Okay... but what's the point when I can just stick a babel fish in my ear?

I guess my point was missed, FWIW I'm not a luddite who doesn't see any value in handheld technology. I've been through about 6 iPods now and have come to rely on them, for music and for advancing my Spanish and Portuguese through podcasts.

My problem is with the techno-dweebs I know who get excited over any technology advancement. As long as it's newer, faster, shinier, smaller, with better audio/video/storage/bandwidth, etc, than last quarter's model I'm supposed to be impressed when they wave it around and rattle off its specs. Then they use it to look up Brady Bunch trivia or some such garbage.

The smug sense of "I have more computing power in my hand than the Apollo astronauts had" yet they can't construct a fucking correct sentence on their own if their lives depended on it. But I digress. >> ^Quboid:

I wouldn't have thought there'd be so many Luddites on the sift.
@ulysses1904, yes, your non-existent example of exaggerated uselessness is indeed useless. Something useful? How about checking prices and product reviews while in the shop? I can browse my local video store and if I see an interesting movie, I pull out my phone, load the IMDB app, take a picture of the BluRay case and learn all about it.
When I was in Italy a few months ago, I had language trouble when ordering food on one occasion - I pulled out my phone, typed my order into Google Translate and handed the phone to the waitress. That day, the human race was closer to having a Babel Fish than we have been in thousands of years of human development - but hey, it's just a gizmo, right? Who cares?
In fact, come to think of it, even your example isn't useless - that birther nonsense wouldn't have lasted long if everyone with a smartphone could have done that while watching Obama's inauguration.
@CheshireSmile, if that's all you need then fine, although I'm guessing your friends have rubbish keyboards on their phones. I don't need much, but I want loads and why not? If I'm waiting for a plane or something, I like to be able to web browse, check Facebook and Twitter, play games, whatever.
My Samsung Galaxy S 2 probably would not survive falling out the window of a moving car, however this has yet to cause me any distress - just out of interest, how often does your phone fall out of a moving car?

I wouldn't have thought there'd be so many Luddites on the sift.

@ulysses1904, yes, your non-existent example of exaggerated uselessness is indeed useless. Something useful? How about checking prices and product reviews while in the shop? I can browse my local video store and if I see an interesting movie, I pull out my phone, load the IMDB app, take a picture of the BluRay case and learn all about it.

When I was in Italy a few months ago, I had language trouble when ordering food on one occasion - I pulled out my phone, typed my order into Google Translate and handed the phone to the waitress. That day, the human race was closer to having a Babel Fish than we have been in thousands of years of human development - but hey, it's just a gizmo, right? Who cares?

In fact, come to think of it, even your example isn't useless - that birther nonsense wouldn't have lasted long if everyone with a smartphone could have done that while watching Obama's inauguration.

@CheshireSmile, if that's all you need then fine, although I'm guessing your friends have rubbish keyboards on their phones. I don't need much, but I want loads and why not? If I'm waiting for a plane or something, I like to be able to web browse, check Facebook and Twitter, play games, whatever.

My Samsung Galaxy S 2 probably would not survive falling out the window of a moving car, however this has yet to cause me any distress - just out of interest, how often does your phone fall out of a moving car?

Babel Fish translation, not the best but...

They leave the country one by one
To go itself from there to earn their living
Far from the ground where they were born
For a long time they dreamed some
City and of its secrecies
Formica and movies
The old men that were not original
When they essuyaient machinal
Of a reverse of handle lips
But they knew all by the way
To kill ruail or young partridge
And to eat divides into volumes it goat

However that the mountain is beautiful
How can one think
By seeing a flight of swallows
What the autumn has just arrived?

With their hands above their heads
They had assembled dry stone walls
Until the top of the hill
What imports the days the years
They had all the well born heart
Knotty like a vine
The vines they run in the forest
The wine will not be drawn any more
It was a horrible nasty wine
But it made centenaries
With more knowknowing to only make some
If it did not turn you the head

However that the mountain is beautiful
How can one think
By seeing a flight of swallows
What the autumn has just arrived?

Two goats and then some sheep
One year good and the other not
And without holidays and exits
The girls want to go to the ball
There is nothing more normal
To want to live its life
Their life they will be cops or civils servant
What to wait without being done some
That the hour of the retirement sounds
It is necessary to know what one likes
And to return in its H.L.M.
To eat chicken with the hormones

However that the mountain is beautiful
How can one think
By seeing a flight of swallows
That the autumn has just arrived

It's stuff like this that makes me know we'll have teleportation one day. If you told somebody in 1920 that we'd make it to the moon, they'd have called you crazy. Or update it: If you told somebody in 1974, that one day they have their entire music and video catalogue able to fit on something size of a postage stamp...you get where I'm going with this.

We're going to have spaceships, holodecks, teleporters, lightsabers, "babel fish"; all kinds of cool radical shit.

And I'll be dead.

"I refuse to prove that I exist", says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"Ah," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead giveaway . . . "

OK I MADE IT! The party can start now! Sorry all been REALLY tied up with work lately. Well besides the more-than-painfully-obvious flaws that my comrades already pointed out,^ I took a look at his Blogger thingy. After babel fishing it back to English (it came up in Korean) I was able to read it.

He was told the rules and still broke them. Even if he doesn't speak English, he could still get a rough translation. If he can't be bothered to read the rules or even try to use Babel Fish, then let's *ban him and be done with it.

No worries. AFAICT it appears to only act like a babel fish as the original (English) is a link to this site.

The babel fish "logic" is a play on the religious "logic", ie: circle-arguing nonsense religious people come up with to avoid showing actual evidence, "God works in mysterious ways" "god doesnt need or want to prove he exists" etc. Adams simply mocks their puffs of logic, and creates a fake "proof" of Gods non-existence.

see, i'm just waiting for the babel fish to come along so we can disprove god, and watch him disapere in a cloud of logic.

but really, this stinks of coporate backing. altho it looks cheaply done there is an INSANE amount of polish and othe tricks used to attempt to brainwash people. i'd say this is more viral then anything.

Someone hand me a babel fish.

Looks good.

Oh, Snake that was horrible!

I prefer this:

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
-- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (book one of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series), p. 50

I guess you'd have to have read Hitch Hiker's Guide to appreciate what a Babel fish is.... ;-)