Bill Gates Seeking Patent To Make Shakespeare Less Boring 338
theodp writes "GeekWire reports that Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold are seeking a patent on making textbooks less boring by using a cellphone or other device to scan text on a page, parse its meaning, and automatically create suitable accompanying video or pictures to keep students engaged. From the patent application for Autogenerating Video From Text: 'A student is assigned a reading assignment. To make the assignment more interesting, the student may use his or her mobile phone to take a picture of a page of the textbook. The systems and methods described herein may then generate a synthesized image sequence of the action occurring in the text. Thus, rather than simply reading names and dates, the student may see soldiers running across a battlefield.' Furthermore, the patent explains, the experience may be tailored to a user's preferences: 'For example, in a video clip about a Shakespearean play, the preference data may be used to insert family members into the video clip instead of the typical characters.'"
A patent on making textbooks less boring? (Score:2)
Has it worked on any of his textbooks yet, or just on iambic pentameter?
Re:A patent on making textbooks less boring? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A patent on making textbooks less boring? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure what "it" is since the patent itself doesn't describe an algorithm. It's just a wish list of potential features.
Isn't that how *all* software patents are, nowadays? A lot of hand-waving and absolutely zero meat.
Imagine if all patents were like SW patents. You could patent the flying car, and all you need to write is a description of what your flying car will/should be able to do. And anyone who actually builds such a flying car will be hit over the head with your patent! That's totally Apple's style of doing business.
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If all patents were like software patents, the perpetuum mobile would have been successfully patented a long, long time ago.
Re:A patent on making textbooks less boring? (Score:4, Funny)
If all patents were like software patents, the perpetuum mobile would have been successfully patented a long, long time ago.
Like US 6,362,718 [google.com] and US 6,867,514 [google.com], you mean?
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Software responding to phrase - disable hard core porn and enable romantic comedy function.
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'Wish' is right. This might make a nice bit of speculative fiction, maybe the core of some future story about a dystopian eduction system where the heroin discovers that evil people have altered the universal animation program....
I knew there were drugs involved.
Re: A patent on making textbooks less boring? (Score:2)
Well done, sir. I grant you the win in this case, but not when the mods judge our race.
What problem (Score:3, Insightful)
What problem are they trying to solve here? If people don't want to read, why force them? Sure, reading is a skill we all should possess, but by doing this you don't help with learning how to read at all. So all the benefits of forcing them to read are removed.
Re:What problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is the mentality that something is only worth doing if it makes you feel better right now. This "solution" only makes things worse. It's like a parent trying to get compliance by bribing their toddler with candy.
Re:What problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to connect your quote with something another commenter said:
Both of you have the same concern as I do - that as a society we only seem to be interested in short-term efforts if they bring immediate rewards (with the exception of perhaps college, but only because so many people have to these days to get a half-decent job it seems). Long-term investment in time and effort is seen as a waste because the payoff might take quite a while to eventuate... and the problem is that not only is this true, it's also not guaranteed that a payoff will even eventuate after all that work.
Short-term effort shows the results reasonably quickly, good or bad. Long-term effort is a difficult thing to justify in our busy lives, so many people avoid it, whether that be consistent exercise, working on a hobby that will take months to produce something half-decent, or indeed, building any skills that aren't strictly necessary to survive.
Re:What problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Short-term effort shows the results reasonably quickly, good or bad. Long-term effort is a difficult thing to justify in our busy lives, so many people avoid it, whether that be consistent exercise, working on a hobby that will take months to produce something half-decent, or indeed, building any skills that aren't strictly necessary to survive.
I agree. All this will achieve is distract children from actually understanding anything by looking at a feed of supposedly related pictures/videos instead. It reminds me of a YouTube video of "My favorite things" (Sound of Music) in which someone had put clipart pictures of all the things. How completely irrelevant and distracting. The point of the song is not the list of things!
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I wanted to say that I agree 100%.
I also wanted to comment on the suggestion that someone would want to substitute family members into Shakespearean plays. I don't think that whoever wrote that part of the patent text has read any Shakespeare.
Re:What problem (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is that people are being taught Shakespeare without seeing the plays. The books are just scripts - useful for studying the play, but they were never meant to stand on their own. Without the actors the lines are dry and uninteresting.
Even a video doesn't convey why Shakespeare is regarded as one of the greatest English writers. His plays were meant to be watched in a theatre, where actors can captivate the audience and convey their story. Good actors will make the story clear and accessible to anyone, as Shakespeare intended, in spite of the old-fashioned and sometimes-difficult language. Only then, once you've seen and understood the play can you start to study it in more detail.
The patent sounds technically dubious, but it's not even addressing the real problem.
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Sound like they are trying to have your device take over for your imagination.
The other day we ran out of aluminum foil and I was telling my son how I had built a model rocket out of the cardboard roll from a box of aluminum foil when I was his age 13yrs old... I told him about building a small generator that would power a light bulb using old speaker magnets and enamel copper wire... he found none of it the least bit interesting and went on about playing his video game.
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The problem is the mentality that something is only worth doing if it makes you feel better right now. This "solution" only makes things worse. It's like a parent trying to get compliance by bribing their toddler with candy.
It doesn't help that the described 'invention' will actually make the task slower in the attempt to make it palatable; while making the bribe worse by trying to make it 'relevant'. Does anyone suspect that a computer throwing together clip art is going to produce especially compelling footage(except occasionally by sheer accidental absurdity)? Or that time spent watching stock footage of guys with swords is something that helps you in actually reading the text?
If you wanted to bribe kiddo, it'd be far easie
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If it makes them read it slower that's probably a good thing. Shakespeare can be skimmed over really quickly, but almost every line requires some pondering if you really want to appreciate it.
Your suggestion on the other hand encourages the opposite: Get through the reading requirement as quickly as possible to reap the reward. The parent has managed to transfer his disengagement from the topic to their child. Hardly very useful.
The more successful parent will try to increase the engagement with the medium,
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The problem they are trying to solve here is the problem of another company potentially inventing something cool having to do with books and not having a weapon to bludgeon that company into submission.
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the problem they're trying to solve is one where, in some unspecified future if someone comes up with a way of making textbooks more interactive by inserting multimedia and other content then Billy and Nath won't be able to assert their vague and speculative patent to extort loadsa cash.
By registering this vague and speculative patent, this problem gets solved! hurrah for the boost in innovation and economic prosperity (for Billy and Nath obviously, not the sucker who might actually come up with the innovat
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I don't understand. Reading Shakespeare is enjoyable.
What is wrong with those kids?
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No, no, what is wrong with Bill Gates? (My personal take says: everything)
Gates does not seem to be able to distinguish technology from the way people work.
Re:What problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand. Reading Shakespeare is enjoyable. What is wrong with those kids?
The language is now a bit dated. Also the plays are always hard to read if you have no imagination. They were meant to be performed. In many ways this patent describes the job of a director. In which case I would have to decline. Politely.
In most other cases it is a prosthetic for imagination and thought processes.
At this point I would have mandatory philosophy classes just to get the kids back on track. Just the basics. Logic, the nature of knowledge, the old Aristotle vs. Plato argument, Munchhausen trilemma. No complex post-Renaissance/modern stuff. Just a kickstart for the old noggin. Then MAYBE they will learn to read and understand texts, the spirit they were written in and their context.
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Yet Romeo + Juliet was perfectly fine to the modern viewer.
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Yet Romeo + Juliet was perfectly fine to the modern viewer.
Rome and Juliet is boring pap after Mercutio's death. He is the only likeable character in the whole play. BTW, I liked the movie.
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Romeo and Juliet makes no sense. If the "poison fiasco" would have worked as Juliet intended, she would have ran away with Romeo into the country. However, her own father flat out told her he would disown her if she didn't marry that other guy. Why couldn't she just say, "OK!", not marry that dude, let the disownment happen, and run away with Romeo into the country any goddamn way. Why go this elaborate poison route?
You could argue Juliet was just too young, too dumb, too passionate, not clear-headed, etc.
Then teach how to find plot holes (Score:3)
Your beloved play does not hold up to cursory scrutiny.
If William Shakespeare's plays are as overrated as you claim, then high school literature teachers are doing their students a disservice in not showing them how to find plot holes like this.
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However, none of that excuses Friar Laurence who provided the poison and hatched the whole harebrained scheme in the first place.
Obviously, Romeo and Juliet is *really* about a sadistic serial-killer who's MO is getting people to commit suicide.
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The anachronisms are intrinsic to the genre. I doubt most kids are knowledgeable enough to identify all of them anyway.
From what you're saying, it seems that they like the stories, but do not like the act of reading. That's the fault of the parents, not the teachers.
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I suspect by anachronistic he wasn't referring to specific details that have to be identified but rather the character's actions and behavior for the modern reader, as well as the storytelling itself. To deny that the social and literary developments in the last 400 years have had no effect on the perception of Shakespeare is a bit disingenuous.
As for reading skills you could engage in an endless debate about parents vs. teachers, but at the end of the day you have to question the sense in forcing someone t
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For a lot of kids, Shakespeare is impenetrable, boring and anachronistic.
I agree that this is bad teaching: I mean, Shakespeare plays have everything you could want in great entertainment - sex, songs, gruesome violence, some drug use, stupid teenage romance, clowns, and sometimes epic proportions.
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The formulas that I found easiest to remember were the ones which were placed next to a diagram or picture. It's not the information that's in the image, but the the extra association which makes recollection easier. It's how our brains work.
I remember seeing an interview with a competitive memory guy and one of his techniques for remembering the order of a pack of cards was to associate each card with an object and make up a story from the sequence. What at first seems completely arbitrary and useless is a
I want it for (Score:4, Funny)
I was just gonna say (Score:3)
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Re:I was just gonna say (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, people tend to dislike the idea of having their life ended prematurely, so it is very unlikely that the average child molester will come forward to collect his bullet. Since precrime doesn't really exist, you have to wait for someone to actually commit a crime before you can convict someone.
And if virtual kiddy porn can keep just one from going for the real deal, it's worth it.
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Hey, it's not "either-or".
--
.nosig
No algorithm should mean no patent (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No algorithm should mean no patent (Score:5, Insightful)
... also known as a software patent.
Re:No algorithm should mean no patent (Score:5, Insightful)
you know what's funny? such wish lists have been written before.. and it'll be expired by the time people can make it reality in state that's not total bull.
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Incidentally, having a patent also means no patent, since algorithms are not patentable.
Catastrophically awful idea (Score:5, Insightful)
This proposal just makes my flesh crawl. Why are we so afraid of the idea that some classic works of literature (just like classics in the field of art or film) require a degree of diligence and attention to get the most out of them? Why do we object so strongly to the idea of teaching children the value of deferred please; that hard work and effort now can produce greater rewards down the line?
It's not just a problem in the arts. If we teach the next generation that all study should be easy, quick and fun, then how do we get over the fact that a learning lot of the science that underpins our current standard of living is none of those things.
"Sit down, shut up and read" might not be patentable as a teaching method due to prior art (though part of me wouldn't be surprised if somebody tried), but it strikes me as far more useful than the technology described in TFA.
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Because hard work down the line doesn't translate into higher exam scores today.
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But it will translate into a generation of children getting out into the workforce who can't do any actual work because they've been coddled and who have been educated in such a way as to maximize standardized tests.
And then we'll be really screwed. Pay the cost of educating them now, or pay the cost of living with that as your workforce later.
Re:Catastrophically awful idea (Score:4, Insightful)
The proposal isn't actually about literature; it's explicitly about textbooks. I dare say it'd have a really hard time with literature because important contextual information is unlikely to be held in the text snippet that it's supposed to visualise. For example it would be pretty trivial to put together an illustration of "1000 men storm the river whatevs" given that it's an abstract, but "What light through yonder window breaks?" takes a lot more foreknowledge.
I suspect the original intention was for them to be able to programatically generate those little illustrative videos you used to see on Encarta articles. Most of the claims are trashed so whatever the original patent was, it was quite a bit more substantial.
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Nope, no it isn't, this is what I get for reading the claims first.
Re:Catastrophically awful idea (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, Shakespeare's plays aren't *meant* to be read. They're meant to be performed. So seeing a performance of the play is actually quite appropriate.
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Yes, point taken on the plays.
I'd also take issue with the phrase "make Shakespeare less boring". Most of Shakespeare's work (and I will make an exception for a couple of the romcoms, which I do feel are a bit crap) are anything but boring.
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The problem is that in our 'classless' society, we seem to believe that EVERYONE needs to be some sort of intellectual, enjoying reading Shakespeare or knowing the dates of important things in history. I mean, EVERYONE should go to college, right?
The fact is, of course, 95% of everyone could get along very nicely never doing either. In fact, we'd be far better off if we somehow 'decided' that knowing how to do plumbing, how to farm, or how to be an electrician was somehow just as 'valued' as Shakespeare?
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Original Romeo and Juliet Balcony Scene:
But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief (5)
That thou her maid art far more fair than she.
Translation:
Look at that lady up there. That bitch be fly!
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"Fun" != "satisfying".
I used their patent to learn using Windows (Score:4, Funny)
Since when has Shakespeare been boring??? (Score:5, Informative)
Misleading headline aside, Shakespeare is hilarious.
Violence, sex, creative insults galore, betrayal, incest, murder, sword fights, pork sword fights, ghosts, and more invented words than you can shake a pork sword at.
It is awesome and even suggesting that the short attention span squad deserves being pandered to is borderline criminal.
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Try Ben Jonson instead. You'll lever look back.
Discussions like this always make me remember my last English teacher at school. It's only literature if there is a four letter word in each sentence. He apologized to us for making us read A midsummer night's dream. When some of us went to see Volpone on a class trip, he announced it as some play by a guy like Shakespeare. I've always wondered what would happen if he actually read something by Poe - his head would probably explode.
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Hey man, Catullus 16 is one of the classics. :D
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Ok, attention-span might be a target problem (Score:2)
Literal Adaptation (Score:5, Funny)
I used this autogenerated video already for my study of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
That's how I know about his brave fight against a sea monster called Fortune, despite having come under heavy fire from arrows and sling shots.
Strange that they always cut that bit out of the film adaptations, I thought it was the most exciting part of the play, even though it didn't seem to make much sense.
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No! No! The kangaroo was at the Last Supper!
You don't want an artist, you want a bloody PHOTOGRAPHER!!!
I tried to read the patent (Score:3)
Titles this should be Beta Tested on... (Score:2)
Prior art already exists (Score:2)
Well, I think it's a good idea. (Score:2)
After all, even typography is all about making text more readable and beautiful. And that's not too objectionable unless you're an MLA submission committee. I'm sure there was a time when spaces, capital letters and punctuations were debatable as crutches.
I would personally find use in an algorithm that highlights nouns or verbs to facilitate speeder reading.
Another idea I have is an eye tracker in an eBook reader that will pick up on you getting stuck on a word and will sound it out for you to hear. If you
Is it just me ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The internet is for porn (Score:3)
From Microsoft - the masters of great UI (Score:2)
Given how shoddy Microsoft's interface to computing has been over the decades, I'm nauseated by the idea of the same people creating - and if this patent is granted, controlling - an interface to (some subset of) reality.
Though it's ironic that people who used to insist text was the only interface the world needed and anyone who wanted more was mentally feeble are now basing a patent application on their ground-breaking insight that text is sometimes limiting.
I do look forward to all the hilarious ways this
This has Microsoft Songsmith fail all over it (Score:2)
Sounds like a dumb idea ... (Score:2)
Yes, make it so kids can't read a book without a smartphone to keep them entertained.
Our kids can apparently barely read now, and writing with a pen is becoming something they don't know how to do.
I don't think we need a room full of kids on smart phones scanning Shakespeare to get entertaining images. We need a room full of kids who can actually sit through a class without using their smartphone, and who can actually read and write.
I don't see this improving that any. This is just more shiny stuff to mak
Next patent (Score:2)
for pre-chewing food.
Have we become so lazy that now we can't be bothered to read the text and visualize it ourselves, but have to rely on a computer algorithm to generate a video of its interpretation of the said text? This is the magic of the written word, that it stimulates our brain to build an entire world and populate it with locales and characters, to breathe life into a seemingly dead medium. The intellectual effort is the exercise that keeps our brain fit, that enables it to improve. You take th
Hold on a second... (Score:2)
Don't give the schools any more ideas (Score:2)
Just wait for it having to buy the book + a school cell phone plan and school phone + with apps. At the high college prices.
We need to get rid of the over priced books that come with online testing sites as well.
Novel? (Score:2)
I go to look at the patent and over 90% of the claims were canceled (seriously there are 39 claims left, numbered 397-453, with gaps in the middle). What's left is basically what xtranormal [wikipedia.org] used to do [youtube.com], with OCR bolted on the front end.
Creating laziness and ilitteratcy (Score:2)
(and people who have trouble spelling ilitteratcy).
So, if this comes out, students no longer have an incentive to read - they just take their smart phone to class, take a picture of their books, and Bing returns youtube videos? Thanks a lot, Bill Gates, for killing reading and reading comprehension!
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Just another stop on the elevator (Score:2)
to the bottom which is US education system - led by the "we must fix it!" crowd. I suspect most adults, let alone high school students, could not pass an exam given to 8th graders a century ago. This notion that everything must be easy to learn and nothing ever boring is the most evil kind of fantasy.
What makes this less boring, exactly? (Score:2)
God forbid ... (Score:2)
Obviates the need for reading (Score:2)
Lost in Translation (Score:2)
rewriting history (Score:2)
LoB
Bad patent system. (Score:2)
With certain things, the devil is in the details. I think this is one of those. I could patent "method to bring a person to Mars and back" but there are a lot lot lot of steps between writing "put them on rocket, send, have them come back" on a piece of paper and getting Chris Rock there and back safely (why Chris Rock? why not?).
Remember for Apollo, they had a few ways of getting people to the moon and back [wikipedia.org]. What if someone had patented "method to get someone to the moon, somehow, someway" then waited for
Wrong Premise (Score:2)
A brave new world (Score:2)
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http://www.arstechnica.com ./ has become so full of shit and its all thanks to its amazing editors. Job well done
Re:Headline (Score:5, Informative)
Besides, this patent just describes storyboarding [wikipedia.org], but on a computer!.
Re:Headline (Score:5, Interesting)
The computer is supposed to do the storyboarding. It hasn't been automated before. What's missing is the WHOLE PROGRAM. The patent office needs to start demanding working code for software patents. If you don't have working code, you don't have an invention, just an idea that you might eventually some day years from now turn into an invention -- if it's even an invention.
These devices will be great for a time in 20 years when kids don't bother to learn to read and can't even listen to a story but must have everything shown to them in video clips. In short, it's for the brave new world of subhumans.
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I don't even understand how someone thinks a patent is going to improve anything? That's not even what patents are for.
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I don't even understand how someone thinks a patent is going to improve anything? That's not even what patents are for.
Correct. The purpose of patents is to make some people money by preventing others from making money on the same thing.
It works from the assumption that this stimulates invention as the patent holder will use the extra income to finance his next invention.
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Re:Headline (Score:5, Informative)
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And Shakespeare isn't boring really. People just think it probably would be.
Re:Prior art again Bill! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd have settled for Key Comics ancient releases of Shakespeares tales.
Not a new idea Bill. If you had the patent, you'd probably sue a comic book company for that. Shame on you, now go away and stay out of my news.
Re:Prior art again Bill! (Score:5, Interesting)
It did strange things, to my guitar building textbook.
I think it may have been the phrase "Ebony Stiffeners".
Re:Prior art again Bill! (Score:5, Funny)
It's not prior art that concerns me, it's the intentional rewriting of history.
History 101, post Bill-Gates Video Learning:
Final Exam Essay: Describe the Battle of Waterloo:
In 1815, an Imperial French army under the command of Emperor Jean-Claude Van Damm was defeated by the armies of the Dirrrty South, comprised of a coalition of Lil Jon and East Side Boyz, Britney Spears, and Leonidas' 300. Emperor Van Damm's Universal Soldiers blitzkrieged the 300, who's phalanx withstood repeated attacks until Lil Jon got crunk up in there and broke through and skeeted up the French lines. Britney Spears' forces then hit that baby one more time.
Citation: Video textbook.
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Looks like this has potential. Thanks for the link.
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I checked out the sketch2Photo site...Amazing! To think you can draw an idea, present it to this program and out pops a photo?
To get this out, I am in agreement that there should be no patent award to Bill. When I read the summary my first thought was "This is the beginning of the end to imagination". I feel their "idea" diminishes the requirement that children learn to use their imagination, to create a place, scene, or person and Bill's idea would jsut take any effort away.
What I see in a program like
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Simple word matching would be a good start.
The Audobon member proudly showed her his collection of tits. "I had a blue footed booby too, but the pussy ate it."
What could possibly go wrong?
Re:Prior Art? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure the 'reduced shakespeare company' might have something to say about making the bard more interesting.
Shakespeare is never boring. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs either an English comprehension course or medication for attention deficit disorder.
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