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IBM, TrollTech Integrate Linux Voice Recognition
Paladin128 writes: "Talk about cool technology. Linux may get widespread voice recognition before Windows, as this article mentions that IBM's ViaVoice will be bundled with Qt, and allow the programmers to use BNF to create parsing rules, and bid voice input directly to Qt components via Qt signals and slots. This level of integration evidently wasn't possible with Win32, thus there were performance issues. And since Qt is open source, the GNOME people could easilly find a way to integrate this technology into GTK+. Between adding voice to the handicapped accessability list, offering KDE in more languages than Windows is available in (I don't use GNOME so I can't comment on how it's doing here), and more customization than Windows can ever hope to offer (such as choice of desktops), Linux could really make some waves this year." Just don't mention "rm -rf" when you're near the microphone ...
Let's see, which QT event should I bind *sneeze* to?
Reality checks:
- it's going to take just a few more CPU cycles you have, no matter how many you have
- it's going to take ages to get translated to all these fancy little European languages
- it's going to take longer to tweak up to usability than all those Eterm background pictures
- it's still slower than typing.
Embedded devices, yeah, but they don't have the muscle. And nobody wants to spend hours to teach their coffee machines or garage doors to listen.
We have each other to misunderstand ourselves, the machines don't really care anyway.
Anyway, where's the tarball? This is going to be soo fun. I'll just have to clean up my place so I can convince someone to come over and witness my geeky coolness once it's running...
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
at least part of the problem was that for it to function well it needed a pretty hefty machine for those times.
I remember differently. I had a M100 (w/ decent RAM) at the time and could use it, even though Voice Type was said to be floating-heavy and Cyrices were said to be floating-weak.
It was simply awkward to use, headset and GUI and all.
OK, with a wireless headset and only intended to support the GUI, not replace the mouse, it could be very useful.
Censorship on Slashdot
Scene:-Computer Lab Student: Excuse me, but what is the command for deleting a directory and all its subtrees? Lab Technician: rm -rf Student: Are you sure? Lab Technician: Yes On a serious note, as voice enabled computer technology becomes more common, what standards are there to enable us to seperate computer commands from normal conversation? Do we have to be like ST and prefix everyhting with "computer", or are there more intelligent ways?
KDE and Qt can *never* be forced back to non-free. They're both GPLed. There's no way to undo that. If they tried integrating non-GPL code with Qt/KDE, they'd be violating the GPL. Therefore they have no choice but to release their code under the GPL.
I think you are wrong here. TrollTech is still the copyright holder of Qt. So nothing can stop them from relasing a Qt3 which is closed source again, BUT on the other hand everybody can work on qt 2.2.x and add what he likes. I am sure they (tt) will not do it (relase it under a closed liscence) but who know's perhaps they come up with two qt3--one closed with voice recognition, one open without.
Your example shows why it's not the absence of voice recognition software that is the problem, and why the addition will not make software for the average home user better. A query for the weather is by nature repetitive and fairly predictable. So why didn't the computer know in advance that you might be interested in the weather and have the information waiting for you? The reason as Alan Cooper points out in his book About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design is that computers and software are stupid. The software is written to be stupid, it has no memory, and it has no intelligence. And that's not going to change anytime soon. What people are going to need for computers to become useful as assistants is for the computers to have intelligence approaching assistants. If you look at say the movie 2001, observe the sheer amount of information that HAL required for any of his functioning. Is there any effort for such information sharing in either the commercial or open source environments? No, such sharing is impossible under current licensing restrictions. So we aren't going to have a home computer that understands the simple concept of "weather", requiring any query about the weather to be explictly programmed. Sorry but PCs capable of functioning as information assistants are the flying cars of this generation.
I'm a piano player, and a touch typing coder (~100-105wpm).
I can piano-play a hell of a lot faster than I can type.
How? Simple. PRACTICE! Yes, piano players practice the same piece over and over again when it is of said difficulty. Once you've practiced it enough, it is really easy to play it fast, because your motor memory kicks in.. it really just feels like your hands know where to go, and your brain decides how fast they do it.
Typists (useful ones, anyhow), tend to type different things every day -- this means that motor memory for a particular passage will never, never kick in. When it does (passwords, etc), you can expect 300+ wpm (bursts) from the "average coder".
Oh, and show me the "average piano player" (remember, we were talking about the "average coder") who can sight-read (no motor memory!) a piece at 220 in 4/4 that is solid 16th notes, with two-octave jumps in the right hand, and I'll eat my hat.
I still have a hard time believing that the "average coder" types 170wpm. I'm a pretty friggin' good coder, and I know how to type -- been doing it for over 15 years -- and 100 wpm seems to be several standard deviations above the mean.
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Restaurants have this system call Squirrel that lets them input orders and it maintains the bills. Two of the common complaints with the touch screen interface is that the servers, who use the system, find it unintuative, and often have their hands full. This sounds like you can make a system where they just have to say "Table 13, burger with fries, philly steak no onions, 2 cokes", and it would do alright. Servers tend to have their own lingo for the meals they serve, and the system could understand them, in list format, with the exceptions. You wouldn't expect the populous to deal with such a system, but a server would pick it up quickly, and they could do it while clearing away dishes.
-no broken link
I wonder if it is possible to get repetitive stress injures from speaking to your computer all day?
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The company I work for sued someone for just that. It was destruction of company property - just because you worked on it doesn't mean you own it.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
I hope you're not implying that it is useless though.
Having voice as the sole or primary means of input and interaction is obviously a poort coice for power users but having more means of input is usually a good thing. How about being able to send voice commands to apps not in your (typing) focus? Being able to not be required to sit at your computer and walk around via (wireless) mic. You could get exercising in while still doing "work"!
Not to mention my mother who types about 10 wpm. Not everyone is as leet and skilled as you and the bubble of people you know.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
No, you don't. That's why you should be using a real keyboard, like the Sun Microsystems Type 5c, which has the control key beside the A key, and the escape beside the one.
And wrt emacs baiting: I guess you guys aren't smart enough to use meta-x global-set-key, huh?
And no, you don't have to move your fingers off the home row to use the meta on a real keyboard, either -- that's what the escape key is for.
Yeesh.
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
First, I was wrong about the standard keyboard. She only used Dvorak.
Second is this quote: "In 1938...Blackburn first laid hands on a Dvorak keyboard. In only a few years her speed was up to 138 words per minute."
In 1938 this keyboard was clearly mechanical, thus 138 is a mechanical speed. From context it sounds like she never switched to electric so 150/170 are also mechanical speeds.
As for your claim: "A good mechanical typrwriter is a match for a good keyboard."
Have you ever even used a mechanical typewriter? FULLY mechanical? As in it doesn't plug into the wall at all? You are probably thinking of "mechanical" electric keyboards (i.e. dedicated typewriters not attached to a computer, but nonetheless electrically powered). REAL mechanical typewriters are VERY hard to type with.
An electric only requires you to close a relay and then the machine does the work of striking the paper. A mechanical requires you to impart enough force to strike the arm against the paper (a distance of several inches) AND lift the ribbon (and if you are shifting, you have to lift the weight of the carriage with your other pinky). The difference is incredible. I remember as a child trying to learn to type with my mother's mechanical typewriter. I had to quit because I couldn't press the keys hard enough. When I played with an electric in the store I was astounded at the tiny amount of force I needed to use to make the keys go. Also keep in mind that a mechanical requires you to wait for the arms to move out of the way (can also be a problem on the electric, but the distance is smaller) but a computer keyboard has no problem with that.
Conclusion: You made a foolish initial statement that you can no longer sustain.
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
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That's why I bought a Soundblaster Live
They've been planning this for years, ever since IBM came out with speech recognition integrated with OS/2 V4 around 1995. They called it WHISPER, for "Windows Highly Advanced Speech Recognition". As usual, MS was far better at inventing marketing terms than creating software.
I agree - voice recognition opens lots of new possibilities when you start thinking beyond simple dictation. If the OSS community does get to play with this stuff, I think we can look forward to some really funky toys cropping up.
Being able to use your computer without sitting in front of it would be great fun (especially if you do manage to rig the house for sound). You could do a whole bunch of stuff before you even get out of bed - call work (using your computer's voice-modem) to say you can't be bothered to go in today, get today's news headlines, play a few rounds of Internet VQuake (a new FPS based entirely on voice commands)...
It would also be handy while you're at the computer, if you're using the keyboard and mouse for other things. Voice commands could be used to trigger a range of macro commands, and would be much easier to learn than cryptic keyboard shortcuts. Sure, it wouldn't replace common easy-to-learn shortcuts like Ctrl-C - but it could give the keyboard a run for its money with things like 'Font: Helvetica 14pt'.
I bet it could work really well with the Gimp too - it always takes me ages to find which menu the script-fu effect I'm after is on, and being able to change brush tools without moving the mouse (or knowing the keyboard shortcut) would be handy.
-- Andrem
There has been a major scientific break-in
Of course, there are CMU Sphinx, FestVox, and Festival available under truly open source licenses. http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/
of functionality that is.
1) no training is included, you must pay for that
2) none of the word recognition code is included
You would be better off starting from scratch. Who knows if/when they will release these "extra" features without the large price tag.
This is very similar to what Troll Tech did with the OpenGL widgets in QT, i.e. not release them in the GPL versions.
So beware, and investigate the RELEASED features before wasting your time.
I would have followed this statment with "there are no computer languages and programming tools that are designed with voice recognition in mind". As VR becomes more commonplace, I'm sure we will see better tools and languages that will take full advantage of all this. Also, if you have VR, your code will change. You will no longer have "int c" but "int count" and other longer, more descriptive names (that I try to do, but int c just comes out).
-no broken link
My next step was to go wireless, but if I can go two way wireless even better!
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I have come to the conclusion that you are a classic /. troll. You are the weakest link...Goodbye!
GiraffeSville, a place anyone can call home
Anyone who has tried to figgure out what I'm saying on /. can't wait for me to get VR. My spelling is horrid at best, VR solves that problem. Who knows, I might even have a point worth reading once in a while - I've been moderated up a couple times anyway.
Spelling has always been my weak point. I like to think that I have good ideas despite that weakness. VR would solve the spelling and fat fingers problem.
Lovely. I can't wait to hire a bozo like you in the future...
Learn from your parents' mistakes: use birth control.
And BitchX for windows is the same as BitchX for linux, only difference is that it runs in a window and not at a console.
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Partly on topic, partly off - I was wondering if there has been any progression in the last 10 or so years with computer generated speech.
My amiga 500 back in 1988 came with a speech program. Now, 10 years down the road I have yet to hear ANY computer generated speech that is mildly better or more realistic.
Frankly, all computer generated speech that I have heard sounds quite terrible. Is there any development going on in this are to make it a bit more human-like?
GiraffeSville, a place anyone can call home
I am a "handicap person" (a physically disabled person is what I assume you mean)--I can type at at best five words per minute--but I am certainly a "coder" [a professional software developer]. I do not make a lot of money, nor do I manage to work incredibly quickly (significantly slower than most able-bodied workers), but I manage (due largely to the largesse of the Australian government admittedly, but I hope that will change).
Please don't forget that large (-ish; let's be realistic!) group of people that I represent.
(Incidentally, I am quite excited at the prospect of, once appropriate voice recognition software becomes available, returning to using a Unix-like OS like Linux!)
[This comment may sound rather peeved; please note that I mean no disrespect to you personally! I understand how easy it is to forget about users like me... I did so for many years!]
Cheers, Chris
...does this new code integration mean that Debian will have to move KDE into non-free again? I never see the licence issues with this discussed (this stuff was announced before). ViaVioce is not Free Software. So, how do they plan to solve this?
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Yes, VR is overrated... unless you don't have any hands. Or even if you've only got one hand. Or if you've got arthritis. And so on.
It's true that VR is not much use for able-bodied coders, but it is useful for able-bodied letter writers who don't type so fast.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Voice *recognition* would be great for replacing the mouse as a selector tool. A lot of people only use the mouse to select menu items or highlight windows to accept input. It sure would be nice to not have to take my hands off the keyboard to do some of these things.
*type type type*
Bold on
*type type type*
Mail window
*check mail*
Read....Reply
*type type type*
--
MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
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Isaac Asimov also published 600+ books in his career - it's not as if he didn't get practice.
I think he also used a manual typewriter. So how did he not get carpal tunnel? I'd have been scared to shake hands with the guy.
Well, actually I had a few profs who'd mastered speaking in a monotone as well... I should of recorded thier lectures and used speech recog to create lecture notes! *D'OH*
;o)
Current student: try this...let us know if it works!
The point wasn't that they weren't available, but that they don't come bundled with Windows.
Not even randomly? That must be pretty lame, when all you have to do is just mash a bunch of keys at once and let the rollover do its job.
BTW, as others have noted, the standard conversion is 1 word=5 characters. 16 cps works out to 192 wpm, which is lower than what some people here have been saying is the record.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I once Installed dragon naturally speaking on the family pc. I trained it to shutdown windows everytime I said Hey Laura, and it would shut down windows on her. She never figured it out until I was telling some freinds a few years later when she was around. boy was she mad.Thats all I have to say about that.
Visit http://www.techcomedy.com/for a few good laughs
not as i understand it... this was fairly early software, done on a pc with a standard (ie non-headset) microphone... so its recognition was still primitive, and didn't have fancy noise filtration built into it... and you might realize that "SHUTDOWN" isn't a valid DOS command... at least, not in any version that i've used
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09
I actually find it useful for two conditions - when I'm tired and when I've had a few drinks. Which isn't to imply I'm a drunk or anything :)
Seriously, I find my typing goes noticeably downhill and becomes a serious effort under those conditions, but the dictation (Dragon NaturallySpeaking, FWIW) still works fine. If I need to send an e-mail or something, it's just easier.
It's not something I use most of the time but it's something I'm very glad to have around.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Oh honestly now, just as people go to their distro's FTP to get Linux packages to download and install, Windows users goto FTP's to get programs to download and install.
www.easywarez.com happens to be a VERY nice warez, err uh, windows programs FTP listing. Heck, you mean to tell me that Photoshop COSTS money?
(Just kidding, bought mine with a student discount, it's actualy not priced half bad, and it IS worth it, you have a little something called plug-ins that totaly rock. Yes you can do great art work in Linux, but its easier to find tutorials of how to do great artwork in Windows, let that be a lesson to ya, until its on Geocities, it isn't popular!)
Seriusly now, with open source being what it is (open source and all) you can go to the same FTP's you got the Linux programs on, download'em and recompile (if somebody hasn't already done that for you.)
Oh yah, and if your worrying about the quality of your IRC client, then you spend FAR to much time on IRC, shit, don't waste your time, watch for Anime instead!
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I can give one fabulous example - AutoCAD - that uses modifiable mouse pads. You've got a central drawing area on your tablet, and then you've got a huge number of areas outside this, where you can stick functions, and assorted pre-drawn pieces. This 'template' area can be changed at will.
Another (lesser) example is the good old MVS system. Your function keys vary depending where you are. Kinda nice, really, although I tend to drastically reprogram mine. Thus PF20 (Same as PF8, Page Down, by default) gets reprogrammed as 'Next' for one app (SDSF), 'Find not'blank' 8' in Edit (goes to next paragraph) and so on.
Crap, just what windows doesn't need, more bloat.
I'm against speech reconization anyways, it's far to iffy. Oh yah, and incase no-one has noticed yet.
_______________IT DOESN'T WORK____________________
Shit folks, in the time it takes to teach a computer to understand your voice (somewheres around until hell freezes over) you can learn to type.
With your feet.
blindfolded.
While playing Classical Music with your hands.
Get the point? Voice reconization does not work, at all! The error rate is about 70%, and thats during training. Shit, it says for me to say the word so it can learn, and then it complains that I didn't say it right. I SAID IT RIGHT, *YOU* LEARN IT! Those things are useless! Can't someone work on something usefull, it would have been better to get firewire working, or implement USB2.0 support (ahead of time you know, as in, before its already established in the market!)
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Pray tell, what OS does Dragon work on?
/. stories. ie:
Or are you comparing apps included for free with Windows, versus apps included with Linux, in which case you can make one hundred more
Linux has IRC, Windows doesn't.
Linux has a Photoshop 3.0 clone, Windows doesn't.
Linux has a lame space strategy game, Windows doesn't.
Linux has vi, Windows doesn't.
I used to think this too, until I was asked to work on a prototype palmtop app that used "voice recognition" to drive the interface. After searching around, the industry seems to think differently than you and I on these definitions. It's my opinion that if everyone else defines something differently, then I'm wrong, even if the dictionary agrees with me (then I and the dictionary are wrong).
-no broken link
I disagree, when RSI's are epidemic in the valley.
Your choice: voice control (slower than typing), or permanent nerve damage.
....Score: -1 (TrollTech)
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
[alt-e] s stupidity [tab] intelligence [return]
actualy, its shorter.
(three esoteric buttons instead of 5, 4 buttons if you count alt-e as two, but I hit'em at the same time so it takes just as long.)
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
While it kinda sucked at dictation, within a few hours it was PERFECT at desktop navigation.
The OS/2 version of netscape was VOICE ENABLED. IF you saw a link on a page that was a word, you could speak the word and the browser went to that page. VERY COOL. Nice to be able to surf like that while typing elsewhere!
Oh yeah...this was all on my 486/66.
The only drawback I can see is if they would make the thing require the KDE environment to be running. When I upgraded to 2.0, I was apalled at the resources that thing wasted. Several processes all eating up 5+ MB of memory...for what??? KMail doesn't even let me drag attachments into it for crying out loud!
While I'm off topic here, I might as well mention that I found the perfect alternative to the K-Desktop environment: Windowmaker + ROX. Try it. You'll like it. Very light. Very fast. Very functional. Nothing gets in your way.
I have actually seen 140 WPM on a standard keyboard mechanical typewriter (with the ding at the end of the line and the bar for the carriage return). My great uncle was an electrical engineer/lawyer for a defense contractor and routinely typed 100+ page documents.
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe
GiraffeSville, a place anyone can call home
The first step to my dream home is an invisible stereo system embedded in the house. The server could be stuck into some closed off closet while all my speakers are flat panel picture frames covered by paintings. Where does VR play into this? If voice recognition technology were to take off, dreams of invisible interfaces could finally come true. The last manifestation of this setup I had was a mic plugged into a Wintel Box using Game Commander to control Winamp. Now, imagine if Linux were to have VR built in (Linux was always the better OS for intelligent appliances, anyway), all of a sudden I have the entire Open Source community supporting my invisible stereo system - and documentation so that anyone in the world can set one up. And also, it's about interfaces and menu choices. Instead of a tree-like file structure, the new file-structure can be a single-folder structure since we now have a full vocabulary to access an infinite amount of choices with. i.e. - GUI's have to branch out into multiple click systems because we don't have an infinite amount of desktop spaces or buttons on our mice. Instead of clicking four times to access a program in KDE, we can now simply speak the program's name. I'm not asking you to throw away your keyboard and mice (hell, how're we going to play quake?), simply think about efficient accessibility of our machines. Fit that in with natural language processing and now my grandma can use a computer! Trust me, though you think our world is technological advanced enough, your faith in humanity is blind. I've recently watched a roomful of my peers (a 13th grade class full of... I guess 18-19 year olds) unsuccessfully try to master the "Hyperstudio" program. Believe me, the program was an easy-to-use typical windows program.
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...
There's also the constraint of pressing each note in strict timing: your computer doesn't care if each key-press exactly follows a quarter note rhythm at 200bpm - it allows you a considerable degree of rubato. So if a typist with good co-ordination between their hands you should easily be able to out-do a pianist.
-- Andrem
There has been a major scientific break-in
Alm you sing it write now and it worse reel grate. ICANN even yews splash dot now. Whoopee!
Sorry to bother you with this but how the Hell do you focus on a given widget with a voice recognition system ?
Do you just say "<TAB>" ?
I don't really like it.
If I type quicker than I speak and I want to replace my mouse with voice recognition, which is IMHO the only interesting way to exploit it, then I might want to focus on a different text zone using my voice but then, I might have problem deciding which word to connect to which action, isn't it?
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
Not to mention the interferences with other people. I wouldn't be able to concentrate when my colleague would start talking to his computer. And there are a lot of symbols you need when programming that have such long names that you type them in about a tenth the time it takes to name them. "left angle bracket" for example ...
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
I've known people with 100+ wpm skills. Isaac Asimov claimed to type faster than he could talk and said this was about 100 wpm. And when I took typing in HS (for which I got a D, btw) our teacher (who was more excited about typing then I am about sex) went on and on about some championship she attended where the winner achieved 200+ wpm.
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MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
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As i saw, there are a lots of comments on now useless is speech recognition for coders. Of course it is. Voice recognition is made for secretaries, writers, housewifes and handicap persons, not for coders. Of course it wount interpret your speech in comand line (imagine yourself in someones eyes dicating vi commands). Idea is ti make computers easy to use for non-computer literate persons.
I'm dislexic. Not just a little either. Had to ride the short bus the school for six years. I have an extremely hard time spelling anything right. Spell checkers that don't have the correct spelling for me are worthless (thanks aspell!)
I don't find Unix names all that hard. They are short. Easy to memorize. I don't have trouble with three letter words. I do when we hit five.
So don't you go changing /etc to some damn thing I can't spell
worth a damn in my name!
For example, use the Star Trek test. They've got very powerful computers (nevermind that they can be infected with weird space-borne contaigons), but what do they use voice controls for? Asking questions, controlling their environment, etc. When they need to program a new subroutine for the deflector dish, though, they use the keyboard.
Which brings up another question: Has anyone done any serious investigation into context-modifiable keyboards? My understanding on Star Trek is that their keyboards change their layouts depending on who's there, and what they're doing. I've always thought something like that would be fantastic, say, for switching into Quake or a flight sim -- make your keyboard LOOK like a control panel, so you don't have to remember that "." is strafe or whatever...
As for voice control, I'd really like to be able to control house systems (see my ÜberTiVo posting under the Set Top Box thread). To say "Play 1812" and have the system start playing it for me. Or "Where's my dinner?" and have the computer tell me to cook it myself (hey, gotta be realistic here). Or to just start rambling on, stream-of-conciousness, in a rant or rave about what's really annoying or cool, so I can edit it down to a letter later. That is what I think we need, and it's more on the application side than on the OS side.
Of course, we may already have good solutions for this, I just haven't been able to play with them yet... :(
Or you're setting up an onboard computer in your car, and you want to be able to control it by talking while you drive... :)
What I want to see is a Windows and Linux version of IRCle. IRCle kicks ass over any Windows or Linux IRC client you want to throw at me. It's a "classic" MacOS program. I wonder if someone's working on a Cocoa or Carbon version of it....
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Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
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http://www.msgeek.org/ -- Because you can't keep a geek grrl down!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Read about the pain Ben Wing, the architect of XEmacs, goes through, and you might change your mind. If it only helps one person, it's worth the effort.
let me clarify on my previous statement - to the bozos who were alarmed by my posting:
I didn't want their creepy fingers prying into my files - allow me to add that these were my own personal files, and copies of remote CVS repositories. I destroyed nothing that was of any value to the employer, they were going to wipe the drive and install NT anyways.
- passion
Replace all just replaces all occurrences. It assumes that you meant to do what you're doing.
...}
I only use R/A when I'm doing large regexp replaces. That happens often enough, though, that I learned the keyboard shortcuts to do it quickly. (Why, you ask, would any programmer do that, seeing as how it's rather dangerous? The particular piece of code I was working on when I learned the trick contained a number of rather large tables of the form
{Name, CONST_, "Name", ,
where it was easy to create a list of the Name fields. That's the kind of thing that old vi-warriors know calls for regexp replace all.)
Umm... sorry, but MacOS has had integrated speech with scripting for a LONG time, and it is easy to use because most apps use the appletalk API which in turn integrates speech. I use it all the time at home, and it is very nice for things that voice would do naturally: open an app, issue commands, etc. Line command is still faster, though.
So no, this isn't a killer app, else Mac would be 50% or more of the market.
However, if this were FREE (beer and speech) and integrated into Gnome and KDE, then that would be Yet Another Reason To Switch To Linux.
I said appletalk when i mean applescript. oops.
Applescript is very cool, btw: it is like an EASY linux line command!
A whole note is four beats long in 4/4 time.
I think he was making a pun, since Gnomes logo is a foot, it follows it is easier to use your feet/toes with gnome...
I posted above, but this is even more appropriate:
APPLESCRIPT does this. You make a VERY easy applescript/macro (you can either write it as a shell script with very easy but powerful syntax.... or you can 'record a macro' and input commands) and then run it via your voice.
I have set up scripts that go to X location and then had the computer read it back to me.
This is nothing new, again the Mac has already done, WITH a good interface, what people say, "Hey, in 5 years it would be cool to do X."
I agree that apple needs to stress that macs can DO such things... kinda like applescript is the equivalent of shell scripting and line command, but most linux bigots don't see that because they don't use macs.
Of course, I am a linux bigot: I want the line command power of a SERVER OS like linux, with the ease of use and powerful interface of the Mac.
I just wish apple would OSS OSX eventually... I think OSX is the direction that Gnome should go in, not a ripoff of a crappy interface (windows).
I think it is definately overrated if you look as it as a replacement for the keyboard/mouse but it holds a lot of promise as an enhancement.
There are many times when I use the mouse to do something that slows down what I am doing dramatically (I hate taking my hands off the keyboard). The mouse is natural for very visual tasks such as selecting sections of text or editing images but is slower for navigating a desktop etc. Think of VR tied in with a pager.
It would be pretty sweet to be typing away and tell the computer to do things in the background so that they're ready when you are.
I can see it now -
"Check Slashdot" "Top Story" "Reply" "First Post - I RULEZ" "Submit"
Anyway, I don't see VR replacing the keyboard anytime soon but with some imagination (and a lot of code) it may finally take the desktop out of the 90's.
everyone here is knocking voice recognition as useless. Well, I'm here to say that it is not.
I used OS/2. Version 4 came with a version of voice recognition, and I ran it on a 100MHz Pentium with only 32Meg RAM. It ruled in the proper place.
First, the system is good for first drafts of text documents like long reports. Don't expect to get a perfect copy the first time through. The output from the voice input will require some cleanup. But guess what, so does anything I type.
Very few people type anything close to 80wpm. I only get around 40. Voice type allowed around 100wpm. For those l337 haX0rz that can type and think that everyone should be able to...go out and see the sun every now and then!!
I would write up my report in note form, basically just outlining what I wanted to say. Anything that I had to quote got a reference to the text I would quote from. Then I locked the bedroom door to keep out noise from wife and kids, gathered my notes and references around and started talking. An hour later I had the first draft of a ten page report. I've spent 4 doing it manually.
You may not have a need for it, but if you're in school or any other place where you have to produce long reports and you don't type with flaming fingers, then voice input can be a real boost to productivity.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I'd keep a copy of Qt around if this happens. I just hope it runs on FreeBSD, I'm not going back to linux just so I can talk to my workstation.
Now I will need to design a Qt-based WM which supports dual-focus, so that I can have keyboard focus on one window, and voice focus on another... Then I can talk while I type and get work done twice as fast.
Oh, yeah, Windows has dragon, like some other poster said, but it isn't integrated.
A new year calls for a new signature.
Dave: "Open the pod bay doors, HAL"
HAL: "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that..."
flounder
I don't like
Some thoughts:
1) Just having the technology isn't enough. Projects currently exist that integrate ViaVoice with voice command-and-control on linux (xvoice, at http://xvoice.sourceforge.net/ for instance). The thing is, unless someone goes through and integrates the technology with the environment, it won't really be usable. For instance, ask anyone who actually uses voice control how practical it is to try to control a computer without a correction window available at every point.
2) That having been said.... If they actually do go through and make a usable integration out of this, it would be a great thing. I personally know several people who have RSI to the point that they can't type and/or mouse for more than 5 minutes without pain. All of these people _have_ to use Windows 95 (!not even NT!) for now--voice command and control on Linux just isn't far enough along right now. (Actually, since all of the companies that make voice recognition software for Windows (Dragon/L&H, IBM) have chosen to go after the dictation market instead of tailoring their tools for hands-free usage, it's barely adequate on Windows...)
3) If you want an idea of how important this is, imagine that you hurt your hands such that you could neither type nor mouse, or even lift medium-weight objects (and it can happen). Then imagine that on top of that, you were forced to use Windows to cope with your disability...
-allen
170 characters per mintue is SLOW. That's less than 3 characters per second. Think about it, and quit talking out of your ass.
--
Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I wonder when are they going to implement a secure access trough voice recognition. IMHO it could be much more secure as the 'UberRoot' access, leaving less power to the other super-users. But it's just a thought.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
However, this is something new - as far as I know, new to any OS, ever. Integrated voice recognition... something I've wanted for years, and a feature that your 'average Joe' can get excited about. Don't look at me like that, you've all seen users go 'Oooh! Look at that!' at the latest Windoze animations, or get all excited about the ******* paperclip in Office. They need something to catch their attention - this could be just what Linux needs to break the mainstream market.
Just remember 1-2-3... it doesn't take something amazing, just something noone else has done yet.
If your concern is beating Windows, then you'd better hope they hurry really quickly, because Whistler will ship with native voice support built-in.... probably this year.
As for what that means performance-wise, I have no idea at this point. We'll just have to wait and see.
-
The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Doesn't the newer versions of bash do this?
no it was mac old macs = tall toaster old apple ][ = electric typewriter w/ tv new macs = see thru pcs new pcs = ugly macs rs6000 = pretty cool looking sgi numa setup = really cool looking
European vaccuum cleaner = iMac = George Foreman's Lean Mean Fat Burning Machine
Cheers,
DWIM originally appeared in Interlisp for DEC 36-bit machines. It was a terrible idea. Despite claims to the contrary in the documentation, sometimes it would destroy work by misinterpreting something. I once typed "EDIT" while in a mode where "EDIT" wasn't permissible, and DWIM typed "=EXIT", throwing me out of Interlisp without saving. DWIM was too closely tuned to the typing error patterns of its originator.
To do this right, a corrector needs information about the potential consequences of what it is doing. For example, knowing whether something is easily undo-able is crucial.
Like I said, I don't really have much use for Replace All. :)
--
Although it's not very hard to type pretty fast in an alphabetic script, it's a lot harder in chinese. The fastest you can get at the moment basically requires a special type of keyboard, one with all 200-odd radical components of characters on, and you type all the components that are in the character you want, and the software works out which character that is.
However, this technology is reportedly very hard to learn, and not at all widespread. Most people who type chinese characters use software where you type the sound of the character (in the roman alphabet) and it gives you a list of characters to pick from.
Chinese speech recognition could be much better than this. It could pick up on the tones a speaker uses much better than the roman alphabet can, and it wouldn't require them to know a foreign script.
This is all in theory though. I don't know how good the software out there is at the moment. There are over 1,000,000,000 people who can read chinese characters, but not many of them have a computer.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
I tried ivan, a little guy that you talk to that surfs the web for you. It pretty much sucks right now, few web sites support it. IBM's Viavoice is difficult to remove from windows once it's on there.
Moving at the speed of government.
If it was has primitive as you say then how could it recognize some random persons voice commands shouted from a distance? FFT aren't "new" technology by the way.
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
People may *say* they type 140 wpm, but that's actually extremely fast, and when you're coding, you're using a lot of top-row special characters, which tend to slow even skilled typists down. And remember, actual typing speed = wpm - errors.
Try this test, folks. Time yourself. Do a typing test and subtract the errors you make from your score. My guess is that most of us won't get anywhere near 140 wpm. I touch type and I still only max out at about 70 wpm - and that's when I'm typing notes like this, not coding.
I still haven't decided how I feel about voice recognition, but 60-140 seems like a tremendously inflated speed range to me.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I don't know how IBMVV works, but you could always just provide events and let people dictate their own words; When something sounds close enough, it matches. I used to have a telephone that stored ~100 numbers, and you could pick up and say things like "I want a pizza" - But of course, you had to teach it first.
--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
can anyone confirm this? even if it's not true though, it makes for a fun story :)
-----
09
I had ViaVoice for a while. For coding it is pretty worthless because you have to switch to the military alphabet to do most variable names, and lots of keywords, and unix commands, and....
It did Ok for email messages, and was pretty allright for web browsing. Then again a good optical mouse with the scroolwheel is almost as good, and not that bad on my RSI.
If integrated in the UI it would probbably be useful for lots of things where you have to look over a button panel before deciding what to "click" on. I look forward to seeing it work, but doubt it will allow a whole lot more hands-off use. Er, let me clarify, it won't make hands-off as effecent as hands-on. People that can't use their hands, or shouldn't may well get a lot out of it.
Besides, it's just palin cool.
is much quicker to type, than using the mouse to:
Edit|Search and Replace
Search "stupidity", Replace "intelligence"
And the syntax highlighting in vim is much cooler than anything I've seen in a GUI editor.
"That fat, dumb, and bald guy sure plays a mean hardball."
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
First off, I say this with no hostility or sarcasm, I am sorry that dyslexia has affected you or someone you know.
However, why should I as a user type Configuration instead of etc?
Feel free to write your own distro with aliases if you need to.
If you NEED long friendly names, most of the world has heard of an alternative OS called Windows. It prob even came preinstalled on your computer!
What you are asking is for the bloat to be removed, yet you insist that others suffer with the bloat of longer names that accomodate your disability.
This is equivalent to saying "No I don't just want every building to have wheelchair ramps, I want EVERYONE to have to cruise around in a wheelchair, just like me, damn it! Its just not fair!"
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
1st Law Of Networking: Loose ends are bad, termination is good.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
just wondering
-----
09
Sounds like this person wants windows......... If you want someone to think for you Im sure Bill Gates will........
That said, I've had the opportunity to work with code that was written based on the 'per line' model. My Gawd, I've never seen so much empty space!
But yeah, keyboards rock, especially if you like macros. One combo, and 50 keystrokes get played out ...
I did have one real problem when I tried to implement that kind of efficiency in DragonSpeak. Started subbing one and two syllable words for multi-syllabic, and for frequently occuring phrases. Terible when that carries over into everyday conversation! The worst part is, I've discovered there were others who do the same thing, with the same consequences.
The best general style for using speech recognition is still for word processing ... first draft dictated, then go through with keboard to edit. (The cat prefers the first part, but the second interferes with lap time ;)
In 1981, Barbara Blackburn, from Salem, achieved 150wpm for 50 minutes (yes, minutes) on a mechanical typewriter. It's in the Guinness Book of Records.
n .h tml
http://sominfo.syr.edu/facstaff/dvorak/blackbur
And *I* will say *this* again: I know for an absolute, 100% fact that the world champion typist in the late 80's was at or near 200 words per minute.
200 cpm is pretty lame. Given an average 5 chars/word, that's only 40 wpm. Check the classifieds for typists/secretaries. Note the speeds being asked for. Minimum 40, usually 50, often 60 words per minute.
Instead of coming back with responses like "I just don't see..." or "I can't possibly believe..." why not go find a link that lists fast typing speeds as either wpm or cpm?
--
MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Use your imagination here, nobody said you have to use it for dictation. I'd like to set up my own HAL-style computer with a few microphones throughout the house and program it to open xmms and play a song or control lights and possibly other appliances. Even better, allow it to take remote voice commands, so I could call my computer from my cell phone and tell it to start making coffee or run apt-get update.
In any case, there are a million and one cool things you can do with voice recognition (well, until your HAL-9001 tries to kill you and you end up dead or on another plane of evolution, whichever comes first), and I'm sure the ideas I have right now are just the tip of the iceberg.
My other
Worse, I can barely do anything without some tangerine dream or similiar going. I think I've pavlov'd myself by doing this for 10 years or so. Luckily it just jerks me into the Zone rather than making me salivate :)
But since I wear earphones, I could still use voice recognition. Using it for coding is highly dubious though. Maybe navigation and window manager stuff. But alas I fear that the environments we use aren't architectrually simple enough, integrated enough, and semantically described enough to make this work well.
Now all that needs to happen is an open source voice enablement. Voice enabled Apache anyone?
I can speak faster than I can type.
If I can have my speech recognized *accurately* then I can gain in productivity.
Real world proof are the articles of Charles W Moore at www.macopinion.com and www.applelinks.com
He creates all his articles using iListen for Macintosh.
If I can do the same with my linux boxen, then this is a dramatic leap forward for me.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Network Security: It always comes down to a big guy with a gun.
Consider blind people for a minute. Think about how difficult it is for a person who cannot see to select menu items when doing so largely involves listening to the system name off each menu item. Being able to say "spell check" would be a wonderful time saver for blind people.
And why shouldn't Linux based systems be designed for accessibility? There are many intelligent people for whom the keyboard and mouse requirement is a major obstacle to using computer systems. Programming and system administration tasks are mostly mental tasks, not physical tasks.
As far as questioning the intelligence of executives who greenlight this kind of R&D, you might want to consider that even if very few people can use this kind of software, the companies still gain in potential service contracts ("We just hired this great guy to set up our new-fangled accounting system, but he has a nerve disease that makes it difficult for him to use the keyboard...fortunately, this company has done work in this area and they'll be able to help things work"). They also gain in the community relations.
You don't have to spend hours training you coffee machine.
For that, all you need is command recognition. It's orders of magnitude simpler than dictation and can be done with little or no training.
Listen to ViaVoice's recordings of what it thinks you've said when playing with its correction feature and you'll see just how hard a job transcribing complete, dictated continuous speech with a wide vocabulary really is. Even deciding where one word ends and another begins is far from simple - but that sort of problem is so myuch simpler with a limited vocabulary and no continuous speech requirement. Both of which can be done with that sort of device.
I agree about coughing and, erm, well, thinking, er about what you, er, were trying to say. I always found I needed fair presence of mind to get something readable (especially if formal) down on the page. If you think the above is exaggerated, try dictation software and you'll see what I mean.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Well, I stand corrected. After looking again it seems the widgets are there.
Thanks for pointing that out.
How would you get any work done in this sort of environment?
Use for handicapped people is a great application, though.
It isn't "rm -rf", it is "R M SPACE DASH R F SPACE FORWARD SLASH"
So? There is still a relatively small set of similar queries to be done in Joe Average's life, so even if this has to be explicity programmed, it would still be incredibly useful, and wastly more useful than actually walking over to the computer and click on an icon or write something on the command line.
If I had moderator points, I would have modded the original comment high.... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Yes, IBM did include voice dictation and navigation with Warp v4 (1996) and yes, it didn't go too far, but at least part of the problem was that for it to function well it needed a pretty hefty machine for those times. IIRC, a P-100 with 32MB was the official minimum requirement, but most people agreed that at least twice the Mhz and RAM were really need to make it acceptable. But Microsoft managed to kill off OS/2 long before entry-level hardware met these requirements.
Bummer.
What I would give for a computer in the trunk of my car, and a microphone so I can yell "KITT, WHAT TIME IS IT?" and I hear "it is 7:30am sir, what the hell are you doing up this early?". Then I could go back to bed since I simply wouldn't be able to sleep without talking to it every few hours.
yeah, it is cool, you just won't admit it
Klowner
And you're assuming that there is only one possible bpm value. 4/4 time only signifies that there are four quarter notes per measure. The time you assume equates to 216 bpm. This value is decided by the composer.
Jesus saves and takes half damage.
170 words per minute is defenetely a rare typing, ;) ...and then it starts again...
but it is possible. Take the manual for an old
typewriter - it can handle a maimum of 12 characters per second. Then came the electrical
typewriter - that's a bit more... You keyboard is
most probably cannot handle more then 15 chars
per sec, but there are special keyboards for the
fast-typers. And there is DVORAK
Leonid Mamtchenkov
Voice Recognition is could be overrated, but not for the reasons you outline. The primary motivation for VR is not to help "administrative assistants" create documents faster or easier. VR is great for applications like Misterhouse, which controls X11 devices and things around a house. You can say stuff like, "Read the Slashdot news" and your computer can recognize that and use the Festival text to speech engine to read it to you.
VR will be used for this and accessibility. You won't see typists flock to this technology.
Dave
I went to school with a guy who is *still* looking forward to the day when Windoze WP's can keep up with his typing. When I first met him, he typed about 140 words per minute. The usual 'cliteky-click' of typing we all hear was more like a quiet buzz for him. He had to take breaks every few minutes so that the old 9in Mac he was using could catch up with him and he could look for errors.
The keyboard was fast enough to keep up with him, but the WP software itself wasn't. Go fig...
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Some years ago there was a programmable keyboard made by Siemens (and probably a bunch of other companis, but that's the one I saw) that had a little LCD display in every key. The LCD's resolution was pretty crappy (8x8 or so), but you could program every key differently.
There just wasn't any software that used it, and pretty much nobody used any other than the standard layout, so it didn't pay off. Maybe nowadays you could try it again, for gamers. You would need a better resolution though.
Another thing that would be interesting would be keyboards where you change the shape of the keys, too. You're just not gonna get force feedback on the keys, and that's a big problem. Would be cool, nonetheless. ;)
Correct me if I'm wrong (as I don't tend to use replace all in the daily course of programming), but doesn't MSVC's "Replace All" put up a dialog each and every occurrence saying, in effect, "You want to replace this one too?"
It's been a while, and since there's nothing I want to globally replace today...
--
here's the reality about speech recognition: it will not work with most soundcards because most soundcards are crap (on the audio input side)
you need to really clean audio for speech recognition to work right. I've spent years with speech recognition after burning up my hands from too many hours programming. I've now learned what combination of microphone, sound system (USB in my case) and software works reliably.
I'm really glad to see IBM start integrating with anybody because it means that the day I can drop kick windows is getting closer!
---eric
I see a number of postings here to the effect that voice recognition, especially for dictation, will be largely useless. The problem is that these postings are considering the use of voice recognition as a replacement for typing within the current crop of user interfaces.
The true power of voice recognition is not in replacing the keyboard. It comes with allowing new forms of interaction with a computer. Consider the simple task of checking the weather. Pulling up a browser and heading to weather.com is no big task, but why would I want to sit at my computer and have to do that just so I can decide how heavy a sweater I'll need for the day? Why not just ask the computer to read me the forecast while I'm getting dressed?
Many people would assume in this scenario that one would call out: "Computer, browse to h t t p colon slash slash w w w dot weather dot com. Read page." How about simply calling a script intead that does all the hard work behind the scenes? "Computer, what is the weather forecast for today?" The use of predefined grammars, as the article describes, will make such queries very reliable as they will be much easier to recognize.
This may have been a simple example, but hopefully it gets the point across. Voice recognition is not going to replace typing. As many have said, some people can type much faster than they can dictate text. Once you start considering higher level interaction with the computer, however, the situation changes, and voice recognition systems will really show their colors.
-kris
Can you imaging how loud a room full of coders screaming commands at their computers might be?
"Insert breakpoint!"
"Step!"
"Step!"
"Inspect variable foo!"
"Dammit!"
also, it wasn't free (when my parents purchased it) anyway.
word messes up your whitespace and notepad appends a .txt extension to files all the time. dos edit is much better than either
If you thought having some yuppie ensconced in a SUV barreling around while yakking on his/her cell phone was dangerous, just wait until you get some sysadmin trying to reconfigure his/her server using voice control while driving...
For that, all you need is command recognition. It's orders of magnitude simpler than dictation and can be done with little or no training.
Sidenote: That's more true in English than in Finnish. Once you get past separating phonems, you can map them straight on letters. The mapping is 1-1 except for a single phonem, "ng", which is separable in itself (though then again n-m separation is guesswork at best). Have a large "words" file and correct to the closest match (possibly accept the 15ish different possible endings for a word that we have).
Still, your voice probably varies so much from time to time that it takes more concentration to make that machine-readable speech than it does to press buttons.
But I digress. It's very important to get this stuff to work if even just to enable less typomatic people to more fully access systems.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
The other side of speech recognition is speech synthesis. What's the current state of speech synthesis on Linux? Is there any open-source software which does a good job of it, so far?
The best speech synthesis I've found so far is the software which somes with Mac OS, but it hasn't been updated for several years and it's still very clumsy. Rumor had it that Apple has had a greatly enhanced version under wraps for many years now, but that they're not releasing it because there doesn't seem to be any need for it yet.
VR have some fundamental drawbacks, that will limits its uses significantly:
* Its almost impossible for any machine (at least until AI makes a significant step forward) to understand the context of a message. When you say "remove it": do you want to write it in the application, remove the last part to wrote, or are you talking to someone who just entered the room? Yes, of cource there are solutions to this, but they are all ackward.
* Unless you are working alone in an office, most people will prefer using a keyboard than speaking everything out load. Are you ever in a situation where you would feel comfortable using VR on your laptop?
* Most people type just as fast as they will ever be able to dictate it.
Of cource there are advantages for people not being able to use a keyboard, and fancy stuff for controlling you mp3-player with shouting to it, but will we sometime in the future drop the keyboard and start talking to the PC? Never!
TTS, however. Ever found your Palm insuitable for reading a manual? Ever wanted to read some documents while you where bicycling to work?
VR is fancy technology, but what I would really use is a good TTS-engine together with a portable computer.
(IBM's ViaVoice TTS is not really there yet, but its a good start.)
-pere
a few years back i did work experience at IBM. while i was there they were gathering as many samples as they could of people's voices for their voice recognition software. of course i volunteered. it took about half an hour of sitting in front of a computer reading out sentences that popped up on the screen, first reading them slowly, then afterwards, reading the same sentences again at normal conversation speed. it's nice to know now that i sort of helped create their voice recognition software.
---
---
Never send a man where you can send a bullet.
Speech recognition is dictation, which is what this article is about. Voice recognition is a security biometric.
Get the terminology right. Nuff sed.
Speech recognition isn't perfect. It's not technology you can use casually, but it is usable with practice and training (for the software and the user). John Ousterhout, the creator of Tcl/Tk, has been using it for years after he developed problems with his wrist.
Until a year ago, there were four leading speech recognition firms out there: Lernout & Hauspie, Dragon Systems, IBM, and Philips (barely). Dragon was near bankrupcy, and L&H bought them last year. Now L&H is being rocked by financial scandals (see this list of articles on them in CNET), and may go under as well.
IBM, on the other hand, has supported their ViaVoice SDK for Linux for a long time. They also sell their ViaVoice dication software for Linux.
Without IBM, speech recognition might die. I'm glad to see they're pushing it futher, especially on Linux.
P.S.: "Voice recogintion" identifies people; "speech recognition" turns what they say into text.
P.P.S. It's possible to bind sneezes, sniffles, coughs, etc., into "null text."
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
GiraffeSville, a place anyone can call home
From what I can tell, they are more like a touchscreen than a reprogammable keyboard. /dev/voice-stream (or whatever) that can easily be read by a scripting language, there'd be a flood of scripts for voice-activated commands. That's what I'd want.
Voice recognition would be great for being able to view multiple video feeds. You could say "Goto camera 2" or "front view of BlackJack table 13". Or viewing different servers at a facility from one monitor (such as a rendering farm or the server farm at an ISP).
Then there's the office-oriented commands. "Call Jones." "What's my schedule for next friday? (with the answer being read aloud)" "When's the next meeting with our prime contractor?"
If we can get a
Okay, somewhere in there is a wise-ass comment about the usefulness of voice-recognition for porn-surfing, but I won't stoop to that level... :-)
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
The only drawback with the OS/2 version is that it only supports discrete, not continuous, dictation. This means that you need to pause between each word. For voice navigation, that's not a problem. You also have to go through a three-hour "training" session if you want it to work well.
So before you get all excited about how Linux might beat Windows, you should not forgot that OS/2 is real competitor here.
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Remember your thinking in terms of traditional coding. The wide spread use of voice recognition would allow for other models of coding to happen. You wouldn't want to have to spell everything out. Instead, there would be a environment specifically gear towards coding with voice recognition. For example, you might say "for" ad the entire c/c++ for loop struct would appear in the code ("for ( ; ; ) {}"). Ideas like this is where you'd gain the most speed. The coding could more naturally match your style of thinking. You wouldn't have to worry about typing everything in.
This would also move the keyboard to a secondary input device. The design of the keyboard is really bad for us. The keyboard, no matter how you have it designed, will always be repetitive motions. The human body doesn't like repetitive motions over long periods of time. Next, I'd like to see something to make the mouse a secondary method of input.
This is really just the first step in a long process of rethinking how we access our computers. In the long run, it will help us interact with computers more easily.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Why do we want our OS's to be driven by voice commands. I can just imagine cubeville with everyone speaking code/emails/commands. Oh, the noise. Make it stop.
Am I the only one who finds that a properly selected task specific MP3 playlist can add that critical 10%+ performance boost that spells the difference between "adequate" and r-r-rippin'?
I especially value it when I am doing literary stuff ("Mood music" if you will) or need to pick up the pace for a deadline. And then there's the selection of "We kick the world's ass" anthems that I save for emergencies when you have to either go into ultra-arrogance or lapse into despair (Warning: not for use when you may have to deal with actual humans intermittently!)
I seem to vaguely recall a keyboard with a small 8x8 (Or something..) LCD monochrome display on each keycap so the keyboard can be programmed to relabel each key.
Now if I could just remember enough about the thing to make the recollection work we may be onto something.. thought I'd post this in case someone has a better memory of this thing than me.
Molt
404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
Just because you can't imagine it, doesn't make it false.
I have an electronic keyboard that plays a certain piece of music at 220 beats/minute. That's 220/60 = 3.6 beats/second. Since all of the notes in the music are quarter (or shorter) that's 12-16 notes/second. I've seen this piece performed by an actual human at roughly the same speed my keyboard plays it. Amazing, yes. Impossible, clearly not.
Piano and typing use a lot of the same hand movements--in fact, typing is EASIER since the keys are closer together AND don't require much force to press down.
--
MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
GiraffeSville, a place anyone can call home
I picked up via-voice executive '98 a couple of years ago. I was very impressed at the time. I installed, configured, and got to know the product. Within a month I had it permanently disabled, it added nothing to productivity. I spend a large part of my day composing specifications/documents/e-mails, etc., and I was thus disappointed... ...until about 6 months ago, I found the CD in my bottom drawer at work, and brought it home, installed it, and have used it successfully to play descent, civilisation, and other games where my co-ordination is the weak link in my experience.
Bottom line: voice recognition clutter's your desktop with the required headset-microphone, you get confused when the phone rings, and you get strange looks. Typically your productivity gets no boost. As far as I can tell, it is still an infant technology.
.. if only.
Well,
:%s/stupidity/intelligence/
is much quicker to type, than using the mouse to:
Edit|Search and Replace
Search "stupidity", Replace "intelligence"
But it isn't faster to type than ctrl-H, stupidity, TAB, intelligence, Alt-A. That's the key sequence in MSVC.
Try gvim for the best of both worlds. GUI toolbars, menus, hilighting, scrollbars, cut and paste, etc. with all the vi commands as well.
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As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
I also thud horse precognition is overrated because her technology wombat cover lart fizz handle sprocket tea cake del *.* yes banana.
I am using bryce echo mission to tripe this article sew I should no.
-- Andrem
There has been a major scientific break-in
What about TiVo type systems, where you can say "Channel 5" or "record this" or "TV Schedule"? or "knocking on heavens door" for mp3, etc...
Would it be a good solution for them?
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
"ftutec buoyd fpaat"
getting"static void start()"
on the screen. Or"brmmpf fbhurrrgle"
becoming". profile"
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
At least one person got that... even if my karma is -6 now....
Fight censors!
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Most of the coders I know type anywhere from 60-140 words per minute. When coding, this measure of speed goes out the window, but it still is a fair shade faster than actually discussing what they are in the midst of coding.
Most writers I know type anywhere from 60-170 wpm. I type on the lower end of this scale, about 80-90 wpm. Again, this is significantly faster than I can comfortably speak.
When *editing* code or text, however, voice commands cannot hold a candle to a combination of mouse and keyboard commands, especially with newer trackballs and 'wheel' mice.
"Page up. Page up. Page up. Stop. No, go up. Stop! Not delete! Damnit!"
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
That would have to be a seriously tough LCD screen to stand up to a gamer. How many here have beaten the keys harder and harder because that OBVIOUSLY will make the computer respond faster, the other guy move slower, me not get fragged, etc.? I broke a cheap joystick playing "X-Wing" because of that very reason. Cracked the handle right off the stick.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Whilst this seems a nice addition to Linux's ever-growing collection of applications, and a great help to those who have physical difficulties in typing, Linux still discriminates against a significant proportion of the population!
But who do you mean, you ask. Well let me tell you, for the many, many people out there who suffer from dyslexia the stubborn insistance of the Linux crowd to stick with their command line interfaces is nothing short of discrimination! I mean, most normal people would have trouble remembering obscure command line syntaxes for commands like "awk" or "grep", but for the dyslexic this is postively a nightmare!
Before we concentrate on adding bloat for some people, maybe we need to concentrate on removing all need for the command line and making sure that directories are named nice, sensible names like "/Configuration" rather than "/etc" and so on. There's no need for this to continue.
Correct me if I'm wrong
You're incorrect, at least if you're . MSVC has a "Replace" and a "Replace All" button; it is the former that asks you about each instance.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Pretty much as soon as IBM's ViaVoice toolkit was available GVoice came out. From memory it lets you bind voice accelerators in the same way you bind keyboard accelerators. Check out this article about it in the GNOME summary from June 1999.
When I'm stuck on Windoze, I like using Visual SlickEdit in vi emulation mode. Has all the cool gui features, syntax highlighting, etc. Also works on all kinds of *nix. Only problem is it costs actual money to buy it. A friend of mine said that the vi emulation isn't "100%", but I've never used the vi commands that break it.
My name fits again.
I just upgraded to OS/2 Warp 4 (don't ask why). The VR on it is a Really Fun Toy, and surprisingly accurate. Of course, if you type 90+ wpm it's not that handy, but it sure is fun playing with it.
Not a web designer.
Am I incorrect in thinking that most people who share this view would have difficulty pointing out the differences between vi and MSDOS-Edit?
:1,$s/^M$// when bringing over crap from notepad?)
(oh, and what would I do without
"Ummmm..."
ln -s /etc /Configuration
But why bother?
Just don't mention "rm -rf" when you're near the microphone ...
Hah - I actually tried this the day I left my former employer. It was only my desktop workstation, but I didn't want their creepy fingers prying into my files, so I did su -l, rm -rf / - the command returned an error claiming I didn't have a lock on a certain process, and it couldn't complete the command.
If I hadn't been lazy, it would have been nice to code up some wipe tool that was used in Cryptonomicon...
- passion
I remember sitting at a friend's computer over 4 years ago, and starting solitaire by saying "run solitaire". There was some sort of voice recognition in the default software that came with this Acer or PB computer. I guess it was never much of a hit.
At the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo New York 2001 Wednesday, Big Blue committed to spending $300 million on Linux services over the next three years. IBM has already committed to investing $1 billion in Linux over the next 12 months.
That $300 million will go towards Linux e-business enablement and migration services, open source consulting for the Linux environment, and Web and High Availability Cluster services.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.