Talk:Suzumiya Haruhi:Volume5 The Day of Sagittarius

References & Translator's Notes

Takeda and Arquebusiers

Kyon refers to Battle of Nagashino (長篠の戦い, Nagashino no Tatakai, 1575) at Nagashino Castle in Mikawa of Japan where Cavalry charges were repelled by the western firearms and tactics in short. Kyon's reference is not unlike the Russian defeats at the start of the Russian campaign of World War II due to German superiority in equipment and tactical doctrine or how the Abyssinian were decimated by the mechanized Italian forces, basically hinting to a gross inbalance that exists between the SOS Brigade and the Denkensha forces. Note that the actual location of Tanegashima is not close to Mikawa, as Arquebusiers had a nickname of 'Tanegashima gun' as that's where these firearms were mainly traded at.

Leyte Gulf

Battle of Leyte Gulf, October 1944, was one of the greatest naval engagements in the history of humankind. This was fought as one of the final operation of the Japanese fleet. Known as Shō-1 (捷１号作戦 Shō ichigō sakusen) operation, the IJN effectively ceased to exist following this battle. Severely outnumbered and underequipped, the Japanese resorted to Kamakaze operations subsequently. Notable Japanese losses are the sinking of battleship Musashi at Sibuyan Sea, Fuso and Yamashiro at Surigao Strait and the total destruction of the Carrier fleet, madeup of four standard carriers and two 'Battleship Carriers'.

Denkensha

(電研社) Abbreviated form of the Computer Research Club.

René Descartes

René Descartes is mentioned by Kyon for his famous cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) quotation. Descartes and his work in methodological skepticism where he developed the axiom following that thinking things is the only axiom that stands and everything is to be deducted, thus there is no absolute certainty in all facets of reality applies to Kyon's situation regarding SOS Brigade.

Cherenkov radiation

Accredited to former Soviet Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov (1904-1990) physicist, Cherenkov radiation causes the "blue glow" of nuclear reactor to occur. It can be used to detect high-energy charged particles. Kyon uses this reference to show how volatile being around Haruhi can be.

Cherenkov radiation is given off when high-energy particles (photons - the particle for all radiation, inc light, or electrons - aka beta-particles) exceed the local speed of light, when they enter a medium such as water. The energy that's given off as they decelerate to local-C is what causes the blue glow. You can see this when Nuclear fuel rods are put into cooling tanks at the end of their life.

The sentence should really be changed to "A highly radioactive material randomly giving off gamma-ray bursts." Just being pedantic.

JBV^_^

Karigane Kukicha

Karigane tea is a twig tea that is highly prized. It takes 1 1/2 minutes for stepping 1 teaspoon with 176-190 F / 6 oz 80-88 C / 450 g of water.

LAN

LAN is short for Local Area Network which traditionally is restricted to computer networks within a building. The configuration that the Denkensha has setup in the SOS Clubroom would either be a star or mesh Wi-Fi network on the laptops and uses Haruhi's computer as a Router with a direct Ethernet cable connection to the Denkensha server. This makes Day of Sagittarius 3 a multiplayer LAN game.

There's no implication that it's wireless; quite the contrary: "they swiftly installed LAN cables for Haruhi's desktop PC and the remaining four notebook PCs". It seems more likely to me they would put a switch or hub in the literature club room, and connect all the computers to that, then run a cable from it to the computer club room; that's how I'd do it.

Macro

Macro used in this case would be keyboard macros despite that the Day of Sagittarius 3 had no such provision in-place.

Belisarius

Belisarius (505–565 CE) was an accomplished general of the Byzantium Empire that reclaimed Rome for a brief period of time. He was known for his elite Cataphract cavalry that infiltrates deep within enemy ranks and emerge victorious even if heavily outnumbered.

GUI

Graphical user interface has been a standard feature of computers since 1990's. Best example would be the very operating system that the readers and Haruhi have running on their respective computers.

BIOS

Asahina asked looking terrified at Nagato, but Nagato didn't even look at her. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, which was no longer showing the game graphics, but a black background with a bunch of letters, numbers and symbols, which reminded me of those BIOS interface screens from the computers of the dinosaur age. What's more, the words and symbols were scrolling by at an incredible speed.

Are you sure that it is BIOS? All computers have a BIOS/CMOS when they boot up. I believe you are thinking of DOS.

Well, maybe the author himself had it wrong ^^; DarkoNeko talk 14:15, 26 September 2006 (PDT)

The important part of this sentence is Dinosaur Age Computer. Prior to the IBM PC/XT range, most 8bit "micros" has the bios built into the OS. DOS (Disk Operating System) was part of the floppy disc drive expansion card/cartridge (which included bios extensions. DOS itself was mainly found on a floppy included with the drive interface.)

You also have to remember that the Author is Japanese, and probably used an MSX computer, which like the Spectrum and other Micros, had a combined BIOS/OS system.

MSX Screen from emulator.

JBV^_^