Gould is an excellent example of what I'm talking about. Most middle-of-the-road evolutionists look to Gould as one of the key players in evolutionary science. However, another key player, Richard Dawkins frequently criticized Gould for his theory of Punctuated Equilibrium. Not because it lacked any scientific merit, but simply because it sounded contradictory to Darwin. In other words, it wasn't good for the cause.
Another standout example is the theory of abiogenesis. While this technically should not be considered part of the theory of evolution, many, many (most?) scientists involved in the study of evolution include this in their schema. However, there are mainstream scientists who have favored an alternate theory known as exogenesis (AKA panspermia). Their theories are usually discarded and their data disregarded by the mainstream. Is this based on scientific principles? No, it's based on consensus - on what most scientists want to believe. Oh yeah, you said name these scientists - I assume you'd prefer to hear names you recognize, like Francis Crick or Fred Hoyle?
Origins a historical document? As you point out, so are they all, at some point. Most breakthroughs in science come from thinking outside the current box. In 1905, most mainstream physicists thought Einstein was amusing, at best. What if he had given up because his ideas didn't fit the mold?
> allow teachers to contradict the teaching of evolution
but what the bill says is:
> objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific > views regarding chemical and biological evolution.
It does not grant the right to "contradict" evolution. Don't we want our future young scientists to be objective and to weigh the full range of scientific facts? Not just the ones that are in vogue or acceptable by consensus.
I'm being somewhat facetious, but only somewhat. I know what you're worried about, but the contrary position is equally worrisome.
While there are many, many scientists who have a balanced, and objective view of evolutionary science, there are more than a few outspoken scientists thumping the Origin Of The Species just as vigorously and just as dogmatically as any Creationist thumps his Bible. And just as with religion, it is typically these vocal few scientists that have the most influence over policy and standards. Sometimes the desire to break Christianity's foothold makes scientists become dogmatic and this is not good for science, in general. Science has it's share of religious zealots.
We would do better to focus on the general principles of science and encourage skepticism and objectivism in the minds of our children. Teach them the scientific method and how to recognize good science from bad science or non-science. If we arm them with the right tools, then it won't matter what kooky theories they get exposed to in school or anywhere else in life.
> True, but it only takes one picture to embarrass somebody, to catch a crime in progress, or > to simply show an individual in a location where they're rather it not be known they are.
True, but which do you think is more likely? You get caught on Google-cam or you get spotted by a neighbor, or your wife's sister, or your preacher, or the local news anchor?
Bottom line; don't be doing something you shouldn't be doing and it won't matter who sees you not doing it!
> That would mean everyone lines up, row 25 first.
I actually flew on an airline in Europe that tried that. It was a huge disaster. Many of the back row people put their luggage in the front row overheads so they wouldn't have to carry it as far. That meant that front row people had to shuttle their luggage more toward the back of the plane. This was bad enough, but when it came time to retrieve their luggage it was complete chaos.
The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
I have this dog who used to run wild, leaving little goodies in the neighbors' flowerbeds. Now he wears a special collar. I burried a wire around the perimeter of my yard. Problem solved... I don't see why Boeing needs to be involved... I mean, it's not rocket science!
I'm happy for you, but I don't see the relevance to this forum... It's not news, it's not particularly interesting to nerds, and it's not stuff that matters (to anyone but you)...
It strikes me as just a self-serving way for you to gloat in a public forum.
I'm really surprised that this story made it past the moderators.
In that case, I concur with you. This is a subject that I have studied much and I've never heard that "voicebox" theory. I'm trying not to be totally dismissive, but references are necessary for me to give it much credence.
> I don't think you'd argue that your body isn't controlled by your thoughts.
No. That's exactly my point. Learning to control some game with bio-feedback is no different than learning to control the same game with a joystick, at least, not with respect to the role your brain plays. My point is that isn't the game controller reading thoughts anymore than operating a joystick is reading thoughts.
This question is key. No one knows. There are a lot of people working on a lot of theories, but none of them have anything tangible yet. Until we understand how the brain creates thoughts, we can't expect a computer interface to interpret them.
> The voice in your head that you identify as yourself?
Now we're branching into the philosophical, but I'll bite. No, that voice is just one manifestation of thoughts. What about the movies that play out in your brain? Would you not classify these as thoughts, yet often they would not correlate with potential verbalizations? There are other concepts in my head that I don't have a clue how to put into words. I may attempt it from time-to-time, but these verbalizations are byproducts of the original thought. They may, in fact, be unique thoughts of their own, but they are not the root thoughts.
> When that "thinks" in words, your voicebox moves. It's just speech with the volume turned down > as far as possible, and it's possible to detect it...
Interesting theory. I've never seen anyone make this claim before. While I think it's possible that the larynx undergoes some change when we think of vocalizations, I doubt that it is a relaiable reproduction of the movements associated with the potential verbalization. Here's why I have my doubts:
(1) The voice in my head speaks much faster than I am able to reproduce with my larynx
(2) The voice in my head continues to ramble on, even when I'm eating or drinking
and most damning to your theory
(3) Sometimes the voice in my head is going on about one thing at the same time I'm speaking about something else entirely
I've been seeing these claims for years, but this technology is not really based on thought. It's just one form of bio-feedback. It is an example of control without conventional physical contact, but it does not process structured thought. The user typically has to train themselves to control the feedback mechanism. This is NOT reeading thoughts and taking some action. It is using thoughts to modulate some physical process. In that sense, it's not much different than training your fingers to operate a game controller.
>...if a guy with a pair of binoculars in his back yard can spot a satellite, > so can the Chinese government.
If the government didn't want China, or anyone else for that matter, to know the whereabouts of their secret satellites, maybe they shouldn't register them. Of course, there are many reasons why it would be stupid not to register a satellite, the most obvious being:
(1) It would be in violation of several international laws (2) You would run the risk of some other satellite trying to occupy the same 'space' (pun intended)
Seriously, it's not WHERE the satellites are that are secret, it's what they do, how they do it, and how they encrypt and transmit their information payloads.
I read both patents and both of them specifically say that the data is encoded via DTMF by the caller. Apple's mechanism doesn't rely on DTMF encoding (or any other kind of encoding from the caller), but rather uses the caller ID and voicemail flags from the carrier. Since the patents are so implementation specific and clearly not the implementation that Apple chose, this seems like an open and shut case.
Silicon -- the backbone of the semiconductor industry -- has long been believed to be immune to fatigue from cyclic stresses...
This will come as a big surprise to all those people actually working in the semiconductor industry who regularly apply cyclic stresses as part of our typical reliability testing...
Seriously, no one who works with silicon thought it was immune to fatigue from cyclic stresses.
The only thing that is new here is that with semiconductors the stresses are incidental due to temperature and pressure events, where with MEMS the stresses are direct and part of the function of the device.
Nanotechnology is still in it's infancy. There are a lot of things we don't know. Ask an average scientist for an opinion about the possibility of unplanned consequences in a relatively immature area of science and he will answer "I don't know". Ask any non-scientist the same question and the average non-scientist will have some sort of opinion, usually based on "If I haven't heard anything bad, it must be OK".
This survey is comparing apples to oranges and trying to draw some inference from essentially a non-committal response from the scientific community.
"Scientists aren't saying there are problems," says the study's lead author Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication and journalism. "They're saying, 'we don't know. The research hasn't been done.'"
Leave it to the uninformed media to read doom and gloom into something so mundane...
You are assuming that people don't use AT&T because they don't like the service. I think this may be true for some, but not most. I think most of the unlockers are "locked in" to a non-AT&T service. Either AT&T dosen't offer service in their area or they already have a contract with someone else and either can't or don't want to switch.
Actually, I don't understand your point. I routinely check out the competition, and AT&T is consistently more reliable in my area and usually the most cost effective. I think all wireless providers are shameless exploiters, but AT&T seems to me to be the scum floating on the top of the pond rather than the slime lurking further down...
If the summary was all there was to it, you'd be right - it's too vague. But that's why that section of the patent is called the summary. The detailed description and the claims are what differentiates the patent from similar "ideas". If you don't like the language, blame the USPTO and the many, many patent lawyers that have evolved this language over the years. All patents are written in this "obfuscated" language. If they are not the patent isn't even considered.
Also, one final point. You seem to be confused about the "constitutionally mandated purpose" of patents. They are not there to instruct, they are there to protect.
No one said the idea wasn't obvious. Using nano-technology to eradicate cancer is an obvious idea. I assure you the first person/company that successfully pulls it off will have patents to protect their IP, even though it was "obvious". It's not the WHAT that gets patented, it's the HOW. In spite of what you might believe, this is true for the NTP patents, as well.
As for your little time-travel gedankin experiment... as they say, hindsight is 20-20. I don't find your reasoning particularly compelling.
You're still thinking in the box... There ARE other alternatives.
Everyone always says, "that's obvious..." and "of course, push email, blah, blah, blah..." What most people don't realize is that it's not merely the idea that gets patented - it's the technology that enables the idea. In 1984 when the idea for push email first gelled, there was only pull. It was not obvious, at the time, that a push email system could work. In fact, it took nearly 8 years and lots and lots of money to build a push email solution that would work. Even when RIM tried to demonstrate in court their earliest attempt at a push email solution (in an attempt to show prior art), it was clear that their demo failed miserably. So, perhaps what seems obvious and trivial to you, today in 2007 was not so obvious and trivial when the patents were first filed.
Technically NTP's patents are not for sending wireless email... rather, the patents are more about the "push" technology that is used. In other words, sending email to wireless devices is OK - just don't use the methodology that NTP patented. Where RIM and possibly others have infringed is due to performance issues with alternate methodologies. In other, other words, the NTP patents actually do conver a competitive advantage over alternate methodologies.
I've been playing guitar for over thirty years... OK, I'm still not very good, but that's beside the point. One thing that I am very anal about is tuning. I've been using electronic tuners for many years and I've yet to find one that get's it quite right. I typically use the tuner to quickly get close, then fine tune so that it sounds right at both ends of the neck and with all strings in unison.
Something that I find odd was that the designers of this gizmo chose a methodology that tunes each string in isolation. Optimum tuning is not simply a function of each string being in tune. The strings need to be in tune as a group and there are slight variations that are dependent on string material, gauge, windings, height, length, and probably a dozen other variables that slightly alter the beat frequencies. The average listener probably can't tell the difference, but to some this makes all the diference in the world.
I think anyone who could justify spending this kind of money for a guitar would tend to be someone who cares critically about their tuning and therefore unlikely to buy such a guitar... For example, you're not going to see Steve Vai replace Thomas Nordegg with these gizmos...
If I'm walking down the street and I notice I have a particular tune in my head... my neural pathways have reconfigured to reproduce a copy of the music. Do I have to pay for this?
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Gould is an excellent example of what I'm talking about. Most middle-of-the-road evolutionists look to Gould as one of the key players in evolutionary science. However, another key player, Richard Dawkins frequently criticized Gould for his theory of Punctuated Equilibrium. Not because it lacked any scientific merit, but simply because it sounded contradictory to Darwin. In other words, it wasn't good for the cause.
Another standout example is the theory of abiogenesis. While this technically should not be considered part of the theory of evolution, many, many (most?) scientists involved in the study of evolution include this in their schema. However, there are mainstream scientists who have favored an alternate theory known as exogenesis (AKA panspermia). Their theories are usually discarded and their data disregarded by the mainstream. Is this based on scientific principles? No, it's based on consensus - on what most scientists want to believe. Oh yeah, you said name these scientists - I assume you'd prefer to hear names you recognize, like Francis Crick or Fred Hoyle?
Origins a historical document? As you point out, so are they all, at some point. Most breakthroughs in science come from thinking outside the current box. In 1905, most mainstream physicists thought Einstein was amusing, at best. What if he had given up because his ideas didn't fit the mold?
You wrote:
> allow teachers to contradict the teaching of evolution
but what the bill says is:
> objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific
> views regarding chemical and biological evolution.
It does not grant the right to "contradict" evolution. Don't we want our future young scientists to be objective and to weigh the full range of scientific facts? Not just the ones that are in vogue or acceptable by consensus.
I'm being somewhat facetious, but only somewhat. I know what you're worried about, but the contrary position is equally worrisome.
While there are many, many scientists who have a balanced, and objective view of evolutionary science, there are more than a few outspoken scientists thumping the Origin Of The Species just as vigorously and just as dogmatically as any Creationist thumps his Bible. And just as with religion, it is typically these vocal few scientists that have the most influence over policy and standards. Sometimes the desire to break Christianity's foothold makes scientists become dogmatic and this is not good for science, in general. Science has it's share of religious zealots.
We would do better to focus on the general principles of science and encourage skepticism and objectivism in the minds of our children. Teach them the scientific method and how to recognize good science from bad science or non-science. If we arm them with the right tools, then it won't matter what kooky theories they get exposed to in school or anywhere else in life.
> True, but it only takes one picture to embarrass somebody, to catch a crime in progress, or
> to simply show an individual in a location where they're rather it not be known they are.
True, but which do you think is more likely? You get caught on Google-cam or you get spotted by a neighbor, or your wife's sister, or your preacher, or the local news anchor?
Bottom line; don't be doing something you shouldn't be doing and it won't matter who sees you not doing it!
> That would mean everyone lines up, row 25 first.
I actually flew on an airline in Europe that tried that. It was a huge disaster.
Many of the back row people put their luggage in the front row overheads so they wouldn't have to carry it as far. That meant that front row people had to shuttle their luggage more toward the back of the plane. This was bad enough, but when it came time to retrieve their luggage it was complete chaos.
The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
Using proprietary, unadvertised API hooks to give Safari a competitive edge is not the same thing as targeting competitors specifically.
Apple is not obligated to give everyone externally the same information that they have internally.
I have this dog who used to run wild, leaving little goodies in the neighbors' flowerbeds. Now he wears a special collar. I burried a wire around the perimeter of my yard. Problem solved... I don't see why Boeing needs to be involved... I mean, it's not rocket science!
I'm happy for you, but I don't see the relevance to this forum...
It's not news, it's not particularly interesting to nerds, and it's not stuff that matters (to anyone but you)...
It strikes me as just a self-serving way for you to gloat in a public forum.
I'm really surprised that this story made it past the moderators.
In that case, I concur with you. This is a subject that I have studied much and I've never heard that "voicebox" theory. I'm trying not to be totally dismissive, but references are necessary for me to give it much credence.
Damn... I keep forgetting to switch to Plain Old Text.
Sorry for the ugly posts.
> Source please? It's not clear to me who or what your question is referenced to. What specifically gives you pause?
> I don't think you'd argue that your body isn't controlled by your thoughts. No. That's exactly my point. Learning to control some game with bio-feedback is no different than learning to control the same game with a joystick, at least, not with respect to the role your brain plays. My point is that isn't the game controller reading thoughts anymore than operating a joystick is reading thoughts.
> Then what are thoughts?
...
This question is key. No one knows. There are a lot of people working on a lot of theories, but none of them have anything tangible yet. Until we understand how the brain creates thoughts, we can't expect a computer interface to interpret them.
> The voice in your head that you identify as yourself?
Now we're branching into the philosophical, but I'll bite. No, that voice is just one manifestation of thoughts. What about the movies that play out in your brain? Would you not classify these as thoughts, yet often they would not correlate with potential verbalizations? There are other concepts in my head that I don't have a clue how to put into words. I may attempt it from time-to-time, but these verbalizations are byproducts of the original thought. They may, in fact, be unique thoughts of their own, but they are not the root thoughts.
> When that "thinks" in words, your voicebox moves. It's just speech with the volume turned down
> as far as possible, and it's possible to detect it
Interesting theory. I've never seen anyone make this claim before. While I think it's possible that the larynx undergoes some change when we think of vocalizations, I doubt that it is a relaiable reproduction of the movements associated with the potential verbalization. Here's why I have my doubts:
(1) The voice in my head speaks much faster than I am able to reproduce with my larynx
(2) The voice in my head continues to ramble on, even when I'm eating or drinking
and most damning to your theory
(3) Sometimes the voice in my head is going on about one thing at the same time I'm speaking about something else entirely
I've been seeing these claims for years, but this technology is not really based on thought. It's just one form of bio-feedback. It is an example of control without conventional physical contact, but it does not process structured thought. The user typically has to train themselves to control the feedback mechanism. This is NOT reeading thoughts and taking some action. It is using thoughts to modulate some physical process. In that sense, it's not much different than training your fingers to operate a game controller.
> ...if a guy with a pair of binoculars in his back yard can spot a satellite,
> so can the Chinese government.
If the government didn't want China, or anyone else for that matter, to know the whereabouts of their secret satellites, maybe they shouldn't register them. Of course, there are many reasons why it would be stupid not to register a satellite, the most obvious being:
(1) It would be in violation of several international laws
(2) You would run the risk of some other satellite trying to occupy the same 'space' (pun intended)
Seriously, it's not WHERE the satellites are that are secret, it's what they do, how they do it, and how they encrypt and transmit their information payloads.
I read both patents and both of them specifically say that the data is encoded via DTMF by the caller. Apple's mechanism doesn't rely on DTMF encoding (or any other kind of encoding from the caller), but rather uses the caller ID and voicemail flags from the carrier. Since the patents are so implementation specific and clearly not the implementation that Apple chose, this seems like an open and shut case.
This will come as a big surprise to all those people actually working in the semiconductor industry who regularly apply cyclic stresses as part of our typical reliability testing...
Seriously, no one who works with silicon thought it was immune to fatigue from cyclic stresses.
The only thing that is new here is that with semiconductors the stresses are incidental due to temperature and pressure events, where with MEMS the stresses are direct and part of the function of the device.
Nanotechnology is still in it's infancy. There are a lot of things we don't know. Ask an average scientist for an opinion about the possibility of unplanned consequences in a relatively immature area of science and he will answer "I don't know". Ask any non-scientist the same question and the average non-scientist will have some sort of opinion, usually based on "If I haven't heard anything bad, it must be OK".
This survey is comparing apples to oranges and trying to draw some inference from essentially a non-committal response from the scientific community.
Leave it to the uninformed media to read doom and gloom into something so mundane...You are assuming that people don't use AT&T because they don't like the service. I think this may be true for some, but not most. I think most of the unlockers are "locked in" to a non-AT&T service. Either AT&T dosen't offer service in their area or they already have a contract with someone else and either can't or don't want to switch.
Actually, I don't understand your point. I routinely check out the competition, and AT&T is consistently more reliable in my area and usually the most cost effective. I think all wireless providers are shameless exploiters, but AT&T seems to me to be the scum floating on the top of the pond rather than the slime lurking further down...
If the summary was all there was to it, you'd be right - it's too vague. But that's why that section of the patent is called the summary. The detailed description and the claims are what differentiates the patent from similar "ideas". If you don't like the language, blame the USPTO and the many, many patent lawyers that have evolved this language over the years. All patents are written in this "obfuscated" language. If they are not the patent isn't even considered.
Also, one final point. You seem to be confused about the "constitutionally mandated purpose" of patents. They are not there to instruct, they are there to protect.
No one said the idea wasn't obvious.
Using nano-technology to eradicate cancer is an obvious idea.
I assure you the first person/company that successfully pulls it off will have patents to protect their IP, even though it was "obvious".
It's not the WHAT that gets patented, it's the HOW.
In spite of what you might believe, this is true for the NTP patents, as well.
As for your little time-travel gedankin experiment... as they say, hindsight is 20-20. I don't find your reasoning particularly compelling.
You're still thinking in the box... There ARE other alternatives.
Everyone always says, "that's obvious..." and "of course, push email, blah, blah, blah..." What most people don't realize is that it's not merely the idea that gets patented - it's the technology that enables the idea. In 1984 when the idea for push email first gelled, there was only pull. It was not obvious, at the time, that a push email system could work. In fact, it took nearly 8 years and lots and lots of money to build a push email solution that would work. Even when RIM tried to demonstrate in court their earliest attempt at a push email solution (in an attempt to show prior art), it was clear that their demo failed miserably. So, perhaps what seems obvious and trivial to you, today in 2007 was not so obvious and trivial when the patents were first filed.
Technically NTP's patents are not for sending wireless email... rather, the patents are more about the "push" technology that is used. In other words, sending email to wireless devices is OK - just don't use the methodology that NTP patented. Where RIM and possibly others have infringed is due to performance issues with alternate methodologies. In other, other words, the NTP patents actually do conver a competitive advantage over alternate methodologies.
I've been playing guitar for over thirty years... OK, I'm still not very good, but that's beside the point. One thing that I am very anal about is tuning. I've been using electronic tuners for many years and I've yet to find one that get's it quite right. I typically use the tuner to quickly get close, then fine tune so that it sounds right at both ends of the neck and with all strings in unison.
Something that I find odd was that the designers of this gizmo chose a methodology that tunes each string in isolation. Optimum tuning is not simply a function of each string being in tune. The strings need to be in tune as a group and there are slight variations that are dependent on string material, gauge, windings, height, length, and probably a dozen other variables that slightly alter the beat frequencies. The average listener probably can't tell the difference, but to some this makes all the diference in the world.
I think anyone who could justify spending this kind of money for a guitar would tend to be someone who cares critically about their tuning and therefore unlikely to buy such a guitar... For example, you're not going to see Steve Vai replace Thomas Nordegg with these gizmos...
If I'm walking down the street and I notice I have a particular tune in my head... my neural pathways have reconfigured to reproduce a copy of the music. Do I have to pay for this?
There's a much easier test for frustration when I'm at my computer:
IF OS == "Windows" THEN
Frustration = "VERY HIGH"
ENDIF