DiMa wrote: > Does anyone know if there is a support group for the above. In my opinion, the best place is a group oriented toward your operating system. Which is .....? -- Wes Groleau "But, Professor! I didn't plagiarize! I paid someone to write the essay for me, and that person plagiarized!" -- from http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com

Hi all, Does anyone know if there is a support group for the above. I have not been able to master it as yet and need some help. Senior moments are always getting in the way and I end up getting the backup fail notice. Thanks, Di

DiMa wrote: > Thanks for your reply David, I am using the software that came with the > Maxtor. > I keep on getting a failed message and can't seems to get around it. > The message reads: SN.2CASDFFK) failed!!! when I hover over the Red M icon. > I used to get the Yellow M when I first used it. > I'm afraid that the description you've given doesn't really help to identify the software. Over the years, Maxtor has shipped various different backup software packages with its external disks, some of them produced by companies other than Maxtor. As Mike Williams indicated, the software might be Maxtor Manager, but my mother-in-law's Maxtor external disk came with Dantz Retrospect, so it need not be Maxtor software. If you can start up the backup software, then the "Help" menu should have an item labelled "About (name of software)". Most Windows software has this menu item in the "Help" menu. For example, Outlook will have an item labelled "About Outlook" in the "Help" menu. When you click on this menu item, it will pop up an information window which gives details of the name of the software and its version number. That's the information we will need to help you to find a support group. David Harper Cambridge, England

"Wes Groleau" <groleau+news@freeshell.org> wrote in message news:yz9rj.198$qw4.29@trnddc02... > Kerry Raymond wrote: >> The problem is the little words ("and", "are", "at", "or", "on", "in", >> "the", "they", "there", "their" etc). When we speak a sentence normally, >> we tend to say these little words quickly and often only make the vowel >> sound ("ah", "eh", "oh" etc) which makes it very hard to recognise >> exactly which > > I haven't noticed this problem in either ViaVoice or Dragon Naturally > Speaking. Both do some sort of statistical analysis that uses nearby > words to help decide. Agreed. I also noticed a dramatic improvement when I upgraded to the versions above 7. It still can't tell the difference between words the same (eg knight and night) but it would be unreasonable to expect it to do so. Proof reading and some correction will always be needed, but I estimate that it's 95% accurate, or more. Since I'm from one of the generatins when they thought that academically-inclined children didn't need to learn to type, it's MUCH better than anything I can achieve. > > The problem I HAVE noticed is that I need to keep looking at the text and > avoid looking at the screen. Any time I pause, the program tries > to transcribe every tiny little sound that happens as one of those > "little words." Yes. Since I bought a better microphone, I no longer have trouble with background noise such as traffic or people walking past my office, but it's interesting what it can do with a sneeze or a sniff! It's also much less useful if I have a cold, but that's reasonable since my voice changes - I've been tempted to set up a second voice file for when I've got a cold, but fortunately I've not had one since I thought of doing it! Nothing's perfect, but some things can be improvements. I'm a lousy, 4-fingered typist. Dragon's quicker and more accurate, so I can accept the imperfections. Lesley Robertson

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 2008-02-09, Mike Williams <nospam@econym.demon.co.uk> wrote: > Wasn't it David Harper who wrote: >>DiMa wrote: >>> Hi all, >>> Does anyone know if there is a support group for the above. >>> I have not been able to master it as yet and need some help. Senior >>>moments are always getting in the way and I end up getting the backup >>>fail notice. >> >>Which backup software are you using? You are more likely to find what >>you're looking for if you Google for the name of the backup software, >>instead of the disk itself. > > It would be extremely odd to use a Maxtor One-Touch drive with anything > other than the Maxtor Manager software that comes with it. Not at all. All it is is a hard drive; you can use any software you want with it, and usually, general-purpose software is better than the software written by a company to go with their product, because the general-purpose software is more flexible. - -- Benjamin M. A'Lee || mail: bma@subvert.org.uk web: http://subvert.org.uk/~bma/ || gpg: 0xBB6D2FA0 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHrZDNEUZDNrttL6ARAu9jAJ9fJySKU382j8Ks/CB2WRNHuTuitgCfTu6g Z9mXEUAZ8eLQrHO+vf2OtyI= =Tu86 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Mike Williams wrote: > Wasn't it David Harper who wrote: >> DiMa wrote: >>> Hi all, >>> Does anyone know if there is a support group for the above. >>> I have not been able to master it as yet and need some help. Senior >>> moments are always getting in the way and I end up getting the >>> backup fail notice. >> >> Which backup software are you using? You are more likely to find what >> you're looking for if you Google for the name of the backup software, >> instead of the disk itself. > > It would be extremely odd to use a Maxtor One-Touch drive with anything > other than the Maxtor Manager software that comes with it. My mother-in-law uses Dantz Retrospect with her Maxtor One-Touch. My sister-in-law uses the backup software that ships with Apple's OS X. And my Maxtor One-Touch is connected to a machine which runs Linux, so I use rsync to backup my files, and crontab to run the backup at regular intervals. But maybe we're just an odd family ;-) David Harper Cambridge, England

On Thu, 7 Feb 2008 21:10:00 +0000, shane@invalid.demon.co.uk (Shane Badham) wrote: >Steve Hayes <hayesmstw@hotmail.com> wrote: > >> On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:04:41 +0100, Hugh Watkins <hugh.watkins@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >> >Steve Hayes wrote: >[SNIP] >> > >> >Custodian 3 is used by one-namers >> >> I looked at Custodian 2, and it seemed useful for managing sources, less >> useful for managing and linking information. >> >> There is also Clooz, but that that is also not quite what I'm thinking of. > >There is also Bygones. This is available for PC and Mac and it is free! >The underlying database is Filemaker, but you dont need Filemaker to run >it, just the "application". > >It allows event dates and what are called Log Files. The way I have it >organised the Log Files are families sorted by the head of the family >and then by event. However you can sort and search on any other >categories, provided that they are in the database. I've got it on my computer, and have occasionally tried to use it, but have never managed to get much out of it. >From what I have seen, it's more designed for keeping track of sources than an event database. And most of what I might want to use it for seems to be built in to Legacy. But I'd welcome any suggestions for using it productively. -- Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

Wasn't it David Harper who wrote: >DiMa wrote: >> Hi all, >> Does anyone know if there is a support group for the above. >> I have not been able to master it as yet and need some help. Senior >>moments are always getting in the way and I end up getting the backup >>fail notice. > >Which backup software are you using? You are more likely to find what >you're looking for if you Google for the name of the backup software, >instead of the disk itself. It would be extremely odd to use a Maxtor One-Touch drive with anything other than the Maxtor Manager software that comes with it. -- Mike Williams Gentleman of Leisure

DiMa wrote: > Hi all, > > Does anyone know if there is a support group for the above. > > I have not been able to master it as yet and need some help. Senior moments > are always getting in the way and I end up getting the backup fail notice. Which backup software are you using? You are more likely to find what you're looking for if you Google for the name of the backup software, instead of the disk itself. David Harper Cambridge, England

> So I want to "dictate" to my computer and have it give me a text file of > some description. As a former Dragon Direct user, I warn you that the quality of the text may disappoint you. The issue is not (as people often imagine) the big words, strange surnames and the like. These speech-to-text programs can be taught new words, if it is not already in their quite large vocabulary. The problem is the little words ("and", "are", "at", "or", "on", "in", "the", "they", "there", "their" etc). When we speak a sentence normally, we tend to say these little words quickly and often only make the vowel sound ("ah", "eh", "oh" etc) which makes it very hard to recognise exactly which word we have said. In contrast long words have lots of consonant sounds that can be used to disambiguate the word. So voice-to-text is useful, but you will almost certainly have to go back and hand-edit a lot of words. Typing will still be required. Kerry

Kerry Raymond wrote: > The problem is the little words ("and", "are", "at", "or", "on", "in", > "the", "they", "there", "their" etc). When we speak a sentence normally, we > tend to say these little words quickly and often only make the vowel sound > ("ah", "eh", "oh" etc) which makes it very hard to recognise exactly which I haven't noticed this problem in either ViaVoice or Dragon Naturally Speaking. Both do some sort of statistical analysis that uses nearby words to help decide. The problem I HAVE noticed is that I need to keep looking at the text and avoid looking at the screen. Any time I pause, the program tries to transcribe every tiny little sound that happens as one of those "little words." -- Wes Groleau "In the field of language teaching, Method A is the logical contradiction of Method B: if the assumptions from which A claims to be derived are correct, then B cannot work, and vice versa. Yet one colleague is getting excellent results with A and another is getting comparable results with B. How is this possible?" -- Earl W. Stevick

Soory I seem to have confused people - what I want to do is read large quantities of letters to the computer and for it to produce me a text file so that the contents of the letters can be shared amongst the family. I know there is a commercial program - Dragon naturally Speaking that does this , it also has a lot of othher bells and whistles that I don't need , so I was hoping there might be a simple shareware version. So I want to "dictate" to my computer and have it give me a text file of some description. Thanks to those who have answered , I'm looking into the later versions of Word to see if they would serve, I am using office 97 which isn't. Anne

David Harper wrote: > > The fact that they have their own DNA, independent of the nucleus of the > cell, is intriguing, and has led biologists to hypothesise that the > mitochondria are actually descendants of ancient bacteria which formed a > symbiotic relationship with other organisms early in the history of > multi-cellular life on Earth. > Looking at things from the point of view of a mitochondrion I would expect that events such as oogenesis, fertilisation and division of the host cell line would be well-nigh indiscernible - the host cytoplasm would simply be an expanding environment of extremely long durability but one shared with other mitochondria. In such circumstances, however, each viable mutation would found a new mitochondrial cell-line (for want of a better term) which would share this environment with its fellows. Over the course of many host generations one would, therefore, expect a host-cell line to contain many genetically diverse mitochondria. But in such circumstances mt-DNA analysis would become difficult if not impossible and yet we are told sensible answers can be obtained from this technique. Presumably there must be a mechanism which enables a single mitochondrial strain to achieve dominance - but what is it? -- Ian Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard at nildram co uk

Haines Brown wrote: > > If so, then how do we represent this unity of quite different things? > What comes immediately to mind is an object-oriented database. It's also what comes to my mind. Take an apparently simple concept such as a name. Name structures are culturally determined. No single data structure will be able to satisfy everyone. In an OO environment, however, we could have an abstract name class with a sub-class for each cultural naming structure we have to deal with. -- Ian Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard at nildram co uk

Steve Hayes wrote: > On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 07:11:12 -0500, Haines Brown > <brownh@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> wrote: > >> A very interesting thread. I hope no one minds if a non-genealogist >> jumps in with questions. >> >> My sense of the distinction of a relation-based and an event based >> structure is clear to me only in the abstract, but not in concrete >> terms. Would someone be willing to offer a simple example of each to >> help make the distinction clearer? > > I've given this a different subject line because it is a different thread. > > I've long felt a need for event-based software that would take a different > approach to ordinary lineage-linked genealogy software and take a different > approach. It woudl be useful for family history research rather than pure > genealogy, and for other kind of historical research as well. > > I've even developed a sort of data model, which I've semi-implemented in > creating a database to illustrate it. > > Let me try to give a concrete illustration of the difference. > > Say you are writing a biography of a person, and you want software to help > you in your research. > > In a hypothetical event-based program you would enter people who impinged on > the life of your subject as you do with genealogy software. Some would be > genealogically related and some not. > > The birth event, for example, would have your subject's birth, with parents > (obviously), but others like midwives, obstetricians and so on also linked. > > Twenty-one years later there might be a 21st birthday party, and you would > have that as an event, and a description of the event, and then link people in > your database to the event -- friends and relatives who attended. > > After entering a lot of events in the subject's life, you could create a > chronology of the events, and of the people associated with your subject at > each stage - parents, friends, teachers, classmates, bosses, and so on. If you > were doing a biography, you could include in notes on various people their > recollections of the subject, and the subjects recollections of them. > > In this hypothetical program, it should be possibly to import family relations > (via GEDCOM) from lineage-linked software, but also from address books etc. > > Such software could be used for other purposes. > > Onme of the things I do research on is African Independent churches. I have > three different databases or datasets -- churches, leaders and events. It > would be useful to be able to link them in a relational database, but I don't > have the skill to design such a database. Also, as software goes obsolete one > would spend more time on redesigning it than entering and manipulating data, > so you would never get any reseach done because you would always be tinkering > with the tools. I once tried to do it with Paradox, but now everyone uses > Access, and it would have to be rewritten from scratch, and I've never found > books on Access that can tell me what I used to know about Paradox. > > So I lumber along using an old DOS program called Inmagic, which serves my > purpose. > > I'm playing with a Windows program called askSam (I also continue to use the > DOS version) which I use for entering raw genealogical data from different > sources and material for other research projects. These are useful research > tools, but an event-based relational program would be a useful addition. > What I have in mind as an ideal would go one step further and be record-based (a record in this sense being a historical record, not a database row). The reason is that a a single event may be documented by more than one record whilst a single record could document more than one event. As a real example of the first a local apothecary documents the death of a patient, John Goddard, his burial a few days later and a few days later than that the death of the patient's wife, name not stated. The parish register documents the burials giving the wife's name as Elizabeth (off-hand I can't remember whether the register gives the dates of death). As a hypothetical example of the second one might have a family bible entry recording a death in childbirth. This would be a single record but two separate genealogical events, a birth and a death. The first section of such a data model would contain a class for the record itself and a class for the source. This section deals with evidence. The next section would be a set of classes for the individuals, events and places named in the record. Each object of such classes would be linked to a single object of the record class. Names of people and placed would be given exactly as they occur in the original record and the role played in the record would be given. (What happens of the name is given twice with different spellings? There would be two records one for each spelling. For instance I have a marriage register entry where the bride's name was filled in as "Kay" but she signed "Kay".) This section deals with analysis of the evidence. Each object would have a globally unique identifier (see Wikipedia for UID or GUID). Once published an object should not be modified. Analysis objects should not be merged. This solves one of Robert Grumbines' problems. We don't need to trace the route by which one of these objects has been acquired: all copies should be the same and if anyone feels that a correction should be made then a new object should be created with a cross reference to the old. The next section would be a set of classes to represent what we believe to be the historical individuals and events and geographical places which we believe underlie those given in the records. As regards people and events these could be quite light-weight objects as the bulk of the information relevant to them is carried in the objects linked to them; their main purpose is to exist as hubs for such links and to provide a standard name for an individual (e.g. "John Goddard of Scholes" as a standard name for an individual who finally settled in that hamlet after at least three previous homes spanning two parishes). This section represents part of our historical reconstruction. My separate classes for analysis and reconstruction individuals is reflected in the discussion of different categories of examples of the PERSONA entity in the GENTECH documentation but there is no differentiation in the actual model. There would be a set of classes ("association classes" in UML terms) used to link analysis objects to reconstruction objects. cf the ASSERTION entity of the GENTECH model. These would give an estimation of the confidence with which we link the reconstructed individual to the analysis objects. These could record negative associations - for instance to state that John of Scholes was not the John Goddard whose death was recorded by the diarist in my early example. There would be another set of classes to represent relationships between reconstructed individuals. These could be families or, in Steve's case, churches. cf GENTECH's GROUP entity. I would have an association class to link relationships to individuals. Again, cf GENTECH's ASSERTION. For instance there would be a relation object for John of Scholes' family with an association class to represent John's role as father. Ideally the reconstruction objects would be stable in much the same way as the evidence classes. The association classes would be less stable - they could be added or subtracted as views change and they provide for the many-to-many links between analysis and reconstruction which would record the multiple candidate situation I've posed in other posts. -- Ian Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard at nildram co uk

Wes Groleau wrote: > Now as to what I _think_ you meant. The question concerned how you > would unambiguously show that you can NOT unambiguously tell who he > is the son of, in the computer-parseable structure as opposed to > a human-readable NOTE. > I wish I could have put it as clearly as that! -- Ian Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard at nildram co uk

"Anne Brick" <annise@netspace.net.au> wrote in message news:mailman.3151.1202464555.4586.gencmp@rootsweb.com... > Soory I seem to have confused people - what I want to do is read large > quantities of letters to the computer and for it to produce me a text > file so that the contents of the letters can be shared amongst the family. I found your query perfectly clear. > I know there is a commercial program - Dragon naturally Speaking that does > this , it also has a lot of othher bells and whistles that I don't need , > so I was hoping there might be a simple shareware version. The problem with speech recognition is that the quality of the programme is very important, especially if vocabulary outside the normal run of daily life is concerned. Since I get RSI, I tried quite a few before settling on Dragon, but I must admit that I haven't treid the one that MS is packaging with some of their programmes. My office pc is running XP, and I see that it has it (go to the Control Panel and look for "speech". Dragon comes in a range of forms from very basic to profession (and expensive). What you could do is watch the discount bins at computer shops (or places like Amazon) for older versions - I'm currently using ver 7.3 which handles scottish place names, etc, very well. Lesley Robertson

"Wes Groleau" <groleau+news@freeshell.org> wrote in message news:HIMqj.30936$xE.5368@trnddc01... > > Even with genealogical material--lots of names of people > and places, not in the program's dictionary, AND interference > from noise in the house, I still manage to average 1200 words > per hour including time for corrections and "retraining" the software. > > Dragon Naturally Speaking is better than ViaVoice. > I agree. I had VV at work, and dragon at home, but am now so pleased with Dragon that I'm only usin it. With training it can cope with the scottish names of my local history research and the pseudo-latin we use for microbial names at work. Faded typescript and photocopies sometimes becomes more legible if photocopied through coloured transparant material (yellow seems to work on thermal paper) and scanning and then playing with colour mixes in Photoshoip or the like can help. Lesley Robertson

"Everett M. Greene" <mojaveg@mojaveg.lsan.mdsg-pacwest.com> wrote in message news:20080207.79CA280.A110@mojaveg.lsan.mdsg-pacwest.com... > "Lesley Robertson" <l.a.robertson@tnw.tudelft.nl> writes: >> "Dale DePriest" <Dale@gpsinformation.het> wrote >> > Anne Brick wrote: > >> >> I have a pile of letters written during WW1 by my father and his >> >> brother >> >> and would like to be able to type them up for family distribution > I >> >> am >> >> a very slow typist and none of my children can read the older hand >> >> writing. Does any one know of a share ware program that I would be >> >> able >> >> to try? >> > >> > If a person cannot read it then a computer program is unlikely to be >> > able >> > to do it. Maybe you could teach your children to type. >> > >> The OP was aksing about speech recognition, NOT character recognition >> (see >> the subject line). With speech recognition, the user reads the text >> aloud, >> into a microphone, and the softweare does the typing. This message is >> coming >> to you via such a system. I find it extremely useful, but it's not a >> shareware programme. > > The OP said that his/her children couldn't /read/ the material. > Recognizing spoken mumbles, hems, haws, etc. won't help anyone. Read the original post (I've left it at the top for your convenience). OP wants to type them up because the children can't read them. Doesn't say that OP can't read them, indeed the comment about being a slow typist impleies that the OP CAN read them. Lesley Robertson

On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:01:58 +1100, Anne Brick wrote: > I have a pile of letters written during WW1 by my father and his brother > and would like to be able to type them up for family distribution > I am > a very slow typist and none of my children can read the older hand > writing. Does any one know of a share ware program that I would be able > to try? I think one was mentioned in this group which you should be able to find via either the GoogleGroups and/or Rootsweb archives. Alternatively, if any of your children can type faster than you can, why not ask one of them to type while your read the letters out? It might have the knock-on advantage of interesting one or more of them in family history if they aren't already ;))