Mxsmanic wrote:

John Doe writes:


I think most people aren't interested because, like you, they are
frustrated with the current technology.


No, most people aren't interested because they aren't geeks, period.
They have lives outside of computers. They care no more about their
computers than they care about their telephones or toasters. They use
computers to accomplish some specific task, and then they are done.
Their are neither frustrated nor pleased by computers--they are
indifferent.


Given your frustration with the current technology.


I'm not frustrated with current technology. It all seems to work very
well.


Because it will provide access to disabled people and in the future
easier access to everyone.


Non-disabled people don't need easier access. Who should pay for
special accommodation of the disabled, and how much should they pay,
and which disabled people should get which proportion of the money?


There is great demand for it. The only problem is that people are
turned off by the current technology.


Nobody is clamoring for speech recognition. Most people don't use
computers that much and don't care. They are no more interested in
speech for their PC than they are in speech for their DVD players.


Microsoft has done many things at a net loss, like when trying to
steal market share.


Which things?


That's the norm. Microsoft could include high-quality speech if it
were truly interested in innovation. But it's not. You can blame it
on the fact that Microsoft must please its shareholders, nonetheless
it's true.


Microsoft already provides more accommodation of the disabled than any
other OS publisher. How much more do you want it to do?


But not within personal computing.


Within personal computing as well. But there are many types of
disabilities, and they all deserve consideration, in proportion to the
number of people afflicted with them. It's a question of balance.

For example, money spent to accommodate wheelchairs exceeds all other
expenditures on most other, more common disabilities combined, which
is a great example of enormous _imbalance_. I don't advocate that for
computers or for anything else.


I agree with that principle. But Microsoft trumpets the idea that
it's a compassionate, forward-looking high-technology company. Given
the lack of interest in speech, I don't believe it.


Uh, Microsoft is more interested in these things than any other major
software publisher.


I'm doing it right with only a USB microphone and speakers.


So you are doing it with special hardware, namely, a USB microphone
and speakers.


I am intimately familiar with the big antitrust trial. Microsoft
illegally destroyed Netscape's Navigator Internet browser business.
That is a fact and that was 17% of Netscape's revenue.


Netscape crashed and burned all on its own. It did that so quickly
that it's hard to imagine anything that Microsoft could have done that
would have significantly accelerated the crash.


Microsoft owns the monopoly operating system and office
applications. That's easy living.


Do you think so? Try it.


Just don't believe it when Microsoft tries to sell a compassionate,
forward-looking business.


I don't believe any company that makes such a claim. Microsoft is no
worse than anyone else, however.


Microsoft is the company that produces the monopoly operating system
and that is where speech belongs.


Because you say so?

I'm really enjoying your messages because it's so refreshing to hear
rational sanity on USENET.