Tag Archives: technology

Word Sucks

If I weren’t so lazy, I might switch to Open Office.

to B or not to b
capitalization and its discontents: why does my word processor upper-case Zoloft but not paxil?
By Roger Parloff

“like many people, I don’t use capital letters when I type e-mail. but when I got a new computer a few months ago, it had Microsoft software that automatically capitalizes the first letters of some words. (I’m using it now.) early on, I noticed some oddities. I was writing an e-mail to a friend about the campaign-financing scandals of the Clinton administration, and I referred to a very peripheral figure named Pauline konchanalak, whose last name I inadvertently misspelled. on second reference, I happened, with equal inadvertence, to spell her name correctly. but this time the surname popped up as Kanchanalak! Microsoft knew to capitalize Kanchanalak and yet not konchanalak!”

AI Spy

Snoop Doggy DOD is starting to really get on my nerves.

Helping Machines Think Different
By Noah Shachtman

“To Pentagon researchers, capturing and categorizing every aspect of a person’s life is only the beginning. LifeLog — the controversial Defense Department initiative to track everything about an individual — is just one step in a larger effort, according to a top Pentagon research director. Personalized digital assistants that can guess our desires should come first. And then, just maybe, we’ll see computers that can think for themselves. “

See It Our Way

People use common sense? Could have fooled me. Anyhow, nothing could improve or fix that demonic paper clip.

AI Depends on Your Point of View
By Noah Shachtman

"Even the dumbest people can look at a situation from several different angles. But that's still a problem for the smartest of computer systems.The Real-World Reasoning project, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program, is designed to get computers to start examining situations in more than one way. It's part of a larger effort, spearheaded by the Agency's Information Processing Technology Office, or IPTO, to move toward machines that can think for themselves. "

Myopic

It gives "Nasa 33% of its results for less than 2% of its budget." Of course it’ll be retired. We can’t have cost-effective equipment operated by the government. People might start expecting it all the time.

Eyeing a post-Hubble Universe
By Rachel Clarke

"Not since Galileo turned his telescope towards the heavens in 1610 has any event so changed our understanding of the Universe as the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope."

Dev/Null

It’s a bit bucket for spam! 🙂

Mailinator

“Have you ever needed an email .. NOW? Have you ever gone to a website that asks for your email for no reason (other than they are going to sell your email address to the highest bidder so you get spammed for ever (and ever (and ever)))?”