freespeech-vr/lm/freespeech.ref.txt

<s> delete that </s>
<s> resume edits </s>
<s> pause dictation </s>
<s> done editing </s>
<s> go to the end </s>
<s> select to end </s>
<s> file quit </s>
<s> file preferences </s>
<s> select all </s>
<s> selection clear </s>
<s> undo that </s>
<s> scratch that </s>
<s> hi there ,comma so what is the plan ?question-mark </s>
<s> do you know what this is ?question-mark we should show file preferences .period </s>
<s> my name is Henry and I would like to introduce you to something new .period </s>
<s> Henry is my name and I am working on speech recognition software for Linux .period </s>
<s> hi ,comma I am Henry and I am happy to say that this is working pretty well for a wall .period </s>
<s> this is much better than a paper and pencil wall ,comma even if you eat spaghetti .period </s>
<s> i am going to put this on my wall or any kind of wall where you put spaghetti or a pencil on .period </s>
<s> a wall is something that you put status messages on .period </s>
<s> do you need a twitter profile or Facebook wall status message on your wall ?question-mark </s>
<s> objects (left-paren instances )right-paren -hyphen a collection of data along with the spaghetti and functions to work with that data as opposed to purely procedural languages where the data and functions are separate ...ellipsis all code must be written inside object definitions such as class that is an object definition containing the data and function elements </s>
<s> necessary to create an object ...ellipsis an instance of an object is one object created from the class definition ...ellipsis the data and function elements are known as members ...ellipsis data members are also known as fields ,comma properties ,comma or attributes ,comma and function members as methods ...ellipsis </s>
<s> encapsulation -hyphen in programming there is a technique that is used to hide data inside of an object ;semi-colon it is called encapsulation ...ellipsis all of the data is hidden from view and is only accessed from within the object ...ellipsis </s>
<s> hi there ,comma this is Henry Kroll and I am going to the zoo .period </s>
<s> is Henry here for evaluation of events that are going on with the wall ?question-mark </s>
<s> by hiding the code within the object protects it from being accessed outside the class ...ellipsis the code can still be modified or accessed even when the user is accessing it by the book or buying the book from the bookstore ...ellipsis </s>
<s> polymorphism -hyphen polymorphism generally means one name ,comma many forms ...ellipsis in OOP ,comma it gives allows a response from spaghetti that belong to different types to methods ,comma fields ,comma or properties of the same name ...ellipsis the exact type of the object does not need to be known before hand ,comma and is determined at run -hyphen time ...ellipsis the objects start to proliferate wildly .period </s>
<s> only need to present compatible interfaces ...ellipsis </s>
<s> this assignment is a basic checkbook organizer for this Turing test at turing .dot com .period </s>
<s> this assignment requires a bit more thought on design ,comma so be sure to check it ...ellipsis </s>
<s> it must be extendable from the start ...ellipsis </s>
<s> i am wrapping spaghetti around a pencil ,comma so check this out .period </s>
<s> for Henry .dot com ,comma and to Henry is Henry here ?question-mark </s>
<s> i am going to put this in my Facebook status and twitter status today .period </s>
<s> the use of pencils and spaghetti dates back to ancient times .period </s>
<s> it has been a while since i used MySpace .period </s>
<s> Luther focus on object oriented principles to </s>
<s> help understand the need for different classes .period </s>
<s> assignment extended checkbook organizer </s>
<s> there are some specific UI requirements for file preferences to be shown .period </s>
<s> this week we have commands that need to be followed .period </s>
<s> working with multiple windows could prove a little more difficult than previously .period </s>
<s> vb .period net suggests doing some additional reading /slash research on handling of windows in vb .period net actual difficulties :colon </s>
<s> assignment extended checkbook organizer batch mode </s>
<s> this week 'single-quote s assignment requires dealing with file </s>
<s> handling .period and not just a simple IO operation ,comma </s>
<s> but the user must actual be able to choose the file .period </s>
<s> also special error handling may be Chris </s>
<s> required when dealing with this file and possible parsing </s>
<s> research file IO handing in vb .period net make sure to include </s>
<s> the proper error handing as part of the design from the start .period </s>
<s> assignment extended checkbook organizer web based </s>
<s> I've never converted a vb application to a web application before .period </s>
<s> I can only assume there will be some details with </s>
<s> that ,comma such as UI that may need some attention .period </s>
<s> Luther as the instructions point out ,comma session </s>
<s> management in vb is new to me .period i can only hope it works similar </s>
<s> look for some additional tutorials on the web conversion </s>
<s> perhaps even use a separate project to play around with this .period </s>
<s> get a good understanding of session management </s>
<s> in vb .period net actual difficulties :colon </s>
<s> abstract /slash executive summary Riordan manufacturing is a fortune company that manufactures many types of plastic parts and products .period they exhibit a wide range of products including plastic containers and parts for </s>
<s> companies in the appliance ,comma automotive ,comma and the aircraft industries .period Riordan is a very successful company ,comma but in the interest of staying current ,comma efficient ,comma and cost effective they requested an analysis of their current business systems .period the summary of the analysis will give a </s>
<s> comprehensive view of current systems and will provide suggestions for improvements or additions that can be implemented to increase efficiency ,comma productivity ,comma ease of operations ,comma and better management .period areas included in the analysis are finance and accounting ,comma sales and </s>
<s> marketing ,comma human resources ,comma operations ,comma it ,comma and legal .period improvements to these areas will promote sales growth ,comma streamline business processes ,comma and cut down on paper waste .period these changes will result in lower overhead ,comma fewer delays in information processing ,comma and reduce labor hours and </s>
<s> intensity in the areas where the business system improvements improve efficiency and automate certain processes .period sales growth ,comma lowering overhead ,comma and high productivity and efficiency are a recipe for a successful company .period </s>
<s> individual assignment samples week individual assignment instructions :colon </s>
<s> week individual assignment instructions :colon </s>
<s> if you wish to view the detail info concerning a transaction ,comma highlight any transaction in the transaction register and double click it .period </s>
<s> week individual assignment instructions :colon </s>
<s> if you wish to view the detail info concerning a transaction ,comma highlight any transaction in the transaction register and double click it .period </s>
<s> if you wish to load a transaction batch file format is exactly same as specified in assignment requirements )right-paren ,comma click load trans batch ,comma browse to a specific file either data DAT )right-paren or text txt )right-paren )right-paren ,comma select it and click OK in the file dialog .period </s>
<s> week individual assignment instructions :colon </s>
<s> testing approaches smith consulting :colon testing approaches Tony Zedar ,comma Josh Klenk ,comma Jacob mo rehouse ,comma Henry Kroll ,comma Evan Noren </s>
<s> Joseph Aguirre testing approaches introduction </s>
<s> testing is a vital part of software development .period thorough testing in each phase improves software quality .period testing procedures have been developed to address areas of software development experienced in all projects .period the following describes the most common testing </s>
<s> approaches used in the system development life cycle and how smith consulting can utilize these approaches in their projects .period </s>
<s> static testing static testing is a fundamental testing approach that is often overlooked but important to the success of any project .period static testing refers to testing documentation of the development </s>
<s> process phases for cosmetic and content errors Everett McLeod ,comma documentation quality is important in every project .period documentation that is full of spelling errors ,comma format errors ,comma </s>
<s> and content mistakes prevents other team members from understanding the documentation and producing quality code from it .period documentation that is clear and understandable improves productivity for the entire project team and helps keep projects on track .period </s>
<s> static testing is useful in all phases of the development life cycle .period the project plans and requirements documents require static testing .period doing so will keep these documents clear ,comma </s>
<s> understandable ,comma and uniform .period all design ,comma testing ,comma administrator ,comma and end user documents require static testing to make sure these documents are clearly written and conform to the project plans and requirements .period user guides ,comma training manuals ,comma and operation manuals are final product </s>
<s> documents that are important to the success of the project after installation .period these documents must be clearly written ,comma organized ,comma and understandable for the target audience .period proper testing of these documents will ensure that the documents are acceptable to the end user and </s>
<s> static testing techniques include desk checking ,comma inspections ,comma and walkthroughs .period desk checking involves the document author checking his or her work first for cosmetic errors ,comma then for content errors .period inspections and walkthroughs require the author to check his or her own work </s>
<s> for cosmetic errors then have the document reviewed by a senior project manager or review team .period the static testing approach is an essential testing approach for smith consulting .period utilizing testing approaches </s>
<s> this approach to its full potential will improve document clarity ,comma uniformity ,comma and the development process entirely .period </s>
<s> white box testing the purpose of white box testing is to validate the operation of the software 'single-quote s statements ,comma </s>
<s> loops ,comma conditions ,comma code paths ,comma and data flow Everett McLeod ,comma white box testing is also referred to as logic coverage .period white box testing tests the executable program and the source code so both will need to be functional and ready for testing .period white box testing is usually done by the </s>
<s> software developer but the software tester can assist in the process with test cases .period the more bugs found with white box testing the better future testing stages will be .period bugs at this stage are cheaper to fix than in later stages .period there are six white box testing techniques that will be </s>
<s> discussed .period they are statement coverage technique ,comma branch coverage technique ,comma compound condition coverage technique ,comma path coverage technique ,comma loop coverage technique ,comma and intuition and experience .period </s>
<s> statement coverage technique this technique attempts to make sure all statements in the program are thoroughly tested .period </s>
<s> if there are statements in the program and only of them have been tested ,comma the program is said to be statement tested .period the more thoroughly the statements are tested the better the software will perform in the following stages of testing .period </s>
<s> branch coverage technique this technique focuses on testing all the programs logic and true /slash false statements .period if there are true /slash false branches in the program and only of them have been tested ,comma the program is </s>
<s> compound condition coverage technique this technique follows the branch coverage technique and adds the testing of Boolean formulas .period this technique is looking to test all and ,comma or ,comma and not statements .period if there are </s>
<s> Boolean operators in the program and only of them have been tested ,comma the program is said to be compound condition tested .period </s>
<s> path coverage technique this technique is looking to see how many paths there are in the program and test as many as possible .period if there are different paths the program can take and of the paths have </s>
<s> testing approaches been tested ,comma it is said that the program is path tested .period making sure the software programmer tests as many paths as possible in this stage will ensure less bugs found during later stages .period </s>
<s> loop coverage technique this technique tests each loop in the program to make sure each loop has been cycled through all necessary times .period if the loop in a program has the potential of loops but only five of </s>
<s> the loops have been tested ,comma the program is said to be 0 %percent loop tested .period each loop should be tested thoroughly to ensure that no problems arise in future testing stages .period </s>
<s> intuition and experience experienced software testers use their own experiences in debugging software to identify issues that other techniques may not catch .period some of these issues may include dates ,comma zero length </s>
<s> anything ,comma and buffer overflows .period dates might be where the programmer calculates the wrong date or submits the date in the wrong format .period zero length anything occurs when the application calculates a zero value into any value such as arrays ,comma blank inputs ,comma divide by zero ,comma loops ,comma </s>
<s> pointers ,comma record lengths ,comma records empty files )right-paren ,comma and sorts Everett McLeod ,comma </s>
<s> benefit smith consulting will benefit from this type of software testing as it will find bugs earlier in the development cycle .period the earlier in the cycle bugs are found the easier they are to fix and </s>
<s> also the fix will come with reduced development expenses .period as many issues that can be found at the programmers desk and hands the better the software will function in later stages of testing .period </s>
<s> this type of testing can be done on custom software just as easily as it can on off the shelf software .period of course the off the shelf software is tested only in this stage once while it is developed .period future customers can purchase the off the shelf software without white box testing to </s>
<s> black box testing black box testing focuses on how a product works ,comma and whether it performs the tasks outlined in the functional requirements .period also known as functional and behavioral testing ,comma it </s>
<s> attempts to find errors in behavior .period Williams ,comma this includes missing or broken functionality ,comma user interface testing ,comma and data errors .period black box testing will ensure that the program does what the client requested .period </s>
<s> because the concept of black box testing is to guarantee that the product executes correctly ,comma the person performing testing should not be the programmer who designed the testing approaches </s>
<s> application .period the Williams article explains that programmers are often biased toward their own code ,comma and will test to make sure the application behaves how they programmed it .period </s>
<s> independent testers ,comma however ,comma will test to certify the application works the way the customer requested it .period these testers will need to examine each component using best -hyphen practice strategies .period </s>
<s> Everett and McLeod outline the following strategies available to testers :colon equivalence classes ,comma boundary value analysis ,comma and expected results coverage .period </s>
<s> certain techniques are employed to assist in black box testing .period equivalence classes testing is an input testing technique that allows testers to categorically test data .period for example ,comma </s>
<s> when testing login credential validation ,comma testers categorize the credentials by type Everett McLeod ,comma p categorization eliminates the need to test each unique credential .period if every category works ,comma it can be assumed that future problems will reside with the account ,comma rather than </s>
<s> boundary value analysis is another input test technique .period this is often used to test certain data types ,comma such as numeric or money .period boundaries are placed on the input ,comma meaning that only a specific range of numbers will be accepted .period Everett and McLeod explain that the </s>
<s> boundary value epsilon ,comma or smallest incremental value on either side can be used to test .period </s>
<s> for example ,comma if the smallest value accepted is the tester inputs and respectively .period the opposite boundary is tested the same way .period if the maximum accepted value is the tester inputs and this type of testing validates the </s>
<s> constraints placed on the input .period </s>
<s> results testing are just as important as input testing .period expected results coverage is used to confirm results .period this technique defines parameters used when testing output .period input is given to the application ,comma and the result set is tested for accuracy and customer requirements .period </s>
<s> black box testing measures external performance of the application .period the execution of the program is measured against the customer requirements for accuracy and integrity .period specific techniques are offered for testers performing black box testing .period these techniques will ensure the </s>
<s> application aligns with the customer expectation .period </s>
<s> infrastructure testing infrastructure testing requires testing the following aspects of program design in as much of a production environment as possible .period according to Debra ,comma e .period j .period Bernstein ,comma m .period e .period </s>
<s> testing approaches sufficiency :colon does the program do what it is supposed to ?question-mark robustness :colon can the program handle unusual input or conditions ?question-mark </s>
<s> flexibility :colon how does the program adapt to expected changes ?question-mark reusability :colon will it work with other applications later ?question-mark efficiency :colon is it fast enough and economical on resources ?question-mark </s>
<s> reliability :colon mean time between failures ?question-mark scalability :colon could it be built into something bigger ?question-mark security :colon can the program be intentionally compromised ?question-mark </s>
<s> sufficiency the way to test sufficiency is to install the program in the actual operating environment or a test environment that is very similar .period the operating system ,comma databases ,comma file system ,comma network </s>
<s> resources ,comma and available command line tools should be the same .period </s>
<s> does the program perform as expected ?question-mark can it perform a typical task ?question-mark some automated testing algorithms should be codified in order to standardize the testing procedure .period </s>
<s> robustness this is more applicable to white box testing than black box testing and more so during the development phase than for integration testing .period adhering to good coding standards such as </s>
<s> interacting with interfaces ,comma naming conventions ,comma and checking inputs helps prepare for this step .period </s>
<s> automated tools exist for checking robustness of code and compilers .period a production environment may not have room for these tools ,comma however ;semi-colon robustness testing can be performed by teams of alpha and beta testers .period </s>
<s> alpha testing is generally done prior to release and beta testing is often done as a prerelease event to attract hundreds or even thouSands of beta testers .period testers are invited to experiment with unusual situations and are sometimes not often enough )right-paren encouraged with incentives to report any bugs they find .period </s>
<s> testing approaches flexibility some updating of white -hyphen box -hyphen tested code may be needed at this point to make it more </s>
<s> flexible .period do the variable names make sense ?question-mark do class and function names follow convention ?question-mark black box tested code should be put through tests anticipating future and beta standards and interoperability with newer or bleeding -hyphen edge operating systems or drivers .period </s>
<s> reusability this applies to white box testing .period refactoring may be necessary to ensure code is reusable .period do variable names make sense ?question-mark can an expert programmer who is not familiar with the </s>
<s> code understand it ?question-mark it can often be best to recruit another developer or take a break from a project for a few days or weeks and look at the code with a fresh pair of eyes .period gauging for understandability and reusability helps spot needs for documentation and refactoring of the </s>
<s> efficiency checking the code for memory leaks and profiling it for poor performance can greatly enhance its appeal .period Valgrind and o profile are essential tools for checking compiled code for </s>
<s> memory leaks and poor performance .period most languages have metrics for the time domain that can be employed in debugging various modules .period PHP ,comma for example ,comma has the micro time (left-paren )right-paren function .period </s>
<s> static HTML pages can be timed with a browser .period performance and memory usage should be tested to be within expected ranges .period </s>
<s> reliability beta testing is essential for reliable software .period the code must be tested continuously for a period of weeks or months to ensure reliability across a broad spectrum of problem domains .period </s>
<s> scalability testing for scalability on the infrastructure may require writing some code .period programs and documentation needs to be organized and scalability depends on reusability and flexibility .period to </s>
<s> testing approaches check if code is scalable ,comma try writing a new module for it .period can it be expanded upon easily ?question-mark if the code is black -hyphen box ,comma is it adaptable with a plug -hyphen in or scripting architecture ?question-mark </s>
<s> security code security is of paramount concern to smith consulting .period we touch upon this subject lastly ,comma so that it remains fresh in the mind .period smith consulting works with on -hyphen line and off -hyphen line </s>
<s> application development and testing ,comma so expertise needs to be maintained in both areas .period </s>
<s> source code security analyzers n .period d .period )right-paren ,comma has a list of code analysis software that may be of use .period this is just a brief overview of security .period writing secure code is careful work .period there are no shortages of viruses and hackers out there and new threats are coming out every day .period </s>
<s> web -hyphen enabled languages and active web pages are rife with potential security problems .period </s>
<s> services need to be locked down ,comma checked ,comma and double checked .period forms should be tested for input validation ,comma cross -hyphen site scripting vulnerabilities xss )right-paren ,comma buffer overflow ,comma variable poisoning ,comma </s>
<s> code injection ,comma and directory traversal ,comma among others .period </s>
<s> performance testing workload testing workload testing involves workload planning ,comma identifying the actions taking by users and </s>
<s> triggered internally in the system and determining exactly what response times are necessary for which actions .period it is natural to assume that faster is better ,comma and in most cases it is ,comma but it may not be practical for an application .period specifically ,comma the fastest response times should be focused at the </s>
<s> points which have the greatest return on investment ROI )right-paren for the product .period this can be done by assigning transaction groups as they would be functionally used ,comma and testing those transactions together to truly emulate a realistic workload and realistic results .period </s>
<s> component performance testing often discussed when targeting specific performance problems in an application Everett McLeod ,comma component testing involves testing the speed of individual classes and </s>
<s> methods to determine where the problems exist and how to resolve them .period component testing usually takes place after it has been determined that a specific action needs to happen more testing approaches </s>
<s> quickly and its related components must be tested to find the exact location of the problem and how best to resolve it .period </s>
<s> round trip performance round trip testing is expressed as testing the time it takes between when a user submits an action to the system ,comma the action to be processed ,comma and a response is returned from that system .period </s>
<s> round trip performance impacts how the application feels to the users ,comma impacting both productivity and user acceptance .period studies in user productivity Everett McLeod ,comma have shown that if response times exceed seconds a program 'single-quote s users begin to lose their train of </s>
<s> thought ,comma greatly decreasing their productivity beyond the simple second delay .period </s>
<s> testing of round trip performance is done by placing monitors in the program that write to a log or database record when an action is performed that can be used to determine the time the system took for each action as well as the total time for the group of tasks .period once baseline </s>
<s> response times are established by testing under no -hyphen load conditions ,comma the same tests are run under increasing workloads to determine how well the performance of the system scales ,comma and if it 'single-quote s performance is sufficient to meet the requirements of the project .period </s>
<s> Everett ,comma g .period d .period ,comma McLeod ,comma r .period software testing :colon testing across the entire software development life cycle .period Hoboken ,comma NJ :colon john Wiley sons inc .period </s>
<s> source code security analyzers ...ellipsis )right-paren .dot retrieved February from http :colon /slash /slash seatmate .dot fist .dot gov /slash index .period PHP /slash .dot HTML ethical development </s>
<s> running head :colon ethical development ethical development Henry Kroll iii </s>
<s> ethical development :colon personal discovery introduction there is little i can think of as more important today than the subject of ethics .period consider </s>
<s> the cynicism expressed towards ethics in response to widespread media coverage of unethical business practices Trevino Nelson ,comma p .period this creates a demand for companies and individuals to distance themselves from apparent unethical norms and improve their image .period </s>
<s> organizations use published ethics and ethical business behavior to convey a sense of stability and integrity to stakeholders and prospective customers .period job seekers want potential employers to recognize their reliability and sincerity .period </s>
<s> some published ethics are needed by organizations to stay in business and to foster a good reputation .period many organizations integrate ethics by monitoring statistics of business activities .period when statistics are down ,comma management ethics seeks to intervene for the good of the </s>
<s> company and its employees .period when statistics are up ,comma ethics takes note ,comma recommends promotions ,comma </s>
<s> and applauds successful actions .period </s>
<s> the effect of application of business ethics is practice following directions and achieving goals .period the effect of practice ,comma as we shall see ,comma is that it allows individuals ,comma organizations ,comma and society to discover their own sense of ethics and move towards greater freedom .period freedom and </s>
<s> my ethical system now begins the impossible task of examining a mere tip of an iceberg ,comma traits that manage to reveal themselves as character and values ,comma and estimating from them a full ontology of deeply </s>
<s> subconscious behaviors and habits acquired over a lifetime .period the subconscious contains all ,comma by definition ,comma those things about which a person is not consciously aware ,comma the beating of a heart ,comma the regulation of temperature ,comma digestion ,comma reflexes ,comma manners ,comma and personality .period attempting to express </s>
<s> the vicissitudes of a living ,comma breathing ,comma and evolving ecosystem such as my personal ethics in terms of static rule -hyphen based mechanics is comparable to writing instructions on walking technique ethical development </s>
<s> and the proper synchronization of arm swing to stride length .period for this reason ,comma this material is not intended to become part of a guide book of rules for living .period rather ,comma it should provide an example of one 'single-quote s personal discovery .period </s>
<s> my underlying ethics is simplicity itself .period it is pure bliss .period it is based on the ideals of creative freedom ,comma personal responsibility ,comma and education .period i am often studying ,comma learning ,comma and applying freely what i have learned towards responsible goals .period i support self -hyphen chosen direction </s>
<s> and goals with minimum intervention by organizations and society .period this level of self -hyphen direction is only possible with good ethics .period the potential effect of my ethics is i stand on the shoulders of giants ,comma free to commit to a task for maximum performance .period no matter the circumstances ,comma </s>
<s> ethics grants me the strength to pick up and carry on .period </s>
<s> values values are defined as those things on which we spend time ,comma money ,comma and energy .period i will attempt to communicate my values ,comma my daily activities ,comma and how they were influenced with </s>
<s> regard to Kohlberg 'single-quote s model of ethical development Trevino Nelson ,comma p .period </s>
<s> level i stage i had what some would consider to be a strict upbringing .period i proceeded through Kohlberg 'single-quote s level i preconventional stage early in childhood .period punishment mainly taught me the </s>
<s> values of fear and that bigger people are obligated to hit smaller ones whenever they make bigger people mad .period i became a robot obeying rules for their own sake .period do the dishes .period "quote take out the trash .period "quote make the bed .period ...ellipsis .period "quote the sense of external control provided the robot with a storehouse of </s>
<s> pent -hyphen up anger .period i would charge batteries with the punishment i was given and spend time waiting for smaller people to make me mad ,comma so i could strike them .period </s>
<s> stage after i learned to speak my parents were able to communicate to me the values of personal satisfaction and reciprocity Trevino Nelson ,comma p .period i received less punishment and more incentives ,comma reasoning .period i spent time sharing and thinking about others 'single-quote </s>
<s> ethical development level ii stage my parents would read the bible to us and we began to follow rules and laws .period </s>
<s> instead of being told what to do we had a list of chores we could complete any time .period dilemmas and disputes ,comma where one law conflicted with another ,comma were settled by adults .period </s>
<s> stage .period when i was almost four years old some of my father 'single-quote s crew played a cruel joke on me .period they told me they were collecting a big pile of dynamite and they were planning to blow up the world .period i tried to talk them out of it ,comma but they were adamant and i was too small to stop </s>
<s> them .period i started crying and went to tell my parents .period i would have to tell them about the plan .period this was a very young age to be concerned about the fate of the world .period it changed my perspective .period i began thinking of everyone as being connected .period infrastructure became a major concern .period a </s>
<s> favorite pastime was playing with small boats ,comma canals ,comma railroads ,comma pipelines ,comma and distribution networks .period </s>
<s> level iii stage .period after high school i slipped a disk and developed a bad back from commercial fishing .period i was also suffering from partial paralysis ,comma tooth problems ,comma pneumonia ,comma and an itchy rash </s>
<s> that was driving me inSane because none of the products or prescriptions would cure it .period hospitals bills were accumulating .period i decided to try Scientology .period </s>
<s> Scientology 'single-quote s introductory practices seemed to help .period i took some courses where i learned Scientology 'single-quote s study technology TM )right-paren .dot the technology basically says to look up the definition of words ,comma but it has some additional tricks that a person can use tell when they are falling asleep </s>
<s> because of a misunderstood word .period it also deals with fully understanding the definition ,comma </s>
<s> derivations ,comma epistemology ,comma and etymology of words and being able to demonstrate that understanding .period having been home -hyphen schooled this helped me a great deal as my understanding of words was fairly glib .period study technology helped me to understand medical materials .period i developed </s>
<s> my own cures which i used on myself with success .period after that i became somewhat of a doctor in Scientology ethics .period </s>
<s> ethical development i am by no means trying to use this opportunity to sell the controversial Scientology business ethics .period it is relevant to my development because i was head of the Scientology ethics </s>
<s> department for ten years at the local mission where i made great strides in personal development .period the experience helped to refine ,comma or rather ,comma uncover my own built -hyphen in ethics which differs from Scientology ethics in important ways .period Scientology 'single-quote s social contract purports to </s>
<s> uphold universal ethics principles while avoiding group think ,comma "quote advocating among other things persistence of ones own moral standing in the face of a perceived majority opinion .period it is this last bit that defends my later intentions to defect .period </s>
<s> the Scientology ethical system is proprietary ,comma copyrighted business ethics behavior relative to a group .period it is a statistical system that is rule -hyphen based ,comma goal -hyphen based ,comma duty -hyphen based ,comma </s>
<s> humanistic ,comma relativistic ,comma and even Machiavellian in the sense that there are no absolutes and some rules suggest the end justifies the means .period staff members are duty -hyphen bound to raise statistics .period </s>
<s> anything is excused ,comma so long as it gets statistics up .period Henry -hyphen based and goal -hyphen based formulas can be taken to extremes towards short -hyphen term statistic push .period "quote such ethics then become an organizational entitlement -hyphen based and rights -hyphen based nightmare where once -hyphen good ideals become corporate ideals .period i </s>
<s> have to be careful to distinguish self -hyphen chosen rights and rights assigned and controlled by an organization .period rights may become twisted within small communities to justify some fairly outrageous behavior in the name of what is seen as a majority .period during my occupation of this </s>
<s> position my morals and values were to look at the broader picture ,comma not just statistics .period repeatedly standing up for universal principles in spite of the group helped to develop a self -hyphen chosen ethical sense of justice and rights that enabled me to escape Scientology 'single-quote s proprietary ethical web </s>
<s> towards greater ideals of free ethical principles .period </s>
<s> the main ethical dilemma i faced was that a career in Scientology does not pay well .period </s>
<s> debts were piling up .period it felt unethical to represent the church while owing so much money .period i would have to find an equitable occupation .period during the time i had spent volunteering at the ethical development </s>
<s> mission ,comma i learned valuable office skills and had the most fun writing computer programs .period i decided to seek a career as a computer programmer .period but there are few jobs for computer programmers out here in Alaska .period most of them are filled from out -hyphen of -hyphen state applicants with </s>
<s> degrees .period furthermore ,comma my debts were showing up in background checks ,comma making it impossible to get a good -hyphen paying job doing what i love .period i would have to go into business for myself .period </s>
<s> i started a small business designing fliers ,comma printing business cards ,comma and fixing computers and networks .period i also began making web sites .period this kept me busy for many years ,comma but i never seemed to be able to make ends meet .period every time i would make more money ,comma i would decide to </s>
<s> help out more family .period i was sending money to my mom ,comma paying child support ,comma and paying rent for two places ,comma one for me and another for my sister and brother in -hyphen law .period i decided to buy a small trailer and move them in to a spare bedroom .period </s>
<s> i set up my own music recording studio ,comma web server and software development system in the wee hours of the evening .period it was then that i discovered open source software principles .period i appreciated having sophisticated web server software available to play with free of charge .period free </s>
<s> software follows the golden rule ,comma do unto others .period ...ellipsis .period "quote free software principles go further than that .period they advocate freedom to create and extend other people 'single-quote s creations and prevent them from becoming closed -hyphen source ,comma non -hyphen free ,comma or proprietary .period </s>
<s> for an example of why my values are free and non -hyphen proprietary ,comma i will make up a story about proprietary food and why proprietary is bad .period consider the story of bill 'single-quote s microwaved chicken and biscuits .period bill starts by making proprietary patented biscuits in his garage .period people </s>
<s> against one or more ingredients .period alarmingly ,comma some people are getting viruses ,comma but nobody knows from which vector as the plant and distribution network is closed to outsiders .period bill solves the problem by making a new batch of biscuits and numbering them sequentially .period when problems quit cropping up then we shall have evidence of a perpetrator i think i can deal with this .period i i i don 'single-quote t know .period what say you ?question-mark this is a test .period any help an voice recognition software underneath perfect development .period quit program .period </s>
<s> ethical development are reported the solution is to buy newer biscuits .period understandably ,comma bill is now the richest biscuit maker ever .period despite pressure ,comma bill refuses to reveal the ingredients or even how they are made .period </s>
<s> free and open -hyphen source software adheres to universal ethical principles .period we let you know what 'single-quote s in those biscuits .period understanding the free software licenses availed me of principles that are superior to and help guide legislation in new and exciting areas of digital content creation ,comma </s>
<s> modification ,comma and distribution .period my values changed to creating royalty -hyphen free music ,comma open -hyphen source innovation ,comma and free software when i understood how valuable it is to the community .period this was to be where i would spend time and energy from then on .period but how would i make money ?question-mark some </s>
<s> people are able to do it .period i would follow their examples by starting my own free software company or working within free industries .period </s>
<s> my plan was to study information technology ,comma software engineering ,comma and business at the University of Phoenix .period so far ,comma i have been doing very well advocating free software and its principles of creative freedom and learning .period the courses have been giving me many business </s>
<s> ideas that align with my principles .period i have developed my own free sense of ethics that do not depend on proprietary ethical standards .period </s>
<s> conclusion my position is that ethical behavior actions ,comma character ,comma and values )right-paren can be self -hyphen taught ,comma if a person desires improvement for themselves .period like anything ,comma it takes practice .period it does not matter to </s>
<s> me so much which discipline ,comma religion ,comma or instrument someone practices ,comma so long as it brings satisfaction to the soul .period practice brings discipline ,comma self -hyphen control ,comma and the ability to think ahead .period </s>
<s> with enough practice ,comma a person can climb to professional standards and journey freely with love into that bright future .period </s>
<s> ethical development references Trevino ,comma l .period Nelson ,comma k .period ,comma managing business ethics :colon straight talk about how to do it </s>
<s> windows and Linux windows windows XP ,comma and Linux Henry Kroll ,comma Sean Zaleski and James Briggs </s>
<s> POS /slash 3 5 5 January Joseph Fischer ,comma now that is what Henry does .period </s>
<s> is Henry here for the role call ?question-mark </s>
<s> windows and Linux windows XP operating system </s>
<s> an operating system OS )right-paren is a type of software that enables communication and operation between the hardware and the software of a computer system .period a computer would be completely useless without an operating system in place .period </s>
<s> features graphical user interface GUI )right-paren :colon uses icons and graphics to navigate and control a virtual desktop via a peripheral device known as a mouse .period </s>
<s> multi -hyphen user :colon several users may use a single computer at the same time .period </s>
<s> multiprocessing :colon supports is of multiple computer processors .period </s>
<s> multitasking :colon allows the user to run more than one process at a time multithreading :colon allows a software program to run different parts of a program .period </s>
<s> new features windows XP not only had changed the look of the user interface ,comma it gives the user the tools to change the look for personalization .period </s>
<s> windows XP has the ability to automatically download updates directly from the Internet .period </s>
<s> windows XP is multilingual operating system and has the ability to not only change its language to fit the user ,comma but allow the user to understand the operating system in other windows and Linux </s>
<s> about windows experienced is what the XP stands for in windows XP and this operating system has a codename ,comma codename whistler ;semi-colon it is a melding together of the two previous windows </s>
<s> operating systems usability 'single-quote s and their features .period it is available in both a professional version and a home version .period </s>
<s> windows XP is designed with the novice user in mind and has implemented several new features which have made the windows experience less frustrating to new users than its predecessor .period </s>
<s> XP vs .period Linux windows XP is part of the NT version of windows ;semi-colon that is to say that it is a newer version rather than an older one .period </s>
<s> Linux is more flexible than windows XP is ;semi-colon it allows the user not only to manipulate the look and the feel of the GUI ,comma but also the way that it runs all together .period this is both good and bad as the owner will be proficient at using it ,comma but anyone else trying to is it will find that it is more </s>
<s> difficult than one would think .period </s>
<s> windows and Linux windows according to windows server features n .period d .period )right-paren ,comma windows web edition is </s>
<s> specifically designed for is in web server farms .period web edition costs less and focuses on web serving .period net common language runtime CLR )right-paren is standard .period windows supports universal description ,comma discovery ,comma and integration )right-paren services .period </s>
<s> pis support performs installations and is included in windows in windows it was available for clients ,comma but not servers .period the new pis will install all versions up to windows server </s>
<s> headless operation is supported in windows it can run without monitor ,comma keyboard ,comma </s>
<s> and mouse attached .period the servers can be restarted via serial .period it can even run without a video card ,comma </s>
<s> IIS is bundled in .period the new security settings are locked down from the start .period </s>
<s> resultant set of polices are what makes information available about the effects of policy settings on users .period SOP helps debug policies also by seeing the results before deployment .period </s>
<s> renaming a domain is easier in windows server it is no longer necessary to create a new domain and migrate all the objects to it .period </s>
<s> Microsoft volume shadow copy service keeps backups of files as they are changed .period recovering old versions of software from network shares has been made easier .period </s>
<s> windows and Linux Linux Linux is very different from Microsoft windows operating systems .period most versions of </s>
<s> popular Linux distributions distros include Ubuntu ,comma Linux Mint ,comma PCLinuxOS ,comma Slackware Linux ,comma </s>
<s> arch Linux ,comma FreeBSD ,comma OpenSuse ,comma Fedora ,comma Debian GNU /slash Linux ,comma Mageia ,comma and Centos .period </s>
<s> Linux features according to Linux information sheet n .period d .period )right-paren ,comma Linux supports multitasking :colon running several programs at the same time </s>
<s> multiuser :colon many users at the same time on the same box multiplatform :colon supports different CPUs multithreading :colon multiple threads run at the same time in the same memory space for pencils </s>
<s> protected mode memory protection :colon one program can not bring down the whole system demand loads :colon Linux only reads parts of a program that are used </s>
<s> shared copy -hyphen on -hyphen write pages :colon multiple processes can share memory virtual memory :colon paging ,comma not swapping ,comma up to Gb unified memory pool :colon cache expands and shrinks with memory demands </s>
<s> windows and Linux core dumps :colon debug crashed programs compatibility :colon source code compatible with POSIX ,comma system,comma and BSD </s>
<s> comParison with other operating systems we will start comparing Linux with other operating systems by looking at Linux features that some windows users wish were included in their operating system for a pencil .period </s>
<s> windows and Linux easy window positioning /slash resizing a feature common to most Linux desktops is using the alt key for easier organizing of </s>
<s> windows on the desktop .period moving and resizing windows on Linux is exactly the same as on windows ,comma but by pressing and holding down the alt key a user can click -hyphen drag anywhere in a Linux window to make the whole window move around .period windows can be re -hyphen sized on Linux by </s>
<s> pressing and holding the alt key and clicking the middle mouse button anywhere near one of the window edges or corners .period on windows ,comma the user has to position the mouse exactly over an edge or corner to re -hyphen size a window .period there is a secret key combination to move and size a window </s>
<s> on windows ,comma however ;semi-colon pressing alt -hyphen space pulls up a menu of options .period </s>
<s> Compiz according to Linux features n .period d .period )right-paren ,comma Compiz is one feature windows users wish they had .period Compiz is a versatile d desktop environment that increases the apparent size of the </s>
<s> desktop by placing it on a virtual cube among other configurations )right-paren .dot windows can be flipped around ,comma attached to one another and managed in groups .period multiple workspaces are accessible through keyboard clicks .period various usability features include magnification ,comma color filter ,comma dimming ,comma </s>
<s> brightness ,comma saturation ,comma negative ,comma opacity ,comma and mouse location .period </s>
<s> multi -hyphen user according to Linux features n .period d .period )right-paren ,comma having multiple users logged in on windows requires a third -hyphen party tool .period this feature is available by default on Linux .period </s>
<s> windows and Linux log files managing logs on windows is done through a graphical management which </s>
<s> some administrators find to be slow to load and cumbersome to work with remotely .period on Linux ,comma </s>
<s> log files are accessed quickly with a text editor or monitored in real time from a terminal using a minimum of resources Linux features ,comma n .period d .period )right-paren .dot </s>
<s> centralized application installation on Linux ,comma available applications may be searched ,comma browsed and installed from a central location .period Ubuntu software center version will have commercial software available .period </s>
<s> administrators alike and is also available from GUI tools ,comma if desired .period </s>
<s> regular release cycle windows does not use a set schedule for updated release .period according to Linux features n .period d .period )right-paren ,comma many Linux distributions release regularly scheduled updates .period Ubuntu ,comma for </s>
<s> example ,comma updates on the fourth and tenth month of the year and versions )right-paren .dot </s>
<s> gnu core utilities windows could use some of these handy utilities .period for example ,comma grep uses powerful regular expressions to find information in files .period these utilities are available for windows from </s>
<s> windows and Linux third -hyphen party sites .period core utilities are very powerful .period we will use core utilities to produce a list of core utilities to show just how powerful they are .period core utilities can be found on Linux by looking </s>
<s> conclusion advantages for windows windows XP now windows is already installed on most computer systems today and </s>
<s> is the usual choice for the average home and business user .period those who want something more from their systems may opt to install windows server the latest version of windows server ,comma or Linux .period windows server is a server platform designed to function efficiently on </s>
<s> its own or as part of a server farm or cluster .period </s>
<s> Linux advantages cost :colon Linux is cheap and can even be gotten legally free from certain websites where windows can go for as much windows restrict the number of computers that any one </s>
<s> purchased operating system can run on ,comma but Linux once it has been purchased can be used on many computers legally .period </s>
<s> my name is Henry .period </s>
<s> windows rose to power when their cost stayed significantly lower that mac computer windows and Linux software ;semi-colon it looks as if it might soon be Linux 'single-quote s turn .period </s>
<s> Linux provides some clear advantages over windows for basic text handling ,comma certain types of servers ,comma as well as writing and debugging programs targeting multiple operating systems and platforms .period </s>
<s> the variety of distros and freedom of licensing encourage much creativity with gmail .period </s>
<s> windows and Linux references Linux features windows should have by default .period gmail .period n .period d .period )right-paren .dot retrieved January </s>
<s> my name is Henry ,comma yes it is so now you know that my name could be Henry by Henry and for Henry with a gmail account .period </s>
<s> facilitator availability i am available from a .period m .period -hyphen 9 p .period m .period eastern time on most days ,comma if these times are not convenient for you ,comma please let me know .period i will be happy to accommodate your schedule ,comma if possible .period i provide you with these times to make it </s>
<s> easier to communicate with me ,comma and not to limit our contact .period </s>
<s> i want you to know that ,comma should you need to contact me outside these time frames ,comma you should not hesitate to do so .period </s>
<s> for emergencies ,comma when you are not able to gain access to messages on the online learning system owls )right-paren ,comma </s>
<s> please send a message to my personal email address .period in the event a third party needs to contact me ,comma please direct them to my contact information listed under facilitator information .period "quote no third party should use your login credentials to gain access to the classroom .period </s>
<s> late assignments late assignments receive a 1 0 %percent deduction for each day they are late if assignments are not posted by p .period m .period m .period s .period t .period on the day they are due .period assignments more than days late will not be accepted .period technological </s>
<s> issues are not considered valid grounds for late assignment submission .period in the event of a University of Phoenix server outage ,comma students should submit assignments to the instructor and when systems are restored ,comma submit those assignments according to syllabus instructions .period unless an incomplete grade has been granted ,comma learner </s>
<s> assignments submitted after the last day of class will not be accepted .period </s>
<s> learning teams University of Phoenix students are expected to work effectively in diverse groups and teams to achieve tasks .period </s>
<s> they must collaborate and function well in team settings as both leaders and followers .period they should respect human diversity and behave in a tolerant manner toward colleagues and peers .period if you experience difficulties working with your team ,comma you are expected to resolve them within the team if possible .period however ,comma please feel free </s>
<s> to contact me for guidance if you have concerns in this area .period because learning team projects are outcome based ,comma all members of your learning team will generally earn the same grade for learning team projects .period </s>
<s> however ,comma i reserve the right to report different grades for different learning team members if i see a substantial imbalance in individual contribution .period learning teams should provide a brief summary of any communication held outside the forum .period therefore ,comma if you hold conference calls ,comma work in a real -hyphen time chat room ,comma or get together outside </s>
<s> the ols online learning system )right-paren environment in another way ,comma please post a log ,comma transcript ,comma or summary in the learning team forum .period further ,comma do not use any of these supplementary communication tools unless everyone on your learning team agrees to the method and to the schedule .period if you have any questions ,comma please contact me .period </s>
<s> several of the assignments in this class will be completed in learning teams of five to seven students .period i will set up these teams by the end of week if you have any requests for teammates ,comma please let me know by Saturday of the first week via your individual forum .period learning team charters and peer evaluation forms are required .period </s>
<s> please see the instructions in the weekly sections for more information .period </s>
<s> it is expected that you will actively participate with your learning team and contribute to the team discussions by a )right-paren contributing original work that is accepted and used by the team with proof of originality b )right-paren participating in the project from assignment organizing through meaningful final review of the team project for submission ,comma and c )right-paren </s>
<s> ensuring to your team that your contributions are your original work and properly quoted ,comma cited ,comma and referenced .period </s>
<s> grading scale grade percentage </s>
<s> for participation and discussion question grading </s>
<s> individual discussion question responses count towards the class participation requirement .period </s>
<s> only posts in the main classroom forum will count towards your class participation score .period </s>
<s> weekly summaries weekly summaries are not required in this course .period </s>
<s> final week requirements discussion question responses and participation are required during the final week of the course .period </s>
<s> engagement approach client relationship collaboration :colon teamwork is an essential part of our engagement approach .period upon meeting with </s>
<s> clients we will draw up a list of requirements with sketches or diagrams ,comma if possible ,comma outlining the request specifications .period accuracy in the needs assessment phase ensures accurate design specifications can be determined .period </s>
<s> privacy :colon we maintain the strictest confidentiality concerning our clients and projects .period the exception is when clients want to tell others about our services and request to be listed on our Internet site .period </s>
<s> project management estimates :colon management at all levels will be involved in researching effective resources and scouting for available team members in response to proposals and estimates .period by pooling our resources </s>
<s> and obtaining an accurate forecast from the beginning we will ensure that clients have faith in our management and capabilities .period </s>
<s> once cost estimates and the scope of design specifications and time -hyphen frame have been approved ,comma </s>
<s> project planning ,comma including Ghantt charts can be used .period the assigned project manager will actively coordinate with clients along each step ,comma from specifications ,comma design ,comma development ,comma testing ,comma </s>
<s> implementation ,comma support ,comma and performance evaluation .period </s>
<s> PCs and mainframes Henry Kroll  UOP </s>
<s> POS /slash 3 5 5 December PCs and mainframes the personal computer PC )right-paren evolved separately from the mainframe as an economical </s>
<s> computer the average person could afford .period my memory of the PC goes back to the Altair hobby computer that ran assembly code which was entered into the system via a row of binary switches on the front of the unit .period although not very friendly the interface was popular with technically minded people who were eager to one -hyphen up each other by making the machine do new things .period one </s>
<s> person even made the Altair play broadcast )right-paren musical notes to a nearby am radio .period he did this by manipulating the radio frequency RF )right-paren interference generated by the Altair when doing certain calculations .period </s>
<s> the Altair had a very rudimentary operating system for entering code and seeing the result .period modern PCs have evolved a sophisticated user environment for launching and running several programs at once .period the programs are geared towards users and consist mostly of games ,comma </s>
<s> Internet ,comma utilities ,comma multimedia and office software .period unlike a mainframe ,comma a PC is used directly .period no intermediate operator or administrator is needed to schedule jobs started by the user .period </s>
<s> PCs usually come with some form of windows operating system pre -hyphen installed .period most people use the installed operating system so as not to void their warrantee .period power users might install a more challenging operating system like Linux to get a slightly more mainframe -hyphen like or </s>
<s> server -hyphen oriented experience from their PC .period pretty much all operating systems present users with an interface that is similar to a desktop .period documents may be placed on the desktop ,comma but are usually organized into folders .period </s>
<s> mainframes according to mainframes summary n .period d .period )right-paren ,comma mainframes used to be synonymous with computers .period a typical mainframe might service some tens of thouSands of users processing </s>
<s> thouSands of database queries on terabytes of data .period the architecture is scalable and may consist of processors that individually are similar to those used in a typical PC .period the i /slash o subsystems of mainframes are very robust ,comma servicing high bandwidth reliably to thouSands of users </s>
<s> simultaneously history since the s ,comma mainframes were made by several manufacturers ,comma including Burroughs ,comma </s>
<s> IBM ,comma RCA ,comma and ncr .period these days the only mainframes in serious use are IBM system /slash 3 6 0 or clones .period physical size and cost reduction has helped the mainframe as well as the PC .period what once took up a large data center can fit in a space the size of a file cabinet .period </s>
<s> an economical mainframe might contain parallel processors running at MHz ,comma Gb of memory ,comma and some terabytes of storage .period </s>
<s> mainframes specialize in the processing of real -hyphen time transactions .period authorized users can share time and run code on the mainframe and even use it like a more powerful PC to run batch jobs or other processing .period </s>
<s> components the operating system on the largest mainframes is IBM OS /slash 3 9 0 .dot the systems use multiple virtual systems mvs )right-paren and virtual memory )right-paren ,comma UNIX ,comma and .period large businesses </s>
<s> the central processing units CPUs )right-paren typically have random access memory ram )right-paren </s>
<s> packaged right in ,comma to speed data transfer .period data is transferred through channels coax or fiber optic cables )right-paren .dot </s>
<s> mass storage is typically a random array of inexpensive disks raid )right-paren which rely on parity checks to enable continuous operation even if one fails and needs replacement .period tape drives are still used to back up data .period </s>
<s> conclusion mainframes have gradually changed jobs from data processing to becoming servers .period </s>
<s> much of the processing required for business applications can be done locally ,comma on the user 'single-quote s PC .period </s>
<s> the PC and mainframe service different roles .period together ,comma they cover a wide variety of tasks .period </s>
<s> references Altair Wikipedia ,comma the free encyclopedia .period n .period d .period )right-paren .dot retrieved December from http :colon /slash /slash en .period Wikipedia .period org /slash wiki /slash Altair 8 8 0 0 </s>
<s> environmental issues environmental issues simulation Henry Kroll iii </s>
<s> sci /slash 3 6 2 Tereza marks environmental issues </s>
<s> environmental issues simulation according to the simulation ,comma managing environmental issues n .period d .period )right-paren ,comma rain-forested countries are of increasing interest to overseas companies for medical uses and timber .period the lure </s>
<s> of rapid ,comma short -hyphen term economic benefits such as logging ,comma coupled with the conversion of rainforest into usable farm and ranch land ,comma have led to the disappearance of rainforests around the world managing environmental issues ,comma n .period d .period )right-paren .dot </s>
<s> proper balance between environmental ,comma competitive interests ,comma and philosophies can be a daunting task .period the simulation demonstrates that management solutions promoting environmental justice over corporate interests are capable of achieving that aim .period </s>
<s> remedies as opposed to synthesized medication managing environmental issues ,comma n .period d .period )right-paren .dot vice president of Colney Pitts ,comma Sharon Cruzon is introduced as someone whose priorities are for profit and future growth of the company managing environmental issues ,comma n .period d .period )right-paren .dot as the </s>
<s> simulation progresses ,comma Sharon 'single-quote s ethical position is revealed to be anthropocentric with only marginal concern for the rainforest ecosystem or its people .period Colney and Pitts has budgeted to develop the rainforest and they have offered a number of measures they are willing </s>
<s> to implement managing environmental issues ,comma n .period d .period )right-paren .dot as students choose which of Colney and Pitts 'single-quote measures to adopt ,comma Sharon provides various communications to ensure they do not exceed environmental issues </s>
<s> the company 'single-quote s budget constraints managing environmental issues ,comma n .period d .period )right-paren .dot </s>
<s> those who know her managing environmental issues ,comma n .period d .period )right-paren .dot </s>
<s> apparently for compensation for use of the trees ,comma as represented by Edgar Rembetski ,comma executive director of the ethnobiology and conservation team ,comma international center for ethnobotanical research icer )right-paren .dot </s>
<s> environmental justice the subject of environmental justice is fairly new ,comma having its inception as an academic field in the s managing environmental issues ,comma n .period d .period )right-paren .dot according to raven ,comma berg </s>
<s> hassenzahl environmental justice is a right of citizens of all races and creeds to a safe environment .period p .period 2 )right-paren .dot according to Bullard ,comma r .period d .period the environmental justice movement advocates against unfair decisions ,comma such as dumping toxic waste in poor and black </s>
<s> following the above line of reasoning ,comma adopting measures in the simulation that would endanger the Kikuyu tribe or its resources would go against environmental justice .period choosing environmental issues </s>
<s> options promoting environmental justice ,comma sustainable harvesting and check poaching ,comma as suggested by ecosmiles ,comma provide compensation ,comma as suggested by icer ,comma and provide health care resulted in a successful outcome managing environmental issues ,comma n .period d .period )right-paren .dot </s>
<s> the simulated exercise agrees with personal experience having to do with environmental justice and resource management .period as a Tsimshian Indian and member of the Ninilchick tribe ,comma i have personally witnessed local harvesting of trees for wood pulp and chips .period the option of </s>
<s> sustainable harvests is the one most often chosen today .period sometimes compensation is provided .period </s>
<s> health care is already provided to natives through treaty .period i perceive that the forest still suffers greatly from select logging .period due to a proliferation of parasitic beetles and fungus ,comma thouSands of additional trees ,comma sometimes miles away ,comma die off in the years following logging activities .period it is my </s>
<s> contention that the abundance of parasitic species results from nourishment provided by the number of dead trees and stumps left behind by loggers .period </s>
<s> in spite of the harm to the forest ,comma the select logging can help protect land from forest fires ,comma when logging is done along fire breaks .period the dead trees in following years are useful as firewood for local residents .period also ,comma the additional cleared land is a boon to moose and other stuff like casual </s>
<s> grazing species who thrive on willows ,comma berries ,comma and grasses .period careful balance of sustainable logging ensures the resource does not disappear .period compensation is welcome and helps pay for education .period </s>
<s> conclusion the simulation makes a strong case for taking environmental justice into account .period health care was the only one of Colney Pitts 'single-quote measures adopted .period measures to check poaching and </s>
<s> sustain harvests are ecocentric or biocentric .period the other two measures are anthropocentric .period </s>
<s> environmental issues references Bullard ,comma r .period d .period July /slash august )right-paren .dot dismantling toxic racism .period crisis ,comma </s>
<s> Huffman networking project Huffman trucking company networking systems project Jim white </s>
<s> Jeremy Trippe Henry Kroll Selma Joe </s>
<s> David Louchart Nathaniel Chapman NCT /slash 3 6 0 </s>
<s> September Richard Lechner Huffman networking project </s>
<s> Huffman trucking company networking systems project the c consulting team has been contracted by Huffman 'single-quote s trucking to redesign the company 'single-quote s technological networking systems .period the project requirements are to review the telephone and </s>
<s> network systems and recommend improvements to increase the capabilities ,comma efficiency ,comma and features .period an estimate of costs is desired .period in a page executive summary we will review and recommend changes in the categories of </s>
<s> a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation will accompany the report .period </s>
<s> executive summary Huffman trucking was founded by k .period Huffman in Cleveland ,comma Ohio .period the growth of the company was the direct result of world war ii and the increased demand for carrier services </s>
<s> between factories in the Midwest to ports on the east coast .period by the fleet had increased in size to tractors and trailers .period the business relationship forged with the u .period s .period government continues today .period </s>
<s> Huffman trucking continued to grow from internal sales and the acquisition of five eastern regional carriers .period this growth has enabled Huffman trucking to continue to be privately held .period </s>
<s> the mission of the company is to be a profitable ,comma growing ,comma adaptive company in an intensively competitive logistical services business environment .period the vision statement reads to be a model company to our stockholders ,comma employees ,comma customers and all stakeholders .period </s>
<s> Huffman networking project once completed the c consulting team will present to Huffman 'single-quote s trucking recommended networking systems enhancements and the benefits of each .period </s>
<s> the c consulting firm first order of business is to determine how to best approach the project .period the c consulting team scheduled weekly team meeting with Huffman 'single-quote s professionals to review its phone systems to better understand gaps and issues .period the consulting team reviewed </s>
<s> each of Huffman 'single-quote s business locations to determine its needs .period </s>
<s> systems Huffman trucking operates in four states ;semi-colon each state has an office and plant located there .period the phone systems are outdated and are not equipped with voice mail or caller id .period this alone can be </s>
<s> an issue if calls are not answered ,comma and shipment details are missed .period there are no consistencies in equipment type or features .period the c consulting finds this to be a problem in that if personal in the event of a locations change would have to be trained on existing phone systems at each site .period </s>
<s> installing the same type of phone equipment in each of Huffman 'single-quote s locations would solve this issue .period Huffman staff has expressed the need for the following features to be available via their new telephone system ;semi-colon caller id ,comma hold capability ,comma caller transfer ,comma conferencing ,comma calls rollover ,comma and </s>
<s> to be able to retrieve phone messages .period the consulting team after evaluating Huffman 'single-quote s existing infrastructure determined that the following standards is adequate for supporting the following telephone system upgrades .period interface standards for connecting extensions to a PBX include :colon </s>
<s> pots plain old telephone services )right-paren the common two -hyphen wire interface used in most homes .period </s>
<s> this is cheap and effective ,comma and allows almost any standard phone to be used as an extension .period </s>
<s> proprietary the manufacturer has defined a protocol .period one can only connect the manufacturer 'single-quote s sets to their PBX ,comma but the benefit is more visible information displayed and /slash or specific function buttons .period </s>
<s> Internet protocol h .period 3 2 3 and sip .period </s>
<s> Huffman networking project interfaces for connecting bxs to each other include :colon </s>
<s> proprietary protocols if equipment from several manufacturers is on site ,comma the use of a standard protocol is required .period </s>
<s> interfaces for connecting bxs to trunk lines include :colon </s>
<s> standard pots plain old telephone service )right-paren lines the common two -hyphen wire interface used in most domestic homes .period this is adequate only for smaller systems ,comma and can suffer from not being able to detect incoming calls when trying to make an outbound call .period </s>
<s> ISDN the most common digital standard for fixed telephony devices .period this can be supplied in either basic two circuit capacity )right-paren or primary or circuit capacity )right-paren </s>
<s> versions .period most medium to large companies would use primary ISDN circuits carried on t 1 or e 1 physical connections .period </s>
<s> interfaces for collecting data from the PBX :colon </s>
<s> serial interface historically used to print every call record to a serial printer .period now an application connects via serial cable to this port .period </s>
<s> network port listen mode )right-paren where an external application connects to the TCP or UDP port .period the PBX then starts streaming information down to the application .period </s>
<s> Huffman networking project network port server mode )right-paren the PBX connects to another application or buffer .period </s>
<s> file the PBX generates a file containing the call records from the PBX .period </s>
<s> protocols topologies switching </s>
<s> jimmy white /slash team c :colon week network security current security efforts in the California office ,comma Missouri plant ,comma new jersey office ,comma new jersey plant ,comma and the </s>
<s> Ohio plant there is the standard encryption options available on windows server and no firewall or antivirus protection .period </s>
<s> in the mo office ,comma oh office the use of novel provides simplified prepackaged security by providing full ,comma no ,comma or read only rights to the Netware files system .period remote access is included to enable access from outside locations ,comma and give the end user the same capabilities as if they were on the intranet .period options are available for a more secure network as well .period the remote access is managed by novell border manager ;semi-colon this package has many built in feature to provide </s>
<s> a secure VPN operating environment .period also included at these sites is Norton anti -hyphen virus protection .period </s>
<s> identify security needs all of the network security software requires updating to more modern software and Huffman networking project </s>
<s> process operation .period some of these security measures will be available as data and connectivity hardware is updated ,comma as well as the base network operating system update .period the offices and plants without firewall and antivirus protection must corrected and have protection added immediately .period </s>
<s> explain advantages and disadvantages of various approaches .period </s>
<s> there are two stances to take when viewing security issues .period </s>
<s> first the physical model ,comma which includes all hardware such as servers ,comma cables ,comma and ensuring total control over physical access to network hardware .period then the software which is presented in two models one is a share object )right-paren orientation and the other user orientation .period </s>
<s> without question physical security protocols in place must be evaluated and system security ensured .period this will include locked rooms for all servers and switches .period limiting access to these items to only those with need is also of the utmost importance ,comma providing escorts for anyone not directly managed by company will also be required .period other security measures are already in place </s>
<s> to control building and property access will provide an additional layer of overall security .period </s>
<s> next ,comma the software security should be addressed to ensure all new equipment and software is adequately updated .period user security is focuses on the rights and permissions of the individual user .period this is a part of most modern server programs ,comma when installing the server operating system the user rights will be programmed to enable access to any needed programs but only those needed .period by limiting access only are the users limited but any potential security breech at the operation nodes are limited as well .period share orientation is very simple to institute as well ,comma this model limits editing of programs by users by providing read only access to certain data .period windows security model is an example of this security model .period </s>
<s> Huffman networking project references :colon </s>
<s> introduction to networking and networking concepts .period copyright course technology .period </s>
<s> a keyword based interactive speech recognition system for embedded applications </s>
<s> speech recognition has been an important area of research during the past decades .period </s>
<s> the usage of automatic speech recognition systems is rapidly increasing among different areas ,comma such as mobile telephony ,comma automotive ,comma healthcare ,comma robotics and more .period however ,comma </s>
<s> despite the existence of many speech recognition systems ,comma most of them use platform specific and non -hyphen publicly available software .period nevertheless ,comma it is possible to develop speech recognition systems using already existing open source technology .period </s>
<s> the aim of this master 'single-quote s thesis is to develop an interactive and speaker independent speech recognition system .period the system shall be able to identify predetermined keywords from incoming live speech and in response ,comma play audio files with related information .period </s>
<s> moreover ,comma the system shall be able to provide a response even if no keyword was identified .period for this project ,comma the system was implemented using PocketSphinx ,comma a speech recognition library ,comma part of the open source sphinx technology by the Carnegie Mellon </s>
<s> during the implementation of this project ,comma the automation of different steps of the process ,comma was a key factor for a successful completion .period this automation consisted on the development of different tools for the creation of the language model and the dictionary ,comma </s>
<s> two important components of the system .period similarly ,comma the audio files to be played after identifying a keyword ,comma as well as the evaluation of the system 'single-quote s performance ,comma were fully automated .period </s>
<s> the tests run show encouraging results and demonstrate that the system is a feasible solution that could be implemented and tested in a real embedded application .period despite the good results ,comma possible improvements can be implemented ,comma such as the creation of a </s>
<s> different phonetic dictionary to support different languages .period </s>
<s> keywords :colon automatic speech recognition ,comma PocketSphinx ,comma embedded systems acknowledgments this master 'single-quote s thesis represent the completion of a journey we decided to start two years </s>
<s> Mexico for the financial support provided through the scholarships we were both granted .period </s>
<s> we would also like to thank our families for their immense support and encouragement during all this time we have been away .period finally ,comma we are grateful with life for having had the great opportunity of being able to accomplish one more goal together .period </s>
<s> list of tables introduction </s>
<s> audio files pause and stop dictation is all I have to do .period </s>
<s> this is what I was talking about .period </s>
<s> now I will begin to dictate some text .period </s>
<s> custom language model and dictionary decoding system is pretty good .period </s>
<s> i think you look pretty today .period </s>
<s> are you feeling pretty ?question-mark </s>
<s> this is pretty bad for an example .period </s>
<s> the privacy is pretty decent .period </s>
<s> text extractor operation mode the amount of text is limited and so is the vocabulary </s>
<s> text extractor operation mode limited by the imagination </s>
<s> dict-generator operation modes and generated dictionary files limited </s>
<s> the rise of robust speech recognition systems during the last two decades has triggered a number of potential applications for the technology .period </s>
<s> existing human -hyphen machine interfaces ,comma such as keyboards ,comma can be enhanced or even replaced by speech recognizers that interpret voice commands to complete a task .period </s>
this kind of applications is particularly important as speech is the main form of communication among humans ,comma for this reason ,comma it is much simpler and faster to complete a task by providing vocal instructions to a machine rather than typing commands using a keyboard .period </s>
<s> the convergence of several research disciplines such as digital signal processing ,comma machine learning and language modeling have allowed the technology to mature and currently be used in commercial applications .period </s>
<s> the current speech recognition systems are capable </s>
<s> of identifying and processing commands with many words .period however ,comma they are still unable to fully handle and understand a typical human conversation </s>
<s> the performance and accuracy of existing systems allows them to be used in simple tasks like telephone -hyphen based applications call -hyphen centers ,comma user authentication ,comma etc )right-paren .dot nevertheless ,comma as the accuracy and the vocabulary size are increased ,comma the computational resources needed </s>
<s> to implement a typical system grow as well .period the amount of computational power required to execute a fully -hyphen functional speech recognizer system can be easily supplied by a general -hyphen purpose personal computer ,comma but it might be difficult to execute the same </s>
<s> system in a portable device </s>
<s> mobile applications represent a very important area where systems can be used ,comma </s>
<s> for example in GPS navigation systems for cars ,comma where the user can provide navigation commands by voice ,comma or a speech -hyphen based song selector for a music player .period however ,comma a large amount of existing portable devices lack the processing power needed to execute </s>
<s> typically ,comma the speech recognition systems designed for embedded devices use restrictive grammars and do not support large vocabularies .period additionally the accuracy achieved by those systems tends to be lower when compared to a high -hyphen end .period this compromise </s>
<s> between processing power and accuracy is acceptable for simple applications ,comma however ,comma </s>
<s> as the technology becomes more popular ,comma the expectations regarding accuracy and vocabulary increase </s>
<s> one particular area of interest in the research community is to optimize the performance of existing speech recognizers by implementing faster ,comma lighter and smarter algorithms .period </s>
<s> for example ,comma PocketSphinx is an open source ,comma continuous speech recognition system for hand held devices developed by the Carnegie Mellon University CMU )right-paren .dot as its name suggests ,comma this system is a heavily simplified and optimized version of the existing tool </s>
<s> sphinx ,comma developed by the same university .period there are other existing speech recognizers developed for embedded devices ,comma but most of these systems are not free and their source code is not publicly available .period for this reason it is difficult to use them for </s>
<s> experimentation and research purposes </s>
<s> outline this master 'single-quote s thesis report is organized as the following :colon </s>
<s> chapter reviews part of the history of speech recognition ,comma the main challenges faced during the development of systems as well as some of the current areas of research .period </s>
<s> chapter presents some of the sources of variability within human speech and their effects on speech recognition .period also described are the main components of an system ,comma </s>
<s> how are they commonly trained and evaluated .period </s>
<s> chapter describes in detail the design and implementation of the keyword based interactive speech recognition system .period this chapter also discusses the reasons for selecting PocketSphinx as the main decoder system for this project .period </s>
<s> chapter presents the tests and results obtained after evaluating the implemented keyword based interactive speech recognition system .period </s>
<s> chapter presents the summary and conclusions of the paper and discusses possibilities of future work .period </s>
<s> as well as some of the main challenges regarding systems and the current areas of research .period </s>
<s> trials were more focused on building machines able to speak ,comma rather than listening and understanding human commands .period for example ,comma using the existing knowledge about the human vocal tract ,comma Wolfgang von Kempelen constructed an acoustic -hyphen mechanical </s>
<s> speech machine "quote with the intention of replicating speech -hyphen like sounds </s>
<s> and in they built a system able to identify isolated digits for a single speaker .period </s>
<s> the system had speaker -hyphen dependent patterns ,comma one associated to each digit ,comma which represented the first two vowel formants for each digit .period although this scheme was rather rudimentary ,comma the accuracy levels achieved were quite remarkable ,comma reaching around to </s>
<s> introduced by Oppenheim in warping ,comma also known as non -hyphen uniform time scale was another technique presented to handle differences in the speaking rate and segment length of the input signals .period this was accomplished by shrinking and stretching the input </s>
<s> system used stack decoding also known as a *asterisk decoding )right-paren </s>
<s> during the late century a technology involving neural networks and )right-paren was introduced into the speech recognition research ,comma the main idea behind this technology was to identify phonemes or even complete words using multi layer perceptions maps )right-paren .dot however ,comma program quit </s>
<s> by measuring their accuracy and ,comma most importantly ,comma their word error rate technology )right-paren ,comma as illustrated by figure </s>
<s> figure d arpa speech recognition benchmark tests .period </s>
<s> large vocabulary with more than thouSand words .period the Darpa program also helped to create a number of speech databases used to train and evaluate systems .period some of these databases are the Wall Street Journal ,comma the Switchboard and the Call home </s>
<s> databases ;semi-colon all of them are publicly available .period </s>
<s> driven by the Darpa initiatives ,comma the technology evolved and several research programs were created in different parts of the world .period the speech recognition systems eventually become very sophisticated and capable of supporting large vocabularies with </s>
<s> thouSands of words and phonemes .period however ,comma the technology for conversational speech still can be considered high ,comma with a value of near </s>
<s> become popular in order to develop machines able to speak to humans .period nonetheless ,comma </s>
<s> designing and building machines able to mimic a person seems to be a challenge for future work figure depicts important milestones of speech recognition .period </s>
<s> figure milestones and evolution of the technology .period </s>
<s> main challenges and current research areas during the past five decades ,comma the technology has faced many challenges .period some of these challenges have been solved ;semi-colon some others are still present even on the most </s>
<s> sophisticated systems .period one of the most important roadblocks of the technology is the high technology for large -hyphen vocabulary continuous speech recognition systems .period without knowing the word boundaries in advance ,comma the whole process of recognizing words and </s>
<s> sentences becomes much harder .period moreover ,comma failing to correctly identify word boundaries of words will certainly produce incorrect word hypotheses and incorrect sentences .period this means that sophisticated language models are needed in order to discard incorrect word </s>
<s> conversational and natural speeches also contain co -hyphen articulatory effects ;semi-colon in other words ,comma </s>
<s> every sound is heavily influenced by the preceding and following sounds .period in order to discriminate and correctly determine the phones associated to each sound ,comma the requires complex and detailed acoustic models .period however the use of large language </s>
<s> and acoustic models typically increases the processing power needed to run the system .period </s>
<s> during the s even some common workstations did not have enough processing power to run a large vocabulary system </s>
<s> it is well known that increasing the accuracy of a speech recognition system increases its processing power and memory requirements .period similarly ,comma these requirements can be relaxed by sacrificing some accuracy in certain applications .period nevertheless ,comma it is much </s>
<s> more difficult to improve accuracy while decreasing computational requirements .period </s>
<s> speech variability in all of its possible categories represents one of the more difficult challenges for speech recognition technology .period speech variability can be traced to many different sources such as the environment ,comma the speaker itself or the input equipment .period </s>
<s> for this reason ,comma it is critical to create robust systems that are able to overcome speech variability regardless of its source </s>
<s> another important challenge for the technology is the improvement of the training process .period for example ,comma it is important to use training data that is similar to the type of speech used in a real application .period it is also valuable to use training data that helps </s>
<s> the system to discard incorrect patterns found during the process of recognizing speech .period </s>
<s> finally ,comma it is desired to use algorithms and training sets that can adapt in order to discriminate incorrect patterns .period </s>
<s> as it can be seen ,comma there are many opportunity areas and ideas to improve the existing technology .period nevertheless ,comma we can organize these areas in more specific groups ,comma for example :colon </s>
<s> the user needs to be able to use the technology in order to find more applications .period </s>
<s> they should be able to learn new words and sounds .period </s>
<s> accuracy of speech recognition .period additionally ,comma it describes the major components of a typical system ,comma presents some of the algorithms used during the training phase and their common method of evaluation .period </s>
<s> speech variability one major challenge for speech recognition is speech variability .period due to human nature ,comma </s>
<s> a person is capable of emitting and producing a vast variety of sounds .period therefore ,comma since each person has different vocal tract configurations ,comma shapes and lengths ,comma articulatory variations )right-paren ,comma it is impossible for two persons to speak alike ,comma not even a same person can </s>
<s> reproduce a same waveform after repeating the same word .period however ,comma is not only the vocal tract configuration ,comma but different factors that can create different effects on the resulting speech signal .period </s>
<s> gender and age speaker 'single-quote s gender is one of the main sources of speech variability .period it makes a difference on the produced fundamental frequencies as men and woman have different vocal sizes .period </s>
<s> similarly ,comma age contributes to speech variability as children becomes particularly difficult since their vocal tracts and folds are smaller compared to adults .period </s>
<s> this has a direct impact on the fundamental frequency as it becomes higher than adult frequencies .period also ,comma according to it has been shown that children under ten years old ,comma </s>
<s> increase the duration of the vowels resulting in variations of the formant locations and fundamental frequencies .period in addition ,comma children might also lack of a correct pronunciation and vocabulary or even spontaneous speech that is grammatically incorrect .period </s>
<s> speaker 'single-quote s origin variations exist when recognizing native and non -hyphen native speech .period speech recognition among native speakers does not represent a significant change in the acoustics and </s>
<s> therefore there is not a big impact in the system performance .period however ,comma this might not be the same when recognizing a foreign speaker .period factors such as the level of knowledge of the non -hyphen native speaker ,comma vocabulary ,comma speaker 'single-quote s accent and pronunciation </s>
<s> represent variations of the speech signal that could impact the system 'single-quote s performance .period </s>
<s> moreover ,comma if the used speech models are only considering native speech data ,comma the system behavior could not be correct .period </s>
<s> speaker 'single-quote s style apart from the origin of the speaker ,comma speech also varies depending on the speaking style .period a speaker might reduce the pronunciation of some phonemes or syllables during </s>
<s> a casual speech .period on the other hand ,comma portions of speech containing a complex syntax and semantic tend to be articulated more carefully by speakers .period moreover ,comma a phrase can be emphasized and the pronunciation can vary due to the speaker 'single-quote s mood .period thus ,comma the </s>
<s> context also determines how a speech signal is produced .period additionally ,comma the speaker can introduce word repetitions or expressions that denote hesitation or uncertainty .period </s>
<s> rate of speech another important source of variability is the rate of speech ros )right-paren since it increases the complexity ,comma within the recognition process ,comma of mapping the acoustic signal with </s>
<s> the phonetic categories .period therefore ,comma timing plays an important role as an system can show a higher error rate due to higher speaking rate if the ros is not properly taken into account .period in contrast ,comma a lower speaking rate can either affect or not the </s>
<s> system 'single-quote s performance ,comma depending on factors such as if the speaker extremely articulates or introduces pauses within syllables .period </s>
<s> environment other sources of speech variability reside at the transmission channel ,comma for example ,comma </s>
<s> distortions to the speech signal can be introduced due to the microphone arrangement .period </s>
<s> also ,comma the background environment can produce noise that is introduced into the speech signal or even the room acoustics can modify the speech signal received by the system .period </s>
<s> from physiological to environmental factors ,comma different variations exist when speaking and between speakers ,comma such as gender or age .period therefore ,comma speech recognition deals with properly overcoming all these type of variations and their effects during the recognition </s>
<s> ASR components an system comprises several components and each of them should be carefully designed in order to be a more robust and well implemented system .period this section presents </s>
<s> the theory behind each of these components in order to better understand the entire process of the design and development of an system .period </s>
<s> front end the front end is the first component of almost every system as it is the one to see the speech signal as it comes into the system .period this component is the one in charge of </s>
<s> doing the signal processing to the received speech signal .period at the moment that the input signal arrives to the front end ,comma it had already passed through an acoustic environment ,comma </s>
<s> where the signal might have suffered from diverse effects ,comma such as additive noise or room reverberation thus ,comma a proper signal processing needs to be made in order to enhance the signal suppressing possible sources of variation and extract its features to be used </s>
<s> feature extraction the speech signal is usually translated into a spectral representation comprising acoustic features .period this is done by compressing the signal into smaller set of spectral n features ,comma </s>
<s> where the size of n most likely depends on the duration of the signal .period therefore ,comma in order to make a proper feature extraction ,comma the signal needs to be properly sampled and treated prior the extraction .period </s>
<s> the feature extraction process should be able to extract the features that are critical to the recognition of the message within the speech signal .period however ,comma the speech waveform comprises several features ,comma but ,comma the most important feature dimension is the so called </s>
<s> spectral envelope .period this envelope contains the main features of the articulatory apparatus and is considered the core of speech analysis for speech recognition </s>
<s> order to obtain these vectors .period figure depicts the series of steps required to get the feature vectors from the input speech signal .period </s>
<s> figure signal processing to obtain the mfcc vectors due to the nature of human speech ,comma the speech signal is attenuated as the frequencies increase .period also ,comma the speech signal is subject to a falloff of db when passing through </s>
<s> the vocal tract therefore ,comma the signal needs to be pre-emphasized ,comma which means that a pre-emphasis filter ,comma which is a high -hyphen pass filter ,comma is applied to the signal .period this increases the amplitude of the signal for the high frequencies while decreasing the components </s>
<s> of lower frequencies .period then ,comma having the original speech signal x ,comma a new pre-emphasized sample at time n is given by the difference </s>
<s> where a is a factor that is typically set to a value near </s>
<s> once the signal has been pre-emphasized ,comma it is partitioned into smaller frames of sizes of about to milliseconds sampled every milliseconds .period the higher the sample rate ,comma the better it is to model fast speech changes the frames are overlapped in </s>
<s> order to avoid missing information that could have been in between the limits of each frame .period this process is called windowing and it is used in order to minimize the effects of partitioning the signal into small windows .period the most used window function in </s>
<s> is the hamming window this function is described by )right-paren cos n </s>
<s> n where w is a window of size n and has a value of </s>
<s> next step is to compute the power spectrum by means of the discrete Fourier transform DFT )right-paren using the fast Fourier transform FFT )right-paren algorithm to minimize the required computation .period then ,comma using a Mel -hyphen filter bank the power spectrum is mapped onto the </s>
<s> filters where the center frequencies are equidistant on the Mel -hyphen scale .period this scale is linear up to hertz and logarithmic thereafter </s>
<s> low order coefficients ,comma also known as the Mel -hyphen cepstrum or cepstral vector this is described by the following m </s>
<s> additionally ,comma it is common to get the first and second order differentials of the cepstrum sequence to obtain the delta -hyphen cepstrum and the delta -hyphen delta cepstrum .period furthermore ,comma the delta -hyphen energy and delta -hyphen delta energy parameters ,comma which are the first and second order </s>
<s> differentials of the power spectrum are also added to the feature vector this is how ,comma </s>
<s> an feature vector typically consists of cepstral coefficients ,comma delta values and delta -hyphen delta values ,comma which gives a total of features per vector </s>
<s> linguistic models language models and n -hyphen grams after processing the input sound waves in the front end ,comma the generates a series </s>
<s> of symbols representing the possible phonemes in a piece of speech .period in order to form words using those phonemes ,comma the speech recognition system uses language modeling .period </s>
<s> this modeling is characterized by a set of rules regarding how each word is related to other words .period for example ,comma a group of words cannot be put together arbitrarily ;semi-colon they have to follow a set of grammatical and syntactical rules of a language .period this part of </s>
<s> speech processing is necessary in order to determine the meaning of a spoken message during the further stages of speech understanding </s>
<s> most systems use a probabilistic framework in order to find out how words are related to each other .period in a very general sense ,comma the system tries to determine what word is the latest one received based on a group of words previously received .period for instance ,comma </s>
<s> what would be the next word in the following sentence ?question-mark i would like to make a collect .period </s>
<s> some of the possible words would be call "quote ,comma phone -hyphen call "quote or international "quote among others .period in order to determine the most probable word in the sentence ,comma the needs to use probability density functions ,comma p w where w represents a sequence of words </s>
<s> w 1 w 2 the density function assigns a probability value to a word sequence depending on how likely it appears in a speech corpus using the same example as before ,comma the probability of the word call "quote occurring after i would like to make a collect "quote ,comma </s>
<s> p w p i "quote ,comma would "quote ,comma like "quote ,comma to "quote ,comma make "quote ,comma a "quote ,comma collect "quote ,comma call "quote )right-paren </s>
<s> if we substitute the words by mathematical expressions we have :colon </s>
<s> p w p w 1 w 2 w 3 </s>
<s> p w p w 1 p w 2 w 1 p w 3 w 2 w 1 p w 1 </s>
<s> as it can be seen ,comma the probability function requires using all of the words in a given sentence .period this might represent a big problem when using large vocabularies ,comma especially when dealing with very long sentences .period a large speech corpus would be required in </s>
<s> order to compute the probability of each word occurring after any combination of other words .period in order to minimize the need of a large corpus ,comma the n -hyphen gram model is used .period </s>
<s> this can be achieved by approximating the probability function of a given word by using a predefined number of previous words n )right-paren .dot for example ,comma using a bi-gram model ,comma </s>
<s> the probability function is approximated using just the previous word .period similarly ,comma the trigram model uses the previous two words and so on </s>
<s> using a bigram model it is easier to approximate the probability of occurrence for the word call "quote ,comma given the previous words :colon </s>
<s> p w p call "quote |pipe-symbol "quote collect "quote )right-paren p collect "quote |pipe-symbol "quote a "quote )right-paren p a "quote |pipe-symbol "quote make "quote )right-paren .dot p would "quote |pipe-symbol "quote i "quote )right-paren </s>
<s> the trigram model looks slightly more complicated as it uses the two words to compute each conditional probability :colon </s>
<s> p w p call "quote |pipe-symbol "quote collect "quote ,comma a "quote )right-paren p collect "quote |pipe-symbol "quote a "quote ,comma make "quote )right-paren .dot p like "quote |pipe-symbol "quote would "quote ,comma i "quote )right-paren </s>
<s> the n -hyphen gram model can be generalized using the following form </s>
<s> the n gram approximation becomes more effective ,comma however ,comma </s>
<s> most systems use a bigram ,comma or trigram model .period </s>
<s> of every phoneme in a language .period the English language is composed by around different phonemes however ,comma due to the co -hyphen articulation effects ,comma one phoneme is affected by the preceding and succeeding phonemes depending on the context .period the most common </s>
<s> approach to overcome this problem is by using triphones ,comma in other words each phone is modeled along its preceding and succeeding phones for example ,comma the phoneme representation for the word houseboat is :colon </s>
<s> a triphone can be seen at figure </s>
<s> figure a typical triphone structure .period </s>
<s> than one way to solve the evaluation problem ;semi-colon however the most used algorithms are the forward -hyphen backward algorithm ,comma the algorithm and the stack decoding algorithm dictionary </s>
<s> the dictionary complements the language model and the acoustic model by mapping written words into phoneme sequences .period it is important to notice that the size of the dictionary should correspond to the size of the vocabulary used by the system .period in </s>
<s> other words ,comma it should contain every single word and its phonetic representation used by the system ,comma as it can be seen at table </s>
<s> aardvark phoneme representation table example of the first words in an dictionary </s>
<s> the representation of these phonemes must correspond to the representation used by the acoustic model in order to identify words and sentences correctly .period similarly ,comma the words included in the dictionary must be the same as the words used by the language </s>
<s> model .period furthermore ,comma the dictionary should be as detailed as possible in order to improve the accuracy of the speech recognition system .period for example ,comma the dictionary used by the CMU -hyphen sphinx system is composed by more than words .period </s>
<s> found within speech by means of stochastic modeling .period hidden Markov models hmm )right-paren </s>
<s> in a Markov model ,comma the probability or likelihood of being in a given state depends only on the immediate prior state ,comma leaving earlier states out of consideration .period unlike a Markov model ,comma in where each state corresponds to an observable event ,comma in an hmm the state is </s>
<s> hidden ,comma only the output is visible .period </s>
<s> then ,comma an hmm can be described as having states ,comma observations and probabilities </s>
<s> an example of an hmm is depicted at figure the model has three states having self and forward transitions between them .period state q 1 has two observation symbols ,comma state q 2 has three observation symbols and state q 3 has four observation symbols .period each symbol </s>
<s> has its own observation probability distribution per state .period </s>
<s> figure three state hmm an hmm shall address three basic problems in order to be useful in real -hyphen world applications such as in an system the first problem is selecting a proper method to </s>
<s> determine the probability that the observation sequence o is produced by the model a ,comma b ,comma )right-paren .dot the typical approach used to solve this problem is the forward -hyphen backward procedure ,comma being the forward step the most important at this </s>
<s> stage .period this algorithm is presented at section the second problem is finding the best state sequence that produced the observation sequence for this ,comma it is necessary to use an optimality </s>
<s> criterion and learn about the model 'single-quote s structure .period one possibility is to select the states qt that are individually most likely for each t .period however ,comma this approach is not efficient as it is only providing individual results ,comma that is why the common approach to finding the </s>
<s> best state sequence is to use the algorithm .period this algorithm is later presented at this section .period </s>
<s> finally ,comma the third problem deals with the adjustment of the model parameters a ,comma b ,comma )right-paren in order to maximize the probability p o |pipe-symbol )right-paren to better determine the origin of the observation this is considered to be an optimization problem </s>
<s> where the output results to be the decision criterion .period in addition ,comma this is the point where training takes an important role in as it allows adapting the model parameters to observed training data .period therefore ,comma a common approach to solve this is by means of </s>
<s> the maximum likelihood optimization procedure .period this procedure uses separate training observation sequences or to obtain model parameters for each model </s>
<s> typical usage of hidden Markov models in ,comma various models can be made based on hmm ,comma being the most common models the </s>
<s> ones for phonemes and words .period an example of these type of models is depicted in figure where various phone hmm models are used to construct the phonetic representation of the word one and the concatenation of these models are used to construct word hmm </s>
<s> phoneme models are constrained by pronunciations from a dictionary ,comma while word models are constrained by a grammar .period phone or phoneme models are usually made up using one or more state hmm .period on the other hand ,comma word models are made up of the concatenation </s>
<s> the front end phase of any speech recognition system is in charge of converting the input sound waves into feature vectors .period nonetheless ,comma these vectors need to be converted into observation probabilities in order to decode the most probable sequence of phonemes and </s>
<s> words in the input speech .period two of the most common methods to find the observation probabilities are :colon the Gaussian probability -hyphen density functions PDFs )right-paren and most recently ,comma </s>
<s> the Gaussian observation -hyphen probability method converts an observation feature vector to into a probability function to using a Gaussian curve with a mean value and a co-variance matrix .dot in the simpler version of this method ,comma each state in the hidden </s>
<s> these probability functions and is also used to train the whole hidden Markov model framework </s>
<s> having the mean value and the co-variance matrix ,comma the probability function can be computed using the following equation :colon </s>
<s> e [left-bracket (left-paren artificial neural networks are one of the main alternatives to the Gaussian estimator in </s>
<s> phone in the language .period in this case ,comma the most common method to train the neural network is the back -hyphen propagation algorithm </s>
<s> suited to applications where amount of processing power and memory are major concerns .period </s>
<s> to identify the place where one word ends and the next one starts .period this is called the segmentation problem of speech and it is typically solved using n -hyphen gram models and the algorithm .period given a set of observed phones the purpose of the </s>
<s> decoding algorithm is to find the most probable sequence of states </s>
<s> and subsequently ,comma the most probable sequence of words in a speech </s>
<s> the search is implemented using a matrix where each cell contains the best path after the first t observations .period additionally ,comma each cell contains a pointer to the last state i in the path .period for example :colon </s>
<s> in order to compute each cell in the matrix ,comma the algorithm uses what is called the dynamic programming invariant in other words ,comma the algorithm assumes that the overall best path for the entire observation goes through state i ,comma but sometimes </s>
<s> that assumption might lead to incorrect results .period for example ,comma if the best path looks bad initially ,comma the algorithm would discard it and select a different path with a better probability up to state i .period however ,comma the dynamic programming invariant is often used in </s>
<s> order to simplify the decoding process using a recurrence rule in which each cell in the matrix can be computed using information related to the previous cell </s>
<s> i as it can be seen ,comma the cell t ,comma j ]right-bracket is computed using the previous cell t i ]right-bracket ,comma one emission probability and one transition probability it is important to emphasize that this </s>
<s> the large amount of possible triphones and the use of a large vocabulary make the speech decoding a computationally expensive task .period for this reason ,comma it is necessary to implement a method to discard low probability paths and focus on the best ones .period this </s>
<s> process is called pruning and is usually implemented using a beam search algorithm .period </s>
<s> the main purpose of this algorithm is to speed up the execution of the search algorithm and the use of a lower amount of computational resources .period however ,comma the main drawback of the algorithm is the degradation of the decoding performance </s>
<s> given a sequence of observations o ,comma for this reason it is often used as the best alternative to substitute Viterbi's method .period </s>
<s> in this case ,comma the speech recognition problem can be seen as a tree network search problem in which the branches leaving each junction represent words .period as the tree network is processed ,comma more words are appended to the current string of words in order to form the </s>
<s> most likely path an example of this tree is illustrated by figure </s>
<s> figure tree search nerwork using the a *asterisk algorithm .period </s>
<s> occurrence .period the basic operation of the a *asterisk algorithm can be simplified using the following steps </s>
<s> i .period if the end -hyphen of -hyphen sentence is not reached ,comma insert candidate into the stack ii .period if the end -hyphen of sentence is reached ,comma insert it into the stack with end -hyphen of sentence flag .period </s>
<s> probabilities of previous words GI t )right-paren and an heuristic function to predict the remaining words in the sentence .period for example :colon </s>
<s> alternatively ,comma these functions can be expressed in terms of a partial path p ,comma instead of time t .period in this case f p )right-paren is the score of the best complete path which starts at path p .period similarly GI p )right-paren represents the score from the beginning of the utterance towards </s>
<s> the partial path p .period lastly ,comma estimated the best extension from the partial path p towards the end of the sentence </s>
<s> finding an efficient and accurate heuristic function might represent a complex task .period fast matches are heuristic functions that are computationally cheap and are used to reduce the number of next possible word candidates .period nonetheless ,comma these fast match functions </s>
<s> must be checked by more accurate detailed match functions </s>
<s> training for hidden Markov models one of the most challenging phases of developing an automatic speech recognizer system is finding a suitable method to train and evaluate its hidden Markov models .period this </s>
<s> section provides an overview on the expectation -hyphen maximization algorithm and presents the forward -hyphen backward algorithm that is used for the training of an system .period </s>
<s> expectation -hyphen maximization algorithm typically ,comma the methods used to complete the training task of an are variations of the expectation -hyphen maximization algorithm em )right-paren ,comma presented by dempster in the goal of </s>
<s> the initial values of the transition and emission probabilities can be estimated ;semi-colon as the training for the hmm progresses ,comma those probabilities are re -hyphen estimated until their values converge into a good model .period the expectation -hyphen maximization algorithm uses the steepest </s>
<s> gradient ,comma also known as hill -hyphen climbing ,comma method .period this means that the convergence of the algorithm is determined by local optimality </s>
<s> robustness to the system by using noisy or contaminated training data .period in fact ,comma this has been a major research area in the field of speech recognition during the last couple of decades </s>
<s> likelihood estimates and the posterior modes transition and emission probabilities )right-paren using emission observations as training data .period the approximation of hmm probabilities can be achieved combining two parameters named :colon the forward probability alpha )right-paren and </s>
<s> backward probability beta )right-paren </s>
<s> the forward probability is defined as the probability of being in state i after the first t observations </s>
<s> similarly ,comma the backward probability is defined as the probability of visualizing observations from time t to the end t when the state is j at time t .period </s>
<s> in both cases ,comma the probabilities are calculated using an initial estimate and then the remaining values are approximated using an induction step .period for example :colon </s>
<s> and then the other values are recursively calculated :colon </s>
<s> as it can be seen ,comma the forward probability in any given state can be computed using the </s>
<s> product of the observation likelihood and the forward probabilities from time t </s>
<s> this characteristic allows this algorithm to work efficiently without drastically increasing the number of computations as n grows </s>
<s> a similar approach is used to calculate the backward probabilities using an iterative formula :colon </s>
<s> i =equals-sign 2 once that the forward and backward probabilities have been calculated ,comma both the alpha and beta factors are normalized and combined in order to approximate the new values </s>
<s> for the emission and transition probabilities .period </s>
<s> the training data needs to be sufficient to avoid having parameters with probabilities equal to zero .period furthermore ,comma using the forward -hyphen backward algorithm helps to train parameters for an existing hmm ,comma but the structure of the hmm needs to be generated manually .period </s>
<s> this could represent a major concern as finding a good method to generate the structure for an hmm could be a difficult task </s>
<s> an example of a training procedure is depicted in figure in which the forward -hyphen backward algorithm is used by sphinx .period </s>
<s> probability ,comma which is why specific metrics such as the word -hyphen error rate measurement are used to evaluate this type of systems .period this section describes the word -hyphen error rate measurement ,comma which is the most common measurement to evaluate the performance of </s>
<s> word error rate the word -hyphen error rate technology )right-paren has become the standard measurement scheme to evaluate the performance of speech recognition systems this metric allows calculating the </s>
<s> total number of incorrect words in a recognition task .period similar approaches use syllables or phonemes to calculate error rates ;semi-colon however the most used measurement units are words .period </s>
<s> the technology is calculated by measuring the number of inserted ,comma deleted or substituted words of a correct transcript with respect to a hypothesized speech string </s>
<s> w er insertions substitutions deletions t total words </s>
<s> a technology lower than percent is acceptable on most systems furthermore ,comma </s>
<s> the technology is the most common metric used to benchmark and evaluate improvements to existing automatic speech recognition systems ,comma for example ,comma when introducing improved or new algorithms </s>
<s> recognition errors .period for example ,comma the analysis of variance anova )right-paren method ,comma which allows the quantification of multiple sources of errors acting in the variability of speech signals during the last decade ,comma researchers have tried to predict speech recognition errors instead </s>
<s> of just measuring them in order to evaluate the performance of a system .period furthermore ,comma </s>
<s> the predicted error rates can be used to carefully select speech data in order to train the systems more effectively .period </s>
<s> interactive speech recognition system using PocketSphinx .period a brief description of the CMU sphinx technology and the reasons for selecting PocketSphinx is provided in this chapter .period </s>
<s> also introduced is the creation process of both the language model and the dictionary .period </s>
<s> furthermore ,comma several tools were created in order to ease the system 'single-quote s development and they are introduced in this chapter .period however ,comma more information on these tools and their usage can be found at appendix a .period </s>
<s> the CMU sphinx technology this section describes the sphinx speech recognition system that is part of the CMU sphinx technology .period also described is the PocketSphinx system which is the decoder </s>
<s> library selected for this project .period </s>
<s> sphinx sphinx is a continuous -hyphen speech and speaker -hyphen independent recognition system developed in at the Carnegie Mellon University CMU )right-paren in order to try to overcome some </s>
<s> of the greatest challenges within speech recognition :colon speaker independence ,comma continuous speech and large vocabularies this system is part of the CMU sphinx ,comma open source ,comma technology that provides a set of speech recognizers and tools that allow the </s>
<s> development of speech recognition systems .period this technology has been used to ease the development of speech recognition systems as it provides a way to avoid developers the need to start from scratch .period </s>
<s> while sphinx 3 is a continuous hmm based speech recognition system and both are written in the c programming language on the other hand ,comma sphinx 4 is a system that provides a more flexible and modular framework written in the java programming </s>
<s> language currently ,comma only sphinx 3 and sphinx 4 are still under development .period </s>
<s> overall ,comma the sphinx systems comprise typical components such as in sphinx 4 that has a front end ,comma a decoder and a linguist as well as a set of algorithms that can be used and configured depending on the needs of the project .period they provide part of the </s>
<s> needed technology ,comma that given an acoustic signal and having a properly created acoustic model ,comma a language model and a dictionary ,comma decode the spoken word sequence .period </s>
<s> PocketSphinx PocketSphinx is a large vocabulary ,comma semi -hyphen continuous speech recognition library based on CMU 'single-quote s sphinx PocketSphinx was implemented with the objective of creating a speech </s>
<s> recognition system for resource -hyphen constrained devices ,comma such as hand -hyphen held computers </s>
<s> the entire system is written in c with the aim of having fast -hyphen response and light -hyphen weight applications .period for this reason ,comma PocketSphinx can be used in live applications ,comma such as dictation .period </s>
<s> one of the main advantages of PocketSphinx over other systems is that it has been ported and executed successfully on different types of processors ,comma most notably the x 8 6 family and several arm processors similarly ,comma this has been used on different </s>
<s> operating systems such as Microsoft 'single-quote s Windows CE ,comma apple 'single-quote s iOS and Google 'single-quote s android additionally ,comma the source code of PocketSphinx has been published by the Carnegie melon university under a BSD style license .period the latest code can be retrieved from </s>
<s> in order to execute PocketSphinx ,comma typically three input files need to be specified :colon the language model ,comma the acoustic model and the dictionary .period for more information about these three components please refer to section by default ,comma the PocketSphinx </s>
<s> toolkit includes at least one language model 0 .period 5 0 0 0 )right-paren ,comma one acoustic model hub 4 k )right-paren </s>
<s> and one dictionary CMU 0 7 a .period dic )right-paren .dot nonetheless ,comma these files are intended to support very large vocabularies ,comma for example ,comma the dictionary 2 includes around words .period </s>
<s> although there are not many scientific publications to describe how the PocketSphinx library works ,comma the official web page 3 contains documentation that describes how to download and compile the source code ,comma as well as how to create example applications .period </s>
<s> can be cumbersome to navigate through the web page as some documentation applies to both PocketSphinx and sphinx while some other parts apply just to sphinx </s>
<s> at the end of the day ,comma we chose to use PocketSphinx because it provides a development framework that can be adapted to fit our requirements .period for example ,comma PocketSphinx has been tested in several embedded devices running different operating systems .period for this </s>
<s> reason ,comma we consider that is more feasible to adapt it instead of creating an from scratch .period </s>
<s> in this case ,comma we can focus on creating a keyword -hyphen based language model and a dictionary that maximizes the performance of our system .period similarly we chose to create an application in which we can measure the performance of the and interact with a computer using </s>
<s> speech ;semi-colon in the following section we will describe this application in more detail .period </s>
<s> system description the development of this project was done considering that the system can be used by a robot that is located at a museum and that can interact with people .period the robot shall be </s>
<s> able to listen and talk to a person based on identified keywords that were pronounced by the speaker .period however ,comma the robot shall never remain quiet .period this means that if no keyword is identified ,comma it shall be able to play additional information about the museum .period for this </s>
<s> project ,comma the robot was assumed to be located at the Swedish Tekniska Museet </s>
<s> therefore ,comma the system needs to be able to identify previously defined keywords from a spoken sentence and it should be speaker independent .period moreover ,comma the system needs to be an interactive speech recognition system ,comma in the sense that it shall be able to react </s>
<s> based on an identified keyword .period in this case ,comma an audio file with information related to the keyword is played in response .period otherwise ,comma if the system does not identify any keyword from the decoded speech ,comma the system shall play any other default audio file .period </s>
<s> furthermore ,comma the system needs to be portable ,comma as it has as main goal to be used by an embedded application .period therefore ,comma as explained at section PocketSphinx was selected from the CMU sphinx family of decoders as it provides the required technology </s>
<s> to develop this type of systems .period </s>
<s> by the system .period this list mostly likely shall have the words that could be pronounced more often by a speaker .period therefore ,comma they shall be selected according to the area of interest .period </s>
<s> for this project the keywords were selected according to the current exhibitions at the museum .period </s>
<s> for the definition of the keywords a keyword file was created .period this file contains the list of all the words that shall be identified from the incoming speech signal .period each line of the file shall contain the keyword ,comma followed by the number of audio files available for playing </s>
<s> whenever the keyword is identified by the system .period </s>
<s> an extra line is also added at the end of this file stating the number of available audio files that are to be played whenever the system is not able to identify a keyword .period the word default preceded by a hash symbol is used for this purpose .period an example of the </s>
<s> format of this file can be seen at figure this example has keywords to n ,comma each with five available audio files as well as ten default audio files .period </s>
<s> figure keyword file example audio files creating the audio files </s>
<s> written within a text file .period the file should first contain a line with the keyword preceded by a hash symbol and then the lines with its associated sentences .period an example of the format of this file containing keywords to n and their sentences can be seen at figure </s>
<s> free software package .period the generated audio files are placed under a folder with the name of the keyword that they belong to and they are numerically named from to n ,comma where n is the number of available audio files per keyword .period figure illustrates the process </s>
<s> of the conversion of the sentences into audio files .period </s>
<s> gnu get :colon http :colon /slash /slash www .period gnu .period org /slash software /slash get /slash </s>
<s> additionally ,comma the user must specify the desired path for the output audio files .period </s>
<s> regarding the get tool ,comma it needs to be placed in the same folder as the resp-generator tool in order generate the audio files correctly .period for Linux operating systems ,comma the get tool is installed by default ,comma nonetheless ,comma for windows operating systems ,comma the user needs </s>
<s> to download the executable and place it in the appropriate folder .period </s>
<s> the following command provides an example about how to execute the resp-generator tool :colon </s>
<s> java jar resp-generator .period jar sentences-file .period txt output path \backslash as it can be seen ,comma the first parameter corresponds to the path and name of the file containing the sentences and the second parameter is the path for the output audio files .period </s>
<s> in case that the user specifies less than two parameters ,comma the tool will display a message indicating that there was an error .period for example :colon </s>
<s> error :colon less than arguments were specified on the other hand ,comma when the two inputs are correctly specified ,comma the tool will generate the output audio files and it will display a message indicating that the tool was executed </s>
<s> keyword as well as how many default responses can be used .period </s>
<s> playing the audio files initially ,comma the system was designed to play mp 3 files ,comma but it was later changed to play ogg files as it is a completely open and free format 6 therefore ,comma in order to play </s>
<s> the audio files ,comma it is necessary to use an external library .period for that ,comma the bass audio library 7 was used .period </s>
<s> the bass audio library allows the streaming of different audio type files ,comma included ogg .period </s>
<s> moreover ,comma the library is free for non -hyphen commercial use and it is available for different programming languages ,comma including c .period furthermore ,comma one of the main advantages of this library is that everything is contained within a small dll file of only kb .period </s>
<s> custom language model and dictionary although PocketSphinx can be used in applications supporting vocabularies composed by several thouSands of words ,comma the best performance in terms of accuracy and execution </s>
<s> time can be obtained using small vocabularies after downloading and compiling the source code for PocketSphinx ,comma we proceeded to run a test program using the default language model ,comma acoustic model and dictionary .period nonetheless ,comma the word accuracy for the </s>
<s> application tended to be very low .period in other words ,comma most of the speech sentences used as inputs were not recognized correctly .period </s>
<s> after performing some research in the documentation for PocketSphinx ,comma we found out that is recommended to use a reduced language model and a custom dictionary with support for a small vocabulary .period the smaller the vocabulary ,comma the fastest PocketSphinx will </s>
<s> decode the input sentences as the search space of the algorithms used by PocketSphinx gets smaller .period similarly the accuracy of the becomes higher when the vocabulary is small .period for example ,comma there is an example application included with PocketSphinx that </s>
<s> uses a vocabulary containing only the numbers from to in this case ,comma the overall accuracy is in the range of to </s>
<s> on the other hand ,comma it is recommended to use one of the default acoustic models included with PocketSphinx .period the main reason is that the default acoustic models have been created using huge amounts of acoustic data containing speech from several persons .period </s>
<s> the CMUSphinx toolkit provides methods to adapt an existing acoustic model or even create a new one from scratch .period however ,comma in order to create a new language model ,comma </s>
<s> it is required to have large quantities of speech data from different speakers and the corresponding transcript for each training sentence .period for dictation applications it is recommended to have at least hours of recordings of speakers 8 </s>
<s> keyword -hyphen based language model generation the CMUSphinx toolkit provides a set of applications aimed to help the developer during the creation of new language models ,comma this group of applications is called the </s>
<s> web browser and the tool generates a language model .period however ,comma this tool is intended to be used with small text corpora containing a couple of hundreds of sentences at the most .period this limitation became a problem for us ,comma as most of the times our web browser </s>
<s> probably the simplest way of generating the text corpus is to write a number of sentences by hand .period nevertheless ,comma this method can become unfeasible very easily ,comma especially when the language model generation requires a fairly high amount of input sentences .period for </s>
<s> this reason ,comma it is preferred to use a different method in order to generate the text corpus automatically .period </s>
<s> in order to optimize the generation of the language models we created a tool called text extractor this tool creates a text corpus based on web texts from the Internet .period </s>
<s> more specifically ,comma this tool downloads text from web pages based on a set of input uniform resource locators URLs )right-paren .dot additionally ,comma the text extractor filters the raw text ,comma </s>
<s> expands abbreviations and acronyms ,comma converts numbers to their word representation and removes special characters ,comma among other things .period </s>
<s> furthermore ,comma as illustrated at figure the text extractor can receive a list of keywords in order to insert into the text corpus only the sentences containing keywords .period this is particularly helpful to keep the language model compact even when the number of </s>
<s> sentences in the selected web pages is large .period </s>
<s> text corpus and the name of the output file ,comma for example :colon </s>
<s> java jar text extractor .period jar URL _underscore list .period txt corpus .period txt in this case ,comma the result of executing the tool will be a text corpus called corpus .period txt .period </s>
<s> this file will include a list of sentences downloaded from the list of URLs .period additionally ,comma </s>
<s> the sentences will not contain punctuation symbols ,comma such as commas and colons ,comma and all of the numbers will be replaced by its word representation .period </s>
<s> include sentences that contain one or more keywords .period for example :colon </s>
<s> java jar text extractor .period jar URL _underscore list .period txt corpus .period txt keyword _underscore list .period txt in both operation modes ,comma the tool will display an error message if it finds a problem </s>
<s> during its execution .period otherwise ,comma a success message will be displayed when the tool has completed its execution successfully .period for example :colon </s>
<s> the performance of several language models in order to choose the most appropriate one given the requirements of our application .period please refer to chapter in order to find out more about the evaluation of different language models .period </s>
<s> this reason ,comma it is important to choose the correct version of the tool before downloading it from the repository .period currently ,comma there is an online document 9 describing the main characteristics of the toolkit .period however ,comma it is not very detailed and the procedure to use </s>
<s> the tools is inconsistently described in several parts .period </s>
<s> the text extractor tool uses a public library called boiler pipe in order to download text from web pages .period this library is publicly available and can be downloaded from the repository for Google code projects 1 0 </s>
<s> custom dictionary generation although the default dictionary file CMU 0 7 a .period dic )right-paren integrated with PocketSphinx includes more than words ,comma it is not feasible to use it in a small vocabulary application .period </s>
<s> easier and perform the speech decoding faster .period </s>
<s> the CMU 0 7 a dictionary from PocketSphinx as inputs .period similarly ,comma the tool generates a custom dictionary containing just the subset of words supported by the language model .period </s>
<s> this process can be seen at figure </s>
<s> figure dictionary generator tool besides the custom dictionary file ,comma the dict generator tool generates a text file containing a list of words not found in the CMU 0 7 a dictionary .period when one word is not found in the </s>
<s> dictionary ,comma it can be because of two main reasons as specified in table </s>
<s> cause the word is written incorrectly or is written in another language .period </s>
<s> solution the text corpus used to generate the language model needs to be edited </s>
<s> to remove typos and words in other languages .period </s>
<s> the user needs to edit the custom dictionary to include the missing word manually .period </s>
<s> the word is written correctly ,comma but is not included in the dictionary .period </s>
<s> table dictionary words not found :colon causes and solutions most of the times ,comma the words in the language model that are not found in the CMU 0 7 a dictionary contain typos .period for this reason ,comma there is no need to edit the custom dictionary </s>
<s> the words in the custom vocabulary .period for example :colon </s>
<s> java jar dict generator .period jar CMU 0 7 a .period dic corpus .period vocab in this operation mode ,comma the tool will generate a custom dictionary using a default name output dict .period dic )right-paren and a file containing words not found in the input dictionary </s>
<s> in the second operation mode ,comma the tool receives a third parameter .period this allows the user to specify a name and path for the custom dictionary :colon </s>
<s> java jar dict generator .period jar CMU 0 7 a .period dic corpus .period vocab corpus .period dic the main difference with respect to mode operation one is that the output file will be called corpus .period dic and it will be stored in the path specified by the user .period the other </s>
<s> output file will have the same name ,comma but it will be stored in the same location as the custom output dictionary .period for both operation modes ,comma the tool will display a message when it finished its execution .period for example :colon </s>
<s> custom dictionary was created successfully !exclamation-point </s>
<s> the dict generator tool was written in java in order to allow the user to execute it in different platforms .period this is consistent with other tools developed during the development of this project .period </s>
<s> support for other languages English is the default language used during the development of this project .period however ,comma </s>
<s> there are language models ,comma acoustic models and dictionaries available for other popular languages ,comma such as ,comma German ,comma french and mandarin .period all this models and dictionaries are publicly available and can be downloaded from the PocketSphinx repository 1 1 </s>
<s> tools .period the only difference is that the web pages used as input need to be written in the desired language .period </s>
<s> the generation of a new phonetic dictionary might be much more complex as every word supported by the language model needs to be included in the dictionary .period it is important to mention that every word needs to be translated into its corresponding arpa bet </s>
<s> representation in order to be used by PocketSphinx .period for example ,comma table illustrates the first five words in a phonetic dictionary for Spanish .period </s>
<s> http :colon /slash /slash SourceForge .period net /slash projects /slash CMUSphinx /slash files /slash acoustic %percent 2 0 and %percent 2 0 language %percent 2 0 models /slash </s>
<s> table phonetical dictionary building a detailed phonetic dictionary for a language can be a very time -hyphen consuming and challenging task as the developer needs to demonstrate a very good understanding of the </s>
<s> language and its pronunciation .period in fact ,comma it is recommended to get help from a group of linguists in order to aid the developers during the generation of the dictionary .period </s>
<s> in contrast ,comma a new acoustic model can be trained automatically ,comma provided there are enough recordings acoustic database )right-paren and the corresponding transcript for every single sentence is available .period PocketSphinx includes a tool called begin that is intended </s>
<s> to be used to train new acoustic models .period the tool receives four inputs that can be seen at figure </s>
<s> figure begin tool the inputs include the following files :colon </s>
<s> besides downloading and compiling the begin tool ,comma it is required to have Perl and python installed in the same computer in order to execute begin .period for more information regarding the installation and the configuration of the begin tool ,comma </s>
<s> please refer to the tutorial 1 2 published by the Carnegie melon university .period </s>
<s> decoding system the system was written entirely in c in order to be able to use the PocketSphinx application programming interface API )right-paren .dot Microsoft visual studio was used as the </s>
<s> integrated development environment ide )right-paren .dot this section describes the inputs ,comma outputs as well as the main algorithm used by the system to perform the decoding of the speech signal .period in addition the interaction between the decoder system and all </s>
<s> the tools that were developed during its implementation is explained at the end of this section .period </s>
<s> inputs the acoustic model ,comma the language model and the dictionary are the three main inputs the system requires in order to perform the decoding of the incoming speech signal .period </s>
<s> for this project ,comma the default acoustic model included with PocketSphinx is the one used by the system .period on the other hand ,comma a new language model as well as a new dictionary were created from scratch following the steps specified at sections and </s>
<s> outputs the system outputs the decoded incoming speech signal by providing a hypothesis that best describes the speaker 'single-quote s utterance .period however ,comma since it is a keyword -hyphen based system ,comma </s>
<s> it also outputs the identified keyword .period in addition ,comma a file containing the obtained results during the system execution is created .period the file contains information from the obtained hypothesis and keywords for every speech signal that was decoded .period </s>
<s> begin tool :colon http :colon /slash /slash CMUSphinx .period SourceForge .period net /slash wiki /slash tutorial algorithm the following describes the decoding process of the system which comprises four </s>
<s> main states :colon ready ,comma listening ,comma decoding and scanning the states represent the steps needed to transform the live speech signal into a word sequence and properly identify a keyword .period </s>
<s> a state shall only start after the completion of the previous state .period after the final state has been reached ,comma the system will return to the first state without the need of restarting the system .period this process is described by the following and is illustrated at figure </s>
<s> signal .period at this state the available keywords and their number of available audio files are also loaded into the system .period </s>
<s> once the startup has finished the system will play the message :colon I'm listening "quote and it will indicate that is ready to start listening to the speaker .period this message is only played during the system 'single-quote s startup ,comma the following times only the word ready </s>
<s> determined by verifying if one second has elapsed since the last spoken utterance .period </s>
<s> once a long silence has been determined ,comma the system will stop listening and the decoding process will then take place .period otherwise ,comma the system will continue listening until the end of the speaker 'single-quote s utterance is determined .period the system will indicate </s>
<s> when it stops listening by printing stopped listening on screen .period </s>
<s> language model and the dictionary ,comma so let's go .period </s>
<s> please ,comma let's refer to section for more information on the linguist .period </s>
<s> audio file from the default ones is randomly selected and played .period after the audio file has been played ,comma the system will be ready to listen to the speaker again .period </s>
<s> there is no need to restart the program to continue its execution .period </s>
<s> in order to terminate the program 'single-quote s execution the speaker can either say the word out or manually exit the program .period the system will play the message :colon bye "quote and the results file ,comma including the hypothesis and keywords identified ,comma will be created .period </s>
<s> figure decoding algorithm system components in order to better illustrate the interaction between the main system and all developed </s>
<s> tools ,comma a component diagram is depicted at figure as it can be seen in this diagram ,comma </s>
<s> the entire system comprises several files ,comma four tools and the decoder in order to properly operate .period some of the files are generated by the user and others are the result of the execution of some of the tools .period </s>
<s> figure component diagram the decoder ,comma which is the main system ,comma uses the language model ,comma the custom dictionary and the acoustic responses to operate .period this outputs are result of the execution </s>
<s> of three tools :colon the text extractor ,comma the dict generator and the resp-generator .period however ,comma </s>
<s> at the same time ,comma this tools require that the user properly generates the following files :colon </s>
<s> the keyword file ,comma the URL list ,comma the master dictionary and the file with the response sentences .period </s>
<s> on the other hand ,comma the revaluator tool uses the output of the main system ,comma the log file ,comma </s>
<s> as well as the verification file to properly execute .period finally ,comma this tool generates the performance report that is used to evaluate the system 'single-quote s performance .period </s>
<s> performance and accuracy of the keyword based interactive speech recognition system .period </s>
<s> furthermore ,comma it includes a set of results obtained using different language models and phonetic dictionaries .period additionally ,comma this chapter includes a list of tests performed to verify the correct operation of a set of java tools developed during this project .period </s>
<s> was evaluated in order to quantify its accuracy and error rate .period as the main purpose of the system is to identify keywords in the input utterances ,comma it is not practical to measure the word error rate technology )right-paren as in other applications .period in this case ,comma we </s>
<s> many tools developed using PocketSphinx evaluate their accuracy by reading audio streams files )right-paren .dot in other words ,comma the audio files are directly loaded into memory and decoded by the tool .period this approach ,comma as depicted in figure can be somehow </s>
<s> unrealistic as the audio decoded by the is absent of ambient noise or distortions caused by the environment .period </s>
<s> allowed testing the application in a realistic environment although the accuracy might be slightly lower .period figure illustrates the mentioned configuration .period </s>
<s> to be modified to alternate between the microphone and the line -hyphen in device .period figure illustrates the automation of the evaluation process .period </s>
<s> test environment and setup the first step in the testing process was selecting a list of keywords to generate a language model and the dictionary to be used by the application .period this was achieved </s>
<s> by selecting keywords from the Swedish Tekniska Museet museum of science and technology )right-paren web page .period it is important to mention that some keywords are actually composed by two words in order to test the application using more complex phrases .period </s>
<s> table comprises the list of keywords .period </s>
<s> mechanical workshop steam engine mechanical alphabet </s>
<s> industrial revolution radio station interactive </s>
<s> telephone technology table keyword list </s>
<s> figure test sentences after generating the set of test sentences ,comma the next phase consisted in generating a language model and a dictionary using a list of web pages URLs )right-paren .dot during the first set </s>
<s> of tests we only used web pages from the Tekniska Museet in order to build a very simple language model .period after evaluating the accuracy of the first set of tests ,comma we proceeded to add more URLs into the list in order to generate more elaborated language models .period </s>
<s> in this case ,comma several articles from Wikipedia were used as most articles contain large quantities of well -hyphen written sentences .period </s>
<s> figure revaluator tool table depicts an example of the output report using keywords .period as it can be seen ,comma </s>
<s> steam engine radio station energy </s>
<s> overall metrics matches sentences </s>
<s> table overall test results note .period for test number the input text corpus was not filtered .period in other words ,comma it included some sentences that did not contain keywords .period this is why the vocabulary size </s>
<s> in test number is smaller but the number of URLs reMained the same .period </s>
<s> keep the vocabulary size around words in order to maintain the execution time low .period </s>
<s> during the final round of tests ,comma the application managed to get a keyword decoding accuracy of in other words ,comma around of the keywords in the test sentences were decoded correctly while maintaining an average execution time of around </s>
<s> as it was explained previously ,comma this could affect the overall performance of the application adversely .period </s>
<s> finally ,comma the system was executed and tested using two workstations ;semi-colon table illustrates the main characteristics of the systems and their architecture .period </s>
<s> system dell studio dell </s>
<s> processor Intel core duo t 6 5 0 0 Intel core duo p 8 6 0 0 </s>
<s> table computer specifications alternatively ,comma during the preliminary stages of development ,comma the application was also compiled and run on Linux using OpenSuse and the same dell workstation </s>
<s> with an external hard drive .period however ,comma during the latter stages we continued the development of the application using windows vista and visual studio </s>
<s> auxiliary java tools in order to verify the correct operation of tools such as the text extractor ,comma resp-generator and dict generator ,comma a list of tests was designed .period this verification phase involved testing </s>
<s> all of the different operation modes for each tool as well as verifying their output files .period </s>
<s> the following sections describe the different tests performed for each tool .period </s>
<s> text extractor tool for the text extractor tool ,comma two operation modes were tested .period for the first operation mode it was verified that the tool was able to generate a text corpus from a list of URLs .period </s>
<s> furthermore it was verified that the list of sentences included in the corpus was not filtered based on a list of keywords .period figure shows the list of messages displayed in the command line after executing the tool :colon </s>
<s> figure text extractor operation mode similarly ,comma the second operation mode was tested .period in this case ,comma it was verified that the list of sentences included in the text corpus was filtered based on a list of given keywords .period </s>
<s> figure shows the list of messages displayed in the command line after executing the tool :colon </s>
<s> difference between the operation modes .period in the first mode ,comma the user does not define a name for the generated dictionary ,comma while in the second mode the user specifies a path and a name for the custom dictionary .period in both cases the set of messages shown in the </s>
<s> command line is the same .period this can be visualized in figure similarly ,comma figure shows the custom dictionary generated using each operation mode .period as it can be seen ,comma </s>
<s> operation mode generates a dictionary with a default name output dict .period dic )right-paren .dot </s>
<s> figure dict generator operation modes and figure generated dictionary files resp-generator tool </s>
<s> a similar test was designed for the resp-generator tool .period in this case the java application has only one operation mode .period the user needs to provide the name of a file containing the sentences to be used as acoustic responses from the system .period additionally the </s>
<s> user must specify the path where the audio files will be stored after executing the tool .period </s>
<s> this can be seen at figure </s>
<s> correctly given three input parameters .period the first parameter corresponds to a log file generated by the application .period the second parameter is a text file listing the keywords corresponding to each decoded utterance .period finally ,comma the third parameter is the </s>
<s> name of the generated output report .period figure shows the set of messages displayed in the command window when the tool was executed .period </s>
<s> figure revaluator :colon execution messages chapter summary </s>
<s> this section recapitulates the main lessons learned and conclusions gathered during the development of the keyword based interactive automatic speech recognition system .period </s>
<s> additionally ,comma it highlights the main areas of improvement and possible topics for future work .period </s>
<s> conclusions the automatic speech recognition technology has been in constant development during the last fifty years .period the possibility of recognizing and understanding human speech has </s>
<s> driven numerous research groups to develop powerful and complex systems able to use and handle extensive vocabularies .period furthermore ,comma a number of commercial tools are now available to be used in automotive and telephone -hyphen based applications ,comma among others .period </s>
<s> however ,comma the day when a machine is able to understand continuous and spontaneous speech still seems to be far away in the future .period </s>
<s> the accuracy and performance of modern systems is strictly related to the size of its vocabulary ,comma the complexity of the algorithms used to decode the input speech and finally ,comma the size of the speech corpus utilized to train the system .period for these reasons ,comma the </s>
<s> most accurate systems are also the ones that require more computational power in order to work correctly .period one important research area is related to the development of fast and efficient algorithms that decrease the processing power needed to execute </s>
<s> beam -hyphen search algorithms to decode speech .period </s>
<s> although the task of recognizing and understanding speech is linked to several different research areas such as language modeling and digital signal processing ,comma the main building blocks of an system are now well defined .period thus ,comma a research group can focus on </s>
<s> improving one or more particular areas ,comma such as the front end or the speech decoder .period </s>
<s> there is a small amount of open -hyphen source systems used by the research community to implement and compare new solutions in the domain against established benchmarks .period </s>
<s> using available tools such as PocketSphinx ,comma proved to be a good strategy as it simplified the process of creating an interactive application .period in this regard ,comma even though PocketSphinx is a free open -hyphen source library ,comma its documentation is still somehow incomplete </s>
<s> compared to other sphinx decoders ,comma most notably sphinx nonetheless ,comma one of the main advantages of PocketSphinx is that it can be compiled for different platforms ,comma such as windows ,comma Linux and android .period </s>
<s> furthermore ,comma PocketSphinx was designed to handle live audio applications such as dictation .period for this reason ,comma it is the fastest decoder of the CMU sphinx family .period nevertheless ,comma </s>
<s> it is also one of the least flexible compared to sphinx which is written in java .period </s>
<s> consequently ,comma trying to change or improve the algorithms used by PocketSphinx can be a troublesome and complex task .period in fact ,comma in most applications ,comma the library is used without any changes made by the developers .period </s>
<s> although PocketSphinx can be used on large -hyphen vocabulary applications ,comma the overall best performance in terms of execution time can be reached using small vocabularies .period in general ,comma as the vocabulary gets smaller ,comma the execution time gets lower as well .period during </s>
<s> the development of our keyword -hyphen based application ,comma we tested different language models and phonetic dictionaries in order to maximize the overall accuracy .period at the final round of tests ,comma the application managed to get a keyword decoding accuracy of </s>
<s> while maintaining an average execution time of around seconds per sentence .period </s>
<s> since the early stages of development of the system ,comma we aimed to develop tools to automate the process of generating the configuration files needed to run the recognizer .period </s>
<s> automation ,comma it is possible to change the set of keywords and generate the corresponding configuration files in no more than a couple of hours .period furthermore ,comma it is possible to run the application and use the new files without re -hyphen compiling the project .period </s>
<s> future work although we managed to successfully complete the development of the keyword based system ,comma there are some areas that can be improved in order to enhance its operation .period </s>
<s> for example ,comma the application can be updated to support more languages .period in this regard ,comma </s>
<s> the main focus would be the creation of a phonetic dictionary for the desired language .period </s>
<s> unfortunately ,comma this can become an extensive task ,comma as it requires a deep understanding of the given language .period </s>
<s> even though the overall accuracy of the speech recognizer application is fairly high ,comma it still can be improved .period for this reason ,comma more testing is needed in order to identify areas of improvement .period for example ,comma it would be beneficial to quantify the effect of speech </s>
<s> variability ,comma such as the speaker 'single-quote s accent ,comma on the overall accuracy of the system .period </s>
<s> finally ,comma it would be recommended to cross -hyphen compile the project in order to be run on an embedded system .period during the development of the project we were able to execute the speech recognition application using windows and Linux ,comma however it would be interesting </s>
<s> to evaluate the application 'single-quote s performance using other operating systems and different hardware .period </s>
<s> PhD thesis ,comma Virginia Polytechnic institute and state university ,comma </s>
<s> computer speech language ,comma </s>
<s> efficient algorithms for speech recognition .period </s>
<s> Sun Microsystems ,comma inc .period Mountain View ,comma CA ,comma USA ,comma page </s>
<s> developed during the speech recognition project .period similarly they describe how to install the PocketSphinx project and how to generate files to run the main application .period it is strongly recommended to follow the instructions section by section in order to take </s>
<s> advantage of the given examples and the main program .period </s>
<s> a .period 1 installation of the speech recognizer project in order to install PocketSphinx and the recognizer application ,comma the user must </s>
<s> seven new folders will be created as seen at figure a .period 1 .dot </s>
<s> figure a .period 1 :colon project folder structure go to the folder sphinxbase inside the project folder and then open the sphinxbase .period file using visual studio .period </s>
<s> a .period 2 running the speech recognition application once that PocketSphinx has been installed correctly ,comma the user can execute the recognizer </s>
<s> by specifying an acoustic model ,comma a language model and a dictionary .period the following set of steps must be performed in order to execute the application :colon </s>
<s> systems in order to solve a problem "quote .dot at the same time ,comma as seen at figure a .period 3 ,comma </s>
<s> some diagnostic messages will be displayed .period </s>
<s> figure a .period 3 :colon decoding example after the computer completes playing the response message ,comma it will show ready .period in the command window again .period then the user is supposed to say another phrase .period </s>
<s> the whole process is repeated until the user commands the computer to close the application .period this is achieved by saying the command "quote out "quote .dot </s>
<s> figure a .period 4 :colon decoding example a .period 3 generating a new language model </s>
<s> in order to generate a new language model the user should create two text files :colon </s>
<s> for example ,comma the word NASA can be found many times in the URL :colon </s>
<s> seen at figure a .period 5 ,comma where each keyword has an associated URL .period </s>
<s> figure a .period 5 :colon keywords and URLs for simplification purposes ,comma the files keyword list .period txt and URL list .period txt can be edited in order to specify keywords and URLs .period these two files are located in the root folder </s>
<s> java jar text extractor .period jar URL _underscore list .period txt generated files \backslash language models \backslash corpus .period txt keyword _underscore list .period txt </s>
<s> a .period 4 generating a new dictionary the process of generating a new dictionary is very straightforward as only one command </s>
<s> needs to be executed .period assuming that the user has one command window open ,comma the following command has to be executed in the project \backslash tools folder :colon </s>
<s> a .period 5 generating a new set of predefined responses a new set of predefined responses audio files )right-paren can be created using the resp-generator </s>
<s> tool when the set of keywords is changed .period the tool receives a text file containing a variable number of predefined responses for each keyword .period an example of this file is presented at figure a .period 6 .dot </s>
<s> as it can be seen ,comma each keyword is preceded by a hash character and succeeded by a number of sentences .period it is important to mention that a list of default sentences is included although default is not a keyword .period these sentences are used as responses </s>
<s> in case the speech recognizer application is not able to decode any keyword from the given input utterance .period </s>
<s> then ,comma the resp-generator tool can be used to create the new sound files using the following procedure :colon </s>
<s> java jar resp-generator .period jar keyword _underscore responses .period txt generated files \backslash acoustic responses \backslash where :colon </s>
<s> folder should contain a list of folders whose names corresponds to each keyword ,comma as in figure a .period 7 .dot inside each folder ,comma there should be a number of mp 3 files containing the responses .period </s>
<s> figure a .period 7 :colon responses structure using a file converter tool such as audacity ,comma convert all the generated mp 3 files into ogg format .period make sure the new files have the same names as the mp 3 files .period </s>
<s> figure a .period 8 :colon ogg files a .period 6 running the speech recognizer using the newly created </s>
<s> files after generating a new language model and a new dictionary ,comma the files created in the language models folder need to be copied to the PocketSphinx folder .period similarly ,comma the </s>
<s> acoustic responses need to be incorporated into PocketSphinx in order to be used by the recognizer application .period this can be done using the command line .period assuming that the current folder is project \backslash tools ,comma the user should execute the following </s>
<s> copy generated files \backslash acoustic responses \backslash *asterisk PocketSphinx \backslash bin \backslash debug \backslash response after the files have been placed in the corresponding PocketSphinx folder ,comma the recognizer </s>
<s> application can be run using the newly created files .period first the user should go to the project \backslash PocketSphinx \backslash bin \backslash debug folder and then execute the recognizer :colon </s>
<s> first the user needs to create a verification file containing the list of keywords used in each utterance that the recognizer tool had to decode .period for example ,comma let 'single-quote s suppose that just utterances were used the last time the recognizer tool was run .period the verification </s>
<s> file should look like figure a .period 9 .dot </s>
<s> last time it was run .period in order to generate the results file the user needs to follow the next sequence of steps .period </s>
<s> women mechanical alphabet overall metrics </s>
<s> all the tools created during the development of this project .period </s>
<s> recognizer file :colon recognizer .period c description :colon adapted from PocketSphinx _underscore continuous /slash continuous .period c in order to develop </s>
<s> an interactive system .period the system reacts based on identified keywords "quote incoming speech signal .period an ogg audio file with information related to the keyword identified .period additional information is played </s>
<s> whenever a keyword is not identified we can add it to the dictionary and use it in a few sentences .period </s>
<s> program quit and ping scanner 65 bytes from start to finish .period </s>
<s> this voice recognition software is useful for taking dictation .period </s>
<s> i would like to say that it is time to update my status ,comma so let's do it !exclamation-point </s>
<s> 3 .dot Python's tokenizer /slash compiler combo will need to be updated to </s>
<s> work as follows :colon </s>
<s> 1 .dot read the file </s>
<s> 2 .dot decode it into Unicode assuming a fixed per -hyphen file encoding </s>
<s> 3 .dot convert it into a UTF -hyphen 8 byte string </s>
<s> 4 .dot tokenize the UTF -hyphen 8 content </s>
<s> 5 .dot compile it ,comma creating Unicode objects from the given Unicode data </s>
<s> and creating string objects from the Unicode literal data </s>
<s> by first re-encoding the UTF -hyphen 8 data into 8 -hyphen bit string data </s>
<s> using the given file encoding </s>
<s> note that Python identifiers are restricted to the ASCII </s>
<s> subset of the encoding ,comma and thus need no further conversion </s>
<s> after step 4 .period </s>
<s> 3 .dot Python's tokenizer /slash compiler combo will need to be updated to </s>
<s> work as follows :colon </s>
<s> 1 .dot read the file </s>
<s> 2 .dot decode it into Unicode assuming a fixed per -hyphen file encoding </s>
<s> 3 .dot convert it into a UTF -hyphen 8 byte string </s>
<s> 4 .dot tokenize the UTF -hyphen 8 content </s>
<s> 5 .dot compile it ,comma creating Unicode objects from the given Unicode data </s>
<s> and creating string objects from the Unicode literal data </s>
<s> by first re-encoding the UTF -hyphen 8 data into 8 -hyphen bit string data </s>
<s> using the given file encoding </s>
<s> note that Python identifiers are restricted to the ASCII </s>
<s> subset of the encoding ,comma and thus need no further conversion </s>
<s> after step 4 .period </s>
<s> 3 .dot Python's tokenizer /slash compiler combo will need to be updated to </s>
<s> work as follows :colon </s>
<s> 1 .dot read the file </s>
<s> 2 .dot decode it into Unicode assuming a fixed per -hyphen file encoding </s>
<s> 3 .dot convert it into a UTF -hyphen 8 byte string </s>
<s> 4 .dot tokenize the UTF -hyphen 8 content </s>
<s> 5 .dot compile it ,comma creating Unicode objects from the given Unicode data </s>
<s> and creating string objects from the Unicode literal data </s>
<s> by first re-encoding the UTF -hyphen 8 data into 8 -hyphen bit string data </s>
<s> using the given file encoding </s>
<s> note that Python identifiers are restricted to the ASCII </s>
<s> subset of the encoding ,comma and thus need no further conversion </s>
<s> after step 4 .period </s>
<s> the attributes set with this function will be ignored if either the "quote use -hyphen underline "quote or "quote use -hyphen markup "quote attributes is True .period </s>
<s> the arguments shown above are merely the most common ones ,comma described below in Frequently Used Arguments (left-paren hence the slightly odd notation in the abbreviated signature )right-paren .dot The full function signature is the same as that of the Popen constructor -hyphen this functions passes all supplied arguments directly through to that interface .period </s>
<s> Kitcosilver is a big step forward in silver coverage by Kitco .period </s>
<s> besides charts ,comma there is silver news ,comma commentaries ,comma press releases ,comma silver equities performance and much more .period </s>
<s> hello ,comma and welcome to the hobby pages of web designer ,comma photographer ,comma musician ,comma fisherman ,comma and software engineer ,comma Henry "quote Hank "quote Kroll III .period </s>
<s> this site is designed for any browser ,comma but we recommend Firefox 4 +plus-symbol or SeaMonkey 2 .dot 1 +plus-symbol to see CSS transitions .period </s>
<s> experienced crewmen are needed for fishing on the west side of Cook Inlet in SouthCentral Alaska .period </s>
<s> sockeye (left-paren red )right-paren and chinook (left-paren king )right-paren salmon season starts to pick up in early June and tapers off in July .period </s>
<s> chum (left-paren dog )right-paren and coho (left-paren silver )right-paren salmon continue to run through August .period </s>
<s> call (left-paren 907 )right-paren 283 -hyphen 1456 to speak to the captain ,comma Hank Kroll ,comma for taxi arrangements and employment opportunities .period </s>
<s> during off -hyphen time ,comma playing ,comma composing ,comma and recording music on the keyboard is a rewarding activity .period </s>
<s> several albums are available for free download .period </s>
<s> photography is an enjoyable hobby ,comma but there is also editing and color correction .period </s>
<s> click the image to view the photo album .period </s>
<s> hi .period </s>
<s> my name is Henry .period </s>
<s> during off time ,comma I enjoy listening to the radio .period </s>
<s> my albums are available on iTunes .period </s>
<s> I like playing the keyboard .period </s>
<s> experienced crewmen are useful for fishing .period </s>
<s> we could always use experienced hands .period </s>
<s> work on computer voice dictation is really coming along .period </s>
<s> I took the latest in speaker -hyphen independent algorithms ,comma fine -hyphen tuned them ,comma and packaged them up behind a simplistic interface ,comma so anybody can use it .period </s>
<s> just start talking .period </s>
<s> there is no menu .period </s>
<s> use voice commands like File ...ellipsis save ,comma File ...ellipsis close ,comma etc .period </s>
<s> it can learn new grammar and languages without any tedious voice training .period </s>
<s> just type a few sentences in the box ,comma or paste in gobs of text and hit the "quote Learn "quote button .period </s>
<s> the language model that ships with this download Is likely to be very limited .period </s>
<s> our excuse is that being pared down as it is will save memory while providing room to more easily learn your manner of speaking .period </s>
<s> if it does not work very well at first ,comma use the keyboard to manually edit the text in the box and hit the "quote Learn "quote button .period </s>
<s> it will try to do better next time !exclamation-point </s>
<s> A martingale is any of a class of betting strategies that originated from and were popular in 18th century France .period </s>
<s> the simplest of these strategies was designed for a game in which the gambler wins his stake if a coin comes up heads and loses it if the coin comes up tails .period </s>
<s> the strategy had the gambler double his bet after every loss ,comma so that the first win would recover all previous losses plus win a profit equal to the original stake .period </s>
<s> the martingale strategy has been applied to roulette as well ,comma as the probability of hitting either red or black is close to 50 %percent .period </s>
<s> since a gambler with infinite wealth will ,comma almost surely ,comma eventually flip heads ,comma the martingale betting strategy was seen as a sure thing by those who advocated it .period </s>
<s> of course ,comma none of the gamblers in fact possessed infinite wealth ,comma and the exponential growth of the bets would eventually bankrupt "quote unlucky "quote gamblers who chose to use the martingale .period </s>
<s> it is therefore a good example of a Taleb distribution the gambler usually wins a small net reward ,comma thus appearing to have a sound strategy .period </s>
<s> however ,comma the gambler's expected value does indeed remain zero because the small probability that he will suffer a catastrophic loss exactly balances with his expected gain .period </s>
<s> the likelihood of catastrophic loss may not even be very small .period </s>
<s> the bet size rises exponentially .period </s>
<s> this ,comma combined with the fact that strings of consecutive losses actually occur more often than common intuition suggests ,comma can bankrupt a gambler quickly .period </s>
<s> typical registration requirements require you to enter a login name and password .period </s>
<s> once you exit the registration page ,comma we will send you an email to confirm your registration .period </s>
<s> have a nice day !exclamation-point </s>
<s> did you have a nice day ?question-mark I hope so .period </s>
<s> if not ,comma this program will try to recognize better ,comma so you can have one .period </s>
<s> A nice day starts with good weather and a hot cup of coffee .period </s>
<s> brewing coffee only takes a few minutes and it is well worth it .period </s>
<s> anti -hyphen martingale </s>
<s> this is also known as the reverse martingale .period </s>
<s> in a classic martingale betting style ,comma gamblers increase bets after each loss in hopes that an eventual win will recover all previous losses .period </s>
<s> the anti -hyphen martingale approach instead increases bets after wins ,comma while reducing them after a loss .period </s>
<s> the perception is that the gambler will benefit from a winning streak or a "quote hot hand "quote ,comma while reducing losses while "quote cold "quote or otherwise having a losing streak .period </s>
<s> as the single bets are independent from each other (left-paren and from the gambler's expectations )right-paren ,comma the concept of winning "quote streaks "quote is merely an example of gambler's fallacy ,comma and the anti -hyphen martingale strategy fails to make any money .period </s>
<s> if on the other hand ,comma real -hyphen life stock returns are serially correlated (left-paren for instance due to economic cycles and delayed reaction to news of larger market participants )right-paren ,comma "quote streaks "quote of wins or losses do happen more often and are longer than those under a purely random process ,comma the anti -hyphen martingale strategy would "quote theoretically "quote apply and can be used in trading systems (left-paren as trend -hyphen following or "quote doubling up "quote )right-paren .period </s>
<s> reducing losses ,comma if possible ,comma is recommended .period </s>
<s> the conclusion is inescapable .period </s>
<s> the biggest improvements in accuracy have been achieved by adjusting the type of microphone and position .period </s>
<s> the volume level is adjusted automatically and tweaking it is not likely to improve much .period </s>
<s> you may try making a recording with audacity and checking the noise levels to make sure it sounds like intelligible speech when played back .period </s>
<s> essentially ,comma FreeSpeech is a "quote front -hyphen end "quote for PocketSphinx with additional learning ability .period </s>
<s> it automatically manages the difficult process of creating language models .period </s>
<s> good morning .period </s>
<s> the insert method inserts the text into the text buffer at the specified position .period </s>
<s> new paragraph .period </s>
<s> good afternoon .period </s>
<s> good evening .period </s>
<s> the method replaces the current contents of the text buffer with the contents of the default selection .period </s>
<s> you know that I thought so .period </s>
<s> I was sure that I thought it was .period </s>
<s> yeah ,comma I knew it was open to question .period </s>
<s> yeah ,comma whatever .period </s>
<s> this is silly .period </s>
<s> are you listening ?question-mark </s>
<s> where are you going with this ?question-mark </s>
<s> what's happening ?question-mark </s>
<s> what's up ?question-mark </s>
<s> I am watching the premier of army wives .period </s>
<s> the city attorney hasn't written me a check yet .period </s>
<s> we must do what we can to protect the wildlife .period </s>
<s> none of us are alone .period </s>
<s> please let me know if you or others in your network have art or other creative contributions .period </s>
<s> indigenous artists these days are enthused about collaborative projects .period </s>
<s> help save lives .period </s>
<s> see how we make that possible .period </s>
<s> it only takes ten minutes .period </s>
<s> it only takes a minute if you already have a Bitcoin account .period </s>
<s> you may send us a contribution using the Bitcoin client .period </s>
<s> it's fast and easy to send money around the world with very low fees .period </s>
<s> position the microphone somewhere near your face and begin talking .period </s>
<s> to end of the sentence ,comma say "quote period "quote (left-paren or "quote colon "quote ,comma "quote question -hyphen mark "quote ,comma "quote exclamation -hyphen point "quote )right-paren Look at the dictionary ,comma "quote custom .dot dic "quote for ideas .period </s>
<s> make sure nobody sells him a weapon because nobody knows who he is .period </s>
<s> i'm glad you are my friend .period </s>
<s> it's a little bit of a test .period </s>
<s> I'm sure that this will work .period </s>
<s> nobody knows the trouble I've seen .period </s>
<s> marine debris is everyone's problem .period </s>
<s> it threatens oceans ,comma coasts ,comma wildlife ,comma human health ,comma safety ,comma and navigation .period </s>
<s> we can all help prevent marine debris by participating in cleanups and reducing ,comma reducing ,comma and recycling .period </s>
<s> this is a test of Microsoft ®registered-sign Windows ™trademark-sign .period </s>
<s> it is 40 °F outside .period </s>
<s> the temperature is 35 °F at least .period </s>
<s> that's 1 .point 667 °C .period </s>
<s> heat the oven to 450 °F (left-paren 232.2 °C )right-paren .period </s>
<s> the Microsoft ®registered-sign Windows ™trademark-sign operating system (left-paren OS )right-paren has been very popular over the years .period </s>
<s> I'm extracting files from email messages in a python program and am running across issues with files named as such :colon </s>
<s> thanks for the correction ;semi-colon </s>
<s> I forgot to edit that into the post .period </s>
<s> please understand that without detailed descriptoin it's hard to help you since there are too many unknowns .period </s>
<s> like you might have done minor mistake somewhere and that minor type can break the whole system .period </s>
<s> in case you are adapting to a single speaker you can record the adaptation data yourself .period </s>
<s> the degree sign (left-paren °degree-sign )right-paren is useful for other things as well .period </s>
<s> oops ,comma I really screwed things up !exclamation-point </s>
<s> I really did it !exclamation-point </s>
<s> I am ready to try it out .period </s>
<s> let's begin now .period </s>
<s> there is no desktop icon yet .period </s>
<s> go ahead and right -hyphen click on the desktop to create one .period </s>
<s> so I was thinking about going to Chicago .period </s>
<s> how's the weather down there ?question-mark </s>
<s> it works most of the time .period </s>
<s> sometimes it can be a little finicky .period </s>
<s> I guess it depends on your vocabulary .period </s>
<s> some people speak a lot clearer .period </s>
<s> I think I will log into Facebook and update my status again .period </s>
<s> you learn something new every day .period </s>
<s> back to school specials </s>
<s> I guess I need to make me a Sandwich .period </s>
<s> A sexist phrase that a male says to a female when he's drunk and /slash or hungry .period </s>
<s> girl :colon </s>
<s> my boyfriend keeps yelling at me ,comma "quote make me a Sandwich ,comma BITCH !exclamation-point "quote He's being sexist and now I need a good comeback to say to him .period </s>
<s> make love not war .period </s>
<s> coined by the hippie generation in the 1960's .period </s>
<s> its real meaning is that love and yes sex is better than war .period </s>
<s> no one ever died from love .period </s>
<s> A bullshit hippy catchphrase trying to get people to fuck their wives instead of killing people .period </s>
<s> obviously ,comma these people are unaware that there are plenty of prostitutes in wherever the war is occurring ,comma willing to give sucky sucky for as little as ten dolla ,comma or even five dolla .period </s>
<s> the hookers are better because they love you long time ,comma unless you are muy beau coup .period </s>
<s> testing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 .period </s>
<s> testing one ,comma two ,comma three ,comma four ,comma five ,comma six ,comma seven ,comma eight ,comma nine ,comma zero .period </s>
<s> I have had two problems with this .period </s>
<s> there are three answers that fit four solutions ,comma five of which are around six in length .period </s>
<s> there are seven of nine charts in eight vectors .period </s>
<s> no harm in that !exclamation-point </s>
<s> the can be a lot of different possible situations to learn from .period </s>
<s> my only hope is that you will get through this tutorial without too much trouble and be able to work through problems like these in the future .period </s>
<s> we are now using UTF-8 unicode code points for everything .period </s>
<s> pocketSphinx's vocabulary this currently one hundred and thirty -hyphen three thouSand words and growing .period </s>
<s> this is cool !exclamation-point </s>
<s> I will have to research that on the Internet .period </s>
<s> I will get back to you on that .period </s>
<s> I can honestly say that the critical infrastructure is in place .period </s>
<s> all that's needed is a Windows installer .period </s>
<s> should we plant turnips in the front lawn ?question-mark </s>
<s> the bushes and shrubs in the front yard need trimming .period </s>
<s> ten twenty thirty fourty fifty sixty seventy eighty ninety one hundred .period </s>
<s> twenty five thirty five forty five fifty five sixty five seventy five eighty five ninety five </s>
<s> there have been twenty five accidents in the past week .period </s>
<s> where is Alaska on the map ?question-mark It is right up there above Canada .period </s>
<s> I am in Washington right now visiting with some CEOs.period </s>
<s> where are you ?question-mark </s>
<s> governor Parnell met with more big oil CEOs today .period </s>
<s> I wonder what he is up to .period </s>
<s> it was on the Internet .period </s>
<s> that's where I saw it .period </s>
<s> could you get off the Internet for a minute ?question-mark </s>
<s> I would like to go over there and talk about it tomorrow .period </s>
<s> that is the only moral choice .period </s>
<s> add the words to the dictionary .period </s>
<s> the University of Phoenix .period </s>
<s> a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush :colon </s>
<s> having something that is certain is much better than taking a risk for more ,comma because chances are you might lose everything .period </s>
<s> a blessing in disguise :colon </s>
<s> something good that isn't recognized at first .period </s>
<s> a chip on your shoulder :colon </s>
<s> being upset for something that happened in the past .period </s>
<s> a dime a dozen :colon </s>
<s> anything that is common and easy to get .period </s>
<s> a doubting thomas :colon </s>
<s> a skeptic who needs physical or personal evidence in order to believe something .period </s>
<s> a drop in the bucket :colon </s>
<s> a very small part of something big or whole .period </s>
<s> a fool and his money are easily parted :colon </s>
<s> it's easy for a foolish person to lose his /slash her money .period </s>
<s> a house divided against itself cannot stand :colon </s>
<s> everyone involved must unify and function together or it will not work out .period </s>
<s> a leopard can't change his spots :colon </s>
<s> you cannot change who you are .period </s>
<s> a penny saved is a penny earned :colon </s>
<s> by not spending money ,comma you are saving money (left-paren little by little )right-paren .period </s>
<s> a picture paints a thousand words :colon </s>
<s> a visual presentation is far more descriptive than words .period </s>
<s> a piece of cake :colon </s>
<s> a task that can be accomplished very easily .period </s>
<s> a slap on the wrist :colon </s>
<s> a very mild punishment .period </s>
<s> a taste of your own medicine :colon </s>
<s> when you are mistreated the same way you mistreat others .period </s>
<s> a toss -hyphen up :colon </s>
<s> a result that is still unclear and can go either way .period </s>
<s> actions speak louder than words :colon </s>
<s> it's better to actually do something than just talk about it .period </s>
<s> add fuel to the fire :colon </s>
<s> whenever something is done to make a bad situation even worse than it is .period </s>
<s> against the clock :colon </s>
<s> rushed and short on time .period </s>
<s> all bark and no bite :colon </s>
<s> when someone is threatening and /slash or aggressive but not willing to engage in a fight .period </s>
<s> all greek to me :colon </s>
<s> meaningless and incomprehensible like someone who cannot read ,comma speak ,comma or understand any of the greek language would be .period </s>
<s> all in the same boat :colon </s>
<s> when everyone is facing the same challenges .period </s>
<s> an arm and a leg :colon </s>
<s> very expensive .period </s>
<s> a large amount of money .period </s>
<s> an axe to grind :colon </s>
<s> to have a dispute with someone .period </s>
<s> apple of my eye :colon </s>
<s> someone who is cherished above all others .period </s>
<s> as high as a kite :colon </s>
<s> anything that is high up in the sky .period </s>
<s> at the drop of a hat :colon </s>
<s> willing to do something immediately .period </s>
<s> back seat driver :colon </s>
<s> people who criticize from the sidelines ,comma much like someone giving unwanted advice from the back seat of a vehicle to the driver .period </s>
<s> back to square one :colon </s>
<s> having to start all over again .period </s>
<s> back to the drawing board :colon </s>
<s> when an attempt fails and it's time to start all over .period </s>
<s> baker's dozen :colon </s>
<s> thirteen .period </s>
<s> barking up the wrong tree :colon </s>
<s> a mistake made in something you are trying to achieve .period </s>
<s> beat a dead horse :colon </s>
<s> to force an issue that has already ended .period </s>
<s> beating around the bush :colon </s>
<s> avoiding the main topic .period </s>
<s> not speaking directly about the issue .period </s>
<s> bend over backwards :colon </s>
<s> do whatever it takes to help .period </s>
<s> willing to do anything .period </s>
<s> between a rock and a hard place :colon </s>
<s> stuck between two very bad options .period </s>
<s> bite off more than you can chew :colon </s>
<s> to take on a task that is way to big .period </s>
<s> bite your tongue :colon </s>
<s> to avoid talking .period </s>
<s> blood is thicker than water :colon </s>
<s> the family bond is closer than anything else .period </s>
<s> blue moon :colon </s>
<s> a rare event or occurance .period </s>
<s> break a leg :colon </s>
<s> a superstitious way to say'good luck'without saying'good luck 'single-quote ,comma but rather the opposite .period </s>
<s> buy a lemon :colon </s>
<s> to purchase a vehicle that constantly gives problems or stops running after you drive it away .period </s>
<s> can't cut the mustard :colon </s>
<s> someone who isn't adequate enough to compete or participate .period </s>
<s> cast iron stomach :colon </s>
<s> someone who has no problems ,comma complications or ill effects with eating anything or drinking anything .period </s>
<s> charley horse :colon </s>
<s> stiffness in the leg /slash a leg cramp .period </s>
<s> chew someone out :colon </s>
<s> verbally scold someone .period </s>
<s> chip on his shoulder :colon </s>
<s> angry today about something that occured in the past .period </s>
<s> chow down :colon </s>
<s> to eat .period </s>
<s> close but no cigar :colon </s>
<s> to be very near and almost accomplish a goal ,comma but fall short .period </s>
<s> cock and bull story :colon </s>
<s> an unbelievable tale .period </s>
<s> come hell or high water :colon </s>
<s> any difficult situation or obstacle .period </s>
<s> crack someone up :colon </s>
<s> to make someone laugh .period </s>
<s> cross your fingers :colon </s>
<s> to hope that something happens the way you want it to .period </s>
<s> cry over spilt milk :colon </s>
<s> when you complain about a loss from the past .period </s>
<s> cry wolf :colon </s>
<s> intentionally raise a false alarm .period </s>
<s> cup of joe :colon </s>
<s> a cup of coffee .period </s>
<s> curiosity killed the cat :colon </s>
<s> being inquisitive can lead you into a dangerous situation .period </s>
<s> cut to the chase :colon </s>
<s> leave out all the unnecessary details and just get to the point .period </s>
<s> dark horse :colon </s>
<s> one who was previously unknown and is now prominent .period </s>
<s> dead ringer :colon </s>
<s> 100 %percent identical .period </s>
<s> a duplicate .period </s>
<s> devil's advocate :colon </s>
<s> someone who takes a position for the sake of argument without believing in that particular side of the arguement .period </s>
<s> it can also mean one who presents a counter argument for a position they do believe in ,comma to another debater .period </s>
<s> dog days of summer :colon </s>
<s> the hottest days of the summer season .period </s>
<s> don't count your chickens before they hatch :colon </s>
<s> don't rely on it until your sure of it .period </s>
<s> don't look a gift horse in the mouth :colon </s>
<s> when someone gives you a gift ,comma don't be ungrateful .period </s>
<s> don't put all your eggs in one basket :colon </s>
<s> do not put all your resources in one possibility .period </s>
<s> doozy :colon </s>
<s> something outstanding .period </s>
<s> down to the wire :colon </s>
<s> something that ends at the last minute or last few seconds .period </s>
<s> drastic times call for drastic measures :colon </s>
<s> when you are extremely desperate you need to take extremely desperate actions .period </s>
<s> drink like a fish :colon </s>
<s> to drink very heavily .period </s>
<s> drive someone up the wall :colon </s>
<s> to irritate and /slash or annoy very much .period </s>
<s> dropping like flies :colon </s>
<s> a large number of people either falling ill or dying .period </s>
<s> dry run :colon </s>
<s> rehearsal .period </s>
<s> eighty six :colon </s>
<s> a certain item is no longer available .period </s>
<s> or this idiom can also mean ,comma to throw away .period </s>
<s> elvis has left the building :colon </s>
<s> the show has come to an end .period </s>
<s> it's all over .period </s>
<s> ethnic cleansing :colon </s>
<s> killing of a certain ethnic or religious group on a massive scale .period </s>
<s> every cloud has a silver lining :colon </s>
<s> be optomistic ,comma even difficult times will lead to better days .period </s>
<s> everything but the kitchen sink :colon </s>
<s> almost everything and anything has been included .period </s>
<s> excuse my french :colon </s>
<s> please forgive me for cussing .period </s>
<s> cock and bull story :colon </s>
<s> an unbelievable tale .period </s>
<s> cock and bull story :colon </s>
<s> an unbelievable tale .period </s>
<s> feeding frenzy :colon </s>
<s> an aggressive attack on someone by a group .period </s>
<s> field day :colon </s>
<s> an enjoyable day or circumstance .period </s>
<s> finding your feet :colon </s>
<s> to become more comfortable in whatever you are doing .period </s>
<s> finger lickin'good :colon </s>
<s> a very tasty food or meal .period </s>
<s> fixed in your ways :colon </s>
<s> not willing or wanting to change from your normal way of doing something .period </s>
<s> flash in the pan :colon </s>
<s> something that shows potential or looks promising in the beginning but fails to deliver anything in the end .period </s>
<s> flea market :colon </s>
<s> a swap meet .period </s>
<s> a place where people gather to buy and sell inexpensive goods .period </s>
<s> flesh and blood :colon </s>
<s> this idiom can mean living material of which people are made of ,comma or it can refer to someone's family .period </s>
<s> flip the bird :colon </s>
<s> to raise your middle finger at someone .period </s>
<s> foam at the mouth :colon </s>
<s> to be enraged and show it .period </s>
<s> fools'gold :colon </s>
<s> iron pyrites ,comma a worthless rock that resembles real gold .period </s>
<s> french kiss :colon </s>
<s> an open mouth kiss where tongues touch .period </s>
<s> from rags to riches :colon </s>
<s> to go from being very poor to being very wealthy .period </s>
<s> fuddy -hyphen duddy :colon </s>
<s> an old -hyphen fashioned and foolish type of person .period </s>
<s> full monty :colon </s>
<s> this idiom can mean either ,comma "quote the whole thing "quote or "quote completely nude "quote .period </s>
<s> funny farm :colon </s>
<s> a mental institutional facility .period </s>
<s> get down to brass tacks :colon </s>
<s> to become serious about something .period </s>
<s> get over it :colon </s>
<s> to move beyond something that is bothering you .period </s>
<s> get up on the wrong side of the bed :colon </s>
<s> someone who is having a horrible day .period </s>
<s> get your walking papers :colon </s>
<s> get fired from a job .period </s>
<s> give him the slip :colon </s>
<s> to get away from .period </s>
<s> to escape .period </s>
<s> go down like a lead balloon :colon </s>
<s> to be received badly by an audience .period </s>
<s> go for broke :colon </s>
<s> to gamble everything you have .period </s>
<s> go out on a limb :colon </s>
<s> put yourself in a tough position in order to support someone /slash something .period </s>
<s> go the extra mile :colon </s>
<s> going above and beyond whatever is required for the task at hand .period </s>
<s> good samaritan :colon </s>
<s> someone who helps others when they are in need ,comma with no discussion for compensation ,comma and no thought of a reward .period </s>
<s> graveyard shift :colon </s>
<s> working hours from about 12 :colon 00 am to 8 :colon 00 am .period </s>
<s> the time of the day when most other people are sleeping .period </s>
<s> great minds think alike :colon </s>
<s> intelligent people think like each other .period </s>
<s> green room :colon </s>
<s> the waiting room ,comma especially for those who are about to go on a tv or radio show .period </s>
<s> gut feeling :colon </s>
<s> a personal intuition you get ,comma especially when feel something may not be right .period </s>
<s> haste makes waste :colon </s>
<s> quickly doing things results in a poor ending .period </s>
<s> hat trick :colon </s>
<s> when one player scores three goals in the same hockey game .period </s>
<s> this idiom can also mean three scores in any other sport ,comma such as 3 homeruns ,comma 3 touchdowns ,comma 3 soccer goals ,comma etc .period </s>
<s> have an axe to grind :colon </s>
<s> to have a dispute with someone .period </s>
<s> he lost his head :colon </s>
<s> angry and overcome by emotions .period </s>
<s> head over heels :colon </s>
<s> very excited and /slash or joyful ,comma especially when in love .period </s>
<s> hell in a handbasket :colon </s>
<s> deteriorating and headed for complete disaster .period </s>
<s> high five :colon </s>
<s> slapping palms above each others heads as celebration gesture .period </s>
<s> high on the hog :colon </s>
<s> living in luxury .period </s>
<s> hit the books :colon </s>
<s> to study ,comma especially for a test or exam .period </s>
<s> hit the hay :colon </s>
<s> go to bed or go to sleep .period </s>
<s> hit the nail on the head :colon </s>
<s> do something exactly right or say something exactly right .period </s>
<s> hit the sack :colon </s>
<s> go to bed or go to sleep .period </s>
<s> hocus pocus :colon </s>
<s> in general ,comma a term used in magic or trickery .period </s>
<s> hold your horses :colon </s>
<s> be patient .period </s>
<s> icing on the cake :colon </s>
<s> when you already have it good and get something on top of what you already have .period </s>
<s> idle hands are the devil's tools :colon </s>
<s> you are more likely to get in trouble if you have nothing to do .period </s>
<s> if it's not one thing ,comma it's another :colon </s>
<s> when one thing goes wrong ,comma then another ,comma and another ...ellipsis </s>
<s> in like flynn :colon </s>
<s> to be easily successful ,comma especially when sexual or romantic .period </s>
<s> in the bag :colon </s>
<s> to have something secured .period </s>
<s> in the buff :colon </s>
<s> nude .period </s>
<s> in the heat of the moment :colon </s>
<s> overwhelmed by what is happening in the moment .period </s>
<s> in your face :colon </s>
<s> an aggressive and bold confrontation .period </s>
<s> it takes two to tango :colon </s>
<s> a two person conflict where both people are at fault .period </s>
<s> it's a small world :colon </s>
<s> you frequently see the same people in different places .period </s>
<s> its anyone's call :colon </s>
<s> a competition where the outcome is difficult to judge or predict .period </s>
<s> ivy league :colon </s>
<s> since 1954 the ivy league has been the following universities :colon </s>
<s> columbia ,comma brown ,comma cornell ,comma dartmouth ,comma yale ,comma pennsylvania ,comma princeton ,comma and harvard .period </s>
<s> jaywalk :colon </s>
<s> crossing the street (left-paren from the middle )right-paren without using the crosswalk .period </s>
<s> joshing me :colon </s>
<s> tricking me .period </s>
<s> keep an eye on him :colon </s>
<s> you should carefully watch him .period </s>
<s> keep body and soul together :colon </s>
<s> to earn a sufficient amount of money in order to keep yourself alive .period </s>
<s> keep your chin up :colon </s>
<s> to remain joyful in a tough situation .period </s>
<s> kick the bucket :colon </s>
<s> die .period </s>
<s> kitty -hyphen corner :colon </s>
<s> diagonally across .period </s>
<s> sometimes called catty -hyphen corner as well .period </s>
<s> knee jerk reaction :colon </s>
<s> a quick and automatic response .period </s>
<s> knock on wood :colon </s>
<s> knuckle tapping on wood in order to avoid some bad luck .period </s>
<s> know the ropes :colon </s>
<s> to understand the details .period </s>
<s> last but not least :colon </s>
<s> an introduction phrase to let the audience know that the last person mentioned is no less important than those introduced before him /slash her .period </s>
<s> lend me your ear :colon </s>
<s> to politely ask for someone's full attention .period </s>
<s> let bygones be bygones :colon </s>
<s> to forget about a disagreement or arguement .period </s>
<s> let sleeping dogs lie :colon </s>
<s> to avoid restarting a conflict .period </s>
<s> let the cat out of the bag :colon </s>
<s> to share a secret that wasn't suppose to be shared .period </s>
<s> level playing field :colon </s>
<s> a fair competition where no side has an advantage .period </s>
<s> like a chicken with its head cut off :colon </s>
<s> to act in a frenzied manner .period </s>
<s> liquor someone up :colon </s>
<s> to get someone drunk .period </s>
<s> long in the tooth :colon </s>
<s> old people (left-paren or horses )right-paren .period </s>
<s> loose cannon :colon </s>
<s> someone who is unpredictable and can cause damage if not kept in check .period </s>
<s> make no bones about :colon </s>
<s> to state a fact so there are no doubts or objections .period </s>
<s> method to my madness :colon </s>
<s> strange or crazy actions that appear meaningless but in the end are done for a good reason .period </s>
<s> mumbo jumbo :colon </s>
<s> nonsense or meaningless speech .period </s>
<s> mum's the word :colon </s>
<s> to keep quiet .period </s>
<s> to say nothing .period </s>
<s> nest egg :colon </s>
<s> savings set aside for future use .period </s>
<s> never bite the hand that feeds you :colon </s>
<s> don't hurt anyone that helps you .period </s>
<s> new kid on the block :colon </s>
<s> someone new to the group or area .period </s>
<s> new york minute :colon </s>
<s> a minute that seems to go by quickly ,comma especially in a fast paced environment .period </s>
<s> no dice :colon </s>
<s> to not agree .period </s>
<s> to not accept a proposition .period </s>
<s> no room to swing a cat :colon </s>
<s> an unsually small or confined space .period </s>
<s> not playing with a full deck :colon </s>
<s> someone who lacks intelligence .period </s>
<s> off on the wrong foot :colon </s>
<s> getting a bad start on a relationship or task .period </s>
<s> off the hook :colon </s>
<s> no longer have to deal with a tough situation .period </s>
<s> off the record :colon </s>
<s> something said in confidence that the one speaking doesn't want attributed to him /slash her .period </s>
<s> on pins and needles :colon </s>
<s> anxious or nervous ,comma especially in anticipation of something .period </s>
<s> on the fence :colon </s>
<s> undecided .period </s>
<s> on the same page :colon </s>
<s> when multiple people all agree on the same thing .period </s>
<s> out of the blue :colon </s>
<s> something that suddenly and unexpectedly occurs .period </s>
<s> out on a limb :colon </s>
<s> when someone puts themself in a risky situation .period </s>
<s> out on the town :colon </s>
<s> to enjoy yourself by going out .period </s>
<s> over my dead body :colon </s>
<s> when you absolutely will not allow something to happen .period </s>
<s> over the top :colon </s>
<s> very excessive .period </s>
<s> pass the buck :colon </s>
<s> avoid responsibility by giving it to someone else .period </s>
<s> pedal to the metal :colon </s>
<s> to go full speed ,comma especially while driving a vehicle .period </s>
<s> peeping tom :colon </s>
<s> someone who observes people in the nude or sexually active people ,comma mainly for his own gratification .period </s>
<s> pick up your ears :colon </s>
<s> to listen very carefully .period </s>
<s> pig in a poke :colon </s>
<s> a deal that is made without first examining it .period </s>
<s> pig out :colon </s>
<s> to eat alot and eat it quickly .period </s>
<s> pipe down :colon </s>
<s> to shut -hyphen up or be quiet .period </s>
<s> practice makes perfect :colon </s>
<s> by constantly practicing ,comma you will become better .period </s>
<s> pull the plug :colon </s>
<s> to stop something .period </s>
<s> to bring something to an end .period </s>
<s> pulling your leg :colon </s>
<s> tricking someone as a joke .period </s>
<s> put a sock in it :colon </s>
<s> to tell noisy person or a group to be quiet .period </s>
<s> queer the pitch :colon </s>
<s> destroy or ruin a plan .period </s>
<s> raincheck :colon </s>
<s> an offer or deal that is declined right now but willing to accept later .period </s>
<s> raining cats and dogs :colon </s>
<s> a very loud and noisy rain storm .period </s>
<s> ring fencing :colon </s>
<s> seperated usual judgement to guarantee protection ,comma especially project funds .period </s>
<s> rise and shine :colon </s>
<s> time to get out of bed and get ready for work /slash school .period </s>
<s> rome was not built in one day :colon </s>
<s> if you want something to be completely properly ,comma then its going to take time .period </s>
<s> rule of thumb :colon </s>
<s> a rough estimate .period </s>
<s> run out of steam :colon </s>
<s> to be completely out of energy .period </s>
<s> saved by the bell :colon </s>
<s> saved at the last possible moment .period </s>
<s> scapegoat :colon </s>
<s> someone else who takes the blame .period </s>
<s> scot -hyphen free :colon </s>
<s> to escape and not have to pay .period </s>
<s> sick as a dog :colon </s>
<s> to be very sick (left-paren with the flu or a cold )right-paren .period </s>
<s> sitting shotgun :colon </s>
<s> riding in the front passenger seat of a car .period </s>
<s> sixth sense :colon </s>
<s> a paranormal sense that allows you to communicate with the dead .period </s>
<s> skid row :colon </s>
<s> the rundown area of a city where the homeless and drug users live .period </s>
<s> smell a rat :colon </s>
<s> to detect somone in the group is betraying the others .period </s>
<s> smell something fishy :colon </s>
<s> detecting that something isn't right and there might be a reason for it .period </s>
<s> son of a gun :colon </s>
<s> a scamp .period </s>
<s> southpaw :colon </s>
<s> someone who is left -hyphen handed .period </s>
<s> spitting image :colon </s>
<s> the exact likeness or kind .period </s>
<s> start from scratch :colon </s>
<s> to do it all over again from the beginning .period </s>
<s> the ball is in your court :colon </s>
<s> it is your decision this time .period </s>
<s> the best of both worlds :colon </s>
<s> there are two choices and you have them both .period </s>
<s> the bigger they are the harder they fall :colon </s>
<s> while the bigger and stronger opponent might be alot more difficult to beat ,comma when you do they suffer a much bigger loss .period </s>
<s> the last straw :colon </s>
<s> when one small burden after another creates an unbearable situation ,comma the last straw is the last small burden that one can take .period </s>
<s> the whole nine yards :colon </s>
<s> everything .period </s>
<s> all of it .period </s>
<s> third times a charm :colon </s>
<s> after no success the first two times ,comma the third try is a lucky one .period </s>
<s> tie the knot :colon </s>
<s> to get married .period </s>
<s> til the cows come home :colon </s>
<s> a long time .period </s>
<s> to make a long story short :colon </s>
<s> something someone would say during a long and boring story in order to keep his /slash her audience from losing attention .period </s>
<s> usually the story isn't shortened .period </s>
<s> to steal someone's thunder :colon </s>
<s> to take the credit for something someone else did .period </s>
<s> tongue -hyphen in -hyphen cheek :colon </s>
<s> humor ,comma not to be taken serious .period </s>
<s> turn a blind eye :colon </s>
<s> refuse to acknowledge something you know is real or legit .period </s>
<s> twenty three skidoo :colon </s>
<s> to be turned away .period </s>
<s> under the weather :colon </s>
<s> feeling ill or sick .period </s>
<s> up a blind alley :colon </s>
<s> going down a course of action that leads to a bad outcome .period </s>
<s> use your loaf :colon </s>
<s> use your head .period </s>
<s> think smart .period </s>
<s> van gogh's ear for music :colon </s>
<s> tone deaf .period </s>
<s> variety is the spice of life :colon </s>
<s> the more experiences you try the more exciting life can be .period </s>
<s> wag the dog :colon </s>
<s> a diversion away from something of greater importance .period </s>
<s> water under the bridge :colon </s>
<s> anything from the past that isn't significant or important anymore .period </s>
<s> wear your heart on your sleeve :colon </s>
<s> to openly and freely express your emotions .period </s>
<s> when it rains ,comma it pours :colon </s>
<s> since it rarely rains ,comma when it does it will be a huge storm .period </s>
<s> when pigs fly :colon </s>
<s> something that will never ever happen .period </s>
<s> wild and woolly :colon </s>
<s> uncultured and without laws .period </s>
<s> wine and dine :colon </s>
<s> when somebody is treated to an expensive meal .period </s>
<s> without a doubt :colon </s>
<s> for certain .period </s>
<s> x marks the spot :colon </s>
<s> a phrase that is said when someone finds something he /slash she has been looking for .period </s>
<s> you are what you eat :colon </s>
<s> in order to stay healthy you must eat healthy foods .period </s>
<s> you can't judge a book by its cover :colon </s>
<s> decisions shouldn't be made primarily on appearance .period </s>
<s> you can't take it with you :colon </s>
<s> enjoy what you have and not what you don't have ,comma since when you die you cannot take things (left-paren such as money )right-paren with you .period </s>
<s> your guess is as good as mine :colon </s>
<s> i have no idea if it is .period </s>
<s> zero tolerance :colon </s>
<s> no crime or law breaking big or small will be overlooked .period </s>
<s> let's go fly a kite that the lake .period </s>
<s> take a long walk off a short pier .period </s>
<s> nevertheless ,comma I like it .period </s>
<s> I like to eat cheese .period </s>
<s> can you say something nice ?question-mark </s>
<s> would you like to go to the movies ?question-mark </s>
<s> this is a good thing to say to someone who is bothering you .period </s>
<s> got to keep putting one foot before the other .period </s>
<s> don't put the cart before the horse .period </s>
<s> A stitch in time saves nine .period </s>
<s> usually if you catch one problem soon enough you can avoid bigger problems later .period </s>
<s> this program is free software :colon </s>
<s> you can redistribute it and /slash or modify </s>
<s> it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by </s>
<s> the Free Software Foundation ,comma either version 3 of the License ,comma or </s>
<s> (left-paren at your option )right-paren any later version .period </s>
<s> this program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful ,comma </s>
<s> but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY ;semi-colon </s>
<s> without even the implied warranty of </s>
<s> MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .period </s>
<s> see the GNU General Public License for more details .period </s>
<s> you should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License </s>
<s> in the future ,comma I am going to put a button here to echo this text to the keyboard .period </s>
<s> to the future ,comma with love .period </s>
<s> that is the truth of scratch that and insert after </s>
<s> I am going to write a letter to the editor .period </s>
<s> delete this delete believe delete that </s>
<s> delete delete delete </s>
<s> go to the end </s>
<s> backspace </s>
<s> his name is David .period </s>
<s> we began to do more than we ordinarily would have </s>
<s> the United States of America began to rock .period </s>
<s> I opened the terminal ,comma typed in </s>
<s> after installation ,comma the desktop icon was unresponsive .period </s>
<s> to solve the problem ,comma I tried loading it from the command line .period </s>
<s> it's always been groups .period </s>
<s> that's the joke ,comma I think .period </s>
<s> otherwise there would be one dude out there with a rock or something .period </s>
<s> A young man and woman had been dating for several months .period </s>
<s> the agreement was that he was going to buy her a ring ,comma once his debts were paid off .period </s>
<s> he kept working and making payments ,comma but she became impatient .period </s>
<s> she started pestering him about the ring and asking him when they were going to get married .period </s>
<s> she was about to receive a big inheritance anyway and could not understand why he kept making these big payments when they could share the burden .period </s>
<s> she thought it was selfish of him to spend so much time paying off debts when they could be enjoying their time together .period </s>
<s> he started working two jobs and they never had time to talk .period </s>
<s> he became evasive about where the money was going .period </s>
<s> finally it occurred to her that he could not be trusted and she decided to call the whole thing off .period </s>
<s> the next day a young man went to the store to pick up a ring ,comma the one he had been secretly making payments on .period </s>
<s> go to the end </s>
<s> goodbye </s>
<s> show commands </s>
<s> erase all </s>
<s> file open file save </s>
<s> sometimes it gets confused and capitalizes words in the middle of a sentence if you pause while dictating text .period </s>
<s> send keys </s>
<s> I have been fascinated by domes ever since my parents bought me a book about them when I was in school .period </s>
<s> their space savings structure encloses a large area with a minimum of materials .period </s>
<s> other advantages of domes include resistance to strong winds ,comma ample room for skylights ,comma and their overall aesthetics .period </s>
<s> geodesic domes typically start with a platonic solid ,comma such as the 20 -hyphen sided icosahedron .period </s>
<s> the process of subdividing the edges and bringing the center points out to form the dome's iconic spherical structure is called tesselation .period </s>
<s> I pried the cover off and removed the circuit board right where it sat .period </s>
<s> there may be many reasons to root an Android device .period </s>
<s> there may be many reasons to root an Android device .period </s>
<s> I wanted to develop for the phone and experiment with ad -hyphen hoc networking .period </s>
<s> there may be many reasons to root an Android device .period </s>
<s> I wanted to develop for the phone and experiment with ad -hyphen hoc networking .period </s>
<s> other reasons might be to uninstall stubborn apps .period </s>
<s> it boils down to a matter principle ,comma being in control of ones own devices .period </s>
<s> today I had dinner with chunky bleu chese dressing .period </s>
<s> what Sells and Smells </s>
<s> the top 10 over -hyphen pushed items on ebay and why I won't rush out and buy them right now .period </s>
<s> 10 .period </s>
<s> the new 32 "quote SEIKI LED TVs look pretty good at $dollar-sign 150 .period </s>
<s> I haven't bought one Because I already have a 32 "quote VIZIO .period </s>
<s> the SEIKI name is new to me .period </s>
<s> they must have spent a ton of money on advertising to be on the front page of ebay .period </s>
<s> the color on the LED TVs is a little hard on the eyes ,comma if you spend all day in front of them (left-paren not that I do that ever )right-paren .dot Actually I have watched maybe 20 cumulative hours of TV all summer .period </s>
<s> we mainly use the TV to watch SciFi and Kung -hyphen fu movies on DVD ,comma or VHS after a long day's work .dot :colon )right-paren It is in winter that I like to have an extra display because programming and testing applications almost requires having a bunch of windows opened .period </s>
<s> it's handy that a HDTV can now double as a computer monitor ,comma but there are some drawbacks .period </s>
<s> I've had problems with newer HDTVs that did not support the frequencies put out by my laptop ,comma and I don't know if I'm ready to upgrade just yet .period </s>
<s> 9 .dot Keurig coffee makers are perhaps the most annoying brand ever .period </s>
<s> my sister had one for maybe a year ,comma before it broke .period </s>
<s> first of all ,comma they gobble up little plastic containers that are filling up landfills because they are only only good for one or two cups .period </s>
<s> there interface is horrible ,comma requiring 6 -hyphen 8 button presses to get a cup of coffee out of it .period </s>
<s> then it groans and makes a mess everywhere if anybody requests a size bigger than their cup will hold .period </s>
<s> it's less convenient than putting instant in the microwave .period </s>
<s> call me old ,comma but I'd rather brew a pot on the stove ,comma or hand -hyphen strain it through a paper napkin .period </s>
<s> 8 .dot I'm not sure about the KitchenAid mixers .period </s>
<s> first off ,comma I don't do a whole lot of mixing .period </s>
<s> I don't have the patience for it .period </s>
<s> if I can't mix it up by hand in a minute or two then I'm not going to bother setting up the mixer .period </s>
<s> I'll deal with the lumps .period </s>
<s> and lumps is what I'd get if I had a spouse and I tried to give this to her .period </s>
<s> there is nothing that says you belong in the kitchen better than a KitchenAid mixer .period </s>
<s> 7 .dot The Samsung Galaxy Gear .period </s>
<s> it's a little large for a watch and a little small for a phone .period </s>
<s> it goes on the wrist .period </s>
<s> at first glance ,comma aside from all the kudos I'd get for looking like Dick Tracy ,comma I can't think of any justifiable reason to get one .period </s>
<s> it isn't a phone .period </s>
<s> it's a device that works with your existing Samsung phone .period </s>
<s> the phone I have ,comma a Motorola MB860 ,comma is too small as it is .period </s>
<s> I'm looking at getting a 4G phone with a 5 "quote or 7 "quote screen .period </s>
<s> if I can get a Samsung for a reasonable price I might consider the Gear as an add -hyphen on ,comma however .period </s>
<s> it does have a few things going for it .period </s>
<s> the Gear can locate a lost phone .period </s>
<s> it secures the data on the phone if it goes more than five feet away ,comma and it unlocks the phone when near .period </s>
<s> this may sound like a joke ,comma but it also tells the time ...ellipsis </s>
<s> 6 .period </s>
<s> the Sony PlayStation 4 .period </s>
<s> this is an awesome game machine and I'll probably get booed for my opinion ,comma but this article is about me and why I don't rush out and buy these things .period </s>
<s> you no doubt have something else to say and you should probably go make your own blog about that already .period </s>
<s> we can't all be the same .period </s>
<s> I have debts to pay and need to spend time on income -hyphen related activities .period </s>
<s> somebody has to make these devices work .period </s>
<s> the only reason I can think of to ever get one of these is if I start developing games for it .period </s>
<s> I don't play video games much .period </s>
<s> it goes against my desire to produce something tangible and to have something to show for my effort .period </s>
<s> 5 .dot The Apple iPad Air .period </s>
<s> weighing in at around $dollar-sign 750 this thing had better pack a serious punch ,comma but it doesn't really offer anything over my existing laptop .period </s>
<s> it has a few things I don't like about it .period </s>
<s> first of all ,comma it's an Apple .period </s>
<s> I know they're popular ,comma but I'm an open source fanatic and an operating system developer .period </s>
<s> I don't want the details like source code hidden away .period </s>
<s> I may consider developing for it ,comma if there is a market ,comma and that translates to if somebody pays me .period </s>
<s> I would more likely use it as a babysitter for anyone who comes to visit .period </s>
<s> keep them busy ,comma so I can get some work done .period </s>
<s> the camera is only 5 megapixels ,comma which is enough for a quick snapshot ,comma but not for any serious photography .period </s>
<s> the battery is supposed to last up to 10 hours ,comma but that's only if it isn't being used much .period </s>
<s> 4 .dot A Burberry Brit quilted jacket or Nanamica denim cycling vest ,comma also quilted .period </s>
<s> I don't care if it's Autumn .period </s>
<s> I have never been a follower of fashion .period </s>
<s> they may be warmer than qiviut ,comma but at $dollar-sign 595 there is nothing that can make a quilt look anywhere near cool .period </s>
<s> I may not be the ultimate authority on coolness ,comma but look at it this way .period </s>
<s> I'm already off the radar so far it would take something impressive to bring me back home ,comma and this doesn't look like it .period </s>
<s> besides ,comma I already have a quilted vest and it hasn't gotten me any dates .period </s>
<s> 3 .dot Vintage Levi's denim jacket .period </s>
<s> these are a classic ,comma but not very warm at around $dollar-sign 150 .period </s>
<s> I haven't had much luck with the denim jackets ,comma however .period </s>
<s> I'm not sure why .period </s>
<s> I though I looked spiffy in my new denim jacket ,comma but nobody seemed very impressed .period </s>
<s> on the other hand ,comma I don't really care that much what I look like ,comma or what people think about that ,comma and it shows .period </s>
<s> I'm not into getting compliments ,comma or I would dress up more often ,comma but I have been told ,comma over and over again ,comma by many different people ,comma that I look good in a suit .period </s>
<s> 2 .dot Scuffed -hyphen up leather boots for $dollar-sign 152 .period </s>
<s> really ?question-mark </s>
<s> I'd have to be dropped on my head to get these .period </s>
<s> they are billed as something to make you look like a rebel ,comma a daredevil ,comma or an adventurous spirit .period </s>
<s> new York cool .period </s>
<s> hmmmm .period </s>
<s> these are for posers who want to look like someone who's been around town for a while ,comma someone who rides a motorcycle .period </s>
<s> I can't think of anyone who would be impressed by a pair of boots such as these ,comma and if they are ,comma I would be worried about their motives .period </s>
<s> if I had the money ,comma I would save it up to buy a pair of comfortable sneakers .period </s>
<s> 1 .dot A Ford Woody Streetrod from 1951 .period </s>
<s> it's a woodie .period </s>
<s> there is wood in the door panels .period </s>
<s> these are great as far as sharing photos of them on Facebook ,comma but I wouldn't actually buy one .period </s>
<s> they also seem like something impractical to me ,comma something that is loved ,comma perhaps by a dwindling selection of old car geeks ,comma possibly old ,comma rich car geeks .period </s>
<s> that there is enough for some people to want to get one .period </s>
<s> it's part of a look ,comma part of a role that I don't want to play yet .period </s>
<s> I can just see myself ,comma in about 30 years ,comma stepping out of one of these with white hair and a cane .period </s>
<s> yes ,comma somebody to hand me a fedora !exclamation-point </s>