Trek computer observations

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2004-01-24 06:03am

Trek computers seems to be highly oriented to symbol manipulation. This can be seen with a natural language parser(Universal Translator) capable of understanding a broad range of languages near perfectly. This puppy looks to be deaply imbedded into Trek Computer architecture.

One property about a Universal Translator system, is it can dynamically learn new lanugages to accept processable information from.

Another property is it can extracting maningful information from inperfect data sources. This means it can compensate for error in a data stream by extracting its meaning an interpolating to fill the gaps.

Coupled with the observed properties of a powerful general problem solver system. I.E. It can extract meaning(problem) and then apply that meaning(solution).

This is probable the primary reason the system is so damn insecure, it tries to process any type of input for commands. And if it can understand it, it can run it.

Frankly, I wouldnt be suprised if you could infect the system with a virus by whistling.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-01-24 06:18am

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2004-01-24 08:27am

Darth_Zod wrote:

Basicly, trek computrs are so insecure because the computer actively attempts to fullfill any commands given to them to the best of its abilities.

The system itself finds expliots in itself to better fullfill the commands given to it.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-01-24 09:29am

just wasn't sure what the point of this post was supposed to be. it looks as though it were responding to another thread and accidentally got its own topic.

Eframepilot · Post by **Eframepilot** » 2004-01-25 03:09am

I'd be careful about making any judgements of Starfleet computer abilities based on the Universal Translator. The UT is a magical device that understands most alien languages before hearing a single word of them and somehow directly ventriloquizes and lipsynches over the aliens' own languages. You do have a point about the nature of the computer systems, though. "Create an opponent that can outthink Data" resulted in a total holodeck malfunction, something that should not have occurred if proper precautions were in place.

The Third Man · Post by **The Third Man** » 2004-01-25 07:28am

ggs wrote: snip

Sounds very plausible to me. In the ST universe alien races are forever encountering one another; it is likely that transmissions include a 'header' that contains cues about how to interpret the following message, and that receiving systems are designed to latch on to anything that resembles such a header.

The Aliens · Post by **The Aliens** » 2004-01-25 12:08pm

That header could actually consist of that languages 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and all sorts of other simple sentences which would give a clue on how to translate it.

Of course, if a computer virus can cause a Warp Core to breach, these people have enver even heard of firewalls, their computers just don't have very much security on them at all.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2004-01-25 01:04pm

The Third Man wrote:Sounds very plausible to me. In the ST universe alien races are forever encountering one another; it is likely that transmissions include a 'header' that contains cues about how to interpret the following message, and that receiving systems are designed to latch on to anything that resembles such a header.

The problem is that often times, they understand aliens who haven't given them a primer of their langauge. Like Eframepilot said, the Universial Translator is a major plot device.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2004-01-26 01:47am

The Third Man wrote:
ggs wrote: snip
Sounds very plausible to me. In the ST universe alien races are forever encountering one another; it is likely that transmissions include a 'header' that contains cues about how to interpret the following message, and that receiving systems are designed to latch on to anything that resembles such a header.

It seems trek computers running the comm system uses something like a DCOM interface used by modern computers. COM allows components written in different language and located on different computers to work togather.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2004-01-28 08:26pm

Eframepilot wrote:I'd be careful about making any judgements of Starfleet computer abilities based on the Universal Translator.

The thing is, the UT is integrated very very tightly into the ships computer system. So the abilitys of the computer are dictated by the UT.

Gil Hamilton, but its highly unsusal for them to encounter a race with out first moving through an area that knows about the race.

These headers probable not just information about one language, but languages from an area. Added to long range sensors, monitoring for comms traffic, its no wonder they can understand them even before they open 1st communications.

Infact, I would bet the only times the UT hasnt worked, is when its dealing with highly isolated socities which arent in contect much with those around them. Or they have just moved into an area which didnt know about them.

Christine St. Andrews · Post by **Christine St. Andrews** » 2004-01-29 12:36am

I seem to remember a phrase from one of the ST novels about how, since any crewmember might need to give an order in any area of the ship in an emergency, they went pretty light on the security measures. Unfortunately this makes the ship a little vulnerable -- if you knew what you were doing you probably *could* give it a virus by whistling, or by encoding something in an innocent comm transmission. If any of you have read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, you could probably do something similar to the Enterprise's computers with the right "random noise".

IIRC, Spock manages to completely occupy the computer banks to the exclusion of all else without giving any kind of security code in an episode I think was called "Wolf in the Fold" -- it had to do with an entity that could possess people and fed off fear. It "possessed" the Enterprise's computers, and Spock drove it out by telling the computer to compute pi to the last digit; the entity was forced out of the computers because all the banks were needed for the calculations.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2004-01-29 12:51am

ggs wrote:Gil Hamilton, but its highly unsusal for them to encounter a race with out first moving through an area that knows about the race.

These headers probable not just information about one language, but languages from an area. Added to long range sensors, monitoring for comms traffic, its no wonder they can understand them even before they open 1st communications.

But the Universial Translator was not just working in the area around the Federation. In Voyager, it had no problem with races they never ever heard of before, on the wrong side of the galaxy, like the Hirogen and Voth and Kazon. Those folks aren't exactly on the local network back home, to get the English Primer and vice versa.

Metrion Cascade · Post by **Metrion Cascade** » 2004-01-29 01:41am

ggs wrote:
Eframepilot wrote:I'd be careful about making any judgements of Starfleet computer abilities based on the Universal Translator.
The thing is, the UT is integrated very very tightly into the ships computer system. So the abilitys of the computer are dictated by the UT.

Hardly. My Dock is open the whole time I'm in Mac OS X and is part of the interface, but that doesn't mean it determines the capabilities of Mac OS X or the hardware. It can be minimized, or I can remove all the icons from it, or change its color with the right hack, or install a different OS. And every Starfleeter (most of whom are from Earth anyway) is wearing his own UT on duty. So the computer wouldn't have to translate their speech. It's possible that the ship's UT is only used when dealing with ship-to-ship transmissions. We've never seen LCARS visually displayed in any language other than English unless it was hacked into (such as by the Borg, or that race that took over Data's mind). I'd also mention that we never hear the computer speak a language other than English, but we've even seen aliens on their own ships speaking English to each other, so apparently any UT in use works for the camera as well. We wouldn't know whether the computer's actually speaking English or not..

Gil Hamilton, but its highly unsusal for them to encounter a race with out first moving through an area that knows about the race.

These headers probable not just information about one language, but languages from an area. Added to long range sensors, monitoring for comms traffic, its no wonder they can understand them even before they open 1st communications.

Voyager.

Infact, I would bet the only times the UT hasnt worked, is when its dealing with highly isolated socities which arent in contect much with those around them. Or they have just moved into an area which didnt know about them.

The UT has only failed once, with the Skreea. Their language took days to be deciphered by the Cardassian, Bajoran, and Starfleet UTs on DS9. And this was after several contacts with GQ races without any UT problems before then. So it wasn't the lack of a primer that caused it. Your explanation would make sense, but events in ST don't allow it. Many, many races have had first contact with Starfleet without any UT hitches. Many others have had first contact in a situation where the opening communication was face-to-face rather than by subspace, ruling out your "hidden primer in the signal" explanation. In fact, in VOY "The '37's," the UT seemed to translate the away team's speech into Japanese for a Japanese guy who hadn't even opened his mouth yet. Which begs the question of how the UT knew he spoke Japanese. Or whether it knew at all. Maybe the UT doesn't translate one language into another, but translates every language into one technobabblified super-language that each person THINKS is their language when they hear it. It's contrived, but so is Trek.

The Third Man · Post by **The Third Man** » 2004-01-29 05:06am

ggs wrote: The thing is, the UT is integrated very very tightly into the ships computer system

It may not be tightly integrated; it could be that the UT subsystem is able to co-opt processing power from the main computer to decipher particullarly cryptic communications. It would make sense to give the UT high "task priority" because understanding what an alien is trying to say would obviously be very important in a first contact situation. Presumably first contacts with previously unknown languages are rare enough that SF considers it not worthwhile to implement the UT with a seperate, isolated processor of the requisite power, and relies on co-opting the ships main computer.
Either way the end result is the same for infection purposes, and I still like your theory.

On the hidden-primer-header concept - I would imagine that the UT doesn't exclusively depend on such a thing being present, but if it sees something that could possibly be a header, then it will call upon ships-computer processing power to aid in the decryption.

Metrion Cascade wrote: we've even seen aliens on their own ships speaking English to each other,

This gets complicated! Have subtitles ever been used in the ST movies? If they did appear, would suspension of disbelief force us to rationalize these as part of the operation of the UT

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2004-01-29 11:22am

lets see subtitles were used in ST 1, ST2, ST3, ST 5, ST 6

Languages Subtitled:

Vulcan ST1, ST 2
Klingon ST 1, ST 3, ST 5, ST 6

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2004-02-06 06:21am

I heard there is an actual dictionary for Klingon language.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2004-02-06 08:17am

evilcat4000 wrote:I heard there is an actual dictionary for Klingon language.

There is, and there are lots of English to Klingon dictionaries too.

Apparently there are more people speaking Klingon than Esperanto.

Metrion Cascade · Post by **Metrion Cascade** » 2004-02-06 10:07pm

ggs wrote:
evilcat4000 wrote:I heard there is an actual dictionary for Klingon language.
There is, and there are lots of English to Klingon dictionaries too.

Apparently there are more people speaking Klingon than Esperanto.

William Shatner made a whole movie in Esperanto called "Incubus."

Guess we know which one he prefers...