I first heard about IBM’s challenge to build a computer system which could compete at the game of Jeopardy. Knowing the types of questions, the many ways the clues are hidden in the questions, and the enormous breadth of categories, I was definitely curious to see the path of the work. It’s here. It’s called Watson. And it’s VERY COOL.

The producers of “Jeopardy!” have agreed to pit Watson against some of the game’s best former players as early as this fall. To test Watson’s capabilities against actual humans, I.B.M.’s scientists began holding live matches last winter. They mocked up a conference room to resemble the actual “Jeopardy!” set, including buzzers and stations for the human contestants, brought in former contestants from the show and even hired a host for the occasion.

Technically speaking, Watson wasn’t in the room. It was one floor up and consisted of a roomful of servers working at speeds thousands of times faster than most ordinary desktops. Over its three-year life, Watson stored the content of tens of millions of documents, which it now accessed to answer questions about almost anything. (Watson is not connected to the Internet; like all “Jeopardy!” competitors, it knows only what is already in its “brain.”)

source: New York Times article

How Watson works is a great read. Watson is not infallible. As noted in the NYT article, one day it won four of six games and another day it won only three of seven games and in one case, had no winnings at all.

When Watson is playing a game, Ferrucci lets the audience peek into the computer’s analysis. A monitor shows Watson’s top five answers to a question, with a bar graph beside each indicating its confidence. Ferrucci’s team has programmed Watson generally not to buzz until it arrives at an answer with a high confidence level.

source: New York Times article

I have no desire to play Jeopardy against Watson … because I’m not very good at Jeopardy. But I am looking forward to watching the game!

… you’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — (laughter) — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.

- (President Obama at Hampton University 9-May-2010 @ 7m40s) watch the speech

I agree with the first part and the last part, but not the middle’s implications.

Information is power but as an old saying goes, "be careful of technology for you may find you have less freedom, not more." It is our responsibility to think for ourselves; to question what we are told / read / hear / see on YouTube. "Truth" is different from "fact". Another saying goes, "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics". rapid fire unfiltered media has the same peril. It can just as easily transmit opinion as if it were fact and lies as if they were true.

I also agree that the flood of information can be a distraction but to ignore it is also a peril. I would bet that more than a small number of staffers for the President follow huge amounts of web content. They filter and cross check information. They write synopsis. They push relevant material up the food chain. The president and our government benefits greatly from this "distracting information".

Most of us do not have the benefit of "staffers". Sticking our heads in the sand is not an option. We must process all of that information ourselves. There is technology that will help but more than anything, we must think for ourselves and not blindly consume the media stream.

So, I respectfully disagree with the implications of the President’s statements. Thankfully, our free society allows me that. It also allows me to contribute my message to the information media stream.

… you never know, one of the President’s staffers may read this and it might get a synopsis and it might bubble up the food chain. … nah. not likely.

I purchased a managed gigabit switch for the data center and chose NETGEAR because they were running a rebate program. All other things considered, my choices would have been a dead heat. The deadline for submitting the rebate was the end of June and since I didn’t install the switch until the second week in June, I did a little scrambling to get it done and in the mail with a few days to spare.

A few weeks passed and I got an email (followed by a postcard) that my rebate had been rejected because there was an additional deadline of "within 30 days of purchase". The unit did not actually get installed for more than 30 days from purchase so that was not obvious. The focus was on the rebate program deadline.

$100.00 is not chump change so a tried to get resolution. NETGEAR makes a point of having no way to reach their rebate program – no phone, no person’s emails, etc. Even calling the the main NETGEAR number is a dead end.

I was ranting one day and Carl said, "I use to work in support. Call in and just try to get to a person, any person and only then start to explain what happened. Thanks Carl.

After three trips through NETGEAR’s phone system, I finally reached a person in Support (probably India). I did not explain much of my situation but tried a few different paths to get to someone in management. Eventually, I was transferred back to "the states and reached Josie. I went through my situation and after a few repeats, Josie said to send her the information and she’d take it personally to the rebate manager.

Yippee – the rebate arrived in the mail this week.

Moral of the story ? Don’t get upset with a real person and don’t give up trying. That real person may help get things right. I’m not happy with how difficult NETGEAR made things and I learned that reading the fine print is not always enough – like Willy Wonka, there may be even finer print.

The biggest issue with digital photo frames is getting images that look good on the screen. Unless you take perfectly cropped pictures with a camera that has the exact aspect ratio as your photo frame, you will end up with “filler bars” on the sides of the image when it is displayed. Some frames have a “smart” display that tries to zoom the image and then crop to make it fill the screen but this can lead to unexpected and embarrassing results.

ImageMagick may be your first step to happiness with your digital photo frame. It won’t make you pictures look like Ansel Adams but it will make them look like they were framed for display.

convert source-image.jpg -resize "1280x800" -quality 75 MIN-target-image.jpg
convert source-image.jpg -resize "1280x800^" -quality 75 MAX-target-image.jpg
convert MAX-target-image.jpg -gravity Center -crop 1280x800+0+0 -quality 75 MID-target-image.jpg

These three command lines give you three different images. The reference to “1280×800″ represents the screen of our test frame. You will substitute the screen resolution of your frame. Note the second like looks almost the same as the first but there is a carrot “^” at the end of the screen resolution. The first line tells ImageMagick’s “convert” program to insure the target will fit within the specified resolution while the second line will create an image that has its smaller dimension no less than the specified resolution. Let’s look at an example …

Let’s start with an image from a point-n-shoot camera that is 2816×2112 pixels. The three commands will give you the following:

1. PF-MIN  is 1067×800 pixels
2. PF-MAX is 1280×960 pixels
3. PF-MID is 1280×800 pixels (with 80 pixels trimmed from the top and bottom of PF-MAX)

If your original image was taken in landscape, then PF-MID is probably what you’d want to display. If you need every bit of your original, then you’d use PF-MIN.

If you look back at the three commands, you will also see the JPEG quality has been set to 75%. This makes the images smaller and will allow the digital photo frame to load them faster. At the same time, the quality is high enough that you will no notice on the screen.

If you take lots of vertical pictures and you have mounted your digital photo frame vertically, ImageMagick can help with that too. Just add “-rotate -90″ or “-rotate 90″ to the command ahead of the quality parameter on the first to commands. You may need to run an experiment to see if you need to rotate clockwise or counter clockwise to match how you have setup your frame.

So, that takes care of getting your images ready for display. Here are a few tips for installing the digital photo frame.

If the frame will be mounted on a wall in a highly visible location (and why wouldn’t it), see if there is an electrical outlet on the other side of the wall. It’s easy to create a small hole in the wall behind the frame where it will not be visible, and then run the power wire to an adjacent room or better yet a closet.

Consider getting a more attractive frame and mat. Most digital photo frames come with a cheap black plastic frame and a white paper mat. It’s not difficult to replace these with a traditional wood frame and a mat that works with your room’s decor.

Before nailing your digital photo frame to the wall, load a picture and have someone hold it at various heights. The viewing angle will change the quality of the image. If you have rotated the frame vertically or even upside down – this latter idea can help hide unsightly controls or slots on the side of the frame – it will change the viewing angle. You may find that you want to mount the digital photo frame a little higher than a traditional picture to improve the view of the screen.

So there you have it. With a few tweaks to the images, and a little attention to the installation of your digital photo frame, you can turn it from geek to chic in no time !

MS. GREENBERG: Okay. Our next question comes from Jim Finkle:

Can you please let the staff use an alternative web browser called Firefox? I just – (applause) – I just moved to the State Department from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and was surprised that State doesn’t use this browser. It was approved for the entire intelligence community, so I don’t understand why State can’t use it. It’s a much safer program. Thank you. (Applause.)

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, apparently, there’s a lot of support for this suggestion. (Laughter.) I don’t know the answer. Pat, do you know the answer? (Laughter.)

UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: The answer is at the moment, it’s an expense question. We can —

AUDIANCE MEMBER: It’s free. (Laughter.)

UNDER SECRETARY KENNEDY: Nothing is free. (Laughter.) It’s a question of the resources to manage multiple systems. It is something we’re looking at. And thanks to the Secretary, there is a significant increase in the 2010 budget request that’s pending for what is called the Capital Investment Fund, by which we fund our information technology operations. With the Secretary’s continuing pushing, we’re hoping to get that increase in the Capital Investment Fund. And with those additional resources, we will be able to add multiple programs to it.

Yes, you’re correct; it’s free, but it has to be administered, the patches have to be loaded. It may seem small, but when you’re running a worldwide operation and trying to push, as the Secretary rightly said, out FOBs and other devices, you’re caught in the terrible bind of triage of trying to get the most out that you can, but knowing you can’t do everything at once.

SECRETARY CLINTON: So we will try to move toward that.

source: July 10th US Dept of State town hall meeting

There’s even video evidence … time index at 26m:34s

• cut to length; remove outer insulation; cut thread; cut core; untwist all the pairs; align; push into pin block
• white with blue … blue … white with green … green … white with orange … orange … white with brown … brown
• repeat

Oh boy, this is fun …. 1, 2, 3, 4, … Oh boy, this is tedious … 16, 17, 18, 19, … Oh please, ENOUGH ! … 29, 30, 31 ….

Did I forget to mention, the phone system uses the same wiring ?!

I ran CAT-6 network cable throughout the farmhouse – even for the phone lines. In the case of the primary service, this means there are four redundant pairs, all carrying the same signal. This feeds into the utility room where I have installed a small wall mounted rack unit. eventually, this will take a 1U panel for the phone, a 2U panel for the networking, a 1U panel for the gigabit switch, and a tray for the DSL modem, the router, and possible a NAS. By dawn’s early light, I installed the 12 port panel that services the DSL and phone connections.

For those who have never had DSL service, the way it works is that the phone line entering the building supports both DSL for internet and POTS* for voice. Little in-line filter blocks must be installed for every phone while an unfiltered connection goes to the DSL modem. Since everything is running through the utility room, I chose to use the patch panel to simplify the filter placement. I established a single port as "unfiltered" and then chained the remaining 11 ports together after installing a filter. So, any phone line from the residence which is plugged into port #1 will be unfiltered and can take the DSL modem. Any phone line plugged into #2 thru #12 will get a filtered phone signal. This will allow the DSL modem to go anywhere. In reality, I hope to install the DSL modem in the utility room so no lines from the residence will plug into port #1.

* POTS = plain old telephone service

It seems the old 250GB HDD I installed was not long for this world. Fortunately it has nothing of significance but it will mean shifting my bit torrent work load and nightly news download back to the ReadyNAS. I’l debate putting a new HDD in the Popcorn Hour in a few weeks.

* sound file courtesy of Western Digital