Buzzwords become invented whenever someone is so proud of their idea that it requires an ineloquent term to sumamrize it, tone it down, or otherwise disguise and dull the idea. Never mind that this idea is obvious to anyone who knows what they are talking about.
Examples: Deliverables - this is used to emphasize that results are desired, not partial completion. People used to call this "results." You know, like "I want RESULTS, Steve!" Now it's replaced with a smug manager talking about "deliverables."
Solutions - this used to be called "services" or whichever verb described what you were actually doing. This is great because it reminds me of a swear word - you can just use it as a crutch instead of figuring out what you really want to say.
Mission Critical - this used to be "critical" or just "really important." Now the manager gets to pretend he's on the Apollo 13 Mission Control team rallying to get the boys home. If someone says this, they are most likely contemplating saying "Failure is not an option" next.
Buzzwords make us puke because they are disguising, globbing, dressing up, or otherwise obscuring perfectly good, straightforward language. Sometimes it's to make things happy-feely ('fired' -> 'terminated' -> 'let go', 'laid off' -> 'downsized' -> 'restructured', 'crippled' -> 'disabled' -> 'physically challenged'), sometimes it's done to escape connotations of the normal word ('results' vs 'deliverables'), but we abhor these kinds of things because they are not rigorous. Legalese is related, but legalese is far too rigorous. (Although a lawyer would love to confuse people like c-speak has.)
Jargon is a different beast - it introduces words where there was truly no word to represent the concept, or it introduces words that add a connotation (hatred, approval, or even fun) to previous words. The difference between this and c-speak is that the listener understands these connotations fully. c-speak is inherently deceptive because it denies connections with previous words ("no, you weren't laid off, we just restructured!"). Eventually c-speak might be introduced into English, but by then it is generally used without said deception (see opportunity, disabled). That's why new ones have to be invented all the time, because they have lost their disguise.
For actually practicing, I suggest getting Audacity. Though while it is a piece of shite for serious recording purposes, if you open up an MP3 with a difficult guitar passage, you can slow it down, figure it out, then practice along with the music making it faster and faster until you get up to full speed. SlowCD works good for this too.
When you write songs, it helps a lot to have a multitrack recorder with you. For the love of god, do not use Audacity for this purpose. Use Ardour, which is about a million light years ahead of Audacity in terms of stability and usability. I can't believe this program isn't more well known. Ardour Ardour Ardour. Use this as a scratchpad to test out ideas, melodies, harmonies, and then you can even use it to make your finished product.
The only other software that might be useful is tuning software, and I'm not aware of any available for Linux.
> He had to drop out of school due to harassment.
What, just from his classmates? 1) he was probably already getting that and 2) what a wimp. I've been there before, and you didn't see me dropping out of school.
> He still gets approached by people on the streets about it.
Poor baby...
> His parents had to hire a private tutor for him.
See above point about dropping out of school.
> He ended up on anti-depression medication.
Clearly he had self-esteem issues before this happened. Maybe it was for the better.
Tool does thigns like this, but this kind of non-traditional rock began years ago when the "progressive rock" genre began. And so do millions of other independent artists. A lot of popular rock songs are in 3/4, the Mission Impossible theme is in 5/4, etc.
There's an entire genre called "math rock" that does exactly this - makes music in weird time signatures on purpose. Most recently, Mars Volta does things like this. Some times it sounds good (Dismemberment Plan, usually) and other times it's just ridiculous.
Of course, I believe moving it out of 4/4 makes it techinically not rock and roll anymore.
You may jest, but switching to a Japanese keyboard from an English one sucks: - The space bar is super-tiny, leading me to switch to Japanese input mode toof. - The " is where @ was - The ' is where & was - The & is where ^ was - The ( and ) are both shifted over one key - The * is where the " was - The : is where the ' was - The + is where the : was - The ~ is where the + was - The ^ is where the = was - The = is where the _ was - The _ is to the RIGHT of the ? - The \ is the shift of the _ - There is a \ to the RIGHT of ^ (but marked as a Yen symbol) - The | is the shift of that \ - The ] is to the RIGHT of the : - The [ is where the ] was - The ` is where the { was - The @ is where the [ was
Certainly your speaking then might not have been native - speaking is difficult, if not impossible to do at a 'native' level if you're not born and raised in the country.
But JLPT 1 is hard. The writing portion is the part of the test that native speakers find hard - many Japanese people are not good at reading and writing. I've asked many of them personally. It makes sense too - how many native English speakers can't spell for shit? Some people I know who are really good at Japanese have trouble with JLPT 1. If you pass JLPT 1, maybe you aren't a native-level speaker, but you are probably a native-level listener, reader, and writer. And it makes sense, having apparently studied for three years to make the bridge between JLPT 1 and 2.
Are you kidding?? JLPT level 1 is considered difficult for Japanese speakers. Perhaps you took a different level of JLPT. JLPT level 1 is about as close as you can get to a testable native level. Also, maybe the confusion is that JLPT doesn't test speaking ability, which generally comes along with listening. I can actually see how that might be different at a university.
You are about to learn a difficult language. The basics, and even the way of thinking can be quite different than English. I studied for about 3 years, took 2 years off and forgot a lot of it, then studied another year, and now I work a tech job in Japan.
At the same time, don't let Japanese scare you. The best asset for learning a language is confidence. If you don't have any confidence, you won't be able to communicate or learn any language.
1) If you can, take a course at your University. This is the best way to start learning. If you're lucky, you'll get a rigorous course. If you're unlucky, you'll get a very easy course that uses romaji. The key to learning the language is to push yourself. I learned at University of Chicago, which has one of the best (and most difficult) Japanese programs (I did terribly:). If you can't take a course, try and get "Communicating in Japanese" by Hiroyoshi Noto. Make sure you get the tapes, too. It's an excellent book, and will take more time but teach you more than, say, "Japanese for Busy People."
2) Learn Kana right away. You will be sorry if reading kana doesn't come as second nature to you after a year. Make sure you begin at least studying Kanji, too. The sooner you start learning Kanji, the less scary it will be later. (check out the book "Kanji and Kana"!)
3) Be prepared for a long road. You should ideally spend at least 2 years studying the language before you can even think about being "fluent." Then, if you want to be able to speak the language, you should spend a good amount of time in Japan. Maybe you'll learn faster (some people have a natural ability for picking up languages), but you might learn more slowly, too. If you have the time and resources, there are many schools in Japan where that you can study Japanese for anywhere from 4 weeks to a year.
4) a) If you want to learn Japanese because of anime, don't worry about it. Getting interested in learning a language just because you enjoy something that country produces is no worse than getting interested because you want to make money, or something. Just make sure you realize there are other interesting things about Japan. Get involved in really learning about the whole culture. I find talking with Japanese people is much more revealing than reading about it somewhere. b) If you want to read manga or watch anime, first off, realize that ou need a very strong Japanese base to understand them in the first place. There's a lot of stuff you're just not going to get unless you really have a strong background in Japanese. It'll probably be a year or two (at least it was for me) before you'll actually be able to use the simplest anime or manga for practice. But if you do use it to study, don't worry about ruining your skills somehow. Major universities use Miyazaki films to teach courses. Just be aware that they do use some words or phrases that will get you laughed at in everyday conversation. For example, you may end up sounding either like a little girl or a stupid high school kid.
So other than that, the most important advice is of course, Practice, Practice, Practice. If you do go it on your own, I wish you best of luck, and I warn you that you will need much self-motivation to get anywhere, because it will take a lot of time.
You're going to get told this by everyone commenting: do. Just do. You'll pick up on it very fast.
Second, you have to have some ideas. Don't go out there with the mind set that you have to make something everyone will use. If it can make your life easier or amuse you, that's enough reason to start working on it. Even if software already exists that does what you want, chances are it won't do it specifically enough or it doesn't do it exactly how you want.
Third, re-write it. If you get something finished, I guarantee you won't be completely happy with the code the first time around. This will teach you a lot about your code.
Fourth, document it. Maybe this can go before or after three, but you'll learn a lot here, too.
Don't let them get behind in the project at all. You've got to keep them updated on what code you've done, how it works, etc. Let them ask questions and get up to speed before you move on, and maybe copious amounts of correct comments and documentation wouldn't hurt either.
I did a very difficult programming assignment during my undergrad days, and my parter didn't pull their weight in the slightest. The only part of the project that was broke was the small part my partner did by themselves. And my partner wasn't even worse of a coder than I was - he simply got behind and spent all his time reading the code that I had written instead of writing it himself.
Secondly, practice good programming and make sure you both have a very good image of the design of your project. If you have that to a fine enough degree (though you don't need to get as ridiculous as NASA), it will make it easier for you to spot mistakes that your partner has made (and ones that you have).
I didn't say I was gloating (I haven't ever installed an MTA!), but 1 bug that can be easily worked around (instead of requiring a patch) which 99% of the users won't even come across, in 9 years is awfully impressive.
Because when I use a scripting language without a nice implementation like Perl or PHP i have:
insert into tablename (field1, field2, field3, field4, field5, field6, field7, field8, field9, field10, field11) values ('hello', 'hi'.$complicated_stuff'... )
And it all starts to look like line noise, and if i insert or remove a row or column, it can be confusing to have to separate the variable names and variable values like that.
Another thing that always got me about SQL: Why is the UPDATE syntax TOTALLY DIFFERENT from the INSERT syntax?
insert into table set field=42; ERROR: parser: parse error at or near "set" at character
When I have a table with a lot of columns, I don't feel like counting fields. This allows far too many bugs into queries (oops you got rid of a value on accident! oops you transposed two on accident...etc...). This problem is mostly taken care of by modern DB packages, but still...
(Disclaimer: I have but the smallest experience with Postgres.)
Reading something that is supposed to engage your imagination for a long amount of time on an electronic screen is really really awful. So I personally will never read a fiction e-book. I generally won't read non-fiction either. I will always print out technical papers and dense material. The only exceptions are short and easier to read pieces - tutorials, Wikipedia, etc. If the material is too dense, it's too hard to read. But if it reads like a chat, or communication instead of Information, then reading on a computer is okay.
I mean, let's face it: paper is clearly the superior technology. There's no real advantage to ebooks except to increase the quantity of media - and we have enough shitty books already. The only function they could really serve is already taken up by the Internet - and that is distributing works by "unknowns" to a target audience. Having ebooks doesn't help these people because the only things ebooks have over current technology is portability and DRM - and I'm willing to bet that when "ebooks" become portable enough to be useful, so will laptops.
eBooks is just one of those 1960 science fiction ideas that seems obvious, but in reality is never going to be something people actually use. Like flying cars.
Yes, but people sure as hell still use cars in New York. In fact, so many do that's why people prefer to take the subway.
Japan I think has a different mindset. How many people in rural areas have the ability to carpool but don't? Japan has railways that will take you to just about anywhere you might possibly want to go in the entire country. America doesn't. There's something impeding the transition from highways to public transit, and it's not necessarily that there's not enough transportation - it's a chicken-egg problem: there's not enough service because there's not enough demand, and there's not enough demand because there's not enough service. I think the underlying issue is that people like their cars so much (why else would they buy an SUV?) that they don't want to give up that freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
Buzzwords become invented whenever someone is so proud of their idea that it requires an ineloquent term to sumamrize it, tone it down, or otherwise disguise and dull the idea. Never mind that this idea is obvious to anyone who knows what they are talking about.
Examples:
Deliverables - this is used to emphasize that results are desired, not partial completion. People used to call this "results." You know, like "I want RESULTS, Steve!" Now it's replaced with a smug manager talking about "deliverables."
Solutions - this used to be called "services" or whichever verb described what you were actually doing. This is great because it reminds me of a swear word - you can just use it as a crutch instead of figuring out what you really want to say.
Mission Critical - this used to be "critical" or just "really important." Now the manager gets to pretend he's on the Apollo 13 Mission Control team rallying to get the boys home. If someone says this, they are most likely contemplating saying "Failure is not an option" next.
Buzzwords make us puke because they are disguising, globbing, dressing up, or otherwise obscuring perfectly good, straightforward language. Sometimes it's to make things happy-feely ('fired' -> 'terminated' -> 'let go', 'laid off' -> 'downsized' -> 'restructured', 'crippled' -> 'disabled' -> 'physically challenged'), sometimes it's done to escape connotations of the normal word ('results' vs 'deliverables'), but we abhor these kinds of things because they are not rigorous. Legalese is related, but legalese is far too rigorous. (Although a lawyer would love to confuse people like c-speak has.)
Jargon is a different beast - it introduces words where there was truly no word to represent the concept, or it introduces words that add a connotation (hatred, approval, or even fun) to previous words. The difference between this and c-speak is that the listener understands these connotations fully. c-speak is inherently deceptive because it denies connections with previous words ("no, you weren't laid off, we just restructured!"). Eventually c-speak might be introduced into English, but by then it is generally used without said deception (see opportunity, disabled). That's why new ones have to be invented all the time, because they have lost their disguise.
(19/3 and 11/3 are not proper time signatures. You probably meant 19/8 or 11/8.)
Oh, if you're talking Windows, then in my opinion you can't beat Goldwave, which is great despite having a nag screen.
For actually practicing, I suggest getting Audacity. Though while it is a piece of shite for serious recording purposes, if you open up an MP3 with a difficult guitar passage, you can slow it down, figure it out, then practice along with the music making it faster and faster until you get up to full speed. SlowCD works good for this too.
When you write songs, it helps a lot to have a multitrack recorder with you. For the love of god, do not use Audacity for this purpose. Use Ardour, which is about a million light years ahead of Audacity in terms of stability and usability. I can't believe this program isn't more well known. Ardour Ardour Ardour. Use this as a scratchpad to test out ideas, melodies, harmonies, and then you can even use it to make your finished product.
The only other software that might be useful is tuning software, and I'm not aware of any available for Linux.
> He had to drop out of school due to harassment. What, just from his classmates? 1) he was probably already getting that and 2) what a wimp. I've been there before, and you didn't see me dropping out of school. > He still gets approached by people on the streets about it. Poor baby... > His parents had to hire a private tutor for him. See above point about dropping out of school. > He ended up on anti-depression medication. Clearly he had self-esteem issues before this happened. Maybe it was for the better.
Tool does thigns like this, but this kind of non-traditional rock began years ago when the "progressive rock" genre began. And so do millions of other independent artists. A lot of popular rock songs are in 3/4, the Mission Impossible theme is in 5/4, etc.
There's an entire genre called "math rock" that does exactly this - makes music in weird time signatures on purpose. Most recently, Mars Volta does things like this. Some times it sounds good (Dismemberment Plan, usually) and other times it's just ridiculous.
Of course, I believe moving it out of 4/4 makes it techinically not rock and roll anymore.
If
you
restrict
your options,
you may be surprised.
You might become more creative.
Because people will ignore it because they don't want to sound like a foreigner.
Forgive me, upon further research, I find that there is no actual writing on the JLPT.
But what is true is that there exist kanji in the 1,945 Joyo Kanji that your average Japanese person cannot write on command.
You may jest, but switching to a Japanese keyboard from an English one sucks:
- The space bar is super-tiny, leading me to switch to Japanese input mode toof.
- The " is where @ was
- The ' is where & was
- The & is where ^ was
- The ( and ) are both shifted over one key
- The * is where the " was
- The : is where the ' was
- The + is where the : was
- The ~ is where the + was
- The ^ is where the = was
- The = is where the _ was
- The _ is to the RIGHT of the ?
- The \ is the shift of the _
- There is a \ to the RIGHT of ^ (but marked as a Yen symbol)
- The | is the shift of that \
- The ] is to the RIGHT of the :
- The [ is where the ] was
- The ` is where the { was
- The @ is where the [ was
ARGH!!!!
Certainly your speaking then might not have been native - speaking is difficult, if not impossible to do at a 'native' level if you're not born and raised in the country.
But JLPT 1 is hard. The writing portion is the part of the test that native speakers find hard - many Japanese people are not good at reading and writing. I've asked many of them personally. It makes sense too - how many native English speakers can't spell for shit? Some people I know who are really good at Japanese have trouble with JLPT 1. If you pass JLPT 1, maybe you aren't a native-level speaker, but you are probably a native-level listener, reader, and writer. And it makes sense, having apparently studied for three years to make the bridge between JLPT 1 and 2.
Otherwise, I don't know what JLPT you're taking.
Are you kidding?? JLPT level 1 is considered difficult for Japanese speakers. Perhaps you took a different level of JLPT. JLPT level 1 is about as close as you can get to a testable native level. Also, maybe the confusion is that JLPT doesn't test speaking ability, which generally comes along with listening. I can actually see how that might be different at a university.
JLPT 4 - Basic Japanese
JLPT 3 - Competency
JLPT 2 - Proficiency
JLPT 1 - Fluency
You are about to learn a difficult language. The basics, and even the way of thinking can be quite different than English. I studied for about 3 years, took 2 years off and forgot a lot of it, then studied another year, and now I work a tech job in Japan.
:). If you can't take a course, try and get "Communicating in Japanese" by Hiroyoshi Noto. Make sure you get the tapes, too. It's an excellent book, and will take more time but teach you more than, say, "Japanese for Busy People."
At the same time, don't let Japanese scare you. The best asset for learning a language is confidence. If you don't have any confidence, you won't be able to communicate or learn any language.
1) If you can, take a course at your University. This is the best way to start learning. If you're lucky, you'll get a rigorous course. If you're unlucky, you'll get a very easy course that uses romaji. The key to learning the language is to push yourself. I learned at University of Chicago, which has one of the best (and most difficult) Japanese programs (I did terribly
2) Learn Kana right away. You will be sorry if reading kana doesn't come as second nature to you after a year. Make sure you begin at least studying Kanji, too. The sooner you start learning Kanji, the less scary it will be later. (check out the book "Kanji and Kana"!)
3) Be prepared for a long road. You should ideally spend at least 2 years studying the language before you can even think about being "fluent." Then, if you want to be able to speak the language, you should spend a good amount of time in Japan. Maybe you'll learn faster (some people have a natural ability for picking up languages), but you might learn more slowly, too. If you have the time and resources, there are many schools in Japan where that you can study Japanese for anywhere from 4 weeks to a year.
4) a) If you want to learn Japanese because of anime, don't worry about it. Getting interested in learning a language just because you enjoy something that country produces is no worse than getting interested because you want to make money, or something. Just make sure you realize there are other interesting things about Japan. Get involved in really learning about the whole culture. I find talking with Japanese people is much more revealing than reading about it somewhere.
b) If you want to read manga or watch anime, first off, realize that ou need a very strong Japanese base to understand them in the first place. There's a lot of stuff you're just not going to get unless you really have a strong background in Japanese. It'll probably be a year or two (at least it was for me) before you'll actually be able to use the simplest anime or manga for practice. But if you do use it to study, don't worry about ruining your skills somehow. Major universities use Miyazaki films to teach courses. Just be aware that they do use some words or phrases that will get you laughed at in everyday conversation. For example, you may end up sounding either like a little girl or a stupid high school kid.
So other than that, the most important advice is of course, Practice, Practice, Practice. If you do go it on your own, I wish you best of luck, and I warn you that you will need much self-motivation to get anywhere, because it will take a lot of time.
You're going to get told this by everyone commenting: do. Just do. You'll pick up on it very fast.
Second, you have to have some ideas. Don't go out there with the mind set that you have to make something everyone will use. If it can make your life easier or amuse you, that's enough reason to start working on it. Even if software already exists that does what you want, chances are it won't do it specifically enough or it doesn't do it exactly how you want.
Third, re-write it. If you get something finished, I guarantee you won't be completely happy with the code the first time around. This will teach you a lot about your code.
Fourth, document it. Maybe this can go before or after three, but you'll learn a lot here, too.
There's actually a NIMH???
These kinds of services have been in available in Japan for a very long time as well.
Don't let them get behind in the project at all. You've got to keep them updated on what code you've done, how it works, etc. Let them ask questions and get up to speed before you move on, and maybe copious amounts of correct comments and documentation wouldn't hurt either.
I did a very difficult programming assignment during my undergrad days, and my parter didn't pull their weight in the slightest. The only part of the project that was broke was the small part my partner did by themselves. And my partner wasn't even worse of a coder than I was - he simply got behind and spent all his time reading the code that I had written instead of writing it himself.
Secondly, practice good programming and make sure you both have a very good image of the design of your project. If you have that to a fine enough degree (though you don't need to get as ridiculous as NASA), it will make it easier for you to spot mistakes that your partner has made (and ones that you have).
I didn't say I was gloating (I haven't ever installed an MTA!), but 1 bug that can be easily worked around (instead of requiring a patch) which 99% of the users won't even come across, in 9 years is awfully impressive.
It's the sound of thousands of qmail users gloating.
Because when I use a scripting language without a nice implementation like Perl or PHP i have: insert into tablename (field1, field2, field3, field4, field5, field6, field7, field8, field9, field10, field11) values ('hello', 'hi'.$complicated_stuff'... ) And it all starts to look like line noise, and if i insert or remove a row or column, it can be confusing to have to separate the variable names and variable values like that. Another thing that always got me about SQL: Why is the UPDATE syntax TOTALLY DIFFERENT from the INSERT syntax?
insert into table set field=42;
ERROR: parser: parse error at or near "set" at character
When I have a table with a lot of columns, I don't feel like counting fields. This allows far too many bugs into queries (oops you got rid of a value on accident! oops you transposed two on accident...etc...). This problem is mostly taken care of by modern DB packages, but still...
(Disclaimer: I have but the smallest experience with Postgres.)
I know it's not unheard of, but exactly HOW does one do it? Methinks most of the credit goes to the parents on this one.
Um, how does one start a company at age 12?
Reading something that is supposed to engage your imagination for a long amount of time on an electronic screen is really really awful. So I personally will never read a fiction e-book. I generally won't read non-fiction either. I will always print out technical papers and dense material. The only exceptions are short and easier to read pieces - tutorials, Wikipedia, etc. If the material is too dense, it's too hard to read. But if it reads like a chat, or communication instead of Information, then reading on a computer is okay.
I mean, let's face it: paper is clearly the superior technology. There's no real advantage to ebooks except to increase the quantity of media - and we have enough shitty books already. The only function they could really serve is already taken up by the Internet - and that is distributing works by "unknowns" to a target audience. Having ebooks doesn't help these people because the only things ebooks have over current technology is portability and DRM - and I'm willing to bet that when "ebooks" become portable enough to be useful, so will laptops.
eBooks is just one of those 1960 science fiction ideas that seems obvious, but in reality is never going to be something people actually use. Like flying cars.
Yes, but people sure as hell still use cars in New York. In fact, so many do that's why people prefer to take the subway.
Japan I think has a different mindset. How many people in rural areas have the ability to carpool but don't? Japan has railways that will take you to just about anywhere you might possibly want to go in the entire country. America doesn't. There's something impeding the transition from highways to public transit, and it's not necessarily that there's not enough transportation - it's a chicken-egg problem: there's not enough service because there's not enough demand, and there's not enough demand because there's not enough service. I think the underlying issue is that people like their cars so much (why else would they buy an SUV?) that they don't want to give up that freedom.