tube technology and EMP

[blstuart at bellsouth.net]

In message <0504212218.AA11705 at ivan.Harhan.ORG>, Michael Sokolov writes:
>Philip Pemberton <philpem at dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
>
>> Speaking of which...
>> <http://microscopy.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html>
>>
>> "VAX: When you care enough to steal the very best" :)
>
>.. and it's invalid Russian, obviously
>written by someone who did not know the language and was merely "translating"
>from English by looking up English words in a dictionary, without any clue
>as to choosing the correct meaning out of the many possible, and then
>stringing those word "translations" together as they go in English without
>regard for Russian grammar rules.

That reminds me of a (possibly aprocryphal) story of an early
experiment in machine translation.  They had both English to
Russian and Russian to English versions so decided to hook them
back to back to see what happened.  Starting with the English
sentence:

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Out the other end came:

The wine is good, but the meat is spoiled.

I never did verify whether it really happened, but it makes a
great anecdote when teaching an AI class.

Brian L. Stuart