Slashdot Mirror
Dolphins Recorded Having a Conversation For The First Time (telegraph.co.uk)
For the first time Russian researchers have recorded a conversation between two dolphins -- Yasha and Yana -- who were talking to each other in a pool. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes The Telegraph:
Scientists developed an underwater microphone which could distinguish the animals' different "voices" [and] have now shown that dolphins alter the volume and frequency of pulsed clicks to form individual "words" which they string together into sentences in much the same way that humans speak...
"This language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins, and their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language... Humans must take the first step to establish relationships with the first intelligent inhabitants of the planet Earth by creating devices capable of overcoming the barriers that stand in the way of using languages and in the way of communications between dolphins and people."
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article, which points out that dolphin brains are larger and more complex than the brains of humans.
"This language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins, and their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language... Humans must take the first step to establish relationships with the first intelligent inhabitants of the planet Earth by creating devices capable of overcoming the barriers that stand in the way of using languages and in the way of communications between dolphins and people."
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article, which points out that dolphin brains are larger and more complex than the brains of humans.
Gary Larson's take on dophin deciphering.
Yeah.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Well as first sign of interspecies communication we could say to them "guys, you're going extinct 'cause we humans are destroying the world". And they would reply "but you're also going to go extinct" to which we would reply "nobody ever said the human race was intelligent".
Dolphins are actually ancient aliens.
Considering we don't actually know much about brains, seems a bit of a publicity stunt to say dolphins have a "larger and more complex" brain.
What's with the quotes around "words" and "language"? Languages and words don't count if they're undocumented? I can understand the quotes around "sentence" maybe, since that implies a grammar which hasn't been verified, but words are fundamental. If they make a noise which has a specific meaning, that's a word.
Also, thumbs up to the editor for the last line there. I laughed, ruefully.
It won't stop me from eating tuna (and I'm not a republican.)
Dolphin 1: I know where we can get some really good fish.
Dolphin 2: Sounds great! Why don't I go get Doris, you talk to Sheila, and we can go there and make a night of it?
Dolphin 1: Works for me. Wanna grab some mackerel afterward?
Dolphin 2: It's like you read my mind!
Dolphin 1: Hey, who's the pink dork with the microphone?
#DeleteChrome
There are a lot of language using animals which are not yet recognized. Humanity is just getting to the point of seeing that there are other intelligences here on Earth.
We have livestock working dogs. They exhibit a lot of language and string up to six words together, use adjectives and have names for each other, us and objects. We have about 300 words we use with them, both from us to them and them to us as well as what they use to each other. It is clear they have a lot more words they use with each other that I don't understand so their language is considerably more extensive than the smattering of pidgin we share.
Realize I'm not talking about Fluffy, a typical domesticated dog that was raised as a singleton isolated from other dog culture. These are livestock large working dogs that are far closer to their wolf ancestors and they grow up in a culturally rich environment of a many generational pack on our farm. They work for a living and know hundreds of individual livestock animals that they tend to on the farm.
Yasha- "The Humans top choices are Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump" Yana- "Bwahahahahahaha".
It means humans are stupid.
It'd be mighty convenient that, if dolphins actually were to possess language skills, their language and conversation style would mimic that of humans so closely.
There were people who tried to claim similar things about apes for quite a while. They could even learn sign language! That finally (mostly) ended when researchers figured out that apes could learn about 300 words... Roughly the same as a dog.
#DeleteChrome
Especially the claimed implications. Most likely some "researcher" finding what they wanted to find, not what was there. Last credible estimates I heard are that dolphins are on th level of smart dogs.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It wasn't that great, to be honest, I say we just fuck off.
Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish....
Even dolphins aren't safe from the KGB listening in.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Previous attempts recorded by researchers came close but fell short:
"More football"
"Me open, see?"
"Jets no good."
"No like them Patriots".
We must make war on them before they organize and begin to attack us in the seas!
The intelligence of dolphins has been subject to myth for so long that there are studies galore on this topic. And by any reasonable standard, dolphins are less intelligent than e.g. crows. Guess we'll continue to hear from wanna-be Dr. Doolittles, nevertheless, time and again.
I only eat tuna if it has a seizure on 9/11
In that case, better come up with a biological differentiator for your own DNA pattern. Probably quickly.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Back in the 70's and 80's, people recorded dolphin vocalizations, and identified the equivalent of human phonemes, basically just different sound patterns that would occur repeatedly. By collecting a lot of data, and counting up the occurrences of distinct phonemes, they were able to show a phoneme frequency that matches the exact same patterns as human speech (frequency here meaning how often a phoneme occurs, not the frequency of the sound waves).
For instance, "the" occurred 6 times in the paragraph above, "and" occurs 3 times, and words like "vocalization" occur once - far less often. All human languages have this distribution where a small quantity of words makes up the bulk of common conversation, whereas things like bird calls or other vocalizations from less intelligent species follow a more flat distribution.
The point being, we've known for a long time that dolphins communicate using something very similar to human speech. This is pretty neat progress, but IMO it's pretty disheartening that after several decades we're still not anywhere near understanding their language. If we can't figure out how to communicate with fellow mammals sharing a common lineage, it really challenges the common sci-fi trope of having any kind of meaningful discourse with a creature from the other side of the galaxy.
maybe they can stop americans talking crap .
Are we humans so self-centered that we did not expect other intelligent animials to talk with each other?
Maybe stop because of the slavery: http://www.alternet.org/labor/why-its-almost-impossible-avoid-being-complicit-slavery-when-you-buy-tuna-fish
To converse, both sides have to want to talk.
Dolphins show little or no interest in actually teaching us their language, so it's more akin to learning a dead language from the last native speaker - one who hates your guts. It's not simple thing.
Then there's the assumption that we can have any kind of meaningful discourse with them, that they think in any way similar to us. That's just unproven.
Then there's the assumption that just listening is enough to learn anything at all. Even listening-and-playing-back does nothing. The dolphins know it's a recording and don't respond in the same way, even if they show interest.
To be honest, I see little point in trying. Dolphins aren't sitting those solving the maths equations that we can't. They are probably talking about where the fish are, where their friends are, and where the danger is. Not something we can usefully use, especially if they are bright enough to know recordings and ignore them.
The reason we don't yet have communications is because it's a lot of effort for almost zero gain.
Premise: Dolphins have "human-like" intelligence and communicate through a sophisticated language.
Observation: Despite decades of human effort trying to decipher it, Dolphins have made no attempt to try to help us understand their language.
Conclusion: Dolphins don't actually want to talk to us.
First our government wanted to record everything we do... now dolphins?
Yup. There was even a Scooby-Doo episode based on that subject: "Scooby's Night with a Frozen Fright". It first aired October 3, 1970.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
"You're trying to insight dysentery among the fishes, aren't ya?"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article, which points out that dolphin brains are larger and more com-
THAT'S BULLSHIT! Human beings are far more intelligent, just look at all the things we've done! Cities, wars... stupid dolphins have never built a city, there are no dolphin cars... they're just big dumb fish!
(For those of you new to sarcasm and humor, I'll point out, at risk of killing the joke, that I, a human, interrupted the sentence that asserted that listening to an entire sentence before replying is a sign of intelligence, then ironically asserted that as a human, I am more intelligent... I wanted to ensure this was clear, as some people interpret everything they read or hear literally, uncritically, and unquestioningly. They're frequently fans of Donald Trump, their brains having atrophied to the size of a walnut, or at least they're functioning on a level one might expect to see in someone with a brain the size of a walnut...)
The analysis of numerous pulses registered in our experiments showed that the dolphins took turns in producing [sentences] and did not interrupt each other, which gives reason to believe that each of the dolphins listened to the other's pulses before producing its own. Now if they could just teach that to my spouse...
They live in 3D, Mr Flatscreen. It's 3D gestures all the way down. Using wavefronts. The echoes of which they can reconstruct into 3D maps on the fly. Er, swim.
Cower before your superiors. Oh, wait, you can't -- no flippers. Also too slow. Limited range of hearing. Weak. Small.
Wow, you just suck.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Lends new meaning to 'click-bait'.
Hook them up to a brain to robot interface complete with VR goggles .. maybe they can do the same things humans can. Maybe we can outsource work to them. I doubt there are any implications to doing something like that.
Maybe stop because of the slavery: http://www.alternet.org/labor/...
That's not a problem with Tuna. It's a problem with protection of humans (and the lack thereof) by other humans.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
hey, so what happened to Fred again?
He tried that thing, you know, crawled out of the water to see if we could escape our aquatic existence.
WTF! To live with them??
Quit looking their way! Talk about something else! Uh, yeah, them tunas is great...er, mackerels, I mean...why are they still staring at us
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Why the fuck is it called "tuna fish" in english anyway? Is there some kind of "land tuna" I'm not aware of?
Look, they may or may not make the playoffs this year but I am pretty sure that the coaches are at least talking to their players in Miami. Wait, what are we talking about?
When they meet another intelligent is to make them 'meat'. If I was another intelligent race I would not 'meet' a human. I'd run.
Isn't that an Americanism, i.e. optional?
You'd better hope they don't eliminate people who don't know that the terminating period for that sentence belongs inside the quotes, sparky. :)
The position of a period relative to an ending quote mark depends on which country you speak (or learned) English in.
"Fish, you know, it just taste so good. How about you? Do you like fish?"
"Yeah me too. I really like fish too."
The following message would be conveyed to dolphins on a repeat loop:
Stay away from Japan...Stay away from Japan...Stay away from Japan
"Tuna" is the Spanish word for the prickly pear plant, and especially its fruit.
Tune a tuba, tuna fish !
No it does not. The period is for the whole sentence, which is not a quote. The quoted words are just a list.
There is a creature called a dolphin fish, otherwise known as mahi-mahi. The dolphins, orcas, manatees, and creatures most everyone calls whales are marine mammals. The latter sort of dolphin is what this article is all about.
I hate to tell you this, but tuna and dolphin are different animals.
I've always been told it depends on where the period belongs. That is to say if you're quoting an entire sentence (e.g. the end of the quote is the end of a sentence) the period goes inside to denote this, otherwise it goes outside. According to this source, placing the period inside the quote regardless of logic is an "American" thing; though I'm American and follow the logic provided there.
Literally every other source I bothered to look at (all American style guides) say the period (or comma) goes inside the quote unless there is a parenthetical citation, in which case it follows that. After a dozen or so sources, I gave up on trying to find one representing a country other than the US; if anyone can provide me one or more, that would be greatly appreciated.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
'Is there some kind of "land tuna" I'm not aware of?'
Yes, yes there is.
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article, which points out that dolphin brains are larger and more complex than the brains of humans.
This is the best summary. My ex-girlfriend never listened to an "entire" sentence before replying. I need to start dating dolphins.
"lt;dr" is the correct response to most of my posts.
I believe he's referring to Matthew 8:28-34.
I believe you're confusing phonemes (distinctive sounds, like English 'p', 'u' etc.--the sounds, not the letters we use to represent them in writing) with morphemes and/or words. I don't know what study you're referring to, so I don't know which one you mean. But there's an awful lot of interpretation going on. With human speech, it's pretty well known what the range of variation in human languages is, and we can verify it by learning the language. (A similar story can be told for signed languages, written languages, languages transmitted with Morse code, even encrypted languages.) But we don't have any way to verify that a sequence of sounds in a dolphin's utterance represents some concept, or that there's any grammar to the way such sequences are put together in utterances--things which are reasonably straightforward, if not easy, to verify with any human language.
So paint me skeptical, until they create a dictionary that shows the same (under some criterion of "same") sequences being used by multiple dolphins to refer to an identifiable concept.
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article...
So, they're both males?
Do you have ESP?
CMoS apparently refers to "The Oxford Style Manual". Haven't seen that one yet, though.
Ezekiel 23:20
A lot of animals are a whole lot smarter than many humans give them credit for, Cats, dogs, birds, horses. You just have to know how to listen. That Porpoises have meaningful communications other than simple alarm noises is nothing new.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Dammit man, it's hard enough to find without you telling more people about its existence!
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Check your privilege and stop mansplaining, shitlord.
Learning the American style of trying to stuff all punctuation inside quotes always seemed like a sort of madness to me.
Here is an interesting read that might broaden your stylo-linguistic horizons.
There are so many instances when placing punctuation outside the quotation punctuation makes infinitely more sense, 'style guides' be damned.
1) they haven't established any sort of relationship between actions or intentions and the recorded sounds.
2) they haven't established that what is happening is a 'conversation'
3 this is definitely not the first time dolphins making sounds has been recorded.
4) they shouldn't be saying that it's beyond any doubt that dolphins are speaking and/or conversing as there's no way to know this.
5) it wouldn't be the first time they've found animals of the same species conveying ideas. Many animals do this all the itme to warn the rest of danger or potential food sources.
6 this is clickbait shit written for the lowest common denominator that doesn't have anything new or interesting to say.
Killing dolphin, not eating.
The "dolphin language?" So what is the "human language." There isn't one. There is no species language. A language, as we understand it with mammals, is developed over generations, and taught from parent to child. So were these wild caught animals? From what pod? How big is that pod? These are the interesting questions.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
since I read the entire article before replying.
No it does not. The period is for the whole sentence, which is not a quote. The quoted words are just a list.
No, quoted words are a string. The end of a list can be implicit, or if the list has only one element, you can denote it with a trailing comma.
Or were we not talking about python?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
In most languages, it's outside. So for most foreigners, they refuse to do something nonsensical even if the english grammars asks for it.
This is pretty neat progress, but IMO it's pretty disheartening that after several decades we're still not anywhere near understanding their language. If we can't figure out how to communicate with fellow mammals sharing a common lineage, it really challenges the common sci-fi trope of having any kind of meaningful discourse with a creature from the other side of the galaxy.
The problem is context. You have to assume that a dolphin, if they have a language, has hundreds of words for fish. But without semantics, all you can do is guess. For all anyone knew, Egyptian's hieroglyphs were just pretty pictures till the Rosetta Stone came around. Even then it took 20 years before anyone could confidently say what were drawn on those walls. We still aren't confident on how you say some of the phonemes either. It could be a "finding out dinosaurs had feathers all this time" event.
Still we should try. I don't think its disheartening because people are trying HARD at this. The lessens we learn in decoding the raw speech patterns of our planet's creatures will help us on truly alien species. I just hope when we do discover alien artifacts, that they aren't passed around as pretty door stops like alto of the Egyptian's ones were.
"Hey fred! That black monolith looks great behind my flat screen TV!"
Good bye and thanks for all the fish.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
dolphin1: Can I lick your blowhole?
dolphin2: Go for it!
This line of thinking perplexes me. Yes, they may be talking about things that we don't necessarily care about, but we almost certainly can tell them things they would like to know. Such as where danger is. We could possibly introduce new vocabulary and through the power of giving something a name, give them a new concept that they can relate to each other. We can make smarter dolphins to eat.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
>> We can make smarter dolphins to eat.
Actually, once we start talking to each other, I'm sure one of the first things we humans will say is "Sorry about all that killing and eating. We didn't know you were so smart until just recently but at least we made it so y'all didn't get caught in the tuna nets so much."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How's this?
From http://www.thepunctuationguide...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
"bwayno dee-us"! https://thenexttobestblogever....
Have you read my blog lately?
Yes old fashioned nets kill dolphins. No, the dead dolphins are not canned and sold as Tuna. Old fashioned nest are now banned in many jurisdictions, modern nets allow most Dolphins and seals to escape, a large proportion of canned Tuna now comes from open water fish farms. Some companies source Tuna only from fishermen who use a feathered hook on a rod (a common practice here in Oz). Some governments will only allow rod fishing for Tuna, those companies who insist fishermen use rod or are forced by size and geography to operate in rod only jurisdictions will heavily advertise their "dolphin friendly" status (even though most of them fought against the introduction of the laws).
CONservation : It might confuse you to know that I am an old fashioned "liberal" who has fond memories of working on farms, fishing boats, and old growth sawmills, let me know when you have managed to locate my political pigeon hole on your simple minded left/right axis of human behaviour.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Perfect, thanks. :)
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
"Hey Dan"
"What"
"Remember what I told you?"
"About what"
"How to hold it"
"No"
"Laces out!"
"Yeah, yeah, got it. Laces out."
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
fyngyrz, you seem like a really good guy, so I regret to have to inform you that it's the smilie-face writers and lol-tards that are closer to the front of the line for elimination when I become Benevolent (mostly) Dictator For Life.
I'll happily make an exception for you if you promise not to do it again though, m'kay?
People didn't take him seriously because he was a bit out there. He said dolphins communicate and as soon as we figure that out the next step will be high level inter-species communication, resulting in dramatic changes akin to contact with extraterrestrials. Interesting guy. I over simplified his views considerably. There's a lot more there. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
American politics largely runs on that left-right axis because the effectively two party system forces everyone to either pick a side or be excluded from politics altogether.
The article says: "Researchers at the Karadag Nature Reserve, in Feodosia, Russia, ..." Well, Feodosia is in Crimea, which is Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia. I tried to contact the newspaper about this mistake, but there is no obvious way to report errors, it turns out.
(US) I was taught to always put the period inside the quote marks. After some careful consideration, I said, fuck that. Logic supercedes some kind of retarded language tradition. Also I was programming computers when I was 7 and the thought of putting shit inside the quote marks that didn't belong there really bothered me.
Is there any actual reason for putting the comma inside the quotes ? As a programmer, it makes me want to throw up.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Same here. It makes as much sense as placing your terminating semicolon inside a close bracket.
To spit in Britain's face, I suppose. Doesn't make sense to me, so I do it the logical (British) way.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
"Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
printf("why would that bother you?);"
for it is and always shall be...
Between the French and American revolutions there was a whole lot of symbolic "Insult the monarchy" bullshit that got made into traditions by deliberately changing what has come before. Some places embraced these, others kicked back hard against them. America did a lot of that with punctuation and spelling for example, but the pattern goes much wider - so for example about half the world is left-hand-drive and the other half is right-hand-drive, mostly because the French revolutionaries changed which side of the road they travelled on (and this was still horse-drawn vehicles) to snub the old monarchic rules and the countries that followed them also copied that change.
All of which are little more than historical oddities that explain how some really weird things came to pass but utterly fails to provide a sane justification for keeping them. "It's tradition now" is not a justification, indeed it's a fallacy. But it can be an extremely tempting fallacy that readily convinces a great many people of really bad ideas... otherwise the US would not *still* be one of only two countries in the world (and the other is one of the worst third-world hellholes on earth) that has *not* embraced the metric system.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
But the Spanish word for tuna is atun.
Do not talk about you being gay, those pesky humans are recording our talks.
Between the Telegraph and Russia's online propaganda, I would expect Russia to make grand scientific claims and the Telegraph to sensationalize them.
Sad, given Russia has a history of being a leader in science, and England has a history of being a leader in journalism.
"..
There are very few universally understood words or gestures in humans, displaying the palms of your hands to say "I mean no harm" is the only example I can think of...."
http://www.expatinfodesk.com/blog/2011/08/02/5-innocent-hand-gestures-that-can-land-you-in-hot-water-overseas/
Haven't we been using Bridging Languages to communicate with dolphins for well over a decade now? (in fact, probably 2 now)
I'm pretty damn sure we even taught Dolphins some things that then spread through groups of other dolphins, literally memetic behaviour in action.
We've had huge swimming pools filled with visual metaphors for actions and having conversation with them for a long time.
Some of that research is even in portable translators researchers use in the ocean.
Of course, said research also found that, like humans, dolphins also have large varieties of language and even dialect. (like some birds as well)
So recognizable... How do you deal with emoticons within parentheses? I can't help but doing it
(like this :-))
because the first closing paren doesn't actually close anything, and of course I can't leave the opening paren unbalanced!
Dolphins also fuck each other for fun.
So that's two points for the Dolphins vs. your ex!
Dr. Doolittle has been vindicated!
"Matthews .... we're getting another one of those strange 'aw blah es span yol' sounds ..
But this sounds like Dolphins could be the next target for facebook.. flipperbook?
The reason we don't yet have communications is because it's a lot of effort for almost zero gain.
The methods used to learn how to talk to dolphins, even if it is to chat about their next meal, can be expanded to other things.
The most fun one is the idea of talking to another lifeform from another planet. Highly unlikely, I know.
However, the lessons learned in this can help human to machine and reverse conversations. Getting a better universal translator, etc.
Finally, I can also see another direct benefit related to food and danger for dolphins: "Warning! We're taking your food and it is dangerous to you in this area. Stay back or you will be hurt."
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Okay, it's entirely possible that a dolphin's brain may be larger and/or more complex than a human brain. But, this article draws this conclusion from the fact that they listen to entire sentences before replying. WHAT?? That conclusion may indicate that YOUR brain is smaller but that's about it. Humans listen to an entire sentence or even an entire speech before replying. Well, some of us. There are those people who feel they need to constantly interrupt.
In none of which you'd end a sentence with a preposition.
Yes, you do. This has been a standard feature of English language for centuries, until prescriptive grammarians hell bent on adapting English to Latin began saying it shouldn't be done. Ignore that nonsense. Ending sentences with prepositions is one of the beautiful features of English, and one I, as an English as second language speaker, use as much as I can, as it provides for compact sentences that remain fully intelligible.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Isn't that an Americanism, i.e. optional?
I've read originally, in handwriting, the punctuation used to come below the quotation mark, both forming what nowadays would be considered a single character. When people transitioned to print, there was no easy way to do that, so some began placing the punctuation before the quotation mark, others began placing the quotation mark before the punctuation, and over time either style became the standard in print. Most countries went for quotation-then-punctuation. The USA went for punctuation-then-quotation. And that's it. There's no right or wrong option there, just an arbitrary usage that eventually became normative.
By the way, if we were to do it "right", as in, to become historically accurate, we should ask the Unicode Consortium to provide us ligature version of the different end-quotation marks with the different punctuations available, then have word processors replace them when typed, as they sometimes do when you type three dots and those get replaced by the single ellipsis symbol. Maybe those already exist? After all, there's no technological reason for keeping them separate anymore.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
For now. I refuse to conform to a stupid way of doing things when doing otherwise makes more sense. It seems that for the English-language, moves to enforce standards to the point where people are imposed upon to do things that hinder the language evolving usefully is fairly recent.
I mean really? You think they talk about fish food?
No. I've talked with trainers. They know what's on the dolphin's minds. The conversation Dolphins have are far more likely to sound like this:
Dolphin 1) You seen the flippers on that babe? Man, I'd like to swim with her, if you know what I mean.
Dolphin 2) That's a Killer Whale, not a dolphin.
Dolphin 1) That don't matter. We're both cetaceans - besides once you go whale, you don't bale.
Dolphin 2) I don't know, that human keeps giving me food. I think she's into me.
Dolphin 1) Definitely. You should get all into that!
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Ah it is always good to see merkins tell native speakers how to speak their own language , none of whom speaks proper english like I does.
It's to support legacy hardware.
Printing presses using physical typeset would have problems with a tiny period or comma in the middle of open space (away from text and under the quote marks) - it would tear paper or break off the typeset. The get around that, they moved the dot closer to other text - to the left of the quote mark.
Somehow that hack implemented for hardware support changed the language structure to become official, even though that's not logical or even the original standard.
Think of it as an IE6 of the English Language.
Good work
Or, as Winston Churchill purportedly said to a publisher who admonished him on ending a sentence with a preposition, "This is something up with which I will not put!".
You're wrong. You're referencing the lazy fucked up American stupid way.
Like, an entree is a main meal ?? How fucking stupid is that ?
Observation: Despite decades of human effort trying to decipher it, Dolphins have made no attempt to try to help us understand their language.
Here we have a species who spends their day fucking, uninterrupted by exploitative jobs, superstitious religions, ideological wars, ...
Why the Hell would they want to communicate with us?
They must speak in Perl
Table-ized A.I.
"So Long, and thanks for all the fish" we'll know we're all in deep shit.
Probably as much reason as putting an apostrophe before every "s" that you encounter.
the conversation went, "Take Russell Wilson out. Make it look like an accident!"
I guess there aren't any Dolphin millenials yet.
Only Murricans like you can do science. We know. You are EXCEPTIONAL. Dumb.
He correctly anticipated the dominance of airpower. In some ways a highly successful social scientist.
He was just a bad politician and canned because he could not shut up in the face of politico officers.
The dolphins listened to an entire "sentence" before replying, according to the article, which points out that dolphin brains are larger and more complex than the brains of humans.
Or it simply confirms that they were female.
Soon the Russians will whisper to their Combat Dolphins (the American Admirals will imagine) and poof - a billion or two of research money will appear. We cannot allow these dangerous Russkies to recruit and talk to dolphins, can we ? Imagine the military potential of talked-to-doplhins !
A Russian KGB blonde riding on a dolphin, commanding a team of 3 more dolhpins, wielding a chrome AK47 and the dolphins all sporting Lasers. Imagine how many American naval eyes could be hurt bis this Amazone !
At this point some of the modern language cracking tools just might make it possible to converse with the dolphins. If the animals really are as intelligent as suspected they might have things like a religion or numerous abilities that we do not expect to find. Do they have any form of mathematics that might be useful to humans? Just what advantage does their intelligence provide for them? Can whales understand dolphins? What are the goals of a pod of dolphins? The real mysteries may be quite shocking to us.
Whatever you say. I bet it will be an Old White Man like me who figures out how to communicate with Dolphins. It will not be your neuter-sexual pussymasters like Clinton or Merkel.
To top it off the old white man will write a piece of software to chat with our sea brothers. You lefties can meanwhile dream to speak to your non existent Marsupilami commie animal.
We humans are almost as bad as the Tigers, Lions and Wolves. And the great apes. All of them eat pigs and other animals, if they can get hold of and if they are in the mood.
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12, 2016 @01:34PM
She was a loyal cat bringing the new family member food. Not her problem you did not eat it.
I have seen this also. When there is a baby in the family or the house, the house cat will lay dead mouse in front of the house.
If the people were just a little smarter they would understand their feline family members.
Nope... it's the Chicago Manual of Style
Why is the British style "more sensible"? I can't find any logic or reason to either method. It would appear to be just a specific custom.
"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been wide
It isn't an American-centric thing, though Lewis Carrol did rail against it and maybe helped the British off it a bit earlier. It's a "make typeset text pretty" thing. "To the wall," she sad - just makes for more legible text (less fatiguing to read), and in a non-technical context, that's fine. It's only when you try to use English as a formal language, where the order of punctuation might possibly resolve some ambiguity, that it matters. "Makes more sense" isn't important here - typesetting isn't about coddling geek OCD.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
That wouldn't make it optional, that would make it correct when using American English, such as on an American website like this one or other writing for an American audience. If you are commenting on the BBC it is correct to spell it colour, if you are commenting here it would be a spelling error. If writing for no audience in particular correct is probably whatever way you originally learned and if writing for youself correct is whatever you say it is at any given moment.
We know according to your Belief System it is OK to eat cows and pigs and chickens. But god beware if other nations think the cow is sacred. They must be serial rapists then. Do some Regime Change on them.
And if the nation of Japan eats Doplhins, excommunicate them and punish them to pay 6 bazillion of Imperial Shekels to your Imperium. Never mind they have done this as long as your ilk has been eating cows. Never mind they do this without eradicating dolphins.
What matters is that your Imperium has a reason to punish a vasall and show his supremacy.
Heil Imperium !
The quote is intended to isolate everything inside it, and by definition, the punctuation is not part of what is quoted. Living in the US, I rebel and put the punctuation after the quote all the time.
Your solution, to bug the Unicode Consortium, is the best solution I've ever heard.
Obviously, what is the question?
It depends on whether or not the punctuation is part of the quote. If a piece of punctuation belongs to what you quoted (such as a complete sentence) then it logically belongs in the quote. You don't go shifting part of a string outside the quotes.
20 bazillion is in the same order of magnitude as 100 bazillions. there could be some serious smartness...
Having realized how intelligent many creatures are, do you think we'll stop killing them?
Oh right, we kill other humans with abandon, so I suppose not.
I was always told not to end a sentence in a preposition. I was told not to.
you are a moron. No, 'half the world' is not right hand drive. And so, you presume the Germans, Italians, Brazilians, Argentines, Norwegians, Russians, Spanish, etc all 'follow the French'? How insulting to those Nations you are.
Metric system: How do the British sell Beer? What is the speed limit in Britain's units of velocity? Now, tell me again how only the USA uses the Imperial system of measurement (note that, the name of the system refers to the English Monarchy!) once again, you show you are a moron.
Been a while since commenting in slashdot. I love dolphins so figured this was a good excuse.
...
Interesting. But then why was this a problem only in the US ? None of the other countries implemented this kind of solution, and yet they had the same printing presses, no ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Although I'm American, it does seem more sensible to me to put the punctuation outside of the quotes unless it is part of the quoted material. Leave it to some idiot in our country to go against the norm and then make it the standard. It was probably to cover up some mistake that he was too fucking lazy to correct.
Maybe the go meant 'followed France in abandoning monarchy' instead of 'follows France like cute little puppies'. Also holding an English beer in my hand right now. It says '500ml' right here on the lable.
Stop calling people morons, moron.
All subjective nonsense based on assumption.
Of course, they don't reveal what the dolphins say because it's all guesswork. They (moronic scientists) haven't got a clue what they are dealing with.
The dolphins are having a real laugh at just how pathetically ignorant we humans really are. Our narcissism makes us ignorant.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!!!!
Just need to find the right filter to plot out enough vectors to decipher the sound.
Probably a's much rea'son a's putting an apo'strophe before every "'s" that you encounter.
Fixed that for you...
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
*Russian* reseachers.
I'm a bit doubtful - it seems so obvious and profound a behaviour that I wonder how it has not yet been seen elsewhere in the world in the last 50 years of dolphin research. Russia isn't exactly truthworthy in anything; I know nothing about the research, or the researchers, but I wonder if this is fabricated.
(printlq what age computer programming was when you were 7)
Since British English makes little sense in spelling, perhaps in this case, color, the American spelling is correct? After all, how do you pronounce "colour"? Is the second syllable pronounced as the "our" in the words our, hour, flour, etc? If not, besides other words like the "labour" which in american english are all spelled with "or" instead of "our" does "our" get pronounced like "or"?
And don't worry about American English being the better version, we have lots of our own special spelling mistakes, some inherited from British English, some not. In the case of color, labor, etc, we did not adopt the phonetically illogical spellings current British English perpetuates. It's been too long since I studied how languages fluctuated and differentiated combined with when semi-stable spellings were instituted and became "standard" for a specific branch. It's interesting to me but nothing I can devote any time to currently. Maybe in retirement I'll become some ivory tower academic who spends their time on totally useless ponderings...
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I think you meant to say,
"...depends on which country in which you speak (or learned) English."
Or do you guys in that country have a rule allowing sentences to end with prepositions too? :P
When it comes to language correct has nothing to do with better or worse. It is correct to communicate using the protocol best understood by the party you are trying to communicate with to the best of your ability, this insures the highest degree of fidelity in your communicatation. Ultimately fidelity of information exchange is the point and language is nothing more than a tool used to accomplish it.
(more sensibly)
As an American, I have always agreed with putting the punctuation where it belongs, but it is funny to see it said that way.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Right hand driving makes more sense as most people are right handed and it puts your right hand on the gear shift which is the more agility based control than the steering wheel.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I've always wanted the upside down question mark that Spanish uses. Can we steal that one?
I tried to add one to that question above, but Slashdot doesn't like Spanish speakers.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Actually, what studies there are, suggests left hand-driving is safer because it puts your right side facing oncoming traffic and gives the right-handed majority slightly faster reflexes when responding to problems from oncoming traffic.
That said, there is no really definitive answer either way, nothing has been proven concretely. It's true that the average accident rate is lower in left-hand-driving countries, it is also true that we can't definitively rule out other causes. It's not a question that can be easily answered and no hypotheses lends itself to really rigorous testing as you have overlaps from biology, neurology and about half the social sciences involved.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
No idea what the origin is. Probably involves being difficult to carve a comma outside the quotes on a block of wood if you're right handed or something like that.
I know that I always used to do it correctly, whatever that was, until I started programming.
P.S. No space before a question mark.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
P.S. No space before a question mark.
I know but I like it a more this way: it's a lot more readable. But it should be a non-breaking space !
Non-Linux Penguins ?