You forgot the Dune prequels. Sucked! (Well, I only read the first one.) But, what do you expect when a famous author's son teams up with Kevin J Anderson (who's a major hack!).
I think that one of the major problems with prequels is that the authors try to explain too many things and fit them into the story (for some reason, I can't think of any examples right now...), and in doing so, the story becomes lame and trite. That's not the only problem, but one of the biggies.
I work for ScanSoft, so I can fill in the DNS history a bit more...
Dragon has actually been around as a product since the late 80s / early 90s? Roughly 10 years, in any case.
Lernout & Hauspie bought out Dragon and axed most of the staff. One of my current coworkers left Dragon shortly prior to that event, and one of my friends joined L&H shortly after. In any event, there was a huge accounting scandal with L&H, and they went bankrupt. ScanSoft acquired the L&H assets (as well as many employees) and now furthers the development of DNS. Another of the L&H products was a dictation / C&C product, which was discontinued.
I hadn't heard about the ScanSoft acquisition of ViaVoice.
I work in the network speech recognition group; previously SpeechWorks; acquired in August.
In fact, today, we announced the acquisition of Locus Dialogue, who is a big? speech-rec autoattendant developer. An interesting thing, is that I believe their main product is based on one that SpeechWorks sold off to them a while ago (SpeechSite).
ScanSoft has actually eaten up many companies in the speech world. I had heard that we currently embody the IP of something like 15 different companies. That's probably grown by now though...
Check out Looney Labs! These are some of the most imaginative games I've played in a while. Try out both Fluxx and Chrononauts especially. My wife and I enjoy Fluxx so much, that I bought a few cases of it and give it out as gifts.
Both of these are card games which are sort of like Uno, but more complex and interesting. I've played Fluxx much more, so these comments relate to that. Fluxx is a great game because if you are familar with it and good at it, you can plan some good strategies, however, if you're a novice, there it is still possible to win. So, both skill and chance come into play. Games can range from one minute to over thirty, and it's good to play from two players to four or five.
There's even a Palm version, called MicroFluxx. It seems like the developers created and were distributing it without the knowledge or consent of Looney Labs, but the matter has since been settled.
At this point in the game, the leading speech recognition engines are approximately the same. Now it's all about services and ways to differentiate yourself.
I have some experience with that, as I design telephony-based speech applications. Based on user feedback, when a computer comfirms an utterance, the callers / users feel like they have had to tell the computer what they wanted a second time. If confirmation happens more than minimally, they hate it. The caller-perceived increase in talk time is much greater than the actual increase in talk time.
Since the speec rec engines return confidence scores, the application knows how confident it is in the recognition results. It can then accept, reject, or confirm the utterance as necessary. The only times we ever set confirmation to always happen is when some sort of irrecovable transaction is happening and mistakes can't be tolerated.
It's web-focused, but a lot of the lessons apply to any domain. Check out Steve Krug's website. This book is totally awesome. Short, sweet, yet it packs a mental punch.
UI design can be really difficult. A lot of the issues are in how the information / features / tools / whatever are organized in the application. Some call that information architecture, but I don't make that distinction. Another issue is that of labels & names.
I am a professional UI Designer, currently working in telephony-based speech recognition. Very often, the "subject-matter experts" at my clients are too close to the issue and try to force their viewpoint on the application. One of my jobs is to convince them that users won't understand that sort of thing. Another is to try to make sense of the mish-mash of requirements for the application.
So, what I'm wondering about this sort of vehicle is the following:
- how much energy / pollution does it take to make all the batteries that go in the vehicles? - what's the lifespan of the batteries and how much will they cost to replace? - how will the batteries get disposed of?
It's kind of lame, since it's limited to 1 frame update a second, but I am getting my group to use Yahoo! messenger. We are finding that the video is best used in conjunction with conference calls, as the audio features provided by Yahoo! suck, I think mostly b/c the mics that people have attached to their computers suck. I have heard that Trillian Pro has / will have video conferencing as well, but I haven't tried it.
People have to take responsibility for their actions. I'm not saying that everyone has to become a computer expert,....
ah, fuck it. People are idiots. That will never change, and because computers are so complex to use, it's even worse when the idiots use computers.
Get or create an anti-virus program that will lock the user out if they get a virus. Or, perhaps at least block network access if that happens. Seems to make sense to me...
Todd
(Sorry to be so bitter; I may get laid off today...)
Re:Tell that to your fiancee... :0)
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 1
You could buy diamonds from non-sub-Saharan-African nations, like Canada or Israel.
Most recent medical research (sorry, it's too late for me to pull references....) says that salt isn't a big factor in your diet, even if you have high blood pressure. So, unless your doctor warns you against it, eat all the salt you want!
To me, when you're comparing a diamond and moissoniate that are similar in size, cut, etc., the moissoniate looks quite yellow. I still say, if you're going to get a fake diamond, get a CZ. They're about 10% cheaper than a moissoniate and look a lot better.
Where I work, we use a combination of AIM and Y!M. Most people use AIM (though I'm slowly converting people to Trillian...) for day to day stuff. However, since we often have conference calls between our various offices, it's great to have video conferencing; the 'remote' offices especially like it. Y!M is ok, it allows video chat between many parties at the same time. However, it only updates 1 frame a second, so it sucks in that way.
This is something that I've been wondering about. Why does it make a difference if something is "critically acclaimed"? Who are the critics? Why should I trust their opinions? What are their credentials that they should be telling me what's good and what isn't?
Why do you take price in the fact that you're able to afford a lot of CDs? Why is it old fashioned to take pride in the number of things that you can buy? It's not like you are the musician on the albums you buy... are you?
In any case, I rarely listen to my CDs anymore. It's all about MP3s. Get a hard drive based player and you'll see how your habits will change. I carry my CJ3 with me everywhere. I have a radio transmitter for my car. My friends have stereos with AUX inputs, as do I. Life is grand. My wife still uses CDs, but that's really only because she doesn't have her own MP3 player yet.
In terms of cover art and the physical packaging, I'm finding that more and more, I don't really care about it. Must album covers suck, or in 20 years, they'll suck. It's nice to have lyrics though, but you can find those on the net as well.
Even if albums were released as only MP3s, I'd probably still burn them to CD as data files. I do like the security of the physical media.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes! That's one of the few parts of that show that I loved! I can't wait until something like that happens; I will buy it almost instantly!
Todd
You forgot the Dune prequels. Sucked! (Well, I only read the first one.) But, what do you expect when a famous author's son teams up with Kevin J Anderson (who's a major hack!).
I think that one of the major problems with prequels is that the authors try to explain too many things and fit them into the story (for some reason, I can't think of any examples right now...), and in doing so, the story becomes lame and trite. That's not the only problem, but one of the biggies.
Todd
I work for ScanSoft, so I can fill in the DNS history a bit more...
Dragon has actually been around as a product since the late 80s / early 90s? Roughly 10 years, in any case.
Lernout & Hauspie bought out Dragon and axed most of the staff. One of my current coworkers left Dragon shortly prior to that event, and one of my friends joined L&H shortly after. In any event, there was a huge accounting scandal with L&H, and they went bankrupt. ScanSoft acquired the L&H assets (as well as many employees) and now furthers the development of DNS. Another of the L&H products was a dictation / C&C product, which was discontinued.
I hadn't heard about the ScanSoft acquisition of ViaVoice.
I work in the network speech recognition group; previously SpeechWorks; acquired in August.
In fact, today, we announced the acquisition of Locus Dialogue, who is a big? speech-rec autoattendant developer. An interesting thing, is that I believe their main product is based on one that SpeechWorks sold off to them a while ago (SpeechSite).
ScanSoft has actually eaten up many companies in the speech world. I had heard that we currently embody the IP of something like 15 different companies. That's probably grown by now though...
Thanks.
Todd
Both of these are card games which are sort of like Uno, but more complex and interesting. I've played Fluxx much more, so these comments relate to that. Fluxx is a great game because if you are familar with it and good at it, you can plan some good strategies, however, if you're a novice, there it is still possible to win. So, both skill and chance come into play. Games can range from one minute to over thirty, and it's good to play from two players to four or five.
There's even a Palm version, called MicroFluxx. It seems like the developers created and were distributing it without the knowledge or consent of Looney Labs, but the matter has since been settled.
Enjoy!
Todd
I know this is OT to the whole discussion, but I thought I'd ask. I'm interested in hybrid vehicles as well, but the questions I have are:
- how much pollution goes into the manufacture of the batteries?
- how safely and cleanly are that number of batteries disposed of?
Thanks.
Todd
Todd
Todd
That's really strange. Not sure how that happened... Oh well. At least you found the real link...
Todd
Like this: ScanSoft's ASR used in SWAT Global Strike Team.
In the network speech area, there's tons of cool stuff running on all the major platforms.
Todd
I have some experience with that, as I design telephony-based speech applications. Based on user feedback, when a computer comfirms an utterance, the callers / users feel like they have had to tell the computer what they wanted a second time. If confirmation happens more than minimally, they hate it. The caller-perceived increase in talk time is much greater than the actual increase in talk time.
Since the speec rec engines return confidence scores, the application knows how confident it is in the recognition results. It can then accept, reject, or confirm the utterance as necessary. The only times we ever set confirmation to always happen is when some sort of irrecovable transaction is happening and mistakes can't be tolerated.
Todd
Man, I *HATE* red dots!
UI design can be really difficult. A lot of the issues are in how the information / features / tools / whatever are organized in the application. Some call that information architecture, but I don't make that distinction. Another issue is that of labels & names.
I am a professional UI Designer, currently working in telephony-based speech recognition. Very often, the "subject-matter experts" at my clients are too close to the issue and try to force their viewpoint on the application. One of my jobs is to convince them that users won't understand that sort of thing. Another is to try to make sense of the mish-mash of requirements for the application.
All in all, it's challenging and fun work.
Todd
So, what I'm wondering about this sort of vehicle is the following:
- how much energy / pollution does it take to make all the batteries that go in the vehicles?
- what's the lifespan of the batteries and how much will they cost to replace?
- how will the batteries get disposed of?
Thanks.
Todd
Todd
Do you mean "stupid man-suit" or "stupid-man suit"?
Todd
People have to take responsibility for their actions. I'm not saying that everyone has to become a computer expert, ....
ah, fuck it. People are idiots. That will never change, and because computers are so complex to use, it's even worse when the idiots use computers.
Get or create an anti-virus program that will lock the user out if they get a virus. Or, perhaps at least block network access if that happens. Seems to make sense to me...
Todd
(Sorry to be so bitter; I may get laid off today...)
You could buy diamonds from non-sub-Saharan-African nations, like Canada or Israel.
Todd
Most recent medical research (sorry, it's too late for me to pull references....) says that salt isn't a big factor in your diet, even if you have high blood pressure. So, unless your doctor warns you against it, eat all the salt you want!
Todd
To me, when you're comparing a diamond and moissoniate that are similar in size, cut, etc., the moissoniate looks quite yellow. I still say, if you're going to get a fake diamond, get a CZ. They're about 10% cheaper than a moissoniate and look a lot better.
Todd
walla
voila
For some reason, when people get this one wrong, it really annoys me...
Todd
Where I work, we use a combination of AIM and Y!M. Most people use AIM (though I'm slowly converting people to Trillian...) for day to day stuff. However, since we often have conference calls between our various offices, it's great to have video conferencing; the 'remote' offices especially like it. Y!M is ok, it allows video chat between many parties at the same time. However, it only updates 1 frame a second, so it sucks in that way.
Does anyone have a better solution?
Thanks.
Todd
Todd
This is something that I've been wondering about. Why does it make a difference if something is "critically acclaimed"? Who are the critics? Why should I trust their opinions? What are their credentials that they should be telling me what's good and what isn't?
Todd
Why do you take price in the fact that you're able to afford a lot of CDs? Why is it old fashioned to take pride in the number of things that you can buy? It's not like you are the musician on the albums you buy... are you?
In any case, I rarely listen to my CDs anymore. It's all about MP3s. Get a hard drive based player and you'll see how your habits will change. I carry my CJ3 with me everywhere. I have a radio transmitter for my car. My friends have stereos with AUX inputs, as do I. Life is grand. My wife still uses CDs, but that's really only because she doesn't have her own MP3 player yet.
In terms of cover art and the physical packaging, I'm finding that more and more, I don't really care about it. Must album covers suck, or in 20 years, they'll suck. It's nice to have lyrics though, but you can find those on the net as well.
Even if albums were released as only MP3s, I'd probably still burn them to CD as data files. I do like the security of the physical media.
Todd