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Tuesday, 1999 October 20
Jesus Fontaine Cranston
Very cute status report on voice-recognition software. Zen and the art of clutter Although this is about housework, the attitude toward clutter can be applied to (almost?) any environment. Makes me remember when I once sighed, "I wish I had a week where nothing happened, so I could get my life in order." A friend laughed and said, "I don't think it's in your nature to have your life in order." Malibu Ken quits Ken Starr finally steps down. Seems he gave up on the idea of trying to affect Hillary's election. Or maybe he was tired of taking money for doing nothing. Or maybe he thinks he can go for the payoff job at Pepperdine - the one he gave up when everyone cried, "Conflict of interest!" We do owe a thanks to Kenny, though, for bringing sexual topics out in the open. Friday, 1999 October
15
One finger typing in the dark"... tests show Thumbscript users enter data 25 percent faster than Graffiti adepts. That's because Thumbscript works by reducing each letter of the alphabet down to two buttons..." - two buttons on a number pad, like the one on your telephone. "A connect-the-dots concept." Madonna: working like a canine Quite ordinary interview rendered bizarre by translation into Hungarian and (badly) retranslated into English. Sample: "In America it is not considered to be mentally ill when a woman advances on her prey in a discoteque setting with hardy cocktails present." Eunuchs (not unix) This article is just a teaser for a TV "news" show, but it is suprising to find that there still are eunuchs in the world.
Thursday, 1999 October 15
Flying car comin' atcha
Henry Ford in 1940: "The combination plane and automobile is coming. You may laugh, but it will come." 350 mph at 25,000 feet, 20 miles a gallon, costs $40,000, runs on natural gas, fits in your garage. NASA and Boeing say it's impeccably engineered. Welcome to the free world Good article about free stuff on the web: not about where to get freebies, but about the effect on business. The internet makes it possible to get services and sometimes items free, so why pay? The logic is irresistible, but biz types ache over the question of how to make money from it. Tim Berners-Lee said something to the effect that if your goal is to make a lot of money, it severely limits your options in life. You have to register to read the article, but it is painless. [1999 Oct 14 13:10] Did he even know he was president? Another humorous potshot at the recent Reagan bio, mentioning several of RR's goofball pronouncements that had slipped my mind (for inst., blaming trees for pollution!). RR had turned down Bogart's role in Casablanca: "Imagine how history would have changed if he had taken it: Bogart might have been president. Of course, Casablanca would have been a crappy movie..." [1999 Oct 14 12:10] Clever browser blocking Some sites actually re-route browsers away from their site. One site, selling pirated movies, was redirecting requests from police agencies, so that the police would see harmless, legal stuff rather than the pirated tape offers. [1999 Oct 14 11:55] INS gives out too many tech visas At first I thought the headline was a jingoistic opinion. What it really means is that INS was supposed to give out 10,000 tech visas last fiscal year, but they gave out 20,000 instead. The total could change because they're still running the audit. "They can blame system errors or the computer. They can blame anything they want, but ultimately this is an agency that cannot count." [1999 Oct 14 11:45] Smellavision Elmer Fudd's futuristic nightmare comes true. Who would want it? Buchanan - bigot without a party Pat Buchanan is still trying to get the Reform Party to take him - I guess he figures Perot is crazy enough to do anything. Why doesn't Pat just move to Serbia, Iraq or some such place where he would fit right in? [1999 Oct 14 10:10]
Wednesday, 1999 October 14
Neural networks faq
Just because of the article mentioned below, I wondered what the heck these neural networks are. I found a faq, and answers to the questions what is an NN? and what can they do?, but I don't know much more than before. It looks like the stuff written about NNs is written by ppl who are just steeped and soaking in the subject and can't imagine that other folk (me, for inst.) don't have the slightest. If anyone finds a more dummy-level intro, let me know. [1999 Oct 13 14:18] Electronic Paper E-paper is an ultra-thin, flexible lightweight screen "made of millions of tiny capsules... that change color when zapped with an electric charge." Like paper: easily changeable; retains image w/o power until zapped again. They predict we'll see store ad displays made of this stuff in six months. [1999 Oct 13 11:50] Rembrandt self-portraits Review of the London show. I didn't realize that prior to R., the self-portrait was an undeveloped branch of the painter's art. Near the end, Berger says something about R. painting what was left of himself - a little ambigious as to whether he means the recollection of his own image or what life had not managed to take from him. [1999 Oct 13 11:30] Superhuman speech recognition Supposedly a computer system has been developed with better-than-human speech recognition. It's the result of implementing a new feature in neural-network programming: the "neurons" change their behavior according to the timing of input signals - never done before. [1999 Oct 13 11:10] Interesting/Amusing Thoughts on Brain Mapping Two snippets: (1) "It occurs to me that maybe we're heavily invested in finding answers to which we don't know the corresponding questions." (2) "I want... to distinguish between the question whether mental functions are neurally localized in the brain, and the question where they are neurally localised in the brain.... I find it hard to care about the second [question]." [1999 Oct 13 11:00] Onion quote of the week Re Edmund Morris' new Reagan bio: "The Reagan bio may be partly fictional, but I don't mind. That means it should correspond pretty closely with my memories of his administration." [1999 Oct 13 10:45] |