The scientific method requires that you have a longer lifespan than the time required to conduct an experiment. Therefore, it cannot answer questions regarding human social problems.
No, experiments can be conducted by more than one person as long as data can be reliable recorded and passed on. Human social problems are difficult to use "hard science" on because we have so little control over so many variables, *and* solid data is very difficult to collect (people lie, memories are unreliable, etc.). You also can't often legally observe people without them knowing it... and that alters behavior (we know from experiment that even having a cardboard person in the room alters behavior of people who know they are otherwise alone).
Religions as you see them today have a quality that is relevant to human social problems. That is, these religions didn't kill off their believers like so many others did. They have been subjected to evolutionary pressure and survived. This quality is measured in the number of generations of mankind that have survived under the system from conception to destruction, or from conception to current day, whichever.
True about selection operating on religions... but I'm baffled by the conclusion. Religions solve problems? No, they survived because they have features that perpetuate *the religion*. Even a religion kills off and actively harms many followers, if it continues to gain more, it survives. Think about how "if you die fighting for God you go to heaven" is so very very useful... because you lose plenty of soldiers, but you conquer the folks around you and convert them.
A counter-example: gang leadership structures enforced by brutal violence -- they are evolutionarily fit, because they keep showing up even today, in spite of organized police forces, etc.. Therefore they solve societal problems...?
What about he created us to love and worship him? Not because he was bored? I thought I read in the Bible that we were created to love and worship him because he wanted someone to share his life with and commune with them. Kind of like how humans relate to one another. I also read in the bible that we were made in his likeness. So, if I were God, i know that i'd want someone to share these great things with.
Okay, now look at that story and think about whether a person thought it up, or a perfect being with no human flaws actually felt that way, and created us just so he could tell us about how he was lonely, being the only god out there in a big universe for untold eons.
It's like any other story that we tell our children. "Once upon a time, there was a great mountain on an island, and he loved his beautiful island... but sometimes he felt lonely because he was all by himself and he had no mountain friends to talk to...." It's a story -- but it feels true because we recognize ourselves in the sadness the mountain feels.
So yes, that's a sensible way to tell a story about an invisible, all-powerful, supernatural being, but the fact that you can identify with the feeling has nothing whatsoever to do with actual truth. I'll bet I could make you actually feel sad for the mountain in my story, if I told it well....
Okay, so god created the universe - who created God?
Mu, the question is retarded. Have you ever heard a physicist explain that there wasn't any time before the Big Bang? It works like that.
The question wasn't perfectly phrased, but your answer is far worse.
We -- human beings -- are very limited in what we can know. The best we have is our own senses, and our own logic to find consistencies in what we can observe. Science is a set of rules about how we can structure and interpret observations reliably and consistently.
Talking about the concept of "time" before the big bang (already a distant enough thing that we're only guessing at it, piecing together clues and with only shaky certainty) is more a mental exercise than anything we can discuss with any kind of certainty.
On the other hand, this "God" you speak of, even further to speak of some kind of sentient being who defies all of the consistencies we have otherwise observed about the universe, has NO clues pointing to its existence, and NO logical consistency even behind the concept. It wants you to pray to it? It knows the future and is perfect, but can be convinced to change its mind? It creates the rules of the universe by which we and every friggin' atom must abide, but violates them itself? Not only are there no clues pointing *towards* its existence, everything points *against* it.
The only reason to believe that this "higher" thing exists that wants you to worship it is because humans have a long history of worshiping such things, and the habit is hard to break. It's hard to say "we don't know why, and it sucks" when it's socially acceptable (and so much more comforting) to say "God did it, and He knows best... let's pray and maybe he'll make it better somehow".
It serves a real psychological function. Does that make it true?
But wasn't this all fairly obvious already? If you touch a fire and it burns you, you can either do science and test if it happens every time you touch it or just coincidence, or you can just be superstitious about not touching fire.
Ah, excellent example. The scientist will experiment and realize: * if you touch it for only a short period of time, the heat transfer doesn't have time to occur * the heat transfer will be affected by many other factors -- is there a fine layer of ash (poor heat transfer) on the coals? Is your hand wet or dry (dry = slower heat transfer as well)? These all affect whether you are burned or not. * When the "magical guru" walks on glowing coals, the non-scientist will be amazed -- MAGIC POWERS! --worship the con-man and give him money.
See the value of the scientist's approach? Cause-effect relationship that seem simple (touch the glowing hot fire, get burned) are often not as simple as they seem. If you have no tools to get to the truth, you may suffer for your ignorance.
What about PRACTICAL data recovery? If it takes an electron microscope to recover the data, I think the challenge's main point is already sufficiently demonstrated.
Nope -- the data could be accurately recoverable 90% of the time, but it's still not worth it for a data recovery company to risk their reputation on this being one of those 10% cases, failing, and having their name dragged through the mud.
I'm not saying that's the case -- but that's all this challenge is proving: there's no data recovery company willing to risk their reputation trying it. There's not much to gain, so all we learn is that it's not guaranteed to recover the *filenames* as required to win the challenge.
The encrypted picture containing the filenames has already been published, using PGP public-key encryption. When the contest is over, all they have to do is publish the public key, and any member of the public can decrypt the file and determine FOR THEMSELVES whether the names matched. There is no possibility of cheating this way.
Huh? It's trivial to cheat: * Drive A has files "one" and "two". Take a screenshot of the files, encrypt it, etc. * Drive B is new & blank. Write it with 0's. * Send out drive B. * ALTERNATE: Overwrite drive A with 13 passes of random data, then with 0's. Send out drive A.
Encrypting the filenames beforehand, etc. doesn't protect anything... the trick is guaranteeing what was done with the hardware itself.
Unless -- as you seem to suggest -- they are "in on" some kind of publicity scheme? If so, they would (and would be able to) put more money into it than this! Also -- sorry to break the news to you -- but you are arguing against yourself! How could this be some kind of publicity stunt if, as you claim, this would not get sufficient publicity to make any money? You can't have that both ways!
Er.. it could be a poorly-conceived publicity scheme. Personally, I think they're actually trying to make a point, but didn't think this through.
But as for "prize money", THERE is where you miss the point. I have been using the analogy of the X prize. [...]
I've addressed this elsewhere, but in short -- it's not a valid analogy. The X Prize garnered a ton of publicity (because of the large prize and first hobbyist forays), and the money & publicity helped lower the risk for a very high-risk investment (but with a possibly enormous payoff), creating an entire new market.
Something more comparable -- the James Randi prize offers $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate scientifically valid paranormal abilities. Obviously, they *want* to prove it's impossible, as much as possible -- more like the 16 servers contest. In spite of the danger of loss of reputation and business, the prize is big enough that lots of people try to win it... so that contest does a much better job of proving that something may well be impossible.
First off, if the data recovery techniques only recovered data 50% of the time or less (as in your example), then the challenge's point is proven already. They can't reliably do it.
This fallacy is "shifting the goalposts". No, the contest site contends that it's impossible. Are you saying a disk-wipe method that worked 50% of the time would be remotely sufficient for anyone's purposes? Huh.
Second, probably the VAST MAJORITY of new business they would be getting would be 0ed files... due to common "secure erase" programs that typically write 0s to the disk.
As I said in my post above, this isn't the main source of business for data recovery firms, and would continue not to be even if someone recovered the drive. The general understanding is that if you've actively overwritten all of your data, either it's toast or it'll cost an awful lot to get anything back. It's *still* not going to be common for folks to have extremely valuable enterprise data (worth the cash to try a recovery) that's not backed up anywhere, actively overwritten with 0's.
(If 0ed areas of the disk can't be reliably recovered, then more-or-less "random" overwriting would render the data unrecoverable, in a practical sense.)
If you don't even prove the first part, you can't assume a shaky extension. "Can't be reliably recovered" is not enough even for wiping even normal personal info. But that's what this challenge is demanding, "reliable recovery". What's the point? The data on a drive that's been dropped down the stairs cannot be "reliably recovered" -- it depends on the damage. But often it can be recovered, so that's NOT a practical method of wiping a disk.
If you want to actually show that dd'ing 0's to a disk once makes it impossible to recover without possibly an electron microscope or some crazy-impractical method like that, then design some way to prove that. This contest does not -- as I said (and you agreed) it's not worth it for companies to enter if it's even 50% possible to recover. "Not reliably recoverable" is not useful information for someone wiping a drive, or even for someone who accidentally wipes a drive and thinks about sending it in someplace to try recovery.
I completely disagree that the reputation of 16systems matters, even a little. Did YOU know who the Ansari family were when they helped to establish the X prize? Did you care?
Million of dollars = mucho credibility. I still don't care who they are -- they put the money on the table, and it got people moving; first the hobbyists who really wanted the cash (and launched a few chairs testing engines!), then some folks with deep pockets of their own (which was really required...) got caught up in the excitement. If the prize had been $500, they would have gotten no real coverage, no takers whatsoever, and no snowball effect. Do you disagree with that?
And was it about the money (as you seem to keep insisting)? The X prize did not even meet the expenses of the winners. Gee, I wonder why they did it then? According to your argument, they would not have any motivation, because they wouldn't be making any money!
They had no reputation to lose if they failed, either. These were not established businesses taking people into space already, being challenged to do some difficult variation on that.
But in fact, even though the prize did not give them a profit, they are going to be profiting anyway! Due to the reputation THEY made in winning the contest! Imagine that.
That still remains to be seen, but again, the analogy is not apt (and I suspect you know this and are trolling by now... but I'll bite this last time). They had no reputation or existing business model to lose; instead, they got a significant monetary & publicity boost in opening a brand new and very risky market that required a ton of money to
If 16 systems is so sure they're right, why not make the reward $50 grand or so? They won't have to pay it, after all... right?
And make it part of the contract that challenge takers who *fail* won't be publicized (remove that obvious & large discouragement), and see if the response changes.
It might not -- as the average data recovery company's customer is NOT coming to them with a dd-wiped drive -- but hey, it'll make it more likely that someone will give it a shot.
This "challenge" would have to use a completely different methodology for there to be any takers. Maybe you know this, and are basically trolling; maybe you don't. I can explain.
Let's invent some numbers for the sake of argument: say that recovering the data from a drive that's been zeroed out once is possible 50% of the time, using a process that costs about $2000 in employee time, resources, etc.. The "50%" number is irrelevant -- it would probably have to be over 95% for anyone to want to take the challenge... but either way, there are no takers. Why's that?
Data recovery company #1 finds out about the challenge, and decides to take it. They expend the $2000 and (flip a coin) fail to recover the data. It costs them $2000, plus an unknown quantity of lost business. If 16 systems manages to stir up enough trouble (not terribly likely, but possible... they have a target to vilify!), it could hurt them significantly. It ALSO spreads the idea to whoever will listen that running dd once is sufficiently secure, even though the "research" was invalid (is one data point statistically significant?).
Data recovery company #2 is similar, but (flip that coin) manages to recover the data. They spend $2000, "win" $580, and their business is basically unchanged. People *already* believe that often some data is recoverable from a damaged drive or accidentally overwritten drive (and only a tiny percentage of their business would actually come from recovering drives that were zeroed out...), so in sum they've spent $1420 just to keep the status quo.
Data recovery company #3 doesn't hear about the challenge, or considers the risks and doesn't try it. They pay nothing, and lose nothing -- STILL their business from people with damaged and partly-overwritten drives will keep coming. People who google them won't come up with any details on this failed challenge (unlike poor company #1!!!). In theory, they might lose a customer or two who somehow actively zero out their drive, then decide they want to recover it, but stumble across the unanswered challenge and say "oh, damn, guess that's toast after all"... but how many people are in that situation?
#3 is the winner.
You can change the numbers -- even if they could recover the data %90 percent of the time, is it worth that 10% risk of looking foolish and damaging their Google reputation? Probably not.
A final thought on reputation -- of COURSE the reputation of 16 systems matters. Is this challenge being covered in any actual industry press, online or off? Anything that "decision-makers" would read? Or is the slashdot article "the big win"? If 16 systems had a rep, they would have much more leverage. The greater the coverage, the more damage they could conceivably do to data recovery companies who didn't respond... well, assuming that the people using data recovery companies were largely dealing with dd-zeroed drives, I guess. ALSO if 16 systems had a rep, the POSITIVE coverage they could drive would be significant, so a company who accepted the challenge and won it would have a real gain. As it is, if some company illogically takes the risk and extracts the data... they have nothing real to win. Would they get enough business out of, say, another slashdot article to make it worth the cost and risk?
I'm no data recovery expert. I have no idea how hard it would be to recover data from that drive, assuming 16 systems is playing fair (which they cannot prove, and they have no rep to lose... again, see how it matters?).
But this challenge does absolutely nothing to give me any more information. Hence, it's a stunt.
I still say that's nonsense. The "defacto standard for communication" is the local language, even in the Netherlands for example where English training is quite intense.
You are misusing the word "standard". Insofar as there is a standard, it's English. "The local language" is a runtime variable; a standard has to be a constant.
The context of the discussion is "how well can you get by in X country, speaking only English?"
A standard is an established norm or requirement. The norm for everyday communication is to speak the local language. Most people in Europe are not bilingual local language(s) and English -- i.e., English is a second language.
If you mean the standard for international business communications, I'd agree -- but that's only useful while you're at work, *if* you work for an international corporation and *if* they conduct all office communications in English (which many do, but not all).
If you're meeting your neighbors or interacting with local businesses with only local customers, your luck will vary. Personally, I'm in rural France, and most people don't speak English with any kind of fluency if at all, younger people included. The Netherlands is definitely farther along; I have a Dutch friend who came to the US for an MFA in creative writing (in English obviously), and there are many more companies/school programs/etc. with English as the medium, agreed.
People are talking more Dutch than English everywhere except the large international business (but... most business conducted is not international, is it?).
It's also the teaching medium in more and more graduate and even undergraduate programmes. And there's no shortage of smaller businesses and NGOs in Amsterdam where English is the main spoken language.
Again, I'd imagine this depends on where you are in the Netherlands and who you're talking with (international business people, university students, etc. vs. elderly people in small towns).
But sure, there's much MORE English in the Netherlands, but if you simply add up the amount of Dutch spoken daily vs. the amount of English, it's still far more Dutch.
I'm not sure where the tipping point is where you speak enough of a "second language" (and start early enough) that you are simply multilingual, but I still doubt that the majority of the Dutch population could have hit that mark. Someday, perhaps.... I'm quite sure the French have not, Paris included.
There are multiple different cultures cohabiting in Chicago, like any decent-sized city. Do you think all of the neighborhoods are the same? It depends on where you live; your neighbors could be quite different.
But the side of my point that you skipped over was that America is not small, and while the insulated corn-fed Christian evangelical (or the bud-light-swilling nascar-watching redneck) might clash almost anywhere, those are exactly the sorts of Americans that would *never* think of moving to Europe. What *is* the stereotype you're thinking of, exactly? How would you describe the culture of the average American who wants to leave the US and live in Europe?
That's not what the vast majority of immigrants living there will tell you.
Ah, at least you've changed from "100%" to "vast majority". Granted, my random sample is a size of two (though I could ask my brother & his wife for opinions from other expats they know, I suppose), but it already disagrees with you.
What's your sample? You don't live there yourself... who does that you know or talk to?
Sorry, "Have you tried" wasn't intended to be nasty.
From what I understand from other comments, the paperwork in the Netherlands is much easier than that in France, particularly if you have a company managing it for you.
But like I said above, I didn't move here to work for a French company, so I don't know how difficult that is *including* the process of landing the job you want -- how many companies are willing to put in the effort to sponsor a foreign employee (when they could hire anyone from the UK or EU without doing that) and how much the company can do for you to ease the process, for example -- but there's a lot of paperwork and many different steps involved either way.
If you went through the process in the Netherlands, I imagine you can't extend that to say "all of Europe"; I have a brother who did close to what you did (with an international company who already employed him in California... and they brought his car over, paid for a furnished apartment and helped him find long term housing, etc..). But he actually wanted & still would like to move to France -- his wife is French, and they both speak French -- but they haven't managed that yet.
My "hard way" is perhaps also partly based on the fact that I have been working from home with flexible hours for a long time now, and it was hard to stomach giving that up (and I didn't want to live in Paris...) just so I could move here.
For people without that limitation, though, there are obviously *some* jobs available for foreigners, France included.
Wow, snarky. Er; I wouldn't be explaining this in detail if it were illegal. I'm not violating any laws; I don't have any European clients. I do contract software development work for U.S. clients, who pay me in dollars.
I actually COULD have European clients if I registered as a business here, which I'm allowed to do with the long-stay visa I already have... but it's expensive, and I'm not sure it's worth it.
I'm still sorting out the tax situation -- I've been paying US taxes but will probably have to start paying French ones instead, now that I'm here more than 1/2 the year -- but that's a separate issue, and I have a specialist expat accountant who's making sure I do it properly.
If I had found a corporate job (shudder) that offered the flexibility, pay, location, etc. that I wanted (not likely, though I did look), the company would probably have helped with the paperwork, but either way, it's not trivial.
Of the thousands of Americans living there, every single one hates the country with a passion.
My American brother & his French wife moved from San Francisco to Eindhoven a few years ago, and enjoy it (they have 2 kids there now... the one old enough to talk is tri-lingual English/French/Dutch). They enjoy it; my brother's job is excellent and they treat him well; he rides his bike to work every day and got *paternal* leave when each baby was born, plus a nurse automatically comes to the house to help the mother sort out how to care for the baby... that was pretty cool. Culturally, they have some funny stories about customer service tendencies, but they do have Dutch friends. It's funny, though, my brother spends all his time speaking English with non-native speakers, and now *his* English is starting to get pretty weird.
And seriously, are you actually saying that there's ONE American culture and ONE Dutch culture? Which clash incompatibly? There are *American* cultures that are basically incompatible with each other. Perhaps your personal preferences clash with the Dutch folks you know? It's simple... wherever you move, you need to be open-minded & flexible enough to adapt, PLUS you do a little searching to find folks you get along with; then you'll be all set.
The Netherlands doesn't have some kind of alien culture that's completely inaccessible to people from elsewhere.
Agreed; I moved to France a couple of years ago, and though there are varying levels of frustration over Bush's policies (as there is in the US), I've had NO anger or disrespect of any kind directed towards me personally. On the other hand, I've had a few elderly people tell me that America basically gets a free pass for almost anything because of their personal experiences with US infantry during WWII... I don't think most Americans have a concept of war like many of the French have -- e.g., there's a village near where I live where *everyone* was rounded up and killed (Oradour-sur-Glane); there are still simmering angers with families who collaborated with the Nazis in some way; many, many villages basically lost all men of marriageable age, so a lot of families were drastically changed/died out/land changed hands/etc..
And there are still a decent number of young people who are basically baffled that I would move from NY to rural France when that's the exact opposite of what they'd love to do.
Fortunately, I suppose, the situation is much more complex than the idiotic American Freedom Fries and all that nonsense.
You touched on part of the problem at the end of your post -- a lot of tourists seem to think that "speaking English" is a binary proposition -- they walk up to someone in Europe and say "do you speak English?", and if they get a hesitant nod, they launch into the way they talk at home, full of idioms, twisted up with their local accent, swallowed words, slang, etc.. That's a mortifying experience for people on the receiving end. Like I said, I was a good student in the US and studied French for 8 years, but still was pretty lost when I tried to have normal conversations with actual French people... it was fairly painful at first, and I was mostly lost.
I'm not saying nobody has studied English... I'm just saying many of the younger folks studied it as a second language, and particularly for those who *didn't* spend a year in the UK or whatnot, it may be pretty darn rusty.
And actually, most of the folks in my town (fairly rural) aren't quite young enough to have studied English, so they only know a few words (if that!). Are you in a major city in Germany, or mostly interacting with younger people?
Also, I was mostly taking issue with this: "It's not a second language[...] it is the defacto standard for communication".
I still say that's nonsense. The "defacto standard for communication" is the local language, even in the Netherlands for example where English training is quite intense. People are talking more Dutch than English everywhere except the large international business (but... most business conducted is not international, is it?).
English is a second language that's getting progressively more & more emphasis as there are more and more jobs where speaking English is a plus... but it's still a second language, and just another subject in school (e.g., they don't conduct math class in English).
I'm not sure how your small village near Castres compares to my likely-smaller village, but partly it'd depend on what you mean by basics. Many shopkeepers in any place remotely touristic will understand the absolute basics accompanied with pointing (please thank you how many) and perhaps numbers, but beyond that would be stuck (can't answer questions about where to find something, can't give directions, etc.). I don't tend to think that counts as speaking at a level of communication, though.
I do know that if I'd moved here without any French, I'd have been screwed. Sure, I'd have been able to go grocery shopping, but navigating the bureaucracy, all of the paperwork (in French only), meeting the neighbors and actually having conversations, trading advice, etc.. we'd have been stuck.
I would also advice to at least start learning the language before going abroad. It would make life easier when hanging out with people after work.
I'd agree with that... you should have at least the basics down, enough to pick up on most of a regular conversation, before moving somewhere.
There are a decent number of British expats living where I am in France, and there's a clear divide between those who are comfortable with French (and can make friends with people who share common interests) and those who haven't (who are basically limited to hanging out with people who just share the common language of English.. a rather more limited pool of acquaintances). I tend to think that most of the English-only expats would have been much happier if they'd just stayed in the UK.
You don't have to have great grammar, or a vast vocabulary, or a perfect accent... mostly you need basic vocab, comfort with common phrases, and to get your ear tuned to *hearing* the language. There's a tipping point where you can stop someone and explain which part you didn't understand -- and getting there is hugely important. That's where properly learning the language really *starts*, because you can actually be in conversation with people, trying out things as you learn them and asking about new things as you hear them.
The process of just moving to France WITHOUT work permits was neither quick nor painless (my wife & I moved here from the US in late 2006).
We researched the options fairly thoroughly before coming, and we both speak French quite well... without that, it probably would have been much worse.
I decided NOT to try to get permission to work -- we both kept bank accounts, etc., in the US, and still earn in dollars (not ideal with the current exchange rates, alas...). Basically, if I want to start my own business, that might be possible... simply getting permission to work for a local company is more or less impossible, though.
I didn't try getting a job in an international company with branches in France -- I spend a week digging around and really didn't see anything of interest near where we wanted to move -- so I can't speak for that approach... but nothing about the paperwork process was "quick & painless", that's for sure.
The difference is that English is the language of global communication. It's not a second language, it's a basic skill that is taught to prepare the person for just such an occasion, whether that be a Frenchie in Fair Rapids, or a Kiwi in Clermont. All little French children, as well as little Dutch, German, Czech, Italian, and Russian kids are all taught English in school because it is the defacto standard for communication.
What nonsense! Sheesh. I'm an American living in central France. And *I* get irritated when some lout of a tourist comes over asking questions in English before they have any clue that I speak it, or at what level I might speak it.
English may be becoming "the language of global communication", but the vast majority of people in France (outside Paris) still conduct near 100% of their communication in their local language, speaking with other locals.
We have a decent number of British expats who live in my part of the country, and there are a few businesses that cater specifically to them, putting up "English spoken!" signs. But most places just won't have a clue if you just come in speaking English... and these are people who deal with the public directly; a random person on the street may be a housewife, an office worker, a mechanic, whatever. What "international" communication would they need to conduct?
It doesn't matter that many of the kids learned some English in school. They've never spent any amount of time actually speaking it with a native, so they can't understand you unless you use a strong French accent and stick to the phrases they learned (no idioms, no slang, etc.), AND it was fairly recently that they were studying it... it fades fairly quickly if unused.
English absolutely *is* a second language unless you are learning it in a context where you speak it regularly, with native speakers. Being taught a language in school by definition *makes* it a second language, and by itself usually isn't enough. (I should know.. I technically studied French for 8 years in school, but I was still lost when I first moved here...).
The Netherlands is closer to what you're talking about -- most people who work with the public will be comfortable speaking English at some level -- but still, not everyone, in spite of their intense English training throughout school.
The moral teachings we have (in various forms, and having been interpreted and rewritten to varying degrees) are separate from the person of Jesus himself, whatever we can actually know about it.
Those ideas can obviously be evaluated separately from any kind of religious belief.
I'm an atheist, but I certainly wouldn't discard and/or ignore concepts that have been part of human morality in various ways since even before Jesus' time.
Don't get trapped in the middle, thinking Jesus was a 'great teacher' but dismissing some of His own words. If you need to deny Jesus' own claim to being God's Son, you need to pretty much ignore His other words too. He's either right or wrong.
Nonsense. He was a human being. We're all right about some things & wrong about others.
I'd agree with you about people who are quasi-religious but never take the time or effort to actually think it through (and realize what they're doing when they're cherry-picking what to believe in)... but my push is just that they go ahead and discard the superstition so they can focus in a clear-headed way on actual morality, separated from whether some ethereal being might be miffed because they ate some specific meat on whatever day of the week.
The "now" is that another election is approaching. It's apparently obvious even to you that if our elected officials are trusted to handle these elections responsibly, they are quite happy to do whatever the hell they want and "irregularities" sprout up like mushrooms after a rain.
So... for this time around, do you want to shout and bitch and moan and demand a fair election? Or do you want to just turn on the TV, drown out any possible responsibility you might have as a citizen and let it all happen again?
The American electoral process has become a disgrace thanks to our indifference.
It depends. It's not that Malay speakers can't express those concepts -- they just don't modify the verbs/adjectives to do it. For plural, you either double the word (e.g., dog-dog would be multiple dogs) or you use a number to be specific. For gender, there are words to throw in when the gender of the people being discussed actually matters.
I personally am frustrated all the time by the pervasive gender in French... I have to know that the noun for "slime" is female before I can use it, or use any adjectives to describe it? WHY? Well, if I use the masculine form, it's a different word (meaning a vase). Interestingly, the nouns for nasty things are basically ALWAYS female. Shit, slime, mud, piss, dirt, etc.. All feminine. Sexism is built into the language, how nice.... And the work involved in learning the gender for every friggin noun is completely useless otherwise.
If I'm talking about *myself* I have to do the extra work of altering the adjectives to reflect my gender. If I'm speaking TO a stranger in dim light, I'm very limited in what I can say without revealing that I don't know. Why so much work? In so many cases it's hard work to maintain utterly useless information.
Obviously English isn't as bad -- though our genders still tangle us up a lot without offering a huge amount of usefulness (particularly now that a man & woman *won't* automatically inhabit completely different spheres of society). It's awkward to talk about someone without knowing their sex ("their" is plural, so I'm already breaking the rules to deal with it).
I haven't done any kind of detailed analysis of the functions that gender serves in language (and different languages), but already there's a huge amount of appeal to have a language that's allowed some intelligent design instead of just unguided evolution... the cruft really adds up.
My wife has a novel that was just translated into German -- it was suddenly 140 pages longer.
For logical languages -- try Malay; they standardized their spelling (wow, how English could benefit from that if it were only possible...), and the grammar doesn't have all of these things that are annoying about many languages... they don't conjugate verbs for number, person, or tense (they have adverbs to show timing); they don't put gender on everything (not even his/hers); they don't even have anything for plural. It's neat.
You can still express everything you'd be able to express in English, for example (as far as I can figure out), but it's sometimes longer... though much more logical!
I started learning French when I was a kid (starting in middle school, so... around 10 years old, I think?), and studied it through high school, and a bit in college.
I'm very glad I did -- my wife and I got an opportunity to move here to France from the US a couple of years ago, and did so. The paperwork was tough (and it's all in French...) but we're enjoying it.
On the other hand, if you travel in France, many speak english, but won't. It's a pride thing. You might get a lot of bang for the effort if you learn french (assuming you would like to travel in France, and who wouldn't).
This is true in much of Paris, but 95% of the French people I meet (I currently live in the countryside in central France) absolutely do not speak English. Sometimes people who interact with tourists (shopkeepers, etc.) will know a few words -- enough to conduct a transaction -- but often not more than that. There are a decent number of Brits who retire to this part of the country, and they have to use their (often terrible) French all the time, unless they only interact with other expats. Some of them go back home when they realize this.
There's also the fact that "speaks English" is not a yes/no proposition. Imagine that you speak the rough Spanish (or whatever) that you learned in high school and mostly forgot, and some tourist marches up to you and asks a simple question. You think you understand it, so you reply... and they launch into a stream of rapid, heavily accented Spanish. Shit, now they're waving their hands at you. WTF? Now they treat you like *you're* playing dumb? No thanks. It's safer to pretend you don't speak the language at all.
I hate to admit it, but I've actually pretended not to speak English a few times, just to avoid needing to talk to a specific type of tourist....
I have forgotten more computer languages than the average programmer knows. And still, I cannot reproduce the sounds of french or many other languages. It's a talent you lose as you get older.
This is quite true.... I still don't always manage to wrap my mouth around it (at least I can hear it as it comes out wrong and try again...). There's the "r", but you can make yourself understood without it. The "u" vs. "ou" is harder to deal with.... to pronounce an "u" in French you have to basically place your tongue like you're making an "ee" sound, but form your lips like you're making an "oo" sound. If you *don't* do it, though, if you just make the "oo" sound, you'll often be speaking different words. If you screw that sound up, you'll try to say "above" (dessus) and you'll say "below" (dessous).
A funnier one my brother ran into: he was trying to say "Merci beaucoup" (thanks very much) but used the "u" sound instead of "ou"... which made it sound like "Merci, beau cul"... "Thanks, nice ass."
I'm not an GPL guru, so I could use a clarification. Is it possible for an author to loose control over a product he/she puts under the GPL license.
You mean "lose control", right? But the answer is "partly".
Bob writes an application, releases it GPL'd. It becomes a success. He later regrets using the license, then releases the same product (not a newer version) under a different proprietary license. What is the impact on someone deciding to fork the original GPL'd release?
Here's the deal: Bob still has copyright, so he *is* allowed to release the product under a new closed-source license, add new features that are closed-source, and so on. BUT the version that he released as GPL can still be freely used, forked, distributed, etc. under GPL. He gave us the right with that release.
The big difference between Bob & us is that you or I can only use/extend that last release under the GPL -- we don't have the right to change the license at all, mix it into our closed source product, etc.. Bob does have that right, though, and he can still sell closed-source licenses for his code for commercial applications. He doesn't have the rights to the code we write into the forked version though.
I guess I'd also point out that many of these kinds of applications -- where there was a single author, no development community, and the author decided to change the license at some point -- the project is not successfully forked. Think about it -- if the project is complicated at all, and it has no developer community already, that means a lot of work for someone to step in and maintain/extend/host the project... they'll be starting from scratch with probably no developer documentation, just a mass of source code.
On the other hand, a solid OSS project with a thriving developer community will likely mean that dozens of people own the copyright to the code -- Bob won't have written all that code himself -- so he won't even have the option of changing the license (all copyright holders would need to agree).
Slashdot Mirror
The scientific method requires that you have a longer lifespan than the time required to conduct an experiment. Therefore, it cannot answer questions regarding human social problems.
No, experiments can be conducted by more than one person as long as data can be reliable recorded and passed on. Human social problems are difficult to use "hard science" on because we have so little control over so many variables, *and* solid data is very difficult to collect (people lie, memories are unreliable, etc.). You also can't often legally observe people without them knowing it... and that alters behavior (we know from experiment that even having a cardboard person in the room alters behavior of people who know they are otherwise alone).
Religions as you see them today have a quality that is relevant to human social problems. That is, these religions didn't kill off their believers like so many others did. They have been subjected to evolutionary pressure and survived. This quality is measured in the number of generations of mankind that have survived under the system from conception to destruction, or from conception to current day, whichever.
True about selection operating on religions... but I'm baffled by the conclusion. Religions solve problems? No, they survived because they have features that perpetuate *the religion*. Even a religion kills off and actively harms many followers, if it continues to gain more, it survives. Think about how "if you die fighting for God you go to heaven" is so very very useful... because you lose plenty of soldiers, but you conquer the folks around you and convert them.
A counter-example: gang leadership structures enforced by brutal violence -- they are evolutionarily fit, because they keep showing up even today, in spite of organized police forces, etc.. Therefore they solve societal problems...?
What about he created us to love and worship him? Not because he was bored? I thought I read in the Bible that we were created to love and worship him because he wanted someone to share his life with and commune with them. Kind of like how humans relate to one another. I also read in the bible that we were made in his likeness. So, if I were God, i know that i'd want someone to share these great things with.
Okay, now look at that story and think about whether a person thought it up, or a perfect being with no human flaws actually felt that way, and created us just so he could tell us about how he was lonely, being the only god out there in a big universe for untold eons.
It's like any other story that we tell our children. "Once upon a time, there was a great mountain on an island, and he loved his beautiful island... but sometimes he felt lonely because he was all by himself and he had no mountain friends to talk to...." It's a story -- but it feels true because we recognize ourselves in the sadness the mountain feels.
So yes, that's a sensible way to tell a story about an invisible, all-powerful, supernatural being, but the fact that you can identify with the feeling has nothing whatsoever to do with actual truth. I'll bet I could make you actually feel sad for the mountain in my story, if I told it well....
Okay, so god created the universe - who created God?
Mu, the question is retarded. Have you ever heard a physicist explain that there wasn't any time before the Big Bang? It works like that.
The question wasn't perfectly phrased, but your answer is far worse.
We -- human beings -- are very limited in what we can know. The best we have is our own senses, and our own logic to find consistencies in what we can observe. Science is a set of rules about how we can structure and interpret observations reliably and consistently.
Talking about the concept of "time" before the big bang (already a distant enough thing that we're only guessing at it, piecing together clues and with only shaky certainty) is more a mental exercise than anything we can discuss with any kind of certainty.
On the other hand, this "God" you speak of, even further to speak of some kind of sentient being who defies all of the consistencies we have otherwise observed about the universe, has NO clues pointing to its existence, and NO logical consistency even behind the concept. It wants you to pray to it? It knows the future and is perfect, but can be convinced to change its mind? It creates the rules of the universe by which we and every friggin' atom must abide, but violates them itself? Not only are there no clues pointing *towards* its existence, everything points *against* it.
The only reason to believe that this "higher" thing exists that wants you to worship it is because humans have a long history of worshiping such things, and the habit is hard to break. It's hard to say "we don't know why, and it sucks" when it's socially acceptable (and so much more comforting) to say "God did it, and He knows best... let's pray and maybe he'll make it better somehow".
It serves a real psychological function. Does that make it true?
But wasn't this all fairly obvious already? If you touch a fire and it burns you, you can either do science and test if it happens every time you touch it or just coincidence, or you can just be superstitious about not touching fire.
Ah, excellent example. The scientist will experiment and realize:
* if you touch it for only a short period of time, the heat transfer doesn't have time to occur
* the heat transfer will be affected by many other factors -- is there a fine layer of ash (poor heat transfer) on the coals? Is your hand wet or dry (dry = slower heat transfer as well)? These all affect whether you are burned or not.
* When the "magical guru" walks on glowing coals, the non-scientist will be amazed -- MAGIC POWERS! --worship the con-man and give him money.
The scientist will know what's going on (or experiment more if not), and sell firewalking workshops to business executives instead.
See the value of the scientist's approach? Cause-effect relationship that seem simple (touch the glowing hot fire, get burned) are often not as simple as they seem. If you have no tools to get to the truth, you may suffer for your ignorance.
So, do you belong to 16 systems?
What about PRACTICAL data recovery? If it takes an electron microscope to recover the data, I think the challenge's main point is already sufficiently demonstrated.
Nope -- the data could be accurately recoverable 90% of the time, but it's still not worth it for a data recovery company to risk their reputation on this being one of those 10% cases, failing, and having their name dragged through the mud.
I'm not saying that's the case -- but that's all this challenge is proving: there's no data recovery company willing to risk their reputation trying it. There's not much to gain, so all we learn is that it's not guaranteed to recover the *filenames* as required to win the challenge.
The encrypted picture containing the filenames has already been published, using PGP public-key encryption. When the contest is over, all they have to do is publish the public key, and any member of the public can decrypt the file and determine FOR THEMSELVES whether the names matched. There is no possibility of cheating this way.
Huh? It's trivial to cheat:
* Drive A has files "one" and "two". Take a screenshot of the files, encrypt it, etc.
* Drive B is new & blank. Write it with 0's.
* Send out drive B.
* ALTERNATE: Overwrite drive A with 13 passes of random data, then with 0's. Send out drive A.
Encrypting the filenames beforehand, etc. doesn't protect anything... the trick is guaranteeing what was done with the hardware itself.
Unless -- as you seem to suggest -- they are "in on" some kind of publicity scheme? If so, they would (and would be able to) put more money into it than this! Also -- sorry to break the news to you -- but you are arguing against yourself! How could this be some kind of publicity stunt if, as you claim, this would not get sufficient publicity to make any money? You can't have that both ways!
Er.. it could be a poorly-conceived publicity scheme. Personally, I think they're actually trying to make a point, but didn't think this through.
But as for "prize money", THERE is where you miss the point. I have been using the analogy of the X prize. [...]
I've addressed this elsewhere, but in short -- it's not a valid analogy. The X Prize garnered a ton of publicity (because of the large prize and first hobbyist forays), and the money & publicity helped lower the risk for a very high-risk investment (but with a possibly enormous payoff), creating an entire new market.
Something more comparable -- the James Randi prize offers $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate scientifically valid paranormal abilities. Obviously, they *want* to prove it's impossible, as much as possible -- more like the 16 servers contest. In spite of the danger of loss of reputation and business, the prize is big enough that lots of people try to win it... so that contest does a much better job of proving that something may well be impossible.
First off, if the data recovery techniques only recovered data 50% of the time or less (as in your example), then the challenge's point is proven already. They can't reliably do it.
This fallacy is "shifting the goalposts". No, the contest site contends that it's impossible. Are you saying a disk-wipe method that worked 50% of the time would be remotely sufficient for anyone's purposes? Huh.
Second, probably the VAST MAJORITY of new business they would be getting would be 0ed files... due to common "secure erase" programs that typically write 0s to the disk.
As I said in my post above, this isn't the main source of business for data recovery firms, and would continue not to be even if someone recovered the drive. The general understanding is that if you've actively overwritten all of your data, either it's toast or it'll cost an awful lot to get anything back. It's *still* not going to be common for folks to have extremely valuable enterprise data (worth the cash to try a recovery) that's not backed up anywhere, actively overwritten with 0's.
(If 0ed areas of the disk can't be reliably recovered, then more-or-less "random" overwriting would render the data unrecoverable, in a practical sense.)
If you don't even prove the first part, you can't assume a shaky extension. "Can't be reliably recovered" is not enough even for wiping even normal personal info. But that's what this challenge is demanding, "reliable recovery". What's the point? The data on a drive that's been dropped down the stairs cannot be "reliably recovered" -- it depends on the damage. But often it can be recovered, so that's NOT a practical method of wiping a disk.
If you want to actually show that dd'ing 0's to a disk once makes it impossible to recover without possibly an electron microscope or some crazy-impractical method like that, then design some way to prove that. This contest does not -- as I said (and you agreed) it's not worth it for companies to enter if it's even 50% possible to recover. "Not reliably recoverable" is not useful information for someone wiping a drive, or even for someone who accidentally wipes a drive and thinks about sending it in someplace to try recovery.
I completely disagree that the reputation of 16systems matters, even a little. Did YOU know who the Ansari family were when they helped to establish the X prize? Did you care?
Million of dollars = mucho credibility. I still don't care who they are -- they put the money on the table, and it got people moving; first the hobbyists who really wanted the cash (and launched a few chairs testing engines!), then some folks with deep pockets of their own (which was really required...) got caught up in the excitement. If the prize had been $500, they would have gotten no real coverage, no takers whatsoever, and no snowball effect. Do you disagree with that?
And was it about the money (as you seem to keep insisting)? The X prize did not even meet the expenses of the winners. Gee, I wonder why they did it then? According to your argument, they would not have any motivation, because they wouldn't be making any money!
They had no reputation to lose if they failed, either. These were not established businesses taking people into space already, being challenged to do some difficult variation on that.
But in fact, even though the prize did not give them a profit, they are going to be profiting anyway! Due to the reputation THEY made in winning the contest! Imagine that.
That still remains to be seen, but again, the analogy is not apt (and I suspect you know this and are trolling by now... but I'll bite this last time). They had no reputation or existing business model to lose; instead, they got a significant monetary & publicity boost in opening a brand new and very risky market that required a ton of money to
If 16 systems is so sure they're right, why not make the reward $50 grand or so? They won't have to pay it, after all... right?
And make it part of the contract that challenge takers who *fail* won't be publicized (remove that obvious & large discouragement), and see if the response changes.
It might not -- as the average data recovery company's customer is NOT coming to them with a dd-wiped drive -- but hey, it'll make it more likely that someone will give it a shot.
As-is, it's all a bit silly.
This "challenge" would have to use a completely different methodology for there to be any takers. Maybe you know this, and are basically trolling; maybe you don't. I can explain.
Let's invent some numbers for the sake of argument: say that recovering the data from a drive that's been zeroed out once is possible 50% of the time, using a process that costs about $2000 in employee time, resources, etc.. The "50%" number is irrelevant -- it would probably have to be over 95% for anyone to want to take the challenge... but either way, there are no takers. Why's that?
Data recovery company #1 finds out about the challenge, and decides to take it. They expend the $2000 and (flip a coin) fail to recover the data. It costs them $2000, plus an unknown quantity of lost business. If 16 systems manages to stir up enough trouble (not terribly likely, but possible... they have a target to vilify!), it could hurt them significantly. It ALSO spreads the idea to whoever will listen that running dd once is sufficiently secure, even though the "research" was invalid (is one data point statistically significant?).
Data recovery company #2 is similar, but (flip that coin) manages to recover the data. They spend $2000, "win" $580, and their business is basically unchanged. People *already* believe that often some data is recoverable from a damaged drive or accidentally overwritten drive (and only a tiny percentage of their business would actually come from recovering drives that were zeroed out...), so in sum they've spent $1420 just to keep the status quo.
Data recovery company #3 doesn't hear about the challenge, or considers the risks and doesn't try it. They pay nothing, and lose nothing -- STILL their business from people with damaged and partly-overwritten drives will keep coming. People who google them won't come up with any details on this failed challenge (unlike poor company #1!!!). In theory, they might lose a customer or two who somehow actively zero out their drive, then decide they want to recover it, but stumble across the unanswered challenge and say "oh, damn, guess that's toast after all"... but how many people are in that situation?
#3 is the winner.
You can change the numbers -- even if they could recover the data %90 percent of the time, is it worth that 10% risk of looking foolish and damaging their Google reputation? Probably not.
A final thought on reputation -- of COURSE the reputation of 16 systems matters. Is this challenge being covered in any actual industry press, online or off? Anything that "decision-makers" would read? Or is the slashdot article "the big win"? If 16 systems had a rep, they would have much more leverage. The greater the coverage, the more damage they could conceivably do to data recovery companies who didn't respond... well, assuming that the people using data recovery companies were largely dealing with dd-zeroed drives, I guess. ALSO if 16 systems had a rep, the POSITIVE coverage they could drive would be significant, so a company who accepted the challenge and won it would have a real gain. As it is, if some company illogically takes the risk and extracts the data... they have nothing real to win. Would they get enough business out of, say, another slashdot article to make it worth the cost and risk?
I'm no data recovery expert. I have no idea how hard it would be to recover data from that drive, assuming 16 systems is playing fair (which they cannot prove, and they have no rep to lose... again, see how it matters?).
But this challenge does absolutely nothing to give me any more information. Hence, it's a stunt.
You are misusing the word "standard". Insofar as there is a standard, it's English. "The local language" is a runtime variable; a standard has to be a constant.
The context of the discussion is "how well can you get by in X country, speaking only English?"
A standard is an established norm or requirement. The norm for everyday communication is to speak the local language. Most people in Europe are not bilingual local language(s) and English -- i.e., English is a second language.
If you mean the standard for international business communications, I'd agree -- but that's only useful while you're at work, *if* you work for an international corporation and *if* they conduct all office communications in English (which many do, but not all).
If you're meeting your neighbors or interacting with local businesses with only local customers, your luck will vary. Personally, I'm in rural France, and most people don't speak English with any kind of fluency if at all, younger people included. The Netherlands is definitely farther along; I have a Dutch friend who came to the US for an MFA in creative writing (in English obviously), and there are many more companies/school programs/etc. with English as the medium, agreed.
It's also the teaching medium in more and more graduate and even undergraduate programmes. And there's no shortage of smaller businesses and NGOs in Amsterdam where English is the main spoken language.
Again, I'd imagine this depends on where you are in the Netherlands and who you're talking with (international business people, university students, etc. vs. elderly people in small towns).
But sure, there's much MORE English in the Netherlands, but if you simply add up the amount of Dutch spoken daily vs. the amount of English, it's still far more Dutch.
I'm not sure where the tipping point is where you speak enough of a "second language" (and start early enough) that you are simply multilingual, but I still doubt that the majority of the Dutch population could have hit that mark. Someday, perhaps.... I'm quite sure the French have not, Paris included.
There are multiple different cultures cohabiting in Chicago, like any decent-sized city. Do you think all of the neighborhoods are the same? It depends on where you live; your neighbors could be quite different.
But the side of my point that you skipped over was that America is not small, and while the insulated corn-fed Christian evangelical (or the bud-light-swilling nascar-watching redneck) might clash almost anywhere, those are exactly the sorts of Americans that would *never* think of moving to Europe. What *is* the stereotype you're thinking of, exactly? How would you describe the culture of the average American who wants to leave the US and live in Europe?
That's not what the vast majority of immigrants living there will tell you.
Ah, at least you've changed from "100%" to "vast majority". Granted, my random sample is a size of two (though I could ask my brother & his wife for opinions from other expats they know, I suppose), but it already disagrees with you.
What's your sample? You don't live there yourself... who does that you know or talk to?
Sorry, "Have you tried" wasn't intended to be nasty.
From what I understand from other comments, the paperwork in the Netherlands is much easier than that in France, particularly if you have a company managing it for you.
But like I said above, I didn't move here to work for a French company, so I don't know how difficult that is *including* the process of landing the job you want -- how many companies are willing to put in the effort to sponsor a foreign employee (when they could hire anyone from the UK or EU without doing that) and how much the company can do for you to ease the process, for example -- but there's a lot of paperwork and many different steps involved either way.
If you went through the process in the Netherlands, I imagine you can't extend that to say "all of Europe"; I have a brother who did close to what you did (with an international company who already employed him in California... and they brought his car over, paid for a furnished apartment and helped him find long term housing, etc..). But he actually wanted & still would like to move to France -- his wife is French, and they both speak French -- but they haven't managed that yet.
My "hard way" is perhaps also partly based on the fact that I have been working from home with flexible hours for a long time now, and it was hard to stomach giving that up (and I didn't want to live in Paris...) just so I could move here.
For people without that limitation, though, there are obviously *some* jobs available for foreigners, France included.
Wow, snarky. Er; I wouldn't be explaining this in detail if it were illegal. I'm not violating any laws; I don't have any European clients. I do contract software development work for U.S. clients, who pay me in dollars.
I actually COULD have European clients if I registered as a business here, which I'm allowed to do with the long-stay visa I already have... but it's expensive, and I'm not sure it's worth it.
I'm still sorting out the tax situation -- I've been paying US taxes but will probably have to start paying French ones instead, now that I'm here more than 1/2 the year -- but that's a separate issue, and I have a specialist expat accountant who's making sure I do it properly.
If I had found a corporate job (shudder) that offered the flexibility, pay, location, etc. that I wanted (not likely, though I did look), the company would probably have helped with the paperwork, but either way, it's not trivial.
Of the thousands of Americans living there, every single one hates the country with a passion.
My American brother & his French wife moved from San Francisco to Eindhoven a few years ago, and enjoy it (they have 2 kids there now... the one old enough to talk is tri-lingual English/French/Dutch). They enjoy it; my brother's job is excellent and they treat him well; he rides his bike to work every day and got *paternal* leave when each baby was born, plus a nurse automatically comes to the house to help the mother sort out how to care for the baby... that was pretty cool. Culturally, they have some funny stories about customer service tendencies, but they do have Dutch friends. It's funny, though, my brother spends all his time speaking English with non-native speakers, and now *his* English is starting to get pretty weird.
And seriously, are you actually saying that there's ONE American culture and ONE Dutch culture? Which clash incompatibly? There are *American* cultures that are basically incompatible with each other. Perhaps your personal preferences clash with the Dutch folks you know? It's simple... wherever you move, you need to be open-minded & flexible enough to adapt, PLUS you do a little searching to find folks you get along with; then you'll be all set.
The Netherlands doesn't have some kind of alien culture that's completely inaccessible to people from elsewhere.
Agreed; I moved to France a couple of years ago, and though there are varying levels of frustration over Bush's policies (as there is in the US), I've had NO anger or disrespect of any kind directed towards me personally. On the other hand, I've had a few elderly people tell me that America basically gets a free pass for almost anything because of their personal experiences with US infantry during WWII... I don't think most Americans have a concept of war like many of the French have -- e.g., there's a village near where I live where *everyone* was rounded up and killed (Oradour-sur-Glane); there are still simmering angers with families who collaborated with the Nazis in some way; many, many villages basically lost all men of marriageable age, so a lot of families were drastically changed/died out/land changed hands/etc..
And there are still a decent number of young people who are basically baffled that I would move from NY to rural France when that's the exact opposite of what they'd love to do.
Fortunately, I suppose, the situation is much more complex than the idiotic American Freedom Fries and all that nonsense.
You touched on part of the problem at the end of your post -- a lot of tourists seem to think that "speaking English" is a binary proposition -- they walk up to someone in Europe and say "do you speak English?", and if they get a hesitant nod, they launch into the way they talk at home, full of idioms, twisted up with their local accent, swallowed words, slang, etc.. That's a mortifying experience for people on the receiving end. Like I said, I was a good student in the US and studied French for 8 years, but still was pretty lost when I tried to have normal conversations with actual French people... it was fairly painful at first, and I was mostly lost.
I'm not saying nobody has studied English... I'm just saying many of the younger folks studied it as a second language, and particularly for those who *didn't* spend a year in the UK or whatnot, it may be pretty darn rusty.
And actually, most of the folks in my town (fairly rural) aren't quite young enough to have studied English, so they only know a few words (if that!). Are you in a major city in Germany, or mostly interacting with younger people?
Also, I was mostly taking issue with this: "It's not a second language[...] it is the defacto standard for communication".
I still say that's nonsense. The "defacto standard for communication" is the local language, even in the Netherlands for example where English training is quite intense. People are talking more Dutch than English everywhere except the large international business (but... most business conducted is not international, is it?).
English is a second language that's getting progressively more & more emphasis as there are more and more jobs where speaking English is a plus... but it's still a second language, and just another subject in school (e.g., they don't conduct math class in English).
I'm not sure how your small village near Castres compares to my likely-smaller village, but partly it'd depend on what you mean by basics. Many shopkeepers in any place remotely touristic will understand the absolute basics accompanied with pointing (please thank you how many) and perhaps numbers, but beyond that would be stuck (can't answer questions about where to find something, can't give directions, etc.). I don't tend to think that counts as speaking at a level of communication, though.
I do know that if I'd moved here without any French, I'd have been screwed. Sure, I'd have been able to go grocery shopping, but navigating the bureaucracy, all of the paperwork (in French only), meeting the neighbors and actually having conversations, trading advice, etc.. we'd have been stuck.
I would also advice to at least start learning the language before going abroad. It would make life easier when hanging out with people after work.
I'd agree with that... you should have at least the basics down, enough to pick up on most of a regular conversation, before moving somewhere.
There are a decent number of British expats living where I am in France, and there's a clear divide between those who are comfortable with French (and can make friends with people who share common interests) and those who haven't (who are basically limited to hanging out with people who just share the common language of English.. a rather more limited pool of acquaintances). I tend to think that most of the English-only expats would have been much happier if they'd just stayed in the UK.
You don't have to have great grammar, or a vast vocabulary, or a perfect accent... mostly you need basic vocab, comfort with common phrases, and to get your ear tuned to *hearing* the language. There's a tipping point where you can stop someone and explain which part you didn't understand -- and getting there is hugely important. That's where properly learning the language really *starts*, because you can actually be in conversation with people, trying out things as you learn them and asking about new things as you hear them.
Have you tried?
The process of just moving to France WITHOUT work permits was neither quick nor painless (my wife & I moved here from the US in late 2006).
We researched the options fairly thoroughly before coming, and we both speak French quite well... without that, it probably would have been much worse.
I decided NOT to try to get permission to work -- we both kept bank accounts, etc., in the US, and still earn in dollars (not ideal with the current exchange rates, alas...). Basically, if I want to start my own business, that might be possible... simply getting permission to work for a local company is more or less impossible, though.
I didn't try getting a job in an international company with branches in France -- I spend a week digging around and really didn't see anything of interest near where we wanted to move -- so I can't speak for that approach... but nothing about the paperwork process was "quick & painless", that's for sure.
The difference is that English is the language of global communication. It's not a second language, it's a basic skill that is taught to prepare the person for just such an occasion, whether that be a Frenchie in Fair Rapids, or a Kiwi in Clermont. All little French children, as well as little Dutch, German, Czech, Italian, and Russian kids are all taught English in school because it is the defacto standard for communication.
What nonsense! Sheesh. I'm an American living in central France. And *I* get irritated when some lout of a tourist comes over asking questions in English before they have any clue that I speak it, or at what level I might speak it.
English may be becoming "the language of global communication", but the vast majority of people in France (outside Paris) still conduct near 100% of their communication in their local language, speaking with other locals.
We have a decent number of British expats who live in my part of the country, and there are a few businesses that cater specifically to them, putting up "English spoken!" signs. But most places just won't have a clue if you just come in speaking English... and these are people who deal with the public directly; a random person on the street may be a housewife, an office worker, a mechanic, whatever. What "international" communication would they need to conduct?
It doesn't matter that many of the kids learned some English in school. They've never spent any amount of time actually speaking it with a native, so they can't understand you unless you use a strong French accent and stick to the phrases they learned (no idioms, no slang, etc.), AND it was fairly recently that they were studying it... it fades fairly quickly if unused.
English absolutely *is* a second language unless you are learning it in a context where you speak it regularly, with native speakers. Being taught a language in school by definition *makes* it a second language, and by itself usually isn't enough. (I should know.. I technically studied French for 8 years in school, but I was still lost when I first moved here...).
The Netherlands is closer to what you're talking about -- most people who work with the public will be comfortable speaking English at some level -- but still, not everyone, in spite of their intense English training throughout school.
France, though... nope.
The moral teachings we have (in various forms, and having been interpreted and rewritten to varying degrees) are separate from the person of Jesus himself, whatever we can actually know about it.
Those ideas can obviously be evaluated separately from any kind of religious belief.
I'm an atheist, but I certainly wouldn't discard and/or ignore concepts that have been part of human morality in various ways since even before Jesus' time.
Don't get trapped in the middle, thinking Jesus was a 'great teacher' but dismissing some of His own words. If you need to deny Jesus' own claim to being God's Son, you need to pretty much ignore His other words too. He's either right or wrong.
Nonsense. He was a human being. We're all right about some things & wrong about others.
I'd agree with you about people who are quasi-religious but never take the time or effort to actually think it through (and realize what they're doing when they're cherry-picking what to believe in)... but my push is just that they go ahead and discard the superstition so they can focus in a clear-headed way on actual morality, separated from whether some ethereal being might be miffed because they ate some specific meat on whatever day of the week.
"Get over it", my ass.
The "now" is that another election is approaching. It's apparently obvious even to you that if our elected officials are trusted to handle these elections responsibly, they are quite happy to do whatever the hell they want and "irregularities" sprout up like mushrooms after a rain.
So... for this time around, do you want to shout and bitch and moan and demand a fair election? Or do you want to just turn on the TV, drown out any possible responsibility you might have as a citizen and let it all happen again?
The American electoral process has become a disgrace thanks to our indifference.
It depends. It's not that Malay speakers can't express those concepts -- they just don't modify the verbs/adjectives to do it. For plural, you either double the word (e.g., dog-dog would be multiple dogs) or you use a number to be specific. For gender, there are words to throw in when the gender of the people being discussed actually matters.
I personally am frustrated all the time by the pervasive gender in French... I have to know that the noun for "slime" is female before I can use it, or use any adjectives to describe it? WHY? Well, if I use the masculine form, it's a different word (meaning a vase). Interestingly, the nouns for nasty things are basically ALWAYS female. Shit, slime, mud, piss, dirt, etc.. All feminine. Sexism is built into the language, how nice.... And the work involved in learning the gender for every friggin noun is completely useless otherwise.
If I'm talking about *myself* I have to do the extra work of altering the adjectives to reflect my gender. If I'm speaking TO a stranger in dim light, I'm very limited in what I can say without revealing that I don't know. Why so much work? In so many cases it's hard work to maintain utterly useless information.
Obviously English isn't as bad -- though our genders still tangle us up a lot without offering a huge amount of usefulness (particularly now that a man & woman *won't* automatically inhabit completely different spheres of society). It's awkward to talk about someone without knowing their sex ("their" is plural, so I'm already breaking the rules to deal with it).
I haven't done any kind of detailed analysis of the functions that gender serves in language (and different languages), but already there's a huge amount of appeal to have a language that's allowed some intelligent design instead of just unguided evolution... the cruft really adds up.
My wife has a novel that was just translated into German -- it was suddenly 140 pages longer.
For logical languages -- try Malay; they standardized their spelling (wow, how English could benefit from that if it were only possible...), and the grammar doesn't have all of these things that are annoying about many languages... they don't conjugate verbs for number, person, or tense (they have adverbs to show timing); they don't put gender on everything (not even his/hers); they don't even have anything for plural. It's neat.
You can still express everything you'd be able to express in English, for example (as far as I can figure out), but it's sometimes longer... though much more logical!
I'd rather pay $1.50/l than 1.50 friggin' euros a litre, which is about where it is in France right now.
I started learning French when I was a kid (starting in middle school, so... around 10 years old, I think?), and studied it through high school, and a bit in college.
I'm very glad I did -- my wife and I got an opportunity to move here to France from the US a couple of years ago, and did so. The paperwork was tough (and it's all in French...) but we're enjoying it.
On the other hand, if you travel in France, many speak english, but won't. It's a pride thing. You might get a lot of bang for the effort if you learn french (assuming you would like to travel in France, and who wouldn't).
This is true in much of Paris, but 95% of the French people I meet (I currently live in the countryside in central France) absolutely do not speak English. Sometimes people who interact with tourists (shopkeepers, etc.) will know a few words -- enough to conduct a transaction -- but often not more than that. There are a decent number of Brits who retire to this part of the country, and they have to use their (often terrible) French all the time, unless they only interact with other expats. Some of them go back home when they realize this.
There's also the fact that "speaks English" is not a yes/no proposition. Imagine that you speak the rough Spanish (or whatever) that you learned in high school and mostly forgot, and some tourist marches up to you and asks a simple question. You think you understand it, so you reply... and they launch into a stream of rapid, heavily accented Spanish. Shit, now they're waving their hands at you. WTF? Now they treat you like *you're* playing dumb? No thanks. It's safer to pretend you don't speak the language at all.
I hate to admit it, but I've actually pretended not to speak English a few times, just to avoid needing to talk to a specific type of tourist....
I have forgotten more computer languages than the average programmer knows. And still, I cannot reproduce the sounds of french or many other languages. It's a talent you lose as you get older.
This is quite true.... I still don't always manage to wrap my mouth around it (at least I can hear it as it comes out wrong and try again...). There's the "r", but you can make yourself understood without it. The "u" vs. "ou" is harder to deal with.... to pronounce an "u" in French you have to basically place your tongue like you're making an "ee" sound, but form your lips like you're making an "oo" sound. If you *don't* do it, though, if you just make the "oo" sound, you'll often be speaking different words. If you screw that sound up, you'll try to say "above" (dessus) and you'll say "below" (dessous).
A funnier one my brother ran into: he was trying to say "Merci beaucoup" (thanks very much) but used the "u" sound instead of "ou"... which made it sound like "Merci, beau cul"...
"Thanks, nice ass."
I'm not an GPL guru, so I could use a clarification. Is it possible for an author to loose control over a product he/she puts under the GPL license.
You mean "lose control", right?
But the answer is "partly".
Bob writes an application, releases it GPL'd. It becomes a success. He later regrets using the license, then releases the same product (not a newer version) under a different proprietary license. What is the impact on someone deciding to fork the original GPL'd release?
Here's the deal: Bob still has copyright, so he *is* allowed to release the product under a new closed-source license, add new features that are closed-source, and so on. BUT the version that he released as GPL can still be freely used, forked, distributed, etc. under GPL. He gave us the right with that release.
The big difference between Bob & us is that you or I can only use/extend that last release under the GPL -- we don't have the right to change the license at all, mix it into our closed source product, etc.. Bob does have that right, though, and he can still sell closed-source licenses for his code for commercial applications. He doesn't have the rights to the code we write into the forked version though.
I guess I'd also point out that many of these kinds of applications -- where there was a single author, no development community, and the author decided to change the license at some point -- the project is not successfully forked. Think about it -- if the project is complicated at all, and it has no developer community already, that means a lot of work for someone to step in and maintain/extend/host the project... they'll be starting from scratch with probably no developer documentation, just a mass of source code.
On the other hand, a solid OSS project with a thriving developer community will likely mean that dozens of people own the copyright to the code -- Bob won't have written all that code himself -- so he won't even have the option of changing the license (all copyright holders would need to agree).