rotten bananas

My attention has been drawn to this video. It’s a pretty humorous attempt to write a simple perl script using Vista’s voice recognition feature. While it’s not as awful as it could be (and there certainly have been more awful attempts), it can hardly be viewed as “usable”. I’m not even sure why companies keep trying to tackle this topic anyway. Have you ever tried talking to a machine? Whether it’s for function, or out of boredom (or rage), I always end up feeling like an idiot, which is hardly a feeling that encourages me to continue.

Based on the sensitivity witnessed in the video, there are two groups that could take advantage of this feature. One wouldn’t need it, as it communicates in much more efficient manners such as TCP/IP and machine code. The other has no arms, which means that they would only have to resort to their feet when relieving their inevitable frustration, and computer cases are hard on the toes. Trust me.

For fear of this turning into a Microsoft bashing shindig, I’d like to point out that this is hardly my goal, but I cannot be held responsible for my actions. I have very little experience with Vista beyond extremely buggy betas on friends’ PCs and those silly mac commercials (the cancel/allow one is hilarious, all accuracy issues aside), but from what I’ve seen, I have no qualms. They’ve certainly succeeded in making it look like an upgrade. It has a certain charm, a “shiny and new” charm, like a new toaster, or a large piece of chrome. This will be the first Windows release that I am not wholly entrenched in on the ground floor, as my workplace is lagging at a comfortable 6 years behind, and I’ve recently switched to the free, open-source world.

My issue here is not that Microsoft has managed to release a buggy half-assed application (who could have predicted?), as I’m employed to use their fantastic Visual Studio suite of applications, which is nothing short of a daily, scarring reminder that I can feel pain. The point is that by releasing broken voice recognition software, nobody is going to consider buying said software, or similar, in the future without some sort of guarantee. At this point, their best plan of attack would be to release a free patch once the technology is much (much) closer to perfection. The very nature of the thing is one that lends itself to a quick temper, tireless frustration and inappropriate outbursts at family gatherings (if you don’t know what I mean, pick up some voice recognition software and try it).

Because of this, people will be very quick to write it off as another for-the-future technology. Even releasing a free patch, they’d be hard pressed to convince many people to give it another try. They’ve effectively written themselves out of the market until something spectacular happens. If you want to be a player in your market, you have convince people that you don’t just know the rules, but that you have the skills as well.

On a separate note.

I’d like to apologize for my colleague’s apparent lack of familiarity with the English language. By the sounds of it, he may be ejected from the country anyway, but in the mean time he’s got a lot of untapped knowledge dying to be released. I’m not sure where the flow gets obstructed between his head and his hands. He certainly doesn’t speak like that, or he would already be on a government watch list somewhere. I’ve seen him ingest many things during the course of our friendship, some with effects akin to those of chips. Not Lay’s, but Sherwin-Williams. Perhaps I should have intervened.

But, bear with us both please. We’re learning this blogging game as we go, and we hope you’re enjoying it. Though, it doesn’t really matter because we are.