Slashdot Mirror
Messing Around With The Prime Directive
One of the humour sites that I enjoy, SatireWire is back with a look at the daily struggles of the Enterprise orbiting the current Earth. Considering the last reaction to Star Trek, I figured people would like this.
heh
My submission about the UF layoffs gets rejected, but the least funny bit in tonight's SatireWire newsletter is worthy of a front page article?
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
What, no commentary from the crew of Voyager: Flying Toilet?
You'd think they'd violate the Prime Directive to at least put an end to Windows XP.
- billn
not even slightly funny. . .
what gives?
Hemos' brain has disappeared to? Apparently some sort of substance was involved to make that funny.
The previous article [satirewire.com] is much funnier (imho), and probably the best I've read from satirewire in a while.
They used to be an amusing diversion to me. Now I respect them more than most of the mainstream press.
is to supply fodder for inane plots. Don't get me wrong, I like Star Trek. But does anybody have an exact tally to the dozens of times that the prime directive has been violated??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Grain alcohol hurts.
Thanks,
Travis
forkspoon@hotmail.com
The copy-on-record algorithm used by the new VM is a horrible, O(n) NP-complete way of managing swap space. Any CS undergrad could come up with at least 20 better ways of managing the swap space, such as inverse buffer-partitioning or full-duplex write caching, which are used in FreeBSD to good effect.
The new ReiserFS's attribute-tree modeling produces even more pathetic disk performance. Opening a file takes three times longer than ext2fs in 2.2 kernels, and almost five times longer than using Windows 2000's block-spacing scheme used in NTFS. It is truly a pathetic, rushed product, whose mediocrity is hidden behind meaningless buzzwords such as "journalling".
The 2.4 developers made a huge mistake by replacing the 2.2 kernel's direct bus device management with a much clunkier frontside multiplex. This extra abstraction means that Linux has no chance of ever matching the AGP throughput of Windows, which is a necessary acheivement if Linux ever hopes to make headway into the home environment. Performance of all other devices, including USB devices, parallel-port printers, and IDE hard drives, is far lower than any competing operating system. The decreased hard drive performance is especially staggering when coupled with ReiserFS's depressed filesystem speed, making the whole Linux system entirely inadequate for even simple server tasks such as web serving.
It's plain to see that Linux 2.4 will never get off the ground; future versions promise only to bring more poorly-implemented systems into the fold. It is sad to see such a promising system waste away so; I would suggest using a 2.2 kernel to people interested in Linux, except that those kernels have been obsoleted by almost every other product in the marketplace. If you want to learn Unix, I suggest you go with Solaris or FreeBSD instead, or to just forget it and use Windows XP.
DCR Spamcannon!
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
...is the little known fact that Capitain Kirk, among his fellow boy-sex lovers also known as Capitain Jerk-off, is a porn-man. That's right, a porn man. How can I state such a thing? Well just look at how he, in each and every one of that SF TV-series, ScarTrack, walks around, softening, yes - mind you, softening - every reasonably attractive female in his path in his own very pornographic manner. And, I can assure you, that when he is not engaged in such perverted activities, he is either laying naked in his own cabin, spreading his legs and softening his very own reproductive organs, or is having boy-sex with his perverse collegues Mr. Spank and Dr. Boner McToy-Boy.
I menstruate on Mecca. I wipe my ass with the Koran. I piss on Mohammed.
Anyone else waiting for the fanboys to come pooring out of the woodwork in order to correct the errors in this article regarding Star Trek continuity? Or are they all burned out from the last ST thread?
all rolled into one: Top 90 Ways Star Trek Would Change If Slashdot Replaced Starfleet.
As usual, you need a login to vote (moderate).
insignificant sig
For some reason, however, Star Trek consistently misses out on the "Geek critique". This, despite the fact that Star Trek is guilty of some of the most contrived plots and unscientific pseudo-science.
For instance:
Despite all these obvious flaws, Star Trek gets a free ride from the geek critics. Favouritism? Hypocrisy? Blindness? I suspect the problem is really just that geeks criticise films to demonstrate their superior intellect, over the Hollywood film-makers and the audience. Since Star Trek films are considered to be a product of more thoughtful and knowledgeable writers, it does not occur to geeks that these films could be open to criticism.
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
I'd like to assure everyone that Generation X's cynical outlook has merely been restrained, rather than decimated by the WTC collapse, and ensuing media appearances. As an affirmed member of generation X, (aka the "cool" generation), I feel as ambivalent as always, and the primary emotional response this disaster provoked was contempt for TV anchorpersons.
Of course, posting this assurance on slashdot is meaningless, as most of the readership was born too late to be part of generation X.
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
The prime directive was established by the federations, which isn't supposed to have formed yet during the time where enterprise is is set.
The
Prophet
Mohummad
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Ibnul-Qayyim (d.751H) - may Allah bless him- said, commenting upon this hadeeth: ''The phrase 'Allaah is beautiful and loves beauty,' includes the beautiful clothing which was asked about in the same hadeeth. It is included by way of generalization, meaning that beauty in all things is what is meant here. In Saheeh Muslim, it says: "Allaah is good and only accepts that which is good." [2] In Sunanut-Tirmidhee it says: "Allaah loves to see the effects of His blessing on His slave.'' [3] It was reported that Abul-Ahwas al-Jashamee said: The Prophet
(sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam) saw me wearing old, tattered clothes, and asked me, "Do you have any wealth?" I said, "Yes." He said, "What kind of wealth?" I said, "All that Allaah has given me of camels and sheep." He said, "Then show the generous blessings that He has given you." [4] Allaah, may He be glorified, loves the effects of His blessings to His slave to be made manifest, for this is part of the beauty that He loves, and that is part of the gratitude for His blessings which forms an inner beauty (beauty of character). Allaah loves to see the external beauty of His slaves which reflects His blessings on them, and the inner beauty of their gratitude to Him for those blessings. Because He loves beauty, He sends down on His slaves clothes and adornments with which they may make their outward appearance beautiful and He gives them taqwaa which makes their inner characters beautiful. Allaah says:
"O Children of Adam! We have bestowed raiment upon you to cover yourselves (screen your private parts, etc.) and as an adornment, and the raiment of righteousness, that is better." [Sooratul-A'raaf 7:26]
And He says, speaking of the people of Paradise:
".and He gave them Nadrataan (a light of beauty) and joy. And their recompense shall be Paradise and silken garments, because they were patient." [Sooratul-Insaan 76:11-12]
Their faces will be made beautiful with the nadrah (light of beauty), their innermost being with joy and their bodies with silken garments. Just as Allaah loves beauty in words, deeds, garments and outward appearance, so He hates ugliness in words, deeds, garments and outward appearance. He hates ugliness and its people, and loves beauty and its people. But two groups are misguided with regard to this issue: a group who say that everything that He has created is beautiful, so He loves all that He has created and we should love all that He has created and not hate anything. They say: whoever realizes that all that exists comes from Him will see that it is beautiful. these people have no sense of jealousy for the sake of Allaah or hatred and enmity for the sake of Allaah, or denouncing what is evil (munkar), or jihaad (struggle) for the sake of Allaah, or adhering His limits. They regard the beauty of images, male or female, as being part of the beauty that Allaah loves, and seek to worship Allaah through immoral acts. Some of them may even go so far as to claim that the One Whom they worship is manifested or incarnated in those images.
The second group, on the other hand, say that Allaah condemns the beauty of images, forms and outward appearances. Allaah says about the munaafiqoon (hypocrites):
"And when you look at them, their bodies please you." [Sooratul-Munaafiqoon 63:4]
"And how many a generation have We destroyed before them. Who were better in wealth, goods and outward appearance?" [Soorah Maryam 19:54]
In Saheeh Muslim it is reported that the Prophet (sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam) said: "Allaah does not look at your outward appearance and your wealth, rather He looks at your hearts and deeds." [5]
According to another hadeeth: "Shabbiness is part of faith." [6] Allaah condemns those who are extravagant, which applies to extravagance in clothing as well as in food and drink.
In order to settle this dispute, we may say that beauty in clothing and outward appearance is of three types, one of which is commendable, one is blameworthy and one of which is neither. The kind of beauty which is to be commended is that which is done for the sake of Allaah, to help one to obey Allaah and fulfil His commands, such as when the Prophet
(sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam) made himself look beautiful (i.e. handsome) when meeting the delegations that came to him. This is like wearing armour or battle-dress when fighting, or wearing silk and showing off (in front of the enemy). This is commendable because it is done to make the word of Allaah supreme and to support His religion and annoy His enemies. The blameworthy kind of beauty is that which is done for the sake of this world, for reasons of power, false pride and showing off, or to fulfil some (selfish) desires. This also includes cases where beauty is an end in itself for a person and is all he cares about. Many people have no other concern in life. As for the kind of beauty which is neither commendable nor blameworthy, it is that which has nothing to do with either of the two purposes mentioned above (i.e., it is neither for the sake of Allaah nor for the sake of worldly purposes).
The hadeeth under discussion refers to two important principles, knowledge and behaviour. Allaah is to be acknowledged for beauty that bears no resemblance to anything else, and He is to be worshipped by means of the beauty which He loves in words, deeds and attitudes. He loves His slaves to beautify their tongues with the truth, to beautify their hearts with sincere devotion (ikhlaas), love, repentance and trust in Him, to beautify their faculties with obedience, and to beautify their bodies by showing His blessings upon them in their clothing and by keeping them pure and free of any filth, dirt or impurity, by removing the hairs which should be removed, by circumcision, and by clipping the nails. Thus they recognize Allaah through these qualities of beauty and seek to draw close to Him through beautiful words, deeds and attitudes. They acknowledge Him for the beauty which is His attribute and they worship Him through the beauty which He has prescribed and His religion. The hadeeth combines these two principles of knowledge and behaviour.'' [7]
RELEASED UNDER THE GNU PUBLIC LICENSE
Christ! I guess some people just don't know when to shut up. Yeah, we do have the freedom of speech but with the freedom comes also the responsibility. We're at war with terrorism and seditionist trash talk like "understanding muslims" should not be tolerated.
How can they interfere? We're right on schedule. Enterprise is 150 years from now, and in the series premier they complained that the Vulcans had been keeping the humans tied down for a hundred years. That only gives us 50 years to get WW3 out of the way and have that drunken leach invent warp drive. If the nukes don't get me I might even live to see it. Woo hoo!
Then, unexpectedly, the Chester White roots out Mohammed's penis and testicles, hungrily biting them off, gobbling them down with full porcine fury. We bury the newly castrated Mohammed up to his nose in pig manure. Two AIDS infected Bowery whores stuff their used condoms and clotted tampax down Mohammed's throat, and crack a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 over his skull. We then leave him for the hogs to munch on. Mohammed is swine feed, and by tomorrow, he will be swine manure.
The cat doesn't take on an existence (or lack thereof!) until it's observed!
Since I don't have time to read the article...let me pose this slightly off-topic question. Do you think Capt Archer will die on the bridge...or under it? ;)
Captain Jean Luc Picard is sitting impatiently in his chair. He adjusts his uniform.
PICARD
Ensign. Take us to planet Earth, Maximum warp.
He motions forward with his index finger.
PICARD
Engage!
Silence. Stillness.
PICARD
Ensign?
WESLEY
The ship is not responding, sir.
Picard activates his communicator.
PICARD
Picard to Laforge
GEORDIE
Yes captain?
PICARD
Geordie... is there something wrong with the engines?
GEORDIE
We're experiencing difficulties with the neon lights chamber.
PICARD
The what?
GEORDIE
The neon lights ch... I mean the dilithium chamber.
PICARD
Do you think you might have it repaired?
Geordie chuckles.
GEORDIE
Why wouldn't I? Frankly captain, I don't know why you even bother to ask such questions. I can repair just about anything by rerouting... oh wait, no that wont work.
PICARD
What won't work?
GEORDIE
Nevermind... the dilithium crystals must be replaced.
WESLEY
Oh is that all? We'll beam down to Coridan and steal...
PICARD
Silence boy. It's not that simple... you see, there's a little thing known as the Prime Guideline, which is one of our most im...
WESLEY
Spare me, captain... I've heard it a million times...
PICARD
Well, nevertheless...
RIKER
Captain...
PICARD
Number One?
RIKER
I believe we might be able to obtain...
Picard chuckles. Riker looks offended.
RIKER
Captain?
PICARD
Oh, sorry Number One, I was just thinking that it's lucky for you that you aren't second in command...
Riker makes an angry face as the camera closes up on him.
CUT TO:
Commercial
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
"After much thought and consideration, I've decided that we need to intervene and put a stop to this endless bickering!"
Capt. Picard looks to Lt. Cmdr. Worf, "Arm torpedos!..Raise shields"
Worf still not knowing whom to attack says,"Captain, who did you decide to attack?"
Which Picard responds with,"I don't care! If our 401K accounts are to recover and I'm to retire next session for some other series called 'DS9', we need to put a stop to this horrific, roller coaster of a ride on the stock market!"
*Worf presses the big red button labeled 'attack bad dudes'.*
*A bright flash occurs as the Enterprise fires it's weapons*
Picard yells to Riker," Quit starring at Deanna's chest and tell me what the 'Temporal imaging sensor' reads!"
Riker sheepishly replies,"You did it Captain! Our retirement funds are stabilizing and returning to normal"
Picard,"Excellent Number One, let's get out of here. This spinning globe is making me dizzy"
Doctor Crusher states,"Captian? How did you remember about our retirement funds? I'd totally forgotten about them."
Picard replies,"Easy Beverly, I'm a bald, old, white dude. It's my job to be up tight and think about money."
LFS. Have you built your system today?
[j@bethmoora j]$ cat Schrödinger
cat: Schrödinger: No such file or directory
"I mean, look, it's really cool to sit up here in our sexless spandex uniforms, downing Klavorian Synth-Ale and pretending we're not all running the Caligula program on the Holodeck
This is just genius. A future where all your needs are met? Yeah, its going to be a hedonistic orgy.
What I'm really trying to say, though, is just because the physics doesn't always match with our current understanding doesn't necessarily make the show bad. Buffy The Vampire Slayer's entire premises are in blatant contravention of just about everybody's personal beliefs about the true nature of the universe, but many here would still reckon it's a cool show.
Star Trek is clearly sci-fi/fantasy rather than hard sci-fi. If viewed as such, the kind of hand-waves and dramatic license that you've pointed out are entirely acceptable.
My personal objection to Star Trek is that it uses such fantastical dodges as ways to cover holes in the plot, rather than putting in the effort to write more plausible scripts.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
"State of the Art" by Iain M. Banks... much funnier and covers the same ground.
1. Spock's logic. The Star Trek Encyclopedia states that "Spock was raised with an older half-brother, Sybok, until Sybok was ostracized from Vulcan society because he rejected the Vulcan dogma of pure logic." This means that the "pure logic" isn't a feature of the Vulcan brain per se, but a norm of behavior in the Vulcan society. In other words, they just *try* to be as logical as possible.
2. Dilithium crystals are not used a power sources in the Star Trek universe. It is used to *regulate* the matter/antimatter reactions that provide the energy necessary to warp time-space.
3. Warp speed. Here's a quick roundup of warp factors' correlation to the speed of light:
Of these speeds, factor 5 is the cruising speed of Enterprise-D. Its maximum rated speed is factor 9.6, although 9.9 can be maintained for 10 minutes. Warp factor 9.9999 is the propagation speed of subspace radio, and factor 10, obviously, can never be reached.
4. Plants on Enterprise. Someone already answered this one correctly. The ships life-support systems are fitted to provide breathable air without any biological components.
5. Artificial gravity. Starfleet vessels are fitted with gravitational units that generate the synthetic gravity field aboard the vessel. A key component of the unit is the graviton field generator, which, obviously, generates a field of gravitons; the elementary particles that transmit gravitational force in the Star Trek universe.
6. Beaming down. It is true that the physics of the transporter are pretty much out of this world. Without going into details, all the different physical problems of the concept seem to be taken care of by a separate component to the transporter system: some of the funniest components are the Heisenberg compensator (go figure) or the transporter's "pattern enhancer". The true story is that The Original Series' effects budget couldn't possibly cope with landing the Enterprise or even a shuttle in every episode. The transporter's instantaneus speed also helps to keep out mundane tasks like shuttle travel out of the show.
Marko Karppinen
In the new series, Erath does not yet have a prime
directive. However, Vulcan may have, which the
reason for their reticence.
How old do you think I am?
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
Instead of just being able to moderate the replies, I'd like to be able to mod the Slashdot news article itself..
and so does michael
Michael fucks children at work in the parking lot. No JOKE.
Rob fucks men. He does this at home. I have no pictures of this, but I'm sure they would be funny looking.
THE DLF HAS SPOKEN
It's proabally more like 10-20k the spped of light. It's a logramithic scale.
I also thought Data had a Rubber Tree plant, IIRC.
The Keeper of Lists site is WAY funnier than the pointer you put up. LAME!!!!!
http://keepersoflists.org/index.php?lid=610
Didn't the "Enterprise of the Future" commanded by Riker in "All Good Things" go Warp factor 13?
In any event, it seems like capping it at 10 leads to making advances from 9.6 to 9.7 cause for excitement. In any case, I doubt that an increase of that sort is as impressive to viewers as Warp 13!
Lasers Controlled Games!
do us a favor hemos, shit can that dumb ass michael.
There's a new site, Gagpipe [gagpipe.com], that sifts through the best comedy sites around (e.g satirewire, the onion) and allows you to navigate them all. It's in beta now, but is shaping up to be this: rather good.
Why does a human need to peek in the box? The cat can observe itself while it's alive. After it's dead, it's too late to matter.
-B
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
ObFunny: Brunching Shuttlecocks has a great spoof of the decon gel.
BTW, will crew members always decontamination in pairs?
-B
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
Who gives a damn about layoffs??? If it happens to you, or people you know, then of course it sucks, but I don't know anyone at any of the places that have recently been hit by layoffs, and I really don't think it's worthy of front page news for the geek world...
Suck it up son, and find another job... don't sit here and try to use slashdot to get sympathy... Those who care, can't do much, and those like myself, who couldn't care less, are simply annoyed by this sort of crap, and thus the little sympathy you would have had just went down the drain...
BAH!!!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Okay I know a girl vulcan got to have some breaties but give me break did they have to look like she could float in a black hole for the duration of eternity? I mean is that what it comes down to a girl and the measure of her beauty even on Vulcan? I did not see the male vulcans wearing penis enhanced leotards to make all the girls cream their pants?
"Torpedoes have to be shot 2 minutes apart, or risk the wrath of the 'Lameness Filter'"
~jawad
...did I *say* I worked at UF? NO.
...DID I work at UF? NO.
...where did you get this IDEA that I worked at UF?
God only knows.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Slashdot prefers not to cover uncomfortable topics close to home.
It is run by snotty nerds just like us, who have no journalistic training what soever.
This is not to say that "journalists" won't do the same thing.
Are you still doing the Naked Nerd Girl by the way?
Goat sex free since 2001
Faith is what hold society together.
/. hates anything that sounds remotely pro-religion. /. likes proof in all things, they're not exactly prime candidates for believing in things without proof.
Faith is doing a pretty shit job then
When you go buy a box of something at the store, you have faith (in the seller) that it is labelled correctly.
No I don't
When you walk into the store, they have faith (in you) that you won't steal stuff. (ok, well not always)
not always? never. or they wouldn't pay for security. why? because people steal stuff, people aren't very nice in case you hadn't noticed
Faith is the belief that someone will do what they claim, trust.
No, it is not. Faith is belief without proof. I do not believe that sellers always label things correctly. Even if I had the faith that they meant to do so (which I do not), human error is still there.
Fatih does not have to have anything to do with religion, and as I see it, most religious people don't understand the concept themselves.
Faith is the basis of religion, there is no religion without faith. Believing (without proof) in the existence of a "higher being", and that that entity allows only certain people to speak on their behalf (eg the Pope).
Posted anonymously because
you may find this odd, but since a lot of
If faith was used as evidence in a court of law, it would be ridiculed.
Define 1 foo to be the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in 1 second. Therefore, c = 1 foo/s.
Does that make c^2 1? Sure. It depends on the units c is expressed in terms of. It is meaningless to speak of c^2 as a speed, it's SQUARE meters per SQUARE seconds, which is NOT a speed.
No one will probably see this, since I'm posting over a day late. Oh well...
- Ithil
Buffy The Vampire Slayer's entire premises are in blatant contravention of just about everybody's personal beliefs about the true nature of the universe, but many here would still reckon it's a cool show.
Yes, but is it cool because of the stories and characters, or is it cool because Buffy, Willow, Anya, Harmony, etc. are way hot?
Mind you, the Vulcan Science Officer is nothing to sneeze at either. I'd gladly rub lotion onto her!
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
>the prime directive has been violated??
Lesssee. Take the total number of episodes, multiply by one, divide by one, add 0, and raise to the first power. That should give a reasonably active count . . .
:)
hawk