Google Turns Your Android Phone Into An On-The-Fly Conversation Interpreter

Re:Google Turns Your Android Phone Into An On-The-Fly Conver... by ghshephard on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @08:19PM (#2098394)

There's a difference between predicting which decade a technology will be in use by the consumer, and whether it is possible. Almost all technologies are possible (teleportation included). The question is when they will land in yours/my hands.

I'm more impressed with Kurzweill saying: "Early 2000s

    * Translating telephones allow people to speak to
      each other in different languages."

And being off, admittedly, by six or seven years, then someone positing:

"Teleportation is possible" and it becoming practical in 2170.

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Re:Google Turns Your Android Phone Into An On-The-Fly Conver... by WalterBright on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @11:01PM (#2098806)

Teleportation will never be possible.

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Re:Google Turns Your Android Phone Into An On-The-Fly Conver... by ghshephard on Thursday January 13, 2011 @05:05AM (#2099370)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation

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Re:Google Turns Your Android Phone Into An On-The-Fly Conver... by feral on Thursday January 13, 2011 @10:44AM (#2100106)

That right there is exactly the sort of reasoning I object to.

A poorly defined prediction is made: "Teleportation will be possible". Now, everyone who reads this probably imagines 'beam me up, scotty'.

Subsequently, teleportation is defined to include things like 'quantum teleportation', which, while it does have 'teleportation' in the name, does not instantly move mass, from one place to another, and, fundamentally, is not theorised to enable the Star Trek-esque people 'beaming' around the place.

I'm not saying which definition of the word 'teleportation' is best - just that the initial statement, if we allow it to be subsequently satisfied by either of those things, in a way it wasn't intended, is not very interesting.

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