How smart are computers getting?

I've been doing a lot of writing, not only for this opinion blog, but also a creative writing blog and as a contributing writer for This or That. Well the other day, one of the writers for This or That posted an article about lessons he learned playing rock-paper-scissors with his computer. (Follow this link to try it out for yourself)

I tried it and I have to warn you that the computer cheats, a lot. OK, it doesn't actually cheat, but it uses it's superior computing powers to review all of your past moves and uses your paterns against you. It's so not fair, but you can click on a button to see into the computers brain and watch it review your move history. Let's say your last four moves were rock, paper, paper, scissors. The computer reviews all your moves to see if you've ever followed that pattern before. If so, it looks to see what you threw after that pattern and moves accordingly. If not, it will look for the pattern of paper, paper, scissors. This computer model isn't far off from what we go through when we decide which of the three to throw when we play, but we don't have such an extensive and exact memory.

So how did I do? After two hundred rounds I basically broke even. I managed to win, lose and draw about a third of the time for each. It wasn't easy to reach this mark either. I had to continually change my thinking. If I didn't change my strategy, and conciously think about my strategy, I didn't stand a chance. It was by having a pattern, but keeping it random that I was able to keep the computer from beating me. If you've got some time, it's a good exercise to try and outsmart the computer.

See if you can do better than I did, and leave a comment below to let me know how you did.

Moving at the speed of the internet.

Sometimes it's hard to see just how much technology has taken over our modern life. I've adjusted to my current home in the middle of nowhere in terms of extremely limited cell service, but I'm still adjusting to the less-than-wonderful internet service we recieve from a certain satellite company I won't name right here. Anyway, there was a fairly big storm that passed through our part of New York State and I was without internet service for over 16 hours. (As far as I can tell, the service at home is still down. I'm currently writing this at work.)

That wasn't all though, we were also having trouble with the land line phone not working so I had quite a bit of trouble getting in touch with my sister about her plans for the weekend. So, it's no big deal to be without a decent cell phone or land line or internet, right? Well, There were a few other things I was trying to sort out, but it still shouldn't have seemed that that big a deal, but it was.

Technology has definitely taken over our lives and makes if difficult for us to face a simpler existence. I often think about what it would be like to go back in time and enjoy the world a little bit more, but then I realize that I might miss something on Facebook or Tumblr. There are definitley times that I realized just how dependent I've become on my technology.

So with all of that, will I make a change? Maybe, maybe not. It really depends on so many things. First off, I've really enjoyed writing and blogging so I can't completely give up on the technology, especially since I get paid for some of the writing that I'm doing. (Let me take a moment to shamelessly plug my writing on This or That)

Well, that's my two cents on the matter. Feel free to comment below, and share your own perspective on the matter.

Sometimes I hate technology

So this post is more about me venting over the sudden and unfortunate loss of my latest (and not-quite-ready-to-go-anymore) post on the top twelve characters from MASH. I had this strange glitch where a section of my text was blocked in white for some strange reason and I was trying to get it cleared up when all of my post disappeared for a second and before I could hit the undo button, the post auto-saved. That's right, I lost my entire post during minor editing.

That isn't the least of my worries, because this isn't the first time I've had a problem with this site giving part of my post a text background for no good reason. I still can't figure out how it happened or why all my fixes weren't working. Anyway, that's enough of a rant for now. Feel free to share problems you've had with our modern technology in the comment section below.