Abstract: A method for automatic segmentation of pitch periods of speech waveforms takes a speech waveform, a corresponding fundamental frequency contour of the speech waveform, that can be computed by some standard fundamental frequency detection algorithm, and optionally the voicing information of the speech waveform, that can be computed by some standard voicing detection algorithm, as inputs and calculates the corresponding pitch period boundaries of the speech waveform as outputs by iteratively •calculating the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of a speech segment having a length of approximately two periods, the period being calculated as the inverse of the mean fundamental frequency associated with these speech segments, •placing the pitch period boundary either at the position where the phase of the third FFT coefficient is ?180 degrees, or at the position where the correlation coefficient of two speech segments shifted within the two period long analysis frame maximizes, or at a position calculated as a combination

Abstract: A method for automatic segmentation of pitch periods of speech waveforms takes a speech waveform, a corresponding fundamental frequency contour of the speech waveform, that can be computed by some standard fundamental frequency detection algorithm, and optionally the voicing information of the speech waveform, that can be computed by some standard voicing detection algorithm, as inputs and calculates the corresponding pitch period boundaries of the speech waveform as outputs by iteratively •calculating the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of a speech segment having a length of approximately two periods, the period being calculated as the inverse of the mean fundamental frequency associated with these speech segments, •placing the pitch period boundary either at the position where the phase of the third FFT coefficient is ?180 degrees, or at the position where the correlation coefficient of two speech segments shifted within the two period long analysis frame maximizes, or at a position calculated as a combination

Abstract: To realize a per-use business model for paying software license fees for a service program run by a service arrangement (1, 32) connected to the Internet (NET), the service arrangement includes software license fee payment means (15) which at moments of payment send software license payment information (LAI) to a pay system (18) connected to the Internet (NET). The pay system (18) receives software license payment information (LAI) from many service arrangements (1, 32) connected to the Internet (NET) and makes out bills for the software license fees to be paid by the operators of the service arrangements (1, 32), which bills cover the payment intervals.