Teaching Language to a Robot. An article by National

Geographic talks about teaching language to a robot. In some of the experiments they used a modified AIBO. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service][National Geographic]

Interesting, left to their own devices, the robots (modified AIBOs) would develop their own language from a set of arbitrary syllables.I  wonder what would happen should the robots each be taught a different language, and then were to meet? Would they form a pidgin/creole in order to communicate? Time will tell.

10:12:53 PM    

Wired: "For a perfect example of the changing dynamic between the GPU and CPU, look at the Xbox. It uses a special version of Nvidia's nForce chipset, built around a tricked-out GeForce3 to handle graphics and sound. Microsoft paid Nvidia more than it did Intel for its 733-MHz Pentium III. For Huang, it's a proof of concept." [lawrence's notebook]

5:31:03 PM    

Why I am buying Nvidia's stock (Wes, do you agree?):

1. Graphics processors are chewing up cycles faster than the flatlined PC CPU.  Usage equals demand.  Control of the interface is extremely important.
2. The parallel architecture of graphics processors allow it to boost price performance at a 2 to 1 rate over PC CPUs.  A doubling rate of 6 vs. 18 months.  Nvidia's chips have twice the number of transistors the Pentium 4 has.
3. There is going to be convergence between the graphics used to create movies and games.  This is going to be huge.  Imagine if the Star Wars game looked as good as the movie -- the sales would be huge.
4. Nvidia will likely acquire AMD to add CPU functionality as a side feature of its chips (to move beyond their joint venture).  That means over time the price of a multimedia PC using an AMD/Nvidia combined chip could be 30% lower than an Intel powered model.
5. Microsoft is likely to create a home server that is tightly integrated (following on the heals of the Xbox's second generation).  An AMD/Nvidia chip could be central to that new box.  It's also likely that the brand of the chip used will be subsumed into the general conumer electronics style marketing that this new home server will use.  That loss of branding will hurt Intel.

[John Robb's Radio Weblog]

5:30:44 PM    

Toshiba's iPod Competitor [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters]

Interesting, it has a removable 5 GB drive. Assuming that it's in a format that allows you to put in a larger sized drive, and the 5 GB is more a matter of price to market consideration, you'll be able to fit all your data on a small removable disk, and since the disks are the same size/format as PC cards, I imagine you could easily swap them out as needed. Given that Kensington's version of these disks can handle up to 200G of operating shock, I think there is little to worry about in terms of dropping/data loss.

5:15:07 PM