Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Sounds Very Fishy

Around 9 years ago I remember testing speech recognition software. At the time, I thought it might be useful for translators at the radio station I was working at - and reduce the strain of typing. I tested Dragon Software and also a package out of Belgium from the great guys at Lernout and Hauspie. At the time the Dragon software was OK (although the computer ground to a halt quite often due to lack of memory) but the L&H stuff just didn't work at all. I had to read passages from a book to train the software on my voice. Then the first letter...

Dead Sod,

Thank yew four righting


Dumped that lemon within 2 days.

Years later I see that perhaps the biggest corruption trial ever held in Belgium has just opened centred around the collapse of once high-flying tech firm Lernout & Hauspie in 2000. Thank goodness I never invested in these jokers. It was hype all the way to the bank - and now perhaps to jail.

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