Cindy Smart Knows Better Than To Say Naughty Words 499
D'Sphitz writes "Cindy Smart, the first doll in the world to be able to read, tell the time and do sums.
Cindy Smart 'sees' via a camera located under a bee on her overalls and has a computer 'brain' that can recognise more than 600 words and objects, although she refuses to recite certain 4-letter words. 'We don't say those kind of words,' she shrills, refusing to even spell obscenities. 'That's a bad word.'" Sounds like a good candidate for a personality transplant.
How can they really stop it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How can they really stop it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Probably won't carry the same weight as when you trick a human being to do it; its voice synthesis probably isn't on par with AT&T Natural Voices [naturalvoices.com].. it'll probably be kind of choppy, halting, broken English.
Re:How can they really stop it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How can they really stop it? (Score:2, Interesting)
Chris
Re:How can they really stop it? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How can they really stop it? (Score:4, Funny)
That didn`t stop Bush becoming president!!
Re:How can they really stop it? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How can they really stop it? (Score:4, Funny)
(if you haven't seen AI, you won't get it)
Re:How can they really stop it? (Score:5, Funny)
"I like to swallow"
"Do me by the backdoor"
"Call the football team I'm wet"
"Daddy likes to do me too"
and so on...
I never thought you'd do it! (Score:5, Funny)
Open the pod bay doors, Cindy... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How can they really stop it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Speak 'n' Spell? (Score:3, Interesting)
That becomes its own source of fun, trying to work around it.
That's all well and good... (Score:5, Funny)
anything is possible (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine a beowolf cluster... (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
spelling? (Score:3, Funny)
recognizes more than 600 words or objects (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:recognizes more than 600 words or objects (Score:5, Insightful)
You can give most speech synthesizers a random string of letters and they will sound it out.
Re:recognizes more than 600 words or objects (Score:5, Funny)
Re:recognizes more than 600 words or objects (Score:5, Funny)
Then, all you have to do until it develops intelligence and comes after you with plasma weapons...
aibOCR -- Make Sony Aibo read! (Score:3, Interesting)
Interested in making this happen? My idea is to add this to an Aibo (Sony's robotic Dog.) Sony has their Aibo SDK (which is moderately difficult to learn), but there's an alternative called Tekkotsu (means "iron bones" in Japanese). Tekkotsu builds on the ba
Re:recognizes more than 600 words or objects (Score:5, Funny)
We don't say those kind of words. That's a bad word.
Re:recognizes more than 600 words or objects (Score:5, Interesting)
Doing a rudimentary word count of this current page of comments gave about 950 unique words, including mis-spellings, names, and e-mail addresses.
When I was studying Arabic, a 500 word vocabulary was a good benchmark to reach. 1000 words meant, barring grammar problems, that you could speak and read pretty proficiently.
I'm sure they're expecting kids will be putting kid-level pages up in front of the doll. With a controlled vocabulary, that might only include a vocabulary of a few hundred words.
Ziff Rank/Frequency (Score:3, Informative)
Obviously the most common words occur much more often, but as the corpus (i.e. set of words you know) grows, you get rapidly dimishing returns. 500 words is a pretty good set of words if
Ken says... (Score:5, Funny)
Ken says he'd rather have a beowulf cluster of Barbies.
Bad Idea (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, it works at first.
But then the thing hits that pesky hyper-hypercube configuration, goes second-order sapient, and starts looking to increase its "cultural and technological distinctiveness."
The more pathetic sort of extropian might see getting uploaded into such a gestalt as a Big Win, but really, what's the worth of an ersatz immortality with an IQ of 97 (remember that fourth-order-cube limit) and a voice interface that randomly throws in phrases like "math class is harrrrrd!?
Play it safe. Stick with FurbyNets with 254 or fewer nodes, and keep some spray paint on hand to blank out those IR transcievers, just in case.
Stefan It's out! [sjgames.com] Jones.
Um I hate to Break it to you... (Score:5, Funny)
Life imitating hollywood (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Life imitating hollywood (Score:2)
Obscoene? (Score:5, Funny)
I guess she won't be saying McBride or SCO anytime soon either.
dirty math (Score:5, Funny)
"We don't do that math", "That's a naughty divisor!"
Re:dirty math (Score:3, Funny)
Re:dirty math (Score:2)
"Five billion plus one billion is one billion, seven hundred and five million, thirty two thousand, seven hundred and four."
Hearing something like that could really traumatize some first graders.
Yeesh! Re:dirty math (Score:5, Funny)
We can only hope they've put in those safeguards*.
Worst case scenario: She succeeds in dividing by zero, and suddenly little Tiphany-Amber's bedroom becomes the center of a howling vortex of nonspace, frying the neighborhood with sparkling discharges of zero-point energy.
Stefan It's out! [sjgames.com] Jones
*The early pocket-calculator manufacturers only cut corners once. Remember that HP plant in Bennettown, CA? Tire fire my ass.
HAHAHHA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:HAHAHHA (Score:2, Informative)
Re:HAHAHHA (Score:2)
Re:HAHAHHA (Score:2)
No, he fooled the people who programed it (Score:2)
KFG
Am I the only (Score:2, Troll)
Why can't we let the children be children while they are still young? Do they need all this tech?
Most girls would be satidfied with a old fashion doll without all this hihg-tech stuff.
So someone please think of the childre instead of trying to earn a buck by trciking innocent parents into buying these items.
Re:Am I the only (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Am I the only (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, though, through most of history toys have been teaching tools, not mere playthings - girls had dolls to learn how to take care of children, etc. So a high-tech toy is more appropriate for today's children than an "old fashioned doll"
Re:Am I the only (Score:3, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I don't have kids of my own (yet), but I'm the proud uncle of two.
There are a few things I've learned the last few years (and looking back on my own childhood, they become very clear):
- The simple, non-complex toys are played with more often than the high-tech gadgetry. My oldest niece plays a hundred times as much with her ragdolls and with her Barbie (*shudder*), than she do with the 'true to life' babydoll she got two years back. The fancy toys holds the kids interest for a short while, bu
Re:Am I the only (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Am I the only (Score:2)
Re:Am I the only (Score:5, Funny)
Why the hell shouldn't he have kids? I grew up with ample access to nails, bits of wood and hammers. The ONLY thing that ever got hurt was my pride when I'd ask for an honest opinion of what I'd created.
We need more parents who are willing to let their kids grow up and experience things first hand. I'm not saying that it's a good idea to give a kid a box of matches, a gallon of gas and tell them to have a good time in their bedroom. That sort of thing should done outside after all.
Re:Am I the only (Score:3, Funny)
Ah yes such great fun. After that you can move on to plastic explosives. Need to be careful with that though, incidents involving semtex and the principal's car may take a bit of explaining.
don't need no nails (Score:5, Funny)
Word is around the doll house... (Score:5, Funny)
Vogel? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes... (Score:2)
Feeeeeeeeear Cindy Smart! Feeeeeeear her and her evil army of doll clones!
(Thank you, Slashdot, for not having -1, Insane.)
Creepy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Creepy (Score:5, Funny)
It was about ten ? years ago. A doll that was advertised on the box as saying " I want Mommy" would actually say "Kill Mommy!" in a deep growling voice.
It turned out that the doll was made (in China) with two versions for the North American market. One with an english voice and one in spanish. The shipment of spanish-speaking dolls got misplaced in a Hong Kong warehouse for over a year and their batteries wore down. Then the dolls were placed in English language packaging and sent to the USA.
The spanish phrase for 'I want mommy' is "quiero mommy" and with the weak batteries the voice came out really low and slow "Kee aill o Mommy!".
It's almost as funny as when General Motors executives couldn't understand why the Chevy Nova was not selling in South America. Then some bright boy realized that 'No Va' is spanish for 'it doesn't go - it doesn't work'.
Re:Creepy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Creepy (Score:4, Informative)
As a simple Google search [google.com] for "Chevy Nova Spanish" [google.com] reveals, this never happened.
The first link [about.com] revealed by Google debunks this myth:
The second link [snopes.com]provided by Google is slightly better.
My favorite quote from the article:
The article also points out the fact that you can't market a car in Spanish-speaking countries without Spanish-speaking people finding out about it. GM dealers in South America would be stupid to sit idly by while GM asked them to sell a car whose very name implied that it was unable to move.
But, I guess it's easier to assume that GM's entire marketing team didn't know enough to realize that people on a different continent speaking another language might have another interpretation for the name of a product, and that everyone in Mexico and South America involved in marketing and selling the car would be too lazy and drunk to mention anything to their regional managers if the name actually was likely to kill sales.
As both articles point out, the Nova actually sold quite well in South America, exceeding GM's expectations.
What's wrong with Germanic roots? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does 'intelligent' sound more sophisticated than 'smart'? Because it comes directly from french rather than Old English?
Just because our (as in english speakers') priests used to speak Latin while our kings used to speak French does not mean we should favor one part of our language over another. Orwell has a very interesting piece, Politics and the English Language [resort.com], which deals with this issues.
It pisses me off so much when people try to limit my vocabulary. This is off-topic just a bit, but
I was in a class called 'Images of Africa in Film and Literature.' I read some good books and saw some interesting films. Generally, I was enjoying it. Then one day, someone (maybe me?) refered to native South Africans. The prof got upset. "We just don't use that word," he said. The jist of his argument against the word was that many ignorant people use it to refer to stereotypic, primitive people who live in the jungle, hunt heads and dance around cauldrons.
These stereotypes are, of course, not encouraged by the academic community which studies Africa. But Jesus H. Fucking Christ, native just means someone who was born in a particular place or apeople which has resided in a location for a long time.
After that, I just really lost interest in the class and respect for that prof. I just did enough to get by, and I still got an A.
So in conclusion, thought/word/language police, FUCK OFF!
Re:What's wrong with Germanic roots? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the value people place on words is influenced only very indirectly by past usage. People think "intelligent" sounds more sophisticated than "smart" because "smart" is used more commonly. It's a bit circular, I know, but I think it's true.
Remember the first time you heard the word "epiphany"? Since its meaning is so specific, you probably thought it was a sophisticated word. Once you found out that everyone and their mother was using it, it probably lost its lustre. The word "perogative" lost all its dignity when Will Smith explained it to the masses. I guess I just think that language snobbery is a facet of generalized snobbery: things that are common are looked down upon, while esoteric things are elevated. I think there's also a point to be made about polysyllabic words sounding more sophisticated than monosyllabic ones, but I don't think I need to prove it.
-----
As for your story about your experience in that class, I agree with you completely. However, your professor has a point--linguistic connotations can creep in subconsciously, and really affect the way a particular question or statement is framed. While "native South Africans" sounds innocuous, "the natives" might be a bit problematic. For example, "native New Yorkers" would sound fine, but referring to the citizens of New York as "the natives" would only be done as a joke. What your professor probably should have done instead would be to point out some of the negative connotations of that word in order to make people aware of them. Censorship, though, is almost always counterproductive.
Re:What's wrong with Germanic roots? (Score:5, Informative)
The word prerogative [m-w.com] lost all its dignity when everyone started pronouncing it "perogative".
Re:What's wrong with Germanic roots? (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple. It just happened. The Old English word was just the one used by, let's say, less sophisticated people, much more often. The other one, though, was 'imported' by probably more sophisticated people, and is obviously used fewer times, and has a different connotation. 'Shit' simply happens to mean
Re:What's wrong with Germanic roots? (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess I really have three points (they are also made by Orwell as linked-to by my grand-parent post):
1. There are quite a few maligned words out there (many 'four-letter' words and other four-letter words;
Re:What's wrong with Germanic roots? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a bias against roots. The connotation of words is what people most respond to. Classic English example is "shack," "cabin," and "cottage" all mean "small dwelling," but which of these would you rather live in? I wouldn't want to live in a shack, because the word's connotation is negative. English speakers don't just use the denotative meaning of words; they keep the connotation well in mind.
Another example is, do you call a particular person "African American," "black," or the N word? They all have vastly different implied meanings, but they all refer to the same race. (Even I refuse to say the latter because I don't have sufficient karma to burn. :))
I'm not sure what exactly distinguishes the connotations of shit and feces, except that the latter is far less likely to provoke people because it's relatively unused and very neutral.
What word police? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can say feces and be unambigous in describing fecal matter to any English speaker.
Shit doesn't always describe animal excretia in English. It also describes a situation or thing which is negative to the point of requiring a word of curse. Much like sex and fuck can refer to the same thing, you don't go up to random people and talk about fucking unless you are very low brow. You can probably talk about sex, though, as long as it's appropriate to the context.
Languages are not logical -- sayings and alternate forms arrise all the time, and are designated as how people use them, not as logic would dictate.
For example, to indicate that someone had revealed a secret, one English expression you might say is, "he let the cat out of the bag." How does that relate to secrets? The french equivalent, "Il a vendu la meche." litterally translates as, "He sold the wick."
How about, "He's as tall as 3 apples." Is that easy to recognize like, "He's knee high to a grasshopper." is?
If you have a problem with the conotations and denotations of the English language, I suggest you learn another one. Then you might appreciate their usage better.
Re:What's wrong with Germanic roots? (Score:3, Informative)
It's because the words 'shit' and 'smart' are used much more commonly (which in turn may be because they're from Old English). They're words you've known since you were a kid, yo
imported vs. native words (Score:5, Interesting)
This phenomenon is not limited to English. Many other languages have the property that foreign imported words are more acceptable in polite company than native words.
For example, in Japanese, there are three major categories of words:
- Native Japanese words, inherited from antiquity
- Chinese words, imported roughly 1000 years ago
- English words, imported since the 20th century and continuing to this day
In almost all cases the more recently imported words are more sophisticated than the older words. For example, the polite way to say restroom in Japanese is either "toire" (derived from the English word toilet) or "otearai" (imported from chinese, literally meaning "hand-wash"). There exist native Japanese words for restroom, but they connote dirtiness and one would never use them in polite company.The three-level categorization of Japanese allows for more interesting observations than English's two level Latin/Germanic split. Note here that the most recent English import "toilet" can be used directly in polite speech, while the older Chinese import requires a euphemism and the original native words cannot be used at all. Compare this to native English, where "toilet" is one of the crudest possible ways to refer to a restroom. Familiarity breeds contempt, in any language.
Cindy the Evil Doll with Windows CE (Score:5, Funny)
"Hi Cindy, how are you today?"
"Hello, I'm Cindy the talking doll and I would like to tell you about the new range of Smart Screens available from Microsoft. This will take approximately three hours. Are you ready to start?"
Sounds fun. (Score:4, Funny)
What about 'sex'? (Score:4, Insightful)
great ! (Score:5, Funny)
This is an AU story, claims Cindy is old hat (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is an AU story, claims Cindy is old hat (Score:2, Interesting)
First Cindy Smart Death Reported (Score:3, Funny)
And Slashdot is offended by this why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is that?
I get the impression that the vast majority of Slashdot readers don't have children. (Insert the obvious "don't have girlfriend" jokes on your own.) One doesn't have to be John Ashcroft or Oral Roberts to believe that maybe six-year-olds don't need to learn the word "cocksucker."
I am far from a prude. I've used lots of those four-letter words in my own fiction, when needed, and laughed my ass off at "Shut Your Fucking Face, Uncle Fucker" from South Park: The Movie. And I myself don't have kids. But oddly enough, despite that, I can still imagine why parents might want a doll that can't say obscenities. I find it rather interesting that, thus far, not a single Slashdot poster seems willing to consider the fact that such a doll might indeed have a useful purpose...
Re:And Slashdot is offended by this why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would most people find it obscene to say "fuck", yet will see a movie with the word "shag" in the title, or use the word "frig" in casual conversation? The three words mean exactly the same thing.
Why is it so "bad" to reference a thing or concept with one word, but perfectly okay to reference it another way.
Why (for another example) do parents teach kids to ask to "go poo poo", or "potty", but would throw histerics if the kid said "crap". It's all the same thing people! Same exact meaning, just a different grouping of sounds.
As for the word "cocksucker", perhaps you don't find "phalluslicker" offensive? Same meaning either way.
Why do we have an entire vocabulary that is considered "offensive", yet any of the words have at least three exact synonyms that are perfectly acceptable in everyday use?
Re:And Slashdot is offended by this why? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And Slashdot is offended by this why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And Slashdot is offended by this why? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a single dad of 3 kids, aged 6,8 and 10 I can honestly say, that if your six year old is trying to get it's doll to read "cocksucker", then your problems go deeper than how the doll will respond.
Re:And Slashdot is offended by this why? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And Slashdot is offended by this why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And Slashdot is offended by this why? (Score:4, Insightful)
The logic of protecting children (Score:4, Insightful)
In short, yes.
You have the air of a teenager who does not spend much time with children. The fact is that a six year old is not equipped to understand sex. With sufficient "education" they could probably pass a sex-ed exam, but that's "book learning"; they still don't understand it. Among other things, they are literally not physically equipped to understand what "sex drive" or "horny" really means.
You have forgotten this because you are now old enough to understand, but in your lack of empathy you forget that everyone is not like you, especially children.
The problem is that what a child does not truly understand will be filled in with something, and the odds of them filling it in correctly are effectively zero. Surely you've seen one of those humor postings that contains 20 or 30 "explanations" from children about how the world works, all very funny, all very wrong. Now imagine that with sex, where they don't have the first clue what it is.
While one does not necessarily need to go to extremes to shield a child (because mercifully they are rather uncurious about stuff they have no inkling even exists; most 5 or 6 year olds should be happy with the explanations that babies require a mommy and a daddy, and probe for only limited details beyond that), it is still better to shield them from stuff that they can not and will not understand, until they have a framework for handling it.
For a more neutral example, look at the number of Slashdot-type people who believe mystical things about Electromagnetism or Quantum Physics or other subjects they totally don't understand. Their ignorance is filled in with garbage.
Furthermore, unlike misunderstanding QM or EM, which is relatively harmless, a misunderstanding of sex has empirically verifiable negative effects on people, ranging from merely awkward moments that should't have been awkward to seriously maladjustments (often caused by early sexual abuse; remember I'm using this as an extreme) requiring years of therapy to address, if it can be addressed at all.
Shielding a child from these things is an attempt to prevent the child from experiencing these negative effects. Any parent who doesn't shield their kid to a large degree is doing their child a serious, potentially life-changing (negatively) misservice.
I'm a big believer that we seriously underestimate our children routinely [johntaylorgatto.com] and are harming them thereby. But this is an exception. Try to teach a third-grader calculus, and they won't get it (with rare exceptions; see Piaget's theories for reasoning on that), but the misunderstandings they will develop won't harm them significantly. That's not true for sex; it has real effects on relationships and understanding their place in the world.
For a humorous demonstration of this, there's a South Park episode where the kids learn about sex; I recommend it to you. It's not as far out as it might seem; the only reason that sort of thing doesn't happen in real life (except for the final silly Mad-Max-style assault bit) is that kids feed back to their parents what they learned, and some of the parents would have noticed sooner the misconceptions they were developing and taken steps to defuse them. Otherwise, the damage done to the children's relationships (and in the real world, it could be worse; it certainly wouldn't be artifically erased at the end of the episode when the Reset Button is pushed) would be real.
Gall durned toys... (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember, back when I was a kid, the best thing we had in talking things was the Jurrasic Park playset, all it would say for five days was, "Jurrasic Park Compound Secured" and then a light would flash. God damned, I barely even got new toys, I just got a bunch of modeling clay and pretended that they were new toys. Parents, I urge you, modeling clay is cheap (but a little messy) and it lets your children express their creativity. Don't just buy them a toy because it can do your parenting for you (and don't use television or computers for the same thing) because that's how the evil robots will take over the planet.
On a more serious note, I think that interactive toys are a nice touch, but I always thought that the point of getting toys was to make up your own adventures and envision how everything played out with a physical aid and your imagination. And yes, when I was younger (okay, like seven years ago) I did play with sticks and dirt, it's good stuff.
Cindy should meet Alice. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bad grammar (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently political correctness is higher in their priorities than good education. "Those" is plural, but "kind" is singular. For $149, I expect proper grammar.
On clearance here (Score:3, Informative)
Old sf story (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this doll a step in that direction? I sure hope not!
(Aside note - I read that story when I was very young (I was a precocious kid), and it really hurt me to think that *anybody* would take apart a *teddy bear* and make it do evil things. This doll evokes the same sort of feeling in me. )
Re:Old sf story (Score:3, Interesting)
No. It's just doing what a lot of parents would probably would want anyone who had the ability to "communicate" with their child to do. Got nothing to do with being a prude, or whether the fact the parents swear or not. Generally you just don't bring up small children with that kind of habit.
Besides, it's a pretty funny hack. I can just imagine coding a swear filter into that
Re:Old sf story (Score:3, Informative)
"I Always Do What Teddy Says (1963) is set in a utopia where mechanical teddy bears are used to condition children against anti-social behaviour: The Times reported on 1st April 1998 that, "Teddy bears...will soon be fitted with tiny cameras to spy on families across Britain.""
Hope this helps.
Re:Old sf story (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Cindy - The Kinks Version (Score:5, Funny)
I met her in a Radio Shack in old Soho
Where you drink Coca Cola(r) and it tastes just like carbonated, caffeinated brown water
See-oh-el-aye cola
She walked up to me and she asked me to fisrt post
I asked her her name and in a dark Linux(r) voice she said Cindy
See-Eye-Enn-Dee-Why Cindy la-la-la-la Cindy
Well I'm not the world's most technical guy
But when she squeezed me tight she nearly dumped my kernel
Oh my Cindy See-Eye-Enn-Dee-Why
I'm not an AC but I can't understand
Why she walked like a doll and talked like a nun
Oh my Cindy See-Eye-Enn-Dee-Why Cindy la-la-la-la Cindy
Well we drank Jolt and raved all night
Under electric high intensity discharge xenon candlelight
She picked me up and sat me on her plastic knee
And said dear boy won't you come home with me
Well I'm not the world's most passionate geek
But when I looked in her glass eyes well I almost fell for my Cindy
See-Eye-Enn-Dee-Why See-Eye-Enn-Dee-Why
I pushed her away
I walked to the X-terminal
I fell to the pile of floppies
I got down on my knees
Then I looked at her and she at me
Well that's the way that I want it to stay
And I always want it to be that way for my Cindy
See-Eye-Enn-Dee-Why Cindy
Girls will be dolls and boys will be geeks
It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world except for See-Eye-Enn-Dee-Why Cindy
Well I left my basement just a week before
And I'd never ever kissed a woman before
But Cindy smiled and took me by the hand
And said dear geek I'm gonna make you a kernel God
Well I'm not the world's most masculine geek
But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a geek
And so is Cindy
See-Eye-Enn-Dee-Why See-Eye-Enn-Dee-Why
See-Eye-Enn-Dee-Why See-Eye-Enn-Dee-Why
Cindy Codes (Score:5, Funny)
That's bad code.
We don't code with those commands.
SoBig (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe her big brother will replace the code with a quake2 time demo and hand it a real gun.
I'll bet it has been designed with Republican propaganda... "Democrat"
What if it instructs the little girl to call a certain phone line at a certain date. Gotta love phone-line DDoS attacks.
Under $30 after Shipping and Handling at HSN (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.hsn.com/cnt/prod/default.asp
Nice thing about froogle. I'd normally never look at places like HSN, but when they were dumping Zaurus's for under $200...
This is nothing new! (Score:3, Informative)
For example, my daughter has an Alpha Bug [shopping2.co.uk] (it's not exactly like that, but really close.) One of the first things adults do with this sort of thing is see what kind of bad words you can make it say ... but it won't do it. It'll go F ... U ... ohhh that tickles!
We mentioned this to a friend of ours who also had an Alpha Bug, and he must have had an earlier version -- while it looked identical, it *would* let you make bad word sounds. Oddly enough, as soon as we mentioned that we had an alpha bug, he immediately picked it up and starting showing us how it can say bad words (even before we got to that part. So obviously we're not alone in this :)
And yesterday, I bought some other Leap Frog toy for my daughter at a garage sale. It's a cylindrical thing that you can rotate the sides to pick letters, and it apparantly knows every 3 letter word, and even has recordings of somebody saying each and every one (it's not just speech synthesis.) If it doesn't know the word, it will spell out the sounds, but if it does it'll say it perfectly. (Pretty impressive for $2!) (It's very similar to this [iqkids.net] but not quite identical.)
In any event, it won't even spell out things that sound like a bad word -- it says `F ... U ... pick another word!'. (Oddly enough, even `JAP' is a bad word according to it. :)
In any event, if you have friends with young kids, but they're not really good friends, you buy them stuff like this -- stuff that makes noise. Very annoying :)
I want applications!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
I want to ask it fuzzy little questions about words. I want it to plug into my computer as my dictionary and thesaurus--no, did I say, 'plug in'? Sorry, I meant, interface via wifi with my computer, as my copy of seven different encyclopedias and as my database of seldom-used Bash and VI commands.
When all that is done, I want it to work pronunciation drills for me when I decide to improve my Russian and review my German.
Really, honestly, for me, all it needs to make me very, very happy as an adjunct to a computer is more power than I know what to do with and a glowing cubical casing.
Re:DO NOT CLICK ON PARENT LINK (Score:5, Funny)
We don't click those kind of links... That's a bad link.
Re:Cool, (Score:2)
Oops.
Re:Who thinks "Damn" is a bad word? (Score:2)