The General Chat thread

[Lord Chrusher]

I should have had French for a few years in school but during a lot of these times I was getting extra tutoring in reading and writing due to my dyslexia. My French is pretty much limited Oui, no, s'il vous plait, merci and parlez-vous anglais.

I did three years of Spanish in high school and I lived for four month in Chile in undergrad.

¿Donde esta el bano?

[Bebop Man]

Ñ

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

Dear Uni Library,

If you're going to put a 10% download limit on books (because copyright yo!), please make it a little more difficult to bypass your limit then simply downloading the images one by one via my browser.

Sure, it takes me more time, but hey, I don't mind.

Yours sincerely,
Valkyrie-Lemons

[Prospero101]

I wouldn't be surprised if that arbitrary limit was put in place merely to appease hungry lawyers. If there's anyone I know most in favor of the free distribution of information, it's libraries.

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

It's an external website that hosts the content (I think), so I believe they may have a "You can access 100% of this content for download for £999.99," or some other high price. In any case, I don't think they're that willing to let copyrighted material leave them easily.

But still, it's amazing how bad their copy protection is, considering I believe clearing your cookies, waiting 10 minuets, then logging back in resets the download limit. Surely it can't be that easy can it?

Also, the reason you have to wait is because it thinks you're a new user, and apparently only one person can look at it at a time EVEN THOUGH IT'S ON THE FRICKEN INTERNET! Because, even though there is no physical copy, they have to act as though it's a real library and have limited copies. Where is the sense in that?

[Deedles]

The Show Must Go On hits me so much harder after finding out that it essentially chronicles Freddie Mercury's effort to continue despite the fact that he was dying.

Think Gladstone from Cracked expressed it well;

I'll face it with a grin
I'm never giving in
On with the show
I'll top the bill, I'll overkill
I have to find the will to carry on
On with the
On with the show
The show must go on

A brave "fuck you" to death from a dying man who never sounded more alive.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Weirdly, it's precisely the reverse of what happened with 'These Are The Days Of Our Lives'. This was the final music video recorded by Mercury, at a time when he was impossibly weak and frail, and is a song about nostalgia, of times gone by and of the somehow unreal feeling of now- yet still it ends up coming across as uplifting and beautiful. It sounds like it was written by, or at least for, Mercury- a man dying, looking back at the old memories, the good times, and coming to terms with his current state- but in fact it wasn't at all. It sprang direct from the mind of Roger Taylor, the band's drummer, and his thoughts about life coming largely from his interactions with his young children- of course it's impossible that the songs essential themes and message are entirely unconnected to the fact that his friend was dying a slow painful death, but it wasn't actually the song for Mercury that many assumed it was.

Although that music video is a goddamn tearjerker.

[Lord Hosk]

So something has been bothering me all day and I dont know why but here it is.

In the Star Trek universe, why arn't there more Vulcan captains, for that matter, why aren't MOST of Star Fleets captains Vulcan?

Here is my logic.

Vulcans are stronger, faster, and more intelligent than humans, they are also much longer lived with life spans over 200 years. While Humans are shown to have more 'ambition' surely an extra 50+ years in a career would put more people in top positions and when they got those positions they would tend to stay there longer.

A human graduating from the academy would have maybe 50 years of service but a Vulcan could have 80-120 years yet the number of Vulcans we see as captains is one?

One and a half if you count Spock when everyone was a captain.

[CSt]

So something has been bothering me all day and I dont know why but here it is.

In the Star Trek universe, why arn't there more Vulcan captains, for that matter, why aren't MOST of Star Fleets captains Vulcan?

Here is my logic.

Vulcans are stronger, faster, and more intelligent than humans, they are also much longer lived with life spans over 200 years. While Humans are shown to have more 'ambition' surely an extra 50+ years in a career would put more people in top positions and when they got those positions they would tend to stay there longer.

A human graduating from the academy would have maybe 50 years of service but a Vulcan could have 80-120 years yet the number of Vulcans we see as captains is one?

One and a half if you count Spock when everyone was a captain.

I think you have a point, but you put it wrong. Why isn't anyone BUT the captain a Vulcan?

I mean, your typical Star Trek captain is not that capable, you have to be able to talk to aliens and sometimes have sex with them. You are told by your crew what is happening and get to shout strange commands that always are the right thing despite it applying to different situations. Even irony aside, they are responsible for diplomacy and tactics. Both are things severely handicapped by acting too "rational" when opposite races who do less so.
But why are there so few crewmembers Vulcans? Unlike captains, engineers, helmsmen, tactical officers, science officers actually have to know what they are doing. And they have the lifespan to make most out of their training.

[Elomin Sha]

In DS9 there was Vulcan Captain in Starfleet whose entire crew was Vulcan. It was the episode where they play baseball on the holodeck.

Also, Vulcans think too logically and doesn't allow for creativity.

[Ptangmatik]

Also narrative reasons (humans are more relatable for viewers).

I think a better question is: Why don't star ships have dedicated away teams, rather than risking the captain, pilot, chief medical officer, etc. every time, but that one's probably been done to death by fans.

[Master Gunner]

It does take a fair amount of fanwankery to explain away the human-centric crews of Starfleet ships. The reasoning I go with is that while other species in the Federation appear to operate their own organized military and scientific arms separate from the Federation (think along the lines of State militias in the United States), but humans, or at least Sol, does not - in exchange for being the capital of the Federation (and home to the Starfleet shipyards), they don't operate a separate military force from the Federation. This kind of structure especially make sense if you consider the final season of Enterprise (generally I ignore the show, but still), which indicated significant tensions between the early members of the Federation (specifically Vulcans and Andorians). As a result, a larger portion of humans join Starfleet than other races simply because they have fewer options.

On top of that, there are cultural reasons and social pressures to take into account. Spock was the first Vulcan to officially join Starfleet, almost a hundred years after the founding of the Federation. Most Vulcans of the aptitude to join Starfleet would instead join the Vulcan Science Academy or other Vulcan institutions. Presumably other long-time spacefaring species have similar institutions held in similar prestige on their own planets. Humans, again, just have Starfleet.

There are also arguments in fanon (which I don't quite hold to), that ships are purposefully crewed predominantly by a single species to simplify logistics and potential problems of having a wide range of very different physiologies and cultural backgrounds in a confined space.

All that said, in the expanded EU - and even in The Animated Series - the species diversity of Federation ships expands drastically once budget stops being an issue.

[Kapol]

So, I came up with a riddle, and I was wondering if it's any good (though it seems really easy). It goes:

"I am a thief. I steal everything, from your most beloved possessions to the most worthless of junk. Even your most secure vault which no one else may access is within my reach. And one day, I will steal your breath away. Who am I?"

[JustAName]

Death? Time?

[Kapol]

It is time. I realized that it also sounded a lot like death when I was writing it out. So I added the 'secure vault' line trying to reference the mind/memories.

[empath]

Yeah, that one's pretty good.

[Bebop Man]

It's been raining all day. Puts me in a good mood.

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

Wooo! Mid-Terms.

Time to indulge the political geek in me!

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

The film Imaginarium I think is good.
Watched it for the second time and I think even if you have no idea who Nightwish are, you'd enjoy seeing the film.
I'm sure it's available immorally somewhere on the interwebs. It's only 1hr and 15mins.

It's Pan's Labyrinth meets The Snowman.

[Bebop Man]

Saw Interstellar yesterday. It's a good movie with a disappointing ending. I don't think it's half as ambitious as it thinks it is, when t's clearly another riff on 2011 Space Odyssey- Everything from the subject matter to the music to the imagery points that way. Matthhew McCounaughey is very good as the lead though. This is probably Nolan's most personal, humane movie, far from the token "daddy misses kids" conflict in Inception.

The only 10/10 I've seen this year is Boyhood. The Grand Budapest Hotel, Gone Girl, Wild Tales and Interstellar come close but not quite.

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

Twitch is apparently worth a hell of a lot of money.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Not sure if I agree with the suspending of streamers who stream with various degrees of anatomy.
Yes, minors might have their brains defiled by seeing skin where they were surprised skin existed, but I think certain words are more damaging.

I think listening to some random person playing DotA2 and getting really into it is more likely to scar a child than I don't know. I don't watch partial or nude streams, because the streamers don't appeal to me.

[CSt]

Twitch is apparently worth a hell of a lot of money.

Either there was a currency crash I missed or one of these numbers is wrong.

[AdmiralMemo]

I don't watch partial or nude streams, because the streamers don't appeal to me.

I know what you mean. I mean, if you want to stream nude, stream nude. Go on a porn site for that. People will watch you. If you want to play a game, play a game. That's what Twitch is for. You don't need to strip to do that... unless you feel that your commentary and play-style isn't entertaining enough to draw more viewers. But then, that says more about you than it does about the game you're playing, which is what people want to see when they come to a game streaming site.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I guess perhaps the rules on clothing might help some streamers be a tad more professional. It might remind them that people are actually looking at them.

I just think if you're going to suspend people for skin, you ought to suspend people for foul language as well.