Ken Jennings, contestant on Jeopardy! famous for winning 74 games in a row, borrowing a line from The Simpsons to congratulate his computer opponent, Watson, for handily winning a three-day competition.
New York Times
February 17, 2011
“I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords."
Ken Jennings, contestant on Jeopardy! famous for winning 74 games in a row, borrowing a line from The Simpsons to congratulate his computer opponent, Watson, for handily winning a three-day competition.
New York Times
February 8, 2011
Payback: Upset Ex-Girlfriend Spams Boyfriend In Google Images
Upset boyfriends and girlfriends are nothing new. There are plenty of stories of girlfriends getting back at their ex-boyfriends for mistreatment and visa versa. But in the age where Google ranks supreme, you do not want to mess with a girl who knows how to manipulate Google.
One guy learned this the hard way.
Apparently, a disturbed ex-girlfriend took her ex-boyfriend's professional taken picture and polluted it all over Google Images for a search on his name. You can see the Google Image search spam yourself by clicking here or in the screen shot below:
Search Engine Roundtable
One guy learned this the hard way.
Apparently, a disturbed ex-girlfriend took her ex-boyfriend's professional taken picture and polluted it all over Google Images for a search on his name. You can see the Google Image search spam yourself by clicking here or in the screen shot below:
Search Engine Roundtable
February 7, 2011
February 3, 2011
The internet has (kind of) run out of space
On Thursday, the internet as we know it ran out of space.
The nonprofit group that assigns addresses to service providers announced that, on Thursday morning, it allocated the last free internet addresses available from the current pool used for most of the internet's history.
"This is an historic day in the history of the internet, and one we have been anticipating for quite some time," said Raul Echeberria, chairman of the Number Resource Organization.
CNN
The nonprofit group that assigns addresses to service providers announced that, on Thursday morning, it allocated the last free internet addresses available from the current pool used for most of the internet's history.
"This is an historic day in the history of the internet, and one we have been anticipating for quite some time," said Raul Echeberria, chairman of the Number Resource Organization.
CNN
January 27, 2011
Sputnik Moment?
"This is our generation's Sputnik Moment," President Obama said during Tuesday's State of the Union.
...
So I couldn't help wondering: Could we ever have a Sputnik moment?
Frontiers? We live on them. In 1969, things were still analog. You didn't have to discard your devices after a few months because Steve Jobs had decided that light purple was the new purple. Now, if something is lasting, we look down on it. "The only thing that lasts these days are dead armadillos and those seasonal breads in the glass case at Starbucks," we point out. Ephemeral is the new permanent. We have the collective memory -- and persistent desire to mate with anything in sight -- of Viagra-addled mayflies.
This comes with many boons. Thanks to our insistence on living on the bubble of the present moment, our world is rife with unnatural wonders - iPhones, iPads, Clouds, memes, videos of cats in Japan stuffing themselves into boxes. When I have a sore throat, I can go online and describe my symptoms, and strangers from across the globe (or the part of the globe that follows me on Twitter, at any rate) can suggest that I drink blueberry syrup and hot toddies! This is the stuff!
Everyone admits that the world has shrunk. But this shrinkage has also closed the window for Sputnik moments.
Washington Post
...
So I couldn't help wondering: Could we ever have a Sputnik moment?
Frontiers? We live on them. In 1969, things were still analog. You didn't have to discard your devices after a few months because Steve Jobs had decided that light purple was the new purple. Now, if something is lasting, we look down on it. "The only thing that lasts these days are dead armadillos and those seasonal breads in the glass case at Starbucks," we point out. Ephemeral is the new permanent. We have the collective memory -- and persistent desire to mate with anything in sight -- of Viagra-addled mayflies.
This comes with many boons. Thanks to our insistence on living on the bubble of the present moment, our world is rife with unnatural wonders - iPhones, iPads, Clouds, memes, videos of cats in Japan stuffing themselves into boxes. When I have a sore throat, I can go online and describe my symptoms, and strangers from across the globe (or the part of the globe that follows me on Twitter, at any rate) can suggest that I drink blueberry syrup and hot toddies! This is the stuff!
Everyone admits that the world has shrunk. But this shrinkage has also closed the window for Sputnik moments.
Washington Post
January 17, 2011
Excessive Video Gaming Not Just A Symptom
Spending hours with a PlayStation or an Xbox every day can lead to serious psychiatric problems in children -- but "pathological" video game playing may not be just a result of preexisting mental disorders, researchers reported.
A two-year prospective study of more than 3,000 children identified several baseline psychological factors such as impulsivity that predicted excessive video game playing, according to Douglas Gentile, PhD, of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, and colleagues.
Nevertheless, such conditions as depression, social difficulties, and poor school performance "seemed to act as outcomes of pathological gaming," Gentile and co-authors wrote online in Pediatrics.
"Pathological gaming seems not to be simply secondary to other disorders but to predict poorer functioning longitudinally, and it can last for several years," they added.
For their study, the researchers gave questionnaires to 3,034 elementary and middle-school children in Singapore from 2007 to 2009. The survey, conducted in the students' classrooms, asked age-appropriate questions to elicit information on video gaming habits, social interactions, decision-making skills, affect, and other aspects of their psychiatric status as well as school performance.
Gentile and colleagues noted that response patterns indicated that causation could go in both directions for some factors.
"For example, although impulsivity is a risk factor for becoming a pathological gamer, impulsivity worsens after a youth becomes a pathological gamer," they wrote.
MedPage Today
A two-year prospective study of more than 3,000 children identified several baseline psychological factors such as impulsivity that predicted excessive video game playing, according to Douglas Gentile, PhD, of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, and colleagues.
Nevertheless, such conditions as depression, social difficulties, and poor school performance "seemed to act as outcomes of pathological gaming," Gentile and co-authors wrote online in Pediatrics.
"Pathological gaming seems not to be simply secondary to other disorders but to predict poorer functioning longitudinally, and it can last for several years," they added.
For their study, the researchers gave questionnaires to 3,034 elementary and middle-school children in Singapore from 2007 to 2009. The survey, conducted in the students' classrooms, asked age-appropriate questions to elicit information on video gaming habits, social interactions, decision-making skills, affect, and other aspects of their psychiatric status as well as school performance.
Gentile and colleagues noted that response patterns indicated that causation could go in both directions for some factors.
"For example, although impulsivity is a risk factor for becoming a pathological gamer, impulsivity worsens after a youth becomes a pathological gamer," they wrote.
MedPage Today
January 13, 2011
January 12, 2011
Your BlackBerry or Your Wife
When you're out to dinner, does your BlackBerry occupy a seat at the table? Does your spouse ever check email before saying "good morning" to the kids? Does your son sleep with his laptop?
It may be time for a technology cleanse.
Like an extreme diet that cuts out all processed foods for a short period of time with the promise of lasting good health, a technology cleanse means you unplug for a short time with longer-term benefits for your relationships.
But be warned: As with any other diet, it isn't easy.
The Wall Street Journal
It may be time for a technology cleanse.
Like an extreme diet that cuts out all processed foods for a short period of time with the promise of lasting good health, a technology cleanse means you unplug for a short time with longer-term benefits for your relationships.
But be warned: As with any other diet, it isn't easy.
The Wall Street Journal
December 30, 2010
The Shallows
Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle, and that, says author Nicholas Carr, is what you're doing every time you use the Internet.
Carr is the author of the Atlantic article Is Google Making Us Stupid? which he has expanded into a book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.
Carr believes that the Internet is a medium based on interruption — and it's changing the way people read and process information. We've come to associate the acquisition of wisdom with deep reading and solitary concentration, and he says there's not much of that to be found online.
NPR
Carr is the author of the Atlantic article Is Google Making Us Stupid? which he has expanded into a book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.
Carr believes that the Internet is a medium based on interruption — and it's changing the way people read and process information. We've come to associate the acquisition of wisdom with deep reading and solitary concentration, and he says there's not much of that to be found online.
NPR
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