[Schadenfreude]

all! I'm so impressed with Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software. I'm actually using it to write this post right now. I just snagged it today and I'm still getting used to it learning the commands etc..

I just noticed that I can actually write posts on Peak oil.com. So I'm utterly flabbergasted.

I pretty much read in my normal voice at normal speed may be speaking just a little bit more clearly than usual. The following piece of literature, Joseph Conrad's almayer's Folly.

Obviously, you get a few mistakes here and there and you have to go back and correct them, which the software makes possible. But it isn't too difficult.

In this post, I haven't gone back and changed anything except for the quote from almayer is where I had to go in show at how to spell out Almayer, Makassar, Hudig, etc. and in the quoted piece, I was more careful to say punctuation very specifically. Probably most of the mistakes are my just getting used to the software. The software is probably so much more capable, and I'm only using a really cheap Logitech USB headset as a microphone, but isn't this funk and cool, what?


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Almayer's Folly', 'C')hapter 1.

"Kaspar! Makan!"

The well-known shrill voice startled Almayer from his dream of splendid future into the unpleasant realities of the present our an unpleasant voice to. He had heard it for many years, and when every year he liked it less. No matter: there would be an end to all this soon.

He shuffled uneasily, but took no further notice of the call. Leaning with both his elbows on the balustrade of the veranda, he went on looking fixedly at the great river that flowed -- in different and hurried -- before his eyes. He liked to look at it about the time of sunset; perhaps because at that time the sinking sun would spread a glowing gold tinge on the waters of the anti-, and I'll Almayer his thoughts were often busy with gold; gold he had failed to secure; gold, the others had secured -- dishonestly, of course -- or gold he meant to secure yet, through his own honest exertions, for himself and Nina. He absorbed himself and his dream of wealth and power away from this coast where you dwelt for so many years, forgetting the bitterness of toil and strife in the vision of a great and splendid reward. They would live in Europe, he and his daughter. They would be rich and respected. Nobody would think of her mixed blood in the presence of her great beauty in of his immense wealth. Witnessing her triumphs he would grow young again, he would forget the 25 years of heartbreaking struggle on this coast where he felt like a prisoner. All this was nearly within his reach. Let only Dane return! In return, soon, he must -- -- in his own interest, for his own share. He was now more than a week late! Perhaps he would return tonight. Such were almayer his thoughts as, standing on the veranda of his new but already decaying house -- -- that last failure of his life -- -- he looked on the broad River. There was no tinge of gold on it this evening, for it been swollen by the rains, and rolled and angry and muddy flood under his inattentive eyes, carrying small driftwood and big deadlocks, and whole uprooted trees with branches in foliage, amongst which the water swirled roared angrily. It's one of those drifting trees grounded on the shelving shore, just buy the house, and almayer, neglecting his dream, watched it with languid interest. The tree swung slowly round, amid the hiss and foam of the water, and soon getting free of the obstruction again to move downstream again, rolling slowly over, raising upwards along, denuded branch, like a hand lifted in mute appeal to heaven against the river's brutal and unnecessary violence. Almayer his interest in the fate of that tree increased rapidly. He leaned over to see if it would clear the low point below. It did; and he drew back, thinking that now its course was freed down to the sea, and he envied the lot of that inanimate thing. Now growing small and indistinct in the deepening darkness. As he lost sight of it altogether he began to wonder how far out at sea he would drift. When the current carry it north or south! South, probably, till it drifted in sight of the Celebes, as far as Macassar, perhaps!

Makassar! Almayer's is quickened fancy distance to the tree on its imaginary voyage, but his memory lagging behind some 20 years or more in point of time saw a young and Slim Almayer clad all in white and models looking landing from the Dutch mail boat on the dusty jetty of Makassar, coming to woo fortune in the gut bounds of Hudig. It was an important applet in his life, the beginning of a new existence for him. His father, a subordinate official employed in the Botanical Gardens Buitenzorg, was no doubt delighted to place his son in such a firm. The young man himself to was nothing loss to leave the poisonous shores of job, and the meager comforts of the parental bungalow, where the father grumbled all day at the stupidity of native gardeners, and the mother from the depths of her long easy chair bewailed the lost glories of Amsterdam, where she had been brought up, and other position as the daughter of a cigar dealer there.

Almayer had left his home with a light heart and a lighter pocket, speaking English well, and strong in arithmetic; ready to conquer the world, never doubting that he would.

After those 20 years, standing in the close and stifling heat of a born in the evening, he recalled with pleasurable regret the image of hudig's lofty and cool warehouses with their long and straight avenues of gin cases and bales of Manchester goods; the big door swinging noiselessly; the dim light of the place, so delightful after the glare of the streets; the little railed off spaces amongst piles of merchandise for the Chinese clerks, neat, cool, and sad eyed, wrote rapidly and in silence amidst the din of the working gangs rolling tasks were shifting cases to a muttered song, ending with a desperate yell.

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

I used the VR software that comes iwht windows vista to write my last book. It was great except for the times when it translated my sighs into words. but then that was kind of fun. I tried to see if it would catch my cats meowing but it wouldn't recognize it.

[Schadenfreude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('uNkNowN ElEmEnt', 'I') used the VR software that comes iwht windows vista to write my last book. It was great except for the times when it translated my sighs into words. but then that was kind of fun. I tried to see if it would catch my cats meowing but it wouldn't recognize it.

[Schadenfreude]

what was your last book?

[Schadenfreude]

one thing I've noticed about Dragon NaturallySpeaking, is that it doesn't understand dirty words at all. So I could say something like hey unknown element. Your flock en masse whole get a life, and you probably wouldn't even get mad!

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

[quote="Schadenfreude"]
why did he realize something like this would come with Vista. Probably everybody around here our new knows about this stuff is just me screwing around with it for the first time.[quote]

Believe it or not I sat with dragon naturally speaking on my shelf for like 3 years. I only started playing with it cause I was doing a national novel writing challenge and pulled a tendon in my arm... hard to write a book in 30 days with a pulled tendon.

sure is funa nd addicting. I let my 14yr old go at it and he entertained himself for hours with it!

My book was a paranormal thriller.

[Schadenfreude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('uNkNowN ElEmEnt', 'M')y book was a paranormal thriller.

[pedalling_faster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Schadenfreude', 'o')ne thing I've noticed about Dragon NaturallySpeaking, is that it doesn't understand dirty words at all. So I could say something like hey unknown element. Your flock en masse whole get a life, and you probably wouldn't even get mad!

[WildRose]

I'm very interested in voice recognition software, particularly how it's progressing. I started a thread in the open forum a while back on this topic. Voice recognition is starting to be used more in the medical field, although it has had somewhat limited success because of the scope of terms, names of drugs, laboratory tests and values, etc. Not only that, but many of the professionals using voice are quite sloppy with dictation and/or have strong accents and I don't know how easily the software can overcome these obstacles.

Anyway, on a personal note, I work with a lot of people whose careers will be obsolete if/when voice recognition becomes really accurate. So far, we are told that many staff will become editors rather than lose their positions, but I think that will be decided by how accurate the technology is.

[pedalling_faster]

the technology is accurate enough.

but there are pre-conditions for the accuracy -
* computer speed in the right places
* training on individual voices. until you go through about a 1 1/2 hour calibration session, the computer will have some real trouble telling the difference between "warm" and "worm", as an example. and if you're dictating a personal ad on CraigsList and use the term "warm worm" ... you'll probably have to type it by hand.
* Operating System support. microsoft & website operators have to buy in. there needs to be a verification cycle. e.g., if a client is dictating a credit card number, the server has to be darn sure it got 'it' (the number) right. another example would be if someone wanted to make a donation to PeakOil.com, and uses a Paypal email address. the end result has to be explicit, but the process has to feel friendly.

one of the best examples i've seen of speech recognition was the customer support system for Telus in Canada. the default voice is a woman's voice, and it doesn't have the pauses and wierdly stitched together phonemes of early speech recognition. in other words, it sounds real.

you know how if you're talking to an operator online, sometimes you start talking about where they're located, in the category of friendly chit-chat ? the Telus system had the same feeling, evoked the same response ... then you realize, "i'm talking to a machine". it's un-nerving.

[strider3700]

I'm pretty sure I can type faster then I speak at this point. I suppose it would be nice to just sit back and speak rather then type and read, but I'm also pretty sure that my thought process is different when typing vs when speaking. I have the tendency to come across far better spoken on paper then in speech. It could be the tiny delay as the thought gets translated into spelling vs the thought into sounds.

[Gandalf_the_White]

Has it gotten that good. I had that a few years ago and it was not very good, but that was Win Me too.

[Lumpy]

I have had Dragon since 1998 or so. It was a little clunky back then. I bought an updated version in 2006, with a specific medical (psychiatric) add on. It was cool, but then I changed jobs, and didn't use it for a couple years.

Got a new laptop in January with Vista Professional (or Business, or whatever it's called.) Dragon I had was incompatible, so they gave me a free upgrade.

It's a great product, and when I have 10 hours worth of psychiatric assessments to dictate, it takes less time to do it in Dragon and correct as I go, than to dictate on tape, have it transcribed by a typist, read/edit it, have it corrected by a typist, read again, then sign.

I type fast, but it is hard on the shoulders to type that much stuff -- so I really do like using Dragon when I have a bunch of stuff to get out the door.

Lumpy

[smallpoxgirl]

I got Dragon a couple of months ago. I use it to do most of my medical dictation. I'm cheap so I didn't get the medical version ($100 vs. $1000). It took a while to train it, but it's pretty good at this point. Training was a combination of adding some medical words and acronyms, and taking out obscured words that I never use, but Dragon kept going for. For example, "47 year old" kept coming out as "47 euro". Getting more memory in my laptop also helped things dramatically. It really didn't like running with only 512mb.

[Schadenfreude]

I just graduated with a degree in Health Information Management and Medical Coding. I have a background in sales, but I thought I'd change careers and I wanted something stable and secure. I thought healthcare would be a good area.

So I've had to really bone up on ICD - 9 coding, and CPT Medical Coding (International Classification of Diseases). But it doesn't seem like it's going be very long before it those kinds of functions are going to be replaced by computers completely, especially since ICD 10 is going to be more complex and more detailed than ICD-9.

I expect there will be an explosion of computer technology devoted to the medical realm in the next 10 to 15 years with the baby boomers retiring and resources being strained to the breaking point. So maybe there will be a place for me within the healthcare information boom we will supposedly see shortly.

I just dictated all of the above using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It works okay when typing directly onto the forum, but it won't do certain things like "select [something]". It could be it's just because I'm using an old notebook computer. This thing must be four years old now and can't believe it's actually doing this. Time for a new one.

[Lumpy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', 'I') got Dragon a couple of months ago. I use it to do most of my medical dictation. I'm cheap so I didn't get the medical version ($100 vs. $1000). It took a while to train it, but it's pretty good at this point. Training was a combination of adding some medical words and acronyms, and taking out obscured words that I never use, but Dragon kept going for. For example, "47 year old" kept coming out as "47 euro". Getting more memory in my laptop also helped things dramatically. It really didn't like running with only 512mb.

[WildRose]

So, Lumpy and smallpoxgirl, do you think the younger physicians will go for voice recognition in a big way, correcting their reports as they go along, or do you think most would still rather dictate and have transcriptionists keying in the reports?

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('WildRose', 'S')o, Lumpy and smallpoxgirl, do you think the younger physicians will go for voice recognition in a big way, correcting their reports as they go along, or do you think most would still rather dictate and have transcriptionists keying in the reports?