• @hips_and_nips
    link
    410 months ago

    early 90s

    Aliasing has been available in UNIX since the C Shell in 1978.

    • Flying SquidOPM
      link
      210 months ago

      I doubt the makers of TNG knew a lot about UNIX.

      • @hips_and_nips
        link
        1
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Even if they did I doubt they would’ve used aliases. Picard’s tea “routine” is right in-line with his character.

        Unfortunately (/s) plot and character development trump diligent technical details.

        I was just highlighting that the technology had been invented over a decade before.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      010 months ago

      Alright? And how often do you talk to talk to bash?

      The point is it’s a TV show from the 90s. They had a few misses regarding how technology would end up looking.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          110 months ago

          Aliases are not the same as natural language processing, so saying that it already existed for a decade is kinda missing the point, because what they were describing didn’t.
          They were very clearly imitating how people would find the beverage via a menu driven interface, but using voice. It’s similar to how real world initial attempts at touch driven computer interfaces had an otherwise unmodified interference mounted on a wall with a touchscreen, and immediately ran into issues with arm fatigue. They didn’t show the arm fatigue in Star Trek either because it’s a TV show and they didn’t predict the future perfectly.

          It wasn’t a loaded question. I meant literally how often do you speak to the bash prompt via a voice interface.
          The tools and technologies that are used for a textual medium don’t port to voice interfaces, so it makes about as much sense to invoke shell scripting in this context as it does to invoke algebraic variable substitution from the 1500s.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            110 months ago

            Yeah but a problem with having too many things aliased is that you eventually forget the underlying commands and when you’re on a terminal that doesn’t have your alias you can’t do anything anymore.

            Picard is a guy that gets around the galaxy and probably learned the menu on replicators when he was young. And it’s possible that there’s some weird alien food that sounds like hot earl grey tea. Some older replicators are probably still in operation on some planets, and he’s found that the order of “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.” is the most reliable command that works on nearly all replicators. Given how much gets around he got used to always saying it that way so even when he’s in his ready room, he still says it that way without even thinking about it.