Bx brings up very good points and I'd further them by bringing up how nearly impossible it would be (and wasteful) to coordinate all that AAA fire the Galactica spewed forth by relaying orders via intercom to dozens of gunnery control teams each targeting and firing independant of the other guns....
quote: The protocol and terminologies could have been translated for our benefit, like the names and language, to be something we could easily understand. As for what we might build centuries from now... well, why not? Can you point to something on Galactica that could be done better in some objective sense, without requiring networked computers?
If we're to accept that all those exact terms are just a translation for our benifit then we might as well accept continuity errors, bad science and hokey dialogue as translation mistakes while we're deluding ourselves.
I can point out that the Galactica is a product of a culture that SHOULD be far diffrent than our own: far moreso than anything the Federation uses in TNG in fact, because the colonies have no design or verbal lineage with any of our modern earth tech or naval history. It'd be far more likely that a "lost colony" wold build something like the new Basestar than anything we'd recognise as an aircraft carrier with a flight deck.
As to what could have been better (and could still be fixed to some point): If Galactica is truly run by mini networks that are not interconnected, I'd have a sub class of technicians and command officers to coordinate their departments and run independent systems. Like the Flight Controller position but for AAA, Missiles, FTL, Damage Control, Ships Stores etc. Each department would need at least a small team with one supervisor to run it properly.
That would however mean a HUGE hirearchy of middle-managment to make the ship run smoothly. It could lead to some great "Lower Decks" type episodes though, I suppose. Everyone would certainly be too busy working their butts off to realize Adama is full of crap.
Maintence crews in particular will be spread very thin to keep the whole fleet in working order. ....and the other ships in the fleet are still probably networked in a way that leaves them vulnerable to the Cylon system-corruption.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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We run into annoying newbies. They leave with great rapidity. You are not among these.
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Something intresting: Glen Larson jsut bought back the rights to make a BG movie and Bryan Singer has been trying to produce/direct one for a few years now: he even has the script, new viper and cylon designs and at one point (when it looked like a greenlight) had full sized Viper mockups under construction before it all fell apart.
quote:Larson's strongest criticism is that the miniseries is so contemporary: "It sort of drove me crazy to have so much dialogue that is earthbound and colloquialisms."
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
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posted
The Battlestar runs Kobol. There's your networking in a nutshell. B)
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-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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quote:Originally posted by MarianLH: Golly. Ah may blush. =)
I'm kinda curious as to why, though...
Coherent sentences. And punctuation. It does wonders for first impressions.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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posted
I for one am not wishing that you'd drop it, Balaam. Quite the contrary, I hadn't put much thought into Adama's "no networks" line until you brough it up here. Besides, this is the most engaging discussion I've been in since I've stopped participating in the Enterprise threads. My opinion at this point is Moore goofed on this point, Adama was over-simplifying for the Secretary of Education, and Adama's just an inch away from locking himself in a shack in rural Montana and hammering out a manifesto.
Also, Jason, could you elaborate a bit more on the need for a huge middle management to run a ship that has no unifying, interconnected network? I'm not quite sure I'm following you on that. Thanks.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
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quote:Originally posted by Krenim: Like many people, I've previously watched little to no Battlestar Galactica. I once tried to watch an episode of Galactica 1980...
*Begin flashback*
My eyes! They burn!
*End flashback*
...but I can't say I cared for it.
Anyway, I enjoyed the mini-series. Commander Adama sounded so much like B5's Sheridan that it was kind of scary, though.
The one thing I want explained, though, is the scene where Adama picks up that piece of paper that says there are only 12 models of Cylons. I'm guessing this is supposed to mirror the 12 colonies, but I still don't get it. Does that mean 12 models that look like humans, or just that many models period? Can't the Cylons design new models themselves?
Appears to be twelve models that are humans like. Silly, to havew only twelve.
There are a lot of flaws in the mini, but overall I liked it. Ratings were great for Sci-Fi, so I figure they will go on to series. As long as they can keep Olmos, I'll keep watching. I hope they can also keep McDonnel.
-------------------- Sparky:: Think! Question Authority, Authoritatively. “Believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see.” EMSparks
Shalamar: To save face, keep lower half shut.
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quote:Originally posted by Siegfried: Also, Jason, could you elaborate a bit more on the need for a huge middle management to run a ship that has no unifying, interconnected network? I'm not quite sure I'm following you on that. Thanks.
I was speculating that if each of the ship's departments were not connected, they'd have to be maintained by crews of people and those crews would need department heads and those heads would report to the XO who reports to the Captain and by the time the Captain gets word, the situation could have changed so the process starts all over endlessly. As opposed to just having the Captain glance at a status report on a monitor.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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quote:I was speculating that if each of the ship's departments were not connected, they'd have to be maintained by crews of people and those crews would need department heads and those heads would report to the XO who reports to the Captain and by the time the Captain gets word, the situation could have changed so the process starts all over endlessly.
I'm just not seeing the problem. No matter what, the ship is going to have a crew working in the various departments maintaining, controlling, and reporting. Having a wide-area network connecting all of the ship's systems isn't going to change that. You may have to add a network engineer to each department, but communications is still going to have receiver repairmen, intercom operators, etc., and engineering is still going to have structural engineers, mechanical engineers, power engineers, etc. A ship as large as Galactica is going to have a large crew regardless of whether all the systems are interconnected or not.
quote:As opposed to just having the Captain glance at a status report on a monitor.
But, this is similar to what we saw happen on the Galactica. There's a damage control station in the command center, and it was getting input from internal sensors and crew reports. Tigh, Tyrol, and another officer were directing the efforts from that station. Not too mention, a lot of the ship's systems were directly accessible from the command center. Dualla appeared to be the communications officer or representative, and she seemed to be on the ball with forwarding messages to Adama. Gaeta appeared to be in charge of navigation. The ship's systems not being interconnected didn't seem to be a problem because all could directed from the command center.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
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posted
I think you two are talking about different concepts.
Jason is thinking about a completely isolated system. Every computer is not networked at all. Every sensor goes to one monitor and thats it. Therefore, yes, it would require a huge amount of middle management. The sensor tech for say, the starboard sensor array would have to confer with the head sensor tech, who would relay the information to the tactical officer, etc. However, this doesn't seem likely and doesn't fit the onscreen evidence.
I propose something like what follows, which fits the onscreen action and what Siegfried is thinking about and CC said briefly. 1) Every subsystem has a separate network. The sensor subsystem may join all sensors with a server and to a master control screen on the bridge but nothing else. 2) No connections between unrelated networks. Propulsion is *physically* disconnected from communications, is separate from life support, etc. 2a) No shared computer core. All calculations are done on servers native to their areas. 2b) Every console has a specific function which cannot be reconfigured.
So how is this separate from what we see in say Star Trek? Well Star Trek does have a shared computer core, every console is multifunctional, everything is connected.
Lets look at a few scenarios:
a) Baltar's infected navigation program. Star Trek: Two choices. Infection can proceed to the navigational console, reconfigure it to a new function and send the appropriate new commands or worse go directly to the shared computer core and do whatever. BG: Infection is confined to the navigation computer. The user may get a few funny looking messages, but without any hard connections to any other systems, i.e. propulaion, nothing happens
b) Bridge is taken over by hostile troops Star Trek: Redirect controls to Engineering, lock out old controls by command codes. BG: Controls harder to redirect, without pre-existing backups...screwed.
c) President Rosalin's teacher computers Star Trek: Computers installed and hooked into network. Due to shared computer core, everything is "faster and more convenient." Unless higher priority functions like navigation or tactical kick in. BG: Only local resources are used. Programs run slower without distributed computing
d) Moriarty goes mad Star Trek: Holodeck connected to computer core, Moriarty takes over the bridge. BG: Moriarty takes over rec-deck chess games
e) Riker orders tactical pattern Epsilon Beta via voice command Star Trek: Computer inputs appropriate navigational coordinates, arms the weapons, puts a tractor on an enemy vessel and prepares a steaming cup of really good tea instantaneously BG: Riker has to talk to three separate individuals and has to go to the replicator himself.
So as we can see there are advantages and disadvatages to both. With a reconfigurable console, Data can essentially control anything connected to the Enterprise computer. BG might need a tractor beam technician, a whole panel of navigation techs, sensor techs, etc. to do the same thing. However BG is much more immune to a computer virus or whatnot. But invariably, the BG setup will need a bigger crew, if only to relay orders between the various subsystems.
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A good wrap-up both points of view. Galactica is also screwed if it's intra-ship communications eat it or if large umbers of crew are rendered unconsious or dead. Even on TOS, there would be computer lockouts to prevent the kind of system wide takeover shown on BSG. If Data could shut out the Borg, the Cylons owuld be no biggie.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: d) Moriarty goes mad Star Trek: Holodeck connected to computer core, Moriarty takes over the bridge. BG: Moriarty takes over rec-deck chess games
Priceless.
Okay, so I was still misunderstanding you, Jason. Sorry about that. And, nice wrap-up, Mucus.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
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posted
Here's something intresting: someone over at SSM thinks Tigh will turn out to be Starbuck's father. It would make sense: Why else make the chracter white? ....and it follows the idea of "parents (not) accepting responsibility for their children" that the series pounds into our heads. Besides, Starbuck calls Tigh "a Drunk" and "weak" but Tigh made some tough calls in the series and wasnt drunk (at least no more than Starbuck was) so where was her whole little bitch-out coming from?.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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BX, first let me say that I didn't intend to come across as wanting you to "let it go" or "shut up" or anything of that sort, and I'm sorry if my post sounded that way. You argue your points both intelligently and politely, and I enjoy reading your posts.
But I still don't agree. =)
You did a thorough job of thinking out some of the variables, but wonder if you aren't overthinking the problem. The answer might be as simple as choosing a fixed position relative to some reference point, and telling a guidance computer to compensate for any deviation. The computer wouldn't need to be networked to the rest of the ships systems, it just needs some way of knowing the ship's position and the reference position, and be able to monitor changes and fire the ship's reaction control engines to compensate. It would be a busy little 'puter during a firefight, but it wouldn't need to be a networked one.
The Galactica seemed to me to be stationary for this battle (relative to the nebula aperature, anyway; nothing's truly stationary in space), with the barrage perimeter shielding Galactica and the Galactia shielding the civilian ships. But I think the basic same idea could be applied to a ship under way. The guidance computer would just be told to compensate relative to a course instead of a fixed point.
I'm confident that there's a counterexample for ever argument that the Galactica's lack of networked computers is implausible, but I wonder if there's anything to gain by arguing the point into the ground. Will I ever persuade you?
Which brings me to the question I've been pondering all day: how do you (and here I mean generic "you," not anyone specific) decide whether something's plausible? How well do you have to understand how something would work to believe that it can?
What I mean is, If you feel that something is (or isn't) plausible, it might be because you're right, or it might be because you don't know enough about the subject. How do you tell?
I recall when I first saw the movie Braveheart thinking how unrealistic it was that Wallace just happened upon one of the great tactical innovations of the Middle Ages--using a tight pike formation to break up a heavy cavalry charge. Then I went home and looked it up, lo, that part of the movie was accurate. Stirling Bridge was the third battle ever in which that tactic was used.
quote:Originally posted by Balaam Xumucane: Also, yes, I do realize that it's, like, 8:30 on a Friday night and that my entry above only serves to further the theory that therefore I have no life.
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