April 23, 1998

New York Yankees defeat Toronto Blue Jays, 9-1; photo (M)

Elizabeth Kolbert Metro Matters column humorously discusses political debate over building new stadium for New York Yankees on West Side of Manhattan (M)

Jon Pareles interviews pop singer Tori Amos, currently appearing at Irving Plaza, who says her volatile lyrics spring from allowing herself to be taken over by characters in her songs; photo (M)

New York will end its fiscal year with a surplus of more than $2 billion, the largest ever recorded by the city and $800 million more than the Giuliani administration predicted three months ago, officials said.

Dictation programs are so useful that they have changed way many people interact with computer chips; pushing trend toward conversational technology is new generation of speech-based products that are markedly improved from earlier programs; Dragon Systems and International Business Machines have programs priced under $200 for 'continuous dictation,' name for programs that will listen to and reproduce words spoken by someone talking at steady rate in phrases or sentences; one drawback is that systems are 'speaker dependent,' meaning new user must train program to recognize quirks in a voice, such as Southern or Boston accent; big leap in voice-recognition technology allows system to learn patterns of speaker quickly, in less than hour; photo; drawings; Sachin Shah, editor of speech and telecommunications industry newsletters, assesses Dragon and IBM digital stenographers (M)