Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates Seeking Patent To Make Shakespeare Less Boring
theodp writes "GeekWire reports that Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold are seeking a patent on making textbooks less boring by using a cellphone or other device to scan text on a page, parse its meaning, and automatically create suitable accompanying video or pictures to keep students engaged. From the patent application for Autogenerating Video From Text: 'A student is assigned a reading assignment. To make the assignment more interesting, the student may use his or her mobile phone to take a picture of a page of the textbook. The systems and methods described herein may then generate a synthesized image sequence of the action occurring in the text. Thus, rather than simply reading names and dates, the student may see soldiers running across a battlefield.' Furthermore, the patent explains, the experience may be tailored to a user's preferences: 'For example, in a video clip about a Shakespearean play, the preference data may be used to insert family members into the video clip instead of the typical characters.'"
I'm sure the 'reduced shakespeare company' might have something to say about making the bard more interesting.
If the USPTO grant patents on this then I for one hope that a huge hole opens up and swallows the entire USA. Just adding 'by a computer' or 'in a network' really does not seem very original and non obvious.
Just because bing can't find it doesn't mean it doesn't already exist. Where did my other post go? A marketdroid was showing me this technology which they are already selling using his cellphone-telephone in a San Diego airport bar a couple of months ago.
Another misleading headline. Has nothing to do with Shakespeare. What other websites have the same tech content as Slashdot?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Has it worked on any of his textbooks yet, or just on iambic pentameter?
After all, this is what screenwriters, directors, and actors do.
Completely destroys Hollywood.
What problem are they trying to solve here? If people don't want to read, why force them? Sure, reading is a skill we all should possess, but by doing this you don't help with learning how to read at all. So all the benefits of forcing them to read are removed.
the integral collection of Marquis de Sade
This patent is just a wish list of features with no disclosure of any technique for realizing any of those features.
.: Semper Absurda
This needs pretty advanced natural language processing to work.
I hope that .NET will also get better natural language
processing library support.
He basically describes OCR to read the text (mostly cancelled claims), and then piping the textual description to a video synthesis system. I'm not aware of video synthesis, but image synthesis and composition already exists, and has for several years. For example: Sketch2Photo shows a similar concept that can be used to dismiss a good chunk of the very few claims left in this application.
The first thing this will be used for is going to be porn, not Shakespeare. The disturbing thing is that it will be used for all sorts of porn "frowned upon" as well. How legal is this generated porn and can the creator of the application be held liable for generating the content?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/hangman-1
Is it April fools already?
Just an opinion, but don't we use Shakespeare and it's ilk to increase reasoning skills? Much Ado About Nothing is no funnier than any given sitcom out there. Isn't it the language gymnastics that give it's benefit? Seems like chewing it for them just works around testing.
This proposal just makes my flesh crawl. Why are we so afraid of the idea that some classic works of literature (just like classics in the field of art or film) require a degree of diligence and attention to get the most out of them? Why do we object so strongly to the idea of teaching children the value of deferred please; that hard work and effort now can produce greater rewards down the line?
It's not just a problem in the arts. If we teach the next generation that all study should be easy, quick and fun, then how do we get over the fact that a learning lot of the science that underpins our current standard of living is none of those things.
"Sit down, shut up and read" might not be patentable as a teaching method due to prior art (though part of me wouldn't be surprised if somebody tried), but it strikes me as far more useful than the technology described in TFA.
what is the point of language gymnastics, you can change the syntax all you want but the semantics are the same, why waste brain cells translating ancient english to modern english. Computers were invented to do all this mundane stuff for us, if a computer can imagine stuff for me too let it.
also this "invention"is the obvios precursor to the holodeck.
Given the fact that automatic translations still frequently produce gibberish, i'm extremely skeptical that these "systems and methods" will produce anything helpfull to the student. However entertaining the endresult may be, i fear it will look more like a dadaist collage than a shakespearean play. As to the patent application: "I do know of these that therefore only are reputed wise for saying nothing.", as the Bard has it.
Learning to use Windows is quite boring, so I used their invention to make the task most interesting. I scanned the textbook, but the system returned me a boring image, with the pixels of the very same colour. I guess it is suggesting me to think about the sky or the sea, but I do not understand why...
Misleading headline aside, Shakespeare is hilarious.
Violence, sex, creative insults galore, betrayal, incest, murder, sword fights, pork sword fights, ghosts, and more invented words than you can shake a pork sword at.
It is awesome and even suggesting that the short attention span squad deserves being pandered to is borderline criminal.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
... but the proposed gadget will likely make the problem worse
I used this autogenerated video already for my study of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
That's how I know about his brave fight against a sea monster called Fortune, despite having come under heavy fire from arrows and sling shots.
Strange that they always cut that bit out of the film adaptations, I thought it was the most exciting part of the play, even though it didn't seem to make much sense.
... and it could definitely be improved with some pictures and captions
Fifty Shades of Grey
[Rent This Space]
Being able to study and unlock materials from other eras is a skill in itself. The notion that entertainment will help learning is wrong headed. Language skills often depend upon being able to see the artful use of language by others. There is a huge divide as we do not see skillful use of language after radio and television became common. Books published prior to 1930 tend to be much higher quality than what we can find today.
Right now the smart phones are eating young people alive. These young folks are getting terse, junk, messages every minute or two from the time they open their eyes until they pass out again at night. Some even receive and respond messages and interrupt their sleep to do so. They don't have five minutes a day in which they can concentrate. They will be useless to themselves and society until they die.
God says...
C:\TAD\Text\QUIX.TXT
any other tongue.
The history of our English translations of "Don Quixote" is instructive.
Shelton's, the first in any language, was made, apparently, about 1608,
but not published till 1612. This of course was only the First Part. It
has been asserted that the Second, published in 1620, is not the work of
Shelton, but there is nothing to support the assertion save the fact that
it has less spirit, less of what we generally understand by "go," about
it than the first, which would be only natural i
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THbwCeFGN_w
This is great for kids who have a trouble memorising information from texts.
I wasn't one of them.
However, this means that instead of forcing you to memorize through text, you can memorize context through images, this really helps those who learns better by colors and so on.
Basically, this is color-coding pages ut with even stronger visual sitmuli.
Fantastic.
However, trying to use this for literature would be moronic.
It's called "imagination."
I'd have settled for Key Comics ancient releases of Shakespeares tales.
Not a new idea Bill. If you had the patent, you'd probably sue a comic book company for that. Shame on you, now go away and stay out of my news.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
After all, even typography is all about making text more readable and beautiful. And that's not too objectionable unless you're an MLA submission committee. I'm sure there was a time when spaces, capital letters and punctuations were debatable as crutches.
I would personally find use in an algorithm that highlights nouns or verbs to facilitate speeder reading.
Another idea I have is an eye tracker in an eBook reader that will pick up on you getting stuck on a word and will sound it out for you to hear. If you're still stuck, it could pop up a definition and a thesaurus.
For little kids and with enough computing power, you can have a Dora animation to do it where appropriate. For all I care you can have clippy too. That much is definitely within Gates' desire.
So, overall not a bad idea.
So if I were to implement Exbiblio's technology ( essentially linking text to the internet a la cuecat and other failed attempts at bridging print and the internet ) and it happened to bring up a youtube video would I then be sued by Gates or by whoever has the Exbiblio patents?
The patent seems like a real mess.. and useless... the product is better protected by copyrighting all the material associated with the given texts. These guys just want to wait and sue whomever puts all the hard work in to actually building something... lazy bastards.. prove me wrong.
or are these guys trying to reduce knowledge to idiocy?
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
They should apply their fantasy tool to the patent transcription to get a glimpse at what it might look like ...
Most students who are doing a completely prescribed course of study are either ahead of the group or falling behind. That's just how the numbers are bound to play out.
So the bright kids are bored because they're waiting, adding videos won't help that. And the dumb kids are bored because they don't follow what's going on. Adding *more* content for them will just slow them down more.
We need to ditch schools with their one-size-fits-none approach and move to modern teaching techniques, which mean self-paced lectures and study, and come to class to review the material.
Brilliant! Instant porn versions of all masterpieces! My kingdom to be hung like a horse!
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I'll try and stay awake.
Hey, is this a kissing book?
Given how shoddy Microsoft's interface to computing has been over the decades, I'm nauseated by the idea of the same people creating - and if this patent is granted, controlling - an interface to (some subset of) reality.
Though it's ironic that people who used to insist text was the only interface the world needed and anyone who wanted more was mentally feeble are now basing a patent application on their ground-breaking insight that text is sometimes limiting.
I do look forward to all the hilarious ways this latest variation of the intelligent PDA will screw up.
"It looks like you're trying to murder your father and marry your mother. Would you like help?"
p.s. The appropriate solution to students finding textbooks boring is better textbooks and a society that demands quality education for its people. What Gates and Myhrvold are attempting to provide is the educational equivalent of an energy drink - instead of true health and fitness.
p.p.s. Knowing how difficult the process is Gates and Myhrvold are attempting to claim they can implement, I'm surprised TFA didn't include
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES
[0011] FIG. 1 and then a miracle occurs.
No, really. I'll give you Flaubert, I might concede Joyce and dozens of others, but Will is mayhem, intrigue, sex, war, love and slapstick comedy laid on with a trowel. How on earth did he get this reputation of being boring?
The claim about the patent in the patent itself is:
"The systems and methods described herein may then generate a synthesized image sequence of the action occurring in the text."
NO SUCH THING EXISTS IN THE FUCKING DOCUMENT!!!!!!!
It's just talking about "you take some text, right, then you make some images, right, and then it'll be interesting, right?". There is no system or method describing the algorithm that generates the image.
This would be like Samsung having a patent on the mobile phone that was "Have a small phone-like device without a wire to a landline, but instead using radio waves (or any other emission spectrum) to do what the wire did in a non mobile phone".
Means and method of utilising arousing media to motivate study.
Claim 1. A device attached to a screen containing p*graph*c material for the purpose of claim 2.
Claim 2. An automated question and answer system to check the student has read and understood the material, for the purpose of claim 3.
Claim 3. For each standard hour of study completed, the student accumulates 10 p*n*y minutes.
Claim 4. The device in claim 1 may then be used to cash in p*n*y minutes for the ability to watch actual p*n*y of the equivalent length.
As a programmed interpretation of the text the video would be a translation and would require payment to the copyright holder. It would not be need for Shakespear. But more modern works would require some sort of payment. As a proponent cf media rights I am sure Mr Gates would design a system that would fully protect all authors.
I can only imagine the carnage this will do...ala songsmith another genius idea to generate art forms of some sort. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kxqMpGAL3I
no comment
Geeks Seeking Patent To Make Bill Gates Less Boring
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Obama Seeking Patent To Make Everyone forget The Constitution
NSA Seeking Patent To Make Everyone a Terrorist
Willie Coyote Seeking Patent To Make Road Runner Less Speedie
Authors seeking to make fiction more incredible, as fact keeps getting weirder
All we are saying, is give peace a chance! :-)
GreekGeek
The whole point of reading this stuff rather than watching a performance is to use your imagination, not to wave your phone over the text and have it do the work for you. If you find your imagination "boring" then you have a more serious problem that won't be corrected by handing you electronic crutches. Do that, and you'll never learn to walk on your own, because you don't have to.
Yes, make it so kids can't read a book without a smartphone to keep them entertained.
Our kids can apparently barely read now, and writing with a pen is becoming something they don't know how to do.
I don't think we need a room full of kids on smart phones scanning Shakespeare to get entertaining images. We need a room full of kids who can actually sit through a class without using their smartphone, and who can actually read and write.
I don't see this improving that any. This is just more shiny stuff to make sure the kids grow up with ADHD and can't function without a smartphone.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
for pre-chewing food.
Have we become so lazy that now we can't be bothered to read the text and visualize it ourselves, but have to rely on a computer algorithm to generate a video of its interpretation of the said text? This is the magic of the written word, that it stimulates our brain to build an entire world and populate it with locales and characters, to breathe life into a seemingly dead medium. The intellectual effort is the exercise that keeps our brain fit, that enables it to improve. You take that away and you're left with just a passive observation, ie a movie.
Species this lazy does not deserve to reproduce and consume resources.
SO we're hanging around Spielberg and Locas I see. DOn't stop to consider that these works lose much after being "tranmogriphied", but this could also be used to make MSNBC sound like FOX news at the touch of a button. No thanks. It's no longer classical literature once it's been that badly abridged.
End of Line.
Is he trying to get a patent on using your imagination to turn words into movies (on a smartphone)? I'm pretty sure that there's prior art for this in everybody who has ever read narrative fiction, and a lot of incomplete yet relevant prior art in the oral tradition as well.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Just wait for it having to buy the book + a school cell phone plan and school phone + with apps. At the high college prices.
We need to get rid of the over priced books that come with online testing sites as well.
Actually, I think MS Bob has a better chance than this one...
It did strange things, to my guitar building textbook.
I think it may have been the phrase "Ebony Stiffeners".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Over 42 years ago, this allegedly innovative feature was perfected when I was born with an imagination.
I go to look at the patent and over 90% of the claims were canceled (seriously there are 39 claims left, numbered 397-453, with gaps in the middle). What's left is basically what xtranormal used to do, with OCR bolted on the front end.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
(and people who have trouble spelling ilitteratcy).
So, if this comes out, students no longer have an incentive to read - they just take their smart phone to class, take a picture of their books, and Bing returns youtube videos? Thanks a lot, Bill Gates, for killing reading and reading comprehension!
to the bottom which is US education system - led by the "we must fix it!" crowd. I suspect most adults, let alone high school students, could not pass an exam given to 8th graders a century ago. This notion that everything must be easy to learn and nothing ever boring is the most evil kind of fantasy.
This is a great fucking idea. So instead of teaching kids to read and comprehend they can use their phone to translate text into a picture book. Why not just translate it to SMS:
2 be, o not 2 be: dat iz d ?:
wethR 'tis nobler n d mind 2 suffer
d slings & arrows of mad GL,
o 2 tAk arms agAnst a C of SOS,
& by opposing nd dem? 2 die: 2 slp;
n mo; & by a slp 2 sA we nd
d hart-ache & d thou natRL shocks
dat flesh iz heir to, 'tis a nd goal
I for one am sure the results will be entertaining, but not due to the content. Rather in the way it was generated.
It's not prior art that concerns me, it's the intentional rewriting of history.
History 101, post Bill-Gates Video Learning:
Final Exam Essay: Describe the Battle of Waterloo:
In 1815, an Imperial French army under the command of Emperor Jean-Claude Van Damm was defeated by the armies of the Dirrrty South, comprised of a coalition of Lil Jon and East Side Boyz, Britney Spears, and Leonidas' 300. Emperor Van Damm's Universal Soldiers blitzkrieged the 300, who's phalanx withstood repeated attacks until Lil Jon got crunk up in there and broke through and skeeted up the French lines. Britney Spears' forces then hit that baby one more time.
Citation: Video textbook.
So, there's some boring textbook, and you scan a line, and some shitty algorithm (probably based on Bing search technology) generates some sort of vaguely-related video. How does that make the book any less boring? Videos are not inherently interesting - they are only interesting if they are made interesting by a human creator. This invention would just add a boring video to the boring text. What little interest can be extracted from this will be derived from the process's failures and unintended hilarious misinterpretations. They might as well try to patent "doodling on the margins" for all the good this is going to do.
would really come to life with this idea.
Who is this Shake speare guy?
Related to Brittany?
... the little dears should be required to develop an imagination. This is a giant leap forward in producing human automatons.
You don't need to be able to read. Your computer will do it for you.
I've never found Shakespeare boring. Centuries later, his plays are still some of the best ever written.
Stupid people find Shakespeare boring. The kind of people that belong on Reddit, not Slashdot.
Derp derp thinking is hard!
I also wanted to comment on the suggestion that someone would want to substitute family members into Shakespearean plays. I don't think that whoever wrote that part of the patent text has read any Shakespeare.
Well, it won't likely be PG13 if your father hacks up your brothers to make pastry in order to serve it to your mother while stabbing your sister who was raped and got her tongue and hands cut off by your brothers...
That's not "Parental Guidance 13" because your parents would get nightmares.
In other news, "Titus Andronicus" is pretty sick stuff. I don't think it could markably be improved by topical video clips, even if you dismember your own family.
Dumming down of young generation Bill Gates way.
Everybody wins: young people entertain themseelves into idiocy while their parents spend even less time with their kids and Bill Gates gets richer.
Something's rotten in the state of Denmark, and Hamlet's taking out the trash!
What's lost here is the poetry. You don't read Shakespeare simply for the story, you read it for the eloquence of the writer. Cyrano de Bergerac would be whittled down to Roxanne. This is a bad idea. Why are we always trying to dumb down everything? Let him make the product and let it fail, but don't give him a patent.
Try something like Henry VIII or Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Booooring. It's just about four handfuls of plays that are actually good. Come to think of it, about the same number as the number of "Asterix" comic volumes that are good (a decline for the last volumes scripted by Goscinny, then an abyss of bore after his death).
It's been said many times that Bill Gates likes to rewrite history to fit his reality, this sounds like yet another avenue for him to do so. If they ever figure it out and produce something then expect lots of very interesting book reviews in schools of the Microsoft employees kids forced to use it.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Video button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the play's subjects, a psychological analysis of the subjects' behaviors and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the reader's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a screenful of images that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike horse porn.
With certain things, the devil is in the details. I think this is one of those. I could patent "method to bring a person to Mars and back" but there are a lot lot lot of steps between writing "put them on rocket, send, have them come back" on a piece of paper and getting Chris Rock there and back safely (why Chris Rock? why not?).
Remember for Apollo, they had a few ways of getting people to the moon and back. What if someone had patented "method to get someone to the moon, somehow, someway" then waited for someone to Idunno, actually do it. Think of all the actual work involved, the Mercury/Gemini programs that were stepping stones, the new materials, the money, the build out of the space centers in Houston and Florida (pork barrel spending at its finest) but i could have put a wrench in the works by having some overworked underpaid patent clerk that stamped some piece of paper that said "method to convey someone to the moon and back".
What no one's mentioned is the possibilities of mis/re-interpreting the content to nefarious ends.
Shakespeare is not boring; far from it. If your language skills aren't up to it, study.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
A world in which technology takes over the job of your imagination. I used to read things and create still and moving pictures within my mind, but soon my phone will be able to do it for me!
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
With software, the only WORK that matters is producing a useful implementation. The old "you might do X at some point in the future, vaguely using the methods Y and Z" represents no form of invention whatsoever, and should NEVER be liable for patent protection.
Using pre-existing pattern rules to convert one form of data to another, via massive databases of pre-existing media, would be obvious to a particularly dull-witted 12-year-old who has been introduced to the concept of coding only a few months earlier. A piece of garbage like Gates (who works daily to push the police state via his NSA partnership, and his sickening inBloom 'every child monitored' database currently rolling out in NY and elsewhere) uses his political influence to claim ownership of obvious, nebulous, generic concepts. Gates is one of the Earth's truly evil people.
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! (Julius Caesar)
'Zounds, sir, you're robb'd; for shame, put on your gown; Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul; Even now, now, very now, an old black ram Is topping your white ewe. Arise, arise; Awake the snorting citizens with the bell, Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you: Arise, I say. (Othello)
What could possibly go wrong? :)
What an awful idea. Microsoft has really hit rock bottom haven't they...
...imagination, as it circles the drain
They're called Teachers. I took British Literature back in high school and in college. In high school, I had a dynamic teacher that made Shakespeare exciting and cause for much classroom participation and discussion.
Later in college, the professor created a boring environment "delving into the meaning behind the meaning behind the meaning" of individual words and phrases that the classroom turned into a snoozefest.
This fellow from Stratford made Shakespeare not boring with live video depictions of his plays around 1600, give or take 15 years.
I imagine auto generating video is more than linking previously created video based upon content? Seems to me that StudyBlue.com already does that. I'm trying to picture the auto-generated video and all I get in my head is an image of Max Headroom reading lines with some background images of Europe.
Odd pairing, considering that Myhrvold is no longer with Microsoft, but, of course, runs Intellectual Ventures. Interestingly, this application isn't a continuation, and was filed in 2012.
That's called disengaging. Holding a book and looking at your phone isn't being engaged in the book any more than holding the book was being engaged in the play.
It is possible to just not like something. It's perfectly ok to not like something. Stop giving me the same carp in a different format. I still don't like it.
I wonder if an eventual goal of this fork of work is to expand to technical or legal documents? It seems like there could be a real can of worms opened when people cruising through EULAs and mortgages using the summary media generated. Who would be liable for a miscommunication?
So this is proposing to patent the process that movie producers/directors go through, only "on a computer".
I'll believe it when I see a working implementation.
I get the gist of the plays, but only about 95% of the words. The 5% are either no longer used or changed meaning substantially.
I find this whole idea to be utterly blasphemous and repugnant. For fuck's sake, you want people to be exposed to the works of Shakespeare? Go see a play! If they're more interested after that then they'll sit still to read the scripts later!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Juliet, lissen beyotch, yer fam is like wack. I juss wanna make love to you babeeee! And we can commit sewer pipes! Yo! That'll teach those mofos ya can't stop luv! Buncha fuckin HATERS!
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Bill Gates has decided to wage war against WB Games by going after Scribblenauts!
How about conducing some actual scientific studies and adding to mankind's understanding of the brain and learning instead of patents for baseless education tools.
I bet that such a device HARMS CHILDREN. If you can't read and imagine you are mentally crippled... Not just in school but especially in the so-called "real world." If you are entertained by fairly thoughtless disjointed animations distracting your reading then you have a really low IQ or you are a CS intrigued by complexity of replacing a team of disney animators with a spam filter AI.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The imagination killer.
The Shakespeare example is hilarious. I believe there is already a tried and true methodology for making plays less boring then reading the text in book form. I've heard it can be quite dramatic, involving live performers on a stage.
Your beloved play does not hold up to cursory scrutiny.
If William Shakespeare's plays are as overrated as you claim, then high school literature teachers are doing their students a disservice in not showing them how to find plot holes like this.
until Lil Jon got crunk up in there and broke through and skeeted up the French lines. Britney Spears' forces then hit that baby one more time
LOL. Where are my mod points when I need them? :D
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
When I was in high school what I needed was "a good teacher" to help me over the rough bits of language. But as I got older I find I have very little trouble understanding Shakespeare when I have a good dictionary at hand to help me with the words, and that, my friends, is the only electronic help anyone needs.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
what is the point of language gymnastics, you can change the syntax all you want but the semantics are the same, why waste brain cells translating ancient english to modern english. Computers were invented to do all this mundane stuff for us, if a computer can imagine stuff for me too let it.
also this "invention"is the obvios precursor to the holodeck.
Without computer:
"Imagine a vast desert with a bird circling overhead, wind whistling through the dunes, and a dazed alien waking up after crash landing.
Zoom out.
Little Eddie sees something tiny wriggling around in his sandbox and decides to see what it tastes like."
If you have any modicum of imagination, part of what's interesting about that is how your brain has to do a few mental flips as the text rolls along and the mental context shifts. Not to mention that if asked to draw or animate the above, everyone would draw something different.
Now imagine if a computer tried to animate that text based on the text alone, and did it the same way for everyone who read it.
The elegance of the holodeck was that it tended to have actual objects pinned, but exactly how they looked and even to some degree how they interacted with the virtual environment was dependent on the experiences and imagination of the participants. This described tool provides none of that.
Now, if it combined sketch2photo with someone's own personal data set (facebook, etc) and used THAT to generate an animation, that would partially solve half the problem. But unless a lot of pre-parsing goes into it, to extract the original author's intent in context shifts and convert that to the animation somehow, there's still an unsolved half of a problem looming in the room.
Basically, the system would have to be an expert not only in the literature domain being read, but also in the experience domain of the reader. Possible, but not covered by this patent.
Isn't this copyright infringement? Creating a derivative work is an exclusive right belonging to a copyright owner.
I guess the Swedish Chef is in patent violation?
Short-term effort shows the results reasonably quickly, good or bad. Long-term effort is a difficult thing to justify in our busy lives, so many people avoid it, whether that be consistent exercise, working on a hobby that will take months to produce something half-decent, or indeed, building any skills that aren't strictly necessary to survive.
Even this analysis assumes that achieving goals is the only reason to do anything. Thus exercise is inherently unappealing because, when viewed as a means to an end, the end is generally only achievable in the long term. However, doing things that make you fit and healthy can be enjoyable in their own right, from the very minute you begin.
In the same vein, the process of learning a skill can and should be enjoyable, even if it takes a long time to become a master.
IMO, the larger problem is that people have been conditioned to view gratification as the their primary goal, and the sooner the better. This attitude is a "feature" of a consumer culture.
BTW, You talk about our "busy lives", but almost nobody is ever too busy to watch TV for multiple hours a day, or idly surf the internet. People complain about being pulled in too many directions, but almost nobody is too harried to add cramming processed foods down their gullet to their slate. We are not busy or overwhelmed, per se, but our attention has been efficiently captivated by consumption.
Surely the way to make Shakespeare less boring is to let schoolkids see a production of a Shakespeare play, rather than have them read the script? If it was written as a play, people should experience it primarily as one. Maybe after they've seen it, there's some value to going back and looking at the dialogue, but only afterwards. There have been some wonderful productions of Shakespeare plays - I really enjoyed the production of Hamlet with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart that was televised a few years ago.
Troll? Dafuq?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Aha, always frugal, Bill wants to find a use for all the artwork created for Microsoft Bob.
So, what if some kid in the future is reading about Anthony Weiner in a text book and... AH! That can't be unseen!
It has Clippy and Bob written all over it
..."synthesized image sequence"...
So point it at manga....instant anime
Funimation and their ilk may not be to happy with Bill tho!
Will it add sound? I can't imagine kids being terribly entertained/engrossed with a silent anime version of Shakespeare clips and trying to add their own dialog !!!
He seems to be missing step 3. ??? just like we do also tho.
me wish he'd go back to making commercials with Seinfeld
Machines, while not the main theme or motif, do convey a side theme on how technology, no matter how well-crafted or intentioned, is no replacement for human interactions with nature and community, a common theme in Bradbury's works.
The first example of this is when Grandpa tells Bill that a tidy lawn is no compensation for the loss of the simple pleasure of mowing the grass and also the elimination of dandelions, "weeds" valuable in their own way. While Bill initially sees the invention of grass that stays the same length as a time saver, Grandpa embraces the longer and old-fashioned methods because they let him work with his hands and with nature, something a physical invention cannot emulate.
I thought school's first mission was to teach children how to read, write and count. If I understand the idea correctly, this is a method to make them consume information without having to read. If that is the goal, then it belongs to leisure activity rather than school, IMO.
Or did they actually file a patent for something they have no idea how to build (probably while high as balls).
Maybe this was done ironically to show what's wrong with the patent system?
Fat chance...
Is this footage of Bill Gates text to movie patent? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruf0Fl_MZvQ
My first thought was he was going to do this:
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them ... er ...
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
And when we say car chase, that you see them too,
Drive fast and furiously down a runway for six minutes with explosions and a giant reptile smashing through the city
But now I realise it was this:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more
Image of a fisting pops up on the screen.
Student: Daddy, I don't want to learn Shakespeare any more, it hurts my eyes and brain!
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
I love it. It's so much better to patent methods of dumbing down an already dumbed down America than to try challenging the dormant brain and patenting methods to challenge the dumbed down brain so it won't be quite so dumbed down.
There's an "e" on the end of Van Damme. Dank U.
How about making Shakespeare less boring and NOT seeking a patent. I mean, you have all the money already.
Maybe Bill Gates should seek a patent on making Bill Gates less boring.
If this is actually necessary the students are 100% write-offs, utterly worthless and it's simply a waste of effort to try to educate them further. Let them flip burgers because they can't possible do any job of value because those all that require integrating information from writing as writing (as well as any other media).
The real proof is in the original word and format. It is a shameful disgrace to dumb down genius.
Jeff e. / Colorado Springs
i have come accross a book that has been digitalised by microsoft , my concern is as that book was borrowed from a public library , who owns the content of the book ? the same goes for shakespeare , anything that has been written ! it seems to me that , this is about getting something for next to nothing , and making a fortune out of it . i am also in total agreement with BrokenHalo and others on this subject . perih60
Shakespeare is inherently fascinating or boring, mostly depending on two factors. First, your level of understanding of the specific text in question, and secondly, your level of interest in the human condition. If you have a high level of interest on the second and a good understanding of any given Shakespearean work on the other, you are likely to find it fascinating, as Shakespeare dealt in timeless themes that play well in any gifted dramatist's hands.
What Mr. Gates seems to be proposing is certainly an interesting idea, judging it from nothing but this short blurb, but it sounds like an instant movie generation device, not a boredom eliminator. I have seen way too many boring movies and probably as many poorly written pieces of software to have any hope that an instantly generated movie will liven up the bard more than a stage or movie crew doing it up right can. Moreover, I have my doubts about auto-generated content drawn from anything coming out compelling anytime soon. Replacing Shakespeare is an especially daunting sounding challenge.
Really, this sounds like it hopes to do for the liberal arts what portable calculators did in the 1970's for math pograms: allow students to turn off their brains and get A's without ever understanding the material in any substantial way.
If that works, which, again, seems unlikely, the results seem unlikely to be really positive.
imo. humble or otherwise.
I just use two pieces of kite CF beneath the fretboard. Ebony is expensive.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Jesus - I had no idea you could patent science fiction as future fact. Would all of our Sci-Fi literature count as prior art?
Seriously - isn't there still a requirement for a demonstrably functional model?
Fucking software patents will bury this industry under a layer of lawyers.
Hey! Another guitar/bass builder, on /. ! Who'da thunk it?
Especially on a bad, joke comment.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Shakespeare? Boring?? What?
they should rule the world but their egos wont let them leave their ceo state of mind i suppose
maybe its evolution and the ones needing less visual stimulation are the ones more capable of
processing
or maybe overpopulation has a tendency to produce more useless units from a biological point of view
or maybe if you get too many people, the soul of the universe needs to spread too much
or maybe
i just talk too much right, thats why i hardly reply to someone ever, the base losing means we are heading for a dark age that much should be clear, its the inquisition coming up all over again
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?