Posted on 04/10/2006 6:22:37 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Search engine giant Google recently acquired an advanced text search algorithm invented by Ori Alon, an Israeli student. Sources believe Yahoo and Microsoft were also negotiating with the University of New South Wales in Australia, where Alon is a doctoral student in computer science.
Google, Alon and the university all refused to comment, though Google confirmed that "Ori Alon works at Google's Mountain View, California offices."
The University acknowledged that Yahoo and Microsoft had conducted negotiations with its business development company.
Alon told TheMarker in an interview six months ago that the university had registered a patent on the invention.
Orion, as it is called, which Alon developed with faculty, relates only to the most relevant textual results. In addition the software, which currently operates only in English, offers a list of topics directly related to the original source.
"For example, if you search information on the War of Independence, you'll receive a list of related words, like Etzel, Palmach, Ben-Gurion," he explained. The text will only appear on the results page if enough words relevant to the search and the link between them is reasonable. Orion also rates the texts by quality of the site in which they appear.
What has the Muslim world invented that's useful to greater humanity?
Well, I guess it depends on your feelings about Algebra.
Does couscous count?
Nothing recently. A lot long time ago. It seems like every system has [has to have] a performance ceiling - what can be produced within it and what cannot. If that's the case, they have reached their ceiling centuries ago, and bounced off it.
India prior to the Moslem invasions was one of the world’s great civilizations. Tenth century Hindustan matched its contemporaries in the East and the West in the realms of philosophy, mathematics, and natural science. Indian mathematicians discovered the number zero (not to mention other things, like algebra, that were later transmitted to a Moslem world which mistaken has received credit for them.) Medieval India, before the Moslem invasion, was a richly imaginative culture, one of the half-dozen most advanced civilizations of all time. Its sculptures were vigorous and sensual, its architecture ornate and spellbinding. And these were indigenous achievements and not, as in the case of many of the more celebrated high-points of Moslem culture, relics of pre-Moslem civilizations that Moslems had overrun. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/791087/posts
Indian mathematicians discovered the number zero (not to mention other things, like algebra, that were later transmitted to a Moslem world which mistaken[ly] has received credit for them.)Well put.
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