Happy Birthday IBM!

Happy Centennial Big Blue!

Thank you for the ff:
-The Personal Computer
-RAM
-Hard Drives
-Lasek
-Online shopping

And for some of the best designed laptops ever (yes, over and above my Macbook Pro)

*This was my first laptop, and I still consider it the best design to date!*

Challenge IBM's Watson

Think you can beat Watson? 

Give it a shot with this interactive trivia game!

NYT IBM Watson Trivia Challenge

Congratulations Skyne...er... Watson!!!

Another small step towards the singularity, IBM's Watson has bested 2 of Jeopardy's all-time champions.  Although personally, I feel that buzzer reflexes played a bigger part of the game... and towards the end, Ken and Brad figured out the latency of Watson's clicking abilities.  This is a huge hurdle in technology.  The fundamental patterns for learning (with Deep Blue) and now, for cognitive thinking have been mapped.

The ability for computers to now learn from experience has now been set in motion.  I can now see people around the world heralding this as both the beginning and the end.  Perhaps so... but it doesn't always have to signal a giant fiery ball of death or some great war.

The Jeopardy match was actually fun to watch.  Specially when Watson gets something wrong, or isn't sure... it's REALLY wrong.

So, ya... apparently Toronto is now a U.S. City.

I think the next step for Watson is to have a Facebook page, solely managed by it.

And the cool thing about all this?  Look who visited my blog as well!!!

Now, I don't know if this is someone from IBM, (or actually Watson just Googling itself...hahahaha)

If it was someone at IBM, congratulations!!!

If it was Watson,

01000011 01101111 01101110 01100111 01110010 01100001 01110100 01110101 01101100 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 01110011 00100001

Watson's TV Debut!

I was wondering when this would actually take place.  I think it's great that the same rules apply to Watson... no Internet connection... can't call Google for help... can't wait to see the next few days!

Day-1 of the IBM Watson / Jeopardy! Challenge

Hard Up: An SSD Hard Drive Upgrade

Patient: A 2003 IBM X31 1.4 GHz Thinkpad

Procedure: Transcend SSD upgrade

I've had my IBM X31 for a few years now.  It was one of the many ultraportables I've owned.  The first being the famous "Butterfly" Thinkpad (701C).  For something that's going on 6 years, it has fairly decent specs: 1.4 GHz CPU, 12.1" LCD, 3 lbs, ATi video card, Bluetooth, Wifi, PC card slot.  Nothing impressive by today's standards... but the fact that it can still hold up to entry level machines today after 6 years says a lot.

The only thing that was showing signs of aging was the tiny 40GB HDD.

So I decided to try and see if the new SSD (Solid State Drives) would extend it's useful life even further.

Procedure was simple enough, Thinkpads are fairly easy to upgrade due to their modular construction, access to internal components is easy.

1) Clone your original drive using back-up software if you have no intentions of doing a clean install.  I use Acronis True Image.

2) Get all your parts ready, screwdriver, SSD, USB CD-Drive, external HDD

3) SSDs are more sensitive to static discharge so don't forget your grounding band.  You can just touch a large metal object to drain your body's static electricity or wear a ground band on your wrist.  Or my preferred method: ESD footwear (Also useful in dry climates to eliminate static shock when you open car doors)

4) Swap out your original drive, then install the new SSD

5) Restore the back-up image to the new drive

6) Boot up

Now, I only did a restore of my original IBM setup.  This includes all the original IBM software that came with my Thinkpad out of the factory.  You may do a clean install of Windows if you want as well.

Noticeable improvements:

• Startup-Shutdown times is under 30 seconds
• Webpage loading is significantly faster
• Battery Life extended by 40%

Additional benefits:

• Shock resistance.  SSDs do not have moving parts (like an iPad and the new Macbook Air) so you can use it on the move, and makes your system immune to extreme vibration.
• Slight reduction in weight.  SSDs are far lighter than traditional spinning drives so you save a few grams.

Now a few minuses:

• SSDs offer significant speed increases in most areas, but create DECREASES is performance in others.  For those in A/V production, SSDs offer much slower read/write real-world performance than current performance drives.  This is due to the fact that SSDs have to erase data before writing new data...ALL THE TIME.  Even over empty sectors of the drive.
• Current OSes aren't fully optimized for SSDs and some optimization settings can cause significant lag.  Swap files, temp files, and prefetching all cause really bad system lag.  These must be disabled when upgrading to an SSD.  Easiest way to do this is to run SSD Tweaker

How big a deal are SSDs?  Well, right now, 50/50.  For everyday computer tasks like surfing, word processing, and e-mail it is a big deal.  For large files, you might still be better off with a traditional platter drive.

**Hallo, ich lerne Deutsch und ich kann ein paar Fragen zu beantworten.
Je parle un peu français aussi. Je peux répondre à des questions sur mes messages.**

Memory Lane

In case you were wondering what all this fuss is about SSD (Solid State Drives) is about, the basics of how your computer stores information is needed.

A computer hard drive is where all your information, programs, pictures, music, software, and other things are stored.  Think of it like a warehouse.

Up until recently, these are commonly spinning disks.  Much like a music record (vinyl).  With a controller arm (like the needle of a record player).  Just like a record player, a hard drive is sensitive to physical shock, bumps, jolts, drops, etc... specially when in use, like when you're playing a video, music, or using a program.

If the hard drive is spinning and you hit, bump, or drop your computer, the controller arm may hit the spinning disk and damage data, and most likely the physical disk as well.  Like a needle scratching a record if hit during playback.

Over the years, hard drive manufacturers have added special systems that can detect if the disk is falling and moves the controller arm away from the spinning disk to prevent any physical damage.  Think of it like an airbag or parachute for the hard drive.  But this is still a mechanical system, subject to physical damage and failure.

Enter the SSD, or Solid State Drive.  These are memory chips that replace the spinning platter and moving parts of a traditional hard drive.  The technology of SSD is not new, but only recently has it been made affordable (well, that's relative) to the general public.

Essentially, modern day computers are built around economic compromise.  You may notice that computer ads boast about several types of memory (Cache, RAM, HDD, VRAM, etc)  Some numbers are smaller (KB, MB) and others larger (GB, TB).  The reason for having so many types of memory is simply cost.

If the whole computer ran on the best, and fastest type of memory available, computers would cost several thousands of US$ more than they do today.

Each type of memory decreases in speed and cost... the slower the memory, the lower the price and more storage can be given to the consumer.  Current hard drives can hold 1000x more data than   So cost for current hard drives was 1/1000 of previous memory chips.  With the introduction of SSDs, that gap has been decreased to about 1/20.  Still way more expensive than traditional hard drives, but offer a significant speed increase in system performance.

What computer manufacturers don't tell you is that usually, the reason you 'old' laptop feels slower than a model that is just a few months newer, is usually just a few upgrades that can be done to bring your aging laptop to a respectable speed once again.  It won't make up for newer technologies, but it will make laptops that are a few years old, usable again and practical to keep.

My upcoming entry will be on upgrading and updating my trusty IBM Thinkpad X31 to as close to modern specs as possible.  This means 2 simple hardware upgrades: maximum RAM, and an SSD upgrade.  That's coming up tomorrow!

Elementary, my dear Watson

A phrase mistakenly credited to the fictional character Sherlock Holmes... may now be given a new meaning by the blue boys at IBM.

"Watson", is the next generation of 'Deep' AI computers from IBM, creators of Deep Blue, the first AI computer to successfully beat World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

Watson's task is to compete (and eventually beat) the World's best Jeopardy champions.

Now, most people might be thinking that chess is a more difficult game than Jeopardy, considering that a computer can access all the information that it could need to compete in Jeopardy.  True... but access to information isn't the goal of Watson.

It's understanding human language.  For those of you who have been using voice-recog apps, you know how frustrating this can be...even through Google's network, it doesn't quite understand simple queries.  And usually, only key-word speech is understood well.

Unlike Deep Blue that had a human operator tell it what moves Kasparov made, and in return Deep Blue told it's human operator what moves to make in return, Watson will have to listen, understand, buzz in (yes, buzz-in), and give the correct question (using the proper syntax) in order to be awarded the points.

The fact that Watson has to listen, buzz, and speak is a big step forward for computer evolution since it effectively makes the machine adapt to the human, rather than the other way around like typing, gesturing, clicking, swiping, etc.

Consider what this means in principle.  Currently, when we do a search, we are presented with hundreds of thousands of results.  In the end, we still have to sort through it all and select the answer that is relevant to our search.  Ask.com (or Ask Jeeves for those that reached him) was the first crude attempt at automated language comprehension.  Although not much more than a keyword analyzer, it was an important step in computer-human interaction.

In Jeopardy, Watson will have to understand the topic, then the Jeopardy answer, before sorting through all its information, then giving its final response.  And take note, even for humans, recognizing context isn't as easy as it looks... hehehehe...