Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Tag: computer

  • TED Talk: Jennings v Watson

    Deep Blue versus Kasparov was an pivotal moment for me. At the time I was playing lots of chess on the computer. (And usually losing.) So the prospect the best player in the world cannot beat a computer was a depressing prospect.  Maybe it is a sign of how much I had matured (or immatured)…

  • Context Menu

    Almost everyone using a computer to access the Internet uses the left click on a link to go to its location. Exceptions might be left handers who switch the buttons on a mouse, those using screen readers, or similar small niche users of the Internet. I tend to multi-task, so I will scan a page…

  • Happy 100th Birthday Alan Turing!

    Alan Turing was born today one hundred years ago. WIRED UK has a couple pretty good post on his legacy and timeline. I wonder what he would think about computers today? Especially the idea that his Turing machine lets us play Words With Friends or chat with someone near instantly on the opposite side of the planet.

  • TED Talk: The power of introverts

    I to really need to pick up Susan Cain’s book Quiet. I watched her talk at Leading@Google a couple weeks ago because I could not find her TED. Now the TED is available. My family very much was the one where we would hang out together reading. I’ve always been the one to hang back and watch…

  • Ctrl+F

    From Crazy: 90 Percent of People Don’t Know How to Use CTRL+F: This week, I talked with Dan Russell, a search anthropologist at Google, about the time he spends with random people studying how they search for stuff. One statistic blew my mind. 90 percent of people in their studies don’t know how to use…

  • TED Talk: How Kids Teach Themselves

    Find it amazing children who have never been exposed English can learn it from a kiosk with just 1980-90s computer games made available to them. That the kids worked in groups appears to enhance the effect was also pretty interesting. One child would operate with 3 advising and all 4 would test the same, so…

  • TED Talk: We Are All Cyborgs

    Technology is evolving us, says Amber Case, as we become a screen-staring, button-clicking new version of homo sapiens. We now rely on “external brains” (cell phones and computers) to communicate, remember, even live out secondary lives. But will these machines ultimately connect or conquer us? Case offers surprising insight into our cyborg selves.

  • Linux Adventure Part 1

    For about a week now I’ve been without my personal laptop as anything much more than a brick. I think tonight I am going to copy off the pictures and other important information to my desktop. From there, anything I do to make the situation worse will no longer matter as much. Monday night, I…

  • First Edition AWK

    When I first started in IT at Valdosta State, my boss had The AWK Programming Language. My initial dabbling with awk was based on the guidance of this book. I am impressed Amazon has the book in stock. I am impressed the sale price is over $70 (3 pages / $1 while typical is >10…