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Thursday, June 18, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
And now,someething to read for us as we loaf around,wonderfull!!
Book-reading Robot
Great, it seems that us humans are getting lazier and lazier by the moment - that the Ninomiya-kun robot for instance. that 1-meter-tall, 25-kilogram aluminum-framed robot was developed at Waseda University’s knowledge, Production and Systems Research Center (IPSRC), and is able to read out stories from a book, letting dad ditch his bedtime story teller role to his kids as the Ninomiya-kun substitutes dad’s place so that he can continue zapping aliens in the living room on,real loafing.Hu!!
Web 2.0 tools:brand new stuff
Web 2.0 is Officially the Millionth Phrase in English Language
English language was first time recorded nearly 1,500 years ago and now it registered its millionth word. On June 10, 2009, at 10.22AM the English dictionary was enriched with the phrase Web 2.0 that expresses the next generation of Internet services. It is worth mentioning that a word must be used at least 25,000 times within the national borders and outside the country in order to be officially accepted.
Global Language Monitor (GLM) is an Austin, Texas-based company that cooperatively documents, studies and tracks trends in language usage around the globe in print publications, online news resources, blogs and social media, paying special attention to the English language. It officially recognized Web 2.0 as the millionth word in English language, with 1,000,001st being Financial Tsunami that describes a sudden financial restructuring.
The company selected 15 words in order to complete its calculation that English language would reach the mark of 1,000,000 words. Although the 15 selected words achieved the mark of 25,000 citations worldwide, Web 2.0 was the one chosen to be the millionth word.
John Simpson, chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, mentioned that for a long time linguists and lexicographers explained that it is impossible to accurately evaluate the size of English language.
"We find it curious that Web 2.0, a term that was coined in 1999 and has been in broad use since 2004, is being regarded as a new entrant to the language," he said. Web 2.0, which started as a tech jargon, gained its popularity mainly in the last six months. It managed to surpass such words phrases as Jai Ho! and slumdog, which became popular after the film Slumdog Millionaire hit the cinemas worldwide. The exclamation Jai Ho! used widely in India means victory or accomplishment, and slumdog is an offensive term that describes children living in the slums.
The chief word analyst at Global Language Monitor, Paul JJ Payack, said that English language has become so popular around the world that it generates about 14.7 new words each day, which means one new word in every 98 minutes.
Powered by www.infoniac.comGuys are really getting ahead of the pack
Latest Invention: Lip-Reading Computers Able to Identify Different Languages
One of the latest inventions created by scientists from the University of East Anglia (UEA) are lip-reading computers that are able to identify different languages.
Scientists managed to come up with lip-reading computers some time earlier but now they created the first computer that can really distinguish different languages. This latest invention could prove to be very useful for people with hearing problems, as well as for law enforcement agencies, and in noisy environments.
The revolutionary research is currently led by Stephen Cox and Jake Newman of UEA's School of Computing Sciences. They will present their latest invention at a major conference that will take place in Taiwan on April 22.
It is worth mentioning that the technology was built up by statistical modeling of the lip movements developed by a team of 23 bilingual and trilingual speakers. The system could distinguish any language with extremely high accuracy. It could identify English, French, German, Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Italian, Polish and Russian, reports the UEA website.
"This is the first scientific confirmation that when people speak different languages, they use different mouth shapes in different sequences," outlined Prof Cox.
"For example, we found frequent 'lip-rounding' among French speakers and more prominent tongue movements among Arabic speakers," he added.
The study was funded by the EPSRC and is a part of a larger project of the University of East Anglia that focuses on automatic lip-reading. Soon scientists will start working on the system closer to an individual's physiology and their way of speaking.
Powered by www.infoniac.comThursday, June 11, 2009
And now a time to pray!!!!
Serenity Prayer
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
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