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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:27PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:27PM (#455585) Journal

    I like the Star Trek universe. I grew up with it for decades. So I'm not into the new star trek reboot movies so much. I don't care to rewind the last five decades of trek and then start re-writing it, screwing with the characters, etc. It's just fine if younger people want to start out with a new trek universe, but I suspect that these movies won't end up going that far.

    I loved the Babylon 5 universe and story. Spin off movies (well, most of them). It is too sad that more didn't come of this.

    So a couple weekends ago, internet service was out. Fiber cut. On Saturday for about four hours. Then, again, on Sunday for about six hours. So I watched DVDs the way people did back in ancient times. Had to blow off a lot of dust. (No cable, cord cutter.)

    After watching a few movies, I decided to watch the first episode of B5. (I have boxed set.) Boy was that a mistake. Now I'm almost done with the first season. The story arcs begin right in the very first episode. They just jump right into it. Subsequent 1st season episodes, might *seem* like a trek-style "alien of the week", but it's not. Those episodes are building the arc. But when B5 first aired, I didn't suspect this story arc until late season 1, and then was convinced early in season 2. At that point I couldn't get enough. Had to wait anxiously for every episode.

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:49PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:49PM (#455602) Homepage Journal

    Those of you who grew up with Star Trek missed the excitement of seeing all that impossible technology, like self-opening doors, cell phones, tablets, Uhura's bluetooth ear plug, flat screen voice operated computers... McCoy's futuristic sick bay looks absolutely primitive today.

    --
    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:34PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:34PM (#455639) Journal

      While I still enjoy the old 1960's star trek, maybe just because it is familiar, I recognize something.

      Both the original star trek, and also the next generation depict the future environment using what the future is expected to look like from their POV.

      In the 1960's, they seem to imagine control panels of PHYSICAL switches, both push button and toggle switches. And glowing indicators. (incandescent maybe?) All hardwired. The controls on a control panel are all the controls it will ever have.

      In the next generation they had the foresight to envision touch screens (even if they couldn't depict them very well in the early episodes). You could, in principle, control anything from anywhere. A lot more like how modern computers are today. Also they imagined that the computer understood who had permission to do what.

      The next generation technical manual is interesting and entertaining. It deliberately (and quite wisely) is vague about the storage capacity and memory of the "main computer". Although they still seem to think there would even be a "main" computer. The user interfaces are wisely described as being upgradeable. The UI might downgrade for a crewman who has not yet been trained on the latest UI version. They also took the idea of replicators to quite an interesting level.

      At this point, once you imagine everyday practical technology like this, there are applications for it that make you wonder why they wouldn't do this. For example, why not just make much of the ship interior be a single large holodeck, or a series of interconnecting holodecks. If engineering crew are always doing various routine maintenance of systems that need periodic maintenance, why not automate that? Why not a lot of small robots?

      With today's self driving cars, it seems obvious that starships would be self driving in a similar way. Just give the order for where to go and forget it. If we try to imagine the Star Trek future from today's POV, it starts to get so wild that it could border on magic, at some level.

      Maybe this is partly why I liked the future vision of tech in Babylon 5. No transporters. No replicators. And a lot of practical problems to solve.

      And another thing. Dirty gritty humanity. Crime. Poverty. Corruption. All the trimmings. By the time I watched DS9, the utopia aspect of Star Trek starts to wear thin. Man will get better. Be peaceful. Etc. It won't happen. People will still compete for resources, and there will be greed. Unless you can produce more wealth than anyone would want, this will be the case. And I fear that even if you could produce enough wealth to satiate all greed, people would still have conflict. With each other. And with aliens who are the wrong color and we need to build a wall. Etc.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:10AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:10AM (#455792)

        At this point, once you imagine everyday practical technology like this, there are applications for it that make you wonder why they wouldn't do this. For example, why not just make much of the ship interior be a single large holodeck, or a series of interconnecting holodecks. If engineering crew are always doing various routine maintenance of systems that need periodic maintenance, why not automate that? Why not a lot of small robots?

        With today's self driving cars, it seems obvious that starships would be self driving in a similar way. Just give the order for where to go and forget it. If we try to imagine the Star Trek future from today's POV, it starts to get so wild that it could border on magic, at some level.

        The very first holodeck episode was a holodeck malfunction episode, way back in the Animated Series when a holographic recreation room was introduced. By the Next Generation holodecks were still constantly breaking down and becoming lethally dangerous, and the AIs inside were prone to going insane. The technology wasn't mature enough yet to be reliable. But by Voyager there was a holographic doctor who was trusted with the health of the crew, and there were prototypes of fully holographic fully automated self flying ships. See for example Moriarty's control mechanism in the Next Generation, the holoship in Insurrection, the Prometheus prototype in Voyager. Prometheus was advanced enough to be completely computer controlled with holographic crew who could simply give the order, ship attack the Romulans.

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 20 2017, @02:07PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 20 2017, @02:07PM (#456531) Journal

          The Trek universe, as much as I enjoy it, is filled with inconsistencies. A few years ago I saw YouTube video with many back to back clips where the first clip said something and the next clip directly contradicted it. For example, is data waterproof.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:14PM

        by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:14PM (#456134) Homepage Journal

        With today's self driving cars, it seems obvious that starships would be self driving in a similar way. Just give the order for where to go and forget it.

        That's pretty much how space ships work in my fiction. The captain inspects engines and makes sure all four computers agree with each other, and that's about it. Robots do the actual repairs.

        And another thing. Dirty gritty humanity. Crime. Poverty. Corruption. All the trimmings. By the time I watched DS9, the utopia aspect of Star Trek starts to wear thin. Man will get better. Be peaceful. Etc. It won't happen.

        I don't agree, and neither does history. The past has always been worse than the present in every era. Hell, just fifty years ago (I was a teenager then) the world was a hell of a lot dirtier, more violent, and more corrupt than today. And when robots grow all the food and construct all the "things" and anyone has anything he or she wants... well, I just finished a story about that, a sequel to Kurt Vonnegut's 2BR02B. In my story, society's biggest problem is boredom. It's one of three I haven't posted, you guys will have to wait for the book.

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        mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
        • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @02:12AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @02:12AM (#456334)

          I don't agree, and neither does history. The past has always been worse than the present in every era.

          You're full of shit, old man. Where's my basic income? Oh right, it was over 2000 years ago, that's when.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae [wikipedia.org]
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses [wikipedia.org]

          I see plenty of circuses in the modern era, but where's my bread??

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 20 2017, @02:13PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 20 2017, @02:13PM (#456534) Journal

          I tend to think we presently live in what is probably the best time ever to be alive. You're probably right about violence and corruption being worse in previous times.

          But people have not changed. And will not change. Ultimately everyone is greedy for limited resources. Unless we can create enough wealth (eg, resources, food, housing, smartphones, etc) to satiate all of that greed, there will be human conflict.

          As for the utopia of the Trek universe, yes, I enjoy that. That is the world I would like to live in. But I think it is a fantasy that can never be unless we had some of the kinds of technology of Trek. Even then, the trek universe seems to have plenty of conflict. People competing for power. Position. Title. There will probably still be plagiarism. It is highly likely there would be conflict over the affections of other people.

          Nonetheless, I like the utopia of Trek. It's just that after many years of it, I found B5 a refreshing view of what will probably be reality.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:24PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:24PM (#456291)

        And another thing. Dirty gritty humanity. Crime. Poverty. Corruption. All the trimmings. By the time I watched DS9, the utopia aspect of Star Trek starts to wear thin. Man will get better. Be peaceful. Etc. It won't happen. People will still compete for resources, and there will be greed.

        I have to disagree here about this wearing thin. This is why I like watching TOS and TNG so much: why would I want to watch fiction about "dirty gritty humanity", crime, poverty, and corruption? I can see that just by watching the news, or visiting Walmart. TV is supposed to be "entertainment", not just the same crap you can see in the real world. I don't want to see humans as they really are; it's just too depressing. I'd rather see an idealistic human society which is a place I'd like to live because it isn't plagued with all those things. If I wanted to watch something realistic, I wouldn't watch sci-fi at all, I'd go watch some modern-day drama about cops or something. I watch sci-fi because I want to escape from today's world. I don't care if it's supposedly unrealistic about human nature; that's fine with me because I don't care much for human nature either. I'd much prefer if humans were like the virtuous beings crewing the Enterprise in TNG, so that's what I want to watch.

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 20 2017, @02:24PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 20 2017, @02:24PM (#456538) Journal

          I mentioned this in another reply. The utopia of Trek is the world I would really want to live in.

          I agree with you that some sci fi is too dark. I see enough bad news in reality. I like the escape of a nearly utopian future. It entertainment and escape. I'm just saying that as an adult, rather than when I was a teenager watching reruns of trek in syndication, I don't believe that the trek utopia is likely to happen. See other reply I wrote about human conflict. For that reason, I found B5 refreshing in that it seemed like a more realistic future. Brown sector. People come to B5 for opportunity, don't find it, and are too poor to return to Earth. That is very believable. In B5 even as you saw all of the various conflicts, corruption, etc, there was constantly believable hope that it would all get made right in the end.

          Here is an example of just the opposite.

          The Battlestar Galactica remake of a few years ago is an example of a show that I had the same type of feelings you describe. It was dark. Then got darker. And darker. And darker. It just got worse and worse. From bits I would hear, they had a plan for an ending. So I kept watching. When four of the final five cylons were revealed, I just couldn't believe they would do such a thing given the backstory of the characters. I began to think they were really just making it up as they went along. And indeed, in hindsight, they were. At that point, I watched the final season since I was already invested. And the ending was terribly disappointing. After all that depressing darkness, the ending didn't really fix much. I decided these clowns would not fool me again into watching anything they ever write.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 20 2017, @04:24PM

            by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday January 20 2017, @04:24PM (#456584)

            I'm just saying that as an adult, rather than when I was a teenager watching reruns of trek in syndication, I don't believe that the trek utopia is likely to happen.

            I completely agree. Instead, I think the future is going to look a lot like "The Walking Dead" in a decade or three. But that doesn't mean that I want to watch that.

            I just couldn't believe they would do such a thing given the backstory of the characters. I began to think they were really just making it up as they went along.

            That's how just about every TV show that has a "story arc" operates. There's not really a way around it. (Notable exceptions are B5 and Game of Thrones.) There's no way for the writers to know how long the network will keep ordering new seasons, so they constantly write it so they can end it at the end of that season, or come back for a new one. But yeah, it makes me now want to bother watching a lot of stuff too.

            • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 20 2017, @05:05PM

              by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 20 2017, @05:05PM (#456604) Journal

              What would be great: If new original content producers (Netflix, Amazon, HBO, etc) would produce a long form story arc in 2 or 3 seasons, all pre-ordered and paid for, that has a definitely planned ending. A logical ending that is highly satisfying.

              Yes, it might only have only 1, 2 or 3 seasons. You might not be able to drag it out for 5 or 6 years.

              But on the other hand, if it is immensely enjoyable like a great novel, then it might be watched over and over again. It might also be watched for several generations of people, just like a good book.

              I don't expect TV networks to be able to wake up to this fact. Even if they do, I don't think they can escape the trap they are in. They can't afford the risk to make a great show, several seasons long, and that it might not get high enough rating in its first run.

              --
              People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Monday January 23 2017, @02:15PM

              by TheRaven (270) on Monday January 23 2017, @02:15PM (#457631) Journal
              It's not like Babylon 5 had all of the episodes written before the start of the first season. JMS had a show bible that contained the big-picture events and the important bits of character development, but would just ask the episode writes to make sure that they included a couple of key exchanges for each one. And they had to shrink the timeline a bit when they thought they were being cancelled at the end of Season 4, to wrap up the main arcs. There's no excuse for something like Battlestar Galactica or Lost, where they obviously had no idea where they wanted to end up.
              --
              sudo mod me up
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday January 22 2017, @09:51PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 22 2017, @09:51PM (#457449)

        Also they imagined that the computer understood who had permission to do what.

        Also somewhat far fetched that no one ever screwed around with that system, or it was highly unusual. You'd think Wesley would have gotten messed with by his peers quite a bit.

        UI was vaguely realistic in that its all fad and fashion based today and much like vacuum tubes are cool today I'm sure we'll have controls again. Remember 20-30 years ago when every machine had to have a digital clock because digital clocks were new? At one time my kitchen had like 30 digital clocks. Thankfully we outgrew that fad. Some day telephones will have buttons again. Maybe smart buttons with LCDs on them, which are available today.

        The depiction of PADDs and Tricoders and communicators over the decades was pretty interesting. They certainly liked small displays, or at least the non-STEM artists thought thats what they'd like. The real world seems to like ipad sized things and giant as hell phones.

        The cultural view of how future people would be masters of old tech was pretty hilarious. I can't flint knap knife blades out of river rocks, my coworkers don't know a damn thing about Z80 assembly language programming, and Scotty isn't going to be able to start a lawnmower engine much less have any useful commentary on any historic object. That is one (of many) thing that Voyager got right, the crew will have spare time and at least some will have strange retro kicks and if you need to change the oil in a 57 Chevy or repair a vacuum tube TV from 1960 then that dude will be useful for once.

        it seems obvious that starships would be self driving in a similar way

        There were a couple TNG episodes where the plot revolved around all you need to be underway is an officer of the deck, a navigator/helmsmen to know where you are and where you're going and lookout at all times, and an ops guy to keep the systems running and monitored. Everyone else had side jobs (science, engineering, looking hot in a skin tight dress while advising the captain on psychological issues, weapons, all that)

        Why not a lot of small robots?

        One of the 80s tech manuals went into a discussion about power usage which is vaguely believable. I need a couple hundred watts of food to keep booted up and we can assume a couple hundred years of life support advancement means they get all their O2 and H2O pretty cheap, so my main energy cost is likely food which they imply is practically a rounding error. A couple thousand watt robot arm is much less capable than a human small engineering team yet uses more energy. Also the tech manual implies the famous scene from DS9 where he replicates/prints some kind of screw for a menial task required enormous amounts of energy. That's why you don't replace shields with hull plate replicators or why you don't just replicate shuttles (or ships) on demand.

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 23 2017, @08:05PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 23 2017, @08:05PM (#457770) Journal

          A society that has technology like replicators, transporters, shields, warp drives would seem like they should have made some significant improvements in robot technology. Like Lt. Cmdr Data

          But even if not . . .

          The purpose of maintenance robots is not to reduce energy use, but to free humans from unnecessary menial tasks. To focus on more important things. Like designing more energy efficient maintenance robots.

          Lt. Cmdr Data himself would not be a maintenance droid because the purpose is to free conscious entities to do more enriching things.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday January 23 2017, @01:37PM

        by TheRaven (270) on Monday January 23 2017, @01:37PM (#457620) Journal

        Although they still seem to think there would even be a "main" computer

        That's not particularly unbelievable. Computing swings between distributed and centralised. Both have advantages and disadvantages. In NextGen, they have PADDs that have some processing ability (and a few times even show that combadges have a lot of processing power), but there's a big advantage to having a big pile of compute and storage resources in the same location, as long as the latency to the display device is sufficiently low and the bandwidth is high enough. In something as small as The Enterprise, the latency wouldn't be an issue and the bandwidth would be more than adequate, so there's little incentive to have a load of small computers for anything other than emergency backup and disconnected operation.

        --
        sudo mod me up
        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 23 2017, @08:01PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 23 2017, @08:01PM (#457768) Journal

          I would think they would learn the benefits of distributed computing throughout the ship. Oh, but then face a patent lawsuit from the Borg.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:20PM

        by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:20PM (#462076)

        The user interfaces are wisely described as being upgradeable. The UI might downgrade for a crewman who has not yet been trained on the latest UI version.

        I hate that when the Ribbon UI controls change with the context. "It looks like you're trying to dock the ship." No! I'm trying to fucking ram this fiery wreck into the Klingons, not dock with them!

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        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:39PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday February 02 2017, @08:39PM (#462087) Journal

          Clippy: It looks like you're trying to dock the ship. Would you like me to help you install Windows 10? If you would like Windows 10 installed, then do any of the following:
          1. Click Yes
          2. Click No
          3. Click Cancel
          4. Click the X in the window's title bar
          5. Pull the electrical cord from the power outlet to have Windows 10 conveniently installed on the next reboot
          6. Order self destruct to have Windows 10 installed in the last five seconds before auto destruct

          As per the EULA, Microsoft is not responsible if Windows 10 ultimately results in erroneous self destruct.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:16PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:16PM (#456233) Journal

    My wife and I have the boxed set, too, and watched it through a couple times. Some of the phrases still turn up in our conversations, like Zathras's classic, "Zathras has such a sad life. Will probably have a sad death. But at least there's symmetry." I can't wait until my kids are old enough to appreciate it, so I can watch it all again.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 20 2017, @02:05PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 20 2017, @02:05PM (#456530) Journal

      Nobody listens to Zathras.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday January 23 2017, @02:19PM

      by TheRaven (270) on Monday January 23 2017, @02:19PM (#457632) Journal
      I'm thinking... pastels!
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      sudo mod me up