From the article "The questions were fed in plain text to Watson"
If "Watson" does speech recognition or Image processing for video clues then I'd be more impressed. Its like playing chess with Blue where blue always plays with white.
Nevertheless, it's the first step...kudos to the team.
This is intriguing. How is "Watson" going to get the clue? Is it going to recognize Trebek's voice? - If yes, human competitors may have an advantage. Or "Watson" will have a camera pointed at the clue board to do a OCR? - What about the video/audio clues. Are they setting some ground rule so that there won't be any audio/video clues? Or Clues are directly fed into "Watson"? - If yes, "Watson" may have an advantage.
Wouldn't it be easier just to make a better voting machine?
Why would they need a voting machine ?
There are several major problems with voting machines in India:
1) you cannot double-check the vote, thus cheating is easy, even if you have secure machines.
2) a lot of people in India don't know how to read, and simple tasks like voting with a computer is impossible for them.
3) machines need electricity. In India, there can be an outage at any time of the day.
Before using expensive voting machines, India's governement should concentrate on improving the infrastructures, like water, electricity and roads.
These machines could very well be "hackable"...I am not doubting that. But you can't make these sweeping accusations
2. EVM makes it easier than paper ballots. 3. EVMs are significantly cheaper than paper ballots and do not need electricity..they are powered by 6V alkaline battery.
Nah...that's MS yardstick. If a rogue developer hijacks IE then it's a MS problem. If a rogue developer does something to Appstore then it is that damn rogue developer.
In high school English we had an exercise called "Letter writing". They teach you how to write (or kiss ass) your higher ups (be it Government officials, or Headmaster, or your boss). Every letter will have "kindly", several pleases, most importantly will end with yours obediently. When I came to US for grad school, I saw no one using those crap, I stopped using them.
Thank you/. for the story, I found another reason to ignore items in the requirements documents. Until they incorporate "please" in the RUP, I will be safe.
1. It's not open - So are iPhone, iPad, iPod. Users can't develop and deploy custom software without "Approval" 2. The "full" web - Yup. Without the flash support, users miss out full web experience. 3. Reliability, Security & Performance - What you say may be true, but let the users decide whether to enable flash on the devices or not. 4. Battery Life - Same as above. 5. Touch - More BS from you. If the flash is not user friendly on your devices, its site owners' problem. Let them opt for HTML5, don't force them. 6. The most important reason - Yes we get it. People will bypass your app store and depend on third party apps. So, stop BSing, just tell us that it will hurt Apple's bottom line that's why you are not supporting flash.
I think this has lot of potentials to replace Text to Speech. There are thousands of people with speech disability use some kind of tablet device to type/scan/etc. to formulate sentences and then they get fed into TTS. This will definitely be faster...but..this technology has to mature into a commercial product which may take years...nevertheless...very good progress.
When was the last time you had to pay the cops for a stolen wallet or purse that belonged to you?
It happens all the time in India. You have to bribe the police to lodge your robbery case, bribe more to recover the stolen goods. Here is a link to a popular newspaper in India which lists all such cases.
As a person from Pittsburgh, I cannot believe this. Why would you want to hurt the hand that feeds you...literally? If you look at all the rust belt cities (Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Toledo), Pittsburgh is still up and its unemployment rate is well below these cities and the national average. (http://www.bls.gov/ro3/urpitt.htm) Primary reason behind these numbers is CMU and Pitt. I have worked with 6 different IT companies here and they are all offshoots of CMU. Google, Apple, Seagate, etc. have their R&D site here because of CMU.
Agreed, they need to find some new sources of income for the city with dwindling income tax income...but this should not be way. But, these politicians are SMART...they chose one group to hurt where that group doesn't have no or significant voting power.
And as much as I disagreed with him, you've got to admit that GWB was dealt a pretty shitty hand. Those who remember the 2000 campaign may well remember that he ran on domestic issues. God forbid if we suffer another mass casualty attack -- you think the idealism and international love fest for Obama would long survive the American response to another attack on the scale of 9/11?
Kidding right. Let's see which of the following was due to 9/11
- Iraq war - Mishandling of Katrina - Secret CIA prison camps around the world - Gitmo & torture - Patriot act
Thinking about COBOL gives me nightmares. In one of our classes ('87), we had to pass a programming test in which you are required to pick a problem from a box (Simplex method) and a language in which you have to implement (COBOL). We were given 3 hours, needless to say I took the entire 3 hours and more (examiner was very sympathetic) while all my friends were outside the exam hall in 30 mins after doing problems like Gauss-Sidel in pascal & c.
"In a series of in-person meetings, phone calls and emails between July 5 and July 28, 2009, Apple and Google representative discussed the approval status of the Google Voice application that was submitted on June 2, 2009. The primary points of contact between the two companies were Alan Eustace, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering and Research and Phil Schiller, Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing. On July 7, Mr. Eustace and Mr. Schiller spoke over the phone. It was during this call that Mr. Schiller informed Mr. Eustace that Apple was rejecting the Google Voice application for the reasons described above."
It is interesting that a VP of R&D is talking to a VP of Mumbo Jumbo. Does it tell their respective corporate culture?
I am originally from a rural place in India. I see pretty much everyone uses electric powered irrigation motors and too have an employee sleeps near the motor so that he could start the motor as soon as the electricity comes on. I wondered why they couldn't use a solar powered motor. I found out that there is no incentive for the farmers to move to solar powered motors as they are expensive to buy and more importantly the electricity is free for agricultural usage (in the state of Tamil Nadu...not only that you don't have file income tax if your income is only from agriculture..sweet..huh..while it helps a lot in terms of food sustainability...but i see it exploited as well.).
>In the long history, the Indians _never_ attacked any other country - it is a peace loving nation that needs power to lift their millions out of poverty.
What a bs. Don't tell anyone what BJP (its a right wing nationalist party) has been spreading. First of all India was not a one country before British. Even during Moguls, south India was not conquered by them. Second, these countries (within India) fought amongst themselves and conquered each other numerous times. Third, Cholas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chola) attacked and conquered south east Asia. I think Kalingas also invaded some part of south east Asia, correct me if I am wrong on that.
Technology won't be the solution if you do not solve the fundamental problem which is the wedge between haves and have-nots. That wedge can be calculated by Gini Coefficient (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient), which is basically a number between 0 and 1. If it is 0 then everyone in the population has equal amount of everything and if it is 1 then one person has everything, rest have nothing.
This image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gini_Coefficient_World_Human_Development_Report_2007-2008.png) shows the index for various countries. When the value reaches closes to 50, then you will see all these kidnappings and gated communities for rich.
Brazil has the highest value among developing countries and surprise..surprise...it has the highest kidnappings (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9A01E5DE1F3CF930A25751C0A9649C8B63).
US's gini indices (from Wiki) over the last 40 years are 1967: 39.7 1968: 38.6 1970: 39.4 1980: 40.3 1990: 42.8 2000: 46.2 2005: 46.9 2006: 47.0
Buckle up ladies & gentlemen...kidnapping culture is not far away from us.
Slashdot Mirror
When a senator visits NASA or NIH headquarters, they openly ask for more money or new projects..how is it different?
From the article
"The questions were fed in plain text to Watson"
If "Watson" does speech recognition or Image processing for video clues then I'd be more impressed.
Its like playing chess with Blue where blue always plays with white.
Nevertheless, it's the first step...kudos to the team.
This is intriguing.
How is "Watson" going to get the clue?
Is it going to recognize Trebek's voice? - If yes, human competitors may have an advantage.
Or "Watson" will have a camera pointed at the clue board to do a OCR? - What about the video/audio clues. Are they setting some ground rule so that there won't be any audio/video clues?
Or Clues are directly fed into "Watson"? - If yes, "Watson" may have an advantage.
Interesting...can't wait to hear more about this.
Hence the smiley!
-2 = -2 :)
1-3 = 4-6
1-3+9/4 = 4-6+9/4
(1-3/2)^2 = (2-3/2)^2
sqrt((1-3/2)^2) = sqrt((2-3/2)^2)
1-3/2 = 2-3/2
1 = 2
As long as Chuck Norris is alive, earthlings need not worry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtQPBHhiAQI
Wouldn't it be easier just to make a better voting machine?
Why would they need a voting machine ?
There are several major problems with voting machines in India:
1) you cannot double-check the vote, thus cheating is easy, even if you have secure machines.
2) a lot of people in India don't know how to read, and simple tasks like voting with a computer is impossible for them.
3) machines need electricity. In India, there can be an outage at any time of the day.
Before using expensive voting machines, India's governement should concentrate on improving the infrastructures, like water, electricity and roads.
These machines could very well be "hackable"...I am not doubting that. But you can't make these sweeping accusations
2. EVM makes it easier than paper ballots.
3. EVMs are significantly cheaper than paper ballots and do not need electricity..they are powered by 6V alkaline battery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_voting_machines
Nah...that's MS yardstick. If a rogue developer hijacks IE then it's a MS problem. If a rogue developer does something to Appstore then it is that damn rogue developer.
In high school English we had an exercise called "Letter writing". They teach you how to write (or kiss ass) your higher ups (be it Government officials, or Headmaster, or your boss). Every letter will have "kindly", several pleases, most importantly will end with yours obediently. When I came to US for grad school, I saw no one using those crap, I stopped using them.
Thank you /. for the story, I found another reason to ignore items in the requirements documents.
Until they incorporate "please" in the RUP, I will be safe.
1. It's not open - So are iPhone, iPad, iPod. Users can't develop and deploy custom software without "Approval"
2. The "full" web - Yup. Without the flash support, users miss out full web experience.
3. Reliability, Security & Performance - What you say may be true, but let the users decide whether to enable flash on the devices or not.
4. Battery Life - Same as above.
5. Touch - More BS from you. If the flash is not user friendly on your devices, its site owners' problem. Let them opt for HTML5, don't force them.
6. The most important reason - Yes we get it. People will bypass your app store and depend on third party apps. So, stop BSing, just tell us that it will hurt Apple's bottom line that's why you are not supporting flash.
Huh...Revisionist history?
She was criticized for using personal yahoo email account to do state business.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/09/17/palins_yahoo_account_hacked.html
Come on guys...Funny (5)? Really?
It's getting old...any article about India is followed with a obligatory tech support joke.
I think this has lot of potentials to replace Text to Speech.
There are thousands of people with speech disability use some kind of tablet device to type/scan/etc. to formulate sentences and then they get fed into TTS.
This will definitely be faster...but..this technology has to mature into a commercial product which may take years...nevertheless...very good progress.
Pittsburgh's population is only around 300k. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh).
When was the last time you had to pay the cops for a stolen wallet or purse that belonged to you?
It happens all the time in India. You have to bribe the police to lodge your robbery case, bribe more to recover the stolen goods.
Here is a link to a popular newspaper in India which lists all such cases.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=site%3Awww.thehindu.com+police+inspector+suspended+for+accepting+bribe&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq=
As a person from Pittsburgh, I cannot believe this.
Why would you want to hurt the hand that feeds you...literally?
If you look at all the rust belt cities (Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Toledo), Pittsburgh is still up and its unemployment rate is well below these cities and the national average. (http://www.bls.gov/ro3/urpitt.htm)
Primary reason behind these numbers is CMU and Pitt. I have worked with 6 different IT companies here and they are all offshoots of CMU. Google, Apple, Seagate, etc. have their R&D site here because of CMU.
Agreed, they need to find some new sources of income for the city with dwindling income tax income...but this should not be way. But, these politicians are SMART...they chose one group to hurt where that group doesn't have no or significant voting power.
And as much as I disagreed with him, you've got to admit that GWB was dealt a pretty shitty hand. Those who remember the 2000 campaign may well remember that he ran on domestic issues. God forbid if we suffer another mass casualty attack -- you think the idealism and international love fest for Obama would long survive the American response to another attack on the scale of 9/11?
Kidding right. Let's see which of the following was due to 9/11
- Iraq war
- Mishandling of Katrina
- Secret CIA prison camps around the world
- Gitmo & torture
- Patriot act
I am sure I am missing many more.
Thinking about COBOL gives me nightmares.
In one of our classes ('87), we had to pass a programming test in which you are required to pick a problem from a box (Simplex method) and a language in which you have to implement (COBOL).
We were given 3 hours, needless to say I took the entire 3 hours and more (examiner was very sympathetic) while all my friends were outside the exam hall in 30 mins after doing problems like Gauss-Sidel in pascal & c.
According to this link,
http://www.businessinsider.com/did-apple-lie-about-rejecting-google-voice-iphone-app-2009-9
"In a series of in-person meetings, phone calls and emails between July 5 and July 28, 2009, Apple and Google representative discussed the approval status of the Google Voice application that was submitted on June 2, 2009. The primary points of contact between the two companies were Alan Eustace, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering and Research and Phil Schiller, Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing. On July 7, Mr. Eustace and Mr. Schiller spoke over the phone. It was during this call that Mr. Schiller informed Mr. Eustace that Apple was rejecting the Google Voice application for the reasons described above."
It is interesting that a VP of R&D is talking to a VP of Mumbo Jumbo. Does it tell their respective corporate culture?
I am originally from a rural place in India. I see pretty much everyone uses electric powered irrigation motors and too have an employee sleeps near the motor so that he could start the motor as soon as the electricity comes on. I wondered why they couldn't use a solar powered motor. I found out that there is no incentive for the farmers to move to solar powered motors as they are expensive to buy and more importantly the electricity is free for agricultural usage (in the state of Tamil Nadu...not only that you don't have file income tax if your income is only from agriculture..sweet..huh..while it helps a lot in terms of food sustainability...but i see it exploited as well.).
Now if you'll excuse me, the microwave upstairs just beeped. My hotpockets are done!
Whats "upstairs"?
millionaire - inherited?
ivy league educated in law - Legacy quota?
>In the long history, the Indians _never_ attacked any other country - it is a peace loving nation that needs power to lift their millions out of poverty.
What a bs. Don't tell anyone what BJP (its a right wing nationalist party) has been spreading. First of all India was not a one country before British. Even during Moguls, south India was not conquered by them. Second, these countries (within India) fought amongst themselves and conquered each other numerous times. Third, Cholas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chola) attacked and conquered south east Asia. I think Kalingas also invaded some part of south east Asia, correct me if I am wrong on that.
Technology won't be the solution if you do not solve the fundamental problem which is the wedge between haves and have-nots.
That wedge can be calculated by Gini Coefficient (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient), which is basically a number between 0 and 1.
If it is 0 then everyone in the population has equal amount of everything and if it is 1 then one person has everything, rest have nothing.
This image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gini_Coefficient_World_Human_Development_Report_2007-2008.png) shows the index for various countries.
When the value reaches closes to 50, then you will see all these kidnappings and gated communities for rich.
Brazil has the highest value among developing countries and surprise..surprise...it has the highest kidnappings (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9A01E5DE1F3CF930A25751C0A9649C8B63).
US's gini indices (from Wiki) over the last 40 years are
1967: 39.7
1968: 38.6
1970: 39.4
1980: 40.3
1990: 42.8
2000: 46.2
2005: 46.9
2006: 47.0
Buckle up ladies & gentlemen...kidnapping culture is not far away from us.