How would you react when you learn that your name appears on a Microsoft filed US patent (7627600)?

No, not as inventor, but under "Other References" which cites an ancient journal paper (Syndication with JML) I had written in 1999 together with a friend.

The patent was filed 2006 and only end of last year (12/01/2009) it has been issued to Microsoft.

Alrighty, we now have the following tests:

• Turing Test: Can a machine expose a behaviour which is indistinguishable from a human?

• inverse (reverse) Turing Test: Can a human prove that he/she is not a machine?

So what about the following spam:

Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:29:06 +0900 (JST)
From: "YOUR (ATM)SWIFT CREDIT CARD PAYMENT" <presidency_kkgbigbe_ngr200771@yahoo.co.jp>
Reply-To: presidency_office_ngr2@yahoo.de

When Alan Turing devised his Turing test it was more of an academic question, whether or how machines can become indistinguishable from humans.

The reverse Turing test is now used in all sorts of websites to allow humans to distinguish themselves from machines.

The human (that would be me or you) is presented with a simple task which to understand it needs a human. Tasks such as reading fuzzy numbers or characters blended over a busy background (captcha).

Such as this: