Microsoft Brings Vision for Mainstream Speech Technology to Life

  Submitted by danjr Microsoft No Comments
From the PR: :"Microsoft Corp. today took another step forward in its strategy to make the business value of speech technology more broadly available to mainstream enterprise companies as Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates launched Microsoft Speech Server 2004 at the co-located AVIOS~SpeechTEK Spring 2004, Microsoft Mobile Developer Conference (DevCon) 2004 and Fawcette Technical Publications' VSLive! San Francisco 2004 events." Elsewhere, Microsoft has announced XNATM, a powerful next-generation software development platform. XNA empowers developers to deliver breakthrough games while combating rising production costs and ever-increasing hardware complexity.
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Getting started with the Linux kernel Device Simulator Framework

  Submitted by Frank Linux 1 Comment
If you are a Linux kernel and device driver developer with a moderate level of experience, the benefit of using the DSF template is twofold: You can develop test cases faster and more consistently since the DSF template can be used for many different tests. Also, you can target specific areas of the kernel for execution, which eliminates the typical userspace test case hit-or-miss approach to executing kernel code. This article will get you started simulating devices of your choice.
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The Future Of The Linux Open Sound System

  Submitted by Jeremy Andrews Linux 26 Comments
During the 2.5 development cycle, ALSA, the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture was merged into the Linux kernel. At that time, support for OSS, the Open Sound System was marked as deprecated. A recent thread on the lkml discussed the future of OSS, questioning if it is worth fixing issues with now deprecated OSS drivers. Read the full discussion at KernelTrap.
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SVG and its Path into the Linux Desktop

Graphics 71 Comments
Computer graphics have long been dominated by bitmapped images. However, the free software community has taken an innovative lead by adopting scalable graphic formats on its desktops. Inthis article I cover the history and rise of scalable graphics on the desktop from my angle - as a proponent of its use in the GNOME platform. This article mostly focuses on SVG's progress from a GNOME point of view, both because GNOME has progressed the furthest and because I am most knowledgable with GNOME's efforts. I will however mention major landmarks in other projects where appropriate.
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Torvalds: Outside threats to Linux

Linux 37 Comments
During a surprise guest appearance at Novell's annual BrainShare user conference, the Finnish open-source guru took part in a question-and-answer session with the networking-software company's chief executive and chairman Jack Messman and vice chairman Chris Stone. Linux creator Linus Torvalds says that non-technical issues such as software patents constitute the single biggest threat to the future success of the open-source OS.
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Opera Gives Its Browser a Voice

  Submitted by gsurface Opera 22 Comments
Opera Software will include voice capabilities in its updated browser software, using IBM's embedded ViaVoice technology, the company says. The upgraded browser, which will continue to be offered at no cost, will be available later this year, Opera in Oslo, Norway, says. Initially, it will offer support for ViaVoice in English only, but other languages may be developed in due course, Opera Chief Executive Officer Jon von Tetzchner says.
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Arch Linux version 0.6 (Widget) Review

  Submitted by Jeff Watson Linux 33 Comments
Linuxlookup newest staff member Rich Hughes takes a look at Arch Linux version 0.6 (Widget). "I am a recovering distribution junkie. I would obsessively spend my time at Distrowatch, looking for something new. There were plenty of exciting releases. After a while, the excitement would wear off, and the sexy distribution I installed would have some annoyance, so I would dump it and look for something new."
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Windows XP Box Made From a Windows XP Box

Humor 23 Comments
One of the more whimsical case mods I've seen: A mini ITX-based PC carefully constructed inside a retail box for Windows XP. And at the end, the creator decides that he'd like to run Red Hat Linux on this machine too, so he tries to find a Linux box that fits over his new case. Unfortunately, Windows XP and Linux are not very compatible. The Red Hat Linux boxes he found were either a little smaller or a bit larger than his WinXP wonder.
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Six Barriers to Open Source Adoption

Open Source 33 Comments
We all know about the benefits of open source software in lowering total cost of ownership, offering more choice and the increasing quality and functionality of the code. The rise of Linux as an edge server and now migrating toward the data center is clear validation that the open source model has taken root. But there are still significant barriers to overcome before Linux and other open source projects are broadly accepted across enterprises, says ZDNet's Dan Farber.
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MS-DOS 4.0: The Next-Gen DOS That Never Shipped

Microsoft 62 Comments
Most people don’t know about Microsoft's other multitasking operating system, MS-DOS 4.0 which was actually a version of MS-DOS 2.0 that was written in parallel with MS-DOS 3.x (DOS 3.x shipped while DOS 4 was under development, which is why it skipped a version). The MS-DOS 4 version described here was never shipped and instead a beefed-up version of 3.x was labeled 4.0 and shipped instead.
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