RE: NVDA and Eloquence
- From: Storm Dragon <stormdragon2976@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:58:39 -0400
Hi,
the specific reasons the Elloquence topic was banned from the NVDA
discussion list isw people were offering pirated copies, telling how
they themselves are using it illegally, and I was getting a ton of
complaints from people who were tired of hearing about it. So, 2 thirds
of the reasoning behind banning the topic was actualy to protect members
of the list. I personaly don't care who uses it or how they got it, but
I don't want my list to be helpful in bringing action against people who
are smart enough to obtain it while not being smart enough to keep that
fact to themselves lol. Plus, the list could be shutdown for allowing
discussion of pirated software if nothing was done about it. Besides,
there is a synth that is a whole lot better included with NVDA by
default. I used to use elloquence myself back when I used Windows and a
nonfree Windows Screen reader. Fortunately, wen I decided to switch to
Linux back in 2007, I did not find out that elloquence was available for
Linux in the form of Viavoice provided by voxin for nearly 6 months.
when I first installed it there was Espeak and festival. the Espeak
synth sounded better and could go faster with less lag, so I became
determined to use it. I had to slow down from where I was with
Eloquence, but week after week I got faster and faster until I regained
the speed, then with a hack using the fast_test variant, I even
surpassed my Elloquence speeds. Today, thanks to the sonic code written
by Bill cox, it can go faster still and sound very clear. After using
Espeak for around 6 months, I found out about Voxin. I actually did buy
it. Even though it was only $5, I regret that purchase, because I
installed it, switched to it, and with in 5 minutes switched back. It
sounds too muffled, and funnily enough, I then as now found espeak
easier to understand. So, I guess the ban on the elloquence has the
added binnifit of hopefully getting more people to try and eventrually
switch to espeak. This itself has several advantages, 2 of which are,
you can use it with pretty much anything with out violating the license,
and the developer is far more responsive than Elloquence people. If a
word caused Espeak to crash I would be willing to bet a decent sum of
money that the bug would be fixed in a week's time after the developer
found out about it. I have know of words that crash elloquence for years
now, and more are discovered everyday. In fact, someone told me there is
actually an elloquence crash word generator. You know, I wonder if that
crash sequence could somehow be exploited to run malicious code? It is,
of course, something to worry about. Well, this post is getting rather
long, so I guess I'll end here.
Thanks
Storm
--
Vinux Publicity Coordinator: http://www.vinuxproject.org/
Registered Linux user number 508465: http://counter.li.org/
My blog, Thoughts of a Dragon: http://www.stormdragon.us/
How many Internet mail list subscribers does it take to change a lightbulb?
http://goo.gl/eO4PJ
My Blackberry is Broken: http://is.gd/my_blackberry_is_broken
"with a trunk big enough to fit three bodies in"
Calabrese
On Wed, 2011-08-24 at 08:18 -0400, Ken Perry wrote:
> I would suppose the problem is Freedom has paid the licenses to use
> eloquence and if you change the way they install eloquence by changing
> registries you are breaking the license. Thus while technically its illegal
> I doubt anyone is going to come in in a black trench coat and take your
> computer. I would however point out that you can now buy a copy of nvda for
> like 10 bucks and get a much better experience with what used to be ibm via
> voice.
>
> ken
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jamal Mazrui
> Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 7:37 AM
> To: programmingblind
> Subject: NVDA and Eloquence
>
> I am trying to understand the legal issues around use of NVDA with the
> Eloquence speech installed with JAWS. I have heard that it is
> technically easy to make this work, thereby substantially improving the
> NVDA experience. On the blind-mozilla list, however, it was stated that
> this is absolutely illegal to do, and even discussion of the topic was
> prohibited on the list. I did not realize this was such a controversial
> topic, but trust that we can at least discuss it here, being careful as
> appropriate not to encourage particular actions.
>
> As I think we know, just because a company says that some activity is an
> impermissible use of software does not make it so. For example, I have
> heard of the "Jailbreak" issue with the iPhone, and that this has been
> deemed legal by an authoritative body, despite initial protests by a
> company. Am I understanding that right?
>
> So, I am interested in any official statement that asserts the
> illegality of using Eloquence with NVDA. Can someone point me to a web
> page?
>
> Please understand that I am not encouraging such activity, especially
> since my knowledge of the topic is limited at present. I do think,
> however, that if people are being told that something is absolutely
> illegal that they deserve some kind of authoritative reference for that
> assertion, given the corresponding implication that one would be a
> criminal to do so.
>
> Jamal
> __________
> View the list's information and change your settings at
> //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
>
> __________
> View the list's information and change your settings at
> //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
>
Other related posts:
