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Microsoft Patents the Censoring of Speech
theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Microsoft a patent for the Automatic Censorship of Audio Data for Broadcast, an invention that addresses 'producing censored speech that has been altered so that undesired words or phrases are either unintelligible or inaudible.' The patent describes methods for muting offensive words and replacing them with less offensive versions, and 'a third alternative provides for overwriting the undesired word with a masking sound, i.e., "bleeping" the undesired word with a tone.' After all, there's nothing worse than being subjected to offensive speech when you're shooting someone in the head."
So now the parents of kids too young to play dont have to worry about letting them play!!
Come on, if you're old enough to play the game, you're old enough to either deal with it or tell them to stuff a sock in it. There are so many other options to work with. Why not just mute the stupid player? Or not even use the voip at all? Like the article says, its only really used for trash talk anyway. Unless I know who I'm playing with, I'm not going to try and coordinate anything.
Stupid idea.
BTW first post!
Trust me when I say you can come up with new curses faster than you can code them into an automatic censorship proram...
Nevermind all the fantastic new accents this is going to promote. And if you disagree; well quck you.
Naturally, I didn't read the article, but I have to say I'm intrigued by this. It would come in extremely handy for radio stations if they no longer needed to have a delay on their live broadcasts. It would especially benefit college radio stations because they often have to limit what they can allow on air since they cannot afford the equipment that is required to have a delay. Although this technology might be very expensive as well, so who knows. I guess I ought to swallow my pride and read the article!
Broadcasters can be, and have been fined thousands of dollars PER EVENT, through violations of FCC rules. One slip of the tongue should not be the basis for fining a program out of existance.
A tool to help in that regards DOES NOT equal sensorship, and the title is a ridiculous assertion that hurts credibility around here.
Hate Microsoft if you want, but Christ, why be stupid about it?
What is next? "Microsoft wants to eat your babies"?
As supposedly logic-driven geeks, can we not do better?
You don't have to use Microsoft products, just switch to ###########
Reminds me of this clip from Harry Enfield:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmRTUNh1vPo
[For those hard of flashing, it's a parody of a short gangster conversation in which the bad words have been taped over with better words]
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Mother smiling gumdrops! I think that's a bunch of bull smurfs! That sparkle pony happy hole, Bill Gates and his piece of rainbow company, Microsoft, can go flower themselves with a sunshine until they bleed out their bunnies!
What the Luck? Those Gassholes in Redmond can't stop me from sMitting up a verbal storm. I'll BLiss all over their parade!
How fun. This as already ben done in spain for some organization alike the RIAA called SGAE.
note: humm... Linux is betwen moron and fucking here. I will make it bold.
Here is the code:
palabras="mafiosos, ladrones, hijos de puta, hijo putas, chorizos, chupopteros, chupópteros, sangrantes, sangrais, sangráis, gilipoyas, por el culo, joderos, que os jodan, chaqueteros, mierda, agilipollao, alamierda, bujarra, bujarrilla, bujarron, bujarrón, cabron, cabrón, cabrona, cabronas, cabroncete, cabrones, cago en, cagoen, calentorra, calentorro, capulla, capullas, cazurra, cazurro, cenutrio, ceporra, ceporro, chingar, chocho, cipote, cipoton, cipotón, cojon, cojón, cojones, cojonudo, coño, cretino, cuesco, encular, estupida, estupido, folla, follada, folladas, follado, folladoras, folladores, follados, follamos, follando, follao, follar, follarse, follo, gilipolla, gilipollas, gilipuertas, hijadeputa, hijaputa, hijasdeputa, hijasputa, hijodeputa, hijoputa, hijoputa, hijoputas, hijosdeputa, hijosputa, hostia, idiota, idiotas, imbecil, imbécil, jilipolla, jilipollas, jilipuertas, joder, joderos, jodete, jódete, jodida, jodidas, jodido, jodidos, jodienda, linux, mamon, mamón, mamones, marica, maricas, maricon, maricona, mariconas, mariconazo, maricones, mentecata, mentecato, moña, ostia, pendeja, pendejo, picha, polla, pollas, porro, pringado, pringao, puta, putas, puto, putos, ramera, subnormal, subnormales, tarugo, tortillera, truño, zangana, zopenco, zurullo,";
function pasapalabra(cadena){
cadena=cadena.toLowerCase();
arPal=palabras.split(',');
i=0;encontrada=false;
while(i if(cadena.indexOf(arPal[i])!=-1){
encontrada=true;
document.formito.initialState.value=257;
}
i++;
}
}
-Woof woof woof!
I'm sceptical that it'll work that well. I do think it'll be more interesting than listening to people using fuck as punctuation - which is to me is dismally boring.
;).
;).
Question: how will it cope with people using stuff like "Jesus/G-d" as an expletive? That sort of thing is offensive to many people too.
Imagine if people started using Muhammad as an expletive. You can't just censor every mention of Muhammad because that will get you in big trouble too
It'll be interesting if the system can tell from the context.
How would it deal with "I helped my uncle jack off his horse" vs "I helped my Uncle Jack off his horse?"
Is it possible to "pirate" censorship?
I...love...Windows Vista. It is a piece of...brilliance. I want to take a sledge hammer and ... gently caress ... it to turn it into a pile of ... sunshine.
Table-ized A.I.
It'll be interesting to see just how such technology will be abused. Want to prevent speech that might inspire someone to stand up and do something regarding a certain topic, simply filter out keywords in context to the topic itself to help tilt the topic to favor one group's interests over another.
"Free" speech is long dead and buried. Welcome to the next China.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Hmmm... that patent is a bit obivious. Just a month ago I was at the InterSpeech conference telling speech recgonition researchers that games needed EXACTLY such technology. And I posted on MudDev in October 26, 2004: "In speech, you could keep an N-day log of the speech on HD. An "I'm being harassed" button press by a player would reference (or copy) the recent audio recordings. You could even have the player's computer do speech recognition on it and transmit the transcription, letting your text filters look for swearwords (SR cannot be gotten around by using dood-speak). Why would this not work?"
Given how zealously MS guards it's intellectual property, now NO ONE ELSE will be able to censor speech without getting sued. Free speech is saved!