ninme

Comment fun at Slashdot:

Coming Soon, The Google Translator

compuglot writes “Google gave journalists a glimpse of its next generation machine translation system at a May 19th Google Factory Tour. “Google Blogoscoped” offers an excellent overview of the presentation. The system has been trained using the United Nations Documents as a corpus. This corpus is some 20 billion words worth of content. It uses existing source and target language translations (done by human translators at the U.N.) to find patterns it then uses to build rules for translating between those languages. Apparently it was successful where the current version had failed in translating certain phrases. If anyone were capable of making a serious go of MT, that would have to be Google.”

So, basically, Google is launching a new translator which has learned, itself, how to translate (rather than being taught), using UN Documents, got it? So, the comments:

Lovely translation source…

So when you go to translate.google.com and translate something, the result will be legal-eze in the resulting languages.

Spanish: “Que pasa?”
English translation: “With regards to the current situation, how is the day progressing?”

Re:Lovely translation source…

No, it actually translates “que pasa” into “We hereby condemn these actions taken by the Israeli government.”

heehee

So things are happening in videogameland. Peter’s been all over it, but I didn’t have time yesterday to follow it really. Before we get to that, lookit this:

Baghdad Bob does 404 error.

Okay, first, we have the Gameboy Micro”!” Peter says, “Nintendo pulled an Apple and came out with something completely unexpected.” Which translates to, Peter’s really excited!!!

Then, we have Sony showing off the PS3. From this page, we scroll to the bottom and click the stream for free button for Killzone 2. Peter thinks that if this is real-time, then Microsoft’s gonna hurt badly. I haven’t had time for video games since I rocked Killer Instinct and Duke Nukem. But this looks good. However Peter says that Sony has a habit of inflating their specs and showing pre-rendered versions. Whatever. The preview still looks good.

Third, we have what we were waiting for for years, now alas after we’re out of school and don’t have time to be sucked into this world every waking moment. Yes, you guessed it. Animal Crossing, wirelessly online and portable. I guess, technically, that was the last time I had time for video games, but Animal Crossing doesn’t really count, does it?

I have no idea what this is, but the music is really nice.

Uh, fifth, this is disgusting, disturbing, and the end to civilisation as we know it. But guys will like it.

Eyedentify

I really really really hate stuff like that. I seriously think it takes advantage of vulnerable men with no social skills, exploits them, and gives them a place to escape to where they won’t ever have to force themselves to learn or fake the social skills necessary to function normally in society, leaving them to sweat behind computer screens eating fatty snack foods for the rest of their lives, as their souls slowly decay. But that’s just my opinion.

Much better: Hello Kitty kicks but. With a sparkly wand!

Hello Kitty Roller Rescue

Then, seventh, Peter thinks this is the strangest DS game ever. I think it’s a pretty clever way to work anime into a video game without ruining the characters. But still a very strange plot idea.

Trauma Center

Okay this is weird. Tamagotchi on steroids. Play with your dog without ever having to go outside for fresh air, clean your room, or interact with any human being or canine!

Chihuahua & Friends - looks more like a corgi to me, tho.

The pièce de resistance for Pierre (keeping with the language, you see), the trailer for the new Zelda: Twilight Princess. Peter has a thing for Zelda. A soft spot, if you will. A dreamy-eyed obsession, if you won’t. For the game, not the girl.

And finally, for all you who couldn’t give a rip about video games, to reward you for scrollilng down after Baghdad Bob, here’s the world’s best billboard.

PhotoStamps

Turn your memories into PhotoStamps.

Interesting.

Wish you could be Batman? But too grownup and important to buy the Batmobile at auction and drive it to work? Get a Mayback Exelero instead!

A little viral action:

funnyfox - Get Firefox

Please do, btw, all you PC users.

Popgadget - Pillow for fragile girls

The Flenndoch pillow, by German designers Karen Olze & Gisa Wilkens, features an integrated kleenex dispenser and comes handy in case of teardrops caused by hay-fever-plagues, heartaches, crybabies or sad movies.

Ask yourself why Peter’s recommending this. I dunno.

Wow, they make cool stuff, that Karen and Gisa.

“Man, this sounds so adorably pointless” (except he spelt pointless wrong):

funkyzilla - nowanowa

Nowa nowa the shy French speaking fairy in a box! Speak or make noise near nowa nowa’s box and nowa nowa will wake up, say something and start moving around inside as the box tilts back and forth. Speak to nowa nowa softly and it will peep out from under the lid and talk to you (If you speak harshly nowa nowa will refuse to come out!) Nowa nowa is shy so will quickly go back inside and the lid will slam shut. As nowa nowa get’s more confident the lid will open wider and stay open longer (Before shutting again). Eventually the lid will open fully and nowa nowa will say you are a real friend! Nowa nowa’s voice is so cute it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand it’s simple French! If you don’t speak or make a sound for a while nowa nowa will say ‘bonne nuit’ and go to sleep.

I like the third one too.