If you take the known mass transfer between the ice sheets and the ocean, you can predict its effect upon the rotational axis of the Earth. You can then compare that prediction to what's actually observed by measurements of the location of the rotational axis of the Earth. This is what the paper did.
It's a bit of a stretch to suppose that there's some other force changing the Earth's angular momentum in just such a way as to be the same as that expected from the mass transfer from the Greenland ice sheet to the oceans.
It occurs to me that my comment below is rather demonstrating your point, actually. If it's a composite then we've successfully proven that the complete set of primes is an incomplete subset of the complete set of primes, which is another contradiction.
It can't be composite if it's a product of all of the primes plus one. It could only be a composite if it was a product of a subset of the primes, plus one.
You don't have to know all the primes in the first place for the proof to work, you just have to postulate that such a finite set exists. (Which you then disprove by contradiction.)
You've misunderstood the proof as a test to see whether a subset of primes up to prime n is complete. That's not the case. You start by taking the entire postulated finite set of primes.
The condradiction you receive - that it's possible to create a prime outside of the complete set of all primes - indicates that any finite set is incomplete. (Or alternatively that addition, multiplication, or sets work very differently than we assume, but let's stick to the form of mathematics the problem addresses.)
Basically, they've got too much political sway. Now, quite what political sway means in this context bemuses me. Yes, car dealers are big employers and provide a lot of tax revenue, but if you make them mad, what are they going to do? Move to the next state? Stop selling cars? Stop paying their taxes? They might, as a big employer, encourage their employees and customers to vote out the guy who had the temerity to challenge them, but is that really all it takes for a business to coax protectionism out of the government?
Owing to laziness and slow turnover I own about fifteen brands of socks, all of which have different thicknesses. If I don't match them up, I walk lop-sided.
I mean algorithm in the more general sense here of a process by which something is done. That was a poor choice on my part. (Yes, I'm the kind of nerd who would describe his process for sorting socks as an algorithm.)
So you shouldn't be allowed to patent, say, a car that does one trillion miles to the gallon, or is made out of four pounds of plastic, because at the end of the day it does the same thing?
I would argue that whoever creates the music generation system is the one doing the expression in this instance, inasmuch as the design of the algorithm is determined by the author's sense of what is musical. Is this really any less expressive in principle than any other piece of algorithmic art?
I don't think we have to worry about algorithmic music taking over creative expression at any rate. By necessity, if the prevalence of such a system caused an objectionable reduction in expression in music, non-generative music genres would become more popular amoungst musicians and listeners.
Indeed, it's disgraceful which software patents have been approved. That is an issue. If MS have generated a new algorithm in this case then that should, in principle, be patentable. And if the algorithm is described previously elsewhere, it shouldn't be.
Isn't Song Smith an extensions of the kind of DirectMusic research that gave us videogame soundtracks that respond to the current action? That's been pretty useful.
Just because you see a cute consumer-facing endpoint that you don't find useful doesn't mean the entire project was "automate composing music".
It's only prior art if they did things the same way. God help us if the USPTO's standard of an invention becomes "does the same thing as something else".
Funnily enough all those wavy characters underneath the title of the patent are a text - in the English language, no less - which describes what has actually been patented. The title is... well, it's the title. It doesn't actually define the patent.
It doesn't even have to be more or less realistic, so long as it uses a different approach. The text about realism is to establish what their invention is supposed to accomplish, which is important in establishing that something is worth a patent in the first place but not part of their legal power.
Setting aside everything that's wrong with patents for a moment, they don't get a patent on everything that can be described by the patent's title. They get a patent on the specific things they describe in the text.
Presumably it's so that the next-generation Kinect will be able to assemble user avatar faces automatically using its camera. Trying to assemble a good face using sliders and decals, as in current implementations on the Wii and Xbox, is a pain in the arse, so having it knock together a reasonable starting point using 3D scanning and face recognition would be nice..
Doesn't the 3DS already do this, in fact?
Obligatory: this gives MS a patent on an approach to cartoon face generation, not the entire idea. I've not read the claims so they could all be obvious, previously existing and unpatentable waffle but it history suggests we'll have a raft of comments about "blah blah did this already" without reading the patent.
Slashdot Mirror
If you take the known mass transfer between the ice sheets and the ocean, you can predict its effect upon the rotational axis of the Earth. You can then compare that prediction to what's actually observed by measurements of the location of the rotational axis of the Earth. This is what the paper did.
And if you'd read the summary, and not just the title, you'd notice that their discussing the current motion of the pole in that context.
It's a bit of a stretch to suppose that there's some other force changing the Earth's angular momentum in just such a way as to be the same as that expected from the mass transfer from the Greenland ice sheet to the oceans.
It occurs to me that my comment below is rather demonstrating your point, actually. If it's a composite then we've successfully proven that the complete set of primes is an incomplete subset of the complete set of primes, which is another contradiction.
It can't be composite if it's a product of all of the primes plus one. It could only be a composite if it was a product of a subset of the primes, plus one.
You don't have to know all the primes in the first place for the proof to work, you just have to postulate that such a finite set exists. (Which you then disprove by contradiction.)
You've misunderstood the proof as a test to see whether a subset of primes up to prime n is complete. That's not the case. You start by taking the entire postulated finite set of primes.
The condradiction you receive - that it's possible to create a prime outside of the complete set of all primes - indicates that any finite set is incomplete. (Or alternatively that addition, multiplication, or sets work very differently than we assume, but let's stick to the form of mathematics the problem addresses.)
Engines already exist, though. So do materials. It's just another method of doing the same thing, after all.
You may enjoy:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-buying-a-car-never-changes
Basically, they've got too much political sway. Now, quite what political sway means in this context bemuses me. Yes, car dealers are big employers and provide a lot of tax revenue, but if you make them mad, what are they going to do? Move to the next state? Stop selling cars? Stop paying their taxes? They might, as a big employer, encourage their employees and customers to vote out the guy who had the temerity to challenge them, but is that really all it takes for a business to coax protectionism out of the government?
You'd have to write one for each variety of CCD, no?
The bit with the shadow angles reminded me of those Apollo conspiracy sites. "The sun's on the right, nothing on the left can be illuminated at all!"
Like ambient light doesn't exist.
Nobody said it did.
Owing to laziness and slow turnover I own about fifteen brands of socks, all of which have different thicknesses. If I don't match them up, I walk lop-sided.
If your news sources ignored the FBI's wiretapping, you need to change your sources.
Yes, the USPTO let them file a patent which is literally just a picture.
I mean algorithm in the more general sense here of a process by which something is done. That was a poor choice on my part. (Yes, I'm the kind of nerd who would describe his process for sorting socks as an algorithm.)
So you shouldn't be allowed to patent, say, a car that does one trillion miles to the gallon, or is made out of four pounds of plastic, because at the end of the day it does the same thing?
I would argue that whoever creates the music generation system is the one doing the expression in this instance, inasmuch as the design of the algorithm is determined by the author's sense of what is musical. Is this really any less expressive in principle than any other piece of algorithmic art?
I don't think we have to worry about algorithmic music taking over creative expression at any rate. By necessity, if the prevalence of such a system caused an objectionable reduction in expression in music, non-generative music genres would become more popular amoungst musicians and listeners.
Indeed, it's disgraceful which software patents have been approved. That is an issue. If MS have generated a new algorithm in this case then that should, in principle, be patentable. And if the algorithm is described previously elsewhere, it shouldn't be.
Isn't Song Smith an extensions of the kind of DirectMusic research that gave us videogame soundtracks that respond to the current action? That's been pretty useful.
Just because you see a cute consumer-facing endpoint that you don't find useful doesn't mean the entire project was "automate composing music".
It's only prior art if they did things the same way. God help us if the USPTO's standard of an invention becomes "does the same thing as something else".
Funnily enough all those wavy characters underneath the title of the patent are a text - in the English language, no less - which describes what has actually been patented. The title is... well, it's the title. It doesn't actually define the patent.
It doesn't even have to be more or less realistic, so long as it uses a different approach. The text about realism is to establish what their invention is supposed to accomplish, which is important in establishing that something is worth a patent in the first place but not part of their legal power.
Setting aside everything that's wrong with patents for a moment, they don't get a patent on everything that can be described by the patent's title. They get a patent on the specific things they describe in the text.
Presumably it's so that the next-generation Kinect will be able to assemble user avatar faces automatically using its camera. Trying to assemble a good face using sliders and decals, as in current implementations on the Wii and Xbox, is a pain in the arse, so having it knock together a reasonable starting point using 3D scanning and face recognition would be nice..
Doesn't the 3DS already do this, in fact?
Obligatory: this gives MS a patent on an approach to cartoon face generation, not the entire idea. I've not read the claims so they could all be obvious, previously existing and unpatentable waffle but it history suggests we'll have a raft of comments about "blah blah did this already" without reading the patent.