Comments on: delete what they end to all of the loop press

delete what they end to all of the loop press

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:17:57 -0800

delete adult scroll conflict for (or: 10 minutes of Perl scripting with Vista)

By: RokkitNite

RokkitNite — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:30:36 -0800

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.

By: SPrintF

SPrintF — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:31:03 -0800

Hilarious!

By: phrontist

phrontist — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:34:07 -0800

Just the description incited a visceral response - I need to go listen to some enya now.

By: Brocktoon

Brocktoon — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:36:15 -0800

I turned it off in embarrassment for the guy.

By: jinjo

jinjo — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:43:05 -0800

I watched the whole thing. Well, well worth it for the moment of "input eagles." [/spoilers]

By: spiderskull

spiderskull — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:46:25 -0800

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.

By: Skwirl

Skwirl — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:48:31 -0800

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?

By: awfurby

awfurby — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:49:25 -0800

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...

By: awfurby

awfurby — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:51:38 -0800

And again at 7:17.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:52:40 -0800

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.

By: jinjo

jinjo — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:57:55 -0800

?, delmoi?

By: churl

churl — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:08:36 -0800

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.

By: !Jim

!Jim — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:13:49 -0800

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".

By: Citizen Premier

Citizen Premier — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:24:06 -0800

Is there any good free voice recognition software? This made me really want to play with one.

By: The Monkey

The Monkey — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:49:08 -0800

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.

By: blacklite

blacklite — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:54:20 -0800

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.

By: Holy foxy moxie batman!

Holy foxy moxie batman! — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 01:12:47 -0800

Just type it for god's sake! Press capitol I!!!

By: the other side

the other side — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 01:12:59 -0800

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."

By: Holy foxy moxie batman!

Holy foxy moxie batman! — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 01:22:54 -0800

It wouldn't have been quite so bad if he didn't start off by saying, "...to show you how easy it is."

By: PontifexPrimus

PontifexPrimus — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 01:49:42 -0800

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?

By: CCBC

CCBC — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 01:54:44 -0800

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.

By: drjimmy11

drjimmy11 — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 02:12:17 -0800

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

By: Jimbob

Jimbob — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 02:46:37 -0800

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.

By: zouhair

zouhair — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 02:58:23 -0800

I hardly doubt voice recognition is useful to write code.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 03:38:41 -0800

Water pizza ship

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 03:47:40 -0800

I had no idea Napoleon Dynamite was a perl scripter.

By: sleslie

sleslie — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 04:04:18 -0800

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.

By: CautionToTheWind

CautionToTheWind — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 04:25:16 -0800

To be fair to Vista, Perl and the poor rat-racer, voice recognition has always worked this bad.

By: JDHarper

JDHarper — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 05:31:24 -0800

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.

By: JDHarper

JDHarper — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 05:38:59 -0800

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

By: furtive

furtive — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 05:40:06 -0800

There's an S in CAPS LOCK

By: Rhomboid

Rhomboid — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 06:00:11 -0800

By: davemee

davemee — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 06:20:28 -0800

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

By: steef

steef — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 06:21:56 -0800

think you! (delete think you.)

By: The Bellman

The Bellman — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 06:35:31 -0800

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.

By: The Bellman

The Bellman — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 06:36:13 -0800

cam hope? What am I smoking? "came home".

By: grouse

grouse — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 06:41:19 -0800

Here's a video demoing a voice recognition system that was actually designed for coding in Python.

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 07:12:13 -0800

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 "]".

By: grouse

grouse — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 07:22:23 -0800

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.

By: popechunk

popechunk — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 07:38:01 -0800

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.

By: fingo

fingo — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:39:21 -0800

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.

By: LeeJay

LeeJay — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:39:22 -0800

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.

By: aerotive

aerotive — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:56:29 -0800

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.

By: SPrintF

SPrintF — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:01:57 -0800

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.

By: synaesthetichaze

synaesthetichaze — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:05:09 -0800

thatwaseasy.txt This was pretty funny.

By: juiceCake

juiceCake — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:10:52 -0800

Funny indeed, but in a way, pretty impressive as well.

By: empath

empath — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:04:53 -0800

you guys are aware that this is a joke, right?

By: puke & cry

puke & cry — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:21:21 -0800

That was predictable but still totally funny.

By: Soliloquy

Soliloquy — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:04:59 -0800

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?)

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:09:41 -0800

Does that ^ answer your question, empath?

By: grouse

grouse — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:12:30 -0800

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."

By: Soliloquy

Soliloquy — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:14:27 -0800

(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.)

By: Soliloquy

Soliloquy — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:19:16 -0800

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.

By: empath

empath — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:37:01 -0800

Well pointing out that he is using it wrong is a big fucking "duh," since that's part of the joke.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:42:28 -0800

So is there any way to capitalize "info"?

By: flatluigi

flatluigi — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:29:04 -0800

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.

By: sleslie

sleslie — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:43:30 -0800

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.

By: Jimbob

Jimbob — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:03:53 -0800

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.

By: shmegegge

shmegegge — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:04:39 -0800

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.

By: eritain

eritain — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:41:44 -0800

[The Sids could]

By: eritain

eritain — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:44:20 -0800

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

By: grapefruitzzz

grapefruitzzz — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:04:18 -0800

It reminds me of this cartoon from Spamusement.