There is a cheap Linux-based PDA out there. The Helio by Vtech. I have one, and have to admit, that it's great except for one serious drawback: the 70Mhz electronics depletes the batteries at a breathtaking pace. Otherwise it features robust and natural stroke recognition (doesn't screw up your handwriting like Palm), ultrafast operation, cool voice system. All the bells and whistles in short. Costs $150.
Let me just point out that once upon a time there
used to be a Russian Empire that subsequentially
became the Soviet Union. The SU had almost 300
inhabitants, most of whom spoke Russian at native
level. And it had been virtually the lingua franca in the rest of the Eastern Block (approx. 70 millions), but the standards of Russian there were way worse than inside the SU even though Russian had been a mandatory subject in the elementary schools. The slavonic people learned it pretty good, nevertheless (Polish speak Russian very well, since it is close to their native language, and most of Poland has been a part of the Russian Empire). The push for eliminating Russian begun as soon as the Russians lost their dominance.
Nevertheless, in that region the national TV stations broadcast movies in Russian without subtitles, the language of science and technology is still Russian (LUG meetings are usually in Russian:-), etc.
English may very well share the same fate if the American economy encounters a major crisis, which is not as impossible as it seems to be, taking in consideration the declining standards of education in US.
The metodology of spreading Russian is actually better than the one of English, one just has to look at the illiteracy rates in the English speaking countries and in the former SU. The standards of Russian are also way higher there, than the standards of English, even in U.S. themselves. Russian has also all the features mentioned in the article and in the subsequent/. discussion (note, that it has 32 letters:-).
It's quite interesting, that the article ignored Russian completely.
WTF are you talking about? This guy - a pretty educated and witty one - is trolling us. His knowledge shines through irony, while our (European) comments put us in bad shape (being so proud of our European heritage). To your information: Hans Bethe was German Leo Szilard was Hungarian (and was really sick of Europe as a whole) Enrico Fermi was Italian Niels Borh was Dutch Sometimes I feel ashamed of our close-minded anti-Americanism. There's no paradise on Earth, neither in America, nor in Europe. Every culture has its bright and dark sides. And chauvinism is a Bad Thing (tm) wherever it shows up.
Hey, don't you guys remember this type of trolling? Sentences beginning with lowercase letters and the pointless America-praising. I like this guy anyway, his trolling is art. And it is nice to observe "'peans" overreacting his trolls. By the way: Dear citizens of the EU, did you know that Europe actually lies between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountain Range? While talking about Europe you very oftenly miss this point. Moscow, Prague, Warsaw and Budapest are European cities as well, with flourishing, European-style hacker culture.
Our techie mind is heavily damaged by learning programming languages. I've been here in US for about 6 months and my English is still leaking. I've learnt java and xml here, but I still speak the same broken English I picked up from man pages and HowTOs.
Anyway, a girl I know speaks 5 (spoken) languages fluently, but could not operate the digital timer and temperature controller of a gas cooktop.
I live in America and I enjoy it when I see people bash our country.
I can see good and bad things in America, but I have to admit that we ape America in many ways in Europe. Belive or not, America-bashing is one of them. I've learnt it here.
Like haggling over a bunch of bricks when you're building a mall?
Have you ever been to America? Almost NOTHING is made of bricks in this country. Brick is something you finish your wooden house with. It's thickness does not exceed 0.5 inches.
As a republic, are you following me 'pean, that employs a bicameral legislative body (that's 2 houses for you stupid 'peans) to give equal representation (2 senators per state) alongside proportional representation (# of congressman per capita). This is a comingling of pure democracy, balanced by representative democracy.
WOW!!! We had that in the USSR too! The unbreakable union of freeborn republics was a comingling of pure democracy?
Anyway, I can read the irony (trolling?) in your posts, I don't take them seriously and laugh along with you on those who do.
Democracy is said to be invented in Greece. I'm not sure whether that is true or not, but that patent claim is backed up better than yours. As of owning the software, THIS IS SLASHDOT, man! Period. And if you make a trip to Europe, just visit the ruins of the Roman Empire with an appropriate guide (or read some books on it sitting in your cozy home), and find out that most of your institutions (including the goddamn INS which doesn't let me work in U.S.:-) are cut'n'pasted from the ancient Rome. So are ours in Europe. We're not better.
Both are true: Englis IS friendly to digital technologies. And the digital technologies are friendly to English. English uses plain latin alphabet, without fancy accent graves and umlauts and stuff like that. OK, Russian is even better on this issue, since the Russian cyrillic alphabet has 32 glyphs (yeah, this fact was exploited in the "knocking protocol" used in Russian prisons from the early 18th century: a neat example of the early digital frame-relays), BUT English is has another big advantage: you put words together and they do mean something. You sequence the words "look", "at", "the", "green", "moon", and you have a sentence. In other languages there are prefixes, suffixes, alternations and other nasty stuff like that. I know, they do exist in English too, but they are rare. That's why even during the cold war the Russian programming languages (like Focal) were based on English, however they had almost nothing else in common with those we all know. So the unquestioned dominance of English is mostly due to lucky(?) coincidence of many facts.
Why not to Denmark? Oh, that's very easy to answer. You may even ask some fresh US immigrants. Denmark (and other 'pean countries) just don't let people in. I'm sure, that if it were so easy to get settled in Switzerland as it is in U.S., Russian had been added to the list of the official languages.;-) And belive or not, almost all European cities over 300K (even Eastern European ones!) have Chinatowns. Chineese are conquering the world in their peaceful way, and to tell the truth I'm very happy about it. I do like chineese restaurants.;-)
I live in a small, poor Eastern European country called Hungary. We had a goverment program, that connected every K12 school and even some kindergardens to the net in 1996. The higher educational network was completed in 1993. Altrough many Hungarian WANs are ill-designed and suffer from various bottleneck problems, since the goverment-financed programs are vulnerable to corruption.
Slashdot Mirror
Check out this link to learn more about the Russian Mars-project. Remeber: These are the same guys who have gotten Gagarin in space.
There is a cheap Linux-based PDA out there. The Helio by Vtech. I have one, and have to admit, that it's great except for one serious drawback: the 70Mhz electronics depletes the batteries at a breathtaking pace. Otherwise it features robust and natural stroke recognition (doesn't screw up your handwriting like Palm), ultrafast operation, cool voice system. All the bells and whistles in short. Costs $150.
Let me just point out that once upon a time there used to be a Russian Empire that subsequentially became the Soviet Union. The SU had almost 300 inhabitants, most of whom spoke Russian at native level. And it had been virtually the lingua franca in the rest of the Eastern Block (approx. 70 millions), but the standards of Russian there were way worse than inside the SU even though Russian had been a mandatory subject in the elementary schools. The slavonic people learned it pretty good, nevertheless (Polish speak Russian very well, since it is close to their native language, and most of Poland has been a part of the Russian Empire). :-), etc.
English may very well share the same fate if the American economy encounters a major crisis, which is not as impossible as it seems to be, taking in consideration the declining standards of education in US. /. discussion (note, that it has 32 letters :-).
It's quite interesting, that the article ignored Russian completely.
The push for eliminating Russian begun as soon as the Russians lost their dominance. Nevertheless, in that region the national TV stations broadcast movies in Russian without subtitles, the language of science and technology is still Russian (LUG meetings are usually in Russian
The metodology of spreading Russian is actually better than the one of English, one just has to look at the illiteracy rates in the English speaking countries and in the former SU. The standards of Russian are also way higher there, than the standards of English, even in U.S. themselves.
Russian has also all the features mentioned in the article and in the subsequent
WTF are you talking about? This guy - a pretty educated and witty one - is trolling us. His knowledge shines through irony, while our (European) comments put us in bad shape (being so proud of our European heritage).
To your information:
Hans Bethe was German
Leo Szilard was Hungarian (and was really sick of Europe as a whole)
Enrico Fermi was Italian
Niels Borh was Dutch
Sometimes I feel ashamed of our close-minded anti-Americanism. There's no paradise on Earth, neither in America, nor in Europe. Every culture has its bright and dark sides. And chauvinism is a Bad Thing (tm) wherever it shows up.
Hey, don't you guys remember this type of trolling? Sentences beginning with lowercase letters and the pointless America-praising. I like this guy anyway, his trolling is art. And it is nice to observe "'peans" overreacting his trolls. By the way: Dear citizens of the EU, did you know that Europe actually lies between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountain Range? While talking about Europe you very oftenly miss this point. Moscow, Prague, Warsaw and Budapest are European cities as well, with flourishing, European-style hacker culture.
I know another exoskeleton which does the trick of preserving the kinetic energy instead of dissipation it: the bicycle.
And WTF are you compiling Linux with?
Anyway, a girl I know speaks 5 (spoken) languages fluently, but could not operate the digital timer and temperature controller of a gas cooktop.
Still, I admire that girl.
I can see good and bad things in America, but I have to admit that we ape America in many ways in Europe. Belive or not, America-bashing is one of them. I've learnt it here.
WOW!!! We had that in the USSR too! The unbreakable union of freeborn republics was a comingling of pure democracy?
Anyway, I can read the irony (trolling?) in your posts, I don't take them seriously and laugh along with you on those who do.
What to expect from "socialist education"? :-). That's what.
Just take a look at the last ACM Collegiate Programming contest (no link to click on
Democracy is said to be invented in Greece. I'm not sure whether that is true or not, but that patent claim is backed up better than yours. :-) are cut'n'pasted from the ancient Rome. So are ours in Europe. We're not better.
As of owning the software, THIS IS SLASHDOT, man! Period. And if you make a trip to Europe, just visit the ruins of the Roman Empire with an appropriate guide (or read some books on it sitting in your cozy home), and find out that most of your institutions (including the goddamn INS which doesn't let me work in U.S.
Remember the lingo spoken in the Blade Runner?
Both are true: Englis IS friendly to digital technologies. And the digital technologies are friendly to English.
English uses plain latin alphabet, without fancy accent graves and umlauts and stuff like that. OK, Russian is even better on this issue, since the Russian cyrillic alphabet has 32 glyphs (yeah, this fact was exploited in the "knocking protocol" used in Russian prisons from the early 18th century: a neat example of the early digital frame-relays), BUT English is has another big advantage: you put words together and they do mean something. You sequence the words "look", "at", "the", "green", "moon", and you have a sentence. In other languages there are prefixes, suffixes, alternations and other nasty stuff like that. I know, they do exist in English too, but they are rare. That's why even during the cold war the Russian programming languages (like Focal) were based on English, however they had almost nothing else in common with those we all know. So the unquestioned dominance of English is mostly due to lucky(?) coincidence of many facts.
Why not to Denmark? ;-) ;-)
Oh, that's very easy to answer. You may even ask some fresh US immigrants. Denmark (and other 'pean countries) just don't let people in. I'm sure, that if it were so easy to get settled in Switzerland as it is in U.S., Russian had been added to the list of the official languages.
And belive or not, almost all European cities over 300K (even Eastern European ones!) have Chinatowns. Chineese are conquering the world in their peaceful way, and to tell the truth I'm very happy about it. I do like chineese restaurants.
I live in a small, poor Eastern European country called Hungary. We had a goverment program, that connected every K12 school and even some kindergardens to the net in 1996. The higher educational network was completed in 1993. Altrough many Hungarian WANs are ill-designed and suffer from various bottleneck problems, since the goverment-financed programs are vulnerable to corruption.