That's why Britain's economy outshines all of Europe's.
Really? On what basis? In terms of pure GDP, Germany is larger. If you prefer GDP per capital I believe Ireland and Norway beat the UK. If you want to talk about salaries I believe three or four countries rank higher. If you want to talk about standard of living about ten European countries rank higher than the UK (according to the Economist, a UK publication). If you want to talk about growth then quite a number of countries rank higher.
I'm not saying that the UK economy is not good, it is, but it is unfortunately common to come across people who think like you in Britain.
And what would the UK economy be like if it wasn't so tied to the USA? Why do you think Blair is Bush's bitch? Read up on the USA economically punishing the UK for its lack of participation in the Vietnam war if you want a taste of what the UK economy would be like if it didn't have the support of the USA...
The (stupid) character assumed that the captain was having fortieth birthday party - forty being "quarante" in French, so a "quarantaine" sounds a bit like a word for a fortieth birthday party. I said it was feeble. But it is an example of a joke that's impossible to translate.
Can you see no good in a rough translation for some purposes?
Of course.
But from the description I think this is being developed for military or intelligence work. In those fields, mistranslations can cause death. And unfortunately I think the current administration is unsophisticated enough to think that machine translation is better than (more expensive) human translation.
I'm not quite sure what you mean here not bother because of this technology?
Perhaps you a not like most people... I often hear English only speaking people say there is no point in learning another language because everyone learns English these days. This just gives them another excuse.
I suspect films are probably translated in one pass and there is no time to understand the context of each sentence spoken so it's left to literal translatation only
I think it is more to do with the fact that they have to write the subtitles so that they can be read at the speed of the speech. And so they cannot go into subtleties. In fact often when there is fast dialogue they will miss whole phrases out.
Another example of this I saw in a french film recently. A character was overhearing a conversation about a ship being under quarentine. He said "Is it the captains birthday?" Makes no sense at all in English but in French it is a play on words and (feeble) joke. Impossible to translate.
More opportunities for Arabic speaking people to misinterpret western media.
I think you've got it the wrong way round haven't you? Did you mean to say "More opportunities for English speaking people to misinterpret Arabic media."?
I'm afraid this type of technology will be used as an exuse for people not to learn foreign languages, which is a shame.
It's not until you learn another foreign language that you realise how complex languages are, and how subtle. Learning another language can literally change the way you think about things.
This type of technology will make people think they completely understand a foreign language, but they won't. Their understanding will be crude, without the subtleties and cultural understanding.
I can speak English and Spanish fluently, and if I watch an English film with Spanish subtitles I'm always thinking - damn, they missed a good joke there, they got that wrong, etc. (Equally so with a Spanish film with English subtitles). And film subtitles are done by professional translators. God only knows what a terrible job a computer would make of film translation.
The UK opposes a lot of the good proposals of the EU (for instance, having completely free markets with respect to alcohol in Europe, so I would be able to order a crate of beer direct from Germany or a case of wine direct from Italy), and push through crap like this. And then the Brits all whine about the EU.
We Americans, though, are FAR more concerned with pointing the finger at someone and punishing them into oblivion.
A lesson I learnt from a former boss: Someone screwed-up bigtime on a project, potentially costing us an important client. They realised their mistake and told the boss. The boss didn't explode, shout, or fire the employee, he just very calmy asked that everyone help to rescue as much as we could from the situation. When I spoke to him later about it, he said that it would have been counter productive to blame someone who new they had made a mistake and probably felt very bad about it. In my book, that's a good people manager.
The fact of the matter is that the USA did not become the world's only superpower by force -- quite the opposite, it got their by being a benevolent power that other countries trusted. What Bush and his team don't seem to realise (at least in the first term, they've been better in the second) is that international laws and treaties are actually beneficial to the USA. The USA wouldn't maintain its standing very long without them, especially these days when so much of its power is based on financial systems and intellectual property.
If a criminal gets his hands on a million records, and he can only use a few hundred a year, what do you think he is going to do, throw all the others away?
No, he's going to sell them to other criminals or pass them on as favours.
I think some of the very worst software comes from hardware manufacturers. HP printers for instance come with the most appallingly crappy software, a lot of it just badly replicating things that the OS (Windows or Mac) does anyway.
Then I brought a Nikon camera recently, and the stupid software they shipped with it managed to screw up both a Mac and a Windows machine.
Like I'm sure many other people on Slashdot, I get asked by friends and family (and even friends of friends or family) to help fix problems on their computers. I was happy to do this for a while, but it started getting annoying when people would phone me up during the middle of the working day with problems, or wouldn't take my advice but still expected me to help them when things went wrong.
But now I have a solution - move to Apple Mac, and then tell people you can't support them unless they use Mac because you don't use a PC any more. The great thing is, those people that do move to Mac rarely bug you because they don't get viruses and stupid problems any more! I recommend it as a great method to stop those annoying telephone calls without upsetting anyone and without needing to feel guilty.
Partly true, but then economics is a funny beast. Does the value of the economy of the USA suddenly drop when the dollar drops? Of course not. That is why GDP (PPP) is used rather than straight GDP. Both figures are in some ways misleading, but GDP (PPP) is felt to be the less misleading of the two, which I expect is why it is the figure the CIA world factbook uses it.
Not true. It has a lot of poverty, but it also has a lot of people with a fairly good standard of living, and some extremely wealthy people.
When I was travelling in Mumbai I met some people who had been working as software engineers in San Francisco but returned to India because they said the standard of living was better for a software engineer.
The GDP of India is about 1/3 of the USA's, although of course they have a much larger population.
I know you're only joking, but the annual GDP of India (according to the CIA world factbook) is $ 3,319,000,000,000, so it's worth considerably more than Microsoft...
I expect Microsoft will be making similar investments in China too.
I see this as partly a defensive move - they know India and China are potentially two big markets for the future, and they don't want them considering OSS alternatives. They will use these investments to twist the governments arms. Although I don't think it will work with the Chinese, it might work in India.
Apparenlyt you've never heard the saying that children are the future? Get them hooked now and you have a consumer for life. Not trying to be cynical, but your parents are just that much closer (15-30 years) to not being active consumers...
There were gaming consoles when I was a kid. But now I've got kids of my own, a job and other responsibilities I don't have time for a Playstation or XBox. But I might buy an Apple TV. Or do you think I'm not a good demographic either? That's my point - I think the market for an Apple TV is probably much larger than that for games consoles.
Everybody is talking about possible future Apple products - the iphone, icamera etc. I think there is a more logical and much more interesting product apple could make - an Apple TV.
Think about it - Sony and Microsoft are currently battling it out with gaming machines assuming that it's going to become the "media hub" for the home. What if they're completely wrong?
Apple have got many of the pieces of the puzzle already - Frontrow, itunes, a rock solid OS to base things on.
I can imagine my old mum and dad buying an Apple TV, but they would never in a million years buy an XBox or playstation.
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That's why Britain's economy outshines all of Europe's.
Really? On what basis? In terms of pure GDP, Germany is larger. If you prefer GDP per capital I believe Ireland and Norway beat the UK. If you want to talk about salaries I believe three or four countries rank higher. If you want to talk about standard of living about ten European countries rank higher than the UK (according to the Economist, a UK publication). If you want to talk about growth then quite a number of countries rank higher.
I'm not saying that the UK economy is not good, it is, but it is unfortunately common to come across people who think like you in Britain.
And what would the UK economy be like if it wasn't so tied to the USA? Why do you think Blair is Bush's bitch? Read up on the USA economically punishing the UK for its lack of participation in the Vietnam war if you want a taste of what the UK economy would be like if it didn't have the support of the USA...
Spoken like a true Brit. Those Europeans aren't like us Brits, we're fricking great at everything.
Can someone mod me as "insightful" as well please?
The (stupid) character assumed that the captain was having fortieth birthday party - forty being "quarante" in French, so a "quarantaine" sounds a bit like a word for a fortieth birthday party. I said it was feeble. But it is an example of a joke that's impossible to translate.
Can you see no good in a rough translation for some purposes?
Of course.
But from the description I think this is being developed for military or intelligence work. In those fields, mistranslations can cause death. And unfortunately I think the current administration is unsophisticated enough to think that machine translation is better than (more expensive) human translation.
I'm not quite sure what you mean here not bother because of this technology?
Perhaps you a not like most people... I often hear English only speaking people say there is no point in learning another language because everyone learns English these days. This just gives them another excuse.
I suspect films are probably translated in one pass and there is no time to understand the context of each sentence spoken so it's left to literal translatation only
I think it is more to do with the fact that they have to write the subtitles so that they can be read at the speed of the speech. And so they cannot go into subtleties. In fact often when there is fast dialogue they will miss whole phrases out.
Another example of this I saw in a french film recently. A character was overhearing a conversation about a ship being under quarentine. He said "Is it the captains birthday?" Makes no sense at all in English but in French it is a play on words and (feeble) joke. Impossible to translate.
More opportunities for Arabic speaking people to misinterpret western media.
I think you've got it the wrong way round haven't you? Did you mean to say "More opportunities for English speaking people to misinterpret Arabic media."?
I'm afraid this type of technology will be used as an exuse for people not to learn foreign languages, which is a shame.
It's not until you learn another foreign language that you realise how complex languages are, and how subtle. Learning another language can literally change the way you think about things.
This type of technology will make people think they completely understand a foreign language, but they won't. Their understanding will be crude, without the subtleties and cultural understanding.
I can speak English and Spanish fluently, and if I watch an English film with Spanish subtitles I'm always thinking - damn, they missed a good joke there, they got that wrong, etc. (Equally so with a Spanish film with English subtitles). And film subtitles are done by professional translators. God only knows what a terrible job a computer would make of film translation.
The UK opposes a lot of the good proposals of the EU (for instance, having completely free markets with respect to alcohol in Europe, so I would be able to order a crate of beer direct from Germany or a case of wine direct from Italy), and push through crap like this. And then the Brits all whine about the EU.
We Americans, though, are FAR more concerned with pointing the finger at someone and punishing them into oblivion.
A lesson I learnt from a former boss: Someone screwed-up bigtime on a project, potentially costing us an important client. They realised their mistake and told the boss. The boss didn't explode, shout, or fire the employee, he just very calmy asked that everyone help to rescue as much as we could from the situation. When I spoke to him later about it, he said that it would have been counter productive to blame someone who new they had made a mistake and probably felt very bad about it. In my book, that's a good people manager.
If anything the Bush people are just too blunt.
Or just too stupid.
The fact of the matter is that the USA did not become the world's only superpower by force -- quite the opposite, it got their by being a benevolent power that other countries trusted. What Bush and his team don't seem to realise (at least in the first term, they've been better in the second) is that international laws and treaties are actually beneficial to the USA. The USA wouldn't maintain its standing very long without them, especially these days when so much of its power is based on financial systems and intellectual property.
This is the most stupid thing I've read recently.
If a criminal gets his hands on a million records, and he can only use a few hundred a year, what do you think he is going to do, throw all the others away?
No, he's going to sell them to other criminals or pass them on as favours.
I think some of the very worst software comes from hardware manufacturers. HP printers for instance come with the most appallingly crappy software, a lot of it just badly replicating things that the OS (Windows or Mac) does anyway.
Then I brought a Nikon camera recently, and the stupid software they shipped with it managed to screw up both a Mac and a Windows machine.
Like I'm sure many other people on Slashdot, I get asked by friends and family (and even friends of friends or family) to help fix problems on their computers. I was happy to do this for a while, but it started getting annoying when people would phone me up during the middle of the working day with problems, or wouldn't take my advice but still expected me to help them when things went wrong.
But now I have a solution - move to Apple Mac, and then tell people you can't support them unless they use Mac because you don't use a PC any more. The great thing is, those people that do move to Mac rarely bug you because they don't get viruses and stupid problems any more! I recommend it as a great method to stop those annoying telephone calls without upsetting anyone and without needing to feel guilty.
Partly true, but then economics is a funny beast. Does the value of the economy of the USA suddenly drop when the dollar drops? Of course not. That is why GDP (PPP) is used rather than straight GDP. Both figures are in some ways misleading, but GDP (PPP) is felt to be the less misleading of the two, which I expect is why it is the figure the CIA world factbook uses it.
Well, the satement that India is dirty poor is very misleading.
a rchives/income_wealth/002484.html
And if you want interesting statistics, and keeping in mind that the population of the USA is much smaller than India"
According to the US Census Bureau, 35.9 million people live below the poverty line in America, including 12.9 million children.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/
Well, the CIA says so:
o rder/2001rank.html
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rank
It doesn't surprise me, but I think that table may shock the many Americans who have a very distorted view of the world!
India is poor, dirt poor.
o rder/2001rank.html
Not true. It has a lot of poverty, but it also has a lot of people with a fairly good standard of living, and some extremely wealthy people.
When I was travelling in Mumbai I met some people who had been working as software engineers in San Francisco but returned to India because they said the standard of living was better for a software engineer.
The GDP of India is about 1/3 of the USA's, although of course they have a much larger population.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rank
To put things in perspective, this investment is equivalent to just over 0.05 percent of India's annual GDP, so it's not a big deal for India at all.
Figures here.
I know you're only joking, but the annual GDP of India (according to the CIA world factbook) is $ 3,319,000,000,000, so it's worth considerably more than Microsoft...
I expect Microsoft will be making similar investments in China too.
I see this as partly a defensive move - they know India and China are potentially two big markets for the future, and they don't want them considering OSS alternatives. They will use these investments to twist the governments arms. Although I don't think it will work with the Chinese, it might work in India.
11) Having fricking huge piles of cash so you can actually afford to do 1-10.
Apparenlyt you've never heard the saying that children are the future? Get them hooked now and you have a consumer for life. Not trying to be cynical, but your parents are just that much closer (15-30 years) to not being active consumers...
There were gaming consoles when I was a kid. But now I've got kids of my own, a job and other responsibilities I don't have time for a Playstation or XBox. But I might buy an Apple TV. Or do you think I'm not a good demographic either? That's my point - I think the market for an Apple TV is probably much larger than that for games consoles.
Everybody is talking about possible future Apple products - the iphone, icamera etc. I think there is a more logical and much more interesting product apple could make - an Apple TV.
Think about it - Sony and Microsoft are currently battling it out with gaming machines assuming that it's going to become the "media hub" for the home. What if they're completely wrong?
Apple have got many of the pieces of the puzzle already - Frontrow, itunes, a rock solid OS to base things on.
I can imagine my old mum and dad buying an Apple TV, but they would never in a million years buy an XBox or playstation.