> Speech recognition is not reliable anywhere.

True, but what has performance to do with availability? (You're the
second person to try and distract by taking this tangent.) Here are two
facts:

* Professionals (doctors, lawyers) are paying *thousands* for speech
recognition software and hardware (microphone, not counting the required
powerful computer). Obviously speech recognition is that good, because
if it wasn't paying off, those groups wouldn't pay up. Having said that,
it's nevertheless a tad short of ideal.

* There is only 1 (as in, one) company in the world which sells you
speech recognition software for a desktop computer. The reason there is
only one is because the other two went bust. This looks to me like an
indication that there isn't really any money to be made with it.
(Actually, Microsoft is dabbling with it too, but I haven't heard much
about it lately.)

It is unlikely that open source is able to deliver the speech
recognition guts any time soon (I have had some contact with this, and
am possibly the only one for some distance with a little experience of
Linux speech recognition). Unless, of course, someone benevolent coughs
up some cash (and the entry ticket is 8 digits). Perhaps OSSRI should
approach the Bill Gates foundation......

> The proprietary software business 
> model is unsustainable in most situations.

I don't think I agree.

Well, until open source meets my computing needs I'm happy to have them
met by propritory software if I consider its price to be reasonable.
This is not mutually exclusive with a healthy portion of idealism.

Volker

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Volker Kuhlmann                 is possibly list0570 with the domain in header
http://volker.dnsalias.net/             Please do not CC list postings to me.

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