I think the degree Enterprise played loose with canon in the first two seasons was acceptable. It had other problems, mainly keeping the characters realistic. It could have been a little better, and I saw signs of it improving.
But the fans rejected it. Ratings slipped. It had to be retooled.
And that retooling -- the Xindi arc -- killed it. It wasn't just that it was violating canon, though that was definitely a problem. It wasn't even that it was trying to pretend to fit in. I could have lived with that. No, what made it suck is simple: It was really, really bad. Horrible, inexplicably-motivated characters. Stories that tied together with the same subtleness as a wire clamp. And even what was there was just plain boring.
I heard season 4 was a little better. To be honest, after the Xindi arc Enterprise was dead to me. Some day I'll catch what I missed in reruns.
Maybe Star Trek 2009 will be better. Maybe not. We'll see. But I think it's time to make Star Trek simple again. If they can keep canon and tell a good story in the 23rd century, great. But if resetting is what it takes I'm all for a universe reset.
The Star Trek universe needs to feel big and dangerous again, and I think the Star Treks set in the 24td century kill the feeling of unknown that made the series great.
(Also? The look needs to be updated. I don't care if it's inconsistent: the tech has to look like the future again.)
Star Trek is about the galaxy. That galaxy is, ironically, portrayed smaller than a typical city. That treatment is part of canon. Star Trek isn't a cop show and can't be treated like one.
*WHOOOOOSH*
That was the sound of the point of my post going over your head.
The previous writers on Star Trek have written the Star Trek universe into a corner. There's no escape that will have the galactic scope needed to satisfy fans while producing an interesting-enough story for newcomers. It doesn't matter how good the new writer is, they're stuck in a broken playground.
It needs a reset, and a better focus on the small. So that the things that matter in other genres are acceptable stories for Star Trek again, like it was in TOS.
Star Trek is about the galaxy. That galaxy is, ironically, portrayed smaller than a typical city. That treatment is part of canon. Star Trek isn't a cop show and can't be treated like one.
Remember Enterprise? A throw-back to the 22nd century, Enterprise had an all-new crew and (at least initially) great writing for plots (if poor handling of some of the characters). It actually aligned really well to canon, if you were willing to let the writers have wiggle where there was wiggle room. But fans hated it because it required that wiggle room. How are you going to tell a story about the future of the federation in the 22nd century and line it up perfectly with what comes later? You're not. The show was retooled to be worse, then retooled again past when anyone cared, and finally cancelled.
So we should base a new movie off books? Something like that? I've read most of those books. Few are based on anything but a major character. Even the ones without major characters are based on previous books that included major characters. Those books are actually a great example of what's wrong with Star Trek's canon. Hand one of them to someone who hasn't watched Star Trek and see how much they enjoy it. Go ahead. I don't care how great the story is, it's not going to grip people. They're not going to get it. Basing a movie off of a story like that? Not gonna work.
You really think a movie with an all-new cast set in the universe is going to appeal? To who? The long-time fans, who will be pissed that their crew wasn't in a movie and know how the movie has to end to fit in with canon? Or the new people, who won't bother watching it because it's Star Trek, and they saw a rerun episode of that in 1981 and didn't like it?
The existing canon is massive and hugely restricting. Establish a core set of major powers? A new one isn't going to appear overnight. No contact between the Romulans and Federation for 50-ish years? You can't set a story in that era and have Romulans. Aligned with the Klingons? Not going to be fighting them, then. Take the Ferengi seriously? We've already been told we can't. What about the Dominion? Defeated foe. Borg? Cybernetic kittens by the end of VOY. New alien race? Sure, but where'd they come from?
What I'm really amazed at is how TOS managed to not fall into this trap. TNG dug the hole, DS9 jumped into it, and VOY managed to escape for a while before throwing itself and the Borg into it. Also funny is how the books have managed to maintain an alternate universe somehow, while matching themselves and canon they haven't restricted their universe as much. But you're not going to expand the universe in a single movie in a way that the "It's not canon, it's not canon!" Enterprise haters are going to accept.
The time has come to create something fresh. Maybe it shouldn't be Star Trek anymore; maybe Star Trek should be left dead. Maybe what comes next should have been brand new.
(And don't kid yourself. Star Trek is currently dead. A TV series relegated to pocket books is a corpse. This movie revives it or leave it dead.)
Is it really too much to ask that a story in an established franchise stick to previously established material?
Yes. Obviously so, even. If the previously established material was good enough, there'd still be a Star Trek series in production. They'd have good ratings, even.
By the end of Voyager, the 24th century is no longer interesting. The galaxy is too small, and the players too firmly established. Attempting to flush out the 23rd century puts the show in a box, because we know the ending already. It also puts us in the situation where the technology is laughably bad.
If Star Trek is going to survive, it has to not only be reinvented, but be reinvented in a good way. In the end, if this movie fails I think people will probably blame the lack of continuity. Really, though, I think it's far more likely that Star Trek will fail because it hasn't stepped far enough out of the box that TNG, DS9 and VOY (and even TOS) put it in.
This movie needs to be about 2008's future, not a future imagined from 1965.
No more features, please. If anything, I think iTunes needs to be split into a couple products at this point. I'm not sure how you would cut it, and I expect the reason Apple hasn't split it yet is they're not sure how to cut it yet either.
Look at the software iPod touch and iPhone, though: They do a much better job of splitting music, videos and store.
Honestly, I'm not sure why this considered is a win for Google. Let's imagine a piece of malware that gets onto phones. Apple can remove it from every phone. Google can't.
If either company starts removing things from their stores (in Apple's case, the only store) that aren't malware, we'll find out about it. But I think malware slipping through the approval process is far more likely.
There's an old teaching kit, previously available from Bell I think, that taught how a computer's CPU worked: CARDIAC. It was NOT a computer program, but rather just used cardboard props and the like. The "operator" was responsible for writing the instructions, then processing the results.
You don't really need the teaching kit, you just need to keep it simple. 100 memory cells, decimal storage instead of binary, only the program counter plus one register. It not only teaches the basics of programming, but teaches at some level that computers are deterministic. This is the one thing people really need to know before they start using them.
This is how I handled it, too, although in my case I was dealing with a one-man shop and settled for a lot less. But we both walked away happy: I got rid of a domain name that I didn't really need anymore, and they got their first choice.:)
It's almost certainly a remanent from the license agreement for one of their online services. For an online service, the clause is fairly standard, although still (honestly) unacceptable. ("That cool thing you created in Google Qwerty? We can use that in our banner ads.")
Oh, sure, it's relevant. Only barely, though. It's a little like arguing over the 52nd digit of pi when trying to figure out how many bags of cement to buy to fill in four post holes.:)
I took it as mocking the Slashdot editors for bothering to post this story at all.
Years ago during the OJ Simpson trial Canadian broadcasters kept struggling to find some Canadian connection so it could be covered on the local news. This was parodied in comedy show, something like this:
ANCHOR 1: There's news that OJ Simpson's housekeeper might have been Canadian. ANCHOR 2: Really?!? ANCHOR 1: Well, we must stress at this time this has NOT been confirmed. ANCHOR 2: Still, wouldn't that be great? ANCHOR 1: Totally.
Anyway, that's how I viewed this story. The cyberwar connection is almost irrelevant to technology. Unlike the Canadian news media which covers news outside of Canada, Slashdot claims to only cover technology news. So it MUST be made relevant somehow.
And sure, technology is involved. But it still screams of totally missing the point. And so sure, I found the comment funny.
The best text editor I've sen for tracking changes has to be e text editor. I don't know if it's exactly what you want, but I think there's a demo so you can check it out. It falls down with 700MB files, but might do okay with 32.
I have never heard anyone miss the h sound in herb, unless they were superlatively drunk in a "I could use some KFC right now!" way and unable to speak without slurring.
(Actually, I think even that drunk friend managed the h.)
Perceived value is not the same as value. Perhaps I value getting new photos from long-distance friends less now that they're on Facebook vs. when they would mail them to me. It's quite possible. Much like hot water or electricity, I take them for granted. But it would be very difficult to argue getting photos once a year is in any way a superior method of communication.
I have a 2220wm at work that has serious colour problems. I assume it's the same problem. (I can live with it, though... I've got a much better display at home.)
Slashdot Mirror
The barn door has not just been left open on the DVD format, someone loaded it into the back of a truck and sped off.
More accurate, but loses the rhyme and cadence.
Maybe I should have said "eighty." :)
I don't buy any videos from iTunes: I prefer to rip my own.
I think the degree Enterprise played loose with canon in the first two seasons was acceptable. It had other problems, mainly keeping the characters realistic. It could have been a little better, and I saw signs of it improving.
But the fans rejected it. Ratings slipped. It had to be retooled.
And that retooling -- the Xindi arc -- killed it. It wasn't just that it was violating canon, though that was definitely a problem. It wasn't even that it was trying to pretend to fit in. I could have lived with that. No, what made it suck is simple: It was really, really bad. Horrible, inexplicably-motivated characters. Stories that tied together with the same subtleness as a wire clamp. And even what was there was just plain boring.
I heard season 4 was a little better. To be honest, after the Xindi arc Enterprise was dead to me. Some day I'll catch what I missed in reruns.
Maybe Star Trek 2009 will be better. Maybe not. We'll see. But I think it's time to make Star Trek simple again. If they can keep canon and tell a good story in the 23rd century, great. But if resetting is what it takes I'm all for a universe reset.
The Star Trek universe needs to feel big and dangerous again, and I think the Star Treks set in the 24td century kill the feeling of unknown that made the series great.
(Also? The look needs to be updated. I don't care if it's inconsistent: the tech has to look like the future again.)
I like this version:
Fool me once shame on you
Fool me twice shame on me
Only the folks in Palo Alto will fall for number three.
*WHOOOOOSH*
That was the sound of the point of my post going over your head.
The previous writers on Star Trek have written the Star Trek universe into a corner. There's no escape that will have the galactic scope needed to satisfy fans while producing an interesting-enough story for newcomers. It doesn't matter how good the new writer is, they're stuck in a broken playground.
It needs a reset, and a better focus on the small. So that the things that matter in other genres are acceptable stories for Star Trek again, like it was in TOS.
Star Trek is about the galaxy. That galaxy is, ironically, portrayed smaller than a typical city. That treatment is part of canon. Star Trek isn't a cop show and can't be treated like one.
Remember Enterprise? A throw-back to the 22nd century, Enterprise had an all-new crew and (at least initially) great writing for plots (if poor handling of some of the characters). It actually aligned really well to canon, if you were willing to let the writers have wiggle where there was wiggle room. But fans hated it because it required that wiggle room. How are you going to tell a story about the future of the federation in the 22nd century and line it up perfectly with what comes later? You're not. The show was retooled to be worse, then retooled again past when anyone cared, and finally cancelled.
So we should base a new movie off books? Something like that? I've read most of those books. Few are based on anything but a major character. Even the ones without major characters are based on previous books that included major characters. Those books are actually a great example of what's wrong with Star Trek's canon. Hand one of them to someone who hasn't watched Star Trek and see how much they enjoy it. Go ahead. I don't care how great the story is, it's not going to grip people. They're not going to get it. Basing a movie off of a story like that? Not gonna work.
You really think a movie with an all-new cast set in the universe is going to appeal? To who? The long-time fans, who will be pissed that their crew wasn't in a movie and know how the movie has to end to fit in with canon? Or the new people, who won't bother watching it because it's Star Trek, and they saw a rerun episode of that in 1981 and didn't like it?
The existing canon is massive and hugely restricting. Establish a core set of major powers? A new one isn't going to appear overnight. No contact between the Romulans and Federation for 50-ish years? You can't set a story in that era and have Romulans. Aligned with the Klingons? Not going to be fighting them, then. Take the Ferengi seriously? We've already been told we can't. What about the Dominion? Defeated foe. Borg? Cybernetic kittens by the end of VOY. New alien race? Sure, but where'd they come from?
What I'm really amazed at is how TOS managed to not fall into this trap. TNG dug the hole, DS9 jumped into it, and VOY managed to escape for a while before throwing itself and the Borg into it. Also funny is how the books have managed to maintain an alternate universe somehow, while matching themselves and canon they haven't restricted their universe as much. But you're not going to expand the universe in a single movie in a way that the "It's not canon, it's not canon!" Enterprise haters are going to accept.
The time has come to create something fresh. Maybe it shouldn't be Star Trek anymore; maybe Star Trek should be left dead. Maybe what comes next should have been brand new.
(And don't kid yourself. Star Trek is currently dead. A TV series relegated to pocket books is a corpse. This movie revives it or leave it dead.)
Is it really too much to ask that a story in an established franchise stick to previously established material?
Yes. Obviously so, even. If the previously established material was good enough, there'd still be a Star Trek series in production. They'd have good ratings, even.
By the end of Voyager, the 24th century is no longer interesting. The galaxy is too small, and the players too firmly established. Attempting to flush out the 23rd century puts the show in a box, because we know the ending already. It also puts us in the situation where the technology is laughably bad.
If Star Trek is going to survive, it has to not only be reinvented, but be reinvented in a good way. In the end, if this movie fails I think people will probably blame the lack of continuity. Really, though, I think it's far more likely that Star Trek will fail because it hasn't stepped far enough out of the box that TNG, DS9 and VOY (and even TOS) put it in.
This movie needs to be about 2008's future, not a future imagined from 1965.
You can also create and mount a disk image with a case sensitive file system using Disk Utility.
No more features, please. If anything, I think iTunes needs to be split into a couple products at this point. I'm not sure how you would cut it, and I expect the reason Apple hasn't split it yet is they're not sure how to cut it yet either.
Look at the software iPod touch and iPhone, though: They do a much better job of splitting music, videos and store.
Honestly, I'm not sure why this considered is a win for Google. Let's imagine a piece of malware that gets onto phones. Apple can remove it from every phone. Google can't.
If either company starts removing things from their stores (in Apple's case, the only store) that aren't malware, we'll find out about it. But I think malware slipping through the approval process is far more likely.
There's an old teaching kit, previously available from Bell I think, that taught how a computer's CPU worked: CARDIAC. It was NOT a computer program, but rather just used cardboard props and the like. The "operator" was responsible for writing the instructions, then processing the results.
You don't really need the teaching kit, you just need to keep it simple. 100 memory cells, decimal storage instead of binary, only the program counter plus one register. It not only teaches the basics of programming, but teaches at some level that computers are deterministic. This is the one thing people really need to know before they start using them.
You got two bites and a +1 informative for that? Amazing! :)
Windows XP introduced a feature called "Group similar taskbar buttons". I personally hate it.
Which, sadly, only impacts how the task bar reacts to overflow.
I'm not saying that's bad, but it's definitely not the same thing.
This is how I handled it, too, although in my case I was dealing with a one-man shop and settled for a lot less. But we both walked away happy: I got rid of a domain name that I didn't really need anymore, and they got their first choice. :)
It's almost certainly a remanent from the license agreement for one of their online services. For an online service, the clause is fairly standard, although still (honestly) unacceptable. ("That cool thing you created in Google Qwerty? We can use that in our banner ads.")
Oh, sure, it's relevant. Only barely, though. It's a little like arguing over the 52nd digit of pi when trying to figure out how many bags of cement to buy to fill in four post holes. :)
I took it as mocking the Slashdot editors for bothering to post this story at all.
Years ago during the OJ Simpson trial Canadian broadcasters kept struggling to find some Canadian connection so it could be covered on the local news. This was parodied in comedy show, something like this:
ANCHOR 1: There's news that OJ Simpson's housekeeper might have been Canadian.
ANCHOR 2: Really?!?
ANCHOR 1: Well, we must stress at this time this has NOT been confirmed.
ANCHOR 2: Still, wouldn't that be great?
ANCHOR 1: Totally.
Anyway, that's how I viewed this story. The cyberwar connection is almost irrelevant to technology. Unlike the Canadian news media which covers news outside of Canada, Slashdot claims to only cover technology news. So it MUST be made relevant somehow.
And sure, technology is involved. But it still screams of totally missing the point. And so sure, I found the comment funny.
The best text editor I've sen for tracking changes has to be e text editor. I don't know if it's exactly what you want, but I think there's a demo so you can check it out. It falls down with 700MB files, but might do okay with 32.
I have never heard anyone miss the h sound in herb, unless they were superlatively drunk in a "I could use some KFC right now!" way and unable to speak without slurring.
(Actually, I think even that drunk friend managed the h.)
Perceived value is not the same as value. Perhaps I value getting new photos from long-distance friends less now that they're on Facebook vs. when they would mail them to me. It's quite possible. Much like hot water or electricity, I take them for granted. But it would be very difficult to argue getting photos once a year is in any way a superior method of communication.
I have a 2220wm at work that has serious colour problems. I assume it's the same problem. (I can live with it, though... I've got a much better display at home.)
Low quality screen is limited to 20-inch iMacs only.
Yes, actually, I think it did. Just knowing a good first tutorial is a good help. Thanks much. :)
Just not the kind of sex you WANT to be having.