When your phone gets a fatal application error and crashes.

Hehehe, nah, thats not science fiction. That is just the reality I live with a company phone

The coffee maker in our office recently needed a firmware update!

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I may have many faults, but being wrong ain't one of them. -- Jimmy Hoffa

I don't get the point here. If it doesn't matter anymore, then they HAVE "moved beyond" it.

A forced unwanted sexual encounter with someone the victim doesn't want to have sex with IS often considered to be pretty much the worst, most repulsive thing that could happen, at least if the victim is a woman. Does the victim in this case being a man make it not matter to you?

That depends on how the teleporter works. A spacefold or wormhole model could transit the original "you", no breakdowns needed. A "superparticle" tunnelling method might consider your entire form as a gestalt; you'd arrive just as you left. OTOH, if there's particle-by-particle transportation you can make yourself into anything you like at the other end, and manufacturing would be a snap.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Same exact feeling, only replace "heartland America" with "Australia".

Looking at- and extending a cautious finger to prod- the insanely miniature communication devices used by one's friends and seeing them laugh at your behaviour.

Watching a spacewalk live on a personal computer.

Having a question about archeology answered in real time by members of an expedition in Turkey. (Three cheers for Robert Ballard!)

Lying in bed and realizing that there are humans living and working in space every minute of every day.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Ouch! A computerized coffee pot? My inner Brontosaur is groaning...

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Ala Nose

A friend's dad had a pacemaker put in Friday--and it was considered routine surgery. Our mailman's wife had serious facial reconstruction, and he says some of the scars are as thin as a sheet of paper.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

No, the point is, at the time "Passengers" was written, an ending in which the possessed man had gone off with a woman would have been much less unpleasant to the perceived audience than the actual ending in which he went off with a man. Indeed, it would probably have been interpreted by some as, "Great! He's going to have a bit of fun before he gets together with the woman he met earlier!"

Now there's an idea for an SF story. Cyber-terrorists crash all the computerized coffee makers on the planet and civilization crashes.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

I've got a NES boxed up on my dresser as a showpiece. How odd is that?


Kids these days start out with an Xbox 360. They'll never know the finer points of 2D gaming.





Shoot, I'm rereading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and in it "electricity" makes everything work. Captain Nemo was able to do things we cannot now, but we no less take electricity for granted.

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"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

Futurama did that one.

Yup. Here is what it looks like:

Attached Thumbnails

 

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I may have many faults, but being wrong ain't one of them. -- Jimmy Hoffa

The point of what the kid said was that he got elected because the position had stopped being important, not because his skin color had stopped being important.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Thanks, Henrik and Paul. I was trying to come up with a reply, and you each did it better than I could have, and more succinctly to boot.

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

As an engineer who designs embedded systems for a living, I can assure you: everything has a computer in it now. Except maybe pencils.

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Heck, I've got a book sitting here that has a CD-ROM--and it's not a book about computers! (It's Vincent Bugliosi's massive, thirty-years-in-the-works book about the Kennedy assassination, and the disc's all end notes and bibliography and things, because there's about 800 pages' worth.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Years ago in New York City I would see a person walking down the sidewalk talking to somebody invisible, and say to myself, "Hmmm, he doesn't look like a crazy person . . Oh wait, he's talking on a mobile phone!" Now I say, "Hmmm, I can't see what kind of a phone he's using . . Oh wait, he's a crazy person!"

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

The funniest related incident I recall was when I walked around a corner and almost bumped into a fellow standing there, and he shouted, "What do you want to fight about, anyway?!" I jumped. Of course he was talking to somebody who wasn't there.

You know you are living in a science fiction world when: you are watching an old episode of Star Trek, and smirk whenever they pull out one of those square computer memory chips that look so much like old fashioned 3.5" floppies, and realize how behind the times the show has become.

You know... when Kirk pulls out his communicator, and you realize your phone is smaller, has GPS, 3-G network capability, a camera, and can also function as a compass, a hand held gaming unit...

You know... when you are strolling throguh Wal-Mart, and come across a toothbrush that will tell you the time, date and your temperature...

Or when you are strolling thtough Wal-Mart cam come across a toy robot... which has more programmable versitility than what Westinghouse ever built into some of their experiemental models back in the 70's...

When you pick up the phone, and start talking with someone who is taking a consumer or election poll... and you don't realize until later that, for the last few minutes, you've been conversing with a machine.

When you come out of a movie, and you just don't realize how much of it was actually a CGI enviroment... until you either see it in the DVD's special features, or a copy of Cinefex... (I had this happen to me with both Children of Men, and Cloverfeild)

Oh ewww, back to the old days of boiling coffee and straining it through a filter...or a tied up sock as I did once when my coffee maker broke. The sock kept the grounds out of the water, and it was the type not to leave threads in the water (it was clean of course).

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Ala Nose

So you like your coffee straight up, not with ameri-toe flavoring?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

I got my coffee maker from a thrift shop called St. Vincent De Paul for $5 about seven years ago...I think. New, you can pick it up for $20 to $25. It's a Proctor Silex 2-12 cup Cheap Skate special.

It doesn't have a computer in it. It has a water pump activated by electricity when you switch it on. But then, my budget doesn't allow for a sweet fancy. I did wonder about how those thingies worked.

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Ala Nose

I'll pass on the jam thank you...

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Ala Nose

When your AP World History review book has a section about space travel. (Yes, it's small, and they combine it with the Arms Race, but it's there! Squee!)

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Flavia makes them, as does Keurgieuuwe3 or something like that.

In a previous office, we had to have one replaced because it kept giving an error code.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

maybe so, but as a kid, I had this pen with a computer in it--novelty item: digital clock.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

My MP3 player has a little computer in it. (My toy is dark blue.)

* 1 GB of memory
* built-in FM tuner
* Play MP3/WMA digital Music with 7 bands mode EQ system.
* Dot Matrix LCD display with blue back light
* 10 hours of operation with one AAA battery

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Ala Nose

Flying in an A380, with hundreds of programs available on the entertainiment system, but the best is the view from the webcam in the tail.

Jon