Actually, you can approximate an infrasonic sound with pulses... you just have to do it very fast (at least twice human hearing speed), and vary the pulse's amplitude continuously up and down, repeating every 5 seconds. The result is a 0.2hz audio wave... synthesized with clicks.
The human voice is analog, not digital. This cannot be approximated by a discrete pulse once every 5 seconds, because it is a continuous wave that peaks every 5 seconds.
There is a *HUGE* difference.
If you were to meaningfully digitize it, then you must still sample it at thresholds above human hearing, and it would appear as discrete pulses whose peaks would appear to form a sine wave... one which has a frequency below that which we can hear ourselves.
I've solved problems while sleeping... including one memorable time where I found a solution to one particular computer bug in some software I was writing that had been troubling me for a few days (the error in my dream, and in reality, turned out to be caused by a mistyped condition that was executed very infrequently, and which was simply missing a boolean negation). Of course, the reasonable explanation for this is that because I had seen the code so many times by that point, my eyes had already viewed the error, I had simply not previously recognized it as such. Somehow, this manifested in a dream where I was working on the program, and happened to catch the error. I don't know exactly why I recognized the error in my dream, but I know that the only reason I spotted the error in real life was because I remembered that dream and decided to look at the applicable place in the code. Nonethless, that was a really bizarre experience... one I'm sure I'll never forget.
But I can't really say I've ever *LEARNED* anything new while sleeping though... only at most, discovered new ways of thinking about things that I really did already know.
To the best of my knowledge, it wasn't patented previously. But this is probably only *BECAUSE* it was thought of as obvious... (indeed, its obviousness is what makes the interface so natural and intuitive for anyone to use without having received any prior training on controlling the user interface).
No, you didn't fix that for me at all. I said what I meant.
You are probably right about the iPhone being the first mobile platform to utilize such an interface, but many of Apple's alleged patents are still on the general idea of what amounts to a "Minority Report" style of computer interaction, using available touchscreen technology... and devices which utilized them, albeit not typically mobile, *DID* exist before the iPhone, while Apple apparently claims to have effectively invented that form of user interaction. The strength of that claim lies only in public ignorance of the interfaces that existed before it, not on any factual merit, and certainly not considering the fact that such a user interface is *extremely* obvious, and no patents on it should have ever been awarded in the first place.
The very fact that Apple devices, and indeed, the other devices which preceded it which used a similar user interface, are very intuitive and easy for people to use without having received any prior training or exposure to the user interface is *BECAUSE* that type of interface is very natural and obvious for people to utilize. It is, quite frankly, nothing less than an abomination that Apple, or any company, should be permitted to take ownership of it, and essentially prevent any other manufacturer from ever making another touchscreen device which might happen to be just as easy for untrained people to use,.
I think that may be throwing the baby out with bathwater. *STUPID* patents should be outlawed... particularly patents that amount to essentially complete ownership of entire concepts, ideas, or manners in which other people may do things.
I'll agree that the patent system needs one helluva *MAJOR* overhaul, but I genuinely believe it would be an error in judgement to not have it at all.
Yeah... but things like pinch-to-zoom existed quite some time before iPhone. Similar, if not identical forms of graphical interface interaction were demonstrated on table-computing devices several years before the iPhone came out. Nobody patented them before Apple because nobody else was arrogant enough to think that they invented them. Indeed, if Apple (or any other device manufacturers before them that utilized such an interface) had genuinely invented the practical use of gestures for such computer interaction, then it would have not been anywhere nearly as intuitive for people without any prior training in using such an interface to operate.
Consider, however, in centralized facilities, it can be easier to implement stricter emission controls, and possibly even produce energy more efficiently than it is in an inherently mobile platform such as an automobile. You're probably right that they'd be using fossil fuels of some kind to compress the air, but that doesn't mean there wouldn't be advantages to centralizing that aspect of things. Plus, of course... there's no inherent requirement that fossil fuel must be used to generate the necessary energy. Other energy sources, including hydro or nuclear, could just as easily be used as well, requiring only an upgrade of the facilities that compress the air, while the overall automobile infrastructure itself remains entirely unaffected.
...e: but the problem is, even if you enjoy it, you probably don't enjoy doing it ALL THE TIME
This is true. I do what I love for a living, and I can't imagine doing anything else. Certainly there have been days where things get a bit stressful, and it's hardly the same thing as just goofing off and having fun.
Nonetheless, I wouldn't trade what I do for anything. Even if I won a lottery and didn't need to work, I know I'd still do what I do everyday.... if for no other reason than the fact that at least having the external motivation would help to keep me from getting bored with too much free time.
If you like doing something for fun, don't do it for work.
I've heard this advice before, but I have to say that I think it's ill-conceived. I believe that it's based on the supposition that if you have to do something every day, then it will simply suck all of the enjoyment out of it.
This is simply not true... happiness is not subject to laws of thermodynamics. If you really enjoy, or especially have a passion for something, then doing it for a living is not going to diminish that. It fulfills it.
Apple didn't even hatch the egg first... they were simply fortunate enough to have the first commercial success.
But of course, that's entirely beside the point that a good deal of what Apple patented here is stuff that is many would think is obvious (the gestures themselves, most significantly, as used to control a visual feedback device). Nobody else had bothered to patent them before Apple did not because the companies that developed technology which utilizes it didn't have any foresight, but *BECAUSE* they were thought to be obvious. Indeed, it is their obviousness that is what makes that kind of user interface so intuitive, and therefore is relatively easy for people with no prior exposure to the device to control.
True, except it wasn't really on technological issues that Apple won this... it was on the basis of things like user interface similarity.
Apple didn't invent those notions (indeed, they are obvious, and that is the only reason that such gestures are intuitive and the device so easy to use in the first place), and they should not be able to prohibit others from using such mechanisms either.
It's a clump of cells. It may have a clump of brain cells, but is the brain even viable? Can it support a personality or just function at that stage?
By the third trimester? Yes.
And when it switches from "clump of neural cells" to "functioning human being finished the boot sequence" how do you tell and say "this is now a person"?
With respect to that moment in time, we can't, really. End of story. We just don't know.
Certainly throughout the last 2.5 to 3 months of pregnancy there definitely is a functioning brain, which not only invokes muscle movement, but also even dreams. The exact point that this starts, however, can vary from pregnancy to pregnancy. Does that make it a person? I don't know that either. But I certainly wouldn't discount the possibility.
But really, if there is no clearly defined single point that the fetus becomes a person, then why should the event of being physically born make any real difference? I'm aware that we probably need some legal definition of when it becomes a person, and to that end, the time of birth works about as well as any, but from a purely ethical standpoint, what makes a baby that is about to be delivered, but still in the womb, so different after has entered the atmosphere that it should ethically suddenly be considered a person afterwards, while not being considered a person before? I'm talking ethically here... not legally. Which is what things really have to boil down to when you try to examine whether abortion is okay or not.
But again... it comes down to the fact that there simply is no clearly defined single point that you could say that "this is a person", or "this is not a person". Not at any point during pregnancy, nor even during childbirth. But no clearly defined point at which we say there is a difference does not mean that there isn't a difference, nor does it mean that we do not have any ethical obligation to respond to the notion that a difference does exist in a morally responsible fashion.
And my point was that Apple shouldn't be able to have exclusive control concepts like those in the first place. First of all, they are obvious... Apple was simply fortunate enough to be the first one to bring a commercially successful device to market that utilized them. Other organizations didn't try to patent them because they *WERE* obvious (indeed, if they were not, they would not be intuitive, and the device would not be as easy for somebody to immediately use).
Second of all, those concepts *WERE* used by others who were making devices considerably before Apple was looking at licensing it to anybody else. They just weren't huge commercial successes, like the iPhone was.
For what it's worth, I wasn't ever particularly disagreeing with your OP.... only pointing out that they shouldn't really have any purview over those concepts.
I know that the device that Microsoft once called Surface is now called PixelSense. That doesn't change the fact that the device was oirignally called "surface". I referred to it as such, in the past tense only, since the events in question happened a couple of years before the iPhone, and the term "Microsoft Surface" was it's label when it was first introduced.
Anyways, I distinctly remember seeing videos of the prototype for it a full 2 years before the product actually was officially for sale. I also recall in the movie the Island, there was a device that was reminiscent of Surface, and I remember thinking when I first saw it that I wondered if they had used a Microsoft prototype of the table computing device, like the video I had seen online only months earlier (I found out later that they had not... the table computer in that movie was just a special effect). Nonetheless, both that movie, and the demonstrations I had seen of the Microsoft tabletop device, which I has already seen *BEFORE* I saw the movie, would have predated the iPhone's public release by 2 years.
I tried searching online for the original surface prototype videos I had seen, but I wasn't able to find them. Nonetheless, here's another video from 2005 that shows a very similar technology.
And here's something to consider.... the reason why these gestures make a device easy to use is because they are intuitive. If Apple had really invented the notion of using such motions to accomplish those activities, they could hardly have been considered intuitive right away. Apple should never have been granted such patents in the first place, and they *CERTAINLY* should not be allowed to stop others from using such gestures. The iPhone may have been the first really commercially successful product to utilize them, and the first to really put their usage into public consciousness, but that doesn't mean they invented them.
And yet the original "Surface", a table computing device, was demonstrating "pinch and zoom" features on a prototype a full two years before Apple introduced the iPhone.
Then I believe you just might be taking the game a tad too seriously.
It's play. Period. The only maturity prerequisite is really from an educational perspective: that a person be able to read on their own, and be able to add and subtract.
Slashdot Mirror
Which raises an excellent point, really. Why does a technical oriented site such as this *NOT* support unicode?
Actually, you can approximate an infrasonic sound with pulses... you just have to do it very fast (at least twice human hearing speed), and vary the pulse's amplitude continuously up and down, repeating every 5 seconds. The result is a 0.2hz audio wave... synthesized with clicks.
0 Hz?
The human voice is analog, not digital. This cannot be approximated by a discrete pulse once every 5 seconds, because it is a continuous wave that peaks every 5 seconds.
There is a *HUGE* difference.
If you were to meaningfully digitize it, then you must still sample it at thresholds above human hearing, and it would appear as discrete pulses whose peaks would appear to form a sine wave... one which has a frequency below that which we can hear ourselves.
I've solved problems while sleeping... including one memorable time where I found a solution to one particular computer bug in some software I was writing that had been troubling me for a few days (the error in my dream, and in reality, turned out to be caused by a mistyped condition that was executed very infrequently, and which was simply missing a boolean negation). Of course, the reasonable explanation for this is that because I had seen the code so many times by that point, my eyes had already viewed the error, I had simply not previously recognized it as such. Somehow, this manifested in a dream where I was working on the program, and happened to catch the error. I don't know exactly why I recognized the error in my dream, but I know that the only reason I spotted the error in real life was because I remembered that dream and decided to look at the applicable place in the code. Nonethless, that was a really bizarre experience... one I'm sure I'll never forget.
But I can't really say I've ever *LEARNED* anything new while sleeping though... only at most, discovered new ways of thinking about things that I really did already know.
To the best of my knowledge, it wasn't patented previously. But this is probably only *BECAUSE* it was thought of as obvious... (indeed, its obviousness is what makes the interface so natural and intuitive for anyone to use without having received any prior training on controlling the user interface).
While what you're saying makes sense to me as a certain cursed existence, I'm trying to figure out how that qualifies as "invulnerable"....
With a universe to move into, I don't think we'd have to worry too much about running out of resources, as we would on just one planet.
I'm not contesting this thesis, but could you actually elaborate on exactly what you mean by that?
No, you didn't fix that for me at all. I said what I meant.
You are probably right about the iPhone being the first mobile platform to utilize such an interface, but many of Apple's alleged patents are still on the general idea of what amounts to a "Minority Report" style of computer interaction, using available touchscreen technology... and devices which utilized them, albeit not typically mobile, *DID* exist before the iPhone, while Apple apparently claims to have effectively invented that form of user interaction. The strength of that claim lies only in public ignorance of the interfaces that existed before it, not on any factual merit, and certainly not considering the fact that such a user interface is *extremely* obvious, and no patents on it should have ever been awarded in the first place.
The very fact that Apple devices, and indeed, the other devices which preceded it which used a similar user interface, are very intuitive and easy for people to use without having received any prior training or exposure to the user interface is *BECAUSE* that type of interface is very natural and obvious for people to utilize. It is, quite frankly, nothing less than an abomination that Apple, or any company, should be permitted to take ownership of it, and essentially prevent any other manufacturer from ever making another touchscreen device which might happen to be just as easy for untrained people to use,.
I think that may be throwing the baby out with bathwater. *STUPID* patents should be outlawed... particularly patents that amount to essentially complete ownership of entire concepts, ideas, or manners in which other people may do things.
I'll agree that the patent system needs one helluva *MAJOR* overhaul, but I genuinely believe it would be an error in judgement to not have it at all.
Yeah... but things like pinch-to-zoom existed quite some time before iPhone. Similar, if not identical forms of graphical interface interaction were demonstrated on table-computing devices several years before the iPhone came out. Nobody patented them before Apple because nobody else was arrogant enough to think that they invented them. Indeed, if Apple (or any other device manufacturers before them that utilized such an interface) had genuinely invented the practical use of gestures for such computer interaction, then it would have not been anywhere nearly as intuitive for people without any prior training in using such an interface to operate.
[NT]
Consider, however, in centralized facilities, it can be easier to implement stricter emission controls, and possibly even produce energy more efficiently than it is in an inherently mobile platform such as an automobile. You're probably right that they'd be using fossil fuels of some kind to compress the air, but that doesn't mean there wouldn't be advantages to centralizing that aspect of things. Plus, of course... there's no inherent requirement that fossil fuel must be used to generate the necessary energy. Other energy sources, including hydro or nuclear, could just as easily be used as well, requiring only an upgrade of the facilities that compress the air, while the overall automobile infrastructure itself remains entirely unaffected.
This is true. I do what I love for a living, and I can't imagine doing anything else. Certainly there have been days where things get a bit stressful, and it's hardly the same thing as just goofing off and having fun.
Nonetheless, I wouldn't trade what I do for anything. Even if I won a lottery and didn't need to work, I know I'd still do what I do everyday.... if for no other reason than the fact that at least having the external motivation would help to keep me from getting bored with too much free time.
I've heard this advice before, but I have to say that I think it's ill-conceived. I believe that it's based on the supposition that if you have to do something every day, then it will simply suck all of the enjoyment out of it.
This is simply not true... happiness is not subject to laws of thermodynamics. If you really enjoy, or especially have a passion for something, then doing it for a living is not going to diminish that. It fulfills it.
Apple didn't even hatch the egg first... they were simply fortunate enough to have the first commercial success.
But of course, that's entirely beside the point that a good deal of what Apple patented here is stuff that is many would think is obvious (the gestures themselves, most significantly, as used to control a visual feedback device). Nobody else had bothered to patent them before Apple did not because the companies that developed technology which utilizes it didn't have any foresight, but *BECAUSE* they were thought to be obvious. Indeed, it is their obviousness that is what makes that kind of user interface so intuitive, and therefore is relatively easy for people with no prior exposure to the device to control.
True, except it wasn't really on technological issues that Apple won this... it was on the basis of things like user interface similarity.
Apple didn't invent those notions (indeed, they are obvious, and that is the only reason that such gestures are intuitive and the device so easy to use in the first place), and they should not be able to prohibit others from using such mechanisms either.
By the third trimester? Yes.
With respect to that moment in time, we can't, really. End of story. We just don't know.
Certainly throughout the last 2.5 to 3 months of pregnancy there definitely is a functioning brain, which not only invokes muscle movement, but also even dreams. The exact point that this starts, however, can vary from pregnancy to pregnancy. Does that make it a person? I don't know that either. But I certainly wouldn't discount the possibility.
But really, if there is no clearly defined single point that the fetus becomes a person, then why should the event of being physically born make any real difference? I'm aware that we probably need some legal definition of when it becomes a person, and to that end, the time of birth works about as well as any, but from a purely ethical standpoint, what makes a baby that is about to be delivered, but still in the womb, so different after has entered the atmosphere that it should ethically suddenly be considered a person afterwards, while not being considered a person before? I'm talking ethically here... not legally. Which is what things really have to boil down to when you try to examine whether abortion is okay or not.
But again... it comes down to the fact that there simply is no clearly defined single point that you could say that "this is a person", or "this is not a person". Not at any point during pregnancy, nor even during childbirth. But no clearly defined point at which we say there is a difference does not mean that there isn't a difference, nor does it mean that we do not have any ethical obligation to respond to the notion that a difference does exist in a morally responsible fashion.
And my point was that Apple shouldn't be able to have exclusive control concepts like those in the first place. First of all, they are obvious... Apple was simply fortunate enough to be the first one to bring a commercially successful device to market that utilized them. Other organizations didn't try to patent them because they *WERE* obvious (indeed, if they were not, they would not be intuitive, and the device would not be as easy for somebody to immediately use).
Second of all, those concepts *WERE* used by others who were making devices considerably before Apple was looking at licensing it to anybody else. They just weren't huge commercial successes, like the iPhone was.
For what it's worth, I wasn't ever particularly disagreeing with your OP.... only pointing out that they shouldn't really have any purview over those concepts.
I know that the device that Microsoft once called Surface is now called PixelSense. That doesn't change the fact that the device was oirignally called "surface". I referred to it as such, in the past tense only, since the events in question happened a couple of years before the iPhone, and the term "Microsoft Surface" was it's label when it was first introduced.
Anyways, I distinctly remember seeing videos of the prototype for it a full 2 years before the product actually was officially for sale. I also recall in the movie the Island, there was a device that was reminiscent of Surface, and I remember thinking when I first saw it that I wondered if they had used a Microsoft prototype of the table computing device, like the video I had seen online only months earlier (I found out later that they had not... the table computer in that movie was just a special effect). Nonetheless, both that movie, and the demonstrations I had seen of the Microsoft tabletop device, which I has already seen *BEFORE* I saw the movie, would have predated the iPhone's public release by 2 years.
I tried searching online for the original surface prototype videos I had seen, but I wasn't able to find them. Nonetheless, here's another video from 2005 that shows a very similar technology.
And here's something to consider.... the reason why these gestures make a device easy to use is because they are intuitive. If Apple had really invented the notion of using such motions to accomplish those activities, they could hardly have been considered intuitive right away. Apple should never have been granted such patents in the first place, and they *CERTAINLY* should not be allowed to stop others from using such gestures. The iPhone may have been the first really commercially successful product to utilize them, and the first to really put their usage into public consciousness, but that doesn't mean they invented them.
I mean, the century is only 12 years old now... is the submitter seriously thinking that there won't be something bigger in the next 88?
And yet the original "Surface", a table computing device, was demonstrating "pinch and zoom" features on a prototype a full two years before Apple introduced the iPhone.
I would suggest that copying is not the right word to use... "inspired by" would probably be a more apt term.
Then I believe you just might be taking the game a tad too seriously.
It's play. Period. The only maturity prerequisite is really from an educational perspective: that a person be able to read on their own, and be able to add and subtract.