Ummm, I don't know what you're point is, but MS Windows.cn or.kr or.jp already has built-in East Asian support, although, obviously, English language users are not likely to install that immediately.
Let's give credit where it's due:- Win XP has some pretty impressive i18n effort on; all of it, at least in the languages I read/write, sticks to standards for once.
Netizens passed along the baby because he represented a geek show as well as a freak show.
Call me old-fashioned, but more than anything else, I think the above sentence summarizes the tech boom for us.
In comparison, consider this usage from 1961, as quoted in the OED:-
Times Lit. Suppl. 27 Jan. 62/2 He picks up waitress, a simple girl, and enslaves a "geek", a dumb sideshow stooge whose daily routine consists of being exhibited in a pit which he has to dig for himself.
That's right folks; before 1990's, a 'geek show', ie, shows by " a carnival 'wild man' whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake" (Webster; quoted again at the same OED link) meant a 'freak show'.
You clearly aren't a programmer. The source and the application code can be identical. And even when in cases where they are compiled into a different form they are still completely equivalent.
An interesting point, being able to write programs in compiled form. I admit I haven't really thought about that, at least not in a techno-legal sense, and obviously, does put my defence of software patents in a difficult position, which was a slight extension of the usual blueprint/model seperation that patents usually have.
On the brighter side though, my CS degree is still sometime away, so there's still hope!:-D
Here's a thought:- code is free speech - mainly because you can transmit the idea in more than one way - but codified programs, that is, compiled applications, aren't. How about that?
The system has been abused in novel ways, but the idea of patents in itself isn't quite stupid; as a certain ex-trade minister once said, it's one of those few things that 146 countries the world over ever agreed upon completely.
On a more serious note folks, this proxy thing has real uses. You see, many people out here have now started to search for free, open proxy servers, after getting rapped in the knees by the RIAA/MPAA-equivalent organisations (as I mentioned earlier). Which, of course, is a very logical thing to do; after all, if they're tracing your IP address, you want to obfuscate as much as possible, just to ensure the entertainment supply lines stay intact.
Just this:- as my friend in Shanghai tells me, this is exactly what they do to avoid government censors there. Which, again, is not quite surprising; I do believe that/. itself ran a story on proxy servers for China. But you never thought we would have to follow their footsteps, did you?
Right now, I'm in a serious funk trying to decide between hitting the industry or getting back into grad school. Your post was enlightening and pretty much what I need at this moment.
This was all covered in an excellent treatise that was released in the '70's itself. I understand it has something to do with an ancient extinct civilisation which carefully mated gorillas who later evolved their own language.
Haven't seen it, but I heard that there was also a documentary made on the subject.
Work on Linux is ongoing, and there's a whole community on offer if you have problems. Windows 95, OTOH, is at least a generation old, and has already been EOL-ed by Microsoft.
Holy jumping jeepers! That's east of even Vlavidostock/Sakhalin isn't it?
Although Windows/Linux/Slashdot now cover my timezones, I used to keep running into the same problem earlier; finally used to settle for some unknown American city on the other side of the globe that was 12 hours behind us.
Anyway, it is quite dumb to include +10 and +12 GMT, but mysteriously drop +11 GMT. This from a UI that can display times as "10-ish" or "11-ish".
Although a more interesting bit is the relationship of population density to illumination, which, I believe is more of the case here, than a statement of political development.
That is to say, can anyone think of a densely populated area that is not brightly lit on the map? I've been trying that, without too much success so far.
Just this:- I think this should be credible enough for Adobe to look at a Linux version of Photoshop. After all, two of its large corporate customers, DreamWorks and Disney, are already using it.
Doubt they thought of that when making the name (it was the pun you said it was on Googol), but it made me smile to see a different way of looking at it.;-)
You have two competing products. One is called, say, Infoseek, while the other is called, say, Google. Infoseek's name is pretty intutive; obviously, it's a place where you go to seek information. The other, Google, is a nerdy pun on the mathematical name for a multiple of 10 that has 100 zeroes in it.
Even if you don't consider the relative merits of the product per se, I'm sure you know which brand-name is more popular.
That said, your general point is well-taken; yes, OSS/Software Libre needs some marketing, but no, good marketing need not always equate to instantaneous comprehensibility.
Actually, I've started using O.O recently, and trust me, for the most part, it liases with MS Office perfectly. Opens all my three years worth of presentations, documents etc without a hassle, and what's more, the UI feels so similar to MS Office, that after a while you'll forget you're not using MS Office (although, admittedly, the look is still not as sleek).
And then, there's this new export to PDF/Shockwave feature that's a kickass thing to have, especially in academic environments (the corporate world, as I see it, is still steeped in.doc files)
RIAA's own internal research shows (quite conclusively, if I may say so) that there's a decrease in demand only when an economy is coming out of a recession (in particular, I believe that the study analysed the Great Depression and the one in 1970's). So if there's a drop in sales in 2001, when the economy was clearly better than it is now, then there's an additional factor to bear in. Piracy is one great option.
Now piracy, despite what we all like to think, is big; as anyone who's been to Mong Kok in Hong Kong will tell you, the pirate shops there have been completely taken over by the Chinese Triad. The Chinese mafia is, of course, very efficiently organised; there was a report a few years back in the now defunct Asiaweek, where a Hong Kong cop, on mufti in Malaysia, was immediately identified by a triad-member there and was actually 'warned' of 'dire consequences' (instead of the other way round).
Yup, the trade is international, criminal, a great way to launder dirty money, and yes, brings better ROI than heroin or cocaine or flesh, all with lesser risk.
But that's not the interesting bit here, if you've been following the music industry with an a-schizophrenic approach. Instead, I find the following bits in the article interesting:-
a) Now they seem to be saying that sales themselves are dropping; earlier, they were saying that the rate of growth of sales was dropping.
b) This quote deep below in the article:-
"Youths are no longer defining themselves by music in the same way they used to," says Mr Mulligan.
Is it me, or is this a direct acknowledgement that the music these days truly sucks?
Consider this extract I got after a bit of focussed googling. Compare that with the Roman transliteration given at the bottom of a fan page. This, apparently, is an absolutely correct piece of transliteration; notice how the author points with glee that JRR Tolkein himself got it wrong in his transliteration. In particular, Tolkein apparently forgot that the script is phonetic in nature, and that the long 'e' in 'even' and 'seen' needs an additional accent on the next consonant.
Now observe what the transcriber returns for 'even'. (Hint:- No double accent over the Tengwar alternative for the letter E)
Not just that, none of the fonts provided have a mapping for the double accent, nor, apparently, is it possible to actually type the additional accent in.
[Okay, I need to get a life and all that - heck, I am known to be a language buff - but just to point out that the 'rules' here don't seem to be serious at all.:-)]
As for Hindi, it is actually simple to type on a typewriter; there have been typewriters for quite sometime now. It's just that on computers you can process letters more logically than a typewriter, so glyph production tends to be complex. The problem, really, is that the concept of a 'standard' is almost non-existent, despite 15 years of ISCII and Unicode. And then, the adjunct consonants, the so-called aadha-akshar, are a bitch to generate in Unicode.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's give credit where it's due:- Win XP has some pretty impressive i18n effort on; all of it, at least in the languages I read/write, sticks to standards for once.
In comparison, consider this usage from 1961, as quoted in the OED:-
That's right folks; before 1990's, a 'geek show', ie, shows by " a carnival 'wild man' whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake" (Webster; quoted again at the same OED link) meant a 'freak show'.
Everyone knows that Nanyang Technological University in Singapore is the world's largest wireless network campus in the world, even though it's beta noir, and long time rival, National University of Singapore has implemented a wireless network waaay before those crummers even thought heard about 802.11b. :-)
On the brighter side though, my CS degree is still sometime away, so there's still hope! :-D
(Sorry folks, but this was just asking for it, dontcha think? :-D )
The system has been abused in novel ways, but the idea of patents in itself isn't quite stupid; as a certain ex-trade minister once said, it's one of those few things that 146 countries the world over ever agreed upon completely.
On a more serious note folks, this proxy thing has real uses. You see, many people out here have now started to search for free, open proxy servers, after getting rapped in the knees by the RIAA/MPAA-equivalent organisations (as I mentioned earlier). Which, of course, is a very logical thing to do; after all, if they're tracing your IP address, you want to obfuscate as much as possible, just to ensure the entertainment supply lines stay intact.
Just this:- as my friend in Shanghai tells me, this is exactly what they do to avoid government censors there. Which, again, is not quite surprising; I do believe that /. itself ran a story on proxy servers for China. But you never thought we would have to follow their footsteps, did you?
... llew sa sdrawkcab sgat LMTH eseht etirw dluoc ylno fi, woN
You guessed it; only two words connect them:- "Michael Crichton".
Right now, I'm in a serious funk trying to decide between hitting the industry or getting back into grad school. Your post was enlightening and pretty much what I need at this moment.
Goes upto 109. After the Actinides, the elements are back in the d-block. :-)
As long as the flight doesn't take him to, say, Munich, I guess it should be okay.
Haven't seen it, but I heard that there was also a documentary made on the subject.
Work on Linux is ongoing, and there's a whole community on offer if you have problems. Windows 95, OTOH, is at least a generation old, and has already been EOL-ed by Microsoft.
Although Windows/Linux/Slashdot now cover my timezones, I used to keep running into the same problem earlier; finally used to settle for some unknown American city on the other side of the globe that was 12 hours behind us.
Anyway, it is quite dumb to include +10 and +12 GMT, but mysteriously drop +11 GMT. This from a UI that can display times as "10-ish" or "11-ish".
That is to say, can anyone think of a densely populated area that is not brightly lit on the map? I've been trying that, without too much success so far.
Lemme guess... you live in Sakhalin?
Just this:- I think this should be credible enough for Adobe to look at a Linux version of Photoshop. After all, two of its large corporate customers, DreamWorks and Disney, are already using it.
You have two competing products. One is called, say, Infoseek, while the other is called, say, Google. Infoseek's name is pretty intutive; obviously, it's a place where you go to seek information. The other, Google, is a nerdy pun on the mathematical name for a multiple of 10 that has 100 zeroes in it.
Even if you don't consider the relative merits of the product per se, I'm sure you know which brand-name is more popular.
That said, your general point is well-taken; yes, OSS/Software Libre needs some marketing, but no, good marketing need not always equate to instantaneous comprehensibility.
And then, there's this new export to PDF/Shockwave feature that's a kickass thing to have, especially in academic environments (the corporate world, as I see it, is still steeped in .doc files)
Now piracy, despite what we all like to think, is big; as anyone who's been to Mong Kok in Hong Kong will tell you, the pirate shops there have been completely taken over by the Chinese Triad. The Chinese mafia is, of course, very efficiently organised; there was a report a few years back in the now defunct Asiaweek, where a Hong Kong cop, on mufti in Malaysia, was immediately identified by a triad-member there and was actually 'warned' of 'dire consequences' (instead of the other way round).
Yup, the trade is international, criminal, a great way to launder dirty money, and yes, brings better ROI than heroin or cocaine or flesh, all with lesser risk.
But that's not the interesting bit here, if you've been following the music industry with an a-schizophrenic approach. Instead, I find the following bits in the article interesting:-
a) Now they seem to be saying that sales themselves are dropping; earlier, they were saying that the rate of growth of sales was dropping.
b) This quote deep below in the article:-
Is it me, or is this a direct acknowledgement that the music these days truly sucks?
Consider this extract I got after a bit of focussed googling. Compare that with the Roman transliteration given at the bottom of a fan page. This, apparently, is an absolutely correct piece of transliteration; notice how the author points with glee that JRR Tolkein himself got it wrong in his transliteration. In particular, Tolkein apparently forgot that the script is phonetic in nature, and that the long 'e' in 'even' and 'seen' needs an additional accent on the next consonant.
Now observe what the transcriber returns for 'even'. (Hint:- No double accent over the Tengwar alternative for the letter E)
Not just that, none of the fonts provided have a mapping for the double accent, nor, apparently, is it possible to actually type the additional accent in.
[Okay, I need to get a life and all that - heck, I am known to be a language buff - but just to point out that the 'rules' here don't seem to be serious at all. :-)]
As for Hindi, it is actually simple to type on a typewriter; there have been typewriters for quite sometime now. It's just that on computers you can process letters more logically than a typewriter, so glyph production tends to be complex. The problem, really, is that the concept of a 'standard' is almost non-existent, despite 15 years of ISCII and Unicode. And then, the adjunct consonants, the so-called aadha-akshar, are a bitch to generate in Unicode.