The Tongue Twisting Tooth Microphone

dylanduck writes "New Scientist has found a patent for a microphone that clips on your tooth, meaning you can stay in radio contact even the noisiest situations - like warzones. You use your tongue to flip it on and off. Here is the patent itself. The same article mentions a blimp that launches like a rocket."

Comments

Patent Filed 4-6-05 however public domain prior

[Brigadier]

Now one would think if this was put in a movie prior to the filing of the patent thus placing it in the public domain. This patent should not have been issued no ?? thoughts ? anyone anyone ......

Re:Patent Filed 4-6-05 however public domain prior

[FLEB]

It wasn't real. It was a movie.

Re:Patent Filed 4-6-05 however public domain prior

[Ahnteis]

Well, that's how patents SHOULD work. They should be for a specific implementation that is a NEW and ORIGINAL implementation.

Then you get the $$ for figuring out whatever it is you figured out.

Sadly, there are far too many general case patents out there now-a-days and that's one of the reasons you see such a large response on may /. patent stories.

Re:A new combat injury

[rtaylor]

Mouse geastures work for browsers, so how about tongue gestures? Have a small sensor that detects motion and require moving the tongue in some pattern to activate and deactivate.

Re:Lead Inventor's name

[the_wesman]

So I work for a large tech company that has a lot of Indian people on staff (lots of Russians too) and it always cracks me when people (usually stupid Americans) bitch about the Indian people's names being hard to pronounce. So, to you Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. backslashdot, here's a little clue: every language but English is phonetic. No other language has stupid rules where Y is 'sometimes' a vowel - where C is sometimes K - where "tongue" is pronounced "tung"

Don't be afraid of a name that is longer than "Bill Smith." Just because it has *gasp* more than 3 syllables, doesn't mean it's completely out of your league. You're probably just too stupid to try rather than too stupid to actually pronounce it.

So, here's this guy's name as you quoted it:
  Anjanappa, Muniswamappa

Here it is phonetically:
An-Ja-nap-pa, Mu-ni-swa-map-pa

Yes, a bit of familiarity with the languages in question will help you with the emphasis, but, in general, if you just say it one syllable at a time 2 or 3 times, the emphasis will present itself for you.

Good luck you goddamn chucklehead

Frank Herbert is saddened by us.

[Amiasian]

I'm surprised there hasn't been a Dune reference yet. Military applications of inter and intra-dental devices, you know. Anyways, wouldn't the inner shape of the mouth, combined with a lot of liquids and the constant need to breathe, plus the clicking of teeth and tongue during certain words, make this impractical?

Re:Lead Inventor's name

[evilviper]

Don't be afraid of a name that is longer than "Bill Smith." Just because it has *gasp* more than 3 syllables, doesn't mean it's completely out of your league. You're probably just too stupid to try rather than too stupid to actually pronounce it.

You can't *just* pronounce names in a language you don't understand.

One of the very important things about knowing a language is knowing the syllable border. Let's use the word 'understand' as a simple example. If you don't know the language, you would be hard-pressed to realize that it is made-up of just two syllables. If you try to pronounce it as 1, 3, 7, etc. sounds, it will be completely unintelligable.

Do you unde rsta nd my point here?

I can hear a foreign name, and phonetically spell it out, and usually get very close. Going from a long string of letters on paper to the appropriate sounds is much more difficult.

And since I'm on the subject anyhow, I've always thought it extremely strange that proper country names are (sort-of) translated between languages, while names are not. And they aren't even translated to a useful degree... They aren't translated so that the name's meaning comes across (with the notable exceptions of the USA and CCCP). You can call your country "The Land of Milk and Honey", but every other language is just going to end up calling it "Uzbekistan" or whatever other moderately-pronouncable but completely meaninless set of syllables somebody comes up with.

If you translate the proper names of places, why not completely translate the names of individuals as well? If you're not going to translate people's names, why not pronounce country names as they are supposed to be, as well?

Re:Lead Inventor's name

[pyrrhonist]

Ha Ha, I've always wondered about how bad non-indians are at pronouncing Indian names

That's easy! It's because...

• It isn't apparent from the English spelling whether the vowels are short or long (e.g. Arush).
• It isn't apparent from the English spelling that there is supposed to be a tongue flap (e.g. Arush), because English doesn't have them.
• There are some sounds in many Indian dialects that native English speakers cannot pronounce, and will never be able to pronounce no matter how much training and practice the speaker receives (e.g. there is a sound in Hindi, which to a native English speaker sounds like it's between a hard "t" and a thorn, but which is not really pronounced that way).

when compared to the other way round,

Actually, most Indian people don't pronounce my name correctly either, because of the aforementioned "t" sound.

you guys just don't get it... do you!!

No we don't, actually. Even if we did, it's completely impossible for us to pronounce some names, simply because we can't make some of the sounds.

Re:during sex?

[Alkind]

Before, during and after sex: the next patent is for a tooth speaker. Brand name: Cyrano. Advertised on Slashdot. With the first millions made it will be marketed for wider use: political party audiences, life sitcoms, board meetings, fake choirs.

I don't un-der-stand

[AthenianGadfly]

Let's use the word 'understand' as a simple example. If you don't know the language, you would be hard-pressed to realize that it is made-up of just two syllables. If you try to pronounce it as 1, 3, 7, etc. sounds, it will be completely unintelligable.

You know, I speak English, and I'm still hard-pressed to realize that "understand" is made up of two syllables. But then, again it seems to make an awful lot of sense to me as three syllables, so I must just be confused. Or, as they say in Spanish when they want to use two syllables, nocomprend-o.

Re:Lead Inventor's name

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Here it is phonetically: An-Ja-nap-pa, Mu-ni-swa-map-pa

You're right, very simple. Just one question: Would that be "Ahn Jah Nahp pah" or "An jay nape ah"? "Moo-nee-swah-mahp-pah" or "Mew-nih-swah-map-puh"?