Shawn King of
The Mac Show Live talked a few days ago with Apple co-founder and knowledge-omnivore Steve (
The Woz) Wozniak. Shawn graciously agreed to post the interview, formerly Quicktime only (
downloadable or
streaming), as an
MP3 file -- so now most anyone can listen. This is an interview worth listening to: Woz talks about his lifelong motivations, his years with Apple (up to the present), OS X, the Newton, and what the future holds for him. He also talks about building TV jammers and the only prank he got caught for in high school, one which might not fly so well right now. (The interview starts about 55 minutes into the show, and lasts for nearly an hour.) What's this got to do with typing madly? Well, since Shawn's program is all-audio (no pictures, and only the barest explanitory text), it's a lot less useful to those on text-only or just-plain-slow links than it could be. Read on below for your chance to change that with just a few minutes of your time.
Update: 10/20 20:43 GMT by
T : Thanks to everyone who's volunteered to transcribe, and to the several alternates who are already in line! No need for more voluneers right now :)
Transcribing an hour of text takes a long time. But if you (yes, you!) are willing to transcribe a 3-minute (well. 3:15) chunk of this interview, I will spend my putative day off gluing chunks of interview together. Shoot me an email with "WozScript" in the subject if you'd like to participate, and I'll give the first volunteers (it shouldn't take that many) a randomly-drawn three-minute segment to type up, as well as more instructions on how to format it. No compensation except your name in lights, and the knowledge that lynx users everywhere appreciate your efforts. I'll update this story if and when the transcription is complete. (And if anyone can suggest a good Quicktime audio --> .ogg converter, Shawn and I would both appreciate it.)
Slashdot Mirror
A) Go from the mp3 to a high-quality ogg file. There are plenty of mp3-->ogg converters. And don't bitch about the quality, it's a freaking interview, notMozart.
B) On a related note, this would be a fascinating job for a text-to-speech editor. I say, slap the
entire interview through one, and then just edit. I'll bet it takes less than half the time.
I found it interesting that in this interview, he acknowledges that the industry has shifted to cheap, commodity hardware and that Apple continues to suffer from it - but he was absolutely correct in pointing out that blind brand loyalty by "artsy types" was keeping them in business. Though Steve's strengths are obviously technical in nature, he possesses an innate understanding of a lot of issues on the business side of things that helped to keep him ahead of the curve.
-CT
Woz was on Digital Village last week for the full hour. A good interview, especially his thoughts about M$.
"Transcribing an hour of text takes a long time. But if you (yes, you!) are willing to transcribe a 3-minute (well. 3:15) chunk of this interview, I will spend my putative day off gluing chunks of interview together."
Which bring the question. What are the alternatives for a voice recognition application that sould take a sound sample and convert it to text? Sort of like OCR (Optical Character Recognition) softwares does with a scanned image?
Or from Quicktime to wav to ogg.
And deaf users should get with the program and install a new pair of ears, right?
Text is good because nearly everyone can use it one way or another.
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three persons, two of them absent.
The interview with Woz starts at T = 55:27
--
Socrates was asked where he was from. He replied not "Athens," but "The world."
I thought we were suppsed to be geeks? Come on guys. Transcribing an hour of audio into text should take one line to fire up a voice recognition code, and no more time than the wall time required to listen to the interview..
There's a huge group of people hear who would love to see a free variant of *NIX that can compete with windows for the desktop market. I think that before this happens you're going to need to sit down, spend some time in your local technical library researching voice, image, pattern recognition algorithms.. I'd love to be able to type:
and get a transcribed version of a speech, or lecture notes.. How about combining this with an answering machine app to record and transcribe messages then send those messages to the IMAP server or atleast place them in a searchable database for future reference..This is way off-topic but it's something I started thinking about when rumors bagan floating around concerning Apple's iPhoto app.. I thought it would be pretty incredible if Apple could piece together an app to project photos onto an empirical basis set and then use the coefficients from that projection to sort images.. Think of it like a generalized face recognition routine only more useful..
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that gnome and kde are nice, but to take over the desktop market you we really need to crawl out of the box, and burn it to the ground!
He is almost the exact opposite of William Gates III. He is the Anti-Gates! :-)
Its good to see he's still around.
Tmiothy,
;-)
OK, I'll tpye.
How long do I have, BTW?
TIA
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
OK. So someone explain why the MP3 file is 20MB of audio only, where as the QuickTime is 17MB of audio AND video...
a) Quick Time quality sucks.
b) MP3 compression sucks.
c) Cowboy Neal sucks.
I actually found some info on the Woz just the other day. I thought it was kinda cool, but the same thing he discusses on his website.
Eggplants!
Ace
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/aw.nsf/techbios/CCD7 B0622FAB2F1788256A1B0057D13F looks like IBM is giving it away for free, NT 4.0/2000.
rooooar
Plenty of other references on Steve's site, as well...
db
Cig:
ôô
I'm listening to the interview right now, and I can assure you that much will be lost if you convert it to text. You can't hear Woz's tone, as he gets excited about some things, and his serious tone on others. Come on, listen to the man's words, this is a guy who is talking about his youth when he could barely stand to speak to people from sheer shyness, and now millions of people can listen to his voice all across the world through the personal computers that he popularized. It's worth hearing his voice.
Just 4 easy steps:
1) Pick up your phone and dial the voice transcription service (any number will do)
2) Give the transcription start command: "bin laden"
3) Play the sample to be transcribed
4) E-mail carnivore@fbi.gov to receive your free transcript!
At LinuxWorld in San Francisco, Geoff Harrison (sp?), co-author of the Enlightenment window manager, talked about text/speech conversion. If I recall his talk correctly, most proprietary voice recognition software is derived from the free sphinx system developed at Carnegie-Mellon University, which also has a sourceforge area. The web page at CMU talks about a sphinx3 program that is slower but more accurate, which sounds like a better fit for transcribing a previously recorded interview, but I did not see a link to the source code for it.
Geoff's employer, Cepstral, also claims to have released some related software under "relatively liberal" permissions. (Sorry, I could not find any download links or texts of the corresponding copying permissions.)
The sphinx2 copying permissions have an advertising restriction similar to the one that made the old BSD copying conditions GPL incompatible but "free" in the opinion of the Free Software Foundation. I do not know about the situtation with sphinx, sphinx3 or any Cepstral contributions.
Sorry, I thought I checked all of my links. The sphinx2 sourceforge links should be http://sourceforge.net/projects/cmusphinx/.
who, in turn, owe a debt to a quirky academic out east for the invention of the "mouse".
. So, it might be safe to say Xerox owes their GUI to someone SRI who owes Turing who owes Grunt for discovering fire.
The mouse and hypertext was invented by the Englebart team at SRI in Menlo Park, CA (on Ravenswood near a really good bar, coffee shop and book store).
The original 1968 presentation which includes the world's introduction to hypertext and windowing is available on video at: http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
My girlfriend works here, they might have the job for you...
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
The Quicktime clip was encoded using the QDesign Music 2 codec as a16 bit Mono recording at 22.05kHz.
Note: the sound is a little hollow.. I imagine the mp3 file sounds about the same, and the compression could probably be better if the signal had not been compressed on the fly, i.e. off-line compression can be better because the whole track is known and the optimization routine could be tuned to minimize the file size.
I have several machines at home (SGI Octane, Sun Ultra 2, several x86 PCs) though only two are Macs. One is an old PowerMac 8600, the other is a much newer iBook 500. I really haven't experienced the crashing so many folks are talking about. Back when my 8600 was running Mac OS 8.5 and Internet Explorer 4.0 it would freeze up on me every now and then, but overall both machines are very stable, even when running (gasp!) MS Mac Office 98, MS Mac Office 2001, and IE 5.0. Right now the 8600 is running Mac OS 8.6 and the iBook is running 9.1. My only real complaints right now are that IE 5.0 will sometimes stall for about 20 seconds while rendering a page. LPR printing to printers on my unix boxen is somewhat limited in flexibility. NFS clients for Mac OS 8.X/9.X are pricey. Hopefully OS X and OmniWeb will
:( But that's ok, I can't afford any more expensive ram for my 8600 anyway!
I have heard, though, some major horror stories about iMac/iBook/G3/G4 stability with versions of Mac OS prior to 9.1, especially when using USB devices. Luckilly 9.1 and 9.2.1 are a free upgrade to 9.X. 8.6 is the free upgrade to 8.5.X. There is no free upgrade from 8.X to 9.X.
If a hundred Slashdotters spend a thousand minutes typing out 20 million bytes worth of audio, will it be Shakespeare?
Or something like that...
-R
Me
Quicktime is a wrapper format. It works at a nigher layer than the actual codec, which can be be any number of format,s but is usually Sorenson.
Sorenson is exclusively licensed to apple. The Linux programs that play and make Quicktime fils do so with other codecs. You can play the films made on Linux back under Windows Quicktime, but 99.95% of the content avaliable on the web won't play under these Linux players, because they're Sorenson, and the players don't support Sorenson.
For Quicktime under Linux, use Codeweavers crossover
Yeah, I was just kidding, but actually, the lack of two buttons on the iBook is one of the things that's keeping me from buying one. It is not very convenient to carry around a mouse as well.
Steve and Steve wrote the game "Breakout" for Atari. Versions of the game have been hidden as easter eggs in one or two Apple softwares, including either System 6 or 7.
They offered the Apple II to both Atari and HP and were laughed at. So they sold it themselves and now we have home computers.
I've heard said that he usually keeps a couple virgin powerbooks in his trunk to give to people he meets who he thinks need to be evangelized.
Kevin Fox
"...and likes to pay for things in stacks of two dollar bills."
This is the mark of a multi-milionaire lifestyle? Eccentric? Yes, but I could go to the bank and use $2 bills instead of $20 yuppie food stamps. doesn't make me a millionaire, any more than using sacabucks.
Kevin Fox
what Woz thinks the "new thingy" by apple is going to be?
.avi).
/. fans camping out for tickets?
MP3 player (enuf of those) is one thought, but I personally think the kickin ass device would be a Portable DivX player...Imagine an iBook screen, with a (DPg3?), ffmpeg codec (divx.jamby.net for you X.1 users and get the "old player" divx.max.st to "doctor" the
DivX, maybe DVD, to go and music... Stripped down OS X...drool.
On a G4-400 DivX is *flawless* videowise.
Sound, depends on the datarate, it seems.
I liked when he called "Dr. Mac" an hourse' d'ourve..heh, cute...and Dr. Mac's comment about X.1 of "it's safe now. He recommend for 10.1 don't pay 129 bucks to beta test.
Moose.
ps. Does the lack of slash dot posts mean there is no enthusiams about these topics, or are all the LOTR
pps. See my rant in the LOTR topic if you feel the need to mod ppl down for joking around.
Get a grip/clue/BJ/sense of humor, something...if you can't appreciate my sense of humor...dammit, that is *your* problem.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
If you don't like the Apple optical mouse, you can sell it for $40 on eBay, which is more than you paid for it with your system.
... they are not high. You just have to realize that Apple doesn't have any low-end machines. They all have 802.11 antennaes and slots (the high-end PowerBook has the $99 card included, too), they all have FireWire, they all have Mac OS X (equivalent to Windows XP Pro, not Home), they all have iMovie and iTunes software (best-of-breed software, not LE stuff), they all have TV out (except the PowerMac), they all have the best-quality displays. They all have Software Update, which is system software that checks once a day/week/user's-choice with Apple and updates everything that came with the box automatically, just asking the user for permission and an administrative password, including drivers, security updates, bundled apps. There are 10 other features like that, too, like CD/DVD burning in the Finder (4.5GB to a $6 DVD-R in 20 minutes in the background), or DiskCopy, which images any kind of disc to a file you can mount as if it were still a disk, so you can take game CD's with you on the road as a 300MB compressed file on your monster hard disk ($99 for a Windows software that does this). When you are looking to get all that stuff included and have a complete system that can do a lot of things out of the box, you will pay less in the end and do more with a Mac. If you are looking for a bare-bones system to run Linux, then yes, Macs look expensive. Saying that "Macs are expensive", though ... it doesn't take into account "value" as opposed to just "sticker price".
... they want people to come in and see what you get for your money, to see that the PowerPC chips are very high performance, even though they are small, low-power, and low-clock-speed. It's a pleasure to buy and work with their stuff.
When you cross platforms, you realize that there are a lot of inherant assumptions in each platform. If you use your right mouse button all day long, it's hard to imagine a system where it's not needed. The Mac has a pervasive, context-sensitive, "infinitely-deep" menu bar (you can't overshoot it since it's at the edge of the display). It's easy to slam your cursor up there and hit any particular menu in no time at all. If the menu bar were smaller, and sitting between a row of buttons and a window title bar, then there would be more utility in context menus. It's just a different approach. Windows users go "right-click / New Folder" and Mac users go "File > New Folder". The Mac user will be faster, I guarantee it, if they have used a Mac for more than a week. And if you want to work the Windows way, that is available too. Plug the same USB mouse from your Windows machine into a Mac and it works just fine, with scroller and multiple buttons and context menus.
I love the Apple mouse I got with my PowerMac G4, and I just bought an identical mouse for $59 to use with my PowerBook G4. They are great mouses. Good to the hands, easy to use, easy to travel with because there are no pieces to fall off (the only moving part is an internal hinge).
> especially with high prices that Apple is
> already charging them
Check out today's Mac prices
That's why Apple is opening stores where all the display products are plugged-in, working, even with third-party software installed and ready to use, so you can try it out before buying
> the lack of two buttons on the iBook is one of
... that is the second button. Instead of clicking the right Trackpad button, you hold down Ctrl with your keyboard hand and click the single mouse button with your mouse hand (if you know what I mean). You also Command+click for other things, or Shift+click for other things, or Option+click for other things. It isn't hard, because the mouse only has one button ... it's not Option+click with the left hand and right-click with the right which is where it would get complex.
> the things that's keeping me from buying one
Macs have an extra keyboard modifier key
I used Windows for years, doing desktop publishing, graphic design, and some music and audio (which it really, really, really wasn't suited for). I always used a two-button mouse, of course, and could get around with the best of them. I put a two-button mouse on my first Mac right away, but went back to the one-button mouse after a couple of months because I realized that I had stopped using the right mouse button in favor of the menu bar, which is always available, and is, itself, context-sensitive.
You won't miss the second button on an iBook.
You don't have to be rich to pay for things with $2 bills. You just have to have a warped sense of humor, which Woz has. I happen to think that few things are funnier than watching your average 16 year-old Taco Bell counter-jockey's reaction to getting handed a few $2 bills as payment for your meal. Simply priceless.
~Philly
In the interview he was asked about os X.
The response was he was "burned" pretty badly by the pre X.1, but Mail, utilities and such (with mention to Office for X, too) everything in X.1 "seemed 'good enough'".
Correct me if I am wrong, please, but is that not a statement normally associated with Microsoft's applications? Even in the Microsoft, Linux, Unix and Mac camp's I've heard this so much it stood out as if shouted from a rooftop.
Tell me honestly; Is that comment a compliment or a slap in the face?
I'm still mulling it over.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Anyone have a non-Fraunhofer conversion? The one they have out there is not working very well.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You're right. The audio track is encoded using the QDesign Music 2 codec
Except, of course, that Jobs had nothing whatsoever to do with Pong. *Nothing*
Willy Higinbotham invented a sort of ur-pong called "Tennis for Two" in the late 50's. And there was another pong precursor on the Magnavox Odyssey in the very early 70's.
Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn developed Pong in the early 70's.
At that time, Jobs, who knew very little about electronics, despite what he claimed ("Infinite Loop" has some scathing comments on this) would've either been a senior in high school, or in college in Oregon, in the process of dropping out and not eating.
Jobs didn't work at Atari until the mid-70's. He was over his head right away, enlisted Woz who was actually responsible for Breakout, and wound up with a design that was indeed so unusual that it had to be redesigned anyway.
Bushnell promised and delivered $5000 to Jobs for it. Jobs promised Woz half -- of $700. (i.e. $350) Woz didn't find out until years later that he had been cheated.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The best trick for this I have heard is to get yourself a copy of IBM ViaVoice and train it carefully for your voice. then, mike youself up, and play back the sound you want transcribed, and repeat it into the viavoice mike. It gets transcribed beautifully, becasue it is in your voice. This lets you do near real-time transcription This process is called 'Hullfishing' after its creator, Steve Hullfish
SJ - "And the last one being one year at Berkeley that the bluebox here at Steve Jobs. I wouldn't have traded Apple for that whole year"
SK - "Explain to the audience what that Blue Box year is."
SJ - "Blue Boxes, you know, I don't even think they worked the year that I left. But the year I was there, it's like, you could put the right tones into a telephone and just control all the switching circuits of the phone network of the world and make free calls anywhere and talk to operators in other countries and reroute signals back to the phone next to you."
SK - "Completely illegal by the way."
SJ - "Pardon?"
SK - "Completely illegal by the way."
SJ - "Completely Illegal and I kind of thought of myself as an ethical hacker. I won't make these calls. I wouldn't make bluebox calls. Any call I made to like friends, relatives, I paid for. I developed that thinking about it early on. I only used the bluebox to experiment with the system and explore it. But, I have helped other people build blueboxes, redboxes, blackboxes and pass out information to them and doing that - that I feel badly about looking back. Like that was really kind of illegal. I was helping other people cheat the system and, you know, not pay for things they should pay for."
SK - "Well, at that time, that was kind of a, uh, don't you see that as part of the experimentation of youth, that, and granted, we're both probably just justifying our past indiscretions, but isn't it, because nobody really got hurt, isn't it...serve"
SJ - "Well, very close. Young people will often, if they have these abilities to do this - almost nobody has the ability - they make up blueboxes, you know, just their technical and engineering ability and stumbling onto it and being interested in certain articles, but, you know, you mentioned my shyness earlier? This was the first time in my life that, for that one year, I was also out of my shyness because I was master of ceremonies. I could talk for an hour describing the bluebox stories, the technology, how it worked, giving demos, talking about famouse phone phreaks, and wierd stories of strange things they've done and how they beat the system and that basically was the first time in my life I could kind of talk and be the MC."
SK - "It's sort of a hacker ethic that you're talking about is, and that's obviously still to a certain degree has a great deal of effect in your life at Apple and your life after Apple, correct?"
SJ - "Ummm, I would say just all my life I guess that the way I operate then is probably still, it's still the same now.I'm sure if you had heard some of the things I've done in the recent years you'd say, 'He's still doing it.' But, ummm, the best thing came out the bluebox for Apple was just a chance to experiment, trying to get my designs as tiny as possible with the perfect set of chips, and I did some designs in the bluebox that I never did anything that good, even at Apple. But at least the timing circuits were the exact same chip structure of the synchronous counter chips that I used for the TV counting signals of the Apple 1 and 2."
SK - "Mm hmm"
SJ - "So it's carried over a little."
SK - "That's something we'll definately get into in the next segment we're going to talk about your life at Apple. But in the meantime folks I would go to Woz.org. He's got a very extensive FAQ there that has all kinds of letters, all kinds of answers to questions that you can find out what he's doing now, what he was doing in the past, what his thoughts are about various things including sounds like the much hated A&E Billionaire Biography, right?"
SJ - "Uhh, repeat that?"
SK - "It sounds like you weren't a big fan of the A&E Billionaire biography about you?"
Random Musings