Uncovering Star Trek's Lost Series: Phase 2

Wow.  This explains a lot.

A Star Dies

Obituary: Doris Day, America's archetypal girl next door

Big fan here, of her movies and her music. This day was inevitable, but...

Below is a link to the last post I did about her. At the end of it, are links to other posts I made about her.

Doris, we won't forget...

Doris Day's New Album: "My Heart"

     

Goodby Mr. Spock

Or goodbye Leonard Nimoy, actually:



Leonard Nimoy, Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 83

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83.

His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Mr. Nimoy announced that he had the disease last year, attributing it to years of smoking, a habit he had given up three decades earlier. He had been hospitalized earlier in the week.

His artistic pursuits — poetry, photography and music in addition to acting — ranged far beyond the United Federation of Planets, but it was as Mr. Spock that Mr. Nimoy became a folk hero, bringing to life one of the most indelible characters of the last half century: a cerebral, unflappable, pointy-eared Vulcan with a signature salute and blessing: “Live long and prosper” (from the Vulcan “Dif-tor heh smusma”). [...]

He was a man of many talents. He had a Master's degree in Spanish that he earned in his 40's, among many other accomplishments. Follow the link for photos, video and more.

     

"Forbes" Reviews Detective Show

I saw this on the Forbes website:

How HBO's 'True Detective' Will Change The Way You Watch Television

HBO’s new Sunday night drama True Detective is really, really good. It’s also potentially revolutionary.

The moody crime drama starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey examines a grisly Louisiana murder through the eyes of the detectives who handled the case. Some reviewers are comparing it to The Wire–which makes most short lists for the Greatest Series Ever–although a more apt comparison may be an earlier David Simon work, the more stylized Homicide: Life on The Street. In any case, this show is well worth watching (and worth discussing, as we’ll do in weeks to come.) [...]

It sounds like it could be good. But I don't get HBO. Maybe it will come out on Netflix eventually?
     

The Weird Ways TV Changed in just 7 Years

5 Ways Television Went Crazy Since I Quit Watching in 2003

Sometime in early 2003, I gave up television. It wasn't some conscious decision to try to become a more productive person or anything of the sort. I just found that the remote had become just an extra unused object on my computer desk that got in the way of my mouse, like job applications and intervention letters.

But eventually, you find that without it you miss out on a lot of social interactions, especially at work. Over seven years, I had a lot of moments that went like this:

"Did you see Family Guy last night?"

"No, I don't have TV. Do you play World of Warcraft?"

"No, I have sex."

So I decided to buy cable again, and let me tell you that after seven years without seeing a single episode of anything except by accident, I found myself feeling like a time traveler in a world where everything had gone just a bit insane.

It turns out that in the last seven years... [...]

His observations are spot-on. Nice to know I'm not the only one that thinks modern TV viewing fare has become... Bizarre and Freaky!

     

A $100 Google TV box?

It's in the works:

Chinese OEM plans sub-$100 Google TV box

There is still hope for the future of Google TV.

A Chinese company called Hisense is working on a new set-top box featuring the search giant's operating system for the living room, and plans to launch it in the US market for less than $100.

It comes on the heels of Vizio's "Co-Star," a competing Google TV box that has been doing notably well in the market since its launch earlier this summer.

"Hisense adds even more innovation to the growing list of Google TV-powered devices available around the world. We're working closely with partners like Hisense to bring services from Google and multiple other providers to your TV with an experience tailored for the living room," said Google TV partner manager Mickey Kim in a statement.

Google TV has had a mixed history. It garnered a lot of attention in 2009 when its partnership with Sony was unveiled, but it was a huge commercial flop because of the high cost of entry and very limited feature set.

The platform effectively relaunched this summer, though, and it is starting to gain steam agin. [...]

     

Using physical, mental and social skills all help keep mind and memory sharp

For a Healthy Aging Brain, 'Use It or Lose It'
Social, Mental, and Physical Engagements Help Maintain Memory

[...] Although some memory decline is inevitable with age, the research now shows this decline to be highly variable from person to person.

Imaging studies also confirm that the brains of older people with no evidence of memory loss more closely resemble those of much younger people than their memory-impaired contemporaries.

This suggests that avoiding the changes linked to memory decline, rather than trying to "fix" declines that already exist, may be the key to successful aging, the researchers write.

"There is quite solid evidence that staying physically and mentally active is a way toward brain maintenance," says researcher and Umea University professor of neuroscience Lars Nyberg.

This "use it or lose it" message is not new, but the review highlights a shift in thinking about brain health in the elderly, says Pepperdine University psychology professor Louis Cozolino, PhD, who in 2008 published the book, The Healthy Aging Brain: Sustaining Attachment, Attaining Wisdom.

"The brain is a very complex organ, with many different systems," he tells WebMD. "Some of these systems start to decline in the third or fourth decade of life and others actually function better with age."
Engage Socially and Physically

Although our genes certainly play a role in how our brains age, it is now clear that our social interactions do, too, especially new interactions, Cozolino says.

"Social relationships stimulate the neurochemistry of the brain to help it stay healthy," he says. "One formula for sustained brain health is continuing to engage in social adaptation."

On the other hand, social isolation can cause accelerated brain aging, he says.

"If you want your brain to deteriorate, just watch TV all day and don't do anything else."

Garrett, who almost never watches television, agrees.

"There are two kinds of people -- those who walk into a room and turn the television on and those who walk into a room and turn it off," he says. "I turn it off."

Though Garrett certainly has good genes -- his mother lived independently until two years before her death at age 96 -- his days also include lots of social interaction. [...]

I can find too much social interaction tiring. But I find too much TV tiring, too. I like to read and study, which I'm sure also helps keep the brain sharp. I suppose there is a balance to be found, that's just right for each person. But I suppose it still comes down to the wise old adage, "use it or lose it".
     

"Watson" won. But did it really?

A database dishing up answers can be quick, but just how intelligent is it?

Computer finishes off human opponents on 'Jeopardy!'

(CNN) -- Start the "computers are conquering the world" jokes now. "Jeopardy!" master Ken Jennings already has.

The IBM supercomputer Watson won its second "Jeopardy!" game in Wednesday's edition of the TV show, completing a sweep of its two human opponents, including Jennings, who acknowledged mankind's trivia inferiority before the match was even over.

"I for one welcome our new computer overlords," Jennings wrote under his correct Final Jeopardy! solution, prompting laughter from the studio audience.

Watson -- despite being far from perfect -- was too far ahead in the two-game match to be caught. It beat Jennings and fellow "Jeopardy!" champion Brad Rutter, earning $41,413 for the day and $77,147 for the two-game total.

Jennings, who led for a good portion of the second game before succumbing to a late string of correct Watson answers, ended the game ($19,200) and match ($24,000) in second place.

The "IBM Challenge" match was spread over three days, with the first game taking two days so that host Alex Trebek could take time explaining what Watson is.

A massive machine represented at the studio by a tablet-like avatar, Watson was in development for years and has the processing power of 2,800 "powerful computers." IBM trumpets Watson as a machine that can rival a human's ability to answer questions posed in natural human language.

For the games, the computer -- stored in a separate building in New York -- received clues through digital texts and buzzed in against the two other contestants like any other player would. [...]

It made some mistakes, but not many. The example they gave wasn't a question I would have been able to answer, either. Watson won a million dollars, which IBM will donate to charity.

It did so well, I doubt it has a future on Jeopardy. The winner would be a forgone conclusion. But that may have more to do with the question format of the show, than any real intelligence on the part of the machine.

Is calling it "Artificial Intelligence" too much? That depends on how you define the phrase. IBM calls Waston a "Question Answering System". If you look at some of the Videos on Youtube, you can see that it went through quite a bit of training before it was ready to compete on Jeopardy; it was prone to breakdowns where it would start getting everything wrong. Perhaps it's really more of a victory for voice recognition and database retrieval?

This article goes into more detail about Watson's weaknesses:

Why Watson's win doesn't make humanity obsolete -- yet

(CNN) -- Well humans, it's been a good ride, but after being eviscerated by IBM's supercomputer Watson on "Jeopardy!," it's probably time to pack up the truck and let the machines inherit the Earth.

Or is it?

Despite Watson's tremendous performance, the Final Jeopardy question at the end of Tuesday night's airing revealed the Achilles' heel that computer scientists have known all along: Watson doesn't really "think" anything, and it struggles with simple questions that most humans can answer without a second thought.

Most of the clues on the "Jeopardy" board mention proper nouns -- specific places, events, people, songs, books and so on, says Dr. Douglas Lenat, a machine learning pioneer, former Stanford professor of computer science and CEO of Cycorp, a company that develops semantic technologies.

"This gives the Watson algorithm a great deal of 'traction.' To us viewing the show, it's impressive if it correctly knows that Franz Schubert's birth date was January 31, 1797. But if that date had been part of the clue, could Watson correctly pick out [Schubert's] maternal grandmother's birth date from a list where only one of the dates was earlier than 1797?"

We could, because we understand that everyone is younger than their own mother and grandmother, but Watson is unable to understand this, Lenat explained.

At the end of the day, Watson is not really conceptualizing a clue's meaning. It simply number-crunches its way to the right answers by comparing vast amounts of data. This is why it dominates the "fill in the blank" knowledge clues (Aeolic, spoken in ancient times, was a dialect of this), but falters on some more "common sense" deductions.

The biggest blunder was in the first game's Final Jeopardy round. [...]

It goes on with more examples of Watson's limitations. Then goes on to describe how the technology could be applied, as a useful tool.

What people call "Artificial Intelligence" (or A.I.) is really just programing that compares data, and mimics human intelligence. Some programs can even "learn" in a limited capacity, but all lack the depths and subtleties of a real living, intelligent consciousness. But it is an interesting, budding technology that will continue to grow and find new uses, as tools and entertainment.

I like the spin IBM put on the victory:

Humans win!

The challenge is over. Watson, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter concluded their final round of Jeopardy! and the winner was… resoundingly, humankind. Watson’s advances in deep analytics and its ability to process unstructured data and interpret natural language will now be applied to humanity’s most vexing problems. If we can teach a computer to compete on Jeopardy! what could it mean for science, finance, healthcare and the future of society?

Watch the video and see how Watson has the potential to transform industries. [...]

The video is interesting. It shows how, for some questions, the humans were able to think of the answers more quickly than Watson could. Watson also got some wrong answers. And if it hadn't been lucky enough to get a "Daily Double" question, perhaps it would not have won the tournament. So it was really a bit of a close call.

I recommend watching the video. It shows how that, while Watson may seem to formulate answers like it's human competitors, it actually uses very different processes to get those answers. And questions with multiple components can slow it down or stump it. Still, it's fascinating to see how it works, it has all sorts of possibilities for future utilization. The way it sorts through data to find answers, combined with voice recognition and speech, make it a tool with great potential. For Watson and the team that build it, this is only the beginning.


Also see:

Ultra HAL, your personal computer assistant

Ultra Hal: His "Second Life" is really his first one

I have a new favorite Sci-Fi AI: "GERTY"

When ALICE met Jabberwacky
     

Favorite TV shows of the Left and Right

What does it mean? You decide:

Leftists like TV "shows about damaged people"
Follow the link for a list of the favorite shows of both Republicans and Democrats.