> Yeah, I know how you feel. Star Trek was a rare bastion of (semi)intellectualism on television, technobabble aside.
Yeah, that's one of the problems, I just can't put the technobabble aside. That was the main factor for me that made TNG/DS9/Voyager/Enterprise boring as snot and intellectually dishonest. It's a tenant of writing that you might get away with one deus ex machina if reasonably foreshadowed, just like any story is allowed one improbable coincidence. But if you're gonna babble your way out of each and every episode, I rapidly lose interest. It wasn't intellectualism, or even semi-intellectualism, it was pseudo-intellectualism. The semblance of thought, without actual, you know, thought. And for fans that want to think they're smarter than they may actually be, that may be enough. It wasn't for me.
I have nothing against a complicated, thoughtful plot as long as it's not contrived, (the problem I have with many popular TV series is how soon they degenerate into stupid people doing stupid things) but Trek was not that. It occasionally had thoughtful plots, but at least in the Berman era, it mostly had self-conscious formula following a template of what the producers thought a thoughtful plot would be. (There are exceptions, of course, and there will be a few episodes I will want to own from the remastered series. But not many.)
I grew up with TOS and will gladly rewatch almost any episode (possible exceptions are Spock's Brain and the one with the yangs and the coms) but if we were honest with ourselves, we'd acknowledge that TOS was different from the series' that followed, in much the same way that Abrams' Trek is different. It's just a matter of degree, really. And budget.
I don't think it's a matter of how Abrams' Trek compares unfavorably to the scientific and philosophical "Old Trek". This is not an entirely accurate characterization of Old Trek, and completely ignores the substantial difference between Old Trek and Middle Trek. Whereas Original Kirk often resolved things with a directed phaser burst or clunky fight scene, the series of the Berman era, starting with ST:TNG, went too far the other way, preferring to move the plot forward with endless meetings and discussions and existential crisis and long meaningful stares. (Side note, I think this was primarily because meetings are cheaper to film than fight scenes, but feel free to disagree.) This is where the technobabble reached a peak, as babbling nonsense to get out of a predicament is viewed as somehow more cerebral than kicking ass. Or actually coming up with a plausible predicament with a plausible solution.
And as we know, Berman's Super Talking Trek eventually collapsed in upon itself. Personally, I've seen every single episode of TOS several times, but I stopped watching each of TNG, DS9, and Voyager before they played out. And I only ever saw perhaps four episodes of Enterprise. (Of which, one was the arguably decent follow-on to "mirror mirror".) Why? Because with a few exceptions, it was boring as hell. The same endless discussions scored by the same eight bars of cello and viola until you want to claw your eyes out. It was an exercise in frustration.
I submit that Abrams' trek was meant as a direct counter to the Super Talking Trek of the Berman era. It's not necessarily TOS reinterpreted as a space opera, because, let's face it, a lot of TOS *was* space opera, just with less money and lower technology. Abrams' Trek takes the action qualities of TOS and gives it a huge boost of technology and caffeine, without losing sight of TOS beginnings: Horatio Hornblower in space. I haven't seen Into Darkness yet, but noticed the "wooden ships and iron men" feel to the battle scenes in the trailer, which Previous Trek had seldom been able to convey. I really don't have a problem with that.
But the lens flare, that has to go. What idiot thought that up?
I mean really, if Roddenberry and Coon and Fontana and the rest had access to something that looked like a decent space suit and the ability to film EVAs and descents into volcanos and small vehicles dogfighting in space, and the Enterprise in atmosphere, don't you think they would have used them?
Look, if you've spent any time on a PC at all, you know that's not true. Not every window needs that much real estate, and windows overlap. Or at least, they used to, before Windows 8. What a step backwards.
I have an app up in my right top corner that's an inch and a half wide by three inches long. Below that is another app that's an inch tall by two inches wide. On a 1920X1200 screen. Those stay up all the time. In the new paradigm, those would be the only two apps that I could display. It's insane.
Before you say it, being able to split my screen and run two apps at a time is sooooo 1992. I currently have six windows open on this screen and eleven open on my second screen. We outgrew "two apps at once", like, 20 years ago. How did they think this would be acceptable? Did Ballmer have a stroke or something?
Hang on. It looks like everyone thinks that 8.1 will give them the old start menu back. What makes you think that? It would be tantamount to admitting that they blew the paradigm, that they Made a Mistake, and I just don't see Ballmer doing that. He'd rather lose market share than admit to this bad of a decision.
Having upgraded a little used touch screen laptop to Win8, (because Win7 sucks on a touch screen) we've found a bunch of things that need to be done to make it useful. But two things are absolutely imperative:
(a) Boot directly to desktop
(b) Bring back the start button and menus.
(c) No fullscreen apps on non-phone devices. Or at least, a regular Windows version or mode on every app that runs fullscreen on Windows Phone. I didn't buy a big, dense monitor and a quad core system to run one damned app at a time.
Any other fixes are cake. Those are not negotiable. (I know, I know, Classic Shell fixes part of this. But we're talking here about what Microsoft needs to do to fix their mistakes.)
In 8.1, I need the ability to set the OS so that I never ever see Metro again. Never. Not ever. Not even a little bit. Yes, I know the laptop has a touch screen. I'd rather abandon that functionality than deal with the frustration that is Metro. Moreover, the other non-touchscreen PCs on which I work will stay firmly put on the Windows version they currently run until (a) and (b) and (c) happen. That is not negotiable.
If instead Microsoft has put the Start button back but it only takes you to the Metro screen, that's an even bigger fail than before, because it shows a mindset that we're just too stupid to like Metro off the bat and need to be forced to use it until we like it. Moreover, I'd fully expect that a way could be found to disable the various third-party start screens. If I wanted to force all my customers to like it or lump it, 's what I'd do.
So, no cheering in Mudville just yet. I wanna see what 8.1 actually does, not what we speculate it might do.
Exactly. The point being, one can own a TV and not sit there watching the off-air feed in real time from beginning of prime time to the 11:00 news, clutching the remote in one's cheeto-powder-encrusted mitts. That's so... seventies. Back when "kill your tv" really meant something, because TV only had three providers of content and so much of it was mindless dreck. Now you get to... well, at least *pick* your mindless dreck.
Daughter (who just graduated high school) watches My Little Pony (the current incarnation, not that horrible 1980's crap), and I've seen a couple episodes, and... you know... kids could be watching worse things. The writers don't talk down to the viewer, the dialog is fast and witty and sometimes genuinely funny, and they don't beat you senseless with the moral.
She was part of a brony group in high school, but about half of them quit when the other half got.... wayyyyy too into it. But that's not necessarily a reflection on the show. Geeks can take anything and make too much of it. (Ahem...)
I'm betting you also don't own a TV, and you're itching for some excuse to explain this fact in excruciating detail.
Well, like me, he may own a TV, but either (a) doesn't watch broadcast TV at all, or (b) timeshifts and doesn't watch the commercials, or some combination of (a) and (b).
I've seen articles on the Facebook phone here, on The Register, and (I think) in Yahoo News, but only as articles, not ever as marketing. I don't even know what the desktop looks like. (Of course, I could google it and find out, but I don't care to do that. The Facebook phone is in my mind in the same class as Windows Phone; something I'd never own and in which I have absolutely no interest.)
So yeah, if they only marketed the device on TV, there are lots of people (more every day) who wouldn't have been in a position to see an advertisement.
Why, that makes all the difference! And I don't have ANY problem putting my photos... my PHOTOS mind you, my creative art by which I earn my living, on someone else's storage. Yeah, no problem with that. It's a bright shiny new world.
Because undocumented, complicated internal web applications written by people who haven't worked for the company for years only work with IE6. (Thank you, Frontpage.) Our company allows users to pick Mac as their laptop, but then they rapidly find out that lots of things on the company website don't work. And we get to say, "sorry, we don't support Safari. Or Chrome. Or Firefox. I'm not allowed to help you unless you're having a problem with the application using IE.) Which is patently ridiculous, but there you go.
What's starting to change things is the emerging prevalence of tablets. Nobody seriously considers the Surface a viable option, so there is renewed interest in getting the company web apps working with those shiny new ipads the execs are sporting.
> 'Does Ballmer have the guts to admit he made a mistake and give users what they clearly want?'
It's not guts, it's arrogance, I think, that's keeping him from doing the right thing.
Reminds me of my last flight on TWA, shortly before they went out of business. We had had a horrible flight on the first leg, the movie stopped five minutes before the end, the release button jammed on the intercom so we got to hear galley noises for much of the trip, the plane was ice cold but the woman next to me was yelled at when she asked for a blanket, two flights were combined making it way overcrowded, people were bumped after their luggage was loaded, and on the second leg, the plane went back to the terminal after three attempts to get the engines up to takeoff speed, and we were told to deplane and wait for another plane. I was one of many people trying to get transferred to "anything but TWA" once we deplaned, and after establishing that TWA declined to transfer the ticket, was told by the TWA ticket agent through gritted teeth "you. will. enjoy. that. flight.... SIR!" With the last word said sarcastically.
I vowed never to fly with them again, which turned out to be an easy vow, as they closed up shop shortly thereafter.
So is Balmer to say to us "You. Will. Enjoy. This. Version........ SIR." -- through gritted teeth? (Or would he say "punk"?)
...Because it doesn't seem in character for him to say "we took the shot, we missed, we're trying to get the rebound".
I usually work with one version of CS for years, and haven't even upgraded to CS6 yet. So I'm not worried. Lots of time for someone to come up with a reasonable replacement. But CS Cloud Subscription? Um, no, sorry.
I'm genuinely curious. I don't own a car, but the ones I know don't have anything that would use much data storage. It seems they store fuel economy data, but that's about it. The entertainment systems don't have any data storage, but it can connect to your phone, MP3 player or whatever via USB.
An entertainment/navigation system may have internal data. Map data might be on hard disk, (easier to update, and doesn't occupy the DVD player while in use) as well as (optionally) music.
Slashdot Mirror
Two word review:
See both.
It appears nobody got the reference....
IMDB spoiled it days ago.
Really? Have you *watched* the original series?
> Because it's Star Trek, and we expect some depth.
I object. Endless discussion and technobabble is not "depth". It's the semblance of depth without the content.
> Yeah, I know how you feel. Star Trek was a rare bastion of (semi)intellectualism on television, technobabble aside.
Yeah, that's one of the problems, I just can't put the technobabble aside. That was the main factor for me that made TNG/DS9/Voyager/Enterprise boring as snot and intellectually dishonest. It's a tenant of writing that you might get away with one deus ex machina if reasonably foreshadowed, just like any story is allowed one improbable coincidence. But if you're gonna babble your way out of each and every episode, I rapidly lose interest. It wasn't intellectualism, or even semi-intellectualism, it was pseudo-intellectualism. The semblance of thought, without actual, you know, thought. And for fans that want to think they're smarter than they may actually be, that may be enough. It wasn't for me.
I have nothing against a complicated, thoughtful plot as long as it's not contrived, (the problem I have with many popular TV series is how soon they degenerate into stupid people doing stupid things) but Trek was not that. It occasionally had thoughtful plots, but at least in the Berman era, it mostly had self-conscious formula following a template of what the producers thought a thoughtful plot would be. (There are exceptions, of course, and there will be a few episodes I will want to own from the remastered series. But not many.)
I grew up with TOS and will gladly rewatch almost any episode (possible exceptions are Spock's Brain and the one with the yangs and the coms) but if we were honest with ourselves, we'd acknowledge that TOS was different from the series' that followed, in much the same way that Abrams' Trek is different. It's just a matter of degree, really. And budget.
I don't think it's a matter of how Abrams' Trek compares unfavorably to the scientific and philosophical "Old Trek". This is not an entirely accurate characterization of Old Trek, and completely ignores the substantial difference between Old Trek and Middle Trek. Whereas Original Kirk often resolved things with a directed phaser burst or clunky fight scene, the series of the Berman era, starting with ST:TNG, went too far the other way, preferring to move the plot forward with endless meetings and discussions and existential crisis and long meaningful stares. (Side note, I think this was primarily because meetings are cheaper to film than fight scenes, but feel free to disagree.) This is where the technobabble reached a peak, as babbling nonsense to get out of a predicament is viewed as somehow more cerebral than kicking ass. Or actually coming up with a plausible predicament with a plausible solution.
And as we know, Berman's Super Talking Trek eventually collapsed in upon itself. Personally, I've seen every single episode of TOS several times, but I stopped watching each of TNG, DS9, and Voyager before they played out. And I only ever saw perhaps four episodes of Enterprise. (Of which, one was the arguably decent follow-on to "mirror mirror".) Why? Because with a few exceptions, it was boring as hell. The same endless discussions scored by the same eight bars of cello and viola until you want to claw your eyes out. It was an exercise in frustration.
I submit that Abrams' trek was meant as a direct counter to the Super Talking Trek of the Berman era. It's not necessarily TOS reinterpreted as a space opera, because, let's face it, a lot of TOS *was* space opera, just with less money and lower technology. Abrams' Trek takes the action qualities of TOS and gives it a huge boost of technology and caffeine, without losing sight of TOS beginnings: Horatio Hornblower in space. I haven't seen Into Darkness yet, but noticed the "wooden ships and iron men" feel to the battle scenes in the trailer, which Previous Trek had seldom been able to convey. I really don't have a problem with that.
But the lens flare, that has to go. What idiot thought that up?
I mean really, if Roddenberry and Coon and Fontana and the rest had access to something that looked like a decent space suit and the ability to film EVAs and descents into volcanos and small vehicles dogfighting in space, and the Enterprise in atmosphere, don't you think they would have used them?
Look, if you've spent any time on a PC at all, you know that's not true. Not every window needs that much real estate, and windows overlap. Or at least, they used to, before Windows 8. What a step backwards.
I have an app up in my right top corner that's an inch and a half wide by three inches long. Below that is another app that's an inch tall by two inches wide. On a 1920X1200 screen. Those stay up all the time. In the new paradigm, those would be the only two apps that I could display. It's insane.
This.
Before you say it, being able to split my screen and run two apps at a time is sooooo 1992. I currently have six windows open on this screen and eleven open on my second screen. We outgrew "two apps at once", like, 20 years ago. How did they think this would be acceptable? Did Ballmer have a stroke or something?
Hang on. It looks like everyone thinks that 8.1 will give them the old start menu back. What makes you think that? It would be tantamount to admitting that they blew the paradigm, that they Made a Mistake, and I just don't see Ballmer doing that. He'd rather lose market share than admit to this bad of a decision.
Having upgraded a little used touch screen laptop to Win8, (because Win7 sucks on a touch screen) we've found a bunch of things that need to be done to make it useful. But two things are absolutely imperative:
(a) Boot directly to desktop
(b) Bring back the start button and menus.
(c) No fullscreen apps on non-phone devices. Or at least, a regular Windows version or mode on every app that runs fullscreen on Windows Phone. I didn't buy a big, dense monitor and a quad core system to run one damned app at a time.
Any other fixes are cake. Those are not negotiable. (I know, I know, Classic Shell fixes part of this. But we're talking here about what Microsoft needs to do to fix their mistakes.)
In 8.1, I need the ability to set the OS so that I never ever see Metro again. Never. Not ever. Not even a little bit. Yes, I know the laptop has a touch screen. I'd rather abandon that functionality than deal with the frustration that is Metro. Moreover, the other non-touchscreen PCs on which I work will stay firmly put on the Windows version they currently run until (a) and (b) and (c) happen. That is not negotiable.
If instead Microsoft has put the Start button back but it only takes you to the Metro screen, that's an even bigger fail than before, because it shows a mindset that we're just too stupid to like Metro off the bat and need to be forced to use it until we like it. Moreover, I'd fully expect that a way could be found to disable the various third-party start screens. If I wanted to force all my customers to like it or lump it, 's what I'd do.
So, no cheering in Mudville just yet. I wanna see what 8.1 actually does, not what we speculate it might do.
Would you say the same if it was NAMBLA instead of Bronies?
Well, no. If there's anyone I wouldn't accept help from, or contribute to, it'd be them. I'm not sure if I'm understanding your point.
Why would you have a problem with the North American Marlon Brando Look Alikes?
Unfortunate acronym.
Exactly. The point being, one can own a TV and not sit there watching the off-air feed in real time from beginning of prime time to the 11:00 news, clutching the remote in one's cheeto-powder-encrusted mitts. That's so... seventies. Back when "kill your tv" really meant something, because TV only had three providers of content and so much of it was mindless dreck. Now you get to... well, at least *pick* your mindless dreck.
Daughter (who just graduated high school) watches My Little Pony (the current incarnation, not that horrible 1980's crap), and I've seen a couple episodes, and ... you know ... kids could be watching worse things. The writers don't talk down to the viewer, the dialog is fast and witty and sometimes genuinely funny, and they don't beat you senseless with the moral.
She was part of a brony group in high school, but about half of them quit when the other half got.... wayyyyy too into it. But that's not necessarily a reflection on the show. Geeks can take anything and make too much of it. (Ahem...)
Would you say the same if it was NAMBLA instead of Bronies?
Well, no. If there's anyone I wouldn't accept help from, or contribute to, it'd be them. I'm not sure if I'm understanding your point.
How long before they're offered as TracFone's for $19.95 with 20 minutes free?
I think you have something there. The "facebook phone" concept was tailor made for prepaid blister-pack impulse buys displayed near the register.
People don't get sucked into a "gadget" when they have real needs. Users want a product with a real answer they can RELY on.
Maybe that's one of the reasons why it flopped?
I'm betting you also don't own a TV, and you're itching for some excuse to explain this fact in excruciating detail.
Well, like me, he may own a TV, but either (a) doesn't watch broadcast TV at all, or (b) timeshifts and doesn't watch the commercials, or some combination of (a) and (b).
I've seen articles on the Facebook phone here, on The Register, and (I think) in Yahoo News, but only as articles, not ever as marketing. I don't even know what the desktop looks like. (Of course, I could google it and find out, but I don't care to do that. The Facebook phone is in my mind in the same class as Windows Phone; something I'd never own and in which I have absolutely no interest.)
So yeah, if they only marketed the device on TV, there are lots of people (more every day) who wouldn't have been in a position to see an advertisement.
Why, that makes all the difference! And I don't have ANY problem putting my photos... my PHOTOS mind you, my creative art by which I earn my living, on someone else's storage. Yeah, no problem with that. It's a bright shiny new world.
Because undocumented, complicated internal web applications written by people who haven't worked for the company for years only work with IE6. (Thank you, Frontpage.) Our company allows users to pick Mac as their laptop, but then they rapidly find out that lots of things on the company website don't work. And we get to say, "sorry, we don't support Safari. Or Chrome. Or Firefox. I'm not allowed to help you unless you're having a problem with the application using IE.) Which is patently ridiculous, but there you go.
What's starting to change things is the emerging prevalence of tablets. Nobody seriously considers the Surface a viable option, so there is renewed interest in getting the company web apps working with those shiny new ipads the execs are sporting.
> 'Does Ballmer have the guts to admit he made a mistake and give users what they clearly want?'
It's not guts, it's arrogance, I think, that's keeping him from doing the right thing.
Reminds me of my last flight on TWA, shortly before they went out of business. We had had a horrible flight on the first leg, the movie stopped five minutes before the end, the release button jammed on the intercom so we got to hear galley noises for much of the trip, the plane was ice cold but the woman next to me was yelled at when she asked for a blanket, two flights were combined making it way overcrowded, people were bumped after their luggage was loaded, and on the second leg, the plane went back to the terminal after three attempts to get the engines up to takeoff speed, and we were told to deplane and wait for another plane. I was one of many people trying to get transferred to "anything but TWA" once we deplaned, and after establishing that TWA declined to transfer the ticket, was told by the TWA ticket agent through gritted teeth "you. will. enjoy. that. flight. ... SIR!" With the last word said sarcastically.
I vowed never to fly with them again, which turned out to be an easy vow, as they closed up shop shortly thereafter.
So is Balmer to say to us "You. Will. Enjoy. This. Version. ....... SIR." -- through gritted teeth? (Or would he say "punk"?)
I usually work with one version of CS for years, and haven't even upgraded to CS6 yet. So I'm not worried. Lots of time for someone to come up with a reasonable replacement. But CS Cloud Subscription? Um, no, sorry.
I'm genuinely curious. I don't own a car, but the ones I know don't have anything that would use much data storage. It seems they store fuel economy data, but that's about it. The entertainment systems don't have any data storage, but it can connect to your phone, MP3 player or whatever via USB.
An entertainment/navigation system may have internal data. Map data might be on hard disk, (easier to update, and doesn't occupy the DVD player while in use) as well as (optionally) music.