Another IT masters thinks he can invent a perfect translation system, simply based on 0s and 1s.
I have said it before, on/. and elsewhere, machine translation does not work.
A good translation is based on several non-quantifiable parameters:
Context.
Grammar.
Vocabulary.
Nuance.
Example:
"My controller has failed. He is going to be replaced" can mean:
My HDD controller is dead. I need to replace it, so that my computer can access its hard disks (For the slashdot crowd).
The financial controller of my company has failed in his/her duty. I need to fire this idiot before the SEC realizes the mess the finances of my company has become (CEO/PHB/Enron crowd).
OK, maybe the above example is not perfect, but you get my drift... Machine Translation? Bah! Humbug.
That was my "machine translation" rant/flamefest of the month. Carry On.
And, frankly, I am still waiting for my robot-butler.
This is purely personal, but I think that AI is a pipe-dream.
Let's face it: I don't think anyone can imitate life -- and its millions of years of evolution -- and its highly complex (albeit crufty) DNA information structure using 0s and 1s.
At least not using the useful, but limited, paradigms of Turing Machines and Von Neumann models (and programming languages and...).
Maybe quantum computers will be able to make it, but that's not before another 20-to-50 years of development and refinement.
Plus, the number 1 problem of humanity now is not robots replacing humans, it is ecological problems, such as pollution, water use, and deforestation. Not to mention unknown killer viruses and North/South inequality...
When we have these problems licked, I believe a robotic society won't be such a big problem after all...
This is a case of PHBs buying into the latest [yoga] fad, or:
This is a case of PHBs trying to pressure employees into working even more than before ("See? we are a gentle, caring company! Now work for 8 more hours... you can, since you have had your yoga classes!"), or:
all of the above.
Frankly, that kind of thing makes me completely mad. What about paying people a decent salary?
What about not over-working them (ie: decent work hours, not permanent overtime)? This way, perhaps your employees won't need frivolous yoga classes to be productive and motivated!
What about managing companies responsibly, not in an Enronesque way?
What about day-care benefits for employees with children? You know, like having in-house day-care center for toddlers, so that moms and dads can see their kids during lunch hour, and not grow apart from their offspring?
Etc... etc... In short: decent and sensible policies? Noooo.... instead, you get these moronic "benefits".
Nothing against yoga, mind you, which I am really interested in, by the way. It's just that replacing sound management policies by yoga classes just doesn't cut it for me.
If I want yoga classes, I'll pay for them out of my own pocket, thank you very much...
(Sorry for the rant, this is the kind of Dilbert-esque "benefits" that just push me over the edge...)
Seriously, though, I think Google would still be king of search...
Amazon would put snippets of book contents online and Google would then rank said snippets according to the number of times they have been linked to by Amazon aficionados.
If I want to know the 'net opinion on, say, The Lucifer Principle, I'll simply go to Google, which will link to the relevant snippets as ranked by the Internet. Interesting, no?
And the flames rose higher and higher, and a million emails were fired in anger...
Script kiddies and geeks, UN*X gurus and bearded free-software prophets all sharpened their r00tkits and compilers and started beating louder and louder on the war drums...
Gee, I love the smell of FUD in the morning... It smells like... like... Victory! =)
[and all of this is said with tongue firmly in cheek, of course!]
At least, I think that's what it was. It came with the first edition of "Linux Unleashed".
Today, several years later, I am still using Slackware, version 9.0, on several computers of mine, and it's still one of the best distros around. (And yes, I have tried Mandrake, Red Hat, Caldera and several BSDs)
Thanks a ton to Patrick Volkerding... May your slack prosper and grow forever more!!
The obvious thing to do is to sue Adobe since their free product discriminates against the blind.
Bzzzzt! Wrong answer!
Abobe is not responsible for the PDF files that are produced by its customers. The "basic" Adobe Acrobat Reader has all the functions necessary to export the document to text for instance. (In Acrobat Reader 5.0/Windows, click on File > Export Document to Text). But it is still possible to create a PDF file that does not allow any manipulation or export...
Non-discrimination laws vs the blind only apply to some countries (AFAIK USA and -- maybe -- Spain). There is no such law in the country where my friend and I live.
Do you have the kind of money that would be necessary to sue Adobe? Do you have enough money in your bank account that it would not matter to you if you actually lost the case? Hmmmm...? Maybe you do... but I don't.
I am definitely going to order one of the Elcomsoft utility for my friend...;-)
Have you got any idea how fscking difficult it is for the poor chap to read "protected"[1] PDF files? Trust me, it's pure hell!!
At least, since Adobe has decided to pull an MS on its users and ignore known problems, maybe I'll be able to crack some of these protected files for my friend, so that he can read them.
So, there are, er, ahem... unexpected benefits to this sh___y Adobe attitude...
Just my US$ 0.02...
[1] "Protected" as in: "can't print, can't copy, can't save as". Yes, Virginia, you can create that kind of PDF files!
Is what kind of database and what kind of software he has used to create the program that is the basis of his PhD.
On a more serious note, I think his work is great. While it certainly has serious security implications, it could also be used by ISPs, telcos, power companies, etc. to disseminate information on outages and/or find the root causes of problems.
Ah, well... I suppose we'll never see the results... but I do hope he gets his PhD.
In the article, he basically says that few companies have the guts to innovate, and that Microsoft does this constantly...
Surprise: Xerox did that way before Microsoft ever thought about it. And Bill himself only thought about it when he saw one of the first demo model of the Apple Lisa (if I remember well). And that's just one example among many.
Microsoft never innovated: it just latched on all the good ideas. GUIs, ACLs, www browsers, spreadsheet, heck, even the mouse was invented by somebody else.
So, what kind of "innovations" has been created by Microsoft? Maybe Clippy. But that's it, and we all know how helpful that is...
And for those who may believe that Microsoft improved on all of these, I have just four words for you: Blue... Screen... Of... Death.
Whew! Enough ranting. You can start modding me down, now.
What about a system that would let you transfer your "karma" or "reputation" from one site to another?
And, specifically for Slashdot: what about a system that would give you precise stats about the state of your karma, such as the number of negative karma moderation?
This is blasphemy!! This, this, this... This is an outrage! Oh, the humanity!
It's time to stop this nonsense once and for all! Coders, Admins, hackers, and yes, even Microsoft employees, virus writers and marketdroids, repeat after me:
No to GMO! We want Real Coffee!
I mean, Decaf' Coffee? If God wanted us to drink this, he would not have invented Starbucks!
Darth Vader, Lord of Sith and Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet, has announced today his intention to sue Sauron of Mordor, the official "Dark Lord" of Middle Earth, for violating his Intellectual Property (IP).
Darth Vader spokesdroid K4VC5 briefly commented to the intergalactic press: "Darth Vader is, most certainly, the original Dark Lord, and we feel that Sauron of Mordor, no matter how creative and evil, has no right to call himself the 'Dark Lord' of Middle Earth". He added that Darth Vader legal team would pursue damages worth "several billions" of Galactic Credits.
Sauron, Dark Lord of Middle Earth, was unavailable to comment, but well-informed sources close to Mordor report that "his evilness" promised to rain death and destruction on the first legal storm trooper to ever set foot on Middle Earth.
Darth Vader spokesdroid also confirmed that Lucifer, the star attorney of Mephistopheles, Baal, Satan & Associates Law Firm (LLC) has been retained to defend a case which promises to be one of the toughest legal fight in the history of Evil(tm).
Lucifer first (and best known) legal battle involved the semitic God YHWH (pronounced: "Yahweh") for the control of the "Garden of Eden" real-estate property. That case was widely considered a draw, and was settled out of court.
Dr Evil, widely considered as an authority on Evil(tm) only commented: "Bwa ha ha ha ha ha!", and declined to elaborate any further.
Yes, that long wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*splat*
That's the sound of one hundred SCO lawyers crashing hard on the ground and making all kind of nice little craters. Now, they know why IBM is nicknamed "Big Blue".
People, you have to remember that EU citizens have a healthy habit of just plain ignoring idiotic laws such as this one. And law enforcement people usually don't... ahem... enforce them...
Which is why I cannot too worried about it. Crypto was outlawed in France for years, for instance, but getting PGP was as simple as calling your firendly neighbourhood BBS and firing up that ZModem (I know, this happened to me!).
Besides, I doubt SCO (or Microsoft, or...) are stupid enough to attack something like Slashdot (or your personal web site), so we are all probably safe for the moment.
Finally, if you have juicy information on, say, a clear violation of the GPL by Microsoft, you'd better back it up with some serious proof, so that MS can't sue you into oblivion...
Slashdot Mirror
I have said it before, on
A good translation is based on several non-quantifiable parameters:
Example:
"My controller has failed. He is going to be replaced" can mean:
OK, maybe the above example is not perfect, but you get my drift... Machine Translation? Bah! Humbug.
That was my "machine translation" rant/flamefest of the month. Carry On.
And, frankly, I am still waiting for my robot-butler.
This is purely personal, but I think that AI is a pipe-dream.
Let's face it: I don't think anyone can imitate life -- and its millions of years of evolution -- and its highly complex (albeit crufty) DNA information structure using 0s and 1s.
At least not using the useful, but limited, paradigms of Turing Machines and Von Neumann models (and programming languages and...).
Maybe quantum computers will be able to make it, but that's not before another 20-to-50 years of development and refinement.
Plus, the number 1 problem of humanity now is not robots replacing humans, it is ecological problems, such as pollution, water use, and deforestation. Not to mention unknown killer viruses and North/South inequality...
When we have these problems licked, I believe a robotic society won't be such a big problem after all...
Frankly, that kind of thing makes me completely mad. What about paying people a decent salary?
What about not over-working them (ie: decent work hours, not permanent overtime)? This way, perhaps your employees won't need frivolous yoga classes to be productive and motivated!
What about managing companies responsibly, not in an Enronesque way?
What about day-care benefits for employees with children? You know, like having in-house day-care center for toddlers, so that moms and dads can see their kids during lunch hour, and not grow apart from their offspring?
Etc... etc... In short: decent and sensible policies? Noooo.... instead, you get these moronic "benefits".
Nothing against yoga, mind you, which I am really interested in, by the way. It's just that replacing sound management policies by yoga classes just doesn't cut it for me.
If I want yoga classes, I'll pay for them out of my own pocket, thank you very much...
(Sorry for the rant, this is the kind of Dilbert-esque "benefits" that just push me over the edge...)
What part of "GNU is not UNIX" don't you understand, SCO??
;-)
There... I feel better...
Seriously, though, I think Google would still be king of search...
Amazon would put snippets of book contents online and Google would then rank said snippets according to the number of times they have been linked to by Amazon aficionados.
If I want to know the 'net opinion on, say, The Lucifer Principle, I'll simply go to Google, which will link to the relevant snippets as ranked by the Internet. Interesting, no?
And the flames rose higher and higher, and a million emails were fired in anger...
Script kiddies and geeks, UN*X gurus and bearded free-software prophets all sharpened their r00tkits and compilers and started beating louder and louder on the war drums...
Gee, I love the smell of FUD in the morning... It smells like... like... Victory! =)
[and all of this is said with tongue firmly in cheek, of course!]
At least, I think that's what it was. It came with the first edition of "Linux Unleashed".
Today, several years later, I am still using Slackware, version 9.0, on several computers of mine, and it's still one of the best distros around. (And yes, I have tried Mandrake, Red Hat, Caldera and several BSDs)
Thanks a ton to Patrick Volkerding... May your slack prosper and grow forever more!!
Here, and here.
(All links courtesy of google).
Bzzzzt! Wrong answer!
But it is still possible to create a PDF file that does not allow any manipulation or export...
I am definitely going to order one of the Elcomsoft utility for my friend...
As I have said before, one of my friend is blind.
Have you got any idea how fscking difficult it is for the poor chap to read "protected"[1] PDF files? Trust me, it's pure hell!!
At least, since Adobe has decided to pull an MS on its users and ignore known problems, maybe I'll be able to crack some of these protected files for my friend, so that he can read them.
So, there are, er, ahem... unexpected benefits to this sh___y Adobe attitude...
Just my US$ 0.02...
[1] "Protected" as in: "can't print, can't copy, can't save as". Yes, Virginia, you can create that kind of PDF files!
Is what kind of database and what kind of software he has used to create the program that is the basis of his PhD.
On a more serious note, I think his work is great. While it certainly has serious security implications, it could also be used by ISPs, telcos, power companies, etc. to disseminate information on outages and/or find the root causes of problems.
Ah, well... I suppose we'll never see the results... but I do hope he gets his PhD.
... like me, you read the following line:
/home directory? Swap space problems?
Somebody believed that a Cyberangels' dick was too small.
as:
Somebody believed that a Cyberangels' disk was too small.
I was like wtf? Disk too small? Not enough space in the
Then, I re-read the line, and I went:
Oh, THAT thing is too small... =)
The time has come, repent all you sinners, for the shiny saucers of the sex goddess are coming to deliver us!
This, as everybody knows, has been predicted in the Holy Scriptures of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs! Convert before it is too late, heathens!
Yes, that's the coolest job in the world.
As a matter of fact, this is the job I have always wanted, but I never realized it until today and this Slashdot article.
My day is now ruined. Heck, my entire life is ruined!
I hate you Slashdot, you, you... insensitive clod!
You forgot to add the canonical ending:
I AM a German lawyer and it is the FIRST article I have understood on Slashdot!
you insensitive clod!
Please try to post properly, this is Slashdot, you know.
In the article, he basically says that few companies have the guts to innovate, and that Microsoft does this constantly...
Surprise: Xerox did that way before Microsoft ever thought about it. And Bill himself only thought about it when he saw one of the first demo model of the Apple Lisa (if I remember well). And that's just one example among many.
Microsoft never innovated: it just latched on all the good ideas. GUIs, ACLs, www browsers, spreadsheet, heck, even the mouse was invented by somebody else.
So, what kind of "innovations" has been created by Microsoft? Maybe Clippy. But that's it, and we all know how helpful that is...
And for those who may believe that Microsoft improved on all of these, I have just four words for you: Blue... Screen... Of... Death.
Whew! Enough ranting. You can start modding me down, now.
The interesting thing is that ATT is a client of Reasoning.
Makes you wonder if they may have tested OSs like Plan9 or Inferno... They probably haven't tested the original UNIX code, though.
SCO CEO: that thing is bullet-proof!
IBM lawyer (pointing fingers at CEO's chest): Bang.
SCO CEO: Aaaaaaaaarrrrgghhhhh...
Army Intelligence.
A contradiction in terms.
'Nuff said.
Hmmmm... Mint sauce boiled +50 trolls... =)
Not a bad idea overall...
For the Slashdot editors, and others:
What about a system that would let you transfer your "karma" or "reputation" from one site to another?
And, specifically for Slashdot: what about a system that would give you precise stats about the state of your karma, such as the number of negative karma moderation?
Just a suggestion...
*Jaw drops open*
;-)
This is blasphemy!! This, this, this... This is an outrage! Oh, the humanity!
It's time to stop this nonsense once and for all! Coders, Admins, hackers, and yes, even Microsoft employees, virus writers and marketdroids, repeat after me:
No to GMO! We want Real Coffee!
I mean, Decaf' Coffee? If God wanted us to drink this, he would not have invented Starbucks!
Oh, wait... I am a tea drinker...
Err... Well, never mind me. Carry on...
DEATH STAR (AP) 2003/06/18 --
Darth Vader, Lord of Sith and Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet, has announced today his intention to sue Sauron of Mordor, the official "Dark Lord" of Middle Earth, for violating his Intellectual Property (IP).
Darth Vader spokesdroid K4VC5 briefly commented to the intergalactic press: "Darth Vader is, most certainly, the original Dark Lord, and we feel that Sauron of Mordor, no matter how creative and evil, has no right to call himself the 'Dark Lord' of Middle Earth". He added that Darth Vader legal team would pursue damages worth "several billions" of Galactic Credits.
Sauron, Dark Lord of Middle Earth, was unavailable to comment, but well-informed sources close to Mordor report that "his evilness" promised to rain death and destruction on the first legal storm trooper to ever set foot on Middle Earth.
Darth Vader spokesdroid also confirmed that Lucifer, the star attorney of Mephistopheles, Baal, Satan & Associates Law Firm (LLC) has been retained to defend a case which promises to be one of the toughest legal fight in the history of Evil(tm).
Lucifer first (and best known) legal battle involved the semitic God YHWH (pronounced: "Yahweh") for the control of the "Garden of Eden" real-estate property. That case was widely considered a draw, and was settled out of court.
Dr Evil, widely considered as an authority on Evil(tm) only commented: "Bwa ha ha ha ha ha!", and declined to elaborate any further.
That's all for business news. Film at 11.
Yes, that long wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*splat*
That's the sound of one hundred SCO lawyers crashing hard on the ground and making all kind of nice little craters. Now, they know why IBM is nicknamed "Big Blue".
A good start, if you ask me.
Bye bye, SCO. We hardly knew you.
People, you have to remember that EU citizens have a healthy habit of just plain ignoring idiotic laws such as this one. And law enforcement people usually don't... ahem... enforce them...
...) are stupid enough to attack something like Slashdot (or your personal web site), so we are all probably safe for the moment.
Which is why I cannot too worried about it. Crypto was outlawed in France for years, for instance, but getting PGP was as simple as calling your firendly neighbourhood BBS and firing up that ZModem (I know, this happened to me!).
Besides, I doubt SCO (or Microsoft, or
Finally, if you have juicy information on, say, a clear violation of the GPL by Microsoft, you'd better back it up with some serious proof, so that MS can't sue you into oblivion...
In short: nothing to see here. Carry on.