SpinVox "Recognition" Is Often Expensive Human Transcription 226
An anonymous reader writes "SpinVox offers to convert voice messages to text using a system called D2 or 'the Brain.' According to BBC News, said 'Brain' is often of the old-fashioned kind: SpinVox is sending private voice messages to South Africa, the Philippines, and maybe Egypt to be typed by people in a call centre, despite being registered as keeping all private data inside Europe and claiming that the text is somehow anonymised. Insiders say they transcribed 'love messages, secret messages' and everything else from beginning to end, and the company is being bled dry by the cost: SpinVox has been locked out of one of their data centers over a payment dispute. SpinVox refuses to comment further on details — but according to their web page, they're 'enabling the Speech 3.0, Voice 3.0, and Business 3.0 markets,' whatever that means."
O(human) (Score:5, Funny)
Speech 3.0 (Score:5, Funny)
Now with 20% more vowels!
new text-to-speech algorithm (Score:2, Funny)
By the way I'm releasing a new text-to-speech service; the algorithm makes for a very smooth speech. It does however have a little bit of an accent.
Re:Speech 3.0 (Score:4, Funny)
So it's Japanese? :-)
In case you were wondering.. (Score:5, Funny)
From their PDF:
Speech 3.0: Fully-hosted, commercial strength SLAs, proven scale and reliability - no CapEx. Scales on demand to 150m capacity
So Speech 3.0 provides 150 meters of service-level agreements with no experience-point cap.
Voice 3.0: Superior and proven range of voice products. We repeatedly deliver great, mass-market experiences with our expertise in marketing and management of all lifecycle stages.
Voice 3.0 takes you from larva, through pupa, all the way to butterfly, and then you die and get eaten.
Business 3.0: Mature yet flexible business models - designed to adapt to the dynamics of service brands we partner with, from on-demand to full lifecycle revenue strategies
Business 3.0 is apparently a flexible business model where they interact with their partners. So that's new I guess, no one has thought of that yet. It's also where people who write marketing buzzwords go to die.
Re:But it's not crazy (Score:5, Funny)
>>>Human brains remain the only high performance computer manufactured with unskilled labour.
I object! It takes a lot of skill to satisfy today's demanding women. And what happens if you lack that skill? They'll just jump ship to some other guy's bed. Unskilled labor indeed. It takes a lot of skill to convince Miss Prissy to let her guard down, bribe her with a 50,000 dollar wedding, remove the diaphragm, and let you impregnate her.
No I'm not bitter.
Although I do have this gnawing pain in my gut until I can taste the bile rising up my throat and into my mouth. Well. Maybe I'm a little bitter. Or else I just have heartburn; anybody have a TicTac?
Automatic Slashdot speech-to-text (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How good can a transcription be? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Was bound to happen (Score:3, Funny)
Okay, humans never screw up their speeck recognition, but that doesn't guarantee that the speeck is correctly transcribed.
Re:Bender vs Apu (Score:4, Funny)
bender does the job perfectly over and over for a lower cost.
Apu does a poor job, frequently making mistakes to the point he isn't cheaper in the long run.
THAT is where the outrage comes from.
Re:Bender vs Apu (Score:1, Funny)
Nobody has ever seen Bender work. Anyone who says he has done work is lying.
Re:But it's not crazy (Score:2, Funny)
Vista file copy (Score:1, Funny)
Vista file copy is O(w^2) where w is the amount of time a normal person is willing to wait for a file to copy.
Re:But it's not crazy (Score:2, Funny)
*sigh* What happened to good ol' rape?
Ok, snide and tasteless comments aside. The only thing it takes a lot of is time. Women can get quite desperate when they hear their biological clock tick away. Unfortunately that happens after their best before date...
Re:O(human) (Score:3, Funny)
I haven't tried it, but their video sure is convincing
*facepalm*