Page 225 - DCAP507_SYSTEM_SOFTWARE

Unit 14: Canonic Systems

Is a Language a Real Formal System? Notes

Chomsky and Halle and many other linguists assume that language IS such a system. Thus they
typically assume that:
1. Phonetic segments are discrete formal tokens. And since they are, it follows that
phonological segments (or phonemes) as well as words, phrases, sentences, etc. are formal
objects as well since they are discrete combination of the a priori phonetic tokens.

2. The tokens are manipulated by formal rules or formally specified constraints, etc.<>
3. These tokens can be stored, read and manipulated essentially without error (thus, how
many rules or constraints are involved is not an issue).

!
Caution These are powerful assumptions that not only are not fully defended, they appear
to have no evidence at all except the intuitions of linguists.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blank:
15. A digital system is a set of positive and reliable techniques (methods, devices) for producing
and ………………………………… .



Case Study A Window to open Source (OS)

buntu is an ancient African word meaning 'humanity to others,' informs
www.ubuntu.com. The word also means 'I am what I am because of who we all
Uare', adds the site.
"The vision for Ubuntu is part social and part economic: free software, available free of
charge to everybody on the same terms, and funded through a portfolio of services provided
by Canonical."
It was, therefore, a pleasant meeting that I recently had with Prakash Advani, Regional
Manager - Asia Pacific, Canonical, Mumbai (http://bit.ly/F4TAdvaniP). "I have been using
the latest Ubuntu 11.04 on a laptop that's almost three years now and I don't see any
degradation of performance," says Prakash. "It performs the same that it used to three
years back when I installed Ubuntu 9.10. After that we released three more versions and
they have all worked beautifully on the same hardware." Our conversation continues over
email.
Excerpts from the Interview:
How has been the growth of the open source operating system market in recent times?
Today, the open source operating systems market is growing much faster than proprietary
offerings. Most of the growth is coming from dissatisfied Windows users who are finding
their computers slowing down, leading to poor performance, or not being able to run the
latest Windows 7. These users are replacing their current Windows system with Ubuntu.
Contd.....

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