|
.... and think about this. The good folks at Bell Labs have
a nice little Text-To-Speech demo page up.
Nothing too fancy, just pick a voice, type in some text and
click "Synthesis." But wait! What's that little checkbox in the
corner? "If you plan to enter text which our system might
consider to be obscene, check here to certify that
you are old enough to hear the resulting output." Whaaa???
There are so many things wrong with that sentence I don't quite know where to
begin. First I was just loving the contorted logic that someone might be old
enough to write something that they couldn't hear repeated by a synthesized
voice.
But there's just so much more being implied here. Like in the phrase "text which
our system might consider to be obscene"-- so, what, they're worried that their
server might be offended? Just what does their "system" consider obscene? How
old is their system and what are the standards of decency in it's community?
I'm just waiting for the day when the alphabet comes with a disclaimer "If you
plan to use these symbols to represent concepts which a culture on planet Earth
might consider to be obscene, please sign here....".
Check it out yourself
zuul@pigdog.org
|
