net neutrality

The underlining issue with net neutrality is the freedom of consumer access to anywhere on the web without limitations. The Internet is free for people to access what we want, when we want. Many large organizations are pro net neutrality such as google, Microsoft, and Facebook. They are in favor of the fair chance playing field that net neutrality offers. It allows healthy competition and pushes organizations to produce better products for the web. Other organizations like Verizon Wireless and Comcast Cable are not inviting to the ideas that net neutrality offers. They feel that with organizations like there own, they can dominate and control what is rightfully theirs. With individuals striving to achieve the ultimate goal of controlling parts of the web, it will create better competition. Both these sides have arguments for the well-being of customers but provide many different points. If I had to choose which argument I most agree with, I would be pro net neutrality. I think that allowing the customer all access without discrimination is a key to our society today. It has allowed us to grow and continue to compete in a way, which helps our economy function the way it should.

Writing Assignment Week 12

Writing Assignment Week 12

In class, we discussed the Turing Test as a potential means for determining if something is intelligent. There are many "chatbots" online that can fool humans (this BBC article talks about some of them). Do you think that the Turing test is a good test for determining if someone (either person or computer) is intelligent? (Note: the question is asking whether the test in principle is a useful way to determine intelligence, not whether you'd be fooled by the specific chatbot in the article.) If so, why? If not, what are some drawbacks? What might be a better way to determine if a computer is intelligent?

No, I do not believe it is a good way of testing intelligence… for humans anyway. After reading the comical BBC article, it seems that several people are believing that this machine is human. However, there seems to be a pattern, the people believing in it are the people that are there as a dating service or there to “talk dirty”. I’m not saying that these people aren’t as smart, but it may reflect their intelligence only because it seems to be a pattern. Depending on how quickly “it” responds and what is has to say, I’m not sure if I’d fall for it or not. As far as it being a principle way to determine intelligence among a computer, I think it reflects the human who programmed it to be able to do it more than the computer itself. Now I’m not very computer savvy, and I do realize that a computer has to be very smart in order to be able to respond as a human but I don’t know who’s intelligence that would be reflecting, the computer? Or would it once again be the human?
I think a better way of judging a computer’s intelligence would be to see how much it can remember and reuse on its own without being programmed with certain automatic responses. After seeing the chatbot in class it seemed that it didn’t take very much to program a computer to answer a question with a question. That doesn’t seem like a way to judge a intelligence of a computer.

My first entry

My name is Alix Gombos, I'm attending USF for my third year and I play for the USF women's volleyball team. I'm from Portland, Oregon, which is possibly one of my favorite cities, next to Boston, Seattle, San Francisco and Las Vegas. I love to travel, and I do so a lot because I travel for volleyball. I'm the youngest of three, I have two older brothers who graduated from Univesity of Oregon and I have a very loving family.
I'm taking this class to enhance my computer knowledge and because I need a math credit for my Communication major. Unfortunately I missed the first day of class due to a volleyball tournament in Seattle, but so far I'm really enjoying this class and I'm looking forward to attending it for the rest of the semester.