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Yeah, but they can add dynametric tailfins to their drones!

I said that too. :) Roddenberry suggested it right in the show bible.

Two fun facts:

1. In TOS, it was somewhat legitimate science fiction to suppose that alien worlds could be identical to Earth. It was theorized that we might be the "optimal" path for evolution to take, and hence things might develop along extremely similar lines. This is why there is literally an episode where they find a planet that has gone through World War III, which ends with Shatner moralizing about the virtues of the US Constitution. This was much-loved because it meant they could re-use props from other productions. Other exciting examples of this kind of imaginary thriftiness include the modern Roman empire, although many were softened: the 20s gangster planet was created by accidentally leaving a history book behind, and the Nazi episode (TM) was deliberate meddling by "a Federation historian" (whom I guess we'd call a neo-Nazi today.)

2. By TNG, the technobabble problem was so bad that the actors sometimes rehearsed with scripts where the technobabble hadn't even been filled in yet. The writers wanted to write a human drama, and science was just a prop thrown in, to support that. To their credit, it at least created a popular show, something which other science fiction programmes had a lot more trouble doing.

Two fun facts:

1. In TOS, it was somewhat legitimate science fiction to suppose that alien worlds could be identical to Earth. It was theorized that we might be the "optimal" path for evolution to take, and hence things might develop along extremely similar lines. This is why there is literally an episode where they find a planet that has gone through World War III, which ends with Shatner moralizing about the virtues of the US Constitution. This was much-loved because it meant they could re-use props from other productions. Other exciting examples of this kind of imaginary thriftiness include the modern Roman empire, although many were softened: the 20s gangster planet was created by accidentally leaving a history book behind, and the Nazi episode (TM) was deliberate meddling by "a Federation historian" (whom I guess we'd call a neo-Nazi today.)

2. By TNG, the technobabble problem was so bad that the actors sometimes rehearsed with scripts where the technobabble hadn't even been filled in yet. The writers wanted to write a human drama, and science was just a prop thrown in, to support that. To their credit, it at least created a popular show, something which other science fiction programmes had a lot more trouble doing.

Two fun facts:

1. In TOS, it was somewhat legitimate science fiction to suppose that alien worlds could be identical to Earth. It was theorized that we might be the "optimal" path for evolution to take, and hence things might develop along extremely similar lines. This is why there is literally an episode where they find a planet that has gone through World War III, which ends with Shatner moralizing about the virtues of the US Constitution. This was much-loved because it meant they could re-use props from other productions. Other exciting examples of this kind of imaginary thriftiness include the modern Roman empire, although many were softened: the 20s gangster planet was created by accidentally leaving a history book behind, and the Nazi episode (TM) was deliberate meddling by "a Federation historian" (whom I guess we'd call a neo-Nazi today.)

2. By TNG, the technobabble problem was so bad that the actors sometimes rehearsed with scripts where the technobabble hadn't even been filled in yet. The writers wanted to write a human drama, and science was just a prop thrown in, to support that. To their credit, it at least created a popular show, something which other science fiction programmes had a lot more trouble doing.

Two fun facts:

1. In TOS, it was somewhat legitimate science fiction to suppose that alien worlds could be identical to Earth. It was theorized that we might be the "optimal" path for evolution to take, and hence things might develop along extremely similar lines. This is why there is literally an episode where they find a planet that has gone through World War III, which ends with Shatner moralizing about the virtues of the US Constitution. This was much-loved because it meant they could re-use props from other productions. Other exciting examples of this kind of imaginary thriftiness include the modern Roman empire, although many were softened: the 20s gangster planet was created by accidentally leaving a history book behind, and the Nazi episode (TM) was deliberate meddling by "a Federation historian" (whom I guess we'd call a neo-Nazi today.)

2. By TNG, the technobabble problem was so bad that the actors sometimes rehearsed with scripts where the technobabble hadn't even been filled in yet. The writers wanted to write a human drama, and science was just a prop thrown in, to support that. To their credit, it at least created a popular show, something which other science fiction programmes had a lot more trouble doing.

Two fun facts:

1. In TOS, it was somewhat legitimate science fiction to suppose that alien worlds could be identical to Earth. It was theorized that we might be the "optimal" path for evolution to take, and hence things might develop along extremely similar lines. This is why there is literally an episode where they find a planet that has gone through World War III, which ends with Shatner moralizing about the virtues of the US Constitution. This was much-loved because it meant they could re-use props from other productions. Other exciting examples of this kind of imaginary thriftiness include the modern Roman empire, although many were softened: the 20s gangster planet was created by accidentally leaving a history book behind, and the Nazi episode (TM) was deliberate meddling by "a Federation historian" (whom I guess we'd call a neo-Nazi today.)

2. By TNG, the technobabble problem was so bad that the actors sometimes rehearsed with scripts where the technobabble hadn't even been filled in yet. The writers wanted to write a human drama, and science was just a prop thrown in, to support that. To their credit, it at least created a popular show, something which other science fiction programmes had a lot more trouble doing.

Two fun facts:

1. In TOS, it was somewhat legitimate science fiction to suppose that alien worlds could be identical to Earth. It was theorized that we might be the "optimal" path for evolution to take, and hence things might develop along extremely similar lines. This is why there is literally an episode where they find a planet that has gone through World War III, which ends with Shatner moralizing about the virtues of the US Constitution. This was much-loved because it meant they could re-use props from other productions. Other exciting examples of this kind of imaginary thriftiness include the modern Roman empire, although many were softened: the 20s gangster planet was created by accidentally leaving a history book behind, and the Nazi episode (TM) was deliberate meddling by "a Federation historian" (whom I guess we'd call a neo-Nazi today.)

2. By TNG, the technobabble problem was so bad that the actors sometimes rehearsed with scripts where the technobabble hadn't even been filled in yet. The writers wanted to write a human drama, and science was just a prop thrown in, to support that. To their credit, it at least created a popular show, something which other science fiction programmes had a lot more trouble doing.

IN real life even if we could travel at Warp speeds, there's hardly any planets - that we know of today - that can support life within a lifetime of Warp travel. Eight times - TEN times the speed of light is not good enough, I'm afraid.

We need THOUSANDs of times the speed of light to have a Star Trek or Star Wars type of intergalactic society.

Warp factors in Star Trek are not linear. The actual scales very a bit, and they're not always consistent between episodes and given distances + ETA, but if you take a look at the TNG section, warp 1 is the speed of light, but warp 2 is the 10x the speed of light, warp 3 is roughly 39x the speed of light, and by the time you get to warp 9 we're talking 1,516x the speed of light. So, with Star Trek, the scientific advisors to the writers know that.

I hope it escapes the fate that befell Pioneer 10.

That was actually Voyager 6, launched in the late 20th century, around the time of the Crazy Years. Or is that another future history...can't think straight with all these images of hot bald chicks running through my mind.

A bit off-topic, but I was watching Star Trek: The Next Generation during my lunch break, and I caught the Samaritan Snare episode, in which some aliens capture a Federation phaser and then proceed to replicate copies of it. Seeing that, I was immediately reminded of all this stuff regarding intellectual property, and it made me wonder: how in the world could a culture like ours survive in a world where even physical goods can be replicated without harm to the original creator of the product? When it's possible to create physical copies of goods as easy as it is to make digital copies now, what then?

All I know is, we need to get our stuff together so we'll be ready.

From: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Money
----
          Picard tries to explain to Ralph Offenhouse from the 20th century that there would be no need for his law firm any longer: "A lot has changed in three hundred years. People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of 'things'. We have eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions." (TNG: "The Neutral Zone")

        When Lily Sloane asked how much the USS Enterprise-E cost to build, Picard tells her "The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century... The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity." (Star Trek: First Contact)
-----

That said, we likely will always have a mix of different types of economic transactions in any society (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft). The question is, what should the mix look like to meet what goals?

Whatever may have been true in centuries past, with the rise of AI like "Watson" and robotics like "Baxter", I'm just not too worried about the issue of people being motivated to "work" in dull jobs. And interesting jobs are generally their own motivation.

Ah, France. You’re so dynamic and quick to embrace change From the Toubon Law to propping up Minitel to the stoic way you embraced labor regulations aimed at easing ridiculously high unemployment by making the first two years of employment somewhat more flexible with your non à la précarité movement... (Does make for decent wine, though, and likely will for centuries.)

Nicolelis says that the work, published today, is the first step towards constructing an organic computer that uses networks of linked animal brains to solve tasks."

Sounds just like Dead Stop.

He took the visor out of choice, because it provided him with vision in some ways superior to natural which he considered made him a better engineer.

And nothing to do with the fact that he could switch to millimeter waves whenever Ensign Lefler walked by.

The one killer feature of Opera that has stopped me from moving to another browser has been the address bar. To my knowledge, no other browser has the same functionality as the Opera address bar, and I haven't found one add-on that mimics that functionality.

The address bar in other browsers works quite simply: if the entered string is a web address, the browser goes to that page. If it isn't a web address, it does a Google search.

Opera implements multiple search engines and bookmarks directly into the address bar. For instance, if I type "w" into my Opera address bar, it goes through my bookmarks, finds that I've tagged Wikipedia with "w", then shows me the Wikipedia front page. If I type "w %s", it does a Wikipedia search on %s. The bookmark tag and the search engine don't have to be related in any way: "alpha" alone takes me to Memory Alpha, while "alpha" and a search term does a Wolfram Alpha query.

And if I learned anything from Star Trek, is that the point is not to lie, but not say the same lie twice.

I know some people are morally against capital punishment, but if the penalty for theft of >$1 million was a capital offense, it would happen a lot less.

Then why not make the death penalty the punishment for every crime? All crimes would happen a lot less.

Hey, there's a TNG episode about that type of Justice

...the fact that her father was a stellar cartographer, and in 2340, he conducted a full spectrum mineralogical analysis of the Vlugta asteroids. He never had the means to follow up on what he found. Alsia's plan was to carry out her father's dream.

Wow has /. gone down hill, this article is a day old and I don't see one comment about ST:DS9 Rivals episode.

Link, to a website I googled to get the summary, couldn't find this mining reference on the Wikipedia page for the episode, was really a sub-plot, I can't vouch for this site, but seems to have the full details of the show.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Rivals_(episode)

Romulan Senator Vreenak said it best:

It's a faaaaake!

Of course, by the time of Star Trek, phasers should be able to automatically lock on the target in real time and hit it, no matter how the target dodges.

So why do the crew keep practicing their aim?

I think you're looking at this from the wrong side.
It's not the size of a book that's fixed, it's the size of the ereader that's fixed.

If you have a thousand random books there will be a large percentage that are 'paperback sized', a few will be 'oversized paperbacks' , those ones that are always a pain on the shelves. But the rest are random sizes of anything from 'C' size to huge. For books the shelves are a problem, but there's not much downside to having a few different shelves for the wrong-sized books.

For an ereader you only have one screen size. As you've noticed it's usually about paperback sized because that's convenient for books that are just words; no pictures, no tables of numbers, just 5-12 words per line like paperbacks or newspapers. But as soon as a book starts adding pictures they're forcing a minimum page size, if that's larger than screen then you have a problem.

The answer is obvious, larger screens for the larger pictures ... but that makes the 'ereader' too big for a pocket, too expensive, not really an ereader any more.

Oddly enough the writers of the original series of Star Trek noted this problem in that there have always been at least two forms of the "PADD" or "hall pass", the handheld style and the clipboard style.

Looks like someone needs to make a "big screen" version of their ereader; identical (and so sharing the development budget) as possible to the "little screen" but sized A4ish. Or perhaps an A4 screen that you can attach the ereader to the back of.

Dr. Julian Bashir, after expressing his disgust at the activities of Section 31, compared the Federation with a "24th Century Rome" in which laws were ignored out of a blind faith that "Caesar can do no wrong." (DS9: "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges")

Do I need to say more?

There are at least 285 rules of acquisition.

I was thinking more along the lines of Barclay's Protomorphosis Syndrome

... make me think of Redjac?

Fiber optic spanner is kind of a long name.

I suggest hyperspanner.

Oh, I didn't realise they had been here already http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Founder. Oh what, you don't mean some ancient race of star travelling shape shifters, you mean a bunch of guys right. Okay, just checking.

The Dreamcast didn't fail because of the controller. It failed after Sega rapidly put out Sega CD, the 32X followed quickly by the Saturn. ...Time will tell.

I find an eerie parallel with Memory Alpha's content I read just about an hour ago tonight. It's about the fall of Star Trek from Rick Berman:

I again asked them for a little breathing room, that maybe it wasn't a good idea to slap a new show on the air in what was going to be the third season of Deep Space Nine

...

With the end of Voyager's seventh season, Berman was once again approached to create a new series - one to air in the fall of 2001, mere months after the final broadcast of Voyager.

I guess Zefram Cochrane was wrong - the Warp Bomb is a reality

So more like the Soliton wave.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/New_Ground_(episode)

FTA:

"Although we often think of space as empty, there are loads of high-energy particles shooting through the void. The University of Sydney research [PDF] indicates that these particles are liable to get swept up in the craft’s warp field and remain trapped in the stable bubble."

And

"All the energetic particles trapped during the journey have to go somewhere, and the researchers believe they would be blasted outward in a cone directly in front of the ship. Anyone or anything waiting for you at the other end of your trip would be destroyed."

Looks like SOMEONES never heard of Bussard collectors....

discussed in March

Also discussed on Star Trek:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Force_of_Nature_(episode)

All we need is to combine this with self-replicating nanoprobes that repair organic and mechanical parts, together with an alcove for regeneration.

All we need is to combine this with self-replicating nanoprobes that repair organic and mechanical parts, together with an alcove for regeneration.

It already has a name: Dakalaw.

Kidding aside: It already has a name: VCFBDSIR2149-0403.

I voted for Kodos.

That's just the dilemma that the people of Eminiar and Vendikar faced, and with the advent of drones, it looks like the road we're heading down is the same one they chose.

Nor can we forget William Riker, played by Jonathan Frakes, who captained the Enterprise-D in one possible future.

Nor can we forget William Riker, played by Jonathan Frakes, who captained the Enterprise-D in one possible future.

But who knows? Our reality may be very much like theirs, and all this might just be an elaborate simulation, running inside a little device sitting on someone's table. -Captain Jean-Luc Picard

It only feels wrong because of your moral perspective, just ask Phlox.

4. USS Enterprise, researching this time period.

Freeman Dyson himself called his theory a "joke."

This was once well known. Wikipedia has blasted this notion out of it's pages long ago.

Actually within the Star Trek universe the use of fusion technology is wide-spread. The use of matter-antimatter reactions is primarily with warp/primary power on most (but not all, see Romulans) star ships and weapon systems. I would recommend adhering to your own advice.

Actually within the Star Trek universe the use of fusion technology is wide-spread. The use of matter-antimatter reactions is primarily with warp/primary power on most (but not all, see Romulans) star ships and weapon systems. I would recommend adhering to your own advice.

Actually within the Star Trek universe the use of fusion technology is wide-spread. The use of matter-antimatter reactions is primarily with warp/primary power on most (but not all, see Romulans) star ships and weapon systems. I would recommend adhering to your own advice.

Actually within the Star Trek universe the use of fusion technology is wide-spread. The use of matter-antimatter reactions is primarily with warp/primary power on most (but not all, see Romulans) star ships and weapon systems. I would recommend adhering to your own advice.

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

Oddly enough, I had the same thought.

Could be the Continuum, for that matter.

Or, where you Ascend to...