Crispin Hull

Voice recognition: Speak and it shall be written. Speech Systems Inc and Timeworks will unveil their speech recognition system for Windows this week at the Comdex/Windows World exhibition in Atlanta, Georgia.

With these systems, you talk into a microphone and the words appear in text on the screen. Be warned: they are in their infancy, which means plenty of glitches and farnarkling. Just as clippers beat the first motor-mowers and horses beat the first cars, I’d back a good typist against the first voice-recognition programs, but eventually the voice recognition technology will threaten the key-boarders’ job.

IBM already has a voice-recognition system on the market. It runs on OS/2 (because IBM hates Windows). But IBM will be forced to make a Windows version before long because the market will demand it. I saw it work at PC94 in Sydney recently. With all these systems you have to train the computer by reading a set text for a couple of hours. It then learns as you correct mistakes.

The IBM version ran at 70 words a minute, but by the time you cut and paste it into a word-processor and fix up the errors, you would be hard pushed to beat a 30- or 40-word-a-minute rough key-as-you-think writer. You would beat a 100-word-a-minute shorthand plus 90-word-a-minute keyboarder translating voice to text the old way.
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Access to Justice report which came down last week acknowledges there is no single, easy solution. It suggests about 100 small to large changes that can help bring costs of courts and lawyers down without draining the public coffers: increasing competition, forcing lawyers to tell clients about costs, getting courts to manage cases and so on.

Good, let’s do all of them. But let’s go further. The first is to question whether the adversarial system is always doing the job. Two lawyers slugging it out before an impassive and impartial judge is not the best way to solve all disputes. Someone is bound to get hurt. One side wins and the other side loses.

Moreover, the lawyers are not interested in a just result, or a true result. They are only interested in the best result for their client. In taxation and commercial law this results in an endless battle between loophole-searching lawyers and patch-up legislatures. The corporations, taxation and bankruptcy laws of Australia are an unreadable, purposeless, inconvenient, chaotic, inefficient mess (and there’s more on that in today’s computer pages).

The convoluted laws are the legacy of the adversary system.
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Shand said the verdicts were inconsistent and that the jury could not agree an “”came to a compromise, which had the result of releasing them from further duties. I have a suspicion in my own mind that they spent too long in deliberation and had to find a way out.”

If Connell were acquitted on one charge the fabric of the other charge fell away, he argued. He said there would be an appeal.

This was good stuff, I thought. Instead of the dumb silence you get from lawyers, here was a lawyer explaining his misgivings about the jury _ clearly something in the public interest coming from a prominent lawyer who had spent six months at close quarters with this jury.
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Once was in a speech by ACT Liberal Opposition Leader, Kate Carnell, to the Australian Republican Movement. And other was in a leaked Attorney-General’s draft letter to the Prime Minister’s Department.

Let me explain the paradox. The vast mass Australians despise politicians. They do not trust them. Experience has shown them that politicians are power-hungry.

So, if there is to be a republic, the bulk of the masses, according to opinion polls, do not want a politician to be President.
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At the outset he said that he would ask the questions; witnesses could have lawyers present, but the lawyers could not speak nor question witnesses. Witnesses would get a chance to respond to what other witnesses said if they wanted at the end.

And the inquiry ripped along.

Also last week, the High Court ruled that witnesses at government-appointed inquiries do not have a right to publicly funded legal representation. Some witnesses whose credibility and reputation were at stake at a NSW inquiry sought to stop the inquiry unless they got free legals. The High Court said no, refusing to extend to inquiry witnesses its earlier ruling that an accused at a trial had a right to representation if he could not afford his own. It has not published its reasons.

This was bad news for lawyers. Lawyers have made a fortune over the years at Royal Commissions, perhaps the WA Inc Royal Commission being the zenith. Getting their paws on public money would have added to their take.
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The court divided. Justice Brennan was in the minority. His minority judgment has been seen (incorrectly in my view) as a “”natural law” position as distinct from a “”positivist” position. And even though he was in the minority in this case, it has been seen as part of a general swing by the High Court towards the “”natural-law” view of the world.

Natural law goes back to ancient times and has taken many forms. Broadly, it appeals to some higher form of universal morality beyond church and nation. Legal positivism, a creature of the scientific age scoffed at this, arguing that the only law was the law factually promulgated and enforced by the state. The positivists argued that natural law was a lot of unprovable wool.

In the face of continuing world horrors, however, the natural-law position is now gaining more respectability. Murder is murder, rape is rape, we all know that, so it doesn’t matter if the “”positive” law in Bosnia at the time allowed it _ to put the natural-law position at its crudest.
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Independent MLA Michael Moore expressed concern yesterday over a proposal to put closed-circuit television monitoring in Civic.

The proposal has been put by the Australian Protective Service to the Community Safety Committee which was set up by the ACT Government to look at ways to curbs violence and disorder in Civic.

The APS proposal would put closed-circuit television cameras in Civic and monitor 24 hours a day. An operator in the remote monitoring station would scrutinise television signals and alert police of incidents requiring attention. It would cost about $250,000.
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The CSIRO, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the Australian Institute of Marine Science will get in total an extra $34 million average in each of the next three years.

In 1994-95 general outlays on general and scientific research are expected to be 0.9 per cent of GDP, the same as last year. Of that, 43 per cent goes to CSIRO and 30 per cent to the Australian Research Council.

The general trend is one of increased external earnings and declining Budget allocations and towards applied research rather than longer term strategic research.
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Arts and cultural funding is little changed.

A further half a million Australians will get SBS following a $5 million allocation for transmitters in the Tweed Heads and Wide Bay areas.

There is no funding to start the National Museum.

Film Australia’s National Interest Program has been renewed following the end of the three-year program which produced 69 films and a review of the program which reported good television coverage and a high standard.
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The good news for the ACT in the Budget is a new building for the Department of Industrial Relations and other capital works and federal funding in line with expectations.

The bad news is that there is no announcement on the National Museum.

The new building will be 14,000 square metres and the department will be its main tenant. Several sites in Barton are under consideration. However, its precise cost was not announced because it is being contracted to the private sector. Construction is to begin at the beginning of next year.

However, some idea can be gained by comparing the Foreign Affairs building: 46,000 square metres, $187 million and 1500 jobs (directly and indirectly). The IR building should be a bit less than a third of this.

The Budget papers said it would be financed on instalment payments. The developer would provide the initial capital and be repaid over the construction period when the Commonwealth would take ownership.
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