[kieran]

Microsoft tried to demonstrate Vista's speech recognition technology recently and well....it didn't go too well.

Dear Aunt, lets set so double the killer delete select all.

The demo starts about 30 seconds into the video.

Once again, MS screws up a public demonstration. They seem to have a pretty nice string of doing this recently.

[alcimedes]

The best part:

"MS was blaming ambient noise, but you can hear it was quiet until the product didn't work and everyone started laughing."

[sunrain]

"I'm glad you're enjoying this."

Heh heh...yep.

[AWR]

How annoying is that guy? He needs a chicken bone in the eye.

Nice demo too.

[Franz Josef]

It gladdens the heart M$ is pile of sh*t.

[macleod]

That was great! When he said dear mom it was SILENT! So much for blaming ambient noise!

[Windowsrookie]

Nice try Microsoft. But we already have it. And it works.

[chucker]

Do we? Serious question.

[Windowsrookie]

Yes. We do.

[Brad]

Not from Apple, we don't.

[chucker]

Thought so. All I see is speakable items. I don't see dictation anywhere.

[Brad]

Even "speakable items" recognition is shoddy, too, and looks/acts as though it hasn't seen an update since the late 1990s (short of porting to Mac OS X). Neither my wife nor I (nor anyone else I know) have ever had much success with it.

[chucker]

It works okay for me. Not great, not even reliable, but I'd say about two third of the time.

[Brad]

Well, it works perfectly okay for some phrases like "tell me a joke" and "what time is it", but some words and phrases never work for us (ironically, often the latter parks of the knock-knock jokes).

On a related note, does anyone else here with Brain Age have trouble getting it to recognize the word "blue"? I always skip that test because it fails to recognize when I say "blue" probably four out of five times. Again, the same goes for my wife.

[chucker]

Oh yeah. That knock-knock thing never worked well for me. Which, uh, kinda makes it… frustratingly comical. Or comically frustrating. Or something.

[Wrao]

I recently discovered my phone does voice recognition for calling people, I've never tried to train it or anything so it makes sense that it's a little bit wonky. But I enjoy playing around with it. When I say things like "my bitch" and a certain friend's name will pop up...etc.

It's similar to typing random letters in a google search an seeing what it suggests you meant. Sometimes good things can come from computer induced confusion.

Well, personally, I hope they(or some 3rd party) manages to get the voice-to-text thing down at least well enough to use, even if it doesn't become a staple. Until then, it will still be fun to play with double so kill delete lets.

[Artap99]

Originally Posted by Brad On a related note, does anyone else here with Brain Age have trouble getting it to recognize the word "blue"? I always skip that test because it fails to recognize when I say "blue" probably four out of five times. Again, the same goes for my wife.

Depending on what version of the game you have, you have to say it differently. On mine I have to say 'baloo' otherwise it will come up red or black. On my girlfriend's I have to say 'brue'. I find this problem odd, as her Nintendogs works perfectly. Maybe it's because it's recognizing a previous recording and Brain Age is going off of a general recognition.

[Engine Joe]

Originally Posted by Brad On a related note, does anyone else here with Brain Age have trouble getting it to recognize the word "blue"? I always skip that test because it fails to recognize when I say "blue" probably four out of five times. Again, the same goes for my wife.

Yup, it gets everything right but blue. And it happens to me the vast majority of the time.

It also reads my "4" as "2" before I finish writing the number, which sometimes costs me 'points'/

[Fahrenheit]

Holy Cow, he looks and sounds like Steve Carroll!

[blakbyrd]

Originally Posted by Engine Joe Yup, it gets everything right but blue. And it happens to me the vast majority of the time. It also reads my "4" as "2" before I finish writing the number, which sometimes costs me 'points'/

I'd the same problem. I got it to work by pronouncing "blue" a little more slowly. (When I say it, it sometimes sounds like Buloo).

[ShadowOfGed]

This serves as another reason to believe the following is true:

Vista is busy being insanely late, while Leopard is busy being insanely great!

[digitalprimate]

I think Microsoft is DELIBERATELY planning these hiccups It's not the first time a demo effs up and by the looks of it, it won't be the last!

[drewprops]

On my phone (Sony-Ericsson) I have to pre-record myself saying people's names, it doesn't recognize them without that comparitive element and I try to make the trigger terms very specific. Sometimes it loses its shit and I have to restart the phone, only after I have cursed the family of every person who ever built and/or coded it. I haven't tried using VR on my Macs in years and years for all the reasons mentioned above.

For such a vaunted "solution" voice recognition has been around long enough, with poor enough implementation, that it is begging to be replaced by a new technology paradigm.

[Kickaha]

Originally Posted by Artap99 Depending on what version of the game you have, you have to say it differently. On mine I have to say 'baloo' otherwise it will come up red or black. On my girlfriend's I have to say 'brue'. I find this problem odd, as her Nintendogs works perfectly. Maybe it's because it's recognizing a previous recording and Brain Age is going off of a general recognition.

Hmm. Stereotypes aside, many Japanese have a difficult time with 'L' vs. 'R'. At the age that linguistics neural tissue is organizing, if you're not exposed to distinct phonemes, it makes it almost impossible later in life to readily distinguish between them. Japanese has a phoneme that sits pretty much squarely between the European L and R, leading to later confusion. Alternately, we're not exposed to many distinctions common in other languages, and will have a hard time with them as well. Could be that the L/R recognition is splitting the difference...

[drewprops]

That's probably why I have such toilsome discussions with my friend from Mexico when he tries to teach me the difference between sounds that are indistinguishable to my ears... and I have a fairly good ear for hearing those things. Very interesting.

[Artap99]

Originally Posted by Kickaha Hmm. Stereotypes aside, many Japanese have a difficult time with 'L' vs. 'R'. At the age that linguistics neural tissue is organizing, if you're not exposed to distinct phonemes, it makes it almost impossible later in life to readily distinguish between them. Japanese has a phoneme that sits pretty much squarely between the European L and R, leading to later confusion. Alternately, we're not exposed to many distinctions common in other languages, and will have a hard time with them as well. Could be that the L/R recognition is splitting the difference...

Yeah, I was trying to think of a way to say that, but I know it would have come out as 'Engrish'. The other thing I notice is that a lot of other that speak/write English when it isn't their first language usually pluralize money as 'moneys'. I am given the chance to notice this frequently because my email is usually stuffed with subject lines saying how I won moneys from an NZ lottery.

[BarracksSi]

From the news clip:

"Ouch! Let's not forget that the first part of 'recognition' is 'wreck', as in 'train wreck'..."

[sirnick4]

Wow, I just laughed my ass off.

Not as bad as the Windows 98 crash, however.

[washington mac user]

I love how in windows 98 Gates said "thats why we arent shipping it yet" and laughed. I love how this is also a demo..

[sirnick4]

It's very easy to pick on the "big" guy when they mess up. That's just life.

Cruel. But true.