Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 UW 5/3/83; site uw-beaver Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!mhuxn!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!info-mac From: info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) Newsgroups: fa.info-mac Subject: SmoothTalker(tm) Warning Message-ID: <2427@uw-beaver> Date: Tue, 4-Dec-84 03:53:19 EST Article-I.D.: uw-beave.2427 Posted: Tue Dec 4 03:53:19 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 4-Dec-84 23:51:26 EST Sender: daemon@uw-beave Organization: U of Washington Computer Science Lines: 76 From: wasser_1%viking.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (John A. Wasser) Beware of Smooth-Talking Software Vendors! or The First Byte may not be the last! I purchased a copy of SmoothTalker (by First Byte) recently (at least I thought that was what I paid for... see below) and would like to warn people what they are getting into. I made the purchase based on the SmoothTalker Demo Disk that I saw and heard at a computer store. What I got is not what I expected from the demo (or from previous experience purchasing software). When you open the box (after having paid your $150) you find out that they didn't include the Female voice (mentioned in the demo) on the disk. You have to send for the free backup disk (the built-in manual says $15 backup disk) to get the Female voice. When you start SmoothTalker you are assaulted with six screens worth of legalese in the form of a "License and Use Agreement". The full text of the agreement is too long to post (Please send mail if you want a copy) but here are some of the more odious points in it: 1) What you purchased is a SINGLE-USER, SINGLE-CPU, NON-TRANSFERRABLE license. 2) First Byte (the publisher of SmoothTalker) owns the software and any copies you make AND ANY SOFTWARE DEVELOPED USING THEIR SOFTWARE. You cannot make copies without PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION. 3) The program is sold "AS IS" and can be as full of bugs as they like. They only thing that they Warranty in any way is the disk on which the software is shipped. 4) If you sue them, you can only recover the purchase price. If they sue you, they get legal fees and more. It gets worse! The only way to use SmoothTalker (currently) is to have it speak a text file. You cannot currently call SmoothTalker (V1.0 as shipped) from ANY programming language. (Remember that if you do, the program legally becomes theirs and you can't use it on any other Macintosh.) The program works fairly well on plain English text... except for the falling inflection that falls at a constant rate (falls more on long sentences than short sentences) and makes it sound like the speaker.. is... running.... d o w n. The text file can be phonetic but cannot (it seems) be mixed English and phonetic. There is no way to have a text file converted to phonemes, and English text is read in chunks of about 3 to 6 lines with long pauses in between. One bright spot: I have it on good authority that if the master disk (which is copy-protected, by the way, with bad sectors) is write-protected (uncover the hole), you can accept the license agreement without changing the disk. This way you can check out the software without loosing your chance to return it to the dealer for a refund (which is what I intend to do). "Let the buyer BEWARE... but let him also be INFORMED!" John A. Wasser New England Computer Society SIGMac Founder Work address: ARPAnet: WASSER%VIKING.DEC@decwrl.ARPA Usenet: {allegra,Shasta,decvax}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-viking!wasser USPS: Digital Equipment Corp. Mail stop: LJO2/E4 30 Porter Rd Littleton, MA 01460