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According To Star Trek: Discovery, Starfleet Still Runs Microsoft Windows (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the final-frontier-indeed dept.

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.

6 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot Ads by itamihn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is with the huge banner that Slashdot lately has? Worse yet, it's floating and moves with scrolling, making it impossible to read anything on a short window. Will Slashdot finally be the site that makes me use adblocking software?

    1. Re:Slashdot Ads by Kiuas · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      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
    2. Re:Slashdot Ads by cryptolemur · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'd like to point out that it was petite captain Georgiou who was fighting the klingon, and in the end lost mainly due to the mass/power difference. Burnham shot the klingon from behind to her captain, so differences in mass, power, gender or race did not really have any effect in that regard.

      One way to look at the same story is that this allegedly superb Star Fleet officer accidentally killed the klingon she was trying to make contact with, and then in haste shot the klingon she really needed to capture alive. So, instead of being all-powerful, unbeatable hero she actually messed everything up and turned a solvable confrontation into a war.

  2. In a later episode... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    the Klingons will travel back in time to destroy mankind and starfleet by inventing Windows...

    captcha: compile. really, slashdot?

  3. Re:Blue Screen of Antimatter containment failure by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't want it to manage the turbolifts or even whatever they use for toilets. If the best the federation has is Windows, I'm joining up with the Romulans.

  4. Re:Blue Screen of Antimatter containment failure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    DS9 gets a pass. That was a Kardashian station so it had whatever was hip at the time. Yes, I know, Cardassians.