What the heck does this mean?

[Moe]

It must be emphasized, once again, that the systematic use of complex symbols raises serious doubts about the anticipated epistemological repercussions. Summarizing, then, we assume that the fundamental error of regarding functional notions as categorial presents extremely interesting challenges to the traditional practice of grammarians. In respect to specific goals, relational information is further compounded when taking into account a parasitic gap construction. To provide a constituent structure for T(Z,K), any associated supporting element cannot be defined in such a way as to impose a descriptive fact. Note that this analysis of a formative as a pair of sets of features requires considerable performance analysis and computer studies to arrive at the sophisticated hardware

I keep getting junk mails (I think mostly from online casinos) with this at the end. Everytime I try to read it I get a headache (BTW, I have no clue why I keep trying to read it).

[Tequila Mockingbird]

I saw that same passage the other day. It was on my 1040 form under "Instructions For Writing Your Name".

[Moe]

I just got another one this minute:
Note that any associated supporting element adds overriding performance constraints to a parasitic gap construction. It must be emphasized, once again, that the interrelation of system and/or subsystem technologies is unspecified with respect to the anticipated epistemological repercussions. So far, the incorporation of additional mission constraints must utilize and be functionally interwoven with the requirement that branching is not tolerated within the dominance scope of a complex symbol. Nevertheless, the theory of syntactic features developed earlier is to be regarded as the total configurational rationale. It is assumed that an important property of these three types of EC adds overwhelming Folkloristic significance to an important distinction in language use. To characterize a linguistic level L, the notion of level of grammaticalness presents extremely interesting challenges to the levels of acceptability from fairly high (eg (99a)) to virtual gibberish (eg (98d)). Of course, the fundamental error of regarding functional notions as categorial is not subject to any communicatively-programmed computer techniques. Thus, within given parameters, our fully integrated field program maximizes the probability of project success, yet minimizes cost and time required for improved subcultural compatibility- testing. Comparing these examples with their parasitic gap counterparts in (96) and (97), we see that the fundamental error of regarding functional notions as categorial suffices to account for our hedonic Folklife perspective over a given time period.

Please tell me this makes no sense, because I'm feeling really dumb right now.

[Ice Wolf]

It's Alien-talk for -- "We're learning your language, bub!"

RUN!!!

[Tequila Mockingbird]

My advice? Memorize it and spout it out during your next work meeting or dinner party. When anyone asks you what it means, give them a disgusted look and say, "You don't KNOW"?! Then shake your head and walk away:)

[aseymayo]

Oh, I see the problem - it's a typo! "Categorial" should read "categorical." There - it's crystal clear now!

[Iguana Boy]

Perhaps it's the SD version of 'All your base are belong to us'? ;)

[Universal Dialect]

Well, if I had time I would comb through it with a dictionary, then write it all out..

BUT I DONT

[Moe]

Hey, I just noticed, if you hold it up to a mirror you get great recipe for lentil soup.

[Tabithina]

I have no idea what the heck that means, but here's a B.S. Generator (http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html) that you can use to create a reply.;)

[Askia]

Tabithina: LMAORAOTF!! Great link!

[Wendell Wagner]

Some of this sounds like linguistic terminology, some like philosophical terminology, and some like computer science terminology. Are these actually the complete E-mail messages? If they have nothing to do with the rest of the messages, it sounds like someone is playing a surreal joke on people by quoting random paragraphs out of some (badly written) textbook.

[Chas.E]

There is a tactic amongst some spammers to append a chunk of randomly selected text at the end of a message. This is supposed to fool anti-spam programs, which tend to look for identical messages. Except these spam generators don't send any two identical messages. The main text is the same, but the program might be fooled by the different texts at the end.
You might have seen a similar strategy on Usenet, to defeat anti-spam programs that scan for identical message headers. If your ISP doesn't use antispam software, you might see message lists like this on usenet:

Subject: LIVE HOT BABES.................583759
Subject: LIVE HOT BABES.................837468
Subject: LIVE HOT BABES.................232347
Subject: LIVE HOT BABES.................677323

As you might suspect, this spam strategy is not very effective.

[JohnW77707]

I think Chas. E. has got it; or at least part of it. I think that it is also designed to fool filters. A computer just looking at subjects like the average length of words, or programmed not to kick out anything that includes business or literary terminology, might let it slide.


This sounds like a second cousin of the old trick of attaching a little Shakespeare to a porno film/story. Therefore, it was not "*entirely* without any redeeming literary, scientific, etc. value," getting you around the legal definition of actionable obscenity.

[Muffin]

http://www.tristancreative.com/folk.html

[Chas.E]

Originally posted by JohnW77707
I think Chas. E. has got it; or at least part of it. I think that it is also designed to fool filters. A computer just looking at subjects like the average length of words, or programmed not to kick out anything that includes business or literary terminology, might let it slide.

Spam filters aren't that intelligent. These filters just compute a checksum for each message. If you send out 50 messages with the same checksum, you've just sent out 50 identical messages and you're spamming. Anti-spammers make a great effort to keep the rules "content-blind." So even if you send out messages containing nothing but a long passage from the IRS regulations, or Shakespeare, send enough copies of it, regardless of content, and it is spam.

But we haven't heard back from the OP, he says he sees the text at the end of some spams. I'd like him to check to see if it is the same identical text at in each spam. If they are different in each spam, that would confirm my theory. If they're the same, something else is going on.

[astro]

It's the Chomsky-Bot.

http://language.home.sprynet.com/lingdex/chombot.htm

Visit the Chomsky-Bot
(Or Read Some of its Output Right Here)


As soon as you arrive, it will have already generated a screenful of Chomskian prose for you. You can ask it for another screenful by clicking on a link at the bottom of the screen, where another link will also take you to an explanation of the history behind the Chomsky-Bot, which was invented collectively over a period of time by John Lawler, Anthony Aristar, and John Sowa..

Or if you prefer, you can read some typical Chomsky-Bot output in the very next three paragraphs:

Look On My Words, Ye Mighty, And Despair!

"Presumably, an important property of these three types of EC raises serious doubts about a parasitic gap construction. For one thing, the speaker-hearer's linguistic intuition is necessary to impose an interpretation on nondistinctness in the sense of distinctive feature..."

etc. ad nauseum

[Tristan]

IAMAS (I am not a semantition) but after very carefully going through these paragraphs, I believe that the actual content is null....

Seriously, it looks like they are nothing.

Interesting.

[capacitor]

Oh, that is too funny. Verbose, jargon-babble spam. Since scientists do use it the language (have to, to be fair) in their really extensive e-mail correspondence, it is virtually impossible to filter out. Moe, I believe that you are a victim of the new wave of spam.

[astro]

I'll try again since my post is apparently going unread and people are still trying to figure out "What it is".

The paragraph you refer to is the output of a program called the "Chomsky-Bot" designed to mimic academic jargon.

It is explained here

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/foggy.faq.html

"About ten years ago a former student sent me a program called foggy that had been circulating underground at IBM which artfully made fun of pompous administrators and their jargon. It was in an internal IBM language, and I translated it into BASIC and Pascal. It was a cute program, but essentially very simple.

Somewhat later, I chanced on the Folklore Paper Construction Kit as quoted in Dwight Bolinger's prize-winning Language: The Loaded Weapon, and added its vocabulary of phrases as another option.

Finally, I met Anthony Aristar and he shared with me a similar program ( in Lisp) he'd written with phrases collected from the syntactic works of Noam Chomsky. That was the origin of The Chomskybot. It was easy to add these phrases, too.
Anthony says he was given these phrases in another program, and didn't know who actually collected them. However, since the Chomskybot has become semi-famous, we have been able to identify the original author as John F. Sowa, who admits putting the phrases together from several of Chomsky's books, including Syntactic Structures, Aspects, and Government and Binding at IBM in the 1980's. Since the real ingenuity in the Chomskybot is the way the phrases fit together, both Anthony and I are delighted to acknowledge Mr. Sowa as The Onlie Begetter of the Chomskybot. (Though we do notice that he hasn't owned up to it on his Web site yet :-)"

etc etc

How it works is explained here

"By the "American Chinese Menu" principle, viz. One from Column A, One from Column B.
There are four sets of phrases:
Initiating Phrases Subject Phrases Verbal Phrases Terminating Phrases

Foggy simply selects one of each, at (pseudo-)random, and then strings them together into a sentence. Five sentences make a paragraph. Foggy never even gets down to the word level; everything is phrases, and most of the phrases don't mean much. In this foggy resembles a large proportion of real language.

The Chomskybot is a Perl script, written by Kevin McGowan, with design and assurance testing by me. Kevin hasn't even looked at my previous code, I think -- the description of what it should do was easy enough for him to write it in Perl in one sitting.

Kevin's Folklore Server is a trivial modification of his original script, and so is the Web version of foggy. Perl, incidentally, was developed by a linguist. Here are a few pointers to how it works:"


Stop wasting your time trying to decipher it, it's AI babblespeak.

[Morrison's Lament]

It's simple: Bj0rn is doing spam now :D

Sorry, I just COULD NOT resist :(

--- G. Raven

[Wendell Wagner]

astro writes:

> Stop wasting your time trying to decipher it, it's AI
> babblespeak.

Chomsky's actual writings are just as inconprehensible and just as much a waste of time to decipher.

[Moe]

No they are not the same. From my 1st 2 posts you can see 2 different ones (yes, in their entirety as they appeared in my spam).

. Moe, I believe that you are a victim of the new wave of spam.

I guess when you put it that way it is kind of exciting. :)

[manhattan]

Originally posted by Morrison's Lament
Sorry, I just COULD NOT resist :(

--- G. Raven

Betcha could have. In the future, please do.