Things Smackie Thinks You Need to Know...

wait - does this mean joseph finally has someone to go to shows with? :) – i mean he realized at some point i couldnt possibly make it to SF for all those shows, nor could he make it to NYC.

then again - maybe his wife keeps him on a tight leash. (youd prob know better than me tho).

Jaguar wrote:
You don't have to answer this if you'd prefer not but was this the real reason for your move awhile ago? 

The move last March was an attempt to salvage things.  Change of scenery, get a dog, new furniture, etc.  Rarely works and didn't on this occasion either, but I had to try.

I LOVE my new neighborhood, dog and furniture though!  Just wish I had DirecTV!

Well, at least you tried. That's more than I've seen some people do. Also, it appears that a lot of good things come from that relationship that may not have happened otherwise, so you really are on the winning end. And I don't mean 'winning' being between you and her but just within the grand scheme of your life.

I want to see a picture of your chihuahua.  ;D

i must admit that he's a very handsome chihuahua. 

and he knows it.

Jaguar wrote:
I want to see a picture of your chihuahua.  ;D

The chick magnet?

Ah, poco Smackito.  ;D

Definitely a chick magnet!

If vansmack offers to show you his "long haired dachsund" you should politely decline.

^ So you've seen it, GGW?  :D

I'll be recording this - I'm very interested to see how the super computer fares:

Humans had a good run: Watson to Debut on Jeopardy tonight

Today, tomorrow, and the 16th are the fateful days: IBM's Watson supercomputer will go head to head with Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings in this silly, human-devised game we call Jeopardy. It promises to be some kickass TV, at the very least, and a historic event if Watson can prevail over his fleshy competition. The two matches, which are being spread over the three days, were pre-taped, so Ken, Brad, Alex and Watson already know the outcome, but they've done a pretty good job of keeping the secret so far. Hopefully they can keep mum until 7pm-ish this evening (check your local listings for a specific time).

Jaguar wrote:
Ah, poco Smackito.  ;D

Definitely a chick magnet!

A bloke and a cheewowa seems more of a guy magnet…….just say'n!

"Drop the chalupa!" - sorry, couldn't help myself!

First off, his name is Chicharito, and by all first hand accounts he's much gayer than I am.

Second, he has landed me more dates with chicks than dudes.  So far.

vansmack wrote:
Second, he has landed me more dates with chicks than dudes.  So far.

right, but had you given me a chance the score would be 1-1.  bitch.

sweetcell wrote:
right, but had you given me a chance the score would be 1-1.  bitch.

Lol.

Psst - [whisper]Danica.[/whisper]

I couldn't be a bigger dork that I've watched this 5 times this morning and can't stop watching it.  Man I would love to do Zelda all over again….

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/02/15/john-hughes-legend-of-zelda-trailer-video/

I'm sure few of you stayed up last night to watch the Caps-Ducks game, but it was pretty damn entertaining.

Jonas Hiller, you can return to the lineup any day now…

vansmack wrote:
it was pretty damn entertaining.

indeed

vansmack wrote:
I'll be recording this - I'm very interested to see how the super computer fares:

Humans had a good run: Watson to Debut on Jeopardy tonight

Today, tomorrow, and the 16th are the fateful days: IBM's Watson supercomputer will go head to head with Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings in this silly, human-devised game we call Jeopardy. It promises to be some kickass TV, at the very least, and a historic event if Watson can prevail over his fleshy competition. The two matches, which are being spread over the three days, were pre-taped, so Ken, Brad, Alex and Watson already know the outcome, but they've done a pretty good job of keeping the secret so far. Hopefully they can keep mum until 7pm-ish this evening (check your local listings for a specific time).

I eagerly watched both nights and was severly disappointed because:

1.  The first two nights were basically infomercials for IBM and how wonderful they are.
2.  John Connor didn't time warp and make a run at Watson with a baseball bat yelling "I must destroy SKYNET!"
3.  Watson didn't start playing Tic-Tac-Toe with itself.

I think Rutter (South Central PA!  REPRESENT!) and Jennings would have gotten a lot closer but a lot of success at Jeopardy is your buzzing in skills.  Once Jennings figured that out he came close to beating Watson the second game.
One of the bottlenecks is voice recognition.  And I think Watson had a distinct advantage in that respect.  It takes humans a second or two to comprehend, like: A post by Walkie….oh….it's homosexual innuendo...and/or a Cat picture…  Watson was parsing the question and had thousands of possibilities before the two humans understood the question.

In terms of answers, two things I thought were funny:

1.  The show displays what Watson thinks are the best three answers. For the Beatles category answer: "Bang bang" his "silver hammer came down upon her head", Watson correctly answered "Maxwell's Silver Hammer".

However, Watson's second best answer?

"Frank Sinatra"

2.  Anyone could write a program that would instruct the computer, if the question category was "U.S. Cities", to NOT guess a city that wasn't in the United States.

But seriously, a 15 year-old texting on a Droid to Wikipedia could have probably beaten all three. 

And in terms of the human race…well…this could be it, for us monkeys.  Game over!  Smoke 'em if you got 'em, turn on the black light and "Dark Side of the Moon" and wait patiently for singularity.

However, a computer will NEVER be able to cleverly make a funny "Simpsons" reference in a "Final Jeopardy" answer.

NEVER!

Brian

Brian_Wallace wrote:
3.  Watson didn't start playing Tic-Tac-Toe with itself.

If the programmers had any sense of humor, just one answer when it was clear Watson was dominating should have been "How about a nice game of chess?" and then just start laughing…

I agree - the clear advantage watson had was it's "reflex ability" programming which allowed it to ring in substantially more often than a human could.  That was clear from the first day.

http://www.slate.com/id/2284721/

Ken Jennings clearly has a GREAT sense of humor:

"I understood then why the engineers wanted to beat me so badly: To them, I wasn't the good guy, playing for the human race. That was Watson's role, as a symbol and product of human innovation and ingenuity. So my defeat at the hands of a machine has a happy ending, after all. At least until the whole system becomes sentient and figures out the nuclear launch codes. But I figure that's years away."

Brian

That's fantastic.