These are not the same problems at all. Look at gaming monitors and Ping times to better understand the problem. (These aren't the same thing, but at least the underlying reasoning is closer). The VR problem is one of synchronicity. If your sitting looking at a screen of a movie or something, you don't need to change the image very often, and your brain will work it out. If there is something you are carefully paying attention too, like a ball in a sporting event. 30 FPS is not smooth enough (you will see gaps.), this also is worse with Tv's without phosphor display. And the ball will noticeably skip. So this trick gives you more frames with less time between them, so it won't skip. It's not perfect and some people get weirded out by the effect. BUT this has NOTHING to do with the VR problem. In this case it's synchronicity. Think about it, real life is relatively continues, there is no 30 fps per second, and there is reasonable belief that synchronicity has a much much faster ruler. You have a near perfect understanding between doing something and watching what happens when you do it. And if it seems real, but it's not. Turns out a large part of the population will get weirded out. And in the ol venn diagram way of thinking about it, that population and influential gamers is pretty damn high. So no it has to be fast ass cards. (there is a little bit of similarity, but one of the other problems has to do with speed of action. If your fast enough you solve by far the largest of synchronism issues. (remember when the rift first came out. Everyone was excited because they largely solved the synchronicity issue, but on low-res screens. The low res screen is problematic with moving input that is trying to reflect reality.If you move at the right speed you will get stuttering. While the timing will be right,but resolution stuttering will weird some people out. So it has to be fast enough to allow synchronicity enough, it has to be pixel dense enough that it doesn't skip unexpectedly differently from real life. None of this can be cheated, because we are not watching movies in real life. We don't ADAPT like when watching a movie.

Dude, that isn't the argument at all. The argument is, that from a human standpoint this is doable. From a human standpoint this is done. IF this is true, then eventually somebody IN a simulation asks this question.

Sure we could. It doesn't take a rocket scientist, well maybe in this case he can, to understand that it shouldn't be possible to create sentient code. We control the inputs, (senses), We control the world (reality), you grow, become sentient, and apparently interact with the world. And remember, you don't need to simulate EVERYTHING, all those people on the road, never going to meet them or interact with them. I only need to create a certain number of sentient beings. Everything else is distant simulation. This doesn't in any way diminish Cogito Ergo Sum. YOU ARE, you always ARE. Just the physicality isn't real.

Programmed SlashDot??????

Lots and lots of trucks.

Go is an interesting game for this approach. It is thin, which mean that the moves and pieces are the same and don't do a lot. It is wide so calculating everything from scratch is essentially not doable...

Chess got to be good enough by essentially matching GM search depth, by intelligently narrowing the search tree. And either capitalizing or avoiding tactical issues, within that depth, and if there are no tactical issues if there are a collection of moves that are left, make the ones that follow a distinct set of priorities. But total search depth and search thinning have proved by far to be the most valuable of contributions. With intelligently managing the priorities a distant but important second.

Tic Tac Toe is done by being able to search to the game ending. As well as connect four.

Checkers is solved by being able to connect opening books with endgame table bases making the search limited enough to be doable by current computing power..

Go is interesting because the nature of the game is one of knowing the right moves to make in given positions. And the pieces on the board don't move. There are going to be two kinds of moves tactical calculating moves which can be iterated (And not as deeply as chess), and those that are correct based on "knowledge" without iterative proof. The best human players are going to be the ones that can do both and not just one. The trick is to first split up the two types of moves. And with the knowledge moves the AI mechanism essentially stole the knowledge from games by human players. And then tested and retested that knowledge by playing against itself. There is also some expertise in manipulating the games to handle board rotation, and location of plays depending on position of the plays in relation to the edge of the board. There is also the reactive vs active moves and when the board requires one type or another.

I am entirely unconvinced that this methodology is going to be universally useful at unknown problems. It has a high level of specialization that must be known by the program in advance to even get to the big data stealing of correct moves (knowledge). What will be useful is that the technique will be added to our knowledge of how to attack certain types of problems, and will help in creation of certain expert systems. What they have actually solved is how to play go as well as humans can, and very little more than that. And not all problems are going to be solvable this way, and even if the can, it is not always going to be the easiest, most elegant, or provide truth.

What is still not likely to be convincingly known is "truth". Chess and Go even beating the best human players still doesn't know the truth in every situation. It is believe that in Chess that the truth always leads to a "draw". In Go, it is believed that Black should always win. We are a long long away from demonstrating, much less proving either case. And may be impossible as the iterative requirement may be simply too high.

What will be interesting is when we can develop AI that can understand and break down a problem into it's meta components and rules, and discover knowledge by itself. You know like some humans seem to be able to do.

Ok, Anti-Piracy is going to be a big deal. There has to be some sort of camera visible, not human visible watermark on the film, so that it can be traced back to an individual user. Cue the scrubbing video crowd. But for some time this will be difficult to discern. I suspect the reason for the box is so you don't have to create an individual version on the fly, but the box adds the watermark. The other point of the box is to keep the software from being hacked easily.

The biggest problem is going to be bandwidth. Hopefully they make a deal with MLB.com or like netflix to settle the bandwidth problems. This is a problem for any video service that has at least some number of subscribers.

But, this doesn't need to be mainstream to be successful. A gigantic portion of movie revs are made in the first 2 weeks, and the first weekend is the largest. If this increases first day revenues, this will be a success for the entire industry. (At least if the model that first day revenue leads to ultimately leads to end revenue holds true). I would suspect that even 100K units will result in positive results for the industry, and if this gets as high as 1M units, this will be great. I am not sure what everyone here is worried about. This won't change anything. Theaters will still be theaters. You can go there. If price is too much, go to a matinee. If it is still to much wait for redbox if it is still too high, wait for netflix, if it is still to high wait for tv.

I for one think opening day movie parties with friends will be awesome. There have always been movies that I want to see but don't need to see them on big screens, and there will always be movies I want to see in a theater. I can't wait to get the box.

Siri will understand me?

The key to VR and stylii, is that they have to be not just good enough, they have to be extraordinary. And when they are, they will change the market. Until then, people will think no body wants Stylii, or VR, but that's probably not the case, they just can't put up with not quite good enough yet.

Anyone see what just happened in California? Can't imagine the practical road damage and amazing environmental damage of tons of plastic on fire.

And that is still true over "free". It's too hard to see the gas cost. It is very easy to see the time, promptness, and privacy costs. Sometimes you see aggravation and alternate activity bonuses, but not enough to have "free" transportation remove a significant amount of current cars off the road. You need higher car costs, or more significant bonuses for taking the PT.

When I search, I don't mind ads. I mind malevolant ads. But I mind malevolant sites more. One is solveable. Generically the site that has the most to gain through advertising pays the most. And I generally benefit from those. But SEO is more insidious. They are trying to gain my attention from generally more appropriate sites by gaming the system. If the system is evolving correctly the best most appropriate sites get selected automatically. The major search sites recognize these things. Because if they stop providing relevant sites other sites will come along and become more relevant. I am not going to use your site if there are no ads. No ads means less relevant searches for me. The site with the most relevant search wins. Hands down. Everything else is meaningless.

There are three main programs that beat grandmasters on rather modest computers. Stockfish (an open source project), Komodo (A private original product that largely uses more correct algorithms and internal scoring), and Houdini (a project built by largely extending Rybka). There was a large increase in strength a few years back over the standard programs that had to do with much improved "search" and better pruning. Rybka took those ideas along with improved board scoring and led the field with an entire class difference in strength (about 300 elo increase). The programs since have raised that by about another 150 or so points. It may be that we have reached near apex with these techniques. And it may be hard to get more "strength" but there are surely points to be discovered. I suspect it may be in exception handling. There is a big resistance to to that, the argument being that exceptions just mean you have yet to understand enough. I'm not entirely convinced. There is also a movement to be exploitive. Magnus Carlsen is the top player in the world, and he uses exploitive technique a lot. He seeks positions unmemorized to allow rawer talent to shine and is really successful with that technique. And many of the top players do this more and more. There is little of this in computer play.

It's called wiring money.

When you hire tons of people especially quickly, you're going to have a lower mean of high quality people. Churn can be as stated, but also a common part of the industry, is to find a way of increasing the quality of your employees. Fire the worst, replace them with better. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes its about a body, any body, to move the ball forward. Then it's about getting better and better people. It's not just about training, it is still largely a talent based industry, where the majority of the progress is made by a minority of the people.