OT Where's my royalties?

[Just Zis Guy]

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 15:00:55 +0100, "Tony Raven"
<[email protected]> wrote in message
<[email protected]>:

>"Initialisms are sequences of letters representing the
>initial letters of the expression they stand for (e.g. USA,
>MP, OED). Sometimes initialisms are pronounced as words
>(e.g. NATO, UNESCO), in which case they are called
>acronyms. Abbreviations are shortened forms of longer
>words, which are used as words in their own right (e.g.
>'pic' for 'picture')."

The people at the OED think an acronym must be
pronouncable, the ones at Merriam-Webster don't. Which
makes it, in their view, functionally indistinguishable
from an initialism, I guess.

I'm on record as being with the OED on this one:
<url:http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A700912>

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after
posting. http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at
Washington University

 

[Alan Braggins]

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
>
>The people at the OED think an acronym must be
>pronouncable, the ones at Merriam-Webster don't. Which
>makes it, in their view, functionally indistinguishable
>from an initialism, I guess.
>
>I'm on record as being with the OED on this one:
><url:http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A700912>

So what's your position on INTERCAL (which stands for
"Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym")?

 

[Keith Willoughb]

Jon Senior wrote:

> Tony Raven [email protected] opined the following...
>> As has been pointed out, all the logic in the world will
>> not help with intrinisically indeterminate situations.
>> That's the basis of both chaos theory and quantum theory.
>
> Really? What is an "intrinsically indeterminate
> situation"?

IIRC, cats are involved.

--
Keith Willoughby http://flat222.org/keith/ "The future's so
dull I've got to sing torch songs"

 

[Jon Senior]

Ian G Batten [email protected] opined the
following...
> But a google search reveals 322000 hits on ``pin number''.
> Which is enough corpus evidence to say it's in widespread,
> common use. Amusingly, the second hit is another pedant,
> whining.

Which would suggest that a significant number of people are
aware of the inherent redundancy in the phrase.

Jon

 

[Jon Senior]

Ian G Batten [email protected] opined the
following...
> > The people who use them tend to.
>
> They don't. Some, with excessive zeal for imposing order,
> do. They end up in the Simplified English Society, or
> banging on about Esperanto. The rest of us like our
> language rich and chewy, filled with ambiguity and
> complexity.

You appear confused. Try considering the differences between
"Queen's English" and spoken English, or even those
differences between local dialects. Up here in bonny
Scotland the phrase "That's something that needs done"
Appears a lot. The continuous form has been dropped in this
example. This is a simplification. It's not some zealot
"banging on about Esperanto", it is (as you are so fond of
pointing out) common usage, which often leads to simplicity.

I am very fond of the complexity of English, and my interest
in Russian stems from its greater complexity.

> > Your words: "the leading historical dictionary".
>
> Exactly. So its relevance to English as it's spoken today
> is pretty low. Certainly, an adult learner of English as a
> foreign language would do well to go elsewhere if they
> want to (a) be understood and (b) understand what's said
> to them.

Despite your numerous calls to the case of the common man,
you seem to misunderstand what a dictionary is for. Ask
someone what they'd do if they came across a word that they
didn't understand. Most would suggest a dictionary.

> Common usage and (therefore) corpus evidence. That's all
> that's needed. If people who speak English say something,
> that _is_ English.

...or a dialect of English.

Incidentally... your last sentence is a perfect example of
circular reasoning (Or having no loose ends as Scott Adams
would have it).

Jon

 

[Jon Senior]

Tony Raven [email protected] opined the following...
> Back to the (now) topic of this thread, one of the
> proposed tests of artificial intelligence was whether the
> sentence "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a
> banana" was understood.

Not a test of AI so much as a test of lexical analysis. The
problem comes in recognising the compound noun in the second
half of the sentence. In terms of formal (non-fuzzy)
programming styles a check for possible compound nouns could
be included which could be broken by the inclusion of a
sentence which reads correctly (And sensibly) with both a
compound noun, and a separate noun and verb. (That should
keep you occupied during the long winter evenings ;-) )

Jon

 

[Jon Senior]

Tony Raven [email protected] opined the following...
> But for reasons that have no logic behind them they apply
> Occam's Razor to their efforts.

Because it works. In the real world, 99 times in 100 the
simplest explanation is the correct one.

And for what it's worth, science is based on the principle
of disproving hypotheses rather than the application of
Occam's Razor.

> In fact for reasons that have no logic other than it seems
> to work, they describe the world with a tool called
> mathematics. Which is where the boundaries between science
> and religion start to blur.

Although I do agree that may people follow science as a
religion, the principle difference between the two is that
science is predictive. With the exception of the Bible Code
(A more dubious application of maths is hard to find),
religion can not and does not predict.

Jon

 

[Jon Senior]

Alan Braggins [email protected] opined the
following...
> Presumably you mean "Presumably Jon also objects to the
> modern use of ...". I don't object to the modern use of
> computer, or calculator, or printer, or laser, or lase, or
> grovel. (Ok, the back formation of grovel from groveling
> isn't really "modern", being 16th C, but presumably Jon
> finds it equally objectionable if he's being consistent.)

Will you all please stop trying to decide what I think, and
actually read what I say!

My issue was over the incorrect use of "phonetic" in the
case of the "NATO phonetic alphabet". I was under the
impression that "lasing" had been conjured up with no roots.
I was wrong. I have admitted that.

Jon

 

[Jon Senior]

Tony Raven [email protected] opined the following...
> As has been pointed out, all the logic in the world will
> not help with intrinisically indeterminate situations.
> That's the basis of both chaos theory and quantum theory.

Really? What is an "intrinsically indeterminate situation"?

Jon

 

[Just Zis Guy]

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 21:18:01 +0100, Jon Senior
<jon_AT_restlesslemon_DOTco_DOT_uk> wrote in message
<[email protected]>:

> What is an "intrinsically indeterminate situation"?

How could I possibly know?

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after
posting. http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at
Washington University

 

[Keith Willoughb]

Jon Senior wrote:

> Keith Willoughby [email protected] opined the following...
>> Jon Senior wrote:
>>
>> > Tony Raven [email protected] opined the
>> > following...
>> >> As has been pointed out, all the logic in the world
>> >> will not help with intrinisically indeterminate
>> >> situations. That's the basis of both chaos theory and
>> >> quantum theory.
>> >
>> > Really? What is an "intrinsically indeterminate
>> > situation"?
>>
>> IIRC, cats are involved.
>
> IIRC Shrodinger <sp?> proposed his "example" as a
> demonstration to one of his students. The problem being
> that having proposed it he came to the conclusion that it
> was all b*ll*cks!

So is the cat dead, or not?

--
Keith Willoughby http://flat222.org/keith/ Monmore,
hare's running

 

[Keith Willoughb]

Jon Senior wrote:

> Keith Willoughby [email protected] opined the following...
>> So is the cat dead, or not?
>
> That depends on whether the atom decayed...

And did it?

--
Keith Willoughby http://flat222.org/keith/ "You are the real
un-Americans and you should be ashamed of yourselves."
- Paul Robeson to the HUAC

 

[Jon Senior]

Keith Willoughby [email protected] opined the following...
> Jon Senior wrote:
>
> > Tony Raven [email protected] opined the following...
> >> As has been pointed out, all the logic in the world
> >> will not help with intrinisically indeterminate
> >> situations. That's the basis of both chaos theory and
> >> quantum theory.
> >
> > Really? What is an "intrinsically indeterminate
> > situation"?
>
> IIRC, cats are involved.

IIRC Shrodinger <sp?> proposed his "example" as a
demonstration to one of his students. The problem being
that having proposed it he came to the conclusion that it
was all b*ll*cks!

Jon

 

[Jon Senior]

Keith Willoughby [email protected] opined the following...
> So is the cat dead, or not?

That depends on whether the atom decayed...

Jon

 

[Alan Braggins]

In article <[email protected]>, Keith Willoughby wrote:
>
>So is the cat dead, or not?

Yes.

 

[Jon Senior]

Keith Willoughby [email protected] opined the following...
> And did it?

I wont know until I open the box.

Jon

 

[Tony Raven]

Jon Senior wrote:
> Tony Raven [email protected] opined the following...
>
>>As has been pointed out, all the logic in the world will
>>not help with intrinisically indeterminate situations.
>>That's the basis of both chaos theory and quantum theory.
>
>
> Really? What is an "intrinsically indeterminate
> situation"?
>

There is not the space here for a primer on quantum
theory and the uncertainty principle or the fundamentals
of chaos theory. I suggest you read up some standard
texts on the subject

Tony

 

[Tony Raven]

Keith Willoughby wrote:

>
> So is the cat dead, or not?
>

Of course it is - from old age or starvation if nothing
else. So is Schrödinger. The concept is not though -
http://physicsweb.org/article/news/4/7/2

Tony

 

[Jon Senior]

Tony Raven [email protected] opined the following...
> There is not the space here for a primer on quantum
> theory and the uncertainty principle or the fundamentals
> of chaos theory. I suggest you read up some standard
> texts on the subject

From memory, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle stated that
you could only observe one aspect of a particle. Doing so
would have an effect on the other aspect (Aspects = position
/ momentum). He simply showed that observation involved
interaction. While you may not be able to know the
everything about a given particle, you can predict the
behaviour of a theoretical known particle.

Chaos theory does not actually consitute "chaos". The high-
order chaos is a result of low-order logic.

The above is the simple understandings that I remember from
my interests in the subject a few years back.

Given full knowledge of a system, you can predict the
behaviour of that system. The problem is obtaining full
knowledge. "Intrinsically indeterminate" would suggest to me
"unpredictable".

Jon

 

[Just Zis Guy]

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 23:17:35 +0100, Jon Senior
<jon_AT_restlesslemon_DOTco_DOT_uk> wrote in message
<[email protected]>:

>Keith Willoughby [email protected] opined the following...

Not in my newsreader he didn't, and I haven't got a filter
for him either. I wonder why?

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after
posting. http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at
Washington University