5 posts and columns on SkyNet

How Siri Really Works (Comic)

in Voices on October 17, 2011 at 4:30 pm PT

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site.
siri

While Fanboys Breathlessly Await Steve Jobs's Apple iTab, They Should Probably Thank Bill Gates Too

in News on October 5, 2009 at 8:10 am PT

Way back in the fall of 2001, BoomTown attended a keynote speech at the now-defunct Comdex show in Las Vegas, where Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates continued to bang the drum for one of his long-running obsessions: The tablet computer. It is an obsession he has never given up. So it is ironic that all the hype has suddenly and firmly coalesced around the particulars of the tablet that Apple has developed–a device being spearheaded by CEO Steve Jobs and likely to arrive in the coming months.
bill_gates_tablet_pc

"Terminator" Terminated? Actually, Restructured!

in News on September 29, 2009 at 12:41 am PT

Memo to all Cyborg Geeks: “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology….We can make him better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.” Wait, that’s “The Six Million Dollar Man” motto! But it might as well apply to the Hollywood outfit that owns the “Terminator” movie franchise.
Terminator-Salvation_l

D7 Tech Demo: Siri

in D7 on May 28, 2009 at 12:00 pm PT

Many would-be augurs have been trying to pinpoint the moment the artificial intelligence overlord known as Skynet gets its start: Some may one day point to the launch of Siri. Siri is a virtual personal assistant, for your iPhone or computer, with a pedigree: It originated at the Stanford Research Institute and was spun out as an AI project financed by DARPA. Now, as an alternative to search, Siri is supposed to carry out tasks like finding your next outgoing flight or ordering a pizza by crawling the Web and conversing with the user, processing requests, responding and learning from the interaction. It will do this via a combination of technologies, including speech recognition, natural language processing and semantic Web search.
siri1

Online Video: The "Terminator Salvation" Trailer

in News on December 18, 2008 at 5:16 am PT

BoomTown is a freakish fan of cybernetic organisms–living tissue over a metal endoskeleton, duh!–and thus feels compelled to include this, the latest trailer from the upcoming fourth movie in the “Terminator” series, called “Terminator Salvation.” The franchise is everywhere these days, including a television series I am also obsessed with, called “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.” But the big Skynet guns are trained on the movie blockbuster, which will be out next summer. Oh, they’ll be back alright.