Pinocchio!
German Language Podcasts (ZDF Heute)
Click here for: ZDF heute – Der Audio-Podcast
(ZDF German Language TV Podcast – News)
Great for getting yourself more involved with German. I’m starting my third week of listenings. Each Podcast is about 20 minutes. Enjoy!
Escape (Game)
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~viniegra/2E1/dodge.htm
In this game, you are to keep the red box moving, without hitting the blue boxes as they move. The more you keep the red box away and moving, the better. If you keep it for 18 seconds or more, your concentration is great. It is said that the American Pilots can keep their concentration in this game for up to 2 minutes! Test it out! My maximum score was 15 seconds! Enjoy!
لینک زیر حاوى یک بازی ساده برای تست تمركز است که باید ماوس را روي مربع قرمز نگه داشته و آن را حركت دهيد. باید سعي كنيد مربع قرمز رنگ با ديواره و مربع يا مستطيلهاى آبى رنگ برخورد نكند. اگر بتوانيد بيشتر از 18 ثانيه از برخورد جلوگيرى كنيد، تمرکزتان عالی ست. گفته ميشه خلبانان نيروى هوايى آمريكا تا 2 دقيقه مى توانند ادامه بدهند
Escape
Computers, Language, Hypothesis
This seems important for teaching computers to learn language and to communicate with people.
From “Principles of Language Learning and Teaching”, page 29, by H. Douglas Brown, I quote:
Rather, the child’s language at any stage is systematic in that the child is constantly forming hypotheses on the basis of the input received and then using those hypotheses in speech (and comprehension). As the child’s language develops, those hypotheses are continually revised, reshaped, or sometimes abandoned.
If the computer system can make hypotheses and test those, by for example, comparing sentence structures or anything necessary for communication, with a source, either human or data on the Internet, it may be able to further open the way to computers understanding human language. Let’s improve this topic!
More than just the mouse and the keyboard.
As I umderstand, scientists are looking for better ways to make computers realize what humans are speaking. I think that we have learning as a full experience. In other words, just like science which doesn’t develop in a vaccum, so does the human language. I think that a comprehensive interaction with a child makes her understand human behaviors and eventually develop her language too. So for computers too, maybe we need more than just the keyboard and the mouse to communicate. This way, the computer can have a more thorough understaning, or feelings, and then, we can go to the next step which includes mathematics and logic to connect these interactions with each other and make something like a web of all information. Just a scrap thought! 
Developing an atificially intelligent sound system
It would be cool to develop a sound system for a robot or machine, which allows it to distinguish the sources of different sounds. For example, if two persons spoke at the same time, the machine would understand the difference. Perhaps lots of sound engineering!
But seriously, what is it that makes the difference between two persons’ speech. How does the brain distinguish different sources? Is it the assistance of the visual abilities like the eye that help, or does the ear distinguish distances and sources by its own devices?
Shallow processing still possible road to badly needed software
Again, as I understand, the professor puts its beautifully. Quote again:
…even today’s language technologies full of clever short cuts and shallow processing techniques can be turned into badly needed software products.
http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~hansu/what_is_cl.html
- Hans Uszkoreit