A language with a constant ideal grammar (an unmessy one) would not be very useful for human purposes. Meaning crucially depends on the context of utterance, and grammatical infractions are always possible and sometimes necessary for the sake of bettering communication. Strange but true. There is no way, in principle, that a grammar checker can ever get things quite right. An improvement would be to check sentence grammar in relation to surrounding sentences, rather than in isolation (pretty obvious and i'm sure this is already being done by people working on this stuff).
Tense is also a thorny issue. The different uses of the present perfect for example depend on pragmatic, context-based features for disambiguation. And if you're writing a novel there are all sorts of grammar rules (pertaining to normal referring speech) that you can and must break to be intelligible. For example, narrative fiction is always written in the past tense yet a narrator can use deictics like "here" and "now" (in a sentence using the preterite tense). If I were to try that in a business letter however, e.g., "I have told you now that..." should the grammar checker catch me? Not if I'm referring to the paragraph above; but yes if "now" is referring to present sentence (the grammar checker should point out that the present tense should be used).
Maybe there should be an option for the user to tell the grammar checker what genre a particular document is being written in. That is, set down the grammatical rules for particular types of writing. That might help a bit.
But at the end of the day, the idea of a perfect grammar checker is in principle impossible. Precisely because language is messy. And that's a good thing.
You do not have access to the resources available ONLY to university students via the web. This includes electronic versions of thousands of journals, databases, dictionaries, etc, etc. Yes, books are still important, but don't confuse your web with the electronic resources available to students at any major university. We certainly aren't using google (or google scholar:P) for research. At least not those of us getting passing grades.
Ya, the headline/summary is misleading but really people, RTFA. The books are not being burned, simply moved to other locations on campus.
It is true that books no longer play the role they used to in higher learning. As a PhD student, 75% of my reading is journal articles, accessed online from school or by connecting through a VPN. Being able to search out and access this material electronically is a MASSIVE time saver. Sure as hell beats photocopying articles in the library.
"So now, any and all copyright holders - both Google Print partners and non-partners - can tell us which books they'd prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library. To allow plenty of time to review these new options, we won't scan any in-copyright books from now until this November."
So unless told otherwise, Google will assume they have permission to scan copyright work.
For those that bought a prequel, why won't game companies offer a reduced price, like other software companies offer for version upgrades? Why should i shell out $40 for a new Madden every year just because the roster has changed? Sure i'd prefer to have the new version and if i, as a repeat customer, could get it at half price, i'd buy it. Wouldn't the economics of this work for the game comanies?
Point still stands cause a lot of those computers are probably Macs. But, I made an error: three-year contract, $99 per year means it would cost $36 million for M$ on every computer.
the contract could be for 500 Suse licenses -- like.0042% of New Zealand's 120,000 computers. The article doesn't say. Considering that the "three-year licensing contract with Microsoft, Apple and Computer Associates signed [by the ministry] last year was worth $27.5 million" there's no way Linux is going to be the primary desktop OS for NZ schools. At $99 a licence it would only take about $12 million of that $27.5 to make every one of those 120,000 computers a microsoft seat.
I bet UC is paying next to nothing for this with minidawn hoping to profit on more musicians signing up to distribute music through their service (for $50). If i were a struggling band, I'd considering paying $50 to have my music distributed to 200,000 college students.
And i'm sure those of you saying how crap the minidawn music selection is are the same ones calling for RIAA boycots in other post. I, for one, think it's great that a university is choosing to promote non-RIAA music to students.
If i were in the 419 business i'd seriously think about getting out. From the above link:
"The anti-fraud agency [The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission] has arrested over 200 junk mail scam suspects since 2003. It says it has also confiscated property worth $200 million and secured 10 other convictions."
Deciding whether a program is art should be determined by the user, not the programmer.
From the perspective of the programmer, of course programming is an art, in the sense of a craft.
But just because a craft requires creativity does not make the products of that craft works of art. Otherwise most everything would be art (the word "art" loses its meaning).
"Art" is a verdict not a process.
A number of video games have had an "artistic effect" on me. That is, at some level they changed how i see the real world.
"So, how big of a hat do you wear?"
My skull is significantly larger than my wife's. Tonight I'm going to measure each of our skulls to determine the precise differential. That will allow me to estimate the percentage by which my intelligence surpasses hers. Then I'm going to show her a print out of TFA. After that I can always end one of our arguments by citing TFA as proof that I'm smarter and therefore in all likelihood right. My only concern is that the dimunitive size of her brain might prevent her from understanding the profound implications TFA has for our relationship.
i totally agree. it's sony and their "betamax" format i'd be worried about. betamax is technically superior though, so we'll just have to wait and see.
Science must never be politically incorrect (sic). It should be the truth, nothing more and nothing less.
This is a very idealistic view of science. Politics has always governed to a large extent what is permissible within science. To go against the grain is to put your career at stake; in earlier times not only your career but also your life (e.g. Copernicus). Most often though, your work just won't get funded (e.g. Nasa) or see publication. "Truth" in science is what is useful for maintaing the political-capitalist status quo (these days that's weapons for govt., new products for consumers). "Pure" science doesn't exist as far as I know.
Actually, your example could be seen to prove my point. Under certain circumstances the hearer would rightly understand that John went down to the river bank to exchange some money. That's where the black market exchanges happen to occur.
As for "activating representations," don't confuse the mental pictures that words create with meaning.
Slashdot Mirror
The laptop with Robson also opened Adobe Reader in 0.4 seconds, while the other notebook required 5.4 seconds.
Presumably, the other notebook was running Intel's next generation CPU with sixteen cores.
The cat's head was shot off by the hunter. The tail was removed and sent to a lab.
A language with a constant ideal grammar (an unmessy one) would not be very useful for human purposes. Meaning crucially depends on the context of utterance, and grammatical infractions are always possible and sometimes necessary for the sake of bettering communication. Strange but true. There is no way, in principle, that a grammar checker can ever get things quite right. An improvement would be to check sentence grammar in relation to surrounding sentences, rather than in isolation (pretty obvious and i'm sure this is already being done by people working on this stuff).
Tense is also a thorny issue. The different uses of the present perfect for example depend on pragmatic, context-based features for disambiguation. And if you're writing a novel there are all sorts of grammar rules (pertaining to normal referring speech) that you can and must break to be intelligible. For example, narrative fiction is always written in the past tense yet a narrator can use deictics like "here" and "now" (in a sentence using the preterite tense). If I were to try that in a business letter however, e.g., "I have told you now that..." should the grammar checker catch me? Not if I'm referring to the paragraph above; but yes if "now" is referring to present sentence (the grammar checker should point out that the present tense should be used).
Maybe there should be an option for the user to tell the grammar checker what genre a particular document is being written in. That is, set down the grammatical rules for particular types of writing. That might help a bit.
But at the end of the day, the idea of a perfect grammar checker is in principle impossible. Precisely because language is messy. And that's a good thing.
Every slashdotter already knows this. I mean, this place has been in decline for years.
Nothing to see here...
Last time I checked, wasn't Eastern Europe a spot where various hackers, virus writers, spammers and bot nets launch their attacks from?
Ya, that's right. Every programmer in Eastern Europe is a crook.
You do not have access to the resources available ONLY to university students via the web. This includes electronic versions of thousands of journals, databases, dictionaries, etc, etc. Yes, books are still important, but don't confuse your web with the electronic resources available to students at any major university. We certainly aren't using google (or google scholar :P) for research. At least not those of us getting passing grades.
Ya, the headline/summary is misleading but really people, RTFA. The books are not being burned, simply moved to other locations on campus.
It is true that books no longer play the role they used to in higher learning. As a PhD student, 75% of my reading is journal articles, accessed online from school or by connecting through a VPN. Being able to search out and access this material electronically is a MASSIVE time saver. Sure as hell beats photocopying articles in the library.
Have they guaranteed that every piece of printed matter in the library is available in electronic format, equally easy to access, before doing this?
The books were just moved to other libraries on campus.
From TFA:
"This summer, 90,000 volumes were transferred to other collections in the campus's massive library system."
Wasn't that what John Shaft called his apartment?
From your link: Google Weblog is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google, Inc.
Google's actual blog is http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
From there we have:
"So now, any and all copyright holders - both Google Print partners and non-partners - can tell us which books they'd prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library. To allow plenty of time to review these new options, we won't scan any in-copyright books from now until this November."
So unless told otherwise, Google will assume they have permission to scan copyright work.
I got it running and my PC feels snappier now.
For those that bought a prequel, why won't game companies offer a reduced price, like other software companies offer for version upgrades? Why should i shell out $40 for a new Madden every year just because the roster has changed? Sure i'd prefer to have the new version and if i, as a repeat customer, could get it at half price, i'd buy it. Wouldn't the economics of this work for the game comanies?
Point still stands cause a lot of those computers are probably Macs. But, I made an error: three-year contract, $99 per year means it would cost $36 million for M$ on every computer.
:-)
Last time I use calc.exe (work computer).
the contract could be for 500 Suse licenses -- like .0042% of New Zealand's 120,000 computers. The article doesn't say. Considering that the "three-year licensing contract with Microsoft, Apple and Computer Associates signed [by the ministry] last year was worth $27.5 million" there's no way Linux is going to be the primary desktop OS for NZ schools. At $99 a licence it would only take about $12 million of that $27.5 to make every one of those 120,000 computers a microsoft seat.
I bet UC is paying next to nothing for this with minidawn hoping to profit on more musicians signing up to distribute music through their service (for $50). If i were a struggling band, I'd considering paying $50 to have my music distributed to 200,000 college students. And i'm sure those of you saying how crap the minidawn music selection is are the same ones calling for RIAA boycots in other post. I, for one, think it's great that a university is choosing to promote non-RIAA music to students.
The article doesn't it make it clear but the banker was in fact duped through email. A bit more information from Reuters here:
p e=internetNews&storyID=2005-07-16T151736Z_01_N1618 0730_RTRIDST_0_NET-NIGERIA-FRAUD-DC.XML
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?ty
If i were in the 419 business i'd seriously think about getting out. From the above link:
"The anti-fraud agency [The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission] has arrested over 200 junk mail scam suspects since 2003. It says it has also confiscated property worth $200 million and secured 10 other convictions."
Deciding whether a program is art should be determined by the user, not the programmer. From the perspective of the programmer, of course programming is an art, in the sense of a craft. But just because a craft requires creativity does not make the products of that craft works of art. Otherwise most everything would be art (the word "art" loses its meaning). "Art" is a verdict not a process. A number of video games have had an "artistic effect" on me. That is, at some level they changed how i see the real world.
"So, how big of a hat do you wear?" My skull is significantly larger than my wife's. Tonight I'm going to measure each of our skulls to determine the precise differential. That will allow me to estimate the percentage by which my intelligence surpasses hers. Then I'm going to show her a print out of TFA. After that I can always end one of our arguments by citing TFA as proof that I'm smarter and therefore in all likelihood right. My only concern is that the dimunitive size of her brain might prevent her from understanding the profound implications TFA has for our relationship.
i totally agree. it's sony and their "betamax" format i'd be worried about. betamax is technically superior though, so we'll just have to wait and see.
Use a mom-and-pop run internet cafe and boot Knoppix. Use the machine at the back.
http://www.knoppix.org/
Thanks for trying but we'd rather have one good story rather than five crappy ones.
This is a very idealistic view of science. Politics has always governed to a large extent what is permissible within science. To go against the grain is to put your career at stake; in earlier times not only your career but also your life (e.g. Copernicus). Most often though, your work just won't get funded (e.g. Nasa) or see publication. "Truth" in science is what is useful for maintaing the political-capitalist status quo (these days that's weapons for govt., new products for consumers). "Pure" science doesn't exist as far as I know.
No, I understood it in reference to my post.
Actually, your example could be seen to prove my point. Under certain circumstances the hearer would rightly understand that John went down to the river bank to exchange some money. That's where the black market exchanges happen to occur. As for "activating representations," don't confuse the mental pictures that words create with meaning.