If you can read this, either the style sheet didn't load or you have an older browser that doesn't support style sheets. Try clearing your browser cache and refreshing the page.

(Komo) Cool Nine year old girl's first words after being able to speak for first time: "Thank you for giving me a voice." Dusty in here   (bellingham.komonews.com) divider line 50
More: Cool, thank you, communications device, Madrona Hartford, Kristine Bengen  
•       •       •

12124 clicks; posted to Main » on 13 Nov 2011 at 9:30 PM   |  Favorite    |   share:  Share on Twitter share via Email Share on Facebook   more»   |    Get this fabulous T-Shirt and impress the methane out of your friends! shirt it!



50 Comments   (+0 »)
   
 
2011-11-13 07:31:40 PM
Okay, the joy on her face in that photo totally made me turn on the waterworks.

I'm getting soft.
 
2011-11-13 07:45:02 PM
You sneezing because of that dust?
 
2011-11-13 09:25:43 PM
You're welcome, sweetie. Now STFU while Mommy and Daddy have a big people conversation.
 
2011-11-13 09:32:56 PM
Changing filter on my vaccuum.

/damn dust.
 
2011-11-13 09:34:13 PM
I'm not having any dust problems over here, but the allergies must be acting up again...
 
2011-11-13 09:34:22 PM
That's great stuff! For a minute, I was worried it was gonna be about that one time in the back of my van.
 
2011-11-13 09:37:29 PM
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.
 
2011-11-13 09:44:09 PM
Someone tell Prof. Hawking he's going to have competition in a few years...
 
2011-11-13 09:44:21 PM
lay off the ciggys already
 
2011-11-13 09:44:52 PM
Wow, what an amazing and touching 7-second long video clip.
 
2011-11-13 09:49:20 PM
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.
 
2011-11-13 09:50:52 PM
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!
 
2011-11-13 09:52:24 PM
Very cool. And I agree... they can't afford more than a 5kb memory card for the camera? Oh well. Either way, I am definitely feeling the dust in this damn apartment right now...
 
2011-11-13 09:53:11 PM
LOL I'm crying harder than I ever have before but I'm a big man so I'm going to pretend there's "dust in the room" LOL

/die stupid meme die!
 
2011-11-13 09:53:12 PM
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


Why do they come to me to die?
 
2011-11-13 09:53:22 PM
She would be the best wife ever. Unable to move or speak, but fully aware of what is happening.
 
2011-11-13 09:54:29 PM
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.
 
2011-11-13 09:55:42 PM
madronaseattle.com
 
2011-11-13 09:57:48 PM
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.
 
2011-11-13 10:04:51 PM
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?
 
2011-11-13 10:10:42 PM
Yeah, most of the time the promises of a dusty room turn out to be disappointment. But this story delivers.

/communication, it's what makes us not animals
 
2011-11-13 10:13:43 PM
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.
 
2011-11-13 10:13:50 PM
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.
 
2011-11-13 10:17:52 PM
Time to do a bit of house cleaning.

img801.imageshack.us
 
2011-11-13 10:20:15 PM
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?


You know if you stab a man in the dead of winter, steam will rise from the wounds. The Indians believed it was the soul escaping from the body.
 
2011-11-13 10:21:49 PM
aerojockey: /communication, it's what makes us not animals

to be fair, I think toilets are nice too, but I get your point
 
2011-11-13 10:22:14 PM
I'm sorry... the "thank you for giving me a voice" line sounds completely contrived... especially in light of the fact that we know that she already had a similar machine and this one is just faster.

It sounds like someone coached her to type that...

Also, way to go, videographer of the year... How about you walk your lazy ass around to the other side of the table and point the camera at the girl's FACE and get a shot of her reaction instead of the back of her head? Maybe you could even talk to her mom before they fire up the gizmo, and interview the girl afterwards... Heck, you could even talk to the lady who donated the machine and maybe get the video up to a whole 15 or 20 seconds long.
 
2011-11-13 10:24:01 PM
Neondistraction: You know if you stab a man in the dead of winter, steam will rise from the wounds. The Indians believed it was the soul escaping from the body.

Did they ever wonder why the souls only escaped in the winter?

/No wonder we got Manhattan for $24 worth of beads.
 
2011-11-13 10:27:19 PM
ARC7: She would be the best wife ever. Unable to move or speak, but fully aware of what is happening.

You're an idiot. If she can't move, how is she supposed to clean the bathroom? And if she can't talk, how is she supposed to ask what you want for dinner? Perfect my ass.

I don't see any dust in here. Just a pile of weepy pussies making excuses for their wussiness.
 
2011-11-13 10:31:03 PM
technicolor-misfit: I'm sorry... the "thank you for giving me a voice" line sounds completely contrived... especially in light of the fact that we know that she already had a similar machine and this one is just faster.

It sounds like someone coached her to type that...

Also, way to go, videographer of the year... How about you walk your lazy ass around to the other side of the table and point the camera at the girl's FACE and get a shot of her reaction instead of the back of her head? Maybe you could even talk to her mom before they fire up the gizmo, and interview the girl afterwards... Heck, you could even talk to the lady who donated the machine and maybe get the video up to a whole 15 or 20 seconds long.


This, except more of this. It plays primarily preprogrammed phrases.
 
2011-11-13 10:35:12 PM
I don't get the whole new 'anyone who gets teary eyed is a flaming pussy' overcompensation thing people are doing now. Some stories are touching. You are not a WW2 or Vietnam Vet reliving his PTSD killing charlies. You're ITG 2.0, Hipster redux. Kudos.

Story is contrived, website is a horrible abomination; half the screen was consumed with some sort of box/flash bar thing at the bottom (which moved with scrolling, superimposed on content). I closed immediately.

I wish people would learn that having horrible intrusive websites (aside from FB apparently) will just encourage people to close your site, never revisit, and/or get better add blocking software.
 
2011-11-13 10:35:39 PM
FTA -

The machine's former owner was a man who had the debilitating disease ALS. When he passed away, his wife made the decision to donate the $16,000 computer to a family who would benefit from it, and she picked Madrona.

2 things.

Good on the wife for donating their unneeded expensive medical equipment - too often families of deceased disabled people just mothball their adaptive equipment. But - $16k? I have a rough idea of the tech that goes into something like this and that seems a bit pricey to me. Even with the typical medical equipment markup I would think you could get a system like this done under $10k.
 
2011-11-13 10:46:09 PM
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.
 
2011-11-13 10:55:53 PM
I like this one better.

Link (new window)
 
2011-11-13 11:00:43 PM
Aww, geez, guys -- "Haters gonna hate, trolls gonna troll", I guess.
*Donning flameproof suit & tinfoil hat*

BTW, Technicolor, if you'd scrolled down in TFA there's a great front shot of the kid.

Med equipment is expensive because there's so little of it -- like broadcast cameras and tape machines. That, and they have to last a long time and work right out of the box. Doesn't compare to consumer entertainment stuff.

/had friends with C.P. and relatives with ALS. Both condx suck mightily.
 
2011-11-13 11:08:53 PM
kroonermanblack: I don't get the whole new 'anyone who gets teary eyed is a flaming pussy' overcompensation thing people are doing now. Some stories are touching. You are not a WW2 or Vietnam Vet reliving his PTSD killing charlies. You're ITG 2.0, Hipster redux. Kudos.

Story is contrived, website is a horrible abomination; half the screen was consumed with some sort of box/flash bar thing at the bottom (which moved with scrolling, superimposed on content). I closed immediately.

I wish people would learn that having horrible intrusive websites (aside from FB apparently) will just encourage people to close your site, never revisit, and/or get better add blocking software.


Yeah, some stories are touching. They don't make me cry. I've cried twice in adulthood, both times arising from the same incident. A man I worked with died while we were fighting a fire. Incidentally, this is also a large part of why 'DIAF' isn't one of my favorite terms.

I cried. It wasn't dusty, the pollen wasn't bothering me, my allergies weren't acting up. I'll probably also cry when my dog dies and in the unlikely event that my wife predeceases me. Maybe I'm emotionally retarded, but I don't come near crying from news stories or 10 second video clips of people I will never meet, and on the occasion that I do cry I will admit it without resorting to overused euphemisms.
 
2011-11-13 11:09:41 PM
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.
 
2011-11-13 11:20:17 PM
brap: Okay, the joy on her face in that photo totally made me turn on the waterworks.

I'm getting soft.




Don't let it keep you down. According to studies, the average refractory period for a man is about a half-hour.
 
2011-11-13 11:49:57 PM
FTA: Despite her parent's predilection to call her Maddy, she's decided she wants to go by her given name of Madrona, and so she begins to enter that into the machine.

"It has everything to do with Maddy," her dad, Ryan, said. "For us, we already know who Maddy is.


I love how your kid is finally able to tell you what she wants to be called, and you go on calling her the nickname she probably hates.
 
2011-11-14 12:17:53 AM
What a beautiful smile.

The world is a tough place, sweetie. Keep givin' it the hell it deserves. You can do anything you set your heart and mind to.

/serious
//happy to be alive to see these advances
 
2011-11-14 12:23:19 AM
Her future husband will forever curse this day.
 
2011-11-14 12:30:23 AM
Solar Plexus!: FTA: Despite her parent's predilection to call her Maddy, she's decided she wants to go by her given name of Madrona, and so she begins to enter that into the machine.

"It has everything to do with Maddy," her dad, Ryan, said. "For us, we already know who Maddy is.

I love how your kid is finally able to tell you what she wants to be called, and you go on calling her the nickname she probably hates.


If she was unable to properly communicate, how would they know?
 
2011-11-14 12:42:47 AM
She pupil gestures words for a computer to play.

1) Could you take that computer voice for days on end? At some point you'd want to turn it off.

2) The margins on those translation machines must be nice.
 
2011-11-14 01:30:37 AM
plumbicon: Aww, geez, guys -- "Haters gonna hate, trolls gonna troll", I guess.
*Donning flameproof suit & tinfoil hat*

BTW, Technicolor, if you'd scrolled down in TFA there's a great front shot of the kid


No... I scrolled down. There's a photo, and yes... it's a great photo. Now, imagine how much better it would have been to actually witness that light grow in her eyes vs. just seeing a still or watching the back of her head sort of move for seven seconds.

I'm a TV producer and that was horrible. I can only imagine that photog is the News Director's kid or something. That's pure laziness. That's the way an amateur would shoot a kid blowing their candles out.

---

And not being the 30th guy to repeat "damn pollen" doesn't mean I'm a troll or a hater.

A.) I'm happy the kid got her device.
B.) But it doesn't change the fact that the "thank you for giving me a voice" line sounds contrived. It's like what a bad writer would come up with for a Helen Keller biopic. If what someone above said is correct, and the device plays pre-programmed phrases, I wouldn't be even a little bit surprised to learn that the manufacturers marketing team programs that line into the default out-of-the-box phraseology.
C.) The photog sucks.

I sincerely believe all of those things, and not because I'm a hater or because I'm trying to be a crass attention whore going against the grain... I believe them because they're true. I -AM- happy the kid got her gadget. The line -DOES- sound contrived. And, the shooting -MOST CERTAINLY- sucks..
 
2011-11-14 02:27:51 AM
lizyrd: ARC7: She would be the best wife ever. Unable to move or speak, but fully aware of what is happening.

You're an idiot. If she can't move, how is she supposed to clean the bathroom? And if she can't talk, how is she supposed to ask what you want for dinner?


Just because she can't ask what you want for dinner doesn't mean you can't facking tell her.

/I'm really, really going to hell now
 
2011-11-14 02:59:25 AM
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.
 
2011-11-14 11:14:16 AM
Gyrfalcon: 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.


It's actually more simple than that: Mass Production.

If you only were able to create about 200 XBOX's the price would be at LEAST $16000. The reason you don't see that price is because of how many units are produced but those costs are minimal (MUCH less than $300 per unit) but the millions it took in research, development, prototypes, etc. are split amongst the number of units being sold. That's also why many items don't make profit for quite some time after release; all their money was put on the front end.

This machine may have been created by a few people in their lab and that $16,000 reflects the R&D more than the equipment cost itself.
 
2011-11-14 11:21:07 AM
Sometimes its dusty on the internet and personally I think there should be more dust. We need more stories like these.
 
2011-11-14 11:38:20 AM
it's angel dust
 
2011-11-14 01:06:38 PM
Up until now, the food tasted fine.

/DRTFA
 
Displayed 50 of 50 comments


This thread is closed to new comments.

Continue Farking
Submit a Link »