Idea's on Search Engines and other Random Thoughts

10. Hubble demise. One reason for letting it die is because NASA is developing new ground based technology using adaptive technology which is better and cheaper than keeping the Hubble. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=8706

1. If foreign graduate students can make it on $9,000 a year why can't American graduate students?

3. Timing is everything. Wallstreet is littered with the bones of those who got it wrong.

2. Wow, how long will it take to organize and prioritize 1,000's of features? There may be 1000's of potential features but I doubt there are more than a dozen or two that really matter and the rest are just in the noise. Theory is nice but you have to be practical when you try to apply it.

8. Of course. A corporation's first obligation is generally to their owners, the investors who want the best ROI they can get. But blue collar unions are continuing to shrink under these same conditions so I don't see white collar workers embracing them any time soon.

Aaaah youthful cynicism, you've got to love it.

You made good points and didn't need to belittle my opinions with a derogatory comment on youth. Won't I always be younger than you? Does that mean I will never have a relevant thought? I've listed my responses, I hope you're not too old and set in your ways to appreciate my youthful insight. (If you haven't guessed yet, I love this blog thing, just what I needed, another place to voice my opinions.)

My responses to your responses:

10. Hubble Demise- Good point about adaptive optics. Still, we could build a better space telescope too, right?. My point was that we are spending (at least) 50X more on a manned mission to mars. Why?

1. Why can't American graduate students live on $9000 a year? Cause they don't have to. These foreign graduate students are doing this to have a better life. They don't have many options open to them. I admire there dedication, but I can't help thinking how many people are we turning away who love the subject simply because you can get someone from overseas much cheaper.

3. Timing is everything. I don't even know how to respond to that. Let me consult my cliche handbook and get back to you.

2. Yes, it seems like a daunting task, better we don't even try. Let's spend countless hours debating the presentation of the useless results instead.

8. Blue Collar Unions are shrinking because blue collar jobs are going overseas. It's not as easy to ship white collar jobs overseas, though not impossible as we see with outsourcing. I don't know if there will ever be a white collar unionization movement. What I do know is that throughout history, a nation that allows a minority of it's citizens to accumulate a majority of that nations wealth at the expense of the majority of it's citizens usually experiences a period of "violent wealth redistribution". I think a white collar union would be a pleasant alternative to a bloody revolution. Unless you feel that a growing wealth gap can continue indefinitely?

I was serious. Even when you disagree with "youthful cynicism" you should appreciate it because it keeps the world from getting stagnant and keep us all on our toes.

I agree we shouldn't spend money on the Mission to Mars bondoogle but I wouldn't spend on a new space telescope to replace the Hubble either. I'd spend it on the next generation shuttle so we can get into space more safely and inexpensively.

So with amercian graduate students, capitalism is working. They can do "better" doing something else so they do, and schools can fill up their graduate students ranks with the money they offer so everyone is happy. Actually I agree with you that we'd all be better off if graduate student pay was better and more amercians got higher levels of education. This would also be a far better way to spend money than on a Mission to Mars. Recently the job market for engineers has been tougher so I have heard many of them are chosing to go to graduate school.

I think you're off base on the engineering web work. From what I see the results aren't useless. Sometimes they are better than Google's and sometimes not. But we've been told that we'll all get to express opinions on that soon as part of the ranking improvement work going on now. On Friday we were also informed that about 50 features are being reviewed as part of the ranking algorithm and they include both "linguistic" and "strutural" features.

The growing wealth gap is undeniable and I also believe unsustainable. But I don't think it will be reversed with a move to white collar unions. I think it will more likely be a move away from the current fanatical conservative movement and back towards a more democratic ideal. That is if the democratics can stop from shooting themselves in the foot all the time, especially when they have it in their mouths.

Cynic is a dirty word for me. To me it means one who is always skeptical of motives regardless of the facts. I like to think of myself as more of a romanic realist. So if you must label my "youthful opinions" something, please call them "youthful romanticism" or "youthful idealism". Now on to the debate:

A next generation shuttle would be a much better use of NASA's cash. Cheaper and safer missions would mean we can maintain future space observatories at a fraction of the cost. The space observatories contribute so much to our understanding of the Universe, I just hate to see any die, especially when they are still very productive, simply to send a man to Mars.

"Capitalism is working"- I think this is the problem, education shouldn't be run like a business. The goal of education shouldn't be to maximize profit margins, which essentially they are doing by importing cheaper labor. Although profitable in the short term, what are the long term costs to American science? I hope I don't come across xenophobic, I'm just alarmed that barely 15 percent of the students in my state funded University Physics department are Americans.

Regarding the search engine, the fact is that Google isn't good enough anymore. I'm tired of Google's shortcomings, and I'm not the only one. And we're not even as good as google. Look, if we had a good search engine, we wouldn't have to pay for our traffic. Paying for traffic isn't just buying Adwords, it's also when you spend tons of man-hours to modify the site to keep it high on the google ratings. Good-sites don't have to manipulate rankings, they rise to the top of rankings on their own merit. Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to increase our rankings. This is a business and we have to remain visible. But we shouldn't lie to ourselves either. The current situation is unsustainible. We need to compel our users to come voluntarily. We can have endless debates and user groups on the correct font to use or background color, but if the product we provide, the information we organize, does not save the user time, they aren't coming back. We should be studying the web like scientists, measuring it, disecting it, observing it, and coming up with hypothesis and testing them. It has structure, it has order, we should exploit it. Google labs came out with scholar search. All they did is took their current model of their search engine, and instead of link popularity, they used citation popularity. Why didn't we do this? We know that there is a power law correlation with citations, we all read it in that book "Linked". We could have done this as soon as we created the Engineering web. We are dropping the ball on this.

"That is if the democratics can stop from shooting themselves in the foot all the time, especially when they have it in their mouths."-Ha, true.
I agree that the wealth gap won't be prevented by White-Collar unions. I do think you could slow it down a little though. The balance of power has shifted too far towards corporations, we need to pull it back. We need to remember that we have a social responsibility to our fellow man, not for their sake, but for our own. We are social animals, dependent upon each other. There will always be rich and poor, that is hard wired into us, but we should always try to keep the proportion reasonable. If we don't, nature will find a way of restoring the balance through other, unpleasant means.

Who can live on £375 (about $750) a month? Show me!

Rene DesCartes, the drunken ... Cartesian Dualism! A great idea at the time, right up there with Flogistan!

Rap music....did you know rap is spelt with a silent C?

Space telesope, the way to go. Human nature means we will go to Mars. We can't stay on one rock for all time.