Canada hasn't been attacked since those American bastards tried it almost 200 years ago (War of 1812). In reply, we (well, we were part of the British Empire at the time) burned their President's house, which had to be whitewashed to hide the smoke and scorch marks.
To my ears, Japanese sounds much more like a Western (Latin-based) language than most Asian languages do. Very little use of inflection (i.e. "hana" (nose) and "hana" (flower) are inflected slightly differently, but it's not that common.
Bilingual Japanese programmers I know, though, say that English is much more direct and easier to understand, even for programming manuals! Apparently the Japanese tendency to soften things and use implicit rather than explicit forms extends even to technical writing.
And Japanese writing is, IMHO, a pig. There's a reason that the Jesuit missionaries declared it to be a language devised by the devil himself!
Unlike Chinese, which usually has one sound per character, and hence about 6,000 commonly-used characters, Japanese has 2,000 common characters, each with multiple pronunciations.
"Is this character pronounced 'i' or 'o' or 'u' or 'ha' or 'ki' or 'nama' or 'na' or 'mu' or 'sei' or 'shou'"?
Oh God! I live in Japan. You have no IDEA what brand-obsessed means.
The funny part is where people wear clothes with English slogans, even though they have NO idea what it means. I had a 17-year-old (female) student come to my class with a T-shirt prominently displaying:
Well, they're not gasping actually. They're just not terribly impressed. In fact, for the Osaka area, where I live, SV IS relatively expensive (although houses and apartments and yards are smaller here, the cost for typical accommodation is about the same, or lower).
You can thank all those interviews with pro athletes who played "real good" instead of "really well." Or maybe its a chicken-and-egg thing and we are all to blame.
I doubt that many products of the U.S. primary/secondary educational system (or my own Canadian one) know or care about the difference between adverb and adjective.
My wife does, and she's Japanese (well, not "talk," but other words). Because the Japanese don't have a separate sound for "r" and "l," it is not only difficult for them to pronounce the two differently, but to remember which is which.
In "talk," a Japanese might remember that one of them is there, but confuse which one because they sound similar. Kind of like the way I mix up the kanji in "to use" and "convenient," which differ by a single stroke.
I didn't see the original message, but think that I should correct this mistaken impression.
I think that, as the chickens come home to roost, the Japanese ARE finding that the post-war work ethic is damaging to their society.
Studies show that a large number of young people either dislike, hate, or simply don't know their fathers very well -- far more than their mothers.
As for health, you'll find that the Japanese have always had lower incidences of heart disease and most other health problems. Partially due to genetics, maybe, but certainly their healthier diet is a huge factor. You know the thing that I notice most when I visit home (Canada)? How many fat people there are. Now, the Japanese may have many problems, but obesity (with its attendant health problems) is a very small one, albeit growing.
You're right about the divorce rate: the U.S. one (50% or so) is far, far higher than the Japanese one (about 4%, I believe). Of course, much of this is due to social and familial pressure not to shame the family, and divorced women have a really tough time financially. I don't think the divorce rate is because things are rosier at home, since many men go out drinking after work, then play golf or pachinko on weekends, but simply because it is harder to divorce.
My company may be typical (who can say?). The official workday is 9 to 5:30, with 50 minutes for lunch. I usually go home around 6:30, but most others stay until 7:30~8:00. Working until 10:00 several weeks in a row is not unheard-of. Managers are expected to be at their desks every day until 9:00; after the CEO telephones them, they can go home.
When you can buy the book, plus several others, on a single CD!
Dr. Dobbs has it as part of their Algorithms CD. It has full text searching, too!
Not only that, but the price is lower than you would normally pay for the CRS book alone.
My only complaints are:
- the interface was a bit weird and buggy - you can only browse it using the supplied Windows app (I think; I lent it to someone and never got it back).
If that's really the case, then come on over to Japan, where sweet, attractive girls will fall over themselves to meet you.
If you're caucasian, of course.
Sad, but true: basically any guy who comes over here (all you need is a degree -- any degree -- to teach English) picks up a Japanese girlfriend. Many eventually marry her. I did.
You see, whether deserved or not, foreign men have a reputation for being more sensitive and attentive than Japanese men. Also, because of the institutionalized sexism here, there are LOTS of women who would like to live overseas.
Is this good? I don't know. Maybe not. But it's true.
There's also a matter of national pride, and the military angle. Almost every major country has its own designs for nuclear reactors. It keeps the bug utilities happy, and they make generous contributions to politicians. Amazing.
Instead of light-water reactors, why doesn't everyone use heavy-water ones, like the CANDU? With that design, if you lose cooling water the reaction stops instead of running out of control. Sounds like a good idea to me. Also (until a spate of recent problems; I'm not sure how it is now) CANDU reactors have held many of the top spots for uptime and performance.
Who are we? I feel sympathy for your emotional distress, but don't you think that such a reaction is excessive? It's just a newspaper article, for God's sake!
In all seriousness, and not wanting to put you down, but have you thought about getting help to find out why you feel this way?
Millenium is no more -- not renewed for the fall season -- and if I may say so, it's a good thing.
The first season was good. The second season was, in my opinion, some of the finest television ever produced (with a couple of clinkers). Morgan and Wong wrote and produced intelligent, witty shows that asked questions about life, death, and faith.
They even used religion superbly, with mysticism (not trashy, Shirley Maclaine type), superstition and historical Christianity blended into plots that didn't just tease like the X-Files.
Then, in the third season, Chris Carter returned to the helm and apparently decreed that there was to be no more religion. Back to the "psycho killer of the week" dreck, completely ignoring all the developments of the second season, and forcing it into an ugly "Special FBI Agent" theme. So much for all the best conflicts like family/work, spiritual/physical, loyalty/justics.
I've heard that the third season improved in the second half, but they haven't come out on video here (Japan) yet, so I can't comment on them.
There is talk of a 6-part miniseries to wind things up, maybe around Christmas. I just hope to God they bring back Morgan and Wong.
While I understand that people could be worried about the intolerance shown on the web site (I personally thought his objection to men wearing pink underwear was the most amusing part), I think it's all to easy for us to be intolerant in return.
I should point out that I haven't seen the movie -- I haven't even seen the TV show, and it is unlikely to ever make it to Japan.
But why can't people at least acknowledge the validity of some of his points, instead of issuing blanket condemnations. You don't have to agree, but you should admit when some points are valid.
He was shocked by images of children suffering and dying. Can any of you say that that is a negative thing?
It seems to be popular to find someone, declare him intolerant, and beat him with a metaphorical stick. I'd say that many of the views expressed here are just as intolerant.
You may think the guy is a goof, a moron, and dangerous, but sticking labels on him and dismissing everything he says is no better.
Very, very few things in this world are absolutely evil, or absolutely good. Hitler probably had some good qualities, although they were completely overshadowed by the evil he did. Likewise with Hussein, Qadaffi, or the current flavour of the enemy-of-the-month. Anyone can be right sometimes, no matter how much you dislike them.
I just don't like the practice of dogmatically opposing people because you decide that they are fill in the blank. If you can't acknowledge when your opponent is right (as in our current political situation), everyone suffers as a result.
If you're going to use a foreign language to sound impressive, you should at least write it correctly:
n'est-ce pas
Sorry to be a stickler, but if I'm not allowed to call people on things like "it's" and "they're" (and, it seems, almost anything with an apostrophe), then I can at least claim that this is a valid point.
Slashdot Mirror
Canada hasn't been attacked since those American bastards tried it almost 200 years ago (War of 1812). In reply, we (well, we were part of the British Empire at the time) burned their President's house, which had to be whitewashed to hide the smoke and scorch marks.
I think it's more likely you bought "Delphi Unleashed," since Mastering Delphi is by Marco Cantu.
Just to avoid MC getting a bad rap.
And by the way, IIRC, Calvert's book was already over 1,000 (1,200?) pages, and CD was the only way to fit in the extra material.
Graham
Are you insane? I mean that in the good sense, of course.
Graham
To my ears, Japanese sounds much more like a Western (Latin-based) language than most Asian languages do. Very little use of inflection (i.e. "hana" (nose) and "hana" (flower) are inflected slightly differently, but it's not that common.
Bilingual Japanese programmers I know, though, say that English is much more direct and easier to understand, even for programming manuals! Apparently the Japanese tendency to soften things and use implicit rather than explicit forms extends even to technical writing.
And Japanese writing is, IMHO, a pig. There's a reason that the Jesuit missionaries declared it to be a language devised by the devil himself!
Unlike Chinese, which usually has one sound per character, and hence about 6,000 commonly-used characters, Japanese has 2,000 common characters, each with multiple pronunciations.
"Is this character pronounced 'i' or 'o' or 'u' or 'ha' or 'ki' or 'nama' or 'na' or 'mu' or 'sei' or 'shou'"?
Yes.
Graham
"loathe" is an even better word!
Or maybe a misty aerodrome.
The funny part is where people wear clothes with English slogans, even though they have NO idea what it means. I had a 17-year-old (female) student come to my class with a T-shirt prominently displaying:
Well, they're not gasping actually. They're just not terribly impressed. In fact, for the Osaka area, where I live, SV IS relatively expensive (although houses and apartments and yards are smaller here, the cost for typical accommodation is about the same, or lower).
You can thank all those interviews with pro athletes who played "real good" instead of "really well." Or maybe its a chicken-and-egg thing and we are all to blame.
I doubt that many products of the U.S. primary/secondary educational system (or my own Canadian one) know or care about the difference between adverb and adjective.
My wife does, and she's Japanese (well, not "talk," but other words). Because the Japanese don't have a separate sound for "r" and "l," it is not only difficult for them to pronounce the two differently, but to remember which is which.
In "talk," a Japanese might remember that one of them is there, but confuse which one because they sound similar. Kind of like the way I mix up the kanji in "to use" and "convenient," which differ by a single stroke.
I didn't see the original message, but think that I should correct this mistaken impression.
I think that, as the chickens come home to roost, the Japanese ARE finding that the post-war work ethic is damaging to their society.
Studies show that a large number of young people either dislike, hate, or simply don't know their fathers very well -- far more than their mothers.
As for health, you'll find that the Japanese have always had lower incidences of heart disease and most other health problems. Partially due to genetics, maybe, but certainly their healthier diet is a huge factor. You know the thing that I notice most when I visit home (Canada)? How many fat people there are. Now, the Japanese may have many problems, but obesity (with its attendant health problems) is a very small one, albeit growing.
You're right about the divorce rate: the U.S. one (50% or so) is far, far higher than the Japanese one (about 4%, I believe). Of course, much of this is due to social and familial pressure not to shame the family, and divorced women have a really tough time financially. I don't think the divorce rate is because things are rosier at home, since many men go out drinking after work, then play golf or pachinko on weekends, but simply because it is harder to divorce.
My company may be typical (who can say?). The official workday is 9 to 5:30, with 50 minutes for lunch. I usually go home around 6:30, but most others stay until 7:30~8:00. Working until 10:00 several weeks in a row is not unheard-of. Managers are expected to be at their desks every day until 9:00; after the CEO telephones them, they can go home.
I'm looking for a new job!
When you can buy the book, plus several others, on a single CD!
Dr. Dobbs has it as part of their Algorithms CD. It has full text searching, too!
Not only that, but the price is lower than you would normally pay for the CRS book alone.
My only complaints are:
- the interface was a bit weird and buggy
- you can only browse it using the supplied Windows app (I think; I lent it to someone and never got it back).
Graham
If that's really the case, then come on over to Japan, where sweet, attractive girls will fall over themselves to meet you.
If you're caucasian, of course.
Sad, but true: basically any guy who comes over here (all you need is a degree -- any degree -- to teach English) picks up a Japanese girlfriend. Many eventually marry her. I did.
You see, whether deserved or not, foreign men have a reputation for being more sensitive and attentive than Japanese men. Also, because of the institutionalized sexism here, there are LOTS of women who would like to live overseas.
Is this good? I don't know. Maybe not. But it's true.
Graham
There's also a matter of national pride, and the military angle. Almost every major country has its own designs for nuclear reactors. It keeps the bug utilities happy, and they make generous contributions to politicians. Amazing.
Instead of light-water reactors, why doesn't everyone use heavy-water ones, like the CANDU? With that design, if you lose cooling water the reaction stops instead of running out of control. Sounds like a good idea to me. Also (until a spate of recent problems; I'm not sure how it is now) CANDU reactors have held many of the top spots for uptime and performance.
Graham
Pretty good mnemonic. Except that it's dekameter, not decometer.
So much for mnemonics.
Graham
Who are we? I feel sympathy for your emotional distress, but don't you think that such a reaction is excessive? It's just a newspaper article, for God's sake!
In all seriousness, and not wanting to put you down, but have you thought about getting help to find out why you feel this way?
Graham
Are you kidding? In Japan, this qualifies as superb English!!!
Just do a search on "Engrish" to see the appalling level of practical English usage in this country.
Blame it on the educational system which uses university entrance exams to select those who can best regurgitate mountains of irrelevant details.
Graham
Millenium is no more -- not renewed for the fall season -- and if I may say so, it's a good thing.
The first season was good. The second season was, in my opinion, some of the finest television ever produced (with a couple of clinkers). Morgan and Wong wrote and produced intelligent, witty shows that asked questions about life, death, and faith.
They even used religion superbly, with mysticism (not trashy, Shirley Maclaine type), superstition and historical Christianity blended into plots that didn't just tease like the X-Files.
Then, in the third season, Chris Carter returned to the helm and apparently decreed that there was to be no more religion. Back to the "psycho killer of the week" dreck, completely ignoring all the developments of the second season, and forcing it into an ugly "Special FBI Agent" theme. So much for all the best conflicts like family/work, spiritual/physical, loyalty/justics.
I've heard that the third season improved in the second half, but they haven't come out on video here (Japan) yet, so I can't comment on them.
There is talk of a 6-part miniseries to wind things up, maybe around Christmas. I just hope to God they bring back Morgan and Wong.
Doesn't that hurt? }:-O
While I understand that people could be worried about the intolerance shown on the web site (I personally thought his objection to men wearing pink underwear was the most amusing part), I think it's all to easy for us to be intolerant in return.
I should point out that I haven't seen the movie -- I haven't even seen the TV show, and it is unlikely to ever make it to Japan.
But why can't people at least acknowledge the validity of some of his points, instead of issuing blanket condemnations. You don't have to agree, but you should admit when some points are valid.
He was shocked by images of children suffering and dying. Can any of you say that that is a negative thing?
It seems to be popular to find someone, declare him intolerant, and beat him with a metaphorical stick. I'd say that many of the views expressed here are just as intolerant.
You may think the guy is a goof, a moron, and dangerous, but sticking labels on him and dismissing everything he says is no better.
Very, very few things in this world are absolutely evil, or absolutely good. Hitler probably had some good qualities, although they were completely overshadowed by the evil he did. Likewise with Hussein, Qadaffi, or the current flavour of the enemy-of-the-month. Anyone can be right sometimes, no matter how much you dislike them.
I just don't like the practice of dogmatically opposing people because you decide that they are fill in the blank. If you can't acknowledge when your opponent is right (as in our current political situation), everyone suffers as a result.
n'est-ce pas
Sorry to be a stickler, but if I'm not allowed to call people on things like "it's" and "they're" (and, it seems, almost anything with an apostrophe), then I can at least claim that this is a valid point.