A few articles from Siderea

[conuly]

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429616/computer-viruses-are-rampant-on-medical-devices-in-hospitals/

In a typical example, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, 664 pieces of medical equipment are running on older Windows operating systems that manufactures will not modify or allow the hospital to change—even to add antivirus software—because of disagreements over whether modifications could run afoul of U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulatory reviews, Fu says.

Ye gods. Maybe the second is less gloom and doom.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/dkim-vulnerability-widespread/all/

Harder to find just the right paragraph to quote there, but let me say it is pretty funny. This guy got a recruitment email from google, noticed it wasn't that secure, assumed it was a test, played along, and found out that they, like so many other companies, had no idea they had this huge vulnerability.

Some of these other companies include many that work with your money. Sheesh.

On the subject of hacking, I'm now up to the DS9 episodes with the earthwide blackout. I have a few questions, like "in the last few centuries, did everybody decide that there's no point to being off the grid" and "doesn't anybody think that having an analog backup for your power supply, one that isn't run with the same computer codes, is a good idea?" and "did these people just forget about viruses recently? why are they circumlocuting what happened instead of calling it a worm or a virus or like one of those?" and "isn't going to the head of the federation for an earth problem sorta like asking the mayor to change your light bulbs? I don't expect to call in The Feds every time there's a garbage strike, doesn't earth have its own independent government to decide things like when to issue random blood tests? I thought each member planet had its own personal government, like in the UN."

I also find myself wondering how, exactly, Roddenberry could honestly have thought that humans would universally ditch religion. That is one amazingly persistent trait among people. And why is it that in Star Trek people still put on plays and write print books as well as holo novels, but only history geeks like Tom Paris know what movies or TV are? Shakespeare ought to be as distant to them as Chaucer is to us, so shouldn't that make 90s tv and movies, at least the good ones people admit to watching, analogous to Shakespeare to Picard? (Then again, I've never understood the man's fascination with English drama. I know there are French playwrights.)

There goes the idea that atheists are more rational than the rest of you. I'd love to believe myself, but I don't see how I *can*!

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Woah, woah - beware, Will Robinson, Logical Fallacy Alert! Start with "the idea that atheists are more rational than the rest of you" - that's a straw man to begin with, because very obviously there is no way to quantify the 'rationality' of a vast, worldwide group of individuals with no connection to each other. Second, the notion that a single individual is representative of the 'rationality' of all those others. And third, the idea that logical flaws in the premises of a TV show indicate anything at all about the rationality of a specific atheist who was dead before DS9 was even conceived.

I've been a Trekkie since the first episode of the original series, but DS9 sucked out loud for the most part - though it wasn't quite the travesty that Enterprise turned out to be. I've long said that people who don't read SF shouldn't go to space - the writers of DS9 proved that people who don't read SF shouldn't even write about people going to space.

Anyway: I don't recall the planet-wide blackout or what supposedly caused it, but if it was a solar event - yeah, that's plausible, and being 'off the grid' probably wouldn't help; it'd still fry everybody's electronic components. And something that is never, never mentioned anywhere in Star Trek: did all this Progress and Prosperity and Enlightenment happen by consensus? people just suddenly decided to be rational for a change and all get along?

Ha, no way. Think about what River Tam's teacher said about Unification at the beginning of Serenity ' "Now everyone can enjoy the benefits of civilization". All we ever see of the Federation on Earth is their big shiny Starfleet Acadamy in scenic San Francisco, full of bright young cadets in their trim little uniforms, and we never see any local civilian authorities (except in the new movie, where Robocop busts young Jimmy Kirk.) For all we know, Earth society may be as stratified as Panem in The Hunger Games, with the worker-population kept in their place through draconically repressive measures - or, more subtly, like Brave New World: "Everybody's happy now."

Whatever the case, we know for a fact that Earth didn't go from Now to Then with an intact social culture. There were the Eugenics Wars, among other things - Khan talks about that time in the episode Space Seed; he and his crew were genetically engineered then, though on Earth of 1967 nobody was yet using the term 'genetic engineering'. We're running late on the Star Trek timetable; we should have already had WWIII.... heh, put it all down to divergent timelines; the future Roddenberry saw for us was actually someone else's.

Most notably, it's the future of some alternate Earth where they never invented the microprocessor, because sheesh, look at their tech! It's like the Vulcans showed up in the Summer of Love and started giving out such cool, unexplainable-by-our-theories stuff that human technological advancement just stopped where it was. Anyway, there's every indication that Earth was severely depopulated before the Vulcans even showed up, and has been under the iron thumb of Authoritah for a long time, no matter how how uplifting and forward-looking the StarFleet recruitment videos may be.

[conuly]

Well, we will have to disagree from the start, because I happen to love DS9 and firmly think it's awesome. Never did like TOS that much, but then, by the time I ever saw a rerun of it I was already in my early teens and had TNG under my belt. I think i actually saw some episodes of the animated series before TOS, and I know some people swear those don't even exist!

But I like your idea that Star Trek might amount to little more than propaganda for the (evil) federation. That would explain why everybody is so darn moralistic.

As far as rationality, I put my paragraphs in a funky order I'm not sure how to remedy. I just can't see how he thought that humans would give up religion en masse without serious coercion. (But that fits nicely with a trekstopia. Oooh. On a similar note, why does nobody think it strange that planets coalesce around a single species wide culture? I would think that magical technology and universal translators and the ability to colonize new planets would make it harder to unify under one culture, not easier. Especially that last one! Don't like the majority culture? Don't like that minority culture that is always making waves? Well, time for one of you to hire a moving van, and don't let the door hit you on the way out! There are more planets in the sky, waiting to be filled up! But other than the Romulans, does this happen?)

[conuly]

Don't expect a reply before tonight, have to run pick up girls go to swimming invent commas cook eat dinner use commas feed cats.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I honestly think that yes, everybody would universally ditch superstition if we could raise just two generations without it. What exactly religion is, as differentiated from superstition, is another matter, and it's a matter that a lot of atheists don't even consider. I get very annoyed with Richard Dawkins over that very point: he may be a fine geneticist, but he is no theologian, and his statements about pantheism only highlight his ignorance of the subject: I suspect the only reason he doesn't have a problem with pantheism is because he doesn't grok it.

Anyway: superstition: belief in invisible, undetectable sentient beings with inexplicable, undemonstrable powers, who interact with humans and control their fates for unknowable reasons. God wrote this book. Demons possessed this woman. The river spirit is angry. The fairies stole a child and left that changeling. The aliens made those crop circles. Superstition: belief in the continuance of the human spirit after death; in the literal existence of heavens and hells and 'planes of existence'': in the mutability of natural law, so that one might become a wolf, or fly, or turn invisible, or move objects by psi alone.

Humanity could be free of all that, if only there was a break in the continuity of cultural transmission. Unfortunately, superstition is so deeply rooted in cultural tradition that it can't simply be yanked out - look at all the trouble we have in this country, trying to make school a place where actual science is taught, instead of preposterous notions from some ancient cult of ignorant desert nomads. Trying to suppress such traditions doesn't work; it only makes people cling to them more fervently.

However, according to those very traditions, the eternally-warring branches of that particular cult are scheduled to destroy the Earth so that God/Allah/YHVH can judge everybody, reward the winners and punish the losers, and start all over, with the winners in charge. They WANT that; they talk about it all the time; it's really horrifying. Well, but suppose they actually did it? Suppose the rival Faithful succeeded in unleashing their long-awaited Apocalypse?

Obviously, a lot of people would die - a lot a lot - and a lot of others would spend their lives in wretched misery, probably clinging to the very superstitions that had devastated their world. But some would survive and start figuring out how to put things back together - those who had figured out how to put them together in the first place, the scientists and engineers. The rational. It seems very likely to me that they would have no tolerance left for superstition. In a depopulated world dependent on science for survival, that attitude might become general.

Ray Bradbury was always writing about that - the cold, hard, modern space-faring world of the future he saw coming, where no one would go trick-or-treating any more, or scare themselves silly reading Dracula under the covers, or give the time of day night to the walking dead. It's sad, but his fear of that seems much akin to that of poor Tella in Zenna Henderson's story Swept And Garnished (http://www.scribd.com/doc/22596575/Zenna-Henderson-Holding-Wonder-Txt) (on pg. 135 of 204 there.)

Atheists as an inclusive group may not be intrinsically more rational than those who identify as 'religious' as a group, especially since the definition of 'religious' is open to such broad interpretation. But one can definitely say that atheists are more rational than the superstitious, since superstition is by definition irrational, and a lot of those who identify as 'religious' do believe in things for which there is no evidence and no rational explanation.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"And why is it that in Star Trek people still put on plays and write print books as well as holo novels, but only history geeks like Tom Paris know what movies or TV are?"

Because holo novels have made them obsolete. Look at all the stuff people are doing even now - there are fan-made trailers for The Silmarillion as good as a real movie company could make. If the technology existed to make laptop holo-novels, so that instead of just watching a screen, the user could be inside the scene, the screen would be old-hat. It's like there's people these days who are still really into the old black-and-white movies, even though they're so primitive and hokey by modern standards.

[conuly]

But there is a huge and intrinsic difference between seeing a TV show or movie and participating in what is essentially LARPing with cool effects. I don't actually see it going away, any more than I see stage shows going away. And indeed, in the trekverse they haven't, unless that's all people sucking up to the captain.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Well, I liked Jadzia Dax, and Quark had his moments. Couldn't stand the Bajorans, though - "Death to Bajor", sez me; I am no fan of the Cardassians either, but they were right about one thing at least.

I was fortunate to see TOS before I knew enough of science to question any of it - and the level of SFX was so much higher than Lost In Space and The Outer Limits that it looked really, really impressive.

LOL, now I'm thinking of the airship in Blade Runner that's always playing a commercial for "A new life in the colonies!" as it flies over the city. Depending on how good the colonies were, that might not be a bad idea. Certainly we saw plenty of isolated, mostly-uninhabited planets with perfectly breatheable atmosphere and surviveable weather - Serenity takes place all in one solar system, "dozens of planets and hundreds of moons" - even if they did have to be terraformed.

It could be that solar systems with at least one Earthlike planet abound throughout the galaxy. The Enterprise is forever going where no one has gone before, and finding that not only HAS someone gone there before, but left a whole civilization of their descendants - primitive and messed-up as those civilizations generally seem to be.

I don't think the Federation is evil, but they're necessarily bureaucratic, and they've got an unbelievable amount of diversity to deal with, so I think - as usual - the richer, stronger, better-represented party will always have an advantage, croneyism, nepotism and the Peter Principle will be rampant, and the people at the top will have no clue what effect their rulings actually have on those affected. Calling on the Feds for help in a planet-wide crisis seems reasonable -it's like calling for U.N. aid - but probably costly in a lot of ways.

Clearly, StarFleet is all about the gung-ho Sir-yes-Sir old-school military traditions, which actually seems like a good idea, because if they didn't consciously maintain those traditions, they'd gradually sink to the level of pirates, sloppy and argumentative.

If the Enterprise's movie library has Casablanca and The Day The Earth Stood Still, d'you suppose it might have Galaxy Quest?

[conuly]

Not actually evil would be even more dystopic. At least with evil empires you know that somebody personally cares. Will come back in a bit.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

They do watch stuff on flat-screens, rather than doing everything holographically - seems to me, if one had a holo-program, there'd be an app to watch it all the way through onscreen, from the point of view of any of the characters - that would be both simple and handy.

TV and movies are all about paid professional actors. It's probable that all those devastating wars trashed the electronic entertainment industries pretty badly; Hollywood wouldn't have survived. But look at CGI even now - Beowulf, Avatar - when CGI gets good enough (as it will) that one can't tell the difference between live and generated, there's no further need to hire actors to wear costumes in front of a camera.

Stage shows are a whole different matter - stage shows might well flourish when everything onscreen is 3-D CGI, because stage shows are actual people doing live performance right there on the stage. But then - as now, on YouTube - everyone would be making videos of all their own and their friends' amateur live productions and posting them in public. So, no professional movies or TV necessary; people just do it for free, for fun, and some of them are really good: huzzah for Fandom.

Heh, now I'm the one running off to get my daughter off the ferry from Seattle and spend the day driving her here and there on her many errands, so I probably won't be back online till tomorrow. Hope your day goes well!.

[conuly]

When have they watched entertainment on a flat screen since the invention of the holodeck? I don't recall. Not arguing, just don't remember.