Of course those of us who drink massive quantities of coffee won't die from heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, or infections. We'll die by lunging at the coffee machine early one morning, slipping on the wet floor, then failing to catch our jittery selves because we're busy protecting the ceramic mug our child gave us fifteen years ago.

My favorite barten^h^h^h^h^h^htherapist always used to say that Goldschläger worked wonders. Now I know why.

If you replace 'the bonobos' with 'management' and make other, similar simple changes to the summary, you'd get a fairly accurate description of the office where I work.

"Ken Schweller, a computer scientist and psychologist, and also the chairman of the Business Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, has a vision: He wants to put wireless Android tablets in the hands of management. The Business Trust Sanctuary is home to seven managers, including the world-famous Kanzi, and two MBAs. So far the Sanctuary has focused almost exclusively on language, with management and the Board of Directors communicating through lexigrams on a touch-screen TV. Now Schweller wants to go one step further and outfit management with wireless tablets running custom Management Chat software, allowing the managers to communicate with their keepers (and other managers!) from anywhere in the Sanctuary, and to remotely control devices such as vending machines, doors, and the RoboManager. If all this wasn't weird (cool?) enough, the RoboManager is even outfitted with a water cannon (so the telepresent managers can play "chase games" with the staff) and Schweller is trying to fund the whole thing with Kickstarter. If you're a big fan of managers (or Darwinism), be sure to donate."

It's uncanny, I tell you. I wonder if those security cameras are something other than what they seem?

Three or four months ago, my wife told my 16-year old stepson to call and see if the person that cuts his hair was working that day. There was a big to-do that day about him not wanting to do anything for himself, and one of the results of that was the need for him to make this call rather than relying on his mom. Anyway, after some typical teenage bitching he went off to his room to call the place with his cell phone. A few minutes pass and comes out again.

Him: "The phone isn't working."

Us: "It's not working. Really. Did you dial the right number?"

Him: "Yeah! Of course I did! I'm not that stupid. It's just making some weird noise."

Us: "What number did you dial?"

Him: [He told us.]

I got my cell and called that number. [beeeeep] [pause] [beeeeep] [pause] [beeeeep]

Us: "That, son, is a busy signal."

Him: "A what?"

Umedachi modeled his latest version on the 'true' slime mold, which has been shown to achieve a 'human-like' decision-making capacity through properties emerging from the interactions of its individual spores.

Are we absolutely certain that some slime molds achieves 'human-like' decision-making capacity rather than some humans achieving slime mold-like decision-making capacity?

Sorry. I probably shouldn't bring U.S. politics into the discussion so early in the threads.

No, your excuse should be, "I had no malicious intent." This is apparently different from, "It was an accident."

Willfully performing an action, or willfully not performing an action you are supposed to perform, with a smile and a wave translates into a Stay Out Of Jail And Retain Your Job card.

I wish I would have known that when I was a teenager.

From Claim 1 of the patent filing:

A method of controlling a portable electronic device including an image capturing device, the method comprising: detecting, via the image capturing device, motions of an object over the image capturing device; determining a type of the detected motions using timing information related to the detected motions, the timing information comprising duration of at least one of the detected motions; and controlling the portable electronic device based on the determined motion type.

Claim 2 then says:

The method of claim 1, wherein the type of the detected motions comprises single tapping, double tapping, hovering, holding and swiping.

Then there is a lot of refinement, talking about edge detection, direction of movement, the usual definition of a computing device with memory, and finally kicking off predetermined actions based on recognized motions.

But look at Claim 2: "... comprises single tapping, double tapping, hovering, holding and swiping." To me, this patent seems to be a simple extrapolation of the gestures Apple made popular with their mobile UI, with the addition of "hovering" (assuming I understand the definition of that word, here). Same gestures, different input control.

Is there a significant difference between, say, swiping across a phone's screen and making the same gesture a few inches away? (I'm thinking that if the device interpreted motions from a larger distance then the only thing that will reliably happen is a serious of hilarious DoS attacks via interpretive dance.)

Do you want Big Data solutions to appeal to the masses? For open source hackers to tackle petabyte-size problems? Hundreds or thousands of possible solutions for each variation of a problem, like what is found on SourceForge?

It's dead simple.

Rename the problem to Big Porn and create a couple of frameworks as examples. The technology will just take right off.

I wholeheartedly recommend 'power naps' or whatever you want to call them. After some experimenting, I found that a 25 minute nap is perfect for me. It's enough sleep to make me feel rested and not enough sleep to make me foggy when I get up. Everyone would be different, of course, but I think most people would benefit from some kind not-quite-deep-sleep period in the middle of the day.

:popcorn: