ironicsans

After seeing the description of how Watson works, I found myself wondering whether what it does is really natural language processing, or something more akin to word association. That is to say, does Watson really need to understand syntax and meaning to just search its database for words and phrases associated with the words and phrases in the clue? How did Waston's approach differ from simple phrase association (with some advanced knowledge of how Jeopardy clues work, such as using the word "this" to mean "blank"), and what would the benefit/drawback have been to taking that approach?

Loophole: spend as many years as you want traveling through time and space and then return it 3 hours and 59 minutes after you borrowed it.

Running On Empty is one of my favorite movies but as far as I can tell it has never been released in any form other than pan-and-scan standard definition. Any idea why? Who do I need to petition to get it released in HD? (Long shot that you know the answer but I have to ask)