Time Travel is thought of as the worst plot device you can play with.
No, time travel is a _brilliant_ plot device. But, like distilled essence of scotch-bonnet chillies, it must be used with extreme caution. Star trek has neglected this, with results sometimes amusing (the fourth movie, for example, or the DS9 episode set during The Trouble With Tribbles) but more frequently dire (too numerous to list).
Hell, [Voyager] was never even upgraded permanently with alien technology, and the damned thing looked like brand spanking new right up to the final episode.
* You've watched a few later episodes of B5 without bothering to watch the early ones, and ended up wondering what on Earth was going on. Clue: B5 was a continuing story -- you need to at least watch most of it in order to understand.
* You're incredibly dense.
B5 was a well written, well plotted series, that makes total sense, and is actually reasonably easy to understand. I've never met anyone who had any trouble with it before.
OK, the props were cardboard, the effects poor (I think it was the first mainstream production to use all computer special effects, and it shows) & it had horrendous acting, particularly in the first series, but I don't think we can really blame JMS for that. He had to work with what he could raise for it.
Berman's problem is that some time between the start of TNG and the end of Voyager he got the idea that he was a better writer than all the great people who used to write Trek. Like D C Fontana. She was _good_.
Thinking about it, the little information we have about this _does_ sound like JMS's style, so this could be what he was talking about.
A big problem with the current Star Trek movies are the writers.
Which ST movies had good writers? OK, the first was written by Alan Dean Foster, who has also written some good stuff. But I reckon he probably thought he was writing a TV episode, and the directors decided to pad it out to feature length...
Re:Unix geeks and their self-referencing acronyms.
on
GPS on Mars?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Aerostationary? Not moving in air??
Perhaps they mean areostationary (not moving with relation to Mars; the martian equivalent of geostationary).
Re:find those little speeding rovers!
on
GPS on Mars?
·
· Score: 1
I think the theory is, if there were a GPS system around Mars, the rovers could go faster.
It absolutely, positively requires IE to run. It makes direct calls to MSXML and does a shitload of.NET stuff on the client side that just don't work with Firefox.
There are other ways of achieving the same thing. I'd consider using a Java applet that uses LiveConnect to update the contents of an HTML user interface.
In addition we've set the IIS server it MUST run on
If it was well written, the IIS server portion of it (an ISAPI filter?) would be written to communicate with a separate back-end module. So write a new server front end that can sit under apache. If it isn't, it'll be a maintenance nightmare -- talk to management/the customer, and explain that things will be cheaper in the future if it is refactored.
use integrated authentication so the users don't have to log in 50 times a day
Use of a properly implemented session ID cookie will mean that users only have to log on once per (whatever period you choose). Assuming they all have their own passworded accounts on their PCs this shouldn't be any more insecure than the system you're currently using. If there's a possibility of snooping on the network (there probably is), you should be using SSL.
That's good for apple. However, apple had horrendous problems for many years in terms of compatibility with other pre-existing computer systems. There are still many standard data formats that cannot be used with apple data (e.g. tar / zip files) without losing the metadata. Many of these formats predate apple's decision. The use of extensions to determine file types dates back to the 70s (possibly even farther, I don't know how far back it goes -- I know DOS's extension support was an enhancement of CP/M's, which was pinched from a Unix convention... did that carry over from Multics? Even farther back?)
Obviously if they were 100% compliant then web developers would stick to the standards
If you think that, you need to get out and meet a few more professional web developers. If MSIE was 100% standards compliant, maybe 5% more of us would stick to the standards. Bringing the total to, roughly, 15%.
Not sure about XP, but I've run 2K on such a machine, and they're very similar systems, really. The first boot might take a long time while it swaps all those services you don't need in and out, but once you've got them switched off it should be OK.
1. XP home only costs GBP 60. If you're paying as much as 200, you're paying extra for the fancy box, which doesn't seem very useful to me.
2. It doesn't seem to require any more upgrades than any other Windows version. And it can handle them silently, unlike, say, WinME. SP2 should, in fact, significantly decrease the number of upgrades required, as the new security capabilities should prevent most exploits from working (as indeed they did with the recent fiasco).
3. I wouldn't ask them, if I were you. I'd just tell them, seeing as when you payed your 60 quid, you entered into a contract with them where they provide the software. If it doesn't work, you get to sue them for not just that 60 quid, but the reasonable value of any time you've wasted.
CSS3 contains a lot of things that IE has never shown any interest in moving toward. Text-to-speech controls, formatting styles for page-based documents, styles that can be applied to MathML documents. The IE team have never shown any interest in doing more than basic work on some of these things, or even any work at all on MathML. I'd be surprised if these aspects of CSS3 get implemented in the near future.
The issue was known by the Moz dev team years ago, and they decided it was WONTFIX.
That was actually a different but related issue. Even if that had been fixed, this would still have been a problem, as clicking on shell: links would be able to execute arbitrary programs.
Fixing that bug would also have disabled some useful behaviour.
The only way to deal with this is ONLY use external handlers you know are safe, rather than using all but the handlers you know have holes in them.
The only problem is that the ability to add an arbitrary handler to your system is extremely useful: it allows people to use a web interface to pass commands to your applications.
If Mozilla didn't allow this, a huge number of people would switch back to IE.
Slashdot Mirror
Time Travel is thought of as the worst plot device you can play with.
No, time travel is a _brilliant_ plot device. But, like distilled essence of scotch-bonnet chillies, it must be used with extreme caution. Star trek has neglected this, with results sometimes amusing (the fourth movie, for example, or the DS9 episode set during The Trouble With Tribbles) but more frequently dire (too numerous to list).
Hell, [Voyager] was never even upgraded permanently with alien technology, and the damned thing looked like brand spanking new right up to the final episode.
You're forgetting The Year of Hell.
(...)
You do know that Berman was involved in the franchise right from the start of TNG, don't you?
I can think of two conclusions from your comment:
* You've watched a few later episodes of B5 without bothering to watch the early ones, and ended up wondering what on Earth was going on. Clue: B5 was a continuing story -- you need to at least watch most of it in order to understand.
* You're incredibly dense.
B5 was a well written, well plotted series, that makes total sense, and is actually reasonably easy to understand. I've never met anyone who had any trouble with it before.
OK, the props were cardboard, the effects poor (I think it was the first mainstream production to use all computer special effects, and it shows) & it had horrendous acting, particularly in the first series, but I don't think we can really blame JMS for that. He had to work with what he could raise for it.
Berman's problem is that some time between the start of TNG and the end of Voyager he got the idea that he was a better writer than all the great people who used to write Trek. Like D C Fontana. She was _good_.
Thinking about it, the little information we have about this _does_ sound like JMS's style, so this could be what he was talking about.
Now that's irony. A West Wing geek quoting West Wing making fun of Star Trek geeks. So, what are your favourite 10 West Wing episodes? ;)
This, people, is why I browse with sigs turned off.
A big problem with the current Star Trek movies are the writers.
Which ST movies had good writers? OK, the first was written by Alan Dean Foster, who has also written some good stuff. But I reckon he probably thought he was writing a TV episode, and the directors decided to pad it out to feature length...
Aerostationary? Not moving in air??
Perhaps they mean areostationary (not moving with relation to Mars; the martian equivalent of geostationary).
I think the theory is, if there were a GPS system around Mars, the rovers could go faster.
It absolutely, positively requires IE to run. It makes direct calls to MSXML and does a shitload of .NET stuff on the client side that just don't work with Firefox.
There are other ways of achieving the same thing. I'd consider using a Java applet that uses LiveConnect to update the contents of an HTML user interface.
In addition we've set the IIS server it MUST run on
If it was well written, the IIS server portion of it (an ISAPI filter?) would be written to communicate with a separate back-end module. So write a new server front end that can sit under apache. If it isn't, it'll be a maintenance nightmare -- talk to management/the customer, and explain that things will be cheaper in the future if it is refactored.
use integrated authentication so the users don't have to log in 50 times a day
Use of a properly implemented session ID cookie will mean that users only have to log on once per (whatever period you choose). Assuming they all have their own passworded accounts on their PCs this shouldn't be any more insecure than the system you're currently using. If there's a possibility of snooping on the network (there probably is), you should be using SSL.
What the crap have they been doing for the last THREE years?
Well, somebody had to write all those bugfixes...
That's good for apple. However, apple had horrendous problems for many years in terms of compatibility with other pre-existing computer systems. There are still many standard data formats that cannot be used with apple data (e.g. tar / zip files) without losing the metadata. Many of these formats predate apple's decision. The use of extensions to determine file types dates back to the 70s (possibly even farther, I don't know how far back it goes -- I know DOS's extension support was an enhancement of CP/M's, which was pinched from a Unix convention... did that carry over from Multics? Even farther back?)
Obviously if they were 100% compliant then web developers would stick to the standards
If you think that, you need to get out and meet a few more professional web developers. If MSIE was 100% standards compliant, maybe 5% more of us would stick to the standards. Bringing the total to, roughly, 15%.
I thought it was Flash Gordon who fought Ming?
Not sure about XP, but I've run 2K on such a machine, and they're very similar systems, really. The first boot might take a long time while it swaps all those services you don't need in and out, but once you've got them switched off it should be OK.
Interesting.
1. XP home only costs GBP 60. If you're paying as much as 200, you're paying extra for the fancy box, which doesn't seem very useful to me.
2. It doesn't seem to require any more upgrades than any other Windows version. And it can handle them silently, unlike, say, WinME. SP2 should, in fact, significantly decrease the number of upgrades required, as the new security capabilities should prevent most exploits from working (as indeed they did with the recent fiasco).
3. I wouldn't ask them, if I were you. I'd just tell them, seeing as when you payed your 60 quid, you entered into a contract with them where they provide the software. If it doesn't work, you get to sue them for not just that 60 quid, but the reasonable value of any time you've wasted.
CSS3 contains a lot of things that IE has never shown any interest in moving toward. Text-to-speech controls, formatting styles for page-based documents, styles that can be applied to MathML documents. The IE team have never shown any interest in doing more than basic work on some of these things, or even any work at all on MathML. I'd be surprised if these aspects of CSS3 get implemented in the near future.
So why is Burt Rutan suddenly the go-to guy for all things space-related
Because, while what he has achieved might not be everything, nobody else has achieved more without government backing.
Still, he seems like he should be taken seriously.
Either that or he's a nut. A rich nut.
NCSA Mosaic?
I'd avoid it.
I believe it launches downloaded documents without asking for confirmation from the user.
Also, Internet Explorer was based on it. That ain't a good recommendation.
And how do you read your slashdot user page? It does not render properly (or sometimes at all) on Konqueror.
Strange. I have the same problem in Mozilla. I think Slashdot's broken, not the browser, though.
The issue was known by the Moz dev team years ago, and they decided it was WONTFIX.
That was actually a different but related issue. Even if that had been fixed, this would still have been a problem, as clicking on shell: links would be able to execute arbitrary programs.
Fixing that bug would also have disabled some useful behaviour.
Yes. The problem is that MS's documentation on this API makes it look like it is safe.
The only way to deal with this is ONLY use external handlers you know are safe, rather than using all but the handlers you know have holes in them.
The only problem is that the ability to add an arbitrary handler to your system is extremely useful: it allows people to use a web interface to pass commands to your applications.
If Mozilla didn't allow this, a huge number of people would switch back to IE.