23. The method of claim 16 , where the rule module analyzes an energy in the portion of the audio stream.
16. A method that identifies a beginning and an end of a speech segment using an end-pointer comprising: receiving a portion of an audio stream; determining whether the portion of the audio stream includes a triggering characteristic; calculating a difference between a signal-to-noise ratio in a high frequency band of the portion of the audio stream and a signal-to-noise ratio in a low frequency band of the portion of the audio stream; converting, by a consonant detector implemented in hardware or embodied in a computer-readable storage medium, the difference between the signal-to-noise ratio in the high frequency band and the signal-to-noise ratio in the low frequency band into a probability value that predicts a likelihood of a high frequency consonant in the portion of the audio stream; and applying a rule that passes only a portion of the audio stream to a device when the triggering characteristic identifies a beginning of a voiced segment and an end of a voiced segment; where the identification of the end of the voiced segment is based on an output of the consonant detector, where the end of the voiced segment represents a boundary between speech and non-speech portions of the audio stream.