[technology] Google Translator

Funny as it is, just last week I chatted with one of the friends on some possible non-mainstream applications of search engines. Here's another one and it is completely breathtaking. Here's the blog entry and here's the Slashdot post.

…The underlying principle is easy – so easy in fact that the researchers working on this enabled the system to translate from Chinese to English without any researcher being able to speak Chinese. To the translation system, any language is treated the same, and there is no manually created rule-set of grammar, metaphors and such. Instead, the system is learning from existing human translations. Google relies on a large corpus of texts which are available in multiple languages.

<…>

All it needs is someone to feed the system two books and to teach it the two are translations from language A to language B, and the translator can create what Franz Och called a "language model." I suspect it’s crucial that the body of text is immensely large, or else the system in its task of translating would stumble upon too many unlearned phrases. Google used the United Nations Documents to train their machine, and all in all fed 200 billion words. This is brute force AI, if you want – it works on statistical learning theory only and has not much real "understanding" of anything but patterns.

A question to dimkaguarani and other experts – is it possible that our brains employ similar structures – large pattern maps built from experience?

[software,link] Video for Skype

Dialcom's Spontania video plug-in is designed to be integrated with any 3rd party Internet-based communication solution. Dialcom selected Skype, the leading VoIP solution, as the first integration candidate. As a result of this, we are pleased to bring you Spontania video4skype, for free.

Via Slashdot.

[<undef>,quote] Healthcare standards

Many Russian columnists cite the official 15 minutes per patient quote that Russian state-controlled clinics use ridiculously small. Well, I just came across the following fragment in a funny article on the Fast Company site:

The hospital in which [the friend's] mom's doctor practices has instituted strict new productivity targets to reduce costs. He's allowed only 8.8 minutes with each patient. So there's no time to explain new drugs. No, that would be another item to be researched on the Internet.

The article itself is quite interesting and its topic is far beyond the mere cost-cutting trends in US hospitals.

[<undef>] Пансионат "Дюны"

После неудавшегося восстания в июле 1917 года, подозреваемый правительством Керенского в шпионаже в пользу Германии, Владимир Ильич Ленин скрывался в Финляндии под псевдонимом Харконнен.

[<undef>] Пансионат "Дюны" revisited

Когда в конце лета сестрорецкий оружейник Емельянов и двое финнов выводили Владимира Ильича от озера Разлив через лес, один из тех финнов был Фейд Раута.

Позже в его честь назвали посёлок на Карельском перешейке.

[<undef>] О, Дюна, Дюна, кто тебя усеял мертвыми когтями?

Дева-ротор и дева-статор.