Re: Speech Input/Output on Apple II

["anoneds@netscape.net" <anoneds@netscape.net>]

Michael J. Mahon wrote:
> jboothbee@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >>Only the Heuristics and Scott cards did better, because
> >>they were computers-on-a-card, with well-honed algorithms
> >>matched to their capabilities--and even they were primitive
> >>by today's standards.
> >
> > In 1999 when I was playing with the Covox Voice master,
> > I found the recognition to be better than any software I could
> > download for the PC.  Better than the built in recognition
> > of the Mac.
>
> That's surprising, since the Voice Master only has a few filter
> bands to work with, and relatively primitive software.
>
> I've never found any of them good enough to make me want to
> do real comparisons.
>
> > in 2002 I tried Windows XP built in speech recognition.  After
> > reading the training document, I tried speaking a few simple
> > sentences.  It would output garbage, similar to "AI" programs
> > "poetry".
> >
> > I would say "it is a great day today.  I need to go to the
> > store"
> >
> > it would type "red dogs had left today.  Exceed not any more"
> >
> > I found it interesting that it would misinterpret almost every
> > word I would speak individually or in sentences, except for:
> >
> > "bill gates"
> > "microsoft"
> > "windows"
> >
> > and I am not kidding or exaggerating.  The program would
> > get those 3 words 99 percent of the time.  Any other word
> > would be interpreted correctly approximately 10 percent.
>
> I have to ask if you said, "it---is---a---great---day---", etc.,
> because natural utterances are much too "connected" and have too
> much contextual influence for today's recognizers to do a good
> job.

This reminds me of my TI's Milton Bradly Expansion System, which did
speech recognition during games.

I don't know the algorithm, I just know it was "neat", but not anywhere
near perfect.

For one, when you did the voice training, your voice wasn't nearly as
excited as when you were screaming "HOME!" at the computer in a frenzy,
and then screaming expletives at the computer as the shortstop fielded
the ball.

Another thing, it always seemed to me that the recognition worked best
at the beginning of a game and seemed to "deteriorate" the longer you
played.

I also got some Dragonslayer recognition software back in the Win3.1
days. It basically was just like the MBX system in that you trained
words to perform certain functions like "File-Save". Very limited, but
it worked very well.