You still haven't set the parameters of debate. If you disagree with my attempts at defining socialism, do it for me. Tell me, in precise terms (not the vague "Oh the workers are getting trampled!" strawman), how you rate countries on a socialist scale.
That said, I hate saying this, you seem to be confused. First you say policies and ideals matter the most, and then you say it doesn't matter if India is constitutionally-mandated to be socialist; workers have been "trampled" upon anyway.
So what matters:- policies and ideals, or ground reality?
Similarly, the #1 capitalist country in the world is Singapore (read the latest studies by the capitalists themselves at the CATO institute)
Wish you'd cite references instead of muddying the issue.
I don't know by what measure you call Singapore capitalist; more than 60% of its economy is controlled by the government (scroll through the message to the part about government-linked companies; sorry, lazy to find and link to the original reports, but I can assure you, this bit is a fair citation) Yes, it scores high on that economic freedom list, but remember, that's only a reflection of policy initiatives; it's not a measure of, say, how many companies are there on the ground.
Which, in a way, should make you happy; very easy to argue that sg has better environment controls than any of its neighbours.
But all the same, I find your main argument troublesome; you seem to be suggesting that non-totalitarian socialist countries, somehow, have better environment protection than capitalist ones. As a citizen of a country that was once constitutionally-mandated to be socialist, I can't disagree more:- if any, environmental parameters in India have been degrading rapidly for the last 20 years.
Could it be, then, that this has more to do with pro-active governance than economic ideologies?
Being pedantic here, but it's 'Brahmi-derived' scripts, and this extends to most of the scripts in India, Sri Lanka, Burma and South East Asia (think Thai, Laotian, Khmer, Burmese, Mon... you'll be amazed as to how closely 'ga' in Burmese resembles 'ga' in Kannada/Telugu). Brahmi, as many know, was used in the fifth-century, about the time there was a massive cultural spread of sorts.
'Devnagari-based' languages, then, is a misnomer; while, like I said, it's convinient to talk about Brahmi-derived languages in terms of Devanagari, it has little or no relevance in actuity:- the Telugu vottulu are completely distinct from the Hindi 'adha-akshar' in every sense, except in logical terms.
That said, a very interesting point guys; I should have checked this earlier, but I somehow presumed Tamil also has conjunct consonants. Guess it doesn't; just checked on the renderer, and it shows them distinct (In Indix/MS' renderers, take any consonant, say, 'ka', add a halant, and then type the consonant again).
What he means is that there are conjunct consonants ('vottulu' in Telugu, 'adha-akshar' in Hindi) in all Brahmi-derived languages and hence, the rules for rendering is virtually the same in all of them. (Helped by the fact that
Which, incidentally, is great news for developers, but end-users like you wouldn't be too bothered about it all (unless you want to transliterate between languages or learn a new one).
But he's wrong in saying there's support for Bengali on WinXP. As this press release states, MS said it will support Bengali and Malayalam soon. This was in Nov 2002. (I don't know if there was any Indic language patch between then and now; probably isnt, willing to be corrected on this)
We've had full support for all the Indic (Devanagari-based) languages since Windows 2000 and Office 2000 shipped.
You probably know this, but let me clarify it for others:-
Win2k had support for exactly two Indic scripts, Devanagari and Tamil. WinXP has support for four more, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati and Gurmukhi. Till date, MS does not have support for Malayalam, Oriya, Bengali, Sinhala, Burmese or other Indic (that's 'South Asian', not just 'Indian', or 'Devanagari-based') languages.
So I don't see why on Earth we'd need to license the Indian technology.
And even in that, it's pretty shoddy; as anyone who's typed in Telugu/Kannada in MS Office will tell you, there's a mysterious space that gets added after the end of each word. Telugu/Kannada characters mysteriously change into boxes every now and then. Again, mysteriously, {Telugu, Kannada} characters change into boxes when placed along with {Tamil, Devanagari} characters on MSN. That's only TWO of the bugs I've sighted so far; trust me, there are many more.
Your company knows about it and all others; I reported it by email to one of your personnel. Understandably, it's not one of your priorities; obviously, you have other, bigger markets to garner. Which, of course, is precisely the point here; if the source is open, concerned techie Indians can easily look into it and implement according to their needs and schedules, and would not be dependent on some faceless corporation's benevolence.
While I'm not sure it was Indix that I saw in action, but I'll say this:- I've seen Kannada and Devnagari in Emacs, and it's a much much MUCH better rendering than what WinXP offers.
And oh, before I end, you still use the Inscript keyboard layout and complex rendering algos in your Indic implementations, don't you? Guess who developed that, hmmm.
but the Nature article talks about airport bus frequencies, not airports per se.
The distinction is important though; when you talk of 'chaotic airports', you're talking of the entire system as a whole:- luggage screening, plane scheduling, passenger movements etc. Dr Nagatani's paper talks about none of these; it merely suggests that the reason shuttle buses (and elevators) appear to come together, or none at all, is chaos.
I can understand where Dr Nagatani is coming from on explaining bus (and elevator) frequencies, but am intrigued by why it is a "problem" (as in user-level problem, not physics problem, if you get what I mean) in the first place. Okay, so the bus comes at 09:23 and not 09:15... big deal. It is merely a matter of managing passenger perceptions.
More to the point, can anyone explain why this would be inefficient for the system as a whole?
I can't tell you how many grassroots organisations in India have taken to Yahoo Groups lately. Easiest thing for them to do; everyone has a free Hotmail/Yahoo account, so there's no better way of informing everyone and having discussions than this.
Really people, I'm tired of this oh-they-don't-have-food-so-let's-not-talk-about-fr eedom argument. Just doesn't wash; you need freedom of speech, you need clear channels of accountability to make a difference. Charity can't work under authoritarianism.
First of all, neither is VSNL government-linked any longer, nor is it a monopoly. The last time I counted, there were about 30 or so ISP's in my hometown alone.
And then, Hotmail/Yahoo were never blocked per se. The ISP Association of India sent up a few test balloons some time last year, "suggesting" that Hotmail and Yahoo pay a toll tax, or be blocked. Nothing came out of it though.
CERT's, if you didn't know, now exist in all countries. If I'm not wrong, there's some international agreement for these to be put up; so the next time country X wants a "cyber"-criminal from country Y, their respective CERT's talk to each other. Or something like that.
As for "kind of people", well, you guys love FUD-ing against us, nothing new in that.
One of my old geography lecturers apparently saw a meteor strike once. She even had a weird looking rock to prove her story; it apparently landed right in front of her car. Yeah, this happened in the Kutch region (west India).
Really folks, we aren't that stupid. If it's any comfort for you guys, the Indian Army has been heavily investing in radar of late, mostly from US and Israeli companies.
An interesting exercise would be to produce a similar text in Japanese or any of the Asian languages where the position of the glyph in the word determines its characteristics (in Indic languages such as Burmese or Telugu for instance).
My hunch is that you'll probably have different results, mainly because the roman script is not as phonetic as, say, Brahmi-derived scripts, are.
They also have a linguist on board. Had the oppurtunity to interact with her some time back, and I must say, I was impressed by the quality of work being done by her team.
Jokes about software quality aside, Microsoft hires some very interesting people.
A friend of mine works as a management trainee at JP Morgan. We once calculated:- she'd be earning more at the local 24 hour McD's if she worked the same number of hours she puts in at JP Morgan. Think about it.
Lemme guess - got caught in Singapore? Did they let you keep the knife?
:-)
Oh well, as long as they make people feel safe.
10% of the cost of a plane ticket these days for me is security/tax/insurance/shit. Quite honestly, if it's all only a pretense, they might as well let go of these measures; my (travel) budget is getting tighter by the day, they're losing passengers, endless headaches for everyone....
Did I say that I was talking about software or this case in particular? I was only commenting on your apparent analogy (which is why I blockquoted that particular piece only).
And turbans are actually not on the list of warning signs. Beards of a certain type are including the Uday short and Osama long styles. Sihks aren't the ones the TSA is after.
No, but the airlines are; 'coz the men in turbans up in front? They're the ones who cause trouble.
(The link doesn't mention that the flight attendant was suspended after the incident, btw)
I carried a Swiss army knife in my pocket through some five airports in Asia and Europe, for some six journeys in 1.5 years. Finally got caught in a prominent Asian hub, but that was only the fourth time I travelled through that airport.
And to think, something like 10% of my ticket is for shit like this.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
You still haven't set the parameters of debate. If you disagree with my attempts at defining socialism, do it for me. Tell me, in precise terms (not the vague "Oh the workers are getting trampled!" strawman), how you rate countries on a socialist scale.
That said, I hate saying this, you seem to be confused. First you say policies and ideals matter the most, and then you say it doesn't matter if India is constitutionally-mandated to be socialist; workers have been "trampled" upon anyway.
So what matters:- policies and ideals, or ground reality?
Call them up!
Really people, I expected better from the /. crowd. This thing's been up for months; somehow, I expected a karma-whore already pointing out that fact.
I don't know by what measure you call Singapore capitalist; more than 60% of its economy is controlled by the government (scroll through the message to the part about government-linked companies; sorry, lazy to find and link to the original reports, but I can assure you, this bit is a fair citation) Yes, it scores high on that economic freedom list, but remember, that's only a reflection of policy initiatives; it's not a measure of, say, how many companies are there on the ground.
Which, in a way, should make you happy; very easy to argue that sg has better environment controls than any of its neighbours.
But all the same, I find your main argument troublesome; you seem to be suggesting that non-totalitarian socialist countries, somehow, have better environment protection than capitalist ones. As a citizen of a country that was once constitutionally-mandated to be socialist, I can't disagree more:- if any, environmental parameters in India have been degrading rapidly for the last 20 years.
Could it be, then, that this has more to do with pro-active governance than economic ideologies?
'Devnagari-based' languages, then, is a misnomer; while, like I said, it's convinient to talk about Brahmi-derived languages in terms of Devanagari, it has little or no relevance in actuity:- the Telugu vottulu are completely distinct from the Hindi 'adha-akshar' in every sense, except in logical terms.
That said, a very interesting point guys; I should have checked this earlier, but I somehow presumed Tamil also has conjunct consonants. Guess it doesn't; just checked on the renderer, and it shows them distinct (In Indix/MS' renderers, take any consonant, say, 'ka', add a halant, and then type the consonant again).
Which, incidentally, is great news for developers, but end-users like you wouldn't be too bothered about it all (unless you want to transliterate between languages or learn a new one).
But he's wrong in saying there's support for Bengali on WinXP. As this press release states, MS said it will support Bengali and Malayalam soon. This was in Nov 2002. (I don't know if there was any Indic language patch between then and now; probably isnt, willing to be corrected on this)
Win2k had support for exactly two Indic scripts, Devanagari and Tamil. WinXP has support for four more, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati and Gurmukhi. Till date, MS does not have support for Malayalam, Oriya, Bengali, Sinhala, Burmese or other Indic (that's 'South Asian', not just 'Indian', or 'Devanagari-based') languages.
And even in that, it's pretty shoddy; as anyone who's typed in Telugu/Kannada in MS Office will tell you, there's a mysterious space that gets added after the end of each word. Telugu/Kannada characters mysteriously change into boxes every now and then. Again, mysteriously, {Telugu, Kannada} characters change into boxes when placed along with {Tamil, Devanagari} characters on MSN. That's only TWO of the bugs I've sighted so far; trust me, there are many more.
Your company knows about it and all others; I reported it by email to one of your personnel. Understandably, it's not one of your priorities; obviously, you have other, bigger markets to garner. Which, of course, is precisely the point here; if the source is open, concerned techie Indians can easily look into it and implement according to their needs and schedules, and would not be dependent on some faceless corporation's benevolence.
While I'm not sure it was Indix that I saw in action, but I'll say this:- I've seen Kannada and Devnagari in Emacs, and it's a much much MUCH better rendering than what WinXP offers.
And oh, before I end, you still use the Inscript keyboard layout and complex rendering algos in your Indic implementations, don't you? Guess who developed that, hmmm.
That was in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency wasn't it? :-)
The distinction is important though; when you talk of 'chaotic airports', you're talking of the entire system as a whole:- luggage screening, plane scheduling, passenger movements etc. Dr Nagatani's paper talks about none of these; it merely suggests that the reason shuttle buses (and elevators) appear to come together, or none at all, is chaos.
I can understand where Dr Nagatani is coming from on explaining bus (and elevator) frequencies, but am intrigued by why it is a "problem" (as in user-level problem, not physics problem, if you get what I mean) in the first place. Okay, so the bus comes at 09:23 and not 09:15... big deal. It is merely a matter of managing passenger perceptions.
More to the point, can anyone explain why this would be inefficient for the system as a whole?
I suppose we'll have to have it your way then; never used VSNL before 1997/98.
Really people, I'm tired of this oh-they-don't-have-food-so-let's-not-talk-about-fr eedom argument. Just doesn't wash; you need freedom of speech, you need clear channels of accountability to make a difference. Charity can't work under authoritarianism.
And then, Hotmail/Yahoo were never blocked per se. The ISP Association of India sent up a few test balloons some time last year, "suggesting" that Hotmail and Yahoo pay a toll tax, or be blocked. Nothing came out of it though.
CERT's, if you didn't know, now exist in all countries. If I'm not wrong, there's some international agreement for these to be put up; so the next time country X wants a "cyber"-criminal from country Y, their respective CERT's talk to each other. Or something like that.
As for "kind of people", well, you guys love FUD-ing against us, nothing new in that.
Really folks, we aren't that stupid. If it's any comfort for you guys, the Indian Army has been heavily investing in radar of late, mostly from US and Israeli companies.
My hunch is that you'll probably have different results, mainly because the roman script is not as phonetic as, say, Brahmi-derived scripts, are.
Jokes about software quality aside, Microsoft hires some very interesting people.
A friend of mine works as a management trainee at JP Morgan. We once calculated:- she'd be earning more at the local 24 hour McD's if she worked the same number of hours she puts in at JP Morgan. Think about it.
Heheh, good one. Didn't quite get the sermon to this Ed guy though; must be some kind of inside joke for you guys...?
Obviously, you need to apply the Teguchi Method (tm) to improve your reading skills! ;-)
Just a guess, but the 'with' probably refers to the "Java Desktop System" and not "J2SE 1.4.2" :-)
Yes, particularly when it seems to be an exact replica of the Ximian Desktop.
Did I say that I was talking about software or this case in particular? I was only commenting on your apparent analogy (which is why I blockquoted that particular piece only).
(The link doesn't mention that the flight attendant was suspended after the incident, btw)
And to think, something like 10% of my ticket is for shit like this. :-)