so..in reality?

[trevanian]

And the data storage devices were repeatedly referred to as "tapes."

A small point, but tape libraries are still the preferred medium for large-scale data archiving.

TGT

And for long-term safe storage, photochemical-based film stock is fast becoming even more of a go-to for movies than before, since there seems to be a decay/crapout rate with digital storage unless you keep doing something with it every couple years.

 

[USS Mariner]

^Isn't that more to do with format obsolescence though?

 

[trevanian]

^Isn't that more to do with format obsolescence though?

Not according to the recent issues of the Kodak mag.

 

[Ziz]

And the data storage devices were repeatedly referred to as "tapes."

A small point, but tape libraries are still the preferred medium for large-scale data archiving.

TGT

And for long-term safe storage, photochemical-based film stock is fast becoming even more of a go-to for movies than before, since there seems to be a decay/crapout rate with digital storage unless you keep doing something with it every couple years.

^Isn't that more to do with format obsolescence though?

Not according to the recent issues of the Kodak mag.

Um...ok. A company that makes film stock and is essentially being driven out of business by digital advancements and its competitor (Fujicolor is now the most popular film processing choice for people that still use film cameras) is claiming that chemical film is the preferred archive medium...

Yeah, there's no bias there.

 

[Hofner]

There's one scene from Star Trek that back in the '60s or '70s you didn't think twice about but nowadays it makes me chuckle a bit. If my memory is correct (I'm too lazy to dig up the ep right now) this scene is from "Balance Of Terror".

When the Romulans made a transmission Uhura got a recording of it. She copies it onto one of them colored thingys they use, pulls it out of her console, steps over to Spock at his station and hands it to him. He sticks it into his console and starts analyzing it.

I don't know, maybe there's nothing wrong with this but evidently their consoles can't talk to each other.

Robert

 

[Forbin]

Maybe they have an email size limit, like we do at work, and have to use datasticks.

 

[Forbin]

Come to think of it, our computer network security at work prevents departments from accessing each other's area drives. It's a wall we slam up against all the time - Marketing wants us in graphics to "pretty up" a powerpoint presentation; We can't access their network drive and they can't access ours. If it's over 50 MB it can't be emailed. So somebody has to request a datastick from computer services (security forbids the personal possession of them), or burn it to CD, and hand carry it.

Ah, life with a government contractor!

Of course such an arrangement would be insane on the bridge.

 

[Christopher]

I don't know, maybe there's nothing wrong with this but evidently their consoles can't talk to each other.

That apparently holds in the 24th century as well, as evidenced by all the VGR episodes of characters using handheld padds to deliver information to one another rather than simply transferring the files between consoles. There, it was conscious dramatic license, both to convey the idea of information being passed along and to give the actors some "business" to perform so they weren't just standing around.

 

[Hofner]

Christopher, I think you're right about the dramatic license. In fact, the scene I was talking about wasn't so much about them not knowing how computers can talk to each other but more of a dramatic point. Earlier Stiles had made that comment suggesting Spock should analyze it implying that he was a Romulan spy. It seems to me having Uhura give it to Spock like that was deliberately linked to Stiles' comment.

Forbin, I kinda know what you're talking about. I used to work as a technician in a research facility for a polymer company. We had secured network drives too. As I recall anyone needing to access one was usually just given it by a supervisor so it wasn't too much trouble.

Robert

 

[Forbin]

Yeah, I think we can call CS and/or security and beg them to give us access to certain drives. Pain in the butt, though.

 

[Timewalker]

I used to work as a technician in a research facility for a polymer company.

So you were working on transparent aluminum?

 

[RobertScorpio]

I used to work as a technician in a research facility for a polymer company.

So you were working on transparent aluminum?

LOL..very good!!!...I wonder if he knew how that reply looked before he made it??? Hopefully he will tell us more before 'they' bring him back!

Rob

 

[Hofner]

I used to work as a technician in a research facility for a polymer company.

So you were working on transparent aluminum?

Nah. I know you're just kidding but if you want the gory, boring details I used to work for Amoco Chemicals in their polymer division. Amoco was one of the major producers of polypropylene (PP). Amoco has pretty much been swallowed up by BP now.

I used to test the physical properties of various plastics mostly PP. One of the most common tests was the tensile strength test where you pull a plastic bar apart and measure how much force it took. The machines I worked with were fun to operate. One of the machines I ran was a robotic testing machine in the late 80s/early 90s. It was simply a test machine with a robot arm attached that would grab a test bar from a stack, mount it in the machine which then automatically ran the test and the robot would repeat this over and over all day.

Another test I did was called the instrumented impact test. You'd put a plastic plaque somewhat bigger than a playing card and 1/8 inch thick into this device, shut the safety door, press a button and BAM. The tester hits the plaque with great force using a probe that sensed how much force it took to punch through. Great for working out your frustrations. Put a plaque in and as you press the button say "Take THAT Rick Berman!" BAM. "Take THAT Brannon Braga!' BAM. Actually I don't hate the beebs; just using them as examples.

Anyways, I was just a technician who did the grunt work, my bosses were the chemical engineers.

Robert

 

[Ronald Held]

I though the clacking was an indication that processing of your request was occuring.

 

[Forbin]

I though the clacking was an indication that processing of your request was occuring.

It was, but the sound effect was basically an old teletype machine - physical things smacking each other and old electrical relays clicking. Sure, you can hear your hardrive running if your PC is right near you, but one can imagine that a computer 300 years from now would have no moving parts at all, and even if it did, the CPU on the Enterprise would be buried deep in the ship, and unhearable.

 

[Timo]

It could also be the virtual sound of files opening and closing... On the noisy bridge of a warship, you would want to have really loud operating sounds as the default setting.

Earlier Stiles had made that comment suggesting Spock should analyze it implying that he was a Romulan spy. It seems to me having Uhura give it to Spock like that was deliberately linked to Stiles' comment.

A gesture of defiance/trust by Uhura, then. And speaking of trust, the practice of delivering key information via dataslip or PADD could be due to there being a need to verify the transfer personally, face to face. A real "for your eyes only" verification system, so to speak. Delivering the information isn't the point - meeting the colleague is. Or then the point is getting the Captain's personal, handwritten authorization and attention, rather than relying on a dull electronic nod that might be automated and let key information pass unnoticed by the recipient.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gil T.Azell]

The only thing that seems rather silly is that whirring-clacking sound when the computer was working, which was of course deliberately weird or cute or something, since I don't believe anyone back then thought the Enterprise's computers were actually mechanical either.

Don't be so sure. "The Cage" showed the computer producing a paper printout of its findings. And the data storage devices were repeatedly referred to as "tapes."

And even if it was dramatic license, it wasn't to be "weird" or "cute," but to be accessible to an audience that had certain preconceptions and expectations about what constituted a machine. Just as modern Trek shows unrealistically depict visible phaser beams in space and show ships implausibly close together, not to be weird or cute, but to present the scene in a way that conveys meaning to an audience with certain assumptions or expectations.

Besides, it's not as if modern computers are totally silent. You can hear your computer's hard drive making noise when the computer is opening or saving a file or performing some other memory-intensive task. It's quiet, but it's there. There are moving mechanical parts inside 2008 computers. So it's not unreasonable that people in the 1960s would've believed that computers centuries in the future would have mechanical relays of some sort.

And those 'Tapes' dipicted are about the size of the "Floppy Disks" that now seem to be no longer included with new CPU's

 

[Gil T.Azell]

I used to work as a technician in a research facility for a polymer company.

So you were working on transparent aluminum?

That stuff seem like it not too far off??
Transparent Aluminum?

 

[Christopher]

^^Sigh... that's not transparent aluminum, it's transparent alumina. Alumina isn't aluminum any more than water is hydrogen or salt is chlorine. Alumina, or corundum, is the substance of which rubies and emeralds are made. It's hardly surprising that it's transparent. (It's also known as emery, the rough stuff on emery boards.) This substance that gets touted on the Internet as "transparent aluminum" every few months is simply a form of glass that's based on alumina rather than silica.

 

[trevanian]

A small point, but tape libraries are still the preferred medium for large-scale data archiving.

TGT

And for long-term safe storage, photochemical-based film stock is fast becoming even more of a go-to for movies than before, since there seems to be a decay/crapout rate with digital storage unless you keep doing something with it every couple years.

^Isn't that more to do with format obsolescence though?

Not according to the recent issues of the Kodak mag.

Um...ok. A company that makes film stock and is essentially being driven out of business by digital advancements and its competitor (Fujicolor is now the most popular film processing choice for people that still use film cameras) is claiming that chemical film is the preferred archive medium...

Yeah, there's no bias there.

Was wondering if anybody would try this moron argument. Kodak is responsible for what was arguably the best CGI and digital scanning facility on the planet with Cinesite, which did some of its remarkable work at 4K and 8K, rivalling the best film-originated fx work (watch SOLARIS' spaceship sequences.) So if they're "being driven out of business," they're doing it to themselves.

As for the Fuji argument, that's probably a pricing issue, at least in the motion picture industry. I've spoken with two cinematographers this year who wound up using Fuji instead of Kodak on features, and in both cases it was because the production needed to save a few bucks, not an artistic choice.

I'm no Kodak shill; I still hate those suckers for back when the Yellow Giant discontinued their gorgeous Ektachrome 40 movie film stock, and then their softer highspeed s8 stocks (7244 or 7242) were only available to be processed by elite labs that cut off the head and tail of the film to use as leader, which lost me 20% of what I had shot. There are about a million reasons to despise Kodak legitimately, but if you've seen their magazine, you'll see this isn't a case of a journal that publishes self-interest results, like mags sponsored by cigarette makers.