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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!houxz!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!hao!seismo!rochester!cmu-cs-pt!cmu-cs-spice!wrs
From: wrs@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA (Walter Smith)
Newsgroups: net.startrek
Subject: Re: Those little cassettes to order food by.
Message-ID: <156@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 8-Aug-84 22:13:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-spice.156
Posted: Wed Aug  8 22:13:36 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Aug-84 01:40:12 EDT
References: <345@alberta.UUCP>, <36@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 18

The little slabs are indeed used everywhere.  The Technical Manual seems to
indicate that they are data recording media.  Also, when Spock needs to
record something (e.g. bizarre alien radio transmissions), he sticks a
little slab into a slot and pushes a button, then removes it when it's over
and tells someone to take the little doohickey (sorry about the technical
language here) to the lab.

It seems like a very simple matter to read the title of one of these things
(when they are used to store books, another function of these amazing little
red pieces of plastic; remember the episode where Nurse Chapel shows a
patient a little red thing and says it is McCoy's prescription with one word
on it: Eat.  McCoy later looks at it and reads off a long medical title),
but I've never been able to see any labeling at all on them.  Strange.

On another subject, why is it that the travel time of the turboelevators is
always exactly as long as the conversation going on within them?

- Walter Smith (wrs@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA, I don't know what on Usenet yet)