From:	Roger J. An ricker@********.com
Subject:	2 Smartguns
Date:	Thu, 12 Aug 1999 12:19:25 -0400 (EDT)

Here is what my friends thinks about having 2 Smartlinks:

"Hey, that was my idea from like a year ago. I wasn't allowed to do it,
though I don't see why not. I think that it is not at all difficult to
shoot at one target with two guns (if you have the strength). To shoot at
two targets with two guns is another thing entirely. Consider this
technical tidbit: The brain's multi-tasking capabilities are very poor
(walk and chew gum), and therefore aiming at two different targets should
be almost impossible to do well. However, with the advent of encephelons
and skillsofts and math coprocessors in the brain (which essentailly do
background precesses why you're thinking about other things), I don't see
why one couldn't multitask smartlinks as well. This is how it would work,
using skill-softs:

skillsofts, as I understand them, are almost entirely self sufficient. That
is, you give your "skill" a basic command, like "shoot at that guy,"
or
"stop shooting at him," or in OS lingo, "start|kill thread" and the
"skill"
does the rest, with the aid of whatever gizmos you have built into your
gun, and your head, including smartguns. While this process was taking
place, skillsoft doing most of the work, I don't see why you couldn't do
other actions which required concentration, such as eating lunch,
touch-typing at a keyboard (with one hand of course), and other manual
activities, including shooting a second fire-arm, but using your own skills
rather that the skill-softs.

Better yet, rather than the PC doing any heavy concentration on any
dextrous action, he could have the two different skill-softs (or two
instances of the same s-soft) performing both actions, while all the person
has to concentrate on is looking at tbe bad guys so the software in his
head has more data to process, thus better able to make good decisions.
Whether or not this would work is entirely dependent on the efficiency of
the "operating system" of the skill-softs, and it's ability to integrate
smart-link data with neurological data. However, in the 6th world, I don't
think this is an issue. One might need a module to incorporate two
smartlinks and skill-softs, but I think it's perfectly feasable.

In fact, the tactical computers (is that what they're called?) do something
similar by tracking multiple targets at once. This is very similar."