
Mechanical Turk Officially Closed Outside of the US - transburgh
http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/09/13/mechanical-turk-officially-closed-outside-of-the-us
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DocSavage
The title is misleading. MTurk requestors must have a US address. MTurk
workers can be outside the US.

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nickb
What a bunch of fools. But they have a pretty tight patent so it will be hard
to operate in the same space as them.

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rwebb
eh...but their base claim is "comprising", but it's a business method and i
fell asleep about half way through. i'm no patent attorney though. what makes
you say it's tight?

patent: <http://tinyurl.com/2lomvg>

1\. A method for a computer system to use human assistance in performing
tasks, the method comprising: automatically and under control of a first
computer system, causing a task to be performed by, identifying a first and a
second subtask of the task, wherein the first subtask involves speech
recognition; retrieving information about past quality of results of one or
more humans when previously performing subtasks other than the first subtask;
using the retrieved past quality information to facilitate performance of the
first subtask by one or more humans, the facilitating of the performance of
the first subtask including, identifying one or more required capabilities for
performance of the first subtask; dispatching the first subtask to a remote
second computer system of a first human for performance by the first human,
the first human identified as being one of one or more humans who have
capabilities that satisfy the required capabilities for the first subtask, the
retrieved past quality information including past quality information for the
first human when previously performing multiple subtasks other than the first
subtask, the past quality information for the first human being at least part
of the capabilities of the first human that satisfy the required capabilities
for the first subtask; and receiving a first result from the first human via
the second computer system, the first result generated by performance of the
first subtask by the first human; providing payment to the first human for the
performance of the first subtask; and generating a result for the task based
at least in part on the first result.

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collision
Am I the only one who thought of the chess automaton and was disappointed?

