The AWFUL TRUTH about the Star Trek replicators

In all series of Star Trek but the Original Series (where they eat common household sponges), most of the crew's food comes from the replicator. The official line is that this is a machine which synthesises food, through Star Trek magic. But think of it; how much simpler would it be if it were simply a 3D printer which produced the 'food' out of whatever biomass was available (human waste, crew members shot by the Romulans in the previous episode, etc.); tongue implants would then be used to lie to the brain about what the subject is tasting.

This would also explain why, when they visit Earth, we see people cooking, even though they have the magic ultra-convenient replicators.

It can, in fact, even explain the peculiar tendency of Kirk-era Starfleet people to eat kitchen sponges (watch an old episode if you believe me not); presumably the secret to 3D printers was lost in the turbulent years of the 21st century (along with circuit breakers to stop consoles randomly frying operators, emergency stop buttons for enormously dangerous things like the Holodeck, emergency brakes for lifts, and so forth), and subsequently rediscovered (unlike any of that other stuff). 

And why do we never see toilets on Star Trek? Because the toilets discreetly built into the back of the 'replicators' would be distasteful to modern audiences!

HP's poor luck with CEOs

With all the fuss about yet another ejected HP CEO, I can't help remembering Carly Fiorina, about three ejected CEOs ago. Who ran for office in California. With THIS:

I mean, if you were a company board, would you hire the sort of person who'd greenlight that as a CEO?

Incidentally, the new HP CEO, Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO, also ran for office in California, but had less insane ads.

The slow, grinding death of Flash continues

When in 'metro mode' (the mode for tablets), IE10 for Windows 8 will not support Flash, or any other plugins. Further, it looks like IE for Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) may lack Flash, too. Adobe had previously said that Windows Phone 7 would be getting Flash, but then, back in the day they said that the iPhone would be, too.

There's been a rather perverse tendency in the tech press to view the absence of Flash on iOS as some personal vendetta of Steve Jobs'. I don't think that's really credible, now, if it ever was; other companies are clearly willing to avoid it.

By the way, I called this in February 2010:

Microsoft says that it is working with Adobe on this. I strongly suspect that Microsoft, which has the advantage of entering late, is just playing for time; by the time the initial Windows Mobile 7 (or whatever we're meant to call it now) comes out, Flash will have been on Android for some time, and Microsoft will just be able to point and say "Given that everyone hates Flash on Google phones, we're not going to bother". This wouldn't be a great surprise; when Microsoft pre-announces a feature, that by no means demonstrates that the feature will actually ship, as we saw with Longhorn/Vista

It increasingly looks like Mobile Flash will be an Android-only thing, which can't be wonderful for Adobe.

Worst ad targeting ever

Should be self-explanatory.