Questor

I should point out that I'm referring to being tired of arguments about canon (which is what I was trying to imply with my reference to the reformation, but that may not have come through.) I have no problem with other aspects of vs, but canon arguments really just make me feel like I'm reading debates about whether the evolution of the english language is changing the preposition rules (yes it probably is, no it doesn't matter because nobody's actually paid attention to those rules in spoken english outside of a couple weeks of grammar class in the last 500 years - no joke, five centuries. Shakespear did it.) I'm bored. I can't sleep. Can you tell?

And these arguments are pointless, stupid and boring. If I want to read a bunch of nerds arguing about the delivered word of god, frankly, I find the liturgical courts of the reformation far more interesting. At least there sometimes the loser was burned at the stake.

Shields on photorps are actually one theory of why they can be "modulated" and shoot out through shields. The idea is that they have weak shields that cancel out the existing shield as they pass through. I've never heard anyone propose that those sheilds could be used to defend the torpedoes on unmodified weapons, though. The point defense phasers used in the ferengi wormhole episode would kind of disagree with the concept of powerful photon shields, though.

Let me tell Shroom, he hasn't stabbed anything lately. Been thrown off any new webboards, or just the ones I know about?

While I think it's been amply demonstrated that if Paul claimed the sky was blue, I'd most likely say it was green... He's right. If people don't like Jason and don't want to debate him, they should just ignore him - there's even a handy feature on the board to do it with. I make a point of reading all of his posts, and usually try to come up with something productive to say if I'm going to say anything. I'm not a fan of the "say whatever comes to mind," and generally don't say anything unless I have something to say. People who just fling abuse at Jason make this place look like 4chan's unpopular little brother, and also make everyone here look immature and cruel. Let's all behave like the putative adults I think most of us are and actually debate Jason. Instead of abusing him, try and actually refute his points. Heck, maybe even actually look at what's being said and respond thoughtfully, although I know that might be asking too much from this crowd.

It doesn't bother me that much, actually. I don't like it as much as the one on SDN, but I do like it.

So, of the ten people who post on this board, 20 percent lived in Texas and moved to CA. We're also smart enough to know that a child's rhyme to keep themselves safe was not the only way to tell a viper from a constricting snake, right Tyralak? What's your complaint? Or are you just living up to your sig?

I'm was born in Houston, and lived in Dallas. Why would I need to know about coral snakes other than the Texas Coral Snake?

Can SF people carry swords? Because I wanna see Picard with a rapier, and Sisco with a battleaxe.

I think its more that forcefields might just have a very limited use. Can a phaser work through a personal forcefield? how do you prevent people from just modulating to shoot through it. Even Klingon rogues without modern equipment can pull off that trick, at least in the abstract. Would you deploy personal forcefields in large scale (division and corps +) ground combat, or even similar scale counter insurgencies? Yeah, then it probably makes sense. Does it make sense for small scale engagements, maybe not - I have no idea. The fact of the matter is that just that one line really doesn't tell us anything other than that they exist (and therefor contradicting that nice piece of jumped up fanon that Paul and Jason are such fans of). What they are used for, and how? We don't know. My explanation of limited uses and forcing the use of melee weapons has the nice bonus of explaining the Klingon fascination with bladed weapons, but it is no more or less valid than any other theory that explains why they don't show up anywhere other than the animated series.

And he gets a negrep for ignoring my post.

Of course it will, and the reason that they stopped making it (as I understand it) was that the new one was coming and the supplies of the old one were so high that no one had ordered in a long time. The point was to illustrate how similar looking things can be completely different. If someone were to throw a coral snake at a camera, teling which it is without freeze frame would be rather difficult. I, of course, don't recommend throwing coral snakes at anything, it's a good way to get a dose of neurotoxin.

You gave it away!!!! That's the same way I learned it.

A - That was a holodeck episode B - The two look nothing alike. And even if they did, oxygen looks the same as CO2 under visible light too, that doesn't make them the same thing by a long shot. P.S. One of these: looks about as much like one of these: As those two do. Are they the same snake? Before you answer, I'd remind you that they stopped making coral snake anti-venom a few years ago.

You have yet to present an application where a personal forcefield is used in combat, and frankly, a personal forcefield is an idiotic way to cambat anyone other than the federation. Either the forcefield will repel everything (making uses other than buckler style setups rather dicey as they repell the user from the ground) or they will only defend against energy, which means that either slug throwers, bows and arrows, or broadswords are about to make a huge comeback. Hrmm... there might actually be evidence for the use of personal forcefields in recent klingon history now that I think about it. Of course, there is no evidence that anyone else in ST ever had extensive use of them. Jason - you keep making "tech level" arguments and forgetting that optimization happens against certain threats and that there are almost always counters to a possible defense. Just because something is "more advanced" doesn't make it more dangerous - althought there are limits, generally at what I call the Clarkian bounderies - the places where technology becomes indistinguishable from magic. I would put my money on Patton commanding a modern Third Army (or even his own, but that would be approaching a clarkian situation) over - say - Picard commanding any amount of federation equipment we've seen onscreen. Do you understand why? The reason why the personal forcefield (especially a buckler style forcefield) would be a good idea for enemies of the federation is because of the Federation's painfully stupid refusal to adopt anything but the most technological way to solve a problem unless they are forced to. How many years has starfleet been fighting the borg and they've never bothered to issue something as simple to replicate as a battleaxe or even a sword to teams GUARANTEED to encounter borg patrols? Heck, even if the borg can adapt to bullets (I don't believe it and you'll never convince me they can, so don't even bother trying - but I'm going to grant that they can simply to point out how stupid the space hippies are in this context), we've been shown time and again that blunt and tearing trauma damages them severely.

WHAT? Are you joking?

The problem with that idea is that they never used them anywhere else. Perhaps they were getting ready for a biohazard issue? Agreed.

My new question is not "What are they used for outside of hazardous environments? (I'm even going to TAS for support)" Because they became space-hippies or space-NOAA, and stopped being a space navy?

Quotes, please?

My only argument with you is that in neither case was there any evidence of shockwaves, suggesting a maximum speed below the speed of sound. Also, the E-D at least seems to jump around. The viewscreen shots are not moving at more than 50-60 miles an hour, if that much.

GIVE ME ONE GOOD REASON NOT TO MERGE THIS LUNACY WITH YOUR OTHER ATTEMPTS TO PROVE THAT A JACKET IS ARMOR.

Crumple zones? Are you kidding me? Why? If you are seriously proposing that the designers of the Sovereign class wasted space, not to mention life support on crumple zones... On the off chance that somebody would ram? You want to know why the E-D saucer did so well? It's quite simple, it was designed to handle that kind of stress. It probably had special capacito-fed SIF and IDG generators, and it came in at a relatively shallow angle after bleeding most of it's velocity off. I'll do a scaling later, but I doubt it impacted at more than 150 kph, if that. Another thing that could have been used were tractor beams. Remember, as soon as it hits atmosphere, the AG should shut off, giving a power surplus, shields would cutout darn quick after reentry too, air regen should shut down around 10,000 feet, propulsion should have been dumped after the de-orbit burn (course, that's a net power loss, fusion reactors not being something you want to carry into a crash landing). The saucer should have a decent glide ratio as well. Logically, you should also be dumping as many escape pods as possible, ordinance dump, blackbox jettison, and lots of other stuff designed to aid survival. As for the ramming, velocities in space are almost impossible to judge, but simply the shape of the Scimitar is going to change the way the damage occurs

Exactly how many people were on that Maquis ship? I would have guessed even less than the nine we need at a minimum to make that work, and we know Voyager took casualties - notably the entire medical staff, the first officer, the chief engineer, and the helmsman.

I'm pretty sure there was a cut there, do we have any evidence that that wasn't a 20 year time jump?