Baumblog EST 1968 - A blog for the Baumbachs who originated in Syracuse, NY


	Posts created by Marc

Want to see light animated?
posted by Marc on December 13, 2011 @ 3:38PM

This is a cool article about an MIT project that uses some trick photography to essentially get a slow motion video of light being projected onto an object. Good (and light!) read.

5 comments | Tags: video, science

Halloween House Competition
posted by Marc on October 25, 2011 @ 4:16PM

You guys have some competition this year:

13 comments | Tags: video, holidays

Kung Fu Volleyball..err soccer, wait no, hackey sack
posted by Marc on August 11, 2011 @ 12:57PM

6 comments | Tags: sports, video, awesome

Papua New Guinea tribe meets white man for first time
posted by Marc on June 24, 2011 @ 12:25PM

Really amazing video of a Papua New Guinea tribe meeting white men for the first time:

1 comment | Tags: video, awesome

Windows 8
posted by Marc on June 1, 2011 @ 7:33PM

You may notice my "funny" tag. This is because I hope this is a joke. Anyway, here's the next gen version of Microsoft Windows.

8 comments | Tags: video, funny

Marc said 3 minutes later

This might be a hit in the tablet world, but for anyone who is any bit like a power user is likely going to hate this in the desktop/laptop world. Also, this will sufficiently piss off developers (At least the ones trying to maintain a product).
GJ said about 2 hours later

I gave up developing Windows apps back in 1998, and haven't looked back.
GJ said about 2 hours later

Oh, and as a power user, I despise Vista and Windows 7. I have no expectations that Windows 8 will be any better. I toyed with Linux on and off for a few years, and given the fact that I play next to no modern Windows-only games anyhow, we're definitely moving the desktop rigs to Linux in another year or two. Darcy's Win 7 laptop will stay Win 7 as long as she can stand it. :)
Geoff said about 2 hours later

Yeah this is totally for tablets (basically a desktop version of their phone it appears). I don't think it is terrible for casual PC users (Internet, Email, Games)...I think most OS's (be it Windows or Mac) are overkill for the average user. Something like this simplified experience is more than enough for those people. Of course, all they really need is an iPad (with Flash). Obviously, this doesn't work for folks like us, though a simplified experience to get at Applications is really all I need. I think Desktop's are going the way of the dinosaur, so it is actually a little refreshing to see something like this used for OS's, but I disagree wholeheartedly about Icons. I'm sorry, but a well executed icon can speak volumes far quicker than boxes of text. Especially when you have a lot of information to display, icons are still king (at least for us dinosaurs).

Sure the temperature outside is one scenario that supports their claim, but give me a break, how important is the damn weather on your computer. You going to explain a spreadsheet in your little box? How about a Word Document? A Video game? Give me a break. All of those can be accomplished with Icons and leaves boxes in the dust (since a box won't be big enough to describe those).

I thought that is why they came up with Widgets and Gadgets. Far better execution (Widgets on the Mac of course).

Again, good for tablet devices. Not for workstations.
Marc said about 3 hours later

Yea, Geoff I completely agree. Apple, IMO, is doing it right with their operating systems. They have the iOS for phones and the iPad which works very effectively there. Their Mac OS X features still feel very natural on the desktop and they are taking some of the great parts of the iPad and integrating it into their next desktop version. The desktop is still a very different use for nearly every person, but I think the idea of a laptop for just chilling on the couch with is gone and the tablet is finally filling that role. Trying to use the same OS for two very different things is stretching things a bit too far.

But I totally agree on the desktop thing. They aren't going to disappear for the people who literally live on the computer, but certainly the average user could get by at home with something like an iPad.

Personally when I saw the Microsoft Kin phone which first introduced this horribly ugly design, I thought it would fail and it did tremendously. Windows Phone 7 kept a very similar interface and it's doing only slightly better than the Kin (iOS and Android are blowing it out of the water). So even if Microsoft is seeing tablets as the next big thing in computers and Windows 8 is their solution, I don't think they'll end up winning this battle. iOS and even Android both own this market pretty well and people just like and understand their interfaces so much more.
GJ said about 14 hours later

Microsoft isn't winning any battles of late, which is why shareholders are demanding Ballmer's head. Not surprisingly, they want Gates to come out of retirement.
Marc said about 15 hours later

Unfortunately I don't think Gates would have the same successful return that Jobs had. Mostly because people are interested in innovation nowadays and copycats of any kind tend to struggle. Gates is better off with his foundation, which is actually a really good use of his time (and more importantly money).
GJ said about 17 hours later

Whoever they bring in needs to give Microsoft an identity. They don't really have one, beyond the guys that maintain the service packs for Windows XP.

British Animal Voiceovers
posted by Marc on April 21, 2011 @ 12:43PM

3 comments | Tags: video, funny, animals

Gmail Motion
posted by Marc on April 1, 2011 @ 1:58PM

5 comments | Tags: video, funny

GOAL! Wait....what?
posted by Marc on March 23, 2011 @ 2:17PM

I don't know what hockey god this goalie prays to, but I need to find out.

4 comments | Tags: hockey, video, funny

Man vs. Machine...again
posted by Marc on February 14, 2011 @ 10:38AM

IBM proved they could beat a chess champion, but they're at it again (read: They spent my bonus on another toy!)

Starting tonight, and for the two following nights, IBM is pitting their supercomputer, Watson, against the two greatest Jeopardy! champions. Will machine prevail, or will it blue screen of death? Either way, it should be entertaining. For more information and some videos of Watson in action, check out the Jeopardy! website.

Predictions?

14 comments | Tags: computers, television

Geoff said about 8 hours later

My bet is on Watson. Seeing as they specifically designed it for Jeopardy...though I agree, I wish they spent their money on a machine that could balance our budget or something actually useful. I'm sure they've learned a few useful things from this process though. Interesting to say the least.
Geoff said about 8 hours later

Just caught the last 15 minutes of the first episode tonight. While Watson had a quirk with repeating the same wrong answer as the first contestant, I gotta say it's pretty cool to see a machine up there answering questions like a regular person. I don't think machine takeover is coming anytime soon, but I think I'd like a Watson upgrade sometime. Cyborg here we come!
Geoff said 1 day later

Watson wins...big
Marc said 1 day later

Yea, I don't suspect the humans will recover from that loss. Even if one of them gets on a huge winning streak, Watson isn't gonna stop playing well.

To me it seemed like the humans had a tough time beating Watson to the buzzer and I'm still not convinced that whatever they rigged up to make that portion more fair, was not fair enough. Ken Jennings seemed to be pretty upset every question cause he couldn't beat Watson on the buzzer. It seemed like the only way they beat him was if Watson decided to not buzz in for that question.

I did like Watson's one response: "What is leg?" That's gonna be my go-to answer during any game where I don't know the answer. :)
Geoff said 2 days later

hahaha. Yeah the reflex thing is a tough thing to overcome when competing against machines. They don't have a finger to press the trigger button. Not sure how that whole parts works to be honest...I assume you can't ring in until Alex finishes the question? Does seem unfair if the machine is sent a signal to indicate it can answer a question...even if they do put some form of random delay to compensate...dunno. In any case, chock one up for the mean machine team.
Marc said 2 days later

According to IBM and Jeopardy, there's no advantage: http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-watson-sees-hears-and-speaks-to.html

Interestingly enough, Ken Jennings disagrees and even said so on Twitter today: http://twitter.com/#!/KenJennings/status/37504762047897601

"@PatKiernan IBM says: no buzzer advantage for the computer. In practice, the humans tend to disagree."
GJ said 2 days later

I watched. Wasn't too impressed. The "answers" Watson was coming up with looked one heck of a lot like what I would have gotten with a GIS. I'm betting this is simply a highly optimized search tool that specializes in the type of trivia seen in Jeopardy.

Meh, I think I respect Deep Blue a whole lot more after this. :)
Geoff said 4 days later

I disagree...these aren't simple questions that are asked. They use slang, metaphors, etc. Though, it is a bit ridiculous that it required an entire building to ascertain the answer...though nothing out of the ordinary since our first computers were the size of buildings practically. In due time this will be seen as a stepping stone to intelligent computer systems. I imagine the Curator from the Movie "The Time Machine"
GJ said 4 days later

You disagree with what, exactly?
Steve said 8 days later

Sorry, a bit late on this, but as avid Jeopardy watchers, Parsla and I caught both episodes. The first show, Watson blew the guys away. The second show, I have to believe, something was changed, as Ken was able to buzz in a LOT more, and Watson seemed to get a lot more questions wrong. I'm betting two things - after the first show, a change was made to Watson's response time, allowing the humans more time to ring in. Second, I bet the people writing the answers for the show made saw how the computer worked the first time, and rewrote the answers to make it harder for the computer to get the questions right.

They did talk about a potential use in the medical industry to help diagnose diseases, but based on the performance the second night, it seems like it could easily be screwed up by human input.
Marc said 8 days later

Obviously we can't know for sure, but one of the reasons Watson faltered a bit more on the second game was that some of the answers were a lot shorter, which left Watson little to work with and, more importantly, less time to figure out what the correct response is. That short period of time gave Ken more time to buzz in. You also probably noticed Watson just wasn't as sure about the answers this time around, so in some cases it didn't even buzz in since it never hit the confidence threshold.

According to everybody involved (Jeopardy, IBM, and the humans), the answers were actually taken from their normal database of potentials. They only removed video and audio clues since Watson was deaf and blind, and even dumb at times!

I definitely think that it unfortunately came down to a buzzer game which Ken even said that most Jeopardy games do. Obviously the computer has a major advantage here and no matter how you cut it, there's not a decent solution to this problem.

I do think there's some decent technology behind this, but I'm with GJ, Deep Blue was much more impressive computer feat at the time. I think this technology could easily be used to replace a lot of customer support lines if combined with decent voice recognition software.
Steve said 8 days later

Wait, Watson was deaf? So he was fed the answers electronically? That's no fair. We know computers can read text way faster than humans. No wonder he always beat the humans to the buzzer, he knew the question before the Alex had even finished reading the answer.
Marc said 8 days later

Watson was fed the answers via a direct connection in plain text at the same time it would become visible to the humans retina. Which on the surface seems unfair, but in reality this may actually be pretty fair.

Most humans playing Jeopardy quickly scan the text looking for keywords and decide whether their confidence is pretty high they'll know the answer. Then they prepare to buzz in and take the 5 seconds after buzzing (and any other extra time they may have after scanning) to figure out the answer.

Since Watson is a ridiculous computer, his time to process is often much faster than a human, however he doesn't have that ability to intuitively know what words may be important just by looking at its structure. This is the part of Jeopardy that determines if your a champion vs. a chump. Watson on the other hand has to try to take the whole answer and make some sense of it. Most humans probably can scan, pick a couple words and be pretty confident of an answer.

I would expect a v2.0 version of Watson to act more like a typical contestant, but I don't think this gave him a big advantage if any, and certainly nothing compared to the advantage he had on the buzzer.
Geoff said 9 days later

well I guess I'm alone in being impressed. Maybe it was the cool brain animation, or maybe deep down, I really envy the machines. I thought it was pretty freaking cool to see the machine up there competing. This will surely make it to the "Mechanica Bible" 300 years from now and will server as inspiration to all machinelings.

It's a small world after all!
posted by Marc on February 8, 2011 @ 3:54PM

No, this isn't a link to the song (sorry Steve), it's even cooler! Sometimes just hearing about how big the universe is can be awesome, but visualizing it is even better.

2 comments | Tags: pictures, science


	1 2 3 4 … 12 Next page

Username:
Password:
Remember me