My grandfather has macular degeneration,
a form of "low vision". Unfortunately as
it's not a problem with focussing, it's not
fixed with eyeglasses. It's not fixed surgically
either, since it involves the retina directly.
Truth is, he had normal eyesight through
his seventies and early eighties. Now
he can barely read and will likely be blind
in a short time. I know he can see much
better in very high light situations, which
makes sense since the problem is related to
the retina not having enough "gain" and
so needing excessive amounts of lignt. I suppose this device helps by brightening
the world a lot. I bet if a normal-vision person
looked through the nomad, it woudl be really bright. A./ toy? Probably not...
these things are usually old-age related and
we're really young, right?;-)
I don't understand Monsieur Le Taco's
comment. Linux wouldn't make a winner
because it runs on a hard-drive?
Um, er, linux is software isn't it?
I imagane that it could
be loaded onto something a bit sturdier...
Audio Image (TM). That's nothing.
If MIT had their way, they'd also
own Computer Science (TM) and
Linguistics (TM). It must drive the
Media Lab (TM) nuts that they didn't
invent the world wide web.
Both the Pinker/Chomsky/MIT and the Elman/Bates/UCSD groups are making substantive claims that should continue to be tested. As I understand the claims, they are (somewhat amplified):
[MIT] Language is built up out of domain- specific, innate modules which are evolved into the genome and are hard-wired into the brain at birth. Evidence: grammars are so complex, babies wouldn't stand a chance with just general-purpose reasoning capacaties.
[UCSD] Language is built up out of domain-general neural hardware which is neither innate nor hard-wired. We can thank the genome for general-purpose reasoning, but it is not correct to attribute language-specific neural wiring to evolution. Also, generative grammars *are* hard. Luckily only linguists (not babies) have to worry about generative grammars. Evidence: young children can lose the parts of their brains where the innate modules are supposed to be, and still do language.
These are not vanilla "nurture/nature" claims but rather substantive claims about how cognition work. Furthermore, they are important because they drive research in cognitive science and (American) linguistics. Finally (unlike much of generative grammar) they are testable claims. So let's continue to test them.
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O(n) *and* NP-Complete? I haven't seen many NP-Complete problems solved in time "order N". Maybe P=NP after all...
My grandfather has macular degeneration, a form of "low vision". Unfortunately as it's not a problem with focussing, it's not fixed with eyeglasses. It's not fixed surgically either, since it involves the retina directly. Truth is, he had normal eyesight through his seventies and early eighties. Now he can barely read and will likely be blind in a short time. I know he can see much better in very high light situations, which makes sense since the problem is related to the retina not having enough "gain" and so needing excessive amounts of lignt. I suppose this device helps by brightening the world a lot. I bet if a normal-vision person looked through the nomad, it woudl be really bright. A ./ toy? Probably not...
these things are usually old-age related and
we're really young, right? ;-)
I don't understand Monsieur Le Taco's comment. Linux wouldn't make a winner because it runs on a hard-drive? Um, er, linux is software isn't it? I imagane that it could be loaded onto something a bit sturdier...
Audio Image (TM). That's nothing. If MIT had their way, they'd also own Computer Science (TM) and Linguistics (TM). It must drive the Media Lab (TM) nuts that they didn't invent the world wide web.
Everybody's taking my birthday off.
[MIT] Language is built up out of domain- specific, innate modules which are evolved into the genome and are hard-wired into the brain at birth. Evidence: grammars are so complex, babies wouldn't stand a chance with just general-purpose reasoning capacaties.
[UCSD] Language is built up out of domain-general neural hardware which is neither innate nor hard-wired. We can thank the genome for general-purpose reasoning, but it is not correct to attribute language-specific neural wiring to evolution. Also, generative grammars *are* hard. Luckily only linguists (not babies) have to worry about generative grammars. Evidence: young children can lose the parts of their brains where the innate modules are supposed to be, and still do language.
These are not vanilla "nurture/nature" claims but rather substantive claims about how cognition work. Furthermore, they are important because they drive research in cognitive science and (American) linguistics. Finally (unlike much of generative grammar) they are testable claims. So let's continue to test them.