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Microsoft has introduced a 'fully conformant software rasterizer' called WARP (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) 10

Sheesh, trust Microsoft to forget that Warp 10 is impossible to achieve.

Or, like their headquarters being located at "One Microsoft Way," is this a subtle message about trying to oversee and control everything, since at warp 10 it's "technically occupying all places in the universe at the same time?"

It has other emotions, but those are the only ones that Lore allows him to feel. :-p

The speed of light is an absolute limit.

Could this barrier be theoretically broken with use of a higher dimension?

Subspace Communication (Excuse the reference :P)

You could get there in 16.5 hours with a quantum slipstream drive.

Really? I mean, being able to see into other parts of the ultraviolet spectrum could be kind of neat, you really want your vision to be so easily taken away? Steal your VISOR and all of a sudden you're absolutely blind.

I could see wanting to go for the ocular implants that Geordi got later on though. Those I suppose could still be stolen, but far less easily than a VISOR(and no more susceptible to theft than organic eyes). Plus they're more powerful.
huh, apparently Seven of Nine got something like these too, except perhaps even more advanced. Had stopped watching Voyager before that happened. I suppose it's not really a stretch to think that she'd be open to mechanically enhancing the body though :P I was a bit surprised that more people didn't opt for the procedure in the Trek universe, particularly people who are doing engineering work. Geordi certainly benefited from the abilities his visor gave him on several occasions. A diplomat might too(since his visor could apparently detect the involuntary reactions made by humanoids when they're bluffing)

Really? I mean, being able to see into other parts of the ultraviolet spectrum could be kind of neat, you really want your vision to be so easily taken away? Steal your VISOR and all of a sudden you're absolutely blind.

I could see wanting to go for the ocular implants that Geordi got later on though. Those I suppose could still be stolen, but far less easily than a VISOR(and no more susceptible to theft than organic eyes). Plus they're more powerful.
huh, apparently Seven of Nine got something like these too, except perhaps even more advanced. Had stopped watching Voyager before that happened. I suppose it's not really a stretch to think that she'd be open to mechanically enhancing the body though :P I was a bit surprised that more people didn't opt for the procedure in the Trek universe, particularly people who are doing engineering work. Geordi certainly benefited from the abilities his visor gave him on several occasions. A diplomat might too(since his visor could apparently detect the involuntary reactions made by humanoids when they're bluffing)

The Enterprise was built on the ground folks.

Actually, the NCC-1701-D was built at Utopia Planitia, the Starfleet shipyard orbiting Mars.

I'll forgive the slip-up this time.

The Enterprise was built on the ground folks.

The Enterprise may have been, but Columbia wasn't. We got to see her in the orbital shipyards.

You fool, a flux capacitor won't get you out of the black hole. You need to find a crack in the event horizon and then you can simply walk out.

Um, no, the USS Constitution (NCC-1700) was the first Constitution class to be built. That's why the class is named after her.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/NCC-1700
http://startrek.wikia.com/wiki/USS_Constitution_(NCC-1700)

On a molten hot planet, even if intelligent life somehow managed to evolve, how would it build a civilization or technology with just streams of lava to work with?

It's like dolphins. They appear to be pretty intelligent, perhaps second only to us on this planet. But they have no way of manipulating their environment (e.g., opposable thumbs), and are stuck living in the oceans, so even if they wanted to, their ability to create technology is quite limited compared to us. So, they just swim around and have orgies.

There's nothing closed-minded about it; it's just pragmatic to assume alien life is likely to resemble us in many ways: developing on a rocky planet within the Habitable Zone of its star, where it won't be too hot or too cold for carbon-based organic life to develop. It would certainly be easier to recognize such life too, rather than looking for Hortas.

Nope, they were all based on the Animated Series. It may have seemed like they related to original episodes because the stories tended to revisit planets and situations from TOS. (e.g. The R&R world was revisited.) Also, the series never made it to the teens.

You win.

My thought is that the concept of warping space and then moving at a sub-light speed (relative) was too hard for the average viewer to understand, so they had to *become* engines...

I don't understand why you think there's a dichotomy between the way that the warp drive works and the nacelle system being a pair of "engines".

I don't understand why you think *I* think there's a dichotomy. *I* get how the ship supposedly works. I was ONLY trying to get across in my original post the notion that early on and even in later days there has been a bit of confusion about it between the various script writers.

Given what Roddenberry had to work with, he pulled off an impressive bit of SciFi for its time. By the time NextGen rolled around, they had worked out many of the details of the FTL concepts and made sure to write them down in the show's bible. (Which eventually lead to Okuda's tech manual.)

Seriously. I can't remember a time that I didn't watch and enjoy ST, even from my birth in '72. I even have a beaten up die-cast 1701 to prove it...

I wish you luck with your continued efforts!

Nope, they were all based on the Animated Series. It may have seemed like they related to original episodes because the stories tended to revisit planets and situations from TOS. (e.g. The R&R world was revisited.) Also, the series never made it to the teens.

You win.

My thought is that the concept of warping space and then moving at a sub-light speed (relative) was too hard for the average viewer to understand, so they had to *become* engines...

I don't understand why you think there's a dichotomy between the way that the warp drive works and the nacelle system being a pair of "engines".

I don't understand why you think *I* think there's a dichotomy. *I* get how the ship supposedly works. I was ONLY trying to get across in my original post the notion that early on and even in later days there has been a bit of confusion about it between the various script writers.

Given what Roddenberry had to work with, he pulled off an impressive bit of SciFi for its time. By the time NextGen rolled around, they had worked out many of the details of the FTL concepts and made sure to write them down in the show's bible. (Which eventually lead to Okuda's tech manual.)

Seriously. I can't remember a time that I didn't watch and enjoy ST, even from my birth in '72. I even have a beaten up die-cast 1701 to prove it...

I wish you luck with your continued efforts!

I think most of the original logs were based upon TOS plots (maybe four episodes per book?). Although as the Log numbers climbed into the teens they may have gotten into the Animated Series.

Nope, they were all based on the Animated Series. It may have seemed like they related to original episodes because the stories tended to revisit planets and situations from TOS. (e.g. The R&R world was revisited.) Also, the series never made it to the teens.

My thought is that the concept of warping space and then moving at a sub-light speed (relative) was too hard for the average viewer to understand, so they had to *become* engines...

I don't understand why you think there's a dichotomy between the way that the warp drive works and the nacelle system being a pair of "engines". (Though more properly, they'd be part of one "engine" just as multiple cylinders are part of a single "engine".)

Wikipedia defines engine as, "An engine is a mechanical device that produces some form of output from a given input." Dictionary.com lists it as, "a machine for converting thermal energy into mechanical energy or power to produce force and motion."

Neither of those definitions preclude a warp drive from being an "engine". And again, the Logs are not canon, so don't pay too much attention to them. Back in those days authors got to take quite a bit of freedom in their writing.

My main point simply being that a lot of the ST technical manual is fairly revisionistic.

There's certainly been some revisionism going on, though I'd think of it more as "refinement". Gene's idea was pretty rough when he first proposed it. Besides Star Trek being one of the first media attempts to actually tackle the problem of FTL travel, the science simply wasn't there yet. Barely a handful of Antimatter particles had been observed, the Standard Model was still developing, Quantum Physics and Relativity were wrestling, and rocket engineering was still a strange and bizarre new field.

Given what Roddenberry had to work with, he pulled off an impressive bit of SciFi for its time. By the time NextGen rolled around, they had worked out many of the details of the FTL concepts and made sure to write them down in the show's bible. (Which eventually lead to Okuda's tech manual.)

Why hasn't anybody mentioned the Xindi superweapon?

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Xindi_superweapon

The "Titan" books have been pretty good, if too infrequent for my tastes. I wonder if Frakes, Sirtis, Russ, etc, would be willing to reprise their characters? http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Star_Trek:_Titan

I was shocked by how good Enterprise was (except for the stupid time travel stuff, and the way they often used T'Pol as a sex symbol). I understand why it was cancelled, but I really wish it hadn't been; there was a lot more good stuff they could have done.

(Don't get me wrong, I find Jolene Blalock quite attractive. However, scenes like this were gratuitous, and I believe the only reason she didn't get a Starfleet uniform when she joined Starfleet (fairly late in the series) is because the producers didn't think it would look sexy enough. On the other hand, I thought her romance with Trip was pretty well done, which is why I didn't think this was inappropriate - it made sense for her character.)

If you ask me, it looks a fair bit like the phase II enterprise.

And why have a Korean play a Japanese character (Sulu)? WTF?

Yeah, they've never done something like that before.

Lost creator JJ Abrams has unveiled footage from his Star Trek prequel

Ha! If the movie will be as ridiculous as Lost is then we can look forward to such silliness as a detached, renegade warp nacelle which will fire up on its own while sucking people into it* as well as trombone glissandi** in the soundtrack! Shows like Lost make me yearn for more realistic shows...say, Twin Peaks ;)

* Remember the wreckage of the jet shortly after it crashed? It showed that one detached jet engine intermittently revving up by itself. What they tried to make creepy was just...funny. Again. At least the engine managed to suck someone into it before it finally exploded.

** Don't remember which part, but when something scary happens right before a break, 2 trombones a whole-tone apart play a descending parallel glissando. For you non-music types, think of what a trombone would play to accompany a clown falling off of a roof! It's entirely inappropriate for what should be "scary"!. My girlfriend, who is a rabid fan of the series, never understood why I always laughed at the same times that she jumped out of her seat in frightened surprise!

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Artificial_gravity

We all know the reason they were shook about during engagements with the enemy was due to the fact energy transferred from the enemy's weapon to the shields and finally to the ships gravity plating.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Artificial_gravity

We all know the reason they were shook about during engagements with the enemy was due to the fact energy transferred from the enemy's weapon to the shields and finally to the ships gravity plating.

The big question is -- can this program tell the difference between a porn photo and a photo of Fidel Castro eating a banana?

For some, a photo of Fidel Castro eating a banana would be porn. Won't someone think of the Kreetassans?

The First Rule of Acquisition isn't just some made up idea from Science Fiction, you know.

We can release new levels, new stickers, new content...

I'm surprised. ' I thought the whole point of this game was to have paying customers do that for them. While they are at it, may I suggest songs about Feklar?

Read the Constitution. Read what the Founders wrote, read what they were trying to achieve,

To hell with the shapeshifters.

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of Kurros, from ST:VOY season 5 episode 20 Think Tank.

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of Kurros, from ST:VOY season 5 episode 20 Think Tank.

I believe the term you're looking for is Dilithium.

No, Trilithium

If electronic could be made 100% secure, foolproof, etc., it should still not be used simply because of the PERCEPTION of what happens..."

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." -- Emma Goldman (attrib.)

Consider that if voting is a feel-good event, does reality matter? If the voters perceive the election to be fair, why even count the ballots? In the cynical view, the voters don't want to know how the sausage is made, they just want to *believe* it doesn't have cow poop in it. No one in the general public thought about hanging chads (cow poop) until there was a disaster; the people running the elections sure knew about the poop, but also knew they could get away with selling it as 100% beef.

I vote (not that anyone cares) for simple, cheap, reliable, flawed-but-less-so optical scan plus manual recounts of samples to detect errors or fraud. Save technology for where it is actually needed,* not because it saves a few bucks (maybe) or makes election officials look 21st century.

*Until we get unalterable optolythic data rod or the equivalent (which I will call "paper plus").

I was disappointed with how TNG treated the Q Continuum, making it look like some borish midwestern scene.

I think that you are thinking of episode 18 (Death Wish) of season 2 of Voyager where they visit the Q Continuum and Q (the one who takes the name 'Quinn' upon being made mortal) clearly states, when the away team expresses surprise that they are standing on a road in the middle of desert next to a gas station, that the whole scene, "was a representation of the Q Continuum that falls within the human level of understanding". Or in other words, the Q Continuum is not a 'borish midwestern scene', that was only how the Voyager away team perceived it not how it literally was to the Q themselves.

Yes, I know that's supposedly how the away team "perceived it", but that was truly too easy of an out for the writers and special effects department!

I was disappointed with how TNG treated the Q Continuum, making it look like some borish midwestern scene.

I think that you are thinking of episode 18 (Death Wish) of season 2 of Voyager where they visit the Q Continuum and Q (the one who takes the name 'Quinn' upon being made mortal) clearly states, when the away team expresses surprise that they are standing on a road in the middle of desert next to a gas station, that the whole scene, "was a representation of the Q Continuum that falls within the human level of understanding". Or in other words, the Q Continuum is not a 'borish midwestern scene', that was only how the Voyager away team perceived it not how it literally was to the Q themselves.

Yes, I know that's supposedly how the away team "perceived it", but that was truly too easy of an out for the writers and special effects department!

I was disappointed with how TNG treated the Q Continuum, making it look like some borish midwestern scene.

I think that you are thinking of episode 18 (Death Wish) of season 2 of Voyager where they visit the Q Continuum and Q (the one who takes the name 'Quinn' upon being made mortal) clearly states, when the away team expresses surprise that they are standing on a road in the middle of desert next to a gas station, that the whole scene, "was a representation of the Q Continuum that falls within the human level of understanding". Or in other words, the Q Continuum is not a 'borish midwestern scene', that was only how the Voyager away team perceived it not how it literally was to the Q themselves.

Yes, I know that's supposedly how the away team "perceived it", but that was truly too easy of an out for the writers and special effects department!

The nacelles aren't going to be pressurized, so you can ignore them and likely the pylons as well. You only have to worry about the saucer and engineering hulls.

The nacelles are pressurized, at least when not under warp. When the plasma stream is not operational, you can walk inside them and perform maintenance. Here's a picture of what they look like in the inside, with the doors open. The episode is "Eye of the Beholder", TNG. Humans travel to the nacelles and control room where they can be monitored during operation is done through the pylons, so they're pressurized all the time.

I was disappointed with how TNG treated the Q Continuum, making it look like some borish midwestern scene.

I think that you are thinking of episode 18 (Death Wish) of season 2 of Voyager where they visit the Q Continuum and Q (the one who takes the name 'Quinn' upon being made mortal) clearly states, when the away team expresses surprise that they are standing on a road in the middle of desert next to a gas station, that the whole scene, "was a representation of the Q Continuum that falls within the human level of understanding". Or in other words, the Q Continuum is not a 'borish midwestern scene', that was only how the Voyager away team perceived it not how it literally was to the Q themselves.

I was disappointed with how TNG treated the Q Continuum, making it look like some borish midwestern scene.

I think that you are thinking of episode 18 (Death Wish) of season 2 of Voyager where they visit the Q Continuum and Q (the one who takes the name 'Quinn' upon being made mortal) clearly states, when the away team expresses surprise that they are standing on a road in the middle of desert next to a gas station, that the whole scene, "was a representation of the Q Continuum that falls within the human level of understanding". Or in other words, the Q Continuum is not a 'borish midwestern scene', that was only how the Voyager away team perceived it not how it literally was to the Q themselves.

I was disappointed with how TNG treated the Q Continuum, making it look like some borish midwestern scene.

I think that you are thinking of episode 18 (Death Wish) of season 2 of Voyager where they visit the Q Continuum and Q (the one who takes the name 'Quinn' upon being made mortal) clearly states, when the away team expresses surprise that they are standing on a road in the middle of desert next to a gas station, that the whole scene, "was a representation of the Q Continuum that falls within the human level of understanding". Or in other words, the Q Continuum is not a 'borish midwestern scene', that was only how the Voyager away team perceived it not how it literally was to the Q themselves.

...the Enterprise crew won't need to confuse them with astonishing logical conundra?

i think the most effective use of the android kill switch to dramatic effect was in "The Measure Of A Man" episode of The Next Generation, where Riker has to prosecute Data in court, and prove he is a slave machine, not a sentient being. Riker uses the android kill switch to abruptly deactivate Data while he is on the witness stand, famously saying "Pinocchio is broken; its strings have been cut." It's much better use of the android kill switch than that later episode where...

wait...

what are we talking about?

It ought to look more like a Tri-D chess board from Star Trek. (Pic)

Have you ever seen Lt Cmdr Data use a computer console? In First Contact, he wrote a crypto program to lock out the entire LCARS operating system from the borg in under six seconds. I mean how are we supposed to even compete with that?

And did anyone read this...and think of this?

Sigh...Geordi's VISOR doesn't use his skin. They translate the electromagnetic spectrum to signals the brain can interpret directly.

However, there's an earlier device that did use the skin though. It's not what the guy in the article is proposing, but it is like some other much more promising devices that translate information into tactile information, and the user can train himself/herself to use that information.

Since you're a TNG fan (what self-respecting trekkie isn't), you should also note that Dr. Miranda Jones is oddly reminiscent of Dr. Katherine Pulaski :) You might also want to look up Dr. Ann Mulhall.

And did anyone read this...and think of this?

Sigh...Geordi's VISOR doesn't use his skin. They translate the electromagnetic spectrum to signals the brain can interpret directly.

However, there's an earlier device that did use the skin though. It's not what the guy in the article is proposing, but it is like some other much more promising devices that translate information into tactile information, and the user can train himself/herself to use that information.

Since you're a TNG fan (what self-respecting trekkie isn't), you should also note that Dr. Miranda Jones is oddly reminiscent of Dr. Katherine Pulaski :) You might also want to look up Dr. Ann Mulhall.

i hope they get Dr. Noonien "Often Wrong" Soong. he's unquestionably the best Android developer in this quadrant.

And did else anyone read this...

"The lenses currently used for optics-based imaging have many problems. They only work within a limited range of electromagnetic radiation. Relatively, these are still costly devices greatly limited by weight and field of view. The imaging Professor Yaroslavsky has in mind has no lenses and he believes the devices can be adapted to any kind of radiation and wavelength. They could essentially work with a 360-degree field of view and their imaging capability will only be determined by computer power rather than the laws of light diffraction."

...and think of this?

With 'religion in schools,' the real issue is that she supports radical fundamentalist Dominionism

I knew it! She is a Founder after all!

Great, another one to add to a long list.

Next, in tomorrow's news....

Fortunately, really dangerous stuff, like pot, or country moonshine, is very verbotten.

Congratulations, then, to our new absolutely guiltless overfolk.

The Old Man on the Mountain would be (or is) certainly proud of all these so very humane endeavours.

Prosit!

The desensitization of an individual to violence through psychological conditioning is frequently featured in fiction, in the ST:TNG episode The Mind's Eye for example, as part of a multi-sensory simulation program necessary (supposedly) to create a Manchurian Candidate style assassin. Theses studies offer at least some proof that people can be conditioned to have a very casual reaction to an episode(s) of extreme violence, so perhaps the fiction is not too far off the mark.

Oh no! We're going to destroy the fabric of subspace before we even develop warp drive! We'll never make it to the stars now!

Another good reason to not watch Gilligan's Starship.

Oh no! We're going to destroy the fabric of subspace before we even develop warp drive! We'll never make it to the stars now!