Star Trek-like 'Phraselator' Helps Police 199
coondoggie writes "Yet another Star Trek-like device is making its way into the real world. VoxTec's Phraselator name sounds a bit like something the Three Stooges might have used long ago but no, this PDA-like device was developed through Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for use in Afghanistan and Iraq by American soldiers for communicating with locals who spoke Farsi, Dari, Pashto and other languages. It is now being used as one tool to help keep the peace between English and non-English speakers by police departments in California, Florida, Nevada. In a nutshell the $2,500 ruggedized Phraselator runs an Intel PXA255 400mHz processor that supports a built-In noise canceling microphone, a VOCON 3200 Speech Recognizer, 1GB removable SD card, 256MB of DRAM Memory and 64MB Flash Memory. It can store up to 10,000 phrases."
Phraselator? (Score:4, Insightful)
One Way Tool? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, due to this device, officers could think they are making themselves clear, and behave differently, (i.e. I said get down, and I said it in your language, now get down or I shoot), but the other side could be saying something important and can't be understood.
Good thing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Will it help them with speakers of other langua (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Phraselator? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Phraselator? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One Way Tool? The price is high because... (Score:3, Insightful)
Contempt Modes
CM1 "SCUMBAG, get ON the GROUND NOW, or i WILL DROP YOU."
CM2 "Turn the FUCK around. PUT your DAMNED hands UP."
CM3 "FREEZE, MOTHERFUCKAH.*"
CM4 "Don't FUCKIN' LIE TO ME, PEDRO/Patel/Nguyen/(sub a name you want)I'm gonna deport your ass."
CM5 "Go back where you came from..."
(As someone given false tickets at least 1 time by local police and TWO times by CHP, and nearly screwed by the judges on the case/docket, I can say contempt of cop is NOT something you want to engage in.)
* (When I part-timed at Emporium in 1989 in Almaden (back then, mostly white, not Asian, neighborhood) there was a theft in progress. Loss Prevention (Caucasian) were in hot pursuit scaling and hopping escalators and chasing the suspects/shoplifters (Black) and not gaining on them. (They were WAY too fast to be caught). Angry, one of the shorter LP yelled "FREEZE, MOTHAFUCKA!! This thin, old, short white lady nearly fainted when she heard the words. I think she wasn't bothered by the hot foot pursuit. I think the profanity stunned her, hehehe...)
mHz? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know, maybe they should get one of them new-fangled Intel chips that's rumored to do a full processor cycle in *under* two seconds?