You may be right of course, but I still think that the "web-english" that we use to communicate on the web will become something separate from british/american english. This is a language used for intercommunication between two non-native speakers. Therefore the grammar will be simplified (no CmdrTaco reference, please) and the vocabualry even more mixed up with other languages then today.
Now moderators, I dare you to say this is Offtopic. Even more, I dare you to get the modaration right for once...
Skit också, jag fick just modereringspoäng, men jag har redan skrivit flera inlägg i den här diskussionen. Jag skulle nog varit frestad att åtminstone ge dig en "+1 roligt".
Why? Because it is becoming so widely used (= embraced and extended) by non-native speakers, that it will become too wide to grasp as a first language. Too complex for every day use.
What we will see is the development of "American" and "British" (and australian and so on). Languages that stem from what we today call english, but develop their own grammar and vocabulary.
Todays english will evolve as an intercommunication tool between people. A language for scientific papers, diplomats, tourists and other border crossing communication. Not for people.
Just like Latin died as a natural language, but survived as a diplomatic/scientific language, while branches like Italian and Spanish survived.
As far as I can tell, Ü sounds like the long "oo" in English. At least that's the way I learned it. Blame my German instructor if you will. (She was from Thuringen.)
Sorry, that sounds like a regular "U" not "Ü"
If you want a wowel that seems unpronounceable to english speakers, try "U" as pronounced in northern europe. Ask Linus Torvalds how he pronounces "Linux" or his own name...
(Damnit, I know I had a link to a soundclip with him somewhere)
Not only do we get the politicians we deserve...
on
The New Mediascape
·
· Score: 2
...the same goes for news and other media.
What bothers me about these personalized, interactive real time news sources is the way they (may) contribute to keeping important niche news in the dark. For example: How will the dark side of the DMCA get any exposure? Sure it is debated every day on/. and other geeky news sources, but mr A. Random Voter will never hear about it. He has his own personalized news source where stuff he doesn't care much about is filtered out.
Sure, Time/Warner is not likely to do a piece about it anyway, *but* one nice feature of the "old" media was some hard unpopular pieces directed to Mr Joe and his friends.
What is worse than a news outlet censoring the news? The viewers censoring the news themselves!
I remember seing a tv show about WWI documentaries. There was one sequence showing the french in their trench and on showing the germans. Thing is, if you looked closely you saw that they used the same trench. The "german" film was reversed so that they would be facing each other...
Most war "documentaries" was made after the battle when the cameramen arrived and kindly asked some R&R'ing soldiers to reenact the event.
Well, well, what apparently *has* changed is that we can no longer trust even live video. Nifty tool for the disinformant but not as good as the traditional method of simply choosing where to point the camera.
Yup. I remember reading about it a couple of years ago. Before Gibsons Idoru anyway.
Wonder why it has not caught on here? The closest thing might be that Croft woman, or MTV's Max Headroom?
This being slashdot I suppose I should add room for a conspiracy theory about how the MPAA together with MS are replacing celebrities with Idorus everywhere. And voters. And politicians! (oh that is why the DMCA went through) and... oh wait a minute. What is that black van doing outside? Oh someone's at the door, better answer. Be right ba...
The thing is: untli (about) now you'd need a studio to reenact the event or really nifty proffesional video editing tools (or frame by frame editing before video) That didn't make "filmed evidence" impossible to falsify, but very hard and very expensive. Esp. in comparison to faked stills.
I doubt that those WWI films would hold up in court too...
Nah, I don't really think that we will freeze yesterdays culture. I'd rather think that we will see synthetic stars, think William Gibson's Idoru...
*sigh* I see a future of carefully market adjusted stars and celebrities, checked in real time against the reactions of some user panel. Everything edited to please the average man and woman. Everything adjusted to fit into the sponsors latest campaign.
A world where n'sync and Britney Spears will seem original...
Yes nowadays, whenever you see a logo or anything else that can be identified with a certain brand, you can be sure it is payed for.
Look at an action movie, for example. I bet you'll never miss what brand and model the heros car is. OTOH You will have to concentrate very hard to identify any other vehicle in the movie (apart from generic policecars etc) Then the hero has a drink. Either from a bottle with a *very* focused label, or an anonymous glass.
Falsified paper documents, falsified signatures, falsified fotographs... The only reason video evidence has had some credibility is that, until now, they have been hard to falsify.
What maters is that we, as well as the courts, are well informed on what is currently possible to fake.
I'm curious as to what you consider a "useful job," if you believe that defending one's bit of soil and the freedom of the
folks on it isn't.
A soldier is "useful" in the same sense as a fire fighter, a doctor or a cop. They don't put bread on anyones table, they merely make sure that the bread is not taken away. For that service they get a slice themselves. If my soil can be kept safe by a smaller number of soldiers and fires, diseases and crime becomes less frequent, the rest are just dead weight, heroic or not.
And replacing our military with robots would wreak havoc on our economy. Military installations parked near small
towns invariably perk the local economy up substantially. Replace those human soldiers with robots, and you'd not only
take the jobs and benefits away from the soldiers replaced, but you would take away the large amount of dough those
humans spend in the nearby towns.
Sorry to break this news to you (unless you're trollong) but that precious dough they spend is your tax money. If you want to care for those small towns, fine, but why not let those soldiers do useful jobs for the same pay?
Yeah I know, this is an evil world and we all need a devence and so on. Still the only army on the plus side of a national budget is an army at war against a weak but wealthy opponent. Think Iraq.
Yup, nothing more evil than common economic sense at work here.
I try to make everything as browser independent as can, but I certainly see why an online vendor rather adds features for the 97% using a [modern/normal/bloated/standard/evil] browser than bother about the rest. See, if those features makes the 97% buy 4% more thanks to the bells and whistles, he comes out ahead.
Also, if I had a commersial site, financed by ads, I wouldn't spend too much time making my content accessible with junkbuster...
I agree with that- there are some things you just don't put in front of a kid. But what's the advantage to having the
government draw the line, rather than the kid's parents?
There is a point, *if* the line is fuzzy enough. There is no chance for a parent to keep up with every movie or game release, getting their own opinion wether it is suitable for their kids or not. *If* my (hypothetical) son would ask to see a movie, cause he really wanted to, *then* I would take the time to make my own opinion.
Course I'd rather have some non-government organisations rating games/movies than one, single, final, official rating. And I think that a parent should be able to override ratings, at least by allowing more.
There's nothing wrong with having a space in a compound word.
Nothing wrong in english, but certainly in swedish (for example). Especially for a nitpicker like myself:-)
Not that everyone gets that right, though. In restaurants, you'll see signs that say "rök fritt" (smoke freely) when they (probably) mean "rökfritt" (non-smoking ie "free from smoke").
Alternatively, there's a risk in assuming other cultures are just like your own. Japanese culture (civilian and military) is
quite different than American or European.
Naturally.
I just meant that one should think about what purpose is served by stressing one difference or another.
Oh the invisible monster has lenses and retina that only affects wawelengths outside the visual spectrum, like infrared. How else would the hero be able to shield his own infrared emissions and detect the disturbance in those wawelengths caused by the monsters eyes, just in time for the final scene?
Well, for an indo-european language, English is *not* very good at making compound words.
You mention "Buzz word" That is two words. A german or scandinavian would have written it as "Buzzword" (substituting "buzz" and "word" for something more native, perhaps "surrord":-)
In French you will call a function which fetch a value chercher_la_valeur, notice the pronoun, this a sentence ! while in English you will naturally call it : get_value, this closer to a concept than the French form
Why not "cherche(r)_valeur" in french or "get_the_value" in english? Your example is about simplified grammar, not linguistic difference.
On a side note, I personally use english for variable and function names, even though I'm not a native speaker. There are two reasons for this:
1) The keywords are english. It is easier to read a code that does not switch language.
2) Should I name the get_value function in my native swedish "Hämta_värde", the code would not compile. Substitutes like "Hamta_varde" or "Haemta_vaerde" are ugly and sometimes confusing.
I guess my opinion is as uninformed as yours but here goes...
Any officer will do his best to boost his troopers morale. That is why every soldier, from any nation facing any enemy, real or potential, will here things like:
"Yes, they may be better trained, but they are unable to act on their own initiative. Break their first attack and we will win"
"They may outnumber us but we are better trained."
"They fight for a corrupt government, they will not be motivated"
"Our airforce has smart-bombed their defences"
"Don't worry about all those bombers in the air. They are just for show. They are only hitting our decoys"
etc etc
Never take anything you here about other armies too seriously. Especially if they are present/former/potential future enemies.
Slashdot Mirror
You may be right of course, but I still think that the "web-english" that we use to communicate on the web will become something separate from british/american english. This is a language used for intercommunication between two non-native speakers. Therefore the grammar will be simplified (no CmdrTaco reference, please) and the vocabualry even more mixed up with other languages then today.
Skit också, jag fick just modereringspoäng, men jag har redan skrivit flera inlägg i den här diskussionen. Jag skulle nog varit frestad att åtminstone ge dig en "+1 roligt".
Why? Because it is becoming so widely used (= embraced and extended) by non-native speakers, that it will become too wide to grasp as a first language. Too complex for every day use.
What we will see is the development of "American" and "British" (and australian and so on). Languages that stem from what we today call english, but develop their own grammar and vocabulary.
Todays english will evolve as an intercommunication tool between people. A language for scientific papers, diplomats, tourists and other border crossing communication. Not for people.
Just like Latin died as a natural language, but survived as a diplomatic/scientific language, while branches like Italian and Spanish survived.
Sorry, that sounds like a regular "U" not "Ü"
If you want a wowel that seems unpronounceable to english speakers, try "U" as pronounced in northern europe. Ask Linus Torvalds how he pronounces "Linux" or his own name...
(Damnit, I know I had a link to a soundclip with him somewhere)
What bothers me about these personalized, interactive real time news sources is the way they (may) contribute to keeping important niche news in the dark. For example: How will the dark side of the DMCA get any exposure? Sure it is debated every day on /. and other geeky news sources, but mr A. Random Voter will never hear about it. He has his own personalized news source where stuff he doesn't care much about is filtered out.
Sure, Time /Warner is not likely to do a piece about it anyway, *but* one nice feature of the "old" media was some hard unpopular pieces directed to Mr Joe and his friends.
What is worse than a news outlet censoring the news? The viewers censoring the news themselves!
And the only thing worse than a foolish sysadmin is a foolish sysadmin with a foolish boss.
I remember seing a tv show about WWI documentaries. There was one sequence showing the french in their trench and on showing the germans. Thing is, if you looked closely you saw that they used the same trench. The "german" film was reversed so that they would be facing each other...
Most war "documentaries" was made after the battle when the cameramen arrived and kindly asked some R&R'ing soldiers to reenact the event.
Well, well, what apparently *has* changed is that we can no longer trust even live video. Nifty tool for the disinformant but not as good as the traditional method of simply choosing where to point the camera.
If you do not change default passwords, you are an idiot.
If you do not place your database server inside your firewall, you are an idiot
If you let your ASP application connect to the database as sa, you are an idiot.
If the database users you use to connect to the database has priviliges to do anything more than they need, you are an idiot.
If you do not check every user data (text fields, url's etc) before passing them on to the database, you are an idiot.
If you are an idiot: thank you for purchasing this software. Too bad you are too stupid to use it.
Wonder why it has not caught on here? The closest thing might be that Croft woman, or MTV's Max Headroom?
This being slashdot I suppose I should add room for a conspiracy theory about how the MPAA together with MS are replacing celebrities with Idorus everywhere. And voters. And politicians! (oh that is why the DMCA went through) and... oh wait a minute. What is that black van doing outside? Oh someone's at the door, better answer. Be right ba...
The thing is: untli (about) now you'd need a studio to reenact the event or really nifty proffesional video editing tools (or frame by frame editing before video) That didn't make "filmed evidence" impossible to falsify, but very hard and very expensive. Esp. in comparison to faked stills.
I doubt that those WWI films would hold up in court too...
*sigh* I see a future of carefully market adjusted stars and celebrities, checked in real time against the reactions of some user panel. Everything edited to please the average man and woman. Everything adjusted to fit into the sponsors latest campaign.
A world where n'sync and Britney Spears will seem original...
Look at an action movie, for example. I bet you'll never miss what brand and model the heros car is. OTOH You will have to concentrate very hard to identify any other vehicle in the movie (apart from generic policecars etc) Then the hero has a drink. Either from a bottle with a *very* focused label, or an anonymous glass.
Falsified paper documents, falsified signatures, falsified fotographs... The only reason video evidence has had some credibility is that, until now, they have been hard to falsify.
What maters is that we, as well as the courts, are well informed on what is currently possible to fake.
A soldier is "useful" in the same sense as a fire fighter, a doctor or a cop. They don't put bread on anyones table, they merely make sure that the bread is not taken away. For that service they get a slice themselves. If my soil can be kept safe by a smaller number of soldiers and fires, diseases and crime becomes less frequent, the rest are just dead weight, heroic or not.
Sorry to break this news to you (unless you're trollong) but that precious dough they spend is your tax money. If you want to care for those small towns, fine, but why not let those soldiers do useful jobs for the same pay?
Yeah I know, this is an evil world and we all need a devence and so on. Still the only army on the plus side of a national budget is an army at war against a weak but wealthy opponent. Think Iraq.
Who else can see an "Office for Linux" that require you to run as root? (or at least have write permit where the program is installed...)
There goes every security benefit of a real multi user system,... out the window.
I try to make everything as browser independent as can, but I certainly see why an online vendor rather adds features for the 97% using a [modern/normal/bloated/standard/evil] browser than bother about the rest. See, if those features makes the 97% buy 4% more thanks to the bells and whistles, he comes out ahead.
Also, if I had a commersial site, financed by ads, I wouldn't spend too much time making my content accessible with junkbuster...
There is a point, *if* the line is fuzzy enough. There is no chance for a parent to keep up with every movie or game release, getting their own opinion wether it is suitable for their kids or not. *If* my (hypothetical) son would ask to see a movie, cause he really wanted to, *then* I would take the time to make my own opinion.
Course I'd rather have some non-government organisations rating games/movies than one, single, final, official rating. And I think that a parent should be able to override ratings, at least by allowing more.
403: Connection refused
Nah, them redmonders are more used to lawsuits...
Nothing wrong in english, but certainly in swedish (for example). Especially for a nitpicker like myself :-)
Not that everyone gets that right, though. In restaurants, you'll see signs that say "rök fritt" (smoke freely) when they (probably) mean "rökfritt" (non-smoking ie "free from smoke").
Naturally.
I just meant that one should think about what purpose is served by stressing one difference or another.
Oh the invisible monster has lenses and retina that only affects wawelengths outside the visual spectrum, like infrared. How else would the hero be able to shield his own infrared emissions and detect the disturbance in those wawelengths caused by the monsters eyes, just in time for the final scene?
You mention "Buzz word" That is two words. A german or scandinavian would have written it as "Buzzword" (substituting "buzz" and "word" for something more native, perhaps "surrord":-)
In French you will call a function which fetch a value chercher_la_valeur, notice the pronoun, this a sentence ! while in English you will naturally call it : get_value, this closer to a concept than the French form
Why not "cherche(r)_valeur" in french or "get_the_value" in english? Your example is about simplified grammar, not linguistic difference.
On a side note, I personally use english for variable and function names, even though I'm not a native speaker. There are two reasons for this:
1) The keywords are english. It is easier to read a code that does not switch language.
2) Should I name the get_value function in my native swedish "Hämta_värde", the code would not compile. Substitutes like "Hamta_varde" or "Haemta_vaerde" are ugly and sometimes confusing.
Any officer will do his best to boost his troopers morale. That is why every soldier, from any nation facing any enemy, real or potential, will here things like:
"Yes, they may be better trained, but they are unable to act on their own initiative. Break their first attack and we will win"
"They may outnumber us but we are better trained."
"They fight for a corrupt government, they will not be motivated"
"Our airforce has smart-bombed their defences"
"Don't worry about all those bombers in the air. They are just for show. They are only hitting our decoys"
etc etc
Never take anything you here about other armies too seriously. Especially if they are present/former/potential future enemies.