Voice-Op Linux PDA

Anonymous Coward writes "At http://www.the-times.co.uk/interface/dailyextra5.html is news of a voice-operated Linux handheld computer to be announced at CeBit next week. Sounds cool!" Oh yeah. Until someone shouts out, "ARRR-EMMM ARRR-EFFF STAR!" Then we'll see who's laughing.

Comments

will it die if you tell it to?

[trollking]

will it die if you tell it to? or hit people?
will it follow you around and sniff other voice op'ed pdas in funny ways?
Thank You,
Troll King

Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

until someone shouts out, "ARRR-EMMM ARRR-EFFF STAR!"

Argh!!! I forgot I had one of those set up across the room, and was browsing on this Windows computer using text-to-voice. It must have interpreted the capitals (correctly) as shouting, because my other computer definately heard it.

rm /*.*

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember this as an actual occurance with a voice operated system, anyone have verification?

-- Ender, Duke_of_URL

Re:rm /*.*

[clyons]

I believe it was during an IBM demo of their voice recoginition software for PC's.

Re:rm /*.*

[Anonymous Coward]

Why "rm /*.*"?
I mean how many people have files with dots in the filenames in their root directories anyway???

"rm -rf /*" would have been better to say, not?

Re:rm /*.*

[Dilbert_]

I work for L&H, and I do remember at least one colleague who was testing stuff with Voice Xpress, and he said "Select all", and then "Delete" while trying some text processing commands. Unfortunately his active window was his e-mail program, more precisely his inbox... More than a year of e-mail gone :-)

So, it's not a Dilbert joke anymore, it happens for real...

Re:rm /*.*

[nhowie]

of course, since '/' is a directory, and the recursive flag is given, "rm -rf /" is all that's required

not that such pendantry really matters anyway ;-)
--

Re:rm /*.*

[fedos]

But if it was in DOS, then you would need to use *.*. Of course, then rm wouldn't work, you'd need to use del.

Theft of PDA

[Nafta]

"Penguin: where are you?"

"Here! Here! he stole me! nasty brute! ..."

text to speech?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I remember a demo of L&H's text to speech, and it wasn't much of an improvement over the ancient typical monotone voice. I don't remember if it was them or someone else. Does anybody have info on them?

Re:text to speech?

[Dilbert_]

think I remember a demo of L&H's text to speech, and it wasn't much of an improvement over the ancient typical monotone voice. I don't remember if it was them or someone else. Does anybody have info on them?

I do, as a matter of fact, because I work there ;-)

The voice in Voice Xpress is indeed the typical monotone voice. But the latest and greatest voice synthesis technology is our RealSpeak. A demo can be found here. You can type in anything you want (up to 30 english words), and RealSpeak sends you a .wav file. I think you will agree that it sounds much better than the older computer voices (who sounded like a guy with a cold talking in a tin can).

Re:text to speech?

[Dwonis]

I just want to hear the old Amiga narrator.device. All text-to-speech sounds fake, and I always found it to be the least annoying.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."

Security

[Anonymous Coward]

The big issue is security, does it only recognize you as a legitimate person to give commands/enter data?

The article is fluffly, and doesn't even say if the PDA requires time to learn your voice, or for you to learn standard enunciation...

-- Ender, Duke_of_URL

Re:Security

[Dilbert_]

This article is fluffy, indeed... I read a couple of much better ones on the subject, and they said this new product is going to use the Voice Xpress engine for recognition, and that works with speaker profiles. But anyway, it's the same with keyboards : they don't check the finger prints of the person who is typing either (you need a password). Granted, saying your password out loud in public probably isn't a good idea either :-)

For slightly better articles, try here and here.

Re:Security

[Nick I]

I really don't see how security is the *big* issue concerning this device. The truth of the matter is that this is a pocket computer. In other words, it will be in your pocket where it won't be easily used without your consent.

or this...

[trollking]

rm /..org
Thank You,
Troll King

The joke

[Zan Thrax]

OK, so its kinda funny, but it is also an old Dilbert strip.

Re:The joke

[Vanders]

It's also wrong, someone shouting "ARRR-EMMM ARRR-EFFF STAR" would mean you'd get:

rm rf *

Which doesn't really do much (Unless you have a file called "rf" in the working directory).
Me, i'd be shouting "ARRR-EMMM DASH ARRR-EFFF STAR", which would make much more sense ;)

Re:The joke

[steelhawk]

"ARRR-EMMM DASH-ARRR-EFFF STAR" ("rm -rf *") would imho be more useful than removing a file named rf in the current dir and then every file in the current dir (recursively)

so remember... every time you enter a room full of geeks with voice operated PDA's shout "ARRR-EMMM DASH-ARRR-EFFF SLASH-STAR" amd they'll all panic and run away... ;)

Re:The joke

[Akaji Monkey]

I think not. Since you're spelling it out in letters, you'd probably get something like this:

rmrf*

What you'd have to say is:

"ARR-EMM SPACE ARR-EFF SPACE STAR"

I think it'd be easier to yell something like:

"TELINIT ZERO!"

;)

Re:The joke

[Akaji Monkey]

Oops... stick a "HYPHEN" in there too.

Re:The joke

[Vanders]

You make a good point. Also, i've realised that it i can type "rm -rf *" quicker than i can yell "ARR-EMM SPACE ARR-EFF SPACE STAR". So, i guess the keyboard isn't about be replaced any time soon.

But without the Userspace Apps?

[mr]

What makes the Palm or a Newton Useful?

The user space apps.
Things like the names/dates/call logging application.

And, face it, most of the apps like that under the modern Unixes need to go on a resource diet if they want to fit on a handheld.

Who's been writing the lo-resource version of Xcalendar? OR a database?

cell phones are bad enough

[trollking]

cell phones are bad enough, now are we going to have people walking around talking to their computers? they would deserve a good whuppin' too.
Thank You,
Troll King

Re:cell phones are bad enough

[Woefdram]

Just a matter of getting used to :) But how useful would speech-recognition be in a PDA? If I'm in a train, I'd prefer to work with it in silence, it's nobody's business what I write in my agenda. Speech-recognition would make it more expensive and more power-consuming. I'd *love* to have speech-recognition on my PII at home, for writing letters or whatever, but not a PDA.

Re:cell phones are bad enough

[clyons]

When I'm walking around using an earbud with my Nokia, I get a few odd looks.

If voice-accessible PDA's become commonplace, we won't know who's talking to their PDA and who's just nucking futz!

Re:cell phones are bad enough

[tlhIngan]

Another caveat of voice-recog PDAs - are you sure you'd want to be talking to one of these in public?

Nothing about spilling your personal life to anyone who'd listen, but what's a typical citizen to do when seeing someone looking at a black box, talking out loud? (I.e., that person's talking to himself! Nuts!)

Heheh. ALthough, I do see a use of vocal "rm -rf /*" from time to time.

Voice-recognition pitfalls

[acb]

I recall reading once (in Risks perhaps?) about a workplace where they were testing voice recognition. All was well until a disgruntled employee walked down the corridor, shouting "FILE! EXIT! NO!", with predictable results.

Re:Voice-recognition pitfalls

[dvorsd]

I've seen similar happen. A co-worker of mine hung up signs all over the office to try and get people to stop slamming doors as it would cause the voice-rec software to insert semi-random junk into whatever he was working on.

-dvorsd

Re:Voice-recognition pitfalls

[Zombie_Magick]

A story (I like stories)

A friend of mine was at a friends place when he said something which seemed to "activate" his Mac. He was told that it responded to voice commands and he simply had disengaged the screensaver (or something). So my friend being the genius that he is starts playing around with commmands. He cuts and pastes text and then says "This is cool, what would happen if I said shutdown?" and it proceeded to shutdown. To this day I won't let him near my computer.

Re:Voice-recognition pitfalls

[DarkFyre]

From my experiences with voice recognition, I've found that the software has trouble picking up sounds a long distance from the microphone (depending on the quality of the microphone), and has difficulty recognizing commands from a voice it's not trained for.

This, to me, suggests that these stories are urban legends. If they're not, then they are indicative of a horribly stupid implementation of voice recognition : In a moderately loud area, or an area where more than one person will be using voice rec, headset mics with 6" pickups should be used.

Don't blame on the voice recognition software what is in reality caused by inepitude and lack of foresight.

ARRR-EMMM ARRR-EFFF STAR!

[sdt]

rm: cannot remove `rf': No such file or directory - :P

L&H voice technology

[RESPAWN]

I have L&H's voice express for my windows machine, and have found it's text-to-speech features to be rather adequate. Granted, it's not exactly the same as having your own personal secretary dictate the on screen text to you, but then how many of us have a personaly secretary? As for the speech-to-text: well, the enrollment process seemed rather lenghty, but I was able to use the program to do a fairly good job at dictating Emails and such. But, isn't this just a step away from those IBM commercials with the guy in Russia wearing his PC? Seems rather similar to me. This is my first post, so be sure to moderate me down! :)

The importance of platform diversity

[vlarsen]

I see that the concept of voice-operated devices is viewed largely as a laughable matter. Personally, I do not view the potensial for "voice-cracking" as the most important aspect of these gadgets...

However, I think the linux (and /.) community should welcome the prospect of an expanding platform base in this field with enthusiasm. With the focus in the PDA/handheld field on WinCE, it would be a shame if this carried over to the field of voice-operated devices.

Personally, I think that much of the "voice" functionallity will reside in the mobile phone networks, and as such be independent on the operating system of the handheld device. But it never hurts to give developers a choice of platform technology.

I am looking forward to this device, and the voice-enabled applications. Although it would be "nifty", I do not think the VoiceShell (vsh) will be the most useful application...

Not quite

[A nonymous Coward]

bash: rmrf*: command not found

--

Re:HELLO....I AM SAM...

[Woefdram]

Porting SAM would be a nice idea. But I wasn't thinking of the C64-version, I'd prefer the HP-UX variant. Linuxconf, YaST etc sure are nice tools, but a tool like SAM (or SMIT in AIX) would make running Linux at home a lot easier for people with little or no experience in UNIX. Anyway, this is off-topic...

Voice Recognition

[xobes]

They've got it for the PDA, there must be one out there for the desktop linux user. Anybody know where I could find it?

Sorry if this seems off topic.

- AZ

Dilbert Strip

[lyrabas]

Yep. You can see it at Macromedia's Shockwave site. Kinda cute. ;-)

no, because

[Anonymous Coward]

you pause after the the spaces, so it's rm (pause which'd add a space) rf (another space) *

nontheless, it wouldn't get you anywhere, w/o the dash.

Re:no, because

[JabberWokky]

you pause after the the spaces, so it's rm (pause which'd add a space) rf (another space) *

:)

Okay... you sit in your home directory and type the following:

acoward$ rm rf *

We'll see who's laughing. (Hint: it might complain about there being no file named "rf", and it won't recurse, but I'd imagine the files deleted would be a real forehead slapper).

--
Evan

Re:no, because

[jd]

Ok, how about:

"Arrr Emmmm (pause) Dash Arrr Efff (pause) Star (pause) Enter"

Re:no, because

[jd]

I'd be happy to type "rm rf *" in any directory you care to name, as often as you like. So long as I don't hit the enter key, it won't do anything. :)

Re:no, because

[ph1l]

see dee (pause) slash (pause) enter
arr emm (pause) dash arr eff (pause) star (pause) enter

Nope, didn't work... slashdot is still here!

Re:no, because

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have anything in your home directory that is a file (as opposed to a dir) and that starts with anything other than a dot, all I can tell you is that you're either a slob or an idiot.

Slap this.

0WN3D --- *5P1G07*

Re:no, because

[Anonymous Coward]

$ arm arf star
bash: arm: command not found

Re:no, because

[izzylobo]

"Arrr Emmmm (pause) Dash Arrr Efff (pause) OWW! Wud the fug did you punch my nobe in for?!"

:-)

Scott Taylor

Wizzy, wiz mis-features

[Anonymous Coward]

This just cracks me up. The first thing that flashed into my head was a scene out of Douglas Adam's "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy".

Zaphod Beblebrox is trying to listen to the radio. I say trying because the damn silly thing is a highly sophisticated computer computer that interprets body movement as a request to change channels. Having to remain rock still once you get the channel is hardly going to improve your listening enjoyment. ;)

Things like voice control are great for text file production, but this kind of thing is often hyped just way too far.

Just as importantly, their is the issue of training the voice recognition system. Once it's calibrated, it might be fine most of the time, but what about when your voice temporarily changes when you get the flue?

Finally, there is the noise pollution factor. Modern open floor plan offices are noisy and distracting enough with telephones and what not. I tend to suspect that the introduction of voice controlled computers is going to be a no go unless people are allowed to work at home in a relative state of quiet.

Re:Wizzy, wiz mis-features

[Vanders]

Modern open floor plan offices are noisy and distracting enough with telephones and what not.

Voice Recognition would be pretty useless in a "Call Centre" type situation, where you have the operator already talking to a customer and operating the computer at the same time. You can only talk to one or the other, and what if the computer thinks that you're talking to it, when you're talking to the customer?

Kind of makes voice recognition in many office enviroments useless, i would think.

yes but

[Tibi the Troll]

That's all very nice and stuff, but surely when you are in a public place there is far to much background noise, and announcements, to give commands/dictate a letter... and besides, that's a hell of a lot worse than being on your mobile in the train for other passengers.

The future of OSs *is* voice recognition though... I want to see the end of keyboards. And mice.

Re:yes but

[Ferzerp]

Voice recognition? Do you honestly speak faster than you type? I mean, think about it for a moment. Find a passage,time yourself reading it in a normal voice that a very sophisticated speech-to-text program could interpret, and then time yourself typing it. You might be surprised. Then again, you may not. Depends on how fast you type I guess. Then you have to take the time to correct any errors, etc with the speech-to-text.

Then there's the mouse thing, I remember the dilbert cartoon:
Pointy Haired Guy: Higher, higher, higher, ok click there. Now! No! Not There!
Dilbert: ::shakes his head::

I mean, for certain things voice is all well and good. "open /etc/fstab with vi. delete line 2." Good for someone who types slowly I guess.

Now consider this: the gimp
explain voice control in that? "draw the mona lisa"?

Until (IF) our thoughts can be interpreted, I'm gonna support my old keyboard and mouse. I have ten fingers, but I can only make one sound come out of my mouth at once. And well, despite its dopiness, the mouse works great. Oh, and I'm convinced that m$ should have been a hardware company, not a software one. Look at the intellimouse explorer. Working optical mouse, great accuracy, you never need to clean the ball and rollers, and it never looses tracking unless on a mirror or very smooth white surface. I have no complaints with mine. Actually, I've never owned any m$ *hardware* that I really ever had complaints with.

Re:yes but

[lcrawford]

Really, the future of voice controll is wearable computers. I would love to have an earbud w/ microphone hooked up to my pda and cellphone. I would wear it all the time, and could plan my code on my way to work, or while running errands. It wouldnt be much use for codeing until I got a good glasses mounted disply. I've seen these really cool mono displays that clip onto normal eyeglasses/sunglasses. I forget the link, but they are only selling to schools and the gvmnt for reasarch. I can type faster than I can talk, but it's hard to carry a keyboard. I guess there are twiddelers, but those have a bit of a learning curve.

Actually, if I could find a cheap (sub 1k) and not hugely bulky text only head mounted display, i'd setup a wearable with a twiddler, my thinkpad, a backpack and whatever hmd I can find.

As for desktop/laptop pointing/input devices, I prefer the ibm TrackPoint keyboards (the one with the little pointing nub between the g and h keys) and those ancient IBM AT keyboards (the ones with metal springs, that make such a racket) for my console-only systems. The trackpoint is really cool for the occasional mouse user like myself, because it is really close to my keyboard. I just need to move one finger, and it's there. But for longer mouse activities, like quake, a joystick or normal mouse might be a bit better. after a good 2-3 hour quake run my finger is pretty sore. But then when I used to use a normal mouse, my wrist hurt.

Maybe I'm on crack here, but i thought that "microsoft" hardware was hardware that a another company made, and paid royalties to microsoft for the use of the name.

re:yes but

[Iudico]

I work at a hospital and the Doctors use this type of software doing voice to TXT for Charts and what not. The ER Doctors just put on a headset and a microphone and start talking. It cuts way down on the background noise problem. The same thing could be used anywere. Car, The bus, train, Or Office, etc

Re:yes but

[nsanit]

I agree with your statement about being able to type much faster than speak.

What needs to happen is that our brothers in the AI field need to perfect natural language recognition (NLR) so that a computer can not only translate what we say into text, but UNDERSTAND what it means. That we we would be able to use the MEANING of a statement instead of the statement itself to tell the computer what we want it to do (think of Star Trek).

Re:yes but

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you pretty much have to have natural language processing to get voice recognition to work at all. This is because so much speach recognition is about using context to narrow down the possible next word or phrase.

Type faster than you talk? the fastest speaker last I knew of was about 400 words a minute, I've never heard/read of a typist half that fast.

Reading is up to 800 words/minute, except speedreaders who are faster, but kind of read sentences not words (I'm not one, and don't really see how that can work, but it seems to be for real). So speech output may be touchy-feely, but it's not really an advantage.

I think we need speech recognition for text input, mice (or something like them, trackballs etc) for positioning on screen and such, and screens for output.

My .02 Ecu

Re:yes but

[Anonymous Coward]

and screens for output.

No, the computer will inform your mind.

Re:yes but

[C.Lee]

> Voice recognition? Do you honestly speak faster than you type? I mean,
>think about it for a moment. Find a passage,time yourself reading it
>in a normal voice that a very sophisticated speech-to-text program
>could interpret, and then time yourself typing it.

Even worse. Imagine someone who has a slight stutter trying to use one of these voice-recognition systems. Not a pretty picture is it?

Re:yes but

[Edward Kmett]

There was a study done a while back on integrating voice and mouse controls. Using voice to issue the commands and the mouse to point to what they affect. As I recall there were appreciable performance gains in the tasks tested (like 30%) but I cannot remember the group who did the study.

I agree that voice control alone is a dead end, but it has potential when integrated with other techniques for target designation.

Re:yes but

[lcrawford]

umm, most _people_ cannot do that.

Stupid trick of the day

[Anonymous Coward]

Set up the IBM voice recognition SDK to control channel changing on kWinTV(with a Hauppauge WinTV card), plug in a sensitive microphone, and turn on the speaker system.

The damn thing started flipping between channels and window/full screen every time it picked a recognised "command" out of the current program.

I eventually managed to shut it down by unplugging the microphone.

Ah well, you live and learn.....
(Voice operated medical equipment, anyone??)

Re:Stupid trick of the day

[gypeter]

Well, ViaVoice tricked me too... I installed the xmms-plugin, with what you can control you mp3 playing with commands like start! stop! skip song! etc. I started a random playlist, turned on the microphone and the speakers, and sat down on my bed at the other corner of the room. Sometimes I shouted skip song or stuff like that, it worked nice. The random playing started that well-known Britney Spears: Crazy song from my musical-joke dir :). You know, it has a part when everything is silent, and Britney says: STOP! And yeah, the mp3 playing stopped :)

Re:Stupid trick of the day

[anotherone]

(Voice operated medical equipment, anyone??) I saw on TV a news story about a robot type thing that responded to voice commands and would give the docters the scalpel, scissors, etc. And it could even distinguise between docters, which was cool.

Make Seven

Re:yes but Other Possibilities

[CBravo]

The future of OSs *is* voice recognition though... I want to see the end of keyboards. And mice.

I agree with the keyboards and (especially) mice becoming a drag. There are other inputdevices possible as well. There are alternatives.

Thinking here about the computer seeing when the navigator window has to scroll just by looking at your eyes. Knowing to stop when your pupils changes size, etc etc.

And off course: combinations of all the new inputdevices. Interaction through question-and-answer with your computer (computer: "give me a smile for Gnome, cry if you want to start KDE").

Re:while (moderation == censorship) troll();

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish all you hot grits 'people' would inject about 10 gallons of hot grits/ground glass mix in your ass and beg for a decent person to drop a petrified Natale Portlywoman statue on your cakehole encompassing head.

Re: the demo

[Chagrin]

The voice in the demo is pretty dang warble-y. The Festival speech system does much better, IMHO.

voice control for gimp CAN and SHOULD work

[zyqqh]

Now consider this: the gimp explain voice control in that? "draw the mona lisa"?

No, not quite. Voice control won't replace any 2-dimensional manipulator interfaces any time soon (at least not for non-disabled users). No one is claiming that the mouse will be rendered useless. After all, "a picture is worth..." Well, ya know.

BUT. How much do you really enjoy clicking around the gimp toolbox? Or, worse yet, searching for a filter you don't normally use in 3- or 4- deep menu system while losing that exact pixel you were over in the image. Right there, a secondary interface via voice would be ideal. No need to lift hand off mouse or move the pointer at all. Just "Use filter A, settings 50%, 3, no." I'm generally against voice recognition, but this would be one of the few spots I'd definitely want to see it.

dictation

[Tibi the Troll]

You're right, typing is/can be faster than speaking, BUT speaking is faster than a mouse. But why was the slow to use GUI invented? Answer: to provide ease of use and a more natural working environment than a command line.

Dictation is a much more natural integration of person to computer. Slower, but better. A newbie can do it just as well as a nerd. Why learn to touchtype???

End of command lines. End of keyboard. End of mouse - use touch-sensitive screens. Sorted.

Re:dictation

[lcrawford]

touch sensitive screens? unless you wash your hands ever 2 minunites, your screen is going to get pretty nasty during a normal days useage, unless you are speaking of a pen input system, like the palm. Fingers are also a bit to big to pick small things, but the pen solves that, as well. I have 2 issues with it. First off, I have a 19" monitor, and I like to recline in my char. right now I'm leaning back with my keybord on my lap (with a trackpoint, for quake and X). I use the trackpoint because reaching to the mouse is to much trouble. It would be quite annoying to have to sit up everytime I needed to hit a link. Even at work, I don't sit close enough to my monitor to comfortably use a touch screen. Didn't IBM try this on the EGA alrealdy, with the light pen?

The other thing is gameing. I just dont think quake would be as cool if you just touched your oponents to splatter them.

keyboardless/touch monitors my have a chance in clueless newbie/ocasional useage/wearable/pda markets, but as for me, I need a decent interface that is comfortable to use for extended periods of time.

Heh, how about this?

[guran]

If you enter the DeCSS code (code != speech according to some judge) via a speech recognition device...

Would *that* qualify as "free speech"?

Seriously, Voice interfaces probably have a very limited usage. Some disabled would benefit (much). Hands free applications are very useful in cars and such, but typing is generally less tiresome.

Sure many people type faster than they speak (at least if it is to be interpretable by a machine) but the main problem is that speaking for an hour is very tiresome (and irritating for those around), and commands by voice are difficult compared to mouse and keyboard. ("Swap those two words,... three sentences back" as opposed to drag and drop or the arrow key dance.).

Still cool is always cool...

Re:Heh, how about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, Voice interfaces probably have a very limited usage. Some disabled would benefit (much). Hands free applications are very useful in cars and such, but typing is generally less tiresome.

Sure many people type faster than they speak (at least if it is to be interpretable by a machine) but the main problem is that speaking for an hour is very tiresome (and irritating for those around), and commands by voice are difficult compared to mouse and keyboard. ("Swap those two words,... three sentences back" as opposed to drag and drop or the arrow key dance.).

There's a good use for voice recognition in PDA's, abliet not as the main interface. Consider driving down the road in your car and just being able to say to your PDA "New meeting, april 25, 4pm @ conference room, notes: discussing new product" or "What do I have today" (and having it read back the current day's appointments) or "What is John Smith's phone number" or even "Give me directions to 1234 Some Pl."

Eavesdropping

[Special Agent K]

As long as I can root Diego Garcia by just walking down the street and listening to him speak his login and password into his PDA it's all good....

Voice recognition, holy grail or waste of time....

[MosesJones]

http://www.developer.ibm.com/library/articles/niel sen1.html

Have a read what Jakob Nielsen (one of the greats of User Interface design) says, he presents one of the better arguments as to why voice recognition just isn't that good a way of interacting with a machine. Most of the things that voice recognition is pushed forward for can be done better and with greater accuracy with your hands and a well thought out display. There are certain cases where it is the best option, and possibly a PDA is one of them (although I use a Psion and don't have any problem with it at all and I wouldn't want voice recognition) but for the most time its a gimmick that doesn't stand upto the demands of the user.

rm -rf .* is the most lethal

[scabpicker]

it seems it will delete everything(at least if you are root at the time), no matter what directory you are in, as it includes /.. . I actually did a chown -rf .* in a moment of idiocy, trying to change some dot files from one user to another once, the dot files were assigned to the correct user, but it made the system as unusable as if I had used rm -rf .*

Voice recognition is useful for a PDA

[oren]

I don't grok the objections people raise to voice recognition. Sure, a keyboard is a better interface for VI and a mouse is a better interface for GIMP. So?

The killer applications for a PDA are the contact info, schedule, and memos - in general, maintaining a database made of records with a small amount of data in each field. Short messaging (integrated with E-mail) too, I guess - still small amount of data. Everything else is bells and whistles. People do not write long texts on a PDA - they use laptops, or at least buy one of the nifty folding keyboards for their PDA. People do not run GIMP on a PDA.

For these killer apps, a voice API is great: "show today's schedule". "new meeting, March 14th, at 10, with L&H". "new memo: buy milk for santa". "new expense: the L&H account, 112$, business lunch". "show contact Joe". "Message to Jane: Lunch at 2?".

I'd expect you'll need to push a button to make the PDA listen - I wouldn't like one which listens all the time (it might make sense for a desktop system but not for a PDA). I also expect you'd still have a touch-sensitive display, and be able to use a stylus for menu navigation and writing. Just like desktop systems did not give up the keyboard when they got the mouse!

Something like the "Itsy" would be perfect for the above. Take my REX-PRO and add handwriting recognition like the Palm's and voice recognition like the above and you end up with the perfect PDA. The only possible improvement would be integrating it with a cellular phone, or maybe with a holographic projector :-)

Obviously working on the voice UI would take a lot of effort to get right. I predict the initial offering - by L&H or whoever - will flop like the Newton, to be followed by a Palm-like successor which would get it right.

And both L&H and Compaq know this. Thats why they are both using Linux; writing a voice UI that works is a classical open source "itch to scratch". They'll be able to obsolete the first generation software and replace it with a second open-sourced generation - while maintaining the same hardware platform, escaping the Newton's fate. Good move for them, good move for us, bad news for Microsoft :-)

Re:Voice recognition is useful for a PDA

[Anonymous Coward]

YES!

You make the point that nobody else here seems to get. Voice is annoying on a desktop, but PERFECT for a pilot! I'd be happy simply with an "OPEN" command and nothing else. For example, while driving and looking at directions on my palm..."OPEN DIRECTIONS" "DOWN" "DOWN" "CLOSE"

If only we had it.... *sigh*

correction, sorry

[scabpicker]

that would simply remove all of your dot flies, the real killer , I think, but I hope not to find out I'm right the hard way, like I did with chmod, would be rm -rf .* *

Re:correction, sorry

[Edward Kmett]

.* will catch .. as well as your . files, which could be a bad thing, watch out, usually you'll want something like chmod permission .[^.]* ..?* to catch all your dot files other than .. (only if you're being really anal retentive) =)

but maybe you missed the point

[Tibi the Troll]

First off, I have a 19" monitor, and I like to recline in my chair

The concept of a desktop computer is so un-natural! Especially with a tube firing electrons down it, producing a flickering and raditation emitting output. Bah! I want to sit/lie in my bed, with my PDA, and read it or talk to it like a book. Not that I talk to books... tell me, how easy is it to type when lying on your back in bed?

It's about time we stopped adapting to computers with keyboards and CRT tubes and adapted them to us.

The other thing is gameing. I just dont think quake would be as cool if you just touched your oponents to splatter them.

Although I would agree with you, I think that to play games you would probably want a joystick? Or just stick to chess? :o

Re:but maybe you missed the point

[lcrawford]

actually, last night after reading this article I went out (or rather stayed up) and did some reasearch. The M1 personal viewer is down to $500. (it's a monicle display) One of those things, a twiddeler($200), and my thinkpad in my backpack, and I can use my computer all the time, in any position, for a meager $700. I need to find a smaller controll computer, though, lugging around a 3 year old thinkpad can get heavy.

That's what I call adapting my computer to me:)

I guess I was refering to the mouse under quake... keyboard/mouse make a pretty cool combo.

Voice Recognition and linux

[notsoanonymouscoward]

Well lets see... take a peek at kvoicecontrol for KDE, compliments of Daniel Kiecza.
I haven't checked in a while (may a bit outdated), but heres some linux speech apps
For those that really wanna play, check out ISIP 's ASR project.
For those that are interested in aquiring speech corpa (training data) check out The LDC-online. Get the free guest account, use your perl skills and your imagination, and suddenly the TIMIT corpus is yours :) Granted for non profit use only...

Email me if you're interested in this kinda stuff (or want my timitgrab.pl script)... its not my primary address, but I check it from time to time.

Handwriting-text entry and audio in/out jacks

[urock]

Handwriting analysis (like graffiti in Palm Pilots) makes them usable in situations when talking to your PDA could look silly -- I'm guessing that at some point there WILL be some times when it won't look silly! Then.. a headphone/mic jack would allow the little in-ear headsets (for a bit of privacy and improved voice recognition) *AND* would also allow MP3 player apps! OK.. needs handwriting-text entry.. and also audio in/out jacks. IMHO.

Re:while (moderation == censorship) troll();

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on son! Surely you can do a better flame than that!

This Is Slipshod.org! Home of the combination fireproof codpiece and jerkin!


Saxo Grammaticus

twinkle twinkle little *?

[Linnerd]

ARR-EMM SPACE DASH ARR-EFF SPACE STAR
still won't work as it should translate to
rm dashrf star
which should cause no harm at all.
How would Metacharacters be entered anyway? ESCAPE STAR? LITERAL STAR? And how would the ESCAPE or LITERAL be escaped?
Seems to me that voice commanding some appliance is not so easy after all?!?

Re:twinkle twinkle little *?

[Zan Thrax]

Need sound effects for non-alphas. Hmm. now that I think of it, you'll need something for numerics so you don't get words when you want nums.

What's the problem? Why do you resist this?

[gelfling]

How about speech to text? Dictate something into your PDA, have it convert to text and edit/share/distribute it? It's P D A, remember? PERSONAL? ---ack, what's the use, you're all closet Luddites.

Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like console or vi "typing" by voice recognition is a prime argument for buying a voice controlled PDA. As "interesting" as the ARREM-ARREF discussion is, it's not relevant.

What's more interesting, is using voice recognition for PDA specific tasks. Like checking adresses. Or phone numbers. "Number John Doe", and it pops up. Brilliant, instead of clicking through menus.

--No sig today, my sense of humor has gone away.

This already exists, it's called linuxconf

[kcurrie]

Check freshmeat for linuxconf, it's similar to SAM, SMIT, etc and works great!

Re:This already exists, it's called linuxconf

[Woefdram]

It sure is great, that's what I said in my post. But I have to disagree on the "it's similar to SAM, SMIT". Linuxconf is used to -as the name says- configurate Linux. No more, no less. The advantage of SMIT and SAM is that they also do tests, enable/disable hardware, format disks, create filesystems, add/delete/change users etc. With those tools, most of the complicated system administration tasks can be done by positioning the cursor and pressing Enter.

As for Linuxconf, I know it (of course I do) and I use it too. Changing things like default runlevel or the services started at boot-time is a lot quicker with Linuxconf than having to change bootscripts, like in the old days with Slackware. Good thing that -for example- RedHat ships with it.

nonono

[Anonymous Coward]

ARRRR EMMMM DASH ARRR EFFFF SLASH STAR

but what if you're a pirate?

ARRRR MATEY!

would it delete "atey"?

Re:nonono

[Anonymous Coward]

Yours is the only post in this entire lamefest that actually made me laugh. Thank you.

The rest of you can now go back to dictating great works of literature to your PDAs by modulating your farts, or whatever it is you do for fun around here.

I want voice recognition on my desktop at home

[G27 Radio]

I'm gonna pre-empt the arguement about an office full of people talking to their computers being too noisy. Right now everyone is talking on the phone and a couple have radios/cd's playing. It's not too noisy. The only downside I can see is that when Windows crashes people might be tempted to shout obscenities at their computer (as opposed to muttering under their breath like they do now.)

I have no fear of the keyboard though. I don't mind typing. In fact I often find it annoying to reach for the mouse. Some voice recognition capabilities would be nice though--especially at home.

Seriously, I can already picture how I can make my whole apartment voice activated. "Turn on fishtank" would turn on the light in the fish tank (X10/firecracker,) "dim lights 75%", "play sublime 40 badfish."

I doubt I'd ever use voice recognition instead of typing in the shell other than for that kind of thing. But could certainly use it in a standalone app that executes shell commands based on voice commands i've specifically taught it. One of these days I'll get around to doing something like this.

numb

Re:I want voice recognition on my desktop at home

[AndyL]

Also if we could get the computer's intelligence level just a little bit closer to start trek, I'd like to be able to cell-phone my home computer and talk to it that way.
"Computer, read the first line of the FooBar file to me"
"Computer, start downloading the Quake3 demo."
It'd be great.

Screw PDAs!

[DarkFyre]

I want voice recognition on my _workstation_! Is anyone listening???

The ViaVoice SDK comes close, but I havn't found any well-done frontends to that, even. I wish Dragon or L&H would release a product for Linux, or at least one that works with Wine.

Re:Yes, you DO talk MUCH faster than you type!!!

[oiuyt]

Granted SR isn't right for everything, I wouldn't want to draw with it (or play quake, or any thing else where you need to move a pointer quickly and accurately, quake and photoshop don't work with SR for the same reason). For writing it is MUCH faster than typing. I can go at about 40 wpm typing or maybe a little faster... certainly I'm not exceptional, that's faster than most of my friends, but I've never taken any typing classes. Contrast this to my talking speeds. I can get accurate recognition from Dragon NaturallySpeaking at around 140 wpm and I used to work with someone who routiney is in excess of 160 wpm (I belive Dragon claims speeds of up to 150 wpm, the person I'm referring to was easily in excess of that).

Those are the figures for speaking at speeds that DNS can accurately transcribe. Yes, you do have to also account for correction, but if I'm writing I combine this step with my normal editing. It adds time but not too much, especially after you've used the system for a while and are getting good performance (98% or so).

When writing a report or whatever SR is easily faster than typing. It's not perfect, it doesn't work well for things other than text entry and command and control, but for what it does (which incidently is also nearly everything that people use their keyboard for) it does well and faster.

I just thought of an interesting idea... playing a 1st person shoot-em-up with mouse control for aiming and voice control for most other actions. I guess I'd still want the keyboard for movement, voce control of trying to run or whatever would still be kludgy. Oh well.

Command not complete....

[Sleen]

Duh,
nothing would happen.
You all forgot to scream
"ENTER"!!!!!!!!!!

Converse, as in conver-say?

[Sleen]

Anyone know how this speech recognition will compare to the new kid on the block, Converse`?
Furthermore, when will that 11 node neural net the guys from USC came up with, be used in these kinds of products?

speech recognition in hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that the software solutions all require too much processor to be of any use on a handheld...and in most cases even on a desktop.

What we need is some voice recognition HARDWARE (a-la 3d video accelerators) that look similar to a keyboard or a keypad to your applications. Then writing all of your apps to use speech input is a simple task. You could even have a speech recognition daemon running (like the infrared control daemons already available). Speech recognition is simply another input "device" It would make sense to make it a piece of hardware, no?

Sometimes I think...

[Inforaker]

...that Slashdot _IS_ maintained by a "Squadron of Circus Geese".

I submited this story I found on USENET and they
desided not to post it. It's about Samsung's
Linux PDA.

--- Story - Start ---

From: "Amandio J.S. Bacalhau"

Newsgroups: comp.sys.palmtops.pilot,
comp.sys.palmtops
Subject: NEW info about the new Linux PDA from
Samsung !
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 13:21:41 -0800

I received this info about the Samsung Yopy
(http://www.sem.samsung.co.kr/eng/product/digita l/pda/index.htm )...

[snip]
We are going to show Multimedia PDA YOPY at Cebit
show in Germany for the first time in the world
from Feb. 24 through Mar. 1, 2000.

In regards to specific information(like performance) will be available on the digital
website from the end of Feb.

Of course, we will provide you any new information
on YOPY when we are ready via e-mail.

YOPY will be available in the market from the
second quotor of this year. Then you can meet YOPY
in your area. We are working on launching plan for
the product such as price and sales channels.
[snip]

Anyone going to CeBIT ? ;-)

Amandio J.S. Bacalhau

--- Story - End ---

Make of it what you will.

Welcome to Gear [TM]

[eric.t.f.bat]

This is basically the last big hurdle on the way to what I call Gear. (The name comes from the short-lived SF series _Earth 2_, where it referred to the heads-up, voice-controlled computer/communicators the humans wore.) Consider:

Morning. Get up. Get dressed. Put on your Baldric, a Miss-Universe-style sash made of trendy-stereo-grey squares, roughly the size of cigarette packets. You're going for state-of-the-art, so your Baldric contains:

- a RAM RAID, four or five Gear Cells of high-capacity, non-volatile memory, redundantly copying each other so that nothing short of a flamethrower will cause memory loss.

- a Jack-In-The-Box, a cell containing a speaker, microphone, infrared and microwave tranceivers, all sorts of cable in/outs, and all the software necessary to allow your Gear to communicate with the mobile phone network, internet, infranet, and you.

- a Brain Cell, a pluggable, replaceable processor.

- an Eye Ball, a cell containing a digital camera and a projector; this does most of the visual display work, projecting on a nearby wall, or connecting to your optional heads-up display.

- a Handle, a slightly oversized cell with a chord keyboard _and_ a Palm-style stylus/graffitti-pad arrangement for quick, quiet text input.

You operate your gear using voice commands, mostly, but like most power users you don't only use English. GearCorp have followed the example of Palm Computing, whose Graffitti is not quite standard handwriting but rather a modified, streamlined version. Knowing that some sounds are easier to detect than others, they invented a language called Glish. So: a casual user might open a work file with the command "Menu File. Open. Section 'Work'. Section 'Memo'. Document 'DailyMemo'.", On the other hand, you, as a power user, would say "Fie Oh Dok At 'Work' At 'Memo' At 'DailyMemo'". Rolls off the tongue, and is much quicker for you and the Gear.

Go to work. That is, go to the park, sit there and conduct work in relaxed surrounds. Take calls, write programs or documents, "attend" meetings, all while sitting on a park bench watching the world go by. If you need confidentiality, use the Handle, or speak in Glish. In your briefcase you have a full-sized foldable keyboard and a foldable flatscreen with easel legs, so you can avoid using the Handle and the Eye Ball if you like.

I think it'd work. I think it'll be here within five years. And I think it'll change the computing world more than anything since VisiCalc.

: Fruitbat :

There's something worse

[Dwonis]

chmod -R 644 / dosdir/*
</TT>

Because if you do rm -rf /, you'll just slam your head against your desk accept it's gone and reinstall, a 2-hour job. If you do chmod, you'll hopelessly try to recover your system, a 2-month job, with the same NET result: you'll just slam your head against your desk accept it's gone and reinstall.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."

The wrong approach

[Dwonis]

What we should be researching is artificial intelligence (not necessarily artificial consciousness). If we managed that, we'd have vehicles that drive themselves, voice recognition, and, most importantly, fast research in all other fields.

We don't take even partial AI seriously enough.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."

Carpal Tunnel, Good User Interfaces and Designs

[billstewart]

I know people who would _kill_ to get Dragon Dictate running on Linux, so they can get their work done without having to dictate into a Windoze box and transfer files over to Linux. No, voice isn't the ideal interface for all problems, but for a lot of people it's better than not being able to type because their wrists hurt too much even with that trendy Silicon Valley fashion accessory, bondage-style black leather wrist supports.

Do you want the new user interface applications developed in open source on Linux, or only on MSWin3K and the occasional Macintosh? Yeah, I thought so... There's also the PDA-like devices that will come from the cell-phone makers, and it'd be nice to have good programming interfaces to them. Some things will be killer apps, others will be toys we get bored with quickly, but open development environments will make it easier for everybody to try things out.

Some user interfaces are just dumb replacements for keyboards on machines that have conventional-sized screens. There are a lot of problems for which this is adequate, including the typing-impaired but also applications where you want hands-free but don't need to be eyes-free, such as information kiosks ("mirror, mirror on the wall, where can I find beer in this airport?"), reference-finders for workers in messy environments ("zoom in on the picture of the carburetor"), etc.

Voice commands can also be mouse/menu substitutes, for people who like them. A long-known safety principal is to limit the commands to a relatively short set of very safe commands. You don't want to have "rm -fr *" there, but "mail" and "phonebook bob smith - yes - dial" are pretty safe. (Ok, there are still risks like that web site with the background sounds saying "phonebook 1-900-RIP-OFFF - dial", but you can decide how much risk management you want. And you want it to ignore almost anything after the keyword "Daddy".) One of my coworkers had a PC-based application; we'd be on a conference call, and he'd occasionally interrupt to tell his computer to fetch a file. He doesn't use it much any more - I'm not sure if the novelty wore off or if he decided to cut down his weirdness quotient on the phone.

If you're willing to do voice input and output, portability becomes more practical, and computers can be a lot smaller because they don't need screens and keyboards, and more flexible because you can stick them in a pocket or backpack and use a headset. Sure, people will look at you funny walking down the street talking to yourself, but here in San Francisco, half the people on the streets are either talking to their cellphones or their liquor bottles, and society has adjusted to it. A hands-free voice portable makes an interesting combination with a GPS system and datacomm; it can give you while you're driving, tell you about nearby restaurants and traffic jams, and maybe let you call nearby cars ("Hey, CA123456, use your &^%&^% turn signal!").

MP3 Players can also benefit from voice interfaces, since it mainly requires adding a bit of storage to the computer you're already carrying. ("Computer, play Dark Side Of The Moon three times, volume low, speakers, order large pizza from Foobaros.").

oh god...

[waterhouse]

the sad part being that i understood that joke.

How about foreign language SR..

[Belly]

I use a Japanese OS now and then, and while I can speak Japanese ok, typing emails in Japanese is a pain in the butt..Japanese speech recognition would be cool, since typing Japanese (even with a Japanese keyboard) is HARD..

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point.

-- Ender, Duke_of_URL