posted by
martyb
on Wednesday November 04 2020, @03:54PM
from the life-is-too-important-to-take-ourselves-seriously dept.
from the life-is-too-important-to-take-ourselves-seriously dept.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:17PM (26 children)
Most of my favorite recent features in programming languages lately showed up first in C#.
Microsoft has put together a really good language, I still prefer python, but always being a few years behind on things like pattern matching switch statements(symptom of lazy application design or no) always feels a bit aggravating.
MVVM is a really great architecture of GUIs and no one else has implemented them well, that JS libraries that tried all suck to use in their own special ways. And Oracle is allergic to UIs designers that are intuitive and fast to build with.
The biggest thing holding the language itself back right now is that it's all but impossible to do any aspect oriented programming without an unreasonbly burdensome set of wrapper classes and factories.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:19PM
I've written some C# for work as well, C# is a good language for the most part. If it was actually portable (not .dll on Linux portable) and wasn't owned by Charles Manson, I'd probably take it a lot more seriously.
Then again, lately I've learned Rust, and it seems to fit the niche of "something safer and easier to develop userland stuff with than C++" rather nicely.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 4, Interesting) by acid andy on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:36PM (8 children)
Yes much as I loathe Micro$oft, I'm forced to admit C# was really, really nice to code in, especially with all the features of .NET readily available, it made coding very rapid and clean--at least from the coder's perspective. Syntactically it seems like the language that Java should have been, where Java forces you too much into doing things in its particular long-winded way.
I have to say I wasn't a fan of the more recent obsession with lambda expressions and compiler-deduced types (auto). I can see where the latter was helpful for cleaning up very long type names of things like iterators and variables for reflection but it seems to me that's treating a symptom rather than the cause and it encourages sloppy programming in my view. The lambda expressions just seem like a distraction to me: syntactic sugar to tart up for-loops.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:57PM (7 children)
I can't speak for lambdas, but the reason for the auto types is because in corporate shops, people have to write SO. MUCH. BOILERPLATE.
Most of the neat features lately have been about killing boilerplate, and reducing statements to just the part that does something. The danger with that has always been that you hide something important from the reader in the simple-looking statements.
Like with the pattern matching I just mentioned, the risk of a decompose having some side effect or interpretation requires implementation knowledge not just intuitive interpretation of code.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Wednesday November 04 2020, @06:03PM (1 child)
Yeah I hate code being hidden like that. I understand why it's advantageous to hide it, and, ideally, when all of the code to be hidden away has been rigorously tested and confirmed to work reliably, it should be fine, but in the real world when stuff breaks it often means the dev wastes a lot of time searching around to deduce what is really going on. It also means a dev can assume the code is doing one thing when really it's doing another and not spot it just by reading the code.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday November 05 2020, @01:22AM
I'd love to see a development environment that would auto-annotate code. All the stuff that the compiler can derive from context, and that you don't have to write explicitly. Particularly for the current line, but a toggle for all code would be very nice as well. Many IDEs will show you a floating tooltip containing the declaration of the function call you're currently editing, but I'd like to see that information integrated into the visual presentation of the code itself, properly aligned, etc.
It would be great for things like like auto x=foo() , where "auto" could be annotated with whatever type it resolves to, so you know exactly what you're dealing with.
Even better would be for function calls, where each parameter could be annotated with the parameter name and type from the function definition - think the clarity of Objective-C or BASIC using optional parameters by name, without having to actually type all that redundant text. There's several other possibilties as well, but I think those two would probably be the most valuable.
e.g.:
Only the "auto" line is actually in the code, the second line only exists visually, neatly aligned witrh the code, but clearly not part of it. Perhaps using a smaller font size and different coloring.
You could add the parameter types as well, or even the types of every variable, but I think you'd rapidly end up with so much clutter that the key information would get lost.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @06:52PM (4 children)
Have the IDEs collapse the boilerplate (some of them already do). Don't bake it into the language.
I've more experience with Java than C# (which was a delight) but part of what I like about those languages is the philosophy of explicit over implicit.
I also do a lot of work in Python-like environments and in those cases duck typing is fantastic. But if I'm building big ol' intricate business-critical stuff, I want the coders to have intended a behavior, not defaulted to one.
Not that that solves the problem of mindless copy/paste or autocomplete.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 04 2020, @06:55PM (3 children)
Collapse it how exactly? What's your proposal for VeryLongClassName.PublicallyExposedSubclass instance=new VeryLongCassName.PublicallyExposedSubclass(), for example?
What do you turn that into?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:32PM
#define SZ 1000000
static void buff[SZ];
Then pass buff around whenever you need some buff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @11:35PM
VeryLongClassName.PublicallyExposedSubclass instance = new VeryLongClassName.PublicallyExposedSubclass()
could easily be collapsed into
[Colored Clickable P].PublicallyExposedSubclass instance = new [Ditto-the-Pokemon emoji]()
Shorter and it makes use of those new Unicode pages which are all the rage!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @11:45PM
If Java allowed it, like this:
import VeryLongClassName.PublicallyExposedSubclass as ShortName
ShortName instance = ShortName()
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:43PM (1 child)
I haven't done a lot of C# wrangling, but I definitely found some of their language features interesting enough to be worthy of consideration.
The problem with C# (and this applies to a lot of Windows-focused code) is just the simple fact that its libraries are closed-source and not always ideally documented, leaving me having to spend much longer than I should on why a particular library function isn't doing what I expected it to do.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:48PM
I've written Java and I've written C#. If you're actually looking for a good language in this space, give Clojure a look. It comes in both JVM and CLR flavors (both of which it has great interop with, so the libraries are available), has pretty good IDE support, does great at application-level multiprocessing and, if you can get over the parentheses, has some of the easiest to use data structures out of the box. It really is worth a look.
That is all.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 04 2020, @06:59PM (9 children)
The military has great intelligence.
Congressmen have the best ethics.
Have some fresh Limburger cheese.
Language, smanguage, if it is under Microsoft control there will be a "keep the competition" (this means YOU) "on a treadmill" component to it, usually baked in at a very low level. I "love" C# the same way I "love" Objective C, from a great distance. I prefer APIs and toolsets that don't make me chase my tail more than necessary.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 04 2020, @08:23PM
It's hardly the only tool in my toolbox. Right now I'm super into doing pytorchy image processing, and I like it better than most of the GPU acceleration libraries for .NET.
But I do respect the ideas about how code should look and feel that they've been building up.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @08:55PM
The second best day of my career was when I moved from programming with Microsoft's suite of tools, to doing database design. It felt so good to get off the Microsoft hamster wheel.
The best day of my career was when I retired. I love reading programming debates now, because I don't have to give a damn anymore. :D
(Score: -1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 05 2020, @12:21AM (6 children)
In the era of compulsory codes of conduct with pink-haired fags and limp-wristed inbred Jews running the repos and development process, is there even a difference anymore? You get the same bad code practices as an army of Indians and wasted time arguing about pronouns rather than writing actual code either way. Non-proprietary has been more garbage as proprietary for the past 20 years, but now with the added bonus that non-proprietary actually works on 1 or 2 platforms.
We all need to stop pretending that "free/open" software is still the edgy wild-West of freedom that it was at the turn of the century. Your "free/open" bullshit is every bit a slave to Jew-pushed political correctness and censorship trends as are your phones which claim to offer "encrypted" messaging applications.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 05 2020, @12:30AM (5 children)
No, it's not. At the turn of the century I still chose to run the MS hamster wheel because free/open was nowhere near ready for prime time.
That changed along about the same time that OS-X came out based on Linux. By then the various flavors of *nix and the programming tools thereon were stable enough on PC hardware to actually consider using them in paid-for products.
For the last 15 years, there has been a proliferation of free-open choices - a lot of them sucking worse than the proprietary offerings of 20 years ago - but a large number are best in class above and beyond the proprietary offerings in capability and polish, and the great thing about them is that they don't, generally, have paid armies of lying marketers trying to convince you to slip them a cut of your development budget.
One of those ex MS salesmen is my back-door neighbor. He sold various MS warez in the 7-8 figure contract range for about 15 years, judging by how much he paid for his houses he was doing pretty well before he got laid off around about 3 years ago. He sells real-estate now, but mostly I think he, his wife, and their four children live off the passive income from investments they accumulated while he shilled for Redmond.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 05 2020, @12:58AM (2 children)
Well, then lets dedicate this thread to hearing exactly what they are. Everybody please reply with your "examples."
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 05 2020, @11:29AM (1 child)
In the video processing space: VLC/ffmpeg
In the API space: Qt
In the Mobile space: you still have to love you some Hamster wheel, but Android
In the compiler space: gcc
OS: Ubuntu, and this one is still marginal as compared to Windows just because so much corporate crust still requires Windows. If you do CAD work I think some CAD packages are still 'doze only.
In your space: honestly fill in the open source choices you use because the commercial ones just can't compete. You might not realize how many you do use because you're not pulling out the credit card every year to pay off a license subscription troll.
So, take your shots, and tell me how much money and time you spend on your commercial alternatives to those open options and how that benefits you in the long run. Don't forget to include accounting and managerial justification overhead in your TCO. I can tell you what my money / groveling overhead is for all of the above: zero. This also means I can use said tools from home, and also walk into a new job and start using them on day 1.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 05 2020, @02:10PM
Okay, ya got me there.
Fuck no. Calling this "open source" is like calling a Black man "3/5ths of a person."
More uninspiring than Windows but with broken packages and lack of backwards-compatibility to fix them, basic-bitch GUIs, had the potential to become king of kings until Shuttleworth Macfag'd it out and everything went downhill from there.
Well, every software suite that's useful to industry has finicky Linux ports (first developed for Windows of course), but I suspect support and dealing with bugs and package problems and shit pushes the TCO way out comparable to the Windows versions.
In the corporate environment, I use open source only because it saves pennies, and my Jew bosses love saving pennies. Schematics look like shit, I have to save + exit and then redraw from something I already drew because there's a show-stopping bug putting weird symbology in a critical area, or use some primitive IDE where I have to keep hitting "Build" spending 5 times the time of bug-hunting because it doesn't recognize blatant syntax errors, the list goes on and on.
The problem with Jewish managers is that they often don't understand that "TCO" can be reduced by shelling out the dough for an application that Just Works on an OS that Just Works. The gay ones use Mac.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Thursday November 05 2020, @02:58AM (1 child)
OS-X is based on BSD, which is Linux at all. What they have in common is just a UNIX inspiration.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 05 2020, @11:32AM
Inspired or whatever, I found myself compiling quite a number of libraries and applications written for Linux on OS-X with zero source changes. I'd rate OS-X as more Linux compatible than MS-DOS4 was compatible with MS-DOS3.x
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by turgid on Wednesday November 04 2020, @08:45PM
Are you sure they didn't come from LISP [paulgraham.com]?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:08PM
I really thought this was sarcasm until the last part made it clear it was not..
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:09PM
Oh yeah, well if you love Microsoft and C# so much, why don't you marry it ... to WebAssembly?
Is something like that feasible? Seems like if the language is designed well, it would be great if code written in it could run in more places.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by corey on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:09PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:20PM (68 children)
DS9 and Babylon 5 were both much better with continuity, consistency, and nuance. That said, the less that is said about Voyager, the better.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:27PM (4 children)
God, I love Babylon 5. Got me through the end of the untreated OCD years.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2, Funny) by fustakrakich on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:39PM (3 children)
They should reboot again, this time with Shatner and Spader. Starfleet needs good legal representation.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday November 04 2020, @08:54PM (2 children)
+1 Funny, although I'm not sure they allow cigar smoking on starships, do they? Maybe they should.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday November 04 2020, @08:57PM (1 child)
They must! And they need the outside balcony...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday November 04 2020, @09:55PM
Oh yes, that goes without saying.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:31PM (13 children)
(Score: 2) by DaTrueDave on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:35PM (2 children)
Never watched Babylon 5. Didn't know it was part of Trek universe.
Is it worth watching?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:40PM
No it's not.
Definately worth watching.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:41PM
Yeh, there's a reason for that...
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:56PM (8 children)
B5 is NOT part of the Trek universe.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:59PM (5 children)
You mean there's not one universe that contains all "human actors with facepaint and wig=alien" shows?
(Actually, I think B5 has much better costume design and a much higher willingness to show alien looking aliens than star trek)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 04 2020, @06:56PM (4 children)
You mean the fake universe we inhabit?
No, I mean the real universe of either Trek or B5, but can't be sure which of the two is the real universe.
B5 also has gambling, slavery, prostitution and psi corps. Trek has fuzzy perfect characters with never any conflicts that can't be resolved in 42 minutes plus commercials.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @08:24PM (3 children)
One takes places after humans are nearly wiped out while the other takes place in a post-scarcity society where people's main drive is to better themselves and the rest of humanity. In other words, they've both got nothing on Blake's 7 or Lexx.
B5: Oh no, we don't like out President lets rebel! Then our 'parents' are making us fight so lets find an uncle to scold them
TNG: Oh no, the Borg are going to come and wipe out one planet out of federation of plants. Ahhh ... Some ships blow up, lets kidnap their ambassador. Yay we win.
B7: Shit, an unknown alien armada from another galaxy just broke through our mine field that we forgot existed. Mobilize Everything! ... Half the galaxy is in ruins, the main governments are gone
Lexx: The universe has been eaten by 9^trillion robotic hands so we should probably go to a new one ... And the deadlocked Vatican decides to pick a real estate agent from Miami as the new Pope, the first female pope, with ninjas.
Farscape: Oh no, I've got special genes which lets me make worm hole weapons. You don't want them. Yes we do! Here's a worm hole weapon! You're right, we don't want them. Lets eat some flowers.
Andromeda: We can't kill people! Uck, these guys are the devil spawn, lets kill them all. Why are we trapped in a desert? WTF is going on? Why are you a sun?
Battlestar Galactica: Robots kill everyone, except a few people. Some strange God stuff happens. WTF is going on?
Firefly: We try to be bad but we're good. The government is bad. Yay us. People will always make the right decisions. No way communications can be hacked to spread false news, so lets hack communications to spread our news. People with sticks and cows will overthrow the multi-planet government which has lasers and spaceships.
Red Dwarf: Like Star Trek TNG but it only follows the janitor. And he's the last human alive anywhere. And there aren't any aliens, except the aliens... But the guy's just an idiot janitor so...
Doctor: I can fix everything with more and faster techno babble than Voyager! But I need someone by my side to scream so I don't go crazy.
The Expanse: Star Gate, but with only one gate and no aliens.
Star Gate: Humans humans everywhere in multiple universes and dimensions! Except the 5 species which aren't humans. And they kill themselves because they're too smart. And 5 people can take down Gods, lots of Gods, fake and real Gods too. So... what's next? Perhaps cure poverty? Teleport all the plastic out of the oceans? No, lets conquer a couple more universes instead.
Star Wars: Just some internal family issues spilling out and messing up the lives of other people
(That was fun. And I've watched way too much TV. Now I'm reading too many books. Yay Commonwealth Saga from Peter F Halamaton. Yay Skippy. Yay LitRPG. Yay Undying Mercenaries. Etc...)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday November 04 2020, @08:57PM
Blake's 7 blew me away in the early 80's when it was on TV.
I recently saw a few episodes of Sapphire and Steel on youtube and while it hasn't aged that well, the storytelling is amazing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2020, @03:09AM
Oh yes, Andromeda. Great actors, etc, but the absolute creeps with that pseudo-buddhist kill-everyone race maniac/convert. After each episode you want to puke and scrub your brain with Lysol or something. If they just dropped that ONE aspect it may have been 1000x better.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday November 05 2020, @10:20AM
Where does MST3k fit in your pantheon of sci-fi universes?
(Score: 2) by bryan on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:05PM (1 child)
But they did share a few actors. Example: Pavel Chekov [fandom.com] - Alfred Bester [fandom.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:37PM
I would point out that Majel Barrett was in one B5 episode.
I believe she flubbed an important line.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:31PM
In the 90's, I remember an April Fools joke between B5 season 2 and 3. This was when the B5 story arc was getting exciting. The joke announcement was that Paramount had just acquired Babylon 5 which would be incorporated into the Trek universe. The series would be renamed to Star Trek: Babylon 5! The writers of seasons 1 and 2 would not be retained. Paramount's writers of season 3 would explain away the first two seasons as a delusion suffered by Cmdr. Data as he passed through an inverse vertiron particle displacement field.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:36PM (3 children)
I was going to watch Babylon5 but I missed the first 4 series.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 04 2020, @08:35PM
That's a shame, they all really blew up.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:23PM (1 child)
They were destroyed, all except the 4th. It disappeared.
Budget cuts i think....
Aside, "What do you want?"
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday November 05 2020, @09:37AM
> They were destroyed, all except the 4th. It disappeared.
Didn't they release the 4th, but *after* the 5th? Anyway it was all about Mimbari and I hate elves.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:59PM (23 children)
I've got to hand it to the designers of Voyager for equipping Voyager with an infinite number of shuttle craft. That is something none of the other federation ship designers had the foresight to do.
Just open the shuttle bay doors and send out an infinite number of shuttle craft.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday November 04 2020, @06:05PM (19 children)
Ah well perhaps they use the replicators to make lots of small parts of a shuttle craft and then site-to-site transport them into place. That could work.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 4, Funny) by DECbot on Wednesday November 04 2020, @06:40PM (1 child)
I imagine this is how they get their infinite supply of red shirts.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Funny) by Fnord666 on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:14PM
The garment or the people? Those pattern buffers in the transporter are there for a reason after all.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:02PM (6 children)
Normally they couldn't do that, but when they really need a new shuttle to satisfy the needs of plot, there is a small (read 100%) chance they can re-configure the warp core to send tachyons into the deflector dish, then use the tractor beam to pull them into transporter range, and then use the transporters to send them to a subspace device with the sensing holosustainer and multisynaptic holocapacitors.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:09PM (5 children)
Ah, the Treknobabble. I was so glad that B5 didn't have that. They instead had magical, mystical technologies. The healing machine. Soul Hunter's device for collecting people's souls. Minbari Triluminary.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:15PM (4 children)
Didn't they at least make an attempt to explain the Triluminary, though? I think that was in the one movie, not the show proper, but
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @09:59PM (3 children)
Nah, you are still missing the key bit.
The Triluminary was Vorlon ultra tech (beings of pure energy with millions of years of knowledge can create tech indistinguishable from magic) so it being able to merge two species DNA is on the edge of believable. But yes, Sinclair / Valen went back in time and it was keyed to react to traces of his DNA, which was why it glowed when it was presented in his interrogation a thousand years later. It also reacted to Delenn because she was a distant relative of Valen and thus carried some human DNA.
The reincarnation story is what most of the high ranking Mimbari actually believed since they didn't know the truth that their most revered leader was a Human Mimbari hybrid created by the Vorlons as they meddled in every race's affairs. Valen's importance to the Mimbari can't be overstated, he seemed to occupy a position almost like a combination of Jesus, Moses and General Washington. Their primary spiritual leader, lawgiver and the war leader who saved them in the last great war. Imagine the cultural chaos that would result if it became generally known he was a Vorlon science experiment? But they had hints he wasn't quite normal, all those references to "a Mimbari not born of Mimbari."
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:28PM (1 child)
Yeah, I got that Valen was a big deal. I watched the show.
But I didn't remember there being any Vorlon trickery required, since it was just his com badge/pistol, made out of bog-standard Earth tech.
It did? When was that?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @11:43PM
It was addressed in Season 4 Episode 9 ("Atonement") [fandom.com] and in the movie "In the Beginning." [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:44PM
Something very interesting in the B5 pilot episode: The Gathering
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:04PM (9 children)
It's even better that replicators can produce an infinite amount of matter. In whatever shape, size, gender, and color1 you wish.
1Not to imply that someone's replicator setting of color is racist.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:11PM (6 children)
But hypothetically speaking, if we were to extend quantum mechanics to derive an Anthropic Uncertainty Principle, we'd be unable to precisely determine its shape, size, gender and color simultaneously.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:23PM (5 children)
I wonder if a replicator could replicate other replicators that could replicate more replicators?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:31PM (4 children)
They can in Stargate SG1.
How many replicators could a replicator replicate if a replicator could replicate replicators?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @08:36PM (2 children)
Gödel, Escher, Bach [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @09:23PM (1 child)
A really hot cup of tea...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:27PM
the long dark teatime of the soul
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:26PM
42.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:16PM (1 child)
The matter gets recycled. Where do you think all the poop goes?
(Score: 4, Funny) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 05 2020, @06:52AM
Sure. That's also why there are no toilets on the Enterprise. The poop gets transported directly from the intestines to the replicators.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:11PM
Evidently you haven't watched ST:Discovery (neither have I)--I hear there's a season finale where they fly like hundreds of shuttles out of some ship to engage in battle.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:22PM
Still makes more sense than Andromeda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:57PM
That's nothing compared to the number of Eagles housed at Moon Base Alpha on Space 1999.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 04 2020, @06:34PM (4 children)
Jeri Ryan.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:53PM (3 children)
Jeri Ryan is definitely the best thing about Voyager...
But, you have to give kudos to Kirk... He had a different woman every week. (although admittedly, some had a horrid shade of green for skin.)
And I am sure some weeks that were not on TV, Captain Kirk probably had some adventures with alien women that would make tentacle porn seem mainstream.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 05 2020, @04:12AM (2 children)
Watch the last episode of ToS. It's freaking hilarious. That shit looks misogynist next to Bond girls.
Honestly though, I liked Janeway better than Cisko or Picard. The rest of the cast except the doctor and Seven of Boobs were pretty unimpressive though. Chakotay was just fucking bad. Might as well have put someone up there in blackface and had them talking about fried chicken, basketball, and watermelon all the time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeVilla on Thursday November 05 2020, @06:07AM (1 child)
I liked Cisko. He was the only one to punch Q.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 05 2020, @07:43AM
That's a mark in his favor, as was being Hawk on Spenser for Hire. I just didn't buy his acting most of the time. Any time he tried to portray an emotion other than angry it was like asking for a medium rare ribeye, getting tofu, and the waiter not understanding why you're unsatisfied.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @06:34PM
I worked my way through TNG, then bought Voyager and DS9. Or at least most of DS9. S2 and S4 seem to be permanently unavailable where I am. And I can kick myself for missing a set, then spent three months waiting for a refund from a non-delivery scam place - thankfully $ arrived, eventually. Trek often has gaping plot holes you could fly the Enterprise through with ease, but is enjoyable. Always an undertone of political agenda, with prevails all the Roddenberry stuff.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:01PM (3 children)
All of this has happened before, and will happen again.
So say we all.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @08:28PM (2 children)
So says we all? No, so says the Time Profit (Lexx)!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:30PM (1 child)
I am Gaaark, last of the Brunnen-G! Do you like my hair?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2020, @12:56AM
I liked the second Zev better than Xev.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:06PM (2 children)
I really liked Voyager when it first came out and I was seeing episodes for the first time, but in retrospect I've found that I prefer re-watching the DS9 series far more. While it certainly wasn't perfect (what budget-limited television series possibly ever can be?) it has a deeper story line, well executed and just seems more enduring to me, though I like all the Treks except those new "re-boot" garbage movies.
I tried to watch the first couple but, to me anyway, it's just not Star Trek.
I don't think I even watched all of the second one. They simply have no interest to me.
My MythTV backend box has all the non-animated, live-action TV series episodes up to Picard (except Discovery, I'm still missing some of those,) the original movies and even Star Trek Continues on it, but I really couldn't care less about that "new rebooted universe movie" crap and certainly won't ever devote any precious hard disk array real estate to house it. :)
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:39PM (1 child)
I was the same with TNG: i so wanted to watch new Star Trek that i watched and waited for it to get better and..... finally gave up. Hated Riker and Troi ("I sense anger, Captain" "Gee, Troi, really? The guys yelling at me on the center screen here... you sense anger? Really?") and just never got into it.
Part of it was there never really seemed to be any danger. The new Enterprise could take hit after hit after hit and then they'd finally swat the fly disturbing them, and Data was too much like the second season of Seaquest DSV:
"Oh no, the only way we can survive is if we had on board a guy who could breathe underwater and not die from the tremendous pressure!"
"Well, Captain, I'm a mutant and can breathe underwater and won't die from the trememdus blah blah"
"Yay, we is saved!"
Just replace mutant with Data... too easy.
And Troi. Never forget Troi.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday November 05 2020, @01:00AM
I think Troi hit her peak in that episode where they went back in time https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086582/ [imdb.com]
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:13PM
DS9 added a lot of richness to the federation universe. And to the alien races. Those races became less of a cardbord enemy and more of a complex race of complex individuals and agendas and traditions. Unlike Roddenberry's "everything is all peace", DS9 finally shows you huge fleets of starships in a shooting war. Better than wolf 359.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday November 04 2020, @08:09PM (1 child)
DS9 wasn't as bad as I thought it was (having finally watched the entirety), but I still prefer TNG and TOS. Voyager is probably about the same as DS9 in my book, but after a holographic doctor had a child (breaking physical laws as well as tossing my suspension of belief into a volcano), it just ends up lacking. Then there's Enterprise, which, feels odd, forced, weird in some way? Maybe, it's just the fact that the actor who plays the captain, is hard to disassociate from Quantum Leap. No opinions on the newer series, because they're locked into a channel/studio I don't have access to.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @11:16PM
No, you didn't understand Enterprise. Every time Archer and the rest make decisions or ones that miraculously work out or seem to selfsabotage, it is because Beckett is in control or one of the evil leapers, respectively.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:29PM
Alien 3 was a good film.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 05 2020, @11:06AM (2 children)
I enjoyed all of B5. They had a story arc back when nobody else had story arcs. The dynamic between G'Kar and Molari was great. But strangely the thing that stands out in my mind all these years later is the little moments, the ornaments, that were unexpected gifts, such as: "Zathras have sad life. Probably have sad death. But at least there's symmetry."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday November 06 2020, @02:32PM (1 child)
I would definitely watch a spin-off series that just follows Zathras around. Poor Zathras!
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday November 06 2020, @04:36PM
Zathras told Zathras that would be a good idea, but Zathras no listen.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 08 2020, @01:43PM
Janeway's voice grated on my nerves! If it wasn't for her voice, the show would have been great in my opinion.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:24PM (4 children)
I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe.... Never mind!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:43PM (1 child)
> SNOTTITES
You might get more buy in with SNOTTITS?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:53PM
To a dyslexic with bad eyesight (probably a fair few Soylentils--hey have we got any self-confessed dyslexics?) it looks a bit like SNOTITTIES.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:08PM (1 child)
Dang.... nobody ever actually posts the link to the newsletter! ;)
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:17PM
The newsletter(s) [soylentnews.org]
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?