New efforts!

[Tubbius]

Weekly Update ---

Help!  There are bunny rabbits everywhere!

"Waddle hero!  Waddle like bunny rabbits!  Waddle good penguin!"

[Goddangit]

Weekly Update ---

Help!  There are bunny rabbits everywhere!

Tell me about the rabbits, George.

[blacksly]

Weekly Update ---

Help!  There are bunny rabbits everywhere!

Have you seen your local Doc about treatment for Rabbititis?

[pinballdave]

Hello, my name is Elmer Fudd, millionaire, I own a mansion and a yacht.

[Arcana]

In other words, they are like Klackons.  Uncreative, and unable to come up with anything on there own.

Not necessarily.  We tend to assume all technology is the same and all science is the same, but that might not be true.  It is possible that the aliens in ID4 have a core competency of science and a kind of technology so dramatically different from the ones incorporated in the space technology they acquired that it is practically magic to them.  It might be that the advantage humans have in ID4 is that the alien technology powering the space weapons the aliens used is of a type that is comparable in "family" to ours.  It is based on metals and materials science, electric power and digital computer technology.  It is hyperadvanced but only projected forward in time.  It is an easy to conceptualize projection of our technology.  But if the aliens use biological telepathy for communications and bioengineered environmental and combat suits it is entirely possible that something like the digital computer is totally alien to them.

And the computer is not just the computer.  It is the mathematics behind digital algorithmic programming, it is the entire semiconductor industry, it is the idea of using digital encoding and all of the ancillary constellation technology of radio and electromagnetic field manipulation.  It would be like if we were suddenly handed a Vorlon fleet.  We might be able to pilot the ships, but it could take us hundreds of years to build up even the scientific language and technological infrastructure to do more than put fancy hood ornaments on them.  The aliens could be perfectly good at their own kind of science and technology, but simply too different from the originating species of the space weapons technology they acquired.

Imagine taking an iPhone back two hundred years and trying to explain how it works to someone living in that time.  Imagine it is someone that was very open minded and an incredibly smart person in general, and you have years to do it.  You still have the problem that practically every single component in that phone isn't just "advanced" but comes from a massive technological infrastructure that didn't even exist twenty years ago much less a couple hundred years ago.  Even if you somehow manage to teach them everything they need to know it is not enough that one person knows.  To do anything with that miracle of technology you would have to somehow convince tens of thousands of people to create the technological infrastructure necessary to build the contextual platform to do anything with it, and no matter how much knowledge you provide and how motivated they are it would likely be a century before they "catch up" to the iphone under the best of circumstances.  If the alien technology is like ours but better, one person might be able to unlock it.  But if the alien technology is not like ours, it might take a cultural and technological revolution just to create the circumstances that would allow us to do anything with it except push buttons on it.

[Arcana]

TFR is certainly a dated technology, forgive me for dating myself, but I was a retread, my first tour of service was in the USAF 79-83 (Security Police) and I spent two years in England at RAF Upper Heyford (20th SPS) with the F-111s of the 20th TFW. We lost several aircraft while I was there, and the prevailing opinion at that time was that the accidents were TFR related, though I never did hear an official statement as to cause.

I don't know if this is related to your personal experience, but I have read that there were several investigations into F-111 crashes that determined that at the time of the crash the pilots had turned off the terrain following autopilot because they did not trust it at extremely low altitude.  Part of the reason was that the autopilot doesn't "fly like a human" and often seems to be making flight adjustments that aren't obvious because it is relying on radar data and not on what the pilots can visually see in the observable flight path.  Sometimes it is making a flight adjustment now not to avoid any of the ground environment nearby but to avoid something it knows is coming up, so it appears to steer *towards* nearby ground obstructions incorrectly to put the aircraft into the right flight attitude to avoid the next incoming obstruction.  That can get unnerving if you don't know why it is doing what it is doing.

[Taceus Jiwede]

After I saw the first movie, I came up with a theory that others independently came up with as well that the aliens in ID4 were actually a relatively primitive race, perhaps only slightly more advanced than humanity was intrinsically, that happened upon the technology they were using in ID4.  Because their own technology was so radically different (think the bioengineered body suits) they appropriated the technology rather than integrated it into their industrial-technological systems.  As a result, they were far more vulnerable to the kinds of strategies that the humans employed on them than the true masters of the technology would likely have been.  There are pockets of evidence that the aliens were extremely trusting and reliant on their technology without fully understanding its limitations.  Why would they deliberately chase Will Smith into the hull of their own mothership at the end when their shields were down, as if the pilots of those craft simply were not fully appreciating the fact that their primary life-saving defense wasn't operative.  Why deploy their vulnerable primary weapon under those same circumstances, whereas if they had just hovered around for a couple of hours alien IT would have restored their shields and they could have proceeded to destroy the Earth?

And perhaps most important, why is their technology relatively unchanged in decades?  The crashed craft from Roswell appears to be fundamentally identical to the fighter craft the aliens invade with forty years later.  That difference can't just be cosmetic either, because they seem to have the same speed, roughly the same maneuverability, exactly the same broadcast power systems, and exactly precisely the same network communications systems.  That seems odd, unless you assume the aliens are just maintaining the technology but aren't really developing it.

Why this isn't actually part of the story is a mystery to me.  It only improves it and would add depth to the aliens without really changing any of the story we saw, it would have just been an extra layer to it.  I've never heard this theory but I like it enough I am going to pretend its canon.

[Paragon Avenger]

Have you seen your local Doc about treatment for Rabbititis?

Thanx, I went to the doc's and got an injection.  It was a real shot in the arm.

[LadyVamp]

After I saw the first movie, I came up with a theory that others independently came up with as well that the aliens in ID4 were actually a relatively primitive race, perhaps only slightly more advanced than humanity was intrinsically, that happened upon the technology they were using in ID4.  Because their own technology was so radically different (think the bioengineered body suits) they appropriated the technology rather than integrated it into their industrial-technological systems.  As a result, they were far more vulnerable to the kinds of strategies that the humans employed on them than the true masters of the technology would likely have been.  There are pockets of evidence that the aliens were extremely trusting and reliant on their technology without fully understanding its limitations.  Why would they deliberately chase Will Smith into the hull of their own mothership at the end when their shields were down, as if the pilots of those craft simply were not fully appreciating the fact that their primary life-saving defense wasn't operative.  Why deploy their vulnerable primary weapon under those same circumstances, whereas if they had just hovered around for a couple of hours alien IT would have restored their shields and they could have proceeded to destroy the Earth?

And perhaps most important, why is their technology relatively unchanged in decades?  The crashed craft from Roswell appears to be fundamentally identical to the fighter craft the aliens invade with forty years later.  That difference can't just be cosmetic either, because they seem to have the same speed, roughly the same maneuverability, exactly the same broadcast power systems, and exactly precisely the same network communications systems.  That seems odd, unless you assume the aliens are just maintaining the technology but aren't really developing it.

The theory I have about the aliens is this:  They didn't progress much beyond the tech needed to conquer other worlds simply due to how their society functioned and the other societies they killed off.  Progress tends to happen when you run into a genuine need.  They didn't have a genuine need to progress.

Consider this:  Their society was built on sameness taken to the extreme.  Being telepathic, they'd find the deviants in their society quickly and remove them before they could do any damage and cause disharmony.  While this has the advantage of keeping the peace as it were, it also has the disadvantage that they no longer have malcontents to kick the tires of their tech to find the weaknesses.  We humans were clearly short on tech against the aliens but being used to kicking the tires of tech until we found a hole to exploit, we had the advantage here.  And once we got into their systems, we found bugs in their systems to exploit that have been removed from our systems due to our malcontents blasting our systems through the very same holes.

Think about all the bug patches that come out for all sorts of software driven systems.  If we had the "perfect" society where everyone lived in perfect harmony, those exploitable holes would never be found, exploited, fixed and patched (hopefully).  We'd also not have the knowledge to attack an enemy that way.  The aliens likely never encountered a species that preyed on itself as much as humans do.  They probably thought we were an easy mark.  Limited tech, weak bodies, disorganized, lots of disharmony.  Should be an easy smash and grab right?  Well not so fast.  We humans specialize in busting each other's gonads.  So give us a reason to team up, and we'll do it every time.  Oh and we carry big, ball busting hammers.  And they were more than happy to put theirs on top of a large stump and beg for us to swing those hammers hard.  And we sure did.

[LadyVamp]

Why this isn't actually part of the story is a mystery to me.  It only improves it and would add depth to the aliens without really changing any of the story we saw, it would have just been an extra layer to it.  I've never heard this theory but I like it enough I am going to pretend its canon.

Some more story about where they came from and how their society was organized might have been interesting to know.  The book probably even covered some of that.  The president certainly could have said more about them.

But then let me ask you this:  does it really matter why the guy on the beach wants your spot and is willing to take it from you by force?  Not really.  To carry that analogy, he came, he saw, he tried to kick our butts: We hit him hard enough were it counts to stop his ticker...permanently.

[LadyVamp]

Hello, my name is Elmer Fudd, millionaire, I own a mansion and a yacht.

That brought back memories.  Remember the one where Elmer left an insane asylum thinking he was bugs bunny and dressed in a rabbit suit?  And they had bugs thinking he was Elmer J Fudd?  And they had Porky Pig arrest him for failing to pay his taxes?  Damn those were classic cartoons.  Too bad they don't show them anymore.  Too violent so they say.

[Sinistar]

That brought back memories.  Remember the one where Elmer left an insane asylum thinking he was bugs bunny and dressed in a rabbit suit?  And they had bugs thinking he was Elmer J Fudd?  And they had Porky Pig arrest him for failing to pay his taxes?  Damn those were classic cartoons.  Too bad they don't show them anymore.  Too violent so they say.

Yet they have no problems with The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, South Park, Robot Chicken......

[Codewalker]

I remember The Simpsons being quite controversial when it first started. Fox pushed back and said it the target audience was adults and parents shouldn't be letting their kids watch it. People eventually got desensitized to it (not to mention the show shifted away from the more adult themes, much to its detriment), and by the time the various other animated prime time shows started showing up everyone was used to it.

South Park has also gotten a lot of flak from various groups, but that show has the luxury of having creators and producers that just don't care... as well as being on cable.

Robot Chicken I think is too obscure to have really gotten noticed, not only because of the network it's on but because of its odd time slot.

The main reason the old Looney Toons aren't shown is because of WB. As a show that's seen as being primarily targeted at kids, they don't want the brand name to be associated with that kind of controversy.

[pinballdave]

That brought back memories.  Remember the one where Elmer left an insane asylum thinking he was bugs bunny and dressed in a rabbit suit?  And they had bugs thinking he was Elmer J Fudd?  And they had Porky Pig arrest him for failing to pay his taxes?  Damn those were classic cartoons.  Too bad they don't show them anymore.  Too violent so they say.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xc94j_elmer-j-fudd-millionaire_news

[Thunder Glove]

That brought back memories.  Remember the one where Elmer left an insane asylum thinking he was bugs bunny and dressed in a rabbit suit?  And they had bugs thinking he was Elmer J Fudd?

That is, in fact, where the quote comes from.  They made Bugs repeat it over and over until he believed he was Elmer Fudd.

[MM3squints]

And they had Porky Pig arrest him for failing to pay his taxes?

When I was a kid, they showed us criminals can try getting away with murder, grand theft, terrorism, and other criminal behavior, but they draw the line when not paying their taxes

[Brigadine]

I remember The Simpsons being quite controversial when it first started. Fox pushed back and said it the target audience was adults and parents shouldn't be letting their kids watch it. People eventually got desensitized to it (not to mention the show shifted away from the more adult themes, much to its detriment), and by the time the various other animated prime time shows started showing up everyone was used to it.

South Park has also gotten a lot of flak from various groups, but that show has the luxury of having creators and producers that just don't care... as well as being on cable.

Robot Chicken I think is too obscure to have really gotten noticed, not only because of the network it's on but because of its odd time slot.

The main reason the old Looney Toons aren't shown is because of WB. As a show that's seen as being primarily targeted at kids, they don't want the brand name to be associated with that kind of controversy.

Other thing about South park is that they pick on everybody, so its not like the groups in question can claim they have been singled out.

[Mister Hassenpheffer]

Weekly Update ---

Help!  There are bunny rabbits everywhere!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6l3tlDuGXQ

[rezulin]

In the Man-Kzin Wars, a series of books written by Larry Niven, the Kzin had an extensive empire that spanned many star systems by the time they encountered humans.  Their technology had not progressed much in centuries because of in most part bureaucracy.

  They had no FTL flight or FLT communications.  All the new technologies came from the home world and expanded out to the fleets/armadas at the speed of light, if it was a digital patch, or at the speed of large cargo tugs which had a maybe a .25C max usable speed with maybe a 1C total delta V available to them before refueling.

  The end result was, they didn't change technology much because if they did so on their own, ship parts would not fit each other's fleets when they came together as they did time to time.  Since these were generational war fleets, you had to mix the gene pool once in a while.

  Any way it was explained better in the books than I can here, but the point is, the aliens in ID could have a similar problem if their empire was vast enough and possibly poorly understood technology which couldn't be changed on the fly without major rework, which then would no longer conform to the rest of the fleet when they get back together.

  Also ID didn't make as much sense as to why they were here in the first place.  Yes we have a good sized iron core, but Mercury has an outsized iron core and much to mine due to how much thinner the crust is.  You go to a class M planet for the thing that class M planets have, namely a biosphere, yet they didn't seem to care much about the condition of said biosphere when they did arrive.  At least in V they wanted the planet and its food sources, and took steps to not destroy the biosphere.

Rezulin

[Tubbius]

At least in V they wanted the planet and its food sources, and took steps to not destroy the biosphere.

Rezulin

Tubbius is currently watching the original V collection with a friend, working through the 19 episode follow-up series at present.  Marc Singer was basically a poor man's Mark Hamill, and Michael Ironside was basically a poor man's Jack Nicholson.