well thanks for being home uh on the weekend i uh i'm actually working at night and uh
there very few people that are on the list for calls uh on the weekends nights
uh-huh yeah well sometimes i'm home and sometimes i'm not but if i am it's always fun to talk
are are you part of the school system out there
i am as a matter of fact i'm at uh North Carolina State
uh the reason i said that because i've had about uh three calls and my daughter had one too from different students out of North Carolina i guess they pass the names amongst your computer students or whatever
yeah i think i was the one who did that actually
oh is that right great great
yeah i had a uh i teach a course in Voice I O Systems
oh is that right that's wonderful
so i know uh you know i know about this project so i got my students to sign up and uh apparently a number of them have been participating
oh yeah i talked to one we're not on the subject of course i talked to one i think he had a whole bunch of calls he had a roommate that had calls and everything he had way more twice as many calls as as i've made uh
uh-huh
and i i'm of course we at TI just hoping it works out that the new products that they come out will uh sell like gang books busters busters really
yeah
okay you first on the subject what what do you think about Latin America
uh let's see the subject is Latin America
Latin America yeah
i don't know whether i have any real profound thoughts about that i actually was was planning a trip to Latin America and i got warned off by
some people they say Peru can't be traveled to and the crime rate in Brazil makes it not a pleasant place to go and so on and so forth
oh really
TI had a place i'm not to sure i don't think they do anymore down i think it was Campinas i'm not sure and uh i guess we were selling parts to the automotive industry or whatever and they had quite a few
locations not quite a few several uh in Latin America i think the one in Mexico is closed and i think the one in Brazil is closed but i
i don't know why that is a problem down there and i guess the crime rate is terrible up here too and uh
and some people say go to New York but i don't i don't have an answer to the crime rate it's sad that is a sad situation i i'd like to go down to Mexico you know and i keep hearing that you know the government and and the crime rates pretty high too that that is sad
yeah
uh not that we can uh sell any great program we have with crime but uh i think uh i'm kind of like you i don't have any strong opinions on it i guess maybe that's our biggest problem we have with our our neighbors down there is that we don't have any we have more
i guess ties we in the United States have more ties to Europe and everything and we don't really aren't that close to everyone in South America i don't really know why though
yeah i i don't understand it either although i i think a lot of South Americans
regard the United States as as bullying and uh that's certainly from a historical point of view
would be true i mean certainly we took far more from Mexico than Saddam Hussein ever dreamed of taking in in his wildest dreams from his neighbors
right
right yeah i know that i saw in a book i was reading a Spanish book uh not that i read Spanish you know i just you know reading some Spanish words and there was a comment in there about
the Mexicans don't really want us to say we're Americans they would like to say that we're North Americans because they're Americans too you know and i guess that's true we don't think of
any one else but ourselves i guess we're kind of uh the smart asses in the world i suppose uh or of America anyway we think of ourselves as the only Americans when they're Americans too
yeah well i think they're going to have that's a tough row for them to to hoe because i think most of the world is going to regard
uh citizens of the United States as Americans and citizens of Mexico as Mexicans and they can stand on their heads if they want too but i don't think that they're going they're going to change that and
as Mexicans yes that that
no no i know
and and really i mean North Americans i think are when you say that even i think i mean i tend to think of Americans and Canadians i just don't think of Mexicans as being North Americans although i guess strictly speaking they are
yeah no i mean they were saying that of us that we're the North Americans and they're Americans they they we always say we're Americans and they they want us to say we're the North Americans we're not Americans we're North Americans and they're South Americans yeah
oh i see
i don't know
whatever i i don't want to make i read it somewhere though it's not my point i guess
yeah well it's it's so interesting i just i just don't think Mexico's problems are going to be cured by semantics
no no they they were lucky enough to have some oil what ten years ago an and they they blew all that and borrowed enough more money than they can pay back now and uh
uh so they're not exactly business men i do think we should deal more with them i don't i do have a lot of sympathy in that we're here in Texas uh for the language you know is very foolish
i'm relative relatively familiar with Texas school system and we should teach Spanish at least in uh grammar school you know four or five grades of it so that we can speak Spanish i think that helps
when you certainly can speak their language uh and there are problems with you know the wet back problem you know for everyone knows what we're talking about when say wet back problem and then we should somehow
uh and i think the governments are working on that to try to have some uh businesses uh at the borders of both sides so that you can you don't have this problem of them trying to come up here and to to get the jobs you know there there may be some organized way to do this
yeah
i i do feel for them uh they are very envious of us or they wouldn't be coming up here you know risking a lot not that they're risking their lives of course but risking a lot uh getting thrown back i guess is all that uh happens
yeah
you probably don't see that where we see it you know once a month i'm sure in San Antonio they see it more often than that
well i grew up in Los Angeles
okay well you see it saw it out there then too
and uh in fact i drove a cab when i was a graduate student so i i knew uh
the Hispanic part of LA pretty well
and certainly you know knew that problem knew you know knew about apartment houses that would have eight or ten or twelve people living in them sleeping in the same bed in shifts and all that
uh-huh
and uh
yeah
it was
it was pretty wild
i think a a common factor to a lot of problems both whether it be crime if if you want to jump on that is mostly uh poverty uh and i think a lot of their problems is poverty if we could
uh uh the problems we have you know in this country is is a lot of it's poverty whether it's the people aren't trying hard enough to get out of poverty i that's another story but uh uh it is sad there there's so much down in all of South America
uh so much potential you know we're TI of course is is really pushing world markets in their products and they're they're mostly in in Europe now and in in in the Orient Japan and Singapore now just announced
building a plant in Singapore uh they're in Taiwan and Japan and they're they haven't had what that much luck in South America and there's got to be a lot of potential for business down there for the products certainly that we make and everything
yeah
and there's got to be trade i guess that's some of the answer i guess is business uh uh and i try to be an optimist and say well that that's one way is to help any problem whether it be crime or certainly poverty obviously is to is to get some business going between each other
and we need we need to do more of that uh somehow and encourage more business between us
yeah
they've got to have a lot of resources i would think an enormous amount of of well potential that way a lot of it of course is hot and jungle and all that but uh there's got to be a lot of potential down there
yeah
what are what are you taking in school i didn't ask you that
i'm sorry
well i am actually
what are you taking in school
oh you you're an instructor yeah you're an instructor yeah you said
yeah i'm the
i'm the teacher i give
as it were
that's great are you
teaching Computer Science what you said what were you saying you were teaching there
yeah i'm in Computer Science
and uh very interested in voice systems and in speech recognition but of course this project is really one to collect a data base of
great great
of uh of casual speech uh in an attempt to get some kin d of a model of what speech is like
right
i of course i work at TI and i'm a little puzzled as to why when they get my voice one time why that isn't enough i mean i'm i'm i'm getting a kick out of the whole program but uh
there's going to be i guess thousands i don't know how many thousands or tens of thousands of these recordings and i wonder how they're going to analyze them whether it would be
listening to them or analyzing i guess they've got to be analyzing with a a voice recorder some how
yeah well they record these and then somebody transcribes them so that they they have uh they have a speech signal and what and what is said
uh-huh
and they have a they're able to average it over a number of different occasions because peoples voices change a lot even from morning to evening and that's uh a big problem in speech recognition
right
oh yes i know they change with age i know mine changes uh has changed uh although you you never found your your voice echoes in your own head which is makes it different than what it really sounds to other people
yeah
uh i'm sure singers and professional people know that and you always hear your own voice in recordings and say my God that's that's not obviously that's not me you know
yeah
but uh i know your voice in your own head resonates a different way
uh go ahead you you comment on it yeah i'm glad that you're in the business that i know TI's gotten it with their Speak and Spell and everything i've told my wife that one of the reasons they're doing it is because eventually you'll be able to talk to your computer you wouldn't have to have a keyboard
right
you'll be able to just give it commands and i'm sure they have some of that now and not not in computers but a lot of potential of course for handicapped people
