Worth the time and money? Depends I guess. I just got back from a week-long CS conference and I think it was definitely worth the time and money, but then I can well afford both. Some people have said that conferences are only for networking, ass-kissing etc. I think conferences CAN be valuable for meeting people and making making connections with others. This could help you professionally or academically in the future. But that isn't all. Personally I got a lot intellectually out of the conference I just attended. But I work in academia and have 3 degrees (2 graduate degrees). I met people I could see myself collaborating with in the future, and learned about areas of research I was not well-informed about. If you are an undergrad and not thinking about doing any graduate work, perhaps you could give it a miss. But if you are, or are thinking about doing graduate work I think it could definitely be good for you. You can also ask if there is a registration fee reduction for students or low-income cases.
There were threads about him with 1000+ Diggs *** AFTER *** the election, due to an interview with Keith Olberman (AFTER the election) where he appears to be several bricks short of a load. What does his becoming known after the election have to do with Alvin Green being unknown prior to voting in SC? Illogical argument.
My main complaint with the gen 1 device is that even though it has a mini USB port, it can't be charged that way with any standard cell phone charger. It has it's own charger and connection, which means one more charger that I have to travel with. I haven't seen anything that says if this has been changed with the updated device.
Have you see this line (see the Amazon kindle listing):
USB Port: USB 2.0 (micro-B connector) for connection to the Kindle power adapter or optionally to connect to a PC or Macintosh computer.
That suggests to me that it can be charged with a computer or other USB charger (probably an iPod charger for example).
I have lived in Japan for the past decade. I think it is great that youtube and any other internet services are challanging the way things are done in Japan. For egalitarian reasons (?) the law says speeches are only broadcast on NHK - but in reality the way most of us hear about the politicians is from the damn sound trucks that set up outside of train stations and drive around neighborhoods. They have these vans outfitted with (VERY LOUD) loud speakers on the top of them, and often a place for an entourage to stand on the roof. There is often some woman with a bright, chirpy voice talking about the politician incessantly while he (or she) waves at everyone while wearing white gloves. (To show how 'pure' they are or some such shit.) I absolutely loath these people and this system. I have talked to many Japanese about them and everyone agrees they are annoying, but kind of shrug their shoulders and say 'what can you do'. That is the way things are done. These vans are often parked outside of big train stations but they also drive around neighborhoods (as one is doing right now while I am writing this) blaring their spin about the candidate over a wide swatch of a residential area. I would love it if youtube and Japanese web sites could change the way we get our information about candidates to lessen the noise polition and aggravation that are the norm today.
I just had a similar problem with the Air Canada web site. (www.aircanada.com) When accessing the site using Safari (latest version, on Mac os X 10.4) I got the following message:
Unsupported Browser Warning. We have detected that the browser you
are using is not able to view some of the more advanced elements of our >website, and may prevent you from completing your booking.
To view supported and tested configurations, pleaseclick here
I wrote to them to complain, saying that there is no reason why they can't make a web site that works with any modern browser. They wrote back to me and "helpfully" suggested this as a solution to "MY" problem:
We have been made aware that some of our customers encounter at times difficulties in using their MAC computer when trying to use the Air Canada Web Site. Even though we are working to improve our web site, these following quick steps have proven to be quite useful for most of our clients to enable debug functionality on Mac. To enable this functionality :
(1) Go to and download OnyX
(2). Open OnyX and select the "APPEARANCE" tab and then select the "Misc." tab, far right
(3) Enable the "Safari Debug menu" option.
(4) Quit OnyX and then open Safari.
(5)You will now see a "Debug" menu on the far right-navigate down to "User Agent" on this menu and select "Windows MSIE 6.0"
(6) Safari is now behaving like Windows IE version 6.
So the "solution" is to pretend that I am using Explorer to make the warning go away. If anyone thinks that this is a viable solution then perhaps 'faking' Explorer will work for Walmart as well.
Is there any site out there that we can direct companies like Walmart or Air Canada to to explain why they should make a standards compliant web site?
English is a lot of things, but 'easy to grasp' isn't one of them. From what I understand, it's one of the more difficult languages to learn, due to it's zany "every rule is an exception" philosophy.
SIGH! I have a graduate degree in linguistics, and have taught English as a foreign language for a decade (now at a uni in Osaka, Japan) and it never ceases to amaze me that people with little or no experience or knowledge of linguistics or language teaching feel comfortable making proclamations on learning language.
There are many factors involved in how 'easy' a language is to learn. Some are intrinsic (your own motivation for example), some are extrinsic (pressures from outside for example). Many people also report languages that are relatively nearer are easier to learn. English and German are closer than English and Spanish for example, and both are closer than English and Japanese. As well, I don't think it is correct to say that 'every rule is an exception'. There is far more conformity in the syntax than exceptions to it and many of the things that the lay person might think would be a large problem are not.
A couple nights ago some Japanese women were talking to me about classes they had taken in Italian and French. They commented that they found those language to be more difficult, mentioning the gendered language and pronunciation as two areas they thought were more difficult than English. On the other hand, I have known Japanese people who said exactly the opposite - they found Italian to be easier than English. Having said that, I have had MANY students from many different countries tell me that they don't think that English is overly difficult to learn (compared to another language).
but then you have cases like: Weigh, way, and whey. If we compressed that to simply 'way', which way would you way the way?
In the context. Japanese has the same issue and that's how they deal with it. Besides, it would vastly increase the odds of constructing puns.
Yes, Japanese has a large number of homonyms. Keep in mind, that althought they may be written the same way in 'kana, they have differing Kanji. I hear this kind of thing all the time where one Japanese person asks another for clarification of some phoneme - Do you mean naka as in _____ . No it is naka as in ______ .
There have been 4 different proposals made in history to either make Japan a bilingual country (English-Japanese, or one proposal suggested French as the other language) or change entirely over to using just Romaji or just Kana. One of the arguements that came up against these proposals was that homonyms would become a problem if Kanji were not in use. You can not compare English and Japanese use of homonyms in the simplistic way (weigh, whey) you have. Japanese do NOT rely on context most of the time.
Other than English, I only know Spanish, and in it, words are truly spelled like they sound. There is a strict one to one mapping between pronunciation and spelling.
A lot of people are comparing English and Spanish. Spanish has only 5 vowel sounds, where as English as 15. (There are some Chinese dialects with more than 50 different vowel sounds.) This makes a tremendous difference in the spelling. This makes Spanish pronunciation and reading quite easy for the foreign learner as compared to English but doesn't mean that English spelling of vowels is inferior to Spanish.
Matt Groening has approved the human version of the show's opening credits to promote the brand new series.
When I read the above I thought Groening must be promoting a brand new TV show... except there is no mention of this. Do they mean 'new series' as in a new season? Is this a British English - American English thing?
Assuming that this is just a one off opening sequence for the latest SEASON of the Simpsons I don't get why this is news. They always do something different with the opening sequence. So they are using live actors. Big deal. If they were making an entire show with real actors or if they were creating some spin off show with real actors (which is how I had read this) then maybe that would be news.
3554 Amun is an small metalic asteroid that crosses Earth's pass
hmmm.... I am just not up on all the current trends and stuff... What is this pass of which you speak? Is it like a hall pass to go to the bathroom we had in school? "This pass is good for the earth to take one rotation outside of its normal path"? Or is it pass as in 'pass a ball to a team mate'. In which case, who the hell is the earth playing with.. and what is the game? Playing "my global warming can beat your global warming" with Mars perhaps? Or is it a pass as in some kind of nounification of 'pass a kidney stone'... or 'pass gas'. Does the earth leave little turds in its wake that this asteroid is going to happen upon?
From the article: " it contains (at today's prices) roughly $8 trillion worth of iron and nickel, $6 trillion of cobalt, and $6 trillion of platinumlike metals. In other words, whoever owns Amun could become 450 times as wealthy as Bill Gates. "
What exactly is "platinumline" anyway? Honey I love you so much, here is a platinumlike ring with a diamondlike stone which will perfectly accentuate your femalelike hand. Some years ago Platinum was the name of the theme used for the Mac OS 8 and 9 GUI. We all know that Windows tried to copy the mac experience, but there is one platinumlike that is of far less value (to me anyway) than the real thing.
People don't get broadband because they don't understand the benefits until they have used it.
I remember when microwaves first came out. My mother's friend said they were great. When asked what she did with it the friend said that she heated up coffee, cooked hot dogs, warmed up some food. My mother couldn't see how that would be useful for her. She doesn't drink coffe and the stove is just fine for the other two. Of course a couple years later after finally getting a microwave it has become an essential part of her kitchen. Same story some years before - my parents used an IBM selectype and didn't see the point in having a word processor. Later the typewritter broke and they did buy a word processor, but couldn't see any use for them buying a computer. Now they have two in their house.
My brother and his family have been living in Jamaica for the past 4 years and using dial-up the whole time until a month ago. I tried to tell him about the benefits of broadband but he just wasn't interested. (Mind you him and his wife don't believe in having a tv either!).
A few months back he wrote to ask me for help with computer problems saying that he kept getting disconnected or it wouldn't even connect. It has been far too many years since I have dealt with modems and didn't even know what to suggest. I thought it sounded like poor quality phone lines. He finally decided to switch to broadband, but hasn't used it enough to really 'get it'. Maybe after a bit of time he will see such benefits as:
- using messenger to chat to our parents (in Canada) or brothers (USA, Japan, Canada)
- using skype et.al. for voice or even video chat, especially between the grandparents and kids
- being able to download his own updates for programs instead of me having to burn them to CD and MAIL them because it 'takes too long' by dial up and the connection would fail anyway.
- be able to send friends photos larger than a postage stamp (and vice versa - they requested that all contacts only send them up to three pictures under 100kb each)
- the kids can browse wikipedia etc. for school project research without having to wait all night just for pages to load
- next time he has a problem I can connect via remote access (vnc) and fix it from here
- listen to live CBC radio streams, or automatically download such radio shows as podcasts
I think it is the same as computers back when typewriters were used... or microwaves when first sold. Until they were ubiqutous, a lot of people honestly didn't see how the technology would fit into their life.
Hmmm... something thinks a lot of themselves, don't they?
I am a linguist (one who studies language, not one who speaks many languages). When you are in school, or when you are learning a second language you are introduced to 'rules' of grammar. This is prescriptive grammar for pedagocig purposes. LInguists are more interested in descriptive grammar, spelling etc. - that is, describing the language, which includes the way that language changes. Yes, Strom Carlson, l hate to have to break it to you, but language does change. There are entire journals devoted to this topic [eg Language Variation and Change].
The post is ostensibly about a "lack strong English skills" and "mediocre command of written English" but the StromCarlson only gives spelling examples.
In the first place bad spelling is NOT equal to a lack of strong English skills. In the second place, as a linguist, I reject the idea that someone has poor language skills based only on the variation from prescriptive grammar or spelling. I could go on and on giving you examples, but I won't. Please just accept that the spellings, syntax and usage we use today are not set in stone. They have change from other forms used in the past and WILL change again. One radical example - English is a head-first SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) language, but if you look far enough into the past you can see that it used to be a head-last SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) language.
English is filled with irregularities in spelling and syntax. I personally hope that English DOES change to become more regular. Right now, or sometime in the near future, the number of people who use English as a second language is going to exceed the number of native speakers. I think that is going to have a large effect on the variation and change, and regularization of English. And I welcome it.
About the example "should of" instead of "should have". Can you tell me exactly why this is wrong. No - just saying "it is wrong" is not enough. There are lots of interesting examples like this where the function of a word changes to encompass new uses. Are you also going to bitch about someone who says "Can you pass me the salt" (instead of using COULD) for a polite request. Your grandfather probably would have. Can has expanded from a modal of ability to also being a modal used for suggestions and polite requests.
As the article mentioned, when the building was being constructed Steve Jobs wanted to have one bathroom (I assume one for each sex) in the entire building. I used to teach business in a college and used to have an article about Pixar that I got my students to read that mentioned this fact. I would then try to get them to decide why Jobs wanted this. (The linked article doesn't give an explanation.) Apparently, his thinking was that it would facilitate communication and creativity. If everyone had to walk THROUGH everyone else's space and all gather in the same place there would be more interaction and cross-pollination of ideas. (I included this reading in a unit on "synergy" in business!)
From what I understand Jobs didn't get his single washroom for the whole building. But I *think* I heard that there is one washroom PER FLOOR instead for the same reason.
My cell phone has almost every piece of functionality I got from my PDA 3 years ago
My cell phone goes almost everywhere with me. It is tiny and light and has all important contacts. But it isn't a complete replacement for my PDA.
The problem is that I don't have any need to replace my PDA. I have a 5 year old Handspring Visor that still does everything I want it to do. The only really important things I use it for are playing chess (lets see a really good program for a cell phone), storing passwords and important information in a locked database, and storing config information and miscellaneous notes about my server. These are not things I NEED a PDA for however. It is just convienient to use it for that. If I lost or broke it I would probably buy another one cheaply, but it has worked without any problems for 5 years now.
On the other hand, after a year with my cell phone I am wondering if it might be time to upgrade. I live in Japan and there are ever-increasing discounts on the price of new phones based on how long you have owned your old one. I know it sounds stupid, but I am thinking of changing to a bright red phone with a better display rather than the miniture black one I have now. That kind of upgrading likely has something to do with why cell phone sales are brisk and PDA sales are not.
Unless the thing has an x86 emulation layer, it's dead in the water in regards to the PC market. Even Apple, with their much vaunted G-chips have to emulate the x86 hardware so that users can run their Windows programs.
Huh?? what are you smoking? Since when does Apple emulate x86 harware? Perhaps you are confused by the fact that you can buy Microsoft Office for the macintosh, or run Internet Explorer. Heres a news flash - they aren't emulating the x86, they are native mac code.
Most likely you are confusing one of two different things. Back in the OS X programs can be either Cocoa (the new way) or Carbon (the old way) apps. But that isn't really emulation. What is emulation is that Mac OS X can run OS 9 by emulation - nothing to do with x86 here.
Or you can buy Virtual PC, which is now owned by Microsoft. It will allow you to emulate x86 to run Windows (or Linux) and associated. But note - this isn't Apple, and it isn't something that Mac users "have to do".
Lastly, why on earth would you HAVE to be able to run windows programs in order for a Playstation processor to be successful? Last time I checked PlayStation was still wildly successful? More so than MS Xbox I think.
Recently bloggers were part of the forces compelling Trent Lott to resign as Senate majority leader and Dan Rather to apologize to viewers on national television -- leaving many to ponder if blogs could someday supplant traditional journalism.
I remember hearing about Dan Rather, but I have no idea what you are referring to regarding Trent Lott. What happened? What did he do? What did bloggers? Do? Why and When did he step down? I think it is kind of funny that in a story on journalism absolutely no background or context is given.
I have Debian installed on my AMD 64 3500+ box right now, thank you very much. No soon about it. what is soon, is that it will soon be in the official sarge branch. Right now you have to point apt-get to alioth.debian.org/.
So far no problems other than the fact that the version of Firefox that apt-get installed is broken on the AMD64 so you have to downgrade to the 0.8x version.
I know I am going to sound like every other debian convert but... I used to use mandrake, but got tired of RPM Hell. I installed and kind of liked Gentoo, but on an older 233 MHz machine 'emerge' would take... oh about a season to finish.
My introduction to Debian came through Knoppix. I was blown away - a bootable CD that just works! (And it isn't Mac OS!?!) Give it a try. It's a pain-free way to check out Debian, and if you enter "install-knoppix" (I think that is the command) you can install it painlessly.
Wish I could say the same for the AMD64 install. Once Debian gets a painless idiot-free installer they will be complete in my opinion.
I am not Korean either, but I have spent a few years working for and with Koreans, and teaching large numbers of Korean students. A lot of the posts here seem to be trying to make some parallel between music stores dying in Korea and the situation (or laws) in Western countries. I don't think that is valid. I am no Korean expert, but my impression from my bosses / coworkers is that this 'problem' of dying music stores is just evidence of the fact that EVERYONE in the country is pirating everything.
OK, that may be a bit over the top, but my point is they do things different. I used to be a director at a small language school in Toronto. Once or twice a month I would need up-to-date information on student enrollment etc - information kept in the database. but the school only had a licence for 3 copies, already used by the General Manager, admissions officer and receptionist. So once a month I would ask the (Korean) GM to email me a spreadsheet of the relevant info. Each time I would have to explain that I can no see the database since I don't have Access on my computer. And each time she would tell me "just install it". And each time I would explain to her about having 3 licences and how this is not done in legit businesses. Every frickin' month! same stuff. When they needed graphic software... they asked someone to give them a copy. I explained about how software purchases would be legitimate business expenses and could be written off. But the GM seemed incredulous - for her EVERYONE copied. There was no point in paying money for software, even if it could be written off.
The Korean student were mostly in their early to mid twenties and they had a similar mindset. I remember mentioning a new CD I bought of some band I really like. A half dozen Korean student agreed I was stupid since I could probably download it. Just to be clear I am not saint. i have 50 GB of music on my hard drive and not all of it is ripped from CDs I own. Likewise, not all of my software has been purchased. But a lot has, and I will gladly shell out the money for a CD of a band I really like. (Say the upcoming U2 one.) But I strongly feel businesses should not be blatantly pirating.
I played devil's advocate with a group of Korean students. They said I could just download any music. I said it was a kind of stealing since the artists don't get paid. A few of the girls just DIDN'T GET THIS! (All the guys did.) Their response was always "well everyone does it, so it is OK."
My impression is that copying / pirating music and software is FAR more rampant in Korea than in my country (Canada). And this is more a matter of culture than access to high speed internet. From young people to business people, it is just standard operating procedure to use a copy, and not make a purchase.
On a totally different note... I am now living in japan where it is LEGAL to rent CDs and make your own copy. The video shops do a brisk business in CD rentals. I think this is banned in Canada and the US. Seems like forward thinking on the part of the Japanese music companies. People want to borrow music and make copies - why not make it easy and get them to pay for the privilage. I copied over 100 CDs this way.
IAAL (I AM a linguist - linguist as in the study of langauges, not "person who speaks multiple languages.)
As others have already pointed out, this case is given a good treatment in Steven Pinkers very readable book THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT.
In the study of langauge acquisition there is the fact that language is underdetermined. Also called the poverty-of-stimulus arguement. Basically, the input that a child is presented with is not enough to "teach" them the langauge. This fact was noted by Noam Chomsky, from which he came up with the influential Universal Grammar theory. Steven Pinker expands on this and adds in a twist - that langauge is something evolved (like the trunk on an elephant is an evolutionary feature). Basically they claim that there is a langauge module in the brain.
Chomsky has updated his theory and lots of others (people in pure linguistics, applied linguistics, cognitive theory, second language acquistion researchers etc) have extended his work. If I remember correctly, the basic take on the theory these days is that there are principles and parameter of language syntax that are thought to be innately present in the brain. (I am doing research right now looking for evidence of UG in language acquisition.)
The case of the children in Nicaragua is old news.... but it IS used as an arguement for the presence of Universal Grammar. The langauge did NOT (as a poster above gushed) "appear out of thin air". Those kids did have some exposure to a pidgen sign langauge used by parents (not a full language). This is akin to the spoken-language phenomena whereby language goes from being a pidgen... to a creole (fully syntactic langauge). This has happened many times in many places (Hawaii for example). The people in the universal (or generative) grammar camp say that grammar (principles) are in the brain, so language WILL develop unless actively prevented. (There are cases of that too - like a girl named Genie who was kept locked up for 13 years or so.... and could never become fluent after.)
I love the fact that Bermuda shows up on this map. (I grew up there.) Bermuda is a VERY small island - just 21 square miles with a permanent population of around 60,000 (but over 1/2 million tourists a year).
Take a look it is due east from North Carolina and due south from Halifax, NS. (Note, Bermuda is NOT in the carribean. It is in the middle of the gulf stream 700 miles off the eastern seaboard of the US.)
On a different note... I am now living in Osaka Japan. I find it really interesting that in this small, densely populated country places like Tokyo and Osaka (Kyoto, Kobe) are just solid light; but nonetheless there are still areas of complete black.
Last week I climbed Mt. Fuji. (Between Osaka and Tokyo) I was really struck by how bright the stars were. I hadn't realized how much light pollution I had come to see as normal (I was born in rural Canada.) I saw three shooting stars. I have never seen that kind of thing in the city before. And from the peak at 3776 meters the view up was crystal clear. I wish everyone had a chance to experience that kind of night view.
This has got to be the stupidest story I have read on slashdot. There's a new calculator out from HP? And someone is making a compiler for it? WHOO-HOO, stop the presses!
Next story - Radio Shack has a new clock radio out.... and you can program the station presets YOURSELF!!!
I don't give a rat's ass about new calculators or compiler for them, but if this story IS worth posting why not include a link to the actual product on the HP website, or a link to the the hpcalc.org web site where people get off on this stuff and provide more background information.
Seriously, this DOES look like a great calculator for a student studying math or science, or someone working in a similar field. I guess for those people who already have the calculator to perform calculations and graph stuff (ie the things calculators are sold to do) the ability to 'customize' it might be 'cool'. But you have got to be one card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool, geek to think so.
I know that road (highway 7 / 8) where he was killed very well. My parents live 15 minutes away from Stratford to the west (St. Marys). I used to live in Toronto and had to travel between Waterloo and Stratford to get to their house.
Andrew Frow was killed near the village of Shakespeare, which is 15 minutes east of Stratford. The area is a farming community. Much of the road has farmer's fields on both sides and can have some pretty heavy wind blowing across. It is often closed for whiteout conditions in a winter snowstorm.
I have never liked this road and have always thought it was dangerous. I never went to visit my parents when it was snowing, and usually didn't like to drive it after dark. ( I once hit a deer on that road at night and totalled my car.)
The city of Shakespeare hosts the Stratford Festival (Shakespeare plays etc) in the summer and highway 7 / 8 gets really busys at times. Heavy traffic on a narrow two-lane highway through farm country leads to accidents every summer.
Last summer I was driving that road after dark and almost hit two different farm vehicles - one some enormous slow-moving thing with only very dim lights on the back. The other was a transport truck FULLY across the highway (so I couldn't see the front lights or tail lights), apparently doing a 10 point turn to back into a farm. This road has had a lot of accidents before Andrew Frow, and will have more after him.
Japan allows far lighter cars on the road and yet, has only 60% of the fatal accidents per 10,000 vehicle
You are comparing apples and oranges.
In Japan many (most) people use public transportation for day to day communting. I have many friends who take a train or subwaay to work every day and ONLY use their car on the weekends. this is one big reason why so many cars here (I am in Japan) can look almost brand new but be 5 years old.
As well, when people DO drive it is often not as far as in North American.
Take my friend Mayumi. She has one of those little tiny LIGHT cars you are talking about. She uses her bicycle and the subway to go to work, meet friends, go shopping etc. She uses the car maybe once every couple of weeks, just as a convienient way to get somewhere. We went to a great golf driving range by car because it was more difficult to get to otherwise. In four months of dating we havn't been anywhere else that required car.
I am Canadian. When I lived in Canada I used my car to visit family and friends in other cities, travel to other places for vacations, etc - MOST of that was on the highway traveling over 100 kph. There is just no other choice in Canada. If I want to visit my parents (who live near where this accident occurred, actually) I NEED to drive there.
In Japan there are few places you need to drive by car. With traffic jams it can be slower driving by car, but also with the tolls on expressways it can be more expensive than taking a train.
Different countries / cultures / driving habits. You can just blindly say "Japan has lighter cars and less accidents" and leave it there without more analysis.
I can't be the only one that immediately thought "iPod" when I read this news. Now if there can be another breakthough in battery technology to make my iPod last longer / not slowly die out, I would be a very happy camper.
Yeah 2 TB would be excessive for music. But I am more interested in the tiny size than the massive storage. (Seriously, I can't imagine needing a terabyte... but then I once thought 1 GB was an impossibly large amount of memory space. HAH! Wonder what comes after tera...)
With 2 TB I could have all my CDs (somewhere around 400 - 500) copied in Aiff format for better quality. With a 2 TB iPod I could keep my entire home folder backed up to take with me from home, to work, on vacation... wherever. I personally can't see the point of incorporating video into an iPod... but with 2 TB you could throw it in as an extra.
But then, on second thought, if you could shoe-horn one of these into a cell phone equiped with the iPod software I could have one less device to carry with me.
This is almost right. The "a" is on the 1 key, not 2. The letters are arranged according to the Japanese alphabet
1 = a, i, u, e, o
2 = ka, ki, ku, ke, ko
3 = sa, shi, su, se, so
.... and so on. (From 4 on, there is the same pattern starting with, ta, na, ha, ma, ya, ra, wa)
The star button is used to switch input modes, but most of the time it is unnecessary. ALL cell phones now come with a predict function which predicts what you are writing. To use an above poster's example, if I want to write "watashi" (I), I DO NOT write WA . TA . SHI . nor do I do any switching to kanji etc (as the above post said). Rather, I just hit 0 for wa (wa, wo, n....) and the bottom of the screen has a list of suggestions. Since I use this word a lot it is the first choice, so I just hit DOWN > ENTER to get the kanji for watashi. It works this way for all kanji. Occassionally it will not have the kanji I want to use, but most of the time one of the first few predictions is that I want.
It also has a learning function. So it remembers words that I have used recently / more frequently and puts those near the top of the predict list. I recently went to a summer festival and mailed my date to tell her I might wear a JINBEI (summer festival clothes for men). The kanji for this was not one of the first predictions when I entered only JI. I had to enter the whole word to get the kanji. But in the next mail, when I wanted to use that word again, it did show up in the first screen of predictions after simply entering JI.
For me, as a foreigner, this is a great system. I speak Japanese far better than I can write. I don't have to have memorized all of the kanji to write on my cell phone, I just have to recognise them in context. The downside is that this makes me lazy in my kanji learning.
A lot of Japanese people say that they are "wordpro baka" (word processor fools) - since using a predict function is ubiquitous they only have to recognise kanji (reading skills) but their production abilities (writing skills) aren't as good. (Recognising and writing aren't the same thing when it comes to thousands of kanji.)
I think the article stated that something like 90% of Japanese cell phones are internet-ready. I think it is a bit misleading. ALL new phones have internet capabilities. It would only be older phones that do not. I have one single co-worker (out of a hundred) who does not have internet capability on his cell phone. That is only because he hasn't upgraded in a few years. The four main cell phones companies all have a system whereby you can upgrade to a new (expensive) phone for little money after a period of time. (Example - after one year of my contract I can get the new TV-equiped Vodafond for half price, after 2 years, for about 1/4 the price, after three years, for free. Or something like that.)
When I bought this phone (in March) I got the cheapest (hence oldest) model I could find. I think I paid about $25 dollars for it. It is MUCH smaller and has more features than the new phones at home in Canada that I would have to pay $500 for. I also pay less per month than I used to to Canada.
On a side note, I find it far easier to write mail in Japanese on my cell phone than in English because of the nature of the langauge. A couple years ago in Canada I used cell phone mail for a short time. I had to pay extra for it in Canada, whereas it is just a normal feature of a phone here. It seems tortuous to write in English and keep having to insert a space between words and keep having to hit the forward button to be able to write letters that are on the same button. It takes a long time to write a sentence. But in Japanese there are no spaces between words (makes text entry on a cell phone MUCH quicker and easier). As well the predict funtion means that you probably only have to enter 1/3 or maybe even 1/4 of the 'letters'. Finally, since the Japanese language usage
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Worth the time and money? Depends I guess. I just got back from a week-long CS conference and I think it was definitely worth the time and money, but then I can well afford both. Some people have said that conferences are only for networking, ass-kissing etc. I think conferences CAN be valuable for meeting people and making making connections with others. This could help you professionally or academically in the future. But that isn't all. Personally I got a lot intellectually out of the conference I just attended. But I work in academia and have 3 degrees (2 graduate degrees). I met people I could see myself collaborating with in the future, and learned about areas of research I was not well-informed about. If you are an undergrad and not thinking about doing any graduate work, perhaps you could give it a miss. But if you are, or are thinking about doing graduate work I think it could definitely be good for you. You can also ask if there is a registration fee reduction for students or low-income cases.
There were threads about him with 1000+ Diggs *** AFTER *** the election, due to an interview with Keith Olberman (AFTER the election) where he appears to be several bricks short of a load. What does his becoming known after the election have to do with Alvin Green being unknown prior to voting in SC? Illogical argument.
My main complaint with the gen 1 device is that even though it has a mini USB port, it can't be charged that way with any standard cell phone charger. It has it's own charger and connection, which means one more charger that I have to travel with. I haven't seen anything that says if this has been changed with the updated device.
Have you see this line (see the Amazon kindle listing): USB Port: USB 2.0 (micro-B connector) for connection to the Kindle power adapter or optionally to connect to a PC or Macintosh computer. That suggests to me that it can be charged with a computer or other USB charger (probably an iPod charger for example).
I have lived in Japan for the past decade. I think it is great that youtube and any other internet services are challanging the way things are done in Japan. For egalitarian reasons (?) the law says speeches are only broadcast on NHK - but in reality the way most of us hear about the politicians is from the damn sound trucks that set up outside of train stations and drive around neighborhoods. They have these vans outfitted with (VERY LOUD) loud speakers on the top of them, and often a place for an entourage to stand on the roof. There is often some woman with a bright, chirpy voice talking about the politician incessantly while he (or she) waves at everyone while wearing white gloves. (To show how 'pure' they are or some such shit.) I absolutely loath these people and this system. I have talked to many Japanese about them and everyone agrees they are annoying, but kind of shrug their shoulders and say 'what can you do'. That is the way things are done. These vans are often parked outside of big train stations but they also drive around neighborhoods (as one is doing right now while I am writing this) blaring their spin about the candidate over a wide swatch of a residential area. I would love it if youtube and Japanese web sites could change the way we get our information about candidates to lessen the noise polition and aggravation that are the norm today.
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I wrote to them to complain, saying that there is no reason why they can't make a web site that works with any modern browser. They wrote back to me and "helpfully" suggested this as a solution to "MY" problem:
We have been made aware that some of our customers encounter at times difficulties in using their MAC computer when trying to use the Air Canada Web Site. Even though we are working to improve our web site, these following quick steps have proven to be quite useful for most of our clients to enable debug functionality on Mac. To enable this functionality :
(1) Go to and download OnyX
(2). Open OnyX and select the "APPEARANCE" tab and then select the "Misc." tab, far right
(3) Enable the "Safari Debug menu" option.
(4) Quit OnyX and then open Safari.
(5)You will now see a "Debug" menu on the far right-navigate down to "User Agent" on this menu and select "Windows MSIE 6.0"
(6) Safari is now behaving like Windows IE version 6.
So the "solution" is to pretend that I am using Explorer to make the warning go away. If anyone thinks that this is a viable solution then perhaps 'faking' Explorer will work for Walmart as well.
Is there any site out there that we can direct companies like Walmart or Air Canada to to explain why they should make a standards compliant web site?
SIGH! I have a graduate degree in linguistics, and have taught English as a foreign language for a decade (now at a uni in Osaka, Japan) and it never ceases to amaze me that people with little or no experience or knowledge of linguistics or language teaching feel comfortable making proclamations on learning language.
There are many factors involved in how 'easy' a language is to learn. Some are intrinsic (your own motivation for example), some are extrinsic (pressures from outside for example). Many people also report languages that are relatively nearer are easier to learn. English and German are closer than English and Spanish for example, and both are closer than English and Japanese. As well, I don't think it is correct to say that 'every rule is an exception'. There is far more conformity in the syntax than exceptions to it and many of the things that the lay person might think would be a large problem are not.
A couple nights ago some Japanese women were talking to me about classes they had taken in Italian and French. They commented that they found those language to be more difficult, mentioning the gendered language and pronunciation as two areas they thought were more difficult than English. On the other hand, I have known Japanese people who said exactly the opposite - they found Italian to be easier than English. Having said that, I have had MANY students from many different countries tell me that they don't think that English is overly difficult to learn (compared to another language).
In the context. Japanese has the same issue and that's how they deal with it. Besides, it would vastly increase the odds of constructing puns.
Yes, Japanese has a large number of homonyms. Keep in mind, that althought they may be written the same way in 'kana, they have differing Kanji. I hear this kind of thing all the time where one Japanese person asks another for clarification of some phoneme - Do you mean naka as in _____ . No it is naka as in ______ .
There have been 4 different proposals made in history to either make Japan a bilingual country (English-Japanese, or one proposal suggested French as the other language) or change entirely over to using just Romaji or just Kana. One of the arguements that came up against these proposals was that homonyms would become a problem if Kanji were not in use. You can not compare English and Japanese use of homonyms in the simplistic way (weigh, whey) you have. Japanese do NOT rely on context most of the time.
A lot of people are comparing English and Spanish. Spanish has only 5 vowel sounds, where as English as 15. (There are some Chinese dialects with more than 50 different vowel sounds.) This makes a tremendous difference in the spelling. This makes Spanish pronunciation and reading quite easy for the foreign learner as compared to English but doesn't mean that English spelling of vowels is inferior to Spanish.
(By the way, I am a linguist.)
When I read the above I thought Groening must be promoting a brand new TV show... except there is no mention of this. Do they mean 'new series' as in a new season? Is this a British English - American English thing?
Assuming that this is just a one off opening sequence for the latest SEASON of the Simpsons I don't get why this is news. They always do something different with the opening sequence. So they are using live actors. Big deal. If they were making an entire show with real actors or if they were creating some spin off show with real actors (which is how I had read this) then maybe that would be news.
just my 2 cents
hmmm.... I am just not up on all the current trends and stuff... What is this pass of which you speak? Is it like a hall pass to go to the bathroom we had in school? "This pass is good for the earth to take one rotation outside of its normal path"? Or is it pass as in 'pass a ball to a team mate'. In which case, who the hell is the earth playing with.. and what is the game? Playing "my global warming can beat your global warming" with Mars perhaps? Or is it a pass as in some kind of nounification of 'pass a kidney stone'... or 'pass gas'. Does the earth leave little turds in its wake that this asteroid is going to happen upon?
From the article: " it contains (at today's prices) roughly $8 trillion worth of iron and nickel, $6 trillion of cobalt, and $6 trillion of platinumlike metals. In other words, whoever owns Amun could become 450 times as wealthy as Bill Gates. "
What exactly is "platinumline" anyway? Honey I love you so much, here is a platinumlike ring with a diamondlike stone which will perfectly accentuate your femalelike hand. Some years ago Platinum was the name of the theme used for the Mac OS 8 and 9 GUI. We all know that Windows tried to copy the mac experience, but there is one platinumlike that is of far less value (to me anyway) than the real thing.
I remember when microwaves first came out. My mother's friend said they were great. When asked what she did with it the friend said that she heated up coffee, cooked hot dogs, warmed up some food. My mother couldn't see how that would be useful for her. She doesn't drink coffe and the stove is just fine for the other two. Of course a couple years later after finally getting a microwave it has become an essential part of her kitchen. Same story some years before - my parents used an IBM selectype and didn't see the point in having a word processor. Later the typewritter broke and they did buy a word processor, but couldn't see any use for them buying a computer. Now they have two in their house.
My brother and his family have been living in Jamaica for the past 4 years and using dial-up the whole time until a month ago. I tried to tell him about the benefits of broadband but he just wasn't interested. (Mind you him and his wife don't believe in having a tv either!).
A few months back he wrote to ask me for help with computer problems saying that he kept getting disconnected or it wouldn't even connect. It has been far too many years since I have dealt with modems and didn't even know what to suggest. I thought it sounded like poor quality phone lines. He finally decided to switch to broadband, but hasn't used it enough to really 'get it'. Maybe after a bit of time he will see such benefits as:
- using messenger to chat to our parents (in Canada) or brothers (USA, Japan, Canada)
- using skype et.al. for voice or even video chat, especially between the grandparents and kids
- being able to download his own updates for programs instead of me having to burn them to CD and MAIL them because it 'takes too long' by dial up and the connection would fail anyway.
- be able to send friends photos larger than a postage stamp (and vice versa - they requested that all contacts only send them up to three pictures under 100kb each)
- the kids can browse wikipedia etc. for school project research without having to wait all night just for pages to load
- next time he has a problem I can connect via remote access (vnc) and fix it from here
- listen to live CBC radio streams, or automatically download such radio shows as podcasts
I think it is the same as computers back when typewriters were used... or microwaves when first sold. Until they were ubiqutous, a lot of people honestly didn't see how the technology would fit into their life.
The post is ostensibly about a "lack strong English skills" and "mediocre command of written English" but the StromCarlson only gives spelling examples. In the first place bad spelling is NOT equal to a lack of strong English skills. In the second place, as a linguist, I reject the idea that someone has poor language skills based only on the variation from prescriptive grammar or spelling. I could go on and on giving you examples, but I won't. Please just accept that the spellings, syntax and usage we use today are not set in stone. They have change from other forms used in the past and WILL change again. One radical example - English is a head-first SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) language, but if you look far enough into the past you can see that it used to be a head-last SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) language.
English is filled with irregularities in spelling and syntax. I personally hope that English DOES change to become more regular. Right now, or sometime in the near future, the number of people who use English as a second language is going to exceed the number of native speakers. I think that is going to have a large effect on the variation and change, and regularization of English. And I welcome it.
About the example "should of" instead of "should have". Can you tell me exactly why this is wrong. No - just saying "it is wrong" is not enough. There are lots of interesting examples like this where the function of a word changes to encompass new uses. Are you also going to bitch about someone who says "Can you pass me the salt" (instead of using COULD) for a polite request. Your grandfather probably would have. Can has expanded from a modal of ability to also being a modal used for suggestions and polite requests.
Just my 2 cents
From what I understand Jobs didn't get his single washroom for the whole building. But I *think* I heard that there is one washroom PER FLOOR instead for the same reason.
My cell phone goes almost everywhere with me. It is tiny and light and has all important contacts. But it isn't a complete replacement for my PDA.
The problem is that I don't have any need to replace my PDA. I have a 5 year old Handspring Visor that still does everything I want it to do. The only really important things I use it for are playing chess (lets see a really good program for a cell phone), storing passwords and important information in a locked database, and storing config information and miscellaneous notes about my server. These are not things I NEED a PDA for however. It is just convienient to use it for that. If I lost or broke it I would probably buy another one cheaply, but it has worked without any problems for 5 years now.
On the other hand, after a year with my cell phone I am wondering if it might be time to upgrade. I live in Japan and there are ever-increasing discounts on the price of new phones based on how long you have owned your old one. I know it sounds stupid, but I am thinking of changing to a bright red phone with a better display rather than the miniture black one I have now. That kind of upgrading likely has something to do with why cell phone sales are brisk and PDA sales are not.
Huh?? what are you smoking? Since when does Apple emulate x86 harware? Perhaps you are confused by the fact that you can buy Microsoft Office for the macintosh, or run Internet Explorer. Heres a news flash - they aren't emulating the x86, they are native mac code.
Most likely you are confusing one of two different things. Back in the OS X programs can be either Cocoa (the new way) or Carbon (the old way) apps. But that isn't really emulation. What is emulation is that Mac OS X can run OS 9 by emulation - nothing to do with x86 here.
Or you can buy Virtual PC, which is now owned by Microsoft. It will allow you to emulate x86 to run Windows (or Linux) and associated. But note - this isn't Apple, and it isn't something that Mac users "have to do".
Lastly, why on earth would you HAVE to be able to run windows programs in order for a Playstation processor to be successful? Last time I checked PlayStation was still wildly successful? More so than MS Xbox I think.
I remember hearing about Dan Rather, but I have no idea what you are referring to regarding Trent Lott. What happened? What did he do? What did bloggers? Do? Why and When did he step down? I think it is kind of funny that in a story on journalism absolutely no background or context is given.
I have Debian installed on my AMD 64 3500+ box right now, thank you very much. No soon about it. what is soon, is that it will soon be in the official sarge branch. Right now you have to point apt-get to alioth.debian.org/.
So far no problems other than the fact that the version of Firefox that apt-get installed is broken on the AMD64 so you have to downgrade to the 0.8x version.
I know I am going to sound like every other debian convert but ... I used to use mandrake, but got tired of RPM Hell. I installed and kind of liked Gentoo, but on an older 233 MHz machine 'emerge' would take ... oh about a season to finish.
My introduction to Debian came through Knoppix. I was blown away - a bootable CD that just works! (And it isn't Mac OS!?!) Give it a try. It's a pain-free way to check out Debian, and if you enter "install-knoppix" (I think that is the command) you can install it painlessly.
Wish I could say the same for the AMD64 install. Once Debian gets a painless idiot-free installer they will be complete in my opinion.
OK, that may be a bit over the top, but my point is they do things different. I used to be a director at a small language school in Toronto. Once or twice a month I would need up-to-date information on student enrollment etc - information kept in the database. but the school only had a licence for 3 copies, already used by the General Manager, admissions officer and receptionist. So once a month I would ask the (Korean) GM to email me a spreadsheet of the relevant info. Each time I would have to explain that I can no see the database since I don't have Access on my computer. And each time she would tell me "just install it". And each time I would explain to her about having 3 licences and how this is not done in legit businesses. Every frickin' month! same stuff. When they needed graphic software ... they asked someone to give them a copy. I explained about how software purchases would be legitimate business expenses and could be written off. But the GM seemed incredulous - for her EVERYONE copied. There was no point in paying money for software, even if it could be written off.
The Korean student were mostly in their early to mid twenties and they had a similar mindset. I remember mentioning a new CD I bought of some band I really like. A half dozen Korean student agreed I was stupid since I could probably download it. Just to be clear I am not saint. i have 50 GB of music on my hard drive and not all of it is ripped from CDs I own. Likewise, not all of my software has been purchased. But a lot has, and I will gladly shell out the money for a CD of a band I really like. (Say the upcoming U2 one.) But I strongly feel businesses should not be blatantly pirating.
I played devil's advocate with a group of Korean students. They said I could just download any music. I said it was a kind of stealing since the artists don't get paid. A few of the girls just DIDN'T GET THIS! (All the guys did.) Their response was always "well everyone does it, so it is OK."
My impression is that copying / pirating music and software is FAR more rampant in Korea than in my country (Canada). And this is more a matter of culture than access to high speed internet. From young people to business people, it is just standard operating procedure to use a copy, and not make a purchase.
On a totally different note ... I am now living in japan where it is LEGAL to rent CDs and make your own copy. The video shops do a brisk business in CD rentals. I think this is banned in Canada and the US. Seems like forward thinking on the part of the Japanese music companies. People want to borrow music and make copies - why not make it easy and get them to pay for the privilage. I copied over 100 CDs this way.
As others have already pointed out, this case is given a good treatment in Steven Pinkers very readable book THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT.
In the study of langauge acquisition there is the fact that language is underdetermined. Also called the poverty-of-stimulus arguement. Basically, the input that a child is presented with is not enough to "teach" them the langauge. This fact was noted by Noam Chomsky, from which he came up with the influential Universal Grammar theory. Steven Pinker expands on this and adds in a twist - that langauge is something evolved (like the trunk on an elephant is an evolutionary feature). Basically they claim that there is a langauge module in the brain.
Chomsky has updated his theory and lots of others (people in pure linguistics, applied linguistics, cognitive theory, second language acquistion researchers etc) have extended his work. If I remember correctly, the basic take on the theory these days is that there are principles and parameter of language syntax that are thought to be innately present in the brain. (I am doing research right now looking for evidence of UG in language acquisition.)
The case of the children in Nicaragua is old news .... but it IS used as an arguement for the presence of Universal Grammar. The langauge did NOT (as a poster above gushed) "appear out of thin air". Those kids did have some exposure to a pidgen sign langauge used by parents (not a full language). This is akin to the spoken-language phenomena whereby language goes from being a pidgen ... to a creole (fully syntactic langauge). This has happened many times in many places (Hawaii for example). The people in the universal (or generative) grammar camp say that grammar (principles) are in the brain, so language WILL develop unless actively prevented. (There are cases of that too - like a girl named Genie who was kept locked up for 13 years or so .... and could never become fluent after.)
Take a look it is due east from North Carolina and due south from Halifax, NS. (Note, Bermuda is NOT in the carribean. It is in the middle of the gulf stream 700 miles off the eastern seaboard of the US.)
On a different note... I am now living in Osaka Japan. I find it really interesting that in this small, densely populated country places like Tokyo and Osaka (Kyoto, Kobe) are just solid light; but nonetheless there are still areas of complete black.
Last week I climbed Mt. Fuji. (Between Osaka and Tokyo) I was really struck by how bright the stars were. I hadn't realized how much light pollution I had come to see as normal (I was born in rural Canada.) I saw three shooting stars. I have never seen that kind of thing in the city before. And from the peak at 3776 meters the view up was crystal clear. I wish everyone had a chance to experience that kind of night view.
Next story - Radio Shack has a new clock radio out.... and you can program the station presets YOURSELF!!!
I don't give a rat's ass about new calculators or compiler for them, but if this story IS worth posting why not include a link to the actual product on the HP website, or a link to the the hpcalc.org web site where people get off on this stuff and provide more background information.
Seriously, this DOES look like a great calculator for a student studying math or science, or someone working in a similar field. I guess for those people who already have the calculator to perform calculations and graph stuff (ie the things calculators are sold to do) the ability to 'customize' it might be 'cool'. But you have got to be one card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool, geek to think so.
Andrew Frow was killed near the village of Shakespeare, which is 15 minutes east of Stratford. The area is a farming community. Much of the road has farmer's fields on both sides and can have some pretty heavy wind blowing across. It is often closed for whiteout conditions in a winter snowstorm.
I have never liked this road and have always thought it was dangerous. I never went to visit my parents when it was snowing, and usually didn't like to drive it after dark. ( I once hit a deer on that road at night and totalled my car.)
The city of Shakespeare hosts the Stratford Festival (Shakespeare plays etc) in the summer and highway 7 / 8 gets really busys at times. Heavy traffic on a narrow two-lane highway through farm country leads to accidents every summer.
Last summer I was driving that road after dark and almost hit two different farm vehicles - one some enormous slow-moving thing with only very dim lights on the back. The other was a transport truck FULLY across the highway (so I couldn't see the front lights or tail lights), apparently doing a 10 point turn to back into a farm. This road has had a lot of accidents before Andrew Frow, and will have more after him.
You are comparing apples and oranges.
In Japan many (most) people use public transportation for day to day communting. I have many friends who take a train or subwaay to work every day and ONLY use their car on the weekends. this is one big reason why so many cars here (I am in Japan) can look almost brand new but be 5 years old.
As well, when people DO drive it is often not as far as in North American.
Take my friend Mayumi. She has one of those little tiny LIGHT cars you are talking about. She uses her bicycle and the subway to go to work, meet friends, go shopping etc. She uses the car maybe once every couple of weeks, just as a convienient way to get somewhere. We went to a great golf driving range by car because it was more difficult to get to otherwise. In four months of dating we havn't been anywhere else that required car.
I am Canadian. When I lived in Canada I used my car to visit family and friends in other cities, travel to other places for vacations, etc - MOST of that was on the highway traveling over 100 kph. There is just no other choice in Canada. If I want to visit my parents (who live near where this accident occurred, actually) I NEED to drive there.
In Japan there are few places you need to drive by car. With traffic jams it can be slower driving by car, but also with the tolls on expressways it can be more expensive than taking a train.
Different countries / cultures / driving habits. You can just blindly say "Japan has lighter cars and less accidents" and leave it there without more analysis.
Yeah 2 TB would be excessive for music. But I am more interested in the tiny size than the massive storage. (Seriously, I can't imagine needing a terabyte ... but then I once thought 1 GB was an impossibly large amount of memory space. HAH! Wonder what comes after tera ...)
With 2 TB I could have all my CDs (somewhere around 400 - 500) copied in Aiff format for better quality. With a 2 TB iPod I could keep my entire home folder backed up to take with me from home, to work, on vacation... wherever. I personally can't see the point of incorporating video into an iPod ... but with 2 TB you could throw it in as an extra.
But then, on second thought, if you could shoe-horn one of these into a cell phone equiped with the iPod software I could have one less device to carry with me.
This is almost right. The "a" is on the 1 key, not 2. The letters are arranged according to the Japanese alphabet
1 = a, i, u, e, o
2 = ka, ki, ku, ke, ko
3 = sa, shi, su, se, so
The star button is used to switch input modes, but most of the time it is unnecessary. ALL cell phones now come with a predict function which predicts what you are writing. To use an above poster's example, if I want to write "watashi" (I), I DO NOT write WA . TA . SHI . nor do I do any switching to kanji etc (as the above post said). Rather, I just hit 0 for wa (wa, wo, n ....) and the bottom of the screen has a list of suggestions. Since I use this word a lot it is the first choice, so I just hit DOWN > ENTER to get the kanji for watashi. It works this way for all kanji. Occassionally it will not have the kanji I want to use, but most of the time one of the first few predictions is that I want.
It also has a learning function. So it remembers words that I have used recently / more frequently and puts those near the top of the predict list. I recently went to a summer festival and mailed my date to tell her I might wear a JINBEI (summer festival clothes for men). The kanji for this was not one of the first predictions when I entered only JI. I had to enter the whole word to get the kanji. But in the next mail, when I wanted to use that word again, it did show up in the first screen of predictions after simply entering JI.
For me, as a foreigner, this is a great system. I speak Japanese far better than I can write. I don't have to have memorized all of the kanji to write on my cell phone, I just have to recognise them in context. The downside is that this makes me lazy in my kanji learning.
A lot of Japanese people say that they are "wordpro baka" (word processor fools) - since using a predict function is ubiquitous they only have to recognise kanji (reading skills) but their production abilities (writing skills) aren't as good. (Recognising and writing aren't the same thing when it comes to thousands of kanji.)
I think the article stated that something like 90% of Japanese cell phones are internet-ready. I think it is a bit misleading. ALL new phones have internet capabilities. It would only be older phones that do not. I have one single co-worker (out of a hundred) who does not have internet capability on his cell phone. That is only because he hasn't upgraded in a few years. The four main cell phones companies all have a system whereby you can upgrade to a new (expensive) phone for little money after a period of time. (Example - after one year of my contract I can get the new TV-equiped Vodafond for half price, after 2 years, for about 1/4 the price, after three years, for free. Or something like that.)
When I bought this phone (in March) I got the cheapest (hence oldest) model I could find. I think I paid about $25 dollars for it. It is MUCH smaller and has more features than the new phones at home in Canada that I would have to pay $500 for. I also pay less per month than I used to to Canada.
On a side note, I find it far easier to write mail in Japanese on my cell phone than in English because of the nature of the langauge. A couple years ago in Canada I used cell phone mail for a short time. I had to pay extra for it in Canada, whereas it is just a normal feature of a phone here. It seems tortuous to write in English and keep having to insert a space between words and keep having to hit the forward button to be able to write letters that are on the same button. It takes a long time to write a sentence. But in Japanese there are no spaces between words (makes text entry on a cell phone MUCH quicker and easier). As well the predict funtion means that you probably only have to enter 1/3 or maybe even 1/4 of the 'letters'. Finally, since the Japanese language usage