EARCHING of the Web is no exact science. If it was, its exhaustive exploration would be infeasible. The more formidable search engines amass information from million of Web sites, each containing huge lumps of information — both textual and media. That information, in turn, could be interpreted and/or indexed in a variety of different forms. Rarely is the content truly understood, which is my personal motivating for knowledge engines.

Mathematics and physics could be argued to be inexact sciences as well, at least when a variety of man-made, non-fundamental fields are introduced. Think of computer science, for example. Its fundamentals assimilate to this complex problem, which is searching the World Wide Web. It is associated with ad-hoc solutions. Computational theories which relate to Turing machines are not tractable enough to make a most correct and efficient algorithm ever crop up and stand out.

Don Knuth has written his popular series of books on the issues of correctness and efficiency in common algorithms. It proves an elegant reference to many computer science practitioners. Problems which are simple, such as element or number sorting, are still handled differently by different algorithms and their efficiency is dependent upon the architecture involved, the scale of the problem, and its nature. Search algorithms likewise, which is why they should be engineered differently depending on a number of key factors. Hence, judgement of the quality of search engines cannot be done objectively, but only ever be estimated using test cases and artificial scoring schemes.

Still, everyone wants to discover the perfect recipe to outperforming Google. Others try to reverse-engineer their algorithms and cheat (fame and riches owing to ‘Google juice‘ that is channelled to one’s site/s). Many of us continue favour and recommend Google, which brings the largest number of referrals to most sites in existence. There is a danger here though. Large search engines are the main target for deceit and they are easily confused by spam inasmuch as they are inclined to pick up rare and valuable content.

Quality of search is probably in the mind of the searcher and the result of hearsay — somewhat of a ‘cattle effect’. Even engines that spit out cruft might be defended unconditionally by their innocent users. This may lead the competition to forfeiting the battle and invest fewer resources (e.g. datacentres) in the attempt to catch up. Phrases like “Google it” do not help either as they promote a search monoculture at best.

Related item: Search Engines and Biased Results

O you know the feeling of listening to playlists which contain assorted tracks from various different albums? More familiarly perhaps, have you ever pondered this issue of volume shifts?

The sound becomes louder and quieter as one track bounces onto the next one. Balancing the — shall we call it — ‘cross-song imbalance’ is an unnecessary nuisance. This lead to a lot of manual intervention with the volume control throughout playtime. Should music players not have the capability to adjust this on-the-fly, before playing a track? Equating in one form or another the volume baseline? Would this be done better off-line? The latter option often requires that the entire track is analysed first. One wonders which players incorporate such functionalities already.

Innocent American children are
being taught about God in biology class

N the latest of many arguments on the issue of intelligent design, a high court judge bans it. As a scientist, I find it rather disturbing that religion penetrates scientific education. It ought to be taught among cultural history or theology perhaps.

 
A court in the US has ruled against the teaching of “intelligent design” alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution.
 

Related items: TV budget takes precedent over science

Recommended site: The Edge

A computer-generated face, which the BBC uses in a promotional trailer, has been dropped despite initial arguments in defence of it.

A promotional trailer for digital TV – which some viewers complained was “horrific” and “disturbingly psychotic” – has been dropped by the BBC.

The Faces campaign, which featured a giant animated head made up of smaller heads, generated 1,300 complaints.

Follow the links at the top and judge for yourself. I think the imagery might only be unnerving to children, unless one considers scenes from Silence of the Lambs.

Manchester’s notoriously busy transport system

There are some big plans for the transport system in Manchester. Buses might become similar to trams, but will involve no driver or rails. Alas, after scraping of the long-anticipated tram extension, we shouldn’t get our hopes up.

It may sound like science fiction, but Stagecoach, which runs most of the buses in south Manchester’s, says the new service could be in place years before any Metrolink connections are built. The computer-guided buses would be manned by a driver but new ‘optical guidance’ technology means the bus would steer itself along a prescribed route and pull up flush to raised platforms.

This is particularly interesting to me because it happens at the very centre of where I live and work. Moreover, it is related to my research, which is focused on computer vision.

Old stories:

• Autonomous Vehicle in Rough Terrain
• Autonomous Vehicle from Stanford and Volkswagen

Related news: Google launch service offering public transport schedules

Also see: Assorted Manchester photography

VER at the Computer Vision Digest, I recently mentioned the IEEE in the context of RSS feeds for journals. It is most pleasant to see RSS feeds penetrating even the world of academia, which usually lags behind in terms of state-of-the-art anything. The IEEE makes the admirable exception, as always.

Several weeks ago I also mentioned my two submissions to IEEE conferences, as well as two other successes. Everything seems to have settled on the right route, which grants me a quick Ph.D. at the age of 24. This was by no means easy for me; I will not pretend it has ever been the case. The first year was sluggish and unpromising. As a matter fact, I was warranted (or rather warned about) a difficult program with potentially rewarding outcomes. This warning was raised on the very first week, as soon as I joined the Division.

Nowadays I work on my submission to an IEEE journal, namely Transactions in Medical Imaging. I must admit that their L^AT_EX templates have been made simple to use — something which I am very pleased with because I am T_EX-illiterate ( I normally use L_yX as a front-end). We are aiming for the special issue on validation.

NB: because this item will be of little interest to many, I have just added a new category aptly named “Personal” and assigned this item to it. If you wish to subscribe to just a few particular topics, see the feeds page where a broader category breakdown gets listed. I still try hard not to ‘noisify’ the blog with personal chit-chats and raves.

HE effect of the Internet on everyone’s life intensifies. With higher-speed connections and rendering capabilities that grip a vivid reality, more and more people get entangled in a world of fascination — a world more worthy than the mundane at times. As some recent studies indicate, Internet addiction can become very severe.

Up to 10 per cent of internet users in the United States have a dependency that could be as destructive as alcoholism and drug addiction, it has been claimed.

Internet addiction disorder is being treated by some therapists in the same way as a chemical addiction.

The Proctor Hospital in Illinois is admitting patients to recover from obsessive computer use, according to the New York Times.

Experts told the newspaper that they see similar signs of withdrawal to those found in alcoholics or drug addicts – including profuse sweating, severe anxiety and paranoia.

On other unhealthy effects of the Internet:

• Treating Online Addicts
• Blog Depression
• RPG Fantasy World