Hi Thomas, And you know, the first time I heard that, it cleared up a lot of things. I never understood why Freedom Scientific ended up making these massive downloads to "realspeak solo" direct, until I heard that. Best Regards, Hayden
-----Original Message----- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:23 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Scansoft voices Hi, I'd highly recommend that you don't buy the Scansoft Real Speak voices from Nextup.com and here is why. As I understand it a while backNuance, the company that owns Scansoft, has changed the way it licences its Real Speak voices. Under the new licensing scheme the products must be purchased by a company and then locked specifically to that product. In other words if you buy Scansoft Karen, Tom, whatever from Nextup.com those will only work with Nextup.com's products such as Text Aloud, Weather Aloud, and News Aloud. You can not turn around and use it with Window-Eyes, Jaws, or your favorite game by Jim Kitchen, because they are no longer, strictly speaking, Sapi voices. They must be accessed using a specific product, and only that specific product through a special license. So if you want to use Scansoft Tom, Daniel, Karen, etc with Jaws 11 you must license the voice through Freedom Scientific for Jaws. If you want to use those voices with Text Aloud you have to turn around and license a copy of those voices through Nextup.com specifically for that product. In short, those voices are going to cost you dearly to have, and I am vvery glad that I managed to purchase those voices when Jaws 8 and Openbook 8 came out when they were still Sapi voices and not under the new more restrictive license. I hate to say it, but at this point I don't know of any legal way to get the older Sapi 5 voices without resorting to outright piracy, and it seams to me to be the logical result of this kind of radical, money grabbing, greedy, unfair change in licensing. Normally I don't advocate software piracy, but when a company makes this kind of idiotic polacy I don't feel a bit sorry if it happens to them. It is one thing to charge once for a product that you can use with most of your software, but quite another when the license basically forces you to purchase a copy for each and every product you intend to use it with. This is criminal in my book, and the company does not deserve any mor of our business until they shape up and change their polacy. I could be wrong about all this, but it seams odd to me that the Scansoft and Nuance web sites no longer have the Real Speak voices for sale on their web site like the use to. When I check Nextup.com they say right on the web site that these voices will only work with Nextup.com products. Go to Freedom Scientific, guess what, all of the new Scansoft voice downloads only work with Jaws and not anything else. So what is really going on here? On 5/12/10, Bryan Peterson <bpeterson2...@cableone.net> wrote: > The only place I know of is www.nextup.com. > He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the castle > of aaaaggh. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
