The brilliant minds over at The Onion have answered this question. I just ran across this video and it gave me a good chuckle. I hope you like it also.
In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?
What if robots took over the world?
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Can a computer beat the best Jeopardy players?Can a computer beat the best Jeopardy players?
Tonight with my wife, I watched an interesting episode of Nova titled “The World’s Smartest Machine.” Romantic, right? You can tell we are a couple of geeks at heart. Being a huge fan of Asimov and his robot creations, I am continually amazed at the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence. As a kid I was playing chess as early as the 3rd grade. I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty good chess player. When I heard about a computer that supposedly could beat a world champion chess player, I was intrigued. Garry Kasparov battled IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer in 1996 and won, however he eventually lost a rematch in 1997. Well, IBM is back at it, this time taking on Jeopardy. Nova takes us behind the scenes with the developers of “Watson,” the next step in AI. I was disappointed when the episode ended and it didn’t say who won. I didn’t realize until logging on PBS.org that the contest actually was taking place while I was watching Nova (on my media center PC). After some frantic Google searches, I eventually came across a Twitter feed with a link to a Youtube posting of the episode. This was not quite 2 hours after the episode aired! Isn’t technology great? I expect the Youtube post to be served a DMCA take down, so watch it soon if you plan on it. In addition to the episode at the end of this post, I’ve embedded the Nova preview and an humorous parody of the challenges Watson overcame during his development. I suggest watching the Nova episode first. If you are at all interested in AI, you must check these out!
Watch the full episode. See more NOVA.
Jeopardy Robot Watson’s Untold Game Show History (VIDEO)
Jeopardy Feb. 14 2011 – Human vs Machine IBM Challenge Day 1 Part 1/2
Jeopardy Feb. 14 2011 – Human vs Machine IBM Challenge Day 1 Part 2/2
There are two more nights to the match, airing Tuesday February 15th, and Wednesday the 16th. Be sure to check them out, along with some live blogging on PBS.org. I find myself rooting for Watson, not because I want to see humans defeated, but because I want to see humans capable of making something smart enough to do it. Who do you think will win? Who do you want to win?
AT AT Star Wars fan license plateAT AT Star Wars fan license plate
I think that one of the best ways for a fan to express themselves is through a personal license plate. I have an Isaac Asimov themed plate, and my wife has one dedicated to The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. Yesterday my mother-in-law was riding in her car when her husband spotted one of the coolest license plates ever with a decal above it to match. AT-AT is the perfect license plate befitting a true Star Wars fan. She promptly posted it on her blog, which was forwarded to me by my wife via StumbleUpon. I had to get the full story from the source, and when I did she said she’d send me all 3 pictures. Here they are…
Isaac Asimov introduces the Radio Shack TRS-80 pocket computerIsaac Asimov introduces the Radio Shack TRS-80 pocket computer
I ran across this ad recently for an amazing new product, promoted by my own favorite science fiction author, Isaac Asimov.
Radio Shack’s TRS-80 Pocket Computer turned my dreams into a reality. Now I can take the power of a true computer with me wherever I go.
— Isaac Asimov
The marketing guys chime in a few paragraphs later.
And it can also function just like a calculator — something a desktop computer can’t do.
— Radio Shack
Wait, what!? With a standard calculator included in just about every phone that I can think of, it is hard to imagine a desktop computer ever existing without that ability. Crazy, right? Now that I think of it, it wasn’t too far in the distant past that desktop computers couldn’t be used for voice communications, something a simple phone could do. So what does $169.95 actually get you?
From Dave Dunfield’s old computer page:
The machine was actually a Radio Shack branded version of the Sharp PC-1211, which features:
- Sharp SC43177/SC43178 4-bit CPU running at 256khz
- 1×24 character LCD display
- 57 key “Qwerty” keyboard
- 1.5k of RAM for user program storage
- Pizoelectric buzzer
Be sure to check out the full breakdown at Dave’s TRS-80 Pocket Computer page
As a point of comparison, here are a few highlights of Motorola’s Droid 2 tech specs:
- 1 GHz processor
- 480×854 Pixel display (Characters displayed depends on the font)
- QWERTY keyboard
- 8GB flash (expandable to 32GB)
- Support for stereo bluetooth (not sure if actual speaker is stereo or not)
- 100’s of other features like camera, video capture, streaming video, and get this includes the ability to make phone calls. Sadly though, it can’t make you breakfast… yet.
Let me whip out my calculator on my i7 Desktop Computer! The Droid 2 has a 3,906.25 times faster processor (just based on clock rate, not actual computational power) and has 5,592,405.33 times more storage. That seems crazy right? The TRS-80 pocket computer came out in 1980, about 20 years ago. I wonder how people will feel about our state of the art smartphones in 2020? That is assuming we haven’t been taken over by robots gone wild, destroyed ourselves with nukes, or succumbed to a raging nano-plague. But that is all just science fiction.
Isaac Asimov promotes Radio Shack's TRS-80 Pocket Computer