Any Physicians Using Macs?
in [UK Mac]
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From: Mark Conrad on 30 Jun 2010 16:43 In article <1jkwte8.1qs6j6d1lg413uN%real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid>, Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > Hmm! `Soar' and `saw' are pronounced the same in my brand of English I was going by the Oxford dictionary, soar something like "so-are" , and saw something like "sss-ahhh" - - - both those examples run together quickly as one-syllable words. > so I don't see how I could do it. Piece of cake. I taught her every "trick" in the book, including how to handle words that sound almost identical, but are spelled differently. For example, in common American English, "cent scent sent" are all pronounced exactly alike. A human can arrange them in a correct sentence like this: ********************************** An alphabetically arranged list of 3 identically sounding words is "cent scent sent". ********************************** A modern speech recognition app' can't do that normally, because it has no idea what "alphabetically arranged" means, i.e. it is too dumb to know the meaning of words. However there is a workaround, if that sentence is used all the time by an English teacher, she can "scan it in" ahead of time. NOW the progam knows the _order_ of the words in the sentence, so it will "get it right", giving the illusion that it understands the meaning of words. > > She is not allowed to cheat by using "text macros". > > I wouldn't know what that means here, would I? Sorry, my error, a text macro is commonly used to mean using one word, or a few words, to trigger printing a whole bunch of boilerplate words, which would otherwise need to be painfully manually added, very time-consuming and tedious. For example, when she pauses and says the word "doctors", all the following text is thrown onto the screen: (minus the lines of hash-marks, of course) #################################### New Surgical Procedure for Ischemic/Functional Mitral Regurgitation: Mitral Complex Remodeling Hirokuni Arai, MD, PhD*, Fusahiko Itoh, MD, Takeshi Someya, MD, Keiji Oi, MD, PhD, Kiyoshi Tamura, MD, PhD, Hiroyuki Tanaka, MD, PhD Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Tokyo Medical and Dental University Graduate School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan * Address correspondence to Dr Arai, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Tokyo Medical and Dental University Graduate School of Medicine, 1-5-45 Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8519, Japan. Email: hiro.tsrg(a)tmd.ac.jp ##################################### She is justified in using this time-saving text macro because none of this info' is liable to change, over the short term. > > She _is_ allowed to scan in representative files of stuff she > > normally dictates; all modern speech app's have that capability. > > How do you mean? And surely that apostrophe is misplaced? You lost me on that one, Rowland. I often use apostrophes to indicate missing letters, like "app's" for "applications". Okay, so I am lazy, I admit it. > > Her instructor can dictate this same "lesson" at 120wpm, > > with zero mistakes. > > That's not a lot faster than a fast typist Granted. When I try to dictate faster than 120wpm, mistakes occur, which is probably due to poor pronunciation on my part. Ordinary everyday speech I can snort along at 200wpm, but not speaking that technical medical jargon. In an ideal world, computers would understand speech as well as we do, but I don't look for that to happen anytime soon. Mark-
From: Rowland McDonnell on 1 Jul 2010 21:19 Mark Conrad <aeiou(a)mostly.invalid> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > Hmm! `Soar' and `saw' are pronounced the same in my brand of English > > I was going by the Oxford dictionary, soar something like "so-are" > and saw something like "sss-ahhh" - - - both those examples > run together quickly as one-syllable words. My copy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary tells me that `soar' is pronounced as `saw' if you speak my brand of English (but rhotic dialects pronounce the `r' on the end of `soar', from what I can tell). Either way, the `oa' in `soar' is definitely a dipthong. What Oxford dictionary did you find the above pronunciations in? > > so I don't see how I could do it. > > Piece of cake. I taught her every "trick" in the book, including > how to handle words that sound almost identical, but are spelled > differently. > > For example, in common American English, "cent scent sent" are all > pronounced exactly alike. Same in all brands of English that I've met. > A human can arrange them in a correct sentence like this: > > ********************************** > An alphabetically arranged list of 3 identically sounding > words is "cent scent sent". > ********************************** > > A modern speech recognition app' can't do that normally, > because it has no idea what "alphabetically arranged" > means, i.e. it is too dumb to know the meaning of words. Well, yes. > However there is a workaround, if that sentence is used > all the time by an English teacher, she can "scan it in" > ahead of time. How do you mean? > NOW the progam knows the _order_ of the words in the > sentence, so it will "get it right", giving the illusion that it > understands the meaning of words. > > > > > > She is not allowed to cheat by using "text macros". > > > > I wouldn't know what that means here, would I? > > Sorry, my error, a text macro is commonly used to mean > using one word, or a few words, to trigger printing a whole > bunch of boilerplate words, which would otherwise need to > be painfully manually added, very time-consuming and tedious. Uhuh. > For example, when she pauses and says the word "doctors", > all the following text is thrown onto the screen: > > (minus the lines of hash-marks, of course) > > #################################### > New Surgical Procedure for Ischemic/Functional Mitral > Regurgitation: Mitral Complex Remodeling > > Hirokuni Arai, MD, PhD*, Fusahiko Itoh, MD, Takeshi > Someya, MD, Keiji Oi, MD, PhD, Kiyoshi Tamura, MD, > PhD, Hiroyuki Tanaka, MD, PhD > > > Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Tokyo Medical and > Dental University Graduate School of Medicine, Tokyo, > Japan > > > > * Address correspondence to Dr Arai, Department of > Cardiothoracic Surgery, Tokyo Medical and Dental > University Graduate School of Medicine, 1-5-45 Yushima, > Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8519, Japan. > Email: hiro.tsrg(a)tmd.ac.jp > ##################################### > > She is justified in using this time-saving text macro because > none of this info' is liable to change, over the short term. Righto. > > > She _is_ allowed to scan in representative files of stuff she > > > normally dictates; all modern speech app's have that capability. > > > > How do you mean? And surely that apostrophe is misplaced? > > You lost me on that one, Rowland. I often use apostrophes to > indicate missing letters, like "app's" for "applications". > > Okay, so I am lazy, I admit it. Mmm.... I suppose looked at that way, the apostrophe is correct. I was looking at it from the point of view of `app' being a real noun on its own - as it seems to be treated these days. > > > Her instructor can dictate this same "lesson" at 120wpm, > > > with zero mistakes. > > > > That's not a lot faster than a fast typist > > Granted. When I try to dictate faster than 120wpm, mistakes > occur, which is probably due to poor pronunciation on my part. I do sometimes wonder if it might be better to get a computer good at reading shorthand - which is a tall order, but possibly easier than speech recognition. Okay, not so useful for `everyone' as would be good speech recognition, but... It'd be dead handy for some things. > Ordinary everyday speech I can snort along at 200wpm, but > not speaking that technical medical jargon. Uhuh. > In an ideal world, computers would understand speech as well as > we do, but I don't look for that to happen anytime soon. I have an idea it'll happen sooner rather than later. I first met computer speech recognition in the 1970s and it was basically non-functional as far as I could tell. The last 30-40 years haven't seen much in the way of improvements in the basic way it's done as far as I can tell. But... The way the world's going, and the potential use to which good speech recognition could be put, I reckon a bit of AI, a bit of massively parallel processing, a bit of specialist hardware, it'll get good inside 20 years. So I think. I've tried using MacOS X's voice commands - as non-functional as the speech recognition that I met in the 1970s. I'm amazed Apple ships anything that useless. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Mark Conrad on 1 Jul 2010 23:00 In article <1jkzbz7.game741xuwf4nN%real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid>, Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > In an ideal world, computers would understand speech as well as > > we do, but I don't look for that to happen anytime soon. > > I have an idea it'll happen sooner rather than later. I first met > computer speech recognition in the 1970s and it was basically > non-functional as far as I could tell. I have that opinion also. I stumbled upon SR about 1990, when...you...had...to...speak...like...this ....at a blazing 40 wpm, tops. > The last 30-40 years haven't seen much in the way of > improvements in the basic way it's done as far as I can tell. Yeah, it is a shame, lots of people have tried it, became disgusted at needing to correct really stupid mistakes, so stopped using it - - - understadable. > But... The way the world's going, and the potential use > to which good speech recognition could be put, I reckon > a bit of AI, a bit of massively parallel processing, > a bit of specialist hardware, it'll get > good inside 20 years. So I think. The main holdup seems to be computer speed, but that seems to be still improving, year after year. Then the next step would be to get the silly computers to actually understand what words mean. ....as much as a machine _can_ "understand", of course. Do you think we should build in emotions and feelings to the machines ? I can see it now, jab a Mac with a pin and it sez "ouch". Naw, we better not. We don't want machines to be as screwed up as humans are. Mark-
From: Mark Conrad on 3 Jul 2010 10:59 In article <1jl11lp.1dj8m4t1kuc9q7N%real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid>, Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > > In an ideal world, computers would understand speech as well as > > > > we do, but I don't look for that to happen anytime soon. > > > > > > I have an idea it'll happen sooner rather than later. I first met > > > computer speech recognition in the 1970s and it was basically > > > non-functional as far as I could tell. > > > > I have that opinion also. I stumbled upon SR about 1990, > > when...you...had...to...speak...like...this > > > > ...at a blazing 40 wpm, tops. > > The speech recognition I met back then - well, I couldn't get it to > understand me, whatever I tried. Same with all versions of speech > recognition that I've tried - never got any of 'em to work. I have heard the same thing from others, including one of my doctors, a woman with a slight Indian accent. Then there are others, a gentleman with a "British accent" so thick that I could barely understand him, even though he was speaking the English language. The silly computer had no difficulty whatever understanding him, words came out perfect. Strange. > Not tried anything lately, mind - aside from the spoken commands on > Macs. Hopeless, utterly hopeless. I can't get them to work, either. Wish Apple would junk that utility. I am one of the lucky ones I guess. I get excellent results on all three of the present speech-recognition applications available to Mac users: 1) Dragon NaturallySpeaking (commonly called "Dragon" or DNS) $200 to $1,600 depending on version - - - They sell a crippled $99 version also, which knowledgable people largely ignore. Requires a Mac user to run a Windows partition on his Mac, set up by the Apple utility "Boot Camp" Dragon is best of the lot, used mainly by about 100,000 physicians here in the USA generally on Windows hardware, although a few such as me use Macs. (recent "Intel version" MacBook Pro) $1,600 version is cheap compared to some of the EMR software that doctors buy, which run as high as $40,000 per physician. EMR stands for "Electronic Medical Record", which doctors are plagued with here in the USA , if they want to get paid, that is. It's my understanding that the British medical system has roughly the same requirements - - - if anything, they likely exceed the USA in their medical bureaucracy, i.e. paper shuffling. (electronic version of paper shuffling) 2) MacSpeech Dictate 1.5.9 (commonly called "MacSpeech" or MSD) $200 - - - runs native on any modern Mac Not used commercially at all by any doctors that I am aware of. Accuracy is relatively high, but it lacks critical correction features and has other drawbacks, plus a lot of bugs. 3) Windows Speech Recognition (commonly called WSR) Free with each copy of "Windows-7" or the older "Vista". Worst of the lot, although it has a few advocates, one guy in particular who is in the business of selling microphones and other things for it. (emicrophones.com) > > > But... The way the world's going, and the potential use > > > to which good speech recognition could be put, I reckon > > > a bit of AI, a bit of massively parallel processing, > > > a bit of specialist hardware, it'll get > > > good inside 20 years. So I think. > > > > The main holdup seems to be computer speed, but that > > seems to be still improving, year after year. > > I don't see how that could be the root problem. Present day SR (Speech Recognition) applications today just demand too much out of a computer. For example, it would not be practical to expect a modern SR program to run on older slower Macs, such as this 10 year old "Pismo" model powerbook that I am writing this post on. Even my $5,000 ultra modern 17-inch MacBook Pro, with all the bells and whistles, including its 512 GB solid-state drive, runs so hot with Dragon that I commonly use it to fry my breakfast eggs while I am dictating. Slight exaggeration on my part, but not much. The cost of all this SR gear has literally driven me into poverty, but I do not much care, because of my age. > > ...as much as a machine _can_ "understand", of course. > > <heh> What does `understand' mean, anyway? Does the assemblage of > neurons and whatnot that - as far as anyone can tell - is the home of > your mind - does that `understand' anything, really? Yes, very poor choice of words on my part, I plead senilety. heh, I have fallen back on that senile excuse for a long while, gets me out of a lot of jams. ;-) What I should have posted was to get a machine to "understand" us as well as a 4-year old child understands us. Hmm, better amend that to a 3-year old child. <g> > > Naw, we better not. We don't want machines to be as > > screwed up as humans are. > > God made man in his own image due to a lack of imagination (according to > this old book of Hebrew propagada I've got here). Do you really think > that humanity has more imagination than that? I think we are both living proof just how _much_ imagination. ;-) I certainly would like to be around 1,000 years from now, to see the circus that would result from the first brain transplant, where an artificial brain was "downloaded" from your/mine ailing brain into this handy-dandy new Apple-designed artificial brain which would replace our worn out biological brain. So that we could continue inflicting our wit upon poor suffering mankind. ;-) ;-) ;-) Mark-
From: Rowland McDonnell on 3 Jul 2010 22:21
Mark Conrad <aeiou(a)mostly.invalid> wrote: > Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: > > > > > > In an ideal world, computers would understand speech as well as > > > > > we do, but I don't look for that to happen anytime soon. > > > > > > > > I have an idea it'll happen sooner rather than later. I first met > > > > computer speech recognition in the 1970s and it was basically > > > > non-functional as far as I could tell. > > > > > > I have that opinion also. I stumbled upon SR about 1990, > > > when...you...had...to...speak...like...this > > > > > > ...at a blazing 40 wpm, tops. > > > > The speech recognition I met back then - well, I couldn't get it to > > understand me, whatever I tried. Same with all versions of speech > > recognition that I've tried - never got any of 'em to work. > > I have heard the same thing from others, including one of my doctors, > a woman with a slight Indian accent. I've got a bog standard Norf Lund'n accent which morphs into educated Southern middle class if I'm being polite. Neither works with any speech recognition I've tried - then again, I've not tried much in that line. (yes Lund'n not Lahnd'n, the way I say it) > Then there are others, a gentleman with a "British accent" Which sort? We have many more accents than anywhere else of the same size, you know. Fewer than when I was young, mind. But there's a not small distinction between Welsh accents north and south, for example; Scottish accents are even wider ranging. As for the English - well, West Country and Yorkshire are radically different to each other and might as well be spoken by alien creatures from the point of view of an approximate Londoner like myself. Then there is Ireland - one of the British Isles, again with a wide range of accents but in this case about which I am moderately ignorant. I do recall finding out the interesting point that the main accent that gave rise to what you might think of as the `standard American' accent (insofar as the concept has any validity at all) was from Northern Ireland - back in the 18th century, huge numbers of Irish moved to the USA, commonly derided these days as `the vicious nasty Ulster Scots' (by those in the USA with modern nationalist Irish links - who think of themselves as the `real' Irish community in the USA from what I can tell. And yes I have read stuff from the modern `Irish' `community' in the USA referring to the Ulster Scots in that very racist fashion). <shrug> So the American accent is a British accent - or at least based on one. btw, Scots invaded Scotland from Ireland - these `Ulster Scots' are a community that began in Ireland, invaded Scotland, ran a kingdom spread from Scotland to Ireland (linked by the sea - look at the map), got forced out of Ireland to a large extent by *other* Irish, and ended up going back some time later. Nothing is similar in the British Isles, *especially* where Ireland is concerned. > so thick > that I could barely understand him, even though he was speaking > the English language. I have had the same trouble with some Americans - oddly enough, I've had more trouble understanding Americans speaking English in American accents than I've ever had understanding French people speaking English, no matter how thick the French accents. I wish I knew why. btw, one day, I was in Dallas at a Texas Instruments bash. There was me and another tech journo talking to this engineer. He worked for Texas Instruments, and he was also Texan, with all that implies... He had a problem - you see, I speak quickly normally. I'd been slowing myself down to speak at Texan speed, but this other tech journo was a small lady from New York with a voice that bored a hole into your skull (think Ruby Wax) and also rattled on at about my normal speaking pace. So, erm, I forget myself and ramped up to her speed - well, it's the pace I'm most comfy with. Oops. So this poor sod had two these two radically different but both high-speed foreign accents (NY is foreign from the point of view of Texas, right?) battering him from either side - he wasn't at all stupid, but he wasn't used to speech at that speed and I could see him reeling under the assault. I slowed down and found myself trying to help him out by adopting a Texan drawl to match his - realised how awful that sounded, and moved to slow RP as best I could. God knows what people listening in thought I was playing at. > The silly computer had no difficulty whatever understanding him, > words came out perfect. Strange. Some of the more bizarre sounding English accents deliver very clear distinctive pronunciation for each word - but the pronunciation isn't necessarily what you're used to. Could be down to that. Scottish accents are mostly intended to wind up the English as far as I can tell ;-) (there's a long-standing suspicion amongst the English that the entire French language is nothing more than an elaborate practical joke played on the English nation by the French, who actually all speak perfectly normal sensible English when no foreigners are looking) > > Not tried anything lately, mind - aside from the spoken commands on > > Macs. Hopeless, utterly hopeless. > > I can't get them to work, either. Wish Apple would junk that utility. Or at least replace it with something similar that works. I was surprised when I found out just how rubbish it was - not like Apple to ship something so poor, is it? > > I am one of the lucky ones I guess. I get excellent results on > all three of the present speech-recognition applications > available to Mac users: > > 1) Dragon NaturallySpeaking (commonly called "Dragon" or DNS) > $200 to $1,600 depending on version - - - > > They sell a crippled $99 version also, which knowledgable > people largely ignore. > > Requires a Mac user to run a Windows partition on his Mac, > set up by the Apple utility "Boot Camp" Uhuh - personally, I'd rather not have to pay the MS tax. I've never bought any MS software; never owned a computer run by an MS OS. Never want to, either. > Dragon is best of the lot, used mainly by about 100,000 physicians > here in the USA generally on Windows hardware, although a few > such as me use Macs. (recent "Intel version" MacBook Pro) Righto. > $1,600 version is cheap compared to some of the EMR software > that doctors buy, which run as high as $40,000 per physician. Woo! I wonder if there's a credible excuse for that sort of pricing? > EMR stands for "Electronic Medical Record", which doctors are > plagued with here in the USA , if they want to get paid, that is. Righto. If you want a good laugh, try doing some Web searching on the subject of NHS computerization. It's a farce that's wasted *HUGE* sums of money so far. The government wanted to build a nation-wide fully comprehensive centrally controlled NHS computer system to hold *ALL* NHS data in a fashion that the government could access directly and sell on to anyone it felt like flogging your confidential medical data to. And so on. The propaganda was that it'd improve delivery of health care, and make it safer for the patients because all their information would be available to any NHS workers - thus reducing mistakes and also reducing costs 'cos of the fewer mistakes and the reduction in actual paper records. Thing is, all this data would also be available to anyone else the government designated as a suitable accessee - including the police, council employees, social services, and so on. Including the minister responsible, of course. The basic concept was unpopular to begin with, and the attempts to implement it using (so it seems) quite a lot of software designed for American hospitals with their totally different administrative requirements has been an utter disaster. > It's my understanding that the British medical system has roughly > the same requirements - - - if anything, they likely exceed > the USA in their medical bureaucracy, i.e. paper shuffling. > (electronic version of paper shuffling) <shrug> Differently bureaucratic. I /suspect/ that our lot are worse, what with the NHS being a huge country-wide government-run, erm, bureaucracy. But then again, in the USA, there's the billing business to deal with, and the demands of the insurance firms, and so on - that's got to add an overhead that the NHS doesn't have to deal with (although there is a certain amount of NHS internal billing paperwork to do with just who pays and from what budget). > 2) MacSpeech Dictate 1.5.9 > (commonly called "MacSpeech" or MSD) > $200 - - - runs native on any modern Mac > > Not used commercially at all by any doctors that I am aware of. > > Accuracy is relatively high, but it lacks critical correction features > and has other drawbacks, plus a lot of bugs. Righto. > 3) Windows Speech Recognition (commonly called WSR) > Free with each copy of "Windows-7" or the older "Vista". Uhuh. > Worst of the lot, although it has a few advocates, one guy > in particular who is in the business of selling microphones > and other things for it. (emicrophones.com) Heh. > > > > But... The way the world's going, and the potential use > > > > to which good speech recognition could be put, I reckon > > > > a bit of AI, a bit of massively parallel processing, > > > > a bit of specialist hardware, it'll get > > > > good inside 20 years. So I think. > > > > > > The main holdup seems to be computer speed, but that > > > seems to be still improving, year after year. > > > > I don't see how that could be the root problem. > > Present day SR (Speech Recognition) applications today just > demand too much out of a computer. Only because of the way they are implemented. For example: if you fitted 'em out with dedicated hardware, it'd be no trouble. Fast fourier transforms can be done at lightning speed with quite cheap dedicated hardware, for example - and I bet that's the biggest processor load in speech recognition. > For example, it would not be practical to expect a modern SR > program to run on older slower Macs, such as this 10 year old > "Pismo" model powerbook that I am writing this post on. Why not? Just because the software you have hammers the CPU doesn't mean more efficient software could not be written; nor does it mean that dedicated hardware to accelerate key aspects of the job could not be fitted. Much as, for example, we all have graphics cards these days to take load off the CPU. You'd never get all those fancy graphical games to run if you relied purely on the CPU, would you? So why not think of dedicated hardware to speed up jobs other than just drawing on screen? > Even my $5,000 ultra modern 17-inch MacBook Pro, with all > the bells and whistles, including its 512 GB solid-state drive, > runs so hot with Dragon that I commonly use it to fry my > breakfast eggs while I am dictating. > > Slight exaggeration on my part, but not much. Inefficiency in computers is a problem... > The cost of all this SR gear has literally driven me into poverty, > but I do not much care, because of my age. Really? I shouldn't pry, but: driven into poverty by a $2000 bill? Okay, finding that kind of cash ain't trivial for anyone who's not rich, but... > > > ...as much as a machine _can_ "understand", of course. > > > > <heh> What does `understand' mean, anyway? Does the assemblage of > > neurons and whatnot that - as far as anyone can tell - is the home of > > your mind - does that `understand' anything, really? > > Yes, very poor choice of words on my part, I plead senilety. > > heh, I have fallen back on that senile excuse for a long while, > gets me out of a lot of jams. ;-) I've been using it since I was twenty-something, I think - possibly earlier. > What I should have posted was to get a machine to "understand" us > as well as a 4-year old child understands us. But `understanding' is a concept that's not defined in a fashion that can be applied to a machine, is it? .... nor is it a concept that's defined in a fashion that seems to me to be valid. I struggled with this one during my teacher training - trying to work out an operational definition of `understanding' for assessing lesson outcomes. I failed. Then I read the literature and it seems everyone else didn't even bother trying as much as I did - no attempt to define `understanding' operationally, just fudges. > Hmm, better amend that to a 3-year old child. <g> Just so long as they can manage it better than a 2 year old child. I have dealings with one such - oh boy... > > > Naw, we better not. We don't want machines to be as > > > screwed up as humans are. > > > > God made man in his own image due to a lack of imagination (according to > > this old book of Hebrew propagada I've got here). Do you really think > > that humanity has more imagination than that? > > I think we are both living proof just how _much_ imagination. ;-) Pfft. What seems like imagination in me from the point of view of some people is nothing of the sort - just me presenting old ideas to someone who's not met 'em before. Almost all so-called imagination is just that - at best, assembling old ideas into new patterns. I'm fairly good at that in certain limited areas, which is why I claim to have a good imagination, but it's not /really/. Some people do create genuinely new ideas - but even the most creative people only ever manage a very few genuinely totally new ideas in their lives. > I certainly would like to be around 1,000 years from now, to see > the circus that would result from the first brain transplant, > where an artificial brain was "downloaded" from your/mine ailing > brain into this handy-dandy new Apple-designed artificial brain > which would replace our worn out biological brain. Don't think it'll take that long - except it won't be Apple involved and I don't think it'll ever be anything other than a side-show at best. > So that we could continue inflicting our wit upon poor suffering > mankind. ;-) ;-) ;-) I'm of the opinion that people ought to forget about that sort of idea - why would anyone in the future *want* to resurrect the personality of someone long dead? Unless that person was something special, they wouldn't - no point, got too many people anyway. Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking |