Well, what about that gear that is probably in service all around that uses serial ports for administration? I was thinking of going back to school for a networking-related career, and from what I gather, RS232 could be the most important thing I could theoretically want on a laptop. ----- Original Message ----- From: "C.M. Brannon" <cmbrannon@xxxxxxx> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 1:24 PM Subject: heretical thoughts was Re: Speakup dropped from Ubuntu > Hi folks, > I had a couple of observations that may not sit well with most of you ... > > Hardware synthesis is becoming obsolete. Why? More and more systems, > especially laptops, are being manufactured without RS232 ports. When > I buy my next laptop, I won't let the presence of RS232 be a > determining factor. The vendors of USB synths won't release their > product information, so these are unsupported. Thus, I'm not buying > one. Who wants to do business with people like that anyhow? So it > looks like software speech is the way of the future, at least for me. > Next, software speech is more convenient, especially when using a > laptop. You have to carry one less peripheral with you. > > The question to ask is this. Given the decline of hardware synthesis, > is it really necessary to have speech support within the kernel > itself? Software synthesizers run in user mode, so the benefits of a > speech-enabled kernel -- notably a talking boot process -- are lost. > > Comments are welcome. > > PS. I'm not a GUI user, so I'm arguing from a console / command-line > perspective. > > -- Chris > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup >
