Friday, March 14, 2014

Stenotype machines...

Stenotype machines...  Some 30+ years ago, I worked for a company (Xscribe, now defunct) in San Diego that made specialized computer systems to automate the job of a court stenographer.  I learned a lot about stenography in the course of working there.

The basis for stenography is that it records phonemes (sounds) instead of words.  The stenographer learns to transcribe the sounds of language rather than the words, and turns those recorded sounds into actual words in a second phase of the process.  That second phase occurs back in the office, outside the courtroom – what you see in the courtroom is just the first phase, wherein the sounds of the courtroom proceedings are recorded.

The machine that the stenographer uses is called a stenotype machine.  You can think of it as a kind of specialized typewriter that records phonemes rather than letters and words.  It is optimized for speed and reliability, as the court reporter must be able to keep up with even the fastest speaker, and you certainly don't want the machine to break down in the middle of proceedings.

One thing I learned at Xscribe is that court reporters make extensive use of shorthand “codes” – strokes (recorded phonemes) that don't actually reflect any sound heard in the courtroom, but rather are special symbols that only the court reporter knows that represent some piece of information.  One of the most common uses for this is to make a short code that represents a long and complicated name.  Some codes might be used by a particular court reporter in every one of their cases; others are made up on the fly for a particular case.  These codes are always very personal to each particular court reporter.  Much of what Xscribe's software did was to automate the process of turning these special codes into words, something that saved a vast amount of time for a court reporter.  The loved Xscribe's products, and it was easy to see why.

These days, with the much more powerful computers that are available, the court reporting software just runs on ordinary PCs.  I haven't talked with a court reporter for many years, but I'd bet they have trouble even imagining doing their job without a computer now...


Putin acts, the West talks...

Putin acts, the West talks...  And the West isn't even talking very persuasively.

I don't know enough about the situation in Ukraine to even propose a solution.  However, it does seem clear that just standing around yakking while Putin grabs territory in Europe is a very bad idea.  Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of history will note the parallels to events in Europe just 90 years ago, when Adolf Hitler started occupying European countries on the slimmest of manufactured pretexts.  That didn't end well, and neither will allowing Putin free reign.

The current context is more complex than the situation with Hitler.  In today's globally-connected economy, there are more tools available with which to pressure Russia – but the inverse is also true.  Russia supplies about 25% of Europe's energy, and that's a pretty big stick with which to prod the Europeans.  Then there's that other little inconvenient fact: that Russia is sitting on (numerically) the world's largest collection of nuclear weapons.  This fact colors the consideration of every possible military response.

I don't have answers, but I can look at the current response and say with confidence: it seems very unlikely that this leads to a good outcome...

Imagine...

Imagine...  For just a moment, suppress your vomit reflex and imagine that you are a budget wonk in the Obama administration.  You're deciding which government programs to chop out of the FY 2015 budget that you're helping write.  Do you look for (a) expensive, wasteful government programs, or (b) cheap, effective government programs to chop?

Why, (b) of course!  Those idiots in That One's budget office are proposing cutting one of the most effective science programs the federal government funds.  It's also a cheap, low-risk program.

If you've been reading this blog for even a few months, you can guess what's coming: they want to terminate one of the least expensive and most productive unmanned space programs (the Mars Opportunity rover).  And of course, they want to expand one of the most expensive and least productive programs: the International Space Station.

There will come a day when I am proud of my country's government.  But today is not that day...