I *knew* it!!

[Atrocities]

Oh ya, Moo3 is sweet.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Kamog said:
What do you actually do to the old ships to "refurbish" them? Where I used to work, "refurbish" means you take an old used product, wipe it with alcohol to make it look somewhat clean, test it to check that it works, and put it in the box and sell it. In other words, "refurbished" means just about the same as "old used product".

I assure you, I only use the finest of duct tape, elbow grease and chewing gum.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Kamog said:
What do you actually do to the old ships to "refurbish" them? Where I used to work, "refurbish" means you take an old used product, wipe it with alcohol to make it look somewhat clean, test it to check that it works, and put it in the box and sell it. In other words, "refurbished" means just about the same as "old used product".

I assure you, I only use the finest of duct tape, elbow grease and chewing gum.

Renegade 13 said:

Something smallish, not too flashy. Nice paint job, a few armaments. Will 58 metric tons of a nice sharp, aged cheddar do?

Well, step right up! Over here, I have a nice one, *nearly **brand new. It's got two forward missile launchers and one backwards, can do warp 9, seats four, life support is fully operational as is the gallery and *Ahem* the bathroom. And I ***assure you, the power plant will not explode ***casually.

* What's a decade between friends?
** No-name is a brand, right?
*** Technically completly true. So long as you don't mess with the duct tape.

[Renegade 13]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Cheese is the currently accepted currency. What are you looking for?

Something smallish, not too flashy. Nice paint job, a few armaments. Will 58 metric tons of a nice sharp, aged cheddar do?

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

OK, I'm looking for a large ship, preferably uberdreadnoughtmonitorbattlemoondysonsphere-sized, heavily armoured, armed with enough weapons to vaporize a Dyson sphere. I've got half a galaxy of planets all set to manufacturing ultra-high-quality cheeses in massive quantities, and I can deposit payments of roughly nineteen thousand mobile cargo-carrying Dyson spheres filled with cheese per year, so I guess you could say the price is irrelevant

Why such a big order? Well, my old pleasure yacht just gave up the ghost, and I'm in need of a new one so.....

[Kamog]

With a ship so huge, you'll need another spaceship inside it just to get around. Yeah, we want a galaxy-sized Dyson sphere! You know, like a regular Dyson sphere but instead of having a star in the middle, there's a galaxy in the middle.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Cantilever or suspension?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

...Both!

[Saber Cherry]

One of the names on the list shocked me. And I have 75% lightning immunity...

The company's own page:
http://www.aeginfo.com/clients.shtml

Which I found by way of X-Bit:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/edi...tions2006.html

Now, I consider this to be not a "dirty litle secret" but a "dirty big secret", like the client list of a questionable Swiss bank or a Washington, DC escort service. However, if the business really is as immoral as it seems - and this is not a foregone conclusion, considering that the entertainment industry (e.g. circuses, playhouses, street performers) has used shills for millenia - it seems to me that the client list would be top secret. Furthermore, if a company felt that AEG's business model tasted bad, it would not enlist their services, knowing that the client list is public. That would be akin to a politician taking bribes from polluters ABOVE the table.

So, have these companies been 'caught with their pants down', or is the situation more innocent than it seems at first glance? Nobody really knows what these people do. Their business statement is perfectly vague - no outsider can accuse them of wrongdoing (or even bad ethics) on the basis of the information they make public. And yet, organizations that hide their doings from the public eye (secret police, drug lords, animal-testing firms [which I heartily endorse]) generally do so because what they do is illegal, unethical, contraversial, or deeply offensive to much of the population.

That said -

There's a quick test to determine who is a mole. Ask, "Are you a mole?" ...but in more direct phraseology, like "Do you or have you ever received goods or money from or on the behalf of AEG, signed any contracts with them or companies having common ownership, or provided any services at the request or stipulation of any of the said parties?" An innocent person can say, "No." But an employee would have to stay quiet, lie, or commit fraud... in which case (if any of the employees could be unmasked) the company would clearly be engaged in illegal fraud.

I wonder which is the case?

[Caduceus]

I know I would be tempted with a 30" liquid crystal display to hype up a product I already believed in. Somehow that seems different than hiring a guerilla campaign company to post 800+ messages a day to "build a trusting persona" that can steer people towards a product.

If we can't trust an avatar who looks like a beloved (if somewhat retarded) mouse, who can you trust?