public education - the species got along fine without government schooling just fine for thousands of years
With the vast majority of people remaining uneducated, which wouldn't work out too well in the current state of the world.
social security and medicare programs - how to punish people for getting old. My poor grandfather would've expired, were it not for Medicare paying for his defibrillator... I have three grandparents left, aged 86 to 91, and they're all sitting around watching T.V. and waiting to die.
Yeah. It's a shame they aren't dead.
war on drugs [...] but I recognize that the 'war' has created more problems than it's solved.
Which was the GP's point, if I'm not mistaken.
government... debt - no government, no debt. That one's quite simple.
And no fire department. No police force. No defense against foreign invastion...
medical and college education costs - government has sent all the jobs that don't require education away to Mexico (via NAFTA) or China/Asia (via WTO)
No, they haven't. They've allowed companies to send the jobs away without penalty. There's a big difference. See, without government, it would be even easier for corporations to do this, with essentially no hope in reigning them in.
Both languages I originally talked about it are the same for colors terms. They are O'odham and Serrano, both Uto-Aztecan languages of the American southwest.
It isn't Mandarin, which I happen to be studying at the moment, since it the tone changes the meaning of individual words, not whole sentences.
The change in stress changes one word from a modal meaning "remote possibility" to a compound verb meaning "pick the butt". The adverb "honestly" and the verb "be true" are homophonous, and word order doesn't matter very much; thus, the ambiguity. This language is O'odham. The other language, the one that lets you split "compound words" is Serrano. Both are Uto-Aztecan languages spoken in the American southwest.
Are you referring to Warlpiri and its sign language?
I do all my work on languages of North America. Mostly, Southern California and Arizona, though I've dabbled in a language from Mexico and one from Oklahoma.
I did not know that some language would use a unique word for distinct colours.
Well, all languages do. The "red" of a rose and the "red" of a brick are quite distinct colors, but we just call them "red". There are languages that make fundamental distinctions we do not in English. Really, it's all just wavelengths hitting our eyes. Different cultures have different ways of organizing that data.
Exactly! Tons of information we convey is done outside of the language we use. Some of the things we have to "leave" English to convey are simple words in other languages. How can automatic machine translation possibly work when that is the case?
Language is not composed of words. It is composed of idiomatic phrases (idiomatic phrases do not mean what the words mean) only understandable in context.
That's like saying humans aren't composed of cells. We are composed of organs who's functions are not useful in isolation. Idioms are composed of words, and the words are vital. Just like an organ will cease to work if you change the component cells, the idiom will cease to mean what you want it to if you change the component words.
True automatic translation is not possible.
True automatic translation will be possible when we have true artificial intelligence. And not a day sooner. (But maybe a day or to later.)
Sorry to say, English is not as unusual as you would like to believe. (I am a linguist.)
In many ways, English is quite simple. For example, our word order is very straightforward. I work with a language were the following is a normal sentence: "This is city New called York here." (This city here is called New York.) In fact, almost every permutation of those words would be valid without a change in the basic meaning (as long as "is" is the second word). This is a so-called non-configurational language. Parsing English is easy by comparison.
I work with another language were there is a slight stress difference between the sentences "That might be true" and "He's honestly picking his butt." The words "soup" and "shit" are differentiated by a 40-50% increase in the length of the last vowel. There is one word for both "blue" and "green", and another word for "yellow", "orange", and "brown".
As to the likelihood of this project succeeding anytime soon: Languages are often not directly translatable into each other. One language I work with has an entire part of speech I cannot adequately translate into English. I have to wave my hands and point to convey the same information in English.
I'm adding this comment to undo an accidental moderation.
And as long as I'm here for this, I might as well rant. The new moderation system is horrible. I should be able to review my choices before committing them. Please, bring back the "moderate" button.
If butterflies were natural you would expect them to look like other flies. Flies have dark bodies and translucent wings. Butterflies have light bodies and colorful wings.
Now, I can accept the idea that evolution has produced a variety of fly that looks different from the other members of its family. (Look at zebras and horses.) But butter does not occur in nature! Butter is only a manmade product! How can we accept that butterflies are natural when butter is not natural! Scientists and evironmentalists are ignoring the clear facts to stir up controversy.
Compound words are not always compositional in meaning. This is especially true of technical terminology. If you want to participate in a debate, it is a good idea to learn what the words mean before doing so. (Hint:"Global warming" is not just about the globe getting warmer. It's more complicated than that.)
iTunes 7.0 has screwed things up for me too, though apparently not as badly as for you. iTunes hangs literally 50% of the time I try to sync my ipod. I have to force quit and restart itunes to try again. I have had a few times where I had to reboot the machine, things had crashed so hard.
It can't be prevented, any more than water can be made to flow uphill.
Water can flow uphill.
Water follows the path of least resistance. If uphill provides less resistance, then uphill it will go. This happens spontaneously in nature in glacial regions. The weight of the glacier pressing down onto a body of water can force the water to flow up the hill or mountain side like a river.
I'll let others extend the metaphor as appropriate for the current discussion.
You'd better stop your students from, uh, using your "intellectual property" in real life, then. That's valuable money you're losing by teaching students your knowledge.
The professor's lectures, slides, etc. are just like a textbook. The knowledge taught by them is free to anyone to disseminate. The presentation of the material is copyright of the professor and cannot be used without at least acknowledgment of the source, preferably with permission. (Fair use meets basic politeness.)
Could we use them on politicians who authorize the use of force based on faulty intelligence? For every X number of American soldiers needlessly killed, you get shot once. Since it's non-lethal, they can actually learn from their mistakes and feel regret. That might discourage dishonesty and blindly accepting what you're told.
If only we could come up with a non-lethal weapon that induced guilt instead of (or in addition to) pain....
Sometimes I feel like getting the truth about a candidate/issue is like some kind of covert ops mission. And sometimes while I'm searching for any shred of honesty, I get irritable and just want to shoot someone working on the campaigns--just like in a game when you can't find the secret door, so you start shooting the innocent civilians to vent.
I bet a sizable sum that most of them didn't even notice yet that it contains DRM. Simply because nobody bothered to try to copy it instead of simply clicking and paying the buck.
I can give anecdotal support to that (for whatever that's worth). Everyone in my work group uses iTunes to manage their music. Some of us use the iTunes store heavily, some of us only use it for free stuff. A couple weeks ago we decided to make a master playlist so all of our musical preferences could be equally represented in the shuffle. Some people were quite shocked and a little angry to find out that some of their favorite tracks could not be put in the mix. A couple people swore of iTunes forever. (Though I have real doubts that they'll stick to that.)
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou -- Slavery apologetics.
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain -- We wouldn't want people to read anti-slavery propaganda
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine -- Childhood is a happy time, kids shouldn't get scared
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle -- Too many kids were putting on gloves and trying to walk through walls.
40. What's Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras -- If you aren't sure how to explain the facts of life to your child, maybe they just shouldn't know.
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee -- If kids learn to judge by facts instead of stereotypes, how are we going to win the War on Terror?
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein -- Clearly a metaphor that people should have a clue.
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl -- Reveals Monsanto's trade secrets
61. What's Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras -- Too many young boys were made to feel inadequate.
88. Where's Waldo? by Martin Hanford -- Pictures of him dressed as Osama bin Laden are clearly taunting the Bush administration.
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell -- Promotes fried foods, which are unhealthy.
Seriously: So many of the books on this list are completely and totally harmless. I can understand the challenges to "My Dad's Roommate" from a Christian perspective (Don't agree, but understand). But WTF is wrong with Waldo? "How to Eat Fried Worms" is a nice, innocent book. My mother is a conservative Mormon, and she loves to read it to her First Grade class every year.
The fact that many of these books make these lists says a lot about the mentality of people who want to ban books.
I couldn't say. I was anal enough to mark all my files as "tv show", "movie", or "music video" while they were all listed together under the "videos" listing, so it was all automatically done for me.
There are some changes to the interface that I really like.
Clearly separating the library, store, and playlist sections
Having separate music, TV show, movie, and audiobook library sections. I hated the way they were intermingled before
No more twisty-arrow to get to the iTunes shopping cart or purchased list.
The new organizational views are nicer to navigate that the old system, at least visually. They might turn out to be less practical, but I can't be sure until I've tried using them for a while.
The no gap playback is nice too.
All that said, I too wish for a more consistent feel.
You're right on the money about gathering. But you're too hard on the poor hunters. The hunters still have to make it back home after the kill, so they also need excellent memory and navigational abilities.
Almost all the studies that have shown that have been done on Europeans and North Americans. Stephen Stephen Levinson and his colleagues have been studying space and cognition from a cross-cultural perspective, and found no statistical difference between genders in Arrernte (Native Australian), Belhare (Nepal), Hai//om (African), Kgalagadi (native Australian), Japanese, Longgu (native Australian), Kilivila (Pacific Islands), Tamil (India), Tzeltal (Meso-American), or Yucatec (Meso-American). They did find statistical differences in studies involving the Dutch.
As they note, further work is needed to figure out if this is indeed a biological gender difference, or a cultural practice difference.
I'm pretty sure guys have a stronger sense of it then girls. Makes sense... hunting and all.
And the female job of gathering fruit, vegetables, and herbs from remote areas of the forest or savanah or whatever doesn't require a sense of direction.
Slashdot Mirror
5. Parody site.
6. A website outlining grievances.
Never has your sig been more appropriate.
public education - the species got along fine without government schooling just fine for thousands of years
With the vast majority of people remaining uneducated, which wouldn't work out too well in the current state of the world.
social security and medicare programs - how to punish people for getting old. My poor grandfather would've expired, were it not for Medicare paying for his defibrillator... I have three grandparents left, aged 86 to 91, and they're all sitting around watching T.V. and waiting to die.
Yeah. It's a shame they aren't dead.
war on drugs [...] but I recognize that the 'war' has created more problems than it's solved.
Which was the GP's point, if I'm not mistaken.
government ... debt - no government, no debt. That one's quite simple.
And no fire department. No police force. No defense against foreign invastion...
medical and college education costs - government has sent all the jobs that don't require education away to Mexico (via NAFTA) or China/Asia (via WTO)
No, they haven't. They've allowed companies to send the jobs away without penalty. There's a big difference. See, without government, it would be even easier for corporations to do this, with essentially no hope in reigning them in.
Both languages I originally talked about it are the same for colors terms. They are O'odham and Serrano, both Uto-Aztecan languages of the American southwest.
It isn't Mandarin, which I happen to be studying at the moment, since it the tone changes the meaning of individual words, not whole sentences.
The change in stress changes one word from a modal meaning "remote possibility" to a compound verb meaning "pick the butt". The adverb "honestly" and the verb "be true" are homophonous, and word order doesn't matter very much; thus, the ambiguity. This language is O'odham. The other language, the one that lets you split "compound words" is Serrano. Both are Uto-Aztecan languages spoken in the American southwest.
Are you referring to Warlpiri and its sign language?
I do all my work on languages of North America. Mostly, Southern California and Arizona, though I've dabbled in a language from Mexico and one from Oklahoma.
I did not know that some language would use a unique word for distinct colours.
Well, all languages do. The "red" of a rose and the "red" of a brick are quite distinct colors, but we just call them "red". There are languages that make fundamental distinctions we do not in English. Really, it's all just wavelengths hitting our eyes. Different cultures have different ways of organizing that data.
Exactly! Tons of information we convey is done outside of the language we use. Some of the things we have to "leave" English to convey are simple words in other languages. How can automatic machine translation possibly work when that is the case?
Language is not composed of words. It is composed of idiomatic phrases (idiomatic phrases do not mean what the words mean) only understandable in context.
That's like saying humans aren't composed of cells. We are composed of organs who's functions are not useful in isolation. Idioms are composed of words, and the words are vital. Just like an organ will cease to work if you change the component cells, the idiom will cease to mean what you want it to if you change the component words.
True automatic translation is not possible.
True automatic translation will be possible when we have true artificial intelligence. And not a day sooner. (But maybe a day or to later.)
Sorry to say, English is not as unusual as you would like to believe. (I am a linguist.)
In many ways, English is quite simple. For example, our word order is very straightforward. I work with a language were the following is a normal sentence: "This is city New called York here." (This city here is called New York.) In fact, almost every permutation of those words would be valid without a change in the basic meaning (as long as "is" is the second word). This is a so-called non-configurational language. Parsing English is easy by comparison.
I work with another language were there is a slight stress difference between the sentences "That might be true" and "He's honestly picking his butt." The words "soup" and "shit" are differentiated by a 40-50% increase in the length of the last vowel. There is one word for both "blue" and "green", and another word for "yellow", "orange", and "brown".
As to the likelihood of this project succeeding anytime soon: Languages are often not directly translatable into each other. One language I work with has an entire part of speech I cannot adequately translate into English. I have to wave my hands and point to convey the same information in English.
I'm adding this comment to undo an accidental moderation.
And as long as I'm here for this, I might as well rant. The new moderation system is horrible. I should be able to review my choices before committing them. Please, bring back the "moderate" button.
God was a terrible programmer. But I guess that's what you get with a tight 7 day timeframe.
If God were clever, he would have divided the night and day last. Then he would have had all the time in the world to finish.
If butterflies were natural you would expect them to look like other flies. Flies have dark bodies and translucent wings. Butterflies have light bodies and colorful wings.
Now, I can accept the idea that evolution has produced a variety of fly that looks different from the other members of its family. (Look at zebras and horses.) But butter does not occur in nature! Butter is only a manmade product! How can we accept that butterflies are natural when butter is not natural! Scientists and evironmentalists are ignoring the clear facts to stir up controversy.
Compound words are not always compositional in meaning. This is especially true of technical terminology. If you want to participate in a debate, it is a good idea to learn what the words mean before doing so. (Hint:"Global warming" is not just about the globe getting warmer. It's more complicated than that.)
iTunes 7.0 has screwed things up for me too, though apparently not as badly as for you. iTunes hangs literally 50% of the time I try to sync my ipod. I have to force quit and restart itunes to try again. I have had a few times where I had to reboot the machine, things had crashed so hard.
It can't be prevented, any more than water can be made to flow uphill.
Water can flow uphill.
Water follows the path of least resistance. If uphill provides less resistance, then uphill it will go. This happens spontaneously in nature in glacial regions. The weight of the glacier pressing down onto a body of water can force the water to flow up the hill or mountain side like a river.
I'll let others extend the metaphor as appropriate for the current discussion.
You'd better stop your students from, uh, using your "intellectual property" in real life, then. That's valuable money you're losing by teaching students your knowledge.
The professor's lectures, slides, etc. are just like a textbook. The knowledge taught by them is free to anyone to disseminate. The presentation of the material is copyright of the professor and cannot be used without at least acknowledgment of the source, preferably with permission. (Fair use meets basic politeness.)
Could we use them on politicians who authorize the use of force based on faulty intelligence? For every X number of American soldiers needlessly killed, you get shot once. Since it's non-lethal, they can actually learn from their mistakes and feel regret. That might discourage dishonesty and blindly accepting what you're told.
If only we could come up with a non-lethal weapon that induced guilt instead of (or in addition to) pain....
Sometimes I feel like getting the truth about a candidate/issue is like some kind of covert ops mission. And sometimes while I'm searching for any shred of honesty, I get irritable and just want to shoot someone working on the campaigns--just like in a game when you can't find the secret door, so you start shooting the innocent civilians to vent.
I bet a sizable sum that most of them didn't even notice yet that it contains DRM. Simply because nobody bothered to try to copy it instead of simply clicking and paying the buck.
I can give anecdotal support to that (for whatever that's worth). Everyone in my work group uses iTunes to manage their music. Some of us use the iTunes store heavily, some of us only use it for free stuff. A couple weeks ago we decided to make a master playlist so all of our musical preferences could be equally represented in the shuffle. Some people were quite shocked and a little angry to find out that some of their favorite tracks could not be put in the mix. A couple people swore of iTunes forever. (Though I have real doubts that they'll stick to that.)
Seriously: So many of the books on this list are completely and totally harmless. I can understand the challenges to "My Dad's Roommate" from a Christian perspective (Don't agree, but understand). But WTF is wrong with Waldo? "How to Eat Fried Worms" is a nice, innocent book. My mother is a conservative Mormon, and she loves to read it to her First Grade class every year.
The fact that many of these books make these lists says a lot about the mentality of people who want to ban books.
I couldn't say. I was anal enough to mark all my files as "tv show", "movie", or "music video" while they were all listed together under the "videos" listing, so it was all automatically done for me.
- Clearly separating the library, store, and playlist sections
- Having separate music, TV show, movie, and audiobook library sections. I hated the way they were intermingled before
- No more twisty-arrow to get to the iTunes shopping cart or purchased list.
- The new organizational views are nicer to navigate that the old system, at least visually. They might turn out to be less practical, but I can't be sure until I've tried using them for a while.
The no gap playback is nice too.All that said, I too wish for a more consistent feel.
You're right on the money about gathering. But you're too hard on the poor hunters. The hunters still have to make it back home after the kill, so they also need excellent memory and navigational abilities.
As they note, further work is needed to figure out if this is indeed a biological gender difference, or a cultural practice difference.
I'm pretty sure guys have a stronger sense of it then girls. Makes sense... hunting and all.
And the female job of gathering fruit, vegetables, and herbs from remote areas of the forest or savanah or whatever doesn't require a sense of direction.