A call for 1 million programmers

[Lew]

It *does* work in German, and not every gemran sentecne is bound to
contian contratced words
If trehe actually are scuh in a sentcene, then proabbly not eevn a
"only within the separate words"-scramiblng wolud hlep, thugoh.

The theory breaks down a little in that all this scramblespeak is much slower
and harder to read than correct spelling. Yes, one can parse it out, but it's
through a process of visualized unscrambling that breaks down more the farther
the signal gets from a meaningful one.

It is not really surprising that there is redundancy in human language; it's a
well-observed and well-examined phenomenon. It's not really surprising that
our brains are capable of some sort of CRC-like error correction on linguistic
input. It's not really surprising that the more bits of error there are in
the signal, the harder it is to reconstruct the (putatively) correct signal.
All these uncited references to uncited research make for cute urban legendry,
but it's not really surprising information.

Also, reading all these scrambled messages is making my head hurt. There is
definitely some strain involved. I speculate that the strain is proportionate
to the error rate in the signal.

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

The theory breaks down a little in that all this scramblespeak is much slower
and harder to read than correct spelling.

Actually, this isn't my experience, and it's also not what the mentioned
study was all about.
The recently-in-this thread quoted text, that went over the net a couple
of years ago, was indeed so easy to read, that it went almost
unconsciously, until one read it in the scrambled text, that it was
indeed scrambled. perhaps it followed more than just the stated rules.

Also, reading all these scrambled messages is making my head hurt.
[...] There is definitely some strain involved.
I speculate that the strain is proportionate to the error rate in the signal.

I claim it is less (but also not zero) -- provided the mentioned rules
are followed. There might even be some more rules, though, because on
re-reading my own text, the "scuh" (for "such") did indeed disturb my
flow of redaing...

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

How easy is to dissect these words in German?
My "forbrukerombudsmann" example for Norwegian indicated that it's
not necessarily easy to know when to stop splitting them up

I seem to have missed that example. (and it's explanation)
I'll re-read it afterwards...

Anyway, I think that german's long words are easy to take apart.

These combo-words do not really exist as such, (exceptions are of course
numerous but are mostly constructed ad-hoc. Often it's a way of
omitting the genitive case: a "X of Y" becomes a "YX". e.g.: the
shell of a snail would become a "snailshell".

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

Another interesting word might be "forbrukerombudsmann", which is
built from "forbruker" (consumer) and ombudsmann (ombudsman).
Then again, "ombud" appears to be an older contraction of "om"
("around" perhaps - in a geographical sense) and "bud" (messenger most
likely)...

This I write now after the other posting in this thread...

"Ombudsmann" is also a common word in german, but "ombud(s)" has
no meaning at all, so either it's a norwegian invention that flew
into other langs, or any attempt at splitting it into single
norwegian words would be a retro-fitting task

The "forbruker" seems to correllate with german "Verbraucher", in which
the "ver" isn't really a word on it's own, and "braucher", while being
a grammatically correct substantivisation of verb "brauchen" (use), is
hardly ever used. "verbrauchen" is rather "consume" than "use", so the
better translation for "Verbraucher" is the consumer.

 

[Bent C Dalager]

"Ombudsmann" is also a common word in german, but "ombud(s)" has
no meaning at all, so either it's a norwegian invention that flew
into other langs, or any attempt at splitting it into single
norwegian words would be a retro-fitting task

As far as I am aware, "ombudsman" came from either Norwegian or
Swedish and was adopted into other languages pretty much as-is.

dictionary.com says:
[Origin: 1910-15; < Sw: legal representative, equiv. to ombud agent,
attorney + -s s1 + -man -man]

The "forbruker" seems to correllate with german "Verbraucher", in which
the "ver" isn't really a word on it's own, and "braucher", while being
a grammatically correct substantivisation of verb "brauchen" (use), is
hardly ever used. "verbrauchen" is rather "consume" than "use", so the
better translation for "Verbraucher" is the consumer.

Now being at home, I have checked my (rather extensive paper)
dictionary and it says that "forbruker" comes from German
"verbraucher", so it it is probably considered a non-composite word
here. "Bruker" remains a commonly used word on its own in Norway and
it seems natural to speculate that "forbruker" was built with this
word at its root (which it evidently wasn't). This illustrates the
difficulty in trying to break down such composite words after they've
matured for a couple of generations

Cheers,
Bent D

 

[Bent C Dalager]

As far as I am aware, "ombudsman" came from either Norwegian or
Swedish and was adopted into other languages pretty much as-is.

I checked my paper dictionary for this one also, and it says that
Norwegian "ombudsmann" came from old Norwegian (think "norse" I
suppose) umbothsmathr, and that the modern "ombud" likewise came from
old Norwegian "umboth". This even makes it difficult to determine if
the modern "ombudsmann" should be considered a composite word
consisting of the two modern words "ombuds" and "mann", or whether it
should be considered the atomic continuation of "norse" umbothsmathr.
Intuitively, it seems like the former but according to the dictionary,
it is the latter.

My advise is simply not to try and dissect modern Norwegian
"composite" words - at least not ones that have been around a while.

(For the curious: I am referring to Norsk riksmålsordbok above, which
is considered rather authoritative on the branch of Norwegian in
question.)

Cheers,
Bent D

 

[Lars Enderin]

Bent C Dalager skrev:

I checked my paper dictionary for this one also, and it says that
Norwegian "ombudsmann" came from old Norwegian (think "norse" I
suppose) umbothsmathr, and that the modern "ombud" likewise came from
old Norwegian "umboth". This even makes it difficult to determine if
the modern "ombudsmann" should be considered a composite word
consisting of the two modern words "ombuds" and "mann", or whether it
should be considered the atomic continuation of "norse" umbothsmathr.
Intuitively, it seems like the former but according to the dictionary,
it is the latter.

According to my Webster it's a Swedish word.

 

[Bent C Dalager]

Bent C Dalager skrev:
According to my Webster it's a Swedish word.

The English "ombudsman" apparently came from Swedish, but the
Norwegian word came from old Norse. Presumably, the Swedish word is
from old Norse also.

Cheers,
Bent D

 

[Andrew Thompson]

That is a great example Andrew, ..

You're welcome. See the example of 'trimming' above.

How many programmers have you conned into promising
you $10 a month? If you can get the million - that
should be enough to retire on.

 

[Lew]

The theory breaks down a little in that all this scramblespeak is much slower
and harder to read than correct spelling.

Actually, this isn't my experience, and it's also not what the mentioned
study was all about.
The recently-in-this thread quoted text, that went over the net a couple
of years ago, was indeed so easy to read, that it went almost
unconsciously, until one read it in the scrambled text, that it was
indeed scrambled. perhaps it followed more than just the stated rules.

Also, reading all these scrambled messages is making my head hurt.
[...] There is definitely some strain involved.
I speculate that the strain is proportionate to the error rate in the signal.

I claim it is less (but also not zero) -- provided the mentioned rules
are followed. There might even be some more rules, though, because on
re-reading my own text, the "scuh" (for "such") did indeed disturb my
flow of redaing...

Plus, individuals vary. I have noticed that I am more sensitive to misspelled
(English) words than most folks I know.

 

[Christian]

I expect this to be more true for a language like English than it is
for e.g. German or Norwegian, where you can build very long words from
a series of shorter ones. The words "a yolelw bgugy wihp" (a yellow
buggy whip) are probably easier to comprehend than "a ylbeolwwghuigyp"
(a yellowbuggywhip) for instance (even if that wouldn't be an entirely
correct contraction in Norwegian at least, the point remains).

Cheers,
Bent D

It works with German as well..
though it is fun to try the same experiment with someone who just
learned to read..
Some student between Grade 2 and 4.
There this experiment doesn't work .. lack of training.. still reading
every letter...

 

[Daniel Pitts]

It works with German as well..
though it is fun to try the same experiment with someone who just
learned to read..
Some student between Grade 2 and 4.
There this experiment doesn't work .. lack of training.. still reading
every letter...

It would be even more interesting to try a more complicated experiment
with highly trained speed readers. Can you scramble the order of words
in a sentence and still have it readable by a speed reader as if it
weren't scrambled? Can you also scrambled the letters in those words?
Can you move letters between words? Can you leave words out completely?

I should have been a researcher

 

[Lew]

It would be even more interesting to try a more complicated experiment
with highly trained speed readers. Can you scramble the order of words
in a sentence and still have it readable by a speed reader as if it
weren't scrambled? Can you also scrambled the letters in those words?
Can you move letters between words? Can you leave words out completely?

Which of these scrambled-word-order sentences conveys the intended meaning?

"It spills the flow in the past behind."
"It spills the past in the flow behind."
"The spills in the behind flow past it."

 

[Daniel Pitts]

Which of these scrambled-word-order sentences conveys the intended meaning?

"It spills the flow in the past behind."
"It spills the past in the flow behind."
"The spills in the behind flow past it."

It depends on context, now doesn't it.

In your examples, "it" would most likely be specified contextually, and
that would be likely to help disambiguate the sentence.

My point was that if "average" readers can disambiguate scrambled words
based on there location in the sentence, can "great" readers
disambiguate sentences based on there location in the larger context.

Adding to your example:
"Tanker bridge the hit a. It spills the past in the flow behind."

Anyway, I'm not a speed reader, I've only got 300-500WPM reading. I
don't know if what I'm suggesting *is* possible, but research on it
interesting would be.

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

I don't know if what I'm suggesting *is* possible, but research on it
interesting would be.

Money for such a study you to collect have ...

Obviously, little ol' yoda's type of scrambling quite understandably
through came...

 

[mpfounder]

Interesting idea, but what exactly are you trying to achieve with 1M
programmers? I am curious, as I read the post on the group you pointed
to, but did not get any idea of the eventual goal. Not to discourage
you or anything, but it'd really help if you get the basics set up and
documented in a bulleted form, easy to understand, and then advertise
the initiative. This will help you get motivated team members, rather
than a confused bunch of folks too early in the game.

-cheers,
Manish

Hello Manish,
The goal is to build a General Platform and set of tools that can be
used to create "temporal software" that can create for itself,
hierarchical temporal models of the real world, the online world, and
interact with them. Applications for such involve too many areas to
list...use your imagination.

Right now we live in a world with Software that can't do anything
excepting what it is specifically programmed to do. We've got
millions of programmers out there that re-invent (metaphorically
speaking) the Wheel a hundred thousand times over. Don't get me wrong
there are lots of applications being built that are useful, but it is
still just "programming" as usual. Ask yourself, what is there to get
really excited about these days?

As said in my original post, we all have as much information as we can
handle, we need tools to take us to another level, to do things that
we dream of doing. Life is short.

The purpose of the Million Programmers is to see how many like minded
programmers exist out there that want to do something meaningful and
take advantage of the time we have. I'm purposely giving limited
information, with the intention of giving more later when and if
things proceed. Right now persons that are interested need only sign
up to the group and try to get others to do the same. It doesn't cost
any money to list your name, and doesn't necessarily involve a further
present time commitment, although it would be helpful, if people would
like to see what is alluded to happen, that they try to bring others
on board and to be positive not negative.

 

[mpfounder]

Most of the text is fluff, but the real key is this sentence, about 20
lines down:

"Every programmer involved will be asked to pay a small subscription
payment every month (perhaps $10) to the project's then to be
formed, parent company."

Can you spell "pyramid scam"?

/gordon

A pyramid but not a scam. There is nothing to lose unless your
worried about that $10 commitment that you can decide later about,
when and if a substantial number of programmers decide to join. As
mentioned if you have a better idea then gather a like minded group
from the Million Programmers members, and go do it!

 

[mpfounder]

Yes, I can, but that's not a pyramid scam. A pyramid scam is where you
pay to join, but then get a cut of the membership fees from those who
you recruit. You have to recruit more than one person to break even,
and each person you recruit has to recruit more than one, and so on.
Hence, the pyramid: each generation of recruits has to recruit a larger
generation.

This sounds like a more basic scam: send the top guys $10/month for
nothing!

The cost right now is $0 and the price of admission is to sign into
the group and say, you are interested. Once the group grows to a
substantial number, or the Million, there will be some subscription
cost to cover operational expenses and to give the project a budget to
work from. Anyone can choose to not pay the subscription, if they feel
that the project does not merit it. So if there is no value then
there is no need to go further. Really there is no catch here.

 

[mpfounder]

"Once the million programmer threshold is reached, things will be
more formally organized"

Apparently they don't really feel it's necessary to organize *fewer*
than 1M...

/gordon

--

Sure, we'll organize with less than a million. But why not stretch
and be optimistic. If Facebook, MySpace, Linked In, Digg and so many
others can do it virally, why can't this project? If only a thousand
eventually join I'd still think it would have potential.

 

[mpfounder]

Easier to try herding cats. They would all have to agree on coding
standards and what editor software to use!

rossum

No there is going to be a hierarchy of leadership and those that want
to partake must follow direction. Of course there is always going to
be personal choice not to participate at any time.