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Vista Speech Recognition Goes Awry
An anonymous reader writes "It seems even MSNBC is willing to take a jab on those rare occasions when Microsoft products don't work. During a demo of Vista's speech recognition technology, Vista couldn't differentiate between mom and aunt, and all attempts to rectify the problem just made it worse. Wait until you see what it spat out, I think we have a new 'All your base.' Don't you just love Microsoft's live demonstrations?"
Yes, once again Microsoft S/W Engineers learn that the more public the demo or the more important the audience, the more likely some will go wrong. It's one of Murphy's laws. Been there. Did that. Barely survived.
Experience is the human quality that enables you to recognize a mistake immediately when you make it again.
Dacap
English -- gotta love it! / The engineers refuse to refuse the rocket until the refuse is removed from the launch pad.
Most likely the system was trained by an engineer and handed off to the ass in marketting. He was probably supposed to train it to his voice too but decided to hit the bar instead.
Voice recognition requires some training regardless of who provides it. We're not Star Trek here....Prep work and rehearsal people. If mr. sales guy had tried the demo before the presentation he would have noticed it wasn't working and avoided the embarassment.
This is why sales people are asshats. They're unprofessional non-technical people who sap back the high life while the rest of us have to put up with the mess they create through their daily barrage of verbal diarhea.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Generally, from what I've seen you need to train it a bit on the way you speak. There are thousands of distinct English accents and pronounciation variations.
For instance, the word "patent" is pronounced differently in the UK from North America. In the UK it is "pay-tent" and over here it's "pah-tent". That's just one example.
Point is [to paraphrase ballmer]:
Preperation (clap), preperation (clap), preperation (clap), preperation (clap), preperation (clap), [pitch of voice higher], preperation (clap), preperation (clap), [wheeze out of breath, pitch even higher], preperation (clap), preperation (clap), yeah!!!
Something tells me this sales guy will get neither punished nor lose their x-mas bonus. Some poor schmuck in engineering will take the fall for not making the demo "people ready".
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.