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Is Speech Recognition Finally 'Good Enough'? 313

Posted by Zonk from the why-do-salty-snacks-keep-coming-up-freedom-fries dept.
jcatcw writes "Speech recognition software is fast, but it still may not be accurate enough. Clerical jobs usually ask for 40 wpm, but speech recognition software can keep up with someone speaking at 160 wpm. In Lamont Wood's demo it did very well at too/two/to and which/witch, but will it still render 'I really admire your analysis' as "I really admire urinalysis'? At 95% accuracy, people aren't jumping on the bandwagon. Wood's typing speed is about 60 wpm with 93% accuracy, so he found that using speech recognition was about twice as fast as typing. Those who type at hunt-and-peck speeds will experience results that are even more dramatic. There's really only one product on the US market: Dragon NaturallySpeaking from Nuance Communications. The free versions from Microsoft aren't up to the task and IBM sold ViaVoice to Nuance, where it's treated as an entry-level product."
Patents

Netflix Sued Over Fradulently Obtained Patents 193

Posted by Zonk from the dirty-pool dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Techdirt has a story about a new class action lawsuit against Netflix, claiming that the patents the company is using to sue Blockbuster were obtained fraudulently. Specifically, the lawsuit claims that Netflix was well aware of prior art, but did not include it in its patent filing, as required by law. The lawsuit also claims that Netflix then used these fraudulently obtained patents to scare others out of the market, in violation of antitrust law. 'Certainly, it makes for an interesting argument. Patents grant a government-backed monopoly -- which should get you around any antitrust violations. However, if that patent is obtained fraudulently, then I can see a pretty compelling claim that you've abused antitrust law. It would be interesting if other such cases start popping up (and, indeed, the lawyer who sent it to us said his firm is looking for additional patents to go after in this manner).'"
Programming

Submission + - A Conversation with Cory Doctorow and Hal Stern

Submitted by ChelleChelle
ChelleChelle writes: In this rare meeting, popular sci-fi writer and co-editor of the blog Boing Boing Cory Doctorow and Sun VP Hal Stern consider the open source approach. A very interesting interview that deals with the pros and cons of going open source as well as the issues of security and privacy. From the interview, "I worry about how we convey that individual responsibility about what you do and do not do online...Conveying the moral sense of right and wrong, the sense of individual responsibility, is a lot harder than saying, 'Don't steal candy from the 7-11.'"
Biotech

Modern Medicine Might Have Saved Lincoln 281

Posted by Zonk from the quickly-to-the-delorean dept.
Pcol writes "For the past 13 years the University of Maryland School of Medicine has presented a historical clinicopathological conference where they consider famous historical medical cases such as the death of Alexander the Great and composer Ludwig van Beethoven and provide a modern diagnosis and treatment in each case. This year Dr. Thomas M. Scalea, physician-in-chief for the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center discusses if the world's first center for trauma victims could have improved the outcome had Lincoln's assassination occurred in 2007. 'This could be a recoverable injury, with a reasonable expectation he would survive,' Scalea said, noting that assassin's weapon was relatively impotent compared to the firepower now on the streets today. The modern prognosis predicts that Lincoln might have conceivably recovered enough to return to the White House to complete his second term."
Security

$16,000 Bounty for Sendmail, Apache Zero-Day Flaws 173

Posted by Zonk from the step-right-up-rilly-big-shew dept.
Famestay writes "Verisign's iDefense is putting up a $16,000 prize for any hacker who can find a remotely exploitable vulnerability in six critical Internet infrastructure applications. The bounty is for a zero-day code execution hole on the following Internet infrastructure technologies: Apache httpd, Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) daemon, Sendmail SMTP daemon, OpenSSH sshd, Microsoft Internet Information (IIS) Server and Microsoft Exchange Server. 'Immunity founder Dave Aitel, who also purchases flaws and exploits for use in the CANVAS pen testing tool, says its doubtful iDefense will get any submissions from hackers. "It's very hard to exploit [those listed applications]," Aitel said. "IIS 6 hasn't had a public remotely exploitable bug in it. Ever." Several other hackers I spoke to had very much the same message, arguing that $16,000 can never equate to the amount of work/expertise required to find and exploit a hole in the six targeted technologies.'"
Space

Extrasolar Planet Could Harbor Life 308

Posted by Zonk from the hello-up-there dept.
BlueMorpho writes with a link to a Space.com article about a recently discovered extrasolar planet that may be able to harbor 'life as we know it.' Orbiting around the star Gliese 581 is a small rocky ball that might have the same liquid ocean and drifting continent configuration we're familiar with. The find may be unique in all of space exploration as this planet appears to be within a habitable band of temperatures for life, and is categorically not a gas giant. "The bottom line is exciting ...The conditions for life could be there, but is life itself? As yet, there's no way to know unless the planet has spawned beings that are at least as clever as we are. As part of the SETI Institute's Project Phoenix, we twice aimed large antennas in the direction of Gliese 581, hoping to pick up a signal that would bespeak technology ... Neither search turned up a signal."
Biotech

Modeling the Building Blocks of Life 59

Posted by Zonk from the hard-not-to-enjoy-emulation dept.
eldavojohn writes "A new research paper is creating some buzz about the roles of computer engineering in biology. Historically, computational techniques in genome sequencing have proved useful in predicting which DNA sequence produces which amino acid and which amino acid sequence produces which protein. Now, this new research is leading towards a robust model of proteins and their messaging systems. This is one step further in understanding the basics of life and, consequently, pushes us closer to being able to emulate organisms entirely from the bottom up instead of our failed prior approaches of from the top down. A long way from perfect, but an opening into a wide field of study and maybe even a new division of biology."
Books

Submission + - The Design of Sites, Second Edition

Submitted by Joe Kauzlarich
Joe Kauzlarich writes: The 'pattern' book has become a familiar genre for frequent readers of technical manuals. The idea is to sift through mountains of architectural or design schemes and then to categorize and catalogue the most frequent ideas and present their strengths and weaknesses. This type of book has been a success in software engineering, but can it translate to website design, where designers have everyday and frequent access to other designs? At worst, these books provide a common industry vocabulary (assuming it was read by everyone in the industry). How many people knew what a factory method referred to before Erich Gamma's Design Patterns was released? At best, as in the case of that 'original' software design patterns book, mountains of complex ideas are archived into a single reference and will sit within arm's reach for the rest of your life. So, is the web design discipline full of patterns that evade common sense?

Initially, I was amazed by the sheer scope and the amount of work that must've been put into this book. Almost 1000 pages — and not just a bunch of screenshots either. Most of the book is well-organized text. The screenshots are full-color, as is everything else in the book. Each section has a different-colored bleed, making it easy to locate the chapter you're looking for. Furthermore, the patterns are extensively cross-referenced throughout the book, and references appear in colored marginal bullets. Even the table of contents has descriptive section headings and a small summary of each section. The design of the book itself gets an eleven out of ten. The book itself is a living catalogue of technical reference design patterns. Kudos to the book's designer on this one.

As far as content, the book describes 117 distinct patterns in 13 categories. This includes patterns related to marginal topics such as mobile devices, accessibility and content creation (i.e. copywriting 101). Like most pattern books, it's a good idea to initially browse the book before using it as a reference so that you'll know what to look for when you need to pick it up again. On my initial browsing, it seemed to contain nothing particularly surprising — this has been the case with many great pattern books such as Martin Fowler's Refactoring or another of his books, Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, so I was not going to discredit it on this basis alone: a pattern book's true value shows itself when you're stuck on a problem and turn to it for a moment of shining clarity. Let's see if The Design of Sites lives up to this promise...

Is the book as invaluable as it aims to be?

Trial #1: a business website that is not e-commerce, but a 'glorified yellow pages' type of site. I have a lot of information that needs to be accessed not only in its heirarchical organization, which can go to three levels deep, but should also guide the reader on what should be read next: a separate 'linked-list' that 'jumps' branches in the original hierarchy.

Given this amount of content and this double-organization, we wanted each page to present access to the site's information without overwhelming the reader. I open up the book to Part A, 'Site Genres', to locate the particular genre of website I'm working on. I find it: 'Valuable Company Sites.' I read some good information on layout. I see a paragraph titled 'other patterns to consider,' which points me to pattern B1, 'Multiple Ways to Navigate.' A-ha! The book's exceptional design allows me to locate pattern B1 in 3 seconds flat. It is hear I realize the true value of the book: there are no 'right' answers in design, only guidelines:

...we have identified two things that drive customers to action: intention and impulse (these can be thought of as goal and trigger, or need and desire). Neither intentional nor impulsive behavior is inherently good or bad, but a site that omits intention-based navigation might feel shallow and quirky, and one that omits impulse-based navigation might seem boring.


Good advice. Though I already have a hierarchical organization (intentional browsing) and recommended organization (impulse browsing), which gives users options on what to read next, I now have an idea of what sort of balance I want in the areas of navigation.

This was not exactly a mind-blowing discovery, but it did give me some confidence in the choices I eventually made and, furthermore, gave me valid reasons for making those choices, in case the client or a team-member were to question those choices later on.

Trial #2: Working on a website for a freelance graphic designer, I encounter a problem whereby each image in the portfolio can be categorized either by project/campaign or by design-type. For example, a logo, a business card, poster and website are all part of a single campaign, but we also want the ability to list all logos from separate campaigns. Again we have an organizational dilemma, but this time for a different type of site and a fundamentally different type of dilemma.

Again, I turn to the first section 'Site Genres' to locate the type of site I'm working on. It's not exactly a business site, but more of an on-line portfolio. The closest seems to be pattern A9, 'Stimulating Arts and Entertainment.' When I turn to it, I discover I was correct: the authors discuss the 'art gallery' site, though it doesn't exactly cover the aspect that I'm looking for. So I've encountered the book's first notable omission: nothing along the lines of an 'online portfolio' or 'interactive resume' genre of site design, which would encompass all creative freelancer sites as well as the usual rock band websites, etc. They differ from the 'Valuable Company Website' in that personal expression and design creativity take center stage. These sites have a general similarity in aesthetic in that they purposely avoid the business-like design. You won't see many pull-down or left-side navigation menus on a standard band website. The menus are typically integrated into a central graphic of some sort and this puts heavy constraints on the web designer while trying to effectively organize information without sacrificing the expressive purposes of the site.

What this book lacks

The book offers no obvious guidelines for dealing with this sort of problem and here's why: it doesn't take into account the various constraints imposed by the client nor does it attempt to offer reconciliations between the design and the underlying organization of the data.

In my trial #2 we had the thumbnail images organized in two ways, either by design-type (poster, logo, business card) or by campaign ("Going Out of Business Sale", "Grand Opening", "Johnson's Automotive Website"), both organization-types having fairly equal weight. How do we allow the user to switch between organization types and keep the site consistent? The book doesn't touch these types of questions in a direct way.

What the book offers
  • A comprehensive aggregate of guidelines for user-interface patterns.
  • User-centered, 'psychological' perspectives.
  • Covers most of the bases: content creation, page layout, organization of component elements, web application design, hints of 'Web 2.0' patterns, and ideas for functional pages such as searching, content submission, and quite a bit more.
  • 'Marginal' topics like localization and accessibility that you may not want to buy a separate book for but, nonetheless, need to know about.
  • A great overall design, easy to use as a reference and easy on the eyes.
  • A long and detailed exposition on the utility of polling and seeking advice from your target audience, including sample forms to present them with.
  • Overall, very well-written and hardly a sentence wasted.


Should you purchase this book?

While 99% of the patterns themselves are common knowledge to most users of the internet and to most decent web designers, it is the expository text that forms the real meat of the book and contains the wealth of insight. This is by far the book's value. Posing as a patterns book is misleading; this book is really just a very good general guide to web design. As a pattern book, it's flawed, because almost every 'pattern' is just a guideline for effectively presenting information, not an elusive insight or 'trick of the trade' in itself, such what as Erich Gamma's (et al) original 'Design Patterns' brought us. There are mountains of outstanding tips and bits of advice throughout the book, but if you've already achieved a decent level of competency in design, then you're not going to be using the book very often and when you do, you might not get the depth of advice you're seeking.

On the other hand, the book gives beginner-to-intermediate-level designers everything they need to get started or fill in the gaps. The Design of Sites would also make an outstanding text book and is likely to be one of the best general guides to web design on the market.

I'll give it a 6 out of 10, judging a book on its utility as a design patterns books (just as you would give The Illiad a possible 2 out of 10 if Homer presented it to me as a historical text and I expected as much). As an introduction to web design, it easily deserves at least 9 points out of 10.
Businesses

Microsoft Buys Ad Firm for $6 Billion 167

Posted by Zonk from the a-bunch-of-people-just-got-really-quite-wealthy dept.
bain writes "The BBC is reporting that Microsoft has agreed to buy the digital marketing firm Aquantive, in what will be its biggest ever acquisition. The software giant spent almost $6 billion acquiring the agency, in its first bid to tackle the online advertising market. 'The deal is expected to be completed in the first half of 2008, subject to regulation. Microsoft said the expensive price tag was worth it to access the complementary technology of Aquantive. The firm will continue to operate from Seattle as part of Microsoft's online operations, and will help the software giant broaden the scope of services its MSN consumer internet unit can offer. Microsoft is the latest technology firm to pounce on the shrinking independent online advertising sector.'"
Networking

Broadband isn't Broadband Unless its 2Mbps? 351

Posted by Zonk from the time-for-a-bit-of-clarity dept.
quanticle writes "According to House Democrats, broadband isn't broadband unless its at least 2Mbps. The view of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications is that the FCC's data collection standards are hopelessly outdated, and is proposing a number of updates to their criteria. For one, they want 'broadband' reclassified to at least 2mbs, up from 200kbps. Another requirement will change the FCC's outlook on broadband availability. Just because one household in a zip code has broadband access, that will not longer mean everyone in the zip code does. 'The plan went over well with the consumer advocates who appeared before the subcommittee. Larry Cohen, president of the Communication Workers of America, said that the US is "stuck with a twentieth century Internet" and that he would support increasing the "broadband" definition to 2Mbps. Ben Scott of Free Press echoed that sentiment, suggesting that the definition needs to be an evolving standard that increases over time, which is in contrast to the current FCC definition; it has not changed in nine years. "We have always been limited by the FCC's inadequate and flawed data," he said.'"
Movies

Submission + - Pirate Bay to create YouTube competitor

Submitted by
Jared
Jared writes: "The site will be modeled after YouTube in that content will be user generated. What will set it apart however, is that there will be "no censorship," that The Pirate Bay "will not be the moral police" and determine what content stays or goes as is oftentimes the case with YouTube. He then hinted that that the community will instead be the censors, that "the community will have to do that.""

Vista's 40 Million License Sales In Context 225

Posted by Zonk from the a-bit-of-background dept.
Overly Critical Guy writes "Microsoft's figure of 40 million Vista OEM licenses sold has less impact when weighed against the expanded size of the PC market, according to IDC numbers. The myriad of factors involved in determining success in the market makes Microsoft's constant comparisons to Windows XP less reliable as a growth indicator — particularly with Microsoft refusing to reveal the number of actual activated Vista licenses. 'HP reported year-over-year PC sales growth of about 24 percent, or about twice worldwide PC sales growth. Whatever HP is doing right, it's more than just Vista ... If Microsoft wasn't so hung up on XP comparisons as the benchmark, it could really demonstrate that Vista sales are increasing. The first 20 million figure really represented four months of sales, and that could have been positive data because Microsoft protected its customers' holiday investments. For free! Instead of making that point, Microsoft got carried away with making comparisons back to XP.'"
Google

Google Wins Nude Thumbnail Legal Battle 204

Posted by CowboyNeal from the over-for-now dept.
eldavojohn writes "Google is currently fighting many fronts in its ability to show small images returned in a search from websites. Most recently, Google won the case against them in which they were displaying nude thumbnails of a photographer's work from his site. Prior to this, Google was barred from displaying copyrighted content, even when linking it to the site (owner) from its search results. The verdict: "Saying the District Court erred, the San Francisco-based appeals court ruled that Google could legally display those images under the fair use doctrine of copyright law." This sets a rather hefty precedence in a search engine's ability to blindly serve content safely under fair use."
Data Storage

Submission + - Holographic storage to be commercialized this fall

Submitted by
prostoalex
prostoalex writes: "The Guardian takes a look at the current developments in the world of holographic storage. Despite being available in research for over 40 years, the technology is getting commercialized only now, with InPhase Technologies launching its 600 GB write-once disk and a drive this fall. What avout the price? "The first holographic products are certainly not mass-market — a 600GB disc will cost around $180 (£90), and the drive costs about $18,000. Potential users include banks, libraries, government agencies and corporations.""

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