I think my personal experiences in several of China's largest cities and knowing quite a few Chinese with a high level of education have some validity.
I can certainly understand the attractiveness of a stylus--I am considering buying a Wacom tablet (or whatever they're calling those now--last time I owned one was ca. 1999) for just that reason.
I'd also like to point out that pinyin doesn't take tones into account.
And I agree that Cantonese Romanisation varies widely. A big reason for this being that the central government suppressed all the regional Han languages ("dialects"? who are you trying to kid?) for many years and permitted little or no publishing or broadcasting in anything other than *Mandarin* Chinese until fairly recently.
For bonus points, learn to write Hanzi left-handed, as I do. Talk about something that flips most Chinese people out when they see me do it...:)
Drones strikes are only a worry in places too small/weak to mount an effective response. Y'know, places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, West Virginia...
I can tell the US education system has gone to shit when I'm reduced to defending Slashdot editors' word choices by diagramming sentences for dunderheads who were allowed to sleep all the way through 8th grade.
FYI: If you check TFA, you'll find the Slashdot headline is merely a slight variation on the original, so please take it up with the folks over at Science Insider.
You use what's available. Back when I still did websites, there were no clientside JavaScript debuggers other than alert() and document.writeln() statements and whatever you wired them up with.
And, please, no guff about it not being a real language or whatever. Again, you use what's available.
There's pinyin for Cantonese as well. And some folks use bopomofo or whatever it's called, right.
And yes, I know how Chinese characters are written and the stroke-order rules and so forth, since I am working on achieving HSK Level 1 proficiency currently and know a couple hundred of them.
In any case, in my trips to HK/Guangzhou and amongst my Chinese friends here, I've never seen anything being used except the keyboard for text input, and my partner, who's a Guangzhou native and Cantonese speaker, tells me use of the stylus is fairly rare and definitely not an everyday thing. She herself has never even owned one, and got through 2 Uni degrees in China just fine without one.
So I reject the OP's contention that stylus support is a significant factor in adoption, and therefore regard his other assertions as suspect.
They are also successful because they sell phones with styli which is very important in asian countries where the pen is used to write letters of the alphabet.
Why the stylus? Is Google Pinyin banned from the S4 or something? Works great on both my S3 and Tab 2 for writing Chinese characters. (They're not letters, BTW.)
All the Chinese people I know--including my partner--use pinyin input method of some sort for this, not a stylus. The capability has existed for ages on Windows, Android, and Linux (and I would be extremely surprised if MacOSX and iOS didn't provide it also).
So I'm forced to call bullshit.
(I wish they'd hurry up with the Linux port for Google Pinyin because the latest updates to SCIM have broken it horribly and now I can only write Chinese using my phone or tablet.)
Slashdot Mirror
I think my personal experiences in several of China's largest cities and knowing quite a few Chinese with a high level of education have some validity.
I can certainly understand the attractiveness of a stylus--I am considering buying a Wacom tablet (or whatever they're calling those now--last time I owned one was ca. 1999) for just that reason.
I'd also like to point out that pinyin doesn't take tones into account.
And I agree that Cantonese Romanisation varies widely. A big reason for this being that the central government suppressed all the regional Han languages ("dialects"? who are you trying to kid?) for many years and permitted little or no publishing or broadcasting in anything other than *Mandarin* Chinese until fairly recently.
For bonus points, learn to write Hanzi left-handed, as I do. Talk about something that flips most Chinese people out when they see me do it... :)
Forgot to add: "Good day, Sir/Ma'am/Fido!"
TFTFY. :D
Get back to us when you've accounted for massive preloading/marketing/lockin and then we'll talk about "fragmentation".
Drones strikes are only a worry in places too small/weak to mount an effective response. Y'know, places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, West Virginia...
And I have a registered business in Australia! Choice!
Just like at many businesses that work in finance, the ports are glued shut or disabled.
I must be behind the times, then. Gluing the ports closed on my own computer wasn't a requirement for being a journalist when I was one.
Yep.
Sun Microsystems also looked too big to fail, in 2000 or so.
A few years later, they found out that there was no such thing as "too stupid to fail".
--ex-Sun employee
Eh? You seem to be confusing the release of NeXT with the release of Rubber Soul.
"Repent, Microsoft!" said the Ticktockman.
No I couldn't, since I didn't have this phone last year.
And I deliberately avoided mentioning Cyanogenmod. :)
*sigh*
'Space Vikings' Spark (Unfounded) NASA Waste Inquiry
{Adjectival Noun + Noun} | Verb | {(Adjective) + Adjectival Noun + Adjectival Noun + Noun}
Subject | Verb | Object
I can tell the US education system has gone to shit when I'm reduced to defending Slashdot editors' word choices by diagramming sentences for dunderheads who were allowed to sleep all the way through 8th grade.
FYI: If you check TFA, you'll find the Slashdot headline is merely a slight variation on the original, so please take it up with the folks over at Science Insider.
I had absolutely no trouble parsing the headline. It makes perfect sense.
Perhaps you did not finish high school?
I too am honestly curious.
What is the value in slagging what appears to be a completely Free/Libre OS?
And what other "ecosystem" did you have in mind, other than that of Apple/iOS or Microsoft/WinWhatever? Is either of those somehow more worthy?
Like the man said, you gotta serve somebody.
Enlighten me. Because as far as I can tell, you're the one being narrow-minded.
BTW, I notice my S3 is on the list of supported devices. Might be a good time and way to nuke all the Samsung crapware from it.
You use what's available. Back when I still did websites, there were no clientside JavaScript debuggers other than alert() and document.writeln() statements and whatever you wired them up with.
And, please, no guff about it not being a real language or whatever. Again, you use what's available.
There's pinyin for Cantonese as well. And some folks use bopomofo or whatever it's called, right.
And yes, I know how Chinese characters are written and the stroke-order rules and so forth, since I am working on achieving HSK Level 1 proficiency currently and know a couple hundred of them.
In any case, in my trips to HK/Guangzhou and amongst my Chinese friends here, I've never seen anything being used except the keyboard for text input, and my partner, who's a Guangzhou native and Cantonese speaker, tells me use of the stylus is fairly rare and definitely not an everyday thing. She herself has never even owned one, and got through 2 Uni degrees in China just fine without one.
So I reject the OP's contention that stylus support is a significant factor in adoption, and therefore regard his other assertions as suspect.
This is the same as the very tired "Linux fragmentation" arguments we've all seen and heard before.
On microsoft. It's just a bit slow to being widely adopted.
Isn't that a bit like saying the dead parrot is merely tired after a long squawk?
In the real world, you are an idiot.
Please mod parent up. The OP is indeed making shit up--see my response to same.
I was sort of with you until I got to this:
They are also successful because they sell phones with styli which is very important in asian countries where the pen is used to write letters of the alphabet.
Why the stylus? Is Google Pinyin banned from the S4 or something? Works great on both my S3 and Tab 2 for writing Chinese characters. (They're not letters, BTW.)
All the Chinese people I know--including my partner--use pinyin input method of some sort for this, not a stylus. The capability has existed for ages on Windows, Android, and Linux (and I would be extremely surprised if MacOSX and iOS didn't provide it also).
So I'm forced to call bullshit.
(I wish they'd hurry up with the Linux port for Google Pinyin because the latest updates to SCIM have broken it horribly and now I can only write Chinese using my phone or tablet.)
I am pretty sure that the beans I ground up this morning were not made of wood.
But it took America to tell the Belgians that the mayo goes on the hamburger, not the fries. Truly one of our finest moments.
I miss real biscuits and my parents, but not much else.
Forgot to add:
For bonus points, do it with a Russian accent.