heads up.

[barfy]

here's a heads up for new people do NOT try the microsoft speech engine with hal. it seems that there is a debate on calling this software(term used loosly)malware or spyware. I prefer the term Bloatware since it peaks your system resources to the max when used with Hal or other programs. But It also apears that some scriptkiddie has came up with a trick that uses a file that bears the same name as a critical file in the speech engine.(ctfmon)now most antispy that uses this signiture will also remove parts of ctfmon causing the CTFloader to fail rendering programs useless,robbing text from web pages and crippleing you internet conection.the spyware file will be located OUTSIDE of the sys32 folder and somtimes found outside the windows folder as well if you find this file outside of the sys32 folder chances are your infected with "coolwebsearch" spyware.

[Testlund]

If that's so then Spybot Search & Destroy should find it, shouldn't it? Also I haven't found anything trying to access internet when using Hal. What are you using instead of Microsofts speach engine?

[Art]

How many other things would you be doing when you're conversing with Hal (as in multitasking)?

Sure, speech uses a lot of memory. Just look at the file sizes of the various TTS voices. This is not to say that a certain amount of bloating can or does occur but ever since the advent of increased ram sizes, programmers have gotten "sloppy" with their coding. When ram was small and quite limited, programmers would often remove unneeded spaces from their code to conserve memory.

With the use of good anti-virus, anti-spyware programs, a good firewall (hardware preferred), and frequent scanning of all downloaded files (into a DOWNLOADS DIRECTORY/FOLDER) BEFORE opening or installing them, one shouldn't encounter but a few stray cookies (data miners) once in a while.

Like Testlund asked, what would you prefer instead of MS Speech?

[GamerThom]

Myself, I use Dragon Naturally Speaking 8.1 as Hal's speech
recognition engine. Of the 5 SRE's installed on my PC, I find
that it is the most accurate. For a TTS Hal voice I use the
L&H British female #1 voice through Microsofts SAPI 5.1 in
tandem with Dragon 8.1, so far I have not experineced any
problems with an over use of RAM or CPU while using Hal with
other programs also running i.e.; Poser, Shade, Blender, etc.,
all very memory intensive graphics rendering programs.

[barfy]

acctualy the debate is about the MS speech engine. the MS speech engine preforms like a piece of malware, hogging reasorses and provideing little to no benifit to downloading it. half of the anti-spy devices including adaware and spybot pick up certain parts of the ctfmon.exe program as spyware and quite honestly It is perhaps the worst speech recognition engine available. having played with it about 3 years ago I found that even after Multipule training sessions it still thought that the word space meant F2 and almost every other spoken word was space bar. seems like everyone should learn to speak out their armpits first before downloading and useing this piece of bloatware. surprised MS. didn't charge us extra for this piece of junk, after all they did charge for windows ME.(another piece of failing software.)I have just purchased dragonspeak and after only one training session it proved to be 20 times superior to the MS speach engine,and their system requierments tell you up front that they requier a 800mhz system with at least 256 mgb. ram. more then microsloth tells you on their download page. (which shows you that they really don't test this crap before they push it out to the public. guess free really isn't always good!!

[DesktopMates]

I think what confused people is that you were referring to the MS Speech Engine when I believe you actually meant the MS Speech Recognition Engine which are two totally different things. The MS Speech Engines are the TTS voices which provide the various voices spoken to the user. Granted the MS Speech Recognition Engine isn't in the same league as Dragon Natural speaking but not everyone has or is willing to spend $100 - $200 for the Dragon products. It just depends on how important speech recognition is to the user, I personally rarely ever use it, I prefer just to type because it's more accurate for teaching Hal or feeding info into Hal's database or memory.

The MS Speech Recognition Engine is ok as a FREE entry level product and works reasonably well. I used the MS Speech Recognition Engine over 7 years ago on a system with 64 MB of ram with a 300 MHz processor along with a standard microphone without too much trouble, so I can't see why it wouldn't work ok on today's systems that have 10X the speed and memory.

Most advanced and high end technologies are considered bloatware, none more than the vast majority of high end games. As long as people continue to desire and demand bigger, better and faster software and technology, developers and programmers will push the user's system to the limit.

As far as the whole spyware thing, there's hundreds of system components that are exploited by spyware and trojans, the user just has to take reasonable precautions and use a little common sense to reduce the odds of becoming infected. Can't just tell people to simply not use a software component just because it might be susceptible to being exploited by spyware.

[Carl2]

DesktopMates,
  Thanks for clearing that up for me, I perfer Dragons speach reconition and MS TTS voice engine. I'd mention that there is a lot of malware out there, not bad enough to be considered a threat so it isn't bothered with.
Carl2

[barfy]

thanks Desktopmates, yes I was refering to the speech recognition engine. sorry I should be a bit more spacific about the things I write somedays, (tend to forget that REAL People read this, LOL.)My main worry is that most people do not know the parts that the thing installs and apperantly the anti-spy people forget to add these little tid-bits for our refferance. By itself the MS. speach recognition engine isn't a bad thing in itself for free but the resorces it uses are consistant plus if you notice in my original posting I refered to another piece of software called "coolwebsearch" which uses the same folder name as the speech recognition engine if you find a ctfmon file Outside of your system32 folder chances are your infected. but most anti-spy devices I have tested with do not make that choice and eliminate the real ctfmon.exe or parts of it. making it a useless product. and yes I realize that high end programs use more resorces but this program is quite the hog when used in conjunction with hal or other high end programs yet MS posts just the minimal use ratings on their site. (rather deceptive if you ask me.)

[DesktopMates]

Microsoft's minimal recommended use isn't really that deceptive, many people were successfully using this Speech Recognition Engine as far back as 1999 when the average user's comp only had 64 MB of ram and a 300 MHz processor. It's not technically Microsoft's Speech Recognition Engine on it's own that's the resource hog, it has more to do with what other programs the user is choosing to use in conjunction with it. Hal and especially Haptek are very resource intense programs on their own and then you add in TTS and Speech Recognition Engines, that's a lot of stuff running all at once and each requiring system resources. Microsoft isn't going to endorse, recognize or post any recommended usage requirements when using their products with third party programs such Hal, CyberBuddy or Haptek, that's solely the responsibility of the third party developers and authors, as well as the users themselves to try and determine.

Just as a general point of interest, the Microsoft TTS Voices and Speech Recognition Engines weren't technically developed by Microsoft themselves. They were acquired through a partnership deal where Microsoft purchased an interest in Lernout & Hauspie back in 1998 at which time their Speech Recognition Engine was considered the most accurate available. Two years later Lernout & Hauspie acquired Dragon to combine their technologies. The present free MS Speech Recognition Engine that's available has fallen well behind anything that's being sold by Dragon/L&H or ViaVoice today, but it's still a decent entry level speech recognition engine for the curious and those who want to explore the possibilities. The new Windows Vista will have a whole new speech recognition engine built into the operating system that will allow for even more voice interaction, including dictating documents and e-mail messages in applications and filling out forms on the web using voice commands, as well as manage Windows Vista and applications by voice. How good it will actually perform is yet to be determined but some of the reports by Beta testers have been pretty positive. Microsoft Agent in Vista will also support SAPI 5 Text-to-Speech and Speech Recognition components. Although this is exciting news and sounds promising and it's about damn time Microsoft upgraded these technologies, there's still a few other issues about Vista that concerns me, mainly with security and the whole admin user thing. I'll personally wait until it's been out for a while to make sure it's not another Windows Me flub and see if there's going to land up being a Vista SE version like with Windows 98.

I agree with barfy that spyware and trojans are a real concern for the average user and people need to be made aware and should educate themselves more about potential threats and problems. One of the problems that people should also be aware of is that the vast majority of anti-spyware (and even some anti-virus) programs are well known for creating "False Positives". Many free versions do this on purpose to get users to buy the paid version and in other cases False Positives are just an oversight or caused by the program seeing some code that is just doesn't like. There are only a very small handful of anti-spyware programs that are reasonably accurate and reliable. I personally never totally rely on the findings of any anti-spyware programs, if I suspect a problem or something triggers I do a thorough search and investigation about it on the Internet first to make sure it's actually a threat, and if it is I usually figure out how to manually remove it myself. Investigating and manually removing spyware, trojans or viruses can be a daunting task even for those with advanced technical knowledge so the average user is reliant on ant-spyware and anti-viruses programs to detect and try and remove the infection. A good rule of thumb is not to panic and potentially compound the problem by removing or crippling perfectly good software or system components, do a search on the Internet, there's lots of good help forums on the subject, even try contacting the software company. Also try and use more than one reputable ant-spyware program to double check that it's not a false positive, and even then still investigate it further. The main key is in prevention and taking reasonable precautions to reduce the risks of being infected in the first place, don't get too comfortable relying on a magic pill (software) to cure the infection, sometimes that pill can cause side effects and compound the problem.

Here's a resource that's a good place to start for learning about the various anti-spyware programs that are available http://spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm