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• Can sorting Japanese kanji words be done programatically?

  - by Mason

  I've recently discovered, to my astonishment (having never really thought about it before), machine-sorting Japanese proper nouns is apparently not possible. I work on an application that must allow the user to select a hospital from a 3-menu interface. The first menu is Prefecture, the second is City Name, and the third is Hospital. Each menu should be sorted, as you might expect, so the user can find what they want in the menu. Let me outline what I have found, as preamble to my question: The expected sort order for Japanese words is based on their pronunciation. Kanji do not have an inherent order (there are tens of thousands of Kanji in use), but the Japanese phonetic syllabaries do have an order: ???????????????????... and on for the fifty traditional distinct sounds (a few of which are obsolete in modern Japanese). This sort order is called ???? (gojuu on jun , or '50-sound order'). Therefore, Kanji words should be sorted in the same order as they would be if they were written in hiragana. (You can represent any kanji word in phonetic hiragana in Japanese.) The kicker: there is no canonical way to determine the pronunciation of a given word written in kanji. You never know. Some kanji have ten or more different pronunciations, depending on the word. Many common words are in the dictionary, and I could probably hack together a way to look them up from one of the free dictionary databases, but proper nouns (e.g. hospital names) are not in the dictionary. So, in my application, I have a list of every prefecture, city, and hospital in Japan. In order to sort these lists, which is a requirement, I need a matching list of each of these names in phonetic form (kana). I can't come up with anything other than paying somebody fluent in Japanese (I'm only so-so) to manually transcribe them. Before I do so though: Is it possible that I am totally high on fire, and there actually is some way to do this sorting without creating my own mappings of kanji words to phonetic readings, that I have somehow overlooked? Is there a publicly available mapping of prefecture/city names, from the government or something? That would reduce the manual mapping I'd need to do to only hospital names. Does anybody have any other advice on how to approach this problem? Any programming language is fine--I'm working with Ruby on Rails but I would be delighted if I could just write a program that would take the kanji input (say 40,000 proper nouns) and then output the phonetic representations as data that I could import into my Rails app. ??????????

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• Performance characteristics of pthreads vs ucontext

  - by Robert Mason

  I'm trying to port a library that uses ucontext over to a platform which supports pthreads but not ucontext. The code is pretty well written so it should be relatively easy to replace all the calls to the ucontext API with a call to pthread routines. However, does this introduce a significant amount of additional overhead? Or is this a satisfactory replacement. I'm not sure how ucontext maps to operating system threads, and the purpose of this facility is to make coroutine spawning fairly cheap and easy. So, question is: Does replacing ucontext calls with pthread calls significantly change the performance characteristics of a library?

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• Closing a window when it's "no longer needed".

  - by Mason Blier

  This is kind of a hard question to describe, and I've searched for about an hour now to no avail. Essentially, picture a small 'flyout' window like the Windows 7 Wireless Control or the Volume Slider from the system tray(notification area). When you click on the icon, the application pops up with focus, and if you click off of it, the window destroys itself. I thought it woudl be easily solved by simply having my window destroy it self when it loses focus (I've been listening for WM_KILLFOCUS), but the problem is, if the icon is clicked, my window does not always get focus. Since this isn't the case, if the user clicks my icon, and then clicks away because it was a mistake (on the desktop say), then how can I set my app to close? I've tried messing with SPY++ but checking the volume control / wireless control apps are proving difficult as they disappear when I try to get their window/process handles. Thanks!

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• Automatic initialization routine in C++ library?

  - by Robert Mason

  If i have a header file foo.h and a source file foo.cpp, and foo.cpp contains something along the lines of: #ifdef WIN32 class asdf { asdf() { startup_code(); } ~asdf() { cleanup_code(); } }; asdf __STARTUP_HANDLE__ #else //unix does not require startup or cleanup code in this case #endif but foo.h does not define class asdf, say i have an application bar.cpp: #include "foo.h" //link in foo.lib, foo.dll, foo.so, etc int main() { //do stuff return 0; } If bar.cpp is compiled on a WIN32 platform, will the asdf() and ~asdf() be called at the appropriate times (before main() and at program exit, respectively) even though class asdf is not defined in foo.h, but is linked in through foo.cpp?

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• What does "the application failed to initialize properly" mean?

  - by Mason Wheeler

  I just got a bug report from someone running an app I wrote under Windows XP. He says it won't start up. The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0150002). Click on OK to terminate the application. It works fine at my end, (under Windows 7,) and I don't have any Win7- or Vista-specific stuff in the program, so it should work on XP too. How do I go about tracking this down and debugging it?

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• Passenger problem: "no such file to load" -- /config/environment

  - by Mason Jones

  I've been researching this one and found references to similar problems here and there, but none of them has led to a solution yet. I've installed passenger (2.2.11) and nginx (0.7.64) and when I start things up and hit a Rails URL, I get an error page informing me of a load error: no such file to load -- /path/to/app/config/environment From what I've found online this appears to be some sort of a user/permissions error, but I've tried all the logical fixes: I've made sure that /config/environment.rb is not owned by root, but by a webapp user. I've tried setting passenger_default_user, I've tried setting passenger_user_switching off. I've even tried setting the nginx user, though that shouldn't matter much. I've gotten some differing results, but nothing's actually worked. I'm hoping someone may have the magical combination of settings and permissions for this. I may try backing down to an earlier version of Passenger, because I've never had this issue before; it's been a little while since I set up Passenger though. Thanks for any suggestions.

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• Removing HTML from a Java String

  - by Mason

  Is there a good way to remove HTML from a Java string? A simple regex like replaceAll("\\<.*?>","") will work, but things like &amp; wont be converted correctly and non-HTML between the two angle brackets will be removed (ie the .*? in the regex will disappear).

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• Why won't my control accept keyboard input?

  - by Mason Wheeler

  I've built a custom control that I'm trying to send input to. It will accept mouse input and report MouseDown, MouseMove and MouseUp correctly, but for whatever reason, it won't accept keyboard input. When I click on it, it doesn't receive focus, and any keys I press get interpreted by whatever control had the focus already. This is probably something really simple. The first place I thought to look was in the ControlStyle property, but the only thing I can see in the helpfile about keyboard input is csNoStdEvents, which disables it, and my control doesn't have that. So what do I need to do to make it so my control can receive input focus?

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• Rails fixtures seem to be adding extra unexpected data

  - by Mason Jones

  Hello, all. I've got a dynamic fixture CSV file that's generating predictable data for a table in order for my unit tests to do their thing. It's working as expected and filling the table with the data, but when I check the table after the tests run, I'm seeing a number of additional rows of "blank" data (all zeros, etc). Those aren't being created by the fixture, and the unit tests are read-only, just doing selects, so I can't blame the code. There doesn't seem to be any logging done during the fixtures setup, so I can't see when the "blank" data is being inserted. Anyone ever run across this before, or have any ideas of how to log or otherwise see what the fixture setup is doing in order to trace down the source of the blank data?

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• How to remove duplicate records in a table?

  - by Mason Wheeler

  I've got a table in a testing DB that someone apparently got a little too trigger-happy on when running INSERT scripts to set it up. The schema looks like this: ID UNIQUEIDENTIFIER TYPE_INT SMALLINT SYSTEM_VALUE SMALLINT NAME VARCHAR MAPPED_VALUE VARCHAR It's supposed to have a few dozen rows. It has about 200,000, most of which are duplicates in which TYPE_INT, SYSTEM_VALUE, NAME and MAPPED_VALUE are all identical and ID is not. Now, I could probably make a script to clean this up that creates a temporary table in memory, uses INSERT .. SELECT DISTINCT to grab all the unique values, TRUNCATE the original table and then copy everything back. But is there a simpler way to do it, like a DELETE query with something special in the WHERE clause?

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• Is there any way to get all the controls on a container control?

  - by Mason Wheeler

  I've got a form with a bunch of controls on it, and I wanted to iterate through all the controls on a certain panel and enable/disable them. I tried this: var component: TComponent; begin for component in myPanel do (component as TControl).Enabled := Value; end; But that did nothing. Turns out all components are in the form's component collection, not their parent object's. So does anyone know if there's any way to get all the controls inside a control? (Besides an ugly workaround like this, which is what I ended up having to do): var component: TComponent; begin for component in myPanel do if (component is TControl) and (TControl(component).parent = myPanel) then TControl(component).Enabled := Value; end; Someone please tell me there's a better way...

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• Write-Only Reference in C++?

  - by Robert Mason

  Is there a way to code a write-only reference to an object? For example, suppose there was a mutex class: template <class T> class mutex { protected: T _data; public: mutex(); void lock(); //locks the mutex void unlock(); //unlocks the mutex T& data(); //returns a reference to the data, or throws an exception if lock is unowned }; Is there a way to guarantee that one couldn't do this: mutex<type> foo; T& ref; foo.lock(); ref = foo.data(); foo.unlock(); //I have a unguarded reference to foo now On the other hand, is it even worth it? I know that some people assume that programmers won't deliberately clobber the system, but then, why do we have private variables in the first place, eh? It'd be nice to just say it's "Undefined Behavior", but that just seems a little bit too insecure.

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• App disappears from Win7's ALT-TAB list sometimes

  - by Mason Wheeler

  I've been having some trouble with one of my Delphi 2010 projects lately. It seems that sometimes, when I have a form open as a modal dialog, the app stops showing up in the ALT-TAB list until I close the dialog. It's still in the Taskbar, but not in ALT-TAB, which means I can't switch to it without using the mouse. Running under Windows 7, 64-bit. Has anyone seen this before? Any idea what causes it and how to fix it?

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• Trouble with go tour crawler exercise

  - by David Mason

  I'm going through the go tour and I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of the language except for concurrency. On slide 71 there is an exercise that asks the reader to parallelize a web crawler (and to make it not cover repeats but I haven't gotten there yet.) Here is what I have so far: func Crawl(url string, depth int, fetcher Fetcher, ch chan string) { if depth <= 0 { return } body, urls, err := fetcher.Fetch(url) if err != nil { ch <- fmt.Sprintln(err) return } ch <- fmt.Sprintf("found: %s %q\n", url, body) for _, u := range urls { go Crawl(u, depth-1, fetcher, ch) } } func main() { ch := make(chan string, 100) go Crawl("http://golang.org/", 4, fetcher, ch) for i := range ch { fmt.Println(i) } } The issue I have is where to put the close(ch) call. If I put a defer close(ch) somewhere in the Crawl method, then I end up writing to a closed channel in one of the spawned goroutines, since the method will finish execution before the spawned goroutines do. If I omit the call to close(ch), as is shown in my example code, the program deadlocks after all the goroutines finish executing but the main thread is still waiting on the channel in the for loop since the channel was never closed.

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• Oracle ‘In Touch’ PartnerCast – Be prepared for a year of growth!

  - by Claudia Caramelli-Oracle

  Dear partner, you are warmly welcomed to join your host David Callaghan, Senior Vice President Alliances & Channels - Oracle EMEA, for the latest headlines from the Oracle Partner Network. With a strong focus on direct partner benefit, 'In Touch' is your chance to stay up to date, share best practices and pose those burning questions to Oracle that you would like answered. In this next cast, David’s studio guests and his regional reporters will be looking at the priorities for EMEA partners and how best to grow with Oracle as we move into the new financial year. So please click here and register now!This partnercast will be held on Jul 01, 2014 from10:30am to 11:15am GMT.  Don't miss this opportunity and follow the conversation on Twitter searching for #OracleInTouch hashtag.

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• SQL Overview V - Monitoring Long Running Jobs

  Continuing with his series on monitoring your SQL Servers, David Bird now looks a a way to fin those long running, active jobs.

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• SQL SERVER – Various Leap Year Logics

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier I wrote one article on Leap Year and created one video about Leap Year. My point of view was to demonstrate how we can use SQL Server 2012 features to identify Leap year. How ever during the conversation I had some really good conversation. Here are updates for those who have missed reading the excellent comments on the blog. Incorrect Logic There are so many people still think Leap Year is the event which is consistently happening at every four year and the way to find it is divide the year with 4 and if the remainder is 0. That year is leap year. Well, it is not correct. Comment by David Bridge Check out this excerpt from wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_year “most years that are evenly divisible by 4 are leap years…” “…Some exceptions to this rule are required since the duration of a solar year is slightly less than 365.25 days. Years that are evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years. For example, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not. Similarly, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500, 2600, 2700, 2900 and 3000 will not be leap years, but 2400 and 2800 will be.” If you use logic of divide by 4 and remainder is 0 to find leap year, you will may end up with inaccurate result. The correct way to identify the year is to figure out the days of February and if the count is 29, the year is for sure leap year. Valid Alternate Solutions Comment by sainswor99insworth IIF((@Year%4=0 AND @Year%100 != 0) OR @Year%400=0, 1,0) Comment by Madhivanan Madhivanan has written a blog post about an year ago where he listed multiple ways to find leap year. Comment by Jayan DECLARE @year INT SET @year = 2012 IF (((@year % 4 = 0) AND (@year % 100 != 0)) OR (@year % 400 = 0)) PRINT ’1' ELSE print ’0' Comment by David DECLARE @Year INT = 2012 SELECT ISDATE('2/29/' + CAST(@Year AS CHAR(4))) Comment by David Bridge Incidentally – Another approach would be to take one day off March 1st and see if it is 29. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DateTime, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Windows Azure Learning Plan - Architecture

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on a Windows Azure Learning Plan. You can find the main post here. This one deals with what an Architect needs to know about Windows Azure.   General Architectural Guidance Overview and general  information about Azure - what it is, how it works, and where you can learn more. Cloud Computing, A Crash Course for Architects (Video) http://www.msteched.com/2010/Europe/ARC202 Patterns and Practices for Cloud Development http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff898430.aspx Design Patterns, Anti-Patterns and Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ignitionshowcase/archive/2010/11/27/design-patterns-anti-patterns-and-windows-azure.aspx Application Patterns for the Cloud http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kashif/archive/2010/08/07/application-patterns-for-the-cloud.aspx Architecting Applications for High Scalability (Video) http://www.msteched.com/2010/Europe/ARC309 David Aiken on Azure Architecture Patterns (Video) http://blogs.msdn.com/b/architectsrule/archive/2010/09/09/arcast-tv-david-aiken-on-azure-architecture-patterns.aspx Cloud Application Architecture Patterns (Video) http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bobfamiliar/archive/2010/10/19/cloud-application-architecture-patterns-by-david-platt.aspx 10 Things Every Architect Needs to Know about Windows Azure http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/archive/2010/10/20/slides-and-links-for-windows-azure-platform-session-at-software.aspx Key Differences Between Public and Private Clouds http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kadriu/archive/2010/10/24/key-differences-between-public-and-private-clouds.aspx Microsoft Application Platform at a Glance http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmeier/archive/2010/10/30/microsoft-application-platform-at-a-glance.aspx Windows Azure is not just about Roles http://vikassahni.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/windows-azure-is-not-just-about-roles/ Example Application for Windows Azure http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff966482.aspx Implementation Guidance Practical applications for the architect to consider 5 Enterprise steps for adopting a Platform as a Service http://blogs.msdn.com/b/davidmcg/archive/2010/12/02/5-enterprise-steps-for-adopting-a-platform-as-a-service.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0 Performance-Based Scaling in Windows Azure http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg232759.aspx Windows Azure Guidance for the Development Process http://blogs.msdn.com/b/eugeniop/archive/2010/04/01/windows-azure-guidance-development-process.aspx Microsoft Developer Guidance Maps http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmeier/archive/2010/10/04/developer-guidance-ia-at-a-glance.aspx How to Build a Hybrid On-Premise/In Cloud Application http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ignitionshowcase/archive/2010/11/09/how-to-build-a-hybrid-on-premise-in-cloud-application.aspx A Common Scenario of Multi-instances in Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows-azure-support/archive/2010/11/03/a-common-scenario-of-multi_2d00_instances-in-windows-azure-.aspx Slides and Links for Windows Azure Platform Best Practices http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/archive/2010/09/29/slides-and-links-for-windows-azure-platform-best-practices-for.aspx AppFabric Architecture and Deployment Topologies guide http://blogs.msdn.com/b/appfabriccat/archive/2010/09/10/appfabric-architecture-and-deployment-topologies-guide-now-available-via-microsoft-download-center.aspx Windows Azure Platform Appliance http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/appliance/ Integrating Cloud Technologies into Your Organization Interoperability with Open Source and other applications; business and cost decisions Interoperability Labs at Microsoft http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/ Windows Azure Service Level Agreements http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sla/

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• OpenWorld Session: Oracle Unified BPM Suite Development Best Practices

  - by Ajay Khanna

  Blog by David Read Earlier today,  Sushil Shukla, Yogeshwar Kuntawar, and I (David Read) delivered an OpenWorld  session that covered BPM development best practices.  It was well attended.  Last year we had a session that covered end-to-end lifecycle best practices for BPM.  This year we narrowed the focus to the development portion of the lifecycle.  We started with an overview of development process best practices, then focused on a few key design topics where we’ve seen common questions from customers and partners. Data Design Using EDN Multi-Instance Activity Using the Spring Component Human Task Integration We wrapped up with an overview of key concepts for effective error handling, including error handling within the process design, and using declarative fault policies. We hope you found the session useful, and as noted in the session, please be sure to try to attend Prasen’s session to see more details about approaches for testing Oracle Business Rules: CON8606  Oracle Business Rules Use Cases, 10/3/2012, 3:30PM  

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• T4MVC Add-In to auto run template

  T4MVC is a fantastic solution to avoid 'Magic Strings' in ASP.NET MVC. Thanks to David Ebbo for this contribution which has made its way to MVCContrib. Must keep T4 template open and save it once.This has been the only negative thing about the template. I thought about writing an Add-In for VS to do this and even taked to David about doing it. Well, his latest post has inspired me to...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• ArchBeat Top 10 for November 11-17, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the week of November 11-17, 2012. Developing and Enforcing a BYOD Policy Darin Pendergraft's post includes links to a recent Mobile Access Policy Survey by SANS as well as registration information for a Nov 15 webcast featuring security expert Tony DeLaGrange from Secure Ideas, SANS instructor, attorney and technology law expert Ben Wright, and Oracle IDM product manager Lee Howarth. This Week on the OTN Architect Community Homepage Make time to check out this week's features on the OTN Solution Architect Homepage, including: SOA Practitioner Guide: Identifying and Discovering Services Technical article by Yuli Vasiliev on Setting Up, Configuring, and Using an Oracle WebLogic Server Cluster The conclusion of the 3-part OTN ArchBeat Podcast on Future-Proofing your career. WLST Starting and Stopping a WebLogic Environment | Rene van Wijk Oracle ACE Rene van Wijk explores how to start a server with as little input as possible. Cloud Integration White Paper | Bruce Tierney Bruce Tierney shares an overview of Cloud Integration - A Comprehensive Solution, a new white paper he co-authored with David Baum, Rajesh Raheja, Bruce Tierney, and Vijay Pawar. X.509 Certificate Revocation Checking Using OCSP protocol with Oracle WebLogic Server 12c | Abhijit Patil Abhijit Patil's article focuses on how to use X.509 Certificate Revocation Checking Functionality with the OCSP protocol to validate in-bound certificates. Although this article focuses on inbound OCSP validation using OCSP, Oracle WebLogic Server 12c also supports outbound OCSP validation. Update on My OBIEE / Exalytics Books | Mark Rittman Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman shares several resources related to his books Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Developers Guide and Oracle Exalytics Revealed, including a podcast interview with Oracle's Paul Rodwick. E-Business Suite 12.1.3 Data Masking Certified with Enterprise Manager 12c | Elke Phelps "You can use the Oracle Data Masking Pack with Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control 12c to scramble sensitive data in cloned E-Business Suite environments," reports Elke Phelps. There's a lot more information about this announcement in Elke's post. WebLogic Application Server: free for developers! | Bruno Borges Java blogger Bruno Borges shares news about important changes in the license agreement for Oracle WebLogic Server. Agile Architecture | David Sprott "There is ample evidence that Agile Architecture is a primary contributor to business agility, yet we do not have a well understood architecture management system that integrates with Agile methods," observes David Sprott in this extensive post. My iPad & This Cloud Thing | Floyd Teter Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter explains why the Cloud is making it possible for him to use his iPad for tasks previously relegated to his laptop, and why this same scenario is likely to play out for a great many people. Thought for the Day "In programming, the hard part isn't solving problems, but deciding what problems to solve." — Paul Graham Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Spreadsheets in Game Design?

  - by Joey Green

  There have been two instances from the past two weeks that I've heard from well known successful game developers that they use spreadsheets when designing games. The first being David Whatley in this GDCVault video: http://gdcvault.com/play/1012372/From-Zero-to-Time-Magazine The second being the guys that do Walled Garden Weekly: http://walledgardenweekly.com/ David said he models everything out and uses excel models to see how everything plays out. What on earth is he talking about? Is it seeing how the game mechanics react to each other? Is there somewhere where I can learn more about how to do this? Thanks

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• SQL Overview VI - Monitoring Process Locks

  In the sixth part of his series on monitoring your SQL Server, David Bird looks at process locks.

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• Mixed Emotions: Humans React to Natural Language Computer

  - by Applications User Experience

  There was a big event in Silicon Valley on Tuesday, November 15. Watson, the natural language computer developed at IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, and its inventor and principal research investigator, David Ferrucci, were guests at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California for another round of the television game Jeopardy. You may have read about or watched on YouTube how Watson beat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, two top Jeopardy competitors, last February. This time, Watson swept the floor with two Silicon Valley high-achievers, one a venture capitalist with a background  in math, computer engineering, and physics, and the other a technology and finance writer well-versed in all aspects of culture and humanities. Watson is the product of the DeepQA research project, which attempts to create an artificially intelligent computing system through advances in natural language processing (NLP), among other technologies. NLP is a computing strategy that seeks to provide answers by processing large amounts of unstructured data contained in multiple large domains of human knowledge. There are several ways to perform NLP, but one way to start is by recognizing key words, then processing  contextual  cues associated with the keyword concepts so that you get many more “smart” (that is, human-like) deductions,  rather than a series of “dumb” matches.  Jeopardy questions often require more than key word matching to get the correct answer; typically several pieces of information put together, often from vastly different categories, to come up with a satisfactory word string solution that can be rephrased as a question.  Smarter than your average search engine, but is it as smart as a human? Watson was especially fast at descrambling mixed-up state capital names, and recalling and pairing movie titles where one started and the other ended in the same word (e.g., Billion Dollar Baby Boom, where both titles used the word Baby). David said they had basically removed the variable of how fast Watson hit the buzzer compared to human contestants, but frustration frequently appeared on the faces of the contestants beaten to the punch by Watson. David explained that top Jeopardy winners like Jennings achieved their success with a similar strategy, timing their buzz to the end of the reading of the clue,  and “running the board”, being first to respond on about 60% of the clues.  Similar results for Watson. It made sense that Watson would be good at the technical and scientific stuff, so I figured the venture capitalist was toast. But I thought for sure Watson would lose to the writer in categories such as pop culture, wines and foods, and other humanities. Surprisingly, it held its own. I was amazed it could recognize a word definition of a syllogism in the category of philosophy. So what was the audience reaction to all of this? We started out expecting our formidable human contestants to easily run some of their categories; however, they started off on the wrong foot with the state capitals which Watson could unscramble so efficiently. By the end of the first round, contestants and the audience were feeling a little bit, well, …. deflated. Watson was winning by about $13,000, and the humans had gone into negative dollars. The IBM host said he was going to “slow Watson down a bit,” and the humans came back with respectable scores in Double Jeopardy. This was partially thanks to a very sympathetic audience (and host, also a human) providing “group-think” on many questions, especially baseball ‘s most valuable players, which by the way, couldn’t have been hard because even I knew them.  Yes, that’s right, the humans cheated. Since Watson could speak but not hear us (it didn’t have speech recognition capability), it was probably unaware of this. In Final Jeopardy, the single question had to do with law. I was sure Watson would blow this one, but all contestants were able to answer correctly about a copyright law. In a career devoted to making computers more helpful to people, I think I may have seen how a computer can do too much. I’m not sure I’d want to work side-by-side with a Watson doing my job. Certainly listening and empathy are important traits we humans still have over Watson.  While there was great enthusiasm in the packed room of computer scientists and their friends for this standing-room-only show, I think it made several of us uneasy (especially the poor human contestants whose egos were soundly bashed in the first round). This computer system, by the way , only took 4 years to program. David Ferrucci mentioned several practical uses for Watson, including medical diagnoses and legal strategies. Are you “the expert” in your job? Imagine NLP computing on an Oracle database.   This may be the user interface of the future to enable users to better process big data. How do you think you’d like it? Postscript: There were three little boys sitting in front of me in the very first row. They looked, how shall I say it, … unimpressed!

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• Time Bomb Design - A Longer Fuse

  In a sequel to his first article on Time Bomb Design, David Poole examines the issues we find between development environments and production ones.

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