I would love a multilingual book database. As an amateur linguist I collect books in all the languages of the world. I often try to get the original language version of a novel that has become famous in its English translation. This type of information is very difficult to find on the internet currently - especially for non-Latin script languages such as Chinese, Arabic, Thai. Such a database would require proper unicode support, standard romanization methods, and understand that Author's names don't work the same in all languages. How many times have I had to look under both "G" and "M" in bookshops for the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez!
You can't always find the ISBN on Google for the simple reason that the format of the number can contain optional spaces and/or hyphens. Though there is a standard the spaces and hyphens often seem to end up in the wrong place. And for rare books, the ones you most need to do a search for, this is important. I found this out a few months ago while searching for all the translations of Douglas Hofstadter's "Goedel, Escher, Bach; an Eternal Golden Braid".
The actual article doesn't mention it, but the slashdot story makes it sound like purple is some weird, genetic engineered colour for potatoes. This is not the case at all. In South America where potatoes originated, there are many many species including more than a few purple varieties.
In the early 1980s (I think), there was a major case in Australia of an exporter selling "beef" to the USA which turned out to be kangaroo meat. I believe the Australian company was called "Protean". I have heard rumours that the US company was Jack 'n' the Box but I cannot find anything about this on the internet so I cannot confirm anything.
I search for Hebrew grammar, dictionaries, and online translators regularly. I have never found a site that describes how Hebrew nouns and verbs work etc. Never.
If Slashdot were truly open source, we wouldn't have to wait and hope that Rob gets around to implementing our favourite feature. We could implement it ourselves. Then we'd only have to wait and hope that Rob approves and accepts our patches.
As a person who speaks only English, but resides in a country where the official languages are French, Flemish (Dutch by any other name), and German, I can tell you from personal experience that it is *much* easier to understand someone speaking another language than it is to try to make yourself understood in another language.
In my experience, this is universal.
I, for one, find I can get my idea across in Spanish a lot more often than I can understand what a native Spanish speaker is trying to tell me.
Since it seems related, I've had a dream open source project in mind for some time. Not so much along the lines of UNL as Babelfish. I think this is the perfect project for the open source model because people from around the world could contribute work relevant to their own languages. A propreietry project would have to employ many specialists.
If anybody is interested in starting such a project, please reply in this thread.
This is what I reckon: * Announce all stable kernels under topic 'Linux' * Announce all dev kernels under topic 'Linux Kernels' except when they are so fantastic that everybody wants to know about them. Then they too can be announced under topic 'Linux'
Look I want to hear about each incremental update of Linux kernels. Even the development ones. But for those who don't, they could disable the 'Linux kernel' topic. If there was one. What do you reckon?
Kernel Traffic in case you don't know is an extremely interesting site which gives summaries of what's happening on the Linux mailing list each week or so.
Slashdot Mirror
Download the AikSaurus Plugin here.
It only supports US English so far but it's pretty cool.
I would love a multilingual book database.
As an amateur linguist I collect books in all the
languages of the world. I often try to get the
original language version of a novel that has
become famous in its English translation. This
type of information is very difficult to find on
the internet currently - especially for non-Latin
script languages such as Chinese, Arabic, Thai.
Such a database would require proper unicode
support, standard romanization methods, and
understand that Author's names don't work the same
in all languages. How many times have I had to
look under both "G" and "M" in bookshops for the
works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez!
You can't always find the ISBN on Google for the
simple reason that the format of the number can
contain optional spaces and/or hyphens. Though
there is a standard the spaces and hyphens often
seem to end up in the wrong place. And for rare
books, the ones you most need to do a search for,
this is important.
I found this out a few months ago while searching
for all the translations of Douglas Hofstadter's
"Goedel, Escher, Bach; an Eternal Golden Braid".
The actual article doesn't mention it, but the slashdot story makes it sound like purple is some weird, genetic engineered colour for potatoes. This is not the case at all. In South America where potatoes originated, there are many many species including more than a few purple varieties.
So it's not as scary as it might sound.
In the early 1980s (I think), there was a major case in Australia of an exporter selling "beef" to the USA which turned out to be kangaroo meat. I believe the Australian company was called "Protean". I have heard rumours that the US company was Jack 'n' the Box but I cannot find anything about this on the internet so I cannot confirm anything.
I cannot find any place that can sell me a t-shirt with the Vegemite logo.
I search for Hebrew grammar, dictionaries, and online translators regularly. I have never found a site that describes how Hebrew nouns and verbs work etc. Never.
You should have just made a copy of it instead.
Do you want to see them with their pink bits or their greenbacks?
If Slashdot were truly open source, we wouldn't have to wait and hope that Rob gets around to implementing our favourite feature. We could implement it ourselves.
Then we'd only have to wait and hope that Rob approves and accepts our patches.
I, for one, find I can get my idea across in Spanish a lot more often than I can understand what a native Spanish speaker is trying to tell me.
dos/tres equis
Since it seems related, I've had a dream open source project in mind for some time. Not so much along the lines of UNL as Babelfish. I think this is the perfect project for the open source model because people from around the world could contribute work relevant to their own languages. A propreietry project would have to employ many specialists.
If anybody is interested in starting such a project, please reply in this thread.
dos/tres equis
If Mosaic evolved into Netscape and Explorer then why is Mosaic still here?
Or am I missing something?
Try 50 years or more! One of the reasons governments started putting money into computers in the early days was for automatic translation.
Well Jenny must be for Jennycam. But what about
knights?
This is what I reckon:
* Announce all stable kernels under topic 'Linux'
* Announce all dev kernels under topic 'Linux Kernels'
except when they are so fantastic that everybody
wants to know about them. Then they too can be
announced under topic 'Linux'
Look I want to hear about each incremental update
of Linux kernels. Even the development ones. But
for those who don't, they could disable the 'Linux
kernel' topic. If there was one.
What do you reckon?
Kernel Traffic in case you don't know is an extremely interesting
site which gives summaries of what's happening on the Linux mailing
list each week or so.
http://www.kt.opensrc.org/