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If you want a vision of the future, imagine a wage slave typing: "I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job," on a keyboard, for ever. That's what a Manhattan court typist is accused of doing, having been fired from his post two years ago, after jeopardizing upwards of 30 trials, according to the New York Post. Many of the court transcripts were "complete gibberish" as the stenographer was allegedly suffering the effects of alcohol abuse, but the one that has caught public attention contains the phrase "I hate my job" over and over again.
We've collectively been around the professional block many times. What's the most spectacular flameout you've seen?
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I Hate My Job, I Hate My Job, I Hate My Job
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"In my opinion, Richard Stallman wouldn't recognize terrorism if it
came up and bit him on his Internet."
-- Ross M. Greenberg
(Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 17 2014, @02:13PM
Perhaps this job should be like one on a car production pipeline, everyone does it one day a week...?
The problem here is that it's a very non-trivial job. Can you type as fast as people talk? I can't. Now, not only do you have to learn to type fast, but with an entirely different keyboard, and using a totally different language (basically a type of shorthand). It takes a lot of training to be a steno, so there's not many people who enter the profession.
Why they even bother any more in this age of cheap recording devices, I have no idea.
(Score: 1) by ButchDeLoria on Thursday April 17 2014, @04:03PM
Same reason law firms have to deliver and receive some legal documents with fax machines.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday April 17 2014, @06:07PM
Don't worry, you can send stuff via telex too!
(Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Thursday April 17 2014, @06:20PM
In most US courts there is a audio recording as well as the steno.
But the audio recording can't be quickly "read back" when a lawyer requests it hearing what a previous witness said before lunch break. The tape will contain coughs and footsteps and all sorts of noise (sometimes covering the testimony), that the stenographer (usually seated close to the witness) isn't bothered by. The steno will indicate who said what, the tape often can't distinguish one voice from another, or a viewer's gallery remark.
Stenographers have an un-spoken signal system with the Judge (quick turn of the head, tap of the earlobe) to prompt for in-ability to hear, and the judge will ask the speaker to speak up or repeat something. The tape on the other hand, can go for hours with a defective recording heads and nobody might notice it.
Also the Steno software now days comes with computer aided software that allows the capability to quickly convert the shorthand to text, with a minimal amount of human intervention. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype [wikipedia.org]
Only in some minor proceedings will you ever see Tape recordings as the only recording method, and even in those cases there is usually still a person (still called a stenographer) who is listening to a playback via a second set of tape heads to make sure the record is audible. This doesn't save much because it still has to be transcribed.
There are also voice stenography technology [cjonline.com] coming into play in some places.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Maow on Thursday April 17 2014, @07:21PM
Thanks - highly informative.
I still think it might be worthwhile to have a pair of audio recordings, taken from different locations, as backups to the sometimes-fallible stenographer.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday April 18 2014, @12:45AM
Very informative, but as the other responder said, it seems like they could do better. Our recording technology is pretty good these days and it should be possible to use multiple microphones and DSP processing to isolate what people say. Have mikes at the judge's desk, the witness stand, the defense and prosecution desks, etc., and it should be pretty easy to see who said what. With good software control, it should be possible to make an easy-to-use GUI that lets you select a mike, go back in time, and play what that mike heard (with other noises filtered out).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SecurityGuy on Thursday April 17 2014, @06:36PM
Even if they record, this stuff will have to be turned into text at some point, and there will still be a place for error or sabotage to happen. A related story:
When one of my kids was born, he spent a decent bit of time in the hospital nursery. Some of the nurses were strangely cold. Seeming to giving me us dirty look now and again. At some point, I noticed two abbreviations on the label of my son's bassinet. One was EtOH. I forget the other. I worked in the medical field and knew what EtOH was. Ethanol. The kind of alcohol you drink. The other, I had to ask about. A was told, rather stiffly, that those were codes indicating the mother had abused alcohol and narcotics during the pregnancy. I was embarrassed, angry, and demanded they be taken off because it was completely false. They refused, claiming that's what the medical record said. That's what the DOCTOR said. I demanded they check again, and they did. What they found was a transcription error. The medical transcriptionist dropped one word: "No." It was enough to change "No history of alcohol and narcotic abuse." to "History of alcohol and narcotic abuse."
They fixed the record and the label once they found the error, but it took them a day or two to find it.
(Score: 1) by Joe Desertrat on Friday April 18 2014, @01:45AM
Hopefully speech to text software will continue to improve and stories like yours can be avoided in the future.