I'm sorry, but Star Trek isn't real.....

[Dave1982]

Nope, no jesting. I could always get Gary to order them for me in TN.

Oh...well......ok then......

[smileyeagle1021]

Oh...well......ok then......

but Dave, I thought you didn't like Staples, hence the job status as "disenfranchised Staples slave"

[Dave1982]

True, but that doesn't mean I like Office Depot

[SpyOne]

Ok, I admit to being a pretty big Star Trek fan, but I can at least recognize that the technology portrayed is fictional.

I actually had a guy ask me this week if he could buy a voice-command typewriter.



That was just one of those brain-freezing moments where you are so astounded that you can't respond right away.

After a few seconds, I finally stammered "Ah, outside of science-fiction? No, sorry."

He seemed genuinely disappointed (though thankfully not angered) by my answer.

I think someone took Gary Seven's typewriter from "Assignment: Earth" a little too seriously.

While not exactly a "typewriter", something that fulfils that very purpose is not only available, but has been available for quite a while. A quick search using an advertising slogan I recall ("you talk, it types") turns up an IBM product to let you dictate to your Word Processor from 10 years ago (including a review that was composed by dictating it using the software), better versions of basicly the same thing from a year ago, and reviews of it being added as a standard feature of operating systems five years ago.
So an onld computer, running an old OS and some old software, should handle the "taking dictation" part quite easilly. add a cheap USB printer, and you've got a voice-command typewriter. Basicly.

(Just before they went obsolete, typewriters got pretty weird. In 1987, I owned a typewriter that was a dot-matrix thermal printer with a built-in keyboard and a 15 character LCD display. It couldn't be hooked to a computer; it was a dedicated typewriter machine, but it was basicly a cheap computer printer with manual controls. Ran on batteries, in fact, and was about the size of a laptop. At the same time, the "printer" for the mainframe computer at my school was an old teletype terminal hocked to the system as a terminal: you had to go log on to it, then run your program and it would print the output that normally appeared on the screen. (My favorite part was how it printed a long string of asterisks and then reset the print head so that when you typed your password it would be unreadable on the printout. I guess they couldn't make the thing not print whatever you typed, so they just made it print your password on top of enough other stuff that no one could read it.)

[code-monkey]

He could try talking into the mouse.

Anyone else seen the IT crown, a channel 4 series in the UK.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MlRrakjsUvo&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MlRrakjsUvo&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

And the part from the closing credits.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Dlgzz63Aw9Q&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Dlgzz63Aw9Q&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

[bunnyboy]

For The Emperor of Mankind!!

Blood for the blood god! Skulls for the skull throne!

[Broomjockey]

voice recognition software

voice-recognition software + word processor.

Voice recognition software and a computer

Mac OSX has "Speech recognition"

Most OSs have some kind of speech recognition built in

dictate to your Word Processor

I swear, one more person mentions voice recognition software I'm gonna close the thread, 'cause people obviously aren't reading it.

[XCashier]

What science fiction isn't real!?!?!? You mean SG-1 didn't save to world more than 10 times! Beaming tech doesn't exist! Jedi mind trick don't work! Data was never built! Andromeda didn't get frozen in time for 300 years! Damn! My entire world has just been destroyed!

"Reality is for people who can't handle science fiction."
-- bumper sticker

[Ironclad Alibi]

One must very careful with Star Trek technology. You never know what can happen.

In the original sereies, they couldn't figure out a way to get the sliding doors to open automatically, so they had two guys behind the scenery operating levers to open the doors. Just think about how many guys have a job doing that today in all the stores with sliding doors.

And there was a cartoon recently showing Kirk and Spock observing the people of today and asking why their 24th century communicators didn't take pictures and play music.

[PepperElf]

Stargate

Well... Stargate really did exist.

It just wasn't a giant gate to other planets.... it was just one of the many names given to the Remote Viewing project the military worked on...

[Caveat Emptor]

Well, how do you expect me him to type, with his nose?
Did you see that?
The machine typed everything I –
It's typing everything I'm saying!
Stop it.
Stop it!
STOP IT!

[SpyOne]

I swear, one more person mentions voice recognition software I'm gonna close the thread, 'cause people obviously aren't reading it.

I'll admit I hadn't read the thread before I posted.

But I think it says something far more important that so many people thought the same thing: while the term the man was using might not be the right one, the thing he was asking for DOES exist, and IS commercially available.
Sorry, but if I have to rule one of the people in that exchange "sucky" or "Brain Burp-y", it isn't going to be the customer.

[Dave1982]

I'll admit I hadn't read the thread before I posted.

But I think it says something far more important that so many people thought the same thing: while the term the man was using might not be the right one, the thing he was asking for DOES exist, and IS commercially available.
Sorry, but if I have to rule one of the people in that exchange "sucky" or "Brain Burp-y", it isn't going to be the customer.

If you had been there for the entire conversation I had with this gentleman, you wouldn't say that. He DID want a TYPEWRITER, not a computer program.

[Mike Taylor]

Would it be that dreadful if the aliens destroyed Florida?

SC

I'd prefer one that selectively destroyed the bad drivers from other states (and countries) who make my commute to work oh so pleasurable each day.

[wolfie]

One must very careful with Star Trek technology. You never know what can happen.

In the original sereies, they couldn't figure out a way to get the sliding doors to open automatically, so they had two guys behind the scenery operating levers to open the doors. Just think about how many guys have a job doing that today in all the stores with sliding doors.

And there was a cartoon recently showing Kirk and Spock observing the people of today and asking why their 24th century communicators didn't take pictures and play music.

From what I read about the series when it first went on the air, one problem they had with Star Trek: Enterprise (set as a "middle ground" between the present and the original series) was developing their fictional "partway there" technology - because in many cases, present-day tech had passed the futuristic projections.

Of course, any "fish out of water" setting (pardon the pun, considering the movie's subject matter) such as Scotty at a Mac in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home can be humourous. A bit off-topic, but one "throwaway" line was left intact by Soviet censors, and had audiences rolling in the aisles in Moscow - one of the principal characters (I believe it was Kirk, but it's a long time since I watched it) warned the others about the 20th century U.S. "Be careful - you are entering a primitive and paranoid society".