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Today's TWoP News: February 11, 2011

by Nic Dris February 11, 2011 3:30 PM
Today's TWoP News: February 11, 2011

Oprah gets even more money? Happy Friday, Oprah! Is Oprah's wealth ever news though?

Elementary, my dear Watson! Jeopardy's two smartest contestants, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, will go up against IBM machine Watson (named after founder Thomas J. Watson) on Monday. It will be man versus machine. I'm all about the rise of technology, but... did anyone else see Wall-E?

Speaking of big scary machines, Oprah gets even wealthier! Her channel, that is. Discovery Communications will invest $50 million more into OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network). This year, the channel is speculated to break even on an operating basis. If we can get Watson versus Oprah, my money's on Oprah. Hands down.

Inspired by Houdini and Doyle's real life friendship, Syfy Channel is developing a new show about Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle solving mysteries together in the 1920s. Magical people solving mysteries? I mean, wasn't this already done with Charmed? Buffy the Vampire Slayer? ZzZzZz, Syfy. Stick to re-envisioning old classics like you did with Alice and Tin Man.

Watch out Vanessa Bayer. Miley Cyrus is hosting Saturday Night Live on March 5th. It's got potential for comedy if they can get the real Miley Cyrus on her own skit. It can't be worse than when Michael Phelps hosted.

Amanda Peet has been cast as the lead in NBC's romantic comedy, Bent. Peet will play a divorced Mom who falls for an attractive contractor. Sounds original... let's hope this doesn't turn into a bad Katherine Heigl romantic comedy, but then again, Amanda Peet can act. Let's hope for the best (and expect the worst).

Zooey Deschanel turned down NBC's The Office to star in a new comedy with Fox. Deschanel will play an elementary school teacher who doesn't have the best of luck with men, but moves in with three of them after being dumped by her boyfriend. You know, this might be the project that will get her to change facial expressions.

What are people saying about your favorite shows and stars right now? Find out with Talk Without Pity, the social media site for real TV fans. See Tweets and Facebook comments in real time and add your own -- all without leaving TWoP. Join the conversation now!

6 Comments

February 11, 2011 10:34 PM
liz
Reply

... Wall-E? I think the movie reference you're looking for is Terminator.

February 11, 2011 11:24 PM
PB
Reply

LOL No I think he means Wall-E... The computer on the ship? Takes over? anyone?

February 13, 2011 2:48 PM
sashay
Reply

BTVS and Charmed had NOTHING to do with magical people solving mysteries. Is this guy on drugs? If you can't get intelligent, well-informed people to write these blogs, then DON'T BOTHER.

February 14, 2011 5:55 PM
skizzy
Reply

Sashay away

February 16, 2011 4:10 AM
C Smith
Reply

Watson is cheating! Unlike his competitors, he has the unfair advantage of being given a question as an ASCII text message. This is virtually instant i.e., not requiring optical character or speech recognition.

Watson is essentially a basic computer algorithm that searches multiple databases for a closely correlated set of words (those contained in the text question). Once sectors of correlating databases have been identified, these sectors are searched for the single word or phrase of highest occurrence. Add the "What is" prefix and Watson, using voice synthesis commonly found at the checkout counter, spews out an answer.

Watson also has the home team advantage at IBM headquarters where the games were taped, not to mention the virtually unlimited computing power of Watson's refrigerated mainframe. Watson is also allowed unlimited space rather than being restricted between his two spatially disadvantaged competitors.

While his IBM developers affirm it would be unfair to connect to internet, they are actually being deceptive. Raw internet content would be unmanageable; too much inaccurate information. Everyone knows, you can't believe everything you read on the internet. For this reason, pre-processed internet content (reputable databases that Jeopardy uses for determining questions) is stored in Watson's massive memory repository. If that is not cheating, what is!

Of course most will still steadfastly contend that Watson is far more sophisticated even though he repeated Ken Jennings' previously incorrect answer, a coding error most Junior High programmers would have caught. You can be sure that IBM heads will roll tomorrow!

All being said, the Jeopardy event was a more entertaining IBM commercial than their standard fair.

http://darwinsalbatross.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html

August 26, 2011 10:51 PM
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