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Speech Recognition Poised to Sweep Through Economy
According to a front page article in the June 21st issue of The New York Times, a wave of new computer techniques that "understand" spoken language are poised to sweep through areas of the American economy as diverse as airline reservations, retailing, directory assistance, telemarketing, banking, medical transcription, computer help desks, and secretarial services.
Machines that can recognize thousands of words and phrases, and diverse English accents, are rapidly becoming commonplace. Speech recognition systems still have problems recognizing human speech - especially jargon. Some foreign accents and questions they aren't programmed to answer still trip up computers. But future systems promise consumers ease in performing day to day transactions.
According to the Times, voice recognition technology is being eagerly embraced by consumers who have grown weary of waiting for assistance from customer service representatives and of using a keypad to navigate mazes of automated menus. The relatively few consumers who have used the technology are generally positive about the experience.
But future voice recognition systems are expected to have a big effect on the American work force. On one hand, jobs will be created for those who work for an expanded number of companies that sell voice recognition systems. But millions of semi-skilled jobs in customer service will likely disappear. Among the corporations already using voice recognition are Sears, A T&T, Charles Schwab, United Airlines, and United Parcel Service. The article was written by John Markoff.
S.E.C. On-Line Filings: Valuable Financial Data?
A report in the June 21st issue of The New York Times examines EDGAR, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's electronic data gathering, analysis and retrieval system, - an on-line system accessible by the public where the S.E.C. stores corporate filings mandated by U.S. securities laws. (The Web site is located at www.sec.gov).
According to the Times, there may be needles of valuable information buried in a haystack of boilerplate and arcana. Successful navigation of the S.E.C.'s EDGAR database requires familiarity with the information content of the forms (e.g., 10K, S1, 3, 4, and 5) as well as key phrases like "related party transactions," (which denotes potential conflict of interest).
Information buried in corporate filings can indicate that the company's stock will advance or decline in the future. For example, corporate officers may file a Form 4 (which reports their purchase or sale of the company's stock) when the stock price is at a yearly low. The article was written by Richard Korman and appears on page 5 of the Business Section.
FDA Drug Monitoring System Under Fire
A report in the June 24th issue of The Wall Street Journal criticizes the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for not spending enough to monitor drugs that are already on the market. For every dollar the FDA spends evaluating new drugs for approval it will spend about six cents monitoring drugs that are already on the market. Some prominent physicians believe that the FDA spends too little on drug monitoring, especially since the FDA recently recalled several drugs that turned out to pose life-threatening complications after the FDA approved them as safe.
The FDA currently employs 80 people and spends $10 million on drug surveillance. Of that total staff, about 33 are qualified to do epidemiological research. By contrast, the agency estimates it will spend $156 million and employ 1,249 people for new drug evaluation.
According to the Journal, some doctors say they are worried enough about the quality of the FDA's monitoring that they wait several months or longer to prescribe a new drug. They claim the agency's system for collecting information about drugs in the marketplace is too reactive, too dependent on pharmaceutical manufacturer's data, and inadequate to keep pace with the number of reports of adverse drug reactions. The FDA claims that its "MedWatch" system generates mounds of reports about possible drug interactions, and relies on doctors, pharmacists, and others to contact the agency about unusual reactions to medications. [Editor's Note: the article doesn't mention data and information quality problems, or other possible problems in the FDA's drug approval process.] The article was written by Journal staff reporter Rochelle Sharpe, and appears on page B5.
U.S. Patent and Trademark Data on Web Soon
On June 25th, The New York Times reported that the Clinton Administration is planning to make the full data base of the nation's patents since 1976 and trademark text and images starting from the late 1800's available on the World Wide Web beginning in August.
The project will create the largest Government data base on the Internet (1.3 terabytes). The decision to make the data base freely available is the result of fierce debate between public interest advocates who argue that Government information should routinely be made available on the Internet and companies that purchase the information from the Government to resell.
The Clinton Administration's action came less than a week before an independent Internet entrepreneur planned to purchase the data from the Patent and Trademark Office and make it publicly available if the Government failed to act. The new data bases will be available at the Patent and Trademark Office's Web site. Trademark text will appear in August, and trademark images and patent text will follow in November. Patent images liked to patent text will be available in March 1999. The database will consis tof 2 million patents, 800,000 trademarks, and 300,000 pending trademarks, all searchable by key word. The entire database will include more than 21 million documents. The Times report was written by John Markoff, and appears on page D2.
Record-to-CD Audio: Resource Intensive - For Now
According to an article in the June 25th issue of The New York Times, record collectors are increasingly transferring music from old records to recordable compact disks. The process requires a state-of-the-art PC and a lot of time and patience on the part of the record collector. But recording onto rewritable CD's has advantages over digital tape. There are no technical restrictions on copying to CD, nor does the cost of CD's include pre-paid royalties. While it may be technically illegal to duplicate copyrighted material, record companies don't go after collectors who are archiving their personal collections, or creating "custom" albums from selected record cuts.
According to the Times, do-it-yourself CD recording typically requires a PC with at least a 300 MHz microprocessor, 6 gigabytes of disk storage, 64 megabytes of RAM, and a 64-bit sound card. Each minute of sound processing requires 11 megabytes of temporary disk storage. The CD recording and noise reduction process can take several hours. In most cases, an external recordable CD drive is attached to the computer, while an audio source - a turntable or tape - plugs directly into the computer's sound card. Recordable CD drives cost as little as $300 and recording software is widely available. The article was written by Charles Bermant and appears on page E11.
A related article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on June 25th. According to the article, a number of new home CD recorders will soon be marketed that will greatly simplify recording onto CD's. The recorders will use special CD's that won't work on home computers. These CD's will be encoded with copy-protection barriers and will be more expensive than CD-recordable and CD-rewritable disks. The new CD player/recorders are expected to retail for about $650, and will (it is claimed) eliminate most of the time and trouble inherent in PC-based systems. The Journal article was written by Walter Mossberg and appears on page B1.