Monthly Archives: May 2005
Today’s Computers, Intelligent Machines and Our Future, Hans Moravec, Stanford AI Lab, 1978
This Article from 1978 about computers and artificial intelligence has a chart in it which compares the computational power of a pocket calculator, a sponge (alive), a Cray and a sperm whale. Apart from that, I have to admit, it’s … Continue reading
I am very busy, but somehow not busy enough
I was reading the very excellent magazine “Cabinet” and came across a link to something that I can only describe as marvy. It’s An Illustrated Timeline of Desktop Computer Icons. There, I’ve said it, now you know.
You can often tell what someone is like from the company they keep
And here’s a great example. The oppressive, torturing, murdering regime in Uzbekistan has some very powerful supporters. What’s particularly ironic is that those same supporters very recently killed thousands of civilians while removing a similarly obnoxious regime in Iraq. BBC … Continue reading
The film US TV networks dare not show
The attitudes that people in the US have towards ‘terrorism’ at the moment wouldn’t seem out of place in an episode of Star Trek. Ask most Americans about their enemy in the ‘war on terror’ and they will have at … Continue reading
Heads behaving badly
So, British headteachers think that it’s acceptable to boo and hiss at anyone who says something they don’t like. An education minister has been booed and hissed by head teachers as he tried to defend school league tables. Delegates at … Continue reading
Passover
I find some parts of the old Testament very alarming; those descriptions of mass murder, ethnic cleansing and the cold hearted destruction of entire cities remind me of Nazi crimes during the second world war. One of the most horrifying … Continue reading