An anonymous reader writes: The gadgets that emerged in Star Trek on TV 40 years ago are not so futuristic anymore, as movie goers to the latest Star Trek movie, clutching their cell phones, demonstrate. While the possibility of warp drive was discussed on Slashdot the other day (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/06/2228251&art_pos=2), there's a lot more technology that became real (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/10/MNPH17GI1J.DTL&type=printable): a "tricorder" has become a bloodless medical probe, the no-kill phaser is reincarnated as the military's Active Denial System, and the universal translator is in use as the "Phraselator" used by troops in Iraq since 2003.