English, as wot she is spoke

IBM has released a "UK-accented English" version of its voice recognition software ViaVoice Pro Enterprise Edition. The holy grail for all speech recognition systems is the quick and transparent processing of natural speech. IBM claims that this latest edition of ViaVoice enables users to dictate "naturally and easily" into most text applications. ...more

CORRECTION: First Blu-ray players may not play movies on 50GB discs

Despite an article on The Digital Bits claiming Samsung's BD-P1000 could not play double-length 50GB discs, Samsung has assured us that the device does and always has been able to play these discs Early adopters of Blu-ray players may be about to discover that they cannot view the first movies to be released on 50GB discs, according to The Digital Bits. Citing multiple sources The Digital Bits' editor Bill Hunt said that Samsung's BD-P1000 as well as forthcoming players from Sony and Pioneer will not play the double-length discs, due, at least in part, to the fact that they were not available for testing when the players were being finalised. 'As you can imagine, there are a few studios that are anxious to get these 50GB BD-ROM discs to work properly, because there are a number of longer films waiting on them,' Hunt said. ...more

GPL version 3 makes DRM progress

A second discussion draft for version 3 of the GNU General Public License has been published. The draft contains a number of revisions, including a clarification of how it will handle DRM technologies. Whereas earlier drafts had been interpreted as outlawing the use of DRM, new wording allows the use of DRM only where it doesn't impact on the freedoms inherent in the GPL enjoyed by licencees. ...more

Google CEO declines Apple shares option

Eric Schmidt has declined to take up the option to buy 30,000 Apple shares that he was entitled to when appointed to the company's board last week. Instead the Google CEO intends to purchase 10,000 shares in the open market, Apple confirmed in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. New Apple directors are entitled to the stock options under the company's 1997 Director Stock Option Plan. ...more

Virtual PC to ship with G5 support in October

Microsoft has sent Virtual PC 7 to manufacturing and the application that lets you run Windows on a Mac will begin shipping in October. The software is G5-compatible and has been signficantly rewritten for OS X 10.3. ...more