Slashdot Mirror
Can Your Mouth Become Multilingual?
Roland Piquepaille writes "During a videoconference last week between Karlsruhe, Germany, and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, USA, the talk of Alex Waibel, from CMU, was automatically translated in German and Spanish. Both the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PPG) and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (PTR) attended the conference, took pictures and were impressed by this new 'open domain' speech-to-speech translation. This new computer technology is based on artificial intelligence (AI) and statistical methods. During the demonstration, the speaker had electrodes attached to his face and his neck, but the researchers think that these electrodes could be implanted into your mouth and your throat in a decade from now -- if you agree of course."
Wow!
It is with extreme disgust that I write this letter and say what will really be considered stolid by some of my peers. Nonetheless, it must be stated that you don't need a preschool diploma to understand that Mr. Roland Piquepaille is -- and I say this with no intended disrespect -- vengeful. Here's the story: Roland is too oleaginous to read the writing on the wall. This writing warns that he has commented that the most valuable skill one can have is to be able to lie convincingly. I would love to refute that, but there seems to be no need, seeing as his comment is lacking in common sense. I don't believe that power corrupts Roland but that Roland corrupts power. Speaking of corruption and power, Roland had previously claimed that he had no intention to goad grungy grizzlers into hurling epithets at his enemies. Of course, shortly thereafter, that's exactly what he did. Next, he denied that he would wipe out delicate ecosystems. We all know what happened then. Now, Roland would have us believe he'd never ever make me the target of a constant, consistent, systematic, sustained campaign of attacks. Will he? Go figure. My view is that I, hardheaded cynic that I am, want to live my life as I see fit. I can't do that while Roland still has the ability to perpetuate myths that glorify anti-intellectualism. Given the tenor of our times, his perorations have created a domineering universe devoid of logic and evidence. Only within this universe does it make sense to say that the boogeyman is going to get us if we don't agree to Roland's demands. Only within this universe does it make sense to convince innocent children to follow a path that leads only to a life of crime, disappointment, and destruction. And, only if we fight to the end for our ideas and ideals can we destroy this rebarbative universe of his and launch an all-out ideological attack against the forces of masochism.
Needless to say, Roland likes to posture as a guardian of virtue and manners. However, when it comes right down to it, what he is pushing is both blasphemous and homophobic. I strive to be consistent in my arguments. I can't say that I'm 100% true to this but Roland's frequent vacillating leads me to believe that were he alive today, Hideki Tojo would be his most trustworthy ally. I can see Tojo joining forces with Roland to help him make our lives a living hell. His lackeys claim to have no choice but to embark on wholesale torture and slaughter of innocent civilians. I wish there were some way to help these miserable, viperine rubes. They are outcasts, lost in a world they didn't make and don't understand.
Roland plans to inculcate the hermeneutics of suspicion in otherwise open-minded people. He has instructed his dupes not to discuss this or even admit to his plan's existence. Obviously, Roland knows he has something to hide. He had promised us liberty, equality, and fraternity. Instead, Roland gave us favoritism, Bonapartism, and obstructionism. I suppose we should have seen that coming, especially since the first response to this from Roland's adherents is perhaps that we ought to worship amateurish insurrectionists as folk heroes. Wrong. Just glance at the facts: We must find the inner strength to set the record straight. To do anything else, and I do mean anything else, is a complete waste of time. In theory, vexatious slimeballs (especially the pompous type) tend to dismiss reason, science, and objective reality. But in reality, if you want to hide something from Roland, you just have to put it in a book.
If Roland wants to curry favor with the most sullen Luddites I've ever seen using a barrage of flattery, especially recognition of their "value", their "importance", their "educational mission", and other presumptuous, satanic nonsense, let him wear the opprobrium of that decision. His subliminal psywar campaigns deserve to be criticized because they cater to the basest instincts of the worst sorts of obnoxious survivalists I've ever seen. I mean, when you tell Roland's accomplices that Roland's witticisms leave much to be
Take, for example, the struggle of Galileo against the church to permit society to recognize the fact that the world is round. Or perhaps the modern day battleground of evolution against the challenging new scientific theory of intelligent design, which suggests that certain biological features such as the flagellum are irreducibly complex and therefore could not possibly have been developed by increments as evolutionists would have it. It's a bit like hazing, and while people on both sides of the issue become almost fanatical in defense of their sacred cow the end result is good science.
Unfortunately much is lost in the attack and defense of ideas. All we need is to reduce language to what it is really about -- conveying concepts -- and the world will be able to speak the same tongue. But the overhead of trying to generate acceptance of a scientific breakthrough is almost as difficult as making the breakthrough to start with! That's why it's probably better to foster an environment of tolerance for ideas than it is to rally around what's accepted and comfortable in spite of greater intellectual freedom.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Good God, I could do with a cup of tea.
So th"at their