Category: Geeks r Us
Hello fokes,
Today I happened to deal with an odd situation.
I logged into RS games, someone sent a message and my jaws crashed all of a sudden. I'm using the latest jaws 14 beta.
Since I'm using NVDA as my secondary screen reader, I was able to manage to find the code which that idiot was using to crash the jaws. But keep in mind this will get crashed for those who are all using elequence as their synthesiser.
I'd like to request people who are all using elequence as their primary synthesiser, to modify this word with some other word so that you can avoid your jaws crashing. I'm going to give this code with spaces. So that your jaws won't get crashed for now. But remove the spaces before adding it to your jaws dictionary manager.
Those who got any doubt in modifying the jaws dictionary manager, feel free to get in touch with me private. I do hope zone admins could modify it with their server so that we won't get affected.
Here is the code below.
t z s c h e
Hope this helps.
Raaj.
i have on my jaws, a short cut command, so if it does crash, i just hit, ault control j and it comes back on.
Isn't giving the code inviting someone who never would have thought of such a thing on their own to try crashing JAWS for other people?
Nicky, I think that shortcut is programmed into JAWS by default. Though in the case of the codes that crash eloquence, I'm not sure the shortcut would bring it back.
Good point, Becky. You know some user is going to be dumb enough to do it.
If you're modifying it in your jaws dictionary manager, even if someone is typing this code, even if it will pronounce your configured word instead of crashing the elequence. As per my case, I've modified it as "ragumaffin". So, if this crashing code is being used, my jaws will pronounce "ragumaffin" instead of crashing. I gave this code not for crashing any of your jaws, I don't have such intension. I want elequence users to be safe. That is the reason as I said, I've given the code by leaving spaces in between the characters.
And as per the shortcut, as per my knowledge, we have to creat our own for jaws. But I'm sure that won't bring back your jaws in this case. That could be useful only if we are unloading it and reloading it.
HTH
Raaj.
Yes after Jaws is crashed you must unload and reload it or switch versions or screen readers.
Good job Raajy. Thanks.
Thank you for this alert. It is most appreciated. And folks, this is called full disclosure. Is some idiot going to try to screw with someone else with the provided information? Surely so; There's always a bad apple somewhere. Better the rest of us be able to protect ourselves, though. Thanks again.
I have to agree with the reasons behind giving out the code, because whether you give out the code or not for people to protect themselves against the crashing word or not, some immature reject is going to try it anyway just to try it. Better that people are able to protect themselves against it, and better for zone admins to know about it so that they can filter it out in case those same rejects send it via quicknotes without taking the precautions which muffinMan so kindly took.
I would report this to the RSGames staff as well, as well as the username of the person who sent it to you. They might not ban the person this time, but if it happens again, they most likely will, or at least give a warning.
Thanks for the tip.
Wow, another eloquence crash word? This is a never ending battle, is it?
This does not apply to the NVDA eloquence driver, which is unaffected.
Yep. that code didn't affect or crashed my NVDA elequence. That is why I was able to find out the code. As soon as my jaws got crashed, I've turned on NVDA and copied that text he sent. he was keeping on sending that many times there though.
Thanks ocean. Kindly do that.
Raaj.
As with all eloquence crash words, it won't phase other synths like dec access 32, so switching to another synth will also get around the crashword.
I just added the word in to my Jaws dictionary 1 thing to be careful of is if it is the first word you are adding. So I added the word being the first one I re opened it to fix how it said my last name and the word being the only one in there caused Jaws to crash just by opening the dictionary. The reason being cause it goes to the list box and sees lets say you fixed apostraphy to be tic it says apostraphy tic if you get what I'm trying to say. This means you have to be careful editing the dictionary in the fewture also you can edit it with NVDA though probly another screen reader to.
haha. stupid freedom scientific.
I hope they're well pleased with their 900 dollars they got from everybody who bought jaws. Eloquence is still my favorite synth, but it hasn't been updated since the 90s, so yeah.
Wait, but can you really blame it on Eloquence? If you use the Eloquence driver with NVDA, this doesn't happen. It's obviously something to do with Jaws, so blame Freedom Scientific, not Eloquence itself. Sorry if I misunderstood your point.
@ MuffinMan, thanks for letting us know about this sir.
I guess there's a difference between the NVDA elequence and jaws's elequence. I'm not sure. that's what I thought so.
And thanks for Chriss N.
Raaj.
Yes, the two eloquences are different, and thus the fault lies with the eloquence licensed to freedom scientific, not the JAWS code itself. I sincerely doubt that some evil JAWS coder said "Hmmm... Let's see... I'll build all these JAWS-crashing strings. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!" Somehow, I don't think that makes that much sense.
My apologies, I was, in fact, wrong. The two eloquences are the same. After taking a look at the eloquence driver code, I realize that these crashing codes have been detected and blocked from the get-go. To bad freedom scientific hasn't done that yet. Still, I don't think it is an evil programmer thing.
This is actually a pretty old crash code. We've had it blocked on our server for years.
Honestly, I think the reason Freedom Scientific doesn't fix it is because they're money grubbing, greedy jerks. I really don't say that often, because I'm a programmer and I know how hard it can sometimes be to fix a software bug. But there's absolutely no excuse for this same bug being in 9 full releases of the software; when it was first reported to me, it was crashing Jaws 5.0.
For a full list of the known crash word patterns, please see this blog post:
Crash words in the eloquence speech synthesizer
Somehow, I doubt this. Yes, this is something that should be blocked, but freedomscientific have probably just not seen it as important. Could you explain to me why including crash words is making them money?