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Star Trek: Nemesis Trailer to Premiere Tonight
savagexp writes "Dark Horizons is reporting that the trailer for the next Star Trek movie will premiere tonight on Entertainment Tonight and via the official website tonight at 7:30 EST." Makes me wish I could stomach
ET, or at least had some real bandwidth. Hopefully it'll get placed in
front of some of the movies coming in the next few weeks (maybe MiB2?)
Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll be on apple's quicktime site. (http://www.apple.com/trailers/)
I guess I'll have to wait a while longer.
Scene:
Picard: Fire photon torpedo's
Yoda: Diverts torpedo's with a wave of his paw.
Blender And Linux Fan
The public premier was last weekend in Tulsa at the Sci-Fi Con. I've got a 3" DVD of it that was given away at Tulsa.
Man do I ever hope this film will include the TNG staff and not one of the later soap opera type series. My friend has a Deanna Troy action figure on which the red paint on the chest has been rubbed off.
Now you'll have to excuse me, the perpetual motion machine is a little loud, and needs to be oiled.
... the first time I use my TiVo to fast forward through a show so I can watch the commercials.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Wow... the IS a use for IPIX
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
...where no one has gone before, getting fatter, balder along the way.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
"Hopefully it'll get placed in front of some of the movies coming in the next few weeks (maybe MiB2?)" According to this post, it will indeed air in front of Men in Black II. And there's already a shot-by-shot breakdown online.
Hum...
So they have the blue screen of death in the 24 century still?!!!!! Sheech.
At least they wont need a planet this time to reactivate him!
A source of harm or ruin: Uncritical trust is my nemesis.
Sounds like the Slashdot effect
Retributive justice in its execution or outcome: To follow the proposed course of action is to invite nemesis.
i.e., clicking the link at the launch time is inviting Nemesis...
An opponent that cannot be beaten or overcome.
The unconscious attitude that rests, all the same, with Slashdot readers... that they will get to see the page even though thousands of others are all trying at the same time.
One that inflicts retribution or vengeance.
It will be in Quicktime no doubt and everyone will be seeking their Wine, so maybe that should be re-distribution (changing distro?) so that they have better Quicktime support in friendly RPM format (yes I'm getting tenuous now)
Nemesis Greek Mythology. The goddess of retributive justice or vengeance.
Godesses... Rather than cite any myself (OK, I always fancied a bit of Deanna Troi actually) I invite you to comment...
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Why does CmdrTaco want to eat a cute, cuddly alien?
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
I'd rather have a MPEG2 VOB file.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world: Those who write in decimal and those who don't
Forgot to add that trailer screenshots are already up right... here.
My friend has a Deanna Troy action figure on which the red paint on the chest has been rubbed off.
Heh. I remember rummaging through my old Star Wars toys a few years ago. I had to chuckle when I noticed my Princess Leia figure had indelable smudges all over her chest from my years of fondling her as a child. Hey, let's face it. As a wee kiddie I didn't have access to Playboy. And I had no idea what the Internet was. So groping my precious Leia figure was the only sexual release a poor young GMD could get.
Gees I dunno why I'm telling you all this. I hope I don't get billed from psych counsuling from CmdrTaco....
GMD
watch this
No Today is Tuesday ... in Tuesdays we like the mpaa and despise the RIAA. Please the schedule is available in the FAQ
Sean.OutaHere()
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
/. is a community, but few communities hold a single viewpont on any given issue.
First, the site isn't anti-MPAA. Many of it's users are. The site is a news and discussion forum.
Second, not all Slashdot readers are Anti-MPAA. Some don't give a rat's ass about the issue. Some, like me, realize the issues and have come to an internal compromise. Some users haven't bought a movie ticket or DVD in years. You have to realize that there are many thousands of posters, and not all have the same opinions about issues.
Just remember,
Wesley has such a CleverNickName, and Obi-Wan doesn't.
Best Slashdot Co
Or maybe we will be even luckier and group of
In any case the original article says:
t'nera semordnilap
"Dark Horizons is reporting that the trailer for the next Star Trek movie will premiere tonight on Entertainment Tonight and via the official website tonight at 7:30 EST."
/. mentions EST, I find it 99.999% likely that the time is actually EDT, especially given that the US is on Daylight Savings time.
Data: Captain, although
Picard: Well put, Data. That is precisely why the Federation uses the Stardate time standard.
Guinan: More oil, Data, honey.
I will be interested to see if the rule of Star Trek movies follows with Nemesis. Odd number Trek movies suck, even numbers rule.
Odd -
Motion Picture - Tried too hard for artistry
Search For Spock - it just blew!
The Final Frontier - Spock's Half Brother? Gah!
Generations - They could have done so much between the casts and didn't
Insurrection - I just couldn't buy those alien bad guys.
Even -
Wrath of Khan - Rocks! Gotta love Kirk yelling KHAAAAAAN!
The Voyage Home - So many great lines. Merged the comedic aspects very well. Nuclear wessels!
The Undiscovered Country - My personal Favorite. Gotta Love the zero grav scene. Guess who's coming to Dinner.
First Contact - Time Travel... Gotta Love Time Travel. Now if they would only set a Star Trek Movie in the Mirror, Mirror Universe.
Nemesis - ?
I have high hopes this pattern will not disappoint me on this Tenth movie.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
...Genesis (odd)
I assume you meant Generations. But yeah, the odd and even theory definitely still holds true.
I work with computer graphics as a hobby, and I can tell you I _wish_ I could encode to Quicktime5 or 6. With the exception of the latest divx codecs, quicktime is the top codec out there.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Wil? You there? Does your employment contract with Paramount allow you to geek out on this topic?
Finding God in a Dog
We're anti-MPAA, not anti-interesting movies.
If none of us liked movies, the MPAA couldn't piss us off.
"Derp de derp."
Not to mention the fact that "torpedo's" is NOT the plural of "torpedo".
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
According to the offical T3 site the T3 teaser will be playing in front of Men in Black.
Great. They've been Slashdotted. I can just see Commander Data drumming his fingers on the console waiting for the hourglass to go away.
"Derp de derp."
Can't we just have a whole pile of jpegs and flick through them by hand?
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
Its too bad that Uncle Willie wont have some huge part as like the traveler or some such shit.
How about some serious shit goes down and Uncle Willie comes out all Q to save the day.. Oh yeah and has lots of hot chicks. All nude.. But taistfully done of course.
If I were only smart enough to accomplish the things I dream about.. Or maybe too dumb to care.
i think what they're saying is that the trailer premiers on Entertainment tonight (whenever that is on for you)...on the east coast it's at 7:30 PM EDT, on the west coast 7:30 PM PDT...
also (and here's where the confusion is), the trailer will premier on the internet at 7:30 PM PDT...in other words, you can watch it at 7:30 (local time) on ET...or wait till 7:30 PDT to see it on the internet...obviously, they can't release it on the internet in conjunction with the 7:30 PM EDT showing on ET, because then everyone on the west coast would just download it, and that would ruin the premier on ET on the west coase...
well, anyway, that's the way i understood it from their web site...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
that's for the internet version...the ET version will be at 7:30 local time (whenever ET is on in your time zone)...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Plot: The Ribbon comes swooping by early 21st Century San Francisco and deposits a young Wesley Crusher in the famous rainbow-striped shirt at the corner of Haight and Ashbury. The story unfolds as he battles depression, overcome that the once-hip intersection is now dominated by a huge Starbucks, serving only Earl Grey, hot, and Mint Tea, hot, with a Ben and Jerry's across the street. He retreats to a small internet cafe and spends the next twenty years working on his blog, and occasionally visiting Gracie the whale at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which for some reason has been moved ninety miles to the City. At the age of 37, Wesley's snatched out of the oncoming path of a hurtling Suliban-driven MUNI bus by a Traveler from another time, who does some weird magic with his hands and looks despondent, and suddenly they're both in a huge City in the far-distant future, where everything is destruction and decay, and all the citizens are dead. "This wasn't supposed to happen," says the Traveler. Roll credits
The new "Star Trek: Nemesis" trailer runs 1:34 and will also play in theaters, starting with the July 4th weekend. The official "Star Trek: Nemesis" movie site will give fans plenty to whet their appetites, with stunning imagery from the film, a 360-degree IPIX view of the Romulan Senate set
I guess they finally got the bugs worked out of IPIX in the 24th century.
-Ed
docbrown.net
Graphic Design, Web Design, Role-playing games...all the good stuff
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
No .avi files please; I haven't seen an .avi file that worked on my Mac since at least the mid-90's. I'll take QuickTime, especially if it's MPEG4.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
Picard: Fire photon torpedo's
Fire photon torpedo's what?
Yoda: Diverts torpedo's with a wave of his paw.
I think you've confused Yoda and Dogbert.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Everywhere I turn, I hear about a different trailer being attached to Men In Black 2. First it was The Two Towers, then Terminator 3, and now this? Whatever happened to going to the movies to see the movie??
I think you've confused Yoda and Dogbert.
/. and were both confused.
That should read, "I think you've confused Yoda with Dogbert." Unless, of course, Yoda and Dogbert read
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Actually the Federation has already done a strategic analysis of the military-industrial complex of the Empire.
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
3 countem 3 boners in one!
Synopsis: A band of gay space gnomes, aboard the U.S.S. Fellow Ship (get it, fellow, ship, heh heh) team up with the Lucasfilm Muppets(tm) to kill the one guy on the bridge of the Enterprise which nobody knows (and hence won't miss when he dies).
A splendid time is guaranteed for all!
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Why get the full size version when you can just view the large version double-sized?
.. is that big enough?
Usually "large" trailers from Apple are 480x260, 480x272, or 480x360. And since the compression is usually fine, you can just click on Movie > Double Size and you'll get at least 960x520
Plus you don't have to pay the Pro price. Heck, you can just take the large trailer and drag the resize handle til it fills the whole screen!
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
I wish I could remember the exact quote, but Tim of Spaced has some line about "death, taxes and the enevitability that the next Star Trek movie will suck." (if a true Spaced freak can help me out, it's in series one, episode 5 "Chaos" where Tim and his 'boss' are in the comic shop talking.)
Actually the news clip says that the site and movie "Both will go live at 7:30 p.m. PDT/10:30 p.m. EDT", not 7:30pm EDT as is stated on the front page
Hear hear... This is the kind of message that should be posted as a response to the "What about the boycott?" questions, as a general rule. It's so easy to generalize people and it actually takes an effort to avoid doing so.
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus we refute entropy" - Spider Robinson
Indeed...I copy/pasted/adjusted this message from another post I made a few weeks back. Some people don't get that /. is a community of individuals, not one voice.
Then why post? Why read /.? If you really can't stand the mods or the posters, why would you bother to become part of it?
To say something like, "I hate mankind" is understandable because you weren't really given the choice of being human. However, you did choose to navigate over to slashdot. You then chose to click the link over to this article. And then you chose to read some of these posts.
If you made it this far, don't bitch about it.
=======================================
Doer of bad deeds, screenwriter-wannabe
savagexp
You're correct, Sir. It is the other way around; Evens are good, hence the dept. name on the post.
Case in point:
KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHN! is the Greatest. Trek. Ever.
=======================================
Doer of bad deeds, screenwriter-wannabe
savagexp
Solaris trailer: After waiting about 6 minutes to download the whole thing, in small format, I saw a few seconds of nebulous moving pictures that could have been sent as an animated GIF at a fraction of the nuisance value. Just because something CAN be done with a fancier technology, doesn't mean it OUGHTA be.
Legend has it that every even-numbered Star Trek sequel sucks.
You got that backwards, surely.
No one of sound mind could rank The Search for Spock above the much-beloved Wrath of Khan.
Or the soul-shudderingly bad The Final Frontier above... well, anything on film, Star Trek or not!?!
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
It seems the Trailers are becoming more of interest than the movies. I make it a point to get to the movie on time so I don't miss the trailers. My girlfriend could not understand how I could like the "Hulk" trailer, that should next to nothing about a movie that will not be out for a year. I thought it was cool
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Thousands of Sonic Blue-using geeks are going to come home to watch the recorded ET only to find the superfantastical hardware recognized the trailer as a commercial and edited it out!
Muahahhahahahahahahaha!
On the plus side, after those two hours, you will have seen every trailer for the foreseeable future.
"Bruce... I just broke three of your ribs."
Screw 'T3' - which has no involvement from James Cameron, and has no reason to exist except as a blatant cash grab, and to revive Arnie's career - the Two Towers teaser will also be playing in front of Men In Black II.
"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." - Steve Jobs on Bill Gates
"The Search for Talent"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Is it the Odd numbered ones that suck or even. I think it the Odd. =)
Apple's practices? I'd always heard it was because Intel owned the newer AVI codexes, and wouldn't license them to Apple. Though that's rather old info and may no longer be the case, I still can't get video on any AVI I download nowadays, just sound.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
OK, it wasn't a Lucas Star Wars movie trailer, but rather a Star Trek trailer. Nevertheless the point remains
I will continue to voice my irritation at this behavior so long as the slashdot editors continue to engage in the hypocracy of denouncing the behavior of these cartels with one breath, while promoting their products shamelessly with the next.
No slight against Star Trek or Wil intended, rather an expression of distaste of a more generalized problem.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Let's look at the evidence:
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Throw in the word "senseless".
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
I think what we're really all waiting for is the (anti-)climatic conflict between Storm Troopers (who can't shoot) and red shirts (who must die).
Here in Indiana, we are quite solidly on EST year-round. Apparently it would confuse the cows to use Daylight Savings.
How about 7 of 9 from Voyager?
You should hope that would not happen. What in the Star Trek universe could possible compete with Yoda using The Force? That's right.... Wesley Crusher!!
Since Enterprise is on UPN tonight at 8:00 (only half-hour following the "premiere", I'ld expect to be able to catch it a few times tonight...
So, you only need to catch it on ET if you absolutely must see it @7:30 rather than @8:00 or if you are one of those unlucky few without a UPN station.
Heh. I love it when people make assumptions to the extreme.
:)
No I would definitely mind if it happened that way. I don't think it would, though. The cause of the SSSCA proposal was that people were trading movies. People weren't trading movies just for shits and giggles, they were doing it to acquire the movies. Hence, demand for movies because they're popular. Had the movies not been popular enough to trade, no SSSCA.
:P
I dunno why I wrote all that, I think you're just pulling my leg. Heh. Fun stuff.
"Derp de derp."
Of course, we'll see 2/3 of the trailer in the multitude of peek-ahead snips that ET will show before actually showing 9/10 of the whole thing at the end of their show. This freaked-up show is so full of fluff, I have to wonder if they spend any more than 5 minutes preparing the actual content.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
In reality, Data is just a machine. Yet he is considered to be on the same level as a human, and afforded the same rights as we are. This lowers humanity to the level of the machines we create. When machines are on an equal footing with the rest of us, you can bet that your rights will be quite limited.
And collect my pension.
:)
Just like the original series cast were during the later Star Trek movies... aren't they getting a bit old for this sort of thing?
Quoth startrek.com:
"online debut at 7:30 p.m. PDT/10:30 p.m. EDT"
I don't get this. Apple wants to show off its technology, so they license the trailer and serve it to anyone who wants to see it free of charge. What's so evil about that? If you want a DivX trailer, bitch to the DivX people. Why do you think Apple owes it to you?
Thats 7:30 Pacific 10:30 Eastern
A lot of it is, but not all of it. Their droid and computer technology seem to be pretty much on par -- though there are significantly different societal attitudes towards droids.
;)
But the biggie is the hyperdrive. SW ships routinely cross the galaxy in very short periods of time... I'd think somewhere in the neighborhood of a few days. (there's a map floating around on the web -- it indicates that Tatooine is near the edge of the galaxy, while Coruscant is on the opposite side of the galactic core. This corresponds to the mention of Tatooine as being in 'the outer rim' and Coruscant impliedly being central, like Trantor) A journey like that for a Federation ship would take generations, which was the basis for ST Voyager.
Similarly, there are some differences in weaponry -- a Death Star superlaser has destructive potential unrivalled by anything in ST besides the Planet Eater, or possibly the Borg. The Federation might try building an antimatter bomb to achieve the same effect, but that's rather crude compared to a beam weapon.
Christ I'm a pathetic geek.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
UAG
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
Here in the heart of East Coast USA, the Wednesday edition of ET has come and gone, and no sign of the trailer. I guess I'll just have to wait til tomorrow morning when I'm back at work with my big fat pipe....
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Right... here.
I am staying in the office waiting for the Star Trek trailer, on the excuse that
1) 7pm the carpool is lifted, and
2) it's only a "half hour" wait, and
3) office connection is about 1.8x that of the DSL at home.
i am so glad there is no "pathetic loser" mod.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
just when i wanted to get a whiff of the new trailer.... it says it's 7:30 PDT. not EST. owowowow!
Hum.
Intersting site guys! Looks like a early 21 century error message comming from an ancient Apache server saying Frobidden.
Cool. Data is blue screen and the site is Forbidden!
I find it amusing that they use IIS for their main web site, but when they need bandwidth, they use apache. Interesting revelation here.
BTW, it is still forbidden. Guess they are not going to let us see the trailer after all.
You see? It's like I've always said. You can get more with a kind word and a 2x4 than you can with just a kind word.
I get a 403 Forbidden when trying to get to nemesis.startrek.com (The official site). I'm sure I'm not the only one. The trailer wasn't officially up at Apple's QuickTime trailers site, but I did find it nonetheless with common sense.
_ nemesis/
It can be found here http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/star_trek
OH MY!!! What a great trailer! The Even-Odd Theory holds true! It's going to be PURE action-packed! WOO!
Nemesis Trailer
Right... here.
Well, I got the full screen version, and it said that it doesn't allow saving. So... I did a get info on the movie, and lo and behold, there is an entry called source which is a URL. I typed this into wget, and it is downloading. For those who want to save it, here is the akamai URL:
a / a1a1aaa2198c627970773d80669d84574a8d80d3cb12453c02 589f25382f668c9329e0375e81787e85abb28970c7aee1d900 465d736aa1c81ec4bb91e8bf063cc3f6ed037/star_trek_ne mesis_fs.l.mov.
http://a1536.g.akamai.net/5/1536/51/979a9ce9df5cd
Enjoy. BTW, if this goes 404, just follow the procedure that I use listed above.
You see? It's like I've always said. You can get more with a kind word and a 2x4 than you can with just a kind word.
star_trek_nemesis_fs.l.mov
No kidding. It's easy to hate M$ because Bill's evil AND they have shitty code. The MPAA may be clueless but the guys who actually make the movies really do seem to try to do a good job, even with a franchise as worn as Star Trek. Damn them for being so very excellent every now and then!
Dyolf Knip
Hmmm... very cool. Loved the trailer. The CGI shots still look pretty 'beta' to me. But I guess they have another five months to work on it. At the same time, I love to see the early stuff. Its nice to see the work in process sometimes.
I completely disagree with this system - it forces fans to find flaws in otherwise decent odd-numbered movies. Insurrection is by far my favorite of all the films, followed very closely by VI, and then, dare I say it, by V. It's actually really good until they go to that planet where they meet God. But, in any case, I like Insurrection because it is a 2 hour TNG episode. I liked TNG. I watched it for many many hours. That's why I pay to go see the movies. Therefore Berman et al should make movies like episodes to please me, the loyal fan. Or they can do what seems to have been done here with X and make a kick-ass action flick. I'll take that too.
Right... here.
At 20.8MB, I'm really impressed with the quality of the compression.
wasn't the Planeteater from Babylon 5?
Dirk
"What made them stand out was their communal decemtralized mind."
Yes, but then you have to factor in locking overhead, and distributed cache coherency. After you've done that, the entire Borg collective is about as intelligent as Congress.
Which kind of explains why individual humans have always been able to outsmart them.
-- Terry
But the biggie is the hyperdrive. SW ships routinely cross the galaxy in very short periods of time...
[snip]
A journey like that for a Federation ship would take generations
Well, SW _is_ set in a galaxy far far away. Might be a galaxy that is just a bit smaller? In AotC, I think they mention stuff about "thousands of worlds" here and there. Not millions. Which could mean there aren't millions of worlds.
There are 010 kinds of people. Those who understand octal, those who don't, and 06 other kinds of morons.
Saw the Nemeis trailer on ET last night and it looked outstanding. I still haven't seen the last ST:TNG movie, but "First Contact" is one of my favorite sfi-fi movies.
Also downloaded the lastest Lord of the Rings: Two Towers trailers and it looks to be even better than the first.
Damn I love quality sci-fi/fantasy movies!
the trailer looks pretty decent. That said I'm still mych more pyched to see the T3 teaser. Cameron or no Cameron, arnie vs a terminatrix is going to be a good time. Cameron is a god but what has he done lately other than sit in his castle bitching about Titanic.
Scene:
Picard: Fire photon torpedo's again!
Yoda: Diverts stray apostrophes with a wave of his paw.
Well, darn it, I did, too. Since there haven't been any new TNG episodes in a while, anytime they crank out a new movie with Picard's crew, it's a Good Thing. It just wasn't as strong a movie as First Contact, IMHO, is all. There were TNG episodes I liked that weren't as strong as the strongest ones, yet they were still good episodes, just not as strong.
There were problems with STV that started way before they went to the center of the galaxy. For instance, it looked like they were trying to shove Scotty and Uhura into a relationship, and that just doesn't make any sense to me. And don't get me started on Uhura's fandancing...
All my opinion, of course.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
They'll find a way to die:
Red Shirt: I'm not hit! (Leaps up and down) I'm not hit! (Lands funny, twists angle, breaks his skull open on a rock.)
Look like a Journey album cover? Is Journey going to be on the soundtrack?!
Why does one of the fade screens look like it says "Anal Journey"? It actually says "Final Journey", but any designer should spot the font's effect in a flash like that! Good yucks!
The Planet Eater was an apparently automated ship in the original Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine." It looked kind of like an empty ice cream cone. It broke apart planets, and the bits went into the open end and were destroyed, probably converted into fuel.
;)
Naturally, Kirk and co. manage to blow it up.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Good point re: the stars... though Toren's origins leave open the possibility of having more advanced knowledge than mainstream Federation science. After all, he was the only one who could build the trilithium stellar probes, and certainly the Romulans never would've passed along that kind of technology to Klingon rebels if they'd known what it could be used for.
/. has ever been witness to.
So I don't think it especially counts for much, kind of like the Tox Uthat from the 27th century (which could remotely turn off stellar nuclear fusion).
As for your other assertions, they're just crap.
Data the only non-homicidal legitimately intelligent artificial life form that's lasted more than a single episode to date. SW droid technology is commonplace. Sanity is a solved problem (no Nomads, V'Ger's, or M5's there), which counts for a lot, and they seem to be just as capable of intelligence, emotion, etc. There are different social issues -- droids are thought of as property and seem to have a slave mentality, and no one really pays much attention to them (which leads me to suspect that their technology has gotten sufficiently advanced that very few non-droids know how everything works. Witness the hyperdrive repair efforts in ESB). But they're hardly a nearly-unique product of mad science, as Data is.
Ditto for hyperdrives -- it's just a plot device, so the mechanics don't really tell us anything interesting. Just because 'precise calculations are required' doesn't mean that it's not faster. The _distances_ traveled and the time it takes are how we know its faster.
(and besides which, ST ships with warp drives can travel many many times faster than c, but still can't safely drive into/through stars, black holes, etc.)
Again of course, this is probably one of the more pathetic debates
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.