Tell people that the interstellar Girl Scouts (will) have a stand on Mars, and we need to plan the mission now so we don't miss them next year.

Sounds a lot like Google TiSP (albeit, a few days early).

I think you just sold your soul for approx $1.99, which is pretty useless, because the gorram bag of Cheetos might have some kind of sales tax involved when you try cashing out.

Better to trade one soul for a bag of Cheetos directly...

Unless they're horribly slow to adopt new technologies/strategies/etc, and assume that we've had no meaningful advances since the Crusades.

what, not 1970-01-01?

I think you actually meant "Christians" rather than "Catholic", as "Catholic" happens to be one sub-set (generally one of the not as bad ones ... although the whole priest thing doesn't really help their image...). If you're referring to the bible itself, yeah it "says" that the Earth is ~6000 years old, but it's just a story where "so, a thousand years ago, this happened". It could just as easily start off "A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." and cover the same general message.

Really though, the important teachings in the O.T. are meant to keep your dumb ass alive from food-borne illnesses (don't eat pork, don't eat shellfish ... some are a bit more out there -- e.g. eating meat & dairy is "bad") ... or other diseases (don't sleep around, don't bugger your neighbours ... etc) under the guise of "God said so". When your most advanced medicine boils down to "hope for the best", this is probably a good idea. N.T. is more focused on "don't be an asshole" than anything.

Just look at me over here. *flash*
Okay, you know how you're on a airplane and the flight attendant asks you to turn your cell phone off? And you're like, "I ain't turning my cell phone off. That ain't have nothing to do with no damn airplane." Well, this is what we get. That's what happens. It gets up there, bounces around on the satellite, then blam! Just turn your damn cell phone off. Now you're gonna drive off a cliff tonight 'cause your GPS don't work.

Provided that Oceania stays at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia, everything in your proposed future will be double-plus good...

... or something like that, anyway.

Oh, for the want of mod points.

Meh, I learned it a few years ago (note - am a "damn kid" still). Bit disappointed that "sunroof" on a new car generally means "automatic transmission". I really wish $MFG would listen when I say I want standard transmission AND the sunroof...

Yeah, that's what it sounds like, the chips "heal" in the same way that networks "heal" -- route around the slow/bad/dead parts -- rather than biological healing of replacing the dead/missing cells. I'm taking this to be the first steps towards artificial healing -- the chips (or networks for that matter) can close off the parts that are "bleeding" due to damage.

So, for now the chips are able to put up a rudimentary scab. Eventually, they may be able to take "local" resources (silicon, carbon, whatever) and start rebuilding the patterns that were on them. I just hope the re-structuring there ends up with a "#5 is alive!" machine, rather than a T-1000.

Evolution's had a damn long time to get the "rebuilding cells" part down -- we're just at the "stop the bleeding" phase with the chips. Once they can rebuild their structure, we're in for trouble...

R64 (moons*) are from Eve Online (Rarity [4*], 8, 16, 32, 64) -- each rarity level being progressively more difficult to find as the number increases... I don't know the progression, as I don't think it's been published (or at least, I couldn't find it with a few quick google searches), though estimates hold Tech moons around 400.

Assuming linear progression of each step halving the number of moons, and Tech being a representative example of R32 Moon density, that gives a count of about 200 of each type of R64 moon, spread across ~3500 systems, with varying numbers of moons (from 0 to ~100 ... I think 102 or 104 is the highest). So, at an average of 50 moons/system, you have a 0.1% chance any one moon in a system would be R64.

*well, actually, it's the material's rarity, but you can R4 and R64 materials on the same moon ... and it'd still be considered a R64 moon.

**R4 moons are everywhere, and generally not counted when talking about moon materials.

No, and nothing of value was (will be?) lost.

yeah, but then again, we'd have to be _incredibly_ lucky to find an unclaimed r64 in our home system ... and then we'd immediately find out how incredibly _unlucky_ we are to find we're living in null.

On the other hand, there are at least a few thousand of us who know how to handle the politics (provided that they're not all too busy shooting each other, that is).