This is about "special 301" reviews, which are a scheme for applying diplomatic pressure on countries that do
trade things that US companies don't like. Anything submitted that doesn't relate to a specific issue with a specific country is irrelevant.
If you want to bitch about ACTA, write your congressional representative.
"Agile" methodologies are most appropriate when the project consists of a large number of loosely coupled user-oriented features with no major architectural or technical innovations. Like PHP-based web sites. Or, in fact, much programming which involves using an existing "framework". Someone else has already figured out what the different parts of the system need to say to each other and roughly how they will say it. Development is mostly filling in the blanks.
Trying to use "agile" on a hard, tightly-coupled problem with no predefined structural framework, like an optimizing compiler or a database engine, is likely to result in a disaster.
A game can fall into either category. If the game requires new technology, especially something hard, (advanced AI, a new physics engine, a very large seamless world, etc.) a very front-end design-driven approach may be necessary. On the other hand, if most of the game consists of developing content for different areas of the game world, an
"agile" methodology could work fine. Second Life is probably the most extreme example of this.
It's interesting to note that movie-making has become very much a waterfall model business. A few decades ago, moviemaking was much more "agile", and most directors came from a theatrical background. For a theatrical director, there's a debugging phase involving actors on a bare stage, and the content may change considerably during development. Big-budget moviemaking today involves going from script to storyboard to previsualization (making a low-end animated version as a planning tool) to production. That's very much a waterfall process.
Look, everyone agrees Lucas should have stopped after three films. The Star [Wars|Trek|Gate|Craft] franchises have been done to death. Now a rehash of "Dune" is in production. Please.
At least we have James Cameron's "Avatar". Cameron is a master of production value. He spends a lot of money, but it pays off. Unfortunately, everything he does looks too much like a "Terminator" movie.
A film based on David Weber's work might be an improvement. But Hollywood would go for "March Upcountry", not the Honor Harrington novels.
Of course, the fundamental trouble with space opera is that it's no longer a plausible future. Space travel hasn't improved much in 40 years.
First, here's the actual report, without any form to fill out. (Backup copy at WebCitation.) Amusingly, the report is clearly written for a target audience who prints out PDF files on paper. It contains charts in tiny type.
The report covers the usual email issues, which will be familiar to Slashdot readers. New issues for 2009 are the following:
Anti-virus companies are slowing down. Average time to "patch: (really, release a new identifying signature) has increased from 22 hours to 46 hours. By the time the anti-virus companies catch up, the attack has changed. This indicates the uselessness of signature-based attack detection.
More attacks are successfully targeting search engines. Google is more vulnerable to hacked SEO than previously thought. Google Trends, which drives Google Suggest (the command completion in Google search boxes) is extremely vulnerable. (I've commented on that before.) "The average number of malicious sites in any Google search using hot/trending topics (as ranked by Google) by the end of the year stood at 13.7% for the top 100 results."
The "long tail" of the Web is becoming less important as more user generated content moves to the top 100 sites.
More attacks now involve injection of hostile code into user generated content on major sites.
The report identifies Google's weak security in their search engine as a problem. Microsoft's Internet Explorer remains a problem, of course, but now Google is now the attack target of choice to drive traffic to a site that can attack the browser. Google still, apparently, hasn't figured out a good way to prevent link farms from driving up search position.
France already has a benefit system for pregnant women. There's a sort of "coupon book", with coupons for various tests and examinations. Of course, France has a Government health care system.
That's good. That reading is a sump inside the plant. It's about the level of the process water, so it's near the leak. They're getting close.
The hazardous readings are all within the plant perimeter. Additional monitoring of off-site wells has been started (ten locations are normally monitored by the State of Vermont, but monthly) and those aren't showing any significant radioactivity.
Why is "soffice.exe" 7MB in size? It's just the launcher. The work is done in "sdraw.exe", "swriter.exe", etc.
Why is there also "soffice.bin", another 7MB?
Does OpenOffice have to have its very own full Python installation? It's only used for scripting OpenOffice from your own applications; OpenOffice itself doesn't need it.
Is the whole Java/UNO system, for scripting OpenOffice from Java, really used much?
OpenOffice has about 100 DLLs, doing who knows what. How many of those are really used?
In fact, most users don't need any of the Java stuff. It's mainly for the OpenOffice database engine, and you're probably not running a relational DBMS on your netbook.
OpenOffice could probably be brought down below 100MB for netbooks without much work.
In order for a Chinese fab to put a backdoor into one of our designs...
If just the IC fab is outsourced, with masks provided, that's true. Many Ethernet chips are designed in Taiwan and fabbed in China, but so far I can't find ones developed entirely on the mainland. That can't be far off; eventually, engineering and design moves near the fab. There are competent IC design houses in China; HiSilicon and C2 Microsystems are sizable design companies. But neither makes an Ethernet controller. The focus of the Chinese design companies tends to be entertainment electronics and portable devices.
DoD is really worried about this. They're trying to develop ways to efficiently examine ICs to check for unexpected "features". Right now, it's necessary to open up the IC and put it under a scanning electron microscope, then use software that can extract the logic diagram from the scan.
One of the obvious places to put in a "back door" is in Ethernet controllers. Many used in servers already have logic for hardware "remote administration" (turn machine off, reboot, load code, etc.). It is supposed to be disabled by default, and work only when initialized with keys during hardware installation. Just build a set of default remote administration keys into the chip, and everyone using that chip is 0wned. Send the right UDP packets, and you can take over the machine. This would be completely invisible until activated.
The article mentions that law enforcement considers Cox Communications "uncooperative". That's because Cox Communications' procedures are legally correct.
Cox insists that all requests go through their Records Custodian in Atlanta. Local offices aren't allowed to deal with law enforcement. There's a worksheet to be filled out. "Please complete with all relevant information and fax with court order". Cox flatly refuses to do anything without a court order. They do accept "emergency requests". The "Emergency Request" form requires law enforcement people to sign this:
"The requester states, as representative of a governmental entity, that this request relates to an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to a person and the information provided shall not be used for any unlawful or harmful purpose. Requesting party represents that he or she has the authority to execute this form and agrees to indemnify Cox Communications, its subsidiaries, employees, and agents harmless for any claim, demand, loss, or injury, including attorneys fees brought against Cox by a third party, including the subscriber, as a result of Cox's compliance with this request."
That makes whomever signs that personally responsible if there's anything illegal about the request.
Then there's billing. Trap and trace, $2500 for 30 days. Wiretap, $3500 for 30 days. Inaccurate requests (for non-Cox phones), $25 each.
Payment may be required in advance. Visa, Master Card, and AMEX accepted. Cox reserves the right to withhold delivery until payment.
The Encyclopedia Britannica costs $70/a for an online subscription. It costs $1300 for a paper copy. People still buy the paper copy.
Not many. Britannica has been in trouble for years. When Microsoft did Encarta, they talked to Britannica about some kind of business arrangement. Britannica turned Microsoft down. Years later, with Britannica doing badly, they went to see Bill Gates, who told them that, because of their expensive sales force, their organization now had "negative value".
The basic problem with "Dune" today is that it predates the Gulf War. We know what "desert power" looks like now - M1A2 Abrams tanks and A10 Warthogs. There were worries back in 1991 that mechanized armies couldn't operate in the desert.
Wrong. You go through more air filters. Some spare parts get used up. The tanks keep rolling.
Remember those Iraqi solders in the first Gulf War who were all dug in, armed, and ready to fight? THe US sent in a line of tanks equipped with bulldozer blades, rolled over them, and buried them alive in sand. Being out in the open desert against a modern army is death. I don't care how good your knife fighters are.
And a giant sandworm with a big open mouth looks like a good RPG target.
There are insurgency tactics that work, but they depend on having a friendly population to hide in. They also require an opposition that doesn't consider extermination of the entire population in the area an option.
Open Office may have peaked in quality. Open Office Draw 3.1 crashes for me about twice an hour, while older versions never did. Draw also has some weird intermittent bug in selection, were suddenly everything goes grey for a few seconds. The last 2.x versions were solid.
I'm always amused that the crash reporter program wants the user to type in which OpenOffice program they were using. The crash reporter ought to know that.
Pure silicon dioxide, in its glass form, is quartz. This is a scheme for putting a thin quartz film on other materials. That's useful, but not revolutionary. The big improvement here is that it's apparently applied as a liquid solution in air at room temperature, rather than having to be applied at molten quartz temperatures or in vacuum.
The New York Times reported that Toyota stopped selling their defective cars only after the NTSB "asked" them to do it.
That's not exactly "voluntary". The way DOT and CPSC recalls work is that first they ask the manufacturer to do a "voluntary" recall. If the manufacturer says no, they issue a mandatory recall notice.
About once a decade, some manufacturer is dumb enough to let things go that far. It means national TV coverage ("The National Transportation Safety Board today ordered the recall of all NNN model XXX cars.") It means that, instead of a obliquely worded letter from the manufacturer, every owner gets an official letter from the Government with words like "dangerous and defective product" in big black type. The manufacturer involved usually experiences a large, permanent drop in sales.
When von Braun was developing the V-2, they launched 600 rockets before they hit a military target. If we were serious about missile defense, there'd be about one test a week, instead of one test a year. The US built over a thousand Minuteman ICBMs in five years in the 1960s. Yes, it would cost. But it would work.
I'm waiting for Z-backscatter technology to filter down to nightclubs.
At the cooler nightclubs, they'd probably send the images to big-screen monitors so everyone could watch.
Although, really, Z-backscatter images aren't erotic. If they were, there would be porno sites with X-ray images.
They can be embarrassing, because they show flab very clearly. But that's usually obvious even with clothing on.
Soldiers recover, and they are trained for the workout, machines break down and that dog is loud as fuck when it's running even with a muffler...no parts to repair = 400+ pounds of junk, stick with the human soldier.
That's what some old soldiers said about motor vehicles, around 1939 or so.
Trying to fit these things into traffic in a crowded area is tough.
New York State classifies such vehicles as follows:
Motorized Scooters, Mini-Bikes, Dirt Bikes, Go-Karts, Motor Assisted Bicycles - not allowed on streets or highways.
Limited Use Motorcycle, class C (20 MPH or less) - allowed in right hand lane or shoulder only. Insurance not required, inspection not required, motorcycle driver license not required, helmet not required.
Limited Use Motorcycle, class B. (20MPH to 30 MPH) - allowed in right hand lane or shoulder only. Insurance required, inspection not required, motorcycle driver license not required. helmet required.
Limited Use Motorcycle, class A. (30MPH to 40 MPH) - allowed in any traffic lane. Insurance required, inspection required, motorcycle driver license required, helmet required.
Motorcycle. - allowed in any traffic lane and on freeways. Insurance required, inspection required, motorcycle driver license required, helmet required. Motorcycle Safety Foundation training recommended.
So New York State makes a clear distinction between a bicycle and anything with power. (Segways are handled somewhat differently, but are limited to 12.5 MPH. New York City prohibits them on sidewalks.)
Realistically, once you pass 20MPH, you have most of the risks of a motorcycle, and may as well get one.
This has been in the pipeline for the last year, and in fact Boston Dynamics had already won the trade study contract for the Legged Squad Support System, the "LS3". This is the next phase, the contract to build prototypes, which will be field tested.
This isn't a research program, as BigDog was. The program is now in DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, which builds prototypes of weapon systems. The next step is volume production and deployment.
So far, DARPA isn't discussing armament. Since the USMC is involved in this program, someone is almost certainly looking at that option. It's attractive as a weapons platform. Since it already has full inertial and GPS sensors, a weaponized version could easily have a stabilized gun, like a tank, so it could fire on the move and hit targets. There's also the possibility of integrating the "automated mortar" developed a few years ago. The "automated mortar" concept is that
someone up at the sharp end designates a target, the firing data goes back to the gun, and the gun duly clobbers the selected target. That's what mortar squads do now, but lugging the gear around ties up too many people and slows up the operation. The automated mortar was too heavy to lug around on foot, and mounted on a vehicle, it duplicated existing heavier weapons. The LS3 is just the right size to move that thing around.
So there's the LS3, trailing the squad, when someone spots something that needs to be destroyed. They point something at the target, data
goes back to the LS3, and the LS3 quickly launches a mortar round, which arcs over the squad and lands on the target. No more target.
And yes, the annoying buzzing sound will go away. That was just the off the shelf powerplant used in the experimental version. The production version will use a small Diesel engine. (The U.S. military is all-Diesel. Gasoline tankers have no place on the modern battlefield.)
The NFL used to crack down on churches for having pay-per-view football watching parties. But they've backed off on churches.
They're afraid to take on religion. Wimps.
As for sports bars, they're a business mooching off someone else's content. Of course they should pay.
Heinlein, in "Stranger in a Strange Land", saw this future of megachurches. There's a scene where a church leader mentions that they have a big screen projection TV for football events. (Heinlein also described megachurches with casinos, but so far, that's only in Vegas.)
The problem with English "grammar" is that it doesn't work. Fifty or a hundred years ago, the study of English grammar was taken seriously because it was believed to be a description of how the language worked. Once computers started processing English text, that belief was destroyed. Parsing of English sentences using a grammatical rule set just didn't work.
Research linguists have a handle on the parsing problem now.
But the methods that really work aren't useful as teaching tools for students. So the teaching of "grammar" has lost its underpinnings.
Incidentally, in English there are only four main types of "open class" words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Then there are about 150-300 "closed class words" (opinions vary, but a common list contains 288), which have to be treated as special cases. Parsing is driven almost entirely by the closed class words. (This is why "Jabberwocky" works.) Closed class words are added to English very slowly - the last one was "Ms." But that's not how students are taught grammar.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up.
This is just someone whining because their somewhat lame business model is having problems.
This is about "special 301" reviews, which are a scheme for applying diplomatic pressure on countries that do trade things that US companies don't like. Anything submitted that doesn't relate to a specific issue with a specific country is irrelevant.
If you want to bitch about ACTA, write your congressional representative.
"Agile" methodologies are most appropriate when the project consists of a large number of loosely coupled user-oriented features with no major architectural or technical innovations. Like PHP-based web sites. Or, in fact, much programming which involves using an existing "framework". Someone else has already figured out what the different parts of the system need to say to each other and roughly how they will say it. Development is mostly filling in the blanks.
Trying to use "agile" on a hard, tightly-coupled problem with no predefined structural framework, like an optimizing compiler or a database engine, is likely to result in a disaster.
A game can fall into either category. If the game requires new technology, especially something hard, (advanced AI, a new physics engine, a very large seamless world, etc.) a very front-end design-driven approach may be necessary. On the other hand, if most of the game consists of developing content for different areas of the game world, an "agile" methodology could work fine. Second Life is probably the most extreme example of this.
It's interesting to note that movie-making has become very much a waterfall model business. A few decades ago, moviemaking was much more "agile", and most directors came from a theatrical background. For a theatrical director, there's a debugging phase involving actors on a bare stage, and the content may change considerably during development. Big-budget moviemaking today involves going from script to storyboard to previsualization (making a low-end animated version as a planning tool) to production. That's very much a waterfall process.
For a brief period on February 5, "en.wikipedia.org" was directed by DNS to an address at "pw-in-f139.1e100.net". That was quickly corrected, although it may have happened more than once. Apparently somebody at Google sent out some bad DNS records. (Google is now in the DNS business, remember.) They need to be more careful.
Look, everyone agrees Lucas should have stopped after three films. The Star [Wars|Trek|Gate|Craft] franchises have been done to death. Now a rehash of "Dune" is in production. Please.
At least we have James Cameron's "Avatar". Cameron is a master of production value. He spends a lot of money, but it pays off. Unfortunately, everything he does looks too much like a "Terminator" movie.
A film based on David Weber's work might be an improvement. But Hollywood would go for "March Upcountry", not the Honor Harrington novels.
Of course, the fundamental trouble with space opera is that it's no longer a plausible future. Space travel hasn't improved much in 40 years.
Carol Bartz. CEO of Autodesk, where she did well, then Yahoo, where she inherited a mess and isn't doing too well so far.
First, here's the actual report, without any form to fill out. (Backup copy at WebCitation.) Amusingly, the report is clearly written for a target audience who prints out PDF files on paper. It contains charts in tiny type.
The report covers the usual email issues, which will be familiar to Slashdot readers. New issues for 2009 are the following:
The report identifies Google's weak security in their search engine as a problem. Microsoft's Internet Explorer remains a problem, of course, but now Google is now the attack target of choice to drive traffic to a site that can attack the browser. Google still, apparently, hasn't figured out a good way to prevent link farms from driving up search position.
France already has a benefit system for pregnant women. There's a sort of "coupon book", with coupons for various tests and examinations. Of course, France has a Government health care system.
That's good. That reading is a sump inside the plant. It's about the level of the process water, so it's near the leak. They're getting close.
The hazardous readings are all within the plant perimeter. Additional monitoring of off-site wells has been started (ten locations are normally monitored by the State of Vermont, but monthly) and those aren't showing any significant radioactivity.
Why does OpenOffice need 350MB, anyway?
OpenOffice could probably be brought down below 100MB for netbooks without much work.
In order for a Chinese fab to put a backdoor into one of our designs...
If just the IC fab is outsourced, with masks provided, that's true. Many Ethernet chips are designed in Taiwan and fabbed in China, but so far I can't find ones developed entirely on the mainland. That can't be far off; eventually, engineering and design moves near the fab. There are competent IC design houses in China; HiSilicon and C2 Microsystems are sizable design companies. But neither makes an Ethernet controller. The focus of the Chinese design companies tends to be entertainment electronics and portable devices.
DoD is really worried about this. They're trying to develop ways to efficiently examine ICs to check for unexpected "features". Right now, it's necessary to open up the IC and put it under a scanning electron microscope, then use software that can extract the logic diagram from the scan.
One of the obvious places to put in a "back door" is in Ethernet controllers. Many used in servers already have logic for hardware "remote administration" (turn machine off, reboot, load code, etc.). It is supposed to be disabled by default, and work only when initialized with keys during hardware installation. Just build a set of default remote administration keys into the chip, and everyone using that chip is 0wned. Send the right UDP packets, and you can take over the machine. This would be completely invisible until activated.
The article mentions that law enforcement considers Cox Communications "uncooperative". That's because Cox Communications' procedures are legally correct.
Cox insists that all requests go through their Records Custodian in Atlanta. Local offices aren't allowed to deal with law enforcement. There's a worksheet to be filled out. "Please complete with all relevant information and fax with court order". Cox flatly refuses to do anything without a court order. They do accept "emergency requests". The "Emergency Request" form requires law enforcement people to sign this:
That makes whomever signs that personally responsible if there's anything illegal about the request.
Then there's billing. Trap and trace, $2500 for 30 days. Wiretap, $3500 for 30 days. Inaccurate requests (for non-Cox phones), $25 each. Payment may be required in advance. Visa, Master Card, and AMEX accepted. Cox reserves the right to withhold delivery until payment.
Cox refused to cooperate with NSA's warrentless wiretapping program.
Cox is obeying the law. Law enforcement hates that when it applies to them.
The Encyclopedia Britannica costs $70/a for an online subscription. It costs $1300 for a paper copy. People still buy the paper copy.
Not many. Britannica has been in trouble for years. When Microsoft did Encarta, they talked to Britannica about some kind of business arrangement. Britannica turned Microsoft down. Years later, with Britannica doing badly, they went to see Bill Gates, who told them that, because of their expensive sales force, their organization now had "negative value".
The basic problem with "Dune" today is that it predates the Gulf War. We know what "desert power" looks like now - M1A2 Abrams tanks and A10 Warthogs. There were worries back in 1991 that mechanized armies couldn't operate in the desert. Wrong. You go through more air filters. Some spare parts get used up. The tanks keep rolling. Remember those Iraqi solders in the first Gulf War who were all dug in, armed, and ready to fight? THe US sent in a line of tanks equipped with bulldozer blades, rolled over them, and buried them alive in sand. Being out in the open desert against a modern army is death. I don't care how good your knife fighters are.
And a giant sandworm with a big open mouth looks like a good RPG target.
There are insurgency tactics that work, but they depend on having a friendly population to hide in. They also require an opposition that doesn't consider extermination of the entire population in the area an option.
Open Office may have peaked in quality. Open Office Draw 3.1 crashes for me about twice an hour, while older versions never did. Draw also has some weird intermittent bug in selection, were suddenly everything goes grey for a few seconds. The last 2.x versions were solid.
I'm always amused that the crash reporter program wants the user to type in which OpenOffice program they were using. The crash reporter ought to know that.
Pure silicon dioxide, in its glass form, is quartz. This is a scheme for putting a thin quartz film on other materials. That's useful, but not revolutionary. The big improvement here is that it's apparently applied as a liquid solution in air at room temperature, rather than having to be applied at molten quartz temperatures or in vacuum.
The New York Times reported that Toyota stopped selling their defective cars only after the NTSB "asked" them to do it.
That's not exactly "voluntary". The way DOT and CPSC recalls work is that first they ask the manufacturer to do a "voluntary" recall. If the manufacturer says no, they issue a mandatory recall notice.
About once a decade, some manufacturer is dumb enough to let things go that far. It means national TV coverage ("The National Transportation Safety Board today ordered the recall of all NNN model XXX cars.") It means that, instead of a obliquely worded letter from the manufacturer, every owner gets an official letter from the Government with words like "dangerous and defective product" in big black type. The manufacturer involved usually experiences a large, permanent drop in sales.
When von Braun was developing the V-2, they launched 600 rockets before they hit a military target. If we were serious about missile defense, there'd be about one test a week, instead of one test a year. The US built over a thousand Minuteman ICBMs in five years in the 1960s. Yes, it would cost. But it would work.
I'm waiting for Z-backscatter technology to filter down to nightclubs.
At the cooler nightclubs, they'd probably send the images to big-screen monitors so everyone could watch.
Although, really, Z-backscatter images aren't erotic. If they were, there would be porno sites with X-ray images. They can be embarrassing, because they show flab very clearly. But that's usually obvious even with clothing on.
Soldiers recover, and they are trained for the workout, machines break down and that dog is loud as fuck when it's running even with a muffler...no parts to repair = 400+ pounds of junk, stick with the human soldier.
That's what some old soldiers said about motor vehicles, around 1939 or so.
Trying to fit these things into traffic in a crowded area is tough. New York State classifies such vehicles as follows:
So New York State makes a clear distinction between a bicycle and anything with power. (Segways are handled somewhat differently, but are limited to 12.5 MPH. New York City prohibits them on sidewalks.)
Realistically, once you pass 20MPH, you have most of the risks of a motorcycle, and may as well get one.
This has been in the pipeline for the last year, and in fact Boston Dynamics had already won the trade study contract for the Legged Squad Support System, the "LS3". This is the next phase, the contract to build prototypes, which will be field tested.
This isn't a research program, as BigDog was. The program is now in DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, which builds prototypes of weapon systems. The next step is volume production and deployment.
So far, DARPA isn't discussing armament. Since the USMC is involved in this program, someone is almost certainly looking at that option. It's attractive as a weapons platform. Since it already has full inertial and GPS sensors, a weaponized version could easily have a stabilized gun, like a tank, so it could fire on the move and hit targets. There's also the possibility of integrating the "automated mortar" developed a few years ago. The "automated mortar" concept is that someone up at the sharp end designates a target, the firing data goes back to the gun, and the gun duly clobbers the selected target. That's what mortar squads do now, but lugging the gear around ties up too many people and slows up the operation. The automated mortar was too heavy to lug around on foot, and mounted on a vehicle, it duplicated existing heavier weapons. The LS3 is just the right size to move that thing around.
So there's the LS3, trailing the squad, when someone spots something that needs to be destroyed. They point something at the target, data goes back to the LS3, and the LS3 quickly launches a mortar round, which arcs over the squad and lands on the target. No more target.
And yes, the annoying buzzing sound will go away. That was just the off the shelf powerplant used in the experimental version. The production version will use a small Diesel engine. (The U.S. military is all-Diesel. Gasoline tankers have no place on the modern battlefield.)
The NFL used to crack down on churches for having pay-per-view football watching parties. But they've backed off on churches. They're afraid to take on religion. Wimps.
As for sports bars, they're a business mooching off someone else's content. Of course they should pay.
Heinlein, in "Stranger in a Strange Land", saw this future of megachurches. There's a scene where a church leader mentions that they have a big screen projection TV for football events. (Heinlein also described megachurches with casinos, but so far, that's only in Vegas.)
The problem with English "grammar" is that it doesn't work. Fifty or a hundred years ago, the study of English grammar was taken seriously because it was believed to be a description of how the language worked. Once computers started processing English text, that belief was destroyed. Parsing of English sentences using a grammatical rule set just didn't work.
A few decades later, parsing of English is better understood. Microsoft Word's grammar checker really does parse sentences. At one time, Microsoft Research offered a tool which plugged into Word's parser and displayed the sentence diagrams it uses internally. The tools for this require Bayesian statistics; they're not based on rigid rules.
Research linguists have a handle on the parsing problem now. But the methods that really work aren't useful as teaching tools for students. So the teaching of "grammar" has lost its underpinnings.
Incidentally, in English there are only four main types of "open class" words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Then there are about 150-300 "closed class words" (opinions vary, but a common list contains 288), which have to be treated as special cases. Parsing is driven almost entirely by the closed class words. (This is why "Jabberwocky" works.) Closed class words are added to English very slowly - the last one was "Ms." But that's not how students are taught grammar.