I have recreated the sound of the beginning of The Weakest Link:
You see, the man whose disembodied male voice appears in the teatime quiz programme is the same man on whose voice is based the electronic voice of my iPod. That’s what I was getting at there.
I am furious that he emphasises the wrong parts of “Bowie” all wrong, but such limitations also serve as a comforting reminder that the machines aren’t ready to take over just yet. When that changes, I think we should start getting worried.
One of the themes – maybe the main theme – of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica was the question: does humanity deserve to survive? Twitter’s trending topics makes me think that the answer is no.
John Gruber pours scorn on Microsoft executive Craig Mundie’s bold assertion that Windows Phone 7 telephones’ voice-controlled natural language interface feature, called TellMe, is just as capable as that of the new Apple telephones.
Clearly, it isn’t, but punters needn’t know that. It’s still impressive – in fact, it is more capable than the legacy functionality of the less new Apple telephones, which are still sold. A person who’s seen neither – that is, the vast majority of people – would be impressed, if they knew it existed.
Mundie claims that the only difference is “marketing”. In that case, why not do some marketing? Shadoe Huard nails it:
A more insidious conclusion would be that Mundie is a dunce, since he’s completely oblivious to his own admission that Microsoft spends no effort adequately marketing their own products, some of which actually do have compelling features consumers would be interested in knowing existed.
Peter Barthel […] belongs to that group of scientists who notice things that most of us, through ignorance or lack of pedantry, are happy to overlook. Things like Christmas cards depicting penguins cavorting with polar bears, or designer snowflakes that “corrupt nature”.