Screwing up and making it easy to crack email accounts is not a crime, nor is there any reason it should be. Choosing weak passwords is also not a crime, nor is there any reason it should be. To say otherwise would be like saying 'making it so you can close a car door without having it lock', or 'leaving your car unlocked' should be a crime. However, accessing someone's email (or taking their car) without permission IS a crime, and the sole responsibility for that crime belongs to the person who committed it. Quit trying to play the play the victim game.
It is a special tournament, like the celebrity/teen/college tournaments. Whoever has the most money after three days gets a million dollars, 2nd place gets $300,000 and third places gets $200,000. IBM will donate all it's winnings to charity (World Vision and World Community Grid), and the other two contestants have said they will donate 50% of their winnings to charities. See http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/33373.wss
Think for a moment about all the stuff you just hand-waved away, and you will begin to appreciate the problem. Let's take your "chicks dig me" example. You correctly identified that "chick" could mean baby chickens or females (it can also mean any young bird or a small child). "Dig" has a bunch of meanings, both as a noun and a verb. "Me" you just brushed off as "no relevance", but there are two problems with that: first, how is a computer supposed to know the word has no relevance, and secondly, it is VERY relevant to the category. Because of the wordplay, "me" is not referring to a person, it is referring to a LOCATION that was EXCAVATED by a FEMALE, so your answer had better either be an archeological site or a female archeologist. And it just keeps getting harder from there.
Thank you for proving the point. I entered the speed of light question, and at the top of the page it said "about 137,000,000 results" and "the speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s". However, I didn't ask how fast light travels, I wanted to know what does "the speed of light" mean? So I changed my query to "what does the speed of light mean", and I got 9,560,000 "answers" (and no single definition). Then I tried "define the speed of light", and I got 3,050,000 "answers", again with no single definition. So it appears that the answer (if any) you get from google is very dependent on HOW you ask the question, which is exactly the problem that Watson is attempting to solve.
First of all, ever since the quiz show scandals of the 1950s there are laws regulating game shows, so your implication of 'faking it' is unfounded.
Second, the age of low cost mass storage is exactly why something like this is needed. Sure, we have tons and tons of data available, but how do you make sense out it?
Third, I have never once seen Google give an answer to anything. It is great at giving you places (thousands or millions of them) where you might FIND the answer, if you worded your search correctly, but it never gives you the single answer to a question.
And furthermore, if you jump the gun there is a delay until your button is re-enabled. That is the real reason for the wild mashing - you jumped the gun, and now your button is disabled, so just keep hitting it til it comes back on.
Hitting the buzzer quickly is only an advantage if you are correct. If you are incorrect, or don't have any response, you lose money. Therefore, the computer (like the humans) must first determine what the response should be, and how confident it is that the response is correct, before buzzing in. This can actually be a disadvantage to the computer, because a human may get a category that he considers himself an expert in and buzz in immediately for all the answers in that category, and then use the remaining time to actually come up with the question.
Sources? Direct from http://www.mpegla.org/main/programs/AVC/Documents/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf, "In the case of Internet Broadcast AVC Video (AVC Video that is delivered via the Worldwide Internet to an End User for which the End User does not pay remuneration for the right to receive or view, i.e., neither Title-by-Title nor Subscription), there will be no royalty for the life of the License."
It says nothing about ad driven sites, only whether or not the end user directly pays. Since most of the video on the web is not paid for by the end user, your statement about 'most video' on the web being illegal is false.
Have a look at http://www.amberalert.gov/pdfs/09_amber_report.pdf - it has all kinds of statistics. For instance, in 2009 there were 207 Amber Alerts issued. There were 166 recoveries in those cases. Of those, 45 were counted as 'success stories' directly attributable to the alert. 16 recoveries were because an individual or law enforcement recognized the vehicle from the alert. 12 were because the abductor heard the alert and released the child. 6 were because an individual knew the whereabouts of the abductor and called authorities, etc.
You are correct. One of the tests for an Amber Alert being issued is that "The law enforcement agency believes that the child is in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death".
According to http://www.amberalert.gov/pdfs/09_amber_report.pdf there were 207 Amber alerts issued in 2009. 166 of those resulted in a recovery. 45 of the recoveries were a direct result of the alert (someone saw the alert and called it in).
Early termination fees are for people who want the carrier to subsidize the cost of their phone, in exchange for a long-term contract. If the carrier doesn't subsidize your phone you don't need a contract, so no early termination fee. A corporation (or government) is not going to have the carrier subsidize the phone (or, if they do, there will be early termination fees).
The default position on a copyrighted work is that you do not have permission to make copies. Fair use may give you license to make copies for your own use (backup, play on different devices, etc). If you sell the original copy, you no longer have any fair use rights, thus no license at all (since, as you pointed out, you get no other license).
Not only that, but you must also prevent the researchers from having any contact with the outside. After all, didn't this case start with some lawyers offering him money so they could sue the for-profit companies?
So no publicly-funded researcher ever falsified data to increase grant money (or keep their job)? The problem is that this guy was a greedy, unethical scam artist. Don't make it out to be anything more.
Of course they don't have to license it to a competitor. The whole purpose of patents is to be able to license (or not) your stuff to whomever you want. Sometimes a monopoly may be found guilty of anti-competitive behavior, and part of the remedy may be forced licensing of patents, but that is not normally the case.
It is not a new utility, it has been on SourceForge for 10 years. What everyone seems to be missing is this: it is THEIR code. They bought the rights from the original developer 10 years ago. THEY created the SourceForge project and released it under the GPL. It didn't contain ANY GPL code, ever, until they released it as such. In 10 years, no-one outside their company contributed to the project - they still own ALL the code. Now they have decided to no longer offer the code under the GPL, which is entirely within their rights, as they own it.
No, WINE does not start with the Windows source, it starts with a description of what Windows does. Since the developers of WINE have no access to the source, it would be very difficult for Microsoft to claim they copied it.
Let me get this straight. You are saying that if an employee (say a diplomat) of the federal government thinks that person xyz is an ass and we should not do business with him, his options are:
Put that he thinks xyz is an ass into the official public record, thereby potentially damaging relations with xyz, and allowing xyz the opportunity to say 'I will not deal with the US unless that person is fired'. That would certainly not have a chilling effect on him stating his opinion, would it?
Or - he could keep his opinion to himself, thereby not providing any opposition to the 'official' position. That would certainly not lead to an authoritarian state, would it?
US foreign policy is not "the king is an ass". The opinion of an employee of the US government is that the king is an ass. Or aren't those people allowed to have opinions?
Ha! Where is this magical place where there are no lies? Even in communities as small as two people there are plenty of lies. Not necessarily big, life-affecting lies, but certain small, keep-the-peace type lies.
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Screwing up and making it easy to crack email accounts is not a crime, nor is there any reason it should be. Choosing weak passwords is also not a crime, nor is there any reason it should be. To say otherwise would be like saying 'making it so you can close a car door without having it lock', or 'leaving your car unlocked' should be a crime. However, accessing someone's email (or taking their car) without permission IS a crime, and the sole responsibility for that crime belongs to the person who committed it. Quit trying to play the play the victim game.
Way to completely trivialize the problem. I hadn't looked at it that way. Here are some other problems that are easily solvable like that.
Comet heading toward Earth - give me a big enough lever and a place to put it and I will move the world - problem solved!
Hunger - give me enough food and remove barriers in my way, a I will feed the world - problem solved!
Cancer - with the correct screenings, tests, and treatments we can have a 100% success rate against cancer - problem solved!
I am not sure why you are so intent on trivializing what seems to be a big step forward in man/machine interaction.
It is a special tournament, like the celebrity/teen/college tournaments. Whoever has the most money after three days gets a million dollars, 2nd place gets $300,000 and third places gets $200,000. IBM will donate all it's winnings to charity (World Vision and World Community Grid), and the other two contestants have said they will donate 50% of their winnings to charities. See http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/33373.wss
Think for a moment about all the stuff you just hand-waved away, and you will begin to appreciate the problem. Let's take your "chicks dig me" example. You correctly identified that "chick" could mean baby chickens or females (it can also mean any young bird or a small child). "Dig" has a bunch of meanings, both as a noun and a verb. "Me" you just brushed off as "no relevance", but there are two problems with that: first, how is a computer supposed to know the word has no relevance, and secondly, it is VERY relevant to the category. Because of the wordplay, "me" is not referring to a person, it is referring to a LOCATION that was EXCAVATED by a FEMALE, so your answer had better either be an archeological site or a female archeologist. And it just keeps getting harder from there.
Thank you for proving the point. I entered the speed of light question, and at the top of the page it said "about 137,000,000 results" and "the speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s". However, I didn't ask how fast light travels, I wanted to know what does "the speed of light" mean? So I changed my query to "what does the speed of light mean", and I got 9,560,000 "answers" (and no single definition). Then I tried "define the speed of light", and I got 3,050,000 "answers", again with no single definition. So it appears that the answer (if any) you get from google is very dependent on HOW you ask the question, which is exactly the problem that Watson is attempting to solve.
First of all, ever since the quiz show scandals of the 1950s there are laws regulating game shows, so your implication of 'faking it' is unfounded.
Second, the age of low cost mass storage is exactly why something like this is needed. Sure, we have tons and tons of data available, but how do you make sense out it?
Third, I have never once seen Google give an answer to anything. It is great at giving you places (thousands or millions of them) where you might FIND the answer, if you worded your search correctly, but it never gives you the single answer to a question.
And furthermore, if you jump the gun there is a delay until your button is re-enabled. That is the real reason for the wild mashing - you jumped the gun, and now your button is disabled, so just keep hitting it til it comes back on.
Hitting the buzzer quickly is only an advantage if you are correct. If you are incorrect, or don't have any response, you lose money. Therefore, the computer (like the humans) must first determine what the response should be, and how confident it is that the response is correct, before buzzing in. This can actually be a disadvantage to the computer, because a human may get a category that he considers himself an expert in and buzz in immediately for all the answers in that category, and then use the remaining time to actually come up with the question.
Sources? Direct from http://www.mpegla.org/main/programs/AVC/Documents/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf, "In the case of Internet Broadcast AVC Video (AVC Video that is delivered via the Worldwide Internet to an End User for which the End User does not pay remuneration for the right to receive or view, i.e., neither Title-by-Title nor Subscription), there will be no royalty for the life of the License."
It says nothing about ad driven sites, only whether or not the end user directly pays. Since most of the video on the web is not paid for by the end user, your statement about 'most video' on the web being illegal is false.
Have a look at http://www.amberalert.gov/pdfs/09_amber_report.pdf - it has all kinds of statistics. For instance, in 2009 there were 207 Amber Alerts issued. There were 166 recoveries in those cases. Of those, 45 were counted as 'success stories' directly attributable to the alert. 16 recoveries were because an individual or law enforcement recognized the vehicle from the alert. 12 were because the abductor heard the alert and released the child. 6 were because an individual knew the whereabouts of the abductor and called authorities, etc.
Bullshit. In 2009 37% of the Amber Alerts were for white children. 29% were black, and 27% were Hispanic.
You are correct. One of the tests for an Amber Alert being issued is that "The law enforcement agency believes that the child is in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death".
According to http://www.amberalert.gov/pdfs/09_amber_report.pdf there were 207 Amber alerts issued in 2009. 166 of those resulted in a recovery. 45 of the recoveries were a direct result of the alert (someone saw the alert and called it in).
It doesn't say the contract is with the phone company. It could be contracts with unions, etc saying who gets cell phones.
Early termination fees are for people who want the carrier to subsidize the cost of their phone, in exchange for a long-term contract. If the carrier doesn't subsidize your phone you don't need a contract, so no early termination fee. A corporation (or government) is not going to have the carrier subsidize the phone (or, if they do, there will be early termination fees).
The default position on a copyrighted work is that you do not have permission to make copies. Fair use may give you license to make copies for your own use (backup, play on different devices, etc). If you sell the original copy, you no longer have any fair use rights, thus no license at all (since, as you pointed out, you get no other license).
Not only that, but you must also prevent the researchers from having any contact with the outside. After all, didn't this case start with some lawyers offering him money so they could sue the for-profit companies?
So no publicly-funded researcher ever falsified data to increase grant money (or keep their job)? The problem is that this guy was a greedy, unethical scam artist. Don't make it out to be anything more.
Of course they don't have to license it to a competitor. The whole purpose of patents is to be able to license (or not) your stuff to whomever you want. Sometimes a monopoly may be found guilty of anti-competitive behavior, and part of the remedy may be forced licensing of patents, but that is not normally the case.
The owner of the original work, and all the contributions, is Appnor. Doubtful they are going to sue themselves.
It is not a new utility, it has been on SourceForge for 10 years. What everyone seems to be missing is this: it is THEIR code. They bought the rights from the original developer 10 years ago. THEY created the SourceForge project and released it under the GPL. It didn't contain ANY GPL code, ever, until they released it as such. In 10 years, no-one outside their company contributed to the project - they still own ALL the code. Now they have decided to no longer offer the code under the GPL, which is entirely within their rights, as they own it.
No, WINE does not start with the Windows source, it starts with a description of what Windows does. Since the developers of WINE have no access to the source, it would be very difficult for Microsoft to claim they copied it.
Let me get this straight. You are saying that if an employee (say a diplomat) of the federal government thinks that person xyz is an ass and we should not do business with him, his options are:
Put that he thinks xyz is an ass into the official public record, thereby potentially damaging relations with xyz, and allowing xyz the opportunity to say 'I will not deal with the US unless that person is fired'. That would certainly not have a chilling effect on him stating his opinion, would it?
Or - he could keep his opinion to himself, thereby not providing any opposition to the 'official' position. That would certainly not lead to an authoritarian state, would it?
Is that your position?
US foreign policy is not "the king is an ass". The opinion of an employee of the US government is that the king is an ass. Or aren't those people allowed to have opinions?
Ha! Where is this magical place where there are no lies? Even in communities as small as two people there are plenty of lies. Not necessarily big, life-affecting lies, but certain small, keep-the-peace type lies.