Very very valid points. The point here is, we are not even talking about industry here; for instance, my grandmom, grows the tulasi plant for medicinal and religious reasons. Now, why should she pay, what in effect will be, tax to an (American) corporation, for what she's been doing for the last seventy years or so?
Yup, I remember reading about Å; it, expectedly, has a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Additional info, but if I remember correctly, there are at least seven towns in Kentucky, US, with two-letter names. And then, there's another town called 88, although US postal regulations state that it must be called as 'Eighty Eight' or something. Can't remember where it is located, probably in NY state.
Sreeveeravenkatalakshminarasimharaajuvaaripuram. India's longest train-station name without abbreviations.
I, of course, cheated; it's easier to read/pronounce if you break the name into its constituent Telugu words "Sree Veera Venkata Lakshmi Narasimha Raaju Vaari Puram", but they write it in the station without spaces. Now, 'Veera Venkata Lakshmi Narasimha Raju' is, arguably, not an un-common Telugu name; in fact, Telugu names will usually have an additional surname in front. Consider then, the travails of someone named, say, Kasimbhatla Veera Venkata Lakshmi Narasimha Raju; I guess he'll write his name as 'KVVL Narasimha Raju' or something.
Incidentally, that place is literally a state away from Ib, Orissa, which has the shortest name for any train station in India.
You're absolutely right about tolerance, but the question here is not that. I think the issue at hand is where do we separate religious beliefs from scientific ones. Or more precisely, can we let our religious beliefs affect our scientific practices? An interesting question, methinks, one that needs some thought.
Of course it is. A mere five characters for the surname in my mother tongue, Telugu.
As to where do they come with the names, I'm guessing he's a Tamilian, which means his surname is his dad's first name. If I remember my Sanskrit correctly, it literally means 'master of health', or a doctor.
My mistake; I meant to say 'Inscript', which is the Indian keyboard layout, when I said 'ISCII'. I pointed this out later in a reply to someone else's reply.
You're right though; IndLinux uses Unicode and not ISCII.
Yes, there is now a definite geographical disparity in power quality, if I may use the term, and other lifestyle parameters in India. The ubiquitous cell-phone, for instance, which remarkably works even in deepest parts of south India, will stop working the moment you go beyond say, Gauhati or Shillong, in the North East. What's more, it's difficult to imagine the phone companies doing anything about it in the near future; the market there won't sustain the difficult cost of wiring up the hills. (My data is two years old; could be wrong of course).
My point:- we Indians are probably looking at two forms of digital divide, international and intra-national, a digital divide that doesn't augur too well for a multi-cultural land like ours.
PS:- Why HCI? Your earlier sig and your webpage seems to be filled more with AI than HCI.
The Inscript layout has the vowels on the left side of the keyboard and the consonants on the right. The idea is you to type the consonant first and then *mould* the glyph using the vowels. It's the same layout for all Brahmi-scripts, which includes Sinhalese, Thai etc as well. Nifty idea, I'd say, but again, needs some getting used to.
Generally speaking, all CDAC software is Inscript, so it's quite possible that the layouts you've been talking about are Inscript. (The keyboard layout is actually called Inscript, while the character-lookup is called ISCII. Slight difference, sorry forgot about that in the earlier post)
Which raises a very curious point about energy. Yes, the world's masses are without power, telephone etc, yes, all that's necessary for *regular* IT development, but the question is, on ecological basis, can we sustain, say, American, energy levels on a global scale?
PS:- From India myself; I know what you're speaking about. My solution:- move to Delhi/Hyderabad!:-D
Precisely. Now you know why all these so-called third-world nations are so excited about IT; most believe it's their ticket to first-world-dom, whether on a personal level (ie jump hop to US/Europe), or on a societal level.
Sanskrit uses the same alphabet, Devanagri. And official (sarkari) Hindi, ie, Hindi in governmental legalese, uses a lot of Sanskrit words, so you could argue that Sanskrit is waaay closer to a Linux port than most other Indian languages.
Figures. Figures. Figures.
on
GNOME In Hindi
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· Score: 2, Informative
18 official languages (check a recent rupee note). 845 non-official, but recognised. 1053 dialects.:-)
Also, as I said in my earlier post, this is probably not the first Indian language port; Tamil got there first. Any case, IndLinux, the group behind this particular port, has sub-groups for all official Indian languages.
Re:Kind of unimpressive
on
GNOME In Hindi
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Inevitable, in fact, IMHO, necessary.
The reason I believe is this:- unlike other language users, Hindi speakers like me are essentially bi-lingual (penta-lingual in my case). Which is to say, even if we type/speak in Hindi, we're used to a more English version of things. I mean, really, how would you translate "OK" to Hindi? Theek hai? For a natural language speaker who's used to an English interface, nothing could sound more funny. Which is also the reason why many of Devnagari commands on the menus are direct transliterations of actual English commands. The translation, as opposed to transliteration, is actually less than it seems.
The problems don't stop there of course. Like most Americans and most other Indian programmers, I'm used to the 101 US keyboard with ASCII layout. I have five Indian language (Telugu) word processors on my system, but rarely use the regular keyboard interface that comes along. Reason:- it easier to type with an ASCII layout keyboard than the ISCII one. More used to it.
Professional DTP folks back in India also apparently have a similar problem; most seem to prefer SreeLipi, which uses the traditional typewriter layout for keyboards, instead of iLeap, which uses the ISCII layout. This, I think, is IndLinux's biggest drawback. How many would like to change their typing habits, especially in languages with complex glyphs?
And finally, despite all appearances, this is not the first Indian language layout for Linux. Tamil Linux, apparently, got there first.
A very good point. Obviously, newspapers earn their $$$ from both ads and sales, but the split, apparently, is different in different countries, and probably has to do with other factors as well.
A point illustrated when you consider the cost of buying a daily in different countries. In Bangkok and in Singapore (possibly Kuala Lumpur/Jakarta as well), the cost is approximately the same:- 10 Baht or S$0.60. The cost of a newspaper in India, on other hand, is a mere Rs. 2 (1 Rupee on certain days); that's about 2 Baht or S$0.08.
Depends, really. There are, apparently, some very profitable newsletters sent out only as email, the names of which often come out when they complain against spam-blockers blocking their newsletter.
Personally, I think it's still possible to make money out of a web-only operation if you narrow your audience, focus your content only for that audience, and try making a good job out of it.
I'm guessing most porn operations, for instance, are successful because of this simple principle.
Very good point, except that you'd want to generalise "limits of the mind" to "limits of a mindset". The universe, as I see it, is a whole big abstraction.
Slashdot Mirror
My guess, no one can. Ah, one of the pleasures of reading El Reg these days... :-)
Laptop, carry-on and a suit in its own bag. That's three for me, whenever I travel. :-)
Very very valid points. The point here is, we are not even talking about industry here; for instance, my grandmom, grows the tulasi plant for medicinal and religious reasons. Now, why should she pay, what in effect will be, tax to an (American) corporation, for what she's been doing for the last seventy years or so?
If you're taking him to a wildlife park, don't use that bridge connecting Oz and NZ.
"When confronted with a bigger foe, make friends with a smaller one"- Loose translation of a verse from the Mahabharata :-)
Ahem. :-)
Yup, I remember reading about Å; it, expectedly, has a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Additional info, but if I remember correctly, there are at least seven towns in Kentucky, US, with two-letter names. And then, there's another town called 88, although US postal regulations state that it must be called as 'Eighty Eight' or something. Can't remember where it is located, probably in NY state.
Sreeveeravenkatalakshminarasimharaajuvaaripuram. India's longest train-station name without abbreviations.
I, of course, cheated; it's easier to read/pronounce if you break the name into its constituent Telugu words "Sree Veera Venkata Lakshmi Narasimha Raaju Vaari Puram", but they write it in the station without spaces. Now, 'Veera Venkata Lakshmi Narasimha Raju' is, arguably, not an un-common Telugu name; in fact, Telugu names will usually have an additional surname in front. Consider then, the travails of someone named, say, Kasimbhatla Veera Venkata Lakshmi Narasimha Raju; I guess he'll write his name as 'KVVL Narasimha Raju' or something.
Incidentally, that place is literally a state away from Ib, Orissa, which has the shortest name for any train station in India.
You're absolutely right about tolerance, but the question here is not that. I think the issue at hand is where do we separate religious beliefs from scientific ones. Or more precisely, can we let our religious beliefs affect our scientific practices? An interesting question, methinks, one that needs some thought.
Of course it is. A mere five characters for the surname in my mother tongue, Telugu.
As to where do they come with the names, I'm guessing he's a Tamilian, which means his surname is his dad's first name. If I remember my Sanskrit correctly, it literally means 'master of health', or a doctor.
My mistake; I meant to say 'Inscript', which is the Indian keyboard layout, when I said 'ISCII'. I pointed this out later in a reply to someone else's reply.
You're right though; IndLinux uses Unicode and not ISCII.
Better in Georgia Tech eh? ;-) Congratulations!
Yes, there is now a definite geographical disparity in power quality, if I may use the term, and other lifestyle parameters in India. The ubiquitous cell-phone, for instance, which remarkably works even in deepest parts of south India, will stop working the moment you go beyond say, Gauhati or Shillong, in the North East. What's more, it's difficult to imagine the phone companies doing anything about it in the near future; the market there won't sustain the difficult cost of wiring up the hills. (My data is two years old; could be wrong of course).
My point:- we Indians are probably looking at two forms of digital divide, international and intra-national, a digital divide that doesn't augur too well for a multi-cultural land like ours.
PS:- Why HCI? Your earlier sig and your webpage seems to be filled more with AI than HCI.
The Inscript layout has the vowels on the left side of the keyboard and the consonants on the right. The idea is you to type the consonant first and then *mould* the glyph using the vowels. It's the same layout for all Brahmi-scripts, which includes Sinhalese, Thai etc as well. Nifty idea, I'd say, but again, needs some getting used to.
Generally speaking, all CDAC software is Inscript, so it's quite possible that the layouts you've been talking about are Inscript. (The keyboard layout is actually called Inscript, while the character-lookup is called ISCII. Slight difference, sorry forgot about that in the earlier post)
Which raises a very curious point about energy. Yes, the world's masses are without power, telephone etc, yes, all that's necessary for *regular* IT development, but the question is, on ecological basis, can we sustain, say, American, energy levels on a global scale?
PS:- From India myself; I know what you're speaking about. My solution:- move to Delhi/Hyderabad! :-D
Precisely. Now you know why all these so-called third-world nations are so excited about IT; most believe it's their ticket to first-world-dom, whether on a personal level (ie jump hop to US/Europe), or on a societal level.
Sanskrit uses the same alphabet, Devanagri. And official (sarkari) Hindi, ie, Hindi in governmental legalese, uses a lot of Sanskrit words, so you could argue that Sanskrit is waaay closer to a Linux port than most other Indian languages.
18 official languages (check a recent rupee note). 845 non-official, but recognised. 1053 dialects. :-)
Also, as I said in my earlier post, this is probably not the first Indian language port; Tamil got there first. Any case, IndLinux, the group behind this particular port, has sub-groups for all official Indian languages.
Inevitable, in fact, IMHO, necessary.
The reason I believe is this:- unlike other language users, Hindi speakers like me are essentially bi-lingual (penta-lingual in my case). Which is to say, even if we type/speak in Hindi, we're used to a more English version of things. I mean, really, how would you translate "OK" to Hindi? Theek hai? For a natural language speaker who's used to an English interface, nothing could sound more funny. Which is also the reason why many of Devnagari commands on the menus are direct transliterations of actual English commands. The translation, as opposed to transliteration, is actually less than it seems.
The problems don't stop there of course. Like most Americans and most other Indian programmers, I'm used to the 101 US keyboard with ASCII layout. I have five Indian language (Telugu) word processors on my system, but rarely use the regular keyboard interface that comes along. Reason:- it easier to type with an ASCII layout keyboard than the ISCII one. More used to it.
Professional DTP folks back in India also apparently have a similar problem; most seem to prefer SreeLipi, which uses the traditional typewriter layout for keyboards, instead of iLeap, which uses the ISCII layout. This, I think, is IndLinux's biggest drawback. How many would like to change their typing habits, especially in languages with complex glyphs?
And finally, despite all appearances, this is not the first Indian language layout for Linux. Tamil Linux, apparently, got there first.
I find Guardian incredibly useful and really interesting too, but that's something that comes by ONLY by web browsing! :-)
On the internet, no one knows your a monkey. Even if you are the Millionth.
From the back of my head, they had a chain of portals as well. Can't remember the brand name though.
A very good point. Obviously, newspapers earn their $$$ from both ads and sales, but the split, apparently, is different in different countries, and probably has to do with other factors as well.
A point illustrated when you consider the cost of buying a daily in different countries. In Bangkok and in Singapore (possibly Kuala Lumpur/Jakarta as well), the cost is approximately the same:- 10 Baht or S$0.60. The cost of a newspaper in India, on other hand, is a mere Rs. 2 (1 Rupee on certain days); that's about 2 Baht or S$0.08.
Depends, really. There are, apparently, some very profitable newsletters sent out only as email, the names of which often come out when they complain against spam-blockers blocking their newsletter.
Personally, I think it's still possible to make money out of a web-only operation if you narrow your audience, focus your content only for that audience, and try making a good job out of it.
I'm guessing most porn operations, for instance, are successful because of this simple principle.
Yes, Google's algo only asked Microsoft to go to hell, of course, taking it down after the story was reported far and wide.
Very good point, except that you'd want to generalise "limits of the mind" to "limits of a mindset". The universe, as I see it, is a whole big abstraction.