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According To Star Trek: Discovery, Starfleet Still Runs Microsoft Windows (theverge.com)
AmiMoJo shares a report from The Verge: The third episode of Star Trek: Discovery aired this week, and at one point in the episode, Sonequa Martin-Green's Michael Burnham is tasked with reconciling two suites of code. In the show, Burnham claims the code is confusing because it deals with quantum astrophysics, biochemistry, and gene expression. And while the episode later reveals that it's related to the USS Discovery's experimental new mycelial network transportation system, Twitter user Rob Graham noted the code itself is a little more pedestrian in nature. More specifically, it seems to be decompiled code for the infamous Stuxnet virus, developed by the United States to attack Iranian computers running Windows.
Hell, even this post feels like an ad for the new Star Trek show.
I thought that the majority of Slashdot users decided that they weren't going to watch this show when they made it exclusive to CBS's new streaming service?
Was kind of hoping for some interesting discussion about the show. It's very different... The captain from the first two episodes was a model Starfleet officer, trying to avoid conflict and do the right thing. Now we are getting echos of Section 31 and doing what it takes to win the war.
The Federation itself perhaps has not reached that level yet. Life imprisonment doesn't sound very enlightened, especially when the crime was largely poor decision making. Of course, in reality she was actually correct and the Klingons would have started the war no matter what, but the court didn't know that. Had she succeeded in destroying that ship the war might actually have been averted.
Star Trek usually considers the moral and philosophical implications of choices, but so far there has been very little of that in Discover. Okay, we are only 3 episodes in so probably too early to judge.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
According To Star Trek: Discovery, Starfleet Still Runs Microsoft Windows
Better headline: "Whoever creates the tech props for Star Trek: Discovery has a wicked sense of humour" (assuming this really is decompiled Stuxnet code)
You're right that it's different, but there's also an issue with the main character that bugs me which is that she's got a way too broad range of skills based on the first episodes. Like just as an example in the 2 first episodes she twice beat a Klingon warrior in single combat while having no previous experience of fighting them, and being smaller. I get that the show wants to emphasize that she's a supergenius and raised by the Vulcans in science and martial arts, but still, I was expecting her character to be a modern take on Spock, not a deadly warrior-princess archetype that goes around instantly kicking everyone's ass. Really the ending of the 2nd episode was a really big blunder in my view from the point of view of writing. I mean, she first tells the captain that they should seek to capture the Klingon leader not kill him so as to not make him a martyr. Okay, makes sense. How do the plan to do it? By beaming to the klingon ship with no backup, just the 2 of them with phasers, 2 women against a shipload of gigantic space Mongol-superwarriors, and then when the captain is killed, instead of doing the logical thing which is retreating hell out of there, she violates her own advice and shoots the Klingon captain dead, essentially causing their mission to be a total failure while also making the death of her captain counter-productive. From a story point of view how're we supposed to feel that she's ever in any danger when she's already demonstrated in the first few episodes that no matter what she's up against and with how little previous experience, she'll get through just fine.
I mean, I get that they're playing round with the notion that she's not a Vulcan so her emotions do take over from time to time, that's ool, and that can function as a neat narrative device, however it's really rather annoying to watch a character that's supposed to be like the smartest person in the whole of Starfeet give out advice on what to do, and then violate her own advice 5 minutes later. Likewise in the beginning she goes to have a look at an unknown artifact that they have no scans on and no idea how hostile it is and instead of doing a flyby like she was instructed, she instantly goes 'wow, this is pretty, I'm going to land on it', runs into a Klingon and kills him in 5 seconds. Is this the Vulcan approach? Is this what Spock would have done? Is this the kind of discipline the Vulcan academy teaches to their students?
That being said, I think the show can still go into a good direction, we'll need to wait and see. So far it's a tad too much like the Abrams films, which is to say that it looks neat and has a lot of action that probably appeals to a larger audience, but it doesn't feel very Trekky to me yet.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
My take too - it's a cute touch, and they must have known what the code was when they used it or they would have just have grabbed something vaguely appropriate from the OSS code base - like the use of NMAP in The Matrix, and many similar examples since - or gone down the gibberish/pseudo code route. I think most directors are well aware by now that with high-def. video anything like that put up on the screen will be subjected to a freezeframe and analysis, so you either need to make it relevant or an easter egg if you want to avoid some mockery. Since we clearly don't have any actual code to deal with the analysis of quantum lifeforms yet, that just leaves the easter egg.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
They really ought to have sold off the Star Trek TV rights, it's not in their wheelhouse.
Your criticism of CBS may be correct, I don't really have a basis to evaluate it. But I would argue we do not live in a time when the masses will tolerate an idealistic utopian future, the philosophical dilemmas inherent in bringing it about and real people trying to be better than we expect.
We live in a time when pragmatists and self-centered behavior is idolized, when war and violence are seen as ideal tools for solving difficult social problems, and when letting people die because they're not us is ok as long as we don't say it out loud. People acting on idealism are viewed as ridiculous and naive and with utmost contempt. That's not compatible with any of the Star Trek series I've liked.
I guess I don't think we're living in a time when Star Trek could be successful, even if it were holding itself to its ideals. They really should just sell the IP and the new owners should sit on it for a little while, while we wallow in our self-imposed cess pit for a decade or two. After a few decades we're going to realize that pragmatism may not be that great after all.
>I guess I don't think we're living in a time when Star Trek could be successful
I think perhaps you have that backwards. Sure, we're still producing 'gritty/dark', but I think we're on the tail end of that as audiences often want to escape reality and get a taste of something different - which can simply entertain or be inspirational - and the world's been a bit too gritty and dark recently.
I'd say now is actually a great time to start popping out the idealistic stuff, but maybe not quite as simplistic as it used to be. Not every idealist has to be deeply and secretly flawed... but they do have to deal with a realistic world where not everything goes their way just because they're 'fighting the good fight'. (And I'd throw the current MCU Captain America and DC Wonder Woman up as decent examples of this)
A lot of entertainment presents an idealized individual who encounters no serious barriers because everyone more or less falls under the spell of their righteousness in 60 minutes less commercial breaks, and that's just stupid on too many levels to take.
The ship's computer seems to have gone through some fairly drastic changes over the years.
Enterprise: No voice interface, apparently people got fed up with Alexa and Siri by the next century.
Discovery: Young female voice borrowed from an early 21st century sat-nav.
Original Series: Lost her voice again, people finally realized that touch interfaces and transparent screens are dumb and reverted to good old reliable 12V bulbs and switches.
Next Generation: The computer is a bit older and wiser now, and everything reverted to flat screens and touch panels.
Deep Space 9: CRTs are back in fashion, complete with curved display.
Voyager: Why does the ship even need people any more?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC