T156

He brawled with the shotgun shell, and lost.

Patterns might be portable on storage devices, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re cross-platform, especially cross-species/technology, or maybe it would require a technical specialist to convert the pattern between systems.

At least on this front, Star Trek doesn't tend to have that much of an issue crossing between platforms. The only time problems seem to rear their head is when another completely different computing paradigm comes into play (like using biochemical computers instead of electrical).

Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be anything technically preventing you from hooking up your Federation computers to a Cardassian mining station and have everything work more or less okay.

That's a good way to get kicked out of the wet lab. Most tutors are incredibly serious about treating bodies with respect, you can't take photos, or muck around with them.

Going Hamlet with them would be absolutely not on.

At some point, though, it seems a little unreasonable, when there's enough ambiguity that the computer has 37 separate presets for tomato soup.

It'd be like going to a coffee shop and adamantly demanding "coffee", and then being annoyed that the barista can't magically intuit what it is that you exactly want.

Presumably the patterns are not easily interchangeable/distributable - different file formats, different scanner resolution, maybe different output options (canonically some materials are more difficult to replicate than others, so might require a specialized replicator). Quark’s replicator, being Ferengi, is probably proprietary and requires purchasing new patterns only from the original manufacturer to increase the variety.

They are, it just takes time to update, since it gets sent over whenever the computer gets updated. That's why Tom Paris was annoyed that the Voyager's replicator didn't have his preferred tomato soup ready. It was scheduled to be loaded onto the computers on Tuesday.

You can write the pattern yourself, but it is easy to get them wrong (Janeway managed to have it consistently produce charcoal).

Now these errors are for the most part irrelevant in most applications, because food for example is still very edible and nutritious even if it is not absolutely 100% as good as the original, same goes for most spare ship parts and such.

Star Trek's replicators also modify the food, which may matter more than small-scale errors. They specifically create a copy of the food that is deliberately nutritionally tailored for your specific dietary needs, and to remove poisonous substances within it.

Those errors tend to be more of a problem for big complex molecules like DNA, or sophisticated things like computer chips.

It does vary. My Thinkpad (T490s) is awful if you want to do more than replace the battery and main drive, despite being a used office machine.

To replace the keyboard for example, you basically have to disassemble the entire laptop, since the frame is a single unit, and the keyboard sits under it, sandwiched under the motherboard and case.

And to allow installing non-market apps. Apple wasn't happy about that in the slightest.

It would at least be a little more understandable, what with the whole aborting, terminating, or killing children before the parents to prevent zombies.

Brain and Limb.

They do. That's why it's called an LLM (Lizard Language Model).