I've been learning Japanese recently (my what a big curve to climb) and also did some Italian years ago in High School. But I grew up speaking English.
Japanese is inflected on average only a little more heavily than English, so word order tends to obey convention rather than rules. Both "shigoto ni dencha de itte shimasu" and "dencha de shigoto ni itte shimasu" mean the same thing, but AFAIK a native speaker would prefer the first construct. (It means "I'm going to work on the train".)
Since it's basically a martial-arts sitcom with an explicitly sexual premise.
Now having said that, I find Ranma very funny and love it. All the main characters are fairly strong, even some of the background characters. And when it occurs (which AFAIK isn't nearly often enough) the romance between Ranma and Akane is really sweet.
You do need an overview of what makes Japanese society tick, however. And the rocket launch sequence is amazing - they used NASA knowledge to make it look right.
A really good taste of Anne McAffrey's talents is the book Get Off The Unicorn, and contains quite a number of short stories ranging from Sci-fi to Fantasy to Speculative Fiction, often all at once. It goes back about 15-20 years in her writing, however, and several of the short stories therein she later turned into full novels. The Tower and The Hive sequence is the prime example. However, The Ship Who Sang also dates from the same period and should be read before the short story "Honeymoon". McAffrey is a "soft" Sci-Fi writer; she puts a lot of emphasis on character and story so the science takes a definite second place. However, she will go seek assistance where necessary (Dragonsdawn is a good example of that).
If after sampling that, tastes run towards fantasy instead, I can recommend Raymond E Fiest. Again, very story and character oriented, but he's quite good at creating huge story vistas. Originally started as a bit of yarning, he has been exploring the metaphysics of his universe for over 15 years!
FYI: CD Players generally look for the TOC of the first session. (Multi-session) CD-ROMs look for the last session. That's currently how PC-only information is hidden from a CD Player. It's a quirk of history.
That's simply downright sneaky. FYI: CD Players generally look for the TOC of the first session. (Multi-session) CD-ROMs look for the last session. That's currently how PC-only information is hidden from a CD Player. It's a quirk of history. Wade.
As in, incorrect.:-) It is, of course, currently questionably legal to export it from the US. Come to think of it, it might even be illegal to export it from Australia!
If memory serves, they couldn't legally protect their intellectual property, i.e. the content. (Hang on that doesn't sound quite right...) At best, they could only add some sort of protection and make it illegal to break that.
In one sense, all this legal biz is legit, albeit horribly misguided. The owners of the content want to control as much as possible what happens to their content and that does mean getting legal at any threats to their control. The misguided bit is, of course, that they think they need this control. The DVD format was delayed a year or two because Hollywood wanted something like this, BTW. It was the same story with those accursed region codes.
By supporting Opera's port to Linux, you're saying to Mozilla et al that you're currently willing to pay for a browser that's better than they can provide for free. In other words, Opera is raising the bar.
Of course, there are things lacking. For instance, Netscape appears to have to only highly-visible IMAP client around at the moment - and it ain't wonderful. Word Perfect's Word 97 file conversion isn't perfect, either. And ApplixWare and Star Office, while nice, need to go a bit closer to Word and then diverge. Some of the basic functionality is um wierd in those two. OTOH, programs like The Gimp are great, if unique (I'm used to Paint Shop Pro:-).
But not to get you down, have a look over at Linux World where Nick Petreley has a good, if quick review of Corel Linux.
I think the original complaint was the anti-GPL-and-by-extension-anti-Linux slant Brett brought to the table. I've lived through his tirades before and his "the GPL is bad, Linux uses the GPL therefore Linux is bad" mantra gets old fast. I've even seen evidence of it offending BSD advocates!
Brett is, of course, welcome to his opinion. I wasn't annoyed at his reference as I expected it, but others unfamiliar with him might get upset at it.
MiniDisc and MP3 audio do not target the same market. Sony is currently busy marketing MD to those who are looking for the next generation Compact Cassette. This includes not juse audiophiles, but DJs and the like. Philips are currently targetting exactly the same market with CD-R (I wonder who's going to win:-). Who are MP3s players going to? People who want their MP3 collection portable. A quite different market segment.
MiniDisc is taking off (in Australia). Blanks are ~AU$7 each and still falling. I know of at least three friends who are into MiniDisc. I couldn't say that 6 months ago.
I recall the French Government got stymied by a proposed onerous law a few years ago by a student protest organised on Minitel. Even though it's ironic that the fact that Minitel is a Government service, but the Government simply didn't see it coming.
I wish I could find a reference to it somewhere, but 5 minutes searching in Google failed. I do recall that it was one of a small number of things that firmly established Minitel in the minds of the French whilst it was still taking off.
Over in a company division we acquired about a year ago, they were using people out of Greek Mythology. There was eventually a Hercules for one reason or another. And then a box got called Xena:-). The original architect of the naming system was not impressed! But at least there was now a whole new slew of pseudo-Greek names available... (I'd use a box called Gabrielle. Or Callisto.)
I have several fantasy worlds that exist in maps and descriptions only. I use Elven cities for my network at home. Sharlai, Entessi, Retasha, Burshanna are the existing four. There are at least another four if and when the machine count gets that high. (The same maps are good for passwords, too, being unpublished.)
One clever scheme at guy a work was using was the names of people who've left. The range is literally endless!
Yes, naming the printers after disney characters strikes me as something that your average Japanese sarariman would either love or hate. I'm not surprised it worked.:-)
Actually, CSS involves locking the movie files away until you can demonstrate to the player you're authorised. The second layer of CSS is tht the unlocked movie files come back to you encrypted, anyway.
However, I have no idea if the CSS locking could be applied to non-movie DVD-ROMs. Theoreticaly, I think so.
I read somewhere in the last month (I think it might have been on aus.dvd) that the hurdles to doing DVD on Linux are almost all along the lines of "we want you to watch what we give you to watch without you tinkering with it". IOW, coporate preferences. The CSS scheme isn't patented and licensing it is $0. It was put in to make it difficult to see the raw MPEG stream. (Isn't this mentioned in the DVD FAQ?) MPEG-2 is patented, yes, but like a number of patents like this, decoding is not something that has to be licensed. AC-3 (Dolby Digital) is also patented, but there is a free AC-3 codec out there that Dolby apparently ignore. Obviously, it's easier to make the money on encoder licenses. (Heck, we could legally implement Macrovision if we really liked! That could be an interesting bargaining chip.)
AFAIK, that's the sort of thing the GGI folks are aiming for: an API which you can build anything graphical on - even other graphics libraries! - that talks to some kernal stuff and some non-kernel stuff.
The goal is to have the kernel protect the display resources the same way it protects the disk, yet allow display drivers to work "under" than in user-space.
Slashdot Mirror
Japanese is inflected on average only a little more heavily than English, so word order tends to obey convention rather than rules. Both "shigoto ni dencha de itte shimasu" and "dencha de shigoto ni itte shimasu" mean the same thing, but AFAIK a native speaker would prefer the first construct. (It means "I'm going to work on the train".)
Wade.
Now having said that, I find Ranma very funny and love it. All the main characters are fairly strong, even some of the background characters. And when it occurs (which AFAIK isn't nearly often enough) the romance between Ranma and Akane is really sweet.
Wade.
Wade.
So long as the SlashDot editors and story submitters keep getting it wrong, there will always be people to posting "It's Lego, not Legos" comments.
Wade.
If after sampling that, tastes run towards fantasy instead, I can recommend Raymond E Fiest. Again, very story and character oriented, but he's quite good at creating huge story vistas. Originally started as a bit of yarning, he has been exploring the metaphysics of his universe for over 15 years!
Wade.
FYI: CD Players generally look for the TOC of the first session. (Multi-session) CD-ROMs look for the last session. That's currently how PC-only information is hidden from a CD Player. It's a quirk of history.
Wade.
That's simply downright sneaky. FYI: CD Players generally look for the TOC of the first session. (Multi-session) CD-ROMs look for the last session. That's currently how PC-only information is hidden from a CD Player. It's a quirk of history. Wade.
Wade.
Wade.
If memory serves, they couldn't legally protect their intellectual property, i.e. the content. (Hang on that doesn't sound quite right...) At best, they could only add some sort of protection and make it illegal to break that.
In one sense, all this legal biz is legit, albeit horribly misguided. The owners of the content want to control as much as possible what happens to their content and that does mean getting legal at any threats to their control. The misguided bit is, of course, that they think they need this control. The DVD format was delayed a year or two because Hollywood wanted something like this, BTW. It was the same story with those accursed region codes.
Wade.
Wade.
How's that for a slap on the face! :-)
Wade.
But not to get you down, have a look over at Linux World where Nick Petreley has a good, if quick review of Corel Linux.
Wade.
But you're right, we don't need a BSD vs GPL tussle. We just didn't need Brett's bias to show, either.
Wade
Brett is, of course, welcome to his opinion. I wasn't annoyed at his reference as I expected it, but others unfamiliar with him might get upset at it.
Wade.
MiniDisc is taking off (in Australia). Blanks are ~AU$7 each and still falling. I know of at least three friends who are into MiniDisc. I couldn't say that 6 months ago.
Wade.
I wish I could find a reference to it somewhere, but 5 minutes searching in Google failed. I do recall that it was one of a small number of things that firmly established Minitel in the minds of the French whilst it was still taking off.
Wade.
Wade.
I have several fantasy worlds that exist in maps and descriptions only. I use Elven cities for my network at home. Sharlai, Entessi, Retasha, Burshanna are the existing four. There are at least another four if and when the machine count gets that high. (The same maps are good for passwords, too, being unpublished.)
One clever scheme at guy a work was using was the names of people who've left. The range is literally endless!
Wade.
However, I have no idea if the CSS locking could be applied to non-movie DVD-ROMs. Theoreticaly, I think so.
Wade.
Wade.
And the Macrovision stuff would be on the luminance signal because that's where the sync info is.
Wade.
The goal is to have the kernel protect the display resources the same way it protects the disk, yet allow display drivers to work "under" than in user-space.
Wade.