Besides, my logical Brain has a problem watching a show that is supposed to pre-date Star Trek, where all the tech seems 100 years beyond the orginal Star Trek and the ideas are 100 years beyond the orginal Star Trek.
To be fair, I think this was a bit of an unsolvable problem for Enterprise. They had to create a vision of the 22nd century that simultaneously looked advanced to viewers from the 21st century and old compared to the 20th century's vision of the 23rd century. To look lower tech than the original Star Trek the computer consoles in Enterprise would have to have been freakin' cardboard boxes with the controls drawn in crayon. It may have been more logically consistant, but I'm betting the bulk of the modern TV audience (many of whom never even watched much of the old show except for an occasional rerun) wouldn't have put up with a truly pre-retro look.
My beef with the technology in Enterprise is that it is static and boring. When I first learned of the premise of Enterprise, there was something I was really looking forward to about it but which hasn't happened. I just assumed that one of the most interesting things about a ST prequel would be seeing how the early Federation learned about new technologies, tried to adopt them, made lots of mistakes, and slowly improved upon them.
For example, I though it would be really cool if the early Enterprise eventually gets some deflector shields, but they suck and they're always breaking. Instead, we get this ridiculous "hull plating" which goes "down to 70%" just like shields do and which might as well just be shields, but aren't because supposedly those days were too early for real shields, or something. Apparently, the Star Trek writers are so locked into the need for shields that keep the ship alive just along enough for the plucky crew to figure out a way out of the latest mess that they needed to invent some other replacement technology to supply the same plot device crutch.
And instead of learning to use it for the unbelievably powerful tool that it is, the transporter remains this last-resort emergency gizmo that everyone's afraid of and which spends most of the time switched off in some dark cargo bay.
I had this exact same problem with Dell. My hard disk failed on a new Dell system after about a month. I called, and they sent some local company over with a replacement. They showed up, replaced the drive...and then expected me to just hand them the old drive.
I said you've got to be f'ing kidding me. I used this PC for contract programming work, the drive had hundreds of files of clients' source code on it. And since I couldn't access it, there was no way to erase them. Physically destroying the drive with a hammer was not an option (I asked.)
After hours of complaining to Dell on the phone, I was only given one choice: pay for the new drive, or give it back. So the bottom line is, the mfg warranty on hard drives is utterly worthless, unless you don't mind handing over all of your files and personal data to a complete stranger.
Currently you can buy things on-line on your computer. But wouldn't that be better from your TV?
No. Why on earth would it be better from the TV? Are you saying that sitting around in front of a TV is better than sitting around in front of a computer?
I enthusiastically second this. Lately, between KCRW (in particular Morning Becomes Eclectic, weekdays 9-noon Pacific, DJ Nic Harcourt featured heavily in this topic's Frontline episode BTW) and somafm.com I'm drowning in so much great new music that I can't even keep up with it all. Who needs commercial radio? I stopped listening years ago. Clear Channel can go f**k themselves for all I care.
ps. if you listen to these stations regularly, consider making a donation online. I did.
Yes, there are many places in the world and times of the year when bicycling is simply impractical.
The problem I've noticed, however, is that most of the people who use "weather" as an excuse not to bike to work are still in their cars when it's 70 degrees and sunny out.
If I'm not mistaken, this is a reference to a very funny picture that made the rounds on the net a year or two ago...it showed a group of anti-war protestors, and next to them a pro-war protestor with a sign pointing at the anti-war protestors that said "MORANS".
I don't understand...what good does this do? Virtually all reply-to email addresses in spam are bogus. The only thing in the entire message that is real is the link to the site they are promoting. If you want to DOS the spammer, go after the site, not the bogus email address.
Well, I suppose you can, but you can't crash it into anything. Well, I suppose you can, but only the station at the end of the line.
As I recall, right after 9/11 suddenly D.C. politicians were talking about how maybe neglecting our national rail system was maybe not such a good idea after all. I was heartened by the possibility that we could be at the dawn of a new rail era. Well, that lasted about 1.5 days. Then it was back to business as usual and the good ol' auto lobby calling all the shots.
As did I. The two movies are remarkably similar, from the failure of a U.S. nuclear bomb to penetrate the alien shields, right down to the "virus" that defeats the aliens in the end.
The other point I guess is that it's only 100 ft across (why not 30m ?) so it would have burnt up on entry into the atmosphere
I'm pretty sure a 100ft diameter rock would make it to the ground. Meteors as small as 3ft can make it to the ground. It depends on what they are made of and whether they break apart when they hit the atmosphere.
But ummm, a whole lot more people than just Fox news are saying islamic terrorists were responsible for WTC. It's not exactly wild speculation anymore. I'm pretty far out on the left and don't believe a word coming out of Fox, but I'm also quite comfortable with the notion that Osama is guilty as charged.
> You're listening to leftist propaganda about the U.S., not reality.
I love how people who you disagree with are just victims of propaganda, but your view of the world is "reality." And then you criticize him for claiming his opinion is fact! Jeezus, dood.
> Why would book-tracking be necessary?... I don't like it, but I can understand it.
Actually, I figure these days anyone really bent on causing trouble is going to do their research on the web, not in a public library. Therefore, I propose a system where every website that everyone visits is logged and tracked in a central government database, and people who visit a lot of suspicious websites get investigated by the FBI. That would be a much better way to catch a potential terrorist. I mean, I wouldn't like it, but I would understand it.
Donald Trump: I would like a computer chip that I could attach to the brains of all my contractors so that they would know exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it, and at what price I wanted it. This would save me a lot of time and a lot of yelling.
Yikes! Anybody remember the Bob Rife character in Snow Crash who did this exact thing to all of his workers? He was supposed to be a parody of Ross Perot, but now it sounds like Donald Trump is the real thing!
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, I think this was a bit of an unsolvable problem for Enterprise. They had to create a vision of the 22nd century that simultaneously looked advanced to viewers from the 21st century and old compared to the 20th century's vision of the 23rd century. To look lower tech than the original Star Trek the computer consoles in Enterprise would have to have been freakin' cardboard boxes with the controls drawn in crayon. It may have been more logically consistant, but I'm betting the bulk of the modern TV audience (many of whom never even watched much of the old show except for an occasional rerun) wouldn't have put up with a truly pre-retro look.
My beef with the technology in Enterprise is that it is static and boring. When I first learned of the premise of Enterprise, there was something I was really looking forward to about it but which hasn't happened. I just assumed that one of the most interesting things about a ST prequel would be seeing how the early Federation learned about new technologies, tried to adopt them, made lots of mistakes, and slowly improved upon them.
For example, I though it would be really cool if the early Enterprise eventually gets some deflector shields, but they suck and they're always breaking. Instead, we get this ridiculous "hull plating" which goes "down to 70%" just like shields do and which might as well just be shields, but aren't because supposedly those days were too early for real shields, or something. Apparently, the Star Trek writers are so locked into the need for shields that keep the ship alive just along enough for the plucky crew to figure out a way out of the latest mess that they needed to invent some other replacement technology to supply the same plot device crutch.
And instead of learning to use it for the unbelievably powerful tool that it is, the transporter remains this last-resort emergency gizmo that everyone's afraid of and which spends most of the time switched off in some dark cargo bay.
I said you've got to be f'ing kidding me. I used this PC for contract programming work, the drive had hundreds of files of clients' source code on it. And since I couldn't access it, there was no way to erase them. Physically destroying the drive with a hammer was not an option (I asked.)
After hours of complaining to Dell on the phone, I was only given one choice: pay for the new drive, or give it back. So the bottom line is, the mfg warranty on hard drives is utterly worthless, unless you don't mind handing over all of your files and personal data to a complete stranger.
Last time I checked, no one was willing to pay me to play video games and look at pr0n.
The joke is that the unix clock value is the same in all time zones.
No. Why on earth would it be better from the TV? Are you saying that sitting around in front of a TV is better than sitting around in front of a computer?
ps. if you listen to these stations regularly, consider making a donation online. I did.
Ha ha! Ba-da-bum. Good one.
The problem I've noticed, however, is that most of the people who use "weather" as an excuse not to bike to work are still in their cars when it's 70 degrees and sunny out.
You must not be a mountain biker. I land on my head all the time!
If I'm not mistaken, this is a reference to a very funny picture that made the rounds on the net a year or two ago...it showed a group of anti-war protestors, and next to them a pro-war protestor with a sign pointing at the anti-war protestors that said "MORANS".
I don't understand...what good does this do? Virtually all reply-to email addresses in spam are bogus. The only thing in the entire message that is real is the link to the site they are promoting. If you want to DOS the spammer, go after the site, not the bogus email address.
As I recall, right after 9/11 suddenly D.C. politicians were talking about how maybe neglecting our national rail system was maybe not such a good idea after all. I was heartened by the possibility that we could be at the dawn of a new rail era. Well, that lasted about 1.5 days. Then it was back to business as usual and the good ol' auto lobby calling all the shots.
As did I. The two movies are remarkably similar, from the failure of a U.S. nuclear bomb to penetrate the alien shields, right down to the "virus" that defeats the aliens in the end.
I'm pretty sure a 100ft diameter rock would make it to the ground. Meteors as small as 3ft can make it to the ground. It depends on what they are made of and whether they break apart when they hit the atmosphere.
I wonder if the technology uses fuzzy logic?
But ummm, a whole lot more people than just Fox news are saying islamic terrorists were responsible for WTC. It's not exactly wild speculation anymore. I'm pretty far out on the left and don't believe a word coming out of Fox, but I'm also quite comfortable with the notion that Osama is guilty as charged.
I love how people who you disagree with are just victims of propaganda, but your view of the world is "reality." And then you criticize him for claiming his opinion is fact! Jeezus, dood.
> Why would book-tracking be necessary? ... I don't like it, but I can understand it.
Actually, I figure these days anyone really bent on causing trouble is going to do their research on the web, not in a public library. Therefore, I propose a system where every website that everyone visits is logged and tracked in a central government database, and people who visit a lot of suspicious websites get investigated by the FBI. That would be a much better way to catch a potential terrorist. I mean, I wouldn't like it, but I would understand it.
Yikes! Anybody remember the Bob Rife character in Snow Crash who did this exact thing to all of his workers? He was supposed to be a parody of Ross Perot, but now it sounds like Donald Trump is the real thing!