And goes into a 4 year extension of Big Brother spying on what books you read or buy, what your emails contain, etc. It allows Big Brother to collect information on you sans any justification whatsoever - you don't even need to have ANY connection to a so-called "terrorist" or "terrorist organization" (like environmental groups, worker's rights groups, anti-corporate groups, etc...you know, horrific "terrorists").
It is not a "yawn". It is yet another shiv into the heart of so-called "liberty" and "freedom".
Land of the free, home of the brave MY ASS. Land of the chattle, home of pansy candyasses is more accurate.
First, define consciousness or, better yet, prove it matters. Explain fMRI studies that indicate that one actually makes decisions PRE-consciously yet still makes consciousness relevant. That's right, fMRI studies indicate that you make a decision to take an action BEFORE you are actually consciously aware of it. Turns the entire idea of consciousness on its head so that it is merely becoming conscious of what your brain/mind has already decided microseconds BEFORE you are conscious of making the decision.
Once we get past the above, THEN we can get into explaining what it is and how it comes about. It is way premature to assign quantum anything as an explanation before we really know what we are explaining or even if it needs explaining.
I suggest purchasing these. Would also block RFID reading by passer's by though you can get EMF-blocking wallets and passport wallets for that too. I suspect these might block the TSA scanners: http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html
Hmpf. What a waste of linux hardcore capability. Just a means to use virus files, err, Outlook pifs?
What is needed is dump the windows from the HDD and use the ARM version of linux to run a tor node and even act as a firewall or what have you, and then use linux on the main processor for real work.
That is some serious "observation" you can do in 3 minutes. Hopefully, what you want to observe is within 3 minutes flight time (if you don't care to get it back) or within 1.5 minutes if you DO want it back.
Just mine the SHIT out of the land to dump a bunch of lime into the oceans.
Anyone ever notice how friggin' HUGE the oceans are? Anyone volunteer to give up their land for massive lime mining operations?
There would be a side benefit to this, however: de-acidification of the oceans. Global Warming means more CO2 in the oceans. More CO2 in the oceans means higher acidity. Higher acidity means even faster decline of coral reefs.
I would see this more as a stop-gap, emergency remedial activity until REAL solutions come to the fore: renewable energy, sharp decline in use of fossil fuels of all kinds.
I remember when the "internet", for regular joes and janes, was essentially bulletin boards. All text-based. I then remember BEFORE Netscape. A real cool app for doing the (modern-style) internet. Let's see...called Mosaic. Yeah, THAT was way cool.
I just went through a week of extremely irritating hell because of IE. I have dual boot system that I occasionally switch from linux to windoze 2000 to play a game or 3. Never a problem mainly because I didn't have a broadband connection, only a pathetic dialup modem, so I would RARELY connect up to the net in windoze.
Well, I recently acquired DSL in my rural area and I got connected. Within a couple days of being connected (and switching to doze to update the software and play a few RTCW online games) I got infected with that goddamned Elitebar.
I downloaded half a dozen different anti-hijack, anti-spyware apps and not a one of them could get rid of the damn elitebar. I'd be playing a game and BOOM, up pops a spam popup for internet gambling, porn, other crap. Long story short, I finally downloaded a set of anti-spyware/anti-virus tools and, after a long afternoon of offline toiling, FINALLY got that damn elitebar killed off.
Just to be safe, I'll download the windoze version of Firefox from linux and transfer it to my doze partition so I can install it without having to get to it with IE. Anything that causes IE to start up anymore makes me cringe, waiting to see the damn popup attack.
The intent is simple and quite clear (and correct). No government documents should be in any format that requires money be paid by any user in order to just have the ability to view them (no licensing fees to buy "rights" to the format so your software will be able to fully and correctly render the information).
The information provided by government belongs to the public, not to any corporation. No private, profit-centered, fee-charging corporation can be the ultimate gatekeeper of government (tax-funded) data. It MUST be available to everyone without requiring that they purchase any company's product to view it. It MUST be available to future generations - all corporations ultimately will die. Their death cannot allowed to be the end of access to public information.
Open standards that clearly delineate the requirements and do not permit propriatory extensions are correct and a good thing (tm). The standards must be such that no MS can come along and say "We obeyed letter of the standards and merely added a few extensions that are not forbidden." No. Uh-uh. The standards have to be such that they WILL be followed so that ANY wordprocessor or text editor or spreadsheet app, free or not, can correctly render and handle that information and that ANY and ALL extensions MUST be fully and openly published so that, if accepted, ANYONE and EVERYONE can use the new extensions without cost.
*If* it's actually fusion (and not just a weird chemical reaction) and *if* we can make it regularly reproducable, then Cold Fusion could essentially change the world.
Well, see, right here is a problem. It doesn't frickin' MATTER if it was "fusion" or not. All that matters is more energy out than went in. Who gives a f*ck if it was "fusion" or not? If I produced more energy than went in then THAT'S ALL THAT MATTERS. Whether or not it was fusion or some obscure chemical reaction, more out then (seemingly) went in is a GOOD THING (tm) and USEFUL. THAT is the problem with the Ponds and Fleischman response. Rather than simply saying "it ain't fusion but...it is USEFUL" the collective community response has been "you said it was fusion but it isn't so it has to be tossed out on its ass no matter what. No redeeming qualities to the outcome at all." Horseshit.
then as far as I am concerned it will not exist. Anyone who thinks correctly will not waste a dime on anything Intel produces so long as it includes ANY hardware DRM shit in it.
I was beginning to think about purchasing a new CPU to upgrade from my current AMD Athlon 2700XP+ and had considered going with an intel chip so I could make use of hyperthreading. Instead, Intel has made my choice so much easier. As a result of their idiocy, I will never ever buy another Intel product of any kind ever again. No laptops powered by Intel, no CPUs, no network cards, nothing. AMD will now be my sole source for CPUs. I will now buy the newest and fastest AMD I can afford to buy myself time (in case AMD goes stupid too) and give myself some future proofing. There will be NO DRM anything on any computer I own, period. I will not stand for anyone other than myself controlling what I get to do with MY computer or MY disks. Mine, absolutely and without reservation, to do with as I see fit.
And what about angstrom symbols, greek symbols (you know, math and science stuff), and other special characters? And what about plots, charts, other graphics?
I'd say go with OOo (or some other open format that ALL can - and must - follow if they want government work). Or, go with PDF. I can read and create PDFs with any free/open wordprocessor in linux or via propriatory wordprocessor...though I cannot imagine a reason to use one of those.
Err...hear of the "Cambrian Explosion"? The timing is about right. EVERYTHING alive today is a descendant of creatures that evolved back then (but then again most of the various evolutionary experiments from back then didn't make it through today). There was a bottleneck (perhaps due to a massive die-off as described?) from which all that we see and know today evolved.
This isn't good news (tm) for us vis a vis a Gamma Ray Burst in the neighborhood. You seem to assume that humans, and virtually everything else that we know and love from dogs to butterflies, would survive. Hardly assured at all. WE and virtually everything else around us could die off to form a new bottleneck from which evolution would work its magic and produce something new and different...totally devoid of Homo sapiens, canids, etc. You are very sanguine about the odds of humans and human society surviving what would essentially be a sterilizing blast of hard radiation.
Another interesting note/sidebar. Hear of the term the "Great Silence"? It refers to the odd lack of ET signals and species moving about the galaxy. It is part and parcel to the "Fermi Paradox". If there is alien intelligence out there, where are they? Humans on earth have only been around and technically "advanced" for about 50 years. Granted, it took us something like 150,000-200,000 years from the appearance of the first modern human to get where we are today. The universe is some 14 billion years old. That is more than enough time for MANY technological societies to evolve and send out signals or even colonize the galaxy. Even with tech allowing only 0.5c, an advanced civilization could colonize the ENTIRE Milky Way galaxy in something like 5000 years (it may actually be less time, I don't have the calculations/documents with me at the moment). So, where are they?
One recent possible answer to the Fermi Paradox (or Great Silence) has been proposed: Gamma Ray Bursts. Given what they are, it is expected that they would have been more frequent the further back in time one goes. In the earlier epochs of universe evolution, there would have been a relatively high rate of Gamma Ray Burst occurance that has tailed off as the galaxies have matured and the young furious stars have long since crapped out and blown their wads (in some cases into Gamma Ray Bursts). The frequency of earlier epoch GRBs would be enough to completely sterilize the galaxies within which they occured (they are that powerful/nasty). Thus, in the earlier universe and galactic history, life may have evolved again and again but before it could get very far POOF! GRB wipes the slate clean. No time for complex life to evolve, let alone an advanced technological species. The idea is that perhaps only recently in galactic/universe history have GRBs become infrequent enough to permit advanced tech life such as our own to evolve. We may be among the first to actually get this far without getting blasted out of existence by an unfortunately close GRB. Know that it doesn't have to be just a few lightyears away, or even within 100 lightyears. All the way on the other side of the Milky Way would do the trick.
GRBs are not wussie events. They are far more intense than you can imagine and the radiation would kill you before you realized you were dead.
Bing! Wrong about steam. Steam sucks because it doesn't work right and it requires me to get Valve's permission EVERY time I want to play MY game on MY computer. It's one thing to act as a centerpoint for updates or online/multiplayer gameplay but quite another when all I want to do is sit down in MY home and play single player. I STILL have to call up to Valve and get their frickin permission to play and then, only after they apply patches to the game that I have no say in whether they get applied. It's MY computer and everything on the harddrive is MINE. I don't want other people dicking with my bits. Period.
Be that as it may, the offline mode is crap. I don't need their permission to play my game. All the instructions on how to play in offline mode don't work worth fuck because I STILL have to first login and get their permission and then disconnect. I have to leave that instance of steam running after disconnect or I am fucked and have to dialup again, wait for their frickin updates to download over a 56k modem line, get their permission to play my game, disconnect the internet link, and then play at their pleasure. They can piss up a rope, the bastards.
Add to that that I cannot play the frickin' game alone on my own PC without getting Valve's OK. Yeah, yeah, people will spout nonsense about offline mode. Doesn't work. I have logged in so many times and set it to supposedly go with offline mode but I STILL have to first connect via my molasses-slow dialup, log into Steam, wait for updates to finish downloading, wait to get Valve's permission yet again to play MY GAME, disconnect my modem (Leaving Steam running! If you shut it down after disconnect you are fucked and will need to dialup again and get their fucking permission) and then play the game.
Steam is NOT a benefit to users in any way, shape, or form. This is what M$ wants your entire computer experience to be, by the way. They really are after you getting their permission to do, well, ANYTHING. Valve beat them to the punch on this sucky idea.
Original cells were (and are) essentially immortal. Bacteria are a case in point. They primarily replicate via binary fission. One begets two begets four begets eight, etc, etc. There is no clear dividing line between siblings of a split except, perhaps, for one or two DNA base changes as a matter of chance.
Any organism that has as a primary (or exclusive) means of replication binary fission is actually "immortal". There is no clear dividing line between sibling cells (perfect clones, like identical twins - much more so than any laboratory clone). One becomes two (and so on)...which is the original? Its line goes back indefinitely in an unbroken chain. It is immortal.
I don't have HD shit at this point so I don't know but...would it be possible to piggyback HD tuners in some way? Perhaps have the nasty broadcast flag tuner that is forced down your throat by the provider piggybacked to a pre-1 July 2005 tuner that doesn't give a flip for the flag and get around it this way?
What I would really like is a SF series that takes nanotech and extreme body customization into human -- not just evil borg -- society.
Ah, sorta like the games Deus-Ex and Deus-Ex 2.
I'd simply like to see some real humans on the show. I got sick and tired of TNG humans being almost completely affectless and all standing around and speaking as if their arms were limp due to some form of nerve damage. I have NEVER watched any human anywhere (except for the physically disabled) who do not use their hands as organic to their speaking. TNG actors were all obviously fighting against human nature and consciously holding their arms limp at their sides at all times.
If Star Trek can get humans right, then there is a starting point from which to get the rest right. As for nano and body customization...there are budgets. Too much of this stuff costs real money whether on a linux CGI farm or with realistic props. Hell, if you wanted the aliens to be "right" there would be virtually NO humaniod aliens on the show. It is simply unbelievable and ridiculous to think that the human body form is THE strange attractor for evolution on all planets. But that's another, more general discussion that isn't limited to Star Trek.
Slashdot Mirror
And goes into a 4 year extension of Big Brother spying on what books you read or buy, what your emails contain, etc. It allows Big Brother to collect information on you sans any justification whatsoever - you don't even need to have ANY connection to a so-called "terrorist" or "terrorist organization" (like environmental groups, worker's rights groups, anti-corporate groups, etc...you know, horrific "terrorists").
It is not a "yawn". It is yet another shiv into the heart of so-called "liberty" and "freedom".
Land of the free, home of the brave MY ASS. Land of the chattle, home of pansy candyasses is more accurate.
First, define consciousness or, better yet, prove it matters. Explain fMRI studies that indicate that one actually makes decisions PRE-consciously yet still makes consciousness relevant. That's right, fMRI studies indicate that you make a decision to take an action BEFORE you are actually consciously aware of it. Turns the entire idea of consciousness on its head so that it is merely becoming conscious of what your brain/mind has already decided microseconds BEFORE you are conscious of making the decision.
Once we get past the above, THEN we can get into explaining what it is and how it comes about. It is way premature to assign quantum anything as an explanation before we really know what we are explaining or even if it needs explaining.
Not just grey blobs. The quality/nature of the image is purely dependent on how the pervs and jackboot thugs that set it up configure the software: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.aclu.org/files/images/asset_upload_file669_35506.jpg&imgrefurl=http://uaddit.com/discussions/showthread.php%3Ft%3D7963&h=331&w=400&sz=35&tbnid=Er3e5tuB7Yv7UM:&tbnh=103&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfull%2Bbody%2Bscan&usg=__sZ_M1ahLf_uqjEeztpAce72UqAE=&sa=X&ei=_LxZTLGPL4-onQeozO2vCQ&ved=0CCcQ9QEwBQ
Go for the pat-down and give the f*cktard a nice smelly fart as he is feeling up your ass and crotch.
http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html
I suggest purchasing these. Would also block RFID reading by passer's by though you can get EMF-blocking wallets and passport wallets for that too. I suspect these might block the TSA scanners: http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html
Hmpf. What a waste of linux hardcore capability. Just a means to use virus files, err, Outlook pifs?
What is needed is dump the windows from the HDD and use the ARM version of linux to run a tor node and even act as a firewall or what have you, and then use linux on the main processor for real work.
They goofed. For heavy lifting, you want linux, for light tasks, you use windows. That is how they work and how they are designed.
LINUX does heavy sh*t, windows does games and recipes, etc.
Game, set, match.
To get off they'd either have to be part of the Administration, a Banker, or one of his major donors.
That is some serious "observation" you can do in 3 minutes. Hopefully, what you want to observe is within 3 minutes flight time (if you don't care to get it back) or within 1.5 minutes if you DO want it back.
Apropos of nothing, I went to high school with Aldrin's daughter. Damn was she hot.
Just mine the SHIT out of the land to dump a bunch of lime into the oceans.
Anyone ever notice how friggin' HUGE the oceans are? Anyone volunteer to give up their land for massive lime mining operations?
There would be a side benefit to this, however: de-acidification of the oceans. Global Warming means more CO2 in the oceans. More CO2 in the oceans means higher acidity. Higher acidity means even faster decline of coral reefs.
I would see this more as a stop-gap, emergency remedial activity until REAL solutions come to the fore: renewable energy, sharp decline in use of fossil fuels of all kinds.
I remember when the "internet", for regular joes and janes, was essentially bulletin boards. All text-based. I then remember BEFORE Netscape. A real cool app for doing the (modern-style) internet. Let's see...called Mosaic. Yeah, THAT was way cool.
I just went through a week of extremely irritating hell because of IE. I have dual boot system that I occasionally switch from linux to windoze 2000 to play a game or 3. Never a problem mainly because I didn't have a broadband connection, only a pathetic dialup modem, so I would RARELY connect up to the net in windoze.
Well, I recently acquired DSL in my rural area and I got connected. Within a couple days of being connected (and switching to doze to update the software and play a few RTCW online games) I got infected with that goddamned Elitebar.
I downloaded half a dozen different anti-hijack, anti-spyware apps and not a one of them could get rid of the damn elitebar. I'd be playing a game and BOOM, up pops a spam popup for internet gambling, porn, other crap. Long story short, I finally downloaded a set of anti-spyware/anti-virus tools and, after a long afternoon of offline toiling, FINALLY got that damn elitebar killed off.
Just to be safe, I'll download the windoze version of Firefox from linux and transfer it to my doze partition so I can install it without having to get to it with IE. Anything that causes IE to start up anymore makes me cringe, waiting to see the damn popup attack.
The intent is simple and quite clear (and correct). No government documents should be in any format that requires money be paid by any user in order to just have the ability to view them (no licensing fees to buy "rights" to the format so your software will be able to fully and correctly render the information).
The information provided by government belongs to the public, not to any corporation. No private, profit-centered, fee-charging corporation can be the ultimate gatekeeper of government (tax-funded) data. It MUST be available to everyone without requiring that they purchase any company's product to view it. It MUST be available to future generations - all corporations ultimately will die. Their death cannot allowed to be the end of access to public information.
Open standards that clearly delineate the requirements and do not permit propriatory extensions are correct and a good thing (tm). The standards must be such that no MS can come along and say "We obeyed letter of the standards and merely added a few extensions that are not forbidden." No. Uh-uh. The standards have to be such that they WILL be followed so that ANY wordprocessor or text editor or spreadsheet app, free or not, can correctly render and handle that information and that ANY and ALL extensions MUST be fully and openly published so that, if accepted, ANYONE and EVERYONE can use the new extensions without cost.
Well, see, right here is a problem. It doesn't frickin' MATTER if it was "fusion" or not. All that matters is more energy out than went in. Who gives a f*ck if it was "fusion" or not? If I produced more energy than went in then THAT'S ALL THAT MATTERS. Whether or not it was fusion or some obscure chemical reaction, more out then (seemingly) went in is a GOOD THING (tm) and USEFUL. THAT is the problem with the Ponds and Fleischman response. Rather than simply saying "it ain't fusion but...it is USEFUL" the collective community response has been "you said it was fusion but it isn't so it has to be tossed out on its ass no matter what. No redeeming qualities to the outcome at all." Horseshit.
then as far as I am concerned it will not exist. Anyone who thinks correctly will not waste a dime on anything Intel produces so long as it includes ANY hardware DRM shit in it.
I was beginning to think about purchasing a new CPU to upgrade from my current AMD Athlon 2700XP+ and had considered going with an intel chip so I could make use of hyperthreading. Instead, Intel has made my choice so much easier. As a result of their idiocy, I will never ever buy another Intel product of any kind ever again. No laptops powered by Intel, no CPUs, no network cards, nothing. AMD will now be my sole source for CPUs. I will now buy the newest and fastest AMD I can afford to buy myself time (in case AMD goes stupid too) and give myself some future proofing. There will be NO DRM anything on any computer I own, period. I will not stand for anyone other than myself controlling what I get to do with MY computer or MY disks. Mine, absolutely and without reservation, to do with as I see fit.
Intel can go fuck itself.
And what about angstrom symbols, greek symbols (you know, math and science stuff), and other special characters? And what about plots, charts, other graphics?
I'd say go with OOo (or some other open format that ALL can - and must - follow if they want government work). Or, go with PDF. I can read and create PDFs with any free/open wordprocessor in linux or via propriatory wordprocessor...though I cannot imagine a reason to use one of those.
Err...hear of the "Cambrian Explosion"? The timing is about right. EVERYTHING alive today is a descendant of creatures that evolved back then (but then again most of the various evolutionary experiments from back then didn't make it through today). There was a bottleneck (perhaps due to a massive die-off as described?) from which all that we see and know today evolved.
This isn't good news (tm) for us vis a vis a Gamma Ray Burst in the neighborhood. You seem to assume that humans, and virtually everything else that we know and love from dogs to butterflies, would survive. Hardly assured at all. WE and virtually everything else around us could die off to form a new bottleneck from which evolution would work its magic and produce something new and different...totally devoid of Homo sapiens, canids, etc. You are very sanguine about the odds of humans and human society surviving what would essentially be a sterilizing blast of hard radiation.
Another interesting note/sidebar. Hear of the term the "Great Silence"? It refers to the odd lack of ET signals and species moving about the galaxy. It is part and parcel to the "Fermi Paradox". If there is alien intelligence out there, where are they? Humans on earth have only been around and technically "advanced" for about 50 years. Granted, it took us something like 150,000-200,000 years from the appearance of the first modern human to get where we are today. The universe is some 14 billion years old. That is more than enough time for MANY technological societies to evolve and send out signals or even colonize the galaxy. Even with tech allowing only 0.5c, an advanced civilization could colonize the ENTIRE Milky Way galaxy in something like 5000 years (it may actually be less time, I don't have the calculations/documents with me at the moment). So, where are they?
One recent possible answer to the Fermi Paradox (or Great Silence) has been proposed: Gamma Ray Bursts. Given what they are, it is expected that they would have been more frequent the further back in time one goes. In the earlier epochs of universe evolution, there would have been a relatively high rate of Gamma Ray Burst occurance that has tailed off as the galaxies have matured and the young furious stars have long since crapped out and blown their wads (in some cases into Gamma Ray Bursts). The frequency of earlier epoch GRBs would be enough to completely sterilize the galaxies within which they occured (they are that powerful/nasty). Thus, in the earlier universe and galactic history, life may have evolved again and again but before it could get very far POOF! GRB wipes the slate clean. No time for complex life to evolve, let alone an advanced technological species. The idea is that perhaps only recently in galactic/universe history have GRBs become infrequent enough to permit advanced tech life such as our own to evolve. We may be among the first to actually get this far without getting blasted out of existence by an unfortunately close GRB. Know that it doesn't have to be just a few lightyears away, or even within 100 lightyears. All the way on the other side of the Milky Way would do the trick.
GRBs are not wussie events. They are far more intense than you can imagine and the radiation would kill you before you realized you were dead.
Bing! Wrong about steam. Steam sucks because it doesn't work right and it requires me to get Valve's permission EVERY time I want to play MY game on MY computer. It's one thing to act as a centerpoint for updates or online/multiplayer gameplay but quite another when all I want to do is sit down in MY home and play single player. I STILL have to call up to Valve and get their frickin permission to play and then, only after they apply patches to the game that I have no say in whether they get applied. It's MY computer and everything on the harddrive is MINE. I don't want other people dicking with my bits. Period.
Be that as it may, the offline mode is crap. I don't need their permission to play my game. All the instructions on how to play in offline mode don't work worth fuck because I STILL have to first login and get their permission and then disconnect. I have to leave that instance of steam running after disconnect or I am fucked and have to dialup again, wait for their frickin updates to download over a 56k modem line, get their permission to play my game, disconnect the internet link, and then play at their pleasure. They can piss up a rope, the bastards.
Add to that that I cannot play the frickin' game alone on my own PC without getting Valve's OK. Yeah, yeah, people will spout nonsense about offline mode. Doesn't work. I have logged in so many times and set it to supposedly go with offline mode but I STILL have to first connect via my molasses-slow dialup, log into Steam, wait for updates to finish downloading, wait to get Valve's permission yet again to play MY GAME, disconnect my modem (Leaving Steam running! If you shut it down after disconnect you are fucked and will need to dialup again and get their fucking permission) and then play the game.
Steam is NOT a benefit to users in any way, shape, or form. This is what M$ wants your entire computer experience to be, by the way. They really are after you getting their permission to do, well, ANYTHING. Valve beat them to the punch on this sucky idea.
Fucking Valve. Fucking Steam.
Original cells were (and are) essentially immortal. Bacteria are a case in point. They primarily replicate via binary fission. One begets two begets four begets eight, etc, etc. There is no clear dividing line between siblings of a split except, perhaps, for one or two DNA base changes as a matter of chance.
Any organism that has as a primary (or exclusive) means of replication binary fission is actually "immortal". There is no clear dividing line between sibling cells (perfect clones, like identical twins - much more so than any laboratory clone). One becomes two (and so on)...which is the original? Its line goes back indefinitely in an unbroken chain. It is immortal.
I don't have HD shit at this point so I don't know but...would it be possible to piggyback HD tuners in some way? Perhaps have the nasty broadcast flag tuner that is forced down your throat by the provider piggybacked to a pre-1 July 2005 tuner that doesn't give a flip for the flag and get around it this way?
Ah, sorta like the games Deus-Ex and Deus-Ex 2.
I'd simply like to see some real humans on the show. I got sick and tired of TNG humans being almost completely affectless and all standing around and speaking as if their arms were limp due to some form of nerve damage. I have NEVER watched any human anywhere (except for the physically disabled) who do not use their hands as organic to their speaking. TNG actors were all obviously fighting against human nature and consciously holding their arms limp at their sides at all times.
If Star Trek can get humans right, then there is a starting point from which to get the rest right. As for nano and body customization...there are budgets. Too much of this stuff costs real money whether on a linux CGI farm or with realistic props. Hell, if you wanted the aliens to be "right" there would be virtually NO humaniod aliens on the show. It is simply unbelievable and ridiculous to think that the human body form is THE strange attractor for evolution on all planets. But that's another, more general discussion that isn't limited to Star Trek.