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Tablet PC Rorschach Inkblot Test 140

Posted by timothy from the book-is-fee dept.
LPH writes "ESC Technologies just put up a funny series of images that they ran through the Tablet PC recognition software." Perhaps these tablets need a "doodle" setting.
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Tablet PC Rorschach Inkblot Test More

Tablet PC Rorschach Inkblot Test

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  • In related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) on Saturday December 07, 2002 @12:06PM (#4832708)
    They fed the software, produced by Redmond titan Microsoft Corporation, a digital image of the Earth. The software interpreted this as "OURS"...

  • Q & A (Pre-Coffee) (Score:5, Funny)

    by ekrout ( 139379 ) on Saturday December 07, 2002 @12:07PM (#4832715) Journal
    Q: Can the Tablet PC store the value of Pi to 1.24 trillion digits?
    A: No.

    Q: Does the scribble recognition software in the Tablet PC work?
    A: The short answer is 'no'. The long answer is 'just barely'.

    Q: So does the Tablet PC increase productivity and make busy professionals more reliable at their work?
    A: The short answer is 'no'. The long answer is "Does a 12 cylinder car get you from Philly to New York any faster than a 6 cylinder auto?". The answer to that query, of course, is 'no'; all drivers must obey the same speed limit.
    • But Intel and Microsoft told me if I get a snazzier PC the Internet will run faster!
    • Q: So does the Tablet PC increase productivity and make busy professionals more reliable at their work? A: The short answer is 'no'. The long answer is "Does a 12 cylinder car get you from Philly to New York any faster than a 6 cylinder auto?". The answer to that query, of course, is 'no'; all drivers must obey the same speed limit. You have obviouly never driven on the new jersey turnpike where the complete idea of a speed limit is irrevelant. Your either goin as fast as you want or about 7mph in line for the toll being charged to get into the tollboth for the highway.

    • Re:Q & A (Pre-Coffee) (Score:5, Funny)

      by donutello ( 88309 ) on Saturday December 07, 2002 @01:40PM (#4833146) Homepage
      Q: Have you ever used the Tablet PC or do you know anything about it?
      A: The short answer is 'no'. The long answer is that I know that I'll get modded up on Slashdot as long as I somehow make fun of Microsoft.
      • Q: Ever used a Tablet PC?
        A: Yes but it was called a pen top at the time.
        Q: Know anything about the tablet pc?
        A: Microsofts third try a making a pen based system.
        Pen Windows: Windows modifyed to run on a pen top...
        But makes no practical use of the fact.
        WinCE: New os for a low end business system.
        Only just now making a dent in the PDA market as Palm os makers move into the mobile internet market.

        Tablet PC: Windows XP.
        Looks like Microsoft repeated the first mistake... Make the os fit the job.
        They also repeated the second but only becouse it's not a mistake anymore.
        Low cost... The market wants power not cheap..
        And third but yet again not a problem anymore.
        Size.. we want pocket sized pen tops... PDAs... we don't want PDAs anymore..

        But the question is.. is this a product looking for a market?
        If not the pocket pc could be pritty cool.
        If so... it's still pritty cool.
        I'd get one..
    • Forgetting about the complete lack of speed-limit obediance on NJTP, your answer assumes a constant rate of speed. Considering that travel between Philly and New York can be achieved via many routes, each of which requires numerous stops and starts, assuming the 12 cylinder car can accelerate faster than the 6 cylinder car, the answer could quite honestly be "yes".

      More important than cylinder count would be the overall handling of the vehical, which would help or hinder your ability to weave through traffic.
    • Does a 12 cylinder car get you from Philly to New York any faster than a 6 cylinder auto?

      It could, even if you respect the speed limits, a 12 cylinder car can accelerate faster, in fact spending more time in the speed limit. This would make more diference if the speed limit changed a lot in the way. :-)

    • Q: Does the scribble recognition software in the Tablet PC work?
      A: The short answer is 'no'. The long answer is 'just barely'.

      Wrong. I have one, a Viewsonic v1100, and the handwriting recognition works well. Excellent even. Have you even tried one?

      Obviously I would rather that these machines had Linux, etc. on them, but I'm extremely happy with mine nonetheless.

      No, I don't work for Viewsonic or Microsoft.

      Hey, it even capitalised Linux for me.

  • "a series of images" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperDuG ( 134989 ) <<kt.celce> <ta> <eb>> on Saturday December 07, 2002 @12:09PM (#4832725) Homepage Journal
    Translated: PRIME FOR A SLASHDOTTING!!

    I know it's been said quite a few times, but this really isn't responsible. What if that host pays by the transfer of data? It's saturday, more than likely the admin is not working today and has no way to take the site down to alieviate the massive stress. If slashdot wants to continue this, they really need to find a cache system, this isn't responsible or fair, especially for a weekend.

    Mod -1 OffTopic -1 OverRated -1 Troll ... you may mod me however you see fit, but realize that these moderations will not surprise me ....

    • Read the damn slashdot faq and quit yer whining.

      • Re:"a series of images" (Score:5, Funny)

        by SuperDuG ( 134989 ) <<kt.celce> <ta> <eb>> on Saturday December 07, 2002 @12:22PM (#4832786) Homepage Journal
        So because it's in a FAQ, that means it must be followed and /. can't be held responsible? Think about what you are saying here. That because the editors of slashdot have placed the information about my post in a FAQ that they are unable to resolve the problem and will of course not be liable for anything they do socially, morally, or legally?

        okay ... here's a FAQ question to add.

        Q: Why do you insist on selling crack to children?

        A: Simple, children are more likely to get hooked at a younger age and will be less likely to turn us in to the cops.

        does this make it inherintly right because it's written in a FAQ?? well ... does it???

        • Well, opinions differ about this of course. But I think Malda et al take the right approach with not caching the posted things.

          But hey, that's just my opinion. The target of the slashdotting can always take their server down temporarily.

          • The target of the slashdotting can always take their server down temporarily.

            But the point is that it's the weekend, so the admin, is probably not at the office to take it down. Probably at home updating goatse.cx for all we know.

        • Re:"a series of images" (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          does this make it inherintly right because it's written in a FAQ?? well ... does it???


          You can't actually be this insane, can you? I find it hard to imagine someone really gets this worked up about the ethics of Slashdot.

          Getting past the topic of your crazed ramblings, let's look at the mechanics of your reply. "well ... does it???" Were you actually expecting someone would reply to your question as you typed it? Does the "well ..." indicate you were becoming impatient at the lack of response at that moment?

          Calm down, Slashdot is just a collection of timely and topical links with jackass rants attached to them. Enjoy it, don't over intellectualize it.
    • Tell ya what. You do your part and don't visit the site in question. Feel free to post comments, though, since a critical part of /. culture is the posting of inane long offtopic diatribes without ever having read the base subject matter.

      Oh, never mind, you already are.

    • It seems to me, if you don't want people to look at your website you shouldn't put it on the web.

      If you put something interesting on your site, people wanting to look at it is a risk you just have to take.

      Frankly if anything I made was /.ed, sure I'd be frustrated, but I'd be damn proud as well.
    • If I publish something on a web site, it's because I want people to see it. If that means that alot of people want to see it, oh well. Such is the price of potential success...

      But what I find more interesting is that technology has existed for some time [bitconjurer.org] that could all but eliminate the problem.

      The Internet is comprised of logical peers. Why are we using a purely client/server model for web sites?

      Once a packet has been downloaded, it's then available to be served to other systems. All you really need is a method of co-ordinating it all.

      Bit torrent has tremendous potential - imagine serving hundreds of copies of a gigabyte file per day, with decent transfer rates - over a 128k DSL line.

      It's possible! (and no, I didn't write it, or even know who the guy is)

      When the porn hosters discover this one out, it just might become a standard!
      • "The Internet is comprised of logical peers. Why are we using a purely client/server model for web sites?

        Once a packet has been downloaded, it's then available to be served to other systems. All you really need is a method of co-ordinating it all.        "

        No, you'd need much more. Look at DNS. It is fairly decentralized via caches and lookups that move up a hierachy, rather than always directly connecting to a remote host. But that opens up the possibility of DNS highjacking. The DNSSec standard is still being constantly rewritten on top of this. It doesn't look good.

        Who do you trust? Do you trust the internet at large? Do you trust your ISP? All good ISPs should already offer an optional proxy, probably Squid, which is linked to a set of other caching servers. This way the caching servers themselves are arranged in a hierarchy, where everyone configures their servers to only trust one or two upstream providers. But, as with DNS, this ends up with a centralized point for attackers to inject bad content for ALL websites, rather than just one or two.

        Plus, if your ISP A trusts B, and B trusts C, is it true that ISP A trusts C? Implicitly maybe, but if you talked to the managers and marketting people, they might have something else to say about it.

        This isn't as trivial a problem as you make it out to be. Decentralization leads to complexity of organization that hasn't been studied like typical client-server relationships have.
        • Your description of classical managed solutions is
          apposiite, but it is not appropriate to the bittorrent
          solution, which is what you are responding to.
          You are clearly a knowledgable and intelligent
          person. You owe it to yourself to do a bit of
          research on modern peer and mesh network
          techniques.

          In reponse to the grandparent:

          I believe the release of swarmcast predates that
          of bittorrent by a small amount.

    • Re:"a series of images" (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Mod -1 OffTopic -1 OverRated -1 Troll ... you may mod me however you see fit, but realize that these moderations will not surprise me ....


      Sir, I admire your noble fight against the tyranny of moderation. Your elloquent statement will serve to catalyze the revolution against our moderating overlords.

      Your brave and stoic acceptance of the moderators' injustice will surely martyr you and make you the symbol of our fight against the oppressive moderating elite.

      Let the blood of moderators water the tree of free speech!

      I stand behind you, SuperDuG.

  • handwriting recognition... (Score:5, Informative)

    by zsmooth ( 12005 ) on Saturday December 07, 2002 @12:09PM (#4832727)
    The site's /.'ed so I haven't seen the pictures, but I tried out one of the tablet PC's at CompUSA yesterday and I was totally blown away by how good the handwriting recognition was. I scribbled down a few notes as I would on paper, and when I converted it to text it was perfect. I tried like 10 times and there was only 1 very understandable mistake (a humad transcribing what I had written probably would have thought the same thing.)

    As far as "it needs a doodle setting", the apps that I used saved things as digital ink by default, and only converted to text when you specifically told it to.
    • (a humad transcribing what I had written probably would have thought the same thing.)

      Was that a typo, or bad handwriting recognition?

    • Re:handwriting recognition... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DevilM ( 191311 ) <devilm@@@devilm...com> on Saturday December 07, 2002 @12:27PM (#4832804) Homepage
      I don't know why everyone is so excited by handwriting recognition. I've been typing since I was three and can do it much better and faster then writing. WTF would I want a slower method for getting data into a computer?

      • Re:handwriting recognition... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by LetterJ ( 3524 ) <j@wynia.org> on Saturday December 07, 2002 @12:50PM (#4832900) Homepage
        Because when I take notes, less than half of the information I need to record is textual. The rest is a mismash of diagrams, visual linking of information, etc. On a regular computer, I'm left with really tedious methods for doing this. Select a rectangle shape tool with the mouse, draw its shape, click below and type a label. The actual typing of the text is inconsequential to the time to get the stupid rectangle where I want it. When I want to just quickly sketch out a network diagram or a layout for a new site or to note down how a bug is acting visually, being able to add a few words with handwriting recognition is a lifesaver.

        Remember, not all information can be easily typed in in vi.
        • Try a Seiko SmartPad and a PDA and save about $1000+ . What you are saying is that the MS TabletPC brings to the table is a place to draw and a piece of software that lets you combine text and drawings. Geesh, the Palm m100 lets you do this in it's memo app... The Seiko Smartpad gives you the same functionality but with a larger drawing area and higher resolution. Both are WAY cheaper then this "new" invention from Microsoft.

          The MS TabletPC is obviously just another way to sell the MS Windows OS since it really doesn't solve any problems that were not already solved by cheaper tools. Maybe a Handera 330 with WiFi or Bluetooth( or the new Palm with Bluetooth ) could get the wireless connectivity solution in there too?

          LoB

          LoB
          • "The MS TabletPC is obviously just another way to sell the MS Windows OS since it really doesn't solve any problems that were not already solved by cheaper tools."

            Or how about the parent post is obviously just another way to bash Microsoft on a topic that a /.er obviously has no experience in. Why don't you try the Tablet PC before you bad mouth it and Microsoft. It works well, very well. Much better than your PalmOS alternatives do, with their large laptop size screens, improved handwriting recognition, searchable memos that are still handwritten by you, plus they pack the whole power of a laptop and throw in all of the above at the same price as a regular mini form factor laptop.

            Wait, what am I saying?? Blearhg, it's just Micro$haft up to it's old ways, trying to screw us over and make us BUY things!
            • oh, I guess I must have said that somewhere in some town there can't possibly be a use for a tablet PC.... That's not what I said or ment. The PARENT poster said he thought combining text with line drawings was fantastic and a good reason for the MS TablePC. I was just saying that there are other solutions to THAT problem and I took a jab at the fact that I THIHK that the MS TablePC is a niche product which Microsoft is peddling as it's own invention and another end all, be all solution to everybodies computing needs. It ain't. IMHO.

              LoB
            • i was gonna mod bomb you for actually defending microsoft, but then I made this post and it took away the moderate option. :(

              since i lack the capacity to assault you with witty verbal abuse, I just wanna let you know I'm REALLY REALLY MAD instead.

              -- a typical slashdot moderator

          • Geesh, the Palm m100 lets you do this in it's memo app...

            Have you actually tried to do this in a meeting?

            The screen estate is so small you have to flip between multiple screens. In one 15 minute meeting I'd got 10. Thats just stupid.

            Secondly the processor is so woefully underpowered that as soon as you start using the pen really fast (as in, this guy is speaking and I need to get the notes down almost as quick fast) then the quality gets very poor and curves start coming out as jagged lines because the processor can't keep up.

            Thirdly the resolution is rather poor so often small writing is just plain unreadable. However if you make it bigger, you lose even more screen estate for diagrams.

            So yes, the Palm did do it first. However thats not much to brag about when you can't actually use it for anything more than a couple of words written at a fairly sedate speed.

            First isn't necessarily better.

            • Sorry but I didn't mean that the Palm by itself could replace what this guy was doing. Just that they already have an app that does this and with alittle software, the SmartPad or something like it could be used to solve that the PARENT poster thought was useful about the MS TablePC.

              That really would be foolish to think the Palms processor could do handle something which might require a 800MHz+ x86 CPU. Saving line drawings with some text doesn't take much.

              LoB
          • I want to be able to lay on my sofa and read slashdot, news.bbc.co.uk, msnbc.com, etc, etc, etc... I want to lay on my sofa reading the web just like I lay on my sofa reading a magazine. THAT is why I want a tablet. THAT is the TRUE value of a tablet: freedom from the chair. This chair holds me like a slave right now. The ability to escape this chair and read long articles from the sofa sounds like heaven to me.
      • Typing requires a surface. It's difficult to type without a desk(quickly, anyway). Typing can be noisy -- at least all the nice keyboards I've used make noise. That said, I prefer to type -- if I can. Otherwise, such as when I'm standing up or taking notes in class, a tablet would be really nice. Now if they would just drop the price -- I haven't seen one under 2200 bucks.
        • simpler/cheaper solution: Seiko SmartPad and PDA

          LoB

        • simpler/cheaper solution: Seiko SmartPad and PDA [slashdot.org]

          LoB

          • Ya know? after seeing this three times in the space of one screen, I'm ready for you to stop, thanks.

            We got it.. you like Sieko, you dont like tablet pcs.
            • I could care less about seiko but always looking at everything like it's a nail because you have a hammer is just stupid. I'm referring to Microsoft BTW. People need to figure out what they need and find a solution instead of waiting around for someones PR department to decide it's time to promote some new re-invention.

              The multiple responses were because they applied to different comments and I don't have the default view set to flat. sorry bout that.

              LoB
        • honestly, price is ALL I've paid any attention to at all after I heard the specs of the OS. So I noticed the $1699.xx model. That is still above and beyond what I will pay for a personal computer, so tablet PCs are still "beyond" me. But not for long. When they get HALF as smart as us, they'll be producing these for dimes on the dollar and we'll all have them. I hope.

    • Re:handwriting recognition... (Score:5, Funny)

      by CoderDevo ( 30602 ) <coderdevo@hotmail.com> on Saturday December 07, 2002 @01:03PM (#4832963) Homepage
      (a humad transcribing what I had written probably would have thought the same thing.)
      The tablet's advances in handwriting recognition is not the result of better software, but actually due to including a wireless internet connection. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition is configured by default to send your handwriting in real-time to their MS Transcription Services .NET facility in Pune, India. There, a handwriting transcriber, from a current pool of 40,000, will read your penned image and type back the appropriate ascii which is sent back to your tablet PC screen. When ever possible, the service sends your text to the same desk where that person learns your style. If the initial transcriber cannot make sense of the text, then they immediately pass it on to the next. After 3 jumps through journeymen, it goes to a master transcriber who makes a final decision.

      This new facility is a key instrument for Microsoft solidifying its hold on the Indian market since it employs so many.

      So really, it is no surprise at all that your latest experience with handwriting recognition is so good. Enjoy it while it lasts. Unfortunately, this is just another example of a Microsoft product that doesn't scale.

    • it's smoke and mirrors (Score:3, Interesting)

      by g4dget ( 579145 )
      I was totally blown away by how good the handwriting recognition was.

      The handwriting recognition on the Tablet PC is better than the kinds of hacks that the Palm, Newton, and many other "commercial" systems have used before, but the technology isn't particularly new.

      Much of what it does is by using a lot of dictionary constraints. Try writing some nonsense words, and you'll see that it will turn them into whatever word seems most similar.

      As far as "it needs a doodle setting", the apps that I used saved things as digital ink by default,

      Applications like Word, Excel, etc. running on Tablet PC don't use digital ink by default, and the integration of ink into those applications is pretty lousy in my opinion. That's particularly ironic given how much Microsoft has bragged about the supposedly good job they have been doing on integrating ink into applications.

  • Fastest. Slashdotting. Ever. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bishr ( 262019 ) on Saturday December 07, 2002 @12:09PM (#4832728)
    maybe they're running their websever on one of those tablets...

    Incidentally, they had a demo at my school (University of Michigan) last month, and I must say that the detail captured by the touchscreen is pretty amazing. Gabe from Penny-Arcade has been using it instead of a sketchbook [penny-arcade.com], and the picture speaks for itself. Now, whether it's worth $2300 is a different story.

    IMHO, this is yet another technology that could be very cool and convienant, and all it needs a killer app and a critical mass in the marketplace, but it doesn't look likely
    • Well, I would love to have one. I think it's a better form-factor than a laptop. You get everything a laptop can do, plus you have the pen option. In a year or so when they are not so novel, I think the price difference between a standard laptop and a tablet will be minimal, and I for one would look for a tablet.
    • Hey, Where at UofM did they have a demonstration? I'm a new student there and would be interested in checking out stuff like this. Thanks, ~Dan
      • That stuff's always on North Campus. They usually put fliers up all over...
        Email L33 (at) umich; he's the microsoft student liason thing, and he'll add you to the email list. They also provide free stuff for "educational purposes": OS's, IDE's, any software for which you can make up a development project, and any book published by Microsoft Press.

  • Mirrored Images (Score:5, Informative)

    by redink1 ( 519766 ) <redink1NO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Saturday December 07, 2002 @12:15PM (#4832753) Homepage Journal
    Mirrored Images [lycos.co.uk]. I think this is all but the last one, which was a bear if I remember correctly.

    Linking to a PHP forum right on the Slashdot main page isn't generally a good idea... :)

    • ESC did know ... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Thanks for the images.

      For all the yappers. This link was a test to see if the servers could handle it. The test is a success because -- the servers couldn't handle the traffic !

      OK. Back to networking 101 :-)

      But seriously, the person who posted (aka ME) this wanted to see if PostNuke, MySQL, and Apache on a GNU/Linux server hosted by a company back east could handle the traffic. ESC Technologies didn't know that I submitted the link up there until last night. They were a bit concerned :-)

      And the company who submitted the story to whatisnew.com is inkwalker.com. So - go there and see what is all about !

      LPH

    • That's a heck of a hosting plan ya got there...I had to refuse four cookies just to look at some pictures...

    • The mirror is also Slashdotted, or just plain down. (It is 09:30 EST on Sunday, or 14:30 UCT.)

      Damn, we're good.

  • I like the interpretation of the laptop (Score:3, Funny)

    by GeckoFood ( 585211 ) <geckofood@nosPAM.gmail.com> on Saturday December 07, 2002 @12:19PM (#4832771) Journal
    The article shows laptop computer image translating to "Oil It". Maybe that's why the keys on my laptop keep sticking, I keep forgetting to oil them?

  • My face, its food? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So, does this mean the tablet will try to eat my face when I'm sleeping?
  • Notice the link to a commercial site to buy the tablet? The .com site just didn't have the foresight to tell the maker that they would be sending the slashdot crowd to DDoS them. Not a very bright way to sell tablets.

  • Check out what it did to a pic of slashdot! (Score:5, Funny)

    by GNU Zealot ( 442308 ) on Saturday December 07, 2002 @12:32PM (#4832830) Homepage
    After a bit of trying, here's something rather amusing I've come up with using it...

    http://guh.nu/temp/slashdot.html [guh.nu]

    Now does the abbreviation stand for F.irst P.ost or F.irst P.icture? Can anyone else come up with some neat translations? (I guess it would be easier if more people had access to the software...)
  • because its been /.ed already. I can't wait to see the first Tablet PC Server. There is always someone out there with way too much time on their hands that will try to do domething like that.

  • A New Form of Steganography? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NeuroManson ( 214835 ) on Saturday December 07, 2002 @12:46PM (#4832886) Homepage
    Almost seems like a computer's version of hieroglyphics, but could conceivably also be used for hidden messages. Even a sheet of what could be considered as otherwise harmless doodles could be converted with this software into coherant communiques.

    It's official, Microsoft supports terrorism! (muah-ha-ha)
  • I hope they installed thoose hinges as its gonna be awfully hard to fold that sucker in half...
  • Does any page with images on it last more than 2 seconds on /.?

  • Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by quintessent ( 197518 ) <my usr name on toofgiB [tod] moc> on Saturday December 07, 2002 @01:29PM (#4833090) Journal
    Perhaps these tablets need a "doodle" setting.

    Do you really think they don't have one?
  • Not the article on ESC, which is actually a funny one but what is posted on Slashdot.

    The TabletPC does have a "doodle setting". Rather, it will only recognize the portions that you want it to convert to text, leaving the rest as "digital ink".

    First, if you don't know anything about a product, you should shut up rather than making snide remarks.

    Second, exactly how stupid do you have to be to realize that the very motivation for a product like this is the ability to easily capture "doodles", etc as part of your notes?

    This is not a Palm Pilot. Maybe you should spend some time playing with the product or reading about it to try and understand what it is before you talk about it.

    • Re:This article (-1 Troll) (Score:4, Informative)

      by CerebusUS ( 21051 ) on Saturday December 07, 2002 @04:20PM (#4834003)
      Agreed. After finally getting to see the images from the slashdotted article, I can tell that what they did was:

      a) doodle.

      b) select the doodle

      c) tell the handwriting engine to try to recognize their doodle as text.

      d) laugh when it can't

      Did you really expect to be able to draw a picture of a book and have it come back as the text "book?" What's next? Computer pictionary?
    • You may think that there is nothing wrong with a handwriting recognizer that blithely assigns random strings to doodles, but it really does point to a deeper problem with the Tablet PC handwriting recognizer.

      If you give it anything, it picks whatever seems closest among a dictionary of known words. That is really an indication that the recognizer makes up for a lack of shape recognition performance through a limited vocabulary. And the problem with that is that it has a hard time with words it doesn't know.

      A good recognizer should reject junk that is fed to it rather than hallucinating meaning into it in an effort to pretend that it's better than it actually is.

  • Other humorous M$ software errors (Score:3, Funny)

    by EaTiN cOfFeE bEaNs ( 513655 ) on Saturday December 07, 2002 @02:16PM (#4833334) Homepage
    Does anyone remember the bug in the thesarus for Word 6.0? You would type in "I'd like to see Bill Gates dead." and the thesarus would recommend "I'll drink to that." as an alternative. Am I the only one who remembers this?
  • Rorschach test? Well, somehow running on a typical computer, "Your responses show you have an unhealthy obsession with pornography..."

    How long after something passes the Turing test do we start psychoanalyzing it?
  • Here's a quick summary of Rorschach testing here [rorschach.org].

    --YerSex [tilegarden.com]

  • IN SOVIET RUSSIA (Score:3, Funny)

    by Johann Public ( 542327 ) <alexhakkinen AT yahoo DOT com> on Saturday December 07, 2002 @03:51PM (#4833860) Homepage
    Handwriting recognizes YOU!

  • I don't get it.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dalangalma ( 514344 )
    Wait, why is this even funny? I mean, it's non-text doodles, then you're telling the handwriting recognition engine to convert them to text. It's not even "ha, ha, look at the silly mistakes the computer made". It's exactly what you'd expect any handwriting recognition algorithm to do when given that image. So where's the humor?

    Seriously, though, they had a demo of this thing at my school, and it was really impressive. They turned on the debug mode for us where the handwriting engine would show in realtime what it thought the words were, and which words were parts of which sentences, etc. I couldn't even read this guy's handwriting, and the Tablet was humming right along, perfectly matching what he was writing, even as he wrote at an angle or on a curve! My Palm can't do that...
  • Since this one is slashdotted, I went searching and found another test that was thrown at the Tablet PCs:

    Tablet PC Horshack Test [collectinghollywood.com]

  • How is it funny? (Score:2, Informative)

    by dumky ( 598905 )
    Hi,

    What exactly would you expect by running a recognizer on such drawings? Garbage in, garbage out...
    The only thing that seems weird is that is would seem possible for the recognizer to know that the approximation he found was really far fetched.

    When I wrote a C# grafitti application a couple months back, if the gesture didn't match any letter close enough, the recognizer would not try to match it at all. So if you write a non-sense letter you don't get any result back.
    Maybe the Tablet recognizer could have had something similar. But on the other hand the user is given a chance to fix whatever the Tablet recognized, so the current model seems fine.

    The Tablet seems like a great product, if only I could get the one that I want (it's backordered everywhere in the US). I just wonder why isn't there more reviews and comparisons and testimonials all over the web (like there is for the iPod for example).
    Are users happy with them? What do they use them for (browsing, reading divx, playing mp3,...)?

    See you,
    Dumky
  • If you want to see a very funny rorschach test on AIM, add the buddy DrBenSobel to you buddy list. Ask him about the Thing with the Thing. :-D
  • The White Rabbit put on his spectacles.
    "Where shall I begin, please your Majesty ?" he asked.
    "Begin at the beginning,", the King said, very gravely, "and go on
    till you come to the end: then stop."
    -- Lewis Carroll

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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