Ackshually… in season three episode seven “The Enemy” it is made clear that Romulan technology is generally assumed to be completely interoperable when Geordi could not connect his VISOR to his tricorder in more than a superficial way… Quote he: “they don’t speak the same language”. :-)
I applaud the writers of that episode for doing that, but I’ve seen too many episodes/movies where people use alien technology with no indication they have a hard time with the interface, or where a Federation ship outright trades equipment with previously uncontacted aliens, and it just works. Hell, even Trip’s reproductive system is so compatible with an alien’s that she can get him pregnant! And don’t even get me started on how often people just walk up and use a control panel to access sensitive systems without needing to present any kind of credentials.
I can get the perspective behind the last one (unauth access). Coming from a closed society it may be unthinkable for someone without authority or authorization to perform an action “unauthorized by the authority”, but in an open society the mindset would be quite different. Much as we might without thought throw a light switch without expecting authorization, or maybe like the hoplophiles that don’t want an electronic lock on their weapons, perhaps what they optimize for (i.e. their security model) could be for even an extreme case such as if “the only survivor” is one unbadged civilian with no bridge/engineering knowledge needing to control the ship (and even weapons) with the usual security case simply being that the bridge/engineering is a secured by persons/staff… IIRC, even knowing who performed such an action is a distant secondary concern (in Voyager it is said that control panels try to log who uses them be the comm badge present), but I know of at least two cases where command-and-control was locked: one in TNG by data (which is presented as quite an exceptional workflow), and one shuttlecraft in DS9 by O’Brien (which might be more of a consideration for scouting operations… to help ensure one has a vehicle to come back to). Conversely, it seems far more frequent that the computer denies access to data in defense of another’s personal privacy.
I’m not gonna listen to Geordi because he lives in an alternate universe where everything is compatible with everything else.
Ackshually… in season three episode seven “The Enemy” it is made clear that Romulan technology is generally assumed to be completely interoperable when Geordi could not connect his VISOR to his tricorder in more than a superficial way… Quote he: “they don’t speak the same language”. :-)
I applaud the writers of that episode for doing that, but I’ve seen too many episodes/movies where people use alien technology with no indication they have a hard time with the interface, or where a Federation ship outright trades equipment with previously uncontacted aliens, and it just works. Hell, even Trip’s reproductive system is so compatible with an alien’s that she can get him pregnant! And don’t even get me started on how often people just walk up and use a control panel to access sensitive systems without needing to present any kind of credentials.
I can get the perspective behind the last one (unauth access). Coming from a closed society it may be unthinkable for someone without authority or authorization to perform an action “unauthorized by the authority”, but in an open society the mindset would be quite different. Much as we might without thought throw a light switch without expecting authorization, or maybe like the hoplophiles that don’t want an electronic lock on their weapons, perhaps what they optimize for (i.e. their security model) could be for even an extreme case such as if “the only survivor” is one unbadged civilian with no bridge/engineering knowledge needing to control the ship (and even weapons) with the usual security case simply being that the bridge/engineering is a secured by persons/staff… IIRC, even knowing who performed such an action is a distant secondary concern (in Voyager it is said that control panels try to log who uses them be the comm badge present), but I know of at least two cases where command-and-control was locked: one in TNG by data (which is presented as quite an exceptional workflow), and one shuttlecraft in DS9 by O’Brien (which might be more of a consideration for scouting operations… to help ensure one has a vehicle to come back to). Conversely, it seems far more frequent that the computer denies access to data in defense of another’s personal privacy.