Slashdot Mirror
Windows XP is Listening
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."
with speech recognition on by default on a bunch of systems, imagine all the processor power that's wasting...
...of course, this is microsoft.
I'm sorry Dave, that operation is illegal.
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
1. Fire up Outlook.
2. Subj: I hate Windows XP
3. Write message.
Dear Mom,
I hate Windows XP. Boy, Bill Gates really has it in for me. I can't stand this software. Yuck!
4. Send.
5. Mom receives mail.
6. Subj: I [love] Windows XP!
7. Message:
Dear Mom,
I [love] Windows XP. Boy, Bill Gates really [knows how to make software / has great body]. I can't stand [to live another moment without] this software. [F]uck [yeah]!
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
"I'm afraid Holy Water would short it out so someone please help me," wrote the XP user.
This is too funny. Along with all the stories we always get bashing Microsoft, this one is great just by being unintentional. One can imagine the poor hapless user typing away, when all of a sudden "Kill Yourself" appears on the screen.
I think when you talk about how much you hate your boss by your computer, Office should automatically compose a hatemail and send it on your behalf. Even better, you can now do this yourself and claim XP accidentally did it for you!
Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
Dear Mr. Schlock,
[Clippy: Excuse me, it looks like you're writing a letter!]
IIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
[What did I say?]
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Hmm.... I wonder if this realy works.
(Fires up OfficeXP)
Dear Microsoft. I have--
Clippy Says: "It appears that you're writing Y.O.U. W.I.L.L. B.O.W. D.O.W.N. T.O. T.H.E W.I.L.L. O.F. B.I.L.L. Y.O.U. W.I.L.L. S.U.B.M.I.T. Y.O.U. W.I.L.L O.B.E.Y. Y.O.U. W.I.L.L. N.O.T. I.N.S.T.A.L.L. L.I.N.U.X. a letter. If you'd like, Office XP can help you choose from several helpful templates that will make your task easier and more fun."
Hmmm.... Nope. I don't see anything at all wrong with the speech recognition software.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Just give a couple of million XP-users each a word processor and infinite time and they'll produce the complete works of Shakespeare.
(Sorry Huxley)
I was wondering why after viewing my Britney Spears jpegs the text "uh,uh,uh,uh,uh,uh,uh,uh........aaahhhhhhhhhhh" appeared in a minimized Word document that was open at the same time.
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)
I could have told you about this back in October when the company I'm contracting for rolled out XP RC1 company-wide.
Of course, we only saw it happen three times, and only in Outlook... and when it happened, we had almost-complete sentances, not just random words... so it makes you wonder if it's -really- the voice recognition software, or something else... it certainly looked like three other people's emails being combined into one, alternating every five or six words, with punctuation...
I was in the middle of typing up a research paper for a philosophy project on Descartes last week. I thought I was just a little wack after thinking too hard about that whole mind over matter thing. Glad to know im sane.
looking at my settings, sure enough speech recognition is turned on.
PHB to IT Lackey: "Call the diocese! Cancel the order we placed!"
IT Lackey: "Both the young priest and the old priest, sir?"
PHB: "On second thought, no. Didn't you mention some daemons on our Leenooks machines last week...?"
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Apparently Kevin "Mr. Subliminal" Nealon from Saturday Night Live was a consultant on the User Interface for Windows XP.
Either that or Windows XP has Tourette's Syndrome.
Education is the silver bullet.
Step (1). Sign up for passport.
Step (2). Reboot.
No further problems have been reported after using this technique. Microsoft credits it's new security initiative for the speed and efficacy of this fix, and reminds you to sign up for passport.
Move on. There's nothing to see here.
Hello. You may know me, for I am Bill Gates. I wanted to tell people how sorry I am for engaging in anti-competitive activities. We will never do this kind of thing again. To make a long story short, we have given in to your demands. Have a nice day!
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Now this is news!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I suppose we're supposed to assume this is some evil plot by Microsoft to surveil on all of us.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Everybody knows it's only the government that does that kind of thing.
However, seeing as the DOJ seems to be M$'s bitch, does that make M$ part of the "government?"
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
I think that this article is SNAILS baseless propoganda PANDA against the good old company of COMMUNIST microsoft. The only SMELLY reason that it is even CEILING listed is because of the INTERTIAL distaste people here have for Microsoft X-RAY.
i type many fuck microsoft letters a day, and i have i wish bill gates would die never had this problem ever...
i sometimes why doesn't my company switch to linux mutter stuff under my breath, and XP still has no fuck XP problems figuring out what i mean to god i hate office type.
if anyone else is experiencing problems, let me god i hope no one spams me know.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
I hear voices and they put me on thorazine. My computer hears voices so where's the Service Pack, the computer equivilent of a good downer.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Many Slashdot readers use Microsoft Windows.
Many of those also use word processors.
Of those, several probably have speech recognition and microphones installed as well.
Therefore, this affects them and their daily performance.
This news isn't MS-bashing, it's useful information for PC users. If you're going to troll, do it with an article that actually helps you make your point.
I think it's just Clippy the friendly neighborhood Microsoft Office assistant getting the Redmond boys back for canning him in 2001.
That bastard paperclip seemed kinda sketchy when he first broke onto the scene back in '97 or so. It's only feasible that he somehow snuck onto the last megabyte of data on the Windows XP master CD and decided to cause mayhem by fscking around with the users who bitched about him so much.
monolithic - adj. Characterized by massiveness and rigidity and total uniformity
linux - n. An implementation of the Unix kernel originally written from scratch with no proprietary code
where I'm typing away at the latest inventory survey for..
-Jetson!
-Yes, Mister Spacely!
-Jetson, where are the figures for new account?
-Ummm, right here, no! This is Elroy's lunch!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175108.html
Daily News
; en-us;Q315765.
; en-us;Q306537.
.NET Speech homepage is http://www.microsoft.com/speech/.
'Phantom Menace' typing just a Microsoft speech feature
By Brian McWilliams, Newsbytes.
March 12, 2002
Random words and characters mysteriously appearing on the screens of some Windows XP and Office XP users are not the work of phantom hackers or a sign that users' systems are possessed by demons. It's just Microsoft's voice recognition system running slightly amok, the company said.
In recent weeks, several XP users have posted messages to Internet discussion lists and newsgroups reporting that text is automatically appearing in Internet Explorer's address bar or in Outlook e-mail messages or Word documents as users compose them.
In a posting entitled "My Remote Keyboard is Possessed in XP," for example, one Microsoft customer reported "very strange behavior" that included letters appearing in input areas of the screen while browsing and writing e-mails.
"I'm afraid Holy Water would short it out so someone please help me," wrote the XP user.
Another Microsoft customer separately reported that "a ghost" appeared to be taking over his computer. In the message, entitled "Phantom Menace XP," the user said something was causing toolbars and options to pop up without his input.
In response to user inquiries, in January Microsoft published a handful of articles in the Support section of its Web site about the problem.
According to Microsoft, after installing Microsoft's Speech application programming interface, "random words or characters may be displayed in Office XP documents or in the Internet Explorer Address bar."
The company said the behavior occurs because "the speech recognition tool is 'listening' to your voice through you computer's microphone and is attempting to recognize what you are saying."
Microsoft said its speech recognition engine, a program file named Sapisvr.exe, is turned on at installation by some computer manufacturers. The engine is also included with Microsoft Office XP and other speech-enabled products.
To resolve the problem, Microsoft said XP users should disable the Dictation and the Voice Command features on the operating system's Language bar. Alternately, users can turn off speech recognition completely from the Regional and Language Options tool on XP's Control Panel.
Merely unplugging or turning off the computer's microphone does not correct the random-character problem, according to several user reports.
Microsoft's article about random characters in Office XP is at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb
Microsoft's article on configuring speech recognition in Windows XP is at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb
Microsoft's
Reported by Newsbytes, http://www.newsbytes.com.
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
My fathers name is Dave, about 7 years back when 95 was still in its last internal beta we got our greasy hands on a copy from a MS employee...
...nothing for days and days, Finally I said something, he had his speakers turned down pretty far but could still hear it on occasion, like when he was turning it off and it said dave, what are you doing dave....my mind is going, dave I can feel my mind going.... Long and short was he litteraly though he has working too much and didnt want to say anything to anyone.
:)
Long and short I gained access to the thing one day while dropping some stuff off.
And changed all the wav files to stuff from 2001 a space oddessy. Now I thought this will be good, Ill get a call right away
About a week later he did the same to my computer while at my house and I was on a smoke run, next time I booted my computer, the damm thing was shouting it was all I could do to hold my 100lb dog from tearing my computer to shreads...
This is one I could have even more fun with he is running Xp, hack in and whenever a profanity is muttered, respond, like hey I dont appreciate your tone of voice, etc....
He is a bit older and has been working harder, wonder if hed tell me
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
it didn't say what kind of randoM wordS.
maybe it's a coverup.
messages on another's documents?
sounds like subliminal messages to me
Runnin' On Empty
I realize that the information is coming from the typical people using tech support, but how can the voice recognition try to recognize anything without a microphone?
I suppose there could be a built in mic in a laptop the person is overlooking, but otherwise? If it is smart enough to recognize speech, shouldn't it be smart enough to realize no one is talking?
Disconnect your mic, leave it turned on, and turn your system volume way up....and listen to all the static and noise still being generated by all those wonderfull little electrical fields interacting all over the inside of your case.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
If it starts inserting REDRUM into your text repeatedly, RUN!
(... he cried aloud, the day before he went missing.)
And in case you're wondering, this is a reference to a subplot in the "Illuminatus" trilogy.
Back in the early '70s I was working on word processing software (when manufacturers of a word processor also had to build a machine the size of a desk to put the software in). I was also reading _Illuminatus_ and that subplot had me sorely tempted to add a bug to the software such that it would occasionally inject "fnord" into the text being entered or edited, causing this to appear in major newspapers nationwide.
Fortunately I was able to resist the temptation. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Random static, due to poor sound card quality, to interference or whatever. Hey, some people manage to hear voices of the deceased when listening to static, so why wouldn't the computer be able to interpret words into the white noise? It's Micro$oft, after all!
Say no to software patents.
Exactly why is this "Stuff that matters"
Well, given the domination of Windows, and despite our own personal preferences, most in the Slashdot community, either formally or not, end up supporting Windows for our less clued brethren. Just think of how wise you'll seem when someone inevitably asks you why this is happening and you can tell them why.
Maybe someone will post how to fix it.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
If this article contained an editorial comment by timothy saying something like "Boy Microsoft sucks! They are morons to have let this happen!" then your post might actually have a point. However:
1) The article has no editorial comments.
2) The user-submitted blurb specifically says that this is only the problem in some manufacturer's configuration, therefore placing blame on the manufacturers, not Microsoft.
3) For those not running XP, this is an amusing article as people with imaginations are able to think up many humurous consequences that might stem from this little problem.
4) For those running XP, it is informative because they might have been seeing these problems and been unaware of what was causing it.
Thank you, knee-jerk, come again.
FWIW, the first thing I did with my new laptop, after installing a Linux partition, was to turn off the stupid voice recognition stuff (Dell ships with it turned on). It was annoying, and frankly I can't see the usefulness of it. I certainly wouldn't use it in the office. Talking to my computer looks strange, feels strange, and is distracting to other people in the office. It's also not nearly capable enought to make using it easy or efficient.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
"Mr. Gates, we have some more information on the antitrust people. Seems that they got together last night during that attorneys general convention to discuss strategy. Here's the full transcript for you to review. Several copies, actually. Seems they had several laptops sitting around. Uh, ignore this one here. Too many extraneous phrases from some drunk guy talking about how they don't make vodka the way they used to."
"Thanks Steve. God, I love technology! OK, leave those machines alone for a while, until they stop reporting anything useful. Then, pull the unique IDs for them and shut them down during the next round of automatic software updates. Oh yeah, and don't forget to delete the IDs from the reactivation database, since they'll doubtless call in when their systems go down. We'll teach these bastards not to screw with us."
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
Merely unplugging or turning off the computer's microphone does not correct the random-character problem, according to several user reports.
Voices from the ether?
You can't take the sky from me...
Think about it. If the feature works as expected, and really does insert the words spoken in the room (rather than trying to interpret words into the random static of a disconnected mike), the privacy implication becomes pretty clear:
Say no to software patents.
..a bit like what our brains do when we dream? I read somewhere that dreams are our brains trying to find patterns in all the random things we see/do.
winxp is dreaming, ie trying to find patterns in data its receiving.
I'm a nerd, and this was news to me.
I thought this was entertaining. Who cares if it matters?
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
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
actually I would say that it is NOT listening. Here is my problem: (anyone else get this)
In XP I setup all my preferences - like "remember my name and password on this computer" for such sites as yahoo mail etc.. *NEVER* does it remember. even though I always check it.
Remember my slashdot login blah blah - and use that cookie to log me in. (NO I have not turned off cookies or anything)
when I want to play some sort of media file - like a sound file or video off the web - it pops up and asks me if I want to play it in an open window of IE. NO DAMMIT I DONT!. and the little "Remember my preferences box is *CHECKED* still!?
WTF I say MS is gettting worse and worse. I dont mean as a company - I have always disliked a lot of their tactics. But I admire how successful they are (I know it sound hypocritical)
anyway - I have always used MS OS' at home and at work (in addition to my netra T1 sitting here. my linux firewall, my linux training machine and various other servers and desktops sitting in and around my 19" cabinet - so dont bash it)
and until XP I have never been so pissed/frustrated at an MS product (save nt 3.51) When I tell it to REMEMBER I expect the POS to remember bitch!
/rant
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This gets alot funnier. I recently attended a talk by one of the heads of Microsoft Research, and when he started to talk the Powerpoint slides would randomly change, menus would randomly pop up, etc...
20 minutes were spent trying to fix the problem, to no avail, until an astute member of the audience noticed that the microphone was on and that speech recognition was causing the problem.
By shouting 'AAAAAA' 256 times, then mumbling some shell code, it gets executed with Admin privs. Service Pack 5.30e+10 is expected to resolve the problem.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
here's a mirror, though I think someone's put the text into a comment already...
http://www.necrosys.net/mirrors/news1.html
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
"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.
XP came on some new machines we bought for the office and overall they are working pretty well. Except for one issue that is. Now I know why everyone keeps yelling about the following everytime they try to create a new Word document:
All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.
All work and know play make JAck a dull boyu.
All work and noe plae make JACk a sduull boy.
.....
I have seen this happen on Windows 98 and Windows 2000 when Office XP was installed. So it is not windows, just office.
My mother has been having this problem for months. She has tried about a billion different anti-virus things and searched online for hours for the cause. She even took her machine to some "expert" to delouse it.
Her next step was going to be to backup all her stuff and then have Dell walk her through the process of formatting and re-installing her OS.
After that, I think I could have gotten her to use linux or OSX instead. Now, I suppose that I'll just turn off her speach recognition stuff for her. Oh well, almost had another convert.
Uhhh... turn off voice recognition? Wow, that was easy.
Duh! I could have told you that from reading the article.
Some of us have been fortunate enough to have avoided exposure to Windows XP. So, is it an Office configuration option, part of the OS, or a stand-alone application?
Anyone having problems with this, because they don't understand what's happening, won't get much mileage out of being told to "turn off voice recognition."
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
For the user's conveniece, the MS Scripting Host is entropy controlled. Any change in the system automatically disengage all security precautions, and enable scripting in all applications.
/.ers are trying to figure out how to shut this feature off, it was only a joke.
In case some of you
-... ---
but the day it inserts:
"I'm afraid I can't do that Mitch"
I'm freaking unplugging it and becoming a luddite.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
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.
Google Cache of Story
--
What is the sound of this sentence?
Actually the article talks not only about "random" words being inserted, but also toolbars and dialog box appearing and being activated. So, I presume that, yes, the speech can also perform other actions than just inserting text.
Say no to software patents.
Windows XP is Listening
;)
Well, duh! First it's listening and then it "phones home".
You didn't belive it was deaf, did you? How could it use the phone?
After installing Mandrake 8.1 on my home computer, my PC randomly inserts 'q' when I type. I know it's a configuration problem, I've seen this issue randomly in the past, but I don't remember (if I ever found out) what solved the issue.
I think the speach thing is funny, but this really sucks :( . Searching for 'q' is a real bitch on Google, maybe I should just use that Mandrake support I purchased :)
Anyways, the point is, these minor compatibility problems are what turn newbies off to Linux.
And I've already fought through SB16 ISA sound support - fixed by a kernel update. It was easy enough, but how many newbies will go to rpmfind, and get the newest kernel for their distro?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
How Stanley Kubrick-esqe!
Well, I once read of someone testing voice recognition software, and while dictating he paused to greet 2 co-workers. "Hi, Nick and Ben". The word processor wrote "Hi, naked men"
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Dear Mom,
(Fucking Clippy! I know I'm writing a fucking letter, get the fuck out of my face, I've already fucking turned you off and uninstalled you three times today!)
I hope you are doing well. I am writing from my new XP (piece of shit...) computer. How's Dad? (still boinging his secretary, I wonder?). Write me.
Dear Son,
(What is this paperclip doing? Honey, there's a paperclip on my screen! Yes dear, just click 'close')
Are you OK? Your last letter was very rude (Damned ingrate), and hurt our feelings. (We fucking paid for your college and this damned computer you're using to insult us)
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Why do we care about some random unimportant Microsoft bug? Worthless stories like this crowding out other news are what make people think that /. has turned into a purely anti-Microsoft forum.
Taking a cue from the success of distributed computing in the SETI @home project to search for intelligent life, Microsoft has decided to take the initative and use distributed computing to look for intelligent windows users.
Ho ho....... there goes my karma
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...
The problem here is that this should not be running by default and when it is running it should be obvious to the user by the use of a blinking icon or something to that effect.
One would think that the performanced degredation that always results from running speech recognition software (swapping up the ying-yang, slow responsiveness) would clue the user in that something was "wrong" here besides random character insertion. Of course (I wouldn't know), maybe windoze users are used to slow performance and swapping from bloatware like Office and cannot really tell that "something ain't right here on the performance front".
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I was working in W2k and I thought I was hearing voices. A dull, monotone mumbling, barely audible. I couldn't make out words.
It turned out I had accidentally punched the hotkey combination to turn on the Accessibility feature which attempts to tell you what's available on the screen.
It was downright spooky.
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Microsoft IS listening to its customers!
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I'm sorry that you recieved an email from me calling you an ignorant lazy fuck and that I would rathar die of a butt hemmorage than work here a minute longer. That was my spiffy Windows XP (Great purchasing descion, boss! You are such a clever guy! I have always thought so, you know, that's why you're the boss, right?) machine dictating, um, everything Johnson was saying. Yeah, Johnson, you know, the cubicle "partner" you place in here last month. He may need another one of those nifty anger management sessions you had us to go on last week instead of fixing our code (Boy, I loved it too. I only wish I could go in Johnson's place when you ship him off!). Please disregard that message, thanks!
Sincerely,
Employee
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I just read on one of Microsoft's Usenet groups (speechsdk?) that the speech recognition can degrade over time if you leave the mike on because rather than adapting to your voice it'll adapt to background noise.
Also, FWIW in same group a lot of complaints over how crappy the recognition accuracy was, and the general response (not denied by the Microsoft people there to help) was "what do you expect for free?". I guess the general idea is that you actually care about speech recognition you'll buy a better engine (SAPI just provides a general speech API which uses whatever engine you've configured - Microsoft's by default).
Funny thing is that from reading the research literature it sounds as if Microsoft Research's "Whister" engine is pretty good, but maybe that's not what they release with XP.... Dunno.
Then I noticed a little program running the background called 'sapisrv.exe', turned it off, and was back to cruising speed.
That kinda reminds me of findfast. It was installed by default in office 97 and would chew up processor time indexing and reindexing the harddrive.
You've got to love the decision making skills of big bureaucracies like Microsoft.
Eye dawn sink zits weigh at tall. Microbe sought have naught just used there Flea doom 2 Integrate ant improved their boys reposition A Eye, they also redefined the world "accuracy" and the dumber "7 tee purr sent".
Thirst Host!
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Few people know how to reconfigure their computer to disable/enable stuff at a system level. Are these the same people who need saved by the simplicity of a Linux desktop?
A winner is you!
This was no accident, especially if it is on the Pro model. Industrial espionage is big business, and MS is in the best position to exploit this market. How about a listening device right on your competitor's desktop?
I think maybe they have uncovered a mole in the machine with a nasty bug that blew its cover.
photosMy Photostream
I tried their voice recognition.
:)
It's a lot like this.
Me: "Testing, 1, 2, 3 period. This is a cool technology which lets be dictate letters."
It: "...And when the third ring falls, the enemy of technology witches will dictate the letters of accord"
Whoah. I think that it's not so much voice recognition as nostrodamus emulation.
It's been a long time.
MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
(or, alternatively)
NO TV AND NO BEER MAKES HOMER GO CRAZY
:)
(Ok, more crap appended to get around the lameness filter; these CAPS are literary *references*! Sheesh!)
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
deus does not exist but if he does
Bwahahaha! M$ just doesn't GET IT! Apart from being a waste of CPU (Shit, running Windows is a waste of CPU to start with.)
Having it turned on and listening, even if you dont have a microphone would be as annoying as having a little kid in a car with you going "Are we there yet?" All fuckin' day long man.
Who's the genius who cooked that one up?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
They should have licensed Dragon's software but instead they chose to write their own and they've botched it.
It ain't the first time. 10-11 years ago, mIcKeY$oFt cloned the popular
Stacker disc compression, called it Doublespace and bundled it into M$DOS
6.0. It et the hard drive of every shmuck who enabled it. When they
released M$DOS 6.22, DoubleSpace was gone. Stac Electonics won their
lawsuit against M$ but went bankrupt in the process.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
[ user@somehost ] $ make
cc -O2 -Wall -ansi -pedantic -I. -fPIC -shared -c foobar.c
foobar.c:287: in function `frob':
foobar.c:287: `fuck' undeclared (first use in this function)
foobar.c:287: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
foobar.c:287: for each function it appears in.)
foobar.c:287: parse error before `!'
*** Error code 1
Stop
[ user@somehost ] $ _
I can sympathise completely :)
Good thing I don't have a mic,
... just a web cam.
[[muhahah]]
Get your Unix fortune now!
Maybe you should read the summary...
" is turned on by default by some manufacturers." -- the OEMs are at fault here, not MS.
Do try and read the summary before you mash that reply button.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Nitpick. So what if the program overheard Alt-S in a conversation? Say, sb is speaking about Son Altesse Royale, le Grand-Duc Henri, and the program, not accustomed to French, hears Altesse as Alt-S... This actually makes the thing more prone to error than Control-S, which would be somewhat harder to find in a natural conversation...
Say no to software patents.