Slashdot Mirror
Star Trek-like 'Phraselator' Helps Police
coondoggie writes "Yet another Star Trek-like device is making its way into the real world. VoxTec's Phraselator name sounds a bit like something the Three Stooges might have used long ago but no, this PDA-like device was developed through Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for use in Afghanistan and Iraq by American soldiers for communicating with locals who spoke Farsi, Dari, Pashto and other languages. It is now being used as one tool to help keep the peace between English and non-English speakers by police departments in California, Florida, Nevada. In a nutshell the $2,500 ruggedized Phraselator runs an Intel PXA255 400mHz processor that supports a built-In noise canceling microphone, a VOCON 3200 Speech Recognizer, 1GB removable SD card, 256MB of DRAM Memory and 64MB Flash Memory. It can store up to 10,000 phrases."
VoxTec's marketing department should be summarily dismissed for coming up with that one.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This is pretty good, but it still doesn't solve the problem that the officer can't understand the other individual. This could lead to some problems. Now, an officer may wait for backup that speaks the language, or proceed forward knowing that he/she cannot understand the other person and vice-a-versa.
Now, due to this device, officers could think they are making themselves clear, and behave differently, (i.e. I said get down, and I said it in your language, now get down or I shoot), but the other side could be saying something important and can't be understood.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
I am not sure those two sides will want to know what the other is saying... Does it work two ways? It seems like it would be more helpful but also more cumbersome as a dialog.
My guess is no. 10,000 phrases might sound like alot, but I can imagine that they would get used up very quickly. Sounds like the only application for this is for police to give commands. With the speech recognition software, not only would only a handful of people be able to use it, but they would also have to know the limits of the device, as far as how fast you can talk, what extent of a vocabulary it has, and so on.
Using a taser does make the policeman's/soldier's job easier. When you tase someone, translations are simple: "AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH" is the English translation of "AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH" in Arabic. And Farsi, and Kurdish, and Najdi, and Khaliji, and...
SOMEwhere in there is an embedded, county/parish/municipality based digitized asshole:
Contempt Modes
CM1 "SCUMBAG, get ON the GROUND NOW, or i WILL DROP YOU."
CM2 "Turn the FUCK around. PUT your DAMNED hands UP."
CM3 "FREEZE, MOTHERFUCKAH.*"
CM4 "Don't FUCKIN' LIE TO ME, PEDRO/Patel/Nguyen/(sub a name you want)I'm gonna deport your ass."
CM5 "Go back where you came from..."
(As someone given false tickets at least 1 time by local police and TWO times by CHP, and nearly screwed by the judges on the case/docket, I can say contempt of cop is NOT something you want to engage in.)
* (When I part-timed at Emporium in 1989 in Almaden (back then, mostly white, not Asian, neighborhood) there was a theft in progress. Loss Prevention (Caucasian) were in hot pursuit scaling and hopping escalators and chasing the suspects/shoplifters (Black) and not gaining on them. (They were WAY too fast to be caught). Angry, one of the shorter LP yelled "FREEZE, MOTHAFUCKA!! This thin, old, short white lady nearly fainted when she heard the words. I think she wasn't bothered by the hot foot pursuit. I think the profanity stunned her, hehehe...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
PXA255 400mHz
I don't know, maybe they should get one of them new-fangled Intel chips that's rumored to do a full processor cycle in *under* two seconds?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.