Most women that are employed hold jobs that are unproductive. Teaching (non-sense in the public schools mind you), planning a company party, selling Gucci hand bags, or posing for Playboy are not good ways to grow an economy.
This is sarcasm, right?...right?? (If not, errrr, you do realize that A. men also do those jobs you list, B. you'd better have a cite for "most women", C. define "unproductive" versus "productive". Because saying that teaching children is unproductive is quite possibly the most idiotic thing I've ever read in my life. You typed your comment yourself, right? So, who TAUGHT you how to read and write? Where'd you learn how to use a computer? Are you using knowledge you gained from teachers in your life? Yeah.)
Jaunty handled my 24" 16:9 iiyama just fine at its native resolution of 1920x1080. Upgraded to Karmic... it autodetected the native res fine, except that it's practically unusable. Screen is blank except, oddly enough, for the toolbars, which display fine. Email and gedit display when run, but nothing else does. I've looked for workarounds, none worked, ended up having to file a bug. Another guy with the same monitor and better Linux skills than I is just as stumped.
Meanwhile I feel like I've gone back in time 15 years, because the only res that works properly on my monitor is the lower 16:9 at 1280x720. At 24" it reminds me of the pixellization on an old 800x600 res monitor. My eyes, my eyes...
You too!?! Hurray, I'm not the only one. When I was a kid I could never understand the mystery behind that koan - it was only once I'd grown up a bit that I realized almost no one else can clap with one hand.
He had lung cancer AND prostate cancer. Late-stage lung cancer is horrible. My grandfather made use of the Death with Dignity Act in Oregon to request assisted suicide; we all supported his choice. It's hard not to when you see an intelligent, once-active man become delirious from pain, and bedridden due to having to be hooked up to machines that keep him from drowning to death (fluids in the lungs).
I'm one of the Oregon voters who voted twice for Death with Dignity, and am very glad that my grandfather was able to die at his own choosing, in a humane manner. (I don't think having to grab a shotgun and shoot yourself in the head, plus knowing others will find you and have to witness the scene, is humane - I say it not against Egan, but because I wish Egan had had a better choice.)
There are people who like to say "I have A THOUSAND followers!!" much like Dr. Evil thought he was oh-so-impressive demanding "one MILLION dollars!!". On the surface it sounds good to have so many followers, and these sorts of people are probably boasting to non-twitterers (non-twits?) who won't know any better. Kind of like how some bloggers cite the number of hits they get -- not the number of unique visitors. Ego inflation pure and simple. Been around since the dawn of humanity ("hurrr me have bigger stick!!!") and will likely be around until its sunset.
I pay about a dollar to go to the doctor. Any doctor of my choice. Emergency procedures are covered at 100%, and our doctors are damned good. With my third-party private insurance that covers extras not covered by government insurance, I also get 100% free dental and eye coverage. I can get a free pair of eyeglasses every single year (so long as I have a prescription for them, and getting that prescription is free).
What is this non-mythical first-world country I live in?! Why, it's France!
Sure, life isn't fair. But sitting there barking "life isn't fair! get over it!" is pretty damned lazy when it IS possible to do something to help make it more fair. No one decides "oh hey, I think I'd like to get breast cancer today" or "damn! I'm so happy that guy ran a red light and turned me into a quadraplegic!" So why the hell should their lives be ruined, when all it takes is everyone pooling a bit of money? For eff's sake, I only pay 80 euros a month towards national health care and 20 a month for the private insurance. One hundred euros a month. That's it. And I get to choose my doctors, my hospitals, my laboratories, everything.
As for the inevitable cries of "omg socialism!!" Americans (I am one, so don't anyone take it the wrong way) seriously need to grow up and realize that in the case of European democracies, they are, um, you know, DEMOCRACIES. As in the people voted for governments that set up these programs, and continue to vote for them.
You're absolutely right about brick and stone roads keeping speeds down. I live in Nice (France) and they recently redid part of the city center roads after putting in the tramway. On a particularly wide road (the one that goes along Place Masséna) that practically everyone sped on, which of course caused pedestrian fatalities, they removed the asphalt and replaced it with cobblestone to slow down drivers. No one goes over the 50km/h speed limit any more! They do the same in Helsinki, where practically all the roads are cobblestone in the city center. It's not so much a sense of history (though that's certainly part of the reason) as it is a practical and aesthetic way to keep down driving speeds.
There are dirt roads in several rural areas and parcs départementaux (roughly equivalent to US county & state parks). The ones in my part of France -- the southeast (yes, the French Riviera, no, I'm not rich:) ) -- are a mix of packed dirt and "gravel" that's actually the ground-up naturally-occurring rock here. I go mountain biking on many of them. (The gravel isn't thin and slippery like in the US, but consists of larger chunks, and it doesn't cover the entire road surface, so it's quite all right to ride on.)
You are right that the French take very good care of their roads -- that would be the taxes that amount to 70% of the price of gas here, which is about four or five times more expensive per gallon than in the US, and, for autoroutes (highways), all the toll stations. (It's so expensive to have a car here that I don't have one. I take public transportation, which costs me a whopping [that's sarcasm] 40 euros a month total, and that does indeed include my commute to and from work.)
You're ignoring the fact that women were actively, wilfully, consistently kept out of higher academics and especially from publishing -- even fiction -- until quite recent history. How are there supposed to be women equivalents if women couldn't even study beyond high school, were laughed at if they wanted to publish anything (unless they used a male pseudonym and had a male friend present it) and were being pushed to get married and have babies ASAP? (Keep in mind there was no birth control, so they'd have several, with the attendant responsibilities. Oh and, their husbands weren't expected to help them beyond finances.)
Oh yes it does still happen. Because if your hard copy of XP is pre-SP2, you can no longer install SP2 from a downloaded.exe -- it won't let you. You *have* to connect to the internet to download it! Connect to the Internet with a pre-SP2 XP box!!
Mine was infected about ten seconds after plugging in the Ethernet cable. WITH a firewall running -- that's how I knew it had been compromised (forget which firewall, because that was last year and I said "#*@* this, I'm installing Ubuntu" and haven't looked back).
Not sure if you're being brilliantly disingenuous, but your aside at the end leads me to believe that there's a possibility you honestly don't get it. (That and the fact that I met someone in real life who'd never seen, nor even heard of, "The Princess Bride" two days ago, and who was being utterly serious with me.) It's funny because it refers to a running joke in Monty Python's The Holy Grail: Scene 1, swallow carrying a coconut
And spoiler alert if you've not seen the movie, don't read this (it really is much better to experience the dénouement by watching the film): Scene 23, the Bridge of Death
Because it makes the segment of Americans who have never gone overseas, and who are scared shitless at the direction their country's taken, feel better by being able to point to a nebulous entity that, in their minds, is "socialist Europe", and spout ill-informed tropes about bad plumbing, terrible quality of life, and, oh, that whole "evil socialism" thing. And how those spoiled, cowardly, snooty Yer'peens are gonna get their due, oh yeah! In so doing, these scared-shitless Americans feel immensely better about themselves. Thus, to them, it is "insightful".
(Please note that I specified a segment of Americans and defined that segment. Thank you. Also, I'm American.)
You know, about the US' stated premise for war being a brazen lie that was eventually admitted to by Bush. Oh wait no, look over there, quick, before we Americans admit any wrongdoing! Look, look! France had a few minor oil contracts with Iraq! Shhhh don't say anything about our interests, shh, quiet, FREEDOM FRIES! US IS THE BEST! YEEAAAAH! (just pretend those WMD really existed and we'll be fine, yah, yah...)
And that his full name was given in the summary: Stephen Colbert. (Sorry to snark, because I'm an American who lives in Europe [France even], but honestly...)
I'm a professional translator and editor who now works with a major IT consulting company based in France (I'm American, and bilingual). The day that native English speakers can consistently communicate without a problem... will never come. Ever. It ain't gonna happen.
What makes people think that having non-native speakers communicate in English will make things better? As a translator, I have a job precisely because non-native speakers cannot communicate at native level in a foreign language. Keep in mind that I am saying that as a very fluent speaker of French (and I speak several other languages too): I am aware that I'll never be a native French speaker. You can get near-native, but will always be "wired" for your native language, which is different. For instance, I recently worked on a 6-month project translating specs into English for a French telecoms company. They told me that "puits de données" was "data mining". It's not. "Puits de données" is a "data sink". Dictionaries confirm. But do you know what happened? They didn't believe the dictionaries. Their engineers, who barely speak a word of English (which is normal, that's not meant as criticism), and who work with not one single native English speaker, forced me to use "data mining". It's perfectly understandable to an English speaker... and it's wrong. This happens All. The. Time. I cannot emphasize enough how often it happens. I know from personal experience that I do the same thing in French -- I'll be talking about something that makes perfect sense to everyone involved, except it turns out I've used a French word that doesn't mean what I think it means, and so that sense everyone thought was understood? Was actually completely different for me, and for the native French speakers. Now, I started learning French when I was 10 years old, have my B.A. in French (magna cum laude, even), studied for a year in France, and have lived in France for 11 years. So it's not because I have bad French skills -- it's merely because I'm non-native, and am "wired" for English.
It seems that IT people tend to conflate programming languages with spoken languages. But you cannot speak a language like you program one. Why? The compiler is not a static entity: it's a human mind. Human minds are all unique and different. When you're born into one language, that language essentially becomes your "compiler", but even then, you're still human and aren't going to be 100% compatible with other speakers of your own language. MUCH less so, then, when you learn a foreign language. It's a fact of life -- and not a depressing one! It's quite mind-opening to experience how differently life is interpreted by people around the world. Many things we take for granted as being "identical" really are not.
Solutions? The best one I've seen is to have two people who are very fluently bilingual present for discussions, and for documentation, an experienced translator who is a native speaker of the language being translated to (this is standard practice in translations, by the way). For example, in France, a native English speaker who is fluent in French, and a native French speaker who is fluent in English. Things get pounded out much more quickly, and others with lower language skills can speak their respective languages and still be understood. I've seen this in action and it really works. Furthermore, it builds mutual respect since everyone is able to speak their own language, and not feel "pushed aside" or left out by being forced to speak a non-native language that is native for the others. There's nothing worse than being unable to communicate what you mean with people who have it vastly easier.
I was surprised to see no mention of anywhere in Europe besides Finland and Romania. I've lived in Finland, and most of my friends were Nokia employees -- if Seattle got an honorable mention because it's overshadowed by Microsoft, then it should have been the same for Finland, which is dominated by Nokia. (Yes, Finland has excellent technology schools, and of course, Linus Torvalds, but that too isn't much different from Seattle.)
In France there's Sophia Antipolis, which is the "French Silicon Valley". HP, France Telecom/Orange, the European headquarters of the W3C, and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute are some of the big names here, then there's a plethora of IT consulting companies, called "SSII" in French, and several different technology schools and a university. Not sure how or why it was overlooked.
(Yes, this is offtopic.) I used to be a freelance copyeditor in addition to my main translation and writing activities. While I was good enough not to be put in difficulty by problems in the business (things had become shaky before the economy definitively went south), I've seen many others get less work, and crap copy being put out by companies that previously had everything proofread. The downturn in the quality of news writeups recently has been noticeable to me too -- the last few months I've seen horrid mistakes in Reuters and AP articles; the kind of mistakes I'd rarely, if ever, seen from them before.
One of the known truths in the writing/copyediting industry is that editors and writers are among the first to go when purse strings get tight. Even in a good economy, it's not an easy thing to convince non-writers that quality proofreading has a real, positive effect on image. Many higher-ups just don't seem to understand how much credibility their company loses and how much damage their image takes with bad copy, so they stop hiring proofreaders entirely, and tell their writers to pay more attention... except these types will have let go of expensive (read: good) writers to take on cheaper (worse) ones, "because anyone can write." So you get copy that reads like a middle schooler's report for Social Studies.
Their remark pisses me off more ways than one. Obviously, it underhandedly insults geeky men -- not cool. Yet it also slyly insults women in two ways, first by ignoring the fact that we even watch their channel at all currently, and second by reading as "we at Sci Fi had to dumb ourselves down for regular folk and teh wimmins in particular". *rolls eyes* I've been watching the Sci Fi Channel ever since it started. So have all of my women friends. Of course it's a biased sample (in addition to being anecdotal); they're my friends in large part because we share the same taste in things. However, my women friends also have other women friends; I know many of them watch too. And many of the "male geeks", notwithstanding the rude characterization of the Sci Fi Channel, have girlfriends or wives -- I'm willing to bet they watch as well.
I won't be watching "SyFy" though. It's condescending to everyone involved, and like many others have said, once BSG is gone, there's really no reason anyway. A shame. MST3K was mythical.
All of these bosses who make developers write documentation need to learn of the existence of Technical Writers. I am one. It's our job to be the nerds who aren't quite geeks -- we're the ones who've always loved technology, yet also love to write. Oh, I know, developers around the world are reeling at the horror of that phrase: "love to write". But yes! It is true!! If only you realized that such people like us truly exist, and are truly motivated by the challenge of learning new technologies, applications, tools, etc. and so forth from their developers, and honestly enjoy translating that into user-friendly documents, and furthermore have proven methodologies for producing quality documentation that take into account any number of different variables (technical users? slightly technical users? highly technical users with a dash of n00bs? and more). if only it were realized! Developers the world over could sigh in relief and say, "why certainly, $boss! I can have that top-quality, user-friendly documentation written up for you without a problem -- I know a good technical writer."
Good lord I wish I had mod points to up your comment. I'm absolutely speechless at the amount of times this same "it's their choice to have kids, dur, they can take responsibility for it" tripe has been trotted out and modded up as insightful. Holy hell. So thank you, CTS, for stating what should be obvious.
Furthermore, in many cases, it is NOT the woman's "choice" to get pregnant, nor, in many cases, to be the sole parent responsible for the child (it's called "breaking up" or "divorcing" and then "not paying child support"). Saying that women having children is some sort of cut-and-dry "choice" is utterly, patently ridiculous. Some men -- and I say men because nature has decreed it so, I'm not removing responsibility from those women who make bad choices, nor women who up and abandon their kids to their male partner, for instance -- some men will only understand when [deity] finally decides to make the physical playing field level, and they too get to pay for an "oops, condom broke" moment with 9 months and 18 years of financial, emotional and moral responsibility for another individual. As it is now, only responsible, conscientious men feel that sense of duty... this/. thread is infuriating me with the reminders of how many are unlike that; how many can be blissfully unaware of the burden of responsibility that the other half of humanity carries.
Thank goodness not everyone has their head stuck in the sand... I live in France (no, I'm not French, I'm originally from Oregon) and get tired of reading remarks like "yah but u socialists have to wait for months, har har!" as if people don't do precisely that with health providers in the US (I too speak from experience with US HMOs, and that was ten years ago, back when it was less bad than now). Not to mention these critiques very often come from people who've never actually lived in the country they're criticizing, much less know someone who lives there. No, they're usually the type who criticizes the liberal media, but then will take the "liberal media" reports on socialized health care to be God's given truth, when I've yet to see a report (including Moore's film, by the way) that reflects French health care accurately. (I single out France merely because that's the only European country I can speak to from experience, aside from Finland, where I only lived a couple of years.)
As for France, I can get an appointment with my GP on the same day, or at the VERY latest, the next day. I've lived here for 10 years now. For specialists -- opthalmologists, dentists, laboratories, gynecologists (I'm female), and also for sonograms, x-rays etc. (all of which I've had to have) -- I can also get an appointment the same day, or at latest the next. Labs you can usually just walk into and you'll get whatever's needed done within an hour or two, no appointment needed. I've also had a few emergencies, including hospitalization and an operation, which were taken care of so promptly that I barely remember them, apart from being immensely relieved that I was taken care of so well.
Back on the subject, in my ten years in France, I've yet to meet anyone -- and I work in a large consulting company where I'm regularly in other, large companies' offices as well, so I meet an awful lot of people, and health care is something they discuss -- who's had anything remotely resembling malpractice troubles. The worst complaints I hear about doctors are "oh my doctor just totally brushed off my precious little one's dry cough as if it were nothing!!! And precious had started coughing an HOUR earlier!! What if precious comes down with pneumonia?!?!" In short, they're spoiled... while it's nice to be spoiled into having good health, it does explain some of the budget problems that the French national health care system has. (Not exactly economical to take Little Precious in to see a GP every single darn time the kid starts to cough, or heaven forbid, gets a scratch. They're not all like that, although it's much more widespread than in the US, for obvious reasons.) Anyway, as a result, I honestly have no idea how complaints about doctors are handled. We have free choice of doctors here, and everyone shares information about them as a matter of course, so I think bad ones go out of business pretty quickly. I personally have never heard of patient views being silenced.
Re:I know no one likes a smartypants but ...
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You too eh? (Well, aside from the pr0n for me -- I'm a woman, not much to choose from.)
I'd applied to university via internet in 1993. Used gopher all the time, because I was and am a bibliophile. God I loved gopher. Met a guy on IRC (I was using a client I'd written & compiled myself, heh) in 1995, we dated online and finally met in the summer of 1996. Stayed together for several years in real life. Had my own website up and running in 1994, optimised for Lynx! A year later I was co-running our university School of Music's website, and we two webmasters prided ourselves on it displaying well in both Lynx and Netscape. We even had a couple of applications to the School via email -- our professors were wide-eyed. Wish I could link to that site since we won a few awards, but it was overlooked by archive.org, unfortunately, and was naturally taken over by others after we graduated. Oh and I still remember when Yahoo was just a couple of guys with a kewl link collection...
False dilemma much? There's middle ground between not being on Facebook and "divulging your entire life".
As for a personal anecdote, I live in France but am originally from the US West Coast. Facebook is ideal for keeping in touch with family and friends in the US -- a lot less formal than email, more private than a blog (as in not just anyone can visit and see whatever's posted). I most emphatically do NOT "divulge my entire life", nor do I know anyone who does. It's "just" a way to see that X's new baby is cute, Y's cat is fluffy and silly, and Z's found a fun link or something. Done by email it'd be spam. But on Facebook, you have the choice, you don't HAVE to follow every last detail. Or if you want to, you can. It's a nice balance.
All that said, I am concerned about Facebook-the-company's approach to privacy. But that's exactly why I'm careful about what I post, and why I recommend my friends do the same.
Slashdot Mirror
Most women that are employed hold jobs that are unproductive. Teaching (non-sense in the public schools mind you), planning a company party, selling Gucci hand bags, or posing for Playboy are not good ways to grow an economy.
...right?? (If not, errrr, you do realize that A. men also do those jobs you list, B. you'd better have a cite for "most women", C. define "unproductive" versus "productive". Because saying that teaching children is unproductive is quite possibly the most idiotic thing I've ever read in my life. You typed your comment yourself, right? So, who TAUGHT you how to read and write? Where'd you learn how to use a computer? Are you using knowledge you gained from teachers in your life? Yeah.)
This is sarcasm, right?
Jaunty handled my 24" 16:9 iiyama just fine at its native resolution of 1920x1080. Upgraded to Karmic... it autodetected the native res fine, except that it's practically unusable. Screen is blank except, oddly enough, for the toolbars, which display fine. Email and gedit display when run, but nothing else does. I've looked for workarounds, none worked, ended up having to file a bug. Another guy with the same monitor and better Linux skills than I is just as stumped. Meanwhile I feel like I've gone back in time 15 years, because the only res that works properly on my monitor is the lower 16:9 at 1280x720. At 24" it reminds me of the pixellization on an old 800x600 res monitor. My eyes, my eyes...
You too!?! Hurray, I'm not the only one. When I was a kid I could never understand the mystery behind that koan - it was only once I'd grown up a bit that I realized almost no one else can clap with one hand.
Great fun indeed with Zen types.
He had lung cancer AND prostate cancer. Late-stage lung cancer is horrible. My grandfather made use of the Death with Dignity Act in Oregon to request assisted suicide; we all supported his choice. It's hard not to when you see an intelligent, once-active man become delirious from pain, and bedridden due to having to be hooked up to machines that keep him from drowning to death (fluids in the lungs).
I'm one of the Oregon voters who voted twice for Death with Dignity, and am very glad that my grandfather was able to die at his own choosing, in a humane manner. (I don't think having to grab a shotgun and shoot yourself in the head, plus knowing others will find you and have to witness the scene, is humane - I say it not against Egan, but because I wish Egan had had a better choice.)
There are people who like to say "I have A THOUSAND followers!!" much like Dr. Evil thought he was oh-so-impressive demanding "one MILLION dollars!!". On the surface it sounds good to have so many followers, and these sorts of people are probably boasting to non-twitterers (non-twits?) who won't know any better. Kind of like how some bloggers cite the number of hits they get -- not the number of unique visitors. Ego inflation pure and simple. Been around since the dawn of humanity ("hurrr me have bigger stick!!!") and will likely be around until its sunset.
I pay about a dollar to go to the doctor. Any doctor of my choice. Emergency procedures are covered at 100%, and our doctors are damned good. With my third-party private insurance that covers extras not covered by government insurance, I also get 100% free dental and eye coverage. I can get a free pair of eyeglasses every single year (so long as I have a prescription for them, and getting that prescription is free).
What is this non-mythical first-world country I live in?! Why, it's France!
Sure, life isn't fair. But sitting there barking "life isn't fair! get over it!" is pretty damned lazy when it IS possible to do something to help make it more fair. No one decides "oh hey, I think I'd like to get breast cancer today" or "damn! I'm so happy that guy ran a red light and turned me into a quadraplegic!" So why the hell should their lives be ruined, when all it takes is everyone pooling a bit of money? For eff's sake, I only pay 80 euros a month towards national health care and 20 a month for the private insurance. One hundred euros a month. That's it. And I get to choose my doctors, my hospitals, my laboratories, everything.
As for the inevitable cries of "omg socialism!!" Americans (I am one, so don't anyone take it the wrong way) seriously need to grow up and realize that in the case of European democracies, they are, um, you know, DEMOCRACIES. As in the people voted for governments that set up these programs, and continue to vote for them.
You're absolutely right about brick and stone roads keeping speeds down. I live in Nice (France) and they recently redid part of the city center roads after putting in the tramway. On a particularly wide road (the one that goes along Place Masséna) that practically everyone sped on, which of course caused pedestrian fatalities, they removed the asphalt and replaced it with cobblestone to slow down drivers. No one goes over the 50km/h speed limit any more! They do the same in Helsinki, where practically all the roads are cobblestone in the city center. It's not so much a sense of history (though that's certainly part of the reason) as it is a practical and aesthetic way to keep down driving speeds.
There are dirt roads in several rural areas and parcs départementaux (roughly equivalent to US county & state parks). The ones in my part of France -- the southeast (yes, the French Riviera, no, I'm not rich :) ) -- are a mix of packed dirt and "gravel" that's actually the ground-up naturally-occurring rock here. I go mountain biking on many of them. (The gravel isn't thin and slippery like in the US, but consists of larger chunks, and it doesn't cover the entire road surface, so it's quite all right to ride on.)
You are right that the French take very good care of their roads -- that would be the taxes that amount to 70% of the price of gas here, which is about four or five times more expensive per gallon than in the US, and, for autoroutes (highways), all the toll stations. (It's so expensive to have a car here that I don't have one. I take public transportation, which costs me a whopping [that's sarcasm] 40 euros a month total, and that does indeed include my commute to and from work.)
You're ignoring the fact that women were actively, wilfully, consistently kept out of higher academics and especially from publishing -- even fiction -- until quite recent history. How are there supposed to be women equivalents if women couldn't even study beyond high school, were laughed at if they wanted to publish anything (unless they used a male pseudonym and had a male friend present it) and were being pushed to get married and have babies ASAP? (Keep in mind there was no birth control, so they'd have several, with the attendant responsibilities. Oh and, their husbands weren't expected to help them beyond finances.)
They'll have to be a bit more devious.
Oh yes it does still happen. Because if your hard copy of XP is pre-SP2, you can no longer install SP2 from a downloaded .exe -- it won't let you. You *have* to connect to the internet to download it! Connect to the Internet with a pre-SP2 XP box!!
Mine was infected about ten seconds after plugging in the Ethernet cable. WITH a firewall running -- that's how I knew it had been compromised (forget which firewall, because that was last year and I said "#*@* this, I'm installing Ubuntu" and haven't looked back).
Not sure if you're being brilliantly disingenuous, but your aside at the end leads me to believe that there's a possibility you honestly don't get it. (That and the fact that I met someone in real life who'd never seen, nor even heard of, "The Princess Bride" two days ago, and who was being utterly serious with me.) It's funny because it refers to a running joke in Monty Python's The Holy Grail:
Scene 1, swallow carrying a coconut
And spoiler alert if you've not seen the movie, don't read this (it really is much better to experience the dénouement by watching the film): Scene 23, the Bridge of Death
Because it makes the segment of Americans who have never gone overseas, and who are scared shitless at the direction their country's taken, feel better by being able to point to a nebulous entity that, in their minds, is "socialist Europe", and spout ill-informed tropes about bad plumbing, terrible quality of life, and, oh, that whole "evil socialism" thing. And how those spoiled, cowardly, snooty Yer'peens are gonna get their due, oh yeah! In so doing, these scared-shitless Americans feel immensely better about themselves. Thus, to them, it is "insightful".
(Please note that I specified a segment of Americans and defined that segment. Thank you. Also, I'm American.)
You know, about the US' stated premise for war being a brazen lie that was eventually admitted to by Bush. Oh wait no, look over there, quick, before we Americans admit any wrongdoing! Look, look! France had a few minor oil contracts with Iraq! Shhhh don't say anything about our interests, shh, quiet, FREEDOM FRIES! US IS THE BEST! YEEAAAAH! (just pretend those WMD really existed and we'll be fine, yah, yah...)
Sorry to break it to y'all: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poney ("Pony" comes from the old French "poulenet", which meant "small colt".)
And that his full name was given in the summary: Stephen Colbert. (Sorry to snark, because I'm an American who lives in Europe [France even], but honestly...)
I'm a professional translator and editor who now works with a major IT consulting company based in France (I'm American, and bilingual). The day that native English speakers can consistently communicate without a problem... will never come. Ever. It ain't gonna happen.
What makes people think that having non-native speakers communicate in English will make things better? As a translator, I have a job precisely because non-native speakers cannot communicate at native level in a foreign language. Keep in mind that I am saying that as a very fluent speaker of French (and I speak several other languages too): I am aware that I'll never be a native French speaker. You can get near-native, but will always be "wired" for your native language, which is different. For instance, I recently worked on a 6-month project translating specs into English for a French telecoms company. They told me that "puits de données" was "data mining". It's not. "Puits de données" is a "data sink". Dictionaries confirm. But do you know what happened? They didn't believe the dictionaries. Their engineers, who barely speak a word of English (which is normal, that's not meant as criticism), and who work with not one single native English speaker, forced me to use "data mining". It's perfectly understandable to an English speaker... and it's wrong. This happens All. The. Time. I cannot emphasize enough how often it happens. I know from personal experience that I do the same thing in French -- I'll be talking about something that makes perfect sense to everyone involved, except it turns out I've used a French word that doesn't mean what I think it means, and so that sense everyone thought was understood? Was actually completely different for me, and for the native French speakers. Now, I started learning French when I was 10 years old, have my B.A. in French (magna cum laude, even), studied for a year in France, and have lived in France for 11 years. So it's not because I have bad French skills -- it's merely because I'm non-native, and am "wired" for English.
It seems that IT people tend to conflate programming languages with spoken languages. But you cannot speak a language like you program one. Why? The compiler is not a static entity: it's a human mind. Human minds are all unique and different. When you're born into one language, that language essentially becomes your "compiler", but even then, you're still human and aren't going to be 100% compatible with other speakers of your own language. MUCH less so, then, when you learn a foreign language. It's a fact of life -- and not a depressing one! It's quite mind-opening to experience how differently life is interpreted by people around the world. Many things we take for granted as being "identical" really are not.
Solutions? The best one I've seen is to have two people who are very fluently bilingual present for discussions, and for documentation, an experienced translator who is a native speaker of the language being translated to (this is standard practice in translations, by the way). For example, in France, a native English speaker who is fluent in French, and a native French speaker who is fluent in English. Things get pounded out much more quickly, and others with lower language skills can speak their respective languages and still be understood. I've seen this in action and it really works. Furthermore, it builds mutual respect since everyone is able to speak their own language, and not feel "pushed aside" or left out by being forced to speak a non-native language that is native for the others. There's nothing worse than being unable to communicate what you mean with people who have it vastly easier.
I was surprised to see no mention of anywhere in Europe besides Finland and Romania. I've lived in Finland, and most of my friends were Nokia employees -- if Seattle got an honorable mention because it's overshadowed by Microsoft, then it should have been the same for Finland, which is dominated by Nokia. (Yes, Finland has excellent technology schools, and of course, Linus Torvalds, but that too isn't much different from Seattle.)
In France there's Sophia Antipolis, which is the "French Silicon Valley". HP, France Telecom/Orange, the European headquarters of the W3C, and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute are some of the big names here, then there's a plethora of IT consulting companies, called "SSII" in French, and several different technology schools and a university. Not sure how or why it was overlooked.
(Yes, this is offtopic.) I used to be a freelance copyeditor in addition to my main translation and writing activities. While I was good enough not to be put in difficulty by problems in the business (things had become shaky before the economy definitively went south), I've seen many others get less work, and crap copy being put out by companies that previously had everything proofread. The downturn in the quality of news writeups recently has been noticeable to me too -- the last few months I've seen horrid mistakes in Reuters and AP articles; the kind of mistakes I'd rarely, if ever, seen from them before.
One of the known truths in the writing/copyediting industry is that editors and writers are among the first to go when purse strings get tight. Even in a good economy, it's not an easy thing to convince non-writers that quality proofreading has a real, positive effect on image. Many higher-ups just don't seem to understand how much credibility their company loses and how much damage their image takes with bad copy, so they stop hiring proofreaders entirely, and tell their writers to pay more attention... except these types will have let go of expensive (read: good) writers to take on cheaper (worse) ones, "because anyone can write." So you get copy that reads like a middle schooler's report for Social Studies.
Their remark pisses me off more ways than one. Obviously, it underhandedly insults geeky men -- not cool. Yet it also slyly insults women in two ways, first by ignoring the fact that we even watch their channel at all currently, and second by reading as "we at Sci Fi had to dumb ourselves down for regular folk and teh wimmins in particular". *rolls eyes* I've been watching the Sci Fi Channel ever since it started. So have all of my women friends. Of course it's a biased sample (in addition to being anecdotal); they're my friends in large part because we share the same taste in things. However, my women friends also have other women friends; I know many of them watch too. And many of the "male geeks", notwithstanding the rude characterization of the Sci Fi Channel, have girlfriends or wives -- I'm willing to bet they watch as well.
I won't be watching "SyFy" though. It's condescending to everyone involved, and like many others have said, once BSG is gone, there's really no reason anyway. A shame. MST3K was mythical.
All of these bosses who make developers write documentation need to learn of the existence of Technical Writers. I am one. It's our job to be the nerds who aren't quite geeks -- we're the ones who've always loved technology, yet also love to write. Oh, I know, developers around the world are reeling at the horror of that phrase: "love to write". But yes! It is true!! If only you realized that such people like us truly exist, and are truly motivated by the challenge of learning new technologies, applications, tools, etc. and so forth from their developers, and honestly enjoy translating that into user-friendly documents, and furthermore have proven methodologies for producing quality documentation that take into account any number of different variables (technical users? slightly technical users? highly technical users with a dash of n00bs? and more). if only it were realized! Developers the world over could sigh in relief and say, "why certainly, $boss! I can have that top-quality, user-friendly documentation written up for you without a problem -- I know a good technical writer."
Good lord I wish I had mod points to up your comment. I'm absolutely speechless at the amount of times this same "it's their choice to have kids, dur, they can take responsibility for it" tripe has been trotted out and modded up as insightful. Holy hell. So thank you, CTS, for stating what should be obvious.
/. thread is infuriating me with the reminders of how many are unlike that; how many can be blissfully unaware of the burden of responsibility that the other half of humanity carries.
Furthermore, in many cases, it is NOT the woman's "choice" to get pregnant, nor, in many cases, to be the sole parent responsible for the child (it's called "breaking up" or "divorcing" and then "not paying child support"). Saying that women having children is some sort of cut-and-dry "choice" is utterly, patently ridiculous. Some men -- and I say men because nature has decreed it so, I'm not removing responsibility from those women who make bad choices, nor women who up and abandon their kids to their male partner, for instance -- some men will only understand when [deity] finally decides to make the physical playing field level, and they too get to pay for an "oops, condom broke" moment with 9 months and 18 years of financial, emotional and moral responsibility for another individual. As it is now, only responsible, conscientious men feel that sense of duty... this
Thank goodness not everyone has their head stuck in the sand... I live in France (no, I'm not French, I'm originally from Oregon) and get tired of reading remarks like "yah but u socialists have to wait for months, har har!" as if people don't do precisely that with health providers in the US (I too speak from experience with US HMOs, and that was ten years ago, back when it was less bad than now). Not to mention these critiques very often come from people who've never actually lived in the country they're criticizing, much less know someone who lives there. No, they're usually the type who criticizes the liberal media, but then will take the "liberal media" reports on socialized health care to be God's given truth, when I've yet to see a report (including Moore's film, by the way) that reflects French health care accurately. (I single out France merely because that's the only European country I can speak to from experience, aside from Finland, where I only lived a couple of years.)
As for France, I can get an appointment with my GP on the same day, or at the VERY latest, the next day. I've lived here for 10 years now. For specialists -- opthalmologists, dentists, laboratories, gynecologists (I'm female), and also for sonograms, x-rays etc. (all of which I've had to have) -- I can also get an appointment the same day, or at latest the next. Labs you can usually just walk into and you'll get whatever's needed done within an hour or two, no appointment needed. I've also had a few emergencies, including hospitalization and an operation, which were taken care of so promptly that I barely remember them, apart from being immensely relieved that I was taken care of so well.
Back on the subject, in my ten years in France, I've yet to meet anyone -- and I work in a large consulting company where I'm regularly in other, large companies' offices as well, so I meet an awful lot of people, and health care is something they discuss -- who's had anything remotely resembling malpractice troubles. The worst complaints I hear about doctors are "oh my doctor just totally brushed off my precious little one's dry cough as if it were nothing!!! And precious had started coughing an HOUR earlier!! What if precious comes down with pneumonia?!?!" In short, they're spoiled... while it's nice to be spoiled into having good health, it does explain some of the budget problems that the French national health care system has. (Not exactly economical to take Little Precious in to see a GP every single darn time the kid starts to cough, or heaven forbid, gets a scratch. They're not all like that, although it's much more widespread than in the US, for obvious reasons.) Anyway, as a result, I honestly have no idea how complaints about doctors are handled. We have free choice of doctors here, and everyone shares information about them as a matter of course, so I think bad ones go out of business pretty quickly. I personally have never heard of patient views being silenced.
You too eh? (Well, aside from the pr0n for me -- I'm a woman, not much to choose from.)
I'd applied to university via internet in 1993. Used gopher all the time, because I was and am a bibliophile. God I loved gopher. Met a guy on IRC (I was using a client I'd written & compiled myself, heh) in 1995, we dated online and finally met in the summer of 1996. Stayed together for several years in real life. Had my own website up and running in 1994, optimised for Lynx! A year later I was co-running our university School of Music's website, and we two webmasters prided ourselves on it displaying well in both Lynx and Netscape. We even had a couple of applications to the School via email -- our professors were wide-eyed. Wish I could link to that site since we won a few awards, but it was overlooked by archive.org, unfortunately, and was naturally taken over by others after we graduated. Oh and I still remember when Yahoo was just a couple of guys with a kewl link collection...
False dilemma much? There's middle ground between not being on Facebook and "divulging your entire life". As for a personal anecdote, I live in France but am originally from the US West Coast. Facebook is ideal for keeping in touch with family and friends in the US -- a lot less formal than email, more private than a blog (as in not just anyone can visit and see whatever's posted). I most emphatically do NOT "divulge my entire life", nor do I know anyone who does. It's "just" a way to see that X's new baby is cute, Y's cat is fluffy and silly, and Z's found a fun link or something. Done by email it'd be spam. But on Facebook, you have the choice, you don't HAVE to follow every last detail. Or if you want to, you can. It's a nice balance. All that said, I am concerned about Facebook-the-company's approach to privacy. But that's exactly why I'm careful about what I post, and why I recommend my friends do the same.