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Comment: It's their right to disconnect the servers anytime (Score 1) 598

by master_p (#44027215) Attached to: Microsoft Reputation Manager's Guide To Xbox One

It's their right to disconnect the servers any time they want. They sell you the product without hiding that fact. If you don't want the product, you don't buy it.

Crying 'consumer rights' for a product that is sold with a publicly known 'always on' feature is like wanting to enforce your own policy on the publisher.

Guess what? it will not happen. Just don't buy those games.

Comment: House Of Corruption (Score 5, Informative) 228

by master_p (#43982211) Attached to: Greek Government Abruptly Shuts Down State Broadcaster

ERT was a House Of Corruption. It should have been shut down years ago.

Not only was it a propaganda station, but it was also full of employees that did not have a job description, but they were employed by politicians in order to vote for them.

2500 employees for 3 channels and 1 radio station.

Comment: AI is all about context. (Score 1) 143

by master_p (#43944625) Attached to: When Will My Computer Understand Me?

The real problem with language recognition is context. When we talk, our spoken words contain half of what we mean. The rest depends on external parameters, from our body language, to the time and place at the moment.

So, unless a computer can understand the same context, there is not gonna be serious language recognition, as we see it in sci fi.

Comment: They wouldn't need that if they did this. (Score 1) 174

by master_p (#43881535) Attached to: Google Maps Used To Find Tax Cheats

I do not understand why governments do not adopt the balanced account system: each individual or business should have their accounts balanced: their current expenses plus current savings must match the savings of the previous year plus their current earnings.

Thus, with such a system, no one would be able to hide profits, simply because if they did so there accounts would be unbalanced.

Comment: Smart developers != smart designers. (Score 1) 195

by master_p (#43881511) Attached to: When Smart Developers Generate Crappy Code

Being a smart developer does not mean being a smart designer.

Being a smart developer means to make a program that has good performance, reasonable number of bugs, can easily be read by other people, etc.

Being a smart designer means code can be easily extended, patterns applied consistently across code, good modularization, can easily be refactored, low coupling etc.

What most projects, if not all, lack is software designers, i.e. people who design APIs, modules and interfaces of high quality.

In most cases, the developers are also the designers, but coding is such a process that losing track of design is extremely easy. You can easily preoccupy yourself with the details of the code and lose tracking of the big picture.

Comment: How can they tell if 1 and 4 do not coexist? (Score 5, Interesting) 364

According to the article, particles 1 and 4 do not coexist. Therefore, one must be destroyed before the other is created.

But if 1 is destroyed before 4 is created, then the entanglement of 1 and 2 is broken before 3 and 4 are created (because 3 and 4 are created together, and then 2 and 3 are entangled).

So, by the time 2 and 3 are entangled, 1 does not exist, because 3 already exists and is entangled with 4.

The question that arises is then how do they know that 1 and 4 are entangled?

It could simply be that 1 and 4 show the same state when measured, because 1 and 2 were entangled, then 3 and 4, then 2 and 3. Which means that whatever entanglement existed between 1 and 2 will exist between 1 and 3 and 1 and 4, even if 1 does not exist.

That does not mean particles are entangled across time. It may mean that entaglement is simply peristent and transmiitable.

Most probably there is a misunderstanding somewhere between the announcement and the article, so please anyone that knows more, elaborate.

Comment: The impact of the new movies... (Score 1) 514

by master_p (#43760631) Attached to: Review: <em>Star Trek: Into Darkness</em>

...is non-existent. There are few discussions around about the 2009 movie, and almost 100% forum talk is about the old movies and series.

People watch the old movies and the series and then go to the forums and talk about them. They watch the 2009 film, but then they have nothing to say.

This proves for me, without any doubt, that the current Star Trek movies did in no way revitalized the franchise. Sure Paramount got a huge profit from it, but other than that, there is nothing to discuss coming from the new movies.

Comment: Star Trek is not for cinema. (Score 1) 514

by master_p (#43760609) Attached to: Review: <em>Star Trek: Into Darkness</em>

I haven't watched this movie, but from what I understand, it is a generic action flick with a Star Trek skin.

We should somehow realize that Star Trek is not cinema. Most Star Trek movies are not that good.

The show shined in the series, and perhaps Abrams should think of doing a Star Trek series. He is very good for that format, and I believe that he will make the best Trek series so far.

Comment: Entirely wrong. (Score 1) 393

by master_p (#43740771) Attached to: Why We Should Build a Supercomputer Replica of the Human Brain

What we need in order to simulate the human brain is to find a way to store the input a human has in a computer and process it in real time.

Humans have 5 senses: vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste.

In order to simulate a human brain, we need to find a way to store these inputs, in a way a brain does.

When we figure this out, making human-like AI would be dead-easy, because all the brain does is pattern matching on the inputs stored to find the response that maximizes its survival potential.

Comment: Bye bye WWW. Welcome MS Web, Apple Web, etc. (Score 1) 447

by master_p (#43543781) Attached to: What's Actually Wrong With DRM In HTML5?

Since the described mechanism is not specific to video,
and since the CDM plugin will be able to acess all input and output devices the browser offers, the proposed DRM opens the door for a custom Web.

The CDM plugins that will be created will be like Flash: they will offer not only video but custom programming languages, widgets and other components that will allow for rich interactive applications.

But this time each company will have their own custom implementation, allowing companies to create their own version of the Web, which runs on their equipment only.

This will be the deathbed for Linux on the desktop, since none of these plugins will work on Linux by default.

This will also be the death of any small laptop and tablet manufacturer that cannot cut a deal with these big companies. They will not be able to offer cheap products since these products will not run the content that MS and Apple devices will run.

If the WWW committee allows this, they might stop HTML development alltogether, because a browser's task will be simply the task to run the CDM plugin of the owner vendor.

Comment: We don't need auto cars, we need auto roads. (Score 1) 352

by master_p (#43469873) Attached to: Why Self-Driving Cars Are Still a Long Way Down the Road

Artificial intelligence will never reach human intelligence, for the simple reason that the brain contains 200 billion neurons in a vastly parallel network. Unless technology can duplicate that, don't expect human-level intellgence any time soon.

What could be done though today is automatic driving though automatic roads, i.e. roads enhanced with digital systems that provide the car with directional and traffic information through wireless stations, as well as kinematic information of other cars.

With such a system, it would be entirely possible to make driving automatic. it will turn roads to railways, but with cars instead of trains.

"We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem." -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982

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