Just because they learned English, doesn't mean they learned it well. If you can speak a little of their language, it will make communicating a lot easier.
Korean and Japanese are about as similar as Spanish and Italian (and I've seen an Italian and a Spaniard speak their own languages to each other fairly slowly and have an effective conversation). There is probably more difference between Mandarin and Cantonese then Korean and Japanese.
I imagine most Chinese have trouble learning Japanese because Chinese is tonal and Japanese is the opposite, even though many of the syllables otherwise sound similar. Coming to Chinese from English as an adult, you're never going to get the tones that well anyway and it shouldn't be a hindrance.
Can we apply this to Slashdot comments? Please? Please? Pretty Please?? I'd love to get a one page summary of all the informative, insightful and interesting comments.
Makes sense.. no one would believe Kirk was up on that much of the technical details and that the crew wasn't. If my captain had to explain to the crew how to turn the ship around, I'd be looking for the life boat.
Anywhere with enough solar energy to use a solar cell or solar sail probably has enough particle density (from the solar wind) to use an ion thruster. You don't need a lot of mass to make a thruster, just accelerate each particle to really high velocities. There are engineering problems, but you can't dismiss it out of hand.
I'm going to ignore all the bullshit and ad hominum because this started out as an interesting thread and go back to the linchpin of your argument
The law says that the telecoms aren't responsible when presented with certain document claiming authority.
Were the teleco's presented with what looked like legitimate paperwork?
From my limited understanding that would mean a warrant. If they were presented with a plausibly legal warrant that was obtained illegally then I would agree that they aren't liable. But then why do they need this bill, the case should be trivial to win in court.
Somewhere else it was pointed out that the papers the telecos need to prove their case are sealed for national security. If so then congress should be investigating the administration's abuse of power. Since they effectively aren't, then we the people need to be able to sue the telecos to find out the truth (supposedly the congressional bill allows the case to go to court, but then advises the court to let the telecos win).
Yes it is important to go after Bush, it is not a pointless vendetta. No other administration should think they can get away with this crap.
Obama will be heavily attacked this fall for any appearance of being 'soft' on terrorism. He's between a rock and a hard place, voting against the bill will give serious ammunition to McCain and voting for it hopefully goes against his principles and pisses off the party base. I'm extremely dissapointed in the democratic leadership that they haven't had the guts to stand against the whitehouse on this crap, which would have avoided this position in the first place. I think 3rd parties candidates for congress will have record turn out this fall.
So I installed linux on it. The last support call I got was because my dad couldn't figure out which port the speakers plugged in to (and apparently he's becoming color blind). I think they're just making stuff up now to guilt me into visiting. They're happy with it and my mom is even an advocate for it at her school.
I wanted to see what serendipity might bring me that deliberation would not Or... you just wanted an excuse to read Slashdot at work.
The problem with asking for cool ideas that aren't in the literature yet, is that anyone who works in the field and is smart will keep them to themselves until they've had a chance to publish. Anyone who doesn't work in the field is likely to throw out ideas that sound cool and were rejected years ago as being unworkable. So in the end you're looking for a monkey typing Shakespeare.
Of course, this is Slashdot. There are certainly plenty of typing monkeys.
Since you're all so curious, I got a full ride to one of the best US universities, graduated and after spending a few years working overseas I'm back for a PhD. Now I'm expected to argue with my teachers and school is a lot more fun.
I used to tutor some of the students in the remedial classes while serving my detentions. It was very enlightening. On the other hand, the National Honor Society that met at the same time on the other side of the library was completely and utterly stupefying (I wasn't allowed to join, something about an attitude problem).
There is something to be said for working with the 'less bright' students instead of being surrounded by high performing zombies all day.
Higher achieving students might get away with less than a student with an emotional/behavioral issues because more is expected from them. I hold the unofficial record at my old high school for valedictorian with the most detentions. Mostly for sleeping in class and showing up late. When the teacher complained one day, I told her if she were more interesting I'd be more awake. Then I went to detention again.
So what do you do with high achieving students who have behavioral issues?
df == disk free. The command tells you how much free space is free on each mounted partition. Aside from some poor user getting a weird command prompt when they try to check the space left, this is a pretty trivial thing and easy to fix.
If you want to be really pedantic, in C, and this sure looks like C, most variables default to undefined and it wouldn't compile. Did you learn to program in Excel?? (I kid, I kid).
Privacy is not a right the limited to the technical elite. The proverbial 'grandma' should be able to expect crossing the border to "just work" without having to set up full disk encryption (which if discovered they would detain you for until you unlock it, so you need to know how to hide it and then make a second dummy installation for them to discover and this really all sounds like a bunch of bullshit to go through when you think about it). The solution is to demand our individual rights, not to hide behind technological barriers.
Ubuntu EEE/Notebook Remix on a desktop?
on
Ubuntu Eee Goes Gold
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I have a desktop with a 15" 1024x768 monitor and these interfaces aimed at subnotebooks look very appealing. From screenshots they almost remind me of MythTV, but not hideous. Has anyone played with them enough to know if it is worthwhile?
I've been listening to the Pimsler Mandarin CD's recently, I got them from the library. They are okay. They really skim over tones though, and I'd never be able to read Pinyin (Chinese written with western characters) if I relied solely on the audio, but there isn't a companion book. They also teach the Beijing dialect and not 'standard' mandarin. Chinesepod has a strong Shanghai accent. I really liked the "Teach Yourself" book and tapes I got a few years back, but I lost the tapes.
After listening to tapes and CDs I can follow a lot of basic and some more complex conversations, I have a very hard time making myself understood just from listening and repeating. You really need to find someone very patient to practice with, and my Chinese wife is not patient. If this MMO provides an means of that, I'll be hooked! It says it has interactive conversations and I'm definitely going to try it out when I get home tonight.
So you trust Google with your documents (which aren't encrypted in anyway so far as I can tell) but not the US Border guards? I'm not saying your mistrust is misplaced, just interesting.
My chinese is pretty poor, but I do think this implementation of a 'ribbon' looks more appealing than that in Office 2007. And as much as the new UI annoys me, the quick formatting buttons in the new Powerpoint are a nice way to add simple visual appeal to my presentation slides. There is a happy compromise to be had in there somewhere.
I've known a great many physicists who were horrible programmers. That said, a programming class for scientists should focus on optimization and data display, hopefully they would pick up simple data flow easily. There are so many open source tools (PAW, SciPy, Octave, etc) available for this that to use a proprietary one to teach the basics is stupid.
At my library at least, all the books have RFID tags. If you put 5 books on at once, it will read and check out all of them. I haven't seen a system that just has a barcode scanner (not that I can't easily picture a library doing that).
Of course, security is always a tradeoff between cost and effectiveness. If they don't have enough books stolen to justify a more robust, and expensive, system then it would be stupid for them to spend money on one.
There seem to be some words missing from your reply, so I'm not sure if you completely missed the point or just had some trouble typing. So I'll be explicit. The chemical reaction for photosynthesis:
6 CO_2(g) + 12 H_2O(l) + photons => C_6H_12O_6(aq) + 6 O_2(g) + 6 H_2O(l) Making biofuels has to consume water (6 water molecules are consumed to create 1 sugar). Burning any hydrocarbon fuel releases water. Unless you're going to collect the exhaust of your car and ship it back to the plant, the system is not a closed loop (except in the sense that all water on the planet is in a closed loop).
Slashdot Mirror
Just because they learned English, doesn't mean they learned it well. If you can speak a little of their language, it will make communicating a lot easier.
Korean and Japanese are about as similar as Spanish and Italian (and I've seen an Italian and a Spaniard speak their own languages to each other fairly slowly and have an effective conversation). There is probably more difference between Mandarin and Cantonese then Korean and Japanese.
I imagine most Chinese have trouble learning Japanese because Chinese is tonal and Japanese is the opposite, even though many of the syllables otherwise sound similar. Coming to Chinese from English as an adult, you're never going to get the tones that well anyway and it shouldn't be a hindrance.
Can we apply this to Slashdot comments? Please? Please? Pretty Please??
I'd love to get a one page summary of all the informative, insightful and interesting comments.
Makes sense .. no one would believe Kirk was up on that much of the technical details and that the crew wasn't. If my captain had to explain to the crew how to turn the ship around, I'd be looking for the life boat.
Anywhere with enough solar energy to use a solar cell or solar sail probably has enough particle density (from the solar wind) to use an ion thruster. You don't need a lot of mass to make a thruster, just accelerate each particle to really high velocities. There are engineering problems, but you can't dismiss it out of hand.
I'm going to ignore all the bullshit and ad hominum because this started out as an interesting thread and go back to the linchpin of your argument
The law says that the telecoms aren't responsible when presented with certain document claiming authority.
Were the teleco's presented with what looked like legitimate paperwork?
From my limited understanding that would mean a warrant. If they were presented with a plausibly legal warrant that was obtained illegally then I would agree that they aren't liable. But then why do they need this bill, the case should be trivial to win in court.
Somewhere else it was pointed out that the papers the telecos need to prove their case are sealed for national security. If so then congress should be investigating the administration's abuse of power. Since they effectively aren't, then we the people need to be able to sue the telecos to find out the truth (supposedly the congressional bill allows the case to go to court, but then advises the court to let the telecos win).
Yes it is important to go after Bush, it is not a pointless vendetta. No other administration should think they can get away with this crap.
Obama will be heavily attacked this fall for any appearance of being 'soft' on terrorism. He's between a rock and a hard place, voting against the bill will give serious ammunition to McCain and voting for it hopefully goes against his principles and pisses off the party base. I'm extremely dissapointed in the democratic leadership that they haven't had the guts to stand against the whitehouse on this crap, which would have avoided this position in the first place. I think 3rd parties candidates for congress will have record turn out this fall.
So I installed linux on it. The last support call I got was because my dad couldn't figure out which port the speakers plugged in to (and apparently he's becoming color blind). I think they're just making stuff up now to guilt me into visiting. They're happy with it and my mom is even an advocate for it at her school.
The problem with asking for cool ideas that aren't in the literature yet, is that anyone who works in the field and is smart will keep them to themselves until they've had a chance to publish. Anyone who doesn't work in the field is likely to throw out ideas that sound cool and were rejected years ago as being unworkable. So in the end you're looking for a monkey typing Shakespeare.
Of course, this is Slashdot. There are certainly plenty of typing monkeys.
Since you're all so curious, I got a full ride to one of the best US universities, graduated and after spending a few years working overseas I'm back for a PhD. Now I'm expected to argue with my teachers and school is a lot more fun.
I used to tutor some of the students in the remedial classes while serving my detentions. It was very enlightening. On the other hand, the National Honor Society that met at the same time on the other side of the library was completely and utterly stupefying (I wasn't allowed to join, something about an attitude problem).
There is something to be said for working with the 'less bright' students instead of being surrounded by high performing zombies all day.
So what do you do with high achieving students who have behavioral issues?
df == disk free. The command tells you how much free space is free on each mounted partition. Aside from some poor user getting a weird command prompt when they try to check the space left, this is a pretty trivial thing and easy to fix.
If you want to be really pedantic, in C, and this sure looks like C, most variables default to undefined and it wouldn't compile. Did you learn to program in Excel?? (I kid, I kid).
Privacy is not a right the limited to the technical elite. The proverbial 'grandma' should be able to expect crossing the border to "just work" without having to set up full disk encryption (which if discovered they would detain you for until you unlock it, so you need to know how to hide it and then make a second dummy installation for them to discover and this really all sounds like a bunch of bullshit to go through when you think about it). The solution is to demand our individual rights, not to hide behind technological barriers.
I have a desktop with a 15" 1024x768 monitor and these interfaces aimed at subnotebooks look very appealing. From screenshots they almost remind me of MythTV, but not hideous. Has anyone played with them enough to know if it is worthwhile?
On Ubuntu Hardy and Fedora 9 they are installed by default for Firefox. The operating system translation can be installed from the system menu.
I've been listening to the Pimsler Mandarin CD's recently, I got them from the library. They are okay. They really skim over tones though, and I'd never be able to read Pinyin (Chinese written with western characters) if I relied solely on the audio, but there isn't a companion book. They also teach the Beijing dialect and not 'standard' mandarin. Chinesepod has a strong Shanghai accent. I really liked the "Teach Yourself" book and tapes I got a few years back, but I lost the tapes.
After listening to tapes and CDs I can follow a lot of basic and some more complex conversations, I have a very hard time making myself understood just from listening and repeating. You really need to find someone very patient to practice with, and my Chinese wife is not patient. If this MMO provides an means of that, I'll be hooked! It says it has interactive conversations and I'm definitely going to try it out when I get home tonight.
So you trust Google with your documents (which aren't encrypted in anyway so far as I can tell) but not the US Border guards? I'm not saying your mistrust is misplaced, just interesting.
My chinese is pretty poor, but I do think this implementation of a 'ribbon' looks more appealing than that in Office 2007. And as much as the new UI annoys me, the quick formatting buttons in the new Powerpoint are a nice way to add simple visual appeal to my presentation slides. There is a happy compromise to be had in there somewhere.
Considering how badly they pronounced the Chinese, it would have gotten past the Chinese sensors.
"dog ten"[bleep]
I've known a great many physicists who were horrible programmers. That said, a programming class for scientists should focus on optimization and data display, hopefully they would pick up simple data flow easily. There are so many open source tools (PAW, SciPy, Octave, etc) available for this that to use a proprietary one to teach the basics is stupid.
But, I really want a wind powered laptop.
At my library at least, all the books have RFID tags. If you put 5 books on at once, it will read and check out all of them. I haven't seen a system that just has a barcode scanner (not that I can't easily picture a library doing that).
Of course, security is always a tradeoff between cost and effectiveness. If they don't have enough books stolen to justify a more robust, and expensive, system then it would be stupid for them to spend money on one.
There seem to be some words missing from your reply, so I'm not sure if you completely missed the point or just had some trouble typing. So I'll be explicit.
The chemical reaction for photosynthesis:
6 CO_2(g) + 12 H_2O(l) + photons => C_6H_12O_6(aq) + 6 O_2(g) + 6 H_2O(l)
Making biofuels has to consume water (6 water molecules are consumed to create 1 sugar). Burning any hydrocarbon fuel releases water. Unless you're going to collect the exhaust of your car and ship it back to the plant, the system is not a closed loop (except in the sense that all water on the planet is in a closed loop).