iWant iPod iAgain

I just bought an iPod Nano. Its not even a couple of month, an all new iPod nano is in the market. Needless to say, I want it. I think I would sell the one I have and get the new one.

Happens quite often with me. The moment I buy something, there is an announcement about a better deal. If only I would have delayed the purchase by a couple of months, I would have been able to lay my hands onto a new one. Anyways I have been taught by one of my professors that a decision made under available information should not be criticized in view of new information.

Colour Blind

Once upon a time, I went to get my driver's license made. There were a few tests to be taken - including a colour blindness test. I flunked that test. I thought the inspector there was trying to fleece me and get bribe out of me. Anyways I got the license made and thats an old story.

Yesterday I was trying to download some files off rapidshare. Rapidshare uses CAPTCHA to fend off automated downloads. To download the file, I had to look at the following image and key it in. And I wasn't able to read it. I still can't.

I could get the file after refreshing the page and "decoding" another picture but thats not the point. The point remains I am now proven colour blind.. .!

Amazon Mechanical Turk

Amazon Mechanical Turk is the answer to people who thought human intelligence is out and artificial intelligence is here to stay (that reminds me, I used to call myself Artificially Intelligent at one point in time).

The concept is simple. Amazon is trying to create artificial intelligence artificially. Most of the tasks can be performed by machines better than humans and then there are tasks that a machine can't even think of doing and humans are completely at ease with them. mturk uses image recognition as an example. CAPTCHA is designed around the premise that humans can read the images and machines can not. mturk calls these tasks HITs.

A Human Intelligence Task, or HIT, is a question that needs an answer. A HIT represents a single, self-contained task that you can perform to completion and collect a reward. You may do as many HITs as you like, whenever you like, in any order.

mturk helps everyone. People can get their work done at low costs from many people (use crowd-sourcing), people can make money and in turn Amazon can make money from exchange and then they must be hoping that some people end up spending money they earn on Amazon itself ... !!!!

Oh yes, the project is still in BETA and yet to catch up. When it is up and running, may be I can put my blog as a HIT ... ?