You're forgetting that you represent a culture which has enjoys Scrapple, head cheese (it's not really cheese), canned brains (US South), and salad bars (eating raw veggies is unusual in China).
Try this. Get out. Travel more. Spend a few weeks in Europe or Asia. Then complain all you want.
I am going to have to strongly disagree with your condemnation of multinational corporations. These large corporations may enter new markets of name recognition, but they compete successfully on price. By standardizing across many outlets and buying in bulk, they can offer a product of similar or higher quality at a lower price. Consider, for instance, the large infrastructure investment McDonalds needed to make while opening their Moscow location just to get fresh vegetables and non-rotten potatoes. I don't see your objection as being any different than the complaints about mass production during the Industrial Revolution.
The future I see has the large multinationals providing the basics - fast food, groceries, etc. Regional cuisines and delicacies will move upstream, differentiating based on preparation times, quality, or presentation.
One more thing: if these protestors are so concerned about multinationals, why aren't they protesting the large conglomerate Unilever (a nearby Dutch company)?
As I read the article, I just kept thinking this all applies to DVDs and DeCSS. Expect an entrenched war with entire corporations literally on the line. There's too much money at risk for this to fade away.
The quote attributed to Voltaire above was actually paraphrased by C.S. Tallentyre
Thank you for the correction. I have had difficulty finding definitive confirmation. The best I could do was this comment
The statement with witch Voltaire is most identified--"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"--is a twentieth-century invention. It was made up by Beatrice Hall (pseudonym: S. G. Tallentyre) in a book puplished in 1907.
from this site. Maybe I'll have to break down and go to a physical library. *smile*
Why have I been thinking that? The bitchslappings. Regarless of whether Andover is really suing osm, the bitchslappings are true. They represent a violation of the social contract on which/. moderation was founded-- that/. comments would run free of editorial intervention.
It was the Frenchman Francois Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name Voltaire, who said "I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it." I have often appreciated the sentiment, but actually applying it is far more difficult in the real world.
The 'bitchslappings' are certainly a violation of this principle. For those users who are constantly posting off topic material, I will not read your posts because they do not contribute to the topic at hand. And I will continue to moderate these as inappropriate. But, I will likewise defend your right to be off-topic, repetative, and irritating.
If you truly appreciate free speech and open discussion, the litmus test is this: will you defend the expression of opinions which which you strongly disagree?
Technically, the chips are intriguing and appeal to the nerd crowd (myself included). But even if they perform at 50% compared to the latest laptops, how many business travelers would want one solely for the increased battery life? I know that when I travel across the US, to Asia, or Europe, I'm nursing the batteries all the way. And I'm only running 'simple' applications.
Given the hype and counter-hype, these may be the most eagerly awaited benchmarks in recent memory. It's great to see competition at this level.
Your chronology is incorrect. Active X, the successor to OLE (Object Linking and Embedding), was announced several years before Java. The original purpose was to extend VBXs (Visual Basic Extensions) to other tools. OLE 2.0 was later merged with it. Eventually,ActiveX became "just a marketing term for a collection of technologies" according to Microsoft.
Java was designed for embedded systems (I believe). When the internet came along, it was only an internal project at Sun. Quite a few changes later, the Internet language we think of today was developed.
Given that Java was only half implemented, turning it into an 'internet' technology was easy. ActiveX was designed with entirely different assumptions in mind and couldn't make the leap. Don't assume that C# will follow the same path!
According to their web page, the PowerPC port is relatively new and only a few machines are supported. In the list of hardware platforms under development, they claim:
Apple PowerMac systems with at least a 603 processor and OpenFirmware.
Only the Apple imac (333Mhz) currenly has driver support.
Other systems supported with hardware availability and driver information. more recent systems will be given priority over older/slower systems.
This isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. Stick with NetBSD.
A quick web search turned up a source for MICR ink cartridges and toner. There must be several people competing in this market. I realize that most banks will process checks without the magnetic ink, but for those financial instituions that require it, this looks like solution.
I am amused by the idea of printing text with a combination of traditional black and magnetic ink. You can hide information in plain sight. Largely useless, I admit, but fun.
These words may be the sentiments of a heretic, but here goes...
The Gnucash program is good attempt to duplicate popular account management programs. But other than being free, what's the point? A more radical approach might has started by saying: most Linux users are connected to the network and like to be constantly plugged-in. Let's build a network friendly UI (say using Java), that users can connect from their Palm Pilots or via web browsers on the road. Let's build in data transfer from Nasdaq for stock and mutual fund tracking (there is development level support currently). And let's allow the program to periodically email reports. This said, I welcome the announcement of this version, and in particular the engine, as a good starting point.
The nice thing about open source is that it provides a road for us heretics to enter the mainstream. All it takes is a few late nights of hacking.
I think it's probably the best animated movie I've seen since Mulan.
If you're looking for other diversions, try 'Princess Mononoke' (originally Mononoke Hime) released in 1999. Neil Gaiman of Sandman fame contributed heavily to the translation of the screenplay. Perhaps since I'm not a Anime aficionado, the movie struck me as very original.
all well and good...but if they are gonna be part of microsoft, their "beverage fund" would be nonexistant.. MS has free sodas for everyone. maybe you could pay their "Pizza fund"
In the eyes of Justice, Bill Gates will never be a saint but now he does have a Halo.
< sentiment > I have long respected Bungie as a creative game company. I've enjoyed playing Marathon and Myth on my Macintosh. </sentiment > And I've really been looking forward to Halo. But now I have a serious ethical problem: I will not pay for Microsoft software (I did once aquire a discarded copy of Excel). And I insist on giving Bungie money for their excellent games. My, oh my.
So how about this: Bungie, I'll willingly donate $40-60 to your developer 'beverage fund' if you'll send me an unmarked Halo CD. How 'bout it?
Reading this article, I am reminded of a paragraph appearing in the 2 June 2000 issue of Science (Vol 288, p. 1597).
New Technologies often initially attempt to reproduce the previous technology in form and function. For example, when word processors were first introduced, many were designed to emulate typewriters: Characters were entered along one line at the bottom of the screen, and white "electronic paper" has to be scrolled up and down to the "writing head".
Interactive television strikes me as the same sort of revolution. Everyone's perspective is limited by what they know. TV will looks totally different in 20 years from the standards committees expect.
We still have helium on earth because it is continuously generated by subterranean nuclear decay. There is also a tiny amount in the atmosphere, because like all mixtures of different-density components, it takes a while for the lightest parts to drift to the top. I think most of the helium we get is in fact from holes in (radioactive) rocks, though I don't exactly know the details.
Helium is released in the form of alpha particles (two protons and two netrons) during radioactive decay. Helium is mobile through out the mantle and percolates through the crust. Much is released directly into the atmosphere. You can consider this non-recoverable. Some molecules of Helium, like oil and natural gas, are trapped by geologic structures within the crust. When natural gas is mined, it contains a blend of helium and various hydrocarbons. In general, the older the deposit the richer the helium. To extract the helium, you simply liquify natural gas using either high pressure or low temperature. The hydrocarbons liquify first leaving helium gas.
FYI: Helium is considered a 'strategic reserve' by the US military. There are several natural gas mines retained solely for their helium content in time of war.
One of the links I mentioned refers to the Richmond Holographic Studios. One very nice feature of this technology is that a wider viewing angle is supported allowing multiple people to see the same image. This might not be so important for games, but for architectural rendering or other 'real work' (that is unless you work for a gaming company;-), this may be vital.
I suspect that there are some strong negatives and would love to read comments from anyone who knows more.
There is definitely a method to the madness here. Let us suppose for a moment that Microsoft is merely able to break even on these X-boxes. Consider the attraction to game developers: you can use the same (well, presumably only similar) code base for a both a console and desktop platform. This is similar to the lure of Windows CE. The difference is that I think this time it might just work. The constraints on the hardware architecture for game consoles are much closer to the desktop requirements for graphics hardware, memory, CPU, etc. than the handheld market.
If developers assume that they'll have to release the software for Windows anyway, why not develop for the X-box as well and release both platforms first? Playstation and the rest might then follow only shortly afterwards. It sounds good, doesn't it? If Microsoft can get the gaming companies to think this way - they will have won.
The convergence in the handheld market is really fun to watch. This is the first mobile phone + MP3 combination I've seen. Elsewhere, we've seen the mobile phone + Palm OS from Qualcomm. And we've seen the Palm OS + MP3 combination from Handspring and Innogear Now each combination of two of the three technologies has been comercialized.
The next step is clear: we'll see a mobile phone + mp3 player + handheld OS combination unit. I hesitate to say Palm OS (though I have some personal preferences there) because Microsoft seem interested in a CE system along these lines. A Linux based system seems an unlikely dark horse. At the rate this market has been developing, we could see this mobile + mp3 + Palm OS combo by Christmas - but I suspect 2001 is more likely.
At least in this monopoly we know where all the money is being spent - litigating against MP3, DeCSS, etc.!
On the bright side, if the record companies realize that the $12 (US) that they make on each $4 CD* is going to shrink to only a $4-6 margin, maybe one or two will embrace electronic distribution.
*: To get the four to six dollar estimate, I am considering a $0.50-$1.00 cost of manufacturing and then a much larger advertising and distribution budget.
[Disclaimer: In the interest of full disclosure, I work in speech recognition for SpeechWorks International. You may enjoy testing the SpeechWorks Demo Line at 1.888.SAY.DEMO (1.888.729.3366).]
A number of users have posted comments questioning the benefit of speech recognition operating on a PDA. Before examining this topic, I would like to quickly review the technical state of the art (in an effort to satify your inner-geek).
The Technology
Speech recognition operates by performing statistical matches of incoming sound against familiar words or phonemes (i.e. individual sounds; a works is composed of one or more phonemes). Traditionally, embedded speech recognition systems have featured small vocabularies (i.e. a limited set of recognizable phrases), but advances in processor speed are allowing larger and more complex vocabularies.
For applications in the telephony industry, a system running on a 500 MHz Pentium may support up to 50 lines and ten languages. These systems use a combination of directed dialog (asking for specific pieces of information - "what is your account number?") or limited natural language ("I'd like to fly from Boston to San Jose").
Returning to the PDA market, the task is to recognize a single user operating in a single language. This greatly reduces the memory and processor requirements. Further tradeoffs are possibly by adapting to the speech patterns of a single user as frequently occurs in dictation systems. But, as we will discuss below, the vocabularies are much more complex and word-spotting becomes vital.
Speech on a PDA
For simple tasks like navigation, the point and click interface works great. You get immediate feedback from the screen and you may peruse a page of information at a time. A speech based interface, in contrast, is more serial than parallel. If you are walking through a list of 50 items, your eyes will locate the correct item far faster than if the list is being read. Likewise speech recognition will not replace the keyboard for data entry. It is, however, a valuable suppliment which allows the user to jump to information not readily visible. While you're composing an email on the Palm Pilot, for instance, saying "Tell me the birthday of Jim Bob Jones" may be faster than navigating there yourself. Likewise, if you're navigating through a database of 20k companies, it may be easier to just say "Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems".
To make speech recognition useful on a PDA, the vocabularies must directly relate to the installed applications and information. Complex navigation using true natural language is a difficult and very much unsolved recognition task. But speech recognition on a PDA is even harder. Why?
Imaging that you're sitting in a cave and you hear "Dave, I'm sure that I've got it.. umm... that's not... no... Boston Sand & Gravel... come on...". You're the PDA. What does the user want? If you understood the context of the situation, you might recall the above example of company names in a database. You might say, I've got that installed and locate the entry for the 'Boston Sand & Gravel Company' for the user. But a PDA is not that smart. It needs to first pick out the allowed phrases from the noise and surrounding conversation. This is called 'word spotting'. Then it needs to decide how to interpret the phrase. Without a restricted application, the PDA must understand the context, frequently in human terms, of the speech.
If this seems hopeless with today's technology, you are correct. We will see speech applied first to limited interactions and simple applications. Over time, the domain will grow. Think back to handwriting recognition on the early Newtons. We've come a long way in a few years. On the PDA, the same will be true for speech.
As nice a story as this is, I believe that another possibility is more likely. Apple's relationship with Motorola has often been strained. By issuing this rumor, they hoping to pressure Motorola a bit more.
Long time Apple watchers will remember periodic stories about MacOS being ported to Intel - the most recent followed the purchase of NeXT. But, nothing has come out of it. As nice as the Crusoe chip sounds, I suspect that if Apple was to do a port, AMD or Intel would be the more likely target.
Disclaimer: I have not yet seen Galaxy Quest, but I do intend to despite the following comments.
I respect parody, but recognize it as inferior to the original form. It is far easier to laugh at the original clichés than create new ones or bend the existing ones.
Consider the genre of action flicks. Often the pace of the action is choreographed to the music. The Fifth Element took this oft-repeated cimenatic effect one step further by having background characters actually dancing to the music.
And consider The Matrix whose producers attempted to create a world in which comicbook-style superheros would be believable. We often see sequences of reduced speed action. As the audience, we know that we're being manipulated, but these scene just fit in because we know that it's all a computer simulation anyways!
Turning now to Galaxy Quest, what new elements will it introduce? The appeal is to fans of the StarTrek series and movies, but will anyone else really care? Even the Trekkie/Trekker audience has been saturated. We've seen the self-congradulatory Trekkies and now we've got yet another parody to add to the collection.
Movies like Galaxy Quest appeal to Hollywood. These are viewed as safe choices with dedicated audiences. I, on the other hand, wish the money were spend to highlight new ideas about the future. Science Fiction is a rich genre celebrating a diversity of ideas. Star Fleet and the 'Prime Directive', despite cosmetic attempts to update them (black commanders - DS9, women commanders & black vulcans - Voyager), are concepts of the 1960s. Isn't it finally time to move on to something new.
Slashdot Mirror
Talk about flamebait...
You're forgetting that you represent a culture which has enjoys Scrapple, head cheese (it's not really cheese), canned brains (US South), and salad bars (eating raw veggies is unusual in China).
Try this. Get out. Travel more. Spend a few weeks in Europe or Asia. Then complain all you want.
I am going to have to strongly disagree with your condemnation of multinational corporations. These large corporations may enter new markets of name recognition, but they compete successfully on price. By standardizing across many outlets and buying in bulk, they can offer a product of similar or higher quality at a lower price. Consider, for instance, the large infrastructure investment McDonalds needed to make while opening their Moscow location just to get fresh vegetables and non-rotten potatoes. I don't see your objection as being any different than the complaints about mass production during the Industrial Revolution.
The future I see has the large multinationals providing the basics - fast food, groceries, etc. Regional cuisines and delicacies will move upstream, differentiating based on preparation times, quality, or presentation.
One more thing: if these protestors are so concerned about multinationals, why aren't they protesting the large conglomerate Unilever (a nearby Dutch company)?
As I read the article, I just kept thinking this all applies to DVDs and DeCSS. Expect an entrenched war with entire corporations literally on the line. There's too much money at risk for this to fade away.
The quote attributed to Voltaire above was actually paraphrased by C.S. Tallentyre
Thank you for the correction. I have had difficulty finding definitive confirmation. The best I could do was this comment
from this site. Maybe I'll have to break down and go to a physical library. *smile*
Why have I been thinking that? The bitchslappings. Regarless of whether Andover is really suing osm, the bitchslappings are true. They represent a violation of the social contract on which /. moderation was founded-- that /. comments would run free of editorial intervention.
It was the Frenchman Francois Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name Voltaire, who said "I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it." I have often appreciated the sentiment, but actually applying it is far more difficult in the real world.
The 'bitchslappings' are certainly a violation of this principle. For those users who are constantly posting off topic material, I will not read your posts because they do not contribute to the topic at hand. And I will continue to moderate these as inappropriate. But, I will likewise defend your right to be off-topic, repetative, and irritating.
If you truly appreciate free speech and open discussion, the litmus test is this: will you defend the expression of opinions which which you strongly disagree?
The motto of the S&M CPUs
Technically, the chips are intriguing and appeal to the nerd crowd (myself included). But even if they perform at 50% compared to the latest laptops, how many business travelers would want one solely for the increased battery life? I know that when I travel across the US, to Asia, or Europe, I'm nursing the batteries all the way. And I'm only running 'simple' applications.
Given the hype and counter-hype, these may be the most eagerly awaited benchmarks in recent memory. It's great to see competition at this level.
Your chronology is incorrect. Active X, the successor to OLE (Object Linking and Embedding), was announced several years before Java. The original purpose was to extend VBXs (Visual Basic Extensions) to other tools. OLE 2.0 was later merged with it. Eventually,ActiveX became "just a marketing term for a collection of technologies" according to Microsoft.
Java was designed for embedded systems (I believe). When the internet came along, it was only an internal project at Sun. Quite a few changes later, the Internet language we think of today was developed.
Given that Java was only half implemented, turning it into an 'internet' technology was easy. ActiveX was designed with entirely different assumptions in mind and couldn't make the leap. Don't assume that C# will follow the same path!
According to their web page, the PowerPC port is relatively new and only a few machines are supported. In the list of hardware platforms under development, they claim:
This isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. Stick with NetBSD.
A quick web search turned up a source for MICR ink cartridges and toner. There must be several people competing in this market. I realize that most banks will process checks without the magnetic ink, but for those financial instituions that require it, this looks like solution.
I am amused by the idea of printing text with a combination of traditional black and magnetic ink. You can hide information in plain sight. Largely useless, I admit, but fun.
These words may be the sentiments of a heretic, but here goes...
The Gnucash program is good attempt to duplicate popular account management programs. But other than being free, what's the point? A more radical approach might has started by saying: most Linux users are connected to the network and like to be constantly plugged-in. Let's build a network friendly UI (say using Java), that users can connect from their Palm Pilots or via web browsers on the road. Let's build in data transfer from Nasdaq for stock and mutual fund tracking (there is development level support currently). And let's allow the program to periodically email reports. This said, I welcome the announcement of this version, and in particular the engine, as a good starting point.
The nice thing about open source is that it provides a road for us heretics to enter the mainstream. All it takes is a few late nights of hacking.
I think it's probably the best animated movie I've seen since Mulan.
If you're looking for other diversions, try 'Princess Mononoke' (originally Mononoke Hime) released in 1999. Neil Gaiman of Sandman fame contributed heavily to the translation of the screenplay. Perhaps since I'm not a Anime aficionado, the movie struck me as very original.
all well and good...but if they are gonna be part of microsoft, their "beverage fund" would be nonexistant.. MS has free sodas for everyone. maybe you could pay their "Pizza fund"
By 'BEvERage fund', I wasn't referring to soda.
In the eyes of Justice, Bill Gates will never be a saint but now he does have a Halo.
< sentiment > I have long respected Bungie as a creative game company. I've enjoyed playing Marathon and Myth on my Macintosh. < /sentiment > And I've really been looking forward to Halo. But now I have a serious ethical problem: I will not pay for Microsoft software (I did once aquire a discarded copy of Excel). And I insist on giving Bungie money for their excellent games. My, oh my.
So how about this: Bungie, I'll willingly donate $40-60 to your developer 'beverage fund' if you'll send me an unmarked Halo CD. How 'bout it?
Reading this article, I am reminded of a paragraph appearing in the 2 June 2000 issue of Science (Vol 288, p. 1597).
Interactive television strikes me as the same sort of revolution. Everyone's perspective is limited by what they know. TV will looks totally different in 20 years from the standards committees expect.
We still have helium on earth because it is continuously generated by subterranean nuclear decay. There is also a tiny amount in the atmosphere, because like all mixtures of different-density components, it takes a while for the lightest parts to drift to the top. I think most of the helium we get is in fact from holes in (radioactive) rocks, though I don't exactly know the details.
Helium is released in the form of alpha particles (two protons and two netrons) during radioactive decay. Helium is mobile through out the mantle and percolates through the crust. Much is released directly into the atmosphere. You can consider this non-recoverable. Some molecules of Helium, like oil and natural gas, are trapped by geologic structures within the crust. When natural gas is mined, it contains a blend of helium and various hydrocarbons. In general, the older the deposit the richer the helium. To extract the helium, you simply liquify natural gas using either high pressure or low temperature. The hydrocarbons liquify first leaving helium gas.
FYI: Helium is considered a 'strategic reserve' by the US military. There are several natural gas mines retained solely for their helium content in time of war.
One of the links I mentioned refers to the Richmond Holographic Studios. One very nice feature of this technology is that a wider viewing angle is supported allowing multiple people to see the same image. This might not be so important for games, but for architectural rendering or other 'real work' (that is unless you work for a gaming company ;-), this may be vital.
I suspect that there are some strong negatives and would love to read comments from anyone who knows more.
You can find a list of similar products here. Another interesting link is the Spatial Imaging Group at the MIT Media Lab.
There is definitely a method to the madness here. Let us suppose for a moment that Microsoft is merely able to break even on these X-boxes. Consider the attraction to game developers: you can use the same (well, presumably only similar) code base for a both a console and desktop platform. This is similar to the lure of Windows CE. The difference is that I think this time it might just work. The constraints on the hardware architecture for game consoles are much closer to the desktop requirements for graphics hardware, memory, CPU, etc. than the handheld market.
If developers assume that they'll have to release the software for Windows anyway, why not develop for the X-box as well and release both platforms first? Playstation and the rest might then follow only shortly afterwards. It sounds good, doesn't it? If Microsoft can get the gaming companies to think this way - they will have won.
The convergence in the handheld market is really fun to watch. This is the first mobile phone + MP3 combination I've seen. Elsewhere, we've seen the mobile phone + Palm OS from Qualcomm. And we've seen the Palm OS + MP3 combination from Handspring and Innogear Now each combination of two of the three technologies has been comercialized.
The next step is clear: we'll see a mobile phone + mp3 player + handheld OS combination unit. I hesitate to say Palm OS (though I have some personal preferences there) because Microsoft seem interested in a CE system along these lines. A Linux based system seems an unlikely dark horse. At the rate this market has been developing, we could see this mobile + mp3 + Palm OS combo by Christmas - but I suspect 2001 is more likely.
At least in this monopoly we know where all the money is being spent - litigating against MP3, DeCSS, etc.!
On the bright side, if the record companies realize that the $12 (US) that they make on each $4 CD* is going to shrink to only a $4-6 margin, maybe one or two will embrace electronic distribution.
*: To get the four to six dollar estimate, I am considering a $0.50-$1.00 cost of manufacturing and then a much larger advertising and distribution budget.
No, you're not alone. The funny thing is that I was considering a post with the same sentiment.
[Disclaimer: In the interest of full disclosure, I work in speech recognition for SpeechWorks International. You may enjoy testing the SpeechWorks Demo Line at 1.888.SAY.DEMO (1.888.729.3366).]
A number of users have posted comments questioning the benefit of speech recognition operating on a PDA. Before examining this topic, I would like to quickly review the technical state of the art (in an effort to satify your inner-geek).
The Technology
Speech recognition operates by performing statistical matches of incoming sound against familiar words or phonemes (i.e. individual sounds; a works is composed of one or more phonemes). Traditionally, embedded speech recognition systems have featured small vocabularies (i.e. a limited set of recognizable phrases), but advances in processor speed are allowing larger and more complex vocabularies.
For applications in the telephony industry, a system running on a 500 MHz Pentium may support up to 50 lines and ten languages. These systems use a combination of directed dialog (asking for specific pieces of information - "what is your account number?") or limited natural language ("I'd like to fly from Boston to San Jose").
Returning to the PDA market, the task is to recognize a single user operating in a single language. This greatly reduces the memory and processor requirements. Further tradeoffs are possibly by adapting to the speech patterns of a single user as frequently occurs in dictation systems. But, as we will discuss below, the vocabularies are much more complex and word-spotting becomes vital.
Speech on a PDA
For simple tasks like navigation, the point and click interface works great. You get immediate feedback from the screen and you may peruse a page of information at a time. A speech based interface, in contrast, is more serial than parallel. If you are walking through a list of 50 items, your eyes will locate the correct item far faster than if the list is being read. Likewise speech recognition will not replace the keyboard for data entry. It is, however, a valuable suppliment which allows the user to jump to information not readily visible. While you're composing an email on the Palm Pilot, for instance, saying "Tell me the birthday of Jim Bob Jones" may be faster than navigating there yourself. Likewise, if you're navigating through a database of 20k companies, it may be easier to just say "Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems".
To make speech recognition useful on a PDA, the vocabularies must directly relate to the installed applications and information. Complex navigation using true natural language is a difficult and very much unsolved recognition task. But speech recognition on a PDA is even harder. Why?
Imaging that you're sitting in a cave and you hear "Dave, I'm sure that I've got it.. umm... that's not... no... Boston Sand & Gravel... come on...". You're the PDA. What does the user want? If you understood the context of the situation, you might recall the above example of company names in a database. You might say, I've got that installed and locate the entry for the 'Boston Sand & Gravel Company' for the user. But a PDA is not that smart. It needs to first pick out the allowed phrases from the noise and surrounding conversation. This is called 'word spotting'. Then it needs to decide how to interpret the phrase. Without a restricted application, the PDA must understand the context, frequently in human terms, of the speech.
If this seems hopeless with today's technology, you are correct. We will see speech applied first to limited interactions and simple applications. Over time, the domain will grow. Think back to handwriting recognition on the early Newtons. We've come a long way in a few years. On the PDA, the same will be true for speech.
As nice a story as this is, I believe that another possibility is more likely. Apple's relationship with Motorola has often been strained. By issuing this rumor, they hoping to pressure Motorola a bit more.
Long time Apple watchers will remember periodic stories about MacOS being ported to Intel - the most recent followed the purchase of NeXT. But, nothing has come out of it. As nice as the Crusoe chip sounds, I suspect that if Apple was to do a port, AMD or Intel would be the more likely target.
Disclaimer: I have not yet seen Galaxy Quest, but I do intend to despite the following comments.
I respect parody, but recognize it as inferior to the original form. It is far easier to laugh at the original clichés than create new ones or bend the existing ones.
Consider the genre of action flicks. Often the pace of the action is choreographed to the music. The Fifth Element took this oft-repeated cimenatic effect one step further by having background characters actually dancing to the music.
And consider The Matrix whose producers attempted to create a world in which comicbook-style superheros would be believable. We often see sequences of reduced speed action. As the audience, we know that we're being manipulated, but these scene just fit in because we know that it's all a computer simulation anyways!
Turning now to Galaxy Quest, what new elements will it introduce? The appeal is to fans of the StarTrek series and movies, but will anyone else really care? Even the Trekkie/Trekker audience has been saturated. We've seen the self-congradulatory Trekkies and now we've got yet another parody to add to the collection.
Movies like Galaxy Quest appeal to Hollywood. These are viewed as safe choices with dedicated audiences. I, on the other hand, wish the money were spend to highlight new ideas about the future. Science Fiction is a rich genre celebrating a diversity of ideas. Star Fleet and the 'Prime Directive', despite cosmetic attempts to update them (black commanders - DS9, women commanders & black vulcans - Voyager), are concepts of the 1960s. Isn't it finally time to move on to something new.