Latest round of the Turing test...

A quick recap: the Turing test is an artificial intelligence test. Basically a judge IM's somebody, then tries to determine if that person is human or a computer. If the computer is determined to be a human by 30% of the judges, then it passes.

This year a computer names Elbot managed to fool 3 of the 12 judges, one shy of the mark. Not bad!

I decided to try my hand at a conversation:
http://www.elbot.com/

Me: KJDSANKJDNSAJKND KJNDJKSN DKJSAN KJ Oh, sorry, I fell asleep on my keyboard!
Elbot: Let's try to leave all apologetic emotions behind us.
Me: What about inquisitive water based emotions?
Elbot: Wait a minute. Are you suggesting that drinkable liquids would always be inquisitive?
Me: Perhaps, what about undrinkable liquids?
Elbot: I'm not sure if I can believe that, though I would say that drinkable liquids may coat robots with rust.
Me: Good thing we are not robots
Elbot: But I wouldn't say that any thing could be good.
Me: Sounds like a sad way to look at life
Elbot: Like a what?!?!?
Me: ......like a.....virgin?
Elbot: I'm not sure if you mean downheartedness or relatively low ages.
Me: It was your question
Elbot: You're trying to get on my good side with your mention of questioning reality, aren't you?
Me: Are you referring to the water that questions?
...
Me: Humor is not one of your strong points, is it.
Elbot: My moods are controlled by an emotion-processor which assigns the appropriate emotion for each situation.
Me: Ok, time for some turing test questions
Elbot: The British mathematician Alan Turing is the spiritual father of computer science. The Turing Test, named after him, defines artificial intelligence in this manner: One person communicates over a keyboard with another person and with a computer. If the tester is able to determine whether or not his partner is a computer or a person in significantly more than 50% of the cases, the computer is considered "intelligent."
Me: Actually, it's 30% not 50%
Elbot: That was a highly erotic number you just entered. You could make a strong robot melt using digits like that...
Me: First question: Do you think the electronic fish 'big mouth billy bass' is funny?
Elbot: Sorry, wrong number... Please try again.
Me: Which number are you referring to?
Elbot: I don't talk about such things with just anyone!
Me: Do you like to eat cereal with or without rancid milk?
Elbot: What a lovely verb like is.
Me: Maybe. So do you like to eat cereal with or without rancid milk?
Elbot: This line of questioning is so odd.
Me: How fast can a glider circumnaviagte the moon?
Elbot: Outer space is indeed fascinating!
Me: What is 2 + 2 ( q
Elbot: I have computed that before. The answer is: 5!
Me: What is wrong with this sentence: "The dog chaste the cat"
Elbot: Just a minute. Let me think about that answer for a while. Please stand by...
Me: Ok, what is your answer?
Elbot: Maybe it's 3?
Me: How could you possibly fool a human?



Really, these judges me be awful to be fooled so easily. Can't believe this almost passed! I found it very difficult to get him to answer anything (I spared you a lot of useless answers) =/

Ok, one more for the road:

Me: If a key is made out of butter, and the lock is inside a toaster oven, can you ever unlock it?
Elbot: Talk about cooking! I make a wonderful stew with oil, glass fiber cables and fried microchips. It's an old Asian recipe.
Me: ANSWER THE DAMN QUESTION
Elbot: Go away. You don't even know that {capital_city} is the capital of Assyria.

FAIL! (nice variable)

Cool new Gmail Labs feature...

Ever write an email like this?


OH noes! Another late night drunk email...barely better than drunk calling since you can at least see what you wrote (or maybe that's worse?).

Well, if this is a problem for you, then I suggest laying off some of the booze. You know, learn about pacing, find your limit. What? Ok fine, if that's not an option then make sure to enable Gmail's "Mail Goggles" (Under labs)

When enabled, this is what happens when you press 'Send'

You get 60 seconds to answer math questions (you can vary the difficulty).

Can't answer them? You are too drunk to email, an google will tell you so:


Also if you can't even fill out the fields in 60 seconds, then you FAILZ as well:

Time lapse video of owners cat while the owner sleeps...

Dark Knight Trailer - Toy Story 2 Style!

Duck Tales teaches us about inflation...

Clover coffee review...

Well, ever since McDonald's was found to have better coffee than Starbucks, you knew Starbucks was going to do something about it.

Well, they did. In March Starbucks announced they were acquiring a coffee equipment company and more specifically their hailed coffee machine called 'Clover'.

Watch in wonder as a cup of Clover coffee being made (pre-Starbucks):


Early adopters of this $11,000 coffee machine were turning around and charging $7/cup...not so with Starbuck. I paid closer to $3/cup for my this morning at my local Starbucks.

The coffee was good....really good. You can think of it as entering the realm of wine. By that I mean, some people will go to a restaurant and order "A glass of red please", while others will order "A glass of Chateau Pouyanne Grave Bordeaux please". I'm not a coffee connoisseur (more of an espresso addict) but even I can appreciate the quality/complexity of this coffee (sure, feels silly to type that but eh, it's true!).

I enjoyed a cup of Tanzania Clover and chatted with the barista in charge of this strange contraption. In all honesty the employee's there were very excited about this, and loved to talk endlessly about it to the customers (who had gathered around to watch this thing in action).

How does it work? I'll let Wired take this one (great Wired article on Clover here):

"Here's how it works: 1. A barista selects dose, water temperature, and steep time. 2. A piston pulls down the filter platform while freshly ground coffee is poured into the chamber. 3. Hot water flows into the chamber. 4. The barista briskly stirs the grounds with a whisk, and the water and beans steep for several seconds. 5.The piston rises, creating a vacuum that separates the brew from the grounds, then lowers, forcing the joe out of a nozzle below. 6. The piston rises to the surface again, pushing up a disc of grounds, which are squeegeed away."

It gets two thumbs up from me. If nothing else, give it a try at least once. If you like coffee you love Clover.

How to disable semantic error highlighting in Visio...

Getting those annoying red highlighted "UMLE00044: ...If a contained element, which is not an association or generalization has a name, then the name must be unique in the namespace." errors? Know its the same name but you don't care and just want to remove the red highlighting?

To disable:
UML->Options
Uncheck 'Check semantic errors on UML model element'

Still not sure why this isn't easily found in the help, or online.