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[umiman]

It used to be pretty good, their sci fi fluff. Then there was too much stuff and they confused themselves.

[Pnx]

Yeah, it's not a very good portrayal of artificial life.  Overall I can't decide if I'm happy or disappointed with Mass Effect's Scifi.  Sometimes I'm impressed (It automatically gets a thousand points for using sentient and sapient correctly) and sometimes I'm not.  You couldn't make a Quantum Entanglement Communication with a single entangled pair, the entanglement effect only happens once and you definitely wouldn't be able to transfer a whole message or even more than a bit or two of data with a single pair.  You'd need entangled batteries with millions of pairs and they'd be consumed as you used them.

Couldn't you use the time difference between the flipping of two pairs to convey the information? I'm guessing in practicality that might be an extremely tricky prospect, but hypothetically you should be able to convey a message of any length as long as you have the willingness and capability to wait long enough. You could do something similar with one pair if both sides keep track of the time, although that has its own difficulties since you can't turn back the clock.

You could also use the order in which pairs are flipped to give you more bang for your buck when it comes to squeezing information out of entangled pairs.

[Cthulhu]

Spoiler: Geth Resolution (click to show/hide)

I didn't know you could make them play nice.  If nothing else, the Quarian girl on Illium will be very sad and vulnerable, this is Friend Zone Turian's chance to make a move

I thought the Magic Brain Cancer wasn't too bad.  They invented an imaginary supertech and then extrapolated all the ways it would affect the way things work, and that's okay with me.  The one thing I have wondered is about planet killing kinetic weapons, using a Mass Accelerator to blow off a planet's atmosphere with a relativistic-velocity slug, although...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think that might be what the Crucible is supposed to be

Pseudo edit, funny shit just happened:

I'm in a vacuum right now.  I've got my breather helmet, Liara's got her mask, James doesn't give a shit, he's got a monocle.

Another pseudo edit:

I'm not sure what you mean, Pnx.

[Pnx]

I'm not sure what you mean, Pnx.

So let's say you want to send a text message, you convert that message from text to a number, then to send that number, flip a "bit" wait X number of milliseconds, then flip a second "bit".

On the other end, you wait for the first bit to flip, then count the number of milliseconds until the second bit flips, and that's your message. If you have the patience, and the capability to wait long enough, you could hypothetically send any conceivable message that way... I think.

[Cthulhu]

That seems like it would be more trouble than it's worth

[Pnx]

That seems like it would be more trouble than it's worth

Well hey, if they're valuable, and you've got a limited supply, why not try to squeeze as much out of them as you can?

[mainiac]

Because as much as you can squeeze out of a entangled pair is a single bit (as in one 0 or 1).  You can not time how long it takes the other side to flip their bit because you can only make a single measurement.

There is only one piece of transmissible data: who collapsed the wave function first.  You can not nudge one particle and move the other, you can not use timing.  You certainly can't send signals across the void.  All you can tell is who went first.  So sending kilobytes (let alone megabytes to make those holograms) of data is just insane.  You would be measuring your bandwidth in bits.

[Pandarsenic]

What he's saying, I think, is to consume only two of the entangled pairs per transmission - you collapse one, then time X multiples of, for instance, Planck Time passing, and the exact number of instances of Planck time before you collapse another pair is your message.

i.e. Collapse both at once = 0
One multiple of it = 1
Two = 10
Three = 11
Etc.

If you used a sufficiently small unit of time it wouldn't even be COMPLETELY unfeasible, just MOSTLY unfeasible.

Edited to clear up a slight ambiguity.

[Cthulhu]

Measuring the particle's state alters it.  You can't be continuously monitoring the particles to detect the change and how long it took for the second particle to change.

[mainiac]

What he's saying, I think, is to consume only two of the entangled pairs per transmission - you collapse one, then time X multiples of, for instance, Planck Time passing, and the exact number of instances of Planck time is your message.

The problem is that measuring time passing requires multiple measurements.  But you can not make multiple measurements.  You can make one and only one measurement.  And that measurement can only tell you one and only one piece of information, if the wavelength was undetermined before or after the time of your measurement.

You can not measure the time the particle collapsed.  Let me repeat that.  You can not measure the time the particle collapsed.

You get one and only one measurement.

[fenrif]

Are you guys arguing about how fictional technology in a sci-fi space opera universe works as if it was real?

[SeriousConcentrate]

Yep. Kind of sad how low that actually ranks in terms of 'what's wrong with this game?' Trust me, whether or not and exactly how fictional tech works is of little concern when the ending shits on the entire trilogy.

I beat Mass Effect 3 again so I could see the 'third ending' I hadn't picked yet... but I find it sad that while I went through Mass Effect 1 7 times (twice of which I did absolutely everything I could) and Mass Effect 2 6 times (once of which I did everything available, and every other time at least doing the DLC if not the N7 missions) and beat both on all difficulty levels, when I got to the Quarian/Geth part of Mass Effect 3 on my third time through (I haven't bothered to raise the difficulty above casual because I just don't care enough to put any effort in) I put the controller down and didn't touch the game again for two weeks. Even when I picked it back up, it felt like I was forcing myself to finish something merely because I'd started it rather than because I wanted to. Also, way to rip off MGS3, ME3. The Renegade path for that is every bit as manipulative as the ending of MGS3, and I was rolling my eyes at how many times they make you pull the right trigger. Maybe if I had picked that option the first time through, I would have cared, but knowing how everything ends I had little remorse for

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

filling Legion full of lead, which is sad, because I liked him in the second game. Knowing that none of this matters = SerCon not giving two shits about the devs trying to tug his heartstrings.

I'm giving the series one last chance by starting again in Mass Effect 1. I'm going to 100% that, then Mass Effect 2, and then when the ending DLC comes out I'll slog through ME3... if I can be bothered to care.

Also, I laugh at Game Informer's 10/10 of ME3, and the reviewer's (Andrew Reiner) claim that 'most of the major plot points and characters arcs resolve.'

[fenrif]

If ME3 taught us anything, it taught us that games journalists are generally hacks and are not to be paid any heed. Though we all allready knew that...

[Pandarsenic]

Measuring the particle's state alters it.  You can't be continuously monitoring the particles to detect the change and how long it took for the second particle to change.

What he's saying, I think, is to consume only two of the entangled pairs per transmission - you collapse one, then time X multiples of, for instance, Planck Time passing, and the exact number of instances of Planck time is your message.

The problem is that measuring time passing requires multiple measurements.  But you can not make multiple measurements.  You can make one and only one measurement.  And that measurement can only tell you one and only one piece of information, if the wavelength was undetermined before or after the time of your measurement.

You can not measure the time the particle collapsed.  Let me repeat that.  You can not measure the time the particle collapsed.

You get one and only one measurement.

If you're going to tl;dr what I wrote, have the decency to just say so.

[Pandarsenic]

Hell, I'll spell it out in a new post since the page is having trouble loading for me:

You take ONE PAIR OF JUNK
You COLLAPSE IT
What you transmit then IS NOT IMPORTANT. The important thing is WHEN THIS OCCURS.

You measure out X arbitrary units of time. THIS IS THE CONTENT OF YOUR MESSAGE.

You then COLLAPSE ANOTHER PAIR OF JUNK, which will INDICATE THE CONCLUSION OF YOUR MESSAGE.
You have now SENT A MESSAGE and if you have accurate enough timekeeping mechanisms you might even have not fucked up the content of it.