For the record, I hope your ego isn't *too* bruised because you are quite right that Chomsky and Pinker disagree on a number of things. The major issue that I'm aware of has Pinker saying that more of the human capacity for language is used only for language than what Chomsky says -- which I think is the opposite of what I wrote in my post.
Chomsky either has changed his view on this or has one widely misunderstood view on it, I am not sure which. On the one hand, he has always started with the notion that we should analyse the brain like we analyse the rest of the body -- in terms of "mental organs". General intelligence, says Chomsky, is a vague and useless cover term. Thus, there is a system for vision, a system for language, another for, perhaps, navigation, and so on.
However, it hasn't been clear until recently (at least it seems to me that it hasn't) whether Chomsky just means that that is the way we should look at it to make it approachable, or whether he is making claims about how these systems are structured in the brain. It is often interpreted, at least implicitly, to mean the latter -- that these different mental organs evolved, and operate, independently, and that they don't share mental resources. You can tell when people think it means this because they'll bring up the supposed localization of language in the brain (Broca's area) in support of what they take to be Chomsky's view.
But Chomsky has been discussing this in more detail recently, and it seems to me from what he's been saying that he didn't mean that at all, or at least he doesn't now. Several of his recent publications take up the idea that the inborn mechanisms (claimed to be) necessary for language are in fact very much domain-general, and that in fact we can maybe even narrow it down to one specific capability (recursively nested structures). Pinker has posted a manuscript of his and Jackendoff's on his website arguing that Chomsky is wrong that we can reduce it this far; more of the things that make language work are domain-specific than that (at least that's what the abstract says:-). So, there is still a question of how much is shared between different 'organs' of the mind (and if it's shared it therefore presumably evolved as one thing). But no one, not even Chomsky -- especially not Chomsky -- says it's "nothing" as in the view I mentioned above.
The issue has more implications for 'what kind of models can we use to talk about how language works in the brain' than for 'how do kids learn language' which, as I said, TFA is kind of (but only kind-of-sort-of) related to. Needless to say, however, the answer to each question is strongly dependent on the answer to the other. Pinker has other differences with Chomsky, but their views are usually fairly compatible. But I was wrong to say they were not debating anything.
Chomsky is not in any kind of debate with Pinker as far as I know, and as far as I can tell from the article the parent linked to. The two have very similar viewpoints on the matter.
Chomsky put forth the following for how children learn language: it is a simple statistical fact that there are entire kinds of sentences that you understand and produce correctly that you are likely have to never heard before -- like English "Is the woman who is walking her dog Tom's neighbour?" where you are asking a question but there are two mini sentences, one about the woman walking her dog, and one about her being Tom's neighbor.
So you couldn't possibly be learning how to speak English (and not speak non-English) just by observing how often things occur -- because you wind up understanding that perfectly even though it just doesn't come up.
Both the claim that this really is a 'simple statistical fact' and the claim that you couldn't learn they are okay just by observing the statistical pattern have been HOTLY debated. But that is Chomsky's claim.
Something is missing, the argument goes, and that missing chunk must be mechanisms in the brain specifically dedicated to language. This too has been hotly debated, but it is both Chomsky's and Pinker's position (less so Pinker).
TFA bears on this issue in a tangential way. It's known that there's a circuit in bird brains that is required for them to learn their songs properly ('anterior forebrain pathway'). This research sheds some light on why it is required. The way I understand it (IANA neuroscientist), it is a keep-on-trucking circuit that says, 'okay, do it again. and again. and again.' Something like this mechanism is also found in humans, in the basal ganglia, so now we have maybe learned something about us.
However, many people on Chomsky's side are very suspicious of any 'generic' learning mechanisms like trial-and-error. For example, the article mentions babies' repeated babbling as a mechanism of trial-and-error to get the sounds of a language right very early on. But a potential alternate 'language-is-totally-innate' -- Chomsky/Pinker -- explanation might be that babbling does not feed back on itself, and a baby doesn't learn anything from it; rather, the baby's 'language faculty' has not matured (which happens with minimal help from what the baby hears) to the point where it can do anything else. I made this up - this is not a theory about babbling that can be found in the literature -- but it is the kind of alternative to 'general intelligence' that is often proposed.
The parent-linked article is about a book which vehemently denies Chomsky/Pinker's point of view. (FWIW I've read some of the author's other works and I think he's just a troll.)
if you RTFA (including the one YOU linked to) you will find that your article was from UCLA from last year and this one is from MIT from this year and was "received [by the journal] February 4, 2005;... Published March 29, 2005" (from the pdf, small print in the lower right hand corner of the first page)
somebody hit me with a stick of details please. the story so far:
cddl is an OSI approved license of sun's getting mixed reviews for not being gpl-compatible and raised eyebrows for coming from a corporation.
CA is another corporation with an osi-approved license called trusted open source. a vp there claims here that
some 60 percent of all our Linux revenue will come from outside the United States, and some 95 percent of the [Open Source Initiative]-approved licenses are unenforceable outside the United States
so they want to create one boilerplate license that they can tack on 'regional tweaks' to. people don't trust them, again presumably because they're a corporation (and also because according to the other article they are dreaming if they think they can possibly create such a license).
fill me in here - what were CDDL and TOS created for? what is the big scary conflict apparently brewing? is it the fear that CA's new license will take over open source and somehow lock everyone in to nefarious corporate terms? fill me in.
why on earth is GNOME so RIDICULOUSLY difficult to compile by hand? yes, it's a big and complicated project. so is kde. kde comes in packages: libraries, base, etc.
last time I tried -- admittedly a VERY long time ago -- compiling gnome without the benefit of something like portage was a days-long dependency hunt. dependencies of FINAL releases were often still in CVS only. ick.
if you think that's what computing should be all about, you have WAY too much time on your hands.
pretty sad that you don't realize it's music until you have already studied music.
I can agree with that to a great extent. On the other hand, if we develop new ways of listening, we can be opened to a new world. As humans, we really can enjoy listening to pretty much anything -- but there are definitely some undeniable and unchangeable constraints that many composers don't/didn't take into account or believe in. Some composers just seem to have been better at making the unconventional -- what might well go against certain of those constraints -- sound good.
To put on my music student's hat, I think Milton Babbitt's music is somewhat listenable despite its intricate complexity, and I adore Webern. Boulez and Schoenberg, despite their lofty status, may look good on paper, but frankly, they sound bad. Cage, however, was ingenious, and did absolutely wonderful-sounding things. (And yes, I include even the infamous 4'33". It is beautiful and indeed quite powerful if you know how to listen to it.)
What it means to "not know how to listen to" certain things seems to be one of two things (depending on what you're listening to): (1) Nature (the constraints): human beings can only naturally listen to certain things together without going crazy; (2) Nurture: your inability to listen to something is only because you've grown up not knowing how -- and in fact, this very often reflects society's basic way of living. A Buddhist, for example, would I think take no issue with Cage's comment, "Open your windows -- music!" But most westerners would say something like "This is stupid." Not to be able to listen to a running stream is "sad," I think -- not that I don't partly agree with you.
I've always thought that electronica was one of the closest relatives to traditional classical music where the meter and timing and beat were very similar in both styles of music. But this new electronica doesn't seem to have any of that. It's more like... random recordings of random sounds, no better than the background noise of your room.
I don't suppose you like pretty much any of the classical music written between 1925 and 1965, then. A lot of it really is just random recordings of random sounds, and most of the rest of it sounds like it to someone who hasn't studied music for a good number of years.
I picked up on weirdness there too, but it was mostly the part where the edited final text of the interview says How militant are you about which licences people use for their software, and how they use them? People who are not following the (free software) licence are pirates, it's as simple as that.
Sounds like a silly thing for ac to say, right? Well, this implies that the original, unedited response (to whatever question was _really_ asked) was People who are not following the licence are pirates, it's as simple as that.
Which makes perfect sense, as he goes on to say It's no different if you take GPL code and don't give people the source code, or if you make copies of movies and sell them to people, it's the same thing. In terms of other software, it really depends on the people who write it. I don't think you have a right to dictate how somebody controls their own work, apart from the very, very basic standard you'd expect.
Read: follow the bloody licence or yer a pirate. I mean, it's pretty clear what he's saying. I'd like to say that Hanlon's Razor ("Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity") applies here; this is rather difficult, because if it's stupidity, what about the relative cluefulness of the interviewer in the rest of the interview? If it's malice, why stop there? Why bother?
I can think of some answers for a few of these questions, I suppose, but none make it too much clearer.
It is called the Canadian Vowel Raising phenomenon. It is a standard example of allophonic variation (and of regional variation) given to every first-year linguistics student. It is distinctly audible coming across the Canadian border: for example, stopping at a convenience store in Michigan and hearing [awt] and then hearing the girl at Canadian Customs say [Vwt] (where [V] is the is the first vowel in "putty") so endearingly it makes me giggle; this is not always the case, people from Michigan often do it too, but I'd just been in Illinois.
It's pretty straightforward. Before an unvoiced consonant (t, p, th in throw, s, vs. d, b, th in they, z) the [aw] sound ([a] is to all intents and purposes the first vowel in father) is "raised" to the above-mentioned [Vw] sound. This means just what it sounds like. The tongue is at the bottom of the oral cavity for [a] and in the middle for [V]. It also happens with [aj], the diphthong in ride, but that phenomenon is also common all over the US. Anyway, it's there, and with a little training, it'll make you giggle too. Sound clips.
It's one thing to say you think Chomsky's opinions stink and you think he's full of shit. That's a perfectly reasonable opinion. But to claim that he misrepresents facts and context demands proof, which I've yet to see provided.
My problem isn't with checking his sources. The problem is -- I've tried. If you want to be a radical -- just like if you want to refute a radical -- you have to prove it. And all too often Chomsky's articles have quotations in them which would be perfectly good if anyone knew where they came from.
The first example that comes to mind isn't one that could have been taken out of context, I expect, but it would be nice to know who was saying what when. He refers again and again to a quotation he claims is from the "19th-century New England labour press": "Those who work in the mills ought to own them." I don't doubt the validity of this. But how exactly am I supposed to verify it if he doesn't list his sources?
He often does. But Randy Allen Harris, though he has never given specific examples, does complain that Chomsky, on reading his book "The Linguistics Wars" send feedback that repeatedly misrepresented him, and he concluded that Chomsky is "an extraordinarily bad reader" on the LINGUIST list a few years ago. He also gives numerous other examples. I don't have a copy of Skinner's Verbal Behaviour to check it against Chomsky's famous review, but I can say that Chomsky surely holds grudges. In the notes to "Economy of Derivation and Representation" (in The Minimalist Program) he attacks his old opponent James McCawley for "misunderstanding" him. He begins by mentioning that the term "Government and Binding" has been the source of much misunderstanding. At which point he brings up an entirely unrelated "misunderstanding" which is -- no pun intended -- a quibble over semantics. If he wishes to defend himself in the appropriate forum, fine. But here it's unrelated to what he's talking about and completely out of the blue.
What about when he quotes himself? Again, fine. But if he's going to use a quote from The New York Times, he had better do more than "(New York Times)" and in the notes "see Noam Chomsky, Year 501" as he does in "'The Ultimate Weapon'" (in Profit Over People). Why doesn't he consult his own book and give the source?
Whether or not Chomsky misrepresents quotations, this sort of behaviour certainly doesn't reflect well on him, and means that we're more likely to expect him to do such a thing.
If anyone's still reading this discussion...
then with a nod to the other reply, I think the actual originator of the term "Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris" would have to be Eli S Bingham in the following classic post to
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Solution to all the DOOM posts...
Message-ID: <2dg5jc$hi1@eis.calstate.edu>
From: ebingha@eis.calstate.edu (Eli S Bingham)
Date: 30 Nov 1993 11:06:20 -0800 Organization: Calif State Univ/Electronic Information Services
NNTP-Posting-Host: temp.calstate.edu
Lines: 13
Listen up, ID Software!
Next time you have an impending release of a much anticipated game, make sure it's name is not so cool-sounding as DOOM and much longer to eliminate all of the casual "Where can I get xxx" posts. How about "Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris" for the next game?
The originator of the abbreviation SPISPOPD is the author of the (first?) reply, Leon Patsiatzis (Leon.Patsiatzis@p12.f262.n620.z3.fidonet.org (!)), simply:
Then everybody would call it SPISPOPD 8)
A tremendously long, twisty thread ensued, with Seth Cohn (who was up until now recognized as the originator of the thread) as the perpetrator of such things as a (seemingly vaporous) SPISPOPD FAQ, though I don't think he originated quite ALL the rumours of its greatness (it "runs on any machine (from a C64 through a Cray 2)" and, of course, "can be downloaded from
ftp.po_russkii.mit.edu at 10th of December"--apparently DOOM's release date, the endless threads of questions about which this thread was tirelessly poking fun at--among countless other unfunny posts that would never get past the stonedest of Slashdot moderators). But explore this thread for yourself if you think it's worth your time...
It seems there's not a single article indexed from 1981 that contains "teh" -- the earliest that comes up in a search is as follows:
Message-ID: <anews.Aucbvax.6208>
Newsgroups: fa.space
X-Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!space
From: ucbvax!space
Date: Thu Feb 18 03:58:17 1982
Subject: SPACE Digest V2 #108
X-Google-Info: Converted from the original A-News header
>From OTA@S1-A Thu Feb 18 03:27:49 1982
SPACE Digest
Volume 2 : Issue 108
[Ed. cut many lines of geeky space banter]
Date: 15 February 1982 03:59-EST
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE at MIT-MC>
Subject: Lunar colony and SPS plan
To: REM at MIT-MC
cc: SPACE at MIT-MC
The L-5 Society, using member talent including Dr. David Criswell and other lunar experts, plus SUNSAT people, plus some architects, plus human fctors types, will begin a "Project Deadalus"-like design of a Lunar colony as part of the L-5 Space Citizens conference at teh Hyatt Los Angeles Airport over weeken of 2-4 April.
What's interesting about this isn't just that it was posted by Jerry Pournelle, but also that he manages to leave the 'd' off of "weekend" and the "teh" after "over." Among other glaring tyops. Of course, it was four in the morning.
I don't have the case to see any details, but I burned (canadian) Jimmy Eat World/Bleed American without a hitch using cdparanoia on an LG (goldstar) CED-8120B. HTH...
Here is the relevant section of the law:
Article 20
1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.
2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.
Now, in general, the UN has pretty reasonable laws -- the world agrees on something, and the US does something else... But, of course, this isn't really rule by the _people_, it's representative of what the world's governments think about civil rights. Frankly, I don't think a law like this is a Bad Thing as long as it says _what_ speech is illegal. After all, it would be really nice if someone threw Rupert Murdoch in jail for disseminating war propaganda...
According to international law, free speech is NOT free speech. Hate talk is illegal under UN regulation, and the US has been in direct violation of the law since they claimed to ratify it in the early 90s. See the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Is it really a Bad Thing? You decide. But it's fact.
Well, I apologize for my uninformed commentary. Indeed, I have been towing the Iraqi line.
I did, however, turn up this article on the booming economy of Northern Iraq (from Radio Free Europe), attributed there to thriving black market exports to Turkey, Iran, and southern Iraq. Interestingly, Rubin points out that during his visit to the area in Iraq he claims is doing so well, he "I watched smugglers load sacks of rice and grain (and whiskey) for export", which is consistent with the more left-wing report from the area.
What's more, in the north, the UN takes responsibility for distributing the cash from the oil sales provided by the inefficient oil-for-food program ("the north... can use the money to finance U.N.-approved projects"), while Hussein is allowed to use the money as he pleases.
But with (hardly unreasonable) statements from the UN such as "Iraq... is liable under international law for any direct loss, damage, including environmental damage and the depletion of natural resources, or injury to foreign Governments, nationals and corporations, as a result of Iraq's unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait" and the immediately following "all Iraqi statements made since 2 August 1990 repudiating its foreign debt are null and void", they have other things to deal with. In fact, Iraq's economy was not doing well before the war, and has sagged ever since due to the sanctions (see Kamil Mahdi, Rehabilitation Prospects for the Iraqi Economy, which conflicts to a certain extent with the reports of illicit trade supporting the northern economy, but only by deemphasizing its impact on the areas nearest the markets for it).
You are, of course, correct in pointing out that US and UN actions are two very separate things--but I would argue that this does not extend to the actions of the Security Council. I am also embarrassed for speaking before I knew what I was saying. However, I am not convinced.
If you think that we've been too violent in the past, where do you think we should draw the line marking where we respond violently (and how violently) and where we don't? If you can think of a better answer, maybe you should run for office. Or easier still, vote.
I agree that elements of the reaction are about as kneejerk as some of the more (IMHO) reprehensible hard-right reactions I've heard expressed, and I agree that military force is often necessary to preserve our own interests (though the "interests" are very often economic--e.g. Cuba and other Latin American communists, and to an extent perhaps the entire Cold War--and sometimes even something entirely different and baffling--I still can't explain the campaign against Kosovo). But "just vote" is offered up all too often as the solution. This is not viable.
The general public is entirely convinced that they can only vote for one of two parties, so any real change is impossible. Meanwhile, the Republicans and Democrats beat back and forth uninteresting and irrelevant economic issues like tax cuts and budget reform (tax cuts, after all, are most significant to the wealthy, and only hurt any social services which might by some miracle resurface in the United States; balancing the budget has a similar effect; most people really only make an attempt to care about either during an election, and only then because that's all anyone talks about), and mostly get elected because of tradition and religious/social positions. It is, as they say, a "two-party system", and if you take a look at how little happens within that system, you may have pretty good reason for calling it, as Chomsky claims, a one-party system.
He's quite the embellisher, and ostensibly very angry, but one must appreciate his ability to see the larger issues, whether or not you believe those larger issues exist, and there's no reason not to take his stance on the sanctions on Iraq.
Iraq's government is busy threatening its neighbors, developing (more) NBC weapons, and trying to exterminate an ethnic minority in its own borders. The US government is squeamish about giving aid to such a regime, especially when its doubtful such aid would actually reach those that need it ("The Republican Guard needs that food more than you do."), but is willing to send such aid if Iraq demonstrates that it neither owns nor is developing weapons of mass destruction.
That aid "may not reach the people" or is politically unpalatable does not seem to be relevant in the case of Afghanistan which has become so high-profile in recent American PR, and that the United States is not at least partly responsible for the suffering in Iraq by denying aid is hardly questionable.
At any rate, I think the best thing to glean from this post is that American promotion of their own interests is often highly detrimental to the rest of the world, which is a pattern we can put quite a bit of faith in having occurred throughout history, but not one we wouldn't like to change.
One Must Fall: 2097 was a FAN-FRIKKING-TASTIC game, and I actually *own* a copy. Of course, it's
in CP backup format, which means as far as I'm concerned it's irretrievable. But I downloaded a copy from an abandonware site. Which is all very well, except that my machine is WAY too fast for it. Dang it.
Anyway, my question is this: does anyone remember an old shareware game called "Stellar Explorer"? It was a DOS game which played in full-screen graphics mode, but ABUSED this privilege... as your character was represented by a small green dot. But it was a WONDERFUL game, and I've had no luck finding any reference to it on the internet.
I don't have a copy of it anymore.. anyone?
I can't help but feel a little pity for LinuxOne. All the code they've ever released smells of incompetence. Or, in other words, their programmers are novices. I can imagine what it would be like to be a novice programmer trying to make a living. But wait. My argument fails there... as I realize that the CEO is NOT some starving novice programmer but some desperate veteran spammer. Never mind. So I guess I'll abandon all pity for LinuxOne, because I *know* there are honest ways of making a buck. Sorry that my post in the end became worthless, but it could come in handy helping people eliminate all pity they may have for LinuxOne. So I'll change the subject line appropriately.
> A individual cloned from an original is the same > genetically as the original and therefore of the > same species. What a stupid question! Perhaps you are being a bit naïve. There's a fickle little thing called Twisted Society which will be quite prejudiced. It's fairly plain to see. See such novels as "Friday" and such films as "Gattaca" for reference.
Despite the name, the site doesn't claim that LinuxMac is a PPC distro. It says it's "makes reading and writing Macintosh format files viable" which seems to be equivalent to TransMac for Windows. I've tried a couple of times to use Mac disks. I've never been able to get it to work. I assumed it was just a matter of compiling in HFS support. Then I discovered the hfstools and assumed it was just a matter of using those. I didn't try very hard, but I never got it to work. Nevertheless, I think this is an Unnecessary Product. But hey, everybody gets delusions of grandeur. And you never know, they might deliver. Something. Someday.
Slashdot Mirror
For the record, I hope your ego isn't *too* bruised because you are quite right that Chomsky and Pinker disagree on a number of things. The major issue that I'm aware of has Pinker saying that more of the human capacity for language is used only for language than what Chomsky says -- which I think is the opposite of what I wrote in my post.
:-). So, there is still a question of how much is shared between different 'organs' of the mind (and if it's shared it therefore presumably evolved as one thing). But no one, not even Chomsky -- especially not Chomsky -- says it's "nothing" as in the view I mentioned above.
Chomsky either has changed his view on this or has one widely misunderstood view on it, I am not sure which. On the one hand, he has always started with the notion that we should analyse the brain like we analyse the rest of the body -- in terms of "mental organs". General intelligence, says Chomsky, is a vague and useless cover term. Thus, there is a system for vision, a system for language, another for, perhaps, navigation, and so on.
However, it hasn't been clear until recently (at least it seems to me that it hasn't) whether Chomsky just means that that is the way we should look at it to make it approachable, or whether he is making claims about how these systems are structured in the brain. It is often interpreted, at least implicitly, to mean the latter -- that these different mental organs evolved, and operate, independently, and that they don't share mental resources. You can tell when people think it means this because they'll bring up the supposed localization of language in the brain (Broca's area) in support of what they take to be Chomsky's view.
But Chomsky has been discussing this in more detail recently, and it seems to me from what he's been saying that he didn't mean that at all, or at least he doesn't now. Several of his recent publications take up the idea that the inborn mechanisms (claimed to be) necessary for language are in fact very much domain-general, and that in fact we can maybe even narrow it down to one specific capability (recursively nested structures). Pinker has posted a manuscript of his and Jackendoff's on his website arguing that Chomsky is wrong that we can reduce it this far; more of the things that make language work are domain-specific than that (at least that's what the abstract says
The issue has more implications for 'what kind of models can we use to talk about how language works in the brain' than for 'how do kids learn language' which, as I said, TFA is kind of (but only kind-of-sort-of) related to. Needless to say, however, the answer to each question is strongly dependent on the answer to the other. Pinker has other differences with Chomsky, but their views are usually fairly compatible. But I was wrong to say they were not debating anything.
Chomsky is not in any kind of debate with Pinker as far as I know, and as far as I can tell from the article the parent linked to. The two have very similar viewpoints on the matter.
Chomsky put forth the following for how children learn language: it is a simple statistical fact that there are entire kinds of sentences that you understand and produce correctly that you are likely have to never heard before -- like English "Is the woman who is walking her dog Tom's neighbour?" where you are asking a question but there are two mini sentences, one about the woman walking her dog, and one about her being Tom's neighbor.
So you couldn't possibly be learning how to speak English (and not speak non-English) just by observing how often things occur -- because you wind up understanding that perfectly even though it just doesn't come up.
Both the claim that this really is a 'simple statistical fact' and the claim that you couldn't learn they are okay just by observing the statistical pattern have been HOTLY debated. But that is Chomsky's claim.
Something is missing, the argument goes, and that missing chunk must be mechanisms in the brain specifically dedicated to language. This too has been hotly debated, but it is both Chomsky's and Pinker's position (less so Pinker).
TFA bears on this issue in a tangential way. It's known that there's a circuit in bird brains that is required for them to learn their songs properly ('anterior forebrain pathway'). This research sheds some light on why it is required. The way I understand it (IANA neuroscientist), it is a keep-on-trucking circuit that says, 'okay, do it again. and again. and again.' Something like this mechanism is also found in humans, in the basal ganglia, so now we have maybe learned something about us.
However, many people on Chomsky's side are very suspicious of any 'generic' learning mechanisms like trial-and-error. For example, the article mentions babies' repeated babbling as a mechanism of trial-and-error to get the sounds of a language right very early on. But a potential alternate 'language-is-totally-innate' -- Chomsky/Pinker -- explanation might be that babbling does not feed back on itself, and a baby doesn't learn anything from it; rather, the baby's 'language faculty' has not matured (which happens with minimal help from what the baby hears) to the point where it can do anything else. I made this up - this is not a theory about babbling that can be found in the literature -- but it is the kind of alternative to 'general intelligence' that is often proposed.
The parent-linked article is about a book which vehemently denies Chomsky/Pinker's point of view. (FWIW I've read some of the author's other works and I think he's just a troll.)
if you RTFA (including the one YOU linked to) you will find that your article was from UCLA from last year and this one is from MIT from this year and was "received [by the journal] February 4, 2005; ... Published March 29, 2005" (from the pdf, small print in the lower right hand corner of the first page)
somebody hit me with a stick of details please. the story so far:
cddl is an OSI approved license of sun's getting mixed reviews for not being gpl-compatible and raised eyebrows for coming from a corporation.
CA is another corporation with an osi-approved license called trusted open source. a vp there claims here that
some 60 percent of all our Linux revenue will come from outside the United States, and some 95 percent of the [Open Source Initiative]-approved licenses are unenforceable outside the United States
so they want to create one boilerplate license that they can tack on 'regional tweaks' to. people don't trust them, again presumably because they're a corporation (and also because according to the other article they are dreaming if they think they can possibly create such a license).
fill me in here - what were CDDL and TOS created for? what is the big scary conflict apparently brewing? is it the fear that CA's new license will take over open source and somehow lock everyone in to nefarious corporate terms? fill me in.
why on earth is GNOME so RIDICULOUSLY difficult to compile by hand? yes, it's a big and complicated project. so is kde. kde comes in packages: libraries, base, etc.
last time I tried -- admittedly a VERY long time ago -- compiling gnome without the benefit of something like portage was a days-long dependency hunt. dependencies of FINAL releases were often still in CVS only. ick.
if you think that's what computing should be all about, you have WAY too much time on your hands.
pretty sad that you don't realize it's music until you have already studied music.
I can agree with that to a great extent. On the other hand, if we develop new ways of listening, we can be opened to a new world. As humans, we really can enjoy listening to pretty much anything -- but there are definitely some undeniable and unchangeable constraints that many composers don't/didn't take into account or believe in. Some composers just seem to have been better at making the unconventional -- what might well go against certain of those constraints -- sound good.
To put on my music student's hat, I think Milton Babbitt's music is somewhat listenable despite its intricate complexity, and I adore Webern. Boulez and Schoenberg, despite their lofty status, may look good on paper, but frankly, they sound bad. Cage, however, was ingenious, and did absolutely wonderful-sounding things. (And yes, I include even the infamous 4'33". It is beautiful and indeed quite powerful if you know how to listen to it.)
What it means to "not know how to listen to" certain things seems to be one of two things (depending on what you're listening to): (1) Nature (the constraints): human beings can only naturally listen to certain things together without going crazy; (2) Nurture: your inability to listen to something is only because you've grown up not knowing how -- and in fact, this very often reflects society's basic way of living. A Buddhist, for example, would I think take no issue with Cage's comment, "Open your windows -- music!" But most westerners would say something like "This is stupid." Not to be able to listen to a running stream is "sad," I think -- not that I don't partly agree with you.
I've always thought that electronica was one of the closest relatives to traditional classical music where the meter and timing and beat were very similar in both styles of music. But this new electronica doesn't seem to have any of that. It's more like... random recordings of random sounds, no better than the background noise of your room.
I don't suppose you like pretty much any of the classical music written between 1925 and 1965, then. A lot of it really is just random recordings of random sounds, and most of the rest of it sounds like it to someone who hasn't studied music for a good number of years.
I picked up on weirdness there too, but it was mostly the part where the edited final text of the interview says
How militant are you about which licences people use for their software, and how they use them?
People who are not following the (free software) licence are pirates, it's as simple as that.
Sounds like a silly thing for ac to say, right? Well, this implies that the original, unedited response (to whatever question was _really_ asked) was
People who are not following the licence are pirates, it's as simple as that.
Which makes perfect sense, as he goes on to say
It's no different if you take GPL code and don't give people the source code, or if you make copies of movies and sell them to people, it's the same thing. In terms of other software, it really depends on the people who write it. I don't think you have a right to dictate how somebody controls their own work, apart from the very, very basic standard you'd expect.
Read: follow the bloody licence or yer a pirate. I mean, it's pretty clear what he's saying. I'd like to say that Hanlon's Razor ("Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity") applies here; this is rather difficult, because if it's stupidity, what about the relative cluefulness of the interviewer in the rest of the interview? If it's malice, why stop there? Why bother?
I can think of some answers for a few of these questions, I suppose, but none make it too much clearer.
It's pretty straightforward. Before an unvoiced consonant (t, p, th in throw, s, vs. d, b, th in they, z) the [aw] sound ([a] is to all intents and purposes the first vowel in father) is "raised" to the above-mentioned [Vw] sound. This means just what it sounds like. The tongue is at the bottom of the oral cavity for [a] and in the middle for [V]. It also happens with [aj], the diphthong in ride, but that phenomenon is also common all over the US. Anyway, it's there, and with a little training, it'll make you giggle too. Sound clips.
It's one thing to say you think Chomsky's opinions stink and you think he's full of shit. That's a perfectly reasonable opinion. But to claim that he misrepresents facts and context demands proof, which I've yet to see provided.
My problem isn't with checking his sources. The problem is -- I've tried. If you want to be a radical -- just like if you want to refute a radical -- you have to prove it. And all too often Chomsky's articles have quotations in them which would be perfectly good if anyone knew where they came from.
The first example that comes to mind isn't one that could have been taken out of context, I expect, but it would be nice to know who was saying what when. He refers again and again to a quotation he claims is from the "19th-century New England labour press": "Those who work in the mills ought to own them." I don't doubt the validity of this. But how exactly am I supposed to verify it if he doesn't list his sources?
He often does. But Randy Allen Harris, though he has never given specific examples, does complain that Chomsky, on reading his book "The Linguistics Wars" send feedback that repeatedly misrepresented him, and he concluded that Chomsky is "an extraordinarily bad reader" on the LINGUIST list a few years ago. He also gives numerous other examples. I don't have a copy of Skinner's Verbal Behaviour to check it against Chomsky's famous review, but I can say that Chomsky surely holds grudges. In the notes to "Economy of Derivation and Representation" (in The Minimalist Program) he attacks his old opponent James McCawley for "misunderstanding" him. He begins by mentioning that the term "Government and Binding" has been the source of much misunderstanding. At which point he brings up an entirely unrelated "misunderstanding" which is -- no pun intended -- a quibble over semantics. If he wishes to defend himself in the appropriate forum, fine. But here it's unrelated to what he's talking about and completely out of the blue.
What about when he quotes himself? Again, fine. But if he's going to use a quote from The New York Times, he had better do more than "(New York Times)" and in the notes "see Noam Chomsky, Year 501" as he does in "'The Ultimate Weapon'" (in Profit Over People). Why doesn't he consult his own book and give the source?
Whether or not Chomsky misrepresents quotations, this sort of behaviour certainly doesn't reflect well on him, and means that we're more likely to expect him to do such a thing.
then with a nod to the other reply, I think the actual originator of the term "Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris" would have to be Eli S Bingham in the following classic post to
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Solution to all the DOOM posts...
Message-ID: <2dg5jc$hi1@eis.calstate.edu>
From: ebingha@eis.calstate.edu (Eli S Bingham)
Date: 30 Nov 1993 11:06:20 -0800
Organization: Calif State Univ/Electronic Information Services
NNTP-Posting-Host: temp.calstate.edu
Lines: 13
Listen up, ID Software!
Next time you have an impending release of a much anticipated game, make sure it's name is not so cool-sounding as DOOM and much longer to eliminate all of the casual "Where can I get xxx" posts. How about "Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris" for the next game?
The originator of the abbreviation SPISPOPD is the author of the (first?) reply, Leon Patsiatzis (Leon.Patsiatzis@p12.f262.n620.z3.fidonet.org (!)), simply:
Then everybody would call it SPISPOPD 8)
A tremendously long, twisty thread ensued, with Seth Cohn (who was up until now recognized as the originator of the thread) as the perpetrator of such things as a (seemingly vaporous) SPISPOPD FAQ, though I don't think he originated quite ALL the rumours of its greatness (it "runs on any machine (from a C64 through a Cray 2)" and, of course, "can be downloaded from ftp.po_russkii.mit.edu at 10th of December"--apparently DOOM's release date, the endless threads of questions about which this thread was tirelessly poking fun at--among countless other unfunny posts that would never get past the stonedest of Slashdot moderators). But explore this thread for yourself if you think it's worth your time...
Message-ID: <anews.Aucbvax.6208> Newsgroups: fa.space
X-Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!space
From: ucbvax!space
Date: Thu Feb 18 03:58:17 1982
Subject: SPACE Digest V2 #108
X-Google-Info: Converted from the original A-News header
>From OTA@S1-A Thu Feb 18 03:27:49 1982
SPACE Digest
Volume 2 : Issue 108
[Ed. cut many lines of geeky space banter]
Date: 15 February 1982 03:59-EST
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE at MIT-MC>
Subject: Lunar colony and SPS plan
To: REM at MIT-MC
cc: SPACE at MIT-MC
The L-5 Society, using member talent including Dr. David Criswell and other lunar experts, plus SUNSAT people, plus some architects, plus human fctors types, will begin a "Project Deadalus"-like design of a Lunar colony as part of the L-5 Space Citizens conference at teh Hyatt Los Angeles Airport over weeken of 2-4 April.
What's interesting about this isn't just that it was posted by Jerry Pournelle, but also that he manages to leave the 'd' off of "weekend" and the "teh" after "over." Among other glaring tyops. Of course, it was four in the morning.
Wow. Goodbye Nethack, hello prehistoric USENET archives...
I wish Lucas & Co. would get the thing going a little faster. I can't really imagine waiting until 1997 to see all nine parts of the Star Wars series.
neither can I.
I don't have the case to see any details, but I burned (canadian) Jimmy Eat World/Bleed American without a hitch using cdparanoia on an LG (goldstar) CED-8120B. HTH...
Here is the relevant section of the law:
Article 20
1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.
2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.
Now, in general, the UN has pretty reasonable laws -- the world agrees on something, and the US does something else... But, of course, this isn't really rule by the _people_, it's representative of what the world's governments think about civil rights. Frankly, I don't think a law like this is a Bad Thing as long as it says _what_ speech is illegal. After all, it would be really nice if someone threw Rupert Murdoch in jail for disseminating war propaganda...
According to international law, free speech is NOT free speech. Hate talk is illegal under UN regulation, and the US has been in direct violation of the law since they claimed to ratify it in the early 90s. See the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Is it really a Bad Thing? You decide. But it's fact.
I did, however, turn up this article on the booming economy of Northern Iraq (from Radio Free Europe), attributed there to thriving black market exports to Turkey, Iran, and southern Iraq. Interestingly, Rubin points out that during his visit to the area in Iraq he claims is doing so well, he "I watched smugglers load sacks of rice and grain (and whiskey) for export", which is consistent with the more left-wing report from the area.
What's more, in the north, the UN takes responsibility for distributing the cash from the oil sales provided by the inefficient oil-for-food program ("the north ... can use the money to finance U.N.-approved projects"), while Hussein is allowed to use the money as he pleases.
But with (hardly unreasonable) statements from the UN such as "Iraq... is liable under international law for any direct loss, damage, including environmental damage and the depletion of natural resources, or injury to foreign Governments, nationals and corporations, as a result of Iraq's unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait" and the immediately following "all Iraqi statements made since 2 August 1990 repudiating its foreign debt are null and void", they have other things to deal with. In fact, Iraq's economy was not doing well before the war, and has sagged ever since due to the sanctions (see Kamil Mahdi, Rehabilitation Prospects for the Iraqi Economy, which conflicts to a certain extent with the reports of illicit trade supporting the northern economy, but only by deemphasizing its impact on the areas nearest the markets for it).
You are, of course, correct in pointing out that US and UN actions are two very separate things--but I would argue that this does not extend to the actions of the Security Council. I am also embarrassed for speaking before I knew what I was saying. However, I am not convinced.
I agree that elements of the reaction are about as kneejerk as some of the more (IMHO) reprehensible hard-right reactions I've heard expressed, and I agree that military force is often necessary to preserve our own interests (though the "interests" are very often economic--e.g. Cuba and other Latin American communists, and to an extent perhaps the entire Cold War--and sometimes even something entirely different and baffling--I still can't explain the campaign against Kosovo). But "just vote" is offered up all too often as the solution. This is not viable.
The general public is entirely convinced that they can only vote for one of two parties, so any real change is impossible. Meanwhile, the Republicans and Democrats beat back and forth uninteresting and irrelevant economic issues like tax cuts and budget reform (tax cuts, after all, are most significant to the wealthy, and only hurt any social services which might by some miracle resurface in the United States; balancing the budget has a similar effect; most people really only make an attempt to care about either during an election, and only then because that's all anyone talks about), and mostly get elected because of tradition and religious/social positions. It is, as they say, a "two-party system", and if you take a look at how little happens within that system, you may have pretty good reason for calling it, as Chomsky claims, a one-party system.
He's quite the embellisher, and ostensibly very angry, but one must appreciate his ability to see the larger issues, whether or not you believe those larger issues exist, and there's no reason not to take his stance on the sanctions on Iraq.
Iraq's government is busy threatening its neighbors, developing (more) NBC weapons, and trying to exterminate an ethnic minority in its own borders. The US government is squeamish about giving aid to such a regime, especially when its doubtful such aid would actually reach those that need it ("The Republican Guard needs that food more than you do."), but is willing to send such aid if Iraq demonstrates that it neither owns nor is developing weapons of mass destruction.
That aid "may not reach the people" or is politically unpalatable does not seem to be relevant in the case of Afghanistan which has become so high-profile in recent American PR, and that the United States is not at least partly responsible for the suffering in Iraq by denying aid is hardly questionable.
At any rate, I think the best thing to glean from this post is that American promotion of their own interests is often highly detrimental to the rest of the world, which is a pattern we can put quite a bit of faith in having occurred throughout history, but not one we wouldn't like to change.
You lose or we win...
When is the Family Guy returning? Or has it already?
One Must Fall: 2097 was a FAN-FRIKKING-TASTIC game, and I actually *own* a copy. Of course, it's in CP backup format, which means as far as I'm concerned it's irretrievable. But I downloaded a copy from an abandonware site. Which is all very well, except that my machine is WAY too fast for it. Dang it. Anyway, my question is this: does anyone remember an old shareware game called "Stellar Explorer"? It was a DOS game which played in full-screen graphics mode, but ABUSED this privilege... as your character was represented by a small green dot. But it was a WONDERFUL game, and I've had no luck finding any reference to it on the internet. I don't have a copy of it anymore.. anyone?
I can't help but feel a little pity for LinuxOne. All the code they've ever released smells of incompetence. Or, in other words, their programmers are novices. I can imagine what it would be like to be a novice programmer trying to make a living. But wait. My argument fails there... as I realize that the CEO is NOT some starving novice programmer but some desperate veteran spammer. Never mind. So I guess I'll abandon all pity for LinuxOne, because I *know* there are honest ways of making a buck. Sorry that my post in the end became worthless, but it could come in handy helping people eliminate all pity they may have for LinuxOne. So I'll change the subject line appropriately.
> A individual cloned from an original is the same > genetically as the original and therefore of the > same species. What a stupid question! Perhaps you are being a bit naïve. There's a fickle little thing called Twisted Society which will be quite prejudiced. It's fairly plain to see. See such novels as "Friday" and such films as "Gattaca" for reference.
Download manager? You mean like Go!Zilla type thing, equivalent to a reget? Yeah, there's a KDE program called Caitoo.
Err, excuse me. It's not a space dragon, it's a Star Goat. Silly.
Despite the name, the site doesn't claim that LinuxMac is a PPC distro. It says it's "makes reading and writing Macintosh format files viable" which seems to be equivalent to TransMac for Windows. I've tried a couple of times to use Mac disks. I've never been able to get it to work. I assumed it was just a matter of compiling in HFS support. Then I discovered the hfstools and assumed it was just a matter of using those. I didn't try very hard, but I never got it to work. Nevertheless, I think this is an Unnecessary Product. But hey, everybody gets delusions of grandeur. And you never know, they might deliver. Something. Someday.