Some of you may or may not remember my recent grumbling session titled Cylons Don’t Use Backups. I complained at length about the silliness of having an emergency resurrection system that has no failsafe and no backup. Some of you actually came up with really interesting explanations on why the system works the way it does. I especially liked Tino’s bit about consciousness being a set of quantum states that can be transmitted but not stored. In my mind, that actually makes sense so I’m sold on that theory.

I just watched the latest BSG episode “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner” and I want to cry. If you haven’t seen that episode, I will warn you that the rest of this post will be a bit spoilish, so you probably should stop reading now.

Let me tell you why do I feel like crying though. It’s because in this latest episode Cylons just revealed that their whole resurrection network is a SPOF system. Just after I came to terms with their rather irresponsible (in my mind) no-backup, no-failsafe scheme, they go and do something that is a 100 times less responsible. They build their whole system (which BTW is of the utmost importance for every living Cylon) with almost a criminal design flaw that would get most engineers fired on the spot.

Oh, yes. I should probably explain what a SPOF is to those of you who do not thing in acronyms. SPOF is short for Single Point of Failure. In engineering it can be defined as:

A component that, if it fails, will cause the entire system to go down.

In the episode “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner” the rebelling Cylons offer a mutually beneficial bargain to the Colonials. They will reveal the location of their “Central Resurrection Hub” in exchange for help in identifying the final 5 Cylon models. Here it is, in it’s full glory:

image @copy; galacticabbs.com

The hub is the previously discussed “boxing functionality” where the Xena Warrior Princes er… Diana model is held in stasis. It is also central nexus of the Cylon resurrection network. We are told that once it is destroyed, all Cylons will lose their ability to resurrect. Yep, the whole seemingly distributed resurrection network with a dedicated R-ship attached to each fleet, has a single point of failure. This single space vessel coordinates resurrections for all Cylons in the universe – both the planet dwelling, as well as space borne. Yep, there is only ONE of these. How is it defended? Well, there are couple of base stars that seem to be floating around it, but a single Raptor patrol was able to jump in, take some pictures and jump away without anyone noticing. So their security seems to be rather lax at this point. Other than that, they just jump it from one location to another every once in a while to avoid detection.

My reaction:

You’d think that there would be a local hub on Caprica for example. Or on some other planets. You would think there would be many of those all over the place – for example, one per occupied planet, and then few others for each major fleet. But no. There is one, and if it is destroyed, then the whole Cylon race instantly loses their immortality. I’m sorry, but WHAT THE FUCK IN HELL?

Let’s assume that the station is virtually indestructible. It is very well defended, and it jumps every few hours using complex patterns that make it almost impossible to track. Cylons may be confident that Colonials do not have the resources to take down this station. But what if it malfunctions? What if there is a fire on board? What if there is a problem with their communication equipment? In a station that size there is half a million things that may go wrong – and any of them can put the whole facility offline for anywhere from minutes, hours to even days. Are Cylon’s really this stupid? Do they actually enjoy gambling with their lives?

Did anyone actually read this script critically, or is everyone just to wrapped up in the BSG mysticism to actually worry about stuff like, I don’t know, logic, common sense and basic engineering principles? To me the Resurrection Hub is nothing more than a huge plot device. It is the ultimate prize. They had tho have something huge at stake, otherwise it would be out of character for Adm. Adama to agree to this uneasy truce between humans and rebel Clons. Too bad it is also laughably stupid.

No one builds mission critical systems this way. No one! Even if there is some strange reason (ie the quantum thing) that would require only a single hub of this type to be in operation, there is no reason why there should be only a single one in existence. They could easily build many hubs like this one – all of them identical in every aspect. But only one would be online at all times – others would act as backups, and/or decoys. In case of an attack or a malfunction the active hub would shut down and transfer control to one of it’s copies.

Then again, perhaps Cylon’s do not actually understand the resurrection technology at all. Perhaps there is only one Hub in existence because they do not know how to build another one. Perhaps they were created with an intentional design flaw, and they simply never were able to improve upon it. Perhaps they sort of know how to maintain the Hub and the R-ships but they are unable re-create this technology and lack knowledge to even reverse-engineer it. This would sort of fit pretty well with their religious zealotry.

If reverse engineering certain “sacred” technologies was forbidden by their religion then they wouldn’t do it for the same reason why some models refuse to search for the final 5 models. Maybe this is all part of a big plan set forth by their creators, or perhaps their god who may not actually be a divine being at all.

What do you think? Is the hub a plot device, or an arcane artifact that Cylons depend on, but do not understand?

[tags]battle start galactica, bsg, cylons, resurrection, resurrection hub[/tags]

screencap © galacticabbs.com

This is the super-secret note that Colonel Tigh (a very senior military officer, and the former leader of the New Caprica resistance movement) passed to Chief Tyrol (who also had experience in NC resistance movement) about an incredibly secretive meeting which was accidentally intercepted by Tyrol’s wife Cally. This sort of thing happened to me too – back in grade school. Since then, I have learned to use encryption.

Let’s review – both Tigh and Tyrol are Cylons (if I just spoiled you, then go back and watch S3 finale already and stop complaining) and they must keep this secret. If anyone would find out about who or what they really are, their lives vrypotwould be in danger. Therefore keeping their true identity secret should be their paramount concern – and no effort should be spared to cover their own tracks. But here we have an experienced leader who had tons and tons of experience operating behind enemy lines make a colossal, bone headed mistake that might have exposed them. It is just stupid!

I do think about encryption all the time because of my education and my job – I’m conditioned to notice these things. A lot of people never even consider it. For example a housewife cheating on her husband may not have been exposed to concepts such as cryptography and information security so she may never even think about using anything but unsecured notes like this one. But these folks, for one have a military training. I have never been in the military so I might be wrong about this but I would think that security and simple cryptography would be part of basic training at least for officers. I’d think that they ought to know about cryptography in case they find themselves behind enemy lines, or in a position where all their communications are intercepted. If I’m wrong, please correct me.

Even if they didn’t get this knowledge in basic training, you can’t tell me they haven’t developed strong, low tech methods of encryption during the New Caprica occupation. Let’s face it – if a silly note like that ended up in the hands of the occupying forces it could mean many deaths, or loss of valuable resources. They simply could not afford to openly communicate their attack plans or resistance movement secrets in plaintext.

What should they have used? There are many low-fi methods to obfuscate or encrypt hand written notes. A simple Caesar Cipher would probably be good enough for plausible deniability in front of Cally. Would she be curious enough to try to crack it? Perhaps, but it is likely that Tyrol could easily play the gibberish note as some sort of an entry code he needed on a routine repair job or simply shrug and act as if it was just that – gibberish.

For real security they should probably use One Time Pad encryption. The pad is a long random sequence of symbols that is used as a key to encrypt and decrypt your message. This method was used successfully by CIA and KGB in the past. How does a pad look? It can be something like this:

image © ranum.com

It is really a relatively secure method as long as you destroy the pads after each use, and you have a foolproof method of securely exchanging them. Our protagonists do have one, since they meet regularly. On each meeting they could exchange pads, which they would then use for written communication until the next meeting. The pads can be small and easy to conceal. A very nice disguise for a pad is a stack of papers with random stream of characters printed on one side, and unrelated hand written notes on the back. Plausible deniability – it’s just scrap paper – some gibberish spit out by some malfunctioning printer and you are just using it for personal notes.

When handled properly, it’s virtually unbreakable and in my honest opinion would be near prefect for this setup. But it seems that the BSG writers have never took a cryptology class. I’d say they ought to hire a consultant who could advise them on blunders like this one, but the difficult part is that an average person wouldn’t even think that this part of the screenplay would need to be looked at by a technologically clueful person.

So this is my BSG nitpick for today. I love that show, and this is why I hold it to a high standard and will ruthlessly pick on the little annoying little bits like this one. They simply destroy my enjoyment and prevent me from buying into the drama. I should be freaked out that Cally found the note and she will expose the final 5 but all I can think of is that C. Thigh is an idiot for leaving that note in plaintext.

Sigh… Sometimes I think I would enjoy TV and movies much more if I was just absolutely, technologically inept and clueless. :P

[tags]bsg, battlestar galactica, galactica, one time pad, caesar cipher, encryption, cryptography, weapons locker[/tags]

It is usually very easy to make viewers accept magical events. All you have to do is to make up some magical system and say “this is just how magic works in this mystical world”. After all, we don’t have magic in the real world, so we might as well go with it. As long as the rules governing this magical system seem logical, consistent within the story, and do not contradict themselves it is easy for us to accept it.

Technology tends to be used the same way. Unfortunately, unlike magic we are pretty good at science. A lot of viewers have scientific degrees and at the very lest, most people took a science class or two in school. So if you start bending and contradicting laws of physics, we can easily call you on it. When you introduce a futuristic technology it must not only be consistent, but also plausible. Of course if you are blatant enough about it, and make it obvious you don’t even pretend to be using “real science” you end up in the same realm as magic. For example Lightsabers are so far fetched that we just accept them even though it would be impossible to construct them. Same goes for various methods that allow spaceships to travel faster than light. We all know it’s impossible, but we agree on this convention because it makes the story more interesting. These devices have no scientific basis for them so they are really nothing more but techno-magic. But closer you show us something that looks and acts just like existing real world technology, we will sort-of expect it continue working within the same limitations and in the same way.

Having a degree in Computer Science and working in IT for a long time doesn’t help me suspend my disbelief when writers try to include technology in their stories without actually bothering to understand how it works in the real world. Usually any movie or show that features “hackers” or computer security experts and etc.. makes me roll my eyes so hard, and so often that it actually hurts. :P Science Fiction often doesn’t cause as much eye strain for me – often because it’s usually pretty good about portraying science and technology in plausible way. Still, every once in a while even hard SF or Space Operas manage to drop the ball and annoy me with inane or poorly researched and thought out “future tech”.

For example, let’s take one of my all time favorites – Battlestar Galactica. The Cylon resurrection system that is an important part of the story has been pissing me off for a while now. I don’t have a problem with the system itself but it is portrayed as having an inherent flaw that more than once was used as a plot device. It’s just that the flaw is ridiculous, and it is almost inconceivable that no one ever worked out a countermeasure for it. Any engineer or sysadmin would ask two questions during his first visit to a Cylon resurrection shop – “how do you do backups?” and “What is the emergency restore procedure to the when a unit fails away from the ship without having a chance to transmit the latest state?”. Sad part is that it seems that no one ever thought about that.

For those of you who haven’t watched the series let me explain.

In the BSG universe, when an individual Cylon dies his or her consciousness is instantaneously transferred into a vat grown spare body which is kept on a specialized, well protected Resurrection Ship. The transmission seems to be instant, and happens at the exact moment of death but this process seems to have a limited range. This is why every Cylon fleet takes at least one Resurrection Ship with them wherever it goes. So far, so good – I don’t have a problem with that – in fact it is a pretty good system. Personally, I’d have a resurrection chamber on each Base Star and turn it into a distributed system, but I guess growing new bodies requires space and resources so centralizing this function is not such a bad idea.

The show however came up with an interesting idea. Want to truly kill your Cylon enemies in a way that prevents them from ever coming back? It’s easy as pie. All you have to do is to destroy the local Resurrection Ship and then simply do your thing. Yep, it’s that easy. Imagine being a Cylon and having to deal with that. If you accidentally die 10 feed beyond the range of the closest R-ship then BOOM! Permadeath! Your near immortality is over.

The sysadmin part of me reels in horror after hearing this. Who designs systems like this? What we have here is a permanent, irrecoverable data loss happening every time an expendable and temporary shell for your AI expires beyond the range of your wireless network. Thats is a criminally stupid design flaw – and one which could be easily fixed! Didn’t these people hear about backups?

Let’s think about it – the transmission of consciousness is almost instant. We have seen it on the show many times. Old body dies, and the Cylon wakes up in a vat of goo almost instantly. This tells me that it takes only a split second to send given Cylon’s memories and personality back to the resurrection ship, and few more seconds to actually upload it to a spare body. Since they are able to do this at all I think it is indisputable that heir consciousness can be fully digitized. There is this notion out there that digitizing human consciousness will never be possible because there is actually more to it than a mapping of neural connections and distribution of electric charges. I don’t know whether or not this is true, but obviously Cylon psyche can be transmitted digitally without any problems. If you can digitize something, you can back it up to permanent storage.

In other words, if Cylons have technology to upload the transmitted consciousness to a vat grown body, then they absolutely must have a technology to temporarily or permanently store this data on some sort of media. I mean it is a prerequisite – before you can put the consciousness in a body, you have to be able to store it somewhere. In fact, I imagine that the Resurrection Ships must be buffering these transmissions in some way before they do the body uploads.

For example, what happens if a Base Star is destroyed? Now you have instantaneous transmission from hundreds if not thousand Cylons streaming down from the wreckage, probably on the same frequency. What happens if the vats are not ready? What if there is a temporary power outage in the vat room? What if the prepared bodies turn out to be defective and need to be discarded? What if the transmission comes in with potential errors caused by outside interference? It’s just simple engineering concerns – you need to have a buffer which will hold the upload until the body is ready. Otherwise you would often miss the window of opportunity and consciousness transfers would simply get lost in space for silly reasons. Not to mention the need to check for transmission errors. It would be a pity to see a Cylon emerge from a vat half-retarded because the post-death transmission included static noise that could have been easily removed in some pre-processing CRC check.

So, if they are processing and buffering the signal there is no reason why they couldn’t just dump it into storage for safe keeping. What is the difference between storing it in memory for 20 seconds and saving it in storage for 3 days? Well, main difference is that the latter is cheaper than the former on all counts – at least by current technology standards.

So why not do a daily backup? Or even hourly incremental backup for that matter? Or even a continuous rolling sync to the R-Ship storage since it seems the consciousness transfer is almost instant? If the Resurrection Ship kept the “last good copy” of each Cylons consciousness then instead of permanent death, a stranded Cylon would simply loose last few hours or days of his/her life. If you would make Resurrection Ships sync up their backup data on regular basis, you now have a highly efficient distributed system that offers you virtual immortality. Permadeath would only be possible if someone would manage to track down all the Resurrection Ships with the copy of your consciousness.

I’ll go even further – why not allow Cylons to make emergency backups to personal storage they could then stow away in a safe place. Drop a thumb drive in a safe deposit box on Caprica before going on an important mission and you can be restored even if your whole fleet was wiped out.

So yeah, I don’t buy the whole “Oh noes, where is the R-ship? If we die now we die FOR REALS!” I just refuse to believe that a race of sophisticated intelligent machines would neglect something as important and basic as backups. It is a small thing, but it bugs the hell out of me.

[tags]bsg, battlestar galactica, cylons, backups, resurrection ship[/tags]

At the time I used to wonder why the networks didn’t simply put the episodes online, complete with commercial interruptions. Since they already circulate in the wild, why not turn around and profit from it. This rejection of adopting a viable stream of revenue out of fear that it will make it easier for pirates to “steal it” seemed silly to me. I mean, some groups out there are able to start seeding an episode 15-20 minutes after it was aired – all they need to do is to grab the file from their VDR, and cut out the commercials. Not releasing a digital copy of your show didn’t necessarily impede their work.

Conversely, if you stream the episodes from the official website, surround them with one or two advertising banners and include commercial spots embedded in your stream, you are capitalizing on several of the 8 generatives Kevin Kelly talked about in his essay Better than Free. Since this is an official release the fans of the show know immediately where to find it (they can bookmark the page, instead of searching P2P networks), and furthermore they know the content is authentic and trustworthy which is not always the case with the less than legal sources.

Well, lo and behold – this idea is starting to take ground. This Friday I missed the new Battlestar Galactica episode and to my surprise I noticed that all 3 episodes of the new season are available via SciFi Channels Rewind service. Yes, the quality is low, and the commercial breaks are a tad annoying but you know what – I don’t really care. I just want to catch up with so that I can participate in online discussions and the obligatory Monday lunch hour BSG discussion at work. And for that the grainy, slightly above Youtube quality compressed FLV is just fine. Hell, it’s in fact more convenient since all I need to do is to click a button and watch. I don’t need to wait for the download to finish, and I don’t need to worry that part 5 of 6 will be taken down before I am able to watch it as it is often the case on the TV-Links like link services.

I wanted to commend Scifi and all the other networks which choose to follow this route. I’m glad people are slowly begging to see the light. When you put episodes online like this we all win! You get an extra stream of revenue and I get to watch my show whenever I want. This is exactly how you should combat piracy – compete with them on terms they cannot match. The streaming show on your website is official, safe, permanent and readily available when needed – it is better than free.

Is this an indicative of change? I don’t think it’s just Scifi that is doing this. I think ABC was doing something very similar for Lost episodes, although I’m not sure if they just offer the last episode, or all of them. So there are networks out there that are beginning to understand how to make a buck in the digital world, and that is filling me with hope. Perhaps future is not as bleak as we all suspected. :)

[tags]scifi, scifi channel, battlestar gallactica, better than free[/tags]

This is not a full review because I didn’t really get to play a lot. But I wanted to put a blurb about it here anyway. Besides, it is hard to review a product that is still in an early development stage. Right now only a demo is available on the website and it is a tad rough around the edges. The briefing UI and option panels are positively dreadful and unintuitive. Ship and weapon descriptions are read by the Microsoft text-to-speech engine and it sounds horrible. But I’m guessing these are little details that they can iron out later.

Fortunately the mission briefings and in-game chatter is all voice acted. This was the bit of the game that impressed me. The acting is really decent, and the voices are surprisingly clear. They follow BSG cannon closely using the familiar jargon – they even do that voice distortion thing when you are in the cockpit. I did notice a slight issue with volume though – sometimes it was really hard to hear the dialog over the effects, but I think that’s something I could just tweak myself via the options menu. The default volume settings are not prefect apparently. But it’s a demo.

The game puts you in the role of a rookie viper pilot on Batlestar Pegasus. The first mission is a tutorial where a slightly annoyed instructor puts you through the basic navigation and combat training. I think they did fudge around with Freespace controls a bit I can’t say for sure. What I can tell you though is that this game is more on the sim than the arcade side. You do have a pretty fine control over your ships acceleration, and thruster systems and the keyboard controls are all over the place. Initially I was a bit confused by the complexity but I guess it grows on you eventually.

I didn’t really get much past the tutorial mission so I can’t write much more. It does have a potential though and it looks like the crew is active and committed. I will be watching this one closely to see where it goes from here. I think that if anyone has a chance to become one of the few successful and worthwhile total conversions it is these guys. If you love BSG I recommend you grab the demo and check it out. You don’t actually need Freespace 2 to play – it is distributed as a standalone product.

Oh, and as most total conversions this one is free. ;)

[tags]battlestar galactica, bsg, battlestar, galactica, total conversion[/tags]

Unfortunately most TV series that have long term story arcs are usually open ended. The writers often do not know if they will be picked up for the next season. A series can end in cancellation after few first episodes, or drag on for years until there is no more story to tell, the quality drops along with the ratings.

Its just not a very good medium for telling compelling stories. It lends itself to open-ended, meandering plot lines which either tapper off into obscurity, or culminate in lame, anti-climatic conclusions. Furthermore, the seasonality forces certain patterns on the show. Every season ends in a cliffhanger which is then dramatically resolved in the season premiere. Then each series winds down airing slow moving “filler” episodes, and then gears up for the next cliffhanger. This constant up-and-down may create exciting seasonal story arcs, but the overall story suffers. Instead of buildup and cathartic resolution we have multiple smaller climaxes interleaved with filler content.

There are exceptions here, but most TV shows end up disappointing fans with the big series finale. In most cases when you look back on n seasons of a given show, you won’t see a cohesive story leading up to the conclusion revealed in the finale. Instead you will see a confusing, meandering jumble of plot lines pulling the characters in different directions.

The best way to write a TV show is to map out the story ahead of time, dice it up into episode length chunks and then sell it as a complete package. A miniseries, a single season show, or a 2-3 season epic. Unfortunately most networks out there have a different model in mind. They will buy a pilot, then pick you up for few episodes before they agree to give you a whole season. And if the series is a hit, they will want you to drag it for more seasons than you intended. This is a wrong approach, and the primary reason why most shows go sour after few years.

You simply can’t write a compelling, moving story in weekly increments if you have no idea where you are going with it, or how long will it take you to get there.

It seems that Battlestar Galactica writers are fully aware of this. Their show always had an ending – finding Earth and final confrontation with the Cylon threat. They knew where they are going, and now they know exactly how long will it take them to get there. All the pieces for a good story are in place, and we just have to hope they won’t screw it up in the final season.

Lost writers also claim they have an ending, and also set a deadline for themselves. And I hope to God that they are not lying about this, an that they will end it with an actual, satisfying conclusion. If they pull a Sopranos on us I will be mighty pissed.

What can I say. Building up tension for 5 minutes and then suddenly cutting to black making people wonder if their cable went out, or if they accidentally hit the wrong button on the remote is not catharsis. It’s being an asshole to your viewers. It’s a pseudo-nihilistic middle finger salute at the loyal fans. Silly trick endings like this might work on a random episode of the Twilight Zone – but are a piss poor way of ending a long, critically acclaimed series.

But then again, with no direction, no goal, no message to convey what do you expect? Every story will eventually be remembered for how it ended, and how it wrapped up the whole storyline. Some people opt for a happy ending, some like to finish strong with an exciting, nail biting conclusion. Some opt for a tear jerker, and some people piss you off by revealing some deeply guarded secret. Some people go with a tragic, controversial ending, and some leave you with a joke. Sopranos went for:

“Oh shit! Did my cable just went out?”

Hell, they should have went completely Andy Kaufman on this by fucking around with the vertical sync, and adding some fake static to really mess with the viewers.

Scary part is that Rob Monroe actually liked the ending. Rob is amazed that Chase was able to end the series without giving the viewers a definite answer to the burning question: “Will Tony Live!”. From a writers point of view, this is clever, and awesome trick to outwit the fans, fuck with spoiler droppers, and generate final media buzz.

Unfortunately, Mr. Monroe forgets that we all do not make TV shows for living. We watch TV for entertainment – for compelling stories, and awesome characters. Viewers do not want a fucking Schrödinger’s Cat ending. We want catharsis.

I really hope Mr. Monroe won’t pull off a similar pointless shit at the end of BSG.

[tags]series, tv series, storytelling, sopranos, season finale, sopranos season finale, finishing a story[/tags]

via confession

God damn it dude! Me too! There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief. :mrgreen:

(BSG fans will get the reference, the rest of you can just move along)

Btw, Confession on twitter is good for fairly random, poignant and sometimes disturbing statements like that. It’s kinda like post-secret in 140 characters. You can add your own anonymous confession here. It is yet another cool use of the Twitter API.

[tags]confession, twitter, cylons, cylon, bsg, battlestar, battlestar galactica[/tags]

So, what are your thoughts on the untimely demise of Ms. “I make my own destiny! Oh wait, maybe I don’t”?

[tags]bsg, battlestar galactica, starbuck, starbuck’s death, cylon, desmond, lost[/tags]

But immortality is not only the domain of fantasy. Science fiction has also developed different models of immortality. One of these models immortality via mind transfer. I think the best example of this technique is depicted in Cory Doctorow’s Down and out in the Magic Kingdom novel. In his fictional Bishun Society, people prolong their lives indefinitely by making electronic backup of their consciousness. In an event of death, the person is simply restored from backup in a cloned body. Similar technique is used by the biological Cylons in Scifi Chanell’s Battlestar Galactica series.

Let’s assume that this type of consciousness backup would be possible. You can back yourself up, and restore with no problems or complications. Once restored you are the same person, with the same stupid quirks, and pet peeves. The process is perfect and flawless.

Now imagine that you get into an accident, and you break your back. The doctors say that there is zero chances of repairing this damage. You will be bound to a wheelchair for the rest of your life… Unless of course, you choose to restore yourself from backup. The procedure is really simple.

First you do a backup. Once you are done, you get a lethal injection and your body dies. Minutes later you are restored in a clone with a clean bill of health. Question is – would you do it?

Me – I would probably choose the wheelchair. Why? Well, the whole concept of immortality via mind transfer sounds great on paper but there is one snag. For a lack of better name I call it Consciousness Interruption.

Let me put it this way – restoring from backup is nothing like falling asleep and waking up in a new body. It’s far from it. When the doctors kill your body, you die. That’s it – it’s game over for you. Sure, your clone will have the same memories, the same personality and be you in every possible way. But you – the old you will be dead. There is no link between you and your new copy – you are two completely separate entities. There is just no way you could die and then wake up.

So is this immortality? I would say yes and no. As far as your friends, family and the rest of the universe is concerned – you are immortal. You die, you get restored and you continue to exist unchanged. But from a very subjective point of view – the continuity of your consciousness is extinguished at the point of death. You cease to exist, and someone else with the same memories takes your place.

At least this seems to be true for Cory Doctorow’s model. Do Cylons suffer from this consciousness interruption? I would say yes. Feel free to dispute me on this. I would love to hear your theories on how their system avoids the interruption issues. Sure, their resurrection works slightly different – Cylons seem to remember their own deaths. They don’t really back up, but transfer their consciousness to the Resurrection Ship the moment they die. But as far as I’m concerned it is the same damn thing. The exact same rules apply – one mind dies, the other one is restored. End result: consciousness interrupted.

I leave you with this: Immortality via mind transfer is not true immortality. At least not in the way we sought it since the beginning of time. It is really just a rouse – a social lie, and a form of ultimate escapism. Restoring from backup doesn’t really do anything for the person who is restored – that person just dies. The real benefit of the restoration process is for this person’s loved ones. If you can restore someone after they die, you no longer need to mourn their death, or deal with their loss. It is really a feel good – happy pill for the masses. Nothing else.

Disagree? I would love to hear a counter argument!

[tags]immortality, mind transfer, consciousness interruption, cylons, bsg, cory doctorow, down and out, bishun[/tags]

So, seeing how the temple has been built by humans, and it actually does not contain any eye like mystical items – why does Xena Warrior Princes have a vision of the Final Five models in it? Why would the colonists leave such a message for the Cylons in there? And if they didn’t then who did, and why would they? What is the connection between the 13’th colony and the final five? Or is this vision just Xena’s brain frying from being exposed to the radiation emitted by the nova?

Oh, and guess what? I don’t think Sharon is immune to the Cylon killer bug anymore. The excuse for her immunity was that she gave birth to a hybrid child and so she somehow developed it because of whatever. Now that she death-jumped to the Base Star she has a brand spanking new body which is a perfect clone of pre-pregnancy Sharon of course. Helo is probably going to be pleasantly surprised next time they decide to make the sexy time… But Sharon better watch out cause that virus may still be lingering on BSG. The fact that humans are immune to it, does not mean they do not transmit it…

[tags]bsg, battlestar, galactica, sharon, cylons, final five, final five cylons, eye of jupiter[/tags]