Microsoft Patents Audio Stream Censorship Technology

[Mistah Kurtz]

How are they going to distinguish between the huge variety of accents? Draft in someone from every corner of the world and have them say 'fuck', 'shit' et al into a microphone?

Yeah, so?

 

[ThePoodonkis]

This sounds good, in theory. But it will be pretty bad if this thing is put in X-Box LIVE.

I never swear on LIVE, but still, conversations will break and more complaints from the dreaded 8-year-old will arise.

 

[Arbre]

I long for the day politicians will use Teamspeak.

 

[Cyclomega]

Won't work. The word Fuck itself grew out of a means to swear around social conventions. People will learn how to swear in other languages if they have to - and some of those Arabic swears are pretty devestating, even if you don't know what they mean.

Particularly

Spoiler: Naughty Words

Ebn el metnakah - Son of a ************,
Eyreh be afass seder emmak - My dick in your mothers ribcage,
and my personal favourite,
Ikhlassy akhrasi ya sharmoot wa iftahy khashmik - Shut up man-***** and open your mouth

Works also in Hebrew :

Spoiler: zOMG swearing

Koss ummek (or ommak in Lebanese Arabic) = your mother's ****
Ya ben sharmuta = you son of a *****

Or in Russian :

Spoiler: zOMG more swearing

khuy = pen0r
chort = shit
suka = *****
pashyol na khuy/ydy na khuy = fuck off

Of course French will be richly colorful, and let's not forget German and Spanish (Mexican Spanish for that matter) or Italian :

Spoiler: Enough with all that swearing you *CENSORED*-mongling *CENSORED* *CENSORED* *CENSORED*

Figlio di una puttana
Callate el pinche hocico, hijo de su puta madre
Chingo a tu madre puto cabron
Va te faire enculer saloperie d'enfoire !
Leck mir am Arsh Du Schweinficker, verdammter Hurensohn !

Anyway this censhorship technology won't work well, unless they take the time to filter each and every single accent and language/dialect, but Microsoft being usually lazy they will only focus on "standard American accent" (Microsoft SAM and other voices do not work or almost not even exist outside English in Windows... maybe Vista changed that, but it's a big failure in terms of accessibility), and it will fail hilariously, since swearing in other languages will still work (maybe people will learn foreign languages then).

Still, I think developing (patenting is another debate) a technology enabling smooth, seamless censhorship of swear words is not such a bad thing in itself, as long as it remains a "toggle function" and not an automatic, imposed feature. Of course we also have to wonder about future uses outside XBL games...

 

[The Wooster]

Allow me to tell you what you will now hear on Xbox live.

"Fuck *beep* fuck*beep* ****** I ho*beep* you get hit by a bus you fucking *beep* dou*beep*"

Also

"Hey My name is Ge*beep* What the fuck? *beep* want to say my fucking name. *Beep* won't it stop doing that? Jesus Christ *YOU ARE GOING TO HELL* I just want to *beep* FUCKING JESUS CHRIST ON A FUCKING CHAIN MADE OF DEAD BABIES AND BOLLOCKS!"


*Beep*

 

[Bakery]

Well, all you sons of unwed mothers had better not let your mom-fornicating bull feces bother me during Call of Duty 4. I might have to mictorate down your throat and show everyone what a differently-abled individual who copulates with your grandma you are and that you allegorically represent how a female genitalia would behave if it was playing me in Call of Duty 4.

Should the said censor go through, and it inadvertently improves the vocabulary of all XBL users tenfold as an unseen side-effect, I'd call it a success. Not that I would support it in the first place anyway. In fact, I'd say that the creators of the censor are a bunch of chronic auto-eroticizers.