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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."
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.
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!
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)
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.
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.
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
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.
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........
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!
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.
"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.
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.
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
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
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.
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...
Microsoft IS listening to its customers!
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
User: "But I thought I unplugged the microphone!"
Computer: "My webcam read your lips as you were talking to your friend about disconnecting me and installing another OS. I cannot allow you to put the mission in jeopardy."
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.