This sort of stuff is one reason why I hate having to write testplans and end user documentation for my apps at work. At times the formalisms we use to avoid ambiguity really do sound somewhat odd.
Oh yeah... imagine trying to translate this:
Quote:
"You did kill him, didn't you?"
into a language that doesn't have a rhetoric construct. It contains a concept and it's negation, an assertion and a question linked by a comma that adds meaning beyond its usual spacer role. Throw in a some non-neutral context/atmosphere ( like "we might kill you if you answer a certain way" ) and you have a disaster.
Don't worry, I'm not some civil rights nut. But I was 'detained' by the police as a young student for 'fitting the description of a man', which I unwisely admitted to being the case ( ie. my appearance was consistent with being a man ). It transpired that the police actually had no description beyond the true perp's gender.... now in Victoria, police cannot 'verbal' a suspect but must actually have evidence in the usual sense. Confessions are still of interest but they must not contradict physical evidence.
Basically it's this sort of crap that impedes development 'natural language interfaces' to computers. Sort of shows us up actually....
Cheers, Mike.
NB. No, I didn't do it, and in fact I never found out what the crime was, assuming there was one!
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: This sort of stuff is
)
Oh yeah... imagine trying to translate this:
into a language that doesn't have a rhetoric construct. It contains a concept and it's negation, an assertion and a question linked by a comma that adds meaning beyond its usual spacer role. Throw in a some non-neutral context/atmosphere ( like "we might kill you if you answer a certain way" ) and you have a disaster.
Don't worry, I'm not some civil rights nut. But I was 'detained' by the police as a young student for 'fitting the description of a man', which I unwisely admitted to being the case ( ie. my appearance was consistent with being a man ). It transpired that the police actually had no description beyond the true perp's gender.... now in Victoria, police cannot 'verbal' a suspect but must actually have evidence in the usual sense. Confessions are still of interest but they must not contradict physical evidence.
Basically it's this sort of crap that impedes development 'natural language interfaces' to computers. Sort of shows us up actually....
Cheers, Mike.
NB. No, I didn't do it, and in fact I never found out what the crime was, assuming there was one!
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal