If only the Emperor somehow was able to save Padme as well, Darth Vader would have been a little less grumpy!
Meet Mr. and Mrs. Vader

If only the Emperor somehow was able to save Padme as well, Darth Vader would have been a little less grumpy!
Meet Mr. and Mrs. Vader

I just ran across this excellent video on YouTube. I suggest watching in 720P if your connection can handle it. This music video parody of “Somebody That I Used To Know” sums up the feelings of a good percentage of fans that grew up with Star Wars, including myself. Check it out! Direct link or embedded below
I ran across an article discussing the top 20 Starship Captains in Science Fiction. This was an interesting article for me because I haven’t seen quite a few of the shows the author was taking the captains from. Of course Star Wars and Start Trek are heavily represented.
In science fiction, the archetypal hero is the starship captain – doughty scientist-explorers setting off across the uncharted reaches of the cosmos in search of new life, new civilizations. You know the drill.
Check out the full article at the original site.
Tonight with my wife, I watched an interesting episode of Nova titled “The World’s Smartest Machine.” Romantic, right? You can tell we are a couple of geeks at heart. Being a huge fan of Asimov and his robot creations, I am continually amazed at the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence. As a kid I was playing chess as early as the 3rd grade. I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty good chess player. When I heard about a computer that supposedly could beat a world champion chess player, I was intrigued. Garry Kasparov battled IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer in 1996 and won, however he eventually lost a rematch in 1997. Well, IBM is back at it, this time taking on Jeopardy. Nova takes us behind the scenes with the developers of “Watson,” the next step in AI. I was disappointed when the episode ended and it didn’t say who won. I didn’t realize until logging on PBS.org that the contest actually was taking place while I was watching Nova (on my media center PC). After some frantic Google searches, I eventually came across a Twitter feed with a link to a Youtube posting of the episode. This was not quite 2 hours after the episode aired! Isn’t technology great? I expect the Youtube post to be served a DMCA take down, so watch it soon if you plan on it. In addition to the episode at the end of this post, I’ve embedded the Nova preview and an humorous parody of the challenges Watson overcame during his development. I suggest watching the Nova episode first. If you are at all interested in AI, you must check these out!
Watch the full episode. See more NOVA.
Jeopardy Robot Watson’s Untold Game Show History (VIDEO)
Jeopardy Feb. 14 2011 – Human vs Machine IBM Challenge Day 1 Part 1/2
Jeopardy Feb. 14 2011 – Human vs Machine IBM Challenge Day 1 Part 2/2
There are two more nights to the match, airing Tuesday February 15th, and Wednesday the 16th. Be sure to check them out, along with some live blogging on PBS.org. I find myself rooting for Watson, not because I want to see humans defeated, but because I want to see humans capable of making something smart enough to do it. Who do you think will win? Who do you want to win?