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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
Entropy

NP Friday May 05 2017

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1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Satellite phones exists, but they are generally called satellite phones and not cell phones (which would actually be wrong unless they are dual) nor smart phones. And they tend to be bigger (although, not so much, nowadays ...).

Still much smaller than the clunky devices used in TOS.

??

star-trek-bluetooth-communicator.jpg

sat-phone-air.jpg

The communicator seems smaller to me.

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15 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

True. As to 24, I think it served mainly as a catalyst. It introduced the notions that torture was 1) effective and 2) justifiable. Other shows would then go on to reinforce this new trope.

But without some kind of reinforcement the trope loses ground to normalcy.  The needle doesn't move permanently.

15 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

*sigh* Yes. Mind, I actually find it suggestive that interrogation without torture developed right alongside torture itself. It indicates that a significant percentage of investigators throughout history either doubted its efficacy or rejected it on ethical grounds, or both.

There are definite skill overlaps.  A skilled torturer like a skilled interrogator, needs to be very good at reading people under duress.  A skilled interrogator also needs to be a good reader of people not under duress.

15 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

True. Mind you, I still think it can be justified. Those plans were MASSIVE in size. Remember that enormous antenna the archive used as its transmitter? And it still took it, what, a minute to upload the entire set of blueprints. The flagship itself was in the middle of a fast-changing combat situation. In order to rebroadcast, it is not unreasonable to posit that it would need clear space and be able to remain stationary in order to properly aim the transmission. Remember, when Vader received news that the Emperor wanted to speak to him back in Empire Strikes Back, he ordered his Star Destroyer moved free of the asteroid field and into a position where it could get a direct line to Coruscant. And that was just for image and voice.

 

15 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Yes, Rogue One *did* cover the whole issue of the files being far too large to be able to propagate easily, but it was very quick so I'm not surprised so many missed it.  It's sort of the equivalent of the plans being on a 32 TB hard drive.  It takes time to transmit or to copy, and you have to have something to copy them *onto* as well.  If everyone's cell phones* can only hold 32GB, and your 4G connection is 3MPS, then you are rather limited in how many copies you can make.  Even a distributed download would take both time to set up and bandwidth to send across.

*AnDroids, of course

Transmission would be limited by the Rebel flagship's ability to receive, not the Library dish's ability to send....Probably.  The library's function is to act as a repository for data.  It's possible that the library has lousy transmission speed but can simultaneously process 145,352 such connections at once.  Need a faster connection?  use multiple channels.  The size of real-world dish antennae also lend the ability to discern and resolve fainter signals.  So perhaps the dish size is related to the volume of space the library serves. 

If we assume that the flagship is the limiting end and it can transmit as fast as it could receive, the question is finding a relay point with as much bandwidth as the flagship.  We start getting into aspects of Star Wars technology that there's no hard continuity for.  How large was the Flagship's data reception/transmission hardware?  Just because the ship is large doesn't mean the comms equipment must be.  Could Leia's ship house comparable hardware?  We don't know.

Complicating the whole question is the fact that we're talking about a fantasy universe with technological trappings, not a sci-fi universe.  Logic is only applied topically.

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7 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Complicating the whole question is the fact that we're talking about a fantasy universe with technological trappings, not a sci-fi universe.  Logic is only applied topically.

Especially since the whole justification for the destruction of the original Death Star essentially boils down to, "A space wizard did it." o.O

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8 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Especially since the whole justification for the destruction of the original Death Star essentially boils down to, "A space wizard did it." o.O

Those darn space wizards...

"Yogurt!  I HATE Yogurt!"

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16 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

*sigh* Yes. Mind, I actually find it suggestive that interrogation without torture developed right alongside torture itself. It indicates that a significant percentage of investigators throughout history either doubted its efficacy or rejected it on ethical grounds, or both.

I think it's more a matter of there being prisoners whom you wish to eventually be able to hand back unharmed - and even have saying you treated them decently - for diplomatic reasons, and prisoners whom you have no such concerns about because either there's nobody important to hand them back to, or the important people to hand them back to don't care about them any more than you do.

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1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

I think it's more a matter of there being prisoners whom you wish to eventually be able to hand back unharmed - and even have saying you treated them decently - for diplomatic reasons, and prisoners whom you have no such concerns about because either there's nobody important to hand them back to, or the important people to hand them back to don't care about them any more than you do.

That is possible, I suppose. But it could also be both, in some unspecified proportion of one to the other.

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10 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Actually, that's my mistake. I was thinking of the tricorder, which is something like three times bigger than the communicator.

Oh, yes. The TOS tricorder was huge.

6 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Pure speculation here, but the size may have been set to make the displays and controls easier for a humanoid to use in the field.

Except the screen on that was small. The biggest part was "adaptable" ... maybe the problem was too many different slots including ones which were supposed to be operated in heavy pressure suit?

6 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Nowadays we could put a smartphone - with the possible exception of a battery to last all day - in a wristwatch.

But imagine typing on that on-screen keyboard...

The screen CAN be rollable. We have the technology. It's only question of when someone makes advertisement so cool everyone will need it.

3 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:
19 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

*sigh* Yes. Mind, I actually find it suggestive that interrogation without torture developed right alongside torture itself. It indicates that a significant percentage of investigators throughout history either doubted its efficacy or rejected it on ethical grounds, or both.

There are definite skill overlaps.  A skilled torturer like a skilled interrogator, needs to be very good at reading people under duress.  A skilled interrogator also needs to be a good reader of people not under duress.

Overlap? I think there wasn't any clear distinction until "recently". There were always requests like "we need information from him but he needs to be presentable afterwards so don't hurt him visibly". Some people took it as incentive to be creative, some just used less rough methods.

3 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

I think it's more a matter of there being prisoners whom you wish to eventually be able to hand back unharmed - and even have saying you treated them decently - for diplomatic reasons, and prisoners whom you have no such concerns about because either there's nobody important to hand them back to, or the important people to hand them back to don't care about them any more than you do.

Also this, yes.

3 hours ago, The Old Hack said:
3 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

Complicating the whole question is the fact that we're talking about a fantasy universe with technological trappings, not a sci-fi universe.  Logic is only applied topically.

Especially since the whole justification for the destruction of the original Death Star essentially boils down to, "A space wizard did it." o.O

Wait what?

 

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Just now, hkmaly said:

Wait what?

My apologies. This was just me making a bad joke by making an extreme oversimplification of the conclusion of the movie where Luke Skywalker used the Force to hit the exhaust vent. Also, in MMO parlance Jedi and Sith are colloquially known as 'space wizards.'

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10 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

My apologies. This was just me making a bad joke by making an extreme oversimplification of the conclusion of the movie where Luke Skywalker used the Force to hit the exhaust vent.

He used two proton torpedoes. Sure, he timed the launch using force, but it was the torpedoes destroying the Death Star. Completely scientific. Well, ok, almost completely scientific. It was implied that if the attackers weren't bothered by Tie fighters (and therefore didn't needed to fly as fast as possible), anyone could hit that.

10 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Also, in MMO parlance Jedi and Sith are colloquially known as 'space wizards.'

That part is obvious.

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51 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

 It was implied that if the attackers weren't bothered by Tie fighters (and therefore didn't needed to fly as fast as possible), anyone could hit that.

Not exactly.  When the target was described as being about two meters across, there was a general grumbling of protest.  Luke reassured the person sitting next to him (Wedge?), who exclaimed it was impossible even for a computer, that the shot wasn't impossible, he used to bulls-eye womp rats in his T-16 back home, and "they're not much bigger than two meters."  But it was certainly not an easy shot.  The first attempt, taken by a different pilot using his targeting computer, impacted near the surface instead of going down the shaft.  Only a precise hit would set off the chain reaction that would destroy the Death Star.  Luke understood then that the targeting computers just weren't accurate enough, and if they kept trying using them, there was too high a risk his shot would miss, too, and there just weren't enough of them left for another run.  My impression was that normally, a computer is a lot more accurate than a human, but in this case Luke had the Force on his side tipping the odds back in favor of a computer-free shot.

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1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

When the target was described as being about two meters across, there was a general grumbling of protest.

Wasn't it AFTER the information they will not have option to slow down and take the time aiming?

Or wait, maybe X-wings are bad at hovering in general, no matter how it doesn't make any sense on orbit.

(Well, ok, "anyone can hit that" might be little overstatement ; but surely if it would be impossible they wouldn't approved the plan.)

1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

The first attempt, taken by a different pilot using his targeting computer, impacted near the surface instead of going down the shaft.

He was flying too fast.

1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

My impression was that normally, a computer is a lot more accurate than a human, but in this case Luke had the Force on his side tipping the odds back in favor of a computer-free shot.

Of course.

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