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Windows XP is Listening

Posted by timothy on from the this-ought-to-freak-you-out dept.

jfengel writes: "According to Newsbytes, some Windows XP users are finding random words inserted into their text as they write. The problem is caused by XP's speech recongition system, which is turned on by default by some manufacturers. It's listening to the random noise you get even when the mic is turned off. Kind of an insight into your computer's subconscious, perhaps."

8 of 380 comments (clear)

  1. Major Slowdown by xSterbenx · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Speech recognition did not come installed with my Windows XP, but was installed (and turned 'on' by default) by my Office XP Pro. After which point my computer suffered a major decrease in speed, to the point where it was taking 15 seconds sometimes for the webbrowser to load. I current have a 1.2 Ghz Athlon T-bird with 512 M ram, so it obviously was not from lack of processing power. Then I noticed a little program running the background called 'sapisrv.exe', turned it off, and was back to cruising speed. Perhaps this slowness was just something I experienced due to some oversight, or maybe I need to upgrade (again), but if not I would not suggest anyone to use the MS speech recog. tool (of course, with the /. crowd that is probably inherent)

    1. Re:Major Slowdown by xSterbenx · · Score: 2, Interesting

      With respect, sir, I did not. I used the default installation of Office XP Professional, rebooted, and the language toolbar appeared upon login. I did not adjust any settings, nor turn anything on (except to load Word to make sure it installed correctly). Yet my system slowed down considerably, and when I checked my process list, two new programs (ctfmon.exe and sapisrv.exe) were running and taking up quite a bit of resources. If this is not indicative of it being turned on by default, then I guess I am mistaken.

  2. Re:No mic? What is it recognizing? by praedor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Random noise. Random crap inserted in the RAM or buffers somewhere.


    Voice rec is not exact, it involves algorithms to interpret sounds (noise) coming in the mic and convert it into what it THINKS the word was. Noise is the key here. It is (possibly) interpreting random system noise (or leaking EM?) inside the box as words.

    --
    In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
  3. Re:eavesdropping technique idea... by sgifford · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There is a story (perhaps apocryphal) about a student who was working on a research project with one of his professors, and had telnet access to his NeXT cube. By running:

    dd if=/dev/audio of=listen.au

    during the evening the professor was grading tests, he was able to download the audio file, and listen to the prof talking to himself outloud about what questions to put on the test.

    So at least somebody has thought about this before.

    --
    My Web Page
  4. Re:Active/Passive voice, and ambiguous pronouns by RazzleFrog · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "XP's speech recognition system causes the problem, because most manufacturers turn it on by default."

    That may be better gramatically but it isn't correct. XP's speech recognition system does not cause the problem. It is doing its job. The problem is that the manufacturers cause the problem by leaving it on by default. The correct phrase should be:

    "The manufacturers cause the problem because they leave XP's speech recognition system on by default." There is also no need for a comma before "because."

    The rest of your post is fine.

  5. Actually, this is not Windows XP, it is Office XP by KnightElite · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have seen this happen on Windows 98 and Windows 2000 when Office XP was installed. So it is not windows, just office.

  6. Ripe source for Douglas Adams speak by bolix · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Even the most advanced Speech API is pretty rudimentary in comparison to conventional input methods. Your OS of choice will need a complete interface overhaul to make speech a more efficient control mechanism than a mouse/keyboard.

    At the current level of maturity the technology serves only to facilitate dictation. The Microsoft take on the genre is as usual quite impressive from a technical and unjustifiable assimilation perspective.

    It does however lead to very interesting mistakes not quite in the PK Dick Angry Vegetables/Grapes of Wrath vein but bizarrely fascinating all the same. Some months ago, as an experiment I left it running admidst the tangle of conversation buzzing around my cubicle. It somehow chose "Racial Isolation Media" and "The death of Green Onions" as viable alternatives to stock phrases.

    I can assure you, those phrases were not uttered on this plane of existence. Perhaps the feature gives us a glimpse beyond Microsofts software ambitions into the next killer app: Edisons UNdeadTAPI.

  7. A fun problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There was a team at IBM that did some research on speech systems 5 years ago. They found that most dictation software created these phantom words when various noises in the environment were recognized. They called it "recognoise."

    Apparently, even with decent unidirectional microphones, people who are trying to use speech software run into these problems...