As you may have read above, there is still ongoing scientific debate about whether viruses count as "life" or not. Thus, the scientists in this story seeking to create a quantum superposition of a virus are merely attempting to bring some peace to science by merging the two theories and making viruses both life and not-life simultaneously.
What I've always found interesting is the Japanese word for "tea" in the context of honorific prefixes.
"O" is an honorific prefix for native Japanese words (o-mizu = water, o-kane = money, o-taku = home, etc.).
"Go" is an honorific prefix for Sino-Japonic words (go-shuujin = husband, go-ryoushin = parent, etc.).
Now technically "cha" is a loan word from Chinese (and "cha1" is a loanword from Indian "chai" to Chinese). However, it has become such a part of Japanese that the language has "forgotten" that it is a loan word: "Go-cha" is incorrect in the modern era. "O-cha" is the correct form with honorific.
And I've seen hiragana used for loanwords before, but it is most frequent in manga, where I've seen it constantly. However, only a fool would read manga expecting it all to follow grammatical convention.
Lawyers are not the leaders of megacorps. Lawyers may work as in-house counsel, but they hardly run the place. Lawyers are, in fact, fairly low on the totem pole, and in corporations are among the first divisions to suffer budget cuts.
Yes, many CEOs may have JDs. However, this does not a lawyer make. That's like saying Obama is a lawyer because he has a JD. He was a lawyer, but he is no more: he's a President.
To be fair, katakana (1) wasn't invented to express loan words, nor (2) is it used exclusively for loan words, nor (3) is it the only writing system in Japanese used for loan words.
1. Katakana was originally created to be a shorthand form of manyogana.
2. Katakana is used for loan words, but it is also used for animal names, sound effects, to emphasize the written word (like bold does in English), and for some native Japanese given names.
3. Kanji are also used for loan words from Chinese.
To be fair, we do in English, too. It's just that our rules of pronunciation are so complicated that it's not feasible for a person to memorize them.
I quote Chomsky (and Halle), the most famous Linguist in America bar none:
It is... noteworthy but not too surprising that English orthography, despite its often-cited inconsistencies, comes remarkably close to being an optimal orthographic system for English.
One paper concludes
Despite the literacy problems associated with traditional orthography (T.O.), linguists have sought to justify T.O. as a near optimal system for English word pairs and families. In order to quantify the morphographemic optimality of T.O., a simple algorithm was applied to the inflected and derived forms of 100 words. An optimality percentage was determined for each form, each family, and the corpus as a whole. At the same time, [traditional orthography ("TO")], which was determined to be 95 percent optimal, was compared with a more phonemically reliable spelling system called Sound-spel, which was found to have an optimality rating of 97 percent. Finally, in order to determine the gradated difficulty of the sample families, the base words - representing the optimality of their extended families - were ranked in descending order.
English is also the only language that doesn't differentiate words based on gender/status. I can talk the same to a child as I can to someone who has a doctorate, and the only difference is the reference I use when saying the person's name or abbreviation for it.
Differentiation of status is a function of culture, not hardline rules in the language itself. Your speech doesn't become unintelligible if you refer to your boss to his face as "omae" in Japanese. It just becomes rude.
Just like if you said "nigga please" to your boss; you'd be modded "terminated," not "unintelligible."
I speak English natively, Japanese fluently, Spanish conversationally, and I have some familiarity with Chinese (I speak it occasionally with the girlfriend's family, but prefer Spanish) and French (I can read a decent portion of the language, but don't speak it that well). Thus, it is with experience (try not to bandy about "ethnocentrism" here--I was a weeaboo in a former life) that I say English is vastly superior at incorporating loan words into its native Lexicon than Japanese is (and, indeed, many (all?) languages). It is one of English's strongest points, although whether this is a function of purely phonetics or phonetics combined with culture I daren't venture a guess now.
For centuries, Japanese strove to maintain its purity of culture. English has never done this, and it has incorporated a copious amount of Latin, French, Arabic, Gaelic, and German words into its organic lexicon thanks to the vicissitudes of empire building. Japanese is not as efficient at this, partly because of its much more restricted phonetic combinations and partly because of a historic xenophobia.
Chinese, likewise, is structured so as not to adapt easily to new characters. It has a much more limited phonetic range than English, and due to the writing system, it is unlikely that foreigners will be able to acquire command of the written language in anywhere near the same numbers as those foreigners who can acquire written English.
I would wager most people on this site know more about copyright than the average congress critter.
While the average Congressperson sets the bar low for knowledge of copyright law, having been on/. for a decade or so, I can safely say that hell no. Your average Slashdotter knows less than nothing about copyright law and talks like he knows a lot. There is a difference!:)
My bloodpressure skyrockets any time I come to a/. copyright discussion.
This makes no sense at all! Decimal shifting cannot be done by humans in your proposed "no problem" system! Note that "mebibyte" there is your "megabyte." It's just that Google recognizes "mebibyte" for the term.
Well the fact that "most other countries have it" is news to me, as I was taught in law school that one of the main differences between the Common Law and Civil Law systems is that the Civil Law system has an extremely limited (and in many nations a nonexistent) right to jury trial.
I was wrong about Russia and Germany. But, to be fair, I did list a large number of nations. Was I only wrong for Germany and Russia? It then seems like I was more right than your assertion that "most other [developed] countries have" a jury trial.
Furthermore, you failed to refute with any evidence my point that jury trials are extremely limited (or nonexistent) in Civil Law systems. I'll provide the quote again:
Jury trials are of far less importance (or of no importance) in countries that do not have a common law system.
It's pretty clear that the right against self-incrimination and jury trial will be included in the 'World Constitutions', since it's there in the laws of most of developed nations.
Most developed nations in the world have abolished or very limited jury trials. Trial by jury is scoffed at by most of the world.
Germany? No trial by jury. Belgium? Only serious crimes. Austria? Limited. Greece? Only serious crimes. India? No. Japan? Very few serious crimes. Italy? Only serious crimes. NZ? Not to the best of my knowledge. Russia? Only death penalty cases. Switzerland? Only in Geneva. Israel? No. Singapore? No.
Civil law systems, which cover probably 70% of the world's landmass (including almost all of Europe) are pretty much all inquisitorial and with no jury.
English common law and the United States Constitution recognize the right to a jury trial to be a fundamental civil liberty or civil right that allows the accused to choose whether to be judged by judges or a jury of peers. The use of jury trials evolved within common law systems rather than civil law systems. Jury trials are of far less importance (or of no importance) in countries that do not have a common law system.
You do realize that less than 80 years after the Constitution was drafted there was a war that killed millions of Americans and nearly rent the nation in twain all because of how the Constitution was drafted, right?
Except for Slashdot's pretty hardcore dismissal of sports in general, I would expect a community of geeks to appreciate attempts at handling corner cases.
Michael Phelps, although physically advantaged to swimming, still has normal body proportions. If his arms or feet were grossly and abnormally long, would it still be considered fair?
Actually in interviews during and after the Olympics, people (including Phelps) made reference to the fact that he is physically disfigured in a way that makes him a better swimmer. His wingspan is literally out of proportion, his torso is abnormally long, and his feet are abnormally large. 60 Minutes talked about this in an interview with him.
I would think the plain reading of the 14th amendment would reveal that it talks about "privileges and immunities," whereas the 2d amendment talks about a "right."
When a single piece of law uses different terms, the terms are not interchangeable. This is one of the most basic rules of statutory and constitutional construction.
The other form of incorporation is via the 14th's Due Process Clause, and "due process" says nothing about the bill of rights on its face. I don't think a plain reading yields the results you think.
And I was more focused on the fact that the conservatives on the bench hate incorporation via the 14th Amendment. In order to enforce the 2d Amendment against the States, they have three options. One is to read the 2d Amendment extremely liberally (there is absolutely no possible way to do this via strict construction), one is to incorporate via the Due Process Clause, and the other is to incorporate via the Privileges & Immunities Clause.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it sad that you felt you needed to provide a definition for "excretion" for the Slashdot crowd.
As you may have read above, there is still ongoing scientific debate about whether viruses count as "life" or not. Thus, the scientists in this story seeking to create a quantum superposition of a virus are merely attempting to bring some peace to science by merging the two theories and making viruses both life and not-life simultaneously.
Peta is both for and against this until someone actually gives a shit about their opinions.
What I've always found interesting is the Japanese word for "tea" in the context of honorific prefixes.
"O" is an honorific prefix for native Japanese words (o-mizu = water, o-kane = money, o-taku = home, etc.).
"Go" is an honorific prefix for Sino-Japonic words (go-shuujin = husband, go-ryoushin = parent, etc.).
Now technically "cha" is a loan word from Chinese (and "cha1" is a loanword from Indian "chai" to Chinese). However, it has become such a part of Japanese that the language has "forgotten" that it is a loan word: "Go-cha" is incorrect in the modern era. "O-cha" is the correct form with honorific.
And I've seen hiragana used for loanwords before, but it is most frequent in manga, where I've seen it constantly. However, only a fool would read manga expecting it all to follow grammatical convention.
Lawyers are not the leaders of megacorps. Lawyers may work as in-house counsel, but they hardly run the place. Lawyers are, in fact, fairly low on the totem pole, and in corporations are among the first divisions to suffer budget cuts.
Yes, many CEOs may have JDs. However, this does not a lawyer make. That's like saying Obama is a lawyer because he has a JD. He was a lawyer, but he is no more: he's a President.
To be fair, amicus curiae is Latin in origin, not French.
To be fair, katakana (1) wasn't invented to express loan words, nor (2) is it used exclusively for loan words, nor (3) is it the only writing system in Japanese used for loan words.
1. Katakana was originally created to be a shorthand form of manyogana.
2. Katakana is used for loan words, but it is also used for animal names, sound effects, to emphasize the written word (like bold does in English), and for some native Japanese given names.
3. Kanji are also used for loan words from Chinese.
To be fair, we do in English, too. It's just that our rules of pronunciation are so complicated that it's not feasible for a person to memorize them.
I quote Chomsky (and Halle), the most famous Linguist in America bar none:
One paper concludes
Differentiation of status is a function of culture, not hardline rules in the language itself. Your speech doesn't become unintelligible if you refer to your boss to his face as "omae" in Japanese. It just becomes rude.
Just like if you said "nigga please" to your boss; you'd be modded "terminated," not "unintelligible."
I speak English natively, Japanese fluently, Spanish conversationally, and I have some familiarity with Chinese (I speak it occasionally with the girlfriend's family, but prefer Spanish) and French (I can read a decent portion of the language, but don't speak it that well). Thus, it is with experience (try not to bandy about "ethnocentrism" here--I was a weeaboo in a former life) that I say English is vastly superior at incorporating loan words into its native Lexicon than Japanese is (and, indeed, many (all?) languages). It is one of English's strongest points, although whether this is a function of purely phonetics or phonetics combined with culture I daren't venture a guess now.
For centuries, Japanese strove to maintain its purity of culture. English has never done this, and it has incorporated a copious amount of Latin, French, Arabic, Gaelic, and German words into its organic lexicon thanks to the vicissitudes of empire building. Japanese is not as efficient at this, partly because of its much more restricted phonetic combinations and partly because of a historic xenophobia.
Chinese, likewise, is structured so as not to adapt easily to new characters. It has a much more limited phonetic range than English, and due to the writing system, it is unlikely that foreigners will be able to acquire command of the written language in anywhere near the same numbers as those foreigners who can acquire written English.
While the average Congressperson sets the bar low for knowledge of copyright law, having been on /. for a decade or so, I can safely say that hell no. Your average Slashdotter knows less than nothing about copyright law and talks like he knows a lot. There is a difference! :)
My bloodpressure skyrockets any time I come to a /. copyright discussion.
False. Opera does business in the US. Therefore it is subject to US laws.
I have how many MiB and how many GiB a CD and DVD hold memorized. I don't have how many bytes they hold.
However, often I am told how many KiB or bytes a file is.
Thus, I necessarily must convert.
Shifting a decimal place is much easier.
Except when eyeballing something in bytes and wishing to express it in MB:
120 415 150 051 bytes = 114 836.836 mebibytes
This makes no sense at all! Decimal shifting cannot be done by humans in your proposed "no problem" system! Note that "mebibyte" there is your "megabyte." It's just that Google recognizes "mebibyte" for the term.
Shoulda called this guy: Identifying Wood
Sorry, but I was too busy hacking the Gibson to watch a movie about it. :)
Well the fact that "most other countries have it" is news to me, as I was taught in law school that one of the main differences between the Common Law and Civil Law systems is that the Civil Law system has an extremely limited (and in many nations a nonexistent) right to jury trial.
I was wrong about Russia and Germany. But, to be fair, I did list a large number of nations. Was I only wrong for Germany and Russia? It then seems like I was more right than your assertion that "most other [developed] countries have" a jury trial.
Furthermore, you failed to refute with any evidence my point that jury trials are extremely limited (or nonexistent) in Civil Law systems. I'll provide the quote again:
Most developed nations in the world have abolished or very limited jury trials. Trial by jury is scoffed at by most of the world.
Germany? No trial by jury.
Belgium? Only serious crimes.
Austria? Limited.
Greece? Only serious crimes.
India? No.
Japan? Very few serious crimes.
Italy? Only serious crimes.
NZ? Not to the best of my knowledge.
Russia? Only death penalty cases.
Switzerland? Only in Geneva.
Israel? No.
Singapore? No.
Civil law systems, which cover probably 70% of the world's landmass (including almost all of Europe) are pretty much all inquisitorial and with no jury.
Civil Law
Jury Trial:
I'm enjoying the hilarious juxtaposition of the body of your comment
and your sig
:)
You do realize that less than 80 years after the Constitution was drafted there was a war that killed millions of Americans and nearly rent the nation in twain all because of how the Constitution was drafted, right?
DESCRIBE how Swedish law applies in any other country...
Ah, Isaac Asimov. A dude named after a dancing Japanese robot. Definitely the go-to guy for ruminating on complex philosophical issues.
Except for Slashdot's pretty hardcore dismissal of sports in general, I would expect a community of geeks to appreciate attempts at handling corner cases.
Actually in interviews during and after the Olympics, people (including Phelps) made reference to the fact that he is physically disfigured in a way that makes him a better swimmer. His wingspan is literally out of proportion, his torso is abnormally long, and his feet are abnormally large. 60 Minutes talked about this in an interview with him.
I would think the plain reading of the 14th amendment would reveal that it talks about "privileges and immunities," whereas the 2d amendment talks about a "right."
When a single piece of law uses different terms, the terms are not interchangeable. This is one of the most basic rules of statutory and constitutional construction.
The other form of incorporation is via the 14th's Due Process Clause, and "due process" says nothing about the bill of rights on its face. I don't think a plain reading yields the results you think.
And I was more focused on the fact that the conservatives on the bench hate incorporation via the 14th Amendment. In order to enforce the 2d Amendment against the States, they have three options. One is to read the 2d Amendment extremely liberally (there is absolutely no possible way to do this via strict construction), one is to incorporate via the Due Process Clause, and the other is to incorporate via the Privileges & Immunities Clause.