24 • JUNE 2016
By the Book This book demystifies the amazing architecture and protocols of computers as they communicate over the Internet. While very complex, the Internet operates on a few relatively simple concepts that anyone can understand. Networks and networked applications are embedded in our lives. Understanding how these technologies work is invaluable.
Rosen Method Bodywork Relaxation & Inner Awareness through Gentle Touch
Anna Dye, M.A. Certified Practitioner
575-519-8591
By Appointment 309 E. College Ave., Silver City
www.desertexposure.com
ORGANIC BYTES • STEVE CHIANG
Hi Speed News
More internet, the next best thing and novel writing More high speed internet Some time ago, I wrote about various high speed internet offerings in the Grant County area and one of the options covered was Verizon’s LTE installed plan. The plan uses Verizon’s 4G cellular network and comes with a router that allows for multiple WiFi devices, such as PC and laptop connections. At the time the article was written I did not know of anyone who had installed a MiFi (what the Verizon service was called). That changed a couple weeks ago when a new client of mine located just outside of Silver City showed me his MiFi service. After using the service for a couple of days and downloading some very large files (about 4GBs), I am happy to report that the service is comparable to services offered by local phone companies such as Western New Mexico Communications and CenturyLink. This particular client is located in an area that has no high speed internet service by either phone company and after experiencing unreliable service from Comcast, he finally decided to give Verizon a try. He has been very happy with the service. For those who are similarly situated, hopefully Verizon can be a viable alternative. If you happen to be in the Las Cruces area, Verizon offers the same service at almost double the speed available in this area.
The next big thing After decades of promises, I think Artificial Intelligence (AI) is finally coming of age. It was in 1997 that IBM’s Deep Blue defeated then reigning World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov and since then, IBM’s Watson (another “thinking computer”) had beaten Jeopardy champs, convincingly. March of this year, Google’s AlphaGo scored another major victory for AI by beating Lee Sedol, a Korean Go champion, by 4 games to 1. Personally, I still remember the days when “computer can never beat a chess master was treated as an undisputed truth. One of the breakthroughs in advances in AI is that research is no longer focused on how to make computers “think” like people, but instead, how to take advantage of some of the unique capabilities that computers have. What are those capabilities? First and foremost, they do not ever get bored or tired, they make mistakes but never “careless” mistakes, and once cor-
rected, they do not make the same mistake ever again and they now have for all practical purpose endless and flawless memory. “The quest for ‘artificial flight’ succeeded when the Wright brothers and others stopped imitating birds.” – “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach,” by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig. One of the early AI/Machine Learning watersheds was an experiment done by IBM in the late 1980s. The “Candide” was a machine translation project that, instead of going through the traditional syntax and grammar, was fed the proceedings of the Canadian Parliament, which are in French and English. From there, the “machine” learned how to pair phrases and sentences. With expert corrections and assistance, the capability soon expanded to parse and translate other French/English writings. The field is currently so mature that a competent software engineer can put together a creditable translation system without knowing either of the languages involved. There are now over 30 publications, including Forbes and the New York Times, that publish machine generated or machine assisted articles. The “pioneers” in the field were in sports reporting, feed the program scores and statistics and the program gives you a credible article. In an entertaining 2011 story, NPR (Nation Public Radio) reported how a machine generated sports report ended up better than the one written by a reporter and the publication actually conceded. In blind tests, people consistently chose the machine generated story as human written. Early 2015, the Associated Press announced it will use software to automatically generate news stories about college sports not previously covered. In addition to sports, AP already uses Wordsmith (software by Automated Insights in North Carolina) to generate stories on corporate quarterly earnings reports. Meanwhile, other automated content companies are providing similar services to publications such as Fortune and “Big Ten Network.” And a Los Angeles Times journalist used custom software to auto-generate a story minutes after an earthquake hit Los Angeles.
Philip M Parker, author Search the name Philip M Parker under Amazon Books, you will find an unbelievably
prolific author with some 70,000 titles under his name. The only catch is, Professor Parker did not really write all these books, the computer system he developed did.
NaNoWriMo and NaNoGenMo NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, which happens in November. It is an annual event that encourages people to churn out a 50,000-word book on deadline. NaNoGenMo is short for National Novel Generating Month, an event for software developers writing computer programs that will write their texts for them. In case you are wondering, there were 500 entries in the 2015 NaNoGenMo and some of the generated stories are quite fine. In a recent interview with five journalists contracted by Facebook to manage their news feed and news aggregation, all five felt they were constantly being watched and “learned” by some computer software. All felt they are just there to teach the computer how to do their job. Once the “job” is learned, their days are over. Facebook has no comment. All these remind me so much of the late 70s into the early 80s, when manufacturers started to realize with a lot of tasks, robots are much better than humans. We all know what happened in the subsequent years. If you are in the writing for a living business, these are interesting times. Finally, on the “things you may be able to use” department, with the latest rash of virus and malware infections, I have been asked many times what anti-malware software do I use. I currently use Malwarebytes, they are a subscription based service and cost $24.95 a year. A number of my clients have switched over to them and appear to have good results. As software quality changes from year to year, if they do not live up to my standard, I could well switch software next year. Over the last 25 years or so, I probably have used over 10 different vendors for machine securities. Until next time. Steve and wife, Martha, both high technology veterans, live in Mimbres. They are owners of techserviceondemand, mimbresdesign.com and the free community forum http://mimbres.freeforums. net. They can be contacted at steve@techserviceondemand. com.