There's a male and female Australian accented voice at this url:
http://www.nextup.com/TextAloud/SpeechEngine/voices.html#ScanSoft(They're under the "RealSpeak TTS" section.) As a New Zealander, I found the accents somewhat annoying, but I guess you'll disagree [
]
(For those who aren't aware, Australia and New Zealand are neighbouring countries, and have many... "friendly rivalries" [
] No offense intended.)
(Note: I haven't actually tried that specific brand of voices, so I can't guarantee they'll work, however I've tried two other brands from that site without too much trouble.)
quote:
Does Hall actually have thought or is he just repeating words and procedures from a program. I have read there are secret things Hal can do and that some users might not be able to get these to work.
Hal is a mixture of "thought," repeating responses, and learning responses.
Basically, he uses a series of routines to analyse whatever you say, and if he thinks he understands what you said, he'll respond directly. If that fails, he'll use a whole heap of methods to find a "best match" from his database of responses. (And he starts off with a huge database.) He'll record some of the things you say and use them himself at a later time. He'll also try and identify what topic you're talking about, to help him give better responses. There's a lot of complexity there, which you can actually pretty much ignore and just enjoy him [
]
Generally people observe that Hal learns to be similar to his user. He may pick up your mannerisms and personality. If you try two well-used Hals "trained" by two different people, you'd usually find that they have very different personalities.
As far as "secret" things go, Hal does have functions that you may not realise are there - for example, try asking him the capital of different countries of the world.
He can also learn "if - then" facts, such as:
Grant: If the sky is grey then it is cloudy.
Hal: Sure, but please explain further.
Grant: If it is cloudy then it may rain.
Hal: I think I understand.
Grant: I looked out the window, and the sky is grey.
Hal: It may rain because it is cloudy.
There are other ways of presenting these facts to Hal. Experiment! [
]
By the way, a lot of his inner workings are easily accessible through his Brain Editor, which gives you access to the VB Script brain code, and to his huge databases of responses and information.
I can't help you too much with your other questions - hopefully someone else around here can!
Enjoy! By the way, it's nice to see another person on here from this side of the world [
]
