First: I don't know why my header is purple. It looked black on my old monitor and I don't really feel like fixing it right now.
I've have the last 5 days off, but I've been sick for the last 5 days. What a lovely surprise. On Thursday I felt better during the afternoon, but it didn't last long. Needless to say, I didn't get much done this week. I did get caught up on all my podcasts, though. Now, I have to clean.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
My Birthday, with no Photos
I had a really good birthday. About a week ago, half way between Jason's birthday and my own, we went to dinner at Leong's with Rose, Sean, Jason, Jennifer, and Sarah. I forgot what I ordered and the waitress made fun of me. Then I had to remind her to bring me chopsticks. Again. Then we hung around Walmart for a while, but ran into one of my managers which was a little awkward.
Jason and I hung out with Steph and her family on my birthday. Steph made me a cake and everyone signed a card for me. It was nice. Then we went bowling at Colony, which was more fun than I thought it would be. Since I ended up on a lane with all the kids, I got a relatively high score. Relatively. Heather won me a stuffed dog from their quarter eater, which we tried to give to Jose because he wanted her to win him something, but the machine wasn't giving another prize. I couldn't stay out too late because I had to work the next morning.
My parents gave me a new 19" widescreen monitor, Jason gave me 2GB of RAM and I used the money my mom gave me to buy a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive. The image from the monitor is beautiful, especially when it's using proper sRGB color. The computer is so much more responsive with the extra RAM, so much that I'm able to do the things I always do without the least amount of slowdown. I'm expecting the hard drive to arrive by Thursday so I reinstall Windows and set everything up before the long hours I'm working over the weekend.
On Valentine's day, Jason took me The Little Bar behind CVS in Marine City. I got Southwestern Tapalia, which was really good. I tasted Jason's long island iced tea, which was also really good. I got Jason a box of chocolates but despite the price, it only came with 6 pieces. He couldn't stay late because he had to work early the next morning. It's a running theme that annoys some of my unemployed friends.
Jason and I hung out with Steph and her family on my birthday. Steph made me a cake and everyone signed a card for me. It was nice. Then we went bowling at Colony, which was more fun than I thought it would be. Since I ended up on a lane with all the kids, I got a relatively high score. Relatively. Heather won me a stuffed dog from their quarter eater, which we tried to give to Jose because he wanted her to win him something, but the machine wasn't giving another prize. I couldn't stay out too late because I had to work the next morning.
My parents gave me a new 19" widescreen monitor, Jason gave me 2GB of RAM and I used the money my mom gave me to buy a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive. The image from the monitor is beautiful, especially when it's using proper sRGB color. The computer is so much more responsive with the extra RAM, so much that I'm able to do the things I always do without the least amount of slowdown. I'm expecting the hard drive to arrive by Thursday so I reinstall Windows and set everything up before the long hours I'm working over the weekend.
On Valentine's day, Jason took me The Little Bar behind CVS in Marine City. I got Southwestern Tapalia, which was really good. I tasted Jason's long island iced tea, which was also really good. I got Jason a box of chocolates but despite the price, it only came with 6 pieces. He couldn't stay late because he had to work early the next morning. It's a running theme that annoys some of my unemployed friends.
Monday, February 08, 2010
The Future of Lies
We've been trying to orally communicate with our machines for a number of years. We haven't had a terrible amount of success until the last few years. The Google Nexus One will let you perform a number of complex actions with simple voice commands (the fact that the phone transmits the sound of your voice to Google where it is decoded and data sent back to the phone is irrelevant). Microsoft Sync is a similar system, optional in any Ford/Linclon/Mercury vehicle which also works exceedingly well. How long will it take for systems like these to be standard on devices, large and small?
Intel Chief Technology Officer, Justin Rattner, theorizes that as computers become faster, we'll begin programming them to think in the same way we do. This makes sense, seeing as our brains seem to be the most efficient computers in existence. When these computers begin to think like us, voice recognition and synthesis will be completely natural. At this point, the most convenient and efficient way to interface with a computer will be by speech. It becomes not entirely unlikely then, that text and writing will eventually fade and our culture will be orally based, like those that existed thousands of years ago.
The difference is that instead of bards passing down and retelling stories through the generations, we'll have computers recording everything we do with 100% accuracy and perfectly communicating the situation to anyone within reason (Ignore the issues with this right now). Since these computers have all the accuracy of written word, will be easier to interface with, and will be in the hands of everyone, society will still be able to advance in much the same way it does now only much faster.
A great deal of information can be conveyed through speech. Tone, pitch, inflection, loudness, and rhythm together convey the true intent of a message behind words. Our brains interrupt these cues and do their best to determine meaning. We then reply, automatically adding these elements into our speech.
The problem I see is this:
These same elements of speech can also be used to hide the intent of a message. What's to keep someone from creating a nice, sweet, mild mannered program with a pretty little voice to deceive and manipulate us in all kinds of creative ways? And the lies get a hell of a lot more convincing if we add holographic body language to the mix. Human psychology is a bitch like that.
Is it any wonder I used to write science fiction?
Intel Chief Technology Officer, Justin Rattner, theorizes that as computers become faster, we'll begin programming them to think in the same way we do. This makes sense, seeing as our brains seem to be the most efficient computers in existence. When these computers begin to think like us, voice recognition and synthesis will be completely natural. At this point, the most convenient and efficient way to interface with a computer will be by speech. It becomes not entirely unlikely then, that text and writing will eventually fade and our culture will be orally based, like those that existed thousands of years ago.
The difference is that instead of bards passing down and retelling stories through the generations, we'll have computers recording everything we do with 100% accuracy and perfectly communicating the situation to anyone within reason (Ignore the issues with this right now). Since these computers have all the accuracy of written word, will be easier to interface with, and will be in the hands of everyone, society will still be able to advance in much the same way it does now only much faster.
A great deal of information can be conveyed through speech. Tone, pitch, inflection, loudness, and rhythm together convey the true intent of a message behind words. Our brains interrupt these cues and do their best to determine meaning. We then reply, automatically adding these elements into our speech.
The problem I see is this:
These same elements of speech can also be used to hide the intent of a message. What's to keep someone from creating a nice, sweet, mild mannered program with a pretty little voice to deceive and manipulate us in all kinds of creative ways? And the lies get a hell of a lot more convincing if we add holographic body language to the mix. Human psychology is a bitch like that.
Is it any wonder I used to write science fiction?
Monday, February 01, 2010
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