Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Pointless Question #58

How does a monitor with a spinning Pac-Man and some dots moving on grid lines tell the engineer how the warp engine's holding up?

15 comments:

Clint Bourgeois said...

If the ghosts catch pacman, then the core explodes. You can avoid this by eating the big pellets and eating the ghosts first. Also, if you eat the cherries then it's ok because you got a high score.

King of Ferrets said...

Not sure, but the explanation involves a hell of a lot of quantum.

Dark Jaguar said...

They've forgone the detailed heads up display as too much data, and so it merely feeds a minute amount of vital data in a graphical output easily understood by anyone who read the code wheel.

James K said...

Of course, given the technological sophistication of the Federation the data should be fed wirelessly to the Chief Engineer's implant computer. But since the Federation follows the No Transhumanism Allowed trope, why expect anything they do to be efficient?

Dunc said...

What good is a read-out anyway? We're talking matter / anti-matter annihilation here - if something goes wrong, by the time the information is relayed to the monitor and processed by the brain of the human watching it, that brain (and indeed everything else in the immediate volume) is going to be nothing but an expanding shell of superheated gases and radiation.

Thanks, but I'd rather have something monitoring the warp engine that has a slightly quicker reaction time than some ugly bag of mostly water...

Tom Foss said...

In the future, everyone's so familiar with video games from such a young age that it's easier to glean a lot of complicated information from a video game display than from long strings of numbers. It's just a different sort of interface.

MWchase said...

Why not use Chernoff faces instead?

Hey, that's a neat idea. I think I'll steal it from us.

Nes said...

It's just like watching the streaming letters of the Matrix... so much information condensed into a small display.

Except it's much more fun to play during your break!

MWchase said...

It's just like watching the streaming letters of the Matrix... so much information condensed into a small display.Any word on the upcoming "flying toasters" version?

MWchase said...

The formatting is broked again. :-(

Tom Foss said...

The formatting is broked again. :-(

Again? Try "still." I haven't used this many "br" tags since I had a Transformers fanfic site on Angelfire.

Any word on the upcoming "flying toasters" version?

Are you even old enough to get that reference?

MWchase said...

I think my grandparents' old blocky-mac had a version of that screen-saver.

Point is, I have, in fact, seen the flying toasters in action.

Don said...

Yes, but have you ever played Commander Keene?

MWchase said...

*wiki wiki wiki* Didn't use DOS all that much.

Zakaria shalih said...

Well! does our universe is the only Place where people that pushes (Mainstream) Science, Rationalism, and Atheism are follows No Transhumanism Allowed trope?