Bits, Bytes, Blow Me

I was listening to NPR this morning, and before you go sayin' "hey you commie pinko bastard," please let me explain.  Radio in Jackson leaves a lot to be desired.  On the local rock station, you can listen to the male/male/female equivalent of Beavis and Butthead or on the classic rock station you can listen to sixteen rednecks (John Boy and Billy) screaming and laughing at one another over stuff that just really isn't that funny.  The other option is the local talk radio, which is usually pretty interesting, but this morning's discussion was some black guy, maybe a politician, arguing for more money for public education and how charter schools don't work.

So, I was stuck with NPR and in today's offering they were talking about IBM's new supercomputer nicknamed "Watson."  Watson is scheduled to take on the two top Jeopardy champions over the next three nights on television.  I thought it was rather interesting as the dicussion focused on how Watson processed the answers to the questions without the added human quality of "context."

Now, Watson apparently is not right ALL the time, missing an answer about what grasshoppers ate by responding with "What is kosher?"  However, in the end, I think that Watson will probably prevail and it'll be neat to see what he does with his prize money.  Robot hookers and cocaine, I betcha.