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Tri-corders As in recorder - but Tri.

Why do so many Slashdot posters have trouble with basic syllables?

Yah, my bad, I don't write none too good and me do not know how to write good like you is, but I write tricorder good and spleld it correrectly. Go to the source if you dernt believed me. I've seen all the old Startrek, and all of the Next Generation and most of Deep Space Nine and a little of Voyager and a tiny amount of Enterprise.

Wnat to see DS( at its best, see "In The Pale Moonlight." Damned good TV, damned good Star Trek.

Naw. Crusher got all funky in the end of the series and ran off with the Traveler. So who knows what he's capable of now.

Seriously, how many would tune in if Wil Wheaton reprised his role as (a more mature *cough*) Crusher on Enterprise? Its not like Rick Berman remembers what Trek is anymore.

Naw. Crusher got all funky in the end of the series and ran off with the Traveler. So who knows what he's capable of now.

Seriously, how many would tune in if Wil Wheaton reprised his role as (a more mature *cough*) Crusher on Enterprise? Its not like Rick Berman remembers what Trek is anymore.

DS9 also did really well when it had to compete against Babylon 5.

Urban legend has it that J. Michael Straczynski went to Paramount trying to sell his idea for this innovate new space opera whose central focus was life aboard a space station. The way I've heard it told, the studio brass sat there nodding silently and appreciatively during the pitch session but ultimately said "Thanks, but No Thanks".

Then, mysteriously, a new show appeared featuring Star Trek themes and ...whaddya know! many spacefaring races mingling in intrigue and commerce on a space station! Go figure, what were the odds of something like that happening? Two shows with nearly identical scenarios hitting the air at roughly the same time? ;)

But to tell the truth the Star Trek folk were just doling out a bit of what they got back in the 60s (okay a bit of a stretch, but bear with me here). According to William Shatner in his book about the making of 60's series he told of how Roddenberry approached (I think it was CBS) trying to sell his "wagon train to the stars" (making an attempt to appeal the success of a show called Gunsmoke) to the execs there. One major selling point was how cheaply the show could be made because of his "similar worlds theory". The theory in question states that given the enormity of the universe there is a mathematically possibility that other worlds could have evolved similarly to the earth. That being the case, depictions of allien races could be achieved cheaply through inexpensive costuming techniques and alien landscapes could be achieved through location shoots. Like their Paramount counterparts of the 1990's, they sat there and said "Interesting, good, but ultimatly no thanks". Then...lo and behold look what hits the air before Roddenberry can get the okay to do Star Trek...

Enterprise is as vapid as anything else you'll find out there. It hangs in the balance between mainstream idiocy and hardcode geekiness, and it doesn't manage to be either with any degree of success. Like almost all sci-fi, it's too geeky for most mainstream viewers. And it's far, far too goddamn stupid to keep me or my friends interested. It's almost like Jennifer Lopez--she tries to sing, dance and act, and does all three of them horribly. Regrettably, Star Trek doesn't have as nice of an ass to fall back on (pun intended), but not for lack of trying. (Had I not already employed the word "vapid" earlier in this paragraph, I could put it to good use again here.)

Berman, Braga and company seem to have lost track of what made Trek so successful in the first place. It wasn't the explosions. It wasn't the combat sequences. It certainly wasn't the titties. Unless the franchise manages to find a good bit of the intelligence it seems to have misplaced along the way, I fear that it's on its deathbed.

[C:\>net send all This is a joke!]
So where's the news? It was already predicted somewhere else. Also, they predicted the failure of the Beagle...

Nothing to see here move along... :-)

[C:\>net send all This is a joke!]
So where's the news? It was already predicted somewhere else. Also, they predicted the failure of the Beagle...

Nothing to see here move along... :-)

WTF does this have to do with sexy borgs?

If you were a real nerd, you would know that the Humans, Klingons, Romulan/Vulcans, etc. discovered evidence of common origins in a DS9 episode.

If *YOU* were a real nerd, you would know that those races discovered evidence in a TNG episode, not DS9.

I should hope so.

And it has almost 22nd Century technology in it.

I believe the solution may be:

"...device for translation of spoken languages in real-time communication. It operates by scanning brain-wave frequencies and using the results to create a basis for translation". A la the portable universal translator." More here.

Personally I'd prefer my own Ensign Hoshi.

Trials and Tribble-ations

Two ideas led to the system, said Regina Barzilay...

Speaking of natural language recognition, I parsed this sentence from the article as reading, "Two ideas led to the system, said Reginald Barclay ..." :)

zefram cochrane invented warp technology in the star trek timeline, and was an ameture cosmonaut in a time when not too much else was going on, much like this /. article.

V'Ger arrives at Earth and signals its Creator. When there is no response, V'Ger blasts energy bolts at the planet in an attempt to rid it of all its carbon infestations. Forced to act, Kirk tells V'Ger he knows why the Creator has not answered. The Ilia-probe, interested by Kirk's remark, says it will cease its attack when Kirk explains. But Kirk replies he will answer to no one but V'Ger itself. With some trepidation, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Decker are lead by the Ilia-probe outside the ship to the "brain" of V'Ger. At the center of the chamber, the Starfleet officers are surprised to discover that V'Ger is in reality a twentieth century Earth robot space probe. In fact, a mounted plaque looks as though it reads "Voyager VI."

... does it run Linux?

One day, one day... :-)

As for the torpedos... 3 words "Torpedo Sustainer Engine":

Propulsion system within a photon torpedo. It comprises a matter/antimatter fuel cell that powers a sustainer coil. The coil maintains a warp field around the torpedo that is handed off from the launching ship, allowing the torpedo to travel at warp speeds. As part of Dr. Timicin's experiments in 2367 in fusion enhancement within stars, sustainer engines were modified on a number of photon torpedoes.

Olde News; Commander Bruce Maddox tried to disassemble Data in an episode of ST:TNG entitled The Measure of a Man. It turns out AI is indeed sentient. Of course we all knew that, recall when Data hammers Tasha Yar to multi-orgasmic bliss in the episode The Naked Now. That episode alone proves that AI is more than just a glorified lube-smeared vibrator.

Nothing to see here.. move along.. next story please.

Well, it's rather a complex explanation,but you might start with this this link, watch the episode and then contemplate again over the relevance of this signature in an IT dominated envorinment...

Google would have helped you on the way though, ...

Well that's also becomming an issue with spam. Spammers use trojans to turn other people's computers into spam machines, now that user (or their ISP) gets blacklisted....and what's that user or ISP's recourse?

The solution to that scenario is fairly simple: don't run software that opens your computer up to infection by trojans/worms. If you're an ISP, don't allow your customers to run such software on your network.

(OK, so maybe that response is like Q saying the solution to some problem is to change the gravitational constant of the universe, but one can always hope, right?)

According to this article on ZDNet News, SCO pointed out some of the allegedly copied code in Linux in a presentation at SCO forum.

I think when you start getting quotes like "The DNA of Linux is coming from Unix.", it starts sounding more and more like a bad soap opera or worse "Voyager".

This is how it starts. They say they do it to protect the homeless of course, and if you want to know how it ends, watch that episode.

The worst is, there won't be any reaction from the /. crowd because they can't think of any non-electronical way to protest this ;)

Today it was announced that Walter "Matt" Jefferies, the art director who designed the original Enterprise vessel for the first Star Trek series has died at age 82. The art designer contributed greatly to our culture and will be missed by all. Whether you were a Star Trek fan or not, he was truly an icon, and will be missed by all. The official website of the sci-fi series just announced his passing.

His design of the NCC-1701, as it was designated in the first series, has become one of the most iconic images of 1960s television.

The exact cause of his death is not known but Jefferies had been battling cancer.

The website reported that he had recently been given the all-clear by doctors.

He is survived by his wife Mary Ann.

Although conceived in the years before space flight became common, the overall shape of the Enterprise has remained close to Jefferies' first vision, through 10 films and five TV series.

As a tribute to the designer's creation, access tunnels in the Enterprise were named "Jefferies tubes" and have featured in many different episodes and films.

Herman Zimmerman, production designer on the latest Star Trek series Enterprise, said: "Matt was a gentle soul. He has put his stamp on everything we have done since his brilliant, classic Enterprise."

Michael Okuda, technical consultant on Enterprise, said: "Matt Jefferies' quiet modesty belied the genius of his work, which set the path for all of us who are lucky enough to follow in his very large footsteps.

"Today, nearly four decades later, Matt's original Enterprise still stands as a design classic. We will miss him greatly."
crazysugarfoundedvivamorph

and the white dwarf will never explode as supernova.

Well, that depends. If the white dwarf is close enough to the Chandrasekhar limit, and somehow manages to accrete enough matter to actually pass it, it would go supernova. Becoming overwheight can be dangerous even for old, retired stars.
Marlon Brando should take notice :)

Actually a white dwarf can explode as a classical nova but it has to have a normal companion star. When this occurs, the white dwarf's gravity strips gas off the companion which builds up on the white dwarf's surface until it explodes.

Going slightly off-topic, this was a plot point in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Actually, the dinosaurs may well have -- they apparently opted for the colonization solution.

hmm...
In fact, although the holodeck-like CAVE was introduced in 1992 - 5 years after ST:NG's debut, VR systems had been around a few years already.

For example, Lanier's VPL had the first commercial interface gloves (1984). head mounted displays (1987), and networked virtual world system (1989).

Seeing article about technology and membranes makes me think that Gene Roddenberry (and his successors) predicted all this integrated biology and technology stuff pretty well....remember "bio-neural gel packs"?

Why did the United States and the USSR go to the Moon in the first place? For the science? Because the world needed velcro and Tang?

Say what? Velcro was a gift from the Vulcans.

It was the Ferengi!

That is a lie!
It was Zoidberg.

But... but... we already know what happened.

It was the Ferengi!

:-)

Soon we won't be able to watch free TV, we will all need to pay mega $$$ to watch, and that is when I will stop watching.

All I watch now anyway is Enterprise and Cowboy Bebop

A conniving character from Sherlock Holmes takes control of a holodeck fantasy and traps the senior staff inside of it.

While enjoying a Sherlock Holmes mystery fantasy on the holodeck, Geordi and Data request that Barclay investigate some anomalies in the program. While doing so, Professor Moriarty appears and informs Barclay that the computer system has created him so well in the fantasy that he has come alive! According to Moriarty, Picard has held him hostage in the fantasy for over four years.

Startrek.com's Synopsis and multimedia for this EP... I'm a nerd too.

The device, which is internally rechargable, can wirelessly transmit location, movements and vital signs via the Internet, storing the info in a database.

I honestly think that episode of Mr. Data's way of committing suicide, and taking out of the universe with him.

Seven years without getting laid. It was his way of getting back at a universe that wouldn't sleep with him.

Somebody should have made Data a female somewhere in Season 7. I don't mean pretty makeup and boobs style... I mean Fistful of Data's-woman-at-the-end style.

That, or they somehow mix it up with the Dukes of Hazard... Imagine the voice of Waylon Jennings going: "Hooo weeeeee! 'Dem Federation Boys just blasted out of there like shotguns at a Wal-Mart sale!"

Any show that is enough of a car wreck, people will watch. It's sad, it's pathetic, and most of all, it's true.

Next week's episode (5/7/2003) will be a Borg episode.

Synopsis:
An arctic research team on Earth discovers debris from an alien vessel, nearly a century old, buried in a glacier along with the bodies of two cybernetically enhanced humanoids. Once those beings are thawed for investigation, they come to life and abduct the scientists and their transport vessel. Enterprise is called to intercept, but Captain Archer and his crew find these cyborgs to be an intractable, insidious enemy.

At each access node, there is a Sisco Router/switch controlling what traffic can come in and out.

Let me guess, you're using a DS9 feed? ;-)

As the costs for this goes up, the slippery-slope endgame will be that email addresses are registered (like DNS), and mail servers and intermediate systems will have to reject email with unknown endpoints. Actually, this could be cool in a carbomite maneuver sort of way - all 'illegal' email is directed back to the sender along with an additional message saying why it was rejected.

On a personal note, I have a problem with my ISP right now where spam actually chokes my inbound download (because of invalid headers, etc.), so I have to use POP3 Scan Mailbox to roto-rooter the queue before all my mail can download. Major pita. But, I'm hoping to make mods to Thunderbird to allow me to do this in one swell foop, as it were.

Some of your points have also been brought up in several mainstream movies. e.g. Gattaca, AI, 2001: A Space Oddyssey and Blade Runner to name a few.

There are of course countless other books, movies and tv shows that comment on the subject from the old to the new.

the borg that are going to be survivors of the borg sphere that was destroyed over earth in star trek: first contact, according to this link.

http://www.frostjedi.com/phpbb

I, too, like Enterprise (many thanks to sharereactor for letting it me view :) ) .

Actually my two greatest problem with the series are, Time Travel episodes and that it misses totally the idea of story/world development. Or the script-writers total disrespect for a consistent world, and its evolvement, should it be inconvinient for new story spins.

Why should it play in the past, when everything which exists in the future already occurs. Great deal, they don't have it, but everyone else has stuff they don't have in TOS.

After the Ferenghi and the Borg I'm waiting for the Cardassians.
Scrap calling it hull-plating and name it shield and let the people stop bragging about how brave they were when using the transporter once again.

> What's next have a new young helm officer named James T. Kirk?
A little calculation:
Comission date of NX-01: 2151
Comission date of NCC-1701: 2245
Age of Kirk as helm officer? Say 16years.
Ergo, Age of Kirk as Captain >110years.

Certainly the youngest person ever to become Captain.
And don't evade by telling me something about advantages in medicine.

I cannot claim to be such a Trekky to know this by heart, but the people at Paramount provided me with some exlusive resources, which Mr. Berman probably is not allowed to look at.

I felt, that Enteprise actually had more of the original "adventurer" feeling, that TOS sported (and all later series lacked). But still in my opinion, Mr. Berman pays too little attention to the little details that makes world believable, like consistency and room for development.

Instead he (and other people) are slowly demolishing the world that was Star Trek.

Maybe Dr. Bussard could speed up the work a bit to help make this happen?

When Star Trek is good, it's about people. That's why my favorite episode is Inner Light. That's why I loved working on First Duty and Final Mission.


I never thought about it that way but you're absolutely right. My absolute favorite episode was The Visitor because it truly captured what the bond between father and son can mean. Yeah, I sound sappy, but I do love my son that much.

As for why Nemesis tanked...sure we're geeks but that doesn't mean we have unlimited time for movies. In an already busy Christmas season we're inundated with several blockbusters at once. We just couldn't make the time to see them all. This, however, bodes well for the Blockbuster rentals and DVD sales. Box office tickets are one measure, but not necessarily the total definitive measure of a successful movie. They'll get their money before it's over.

• Find someone new - or -
• Bring back the creative team of Meyer and Benet

• Find someone new - or -
• Bring back the creative team of Meyer and Benet

The TNG Universe (and Enterprise) is formulaic, over-produced, slick to the point of featurelessness, and so politically correct it is painful to watch. . . .

I've been watching Trek since the original series. The original was fun, quirky, politically-incorrect for its time, and just plain fun.

If anything, the original Star Trek was quite politically correct. The two basic political themes I see were (1) inclusion, equality, diversity, and (2) exploring without conquering, winning the hearts and minds of everybody we find by virtue of our virtue and our lofty principles. This isn't a bad description of the way America wanted to view itself then.

This is 1966-1969, remember. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had passed and were being enforced. This is the height of Martin Luther King's activism, and the period where pictures of peaceful marchers being attacked by police dogs were making most of America realize how far out of the mainstream the Jim Crow South had become. Yes, the interracial kiss upset some people, but it wouldn't have happened on mainstream TV if it wasn't time for it.

And the general approach of exploration without colonialism works too. McCarthyism was behind us, but the Cold War was not. We wanted to differentiate ourselves from the Red Menace by our goodness and virtue. While Soviet tanks were rolling into Czechoslavakia, we were trying to win people over with Voice of America broadcasts.

OK, Gulf of Tonkin, American underhandedness, yadda, yadda -- I'm not trying to defend us, but rather speaking to how mainstream America viewed itself at that time. After all, what is political correctness, if it isn't showing us the way we like to think of ourselves. And when I think of Kirk, homemade dagger in hand, poised over the Gorn, but refusing to kill him (Arena, 1/19/1967), I'm thinking that this is exactly how America wanted to view itself at the time.

So I'll agree with basically everything you said about "fun", "quirky", "bold", but not about political correctness. Original Star Trek is a time capsule that preserves the political sentiments of the time quite correctly, thank you very much.

Looniness is quite natural for me, I don't mind at all. But the explanation is entertaining, so I'll share with you. (Hint: negative evidence is still evidence)

Carl Sagan said it better than I ever could. The Drake Equation posits that by now, at least 100 (or anywhere from 5 to 50000, depending on your assumptions) electronics-capable intelligent species have existed in our area of the galaxy so far.

So where are their radio signals? Their space probes? Why does SETI strain fruitless to discover any kind of extraterrestrial signal?

The possible explanations are that there either never was any other intelligent life, or that it lost its ability to send radio signals and space probes shortly after acquiring it. (The Dyson Sphere is another possiblity. So is the Prime Directive, and plain xenophobic paranoia.)

Look at the technology level on earth today. We can already send probes out of the solar system. Given this ability, within 100-300 years at most, we'll be flinging a capsule laden with data storage and solar-powered radio transmitters towards every star we can see.

If we ever manage to colonize other worlds, then over a few millenia there will be an exponential population growth, and nary a corner of the galaxy will be free of us.

But evidently, this hasn't happened yet. Where are all the alien visitors?

Again, using ourselves as an example, the most likely possibility is that whenever technology increases to the point where a species can venture into space, it also allows the species to destroy the viability of it's entire ecosystem. Looking around at the relative popularity of military activities vice space exploration, which one do you think will happen first?

Darwinian evolution dooms us- it creates a locally optimal species, which struggles violently against its peers for resources, always knowing there is a frontier to explore where more open land can be found. But when the frontiers are gone, and the planet is full, it leaves us with a competitive psychology that will be unlikely to abide cooperation long enough for us to "get off the rock".

Look at the science-fiction worlds of something like Clarke's 2001. Flight to Jupiter in 1997? It seemed reasonable then- because it was on the assumption that petty nationalist squabbles wouldn't divert our attention and resources in the meantime. Sadly, that is exactly what's been happening.

Freeman Dyson postulated the idea of a Dyson Sphere, which is basically a planet that was built as a shell surrounding a sun, using all the energy it radiates.

Also mentioned in the TNG episode Relics.

This person did, at least for a while