09/11/2012 08:04:53 AM EST

> Why was the Federation constantly redesigning its Starfleet uniforms? I'll offer you a counter-example. Why did American car makers change their styling every year, while Porsche kept the same lines for years at a time? When asked about this, F. A. Porsche said "Why wouldn't they? At their production volumes, they have to make new body dies after a year's production, so why wouldn't they update the styling? Porsche makes so few cars that the stamping dies remain serviceable for years, and they are expensive." As for Star Fleet - did you ever see a factory? in that era, everything came from the Replicator. If you make everything one-off 'publish to order' from a digital model, you can make changes on a whim. The old uniforms were recycled to atoms and remade in a new image. I expect even egalitarian Federations in the far future have their power struggles and egocentric stylists promoted to positions of power. The US Army just went through a phase of spending billions on 'new, stylish' camo uniforms that looked cool but performed dangerously badly in the field. If you live in a world where logos are just bitmaps and signs created by CNC machining centers, it's a wonder logos do not change more often. You may recall that the PacMan Microsoft logo was in fact not the first. The first Microsoft logo I recall (from C Version 3, MS-DOS, and Windows 1 days) had horizontal lines through the 'o'. I've given up trying to understand anything Microsoft does.

United Statesr.k. herzog