Intel To Help Stephen Hawking Communicate Faster 133
hypnosec writes "Stephen Hawking's ability to communicate has been deteriorating over the years and as it stands, he is only able to communicate at the rate of 1 word per minute. Intel CTO Justin Rattner has revealed that they are working on an interface that will boost the scientist's speech to up to 10 words per minute. Beyond twitching his cheek, Hawking is also capable of other voluntary facial expressions which can be tapped to achieve faster communications with the help of a better character interface and a better word predictor."
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Yes, the x86 tech has improved a lot.
However, the intel presentation at CES was empty. They presented a facelift of the same chip with stuff limited, and made false claims on it.
The competition (x86 or not) is not sleeping like that. intel needs to wake up if they want to survive.
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Yes, the x86 tech has improved a lot. However, the intel presentation at CES was empty. They presented a facelift of the same chip with stuff limited, and made false claims on it. The competition (x86 or not) is not sleeping like that. intel needs to wake up if they want to survive.
Have you been smoking what Charlie Demerjian is selling? Intel has a huge lead over their closest competitor, AMD. Since AMD resigned its-self to the value market a few years ago they have not even attempted to take a shot at leading. Intel has no immediate threats, unfortunately.
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damn you autocorrect ... (Score:3)
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Probably the other way round, it might grab sense from the jaws of his hard-to-understand utterings...
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Lol, excuse me while I go to te grocery store and get some fake lemon :)
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Ah, ReaLemon. It there anything you can't do?
Cat and bird spray, room freshener, food additive, and now time travel!
Re:damn you autocorrect ... (Score:4, Funny)
"fish fingers and custard"
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The secret to time travel is to faux eat lemons.
The secret to faux time travel is to faux eat faux lemons.
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if, as reported here recently, Watson can master Urban Dictionary then the literature for the grand unified theory shouldn't cause 'it' too much problems.
Hook Hawking's wheelchair up to Watson via wifi/3g and you're all set...
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The beauty of computers is without a sense of context, the conceptual difficulty of hardcore physics vs urban dictionaries sailor slurs would be completely irrelevant to it. So your probably right actually.
Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I suspect principally because a company which builds computer hardware doesn't have a very large bioscience division.
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Re:I have an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of rehashing 1970s tech, could we PLEASE start understanding how the human body works and why some bodies destroy themselves in this way?
Could you PLEASE stop assuming that there aren't thousands upon thousands of people actively engaged in all areas of medical science trying to do exactly this?
Re:I have an idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead of rehashing 1970s tech, could we PLEASE start understanding how the human body works and why some bodies destroy themselves in this way?
Could you PLEASE stop assuming that there aren't thousands upon thousands of people actively engaged in all areas of medical science trying to do exactly this?
Could you please explain why one of the most brilliant men of all time is sitting in a 70's era wheel chair using a fucking joystick and his cheek to try and type words when we already have EEG-based headcaps that fucking MONKEYS can use to play goddamn video games?
Seriously man, quit making excuses. Biomedical technology for the disabled is at least 30 years behind CONSUMER technology and at least 50 years behind where it should be. He ought to be walking around his house in a thought- controlled, self-powered exoskeleton right now, and no I'm not joking for even a second. At the very least he should have a head-cap based interface for using his computer system instead of a half-assed muscle-proxy mechanism. And that's with shit that's damn near available at WalMart, no fucking joke.
The state of actual medical research to fix conditions like his is in just as sorry of a state. Companies are too busy pouring cash into penis pills and weight loss drugs to spend R&D money on tailoring targeted DNA rejuvenation treatments. No, it's not just Sci-Fi, or rather it ought not to be, but assholes like you act like this is being feverishly worked on around the clock when in reality nobody is doing a GODDAMN THING.
Re:I have an idea (Score:4, Insightful)
The state of actual medical research to fix conditions like his is in just as sorry of a state. Companies are too busy pouring cash into penis pills and weight loss drugs to spend R&D money on tailoring targeted DNA rejuvenation treatments. No, it's not just Sci-Fi, or rather it ought not to be, but assholes like you act like this is being feverishly worked on around the clock when in reality nobody is doing a GODDAMN THING.
Two points: (1) Do you claim to have a solution that can be implemented? (2) What are YOU doing about curing the diseasse?
I know it is fun to sit at home and bash medical R&D of focusing on weight-loss pills etc. But look at the statistics. About 5000 people in the US have ALS at any given time (and death rate is close to incidence rate of 2/100,000 per year: Citation [cwfo.org]). So in the US (300 million population) that is 6000 deaths a year. Do you know how many people die due to obesity? Automobile accidents? Heart disease? ALS doesn't even count compared to those: Rank of causes of death.
Just so you know, I would love cures for a lot of diseases to be found (including ALS). But in the real world, companies focus on what makes business sense. Why should the NIH grants/Medical R&D focus on ALS when there are a lot more deaths due to other causes? Because one person who has it is famous? I'm sure there are a lot of smart/famous people (okay, may not be Stephen Hawking type of smart, but talented and contributing to society in other ways) who die of lots of other causes. We don't live entirely in a meritocracy that says Famous Guy's life is worth more than everyone else's and is therefore more deserving of resources.
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I could make an argument that obesity is self induced. Auto accidents are mostly due to stupidity, in which one stupid person takes himself and a random number of victims out. Heart disease is often due to self induced obesity.
GP may have a point, in that we should cure those diseases that are not self induced, before worrying about dumbasses who work hard to kill themselves. How much money went into all that penis hardening research, anyway? Every single dollar was a total waste. We don't NEED more ol
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I could make an argument that obesity is self induced.
That it is. It may be rooted in psychological causes both genetic, environmental and acquired, but it is (almost) never the result of someone else force-feeding you, so any and all motivation and incentive have to come from yours truly and nobody else.
Oh, and coming down from semi-obesity isn't all that hard (unless you're in a hurry). In the past year I've come down from 150+ kg to 96 kg today over the course of 13 months doing nothing more than eating at least one healthy meal each day (usually a 500g mix
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But in the real world, companies focus on what makes business sense. Why should the NIH grants/Medical R&D focus on ALS when there are a lot more deaths due to other causes?
Actually, a lot of the basic biomedical and technological groundwork that would be required to treat a condition like ALS using the science-fiction fantasies of the GP would be immensely profitable. If we could really understand how stimuli get in and out of the brain, and come up with neural-computer interfaces that not only restor
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Two points.
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What never ceases to amaze me is how we treat such brilliant people. I was surprised to hear how old his equipment is, how difficult it is to keep running, and how little his personal assistants are paid.
I understand he is not a rich man and caretaking is naturally expensive, but I would have expected more goodwill sponsors to come forward, if only for publicity's sake.
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Hawking is fairly conservative with his tech. As another post said, working is the primary requirement, even if slow. Remember, a FUBARd system is no use no matter how cool or fast it worked in the lab.
Besides, Hawking has a nice media career going for himself: http://youtu.be/tOimeRod4TY [youtu.be] (yes, it really Hawking help sell financial products!).
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Remember when he was taking applications for an assistant a while back? One of the requirements was that the individual would be able to repair his tech on-the-spot. Not just replace a keyboard, but do a teardown and get it back up and running again. That's another pretty good reason for him to stick with the tech he's had around for years. They can train the new people as they come in, and you're not playing catchup with new tech.
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Because you're too busy wasting your life bitching about what hasn't been achieved by society while doing fuck all to sort it yourself. It's pretty pathetic so sort your shit out.
Cure for cancer (Score:1)
Reminds me of the cancer cure for (much of) cancer [escapistmagazine.com]. This one was even on The news [youtube.com]
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There are several reasons. One of the biggest reasons, which is also the reason space probes have seemingly antiquated computing power, is that it has to work. EEG-based headcaps for playing video games is great, but how good is the fidelity? How good does it do when you need to be able to use it 24/7? Face it: most consumer electronics
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Seriously man, quit making excuses. Biomedical technology for the disabled is at least 30 years behind CONSUMER technology and at least 50 years behind where it should be.
Designing general-purpose silicon-based microelectronics technology from the ground up is vastly easier (and currently, vastly more profitable) than deducing the function of an organic, naturally evolved, and vastly more sophisticated neural system. The fact that you would make such a comparison proves that you don't know a fucking thing
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Pick any two you like: http://www.alscenter.org/als_science/research_projects/index.html [alscenter.org]
Re:I have an idea (Score:4, Informative)
Name two.
1. Martinovich I., Perito, D., et al. [usenix.org]
2. House, P., Greger, B. [gizmag.com]
Notes:
- these are only two papers that made it into the public media in recent times
- it is a very conservative estimation to assume that each one of them involved the work of tens of peoples
- it is also safe to assume that there are many others that are still "pushing the boundaries of Knowledge" on the matter but are not enough "media-chewable" so they never reach the notoriously sloppy AC's attention
Re:I have an idea (Score:4, Interesting)
If you were a very smart fellow in the 1800's with nothing but the most rudimentary knowledge of electricity, how would you go about understanding something like a portable radio transistor?
Would you have advised the people in the 1700's to just stop thinking about electricity because they lacked fundamental understanding of it? How would that have brought us to where we are now?
Do you think it would be possible to understand the human brain without computers (the cognitive models but especially the computing power needed for modeling) and electronic microscopes? Do you think it would be possible to build computers and electronic microscopes without a deep understanding of electronics (among other things)? And do you think we could get a deep understanding of electronics without the first crude experimentation with naturally occurring and static electricity?
Sure, someone that would write a paper now on how a radio works by reversing engineering the circuit board without understanding the first notions of electronics is an idiot and would be duly ridiculed in the literature. An "inventor" from the 1700's who did experiments with rubbing amber or flying kites into the storm was a genius, someone doing it now would be an amateur at best.
tl;dr: context matters
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The real problem is that people are just too lazy to accomplish great things, they'd rather be handed a solution on a platter that requires no input from them.
For example, people could learn how to use their eyes properly, or they can stick with the same viewpoint, ignoring the physical world, and buy a pair of glasses that supports their inflexibility.
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You got modded down I believe because you made the ridiculous assertion that there is already a cure for ALS-- legalizing marijuana! And that people just refuse to accept it. I assure you that if cannabis was the cure for ALS that so much money would not have been spent helping Hawking cope with ALS rather than just curing him.
One might ask where exactly you got your PHD, and why you havent gotten a government grant yet.
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Theres grant money to be had if you can show the truth of your words; that youre on slashdot rather than applying for it indicates that there is no substance behind them.
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Why don't you get started on that little project in your spare time?
I would suggest that you're looking at the problem incorrectly though. The atoms did not arrange themselves into nerves, etc, all by themselves. You've simply leaped past a couple of very critical things, like viable DNA donors, cooperating to create yet more healthy, viable DNA.
Hell, if all that were required were a bunch of atoms, we could take hydrocarbons almost at random, throw them in a blender, and wait for a child to birth itself
AC because it's easy, and not hard ;-) ? (Score:2)
Somewhat ironic you choose to post a provocative style message as AC. Did you choose to do so because it was easy, and not hard? ;-)
Re: "could we please start understanding how the human body works" - I think you'll find that there are many research institutions and universities carrying out a lot of biological research. Why don't answers appear quickly? Because it's hard. A good friend has just finished his PhD studying Huntingdon's disease, he has made some valuable but incremental progress to solving gen
Yay! (Score:4, Insightful)
He'll be able to do even more awful TV adverts for crappy insurance companies! [youtube.com]
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Interesting)
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On the level you're coming at it from, it's wonderful.
I hope it's taken that way. I hope people laugh at the joke...
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Sad but true.
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He might not be AS much of an idol, but he'd still be as big an idol as say Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox or Phil Plait.
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> If he wasn't crippled, he wouldn't be an idol.
I respectfully disagree, at least in part. Sure, the public admires him because he absolutely refuses to give up, in spite of disease that would have made most people surrender long before now. I respect him for that.
But to be fair, Hawking had already made a name for himself long before he landed in that wheelchair -- starting with the Adams Prize for his doctoral thesis (back in 1966). He's not just winging it or banking on public sympathy. He and Roger P
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That's actually a brilliant ad.
Easily the best ad I've seen in ages, as it really takes the piss out of the company's own ads.
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Problem is though that it's the fifth (or sixth? I lost count) in a series that have been doing just that - and it's getting tedious now
It may even be time to get rid of my opera-singing namesake as their main character while they're at it, and come up with a new pitch...
But... (Score:5, Funny)
That's all well and good, but what will happen when Hawking dictates a formula that involves division?
Hook him to the NSA's supercomputer (Score:1)
Come on IBM, why don't you hook him up to the neural interface and the supercomputer you built to run the platform????
Oh right...sorry...we all need to keep quiet that your neural research is coming from an unlawful human experiementation program.
Dicks.
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Or they could get Hawking one of these. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotiv_Systems [wikipedia.org] A brain computer interface that is available to consumers already. With it they could give him a means of communication even if he loose what little control of his body he has left
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They could definitely get one of those for you. You could hook it up to your spell checker, and it would hopefully figure out that when you write 'loose', you really mean 'loses'. :)
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You could hook it up to your Grammar checker
FTFY
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it's pity (Score:3, Insightful)
It's pity that person that have so many interesting things to say can't communicate normally with other peoples.
There are a lot of people that speak a lot and doesn't have anything interesting to say.
And (Score:5, Funny)
Are they loading the urban dictionary?
Engineers are problem solvers (Score:2, Informative)
After meeting with Hawking, Rattner said he wondered whether his company’s processor technology could restore the scientist’s ability to communicate at five words per minute, or even increase that rate to 10.
A business person would probably have left and said, "boring conversation anyway"
Eye Tracking (Score:5, Interesting)
A quick Youtube search turns up this example of eye-tracking tech for character input [youtube.com]. Yeah, it doesn't look to be much faster than Intel's proposed 10 words per minute but that clip is 5 years old and I'm sure it could be improved upon in a number of ways (instead of having to 'hover' over a key for couple seconds for it to confirm, maybe a twitch could be used instead).
Only the other day we saw a demonstration of eye tracking being used with the Windows 8 interface. Something like that would allow him to browse the web, email, take notes, etc.
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Oh, and add decent predictive text like modern smartphone soft-keyboards have too. I think I remember reading that his current system has some form of predictive text but I'm guessing it's pretty dated.
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Something like that would allow him to browse the web, email, take notes, etc.
For the love of god, keep Hawking off the web. It seems we have one great mind left that's exploring how the world works, and you want to sidetrack him with lolcats?!?!
Yes, I'm joking.
Big corporate helping handicapped man? (Score:1, Funny)
Intel is not evil after all!
Now I will buy all their shit.
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For all we know...
Stephen Hawking diagnosed - 1963 Intel founded - 1968
Seems unlikely.
But not impossible. Sounds like an Intel floating point error.
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they should do this (Score:3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiGRt9jaxdI [youtube.com]
We all know where this is headed... (Score:1)
Images [google.com]
That's great, but... (Score:1)
Tennyson - Ulysses (Score:5, Insightful)
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
It is not enough to have the ability to change the world. It is a rare combination of chance and circumstance, far more than any particular genius. Archimedes could not have formulated the questions that led to quantum electrodynamics. Nor is it fair to select a particular point of inflection out of a continuum of progress -- which discovery since the invention of the transistor is responsible for the processor in your computer?
You judge beyond your ken, and far above your station. I hope that you are ashamed of your comment, but console myself that it will likely receive all the attention that it deserves.
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Not the parent, but I think you misunderstand the concept of poetry. You need individual examples to be inspiring. A poem about the faceless masses of scientist wouldn't be very inspiring to most people.
(Captcha: "brooding")
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Hawking was the first to make a cosmological model by unifying general relativety and quantum mechanics. That's not easy, Einstein couldn't do it.
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M-theory?
Give me a break. It fails tests of Godel - and is based on a mathematical supposition of unobservable, multiple dimensions. It's like adding new axes to a graph - to fit non-conforming data into a pre-determined hypothesis.
It is a sophomoric proposition illuminated by calculative sophistication. Wittgenstein, were he alive, would have ripped Hawking seven new assholes, and been mathematically correct in his exposition.
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And I shall be epigrammatic: "M-Theory is a tautology".
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all systems of mathematics are
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all of the commonly used and useful quantum models also do exactly those things
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Which is why they are false.
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"false" is not the issue, that is from the realm of philosophy and of no import. a scientific model is USEFUL for predicting behaviour of natural phenomenon or it is NOT USEFUL. there are several quantum mechanical models that are very useful. you are presently using devices engineered with useful quantum mechanical models. scientific experiment has shown other quantum mechanical models to be useful.
Interestingly, there have been recent astronomic observations in the realm of the intersection of quant
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Galactic distribution discoveries are demolishing the usefulness of these hypothesis, like the fossil record smashing Old Testament "history".
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C'mon!
He's GREAT on that Futurama show! Almost as funny as Nixon's head, or that degenerate robot... Al Gore.