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MS Seeks To Patent Education-Feedback Software
theodp writes "The USPTO disclosed Thursday that Microsoft is seeking an early childhood education-related patent for Providing instructional feedback to a user, which the software giant says covers the use of computers to teach little tykes to form the letter 'b', make a 'ch' sound, and divide 321 by 17. Let's hope LeapPad-toting preschoolers are indemnified against Microsoft lawsuits." "Unstructured" is the key word in this patent, which (like most) is written in language that does more to obscure than illuminate. Just how structured was Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing? How about GCompris?
This may be the big one folks. There is so much prior art for this that its not even funny. Not only that, this is the backbone of the world's economy and its rigorous enforcement may well wake up the world to the problem of broad software patents and bring about quick change to the patent system.
May it be rigorously enforced for the good of humanity.
The PalmOS Graffiti tutor - very structured, obviously it's not prior art!
And, these much older teaching tools are also obviously too structured and not prior art!
Madlibs, a game from the Apple II days! - Obviously too structured.
Lemonade stand - Apple II
. . . Other examples, too numerous to waste time on! There is so much prior art on this, that maybe it will wake someone at the US Patent Office up!
Speak and Spell came out in 1978. This is about as plain an example of "prompt user, wait for reply, respond" as you can get. Is MS claiming they came up with this concept before 78?
I wrote a program that did this for my daughter in my own voice. If Microsoft wants to come sue me, they're welcome to go ahead and try.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
I looked at the slashdot comments for useful information and opinion on the patent, but found some worthless posts meant to better the poster's karma and some humourless funny posts. I don't know how to read patents, so can anyone please make a useful comment about what the patent actually says? Please don't make funny replies to this with posts like "you must be new here".
It is so much broader then that : Its about 'concept duplication' and prohibiting that..
Should simple concepts be patentable? I donno, but should people be able to profit off their ideas, yes....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Back in 1992 I wrote a flash card program for a girlfriends daughter. I used a non-M$ BASIC language that has a compiler (ASIC I think).
I still have the program and source code if we need to show prior art to the id10ts at the USPTO. The program worked by displaying the letter or number (real big) the kid press on the keyboard. It also had basic shapes and colors (i.e. red triagle blue square, yellow circle etc.) It was interactive with he kid and parent.
I hearby patent cows farting. Every farmer that has a cow that farts must pay me a penny for every fart.
Is it just me, or is there some connection between this patent and the $100 PC (http://linuxpr.com/releases/7357.html), which mentions its use as an educational tool in schools, possibly using networks/internet to create or find educational tools for use on these DSL computers? Whats next, will microsoft be telling developing China that it cannot buy/use these computers for educational purposes (whatsoever, due to the broadnes of that patent) without the danger of patent litigation? It seems Microsoft is a sore looser.
Plasma Panels, TUTOR and Teaching - Oh my
/ showsg.asp?rg=7&sg=13
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_system
http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/uaccard/adminhist
OK, I read the patent app and came to the following conclusions:
First, the biggest threat is to "simulation" education, not regular teaching systems, and it looks like they are trying to patent a simulator. As the world becomes more complex, many things will be better taught by simulation than rote learning. The images didn't work well in Mozilla, but I get the impression that MS is proposing a stand alone unit over the broad scope of the early claims. IBM and Control Data may have the "prior art" for simulated learning systems.
This should not be a threat to regular "programmed instruction" because PI usually requires specific answers to specific questions. It is a "reinforcement" to structured responses, rather than analog unstructured skill building. Texas Instruments built a great Typing teacher back in the 70's. You painted a child's fingers different colors, and painted the keys the right color for those fingers. The student was reinforced for both getting the right spelling for the words presented, but also for touching the right keys with the right fingers. Most of the typing teachers, type and spell, etc. use this type of PI based on the teachings of Skinner and Crowder. BTW, IBM was using this type of teaching back in the 60's, and I actually learned to program in AUTOCODER from this type of teaching. PI courses are considered inadequate if they do not teach 98% of the subject to 98% of the users, and it typically takes only about 1/6th the time that it would take with a passive presentation. I think that Skinner got such a bad rap that people "threw out the baby with the bathwater" when they de-emphasized PI in the 70's. To be fair though, even though PI is extremely useful for transmitting knowlege, it takes about 5 times as long to produce a good PI course or book as it would take to produce a passive presentation course.
"Unstructured input" may be challenged by people using fuzzy logic or neural nets in learning devices. It's been done. In the near future, I can certainly envision cameras that will tell a system when a child is holding a pen incorrectly, and certainly it's possible to figure out how a person arrived at their answers, even if it's an incorrect answer. In arithmetic, for instance, accountants have multiple tricks to identify specific types of arithmetic mistakes.
A lot of CAI is crap these days. It always tics me off when a company produces a multimedia presentation of a lecture and ignores the other things (like PI) that could so well enhance the instruction. If this MS patent would reduce the level of crap I'd be for it, but I'm afraid it's more likely that it will increase the amount of crap as people try to avoid infringement problems.
It is, however, time to do something about the low level of learning among our children, and the slow process of teaching our adults. (These problems may be related!) Microsoft deserves some of the patents they've produced, and knee-jerk anti-MS responses won't solve the problem of teaching our population. If they have come up with something really new, I'd be delighted to see it distributed throughout our schools and homes.
Where's Ray Kurzweil when we need him?
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
"Wake me up when one of these is upheld in court. That will be news. The patent office still hasn't even approved this one"
I think the "news" is that Microsoft are trying to get as many patents as possible, as quickly as possible.
The apparent stupidity of some of the ideas they've come up with (patenting the comparaison of numbers?) implies that they're not trying to pretend that any innovation is happening at the company, they just want lots of patents.
Notice the timing though. Europe is in the middle of a nasty debate about whether to allow software patents. The SCO harassement is starting to wane. Stallman and the FSF are warning that the next attack against free software will come using patents as attack tools. Everybody is expecting something to happen. And Microsoft seems to have decided it needs a stockpile of ammunition.
I won't be waking you up when it's upheld in court, because that will occur many years after the patents concerned have been used to destroy a competitor (probably a useful OSS program we all use), or as "FUD" which we'll see when our managers sneer at the idea of using free software at work now that they're living in fear of being sued for it.
But the action required is not so much finding prior art, as (a) ensuring that European law remains sane, and (b) continuing to create free software which is more innovative than anything the proprietary world can offer.
"Write your congressman and plead for reform."
I hate to break it to you but it won't help. Your congressperson doesn't give a shit about you. Read this article. Here is a quote.
While all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for election in November, the truth is that only about 25 to 40 seats are truly contested
So unless you live in one of those 24 t0 40 districts your congressmen gets re-elected automatically. As they say their only risk is to be caught with a dead girl or a live boy.
MS is bribing them, they know they will get re-elected no matter what.
When push comes to shove they will simply say that if you vote for their opponent gays will marry and terrorists will kill you and voila! They will get re-elected. Your neighbors are dumb and are much more concerned with preventing gays from being married then patents.
evil is as evil does
Jeebus, this is basic stuff that's been done in CAI for decades. The firmest prior art is probably IBM CourseWriter which dates back to 1968, maybe even farther. I worked porting some CourseWriter programs back in the early 70s, they did exactly what the MS patent describes. In fact, that was the whole POINT of CourseWriter, to branch to extended instructional material depending on user input.
IBM even had a little "voice unit" for synthesized speech output from the old Coursewriter machines, but I forget the model number of the CPUs, I think they were 1401s. I have a nameplate from one of the old voice units somewhere, I found it lying on the floor when the old machines were decommissioned and the new DECs were installed.
Having read a lot about patentability in the UK recently, the damages caused by US patents can be far more real in the UK than the rest of Europe. For this we have largely to thank President....er....I mean Primeminister Blair.
It is also of note that the current UK government is all-for patent reform. ie: adopting the US standards.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.