Samizdata

Real time speech translation, speech to text conversion, story summarization: all of these were “just around the corner” when I was a CMU grad student. I remember reading Dr. Raj Reddy’s proposal for a speech understanding system, what later became the Hearsay I project I believe. This was all going to happen in five years or so. By the time they developed Hearsay II his research group had a DEC PDP-10 (the cmub) pretty much to themselves. All the rest of us had to make do on the cmua.

That was in 1973.

So here we are, thirty years on, and it appears the real thing may really, finally be “five years in the future”. Some of the key elements are actually working under field conditions. It has always been inevitable we’d crack the speech understanding problem… eventually. It just took a couple years longer than we thought. [There were even more optimistic thoughts in the early 50’s, but that was computing before my time. Vacuum tube days. I think Fred Flintstone worked on the project.]

So here are a few very readable documents on the current state of military applications. The Phrasealator has been tested in Afghanistan by the guy who built it. The following are pdf documents. Right click and download.

1. “An SBIR Success Story”, James Bass (script)
2. “An SBIR Success Story”, James Bass (slides)
3. “Human Language Technology TIDES/EARS/Babylon”, Charles Wayne (script)
4. “Human Language Technology TIDES/EARS/Babylon”, Charles Wayne (slides) (large-ish)

PS: Note the military dune buggy at Kandahar Airport in James Bass’ slides. I want one!

Whenever David Carr writes one of his we are doomed doomed pieces, I try to cheer myself up by pondering the excellence of capitalism and its products, with a view to giving one of the better ones that extra boost into product super-stardom that a mention on samizdata surely guarantees. And of all the candidates in range of my personal ain’t-capitalism-great? scanner, I think that the one I’m most impressed by at the moment is Swiffer cloths.

Says Cynthia Townley Ewer of OrganizedHome.Com:

Electrostatic dry sweepers fill a household cleaning niche. While these dry mops won’t replace a damp-mop for stain or dried soil removal, the new sweepers are far superior at picking up and removing dust and dry debris.

Use electrostatic dry sweepers before damp-mopping to remove loose dirt and speed mopping chores. Use them between damp-mopping and instead of daily sweeping or vacuuming.

The cloths alone are great dust removers for televisions and computer equipment, and will take dust from furniture quickly and easily. Without a doubt, these new products represent a true innovation, and have a place in today’s organized home.

I am myself a satisfied Swiffer customer. I find Swiffers invaluable for those deposits of dust that accumulate over the months and years. Whenever, as happens from time to time, I need to rearrange some of my possessions, such deposits as these used to have to be moved as if manoevring a delicate item of scientific investigation, in order to avoid hurling all that dirt into the air and perhaps into my respiratory system, which functions imperfectly at the best of times. Now, I Swiffer the offending deposit. I ensure clean TV and computer screens by Swiffering them also, just as Ms, Townley Ewer says.
→ Continue reading: Swiffer!

The Banned Wagon is rolling into town again and, this time, a herb called ‘Kava-Kava’ has been tossed unceremoniously onto the back of the wagon and driven into the wilderness:

“Remedies containing the herb Kava-kava have been banned after it was linked to four deaths.”

Well, four deaths is four too many, that’s for sure. But how is Kava-Kava ‘linked’ exactly? What does ‘linked’ mean? Does it mean that the herb caused symptoms which led to an illnesss, or what?

Questions enough, but the report gets even more obtuse and vague:

“The MCA said investigations had been unable to say what might put people at risk of adverse reactions to Kava-kava.

How the remedy damages the liver is also unknown.”

But that doesn’t matter because:

“Given the expert advice from the CSM and Medicines Commission following the recent public consultation it is clear that this ban is necessary.”

This may have something to do with the way the journalist has written the article or it may that there’s something we’re not being told but, in the absence of those two possibilities, then the case for prohibition is anything but ‘clear’. In fact, it is quite opaque. It is the diametric opposite of ‘clear’. This is ‘Newspeak’; producing no evidence of guilt results in a ‘clear’ case having been made.

Well, that’s about as much ranting as I’m entitled to, I reckon. I have never bought kava-kava and now, I daresay, I never will. Not unless I’m prepared to go to a shady, kava-kava pusher. But, I do detect that we’ve just witnessed another example of the ‘Precautionary Principle’; this is the public policy mandate that all risk must be avoided and which usually manifests itself as an avoidance of all critical inquiry as well.

I have no medical or scientific training but I presume that the people who staff the Medicines Control Agency have oodles of both. Is it too much to expect them to approach matters a bit more…well, scientifically?

Yesterday I saw an advert in the London Underground that I think said something interesting about the differences between different countries, namely the cost per minute of ringing them up.

The advert was for something called Alpha Telecom which is apparently some sort of internet something-or-other for ringing people up in foreign parts.

I can’t explain how that works, but I can give you the different prices for the different countries with which we Brits would appear to be in regular phone contact, because I jotted them down. The numbers don’t say which countries are the best. But perhaps they do say something about which countries work the best. It would seem that distance has nothing to do with anything here, which I guess because this is the Internet we’re talking about. The INternet murders distance. What seems to matter is degree of serenity or confusion at the destination of your call.

All measurements of differential national merit strike me as interesting. What does it cost to become a citizen legally? What does it cost to become a citizen illegally? (Do some countries pay you to join?) Who gets the most sporting medals? What are the different credit ratings of different national governments? What proportion of people are wearing shoes? Driving cars? Connected to the Internet? Can read and write? Who scores highest and lowest, in the opinion of some bunch of people in Washington DC who measure “freedom” in different countries, and which countries have changed their scores the most since last year or in recent years? When does each country’s “tax freedom day” arrive, ditto? And so on. Well, maybe this cost of phone calls thing is another such score, albeit a very crude one.

So here are the scores, in pence per minute I assume: Austria 4, Somewhere illegible (Canada I think) 4, France 4, Germany 4, Hong Kong 7, Ireland 4, New Zealand 4, Pakistan 20, Spain 4, Sweden 2, USA 3, Australia 4, India 20, South Africa 8, and: Internet 1.

So, if I’m right about what this all means, the most efficient country in the world is the Internet, followed by Sweden, followed by the USA, followed by all the brand-X Western democracies. I think that Sweden and Hong Kong are the most interesting scores, the former for being so low, the latter for being rather high. Ireland and Spain have reputations for incompetence that they would seem to be shedding fast. I also wonder if Hong Kong, and maybe also South Africa, have gone or are going up, and whether either India or Pakistan are coming down from their current twin peaks.

But maybe I’m quite wrong, and it means either nothing at all, or something very trivial. I’m sure our many techy readers will elucidate. If you do, gentlemen, could you include an explanation of what this system actually is and does, because I can’t make it out at all. Surely a telephone is a telephone, and the Internet is basically something you look at and type into and get email in and out of with a computer, with occasional videos and tunes as decoration. How can you phone the internet?

Here’s another “wonder of capitalism story. Yes folks, Internet connections on passenger airplanes. As Patrick Crozier of Transport Blog, who piloted me to the story, puts it:

Look, no Ministers of Transport, no Euro-directives, no dirigisme. Isn’t greed good.

I suppose, what with Samizdata being in the gloomy mood it’s in just now, various among us will find ways to be depressed even about this. Either (a) it will offer terrorists new ways to hijack airplanes, blow them up or even fly them into famous landmarks, without even being on them. Or else (b) it will be annoying to have to sit next to a surfer or emailer, especially if he has a sound card. Like portable phones on trains all over again, in other words.

But I’m impressed. Patrick has now bestowed upon me automatic posting rights to Transport Blog, for when he isn’t in the mood. So maybe one day I’ll do a celebratory posting to TB from an airplane:

“Patrick and transportsmen everywhere, how are you my old mates? How’s things? Trains all late as usual, are they? Cars and buses and lorries all jammed up? Good, good. I’m now two and half minutes away from landing at Stanstead. I estimate I’m somewhere north of Watford. I’ve been delayed by strong cross winds but I’ll be at arrivals in thirty three minutes and expect to be back at base in one hour and forty seven and a quarter minutes, approximately, can’t be sure exactly. You may have to delay the meeting by three and a bit minutes, maybe four. Or so. I’m doing my final approach now. The flaps are coming out into flap mode. The wheels are now down. No, I tell a lie. Yes, here they come. Oops. Rather bumpy, my son, rather bumpy. But mustn’t grumble, know what I mean? Have to unplug now. See you at head office in one hour, forty two and eleven sixteenths minutes. Give or take. Gotta rush.”

Maybe not. Seriously, when I’m actually on that airplane I’ll have something better than that to say, and it will be good to keep up with the blogs. I think this is very good news.

I reported on the Twente University server room fire last week. According to this item in the Debian News mail list it was arson:

“Debian Server burnt down. Wichert Akkerman reported that a fire started in the computing facilities of Twente University. According to the fire department, everything in the building and the entire building was burnt to the ground. The Debian server “satie” that served as security and non-US archive was hosted there. Two days later, the Security Team reported that the security service was successfully reinstalled on another server. The nm and qa hosts had their home on satie as well and were also reinstalled on klecker. It has finally been confirmed that the fire was a result of arson.”

One has to wonder about motive. It’s just not the done thing to go burning down a university computer centre.