Borrowing writing systems is common and does not mean that the languages are at all related.
And besides, going off on a tangent about how languages are related is a healthy sign, shows curiosity and an interest in wanting to understand things for its own sake --
But if any of this addresses the most flagrant abuse of the human ractiocinative apparatus in the Parent post, it showed up way below my current threshold, which I somehow doubt.
Sorry for not scrambling to get the Exact Wording -- feel free to interject. But wasn't the guy's basic argument about Microsoft Office's lack of right-to-left Hebrew support for the Mac OS X . . . wasn't it that you could use German, which is a lot like Yiddish, which is related to Hebrew?
Edifying speculations ensue. I will just add that my father told me that he was once sight-seeing at wherever the place is you can see the Hagia Sophia from across the water in Istambul. He ran into another sightseer, a European, and reports thst the two gentleman conversed for about fifteen minutes before either of them realized that my father was speaking Yiddish and the other fellow was speaking a sort of Bavarian dialect of Plattedeutsch (whichever one is the opposite of Hochdeutsch.)
But that might be to be expected, since the conversation had very little to do with Jewish religious practice, which is where the lion's share of the Hebrew vocabulary enters into the basically Low Germanic syntax and grammer of Yiddish.
No, what amazed me about This Dude's argument was . . .
Since Hebrew and Yiddish, whatever their structural kinship, share an Alphabet and are both written Right to Left, HOW DOES SUBSTITUTING YIDDISH FOR HEBREW SOLVE THE MICROSOFT-MAC OS OFFICE LACK OF SUPPORT FOR HEBREW RIGHT-TO-LEFT WORDPROCESSING?
It's been a heck of a long time since I've heard of anyone using a search engine other than Google...
So really, how many people would honestly be affected by this?
If you are sharp and focussed, know about Google and know what you want to find, you will probably use Google.
But if most Americans watch an average of 5 1/2 hours of TV a day, then they are by default choosing to spend at least sixty minutes of their 16 or so waking hours staring slack-jawed at a bunch of commercials. These people might not qualify as the most self-willed bunch when it comes to how they spend their leisure-information hours.
My own net activity varies. When I'm goal-directed and know what I want, I make a game out of trying to get a direct hit with the first Google "I feel lucky!" But truthfully, there are times when I just stare at the screen, the way you would hold the refrigerator door open and practice mouth-breathing when you don't know what you're hungry for.
Sometimes I stumble unknowingly into someone's Search page, without planning to, most likely MSN or AOL. (For various reasons, when I log on, I have access to AOL, Prodigy, MSN, and Yahoo. That way, I think I get a more balanced view of how other people see the net.)
Guys like these (MSN, AOL) try to toe the line between satisfying their sponsors by directing likely queries towards them and satisying the User (browser, consumer) who, let's face it, is also a sponsor, by giving them at least a semblance of valuable information.
(But here's a pretty egregious counter example: This morning I happened to have a Browser problem where I couldn't access any WWW sites outside of the intra-AOL realm. I needed a text of the Declaration of Independenc, fast, and AOL's on-line World Book Encyclopedia had 17 articles on or about or referencing the Declaration of Independence -- but NO Original Source Text!)
Now, a total slimebag money-grubbing All-Banners, All the Time Ad Pimp would probably lose user credibilty in a short time (recent history, won't go into it, you probably know more than I do anyway.) But meanwhile, moderately corporate, moderately informative Search engines will probably continue to attract moderately informed consumers.
Nevertheless, even the Harvard Business School is coming around to the idea that in the long run, the only viable business model is: Quality generates loyalty, and loyalty generates money. Therefore, Google and those who follow a similar outlook (it's really a philosophy, not a "business model") always win in the end, because they are the best at what they do. They give intelligent results to intelligent users, and they seem to be aware that if you concentrate on providing quality and integrity, the money will take care of itself.
In the old days, they used to call this "The Free Market of Ideas," and it's still a good thing, especially if that includes being free to have ideas about the Free Market.
Slashdot Mirror
Borrowing writing systems is common and does not mean that the languages are at all related.
And besides, going off on a tangent about how languages are related is a healthy sign, shows curiosity and an interest in wanting to understand things for its own sake --
But if any of this addresses the most flagrant abuse of the human ractiocinative apparatus in the Parent post, it showed up way below my current threshold, which I somehow doubt.
Sorry for not scrambling to get the Exact Wording -- feel free to interject. But wasn't the guy's basic argument about Microsoft Office's lack of right-to-left Hebrew support for the Mac OS X . . . wasn't it that you could use German, which is a lot like Yiddish, which is related to Hebrew?
Edifying speculations ensue. I will just add that my father told me that he was once sight-seeing at wherever the place is you can see the Hagia Sophia from across the water in Istambul. He ran into another sightseer, a European, and reports thst the two gentleman conversed for about fifteen minutes before either of them realized that my father was speaking Yiddish and the other fellow was speaking a sort of Bavarian dialect of Plattedeutsch (whichever one is the opposite of Hochdeutsch.)
But that might be to be expected, since the conversation had very little to do with Jewish religious practice, which is where the lion's share of the Hebrew vocabulary enters into the basically Low Germanic syntax and grammer of Yiddish.
No, what amazed me about This Dude's argument was . . .
Since Hebrew and Yiddish, whatever their structural kinship, share an Alphabet and are both written Right to Left, HOW DOES SUBSTITUTING YIDDISH FOR HEBREW SOLVE THE MICROSOFT-MAC OS OFFICE LACK OF SUPPORT FOR HEBREW RIGHT-TO-LEFT WORDPROCESSING?
Oh, yeah, it doesn't.
Om Shalom,.
Reshrabbi {: )}=
Amphibious Maleficus writes:
It's been a heck of a long time since I've heard of anyone using a search engine other than Google...
So really, how many people would honestly be affected by this?
If you are sharp and focussed, know about Google and know what you want to find, you will probably use Google.
But if most Americans watch an average of 5 1/2 hours of TV a day, then they are by default choosing to spend at least sixty minutes of their 16 or so waking hours staring slack-jawed at a bunch of commercials. These people might not qualify as the most self-willed bunch when it comes to how they spend their leisure-information hours.
My own net activity varies. When I'm goal-directed and know what I want, I make a game out of trying to get a direct hit with the first Google "I feel lucky!" But truthfully, there are times when I just stare at the screen, the way you would hold the refrigerator door open and practice mouth-breathing when you don't know what you're hungry for.
Sometimes I stumble unknowingly into someone's Search page, without planning to, most likely MSN or AOL. (For various reasons, when I log on, I have access to AOL, Prodigy, MSN, and Yahoo. That way, I think I get a more balanced view of how other people see the net.)
Guys like these (MSN, AOL) try to toe the line between satisfying their sponsors by directing likely queries towards them and satisying the User (browser, consumer) who, let's face it, is also a sponsor, by giving them at least a semblance of valuable information.
(But here's a pretty egregious counter example: This morning I happened to have a Browser problem where I couldn't access any WWW sites outside of the intra-AOL realm. I needed a text of the Declaration of Independenc, fast, and AOL's on-line World Book Encyclopedia had 17 articles on or about or referencing the Declaration of Independence -- but NO Original Source Text!)
Now, a total slimebag money-grubbing All-Banners, All the Time Ad Pimp would probably lose user credibilty in a short time (recent history, won't go into it, you probably know more than I do anyway.) But meanwhile, moderately corporate, moderately informative Search engines will probably continue to attract moderately informed consumers.
Nevertheless, even the Harvard Business School is coming around to the idea that in the long run, the only viable business model is: Quality generates loyalty, and loyalty generates money. Therefore, Google and those who follow a similar outlook (it's really a philosophy, not a "business model") always win in the end, because they are the best at what they do. They give intelligent results to intelligent users, and they seem to be aware that if you concentrate on providing quality and integrity, the money will take care of itself.
In the old days, they used to call this "The Free Market of Ideas," and it's still a good thing, especially if that includes being free to have ideas about the Free Market.
no clever signature,
bankjobmaniac