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To: craig crawford who wrote (125913)	6/3/2001 4:46:18 PM
From: 10K a day	Respond to of 164687

>>'A current goal of the Chinese government is that each resident receive one more egg every four days' Oh geeze craig. That's a lot of sulfer...

To: craig crawford who wrote (125913)	6/3/2001 8:11:20 PM
From: H James Morris	Respond to of 164687

>There are plenty of people who would happily dump their keyboard if they could talk to their computers instead of type. Of course, the computer would have to understand spoken language and be able to translate it into text and menu commands. If it were truly effective, it would handle fluid dictation and obey voice editing and formatting commands. Users could tell their computers to log on to the Internet and complete online tasks such as searching and shopping. If you would rather talk than type, there is software available that claims to do this. Some will note that speech-recognition software has been around for a while. But now it seems technology has improved to the point that users (not just those physically unable to type) might choose to use their voices rather than keyboards. A leader in voice-input technology is Lernout & Hauspie, and the software I tried is Dragon Naturally Speaking 5, Preferred ($200, for PC only). The package includes a headset, Quick Start booklet and a users guide. The software and headset are easy to install, and the next step is to read a couple of sentences out loud to test the volume and sound quality of the computer. My Dell PC passes, so I'm asked to read from a selection of text documents for about 10 to 15 minutes, to "train" the program to understand my voice. The tutorial explains the vocal editing and formatting commands, such as "scratch that" and "new line." After 15 minutes of training the computer and 15 training me, I dictate a fictional message to my sister. I say "start mail" to open my e-mail program, "new mail" to get a blank message, and begin: "Dear Sis. Have you been to see Dad lately? It's spring here. We went dancing Friday. I wish I could learn to sing." On the screen, the text translation of my voice looks like this: Peter says, Have you been deceived lightly? It is bringing here. We wins dancing righted. I wish I could learn to saying. The user's manual notes it's sometimes a good idea to go back and do more voice training after getting started. Maybe a bit of a leftover Boston accent is throwing off the recognition system. I can teach the software to understand words it keeps getting wrong by adding specific words to its vocabulary, or by asking the system to read other documents I've written so that it can add new words from those documents. I can also add and edit text using the keyboard. I decide to continue teaching the program how to recognize my voice in hopes the text will end up more similar to what I dictate. For 20 minutes, I read a longer text excerpt into the microphone, then go back to the writing pad and try speaking the same message to my sister again. Here's the text I get this time: Dear since, Have you been to see Dad lately? It's spurring year. We went dancing Friday. I wish I could learn to sing. It's getting better. With more practice and more getting-to-know-you on both sides of the computer, the program could be a reasonable substitute for the keyboard. Personally, I love my keyboard. Writing with my fingers on the keys naturally integrates the processes of thinking and writing. My husband loathes typing and has chronic back pain. He's a prime candidate for this software, but it won't run on his Macintosh. There are other voice-input programs for both Mac and PC, but Dragon Naturally Speaking gets the reviewers' highest praise. If you hate typing, have a PC and don't mind spending time memorizing voice commands and training the software to recognize those little quirks of your particular dialect, try the Dragon.

To: craig crawford who wrote (125913)	6/3/2001 10:21:08 PM
From: Victor Lazlo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164687

<<article by jim rogers: "In the West, it's hard to conceive just how big the Chinese market is. A current goal of the Chinese government is that each resident receive one more egg every four days.>> Craig, the vast majority of mainland Chinese are desparatly poor. And the major goal of the Chinese govt is to oppress their people and suck resources out of them to enrich the dictators at the top. That stupid chicken and egg claim has been around for years, and it was used for a while to pump the stock of some chinese co that raised chickens and sold motorcycles. I never heard if the whole thing was just a big scam or not, but that co's stock sure did very badly.