...this isn't even controversial, though -- it's been this way for many years. They even made it illegal to sell a radio that could receive in the bands where the cellphone transmissions are made.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
...email is a facet of today's "papers", as the telephone was a facet (which congress recognized with explicit telecommunications laws... which appear to me to be redundant, but that's just me.)
The thing about our right of security is that it isn't about hardening. If I don't lock my door, that's not an invitation for you to come in and raid my refrigerator. If I write my papers in English, that's not an invitation for you to read them and walk off with my banking info or anything else. If a lady wears a dress, that's not an invitation for you to look up it. In all cases, the boundary can be trivially hardened: I can lock my door, I can write my papers in code, the lady can wear jeans. None of that has any bearing on the expectations of privacy, though -- the boundaries don't move.
This bears on cellphones. The 800 mhz band (was) easily accessible to anyone with a scanner at one point. This was used as an attempt to say that the conversations on that band were not to be protected. basically the argument was there was no hardening. The door was open, in a sense. And the end result was... those conversations were protected by law. Because it isn't about hardening. The analogy is to the mail. It's unencrypted, and the difficulty of reading someone else's mail is basically zero. So "expectations", you would think, would not incorporate privacy. But again, that's just not how we look at things. We consider our details private and inviolate because of what they are, not because of the medium or any level of obfuscation.
Nothing in the 4th amendment says "if you encrypt, you have this right -- if you don't, the right evaporates."
...and I really don't think case law should over-ride clear constitutional specifics.
Even so... I think most people *do* have an expectation of privacy when they're receiving and sending email, surfing the net, etc. We -- as technical types -- may be very cynical about just how naive that expectation is, and particularly so if you incorporate an awareness of all the government "finessing" of 4th amendment issues, but my feeling is that the average person would be quite startled if you walked up to them and told them you knew what they'd sent via email the previous evening.
...because listening to unencrypted cellphones is illegal.
I think that the difference between your conversations and pizza ordering on an analog transmission and on a digital one WRT 4th amendment protection should be zero.
You're confusing the early history of mathematics with the actuality of today's science.
What you're trying to say here is the same as if I claimed that chemistry today is alchemy.
Was alchemy part of the history of people trying to understand the chemical nature of the world? Sure. Absolutely. But is it part of today's chemistry? No. Not at all.
So yes, early math arose in some cases as the product of abstracts and was called philosophy because "philosopher" is what thinkers are called in general from such times -- but that's not representative of math today, or of philosophy.
Today, you follow (and extend) a most rigid and scientific set of rules if you are actually advancing the science of math, but if you are simply implementing things using previously developed math, you are working as merely a technician and are so constrained by those existing rules that any mention of philosophy on your part is simple cause for mirth.
On the other hand, when you start to throw things around like "memory is an act of faith" or any variation thereof, you are definitely engaging in unfounded philosophical speculation, and not in math at all.
You'll be a much better mathematician when you have a firmer grasp on reality. Good luck.
Useful mathematics are always rigid scientific metaphor; philosophy is speculation on the fundamental nature of knowledge, existence and reality. Math is science. You can't develop it beyond the trivial without using scientific method (and even the trivial benefits from this.)
Consider the arrow of time; the physics math works in either direction, and as it turns out, there's evidence for that (as demonstrated by relativity and the observation vector across space-time when the observer is approaching or receding from the observed.) Because the physics is solid, we had reason to think that the specific metaphor, that is, the math, was telling us something solid as well, and so it was.
Really not on board with the idea that math is a product of philosophy. A product of thinking, yes. A product of speculation on the fundamental nature of things... no. It's the other way around. Math acquires relevance and respect when it *matches* the fundamental nature of things. Otherwise, it is meaningless. base 10: 2+3=4 is math; but it's meaningless, because it doesn't match the fundamental nature of reality. base 10: 2+3=5, on the other hand, is science and provides meaningful tools and context with science, or without it. Not so for philosophy -- unless philosophy is just parroting the science. And if that's the case... then philosophy's value is questionable at best.
It's used to denote a large discontinuous transition
No. It isn't. It's used to denote a small discontinuous transition. The smallest possible in a system. It is a term that pops up when discussing the low energy behaviors of a system.
Yes, well, not all "purposes", as you miscast them, are benign, and nature's implementation can be pretty darned faulty, because the underlying mechanism is basically a random process that selects for stuff that works -- not that is optimal. E(e)volution is full of dead branches, and useless, dangerous, or outright fatal mutations. Let's not get too hand-wavy about "nature's purpose."
IOS (effectively iPad) interface complaints: folders that won't nest. Things that won't go INTO folders (like iBookshelf.) Folders that can't hold more than 20 items.
How's that for a start?
Good things are natural, does not need to be explained.
Yes, this. That's what's wrong with Unity in a nutshell. It's utterly opaque, I can't make it do what I want, and it's missing the most basic of features (like the ability to go to 256 colors so on-board graphics don't reduce the desktop speed of my otherwise very fast LAMPS multicore machine to a crawl.) When a years-old (decade-old?) Gnome version outperforms the current one in obvious discoverability, that's a very bad sign.
Unity drove me directly to the shell. That's just how opaque (or possibly non-functional... there's no effective difference if you can't find the functionality) Unity is.
It's about discoverability. So I install Ubuntu 12.04. It offers Gnome whatever. Sure, Gnome was ok, I think. I pick it. The install runs. The machine boots. Here's my new machine and its desktop. I don't recognize anything in front of me. I play with it for a few minutes, and I am appalled at the lack of functionality. My reaction is, in fact, OMG, I'd like to replace this with the old stuff -- I knew how it worked, and I could get things done in that environment.
Now -- how exactly am I supposed to get from this brain-dead "thing" on the left, to a replacement for Gnome3? Which button do I click?
Because that's the absolute question for most users. If it's not accessible and discoverable, it doesn't exist. We want something that works. Not something we have to figure out. We have stuff to do already. You know. Jobs. Hobbies. This desktop lands with a thud and a squish and a funny smell. It's not helping me with my work or my hobbies: Instead, it's in my way.
Not just the desktop: This goes for basic features, too: Such as, how do I switch to 256 colors so my desktop chipset can run at speed? Is there is discoverable way to do it? I don't think there is, because I tried hard to find it. But there sure as heck ought to be.
So you know how I manage my new Ubuntu 12.04 machine?
Through the shell. Because it's the only thing on the darned desktop that works right. I have literally given up on the desktop portion of 12.04.
Historically, Apple also charges additional for cell connectivity and GPS.
So the $300 tablet might have a $499 version very easily.
Which, if you look at the fully loaded current iPad, still doesn't look all that bad:
$829 with cell, GPS and 64 Gb.
I have an original iPad, and I'm waiting till fall to upgrade: I'll want to take a hard look at the 7" model before going for all those acres of useless bezel on the original size unit again. Less money only sweetens the idea.
Perhaps a letter to the NRA; or maybe you should just print "Rifle" on your knife and send them a photo.:)
More seriously, the NRA is a firearms lobbying operation, not a generalized government watchdog. They're simply sticking to their member's primary agenda, which while narrow-minded, is more or less understandable.
Your knife carrying, of course, cannot be legitimately restricted by legislation just as the carrying of any other arm cannot. Not that this stops the malfeasance of congress and the courts in that regard.
On the other hand, however, I cannot believe that our founding fathers would have intended for the high-powered weaponry we have available to us today to be freely available to anyone out there that's capable of passing a cursory background check
That's exactly what they intended, and they never even *thought* of a "background check."
In 1791 (when the bill of rights were ratified), “arms” included all manner of pistols, rifles, muskets, cannons, explosive and solid cannonballs, cannonballs filled with shards, frigates with multiple decks of cannon, wagons with explosives and multiple guns rigged to fire in unison, chain shot, flaming missiles soaked with pitch and other inflammable, easily spread and hard to extinguish compounds, swords, knives, bayonets, fighting canes, brass knuckles, battering rams, catapults, siege towers, glass bottles, garrotes, whips, chains, both fused and mechanically triggered explosives, striking weapons like sticks and poles and quarterstaffs and maces and war-hammers, spears, bows, axes, arrows and crossbows I could go on for quite some time. All of these things were in common use in warfare and self-defense at the time. Yet, knowing all these things, all they put in the 2nd amendment was “arms.” So clearly, that’s what they meant. Arms of any kind. They didn’t say “muskets and pistols.” They said arms. And background checks? No.
I think you accidentally got it right "it's fundamentally democratic". If the people decide that some weapons are too dangerous and it's best for everyone to not have them around, who are you to disagree?
Here's the thing. This is not a democracy. This is a constitutional republic. That's mostly because democracy is inherently dangerous to minorities, a problem which the founders were well aware of -- they didn't just skip the idea of a pure democracy because they missed it, you know. The statement "Democracy is two wolves and one sheep voting on what's for dinner" illustrates the basic problem. It's actually worse than that, but even just that is enough to say "a pure democracy is a very bad idea."
The US process is not "we do what popular opinion (democratic majority) says", it is "we establish a government which is constituted with specific limits" and then we vote on representatives who swear to act within the bounds of those limits.
One of those limits is that if we -- actually, the government acting in our stead -- want to change the constituting rules, then the procedure described in article five must be followed. We don't just get to vote changes in, nor is the legislature authorized to simply write law that makes such changes. That is allowing the fox to define the combination for the chicken yard, and that's why they're not authorized to do it. Instead, there is a tedious and annoying process, even somewhat democratic in nature which I suspect would please you, that must be followed.
And the bottom line with the second amendment is that it authorizes the keeping and carrying of arms, no restrictions, and furthermore it explicitly denes the government the power to apply restrictions.
If we want to change that, and actually, I agree it needs updating, as nukes and bioweapons and chemweapons strike me as needing rather more stewardship than Larry the plumber down the street is likely to be able to provide, we have that opportunity. See article five.
You know why I'm not excited? Because the "3d steroscopic effect" is not... 3d.
It's one POV, the very same one I had in the first place.
A 3D display would allow me to get up, which would change my POV. It would allow me to walk behind the display, and look at the BACK of the actors. I could look down at the scene, or up at it; I could sit in my chair and rotate the scene with my remote.
Stereoscopic display tech is no more than 1930's postcard (later ViewMaster) tech. Added to which, it seems that a great deal of the use of it is in displaying distortion -- things TOO close or TOO far, like an addled child with a new toy, the filmmakers just can't seem to get the idea that verisimilitude is of greatest interest, even though everything else about imagery that is popular with consumers is telling them that: resolution, color fidelity, the rejection of NTSC (never twice the same color, lol) for digital, high-resolution detail on reds and blues and colors with those components, instead of the blurry sludge NTSC gave us.
So to stereovision, good bye, don't let the door hit you in the front porch on the way out. Call me when we're going to have real 3D. That's worthy of my wallet. And the good news is, there are already systems out there. Some people, at least, know which way to go.
That's very interesting. My emulators aren't game emulators, or at least, not per se -- they're machine emulators. For example, one is an emulation of a 1970's era 6809 system with disk operating system and so on. Only one of the companies involved was still in business at the time I wrote the emulator, and I do have permission from them to include their software. It has everything from assemblers to c compilers to basic to forth to whatever you can think of from that era, pretty much.
Still, it's a big pushup, for a small potential audience, to go thru with a chance Apple will say "no." And it isn't like I don't have other things on my plate, either.
What's annoying to me is you can't run emulators. I'd port a couple I've written ASAP if you could. Apple's just a wee bit too paranoid there if you ask me. Which, of course, you didn't.:)
I wrote, and my company shipped, a free icon/text configurable speech generation system for the Amiga that does essentially what the iPad app in question here does at least two years before the date of the patent in question (the complaint dates the patents 1995 and 1997 -- Talkboard hails from 1993 and before, though I can only document it to 1993 -- that's the copyright date in the archive.) The application is called "Talkboard" and is still available from our company's historical archive.
Talkboard presented a layered interface pretty much just like the one in the iPad app, It used a synthesized voice and provided for unusual phonetic construction so as to obtain the best clarity (the Amiga's text-to-speech could be.... quirky.) You could load and save phrase banks, and one phrase bank could partially replace another or completely replace another. Single words or short phrases or entire complex sentences could be stored for 1-click or multiple click retrieval. The phrase could be represented by any shorthand that was convenient. It came with presets, but was really intended to be customized by the end user - what a kid has to say and an adult has to say tend to not be the same things in most cases. It could also be driven from ARexx, a system-wide scripting facility, and could dynamically change definitions based upon whatever criteria you needed it to.
As far as I can tell, there's nothing unique, new or even interesting in the two patent claims.
Hopefully that's of use to the EFF or the defending party.
And you're surprised that your family, friends and people who know and care about you are to be found on the site with real names and not the one with pseudonyms?
What? Wait, did I say I was surprised by that, or imply it? [checks] No, I didn't say, or imply, any such thing.
Perhaps you'd like to try again. Many people misremember what they're responding to from time to time.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure:
https://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs9-wrtp.htm
https://www.cdt.org/wiretap/wiretap_overview.html
Let's just review this little bit of law:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
The thing about our right of security is that it isn't about hardening. If I don't lock my door, that's not an invitation for you to come in and raid my refrigerator. If I write my papers in English, that's not an invitation for you to read them and walk off with my banking info or anything else. If a lady wears a dress, that's not an invitation for you to look up it. In all cases, the boundary can be trivially hardened: I can lock my door, I can write my papers in code, the lady can wear jeans. None of that has any bearing on the expectations of privacy, though -- the boundaries don't move.
This bears on cellphones. The 800 mhz band (was) easily accessible to anyone with a scanner at one point. This was used as an attempt to say that the conversations on that band were not to be protected. basically the argument was there was no hardening. The door was open, in a sense. And the end result was... those conversations were protected by law. Because it isn't about hardening. The analogy is to the mail. It's unencrypted, and the difficulty of reading someone else's mail is basically zero. So "expectations", you would think, would not incorporate privacy. But again, that's just not how we look at things. We consider our details private and inviolate because of what they are, not because of the medium or any level of obfuscation.
Nothing in the 4th amendment says "if you encrypt, you have this right -- if you don't, the right evaporates."
I'm not sure where that is in the 4th amendment.
Even so... I think most people *do* have an expectation of privacy when they're receiving and sending email, surfing the net, etc. We -- as technical types -- may be very cynical about just how naive that expectation is, and particularly so if you incorporate an awareness of all the government "finessing" of 4th amendment issues, but my feeling is that the average person would be quite startled if you walked up to them and told them you knew what they'd sent via email the previous evening.
...because listening to unencrypted cellphones is illegal.
I think that the difference between your conversations and pizza ordering on an analog transmission and on a digital one WRT 4th amendment protection should be zero.
I think it has a longer history as a military acronym: fucked up beyond all recovery.
I rather think the offer of the virgin daughters to the prospective rapists was just as wrong.
You're confusing the early history of mathematics with the actuality of today's science.
What you're trying to say here is the same as if I claimed that chemistry today is alchemy.
Was alchemy part of the history of people trying to understand the chemical nature of the world? Sure. Absolutely. But is it part of today's chemistry? No. Not at all.
So yes, early math arose in some cases as the product of abstracts and was called philosophy because "philosopher" is what thinkers are called in general from such times -- but that's not representative of math today, or of philosophy.
Today, you follow (and extend) a most rigid and scientific set of rules if you are actually advancing the science of math, but if you are simply implementing things using previously developed math, you are working as merely a technician and are so constrained by those existing rules that any mention of philosophy on your part is simple cause for mirth.
On the other hand, when you start to throw things around like "memory is an act of faith" or any variation thereof, you are definitely engaging in unfounded philosophical speculation, and not in math at all.
You'll be a much better mathematician when you have a firmer grasp on reality. Good luck.
Useful mathematics are always rigid scientific metaphor; philosophy is speculation on the fundamental nature of knowledge, existence and reality. Math is science. You can't develop it beyond the trivial without using scientific method (and even the trivial benefits from this.)
Consider the arrow of time; the physics math works in either direction, and as it turns out, there's evidence for that (as demonstrated by relativity and the observation vector across space-time when the observer is approaching or receding from the observed.) Because the physics is solid, we had reason to think that the specific metaphor, that is, the math, was telling us something solid as well, and so it was.
Really not on board with the idea that math is a product of philosophy. A product of thinking, yes. A product of speculation on the fundamental nature of things... no. It's the other way around. Math acquires relevance and respect when it *matches* the fundamental nature of things. Otherwise, it is meaningless. base 10: 2+3=4 is math; but it's meaningless, because it doesn't match the fundamental nature of reality. base 10: 2+3=5, on the other hand, is science and provides meaningful tools and context with science, or without it. Not so for philosophy -- unless philosophy is just parroting the science. And if that's the case... then philosophy's value is questionable at best.
No. It isn't. It's used to denote a small discontinuous transition. The smallest possible in a system. It is a term that pops up when discussing the low energy behaviors of a system.
Yes, well, not all "purposes", as you miscast them, are benign, and nature's implementation can be pretty darned faulty, because the underlying mechanism is basically a random process that selects for stuff that works -- not that is optimal. E(e)volution is full of dead branches, and useless, dangerous, or outright fatal mutations. Let's not get too hand-wavy about "nature's purpose."
Many coral and soft coral species do it as well -- some using symbionts, some directly -- and they are animals, not vegetable.
IOS (effectively iPad) interface complaints: folders that won't nest. Things that won't go INTO folders (like iBookshelf.) Folders that can't hold more than 20 items.
How's that for a start?
Yes, this. That's what's wrong with Unity in a nutshell. It's utterly opaque, I can't make it do what I want, and it's missing the most basic of features (like the ability to go to 256 colors so on-board graphics don't reduce the desktop speed of my otherwise very fast LAMPS multicore machine to a crawl.) When a years-old (decade-old?) Gnome version outperforms the current one in obvious discoverability, that's a very bad sign.
Unity drove me directly to the shell. That's just how opaque (or possibly non-functional... there's no effective difference if you can't find the functionality) Unity is.
It's about discoverability. So I install Ubuntu 12.04. It offers Gnome whatever. Sure, Gnome was ok, I think. I pick it. The install runs. The machine boots. Here's my new machine and its desktop. I don't recognize anything in front of me. I play with it for a few minutes, and I am appalled at the lack of functionality. My reaction is, in fact, OMG, I'd like to replace this with the old stuff -- I knew how it worked, and I could get things done in that environment.
Now -- how exactly am I supposed to get from this brain-dead "thing" on the left, to a replacement for Gnome3? Which button do I click?
Because that's the absolute question for most users. If it's not accessible and discoverable, it doesn't exist. We want something that works. Not something we have to figure out. We have stuff to do already. You know. Jobs. Hobbies. This desktop lands with a thud and a squish and a funny smell. It's not helping me with my work or my hobbies: Instead, it's in my way.
Not just the desktop: This goes for basic features, too: Such as, how do I switch to 256 colors so my desktop chipset can run at speed? Is there is discoverable way to do it? I don't think there is, because I tried hard to find it. But there sure as heck ought to be.
So you know how I manage my new Ubuntu 12.04 machine?
Through the shell. Because it's the only thing on the darned desktop that works right. I have literally given up on the desktop portion of 12.04.
Historically, Apple also charges additional for cell connectivity and GPS.
So the $300 tablet might have a $499 version very easily.
Which, if you look at the fully loaded current iPad, still doesn't look all that bad:
$829 with cell, GPS and 64 Gb.
I have an original iPad, and I'm waiting till fall to upgrade: I'll want to take a hard look at the 7" model before going for all those acres of useless bezel on the original size unit again. Less money only sweetens the idea.
Perhaps a letter to the NRA; or maybe you should just print "Rifle" on your knife and send them a photo. :)
More seriously, the NRA is a firearms lobbying operation, not a generalized government watchdog. They're simply sticking to their member's primary agenda, which while narrow-minded, is more or less understandable.
Your knife carrying, of course, cannot be legitimately restricted by legislation just as the carrying of any other arm cannot. Not that this stops the malfeasance of congress and the courts in that regard.
That's exactly what they intended, and they never even *thought* of a "background check."
In 1791 (when the bill of rights were ratified), “arms” included all manner of pistols, rifles, muskets, cannons, explosive and solid cannonballs, cannonballs filled with shards, frigates with multiple decks of cannon, wagons with explosives and multiple guns rigged to fire in unison, chain shot, flaming missiles soaked with pitch and other inflammable, easily spread and hard to extinguish compounds, swords, knives, bayonets, fighting canes, brass knuckles, battering rams, catapults, siege towers, glass bottles, garrotes, whips, chains, both fused and mechanically triggered explosives, striking weapons like sticks and poles and quarterstaffs and maces and war-hammers, spears, bows, axes, arrows and crossbows I could go on for quite some time. All of these things were in common use in warfare and self-defense at the time. Yet, knowing all these things, all they put in the 2nd amendment was “arms.” So clearly, that’s what they meant. Arms of any kind. They didn’t say “muskets and pistols.” They said arms. And background checks? No.
Here's the thing. This is not a democracy. This is a constitutional republic. That's mostly because democracy is inherently dangerous to minorities, a problem which the founders were well aware of -- they didn't just skip the idea of a pure democracy because they missed it, you know. The statement "Democracy is two wolves and one sheep voting on what's for dinner" illustrates the basic problem. It's actually worse than that, but even just that is enough to say "a pure democracy is a very bad idea."
The US process is not "we do what popular opinion (democratic majority) says", it is "we establish a government which is constituted with specific limits" and then we vote on representatives who swear to act within the bounds of those limits.
One of those limits is that if we -- actually, the government acting in our stead -- want to change the constituting rules, then the procedure described in article five must be followed. We don't just get to vote changes in, nor is the legislature authorized to simply write law that makes such changes. That is allowing the fox to define the combination for the chicken yard, and that's why they're not authorized to do it. Instead, there is a tedious and annoying process, even somewhat democratic in nature which I suspect would please you, that must be followed.
And the bottom line with the second amendment is that it authorizes the keeping and carrying of arms, no restrictions, and furthermore it explicitly denes the government the power to apply restrictions.
If we want to change that, and actually, I agree it needs updating, as nukes and bioweapons and chemweapons strike me as needing rather more stewardship than Larry the plumber down the street is likely to be able to provide, we have that opportunity. See article five.
You know why I'm not excited? Because the "3d steroscopic effect" is not... 3d.
It's one POV, the very same one I had in the first place.
A 3D display would allow me to get up, which would change my POV. It would allow me to walk behind the display, and look at the BACK of the actors. I could look down at the scene, or up at it; I could sit in my chair and rotate the scene with my remote.
Stereoscopic display tech is no more than 1930's postcard (later ViewMaster) tech. Added to which, it seems that a great deal of the use of it is in displaying distortion -- things TOO close or TOO far, like an addled child with a new toy, the filmmakers just can't seem to get the idea that verisimilitude is of greatest interest, even though everything else about imagery that is popular with consumers is telling them that: resolution, color fidelity, the rejection of NTSC (never twice the same color, lol) for digital, high-resolution detail on reds and blues and colors with those components, instead of the blurry sludge NTSC gave us.
So to stereovision, good bye, don't let the door hit you in the front porch on the way out. Call me when we're going to have real 3D. That's worthy of my wallet. And the good news is, there are already systems out there. Some people, at least, know which way to go.
That's very interesting. My emulators aren't game emulators, or at least, not per se -- they're machine emulators. For example, one is an emulation of a 1970's era 6809 system with disk operating system and so on. Only one of the companies involved was still in business at the time I wrote the emulator, and I do have permission from them to include their software. It has everything from assemblers to c compilers to basic to forth to whatever you can think of from that era, pretty much.
Still, it's a big pushup, for a small potential audience, to go thru with a chance Apple will say "no." And it isn't like I don't have other things on my plate, either.
Just got a nice thank you from the company, too. :)
No, I stuck it on the page the article linked to as well right after I posted it here.
What's annoying to me is you can't run emulators. I'd port a couple I've written ASAP if you could. Apple's just a wee bit too paranoid there if you ask me. Which, of course, you didn't. :)
I wrote, and my company shipped, a free icon/text configurable speech generation system for the Amiga that does essentially what the iPad app in question here does at least two years before the date of the patent in question (the complaint dates the patents 1995 and 1997 -- Talkboard hails from 1993 and before, though I can only document it to 1993 -- that's the copyright date in the archive.) The application is called "Talkboard" and is still available from our company's historical archive.
Talkboard presented a layered interface pretty much just like the one in the iPad app, It used a synthesized voice and provided for unusual phonetic construction so as to obtain the best clarity (the Amiga's text-to-speech could be.... quirky.) You could load and save phrase banks, and one phrase bank could partially replace another or completely replace another. Single words or short phrases or entire complex sentences could be stored for 1-click or multiple click retrieval. The phrase could be represented by any shorthand that was convenient. It came with presets, but was really intended to be customized by the end user - what a kid has to say and an adult has to say tend to not be the same things in most cases. It could also be driven from ARexx, a system-wide scripting facility, and could dynamically change definitions based upon whatever criteria you needed it to.
As far as I can tell, there's nothing unique, new or even interesting in the two patent claims.
Hopefully that's of use to the EFF or the defending party.
What? Wait, did I say I was surprised by that, or imply it? [checks] No, I didn't say, or imply, any such thing.
Perhaps you'd like to try again. Many people misremember what they're responding to from time to time.