http://www.tuaw.com/2007/12/13/quicktime-7-3-1-fixes-rtsp-vulnerability/

You are very correct about voice and foreign languages. It does make it difficult. OTOH, I tried to help some portuguese speakers with a space station built by an associate of mine, and the translation stuff was horrible. Add to that the lack of tone in typing, and they were upset for a bit until I managed to finally get my point across to them and we managed to get amicably to a resolution.

As for open source, it’s great and has its uses. I’ve run various linux distros over the years. All I’m going to say is that my current brand of unix based OS of choice is OS X. I think linux is a hugely better alternative than windows, and I think everyone benefits from having linux and other open source OS options available. And sure, the quicktime thing might be fixed by now if it was open source. Then again, it might not. Not all firefox security holes, for example, get fixed right away. Open source does not always mean instant security or bug fixing. It does mean that the possibility for faster resolution exists.

Voice recognition software - it has its uses. It’s not appropriate for all situations and it’s about impossible to use it for certain things. Does anyone manage to use Poser 7, ac3d, or Fireworks with voice recognition and get anything done? And for me programming by typing is (or used to be) so much faster by typing it’s not even funny.

Voice fills a need in SL. Not for all uses, not for all times, but it is not a detriment to SL. Every time something new comes to SL and people say it’s the end of the world, you can bet in 6 months no one will care.

Also, interacting with people of different native language is much easier when you don’t have the difficulty of recognizing spoken words in realtime piled on top of parsing and understanding sentences–I can’t cut a sound sample and paste it into Google or a {French, Dutch, …}-English dictionary web site and get a translation yet.

Also, we Linux users are _still_ waiting for a voice-enabled client… and the Vivox(?) package is yet another piece of proprietary software. LL should be _replacing_ proprietary software in SL infrastructure, not adding to it. If the common video delivery mechanism in SL were open source, how many _hours_ do you suppose it would be before there was a fix, compared with the current situation, in which video is effectively shut down until Apple deigns to provide a fix that may only badly affect the SL client?

I sympathize with RSI, tendonitis, etc., but… if you have that problem, you have it with every computer interaction, not just with SL… so why aren’t you using voice recognition software?

I find it to be quite amusing to open up the microphone when someone on voice says “Mrs.” or “Miss” Mariner once too often.
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Seriously, I agree with you on the usefulness of voice. If I’m working on a build or fixing something, it’s easier to keep people informed as to what I’m doing by blithering and rambling as I build as opposed to them having to wait after every step.

Despite my unrivaled literary skills, I STILL communicate better using my voice than just plain text?

Voice also works well with real-time discussions that don’t need to be logged like textchats.

Plus, it’s just fun to open the microphone for low-quality a capella karaoke nights. Had a blast on Artropolis a while back with that.