Ok, I stand corrected - 15th century puts it 700 years ago. From elsewhere on the 'net... "unlike almost every other alphabet in the world, the Korean alphabet did not evolve. It was invented in 1443 (promulgated in 1446) by a team of linguists and intellectuals commissioned by King Sejong the Great."
My comments concerning English versus Korean are based on the differences in how the mouth, tongue, pallate, throat and nasal cavities are employed. While native English speakers are capable of making individual sounds, the correct sounds needed to imitate a native Korean speaker require distinctly different combinations of throat and tongue, using the rear of the mouth, instead of the teeth, as an example. Koreans rarely combine the tongue and front teeth when making the short list of sounds needed to express themselves - native English speakers, however, (USA) rely constantly on THIS TYPE of lip, front teeth and tip of tongue expression. For a native english speaker to sound like a Korean to a Korean takes time and practice, as the use of the tongue in the back of the throat and softer tones made with lips, tongue and nasal breathing are not something their mouths are used to.
Beyond the date, the rest if your rattling, however, is anecdotal and apparently suffers from your creative imagination:)
More from the net, such as Wikipedia... "The Korean alphabet, invented in the years 1443-46, is the only true alphabet native to the Far East." Not derived, evolved, bastardized or co-mingled.
The Korean script which is now generally called Han-gul was invented in 1443 under the reign of Hing Sejong (r. 1418-1450), the fourth king of the Choson Dynasty. It was then called Hunmin Chong-um, or proper sounds to instruct the people. However, evidence for a script version did not appear until 1446 when Hunmin Chong-um appeared in a written document. The motivation behind the invention of the Korean script, according to King Sejong's preface to the above book, was to enable the Korean people to write their own language without the use of Chinese characters. Until the introduction of Hunmin Chong-um, Chinese characters were used by the upper classes, and Idu letters, a kind of Chinese-based Korean character system, were used by the populace. There also seems to have been a second motivation behind the development of Korean script: to represent the "proper" sound associated with each Chinese character.
In attempting to invent a Korean writing system, King Sejong and the scholars who assisted him probably looked to several writing systems known to them at the time, such as Chinese old seal characters, the Uighur script and the Mongolian scripts. The system that they came up with, however, is predominantly based upon their phonological studies. Above all, they developed a theory of tripartite division of the syllable into initial, medial and final, as opposed to the bipartite division of traditional Chinese phonology.
The initial sounds (consonants) are represented by 17 letters of which there are five basic forms. The other initial letters were derived by adding strokes to the basic letters. No letters were invented for the final sounds, the initial letters being used for that purpose. The original Humin Chong-um text also explains that the medial sounds (vowels) are represented by 11 letters of which there are three basic forms.
After the promulgation of the Korean alphabet, its popularity gradually increased, particularly in modern times, to the point where it has replaced Chinese characters as the primary writing system altogether.
One of the more interesting characteristics of the Korean script is its syllabic grouping of the initial, medial and final letters. However, the Korean script is essentially different from such syllabic writing systems as Japanese Kana. It is an alphabetic system which is characterized by syllabic grouping.
Languages are 'derived', sure - they evolve as derivations of other languages and/or common usage that pushes some words into popularity while others fall into history. All languages but one...
The Korean language that has been in use for the last four hundred years is the only 'human' invented language on the planet. At one time, when the country was unified by one King, it became clear that the multiplicity of dialects in use around the country were barriers prohibiting trade, mobility, communication, learning from each other, etc.
The top thinkers were gathered and ordered to design a language that was simple to learn and speak...read and write. Once this was done, the King simply decreed that all citizens adopt it, shedding their separate dialects.
Of course, foreigners still need to train their tongues to make correct sounds, but if you already speak Chinese or Japanese, as examples, you can pick Korean up in short order. Reading and writing are similarly learned.
My point is that the future of language lies not only in continued evolution. What say we follow the Korean lead and build a new one everyone can use...or perhaps just use Korean:)
"As computers become more adept at extrapolating data of different types, your identity isn't safe unless you completely cover all those identifying features.""
New laws were passed today, making it a felony to obscure, obfuscate, scramble, cover or otherwise purposely mask your identity by modifying a digital image for the purpose of avoiding identification by law enforcement agencies.
Two years ago, authorities in Paris uncovered a ticketing scheme that had thrived for years and sluiced off more than a million euros involving the Eiffel Tower.
As long as there is commodity demand, there will be someone short-cutting the process for their own advantage.
Sound the alarm? Been asleep for a while or what...?
The alarm went off more than ten years ago when Apple and Tower Records courted each other to sell music online. Apple wanted to supply the hardware/software and Tower planned to run the online store. Tower had the credit card backend and access to the MUSE database.
"The six officials were publicly chastised for editing hundreds of Wikipedia entries during work hours."
I tried to get someone to listen. Take away the vending machines selling high school girl's used underwear in the Ginza and it is going to mean trouble, I said, big trouble - but noooo...
"The Shinkansen puts any other public transportation I've ever been on to shame..."
From inside, it is hard to tell you are even moving - you need the readouts and a look out the window to be sure. From the outside, things are a bit different. I was on a platform one time, several hundred meters away from a tunnel, when a Shinkansen emerged full speed...the salarymen simply kept reading their newspapers and reached for something to hold on to. As the train blasts from the tunnel, your skin crawls in reaction to the altered ion field that reaches you before the actual train whips past. The train appears to lean into the corner as it and 1,000 passengers fly past (the tracks are banked, not the train) and the whole thing is over just as quickly as it began...
"compared the fiber efforts to the push for the Shinkansen bullet-train network in the 1960s, when profit was secondary to the need for faster travel."
Profits and/or speed were not the drivers as claimed. Much of the construction was financed by a US$80 million loan from the World Bank. USD$80 mil in 1960 dollars is approx. 1/2 billion in today's money.
The initial project was originally discussed in the 1930's with construction beginning in 1959 - the Tokaido Shinkansen started running on October 1, 1964, in time for the Tokyo Olympics. National pride was (and still is) the driver, not the need for speed...
Notice that China is following a similar process, with the Maglev in Shanghai running at 433 kph and drawing significant attention as the 2008 Olympics in China are just around the corner.
Also, note that "Shinkansen bullet-train" is redundant - 'bullet train' is a literal translation, thank you very much.
"Notebooks break, they get lost, and they are replaced frequently, so the cheaper, the better."
They also represent a dieing phase of mobile-hardware evolution.
By the time OLPC positives coalesce, apps & data for the masses will all be ubiquitously net-available, meaning anything more than a terminal will be/is outdated.
Of course, the OLPC is still a viable tool for the left-behinds.
Dave Clark an 'audiophile'...? The idiot writes more like a monkey on prozak...
"I was sent a 4-foot single run pair and after a short break-in...
They got to work and make music that is in balance with my system. After all, we listen to a system and not just a bunch of stuff tethered together with some wire. You never really listen to just a cable, but how it interacts with the rest of the system as a whole. Yeah, cables are components too, so we got to find the right ones to make things settle-in just so.
Yeah, I found certain areas to criticize--the reader will read that as having faults or shortcomings, but they ain't really...
Okay so the Anjous are rather pricey at $2750 for a meter pair, but they are impeccably built, sound quite nice, and should keep you happy for a quite a while."
....ouch.... Good, bad or otherwise, the outfit that sent this moron hardware to review should be embarrassed and issue a memo to never deal with him again.
"The "skate through" description applies to an MBA in nearly every country in the english speaking part of the world."
I don't think so - not to the degree that I am describing.
Unless you are directly familiar with the situation in India, as an example, you are simply not aware of the specifics there... I'm talking idiots that couldn't survive a week in a US HS - my experience is direct and not anecdotal, by the way, after interviewing nearly 3,000 in 2006, just to glean 50 (Indian Engineers) to bring to China. And even the 50 'fininalists' were a stretch...
"All the students come here to study and there are only 7 US citizens in the engineering program this year. Why is that?"
Less than 20% of the MBA's in India are employable. They skate thru school, sharing test answers and learning little. The system there makes no effort except to get them out the door. The educational system only wants to say how many have been produced, happy to ignore that the certificates are worthless.
The individuals that recognize the travesty and know that the system in the USA is legitimate by comparison, spread the word. The ones that can come over do it for the legitimacy and the true value of an educational system rooted in honesty, hard work and individual betterment.
The scale of the Indian & Chinese populations means that what is a small number over there seems large in comparison here.
The Maglev in Shanghai (built by the Germans) is great fun. The ride takes less than 10 minutes, and you hit a top speed of 433kph - smooth as glass.
You can frequently find Japanese tour groups that will ride back & forth between the airport and downtown, like it was a theme park ride:)
When the Shanghai Maglev first went online, ridership was fairly low. The ticket cost is a bit high in local terms... Today, with the Olympics right around the corner, ridership means the train is usually full.
Plans are in place to build the next one as a longer leg, perhaps between Shanghai and Nanjing.
I run a nice little OSS item by the name of 'MyTunesRSS'. MTRSS scans your iTunes library, fires up a little Bonjour webserver & bam.
Any device that runs a web client can login and browse by different schemes. You can click and listen to existing playlists or create new ones... or click and download via RSS. MTRSS will even zip up files you queue for download and send that one file along asap.
Trivial, actually, especially since Apple did such a bronzed job of building RSS capability into iTunes:)
There is a trimmed-down free version and a full-featured paid license version that includes these features:
Flash player for playback directly in your browser
Unlimited user accounts (free edition: 3 user)
Unlimited watch folder (free edition: 1 folder)
Run MyTunesRSS without GUI and configure it via JMX
Create and use a mytunesrss.com account
Upload files to the server via the web interface
Optional download limit per day/week/month for a user
Set maximum number of files in a ZIP archive per user
User may (optionally) change his password in the web interface
Discover other MyTunesRSS server on the local network
Slashdot Mirror
"Why does "The Steve" need to bash M$ & Vista at every opportunity?
C o m p e t i t i o n - the American way.
Reminding your core customers why your product is better than the crap sold by the other guys is not new.
Maybe you'd prefer no advertising at all - wouldn't we all...talk to MS about that idea and let us know when they stop laughing.
Please see reply above, thanks.
Ok, I stand corrected - 15th century puts it 700 years ago. From elsewhere on the 'net... "unlike almost every other alphabet in the world, the Korean alphabet did not evolve. It was invented in 1443 (promulgated in 1446) by a team of linguists and intellectuals commissioned by King Sejong the Great."
:)
My comments concerning English versus Korean are based on the differences in how the mouth, tongue, pallate, throat and nasal cavities are employed. While native English speakers are capable of making individual sounds, the correct sounds needed to imitate a native Korean speaker require distinctly different combinations of throat and tongue, using the rear of the mouth, instead of the teeth, as an example. Koreans rarely combine the tongue and front teeth when making the short list of sounds needed to express themselves - native English speakers, however, (USA) rely constantly on THIS TYPE of lip, front teeth and tip of tongue expression. For a native english speaker to sound like a Korean to a Korean takes time and practice, as the use of the tongue in the back of the throat and softer tones made with lips, tongue and nasal breathing are not something their mouths are used to.
Beyond the date, the rest if your rattling, however, is anecdotal and apparently suffers from your creative imagination
More from the net, such as Wikipedia... "The Korean alphabet, invented in the years 1443-46, is the only true alphabet native to the Far East." Not derived, evolved, bastardized or co-mingled.
The Korean script which is now generally called Han-gul was invented in 1443 under the reign of Hing Sejong (r. 1418-1450), the fourth king of the Choson Dynasty. It was then called Hunmin Chong-um, or proper sounds to instruct the people. However, evidence for a script version did not appear until 1446 when Hunmin Chong-um appeared in a written document. The motivation behind the invention of the Korean script, according to King Sejong's preface to the above book, was to enable the Korean people to write their own language without the use of Chinese characters. Until the introduction of Hunmin Chong-um, Chinese characters were used by the upper classes, and Idu letters, a kind of Chinese-based Korean character system, were used by the populace. There also seems to have been a second motivation behind the development of Korean script: to represent the "proper" sound associated with each Chinese character.
In attempting to invent a Korean writing system, King Sejong and the scholars who assisted him probably looked to several writing systems known to them at the time, such as Chinese old seal characters, the Uighur script and the Mongolian scripts. The system that they came up with, however, is predominantly based upon their phonological studies. Above all, they developed a theory of tripartite division of the syllable into initial, medial and final, as opposed to the bipartite division of traditional Chinese phonology.
The initial sounds (consonants) are represented by 17 letters of which there are five basic forms. The other initial letters were derived by adding strokes to the basic letters. No letters were invented for the final sounds, the initial letters being used for that purpose. The original Humin Chong-um text also explains that the medial sounds (vowels) are represented by 11 letters of which there are three basic forms.
After the promulgation of the Korean alphabet, its popularity gradually increased, particularly in modern times, to the point where it has replaced Chinese characters as the primary writing system altogether.
One of the more interesting characteristics of the Korean script is its syllabic grouping of the initial, medial and final letters. However, the Korean script is essentially different from such syllabic writing systems as Japanese Kana. It is an alphabetic system which is characterized by syllabic grouping.
We have an announcement before we get back to the event, so everyone...hey...please listen up. This is important.
The red-dot acid being passed around is B A D - avoid the red-dot acid!
It's a bummer, I know - just don't use it, ok...? Try the blue, I guess. Now, back to the show...
Languages are 'derived', sure - they evolve as derivations of other languages and/or common usage that pushes some words into popularity while others fall into history. All languages but one...
:)
The Korean language that has been in use for the last four hundred years is the only 'human' invented language on the planet. At one time, when the country was unified by one King, it became clear that the multiplicity of dialects in use around the country were barriers prohibiting trade, mobility, communication, learning from each other, etc.
The top thinkers were gathered and ordered to design a language that was simple to learn and speak...read and write. Once this was done, the King simply decreed that all citizens adopt it, shedding their separate dialects.
Of course, foreigners still need to train their tongues to make correct sounds, but if you already speak Chinese or Japanese, as examples, you can pick Korean up in short order. Reading and writing are similarly learned.
My point is that the future of language lies not only in continued evolution. What say we follow the Korean lead and build a new one everyone can use...or perhaps just use Korean
"It's already a crime to tamper with evidence."
:)
Looking like I might do something bad later (blanked out face on photo) isn't evidence that I will...not yet, at least
"As computers become more adept at extrapolating data of different types, your identity isn't safe unless you completely cover all those identifying features.""
New laws were passed today, making it a felony to obscure, obfuscate, scramble, cover or otherwise purposely mask your identity by modifying a digital image for the purpose of avoiding identification by law enforcement agencies.
"Since all those companies started back before the web bubble burst, what's left for us geeks now?"
Clearly you've been given the gift of 'imagination'. Please let us know when you intend to unwrap it and take it out of the box...
Two years ago, authorities in Paris uncovered a ticketing scheme that had thrived for years and sluiced off more than a million euros involving the Eiffel Tower.
As long as there is commodity demand, there will be someone short-cutting the process for their own advantage.
Sound the alarm? Been asleep for a while or what...?
The alarm went off more than ten years ago when Apple and Tower Records courted each other to sell music online. Apple wanted to supply the hardware/software and Tower planned to run the online store. Tower had the credit card backend and access to the MUSE database.
"The six officials were publicly chastised for editing hundreds of Wikipedia entries during work hours."
I tried to get someone to listen. Take away the vending machines selling high school girl's used underwear in the Ginza and it is going to mean trouble, I said, big trouble - but noooo...
"The Shinkansen puts any other public transportation I've ever been on to shame..."
From inside, it is hard to tell you are even moving - you need the readouts and a look out the window to be sure. From the outside, things are a bit different. I was on a platform one time, several hundred meters away from a tunnel, when a Shinkansen emerged full speed...the salarymen simply kept reading their newspapers and reached for something to hold on to. As the train blasts from the tunnel, your skin crawls in reaction to the altered ion field that reaches you before the actual train whips past. The train appears to lean into the corner as it and 1,000 passengers fly past (the tracks are banked, not the train) and the whole thing is over just as quickly as it began...
"compared the fiber efforts to the push for the Shinkansen bullet-train network in the 1960s, when profit was secondary to the need for faster travel."
Profits and/or speed were not the drivers as claimed. Much of the construction was financed by a US$80 million loan from the World Bank. USD$80 mil in 1960 dollars is approx. 1/2 billion in today's money.
The initial project was originally discussed in the 1930's with construction beginning in 1959 - the Tokaido Shinkansen started running on October 1, 1964, in time for the Tokyo Olympics. National pride was (and still is) the driver, not the need for speed...
Notice that China is following a similar process, with the Maglev in Shanghai running at 433 kph and drawing significant attention as the 2008 Olympics in China are just around the corner.
Also, note that "Shinkansen bullet-train" is redundant - 'bullet train' is a literal translation, thank you very much.
"Notebooks break, they get lost, and they are replaced frequently, so the cheaper, the better."
They also represent a dieing phase of mobile-hardware evolution.
By the time OLPC positives coalesce, apps & data for the masses will all be ubiquitously net-available, meaning anything more than a terminal will be/is outdated.
Of course, the OLPC is still a viable tool for the left-behinds.
That's right! Cry0-treated!! Of course :)
Dave Clark an 'audiophile'...? The idiot writes more like a monkey on prozak...
....ouch.... Good, bad or otherwise, the outfit that sent this moron hardware to review should be embarrassed and issue a memo to never deal with him again.
"I was sent a 4-foot single run pair and after a short break-in...
They got to work and make music that is in balance with my system. After all, we listen to a system and not just a bunch of stuff tethered together with some wire. You never really listen to just a cable, but how it interacts with the rest of the system as a whole. Yeah, cables are components too, so we got to find the right ones to make things settle-in just so.
Yeah, I found certain areas to criticize--the reader will read that as having faults or shortcomings, but they ain't really...
Okay so the Anjous are rather pricey at $2750 for a meter pair, but they are impeccably built, sound quite nice, and should keep you happy for a quite a while."
Pollution...?
Personally, I stopped using map-lights years ago - is there a way I can claim retro-carbon credits for that...?
"This is a technology that will remain mired in the mud and never goes anywhere."
That's eh, funny - WiMAX seems to be doing pretty well in China...
"Why Is US Grad School..."
:)
I don't see the word 'post', sorry
"The "skate through" description applies to an MBA in nearly every country in the english speaking part of the world."
I don't think so - not to the degree that I am describing.
Unless you are directly familiar with the situation in India, as an example, you are simply not aware of the specifics there... I'm talking idiots that couldn't survive a week in a US HS - my experience is direct and not anecdotal, by the way, after interviewing nearly 3,000 in 2006, just to glean 50 (Indian Engineers) to bring to China. And even the 50 'fininalists' were a stretch...
"All the students come here to study and there are only 7 US citizens in the engineering program this year. Why is that?"
Less than 20% of the MBA's in India are employable. They skate thru school, sharing test answers and learning little. The system there makes no effort except to get them out the door. The educational system only wants to say how many have been produced, happy to ignore that the certificates are worthless.
The individuals that recognize the travesty and know that the system in the USA is legitimate by comparison, spread the word. The ones that can come over do it for the legitimacy and the true value of an educational system rooted in honesty, hard work and individual betterment.
The scale of the Indian & Chinese populations means that what is a small number over there seems large in comparison here.
"a relatively simple and cheap technology "
Apparently a bit TOO simple and a bit TOO cheap...
The Maglev in Shanghai (built by the Germans) is great fun. The ride takes less than 10 minutes, and you hit a top speed of 433kph - smooth as glass.
:)
You can frequently find Japanese tour groups that will ride back & forth between the airport and downtown, like it was a theme park ride
When the Shanghai Maglev first went online, ridership was fairly low. The ticket cost is a bit high in local terms... Today, with the Olympics right around the corner, ridership means the train is usually full.
Plans are in place to build the next one as a longer leg, perhaps between Shanghai and Nanjing.
To brick or not to brick...
Not the cheapest, but XP can be run on a MacBook, ya' know...
I run a nice little OSS item by the name of 'MyTunesRSS'. MTRSS scans your iTunes library, fires up a little Bonjour webserver & bam.
Any device that runs a web client can login and browse by different schemes. You can click and listen to existing playlists or create new ones... or click and download via RSS. MTRSS will even zip up files you queue for download and send that one file along asap.
Trivial, actually, especially since Apple did such a bronzed job of building RSS capability into iTunes
There is a trimmed-down free version and a full-featured paid license version that includes these features: