One prime reason I try to popularize MacSpeech
in [Mac Systems]
|
From: Mark Conrad on 7 Sep 2009 11:00 In article <mbreslau-7DCDD7.09110907092009(a)news.speakeasy.net>, Michael Breslau <mbreslau(a)speakeasy.org> wrote: > My wife has pain if she tries to type. I'm her computer > guru and have to guide her through learning Dictate 1.5 > (even as I learn it myself to teach her...) > As such, I'm grateful for every hint I can glean. Happy to oblige. Just try to keep it fun for your wife's learning process. Anyone can reach the level of proficiency that I have, it is just a matter of keeping learning and improving. It is something like learning to play the violin by yourself without any outside help. Nothing but sour music results at first. Keep your eyes on the MacSpeech user forums, many others have difficulty learning. Often you can glean good tips there. The prize at the end of the rainbow is when she can achieve average accuracy of 99% _before_ any text correction, i.e. only one text mistake every hundred words. ....at her normal speaking rate, probably somewhere between 100 wpm and 160 wpm. Beware of the mantra that some preach about the value of constantly correcting text mistakes over and over and over and over :-\ It is much more important to learn the correct use of the so-called "speech vocabulary". If you can afford it, rig up a 2nd Intel Mac, even one as humble as an Intel Mini, to experiment with techniques that might zap her main Mac, if she tried them there. Most of my knowledge resulted from trial-and-error experimentation. The 100% accuracy I achieved while my TV was blaring loudly in the background is a prime example. *EVERYONE* will tell you that is impossible. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I zapped my Mac by trying techniques that backfired on me. Three tips: 1) Keep it fun. 2) If _you_ can not achieve 99% accuracy at 100 wpm, it is doubtful that you will be able to teach your wife how, so attempt to boost your own proficiency. Remember, MacSpeech is buggy, it is super easy to corrupt your user profile. Using MacSpeech is every bit as easy as steering a bull by the tail ;-) 3) Keep it fun. Mark-
From: Hamish Reid on 7 Sep 2009 12:46 In article <mbreslau-7DCDD7.09110907092009(a)news.speakeasy.net>, Michael Breslau <mbreslau(a)speakeasy.org> wrote: > Mark, I am one who follows and appreciates your postings for what they > are. Keep up the good work. [...] > PS: I'm old enough to remember when newsgroups were free from > name-calling and vituperation, and I wish it were still so today. Those > who try to demean others in public wind up demeaning themselves. As someone who's been on Usenet since at least the early 1980's, I can't imagine what Usenet you were on back then that was "free from name-calling and vituperation". "Dinette For Sale!" ring a bell? And as someone who once, long ago, innocently tried to help Mark (I had no idea who he was or his back story at the time), and whose polite efforts were met by Mark's name-calling and insults, I have no idea what you think his "good work" is. Unless, of course, you're being sarcastic or ironic, which, come to think of it, seems increasingly likely.... Hamish
From: Mark Conrad on 7 Sep 2009 15:40 In article <mbreslau-7DCDD7.09110907092009(a)news.speakeasy.net>, Michael Breslau <mbreslau(a)speakeasy.org> wrote: > Mark, I am one who follows and appreciates your postings > for what they are. Keep up the good work. I really appreciate that, thanks. I had better qualify this prior remark of mine: "If you can afford it, rig up a 2nd Intel Mac, even one as humble as an Intel Mini, to experiment with techniques that might zap her main Mac, if she tried them there." Just be aware that with any slow Intel Mac, such as a Mac Mini, the top speed you can dictate at will drop radically. The Mini will probably work okay at slower dictation speeds of 80-100 wpm. (people normally talk at 100-160 wpm) With a faster Mac, such as my 2 year old MacBook Pro which runs at a CPU rate of 2.4 MHz, I can get by with speaking at 480 wpm and expect 100% raw accuracy. Believe it or not, you can talk at the same rate, 480wpm. Newer MacBooks today run at 2.8 GHz. Speech apps are *VERY* CPU intensive, todays computers are barely fast enough to handle them. For certain, I have found any virtualization app such as "VMWare Fusion 2" too sluggish to handle speech apps, as have other users in the SR forums. I could fry my breakfast eggs on my computer when running speech apps, _hot_ temps of 185 F are not uncommon, which can shorten the life of a Mac. To avoid that, I installed a free app "smcFanControl" from a donation-ware author in Germany. Prior to *EVERY* extended SR session, I manually crank up the fan speed of my MacBook from 2,000 rpm to about 3,500 rpm, and then keep my eyes on the temperature. If it gets above 130 F, then I nudge the fan speed up a bit higher. The initial "training session" of a new speech profile is the most brutal, the part of the training immediately after the training session itself, when the speech app "incorporates" the training results into the speech app. I had to crank up my fan speed to maximum, 6,000 rpm, to keep the CPU temp from rising above 160 F. After I am finished with any speech recognition session, I shut off the fan control utility, which lets my MacBook revert to its normal automatic fan control. All this manual fan speed control nonsense is unnecessary if you trust the automatic fan speed control built into every Mac, and do not care about a slightly reduced lifespan of your Mac. I just prefer manual control of the Macs temperature, having worked for 34 years in the electronics industry, and observing firsthand what high temperatures can do to the lifespan of electronic components. (accelerated aging) Mark-
From: Mark Conrad on 7 Sep 2009 22:20 In article <070920091649272280%not(a)home.invalid>, John Steinberg <not(a)home.invalid> wrote: > > One of the prime wastes of money in this country is > > due to the fact that only 7% of US hospitals employ > > speech recognition. > > <snort> > > I like made up facts like this. Not made up, you too can dig up facts like that if you are so inclined. Or just sit in a car outside the hospital, wait for a bunch (herd?) of rich looking IT guys driving up in their limos. Takes a whole herd of them to keep the PCs going in the horse pistol. (but you already knew that) Sorry 'bout those last two words, it is this darn beach wreck-a-nation program, y'know. (shoulda been "hospital", not "horse pistol". > Wow, you have the answers to every problem affecting man! Not me, I am just a senile old geezer with wrong ideas, humbly waiting for someone like you, with all your neurons neuroning, and all your synapses snapping away, to properly enlighten me about the few words I am about to post. (I believe in brevity) Heck, I have been wrong before, I think it was 20 yrs ago. > > Doctors I associate with would give their eye-teeth > > to switch to Macs for their medical record keeping. > > And here I thought psychiatrists were the yellow legal pad type. No more. The _poor_ psychiatrists use what looks like a very small black lipstick clipped to the lapel of their coat. (wireless microphone) Cost, $360, from Revolab. Rich Hollyweird/Beverly-Hills psychiatrists use an almost invisible small tie-clip variation of the same thing from Telex, model EW 512 G3, marked down in price just for you, only $1,049.95 today (was $1,575) <http://store.daleproaudio.com/Items/senn-ew512g3g?&caSKU=senn-ew512g3g& caTitle=Sennheiser%20EW%20512%20G3%20Rackmount%20Wireless%20Lavalier%20M icrophone%20System%20-%20%22G%22%20%20566-608%20MHz> Mic' is sometimes used as a very small tie clip. ....or when poked up through their clothing, the mic is about the size of a match head, almost totally invisible. Encrypted signal, choice of about 1,100 frequencies, I think they are self-seeking frequencies for the best signal. > > Consumer medical costs would go down. > > Right, and teenage acne would be a thing of the past, dogs would lie > down with cats, and the world would at last be at peace. Honest Injun. All the return-on-investment studies bear it out. 1) Dictation, considering average typing speeds etc. is typically 3 times faster, therefore cheaper. 2) Doctor "does his paperwork" essentially as he is walking his rounds - - - his transcription gets wirelessly fed to a flunky, who also corrects the text, meaning our high-priced doctor does NOT have to do the lions share of the text correction. Important details get fed immediately into the medical grid, which means all hospitals/doctors have immediate feedback from an emergency room, which saves lives when the "magic hour" starts ticking for a patient. 3) Doctor can run for the parking lot and go home at the end of his shift, instead of staying 3 hours to type his paperwork. Cheaper again, doctor puts in an 8 hour day, instead of an 11 hour day. By the time the doctor arrives home, the final draft of all his days dictation has been sent to his Mac at his house. He can read/okay/approve/send the final draft while wifey sets the dinner table; might even save his marriage. 4) Save roughly $10,000 per year per doctor, not needing to send audio files to india, where a smelly guy in a big diaper and a turban will make all sorts of mistakes trying to understand "Amelican" medical lingo, not to mention the hours and hours and hours delay in getting critical medical text fed back into the waiting medical grid in the USA. Fly in the ointment is that doctors are not made aware of how important prompt paper shuffling is, during their training. If the politicians _really_ want to do some good, they could force the training hospitals to be realistic and up-to-date by insisting that they recognize that doctors have to be taught how to handle paperwork quickly and cheaply. In an ideal world, doctors would do no paperwork, they would just, err, "doctor", wiley-niley cutting into patients, with no documentation of what they are doing. This is not an ideal world, doctors have to get approval, insurance companies have to "approve" the cost of an operation, while the patient is dying; testing labs often need written orders for a test, doctors can't line up on a pay phone and give orders verbally. (hey Fred, do you have another quarter?) Medicare needs paperwork in _their_ weird format, or the hospitals/doctors never get paid. Politicians have to be educated by text from doctors and hospitals, otherwise stupid dumb-o-crats will break the country with trillion dollar debts which do not address underlying problems with the medical fiasco we are presently in. Poison control centers need text/photos on their private hot line, as regards type of snake etc. so they can rush the correct anti-venom. Burn centers need pix and text to prepare for a patient being flown to them. Every cotton picking thing has to be documented in text so the medical business will not fold up from malpractice law suits. Google and you will find that it is not uncommon for a gynecologist in Florida to pay $200,000 PER YEAR for malpractice insurance. You think the common lack of speech recognition has nothing to do with that boondoggle expense? Think again, with thorough documentation due to having speech recognition, fewer frivolous lawsuits would be possible, doctors could get cheaper insurance. Mark-
From: Mark Conrad on 8 Sep 2009 01:29
In article <070920091649272280%not(a)home.invalid>, John Steinberg <not(a)home.invalid> wrote: > > You would know why if you ever had to use Windows. > > Alas, poor Yorick, I do. Poor devil. I have to use it also. Now you know me, a man of few words. Expanding a tiny bit on the subject of doctors _wanting_ to use Macs... <http://www.macpractice.com/mp/md/> This company caters to "Mac doctors" - - - all they do is to create/sell software to do one thing. To fill out medical paperwork. MacPractice proudly states in their website that their software, "MacPractice MD" , works with the speech app "MacSpeech Dictate". That is like Apple proudly stating that their Mac Pro works with an abacus. Why, because MacSpeech Dictate is so buggy that it is almost impossible to use for any productive purpose, unless used by a person such as myself. The MacPractice company, not to be confused with MacSpeech, realizes the importance of speech recognition. If MacSpeech goes under... ....that would have a bad impact on MacPractice, not to mention all the "Mac Doctors", who would be screwed because pressure would be on them to revert to Windows. <shudder> "MacPractice MD" goes for $2,000 a copy, but the doctor winds up buying an additional bunch of associated apps which brings the final price to $5,000 from the MacPractice people. Remember, all the $5,000 gets the doctor is the ability to fill out medical forms with his Mac. MacPractice seems to be doing a booming business at the present time. You would be surprised how many doctors would be happy with this situation, being able to avoid the obfustication and confusion and viruses and IT leaches associated with Windows. I really hope that the ten programmers who constitute "MacSpeech" manage to stay in business, avoid bankruptcy, and improve MacSpeech to the point where a dumb doctor can use it. ....otherwise we Mac users will have to wait another 25 years before we get a decent speech recognition application. ....and Obama will have to spend another trillion dollars of money he does not have, to support the high cost of medicine using The Evil Empire $MS to do their medical paperwork. Mark- |