Slashdot Mirror

http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/0996September/Sparky/tricorder.html I think that was the one we had. Really dorky one of a kind science class where we measured emf, geopositioned things (before public access to GPS), etc. Thing did temperature, emf, voltmeter stuff if you had the attachments I think, had a colour spectrum analyzer (so you could hold it up to something and it would tell you the rgb values).

http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/0996September/Sparky/tricorder.html

Bah! That's nothing compared to Russia's Cosmos Patrol.

While it is a new design, and has different features, this is in fact not the first tricorder that has been made.

http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/0996September/Sparky/tr icorder.html talks about the very first "tricorder," but it doesn't look like it was very successful. Maybe Purdue's device will stick around longer.

By the way, something that is very interesting to note is that Gene Roddenberry allows anyone who creates devices like the ones in Star Trek (and presumably its variations) can use the names used in the show. Get to work all you Trekkie engineers!

While it is a new design, and has different features, this is in fact not the first tricorder that has been made. http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/0996September/Sparky/tr icorder.html talks about the very first "tricorder," but it doesn't look like it was very successful. Maybe Purdue's device will stick around longer. By the way, something that is very interesting to note is that Gene Roddenberry allows anyone who creates devices like the ones in Star Trek (and presumably its variations) can use the names used in the show. Get to work all you Trekkie engineers!

Silicon based life forms?

Not yet. Non-aqueous solvent life looks more promising in the Xenochemistry field, FWIW.

Tricorders?

Check.

Holidecks?

Check.

Deanna Troi android?

More or less, although it looks more like Keiko Ishikawa O'Brein.

And, of course, there's Hawking's remark about the Warp Core when touring the set of TNG's Engineering: "I'm working on that." And the resemblance between TOS communicators and modern cell phones.

Aren't you glad Star Trek had a generally utopian view of the future, instead of the common dystopian views? =)

I was talking about the communicators in The Original Series, not from The Next Generation. They looked very much like today's flip phones.

Nor was I talking about stun guns. We do have honest to goodness laser weapons now, which at this point only cause blindness, but there are also weapons under development that will do further damage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personnel_Halting_and _Stimulation_Response_rifle

There is also a laser-equipped 747 that can shoot high-powered beams at a given target.

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/000551.html

The tricorder is also a real device, although the technology still has a long way to go.

http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/0996September/Sparky/tr icorder.html

Transparent Aluminum, first introduced with ST4:The Voyage Home as the superstrong "metal glass" used to haul two humpback whales back to the 23rd century, is also the real thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparent_aluminum

I don't smoke anything, not even tobacco.

Thank you, sir, for inspiring me to seek out additional French curses. Oddly coincidental, but my wife was just teaching me some of these the other night (no, not like that).

http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/9.1/curses/curses.html

It is highly likely that the acronymn was specifically made to copy the one used in Star Trek.

Star Trek fueld the minds of many young scientists and is the inspiration behind ideas like the cell phone (especially the flip phone!), the PET scan, the PDA (PADD), etc.

And if you want some real fun, get yourself a real life tricorder.

here the site claims that: It is also rumored that Stanley Kubrick's in-production film, A.I., is based on Dick's Martian Time Slip

But I'm not sure as I haven't read the story.

you overlooked the fact that the FBI's subpoenas (even the secret ones) have to be reviewed by a judge and often a grand jury.

But what if they don't need a subpoena?

and perhaps most significantly, you seem unaware that the activities of the FBI are overseen by Senators and Representatives that you and I vote for

Oh sure, I trust the other branches of the Gov't to oversee the FBI.

The problem is that Congressional and Court oversight usually waits until things have gotten so far out of control that they can't duck their responsibility. By which time many innocent people have been hurt. I call the current stupidity in Iraq (ICRC pdf - sorry) as my first witness and Frank Church as my second.

Your significantly more paranoid friend (who has worked for two out of three branches of the Federal Gov't).

I did a search and came up with this. Not precisely what you wanted as it is missing the temperature sensor and the camera, but it has the electromagnetic field sensor as well as other sensors which seem very useful. And it's called a tricorder.

Too bad the company that made it (a Canadian company called Vital Technologies) has gone under, apparently it really worked!

"NAVAJO CODE TALKING

Most experts agree: one of the most cryptanalytically sound form of code-making is simply to speak in Navajo.

There are a few tricks here, the first being that Navajo is an intensely nuanced and dialectic form of language, and is thus royally difficult to pick up if you don't either grow up as a Navajo Indian, or spend 30 years hanging out, 24 hours a day, with Navajo Indians.

That's why the U.S. military hit upon Navajo as the singularly most successful code in World War II--because it wasn't a code at all. At the time of the war, it was estimated that only about 30 people outside of the Navajo nation could speak the language, making it extremely cryptanalytically sound. In fact, Navajo code was so successful that it is perhaps the only traditional code technique to be profiled on an episode of the X-Files--pop culture's official stamp of paranoia-culture approval."

From Navajo

Unfortunately, they don't seem to be available any more. Maybe they were ahead of their time?