Google's April Fool : TiSP

Today I read a story on Slashdot about Google launching a free wireless broadband service, called TiSP. A link of how it works was provided, leading to a page on Google's website.

On this page was a picture of an installation kit and instructions on how to get your wireless network to work. Going short : You have to flush a cable through the toilet, into the sewage system and connect one end to a wireless accesspoint. The other end is picked up by a Google engineer, located somewhere in the sewage system, connecting it to a large and fast fiber optics network.

It sounds all very promissing and it is presented very professionaly, so it seems almost believable, but it is somewhat unrealistic and inpractical to flush a cable to get wireless internet access. Combine this with the date the story was released (april, 1st) :
This must be Google's April Fool's day joke. Very funny!

Am I a nerd?

I came along a funny little quiz on Bruce's blog.

Your Result: Science/Math Nerd   (Absolute Insane Laughter as you pour toxic chemicals into a foaming tub of death!) Well, maybe you aren't this extreme, but you're in league with the crazy scientists/mathmeticians of today. Very few people have the talent of math and science is something takes a lot of brains as well. Thank whosever God you worship, or don't worship, so thank no deity whatsoever in your case, for you people! Most of us would have died off without your help.
Literature Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Social Nerd
Anime Nerd
Drama Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Musician
What Be Your Nerd Type?

Computers need help

Computers are good at calculating, searching through data and doing other automated tasks. And they're fast doing so. They're much faster than any human doing these tasks.
That's why computers are used for assisting human beings performing certain tasks or, in some cases even replace the human being.

But don't despair. There are some tasks a computer can't do. And that's when a human being is needed to help the computer.
A computer can't easily recognise objects shown in a picture, something a human being does without any problems or hesitation. If you show a picture of 'a car by a lake on a sunny day' to a human, he or she will tell you it's a picture of a car with a lake in the background. It seems to be nice that day, because of the blue sky and the small clouds.
If you present the same picture to a computer, depending on the complexity of the algorithm being used, you well get an answer like : large blue surface with green and red area's, or maybe (if it's a very strong or specialised algorithm) red car on blue background. The algorithm probably won't be able to tell the difference between the blue of the sky and the blue of the lake.
The same is true for recognising text. A human viewer will recognise a word or some characters without difficulty, even if the characters are deformed, written through and over each other or when the colour of the letters and the background change. Computers can detect characters and words, but only if it knows the used font, if the contrast between the characters and the background is big enough (and constant) and if the characters are nicely aligned. And even then it makes mistakes. When the conditions are a bit less ideal, a computer has a very hard time recognising characters or words. Most likely it will fail to recognise anything at all.
That's the reason why so called CAPTCHA's are used to make sure a human is performing a task on a website, like registering on a forum, leaving a message on a blog or logging into a bank-account : a computer can't read the word in the image.
This way, automated algorithms that are used to flood forums with spam, are stopped (or delayed, as the algorithms to read captcha's are getting better).

But most of the time, computers (algorithms) are unable to recognise things a human does without effort. And that's were the human can help the computer. Computers are good at looking up information that's stored in a database. So if a database would be constructed linking the picture of the car with some keywords like 'car, blye sky, sunny day, lake, ...' the computer would 'know' what is on the picture. If the computer was asked to present a picture of a 'car' or even of 'car by a lake' it would filter through the database and come up with the picture of 'the car by the lake on a sunny day'.
A computer couldn't fill the database with keyword matching data, because it is unable to recognise what's on the picture, but a human could. Of course, it would be a very tedious task for a human being to look at every existing picture and tagging it with keywords. That's why a scientists came up with the idea to turn it into some sort of a game.
The concept is easy : two randomly picked people are paired and they are presented some pictures. They have to describe what's on the picture, using keywords or tags. If both people come up with the same keyword, they are granted some points and the next image is presented. The goal is to earn as much points, i.e. get as many matching keywords as possible, in a defined timeframe. The best scores are added to a highscore list.
The concept is simple, but effective. Google is using this 'game' to tag pictures found on the web, in order to return the best matching search results for images.

So, for now computers still need human assistance to perform certain tasks, like recognising characters, text, images or every day objects or understanding what a text or conversation is about. But maybe some day, computers could pass the Turing Test, and they would be able to 'recognise', 'understand' and maybe 'think' like humans do. But it seems that computing and Artificial Intelligence have a long way to go to be able to do that. Until then, computers still need help.

Old love rediscovered

This weekend I rediscovered something I haven't felt for quite some time now : I was very excited solving a mathematical problem. I was so excited, I lost track of time. It was after a few hours I realized I had been busy looking into the problem and looking up some stuff, without taking a break.
Last few years, most of the time when I'm studying or getting some work done, I get distracted after a time and I take a break or do something relaxing. Most difficult part is to stop taking a break and start studying again. And sometimes I'm taking more and longer breaks than that I spent time studying.

I haven't solved the particular problem yet, I have to look into it some more, but I'm eager to continue working on the problem and finding a solution.
I'm very glad I found this drive to solve problems again. I thought that I lost it, but now that I got it back again, I'm looking forward on digging into some more mathematical and physics problems.
I can't realy describe what it feels like to have found that drive again, but it feels very good. And I like it a lot!

Birthday party

Tomorrow is my birthday and I'm throwing a party to celebrate.
All preperations have been made, invitations have been sent and I have notified my neighbours.
About 15 people will attend, at least, that's the number of people I've invited.
Today I went shopping to get drinks and snacks. I had to carry my groceries home by foot, so I went to shop two times to get everything I needed.
This is what I got:

• 24 cans of beer
  
• 3 l of white wine
• 3 x two liter bottles of coke
• 2 l of orange juice
• 1 bottle of Ice Tea (I wanted to bring two, but the one I got was the only one left in the shop)
• 4 bags of differently flavoured crisps
• 2 bags of party nuts
• some hot snacks (at the moment I bought them, they were frozen. I will have to fry them or put them in the oven before serving them to my guests)

I got my appartement cleaned up and prepared for the party. Not that I had to clean up that much. I just tried to bring some structure in the everyday chaos.
All drinks are in the fridge, so they will be cool by the time they will be served.
The only thing that has to be done is to move some furniture around.

I almost forgot, I have to buy some disposable cups tomorrow.

The only casualty so far is one can of beer, which was attracted by earth's gravitational force. In other words: I dropped it when taking it out of it's wrapping, before putting it in the fridge. The fall caused the tin foil to shear, so I almost got a beer shower.

Everything is ready for a nice party. Now, only my guests have to show up. Let's hope they do. ;-)

Mathematical knitting and crocheting

I remember a statement recently made by a fellow student and friend, claiming that 'knitting is hip' and will soon become the next big thing. Time will tell if she's proven right.

Anyway, it seems more people are knitting and are making useful things with it. I came across an article about a maths professor who is using crocheting to make models of mathematical objects that are difficult to imagine, like hyperbolic planes and a Lorenz manifold.

Dilbert

I receive daily Dilbert comics for quite some time now. Most of the time they are very funny or even hilarious. The comic of today is one of those hilarious ones.