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Microsoft researchers dream big

malebolgia   on 10 June 2004 - 14:55 · 6 comments & 888 views

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Wouldn't it be nice if your computer could read your paper in the morning? That sure would be handy, but even better than that would be if your computer could search through 1,000+ newspapers. Afterwards your computer would read you even more information about the same topic, but never the same information again (no repeats). Microsoft thinks that computers can do that and its working on a way to make this happen along with other ideas.

What if your computer could read the newspaper for you and tell you just what you needed to know? What about 1,000 newspapers?

Researchers at Microsoft think computers can do just that. Someday. Google and Microsoft already offer news aggregation sites that collect all of the day's news stories from throughout the Web. However, MSN Newsbot and Google News present the first part of a story, assuming that is the most important part. Microsoft research is looking into creating software that can read the whole article--and dozens of others on the same topic--and come up with an accurate summary. In theory the research could be extended to even allow the summary to mimic a particular style--giving, say, a Wall Street Journal-style summary of Jennifer Lopez' wedding to Marc Anthony.

"The research issue is comprehension," said Lucy Vanderwende, who is heading the project. "Can the machine understand?" If the answer is yes, you can bet the folks at MSN want to know. Indeed, several of the research projects Microsoft showed off Wednesday in Silicon Valley are designed to help the company in two of its most critical challenges--battling security threats and taking on Google in the Web search and information business. The miniature science fair was part of a road show for Microsoft, which held a larger exhibition in March at its main campus in Redmond, Wash.

News source: C|Net News.com


Red Hat had sold and supported a version of Linux identical to its freely downloadable product. After 2002, though, it split those two versions--and the supported, corporate product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, can't be downloaded for free. Instead, it's sold for use on a single server, with Red Hat charging an annual subscription for access to support and service through the Red Hat Network.

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(1 reply) #1 dougkinzinger on 10 Jun 2004 - 15:02
One day it'll happen. When we're all old and grey, our kids'll be going circles around us with all this newfangled technology.
#1.1 The_Decryptor on 10 Jun 2004 - 15:33
LOL

"Back in my day son, we had REAL rss news readers, we had to do the hard work ourself and read the multiple stories by hand!"
(2 replies) #2 badall on 10 Jun 2004 - 15:08
wow just what we need micro$oft telling us what we should and shouldn't be reading and if you don't do as it tells you, you will be picked up by the thought police and taken to room 101
#2.1 lexor on 10 Jun 2004 - 20:37
it couldn't possibly come up with biased opinion if you tell it to read through doezens of news articles, because all those articles will be written by biased people, biased in different ways, conservative/liberal/pro-life/greenpeace etc. no way can it summarize it to one and only biased version geared toward MS interest.

and stop using $ you pissing me off, you would still be paying for internet browsers, you wouldn't have free Mozilla, and you wouldn't have MPEG4 for at least another few years if it wasn't for MS! (MS engineers were in charge of MPEG4 development and they were on MS payroll at the time, and it was MS money that got MPEG4 ratified by standard body on a swift schedule)
#2.2 badall on 10 Jun 2004 - 22:43
erm ever heard of a joke ?
#3 Rock on 10 Jun 2004 - 16:01
I remember seeing some univerisy research site a couple years ago that already did this. They would start by doing what Google news does, and then do some pattern recognition to determine which articles are about the same news story. Then the computer would rewrite a summary on its own using info and chunks from all of the articles. It was pretty amazing. The english and grammer was maybe about 90% correct. But for a computer composing its own summaries it was really good.

But now I can't remember the website!
Does anyone remember this website?

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