Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 May 21

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May 21

Why can't Google have a(n animated) sign-language translator yet?

When I type in a sentence and press "Translate," I'd like for Google Translate to show me an animation (Flash or otherwise) of hands signing the sentence I inputted.

(Also, would help if I saw a list of images of individual hand-movements for each word.)

With Google being as highly innovative as it is, and sign language being in constant demand (as there are no shortages of deaf people to interpret to), what is taking Google so long to finally bring up an option to translate sign language? --70.179.170.114 (talk) 03:47, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I imagine they will have that feature some day. But, as it requires recording lots of video, and that costs a lot, this might slow things down, unless there is a free video library of all sign language words that they could use. Also, aren't there multiple sign languages ? StuRat (talk) 03:57, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Think you're confusing highly innovative with fairly productive. :p Machine translation has been around for a long time. ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:32, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Because deaf people can read? I know that's so obvious that it might seem flippant, but I don't mean it that way. Deaf people have no problem using google, so what are you actually asking? You want to learn sign language and you want google to teach you? Vespine (talk) 04:41, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Sign languages don't grammatically or syntactically map onto spoken/written languages, they are their own large independent entities. (For example, American Sign Language and British Sign Language are not mutually intelligible; ASL is closer to French Sign Language.). Furthermore, they often do things that are rare in spoken/written languages (A cool example: American Sign Language has an arbitrary number of pronouns, which are just points floating in space.) I imagine that machine translation of sign language would be a massive research project. There isn't even a generally-agreed-upon notation for ASL yet, which suggests to me that it's not yet well-enough-studied to lay down the important data structures. It's a shame we don't know more, but until we do, it's too big for Google to do alone. Paul (Stansifer) 05:27, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

All those statements are undoubtedly true, BUT STILL, is there really a large population of people who insist on using their eyes to read hands, but refuse to use those same eyes to read a printed page? How do they get along in the world if they can't or won't read traffic signs, or fill out paper job applications, or other such everyday uses of reading from paper or a screen?

Give Vespine more credit for his response, there's just no way it's the wrong answer.

--DaHorsesMouth (talk) 22:11, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't have a position about what reason is the main reason, I just wanted to give some additional information about the probable size of the task. (And how sign language is, from what little I know about it, really cool.) Paul (Stansifer) 00:37, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

It might not be a wrong answer, but I don't think it's an answer to the question that was asked. To me it reads that the OP wants to learn how to say something in ASL, so would like to type a word/sentence/phrase into Google Translate and have that illustrated. It's an interesting idea, and probably several orders of magnitude more difficult than the Subservient Chicken, but it does seem useful. Now, as to why Google doesn't have that already - I'd actually be surprised if one of their employees isn't working on it as part of their Innovation Time Off projects. --LarryMac | Talk 12:48, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Google Translate is a statistical translator that works by manipulating large amounts of text (basically it compares similar texts in different languages and uses them to get from one language to another; the article explains a bit more). This can't be easily applied to video. It's easy for them to extend their algorithms to a new written language, but supporting sign language would require a lot more work (comparable to the work required to support speech as well as text). --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:32, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Furthermore, Google's philosophy is very big data-oriented. I talked to someone who works on translation for Google, and he pointed out that there are no giant corpora of "text" "written" in sign language to work with. Even you had some machine-readable representations of sign language on the web, there would need to be huge quantities of it for Google's techniques to work. Paul (Stansifer) 16:17, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Drivers

I installed Debian in a USB to boot my laptop but I can't find a way to get the drivers for playing sound or using the wireless card, also I downloaded firefox for linux in .bz2 I exctracted it and it just doesn't run. Sometimes programs crashes on their own. It is the computer? English is not my first language, so sorry for the mistakes. thanks --190.158.212.204 (talk) 06:07, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't know about sound, but your wireless driver will depend on the card itself. Make sure you have the Linux version of Firefox, if you do I'm not sure what else to say. Based on what you said about your laptop falling I suspect you have a hardware problem. Did you replace the HDD? And are you using a stable version of Debian? Check out the Ubuntu forums if you need more help. --T H F S W (T · C · E) 06:55, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

You should probably go here — http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=oneNinety&channels=#debian — to get some real-time help, though I will say that on Linux downloading random tarballs and extracting them is not usually the proper way to install applications; for Debian you'd want to run apt-get install iceweasel (or if you truly need the version of Firefox actually called "Firefox", see again the aforementioned IRC channel. ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:09, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Security risk of WINE on Linux

If you install Wine on Linux, does it pose a security risk? Does it mean that all viruses, malware and such from Windows will be able to run on Linux. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OsmanRF34 (talk • contribs) 13:58, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Probably an insignificant one (as in someone might one day find a bug that for a few days allows a person who runs a specific application a specific way to do something you don't want it to). Mostly the only thing you put at risk with Wine is the win32 programs you use with Wine. You should be able to stop Wine processes at any time by using wineserver -k, killall, or kill. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:49, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

A virus would in this case infect the Wine installation only, as said above, unless it is a (never heard of, but possible) specific Wine virus. The second problem for the virus is that you normally do not run Wine as root, but as a simple user, not many chances of breaking havoc along your Linux system here. XPPaul (talk) 18:44, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

wordpress.com trouble

I can't seem to log into my wordpress account, it says I am putting in the wrong username, but when I try to register again under the same name, it doesn't let me because it already exists, and when I ask for a new password and give them my email address, I never get the emails. I can't ask for help unless I register a paid account, which I'm not even sure I can do without logging in, and I can't get on their support forum without logging in either, so there's nowhere else I can go. What is going on here?

Kitutal (talk) 15:15, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Could I get sued?

This question has been removed. Per the reference desk guidelines, the reference desk is not an appropriate place to request medical, legal or other professional advice, including any kind of medical diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment recommendations. For such advice, please see a qualified professional. If you don't believe this is such a request, please explain what you meant to ask, either here or on the Reference Desk's talk page.

This question has been removed. Per the reference desk guidelines, the reference desk is not an appropriate place to request medical, legal or other professional advice, including any kind of medical diagnosis or prognosis, or treatment recommendations. For such advice, please see a qualified professional. If you don't believe this is such a request, please explain what you meant to ask, either here or on the Reference Desk's talk page. --~~~~

--Jac16888 ^Talk 16:57, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Legality of Mac OS on a PC

How can Apple prohibit that someone installs their OS on a PC? It's obvious that those hacked version online are illegal, but what if someone indeed legally obtains the Mac software? — Preceding unsigned comment added by OsmanRF34 (talk • contribs) 21:30, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Some information at OSx86#Legal issues and Apple objections. -- BenRG (talk) 22:07, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

What you legally obtain is the install media, which will give you a license agreement, the agreement to which licenses you to use the software.
That said, as long as you aren't directly profiting from it and aren't seeking support, no one will ever care if you personally install Mac OS on any hardware you choose. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:43, 21 May 2012 (UTC)