Posting Problems

by | May 18, 2013 | Culture and Society | 18 comments

Marc Millis’ article “Star Trek, Star Tech,” posted on Friday, has been taken down temporarily due to server problems that are now being investigated. As soon as I get these ongoing site maintenance issues resolved, the article will be reposted.

18 Comments

  1. James D. Stilwell on May 18, 2013 at 9:30

    I saved the article in case you didn’t….Jim

  2. Paul Gilster on May 18, 2013 at 9:35

    Thanks, Jim. I’ve got backups here, but I appreciate the thought. Still working the problem.

  3. Marc Millis on May 18, 2013 at 11:02

    James –
    If you also saved the comments, I would love to get a copy since I’m not sure if I can re-create what answers I already gave.

    Marc

  4. ljk on May 18, 2013 at 15:50

    Have the comments to this piece been saved too?

  5. Peter Chapin on May 19, 2013 at 11:23

    There’s an episode of the original series Star Trek where the Enterprise visits a planet, I believe called Memory Alpha, that contains a library holding a huge repository of the Federation’s knowledge. The planet had been attacked by some unknown entity. When Kirk and Spock and some others beam down to the surface Spock immediately checks the computer system only to discover that the database of information stored there has been erased. “It’s a disaster for the galaxy,” he says (or something like that).

    When I last saw the episode, a number of years ago now, my first thought was, “What? They don’t make off-planet backups?” I’m sure in “real life” the data would be replicated to several systems scattered across the Federation. Or maybe the days of central repositories will be over by then and such a library would be stored in a distributed manner over the whole network.

  6. Alex Tolley on May 19, 2013 at 12:26

    @Peter – it was TOS Series 3, ep. 18 “The Lights of Zetar”.

    What was the federation thinking? A single point of failure for all galactic knowledge, especially given the threats that the Federation knew about. But this was 1969, when computers were mainframes and networking was primarily to terminals. Funnily enough, as data migrates to the cloud and only a few vendors predominate, we may be returning to that model again…

  7. Paul Gilster on May 19, 2013 at 19:11

    ljk writes:

    Have the comments to this piece been saved too?

    They’re currently in limbo but I’m trying to recover them. The larger problem is the continuing flakiness about posting, which is resulting in posts with broken text and images. Numerous eyes are now on the problem.

  8. James D. Stilwell on May 19, 2013 at 22:15

    My save stopped with Marc Millis. Didn’t save the subsequent comments…

  9. Dmitri on May 20, 2013 at 13:20

    Pity they haven’t restored the missing content over the weekend. Things happen and I hope they’ll reach our satisfaction soon.

    Regarding comments they can be restored via your browser cache. Just detective work needs to be done who was the last one reading the comments. The instruction to recover the browser’s cache content is here – http://lifehacker.com/5477287/recover-recently-deleted-web-content-via-your-browsers-cache

    I hope this will help to salvage the content. I actually think it’s more an issue with connecting the data set/base on the host side. That would mean all is safe and sound just the access to this is hindered.

    Hope for better, be prepared for worst.

  10. Paul Gilster on May 20, 2013 at 15:37

    Thank you, Dmitri. Actually, I was able to salvage the comments a different way just this afternoon, but if it hadn’t worked, I would have tried your method. Glad they’re safe, as many were excellent and I’d hate to lose them. Everything else is well backed up, so this will work out.

  12. Michael on May 21, 2013 at 14:03

    ‘The engines cannae? take it captain!?’

    Sorry could’nt help it,

  13. ljk on May 21, 2013 at 14:15

    This quote from the Space.com article linked above should be raising red alerts big time here:

    “Those cuts come as NASA and the rest of the federal government negotiate sequestration cuts, which could trim $7 billion from NASA’s ledgers next year if the reductions are maintained.”

  14. Raffaele Antonio Tavani on May 21, 2013 at 15:04

    Salve, a voi tutti.

    In attesa di poter rileggere l’articolo “andato perso” scritto di recente da Paul Gilster, vi invito a leggere questo interessante articolo, che offre interessanti spunti di riflessione.
    http://www.itworld.com/hardware/357419/nasa-chief-technologist-our-destiny-lies-among-planets-our-solar-system
    Saluti da Antonio Tavani

    Via Google Translate:

    Hello to all of you.

    Waiting to re-read the article “lost” recently written by Paul Gilster, I invite you to read this interesting article, which offers interesting insights.

    Greetings from Antonio Tavani

  16. coacervate on May 23, 2013 at 17:22

    Perhaps we can continue a discussion on this very interesting topic. One way to look at the problem, lets say getting to Alpha C for example is as a kind of technological race involving known “nuts and bolts” technology (and the inherent light speed limit) and break through advances in physics that result in some form of stargate/wormhole thingamabob. Underlying (or overarching?) would be developments in biology/bionics speed-volving into entirely new intelligent life forms custom fitted to suit living in strange new environments.

    I envision half-light speed steam-punk probes being ceremoniously received by these trans-dimensionauts who’ve already made the “jump” to AC and beyond. Childs play in a Clarke-ian sort of way if you catch my drift.

    But before I wax too lyrical, I wanted to say that I strongly endorse inclusion of more updates from the people working on FTL or whatever form the new physics will take. Thanks for this uplifting and gutsy blog!

  17. Peter on May 23, 2013 at 17:58

    It’s been almost a week- it seems you guys could really use a tech support guy. Might I suggest a crowd source funding campaign to raise the money to hire one… it should be easy given the integrity of this site.