Posts Tagged: Robots!
robots to persuade humans with human-like voices
Posted by on Sunday, March 3, 2002 in - 5 comments
AT&T Labs is commercializing their recent advances in text-to-speech processing (a.k.a. talking computers) with Natural Voices. While the live demo still reveals its robotic ancestry, a few of the pre-recorded demos could really pass for human. Listen to one of the better samples (70Kb Windows …
Robots!
Posted by on Saturday, February 2, 2002 in - 7 comments
I'll always remember that day years ago in high school math class. The class was quiet; everyone was working on their assignments. Then, suddenly, a horrible crash and clang of metal on metal came hurtling down the hall towards us. My friend ffoeg, always able to bend a moment to his liking to the …
I still wish I was an engineer
Posted by on Wednesday, January 23, 2002 in - 16 comments
My first AOV post ever was concerning how I wished I was an engineer so I could take my monstrous robot onto television and beat on other robots. Nothing has changed, except for now people out there are living the dream. • There are now about three shows that deal with his, and I want to tell …
actos de la volición
Posted by on Friday, June 15, 2001 in - 2 comments
Fun with Babelfish. Robots translating aov to Spanish. Rob Fletcher becomes Robo Fletcher, I apparently work for "el silverorange", and thegeniuses@actsofvolition.com are losgenios@actsofvolition.com. • Keep up the good work, robots.
the death of the free web
Posted by on Wednesday, June 6, 2001 in - 28 comments
News.com tends to consist of little more than a collection of press releases and product announcements. However, their new feature, The Death of the Free Web is a fine collection of articles measuring the effects of the crash of dot-com-tomfoolery. • The bottom line of the articles is that we …
talking to robots
Posted by on Friday, April 27, 2001 in - 18 comments
ActiveBuddy, as far as I can tell, is a new service that will retrieve info from participating companies via queries from AOL's Instant Messenger. It's got a little buzz going, and lots of IT media hype. • Is it just me, or is this a stupid idea? The example on the activebuddy website goes like …
actors are /so/ 20th century
Posted by on Sunday, April 22, 2001 in - 23 comments
Final Fantasy, the classic video game series (one I never had the patience for myself) is coming to the big screen. Completely computer animated, it makes Toy Story look like a flip-book animation, and Dinosaur like, uh, never mind. • These "photos" of the characters are some of the most amazing …
this wouldn't be a problem if the Japanese ate toast.
Posted by on Saturday, April 7, 2001 in
Quoted from A Whole Lotta Nothing: • “ • Did you realize it's the year 2001 now? We live in the goddammed future! Robotic dogs, computerized cars, intelligent global information networks, and yet... we're still stuck with toast. With all the recent improvements in the fields of microprocessors …
robots: fast as hell, still not so great with context.
Posted by on Wednesday, March 21, 2001 in
The following email was sent from Network Solutions in regards to a domain name update request. I was aware that robots were sending emails, but I had thought we were still a few years away from the robots actually writing the emails themselves. • At least the robot was polite enough to wish us …
most amusing spam award.
Posted by on Sunday, March 4, 2001 in
I've seen personalized spam before, but this was the most impressive I've ever received. • Today, an email promoting a search engine registration service arrived in my inbox, complete with little animated people being ‘magnetically attracted’ to an actual screenshot of actsofvolition.com …