Good old Internet marketing - aka - SPAM. Was somewhat amused yesterday when I received two disaparate emails. The first was for Bras and the second...the second...was for..forklifts! Talk about two totally different products.
In both cases (but especially the latter), I like to refer to this as B&B marketing. Bullhorn and buckshot. The bullhorn is self-evident. The buckshot - well - you shoot off enough pellets and sooner or later one will hit a target.
The email for bras - okay - so I see their plan that with a mass market, they have a 50/50 chance at reaching their target audience. But forklifts? Seriously - I am very curious as to what the click-through on that email was. What's next? Spam for swimming pools? Nuclear reactors? A rocket-launcher perhaps?
B&B Marketing - it just has to be the lazy man's way of doing this.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Artificial Intelligence – Possible? Yes. Probable? Yes. In our Lifetime? Probably Not.
It has been a number of months since I’ve started off one of my articles with a quote. Today – I go back to my roots with the following quote:
“I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”
I’m curious as to which of my audience recognizes this quote. I’m not sure if the most recognition would be from those of a certain generation – or perhaps those who appreciate particular genres of entertainment.
Regardless, this quote is from a movie – too be specific “2001 – A Space Odyssey” and it is muttered by “no-one” other than HAL-9000 – the onboard computer.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been pondering what to write this month. I knew that I wanted to write about “Artificial Intelligence” for lack of a better word. Once I read this quote, one thing immediately came to mind.
I think that there is a grandiose notion that eventually technology will evolve to the extent where it will become a form of a sentient being. Perhaps one day, technology will evolve (evolve?) to such an extent, but I don’t think that this will be in our lifetime, perhaps not even in the lifetime of our children, either.
This may be heresy to suggest, and there’s a good chance that I could be totally wrong. As much as technology has evolved over the last 20 years, I certainly don’t see any semblance of it pushing the envelope in terms of this level of sophistication.
Getting back to the quote from Hal – I’m most interested in the term “conscious entity”. I think that most people would consider that to be a relatively decent definition of “life”. Merriam-Webster gives a couple of interesting definitions:
1 : perceiving, apprehending, or noticing with a degree of controlled thought or observation
2: capable of or marked by thought, will, design, or perception
Can technology – in any form be considered of being self-aware? I don’t think so – not through any evidence that I have ever heard of or seen. I think of another movie from many years ago, “Demon Seed”. In this movie, Proteus (the computer) is clearly self-aware and does whatever is in its power to prevent being shut down.
If this is indeed one example of how a computer could be considered to be self-aware (and therefore be considered “conscious”), then I think that it’s quite apparent that we are many decades away from developing this type of sophistication.
If it is theoretically possible to build a machine that is self-aware, then I think that the first fundamental problem is that the technology as we know it is nowhere near sophisticated enough, quick enough or has sufficient capacity to host and run a series of programs that would define the computers “soul”.
Let’s take the last problem – that of capacity. How much data could the human mind hold. The answer itself is actually the whole root of the problem. The answer is that no-one really knows how much information the human brain can hold. One researcher from Syracuse University has speculated that the human mind can hold perhaps in the range of 500-1000 terabytes. One terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes, so if I consider that this notebook that I’m using has a 500gb hard disk, then the mind holds more than 1,000 times the capacity that I am working with now.
However, this leads to an interesting point, this memory requirement is what is required to store as much data as is in my mind. This does not take into consideration the extraordinarily complex program code that would need to be in the computer to process and analyze this data. Let’s say for the sake of argument that we’d need an addition 500-1000tb for the program itself.
The biggest argument against the possibility of there being sentient beings in anything but the distant future is that there is so much that we don’t understand about the human mind. There are numerous mysteries as it involves how data is processed, how decisions are made, how judgements are evaluated and how to analyze goals.
It doesn’t matter how good of a software designer or developer I am, if I don’t have a thorough and intimate knowledge of exactly how the mind works, then I can’t be expected to be able to write software that contains these skills.
Friday, April 30, 2010
3D & James Cameron - What a Guy!
James Cameron is becoming "instrumental" at building a 3D camera for a future Mars land-rover. Why - methinks - do they need to engage the famous James Cameron for this? Is he some expert? Perhaps. Not meaning to bash a fellow Canadian, but aren't there probably a bunch of other scientists in this area that would have more to contribute to this technlogy than James Cameron? More than likely, I'd think.
The one really odd thing about this article - and something just seems quite odd. The articles briefly mentions that they were going to scrap the concept of a 3D camera due to budgetary concerns. Huh? Budgetary concerns? Come on, they have to be kidding me! The current NASA budget is somewhere around $18 billion. How much would this camera really eat up of this budget? $1m? Perhaps? Yeah yeah - budget cuts across the board. I know the song and dance, but I also know that "budget cuts" can be one of the handiest excuses out there for killing projects, so call a spade a spade and just be truthful.
Monday, April 26, 2010
My Favourite Windows 7 WTF Moment
I haven't been using Windows 7 all that long - maybe only a couple of months on my new notebook. One day I'm at home - working away and I am typing away and presto-chango, my display rotates 90 degrees to the right :)
I'm thinking WTF did I just do. Tried to reconstruct my keystrokes and eventually determined the hotkey sequence that rotates the display 90 degrees (useful for monitors that also do so, not very useful when the monitor doesn't rotate as well!)
I'm thinking WTF did I just do. Tried to reconstruct my keystrokes and eventually determined the hotkey sequence that rotates the display 90 degrees (useful for monitors that also do so, not very useful when the monitor doesn't rotate as well!)
My Biggest Pet Peeve
Okay - really is stretching the limits of if this falls into my whole "TecHumanity" theme or not, but what the hell - it's my blog and I'll post what I want :)
Going for a walk at lunch today and within a two block radius, I spot two glaring spelling mistakes on signage. It doesn't matter if it's the owner that doesn't know how to spell, the printers obviously not only are spelling-challenged, but they've also not clicked into this REALLY neat function called a spell-checker.
The words in question: Chiken and privlage - how does someone look at that and not immediately know that there is something wrong with this picture? Totally burns my britches :) (reminder to self - do a spell check before posting this blog entry!)
Saturday, April 24, 2010
And the Lines of Technology Blur Even More
In terms of entertainment, the television was always king (and movies as well, to make it a bit of a stretch).
One of the benefits of the Internet is that it also allowed access to many legal (and some not-so-legal) sites where entertainment material can be experienced. From the iTunes and the Napsters on music to all sorts of peer-to-peer network for pirated movies.
Now - it is not uncommon to be able to view archived episodes of your favourite episode online.
Although I haven't yet tried it, Rogers Cable has introduced an online Rogers on Demand service for viewing episodes and ordered movies via things other than the TV top decoder/converter.
This week, Playstation announced that one can purchase access to Major League Baseball games via the Playstation 3 and this has me thinking. With the PS3 we have a true entertainment device - not just a gaming machine. Not only can a wide range of games be played, but it also has a built-in BluRay drive and access to the Internet. Now with this MLB application, we now have streaming games. Let's not even get into how the PS3 can listen to music that exists on one of my three computers through the WiFi network.
I almost said that the introduction of the PS3 will almost make the television obsolete, but I guess that isn't going to happen until they have a build-in monitor!
One of the benefits of the Internet is that it also allowed access to many legal (and some not-so-legal) sites where entertainment material can be experienced. From the iTunes and the Napsters on music to all sorts of peer-to-peer network for pirated movies.
Now - it is not uncommon to be able to view archived episodes of your favourite episode online.
Although I haven't yet tried it, Rogers Cable has introduced an online Rogers on Demand service for viewing episodes and ordered movies via things other than the TV top decoder/converter.
This week, Playstation announced that one can purchase access to Major League Baseball games via the Playstation 3 and this has me thinking. With the PS3 we have a true entertainment device - not just a gaming machine. Not only can a wide range of games be played, but it also has a built-in BluRay drive and access to the Internet. Now with this MLB application, we now have streaming games. Let's not even get into how the PS3 can listen to music that exists on one of my three computers through the WiFi network.
I almost said that the introduction of the PS3 will almost make the television obsolete, but I guess that isn't going to happen until they have a build-in monitor!
Huh? Say What?
Story today is of a fellow who has bought and resold iPads for his friends and colleagues. Apparently, he goes to buy another one - sales clerk replies "Sorry sir, you've been cut-off". According to the sales clerk, the individual has reached the lifetime "maximum" of iPads that he's allowed to buy.
Huh? Really? Are there companies that DISCOURAGE sales? There must be something behind the story - I just don't get it.
Over the years, I've bought a ton of Dell Machines - for myself - and for friends and family. I can't imagine that Dell is anything but thrilled with my preference for Dell products.
This week, I received a gift certificate more Moore's Menswear as I had bought over $500 worth of clothes over the past few months. Can you imagine how odd it would have been to instead, having received a letter stating "I'm sorry, but you've bought 3 suits at Moore's - that's your lifetime maximum. Now go away!".
Too odd. I'm sure that there's probably a supply and demand sort of thing with the iPad (especially here in the Great White North), but to state that there is a limit? Truly a head-scratcher
Huh? Really? Are there companies that DISCOURAGE sales? There must be something behind the story - I just don't get it.
Over the years, I've bought a ton of Dell Machines - for myself - and for friends and family. I can't imagine that Dell is anything but thrilled with my preference for Dell products.
This week, I received a gift certificate more Moore's Menswear as I had bought over $500 worth of clothes over the past few months. Can you imagine how odd it would have been to instead, having received a letter stating "I'm sorry, but you've bought 3 suits at Moore's - that's your lifetime maximum. Now go away!".
Too odd. I'm sure that there's probably a supply and demand sort of thing with the iPad (especially here in the Great White North), but to state that there is a limit? Truly a head-scratcher
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