@JamminJerry Yeah, exactly. I have no use for a cool Linux machine that supports Braille input and is based on an open platform and has long battery life. My iPhone can do everything it can do!
@fastfinge as you can tell for me, if I am thinking about getting something that is over say 100 dollars, I have to justify it to myself before buying it. so it comes back to cost for me all the time. lol.
@JamminJerry Totally. And if I wanted a reading device I could get one of @simon's solar jelly android preserve phones or whatever they are for much cheaper than a BT Speak.
@fastfinge@JamminJerry How much do you care about Eloquence? You can run that on a cheap Unihertz phone but not on the BT Speak. I find the price obnoxiously high, but everything you said about it is also why I find it appealing. I just do not understand why it needs to cost what it does. Either I'm way wrong about manufacturing costs or they are making an absolute killing. They were content to charge $800 for the exact same device with a software lockout on running a proper desktop environment. When everyone (rightfully) biqched, I wish they'd just met in the middle and charged $1000. But apparently they are content to charge $1200 _a device they could have reasonably sold for $800. So yeah, much as I want 'one too, it's hard to justify. I figure that eventually, some company like GPD will release a tiny ARM computer and then we can get one of those.
@simon@fastfinge@JamminJerry@modulux I just keep hearing slightly dodgy things about them to be honest. Casing messed up, their people not being paid or being taken advantage of, shady support practices. I dunno it just all looks shady in a way somehow. Not good vibes
@bermudianbrit Don't forget the biggest, most salacious scandal of them all: nobody could find info about the company they allegedly licensed DECtalk from, which obviously means they stole it off GitHub. /s @simon@fastfinge@JamminJerry@modulux
@bermudianbrit I'm honestly not sure what people are most annoyed about: that a company may've lied, that someone else might know more about DECtalk licensing than they do, that a company might have stolen their pirated work off of GitHub and put it in a commercial product, that they can't buy DECtalk legally for themselves, or something else. @simon@fastfinge@JamminJerry@modulux
@jscholes@bermudianbrit@JamminJerry@modulux@simon The only thing I can't prove is that Human Voice, LLC has the rights to license DECTalk at all. DECTalk was created at MIT and Digital Equipment Corporation. Did Denis own the rights to DECTalk at the time he died? It looks like Human Voice, LLC is working under the belief that he did. But based on how most employment and research contracts work, I find this deeply unlikely.
