Ah, it’s the freaking Future, and not any future, but a care-bear Federation Future. After 500 years of law suits, probably most beverages are served at body temperature or less.
Not to mention that the galaxy is crawling with aliens who probably drink their Earl Grey with big chunks of frozen ammonia in.
The boring answer is that the whole speech interface is just horribly inconsistent. From one episode to another the capabilities vary from human-level language ability to shittier than real-world systems. Unless they are completely unable to use their own technology optimally, the limitations have to be intentional. Apparently they want their computers to behave unnaturally. Even today you can observe that people react irrationally towards machines that emulate sentient beings. When working with very advanced systems it might make sense to remind people that they aren’t interacting with a person. Holodeck characters have far more natural language ability, so probably it isn’t a technical limitation.
kellner, student of computational linguistics
Remember that computer was built and programmed by the lowest bidder.
He’s lucky he doesn’t get root beer when he asks for “Earl Grey… Hot!”
I thought the computer’s name was Hot, like Hal in 2001. You know: “Earl Gray, Hot.”
I’ve often wondered what happens to the cups and saucers he gets with every order. When all the closets and crawlspaces are stuffed with dirty dishes and cutlery, do they have to abandon ship?
This has me laughing out loud. Soooooo sexy! I’m just glad I’ve already finished my cup of tea (Earl Grey, in fact!) or it would be all over my laptop now!
With Picard ordering his tea HOT, and Wesley at the helm, you’d think someone in StarFleet Legal would realize they have a lawsuit waiting to happen of McDonald’s-Coffee-esque proportion.
(and you just know those poly pyjamas don’t offer any thermal croch protection. heck, they give out just from the strain of holding in Riker’s gut.)
Now that you mention it, I’ve never seen any scene where such mundane things like dish disposal happened. I suppose I assume that there’s some “universal disintegrator” unit where one pitches their empty hot chocolate mugs or synthehol shot glasses.
A side observation is that they sure have cheesey glassware in Ten Forward. It looks like acrylic plastic made into tumblers by a bad craftsman.
They are recycled into mass for the replicators.
The programmer had a thing for carnival glass of the early to mid 20th century.
In the future, everything will be recycled.
Those teacups are made of people!
Well in that case “Make it so”
Actually, this is covered in Deep Space Nine. Molly O’Brien had finished eating, and Keiko told her to put her dishes away. Little Molly takes them to the replicator, and the dishes are dematerialized.
I would assume since the food is fake and materialized out of pre-set patterns, the dishes are too.
Now, trivia time…how does O’Brien take his coffee?
Wow, a convenient evidence-disposal unit in every kitchen, eh? Got a bloody knife you need to get rid of? Stick it in the dematerializer! Maybe you’re sick of your baby brother, or your cat? poof!
“Engage.”
Computer, I like my coffee like I like my women…
Maybe not.
“Set a course for… my tummy!”
You know, if the dishes are destroyed as well as the food, the station should be lighter after mealtime! That puts a new spin on this Straight Dope classic, doesn’t it?
I’m not going to go there, but I have to say this is begging for some offensive Irish jokes.
They are most likely set to not work on things that are alive.
As to the evidence disposal, the replicators work partially on transporter technology which keeps a log of what goes through it. So by putting that bloody knife in there, you have not only NOT gotten rid of evidence but have actually now made a readily duplicatable version of it for convenient reproduction.
[QUOTE=Marley23
I’m not going to go there, but I have to say this is begging for some offensive Irish jokes.[/QUOTE]
Come on…there’s a real answer to this!!! And you call yourselves Trekophiles. Honestly…I’m ashamed to wear my pointy ears around you guys.
Drinking hot tea, instead of iced tea, is the scriptwriters way of making Jean-Luc European, without making him annoying. They could also have given him American taste and an French accent, (think Michèl in Gilmore Girls) but that would have gotten old fast.
“Computèr, è Budwesèr, lightely chilled.”