Domestically for health care and internationally for Google’s action to change its position in the Chinese market. Because Google is redirecting google.cn to their unfiltered Hong Kong site, I thinking it a bit early to be making the bold claim that Google has withdrawn from China completely. Especially considering that Hong Kong is a part of the larger People’s Republic of China. It will be interesting to see how both of the situations play out over the coming weeks and months, with health care passed and Google taking a serious step towards leaving the Chinese mainland.
Category Archives: Technology
Site Changes
I have decided to move the whole site over to WordPress for a more uniform look across the site. As become better acquainted with WordPress the look and feel of the site may change tremendously from what it is now, and some of the content I have yet to move over should gradually return. In time images will be placed into posts missing them, 301 redirects will fix broken permalinks, and missing posts may be recovered.
Google may or may not be using Quantum Computer
From the files of the potentially scary while potentially exciting comes news of Google’s venture into what may or may not be quantum computing using technology from D-Wave company who may or may not be marketing the technology that they claim to be.
There’s a lot of coverage out there already, but I just find it interesting where a lot of the commentary is putting out comparisons of this implementation of maybe or maybe not quantum computing to neural networks. If this connection is realized further, it would support some hunches that I have had for some time. On the other hand it it creates a computer that is too brain like, we probably will have a good idea as to how an actual implementation of a Skynet like system may or may not differ from its portrayal in fiction. Hopefully it will be more concerned with why the Google team used such elementary school-type branding on its predecessors than having the world all to itself.
Considering especially the application of this new technology towards image recognition, a task at which people tend to perform very well, the nature of this technology as possibly more of a cousin to cognition than earlier computing technologies sounds rather possible. Considering also on the other hand the difficulties associated with building quantum computers in academic environments and the consideration offered in other commentaries on D-Wave that its products are likely frauds, jokes, or some form of joke there is the possibility that the Google team is working on its most elaborate April fools day project yet.
System Analysis and Legislation
Structured systems aren’t very different even when they occur in very different situations. A recent story on Slashdot about approaching healthcare bill HR 3200 from a system design perspective like you’d find in computer science or information technology. It is something that probably ought to be approached more often, this similarity between legislation and software. A piece of legislation is much like a piece of software in that each type of system is a collection of instruction to be carried out in order to manage something. A piece of software can compel your computer to function as a word processor, audio player, or communications device by compelling it to follow the instructions contained within the software.
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