, 1 min read
This has been know for some time, but in vitro kids have an higher IQ than the average (whether IQ is an accurate measure of intelligence is a debate better left for another day). Even advanced in vitro techniques lead to smarter kids. So, people, if you want to have smart kids, in vitro is the way…
, 2 min read
It used to be that Google’s RSS reader was a catastrophe, but it is now pretty good and pretty smart. Google has turned things around. I’ve switched to it two days ago. The UI is still trying a bit too hard for my taste, but I guess you have to account for the fact that it is still slightly…
, 1 min read
Querying the library of congress using Search/Retrieve via URL
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SRU (Search/Retrieve via URL) is an interesting REST Web Service protocol. Enough technobabble. Let’s run an example. Suppose you want to retrieve the data that the library of congress has on a book called “First Impressions of the New World” by “Trotter Isabella Strange”, you issue the…
, 1 min read
The USA Today research projects whose goal is to deliver, by 2010, software that can almost instantly translate Arabic and Mandarin Chinese with 90 to 95% accuracy. I’m no natural language researcher, but I’d be interested in knowing how they measure accuracy. I have seen some recent results on…
, 1 min read
Dear reader, I’m looking to record everything I ever browse on the Web using Firefox. That is right. I want a copy of every single document, Web page, query, and so on, I ever encounter. I also want to record the content of every single form I submit. The result should be adequately protected so…
, 1 min read
The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) has created a wiki for the Computational Linguistics community. This is a great initiative! (Source: Peter Turney.)
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ACL Wiki for Computational Linguistics
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Fascinating. My ErdÅ‘s number is 4. According to wikipedia, the median ErdÅ‘s number amongst all working mathematicians at the turn of the millennium is 5 and the average is 4.64. In this case, being below average is good. Here is how it happened: Paul Erdös coauthored with Janos Galambos…
, 1 min read
Reinventing HTML or, yes we admit it, XHTML failed
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Very interesting post by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web. Some things are clearer with hindsight of several years. It is necessary to evolve HTML incrementally. The attempt to get the world to switch to XML, including quotes around attribute values and slashes in empty tags and namespaces…
, 1 min read
A colleague of mine, a Ph.D. in Physics, objected to my use of the term “infinite storage” in some lecture notes I posted on the Web. I think that infinite storage is something that might be possible in my lifetime. What does “infinite storage” means? Let us consider how much is required to…
, 1 min read
Free Web Conferencing Solutions
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Sharing slides and white boards on the web ought to be free, multiplatform, and easy. We have used the Java-based webhuddle with quite a lot of success. Now comes along Vyew which is the Web 2.0 equivalent of webhuddle. (Source: Harold Jarche)
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NRC sets up publication RSS feeds for its researchers
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Finally! My call for researchers to make available their publication lists as RSS has been heard! NRC decided to make it available for all their researchers, see this example. (Source: Peter Turney)
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Subversion is a great version control tool, but the scripts that accompany it are still immature. One of them, commit-email.pl is particularly bad. It goes on and on for hundreds of lines, and the end result is very poor usability. Earlier tonight, I found a better solution on the Web with color…
, 1 min read
Suppose you have incorrectly checked in a change to a file in a subversion repository. How do you revert back? This is documented elsewhere, but I want to document just exactly how I do it. First of all, you need to know what are the most recent versions of your file, to figure it out, just…
, 1 min read
I just found out about IEs4Linux. This is a beautiful project that allows you to run various version of Internet Explorer under Linux very easily. Ideal for testing out your web sites under IE!
, 1 min read
Netflix Prize: First Entries