Luckily, you there are workarounds, such as using Eclipse instead of swing and a different language to avoid checked exceptions.
Using Eclipse instead of Swing? They're different things. Eclipse is a development environment and Swing is a windowing library. Also, please explain how using Eclipse instead of $OTHEREDITOR would change the way the language handles exceptions.
You're damn right about that. The whole world is following the US's steps, only years (or months) behind. Would this be the start of the end of capitalism?
People should be made pass an iq test before being admitted into congress or legal services. It is apparent that many of the 'lawmakers' do not have any tint of the sense of 'proportionality'.
Wrong. They're smart and know very well what they're doing. The problem are the uninformed, uneducated masses who rush to vote for them as soon as any proposed new law has either "terrorism" or "children" attached to it.
They're taking advantage of this, and there's nothing you can do to avoid it, other than informing and educating as many people as you can. Do you think it's a coincidence that the education budget in the US is being cut?
I pity you Americans. Your country is going down the drain.
My relatively new Thinkpad X40 has a 20Gb disk. The 40Gb version was more expensive, and I don't really need so much space on the laptop, as I have an external USB disk.
I'm Spanish from Catalonia, so my mother tongues are Spanish and Catalan. I can also speak English and Japanese, and now I'm learning Chinese (Mandarin). I also understand Galician/Portuguese (my grandparents were from Galicia and spoke it at home), but that doesn't count because I cannot speak it.
I don't know what are the best methods for learning a language, but at least I can tell you what works for me.
Vocabulary:
Read books in the language they were written (the one you're trying to learn). Underline with a red pen every single word that you don't understand and look it up in a dictionary. Each time you find the same word again and still don't remember its meaning, underline it again and look it up in the dictionary once more. Continue reading until you finish the book.
What I like about this method is that I get visual feedback of how my vocabulary is growing. The first chapters of my books are a mess of underlined words, and they progressively get cleaner as you look the pages further into the book.
Hearing:
In my opinion, DVDs are the best tool for training your listening and pronounciation. They get bonus points because you have fun while you learn. The keyword here is "subtitles".
When I was still working on improving my English listening some years ago, I used to buy lots of American/English films on DVD and watch them in their original version, with English subtitles. Since I could read what the actors were saying, I was able to learn the pronounciation of many words. Back then I was still living in Spain, so this was the only way I had to listen to real English.
With Japanese the situation it's a bit different. The problem with Japanese is reading, so I did it in two steps: before coming to Japan, I watched Japanese movies in Japanese with Spanish (or English) subtitles in order to learn vocabulary.
Now I've been living in Japan for almost four years and my vocabulary is (relatively) good, so I'm working on my reading/writing skills. What I do is watching these same Japanese films, but with Japanese subtitles. That allows me to link words with their written kanji form. Japanese TV is very good for this, as they like to subtitle everything.
Please note that I was using this book to study Japanese at the same time.
Also, remember that the more languages you know, the easier it will be to learn new ones.
...but I'd love a recommendation for a system that I could trust for more than 10 years.
Magneto-optical disks. Usually they should keep your data for around 50 years. They're very reliable, but have two cons:
- They're expensive (around $17 for a 2.3GB disk) - You'll need 3 disks/day if you generated 6GB of data daily, so after a few weeks you'll need lots of space to store them.
I' more or less in the same situation. I'm not a professional photographer or anything like that, but I do like to take lots of photos when I go somewhere. And since I do not trust CDs or DVDs for long-term storage, I store them on magneto-optical disks. It's more expensive than DVDs, but *MUCH* more reliable. I use 1.3GB disks, and they cost 1000 yen each (around $8.5).
Since your friend has around 2GB of data on each session, he could get a 2.3GB MO drive and use 2.3GB disks. These cost around 2000 yen ($17). In my opinion they're better, specially for someone who's using them for work, even though they're expensive compared to DVDs.
I'm living in Japan and these disks are very popular here (and easy to find everywhere). I don't know about their availability on the USA.
I have heard that it's actually faster to type japanese words on a cell than english words on a keyboard. Can someone confirm or refute this?
Not true. Typing is always faster on a keyboard. Anyway, typing Japanese on a cell phone is WAY faster than typing English (or other roman-alphabet language).
I'm Spanish, living in Japan, and I have a Spanish friend who's living here too. When we send email to each other from our phones we mostly use Japanese instead of Spanish (even though Spanish is our mother tongue) because it's so fast to type.
The reason is that when you type Japanese on a phone's keypad you type syllabes (or phonemes) instead of individual letters. And most words are composed by 2-3 phonemes, so typing a full sentence in Japanese often takes as few keystrokes as a single word in English.
However, when typing Japanese on a keyboard you actually type the letters that compose each individual phoneme. Or at least on the standard input method that most people use. In Windows and many X-Windows input methods it is possible to switch to a mode where each key is assigned a phoneme instead of a single letter. In theory you should be able to type VERY fast in that mode, but in practice you have to learn another keyboard layout, so nobody cares.
I've read the Mars trilogy. Kim Stanley Robinson's space elevator is a *TOWER* with a diameter of several meters. Compare that to the flat, think nanotube *RIBBON* that is proposed for this elevator.
I grew up playing (mostly) Japanese games on my MSX, and with a few exceptions, modern games don't appeal to me so much as the mid-80s to mid-90s games did.
Yes, nowadays games have better graphics and are faster, but they more often than not playability sucks. Hell, sometimes they aren't even fun! Often they rely on very successful franchises in order to sell lots of copies (like happened with Tomb Raider 6: Age of Darkness).
I guess I'm not the only one who thinks like this. I'm living in Japan, and in the biggest video game shops you can see LOTS of games from the 80s ported to GBA, adapters for playing old NES cartridges on new hard, and more recently, retro game collections for PSP (Space Invaders, Namco Museum, etc). And guess what? These "retro" games are selling almost as much as the new ones.
I think it is also significant the fact that most game arcades have "retro" games mixed among the newer ones. Here are some photos of this.
I guess this has something to do with the fact that older machines had fewer hardware resources, so game developers had to write FUN games in order to sell them. Sadly, nowadays it is all about flashy graphics.
Indeed. I had a Fidonet node running at home for several years (LuzNET 2 BBS, 2:343/163). I was using FrontDoor + RemoteAccess, until I switched to OS/2 and replaced FrontDoor with MainDoor/2.
I miss those days. Each sysop was responsible for the users posting from his BBS, so there was little trolling back then. The quality of the Fidonet message areas was very, very high: you knew people by their names, moderators did their jobs (or they were voted out).
Unfortunately, I had to stop running the BBS when I moved out of my parents' home. That was when Internet was already taking over, so there wasn't so much activity as in the good days anymore. It went from 60-70 calls/day to around 20-30 and just around 50 active users.
I prefer printed documents because I can take quick notes, underline parts, highlight interesting/important sentences, etc. I can't study on a PDF displayed on the computer because I can't do all these things.
Now, if I had one or two A4-sized electronic paper sheets, with a touch screen on top so I can make annotations with my stylus, then I would be able to stop using dead trees for studying...
He had a reason, but it's irrational and insane. He's religious fundamentalist,
Yes, a religious fundamentalist. Not very different from Bush, in my opinion.
Though in my opinion, Bush's has more faith in money than in religion. Religion is just the excuse he tells to the cattle in order to get voted into office again.
...and if you want to be treated professionally, then you need to act AND look professionally.
Being tattooed/pierced doesn't have to affect how professional you look. I got my tongue pierced several years ago, and:
a) Never had a problem at work (yes, they've known about it in every company I've been working for). b) The way I dress for work has more effect on how professional I look than whether I got my tongue pierced or not.
Twophotos (warning: close-up of my big nose in this one).
Of course, there are extremes. But in those cases I guess the result was intended.
My favorite memory of strolling through akihabara was going through a maze of electronics vendor stalls and coming across a guy selling nothing but big red buttons.
Most likely that's one of the small electronic shops under the station. That's one of the most Blade Runner-esque spots I've ever seen. Many shops there are a 1x1 meter square with a hole on the midle barely wide enough for the guy to stand on it, with all kind of components surrounding the guy.
Most Japanese phones already come with a small Java application to turn the phone into a remote control. My old phone had this function, and the new one does too. The application in both phones shows a list of well-known TV/video manufacturers to choose from (I guess each company uses its own IR codes/protocols/whatever). It's not a feature that I use often because I don't watch much TV lately.
In any case, if your phone doesn't come with a remote control applet, you can alwaysdownloadone (links in Japanese).
Slashdot Mirror
Luckily, you there are workarounds, such as using Eclipse instead of swing and a different language to avoid checked exceptions.
Using Eclipse instead of Swing? They're different things. Eclipse is a development environment and Swing is a windowing library. Also, please explain how using Eclipse instead of $OTHEREDITOR would change the way the language handles exceptions.
You're damn right about that. The whole world is following the US's steps, only years (or months) behind. Would this be the start of the end of capitalism?
People should be made pass an iq test before being admitted into congress or legal services. It is apparent that many of the 'lawmakers' do not have any tint of the sense of 'proportionality'.
Wrong. They're smart and know very well what they're doing. The problem are the uninformed, uneducated masses who rush to vote for them as soon as any proposed new law has either "terrorism" or "children" attached to it.
They're taking advantage of this, and there's nothing you can do to avoid it, other than informing and educating as many people as you can. Do you think it's a coincidence that the education budget in the US is being cut?
I pity you Americans. Your country is going down the drain.
I guess it won't belong after either. ;)
My relatively new Thinkpad X40 has a 20Gb disk. The 40Gb version was more expensive, and I don't really need so much space on the laptop, as I have an external USB disk.
Heh, this is almost fun.
Nope, this is just your usual dictatorship FUD; keep the population poor, afraid and ignorant.
Poor:
An Analysis of the Presidents Who Are Responsible For Excessive Spending
Bush Borrowed More Than All Previous Presidents Combined, Group Says
Surplus? US Debt Pushes $6 Trillion
U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK (this is a very interesting one, in my humble opinion)
(hint: guess whose taxes are going to pay for that)
Afraid:
U.S. Department of Defense News About The War On Terrorism
The War On Terrorism
AMERICA'S WAR AGAINST TERRORISM
Ignorant:
Education Not a Bush Budget Priority, Representative Miller to Testify
Bush Budget Slashes Education, Other Domestic Programs
$2.5 Trillion Budget Plan Cuts Many Programs
Bush administration Cuts Public School Funding to Pay for New Private School Voucher Scheme
And you complain about China? I'm afraid you have the same problems in your country (assuming you're American).
I'm Spanish from Catalonia, so my mother tongues are Spanish and Catalan. I can also speak English and Japanese, and now I'm learning Chinese (Mandarin). I also understand Galician/Portuguese (my grandparents were from Galicia and spoke it at home), but that doesn't count because I cannot speak it.
I don't know what are the best methods for learning a language, but at least I can tell you what works for me.
Vocabulary:
Read books in the language they were written (the one you're trying to learn). Underline with a red pen every single word that you don't understand and look it up in a dictionary. Each time you find the same word again and still don't remember its meaning, underline it again and look it up in the dictionary once more. Continue reading until you finish the book.
What I like about this method is that I get visual feedback of how my vocabulary is growing. The first chapters of my books are a mess of underlined words, and they progressively get cleaner as you look the pages further into the book.
Hearing:
In my opinion, DVDs are the best tool for training your listening and pronounciation. They get bonus points because you have fun while you learn. The keyword here is "subtitles".
When I was still working on improving my English listening some years ago, I used to buy lots of American/English films on DVD and watch them in their original version, with English subtitles. Since I could read what the actors were saying, I was able to learn the pronounciation of many words. Back then I was still living in Spain, so this was the only way I had to listen to real English.
With Japanese the situation it's a bit different. The problem with Japanese is reading, so I did it in two steps: before coming to Japan, I watched Japanese movies in Japanese with Spanish (or English) subtitles in order to learn vocabulary.
Now I've been living in Japan for almost four years and my vocabulary is (relatively) good, so I'm working on my reading/writing skills. What I do is watching these same Japanese films, but with Japanese subtitles. That allows me to link words with their written kanji form. Japanese TV is very good for this, as they like to subtitle everything.
Please note that I was using this book to study Japanese at the same time.
Also, remember that the more languages you know, the easier it will be to learn new ones.
...but I'd love a recommendation for a system that I could trust for more than 10 years.
Magneto-optical disks. Usually they should keep your data for around 50 years. They're very reliable, but have two cons:
- They're expensive (around $17 for a 2.3GB disk)
- You'll need 3 disks/day if you generated 6GB of data daily, so after a few weeks you'll need lots of space to store them.
I' more or less in the same situation. I'm not a professional photographer or anything like that, but I do like to take lots of photos when I go somewhere. And since I do not trust CDs or DVDs for long-term storage, I store them on magneto-optical disks. It's more expensive than DVDs, but *MUCH* more reliable. I use 1.3GB disks, and they cost 1000 yen each (around $8.5).
Since your friend has around 2GB of data on each session, he could get a 2.3GB MO drive and use 2.3GB disks. These cost around 2000 yen ($17). In my opinion they're better, specially for someone who's using them for work, even though they're expensive compared to DVDs.
I'm living in Japan and these disks are very popular here (and easy to find everywhere). I don't know about their availability on the USA.
Wouldn't it be nice if phones were so cheap that after a year or two of use you wouldn't mind tossing and picking up a new one for a few dollars?
;-)
They already are.
Oh, wait, you're in America...
"Pavarotti", not "Pavorati".
I have heard that it's actually faster to type japanese words on a cell than english words on a keyboard. Can someone confirm or refute this?
Not true. Typing is always faster on a keyboard. Anyway, typing Japanese on a cell phone is WAY faster than typing English (or other roman-alphabet language).
I'm Spanish, living in Japan, and I have a Spanish friend who's living here too. When we send email to each other from our phones we mostly use Japanese instead of Spanish (even though Spanish is our mother tongue) because it's so fast to type.
The reason is that when you type Japanese on a phone's keypad you type syllabes (or phonemes) instead of individual letters. And most words are composed by 2-3 phonemes, so typing a full sentence in Japanese often takes as few keystrokes as a single word in English.
However, when typing Japanese on a keyboard you actually type the letters that compose each individual phoneme. Or at least on the standard input method that most people use. In Windows and many X-Windows input methods it is possible to switch to a mode where each key is assigned a phoneme instead of a single letter. In theory you should be able to type VERY fast in that mode, but in practice you have to learn another keyboard layout, so nobody cares.
I've read the Mars trilogy. Kim Stanley Robinson's space elevator is a *TOWER* with a diameter of several meters. Compare that to the flat, think nanotube *RIBBON* that is proposed for this elevator.
Make sure that these people are indeed contacting AOL in order to cancel the service.
Ah, how much truth condensed in a single post!
I grew up playing (mostly) Japanese games on my MSX, and with a few exceptions, modern games don't appeal to me so much as the mid-80s to mid-90s games did.
Yes, nowadays games have better graphics and are faster, but they more often than not playability sucks. Hell, sometimes they aren't even fun! Often they rely on very successful franchises in order to sell lots of copies (like happened with Tomb Raider 6: Age of Darkness).
I guess I'm not the only one who thinks like this. I'm living in Japan, and in the biggest video game shops you can see LOTS of games from the 80s ported to GBA, adapters for playing old NES cartridges on new hard, and more recently, retro game collections for PSP (Space Invaders, Namco Museum, etc). And guess what? These "retro" games are selling almost as much as the new ones.
I think it is also significant the fact that most game arcades have "retro" games mixed among the newer ones. Here are some photos of this.
I guess this has something to do with the fact that older machines had fewer hardware resources, so game developers had to write FUN games in order to sell them. Sadly, nowadays it is all about flashy graphics.
Indeed. I had a Fidonet node running at home for several years (LuzNET 2 BBS, 2:343/163). I was using FrontDoor + RemoteAccess, until I switched to OS/2 and replaced FrontDoor with MainDoor/2.
I miss those days. Each sysop was responsible for the users posting from his BBS, so there was little trolling back then. The quality of the Fidonet message areas was very, very high: you knew people by their names, moderators did their jobs (or they were voted out).
Unfortunately, I had to stop running the BBS when I moved out of my parents' home. That was when Internet was already taking over, so there wasn't so much activity as in the good days anymore. It went from 60-70 calls/day to around 20-30 and just around 50 active users.
Now, with the Internet it is... well, different.
Here's the Doraemon version. They had the Hello Kitty one too, but I didn't take photos of it.
;)
Those are not USB-powered, by the way.
I prefer printed documents because I can take quick notes, underline parts, highlight interesting/important sentences, etc. I can't study on a PDF displayed on the computer because I can't do all these things.
Now, if I had one or two A4-sized electronic paper sheets, with a touch screen on top so I can make annotations with my stylus, then I would be able to stop using dead trees for studying...
He had a reason, but it's irrational and insane. He's religious fundamentalist,
Yes, a religious fundamentalist. Not very different from Bush, in my opinion.
Though in my opinion, Bush's has more faith in money than in religion. Religion is just the excuse he tells to the cattle in order to get voted into office again.
Otherwise you'd have people patenting words like "the" and "it"...
Aaaaugh! Aaaugh! Augh! Ohh! Don't say that word!
...and if you want to be treated professionally, then you need to act AND look professionally.
Being tattooed/pierced doesn't have to affect how professional you look. I got my tongue pierced several years ago, and:
a) Never had a problem at work (yes, they've known about it in every company I've been working for).
b) The way I dress for work has more effect on how professional I look than whether I got my tongue pierced or not.
Two photos (warning: close-up of my big nose in this one).
Of course, there are extremes. But in those cases I guess the result was intended.
Next time you go there, take some pictures of the people, not just the random crap you can buy. Kplzthx.
;-)
The people? I'll tell you about the people: obese, sweaty japanese nerds, just as TFA explains.
Not really worth talking pics of them.
These photos are here, but please don't tell my wife or she'll cut my balls. ;)
No thumbnails, by the way.
My favorite memory of strolling through akihabara was going through a maze of electronics vendor stalls and coming across a guy selling nothing but big red buttons.
Most likely that's one of the small electronic shops under the station. That's one of the most Blade Runner-esque spots I've ever seen. Many shops there are a 1x1 meter square with a hole on the midle barely wide enough for the guy to stand on it, with all kind of components surrounding the guy.
Shameless plug:
Akihabara photos on my site.
More Akihabara photos.
And more.
And yes, I'm living in Tokyo.
Most Japanese phones already come with a small Java application to turn the phone into a remote control. My old phone had this function, and the new one does too. The application in both phones shows a list of well-known TV/video manufacturers to choose from (I guess each company uses its own IR codes/protocols/whatever). It's not a feature that I use often because I don't watch much TV lately.
In any case, if your phone doesn't come with a remote control applet, you can always download one (links in Japanese).