Skype Translations

The article I read is: Skype Can Now Do Spanish/English Translation in (Almost) Real Time.

Well, this isn't anything new to me, as I've read about the "alpha" testing earlier this year. Some other articles compares it with universal translator in the Star Trek series, and while it kind of is, at the same time, the universal translator is just a fictional device - which is what I actually wanted to talk about. I apologise ahead of time of ripping apart a device in the Star Trek universe, but it's the one that's not very logical to me, though I'm a "trekkie".

The universal translator supposedly works in real-time, in other words: as the other person speaks, the translator translates exactly what they're saying. The problem with this is that languages are not structured the same way, so for something to translate in real-time is impossible unless the two languages have the same structure. The only way real-time translation would be possible, is that something knows exactly what you're saying before you even finish saying it. Otherwise, there's going to be a delay between when the person speaks and when the translator starts translating.

If you "study" languages (not necessarily learning them), it eventually becomes obvious that the structures are much different and doesn't (usually) carry over to a different language. For this example, I will use Japanese and English.

私はご飯をたべています。 translates to "I am eating rice."
私 is "I", は tells the reader/listener that the noun/pronoun preceding it is the main subject, ご飯 is "rice", を tells the reader/listener that the noun/pronoun preceding it is related to the verb following it, 食べています is "eating" (simply put). The "am" in the English translation is inferred (though います can be considered the actual source of "am" and "ing"). So if we directly translate this without changing the language structure, it would become "I rice eating." which doesn't make much sense.

Some languages might have the same structure - while I'm not entirely sure about Korean compared with Japanese, I do know at least that Korean follows the same "noun-verb" structure.

 Though a real-time translation is impossible, what we have now is definitely is a step toward breaking the language barriers.

Samsung SSDs

The article I read is: Samsung Brings 3D NAND to Mainstream with 850 Evo SSD Line.

This is something that's pretty exciting for computer and/or storage enthusiasts, as solid-state drives have been sort of a mixed bag for a number of years, at least from my point of view. From what I remember seeing, SSDs with higher reliability or storage space has always been quite pricey, the cheaper ones are usually pretty decent in terms of reliability but not with space, and the cheapest ones are the ones that you would feel uneasy about buying.

I only own a couple of SSDs, and have only been using them to store video files; I've never really had the want or need to use SSDs in place of traditional HDDs mainly because of the price. Back then, I didn't really quite understand the reliability of SSDs, so I wanted to use them in such a way to keep the writes as low as possible, which is storage. However, things are different now that this article breaks down the reliability into something a lot easier to understand than "1,000,000 hours" for the mean time between failures.

The price points of the 850 Evo line seem about the same as other SSDs of the same capacity in terms of retail price, which will let the SSD line have a nice start once released.

I will still be doing what I have been doing with SSDs until the prices are low enough to where I can viably switch to SSD without being gouged in the wallet.