Yup, I am not sure if it counts, but a TOTALLY empty places flags my mind with a "what's wrong with this place?" signal, while seeing people sitting with a laptop tells me it is a friendly place to sit, read, have a chat...
I am a computer engineer, I work as a technical translator, and I speak (or at least understand) 6 languages, with some more coming. I think languages are always interesting, at least because they let you understand how many of our concepts and words (yours, actually, since English is not my first language) are just a convenction.
But when I read the title, I thought about the learning STYLE of an Engineer. At least, I start with a language the way I start with a computer language, with a new tool, a skill: I get a couple of examples (either I book I already read and loved, or a children book, or both: I think I read "le petit prince" in 4 languages at least), a dictionary, a grammar book, and I start. With the book, I mean. (At least with a latin alfabet. Chinese is a bitch for this, and also Thai and Russian don't make things SO easy). Word by word. I know there is MEANING there, so I want to get it. It takes me anything between 1 and 5 hours for the first page. After some afternoon, I begin to get an idea of the structure. I start reading the grammar, then. I make a list of words I want to know, common verbs, bodyparts, "where it the loo" and so on. And I go on.
I am not sure it is efficient. I just know it is fun, for me, 'cause I get to look at languages as riddles. I learn very weird words (my first 2 words in German were Hornhaut, that is callus, and Verdauen, digest: useful to impress chicks... mostly).
This is part truth and part old wife's tale. Yes, there are some things in a language that are more difficult to learn once you're older.
Yep, it is just different. You have different strategies. You'll probably never get rid of the accent, AND you'll make strange grammatical mistakes (I know I do in German). But you can be quite quick, and become more or less fluent in from 3 months to 3 years (it depends on the language: Portuguese is very easy for me, German is used to scare small children and immigrants).
It is just a question of using age and experience as a strenth, NOT as a weakness...
Seconded. But it takes A LOT of time. More than a language, it's like running an emulator inside you. And when the emulator runs quick enough, you get into trouble with menspeak.
About three months ago, I had a "discussion" with someone who claimed that piracy would be the end of the music industry and that no one would want to play music anymore. My assertions that real musicians (and I know quite a few) just want people to listen to their music. They'll work a day job, go without eating, or do anything else it takes to keep playing in front of groups was dismissed. In my experience, the guitar/bass/sax/whatever is always the last thing to get hocked and the first thing to come out of the pawn shop.
Real musicians play for the people, not the money. They always have and they always will. This fifty-year invention of the rock star lifestyle is just a fad.
Weeeell... I am not a musician (nor I play one on TV). I have many friends that are, but I am not. But I am performer (mostly with fire, sometime just dancing), and a writer. I used to be a code monkey, I more or less gave it up because "it did not make me happy". So, you see: sure, I do it for love. I do it because after a well made performance, I am glowing so much that I could do ANYTHING (and in most cases, I did: talk about going to the most beautiful girl present, that happened to be a model, and say "come here, we are having more fun that your group", and it was true, btw). Most of the time, I don't make a lot of money; I have a score of freelance "day jobs" to keep up with the "fire of the art": in this moment, on the other tab, I am translating a technical manual, and I do some webdesign, and some IT consulting, and massages, and so on. Still. When I MANAGE to live on this passion, it IS great. I prefer it, by far. When I can live, and invest on tools and training and so on, even better. Sure, it feels a bit like cheating, because "work" is supposed to be boring and so on, so being paid for something that I often said "it is better than (most) sex (and drugs)" feels strange. But very good. Am I not a REAL artist, since I would really like to live on what I do best, what I do for love? I am not sure.
Probably, Real Artists(tm) don't do it for love, they just say to bring it (who?) in bed...
I think I'm going to disavow all knowledge of Windows from now on. If they have a problem, I'll hand them the Linux CD and tell them to re-install, " 'cause that's the only thing I know."
I did that, and it's actually true since I use Linux and Mac only since 5-6 years. I CAN still find ways to fix windows, if I need. I. Just. Don't. Like. It.
With my close friends, the running rate was: free help with Linux, dinner-ware with Mac (I fix your comp, you cook me dinner; I'm Italian, my friends CAN cook), normal business rate for Windows. I did not get asked about windows in a long time...
I cannot speak about *all* of Europe, but for sure it's *not* the way it works in Italy. I mean, come on, Football Clubs even got tax discounts and what more (it helped that our formed prime minister was the owner of one of the biggest Football Club in the country). No, everyone pays for the police, the ruined train, the problems. I'd LOVE to see football matches taxed (and I would not complain if they disappeared alltogether, actually)
Well, I tried to use it ONCE in Italian. And gave up. I guess it's possible to more or less grammar check English, that for some things has a simple grammar (it looks so). The grammar checker for Italian was TOTALLY ludicrous. I don't think any Italian user would ever miss it!
(something happened with Safari and I pressed submit in mid-writing!)
This results in that it is often easy for people to get a basic understanding of English, and to express more basic ideas in it.
That's quite enough to START. It's more difficult in many other languages.
TO get from there to speakign it well, including expressign all kinds of nuances in meaning is however a very big step that is very difficult to take, specifically because there are few rules to learn and most of it has to come from knowing and 'feeling'.
Well, I know I have the feeling when I read in English, and I don't have it enough when I write it. I can recognize it does not sound completely English-like, but I am at a loss to express me perfectly. But I think it's the same for any language: it takes a whole LIFE to use it perfectly. But with English (and Italian, they tell me: I don't know, I was quite young when I learnt it!), it's at least easy to START.
English is at first glance a relatively simple language, not that many rules to learn, many words that are already somewhat familiar (if you speak any related language), and many peopel who grow up nowadays have been hearing it for most of their life (due to TV and movies mostly)
Well, apart from the "having been hearing it" (that's true in a place without dubbing, like Holland or Swedenn, but not true in Germany or Italy, sorry for the eurocentric examples), the point is that it is quite easy to start, with English. Since there is not a lot of formal grammar to consider, it's quite easy to get a book, get a dictionary, and crawl your way page after page, learning a bit of the language structure and a lot of vocabulary in the process (I know I did it, when I was 13, with RPGs: I was lucky since GURPS was not translated, at the time!). Try to do it with Finnish (I did try!): it has 15 cases. Often you cannot even UNDERSTAND what is the word you are looking for. It takes a lot of time before you can UNDERSTAND it.
The simplicity of English is somewhat deceptive however. The 'few rules' also result in a lot of freedom in how the language is used, and often meaning is expressed by creative use of the language, while in for example German, that is done by using the correct 'rule'.
I think that the simplicity of a language is "how easy it is to use it". It took me 3 months or so to get the hand of Swedish (it's grammar is more or less on par with English, even if the pronunciation is much more regular). After 3 months in Germany, I am just beginning to understand the spoken language, and manage to read it quite slowly. Let's forget about speaking it without HUGE
This results in that it is often easy for people to get a basic understanding of English, and to express more basic ideas in it. TO get from there to speakign it well, including expressign all kinds of nuances in meaning is however a very big step that is very difficult to take, specifically because there are few rules to learn and most of it has to come from knowing and 'feeling'.
What? Sorry, I am an Italian native speaker. I learnt English, French, Spanish and Swedish as a grown up. I am learning now German: let me tell you, English is one of the easiest. No cases to bother you (no dative, genitive, accusative or the like). No verbs to conjugate (ok, ok, the "s" for the third person of the singular, big problem). The plural is more or less regular (just try to guess the plural in Swedish, there are 6 different ways of making a plural, and no rule to follow).
English IS easy. Maybe to write perfect English can be difficult: but in NO WAY it's more difficult than German or Russian.
Hm, I don't really think so.
I know I cannot PROVE god does not exist: let's forget about the God of the bible, but any kind of all mighty entity that exist outside time and space, and outside cause and effect. Some kind of entity that does not need a beginning, but that can begin the Universe.
Now: I don't believe in it. But I know I cannot prove it does not exist: because it can just modify the world the way it wants. It can create the proof of evolution, it can (could?) do whatever it wants: I cannot use its world to speak about it.
So: I behave like god did not exist. I am, for all purposes, atheistic. BUT I wont discuss about the existence: I'll just discuss about the behaviour, in THIS life. This means I just don't want to do anything BECAUSE of a god I don't believe into.
I don't really think it's being coward: it's just choosing your field for the fight. I want to fight about life, not hypothetical gods.
I guess no one is going to read this late comment, anyway: I "quit" drinking coffee some 3 months ago, after reading some things about its effects in a book of pharmacology (sp.) and realizing it was my only phisical addiction.
I mostly did it to end the dipendence: I am not sure coffee causes any harm to a healthy person. (Oh, well, I did it also because to drink something that has been roasted seems to be a good way to cancer; but I am not sure of that either)
I used to drink between 3 and 7 cups a day, the bigge figure before stressful deadlines and the like. I began drinking a cup less every some days, and after 2 weeks I tried not to drink it at all. I managed without headache; I was a bit sleepy, that's all. I kept on drinking a cup or two a week, and only if I was feeling to tired to do anything useful. It's funny how you notice how strong caffeine is as a drug if you take it only now and then: I feel it a lot now.
That's it. I just drink some really light green tea in the morning, and sometime I eat chocolate or drink cocoa: remember that those contain a little bit of caffeine, it helps to wake up and not to suffer the splitting head aches.
I believe that, here in Italy, a figure of 1 message lost every 17-20 is quite accurate.
And OF COURSE that one message that gets lost is the most important one, the answer to THAT date proposal or something like this; but I guess that this is just ordinary Murphy's law...
KDE and GNOME are not the only window managers available!
I would like to point XFce , a "lightweight desktop environment", I ended up findit it a ouuple of years ago looking for a faster desktop, MAYBE that used FLTK (fast light toolkit), that seemed SO fast. Anyhow, XFce uses GTK but IS fast and light, really...
Of course not, but they sometime like to be considered in Scandinavia, so that, if you include Scandinavia in Germanic countries, you end un woth Finland too, every second time.
But, well, I just overreacted, since I did't feel like I was in a Germanic country (Italy).
German countries? Do you mean, maybe, Holland and Belgium and, who knows, Scandinavia (you know, Norway, Sveden, Danmark and, sometimes, Suomi-Finland)?
Spain is NOT a german country, by any point of view.
Did you mean European countries (I live in Italy, not a german country either).
A quick Google, and I came up with 314 million for NA, and 727 million for Europe. Put in this persepective, NA still has over twice as many people online, but also leaves Europe with a lot of room to grow (and hence probably faster uptake in the future).
But, if you take out Eastern Europe (the former Communist one), you end up with more or less 300 million. And I believe they intend western Europe (oh, well, I do when I say Europe).
Last time I checked, WE were more or less 15 countries (not counting S.Marino, Monaco and the rest), but we (inhabitants) are more or less as many as the Nort Americans, 300 millions.
So, these numbers do make sense, if the are real...
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, I am not sure if it counts, but a TOTALLY empty places flags my mind with a "what's wrong with this place?" signal, while seeing people sitting with a laptop tells me it is a friendly place to sit, read, have a chat...
Strange, since it is a direct translation of an Italian expression, "campanilismo" (belt-tower-ism)...
I am a computer engineer, I work as a technical translator, and I speak (or at least understand) 6 languages, with some more coming.
I think languages are always interesting, at least because they let you understand how many of our concepts and words (yours, actually, since English is not my first language) are just a convenction.
But when I read the title, I thought about the learning STYLE of an Engineer.
At least, I start with a language the way I start with a computer language, with a new tool, a skill: I get a couple of examples (either I book I already read and loved, or a children book, or both: I think I read "le petit prince" in 4 languages at least), a dictionary, a grammar book, and I start. With the book, I mean.
(At least with a latin alfabet. Chinese is a bitch for this, and also Thai and Russian don't make things SO easy).
Word by word. I know there is MEANING there, so I want to get it. It takes me anything between 1 and 5 hours for the first page. After some afternoon, I begin to get an idea of the structure. I start reading the grammar, then. I make a list of words I want to know, common verbs, bodyparts, "where it the loo" and so on.
And I go on.
I am not sure it is efficient. I just know it is fun, for me, 'cause I get to look at languages as riddles. I learn very weird words (my first 2 words in German were Hornhaut, that is callus, and Verdauen, digest: useful to impress chicks... mostly).
Have fun with it.
Yep, it is just different.
You have different strategies. You'll probably never get rid of the accent, AND you'll make strange grammatical mistakes (I know I do in German). But you can be quite quick, and become more or less fluent in from 3 months to 3 years (it depends on the language: Portuguese is very easy for me, German is used to scare small children and immigrants).
It is just a question of using age and experience as a strenth, NOT as a weakness...
Seconded.
But it takes A LOT of time.
More than a language, it's like running an emulator inside you. And when the emulator runs quick enough, you get into trouble with menspeak.
I know. I've been there....
About three months ago, I had a "discussion" with someone who claimed that piracy would be the end of the music industry and that no one would want to play music anymore. My assertions that real musicians (and I know quite a few) just want people to listen to their music. They'll work a day job, go without eating, or do anything else it takes to keep playing in front of groups was dismissed. In my experience, the guitar/bass/sax/whatever is always the last thing to get hocked and the first thing to come out of the pawn shop.
Real musicians play for the people, not the money. They always have and they always will. This fifty-year invention of the rock star lifestyle is just a fad.
Weeeell...
I am not a musician (nor I play one on TV). I have many friends that are, but I am not.
But I am performer (mostly with fire, sometime just dancing), and a writer. I used to be a code monkey, I more or less gave it up because "it did not make me happy".
So, you see: sure, I do it for love. I do it because after a well made performance, I am glowing so much that I could do ANYTHING (and in most cases, I did: talk about going to the most beautiful girl present, that happened to be a model, and say "come here, we are having more fun that your group", and it was true, btw). Most of the time, I don't make a lot of money; I have a score of freelance "day jobs" to keep up with the "fire of the art": in this moment, on the other tab, I am translating a technical manual, and I do some webdesign, and some IT consulting, and massages, and so on.
Still. When I MANAGE to live on this passion, it IS great. I prefer it, by far. When I can live, and invest on tools and training and so on, even better.
Sure, it feels a bit like cheating, because "work" is supposed to be boring and so on, so being paid for something that I often said "it is better than (most) sex (and drugs)" feels strange. But very good.
Am I not a REAL artist, since I would really like to live on what I do best, what I do for love?
I am not sure.
Probably, Real Artists(tm) don't do it for love, they just say to bring it (who?) in bed...
I think I'm going to disavow all knowledge of Windows from now on. If they have a problem, I'll hand them the Linux CD and tell them to re-install, " 'cause that's the only thing I know."
I did that, and it's actually true since I use Linux and Mac only since 5-6 years.
I CAN still find ways to fix windows, if I need. I. Just. Don't. Like. It.
With my close friends, the running rate was: free help with Linux, dinner-ware with Mac (I fix your comp, you cook me dinner; I'm Italian, my friends CAN cook), normal business rate for Windows.
I did not get asked about windows in a long time...
I cannot speak about *all* of Europe, but for sure it's *not* the way it works in Italy.
I mean, come on, Football Clubs even got tax discounts and what more (it helped that our formed prime minister was the owner of one of the biggest Football Club in the country).
No, everyone pays for the police, the ruined train, the problems.
I'd LOVE to see football matches taxed (and I would not complain if they disappeared alltogether, actually)
A
'nuff said.
I was hoping to read a DIFFERENT article, from the one of last week.
Oh well...
at least in languages other than English
Well, I tried to use it ONCE in Italian.
And gave up.
I guess it's possible to more or less grammar check English, that for some things has a simple grammar (it looks so).
The grammar checker for Italian was TOTALLY ludicrous.
I don't think any Italian user would ever miss it!
Well, unless you count Orkut, where 90% of the FOAF spam comes from Brazilians, in Portuguese (that I *can* read, but, still).
But well, I admit I NEVER got email spam from Brazil. And the one in Orkut is only due to some Brazilian friends, so it's my fault, after all.
That's quite enough to START.
It's more difficult in many other languages.
Well, I know I have the feeling when I read in English, and I don't have it enough when I write it. I can recognize it does not sound completely English-like, but I am at a loss to express me perfectly.
But I think it's the same for any language: it takes a whole LIFE to use it perfectly. But with English (and Italian, they tell me: I don't know, I was quite young when I learnt it!), it's at least easy to START.
Well, apart from the "having been hearing it" (that's true in a place without dubbing, like Holland or Swedenn, but not true in Germany or Italy, sorry for the eurocentric examples), the point is that it is quite easy to start, with English.
Since there is not a lot of formal grammar to consider, it's quite easy to get a book, get a dictionary, and crawl your way page after page, learning a bit of the language structure and a lot of vocabulary in the process (I know I did it, when I was 13, with RPGs: I was lucky since GURPS was not translated, at the time!).
Try to do it with Finnish (I did try!): it has 15 cases. Often you cannot even UNDERSTAND what is the word you are looking for.
It takes a lot of time before you can UNDERSTAND it.
I think that the simplicity of a language is "how easy it is to use it".
It took me 3 months or so to get the hand of Swedish (it's grammar is more or less on par with English, even if the pronunciation is much more regular). After 3 months in Germany, I am just beginning to understand the spoken language, and manage to read it quite slowly. Let's forget about speaking it without HUGE
This results in that it is often easy for people to get a basic understanding of English, and to express more basic ideas in it. TO get from there to speakign it well, including expressign all kinds of nuances in meaning is however a very big step that is very difficult to take, specifically because there are few rules to learn and most of it has to come from knowing and 'feeling'.
What?
Sorry, I am an Italian native speaker. I learnt English, French, Spanish and Swedish as a grown up. I am learning now German: let me tell you, English is one of the easiest. No cases to bother you (no dative, genitive, accusative or the like). No verbs to conjugate (ok, ok, the "s" for the third person of the singular, big problem). The plural is more or less regular (just try to guess the plural in Swedish, there are 6 different ways of making a plural, and no rule to follow).
English IS easy. Maybe to write perfect English can be difficult: but in NO WAY it's more difficult than German or Russian.
I know I cannot PROVE god does not exist: let's forget about the God of the bible, but any kind of all mighty entity that exist outside time and space, and outside cause and effect. Some kind of entity that does not need a beginning, but that can begin the Universe.
Now: I don't believe in it. But I know I cannot prove it does not exist: because it can just modify the world the way it wants. It can create the proof of evolution, it can (could?) do whatever it wants: I cannot use its world to speak about it.
So: I behave like god did not exist. I am, for all purposes, atheistic. BUT I wont discuss about the existence: I'll just discuss about the behaviour, in THIS life. This means I just don't want to do anything BECAUSE of a god I don't believe into. I don't really think it's being coward: it's just choosing your field for the fight. I want to fight about life, not hypothetical gods.
I guess no one is going to read this late comment, anyway: I "quit" drinking coffee some 3 months ago, after reading some things about its effects in a book of pharmacology (sp.) and realizing it was my only phisical addiction.
I mostly did it to end the dipendence: I am not sure coffee causes any harm to a healthy person. (Oh, well, I did it also because to drink something that has been roasted seems to be a good way to cancer; but I am not sure of that either)
I used to drink between 3 and 7 cups a day, the bigge figure before stressful deadlines and the like. I began drinking a cup less every some days, and after 2 weeks I tried not to drink it at all.
I managed without headache; I was a bit sleepy, that's all.
I kept on drinking a cup or two a week, and only if I was feeling to tired to do anything useful.
It's funny how you notice how strong caffeine is as a drug if you take it only now and then: I feel it a lot now.
That's it. I just drink some really light green tea in the morning, and sometime I eat chocolate or drink cocoa: remember that those contain a little bit of caffeine, it helps to wake up and not to suffer the splitting head aches.
Good luck.
I believe that, here in Italy, a figure of 1 message lost every 17-20 is quite accurate.
And OF COURSE that one message that gets lost is the most important one, the answer to THAT date proposal or something like this; but I guess that this is just ordinary Murphy's law...
Really? /. for a couples of hours, some days ago? Me stupid having a life...
When?
Did I forget to check
sigh!
KDE and GNOME are not the only window managers available!
I would like to point XFce , a "lightweight desktop environment", I ended up findit it a ouuple of years ago looking for a faster desktop, MAYBE that used FLTK (fast light toolkit), that seemed SO fast.
Anyhow, XFce uses GTK but IS fast and light, really...
Of course not, but they sometime like to be considered in Scandinavia, so that, if you include Scandinavia in Germanic countries, you end un woth Finland too, every second time.
But, well, I just overreacted, since I did't feel like I was in a Germanic country (Italy).
Its not a competition. The US doesn't _have_ to work the stats in their favour.
/., Dilbert and so on ;-)
Maybe it is not a competition, but I for me would favor a less USA-centric Web...
Even if I read
German countries?
Do you mean, maybe, Holland and Belgium and, who knows, Scandinavia (you know, Norway, Sveden, Danmark and, sometimes, Suomi-Finland)?
Spain is NOT a german country, by any point of view.
Did you mean European countries (I live in Italy, not a german country either).
A quick Google, and I came up with 314 million for NA, and 727 million for Europe. Put in this persepective, NA still has over twice as many people online, but also leaves Europe with a lot of room to grow (and hence probably faster uptake in the future).
But, if you take out Eastern Europe (the former Communist one), you end up with more or less 300 million. And I believe they intend western Europe (oh, well, I do when I say Europe).
Last time I checked, WE were more or less 15 countries (not counting S.Marino, Monaco and the rest), but we (inhabitants) are more or less as many as the Nort Americans, 300 millions.
So, these numbers do make sense, if the are real...