Although this comment is scored funny, it's not really.
Most libraries would be very hesitant to put a 'contested copyright' item on the shelf for copying (after checkout - at home) knowing that they MIGHT get legally harassed for doing it.
This is most true for operating system software CDs.
It is not true for normal music/audio/spoken word CDs as public libraries take the position that ordinary CDs that are checked out will only be listened to and not copied.
I get most of my music from the two local libraries (one main library for the city and the library system in the wealthy suburbs). I used to just grab about ten CDs at a time off the shelf and rip them to MP3s, listen to them selectively, and burn the best music to 15 cent CD-R blanks. After about a thousand albums, I got a little bored with stuff like "1000 Bulgarian Accordians Play the Beatles", but I still found lots of interesting stuff that I would have never heard from any other avenue of music exposure.
I copied a lot of music that I'm not interested in now but may be in the future because I believe that it's only a matter of time before the RIAA targets libraries for having CDs available for checkout. You could come into the library one day and find all the music CDs, just, gone. All it takes is one paid-off judge. And we sure have plenty of those around here. So I copied everything that I could with the idea that I might possibly enjoy a different type of music (like jazz or classical) in ten years time when all the music may possibly have been removed from the library shelves.
[How's that for a verb tense? Subjunctive Future Perfect? Too much college, not enough beer]
I believe that what will happen is that the current music of today and the next thirty to fifty years will be lost to music-historians hundreds of years in the future.
This will happen because unbreakable DRM will become routinely applied to recordings while the keys to unlock these recordings will be abandoned by the music corporations as the recordings lose their profitability over time.
This has happened to a certain extent with early twentyth century media such a silent films of the 1910-1930 era. These works had their media base as a silver-nitrate film stock. When the copyright issues were finally resolved to allow reproduction of many of the old movies of the era, most of the film had decayed in the film canisters into dust. Or they had been reprocessed in order to recover their silver content with the film's movie content assumed to be worthless.
Another example of cultural destruction is the permanent copyright extension policy of the USA. Old novels and books from the 1920-1960 era can never be legally copied under these misguided laws, and as their paper wears out, their content is destroyed. The one-a-year literary masterpieces that still retain marginal commercial value are allowed to be copied, but the vast majority of books written in this era are disappearing. When the paper disintregrates, the entire era's literary output disappears.
It seems odd that the Americans would allow the entire literary output of their golden age to disappear in order to protect the copyright of a single company's cartoon character. But it always seems that the Americans are always the last to recognize the long-term value of their accomplishments. In fifty years the only place to get American novels from the early twentyth century will be from Japanese collectors at very high prices.
Although it seems at first glance to be the answer to the 'problem' of people sharing music files, the practice of putting powerful copy-prevention technology on recordings is not a good approach to dealing with the new distribution technology for recorded audio product.
Assuming that the DRM actually works and prevents anyone from making a quick and clear copy of an audio recording, DRM technology encourages the RIAA companies (soon to be one company with the extensive mergers in this industry) to raise the prices on their products. Since one of the primary reasons that people are sharing files is the perception that the product is already overpriced, this will encourage present RIAA consumers to explore alternatives. Since we're talking the ultimate 'soft' product; music; which can be created by anyone, anywhere, at anytime, and be copied and distributed with even more ease, it is likely that a sizable percentage of the present consumers of prerecorded audio will switch to home-grown or non-commercial alternatives to buying RIAA product.
Eventually the non-RIAA music scene will develop into the perceived quality level as the corporate RIAA product, but without the legal risk of imprisonment or asset confiscation that follows unauthorized RIAA product consumption. Considering that the non-RIAA music will be significatly cheaper, it seems unlikely that music consumers who switch from the RIAA will ever switch back to consuming high priced RIAA product.
Therefore the RIAA is dependent of an ever-growing number on young, new consumers. This is not an unreasonable expectation given that the world's population is exploding and 2/3rds of the people on Earth are less than 25 years old.
However it is unclear how the RIAA will attract new artists to their ranks when the standard contract offered to artists does not offer significantly more compensation over the arrangements that will be developed between artists and audience on the non-RIAA sector. (Except for RIAA superstars).
The only long-term solution to making DRM work is the make all non-RIAA recordings illegal. Then they will call on their legal staff and law-enforcement authorities to routinely and aribtrarily select random members of the non-RIAA audience for systematic long-term incarceration and asset-confiscation from their families in order to scare the remaining non-RIAA audience into compliance with their dictates.
Which appears to be only realistic explanation of their current business strategy.
I noticed recently that Hollywood is on the verge of a major milestone in cinema:
within the next year or two, the majority of large budget blockbuster films that are released will be oriented towards teenagers.
Until now most major Hollywood films have been oriented towards adults.
This can be dangerous for Hollywood because it will generate a perception amoung the young that movies are something that you will grow out of, like believing in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, or whatever the imaginary god-like beings for children there are in your home culture.
Going to movies will cease to be thought of as cool and grown-up and be thought of a something that one grows out of. As big-budget movies are currently not very profitable for studios, (due to the sharing of gross-box-office points with the stars, and the enormous and growing advertising and promotion costs) this could be bad for the studios to lose their audience due to changing fashion.
This is why I'm against making $150 million dollar comic book movies. In the long run, it's just bad business.
When you're the youngest (or next to youngest) of fifteen children, you learn quickly how to speak in a way that has all the superficial appearance of being polite but has no real meaning that can be used against you in the future by older brothers eager for any excuse to knock you around for fun.
This guy would have been a master politician in any country.
Best said(yelled) in a world famous resuraunt, renowned for its refined culinary palette, possibly (but not nessessarily) in France.
A cultural stereotype situation from the 1960's. Typically used in Hollywood movies to portray the 'bad foreign vacation' cliche.
But funny, nonetheless.
Ever seen anything remotely resembling it in real life?
Quote from the secret American all-purpose tourist guide book for dealing with foreigners: "Quand personne ne comprend ce que vous dites, parlez juste plus fort!"
There isn't anything uniquely American about being in an illinguate situation.
Americans happened to be the leading world power when technology advanced enough to allow millions of middle-class people to travel very long distances easily for vacations.
That, coupled with the historical American tendency to surpress the languages of immigrants in favor of English, led to the current situation where people assume the uncouth behavior associated with culture shock and illinguacy to be a cultural characteristic distinctly of Americans.
But in similar circumstances, it can happen to anybody from anywhere.
I live in an American suburb of a small city. Twenty years ago my friends and I laughed at smug cuteness of our little town. Then we got hit with a wave of immigrants from all over the world. About one quarter of the local people are from very different countries. I myself find it exciting. For example, as a kid in the late 1960's, Red China was as culturally far away as the dark side of the moon. But last week I met a middle-aged Chinese woman waiting at my bus stop who told me that she had actually been a Red Guard and had once traveled three days during the Cultural Revolution to hear Mao speak in Tienamien square in Beijing.
I used to worry about not going out, traveling, and seeing the world. Now I don't. The world has come to see me in my little town in Oregon.
I have seen literally none of the racism and xenophobia that people normally accuse Americans of having. It's probably still out there, but not in sleepy little Beaverton.
I'd suggest 'avernacular'. Vernacular is a straightforward enough word for the local language. Negating that with an a- prefix would arrive at a meaning similar to the one you propose.
An excellent suggestion.
My only partial doubt towards this word would be that it might imply that a person doesn't completely understand the local dialect, such as a tourist in Jamaica, or doesn't follow a specialized vocabulary, such as a defendant unversed in legal vernacular.
'Illinguate' conveys that sense of total alienation that comes from knowing that one can't even express the simplest verbal communication with the people around you only because you don't know the local words for common things and expressions.
Monolingual would describe a person who only speaks their home language. That's different from being in a place where you don't speak the local language regardless of how many other languages that you've mastered.
Being unable to speak the local language is a common tourist situation and one whose complexity and overwhelmingness is ignored until the tourist finds themselves in that situation.
It can be really uncomfortable when one is of the same general appearance of the local people whose language you don't know. No one who randomly speaks to you will be aware that you are illinguate and will instead assume that you are a mentally retarded freak or exhibiting extreme anti-social behavior towards them.
To my eternal dismay, my racial characteristics make people assume that I'm German. Once in Germany on a business trip, I tried to buy bananas in a local supermarket. I brought a small number to the counter and the check-out clerk spoke harshly and loudly at me for almost an entire minute before having the manager escort me to the door (without being able to buy the bananas).
Finally I said 'Es tut mir leid...Ich bin Americaner. Ich sprech kein Deutsch.' which was all of the German that I knew then.
A light went on in his head as he realized what could have caused the whole situation, but still threw me out of the store.
I've heard that these situations are much more difficult for fifth generation Japanese-Americans whose ancestors restricted their marriages to other Japanese-Americans. These people have enormous difficulty when visiting Japan because they are ethnically Japanese while being either completely illinguate or unable to understand the unspoken subtleties of the language.
The word you're looking for is "inarticulate." It means "without or deprived of the use of speech or words."
In common usage, 'inarticulate' means not having the vocabulary in one's native language to express one's current emotion or situation.
It does not mean being unable to make even simple communication because one doesn't know the vocabulary of the commonly spoken language of one's present surroundings.
I still believe that there is no word in English for being unable to speak the local language.
As far as I can tell, there is no word in everyday English that means 'being unable to speak the local language'.
This is quite a common occurance nowdays. Hop on a plane and within a few hours you can be in a place where you can't speak the local language. But we don't have any word for that condition.
The systematic selection of troublesome individuals, their removal from their community, and the necessary legal and moral stategies for justifing the selection and elimination of this individual.
With the population rapidly expanding at a far faster rate than ability of current political and economic systems to absorb these new young people, the death industry will be the fastest growing new industry of the twenty-first century.
There will be many new opportunities for lawyers to devise legal justification for murder, new openings for religious leaders to develop theologies endowing God's grace on murder (built opon the initial explorations in this field by Wahabi'ists of Saudi Arabia to justify the mass murder of Americans and Israelis through terrorism), new positions for technicians to design and maintain the machines of murder, and scientific and academic positions for modifying the crude 20th century weapons of mass destruction into the focused depopulation engines of tomorrow.
If you find yourself bothered by the reminants of morality and conscience when transistioning to your new career, you'll find the recent development of powerful psychoactive drugs designed to neutralize this area of brain chemistry most helpful.
The problems of the Earth's people do get effectively dealt with. Plague, Smallpox, and polio, and soon malaria are no longer killing millions of people.
Famine has been solved by the 'Green Revolution' and the development of geneticially engineered food plants.
Corruption is dealt with by systematic analysis of money flows, binding legal structures, and a growing awareness of the community of its corrosive effects. The Mafia is a pale shadow of what it was fifty years ago in the USA.
War is dealt with by United Nations peacekeepers, while the brunt of jokes and derision in the USA, have on many occasions prevented psychopathic national leaders from engaging in genocide against minorities. The nuclear arsenals are monitored and are no longer set to burn the world each time a flock of geese flys by the radar.
Earth's problems are dealt with by intelligent people deciding where and how many resources are allocated to address these problems.
Given the growing awareness of truely massive problems that will require large allocations to address in the future: problems such as global warming, environmental destruction, overpopulation and the terrorism that comes from it; space exploration is not an efficient allocation of resources given that fact that there is nothing in space and it is extraordinarily expensive (and will remain so) to get vehicles off the Earth.
My point is that space exploration can wait. That fact that no one has returned to the moon for thirty years qualifies the argument that there was no real need to go to the moon in the first place. It was an expensive political stunt and all of the supposed gains from doing it could have been realised much more efficiently by better focus of the resources that were spent to do this stunt.
This is another example of a space exploration project that should be shelved until the problems on Earth are dealt with.
A mission to Mercury can wait two or three hundred years. Mercury isn't going anywhere and there isn't anything that we could learn from the massive expenditure for such a project that will be of any direct and servicable use to us for another 200 years.
For NASA to request funds for projects like this only confirms the growing public perception that the entire space program is nothing more than a big welfare handout for scientists and engineers who forgot to study anything useful in grad school.
John Kerry and Ted Kennedy are the senators who represent the interests of Mass in the federal government.
They don't concern themselves with local graft and payoffs.
Plus neither of them have the time for local matters anymore except the minimum number of traditional ceremonial functions that all senators do.
These bozos should instead learn to conserve water. Millions of gallons of fresh clean potable water are wasted every day in typical American usage.
Do they have usage rates that increase exponentially as individual home water usage increases? Not likely.
Do they have ANY conservation program? Doubt It!
Given that this is Massachusetts the possibility that this is a giant pork project with massive 'Sopranos'-style kickbacks involved should not be discounted. If it were Rhode Island, then it would be the most-likely reason that this plan for such an expensive solution to the water shortage problem is being put forward.
Now that the 'Big Dig' project is winding up, there has to be a new avenue for big action. Massachusetts is always up for a big marginal public works project with lots of 'opportunities'.
It has been for four hundred years. Since the city fathers of Salem 'did good by doing well' selling off the conficated property of the burned witches for a toasty profit.
Fuck Massachusetts! If you live there, get a life. Get a future. Leave!
If you live in Massachusetts, make your large purchases in New Hampshire where there is no sales tax.
Or better yet, Rhode Island, where you can pay a special reduced-rate 'Buddy' tax in cash and get all the necessary paperwork needed to avoid the higher Mass taxes.
I got my driver's license in Louisana in 1973. A school friend offered me a ride home and mentioned that she needed to stop at the Motor Vehicles to get some paperwork.
I thought that I would use the opportunity to get a learner's permit. I filled out the papers and took the eyetest. Then the written test with pictures of the correct answer in order to aid the large number of people in Louisana who can't read.
As soon as I passed the written, the state trooper stood up and said 'Ready to drive?'. I borrowed the keys to my friend's car and very slowly and carefully drove around the block. Thank god it was an automatic transmission.
I thought that I was doing OK until the last stretch of the block which was an expressway. I actually got up to about 45 MPH and then pulled back into the Motor Vehicles lot and cut the engine.
The state trooper started to write something on the form and then just looked at me and said "Girlie, You don't drive worth a piece of shit! You'se lucky you didn't get somebody killed back there! Well, I'm gonna give you your license anyway, but I strongly suggest that you learn how to drive!"
I went in, completed the papers, paid the fees, took the photo, and became a fully registered driver in the great state of Louisana.
When I got home I started laughing and couldn't stop for ten minutes.
Why do you think Hollywood hates the idea of these things? They consider themselves artists and artists don't like it when other people start changing their work.
That is true for artists in small personal media like books, painting, photography, and songwriting, but not Hollywood filmmaking.
Films are giant 60 million dollar individual corporations involving hundreds of people. The entire product is designed primarily a revenue- generating enterprise using long-established visual cliches and well-known plots and dialog with little surprise that could adversely affect the income stream.
Films bring in most of their revenue in the first three weeks after release to the theatres.
Hollywood would welcome any method to tinker with the product after the initial release if it could generate more revenue in the ancillary (VCR-DVD-airline-TV) markets. Presently it's just too difficult to recall the cast and set designers to do 'touch-up' refilming of the product after its release.
But with digitally-generated virtual actors in the future, that may not be the case and films will most likely be altered in a major way in order to gain more revenue after the theatrical run.
My entire generation loaned eachother uncensored VHS tapes because of our childish curiosity, and my god didn't we all turn out badly? We're all going round raping girls because of that smut we watched as 10 year olds and swearing like sailors in restaurants, quick somone sue Francis Ford Coppola!
I noted this characteristic when VCRs first appearing in great numbers in homes in the mid 1980's. Here was the first generation of kids where were allowed to see 'adult theme' movies; what would the effects be?
Glad to see it hasn't affected your (generation's) sense of irony! (A single sentence definition of irony - It's where the Iranians come from)
Actually I think the effect has been to cause a subliminal expectation that adult problems and situations will have Hollywood endings. Quick and nearly complete resolutions of complex issues.
I don't know. But there's at least a Master's degree thesis in the topic in case you can't find a job because the 'Baby Boomers' fucked up the economy so badly.
For instance, in noise studies, helicopters are considered more annoying...
Maybe it's a Pavlovian response. The sound of an old Huey is basically that of a machine either coming to kill you or coming to carry you off to be killed.
The huge whirling blades are subliminal reinforcements of the motif of the 'grim reaper'.
California will add a recycling fee to the cost of new computers and televisions starting July 2004,...
Might I suggest that anyone seeking to purchase a computer in California after July 2004, to instead jump in the car and drive north to Oregon to make the purchase?
We have no idiot fees here and NO SALES TAX for anyone, on anything, at anytime. There are several well-stocked and knowledgeable PC stores in Medford just across the border. The trip is about 400 miles each way.
The drive from the Bay Area is beautiful on the Hwy 101 route (same highway number, but not the demon road of Silicon Valley) and goes through one of the most beautiful places on Earth, the Redwood National Park. There are interesting and inexpensive hostels to stay at in both Kalmath (1 mile north of Trees Of Mystery) and Ashland.
Even with high gasoline prices, the savings from not paying the idiot California sales tax and the new recycling fees make the trip worthwhile. Plus the beautiful scenery is rejuvenating experience for those who spend far too much time staring at symbols on a PC monitor.
I suspect that this 'raid' is mostly political. Japan historically has vastly different standards between what Japanese companies can do and what foreign companies can do in Japan. If there is ever a question of whether to forward the interests of a Japanese company or apply the law as written fairly when such a situation would benefit the foreign company, the Japanese government will always support the local team.
Check out the dozens of books written about Japanese business-government practices with American companies in the 1980s.
With all respect due, I don't see how anyone could use the words 'Japanese anti-trust law' together seriously unless they are referring to a government-keiretsu coalition to destory a foreign company and assign their market to a Japanese concern. There's just too much history to suggest otherwise.
Strap on you Kevlar, line your helmet, and go out and explore the slums of your own city.
We have far too many problems here on earth to justify wasting so much money on space exploration. At the present time, space exploration is just welfare for misguided engineers and techno-warlords.
We should wait for two or three hundred years before doing any money on space nonsense. Let the space freaks content themselves with virtual reality simulations and big-budget hollywood productions.
Here in the real world, we have far more important things to deal with.
Slashdot Mirror
Although this comment is scored funny, it's not really.
Most libraries would be very hesitant to put a 'contested copyright' item on the shelf for copying (after checkout - at home) knowing that they MIGHT get legally harassed for doing it.
This is most true for operating system software CDs.
It is not true for normal music/audio/spoken word CDs as public libraries take the position that ordinary CDs that are checked out will only be listened to and not copied.
I get most of my music from the two local libraries (one main library for the city and the library system in the wealthy suburbs). I used to just grab about ten CDs at a time off the shelf and rip them to MP3s, listen to them selectively, and burn the best music to 15 cent CD-R blanks. After about a thousand albums, I got a little bored with stuff like "1000 Bulgarian Accordians Play the Beatles", but I still found lots of interesting stuff that I would have never heard from any other avenue of music exposure.
I copied a lot of music that I'm not interested in now but may be in the future because I believe that it's only a matter of time before the RIAA targets libraries for having CDs available for checkout. You could come into the library one day and find all the music CDs, just, gone. All it takes is one paid-off judge. And we sure have plenty of those around here. So I copied everything that I could with the idea that I might possibly enjoy a different type of music (like jazz or classical) in ten years time when all the music may possibly have been removed from the library shelves.
[How's that for a verb tense? Subjunctive Future Perfect? Too much college, not enough beer]
I believe that what will happen is that the current music of today and the next thirty to fifty years will be lost to music-historians hundreds of years in the future.
This will happen because unbreakable DRM will become routinely applied to recordings while the keys to unlock these recordings will be abandoned by the music corporations as the recordings lose their profitability over time.
This has happened to a certain extent with early twentyth century media such a silent films of the 1910-1930 era. These works had their media base as a silver-nitrate film stock. When the copyright issues were finally resolved to allow reproduction of many of the old movies of the era, most of the film had decayed in the film canisters into dust. Or they had been reprocessed in order to recover their silver content with the film's movie content assumed to be worthless.
Another example of cultural destruction is the permanent copyright extension policy of the USA. Old novels and books from the 1920-1960 era can never be legally copied under these misguided laws, and as their paper wears out, their content is destroyed. The one-a-year literary masterpieces that still retain marginal commercial value are allowed to be copied, but the vast majority of books written in this era are disappearing. When the paper disintregrates, the entire era's literary output disappears.
It seems odd that the Americans would allow the entire literary output of their golden age to disappear in order to protect the copyright of a single company's cartoon character. But it always seems that the Americans are always the last to recognize the long-term value of their accomplishments. In fifty years the only place to get American novels from the early twentyth century will be from Japanese collectors at very high prices.
Although it seems at first glance to be the answer to the 'problem' of people sharing music files, the practice of putting powerful copy-prevention technology on recordings is not a good approach to dealing with the new distribution technology for recorded audio product.
Assuming that the DRM actually works and prevents anyone from making a quick and clear copy of an audio recording, DRM technology encourages the RIAA companies (soon to be one company with the extensive mergers in this industry) to raise the prices on their products. Since one of the primary reasons that people are sharing files is the perception that the product is already overpriced, this will encourage present RIAA consumers to explore alternatives. Since we're talking the ultimate 'soft' product; music; which can be created by anyone, anywhere, at anytime, and be copied and distributed with even more ease, it is likely that a sizable percentage of the present consumers of prerecorded audio will switch to home-grown or non-commercial alternatives to buying RIAA product.
Eventually the non-RIAA music scene will develop into the perceived quality level as the corporate RIAA product, but without the legal risk of imprisonment or asset confiscation that follows unauthorized RIAA product consumption. Considering that the non-RIAA music will be significatly cheaper, it seems unlikely that music consumers who switch from the RIAA will ever switch back to consuming high priced RIAA product.
Therefore the RIAA is dependent of an ever-growing number on young, new consumers. This is not an unreasonable expectation given that the world's population is exploding and 2/3rds of the people on Earth are less than 25 years old.
However it is unclear how the RIAA will attract new artists to their ranks when the standard contract offered to artists does not offer significantly more compensation over the arrangements that will be developed between artists and audience on the non-RIAA sector. (Except for RIAA superstars).
The only long-term solution to making DRM work is the make all non-RIAA recordings illegal. Then they will call on their legal staff and law-enforcement authorities to routinely and aribtrarily select random members of the non-RIAA audience for systematic long-term incarceration and asset-confiscation from their families in order to scare the remaining non-RIAA audience into compliance with their dictates.
Which appears to be only realistic explanation of their current business strategy.
Jeez, these people are weird and sick.
I noticed recently that Hollywood is on the verge of a major milestone in cinema:
within the next year or two, the majority of large budget blockbuster films that are released will be oriented towards teenagers.
Until now most major Hollywood films have been oriented towards adults.
This can be dangerous for Hollywood because it will generate a perception amoung the young that movies are something that you will grow out of, like believing in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, or whatever the imaginary god-like beings for children there are in your home culture.
Going to movies will cease to be thought of as cool and grown-up and be thought of a something that one grows out of. As big-budget movies are currently not very profitable for studios, (due to the sharing of gross-box-office points with the stars, and the enormous and growing advertising and promotion costs) this could be bad for the studios to lose their audience due to changing fashion.
This is why I'm against making $150 million dollar comic book movies. In the long run, it's just bad business.
When you're the youngest (or next to youngest) of fifteen children, you learn quickly how to speak in a way that has all the superficial appearance of being polite but has no real meaning that can be used against you in the future by older brothers eager for any excuse to knock you around for fun.
This guy would have been a master politician in any country.
Best said(yelled) in a world famous resuraunt, renowned for its refined culinary palette, possibly (but not nessessarily) in France.
A cultural stereotype situation from the 1960's. Typically used in Hollywood movies to portray the 'bad foreign vacation' cliche.
But funny, nonetheless.
Ever seen anything remotely resembling it in real life?
Quote from the secret American all-purpose tourist guide book for dealing with foreigners: "Quand personne ne comprend ce que vous dites, parlez juste plus fort!"
There isn't anything uniquely American about being in an illinguate situation.
Americans happened to be the leading world power when technology advanced enough to allow millions of middle-class people to travel very long distances easily for vacations.
That, coupled with the historical American tendency to surpress the languages of immigrants in favor of English, led to the current situation where people assume the uncouth behavior associated with culture shock and illinguacy to be a cultural characteristic distinctly of Americans.
But in similar circumstances, it can happen to anybody from anywhere.
I live in an American suburb of a small city. Twenty years ago my friends and I laughed at smug cuteness of our little town. Then we got hit with a wave of immigrants from all over the world. About one quarter of the local people are from very different countries. I myself find it exciting. For example, as a kid in the late 1960's, Red China was as culturally far away as the dark side of the moon. But last week I met a middle-aged Chinese woman waiting at my bus stop who told me that she had actually been a Red Guard and had once traveled three days during the Cultural Revolution to hear Mao speak in Tienamien square in Beijing.
I used to worry about not going out, traveling, and seeing the world. Now I don't. The world has come to see me in my little town in Oregon.
I have seen literally none of the racism and xenophobia that people normally accuse Americans of having. It's probably still out there, but not in sleepy little Beaverton.
I'd suggest 'avernacular'. Vernacular is a straightforward enough word for the local language. Negating that with an a- prefix would arrive at a meaning similar to the one you propose.
An excellent suggestion.
My only partial doubt towards this word would be that it might imply that a person doesn't completely understand the local dialect, such as a tourist in Jamaica, or doesn't follow a specialized vocabulary, such as a defendant unversed in legal vernacular.
'Illinguate' conveys that sense of total alienation that comes from knowing that one can't even express the simplest verbal communication with the people around you only because you don't know the local words for common things and expressions.
(as he didn't say that AT ALL) ...he didn't even say that he was a he...
Thank you,
Simonetta
Monolingual would describe a person who only speaks their home language. That's different from being in a place where you don't speak the local language regardless of how many other languages that you've mastered.
Being unable to speak the local language is a common tourist situation and one whose complexity and overwhelmingness is ignored until the tourist finds themselves in that situation.
It can be really uncomfortable when one is of the same general appearance of the local people whose language you don't know. No one who randomly speaks to you will be aware that you are illinguate and will instead assume that you are a mentally retarded freak or exhibiting extreme anti-social behavior towards them.
To my eternal dismay, my racial characteristics make people assume that I'm German. Once in Germany on a business trip, I tried to buy bananas in a local supermarket. I brought a small number to the counter and the check-out clerk spoke harshly and loudly at me for almost an entire minute before having the manager escort me to the door (without being able to buy the bananas).
Finally I said 'Es tut mir leid...Ich bin Americaner. Ich sprech kein Deutsch.' which was all of the German that I knew then.
A light went on in his head as he realized what could have caused the whole situation, but still threw me out of the store.
I've heard that these situations are much more difficult for fifth generation Japanese-Americans whose ancestors restricted their marriages to other Japanese-Americans. These people have enormous difficulty when visiting Japan because they are ethnically Japanese while being either completely illinguate or unable to understand the unspoken subtleties of the language.
The word you're looking for is "inarticulate."
It means "without or deprived of the use of speech or words."
In common usage, 'inarticulate' means not having the vocabulary in one's native language to express one's current emotion or situation.
It does not mean being unable to make even simple communication because one doesn't know the vocabulary of the commonly spoken language of one's present surroundings.
I still believe that there is no word in English for being unable to speak the local language.
I suspect that this is true for most languages.
As far as I can tell, there is no word in everyday English that means 'being unable to speak the local language'.
This is quite a common occurance nowdays. Hop on a plane and within a few hours you can be in a place where you can't speak the local language. But we don't have any word for that condition.
Allow me to propose the new word:
illinguate
from 'illiterate' and 'linguistics'.
What is the next new economy, retail?
The death industry.
The systematic selection of troublesome individuals, their removal from their community, and the necessary legal and moral stategies for justifing the selection and elimination of this individual.
With the population rapidly expanding at a far faster rate than ability of current political and economic systems to absorb these new young people, the death industry will be the fastest growing new industry of the twenty-first century.
There will be many new opportunities for lawyers to devise legal justification for murder, new openings for religious leaders to develop theologies endowing God's grace on murder (built opon the initial explorations in this field by Wahabi'ists of Saudi Arabia to justify the mass murder of Americans and Israelis through terrorism), new positions for technicians to design and maintain the machines of murder, and scientific and academic positions for modifying the crude 20th century weapons of mass destruction into the focused depopulation engines of tomorrow.
If you find yourself bothered by the reminants of morality and conscience when transistioning to your new career, you'll find the recent development of powerful psychoactive drugs designed to neutralize this area of brain chemistry most helpful.
Nonsense.
The problems of the Earth's people do get effectively dealt with. Plague, Smallpox, and polio, and soon malaria are no longer killing millions of people.
Famine has been solved by the 'Green Revolution' and the development of geneticially engineered food plants.
Corruption is dealt with by systematic analysis of money flows, binding legal structures, and a growing awareness of the community of its corrosive effects. The Mafia is a pale shadow of what it was fifty years ago in the USA.
War is dealt with by United Nations peacekeepers, while the brunt of jokes and derision in the USA, have on many occasions prevented psychopathic national leaders from engaging in genocide against minorities. The nuclear arsenals are monitored and are no longer set to burn the world each time a flock of geese flys by the radar.
Earth's problems are dealt with by intelligent people deciding where and how many resources are allocated to address these problems.
Given the growing awareness of truely massive problems that will require large allocations to address in the future: problems such as global warming, environmental destruction, overpopulation and the terrorism that comes from it; space exploration is not an efficient allocation of resources given that fact that there is nothing in space and it is extraordinarily expensive (and will remain so) to get vehicles off the Earth.
My point is that space exploration can wait. That fact that no one has returned to the moon for thirty years qualifies the argument that there was no real need to go to the moon in the first place. It was an expensive political stunt and all of the supposed gains from doing it could have been realised much more efficiently by better focus of the resources that were spent to do this stunt.
Thank you,
Simonetta
This is another example of a space exploration project that should be shelved until the problems on Earth are dealt with.
A mission to Mercury can wait two or three hundred years. Mercury isn't going anywhere and there isn't anything that we could learn from the massive expenditure for such a project that will be of any direct and servicable use to us for another 200 years.
For NASA to request funds for projects like this only confirms the growing public perception that the entire space program is nothing more than a big welfare handout for scientists and engineers who forgot to study anything useful in grad school.
John Kerry and Ted Kennedy are the senators who represent the interests of Mass in the federal government.
They don't concern themselves with local graft and payoffs.
Plus neither of them have the time for local matters anymore except the minimum number of traditional ceremonial functions that all senators do.
These bozos should instead learn to conserve water. Millions of gallons of fresh clean potable water are wasted every day in typical American usage.
Do they have usage rates that increase exponentially as individual home water usage increases? Not likely.
Do they have ANY conservation program? Doubt It!
Given that this is Massachusetts the possibility that this is a giant pork project with massive 'Sopranos'-style kickbacks involved should not be discounted. If it were Rhode Island, then it would be the most-likely reason that this plan for such an expensive solution to the water shortage problem is being put forward.
Now that the 'Big Dig' project is winding up, there has to be a new avenue for big action. Massachusetts is always up for a big marginal public works project with lots of 'opportunities'.
It has been for four hundred years. Since the city fathers of Salem 'did good by doing well' selling off the conficated property of the burned witches for a toasty profit.
Fuck Massachusetts! If you live there, get a life. Get a future. Leave!
If you live in Massachusetts, make your large purchases in New Hampshire where there is no sales tax.
Or better yet, Rhode Island, where you can pay a special reduced-rate 'Buddy' tax in cash and get all the necessary paperwork needed to avoid the higher Mass taxes.
Inquire discreetly at any Rhode Island merchant.
I got my driver's license in Louisana in 1973. A school friend offered me a ride home and mentioned that she needed to stop at the Motor Vehicles to get some paperwork.
I thought that I would use the opportunity to get a learner's permit. I filled out the papers and took the eyetest. Then the written test with pictures of the correct answer in order to aid the large number of people in Louisana who can't read.
As soon as I passed the written, the state trooper stood up and said 'Ready to drive?'. I borrowed the keys to my friend's car and very slowly and carefully drove around the block. Thank god it was an automatic transmission.
I thought that I was doing OK until the last stretch of the block which was an expressway. I actually got up to about 45 MPH and then pulled back into the Motor Vehicles lot and cut the engine.
The state trooper started to write something on the form and then just looked at me and said "Girlie, You don't drive worth a piece of shit! You'se lucky you didn't get somebody killed back there! Well, I'm gonna give you your license anyway, but I strongly suggest that you learn how to drive!"
I went in, completed the papers, paid the fees, took the photo, and became a fully registered driver in the great state of Louisana.
When I got home I started laughing and couldn't stop for ten minutes.
I had never driven a car before in my life!
(But I had read a book on it at the library.)
Why do you think Hollywood hates the idea of these things? They consider themselves artists and artists don't like it when other people start changing their work.
That is true for artists in small personal media like books, painting, photography, and songwriting, but not Hollywood filmmaking.
Films are giant 60 million dollar individual corporations involving hundreds of people. The entire product is designed primarily a revenue- generating enterprise using long-established visual cliches and well-known plots and dialog with little surprise that could adversely affect the income stream.
Films bring in most of their revenue in the first three weeks after release to the theatres.
Hollywood would welcome any method to tinker with the product after the initial release if it could generate more revenue in the ancillary (VCR-DVD-airline-TV) markets. Presently it's just too difficult to recall the cast and set designers to do 'touch-up' refilming of the product after its release.
But with digitally-generated virtual actors in the future, that may not be the case and films will most likely be altered in a major way in order to gain more revenue after the theatrical run.
My entire generation loaned eachother uncensored VHS tapes because of our childish curiosity, and my god didn't we all turn out badly? We're all going round raping girls because of that smut we watched as 10 year olds and swearing like sailors in restaurants, quick somone sue Francis Ford Coppola!
I noted this characteristic when VCRs first appearing in great numbers in homes in the mid 1980's. Here was the first generation of kids where were allowed to see 'adult theme' movies; what would the effects be?
Glad to see it hasn't affected your (generation's) sense of irony! (A single sentence definition of irony - It's where the Iranians come from)
Actually I think the effect has been to cause a subliminal expectation that adult problems and situations will have Hollywood endings. Quick and nearly complete resolutions of complex issues.
I don't know. But there's at least a Master's degree thesis in the topic in case you can't find a job because the 'Baby Boomers' fucked up the economy so badly.
For instance, in noise studies, helicopters are considered more annoying...
Maybe it's a Pavlovian response. The sound of an old Huey is basically that of a machine either coming to kill you or coming to carry you off to be killed.
The huge whirling blades are subliminal reinforcements of the motif of the 'grim reaper'.
California will add a recycling fee to the cost of new computers and televisions starting July 2004,...
Might I suggest that anyone seeking to purchase a computer in California after July 2004, to instead jump in the car and drive north to Oregon to make the purchase?
We have no idiot fees here and NO SALES TAX for anyone, on anything, at anytime. There are several well-stocked and knowledgeable PC stores in Medford just across the border. The trip is about 400 miles each way.
The drive from the Bay Area is beautiful on the Hwy 101 route (same highway number, but not the demon road of Silicon Valley) and goes through one of the most beautiful places on Earth, the Redwood National Park. There are interesting and inexpensive hostels to stay at in both Kalmath (1 mile north of Trees Of Mystery) and Ashland.
Even with high gasoline prices, the savings from not paying the idiot California sales tax and the new recycling fees make the trip worthwhile. Plus the beautiful scenery is rejuvenating experience for those who spend far too much time staring at symbols on a PC monitor.
I suspect that this 'raid' is mostly political. Japan historically has vastly different standards between what Japanese companies can do and what foreign companies can do in Japan. If there is ever a question of whether to forward the interests of a Japanese company or apply the law as written fairly when such a situation would benefit the foreign company, the Japanese government will always support the local team.
Check out the dozens of books written about Japanese business-government practices with American companies in the 1980s.
With all respect due, I don't see how anyone could use the words 'Japanese anti-trust law' together seriously unless they are referring to a government-keiretsu coalition to destory a foreign company and assign their market to a Japanese concern. There's just too much history to suggest otherwise.
We, as humans, want to learn and explore.
Strap on you Kevlar, line your helmet, and go out and explore the slums of your own city.
We have far too many problems here on earth to justify wasting so much money on space exploration. At the present time, space exploration is just welfare for misguided engineers and techno-warlords.
We should wait for two or three hundred years before doing any money on space nonsense. Let the space freaks content themselves with virtual reality simulations and big-budget hollywood productions.
Here in the real world, we have far more important things to deal with.