s what someone is saying and then indicates whether the speech has any content whatsoever.
The technology is based on a simple adaptation of the Breathalyzer, a machine that analyzes the alcoholic content of a subject's breath. The Content Analy
zer's manufacturers, who emigrated to the U.S. from Russia three years ago, claim that the device measures "the semantic content of the breath." It does so on the so-called Engels scale, which ranges from a value of zero for empty rhetoric to a value of 100 for intellectually complex discourse.
Early versions of the Content Analyzer suffered from accuracy problems. Often, they seemed to indicate that jet engines, bus exhausts, and late-night cartoons on MTV have semantic content. The current version of the machine has fixed the problem. As we understand it, some preliminary work has been done in using the Content Analyzer with animals.
Praying and Plugging for Plug and Play
Plug and Play to the rescue. Recently, a marketing manager for a company that will remain nameless heaved himself into our office. His career is intimately involved with what he and his compatriots call the "Plug and Play revolution." He revealed a new reason why everyone should adopt Pl
ug and Play as the standard of standards for today's computing environment.
He showed us several clippings from a daily newspaper in Michigan. The first describes a new peripheral device called a Terminal Computer Terminal. It gives lethal intravenous drugs to a suffering patient who wishes to end his or her life. The patient initiates the flow of drugs by entering three computer commands.
A doctor in Michigan purchased one of these devices. He planned to hook it up for (and to) a patient who was suffering from an incurable disease. The second article, dated a week later, reports that the Terminal Computer Terminal failed to deliver the lethal dose.
A third article explains that this failure was fortunate, because the patient was not suffering from an incurable disease, but from a commonplace, easily cured disease.
What saved the patient's life was -- yes -- Plug and Play. How? Well, the patient had a Windows 95 machine, but Plug and Play couldn't correctly configure the PC when the Te
rminal Computer Terminal's hypodermic needle was stuck (plugged) into the potential suicide. Plug and Play could thus be responsible for saving thousands of lives.
The moral of this is that computer science is indisputably enriching our lives, not just the other fellows' pockets. If Plug and Play has saved your life, or the life of someone you love or despise, please send us details and, if appropriate, photographs. No biomedical samples, please.
Sweet Megabyte Surprise
You thought you'd seen every conceivable kind of marketing collaboration? Not so. Sources tell us that one prominent maker of memory chips is planning to grab market share in a most appealing way. Noting that people who love computers also crave gizmos and junk food, this manufacturer will give away several thousand of its new chips as the prizes packed inside boxes of Cracker Jack and sealed into KinderSurprise eggs. The two confectionery makers and the chip manufacturer all stand to gain --
the former from a rush of junk-food-crazy bitheads buying crates full of munchies, the latter from the anticipated rush of favorable publicity.
Marc Abrahams is the editor of The Annals of Improbable Research. You can contact him at
marca@improb.com
.
Advances and Retreats in Computing
