Why would it be a surprise that 3.2 billion years of evolution has produced a system you can't just twiddle with? How can you understand a system which has iterated so long and so profoundly?
PS: informed, rational decisions are an assumption in free-market economics. The fact that you don't like capitalism doesn't make this untrue, as you seem to imply. >They are not assumed, they are required. Thus any >market economic model is invalidated when a >non-trivial portoin of the actors do not have >access to information, or do not make rational >decisions. These factors can be adjusted for, but >it is difficult to accurately assess. You both misunderstand a fundamental aspect of "free market choice" as explained by economics. First there is no assumption of "informed" in economics. Quite orthogonally to that, there is an assumption of utility maximization. For the vast majority of people, utility maximization means NOT being very informed on most topics at all. (A partial explanation of why inferior software will outsell superior software often). Economics never assumes its actors have full information, or even that they have good information.
Additionally, you have both forgotten that "rational" is relative to the values of the person making the decision. Their "rational" could be completely crazy to you, or even to every single other human on the planet. Crazy or not, free-market economics ("capitalism") does not fail to explain their behavior at all. Capitalism does not assume "rational" to mean: "will pass Logic 101 in college." "Rational" is merely, "makes sense relative to the values of the individual doing the thinking."
>The reason free-market capitalism actually >reduces choice for purchasers is that there are >barriers to entry for production of a good. Some >are regulatory (and thus would disappear in a >true free market) but some are natural and cannot >be removed from the equation.
You have also forgotten about resource scarcity. You appear to have based "reduced choice" as compared to some theoretical "continuum of infinite choices." Capitalism does not reduce choices consumers - if actually practiced (good luck with that one) it would efficiently maximize choice to the greatest extent a market could bear. Scarcity of all resources imposes burdens on choice - there can be no infinite panoply of options except maybe "in heaven."
>Pure free-market economics assume that the >players are making rational informed decisions. >In software acquisition, that assumption >fails often.
That is an incorrect statement of what modern free-market economics states. Modern experimental economics / public choice economics and "welfare economists" have shown that groups of individuals make rational decisions in aggregate, but that individuals frequently make irrational decisions. This is a beautiful result, but unintuitive. For more, read things by Vernon Smith (Nobel Laureate).
I remember that ruling because it was right after we had to write an appellate brief in Legal Research Writing & Analysis about this very issue. In our hypo our "client" was busted with child pr0n on his 2nd-hand laptop which had LimeWire on it. He was screwed, basically, but at that time the caselaw wasn't as tight as it is now. I haven't followed what happened in the Mass court, but I note that there is no circuit split on this issue. So the Supreme Court's not going to wade in. Figure that there's no privacy on the laptop.
Yet another reason to move away from the monolithic OS? I assume that they would have a very hard time convincing a court that they can search a server from your machine if you log in to access all your files remotely.
I doubt they can keep the laptop. For instance the cases where people's cars are searched at the border only stand up if the car is returned in the same condition it was taken. To what extent this is enforceable is a different issue (See this eBay auction for an Audi A8 that the Border Patrol cut open and welded back together, badly: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Audi-A6-QUATTRO-1998-A6-AWD-QUATTRO-RUNS-GREAT-NEEDS-WORK-NO-RESERVE_W0QQitemZ280218241772QQcmdZViewItem - if this is a wet-climate or salt-in-winter car then expect massive internal rust to commence shortly. But I'd hate to try and sue for "just compensation".)
The Border people have no obligation to work speedily, but they aren't to take all day either. For instance in the case where a man had drugs in his gas tank his defense that he had a privacy interest in his gas tank was specifically denied. I think this was 9th Circuit, too. Also, the court ruled that the fact that the search took a few hours (they had to wait for a mechanic to show up) didn't matter in this instance, presumably because of reasonable suspicion.
I think that in the court's mind laptop == gastank == no privacy interest. If it's at the border, or falls under the "extended border" then they can search it without "reasonable suspicion."
The really scary question is, I think, P2P software on the searched laptop. Say someone you know has a 2nd-hand computer, or borrows one, that has P2P and let's say that software has been pwned or the machine pwned. Let's say the malicious "owner" uses the machine to distribute porn, or, god forbid, child porn. Now you are truly in DEEP SH*T.
If they can get you for distribution (P2P!) then you'll be looking at serious serious federal time. Do you think you can prove, or afford to prove ($$$), the ages of the teen models in your pr0n cache? This outcome is more scary to me because it increases the danger to the technologically clueless, the older generation who have no idea how their machines work and might have allowed something to happen unwittingly. (Click here!)
How would you like your Dad or uncle to face what effectively amounts to a life term because he didn't know what was on his pwned machine and he then gets busted for distribution?
How will the courts handle this case? Possession is a per se violation. There is no scienter requirement as I understand it. So if you've got it, you're screwed. If the p2p software has a nice list of people you've shared your stuff with then you're toast.
Some of the cases in the caselaw were easy - the person set up Kazaa to share into certain folders, etc., but I doubt the courts will give an easy listen to people who didn't obviously optimize their settings so as to maximize their distribution of the bad stuff.
As a matter of laptop policy: Just Don't Surf Pr0n On Your Laptop. Or, keep a machine at home for private use. Oh yeah, encrypt it with truecrypt or similar... twice...
Ramji is a complete MSFT tool. I heard him speak at OSBC 2007 - for some reason they let him be on the panel - and at one point the response he made when asked about MSFT and patents vis a vis open-source was such a MSFT-shill line that he actually caused the entire room (composed of engineers and lawyers) to laugh out loud. It was not a chuckle; his line was so obviously MSFT-speak and was so cynical (wonder where my notes are... I'll see if I can dig them up). He didn't even crack a smile.
I wouldn't trust him farther than I could throw him. Why OSBC and others in open-source let these guys on the panels is a mystery to me.
It's like making Darth Vader part of the committee that's responsible for security on Alderaan.
I've been trying to figure out for some time whether my battery drains faster in any significant way between Fed Core 6 and XP on an HP nx6325 x86_64 laptop (two partitions). I don't think there's any significant difference. Anyone know otherwise?
From what I've gathered about Vista, that XP would outperform it on battery life doesn't surprise.
But the Mac x86 test would be yet another "nail in the coffin" as people move farther from Windoze.
-- learnjapanese.poddedcell.net// Learn Japanese with Step Up Nihongo
You appear to have forgotten that we, too, have competition for educating "the poor" in the U.S. (Assuming you're from the U.S.). Charter schools are exactly that - they just happen to leverage publicly gathered tax dollars and allow private entities access to them. While the results have been mixed so far, there is evidence that public schools improve in areas where charter schools start up (public school teachers *are* responsive to competitive pressures! whodathunkit). For more on the fight for school choice (via charter) see: ij.org .
Additionally, Amartya Sen and other prominent economists have written extensively on how it is that the poor in "3rd world" countries actually have a fair amount of money - it's just that they have no secure place to save funds and have little access to credit to leverage their existing assets. Which is to say that many of the "poor" aren't even "poor" in the sense of utterly destitute - they're just unable to leverage institutions and assets because of the overall social infrastructure they have to survive in. It is undeniably true, however, that there are many extremely poor people who this doesn't cover (and I'm not trying to deny the gravity of their poverty), it's just that many people we label as "poor" actually have more options than we would expect.
-- learnjapanese.poddedcell.net - Step Up Nihongo, Bobby Valentine's Japanese textbook of choice!
> Nothing a good, structured tax/tariff structure can't correct with regards to > allowing shoddy imports to undercut quality. The idea is to reverse the damage > done by that region of the world to our domestic industries (who seem to have > done better in terms of quality when allowed to build domestic). Just enough that > companies get the hint not to use countries like Mexico and regions of the world > such as Asia to undercut domestic labor- which would be used as a retraining fund.
Such cynicism is unfounded. Japan's manufactures after WWII were considered shoddy in the extreme - very low quality. None would argue that today. Remember the first Hyundais? Crap like the Kia, now look at them. China will come along - and meanwhile, we benefit from cheaper goods. Go out into the countryside and calculate how much more money is in the pockets of the less wealthy in this country because they can buy goods cheaply. Make no mistake, those who suffer most are the poor here when you create barriers to free trade.
Sure, you worry about lost jobs, but the fact of the matter is, the U.S. manufactures 22% of the world's manufactures, still, and China only 8%. Our value-added manufacturing is growing and has every year but two since the late 1980s.
The U.S. idea that we "deserve" to be top-dog in this area stems from an accident of history: our victory in WWII was accompanied by no significant domestic capital destruction. Whatever our factories made - for almost 30 years - was bought the world over.
> What do you expect from a part of the world that seems to have forgotten quality, > but how to become a large black hole for industries of other regions of the world? > Certainly you cannot expect quality for a place like China.
Ever driven a domestic car from the 1960s or 1970s? The quality was poor, and it was poor because Ford, GM, et. al., didn't have competition.
China will produce quality in time. Meanwhile, enjoy the cheap goods!
Government-issued contracts for rebuilding previously state-owned assets in warzones certainly aren't decided in a "free market." No real capitalist would likely go into such a place anyhow, because they are highly concerned about preserving capital and war is the worst destroyer of capital ever.
Bush and his cronies are NOT operating in a free market. They're a bunch of rent-seekers who couldn't make it in a free market - or got lazy and decided to use influence to create money, instead of hard work.
It's because people allow themselves to be hoodwinked into believing that they are in a free market that we have trouble. Take, for instance, the people who claim the California energy deregulation was a failure of free markets - when in actuality it wasn't a free market at all.
-- learnjapanese.poddedcell.net -- Step Up Nihongo
I presume you're talking about "them" calling "us" and saying "we've decided not to buy your government-issued debt anymore." Problem is, what would they invest their 1 trillion in government funds in then? It's not like there are that many - if any - safer alternatives? Euro bonds? Uhhh... what was that long-term growth rate again? Yen? yeah right, the Chinese? Swiss Francs? Uhh... sure it's a hard currency, but how much of it can you liquidate when you need to? Dollars are still the best place to park savings.
Also, China exports vast quantities to the US - they'd never cause our economy to "crash" if they could help it. It would create massive social unrest over there (and they can barely keep a cap on what they've got happening even right now). China's going to have many, many significant, huge, social problems in the mid-term. Their "one country, two systems" thing is inherently unstable and will fail. If China ever copies the fine pre-handover Hong Kong example which the British left the world, then move over U.S., because we're going to get trounced. In the meantime, China will simply remain a cheap place to manufacture lower-technology goods. I include computers and HDTVs in the "lower-technology goods" category. They've got far to much to lose to damage us that way.
But one of the above posters is totally correct: The real threat - the one thing that could bring us down - is ourselves. FDR was right about fear. If the US goes down, it'll be because we did it to ourselves.
Actually I hope you're already used to it. GM already lost a case - several years ago - where a Chinese manufacturer ripped off, bolt-for-bolt, panel-for-panel, an entire car and then released it to market BEFORE GM did! Brazen as hell. Toyota has also had problems in China for theft and such. I think when foreigners wake up to the fact that there's not really that much money to be made in China they might not be so enthusiastic about jumping in. For instance, huge numbers of cars are made over there, but everyone's killing each other on price. The Chinese are happy about it (they get new factories, trained workers, cars, etc.), but I don't think the foreigners are making any money.
Plus, as I referenced yesterday when commenting on this alarmist post about how the US may soon have "no comparative advantage" - China is not all it's cracked up to be.
Thing is, no one's making money in China, except for a few well-positioned people who can grease the right wheels. Nothing to see here, move along, it's the same old mercantilism and cronyism we find in all non-free markets. The sheer balls of the park manager telling the camerman they "newly invented" the characters ("It's not a mouse, it's a cat with big ears!") is classic.
This guy should be the new Iraqi Information Minister.
-- learnjapanese.poddedcell.net -- Step Up Nihongo, learn Japanese
Your alarmism - unfortunately accepted as dogma by many, including the slashdot crowd which should have the intellectual firepower to overcome politician- and union-inspired sloganeering - simply doesn't match the facts. Real value-added US manufacturing has grown every year since 1987 except for during the 1990-91 and 2000-01 recessions. The US still has well over twice the global share of manufacturing than China. This is in spite of falling employment in U.S. manufacturing. Interesting, eh?
It is common on Slashdot, in part because of the outsourcing of coding and coding-related jobs to India, to equate "cheaper manufacturing/production" with inevitable disappearance from our shores.
If that were in fact true, then why haven't manufacturing jobs moved to Senegal, Ghana, Bangladesh or Haiti? Those places would clearly be cheaper. In actual fact, the US is still the cheapest when you consider what actually matters: productivity. How else could one explain falling manufacturing employment with increased real output globally? You recognize that the productivity of coders in India may be lower than that of an equivalent engineer in the US. However, the price differential means that paying for a less productive "employee" in India may be worth it.
If you look at the US manufacturing sector, we have the highest productivity per worker in the world. In fact, it's easily the highest. Why do we still have steel mills? Why do we manufacture "Japanese" cars in the US? It is because US workers - and manufacturing workers are included - are generally the most efficient, productive workers in the world. Those that aren't lose their jobs to India, China, etc. Those that are keep attracting foreign investment. It's not an accident that The Economist calls the US the "world's manufacturer."
Regarding fears of China "overtaking us" I have this to say: The US economy will remain the strongest and most dominant economy for some time - perhaps even for most or all of our lifetimes. Eventually China, by sheer dint of population, may outstrip us, but they're going to have many, many significant, huge, social problems before then. If China ever copies the fine pre-handover Hong Kong example which the British left the world, then move over U.S., because we're going to get trounced. In the meantime, China will simply remain a cheap place to manufacture lower-technology goods. I include computers and HDTVs in the "lower-technology goods" category. We shouldn't be trying to compete with China in those areas anyhow - it's a waste of our workers, who are the world's most efficient.
> I think the answer is staring you in the face: as a nation, the U.S. imports a > lot of physical goods, but exports a lot of intellectual property.
This is true, but it just proves our versatility as a nation and is only looking at half of the story (and not even in the "glass half-empty" kind of way). Look at China or Japan or Thailand or India: they export strongly in only a few areas and have historically not demonstrated the capacity to develop world-leading or world-beating companies in others. Compare Bollywood to Hollywood: They make far more movies in India than Hollywood does - but no one's running around in the streets screaming that they're about to take over the world's movie industry. The whole idea is ridiculous, and in case you think it's a bad example, I suggest you think more closely about the metaphor.
> Therefore, we reward companies who chisel their foreign suppliers into squeezing > their employees, because this results in cheap imports here in the States. Likewise, > we punish IP 'theft,' because IP is one of the last things that we seem to be able > to produce and sell.
That's just plain empirically false. Nike's not going to make sneakers in some plant in Oregon if they can get Malaysians to do the same job for $16 per day. They can afford to pay for ineffecient workers if they're comparatively cheap. We happen to produce and sell more
In Japan the game is - regarding construction boondoggles (think FDR-style public works, CCC, etc.) - to use taxpayer *SAVINGS* not tax revenues! This outstandingly clever scheme involves the government raiding the postal savings system as a hidden budget. The Japanese postal savings system has over a trillion in savings - making it by far the world's largest "bank." Koizumi had a goal to get the government's grasping hands out of these near-bottomless coffers but I don't think he succeeded. I highly doubt anyone else will be able to muster the political authority or public support necessary to even get as far as he did. Because most Japanese households have at least one postal-savings account, and their rate of saving is very high, raiding the postal savings system looks irresistible to politicians. Hey, everyone's doing it.
-- learnjapanese.poddedcell.net (Step Up Nihongo - Bobby Valentine's favorite Japanese textbook)
Cost is no object. Profit is unnecessary. All that matters is that construction continue. Japan has dammed all but maybe one river (many of them multiple times), built tunnells through mountains so that villages of less than 100 people can have a bullet-train stop(!! move over Sen. Stevens !!), paved many a riverbed in concrete, eliminated dirt from the cities (almost every square inch is paved), etc., etc.
I recall visiting a dam in Nagano that had special turbines so the water could be pumped back *up* into the reservoir behind the dam during the night (luckily the next dam was less than a mile below!) so that extra power could be generated by this dam in the day during the summer so Tokyoites could have air-conditioning. This dam used more power than it made, obviously. (Economically, this scenario might actually make sense, but it is interesting to think about... could this happen in the US?).
When I lived in Tokyo they tore up my street every few months relaying pipes. First gas, then water, who knows what else. Then a few months later, since the street had been patched so many times, they repaved it. Streets that are 3 years old are routinely torn up (including the concrete kerb) and repaved. They always looked like they still had years and years left of service in them. In the 30 years my family's lived in Northern Virginia (affluent, high-traffic area) I can only think of 1 or 2 times certain major roads in town were repaved.
From small: http://regex.info/blog/2007-03-25/403
To large: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashi-Kaikyo_Bridge The likelihood of the projects (for instance the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge) recouping investments is papered over and never taken seriously, except to BS the public or to rationalize the hidden logrolling which is required to acquire the budgets necessary to build the projects.
> Never underestimate the Japanese. If they set a firm goal that is obtainable then watch out.
I think you misunderstand the process at work here: a bureaucracy holding onto its budget. In Japan, budgets, once granted, are uncuttable. MagLev research would continue, ad eternum, regardless of the possibilities of success, with an expanding budget, until some sort of "budgetary catastrophe" (they've already rebuilt their test tracks due to accidents at enormous cost - so I don't think a technical failure would cause abandonment).
If the budget involves the Public Transportation Tribe, with construction costs beyond all description and belief, they just salivate at it. The waste of public taxpayer dollars beggars belief, and doesn't appear to even raise an eyebrow from the citizenry. I was in Tokyo when the Namboku-sen subway line was "finished" and the cost for this line came out to something like $300,000+ _per foot_... and that was a conventional subway line (if you don't count the computerized trains that had to be manned anyway and the fact that each station had enclosed platforms (all "for safety").
> Here is another thing to think about. This opens the door for small startup or research > groups that could potentially win a contract if they can create a viable working and > safe system.
In Japan there would be no chance of this happening. Research would be handled by JR Group or some quasi-governmental body, and, because venture capital in Japan is basically a joke (they won't invest in startups because "it's too risky") no startups could even get out of the garage. Probably any viable startups would eventually be bought by foreigners (like when Lamborghini bought a boutique Japanese car outfit).
They'll pull it off just by 1) eternal access to money, 2) doggone bullheadedness. Let's just be glad they weren't trying to build the Orion nuclear rockets back in the 1960s...:o
It wouldn't surprise me if this thing ballooned to half a trillion dollars when you could do almost as well for 1/10th that.
-- quote -- I don't follow. Why do you need to add the parenthetical to convey the same information in English? When I say, "Rick likes tennis", no one's going to say or think, "Oh, you mean Jane likes tennis?" or "You're trying to tell me Rick is the ONLY person who likes tennis?"* It just seems that all of your parentheticals would be redundant in English. Are you trying to say that in Japanese, the parenthetical is made explicit? -- end quote --
A proper, technically accurate, English equivalent would be something like:
"Rick (at least) likes tennis" or
"As for Rick (and I'm not talking about anyone else) likes tennis" or even
"Rick (compared to unnamed others) likes tennis."
I think you'd agree that "Rick likes tennis" is, indeed very different from "Rick (at least) likes tennis" and the other examples above. The example sentences convey different things from the basic English "Rick likes tennis". Japanese particles convey those nuances; they mean things akin to saying, "I'm including other unmentioned similar things here - ya, or "I choose this from several options" o, etc.
The analogous English tools would be the difference between saying:
"This is 'Book One'",
"This is a 'Book One'" and
"This is the 'Book One'".
The presence or absence of articles (indefinite or definite) conveys much information to the English native - information about the number of objects under discussion, whether others are similar, whether the parties to the discussion believe the other party knows what is being discussed, etc. In order to properly convey these meanings in Japanese to a learner of English we would have to use some long-winded (from their point of view) explanations that sound very strange to them (Japanese doesn't care about the number of nouns, for instance). I would argue you're feeling what they would feel if we were to break down English to them.
Perhaps you're struggling with this basic idea: no languages are analogous. You can't just take words from Language A and put them into Language B and have an exact fit. Different concepts exist in different languages and there is no reason why those same concepts should exist in any other particular language - particularly languages as alien to each other as Japanese and English. For instance "home" in English is not found in French. "Maison" doesn't mean "home". That's why they say, "chez moi," it conveys the important emotional context found in "home" which they don't have an explicit word for. Third person singular "pronouns" in Chinese are all the same word! They don't distinguish between "he," "she," and "it." No language is a representation of any other language which just happens to have different pronunciations. Arabic has singular, dual and plural forms, for instance.
Fundamentally, each language is, in some sense, an island. Very technical terms are an exception (as they are terms created purposefully to describe discrete known phenomena, i.e. database, video camera, optical refraction), but the core parts of a language, particularly the aspects that are emergent phenomena (grammar, most basic vocabulary) are unique to that language.
The difference between Rick, tenisu ga suki and Rick wa tenisu ga suki does indeed require all that parenthetical information in order to really convey what it is that wa *means*. From the English point of view that wa is doing lots of work, but to them it's simple and clean.
-- quote -- I'm talking about regular cases. -- end quote -- Though I may be taking you out of context on this point, the distinctions created by the particles are as regular to them as your decision (unconscious or otherwise) to refer to some object, say your computer, as "the computer" or "a computer" when talking with someone.
-- quote -- I find it kind of ironic that you're trying to espouse the precision of Japanese over Western languages, followed quickly by indicating that there is an absence of gender indication. -- end quote --
It is a European conceit that we need to indicate gender when we speak. Chinese doesn't do it, for instance, with its pronouns (and it has something much more akin to a European-style pronoun than Japanese does). Basically, the Japanese don't value gender distinctions at the grammatical level, or else they would have them. To the extent that gender is important it is either indicated through other tools, or assumed understood and unnecessary of discussion.
Like a linked library in a computer program (or a standard like TCP), it is unnecessary to "reinvent the wheel" in each program. You glue things together. It's an analogous situation to having a context - we don't say things that are unnecessary. It's just that in English, for whatever reason, we spend our "attention capital" on continuing to indicate gender, for instance, even though everyone already knows the gender of the person being discussed! From an efficiency point of view it's silly. But it's what we do.
-- quote -- Also, the repetition of subject is not always necessary (understood subject, such as in "RUN!") and the object is not required ("I ran.") English can drop things from context, it's just not typical. -- end quote --
Yes, these things are possible, of course. Context is, after all, universally available in all spoken situations regardless of circumstances (it's only in writing that we have no context at all).
-- quote -- Or you could say "I bought that piece of shit" if you didn't like it. English still has connotations. I remember from one of your posts, there are two ways to say "come here", one polite and one not so polite. I can think of English equivalents -
"Bitch, get over here." "Could you please come here?"
You could also replace here with hither to add a sort of accent to it, changing the connotation of the sentence. -- end quote --
Yes, all true. However I feel that you are reinforcing my point - though I may not have articulated it well. There's no way, in English, to change the verb "come" itself to connote "Bitch! come the hell over here." We have to add in extra words and start screaming. In Japanese the verbal "kuru" can be so modified so that the connotation can carry meanings that are part of the grammar, but not spoken directly. "hayaku koi baka!" (quickly come idiot! == get the hell over here now!) versus "hayaku kite kudasai baka!" are identical in important respects, but carry very different connotations. I can say the second one to my girlfriend and she'll complain but she won't put me in the doghouse for a week. The first could lead to a serious fight.
-- quote -- In the end, I suppose neither language is superior to the other, they're simply different. -- end quote --
I'm glad you said that. Many people seem to get caught up in a comparison game, trying to establish a hierarchy of languages. (Strange, considering how anti-hierarchical English actually is!) Language is just a tool people use to talk. It makes sense that every language would have ways of achieving or describing the universal goals people have when they communicate. In every culture people want to communicate and do the things which only language allows them to do. They might value different aspects of the communication more, but they still have the same human life other language's speakers have. There can be no "superior" or "inferior" when comparing different languages. Different languages, different tools.
Many geeks compare computer languages... lol They at least are engaging in discussing designed languages, not ones that arose as emergent phenomona among large numbers of people attempting to accomplish similar goals.
-- quote -- See, here is an example of why sometimes English can be confusing. "Doing so" - doing what, exactly? Using "Rick is the subject", or "avoid using terms created for analyzing European languages". I know it was the latter, but sometimes it's not so obvious - like when someone asks you to choose between A or B, and you say yes (bad example, I know). It's very confusing, and the consequence of dealing with the confusion is the perceived long-winded-ness. -- end quote --
The point generally made is that Japanese is vague and English precise. The reality is that all languages are both vague and precise. It's just that different cultures value different things - so they are precise about different things. Languages are products of culture (while also shaping culture, granted) and as such reflect what's important to that culture. English doesn't value social hierarchy. Japanese considers social hierarchy and acknowledgement of it as of primary importance; so important, in fact, that it is literally impossible to speak in Japanese without indicating the relative social positions of the parties to the conversation. English thinks it's important to mention subjects and objects in almost every sentence; Japanese doesn't. In the end these come down to preferences that people have had who used the language, thus shaping its development over time. Languages change over time, too - and are subject to various influences. English, for instance, has an increasing influence over Japanese as virtually everyone has studied it in Japan now.
-- quote -- I imagine that Japanese avoids confusion primarily because it follows such a strict set of grammatical rules. -- end quote --
I would say that Japanese avoids social confusion because it follows a very strict set of social mores about communication. The grammar always serves a subservient position to illustration of social status. While this is irritating and irksome (at least initially) to English speakers (particularly Americans), it is simply the way it is - unavoidably so.
-- quote -- I feel like a comparison would be very enlightening right about now. What's the difference between the following two sentences?
1) Rick wa tenisu ga suki desu 2) Rick wa tenisu o suki desu -- end quote --
The first sentence I've discussed at length in other posts in this thread. The second is, believe it or not, traditionally considered unacceptable in Japanese grammar. When I was learning Japanese back in the early '90s every Japanese textbook said that 'o suki' or 'o -tai' was wrong. I'm not as confident that textbooks are as dogmatic on this point today.
Now today, more and more Japanese appear to have accepted that the operand "o" can be used with 'suki' and 'kirai,' etc. My impression is that Japanese speakers don't like to use o suki whereas they won't mind o suki as a construction. This seems arbitrary - and I don't have linguistic data to back my feelings up. Consider that a guess worth subjecting to some "participatory observation"-style research.
"O" presumes choice. It means, at heart, that the speaker has selected something, over and above other things. 'Biiru kudasai' and 'Biiru o kudasai' are different in the nuance that the latter has more of a feeling of a choice or selection process being at work.
"Suki" is, from the traditional Japanese grammatical point of view, an affective condition. It's NOT a condition you choose to be in. You like something or someone or you don't. You understand something or you don't. You find something interesting, funny, boring, ugly, etc., or you don't. You can't choose to like something, or to understand something. You can choose to engage in acts that will lead to understanding, but you still can't command understanding directly.
That is, I think, the reason why the 2nd example you gave is traditionally unacceptable.
The case of " ga -tai" vs. " o -tai"
Most books seem to teach both these days. "Back i
I've commented several times in this thread, but wanted to address some of the same issues in respect to your specific examples. More below!
-- quote -- Tenisu-wa Rick-ga suki-da -- end quote -- I've already commented extensively on this example in at least two other posts in this thread. Please see them for my ideas on that.
-- quote -- The topic particle can in a sense replace any other particle (subject/object/etc), and the listener should be able to infer the meaning of the sentence. Of course, once the topic is established, it is in context and can be dropped from further conversation where it could be understood. -- end quote -- You are right that things which aren't English "subjects" can be marked with "wa". "Wa" has the effect of "highlighting the topic of the moment" (Step Up Nihongo, vol 1, p. 140). "Wa" marks what follows as applying only to it - the highlighted topic about which we are talking. Now do you see why it's different from "subject"?
For instance, "Konpyuutaa wa amari tukaimasen" translates as "I don't use computers much". We'd have to say then that "I" is the "subject" in the English sentence, I think you'll agree. So, what's "Konpyuutaa" then? It's the thing about which the following predicate is concerned (and no other things are described by the following predicate either). Note that, there can be two "wa" in one sentence - further making it hard to call it a "subject marker." "boku wa konpyuutaa wa amari tukaimasen" is perfectly fine Japanese.
"Biiru wa nomimasu kedo, uisukii wa nomimasen"
"beer, at least, I drink, but whiskey (in comparison) I don't." "I drink beer, but I don't drink whiskey" Are "beer" and "whiskey" the "subjects" here? Surely not!
-- quote -- I ate cake in December. (possible) Japanese translations (my vocabulary is far too lame to attempt this in actual Japanese): So I did this thing (topic), and it was eating cake in December (comment). In December (topic), I ate a cake (comment). About cake (topic), I ate one in December (comment). -- end quote -- How about: 12gatu ni wa keeki wo tabemashita.
I ate cake *in December*. (focus on the time the cake was eaten - cake selected from among others, probably). keeki wa 12gatu ni tabemashita.
Cake, at least, I ate in December. ("I ate cake in December (and I'm not talking about anything else which I may or may not have eaten)."
jvp
-- Learn Japanese - learnjapanese.poddedcell.net/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi
-- quote -- English: Rick likes tenis. Japanese: rick wa tenisu ga suki da. Translation: Rick (=TOPIC) tenis (=SUBJECT) likes. How can you just make a pronouncement that Rick is not the subject of the sentence? Tennis is the direct object. It is the thing that receives the action of the verb (like) initiated by the subject (Rick). I mean, you can say that Rick is not the subject, but he really is. -- end quote --
Yes, you could say that "Rick is the subject" here, but it's best to avoid using terms created for analyzing European languages to analyze non-European languages. Doing so avoids confusion and promotes a better understanding of the non-European language. "Rick is the subject" carries with it a number of highly inaccurate assumptions when studying Japanese. It's like trying to use a chisel to cut glass, or a knife to loosen a screw; wrong tool for the job.
"Tennis" is not the thing that receives the action of the verb "like" in the original Japanese sentence! First off, "like" is not a verb in Japanese, it's a na-nominal (a "noun"). Tennis is the affect, the "subject matter" of the liking (which occurs naturally, not having been done or created by anyone in particular, though here it is associated with Rick, who has that feeling towards tennis). "Liking" is, actually, an affective condition. Since English grammar lacks the "affect" this is probably the single most difficult grammatical aspect of Japanese for us to grasp. As geeks, it may be best to analogize to computer languages and keep away from the miresome "subject/object" debate which just bogs things down by forcing us to use inaccurate terms.
Technically stated, "Rick wa tenisu ga suki desu" states something like "As for Rick, tennis is the affect of his liking." The liking of tennis is a condition over which he has no direct control.
"Subject" is a technical word, in linguistics, with a specific meaning that is tightly tied to European-language based grammatical analysis.
We were raised being told that sentences always have a subject and a verb (not really accurate, but ok - what about: "Eat!"?). Why would a language that evolved 10,000 miles away share the same ideas as those in Europe?
Using words that come from an analysis of western languages to describe non-western languages is the equivalent of trying to teach, say, a stack-based language (like Forth) using the terms that apply to proper technical description of Perl, or vice versa. Doing this would make the learning of either language unnecessarily difficult and require inclusion of numerous strange "exceptions."
In large part, this is why Japanese is called "The Devil's Language." In actuality it is very clearly organized with virtually no exceptions to any of its very strict grammatical rules. English pales in comparison - riddled with exceptions and arbitrary usages as she is.
"Topic" is just a way to try and escape the obvious problem (that we seem to have two "subjects" here). What's needed is a different perspective, not a strange hair-splitting act.
jvp
-- Learn Japanese - learnjapanese.poddedcell.net/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi
-- quote -- English: Rick likes tenis. Japanese: rick wa tenisu ga suki da. Translation: Rick (=TOPIC) tenis (=SUBJECT) likes. -- end quote --
A proper, technically accurate, English equivalent would be something like "Rick (at least) likes tennis" or "As for Rick (and I'm not talking about anyone else) likes tennis" or even "Rick (compared to unnamed others) likes tennis."
Tennis here is NOT the subject. (If anyone/anything is the 'subject' then it has to be RICK!) "Subject" is a word that only applies to European languages and is useless outside of that framework.
Tennis here is the "AFFECT" for like. English does not have affects (though you can find them in mathematics and when studying linguistics). "Tennis is the 'subject matter'" is reasonably accurate, but it's not "the subject".
Tennis is that which is acted upon by the liking. More technically (quoting from 'Step Up Nihongo' here, which I edited) "the [affective] predicate expresses some state or happening which occurs without someone choosing or deciding that it be so." Rick did not choose to like tennis, he just likes it. That's what the 'ga' indicates. Full coverage of the use of "ga" is a bit more involved, but in this case we should be complete here.
See my thread here regarding "Japanese has no 'subject' or 'object'" for more.
In Japanese you *never* need to include something that is known through context. It can always be dropped (assumed to be understood) and generally is so dropped when natives are talking to each other. Westerners feel that this lacks clarity and that Japanese is "fuzzy."
But, Japanese is *FAR* more precise than Western languages in many, many areas. Our languages tell us nothing about the speakers, for instance. You can write down what several Japanese people are saying and show it to other Japanese people and they will be able to tell you, with quite reasonable accuracy, which of the speakers were men or women, what the relative ages of the speakers were, and in cases involving multiple "groups" who was in which group and, depending on how much material you have, what their relationships to each other were in terms of social hierarchy as well (both within and without the groups).
Note that this whole interaction will not include any gender pronouns ("he" and "she" are rarely used in Japanese) and of course Japanese nouns/verbs/adjectives have no gender connotations so all of this information is not being picked up through things like that either. The variations and gradations in politeness will indicate everything - acquiring this skill is a necessary task for students of Japanese.
In this respect English is so vague as to be utterly useless. And the needless repetition of subject matter and objects? A waste of breath.
Also, Japanese words generally have an "ura" (back-side) to them that has some sort of emotional connotation. This makes the language very interesting. In English if I say, "I bought it" then the only way I can tell you anything about how I feel is by changing my enunciation/emphasis on certain words. If I'm mad about having bought it I might have to yell! In Japanese changing one's tone of voice is completely unnecessary. (Your boss could chew you out - a real reaming - without raising his tone at all, as an example.)
"Katyatta!" "katta no desu" "kattyattandayo" "katta sa" "kattyattanda" "kaimashita yo" "kaimashita" are all, basically "bought it" and here we assume that the buyer is known through context (you're standing next to your new car for instance talking to someone). We haven't even included any of the numerous words that indicate "I" ('ore', 'boku', 'watashi', 'watakushi', 'atashi',... etc.). Ending predicates with "nda" or "ttyatta" (instead of 'ta') also connote emotions. The first says, "it's that... (which explains something obvious in the context)" and the second is equivalent to "and that explains why I'm happy/sad/angry/frustrated." The grammatical patterns themselves carry emotional content, which is left unspoken.
"ore, kattyattandayo" is very very different from "watashi, kaimashita" but the difference is less one of meaning and more one of social positioning, politeness and intimacy/revelation of emotions. In the first I can tell you, without any other information, that the person speaking is not talking to his teacher, or even to an older neighbor. Possibly not even to an older in-group member (depends on the traditional-ness of the group itself). The latter is more likely a woman, or the person addressed quite senior to the speaker. The first one means the guy speaking is probably psyched, or alternatively pissed, about having bought the thing (and he views the buying as fully completed). In the second, the lady (probably anyhow) is merely stating that she has bought it, without revealing much about her emotional state regarding the purchase.
Proper use of the "passive voice" in Japanese is actually quite advanced - generally only found among upper intermediate or advanced students. The passive performs several functions in Japanese that are not found in English.
It can be used to indicate respect, to insult, or to indicate that something unwanted happened! These last two are actually the same thing, though that might not immediately be obvious.
"Itsu Tokyo ikaremashita ka" ("When did you go to Tokyo (politely)?") Here the passive is applied to "ikimashita" which is the standard way of saying "went" in "desu/masu style"). This type of usage is very commonly used when first meeting people as a polite way of asking relatively direct questions (note then that it can't be used in situations where you can't ask direct questions of someone). When I was studying in Japan I found that peers in age would very frequently do the "getting to know you" type of questions using this style of politeness. It's not over-the-top, but it's polite enough that you can use it very safely and still not sound overly stiff (learning this sort of balancing act is one of the difficulties we face, as English native, when learning Japanese).
Regarding the "insulting" or "unwanted happening" usage of the passive we look at: "hoka no hito ni, suwaremashita yo" (Someone else sat there (I'm telling you) (and it sucked... )) Here, the person who did the sitting is indicated by that versatile location marker "ni" and we know that the person doing the talking was "negatively affected by a sitting." That's actually a very precise translation of the sentence, unwieldy as it sounds in English.
Another one: "sono osushi wa, dareka ni taberaretandayo!" (That sushi (we both know of) was eaten by someone (dammit!)" More technically accurate: "I was negatively affected by an eating (by someone) of that sushi (and that explains my current state)!"
DANGER: Whether you are using "meiwaku ukemi" (troublesome passive voice) or honorific passive voice is indicated by PARTICLE choice!
"Sensei ga koraremashita" "Sensei ni koraremashita"
You pretty much have to translate both of these, at least colloquially, as "the teacher came (here)."
The first one gets you brownie points (or at least keeps you out of trouble). The second one might get you in deep miso.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would it be a surprise that 3.2 billion years of evolution has produced a system you can't just twiddle with? How can you understand a system which has iterated so long and so profoundly?
>They are not assumed, they are required. Thus any
>market economic model is invalidated when a
>non-trivial portoin of the actors do not have
>access to information, or do not make rational
>decisions. These factors can be adjusted for, but
>it is difficult to accurately assess. You both misunderstand a fundamental aspect of "free market choice" as explained by economics.
First there is no assumption of "informed" in economics. Quite orthogonally to that, there is an assumption of utility maximization. For the vast majority of people, utility maximization means NOT being very informed on most topics at all. (A partial explanation of why inferior software will outsell superior software often). Economics never assumes its actors have full information, or even that they have good information.
Additionally, you have both forgotten that "rational" is relative to the values of the person making the decision. Their "rational" could be completely crazy to you, or even to every single other human on the planet. Crazy or not, free-market economics ("capitalism") does not fail to explain their behavior at all. Capitalism does not assume "rational" to mean: "will pass Logic 101 in college." "Rational" is merely, "makes sense relative to the values of the individual doing the thinking."
>The reason free-market capitalism actually
>reduces choice for purchasers is that there are
>barriers to entry for production of a good. Some
>are regulatory (and thus would disappear in a
>true free market) but some are natural and cannot
>be removed from the equation.
You have also forgotten about resource scarcity. You appear to have based "reduced choice" as compared to some theoretical "continuum of infinite choices." Capitalism does not reduce choices consumers - if actually practiced (good luck with that one) it would efficiently maximize choice to the greatest extent a market could bear. Scarcity of all resources imposes burdens on choice - there can be no infinite panoply of options except maybe "in heaven."
>Pure free-market economics assume that the
>players are making rational informed decisions.
>In software acquisition, that assumption
>fails often.
That is an incorrect statement of what modern free-market economics states. Modern experimental economics / public choice economics and "welfare economists" have shown that groups of individuals make rational decisions in aggregate, but that individuals frequently make irrational decisions. This is a beautiful result, but unintuitive. For more, read things by Vernon Smith (Nobel Laureate).
I remember that ruling because it was right after we had to write an appellate brief in Legal Research Writing & Analysis about this very issue. In our hypo our "client" was busted with child pr0n on his 2nd-hand laptop which had LimeWire on it. He was screwed, basically, but at that time the caselaw wasn't as tight as it is now. I haven't followed what happened in the Mass court, but I note that there is no circuit split on this issue. So the Supreme Court's not going to wade in. Figure that there's no privacy on the laptop.
Yet another reason to move away from the monolithic OS? I assume that they would have a very hard time convincing a court that they can search a server from your machine if you log in to access all your files remotely.
I doubt they can keep the laptop. For instance the cases where people's cars are searched at the border only stand up if the car is returned in the same condition it was taken. To what extent this is enforceable is a different issue (See this eBay auction for an Audi A8 that the Border Patrol cut open and welded back together, badly: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Audi-A6-QUATTRO-1998-A6-AWD-QUATTRO-RUNS-GREAT-NEEDS-WORK-NO-RESERVE_W0QQitemZ280218241772QQcmdZViewItem - if this is a wet-climate or salt-in-winter car then expect massive internal rust to commence shortly. But I'd hate to try and sue for "just compensation".)
... twice ...
The Border people have no obligation to work speedily, but they aren't to take all day either. For instance in the case where a man had drugs in his gas tank his defense that he had a privacy interest in his gas tank was specifically denied. I think this was 9th Circuit, too. Also, the court ruled that the fact that the search took a few hours (they had to wait for a mechanic to show up) didn't matter in this instance, presumably because of reasonable suspicion.
I think that in the court's mind laptop == gastank == no privacy interest. If it's at the border, or falls under the "extended border" then they can search it without "reasonable suspicion."
The really scary question is, I think, P2P software on the searched laptop. Say someone you know has a 2nd-hand computer, or borrows one, that has P2P and let's say that software has been pwned or the machine pwned. Let's say the malicious "owner" uses the machine to distribute porn, or, god forbid, child porn. Now you are truly in DEEP SH*T.
If they can get you for distribution (P2P!) then you'll be looking at serious serious federal time. Do you think you can prove, or afford to prove ($$$), the ages of the teen models in your pr0n cache? This outcome is more scary to me because it increases the danger to the technologically clueless, the older generation who have no idea how their machines work and might have allowed something to happen unwittingly. (Click here!)
How would you like your Dad or uncle to face what effectively amounts to a life term because he didn't know what was on his pwned machine and he then gets busted for distribution?
How will the courts handle this case? Possession is a per se violation. There is no scienter requirement as I understand it. So if you've got it, you're screwed. If the p2p software has a nice list of people you've shared your stuff with then you're toast.
Some of the cases in the caselaw were easy - the person set up Kazaa to share into certain folders, etc., but I doubt the courts will give an easy listen to people who didn't obviously optimize their settings so as to maximize their distribution of the bad stuff.
As a matter of laptop policy: Just Don't Surf Pr0n On Your Laptop. Or, keep a machine at home for private use. Oh yeah, encrypt it with truecrypt or similar
Ramji is a complete MSFT tool. I heard him speak at OSBC 2007 - for some reason they let him be on the panel - and at one point the response he made when asked about MSFT and patents vis a vis open-source was such a MSFT-shill line that he actually caused the entire room (composed of engineers and lawyers) to laugh out loud. It was not a chuckle; his line was so obviously MSFT-speak and was so cynical (wonder where my notes are ... I'll see if I can dig them up). He didn't even crack a smile.
I wouldn't trust him farther than I could throw him. Why OSBC and others in open-source let these guys on the panels is a mystery to me.
It's like making Darth Vader part of the committee that's responsible for security on Alderaan.
I've been trying to figure out for some time whether my battery drains faster in any significant way between Fed Core 6 and XP on an HP nx6325 x86_64 laptop (two partitions). I don't think there's any significant difference. Anyone know otherwise?
// Learn Japanese with Step Up Nihongo
From what I've gathered about Vista, that XP would outperform it on battery life doesn't surprise.
But the Mac x86 test would be yet another "nail in the coffin" as people move farther from Windoze.
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learnjapanese.poddedcell.net
You appear to have forgotten that we, too, have competition for educating "the poor" in the U.S. (Assuming you're from the U.S.). Charter schools are exactly that - they just happen to leverage publicly gathered tax dollars and allow private entities access to them. While the results have been mixed so far, there is evidence that public schools improve in areas where charter schools start up (public school teachers *are* responsive to competitive pressures! whodathunkit). For more on the fight for school choice (via charter) see: ij.org .
Additionally, Amartya Sen and other prominent economists have written extensively on how it is that the poor in "3rd world" countries actually have a fair amount of money - it's just that they have no secure place to save funds and have little access to credit to leverage their existing assets. Which is to say that many of the "poor" aren't even "poor" in the sense of utterly destitute - they're just unable to leverage institutions and assets because of the overall social infrastructure they have to survive in. It is undeniably true, however, that there are many extremely poor people who this doesn't cover (and I'm not trying to deny the gravity of their poverty), it's just that many people we label as "poor" actually have more options than we would expect.
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learnjapanese.poddedcell.net - Step Up Nihongo, Bobby Valentine's Japanese textbook of choice!
> Nothing a good, structured tax/tariff structure can't correct with regards to
> allowing shoddy imports to undercut quality. The idea is to reverse the damage
> done by that region of the world to our domestic industries (who seem to have
> done better in terms of quality when allowed to build domestic). Just enough that
> companies get the hint not to use countries like Mexico and regions of the world
> such as Asia to undercut domestic labor- which would be used as a retraining fund.
Such cynicism is unfounded. Japan's manufactures after WWII were considered shoddy in the extreme - very low quality. None would argue that today. Remember the first Hyundais? Crap like the Kia, now look at them. China will come along - and meanwhile, we benefit from cheaper goods. Go out into the countryside and calculate how much more money is in the pockets of the less wealthy in this country because they can buy goods cheaply. Make no mistake, those who suffer most are the poor here when you create barriers to free trade.
Sure, you worry about lost jobs, but the fact of the matter is, the U.S. manufactures 22% of the world's manufactures, still, and China only 8%. Our value-added manufacturing is growing and has every year but two since the late 1980s.
The U.S. idea that we "deserve" to be top-dog in this area stems from an accident of history: our victory in WWII was accompanied by no significant domestic capital destruction. Whatever our factories made - for almost 30 years - was bought the world over.
> What do you expect from a part of the world that seems to have forgotten quality,
> but how to become a large black hole for industries of other regions of the world?
> Certainly you cannot expect quality for a place like China.
Ever driven a domestic car from the 1960s or 1970s? The quality was poor, and it was poor because Ford, GM, et. al., didn't have competition.
China will produce quality in time. Meanwhile, enjoy the cheap goods!
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learnjapanese.poddedcell.net
Government-issued contracts for rebuilding previously state-owned assets in warzones certainly aren't decided in a "free market." No real capitalist would likely go into such a place anyhow, because they are highly concerned about preserving capital and war is the worst destroyer of capital ever.
Bush and his cronies are NOT operating in a free market. They're a bunch of rent-seekers who couldn't make it in a free market - or got lazy and decided to use influence to create money, instead of hard work.
It's because people allow themselves to be hoodwinked into believing that they are in a free market that we have trouble. Take, for instance, the people who claim the California energy deregulation was a failure of free markets - when in actuality it wasn't a free market at all.
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learnjapanese.poddedcell.net -- Step Up Nihongo
I presume you're talking about "them" calling "us" and saying "we've decided not to buy your government-issued debt anymore." Problem is, what would they invest their 1 trillion in government funds in then? It's not like there are that many - if any - safer alternatives? Euro bonds? Uhhh ... what was that long-term growth rate again? Yen? yeah right, the Chinese? Swiss Francs? Uhh ... sure it's a hard currency, but how much of it can you liquidate when you need to? Dollars are still the best place to park savings.
Also, China exports vast quantities to the US - they'd never cause our economy to "crash" if they could help it. It would create massive social unrest over there (and they can barely keep a cap on what they've got happening even right now). China's going to have many, many significant, huge, social problems in the mid-term. Their "one country, two systems" thing is inherently unstable and will fail. If China ever copies the fine pre-handover Hong Kong example which the British left the world, then move over U.S., because we're going to get trounced. In the meantime, China will simply remain a cheap place to manufacture lower-technology goods. I include computers and HDTVs in the "lower-technology goods" category. They've got far to much to lose to damage us that way.
But one of the above posters is totally correct: The real threat - the one thing that could bring us down - is ourselves. FDR was right about fear. If the US goes down, it'll be because we did it to ourselves.
--
for more on this topic, check yesterday's post.
-- Step Up Nihongo (learnjapanese.poddedcell.net)
Actually I hope you're already used to it. GM already lost a case - several years ago - where a Chinese manufacturer ripped off, bolt-for-bolt, panel-for-panel, an entire car and then released it to market BEFORE GM did! Brazen as hell. Toyota has also had problems in China for theft and such. I think when foreigners wake up to the fact that there's not really that much money to be made in China they might not be so enthusiastic about jumping in. For instance, huge numbers of cars are made over there, but everyone's killing each other on price. The Chinese are happy about it (they get new factories, trained workers, cars, etc.), but I don't think the foreigners are making any money.
Plus, as I referenced yesterday when commenting on this alarmist post about how the US may soon have "no comparative advantage" - China is not all it's cracked up to be.
Thing is, no one's making money in China, except for a few well-positioned people who can grease the right wheels. Nothing to see here, move along, it's the same old mercantilism and cronyism we find in all non-free markets. The sheer balls of the park manager telling the camerman they "newly invented" the characters ("It's not a mouse, it's a cat with big ears!") is classic.
This guy should be the new Iraqi Information Minister.
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learnjapanese.poddedcell.net -- Step Up Nihongo, learn Japanese
Your alarmism - unfortunately accepted as dogma by many, including the slashdot crowd which should have the intellectual firepower to overcome politician- and union-inspired sloganeering - simply doesn't match the facts. Real value-added US manufacturing has grown every year since 1987 except for during the 1990-91 and 2000-01 recessions. The US still has well over twice the global share of manufacturing than China. This is in spite of falling employment in U.S. manufacturing. Interesting, eh?
It is common on Slashdot, in part because of the outsourcing of coding and coding-related jobs to India, to equate "cheaper manufacturing/production" with inevitable disappearance from our shores.
If that were in fact true, then why haven't manufacturing jobs moved to Senegal, Ghana, Bangladesh or Haiti? Those places would clearly be cheaper. In actual fact, the US is still the cheapest when you consider what actually matters: productivity. How else could one explain falling manufacturing employment with increased real output globally? You recognize that the productivity of coders in India may be lower than that of an equivalent engineer in the US. However, the price differential means that paying for a less productive "employee" in India may be worth it.
If you look at the US manufacturing sector, we have the highest productivity per worker in the world. In fact, it's easily the highest. Why do we still have steel mills? Why do we manufacture "Japanese" cars in the US? It is because US workers - and manufacturing workers are included - are generally the most efficient, productive workers in the world. Those that aren't lose their jobs to India, China, etc. Those that are keep attracting foreign investment. It's not an accident that The Economist calls the US the "world's manufacturer."
Regarding fears of China "overtaking us" I have this to say: The US economy will remain the strongest and most dominant economy for some time - perhaps even for most or all of our lifetimes. Eventually China, by sheer dint of population, may outstrip us, but they're going to have many, many significant, huge, social problems before then. If China ever copies the fine pre-handover Hong Kong example which the British left the world, then move over U.S., because we're going to get trounced. In the meantime, China will simply remain a cheap place to manufacture lower-technology goods. I include computers and HDTVs in the "lower-technology goods" category. We shouldn't be trying to compete with China in those areas anyhow - it's a waste of our workers, who are the world's most efficient.
> I think the answer is staring you in the face: as a nation, the U.S. imports a
> lot of physical goods, but exports a lot of intellectual property.
This is true, but it just proves our versatility as a nation and is only looking at half of the story (and not even in the "glass half-empty" kind of way). Look at China or Japan or Thailand or India: they export strongly in only a few areas and have historically not demonstrated the capacity to develop world-leading or world-beating companies in others. Compare Bollywood to Hollywood: They make far more movies in India than Hollywood does - but no one's running around in the streets screaming that they're about to take over the world's movie industry. The whole idea is ridiculous, and in case you think it's a bad example, I suggest you think more closely about the metaphor.
> Therefore, we reward companies who chisel their foreign suppliers into squeezing
> their employees, because this results in cheap imports here in the States. Likewise,
> we punish IP 'theft,' because IP is one of the last things that we seem to be able
> to produce and sell.
That's just plain empirically false. Nike's not going to make sneakers in some plant in Oregon if they can get Malaysians to do the same job for $16 per day. They can afford to pay for ineffecient workers if they're comparatively cheap. We happen to produce and sell more
In Japan the game is - regarding construction boondoggles (think FDR-style public works, CCC, etc.) - to use taxpayer *SAVINGS* not tax revenues! This outstandingly clever scheme involves the government raiding the postal savings system as a hidden budget. The Japanese postal savings system has over a trillion in savings - making it by far the world's largest "bank." Koizumi had a goal to get the government's grasping hands out of these near-bottomless coffers but I don't think he succeeded. I highly doubt anyone else will be able to muster the political authority or public support necessary to even get as far as he did. Because most Japanese households have at least one postal-savings account, and their rate of saving is very high, raiding the postal savings system looks irresistible to politicians. Hey, everyone's doing it.
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learnjapanese.poddedcell.net (Step Up Nihongo - Bobby Valentine's favorite Japanese textbook)
Cost is no object. Profit is unnecessary. All that matters is that construction continue. Japan has dammed all but maybe one river (many of them multiple times), built tunnells through mountains so that villages of less than 100 people can have a bullet-train stop(!! move over Sen. Stevens !!), paved many a riverbed in concrete, eliminated dirt from the cities (almost every square inch is paved), etc., etc.
... could this happen in the US?).
I recall visiting a dam in Nagano that had special turbines so the water could be pumped back *up* into the reservoir behind the dam during the night (luckily the next dam was less than a mile below!) so that extra power could be generated by this dam in the day during the summer so Tokyoites could have air-conditioning. This dam used more power than it made, obviously. (Economically, this scenario might actually make sense, but it is interesting to think about
When I lived in Tokyo they tore up my street every few months relaying pipes. First gas, then water, who knows what else. Then a few months later, since the street had been patched so many times, they repaved it. Streets that are 3 years old are routinely torn up (including the concrete kerb) and repaved. They always looked like they still had years and years left of service in them. In the 30 years my family's lived in Northern Virginia (affluent, high-traffic area) I can only think of 1 or 2 times certain major roads in town were repaved.
From small: http://regex.info/blog/2007-03-25/403
To large: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashi-Kaikyo_Bridge
The likelihood of the projects (for instance the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge) recouping investments is papered over and never taken seriously, except to BS the public or to rationalize the hidden logrolling which is required to acquire the budgets necessary to build the projects.
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learnjapanese.poddedcell.net (Step Up Nihongo)
> Never underestimate the Japanese. If they set a firm goal that is obtainable then watch out.
... and that was a conventional subway line (if you don't count the computerized trains that had to be manned anyway and the fact that each station had enclosed platforms (all "for safety").
... :o
I think you misunderstand the process at work here: a bureaucracy holding onto its budget. In Japan, budgets, once granted, are uncuttable. MagLev research would continue, ad eternum, regardless of the possibilities of success, with an expanding budget, until some sort of "budgetary catastrophe" (they've already rebuilt their test tracks due to accidents at enormous cost - so I don't think a technical failure would cause abandonment).
If the budget involves the Public Transportation Tribe, with construction costs beyond all description and belief, they just salivate at it. The waste of public taxpayer dollars beggars belief, and doesn't appear to even raise an eyebrow from the citizenry. I was in Tokyo when the Namboku-sen subway line was "finished" and the cost for this line came out to something like $300,000+ _per foot_
> Here is another thing to think about. This opens the door for small startup or research
> groups that could potentially win a contract if they can create a viable working and
> safe system.
In Japan there would be no chance of this happening. Research would be handled by JR Group or some quasi-governmental body, and, because venture capital in Japan is basically a joke (they won't invest in startups because "it's too risky") no startups could even get out of the garage. Probably any viable startups would eventually be bought by foreigners (like when Lamborghini bought a boutique Japanese car outfit).
They'll pull it off just by 1) eternal access to money, 2) doggone bullheadedness. Let's just be glad they weren't trying to build the Orion nuclear rockets back in the 1960s
It wouldn't surprise me if this thing ballooned to half a trillion dollars when you could do almost as well for 1/10th that.
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learnjapanese.poddedcell.net
I don't follow. Why do you need to add the parenthetical to convey the same information in English? When I say, "Rick likes tennis", no one's going to say or think, "Oh, you mean Jane likes tennis?" or "You're trying to tell me Rick is the ONLY person who likes tennis?"* It just seems that all of your parentheticals would be redundant in English. Are you trying to say that in Japanese, the parenthetical is made explicit?
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A proper, technically accurate, English equivalent would be something like:
I think you'd agree that "Rick likes tennis" is, indeed very different from "Rick (at least) likes tennis" and the other examples above. The example sentences convey different things from the basic English "Rick likes tennis". Japanese particles convey those nuances; they mean things akin to saying, "I'm including other unmentioned similar things here - ya, or "I choose this from several options" o, etc.
The analogous English tools would be the difference between saying:
The presence or absence of articles (indefinite or definite) conveys much information to the English native - information about the number of objects under discussion, whether others are similar, whether the parties to the discussion believe the other party knows what is being discussed, etc. In order to properly convey these meanings in Japanese to a learner of English we would have to use some long-winded (from their point of view) explanations that sound very strange to them (Japanese doesn't care about the number of nouns, for instance). I would argue you're feeling what they would feel if we were to break down English to them.
Perhaps you're struggling with this basic idea: no languages are analogous. You can't just take words from Language A and put them into Language B and have an exact fit. Different concepts exist in different languages and there is no reason why those same concepts should exist in any other particular language - particularly languages as alien to each other as Japanese and English. For instance "home" in English is not found in French. "Maison" doesn't mean "home". That's why they say, "chez moi," it conveys the important emotional context found in "home" which they don't have an explicit word for. Third person singular "pronouns" in Chinese are all the same word! They don't distinguish between "he," "she," and "it." No language is a representation of any other language which just happens to have different pronunciations. Arabic has singular, dual and plural forms, for instance.
Fundamentally, each language is, in some sense, an island. Very technical terms are an exception (as they are terms created purposefully to describe discrete known phenomena, i.e. database, video camera, optical refraction), but the core parts of a language, particularly the aspects that are emergent phenomena (grammar, most basic vocabulary) are unique to that language.
The difference between Rick, tenisu ga suki and Rick wa tenisu ga suki does indeed require all that parenthetical information in order to really convey what it is that wa *means*. From the English point of view that wa is doing lots of work, but to them it's simple and clean.
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I'm talking about regular cases.
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Though I may be taking you out of context on this point, the distinctions created by the particles are as regular to them as your decision (unconscious or otherwise) to refer to some object, say your computer, as "the computer" or "a computer" when talking with someone.
jvp
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... lol
I find it kind of ironic that you're trying to espouse the precision of Japanese over Western languages, followed quickly by indicating that there is an absence of gender indication.
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It is a European conceit that we need to indicate gender when we speak. Chinese doesn't do it, for instance, with its pronouns (and it has something much more akin to a European-style pronoun than Japanese does). Basically, the Japanese don't value gender distinctions at the grammatical level, or else they would have them. To the extent that gender is important it is either indicated through other tools, or assumed understood and unnecessary of discussion.
Like a linked library in a computer program (or a standard like TCP), it is unnecessary to "reinvent the wheel" in each program. You glue things together. It's an analogous situation to having a context - we don't say things that are unnecessary. It's just that in English, for whatever reason, we spend our "attention capital" on continuing to indicate gender, for instance, even though everyone already knows the gender of the person being discussed! From an efficiency point of view it's silly. But it's what we do.
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Also, the repetition of subject is not always necessary (understood subject, such as in "RUN!") and the object is not required ("I ran.") English can drop things from context, it's just not typical.
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Yes, these things are possible, of course. Context is, after all, universally available in all spoken situations regardless of circumstances (it's only in writing that we have no context at all).
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Or you could say "I bought that piece of shit" if you didn't like it. English still has connotations. I remember from one of your posts, there are two ways to say "come here", one polite and one not so polite. I can think of English equivalents -
"Bitch, get over here."
"Could you please come here?"
You could also replace here with hither to add a sort of accent to it, changing the connotation of the sentence.
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Yes, all true. However I feel that you are reinforcing my point - though I may not have articulated it well. There's no way, in English, to change the verb "come" itself to connote "Bitch! come the hell over here." We have to add in extra words and start screaming. In Japanese the verbal "kuru" can be so modified so that the connotation can carry meanings that are part of the grammar, but not spoken directly. "hayaku koi baka!" (quickly come idiot! == get the hell over here now!) versus "hayaku kite kudasai baka!" are identical in important respects, but carry very different connotations. I can say the second one to my girlfriend and she'll complain but she won't put me in the doghouse for a week. The first could lead to a serious fight.
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In the end, I suppose neither language is superior to the other, they're simply different.
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I'm glad you said that. Many people seem to get caught up in a comparison game, trying to establish a hierarchy of languages. (Strange, considering how anti-hierarchical English actually is!) Language is just a tool people use to talk. It makes sense that every language would have ways of achieving or describing the universal goals people have when they communicate. In every culture people want to communicate and do the things which only language allows them to do. They might value different aspects of the communication more, but they still have the same human life other language's speakers have. There can be no "superior" or "inferior" when comparing different languages. Different languages, different tools.
Many geeks compare computer languages
They at least are engaging in discussing designed languages, not ones that arose as emergent phenomona among large numbers of people attempting to accomplish similar goals.
jvp
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See, here is an example of why sometimes English can be confusing. "Doing so" - doing what, exactly? Using "Rick is the subject", or "avoid using terms created for analyzing European languages". I know it was the latter, but sometimes it's not so obvious - like when someone asks you to choose between A or B, and you say yes (bad example, I know). It's very confusing, and the consequence of dealing with the confusion is the perceived long-winded-ness.
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The point generally made is that Japanese is vague and English precise. The reality is that all languages are both vague and precise. It's just that different cultures value different things - so they are precise about different things. Languages are products of culture (while also shaping culture, granted) and as such reflect what's important to that culture. English doesn't value social hierarchy. Japanese considers social hierarchy and acknowledgement of it as of primary importance; so important, in fact, that it is literally impossible to speak in Japanese without indicating the relative social positions of the parties to the conversation. English thinks it's important to mention subjects and objects in almost every sentence; Japanese doesn't. In the end these come down to preferences that people have had who used the language, thus shaping its development over time. Languages change over time, too - and are subject to various influences. English, for instance, has an increasing influence over Japanese as virtually everyone has studied it in Japan now.
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I imagine that Japanese avoids confusion primarily because it follows such a strict set of grammatical rules.
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I would say that Japanese avoids social confusion because it follows a very strict set of social mores about communication. The grammar always serves a subservient position to illustration of social status. While this is irritating and irksome (at least initially) to English speakers (particularly Americans), it is simply the way it is - unavoidably so.
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I feel like a comparison would be very enlightening right about now. What's the difference between the following two sentences?
1) Rick wa tenisu ga suki desu
2) Rick wa tenisu o suki desu
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The first sentence I've discussed at length in other posts in this thread.
The second is, believe it or not, traditionally considered unacceptable in Japanese grammar. When I was learning Japanese back in the early '90s every Japanese textbook said that 'o suki' or 'o -tai' was wrong. I'm not as confident that textbooks are as dogmatic on this point today.
Now today, more and more Japanese appear to have accepted that the operand "o" can be used with 'suki' and 'kirai,' etc. My impression is that Japanese speakers don't like to use o suki whereas they won't mind o suki as a construction. This seems arbitrary - and I don't have linguistic data to back my feelings up. Consider that a guess worth subjecting to some "participatory observation"-style research.
"O" presumes choice. It means, at heart, that the speaker has selected something, over and above other things. 'Biiru kudasai' and 'Biiru o kudasai' are different in the nuance that the latter has more of a feeling of a choice or selection process being at work.
"Suki" is, from the traditional Japanese grammatical point of view, an affective condition. It's NOT a condition you choose to be in. You like something or someone or you don't. You understand something or you don't. You find something interesting, funny, boring, ugly, etc., or you don't. You can't choose to like something, or to understand something. You can choose to engage in acts that will lead to understanding, but you still can't command understanding directly.
That is, I think, the reason why the 2nd example you gave is traditionally unacceptable.
The case of " ga -tai" vs. " o -tai"
Most books seem to teach both these days. "Back i
I've commented several times in this thread, but wanted to address some of the same issues in respect to your specific examples. More below!
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Tenisu-wa Rick-ga suki-da
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I've already commented extensively on this example in at least two other posts in this thread. Please see them for my ideas on that.
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The topic particle can in a sense replace any other particle (subject/object/etc), and the listener should be able to infer the meaning of the sentence. Of course, once the topic is established, it is in context and can be dropped from further conversation where it could be understood.
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You are right that things which aren't English "subjects" can be marked with "wa". "Wa" has the effect of "highlighting the topic of the moment" (Step Up Nihongo, vol 1, p. 140). "Wa" marks what follows as applying only to it - the highlighted topic about which we are talking. Now do you see why it's different from "subject"?
For instance, "Konpyuutaa wa amari tukaimasen" translates as "I don't use computers much". We'd have to say then that "I" is the "subject" in the English sentence, I think you'll agree. So, what's "Konpyuutaa" then? It's the thing about which the following predicate is concerned (and no other things are described by the following predicate either). Note that, there can be two "wa" in one sentence - further making it hard to call it a "subject marker." "boku wa konpyuutaa wa amari tukaimasen" is perfectly fine Japanese.
"Biiru wa nomimasu kedo, uisukii wa nomimasen"
"beer, at least, I drink, but whiskey (in comparison) I don't."
"I drink beer, but I don't drink whiskey"
Are "beer" and "whiskey" the "subjects" here? Surely not!
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I ate cake in December.
(possible) Japanese translations (my vocabulary is far too lame to attempt this in actual Japanese):
So I did this thing (topic), and it was eating cake in December (comment).
In December (topic), I ate a cake (comment).
About cake (topic), I ate one in December (comment).
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How about:
12gatu ni wa keeki wo tabemashita.
I ate cake *in December*. (focus on the time the cake was eaten - cake selected from among others, probably).
keeki wa 12gatu ni tabemashita.
Cake, at least, I ate in December. ("I ate cake in December (and I'm not talking about anything else which I may or may not have eaten)."
jvp
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Learn Japanese - learnjapanese.poddedcell.net/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi
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English: Rick likes tenis.
Japanese: rick wa tenisu ga suki da.
Translation: Rick (=TOPIC) tenis (=SUBJECT) likes.
How can you just make a pronouncement that Rick is not the subject of the sentence? Tennis is the direct object. It is the thing that receives the action of the verb (like) initiated by the subject (Rick).
I mean, you can say that Rick is not the subject, but he really is.
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Yes, you could say that "Rick is the subject" here, but it's best to avoid using terms created for analyzing European languages to analyze non-European languages. Doing so avoids confusion and promotes a better understanding of the non-European language. "Rick is the subject" carries with it a number of highly inaccurate assumptions when studying Japanese. It's like trying to use a chisel to cut glass, or a knife to loosen a screw; wrong tool for the job.
"Tennis" is not the thing that receives the action of the verb "like" in the original Japanese sentence! First off, "like" is not a verb in Japanese, it's a na-nominal (a "noun"). Tennis is the affect, the "subject matter" of the liking (which occurs naturally, not having been done or created by anyone in particular, though here it is associated with Rick, who has that feeling towards tennis). "Liking" is, actually, an affective condition. Since English grammar lacks the "affect" this is probably the single most difficult grammatical aspect of Japanese for us to grasp. As geeks, it may be best to analogize to computer languages and keep away from the miresome "subject/object" debate which just bogs things down by forcing us to use inaccurate terms.
Technically stated, "Rick wa tenisu ga suki desu" states something like "As for Rick, tennis is the affect of his liking." The liking of tennis is a condition over which he has no direct control.
jvp
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Learn Japanese: learnjapanese.poddedcell.net/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi
"Subject" is a technical word, in linguistics, with a specific meaning that is tightly tied to European-language based grammatical analysis.
We were raised being told that sentences always have a subject and a verb (not really accurate, but ok - what about: "Eat!"?). Why would a language that evolved 10,000 miles away share the same ideas as those in Europe?
Using words that come from an analysis of western languages to describe non-western languages is the equivalent of trying to teach, say, a stack-based language (like Forth) using the terms that apply to proper technical description of Perl, or vice versa. Doing this would make the learning of either language unnecessarily difficult and require inclusion of numerous strange "exceptions."
In large part, this is why Japanese is called "The Devil's Language." In actuality it is very clearly organized with virtually no exceptions to any of its very strict grammatical rules. English pales in comparison - riddled with exceptions and arbitrary usages as she is.
"Topic" is just a way to try and escape the obvious problem (that we seem to have two "subjects" here). What's needed is a different perspective, not a strange hair-splitting act.
jvp
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Learn Japanese - learnjapanese.poddedcell.net/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi
This is close, but not accurate.
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English: Rick likes tenis.
Japanese: rick wa tenisu ga suki da.
Translation: Rick (=TOPIC) tenis (=SUBJECT) likes.
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A proper, technically accurate, English equivalent would be something like "Rick (at least) likes tennis" or "As for Rick (and I'm not talking about anyone else) likes tennis" or even "Rick (compared to unnamed others) likes tennis."
Tennis here is NOT the subject. (If anyone/anything is the 'subject' then it has to be RICK!) "Subject" is a word that only applies to European languages and is useless outside of that framework.
Tennis here is the "AFFECT" for like. English does not have affects (though you can find them in mathematics and when studying linguistics). "Tennis is the 'subject matter'" is reasonably accurate, but it's not "the subject".
Tennis is that which is acted upon by the liking. More technically (quoting from 'Step Up Nihongo' here, which I edited) "the [affective] predicate expresses some state or happening which occurs without someone choosing or deciding that it be so." Rick did not choose to like tennis, he just likes it. That's what the 'ga' indicates. Full coverage of the use of "ga" is a bit more involved, but in this case we should be complete here.
See my thread here regarding "Japanese has no 'subject' or 'object'" for more.
jvp
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learn japanese: learnjapanese.poddedcell.net/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi
In Japanese you *never* need to include something that is known through context. It can always be dropped (assumed to be understood) and generally is so dropped when natives are talking to each other. Westerners feel that this lacks clarity and that Japanese is "fuzzy."
... etc.). Ending predicates with "nda" or "ttyatta" (instead of 'ta') also connote emotions. The first says, "it's that ... (which explains something obvious in the context)" and the second is equivalent to "and that explains why I'm happy/sad/angry/frustrated." The grammatical patterns themselves carry emotional content, which is left unspoken.
o m.cgi/
But, Japanese is *FAR* more precise than Western languages in many, many areas. Our languages tell us nothing about the speakers, for instance. You can write down what several Japanese people are saying and show it to other Japanese people and they will be able to tell you, with quite reasonable accuracy, which of the speakers were men or women, what the relative ages of the speakers were, and in cases involving multiple "groups" who was in which group and, depending on how much material you have, what their relationships to each other were in terms of social hierarchy as well (both within and without the groups).
Note that this whole interaction will not include any gender pronouns ("he" and "she" are rarely used in Japanese) and of course Japanese nouns/verbs/adjectives have no gender connotations so all of this information is not being picked up through things like that either. The variations and gradations in politeness will indicate everything - acquiring this skill is a necessary task for students of Japanese.
In this respect English is so vague as to be utterly useless. And the needless repetition of subject matter and objects? A waste of breath.
Also, Japanese words generally have an "ura" (back-side) to them that has some sort of emotional connotation. This makes the language very interesting. In English if I say, "I bought it" then the only way I can tell you anything about how I feel is by changing my enunciation/emphasis on certain words. If I'm mad about having bought it I might have to yell! In Japanese changing one's tone of voice is completely unnecessary. (Your boss could chew you out - a real reaming - without raising his tone at all, as an example.)
"Katyatta!" "katta no desu" "kattyattandayo" "katta sa" "kattyattanda" "kaimashita yo" "kaimashita" are all, basically "bought it" and here we assume that the buyer is known through context (you're standing next to your new car for instance talking to someone). We haven't even included any of the numerous words that indicate "I" ('ore', 'boku', 'watashi', 'watakushi', 'atashi',
"ore, kattyattandayo" is very very different from "watashi, kaimashita" but the difference is less one of meaning and more one of social positioning, politeness and intimacy/revelation of emotions. In the first I can tell you, without any other information, that the person speaking is not talking to his teacher, or even to an older neighbor. Possibly not even to an older in-group member (depends on the traditional-ness of the group itself). The latter is more likely a woman, or the person addressed quite senior to the speaker. The first one means the guy speaking is probably psyched, or alternatively pissed, about having bought the thing (and he views the buying as fully completed). In the second, the lady (probably anyhow) is merely stating that she has bought it, without revealing much about her emotional state regarding the purchase.
jvp
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Learn Japanese: http://learnjapanese.poddedcell.net/cgi-bin/blosx
Proper use of the "passive voice" in Japanese is actually quite advanced - generally only found among upper intermediate or advanced students. The passive performs several functions in Japanese that are not found in English.
... ))
It can be used to indicate respect, to insult, or to indicate that something unwanted happened! These last two are actually the same thing, though that might not immediately be obvious.
"Itsu Tokyo ikaremashita ka" ("When did you go to Tokyo (politely)?")
Here the passive is applied to "ikimashita" which is the standard way of saying "went" in "desu/masu style"). This type of usage is very commonly used when first meeting people as a polite way of asking relatively direct questions (note then that it can't be used in situations where you can't ask direct questions of someone). When I was studying in Japan I found that peers in age would very frequently do the "getting to know you" type of questions using this style of politeness. It's not over-the-top, but it's polite enough that you can use it very safely and still not sound overly stiff (learning this sort of balancing act is one of the difficulties we face, as English native, when learning Japanese).
Regarding the "insulting" or "unwanted happening" usage of the passive we look at:
"hoka no hito ni, suwaremashita yo" (Someone else sat there (I'm telling you) (and it sucked
Here, the person who did the sitting is indicated by that versatile location marker "ni" and we know that the person doing the talking was "negatively affected by a sitting." That's actually a very precise translation of the sentence, unwieldy as it sounds in English.
Another one: "sono osushi wa, dareka ni taberaretandayo!" (That sushi (we both know of) was eaten by someone (dammit!)" More technically accurate: "I was negatively affected by an eating (by someone) of that sushi (and that explains my current state)!"
DANGER: Whether you are using "meiwaku ukemi" (troublesome passive voice) or honorific passive voice is indicated by PARTICLE choice!
"Sensei ga koraremashita"
"Sensei ni koraremashita"
You pretty much have to translate both of these, at least colloquially, as "the teacher came (here)."
The first one gets you brownie points (or at least keeps you out of trouble).
The second one might get you in deep miso.
jvp