Translation: We know, from earlier movies, that Darth Vader is really a former grad student (who actually graduated) who has decided to work as a staff researcher for his former advisor (The Emperor) at an industrial lab (for example, IBM). Here we meet the adult Leia for the first time and it seems clear that she has something Vader wants/thinks is his. Leia must have been a visiting student (like an intern).

Translation: Leia was a tricky little minx. She had something of Darth's (probably some early findings from his lab) that she may have taken while doing an internship at IBM. She puts these "secrets" into her droids (who incidentally have been around since the beginning and follow our heroes around for the rest of the story). It seems clear that these droids symbolize research projects and Leia has incorporated (possibly stolen) ideas from Darth's research and added it to her own. Just like all research, the droids never go away and never end. Leia takes these new ideas in her research and quickly tries to fire them off to a bush-league workshop. If she can publish them first, no one will know they weren't hers to begin with... Bad mojo! Leia has chosen a conveniently near deadline to a workshop called the Intergalactic Proceedings of Tatooine. It's at this dinky little conference that a young code hacker/undergrad community college student, named Luke, sees Leia's paper. Now, Luke being tenacious for his age (someone who likes to tinker with things but probably doesn't have any idea what research is) starts playing with Leia's work. In CS, this might mean that Leia's work extended an Internet RFC, or at least built upon some prior work, and Luke may have tried to get creative with it.

Translation: Luke is obviously a pretty industrious little dude (he is the hero after all) and so in playing around with Leia's research (the droids) in his little workshop, and adding some of his own lame ideas, he decides to fire them off to a little magazine (like Popular Mechanics, Boys Life, or Ideas from Dumb Kids Magazine - IFDKM) This sort of brazen, "I have an idea too..." mentality raises the ire of a set of trolls that read IFDKM. These trolls respond to Luke's little article by flaming him and harassing him with letters to the editor (which also get published) about how stupid his ideas are. But then, one of the original authors from the work Leia built on (Ben) sends a glowing response to Luke's article that totally backs Luke up. He goes on to tell the trolls where they can stick their lame flames. Ben is obviously a badass. Ben chats Luke up (on the phone) and ask where Luke got the ideas he's been poking around with. As this is unfolding, Luke's college LARP'ing friends decide he's getting too snooty and they all decide he's not their friend anymore. Poor Luke, he only has his new ideas and Ben now. :( Luke comes clean to Ben that most of his ideas come from the dinky little workshop paper he scraped up. Ben tells Luke about how he actually has a Ph.D. and how he used to do research before burning out and getting a job a Denny's. Ben reads Leia's paper and decides that her ideas could really benefit from his sage wisdom... ;) So he decides to look her up in her "Dad's" (read: advisor's) lab at Alderan U. and help them research this new direction (remember, Leia is a grad student). Ben sees that even though Luke is a tool and a newb, he has some skillz and tells him to come to the lab and think about grad school... *sigh* Big mistake.

Translation: They need to get Luke into college now, but Luke's credentials are, err... Not legit/good/etc. So, Luke needs to find a way to grease the skids and get in on the sly. They find some guy who's willing to write Luke a pretty solid recommendation, and talk about the great things Luke has done at his company (Millennium Falcon Corp) whose product is a little rough around the edges and isn't always very clear (i.e. Chewie). We'll all just have to HOPE poor little Luke gets in.

Translation: They decide Luke really should get a LITTLE experience working at M. Falcon Corp before the fist semester starts. While getting some work done, Ben decides to help give Luke a flavor for what research is like, and he gets him thinking about what might make a good thesis topic. This is an opportune moment, because (as the movie shows) they are farting around with the droids, which means they are pursuing those research ideas.

Naturally, the droids and Chewie don't get along, because research is often lofty and not always pragmatic, and corporate projects and IP are often crude enough to be useful. ;)

Han sees this and points out that research doesn't seem to be very practical. Ben talks about the greater contribution to human knowledge and the scientific method, etc. Han laughs and points at his bank account. Luke has "chosen poorly," and wants to be like Ben when he grows up. Han couldn't care less.

Translation: Leia's advisor lost his funding by the start of the semester and had to close up his lab. He's getting audited by his funding agency and they notice that he had ear-marked some money for Ben and Luke.

Translation: The audit is being conducted by a government agency that is using some of the "experts" from the lab where Vader is on staff to investigate claims of plagiarism and fraud. It turns out they decide to look into the Millennium Falcon Corp financials. It seems Vader has an axe to grind w/ Ben. Vader and Ben, who we've seen already knew each other, get into it and Vader tells Ben that he's going to pull enough strings in Washington so that Ben can never get funded again, AND if he's ever on a project that is has government funding ties, he'll make sure it loses its funding. Ben agrees to (basically) retire, and he maintains that as an independent thinker he'll, "become more powerful than [Vader] could possible imagine.". He probably means that he's going to write a text book. After getting his pound of flesh, Vader loses interest and the Millennium Falcon Corp is free to... to do whatever...

Translation: This one is a no-brainier. After their funding gets pulled, the Leia Lab's students (that are now unfunded) have all decided to keep working on their lab projects. Leia tells Han that they could really use his help. Han is a businessman, so he, naturally, doesn't understand what would posses someone to work for free. This is a BEAUTIFUL example of how industry and academia do not see eye to eye. lol... Beautiful. Leia finally ponies up a promise for cash. She obviously thinks that there's some potential to this research. Possibly a patent, maybe a startup. My money's on startup.

Translation: When they get to the lab, Leia takes charge and starts organizing the grad students. Luke is itching to get started and doesn't seem to have any qualms about working for free. Almost right away, Luke is talking down to the other grad students and talking up his personal projects (i.e. "Shooting womp-rats" == writing dinky little programs, "T-16" == Apple II?). This is so sophomoric, but it's the way a lot of wonder-kid newb's act when they first show up in a lab: "I have to show all of these other students how smart I am!" Luke, Luke, Luke... You suck buddy.

Han, meanwhile, isn't getting any richer hanging out with these clowns, so he goes back to running M. Falcon Corp.

Translation: During the afore mentioned audit, Vader was squeezing Leia for details about how her lab's research was progressing, and what their early findings were. Leia being (as previously mentioned) a smart little minx gave Vader some bogus results to shut him up. After they completed the audit, Vader and his group started pursuing the findings Leia gave and find they were bogus. Now they're back on the original track and rushing to publish some results.

Translation: OK, this is a good one. Vader's group and Leia's groups are each trying to scoop each other. The first to publish obviously wins. Vader's publication objectives revolve around building a foundation for patents and other corporate intellectual property (IP). While getting to the publication stage, the lab members (from both labs) keep running into each other at conferences, workshops, etc. Leia's lab feels they have an edge because after looking at the data Leia stole, they think Vader's lab is working on data/assumptions that are flawed (but Vader's lab hasn't realized it yet).

The students in Leia's lab aren't very good, so whenever they debate Vader's group, they get served. Luke thinks that his initial conversations with Ben give him a particularly good insight into this problem. Luke is close to producing some findings but he really needs some additional processing power. Vader's lab has a wealth of resources and (having corrected the flaw in their dataset) is crunching out their findings... Just as Luke is about to be scooped, Han offers Luke some time on M. Falcon Corp's Cray-1, and Luke crunches out a really ground-breaking set of results. They submit the lab's findings to the prestigious Warring of Stars Journal (WSJ) and scoop Vader's lab!

Translation: Looks like Vader's whole project is toast. Without the publication, the odds of claiming any IP are pretty slim. Those industrial labs don't like getting scooped I guess. Leia is very happy that Luke put the hours in and Han offered to keep Luke crunching. So she buys them pizza at Shakey's. Of course, as grad students, we all know there is hardly a bigger reward than free food. Luke is ecstatic, and Han is probably wondering why Leia is trying to poison them. Looks like Leia wants to keep collaborating with M. Falcon Corp, and Luke is really psyched about being a grad student. Fin