Quite by accident, with my wife as my witness, I pulled a slice of American cheese out of its wrapper tonight – and it’s in the shape of the state of Arkansas!
The bidding will start tonight on eBay at $50,000! … Read more
So I answered the phone today and it was a voice-synthesized, pre-programmed message trying to sell me something.
Whoa, let me back up there a bit. I used to live in Wisconsin, where there were – at least at the time – some very strict laws about cold-calling someone for marketing purposes. I don’t recall ever getting a recorded/voice-synthesized sales call up there, ever. We need those laws in Arkansas. Urgently.
Anyway, I got this call today. The voice was female, maybe one or two steps up from the AT&T TTS demo voices, so maybe these were pre-recorded words and/or phrases spoken by a human and pieced together in the computer, with big gaps between each word – sort of like a Dalek, only slightly more soothing. (But only slightly.) And in listening to this slightly soothing message, I had a revelation: it would help if the person piecing the recorded words together knew, oh, maybe, what the hell they were doing. … Read more
