Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!mips!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!ox.com!yale!bunker!hcap!hnews!129!89!William.Wilson From: William.Wilson@f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org (William Wilson) Newsgroups: misc.handicap Subject: Re: Genie Message-ID: <18887@bunker.isc-br.com> Date: 19 Apr 91 20:22:54 GMT Sender: wtm@bunker.isc-br.com Reply-To: William.Wilson@f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org Organization: FidoNet node 1:129/89 - BlinkLink, Pittsburgh PA Lines: 62 Approved: wtm@bunker.hcap.fidonet.org Index Number: 15064 [This is from the Blink Talk Conference] MO> not happy with what it does in the first place. I like the idea MO> of taking the best possible educated guess, and then if it MO> doesn't work. you try something different. I'm tired of getting MO> programs and not even being able to figure out what ehey're MO> they're doing, much less setting up acomplex cfg file for them. Mary, Yeah, I have a comment for you! You are one bright lady! I too have been an advocate for speech programs doing as much automatically as they can, and for precisely the reasons you stated! Heck, there was a day when I used to download 8 or 9 programs a day just to give them a quick look, and writing a speech configuration for each not only would have taken more time than it deserved, it would probably have been all for naught as it would be included in the del star dot star I gave when I decided that the program wasn't worth the disk space, as usually happened when I did a lot of downloading! On the other hand, I am a little surprised that Doug and you are discussing this as if ASAP is on one end of the spectrum and Vocal-Eyes is on the other! In fact, this whole comparison of AI versus configuration ability has me a bit stumped, as they are in my opinion not at all mutually exclusive! I havn't looked at ASAP, primarily because they don't have a demo (Not one of it's best selling points in my mind!) and because I havn't run across anyone running it yet in my travels, but I do know that all the things I want to be done automatically are there in Vocal-Eyes, or at most but a key stroke away in a very user friendly menu. You mention in your message that ASAP has the ability to do much too via configuration, or at least that is what I surmised, so I am wondering exactly what is the difference in the approach of ASAP and Vocal-Eyes except for which aspect of the program they decided to concentrateon in their public image? That is, Vocal-Eyes definately, at least in my mind, has more options available to the user than anything I have ever seen! It does, however, in a much quieter fashion, do a lot automatically. ASAP you say also has many configuration options available, but they decided to push the automatic aspects instead. In order for a program to really have "Artificial Intelligence", it is going to have to not only read boxes automatically, and track light bars automatically, it is going to have to know when I want to read this bit of information from a particular program and when I don't, when I want it to speed up and when I want it to slow down, when I want it to spell out a word or tell me a particular characteristic of the screen, etc., and all this without me having to touch a key! In fact, while we're at it, I think an Artificially Intelligent speech program should have the sense to speak Pittsburghese! All I am really trying to say is that I don't buy the AI versus Configurability controversy, as every speech program has some of each in them, and I'm not even sure that one which has a lot of one can't have a lot of the other, or vice versa. The only way I will ever believe that billing a program as being either AI or highly configurable is more than just a marketing approach I will let you know that as well! Willie ... BlinkTalk, Dr. Deb and Silver in Pittsburgh! -- Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!129!89!William.Wilson Internet: William.Wilson@f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org