Uh oh... I feel this cold wind blowing in from the late 90s: a buzz word packed vague product on an ever-so-cool web-site with a minumum of information in a space already occupied by multiple firms doing pretty much exactly the same thing...
We've even got soft pastels, an allergy to the upper case, rounded corners and even a "team blog". "Web I" + "Web II" in giant colorful stickly ball of happy speak. They even manage to work in "Google" on the inside.
Ah... nothing like the way an Areon chair molds itself to the ass while In the distance the soft clicks of a foosball match echo. Time for a free soda before the VCs arrive...
Lots of people are debunking the discovery because the fellow who might have found the supposed pyramid is a wack-job. I think that the "Chariots of the Gods" stuff can be disposed off without, as it were, throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
From the pictures on the web-sites linked to, it does seem reasonable to assume that there is something there. Geography is rarely THAT regular and it seems like the people digging have found evidence of blocks, construction, tunnels etc. These might be Roman or Ottoman era remains, or they might not.
History is long and great periods are undocumented or forgotten. It seems absolutely reasonable that the ruins of great civilization could have gone unnoticed in Bosnia especially as this area has seen almost constant and vicious warfare for most of the modern era. I think it is very unfortunate that this discovery has been tarred with pseudo-science before real results have been developed.
I love using Wikipedia; at the same time, I know that any facts or information I find in there needs to be confirmed with a more traditional source before I take it to heart. Wikipedia is good for letting you be aware of obscure and details and facts about topics you never would have guessed existed. Some of this information is BS, but a quick scan of more traditional sources will show the truth. For instance, I saw an odd interest in Bulgarian. Through Wikipedia, I discovered information about an ethnic group in that country I'd never heard of, as follows:
"Karakachans or Sarakatsani are an itinerant "white colour" (i.e. non-Roma) people of the Balkans. Their name is thought to be a pejorative label coined by Turkish conquerors, for their nomadic way of life. They used to practice transhumance, raising their herds on the move, wintering on the Aegean shore, and spending the summer in the Rhodopes or Balkan mountains. In the Ottoman period they were a relatively independent people and wealthy through trade in lamb meat and wool. After the WWII, they were sedentarized in Bulgaria. They speak an archaic Greek dialect (to some extent mixed with Romanian words) and are Eastern Orthodox."
The writing is a little odd, and obviously by someone who loves the thesaurus. ("transhumance?"... why not just say that they migrate seasonally). However, the facts are dead on and this is valuable information to someone like me with interest in such an utterly obscure topic. It was especially interesting to know that this group has another name, the "Sarakatsani".
I recently returned from a trip to the Philippines. One of the most annoying things about the shopping there is that they actually verify credit card signatures, and, if your signature is the least bit different on the receipt than on the card, a manager has to be called over.
Even the most brain 2 dollar a day cashier chicks carefully verify credit card transaction, and, if there's a question, they'll gather another two or three cashier chicks to cluck at the card before summoning a manager, who will then have to summon another manager sometimes.
One thing about the Philippines... it is hot and Americans sweat like pigs there. On one really bad day, my sweat washed away most of my signature and I couldn't use my credit card until I got back to the States and no-one cared anymore...
I am not geneticist or even a scientist, so if the following opinion sounds stupid, please take that into consideration... I was thinking about that and have an idea. Imagine this a mouse in the wild that regenerate a leg after, say, a week. For that one week period, the three legged mouse will barely be able to move and when it does it will slow and shambling, i.e. perfect owl/stoat/dog/cat food. The regeneration genes will never get passed on to the next generation. A blind mouse would eaten even faster.
I think this is a good thing; the more competition, the better. Even though Microsoft's "Google killer" is a damp squib, I'm sure the the product's existence keeps people at Google on their toes and innovating just in case Microsoft throws enough money at web searching to accidently create something new.
I used Skype and love the service, but I feel they're a little lazy. For instance, Skype-In. You can get Skype-In numbers in such populous, economic power house countries as Estonia or Finland. But for such small, obscure places like Japan, India, Germany, getting a Skype-In number is not possible as of yet.
It might be regulatory issues, I guess, but now that MS in the mix the people at Skype will have to move faster. When Bill Gates wants to talk to the German telecom authorities about "MS-in" numbers, he'll get a meeting right away...
Other things like video calls have been possible using MSN and Yahoo for ages. Why not Skype? Also, voice quality could improve inside the US. I get clearer calls to the Philippines and Bulgaria than to NYC or Missouri.
As a geek, I realize that this might be the fault of the US infrastructure and something that to fix would require new technology, money or innovation; however, as a customer, I don't care and I'm sure that Microsoft would find a way to make the calls crystal clear.
Just to be clear, I'm not bashing Skype. It has revolutionized the way I talk to to family and friends world-wide. At present it is the best product out there for what it does, the most flexible, the most innovative, etc. I just want to see them continue on this path and a little kick in the ass from Gates and company would be a good thing.
So, after millions of dollars and with the combined power of multiple PhDs, aeronautical engineers have successfully invented... a bird.
Seriously, it really is amazing to go the beach and see a small sparrow and realize that the tiny bird flies better, is more maneuverable, more energy efficient, has better sensors, better object avoidance and has better AI than the best blue-sky, black budget skunk works project out of Area 51.
It is humbling to think how far we far to go to even come close to what evolution has randomly created.
This might be a very stupid question, but what happens when an Australian tries to buy/download songs from the US site? Does apple block Australian IP addresses or is that when you try and pay with an Australian credit card, it won't go through? They use PayPal. Does PayPal tell Apple if the account holder is Australian? Like I say, this might be a really idiotic question.
I think it was just big company stupidity on MS's part. The memo about how having a pop-up blocker got lost or side-tracked by some PHB buried deep in the organization because of some internal politics, maybe.
I might be very wrong, but I have never seen or heard of MS popups advertising MS products. Hotmail might have had some pop-ups before, but I use Hotmail in IE all the time with no blocker at work, and I don't think I've seen a popup off that site in years, if ever. So, their lack of a built -in pop-up blocker can't be because of impact on their revenue and, even if they wanted to do pop-ups, it wouldn't be hard to code the pop-up blocker so that MS stuff would always get through.
And what exactly is wrong with this? Why shouldn't I as a paying consumer be able to choose exactly what kind of offspring I want with the best talents, intelligence, strength, appearance, personality, skills, etc. that money can buy? The 21st century is going to be intensely competitive as machines take over more and more tasks from humans. I would love to be able to go a website and choose the traits that would make my children dominant in the coming world. To me, paying 100,000 dollars or so for this would be fine, especially as that is how much an Ivory league school costs. (Not that I have 100,000 dollars now, of course...)
Even if there are other foreigners around, to really get in deep to the level of hard-core fluency takes solo study time and total intensity. Some things can only be learned by repetition and old fashioned memorization. It is when you come out of this phase with a high level of background that you can enjoy real conversations with native speakers about actual topics (rather than what color your cat is) and can intelligently discuss the language you've learned with other foreigners at an equal or higher level.
I've spent the last three years teaching myself to read Japanese. I can now pick up a Japanese newspaper and just read 90% of the articles. Sadly, this isn't as good a way to pick up Japanese chicks as one might think. Instead of being the happy go-lucky fun-loving gaijin, you become just another crufty, bog-average business guy in a suit reading about the latest municipal garbage hauling scam in Osaka...
How I did was brute force, using the Breen dictionary site and various on-line Japanese new sites. I'd find an article, and read it. Words I didn't know, I'd look up. Then I'd read another article and do the same thing. Over a year, I had built up a good vocabulary. I was working a Help Desk, so believe me, I had nothing but time to keep looking up the same word over and over until it stuck.
I wrote my own flashcard programs (one in JavaScript and one in VB) that brought in audio and pictures. Unfortunately, this method (for me) was not long term effective. I'd gain an extra 500 words of vocab that I'd loose just as fast. For me, only words that I saw all the time really stuck. Pictures, audio, etc., although nice, didn't seem to add much to my learning effort. Just straight and constant reading and watching TV and looking up words is what did it for me.
The hardest challenge is crossing the line to real fluency and reading novels. I can get through the newspaper fine but can't get past page one of a novel yet. The reason is all the words that every Japanese person knows that only show up rarely in written material (English is the same, how often do you say "ermine", "demarcation" or "orbital insertion" in conversation?). I've gone back to the flash cards for words of this type.
In short, there's no magic to learning a language. It is a grotty, tedious, intense and rather lonely project involving memorization, dictionaries and lots of time.
We've seen lots of BSG stories lately on Slashdot,and with the quality of the show plus forward thinking initiatives on that part of the producers such as this "podcast", there will likely be many more stories to come. So, when will BSG gets it's own icon ?(Instead of that StarTrek TOS looking bumpy headed alien.)
There really hasn't been anything like it on TV in a while, and it is obvious that the producers pay attention to what fans think. I rememeber last year, there were postings on Slashdot about why after all the nuking Caprica didn't have nuclear winter effects, radiation. Now, 2nd season, the characters need radiation shots and the weather is awful (although shouldn't it be cold and icy instead of rainy?)
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And the Baltar character is hilarious. Like last episode when Starbuck caught him and his imaginary(?) cylon GF doing it doggy style. It was sexy without being UPNish and funny without being stupid and, well, UPNish. I like how they introduce an edgy, troublesome character like commander Ty's wife and don't just send her off at the end of the episode StarTrek syle. Or it was cool when Boomer started getting hot and bothered over the Cylon fighter ship. I could go on and on. I wish the people who were doing Enterprise had had 1/10nth of the creativity. The one episode where they came close to the human level BSG gets is when they had shoreleave on that one planet, and Hoshi got bent over by that big alien guy. It was funny, totally unexpected from that particular character and made them seem like real people.
Could someone elucidate why the internet community is nervous about implementing an XXX domain for all porn, adult sites, etc. to be assigned to? To me, this seems the best solution and the best way to avoid censorship. (We have four more years of Bush, 8 years of Jeb and then 8 of Condi Rice ahead of us... they're going to get judges on the courts who will start letting these laws stand).
I know that there was some worry about borderline sites (breast cancer, anatomy, etc.) being forced into XXX status. It seems to me that a review board could decide on those, or, even individual ISPs or users that block XXX urls could whitelist the borderline ones. All in all it seems too small an issue to derail the whole idea.
I have heard it said that this won't stop foreign sites. This is true,but if all US porn was put under an XXX domain, that would be big step. And remember, the porn isn't being banned. People, companies and ISPs would be able to make their own choices about what sites to let in. As for who gets the new XXX domain names, I say that existing.com porn site holders should get the right of first refusal.
I like porn as much as the next guy. At the same time, I don't think it ought to be accessible at schools, libraries, work, etc. To people who cry "censorship!" at this, what would happen if you took out a Penthouse in home-room in gradeschool, or sat there at work reading a Playboy? Access to porn should be something I am able to block, allow etc. based on my own choices either on my machine or by choosing an ISP with XXX blocking policies that fit my needs.
(If you haven't seen this season's episodes of BSG or Enterprise up until last week, SPOILER ALERT... )
I agree, I love how the writers on BSG have done things. I felt a cold fear when they loaded that Boxy kid on the ship during the initial mini-series.
However, when he turned up again as Starbuck's sidekick, instead of sugary cute and vulnerable he was a greasy, angry, pissed off cynical asshole. Nice. His best line was when Commander Ty asked where is mother and father were, and Boxy answers, "Dead." Also so far, and I pray never, no stupid robot dog.
I like the humanistic way the characters do things, as when Starbuck was lost and Ademna just refused to move the the fleet or stop the search. As utterly wrong a command decision as that was, his character had obviously decided that at that point, there would be no more retreats, surrrenders or fallbacks. It was completely real (and would have gotten him relieved of duty during normal times, of course).
When Archer did the same kind of thing to help attempt to recover the son of the transporter inventor re-materialize after the scam was revealed (and the half materialized son had melted off one guy's face and done major damage to the ship) it was just stupid. A commander of warship would just never do something like that or if he did, it would be the last thing he'd do as commander. (I don't know how it works in the real Navy if the captain starts giving crazy orders, if people on the crew just wait till the ship docks and report it or if the XO takes over right away.)
I think because The SciFi Channel is shooting for a smaller, specific audience (us) and doesn't have to care about reaching out to all demographics, being family conscious, etc. they can really let loose. Another really funny scene you'd NEVER see on Enterprise was when Baltar was trying to talk to the to other guy taking a dump in the john. Even more funny was when the Cylon chick came in to use the toilet. You wonder if she's crapping out machine oil or something. Do StarFleet ships even have toilets? And what about the femdom scene on the roof of the building on Caprica, where the Boomer cyclon gets its ass kicked by the blond one? Wow.
StarTrek is also caught in the complexity of its universe. With the history, mentalities, etc. of all the aliens worked out, it comes off more like a history channel documentary. If they diverge too far (and they've really pushed it as it is... ) away from the established canon, the show isn't acceptable to hardcore fans. But, at the same time, to someone channel surfing, Enterprise would be very hard to get into because of so many things assumed to be known. BSG is much simpler: evil robots want to kill everyone. (And some of the robots are hot fembots who hold sexy parties... lol)
I think I remember that one, I think it was the episode where a movie studio is filming a "StarGate" movie that seems too close to the "real thing" and they send Colonel O'Neil to figure out how the movie people could have gotten so close to the truth. That little whiny ferret-like guy with the glasses is in it also, I think.
It is annoying. I wish they would at least have some techobabble explanation like "infection with g'auld nano-translators" or something to explain it.(I only got into the show a few seasons in... to those hard core fans out there, has the "English problem" ever been addressed in an episode?) I think the way Enterprise does it isn't good. There's no way Hoshi could listen to a few phrases of random insect screech and somehow magically understand it, no matter how much of a super genius she is.
On the other hand, with only 45 minutes to tell an interesting, engrossing story each week, there really isn't time to muck around with languages, translation, etc. As StarGate and Atlantis generally provide entertainment far superior to anything else on TV (barring BSG and what's left of Enterprise) I can live with a universe of perfect American standard English speakers. At least the StarGate aliens don't have bumpy heads...
They'd have to fire the BSG writers and bring over the now unemployed people who screwed up Enterprise to ruin the show that much. From what we've seen so far, I don't think they'd destroy what has so far been an excellent show with crappiness (those of you who have downloaded the UK version or seen it live, so please spoilers... I could download it, but kind of like looking forward to the show every week.) From other posts which have alluded to the final episode, I'm pretty sure Enterprise or Voyager type grottiness is not what the future holds for BSG.
I think BSG is going to be around for a long time. The SciFi Channel is not aiming for a big national hit like Friends or something. They know (and their advertisers know) just about how big an audience that network has and that it won't get much bigger. BSG not only beat StarTrek, but likely scooped up the maximum audience numbers Scifi Channel ad people promised advertisers.
UPN has dreams of becoming the next FOX or ABC or something. They're a long way from it, but their goal/hope is to compete with and dominate the other networks. Advertisers will judge a UPN show on how much of UPN's potential audience it gets. StarTrek failed on both counts for them. If the SciFi Channel comes up with a hit as big as the Sopranos or something, they'll be happy, of course, but no-one over there is seriously expecting that to happen, while at UPN, the suits will want to know why it isn't happening...
The immediate future of television SciFi is niche channels. The staple of good SciFi is great special effects. Every year, it gets cheaper and cheaper to make effects that are better and better. The original BSG took the budget of a major network to put out. Now, a smallish cable channel can do a better job cheaper.
When creating StarWars level special effects becomes as cheap as putting together the set for Seinfeld or Friends, I predict SciFi will return to the major networks. On shows like this, the cost of some old furniture, some cereal boxes, etc. was hardly anything and most of the money went to the actors.
I just tested out the msn site. It comes up with good links, fast, has cached pages and verifies my spelling. It doesn't quite feel as smooth or polished as Google, but that might be sujective. It definitely isn't "better" yet. However, version 1 sucked and now version 2 is more-or-less on par.
Microsoft always plays this tortoise/hare game with its software. Every few weeks, msn search will get incrementally, imperceptibly better. I remember back in the day, IE was crap and used Netscape. Slowly, I wound up using IE more-and-more until Firefox/Mozilla came along. If the guys at Google stay on their toes and don't become complacent they shouldn't have a problem, though.
Although I do not like Microsoft, for us the consumer, having the two giants smashing at each other for market share is nothing but good. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've felt Google has gotten lazy. Lots of the search results are nothing but sales sites these days... with all that brain power they brag about, you'd think they could have done something about that by now.
I hope the TV industry wakes up to the potential they're missing. For example, I am a StarTrek Enterprise fan (maybe the last one... LOL). Well, my Tivo crapped out Friday and missed the episode. Right now, via eDonkey, I've got 67% downloaded and eight hours to go. Bittorrent is supposed to be better, I hear everywhere. My luck hasn't been so good with it (files only partially show up, don't start, etc.). That's likely due to something stupid I'm doing, though.
However, I would gladly pay UPN up to 10 bucks to see the episode. That's the cost of a movie, mucking around with p2p apps, or renting a video (with convenience costs built in). I hate p2p networks. You never know if the file is what you want or some kind of Mongolian goat bondage porn. Sometimes the files don't play. Other times they might be full of viruses. It is worth the money to me to get a quick, quality download from a trusted source. Being busy, I just don't have the bandwidth to deal with different p2p apps, etc. For something like TV, let me just put my cash down and get what I want.
As for ads, they can leave them in. With my Tivo, I forward past the stupid ones and actually watch the ones that catch my eye. I'd do the same with a downloaded file. They could also run ads as "strips" below the show. Both methods are annoying, but these methods would satisfy the marketing neanderthals at the big networks. Even if they stuck some annoying DRM on the file, I'd go for it (figuring that slashdot would have an article about a workaround to it in about a milisecond anyway.)
Let me pat myself on the back here.... you know how the Breen site has a link that points to Google images? It was me who suggested that to Prof. Breen a few years back. I hated finding words in Japanese on the site that meant what I wanted to say but either turned out to be obscure and never used, or actually have different meanings entirely (think of English, how lie and lay sound the same, but are very different in meaning.) If no images come up, the word is something no-one ever uses and if the images are all wrong for the meaning I want, I try another word till the images are right. It was me who also got the katakana for Lucy Liu's name listed on the site. I'm still waiting for her to be so impressed by my effort on her part that she turns up at my door to be mine... LOL, I think it'll be a long wait...
I am American but have to write in Japanese for work. No matter how much one learns in school, when one writes in a foreign language, you'll hit a point of wondering if what you wrote is how native speakers say something or is even understandable. Whenever I hit a point like that, I put the sentence in question (or key fragments thereof) into a Google search. If nothing comes up, I know I have to rewrite. If only a few links come up, I know what I wrote might be a little wierd, but is at least understandable. If I get pages and pages of links, I'm golden.
Slashdot Mirror
We've even got soft pastels, an allergy to the upper case, rounded corners and even a "team blog". "Web I" + "Web II" in giant colorful stickly ball of happy speak. They even manage to work in "Google" on the inside.
Ah ... nothing like the way an Areon chair molds itself to the ass while In the distance the soft clicks of a foosball match echo. Time for a free soda before the VCs arrive ...
From the pictures on the web-sites linked to, it does seem reasonable to assume that there is something there. Geography is rarely THAT regular and it seems like the people digging have found evidence of blocks, construction, tunnels etc. These might be Roman or Ottoman era remains, or they might not.
History is long and great periods are undocumented or forgotten. It seems absolutely reasonable that the ruins of great civilization could have gone unnoticed in Bosnia especially as this area has seen almost constant and vicious warfare for most of the modern era. I think it is very unfortunate that this discovery has been tarred with pseudo-science before real results have been developed.
This is about 1000 light years off topic but ass rippingly funny! I literally fell out of my chair reading this.
"Karakachans or Sarakatsani are an itinerant "white colour" (i.e. non-Roma) people of the Balkans. Their name is thought to be a pejorative label coined by Turkish conquerors, for their nomadic way of life. They used to practice transhumance, raising their herds on the move, wintering on the Aegean shore, and spending the summer in the Rhodopes or Balkan mountains. In the Ottoman period they were a relatively independent people and wealthy through trade in lamb meat and wool. After the WWII, they were sedentarized in Bulgaria. They speak an archaic Greek dialect (to some extent mixed with Romanian words) and are Eastern Orthodox."
The writing is a little odd, and obviously by someone who loves the thesaurus. ("transhumance?" ... why not just say that they migrate seasonally). However, the facts are dead on and this is valuable information to someone like me with interest in such an utterly obscure topic. It was especially interesting to know that this group has another name, the "Sarakatsani".
Even the most brain 2 dollar a day cashier chicks carefully verify credit card transaction, and, if there's a question, they'll gather another two or three cashier chicks to cluck at the card before summoning a manager, who will then have to summon another manager sometimes.
One thing about the Philippines ... it is hot and Americans sweat like pigs there. On one really bad day, my sweat washed away most of my signature and I couldn't use my credit card until I got back to the States and no-one cared anymore ...
I am not geneticist or even a scientist, so if the following opinion sounds stupid, please take that into consideration ... I was thinking about that and have an idea. Imagine this a mouse in the wild that regenerate a leg after, say, a week. For that one week period, the three legged mouse will barely be able to move and when it does it will slow and shambling, i.e. perfect owl/stoat/dog/cat food. The regeneration genes will never get passed on to the next generation. A blind mouse would eaten even faster.
I used Skype and love the service, but I feel they're a little lazy. For instance, Skype-In. You can get Skype-In numbers in such populous, economic power house countries as Estonia or Finland. But for such small, obscure places like Japan, India, Germany, getting a Skype-In number is not possible as of yet.
It might be regulatory issues, I guess, but now that MS in the mix the people at Skype will have to move faster. When Bill Gates wants to talk to the German telecom authorities about "MS-in" numbers, he'll get a meeting right away ...
Other things like video calls have been possible using MSN and Yahoo for ages. Why not Skype? Also, voice quality could improve inside the US. I get clearer calls to the Philippines and Bulgaria than to NYC or Missouri.
As a geek, I realize that this might be the fault of the US infrastructure and something that to fix would require new technology, money or innovation; however, as a customer, I don't care and I'm sure that Microsoft would find a way to make the calls crystal clear.
Just to be clear, I'm not bashing Skype. It has revolutionized the way I talk to to family and friends world-wide. At present it is the best product out there for what it does, the most flexible, the most innovative, etc. I just want to see them continue on this path and a little kick in the ass from Gates and company would be a good thing.
Seriously, it really is amazing to go the beach and see a small sparrow and realize that the tiny bird flies better, is more maneuverable, more energy efficient, has better sensors, better object avoidance and has better AI than the best blue-sky, black budget skunk works project out of Area 51.
It is humbling to think how far we far to go to even come close to what evolution has randomly created.
Well, you all do know that Bush had better grades than Kerry at Yale?
This might be a very stupid question, but what happens when an Australian tries to buy/download songs from the US site? Does apple block Australian IP addresses or is that when you try and pay with an Australian credit card, it won't go through? They use PayPal. Does PayPal tell Apple if the account holder is Australian? Like I say, this might be a really idiotic question.
I might be very wrong, but I have never seen or heard of MS popups advertising MS products. Hotmail might have had some pop-ups before, but I use Hotmail in IE all the time with no blocker at work, and I don't think I've seen a popup off that site in years, if ever. So, their lack of a built -in pop-up blocker can't be because of impact on their revenue and, even if they wanted to do pop-ups, it wouldn't be hard to code the pop-up blocker so that MS stuff would always get through.
And what exactly is wrong with this? Why shouldn't I as a paying consumer be able to choose exactly what kind of offspring I want with the best talents, intelligence, strength, appearance, personality, skills, etc. that money can buy? The 21st century is going to be intensely competitive as machines take over more and more tasks from humans. I would love to be able to go a website and choose the traits that would make my children dominant in the coming world. To me, paying 100,000 dollars or so for this would be fine, especially as that is how much an Ivory league school costs. (Not that I have 100,000 dollars now, of course ...)
Even if there are other foreigners around, to really get in deep to the level of hard-core fluency takes solo study time and total intensity. Some things can only be learned by repetition and old fashioned memorization. It is when you come out of this phase with a high level of background that you can enjoy real conversations with native speakers about actual topics (rather than what color your cat is) and can intelligently discuss the language you've learned with other foreigners at an equal or higher level.
How I did was brute force, using the Breen dictionary site and various on-line Japanese new sites. I'd find an article, and read it. Words I didn't know, I'd look up. Then I'd read another article and do the same thing. Over a year, I had built up a good vocabulary. I was working a Help Desk, so believe me, I had nothing but time to keep looking up the same word over and over until it stuck.
I wrote my own flashcard programs (one in JavaScript and one in VB) that brought in audio and pictures. Unfortunately, this method (for me) was not long term effective. I'd gain an extra 500 words of vocab that I'd loose just as fast. For me, only words that I saw all the time really stuck. Pictures, audio, etc., although nice, didn't seem to add much to my learning effort. Just straight and constant reading and watching TV and looking up words is what did it for me.
The hardest challenge is crossing the line to real fluency and reading novels. I can get through the newspaper fine but can't get past page one of a novel yet. The reason is all the words that every Japanese person knows that only show up rarely in written material (English is the same, how often do you say "ermine", "demarcation" or "orbital insertion" in conversation?). I've gone back to the flash cards for words of this type.
In short, there's no magic to learning a language. It is a grotty, tedious, intense and rather lonely project involving memorization, dictionaries and lots of time.
There really hasn't been anything like it on TV in a while, and it is obvious that the producers pay attention to what fans think. I rememeber last year, there were postings on Slashdot about why after all the nuking Caprica didn't have nuclear winter effects, radiation. Now, 2nd season, the characters need radiation shots and the weather is awful (although shouldn't it be cold and icy instead of rainy?)
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And the Baltar character is hilarious. Like last episode when Starbuck caught him and his imaginary(?) cylon GF doing it doggy style. It was sexy without being UPNish and funny without being stupid and, well, UPNish. I like how they introduce an edgy, troublesome character like commander Ty's wife and don't just send her off at the end of the episode StarTrek syle. Or it was cool when Boomer started getting hot and bothered over the Cylon fighter ship. I could go on and on. I wish the people who were doing Enterprise had had 1/10nth of the creativity. The one episode where they came close to the human level BSG gets is when they had shoreleave on that one planet, and Hoshi got bent over by that big alien guy. It was funny, totally unexpected from that particular character and made them seem like real people.
I know that there was some worry about borderline sites (breast cancer, anatomy, etc.) being forced into XXX status. It seems to me that a review board could decide on those, or, even individual ISPs or users that block XXX urls could whitelist the borderline ones. All in all it seems too small an issue to derail the whole idea.
I have heard it said that this won't stop foreign sites. This is true,but if all US porn was put under an XXX domain, that would be big step. And remember, the porn isn't being banned. People, companies and ISPs would be able to make their own choices about what sites to let in. As for who gets the new XXX domain names, I say that existing .com porn site holders should get the right of first refusal.
I like porn as much as the next guy. At the same time, I don't think it ought to be accessible at schools, libraries, work, etc. To people who cry "censorship!" at this, what would happen if you took out a Penthouse in home-room in gradeschool, or sat there at work reading a Playboy? Access to porn should be something I am able to block, allow etc. based on my own choices either on my machine or by choosing an ISP with XXX blocking policies that fit my needs.
I agree, I love how the writers on BSG have done things. I felt a cold fear when they loaded that Boxy kid on the ship during the initial mini-series. However, when he turned up again as Starbuck's sidekick, instead of sugary cute and vulnerable he was a greasy, angry, pissed off cynical asshole. Nice. His best line was when Commander Ty asked where is mother and father were, and Boxy answers, "Dead." Also so far, and I pray never, no stupid robot dog.
I like the humanistic way the characters do things, as when Starbuck was lost and Ademna just refused to move the the fleet or stop the search. As utterly wrong a command decision as that was, his character had obviously decided that at that point, there would be no more retreats, surrrenders or fallbacks. It was completely real (and would have gotten him relieved of duty during normal times, of course).
When Archer did the same kind of thing to help attempt to recover the son of the transporter inventor re-materialize after the scam was revealed (and the half materialized son had melted off one guy's face and done major damage to the ship) it was just stupid. A commander of warship would just never do something like that or if he did, it would be the last thing he'd do as commander. (I don't know how it works in the real Navy if the captain starts giving crazy orders, if people on the crew just wait till the ship docks and report it or if the XO takes over right away.)
I think because The SciFi Channel is shooting for a smaller, specific audience (us) and doesn't have to care about reaching out to all demographics, being family conscious, etc. they can really let loose. Another really funny scene you'd NEVER see on Enterprise was when Baltar was trying to talk to the to other guy taking a dump in the john. Even more funny was when the Cylon chick came in to use the toilet. You wonder if she's crapping out machine oil or something. Do StarFleet ships even have toilets? And what about the femdom scene on the roof of the building on Caprica, where the Boomer cyclon gets its ass kicked by the blond one? Wow.
StarTrek is also caught in the complexity of its universe. With the history, mentalities, etc. of all the aliens worked out, it comes off more like a history channel documentary. If they diverge too far (and they've really pushed it as it is ... ) away from the established canon, the show isn't acceptable to hardcore fans. But, at the same time, to someone channel surfing, Enterprise would be very hard to get into because of so many things assumed to be known. BSG is much simpler: evil robots want to kill everyone. (And some of the robots are hot fembots who hold sexy parties ... lol)
I think I remember that one, I think it was the episode where a movie studio is filming a "StarGate" movie that seems too close to the "real thing" and they send Colonel O'Neil to figure out how the movie people could have gotten so close to the truth. That little whiny ferret-like guy with the glasses is in it also, I think.
On the other hand, with only 45 minutes to tell an interesting, engrossing story each week, there really isn't time to muck around with languages, translation, etc. As StarGate and Atlantis generally provide entertainment far superior to anything else on TV (barring BSG and what's left of Enterprise) I can live with a universe of perfect American standard English speakers. At least the StarGate aliens don't have bumpy heads ...
They'd have to fire the BSG writers and bring over the now unemployed people who screwed up Enterprise to ruin the show that much. From what we've seen so far, I don't think they'd destroy what has so far been an excellent show with crappiness (those of you who have downloaded the UK version or seen it live, so please spoilers ... I could download it, but kind of like looking forward to the show every week.) From other posts which have alluded to the final episode, I'm pretty sure Enterprise or Voyager type grottiness is not what the future holds for BSG.
UPN has dreams of becoming the next FOX or ABC or something. They're a long way from it, but their goal/hope is to compete with and dominate the other networks. Advertisers will judge a UPN show on how much of UPN's potential audience it gets. StarTrek failed on both counts for them. If the SciFi Channel comes up with a hit as big as the Sopranos or something, they'll be happy, of course, but no-one over there is seriously expecting that to happen, while at UPN, the suits will want to know why it isn't happening ...
The immediate future of television SciFi is niche channels. The staple of good SciFi is great special effects. Every year, it gets cheaper and cheaper to make effects that are better and better. The original BSG took the budget of a major network to put out. Now, a smallish cable channel can do a better job cheaper.
When creating StarWars level special effects becomes as cheap as putting together the set for Seinfeld or Friends, I predict SciFi will return to the major networks. On shows like this, the cost of some old furniture, some cereal boxes, etc. was hardly anything and most of the money went to the actors.
Microsoft always plays this tortoise/hare game with its software. Every few weeks, msn search will get incrementally, imperceptibly better. I remember back in the day, IE was crap and used Netscape. Slowly, I wound up using IE more-and-more until Firefox/Mozilla came along. If the guys at Google stay on their toes and don't become complacent they shouldn't have a problem, though.
Although I do not like Microsoft, for us the consumer, having the two giants smashing at each other for market share is nothing but good. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've felt Google has gotten lazy. Lots of the search results are nothing but sales sites these days ... with all that brain power they brag about, you'd think they could have done something about that by now.
However, I would gladly pay UPN up to 10 bucks to see the episode. That's the cost of a movie, mucking around with p2p apps, or renting a video (with convenience costs built in). I hate p2p networks. You never know if the file is what you want or some kind of Mongolian goat bondage porn. Sometimes the files don't play. Other times they might be full of viruses. It is worth the money to me to get a quick, quality download from a trusted source. Being busy, I just don't have the bandwidth to deal with different p2p apps, etc. For something like TV, let me just put my cash down and get what I want.
As for ads, they can leave them in. With my Tivo, I forward past the stupid ones and actually watch the ones that catch my eye. I'd do the same with a downloaded file. They could also run ads as "strips" below the show. Both methods are annoying, but these methods would satisfy the marketing neanderthals at the big networks. Even if they stuck some annoying DRM on the file, I'd go for it (figuring that slashdot would have an article about a workaround to it in about a milisecond anyway.)
Let me pat myself on the back here .... you know how the Breen site has a link that points to Google images? It was me who suggested that to Prof. Breen a few years back. I hated finding words in Japanese on the site that meant what I wanted to say but either turned out to be obscure and never used, or actually have different meanings entirely (think of English, how lie and lay sound the same, but are very different in meaning.) If no images come up, the word is something no-one ever uses and if the images are all wrong for the meaning I want, I try another word till the images are right. It was me who also got the katakana for Lucy Liu's name listed on the site. I'm still waiting for her to be so impressed by my effort on her part that she turns up at my door to be mine ... LOL, I think it'll be a long wait ...
I am American but have to write in Japanese for work. No matter how much one learns in school, when one writes in a foreign language, you'll hit a point of wondering if what you wrote is how native speakers say something or is even understandable. Whenever I hit a point like that, I put the sentence in question (or key fragments thereof) into a Google search. If nothing comes up, I know I have to rewrite. If only a few links come up, I know what I wrote might be a little wierd, but is at least understandable. If I get pages and pages of links, I'm golden.