adventures in (machine?) translation

My spam filter does a generally excellent job: I get virtually no false positives and very few false negatives. So I don't usually bother reading the stuff it classifies as spam. But the subject line "Timely route for missing mass!" caught my eye (my first thought: some weirdo email about the cosmological "missing mass"/"dark matter" problem--if there's anyone reading this that wasn't aware of the full extent of my geekitude, well, I've just outed myself).

Sure enough, it was spam, albeit unfortunately noncosmological in nature. However, it contained the following text (redacted to remove the URL in between):

This lozenge is a modern grease-binding accessory
which removes grease from a board you consume! Explicated with the
mighty fat-sticking fiber, the alloy of biological constituents...

This tablets is a modern fat-sticking addendum which removes fat from a
nourishment you wolf! Forged with the mighty fat-sticking fibre, the
alloy of biological compounds...

It seems clear that we have two different translations (using two different programs?) of the same foreign-language text. I am at a loss to explain why the sender would have thought this useful...unless they figured that the combination of translations might serve better than either alone. Which, in a way, it does, actually.

It also caused me to reflect on the potential for "reverse-engineering" the original language based on the nature of the translated text: word choice, phrasing, etc. Anyone know whether this has been tried?

"mandate, my ass"

http://www.cafepress.com/mandatemyass

What, no black hooded sweatshirts?

Patron saint of the nerds?

Proof that the Catholic church is going to remain relevant to some, whether it wants to or not:

http://www.wired.com/news/roadtrip/riverroad/0,2704,65184,00.html

(Of course, now I'm going to be tempted to pronounce that word forevermore as "ex-peh-dee-teh".)

you put your kangaroos in my Great Lakes pot patch!

(reference to Matt Ruff's Sewer, Gas, & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy. Cryptozoology makes only a brief explicit appearance, but arguably it runs throughout the book. (Heh.) Besides, more people need to read Matt Ruff's stuff.)

The University of Birmingham's Department of Cryptozoology

user-absent design

The NY Times reports on a rocky adoption process for the San Jose PD's new Windows-based computer system. It seems they forgot to ask any of the cops to provide feedback on the design before they delivered the system.

I feel that San Jose has a lot less excuse for this sort of problem than most cities: I mean, it's in Silicon Valley. You can't hardly throw a brick without hitting six software engineers, at least a couple of which have had some experience in interface design.

Are we still graduating software engineers that don't recognize the importance of user testing, or is this a management problem? I've had several conversations with my dad about problems like this: he's a doctor at the University of Arizona hospital, and it seems no one asked his colleagues about the design of their new software system either.

These are critical services, folks. (For that matter, it's your money.) Do you really want the doctors that are looking after your kids (Dad's a pediatrician) to make mistakes because your software sucks? (Maybe you don't care, if Dad's in Tucson and you're in Atlanta.)

For companies that charge extra for post-installation consulting, the motivation for poor design seems obvious: if you do it right the first time, you won't be able to charge $150/hour for a consultant to come out and fix it for you. But I assume that all companies can't be working like that, so it's hard for me to see why this problem would continue to persist.

*sigh*

do-ers and be-ers

( aww.... )

One of the things that I like about my relationship with Megan, actually, is that we each take each of these roles at different times.

(Stolen from Wendy & Joey's wedding web page.)