Star Trek: Scents. I’m not kidding.

I would say “I’ve seen it all now” but I’m totally not going down that road. Still, this one made me laugh. I was bumbling around this morning, looking at this and that, first cup of coffee, have to Get Moving in a Minute, and stumbled on this: Star Trek: the perfumes...really
Star Trek: perfumes. Really.

And they have one named “Red Shirt”. They have named a perfume after all the poor suckers who died! I mean, it’s funny and all, but… please explain the marketing strategy to me. Why would some committee somewhere think that is a winning strategy?

I got a chuckle out of this whole thing, mostly, but… Red Shirts? Maybe I’m just missing the point?

Artificial Intelligence, Part 2

I just saw a revised mention of the article I talked about earlier. Now it says that the university (in Amsterdam I think? I’m hurrying so not sure right now) – anyway, the people who developed the “intelligent programs” have a robot working with their programs.

They named the robot Adam. And they have already made a second robot. Named Eve.

Insert Twilight Zone music here.

Artificial Intelligence – Robots that can reason?

Wow. Just saw an article from Reuters that says some scientists are developing “robots (computers anyway) that can think”.

Of course that’s an oversimplification designed to get headlines, but it does say that programs have been developed that can reason and create hypotheses, determine and then check results. It’s on a baby scale so far but still… wow.

Old Univac Computer
Talk about a double-edged sword. The article talks about how these programs could “take over much of the routine work in research laboratories”. This would be terrific for efficiency (and probably cost-savings). It could also lead to, well, all those computers-take-over-the-world-scenarios that SF has loved for years.

“Terminator”, anyone?