Archives
-
Very Interesting article... I'd love to hear people's reactions on this...
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13350
The IT industry is shifting away from Microsoft
Comment In the beginning there was Microsoft. Then it exploded
from the Inquirer. -
The tale of the $40 DVD player -- or why I hate the CHEAP! CHEAP! CHEAP! mentality of Americans today
So my brother decided to get one of those cheapo-dvd players for $40. I was given the task of setting this up for my mom, and my first thought was "what an utter piece of junk this thing is. I'll be surprised it it lasts 6 months."
To no surprise, it failed within 2 hours of use. I told my brother to return it and PLEASE let me go with him to pick out a better model -- something that was at least $100 with a brand name, since he insisted on being so cheap! He declined and came back with another $40 player with the hopes that it wouldn't die so quickly. We'll see how long this one lasts...
I looked at the specs -- audio signal to noise ratio of 60dB -- how pathetic -- analog cassettes have a better s/n ratio than that! I truely wonder exactly how cheap the D/A converters are in that thing. I see DVD-Rom drives going for like $16 these days.. the decoder card I can see being $10 -- I don't think they can meet the standard consumer electronics price point of selling at 4 times manufacturing costs. If they indeed do with these no-name chinese players, then how they manufacture them for $10 is beyond me.
I do in fact personally own the player that started this cheap! cheap! cheap! craze -- the Apex AD600A -- which I bought solely for the novelty of playing MP3-CD's in 2000, when it was the only player that could do so. While it still works today, I regret the purchase in a way, because it was just a sign of things to come. I do fully intend to purchase a Sony 999ES or the earlier 9000ES one day in the next two years. Then I'd have a DVD player on par with the rest of my audio equipment, but since I am more of a music person than a video or movie buff. Nor do I have the space or money in college for a really nice TV.
I suppose my point is, why do people WANT to buy this crap, solely on the fact that it's cheap? What happened to people willingly spending money on things that LAST, rather than things that are CHEAP! As I said, standard fare in the consumer electronics world is sell at 4 times manufacturing costs. If they somehow got the costs to $10 in china for that player, it's no wonder that the parts inside do indeed, suck. And the quality control does too. And under what labor conditions was this thing manufactured to meet that price point and still make a profit?
I look at a lot of my stereo equipment, a lot of which is 10-year old Rotel gear that is solid as a brick (and yes, made in china), some 10-year old Sony ES components (Made in Japan), and I have a 20-year old Tape deck (Technics 3 head) which retailed for $400 when it was new. All of it still works, and works beautifully. I bet you it will all still be working in 10 more years. But I spent the time to earn the extra money and spend it on *quality.*
I look at those $500 computers in the same way. Sure it's cheap, but what was the cost to get there? Memory shared with the Video card? CPU with high clockspeed but castrated L2 cache? Hard drive that will fail in one year? I still have some $2000-$3000 machines that are 6 years old and solid as a brick. I have a working Apple II+ still.
C'mon people, demand quality again. And Quality costs MONEY. I had a discussion with a GM engineer a couple months ago who was shocked that Toyota (Lexus) switched steel suppliers on a whim for their RX330 manufacturered in Canada, because the hood panel gap was something like .05" too much, and the Japanese engineer decided it was the steel they were using that was the problem, so they are now shipping steel in from Japan rather than using a local supplier in Canada.
My response to him was, "Well you do that 128 times, and you end up with a better car, not just a better part."
-
Ah, the joys of Microsoft Smart Tags in Office -- I wonder where “Finite State“ is.
Perhaps they need to work on this some:
-
Day in the Life of the I.T. consultant
Ok, I just had to post this -- so funny, and so true!
http://thegravy-train.20m.com/work.swf -
Time for an update!
Whew! Finals are finally finished, so I finally get to blog again. Recently, I upgraded my soundcard to a Terratec DMX6 Fire 24/96 -- my old soundblaster live wasn't cutting it anymore. Amazing what a difference a sound card made for audio makes, as compared to one for gaming! One day I'll be able to afford one of those Lynx Two's
Ok, before anyone else says I'm going overboard, I'm an audiophile, and well, my work has to do with speech recognition and dialogue systems. So, sound is my life so to speak. I also got an excellent new microphone, the Andrea ANC-750 which also is helping my demos.
On the dialogue systems front, there are many interesting things happening, though I'm not saying what just yet. All I'll say is watch this space closely.... there should be a new build of ariadne by mid-January, I may not make a public release this time, though.
Lots of trips coming up for me, too:
Winter Break: New York City, Jan 1st - 10th (philadelphia the other part of winter break)
Spring Break: San Francisco, March 6th - 13th
post graduation: Germany (probably Freiburg), June 1st - July 29th
-
Parallel Computing or Computer Networks next semester...?
Wondering which course to take... I've always fancied multiprocessing and learning how to utilize it better. Though Networks is useful too... any suggestions from blog land?
-
Craigslist made it to Pittsburgh
Woohoo!!!! Woohoo!!!
-
IBM cites SCO judge in latest SCO filings
-
Eolas patent getting re-examined!
-
Jennifer Chayes' talk was great!
Jennifer Chayes, Manager of the Theory Group at Microsoft Research, gave a fabulous talk on Thursday last week, although I still think the professors probably got more of a kick out of it than the students. She's a real good speaker, one of the few people that can talk lively about CS Theory. Her talk on "Phase transitions for Combinatorial Optimizations" is archived here. (Windows Media Player needed)
I personally found her talk didn't go over my head nearly as much as I expected it would... but if you watch it, be prepared that it might! Jennifer definately shows the amazing things that happen when you get a cross-disiplinary background -- She gravitated from Biology to Physics to Math to Computer Science. She was a fabulous speaker, and is a fabulous person in real life too! -
Bringing in some awesome speakers into CMU...
So, ever since I've been a freshman here, I've been very active in our SWE (Society of Women Engineers) chapter, and in the past two years, increasing my involvement in our Women@SCS (Women in the School of Computer Science) group here, too. I also used to be an officer of SWE, in 2000-2001.
I'm excited to note that we have Jennifer Chayes, manager of the Theory group at Microsoft Research, coming to speak this Thursday, and from what I hear, she's a really dynamic person!
As for future speakers (someone else arranged for Jennifer to come in), it looks like our wonderfully famous dotnetblog member, Julia Lerman has agreed to give a talk to our Women@SCS group here, and along with Julia, Lili Cheng may also be coming with her.
I'm hoping that along with these two wonderful gals and our group here at CMU, that we can have a wonderful discussion, learn about one another's initiatives into encouraging more women into the technical fields, and perhaps get some initiatives we all can work together on. From my own personal experiences, mentoring is critical at all stages of life, for both men and women alike, and everyone needs not only an internal drive, but external support to acheive their dreams. One of my most favorite people in the world, Elizabeth Smith, a general manager at IBM, introduced me to the world of mentoring, when we had her come in for one of our SWE conferences, "Coloring outside the lines" in February of 2000, and ever since then I've personally realized how a strong community for oneself helps one realize his or her dreams. Thank you Liz, and may we all pass on the wonderful gifts of our own experiences and knowledge to help others reach for the stars!
And for you men out there wondering why the heck a guy like me is so supportive and involved in these women in technology initiatives, here's my top three reasons why you should get involved and help with them too:
1. By understanding women's needs' in the workplace, you'll be a better and more understanding manager later on.
2. You'll make better products that are less gender-biased.
3. You'll have diversity in the workplace. This means having lunch with girls and not talking about only geeky things! Could also mean more potential dates for you, but I *am not* going to advocate dating in the workplace, as that can become a sticky situation. -
Apparently, being a specialist can be nice...
Meeting with Bosch went great. We didn't get to have lunch because we were a tad pressed for time, but looks like they want to consider funding me for a masters degree in Human Computer Interaction or the Language Technologies Institute here at Carnegie Mellon. Only problem is I need to finish up this research proposal by Monday (November 10th)... so I've got my work cut out for me.
-
Tim Berners-Lee steps in the Microsoft/Eolas Case
Well, what do you know, I'm not the only one of the opinion that this patent is invalid on the basis of prior art... Story Here
-
Lunch with Bosch tomorrow!
Hmm, it occurs to me that I haven't posted much speech related stuff for the past two weeks -- school's been hectic lately.
Well, not too much new right now, though I am having lunch with one of the researchers at Bosch to update them on what's been going on recently and where we're headed with future Ariadne (dialogue system) related work. -
Official PDC Pumpkin
So this is totally awesome. My friends Jim Bai and Craig Austin at CMU just made this fabulous pumpkin!
Jim is our wonderful student consultant this year at Carnegie Mellon for Microsoft (hired off of my referral :) ), and Craig is one of his suitemates. Let's give them a round of applause!
And don't forget that awesome Longhorn "T"! -
"Your good deeds are never forgotten"
So says a fortune cookie from my dinner tonight. I hope Someone Really Special remembers mine. I swear, I feel like I had a whole slew of lessons this week on trust and loyalty in relationships. Sometimes, you have to bend over backwards to let them get their way, and sometimes you have to stand your ground to direct them back onto the right path. And sometimes you have to lose it all to remember what you had.
-
Cute, Google, Cute...
Try this:
-
Don Box rocks!!
Don, I just want to say thank you -- that was a very informative and very cool article! It felt like a trip down memory lane. Me not being a Microsoft employee (ah, the joys of being at a University), I'm free to say what I want about the Eolas case... and might I suggest you give Mr. Michael Wallent a bit of help here if you haven't done so already -- especially as the case goes to the appeals court. Since you were one of the inventors of COM... and that led to OLE... and you all see where I'm going with this.
-
Now *THIS* is a cool ad
Look closely at this ad:
-
Arnold wins California -- tenatively
Yay! Okay, as a Bay area resident for 18 months during my years in college, I can't begin to express my joy at this result, if it is true! I remember the rolling blackouts of 2001 when I was working at IBM -- it sure was a funny scene seeing thousands of computer geeks at Sun, IBM, and Apple on De Anza Blvd. in Cupertino evacuating the buildings and seemingly seeing daylight for the first time. Regardless, those blackouts cost California tons of productive hours... prior to that California had water problems, and California spends the most on education, yet has an abysmal public education system for K-12.
-
Microsoft Changes to IE for Eolas patent...
So I just read about Microsoft's changes to Internet Explorer to deal with the Eolas patent, and I must say, all this change does, in my opinion, is create nuisance to content developers and users, and while it may circumvent the patent (whether it does or doesn't I am withholding my opinion on), it doesn't prevent the fact that the ActiveX control or plugin still will load after a bit of Javascript.
-
Herbivore.. Insanely cool P2P project
Looks like some friends of mine at Cornell are working on something really cool -- a project called Herbivore.
In a nutshell, it's a Peer to Peer system that ensures privacy. Nifty.
Read more about it at www.herbivore.info
And look at their whitepaper here. -
GM Collaborative Research Lab Retreat
For all of us at CMU who are funded by General Motors, we have a retreat this Friday!! This is going to be a great opportunity to get to know some of GM's top researchers, and learn about all sorts of cool research going on over here! Free Food and Free Knowledge! Can't beat that!
-
First Post!
Alright, so today I'm starting a new blog relating to Speech Technology and Dialogue Systems. I'm a senior at Carnegie Mellon University in Computer Science, and I've spent about two years working on dialogue systems here.