Hi Bill.
My comments are in the quoted message below and they are preceeded by
sm:
>>> bill cameron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 22/January/1999 04:00pm >>>
sean not so sure that i agree with your theory here, if the lack of i
s a slots
was the issue then why is it that
drivers are maid for serial port synthes?
After all they are, serial ports part of the isa bus.
SM: On the old IBM PS2 computers, THE SERIAL PORT IS a PART OF the
Micro channel architecture and the PS2 computers have no ISA
architecture in them. Therefore, I expect the new mother boards that
do not have Isa architecture in them will have the serial ports part
of the new PCI architecture. Otherwise they might use the Universal
Serial Bus Ports (USB) and have serial port adapters. Basically what
I am saying, is that serial and paralell ports will not die in the
next 5 years because their is to many devices out there that uses
serial or paralell. I would not be suprised if they phase serial and
paralell ports out over a period of time.
with that said the real truth is that the n t operateing system has
security
makeing harder to write drivers for hardware.
this is the same reason fax software took so long to be written for n
t.
much longer than similar software in o s 2.
now i do agree that a hardware synth in n t is not required, by the
way in n
t the software speech will be free and ship with n t 5.
SM: I did not know this fact, this is quite disturbing because once
again Microsoft is trying to dominate the market.
plus their is no dos so no dos stand alone synth is needed.
so the only advantage of hardware synth in n t is speed.
SM: This is true for any platform at this point of time.
one other point a person could easily design a p c i synth.
SM: I disagree with this point because I have heard from several
different A.T. companies that the cost of re-developing their ISA
based Synths to work on the PCI architecture is to expensive.
Specially when people can get software synths for nothing. You have
just stated in your message the NT 5 is going to come with its own
software synth. If a screen reader works with this synth, then why
would a screen reader user buy any software synth? Other than they
did not like the speech, wanted to use their old hardware synth, etc.
Therefore the market for hardware synth in the future will shrink.
personally i think the blind market could support one of these, though
i doubt
that as many hardware synths could survive in the n t enviroment
because most
will choose the cheaper software.
SM: You have just supported my arguement above.
of course such a synth would need to incorporate new technology, like
maybe a
on board pronunciation
dictionary, which used real data base rules to look up words instead
of the
methods currently used in screen reader software.
SM: This is a great idea, a hardware based device that improves
synths pronunciation of words would increase the speed of a software
synth. But I doult the developers of software synths would do this,
because the processors are increasing at such a rapid rate, that by
the year 2001, Intell expect to have a processor that would be about 1
gigabyte in speed. Computers are just going to get so much faster,
that it is going to blow us all away. Using our screenreader like Jfw
and software synths are going to be like the hardware synths under
DOS.
such a synth could produce every word accurately, or awful close to
100
percent, and would find great value with medical transcriptionist or
lawyers.
as the main c p u incorporates more and more capabilities to act as
a more
powerful digital signal processor, that in turn means better ability
to make
speech software work faster.
sm: Isn't this what I have already said in different words? Software
synths are going to be cheaper and you have stated this several times
in your message. Companies are not going to update their hardware
synths if they are not going to make a profit.
also as the main c p u also incorporates bigger and bigger on board
cqache it
may be possible to actually
design the whole synth i am proposeing and be able to store all the
correct
spellings in the cache itself.
sm: That is a good idea, but if someone did your suggestion, they
would store it all in main memory because of the price. Computers in
the future will have a minimum of 128 mb of ram and expandable to 1
gb.
Cheers
Sean.
-
Visit the jfw ml web page: http://yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au/~nallan/jfw
