Google's new translation method!!

yay! Google changed its translation method to a new one that seems to be way more accurate than the one that google used to use, that was also the one that Babelfish used.

everything is explained here:
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/04/statistical-machine-translation-live.html

I am pretty excited cause I have been doing a lot of translations recently, and it is always good to have an efficient and reliable translation system to double check your work.

A new system to keep Paris under surveillance...

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/infog/0,47-0@2-869660,54-965983@51-956422,0.html

Well, with an autonomy of 40 minutes...

Blackwater - A new idea about security!

Blackwater is all over the news these days. In case you missed it, the idea is that Blackwater has been hired by the US givernement to ensure security in the territory "occupied" by the US army. They worked in Afganistan, they work in Irak, where they are suspected to have commited around 170 crimes, to have been euuh how to out it right yeah "overzealous" in ensuring the security over there. Right now, they are accused of having killed 17 civilians, and they were apparently not responding to an attack. The iraqi governement says that they want to try these guys in front of the iraqi justice. Of course the case is investigated also by the US governement and the FBI, it would not be as fun to see american citizens (if they actually are american citizens, cause do we know who the employees are?) be hung in public than it was to see Saddam Hussein right? We could have started by not airing the first hanging in first hangings in first place, in my opinion, but that is another story.

On lemonde.fr, we learn interesting facts about that company:1) in 84% of the cases (i.e. deaths of civilians), the blackwater guys fired first, 2) Blackwater earned more than a Billion of dollars since 2004 for their "services" (whatever that means) in Afganistan and Iraq. and 3) Blackwater, which we might think could be embarrassing for the US governement considering the complaints, the spoof investigations and testimonies and the huuuge media coverage, just had one of its subsidiaries "Presidential Airways" sign a new contract on MONDAY (!!!!!) with the American governement.

Gives us subject matter to meditate right?