Star Trek's Design Influence On Palm, New Tech

kevcol writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has a fun article describing how many of the inventions of Star Trek have made early appearances, 2 centuries ahead of Captain Kirk's time. They talk with one of Palm's UI designers, who admits that '...my first sketches were influenced by the UI of the Enterprise bridge panels', and also notes: 'When we designed the first Treo... it had a form factor similar to the communicators in the original series. It had a speakerphone mode so you could stand there and talk into it like Capt. Kirk'."

Comments

missed this one?

[grub]

What about the medical monitoring equipment McCoy had in his sick bay?

It could track heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, etc. I don't think those devices existed before Star Trek hit the air. Granted we don't have the "no-contact" versions yet (and I stress "yet") but we still have a few hundred years to perfect it.

Re:missed this one?

[djh101010]

Temperature and heart rate should be easy - infrared pyrometers are used in industry to measure, with accuracy, the temperature of a surface, no reason it shouldn't work to point it at a person & get a number. Heart rate - several optical ways, no problem, or a directional microphone and appropraite sound processing - again, nothing too complicated.

Blood pressure, though...since BP is measured by finding the two points where (1) the pressure in the cuff blocks all flow, and (2) the pressure in the cuff blocks no flow, I can't see an easy way to get that without actually blocking and unblocking said flow.

Non-inavsive blood pressure systems work by "listening" to the pulse with a pressure transducer & working some fairly mundane math to get the numbers, but I just can't see a way to find out how much pressure it takes to occlude a blood vessel without...occluding that blood vessel.

Re:missed this one?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the medical monitoring equipment McCoy had in his sick bay?

Better yet, how about springboarding off Space 1999. It would be cool to have one of those TV comlink thingies. Of course in that case, we are a little behind the show's technology.

Re:missed this one?

[grub]

Space:1999 was too far fetched. I mean.. a space station on the moon a FULL YEAR before we were able to buy flying cars here on Earth? That's crazy talk!

Re:missed this one?

[dnahelix]

I remember reading about a device that uses sonar and radar to read heart rate, breathing rate, body temperature and a few other things via a no contact scan. It was developed mainly for burn victims. The cost of tens of thousands of dollars per unit made it cost prohibitive for non necessary uses. I tried doing a quick search but didn't find anything (and I'm supposed to be working) Does any else know about this device?

Re:missed this one?

[wwwrun]

Remember SARS? In East Asia (and maybe Canada - I don't know) they used infrared imagers to scan passengers boarding planes for symptoms of fever.

Re:missed this one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Already exist:

Temperature: digital thermometer, works without contact, but must be near (not inside) the ear (a doctor used on my daughter some 2 years ago).

Heartbeat & Pressure: all methods are non-invasive, usually based on sound. Unborn babies can be heard with ultrasound. A foetus heartbeat is about 160 bpm. BTW, don't do abortions. Think.

Level of oxygen: a sensor measures passing of light thru a finger and (as I was told) counts red cells (?!)

Another interesting fact: there have been reports of rare dogs being able to smell tumors (or associated chemicals) before they're visible. I wonder if dogs can smell DNA.

It has also been said dogs can warn of impending epilepsy attacks (maybe by noticing its owner's pre-stroke behaviour?).

Re:missed this one?

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

The question is, is it worth the extra cost for the added value? We can take someone's temperature in two seconds with a digital ear thermometer, so is there much more value in being able to take it from the air?

Tim

Re:missed this one?

[Tango42]

A lot of people can tell when they are going to have a fit (NB: a fit is very different from a stroke), it's not suprising that dogs can pick up on that.

Re:missed this one?

[djh101010]

The point was "non-contact", not merely "non-invasive".

If you weren't an AC I'd spend time on your other points.

Re:missed this one?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Another interesting fact: there have been
> reports of rare dogs being able to smell tumors
> (or associated chemicals) before they're
> visible. I wonder if dogs can smell DNA

They probably can't smell DNA, but that wouldn't be how they do it (if they can).

Living creatures are a soup of chemicals, many of which would probably contribute to the organism's "odor" if there were sensitive enough means to detect them. The creature's odor would vary according to its physical health, mental state, etc.

From my personal experience: Put a honeybee an inch or so from a schizophrenic (if you have one handy) and watch what the bee does.

AC.

Re:missed this one?

[Lord Kano]

Temperature and heart rate should be easy - infrared pyrometers are used in industry to measure, with accuracy, the temperature of a surface, no reason it shouldn't work to point it at a person & get a number.

I do believe that "core temp" is what is important.

Sure the temperature under the tongue of the average healthy person will be 98.6 F, but who knows what the normal skin temp of the forehead of the average person is?

LK

Re:missed this one?

[neil.orourke]

Actually, it is.

You're referring to the aura that a patient develops when a seizure (fit) is going to happen. The usual indicators of an aura is:
- Metallic taste in the mouth;
- Visual distortion (red tint, sometimes blue tint or solid object moving / morphing); and
- Strange / intense headaches.

All these are experienced by the patient - they are not necessarliy obvious to the observer. An observer can sometimes pick when a seizure is going to happen.

The point about dogs is that they can pick up a seizure apparently by smell alone - sometimes several hours in advance. Some dogs can even detect a seizure before the patient's aura develops. There's definitely someting interesting happening here.

Re:missed this one?

[seafortn]

Minor correction on the O2 Sat monitor:

It works by shining a red light through the extremity and calculates O2 Sat based on absorption - oxygen carrying RBCs do not absorb the light, whereas deoxygenated RBCs do.

As a side note, this is what fools you with CO poisoning - hemoglobin bound by CO also does not absorb red light - same reason that people with CO poisoning look fine.

Re:missed this one?

[neil.orourke]

Oh, and as a point of interest, dogs can detect a stroke hours before it happens, too.

Re:missed this one?

[zzendpad]

You are correct about the light sensor on the finger. They are referred to in hospitals as a "pulsox meter", short for pulse oximetry, and they measure both pulse and oxygen saturation.

Basically light is emitted at two different wavelengths (650nm and 805nm). The haemoglobins in your blood will absorb more or less of this light depending on oxygen saturation. Basically this meter is looking at the colour of your blood. It then takes the measurements and computes the oxygen saturation based on the delta between the amount of light absorbed at each of these wavelengths.

Re:missed this one?

[Garlonuss]

Yeah. We all know, by the Back to the Future Movies, that flying cars will be around well before 2015.

Re:missed this one?

[cthugha]

Yes: you don't have to waste time doing a lot of simple tests whose time cost adds up or hooking up a (possibly convulsing) patient using wires to a hulking box in the corner when you can just look at a panel to get a wealth of data. Very handy in an emergency.

Re:missed this one?

[Matrix272]

Blood pressure, though...since BP is measured by finding the two points where (1) the pressure in the cuff blocks all flow, and (2) the pressure in the cuff blocks no flow, I can't see an easy way to get that without actually blocking and unblocking said flow.

Correct me if I'm wrong... but isn't blood pressure simply a measurement of pressure exerted by the blood inside a person's veins (or arteries)? If so, wouldn't it be possible to shoot a stream of a specific type of atom or electron through the vein (technically through the arm) and measure how long it takes to get the other side, or how many of them get to the other side? For an analogy, I'm imagining a piece of paper with a flashlight behind it. With 1 sheet of paper, you can see the light pretty well. Keep adding sheets, and eventually the light disappears completely. Maybe that's a flawed analogy, but given that we have lots of equipment for measuring electroncs (X-ray or CAT scan anyone?), why can't we apply the same type of physics to measuring blood pressure?

Re:missed this one?

[djh101010]

I think you'd have a hard time convincing anyone (the FDA included) that ionizing radiation to indirectly measure blood pressure is somehow better, cheaper, safer, or more reliable than pumping a cuff up around someone's arm and measuring it directly.

Sure, we can measure flow non-invasively, MRI is excellent for this (lay down a saturation pulse, wait (n) milliseconds, take an image & see where the pulse in the blood has moved to). That's fine for how fast it's moving, and where it's moving to, but still doesn't give pressure.

I'm not sure that an xray would be able to see any difference between a blood pressure of 120 systolic and 150 systolic - that peak pressure is only there for a dozen milliseconds or so; synchronization would be a problem, even if you could trigger the system fast enough I'm not sure that there's enough - or indeed, any - radiological differentiation between a blood vessel at 120mm of Hg vs. 150mm of Hg.

In other words, might work, but it's a lot of screwing around compared to inflating a cuff around someone's arm.

Re:missed this one?

[Tango42]

I was more refering to the dogs picking up on the fact that the person has (prehaps subconciously) picked up on it, then them picking it up directly.

Re:missed this one?

[FingerDemon]

Or its like that story about the circus horse who could do math. When someone asked the horse any kind of math problem the horse would tap out the answer with it's hoof. But if the person asking the horse didn't know the answer to the question, the horse was often wrong. It turned out, he was reading the subtle body language and emotion on the face of the person asking and would stop stomping when he read the reaction that he had reached the right answer.

Dogs could be doing something similar with epilepsy or strokes, by picking up on hidden body language cues that the person isn't even aware of.

It has always seemed to me that dogs are much more in tune to emotions than anything rational, anyway. Our physical health undoubtedly has an affect on our emotional state.

Re:missed this one?

[genner]

We've had flying cars for years, their just really expensive and require a pilots license. http://www.moller.com/skycar/

Re:missed this one?

[The_REAL_DZA]

"Temperature and heart rate should be easy - infrared pyrometers are used in industry to measure, with accuracy, the temperature of a surface, no reason it shouldn't work to point it at a person & get a number"

That's exactly the way the "SARS test" in the Shanghai International Airport works; they herd (yes, "herd" is the appropriate term) passengers-to-be past a checkpoint where there's a lone infrared imager scanning the single-file line -- most likely they swoop in to perform more detailed investigations if you trip the temp limit...don't know for sure since nobody tripped it while we were there (as far as we know...)

Re:missed this one?

[ctrivedi]

Some runners use heart rate monitors which measure electrical signals given off by the heart - these are in contrast to monitors which sense pulse in blood vessels. These systems are also "non-invasive;"; however, they do not work by simply "'listening' to the pulse with a pressure transducer & working some fairly mundane math to get the numbers." See generally Nike HRM/SDM

Re:missed this one?

[Matrix272]

In other words, might work, but it's a lot of screwing around compared to inflating a cuff around someone's arm.

Oh, I never said it would be easier than doing it the traditional way. The question that was posed was whether it was possible to measure someone's blood pressure without actually touching them... in the vein (forgive the pun) of Star Trek. So, the answer seems to be yes, it may be possible, but it's not practical...... yet. In the future, we may be able to pump a certain type of radiation through someone and detect all sorts of ailments, including high or low blood pressure. At that point, it may become both possible, and practical.

Re:missed this one?

[DesertFalcon]

If you've ever seen one of the ear thermometers, it's not a hulking box, and you don't need to hook them up to it. You just stick it in their ear, push a button, and beep! there's their temperature on the readout. (It doesn't go very far in, either, so there's no risk of poking their eardrum.)

From www.medterms.com:

The ear thermometer was invented in 1964 by Dr. Theodor H. Benzinger. Dr. Benzinger worked from 1947 to 1970 at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland where he studied temperature regulation and helped create the field of biothermodynamics. He created the ear thermometer while looking for a way to take a person's temperature and get a reading as close as possible to the temperature center of the brain temperature, the hypothalamus. Because the hypothalamus and the eardrum share blood vessels, Benzinger decided to use the ear canal to take a reading. (Until that time, attaching electrodes to the hypothalamus was the only way to get a brain temperature reading.) Prior to Benzinger's invention of the ear thermometer, temperature readings were typically obtained by placing a thermometer in the mouth, rectum or under the arm. The ear temperature most closely correlates with the brain temperature and is therefore, if properly taken, the best body temperature reading. Theodor Hannes Benzinger was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1905 and died in Bethesda in 1999 at the age of 94. He was also the inventor of a device to measure calorie loss and made many other important contributions to medicine and science including the Planck-Benzinger modification of the second law of thermodynamics.

Re:missed this one?

[cthugha]

If you've ever seen one of the ear thermometers, it's not a hulking box, and you don't need to hook them up to it. You just stick it in their ear, push a button, and beep! there's their temperature on the readout.

True, but not all instruments are like that and doctors often have to do a whole battery of tests to work out what's wrong with a given patient, in which case (as I said) the time cost of all those tests, even if they are quick and simple, adds up. Also note that a remote sensor would greatly facilitate automatic data collection, relieving nursing staff of the need to go around checking the vitals and other relevant data of every patient on the ward every $x hours.

Orgasmatron

[meehawl]

I wish they'd work on some of the innovations in Woody Allen's scifi movie Sleeper. I want my own Orgasmatron!

Re:Orgasmatron

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.skfriends.com/orgasm-machine.htm

Re:Orgasmatron

[shystershep]

It's attached to your wrist.

Re:Orgasmatron

[WeaverBen]

10 kinds: Those who can count in binary, and those who can't.

Re:Orgasmatron

[Anonymous Coward]

That's only two you idiot.

Re:Orgasmatron

[Sloppy]

Don't bogart the orb, man.

Re:Orgasmatron

[triumphDriver]

Damn!! My Tag Heuer doesn't have that function!
Oooooooh
I get it

Re:Orgasmatron

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHAHA

Re:Orgasmatron

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off with that crusty old joke. Fuck.

Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

When are those panels of randomly blinking lights going to make it on the market? I have been waiting some time.

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Bob was a dismal failure.

Re:Hmmmm

[Mateito]

| When are those panels of randomly blinking
| lights going to make it on the market?

You've never tried to diagnose a 3COM Switch network, have you?

Re:Hmmmm

[irregular_hero]

I think you might be able to take your pick from Thinkgeek today, if you're so inclined.

Re:Hmmmm

[argStyopa]

OK, it's not the panels, but there's software you can use with your computer that simulates the entire functionality of the blinkenlights.

http://www.microsoft.com

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

All I want is an infinite improbability engine.

Re:Hmmmm

[cft_128]

Thinking Machines supercomputers had that. A light for each CPU blinking on and off. Useful in a macroscopic way I would guess as a measure of load, but I'm not sure how useful it actually was.

Re:Hmmmm

[Trurl's Machine]

You missed them! They were available for vintage systems - ebay is your last resort now, sleeper!

Re:Hmmmm

[ewhac]

Go check out these guys.

Schwab

Re:Hmmmm

[Schemat1c]

When are those panels of randomly blinking lights going to make it on the market? I have been waiting some time.

A company I used to work for many years ago had a good sized VAX in the typical early 80's fishbowl/raised floor computer room. The thing had tons of cabinets and was pretty big but the only real light on the thing was the power light. One of the engineers stuck a bunch of led's on a black wooden box and set them up to blink randomly, just like in the cheesy old sci-fi films. He put it on the top of the VAX to impress customers when they got the tour.

Re:Hmmmm

[SWTP_OS9]

Actualy we did but was mid to late 1970's. Remember the Altar? It even had switches to toss!

Re:Hmmmm

[Romeozulu]

Very true. Much of my early computer work was on CPM machines and they had lights for the address and data bus. Plus switches to key in address and values. It was how we bootstrapped the machine off the tape reader (paper tape, that is).

It was also useful in seeing where the machine locked up, or was in a tight look. You could halt the machine, toggle in a new value for a register and continue. Those were the days...

Re:Hmmmm

[AndroidCat]

It couldn't have impressed you very much, or you wouldn't have gone SWTPc. :^P

Re:Hmmmm

[_Sprocket_]

When are those panels of randomly blinking lights going to make it on the market? I have been waiting some time.

Already on the market - if you had the right copy of Softside and a TRS-80. I've got the copy of Softside stuck away in a box somewhere... and a TRS-80 Mod I also in a box somewhere... might even be the same box.

Re:Hmmmm

[YCrCb]

A rack of Cisco 2940's with lights in Utilization mode!

[ More detail ]
24 port 1U rack ethernet switch, with 24 lights in a row. Lights left to right based on current utilization in green, and peeks in orange.

Re:Hmmmm

[laird]

"Thinking Machines supercomputers had that"

They were great -- you could write programs that would utilize specific CPU's so that you could indirectly control the display to spell out messages. And aside from that silliness, there were times when you could detect errors or inefficiencies in your software because of the pattery of lights.

I'm just not ready

[Anonymous Coward]

To live in a house without a bathroom.

Re:I'm just not ready

[October_30th]

To live in a house without a bathroom

Don't worry.

Where do you think all those Captain's "logs" go?

Re:I'm just not ready

[Gzip Christ]

Where do you think all those Captain's "logs" go?

Generally speaking, the same place as his Number One.

Re:I'm just not ready

[kid-noodle]

Actually it should be pointed out that there is at least one bath on the Enterprise, and one toilet. Right at the bottom of the ship. But that's the TNG Enterprise of course.

And I'm recalling that based on a brief showing of a plan of the ship, on a documentary on Star Trek...

Re:I'm just not ready

[sharkey]

IIRC, Shatner has or had a toilet built to look like the captain's chair on the Enterprise. Don't remember where I heard, tho.

Re:I'm just not ready

[Zarquon]

Dunno about showers, but they showed baths a number of times.. bubble baths mostly, but there was the "devolving" episode where troy became a frog or something? Didn't she stay in the tub to breathe?

Re:I'm just not ready

[shadow303]

She stayed in the tub because of the amphibious tendencies. At the time, she had both lungs and gills. As far as the shower goes, they have sonic showers and they showed one of them in an episode of voyager.

Re:I'm just not ready

[Anonymous Coward]

They use waste extraction and sonic showers.

Come to think of it, do they just "beam out" the crap?

Beam me up scotty!

[xot]

Palm probably has an easter egg which is a pre recorded message that says "Beam me up Scotty", a feature that capt kirk could have used in his days!! :-)

Re:Beam me up scotty!

[HexRei]

Actually, IIRC Kirk never said that in ST:TOS. He almost always said something like "Two to beam up".

Re:Beam me up scotty!

[Mateito]

However, he DID say it in "Star Trek 4: The
Voyage Home"... which of course in an even numbered movie.

Re:Beam me up scotty!

[brucmack]

Well, technically Kirk never said anything in ST:TOS. When he was speaking, it wasn't called Star Trek: The Original Series, was it? :)

Re:Beam me up scotty!

[Wehesheit]

nope, he did not say it exactly in the voyage home. Close but no cigar. Watch it again and see.

Re:Beam me up scotty!

[CrazyTalk]

Sorry, he still did not say that. I believe it was "Scotty, beam me up" in ST4. As close as he ever got to uttering the imortal phrase.

Re:Beam me up scotty!

[Erik K. Veland]

Wow. Someone modded this fact interesting. News for nerds indeed. :-)

Speaking of medical tech

[detritus`]

The needle-less shots McCoy would give for every little thing are not that far off either, DMSO is a popular one that's used for horses, but you wouldnt want that one used on yourself unless you love the taste/smell of dead fish...

Re:Speaking of medical tech

[grub]

They already have units that blast the medicine/vaccine through the skin at high pressure. They're mainly used when they have to process a lot of people in a short time.

Re:Speaking of medical tech

[WeaverBen]

Don't forget patches for nicotine, estrogen, etc., etc.

Re:Speaking of medical tech

[JudgeFurious]

And if you move you're in a small world of pain so be very still when you get one of those. I also recall that they're either completely painless or hurt like hell but I can't really tell you why that's the case. I just chalked it up to skill of the person giving the shot but maybe I twitched a little or something.

Re:Speaking of medical tech

[kevcol]

..unless you love the taste/smell of dead fish

Well, as a matter of fact, um.... wait- no, I won't go there.

Re:Speaking of medical tech

[Loadmaster]

My dad used to administer shots like this in the Air Force during Vietnam. You are exactly right. Pain level is determined by skill of the admin and by how still you can be. Twitch or move and it hurts.

Re:Speaking of medical tech

[sillydragon]

When I inprocessed into the US Army in 1989, the immunizations they gave to everyone were administered by medics using what looked and sounded like an airgun.

And yeah, if you flinched, it hurt...I think it had to do with the airstream being angled instead of straight down. The good medics would walk by, tap you on the arm with the tip of the gun to make you flinch, then do it again right after you'd flinched, and fire.

I'm not sure if the air was used to carry the medicine, or just accelerate it. It'd guess just accelerate it, since blowing air under someone's skin strikes me as being unsafe for some reason. }:)

Re:Speaking of medical tech

[pair-a-noyd]

Yeah, in 1966 they used those on us in first grade for some sort of vaccinations. They hurt like HELL and left a scar..

Re:Speaking of medical tech

[Dr. Evil]

Intramuscular shot in a tense muscle? Interesting observation though.

Re:Speaking of medical tech

[hawaiian717]

I had something like this used once when a podiatrist had to remove an ingrown toenail. He used it to deliver a local anesthetic. It felt like being hit by a rubber band.

Re:Speaking of medical tech

[87C751]

When I inprocessed into the US Army in 1989, the immunizations they gave to everyone were administered by medics using what looked and sounded like an airgun.

Old news. I inprocessed in 1974 and the airgun injections were well-established even then.

The actual mechanism is a high-power squirt gun. Somewhat disturbing to watch the medic cleaning one out by shooting into a trash can 20 feet away. And whatever you do, don't flinch! They told us this in those exact words. One session, they were giving one in each arm, and one guy didn't see the second one coming and flinched away. He ended up with a bunch of stitches to close up the gash.

Re:Speaking of medical tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, my pop enlisted in the USMC in the late 50's, and says they used them all the way back then. The've been around forever, it seems, though they've not been as nice and compact as ol' Bones' hyposprays.

horrible

[Quasar1999]

The UI of star trek (at least TNG and onwards) has been horrible. A bunch of numbered buttons with lines going in virtually random directions to displays of other grouped buttons that don't seem to make any sense as to why they are grouped... They look pretty, but there is no way someone would lay out an interface like that and use it daily...

Don't take my word for it, do some googling for actual set shots of the UI... it's upsettingly poorly designed.

Re:horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. And why would Picard have to say "Data, set course and speed..blah, blah, blah" when all he has to do is s/Data/Computer/?

Re:horrible

[DR SoB]

That's what they said when calculators, telephones, type-writers, etc. were invented. Maybe once you learn to use them they make sense?! i.e. the big red button on the top of the TV remote looks like it is random, but when you know it's the POWER button it seems to make more sense..

Re:horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the original series had a great UI. The rows of light bulbs and that cool spiraltron that Spock used.

Re:horrible

[jhoger]

On the contrary it seems a heck of a lot more functional than typical desktop GUIs...

Every window opened full screen, important messages in large readable text, it has a very interactive feel. It gives the impression of an adaptable, efficient two dimensional interface for communicating with an embedded system. The Lines clearly delineate portions of the display of interest, the text is large enough to be seen and pressed with fingers, etc... they did put thought into the general look and feel and I think Okuda did a great job.

But generally you should just think of them as props, they in general aren't meant to be looked at up close so don't be too "upset."

Re:horrible

[Short Circuit]

Very few of the buttons from LCARS (and whatever the Cardassian system was on DS9...heh. It was funny when they tried to install a new system. Security system went berzerk.) were labeled. At best, they were color-coded.

I assume that Starfleet training included using the interfaces. However, I do wonder about the three-dimensional interface mentioned by Jahdzia in the episode where Sisko's stuck bouncing through time connected to his son, and about the Dominion command interface.

If you think about it, LCARS was horrible, unless your goal was unusability. In one of the TNG episodes, a child thought he caused the destruction of most of his ship by falling on one of the consoles.

I did notice that non-Federation people rarely had any difficulty figuring out the computer systems. Even in Voyager, guests didn't have much of a problem using the systems. (Except for the occasional surprise at a holo-doctor.)

Re:horrible

[ciroknight]

Think of modern keyboard layouts: qwerty doesnt make a damned bit of sense to someone who's never used a keyboard, and often causes people to "Peck type". But once you learn the system, you can type tens-hundreds of words per minute. It's all about learning and repetition. In fact, I actually see how some of the Enterprise-D's panels work, they actually make a lot of sense of the buttons you can read, and of what you can't read, most of the time it's voice control anyways, unless you're an android or acceptionally good at entering in long keyboard commands.

Think of Palm Pilots language, then compare it to QWERTY.. you'll find that "a bunch of squigly lines not even laid out in the same direction" can be most useful...

Re:horrible

[epiphani]

TNG's interface was far better than TOS. Those bridge panels are all all totally configurable to your choice. They arent static buttons - they're basically touchscreens.

You know that little laptop-like thing that Picard keeps on his desk? Watch how he uses it sometime. There is one button on it - to turn it on. He turns it on, then just hits the screen. Also, pull out the TNG technical manual sometime. They accually put a disturbing amount of thought into the design of their UI.

Re:horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

jesus, where's the shatner SNL skit when you need it

Re:horrible

[Short Circuit]

That brings up an interesting thought. Perhaps if interfaces were designed to be intelligible on TV, they'd be more usable in reality, too.

Think about it. People watching the show may not know anything about computers, but they still had to understand the occasional piece of information that was important to the plot. (One good example would be when Dr. Crusher was caught in her son's experimental warp bubble. She didn't know where she really was until she saw (and the viewer) saw a picture of the "nature of the universe" and recognized it as something she (and the viewer) saw on one of Wesley's screens in Engineering.

That kind of driving force behind usability would probably be benificial to general use of computers.

Personally, though, I prefer {NeXT|OPEN}Step, GTK, or QT.

Re:horrible

[hellfire]

So exactly what function did you serve on the Enterprise D when you experienced this horrible UI? Helm? Security? Engineer? Perhaps you were even the captain having trouble working the ship?

Or maybe you were just some shmuck trapped in a cargo hold who couldn't work the UI to get out so you were forced to just go along for this Crack-induced joy ride of a hallicination because after all it is only a friggin TV show!

Re:horrible

[Sloppy]

Don't fuck with Data's union.

Re:horrible

[Jexx Dragon]

Personally, I like the computers and UI in Enterprise. Seems more useful and realistic to me, TOS had the worst... But then, the computers that existed when the show was made were all analog, I guess no one could imagine a digital computer. LCARS isnt actully that bad, though there is room for improvement.

Re:horrible

[josh_freeman]

I did some thought of doing a UI based off LCARS when I was going to put a computer in my truck after the radio was stolen. Based on the Technical Manual descriptions, it would be a good, flexible UI for a car, when you can't take a lot of tiemt o look at what's on the screen while driving.

Re:horrible

[jhoger]

I use Ion 2... either a window should be visible or it shouldn't (though the tab should show)... some random visible portion of a window might be the only metaphor available for desktops in meatspace but I am growing accustomed to a nice orderly gui desktop.

Re:horrible

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

It is.

I took apart a keyboard to turn it into a "Star Trek" keyboard - no buttons, you just touched spots on plastic - which is basically what a keyboard is underneath the buttons.

I didn't even get all the way and it was annoying as hell - it was quite responsive when you touched the right spot on the plastic, but when not staring at the keyboard there was no feedback - no feel of the buttons to tell you where your hands were located, since it was all a smooth plastic film, and you lost the tactile feedback from pushing the button and knowing it was pushed.

Tim

Re:horrible

[Trurl's Machine]

The UI of star trek (at least TNG and onwards) has been horrible.

That can be said about actually every major science fiction flick or tv series. What's funny is about the same time when ST:TOS was on the air, Douglas Engelbart was already working on the real user interface for the 21st century computers - mouse, pointer, windows etc. In 1968, you could even attend The Mother Of All Demos to see the 21st century computing. Of course, the event passed virtually unnoticed and everybody was excited by famous (yet utterly missed) vision of 2001 in the Clarke/Kubrick movie. Probably somewhere someone right now knows what the computers of 2050 will look like - and he might even right now show the demo. Virtually unnoticed, as always.

Re:horrible

[feepness]

It is [horrible].

it was quite responsive when you touched the right spot on the plastic, but when not staring at the keyboard there was no feedback

Too bad the touchpad wasn't on the screen LIKE ON THE TV SHOW.

Sorry, sorry, I don't really care that much but I mean come on really, you just aren't bloody paying attention.

Re:horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for starting a completely useless rhetorical discussion for a bunch of slashbots to manically masterbate in.

Re:horrible

[SWTP_OS9]

I purchased a solid state no moving parts capasity sensing ascii keyboard in the early 1980's. It was simular to the ST style. It had the abbility to be boil as in stralizing it!

There is a new portable keyboard for PDA's that uses a laser pattern laying out a keyboard on a surface and a camera to detect what key you pressed. Its about 100 dollars.

Re:horrible

[wdavies]

Also, it doesnt make much sense anyway. Apparently Qwerty was developed to avoid the actual typing heads from jamming when typing at speed. Allegedly. I dont have proof of this. AFAIK, this means keeping the frequently hit keys away from each other. Yes you can learn to type fast on it, but I'm pretty sure its not the most efficient layout when you dont have moving type heads. Dvorak developed a very efficient layout.

Oh, ok found a reference
Winton

Re:horrible

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

I don't think we want the helmsman staring down at his console to make sure he pushes the forward button instead of the back one, when he should be looking out the main viewer at the Borg cube.

Tim

Re:horrible

[thanasakis]

There is one button on it

Yeah, and it says: "I feel lucky"

Re:horrible

[neil.orourke]

Here in Australia, our new combat "Collins" class subs had a user interfce designed by committee. It took 13 button presses to designate a target and launch a torpedo. The generals, when assessing this new sub, complained that the UI in a Playstation game to at most three clicks to designate a target and launce; why can't a multi-billion dollar sub work like that.

The contractor then employed some game UI designers to rewrite the combat system.

It's a true story! I don't have tome to search for the reports now, but it should be available on www.smh.com.au or www.theaustralian.com.au.

Re:horrible

[Dun Malg]

Or maybe you were just some shmuck trapped in a cargo hold who couldn't work the UI to get out so you were forced to just go along for this Crack-induced joy ride of a hallicination because after all it is only a friggin TV show!

How DARE you call my TV friends a hallucination.

Re:horrible

[kundor]

there were plenty of digital computers around when star trek was made. Late 60s, the world was teeming with them, arpanet was getting started, high-level programming languages were being invented left and right. Even Unix was released while star trek was on.

Re:horrible

[Chanc_Gorkon]

The layout was good, but that font they used in TNG and onward was HORRIBLE! Everything was squished all together, or looked that way.

Re:horrible

[MagicDude]

From the Star Trek Technical Manual - Page 34

We incorporated the concept of software-definable, task specific panel layout into our controls because Mike (Okuda) thought it a logical way of simplifying designs that would otherwise have been nightmarishly complex. The basic idea is that the panels automatically reconfigure themselves to suit the specific task at hand. A side benefit we discovered is this gave our actors much more freedom in hitting controls to accomplish various tasks. Even though out case tries to get things right, there are numerous occasions when a particular shot will require an actor to hit a button on a specific area of a panel, which may not reflect out original design for that panel. Variable layout control panels mean that the button that fires phasers this week is not necessarily the same button that fires them next week.

Re:horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good to know that some people have the history of technology right! I still meet kids that don't believe I have a 4GHz oscilloscpe from 1966.... Kids these days.

Re:horrible

[nervous_twitch]

Why wouldn't we want him staring at the console? It could display 3D ship's vectors and possible paths or whatever. That big pretty main screen never showed any technical information. I'd rather my pilot know how fast he's going, what direction he's going in, and how far away things are.

Re:horrible

[ciroknight]

My impression was that they were labled, but all the consoles had a mask over them (the reason for the uniform black look) that only allowed them to be read if you were looking directly at them. This would explain the panels in the Engineering section that are very well labled, and the panels on the bridge, which look as if they say nothing at all.

Mind you, the system also has a command lock-out via the communicator, so the boy could not have possibly triggered any damage. This is actually quite a good design, because any interface that worked like this could easily become a nightmare if you laid your hand on one by accident. I actually think that panels like this would be quite nice to work with: Sorta like modern GUI's with movable windows, except the buttons can be rearranged as well...

Re:horrible

[Skater]

This reminds me of the times when I go up to a counter or call a company to order something - the employee is clicking away like mad when all I've said is, "I'm looking for a widget." It amazes me how many keystrokes they have to go through just to do something pretty simple. (I wish I could think of a good example off the top of my head, but a day of travelling has fried my brain for now.)

You see this on ST, too: "Worf, arm phasers and photon torpedos." *Worf's hands flying about hitting button after button* I think arming and firing phasers and torpedos is something you'd want to be able to do with a minimum of keystrokes (including safety precautions to prevent accidental firings, of course), but it sometimes looks like Worf or Data is working on reproducing the works of Shakespeare...

--RJ

Re:horrible

[iNetRunner]

Also figure if the interface has some voice/sound functionality too.. Hideous wailing and you'd need Uhura to translate what it meens!

Re:horrible

[Tablizer]

The UI of star trek (at least TNG and onwards) has been horrible. A bunch of numbered buttons with lines going in virtually random directions to displays of other grouped buttons that don't seem to make any sense as to why they are grouped... They look pretty, but there is no way someone would lay out an interface like that and use it daily...

UML lives to the future? Oh God, no!

Re:horrible

[SamSim]

Here's a question. Why have a big diagram of the ship's shields status at the *back* of the bridge, where a technician has to read the number out loud all the time? Seeing as it's apparently the most important piece of data to refer to in a combat situation, why not simply have a big LED display just to the right of the viewscreen at the front?

Re:horrible

[Tony Hoyle]

TOS had about 4 switches, and depending on what the story was this week it either meant 'warp factor 6' or 'shoot the badguy with the newly reconfigured tractor beam/tacyon laser'.

Great UI... but the artificial intelligence needed to work out what the operator actually *meant* must have been a bitch to code...

Re:horrible

[Tony Hoyle]

All the important tactical information is mirrored on the captains chair - in fact it's possible for the captain to pretty much dispense with the rest of the crew & use voice command to tell the computer to do the important stuff ('FIRE!!!').

Re:horrible

[prockcore]

Actually the secret is that the buttons don't do anything, they're like the buttons on an elevator, just there so you feel like you're doing something.

In reality the computer just figures out what needs to be done and does it. We already know it has baddass voice recognition, it just eavesdrops on everyone's conversation and takes the appropriate action.

I'd think that's the only thing that makes sense. The computer goes, "Hmm, the shields are going down, if I don't redirect power from everything available, I'll be blown to smithereens.. nah, I'll wait for wesley to push some buttons before I do anything to protect myself and the ship" Dumbass computer.

Re:horrible

[nautical9]

I also heard (although this is likely just a coincidence) that since typewriter salesmen where unlikely to be touch-typists, they wanted it to be easy to type the word "typewriter" when they were demoing the products. Note that all those letters are on the top row.

Re:horrible

[prockcore]

Apparently Qwerty was developed to avoid the actual typing heads from jamming when typing at speed. Allegedly. I dont have proof of this. AFAIK, this means keeping the frequently hit keys away from each other. Yes you can learn to type fast on it, but I'm pretty sure its not the most efficient layout when you dont have moving type heads.

True, but you're seeing the solution wrong. They didn't move commonly hit keys apart from each other to slow you down, it was to speed you up. Two keys right next to each other, when hit at nearly the same time, would jam the typewriter. Move them to opposite sides, and you can hit them at nearly the same time without jamming.

Re:horrible

[wdavies]

pedant :) I didnt say they did it to deliberately slow you down (in fact they wanted to maximize the speed with mechanical technology), just that it wasnt statistically optimized for touch typing if there had been no moving parts.

Re:horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't all Aussie buttons labelled "Just Do As George Says"...?

Re:horrible

[ferkelparade]

Either that, or they're using morse code to communicate with their computer.

Re:horrible

[Short Circuit]

Well, Picard and Troi told the boy that you needed to enter your access code before the computer would enable the panel, and there hadn't been anyone else in the area with the boy. So the panel was probably disabled already.

Re:horrible

[merlin_jim]

Don't take my word for it, do some googling for actual set shots of the UI... it's upsettingly poorly designed.

Or experience it for yourself by going to the official star trek website... it uses the same UI from the TNG show...

Re:horrible

[sql*kitten]

not staring at the keyboard there was no feedback

You notice that Wilson Riker has a habit of sitting on control panels when he wants to chat to someone? Yeah, he'd get some feedback if his ass fired the photon torpedoes, wouldn't he? :-)

Re:horrible

[lifespan]

Yes. Except in Sydney and Melbourne where all buttons are labelling "Whine About Everything George Says".....lol

Then why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't there a ST communicator-styled cell phone avaliable yet? It seems to me we have the miniaturization tech to produce a really cool and obvious product.

Re:Then why?

[Jexx Dragon]

Yep, my dad has one. Well, its a phone with a "walkie-talkie" mode.

Re:Then why?

[josh_freeman]

I don't think so, but I am convinced that watching Star Trek is 90% of the reason I got my latest cell phone, which is a flip phone. If I could only find some Star Trek ring tones. . .

Seriously, Paramount is sitting on a goldmine here. Someone ought to license that. There are enough of us Geeks floating around that whoever came out with at ST:TOS style cell phone would probably make decent money on it.

Re:Then why?

[Jhon]

Great... and with bluetooth technology, how long before we see some geek walking around tapping his "federation logo pin" on his "Picard's Capt. Jacket" to activate his "speaker phone". Yet another thing to annoy me at the local electronics store check-out line.

Sigh. What ever happened to just wearing a tee-shirt to demonstration ones devotion to a "show"?

-jhon

Re:Then why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget about the TNG stuff... Captain Kirk is the only true StarTrek captain for me, howgh. :)

Re:Then why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, that could really work. You could fake the whole getup by putting the cellphone in a tricorder shell, wearing a discrete voice-activated headset, and then just wearing a standard issue plastic federation pin. Tap the pin for effect, do the whole "Picard to Geordi" thing, and wait for the phone to dial the person you named. I'll have to look into this...

What? Was it something I said?

i am still anxiously awaiting

[Neuropol]

The Holodeck.

Re:i am still anxiously awaiting

[Anonymous Coward]

The Holodeck.


"Lets build an entertainment facility that tries to destroy/take over the ship on an almost weekly basis."

Good idea.

Re:i am still anxiously awaiting

[sndtech]

aww c'mon. imagine a giant game of quake. a beowulf cluster of holodecks!

Re:i am still anxiously awaiting

[Anonymous Coward]

"Lets build an entertainment facility that tries to destroy/take over the ship on an almost weekly basis."

A big company in Redmond is already on this project.

Re:i am still anxiously awaiting

[Anonymous Coward]

I think most /.ers would use a holodeck for more intimate activities involving Ms Portman.

Re:i am still anxiously awaiting

[Anonymous Coward]

aww c'mon. imagine a giant game of quake. a beowulf cluster of holodecks!


Oh yeah, it would be great fun ... right up to the point when the holodeck program takes over the ship's systems and starts blowing everything away in the real world.

Didn't you watch the show?

Re:i am still anxiously awaiting

[SnappleMaster]

I feel that would be an acceptable compromise given the other things a functioning holodeck could be used for. ;)

Re:i am still anxiously awaiting

[kevcol]

You still haven't tried drugs, have you?

Star Trek?

[molafson]

Star Trek? Screw that! Where's my flying car?

Re:Star Trek?

[ThogScully]

Not here yet. Blame Holden
-N

Re:Star Trek?

[apparently]

Holden? Try Dante, numbnuts.

i hope

[Anonymous Coward]

no one gets inspired by the clothing though. I'm not quite ready to jump into tights yet.

Re:i hope

[Killswitch1968]

1 piece tights for the ladies, yowza.

Re:i hope

[Short Circuit]

I found it interesting that only Admirals were generally physically unfit. So why the hell aren't I an admiral right NOW?!

Re:i hope

[Anonymous Coward]

just hope that the military uniforms don't follow futurama's Zapp Brannigan. He just seems to love Velour mini-skirt type outfits without underwear.

Re:i hope

[biobogonics]

no one gets inspired by the clothing though. I'm not quite ready to jump into tights yet.

Actually, it was the (relative) lack of clothing in the original series that got people's attention.

Re:i hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever notice how slashbot dorks will start arguments with the word 'actually'.

such as:

Actually, I _did_ just prove that I am a dweeeeeeeB in one word!!!

or:

Actually, He came in my ass and _then_ in my mouth.

or:

Actually, I help the users with their icons.

Fucking Dork.

Re:i hope

[el-spectre]

interesting rant AC... next tell us why using "the" is somehow nerdy...

Re:i hope

[rscrawford]

When are we gonna get the beehive hairdos and the miniskirts? I mean, some of those fashions were centuries ahead of their time!

Re:i hope

[droleary]

Ever notice how slashbot dorks will start arguments with the word 'actually'.

Because starting a sentence with "ever notice" makes you look nothing like Andy Rooney . . .

But what about...

[LostCluster]

How's develpment on the transporter coming?

Re:But what about...

[doconnor]

Still in theoretically impossible stage.

Re:But what about...

[jhoger]

Fantastic! The only pacing item seems to be the Heisenberg Compensators... and some minor metaphysical issues, but other than that, good to go!

Re:But what about...

[LostCluster]

I remember a "Technical Manual" book that tried to explain the science behind Star Trek:TNG-era devices. A footnote in the section of the book about transporters revealed that the answer that the writers gave whenever asked "How do the Heisenberg Compensators work?" was always "Very well, thank you."

Re:But what about...

[Short Circuit]

Definitely religious issues. For instance, does my soul automatically go to the new copy of my body?

Of course, the "new me" will be immediately certain its safe. Everything will seem exactly the same. Except now that I've thought about it. How will I know that I am who I was? How do I know that now?

I suppose that if you arbitrarily come up with a rule saying there can be only one person with a given set of recollections at a given religious destination for souls, then you can declare as a consequence that the soul is moved, not destroyed, or you'll have two John Does in heaven (or hell) (or purgatory) (or whatever you believe in), arguing over which one is the real one.

Wasn't there a series of episodes in one of the current sci-fi shows about that? A human who was cloned, including memories, and nobody knew who was the original? "Stick a lobster on my head" comes to mind.

Re:But what about...

[Posting=!Working]

Well, at the very least least IBM is working on it.

http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleport at ion/

Re:But what about...

[Anonymous Coward]

You might not be happy with the results

Re:But what about...

[Copperhead]

The Sixth Day?

Now I need to type a lot of inane information, because the lameness filters are unintelligent. Perhaps I should phrase it this way: "Could it be that you are recalling, in an imperfect way, the excellent sci-fi thriller, The Sixth Day?"

Re:But what about...

[The Only Druid]

"I suppose that if you arbitrarily come up with a rule saying there can be only one person with a given set of recollections at a given religious destination for souls, then you can declare as a consequence that the soul is moved, not destroyed, or you'll have two John Does in heaven (or hell) (or purgatory) (or whatever you believe in), arguing over which one is the real one."

Actually, it'd be far simpler than this: the instant you create a duplicate, the two [the original+the copy] start having divergent memories, due to their cartesian seperation (i.e. their seperate sensory experience). After any small amount of time, this would rapidly become signficant.

Far more difficult are the following two questions: (1) the original matter seems to be irrelevant (since the receiving transporter seems able to fill in gaps in the matter stream according to the data, such as the episode that had Riker duplicated by the transporter), so it seems that you are meaningfully killing the original body in the process of creating the second body, so is that murder? (2) If you duplicate someone in this manner, is their soul copied, or is a new soul made? Put another way, if your soul was terribly damned beforehand, is the duplicate similarly damned at that point?

Re:But what about...

[Short Circuit]

Question 2 was addressed in Heinlein's Time Enough for Love ... one of the things he hadn't tried was transfering his mind to the body of a woman. I suspect one of the reasons he chose not to was that there were too many unanswered questions, the same points you bring up.

Re:But what about...

[Short Circuit]

No...the show was about an American astronaut that somehow wound up in another civilization that comprised of many different species. The episode I saw had the crew of his ship needing repairs for his ship, and they were negotioating with the planet they were near. Some sort of imperial fleet was after them.

Re:But what about...

[edbarrett]

How will I know that I am who I was?

I don't know, but Douglas Adams had a forewarning...

I teleported home one night
With Ron and Sid and Meg.
Ron stole Meggie's heart away
And I got Sidney's leg.

Re:But what about...

[digitalsushi]

prove you're the same you every time you wake up

Re:But what about...

[comedian_999]

Transportation's all fun and games until the Federation Communication Commission mandates the inclusion of a Human Broadcast Bit...

Re:But what about...

[tbmaddux]

I remember a "Technical Manual" book that tried to explain the science behind Star Trek:TNG-era devices.

I had one of those, too, but I accidentally threw it out with a bunch of old stem bolts.

Re:But what about...

[Anonymous Coward]

> How's develpment on the transporter coming?

To expand on the "still theoretically impossible" comment somebody posted, here are a few challenges that make this trickier than your typical weekend project:

1. Converting a human from matter to energy and then reversing the process would require an extremely detailed scan of every molecule in the body. Since we're mostly water, and liquids are subject to Brownian motion (mostly random) this gets tough.

2. Assume we *could* do the scan. You better have superfast processing to do it, and massive storage to keep all the details. And hopefully this will happen before you age so much that your cells no longer match their descriptions as stored in the computer.

3. Converting matter to energy can be dangerous. Just figure the average human weighs between 100 and 200 lbs. Since E=mc^2, that's A LOT of energy in there. You better be able to hold energy that surpasses what some nuclear warheads can release, and then safely beam it to your intended destination.

I'm sorry to say that in this case, even 2 out of 3 *is* bad. :-)

Re:But what about...

[Anonymous Coward]

Off the top of my head (haha) it was something like,

"Cross my heart, shoot me dead.
Stick a lobster on my head."

And he said it while he had this wierd, extremely vaguely lobster-like, alien critter sitting on his head. It was supposed to be able to tell when someone was cognitively lying, and then kill them.

The character was John Chrichton, and at the time he said that he'd been cloned by a mad scientist that was floating aboard a dead/dying peace-keeper ship, using a kind of "out of the womb" device to clone the remaining peace-keepers on the ship so that they could... eat the clones.

Farscape rocks.

Re:But what about...

[Anonymous Coward]

Commander John Crichton, astronaut in the employ of the International Aeronautics Space Agency - IASA.

His module - incidentally a copy of the X-38 CRV NASA designed for the ISS, src. Designs on Space by Richard Wagner - was attempting an interesting maneuver - using earth's gravity and it's atmosphere to propel a space vessel at high speed by "skipping it" like a stone - when he encountered an Ion storm, rode a magnetic wave and got sucked through a wormhole through space.

Ends up in another place - probably a distant galaxy by the storyline - accidentally kills a peace-keeper pilot in a near-miss collision, meets Dargo, Rygel, Zhan, and Pilot, get's injected with "translator microbes" and finds out he's on a living ship called Moya and for a little while everyone thinks he's Sebation.

I thought you guys were geeks? :)

Re:But what about...

[fermion]

The interesting thing is we deal with the soul issue every day. For instance, how fast can the soul travel. Can it travel as fast as a car? Can it travel as fast as a plane? If we get too far away from out soul do we lose it?

And then there there are issues of transplant. Is the sould localized or dispersed. If a person has an organ transplant, has he or she lost part of the soul? Does that person get part of another soul? if we lose a body part do we lose part of our soul. How much soul can we lose before we fall under a critical mass?

These and other question indicate we should not be living in our modern way. However even most of those who really believe in souls do live with all the modern perks. I suspect that trransport will fall under the same clasification as rapid travel. Probably not good for the soul, but not worth worrying about. It seems our soul, like the dog tossed out of the truck in the woods, is pretty good at finding it's way back home. And there are certainly not a limited number of souls. Otherwise we would have a lot of people without souls. I am sure a sould can be found for any cloned person.

Re:But what about...

[johnwroach]

That's a joke, right? Everybody knows that it's Farscape, right?

I thought that was pretty clever, using a clone to fool a lie-detector device(?)

Re:But what about...

[Short Circuit]

I've always felt that my soul is firmly attached to my brain, even though the chemistry and makup of my brain largely dictates my actions. (I have autism, so that's a topic I think about more often than most.)

Re:But what about...

[Short Circuit]

I was at a hotel room. I didn't see the title scene, so I didn't know what show it was.

Re:But what about...

[Pvt_Waldo]

Self sealing ones?

Re:But what about...

[tbmaddux]

Self sealing ones?

I can't tell... there is too much yamok sauce on them.

Lapel phone?

[Gunfighter]

I always liked it when the Star Trek crew just brushed the emblem on their uniform and started talking.

Re:Lapel phone?

[jhoger]

It obviously requires an artificial intelligence of some sort... somehow the device seems to anticipate who it is you want to talk to and establishes up a 1-1 link. Otherwise if everybody was on one partyline you can imagine the level of chatter. Perhaps the idea is the computer is always following the context of conversations, or it doesn't actually interrupt the person you are talking to until it collects enough context to decide.

With enough processing power I think that's how one would do it though...

Re:Lapel phone?

[LostCluster]

The interesting thing, however, is that those devices were too good to even be possible. How did the lapel button ever figure out that a communication "Picard to Crusher" would go to either the doctor or her son, since he dealt with both people on a daily basis... only a scriptwriter could route that correctly.

Re:Lapel phone?

[MoonBuggy]

You could simulate the effect with a bluetooth headset (look for the Nextlink BlueSpoon 5G prototypes, they're about the right size). AFAIK there's nothing to say explicitly that the badges act alone, they could well provide a short range bluetooth-like signal to a tricorder (or mobile phone, your choice). Voice dialing could pick up the names too :-D

Re:Lapel phone?

[AuMatar]

Notice how they always start "My name to someone/someplace"? You delay sending until they've said who.

Re:Lapel phone?

[JudgeFurious]

I don't know, as I recall (and like most things where Star Trek is concerned I'm not counting on it being consistent) Picard usually said something like "Picard to Doctor Crusher" so that might account for it.

When asking the computer to locate someone (say for instance Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher) He'd say "Computer, locate Ensign Crusher" and I guess the computer worked out the "Acting" part itself. Then it would come back with something like (insert Majel Barrett voice here) "Acting Ensign Crusher is on Holodeck Seven in a state of undress and presently running the "Blue Oyster Club" program"

Re:Lapel phone?

[sdwr98]

They already have those - http://www.vocera.com/products/products.shtm

Re:Lapel phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, when I'm "brushing somebody's lapel", I wouldn't want to accidentally phone her mother or anything.

Re:Lapel phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice how they always start "My name to someone/someplace"?


I never understood why they had to explain who they were to their own communicator.

They had developed warp drive but still hadn't mastered caller ID???

Re:Lapel phone?

[Trurl's Machine]

The interesting thing, however, is that those devices were too good to even be possible. How did the lapel button ever figure out that a communication "Picard to Crusher" would go to either the doctor or her son, since he dealt with both people on a daily basis...

Oh, come'on. It's very easy to imagine a sort of pseudoscientific explanation, in the mood of the "Star Trek Physics". Let's just assume that the 22st century neurophysiology allows to read subliminal nuances in the way you talk about certain persons. Just some tiny difference in the way your stress particular phonems saying "Johnson" when you refer to different "Johnsons" - can't hear them with your ears, but the General Gizmotronics Voice Analyzer 3000T catches them in real time. It's probably bullshit, but if you buy the whole dilithium crap, why won't you buy this one?

Re:Lapel phone?

[bill_mcgonigle]

How did the lapel button ever figure out that a communication "Picard to Crusher" would go to either the doctor or her son

Maybe in the 23rd century they still have addresses books with a nickname field. Picard has his setup with "Crusher" for Dr. Beverly Crusher. "Ensign Crusher", and "Wesley Crusher" don't need a special nickname - they're just LDAP lookups. The o= defaults to the current ship.

Re:Lapel phone?

[AuMatar]

I would assume its so that people in large ships, who don't know everyone by voice, knows who's calling when not staring at a display.

Re:Lapel phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe in the 23rd century they still have addresses books with a nickname field. Picard has his setup with "Crusher" for Dr. Beverly Crusher. "Ensign Crusher", and "Wesley Crusher" don't need a special nickname - they're just LDAP lookups. The o= defaults to the current ship.

Or maybe it sensed the captain's arousal level and routed appropriately...

Re:Lapel phone?

[jcuervo]

Or maybe it sensed the captain's arousal level and routed appropriately...

...To Wesley?

Re:Lapel phone?

[smammon]

Have a look at www.vocera.com

It works - I've used it. Very freakin cool!

That's a great name

[Limburgher]

I love that the last name of an astrophysicist mentioned in an article on Star Trek in Batchelor.

How telling is THAT? :)

Re:That's a great name

[mcrbids]

UPDATE base SET belong.to=us WHERE belong.to=you;

Three bugs in this statement!

1) A period (".") is not a legal ANSI SQL character in a field name.

2) Since "us" and "you" are presumably strings, they really should be quoted. Many SQL implementations would error on unquoted strings.

3) Don't you want everything to belong to 'us'? Why limit it to just those records with 'you'?

4) (Pushing it, here) Mixing case makes statements harder to read. Best to write all the SQL stuff in all caps, and mix case on everything else as needed. This makes for much more readable statements!

Try this:

UPDATE base SET belong_to='us';

Re:That's a great name

[digitalsushi]

everyone hug mcrbids!

*hug* *hug*

Re:That's a great name

[ameoba]

You want to know what's worse? My initials are SWM.

Eat your heart out

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.moller.com/

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

$tv_series really shows what a visionary $creator was.

It is very logical

[amichalo]

(1) Extend arm 90 degrees in front of you
(2) Rotate palm side up
(3) Make the sign of a Vulcan

Viola! The first spork!

The most important Star Trek innovation

[Aerion]

I wish that in real life that whenever you met a minor character, an unimportant and insignificant person, probably annoying and/or ignorant, you could be sure that they were going to die within the next 60 minutes. That would make life much more enjoyable!

Re:The most important Star Trek innovation

[eln]

Incorrect. Wesley Crusher lasted far longer than 60 minutes.

Re:The most important Star Trek innovation

[sharkey]

Better than that, whenever you meet a ravishing female with different colored skin, a non-beehive hairdo or an outfit that's different than the women around you normally wear, you get to have sex with her before she dies!

Re:The most important Star Trek innovation

[spood]

And to make it more obvious who was unimportant, they'd all be wearing red!

Re:The most important Star Trek innovation

[Loadmaster]

I do that all the time. I carry a small bag of red shirts with me everywhere I go. Meet an annoying person; I hand them a shirt. They die later on. Usually of either phaser burns, tetryonic evisceration or some beam weapon of unknown type.

Re:The most important Star Trek innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I don't think that is what you wish for slashbot. You would already be long gone. As nothing more than a digital janitor you would not have made it to the second episode.

Re:The most important Star Trek innovation

[Ice_Balrog]

Except that you are that minor, unimportant and insignificant person. ;)

Re:The most important Star Trek innovation

[jeremyp]

All women will look ravishing because whenever you look at one you have to put on a pair of specs with the lenses smeared in vasaline.

Missed LCARS phenomenom

[WillAdams]

and found examples of the ``Okudagrams'' since popularized on Star Trek: The Next Generation and later shows.

There're a fair number of programs using such an interface (even a couple of products licensed by Paramount such as ``Captain's Bridge'' a virtual tour of all the star ships), and even a project on Sourceforge to create a programming system and UI guide (look for LCARS, Library Computer Access and Retrieval System).

I've found such programs fairly useful on my pen slate and amenable to use w/o a keyboard....

Links:
http://www.lcarscom.net/
http://www.lca rs-terminal.net/
http://www.bennisoft.com/
http: //www.lcars-am.org/

William

Re:Missed LCARS phenomenom

[adagioforstrings]

Ah, I love my LCARS skin for Aeroplayer on my palm:

http://www.aerodrome.us/images/LCARS.png

Several episodes in original series AND TNG

[Anonymous Coward]

In episode 14.3, "Voyage to Gomor's star" the small, rectilinear object that Ohura uses on the salt monster looks EXACTLY like a Palm

Also, (I don't have my desk reference handy here) in the sixth season of TNG, Picard is talking with the Universal Translater guy about whether or not there are four or five lights and the device he brings out is basically an iPod. His recreation device is just like our favorite device today. And what, the sixth season broadcast in, like 1990, right?

There are several other examples that I can detail if you wish.

Re:Several episodes in original series AND TNG

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Your post reminded me of a Simpson's quote by Frink:

"Yes, over here, n'hey, n'hey. In episode BF12, you were battling barbarians while riding a winged Appaloosa, yet in the very next scene, my dear, you're clearly atop a winged Arabian. Please do explain it."

But yours was more geeky.

Re:Several episodes in original series AND TNG

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks...obviously I'm trying to be a troll.
By the way "Morph" is from Star Trek also where you first find Grallice and Womit.

Re:Several episodes in original series AND TNG

[Anonymous Coward]

The episode was with a Cardassian who was holding picard prisoner. The device wasnt a Universal Translator, it was a pain-inflicting device.

Its more analogus to a remote control rather than a PDA or iPod.

For the record, the episodes were "Chain of Command Par I and Chain of Command par II"

I dont know the stardates because I'm not THAT big of a nerd. (yet)

-n

Re:Several episodes in original series AND TNG

[Anonymous Coward]

And lest we forget the salt-shaker-in-the-ear syndrome.

Re:Several episodes in original series AND TNG

[Chris Tucker]

"In episode 14.3, "Voyage to Gomor's star" the small, rectilinear object that Ohura uses on the salt monster looks EXACTLY like a Palm"

Ohura ye say? Sure, and she must have been one o' them black Irish.

Tanx for clearin' that up for me, boyo.

Patents

[harumscarum]

I am just waiting for the lawsuits.

Re:Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

A person finds technology from the future and profits from it now?

That was either a DS9 or Voyager episode, but I can't remember for sure.

Science or Fiction

[Un0r1g1nal]

A lot of items that have been created owe their innitial conception to some far sighted sci-fi writer, I remember with fondness a lot of the early analog's (My dad has been getting them for years) and reading some of the things they thought of, that to them were impossibilities. Yet we are starting to realise some of their dreams and make them realities. How long before our dreams become realities also? It's not something we can really place a time limitation on, but as we progress in general we get through technilogical barriers, and then make huge leaps forward. The joys of innovation.

And as a side note, lots of UI's appear difficult to use and understand, but if you understand them then it becomes easy. Take a look at the QWERTY keyboard for example. To a complete novice the keys are laid out in a random formation that does nothing to help them type. They want 'A' to be at the top and 'Z' to be at the bottom. But as they progress and learn about 'Home Keys' typing becomes a lot quicker and easier, just because a UI looks different, doesn't mean that with practice it wouldn't be a lot simpler and easier to use

Re:Science or Fiction

[cmburns69]

Don't forget that QWERTY was initially designed to slow down typists, due to the tendency of typewriters to jam if you typed too fast.

Re:Science or Fiction

[Zarquil]

And then we can discuss the Dvorak keyboard which is generally considered quicker to learn, quicker to type with, and much more comfortable on the wrists.

It makes more sense with the vowels together at left home and the common consonants on the right. Many professional writers make quite a fuss over the Dvorak keyboard if they hold a preference.

QWERTY is difficult to use and understand compared with other alternatives. We shouldn't stop improving simply because of inertia.

(No, I don't use the Dvorak keyboard myself. I jump between keyboards too often and I've been afraid of how difficult it would be to transition constantly between mine and someone else's. I should be less hypocritical in my life.)

- Zarq

Re:Science or Fiction

[(startx)]

Yes, I've seen several comments in this thread bringing up the example of the QWERTY keyboard as a strange interface that allows you input information fast. What people don't remember though is that QWERTY was designed to slow people down because they kept jamming typewriters with the more efficient layout.

Re:Science or Fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah blah blah. I use Dvorak. I am a coomplicated person who just likes to keep it simple stupid. I have a 'flair' for interface design that I too wish to inflict on people.

I am one of the Cliche slashbots. Because you mentioned QWERTY I will now get a technopolitical erection and now mention how Dvorak is better and more efficient and how I am better for using it.

I am just doing what previous slashbots have shown me.

Re:Science or Fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha ha.

Look at all the slashbotz bringing up the old QWERT vs Dvorak thing.

*BING*

You are slashbots!

Re:Science or Fiction

[Dun Malg]

Yes, I've seen several comments in this thread bringing up the example of the QWERTY keyboard as a strange interface that allows you input information fast. What people don't remember though is that QWERTY was designed to slow people down because they kept jamming typewriters with the more efficient layout.

It wasn't designed to slow typists down, it was designed to let them type faster. Sholes used statistical analyses of english words to find the most common digraphs (two-letter sequences) and then laid out the keyboard so the striker bars to which those letter were attached were separtated enough so they'd be less likely to jam.

Re:Science or Fiction

[Dun Malg]

Informative? Try incorrect. From the linked text:

For years, popular writers have accused Sholes of deliberately arranging his keyboard to slow down fast typists who would otherwise jam up his sluggish machine. In fact, his motives were just the opposite.

When Sholes built his first model in 1868, the keys were arranged alphabetically in two rows. At the time, Milwaukee was a backwoods town. The crude machine shop tools available there could hardly produce a finely-honed instrument that worked with precision. Yes, the first typewriter was sluggish. Yes, it did clash and jam when someone tried to type with it. But Sholes was able to figure out a way around the problem simply by rearranging the letters. Looking inside his early machine, we can see how he did it.

The first typewriter had its letters on the end of rods called "typebars." The typebars hung in a circle. The roller which held the paper sat over this circle, and when a key was pressed, a typebar would swing up to hit the paper from underneath. If two typebars were near each other in the circle, they would tend to clash into each other when typed in succession. So, Sholes figured he had to take the most common letter pairs such as "TH" and make sure their typebars hung at safe distances.

He did this using a study of letter-pair frequency prepared by educator Amos Densmore, brother of James Densmore, who was Sholes' chief financial backer. The QWERTY keyboard itself was determined by the existing mechanical linkages of the typebars inside the machine to the keys on the outside. Sholes' solution did not eliminate the problem completely, but it was greatly reduced.

The keyboard arrangement was considered important enough to be included on Sholes' patent granted in 1878 (see drawing), some years after the machine was into production. QWERTY's effect, by reducing those annoying clashes, was to speed up typing rather than slow it down. I csn't believe people still think Sholes crippled his layout to slow people down.

Re:Science or Fiction

[Zarquil]

(sigh)

I must be new here.

#include

Re:Science or Fiction

[sonpal]

QWERTY's effect, by reducing those annoying clashes, was to speed up typing rather than slow it down.

What Sholes did was slow down the fastest theoretical speed at which you could type, while at the same time increasing the fastest practical (given the technology available at the time). He didn't do it to slow people down, he did to speed them up.

That said, since he did slow the fastest theoretical speed, you can't argue that he didn't cripple his layout to slow people down. He did, at least theoretically, slow them down.

Re:Science or Fiction

[Dun Malg]

That said, since he did slow the fastest theoretical speed, you can't argue that he didn't cripple his layout to slow people down. He did, at least theoretically, slow them down.

The fastest theoretical speed is determined by the mechanical limitations of the machine. Since his reordering of the keys allowed letters to be struck in quicker succession, the fastest theoretical speed increased. People were slowed down at first by their unfamiliarity with the layout, but they were able to type faster once they learned it. You certainly can argue that he didn't change the layout to slow people down, as that was never his stated goal nor the end result. When you get right down to it, his old alphabetical layout was no more conducive to fast typing than the QWERTY layout anyway.

3-d chess

[GillBates0]

Blame me for not knowing about if it existed before the Star Trek TOS, but looks like Spock's favorite game is quite popular

Re:3-d chess

[fm6]

It's been a while since I read The Making of Star Trek, but I seem to recall that the form of 3D chess you link to (known as "Tridimensional Chess" or "Star Trek Chess"), was in fact invented for the TV series. They needed to show Spock and Kirk playing chess, but they decided that existing forms of 3d chess weren't sufficiently futuristic, to say nothing of the old-fashioned 8x8x1 chess board.

As it appeared on the show, Tri-D chess didn't have any actual rules. That was invented later, by chess loving trekkies (or maybe trek loving chessies).

Things from Star Trek universe I want to own - NOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Holodeck (Holo-orgies :-D)
Phasers (car mounted phasers would be sooo handy durring rush hr in the south US durring Spring break.. damn kids..)
transporters
The jet boots Spock wears when he saves Kirk from certain death at El capitan..

handing out pdas

[bmidgley]

I love how one start trek guy will hand his pda to another guy and say 'here's that report you asked for.'

So not only do they not have email, there's like one crewmember who's really bad at reading reports he's given... so his inbox is full of other peoples' pdas.

Re:handing out pdas

[Cecil]

The idea being that PADDs are about as ubiquitous as paper or floppy disks or burned CDs are nowadays. It's supposed to be like handing around a floppy disk that happens to have a touchscreen on it. No big loss. In fact you probably don't care if it gets returned, or even expect it to get returned.

It's a neat idea, and I would be surprised if it didn't happen in some form eventually.

Re:handing out pdas

[CrazyTalk]

even so, how often do you hand someone data on a floppy disk these days? Chances are you will email it to them (or upload it to a server somewhere). Handing the PDAs around in Star Trek did reflect what was eventually achieved circa 1980s with floppy disks, but we've since surpassed that.

Re:handing out pdas

[Anonymous Coward]

The got rid of email to end spam.

Re:handing out pdas

[fiannaFailMan]

They don't have computer networks either. I saw an episode of Voyager where Janeway gives an order, puts it into a PADD, gives it to a crewmember who then walks down into the bowels of the ship and gives the PADD to another crewmwmber who looks at the order and presses a few buttons. Cups and string would be more efficient.

Re:handing out pdas

[epiphani]

The email system of the star trek universe was made unusable due to massive amounts of spam in the early 21st century. The majority of these spam messages were from a time traveller seeking out a dimensional warp generator.

Re:handing out pdas

[Weaps]

True, but you have to remember that, being a TV show, the director needs to show in a very understandable-by-non-geek-public way how data is passed around. During the production of all of the series' computer networks were not very well known by the general public.

Besides, how do you film in a very visceral way the Captain sending an email to a subordinate with orders?

Re:handing out pdas

[DustMagnet]

At a recent science conference everyone was passing files on USB drives. Yes, they want them back. I'm not sure if we are really past those days. People seem to prefer them to burning CDs.

Re:handing out pdas

[Chester K]

I love how one start trek guy will hand his pda to another guy and say 'here's that report you asked for.' So not only do they not have email...

Of course not. By the 24th century, there's so much spam in email that you pretty much have to give you entire computer to someone for them to notice your message!

Re:handing out pdas

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, how do you film in a very visceral way the Captain sending an email to a subordinate with orders?


[CAPTAIN] (types for a while and finishes off with a very final looking keypress)

[COMPUTER] (makes a sad, something's wrong kind of sound.)

[CAPTAIN] Huh? (types some more and finishes with a emphatic kepress)

[COMPUTER] (makes a sound almoust exactly like a rasberry)

[CAPTAIN] Why you worthless piece of... (types savagely and finishes off with a violent keypress)

[COMPUTER] (makes a very happy sounding "ding")

[CAPTAIN] Well that's better. (turns to Riker and starts to speak)

[COMPUTER] (makes a "nope, that didn't work" kind of sound)

[CAPTAIN] (screaming) SON OF A... (whips out a phaser and melts the computer terminal)

[COMPUTER] (makes a broken kind of a sound)

Re:handing out pdas

[SmackCrackandPot]

I hate to imagine what would happen to the subspace relay network if someone had a misconfigured router. Packets endlessly bouncing across the universe for millennia..

Re:handing out pdas

[Anonymous Coward]

They use Macs on Voyager?

Next, I suppose, an animated clown will come juggling across the screen, wink, and point to the icon you're supposed to click.

User interface war

Re:handing out pdas

[c.emmertfoster]

You make it sound like the next spin-off is going to be "Star Trek: The Continuing Voyages of Ellen Feiss."

Groan.

Re:handing out pdas

[SuiteSisterMary]

Yeah, so, like, we're cruising along, and, like, this Romulan Warbird thingy, like, decloaks, and I'm like 'Raise shields!' and the computer goes 'boop boop boop' and the shields didn't raise. Bummer.

Re:handing out pdas

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be a security issue. Unbreakable encryption is never going to be easy, so the best way to be sure it gets to the person you want without it being intercepted is to physically hand them the PADD.

You can't spoof a person.

Unless you're watching DS9.

The impact of Star Trek

[master_p]

The impact of Star Trek has been great. Star Trek is the best pseudo-science fiction TV and movie series ever. Of course, it can not be compared to true science fiction literature, which contains 100s of future inventions and gadgets. But for TV, it is the first.

Is anybody here old enough to share his/her impressions of the first Star Trek shown, back in '66 ? it would be like magic, back then. Today we consider cell phones, digital recording devices and palmtop computers as everyday reality, but back then, it must have been very jaw-dropping, to say the least.

Re:The impact of Star Trek

[fiannaFailMan]

"Pseudo?"

Re:The impact of Star Trek

[andrews]

Ouch... I guess I'm "old enough" since I remember watching it in B&W when I was 3 years old in 1966. I didn't realize the Orion chick was green until a decade later when it was in syndication and I saw it for the first time in color.

It was absolutely amazing at the time. What looks a little stupid and clunky today was cutting edge and we loved it.

Yep, 1966. You young'uns don't know what it was like back then. No computers, no calculators, no digital watches. Most people had ONE phone in the house and we actually answered it when it rang so we could find out who was calling. It was safe to answer because tele-marketing hadn't been invented yet so it was probably someone you actually knew.

For most people the only 'high tech' thing they used on a daily basis was the television. In fact, I knew people who dismissed Trek as silly because there was no possible way any of that stuff could ever happen in real life. I guess the joke's on them.

Re:The impact of Star Trek

[ktakki]

Is anybody here old enough to share his/her impressions of the first Star Trek shown, back in '66 ? it would be like magic, back then. Today we consider cell phones, digital recording devices and palmtop computers as everyday reality, but back then, it must have been very jaw-dropping, to say the least.

I was six years old in '66, and I recall eagerly looking forward to ST's debut, to the point that I conned my parents into letting me stay up past my bedtime ("Mom, Dad said it was okay...", "Dad, Mom said it was okay...").

A little background: I was pretty well aware of tech back then, having been to the '64-'65 Worlds' Fair two or three times over the previous years. And in '64, my father's company bought an IBM System 360, a roomful of machines that was administered by men in starched white lab coats, so I had a good idea what a computer looked like.

As for Trek tech, some things were impressive, some were underwhelming, even for a starry-eyed six-year-old. Transporters, phasers, and tricorders fell into the former category, while the viewscreen, the computer, and the various consoles on the bridge fell into the latter. I think they were underwhelming to me because I had the impression that running a starship would involve more in the way of dials, gauges, buttons, switches, etc. One of the things that fascinated me back then (and really still does) are pre-glass cockpit aircraft flight decks. I guess I expected something more like that. Instead, the bridge consoles looked like an orderly collection of gumdrops.

The computer wasn't impressive to me because it was, in essence, a disembodied voice. I knew that somewhere in the ship was a room full of hulking grey or black boxes with rows of toggle switches and blinkenlights (the contemporary show Time Tunnel was more impressive in this respect), and I damn well wanted to see it. Maybe they did show it, but I don't recall any specifics or particular episodes. Seeing 2001 a few years later, I recall that one of my favorite parts was when Dave enters Hal's "core" and starts to pull out memory modules, little rectangular lights that I suppose were meant to be reminiscent of the Monolith. Symbolism aside, that scene was like a money shot for a tech-obsessed pre-teen like I was at the time.

Same with the viewscreen: I'd seen a videophone demo at the World's Fair, and it just seemed like something we'd all have in our living rooms in a few years. One thing that bothered me even then were the displays that were arrayed around the bridge, above the stations and near the ceiling. They always seemed to show some random nebula or Spirograph-like pattern. It looked cheesy, even to a six-year-old kid.

All in all, I had no doubt that I'd see some of these things in my lifetime. And why not? There were more jet planes flying overhead than propeller-driven craft (I lived near an airport back then). Televisions came in color now, skyscrapers were built with glass and steel instead of granite and stone, and it seemed like every other month there was another Gemini spacecraft being launched. They promised us flying cars and jet packs by the year 2000, and I had no doubt that they'd deliver.

I hope this hasn't been too much of a Grampa Simpson-like ramble. Oh, did I mention how I used to tie an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time...?

k.

Re:The impact of Star Trek

[Anonymous Coward]

> Star Trek is the best pseudo-science fiction TV and movie series ever.

I consider "Lost in Space" as a serious contender. Though somewhat corny, characters were more human-like, and episodes focused more sophisticate themes like greed, friendship, fear, interspecies relationship, evil vs. good, innocence, reassessment of traditional values (like the old toy maker) etc.

I'm in doubt which one was better. But I have fonder memories of LiS.

To draw a parallel, B5 was growing to be a major phenomenon, IMHO. From a sketchy and weak beginning, its author had the wit to drive it to a crescendo. Too bad it ended after four or five seasons. I hope it gets a decent sequel (and no, that Sword thing wasn't even close).

When I was young, we had ST here in Brazil. What year was it? 68 or 69, I can't recall accurately.

I was crazy about ST, but was never allowed to see it, because it was aired at 9 PM and I woke up early. One particular frightening episode was that of the bigheads with veins with telepathic powers.

Re:The impact of Star Trek

[subtillus]

thanks that was actually very interesting.

I grew up on TNG, here's to hoping that they got a few things right in that too!

Re:The impact of Star Trek

[Anonymous Coward]

When it was aired in Germany in 1968-69 I was 11 years old (which probably makes me the grandaddy of this thread:-) and We. Where. Stunned!
Star Trek, which was named "Raumschiff Enterprise" (Spaceship Enterprise) in Germany, was a marvel. We only had the b&w "Raumpatroullie Orion" in 1966, a 7-part small budget TV mini series, the ship's controls were made from sanitary equipment and a flat-iron:-D

Medical devices that McCoy use

[Anonymous Coward]

Temperature and heart rate should be easy - infrared pyrometers are used in industry to measure, with accuracy, the temperature of a surface, no reason it shouldn't work to point it at a person & get a number. Heart rate - several optical ways, no problem, or a directional microphone and appropraite sound processing - again, nothing too complicated.

Blood pressure, though...since BP is measured by finding the two points where (1) the pressure in the cuff blocks all flow, and (2) the pressure in the cuff blocks no flow, I can't see an easy way to get that without actually blocking and unblocking said flow.

Non-inavsive blood pressure systems work by "listening" to the pulse with a pressure transducer & working some fairly mundane math to get the numbers, but I just can't see a way to find out how much pressure it takes to occlude a blood vessel without...occluding that blood vessel.

Re:Orgasmatron -- Nope, SFC just missed it.

[mynameis (mother ...]

Remote controlled orgasms to cost 9,500

Ahem... :)

Teleportation - Electrons No Problem

[meehawl]

How's develpment on the transporter coming?

Quantum teleportation is progressing slowly. Teleporting electrons using quantum entanglment has been done. Scaling it up to macroscopic sizes and massively superposed states is not trivial.

Trek Trio

[g0bshiTe]

Yes, but.........the long pauses..........are not.......included.
Mr. Spock..........moderate this post...........to TROLL.

I'm guilty of this too

[faust2097]

The ST:TNG computer interfaces are a great jumping-off point for a lot of designers. They were a good blend of rectangles and curved areas and they were funky without being over the top. In fact, one of the products I'm working on now has a slight similarity to it. The engineers all notice but for some reason none of the markeing people do.

Re:I'm guilty of this too

[Anonymous Coward]

> The engineers all notice but for some reason none of the marketing people do.

But they understand people. ;-)

Just like Capt. Kirk talked?

[orthogonal]

It had a speakerphone mode so you could stand there and talk into it like Capt. Kirk.

You...

mean you...

could... speak...

into... it like...

this?

And call green...

women to...

see if they... would beam...

up... for a...

date?

Re:Just like Capt. Kirk talked?

[CAIMLAS]

Sounds about par for most of the voice recognition software out there, I'd say.

Sonique

[Kiyooka]

Sonique use to have a Star Trek skin (can't find it anymore). It had all the rounded-square coloured buttons and feel of the tv series. Very very well done.

Re:Sonique

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the one? I think it's the best LCARS skin. There's also this one, but I don't like it as much.

If you just mean general style, and not imitation, I can't help you, but there are only 446 skins in the sonique.com archive, so it shouldn't take more than a few minutes to scroll through all of them to see if it catches your eye.

Where the hell is my holosuite?

[ChaosDiscord]

What I really want are holosuites. Why? Ummm, well, erm, so I can do Sherlock Holmes mysteries like Picard, yeah that's it. Certainly nothing else.

Re:Where the hell is my holosuite?

[Short Circuit]

Picard didn't do Holmes. Data did Holmes.

Picard did Dixon Hill, a much more unsavory character.

You know, perhapse getting all the seasons on DVD wasn't a healthy choice...

Re:Where the hell is my holosuite?

[Guru2Newbie]

Picard didn't do Holmes. Data did Holmes.

And Lt. Yar did the fully-functional Data.

it's the personnel that are geniuses

[PollGuy]

And yet, over and over again, our plucky crew members will beam onto a ship of a completely alien race they've never met before, walk up to a completely alien console that is completely unmarked and still know exactly how to use it, including correctly interpreting the monitor's output in a completely alien language they've never seen before.

And they always seem like hard-to-learn panels, too -- the kind where there are only four or five unmarked buttons, whose functions seem to change every time they are pushed, so that an entire range of functions can be carried out just by pressing them over and over again.

Man, I wish I could pick up new UIs that easy. Or maybe there is some sort of trans-galactic UI style recommendation to which every species subscribes, just in case this situation should come up.

Re:it's the personnel that are geniuses

[Anonymous Coward]

I just pretend GUI translation is a function of the universal translator. Stupid I know, but I need some excuse so that I don't start ranting and get in trouble with the wife.

I've asked that question online.

[nlinecomputers]

Back during my days before the internet was in wide use I was on GEnie. A lot of the staff on trek hung out there. Mike Okuda who did the graphic art of the show and helped write the tech manuals and technical writing guides told me in an oline clat that the computer was constantly ease dropping on everyone in order to tell if you were about to request a comm link.

Thus you had Picard saying to the ceiling "Picard to Bridge" and get an instant comm link with out having to touch anything. The only issue I had was there was never a pause. He would instantly say that and Riker or Data would instantly answer. Obviously in real life the computer would have had to record that request and play that on the bridge for whoever to hear an answer. A delay of a second or two should have always happened while the computer repeated the request and got an answer back.

Picard: "Picard to Bridge"
Computer on bridge: "Picard to Bridge"
Riker: "Riker here, sir."
Computer in Picard's quarters: "Riker here, sir."
Only at that point would the two way link be established.

Obviously from a TV point of view that realistic a use of comm links would have slowed down the show.

Re:I've asked that question online.

[LostCluster]

As much as the computer tried to predict conversations, there'd have to be a few situations where it gets one wrong. Could have been an interesting plot line to have somebody poorly named start getting communications not meant for them...

Re:I've asked that question online.

[bill_mcgonigle]

Obviously from a TV point of view that realistic a use of comm links would have slowed down the show.

Just think of it as how they squeeze a multi-day plot line into 42 minutes. They cut out the boring parts. :)

Re:I've asked that question online.

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you notice? "Pickard to Bridge" opens the com link to the communications officer, and a light comes on at her console. The link is transferred to bridge speakers and microphone at the press of a button.

Re:I've asked that question online.

[TwistedGreen]

I'm sure that a "favourites" system is implemented, where Picard wouldn't get newly-recruited Ensign Rikor ever time he tried to contact his first office. The computer just wouldn't deem it likely that he would try to contact this ensign without the captain explicitly specifying 'ensign.'

But yes, it would make for an interesting episode of Bizarro Trek.

Re:I've asked that question online.

[G-funk]

Ah slashdot. Where in the face of time travel, FTL travel, aliens, antigravity, intertial dampners, teleportation and Q, people are worried about how realistic the cell phones are.

Re:I've asked that question online.

[shogun]

Just think of it as how they squeeze a multi-day plot line into 42 minutes. They cut out the boring parts. :)

Theres been more than a few episodes where they forgot to do that however.. ;-/

Re:I've asked that question online.

[vrmlguy]

The lapel pins obviously use bi-directional custom ring/answer-tones and TiVo-like recording/replay.

Picard says, "Picard to Bridge", the computer figures out that Riker is the senior officer on the brige and routes the call to him, then as Riker starts to answer, the computer plays back to Picard a previously recorded "Riker here, sir." Picard's next upperance is recorded and replayed to Riker slightly delayed, but in a compressed form, so that the end of sentence occurs in real-time.

I want my Star Trek phone, dammit

[DavidBrown]

Seriously. I think I'd buy a new wireless phone in a heartbeat, if it was modeled after the classic trek communicator. I fail to understand why Paramount hasn't licensed this to Motorola yet.

Re:I want my Star Trek phone, dammit

[ckulpa]

Have you noticed that the Motorola logo looks like a mirrored Federation logo?

Re:I want my Star Trek phone, dammit

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out vocera - Star Trek communicators over 802.11b

Re:I want my Star Trek phone, dammit

[freeze128]

I fail to understand why Paramount hasn't licensed this to Motorola yet.

Maybe it's because sales of the Playmates communicators are lackluster.

UIs are learned

[Anonymous Coward]

You have an excellent point. To all those people who talk about how "intuitive" Windows is, I beg to differ. You learned how it works, so it makes sense to you. And don't get me started on Macs! It's never made sense to me that you eject your CD by throwing it away.... that is NOT intuitive!

That's why I love seeing someone trying Linux for the first time using something like twm instead of KDE or Gnome! It's hilarious!

Re:UIs are learned

[digitalsushi]

That's why I love seeing someone trying Linux for the first time using something like twm instead of KDE or Gnome! It's hilarious!

That's the attitude that's going to make us fail at this whole "linux advocacy" thing we've been working on for a decade.. *sigh*

Re:UIs are learned

[simcop2387]

actually i started off like that myself, i didn't know how to switch slackware into anything else because mostly i didn't have a whole lot installed for a period of about 3 weeks, i didn't have a very good net connection then to get at anything, since then i've always prefered that kind of thing, but the gnome panels sure are convinient.

Don't make me testy. You wouldn't like me when I'm

[Thud457]

Don't make me dig out that VIC-20 advertising campaign!!!

UI of Kirk's Enterprise

[iamanatom]

Presumably they mean the UI of Picard's Enterprise. Kirk's crew seemed to be able to accomplish their tasks with approx 6 toggle switches (unlit), 4 push buttons (lit or unlit) and a couple of flashing lights each. Either that's a very powerful context sensitive UI that's had a lot of work put in to it and which requires a lot of skill to learn how to use or.... they were actually doing chuff all. The exception is Spock's scope type thing. Lot's of swirly patterns that tell him all sorts of things. Only seems to have one knob though. I can't help making observations like these when watching the original series and they almost stop be enjoying it. I also start imagining trying to live my life with this kind of UI and break out in a cold sweat.

Re:UI of Kirk's Enterprise

[t_allardyce]

I just love the way enterprise has the same scope thing, you have to wonder what it is that just cant be displayed on a monitor, especially since they always seem to give readings like they were reading off numbers.

Re:UI of Kirk's Enterprise

[painandgreed]

Ya, but they had a near sentient computer running the ship. It could basically just listen to the bridge chatter and impliment orders before the crew could. All the crew were probably doing with their toggle switches and buttons was the equivilant of pressing the "OK" button.

Re:UI of Kirk's Enterprise

[Anonymous Coward]

but they had a near sentient computer running the ship

The ship's computer was fake, too. Trust me, I know about TV shows.

Re:UI of Kirk's Enterprise

[evilempireinc]

only 1 knob, perhaps it was like the BMW iDrive system?

Re:UI of Kirk's Enterprise

[Paddyish]

I remember Spock once telling Kirk how long it would take to "review the library computer tapes". Heh.

They've been here for years....

[BobSutan]

".... are not that far off either...."

They've been "here" for quite a while now. I guess they're just not widely used. Case in point: when I went throught basic training back in '97 almost all of the shots were given with needleless injectors. I don't think they called them hyposprays, but they were effectively the same device. IIRC it was basically just a regular shot with a high PSI load behind it. There is a drawback though--you had be really still when they gave it to you or would cut the skin like a little razor (due to the insanely high pressure).

Re:They've been here for years....

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been "vaccinated" in the '70 (seventies) with that. It's so old, I bet ST-TOS was in production when it was invented.

Low to no risk of cutting. The operator holds your arm, so you're not going anywhere and it's ultra fast, compared to human motions, inertia etc.

Copy, see above post... mod down.

[SuperKendall]

Just another copy of someone with original thought.

QWERTY history

[GirTheRobot]

I guess you don't know that the QWERTY layout was designed to be random so people would not jam typewriter arms from typing too fast. This was before the advent of electronic typewriters.

Helpful hint...

[Thud457]

I find Walgreen's brand generic hydrocortizone cream (5%) to be just as effective and more economical.

Re:Helpful hint...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you can't buy 5% hydrocortisone without a prescription. You sir, are a liar.

The first PDA in a Sci-Fi movie...

[marcello_dl]

...that I recall, is shown in Forbidden Planet (1956), used by a spaceship crew member looking for information on Dr. Morbius. Gene Roddenberry said he was inspired by this film, as this trivia page says.

You can also see Robby, which is a robot that behaves like a tool without developing his own will and running out of control. Many newer sci-fi adventures are way less mature than this movie.

Re:The first PDA in a Sci-Fi movie...

[JoshWurzel]

a robot that behaves like a tool without developing his own will

What, like Carson Daly?

You think THAT's geeky?!!!

[Thud457]

"A sorcerer did it."

Re:You think THAT's geeky?!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll trump your geekiness: It's wizard, not sorcerer.

Re:You think THAT's geeky?!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

you loose on a technicality - sorcerer is now a base class. check it out character
classes

Re:You think THAT's geeky?!!!

[Anonymous Crowhead]

you loose on a technicality - sorcerer is now a base class. check it out character classes

Sorry, the Simpson's is strictly a top-down program.

Liability concerns

[scheme]

The would have been out a lot sooner but companies are still having problems with the panels randomly blowing up and injuring people using them.

Re:Liability concerns

[lowmagnet]

Great! All I need are some flashpots, foam beams, and a red shirt and I'll be set!

We write our own future

[DrugCheese]

And how many Isaac Asimov ideas have been turned into everyday reality? Humanity writes it's own future in Science Fiction.

How many science fiction books dealt with the grim future of a corperate controlled government?

Re:We write our own future

[Anonymous Coward]

Cyril Kornbluth wrote some great stuff along these lines, in the 40s and 50s.

Re:We write our own future

[NLG]

The Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth
also the sequel The Merchant's War by Frederick Pohl
Reading these will make you want to strangle an advertising executive.

Re:We write our own future

[TClevenger]

What's fascinating about Asimov is that he had some great ideas, but exactly backwards. His stories usually involved computers that filled buildings and communicated by special codes output onto Teletype machines and translated by men in white coats, but featured robots that were fully sentient and useful companions. In reality, we have incredibly small and fast computers, but robots are limited to lumbering contraptions that are essentially useless.

Re:We write our own future

[c.emmertfoster]

Ha! The Space Merchants is one of my favorite books, and to the contrary, it made me want to be an ad-man!

Who was it that said . . .

[StefanJ]

. . . that a full-featured Holodeck would be the *last* thing that Man ever invents?

As someone else in the thread has noted, the Holodeck was a really problematical thing to add to the series.

The fact that it figured in so many episodes is evidence of either a), that the producers don't find the idea of exploring new worlds all that interesting, or b) that they're unimaginative hacks who can't make space exploration interesting.

The ultimate irony: The VERY FIRST Star Trek story, "The Cage" AKA "The Managerie," was about a decadent civilization whose people spent their time living out their fantasies via telepathic thought records.

Stefan

Re:Who was it that said . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . that a full-featured Holodeck would be the *last* thing that Man ever invents?

No, really, think about what it would do to porn!

Pocket Books may hold the answer...

[Denyer]

...fairly sure I recall reading it in one of these. Possibly in one of Shatner's own books? I realise the Pocket Books fiction isn't strictly canonical... but then, as others have noted, the term TOS is a retcon.

Since my favourite part of Star Trek (Peter David's New Frontier series) is only available in novel form, it's good enough for me... :)

Re:Pocket Books may hold the answer...

[CrazyTalk]

hmm it appears you are correct according to the script but I still remember hearing it the other way as filmed - I could be wrong tho.

Transpoter, Warp Drive & Universal Transelator

[Forge]

Transporter, Warp Drive & Universal Translator.

The 3 most important Star Trek technologies are still unavailable. Sure there are people working on these things but they are not yet workable. Except for the Translator which has a barely working prototype available now.

BTW: Artificial gravity should be invented 1st since it appears to be by far the most reliable of all the technologies as It never once failed in all the episodes of TOS, TNG, DS9 or Voyager.

AG even survived, life support shutdown. :)

Already avalible...

[Cyno01]

I've got this, a cable modem, and a router next to me. Sounds like what your looking for, although if my desk takes a hit they'll all explode in my face...

uh oh

[No. 24601]

They talk with one of Palm's UI designers, who admits that '...my first sketches were influenced by the UI of the Enterprise bridge panels'

Wonderful... now Paramount will have an opportunity to cash in on the ubiquity of Star Trek once again - "time for some litigation boys!"

When I was a kid I had the Star Trek blueprints

[pair-a-noyd]

and there was a schematic for the communicator.
It was a standard ch14 walkie-talkie schematic. I don't know how many people they had intended on being able to interpret the schematic but it was there back in the 1960's blueprints package I had.

They weren't too far off from reality back 30+ years ago..

Re:When I was a kid I had the Star Trek blueprints

[SWTP_OS9]

The orginal Technical manual had a secmatic for a walk talky in it. Problem was it use Red, Green and BLUE led. Had to wate a few years to build due to no blue leds!

Re:When I was a kid I had the Star Trek blueprints

[Anonymous Coward]

Me, too.

Did you figure the missing part to make the warp engine actually work? Boy, it took me 2 years.

But somehow, something is still lacking as I can't make it past warp 5... any hints?

Fortunately...

[Magus311X]

Fortunately for us, Star Trek didn't influence Peter Jackson's take on Lord of the Rings!

I mean... wtf is this? (quicktime required)

----- -----

Are you sure they haven't?

[FreeLinux]

I always felt that this Motorola i90c was strikingly similar to the Star Trek communicator. It is very similar both in appearance and functionality.

Forget the gadgets .. I want

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget the gadgets, when can I get one of them green broads?

heh

[way2trivial]

My kyocera 7135 is the right size, and plays the right 'click click cheep' when ever the flip is opened.. (yes, I am a nerd, and yes, people in convenience stores do stare)

Neither are you

[DrMorpheus]

Because, if you bothered to read the sentence you quoted, you realize that he's talking about tactile feedback.

How the hell would being "on the screen" make a damn bit of difference with respect to tactile feedback?

Not to mention the fact that the control panels were show to be just as flat as the screens!

So basically you have no point at all.

Re:Neither are you

[Aldric]

When you are using the touchscreen though you can see where you are pressing and where you are supposed to be pressing. The lack of tactile feedback doesn't really matter then. Even accessability options wouldn't need to be considered in this, since blind people have the visor.

Learned Interfaces are Faster than GUI's

[bill_mcgonigle]

Don't take my word for it, do some googling for actual set shots of the UI... it's upsettingly poorly designed.

It's upsettingly poor if you want to have friendly, discoverable user interface.

I suspect rather it's a learned interface. Some 22nd century researcher computed the fastest, most error-proof interface and it has to be learned how to use.

Think about it. "Mr. Worf, target the leftmost and rightmost ships' engines. Fire."

Mr. Worf has about 2 seconds to input this into the computer. He can't grab a mouse and go:
Menubar...Weapons...Select Ship... Ship 1...
Modify target type... Engines...Modify weapon type...phasers....
OK...OK...OK...
[repeat for ship 2]
Menubar...Weapons...Fire

At best he has time to go "bleepity bleep bleep bleep". As a tradeoff he had to go to 3 semesters of targeting computer class at Starfleet Academy. But it's worth it because he nails the other ships before they can return fire.

UI books are filled with real-world analogues - in the 90's they replaced lots of VT terminals with Windows GUI apps on Citrix terminals for travel agents, telesales folk, hospital registrations, etc., and usually their productivity was cut in half on their data entry tasks. They had memorized the keypresses 5 screens in advance on the terminal apps, but now had to wait between each step and use a mouse to navigate. It's largely a latency problem.

GUI's are a great solution to many UI problems, but not all of them.

Re:Learned Interfaces are Faster than GUI's

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I've thought about and decided that pushing random buttons looks much better on TV than using a mouse. It has nothing to with usablility.

Re:Things from Star Trek universe I want to own -

[CoolToddHunter]

The jet boots Spock wears when he saves Kirk from certain death at El capitan..

Ha! You just admitted that you've seen Star Trek 5! Oh wait...

Startrek, a sucker for Danish Design,

[Anonymous Coward]

It's seems to me that Star Trek, often has used Danish design products. Maybe it's because it's often simplistic design fits the futuristic look well, compared to traditional American design which I would call, heavy, dark, dusty, woody.

looking for the captain's log

[CleverNickName]

To live in a house without a bathroom.

Hey, there was ONE bathroom on the Enterprise D. It's near Engineering, behind the hamster wheel.

Re:looking for the captain's log

[shfted!]

Of course Wesley would know. Saving the day again, are we?

Re:looking for the captain's log

[CleverNickName]

Of course Wesley would know. Saving the day again, are we?

Hey, you gotta know where your strengths are, and use them.

By the way, your matter / anti-matter influx is slightly off. You need to reverse the flow for .004 seconds, but don't forget to compensate for the inertial dampeners.

That one's free. The next one you have to pay for. These orange sweaters ain't cheap, you know.

Re:looking for the captain's log

[Anonymous Coward]

I have given this some thought, and wouldn't it be possible in the 24th century to use site-to-site transporter technology to simply *beam* waste out of the body?

Heh... I bet the guys in the Borg suits could use those. I mean, did it require a lot of work for say, the guy who played Hugh, to undress enough to be able to take a piss? Were there any accidents on the set of TNG? Actually, in seven years, I'd be surprised if there weren't...

Re:looking for the captain's log

[Magic5Ball]

...wouldn't it be possible in the 24th century to use site-to-site transporter technology to simply *beam* waste out of the body?

There would be severe cavitation issues unless you simutaneously beamed something in to fill the space. And you'd better hope the inertial dampeners are working well...

Re:looking for the captain's log

[first.last]

Of all the characters....why do we get stuck with the kid? Why the hell couldn't Seven of Nine be a linux geek instead???? In space, no one can hear you fart.

Re:looking for the captain's log

[stonecypher]

I almost went as far as to play the asshole and point out how often we see people in the shower, until I realized that even I don't want to be the guy that corrects cast members.

Re:looking for the captain's log

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, I'll just reverse the polarity instead :P

Re:Things from Star Trek universe I want to own -

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, but read the book :-P

I've used DMSO

[GuyMannDude]

DMSO is a popular one that's used for horses, but you wouldnt want that one used on yourself unless you love the taste/smell of dead fish...

Actually I have used DMSO on myself. I had an injury in my knee so I picked up a bottle at the local horse-stuff store (I live in a wealthy area so, yes, there is a horse-crap store). My sports medicine doc had suggested it for me to reduce the inflammation. I used it every morning before breakfast. It had one of those ball applicators and I would rub a good amount on all parts (front, sides, and back) of my knee. I was warned that it would irritate the skin and make my mouth taste like I was sucking on a nickel. Honestly, I didn't notice the taste thing but, boy, did that stuff itch. I could only stand to leave it on my skin for about 10 minutes at the most before I would have to wash it off.

DMSO was originally used as an engine degreaser (!) but has found some fame among injured athletes because it tends to reduce inflammation and it gets absorbed into the skin really fast. I'm sure DMSO is controversal but it is an example of a non-injection compound that does get absorbed by the body really fast just like McCoy's hypo spray. Whether it actually sped up my recovery I couldn't say without doing a double-blind study (and a sample size of one isn't very good) but I did get better.

But, man, did that shit itch!

GMD

Explanation from a true trekkie

[brunes69]

Actually, in theory, as soon as the computer recognized from his tone and inflection that when he is saying "Picard to..", the computer can initiate the link and play *that* portion back (Don't forget that according to the technical manual, the computer is wrapped in a warp field for FTL processing, so there is essentially 0 delay there).

So, while Picard is saying "Bridge" the computer is playing "Picard to" on the bridge. Then take into account that Riker, as a human, has to have *some* delay before he can respond with "Riker here", and you have a live, 2-way link, with 0 delay.

Re:Orgasmatron -- Nope, SFC just missed it.

[Guru2Newbie]

The North Carolina hospital doctor's device, which he has already patented and is trying to trademark under the name Orgasmatron, is a tiny spinal cord stimulator. A hand-held remote control turns the device on and off.

An OFF switch? Why would a woman want an OFF switch? Oh, right--sleep. Silly me.
I could see three buttons: ON, TURBO, and ENOUGH!

Re:Transpoter, Warp Drive & Universal Transela

[starm_]

nope the arificial gravity always fails when the ship is is almost to be destroyed. They always say "inertial dampers" (-- this is the AG) are failing. That's when everyone starts to be thrown across the bridge and over consoles.

also any impact on the ship or any acceleration is felt greatly by the crew when the inertial dampers fail.

The gravity usualy comes back quikly enough though.

How?

[nlinecomputers]

By mind reading?

How can the computer play, ON THE BRIDGE, the words "Picard to..." when he hasn't even uttered the words yet?

Sure the computer is wrapped up in an FTL field. That just means that, from the POV of the computer, it is having to wait an enormously long time while it waits on Picard to utter Bridge, Sickbay, Barbershop, or whatever he might be wanting to call. Unless shipwide there is this utterance of "Picard to ..." that is snuffed out when the finally says the destination.

Re:How?

[quacking duck]

Not to sound fanboyish (Trek fell out of favour for me around Voyager), but I think the FTL part keys in the moment "Picard to..." is uttered. After that point the computer would go into "high attentiveness" mode and do an analysis of every millisecond of whatever Picard is saying.

In other words, by the time Picard has said "Ri-" the computer would've already filtered it down to the likely recipient based on past communication requests, such that by the time Picard got to "Rik-" the computer will have already routed the initial call to Riker.

Real world semi-example: on the Mac there's a utility called Launchbar which learns what you want launched based on just a couple key presses, so after a few tries typing "fi" would narrow it down to Firefox, or "vp" would select Virtual PC.

Mind you, in the first season of TNG opening a comm channel was more like "Riker, from Picard". And of course current military's even more efficient, with "Conn, Sonar" indicating Sonar wants to talk to the Conn.

In any event, this is way over-analyzing something that should just be taken as part of a fictional TV show. For example, would anyone working in ship's engineering ever actually listen to the warnings spouted by the computer voice--multiple times even? How many of us just click "ok" or "cancel" without reading the dialogue boxes because we already know what the message is?

umm...they use those flp open communicators

[the_2nd_coming]

in enterprise, so it is more like 100 years ;-)

No, give me a phaser instead.

[Guru2Newbie]

A transporter would be nice, but a phaser with stun setting would be oh-so-useful with idiotic and unhelpful salepeople, not to mention inconsiderate motorists. And when you really get ticked off, there's the vaporize setting.

Captain Kirk: "We come in peace. Shoot to kill. Shoot to kill. Shoot to kill. We come in peace. Shoot to kill. Shoot to kill, men!" --Star Trekking Across the Universe

Re:No, give me a phaser instead.

[CPM User]

Have a look at this

Been there . . .

[droleary]

When are those panels of randomly blinking lights going to make it on the market?

. . . done that. Sadly limited to the desktop until someone gets me one of these.

Here's something they' ll never invent

[Tired and Emotional]

Remember how Kirk would flip open his communicator one handed, say "one to beam up" and be transported back to the ship. Well there's something they will never invent - a folding cell phone with a reliable hinge.

Steve Wozniak

[Cynikal]

i was flipping through the photos and for the life of me i couldnt remember which eppisode of ST had a Steve Wozniak...

Re:Orgasmatron -- Nope, SFC just missed it.

[Anonymous Coward]

They already have this...

It just has a remote...

A girl I knew in high school had one and I noticed what the remote was immedately... So I grabbed it up and watched her squirm.

Then on went the evil mode. The teacher asked what that little controller was and I said its just a blinky light. You press the button and it lights up.

Well, that was mostly true, it did light up but it sent an RF signal out to another device.

So I buzzed it a few times during english class and let her know I knew.

The evil really comes in when she started to read from a book to the class. Then I let her really have it. I'm sure it must be difficult to publically read to a group of people and get vibrated to hell and back.

Later, the teacher decided I was just too focused on this little light thing and she took it away. She played with it some too!

Fun times.

user interface is king in Star Trek

[peter303]

Instead of trying to wrap he human being around the technology, the imagineers of Star Trek just guessed what the optimal machine-human interface would be: talking computers, palm size commnication and medical devices, etc. Where a device name did not exist, they just turned the verb-action into the name; scanner, transporter, etc. Hopefully the details of our technologies will disappear into the optimal machine-human interfaces also.

TrekUI

[MarcQuadra]

IIRC the UI for TNG devices was at least part 'anticipatory'. If you were walking down the corridor saying to some chick that you'd like to see a play, but you forgot what was on tonight, you could basically walk up to the nearest console and hit the "I'm feeling lucky"[sic] button and it'd be right there. The computer was the benevolent 'big brother'.

As for the actual UI, it really DIDN'T make sense, because if it did it would just feed the nitpickers, and Gene R. really wanted the focus of the show to be on the plot. It did seem that the UI was very 'flow' oriented, with very little available at a given time, but very easy to get from one task to another, sort of like my WindowMaker setup. Also, there wer no 'files' or 'applications' as we know them, the experience seemed to be very task-oriented and realtime.

Needle-less shots PREDATED Star Trek

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Spray hypodermics predated the Star Trek series. McCoy's injector was based on them - though of course vastly improved. (Dial-a-drug, hand-held rather than big gun with compressor sidekick, etc.)

The original discovery was made when a worker handled a high-pressure hydraulic hose with a pinhole leak, and reported to medical with a sore spot in his hand. The medic found a teaspoon or so of hydraulic fluid under the skin - but the worker hadn't felt it going in. Investigation quickly identified the leak and thus resulted in the discovery that a very small, very high-speed, jet of fluid will go subcutaneous or even intramusclular with minimal sensation.

Somehow this info didn't get lost, but resulted in the bright idea of doing it deliberately to reduce the discomfort and increase the speed and convenience of injections - especially mass injections. The military funded development of the first devices (primarily because they have to innoculate thousands of troops in batches efficiently, and also so they could innoculate a civilian population rapidly in case of a biowar attack - this being during the "cold war".)

Re:Orgasmatron -- Nope, SFC just missed it.

[Cynikal]

"My anticipation is that patients who try this on a temporary basis will agree that paying $17,000 is worthwhile"

hehe i can see the infomercial now... you can get rid of that expensive $100/hr hooker cause this baby will pay for itself in only 170 days!

and what about that talk of "temporary basis"?? could they really legally reposess it if you refuse to pay once its been "installed" ? or do they just remotely set it on 'dissapointing'?

Re:Transpoter, Warp Drive & Universal Transela

[shadow303]

Artificial gravity is not the same as the inertial dampeners. The only case I can think of where artificial gravity went out was on a klingon ship in "The undiscovered country" movie (I forget the number). You are right about the inertial dampeners getting knocked out rather frequently.

Re:Transpoter, Warp Drive & Universal Transela

[Mike Markley]

Ugh, I'm gonna hate myself for knowing this...

Those are two separate things. The artificial gravity is, well, artificial gravity. It holds the people to the deckplates and etc. The inertial dampers are the magic forcefields that keep people from going "splat" against a wall during 50G maneuvers, and yes, those do seem pretty unreliable. :)

With Quantum Port there's still just one of you.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I suppose that if you arbitrarily come up with a rule saying there can be only one person with a given set of recollections at a given religious destination for souls, then you can declare as a consequence that the soul is moved, not destroyed, or you'll have two John Does in heaven (or hell) (or purgatory) (or whatever you believe in), arguing over which one is the real one.

While it may not solve the metaphysical issues, one "advantage" of quantum teleportation is that you still end up with just one copy.

Hesienberg Uncertainty keeps you from measuring ALL of the state of the original, so you can't make an exact copy. Quantum Teleportation sidesteps this by using quantum-entangled matter at both ends, and interacting the original with one half of the quantum-entangled matter, measuring the result of its interaction and sending that information to the far end, where it forces the other half of the matter into a state totally duplicating the origianl. But the original is destroyed in the process.

The net result is you start with the original HERE, made out of a set of particles in state set A, and after you send the message and process it at the far end you end up with a totally indistinguishible set of particles in state set A THERE, with a mass of junk HERE. (It could be argued that what ended up at the far end is the original set of particles, which tunneled through and exchanged mass with the set at the far end.)

So no cloning of souls necessary. (Just assume that a soul, if it exists (and is actually different from the pattern of matter), stays "attached" to the pattern as the pattern is transferred from one place to another via quantum tweaks and information transfer rather than by physical motion.)

I don't know about you, but I'd be much less worried about whether I was still me after transmission by a device where physical limits of the universe prevent making a copy than if I were "transmitted" by remote duplication.

Re:Missed LCARS phenomenom - clickable

[Anonymous Coward]

Clickable:
http://www.lcarscom.net/
http://www.lcars-terminal.net/
http://www.bennisoft.com/
http://www.lcars-am.org/

Norman Who?

[Nom du Keyboard]

There are no smart androids, such as "Norman'' in the episode "I, Mudd.''

And just who was paying any attention at all to Norman?

Re:Transpoter, Warp Drive & Universal Transela

[starm_]

yes but inertial dampers are still a kind of gravity. You did say 50G as in 50 Gravity.

SCORE -1: LAME FLYING CAR JOKE

[Anonymous Coward]

What?!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the steel hook? You are either into some wierd things or are an insensitive clod.

Spock and PowerPoint?

[Tablizer]

In the first pilot, Mr. Spock used a viewer in a meeting room to display what resembled a primitive PowerPoint presentation to the ship's executive officers.

That is illogical. A Volcan would never invent such an emotion-tied and fact-poor presentation technique.

Re:Spock and PowerPoint?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's easy: Logically, the Vulcans must have developed the Powerpoint-like presentation system in order to convince the illogical humans to choose the correct logical action.

Ultimate UI

[AvengerXP]

It's funny how when they want to, saying "Computer" activates it but when they are talking ABOUT the computer, not a peep. Now that's a freaking nice UI, detects intonations.

Re:Ultimate UI

[hawaiian717]

What about the doors that know exactly when (or when not) to open?

Re:Ultimate UI

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, considering that it has voice recognition it's not too surprising. Just starting the sentence with "computer" is an obvious prompt.

In current times, I think that addressing the computer involves saying some unusual word or name that wouldn't come up in ordinary conversation.

Re:Ultimate UI

[ronaldb64]

Don't the doors only open when you make the "Shh" sound? Or was that just Airplane 2?

Re:Transpoter, Warp Drive & Universal Transela

[Tony Hoyle]

Naah. *All* of these are eclipsed by the non-invention of the holodeck.

It'd revolutionise the porn industry!

Very early UI

[Animats]

Many years ago, in 1972, I modelled a UI after the displays in "2001". This was a 24x80 text display on a TV showing the status of a mainframe computer. The upper half of the screen showed constantly updated status information. Ever few seconds, the lower half of the screen switched to a new screen, alternating between a memory map, a job list, status messages, and requested operator input. High priority messages would immediately preempt the lower half of the screen.

This was a big hit. People would stand outside the glass computer room wall to watch. It was self-explanatory enough that people could follow it effectively.

Re:Things from Star Trek universe I want to own -

[c.emmertfoster]

Star Trek five... which one is that? The one where they save the whales? The murder-mystery in space? I seem to be repressing any memories of ... whatever it is you're talking about. Although I'll admit that the first half hour of the film is quite engaging.

Spock: "Captain...?"
Kirk: "Spock, we're on leave. You can call me Jim."
Spock: "Jim...?"
Kirk: "Yes, Spock?"
Spock: "Life is not a dream."
Kirk: "Go to sleep, Spock."
Spock: "Yes, Captain."

Problems presenting an 'older' technology in ST:E

[TintinX]

I remember reading an interview with the director(?) of Star Trek Enterprise over the problems faced when trying to make a modern TV show with tech that was supposed to pre-date that of TOS.
I must admit that I haven't watched many eps of Enterprise but from what I have seen they didn't bother trying. It was always going to be difficult, granted, but the idea that that ship and crew were from a whole generation before Kirk et al is hard to swallow - and I don't just mean the sfx.

McCoy was right...

[Captain Irreverence]

You'll never get me into a Star Trek-style transporter. Essentially, this device kills you and then makes an exact copy of you somewhere else. I can't imagine being in such a hurry to get someplace that I'm willing to committ suicide in order to speed up the process.

Of course, later versions of Trek seemed to be somewhat confused on exactly how the transporter worked...The Next Generation especially seemed to suggest at times that the transportee wasn't broken down into their component atoms at all, but was somehow singing and dancing within the "matter stream" - which not only contradicts TOS but various other episodes of The Next Generation. Whatever, I'm with Dr. McCoy on this one...we'll take the shuttle, thanks.

Re:McCoy was right...

[ensignyu]

From a societal point of view, nobody cares, because the person that came out of the transporter acts just like you and thinks everything worked just fine.

Barring those aliens with extradimensional senses, you wouldn't know if it actually killed the person or not just as nobody knows what happens after death.

not technology, energy

[CAIMLAS]

The technology to make Star Trek:TOS and even ST:TNG a reality has existed for years (except for maybe antigravity).

The only thing holding us back from going "where no man has gone before" is a lack of energy sources powerful enough and available enough to power all the cool gadgets indefinitely. And of course the engines, but that technology isn't even practical to start considering without the energy source.

When you're 1 million miles from Earth, refueling would likely be a bit of a bitch.

Re:not technology, energy

[stonecypher]

The technology to make Star Trek:TOS and even ST:TNG a reality has existed for years (except for maybe antigravity).

Oh, well, sure. I mean, I've got that nacelle buried under old tires out back; if someone would just lend me a few magnetic bottles full of antimatter that I could pipe through a second-phase crystal into matter to create the warp field, I'd zap down to the CostCo and bring them back their supply plus some spares for their trouble. Besides, I need some new force coils for the field generators for the quarantine array; Timmy's got the Rigellian Fever, and we can't afford any of those fancy hyposprays. So we put him in suspended animation, because there's a little magnetic field near his hypothalamus, and we're waiting to see if it's a parasite or a dimensional traveller or a nanite supervirus, or maybe if the damn scanner's just on the fritz again.

Wouldn't want to do it in the roundabout; the shields aren't strong enough to stand up to those disrupters the hoodlums have down in the East End. Why, they'd transport on board and force me to synthesize food and electronics for them until my dilithium matrix was depleted! And without one of those, how am I supposed to detect the heavy neutrino emissions to avoid cloaked ships, or time travellers, or Jehovah's Space Witnesses?

Yep, everything's ready except the antigravity. That elusive centripedal force. When will we catch you, centripedal? When?

Re:not technology, energy

[Commykilla]

All the energy in the world won't keep your body from being splattered all over the back wall without inertial dampeners! No word on when that tech will be available yet... :)

90% Reason

[Atario]

My 90% reason is that the buttons are protected (from besmirchment and pressing) when you fold it up.

I don't get why people buy the other kind.

Re:90% Reason

[Bigbutt]

1. Because it's cheap (minor)
2. Because it has a lock button
3. But mainly, because it's normally off and in my gangster pocket.

Just because I have a cell, doesn't mean I want people calling me. That's why I have a pager. Page me and I'll call you back. If you don't know how to page me then you don't need to talk to me.

Re:90% Reason

[WhiteDragon]

the reason I don't use a flip style phone is that they feel too flimsy to me. I am sure they are probably really tough, but they just don't feel solid. I just know I am going to drop it while it's open, and the hinge will bend backwards or something.

Matter = energy

[Atario]

Once you have the ability to arbitrarily convert matter to energy and back again (see transporter, replicator), you can get all the engergy you need by just tossing anything into the device and telling it to convert to energy. Screw Mr. Fusion, we're talking Mr. Total Mass Conversion.

Dilithium crystals? Should be described not so much as energy devices as plot devices.

Societal issues of transporters

[Atario]

Scott Adams has pointed out that transporters (and virtually all Star Trek tech) would instantly destroy society.

Want to steal anything? Your neighbor's stereo? The Governator's Hummer? All the gold in Fort Knox? Point your transporter at it.

Want to kill anyone in the world? Transport him to outer space. Or under Earth's crust.

My solution to this: not abitrary point-to-point transporter "beams", but solid transporter booths -- you must get in one and out another. Danger averted, and my commute (or travel) time goes to zero. Current utilitarian modes of transportation (cars, planes) become so much easier and more pleasant that people do them as a throwback lark (like long-distance train or boat travel now).

Hop on it, Hawking!

I think that's his point...

[anakuran]

Once someone creates the holodeck that's where we'll spend all our time. No more inovation, no more productivity.

BTW, there is something missing

[sharok]

This gadget needs the Exploding Panel (c) technology to make it complete.
Just think, somebody jostles you in the subway and POOF ! lights, sparks and burning wires.
Great way to promote replacements too.

Re:Transpoter, Warp Drive & Universal Transela

[cthugha]

AFAIK the inertial damping system (IDS) is a lot like the artificial gravity generators in that the crew still has to be accelerated with the ship, it's just that gravity-assisted freefall is a lot better for you than pressure applied to only one part of the body.

Remember, acceleration due to gravity does not of itself cause any physical sensation, it's the reaction force from the ground that does that. Just ask anyone who's been in orbit.

Faster than you think...

[Genda]

And soon the world will change faster than you can think... clearly the delta V for changes in tech is picking up serious speed. The prediction of each generation of forward thinkers and futurists, demonstrates that the curve towards advancement is dramatically steeper than anybody can imagine. In fact people are becoming the bottleneck in advancing technological growth. New tech is backing up in the labs, new discoveries are falling out of research centers like a monsoon rain. The limiting factor between discovery and product is the manufactruing cycle, the rate at which human beings can apply, engineer, construct and market a new technology. By the time that tech is ready to use, it's obsolete... the cycle takes to long, and the human beings involved suffer from crushing pressure to go faster and faster.

We are only a hop skip and jump from fully automated manufacturing from discovery to home delivery. Once that happens... human beings are going to experience a world of liquid change, a flashing blur that can barely be grasped... that is until we begin to engineer ourselves.

Then the real fun begins...

Genda

Re:Faster than you think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I don't think so. It may look like technology is making rapid progress, but it's mostly just new applications of old technology. I think there is very little coming out today that couldn't have existed in the 70s. The biggest advancements since then seem to be in shrinking the electronics and making the old technologies commercially viable. Ultimately though, almost everything that seems new is old. My perspective is in the computer science world, and that definitely seems to be the case to me. Think .NET is new? Nope. It's the same concept as NeXT, from the late 80s. Most languages are also simple evolution of C, Smalltalk, or some functional language. Computer software could easily have been where it is today 20 years ago, if somebody just put the pieces together right. The only thing you couldn't have had was the web and anything based on it. That's the last big invention in computers that I know of.

One thing that has surprised me lately is humanoid robotics. As far as I know, Honda's Asimo wasn't possible just five years ago. Now it's approaching human capabilities.

Re:Faster than you think...

[StarfishOne]

This is exactly what Ray Krutzweil describes right here:

KurtzweilAI.net

"We're entering an age of acceleration. The models underlying society at every level, which are largely based on a linear model of change, are going to have to be redefined. Because of the explosive power of exponential growth, the 21st century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of progress at today's rate of progress; organizations have to be able to redefine themselves at a faster and faster pace."

Faschinating reads can be found on this website!

Lt. Uhura's earpiece...

[87C751]

seems to be the design prototype for a bunch of Bluetooth headsets. It's just silly. The nift factor of obviously wearing a headset will wear off very quickly, and leave the BlueSpoon users just looking like ST geeks.

OTOH, Jabra seems to have done it right.

Re:Orgasmatron -- Nope, SFC just missed it.

[swv3752]

The temporary basis is probably a belt with some electrodes they stick in your back.

HAH!

[Thud457]

You've been revealed by my fiendishly clever TRAP!

Re:Orgasmatron -- Nope, SFC just missed it.

[merlin_jim]

FYI I live in Winston Salem.

I'm thinking I might schedule a lunch session to talk with this doctor :)

Swiss people are working on it

[DrYak]

It does exist.
It's called BioWall and it's curently being developed in Switzerland.
http://lslwww.epfl.ch/biowall/
Click on Application and see the weird usage they are finding for it.... it's seems it can be really used as a big useful computing device, with lot of funny lights on it...

For me, it looks like "Baby play quilt" for engeneers.

Are you sure ?

[DrYak]

Go read that Slashdot article. Maybe they're already secretly working on it...

Re:Transpoter, Warp Drive & Universal Transela

[Raistlin99]

the 50G is a measure of acceleration felt by an object. Here it would be 50 * 9.8m/s^2 = 490m/s^2. Inertia is what keeps us at rest or keeps us moving unless acted on by another force. These "inertial dampeners" make it so that when the crew goes from faster than the speed of light to all stop they don't splat against the viewscreen. If you drive your car 60mph and then slam on the brakes the car stops but you travel forward until the seatbelt catches you. Thats your inertia pushing you forward. The inertial dampeners are like "seatbelt fields" that keep everything in place during those manuevers. Artificial gravity is what gives a sense of down in space. You drop something and it goes to your feet, like it would on a planet.

Re:Transpoter, Warp Drive & Universal Transela

[starm_]

Einstein said that there is no difference between being in an accelerating frame of reference orin a gravitational field.

They are indistiguishable.

The example he gives is of someone trapped in a box pulled by a ship accelerating at 1G. For all the person knows he or she is in a box standing still, here on earth.

Two Trek Ringers

[gottabeme]

There are a couple of good Trek ringers at 3gupload.com. One's the intercom whistle from TOS, and the other the intercom beep from TNG.

max smart

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody remember the shoe phone??????

Re:Transpoter, Warp Drive & Universal Transela

[Mike Markley]

But the "artificial gravity" only has to work in one direction, namely towards the deckplates, while the inertial dampers have to work in every direction to account for the ship's movement in 3D space. It seems like there would be advantages to separating them into two systems, thereby keeping the inertial dampers from having to worry about ALSO accounting for which direction is "down". Their job is hard enough, which could explain why they're so prone to partial, I guess. I can't imagine that we've ever seen a complete failure of inertial dampers, as that would basically mean the death of anyone aboard if even a fraction of the engines' power were used under such circumstances.

Additionally, I suppose, the artificial gravity could be a much simpler system since its task is both simpler and less critical (people don't splat against bulkheads at significant fractions of C when the artificial gravity fails and, presumably, the inertial dampers could help out SOME, i.e. keeping the poor crew from being tossed against the floor and ceiling). In other words, similar principles but separate systems.

Aside from the above hypotheses, there's also the fact that the TNG tech manual clearly indicated separate artificial gravity generators and inertial dampers, and I've definitely heard them referred to separately on the various shows and movies.

Now that I've earned my Comic Book Guy points for the day, I guess it's back to work...

Re:Transpoter, Warp Drive & Universal Transela

[Anonym1ty]

I would think that artificial gravity, inertial dampers and warp drive would all be closely related. Since it may be likely that in order to create gravity (or counter act it) you may have to warp space.

It may be likely if any one of these technologies were to become practical, so will the rest.

Designed by gamers and Sci fi fans...

[slittle]

Heh, the Collins fire Gould torpedos :)

hmm, my apologies

[way2trivial]

my phone, when the headset is plugged in, and playing MP3's or not into my ears, will occasionally go "incoming call-accept?" and if I answer yes, i'm live..

My apologies if this is a problem, but I don't even have to tap.
of course, to make a call, I tap it... then speak the name.. I suppose I could re-record the voice names as "me to blank" instead of the current "blank"

Re:Transpoter, Warp Drive & Universal Transela

[Raistlin99]

The problem is not that the feels a gravity field, but what happens when the box stops. When the box stops, the man continues in the path of motion. He would smack his head into the top of the box. Inertial Dampeners would stop that from happening. So in this example it would be like increasing the gravity so the man's feet never leave the floor. However if the box is moving sideways. The man would assume he is standing still in the box while the box moves. When the box stops he would be thrown into the side of the box. The inertial dampeners would stop this as well. Artificial gravity would keep the sense of down, while the inertial dampeners would keep a sense of not moving.

Re:Transpoter, Warp Drive & Universal Transela

[starm_]

So the only difference is that AG acts in only one direction and ID in all directions?