I just returned from a few days on Cape Cod. Notwithstanding the weather, it was a nice time. There were, however, some comprehension issues.

In a chocolate store, from the shopkeeper to a local customer: "Gift box is ready. Didja find the cod you needed?" I'm thinking, cod in a chocolate store? Of course, the reference was to a "card", specifically a Happy Anniversary card, and I kind of knew that, but it still caught me off balance. It was the first day, after all: my ears hadn't adjusted.

On a t-shirt: "Welcome to the Lawbsta Bah". Cute, but tough to parse, at least for a computer.

My point? We can, and we will, always try to close the gap between human understanding and machine understanding, but the limitless variety of spoken and written dialect pretty much guarantees that humans will always stay ahead of the software.

That means we'll never run out of challenges. And that's the good paht. Ain't life a howlah?