I'd add basic HTML to the list of durable formats. Even if there is difficulty in rendering it as a webpage, it can be opened the file in a text editor and the document information (such as the text and formatting) is easy to figure out.

jkiol wrote:

Not only have I forgotten how to write in cursive, I've forgotten how to write in lower case.

I also don't use lower case letters when writing. Rather, my "lower case" letters are simply half the size of my "capital" letters.

This is due to my time in the military, when I was working in jobs that trained me to write in all upper case letters for clarity (errors caused by unclear handwriting were not acceptable). Even when no longer required by the job, I found that I liked the clarity that writing that way provided to both me and people who needed to read my handwriting.

That is the main reason, besides lack of use, that I no longer write in cursive. Even when writing in cursive regularly, at times my own handwriting was difficult for me to read when I tried to read something that I'd written recently. But with things I've written in block letters (as described above), even decades later they are still as legible as computer-printed documents.

Despite the advent of computers, I think there will always be a need for handwriting. But as it has been made clear by the many posts in the thread, one of the main reasons cursive is fading from use is that many people find it much easier to write in block lettering or in upper/lower case lettering. That, and people's bad experience in trying to learn and use cursive have caused them to abandon cursive when no longer required to use it.

I think that, eventually, cursive writing will move into the same realm as calligraphy. It will be an admired artistic skill that (when done well) produces beautiful results.

mikael_j wrote:

If I recall correctly these days some researchers are classifying Generation X as those born between the mid-60s and the late 70s and Generation Y as those born from the mid-80s to the mid-90s with those born inbetween these two generations being called the "Cold Y Generation".

/Mikael

There was a book called "13th Gen" released a few years ago that deals with the people that have also been called "Generation X." Per that book, using those born in the mid-60s to mid-80s as the defining birth years is based on the end of the baby boom. "13th Gen" refers to those born between 1961 and 1981 as the thirteen generation since the founding of the United States.

The reason that the book "13th Gen" uses 1961 to 1981 as the defining birth years for the 13th Gen is that while the baby boom continued to the mid-1960s, the individuals born after 1960 were socially and culturally different from those who were part of the Baby Boom Generation.

Opportunist wrote as part of a post:

Rights holders claim that without DRM they'd lose sales. My claim is you lose at least as many because of it. Actually, you don't "win" any sales with DRM, or rather, compared to the sales you lose because of DRM, your gain is minuscle.

I can provide a personal example of lost sales due to DRM. I basically passed on buying music on-line due to DRM, regardless of the price. Basically, it was only until this year, when I could get DRM-free music from iTunes and Amazon.com, that I started buying music on-line (mostly music that I could not locally find on CD or was too expensive on CD).

Now, I've purchased quite a bit of music on-line. But if DRM was still in place, those sales would not have happened.

91degrees wrote and included with a post:

Yeah, that totally didn't ruin any immersion..

No, what ruined the immersion was bad voice acting.

Does the fact that Chief Wiggum, Moe, Principal Skinner, Apu and Professor Frink all have the same voice actor ruin The Simpsons? No, because Hank Azaria is a talented actor who gives each character his own voice. Hell, Eeyore and Optimus Prime have the same voice. Nobody cares because they sound different.

I think that is the key ("Nobody cares because they sound different"). Each character should have a distinctive voice, and one that is appropriate to the character. That is the problem with using famous actors as voice actors, the real them tends to overpower the character they are playing.

Returning to the anime series Bleach, there is a voice actor named Kyle Hebert who provides the voice of both Ganju Shiiba and Sosuke Aizen. The performance he gives as each character is so completely different that it was complete surprise to find out that the same voice actor performs both characters.

tepples wrote and included with a post:

[In a non-Pokemon related work,] They had used the same voice actor as the one who did Misty in the Dutch translated version of the Pokemon tv show.
Yeah, that totally didn't ruin any immersion..

Did it also ruin immersion when Tim Allen played Tim Taylor in Home Improvement, Santa Claus in The Santa Clause trilogy, and Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story?

Sometimes using the same voice actor for different roles can be a little distracting. I'm a fan of the series Bleach and many of the voice actors from that series do many different characters. For example, a check of the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) shows that Wendee Lee, Megan Hollingshead, Kate Higgins, and Stephanie Sheh both do at least two regular voice actor roles in the series. But they often alter their voices so that they sound significantly different in different roles.

Also, many of the voice actors from Bleach have appeared in many other series over the years. As an example, a check of the IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0283253/) shows that Wendee Lee alone has over 290 voice actor credits.

BitterOak wrote:

Meryl Streep's character in Doubt had it absolutely right. Ball-point pens are to blame. People in my parent's generation who learned to write with fountain pens always seemed to have better handwriting than me. I always struggled with cursive in school: my writing was very slow and messy.

A few years ago I bought my first fountain pen, and now, writing is a pleasure. I still don't write terribly neatly; it seems whatever pen you learn to write with determines your handwriting for life. But I can write in cursive much faster and my penmanship has improved a bit. If you have never tried a fountain pen, I urge you to. I never thought writing cursive could be a pleasure.

I agree that fountain pens are terrific to write with. I used to use them in high school because they gave better writing quality that ball point pens. With recent pens, the ones that come closest to the writing quality of fountain pens are the rollerball pens (the kind of pen I use now) and the gel writer pens.

Returning to the topic of the thread, I think the major factor that has led to cursive writing falling into disuse is that people are no longer required to use it. For myself, outside of grade school I've never been required to write in cursive. Now, I no longer have the ability to write in cursive.

I think another factor in the decline in cursive handwriting is that so much of our writing no longer remains in a fixed place. What I mean by this is, before the advent of electronic communication our writing basically stayed on a piece of paper. The only way the writing could travel is if it was sent or handcarried to someone.

Now, much of what we write travels in a non-physical form. Rather that writing letters on paper, we write e-mails and text messsages where the text only exists in an electronic form. Also, much of what is handwritten ends up being retyped into an electronic format at a later time.

Man On Pink Corner wrote as part of a post:

An earlier poster had it right: batteries are bombs. Want a lot of power in a small space? Then you're going to have to put up with the occasional case of China Syndrome. Sorry, that's how it works.

From what I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong), it is in the nature of lithium batteries to go out of control. Much of the engineering of lithium batteries is to (1) prevent them from following their nature (ensure they don't go out of control) and (2) ensure they fail safely when it does occur.

I think the last point is the key. If the battery in a device fails, it should fail in a way that doesn't put the user in danger (even if it destroys the device).

Mattman723 wrote:

Who's read Y: The Last Man...

I have. A good solid series, and the type of story that it would be difficult to tell in any other medium (except, possibly, as a textual book) without a large number of changes to the story.

Kesch wrote:

Anonymous sperm donation is pretty much the only way to get out of child support. In every other case the court has ruled "in favor of the child" which means the man has to pay child support even if he was raped. In contrast to much of society, reproductive rights are an area where the women have the men by the balls.

I think the only way an anonymous sperm donor can be safe from being required to pay child support is if it is truly anonymous, meaning there is completely impossible identify the donor. If a single record exists that can be used to identify the donor, then I would not be surprised if that could be used to require child support payments.

Also, there have been cases where it is later proven that a man is not the child's father but he is required to pay child support. If he fails to raise an objection in a timely manner, he can be forced to pay child support for a child that is not his.

MarkvW wrote:

If a woman gets your blood, then she can bear your children? Wow! This will be a great argument for deadbeat dads! Now they can truthfully say "I never had sexual relations with that woman."

Black markets for the blood of rich men . . .
Personal IP rights in your personal blood composition . . .

Wow, the world got more interesting on 7/08/2009!!!!

This could be a serious legal problem for men in the future. I'm not a lawyer, but based on what I've read the general guide is that if male reproductive material is used to produce a child, the biological father is liable for child support no matter what the specific circumstances are.

In the scenario mentioned by MarkvWI in his first quoted paragraph above, I don't think it is out of the realm of possibility that the man the blood was taken from could be held liable for child support.

techess wrote as part of a post:

So this is where I'm going to throw my two cents in and get declared a heretic. This is exactly why my favorite Trek is DS9. Captain Sisko was a good mix of action and diplomacy. They had a lot of different races that were major characters, and most importantly to me the characters changed. They were completely different people at the end of the show.

I, too, enjoyed DS9 on the whole. One of the main reasons was Captain Sisko. Much as has been made about Kirk breaking the rules, but Sisko pushed it even further at points.

Two cases come to mind (I don't remember the names of the episodes). In one, he made a planet uninhabitable for humans in order to force Eddington (his former security chief) to turn himself in and he was prepared to do it to planet after planet until Eddington turned himself in. Sisko view was that Eddington was a threat to the Federation, and Sisko would remove that threat.

In another case, he allowed the death of a Romulan representative in order to bring the Romulans into the war against the Dominion. Despite the fact that his actions would lead to more deaths, Sisko could live with it.

RoboRay wrote:

But I think it's a shame that Abrams decided just to throw something together based on the Trek franchise, film it in a spectacular way and profit, ignoring the existing trek history when it got in his way.

Umm, that's kind of what "reboots" are all about.

If you restrict yourself to working completely within the pre-existing material, it's not a reboot at all. It's a sequel (or prequel). A reboot of a franchise typically occurs when the property owners reallize that irreconcialable mistakes have been made, and the only way to fix things is to start over and pretend the earlier material doesn't exist. They'll typically reuse a great deal of it, but anything and everything is subject to change, to suit the revised story.

An example of this is in the comic series "Legion Of Super-Heroes." In 1994 the creative team completely wiped out the entire continuity and started over again. The reason was that its continuity had been so damaged by recent events (such as Superman having never been a Superboy, and then the complete deletion of Superboy and Supergirl from continuity, and inserting new characters to take their place) that the writers were spending a massive amount of time trying to fix the continuity rather than moving the series forward. I've compared what was done with the Legion to the writers of Star Trek suddenly being told by the powers that be that "James T. Kirk never existed, deal with it" and yet being required to revise many of the old stories and replace Kirk with another similar character.

Worse, every time the writers did fix something, something else would happen in another comic series that the Legion writers would have to work around. Every fix lead to more problems which had to be fixed, which led to more problems. In the end, there was little choice but to wipe it all out and then start again. This turned out to be a good thing because the writers were able to focus on telling good stories.

This is why I think rebooting Star Trek is a good thing. Each new movie can focus on telling a great story, one that is planned to be built upon and used in the future, while not having work with a massive already-existing continuity. But the writers do need to ensure that each movie in the new series is kept consistent with the previous ones.

MightyMartian wrote:

I agree. This is, after all, a REBOOT. That means a lot of the cruft from about thirty years of post-ToS development is being dispensed with, and that's fine by me. This is meant to rejuvenate a series that had pretty much become one monstrous cliche of itself. If there's one thing ToS had that, over time, the later series lacked, it was solid, straightforward storytelling. Everything was burdened down by the vast edifice of Everything-That-Had-Come-Before. The last two attempts, the dull Voyager and the increasingly-pathetic Enterprise, showed just how uninteresting it had all become.

The Trouble With Tribbles was just fine with Klingons speaking English, thank you very much. In fact, and so will this.

I think that starting over is the key. From what I've picked up, this movie is starting from scratch and nothing we've seen previously will count. This gives the new team the freedom to take the series in a new direction, without being bogged down with having to deal any of the already-existing stories.

One thing I that has been overlooked is that when the Original Series was done, I doubt much thought was given to the possibility that writers would have to live with these stories over 40 years later. Added to the fact that the limitations of television further prevented the writers from doing stories they'd like to do. Although I was doubtful about the new movie when I first heard about it, I find that I'm looking forward to it.

I think one of the biggest mistakes that the new Star Trek could make is to simply tell the same stories over again. Unlike the Original Series (which had much already established even if we hadn't yet seen it), it appears that this movie will start at the beginning. It is possible that the reason the Klingons don't appear in the new movie is that the Federation hasn't encountered them (yet). It could be that the first time we see the Klingons is during a full-out war with the Federation (how that happened, now there's a story).

pentalive wrote:

Of course wouldn't the Klingon reply be "It is a good day to take yours."

That sounds more appropriate for a Ferengi than for a Klingon.