Comments on: Gates still finding his voice

Following launch of corporate telephony software, Microsoft's chairman discusses how speech recognition has made inroads and where it has yet to go.
Video: Gates' crystal ball
Video: Phones should call person, not number

[yacahuma]

Mr Gates

Mr Gates, Microsoft is no longer a software company but a marketing one. By building 5(are there more) of the new OS, that doesnt really do anything new, it shows that a marketing person not a software person is in charge of Microsoft. Only a sales person will be STUPID enough to come up with that idea. Please STOP pretending Microsoft is a software company. MS lost its MOJO a long time ago.

[FutureGuy]

you lost yours

MS is not a software company?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_software_applications

and this doesnot include entertainment related software like XBox live.

[rthutchison]

Dude

you are making no sense

[yacahuma]

dude...

Dude look at what Microsoft is doing. You have 5 different vista versions. You have 8, I repeat, 8 office versions. The professional office version does not includes Outlook, even if most businesses use outlook.

Please tell me who is NOT MAKING SENSE???

All these are MARKETING DECISIONS.

So basically a marketing group at MS is making the decision of what a software product should be. Forget if it make sense or not.

Do you see the problem HERE?? The decisions are not based by anyone?s needs. The decisions are made based on how much money they can get out of one product taking into considerations that everyone will need the most expensive versions since the least expensive serve no one.

I am not saying MS should not make money. That's the whole purpose of having a business. But there should be a balance.

Is this the company you want to keep promoting?

People like me fill betray by what they are doing.

[Lee in San Diego]

Not yet?

His voice still hasn't changed! Might explain why he doesn't have a
beard :)

[FO-FI_FO_454]

HOWEVER, THIS SHALL BE THE FUTURE OF CORPORATE TELEPHONY.

Bill Gates is right, right on target, however, being a Proper Gentleman, a Worldly Man, a husband, a parent and loving son, this is what he is NOT telling you. How do I know all of this, well, I've been there, done that, and my favorite tune is from "Fiddler on the Roof" - Tevya (portrayed by Zero Mostel) sings "If I Was A Rich Man - deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle doooooo!" Let's get rolling with this preview of Voice Recognition, as it might be employed 20 years (or sooner if censorship rules are relaxed) from now.

But wait - do I like voice recognizion? I LOVE IT! Why? Like Rex Harrison's character (the speech therapist) and Audrey Hepburn's character (the street urchin....GO WANNNNNNNNNN)in one of my top 10 all time MUST SEE movies (available on DVD....SEARCH IT, GO WANNNNNNNN do some work)I now speak "PROPERLY" when addressing my AT&T Telephone device. With a pronounced NEW YAWK accent, coupled with my Brooklynese upbringing, I speak today at age 73 just like I used to speak when I was 23 years old. BUT WAIT - with Voice Recognition, I speak PROPERLY to the voice in the device that TALKS TO ME, PROPERLY. The end result is that when I'm done with Telephony Voice Recognition sessions, my neighbors don't understand me....after all, I'm now, A PROPER MAN. I dig it - it's as though I've been taken back to my childhood, Public School, and am being taught all over again, HOW TO SPEAK CLEARLY AND DISTINCTLY in my preferred language which is English. Abd then, I change my colostomy bag - what is eally important today, my LIFE or learning how to speak all over again?

It's a cool way to reduce administrative costs, add functionality to a telephone without the risk of the caller or recipient of the call "LOSING IT - GOING PHCUCKING NUTS and SCREAMING.

Some negative comments: For those of you that are afflicted with a Cleft Pallet, or LISP, voice recognition PSUCKS (the P is (p)silent)....think about that for a while. For those of you that just had a tooth pulled, root canal, and have a mouth full of cotton balls, and MUST CALL YOUR BANK - get a stooge to do it for you, because ain't no way voice recognition is going to help you. Can you understand - you must speak PROPERLY to a ROBOT, unless you are in the year 2027 or sooner when we will have these options:
1. The Howard Stern Voice Recognition Telephone system. Say whatever the PHCUCK you want - and you have the option of selecting a Voice Recognition genre, so taht the Robot talks back to you the way you prefer to be spoken to...undertand.
2. The Penthouse Voice Recognition Telephone system. I'm not referring to Donald Trump's PENTHOUSE but rather to a gentleman who has the first name Larry....his last name rhyme's with Clint.
3. With the influx of more cross border and foreign visitors to this nation, Voice Recognition Telephony will offer a wide variety of languages. Think about that for a moment - there's an emergency, you have to make a phone call, in ENGLISH, the robot answers and goes through the drill, offers you 200 languages, plus dialects to select before you can shout "FIRE FIRE FIRE - HELP HELP HELP - NOW NOW NOW."

Yes indeed, proper people must portray themselves at all times as being PROPER....just like Rex Harrison in that infamous ALL TIME GREAT MOVIE with Audrey Hepburn. Personally, I'm a PROPER PERSON TOO, just like Tevya, James Dean, Marlon Brando, Joey Bishop, Buddy Hackett, Milton Berle, and Howard Stern.....we tell it like it is, PROPERLY, but also funnier.

Thank you for this opportunity to Talkback, and have a wonderful weekend.

[aaydogan]

Penthouse is not published by Larry Flynt....

...it is published by Bob Guccione...I just don't know what to say
about the rest.....

[matthewcsims]

I don't know about that.

Some customer service centers, like my cell phone company, already have voice recognition software, and I don?t like using it. It is not because it doesn?t work. It usually works fine for me, but it is not human. I don?t mind talking to a human like a human. It does make me uncomfortable talking to a computer as if it were human. I don?t know why, it just does. Some people have conversations with their plants. I talk to my dog. Don?t make me talk to your fichus, and I won?t make you talk to my dog, I guess.

But in my house, voice recognition is going nowhere. When I bring home my new computer, with that spiffy voice recognition software, my girlfriend and I will use it for about 20 minutes, talking about how cool it is. Then she will say, ?Ok, I?m going to watch TV now.? Ok, I will just play on the net. About five minutes of me voicing out every Google request my girlfriend says, ?Hey I am trying to watch TV!!! Why don?t you shut the?.? Know what I mean?

Just imagine what it would sound like in an office.

Then there are the inherent security implications for people that will voice out their email password to their laptop while out in public. But invention never really stops to think I guess.

I also don?t want computerized walls or screens all over. Like refrigerators with web browsers built in. I am sorry, but I just don?t get that.

[zgreenwell]

Sounds like they're on target

Simplifying the user interface to something that is more practical sounds great. I personally would love to see a greater implementation of speech recognition and touch controls. Also, "cloud computing" is a great thing that I hope gets developed more too. It would be great if cell phone companies would jump on the and back up my contacts "in the clouds". That way if I lost my phone I could still get the information. I feel the same way about computer back ups. There is no reason why I can't do that now.

[JRFeeney]

Yeah, right.

If Microsoft is in charge of the computing community, we will never get there. Oh, it will look pretty and have all kinds of feel good bells and whistles but it will amount to a POS.