[ExI] google translator

[spike]

... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty
...

>...Old dog, here's a new trick: http://www.george-orwell.org/1984

Actually I prefer to think of myself as a middle aged dog.  {8^D

>> One may use derogatory terms if done respectfully, and one is derogging
oneself...

>ok then, consider yourself rogged (above)

I do, early and often thanks.  I always like to do things my own way in my
own time, and fortunately for me, people around often have kind things to
say, so for that reason I consider myself a rogged individualist.

>> After a while the term overqualified starts to sound more and more like a
code word for "too old."

>hmm..  "I'm overqualified for all-nighters"  - I see what you mean :)

Me too.  {8-[  Of course it depends on what activity we are talking about.
I am quite skilled at sleeping all night.

Something we used to discuss a long time ago, we are now seeing for the
first time: the elderly computer users being left behind.  My mother has
been a computer user for almost 40 years now, owned a PDP 11-780 for an
accounting business back in the early 70s.  Now she is being overwhelmed by
the pace of change in operating systems.  It has long been a worry to me
that we don't do enough to make technology accessible for the superannuated.

IBM's Jeopardy-playing Watson exercise makes me confident we will soon have
computers that operate via voice command, or respond to conversation, to be
an acceptable companion for the elderly.  They should: we have good voice
recognition, we have good inference software.  I would think we could
already do as good as a semi-senile nursing home cohabitant for a software
based companion for the elderly.

Some of you coding hipsters who know from conversational software, how far
out is this now?  Five years?  Ten?  Why don't we have stereos and TVs set
up to where we just tell it what we want, and it goes off and does it?  Why
do we need to learn its language instead of it learning ours?

spike