Microsoft bashers used a failed product demonstration Thursday at the company’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting as an easy excuse to mock the world’s largest software company.
    But the response from within Microsoft was anything but that of a corporate monolith. First one developer, then another owned up to the problem in online postings on the company’s developers’ blog. They described in detail what Microsoft already had done to fix the issue.
    Over the weekend, Rob Chambers, a member of Microsoft’s speech recognition team, posted a tentative explanation of what he thought might have gone wrong. He provided a more definitive technical answer Monday that pinned the problem on audio gain issue called “clipping.”
    “Have you ever heard a car drive by that had the stereo blasting away, and the audio sounded absolutely horrible?” he writes. “Microphones and sound cards can have similar problems trying to convert the analog signal from the microphone element into a digital signal for use by software on the PC.”
    Chambers said the glitch was well understood by the team. The demo had worked perfectly well in practice, but because the bug is intermittent, it only popped up during the main event.
    “Rest assured that we have the issue under control here in Redmond, and when Vista ships later this year, this audio gain issue will be a thing of the past,” he said.
    Larry Osterman, a 22-year Microsoft veteran who is part of the audio team owned up to being slow to detect the software bug when it first was detected about a month ago. “Mea Culpa,” he writes in a blog post entitled “Wait, that was my bug? Ouch!” 

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   Callers to the main switchboard at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington headquarters are treated to a sample of speech recognition technology in practice.
   “Thank you for calling Microsoft,” the automated voice response system tells outside callers. “To reach a specific person, just tell me their name at anytime,” the recorded woman’s voice intimates.  
    Listen to a sample of when a caller asks to speak with Bill.

There aren’t a lot of big cities in the world where you need an official decree to keep people from going naked in a crowded place, but Paris is apparently one of them. Parisian sunbathers will no longer be allowed to go nude or wear g-strings on the city’s artificial beaches, and risk a fine if they are caught baring their breasts or buttocks.  Here’s the story:  

People enjoy the sun as ‘Paris Plage’ (Paris Beach) opens along banks of the River Seine in Paris July 20, 2006. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier

What’s going on here? Go wild. Send your captions to us via Post a Comment. 

Australian sculptor Ron Mueck works on his sculpture entitled “A Girl” at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, Scotland, July 31, 2006. REUTERS/David Moir

Who are you going to root for here?  It turns out this fishing town has a traditional fund-raising event in which people hit each other with dead eels tied to ropes. They must not have cable TV there.

That’s pretty  biizarre, but it gets stranger.  An animal rights activist has complained about the spectacle, on grounds that it is ”disrespectful” to dead fish. 

Now, it gets even stranger. The town, which once billed the event as the most fun a person could have with dead fish, has now banned the activity as a result of the complaint, leaving some residents “extremely upset.”  

How can the two sides resolve this?  Well, they could battle it out with dead eels, except oops, that’s been banned… Here’s the story:

Live eels are weighed before being exported to Italy by fishermen in Greece’s Messolongi Lagoon, in this 2005 photo. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis 

Okay, this is one of those “what’s wrong with this picture?” deals. Here is a Rough Cut video clip about a four-year-old kid who expressed an interest in driving.

So what did the parents do? They’re teaching him!  Guess it’s a good thing he didn’t express an interest in brain surgery. Here’s the clip:

Slashed budgets have left a 12-man squad of motorcycle police with just four bikes among them.  The plucky cops are making the best of it, but when they have to split up suddenly to chase suspects in different directions, it gets ugly… Or maybe that isn’t what’s going on here.  Come up with alternate captions, and drop them to us via Post a Comment.  

Members of the acrobatics team of Mexico’s city police perform at the city main square or Zocalo July 26, 2006. REUTERS/Daniel Aguilar

What kind of world do we live in when even the prison escapees have MySpace accounts?

The Times of London is running a story on Farah Damji, a former magazine editor in jail for theft. In the latest twist, Damji received a day pass out of prison and decided she really didn’t feel like going back. What’s a modern absconder to do?

Blog it! On MySpace!
“It seems I am the cause for great consternation because I have apparently ‘absconded.’ “I don’t think you can call it that,” Damji wrote on her blog. The Times has more:

On Tuesday, in an entry entitled “Sea Air”, she wrote of how much she was enjoying not being in prison. “It’s so peaceful, the sound of seagulls replacing the screaming police sirens streaming up and down Kings Road.”

She added: “Blue skies, sea air. Some of the prison pallor is leaving me, I’m starting to feel awake again. Gonna go for a long walk this morning.”

A spokesman for the Downview prison, where Damji was held, confirmed to Reuters MediaFile that a prisoner released on temporary license has failed to return and it is now a matter for police.

In related news, check out the MySpace pages for the band Planning a Prison Break and the Prison Moratorium Project.

If you’re looking for happiness, go and live in Denmark - that’s the happiest country in the world, while Burundi in Africa is the most unhappy, according to a report by a scientist.

Or, you could stay in the U.S., which came in 23rd on the list, if that’s enough happiness for you. Following behind Denmark came Switzerland, Austria, Iceland and the Bahamas, so apparently hot tropical paradises aren’t quite as blissfull as you might have expected.

To see the details, including a nifty interactive map, go here:  Here is the Reuters story:  

Happy, happy… Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary wave to well-wishers from the balcony of the Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen, Denmark, May 14, 2004, after their wedding. REUTERS/SCANPIX/Carl Redhead 

The Case of the Constabulary Confectionery…

Or, to shorten it a bit, cops notice money is missing from the candy shop in their police station. One investigation later, two officers are arrested on “suspicion of stealing candy” and a number of other officers have been relieved of frontline duty while the Candygate investigation continuies… Here’s the story: 

Not the cops in the story… City of London police wear traditional uniform at St Paul’s Cathederal in this file photo.

Someone must have locked Chad Ruble in this week, over at the Oddly Enough Video Library, which covers six city blocks in New York. He’s come up with another “special episode” of his weekly collection of bizarre video clips.  I mean, this was a great video week, with stuff like the penis painter, the pig trough races and the curry spa,..  Don’t get me wrong — Chad has chosen some nice classics, like the Hello Kitty wedding, and the water-skiing squirrel, but you should e-mail him and demand something new next week. 
Continue for the Classic Clips: