Software
Opera Software announced it will release a desktop browser that incorporates IBM's Embedded ViaVoice speech technology. By leveraging IBM's voice libraries in this version of Opera, users can navigate, request information and even fill in Web forms using speech and other forms of input in the same interaction. "Voice is the most natural and effective way we communicate. In the years to come it will greatly facilitate how we interact with technology," says Christen Krogh, VP Engineering, Opera Software ASA. "By making this technology available today for the wider Web audience, the serious work of voice-enabling the Web can commence."
Walt Scacchi of the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues are conducting formal studies of the informal world of open-source software development, in which a distributed community of developers produces software source code that is freely available to share, study, modify and redistribute. They're finding that, in many ways, open-source development can be faster, better and cheaper than the "textbook" software engineering often used in corporate settings.
Nasa has developed a Web-based software tool meant to help scientists and engineers investigating accidents work more effectively and efficiently. The InvestigationOrganizer, developed at NASA Ames Research Center, is a Web-based tool that provides information storage, management, and analysis capabilities to accident investigation teams. Current investigating and reporting methods used by NASA's mishap investigation teams tend to be disparate and cumbersome. Teams have no standard methods or tools for information storage, management, dissemination or analysis ? all issues that InvestigationOrganizer is designed to address.
You can't keep a good supercomputer down, especially when it only knows how to do one thing: Play chess. Deep Fritz, the German-built brainiac, forced DNA-based competitor Vladimir Kramnik into a draw Thursday, in a crucial Game Four of the eight-game "Brains of Bahrain" competition. At the half-way point, Kramnik leads the series 3-1. One more win guarantees he won't lose the "duel of the century" (a decidedly modest claim, considering the year).
See also: Vlad the Impaler Defeats Fritz the Ditz
Maybe Deep Fritz should be called On the Fritz. The German-built, chess-playing computer lost another game to 27-year-old Russian champ Vladimir Kramnik in a match billed as the "Brains of Bahrain." The competition's third day of play ended when Kramnik, well, kicked Fritz' butt in 57 moves that showed DNA can still best silicon at some things. As reported by Reuters, Sunday's game wasn't completely one-sided. "Fritz, after early errors, fought back and startled Kramnik with some typical computer tactics. 'I never imagined (the 27th move) and the tactics that followed. Only a computer would find and play something like that,' Kramnik said later. 'I was completely shocked.' The Fritz team was more than a little embarrassed, however, when their brainchild in move 12 returned its bishop to its original square. This bizarre move was something even the lowliest human player would never consider."
Chalk up another casualty of the Hewlett-Packard/Compaq merger. For two years, Bruce Perens was an in-house evangelist for the Linux operating system at computer giant HP. He would go around extolling the virtues of the open source software to corporate clients, pointing out that it was secure, cheap and kept customers from being locked into proprietary systems like Sun Solaris or Microsoft Windows. In fact, it appears to have been his self-acknowledged baiting of Redmond that eventually did him in. Perens was canned by HP, which finds itself post-merger as the single biggest buyer of Windows for PCs and servers and thus, as the New York Times' Steve Lohr put its, more dependent on Microsoft than ever. But don't expect Perens to go quietly into that dark night. "I'm sorry that I had to leave HP, but I'm not going to shut up about my views," he said. "I'm not just going to sit back and be a quiet engineer. I have a two-year-old son and I don't want him to grow up in a world that is less free."
John Mahoney writes: "Noted computer scientist Edsger Wybe Dijkstra died on August 6, 2002." Here's a link to what looks like a university obituary on Dijkstra and here's part of what CNET's News.com had to say about him: "Dijkstra was on the committee that created Algol, the first block-structured programming language and one that introduced many ideas behind Pascal, Basic and C. His practical skills, especially in discerning and coding algorithms, were also remarkable--he wrote the first Algol 60 compiler. Other ideas he invented or helped define include structured programming, stacks, vectors, semaphores, synchronized processes and the notorious deadly embrace--feared by multitasking programmers the world over--where two processes both stop while they wait for each other to continue."
Boy explodes from eating Pop Rocks with Coca-Cola. Girl summons vengeful spirit by chanting "Bloody Mary" while staring into mirror. Richard Gere checks into hospital, furry friend in tow. And once again, Apple plans x86-platform Macs. As posted on MacOSRumors, "Apple may be on the way to moving over to an x86-based platform, probably the AMD Athlon family of processors."
Historically, this techno-legend was wishful thinking on the part of cultish Apple devotees in hopes that the Mac would rise up from its Amelio-era deathbed and strike a fatal blow to the Wintel camp. Today, there are several reasons why this rumor is feasible at this time in Apple's history: Apple's UNIX-based MacOS X seems an easy port to CISC-based processors; The Apple/Microsoft arranged union is soon to come to a close; rumors of Motorola's processor shortages; and so on.
"Although Motorola sources have repeatedly stated that they do not believe Apple will be implementing Moto's G5 family of processors as it is currently known -- G4 processors "have legs," according to those sources, and will power Apple computers for at least another year, they say -- we do not believe that this means that Apple will not employ PowerPC processors significantly more advanced than the current crop. It may mean that Apple does not believe that the current G5 designs are suitable in terms of clock speeds, price, or reliable supply availability. In fact, this rumor that Apple isn't going to implement the G5 may not be accurate at all."
Consider that CISC-based processors are larger, consume far more power and run much hotter than RISC processors, which would not fare well in many of Apple's newer, more compact machines that do not include processor-cooling fans. Additionally, Apple touts its PowerPC G4 with Velocity Engine processor"the chip that put supercomputing power on the desktop?can perform four (in some cases eight) 32-bit floating-point calculations in a single cycle ? two to four times faster than processors found in PCs."
Gene Kan, peer-to-peer file-sharing programmer extraordinaire, took his own life June 29, and Wired.com has a fine tribute to the troubled but brilliant 25-year-old. Kan's professional life revolved around developing ways for people to swap information easily and quickly. As Wired notes, Kan was among the first programmers to create an open-source version of the file-sharing application Gnutella, which lets users search for and transfer files from computer to computer. "His ability to translate complicated technology into easily understandable terms quickly led to his becoming the unofficial spokesman for Gnutella in particular, and for file-sharing applications in general," the new site says. "Gene was one of the first people to make hay with the idea that peer-to-peer file sharing wasn't just about music, but about a powerful approach to problems in computer networking," adds Tim O'Reilly, of O'Reilly Publishing. "It was Gnutella and Freenet, more than Napster, that got the attention of the technical elite and made us think more deeply about the way the Internet was evolving." Kan's death was not entirely unexpected, Wired reports. Friends had hoped Kan was winning his hard-fought battle against depression. "We did all the things you're supposed to do," said Cody Oliver, Gene's business partner in peer-to-peer search technology gonesilent.com. "We got him on Prozac; we connected him to the suicide hotlines. He promised he wouldn't do anything drastic. But now he's gone. It's a really rough time."
