Okay, the joy on her face in that photo totally made me turn on the waterworks.

I'm getting soft.

You sneezing because of that dust?

You're welcome, sweetie. Now STFU while Mommy and Daddy have a big people conversation.

That's great stuff! For a minute, I was worried it was gonna be about that one time in the back of my van.

this is stupid. if we go around helping people with cerebral palsy to speak, there will be no incentive to AVOID cerebral palsy.

by which i mean that the degree and quality of emotion evoked in me by this story makes me feel uncomfortable and weak, so I will make a snarky/sarcastic joke about it.

Someone tell Prof. Hawking he's going to have competition in a few years...

This is one of those links that, for me on my mobile, is disappointingly incomplete; no video is accessible. Nevertheless, this is a lovely story!

NightOwl2255: FTA: "This isn't Madrona's first such-device, her parents said. Her first voice came in the form of Tobii's first generation device--a small carry-on luggage-sized machine that wasn't fast enough to keep up with everything Madrona had to say."

Yeah, subby, about that headline....

/Green don't care notin' about facts.

There is an appreciable difference between the first-generation device and the one she has now. It is a new world for her.

tetsoushima: Mixolydian Master: That's great stuff! For a minute, I was worried it was gonna be about that one time in the back of my van.

[hubsub54.files.wordpress.com image 266x151]


Why do they come to me to die?

I'd never done a crazy thing in my life before that night. Why is it that if a man kills another man in battle, it's called heroic, yet if he kills a man in the heat of passion, it's called murder?

NightOwl2255: some.old.lady.: There is an appreciable difference between the first-generation device and the one she has now. It is a new world for her.

Headline: Nine year old girl's first words after being able to speak for first time:

FTA: This isn't Madrona's first such-device, her parents said. Her first voice came in the form...

Yeah, facts are wasted on some people.

/That's all I'm saying.

Understood. Carry on, sir.

CapnBlues: tetsoushima: Mixolydian Master: That's great stuff! For a minute, I was worried it was gonna be about that one time in the back of my van.

[hubsub54.files.wordpress.com image 266x151]


Why do they come to me to die?

I'd never done a crazy thing in my life before that night. Why is it that if a man kills another man in battle, it's called heroic, yet if he kills a man in the heat of passion, it's called murder?

Hel-lo! What do you think you're doing? Only me and Garth get to talk to the camera.

vodka: This isn't the first time she has used one of these machines so it isn't her first time speaking.

What's really farked up is what a scam the medical industry and lawyers have going here. Machines like this have a couple hundred dollars worth of technology in them and yet they cost $16k. I mean there is less technology in this machine than an Xbox 360 + Kinect. Greedy vultures.

What's costly is the processing speed needed to make these things talk at the speed of a human voice. If you've heard Stephen Hawking's machine, you need to realize that he's not just using "preprogrammed phrases" or whatnot, that's him looking at a keyboard spelling out words AND the machine being able to keep up with his eye movements and parse that into spoken phrases at spoken-word speed.

You could get a cheaper machine that would sound like an old telephone operator and I suspect that's what she had before--the one that was "too slow" to keep up with her speech. Also, a lot of these adaptive communication devices usually come with automatic upgrades--so people don't have to buy new equipment every time there's a software upgrade. A $16K device probably has 10 years worth of software guarantees in it (I'm guessing) because the tech evolves so fast.

There is way a lot more than there is in an Xbox, btw. The human eye makes significantly smaller movements and requires a much finer focusing device than a Kinect.

Gyrfalcon: you need to realize that he's not just using "preprogrammed phrases" or whatnot, that's him looking at a keyboard spelling out words

No, it's not. It's him controlling the playback of previously input speeches on a computer that's essentially indifferent from the one he had back in the 80s. Now part of that is him not wanting up update, but most of it is that even new systems have output rates of under 10 words/minute (or maybe 15 words/minute with rate enhancements).

Consider this: even very good typists generally can't keep up with the speed of human speech (hence the use of the stenotype for transcriptions), and they're using 10 fairly independent single-factor actuators over about 30 inputs. Eye-actuated systems have only one input and require multi-factor actuation (gaze + select). I don't care how fast your gaze-tracking computer is, your fingers are going to be faster just because they can run in parallel. And that's not even taking into account blink-actuated systems.

Now there are things you can do to make this faster -- you can guess at word and phrase completion and add macros and the like so that users don't have to actually type everything they want to say. It's the same sort of thing modern cell phones do when you type on them. Which is better than nothing, and some improvement since the 80s, but it's no where near conversational speeds, or even the speed of normal typing.

None of the speech rate limitations are related to the speed of the gaze tracking computer -- it's all about input inefficiency -- so it's silly to pretend that the cost of the machine is related to its technical specifications.

it's angel dust