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Mark Tilden, Robosapiens Inventor Interviewed
An anonymous reader writes "You-Review.Net has an interview with Mark Tilden, the inventor of the Robosapiens line of products. In this interview, Mr Tilden reveals more information about the RSMedia bot, which will be the world's first walking, talking, MP3 playing, ARM9 powered programmable Linux computer (with a Subwoofer, just incase). No news yet on the GPL status of this beast."
These kinds of things are always interesting to look at. Currently the cost of most of the more interesting robot systems are rather prohibitive to the poor geek tinkerer, but I expect that will change in the next few years. I recently started an radio controlled tank project and got into looking at some of the the various robot sites around for parts and was surprised to see what kinds of things are available and what has been done even at the garage hobby level. I can't wait until some of the more advanced robot technologies become a little more available to the garage hobbyist, I imagine we will really start to see the creative uses come out then. On a side note, is that picture a little frightening to anyone else?
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
It is in fact much more sensible and natural to assume that "sapiens" is a plural of a singular "sapien". Whenever I see the morpheme /-z/ at the end of a syllable or two that has a consonant at the beginning and a vowel in the middle and maybe another consonant at the end, I assume that I'm looking at /noun-z/; that is, a noun that is being made to sound differently in a context of plurality. Fine and dandy. I'd be right most of the time. Maybe not this time, but if I'm trying to be economical about my intake of new words, it's a winning strategy.
/-z/, on the other hand, is how to speak English. Morphology is fun and all, but let's be real: it's just plain stupid to pretend that the academic approach (which leads to certain errors) is inferior to the realistic approach that people actually use to successfully learn language (which leads to certain other errors). What's more, you attempt to compare the two by only comparing their errors! This is not science! This is bullshit!
This is if we're assuming the word is English, not Latin. Please note: you are discussing the behavior of English speakers (ie, the person who came up with the name "Robosapien"), so please, base your assumptions about their behavior on an understanding of the fact that they KNOW HOW TO SPEAK ENGLISH, but probably NOT LATIN.
Yes, it is "ignorant" to not "know" more about Latin if AND ONLY IF you assume that English speakers must learn Latin. This, of course, is as stupid and true as saying that if you speak Mandarin, you will live in dark ignorance until you learn about the history of Afrikaans.
Of course, you would learn something if you did that comparison. But what you would NOT learn is how to speak either language. What you would learn if you walked around looking for "s" sounds that could be the morpheme
Your futility should be self-evident.
Having thus posted, inspired by the languagelog, I can only do one thing:
Link to the languagelog