How hard would it be to develop something like this for my computer? I'd want an extreme level of macro control (like selecting a particular playlist on my computer, with the ability to keep adding to the playlists and training in more names) and other fun stuff like scrolling by a percent and other dictations that make it seem intuitive.

Based on many many hours of fussing with Vista's voice recognition, you'd get fed up with it and stop using it in about a week.

The problem isn't so much its recognition of words, it actually does that pretty well. It's the fact that it just LOVES to completely bug out and stop listening entirely. Or lock up. Or ignore commands and type them instead. Or run your CPU at 30% constantly.

And let's not forget that things such as navigation controls are practically useless in non-microsoft programs. You end up having to bring up the "numbers" view almost any time you need to click on something.

Shut up, vista is awesome

BALLS

Not sure if launchy (windows quick launch program) does it, but on OSX quicksilver is pretty good at the control you want... but its keyboard input.

However, it's pretty easy to use. Typically I can just do:
alt+space to bring up the cmd window
start typing playlist name / select and itunes start playing it.

To be honest, I rather just use a keyboard and mouse.

I never saw the real advantages of voice commands for UI. Someone explain it to me?

Accessibility for vision impaired users is a big part of it. Dictation for writing works well, too.

Well, yeah. Speaking while driving is also helpful.

I was more along the lines of an average computer user using vocal commands for operation. Not so much just diction.

Yea haha that would be the ultimate lazyness.

"Computer...open internet....computer....look up porno...."

I think you can tell Vista to go right to a web address. You can probably say "open http://myfavoritepornsite.com"

Who is the girl on his desktop?

His accent sounds pretentious and fake.

you "think"? "probably"? right

Not really, and unfortunately if you don't use IE you lose even more functionality.

I'm too lazy, I'll wait for thought control.