Episode 081

This is the transcript from Adam's review of MACSPEAK DICTATE – This is exactly how the programme treated Adam's review and note that it is not word perfect!! (no pun intended)

 A review that I did while dictating into this program. The words I said were transcripted into this passage, you may get a laugh out of it:

Hey Marking Glenn and all the Aussie Tech Head listeners I decided to take the chance to write this review then dictate out to my computer using MacSpeech Dictate. Its new from the Mac developers are made iListen, the previous speech recognition software for the Mac. MacSpeech Dictate was a star product at MacWorld Expo in January, and received a range of awards fruit accuracy and speed. What makes it so Quakers that it's working of the backbone of the Dragon NaturallySpeaking product from the PC. In the box, you get the disk with the product inside as well as a Plantronics headset microphone to talk into. You don't have to use this headset, but that's what the product has been optimised for. Setting up is fairly easy. You choose your audio input, either you built-in microphone, line in all the USB headset. He read a couple of paragraphs of text to get the program to optimise real voice, then you're off and running. It is by far the best speech recognition software either every use, however, because it's the computer program, it makes too many mistakes in with basic works. Because I have a wearied pseudo-Canadian accent, I can't speak my normal English, defined putting on an American accent helps. However the sound stupid, but I think the it puts a very high regard of my American impression. There are two modes in this program, this dictate mode that it can be used in any word processor app you can input taxed, from Textedit to work, and there's also a command mode, this helps with navigating around Mac OS X, from opening files to closing programmes. I should save you can control your entire computer this way, and if Dictate makes a mistake, saying it simple conman will on doom that he can say whatever it is again I would recommend Dictate to any visually impaired or lacy Protestant, or anyone looking for a speech recognition piece of software. MacSpeech Dictate team can be bought in Australia to $99 from macsence.com.au, a little steep, but you can get from is on for a tad cheaper. This review, subscribed to the Aussie maximum, we can get content like this in a roundtable discussion featuring meat, Glenn the Aussie tech head! And Chris from Tech White Australia. See you at aussiemaczone.com I'll Put the transcription in the show notes.

Adam

(NONE FROM MARK THIS WEEK) 

 Victorian DPP warns of legal action against Underbelly pirates | Herald Sun
Victorian DPP warns of legal action against Underbelly pirates

 VICTORIA'S DPP has warned he will take legal action against anyone who screens episodes of Underbelly after the network today lost an appeal against the ban.

But the three judges ruled that the court order was too wide and unnecessary, and reworded the broadcast ban so it applied only to Channel Nine and not to "every person in Victoria".

Justice King later strengthened the order so all Victorians – not only Nine – were banned from transmitting or exhibiting the program, after the OPP alerted her to a Melbourne pub that had broadcast the premiere to patrons via an interstate cable channel.

St George admits to security flaw | Australian IT
St George admits to security flaw

 

The flaw was discovered by News Limited IT consultant Aaron Peapell, who was able to set up a St George Directshares trading account using freely available identifiers, including an account number, ABN and any valid tax file number.

All other details needed to sign up could be false, and once the process was complete, the attacker could view customers' bank account balances.

The bank has since closed the security hole.

"There's no exploit, it's just signing up for an account," Mr Peapell said.

Mr Peapell first discovered the problem after setting up a Directshares account for himself.

The alarm bells went off when he was able to see his bank balance without needing to verify his identity.

 

Fast-track broadband unveiled | The Courier-Mail
Fast-track broadband unveiled

 

GOOGLE has unveiled plans to launch wireless broadband "on steroids" in America as early as next year in a move that could be replicated in Australia.

The new wireless broadband service would be significantly faster than current broadband internet access and could deliver feature films or full music albums to mobile phones with little delay.

Google outlined its plan to the US Federal Communications Commission, applying to use the soon-to-be vacant analogue TV airwaves in the US to deliver broadband access for low-powered internet devices.

Google media counsel Rick Whitt said the service could deliver data transmission speeds of billions of bits a second – far faster than the millions of bits a second available on most current broadband networks.

Similar speedy wireless broadband services could become available in Australia after analogue TV broadcasts are switched off at the end of December 2013.

Australian Communication and Media Authority media manager Donald Robertson said the authority had already called for submissions on how to use the abandoned spectrum.

Dating Psychos ditches vicious profiles of minors | The Courier-Mail
Dating Psychos ditches vicious profiles of minors

 

REPEATED online attacks on a Brisbane schoolgirl have prompted an overhaul of a controversial US website.

Dating Psychos website administrator "J-Dog" said he had been forced to remove a vicious profile on 15-year-old Samantha Fletcher a number of times as it was re-posted by different users.

The profile accuses Samantha of racially taunting classmates, sexual promiscuity, insulting an anorexic student and being a "loser friend".

J-Dog said he had now taken down all sites referring to people aged under 18 years.

"I removed her profile yesterday and awoke this morning to discover that she had been re-posted on the site again by different people.

"I have since removed those profiles as well.

STANDING up … Samantha Fletcher, who has caused a US website to remove malicious profiles of under-18s after she was targeted.

Searching for cheap flights | The Courier-Mail
Searching for cheap flights

 ut a new Australian website will enable users to "search the major travel sites at the same time with one click".

YellowPages Corporation – the folks who produce the telephone books – have launched YELLOWPAGES.travel (www.yellowpages.travel) as a service that lets users search top travel pages such as as Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline, Kayak, HotWire, SideStep and Hotels.com.

"YELLOWPAGES.travel has found the solution for Australian travellers who are tired of searching over a dozen travel websites looking for bargains," a media release about the site explained.

"(It is) A tool that enables users to enter their travel and flight information once and have the results pages of the major travel

sites displayed with one click. With YELLOWPAGES.travel, users

will no longer need to jump from site to site."

As well as looking for discount plane tickets and bargain beds, visitors to the site also can organise hire cars, cruises and tours such as a cable car ride in San Francisco, pictured.

Consumers pay for banks' creaky system | Australian IT
Consumers pay for banks' creaky system

 

BANKS are gouging penalty fees from customers caught out by 30-year-old payment processing systems that cannot transact in real time, industry experts say.

Banks slugged householders more than $1.6 billion in penalties for failed direct debits, exceeding card limits and late payments on credit cards last year, consumer magazine Choice says, but they have been slow to adopt new technology to prevent errors.

Mike Aston, chief executive of real-time payments processing developer Distra

"The issue is doing away with fees that are totally unfair, and getting the rest back to reasonable cost recovery."  most banks and credit card firms were still using systems that were 25 to 30 years old, and written in the obsolete Cobol language.

"Until recently, these systems did the job, and there wasn't much incentive to replace them," he said.

"But there have been a lot of regulatory and competitive changes in the past few years.

"These clunky old systems can't get any closer than 24-hour settlement.

"During the day they're simply exchanging messages about transactions, while settlement and reconciliation takes place overnight as a batch process."

Distra, a local technology startup, had developed and proven a next-generation retail payments switch that allowed real-time settlement and reporting, Mr Aston said.

National Australia Bank is the first locally to adopt Distra's platform. Four British banks are using it to meet immediate settlement rules as part of the Faster Payments program.

Senator Fielding said some banks charged up to 16 times the real cost of processing a dishonoured cheque, and 92 times the cost of processing a failed direct debit transaction.

You can now recover unfair Penalty Fees though a No Win – No fee service. Just sign up at www.bankchecker.com.au and they do the rest for you. Thousands of people are now getting money back on these fees that are thought to be illegal under Australian law. The bottom line is that they want to keep this out of court for as long as they can because a ruling against the banks would open up a case for Billions of dollars of compensation. www.bankChecker.com.au

Digital TV to cost Canberra $38m | Australian IT
Digital TV to cost Canberra $38m

 Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today said the government would spend $16.9 million on a digital switchover taskforce, which will coordinate the change.

The government will also spend $8.5 million for the Australian Communications and Media Authority to undertake technical switchover-related projects, including an evaluation of digital TV transmission and reception throughout Australia.

The government will also spend $4.8 million assessing issues such as public awareness of digital switchover, intention of households to convert and actual conversion rates.

The remainder of the funding will be spent on research into digital reception problems and a logo and labelling scheme to clearly indicate which products are digitally ready.

100,000 year-old crater found in Pilbara via internet – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting
100,000 year-old crater found in Pilbara via internet

 

The discovery of a meteorite crater in Western Australia's Pilbara has sparked a huge search on the internet for similar geographical features.

WA Government geologist Arthur Hickman discovered the crater in July last year while searching the region for iron deposits.

He was using a popular internet based satellite imaging site when he discovered Australia's second-largest meteorite crater.

Dr Hickman says the discovery of a crater using an internet program available at home has increased the number of people searching for geographic features.