"Beginning to enter the Home Entertainment scene"?!?
Some PCs, such as the Commodore Amiga CDTV have been integrated seamlessly into modern home theater systems for over a decade now.
The CDTV was expressly designed to not look like an intimidating computer; rather it was supposed to look like a friendly, familiar stereo or home video component. It didn't help much; CDTV was an expensive failure for Commodore, much like the similar Philips CDi system.
It wasn't a CANDU reactor, it was a SLOWPOKE (Safe LOW POwer Kritical Experiment) reactor.
Generated about enough power to run an average house for 20 years, if you didn't mind the $500,000 per year operating cost - I wonder why they never caught on?
Details on its history (it's now being decommissioned) are here: http://www.newsandevents.utoronto.ca/bin1/000724e. asp
The only problem with this idea is that Dragon Naturally Speaking doesn't work worth crap on voices that it hasn't been trained for.
The software (as of one version ago, anyway) requires the user to train it by reading several known passages so that it can fine tune its speech recognition algorithms. If you run the software on speech recorded by someone that the software doesn't have patterns for, the resulting text is gibberish. It's even worse if you try it on a group of dissimilar voices (e.g. a meeting where several different people speak, one at a time).
HMS Sheffield's aluminum superstructure is a myth. To quote the sci.military naval FAQ, found at www.hazegray.org/faq/smn6.htm#F7:
"One common story is that HMS Sheffield, a destroyer sunk during the 1982 Falkland War, was lost because her alleged aluminum superstructure made her more vulnerable to damage. This story is completely untrue, because Sheffield's superstructure was not aluminum. Like all ships of her class, her hull and superstructure were entirely steel. Aluminum played no role in her loss."
The University of Calgary (in Alberta, Canada) offers a course in the history of computation [CPSC 509 - History of Computation] that I took a few years back. You could probably request a copy of the syllabus from the University. Their Web site is www.ucalgary.ca. The instructor was Michael Williams, who has written a very good general history of computing:
A History of Computing Technology
by Michael R. Williams
2nd edition (March 1997)
IEEE Computer Society; ISBN: 0818677392
I'm sure other universities offer similar courses. Don't reinvent the wheel if you don't have to; build on the work of others. Good luck!
Slashdot Mirror
"Beginning to enter the Home Entertainment scene"?!?
Some PCs, such as the Commodore Amiga CDTV have been integrated seamlessly into modern home theater systems for over a decade now.
The CDTV was expressly designed to not look like an intimidating computer; rather it was supposed to look like a friendly, familiar stereo or home video component. It didn't help much; CDTV was an expensive failure for Commodore, much like the similar Philips CDi system.
It wasn't a CANDU reactor, it was a SLOWPOKE (Safe LOW POwer Kritical Experiment) reactor.
. asp
Generated about enough power to run an average house for 20 years, if you didn't mind the $500,000 per year operating cost - I wonder why they never caught on?
Details on its history (it's now being decommissioned) are here: http://www.newsandevents.utoronto.ca/bin1/000724e
Cheers, a U of T alumnus.
The only problem with this idea is that Dragon Naturally Speaking doesn't work worth crap on voices that it hasn't been trained for.
The software (as of one version ago, anyway) requires the user to train it by reading several known passages so that it can fine tune its speech recognition algorithms. If you run the software on speech recorded by someone that the software doesn't have patterns for, the resulting text is gibberish. It's even worse if you try it on a group of dissimilar voices (e.g. a meeting where several different people speak, one at a time).
Cheers.
Mark.
The info pages at http://freehenson.tripod.com/ have either been removed, or they're slashdotted. Are there any mirrors out there?
Burntsand, who lives in Canada and is free to tell the Church of Scientology to kiss my ass
A History of Computing Technology
by Michael R. Williams
2nd edition (March 1997)
IEEE Computer Society; ISBN: 0818677392
I'm sure other universities offer similar courses. Don't reinvent the wheel if you don't have to; build on the work of others. Good luck!
Mark Gregory