Alliance Atlas: Olgrea

  Olgrean government officials were playing down the unseemly row that is brewing over corporation tax and its G.I.N. relay suppliers. Olgrea's Social Democratic government has the highest taxation rate in the Alliance, and the Treasurer, Ron Tetommo, has just introduced a network bandwidth tax.

  Eve Paget, the western region manager for AllianceBell, the second largest network supplier in the Alliance has threatened to pull the plug on Olgrea, which would isolate it from the rest of the galaxy. She told the News, "The new tax is ridiculous. No other system in the galaxy charges this kind of tax. They want one credit per transferred terabyte. This would add millions of credits extra per month to our cost of business, and since no other system charges a bandwidth tax, we aren't even set up to collect it, and collection would cost millions more. Unless the Olgreans back down, we will regrettably have to withdraw our service."

  Tetommo reacted angrily saying, "Here is yet another large corporation refusing to support the welfare of the community. They could pass on the tax to the customer just like any other business, and the money raised will go on public services that no other Alliance system enjoys. If push comes to shove, we'll just nationalize all the relays."

  Informally, Tetommo was reminded that nationalization of private property is illegal in galactically-recognised treaties. Olgrea could always buy and operate its own relays, but this would be a huge capital cost that would detract greatly from Olgrea's much vaunted public services. The Republican Democratic member for Olgrea Region 23, Jack Innitu, told the News, "Olgrea's taxes are way too high - and to avoid unpopularity, the SocDems are trying to raise taxes by stealth. Already they have increased corporation taxes to the highest levels in our history in the hopes that the public at large won't notice. However, forcing out our only G.I.N. provider by creating new and ridiculous taxes will draw the ire of the public"

Critical EBBS article

Fed.network

  Phekdans are striking back at what was termed "an unfair swipe at a system trying to do everything it could to get back on its feet", after a well known and prominent Federation commander published a critical article against the system on the EBBS. Cdr. Stuart Wilson, a well-known anti-Alliance activist, wrote a negative summary about the system on Sunday, summarising that Phekda was "...a highly uncivilized region and well worth missing by any law abiding citizen." Additionally, the Fed.network news this week contained several column inches about what a danger Phekda poses to the Federation (largely due to the production of military fuel).

  Wilson said he now "awaits a defence, based on this indisputable evidence against Phekda, as I propose the motion that its membership of the Alliance is foolhardy."

  The TSCA's commander, James Winston, a native Phekdan, immediately rebutted this statement. He told the News, "Happily, Wilson has it all wrong, and things are getting better all the time. It used to be pretty rough there, as I know from personal experience, but things are a lot more settled now a stable government has formed. Cdr. Wilson's data is many years out of date."

  Phekda's President, Kelly Wright, told the News, "Mr. Wilson's comments are quite irresponsible. Our new democratic government is doing all it can to make Phekda a good place to live and a good place to do business - and we are getting there. People spreading out-of-date misinformation does not help our cause. Mr. Wilson should come to Phekda and see how much things have changed since even a year ago."

  It is also felt that the thesis that Phekda shouldn't be part of the Alliance misses the point. Part of the Alliance's charter is to help foster stable, open and democratic government in any system that joins. Several Alliance systems have supplied law enforcement officers to the newly stablized system to help train Phekda's own law enforcement in crime-fighting techniques. This even included training on how to leave a space station one at a time to avoid collisions, and how to avoid flying into the ground - something that other police forces have had difficulty coming to terms with.

Fed.network

Frontier News Issue 32

  News is filtering through from the Federation that the Unity Party has unceremoniously ejected their leader, Sam Redterk. Redterk is notable in putting strain on Federal/Alliance relations with his declared intent of invading Phekda, should he have been elected. Phekdans can now breathe a sigh of relief.

  Redterk was withdrawn as Unity's presidential candidate for the November elections due to "unwarranted comments which do not reflect the Unity Party's ideology." The Unity Party is also seeking legal advice on the situation, as Redterk's comments may have breached Federation hate laws. However, there is some evidence that the Unity party is split - worryingly with many hardliners ardently agreeing with Redterk's position, with the more moderate members wanting nothing to do with Redterk or his policies. It remains to be seen which half of the party will win the struggle for control.

  It is likely that a Unity candidate will be in no position to win after Unity's disasterous slide in the polls since Sam Redterk made his position on the Alliance clear.

  Meanwhile, in the Alliance parliament, Geoff Stibbons (SocDem, Alioth region 106) asked the government "whether this reduction in threat will lead to a change in plans over the AJN's fleet renewal". The Defence Secretary (R.Dem, Gateway region 74), replied, "The AJN fleet renewal programme will continue as planned. We don't know what other threats might appear on the horizon, so to give Alliance members the value for money they require, there is no change in schedules". Opposition parties are now calling for a full debate on AJN funding, to ensure the fleet size is correct. "We need to make sure that the AJN isn't getting bloated. The trick is making it big enough for a good, effective defence, but not so big that it unnecessarily sucks tax credits from AIS citizens," Stibbons said later, in an interview with reporters.

Frontier News Issue 36

Alliance Atlas: Ackwaze

  The probes that returned with the small LRA object last week are being intently studied by researchers at the Ackwaze Space Science Institute. Three of the probes that disappeared with the LRA-2 were returned, and researchers are not disappointed with what the probes contained.

  "The mission seems to be a success from the data standpoint," said Alice Thompson, the head of the LRA Investigation project. "The probes came back with every byte filled - that's fifteen petabytes each. Each probe contains different data. The challenge is now trying to figure out what the data means. Extraction of sensor logs was successful, and this has already turned up a lot of stunning information. Now we have to work on this, and the data that was loaded into the probes by an unknown, external party - presumably the non-human intelligences."

  Like the analysis that is still continuing on the transmissions received from the LRA-2, it may be years before anything meaningful is found. It is likely that the sentient beings who inserted the data have such an incredibly different way of interpreting the universe around them that it takes centuries to figure out their frame of reference. To even begin to read the data, researchers have to at least get this far, otherwise the data may as well be as random as radioactive decay. Even with the Thargoids, who have a great deal of frame-of-reference overlap with humans, the process took many years. It was of course worthwhile since it meant that by 3250, we could communicate in real time with the Thargoids, resulting in the first of many highly successful "Quest" peace missions.

  There is some speculation that the LRA objects were related to the finding of an alien artefact, whose origin is still unknown. The artefact was found in 2280 - over 1,000 years ago. It is entirely possible that the intelligence behind the LRA has been studying humankind for thousands of years - in which case, they may have structured the data in such a way that we can decode it relatively easily. Of course, we always have to ponder what an alien intelligence thinks of humankind's incessant squabbling which has nearly destroyed us on more than one occasion.

Fed.network

The Price of Elite

Slashdot: Sun buys Cobalt

  After a very quiet week out on the web, there's only two things to report on the Elite scene. Firstly, the Frontier News has competition - from the Federation! Detonate's Fed.network is of course an unashamedly Federation-oriented news network. Apparently, the Alliance is getting "too much biased press" from none other than the Frontier News...

  Simon Challands keeps on writing. The second chapter of "The Price of Elite" is now online. The pendant is giving not only the native humanoids a shock, but one of the humans too. There is the general feeling that something horrible is about to happen.

  Finally - not really Elite-related - but Cobalt has been bought out by Sun Microsystems. Alioth.Net runs on a CobaltRaQ system. Hopefully, Sun isn't about to asset-strip the company, since things are working out very nicely at our end with the Linux-based CobaltRaQ. Sun, may of course, start forcing us to use Solaris instead. We'll have to see.