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Google

Google Wants Your Voice Data 138

00_NOP writes "Peter Norvig, Google's director of research, has told New Scientist that one of the reasons the search engine launched Google Voice is that it needs more human voice data to perfect the sort of 'big data, simple algorithm' probabilistic approach to translating voices to text that drives Google Translate. Norvig says that no one is listening to your calls on Google Voice — it is simply their servers trying to get the translation right."

Comment Re:This is why I have given up on Adobe (Score 1) 272

Gimp is not just not "exactly like photoshop", it's not layed out like any other Windows application. If you're on Mac or Linux is fine, but someone accustomed to Gimp will struggle needlessly with the (incidentally monstrously ugly [to the point of making it difficult to use]) interface. Gimpshop and gimphoto are fine but are several major revisions behind gimp proper.

Comment Re:Define "a lot"... (Score 1) 426

Your numbers looked good until you got to the DSi. You just estimated that 57% (172k/300k) of DSi owners are left-handed, (and then dismissed it because of market size!) One of your sales numbers is off by a lot. For simplicity, we could just assume 30k, 10% of DSi sales. I suspect it's a little higher, since among gaming systems, the DS in general has more left-handed owners than other consoles since there is usually pretty good support for moving buttons to the other side if you want to use a stylus with your left hand. (I'm a left-handed DS owner myself) I have the impression the DSi download market is pretty low in general.

Comment Re:No (Score 1) 480

Think about it... you are getting standard edition for "free". Google wouldn't do unless some non-trivial number of users is READING and CLICKING on those ads. If your secretary is working on a budget spreadsheet, and gets distracted by an google ad in the corner of her spreadsheet, gets distracted and clicks on it, and goes browsing for 20 minutes as a result... that costs you money. And THAT is PRECISELY what your beloved partner google is counting on. THAT is their entire business model. Give you the app for free, and then extract a profit by luring your staff to click ads instead of work.

There are no ads in google docs.

Comment Re:Logitech MX Revolution (Score 1) 569

While we're extolling the benefits of nicely contoured mice, the Logitec MX 610 is a similar model to this but is also available in contours for left-handed people. This probably doens't help the original poster, but may be useful information to others in this thread. I've been very happy with mine.

Comment Re:depends (Score 1) 1137

I'm not exactly sure how it works in Canada, but in many places in the US, speeding tickets will affect your car insurance at least as much as a minor accident. Get a couple of them close together and they could consider you a risky driver.
Privacy

Wikipedia Opts Out Of Phorm 98

ais523 writes "Wikipedia (and other websites run by Wikimedia) have requested to opt-out from Phorm; according to the email they sent, they 'consider the scanning and profiling of our visitors' behavior by a third party to be an infringement on their privacy.'" Another reader points to this post on techblog.wikimedia.org which includes a confirmation from Phorm that those sites will be excluded.
Books

Lose Your Amazon Account and Your Kindle Dies 419

Mike writes "If you buy a Kindle and some Kindle ebooks from Amazon, be careful of returning items. Amazon decided that one person had returned too many things, so they suspended his Amazon account, which meant that he could no longer buy any Kindle books, and any Kindle subscriptions he's paid for stop working. After some phone calls, Amazon granted him a one-time exception and reactivated his account again." Take this with as much salt as you'd like.

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