delete what they end to all of the loop press
February 16, 2008 11:17 PM   Subscribe

delete adult scroll conflict for (or: 10 minutes of Perl scripting with Vista)
posted by Blazecock Pileon (62 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
I caught myself rocking with agitation just before I stopped watching. Funny or no, technical malfunction is my number one stressor above death and the wrath of God. Actually, that and trying to figure out how to formulate an amusing post that appears to be written using hilariously inadequate voice recognition technology.
posted by RokkitNite at 11:30 PM on February 16, 2008


Hilarious!
posted by SPrintF at 11:31 PM on February 16, 2008


Just the description incited a visceral response - I need to go listen to some enya now.
posted by phrontist at 11:34 PM on February 16, 2008


I turned it off in embarrassment for the guy.
posted by Brocktoon at 11:36 PM on February 16, 2008


I watched the whole thing. Well, well worth it for the moment of "input eagles."
[/spoilers]
posted by jinjo at 11:43 PM on February 16, 2008 [1 favorite]


It's actually not that bad at detecting what he's saying. Obviously writing code using this is absurd (and comedy gold!), but as far as accessibility goes, it doesn't suck.

Also, will cycle fleet.
posted by spiderskull at 11:46 PM on February 16, 2008


Meh. Cute, but try this exact same transcription with your native English speaker grandma, or any other non-computer programmer and you're going to have similar confusions (probably) minus the hilarious guesses and with a slightly easier to breach learning curve (heavily depending on the intelligence and flexibility of your scribe.)

That is to say, this could just as easily be a criticism of the non-usability of Perl than of Vista. Or maybe that's the point?
posted by Skwirl at 11:48 PM on February 16, 2008 [2 favorites]


At 4:41 he breaks down and uses the keyboard to delete something. I'll keep watching and tell you all how it turns out...
posted by awfurby at 11:49 PM on February 16, 2008


And again at 7:17.
posted by awfurby at 11:51 PM on February 16, 2008


Bwahahaha. That was hilarious.

I mean, it's not like there is any particular reason why it should work, since obviously the voice recognition software would have been created to input regular English text, rather then code. I bet you could write a pretty good programming language specific voice recognition system if you came up with goofy sounds for all the exciting glyphs used.
posted by delmoi at 11:52 PM on February 16, 2008 [3 favorites]


?, delmoi?
posted by jinjo at 11:57 PM on February 16, 2008 [6 favorites]


I liked at 8:11 when he says "I'm gonna kill somebody" and the thing types "ONLY CUSTOMERS." Because I have that very conversation with coworkers pretty regularly.
posted by churl at 12:08 AM on February 17, 2008 [6 favorites]


I have to say that many of his problems are because he's saying things into the microphone that he doesn't want typed. What does he expect to happen? Also, he keeps saying thinks like "equals" instead of "equals sign".
posted by !Jim at 12:13 AM on February 17, 2008 [1 favorite]


Is there any good free voice recognition software? This made me really want to play with one.
posted by Citizen Premier at 12:24 AM on February 17, 2008


I don't know how good his headset microphone is, but if the background noise on the video is anything to go by, I'm not surprised the software is having trouble. (Never mind that it's probably set up for dictating letters in English.)

An ex of mine had RSI and used Dragon quite a bit, it seemed to work reasonably well for her - once she had a good headset, and had set everything up nicely, anyway.

There's a reason everyone with fingers still uses a keyboard as a first choice.
posted by The Monkey at 12:49 AM on February 17, 2008 [1 favorite]


well, this is almost sort of funny, except speech recognition isn't really designed for this sort of thing, and he's being an idiot about it who seems to be acting as though he hasn't read the manual.

Vista's still shit, but this isn't really an effective criticism of anything, it's just dumb.
posted by blacklite at 12:54 AM on February 17, 2008


Just type it for god's sake!

Press capitol I!!!
posted by Holy foxy moxie batman! at 1:12 AM on February 17, 2008 [1 favorite]


Effective criticism or not, I still think it's hilarious... best part is at 5:29 :

"Now that Vista's played catch-up..."

None of the fuck as a

"'at' sign"

None of the fuck as a@

"(sigh) ... thank you, thank you Windows."

"None of the fuck as a@like you like your windows

"(sigh) ... delete 'none of the fuck as [snicker in background] at sign like you like your windows, stop laughing."
posted by the other side at 1:12 AM on February 17, 2008 [1 favorite]


It wouldn't have been quite so bad if he didn't start off by saying, "...to show you how easy it is."
posted by Holy foxy moxie batman! at 1:22 AM on February 17, 2008


Dang, I had a bad cough yesterday, and laughing hurts...
Great little clip, reminded me of this one where an official Microsoft tech demo goes awry.
Oh, and I especially liked the part where it briefly looked like he'd go into an infinite loop of "delete "adult scrolls conflict for delete adult scrolls conflict for"" - how is the poor program supposed to know which is meta-language (i.e., commands) and which is textual input which is supposed to be typed out?
posted by PontifexPrimus at 1:49 AM on February 17, 2008


This has nothing to do with PERL or Vista, just another demonstration (if you missed the first fifty) of why voice recognition software isn't cool yet. And may not ever be. That's the real problem.
posted by CCBC at 1:54 AM on February 17, 2008



rjdsmiths (4 days ago)
If thats Not Windows, Than What Is
LOLOL!
Good old Billy;)

posted by drjimmy11 at 2:12 AM on February 17, 2008


This guy clearly wasn't being serious...you don't make a clip saying how easy something's going to be, spend 10 minutes making a fool of yourself, then upload it to Youtube unless you were taking the piss to begin with.

Anyway, obfuscated Perl probably would have been easier. Just say Bracket Parenthesis Dollarsign Plus Plus At Sign Hash Has Close Bracket Semicolon Hash Slash Dot Dot or something, I'm sure it will run just fine.
posted by Jimbob at 2:46 AM on February 17, 2008 [1 favorite]


I hardly doubt voice recognition is useful to write code.
posted by zouhair at 2:58 AM on February 17, 2008


Water pizza ship
posted by Wolfdog at 3:38 AM on February 17, 2008 [7 favorites]


I had no idea Napoleon Dynamite was a perl scripter.
posted by srboisvert at 3:47 AM on February 17, 2008


To fix the problem with the "delete "adult scrolls conflict for delete adult scrolls conflict for"" problem there will be a dicta-button which is pressed to change the input mode of the text being entered, just like vi. Because those inclined to vi will not spent much time on speech recognition software and won't like the idea of pressing keyboard buttons to change text modes, the software should come with a simple usb interface that has a button similar to a Jeopardy button. To make the interface metaphor even more obvious, there should be a record icon that pops up whenever it is 'enter text' mode.

Also, I didn't like the guy in the video. It's a gut instinct, but it seems to me the tone he using in the 'delete' command sequences implied that he was simply annoyed -- not someone who looks at the failure of the software as an exposure of the mechanics behind the software. A simple pause after a mistake is all it takes for me. He seems like someone who writes code in moses-on-the-mountain mode and is annoyed at the foibles of men who interpret the writing, and not in investigator mode. Perhaps it's acting to make Vista look extra stupid.
posted by sleslie at 4:04 AM on February 17, 2008


To be fair to Vista, Perl and the poor rat-racer, voice recognition has always worked this bad.
posted by CautionToTheWind at 4:25 AM on February 17, 2008


He's probably not using a headset mike. I've used the Vista voice recognition before, and it's nigh worthless if you're using a mike that's built into the case of your computer, but it works OK if you're using a really good headset mike.

Of course, trying to code anything with voice recognition only makes sense if you're a quadriplegic.
posted by JDHarper at 5:31 AM on February 17, 2008


Upon further viewing: He *is* using a headset mike.

Ouch.
posted by JDHarper at 5:38 AM on February 17, 2008


There's an S in CAPS LOCK
posted by furtive at 5:40 AM on February 17, 2008


See also.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:00 AM on February 17, 2008


There is a guy... somewhere... who writes code with Dragon Naturally Speaking (due to an injury, as I dimly remember). He has a whole suite of macros set up, so he can say "if block", get his brackets in place, move the cursor around, and so on. However, this video guy is an ass. If you can code perl, you're probably technically minded enough to understand the ambiguity of dictated speech will not convert well into the symbol-heavy needs of a machine language. I say he went out of his way to make it fail and make the speech recognition of vista deliberately look bad.

The sad thing is, a lot of people with vista have a pretty good speech recognition system for free*, and won't consider using it thanks to videos like this.

* as in 'not paying for it as an extra', which I'm aware isn't strictly the same as free
posted by davemee at 6:20 AM on February 17, 2008 [1 favorite]


think you! (delete think you.)
posted by steef at 6:21 AM on February 17, 2008


Twenty years ago, when I was in college, a friend of mine had a dream summer intern job as a coder at Apple. They worked on Apple's then-revolutionary speech recognition program on early macs. He cam hope with a tee shirt that said: I helped Apple wreck a nice beach.
posted by The Bellman at 6:35 AM on February 17, 2008 [15 favorites]


cam hope? What am I smoking? "came home".
posted by The Bellman at 6:36 AM on February 17, 2008


Here's a video demoing a voice recognition system that was actually designed for coding in Python.
posted by grouse at 6:41 AM on February 17, 2008 [2 favorites]


I'm not sure when voice recognition would ever be more useful for coding than typing for non-disabled programmers because the spoken word is just not precise enough for coding. Have you ever tried pair programming and tried to tell the other person what to type? It usually goes something like "put a brace there...no not a square bracket, a curly brace...a closing curly brace...here let me drive for a minute...". It's never going to be easier to say "closing square bracket" than just typing "]".
posted by octothorpe at 7:12 AM on February 17, 2008


Well, I think the point is that this stuff is for disabled programmers. And if you have specialized voice recognition software for coding and don't perversely choose to program in one of the most punctuation-dependent languages known to man, you can get around some of those problems.

The verbose syntax of a language like AppleScript would become a real advantage in a dictation environment.
posted by grouse at 7:22 AM on February 17, 2008


This will never work in a busy office. Some people's voices carry like that of an angry god.

I think you could design a language to be optimized for this kind of input. It might even be more readable.
posted by popechunk at 7:38 AM on February 17, 2008


http://youtube.com/user/scrubadub1
He's made a bunch of these trying to do different things using the speech recognition. The other ones, while not as funny, do show him failing at tasks that are more suited for speech recognition then coding.
posted by fingo at 9:39 AM on February 17, 2008


I laughed. It seemed to me that the guy was trying for silly and tongue-in-cheek.

It's a gut instinct, but it seems to me the tone he using in the 'delete' command sequences implied that he was simply annoyed -- not someone who looks at the failure of the software as an exposure of the mechanics behind the software. A simple pause after a mistake is all it takes for me. He seems like someone who writes code in moses-on-the-mountain mode and is annoyed at the foibles of men who interpret the writing, and not in investigator mode. Perhaps it's acting to make Vista look extra stupid.

I...really? I am obviously interrogating this Youtube clip from the wrong perspective.
posted by LeeJay at 9:39 AM on February 17, 2008


Y'all have more fortitude than me. Coding and voice recognition are two of my least favorite things tech and I bailed out less than 30 seconds into the video. Painful stuff.
posted by aerotive at 9:56 AM on February 17, 2008


Now that I think on it, this reminds me of the article posted on MeFi a few weeks ago about Steve Martin's approach to humor:

What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension?

I get the same kind of tension, and relief in laughter, watching this video.
posted by SPrintF at 10:01 AM on February 17, 2008


thatwaseasy.txt

This was pretty funny.
posted by synaesthetichaze at 10:05 AM on February 17, 2008


Funny indeed, but in a way, pretty impressive as well.
posted by juiceCake at 10:10 AM on February 17, 2008


you guys are aware that this is a joke, right?
posted by empath at 11:04 AM on February 17, 2008


That was predictable but still totally funny.
posted by puke & cry at 11:21 AM on February 17, 2008


The guy in the video is at least partially responsible for all those errors; when working with voice recognition you've got to keep the tone of your voice even, and refrain from making asides. And if he doesn't consistently train the software, it will only get worse.

This is why I'm still using DragonDictate (circa 1996) on Windows XP and I dread the day I can no longer buy a new laptop with XP. All the modern voice recognition programs are for continuous speech voice recognition, as opposed to discrete speech (recognizing one word at a time). And the old versions of DragonDictate have a Command Mode so commands don't get confused with the text you're trying to dictate, PontifexPrimus.

So I may have to talk like a robot, but I get much better results than this poor schmoe. In trying to make voice recognition more user-friendly for the non-disabled user, they've made it less accurate and more frustrating to deal with. Most people have the option of giving up and using the keyboard, but people with disabilities for whom voice recognition is the only option often have a very hard time with these new programs. And discrete speech is no longer supported.

(I don't think voice recognition is the wave of the future for the average user, anyway. Keyboards will never die out. Do you really want your spouse to hear everything you're doing on the computer?)
posted by Soliloquy at 12:04 PM on February 17, 2008


Does that ^ answer your question, empath?
posted by Wolfdog at 12:09 PM on February 17, 2008


You can know that this was intended to be humorous and still have a more intelligent conversation about it than "them videos sure are funny."
posted by grouse at 12:12 PM on February 17, 2008 [1 favorite]


(Um, I kinda forgot to make the salient point, which is that discrete speech voice recognition is more accurate then continuous speech; here's more information.)
posted by Soliloquy at 12:14 PM on February 17, 2008


Empath, I can see how for you this might be funny ha-ha, but for me this video was funny that's-me-in-a-few-years-oh-god-I'm-screwed.
posted by Soliloquy at 12:19 PM on February 17, 2008


Well pointing out that he is using it wrong is a big fucking "duh," since that's part of the joke.
posted by empath at 12:37 PM on February 17, 2008 [2 favorites]


So is there any way to capitalize "info"?
posted by smackfu at 7:42 PM on February 17, 2008


smackfu: "So is there any way to capitalize "info"?"

I'd try something like "allcaps" or just say "press capital I, press capital N..."

That or use a damn keyboard.
posted by flatluigi at 8:29 PM on February 17, 2008


It's a gut instinct, but it seems to me the tone he using in the 'delete' command sequences implied that he was simply annoyed -- not someone who looks at the failure of the software as an exposure of the mechanics behind the software. A simple pause after a mistake is all it takes for me. He seems like someone who writes code in moses-on-the-mountain mode and is annoyed at the foibles of men who interpret the writing, and not in investigator mode. Perhaps it's acting to make Vista look extra stupid.

I...really? I am obviously interrogating this Youtube clip from the wrong perspective.


Perhaps it is humour. Jokes about speech recognition programs and perl scripts aren't exactly borscht belt material, so I took it at face value. On my first viewing, it appeared to me to be the work of someone out to showcase weaknesses in Micro$oft's tools.

I'm thinking a bit more... In the right hands and with accurate comedic timing, this can be a very entertaining 50's style comedy routine. A guy writing his will using speech recognition, entitled "Delete my Wife".

MAN: Delete My Wife. Hello. Who Are You? Why is She Over at Your Place? Stop. Dog.
posted by sleslie at 4:43 AM on February 18, 2008


Jokes about speech recognition programs and perl scripts aren't exactly borscht belt material

No-one said it was good humour. Browse Slashdot sometime and see if you ever laugh at any of the comments that get a +5 Funny moderation. I think that's its target audience.
posted by Jimbob at 5:03 AM on February 18, 2008


I would just like to point out that anyone who says "thank you" ironically to voice recognition software every time the computer finally gets something right deserves what he gets.

Eye Lie Chris.
posted by shmegegge at 12:04 PM on February 18, 2008


[The Sids could]
posted by eritain at 1:41 PM on February 18, 2008


correct the
this, OK
lowercase this
correct sids
correct sids
select sids
delete
is
correct could
good
good
good
jeez
correct Jeeves
good
good
good
good
horrible, OK

posted by eritain at 1:44 PM on February 18, 2008


It reminds me of this cartoon from Spamusement.
posted by grapefruitzzz at 8:04 PM on February 18, 2008


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