The Official Funny Stuff Thread™
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@PleegWat maybe some kind and benevolent god (who most definitely does not need a starship) gifted them a Babel fish?
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@Arantor I'd love to hear how a Tamarian orders a drink since we were explicitly told that the universal translator couldn't make any sense of them. (You remember the Tamarians? "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra"?)
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@PleegWat said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@dkf said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@da-Doctah said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
without knowing a lot more about who is doing the ordering
It's reasonable to assume that the shipboard replicators would do voice recognition and so have access to the customer's personal profile.
My bet's on some form of brain scanning. They're bound to have that tech or their universal translator could never work.
They do have time travel and instant communications. What if the translator just sends the audio to a professional translator, and time travels the translation back to when it was requested?
Then the "AI" could just be a person in a jar who's been convinced that they're an AI.
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@da-Doctah the problem isn’t that the universal translator doesn’t work - because it clearly is. It’s just that “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” doesn’t have a linguistic meaning.
We have the same problem even in English for things that don’t really have a linguistic “meaning” where the concept is abstract and somewhat subjective - what should the UT do to translate “beauty” for example? What is beautiful is in the eye of the beholder, and so too is something akin to Darmok’s language.
However there are much, much larger problems than ordering a drink. “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” only works if you, as the listener are familiar with this. How does anyone other than Darmok and Jalad themselves ever communicate this to their own people? In fact, how even do Darmok and Jalad communicate this?
The only reason Picard figures it out is because he’s actively working through this, as an adult, whereby he has a basis for language to reason it through with. How do children ever get taught this?
Troi, incidentally, explains the problem well at one point, gesturing to a cup of coffee and says a word and then asks something like “did I indicate the cup, or that it is hot? Or perhaps its colour.”
At least the TARDIS explicitly is indicated to translate telepathically… the UT is one of the weaker sci-fi details of Trek for this reason.
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@da-Doctah said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@Arantor I'd love to hear how a Tamarian orders a drink since we were explicitly told that the universal translator couldn't make any sense of them. (You remember the Tamarians? "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra"?)
I think that was just the translator lacking sufficient context (i.e. their whole culture and history). Once Starfleet gets all of that organized and fed into their translator database, the translators would work for Tamarian, too.
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@loopback0 I might be in this post, and I do not like that. That's my current insurance company.
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@djls45 So how does that work in voyager, tens of thousands of lightyears from where humans have ever been?
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@boomzilla said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
I shall require a version of the "hands on keyboard, then more hands on keyboard" videomemetic, with this hard-case substituted in place of the laptop. You may use as much processing time as you like.
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@Gribnit said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@boomzilla said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
I shall require a version of the "hands on keyboard, then more hands on keyboard" videomemetic, with this hard-case substituted in place of the laptop. You may use as much processing time as you like.
And I guess you'll want him to plug it in too?
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@PleegWat said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@Gribnit said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@boomzilla said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
I shall require a version of the "hands on keyboard, then more hands on keyboard" videomemetic, with this hard-case substituted in place of the laptop. You may use as much processing time as you like.
And I guess you'll want him to plug it in too?
No. God no. That's a union demarcation issue.
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@PleegWat said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@djls45 So how does that work in voyager, tens of thousands of lightyears from where humans have ever been?
Um... Jungian archetypes. Final offer.
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@Zecc It does not. Had you thought it was, that would have been a real thought. If you had only thought you had, only the realization you hadn't was real. Glad to have the chance to clear this up.
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@boomzilla this joke just gets old, you know.
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@Gąska said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@boomzilla this joke just gets old, you know.
Unlike everyone on doctors' floor.
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Especially the sources linked in the first answer.
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@obeselymorbid said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@Gąska said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@boomzilla this joke just gets old, you know.
Unlike everyone on doctors' floor.
The software engineering floor makes up for it.
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@GOG said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@dkf said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@Zecc “The microwave went to the p….” so that'll be in the bathroom too?
Mikrofalówka poszła w pizdu.
That is almost readable in Russian
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@PleegWat said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@da-Doctah said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
Always did have issues with how vague that command was. As usually stated, the replicator could not be faulted for serving him a five-gallon galvanized pail of burning tea leaves.
Would that be better or worse than a cup of Advanced Tea Substitute?
Only if you need it to operate the Infinite Improbability Drive.
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@dangeRuss said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@GOG said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@dkf said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@Zecc “The microwave went to the p….” so that'll be in the bathroom too?
Mikrofalówka poszła w pizdu.
That is almost readable in Russian
Very similar languages are very similar.
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@Gąska said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@dangeRuss said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@GOG said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@dkf said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@Zecc “The microwave went to the p….” so that'll be in the bathroom too?
Mikrofalówka poszła w pizdu.
That is almost readable in Russian
Very similar languages are very similar.
I am sure that he meant nothing by this, Colonel.
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@topspin said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
Come on, you know the ending!
"fuck you, give me money!"
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@boomzilla It's been posted before, but it's still funny.
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@HardwareGeek said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
@boomzilla It's been posted before, but it's still funny.
I hadn't seen it, it won't be funny the second time.
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@Zecc I don't see a problem here. But I am becoming inexplicably agitated.
ed. he doesn't know.
Nobody needs to help them, turtle or not it's none of my problem.
ed. he still doesn't know and nobody even mentioned turtles
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@loopback0 things that remind you of WTDWTF members…