Added to that, the Japanese have long been masters of integrating foreign concepts into their own culture. the result is that many of the concepts we think of as quintessentially Japanese actually originated in China. Examples include haiku and zen buddhism.
I'll certainly give you zen, as that's the Chinese chan. But I think you're off base when it comes to haiku.:)
The haiku is part of a distinctly Japanese poetic tradition stretching back to at least the Heian period, and likely evolving from something prior to that. The word itself means something like "excerpt", being the first three lines of a larger format called a tanka. The word tanka means "short song", and was contrasted against the chôka or "long song", both forms of the waka, or "Japanese song" -- "Japanese" to distinguish the form from the classical-Chinese-based kanshi style of poetry. More here.
There is some speculation that Japanese poetic forms, particularly the renga style, might have arisen from or been heavily influenced by Chinese poetry, but the first paragraph here mirrors what I've read elsewhere, basically making the point that Japanese poetry doesn't owe much to Chinese. No doubt this is due at least in part to very different linguistic structures -- one might as well try to compose a limerick or iambic pentameter in Japanese. (For that matter, I happen to feel that a haiku in English makes about as much sense -- the haiku format only really works for a language with morae and relatively flat stress, which pretty much rules English out.)
"Honor" for "Asians"? Which, of the many Asian cultures, are you talking about? If Japan, then sure, to some extent this is the case. It was more so in years past, but hey, things change.
In China, I'm not so sure. I'm not as familiar with Chinese cultural mores, not having lived there, but everything I've read suggests that "seppuku" (which, incidentally, is a Japanese word) is much less of a popular out than it is/was in Japan. I bring up the significant possibility that Sun Danyong's death might not have been suicide at all, but even if it were, I strongly suspect that it was motivated less by ideas of honor than it was by ideas of being completely and royally screwed -- i.e., desperation, not clearing one's name so much as escaping a terrible situation.
As the South Korean character Captain Sam Pak says in a M*A*S*H episode, "Suicide? That's the Japanese. We don't do that schtick." (Ironically, the part was played by the late Japanese-American actor Pat Morita.)
At what point do we say "STOP! This unrestrained capitalism is KILLING us!" and apply some sort of humane regulation??
I've lived in Japan several times, totaling six years there. One thing that I became aware of was how this very different society prioritizes different things, such that changing an established practice takes a different amount of effort or carnage.
I came up with the idea of "death quotient" from thinking about accidents and disasters, and how people react. Sometimes the reaction is to ignore that there's a problem, while other times the reaction is to change how things work. Every society has a different death quotient, based on how many people have to die for XX phenomenon to change. Take a busy unregulated intersection, for example -- how many people have to die in accidents there before folks put up a stop sign? A traffic light? A traffic camera? Or, how about healthcare policy -- how many people have to die before folks prioritize basic health education? Preventive medicine? Increasing the number of doctors per capita? Reworking insurance prices? Changing pharmaceutical safety regulations? Etc., etc.
So, looking at the death quotient in the US for healthcare policy, I'd hazard a guess that it's higher than in the rest of the developed world. Ultimately, it seems that people in the US just aren't as important as corporate profits. I sincerely hope this will change, markedly, quickly, and soon, but I'm also not naive enough to hold my breath.
You asked for it, ladeees and gentlemen! It may not be that grand masterpiece, Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in my Armpit One Midsummer Morning, but I think this little joy from Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz should be enough to warm your hearts:
Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits
On a lurgid bee
That mordiously hath bitled out
Its earted jurtles
Into a rancid festering...[drowned out by moaning and screaming]
Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles
Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts
And living glupules frart and slipulate
Like jowling meated liverslime
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon
See if I don't.
Bingo -- I thought perhaps they (WF) might be shaky enough to be on the not-allowed list, as noted on the WF Wikipedia page.
I'd heard about other banks paying back, so that in itself is not a surprise. My cynicism is threefold -- one, that the bank might well wind up going under or undergoing some similar transformation that prevents the full amount being repaid to the Treasury; two, that the bank might engage in some paperwork complications and subterfuge to avoid repaying the full amount; or three, that the bank might successfully lobby to avoid repaying the full amount. Or, I suppose, some combination of the above.
Many things are possible. As I said before, I'll believe it for Wells Fargo in specific when I see it.
In spite of the fact that it's also the correct way to say "I am a jelly donut," no adult German speaker could possibly have misunderstood Kennedy's meaning in context.
Be that as it may, my German teacher, who is German through and through, described watching the Kennedy speech on the tube with her family in Germany and busting a gut when he uttered that line, for which her grandmother scolded her for being disrespectful.
A person from Hamburg is called, in both English and German, a "Hamburger", and thus the proper way to say you're from Hamburg in English is to say, "I am a Hamburger." In the proper context, this is understood to mean a person from Hamburg -- but it's still funny.:)
In the same NYT article, we also read that some other banks have not been allowed by the Treasury to pay back their loans, due to concerns about capital adequacy should the current economic situation change. It sounds like Wells Fargo could fall into this same category.
I suppose the social norms in Japan can be a bit more oppressive than in other countries too, particularly for women.
My wife certainly struggled with that. She found it so oppressive that it put her into a funk and produced some real anxiety issues; this was a large part of why we moved back to the US, despite having moved to Japan with the intent of being there for the long haul, given our serious misgivings about the US. There was an interesting book written by a gaijin woman about living and coping in Japan, called Being a Broad in Japan. That helped some; but there's a difference between intellectually understanding why something is the way it is, and viscerally having to live with it. Ah, well... The things we do for love, eh?
A branch in real life is not part of a hierarchy. It's just a piece of wood attached to a tree; it's not contained in the tree in any way.
I think I get your point about hierarchies being a human cognitive construct, but a branch is a _part_ of a tree...?
People know how hierarchies work; they just don't get them. They are not sure how to properly categorize things, and if they decide on a given hierarchy, later, they won't remember where they decided to put things because there's no naturally correct way of categorizing files. There's no obvious taxonomy; the problem becomes even worse when people have to use hierarchies created by other people.
I would argue a slightly different angle. I think most folks do actually "get" the idea of hierarchies; I think the problem is more what you describe later in the paragraph: people are not sure how to properly categorize things... there's no naturally correct way of categorizing files. There's no obvious taxonomy. And, for that matter, which hierarchy makes more sense depends on the context, further complicating the issue.
This is where systems closer to what we see with iTunes come to the fore -- you get different hierarchies as different contexts, all at the click of a button: by year, by album, by artist, alphabetically, what have you. Part of the difficulty in expanding this to be usable for a full filesystem, rather than just for media files, is that doing so expands the number of relevant contexts -- who created the file, who modified the file, versions, perms, file type, usage frequency, yada yada.
As for alternatives, tagging is easier to understand since it gets rid of the whole hierarchy aspect, and since people can just add as many tags as they want to.
I agree that tagging is infinitely easier -- but I would also argue that it doesn't remove the idea of hierarchies, but rather that it allows for more specific and flexible hierarchies -- which is still a good thing.
I'm merely reporting what I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears. I've lived in Japan for various periods totaling six years, in three very different towns. I don't mean to imply that the vast majority of Japanese femininity is in dire straits to leave; but, as with anywhere, there is a bell curve, and there would appear to be a number of women on the "want to leave" end of the curve.
My wife and I were friends with one such individual once, and sadly had to break off our friendship when it was clear that she was effectively stalking a few of our single white male friends. She was desperate to leave, and had more or less told us that in about as many words. And I've met, or at least known of, other women in Japan in similar situations.
It's not too different from some of the girls and women I've known in the States, where perhaps the home situation is crap and they're looking for a way out. One of the differences in Japan is that foreigners are still a bit of a novelty (in some towns more than others), and are still a bit more obvious than here in the US (the only times I managed to "pass" were on the telephone).
So, indeed, it's not *every* Japanese woman by a long shot, not anywhere close -- but there are women there who are looking for a way out, and SWM expats are one of the more obvious possible tickets elsewhere. The "Charisma Man" meme was definitely playing off of real events and dynamics; had it been purely fanciful, it would not have resonated quite so strongly.
I want to be a linguist. Should I become fluent in Latin or Japanese? Why does this accredited linguistics department insist on me taking all sorts of philosophy and linguistics classes, when I should be learning a language?
I'm a Japanese-English translator. I translate because I love a good puzzle, and I love to write but often don't have much luck coming up with my own content. Translation fits this perfectly -- I get the content handed to me, and just need to figure out the best way to write it.
Meanwhile, I cannot tell you the sheer numbers of native-English-speaking J-E "translators" who fell into the field by dint of happening to speak Japanese. (It might be the same for native-Japanese speakers, but my limited experience suggests otherwise.) Usually this consists of men who moved to Japan as bachelors, got married to a Japanese woman, and gained passable Japanese language skills. However, they generally lack much by way of social graces, which can be very necessary for properly translating some of the subtle nuances of certain types of text, and they generally lack much by way of writing skills. They're not much fun to be around, and tend to write crap English that would flunk them out of any competent high-school writing class.
Thankfully, this clueless type is not the only one in the field, but good lord, there are certainly more than enough of them. I suspect this is partly due to the whole Japan mystique thing, making me think that translators in other language combinations might not exhibit similar trends. I also suspect this is closely related to the white-single-male-expat-in-Japan "Charisma Man" phenomenon. Unfortunately, what a lot of these guys don't realize is that one of the big attractions of a white guy for a Japanese woman is that he represents a possible ticket out of the country. I've heard numerous tales (some second-hand) of relationships dissolving once the guy lets it be known that he intends to stay in Japan. (FWIW, I met my wife at uni in Indiana, and she ain't Japanese.:)
I pointed out that the iPhone can do something well, so a cheap computer should also be able to do it. This has nothing to do with sending iPhones to remote villages in India and hoping they somehow find a cell signal.
Fair enough, and my comment was out of turn, really.
And Google is pretty decent at parsing real world questions. For specialized common queries, bookmarks could be set up (for example, push this button with a cricket player on it if you want to know the results of today's cricket matches).
This speaks more to the meat of my response. While theoretically possible, such a system would require much more work to set up, and much more training of the targeted user population, before it could be of much use, especially given the nature of many of the queries.
No Google-fu + Voice recognition + Voice-based reading of the results = Not yet implemented + Unfortunate waste of time.
I'm not say that VR *couldn't* be used, simply that it's not the appropriate solution for this particular problem. Having a trained human in the mix is vital -- either the users themselves, who would be trained how to enter useful queries and how to interpret the results, or an operator, trained similarly. Much less work to go with Option #2.:)
Um, I thought part of the point here was that the Question Box is servicing areas otherwise totally off-grid... which would kinda make having an iPhone an expensive exercise in futility (hint -- the back of the bush tends not to have much cell phone service, even here in North America [I have choppy reception at best]).
iPhones aside, and answering your specific point about voice recognition, any VR-based Googling system would still require the users to be literate in how best to phrase their Google queries. Remember, the target audience for this service has zero Google-fu. Never mind all the time wasted by any voice system reading the results of Google searches. Having a trained Google master one dedicated button-click away, someone who knows how best to search and who can ask follow-up questions as needed to refine the query, and then reply with *just* the relevant information, provides a lot more value, IMHO.
Hmm, I find myself thinking that SELinux on a desktop could *potentially* be very useful indeed, helping security newbs with risky browsing habits, particularly if managed at the distro level -- say, where the distro puts together sane and safe capability lists for each distro package, similar to what theCoder described above:
It would be nice if it was easier for a general user to create sub accounts (or something similar) for the photo editor, web browser, mail reader, etc. This way, the photo editor could write to the photos, but the web browser, which might be compromised, could not.
Any unknown package not coming from the distro's own repos would thus not have any distro-specific (probably signed?) capability list included, and the default would be locked down tight, perhaps with r/w (but not exec?) perms on one specific directory. Hmm...
What would be nice if if it were easier for users to create capability lists so that they could make use of technologies like SElinux or Apparmor which are band-aids applied to specific programs instead of as a whitelist as they probably should be.
I wondered about that. SELinux sounds like a great idea, so I took Fedora for a spin for a while to see what I could learn about it.
I learned that the documentation was cryptic at best and imprenetrable at worst, and that configuration was beyond me. So while the *idea* is fabulous, the execution rendered SELinux unusable to me.
I'm a translator, I don't have truckloads of free time to blow reading poorly written docs. (I acknowledge that there might be great docs out there, but I sure didn't find them.) Until such time as SELinux is either a requirement or the docs are rewritten (and possibly the config tools as well), I find that a proper firewall, log checking, and clueful browsing are doing me just fine. Oh, well.
Up again now that it's morning here, and I find myself saying, "Oh, dear..." There was no delight in my initial posting, nor any self-satisfied "they're getting what they deserve". My thinking was much more along EdIII's lines. And, FWIW, at least some of my "clue bat" commentary was from personal experience.:S A good part of why I use Windows (and other MS software) as little as possible anymore has to do with being burned, repeatedly. I consider myself lucky that Windows screwed me over back in 2000-01 without the aid of online nasties, prompting me to do the hard work of learning proper setup, configuration, and ultimately a whole different system, well before the current clusterbleep of DIY botnet-for-hire madness arose.
So no, I wasn't intending any derision. Grim sympathy instead, and silver-lining thanks that at least the botnet will cease to exist, quite likely taking other malware offline in the process.
NB: You might want to work on how you perceive tone in writing. None of what you react to was intended, and while I now see how you might be able to read my post that way, it's also important to note that my post could be read multiple other ways as well. Before getting all fired up and throwing around angry language, it could be a good thing to double-check a poster's intent.
This might just be a GOOD thing; when these compromised twits wake up to a completely wiped drive, it might be the thing that drives them to read up on computer security a little bit, perhaps switch to a more secure browser, buy a router with a hardware firewall, etc. Not to mention, it will also wipe out all the aforementioned crapware.
Precisely my thought on reading the summary -- good riddance to some severely compromised systems on the one hand, and on the other, I sincerely hope the users gain a clue.
Getting hit with the clue bat hurts. Otherwise, folks tend not to remember.
Well, FWIW, the koeru kanji looks not too far from the okiru kanji; they both have the same bushu or radical, the bit going down the left and extending across underneath, which happens to be one of the larger bushu too.:) And, for that matter, there are two kanji used for koeru / kosu, one with the on reading (i.e., the reading(s) generally used in compounds and that came originally from Chinese) of etsu, and the other read as chô, as in chô kawaii!
...but I didn't realize the last one was the character for Vietnam. It normally means to wake or cause.
Doh, nope!:) Actually, it's not the character for "wake" or "cause", i.e. okiru or okosu, but rather the character for "exceed" or "pass through", as in the Japanese words koeru or kosu.
FWIW, the old name for Vietnam in Japanese seems to be "etsunan", which I guess is pretty close phonetically.
The etsu part in Japanese is pronounced yuè in Mandarin Chinese (link). The "u" is kinda pinched in pronunciation, such that the sound isn't all too far from a tight viet pronunciation. I have a sneaking hunch the pronunciation in Cantonese would be even closer to the Vietnamese.
The nan or nam morpheme shows up in a lot of Asian place names, and usually means "south" -- Hainan, Vietnam, Nanjing, Shônan, etc.
So the name for Vietnam (as written in Chinese characters, at least) ultimately means something like "deep south" -- about right, geographically speaking, from a Chinese perspective.:)
You mean those fancy clubs that would never allow Cretans like us to bask in the glowing light of their intellectual presence?
Oh, you're from Crete? I'm not, so I suppose I must be allowed into the fancy clubs...:-)
I think the word you're probably looking for is "cretin", i.e. "a stupid, vulgar, or insensitive person : clod, lout" (Merriam-Webster). "Cretan", properly capitalized to boot as it is in your comment, means "someone from Crete".
But if you are indeed a Cretan, then I suppose I must be a cretin. Doh!
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I'll certainly give you zen, as that's the Chinese chan. But I think you're off base when it comes to haiku. :)
The haiku is part of a distinctly Japanese poetic tradition stretching back to at least the Heian period, and likely evolving from something prior to that. The word itself means something like "excerpt", being the first three lines of a larger format called a tanka. The word tanka means "short song", and was contrasted against the chôka or "long song", both forms of the waka, or "Japanese song" -- "Japanese" to distinguish the form from the classical-Chinese-based kanshi style of poetry. More here.
There is some speculation that Japanese poetic forms, particularly the renga style, might have arisen from or been heavily influenced by Chinese poetry, but the first paragraph here mirrors what I've read elsewhere, basically making the point that Japanese poetry doesn't owe much to Chinese. No doubt this is due at least in part to very different linguistic structures -- one might as well try to compose a limerick or iambic pentameter in Japanese. (For that matter, I happen to feel that a haiku in English makes about as much sense -- the haiku format only really works for a language with morae and relatively flat stress, which pretty much rules English out.)
Cheers,
"Honor" for "Asians"? Which, of the many Asian cultures, are you talking about? If Japan, then sure, to some extent this is the case. It was more so in years past, but hey, things change.
In China, I'm not so sure. I'm not as familiar with Chinese cultural mores, not having lived there, but everything I've read suggests that "seppuku" (which, incidentally, is a Japanese word) is much less of a popular out than it is/was in Japan. I bring up the significant possibility that Sun Danyong's death might not have been suicide at all, but even if it were, I strongly suspect that it was motivated less by ideas of honor than it was by ideas of being completely and royally screwed -- i.e., desperation, not clearing one's name so much as escaping a terrible situation.
As the South Korean character Captain Sam Pak says in a M*A*S*H episode, "Suicide? That's the Japanese. We don't do that schtick." (Ironically, the part was played by the late Japanese-American actor Pat Morita.)
Cheers,
I've lived in Japan several times, totaling six years there. One thing that I became aware of was how this very different society prioritizes different things, such that changing an established practice takes a different amount of effort or carnage.
I came up with the idea of "death quotient" from thinking about accidents and disasters, and how people react. Sometimes the reaction is to ignore that there's a problem, while other times the reaction is to change how things work. Every society has a different death quotient, based on how many people have to die for XX phenomenon to change. Take a busy unregulated intersection, for example -- how many people have to die in accidents there before folks put up a stop sign? A traffic light? A traffic camera? Or, how about healthcare policy -- how many people have to die before folks prioritize basic health education? Preventive medicine? Increasing the number of doctors per capita? Reworking insurance prices? Changing pharmaceutical safety regulations? Etc., etc.
So, looking at the death quotient in the US for healthcare policy, I'd hazard a guess that it's higher than in the rest of the developed world. Ultimately, it seems that people in the US just aren't as important as corporate profits. I sincerely hope this will change, markedly, quickly, and soon, but I'm also not naive enough to hold my breath.
Cheers,
You asked for it, ladeees and gentlemen! It may not be that grand masterpiece, Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in my Armpit One Midsummer Morning, but I think this little joy from Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz should be enough to warm your hearts:
Oh freddled gruntbuggly, ...[drowned out by moaning and screaming]
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits
On a lurgid bee
That mordiously hath bitled out
Its earted jurtles
Into a rancid festering
Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles
Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts
And living glupules frart and slipulate
Like jowling meated liverslime
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon
See if I don't.
Cheers!
Bingo -- I thought perhaps they (WF) might be shaky enough to be on the not-allowed list, as noted on the WF Wikipedia page.
I'd heard about other banks paying back, so that in itself is not a surprise. My cynicism is threefold -- one, that the bank might well wind up going under or undergoing some similar transformation that prevents the full amount being repaid to the Treasury; two, that the bank might engage in some paperwork complications and subterfuge to avoid repaying the full amount; or three, that the bank might successfully lobby to avoid repaying the full amount. Or, I suppose, some combination of the above.
Many things are possible. As I said before, I'll believe it for Wells Fargo in specific when I see it.
Cheers,
Be that as it may, my German teacher, who is German through and through, described watching the Kennedy speech on the tube with her family in Germany and busting a gut when he uttered that line, for which her grandmother scolded her for being disrespectful.
A person from Hamburg is called, in both English and German, a "Hamburger", and thus the proper way to say you're from Hamburg in English is to say, "I am a Hamburger." In the proper context, this is understood to mean a person from Hamburg -- but it's still funny. :)
Cheers,
In the same NYT article, we also read that some other banks have not been allowed by the Treasury to pay back their loans, due to concerns about capital adequacy should the current economic situation change. It sounds like Wells Fargo could fall into this same category.
Cheers,
Call me a cynic, but I'll believe that when I hear about that money actually being paid back to the US Treasury.
Cheers,
My wife certainly struggled with that. She found it so oppressive that it put her into a funk and produced some real anxiety issues; this was a large part of why we moved back to the US, despite having moved to Japan with the intent of being there for the long haul, given our serious misgivings about the US. There was an interesting book written by a gaijin woman about living and coping in Japan, called Being a Broad in Japan. That helped some; but there's a difference between intellectually understanding why something is the way it is, and viscerally having to live with it. Ah, well... The things we do for love, eh?
Cheers,
I think I get your point about hierarchies being a human cognitive construct, but a branch is a _part_ of a tree...?
I would argue a slightly different angle. I think most folks do actually "get" the idea of hierarchies; I think the problem is more what you describe later in the paragraph: people are not sure how to properly categorize things ... there's no naturally correct way of categorizing files. There's no obvious taxonomy. And, for that matter, which hierarchy makes more sense depends on the context, further complicating the issue.
This is where systems closer to what we see with iTunes come to the fore -- you get different hierarchies as different contexts, all at the click of a button: by year, by album, by artist, alphabetically, what have you. Part of the difficulty in expanding this to be usable for a full filesystem, rather than just for media files, is that doing so expands the number of relevant contexts -- who created the file, who modified the file, versions, perms, file type, usage frequency, yada yada.
I agree that tagging is infinitely easier -- but I would also argue that it doesn't remove the idea of hierarchies, but rather that it allows for more specific and flexible hierarchies -- which is still a good thing.
Cheers,
I'm merely reporting what I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears. I've lived in Japan for various periods totaling six years, in three very different towns. I don't mean to imply that the vast majority of Japanese femininity is in dire straits to leave; but, as with anywhere, there is a bell curve, and there would appear to be a number of women on the "want to leave" end of the curve.
My wife and I were friends with one such individual once, and sadly had to break off our friendship when it was clear that she was effectively stalking a few of our single white male friends. She was desperate to leave, and had more or less told us that in about as many words. And I've met, or at least known of, other women in Japan in similar situations.
It's not too different from some of the girls and women I've known in the States, where perhaps the home situation is crap and they're looking for a way out. One of the differences in Japan is that foreigners are still a bit of a novelty (in some towns more than others), and are still a bit more obvious than here in the US (the only times I managed to "pass" were on the telephone).
So, indeed, it's not *every* Japanese woman by a long shot, not anywhere close -- but there are women there who are looking for a way out, and SWM expats are one of the more obvious possible tickets elsewhere. The "Charisma Man" meme was definitely playing off of real events and dynamics; had it been purely fanciful, it would not have resonated quite so strongly.
Cheers,
I'm a Japanese-English translator. I translate because I love a good puzzle, and I love to write but often don't have much luck coming up with my own content. Translation fits this perfectly -- I get the content handed to me, and just need to figure out the best way to write it.
Meanwhile, I cannot tell you the sheer numbers of native-English-speaking J-E "translators" who fell into the field by dint of happening to speak Japanese. (It might be the same for native-Japanese speakers, but my limited experience suggests otherwise.) Usually this consists of men who moved to Japan as bachelors, got married to a Japanese woman, and gained passable Japanese language skills. However, they generally lack much by way of social graces, which can be very necessary for properly translating some of the subtle nuances of certain types of text, and they generally lack much by way of writing skills. They're not much fun to be around, and tend to write crap English that would flunk them out of any competent high-school writing class.
Thankfully, this clueless type is not the only one in the field, but good lord, there are certainly more than enough of them. I suspect this is partly due to the whole Japan mystique thing, making me think that translators in other language combinations might not exhibit similar trends. I also suspect this is closely related to the white-single-male-expat-in-Japan "Charisma Man" phenomenon. Unfortunately, what a lot of these guys don't realize is that one of the big attractions of a white guy for a Japanese woman is that he represents a possible ticket out of the country. I've heard numerous tales (some second-hand) of relationships dissolving once the guy lets it be known that he intends to stay in Japan. (FWIW, I met my wife at uni in Indiana, and she ain't Japanese. :)
Cheers,
Fair enough, and my comment was out of turn, really.
This speaks more to the meat of my response. While theoretically possible, such a system would require much more work to set up, and much more training of the targeted user population, before it could be of much use, especially given the nature of many of the queries.
No Google-fu + Voice recognition + Voice-based reading of the results = Not yet implemented + Unfortunate waste of time.
Meanwhile, Trained operator + Simple intercom call box = Implemented already + More useful output.
I'm not say that VR *couldn't* be used, simply that it's not the appropriate solution for this particular problem. Having a trained human in the mix is vital -- either the users themselves, who would be trained how to enter useful queries and how to interpret the results, or an operator, trained similarly. Much less work to go with Option #2. :)
Cheers,
Did you get any answer to this one?
Cheers,
Um, I thought part of the point here was that the Question Box is servicing areas otherwise totally off-grid ... which would kinda make having an iPhone an expensive exercise in futility (hint -- the back of the bush tends not to have much cell phone service, even here in North America [I have choppy reception at best]).
iPhones aside, and answering your specific point about voice recognition, any VR-based Googling system would still require the users to be literate in how best to phrase their Google queries. Remember, the target audience for this service has zero Google-fu. Never mind all the time wasted by any voice system reading the results of Google searches. Having a trained Google master one dedicated button-click away, someone who knows how best to search and who can ask follow-up questions as needed to refine the query, and then reply with *just* the relevant information, provides a lot more value, IMHO.
Cheers,
Jeeze, don't let the cat out of the bag already! ;-) Nudge nudge, and all that...
Cheers,
Hmm, I find myself thinking that SELinux on a desktop could *potentially* be very useful indeed, helping security newbs with risky browsing habits, particularly if managed at the distro level -- say, where the distro puts together sane and safe capability lists for each distro package, similar to what theCoder described above:
Any unknown package not coming from the distro's own repos would thus not have any distro-specific (probably signed?) capability list included, and the default would be locked down tight, perhaps with r/w (but not exec?) perms on one specific directory. Hmm...
Cheers,
I wondered about that. SELinux sounds like a great idea, so I took Fedora for a spin for a while to see what I could learn about it.
I learned that the documentation was cryptic at best and imprenetrable at worst, and that configuration was beyond me. So while the *idea* is fabulous, the execution rendered SELinux unusable to me.
I'm a translator, I don't have truckloads of free time to blow reading poorly written docs. (I acknowledge that there might be great docs out there, but I sure didn't find them.) Until such time as SELinux is either a requirement or the docs are rewritten (and possibly the config tools as well), I find that a proper firewall, log checking, and clueful browsing are doing me just fine. Oh, well.
Cheers,
Hey there Psychotria --
Up again now that it's morning here, and I find myself saying, "Oh, dear..." There was no delight in my initial posting, nor any self-satisfied "they're getting what they deserve". My thinking was much more along EdIII's lines. And, FWIW, at least some of my "clue bat" commentary was from personal experience. :S A good part of why I use Windows (and other MS software) as little as possible anymore has to do with being burned, repeatedly. I consider myself lucky that Windows screwed me over back in 2000-01 without the aid of online nasties, prompting me to do the hard work of learning proper setup, configuration, and ultimately a whole different system, well before the current clusterbleep of DIY botnet-for-hire madness arose.
So no, I wasn't intending any derision. Grim sympathy instead, and silver-lining thanks that at least the botnet will cease to exist, quite likely taking other malware offline in the process.
NB: You might want to work on how you perceive tone in writing. None of what you react to was intended, and while I now see how you might be able to read my post that way, it's also important to note that my post could be read multiple other ways as well. Before getting all fired up and throwing around angry language, it could be a good thing to double-check a poster's intent.
Cheers,
Do I have to?
Precisely my thought on reading the summary -- good riddance to some severely compromised systems on the one hand, and on the other, I sincerely hope the users gain a clue.
Getting hit with the clue bat hurts. Otherwise, folks tend not to remember.
Cheers,
Well, FWIW, the koeru kanji looks not too far from the okiru kanji; they both have the same bushu or radical, the bit going down the left and extending across underneath, which happens to be one of the larger bushu too. :) And, for that matter, there are two kanji used for koeru / kosu, one with the on reading (i.e., the reading(s) generally used in compounds and that came originally from Chinese) of etsu, and the other read as chô, as in chô kawaii!
So no worries, hey, it's Japanese. Whee!
Cheers,
Doh, nope! :) Actually, it's not the character for "wake" or "cause", i.e. okiru or okosu, but rather the character for "exceed" or "pass through", as in the Japanese words koeru or kosu.
The etsu part in Japanese is pronounced yuè in Mandarin Chinese (link). The "u" is kinda pinched in pronunciation, such that the sound isn't all too far from a tight viet pronunciation. I have a sneaking hunch the pronunciation in Cantonese would be even closer to the Vietnamese.
The nan or nam morpheme shows up in a lot of Asian place names, and usually means "south" -- Hainan, Vietnam, Nanjing, Shônan, etc.
So the name for Vietnam (as written in Chinese characters, at least) ultimately means something like "deep south" -- about right, geographically speaking, from a Chinese perspective. :)
Cheers,
Where are my mod points when I need them?
Cheers,
Oh, you're from Crete? I'm not, so I suppose I must be allowed into the fancy clubs... :-)
I think the word you're probably looking for is "cretin", i.e. "a stupid, vulgar, or insensitive person : clod, lout" (Merriam-Webster). "Cretan", properly capitalized to boot as it is in your comment, means "someone from Crete".
But if you are indeed a Cretan, then I suppose I must be a cretin. Doh!
Cheers,