inspired by a Usenet posting written by Roger M. Wilcox <rogerw@cisco.com>
So what on earth is this thing?
It can't be as dumb as I suspect.
Oh, yes it can! Treknobabble is a very simple application which generates technical babble of the sort commonly heard on various science fiction television series.
Yuck! Those shows are for nerds!
Thanks for playing. We'll have some nice parting gifts for you backstage.
How do I work it?
This program is so simple it borders on trivial. After launching Treknobabble, you will be faced with an initial stream of babble. You can:
[1] generate another stream of babble
[2] copy the babble to the clipboard
[3] listen to the babble spoken out loud
(The third feature only works if you have the Speech Manager installed. Please don't ask me where to find Speech Manager — I forget where I got mine.)
Perhaps the most fun to be had with the program is repeatedly generating streams of babble and realizing that some of them are quite serviceable in the context of a real show (which is not to say that the babble itself is plausible). I secretly hope that once or twice a writer on one of the shows will actually use the babble produced by this program. Oops, I guess it's not a secret any more.
I know, it's only a GUI front end to _Munger, but I like it.
Can I give it to my friends?
Certainly. You can give it to whomever you please. Make sure you include this document with any copy of Treknobabble you redistribute.
However, if you are the publisher of a freeware/shareware CD ROM — or someone who manages any similar form of media repackaging — under no circumstances should you contact me hoping I will sign a document authorizing you to do anything with this program. You have worldwide redistribution rights — go to it. If you do contact me despite this exhortation, I am likely to become grumpy, refer you to this document, and terminate the conversation.
