Voice Recognition, iListen stuck at starting gate

So, Mark - by the definition you present below, it is safe to say you
believe we are a first-rate Macintosh speech recognition product,
then?

I am sorry to pick-nits, but when most people (other than you,
apparently) says "second-rate" it is not a compliment. So I would
really rather we didn't go around promoting the fact we are
"second-rate."

According to thefreedictionary.com, "second-rate" means "moderate to
inferior in quality." It's that "inferior" part we are trying to
avoid, because the vast majority of our users certainly wouldn't
classify us as that.

At this point, we aren't comparing ourselves to Dragon Naturally
Speaking. We know it is better - but they had about a 20 year head
start on us. Give us some time to catch up. I think it is safe to say
that in the time since we released version 1.0 we have made tremendous
strides in quality, accuracy, stability, and features. This is despite
the fact that we had to practically rewrite the software from scratch
to support Mac OS X.

All I am asking here is that you take a more optimistic "glass is half
full" approach in your assessments. There is nothing wrong with saying
we don't compare with Naturally Speaking - and we are the first to
admit that. But what is wrong with saying something like "nonetheless,
they are the best available on the Mac and doing a great job of
constantly improving their product," which is exactly what we believe
we have been doing.

BTW, it is totally understandable for you and others to be impatient
for iListen to mature more rapidly. Lots of coding requires lots of
time. The only way to cut the time to deployment is to throw more
people at the problem, which costs $$. You would be amazed at how
quickly we could improve the product if we could only raise a fraction
of the investment income raised by Google. Heck, if each of the people
reading this message got just 4 or 5 people to buy the product, it
would speed things up considerably!

So, when you see fit to complain about what iListen lacks - make sure
you also complain about the lack of proper investment, and the lack of
willingness of tech investors (and others out there) to put money into
a company that is diligent, dedicated, and has a proven track record.

Best Regards,

Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.

Mark Conrad <NoSpamDammit@invalid.com> wrote in message news:<160920041310492567%NoSpamDamm
it@invalid.com>...
> In article <9d494463.0409151517.5ac045e3@posting.google.com>, Chuck
> Rogers <chuck.rogers@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>
> Well, when most people rate products for a particular purpose, their
> best product is often called a "first rated product", and lesser
> products are often called "second rated", "third rated", etc.
>
> That is why people "rate" products, to determine which products are the
> best, and which products are better than other products, i.e. their
> "rank" or "rating" in the hierarchy of best, average, worst, etc.
>
> One would think you would be happy with "2nd rate product", that puts
> you ahead of others like ViaVoice.
>
> Rating a product has absolutely nothing to do with the motivation of
> the people who create that product, as you stated erroneously in your
> post.   People can be highly motivated and  _still_  create a 2nd rate
> product.
>
> People do  _not_  rate products by the motivation of the company that
> created the product, instead they rate products by how well they
> perform the task under consideration, the task they are being rated
> for.
>
> I and others care less about how much a company is motivated, that does
> not feed the bulldog.
>
> I am in no way faulting MacSpeech Inc. for fielding a 2nd rate product,
> they are doing the best they can given their available resources, and
> they are to be commended for that.
>
> I and others are looking forward to the day when MacSpeech creates a
> 1st-rate-product for converting speech dictation to text.
>
> Nothing would make me happier than seeing Naturally Speaking Pro
> relegated to 2nd rate status, well behind iListen by MacSpeech.
>
> I wasted all day yesterday fighting with PC software in my futile
> attempt to try to backup a PC partition.   I kept getting obscene
> messages about not having this or that driver, and other messages about
> buffer overruns and needing to import Microsoft "patches" to prevent
> such overruns, but the straw that broke my back was when the XP
> operating system itself arbitrarily decided to shut my computer down
> "for my own good", or words to that effect.
>
> I completely reloaded the entire damn XP OS from its CDs, several
> times, each time taking about 30 minutes, but no luck in throwing the
> myriad faults.   Even tried running diagnostics, but hardware passed
> ok.
>
> All I was trying to do was simply to download and install a needed
> "Framework" file named  ".NET Framework 1.1" which was needed before I
> could install the latest version 9.0 of "Norton's Ghost", an image
> backup/restore utility capable of restoring a bootable drive C on my
> PC.
>
> You think I like doing this crap?
>
> Get yourself busy creating something for the Mac that comes closer to
> being a 1st rated product, please!
>
> As for my PC, I  _need_  that image backup utility, in order to protect
> my extensive training files for speech recognition on the PC, not to
> mention all the various drivers and security patches, and the miserable
> PC "Directory", which apparently gets modified behind my back by every
> program in creation.
>
> (Welcome to the world of PCs, gentle people)
>
> I am going to give up and do what other PC users are forced to do,
> namely take the PC to a shop and pay them big bucks to install the
> needed files.   grrr
>
> Mark-

In article <9d494463.0409171434.1e6c7891@posting.google.com>, Chuck
Rogers <chuck.rogers@gmail.com> wrote:

> So, Mark - by the definition you present below, it is safe to say you
> believe we are a first-rate Macintosh speech recognition product,
> then?

Yes, as long as we all do not rate your product against the PC
software, then we can safely say that your MacSpeech software is indeed
a first-rate Macintosh speech recognition product.



> Heck, if each of the people reading this message got just 4 or 5
> people to buy the product, it would speed things up considerably!

I made my small contribution of $99 recently, even though I was fully
aware that the iListen software could not compete head-to-head against
the PC software.

On the positive side, if a Mac user wants to see the present status of
speech-to-text software on the Mac, I would not hesitate to recommend
your product, which only costs $99.

The PC alternative is very expensive and difficult to implement:
1) Buy a fairly recent PC machine and an external drive for it.
Make sure it uses the XP operating system, primarily because
the recent version 9.0 of "Norton's Ghost" backup software
will not run on a lot of other PC OS's, which
is why XP is needed.
Older DOS versions of Norton's Ghost are very difficult for a
Mac user to master, due to their arcane DOS oriented switches.
2) Install all the security patches _before_ attempting to use the PC.
3) Download the very large free file ".NET Framework 1.1" which is
almost impossible to find on the Symantec website.  Install that
file in the appropriate place on the PC.  That file is necessary
in order to get Symantec's "Norton's-Ghost 9.0" to run, which
in turn is needed to backup the C partition of the PC, in order
to protect the valuable voice training files.
4) Buy "Norton's Ghost" ver' 9.0 for backup/restore.
5) Purchase "Naturally Speaking Pro" version 7.3 which costs
around $700.

In my case, I also had to shell out $83 to my local PC shop just in
order to overcome the difficulties in getting that big "Framework" file
downloaded and installed.

In the past, I also bought the Sony digital recorder model ICD-MS1
which cost an additional $300.

I used it all by itself, (no computer) to record my voice from reading
hundreds of scrawled handwritten notes. My recording was used to
initiate the initial drafts for 3 books about WW2 in the Pacific by my
best friend who was a UPI war correspondent there.  He died recently at
age 89.

Later, the recording was dumped into the PC, where it was automatically
converted to text.

Chuck, keep up the good work.  A lot of us hate using the PC so we are
watching the progress being made by MacSpeech with interest.

Mark-

ward mcfarland wrote:
> Mark Conrad <NoSpamDammit@invalid.com> wrote:
>
>
> 
>
>
> Patent fights on SR go back at least to the mod-80's (between Dragon and
> IBM, in my fuzzy recollection).
>
>
> 
>
>
>
> The criteria for court stenographers (who are the highest skilled human
> transcriptionists) is about 200 wpm at 95% accuracy.
>
> I google'd some job listings for shorthand stenogrpahers for government
> office work where the requirement was 35 wpm at 95% accuracy.
>
> I bet that medical transcriptionists used by most hospitals to handle
> physician taped dictataions would not be much better than 95%.
> Especially when you note similarity of sound of similar drug names
> (Digoxin, Digitoxin, Doxepin) and common typos missed by spell checkers
> (their/there  its/it's  etc)

I'm happy to chime in and give 2 responses:
1)  hospital/office medical transcriptionists are WAY better than 95%
accurate because they do know what the doc is trying to say and they do
use spell-checkers to catch typos.  Honestly, I can't remember the last
time I saw a typo in my hospital dictation transcriptions.  When the
transcriptionist is stumped, they don't guess, they leave a blank space
with an underline so the doc can fill in the correct word.
2)  doctors generally do NOT check their transcriptions!  I know, gasp,
shriek.  But no one has time to check a 1000 word discharge summary for
its possible 1 or 2 typos which have a vanishingly small likelihood of
changing the meaning of what one dictated.  Yes, that opens the door a
tiny crack for medical errors or for lawyers to tear us apart, but only
a microscopic crack.  Because it is true, transcriptionists almost never
make an error (maybe 1 out of 1000 words wrong), and among those errors,
almost none (perhaps another 1 out of 100) changes the meaning of what
was written.  Multiply those together and you are looking at careful
reading of 100,000 documents just to find one error, and that's
obviously never going to happen.  The final screen to catch errors is
that any doctor reading that document a day, month, or year later then
has to think about the info in that document.  If it doesn't make sense,
don't trust it.  We don't just blindly take as truth whatever is
contained in any document, any history, any lab report, etc.  Human
thoughtful consideration is the final screen to catch errors, and it's
pretty good too.

Putting on my bicycle helmet to protect myself from anyone who wants to
bash me with the Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) Report on Medical Errors,

-- Josh Steinberg MD

In article <1095597350.QBEIJr7zJwPhIMF3+MKMcg@teranews>, Joshua
Steinberg <jsteinb1@twcny.rr.com> wrote:

> Putting on my bicycle helmet to protect myself from anyone who wants to
> bash me with the Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) Report on Medical Errors,
>
> -- Josh Steinberg MD

heh heh, no one here is going to bash you for that enlightening post.

That certainly eases my mind about the 95% accuracy criteria for
medical transcriptionists - - - that in practice they are much better
than that because of the close cooperation with the doctors.


> ... doctors generally do NOT check their transcriptions!  I know, gasp,
> shriek.  But no one has time to check a 1000 word discharge summary
> for its possible 1 or 2 typos which have a vanishingly small
> likelihood of changing the meaning of what one dictated.

I would imagine that when a doctor hires a  _new_  transcriptionist
that he takes the time to check the work, until he is confident about
the skill level of that new person.

...if for no other reason than to keep his malpractice insurance
premiums down to their modest $15,000 a year cost.<g>

Every doctor I have run across is busier than a one-eyed cat in a fish
market, which is why they have to delegate work to the hired help.

Mark-

Is there a way to use Naturally Speaking on a Mac with something like
Virtual PC? I am expecting a new OS X, G4 powerbook this Wed, and one of
the very wonderful things i was looking forward to was the ability to
finally use voice dictation. (my cache-less wallstreet is too slow for any
such software.) Must I get a PC to use NS?
thanks,
cathy

In article
< 674c19c39d0ca4747d6803bf118a2a28@localho
st.talkaboutmac.com>,
"catgil" <catgil3@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Must I get a PC to use NS?

I'm new to (attempts at) VR.  What's the deal with iListen?  Sorry, I
didn't see the earlier part of this thread.  Is iListen a viable OSX VR
application?

Thanks,

RB

catgil <catgil3@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Is there a way to use Naturally Speaking on a Mac with something like
> Virtual PC?

No. Don't even think about it.

I am expecting a new OS X, G4 powerbook this Wed, and one of
> the very wonderful things i was looking forward to was the ability to
> finally use voice dictation

You can: you can use iListen or ViaVoice. Both work fine (and they work
better the faster your computer is and the more memory it has). m.


--
matt neuburg, phd = matt@tidbits.com, http://www.tidbits.com/matt/
AppleScript: The Definitive Guide
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...omethingsbymatt
Read TidBITS! It's free and smart. http://www.tidbits.com

In article
< 674c19c39d0ca4747d6803bf118a2a28@localho
st.talkaboutmac.com>, catgil
<catgil3@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Is there a way to use Naturally Speaking on a Mac with something like
> Virtual PC?

Unfortunately, no.

VPC can not use any sort of microphone input from the Mac side.   I
have the same problem here.   I run the latest version of VPC on my Mac
Pismo, and I also have Dragon NaturallySpeakingPro version 8.0 on an
old PC, a HP N5425 that I keep for that app' only.  The PC runs the XP
(home-version) OS.


I am strictly a Mac person, having used them since the original Mac
came out in 1984, and used Apple computers before that since the days
of the Apple-2 computer.

...but I draw the line on using any kind of Mac-compatable dictation
software, it is years behind Dragon's PC software, accuracy wise.

Voice recognition technology is one field where a slight added amount
of accuracy in recognition literally costs an arm and a leg.

The PC stuff is very expensive.  I have shelled out over $1,000 for
dictation software and hardware, but it is the only way to fly when one
is serious about dictation applications.

The "Pro" version alone costs $700, but it has enough added features
that I bought it instead of the much lower priced "Prefered" version,
which I think runs about $200 or slightly less.

Mark-

catgil: 

matt neuburg:
> No. Don't even think about it.
 

> You can: you can use iListen or ViaVoice. Both work fine (and they work
> better the faster your computer is and the more memory it has). m.

You may be living in a reverse parallel universe. ViaVoice doesn't work
at all -- it stops accepting dictation after a period. And that's not
only my experience. iListen has potential, but has not arrived yet.

The answer is that for a good voice recognition experience one needs to
run Dragon Naturally Speaking on a PeeCee. Even ViaVoice on a PeeCee is
better than anything on a Mac. Sorry to have to say this.

Davoud

"catgil" <catgil3@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<674c19c39d0ca4747d6803bf118a2a28@localh
ost.talkaboutmac.com>...
> Is there a way to use Naturally Speaking on a Mac with something like
> Virtual PC? I am expecting a new OS X, G4 powerbook this Wed, and one of
> the very wonderful things i was looking forward to was the ability to
> finally use voice dictation. (my cache-less wallstreet is too slow for any
> such software.) Must I get a PC to use NS?
> thanks,
> cathy

Don't bother to get NS on the off chance it will run adequately on
VPC. Dictation software needs lots of fast processing power. VPC
optimised on a G4 runs at what I estmate to be a notional processor
power of - say - 250-300mhz. It's just adequate to play music files
without clicks and pops, let alone run dictation software.

Personally I have made peace with Via Voice for Mac OSX and although
it's full of bugs, it works adequately. As recognition software I find
it fundamentally very good, it's just that it was released with loads
of infuriating bugs and there's never been any further development of
it. You can get it for a song.

Rob