Cycling UK Forum

Siri is plain annoying and has some way to go I think.

I confess I've never heard of this device. Yet! My experience of voice-recognition robots is next to none - with one exception.

There were a few occasions, years ago, when I attempted to pay my electricity bill over the phone, speaking to some sort of automated voice-recognition system:

ROBOT: Hello. Please say your account number clearly.
ME: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8.
ROBOT: I heard: 12345678. Is that correct?
ME: Yes.
ROBOT: I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch that.
ROBOT: I heard: 12345678. Is that correct?
ME: Yes.
ROBOT: I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch that.
ROBOT: I heard: 12345678. Is that correct?
ME: Yes.
ROBOT: I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch that.
ROBOT: Please say your account number clearly.
ME: Oh, **** you, you stupid metal moron!!!
ROBOT: I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch that.
ME: [hangs up]

And so on.

661-Pete wrote:I confess I've never heard of this device. Yet! My experience of voice-recognition robots is next to none - with one exception.

There were a few occasions, years ago, when I tried to attempted to pay my electricity bill over the phone, speaking to some sort of automated voice-recognition system:

ROBOT: Hello. Please say your account number clearly.
ME: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8.
ROBOT: I heard: 12345678. Is that correct?
ME: Yes.
ROBOT: I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch that.
ROBOT: I heard: 12345678. Is that correct?
ME: Yes.
ROBOT: I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch that.
ROBOT: I heard: 12345678. Is that correct?
ME: Yes.
ROBOT: I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch that.
ROBOT: Please say your account number clearly.
ME: Oh, **** you, you stupid metal moron!!!
ROBOT: I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch that.
ME: [hangs up]

And so on.

If you have Alexa, ask her to play "safe as sheep" by Harry Hill. If that doesn't work, nothing has changed and his song is still true!

Those without Alexa, follow this link:

https://open.spotify.com/track/3lGrbkqjKIEPHVgnA6uJAG


I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my wobbly bog brush using hovercraft full of eels

tanglewood wrote:.....
If you have Alexa, ask her to play "safe as sheep" by Harry Hill. If that doesn't work, nothing has changed and his song is still true!

Those without Alexa, follow this link:

https://open.spotify.com/track/3lGrbkqjKIEPHVgnA6uJAG
...

And those without Spotify ? (I just got a signup/signin page from the link)

Ian

Psamathe wrote:

tanglewood wrote:.....
If you have Alexa, ask her to play "safe as sheep" by Harry Hill. If that doesn't work, nothing has changed and his song is still true!

Those without Alexa, follow this link:

https://open.spotify.com/track/3lGrbkqjKIEPHVgnA6uJAG
...

And those without Spotify ? (I just got a signup/signin page from the link)

Ian

Just use your preferred music streaming service, searching for the song name.


I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my wobbly bog brush using hovercraft full of eels

tanglewood wrote: ... When the first wave of bird flu threatened, some of us in government departments were summoned to Cabinet Office to discuss how we would be able to deal with a massive lethal spread. I did my bit about death registration and statistics that have a 1 month lag - not great. But the guy from GCHQ was fascinating. They were monitoring the pattern of coughs over the phone networks. Not the words, just the spikes in volume that a cough represents, and the space between them. Different flus have different cough patterns. They already had the pattern for bird flu coughs and had set alarms for when those patterns were spotted by their machines.

Really clever, and I was really pleased this sort of early warning was protecting us. ...

I'm in a bit of a dilemma. Are these the words of somebody out to impress us wide-eyed simpletons, who's not too bothered about breaching confidences in the attempt to demonstrate how important they are, or carefully crafted and planted words from some secret squirrel squad, intended to allay the fears of the 1984 theorists?

Someone bought my sister an Alexa for Christmas and it was my job to get it working on Boxing Day.

I had to create an Amazon account for my sister to get it going, and then we found out just how limited it is. It has a poor understanding of English and responds with 'Hmm' to most requests. When it does understand a question it seems to read out passages from Wikipedia as an answer.

On recent visits to my sisters it was nowhere to be seen, and is probably in a cupboard with the sandwich toaster, the juicer and all the other gadgets that seem like a good idea but never get used after a few days of enthusiasm.

thirdcrank wrote:

tanglewood wrote: ... When the first wave of bird flu threatened, some of us in government departments were summoned to Cabinet Office to discuss how we would be able to deal with a massive lethal spread. I did my bit about death registration and statistics that have a 1 month lag - not great. But the guy from GCHQ was fascinating. They were monitoring the pattern of coughs over the phone networks. Not the words, just the spikes in volume that a cough represents, and the space between them. Different flus have different cough patterns. They already had the pattern for bird flu coughs and had set alarms for when those patterns were spotted by their machines.

Really clever, and I was really pleased this sort of early warning was protecting us. ...

I'm in a bit of a dilemma. Are these the words of somebody out to impress us wide-eyed simpletons, who's not too bothered about breaching confidences in the attempt to demonstrate how important they are, or carefully crafted and planted words from some secret squirrel squad, intended to allay the fears of the 1984 theorists?

Ah ha! (Strokes white cat).

No, really, analysis of coughs was openly described and discussed in those meetings with 30+ civil servants in them. Don't feel I'm breaching any rules!


I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my wobbly bog brush using hovercraft full of eels

....and is probably in a cupboard with the sandwich toaster....

Ahhh! This toaster, you must be referring to!
[youtube]LRq_SAuQDec[/youtube]
"Ah! So you're a waffle man!"

tanglewood wrote: ... When the first wave of bird flu threatened, some of us in government departments were summoned to Cabinet Office to discuss how we would be able to deal with a massive lethal spread. I did my bit about death registration and statistics that have a 1 month lag - not great. But the guy from GCHQ was fascinating. They were monitoring the pattern of coughs over the phone networks. Not the words, just the spikes in volume that a cough represents, and the space between them. Different flus have different cough patterns. They already had the pattern for bird flu coughs and had set alarms for when those patterns were spotted by their machines.

Really clever, and I was really pleased this sort of early warning was protecting us. ...

What are GCHQ doing listening-in to all these phone calls (the audio), listening in to people who have done nothing wrong, are presumably under no suspicion, I assume where there is no court warrant in place, etc. (and I suspect those assumptions are fair because I would hope that any court warrant would specify the constraints on scope of what can be done with the collected data, just as there are constraints on e.g. what the Police can do whn they take a DNA sample from a suspect).

Even when the Snoopers Charter was being debated it was always being maintained that GCHQ were only collecting meta data - but now you say they are routinely listening in to what is said on phone conversations ...

Ian

Psamathe wrote: ... Even when the Snoopers Charter was being debated it was always being maintained that GCHQ were only collecting meta data - but now you say they are routinely listening in to what is said on phone conversations ...

You have got him to cough (if I may use a bit of jargon.) To be admissible it probably needs to be under caution and either taped or written down for him to sign.

661-Pete wrote:

....and is probably in a cupboard with the sandwich toaster....

Ahhh! This toaster, you must be referring to!
[youtube]LRq_SAuQDec[/youtube]
"Ah! So you're a waffle man!"

wow how old is that? must before the IOT was thought of? Every one who wants an IOT device should be MADE to watch that?

mercalia wrote: wow how old is that?

Before your time, evidently.

must before the IOT was thought of?

I'm not so sure of that. Thoughts about things go back a long way in time - long before there were the tools to bring those thoughts to fruition. Never heard of Alan Turing? Or John von Neumann? Or - for that matter - Charles Babbage - or Ada Lovelace?

661-Pete wrote:

mercalia wrote: wow how old is that?

Before your time, evidently.

must before the IOT was thought of?

I'm not so sure of that. Thoughts about things go back a long way in time - long before there were the tools to bring those thoughts to fruition. Never heard of Alan Turing? Or John von Neumann? Or - for that matter - Charles Babbage - or Ada Lovelace?

dont be so patronising.

I've got several Echo's.

I use them for all sorts of things, nothing of profound importance but they're handy for controlling lights around the house and in the kitchen I use it to listen to the radio, set timers, do cooking conversions etc

In general I use them for alarms, to check the weather, to check if my train hasn't been cancelled, to list any upcoming events in my diary, keep lists, listen to the occasional song, check spellings & thesaurus, conversions and general maths stuff.
In the garage it's great. Listen to the radio, convert units, timers and the occasional joke and without having to leave my bench and put my oily hands all over it.

The privacy issue bothers me not. If the lights off then its not spooling anything to the servers, it comes on when you say it's name and then passes the next few seconds back to the server. It's all tedious stuff, if anyone on here wants it I can paste the last few weeks worth of requests - no need to ask the government.

Oh, and it's a doddle to write your own apps for. I've a few in test now for doing stuff.

Kids love them, parents of kids less so "Alexa, play Spongebob Squarepants (again)".
Talking to your computers is the future. Keyboards and mice are so last week...
(Mind you I use voice on my phone to do most things these days, far easier than messing about with touch screens)