• Been watching and enjoying the crap out of Star Trek TNG. They are in space and for some reason the law of conservation of momentum and inertia doesn't exist at all in the case of towing ships with a tractor beam on impulse power. Season 4 episode 9 "final mission". Not only do they not realize if you push something in space it will keep moving, and also are worried about an asteroid field in their way which brings up my main pet peeve. THE THIRD DIMENSION. It seems that every time a space ship meets another they square up to each other face to face oriented upright and seem to all ways fly in a plane almost NEVER traveling upside down or in the Z dimension. Asteroid field eh? Just more a couple hundred kilometers in the vertical plane. Oh yeah, also how the hell can aliens somehow evolve from separate planets and breed with each other? Why is their some BS universal translator on the spaceship if everybody speaks English anyway? Why isn't Data the only person to ever go on the away team all the time, and why doesn't he really quick download all the medical information Crusher knows? How about the new star trek movie where they know how to teleport to a ship super far away traveling warp speed and they FORGET how to do it? The one guy who steals and tries to add Data to his collection seems to be the only non-borg with an individual force field. P.S.The transporter fixing aging thing was a great thing to point out. P.S.S. As far as Star Wars goes I just wonder why a dark Jedi doesn't just make somebodies head explode, that would be awesome.

• I would have to go with the aliens from Independence Day. Their entire plan was foiled because one computer savvy person was able to decode their countdown that they hid in our satellites. So of course, this begs the question ... can't they build their OWN satellites?! Or better yet, a WATCH! Every spy group knows the phrase "synchronize watches" but apparently, that doesn't translate into Alienspeak.

• Starship Troopers I watched this again recently, and was kind of amazed at what I'd missed the first time around. It's pretty clear on second viewing that the entire war is a trumped-up ruse to bolster the fascist Earth government, excuse their suspension of free press and civil rights, and to justify their aggression against other planets (the bugs actually don't seem to be hostile unless you invade their territory). The asteroids are either intentionally ignored, or maybe even secretly sent by the Earth government as part of their conspiracy. In fiction, there's a thing called an "unreliable narrator." Well, in this case, the entire film (presented as a propaganda film of the fascist government) is the unreliable narrator, something I haven't seen done before or since. The whole thing could be seen as a vicious parody of post 9/11 America and the Bush administration, except it was done FIRST! Spooky. Maybe Rumsfeld and Cheaney saw it and used it as their Master Plan. All they missed were the asteroids.

• I totally forgot about the laser pistol episode. Dammit. I'm glad Talanic (and the ones after him) called me on it, though, this is what the TR community is for. As for Mal's revolver being "Not A Conventional Revolver," thanks. Now I have to go watch the entire series again to listen for that sound. And I was totally all set to steer clear of Whedon until Christmas, when I inevitably get Dr. Horrible and make my whole family sit down and watch. And this goes back to the first thing I said, because had you guys not called me out earlier, I would have gotten to the episode with the Lassiter and been like "GUYS I TOTALLY MISSED SOMETHING AND SCREWED UP I DEMAND TO BE RIDICULED ON THE INTERNET." Now I can rest easy and just listen for a high-pitched stereotypical high-tech gun cock noise. Or I could take your word for it and just go play Persona 4. Decisions, decisions.

• What about Resident Evil: The video game. Let me get this straight. You can only carry six things? Six? No more than six items...total? If I want to pick up a leaf I find on the ground I have to put down my pistol because I couldn't possibly hold them both?! This isn't even technology based and I understand that, but I just really thought it needed bringing up. Along side the immense problem of the Holy Six. Why the Fuck cant I pick up anything on the ground?!? "Look out!" "Theres a group of Zombies coming and your all out of bullets!" "Quick, pick up that iron Pipe and knock em' in the Skull!" "What do you mean you CANT because its part of the scenery?" Stupid... just plain stupid. And what kind of super agent cant pop a slow-moving zombie square in the fucking head with out with out stopping and taking two minutes to vector in his sights and take precise aim? I haven't got any military training and I can do it, no problem! Game sucks.

• Anonymous said: @Jxn: Do you have some kind of vendetta against BSG? Of COURSE nobody brought it up, their technology is not supposed to be even remotely that advanced beyond kinetic energy weapons, one layer spacesuits, robots, and FTL. Christ, you're a fucking idiot. That's like complaining about the basis of a plot. You're defending loose fitting, unpressurized spacesuits without eye protection and Kinetic weapons that would throw the ships off trajectory every time they were fired and you're calling me an idiot? The whole point of this was to point out glaring omissions in the technology of Sci-Fi properties. If I'm complaining about the plot then so are you. Because, most of this stuff is left out just to give the protagonists something to do. Yes, BSG is made to look intentionally primitive, but, it's not immune to the law of unintended consequences. They can't "see" (no sensors) into other star systems in real-time, so, they can't know what they are jumping into. Or what's or what's there. There could be a damn Cylon base or a super nova there for all they know. And FTL could be used as a weapon if the writer's were smart enough to think about it. There's no warning and no shields what's stopping them? Lazy or stupid writers, that's what. Spacesuits without air supplies or eye protection wouldn't be practical in any shape or form. All spacesuits made on Earth have them why don't they? So you can always see how pretty the actors are that's why. And suits that don't have some means of keeping pressure on a body don't work. On the matter of kinetic weapons; You do know that guns have been suggested as a means of propulsion in space for years right? The recoil from a big enough cannon or coil gun could push a ship along at a pretty good clip. Yet somehow the ships on BSG aren't affected by the recoil in the slightest. Do they have inertial dampers? No, they don't. In fact they don't have anything that helps make any of the shit they shovel any more plausible than any other Science fiction show. They just do less and call it more. Here's one more question: if they can build ships that can stand up to nukes why can't they build robots that can stand up to bullets?

• <b>Things that exist TODAY but will suck more in the future</b> <b>1. Star Trek Communications Earpiece:</b> Or as we call it, a Bluetooth headset. So I guess in the future, someone's going to decide, "Gosh, this technology needs to be bigger and go IN the ear." <b>2. Star Trek Communicator (TOS):</b> Today I'm rocking a candybar mobile phone that fits in the palm of my hand, and handles full-on video, but hundreds of years from now someone will decide to increase the size, remove all the bells and whistles (Video? It's all about tinny sound these days, kid!) and make it function more like a walkie talkie (two-way, half-duplex communication. How quaint!) Shit... it doesn't even have an MP3 player. <b>3. Computers:</b> I'm writing this on a MacBook that is smaller and lighter than a remedial English textbook, but some time in the far-off future the people will forsake this "thin is in" ideal with computers, and say, "Damn, I miss the days when computers took up an entire room." Likewise, they'll feel a pang of nostalgia for slow, faulty magnetic media, and we'll see a resurgence of reel-to-reel magnetic tape in our computers. Here's a bonus, though: If we don't have an high-tech amber or EGA screen on the computer, we'll get one that replaces the screen with a vocal interface that sounds like Microsoft SAM had a botched sex change. <b>4. The New Renaissance of Dot Matrix:</b> Today, only a few places still use dot matrix printers, and that's only because they have to print out huge sheets of labels or something equally unwieldy. The rest of us are using laser or inkjet or thermal printers. I must inform you, however, that sometime around 2025 the dot matrix printer will return in a big way. It will be used for anything and everything. I suspect this will happen because there will be some sort of negative side-effect discovered in connection to laser and inkjet printers, like cancer-causing radiation (It COULD explain all the sewer/outland mutants we'll see in the future). <b>5. Fashion:</b> Everything old IS new again! Even today we see a trend where fashion becomes popular again about 20 years after its heyday. In the 70s, people starting doing the 50s look again. Today, we're seeing people dress like it's 1987. It slows down, though, as time goes by. In 2050 everyone will be dressing like it's 1930. In 2025 everyone will dress like it's 1984. Sometime around 2266 we'll all be back in awesome 60's styles (We'll even have flower children and hippies again!) In 2517 the OLD WEST LOOK is back! In the year 3000 we'll have 70's fashion back and it will be ultra-white and FABULOUS. In the dark times of the corporate-controlled far-off future, everyone will dress like they're in a leather bar in 1997. You can't avoid it. No new fashions will EVER be invented. We just keep repeating the same stuff from the 20th century. <b>6. Personal Vehicles:</b> Sure, you want a flying car. Everybody does. But the problem is that when they finally give us flying cars (2015 according to one source) they'll be small, domed things with no cargo space, no luxury features, and a fairly utilitarian design. They'll also make a "wubwubwubwub" or "veeveveveveve" sound when they're in motion. Trust me: You'll hate them. <b>7. Robots:</b> Today, ASIMO is able to dance, climb stairs, run, and move quite deftly on two legs. Some time in the future, however, we're going to decide that we don't want nimble robots, and we'll hobble them so that they either walk in a slow shuffle without bending their knees, or we'll give up on legs completely and go back to wheels in some form or another. Sure, there will be some old reminders of ASIMO, but they'll be short, ill-mannered and have annoying speech impediments (bidibidibidi). Luckily, sometime around either 2021 or the 2300s we'll see androids that are almost indistinguishable from humans. The only way you'll be able to tell that they're not human is that they're spending the majority of their time bitching about not being human... or they're trying to kill you.

• The ineffectiveness (and non-existence) of personal force fields in Star Trek. Sure, the Enterprise can take a beating with its shields at 10 percent power, but if Picard showed us anything in Star Trek: First Contact, machine gun bullets can still F you up in a major way, even ones made by the holodeck. And why do you think Spock and Kirk were pissing their pants when Vic Tayback was runnng the gangster planets. That's right, machine guns. Even Bones can't help you when you have a .45 slug embedded in your brain. You're dead, Jim.

• &#64;Jxn: Do you have some kind of vendetta against BSG? Of COURSE nobody brought it up, their technology is not supposed to be even remotely that advanced beyond kinetic energy weapons, one layer spacesuits, robots, and FTL. Christ, you're a fucking idiot. That's like complaining about the basis of a plot. Anyway... my list. Taken from many a source. 1. CRT monitors on the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise Seriously? In the future you'd think they'd have at least discovered LCD technology. Or even holographic technology (which seems to be confined almost entirely to the holodeck, at least Star Wars used it). If this is a utopian future, haven't they phased out energy burning nonsense like that? For that matter the bridge in TOS even had physical switches that were flipped, and analog readouts and printouts of data. 2. The blaring klaxons on the bridge of the Enterprise Having a flashing red light in your face is going to cause epilepsy, not alert you further to an enemy presence. You could just have a small signal, and maybe a more pleasant sounding emergency signal that said "people, get the fuck up to the bridge, we're being attacked by Romulans." They also don't shut off the red alert once they've encountered the enemy, it keeps blaring in their ears the whole time. 3. Droids making stupid sounds in Star Wars Chalk this one up to Lucas having the brains and sense of a four year old. But still, why the fuck should a maintenance bot make any kind of noise even resembling a mouse? It's stupid, instead if you step on it, it should say quiet loudly "GET OFF, YOU'RE STEPPING ON ME" in a normal voice. Also, the battle droids employed by the bad guys during the Clone Wars had stupid voices and would say things like "uh-oh" and "whoops" - give me a fucking break. They're battle droids, combat hardened, they should be striking FEAR into the hearts of their enemies. Even the super battle droids, which were pretty damn intimidating, had those stupid noises. 4. The consoles blowing up on the Enterprise bridge Seriously? This far in the fucking future and you can't put, oh, I dunno, some kind of surge protection? Mind, this even occurs when the shield is up. Great fucking shield guys, it's really preventing people from being killed - oh wait, sorry, no it isn't. I mean for all the bitching that Jxn does about Battlestar, they at least have the sense to protect their electronics and when the bridge shakes, it's because they're being bombarded with missiles and don't have energy shields. Hell, their flak shields keep out incoming missiles better than the Enterprise's shield. That's all I can really think of at the moment.

• "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." I am not sure but that sounds like the past and the past is not the future. Since that is how the star wars saga starts off any of you posting complaining about the star wars universe you all owe me your nerd cards. I am sure to be banned for life after this post but oh well.

• "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." I am not sure but that sounds like the past and the past is not the future. Since that is how the star wars saga starts off any of you posting complaining about the star wars universe you all owe me your nerd cards. I am sure to be banned for life after this post but oh well.

• Well, it is past 3 am here, but I am just going to throw this out, since it is related. There is but ONE single blunder in the entirety of the Star Wars universe that does not make sense to me, and it relates to the games (and roleplaying games). Vibroswords. How else can we make people as cool as the Jedi, able to withstand Sith, but not completely rape the back story of uber-awesome lightsabres? Simple. We give them a sword. But not just any sword. A sword with special 'weaves' that can be used to block lightsabres. These are still around, as well, and this is not lost technology. So, my only question is.... why not make a whole damn set of armor out of the technology they use for vibroblades? Make a ship's bulkhead out of them, maybe even a droid to save the little shit from suffering a humiliating defeat from the Jedi who can conveniently stray from their paladin code since the poor bastard is only 'artificial life'.

• Well, it is past 3 am here, but I am just going to throw this out, since it is related. There is but ONE single blunder in the entirety of the Star Wars universe that does not make sense to me, and it relates to the games (and roleplaying games). Vibroswords. How else can we make people as cool as the Jedi, able to withstand Sith, but not completely rape the back story of uber-awesome lightsabres? Simple. We give them a sword. But not just any sword. A sword with special 'weaves' that can be used to block lightsabres. These are still around, as well, and this is not lost technology. So, my only question is.... why not make a whole damn set of armor out of the technology they use for vibroblades? Make a ship's bulkhead out of them, maybe even a droid to save the little shit from suffering a humiliating defeat from the Jedi who can conveniently stray from their paladin code since the poor bastard is only 'artificial life'.

• (sorry for the repost - needed to edit a bit) The Star Wars universe has to have some of the stupidest uses of technology around and I'm only going to stick with the original trilogy. Cause lets face it, the prequels are just way too easy to make fun of. I'm also going to try to avoid the obvious ones like no handrails, etc. So here we go... <b>9. Astromech Droids.</b> OK, don't get me wrong. I love R2-D2. Astromechs are, quite arguably, some of the coolest robots in sci-fi. Their chosen mode of transportation, however, is about the least effective design that you could possibly have for a robot that's essentially a self-propelled Swiss Army Knife. These guys go everywhere, so lets make them need a smooth surface just to get around. Brilliant. Oh and to top things off, lets make it a tripod setup. Oh yeah, way to go George. Tripods are pretty stable for cameras, not so much for things that move. Anyone who's ever seen any Star Wars outtakes knows that a large portion of them are Artoo falling over. Dare I even bring up 3-wheeled ATVs? And for those of you who cry out, "Oh but in the prequels he has je-" <B>Shut. Up.</B> If three wheels is a bad idea for droids, then a pair of rockets with no directional control beyond R2 leaning forward is fucking ridiculous. <b>8. Mouse Droids </b> What the fuck are they supposed to be anyways? Messengers? Security? The SW equivalent of a Roomba? Lightning fast, calf-high, droids that are painted the same color as the floor. Rolling death traps I say! How many a Stormtrooper has fallen to his doom after having been tripped by one of these little buggers? <b>7. Annoying Protocol droids.</b> Jeezus! The one kind of robot in this universe that actually speaks in a way that humanoids can understand, and it talks like a gay butler! Way to go Anakin! (Oops forgot I wasn't going to reference the Prequels.. heh) <b>6. Other droids that don't communicate verbally but should.</b> "BeepBoopWhirrrFizzlePopSneezeWarbleBzzzt!" "I have no idea what you just said. I guess I'll have to buy one of those #7's above. Just fucking great!" <b>5. The Y-Wing's non-functional turret.</b> I know these ships are old, but seriously, at least give them a fucking chance. Were the Rebel mechanics not briefed on the mission? Did they not know that these ships would have to fly down a trench with no room to maneuver? Oh and that they would likely have enemy fighters chasing them down? Apparently not. Or, quite possibly, the pilots just forgot to turn them on. "Lost Tiree. Lost Hutch. They came from behind!" "Didn't you guys have your turret guns turned on?" "Oh fuck.." *explosion and fireball* "Dumbass." <b>4. TIE Fighters.</b> The last thing you want to do with any sort of aerospace fighter is to block it's pilot's vision. Right? So what does the Empire do? Put two fucking huge 'solar panels' on either side of the cockpit. "Hey Black 2! You have a bogey coming in from 3 o'clock!" "Where?! I don't see him!" *explosion and fireball* "Nope, guess you didn't." <b>3. Guillotine-speed blast doors on the Death Star</b> Okay, I'm the first person to admit, that in an emergency such as a hull breach or some other rapid decompression, I would be grateful for a speedy cut-off to whatever danger was presenting itself. In normal situations, however, it's just dangerously unnecessary. Unless you're a pair of bored Stormtroopers... "Hey THX-1977. Bet you 10 credits I can crush the next mouse droid to come in here." "You're on dude!" "Here comes one now!.." *PSSSHHTT! CRUNCH!* "Hah!" "Dude! You totally cut him in two!" "Pay up." <b>2. Tow cables.</b> Besides roping and hog-tying the random Imperial Walker that happens to wander into your neighborhood, what the fuck are these things used for?! Presumably, given their name, they are used for towing things. Why then, are they mounted to a goddamn harpoon gun? Wouldn't you just manually latch it to the Snowspeeder rather than firing a high-velocity gun at something that could be valuable? Also, do you really want to have something flailing around behind a speeder screaming along at a couple hundred MPH? Probably not. <b>1. Stormtrooper Armor</b> Do these poor bastards ever really have a chance? Blazing white armor that would only be easier to see if you painted a big red target on it. For all the blaster protection said armor affords it's wearer, it may as well be made of paper mache. Near zero visibility. Vision is so strained that you have to move your head just to look down. Or up as we know from the famous trooper who hits his head on the blast door. (If you don't know what I'm talking about... First, punch yourself in the face hard for not being geek enough to be here in the first place. Second, pop in your copy of A New Hope and go the scene where R2 and 3PO are discovered by Stormtroopers in the Death Star control room. Watch the troopers carefully when they enter the room. Third, if you don't own a copy of A New Hope, promptly walk out into traffic. Thank you.)

• The Star Wars universe has to have some of the stupidest uses of technology around and I'm only going to stick with the original trilogy. Cause lets face it, the prequels are just way too easy to make fun of. I'm also going to try to avoid the obvious ones like no handrails, etc. So here we go... <b>9. Astromech Droids.</b> OK, don't get me wrong. I love R2-D2. Astromechs are, quite arguably, some of the coolest robots in sci-fi. Their chosen mode of transportation, however, is about the least effective design that you could possibly have for a robot that's essentially a self-propelled Swiss Army Knife. These guys go everywhere, so lets make them need a smooth surface just to get around. Brilliant. Oh and to top things off, lets make it a tripod setup. Oh yeah, way to go George. Tripods are pretty stable for cameras, not so much for things that move. Anyone who's ever seen any Star Wars outtakes knows that a large portion of them are Artoo falling over. Dare I even bring up 3-wheeled ATVs? And for those of you who cry out, "Oh but in the prequels he has je-" <B>Shut. Up.</B> If three wheels is a bad idea for droids, then a pair of rockets with no directional control beyond R2 leaning forward is fucking ridiculous. <b>8. Mouse Droids </b> What the fuck are they supposed to be anyways? Messengers? Security? The SW equivalent of a Roomba? Lightning fast, calf-high, droids that are painted the same color as the floor. Rolling death traps I say! How many a Stormtrooper has fallen to his doom after having been tripped by one of these little buggers? Which leads me into my next point... <b>7. Annoying Protocol droids.</b> Jeezus! The one kind of robot in this universe that actually speaks in a way that humanoids can understand, and it talks like a gay butler! Way to go Anakin! (Oops forgot I wasn't going to reference the Prequels.. heh) <b>6. Other droids that don't communicate verbally but should.</b> "BeepBoopWhirrrFizzlePopSneezeWarbleBzzzt!" "I have no idea what you just said. I guess I'll have to buy one of those #7's above. Just fucking great!" <b>5. The Y-Wing's non-functional turret.</b> I know these ships are old, but seriously, at least give them a fucking chance. Were the Rebel mechanics not briefed on the mission? Did they not know that these ships would have to fly down a trench with no room to maneuver? Oh and that they would likely have enemy fighters chasing them down? Apparently not. Or, quite possibly, the pilots just forgot to turn them on. "Lost Tiree. Lost Hutch. They came from behind!" "Didn't you guys have your turret guns turned on?" "Oh fuck.." <explosion and fireball> "Dumbass." <b>4. TIE Fighters.</b> The last thing you want to do with any sort of aerospace fighter is to block it's pilot's vision. Right? So what does the Empire do? Put two fucking huge 'solar panels' on either side of the cockpit. "Hey Black 2! You have a bogey coming in from 3 o'clock!" "Where?! I don't see him!" <explosion and fireball> "Nope, guess you didn't." <b>3. Guillotine-speed blast doors on the Death Star</b> Okay, I'm the first person to admit, that in an emergency such as a hull breach or some other rapid decompression, I would be grateful for a speedy cut-off to whatever danger was presenting itself. In normal situations, however, it's just dangerously unnecessary. Unless you're a pair of bored Stormtroopers... "Hey THX-1977. Bet you 10 credits I can crush the next mouse droid to come in here." "You're on dude!" "Here comes one now!.." <PSSSHHTT! CRUNCH!> "Hah!" "Dude! You totally cut him in two!" "Pay up." <b>2. Tow cables.</b> Besides roping and hog-tying the random Imperial Walker that happens to wander into your neighborhood, what the fuck are these things used for?! Presumably, given their name, they are used for towing things. Why then, are they mounted to a goddamn harpoon gun? Wouldn't you just manually latch it to the Snowspeeder rather than firing a high-velocity gun at something that could be valuable? Also, do you really want to have something flailing around behind a speeder screaming along at a couple hundred MPH? Probably not. <b>1. Stormtrooper Armor</b> Do these poor bastards ever really have a chance? Blazing white armor that would only be easier to see if you painted a big red target on it. For all the blaster protection said armor affords it's wearer, it may as well be made of paper mache. Near zero visibility. Vision is so strained that you have to move your head just to look down. Or up as we know from the famous trooper who hits his head on the blast door. (If you don't know what I'm talking about... First, punch yourself in the face hard for not being geek enough to be here in the first place. Second, pop in your copy of A New Hope and go the scene where R2 and 3PO are discovered by Stormtroopers in the Death Star control room. Watch the troopers carefully when they enter the room. Third, if you don't own a copy of A New Hope, promptly walk out into traffic. Thank you.)

• The entire future of "Idiocracy" You talk funny. FAG! There it is in a nut shell! Remember drink Braundo... it's got ELECTROLITES! Water is for toilets! FAG! Yea the future looks bright!

• So in the movie starship troopers, earthlings have just about everything, spaceships for intergallactic travel, pocket nukes to destroy shit in tunnels, psychics that just happen to be neil patrick harris, and best of all, coed showers. Hell, this world even has a form of arena football that people are willing watch. But apparently this world has no ability to monitor the actions of bug planets it knows to be hostle towards them. I can't go a month without reading some news article about an asteroid or bit of space crap that's on track to come within miles of hitting the earth three decades from now. Yet in this super cool world where high school kids can dissect giant beetles instead of fetal pigs, they can't see an asteroid sent to earth by enemies until in blocks out the sun over its argentinian target. While we currently pay hundreds of scientists to track space rocks and discover ways of shooting them away from the planet, the best the world of starship troopers has for an early detection system is the tallest guy in buenos aires saying "tut tut it looks like rain" before his whole family is incinerated. In addition to lacking the ability to detect an act of war by bugs until it's way too late, there's the horribly unplanned military response. Let's take our entire space fleet to the bugs' home planet. Then have Admiral Ozzel bring the ships in too close and in range of the blue energy light balls that can't possibly be considered a threat until they start blowing half the fleet apart. So now that the space decimation from a weapon that no one, not even psychic neil patrick harris, knows the extent of its power has commenced, what to do now? Send in ground troops with a tv crew to document the massacre, of course. Nicely done, especially considering today's military technology allows us to scout enemies using satilites and drones that can take pictures using night vision and infrared spectrums, without risking human life. all this before considering the use of ground troops. It's obvious that the world of starship troopers has enough satilltes to go around in order to facilitate communication that spans across the globe and into other solar systems, but i suppose no one considers using these satillites to spy on the pissed off bugs. This lack of technology is only made worse by a military intelligence that closely resembles a third grader playing chess without knowing what the horsey piece does.

• I'm surprised that almost no one has mentioned Battlestar Galactica yet. Thst show is the queen of technological cherry picking. BSG has all the flaws of Star Trek, SG-1, and more. They may even have some new ones of their own. Here's a list: 1. No wheeled or tracked military vehicles carried by military ships. I guess neither side expected to fight on the ground. 2. No directed energy weapons or high tech kinetic weapons. They can control gravity and travel faster than the speed of light, but, their ships use old fashioned guns. Wouldn't it be impractical to use guns because of the recoil? 3. Their planes can be killed by old fashioned guns. Bullet speed is measured in feet per second. The average speed of micro meteors/asteroids is measured in tens of miles per second. The faster an object travels the harder it hits. How is it then, that Starbuck can fly her Viper though an asteroid field without being destroyed? 4. The method of faster than light travel on the show seems to be teleportation more or less. Why don't they use it as a weapon? Given what we've seen on the show neither side has any way to detect/stop FTL events. It seems to me that the Cylons could have avoided a whole lot of crap by by strapping FTL drives to asteroids and jumping them into the colonies. Like wise they also could have jumped nukes into the landing bays of the Battlestars. Hell, they could have just jumped raiders into the control room or engines of any ship they wanted to stop. 5. They are FTL jumping blind. Neither side has faster than light sensors, a la Star Trek. How do they know they aren't going to jump into an asteroid or comet or whatever? How does Galactica know there won't be a Baseship waiting at their destination? 6. Their space suits suck. As far as I can tell they aren't pressurized and the don't seem to have air tanks. PLUS they don't have flare/glare shields in their helmets. If the Cylons really wanted fight dirty all they'd have to do is set off a nuke right in front of the attacking colonials. Presto: permanent blindness. 7. Their ships run on liquid rocket fuel. Liquid fuel that's made by squeezing rocks. And that brings me to 8. How are they powering things? The writers make it seem as though the ships on both sides are rocket powered. After all, the only fuel they ever seem to be concerned about is Tillium. And the only things that seem to run on Tillium are the rockets that move the ships. Oh, and the FTL. Of course, rockets don't power shit. In fact, pretty much all rocket do is push things. So, where are they getting their electricity?

• "Final Fantasy VII. Phoenix Down." This applies to all RPGs with ressurection spells/items, for that matter.

• I guess the reason why they don't want seat belts on a star ship is when the panels explode they want the crew members to be able to leap clear...

• Heh, does anyone remember the Avengers Comics where Iron Man had a rotary phone built into his armor? http://i456.photobucket.com/albums/qq283/AngmarBucket/Scans/death4.jpg

• Final Fantasy VII. Phoenix Down. As the ragtag heroes of AVALANCHE battle into the depths of the 'Forgotten City' to stop Sephiroth's theft of the Black Materia, tragedy strikes. Aeris, the lovable flower girl bred in the pits of Midgar, ends up slain by the evil protagonist. As Cloud watches her body slump down and slowly begin to fade back into the Lifestream, emotions of fear, sorrow and anger welled deep within me... And then I thought... GET A FUCKING PHOENIX DOWN! Shit, Aeris died like, 10 times getting to this damn point in the game and EACH TIME it took less then 30 seconds and a few sprinkled bird feathers to get back to her feet. Sheesh, I'm guessing Tifa hid all the Phoenix Down right after Sephiroth stabbed her just to get her flower-peddling ass out of the picture.

• Final Fantasy VII. Phoenix Down. As the ragtag heroes of AVALANCHE battle into the depths of the 'Forgotten City' to stop Sephiroth's theft of the Black Materia, tragedy strikes. Aeris, the lovable flower girl bred in the pits of Midgar, ends up slain by the evil protagonist. As Cloud watches her body slump down and slowly begin to fade back into the Lifestream, emotions of fear, sorrow and anger welled deep within me... And then I thought... GET A FUCKING PHOENIX DOWN! Shit, Aeris died like, 10 times getting to this damn point in the game and EACH TIME it took less then 30 seconds and a few sprinkled bird feathers to get back to her feet. Sheesh, I'm guessing Tifa hid all the Phoenix Down right after Sephiroth stabbed her just to get her flower-peddling ass out of the picture.

• Yes, seat belts in star trek... oh wait they do exist, they were added in in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And the idea behind seat belts isnt needed unless your on a battle cruiser. Normally, inertial dampaners work so well that you would never need any sort of seat belt or restraint. However, the computers that run them have a slight delay. As long as you are doing something that is programmed into the computer ahead of time, like a predetermined course, even the most complex of turns can be compensated for. However, in battle, you literally have to take the wheel, and moves can't be predetermined, so the ship shakes and people fall over. And, of course, you can't predict getting hit by a photon torpedo. Now, normally you wouldn't be getting into a firefight every freakin' week, so there's no reason to worry about restraints Installing seat belts in a star ship would be like asking you to wear a helmet when your driving your car. Could save lives but still a stupid idea

• How about the lack of paper in the Star Wars Universe. I know they have datapads, but what the hell do they write on or wipe their asses with?

• Oh this one has to go to Star Wars, and the inability to come up with railings. So let me get this straight george, we can have artificially intelligent robots, lightsabers which must be some form of (any colored) plasma in a containment field to even work, yet not one person in the galaxy filled with all of these bottomless chasms ever thought " I know how about an iron bar about waist high to keep people from falling to their deaths!" I gotta feel sorry for the poor sap who had to work the tractor beam on the death star "O.k. TK-1138, your job is to climb out on this ledge and walk around a device with only 3 inches of footing between you and certain death and enter activate the tractor beam at a moment's notice!" so let me get this straight we can build force fields for dramatic tension but the man who says how about we put a bar just here to keep us from falling the 3000 feet is nowhere to be found!

• 1. Battlestar Galactica - Athena can insert wires into her body and talk to the computer, but we still can't find something physically different with her to tell that she is a cylon. 2. Superman - Superman's father can create a portal to harbor outlaws and shoot them into space, but he can only create a spaceship to save his son and not the entire race, or at least himself and his wife. 3. Any zombie story - how do dead people that are decomposing and missing limbs have super strength and in some cases sprint FASTER than a healthy person.

• Star Trek: Shielding Humans with Individual Technology (SHIT) I'd have though that once the statistics on how many red shirts were getting fried every time they landed on a planet had been analyzed SHIT would have been a priority and standard Star Fleet issue. Its not like the technology hadn't been developed to make SHIT a feasible item of kit. All star craft including the shuttles have shields and the miniaturization of the technology needed to make its use possible, both the power plants and shield generators, is completely practical and employed in the construction and running of Data the Android. SHIT would have saved countless lives and stopped the needless slaughter of innocent security officers.

• All respect to Doctor Death, but everyone could have just remained silent after Strangeman. Son killed it, f'rilla. Don't get no more basic than seatbelts. Having said that, however, I'll throw this gem out there, on a property not yet touched upon: Total Recall. Or more specifically, this universe's absolute lack of bulletproof glass all the while possessing the technologies of holograms, encapsulating face masks that also become bombs, interplanetary travel and false memory impregnation. When the badguys are trying to kill Ahnuld in the train station, he deflects all of their shots by holding a (already dead) human body directly in front of him. The body takes probably 50-60 shots from multiple forms of handgun, including UZI-style, and not a single round pierces all the way through the dead guy to hit Ahnuld. However, on Mars, the main baddie fires a single shot at our hero in one of the great domes that ALLOW LIFE TO EVEN FUNCTION on the Red Planet, and manages to pierce the single pane-thick barrier. No 24-inch thick dome of thermoplastic here; no, instead we have a single-paned shield between all human life on the planet and the UNYIELDING VACUUM OF INFINITY. And don't tell me the baddies were using higher-calibered weapons on Mars - even Ahnuld's nemesis's mega-caliber shotgun used in the cab chase barely shot out the taxi's lighted sign. But again, Strangeman knocked it out the park. I merely humbly point out a lesser example of a futuristic society that has yet to master a technology developed 20+ years ago.

• Neuromancer. Gibson writes a novel that considers the deepest implications of cyberspace and artificial intelligence in future society. One of the most effective scenes involves the hero walking past a row of pay phones, each of them ringing a single time, one right after the other in quick succession as the AI tries to contact him. It should be eerie and disturbing. Instead, it just makes you wonder why no one in this vast dystopian future—a vision that supposedly put The Matrix to shame before anyone even thought of The Matrix—has yet to invent a fucking cell phone.

• I believe I have you all beat. And yes. I'm talking about Star Trek again. Subject: Masturbation. What happened? No masturbation in the far future? Spock was willing to Kill his best friend in the Universe just to hook up with some Vulcan chick for five minutes because he had so much pent up sexual tension. And how many space-chicks did Kirk impregnate across the galaxy? And then even farther in the future we have Holodecks. A room where anything you imagine comes to life and you want nothing more than to be Sherlock Holmes? Really? I recall an episode of TNG when Picard strolled into Rikers room and Riker was watching three hot chicks playing classical music... Really? What happened to porn? No Money, No Personal Items, No Masturbation and No Privacy... sounds like a pretty Hellish Future to me.

• I do believe I have you all beat. And yes, I'm going to refer to Star Trek... Masturbation... Somehow in the far future of Star Trek where Massive Spaceships the size of Cities Circumnavigate the Universe and intermingle with alien races and We have the technology of Phasers, Transporters and Holodecks... somehow "Spanking the Monkey" got lost in translation somewhere. Spock nearly killed Kirk in a fight to the death because he had so much pent up frustration he was willing to slaughter his best friend just to get with some Vulcan Chick for five minute. And how many space-chicks did Kirk bang in five years... Take a break buddy. Get to know yourself. And then even farther into the future we have the holodeck... a room where anything you can imagine can come to actual, flesh and blood life... and you want to be Sherlock Holmes? Really? I would have a Harem of supermodels and strippers that would blow your freekin mind! I recall one episode of The Next Generation where Picard walked into Rikers room and Riker was watching Three Hot chicks playing classical music on a Holo-table... Really? No Space Porn? And no locks on the door? You know they didn't have Masturbation because they didn't even have locks on the doors. No Money, no personal items, no privacy.... No Masturbation. Sound Hellish to me.

• I nominate the Xenosaga series of video games for some of the most inconsistent uses of future technology in sci-fi. Supposedly we are 3000 years in the future, yet most military forces still use 20th century weaponry! I can understand Jr.'s use of pistols, given his fascination with antique weapons, but really, how is he different from everybody else in the universe that also uses the same old guns? They HAVE lasers. I've seen the lasers. Ships shoot lasers. Ziggy has lasers. KOS-MOS shoots lasers. Even the friggin GNOSIS have lasers. Yet nobody seems to want to use them. They're much happier with their completely ineffective popguns, I guess. Oh well. Speaking of Jr.'s guns, apparently 3000 years in the future, they haven't figured out how to make things bulletproof. Really? Is it that hard? They haven't developed kevlar vests? Jr. can just gun down a whole squad of U-Tic soldiers who might as well be wearing clothes made out of butter? I mean, I love Xenosaga, but it's not like half of the stuff there makes sense. Like, come on, no teleporters? No faster-than-light travel? No fucking aliens (and no, Gnosis don't count as aliens)? What kind of sci fi is this? :P

• <i>Please explain to me why people (specifically the Captain) are still using plain old six shooter revolvers.</i> Okay; he doesn't. Seriously, listen every time Mal cocks his gun. There's this little high-pitched generic high-tech sound that accompanies the motion. Yes, it's a revolver, and it may well be limited to six shots, although I don't believe he's ever actually run out of bullets before, so it may just look like one while actually carrying a dozen half-sized high-powered space-bullets. But my point, and I do have one, is that Mal's gun is identified as being Not A Conventional Revolver, and thus we can assume that it's been altered in whatever manner necessary for it to be an effective weapon.

• Well this isn't the far future like star trek or outer space technology like Star Wars. But when you're a kid the future is only a couple years away. Well I remember watching G.I. Joe on television and thought that they were cool and that the B.A.T.s (Battle Android Trooper) were the worst shots ever. Then I thought well maybe they are just supposed to be like a Timex just around to take a lick'n and keep on tick'n. To my surprise when I finally read the file card where "their only function is in the battlefield is to shoot the enemy". They failed like a fat girl on weight watchers at hometown buffet. Now I am not surprised Dr. Mindbender couldn't come up with the simple technology that is on almost every video game now and 90% of all US troops rifles, laser sights. He couldn't find a shirt to wear with his cape and monocle. (Hey next weeks FFF the adventures of Dr. Mindbender and the lovely B.A.T.) The B.A.T.s could not shoot anything. I mean even a blind squirrel finds a friggan nut now and then. The amount of lasers (yes I know that sounds silly) that they shot should have killed at least 3-4 Joes an episode, isn't that that why they had the no names in green to use as BAT target practice. Even star trek had the red shirt guy who would not make it thought the opening credits. Wouldn't it have been funny if Quick Kick got shot in the nuts by a laser as he is trying to kick another B.A.T.s head off. Laser sights. Are all around now and no one thought to use those as an aiming device? That is the real reason Cobra couldn't win that and apparently a crappy HR department.

• Here's one: So they can build massive Starships, but they can't keep the panels from exploding in the faces of crew members?

• Actually lasers do exist in Firefly. In one episode they steal the first laser pistol ever and in another the bad guy they fight has one and kills a prostitute with it.

• Actually, there's an advantage the revolver has over magazined guns: Easier-to-produce ammunition. Bullets for a revolver are easily manufactured and standardized. Get them made for the right caliber and you've got it. Magazined guns, though, are harder to make ammo for and more catastrophic if you screw up while making that ammo; a messed up revolver bullet may fire crooked or just not fire, and can be ejected when it's time to reload. A messed up magazine bullet can jam the gun, preventing the gun from firing the rest of the magazine until the owner gets a chance to fix it. Either situation sucks. In short, if you've got a good market that you can trust to not be selling cheap knock-offs that you might not be able to detect without opening up the magazine to check (which Jayne, no doubt, DOES) then magazine-based guns are superior to revolvers in just about every way. If you're scrabbling for ammo and may have to deal with gunsmiths who've seen pictures of a rifle but never touched one, you might be better off with a revolver. Oh, and lasers do exist in Firefly, hence the episode about them stealing the Lassiter (museum piece, early model laser gun) - but they're too high tech for most of the worlds the cast visits to actually maintain.

• No one's taken a stab at the Whedonverse yet? Really? Okay, I'll be lynched later. So we've got Firefly, yeah? Great show, yeah? Captain Reynolds is cool and doesn't afraid of anything? Please explain to me why people (specifically the Captain) are still using plain old six shooter revolvers. It's ridiculous. Oh, they're aware there are magazine based guns. Hell, other characters use 'em. Jayne's bloody loaded to the tip with high-tech weaponry, without venturing into laser territory (which doesn't exist in Firefly, and I respect that). But Malcolm Reynolds? Uses that revolver like his life depends on it. And it does, in several cases. Nevermind the fact that revolvers have lousy aim, take forever to reload, and are worthless in serious firefights. The revolver straight up looks cool. Look, Joss. I understand that you're trying to make the character look like a chief. But there's only one man who wields a revolver and makes it look badass, and that's Revolver Ocelot. When Malcolm Reynolds does it, he just looks like a guy bringing a sword to a gunfight. Oh, no, wait, now I'm thinking of the Operative in Serenity. Silly me.

• All right, time to sum it up. We love it, we love to pick on it, the winner is obviously Star Trek. Screw the lack of seats or seatbelts, there's far worse problems with their technology. They have the ability to annihilate someone into energy and rebuild them somewhere else, analyzing them for foreign diseases in the process, but they treat this as a parlor trick. Hello? You're putting someone in a cast? Why not run them through their old pattern and just beam them back to health like was actually done in one episode but NEVER AGAIN? This is HOW far in the future, and poor Pike still can't be given prosthetics or a repaired nervous system? I mean, Picard might just like having no hair (after all, if baldness is curable, CHOOSING to be bald is a fashion statement) but medical prosthetics suck in Star Trek. Remember Picard's artificial heart, and the episode where he was going to die because it was inferior to a real one? And that's AFTER the Borg had him assimilated for a while; they apparently missed that his heart would need an upgrade and just left it as-is, despite their general goals including replacing all inferior fleshy bits with superior machinery. Back to the transporter, though. We're shooting things at the enemy? Why bother? Just take a brick and beam it at the enemy, but don't bother to have it reform as matter. Hell, beam a penny; that's more energy than was used in the bombing of Hiroshima. At least the original series stipulated that you couldn't beam something through shields. Or, how about when repelling boarders, you just beam them off the ship into space? You're planning to shoot them anyway (unless they're there to kick Worf's ass, proving their toughness by showing that they're stronger than Worf, who is the strongest of the cast...which is why he gets his ass kicked so much). We're still not done. Not even half. We have replicators. They can make most things, except things the plot says NO about. Replicators take energy and directly convert it to matter (or vice versa), with very very few limits on what it can create and no apparent limits on what it can convert to energy. In one episode, Picard totes around a mobile replicator. It's not a small object; he's providing it to some people to meet their long-term food requirements. I'll assume that it's really just a glorified picnic basket and can only provide two single-pound burgers (just for simplicity, we'll call it a kilogram worth of food). A single kilogram of matter, converted to energy, is equal to 21.5 megatons of TNT. In contrast, the largest bomb ever detonated to date was 50 megatons. Someone smacks that sucker hard and it's going to blow HARD. But wait a minute. That means that that little device there is capable of handling the power contained in a moderate nuclear explosion and regulating it easily. What the hell? Why does the bridge get power surges left and right when there's a fight? They're not power surges of amazing proportion either, where by the time you know there's a surge, your ship has already melted. That would be acceptable, as it meant that the circuits performed to their maximum power and failed. Instead, we get repeated power surges that will set your console on fire but not necessarily kill YOU. Power surges that are apparently unpreventable, because no matter how they engineer the bridge's electrical system, enemy weapons exceed its capacity by just BARELY enough that the system sparks all over the place. That, or the engineers consider bridge personnel expendable and don't care to upgrade the electrical system. One could argue that the weapons on the enemy ships were firing the ridiculous amounts of energy that the replicator deals with on a minute-to-minute basis, but then a single shot on an unshielded ship (which has happened plenty of times) would reduce a ship to dust - EVEN IF the ship being shot was hiding on the other side of a moderate sized moon – and anyone foolish enough to fire while their own shields were down would be likewise vaporous. The argument falls apart further when it's revealed that it's canon that a small, ship-mounted phaser bank has a power draw of 4.2 gigawatts - impressive enough to a flux capacitor, but PATHETIC compared to the other numbers here. No, the ship's cook deals with a device that has shown to be capable of a throughput of roughly a small nuclear weapon every minute or two. More than that, they use the replicator to provide life support by recycling air. Granted, mass-wise, that's fairly piddly; the estimate I've found is 550 liters of oxygen for each human, each day, which comes to about a kilogram and a half per person per day. Double that because it's processing CO2 also (should be more than double because CO2 is a heavier molecule, but I'm not going to bother). I also can't find the total number of crew on a starship, but let's just go with 200. That's 308 kilos (roughly, double that for pounds if you care to) of air that the replicator must process, each day. Converting that to energy by good ol' e=mc2 and then dividing it up amongst the seconds of the day gets us a total energy throughput for those replicators of seventy-six kilotons PER SECOND, to support 200 crewmembers. It gets worse. The transporter ALSO converts matter to energy and back. It also moves that energy (expending MORE energy, but an unspecified amount – we're going to ignore how much it takes, though, since we have no idea). The most I've seen regularly beamed around at a time was five people; beaming takes what, four or five seconds? Okay. Let's go to weight. Five adult human males, estimated for simplicity at a hundred kilos each. That makes for a total of two gigatons of TNT, flowing through the transporter's circuits, per second. That's bad, but I also recall an episode in which the crew beamed an entire village of primitives about, at least thirty people. Screw the replicator's circuits, why don't they have TRANSPORTER wiring in the bridge? Remember, I'm haven't been talking about power sources yet, just power throughput and surge suppression. Actually, do I even have to bother talking about power sources? With what the replicator and transporter can do, that I've SHOWN they do, why would you need anything else? There's nothing in physics that produces more energy than direct conversion of matter; literally, NOTHING. One gram of mass converted to energy will power that aforementioned 4.2 gigawatt phaser bank for over a week. Oh, and since we're talking the transporter and replicator at the same time, why can some things (e.g. latinum) not be replicated because their molecular structure is too complicated, or not understood, or whatever. But they can still be beamed from one place to another, apparently. Soooo…WTF? I could go on. Programming methods in the Federation and beyond are ludicrously horrible and don't check for invalid input. "What Is Love?" Yeeeaaah. The Enterprise's computer can be ordered to calculate all digits of Pi, thereby paralyzing it for hours – yes, Spock did this once. The Borg might have been destroyed by a vision of an impossible shape, and the Collective fell apart (in limited area) by the introduction of a drone who actually had experience with individuality – just like the experiences all newly assimilated drones share with the Collective every time a new one's added. Do I really need to go on? I could, but I don't think I really need to. How many people actually read the whole thing, anyway?

• Or, more to the point, nobody has ever COOKED meat before...

• OK. Here's a weird one. In the movie version of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, they obviously live in a weird high-tech future of a fantasy world, and they have laser weapons, hovering vehicles, and the ability to make inter-dimensional travel a reality-- But when they get to 1980s Earth, Teela and Gwildor are amazed and repulsed by the very idea that they're eating meat, as if the idea had never occurred to them. Now how the hell can a futurist fantasy world filled with skull-headed dictators and barbarians riding green tigers get to the point they're at without ever having eaten meat? A whole civilization of humans and human-like sentients, and there's never been ONE meat-eater among them? Not even Beast-Man?

• Christpher Pike on Life Support in Star Trek "The Menagerie Parts 1 and 2" Star Trek features a society so technologically advanced that they can scramble a persons molecules, "beam" them to a distant location, and reassemble them. However, when the extent of Christpoher Pike's injuries are revealed in "The Menagerie" we see that he is wheelchair-bound and reduced to communicating through a series of flashing lights and a beeping sound. One flash/beep means "no," two flashes/beeps means "yes." Doctor McCoy immediately observes that, for all their knowledge, they still can't fully comprehend the workings of the human brain. That might be the case, but they can still "beam" peoples brains, so you would think they could offer a more complete system of communication other than flashing lights and beeping. The thing that makes this frustrating is how this specific lack of medical technology in our utopian future is merely a plot device (Spock saves Pike) Add to that the actor's reprisal of the role of Pike being reduced to sitting and staring blankly, and you have a situation that seems like it could have been more imaginative, more in line with what we expect of Trek.

• My vote goes to any world where someone is capable of programming computers or robots so complicated that they appear to have an independent intelligence...but not, apparently, capable of adding a simple debugging loop to their programming. This shows up a lot, but I know it's happened in Star Trek, specifically, more than once. As a result, Captain Kirk (or whoever) is able to walk up to these computers and make them explode by saying something like, "This statement is a lie." How is it that these people can code machines sophisticated enough to hold abstract conversations, conquer humanity, etc., but have somehow never thought to include an eval() statement, or multithreading, or any kind of protected memory that would allow the computer simultaneously to run a "conversation with Kirk" process, the "maintain dominance over conquered humans" process and the "do not explode" process. What are these things written in, BASIC?

• To continue the Star Trek assault, there is something i have always wondered. Having watched it since i was a kid, i have always wanted to know why every piece of technology is connected to the same power source. If any part of the ship receives phaser fire or photon torpedos, not only does the bridge essentially catch fire but you have lights going out in the hallways, the holodeck acting up and sickbay losing power. Would it be so hard to just set up a series of different breakers? Or god forbid just set something besides life support on the auxiliary power?

• &#64; toxic: Asimov is one step ahead of you on this one, I'm afraid. Even today, archivists use microfilm for long-term storage, because there just isn't a digital technology yet that will survive for long periods of time. Digital discs will last a couple of decades; magnetic platters in hard drives less than that, usually. Paper is better; it can last a few hundred years if you treat it right. But if you want to store something long-term, like hundreds or thousands of years, the only practical solution we have today is microfilm.

• How, oh how, do you top Star Trek and seat-belts? Most likely, not. But we do what we can. I'm thinking, has anybody on any of the Stargate shows ever heard, of (this is crazy-talk, I know) VEHICLES? I mean, the gate is pretty freaking huge. I'm not sure if you can drive an Abrams tank through there, but you could certainly drive a Humvee or light armored car through. But no, the stupid Star Gate people (and everyone else in the universe with access to the Stargates) just go through and walk. That isn't such a problem, as apparently with a Stargate network covering hundreds and thousands of planets, everything of interest on every planet is located within a half-a-day's walk of the gate. Yup, let's explore the universe, one ten-mile circle at a time! I mean, really, this isn't rocket science, and it isn't going to put much of a dent in the Stargate Program's budget. I mean, if nothing else, send someone down to the Honda store to pick up a few fricking quadrunners or trail bikes. Hell, even a couple mountain-bikes or a pack mule would be an improvement over what we've seen so far. Sure, as someone mentioned, Star Trek has the same problem, but with a transporter, it's less of an issue. And besides, even Picard eventually got a fricking dune-buggy in one of the later movies. Wheels, SG-1! They aren't just for MALPs any more!

• ThaFame, I hear the argument about the virus all the time whenever that movie comes up. People forget that the military had a fully functional alien craft available for study for years before the invasion. All they needed to do was take what they had discovered by studying the alien technology and put together a wireless driver that could interface with the alien systems. Hell, they probably already had something like that so that the military computers could interface with the craft that they were studying. Once you understand how a computer system works (as they did) it would be pretty easy to create a virus to take it down. As for why the mothership wasn't running N'rT-hn Antivirus, it's possible they had never come up with the idea of a computer virus. Maybe their computers were set up in such a way that no single alien could introduce a dangerous code without everyone else knowing about it and knowing where it came from, so the idea never occurred to them.

• Ok...for me anytime this question comes up in my mind, it will ALWAYS be the laptop Mac computer hacking to a super spaceship computer from a totally adavance alien race in teh movie Independance Day! Nothing can beat that I guess...I mean...we still have translation problems on this planet, internet is nice but try to understand a Chinese or Japanese web site...and they want us to believe that a Mac can plant a virus in an Extra-terrestrial spaceship...Nice try :) Love James

• "<i>The Ferengi have access to this technology, but the value Gold press latim, or whatever. Can't the replicator make that?</i>" Nope; gold-pressed latinum is made of <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Unobtainium">Unobtainium</a>, which for reasons never actually explained simply cannot be replicated. Since everyone has piled onto Star Trek pretty hard, (and also taken all the good ones) I figured I'd swing around a bit and go after an anime. Picture, if you will, the year 2015, as seen from 1995-96. It is a fantastic land; giant robots crouch in massive underground complexes, which displays its tactical readouts on giant free-floating holograms. Massive, semi-self aware supercomputers can be found in the major military-industrial centres of the world. Genetically engineered warm-water penguins operate refrigerators and hot tubs. High school classrooms have networked computers at each student's desk. The SDAT digital tape is the audio player of choice. Yes, this is the world of that cornerstone of the anime universe, Neon Genesis Evangelion. Wait, what's that you said? 2015 and they're still using <i>tapes</i>? Yes, tapes. And it's not like Evangelion predates anything else, here. The CD entered mass-production in 1982, and the MPEG digital audio file was developed in 1991, though to be fair to Evangelion the mass-distribution of mp3 coding software didn't take place until 1994. But what about Second Impact, some will say; the death of half the world's population would certainly have changed the development of our technology! And they'd be right, of course; witness the aforementioned penguins and giant robots. But SI doesn't happen until 2000, by which time Metallica was already suing Napster, so unless the half of humanity that was killed included each and every person who'd ever, I don't know, used the internet before (and Japan survived, so we <i>know</i> that's not true), there's no way the SDAT digital cassette would have become the pride of a teenaged boys electronics collection. And anyways, beyond all that, beyond the logic and the reality and the extrapolations... Cassette tapes? You took a science fiction series and gave the giant robot-piloting teenager cassette tapes? Why not just give him an 8-Track player, Anno, and make the obsolescence <i>totally</i> obvious, eh?

• My favorite example of this type of thing is Isaac Asimov's short story "Robbie" where they have autonomous humanoid robots that can cook, clean, nanny children, drive taxis, et cetera but the world's first talking robot is an ENIAC styled project that takes over an entire wing of a robot museum. Of course, you filthy, unwashed, mouth-breathing simplekins don't include pulp-literature in the magic fun pop-science fiction game so instead I offer: The futuristic phone booth in 2001: A Space Odyssey. First, it's somewhat disappointing that <I>Arthur C. Clarke</I> didn't really extrapolate the inevitable course of radio telecommunications. Second, this is the one and only piece of technology in 2001 that is <I>less</I> advanced than what we actually had in 2001. Sure, you may have space-pens, space-planes, space-hotels, video phones, moon-bases, moon- archaeologists, hibernation pods, interplanetary spacecraft, and super-intelligent murdercomputers, but I never, ever, ever have to track down a phone booth in 2001. I think we know who got the better end of that technology stick, and it isn't the guy paying Ma Bell fifty space-dollars per minute in the space-phonebooth to talk to his daughter.... Oh wait. I guess we may have also invented something that competes with that wicked sweet animal bone. <I>Maybe.</I> So there.

• ThaFame, if you're going to go with that, why not just mention the original War of the Worlds? It's one thing to not have antivirus computer software, it's another thing to not have antibacteria immune systems.

• While on the topic of alien invaders, I have to go with the brilliant spacemen from Independence Day. First off, you have an advanced alien race with the capability of impenetrable forcefields....however, they never put in any virus software. A simple virus uploaded via laptop completely takes out there forcefields. Next, the simple fact a laptop not only is compatible with their advanced tech (that originates from the OTHER SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE), but it can translate their code. Seriously, where the hell did they pick up such an advanced laptop, yet they can't come up with communication that will work beyond fucking morse code. Then, in the climatic battle, everyone is deep underground in Area 51. Praying, weeping, and going batshit because the big, bad aliens are about to unleash there weapon above them. Outside. ON THE SURFACE. Somewhere, someone forgot that stripper Vivica A. Fox, along with a few others, survived in a maintenece room to a tunnel behind a steel door and in the subway. SO basically, we have hyper advanced laptops, but must rely on morse code for global communication and the massive weapon tech of the alien invaders can be deflected by a maintence room door.

• Another Star Trek one. They have apparently lost pocket technology. At what point did sewing little pouches into garments become passe? Even more impressively they have lost all military tactics developed since the eighteenth century. Capital ships just square off and pound away at each other. Captain Picard is considered a brilliant tactician because he once tried "maneuvering." They don't have any burst fire weapons. Various forces have resorted to massed infantry charges. Most battles end in either grappling or blade work, and they've also lost the concept of indirect fire.

• In the Star Trek universe, the Federation has eliminated the need for money with, I assume, replicaor technology. The Ferengi have access to this technology, but the value Gold press latim, or whatever. Can't the replicator make that?

• Well, one of my favorite examples of lack of technology in something is Doom III. The flashlight of doom, as I like to call it. I understand that it was supposed to give the game pacing and manufacture a sort of synthetic suspense, but holy hell, the complete lack of logic is out there. They have made it to MARS (right? Mars, I think) and there is not a single roll of duct tape in that entire base. Just one roll and you can tape the flashlight to a weapon of your choice! That's not even considering that most modern weapons of today (when we still have no real shot of colonizing squat in outer space) have an attachment slot for just about any kind of flashlight already built in. Make us collect batteries, make us attach it to a single weapon at a time, I don't care, but don't make us have to choose between seeing and shooting especially when with the smaller weapons even a novice (like myself) can use one hand to hold the flash and the other to fire a pistol or other weapon. Seriously! Duct tape! All I ask.

• The greatest and most puzzling lack of technology I've witnessed would have to be from M. Night Shyamalan's Signs. Before really getting into the technological nitty gritty, first off, I'd assume that space traveling aliens would be fairly bright, but they had one weakness, water (Granted that one weakness is kind of a biggie. H20 being a fair bit more common than kryptonite or silver bullets), and they chose to land on a planet that not only is 70% covered in water, where children entertain each other by hurling rubber membranes filled with the alien equivalent of sulfuric acid at one another, but it regularly falls from the sky and they show up naked! I am trying to imagine this alien race's planetary invasion check list. Faster than light trave? Check. Impenetrable cloaking technology? Check. Umbrellas? Umm, what? Your super science confounds me sir! Good Day. How about a poncho? You dance with the devil, sir. I bid you adieu. Now I am going to march down the street naked (not having developed pants technology) and pray a dog doesn't pee on me.

• Nothing beats the Star Trek universe for ridiculous gaps in technology. Transporter technology has caused the Federation to forget how to make a wheel. There are no wheeled vehicles in Star Trek. In the episode "Sub Rosa", Geordi and Data exhume a body WITH SHOVELS! Don't they have the 24th Century equivalent of a backhoe in the Federation? And then there's the episode in which Worf breaks his spine and has to undergo high-rish surgery to knit his spinal cord back together. This episode aired AFTER it had been established that the transporter keeps a record a person's molecular pattern (it's how they screen out diseases picked up on alien planets). It doesn't occur to anyone to just run Worf through the transporter and put him back together atom by atom. And circuit breakers? Where are the circuit breakers on Star Trek? Next Generation had at least four separate episodes in which a holodeck malfuction nearly destroys the ship, and no one has the ability to JUST PULL THE PLUG ON THE DAMNED THING!

• Oh, I like the tech in Battlefield Earth (the movie). Harrier Jets, built in the 1980s survive long into the future to fight and defeat the evil that is John Travolta! The fuel doesn't evaporate, the explosives go off just like it was made yesterday, and all the rubber bits are still working. Buy American I say! (American copies of British shit, no less!)

• I'm going to have to go with Kurt Vonnegut's <i>Player Piano</i> where the mechanized future uses technology so analog that it was already falling behind the curve when he wrote the book. By the time of publication, 1952, most of what he was suggesting as the future was verging on obsolete. I understand that it's soft sci-fi, but that's no excuse for laziness. Oh, and the "no seatbelts rule" in Star Trek is likely to be an emulation of naval vessels of another era; the USS Enterprise of the Continental Navy in 1775...

• Barbara Gordon, formerly Batgirl and now Oracle after she was shot the spine by the Joker and paralyzed from the waist down. A great character -- and a much, much better one now than she ever was as Batman-in-a-skirt. But how in the name of Kirby does a member of the Bat-family stay permanently paralyzed in the magic/techno/cosmic-wish-granting-imp reality of the DCU except by obvious and odious editorial fiat? Her main squeeze Nightwing pals around with a guy named <i>Cyborg</i> who goes through replacement limbs like they were toilet paper. Yet he someone can't find the time to whip up a pair of cyberlegs for Babs. Too busy oiling is piston, I guess. Then there's all the mystics Batman has on speed dial =-- like Zatanna, who can do literally do ANYTHING at anytime except when it's inconvenient for the plot. On the bright side, at least Batman didn't try to sell his love for Robin to Dr. Hurt just to give Barbara a Brand New Day where she could walk again and be back living in Commissioner Gordon's townhouse. Now <i>that</i> would be ridiculous.

• Demolition Man. 3 Seashells? What. The. Fuck. How do you make toilet paper obsolete? Never mind the broad dumbing down of society, etc necessary to present this distopia. I'm talking about a lack of mother trucking toilet paper, a technology so awesome we used to raid the tombs of mummies to get after it.

• I gotta say Strangeman's piece on the lack of seatbelts in Star Trek is just about perfectly awesome (especially with regards to Worf). I'd think second to that would be the lack of paper in Star Wars, though. Yes, some late series books have characters use paper, but the highest level sources of canon have stated explicitly that there is no paper, period, in the Star Wars universe. Is that really so bad, though? I mean, everyone has a datapad of some form, so they simply write on their touchscreens or whatever. The more you know, though, the worse it gets. See, people do need to occasionally jot something down on something portable and not subject to EMP, or requiring menu navigation. That is, after all, why paper is still used in the real world. So they came up with alternatives, like Flimsiplast and Durasheet. Great! Really, both were reusable, which pleases the environmentalists, and by all accounts far more durable than paper. Except... Anything written on Durasheets faded away in short order (great if you're either in Mission Impossible, or think invisible ink is the most practical of all inks), and Flimsiplast not only dissolved in liquid (don't set your coffee down on your notes, smugglers!), and was transparent, which is really cool for special effects, but means you can't put one piece on top of another and comprehensibly read anything. There are canon mentions of people binding Flimsiplast into books, people. Books that no one would ever be able to read. And of course this ignores the question of toilet paper (great, now someone is going to be inspired to masturbate to thoughts of Chewbacca on a bidet). One more freebie to the fanfiction authors out there: The next time you're trying to justify your Star Trek/Star Wars crossover, just think how much could be gained by the New Republic trading their seatbelt technology with the Federation for data on paper mill design.

• There are guns in naruto, one of the first arc where they are protecting the bridge guy don't the thugs have guns? I will have my entry later on, have to think of a good one.

• P.S. If you click on my name, and then click on my "Website" on Gawker, you may find the link familiar. God I love y'all...and this (mostly) isn't kissing ass for a T-shirt. If I get executed on Gawker, you guys are to blame!

• Why no USB ports in Robocop? Imagined dialogue: Q: How should this robot cop we invented interface with other computers? A: A sharp 10 inch spike. Q: Do PCs even have a port for a 10 inch spike? A: PCs? umn hello it's 1987, we don't have high tech shit like PCs... err well we do but...but... Our MAINFRAMES have always had 10 inch spike ports. Q: Oh those are for metal spikes... why didn't you tell before I "interfaced" with the port? A: Don't worry, it's designed to function covered in blood, so other fluids are fine. http://www.challengingdestiny.com/reviews/robocop.htm

• Why are there no <i>GUNS</i> that fire <i>BULLETS</i> in <i>Naruto?</i> While <i>Naruto</i> may not be Sci Fi in the traditional sense, there is doubtlessly post-musket technology, and the whole med-ninja thing seems to have its roots in bullshit science. The unevenness of technological advancement in the show is ridiculous, and clearly premeditated by the writers. Let me be clear about one thing: The villages utilize radios, but <i>still communicate via carrier pigeon.</i> Pigeons might be fast, but not as fast as light waves. Light waves of the radio-wave frequency. Which come out of radios. <i>Which they have.</i> And finally, just to beat a dead Kakuzu, during one of the <i>Naruto</i> movies, they <i>do</i> use guns. Guns that fire shuriken. Shuriken fly slower than bullets, (much like pigeons do radio-waves) and can therefore be dodged. Naruto, Naruto. I love you, but you're an idiot.

• The Star Wars universe is filled with some truly fantastic technology. Aside from hyperdrives that allow ships to fly faster than the speed of light, you have other super cool things like speeder bikes and and droids and hologram communication devices and floating cities in clouds. Hell, there's even gigantic man made space stations the size of small moons that can destroy a planet with its superlaser. It's pretty badass. Even in the field of medical science they can do amazing things. Bacta tanks can heal pretty much any injury or disease just by taking a long bath in them. And if you're unfortunate enough to lose an arm or a leg in a freak lightsaber fight accident, they can attach a fully robotic prosthetic replacement complete with synthflesh on it that looks like a real limb. However, the prenatal care sucks balls. Not even taking into account that medical droids can't stop a woman from dying after childbirth simply because "she lost the will to live", there's one more truly lacking omission in the tech of the Star Wars universe.....ultrasound. When Padme gave birth, everyone was shocked that she had twins. How the holy hell did they not know she was carrying twins? Are you telling me that in a universe where ships can break the light speed barrier and a race of warrior monks run around carrying laser swords, technology hasn't progressed to the point where you can look inside a woman's uterus to see growing babies? Please. Ultrasound in Star Wars should involve fully 3D rendered holograms of the children in the womb. What makes this truly sad is that this is technology that already exists in our world. It's not like this was some new thing that was developed after the film was written. Episode III was written after the year 2000, so Lucas' lack of its existence in Star Wars is just a gaping plot hole.

• really hope the above post wins.

• I'd have to say it's the near total lack of seatbelts in the entirety of the Star Trek Universe. At least every episode there's a battle scene where everyone gets thrown from their chairs, sometimes to their own deaths. So every time there's a red alert, everyone has to go to their battle stations. What these stations don't include, however, are seatbelts. So here you are, a human pinball in front of a hard, unforgiving computer terminal that for whatever reason is powered by dynamite that'll explode at the smallest impact, and you have no safety aparatus whatsoever. Why? Would it have cost too much to instal them? You could go to the replicator and make your own, but then Worf or someone would come by and throw you in the brig for violating ship rules. And what about Worf? He doesn't even get a chair. There he is, at the back of the proverbial bus, and there's no chair. So he's on his feet pretty much 24/7 staring at the back of Picard's chrome dome, while there's a tireless android up front, sitting in a chair. Is it because he black/Kligon? I think so. I could just imagine someone like Wesley Crusher trying to pitch the idea of seatbelts to the Captain, and being shot down. Wesley: "Think of all the lives they'd save!" Picard: "Ridiculous! How would we ever get out?" Picard would reply. Wesley: "Well, they have buckles on them that... unbuckle." Picard: "Wesley, just because I'm trying to nail your mother doesn't mean I'm going to put up with your shit." Mr.Belvedere: "Oh Wesley." *laugh track*

• Remember that episode of Star Trek where they get some disease that prematurely ages them, so they use the transporter + some pre-infection DNA to make them young again? So Jordi finally figures out how to beat old age, disease, cancer and grant immortality to the human race, and they just... forget about it. No big deal. But the really really silly thing that pops to mind: In Asimov's Foundation series, the human race has space travel, has populated an entire galaxy, can predict all future human evolution, etc... and they are using microfilm to store documents. Microfilm. He wrote this in the 70's, its not like they didn't have hard drives already. That's easily the most ridiculous technological goof I've ever seen, especially since it undermines the whole premise of the book (which is that a smart guy can predict the future course of humanity thousands of years into the future.)

• Remember that episode of Star Trek where they get some disease that prematurely ages them, so they use the transporter + some pre-infection DNA to make them young again? So Jordi finally figures out how to beat old age, disease, cancer and grant immortality to the human race, and they just... forget about it. No big deal. But the really really silly thing that pops to mind: In Asimov's Foundation series, the human race has space travel, has populated an entire galaxy, can predict all future human evolution, etc... and they are using microfilm to store documents. Microfilm. He wrote this in the 70's, its not like they didn't have hard drives already. That's easily the most ridiculous technological goof I've ever seen, especially since it undermines the whole premise of the book (which is that a smart guy can predict the future course of humanity thousands of years into the future.)

• How about in one of Orson Scott Card's series, where the characters have advanced medical technology, antigravity, and such, but nobody's thought to create engines that propel things forward - to the point that one of the characters freaks out over the idea of having a horse pull a wagon. GRANTED, there's a good reason for their technological gaps which constitutes why this entry probably shouldn't win - in this particular series, there's a computer that's cybernetically linked to all humans that selectively purges their minds of specific ideas, with the idea of preventing wars. Horse-drawn hoverwagons would allow people to carry lots of supplies for long distances, allowing them to supply armies, allowing them to conquer each other, etc.

TotalComments: 73