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IBM

Submission + - IBM creates question-answering algorithm (nytimes.com)

religious freak writes: IBM has created and made the question answering algorithm, Watson, available online. Watson has competed in and won a majority of (mock) matches against humans in Jeopardy. Watson does not connect to the Internet to answer his questions and seeks answers using many different algorithms then employs a ranking algorithm to choose the best answer. Click on 'original source' below to try your luck against Watson.

Comment Re:Bad title (Score 2, Funny) 105

Agreed. My first thought after reading the title was a large network of machines making microsecond stock purchases and sales with other machines, hoping that its algorithms are good enough to turn a profit. Some senior British official proposed a small fee per stock transaction to prevent that from happening, claiming that it would hurt the "buy and hold" stock purchasers, but I hadn't heard anything for a while. Samsonite? I was way off!

Comment You game on Fedora? (Score 1) 160

As a PC owner with a polarized projector setup, I'm mush more interested in ATI's Catalyst 10.3 coming out in March that will have 3D support in the stereoscopic sense. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/catalyst-eyefinity-radeon,2559-2.html (Yes, I know it's offtopic. It still makes me giddy and I don't have anyone else to tell.)

Comment Re:How I beat my own addiction (Score 1) 59

A few years ago, I started masturbating, well I must admit that I was instantly hooked-up. I spent the next 3 years masturbating hardcore, and became very good at it. Eventually, I managed to become quite skilled and could go for hours at a time. I was very successfull in masturbating... That was until I lost everything, when my -ahem- was blown by a woman and I realized it fely way, way better. In a heartbeat, I lost everything I had, everything I spent time for. I realised that it took only a second to destroy three entire years of efforts. I finally "woke up", stopped masturbating and never touched it again. Peoples need to understand that masturbating is just that - it doesnt result in anything - the only real thing is the time and commitment one can spend on masturbating.

Comment Re:Watching TV vs. Playing Video Games (Score 1) 59

Maybe concentrating on a task that requires hand-eye coordination and lots of thought for more than 2 hours at a time is not healthy.

Um, isn't that what most /. readers do for employment? Except they do it 8 hours a day.

I know I always feel queasy if I've been playing an action game for that amount of time.

Motion sickness when playing 3D games is common; I would hope that you wouldn't suggest that travel by car, ship, or boat is unhealthy because they cause motion sickness.

Comment I predict... (Score 3, Insightful) 361

Assuming technology exists to accelerate space ships to interplanetarily practical speeds, what's to stop warring planets from accelerating an asteroid in the same way and in the direction of the enemy planet? Or take that acceleration technique and speed up some ball bearings to ridiculous speeds and send them on their way towards something with a predictable position like a space station? Hell, you could use millions of ball bearings like a mine field, because any ship traveling through the bearings will have such a high speed relative to them. I just wonder that if we currently get so butthurt about orbiting space debris, a space war will focus on simple kinetic weapons at huge speeds and from huge distances.

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