The Eurovision Song Contest has been and gone with a better-than-usual winner and much of the snarkiness was on microblog sites like identi.ca this year. Search for #ESC, #eurovision or incomprehensibly-to-me #eurovison (no second i – is it spelt like that in some language, or can thousands not spell?). Anyway, enough of the title, on with the message…
I’ve been irritated by my linphone SIP internet phone (Skype without lock-in, with standards) taking up my screen space for a while. I’ve been meaning to upgrade to one of the recent versions that includes the linphonecsh shell and write some client that only displays windows when it’s needed, but I’ve been writing programs for work so much that I’ve not even found time to write blog posts recently, much less fun code, so that’s not happened.
So I’m quite happy to find linphone.el for my GNU Emacs text editor and find it mostly works. I changed one line at the end to (define-key global-map [menu-bar tools linphone] '("Linphone" . linphone)) to put it on the tools menu, but other than that, it just worked. Well, the Mute doesn’t, but that’s probably my phone headset being a different ALSA device. I don’t care: I use the hardware mute button.
In previous times, I would have added the link to the venerable EmacsWiki too, but it has the evil bad wrong Google reCaptcha on the edit page to stop disabled users, so screw it. Google’s reCaptcha seems to be spreading again, obstructing more people when accessing more websites. Is there a reason for that? The re in reCaptcha stands for replace with real anti-spam, please!
Anyway, now I’m controlling phone calls from Emacs. Whatever next? Voice recognition, M-x doctor and a speech synth?
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6 comments so far
1 Andy Cater // Jun 1, 2010 at 8:36 am
EMACS – once again, the universal operating system that’s in need of a decent editor
However, this does mean that someone visually impaired / using text only for some other reason now has a decent telephone application.
2 MJ Ray // Jun 1, 2010 at 9:52 am
Well, it was possible to use it from the command-line with the linphonec client instead of the GTK+ one, but that meant having its own terminal open all the time.
3 Luke Faraone // Jun 1, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Doesn’t reCAPTCHA also offer an audio version?
4 Dmitrijs Ledkovs // Jun 1, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Yes, it means a lot to hear all of the countries prolong results announcement by congratulating participants and praising organisers……. Give the points =))))))
I can never beat reCaptcha
5 Anonymous // Jun 1, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Why does reCAPTCHA’s audio alternative not address your concern about disabled users? Yes, it’s still a hoop to jump through, which is a different objection (and one I have some sympathy for), but AFAICT it at least seems like an accessible hoop.
6 MJ Ray // Jun 4, 2010 at 12:17 am
reCaptcha offers an audio alternative, but my hearing is imperfect too! Adding a second physical ability test does not make the first one accessible.
According to nhs.uk, in the UK’s 61.4 million people, there are two million with serious sight problems, over five million with refractive errors and almost nine million hearing impaired, so I can’t be anything like the only computer user who fails both eyetests and hearing tests. Also, as you can see from the numbers, more people have hearing problems than sight problems, so offering a hearing test instead of an eyetest is like offering a maths test instead of a general knowledge question – fine for some, but still not really accessible.
If you want to block spam, test submissions for spam. Don’t test eyesight or hearing!