Why is it so much fun to make a computer say dirty words?

June 4, 2001 4:30 PM

Why is it so much fun to make a computer say dirty words?
posted by RylandDotNet (16 comments total)

This is an excellent tool for making pranks using the paging system at work.
posted by daver at 4:47 PM on June 4, 2001

Mac users have been able to do this for a while.
posted by noisemartyr at 5:16 PM on June 4, 2001

I had some Creative Labs PC software back with my 486 that would do really bad speech synthesis. I was able to enter 10 or so phrases and select them for reproduction. I had a blast calling up relatives, having it ask "Guess who this is?" and then answering yes, no, getting closer...

My sister-in-law figured it out pretty quick but my dad got pissed and hung up on me. Then when I called back he wouldn't answer the phone...
posted by mutagen at 5:34 PM on June 4, 2001

does anyone remember Dr. SBAITSO?
posted by mcsweetie at 6:18 PM on June 4, 2001

"If you plan to enter text which our system might consider to be obscene, check here to certify that you are old enough to hear the resulting output"

Am I reading this correctly? This has got to be one of the funniest things I've seen in awhile...

"I am wandering around, hopelessly insane" cuts off at the end. Darn.
posted by Wizzle at 6:22 PM on June 4, 2001

I remember using something even older than Dr. Sbaitso. It was a pair of old DOS apps called SPEECH.EXE and SAY.EXE (or was that .COM?). First you loaded SPEECH into memory, then you used the SAY command to spell words phonetically. Like so...

C:\> say heh-loh
C:\> say waht ah deh-y.
C:\> say ahn-tai-dihs-ehs-tahb--ihsh-mehn-tahr-yah-nih-suhm.


The output would come out of my 8088 PC speaker in this scratchy, almost unintelligible robot drone. Anyone else ever use that?
posted by brownpau at 8:19 PM on June 4, 2001

I'll see your SAY.COM and raise you Magic Voice for the Commodore 64!
posted by hijinx at 8:52 PM on June 4, 2001

Magic Voice rocked, it let you define pitch and inflection of individual syllables. I remember getting it to sound pretty natural. I haven't seen a speech synth app that will do that lately.
posted by RylandDotNet at 9:35 PM on June 4, 2001

All i can say is AMIGA!
posted by crackheadmatt at 9:51 PM on June 4, 2001

AppleCat modem had speach output directly to the phone line. Lovely feature.
posted by daver at 10:09 PM on June 4, 2001

This one sounds better
posted by crackheadmatt at 10:47 PM on June 4, 2001

Jeez, that's amazing. It still sounds like a person with Parkinson's, but the Bell Labs one sounds like a robot with Parkinson's.
posted by RylandDotNet at 3:55 AM on June 5, 2001

does anyone remember Dr. SBAITSO?

I remember Sh*t Talker. Great for phone pranks: "Honey, Stephen Hawking's on the phone"...oh wait, useless now that he has his English Accent...
posted by DiplomaticImmunity at 10:58 AM on June 5, 2001

I remember Sbaitso, he had an incredible sense of humor if you told him about really disturbing mental problems. Also, if you swore too much at him, he'd go completely insane and finally have a parity error. Good therapy :)


Sound Blaster Artificial Intelligent Text to Speech (forget what the O stood for tho)
posted by samsara at 11:55 AM on June 5, 2001

...oh wait, useless now that he has his English Accent...

He's got his own record too
posted by samsara at 12:00 PM on June 5, 2001

Speech synthesis is cool.. but if you want to do pranks on the phone, then it's easier to set up a new EAX preset (lots of distortion, and change pitch) on your Sound Blaster Live card and just talk in a robotic voice :)
posted by wackybrit at 4:15 PM on June 5, 2001