Erratica Reduex

Chromium is the open-source issues-fixing project behind Google Chrome. I'm sure we all will appreciate this example of how dedicated they are to creating a safer, faster, and more stable way for all Internet users to experience the web.

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Find Tim (he's usually in the Seattle office)
2. Engage him in conversation
3. Surreptitiously try to check the time on his watch

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

Expected watch to tell correct time.  It tells the wrong time.

Please use labels and text to provide additional information. 

The comments log is a fascinating example of IT professionalism.

Here's an interesting paper on Turing and his famous Turing Test. 

According to the authors' analysis of Turing's original paper, elements of the paper deal with ethics, and encourage scientists to take a broader perspective on intelligence.  Turing actually uses computers in a very broad sense-including "biological" (i.e. human) and warns that failing what he called "the imitation game" may not actually prove something is not human, merely that it does not think or communicate like a human. In other words, it cannot "pass" for a "normal human".  This concept takes on greater  importance in the context of Turing's homosexuality, for which he was persecuted unto suicide.  It has also been theorized that Turing was mildly autistic, which in turn can give greater context to Turning's hypothesis of intelligent machines that cannot imitate humans.

The real legacy of Turing's paper may be its encouragement to think in terms of other conceptions of intelligence, and that imitation isn't everything.  For a person who died because he could not sufficiently imitate the mainstream, this is a chilling reminder of what may happen if we do have too limited a definition of "human".

According to Tor.com, one of the film's science advisers has formed a company that is actually trying to make a reality of the coolest thing in that film: the special computer interface that uses arm gestures to manipulate images. It DOES look neat:





However, I'm not sure how practical it would be in real life: aside from accidentally moving the image when I twitch or respond to someone, I'd have concerns about having to stay standing for long periods of time. Still, it might be useful for people who do heavy image manipulation, like Cadcam or CGI artists.

Technically, this should be "technology Monday, but oh well.  here's our story today- and actually the title is quite serious- from Yahoo News:

Gamer uses virtual training to save lives

My reaction was initially twofold: 1) "Gee it's nice that gamers get good press for once", and 2) "Gee, that could have so easily gone wrong".  But after a bit, I got to thinking about this in a bit more depth.  the important point in this article isn't that a gamer used virtual training to save lives, but that the game actually used highly useful virtual training.

You see, back in the 1980s, one of the Big Things that was being touted about Virtual Reality  (and computers in general) was that VR training was right around the corner, and was going to supplant standard learning methods.  In the 90s we were going to be going into classrooms, putting on our VR goggles, and running through video-game style scenarios that would teach us anythng without the need for teachers.  It's interesting to me that one of the elements of computer applications that seems to have fallen somewhat by the wayside is virtual training.  Not that computers aren't being used for learning and training; distance learning has largely migrated over to online courses.  And of course airplane, tank and medical simulators are common.  But the development of a whole new style of learning has been much slower than other computer applications.

Perhaps one of the things that needed to be accomplished before virtual training could take off  was improving the quality of the VR reality to get acceptable levels of fidelity.  Also  MMORPGs in creating flexible, open-ended scenarios was probably useful- II don't think it was a coincidence this story came out of America's Army.  All this being the case, one may expect that in the last few years, more and more VR learning applications would be coming out, and indeed that seems to be the case.  Which means we may yet be "right around the corner" from an explosion of VR training applications.  Now, if they could only manage to miniaturize the damn VR goggles to a usable size...

Any thoughts?

So this weekend at Ani-magic was my wife's first try at Cosplaying, which meant that after a week of panicked last-minute costume assembly, she got to pose in her Rosenmaiden outfit...outside. At a convention out in the desert. In the afternoon heat. My wife, who can't sweat, in a beautiful, victorian layered hoop-skirt outfit.

While taking pictures of the group, I looked up to see a vulture gliding overhead, only about fifty feet above. And then another. And then three more. And then four more, all in a line. Now that, I thought to myself, if it isn't a bad omen, nothing is, and gave up hope of contest awards. Instead I started worrying about whether my wife would even survive.

Naturally, her group won best of show.

I guess the vultures wern't so much omen-like, as simply window shopping. They were probably gliding long, going "Hmm...look at all those fans. Surely one or two of the herd are going to keel over, leaving us a nice feast..."

And yeah, I'm extremely proud. Make that EXTREEEEEEMLY proud!

It's going to be weird getting back to a normal schedule at our house. And she's mentioned that she's going to need the computer for the next three days. Hmm- maybe not so weird as ominous. I see omens of a lack of night-time computer use in my future.