Sunday, April 20, 2008
Minor Amusements -vwv

My life hasn't been particularly exciting lately. Fortunately, I am rather easily amused.

First, there was this article I read in the papers this morning about the noise levels in various parts of Singapore. In the report, an expert claimed that anything above 70 decibels is considered noisy. A graph accompanying the article showed that many places such as MRT trains and Buses with TVMobile are above the 70 decibels threshold. The reporter therefore concluded that the complaints about the noise is overstated. Huh?

(Note: Small digression here. For those not familiar with the decibel scale, it is a logarithm scale, i.e. sound intensity doubles with every increase of roughly 3 decibels)

Next, I received a letter from the commanding ocifer of my reservist unit (let's just call him XXX). Like many other letters I have received before, it ends like this:

Best Regards
XXX
This is a computer-generated letter.

So who wrote the letter? The CO or the computer? The CO is a computer?

-- permalink --
Yiheng made 5:43 PM

3 Comments:

I doubt the computer AI can draft intros to such complexity. It's probably a programme that distributes letters.

You are too easily amused. Better find something interesting to do on weekends.
By  Soqcrates, at 12:32 AM  

Actually, computers are quite powerful nowadays. Some AI systems can even pass the Turing Test. But for simple letters, I think a create-your-own-Dan-Brown-novel generator sort of program will be sufficient.
By  Anonymous, at 10:03 AM  

lemme get the paintball outing going. you really need a new ECA...
By  Anonymous, at 3:12 PM  

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Saturday, April 12, 2008
Thanks a lot, Microsoft! -vwv

-- permalink --
Yiheng made 12:54 PM

2 Comments:

'So as to' kind of awkward transition to use.

Try XXX, in order to reduce, or XXX, to reduce...

Microsoft won't screw you over then.
By  Soqcrates, at 11:43 PM  

or maybe shorter transitions?
"which reduces confusion", "thereby reducing confusion", or just split the sentence up, "it reduces confusion".

long sentences are anathema to understanding.
By  Anonymous, at 5:50 PM  

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