I work in a software house that develops frontend/backend systems for stock trading. I'm an implementor, not a developer, but believe you me, when there's a bad problem that our helpdesk can't help me with, the developers are getting a call.
We had a problem on December 25 (I'm in Japan, so it's not a holiday), and I ended up calling one of our developers in the UK at 3am on Christmas Day;)
On one side, you give Lessig's argument that Japanese copyright laws are applied less strictly than those in the US - and then, as an example of how ridiculous that is, you state that he might as well say that Japan's (strict) edged-weapon laws should be applied in Oklahoma.
Sorry, but that example doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Perhaps you should find a new line of work.
Writing systems are *now* defined consciously, but this was most certainly not true up until quite recently - for example, take a look at the variance in spelling in English as late as the 18th century.
Kanji are only as limiting as your vocabulary requirements - lower requirements, fewer kanji required. This is quite similar to how, in English, a young child can't read adult-oriented books, as they haven't previously encountered the vocabulary used. Remember, once you learn a particular kanji, it's relatively easy to guess the meaning of words using that kanji in combination with others - but English provides far fewer clues as to the meaning of words encountered for the first time.
Of course, that's true - but the 'environment' a language adapts to is formed by its speakers, so by definition a language will always improve for the group composed of those who speak that language. In other words, superiority is, by definition, determined by how well it serves its speakers.
A language does not improve in a direction that makes it easier to learn for non-native speakers (unless its main group of speakers is linguistically disparate - Creole/Pidgin languages are examples of this), bur rather to serve its speakers in whatever way is deemed necessary by the group. In a way, language development is quite democratic, although that might be better expressed as mob rule;)
So, what you're saying and what I'm saying are really just different ways of looking at the same concept (although my use of 'bloat' was possibly not the best).
He might just as well point to the infamous sword-carrying laws of greater Japan...
And what 'infamous' laws would those be? For someone who claims to be a Japanese lawyer, you seem to be strangely unaware that in most circumstances, it is against the law in Japan to carry any blade over 15cm in length on your person - and the Japanese laws on sword ownership are much stricter than 90% of the rest of the world (for example, a sword has to be an antique of historical value, and it muct be registered with a branch of the local government).
Japanese courts are capable of being just as hair-splitting as Western ones. The reason doujinshi get away with it is that most manga authors have, at some point, drawn doujinshi themselves. Other areas of the publishing industry are much more strict about copyright enforcement.
Written Japanese is overcomplicated by the use of kanji.
Japanese, like any other language, is almost exactly as complex as it needs to be - several thousand years of linguistic development tends to remove the bloat.
of course, why the Japanese don't drop the kanji and use kana exclusively is beyond me -- it seems that it would make all sorts of things easier
It only seems easier to you that way because you read things like manga where kanji is not necessarily vital. If you read a Japanese novel, you'd see why kanji are required - reading with kanji is about ten times faster than pure kana.
I just don't get this bullshit about CEOs telling their employees to take a pay cut, and trying to convince them it's OK by cutting their own pay.
20% off of (say) $1 million still leaves $800K - whereas 6% off $50K leaves you with $47K. The CEO can still buy that beach house, but you'll have to cut back on essentials. Thanks for nothing.
Since nobody was talking about Mozilla, I don't know what you're on about, but anyway...
tabs are poorly implemented In what way?
the whole mozilla render engine sucks The WHOLE engine? Really?
doesn't cache pages very well No problems here...
if I want to open a new tab I have to ctrl-click or go use a fscking menu, this is also slow and make me want a keyboard shortcut Ctrl-t is your friend. You can't have used it much if you don't know that one.
and there is no way to open a tab in the background Preferences/Navigator/Tab Browsing/Load links in background. My, that was hard, wasn't it?
in my not very humble opinion, mozilla is a terrible implementation of a web browser and its bretheren are not any better either. You mean "in my uninformed and completely worthless opinion", I think, as it looks like you haven't bothered learning even the most rudimentary features.
My job's in Japan at the moment, but not directly Japan-related (SE at a software company) - I picked up my Japanese from university here, as well as my first job (book editor at a publishing company).
High (i.e. slow) response time does not mean tearing. Tearing is the result of screen updates happening between refreshes - a slow response time on your LCD gets you trails and motion ghosting, which are completely different.
Slashdot Mirror
I work in a software house that develops frontend/backend systems for stock trading. I'm an implementor, not a developer, but believe you me, when there's a bad problem that our helpdesk can't help me with, the developers are getting a call.
;)
We had a problem on December 25 (I'm in Japan, so it's not a holiday), and I ended up calling one of our developers in the UK at 3am on Christmas Day
On one side, you give Lessig's argument that Japanese copyright laws are applied less strictly than those in the US - and then, as an example of how ridiculous that is, you state that he might as well say that Japan's (strict) edged-weapon laws should be applied in Oklahoma.
Sorry, but that example doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Perhaps you should find a new line of work.
Writing systems are *now* defined consciously, but this was most certainly not true up until quite recently - for example, take a look at the variance in spelling in English as late as the 18th century.
Kanji are only as limiting as your vocabulary requirements - lower requirements, fewer kanji required. This is quite similar to how, in English, a young child can't read adult-oriented books, as they haven't previously encountered the vocabulary used. Remember, once you learn a particular kanji, it's relatively easy to guess the meaning of words using that kanji in combination with others - but English provides far fewer clues as to the meaning of words encountered for the first time.
Of course, that's true - but the 'environment' a language adapts to is formed by its speakers, so by definition a language will always improve for the group composed of those who speak that language. In other words, superiority is, by definition, determined by how well it serves its speakers.
;)
A language does not improve in a direction that makes it easier to learn for non-native speakers (unless its main group of speakers is linguistically disparate - Creole/Pidgin languages are examples of this), bur rather to serve its speakers in whatever way is deemed necessary by the group. In a way, language development is quite democratic, although that might be better expressed as mob rule
So, what you're saying and what I'm saying are really just different ways of looking at the same concept (although my use of 'bloat' was possibly not the best).
He might just as well point to the infamous sword-carrying laws of greater Japan...
And what 'infamous' laws would those be? For someone who claims to be a Japanese lawyer, you seem to be strangely unaware that in most circumstances, it is against the law in Japan to carry any blade over 15cm in length on your person - and the Japanese laws on sword ownership are much stricter than 90% of the rest of the world (for example, a sword has to be an antique of historical value, and it muct be registered with a branch of the local government).
Japanese courts are capable of being just as hair-splitting as Western ones. The reason doujinshi get away with it is that most manga authors have, at some point, drawn doujinshi themselves. Other areas of the publishing industry are much more strict about copyright enforcement.
Written Japanese is overcomplicated by the use of kanji.
Japanese, like any other language, is almost exactly as complex as it needs to be - several thousand years of linguistic development tends to remove the bloat.
of course, why the Japanese don't drop the kanji and use kana exclusively is beyond me -- it seems that it would make all sorts of things easier
It only seems easier to you that way because you read things like manga where kanji is not necessarily vital. If you read a Japanese novel, you'd see why kanji are required - reading with kanji is about ten times faster than pure kana.
The BitKeeper license has a clause to that effect, IIRC.
I know there used to be a common shareware X image viewer (common, as in installed by Red Hat 4), which was distributed as source code.
That would be xv. Slackware distributed it until at least version 7, and maybe they still do.
I've yet to meet anyone who's registered it, though...
Lemme guess... you're single, right?
I just don't get this bullshit about CEOs telling their employees to take a pay cut, and trying to convince them it's OK by cutting their own pay.
20% off of (say) $1 million still leaves $800K - whereas 6% off $50K leaves you with $47K. The CEO can still buy that beach house, but you'll have to cut back on essentials. Thanks for nothing.
So, where's the Cyberdog SUV?
That's the *old* Zaurus - the new one looks like this.
Since nobody was talking about Mozilla, I don't know what you're on about, but anyway...
tabs are poorly implemented
In what way?
the whole mozilla render engine sucks
The WHOLE engine? Really?
doesn't cache pages very well
No problems here...
if I want to open a new tab I have to ctrl-click or go use a fscking menu, this is also slow and make me want a keyboard shortcut
Ctrl-t is your friend. You can't have used it much if you don't know that one.
and there is no way to open a tab in the background
Preferences/Navigator/Tab Browsing/Load links in background. My, that was hard, wasn't it?
in my not very humble opinion, mozilla is a terrible implementation of a web browser and its bretheren are not any better either.
You mean "in my uninformed and completely worthless opinion", I think, as it looks like you haven't bothered learning even the most rudimentary features.
The 12" PB will sell well in Japan, as Apple's smaller notebooks have always done.
My apologies - you did say four *face* buttons.
Look closer. It has four buttons.
Take a look at the new Sharp Zaurus - it basically looks like this GBA with a keyboard.
Here's a link to a photo from the Japanese announcement.
Sad. That's all I can say - just sad.
Thanks - I did realize that, but somehow it didn't seem as funny to say "...the passphrase to the key..." ;)
Sorry for the late reply...
My job's in Japan at the moment, but not directly Japan-related (SE at a software company) - I picked up my Japanese from university here, as well as my first job (book editor at a publishing company).
1. Provided Microsoft uses a proper public key infrastructure, brute-forcing this thing could potentially take forever
;)
Don't worry, the key's probably something like "Sony engineers suck donkey balls" written backwards
Everybody knows what's coming after us - the Great Race of Yith, inhabiting big beetle bodies.
High (i.e. slow) response time does not mean tearing. Tearing is the result of screen updates happening between refreshes - a slow response time on your LCD gets you trails and motion ghosting, which are completely different.