I HAVE THE FREE VERSION/considering purchase

[THOMAS_GRUNST]

i feel like the demo is somewhat worthy, it is slow to learn, but it can be fun to experiment. i have read the posts, and it seems that customer service is somewhat lacking. i am afraid i will order the cd and get nothing that works.

    in the mean time i have a question: when will "they" come up with a program that answers the phone? i mean more than  an answering machine that only records messages, but a device that will redirect your call, through an intelligent conversation....i.e. the phone rings, hal picks up, says"hello" the caller asks for tom, hal responds with tom is at work today... or tom is at the doctor's today, would you like to have that number? or leave tom a message here. or tom is at john's house, would you like the number to john's house etc....

    i know we a years away from computers , as we have often become familiar with in the movies and television, but it should be possible to have the learning level of a 3- 5 year old. atleast a child of that age is able to sing to you or tell you a joke. even a child can tell you where you live, or where aunt mary lives.  i am having second thouhts all the time.....

    i notice that the demo, is what 11 mb ? or so.... and the full version is about 105 mb,, what in god's name do you get with 105 mega bytes? what's it do? time travel for you, to send messages to your dead girlfriend, back in high school?    i have a talking clock character that works better than the assistant demo...

            thomasito el guerito, con bollitos pequenos

            Serrunsto@aol.com

THOMAS E. GRUNST

[WholyChao]

I agree with you that customer service is somewhat lacking.  I purchased the full version about two months ago and I still have not had sufficent help getting my voice recognition to work.

I think you're idea for a working phone attendant is fantastic, actually it's one of the first ideas taht I had when I first started working with the program.  

Have you read my posts - "drawing a line" and "The physics of Sight"?  I'm trying to explore the difficulties of having hal become more functional and independent.  

The difficulty with having hal answer the phone is the computers limitations in voice recognition.  Some voice programs are becoming available to consumers, Dragon Naturally Speaking and other similar program have drasitcaly dropped in price over the last few years.

However these programs generally work for one user.  The soft and hard ware that make the universal voice recogniton used in universites and major corporations are still quite out of the reach of the common pocketbook.

Think about the subtle diffrences in voice between you and the people you know, let alone people from other parts of the country.  As a people, we are begining to develop a Television accent - however it is still not unified enough to have computers easily recognize a wide segment of the population's speach.

I've also looked into the idea of using touch tones in the phone.  That seems to be a more realistic first step.

And if you just take a look around downloads.com and tucows.com you'll find a varity of communication and telephone programs.  I don't believe any of them are exactly what you're looking for - but they are very interesting.

I hope some of this has been useful.

WholyChao

[THOMAS_GRUNST]

thanks man i have read "drawing lines" it's all greek to me. you guys are geniuses. what would keep a person from using text files from an encyclopedia cd and copying small packets to the "hal"  brain? wouldn't that work to make "hal" smarter?

THOMAS E. GRUNST