On February 17, 2009 the last analog television signal will be broadcast. I just read about it today but, apparently, everyone in the universe knew about it before I did.
The FCC is mandating a total switch to Digital TV in an attempt to free up broadcast spectrum for public safety communications and for sale to companies offering wireless broadband. Televisions without an internal digital tuner will not pick up signals after the change over.
For you neurotic television watchers, the FCC has a countdown clock available at http://www.dtv.gov/
Monday, December 3, 2007
Amazon's Mechanical Turk
The Turk was an eighteenth century chess playing machine that beat, among other notables, Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. The machine was, of course, a hoax based on having a human hidden inside the apparatus directing the machine.
Amazon has taken the name, and the concept, for its new artificial intelligence engine Mechanical Turk.
There are some tasks which people are much better at solving than computers (even still). The concept of MTurk is that people submit requests called HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) like "does this picture contain a duck" or "what color is this shoe" and offer a small fee on the order of $.03 for a valid answer. Turkers accept the job and submit the answer. The same job will be taken and fulfilled by more than one person and, if the answers match, the answer is deemed correct and the people are paid. The payment amounts are so small that it's not really a way to make a living - most people doing it are participating instead of playing solitaire or some other mindless game and are thrilled to make $50 in a week.
This article was posted in the SBM forum of Moodle and is an excellent review and commentary on Amazon's newest scheme.
Amazon has taken the name, and the concept, for its new artificial intelligence engine Mechanical Turk.
There are some tasks which people are much better at solving than computers (even still). The concept of MTurk is that people submit requests called HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) like "does this picture contain a duck" or "what color is this shoe" and offer a small fee on the order of $.03 for a valid answer. Turkers accept the job and submit the answer. The same job will be taken and fulfilled by more than one person and, if the answers match, the answer is deemed correct and the people are paid. The payment amounts are so small that it's not really a way to make a living - most people doing it are participating instead of playing solitaire or some other mindless game and are thrilled to make $50 in a week.
This article was posted in the SBM forum of Moodle and is an excellent review and commentary on Amazon's newest scheme.
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