IBM's Watson supercomputer crowned Jeopardy king. 17 February 2011Last updated at 09:13 Jeopardy! Champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter revealed what it felt like to "represent the human race" against IBM's supercomputer Watson. IBM's supercomputer Watson has trounced its two competitors in a televised show pitting human brains against computer bytes. After a three night marathon on the quiz show Jeopardy, Watson emerged victorious to win a $1million (£622,000) prize. The computer's competitors were two of the most successful players ever to have taken part in Jeopardy. But in the end their skill at the game was no match for Watson. Ken Jennings had previously notched up 74 consecutive wins on the show - the most ever - while Brad Rutter had won the most amount of money, $3million (£1.9m). "I for one welcome our new computer overlords," Mr Jennings wrote along with his correct final Jeopardy question.
Search for meaning But the victory for Watson and IBM was about more than money. IBM machines have previously taken on chess players Fair fight.
Matthew Moore - Truly extraordinary speech by fearless West Indian woman in face of #Hackney rioters. Pls watch. Swedish man tries to build nuclear reactor in kitchen. Do you see what I see? 8 August 2011Last updated at 11:31 Colour does not actually exist... what exists is light Roses are red, violets are blue - or are they? The colours you see may not always be the same as the colours someone else sees… as we see colour through our brains, not our eyes. Neuroscientist Beau Lotto explains.
Colour is one of our simplest sensations… even jellyfish detect light and they do not have a brain. And yet to explain lightness, and colour more generally, is to explain how and why we see what we do. The first thing to remember is that colour does not actually exist… at least not in any literal sense. What exists is light. The grey tiles on the left look blue, and the grey tiles on the right look yellow You can measure it, hold it and count it (well … sort-of). How do we know this? Here's another example.
Once you've convinced yourself that these tiles are all physically the same colour (because they are), look at the next image down. Colour memories Continue reading the main story. When suicide was illegal. 3 August 2011Last updated at 10:04 By Gerry Holt BBC News Up until 50 years ago suicide was a crime in England and Wales. But why were people prosecuted for attempted "self-murder" and how did things change? When police found Lionel Henry Churchill with a bullet wound in his forehead next to the partly-decomposed body of his wife it is hard to imagine the emotional turmoil he must have been in. He had tried but failed to take his own life in the bed of their Cheltenham home. Doctors said the 59-year-old needed medical treatment at a mental hospital, but magistrates disagreed.
In July 1958 he was sent to prison for six months after pleading guilty to attempted suicide. His story made just a few column inches in the Times, but in the newspaper's archives his tale is far from uncommon. Take out-of-work labourer Thomas McCarthy, 28, who "drank something bad" on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral after becoming depressed. Night-time burial Continue reading the main story Use of the word 'commit' How good software makes us stupid. 12 September 2010Last updated at 07:29 By Dave Lee BBC World Service London cab drivers must undertake a test on the city's streets before they can work, but Sat-Nav could make that knowledge unnecessary Imagine for a moment that you have thumbed a ride in one of London's iconic black cabs. "Where to, guv?
" he asks, in typical cockney-twang. You tell him. "No problem - let me just enter that into my sat-nav…" It sounds unnatural, almost deceitful, that any self-respecting London cabbie would ever utter those words. After all, a taxi driver's ability to know every twist and turn of the capital's streets is the stuff of legend. It's not optional - unless drivers pass a formidable test - called "The Knowledge" - they are not allowed to head out onto the roads in one of the iconic vehicles. "The particular part of our brain that stores mental images of space is actually quite enlarged in London cab drivers," explained Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. South Africa: 'Dead man' wakes up inside morgue. Is this a new tech bubble? 15 July 2011Last updated at 00:01 Viewpoint, by Julie Meyer Chief executive, Ariadne Capital Is it 1999 all over again?
Are we in a new tech bubble? Has the thrill of the new - social media and ubiquitous connectivity - erased our memory of the last tech bubble's burst just over a decade ago? The stock market flotation of LinkedIn and the excitement around the listing of social-buying website Groupon would seem to suggest that we have got carried away again with the idea of new business models that will change the world forever and create untold wealth in their wake. At the height of the dotcom boom some 12 years ago, every internet entrepreneur was a market disruptor, applying technology to make everything from entertainment to markets and services more efficient.
Those entrepreneurs were like David with a slingshot, out to slay the FTSE Goliaths: "Watch out established businesses. Dancing with disruptors HMV for one, is limping along with an outdated business model. Ecosystem economics. A visualization of US debt (credit card bill) stacked in 100 dollar bills. Royal honeymooners' 'erotic' Seychelles souvenir. The recently married Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were presented with an unusual souvenir by the Seychelles government after their honeymoon to the country - a rare and mysterious coconut famed for its erotic shape.
The forest groans, squeaks and rattles. Even a light breeze causes the giant fronds of the coco-de-mer trees to rub against one another with a sound like the creaking rigging of an old wooden schooner. Underfoot there is the loud crunching of huge dead leaves. Here in the Vallee de Mai, on Praslin, the Seychelles' second largest island, the dominant plant is the coco-de-mer palm tree.
I have visited the Vallee de Mai many times in the past 20 years, but each time I go I learn something new. This time I am accompanied by Dr Christopher Kaiser-Bunbury, an ecologist who studies the networks of life supported by the palms. "There's nowhere on earth like the Vallee de Mai," he enthused, as we stepped through the thick dry leaf litter.
"Look how the giant leaves blot out the sky above. Facebook is Dying - Social is Not. There is one question that I hear all the time. Is Facebook going to last, or is it just a fad? My answer is always the same. If you are trying to find an excuse for not doing “social,” then Facebook is here to stay. But, if you ask “is Facebook going to last?” Then the answer is no; it’s already dying. Let me explain. Facebook is like Microsoft Project 2003 If I had to compare Facebook to anything, I would say that it is turning into Microsoft Project 2003. Microsoft Project 2003 was *the* project management tool for any serious project manger. But that was what also caused its demise. So Microsoft Project 2003 destroyed itself. Same with Facebook Facebook is really big, it has a ton of features. To give you a few examples. We got profiles, groups, pages, and now also community pages - who all looks rather similar, but works quite differently.
We got inconsistencies in likes and comments. We are notified when someone post a comment on our profiles, but not on our pages. Community Pages. Www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/1071Bickford.pdf.