Why can’t computers think?
Is there something peculiar to human thought that computers can't capture in principle? At the end of this week, the 2009 Loebner prize will be contested in Brighton, to try to find a computer program that can fool a human that it is another human over five minutes of interaction through a screen
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Why can't computers think?
Supercomputer in the firing line over carbon footprint
It's impossible to ignore the irony that the Met Office supercomputer dedicated to modelling climate change has an enormous carbon footprint. But critics just miss the point In the past I've written about the internet's energy footprint , and raised the question of whether we should consider ways to drastically reduce the power consumed by data centres as our lives go increasingly online. So it was with more than a little interest that I read this story about the Met Office's weather-predicting supercomputer - and how, ironically, it has a pretty big carbon footprint. According to a study by the Department of Communities looking into the footprints of public buildings around the UK, the £33m IBM cluster produces up to 75% of the carbon emissions from the Met Office's HQ in Exeter. That means it's responsible for a good deal of their annual output of 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide - one of the highest totals in the country. It's an easy headline, of course - and probably feels particularly sweet for those who revel in poking at climate change scientists (and they are certainly a vocal group). But the delight in this irony is also driven, in part, by the misplaced assumption that a climate scientist would think that all carbon emissions are bad. Are all CO2 emissions equal? Well I'm certainly happier to see carbon being spent solving the world's biggest problems than ferrying people around the globe for business meetings they could do through teleconferencing. And, of course, it's all relative in any case. Supercomputers in the past used vast amounts of energy to run, and were extremely primitive by comparison to today's beasts - on a visit to the Museum of Computer History earlier this year , I saw an old IBM machine that used the same amount of power as a small town but had just a few KB of memory. The Met Office machine hopes to be able to run at a Petaflop soon - that's 1 thousand trillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) calculations every second. The truth is that while the public rarely thinks about supercomputers - except, perhaps, when there's a chess game at stake - these machines do amazing work that is impossible to replicate elsewhere. These are the machines that fold proteins, that crunch data from particle accelerators; they are the sort of machines that could help cure cancer - or, in the case of the Met's cluster, save thousands of lives by accurately modelling a climate-related disaster. It's worth thinking about. Computing Carbon emissions Carbon footprints Bobbie Johnson guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Supercomputer in the firing line over carbon footprint
Breakfast briefing: PC industry ’stablising’, says Dell
• Things have been pretty tough in the PC business recently, but things could be on the turn according to Dell. Despite posting a 22% decline in revenues from the same time last year, the Financial Times quotes executives from the Texan company saying that the slump was "stablising" and that there are now "some pockets of strong demand". • Despite concern that Spotify's iPhone app might not get approval, since it potentially competes with Apple's own music business, Cupertino says it has given it the rubber stamp , reports PaidContent . Premium users will get the chance to stream music over the air and cache tracks when in Wi-Fi range so that they can listen to them again later. • Microsoft has unveiled some details about its "White-Fi" project , a way for electronic devices to use spare parts of the radio spectrum. It's part of a project that's been running for a few years, but supporters hope it can pick up steam: Ars Technica has a good overview . You can follow our links and commentary each day through Twitter ( @guardiantech , or our personal accounts ) or by watching our Delicious feed . Dell Computing Spotify Apple iPhone Software Wi-Fi Microsoft Research and development Bobbie Johnson guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Breakfast briefing: PC industry 'stablising', says Dell
Apple’s Snow Leopard reviewed
The Guardian's comprehensive review of Apple's new Snow Leopard OS Overview Mac OS X 10.6 – aka Snow Leopard – will be released tomorrow. The truth is that it doesn't contain hundreds of big new features to entice you into upgrading – but it does have one that everyone will appreciate: speed. Snow Leopard is, in fact, blisteringly fast. Booting is quicker, waking from sleep is quicker, and, of course, launching applications is quicker than if you're using Leopard. That's not to say that it doesn't have other, real, new features, too – Exchange support in Mail, iCal and Address Book are probably the most well known in companies. And there's the anecdotal effect: after a few days of using Snow Leopard, sitting down at a Mac running Leopard will drive you insane, just as using a Tiger-based Mac now sets the teeth of any seasoned Leopard user on edge. In place of the big new features, Snow Leopard brings many small improvements. Finder has been rewritten to be much more robust in the face of vanishing network volumes. Your time zone is automatically set based on your location. Preference panes have been reorganised – sometimes only minutely – to make it easier to find the most important settings.
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Apple's Snow Leopard reviewed
Technophile: MESH Cute X215 HD home theatre PC review
It's attractive and well connected but Mesh's Cute X215 HD PC is noisy and has limited expansion options London-based Mesh has just launched a Cute home theatre PC that is easy to fit into a living room or even a bedroom. The £399 price includes a Blu-ray drive, DVB-T digital TV card with remote control, and 7.1 surround sound. It doesn't include a monitor or speakers, but to get the best out of it you'll need a high-definition screen (1920 x 1080) and a set of speakers. The Cute's front is 200mm across and 166mm high, though the "cube" is comparatively deep at 303mm (7.9 x 6.7 x 12.2 in). I tried a glossy red one but it's also available in blue, black, or white. The Cute is the sort of thing hobbyists and movie enthusiasts have been building from barebones cases (the Cute looks like an A8989-Series from Chyang Fun) and mini-ITX motherboards. Mesh has done it for the rest of us, with a range of machines at prices from £299 to £599 . The £399 X215 HD version has a 2.7GHz dual-core AMD Athlon processor, 2GB of memory, a 320GB hard drive, 64-bit Windows Vista Home Premium, and Cyberlink's Blu-ray Disc Suite. (It also qualifies for a free copy of Windows 7.) Given that you pay a premium for small, it's good value. On set up, I was far from being the first person to struggle to get the Logitech cordless keyboard and optical mouse working. Eventually I found a tip in the documentation – push the connect buttons in with a pen – after which everything worked, instantly. If you're using it in a living room and/or at a movie-viewing distance, having cordless peripherals is important. The Cute is reasonably nippy, with the processor scoring 5.5 on the Windows Experience Index . However, the overall score is brought down to 4.0 by the 3D graphics from the integrated ATI Radeon HD3200 chip. Drawbacks?
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Technophile: MESH Cute X215 HD home theatre PC review
Windows 7 laptops: how to choose | Jack Schofield
With the Windows market so large, the trick is to decide on a category of laptop before you start shopping Research suggests that Windows 7 is not going to give the PC market much of a lift when it makes its retail appearance on 22 October. My contrary opinion is based on a survey of only one user, but I get the impression from Ask Jack emails that I won't be the only person shopping for a new laptop when Windows 7 appears. Buying a portable Windows machine can be a bit of a challenge, because there is so much choice. There are hundreds if not thousands of suppliers, and some of them offer two dozen different models. The trick is to know what sort of laptop you want. To simplify things a bit, there are roughly six classes of portable PC: netbooks, "value" systems, mainstream notebooks, ultraportables, desktop replacements and gaming systems. Most netbooks today have Intel Atom processors with 1GB of memory, a 10in screen and Windows XP. Some will appear running the cheaper Windows 7 Starter Edition, which you can't buy in the shops
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Windows 7 laptops: how to choose | Jack Schofield
Ask Jack: 27 August 2009
Searching for a cheap PC My parents are in their 70s, and want to upgrade their ancient (15-year-old) PC and get online. They don't want a laptop and have asked me to source a reliable PC with a flat-panel monitor for around £300. I'm struggling. Paul English JS: It may not be easy to hit the £300 price point on a new, name brand machine running Windows. However, there are often special deals that come close. At the moment, for example, Dell is offering an Inspiron 545 desktop PC deal (search the site for D004528) with an 18.5in widescreen for £329 including VAT and shipping. It's not the prettiest machine around, but the price includes 2GB of memory, a DVD +/- RW drive, Windows Vista Home Premium and Microsoft Works 9.
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Ask Jack: 27 August 2009
Fujitsu to cut 1,200 UK jobs
• Job losses account for almost 10% of Fujitsu's UK workforce • Move follows loss of contracts and company-wide pay freeze Japanese IT group Fujitsu is axing 1,200 jobs, almost 10% of its UK workforce, as the recession sees corporate clients and public organisations try to conserve their cash. The company, which has a number of contracts with government departments including the Ministry of Defence, employs 12,500 people in more than two dozen offices including its corporate headquarters in London. While the losses are expected to be spread across the country its largest office is in Bracknell, Berkshire, which has 1,240 staff, with 750 people based in Manchester and 670 in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. "Fujitsu has proposed this measure reluctantly," the company said in a statement. "However, action is necessary to ensure that the company remains competitive in the current difficult global economic climate and is in a solid position for future growth when the economy starts to recover." Unite , the largest union in the UK, condemned the proposed redundancies as "wholly unwarranted". National officer Peter Skyte said: "Unite is pressing for detailed information about the reasons for this proposal and the areas affected. We will be doing everything possible to protect the jobs of the workforce." Fujitsu UK, which recorded annual revenues of more than £2bn last year, had already introduced a company-wide pay freeze and slashed the number of contractors it uses in order to save costs. A spokesman said the move was not connected with the loss of any particular piece of business, but the company has suffered some setbacks over the past year. It looks set to lose work with BT as the telecoms company recently appointed a joint venture between services group Carillion and Telent as its sole network outsourcing partner. Fujitsu has been servicing the network in several parts of the country. Last year the company was ejected from the multibillion pound renovation of the NHS computer system – the largest non-military computer project on record – as it lost its £896m contract to run hospital IT upgrades in the south of England. That business was subsequently picked up by BT. The company, which is also a shareholder in the National Lottery operator Camelot, is currently part of a consortium chasing a £1bn 10-year contract to run the armed forces' recruitment services. Job losses Recession Redundancy Work & careers Computing Japan Richard Wray guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Fujitsu to cut 1,200 UK jobs
Could better computer and administrative systems have reduced suffering?
NHS informatics could have done more to help two of my contemporaries, argues the Patient from Hell A few months back, I chronicled in these columns the problems of two aged contemporaries, Tom and Charles (not their real names), at the hands of defective administrative systems and clinical lack of interest. One of them lived in the home counties, the other was a patient of a mega-hospital in central London. Last week, they both died. Since then, I have been wondering whether better computer and administrative systems could have reduced their suffering and the distress of their families, and prolonged their lives. I quoted their cases originally as a contrast to the superb treatment I have been receiving at the specialist 'Fastrack Hospital', with its quite good computer systems. My aim was to contrast what is the best in the NHS with the run-of-the-mill, which is inadequate and distressing for the patient. The following will of course be dismissed as anecdotal by the medical establishment, because I use a sample of just two cases, but my sample is 100% of the current cases which I have been following, and the two cases show similar failings.
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Could better computer and administrative systems have reduced suffering?
Galileo’s telescope reminds us to celebrate toolmakers
Galileo and his telescope are rightly celebrated. But will the inventors of integrated circuits, DNA sequencing and X-ray crystallography be remembered by future generations? If it weren't for Google, which has transformed its logo into a telescopic doodle to mark the occasion, the 400th anniversary of the first public demonstration of Galileo's revolutionary telescope might have gone unnoticed. How strange that the public – and the media – can be captivated by revolutionary ideas in science, such as evolution and relativity, but fail to be impressed by the invention of new scientific instruments, which have arguably been far more important for human progress.
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Galileo's telescope reminds us to celebrate toolmakers