Pygmies in the Congo

The Congo has the chance to be the home of between 15 000 to 30 000 Pygmies. Unfortunately, their situation is all but fun : BBC News - Pygmies' struggle. “They cannot afford the hunting and fishing permits sometimes required by the local authority.” “Because Pygmies have never taken part in any census they are not allowed to own land.” “This Pygmy community is poor and has no access to education and health care. The infant mortality rate is over 30% in the villages of this area and most parents cannot buy medicine. ”

Google searching blogs

I don't know how long this has gone unnoticed by me... But I'm glad I found this today. Google is doing blog search. Now there's nothing to exciting about that, unless you a blog addict. I'm not really, so I wasn't too excited when I saw it. Especially since other good search engine have been doing it too, like Clusty for example. What's exciting is if you go to the bottom of the search result page or, with Firefox or any RSS enabled browser, notice that you can get RSS or Atom feeds for the search you just made. How cool is that. Wanna know what's being blogged about something? Google does that too. And you don't even have to sign up anywhere to be indexed, your site I mean...

Future in Search Technology

I think a few things Google and other big Search Engine companies are starting to do can be very scary (think Big Brother and the likes), but on the other side the potential is amazing. Indexing phone calls, searching for video (AltaVista, Yahoo) or even better with indexing of text content (Google), keeping track of your search history. searching through directories and maps, etc... Imagine when all these will be connected. You'll be able to search and find back what you've said during a call, find the related topics, in all forms of media, as well as how to get to a location mentioned.

A step further would actually to have intelligent assistant who would actually prepare the search for you. So suppose your having a conversation with a friend, he mentions a restaurant somewhere, and at the same time the intelligent assistant program, search for it and has all the relevant information at hand for you to use. Even better in arguments, you'll be able to go back and check what you've said. No more of that "I didn't say that" ;) But mostly, it could search through encyclopedia, webpages, books and other resources, make summaries or pertinent list, and all display it for you to use and abuse.

Disconnected

I've been disconnected for a while. My new appartment has a fast internet connection directly through the university. But since the landlord, the company owning the building, the company managing student housing or the university don't seem to know anything about when or how it will actually be activated by the IT company the uni is outsourcing all this kind of stuff, I have no idea how long this will take.
This is very frustrating. I don't mind not being connected, I mind the fact that no body knows anything. It just seems like nobody cares. We have a bunch of students in a new building, not being able to communicate with the outside world in any other way that with cellphone. This is not very good when you have to do some research or collaborate on the internet. What if some of us are actually suppose to work, i.e. make some money from home?

Anyway, that's my rant of the month. Everything is else is pretty good. My classes are interesting. I'm meeting great people (lot's of Canadians by the way). I am really enjoying biking around too.

Biking in Utrecht

I finally bought a bike today after my mom and sis dropped me off under the Hoog Catherijn. I bought a mixed breed bike for around 50 euros. I'm quite happy since it has a working light. I added a back seat (to do grosseries and carry stuff or people). With that I also took a lock. They had locks that were as expensive as the bike. Being cheap as I am, I settle for a second hand chain with a disk lock, for just 15 euros. Everything is legit so I have papers for my bike. I expect no troubles with the cops. I could have bought a similar bike from a junky aroudn the same place a few hours later, but that's illegal and... well... I haven't got my bike stolen yet.

Class really starts tomorrow. Should have a class somewhere around 9am. I should find out before 9am tomorrow.

We haven't got our internet connection up in the residenc yet. A bunch of us are thinking about write a petition for some kind of refund. Many of us aren't able to do research, work or even enterntain ourselves because of it. If we all sign it, they'll have not choice but to hear our plea.