>>>I envision a world which has finally created the teleportion (beam me up, Scotty) box. You stand at a McDonald's counter, speak into a squawk box to give your order, listen to Jack-in-the-Box static with an Indian accent, and out pops your order (well, maybe not YOUR order, but some reasonable facsimile thereof) all lovingly outsourced to ???????
>>>
>>>Wouldn't surprise me at all.
>>
>>Can't find an article on it now, but in fact, there are real researchers working on replication (not teleportation, which is impossible based on the laws of physics). Really interesting stuff.
>>
>>Tamar
>
>You can Google the phrase Quantum Teleportation. But this is more like faster-then-light communication, then it is like the Star Trek teleportation.
>
>Here one htat IBM has
>
>http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/

Hmm I have a problem with that part

"... it would produce an exact copy rather than an approximate facsimile, and it would destroy the original in the process of scanning it..."

Would'nt it be better to destroy the original when you know for sure that it's been well transfered to its destination. Imagine the teleporter freezes then we can't talk no more about a teleporter but a zapper.

Possible solution: Destroy the original when its been transfered effectively to its destination. But here also a possible problem. What if the teleporter freezes after the original has been copied to its destination. So the original is'nt destroyed. In this situation we can't talk about a teleporter but a duplicater.

Hmmm serious dilemma.

Worst case scenario. Imagine that the machine broke when Bill gates tried it. He did'nt get transferred to his destination. The only problem here is that the machine was too slow. When they see that that was the problem ten copies of Bill Gates have been created.

Now which Bill Gates will eventually rule the world?