I just installed Sphinx II and tried the sphinx2-demo program. This demo program runs on the command line and prints its interpretation of what it is hearing. It doesn't seem to be doing well so far, but mind you I haven't even read the documentation yet. I may not have it setup correctly
Here is a sample of sphinx2-demo output with me counting from 1 to 11 (I speak fluent English with a western Canadian accent with no impediments; I'm a "normal clear speaker"). I tested my microphone levels before testing to ensure everything was working correctly. I start by saying "one" and it thinks I said "eleven". It gets "two", "six", and "seven" correct. It almost gets "eleven": [silence] [audio] ELEVEN [silence] [audio] TWO [silence] [audio] DO REID [silence] [audio] HELLO [silence] [audio] HALF [silence] [audio] SIX [silence] [audio] SEVEN [silence] [audio] METERS [silence] [audio] TO THE A [silence] [audio] TO HALF A [silence] [audio] THE ELEVEN
In other tests where I speak complete sentences it seems to pick certain words all the time. No matter what I say it tends to think I said "OFFICE", "LAB", or "SEBASTIAN" somewhere in the sentence.
I hope this works. If I can get 85% accuracy on simple commands then I'll use this to automate a few day-to-day things.
Consider that "crazy, lone individuals" are usually open about their motivations and directly state what their actions might be. Lone crazies are pretty transparent. Consider that a secretive organization like the NSA isn't transparent. It doesn't state its motivations and its behaviour is difficult to predict and it even lies about its motivation and specifically cultivates public relations to encourage an unrealistic public opinion about its motivations and actions.
We should also be worried about the secretiveness of coporations. If you want to look for the "bad boys" in governement, turn your eyes towards the Department of Energy too.
We should setup a network of DNS resolvers (DNS nameservers that just resolve addresses) that have alternate entries for the hosts of ad servers. Thus those individuals who wish to not see banner ads and not have their consumer activities profiled, could simply avoid ever connecting to the offending servers. Anyone willing to help out?
The OPL used to be MUCH stricter.
on
GPL for Books?
·
· Score: 2
When the OPL was first announced on slashdot in 1998 it was a very strict license. It didn't even allow for modification of an OPL'ed work. David Wiley responded to concerns that there wasn't much point to an "open" license that didn't allow for modification very quickly. David received lots of input from other parties both for and against modification rights in the OPL. He indicated to me in email that RMS was giving him some feedback and the OPL was more or less a knock off of the GPL with some stuff removed.
It seems that some academics who had interest in creating an open license for content were strongly opposed to giving up modification rights. Their concern was that their professional integrity might be a stake. The license you see now if the compromise that was made and it seemed really good at the time. David Wiley got feedback from everyone interested and had the modification made in less than a day!
When "flaws" were initially identified in the OPL the license's maintainer (David Wiley) sprang into action and found a solution that satisified everyone interested. Hopefully that any valid concerns raised here also find their way into a discussion about updating the OPL. But caution is merited in this. Are the people raising concerns here the same people who are releasing content under the OPL or are the complaints just philosphical? Does anyone who needs to or plans to release "open" content actually find the license to be faulty for their purposes?
It is really encouraging to see that RMS is working on new license for documenation. It is worth pointing out that the OPL is not just for documentation and is designed to cover written/non-software works of many kinds. An "open documenation license" may in fact have different requirements than an "open content license." RMS, more than anyone else, is qualified to come up with a relevant new license.
The blurb implies that S3 is a different company than Diamond Multimedia and that there are at least two vendors announcing Crusoe based devices. This is not so. S3 owns Diamond Multimedia. If fact the article about S3 explicitly states the fact: "S3's recent acquisition of Diamond Multimedia(TM)..."
Don't count your chickens before they hatch... and don't count them twice before they hatch...:-)
I absolutely love the idea of Webpads. In fact I'm posting this from my Sharp Triapd connected via wireless ethernet. I would never buy a new device from Diamond though. Since the technology is new there is a greater than average chance that you'll have to send your device in for RMA work. As anyone who has dealt with Diamond's RMA department can tell you... there is a good chance you'll never see your device again after you send it in for warranty work. You'll be out-of-pocket for the cost of the device and have nothing to show for it.
When I finally was able to load the webpage where they have the archived webcast presentation, I discovered that they only intend the audience to include MS Windows Users. The format they've selected for the archive of the webcast is MS Media Player format.
Both Realplayer and Quicktime run on more than one operating system and would have been a marginally better choices. I wonder what objection they had to plain-old MPEG 2 video?
My very first bank account was with CT. But they charged me incredibly high fees so I closed the account. It wasn't anything they did, it was that I didn't know anything about banking and I choose the wrong type of account.
My parents just got a mortgage through CT and had a great experience. They got a better rate on their mortgage by switching all their banking to CT. On-line banking is very important to them too but they aren't half as fussy as I am! I also know someone who is a manager at a CT branch and know they have pioneered some on-line banking stuff (in 1995 I got to demo their on-line banking website before it was available to customers).
A business I used to be a partner in used TD for its banking and we had a pretty bad experience with them, so this news that TD has purchases CT makes me nervous but I won't hold it against them.
I looked into President's Choice Financial because they are one of very few "branchless" banks. I'm very fussy and don't want to ever have to visit a bank in person to sign forms that could otherwise be mailed to me.
I think the sign-up process is a good metric for how the bank manages its customer relationships. I think that doing business over the phone is a bad idea as there is too much opportunity for confusion and misunderstanding. Furthermore you don't get a record of what was said when you conduct business over the phone.
If they are truely an on-line web-based bank then they should be able to process my application (at least enough to email me forms to sign) on-line. While they may offer many other ways to do banking (probably a good thing!) I'm only interesting in on-line banking and if they can't support that well I'm going to keep looking until I can find someone who can. Currently I'm with a bank that doesn't satisfy me, but I'm not going to put in a lot of effort until I'm confident another bank will satisfy me.
I'm a charter member of mbanx (available in Canada and the USA). I've been banking with them for over two years now. I have a personal and a corporate account with them. I strongly recommend that people choose another bank though.
It took me two months to get my corporate cheques after opening my account. I had been told on three occaisions that the cheques had been printed and shipped and that the fact had been verified. When the cheques arrived they were printed wrong. I asked them to ship the cheques by courier and I went to the extent of asking for the name of the courier company and a tracking number. The told me they had shipped the cheques by purolator but didn't have a tracking number. I asked them to verify the facts. Later the cheques arrived via postal mail. When I asked for the phone number of a supervisor I was told there was none!
mbanx recently changed their pricing so that you have to pay for each time you view your account history on-line.
I won't be an mbanx customer for much longer but it takes a while to shop around and find another on-line bank who can provide everything I have at mbanx (on-line trading in US and Canadian funds, linked directly to my chequeing bank accounts, etc.).
I have tried to apply on-line to "President's Choise Financial" (actually run by CIBC I believe) but they never send me the enrollment package after I fill out the on-line application. I figure if they can't make a little CGI work, I'm not going to trust their banking system!
If you need to update your domain records to switch to another provider, you can do so by sending the appropriate form by email to network solutions and then faxing them an authorization form. To generate the authorization form you need your tracking number though so you need to send the form from an email address you can read (any email address should do).
I strongly recommend using a separate company to host your DNS. Sure, the company that hosts your website will through in DNS hosting for free, but if they are negligent or incompetent or unfortunate, your the one who will suffer. My web-server is hosted by one ISP but I use Easy DNS to manage my domain. There are many similar services out there too.
The bottom line is that you should have your website hosted by professionals who specialize in managing webservers, but your DNS should be hosted by professionals who specialize in managine DNS servers. The two are very different, and far too many admins take DNS management lightly.
I'm actually joking, I don't or care enough about politicians to vote B.Y. the man of the century but I was impressed when I heard a translation of his speech on the BBC World Service this morning and he refered to the coming year as the "new century" and not the "new millenium". At least one of these political stucco-heads can count.:-)
I too am a tech contact on many domains. My experience is that Network Solutions sends several warnings before putting a domain on hold. In fact in September I received a final notice (by postal mail) on a domain for which I was formally listed as a technical contact. I haven't been listed as the technical contact for the domain in question for over one year yet after not receiving a response for the client's current contacts, Network Solutions sent me a notice too. That is quite extraordinary I think, and while we can't know if the passport.com domain was treated in this way I think they probably got more than one notice.
I consult for a large telecom company that hosts thousands of domains so I get to see a good sample of the problem people have with Network Solutions. Generally speaking they send out plenty of notice before putting a domain on hold. [Hey, don't get me wrong, I really hate dealing with Network Solutions, but generally the problems I have with them are getting updates done.]
I've seen one other case where a large ISP neglected to pay for an important domain. In that case it was simply that those responible for paying where not techies (because in large organizations techies don't pay the bills, the finance department does) and considered a US$35 bill unimportant; they willfully neglected to pay. I suspect the same thing happened with passport.com. I'd bet that some accountant recieved the invoice but couldn't find anyone who could tell him who "network solutions" is and said to himself, "Well, I'm not going to pay a $35 invoice that I can't account for."
I've seen many cases with small organizations where domains didn't get paid for because the accountant was expecting an invoice for "InterNIC" and didn't know that "Network Solutions" was the Internet (in days gone by there were the same organization).
You can't blame someone for taking decisive action when those responsible fail to. It is outrageous that the problem occured in the first place. An Internet company that fails to pay for their domain registration is the equivalent of a airline forgetting to fuel up their planes. Let us all remember that before Network Solutions puts a domain on hold they send lots of warnings via email and via postal mail. To let something like this slip is negligent.
If the hero in this situation wants to make a few pointed statements about the negligent party, he deserves no criticism for it. He's just doing everyone a favour by drawing attention to a serious problem with the management of the passport.com domain.
A clear problem with this legislation is that it ignores the possibility that neighborhood pharmacies might use the Internet/WWW to serve their local customers. We often get carried away with the Internet's ability to "globalize" and forget that it is a suitable tool for servering local needs as well.
A neighborhood pharmacy might, for instance, setup a website so that regular customers can place perscription orders on-line and recieve email notification or instant messages when the perscription is ready to be picked up. They might also make arrangements with the local clinic or doctors.
This legistation would require website that provide strictly "local" service (local to a single neighborhood) to be federally regulated. This seems to largely tip the scales in favor of large national providers of drugs.
Right now I use the Enlightenment Window Manager for my Gnome desktop. I've never really liked it though. I also never felt like I had a choice. I like ICE's Mouse is optional feature but only time will tell if it is practical.
Something I've noticed about many of the WMs currently under development is that they seem to put a lot of energy into support for "themes". While it is an important practicality to allow users to customize the look and feel of their desktop what I see (especially under KDE and Enlightenment) is a lot of wacky features that don't seem practical.
I'd like to see more Gnome compliant window managers. Choice is a good thing. I feel like Oliver Twist actually, "Please Sir, Can I have some more?":-)
If Slashdot is "News for nerds: Stuff that matters" then PCWeek is "News for Newbies: Stuff that will amuse your Pointy Haired Boss".
Seriously Slashdot gives way to much play to ZDNet articles and PCWeek. Why do we so rarely hear about articles from Information Week (sometimes from InfoWorld Electric), Newsbytes, First Monday, or IEEE Journals (hey, now the IEEE has NEWS FOR NERDS!).
Newsbytes is pretty pedestrian but the news is usually raw (uncooked, uninterpreted) and more appropriate for discussion.
This is certainly NOT an untried business model. I've been shopping on-line for years and this is the first year that I've had any problems. There is a definate pattern too; it is the big new retailers that are failing to deliver. Little shops and stores are taking orders and making good on them.
Here are some examples:
X10.com: I had a great experience with them this x-mas. Many members of my family ordered from them, they shipped in about 3 weeks. Very trustworthy.
chapters online: I ordered a Creative Labs Nomad from them and had it shipped "express" but several weeks later I checked the status of my order and discovered it had been canceled... but I received no notification of why it was canceled. So far I've sent them three emails and they have not responded at all. I am a Chapter's Online shareholder and I'm not impressed.
PERL Magnets: I ordered some perl magnets (can't remember the URL right now). They shipped fast. No problems.
Linux Mall: I ordered a "tux" (stuffed penguin) from Linux mall. Shipped fast, no problems.
Future Shop: This was by far the worst experience. My mother ordered a Diamond Rio MP3 player on-line. She was told via email on two different occaisions when the product would ship. It never shipped. She phoned a 1-800 number and the staff were rude and explained there was no way they could possibly ship the product until the new year and asked why she didn't order earlier (she ordered in the first week of November!).
Peter Zale: I ordered a copy of Techies Unite: Helen Sweetheart of the Internet (a comic strip). It shipped fast, no problems.
Sound Forge: I ordered a copy of Acid Pro 2.0 for my brother. It shipped kind of slow considering I paid US$30 for shipping and while I called UPS to have them hold the package so I could pick it up at night it took them 3 business days to change process the "hold" order. UPS didn't please me. Other than that it was a good experience.
Sears: I ordered several things for my mother from sears on-line order form. This was a great experience. Their on-line order form is kind of lame, but the shipping was lightning fast, dirt cheap, and their return policies are wonderful. Sears has been doing mail-order sales for decades and know how to do this stuff... these stores that say this is a new business model are lying... mail order is an old business model; Internet stores are just mail order stores with dynamic catalogs.
If there is a lesson to be learned, I guess it would be: don't buy from big on-line stores. Buy from experienced mail order houses and "the little" guy. They'll deliver and they actually care that your satisfied.
There is a difference between the source code and the binary. The only thing that you want to "bless" is the binary. The source lives its open life as it normally would but people could submit copies of their customized versions to be compiled, "blessed", and distributed.
This example of providing a CRC for a file in a client server environment is probably off-base. My example is a poor one now that I think about it. In a client-server environment you would "bless" a client by embedding a cryptographically signed secret into the program.
All I know is that this technique is used succesfully for other games. I believe that cryptography is one of the keys to building an effective client/server trust system in software; we do it for Java Applets, SSL transactions, banking transactions, and we should do it for games too.
This is a good point. This might be why John Carmack says that their would have to be a closed-source part of the system. You could put a "global" secret key put into "blessed" clients known only to the authority that does the blessing and encrypted in the client itself.
Slashdot Mirror
It's good to see an instance of a Canadian company (Corel) buying out a US company for a change.
Will slashdot move to a .COM domain? It has been a long time since slashdot could claim to be a non-commercial organization.
I just installed Sphinx II and tried the sphinx2-demo program. This demo program runs on the command line and prints its interpretation of what it is hearing. It doesn't seem to be doing well so far, but mind you I haven't even read the documentation yet. I may not have it setup correctly
Here is a sample of sphinx2-demo output with me counting from 1 to 11 (I speak fluent English with a western Canadian accent with no impediments; I'm a "normal clear speaker"). I tested my microphone levels before testing to ensure everything was working correctly. I start by saying "one" and it thinks I said "eleven". It gets "two", "six", and "seven" correct. It almost gets "eleven": [silence] [audio] ELEVEN
[silence] [audio] TWO
[silence] [audio] DO REID
[silence] [audio] HELLO
[silence] [audio] HALF
[silence] [audio] SIX
[silence] [audio] SEVEN
[silence] [audio] METERS
[silence] [audio] TO THE A
[silence] [audio] TO HALF A
[silence] [audio] THE ELEVEN
In other tests where I speak complete sentences it seems to pick certain words all the time. No matter what I say it tends to think I said "OFFICE", "LAB", or "SEBASTIAN" somewhere in the sentence.
I hope this works. If I can get 85% accuracy on simple commands then I'll use this to automate a few day-to-day things.
We should also be worried about the secretiveness of coporations. If you want to look for the "bad boys" in governement, turn your eyes towards the Department of Energy too.
We should setup a network of DNS resolvers (DNS nameservers that just resolve addresses) that have alternate entries for the hosts of ad servers. Thus those individuals who wish to not see banner ads and not have their consumer activities profiled, could simply avoid ever connecting to the offending servers. Anyone willing to help out?
When the OPL was first announced on slashdot in 1998 it was a very strict license. It didn't even allow for modification of an OPL'ed work. David Wiley responded to concerns that there wasn't much point to an "open" license that didn't allow for modification very quickly. David received lots of input from other parties both for and against modification rights in the OPL. He indicated to me in email that RMS was giving him some feedback and the OPL was more or less a knock off of the GPL with some stuff removed.
It seems that some academics who had interest in creating an open license for content were strongly opposed to giving up modification rights. Their concern was that their professional integrity might be a stake. The license you see now if the compromise that was made and it seemed really good at the time. David Wiley got feedback from everyone interested and had the modification made in less than a day!
When "flaws" were initially identified in the OPL the license's maintainer (David Wiley) sprang into action and found a solution that satisified everyone interested. Hopefully that any valid concerns raised here also find their way into a discussion about updating the OPL. But caution is merited in this. Are the people raising concerns here the same people who are releasing content under the OPL or are the complaints just philosphical? Does anyone who needs to or plans to release "open" content actually find the license to be faulty for their purposes?
It is really encouraging to see that RMS is working on new license for documenation. It is worth pointing out that the OPL is not just for documentation and is designed to cover written/non-software works of many kinds. An "open documenation license" may in fact have different requirements than an "open content license." RMS, more than anyone else, is qualified to come up with a relevant new license.
Don't count your chickens before they hatch... and don't count them twice before they hatch... :-)
I absolutely love the idea of Webpads. In fact I'm posting this from my Sharp Triapd connected via wireless ethernet. I would never buy a new device from Diamond though. Since the technology is new there is a greater than average chance that you'll have to send your device in for RMA work. As anyone who has dealt with Diamond's RMA department can tell you... there is a good chance you'll never see your device again after you send it in for warranty work. You'll be out-of-pocket for the cost of the device and have nothing to show for it.
Both Realplayer and Quicktime run on more than one operating system and would have been a marginally better choices. I wonder what objection they had to plain-old MPEG 2 video?
From the biographical sketch of Douglas C. Engelbart:
Pioneering Firsts
I hate the "mouse" but in light of everything he's done, how can I complain? ;-)
My parents just got a mortgage through CT and had a great experience. They got a better rate on their mortgage by switching all their banking to CT. On-line banking is very important to them too but they aren't half as fussy as I am! I also know someone who is a manager at a CT branch and know they have pioneered some on-line banking stuff (in 1995 I got to demo their on-line banking website before it was available to customers).
A business I used to be a partner in used TD for its banking and we had a pretty bad experience with them, so this news that TD has purchases CT makes me nervous but I won't hold it against them.
I think the sign-up process is a good metric for how the bank manages its customer relationships. I think that doing business over the phone is a bad idea as there is too much opportunity for confusion and misunderstanding. Furthermore you don't get a record of what was said when you conduct business over the phone.
If they are truely an on-line web-based bank then they should be able to process my application (at least enough to email me forms to sign) on-line. While they may offer many other ways to do banking (probably a good thing!) I'm only interesting in on-line banking and if they can't support that well I'm going to keep looking until I can find someone who can. Currently I'm with a bank that doesn't satisfy me, but I'm not going to put in a lot of effort until I'm confident another bank will satisfy me.
It took me two months to get my corporate cheques after opening my account. I had been told on three occaisions that the cheques had been printed and shipped and that the fact had been verified. When the cheques arrived they were printed wrong. I asked them to ship the cheques by courier and I went to the extent of asking for the name of the courier company and a tracking number. The told me they had shipped the cheques by purolator but didn't have a tracking number. I asked them to verify the facts. Later the cheques arrived via postal mail. When I asked for the phone number of a supervisor I was told there was none!
mbanx recently changed their pricing so that you have to pay for each time you view your account history on-line.
I won't be an mbanx customer for much longer but it takes a while to shop around and find another on-line bank who can provide everything I have at mbanx (on-line trading in US and Canadian funds, linked directly to my chequeing bank accounts, etc.).
I have tried to apply on-line to "President's Choise Financial" (actually run by CIBC I believe) but they never send me the enrollment package after I fill out the on-line application. I figure if they can't make a little CGI work, I'm not going to trust their banking system!
I bet this made a few people's hearts beat faster when it happened.
I strongly recommend using a separate company to host your DNS. Sure, the company that hosts your website will through in DNS hosting for free, but if they are negligent or incompetent or unfortunate, your the one who will suffer. My web-server is hosted by one ISP but I use Easy DNS to manage my domain. There are many similar services out there too.
The bottom line is that you should have your website hosted by professionals who specialize in managing webservers, but your DNS should be hosted by professionals who specialize in managine DNS servers. The two are very different, and far too many admins take DNS management lightly.
I'm actually joking, I don't or care enough about politicians to vote B.Y. the man of the century but I was impressed when I heard a translation of his speech on the BBC World Service this morning and he refered to the coming year as the "new century" and not the "new millenium". At least one of these political stucco-heads can count. :-)
I consult for a large telecom company that hosts thousands of domains so I get to see a good sample of the problem people have with Network Solutions. Generally speaking they send out plenty of notice before putting a domain on hold. [Hey, don't get me wrong, I really hate dealing with Network Solutions, but generally the problems I have with them are getting updates done.]
I've seen one other case where a large ISP neglected to pay for an important domain. In that case it was simply that those responible for paying where not techies (because in large organizations techies don't pay the bills, the finance department does) and considered a US$35 bill unimportant; they willfully neglected to pay. I suspect the same thing happened with passport.com. I'd bet that some accountant recieved the invoice but couldn't find anyone who could tell him who "network solutions" is and said to himself, "Well, I'm not going to pay a $35 invoice that I can't account for."
I've seen many cases with small organizations where domains didn't get paid for because the accountant was expecting an invoice for "InterNIC" and didn't know that "Network Solutions" was the Internet (in days gone by there were the same organization).
If the hero in this situation wants to make a few pointed statements about the negligent party, he deserves no criticism for it. He's just doing everyone a favour by drawing attention to a serious problem with the management of the passport.com domain.
A neighborhood pharmacy might, for instance, setup a website so that regular customers can place perscription orders on-line and recieve email notification or instant messages when the perscription is ready to be picked up. They might also make arrangements with the local clinic or doctors.
This legistation would require website that provide strictly "local" service (local to a single neighborhood) to be federally regulated. This seems to largely tip the scales in favor of large national providers of drugs.
Something I've noticed about many of the WMs currently under development is that they seem to put a lot of energy into support for "themes". While it is an important practicality to allow users to customize the look and feel of their desktop what I see (especially under KDE and Enlightenment) is a lot of wacky features that don't seem practical.
I'd like to see more Gnome compliant window managers. Choice is a good thing. I feel like Oliver Twist actually, "Please Sir, Can I have some more?" :-)
Seriously Slashdot gives way to much play to ZDNet articles and PCWeek. Why do we so rarely hear about articles from Information Week (sometimes from InfoWorld Electric), Newsbytes, First Monday, or IEEE Journals (hey, now the IEEE has NEWS FOR NERDS!).
Newsbytes is pretty pedestrian but the news is usually raw (uncooked, uninterpreted) and more appropriate for discussion.
Here are some examples:
If there is a lesson to be learned, I guess it would be: don't buy from big on-line stores. Buy from experienced mail order houses and "the little" guy. They'll deliver and they actually care that your satisfied.
There is a difference between the source code and the binary. The only thing that you want to "bless" is the binary. The source lives its open life as it normally would but people could submit copies of their customized versions to be compiled, "blessed", and distributed.
All I know is that this technique is used succesfully for other games. I believe that cryptography is one of the keys to building an effective client/server trust system in software; we do it for Java Applets, SSL transactions, banking transactions, and we should do it for games too.
This is a good point. This might be why John Carmack says that their would have to be a closed-source part of the system. You could put a "global" secret key put into "blessed" clients known only to the authority that does the blessing and encrypted in the client itself.