For the show broadcast between October 25th and 31st, 2008
As Internet Explorer 8 continues its development, Benjamin did a semi-review of it and Google Chrome. Unfortunately, these programs, both in their Beta forms, require massive work from your computer. The recently released, Firefox 3, however, provides great speed and plenty of variety from Internet Explorer 7, making it the obvious solution.
Also in big news is YouTube, who is putting a ban on certain videos in the United Kingdom. These videos include ones “showing weapons with the aim of intimidation.” Unfortunately, anyone can claim feeling intimidate, regardless of whether it is a legitimate fear or not. This means that if someone has an irrational fear of spoons then they can claim intimidation from a video of a person eating soup and the video will be pulled. The common fear and foreseeable end result of this is complete internet censorship, with service providers keeping you from reaching any site that they want. You could be kept from watching your Netflix videos online because it would compete with your cable company who wants to sell you that video for twice the price. This is a slippery slope and things could get very ugly from here.
Benjamin also talked about the artificial intelligence-measuring Turing Test. This test puts you in a chat with two people, one a human and the other a computer. You can try it out at www.jabberwacky.com. In order to pass the test, a machine must fool 4 out of 12 human judges in order to pass the test and be considered “intelligent.” Great. . . Now we can give computers bug egos by calling them “intelligent.”
Additionally, Benjamin interviewed Dave Marcus from McAfee about cybercrime and staying safe online.
In the e-mail department, Benjamin answered Paul’s question about a possible virus on his computer keeping him from logging in, Tom asked about SupportSoft, Alfonzo wanted to know why his internet explorer has been closing since he installed Norton Anti-virus, and Bill asked how to shrink down pictures so that he can e-mail them to friends more conveniently and without them getting mad at him.
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