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[PATV] Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - Extra Credits Season 3, Ep. 20: Technobabble

DogDog Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
edited August 2012 in The Penny Arcade Hub

image[PATV] Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - Extra Credits Season 3, Ep. 20: Technobabble

This week, we examine that classic staple of mediocre science fiction: technobabble.
Come discuss the topic with us in the forums!

Read the full story here


Dog on

Posts

  • Material DefenderMaterial Defender Registered User new member
    Reminds me of Quantum Entanglement in ME to produce FTL communications. Yes, because a method of catching Quanta increases its speed of movement.

    *head dkes*

  • rash92rash92 Registered User new member
    edited September 2012
    Uh...material defender, the reason quantum entanglement can lead to FTL communication has nothing to do with increasing the speed of movement. it's to do with two entangled particles affecting each other instantly regardless of how far away they are. so if you have one half of an entangled pair of particles, and someone 1000 lightyears away has the other particle in the pair, then affecting on will affect the other and this is used to send messages. Of course, it's not as simple as that, and there are other reasons why it might not lead to FTL communication, but it's not THAT obviously stupid.

    rash92 on
  • rainbowhyphenrainbowhyphen Registered User regular
    @rash92 Sadly, quantum entanglement can't be exploited for FTL communication. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem

    On the plus side, if it could, it would break causality, and that would be all kinds of bonkers, so it's probably for the best. Also, it CAN be used for generating and sharing truly random data, instantaneously, at any distance, which is an amazing boon for cryptography. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_cryptography for more on that! Very exciting, and it's actually been done.

    raise-this-arm-to-initiate-revolution.png
  • Katamari23Katamari23 Registered User regular
    Hey guys, sorry to nitpick, but the picture you showed of "geoffrey landis" is actually a pic of cory doctorow.

  • OsterPenPenOsterPenPen Registered User regular
    *Einstein* was the last guy to capture the public imagination? Buwhaaa?

    Have you *not* seen Carl Sagan's "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage"? There's rumors it's getting a sequel narrated by Niel DeGrasse Tyson.

    http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qccer/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ask_me_anything/c3wgd0e

  • ZhayneZhayne Registered User regular
    Though to be fair, Einstein is a worldwide icon. Carl Sagan, while known, really does not have the same status.

  • padoylepadoyle Registered User regular
    I know I'm in the minority here, but this anecdote is worth mentioning:

    In Sly Cooper: Theives in Time (developed by a different studio but ones who clearly have huge respect and adoration for Sucker Punch and its Sly Cooper universe), they add a new version of the usual hacking minigame with Bentley describing his actions all the while.

    It's RIDDLED with programming terms and puns. Not misinforming or using buzz words, but just puns. For example, there's a little ship you pilot most of the time that can transform into different forms. The default is a little turtle shell (Bentley is a turtle). When you switch back to it, sometimes he'll say something like "Let me just run my shell script again..."

    There's other less obvious ones that don't have a clever double meaning, but I couldn't help but adore the hacking sections because of all the inside jokes I picked up on. I can't make any judgments about it because of my bias and the fact that probably very few of the players of that game are programmers, but I really did enjoy those little jokes. It seems to me that it was still a responsible use of technical terms in that it never tried to explain anything (it was just Bentley's mumbling).

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