The News Review:
- In good company
- Immigration – First Read – msnbc.com
- Second half TV line-ups revealed
- Xerox’s smarter search tool: Don’t look for it
In good company
NEWS.com.au – Jun 25, 2007
article-tools –> Tonya Turner June 24 2007 11:00pm NERIDA Matthaei is chasing a dream. It lives on the stage where every now and then Matthaei 25 gets a taste of it. She wants to dance full time but like any dream worth pursuing she is finding it hard to achieve. Auditions like jobs come and go. But refusing to just wait for the next job to come through Matthaei used her creative strengths and teamed with two friends to form their own Brisbane dance company. It was a good move. At the Melbourne Fringe Festival last year they road tested a development of their first production and were awarded second prize in the best dance show category… The 55-minute performance is based on their life experiences such as feeling burdened with decisions when confronted with life after university. "When you finish an arts degree it’s often difficult to figure out where to go from there. In the show there’s a part where I get boxed in and then at the end I break out and rebel against it. That part for me is about really pursuing my goals and not letting myself get stuck in a rut of having to work full time doing something else. "I wouldn’t want to work full time nine to five and not give myself the opportunity to continue training and reach my potential" Matthaei says. Another story told through the show is the death of Matthaei’s stepfather who passed away five years ago from a brain tumour. "It’s about grieving.
Immigration – First Read – msnbc.com
MSNBC – Jun 25, 2007
The problem is you can’t tell the legals from the illegals and not all of them are guilty of breaking our immigration laws. I am tired of the sob stories about these lawbreakers. What law can I break and get away with it? And be rewarded for breaking the law too? Do I get to pick one?Utahreb Veyo UT (Sent Monday June 25 2007 5:30 PM)If this passes America as we know it is officially dead. F*** This Adminstration. James Fort Lauderdale Florida (Sent Monday June 25 2007 5:52 PM)Bush wants the bill because the wealthy see it as cheap labor and a way to keep wages for Americans stagnant.
Second half TV line-ups revealed
The Age – Jun 25, 2007
June 25 2007 – 5:50PM The TV landscape for the second half of the year is looking asvaried and unpredictable as the first as the major networks’schedules begin to take shape. Network Ten has announced it will unleash a racy new US comedyamong family friendly new series as it chases ratings for the restof the year. Seven will rush new series of Prison Break andHeroes into its schedule within days of their airing inthe US along with its new local drama City Homicide andthe commercial TV debut of Kath and Kim. They will compete with Nine’s previously announced string ofobservational reality shows its own local drama SeaPatrol and the gritty US legal drama Damagesstarring Glenn Close and Rose Byrne. Seven has dominated the first half of the year with wins in allbut one of the 17 ratings weeks. But Nine remains within striking distance of its rival. Ten has claimed a number of victories with younger audiences in2007 and believes a strong second half line-up could see furtherimprovement… For Ten its most controversial hope will be David Duchovny’ssexy new comedy Californication which will debut inSeptember two weeks after it premieres in the US the networkannounced today. It will join a schedule that includes the sixth Australian Idol- set to follow the current series of Big Brother – and anew series of Thank God You’re Here. Ten will also air the second series of US reality contest SoYou Think You Can Dance which was a hit for the network whenit aired over summer while Rove McManus will make his debut as agame show host on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?Seven will unveil Shark starring James Woods and JeriRyan in its second half drama schedule alongside new series ofCriminal Minds and Ghost Whisperer. But Seven’s main focus will be on local programs. Australia’s Best Backyards Jamie Durie’s first hostingeffort for his new employer RSPCA Animal Rescue withAnthony Field from The Wiggles and the new observational realityshow Surf Patrol will also join the schedule. Should any of the new programs fail Seven has a strong stableof returning programs to rely on for ratings including DancingWith The Stars Australia’s Got Talent TheForce and Border Security. Seven has also secured rights for Mark Philippoussis’s realityforay The Age of Love but expect to see that either late at nightor over summer.
Xerox’s smarter search tool: Don’t look for it
ZDNet – Jun 25, 2007
The FactSpotter tool due to be available by 2008 will first be offered to the document-heavy legal and litigation market. Xerox predicts the text-miner software will be useful in other situations where information must be retrieved from a massive database including corporate and government searches drug discovery fraud detection and risk management. Christopher Dance laboratory manager at Xerox told Silicon. com that FactSpotter could also be used to manage the vast number of documents produced during large mergers and acquisitions. FactSpotter can hunt for relevant documents at a rate of 2000 documents per second. Dance said the next stage of the development process will be to speed up the software. The tool uses a linguistic engine that analyzes the meaning of words and the construction of phrases and sentences to work out exactly what a user is hunting for… The tool uses a linguistic engine that analyzes the meaning of words and the construction of phrases and sentences to work out exactly what a user is hunting for. FactSpotter also recognizes concepts in a search term. To use the previous example when a person types in “what Steve Jobs said yesterday” the tool will break down the sentence and recognize “Steve Jobs” as a person and “yesterday” as a time. Xerox is “trying to make a computer understand text like a human being” said Frédérique Segond parsing and semantics area manager at the company. Segond added the FactSpotter tool is the next step for searching documents and uses “Web 3. 0″ technology that connects data whereas Web 2. 0 applications only collect data.