Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

There's one thing to remember, no matter how smart computers appear, they're even dumber than Homer Simpson. Yes, even the mighty Googleplex, with its many thousands of processors and high-bandwidth connections.

Take the Google Maps "Brothel" story that's been going around for the last week. It's an amusing little game that quickly turned into a silly season news story, where searching around a chosen location for the word "brothel" labels various unusual and unlikely places as bordellos - including The National Film Theatre, Amnesty International and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

The reason why is simple - at some point in the past the word "brothel" has appeared on their web sites, in a piece of journalism, or a film review. What Google is doing in its map-driven local search is just providing a simple search of its existing index, without the context we're familiar with from a normal Google search. The only difference between a Google Local search and a search on the main Google site is that Google applies a an additional geographic boundary condition to its search algorithm.

So no need to panic - this is not, as a quote in a recent article on Yahoo! News implies - a deliberate attack or an error in the Google databases. It's just a computer doing exactly what you tell it to do, and surprisingly well at that...

Of course, as I have geographic information in my blog headers, and I have used the word "brothel" several times in this entry, I'll need to start putting out the red lights again...

As I was tagged by purplecthulhu...

1) Total number of films I own on DVD/video:

I'm not sure exactly - probably a two or three hundred (if you let me count TV and anime series).

2) Last film bought:

"Wild Palms" - Oliver Stone and Bruce Wagner's cyberpunk mini-series about VR TV in a world where Philip K. Dick was L. Ron Hubbard.

3) Last film that I watched:

Cinema: "Ocean's 12"
DVD: "Oscar"
Sky TV: "Once Upon A Time In Mexico"
Airplane: "Ocean's 12"
(I'm still actually surprised by how intelligent the recent "Ocean's" movies are. The cons are well choreographed, and layered so well that you spend time trying to work out just what was happening. It pays to watch them more than once to spot the clues. In "Ocean's 12", keep an eye on Linus' rucsac...)

4) Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me, in no particular order:

Blade Runner - "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." Best line in a film. Ever.
Oscar - a three room, three bag farce based on "The Marriage Of Figaro", in prohibition Chicago. Starring Sylvester Stallone. It couldn't possibly work, but it does, magnificently.
Mononoke-Hime - Miyazaki's master-work. An ecological fable of gods and men, set in middle ages Japan.
La Cité des Enfants Perdus - Caro and Jeunet's fantasy of mad science, strange happenings and love that transcends all barriers. A wonderful film.
For All Mankind - Al Reinert's wonderful documentary. Eno's music, and NASA archive footage to paste together a history of the Apollo missions.

5) Pick on five people. Tag five people and have them put this on their journal.

marypcb ramtops rowanf ocean_song tanais (with mr_kurt as first reserve and spride as second reserve)