Over the years, we've all seen many technologies come and go, and even made fun of some that were dead on arrival. One that keeps hanging on is voice-recognition. Some implementations are good while others still leave us, well, speechless. Specialized high-end speech recognition software does a very limited job extremely well. When I recite a prescription number, read a credit-card number, or even reel off one of my frequent-flyer numbers, these systems work flawlessly, even with a nasal monotone voice like mine. These programs have an extremely small vocabulary, perhaps as narrow as numbers or letters that are recited one at a time instead of as a continuous stream. Think of it as akin to writing individual block letters in contrast to cursive penmanship.

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