Grammatical gender is trivial for computers, even in languages with > 2 genders. German, for example, has masculine, feminine and neuter. Swahili (like other Bantu languages) has more than a dozen noun classes, which are similar to genders. And trivial for computers, because computers memorize easily. What they don't do is relate words to the real world, and that's why ambiguity hurts them more than it does us.
Not here, I barely even remember hearing about it, and can't figure out what it would be good for. I am, however, anticipating further improvements to the Windows Linux subsystem.
I won't disagree about the scientific merits of the Anthropic Principle. I'm actually on the God side of that question.
But about this: "why did life arise so quickly on this planet?", I think a counter-question to that is "why did sentient life take so long to arise on this planet?" The Earth was around for almost exactly 1/3 of the age of the universe before we came. Of course we don't know whether that's unusually long, short, or average, but it is a long time.
"it's generally considered poor science to assume we're in an unusual part of the universe": Actually, that's the Anthropic Principle, which is also one of the possible explanations (I suppose the only worked-out one, aside from God) for why the constants of physics are what they are.
Actually, increased CO2 by itself would do relatively little to increase the average temperature of the Earth. The much greater increase in temperatures, as derived from the models, are due to other changes that are supposed to follow from the rise in temp due to the CO2, particularly increased evaporation leading to increased clouds. Factor those in, and if the models are correct, you'll get your 2-5 degrees of warming over the next century or so. Drop those assumptions, and the number is more like 1 degree, or less.
"Dolphins and whales exhibit languages with complex grammars... There is no known capability of human languages that bottle nosed dolphins lack. If we cannot even hack their language..." Putting on my linguist hat (and yes, I am a linguist), IMO, all three sentences are simply false. But under the assumption of your third clause ("we cannot even hack their language"), the second sentence and probably the first are undecidable. We can tell that there is variability in the sounds a whale makes, but that doesn't mean there's a complex grammar, much less a real language; it could be (and IMO is) just random variation, similar to song birds.
If you want more than my opinion (and I'm sure you do), you might look at the Language Log, e.g. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.e... (about the supposed names that dolphins use), or http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.e..., or http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.e.... Or just google "dolphin site:languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu" (or "whale" with the same "site:"). There are also interesting blogs there about songbird songs, and how much grammar they have.
Is the universe old enough for such creatures to have evolved? It took at least 5 billion years to create us, even if you don't count the sources of the metals (in the astronomical sense) that make up the Earth and us.
There was a SciFi story that sort of riffed on that idea. The aliens in the story came from a parallel universe. I think the Periodic Table was the same, but some details were different--the exact frequency of light put out by lasers was different, for example, because the Fine Constant (or something like it) was subtly different. (And maybe Tellurium and Iodine (and Potassium and Argon, Nickel and Cobalt), had the atomic weights that would have ordered them correctly in Mendeleev's table.)
I would hazard a guess that every one of those "8,000 separate characters that could be abused to confuse people" has been known for a least a decade. News my eye.
Warning: According to Judy Collins, if you can remember the 60s, you weren't there. (Or somebody said it: https://quoteinvestigator.com/.... Which just proves it.)
Apparently he really is an astrologer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... His only claim to being an astronomer is that he teaches astronomy, but this is at the "Faculty of Astrological Studies."
One side can have integer length, but the other two sides need not. It depends on the angle (that is, either of the acute angles), the sides are integers for only some choices.
I don't see that in the Tech Times article; the claim there is that the builders of Stonehenge knew the Pythagorean *theorem* (which of course doesn't require integer sides). It does claim that Pythagorean *triangles* will be found elsewhere in Britain, but leaves implicit any connection between Pythagorean triangles and the Pythagorean theorem.
The Telegraph article has a picture of Stonehenge labeled "A bird's eye view of Stonehenge showing the rectangle and Pythagorean triangles", with 56 postholes in the outer circle, and a Pythagorean triangle laid out on 3 of those holes. With 56 holes (almost one every 6 degrees), you could lay out almost any triangle you want, as long as your measurements weren't real precise. The sides of this triangle are alleged to point in certain directions (midwinter moonset--what date is midwinter? and "major standstill"), sunset on two dates (labeled "sunset Beltane and Lammas", and in the opposite direction, "sunrise Samhain and Imbolc"), and midsummer sunrise (again, which date is midsummer? and another "major standstill"). In short, it sounds to me very much like the Bible Code; given enough points, you can find anything you want: multiple "special" days in the year, and then sunrise, sunset, even moonrise and moonset.
Also, the moon doesn't rise and set in exactly the same direction on any particular date of the year, nor even on the same lunar phases at nearly the same time of the year. If it did, eclipses would occur at the same time every year. For example, 28 June of this year is a full moon; from Washington DC, the Moon rises at a declination of 117 degrees. On 9 July of last year, also a full moon, it rose at a declination of 114 degrees; and on 5 July 2001, the full moon rose at a declination of 121 degrees. That's a variation of 7 degrees, slightly more than the distance between two of those postholes as viewed from the center of the circle. So it's not clear how a unique posthole was chosen for the midwinter moonset. (And if you have a particular date for moonset, rather than the closest full moon to some date, it's even worse: moonrise/ moonset varies by 61 degrees at the latitude of Washington DC. In which case you have a choice of ten or so postholes.)
I got the moon declinations and phases from https://www.timeanddate.com/mo.... It's a nice calculator, much better than having a Stonehenge in your back yard.
What I was thinking. Also, whoever wrote the article (and the person who copied it into/.) got the Pythagorean theorem wrong: "The theorem states that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the other two squares on the triangle." That's only true if it's a right triangle, not true for other triangles (unless you're the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...).
Well, they could keep the Ribbon if they did a few things to it.
Like instead of having an entirely separate 'File' menu, they could include that in the rest of the Ribbon as a 'File' tab.
Then they could get rid of the 'Home' tab (I've never quite understood what it has to do with my home, or even with home base), and they could distribute its contents among other tabs, like maybe tabs named 'Edit', 'View', 'Insert', 'Format', 'Tools', and 'Table'. That would allow them to keep Alt-H for 'Help', where the 'Help' tab could contain things like 'Word Help' and 'About Word' (where the latter would display version information etc.).
Finally, they could allow the user to hide the hieroglyphs and just keep the names of functions, I'll call these "tab elements." Some of these tab elements would correspond to simple commands, like there could be a 'Copy' command in the 'Edit' tab. Other tab elements would have to lead to sub-tabs or dialog boxes. For instance, the 'Format' tab might contain words like 'Font...', 'Paragraph...', 'Bullets and numbering...', 'Borders and shading...' etc., each of which would bring up a sub-tab or a dialog box. I guess these tab elements could be stacked on top of each other.
I thought of getting a patent on this, but it turns out someone already came up with my idea. There's a picture of one of these tabs here: https://www.ischool.utexas.edu...
I appreciate the comment. I do some moderation (I've never meta-moderated, although I did get an invite, it just came at a bad time). But I do find it hard to be fair when moderating--it's so very tempting to favor posts that I agree with. I hope I successfully avoid that temptation.
Agreed. For the record, another annoyance with newer versions of Word is that when I open a file that happens to be read-only (which includes anything that gets emailed to me), the search tool is entirely different from the search tool for a doc that I have open in write mode. And IIRC, it can't be called up by the same keystroke. I can understand why it opens docs in email as read-only, I just want to have the same UI insofar as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Grammatical gender is trivial for computers, even in languages with > 2 genders. German, for example, has masculine, feminine and neuter. Swahili (like other Bantu languages) has more than a dozen noun classes, which are similar to genders. And trivial for computers, because computers memorize easily. What they don't do is relate words to the real world, and that's why ambiguity hurts them more than it does us.
Not here, I barely even remember hearing about it, and can't figure out what it would be good for. I am, however, anticipating further improvements to the Windows Linux subsystem.
I won't disagree about the scientific merits of the Anthropic Principle. I'm actually on the God side of that question.
But about this: "why did life arise so quickly on this planet?", I think a counter-question to that is "why did sentient life take so long to arise on this planet?" The Earth was around for almost exactly 1/3 of the age of the universe before we came. Of course we don't know whether that's unusually long, short, or average, but it is a long time.
Yeap, those of you who "think [you] are masters of the known universe" really annoy those of us who are.
Of course, my universe is pretty small, well under an acre...
"it's generally considered poor science to assume we're in an unusual part of the universe": Actually, that's the Anthropic Principle, which is also one of the possible explanations (I suppose the only worked-out one, aside from God) for why the constants of physics are what they are.
Yes, and look where those people are now: Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
They were actually tortoises. Something to do with Zeno, I suppose.
Yes, but the result is...oops, no matter.
Weren't those very early (and unmanned) Apollo launches on Saturn I? Which was an entirely different booster from Saturn V.
Natasha!
Actually, increased CO2 by itself would do relatively little to increase the average temperature of the Earth. The much greater increase in temperatures, as derived from the models, are due to other changes that are supposed to follow from the rise in temp due to the CO2, particularly increased evaporation leading to increased clouds. Factor those in, and if the models are correct, you'll get your 2-5 degrees of warming over the next century or so. Drop those assumptions, and the number is more like 1 degree, or less.
"Dolphins and whales exhibit languages with complex grammars... There is no known capability of human languages that bottle nosed dolphins lack. If we cannot even hack their language..." Putting on my linguist hat (and yes, I am a linguist), IMO, all three sentences are simply false. But under the assumption of your third clause ("we cannot even hack their language"), the second sentence and probably the first are undecidable. We can tell that there is variability in the sounds a whale makes, but that doesn't mean there's a complex grammar, much less a real language; it could be (and IMO is) just random variation, similar to song birds.
If you want more than my opinion (and I'm sure you do), you might look at the Language Log, e.g. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.e... (about the supposed names that dolphins use), or http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.e..., or http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.e.... Or just google "dolphin site:languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu" (or "whale" with the same "site:"). There are also interesting blogs there about songbird songs, and how much grammar they have.
Is the universe old enough for such creatures to have evolved? It took at least 5 billion years to create us, even if you don't count the sources of the metals (in the astronomical sense) that make up the Earth and us.
There was a SciFi story that sort of riffed on that idea. The aliens in the story came from a parallel universe. I think the Periodic Table was the same, but some details were different--the exact frequency of light put out by lasers was different, for example, because the Fine Constant (or something like it) was subtly different. (And maybe Tellurium and Iodine (and Potassium and Argon, Nickel and Cobalt), had the atomic weights that would have ordered them correctly in Mendeleev's table.)
Found it: Anathem, by Neal Stephenson.
Right. Here's an article on the topic (and a solution) dated *2011*: https://www.symantec.com/conne.... Or read about it in the Wikipedia, with references going back to *2002*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
I would hazard a guess that every one of those "8,000 separate characters that could be abused to confuse people" has been known for a least a decade. News my eye.
Punk kid. I remember 1968 like it was yesterday.
Warning: According to Judy Collins, if you can remember the 60s, you weren't there. (Or somebody said it: https://quoteinvestigator.com/.... Which just proves it.)
Apparently he really is an astrologer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... His only claim to being an astronomer is that he teaches astronomy, but this is at the "Faculty of Astrological Studies."
One side can have integer length, but the other two sides need not. It depends on the angle (that is, either of the acute angles), the sides are integers for only some choices.
I don't see that in the Tech Times article; the claim there is that the builders of Stonehenge knew the Pythagorean *theorem* (which of course doesn't require integer sides). It does claim that Pythagorean *triangles* will be found elsewhere in Britain, but leaves implicit any connection between Pythagorean triangles and the Pythagorean theorem.
The Telegraph article has a picture of Stonehenge labeled "A bird's eye view of Stonehenge showing the rectangle and Pythagorean triangles", with 56 postholes in the outer circle, and a Pythagorean triangle laid out on 3 of those holes. With 56 holes (almost one every 6 degrees), you could lay out almost any triangle you want, as long as your measurements weren't real precise. The sides of this triangle are alleged to point in certain directions (midwinter moonset--what date is midwinter? and "major standstill"), sunset on two dates (labeled "sunset Beltane and Lammas", and in the opposite direction, "sunrise Samhain and Imbolc"), and midsummer sunrise (again, which date is midsummer? and another "major standstill"). In short, it sounds to me very much like the Bible Code; given enough points, you can find anything you want: multiple "special" days in the year, and then sunrise, sunset, even moonrise and moonset.
Also, the moon doesn't rise and set in exactly the same direction on any particular date of the year, nor even on the same lunar phases at nearly the same time of the year. If it did, eclipses would occur at the same time every year. For example, 28 June of this year is a full moon; from Washington DC, the Moon rises at a declination of 117 degrees. On 9 July of last year, also a full moon, it rose at a declination of 114 degrees; and on 5 July 2001, the full moon rose at a declination of 121 degrees. That's a variation of 7 degrees, slightly more than the distance between two of those postholes as viewed from the center of the circle. So it's not clear how a unique posthole was chosen for the midwinter moonset. (And if you have a particular date for moonset, rather than the closest full moon to some date, it's even worse: moonrise/ moonset varies by 61 degrees at the latitude of Washington DC. In which case you have a choice of ten or so postholes.)
I got the moon declinations and phases from https://www.timeanddate.com/mo.... It's a nice calculator, much better than having a Stonehenge in your back yard.
What I was thinking. Also, whoever wrote the article (and the person who copied it into /.) got the Pythagorean theorem wrong: "The theorem states that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the other two squares on the triangle." That's only true if it's a right triangle, not true for other triangles (unless you're the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...).
Robur the Conqueror (a character in the eponymous book by Jules Verne) built his heavier than air flying machine out of straw paper, IIRC.
Well, they could keep the Ribbon if they did a few things to it.
Like instead of having an entirely separate 'File' menu, they could include that in the rest of the Ribbon as a 'File' tab.
Then they could get rid of the 'Home' tab (I've never quite understood what it has to do with my home, or even with home base), and they could distribute its contents among other tabs, like maybe tabs named 'Edit', 'View', 'Insert', 'Format', 'Tools', and 'Table'. That would allow them to keep Alt-H for 'Help', where the 'Help' tab could contain things like 'Word Help' and 'About Word' (where the latter would display version information etc.).
Finally, they could allow the user to hide the hieroglyphs and just keep the names of functions, I'll call these "tab elements." Some of these tab elements would correspond to simple commands, like there could be a 'Copy' command in the 'Edit' tab. Other tab elements would have to lead to sub-tabs or dialog boxes. For instance, the 'Format' tab might contain words like 'Font...', 'Paragraph...', 'Bullets and numbering...', 'Borders and shading...' etc., each of which would bring up a sub-tab or a dialog box. I guess these tab elements could be stacked on top of each other.
I thought of getting a patent on this, but it turns out someone already came up with my idea. There's a picture of one of these tabs here: https://www.ischool.utexas.edu...
I appreciate the comment. I do some moderation (I've never meta-moderated, although I did get an invite, it just came at a bad time). But I do find it hard to be fair when moderating--it's so very tempting to favor posts that I agree with. I hope I successfully avoid that temptation.
It looks like you're trying to post on slashdot. Would you like help?
--Clippy Jr
Agreed. For the record, another annoyance with newer versions of Word is that when I open a file that happens to be read-only (which includes anything that gets emailed to me), the search tool is entirely different from the search tool for a doc that I have open in write mode. And IIRC, it can't be called up by the same keystroke. I can understand why it opens docs in email as read-only, I just want to have the same UI insofar as possible.