Lurker > LtCommanderData

Follow up once then forget about it. Unfortunately a lot of companies will not bother giving you a rejection letter and simply toss your resume in the trash and move on.

It is not a stretch at all. The entire issue is that the Federation had a treaty with the Cardassian ceding border worlds, later turned Maquis worlds, to them and the Federation officially condemned the Maquis and cooperated with Cardassian efforts to apprehend them. They absolutely sided with the Cardassians.

Dash_Harber posted...

They had some more rivalry ongoing for about the first half of the series. I think it actually ended when during the mutli-episode story arch where Tom kept acting out and it came to a head when Tom and Chakotay almost came to blows, leading to Tom leaving the ship, joining the Kazon, and then turning out to be a double agent.

That whole incident was an act to give Tom's departure credibility to the leak, so it hardly lends credence to them still having a strained relationship.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Yeah, but when you consider the main complaint of the Maquis was that their home planets were basically "sold out" by the Federation, and now this particular group was halfway across the galaxy from home and completely disconnected from overarching politics, most of their reasons to be opposed to the Federation were negated.

I tend to think they would still harbor some level of resentment towards the Federation for abandoning them to the Cardassians and then later siding with the Cardassians against them, though. It is not something that needs to be overarching through the whole series, but at least give me some acknowledgement of it.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Doubly so when you realize that at least some Maquis WERE ex-Federation

Only two as far as we know, right? Chakotay and Tom were ex-Federation turned Maquis. B'elanna was an academy dropout and I don't think we're given any information about the rest at all as far as their origins.

Speaking of Chakotay and Tom what the hell happened to their rivalry? In the first episode they absolutely despise each other and that disappeared entirely by episode 2. Did Janeway beat the aggression out of them as an initiation right to join her command staff?

ParanoidObsessive posted...

"The Maquis and Starfleet personnel have to work together to get back home, and while the Maquis COULD suck it up and take a subordinate position in the crew the Starfleet crew members weren't likely to be all that willing to follow the orders of an outsider/mutineer who forced their way into command, so even the Maquis would be willing to follow Janeway."

From a pragmatic standpoint it makes sense that it would be a more Starfleet than Maquis crew. It is their ship, they outnumber the Maquis something like 3-to-1 and they are more disciplined, organized and professional. I am not really complaining about the direction of the crew hierarchy in that regard, I just wanted a lot more friction as the Maquis crew struggled to assimilate with the happy-go-lucky dandies of Starfleet.

It should have been a huge part of the first few seasons and we should have seen real growth on both sides as they both adjusted to each other's presence. Maybe the Starfleet officers learn to bend the rules a little more while the Maquis learn discipline and how to follow a rigid command structure. They explored these concepts maybe 2 or 3 times in the whole series and the crew became so homogenized that one of those times they had to explore it as a hypothetical tactical simulation because at that point it was so preposterous that the Maquis crew was anything but Starfleet. Hell for most of the series them being Maquis was so irrelevant that I totally forgot about it.

MasterGakke posted...

There have only been a handful of societies in history to be able to field heavily trained armies like that, though. Most of the actors in military conflicts are terrified, untrained peasants only there because they'd be killed otherwise.

That is mostly true, but it does not change what I said. I was not saying you were wrong about peasant levies being easy to train, just that there are levels of infantry and that is the lowest level.

MasterGakke posted...

Plus, any society who can afford to field an army like that has cavalry, unless they're really dumb or in a very bad way logistically.

The Romans, though, had comparatively shitty cavalry to their neighbors. That is why so much of their cavalry arm later on was composed of foreign auxiliaries. The Romans were heavy infantry men at the core.

MasterGakke posted...

Infantry, on the other hand, just requires press ganging farmers and handing them pointy sticks.

Shitty infantry that will rout immediately requires that. Excellent heavy infantry, like Roman Legionaries, required significant training.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Speed + arrows that pierce armor > heavy plate

It's similar to how gunpowder basically made plate armor entirely obsolete in combat.

I had always assumed it was simply the sheer volume of arrows that allowed for victory, not that it could penetrate plate. That is, if you fire 100 arrows per soldier, a few arrows are going to find gaps and many more are going to kill horses rendering them even more useless. Add to that that most soldiers in European armies were levies and not fully plated knights and its a recipe for disaster.

Admittedly I am not extremely well-versed in this subject. Is there historical evidence that the Mongol bow could punch clean through plate and the underlying gambeson? Even early guns had trouble doing that given that one of the tests of a good armor was to literally shoot it and display the dent as a mark of quality: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-rdfeP1gCp4k/T9USX79XvrI/AAAAAAAACiQ/HfNSlvJyd2U/s640/DSCN0894.JPG

streamofthesky posted...

It's why Genghis Khan will always be the most impressive historical figure to me, when you combine all the civil and social reforms and advancements he also made for his people.

I'd put Napoleon above him honestly given the closer military parity of the time and the Napoleonic code.

streamofthesky posted...

Better weapons, tactics, mobility and speed, battlefield experience...pretty much literally every other factor other than armor?

Logistics too, which is often sorely underrated in what is required to win a war.

Horse archers

ParanoidObsessive posted...

You've basically summed up the major problem with Janeway, though.

In theory, she was a strong character, and her actress was great, but the writers could never really decide on what sort of character she was actually supposed to be, so it's almost like there's 3-4 different Janeways and you're never entirely sure when an episode starts which one is going to show up that week.

So one episode she'll absolutely refuse to break the Prime Directive in even the most minor of ways, and then two weeks later she'll murder her way through what might have otherwise been a relatively diplomatic situation.

I always got the feeling that rather than writing Janeway to be a legitimately strong, charismatic character they just wrote the other characters to be excessively submissive to her authority in a backwards attempt to accomplish the same thing. Take Chakotay, for example. A renegade, former Starfleet Maquis captain turned first officer? That had the potential for a lot of really interesting storylines on how two people with such different ideologies and ways of doing things would come together to form a cohesive crew. Nope, pretty much on day one Chakotay became her whipped dog and with a few minor exceptions, like that one traitor, the Maquis basically fell in line and became good little Starfleet peons. We can't have anyone questioning Janeway's authority otherwise people will start to think she's weak and ineffectual. The audience is too stupid to be trusted with more complex concepts apparently.

JOExHIGASHI posted...

I wonder what the penalty for getting convicted of breaking into a studio and stealing the physical copy of the movie compared to convicted of pirating over internet

Breaking and entering is probably a more serious offensive in your jurisdiction than simple larceny.

JOExHIGASHI posted...

Copyright infringement is punished harsher than physically taking things from a store

I wonder what the penalty for getting convicted of breaking into a studio and stealing the physical copy of the movie compared to convicted of pirating over internet

Copyright Infringement is usually a civil matter and larceny is criminal. If it is a first offense and a small item, you are probably correct. If it is something expensive or you have a history of doing it infringement is only punished more harshly if you value your assets more than your freedom and clean criminal record.

faramir77 posted...

Half of 13.5" is 6.75" which is still a large dick.

Even bigger if he was talking about by volume. IIRC this guy has ridiculous girth too.

SmokeMassTree posted...

Larger than average*

I wouldn't call that large

https://calcsd.bitballoon.com/

Apparently it is 98th percentile for length. What would you consider large?

I understand that Arkaria has some very interesting weather patterns.

Questionmarktarius posted...

No, not really. It's infringement, which is functionally closer to 'unauthorized borrowing' were it a physical object.

Yeah, you can not really argue that it is ethical, however they are not losing any inventory. They try to argue that they are losing hypothetical purchases, but you can not even estimate that very well because it is impossible to tell who would have actually purchased it and who is downloading it just because it is not costing them money. Copyright infringement is a better description of it because in reality you are copying it not taking it.

SunWuKung420 posted...

Yea. Quite the since Wednesday to be honest.

However a change in routine is often invigorating and can be a welcome diversion don't you agree?

It has been quite a day, has it not?