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Star Trek's LCARS Could Become Your Virtual Assistant (cnet.com)
H_Fisher writes: It has arguably inspired many other technological innovations in the fifty years since its premiere, and now another Star Trek-inspired touch could be coming to your device: the voice of Majel Barrett from the Star Trek universe's LCARS computer system. CNET reports: "The voice of LCARS was provided by Majel Barrett, who was married to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Although Barrett sadly passed away in 2008, she took several roles on the show over the years, including nurse Christine Chapel in Star Trek: The Original Series and Betazoid ambassador Lwaxana Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation. According to a tweet by the official Roddenberry account yesterday, this has provided enough phonetic data to perhaps get Barrett's voice appearing in upcoming new 2017 TV series Star Trek: Discovery -- and maybe even a Siri-like virtual assistant."
I've always been able to spot other trekkers by how people react to me referring to any digital female voice as Majel.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I basically grew up in the time just after TOS aired (I was only 3 in 1967 so I wasn't watching then, and I barely remember the series being on first run TV at all). However, I do remember a number of TV pilots that Roddenberry created after Star Trek, that unfortunately were never picked up by the networks as regular series. I'm talking about made-for-TV-movies like Genesis II, Strange New World and Planet Earth (which were all attempts to boot up a series set in the same post apocalyptic future), as well as The Questor Tapes, and Spectre (a really weird supernatural series I didn't know about until recently). It's interesting to look at those shows now and see the familiar face of Majel Barrett in nearly all of them. She also had a small role in the movie Westworld, one of my favorite SF films of the 70s.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
Maybe I'm just old and boring, but I really don't like the way that being dead is no longer the end for appearing in new things you never knew about. Between the holographic appearances of ... was it Tupac? And now this, it all just feels a bit too morbid to me.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
... a fitting tribute to the actress or just that little bit creepy? I can't decide.
When watching ST I always figured there were more than enough lines for her to be the computer forever in the series and the movies. Some people talk about it being morbid or creepy, but I think it's more of a tribute to her. We don't see her as replaceable even in death. My mom was always excited when she was on the shows as Lwaxana Troi and would always comment that she was Gene's wife and that she was the nurse on TOS. I doubt she could be a Siri or Cortana type assistant due to the words/products we use in speech that were never said by her and I don't think they recorder her just making phonetic sounds to combine into every word imaginable, but I would love to hear her on Star Trek again.
But I guess going the emulation route is cooler.
Although Barrett sadly passed away in 2008, she took several roles on the show over the years . . .
Wow, although she was dead, she still took on several roles?!? She must have been one amazing lady!!
Great journalism skills you got there.
And how long does your estate/corporation retain rights to your own voice and appearance after death? Does copyright law apply? Trademark law? If the rights expire after the lifetime of the actor plus 70 years will we reach a point sometime around, i dunno, 2086 or so when there are no employment opportunities for new actors because all the "great" actors are already in the public domain?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
This is the technology of the future.
For a while workers had retirement to look forwards to.
The millennial generation, because of a greying population, won't have retirement, they'll have to work until they die
In the Star Trek future it gets even worse - you have to keep working after you die.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I'd love a darker series Colonists crash landing on an alien planet disconnected from the rest of the federation Losing most of their technology. Finding out they're not alone and there is a semi-hostile primitive species there. Then they have to struggle, how hard do they try and stick with the prime directive, and non-interference, how does it impact their own survival.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Fred Astaire came back from beyond the grave to sell a vacuum cleaner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
The part that is more bothersome is they collected words from all her different parts.
Her role as the ship computer vs. Lwaxana she is acting very differently. It would be a computer with some of the words expressed very emotionally with others very cut and dry. Also that doesn't say much for the show, because if they are going to have the computer say the same stuff, it sounds like a lot of recycled plots.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Well, considering how wooden he acted, Shatner died somewhere in the early 1960s.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In 2086, copyright will be lifetime + 140 years (or 160 years for works for hire). Steamboat Willie can never enter the public domain after all...
Also remember this was a TV Show.
In TV Shows having talking computers is useful to help move the plot along. In real life, even if I computer can talk, I turn off the volume most of the time, because I can read faster, skip useless information, and interface faster than verbally.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Or we could do something radical, something that hasn't been around for a decade or two: Come up with a new idea instead of rehashing old ones and putting some more lipstick on the corpse.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Spoken with the sincerety and conviction of someone who can only have zero clue as to what they're talking about.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I'd love a darker series Colonists crash landing on an alien planet disconnected from the rest of the federation Losing most of their technology. Finding out they're not alone and there is a semi-hostile primitive species there. Then they have to struggle, how hard do they try and stick with the prime directive, and non-interference, how does it impact their own survival.
So basically you want to watch LOST but set in the Star Trek universe? Why not make it a planet full of zombies and then you can call it "Walking Dead: Lost in Space"? Starfleet crash lands on an alien planet stranded with no communication. On the planet, they discover a planet full of zombies. Cobbling together the spare parts from their shuttlecraft they erect an encampment with a solar powered force field. During ever episode they try to sneak out of the encampment to search for food and supplies meanwhile the zombies continue to try to figure out how to penetrate the force field to eat the humans as food. Later on in the series they find a planet that is composed of tachyon particles that they learn they can combine with scrap metal and jute to form a communications device to transmit SOS messages in hopes that someone will find them. I think you're onto something here...
We'll make great pets
They don't play a recording of each word. They have a recording of each individual sound, that lasts a fraction of second, that a person uses. They string these individual sounds together to form any word. It's how they made Siri and Cortana.
Like Majel he had 25+ years of recorded material from TV shows like At the Movies. He even hired a firm to create a voice from that material. As it turned out, that 25+ years of recording was inadequate to create a working synthetic voice.
I suspect Roger had more material than Majel as he was doing 22 minute review shows for some many years compared to Majel's occasional appearances and scripted "computer voice" work.
Facebook is billions of individual "Skinner Boxes." And if you use it you are the pigeon!
Phonetic data, not words, or lines. I worked on an English as a Second Language system back in 1996 that sounded really good and only had about 120 phonetic samples that you could make it say anything you wanted. It even had a basic emotion engine. The more complicated part we found was in translating the typed words into phonetic speech. Back then we went with a lookup table for words that didn't sound like how they were spelled, then falling back to a sound it out algorithm for everything else. We usually only used the table for words that really did not sound right, as RAM and CPU cycles were limited back then. Also much more efficient lookup algorithms have been developed since then.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
There is a TOS episode where the computer voice was upgraded to a sexy sounding female. Kirk reprimands the computer, and it sounds noticeably sad. I don't think you can do that with the existing recordings of Majel Barrett.
Fuck that. I want a John Wayne styled LCARS first.
"Life is hard when you're stupid."
"Howdy, partner."
"That'll be the day."
"Take 'er easy there, Pilgrim."
"I wouldn't make it a habit of calling me that, son."
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Because that theme hasn't been tried a billion times in other shows?
I can think of a half dozen shows which fit that criteria and with only marginal retrofitting it'd be what you describe.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
When I step away from this keyboard I have a life waiting for me.
LOL Course you do, that's why you're in here trying to troll some neckbeards. I almost feel sorry for you.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Vocaloids did this long before voice assistants. To be done properly though, the recording has to be done at a constant pitch, so it's easier to modulate it by computer later. "Harvesting" phonemes, diphomes, and polyphomes from pre-recorded spoken speech isn't as effective because you need to post-process it to remove the pitch change. (It should be noted that adding inflections to make it sound like spoken speech is a huge AI project in itself. Singing is a lot easier to synthesize because these changes in intonation and pitch are mostly pre-determined by the music.)
oh please spare us another "dark and gritty reimagining"
instead, how about:
1. a comedy
2. a musical
3. a war movie
4. a police procedural
5. a lawyer show
6. a doctor show
7. a buddy cop movie
8. a special episode where the Harlem Globetrotters drop by
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Actually, I don't think it was so inconsistent .... Just not as well explained to viewers as it could have been.
Those enlisted in Starfleet or living on planets under their control didn't have to work for money anymore.... For those who lived on planets outside their zone of influence, results varied. Many of those planets still exchanged currency for goods and/or services. Technology like replicators don't appear to have been universally available or prevalent.
Yes. Staggering.
Steamboat Willie can never enter the public domain after all...
I've been referring to the 'Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act' as the "Mickey Mouse Perpetual Protection Act" for years, and I'll just shift the name to whatever bill Disney rams through Congress to extend copyright protection to ensure that no representation of The Mouse ever falls into the public domain.
The part that is more bothersome is they collected words from all her different parts.
Her role as the ship computer vs. Lwaxana she is acting very differently. It would be a computer with some of the words expressed very emotionally with others very cut and dry. Also that doesn't say much for the show, because if they are going to have the computer say the same stuff, it sounds like a lot of recycled plots.
I'd have thought there'd have been more than enough vocal sampling for her just as the computer voice. Actually, I'm surprised the computer voice wasn't *already* in phonetic format just for all of the video games. Although she'd be able to give the most natural performance by recording the lines normally, I could see one of the (many, many, many) ST game developers realizing that they'd need TTS ability here and there (eg, player-generated names) and do the vocal data collection needed for it.
Anyway, Majel Roddenberry's voice is more or less holy ground for both the franchise and fans of the franchise.... I don't think they'd mess up something so sacrosanct.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Nah, it was still inconsistent. Harry Mudd clearly lived within Federation space, even if he considered himself an outlaw, and he was obsessed with money.
And what about the Ferenghi living on Deep Space 9? Didn't they live on a "planet" under Starfleet's control? I guess technically they weren't really obsessed with money, they were obsessed with acquiring material things. But that in itself is a paradox when acquiring material things incurs no monetary cost.
I mean, if you think about it, the idea of the end of scarcity for everything is preposterous, even with Replicator technology. Suppose you have a signed picture of Majel Barret and I want it? I don't want a replica of it, I want the one with her actual signature on it. I might want to trade you something for it. What? With no generally accepted form of money, you're stuck with a barter economy and the Federation is back to the Bronze Age.
Breakfast served all day!
The Ferengi explicitly rejected the very concept of material egalitarianism (which underlies the Federation using their replicated plenty to eliminate scarcity), and for entirely social reasons (status) strove to acquire something that specifically could not be replicated (Latinum). They basically worship capitalism (literally) and actively fight against the natural progress of technology eliminating it.
Mudd likely wanted money for similar reasons. Some people -- lots of people -- don't just want all of the material things they could possibly need, they want social power, they don't want everything to be free and equal because then there's no hierarchy for them to be on top of. In Mudd's case, and probably the Ferengi as well, I imagine he sought out this kind of power over people in places outside the Federation, as it's hard to have power over someone who can get anything they want for free on a whim like most Federation citizens.
As for your signed picture of Majel -- is it OK if I send that via transporter? You don't mind if its constituent atoms are converted into entirely fungible energy and then reassembled into the same pattern they started in on your end? What if there happens to be a transporter accident along the way, and a transporter duplicate gets sent back to me? Or is it that the original got sent back to me and you got the duplicate? How can we tell? What does it matter?
Also, a Bronze Age with starships and replicators sounds pretty sweet to me.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
It's called "tenting ones fingers." And yes, it's eeeeexcellent.
Mudd sometimes lived in Federation Space. He went out of it twice, the first to pick up whores for miners to marry, and the second to live on a planet of robots.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Because Latanum appeared, at least in one episode, to be a dangerous liquid metal like mercury. Which might also be the reason it could not be replicated. The gold was used as shielding to make usable money.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Oh right, *SPOILER*. If you haven't seen it after 13 years you probably weren't going to before this post went up :)
Fair enough, but I was waiting for you to make an actual point with that instead of just dropping the detailed spoiler and otherwise contributing nothing to the conversation.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
In its opinion in Eldred v. Ashcroft upholding the Bono Act, the Supreme Court recognized the possibility of "legislative misbehavior" to repeatedly extend the copyright term. So far there have been only two, in both cases to harmonize to the European standard of "life of grandchildren". The Copyright Act of 1976 and the interim extensions that preceded it were the first to adopt the "life of grandchildren" standard, and the Bono Act merely updated it for longer life expectancy. Unless there's a breakthrough in health care that dramatically extends the life of grandchildren, the copyright lobby will have to argue anew that a further extension past the life of grandchildren is not "legislative misbehavior".