From one thought to another

Isn't it funny how some ideas never die? Especially when hacks (in the old and "honourable" sense of the word) have to churn out a certain number of lines of copy per day. I'm amazed to read that for some the fact that Microsoft 8 may prevent you from installing Linux-Windows dual boot setups is apparently interesting news: http://zd.net/oBlwiE.

Surely dual-booting is a 90s subject if ever there was one. After all, with reasonable hardware resources, you can easily run a Linux virtual machine on Windows or vice versa. That way, you can switch from one OS to the other without rebooting.

And might what goes for hacks not be true for translation software marketers, gurus, mavens and such as well? You've got to keep that copy flowing. So, why not resuscitate that old saw, MT, machine translation? There's been an awful lot of talk about it lately, and the subject's as old as the hills: it's been around since the early 1950s, which in terms of technology is like the Jurassic era.

To vaccinate ourselves against the seductive hype of marketers and gurus, we'd do well to remember that MT is a part of Artificial Intelligence. Now I ask you, when was the last time you heard someone talk seriously about that?