grad a: So , I think this is gonna be a pretty short meeting because I have four agenda items , three of them were requested by Jane who is not gonna be at the meeting today . Does anyone besides Jane know what the transcription status is ? phd f: sort of , I do , peripherally . phd c: Is that English ? phd f:  Well first of all with IBM I got a note from Brian yesterday saying that they finally made the tape for the thing that we sent them a week or week and a half ago phd d: That 's our system . grad a: Ugh ! phd f: and that it 's gone out to the transcribers and hopefully next week we 'll have the transcription back from that . grad a: C can I have a pen ? phd f:  Jane seems to be  moving right along on the transcriptions from the ICSI side . phd f: Yeah , so  , I guess she 's hired some new transcribers phd d: Speaking grad e: Which meetings is she transcribing ? phd f: and  well we 've we 've run out of E D Us because a certain number of them are  , sort of awaiting to go to IBM . phd d: So does she have transcribers right now who are basically sitting idle because there 's no data back from IBM grad e: So we 're doing some in parallel . phd d: Because I I need to ask Jane whether it 's it would be OK for her  , s some of her people to transcribe  some of the initial data we got from the SmartKom data collection , which is these short like five or seven minute sessions . phd d:  and we want it You know , we need The Again , we we have a similar  logistic set - up where we are supposed to send the data to Munich grad a: Right . phd d: And so  I wanted to ask Jane if if  , you know , maybe one of their transcribers could could do  since these are very short , that should really be  , professor b:   And it 's One session is only  like seven professor b: So that should have ma many fewer And it 's also not  a bunch of interruptions with people and all that , phd d: Right . And some of it is read speech , so we could give them the the thing that they 're reading professor b: right ? So . phd d: And so  , I guess since she 's I was gonna ask her but since she 's not around I maybe I 'll professor b: Yeah , well it certainly seems phd d:  if if that 's OK with you to to , you know , get that stuff  to ask her for that , then I 'll do that . Yeah , if we 're held up on this other stuff a little bit in order to encompass that , that 's OK because I I  ,  I still have high hopes that the that the IBM pipeline 'll work out for us , so it 's phd d: Yeah . phd f: Oh , yeah , and also related to the transcription stuff , so I 've been trying to keep a web page  up to date f showing what the current status is of the trans of all the things we 've collected and what stage each meeting is in , in terms of whether it 's grad a: Can you mail that out to the list ? phd f:  -  , yeah I will . I That 's the thing that I sent out just to foo people saying can you update these pages grad a: Oh , OK , OK . phd f: and so that 's where I 'm putting it but I 'll I 'll send it out to the list telling people to look at it . So Jane also wanted to talk about participant approval , but I don't really think there 's much to talk about . professor b: You are going to grad a: I 'm gonna send out to the participants , with links to web pages which contain the transcripts and allow them to suggest edits .  phd c: So but it 's just transcripts , not the not the audio ? grad a: Nope , they 'll have access to the audio also . phd f: So ,  the audio that they 're gonna have access to , will that be the uncompressed version ? Or will you have scripts that like uncompress the various pieces and grad a: Oh , that 's a good point . Yeah , it 's it 's probably going to have to be the uncompressed versions because , it takes too long to do random access decompression . Yeah , I was just wondering because we 're  running out of the un - backed - up disk space on grad a: Well , that was the other point . phd f: Oh , was that another one ? grad a: Yep , that 's another agenda item . grad a: So ,  But that is a good point so we 'll get to that , too . I 've added some stuff that  indes indexes by the meeting type MR , EDU , et cetera and also by the user ID .  The back - end is  , going more slowly as I s I think I said before just cuz I 'm not much of a Tcl - TK programmer . So I think Don and I are gonna work on that and and you and I can just talk about it off - line more .  grad e: And , also  , I was just showing Andreas , I got  an X Waves kind of display , and I don't know how much more we can do with it with like the prosodic stuff where we have like stylized pitches and signals and the transcripts on the bottom grad a: Oh , cool . grad e: so , right now it 's just an X Waves and then you have three windows but I don't know , it looked pretty nice and I 'm sure it think it has potential for a little something , grad a: For a demo ? grad e: yeah , for a demo . grad e: So professor b: OK , so again , the issue is For July , the issue 's gonna be what can we fit into a Windows machine , and so on , but grad e: Oh . grad e: Well , we 'll see ,  phd c: I 've been putting together  Transcriber things for Windows so i And I installed it on Dave Gelbart 's PC and it worked just fine . phd d: Really ? So is that Because there 's some people  It would be cool if we could  get that to work  at at SRI phd c: Yeah . phd d: because the  grad a: Well Transcriber is Tcl - TK , very generic with Snack , phd d: we have m m We have more Windows machines to run the phd c: Yeah . Yeah but But the problem is the version Transcriber works with , the Snack version , is one point six whatever and that 's not anymore supported . But I just wrote an email to to the author of to the Snack author and he sent me to one point six whatever library grad a: Well I thought it was packaged with Transcriber ? phd c: and so it works . Yeah , but then you can't add our patches and then the the new version is is totally different grad a: Oh . phd c: and you can't you can't access that so you have to install First install Tcl then install Snack and then install the Transcriber thing and then do the patches . Ugh ! phd d: I I wonder if if we should contribute our changes back to the authors so that they maintain those changes along phd c: Yeah . grad a: We have Yeah b it 's just hasn't made it into the release yet . phd f: So did you  put the  the NT version out on the  Meeting Recorder page ? Or phd c: No , I haven't done that yet . professor b: So , can some of the stuff that Don 's talking about somehow fit into this  , mean you just have a set of numbers that are associated with the grad e: Yeah . phd c: So grad e: Yeah , it 's basically ASCII files or binary files , whatever representation . Just three different It 's a waveform and just a stylized pitch vector basically so it 's phd d: So So Well grad e:  we could do it in Matl -  you could do it in a number of different places I 'm sure . phd d: But But it would be cool if the Transcriber interface had like another window for the you know , maybe above the waveform where it would show some arbitrary valued function that is that is you know time synchron ti ti time synchronous with the wavform . Again it 's it 's It 's more Tcl - T grad e: Yeah . grad a: So someone who 's familiar with Tcl - TK has to do it , phd d: Right . grad a: But it it seems to me that I c phd c: And grad a: It doesn't seem like having that real time is that necessary . grad e:  What do you mean by real time ? Do you mean like phd f: Like being able to scroll through it and stuff for the demo . phd f: Is that what you mean ? grad a: It just seems to me jus grad e: It would be cool to see it phd f: Yeah . grad e: It would be cool like to see to hear it and see it , phd c: And to hear it . grad a: Sure , but I don't think I You can do all that just statically in phd c: Yeah . grad e: I think it would lose Yeah ,  y grad a: Just record the audio clip and show an image and I think that 's grad e: Right , right .  , no , we 're talking about on the computer and and  , I think when we were talking about this before we had littl this little demo meeting , grad e: Right . professor b: we sort of set up a range of different degrees of liveness that you could have and , the more live , the better , but  , given the crunch of time , we may have to retreat from it to some extent . So I think For a lot of reasons , I think it would be very nice to have this Transcriber interface be able to show some other interesting signal along with it phd d:   But ,  Anyway , jus just looking for ways that we could actually show what you 're doing , in to people . professor b: Cuz a lot of this stuff , particularly for Communicator ,  certainly a significant chunk of the things that we waved our arms about th originally had t had to do with prosodics It 'd be nice to show that we can actually get them and see them . So , we have a little bit of time before that becomes critical , but we are like ninety five percent , ninety eight percent on the scratch disks for the expanded meetings . grad a: And , my original intention was like we would just delete them as we needed more space , but unfortunately we 're in the position where we have to deal with all the meeting data all at once , in a lot of different ways . grad a: Yeah , there 're a lot of transcribers , phd c: Yeah . grad a: so all of those need to be expanded , and then people are doing chunking and I want to do  , the permission forms , phd f:   grad a: so I want those to be live , so there 's a lot of data that has to be around . One of the things I was thinking is we we just got these hundred alright , excuse me ten ,  SPARC - Blade SUN - Blades . grad a: And so it seems to me we could hang scratch disk on those because they 'll be in the machine room , they 'll be on the fast connection to the rest of the machines . phd f: Well , is there Why not just hang them off of Abbott , is there a grad a: Because there 's no more room in the disk racks on Abbott . phd f: You can put two phd d: Oh you mean you put them inside the pizza boxes for the grad a: Sure . grad a: So you can just go out and buy a PC hard drive and stick it in . professor b: But if Abbott is going to be our disk server it it file server it seems like we would want to get it , a second disk rack or something . What I 'm looking for is where do we s expand the next meeting ? phd c: Yep . professor b: Well , for the next meeting you might be out of luck with those ten , mightn't you ?  , you know Dave Johnson is gone for , like , ten days , grad a: Oh , I didn't know he had left already . grad e: How much space do you need for these ? professor b: I don't know what his schedule is . phd f: I I thi grad e: I have  I have an eighteen gig drive hanging off of my computer . grad a: Alright ! What 's your computer 's name ? grad e: So  , Samosa . grad a: And you 're o you 're offering ? grad e:  I 'm not doing anything on it right now until I get new meetings to transcri or that are new transcriptions coming in I really can't do anything . grad e:  not that I can't do anything , I jus phd f: I I jus I just gave Thilo some about ten gigs , the last ten gigs of space that there was on on  Abbott .  And  So but that But grad a: Which one was that , X G ? X G ? phd c: XG . phd d: That 's also where we store the The  Hub - five training set waveforms , phd c: Oops . grad a: But that won't be getting any bigger , phd d: right ? phd f: No . grad a: will it ? phd f: I don't think that 's on XG . phd d: But I 've also been storing I 've been storing the feature files there and I guess I can s start deleting some because we now know what the best features are grad e: Well phd d: and we won't be using the old ones anymore . phd d:  Oh thats XA Oh that 's X phd c: Isn't that XH ? phd f: I th grad a: Not not for long . grad e: I have a lot of space and it 's not it 's n There 's very little  Yeah not for long . phd d: Maybe I 'm confu grad e: But  it 's not going f phd d: Oh no I 'm sorry . grad a: Yeah , it 's probably Probably only about four gig is on X on your X drive , phd c: So . grad a: but we 'll definitely take it up if you grad e: I th phd d: I think you 're right . It 's XH and D grad e: I think it 's about four or five gig cuz I have four meetings on there , phd d: The b I 'm also using DG I got that confused . grad a: The " more disk space " button ? professor b: Just press Press each meeting saying " we need more disk space " " this week " . professor b: And And how much does each meeting take ? phd f: And it 's about a gig uncompressed . phd c: It 's It 's a little bit more as I usually don't do not uncompress the all of the PZM and the PDA things . So there 's what thirty some gig of just meetings so far ? professor b: So - so So maybe there 's a hundred gig or something . Well we We haven't uncompressed all the meetings , but grad a: I would like to .  it 's just a question of figuring out where they should be and hanging them , grad a: Yep . professor b: but But  , we could You know , if you want to get four disks , get four disks . Well I sent that message out to , I guess , you and Dave asking for if we could get some disk . phd f: I s I sent this out a a day ago grad a: And put it where ? professor b: Right . phd f: but and Dave didn't respond so I don I don't know how the whole process works .  does he just go out and get them and if it 's OK , and grad a: Yep . And just say an - e just ask him that , you know , wha what should you do . And in my answer back was " are you sure you just want one ? " So  I think that what you want to do is plan ahead a little bit and figure " well , here 's what we pi figure on doing for the next few months " . So this is a question that 's pretty hard to solve without talking to Dave , phd d: Th - The phd f: I think part of the reason why Dave can't get the the new machines up is because he doesn't have room in the machine room right now . phd d: One One On - One thing to in to  t to do when you need to conserve space is phd f: So he has to re - arrange a bunch of stuff . phd d: I bet there are still some old , like , nine gig disks , around and you can probably consolidate them onto larger disks and and you know recover the space . An - and so , he always has a a lot of plans of things that he 's gonna do to make things better in many ways an and runs out of time . And so I think what he 's been concentrating on is  the back the back up system , rather than on new disk . Basically , we can easily get one to four disks ,  you just go out and get four and we 've got the money for it , it 's no big deal .  , but the question is where they go , and I don't think we can solve that here , you just have to ask him . grad a: Yeah , it 's just It 's not on the net , so it 's a little awkward phd d: The only phd f:  . phd d: What do you mean it 's not on the net ? grad a: It 's not phd c: It 's not bad . grad a: It 's behind lots of fire walls that don't allow any services through except S S phd d: Oh because it 's because it 's an ACIRI machine ? grad a: Yep . grad a: And also on the list is to get it into the normal ICSI net , but Who knows when that will happen ? phd d: But that can't be that hard . phd d:  grad a: No , the the problem with that apparently is that they don't currently have a wire running to that back room that goes anywhere near one of the ICSI routers . If there was a person dedicated to doing it they would happen pretty easily but it 's it 's jus every ever everybody everybody has a has grad a: But Dave has to do all of them . But at any rate I think that there 's a there 's a longer term thing and there 's immediate need and I think we need a a conversation with  , maybe maybe after after tea or something you and I can go down and and talk to him about it Just say " wha you know , what should we do right now ? " phd f: How long is David gonna be gone ? professor b: eleven days or something ? grad a: Oh my ! professor b: Yeah basically tomorrow and all of the week after . The only oth thing other thing I was gonna add was that   , I talked briefly to Mari and  we had both been busy with other things so we haven't really connected that much since the last meeting we had here but we agreed that we would have a telephone meeting the Friday after next . And I I I wanted to make it ,  after the next one of these meetings , so something that we wanna do next meeting is is  to put together  , a kind of reasonable list for ourselves of what is it , that we 've done .  just sort of bulletize  o e do do I can I can dream up text but this is basically gonna lead to the annual report . grad a: This is the fifteenth ? So just a week from tomorrow ? professor b: that would grad a: OK . So , we can This So that 's an phd d: Is this gotta be in the morning ? professor b:  phd d: Or Because you know I Fridays I have to leave  like around  two . So if it could be before that would be be professor b: No , no but I I I don't need other folks for the meeting . professor b: Yeah so what I meant was on the me this meeting if I wa something I I I 'm making a major thing in the agenda is I wanna help in getting together a list of what it is that we 've done so I can tell her . professor b: but but   , and then the next day  , late in the day I 'll be having that that discussion with her . phd d:   One thing  we in past meetings we had  also a you know various variously talked about the  work that w  was happening sort of on the on the recognition side professor b:   And I wondered whether we should maybe have  a separate meeting and between you know , whoever 's interested in that because I feel that  there 's plenty of stuff to talk about but it would be sort of  maybe the wrong place to do it in this meeting if  professor b: Think so ? phd d: Well , it 's that It 's just gonna be ver very boring for people who are not you know , sort of really interested in the details of the recognition system . professor b: Well , OK , so how many how many people here would not be interested in  in a meeting about recognition ? phd c: Me too . phd d: Well I know Well , Jane an Well you mean in a separate meeting or ha ha talking about it in this grad a: No . professor b: Real grad e: Watch a ball game ? professor b: Yeah , real real real men " Real men do decoding " or something like that . phd d:  it it 's sort of  when when the talk is about data collection stuff , sometimes I 've you know , I I 'm bored . grad a: The Nod off ? phd d: So it 's I c I can sympathize with them not wanting to i to to be  you know If I cou you know this could professor b: It 's cuz y you have a So you need a better developed feminine side . phd d: I 'm professor b: There 's probably gonna be a lot of " bleeps " in this meeting . You know , whatev or whenever we feel like we phd f: Right , I was Why don't we alternate this meeting every other week ? grad a: Or just alternate the focus . grad a: Oh sor phd f: But I do I don't  a lot of times lately it seems like we don't really have enough for a full meeting on Meeting Recorder . phd f: So if we could alternate the focus of the meeting grad a: Let 's read digits and go . professor b: And then if we find , you know we 're just not getting enough done , there 's all these topics not coming up , then we can expand into another meeting . Let 's chat about it with Liz and Jane when we get a chance , see what they think and phd d:   phd f: and there 's lots of things , you know , details and stuff that would I think people 'd be interested in and I 'd you know , where do we go from here kind of things and So , it would be good . professor b: Yeah , and you 're you 're attending the  the front - end meeting as well as the others so you have you have probably one of the best you and I , I guess are the main ones who sort of see the bridge between the two . phd d:  I jus So the latest result was that   yot I tested the  the sort of final version of the PLP configuration  on development test data for for this year 's Hub - five test set . phd d: And the recognition performance was exactly , and  exactly up to the you know , the first decimal , same as with the  Mel Cepstra front - end .  , well i there was a little bit of a phd f: Oh ! phd d: i overall . phd d: And then the really nice thing was that if if we combine the two systems we get a one and a half percent improvement . phd d: Which u actually uses the whole N - best list from both systems to mmm ,  c combine that . professor b: So except  the only key difference between the two really is the kind of smoothing at the end which is the auto - regressive versus the cepstral truncation . phd d: And , the phd f: But a percent and a half ? grad a: Yeah , it 's pretty impressive . phd f: That 's phd d: And And so  after I told the my  colleagues at SRI about that , you know , now they definitely want to , you know , have a Next time we have an evaluation they want to do  , you know , basically a at least the system combination .  , and , you know , why not ? professor b: Sure , why not ? phd d:  . phd d:  w what do you mean ? More features in the sense of front - end features or in the sense of just bells and whistles ? grad a: No ,  front - end features . Let 's , you know , try RASTA and MSG , and phd d: Oh  Yeah . That 's the the the There 's one thing   you don't want to overdo it because y every front - end You know , if you you know you basically multiply your effort by N , where N is a number of different systems phd f: Oh . So one one compromise would be to only to have the everything up to the point where you generate lattices be basically one system and then after that you rescore your lattices with the multiple systems and combine the results and that 's a fairly painless  thing . phd f: Do you think we 'd still get the one and a half  phd d: I I think so . Maybe a little less because at that point the error rates are lower and so if You know , maybe it 's only one percent or something but that would still be worthwhile doing .  Jus - You know , just wanted to let you know that that 's working out very nicely . phd d: And then we had some results on digits , with  We We So this was  really really sort of just to get Dave going with his  experiments . But as a result , you know , we were sort of wondering why is the Hub - five system doing so well on the digits . phd d: And the reason is basically there 's a whole bunch of read speech data in the Hub - five training set . phd d: And you c And Not all of No it 's actually , digits is only a maybe a fifth of it . professor b: A fifth of it is how much ? phd d: The rest is is read is read TIMIT data and  ATIS data and Wall Street Journal and stuff like that . But a fi a fifth is how much ? phd d: A fifth would be maybe  two hours something . professor b: Yeah , so  that 's actually not that different from the amount of training that there was . phd d: But it definitely helps to have the other read data in there professor b: Oh yeah phd d: because we 're doing professor b: w phd d: You know the error rate is half of what you do if you train only on ti  TIMIT  not TIMIT  TI - digits , professor b:   phd d: That 's e professor b: Because because  , it was apparent if you put in a bunch more data it would be better , phd d: That was e Right , right . So we only for the Hub - five training , we 're only using  a fairly small subset of the Macrophone database . grad a: I could also put in  focus condition zero from Hub - four from Broadcast News , which is mostly prepared speech . So , you know that might be useful for the people who train the the digit recognizers to to use  something other than TI - digits . They they  they experimented for a while with a bunch of different databases with French and Spanish and so forth cuz they 're multilingual tests phd d:   professor b: But but yeah certainly if we ,  If we knew what the structure of what we 're doing there was . professor b: Once we know , then the trainable parts of it it 'd be great to run lots of lots of stuff through . And then I th guess Chuck and I had some discussions about how to proceed with the tandem  system and You wanna You wanna see where that stands ? phd f: Well , I 'm phd d:  phd f: Yeah , so Andreas  brought over the  alignments that the SRI system uses . And so I 'm in the process of  converting those alignments into  label files that we can use to train  a new net with . phd d: An - And one side effect of that would be that it 's  that the phone set would change . So the MLP would be trained on I think only forty - six or forty - eight phd f: Right . phd d:  which is smaller than the  than the phone set that that we 've been using so far . phd d: And that that that will probably help , actually , phd f: So it 's a little different ? phd d: because  the fewer dimensions  e the less trouble probably with the as far as just the  ,  Just You know we want to try things like deltas on the tandem features . And so , you know , fewer dimensions in the phone set would be actually helpful just from a logistics point of view . Although we  , it 's not that many fewer and and and we take a KLT anyway so we could phd d: Right . And then we wanted to s just limit it to maybe  something on the same order of dimensions as we use in a standard  front - end . So that would mean just doing the top I don't know ten or twelve or something of the KLT dimensions . My impression was that when we did that before that had very little  he didn't lose very much . phd d: But then And then something Once we have the new M L P trained up ,  one thing I wanted to try just for the fun of it was to actually run  like a standard hybrid system that is based on you know , those features  and  retrain MLP and also the you know , the dictionary that we use for the Hub - five system . professor b: And the b And the base u starting off with the base of the alignments that you got from i from a pretty decent system . phd d:  because you know , compared to what Eric did a while ago , where he trained up , I think , a system based on Broadcast News and then  tra retraining it on Switchboard or s  and professor b: Yeah . phd d: But he I think he d he didn't he probably didn't use all the training data that was available . We we made some improvements to the dictionary 's  to the dictionary about two years ago which resulted in a  something like a four percent absolute error rate reduction on Switchboard , which professor b: Well the other thing is , dipping deep into history and into  our resource management days , when we were collaborating with SRI before , phd d:   professor b:  it was I think , it is was a really key  starting point for us that we actually got our alignment . professor b: When we were working together we got our initial alignments from Decipher ,  at the time . Later we got away from it because because once we had decent systems going then it was it was typically better to use our own systems phd f: Yeah . professor b: cuz they were self consistent but but certainly to start off when we were trying to recover from our initial hundred and forty percent error  rate . professor b: And we 're not quite that bad with our our Switchboard systems but it was they certainly aren't as good as SRI 's , phd d: OK . phd f: W What is the performance on s the best Switchboard system that we 've done ? Roughly ? professor b: Well , the hybrid system we never got better than about fifty percent error . And  it was I think there 's just a whole lot of things that  no one ever had time for .  we always had a list of a half dozen things that we were gonna do and and a lot of them were pretty simple and we never did . professor b: we never did an never did any adaptation phd d: But that w Even that that number professor b: we never did any phd d: Right . And And that number I think was on Switchboard - one data , right ? Where the error rate now is in the twenties . phd d: So it would be So it would be good t to sort of r re  professor b: Yeah . And the other thing that that would help us to evaluate is to see how well the M L P is trained up . phd d: So it 's sort of a sanity check of the M L P outputs before we go ahead and train up the  you know , use them as a basis for the tandem system . Not phd f: Should we Should we bother with  using the net before doing  embedded training ? professor b: But . phd d: But phd f:  should should we even use that ? phd d: Oh oh that 's a good question . phd f: Or should I just go straight to phd d: Yeah , we we weren't sure whether it 's worth to just use the alignments  from the S R I recognizer or whether to actually go through one or more iterations of embedded training where you realign . You run it ? Keep keep both versions ? See which one 's better ? professor b: yeah . professor b: And while it 's training you may as well test the one you have and see how it did . You know , it 's phd d: But But so I grad a: Sort of given up guessing . phd d: Well but i But in your experience   have you seen big improvements in s on some tasks with embedded training ? Or was it sort of small - ish  improvements that you got professor b:  well . professor b: because we 're coming from  , alignments that were achieved with an extremely different system . grad a: Although ,  we 've done it with When we were combining with the Cambridge recurrent neural net , embedded training made it worse . phd d: So you you started training with outputs from a with alignments that were generated by the Cambridge  system ? grad a: Yep . professor b: Oh ! phd d: No  it 's weird that it did I 'm sorry . Tha - u we we 've see  and wi with the numbers OGI numbers task we 've seen a number of times people doing embedded trainings and things not getting better . phd d: Oh actually it 's not that weird because we have seen We have seen cases where acoustic retraining the acoustic models after some other change made matters worse rather than better . professor b: But I But I would I would suspect that something that that had  a very different  feature set , for instance  they were using pretty diff similar feature sets to us . professor b: I I would expect that something that had a different feature set would would  benefit from phd d:   professor b: sorry , it was the other thing is that what was in common to the Cambridge system and our system is they both were training posteriors . professor b: So  , that 's another pretty big difference grad a: That 's another big difference . professor b: and  , one bac at least Back at phd d: You mean with soft targets ? Or ? Sorry , I 'm sor I missed What What 's the key issue here ? professor b: Oh , that  both the Cambridge system and our system were were training posteriors . And if we 're we 're coming from alignments coming from the SRI system , it 's a likelihood - based system . You know , there 's diffe different front - end different different  , training criterion  , I would think that in a that an embedded  embedded  training would have at least a good shot of improving it some more . I was wondering  you know what size net I should Anybody have any intuitions or suggestions ? professor b: how much training data ? phd f: Well , I was gonna start off with the small train set . professor b: And how How many hours is that ? phd f: That 's why I was I I 'm not sure how much that is . phd d: I think that has about Well i you 'd would be gender - dependent training , right ? So So I think it 's  that 's about mmm , something like thirty hours . phd f: In the small training set ? grad a: Hello ? phd d: I I think so . I 'll grad a: Excuse me ? phd d: It 's definitely less than a hundred grad a: Alright . It 's it 's th the thing I 'll I 'll think about it a little more phd d:   It 's m It 's more than phd f: And a thousand is too small ? professor b: Oh let me think about it , but I think that that  th at some point there 's diminishing returns . professor b: but it but but there is diminishing returns and you 're doubling the amount of time . phd d: Remember you 'll have a smaller output layer so there 's gonna be fewer parameters there . phd d: And then professor b: Fifty s Fifty four to forty eight ? grad a: Vast majority is from the input unit . grad a: Right , because you used the context windows and so the input to hidden is much , much larger . professor b: Yeah , so it 's it 'd be way , way less than ten percent of the difference . What am I trying to think of ? phd f: The The net that that we did use already  was eight thousand hidden units and that 's the one that Eric trained up . professor b: So , yeah definitely not the one thousand  two thousand fr  the four thousand will be better and the two thousand will be almost will be faster and almost as good .  a four thousand is well within the range that you could benefit from but the two thousand 'd be faster so phd d: Right


phd c: Adam , what is the mike that , Jeremy 's wearing ?  grad f: It 's the ear - plug mike . professor b: Oh ! postdoc a: Is that Does that mean you can't hear anything during the meeting ? grad d: It 's old - school . grad f: Huh ? What ? Huh ? professor b: Should we , close the door , maybe ? grad f: It it 's a fairly good mike , actually . professor b: Well , that 's a grad f: Ugh ! So I didn't send out agenda items because until five minutes ago we only had one agenda item and now we have two . So , just to repeat the thing bef that we said last week , it was there 's this suggestion of alternating weeks on more , automatic speech recognition related or not ? Was that sort of the division ? grad f: Right . professor b: So which week are we in ? grad f: Well We haven't really started , but I thought we more we more or less did Meeting Recorder stuff last week , so I thought we could do ,  professor b: I thought we had a thing about speech recognition last week too . grad f: But I figure also if they 're short agenda items , we could also do a little bit of each . grad f: So , as most of you should know , I did send out the consent form thingies and , so far no one has made any Ach ! any comments on them . So , w what follows ? At some point y you go around and get people to sign something ? grad f: No . professor b: And how long of an opportunity did you tell them ? grad f: July fifteenth . professor b: Given that it 's that long ,  Why was that date chosen ? You just felt you wanted to ? grad f: Jane told me July fifteenth . postdoc a: I ,  I thought grad f: You y you had professor b: I don't grad f: I had heard July fifteenth , so that 's what I put . professor b: No , the only th the only mention I recall about that was just that July fifteenth or so is when this meeting starts . postdoc a: It 's fine with me if it is , or we cou But I thought it might be good to remind people two weeks prior to that professor b: w postdoc a: in case ,  you know , " by the way this is your last " professor b: Right . professor b: We probably should have talked about it , cuz i because if we wanna be able to give it to people July fifteenth , if somebody 's gonna come back and say " OK , I don't want this and this and this used " , clearly we need some time to respond to that .  the people who are in the meeti this meeting was , these the meetings that in are in set one . grad f: I we don't My understanding of what we had agreed upon when we had spoken about this months ago was that , we don't actually need a reply . postdoc a: And he 's got it so that the default thing you see when you look at the page is " OK " . postdoc a: So that 's very clear all the way down the page , " OK " . postdoc a: Which means also we get feedback on if  , there 's something that they w that needs to be adjusted , because , these are very highly technical things .  , it 's an added , level of checking on the accuracy of the transcription , as I see it . The reason I did that it was just so that people would not censor not ask to have stuff removed because it was transcribed incorrectly , postdoc a: And the reason I liked it was because grad f: as opposed to ,  postdoc a: was because it ,  it gives them the option of , being able to correct it . So , you have it nicely set up so they email you and ,  grad f: When they submit the form , it gets processed and emailed to me . phd c: Oh , those are the NSA meetings ? phd e: The non - native phd h: Those are postdoc a: Yeah . phd e: The all non - native postdoc a: That 's that 's that 's r grad f:   postdoc a: But what what I meant to say was that it 's the other group that 's not n no m no overlap with our present members . And then maybe it 'd be good to set an explicit deadline , something like a week before that , J July fifteenth date , or two weeks before . professor b: I would suggest we discuss  , if we 're going to have a policy on it , that we discuss the length of time that we want to give people , grad f:   grad f: Well , the only thing I said in the email is that the data is going to be released on the fifteenth . grad f: So my feeling is if someone after the fifteenth says , " wow I suddenly found something " , we 'll delete it from our record . grad f: If someone says " hey , look , I found something in this meeting and it 's libelous and I want it removed " . postdoc a: I I agree with that part , but I think that it would it ,  we need to have , a a a message to them very clearly that beyond this date , you can't make additional changes . professor b: So if we agreed , OK , how long is a reasonable amount of time for people to have if we say two weeks , or if we say a month , I think we should just say that say that , you know , i a as  , " per the the the , page you signed , you have the ability to look over this stuff " and so forth " and , because we w " these ,  I would I would imagine some sort of generic thing that would say " because we , will continually be making these things available to other researchers , this can't be open - ended and so , please give us back your response within this am you know , within this amount of time " , whatever time we agree upon . grad f: Well , did you read the email and look at the pages I sent ? professor b: Did I ? No , I haven't yet . OK , well why don't you do that and then make comments on what you want me to change ? professor b: No , no . I I 'm what I 'm what I 'm I 'm trying to spark a discussion hopefully among people who have read it so that that you can you can , decide on something . professor b: and then grad f: I already did decide something , and that 's what 's in the email . OK , so grad f: And if you disagree with it , why don't you read it and give me comments on it ? postdoc a: Yeah . professor b: Well , the one thing that I did read and that you just repeated to me was that you gave the specific date of July fifteenth . professor b: And you also just said that the reason you said that was because someone said it to you . So what I 'm telling you is that what you should do is come up with a length of time that you guys think is enough grad f: Right . But we can make the assumption , can't we ? that , they will be receiving email , most of the month . Sometimes somebody will be away and , you know , there 's ,  for any length of time that you  , choose there is some person sometime who will not end up reading it . phd h: S so maybe when Am I on , by the way ? grad f: I don't know . The ,  Maybe we should say in w you know , when the whole thing starts , when they sign the the agreement that you know , specify exactly  , what , you know , how how they will be contacted and they can , you know they can be asked to give a phone number and an email address , or both . A And , then , you know , say very clearly that if they don't if we don't hear from them , you know , as Morgan suggested , by a certain time or after a certain period after we contact them that is implicitly giving their agreement . postdoc a: the f phd h: Well , if that 's i tha if that 's already if grad f: so , eh , that 's gonna be a little hard to modify . postdoc a: Well , the form Well , the form doesn't say , if  , you know , " if you don't respond by X number of days or X number of weeks " phd h: I see . So what does it say about the the the process of of ,  y the review process ? postdoc a: It doesn't have a time limit . That you 'll be provided access to the transcripts and then , allowed to remove things that you 'd like to remove , before it goes to the general  , larger audience . phd e: I 'm not as diligent as Chuck , but I had the feeling I should probably respond and tell Adam , like , " I got this and I will do it by this date , and if you don't hear from me by then " You know , in other words responding to your email once , right away , saying " as soon as you get this could you please respond . phd e: And then if you if the person thinks they 'll need more time because they 're out of town or whatever , they can tell you at that point ? Because grad f: Oh , I just I didn't wanna do that , because I don't wanna have a discussion with every person if I can avoid it . phd e: Well , it 's grad f: So what I wanted to do was just send it out and say " on the fifteenth , the data is released , postdoc a:   grad f: if you wanna do something about it , do something about it , but that 's it " . So , we 're assuming that phd h: Well , that 's that would be great if but you should probably have a legal person look at this and make sure it 's OK . Because if you if you , do this and you then there 's a dispute later and , some you know , someone who understands these matters concludes that they didn't have , you know , enough opportunity to actually exercise their their right phd e: Or they they might never have gotten the email , because although they signed this , they don't know by which date to expect your email . grad f: So let 's say someone I send this out , and someone doesn't respond . Do we delete every meeting that they were in ? phd e: Well , then grad f: I don't think so . phd e: but that 's why there 's such a thing as registered mail grad f: That will happen . Because people don't read their email , or they 'll read and say " I don't care about that , I 'm not gonna delete anything " and they don just won't reply to it . phd h: Maybe  , do we have mailing addresses for these people ? grad f: No . postdoc a: But the ones that we 're dealing with now are all local , phd h: Well , then postdoc a: except the ones who  , we we 're totally in contact with all the ones in those two groups . postdoc a: So maybe , I you know , that 's not that many people and if I if ,  i i there is an advantage to having them admit and if I can help with with processing that , I will . It 's it 's there is an advantage to having them be on record as having received the mail and indicating grad f: Yeah . grad f: And so it seems like this is a little odd for it to be coming up yet again . professor b: Right ? So phd e: You 'll either wonder at the beginning or you 'll wonder at the end . phd e: there 's no way to get around I It 's pretty much the same am amount of work except for an additional email just saying they got the email . phd e: And maybe it 's better legally to wonder before you know , a little bit earlier than grad f: Well postdoc a: It 's much easier to explain this way . Well , why don't you talk t postdoc a: T t to have it on record . grad f: Morgan , can you talk to our lawyer about it , and find out what the status is on this ? Cuz I don't wanna do something that we don't need to . grad f: Because what I 'm telling you , people won't respond to the email . No matter what you do , you there 're gonna be people who you 're gonna have to make a lot of effort to get in contact with . grad d: i it 's k grad f: And do we want to spend that effort ? phd h:  . postdoc a: Except I really think in this case I I 'm agr I agree with Liz , that we need to be in the clear and not have to after the fact say " oh , but I assumed " , and " oh , I 'm sorry that your email address was just accumulating mail without notifying you " , you know . professor b: But the thing is that , you know , I I I think , without going through a whole expensive thing with our lawyers , from my previous conversations with them , my my sense very much is that we would want something on record as indicating that they actually were aware of this . grad f: and I thought that we had even gone by the lawyers asking about that and they said you have to s they 've already signed away the f with that form that they 've already signed once . postdoc a: I don't remember that this issue of the time period allowed for response was ever covered . professor b: We certainly didn't talk , about with them at all about , the manner of them being made the , materials available . phd h: We do it like with these professor b: That was something that was sort of just within our implementation . phd h: We can use it we can use a a ploy like they use to ,  you know , that when they serve , like  , you know , like dead - beat dads , they they they make it look like they won something in the lottery and then they open the envelope grad d: And they 're served . So you just make it , you know , " oh , you won you know , go to this web site and you 've ,  you 're " phd e: That 's why you never open these things that come in the mail . grad f: Well , it 's just , we 've gone from one extreme to the other , where at one point , a few months ago , Morgan was you were saying let 's not do anything , phd h: Right . phd h: i i it it might well be the case grad f: and now we 're we 're saying we have to follow up each person and get a signature ? phd h: it might Right . grad f: what are we gonna doing here ? phd h: It might well be the case that that this is perfectly you know , this is enough to give us a basis t to just , eh , assume their consent if they don't reply . phd h: But , I 'm not you know , me not being a lawyer , I wouldn't just wanna do that without having the the expert , opinion on that . grad f: Then I think we had better find out , so that we can find a phd h: Yeah . I I think that it 's a common courtesy to ask them  , to expect for them to , be able to have @ @ us try to contact them , grad f: For for th postdoc a: u just in case they hadn't gotten their email . My Adam , my my view before was about the nature of what was of the presentation , grad f:   professor b: of of how my my the things that we 're questioning were along the lines of how easy  , h how m how much implication would there be that it 's likely you 're going to be changing something , as opposed to grad f:   professor b: But , the attorneys , I  , I can guarantee you , the attorneys will always come back with and we have to decide how stringent we want to be in these things , but they will always come back with saying that , you need to you want to have someth some paper trail or which includes electronic trail that they have , in fact O K 'd it . professor b: So , I think that if you f i if we send the email as you have and if there 's half the people , say , who don't respond at all by , you know , some period of time , we can just make a list of these people and hand it to ,  you know , just give it to me and I 'll hand it to administrative staff or whatever , grad f: Right . professor b: and they 'll just call them up and say , you know , " have you Is is this OK ? And would you please mail you know , mail Adam that it is , if i if it , you know , is or not . phd e: The other thing that there 's a psychological effect that at least for most people , that if they 've responded to your email saying " yes , I will do it " or " yes , I got your email " , they 're more likely to actually do it later than to just ignore it . phd e: And of course we don't want them to bleep things out , but it it 's a little bit better if we 're getting the their , final response , once they 've answered you once than if they never answer you 'd at al at all . phd e: You know , an official OK from somebody is better than no answer , even if they responded that they got your email . And they 're probably more likely to do that once they 've responded that they got the email . professor b: I think the main thing is  , what lawyers do is they always look at worst cases . professor b: So they s so so Tha - that 's what they 're paid to do . professor b: And so , it is certainly possible that , somebody 's server would be down or something and they wouldn't actually hear from us , and then they find this thing is in there and we 've already distributed it to someone . So , what it says in there , in fact , is that they will be given an opportunity to blah - blah - blah , postdoc a:   professor b: but if in fact if we sent them something or we thought we sent them something but they didn't actually receive it for some reason , then we haven't given them that . grad f: Well , so how far do we have to go ? Do we need to get someone 's signature ? Or , is email enough ? professor b: I i i em email is enough .  , I 've been through this  , I 'm not a lawyer , but I 've been through these things a f things f like this a few times with lawyers now grad f:   phd c: Do you track , when people log in to look at the ? grad f:  . grad f: If they don't submit the form , it goes in the general web log . grad f: Right ? Cuz if someone just visits the web site that doesn't imply anything in particular . postdoc a: I I could get you on the notify list if you want me to . professor b: So again , hopefully , this shouldn't be quite as odious a problem either way , in any of the extremes we 've talked about because  , we 're talking a pretty small number of people . grad f: W For this set , I 'm not worried , because we basically know everyone on it . grad f: You know , they 're all more or less here or it 's it 's Eric and Dan and so on . But for some of the others , you 're talking about visitors who are gone from ICSI , whose email addresses may or may not work , professor b:   grad f: and So what are we gonna do when we run into someone that we can't get in touch with ? postdoc a: I don't think ,  They 're so recent , these visitors . postdoc a: They 're prominent enough that they 're easy to find through I  , I I w I 'll be able to if you have any trouble finding them , I really think I could find them .  , and I think , you know , if you go into a room and close the door and and ask their permission and they 're not there , it doesn't seem that that 's the intent of , meaning here .  , because they they filled out a contact information and that 's where I 'm sending the information . professor b: Well , the way ICSI goes , people , who , were here ten years ago still have acc have forwards to other accounts and so on . professor b: So it 's unusual that that they ,  grad f: So my original impression was that that was sufficient , that if they give us contact information and that contact information isn't accurate that we fulfilled our burden . postdoc a: I just professor b: So if we get to a boundary case like that then maybe I will call the attorney about it . professor b: and and and , you know , people people see long emails about things that they don't think is gonna be high priority , they typically , don't don't read it , or half read it . postdoc a: And actually , professor b: But postdoc a: I I didn't anticipate this so I that 's why I didn't give this comment , and it I this discussion has made me think it might be nice to have a follow - up email within the next couple of days saying " by the way , you know , we wanna hear back from you by X date and please " , and then add what Liz said " please , respond to please indicate you received this mail . " professor b: or e well , maybe even additionally , " Even if you 've decided you have no changes you 'd like to make , if you could tell us that " . You know , it makes you feel m like , if you were gonna p if you 're predicting that you might not answer , you have a chance now to say that . Whereas , I  , I would be much more likely myself , phd c: And the other th phd e: given all my email , t to respond at that point , saying " you know what , I 'm probably not gonna get to it " or whatever , rather than just having seen the email , thinking I might get to it , and never really , pushing myself to actually do it until it 's too late . I was I was thinking that it also lets them know that they don't have to go to the page to accept this . So that way they could they can see from that email that if they just write back and say " I got it , no changes " , they 're off the hook . phd c: They don't have to go to the web page professor b: the other thing I 've learned from dealing with dealing with people sending in reviews and so forth , is , if you say " you 've got three months to do this review " , people do it , you know , two and seven eighths months from now . professor b: If you say " you 've got three weeks to do this review " , they do do it , you know , two and seven eighths weeks from now they do the review . professor b: And ,  So , if we make it a little less time , I don't think it 'll be that much grad f: Well , and also if we want it ready by the fifteenth , that means we better give them deadline of the first , if we have any prayer of actually getting everyone to respond in time . professor b: There 's the responding part and there 's also what if , I hope this doesn't happen , what if there are a bunch of deletions that have to get put in and changes ? grad f: Right . professor b: if we want it to grad f: Ugh ! Disk space , postdoc a: By the way , has has Jeremy signed the form ? grad f: oh my god ! I hadn't thought about that . grad f: That for every meeting any meeting which has any bleeps in it we need yet another copy of . phd c: Do you have to do the other close - talking ? phd e: as well as all of these . phd e: You have to do all You could just do it in that time period , though , grad f: Yes . postdoc a: Well I you know , I think at a certain point , that copy that has the deletions will become the master copy . So I I don't want I really would rather make a copy of it , rather than bleep it out professor b: Are you del are you bleeping it by adding ? grad f: and then Overlapping . So what I really think is " bleep " professor b: I I I I understand , but is is it summing signals grad f: and then I want to professor b: or do you delete the old one and put the new one in ? grad f: I delete the old one , put the new one in . postdoc a: But And then w I was gonna say also that the they don't have to stay on the system , as you know , professor b: Yeah . postdoc a: cuz cuz the the ones grad f: Say again ? postdoc a: Once it 's been successfully bleeped , can't you rely on the ? phd c: Or we 'll tell people the frequency of the beep professor b: Encrypt it . postdoc a: Can't you rely on the archiving to preserve the older version ? phd h: Oh , yeah . You could encrypt it , you know , with a with a two hundred bit thousand bit ,  grad d: You can use spread spectrum . grad d: Then you have , like , subliminal , messages , grad f: But , ha you 've seen the this the speech recognition system that reversed very short segments . It 's just we 've had meeting after meeting after meeting a on this and it seems like we 've never gotten it resolved . And ,  and I 'm sorry responding without , having much knowledge , but the thing is , I am , like , one of these people who gets a gazillion mails and and stuff comes in as grad f: Well , and that 's exactly why I did it the way I did it , which is the default is if you do nothing we 're gonna release it . grad f: Because , you know , I have my stack of emails of to d to be done , that , you know , fifty or sixty long , and the ones at the top I 'm never gonna get to . professor b: So so the only thing we 're missing is is some way to respond to easily to say , " OK , go ahead " or something . So , i this is gonna mean phd c: Just re - mail them to yourself and then they 're at the bottom . The m email doesn't specify that you can just reply to the email , as op as opposed to going to the form postdoc a:   phd h: In postdoc a: And it also doesn't give a a specific I didn't think of it . grad f: and postdoc a: S I think it 's a good idea an ex explicit time by which this will be considered definite .  , I got email , and it i if I use a MIME - capable mail reader , it actually says , you know , click on this button to confirm receipt of the of the mail . phd h: So grad f: You you can grad d: It 's like certified mail . This is not So , I I know , you can tell , you know , the , mail delivery agent to to confirm that the mail was delivered to your mailbox . phd h: th there was a button that when you clicked on it , it would send , you know , a actual acknowledgement to the sender that you had actually looked at the mail . phd h: But it o but it only works for , you know , MIME - capable you know , if you use Netscape or something like that for your n grad f: Yeah . professor b: It 's not that you 've looked at it , it 's that you 've looked at it and and and agree with one of the possible actions . professor b: Right ? phd h: You know , you can put this button anywhere you want , professor b: Oh ? Oh , I see . phd h: and you can put it the bottom of the message and say " here , by you know , by clicking on this , I I agree  , you know , I acknowledge " professor b: That i i my first - born children are yours , and Yeah . Are ,  grad f: Well , I could put a URL in there without any difficulty and even pretty simple MIME readers can do that . postdoc a: But why shouldn't they just email back ? I don't see there 's a problem . phd h: I 'm just saying that grad f: Well , I cuz I use a text mail reader . phd h: if ev but I 'm phd e: Don't you use VI for your mai ? phd h: Yeah . phd h: So I i There 's these logos that you can put at the bottom of your web page , like " powered by VI " . phd e: Like , there were three meetings this time , or so postdoc a: Six . So I guess if you 're in both these types of meetings , you 'd have a lot . But How  , it also depends on how many Like , if we release this time it 's a fairly small number of meetings , but what if we release , like , twenty - five meetings to people ? In th grad f: Well , what my s expectation is , is that we 'll send out one of these emails every time a meeting has been checked and is ready . grad f: maybe Is that the way it 's gonna be , you think , Jane ? postdoc a: I agree with you . It 's we could do it ,  I I could I 'd be happy with either way , batch - wise What I was thinking  , so this one That was exactly right , that we had a  ,  I I had wanted to get the entire set of twelve hours ready . But , this was the biggest clump I could do by a time where I thought it was reasonable . My ,  I was thinking that with the NSA meetings , I 'd like there are three of them , and they 're  , I I will have them done by Monday .  , unfortunately the time is later and I don't know how that 's gonna work out , but I thought it 'd be good to have that released as a clump , too , because then , you know , they 're they they have a it it 's in a category , it 's not quite so distracting to them , is what I was thinking , and it 's all in one chu But after that , when we 're caught up a bit on this process , then , I could imagine sending them out periodically as they become available .  , it 's a question of how distracting it is to the people who have to do the checking . Adam had a script that will put everything back together and there was Well , there was one small problem but it was a simple thing to fix . Now we haven't actually had anyone go through that meeting , to see whether the transcript is correct and to see how much was missed and all that sort of stuff . There are a fair number of " yeahs " and "  - huhs " that it 's just that aren't in there . Like you said , that 's that 's gonna be our standard proc that 's what the transcribers are gonna be spending most of their time doing , I would imagine , postdoc a:   professor b: It 's gonna postdoc a: Do you suppose that was because they weren't caught by the pre - segmenter ? grad f: Yes , absolutely . So maybe when the detector for that gets better or something I w I There 's another issue which is this we 've been , contacted by University of Washington now , of course , to ,  We sent them the transcripts that correspond to those six meetings and they 're downloading the audio files . Yeah , I pointed them to the set that Andreas put , on the web so th if they want to compare directly with his results they can . And , then once , th we can also point them at the , the original meetings and they can grab those , too , with SCP . grad f: There 's another meeting in here , what , at four ? Right ? Yeah , so we have to finish by three forty - five . phd h: D d So , does Washi - does does UW wanna u do this wanna use this data for recognition or for something else ? phd c: for recognition . phd e: didn't they want to do language modeling on , you know , recognition - compatible transcripts phd h: Oh . postdoc a: This is to show you , some of the things that turn up during the checking procedure . phd e: or ? postdoc a:  @ @ So , this is from one of the NSA meetings and , i if you 're familiar with the diff format , the arrow to the left is what it was , and the arrow to the right is what it was changed to . The last time ,  " And the transcriber thought " little too much " But , really , it was " we learned too much " , which makes more sense syntactically as well . phd h: And these the parentheses were f from postdoc a: Then Oh , this that 's the convention for indicating uncertain . So the original was " So that 's not so Claudia 's not the bad master here " , and then he laughs , but it really " web master " . postdoc a: And then you see another type of uncertainty which is , you know , they just didn't know what to make out of that . grad d: Jane , these are from IBM ? grad f: Spit upon ? grad d: The top lines ? postdoc a: No , no . postdoc a: The transcribers transcriber 's version ver versus the checked version . The , version beyond this is So instead of saying " or " , especially those words , " also " and " oder " and some other ones . postdoc a: cuz it 's , like , below this it 's a little subliminal there . OK , then you got , instead of " from something - or - other cards " , it 's " for multicast " .  , and the final one , the transcriber had th " in the core network itself or the exit unknown , not the internet unknown " . And it it comes through as " in the core network itself of the access provider , not the internet backbone core " . postdoc a: but , you know in this this area it really does pay to ,  to double check and I 'm hoping that when the checked versions are run through the recognizer that you 'll see s substantial improvements in performance cuz the you know , there 're a lot of these in there . So how often ? grad f: Yeah , but I bet I bet they 're acoustically challenging parts anyway , though . grad f: Oh , really ?  , it 's Oh , so it 's just jargon .  this is cuz , you know you don't realize in daily life how much you have top - down influences in what you 're hearing . phd h: Well , but postdoc a: And it 's jar it 's jargon coupled with a foreign accent . phd h: But but But we don't  , our language model right now doesn't know about these words anyhow . phd h: you know , un until you actually get a decent language model , @ @ Adam 's right . postdoc a: Well , also from the standpoint of getting people 's approval , professor b: Yeah . postdoc a: cuz if someone sees a page full of  , barely decipherable w you know , sentences , and then is asked to approve of it or not , it 's ,  grad f: Did I say that ? professor b: Yeah . That would be a shame if people said " well , I don't approve it because the it 's not what I said " . grad f: Well , that 's exactly why I put the extra option in , professor b: Yeah . grad f: is that I was afraid people would say , " let 's censor that because it 's wrong " , professor b: Yeah . postdoc a: And then I also the final thing I have for transcription is that I made a purchase of some other headphones phd h: C postdoc a: because of the problem of low gain in the originals . And and they very much appro they mu much prefer the new ones , and actually I  , I I think that there will be fewer things to correct because of the the choice . Ugh ! postdoc a: but , they 're just not as good as these , in this with this respect to this particular task . postdoc a: I don't know exactly , grad f: But postdoc a: but we chose them because that 's what 's been used here by prominent projects in transcription . phd h: So you have spare headsets ? postdoc a: Sorry , what ? phd h: You have spare headsets ? grad f: They 're just earphones .  , just earphones ?  , because I , I could use one on my workstation , just to t because sometimes I have to listen to audio files and I don't have to b go borrow it from someone and postdoc a: We have actua actually I have W Well , the thing is , that if we have four people come to work for a day , I was I was hanging on to the others for , eh for spares , phd h: Oh , OK . postdoc a: It 'd just have to be a s a separate order an added order . phd e: Yeah , that We should order a cou  , t two or three or four , actually . phd e: We have phd h: I think I have a pair that I brought from home , but it 's f just for music listening professor b: No . phd e: Sh - Just get the model number phd h: and it 's not Nnn . grad f: W  , could you email out the brand ? postdoc a: Oh , sure . So what 's the other thing on the agenda actually ? grad f: the only one was Don wanted to , talk about disk space yet again . phd e: It 's one of these it 's it 's social professor b: It 's I i i it i phd e: and , discourse level grad d: Yeah . professor b: double double grad f: Yeah , it was really goo phd e: See , if I had that little scratch - pad , I would have made an X there . So , without thinking about it , when I offered up my hard drive last week grad f: Oh , no . I ,  I realized that we 're going to be doing a lot of experiments , o for this , paper we 're writing , so we 're probably gonna need a lot more We 're probably gonna need that disk space that we had on that eighteen gig hard drive . We just need to phd e: I think we need , like , another eighteen gig disk to be safe .  , I guess the thing is is , all I need is to hang it off , like , the person who 's coming in , Sonali 's , computer . phd h: Oh , so so , you mean the d the internal the disks on the machines that we just got ? grad d: Whew . grad d: So are we gonna move the stuff off of my hard drive onto that when those come in ? grad f: On phd h: Oh , oh . phd e: Do when when is this planned for roughly ? phd c: They should be I I imagine next week or something . So grad f: If you 're if you 're desperate , I have some space on my drive . grad d: I think if I 'm grad f: But I I vacillate between no space free and a few gig free . phd e: Well , each meeting is like a gig or something , grad f: It 's eventually real disk space . I was just going to comment that I I 'm going to , be on the phone with Mari tomorrow , late afternoon . She was re she was referring to it as I think this actually didn't just come from her , but this is what , DARPA had asked for . But of course the fiscal year starts in October , so I don't quite understand w w why we do an annual report that we 're writing in July . It 's that the meeting is in July so they so DARPA just said do an annual report . I 'll do it , you know , as much as I can without bothering people , just by looking at at papers and status reports . And if ,  if I have some questions I 'll grad f: When we remember to fill them out . If people could do it as soon as as you can , if you haven't done one si recently .  , but , you know , I 'm I 'm sure before it 's all done , I 'll end up bugging people for for more clarification about stuff . But , I don't know , I guess I guess I know pretty much what people have been doing . And if something hasn't ,  I 'll be talking to her late tomorrow afternoon , and if something hasn't been in a status report and you think it 's important thing to mention on this kind of thing , just pop me a one - liner and and and I 'll I 'll have it in front of me for the phone conversation . grad f: Not here , but later today ? grad d: We should probably talk off - line about when we 're gonna talk off - line . Yeah , I might want to get updated about it in about a week cuz , I 'm actually gonna have a a few days off the following week , a after the after the picnic . grad f: So we were gonna do sort of status of speech transcription automatic transcription , but we 're kind of running late . phd e: How long does it take you to save the data ? grad f: Fifteen minutes . grad f: ten minute phd e: Guess we should stop , like , twenty of at the latest . professor b: Well , I would love to hear about it , grad f: What do you have to say ? professor b: especially since grad f: I 'm interested , so professor b: Yeah . Well , I 'm gonna be on the phone tomorrow , so this is just a good example of the sort of thing I 'd like to hear about . professor b: Cuz he looked at you phd h: What ? professor b: and says you 're sketching . phd h: I I I I 'm not actually , I 'm not sure what ? Are we supposed to have done something ? grad f: No . grad f: Whew ! professor b: That was grad f: Dodged that bullet . phd e: Yeah , we 're phd h: the the next thing on our agenda is to go back and look at the ,  the automatic alignments because , I got some I I I learned from Thilo what data we can use as a benchmark to see how well we 're doing on automatic alignments of the background speech or , of the foreground speech with background speech . phd e: And then , I guess , the new data that Don will start to process phd h: But , we haven't actually phd e: the ,  when he can get these You know , before we were working with these segments that were all synchronous and that caused a lot of problems phd h: Mmm . phd e: And so that 's sort of a stage - two of trying the same kinds of alignments with the tighter boundaries with them is really the next step .  , but we 're hoping to have a paper for that as well , which should be an interesting grad f: When 's it due ? phd e: The t paper isn't due until August . phd e: But , the good news is that that will have sort of the European experts in prosody sort of a different crowd , and I think we 're the only people working on prosody in meetings so far , so that should be interesting . postdoc a: What 's the name of the meeting ? phd e: it 's ISCA Workshop on Prosody in Speech Recognition and Understanding , or something like that phd h: It 's called Prosody to grad f:   phd e: some generic  , so it 's focused on using prosody in automatic systems and there 's a  , a web page for it . Well , that th Hey , if that 's what it takes , that 's fine with me