Platform-Independent Technical Gibberings - hardware and "Internet"

[knock]

They've got a lot better, this chrome one is not bad, you can choose different voices. I've got English, UK, Female at the moment. Like Star Trek taught us, men pay more attention to female voices. Although my ex would beg to differ

But the intonation isn't right. I used it for that Peter O'Toole / Oliver Reed dialogue. It doesn't pick up exclamation marks, so the comedy timing and emphasis is lost. But it's still pretty good.

 

[kingme]

totally unrelated, but i think the gps navigation systems also use female voices for the same reason. most men pay more attention to female voices.

that, and its harder to shout at a woman giving bad directions (you kinda expect her to give em wrong )

 

[knock]

yes exactly!

Just tried that chrome extension with this post:

fucking sweet.

1992-1997 old skool jungle mix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwYfD4bWHdg

Stupid thing reads 1992-1997 as "nineteen-million nine-hundred twenty-one thousand nine-hundred ninety-seven"

Room for improvement...


The extension has two text-to-speech engines, "iSpeak" and "SpeakIt!" SpeakIt! only has one voice - a UK English female - but she sounds a bit better than the iSpeak ones.

She says "iSpeak" as "eeSpeak" and text-to-speech as text-toe-speech, stupid woman.

 

[kingme]

i think the real breakthrough will be when the speech to text dictation software takes off...

imagine all bluelighters posting at every whim whatever comes out of their mouths...
things would be a lot busier ...especially friday threads...

 

[knock]

Oh the chrome plugin does that too! And Android has pretty good speech recognition. I have made quite a few Bluelight posts on my tablet by speaking. The future is here now! I've not tried the chrome plugin for this, I'll give it a bash.

 

[pinkpapaver]

I have a proper computer and have installed a wireless card onto it. how do I get to make it recognise the wireless business. said computer is currently taking up the space the Christmas tree wishes to occupy since it is near to the phone socket. I could leave computer and mouse on for that christms lok but would rather the tree.

please help. I'm sure I cold work it out but I'm not too comfortable here in this Christmas tree space.

 

[kingme]

wait. so you have a pc, with a wireless card? and you want to use... wifi?
assuming the pc installs the wireless card correctly and the wifi is set up right, you should be seeing the available networks on the pc and select your home wifi just like that...

 

[knock]

What ISP are you with and what router are you using?

 

[pinkpapaver]

I've had a look at the card at the back and the green light isn't coming on. I think I'll have to take it out and put it back in again. I'm with orange/ee and it's a bright box roputer. I really need to get my tree up but I have a load of housework to do. grrrrrrr. wish I was a girly girl that didn't do such stuff myself.

 

[Josh]

What operating system do you use? It might not automatically install drivers for wifi. Did you get an installation disk with the wifi card?

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

Ubuntu. Am I in the right place? Talk to me knock. You don't appear to be talking to me anymore. Ubuntu. Any good?

(I use windows xp and my technical help has told me xp is about to, in April, stop supporting - wrong word, sorry - browsers such as Firefox, which I use)

Ubuntu. Any good for a dummy (me)?

 

[knock]

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution. But as you're moving from windows to linux, platform independent or indeed cross-platform seems relevant.

Of course I'm talking to you, as much as I talk to anyone :D maybe a bit more even if you did call me names. Ubuntu is good for a non-techie. Yes.

Microsoft is stopping all security updates for XP in April, your tech support isn't telling you the truth. If you didn't use Firefox you'd still need to move on from XP.

Yes try Ubuntu

Be aware:
- you can't run every Windows program in Ubuntu. You can run some, with Wine, but it tends to work best with either very simple programs or very popular versions of complicated programs from a couple of years ago.
- back up your files before installing!
- It sometimes takes a while for new hardware to get drivers and some hardware never gets drivers. I currently have in mind the fingerprint reader on my Lenovo laptop which is about three years old but is only just starting to get supported now. Never bothered me much but it's a fact. Also cheap printers from no-mark manufacturers and that sort of thing are often a gamble but you can do your research first by searching the web / asking me.

 

[swampdragon]

What knock said. ^

Ubuntu is lovely, very easy to use and it's what my parents used quite happily without breaking anything. (Though I tend to assume that most Windows programs won't run on it, though, as Wine can be a bit of a bugger.)

 

[knock]

exactly, I give it to family and I don't get constant "My computer is full of viruses / has slowed to a halt" phone calls.

I get them from family members who have not (yet) moved to Ubuntu. The most recent case uses a lot of peculiar software though, so I don't think it's going to be possible to move them over.

My Dad bought a no-mark Sat Nav. Why any casual driver would buy sat nav and not a smart phone is beyond me, but he did. The software didn't run in wine so I set up a virtualbox Windows install, purely for updating the satnav database. That works. He uses it once a year or something

 

[swampdragon]

Yeah, my system worked well until my dad rebelled and bought a cheap PC on ebay with Windows. Now I'm constantly removing malware from the thing.

 

[kingme]

the malware doesnt install itself... i think a lot of the problems that get pinned on windows and the like are also to do with the enduser who knows too little to protect himself.
just reading the instructions during an install can protect from the worst of th ebunch. that and NOT clicking on everything that popus up on random sites...
i run antivirus antimalware programs perhaps twice a year and had no problems the past 5 or so years on the work pc.

 

[Josh]

Ubuntu. Am I in the right place? Talk to me knock. You don't appear to be talking to me anymore. Ubuntu. Any good?

(I use windows xp and my technical help has told me xp is about to, in April, stop supporting - wrong word, sorry - browsers such as Firefox, which I use)

Ubuntu. Any good for a dummy (me)?

It might help to list some things you commonly do in Windows so we can suggest alternatives using Linux

 

[swampdragon]

Yes, but.. have you ever tried to tell parents to not do something? 8)

 

[knock]

also free updates. None of my family members running Ubuntu are in the slightest bothered by the fact XP support is over in April. Everyone else is stressing about it, and putting that stress on me

 

[Allein]

Why do they not just upgrade to Windows7? The industry I work in is in a totall state of panic. It is a unique situation since no OS has gone out of support that has such massive distribution and this means attacks are more likely. I work on some stuff thats running OS2 but I doubt there are many hackers trying to compromise that.