The kind of opinion you'd come to from checking Wikipedia rather than actually using it.
Millions upon millions of Japanese (and some non-Japanese, like myself) have found the IMEs to be more than satisfactorily efficient and easy to use. Not only that, but they sometimes have predictive input as well (especially on cell phones), which makes typing in Japanese even faster and easier.
Japanese is typed using a more-or-less standard QWERTY keyboard.
Tediously.
Not in the least. I do it every day at work. It takes little more effort than writing in English. Unless, of course, your Japanese reading skills are not up to the job---but that won't be the fault of the keyboard.
Please let me emphasize that typing with a QWERTY keyboard is the standard way of typing in Japan. In fact, despite the existence of other methods, I don't know a single person who actually uses those methods.
When I was in Grade 7 or 8, we studied compound interest in math class (in Southern Ontario). My math classes didn't go out of their way to avoid relevance to the real world. Maybe that's why Canadians tend to score so much higher on math than Americans?
Notice how I said "in the vast majority of cases"---worldwide, and throughout history, the vast majority of cases of such thievery would not have been punished by hanging.
You stated flat out that you would be hanged if caught stealing to feed your family. In certain places and under certain circumstances such a thing may have happened. But in the vast majority of cases in most times and in most places death would not even have been considered.
When I was in school, I used to wake up at 5am. With no alarm clock. Even today, I consider getting up at 8 to be "sleeping in." Not everyone's a night owl, you know.
Except that you're answering the above question after I have made explicit what I meant by it (my layman's understanding of genetic drift).
If you were responding to that question, then why did you post the response to that question>, rather than to my post with the link to genetic drift in it?
Maybe you should look up the word disingenuous as well?
Okay then, substitute "blue eyes" for any other neutral feature that genetic drift would work on. Or was it your intention to suggest that genetic drift never actually occurs?
If the feature spreads to the entire population (eg during a population bottleneck, something that happened to humans about 70000 years ago), then where would "it" go? There would be nobody who advantageously was missing this "it" to breed it out.
Statistically we're not talking about something like all the air in the room suddenly accumulating in one corner (not impossible, but statistically astoundingly unlikely), we're talking about something that actually happens.
For the record, I've never said that I think that's what's happened here, only that it's not impossible.
Statistically, but not in all specific cases. If genetic drift always resulted in such features disappearing, genetic drift wouldn't even be a significant area of study. The thing that makes genetic drift interesting at all is that these features (like blue eyes) can spread to a significant portion of the population, and in some cases even became universal in a population.
Is it impossible that that is the case with taste buds in the lungs? Until there is found a reason for them to be naturally selected for, what argument is there other than genetic drift? Do I need to quote Sherlock Holmes?
Sorry, but unless my reading skills are broken, you seem to be talking about selection rather than genetic drift. My understanding of genetic drift is that it is random, and thus doesn't "tend to remove" (or promote) features of any kind--that would be selection at work, if the feature was beneficial or detrimental.
In contrast to natural selection, which makes gene variants more common or less common depending on their reproductive success, the changes due to genetic drift are not driven by environmental or adaptive pressures, and may be beneficial, neutral, or detrimental to reproductive success.
Our society has near-universal reading and writing skills, true. For anything more advanced, though, I think we're starting to see the limits of 'the average' human's capability. Consider that despite decades of widespread attempts to teach scientific method and basic mathematics in schools, we still have almost universal scientific and mathematical illiteracy.
"Mathematical illiteracy" is pretty hyperbolic considering a) how advanced mathematically the average person in our society's math skills are compared to, say, that of someone in a South American tribe whose society and language has no concept of any number beyond 'three', and b) how often your average person has the opportunity to make practical use of more advanced math skills.
I mean, what would be the mathematical equivalent (for the average person) of reading the newspaper every day?
Also, we see great differences in average math skills in different countries. Canada and the US are neighbours, yet Canada ranks consistently higher in math skills (and science). A couple of rankings I've found have placed Canada about 5th out of industrialized nations, and the US about 24th or 25th. Clearly the US hasn't come anywhere near its math skills potential (and, I would halfheartedly argue, neither have Canada or Hong Kong).
All brains don't have to be created equal. It's pretty clear that the vast majority of the population are not making the best of the capabilities they were born with.
It was once believed that the serfs couldn't possibly learn to read, or to benefit from it even if they did learn. Now we live in a society with near-universal literacy.
We have no idea what the limits of our brains are, and thus have no way of comparing brain capacity.
If Einstein had been raised in a box, do you think his brain capacity alone would have given Relativity to the world?
If you really want to have an "open" device, you should have supported the various open hardware platforms that eventually failed because of your lack of support.
Some of us would like to, but here in Japan, we get only what the carriers offer. Even if I bought an unlocked OpenMoko, I couldn't use it.
IgnoramusMaximus's post suggested that 3G support was limited to Europe, but in fact the N900 has been rolled out all over the world (India, the Gulf Arab states, Japan, Hong Kong...)
Japan?! On what carrier?! I was looking for an N900 for months before I settled on my Desire. No info.
I'm in Shizuoka City. I've heard Numazu's pretty strict and will actually return your garbage bags (is that where you are?). Not sure about other municipalities.
Here, they don't accept PET bottles per se. They just don't give people shit if you do throw them in with the rest of the garbage. And so, people do (even the 2L bottles, and lots of them).
Slashdot Mirror
The kind of opinion you'd come to from checking Wikipedia rather than actually using it.
Millions upon millions of Japanese (and some non-Japanese, like myself) have found the IMEs to be more than satisfactorily efficient and easy to use. Not only that, but they sometimes have predictive input as well (especially on cell phones), which makes typing in Japanese even faster and easier.
Japanese is typed using a more-or-less standard QWERTY keyboard.
Tediously.
Not in the least. I do it every day at work. It takes little more effort than writing in English. Unless, of course, your Japanese reading skills are not up to the job---but that won't be the fault of the keyboard.
Please let me emphasize that typing with a QWERTY keyboard is the standard way of typing in Japan. In fact, despite the existence of other methods, I don't know a single person who actually uses those methods.
Japanese is typed using a more-or-less standard QWERTY keyboard.
When I was in Grade 7 or 8, we studied compound interest in math class (in Southern Ontario). My math classes didn't go out of their way to avoid relevance to the real world. Maybe that's why Canadians tend to score so much higher on math than Americans?
Notice how I said "in the vast majority of cases"---worldwide, and throughout history, the vast majority of cases of such thievery would not have been punished by hanging.
You stated flat out that you would be hanged if caught stealing to feed your family. In certain places and under certain circumstances such a thing may have happened. But in the vast majority of cases in most times and in most places death would not even have been considered.
Which would be fine, if they were suing the parents.
In days past you would be hanged if caught.
That's a bit of an exaggeration in the vast majority of cases.
...when ever there's a news story about a portable music device they automatically refer to the Apple iPod
Apple's marketing division has worked hard to make their brand synonymous with portable music devices, smartphones and tablets.
We didn't have A.D.D. then either, a smack upside the head nipped such a developing condition in the bud.
Yeah! The left-handed people, too!
When I was in school, I used to wake up at 5am. With no alarm clock. Even today, I consider getting up at 8 to be "sleeping in." Not everyone's a night owl, you know.
MySQL AB owned MySQL and distributed a version of it under the GPL.
PostgreSQL isn't owned by anyone who could sell.
Except that you're answering the above question after I have made explicit what I meant by it (my layman's understanding of genetic drift).
If you were responding to that question, then why did you post the response to that question>, rather than to my post with the link to genetic drift in it?
Maybe you should look up the word disingenuous as well?
Meaning you prefer blue eyes?
Okay then, substitute "blue eyes" for any other neutral feature that genetic drift would work on. Or was it your intention to suggest that genetic drift never actually occurs?
If the feature spreads to the entire population (eg during a population bottleneck, something that happened to humans about 70000 years ago), then where would "it" go? There would be nobody who advantageously was missing this "it" to breed it out.
Statistically we're not talking about something like all the air in the room suddenly accumulating in one corner (not impossible, but statistically astoundingly unlikely), we're talking about something that actually happens.
For the record, I've never said that I think that's what's happened here, only that it's not impossible.
unlikely != impossible
Statistically, but not in all specific cases. If genetic drift always resulted in such features disappearing, genetic drift wouldn't even be a significant area of study. The thing that makes genetic drift interesting at all is that these features (like blue eyes) can spread to a significant portion of the population, and in some cases even became universal in a population.
Is it impossible that that is the case with taste buds in the lungs? Until there is found a reason for them to be naturally selected for, what argument is there other than genetic drift? Do I need to quote Sherlock Holmes?
Sorry, but unless my reading skills are broken, you seem to be talking about selection rather than genetic drift. My understanding of genetic drift is that it is random, and thus doesn't "tend to remove" (or promote) features of any kind--that would be selection at work, if the feature was beneficial or detrimental.
You may want to read up on genetic drift:
In contrast to natural selection, which makes gene variants more common or less common depending on their reproductive success, the changes due to genetic drift are not driven by environmental or adaptive pressures, and may be beneficial, neutral, or detrimental to reproductive success.
(emphasis mine)
Our society has near-universal reading and writing skills, true. For anything more advanced, though, I think we're starting to see the limits of 'the average' human's capability. Consider that despite decades of widespread attempts to teach scientific method and basic mathematics in schools, we still have almost universal scientific and mathematical illiteracy.
"Mathematical illiteracy" is pretty hyperbolic considering a) how advanced mathematically the average person in our society's math skills are compared to, say, that of someone in a South American tribe whose society and language has no concept of any number beyond 'three', and b) how often your average person has the opportunity to make practical use of more advanced math skills.
I mean, what would be the mathematical equivalent (for the average person) of reading the newspaper every day?
Also, we see great differences in average math skills in different countries. Canada and the US are neighbours, yet Canada ranks consistently higher in math skills (and science). A couple of rankings I've found have placed Canada about 5th out of industrialized nations, and the US about 24th or 25th. Clearly the US hasn't come anywhere near its math skills potential (and, I would halfheartedly argue, neither have Canada or Hong Kong).
I wonder what might be the reasoning behind this system evolving/remaining intact in humans.
What, you think genes reason?
All brains don't have to be created equal. It's pretty clear that the vast majority of the population are not making the best of the capabilities they were born with.
It was once believed that the serfs couldn't possibly learn to read, or to benefit from it even if they did learn. Now we live in a society with near-universal literacy.
We have no idea what the limits of our brains are, and thus have no way of comparing brain capacity.
If Einstein had been raised in a box, do you think his brain capacity alone would have given Relativity to the world?
They can only release what they have. Do you have reason to believe they have such documents in the first place?
If you really want to have an "open" device, you should have supported the various open hardware platforms that eventually failed because of your lack of support.
Some of us would like to, but here in Japan, we get only what the carriers offer. Even if I bought an unlocked OpenMoko, I couldn't use it.
IgnoramusMaximus's post suggested that 3G support was limited to Europe, but in fact the N900 has been rolled out all over the world (India, the Gulf Arab states, Japan, Hong Kong...)
Japan?! On what carrier?! I was looking for an N900 for months before I settled on my Desire. No info.
My job is affected. I'm so sorry for taking pride in the quality of work I produce.
Here, they don't accept PET bottles per se. They just don't give people shit if you do throw them in with the rest of the garbage. And so, people do (even the 2L bottles, and lots of them).