Ancient inscriptions from classical, and older (e.g., ancient Middle Eastern), times often contain curses against those who would deface, or in some cases alter, them. The key is that they don't seem to prohibit copying them at all.

Jollyreaper's posting is right on target.

As soon as writers get a hold of a holodeck, an all-powerful being (Q), or time travel, you can kiss the show goodbye. It's like comedians making jokes about sex: Sure, sex jokes can be good, but all too often they just mean the comedian is running short on material, and because sex is an easy giggle, they seize on it. It becomes like a comedian's deus ex machina. With a holodeck or all-powerful being you get the same thing - almost a literal deus ex machina. And with time travel, that machine quickly reveals the writer's scientific and creative limitations, as he or she either ignores obvious paradoxes, or lamely explains them away.

I sometimes wonder whether the reason why most SciFi series's all seem to go this sorry route is that the Writer's Guild limits, consciously, the show's ability to draw in fresh ideas. SciFi and Fantasy writing is hard, and takes imagination. And you can't just stick a bunch of writers in a room and expect them (without serious prodding and mining the outside world for new ideas) to avoid burbling on about sex, holodecks, time travel, space anomalies, and all the clichés they've come to be known for.

I'm still wondering, though, when we can have space ships that don't bank and turn (like a plane in the atmosphere) or make 'noise' when they explode in the emptiness of space, and when we have a bridge with a window to the outside world that doesn't look like my neighbor's HD TV - but rather fills most or all of the room, and doesn't just point 'forward' (with other ships always approaching with an identical orientation). I understand that one has to make concessions to the realities of earth-bound production (e.g., everyone has to speak the same language, they need mostly to be humanoid, corridors on ships need to be big enough to accommodate cameras, etc.). But that shouldn't mean that all plots must be constructed around a bunch of hackneyed conventions.

If SciFi is going to draw in new people, it really needs to go where no one has gone before, kinda like Firefly started to do (see the thread on Fox SciFi, though, for why that didn't happen).

Of course, part of me knows, deep down, that the reason SciFi is often so stupid is that we ourselves are stupid. Or at least I am. I watch this stuff, after all.

Could some of the more rabid Apple fans help the rest of us understand why you tolerate being slapped around an alarmingly litigious firm? I don't mean this as a smart-ass question. I use Apple products myself (I have a Mac on my desktop at work alongside a Linux box/Windows XP workstation). Please help the rest of us understand.