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 Why Linux Makes Sense for India |
Posted by Roblimo on Sunday January 30, @12:00PMfrom the penguins-on-every-continent dept.
"The localisation of Linux to Indian languages can spark off a revolution that reaches down to the grassroots levels of the country," writes Prof. Venkatesh Hariharan. Read the rest of his informative essay Below.
Why Linux Makes Sense for India
Falling costs have made computers more affordable to a larger section of India's population. At the same time, the Internet has made the PC a compelling proposition for fulfilling communications, education, entertainment and information needs. Based on these two trends, the market for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is likely to take off significantly in India.
Yet, India faces a peculiar problem in that almost all popular operating systems and applications packages are available only in English, a language which is spoken by a mere ten percent of the population. The lack of "Indianized" software is therefore an issue that seriously hampers the growth of the Indian computer industry. For almost 915 million Indians, the lack of Indian language interfaces is one among many issues that hamper their ability to reap the benefits of information technology. This is creating a new class of people who live in what can be called as "Information Poverty" even as technology becomes cheaper and cheaper.
At the infrastructure level, the barriers to information access are dropping dramatically with new ISPs coming into India and several players jockeying to provide bandwidth and other back-end services. However, without operating systems, applications and Internet content in Indian languages, key benefits of the digital revolution-e-commerce, low cost communication through e-mail, access to information databases, telemedicine services etc are denied to the Indian masses. Giving Internet access to an Indian who does not know a shred of English is like giving someone the keys to a car when there are no roads to drive on!
One development that can help India out of this deadlock is a national-level, collaborative effort to localise Linux to Indian languages.
Linux is a free operating system that has gained phenomenal popularity in recent times because it allows users to modify it to suit their own needs. Linux is a collaborative effort of thousands of programmers interacting over the Internet and is therefore not owned or controlled by any one company. In this article, we outline the economic and cultural imperatives for the localisation of Linux.
Free operating systems have several advantages for developing countries because most software packages today are developed in the west and then sold in developing countries where the parameters of affordability are completely different. The Bangladeshi activist Shahidul Alam expresses these differences poetically when he says, "A modem costs more than a cow." The benefits of free software multiply exponentially when we look at large-scale implementations. The Government of Mexico is estimated to have saved close to $125 million that would otherwise have been spent on proprietary systems when it signed up Red Hat to implement Linux in more than 140,000 schools and colleges across Mexico. In India too, large operators like World-Tel (which plans to have a thousand Internet Centres in Tamil Nadu, with each of them having between two to 20 PCs each) have expressed their intention to go the free software way. The company is negotiating similar deals with several other state governments. Organizations like World-Tel, Internet centres, schools and homes etc. can be expected to be significant users of Indian language operating systems.
The growth of content in platform-independent file formats (HTML, MP3 etc) has also reduced the dependence on a specific operating system, making Linux a viable option.
Apart from these, there are cultural reasons that make Linux attractive. The existing user interface paradigm of files and folders evolved because computers were essentially designed for a western audience familiar with real-life files and folders. There is no reason to assume why the same paradigm should apply to a trader in Tamil Nadu or a farmer in Madhya Pradesh.
The openness of Linux (and other free operating systems like Free BSD) allows local linguistic groups to customise user interfaces in ways that are far more culturally sensitive than any centrally controlled approach. Linguistic groups that may be considered too small a market by vendors can also take their destiny in their own hands by customising the Linux interface to their own needs.
It is therefore clear that Linux is a very attractive long-term solution to India's computing needs.
Localising the user interface of Linux to all the 18 official Indian languages will involve changing the menus and help-text to Indian languages and creating a whole stack of applications and tools (word processors, browsers, spell-checkers etc.) to enable computing in Indian languages.
This is a task that involves both technical and linguistic challenges. For example, should "File" simple be called "File" but written in Indian scripts because it is now a part of popular usage? Or should we find Indian language equivalents? In some cases it makes little sense. For example, how many people know that the Hindi word for computer is "sanghanak"? Or what is the Hindi equivalent for "Internet"? A very sensitive balance has to be struck between practicality and preserving Indian languages. However, Indian linguistic groups will have to wake up to the fact that their languages will become outdated if they do not become a part of the digital age. In fact, the Internet can be one of the finest means of recording, archiving and propagating Indian culture. Since culture is embedded in language to a significant degree, the ability to compute in one's native language can give Indian culture a significant boost.
However, one of the greatest roadblocks to computing in Indian languages has been the lack of widely accepted standards. If millions of people are able to freely e-mail each other, it is because of a widely accepted standard called ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). It is sad that in spite of claims that India is a software superpower, we cannot harness IT for the benefit our own nation's citizens and the greatest stumbling block is a lack of agreement on standards. Check out ten different Hindi newspapers on the Web to see for yourself. You'll end up downloading and installing ten different fonts that (in most cases) can be used for browsing that one site and nothing else. It is because of this reason that Hindi, despite being one of the largest spoken languages in the world, has a negligible presence on the Web. Informed sources feel that the Unicode standard (which Microsoft has adopted for the upcoming Windows 2000 operating system) will soon become the de-facto standard settling the language standards issue once and for all. If this prediction comes to pass, it will significantly increase the domestic market for hardware, software and services, which is restricted only to a small fraction of India's population that understands English.
There are several initiatives that are underway in order to make this possible. The National Centre for Software Technology has submitted a proposal to the Technology Development in Indian Languages of the Government of India. TheIndian Institute of Technology, Madras has already started work on localising Linux to Malayalam and Tamil. My own institute, the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore has committed resources to this the "IndLinux" project and started a collaborative effort to realise this goal. IndLinux has attracted the interest of organizations like FreeOS.com and many individuals located around the world.
In conclusion, it has to be said that the Indianisation of Linux is probably one of the most practical ways of making information technology available to millions and millions of Indians. It is now upto linguistic and technical groups to collaborate and make things happen.
-0-
Prof. Venkatesh Hariharan is with the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore. He can be reached at venky@iiitb.ac.in.
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| Yeah! (Score:1) by ChrisUK on Sunday January 30, @12:03PM EST (#1) (User Info) http://www.chrisb.co.uk |
| First India, now China.. things are looking good for linux. |
| Re:Yeah! (Score:1) by jinx_ on Sunday January 30, @12:05PM EST (#2) (User Info) |
| maybe so, but i would have to be the one who has to do all that translating. yeesh. ..jinx.. |
| Celebrity Endorsement for Indian Linux (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @09:21AM EST (#314) |
| CNN Entertainment related story |
| Re:Yeah! (Score:1) by British on Sunday January 30, @12:12PM EST (#8) (User Info) http://british.nerp.net |
| Yes, one BILLION users! Kids love the rich taste of web content! http://british.nerp.net |
| Re:Yeah! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:29PM EST (#30) |
| yes, 95% of whom are too poor to afford a television. |
| Re:Yeah! (Score:1) by jawad (jawad(at)nycap.rr.com) on Sunday January 30, @12:33PM EST (#37) (User Info) http://jawad.org/ |
| I was thinking about that... With the whole "Internet Revolution," so many countries are being left behind because (1) theres not enough per capita income to buy a computer & get internet service, and (2) the infrastructure sucks enough to make phone line access real bad, let alone higher bandwith. How to combat this? |
| free software only runs on fast new machines (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @07:05PM EST (#254) |
| X is just a pile of crap on an old machine like a old pentium or 486, especially with 8 megs of ram..... now the front of the 'curve' will always be severly ahead of the back of the 'curve' and the people at the 'front' will always program for their machine not some poor slob who is at the 'back' of the curve. unless the socieconomic split between free software developers, most of whom are extremely wealthy and highly culturall insensitive techies who think all poor people are lazy and deserve to be killed, things are not going to change. |
| It is amazing how open source developers = evil (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @11:03PM EST (#280) |
| So a highly motivated group of people donate their talents to the world at large and they receive the honor of your contempt? Techies are insensitive other cultures ,obviously, because you say so. There is plenty of free software that is not X-Windows. I will also mention my personal experience with "geeks" is usually a far more rewarding experience than one with a typical jackass such as yourself. |
| Erm, uhhh, whuh? (Score:1) by Venomous Louse (thevoom@howce.com) on Monday January 31, @12:19AM EST (#291) (User Info) |
| all poor people are lazy and deserve to be killed That's a disgusting overgeneralization. I have certainly advocated wounding the poor on more than one occasion, but never killing them . . . unless they're driving slowly in the left lane, of course, but that's a capital crime when anybody does it. Nice troll, by the way. Not bad at all. It took me a minute to grok. "Put a thief among honest men and they will eventually relieve him of his watch." -- Flann O'Brien |
| socialist countries can be rich ... (Score:2, Informative) by divec on Sunday January 30, @12:40PM EST (#43) (User Info) |
| France was quite rich when I last checked. (India is not, and never has been, communist) |
| Re:socialist countries can be rich ... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:52PM EST (#52) |
| Yes, and such low unemployment and high levels of racial tolerance! |
| There are no socialist countries; India is Red. (Score:2) by Russ Nelson on Sunday January 30, @02:42PM EST (#133) (User Info) http://russnelson.com/ |
| There are no socialist countries in existance. There are many capitalist market economies which are influenced by socialist thought (and they are worse off for it), but a socialist economy requires the absence of a market. It's very unlikely that a socialist economy could survive even one natural diaster. How could it mobilize resources faster than the market? Look at how badly Orissa did, with all the interference that the Indian gov't puts in the ways of the Indian market. I'm very impressed by the Indian people's eagerness to work hard and get ahead. I'm saddened that they don't know enough about economics to shun political solutions. -russ p.s. Read any Indian newspaper, or read India Today if you want to see how Marxist India remains. For example, university tenure committees are full of Marxists; to get tenure you must espouse Marxist (that is, Nonsense) economics. |
| Re:There are no socialist countries; India is Red. (Score:1) by Yumpee (yumpee@iname.no-spam.com) on Sunday January 30, @04:11PM EST (#183) (User Info) |
| Given the recent change in the editorial board of India Today, it is not surprising that socialism gets a little bashed. The editor is Prabhu Chawla, a registered member of the currently-in-power Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which the non-Indian press loves to refer to as a right-wing Hindu nationalist party. The second-in-command is Swapan Dasgupta (I think) who is also apparently a well-known right-wing sympathizer. India Today is not exactly in love with socialism or Marxism (not that I am either) and probably has its own agenda. I will agree with your point though that Marxism is fashionable in certain academic circles. But it's not socialism, Marxism or democracy that's the cause for India's woes. It's corruption, ignorance and apathy. Y. |
| Right on! Corruption is a *big* problem. (Score:2) by sumana (sumanah@uclink4.berkeley.edu) on Sunday January 30, @05:34PM EST (#208) (User Info) |
| I'm not sure how many natural-born US citizens actually realize the extent of what we would call corruption in Asian countries. It's a fact of life, a custom, a cost of doing business. If you want a phone or cable line hooked up, if you want a permit to do ANYTHING, if you want to get into a school, if you want anything, there's always baksheesh (the Indian term). There's always gotta be something to lubricate the palms. Here (northern California, to be exact), such a thing would result in investigation, 60 Minutes interviews, outrage, scandal, firings, etc. But who will investigate someone for only doing the same thing the investigator does? Bureaucrats' wages are low; it's accepted and expected that they will compensate for those low wages via bribes. And, for anyone who's studied political science, remember that this is less a rational-legal relationship than a traditional one (in the Weberian sense) -- there are patron-client dyads everywhere, which are diffuse relationships, not limited ones.
|
| Re:Right on! Corruption is a *big* problem. (Score:1) by Russ Nelson on Sunday January 30, @11:01PM EST (#279) (User Info) http://russnelson.com/ |
| Yes, I was totally amazed to see a big sign behind the VSNL front desk proclaiming an initiative to eliminate corruption. Seems to me like the way to eliminate corruption is to fire the people who take bribes. If you then cannot hire anybody because they can't make enough without baksheesh, well, then, that's a signal from the market to pay your workers more. Hmmm... I was wondering why my hosts pre-paid the hotel room partly in cash. Maybe credit cards are not trusted? Maybe the hotel employees were taking their cut out of the till? -russ |
| Re:There are no socialist countries; India is Red. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:37PM EST (#212) |
| > There are no socialist countries in existance. In my humble belief, the USA is far, far more socialist than India. A top tax rate of 39.6%+ (fed plus state plus city) in the US versus a top tax rate of 30% in India. Mandatory deductions for Medicare, Social Security in the US versus no such thing in India Your freely convertible dollar goes a longer way in india - more of it gets in your pocket Having set the cat among the pigeons I shall sneak back into my hole |
| Re:There are no socialist countries; India is Red. (Score:1) by Lysis on Sunday January 30, @05:57PM EST (#232) (User Info) |
| >There are no socialist countries in existance. >There are many capitalist market economies which >are influenced by socialist thought (and they >are worse off for it), but a socialist economy >requires the absence of a market. It's very >unlikely that a socialist economy could survive >even one natural diaster. How could it mobilize >resources faster than the market? Look at how >badly Orissa did, with all the interference that >the Indian gov't puts in the ways of the Indian >market. I'm very impressed by the Indian >people's eagerness to work hard and get ahead. >I'm saddened that they don't know enough about >economics to shun political solutions. Indians seem to have learned the hard way that state interventionism brings nothing but pain and suffering. Unfortunately going about dismantling the massive government apparatus is not easy... >p.s. Read any Indian newspaper, or read India >Today if you want to see how Marxist India >remains. For example, university tenure >committees are full of Marxists; to get tenure >you must espouse Marxist (that is, Nonsense) >economics. Forget India, look at any liberal arts department in the US... |
| Worse off for it? (Score:1) by GauteL on Sunday January 30, @06:10PM EST (#240) (User Info) http://linuxguiden.dhs.org |
| I'm sorry but your posting shows nothing more than the traditional american fear of anything slightly resembling socialism. The nordic contries are examples of market economies influenced by socialist thought. Are these countries worse off? I don't think so. The economy is great, crime is low, people are generally happy. I'm sorry, but stating that all economies influenced by socialism is worse off shows nothing but ignorance. Communism doesn't work, we all know that. It doesn't give people enough motivation to do their job well enough (Why work hard if I don't get paid more anyway?). But _Pure_ captitalist market economies, doesn't seem all that fantastic either. It breeds poverty, which in turn breeds crime. Perhaps it is time to throw off all the fear of not being able to become stinking rich (which most people with the dream, never will), for something in between. Taking care of people of all kinds of social-status, but still making it possible to achieve something IS possible. -- I hate long signatures -- Gaute Lindkvist - http://linuxguiden.dhs.org |
| Re:Worse off for it? (Score:2) by Russ Nelson on Sunday January 30, @10:54PM EST (#277) (User Info) http://russnelson.com/ |
| Yes, those countries *are* worse off. If you think they're doing well now, imagine how well they would be doing if the market was free to work well. How can you say that pure capitalist market economies breed poverty?? Who's gonna buy all this stuff if everyone is poor?? Sheesh! Use your head, man. Capitalists lend their money to entrepreneurs, who spend it to solve a problem, and then they sell the solution back to the people who got the capitalists' money, keeping a portion of the extra value created. The workers are better off, the entrepreneurs are better off, the capitalists are better off. It's the only way progress has *ever* been made. -russ |
| Re:Worse off for it? (Score:1) by FredLaForge on Monday January 31, @12:38AM EST (#295) (User Info) |
| [Capitalism is...]It's the only way progress has *ever* been made. Actually, the highest rate of industrial growth ever recorded was in china under Mao. After that comes the Soviet Union under Stalin. This was due to restrictions on international capital, IMHO. |
| Re:Worse off for it? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @09:22AM EST (#315) |
| Hear, hear. Socialism made enormous strides in China that get ignored by know-nothing technogeeks who aren't even aware of the poverty that exists in the U.S.A. It's too bad none of these liberatian types have to work in the crappy jobs that unrestrained capitalism creates. Dan Axtell dan_axtell@mailcity.com |
| Re:Worse off for it? (Score:2) by Russ Nelson on Monday January 31, @12:35PM EST (#336) (User Info) http://russnelson.com/ |
| It's too bad that critics of capitalism can't be forced to do without the benefits it has brought them. If you don't like capitalism, go back to the land and do without it. Do without your computer, too. -russ |
| Re:Worse off for it? (Score:2) by Russ Nelson on Monday January 31, @12:29PM EST (#334) (User Info) http://russnelson.com/ |
| No, it was by stealing capital from peasants, and causing WIDESPREAD DEATH FROM STARVATION. In other words, yes, industrial growth happened, but it came at a horrific cost in human lives. In sum, there was no progress, only bones and factories. -russ |
| Re:Worse off for it? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @08:01PM EST (#344) |
| I don't think you are serious about what you are saying. You are talking about ene of the worst crimes of humankinds, with millions of victims. And it was not due to the restrictions on international capital, but due to the fact, that 1.) everything was taken into the industrial growth statistics, things that were not accounted before (e.g. agriculture) and 2.) that this growth was produced by exploiting millions of people, many died and starved. |
| Re:Worse off for it? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @10:01AM EST (#323) |
| Capitalism also has the tendancy of exploiting people. Within a capitalist system there will always be poverty and wealth; it is necessary for the system to survive. The entrepreneurs to whom the 'Capitalists' lend their money are often sufficiently well off to begin with. Who, for example, has heard a success story of some third-world Nike employee getting a grant from the 1st National Bank of Amerika (the 'k' is intentional)? The flaw in your argument is that the entrepreneurs whom are 'given' money to "spend it to solve a problem" often create more problems in the process of doing so. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that a better system exists, just that there is *no* perfect system. |
| Re:Worse off for it? (Score:2) by Russ Nelson on Monday January 31, @12:33PM EST (#335) (User Info) http://russnelson.com/ |
| Sorry, no, there is no exploitation. Yes, people do have to work to eat, but absent charity, everyone has always had to work to eat. That's not the fault of capitalism, it's just reality. And yes, the entrepreneurs who can get megabucks have often had to prove themselves. How else would you expect them to get the money to pay the workers to solve the problem to make more money? As far as loans to small-scale entrepreneurs goes, just look at the Grameen bank. -russ |
| Re:Worse off for it? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @09:08AM EST (#311) |
| The economy is great, crime is low, people are generally happy. This must be why Scandanavia has the highest rates of suicide in the world... |
| Re:Yeah! (Score:1) by Squeeze Truck (xmsho@!SHPAM!NEIN!yahoo.com) on Sunday January 30, @04:49PM EST (#192) (User Info) |
| PC's are cheaper than televisions. "You can't say whatever you want about a company." -- John Roberts |
| India isnt as poor as you think (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:16PM EST (#202) |
| I live in India - where 70 million homes (i.e. 300 million people) have television. That isn't 5%, but over 30%. Further, 25 million of these homes (about 100 million people) have cable - and that includes 65 or so channels - most of which are beamed in from around the world. BBC, CNN, even Baywatch and MTV - you name it - it's all there Moreover, unlike China, there is no censorship - either of press in india - or any cable television. Only the govt's own broadcast tv channels are controlled by it India is ripe for Linux - and that isnt a pipe dream |
| Re:India isnt as poor as you think (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:37PM EST (#211) |
| Why are you being defensive about the percentage of the population that owns televisions? It just means that they fill their life with real things, instead of choosing to watch awful sitcoms or dramas with the same basic plot every time. It also means the Media gets in to every home, and begins telling people how to think if you want to be like us, how to dress, how to spend your money. |
| Re:India isnt as poor as you think (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:48PM EST (#223) |
| How else will we tell them how much they need Coca-Cola, AOL, Bud Light, MacDonalds... ad nauseum ? |
| Re:Yeah! (Score:3, Funny) by Bill-Gates (BillGates@microsoft.com) on Sunday January 30, @12:30PM EST (#32) (User Info) http://www.microsoft.com |
| You want India? Fine, it's yours. You Linux nutzoids are always thinking you've "gained more ground". Nevermind the fact that COMPUTERS are gaining more ground. Your percentage is going up, just your user base. Well, here's a scoop, MY userbase is going up too. How's that?!? In fact, more people start using Windows every day. And a lot more people start using it than switch over to your puny little OS. You want India, it's yours. Most of them can't afford Windows 2000 licensing anyway. Of course, neither can the Americans, but we'll deal with that at a later point. Have fun taking over a little insignificant country. Maybe I'll let you nuts open source mars... hmmph. Sincerely, Bill Gates |
| Re:Yeah! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:44PM EST (#96) |
| Given India's monstrous beurocracy, who knows what will happen if Linux becomes the standard OS over there. Unfortunately, it would benefit everyone if there were a standard OS for everyone. It sounds crazy, but I think Windows it should be. Sorry. |
| Re:Yeah! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:43PM EST (#217) |
| New Years Neighbor It won't be long now before my wife, Annmarie, and I will gather with friends and neighbors to welcome in 1997. I'm sure we'll have a good time, but there's no way this New Year Eve's will be better than last. I mean, what could possibly be better than watching your honey get down and dirty with another guy? Any man who's experienced this thrill knows exactly what I mean. Annmarie and I have been married five years, and I first brought up the subject of her fucking another guy while I watched about eighteen months ago. At first she was shocked, but then slowly she warmed to the idea, perhaps coming to realize that after years of marital fidelity it might be fun to suck and fuck someone other than yours truly I kept nudging her along until finally we reached the point where we were talking about the who, when and where of it all, my wife having decided that she was ready to take the plunge. My joy was short-lived, however, because our search for a hot bedmate for Annmarie quickly proved frustrating. In my fantasies it was always this nameless, faceless stud with a giant cock who fucked my wife silly as I stood nearby jerking off feverishly. The reality was something else altogether. I wasn't about to put an ad in the paper, nor was I keen on Annmarie's suggestion that she fuck my long-time buddy and business partner, Ernie, who she said always made her pussy warm and wet. Every time we came close to agreeing on a stud, we wound up having to dismiss him for one reason or another. Like I said, it was frustrating. And then, in August of last year, Al moved into the neighborhood, three houses down from ours, to be exact. Divorced and delighted to be, in his words, "free and on the prowl again," Al's lean, hard frame, rugged good looks and sexy smile made an immediate impression on Annmarie, who soon started campaigning for him to be her lover. (My once conservative wife was turning into a lusty wench before my eyes!) While acknowledging his physical attributes, I needed to get to know him better before making a decision. Was he trustworthy? Would he be discreet? As eager as I was to watch Annmarie get soundly screwed by another man, I sure as hell didn't want the stud chosen blabbing about it to the whole neighborhood. To get into Al's head, I courted his friendship. He responded enthusiastically, and soon we were talking sports, home repairs and just generally enjoying each other's company. We made sure to invite him whenever we barbecued on the patio. The more time I spent with Al, the more convinced I became that he was our man. He was a genuinely nice guy who could be trusted, in addition to being, as my wife put it, "delicious to took at." All that remained was to tell Al about our idea, and his part in it, but time flew by, and before we could set anything in motion it was New Year's Eve. At around nine o'clock we started making the rounds, visiting neighbors who had earlier informed us that they were having "open house" that year. Annmarie and I joined in the merrymaking, funny hats and all, dancing to loud music and sipping champagne in each house we visited. Who knows if it was fate that found us partying at Al's house around eleven fifteen that night. There were hugs and kisses all around, with Al giving Annmarie an especially tight squeeze, or so I thought anyway. She, in turn, seemed reluctant to break the clinch. I could feel my cock stir as for the hundredth time I pictured the two of them together, fucking up a storm. It was about a half-hour to midnight when my wife plopped down into the couch next to me and whispered in my ear that she intended to start the new year with a bang. "Al's upstairs in his bedroom waiting for us," she said breathlessly. "I told him everything and he's even more excited than I hoped he'd be. God, my panties are drenched!" Although my cock was already tenting my slacks, I told Annmarie that we couldn't possibly do this now, on New Year's Eve, with a houseful of people. She laughed and said, "You don't really think they'll miss us, do you? Besides, the bedroom door will be locked. So, do you want to watch your wife get screwed silly or not?" Minutes later. I was sitting in a comfortable chair in Al's bedroom, cock in hand, watching my pretty wife hotly sucking our newest neighbor and good friend. Entering the bedroom we had found Al stark naked and in bed, idly stroking his swelling penis. An awkward few moments followed as Al and I looked at each other, but then I grinned and he relaxed immediately, giving me the thumbs-up sign as Annmarie began removing her clothes. And now, with Al still prone on the bed, my hot wife was gobbling his cock with sluttish delight, almost choking in her determination to take the shaft down her throat. I loved the way she burrowed into Al's crotch, her head scrunched between his thighs as she swabbed his balls with her tongue. She had positioned herself so I could see it all, and at one point, when she looked over at me with half of Al's hard cock in her mouth and winked. I almost lost it right then. Managing to regain control, I watched as she resumed slobbering over our hand some neighbor's genitals. Soon Al insisted on returning the favor, and I was treated to the wonderful sight of Annmarie flat on her back, legs spread wide, with her lover's face plastered against her soaked pussy. Whatever he might have lacked in skill (my wife was constantly directing the action with either hands or words) he made up for with enthusiasm. And it was nice to see him wet a finger in my wife's juicy cunt and then carefully work it into her puckered anus while he continued to lap up her honey like a kitten does cream. I knew I wouldn't be able to hold out much longer as my cock was achingly hard and throbbing incessantly. Fearful of coming too soon, I stroked it ever so carefully as I watched my wife straddle our new neighbor and with a drawn - out sigh of delight sink down on his spike of flesh. She started bouncing up and down, squeezing her breasts as she rode Al's cock with wild abandon. All of a sudden I heard the people downstairs start to count down the seconds to midnight. They were so loud that for a second I thought they had all gathered outside the bedroom door. Ten. . . nine. . . eight. . . Annmarie heard them too and flashed me a smile of utter depravity. Seven . . . six . . . five . . . four. At the count of three my wife threw her head back and started shrieking like a banshee. Three . . . two . . . one. Happy New Year! Downstairs the crowd was going wild and, I thought, unknowingly cheering the intense orgasm that my wife had managed to achieve right at the stroke of midnight. It was all too much and I simply let go, my whole body stiffening in the chair as my throbbing cock started spurting like crazy. Al, caught up in all this craziness, suddenly announced that he was ready to shoot. Hearing this, my wife sprang off his cock and grabbed hold of it, positioning herself on the bed so that she was facing me. Still coming, I watched my seemingly dazed wife point Al's cock at her face as the first bolt of creamy semen flew from it, hitting her nose. This show was for me, I knew-the icing on the cake, as it were. The come kept spitting from Al's cock onto Annmarie's face. She kept rubbing it in, smearing the semen around, and I kept coming, spilling what seemed like a pint of my cream into the handkerchief I had somehow managed to wrest from my pants pocket. By the time it was all over I was slumped in the chair, thoroughly drained. Al, flat on his back, appeared to have passed out. Through blurry eyes I saw my wife give me the happiest of smiles. "Happy New Year, honey," she said. "Happy New Year, baby," I responded weakly, thinking that my wife and I had just welcomed in a new year in the absolute best way possible. ________________________________________________________ |
| Re:Yeah! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @09:29PM EST (#269) |
| Sounds like someone has a case of penis envy... I've seen this type in my Amiga days.. "Mine is better than yours!" As any psychology student will tell you, the people that scream the loudest are just compensating for their own lack of self-esteem.. They feel that the only way they can feel good about themselves is to constantly attack others. I think you should see a psychyatrist at your earliest possible convenience.. maybe a professional will help you see that you are worth something. |
| you forgot to end your tag (Score:0, Offtopic) by theclinic (wilhelmr@nospam.theclinic.org) on Sunday January 30, @12:06PM EST (#4) (User Info) http://www.theclinic.org |
| Wow, you forgot to end the tag and now all of the stories are in bold. neat. --- Ryan Wilhelm Lotus Notes Administrator Executive Risk, Inc. --- |
| Re:you forgot to end your tag (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:11PM EST (#7) |
| You're very observant. Don't mess with the Slashdot staff! |
| Re:you forgot to end your tag (Score:0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @02:11PM EST (#118) |
| BOLD BOLD BOLD some is good, a lot is bad, BOLD BOLD BOLD ask your mom or ask don knotts |
| that's interesting... (Score:1) by matticus (boesSPAM@cs.hope.edu) on Sunday January 30, @12:07PM EST (#5) (User Info) http://www.stavesacre.com/ |
| i've never thought of that before. computers definitely do cater toward a western audience, that much is obvious, but that is a great reason for linux to be used in the east. i've always liked how it was customizable, and i think that the author has great points here. We have china, we could be getting india, now let's go for russia! |
| I'm taking Russian... (Score:1) by sumana (sumanah@uclink4.berkeley.edu) on Sunday January 30, @05:35PM EST (#209) (User Info) |
| Privyet! Minya zavut Tatiana! Er, my name's not really Tatiana, but I *am* in Slavic 1 -- Intro to Russian -- right now (should be studying for a test tomorrow). I'd be happy to help out, except for the fact that every time I try to speak I feel like a Bond villian.
|
| Re:that's interesting... (Score:1) by Chyeburashka on Sunday January 30, @05:45PM EST (#218) (User Info) http://chebur.polyn.kiae.su/chebur.html |
| We have china, we could be getting india, now let's go for russia! You can read Linux news in Russian and see Tux wearing a suit of armor at www.linux.ru.net. |
| A quiet revolution (Score:1) by Maxintern9 on Sunday January 30, @12:09PM EST (#6) (User Info) http://www.toshistation.com/funk/Dm.htm |
| It's true that Linux could be a boon to a country without the wealth to purchase proprietary OS's. But let's face it - Linux isn't all that easy to use, even for a Westerner who grows up surrounded by electronic devices. Please don't flame me, but wouldn't it be better to give them an easier path? Windows is a lot easier to use, and MS could do a huge licensing agreement with the Indian gov't, since most people couldn't afford to buy it. I KNOW this sounds silly, but think - so many of you reading this got your start using Windows, and moved on to a superior OS when you got more experience. Why should you assume the same thing wouldn't work for up and coming Indian computer geeks? |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:1) by mihalis (cm at mihalis dot net) on Sunday January 30, @12:19PM EST (#15) (User Info) http://mihalis.net |
| On the contrary, Windows only seems a lot easier to use when it's what you started with. I didn't start with Windows and I find it nasty and repellant (I used VMS, Apollo Domain, Mac and various 8-bit microcomputers before I ever touched Windows). I think starting with systems built for reliability, power and openness first will innoculate the average Indian against thinking Windows is the "One, True Way". |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:1) by Teckblur on Sunday January 30, @03:58PM EST (#175) (User Info) |
| I completely agree. I had next to no knowledge of Windows when I started my computer use on FreeBSD and Linux. I found Unix(I consider Linux Unix too) to be understandable enough so I didn't turn away and run. A good project to facilitate the process( and probably a very large one) would be to translate the manpages into the native Indian language. I'm sure this would be a great start. |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @04:06PM EST (#180) |
| Nope. Windows is easier to use than Linux. It may not be as easy as it should be, but don't delude yourself into thinking Linux is something it's not. |
| Are you kidding me??? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:51PM EST (#228) |
| When I first came to the university in 1994 they had Windows 3.1, Mac, and some Sun and DEC unix boxes. The only computer I'd used before that was an Apple II. And for those of you who've never used an Apple II, it works like this: you put in a disk, and turn it on. When you want to run a different program, you put in a different disk and press reset. It's about as difficult as a Nintendo, and any three year old can figure out how to use a Nintendo. These machines were totally different. So there were these Macs... lots of them because at the time Apple was practically giving them away to schools. They worked okay, but they were a little slow. If I clicked around enough it would open up lots of useless windows, but eventually I found the word processor and such. Okay, I can do this. Then there was Windows 3.1. It didn't have as many windows as the mac because there was just two - "Program groups" and "Program Icons" but that was okay because it wasn't so hard to find stuff. And so after fiddling around a bit I found solitare and minesweeper, and MS Word. Okay, I can use this. Then there were the unix boxes. Now I had seen mac and windows before, but these things were really weird. I mean you signed in and you got a blank screen with a little X cursor in the middle. Like I said, weird. When you pressed a button it brought up a little menu with about ten items, one of which was "Help". Now that was really strange since the Macs and MS-Windows didn't have anything like that. Yet here there were over a thousand "man pages" describing everything that I wanted to know. Guess what I have been using ever since. Oh yeah, occasionally I use the Macs to do my word processing. |
| If you bothered to read the whole thing... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:21PM EST (#19) |
| It talks about designing their OWN interfaces on Linux, and developing their own software. He was addressing ease of use for Indians specifically. Go read it. |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:1) by .c (cory@olga.net) on Sunday January 30, @12:24PM EST (#22) (User Info) |
| It's true that Linux could be a boon to a country without the wealth to purchase proprietary OS's. But let's face it - Linux isn't all that easy to use, even for a Westerner who grows up surrounded by electronic devices. Please don't flame me, but wouldn't it be better to give them an easier path? Windows is a lot easier to use, and MS could do a huge licensing agreement with the Indian gov't, since most people couldn't afford to buy it. Consider the Mexico redhat deal (I think it's actually mentioned in the article) -- I think linux would certainly be the best route to take. Consider the (major) problem created by the prevalence of Microsoft: People expect computers to be inherently unstable. This is a Very Bad Thing, and is widespread amongst novice users. Linux would go a long way towards preventing this. Sure, people may think computers are confusing -- but once people realize that computers can be reliable... well then we'll start to see some real widespread acceptance of technology integration. |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:3, Interesting) by Kris Warkentin (kewarken@NOSPAM.simon.math.lakeheadu.ca) on Sunday January 30, @12:32PM EST (#34) (User Info) http://flash.lakeheadu.ca/ |
| Windoze is only easier to use if you're used to it. I heard my girlfriend's 11 year old daughter tell one of her friends that "windows sucks...linux is way better" and her 5 year old has no trouble logging in to play games and fool around. The truth of it is, Microsoft is only intuitive to those who have used it for years and expect things to be in certain places. My father had a hell of a time going from win311 to win95 because there were too many ways to do the same thing and nothing really analogous to the program manager with all his programs laid out in front of him. He still refuses to use the start menu. Mexico will produce millions of children who find Linux as intuitive as American kids find Windows. And, with all good fortune, so will India and China. You think some of those kids will be the next Alan Cox or Linux Torvalds or Larry Wall? I bet they will. Beware of bugs in the above code. I have only proven it correct, not tried it. -Donald Knuth |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:1) by Richy_T (slashdot@perihelion.demon.co.uk) on Sunday January 30, @06:28PM EST (#245) (User Info) |
| I'm no Windows apologist but you can switch windows (95 anyway, not sure about 98) to use program manager instead of explorer as the shell. Rich |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @12:00AM EST (#290) |
| I'm no Windows apologist but you can switch windows (95 anyway, not sure about 98) to use program manager instead of explorer as the shell. Please explain how. A nasty prank awaits the workplace ;) |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:35PM EST (#38) |
| Linux isn't all that easy to use This is all determined by what you are doing with linux. For my friends that just want to email,web browse,word process, and chat, setting up a linux box was simply and they don't know anything about Linux. They just know it works. I think this is the point of using Linux in Indian over Windows. I don't think the issue is everyone in Indian understanding Linux enough to run a www or mail server with multiple domains, and running samba for the neighbors or somthing like that. If you are going to use the computer for a specific task then why not linux? Windows is a lot easier to us I think the reason that so many people have a hard time understanding Linux is because they started out using Windows. If you were just starting out using linux, it might not be that difficult to understand the basics. |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @04:17PM EST (#185) |
| Yea! Linux is WAY easier than Windoze! puke Stop deluding yourself. Linux is an OS made by programmers FOR programmers, and it shows. Funny how as soon as I log in, I get a command prompt. Okay, so I want X to start up so I edit my login script (STRIKE1). Okay, X starts up, and I get an XTerm (STRIKE2). Okay, so I need a better UI, so I change my .xinitrc to launch FVWM (STRIKE3). I find FVWM still doesn't do the trick, so I try to download GNOME. So, I start hacking more config scripts so that Linux will use my AT&T Worldnet account (STRIKE4). Finally, I'm on the net, but Netscape keeps crashing (STRIKE5) and even brings down XWindows (STRIKE6). Finally, I get GNOME in a tarball and am left wondering what to do (STRIKE7). I call my friend and find out that I need to use GZip and tar to extract the files (STRIKE8). Give us a break. |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:56PM EST (#230) |
| Bollox. Linux : I boot from the Mandrake 7 CDROM. It flawlessly autodetects my hardware. 1 reboot later I'm at a graphical login prompt. Type in name, password. KDE loads, and I click "connect to internet". Your information is about 2 years out of date. Minimum. You pathetic FUD spreading tosser. |
| Re: A quiet revolution (Score:3, Insightful) by Ian Schmidt (ischmidt@cfl.xuS-mapS.rr.com) on Sunday January 30, @12:53PM EST (#53) (User Info) |
| Having recently had the experience of having to teach my mom Windows, I can fully tell you it's only easy if you already understand computers. All operating systems are equally hard when you're starting out (except maybe MacOS), so why not get 'em on the good stuff right away? Also, because source is available to 99% of Linux apps, they're easily internationalized by Indian hackers and distros. Try that with Winamp or mIRC. KDE has a very nice internationalization framework in place, and console apps can use GNU gettext. Because Linux apps are often developed by non-US people, they tend to better address i18n issues than the Windows equivalents. |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:59PM EST (#56) |
| Actually, I've found that what a person learns first matters. A complete newbie sitting down in front of a Linux box will pick it up *faster* than someone who has used windows for a while - because things are deliberately different on the microsoft side (remember UNIX came before MS) - eg. microsoft put the close widget on the right-hand side for windows, when all the other GUIs used to put it on the left, the path separator is different, etc. And once the person has gotten used to the level of control linux affords, moving to windows pisses them off. There's a similar effect that means that ex-Amiga users move en masse to Linux and BeOS rather than Windows - they will never use a less powerful system than the one they started out on by choice. |
| close widget (Score:1) by elegant7x (elegant7x(a)hotmail.com) on Sunday January 30, @01:24PM EST (#77) (User Info) |
| Actualy, in win3.1 the close widget was on the left hand side. In win9x/nt4+ it's on both sides. Amber Yuan (--ell7) Taipai Taiwan 2000AD |
| Re:close widget (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:58PM EST (#233) |
| No. You click on the left side and some lame-ass menu comes up. If you double-click, granted, most of the time you select the first option ("close") on the menu almost too quick to see, but the "official" close widget that everybody normal learns is on the right. |
| doubleclick, dumbass (Score:1) by elegant7x (elegant7x(a)hotmail.com) on Sunday January 30, @10:26PM EST (#274) (User Info) |
| Doubleclick. The thing has the exact same functionality as in win31. Amber Yuan (--ell7) Taipai Taiwan 2000AD |
| Pardon me, sir, you're a fucking moron. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @12:29AM EST (#292) |
| The "close" option is last on the menu. The default windows "system menu" (which is what that thing is called in the docs, for what it's worth) has six items, the last of which is "Close". I just checked. Furthermore, the top of that menu appears below the bottom edge of the widget in the title bar. It's not possible to click the mouse twice in the same spot and hit first one, then the other. You're either drunk, mentally retarded, or trolling. You must be trolling, nobody's that dumb. That was a damn good troll! Thanks. :) |
| Re:Pardon me, sir, you're a fucking moron. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @01:03AM EST (#297) |
| No sir it's YOU that is the goddam moron. You double click on the top left box in windows and it closes. Worked in every windows since 3.0 (maybe before who knows) You should test something like that before you flap your stupid little mouth. |
| You have a brain the size of a fucking walnut. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @01:55PM EST (#339) |
| I never said that double-clicking on the fucking icon didn't close the fucking window, you pathetic fucking brainless ape. What I said was that the closing of the window when you double-click WAS NOT DUE TO CLICKING ON THE FUCKING "CLOSE" OPTION ON THE FUCKING SYSTEM MENU. The imbecile to whom I responded claimed that if you double-click on the system menu icon, the second click will be reported SOMEWHERE ELSE, on the menu which appears after the first click. He was wrong. I explained why. Try it. The menu appears. The mouse is not on the menu. The Close option is far away. On the second click, if you've clicked rapidly to have it count as a "double-click", the window will close. The menu will not have been used. The menu loop will have terminated when you clicked outside the fucking menu. Windows reports mouse events with coordinates. Those coordinates are the coordinates where the hot spot of the mouse pointer is located when the event took place. Windows, for all its idiotic failings, does not invent imaginary coordinates and give you those instead. Look up WM_LBUTTONDOWN, WM_LBUTTONDBLCLK, and WM_MOUSEMOVE in a Win32 reference. Got that? Nope, you're too fucking stupid to grasp it. Crawl away and die. |
| ass/u/me(ptions) (Score:2, Insightful) by RoLlEr_CoAsTeR (httpdaemon@iname.com) on Sunday January 30, @01:15PM EST (#70) (User Info) http://www.crosswinds.net/~gertuine |
| Why should you assume the same thing wouldn't work for up and coming Indian computer geeks? As many others have said, and as I will word (only slightly differently): Why should you assume the same thing would work for up and coming Indian computer geeks? What you begin with is what you will be familiar with. I, unfortunately, had my start with Windows, and I therefore seem to know more about what I'm doing while using Windows as opposed to Linux. I wish I had had a start on another OS so I could be more familiar with something more worthwhile. It's the same with innumerable other things in life.. say, language. The language you grow up hearing/speaking/etc. will be the one you are most comfortable with (AFAIK). I grew up on English, hence, I'm better at it than I am at the foreign languages I'm studying in school now. I conclude by saying this: You were truly thinking in the spirit of a Westerner ,as referred in the article when Professor Venkatesh Hariharan said: "The existing user interface paradigm of files and folders evolved because computers were essentially designed for a western audience familiar with real-life files and folders. There is no reason to assume why the same paradigm should apply to a trader in Tamil Nadu or a farmer in Madhya Pradesh. " when you made your statement because you were assuming that Windows would be a better transition for the Indians. The whole point of the article is that the Indians haven't had access to computers/an OS yet! Therefore, they need something that will work for them/be cheap/be configureable for them... Linux! "If we all did what we were supposed to do, we'd all be doing what we're supposed to be doing. But then, who knows what we're supposed to be doing?" |
| Re:differing paradigms (Score:2) by Bill Currie (bill@taniwha.org) on Sunday January 30, @04:08PM EST (#181) (User Info) http://www.taniwha.org/ |
I conclude by saying this: You were truly thinking in the spirit of a Westerner ,as referred in the article when Professor Venkatesh Hariharan said: "The existing user interface paradigm of files and folders evolved because computers were essentially designed for a western audience familiar with real-life files and folders. There is no reason to assume why the same paradigm should apply to a trader in Tamil Nadu or a farmer in Madhya Pradesh. "lol. Of course, this is right, but it made me think that instead of having the virtual desktop with files and folders as us westerners do, someone like the arabs would possibly have a virtual cammel with bottles and bags. On the other hand, a magician would have a virtual bag of holding :) |
| Actually... (Score:2) by Greyfox (nride@uswest.net) on Sunday January 30, @02:37PM EST (#130) (User Info) |
| I don't know about the rest of you but the first real computers that I worked on were UNIX machines. Apple ]['s and a TI 99/4A previous to that. I was using Sun systems with X back around '87 and when I finally started using Windows a couple of years later it always seemed rather primative. And when you get right down to it, if you preload NT or 95/98 to require a password and you preload a Linux box to start in init 5 with gnome/gdm, your average new user would undoubtedly have exactly the same level of difficulty learning either. Someone had to put all that chaos there! |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:1) by Squeeze Truck (xmsho@!SHPAM!NEIN!yahoo.com) on Sunday January 30, @04:55PM EST (#194) (User Info) |
| Linux isn't all that easy to use, even for a Westerner who grows up surrounded by electronic devices. "You can't say whatever you want about a company." -- John Roberts |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:49PM EST (#224) |
| It's the absence of pocket calculators - like in the republic of Ireland (the second largest exporter of (legitimate) computer software in the world - with a population 1.2% of the USA's) In the RoI, chidren are banned from using calculators to do math until they are approx 16 yrs old - and then, in any exams, they must mark any questions in which they used a calculator "EC". In Ireland, you are also taught how to use log table books. In India, they can't afford calculators, for the most part. |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:51PM EST (#229) |
| India is a democracy. Their textbooks are mainly clones of British and American ones, or sometimes written in India (some of the best mathematicians, chemists and physicists in the world came from India) |
| Windows NOT easy to use and Mac is sometimes worse (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @04:58PM EST (#195) |
| Microsoft has tried to make their software more appealing by imitating popular concepts from their competitors, such as the Mac finder and the unix "start" menu. There is no overall consistent design, just a lot of stuff thrown together in the hopes that some of it will already be familiar to the user. Then just in case the user doesn't find something there is the ubiquiutous (and infuriating) pop-up menu. "Do you want to do X now?" More likely than not the confused user says no, then five minutes later when the user decides they really did want to do X, the not-so-helpful pop-up is nowhere to be found. This is probably the most aggrevating misfeature of Microsoft programs. The Macintosh, at least in theory, was designed with some sort of consistency to the interface. It runs into several problems where this design is self-contradictory, or just annoying. One big problem is that dragging a file into the trash can erases the file. Dragging a disk into the trash can doesn't erase the disk, it does something else. Another problem is the "finder" itself. Perhaps driven by a need for consistency rather than common sense, is that double-clicking a folder opens up a new window. Opening another folder plops a new window on top of that, until there are some dozen or so windows on the screen and the user has forgotten what they're all for, or where they came from. The strictly-heirarchical menus commonly found on unix systems (and to some degree imitated by microsoft) are a much better design as they allow the user to "retrace their steps", working backwards to see how they got to where they are now, reducing the common "I'm lost" problem that new users are almost always faced with. I still think the simple mwm/fvwm type menus are the best for a new user. I know a lot of people bash fvwm as being too limited. But were talking about new users here - simple is good. |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:2) by elflord on Sunday January 30, @08:14PM EST (#263) (User Info) http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord |
| Please don't flame me, but wouldn't it be better to give them an easier path? Yes, but perhaps Linux could become that "easier path". India has a tremendous amount of intellectual capital and not much money. Linux could be a dream come true for them. The dev tools for building end user apps are already there ( namely, GNOME/GTK and KDE/QT ), and the Indian hackers have something that they can beat into shape. Perhaps beating Linux is easier for them in the long run than paying Windows licensing fees. Linux might not be ready for home users yet, but perhaps it can start by taking the government desktops and the server market by storm.
|
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @09:52AM EST (#320) |
| The fact that Microsoft (*shudder*) is not in the face of every Indian computer used is likely a major factor contributing to the upcoming success of Linux. If, for example, you are only given a single tool with which to work, you pretty much have to adapt to it and learn how to use it effectively. As is the case with Linux. The whole reason that so many people do not even wish to use Linux is because (in North America) it is employed by a noticeable minority of users. In India, much to the opposite, Linux is employed by the majority. Learning it and using it as your primary OS is assumed. |
| Re:A quiet revolution (Score:1) by robinsc (nospam_Robinsc@iname.com) on Monday January 31, @01:53AM EST (#301) (User Info) http://www.geocities.com/PAris/Metro/5952 |
| The interesting thing is that americans "surrounded by electronic gadgets have at least as hard a time (if not harder) wrestling with computers , firstly because there is much fiercer competition in schools etc. witness the number of asian software engineers migrating to the USA in droves. |
| Ah, the joys of.. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:14PM EST (#9) |
| ..i8n. :-) Although it makes looking at screenshots on Themes.org tough when they're in different languages! :-) |
| Re:Ah, the joys of.. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @11:46PM EST (#286) |
| Oh My God! We Americans might actually have to start learning (GASP) OTHER LANGUAGES! |
| Language Problems... (Score:2, Interesting) by loofa (steven.crawford@NOSPAM_loofa.freeserve.co.uk) on Sunday January 30, @12:16PM EST (#11) (User Info) |
| If SuSE can't manage to remove all the german from their distribution and it's manuals (and let's be honest - they can't), how much chance does anybody have of translating everything into Indian? Mind you - it's still better than users being novices in both Linux and English. |
| I don't get your point ... (Score:1) by divec on Sunday January 30, @12:25PM EST (#23) (User Info) |
| ... are you saying it's harder to translate stuff into Indian languages than out of German? Or that Linux has more English in it than German? |
| Re:I don't get your point ... (Score:1) by loofa (steven.crawford@NOSPAM_loofa.freeserve.co.uk) on Sunday January 30, @05:06PM EST (#198) (User Info) |
| I'm saying that if a commercial company with the help of usenet can't manage to remove all traces of German, when there are probably more Linux users available and willing to translate, then you are still going to be left with traces of English in the Indian version, no matter who does it - Government, Business or Usenet. |
| Re:I don't get your point ... (Score:1) by ph43drus (EATph43drus@WITHAhomeSPORK.com) on Sunday January 30, @06:30PM EST (#246) (User Info) http://24.5.73.229 |
| Ok, I am a long time SuSE user, and when I have to plow through the supplied docs, the german I learned in school is handy at times (simply because the english distrobution still includes the german documentation packages by default). Now, this has nothing to do with whether or not german->english is harder than english->one of 18 indian languages, but that there is a fsck load of stuff to translate, and it'll be quite a project. Even then, there will more than likely be remnants of the english documentation. On the other hand, India has a huge population, probably bigger than the US and Europe combined (but I don't know the population of Europe, so I might have just shoved my foot down my throat), which would mean they have plenty of people to support their own Open Source culture, but that doesn't mean we can't all help each other ;). So, it is a big project, but they have the man power. What we need to do is make sure our apps are translation friendly. Jeff
|
| Re:Language Problems... (Score:1) by Squeeze Truck (xmsho@!SHPAM!NEIN!yahoo.com) on Sunday January 30, @05:09PM EST (#199) (User Info) |
| Turbolinux, OTOH, has done a superb job localising Linux into Japanese and Simplified Chinese. Even bloody fdisk is in Chinese (If you can imagine!) "You can't say whatever you want about a company." -- John Roberts |
| Re:Language Problems... (Score:2) by scrytch on Sunday January 30, @05:38PM EST (#214) (User Info) |
| If SuSE can't manage to remove all the german from their distribution and it's manuals (and let's be honest - they can't), how much chance does anybody have of translating everything into Indian? We don't have to. The Indians can. They just need some support and coordination with the people who control the relevant code, such as glibc, mozilla, gnome, KDE, and so on. Making sure the language has a language code, that bidi-capable text widgets are used, and so on. |
| India nees economic freedom more. (Score:3, Interesting) by Russ Nelson on Sunday January 30, @12:19PM EST (#14) (User Info) http://russnelson.com/ |
| India needs to get away from the idea that all economic activities should be controlled by the government. Curiously, there are many self-help groups in India, and yet you have the remainder of the Raj, controlling, for example, every aspect of communications, whether wireless or wired. -russ |
| Re:India nees economic freedom more. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:25PM EST (#24) |
| Are there things like computer geek groups? |
| Computer geek groups (Score:1) by dodobh (d o d o b h @ v s n l . c o m) on Sunday January 30, @01:47PM EST (#101) (User Info) |
| |
| Re:India nees economic freedom more. (Score:1) by udhay (udhay@pobox.comNOSPAM) on Sunday January 30, @11:29PM EST (#284) (User Info) http://pobox.com/~udhay |
| http://www.linux-india.org/ -- God is silent. Now if we can only get Man to shut up. |
| Economic freedom is best (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:24PM EST (#78) |
| Interesting review |
| Re:India nees economic freedom more. (Score:1) by dodobh (d o d o b h @ v s n l . c o m) on Sunday January 30, @01:45PM EST (#97) (User Info) |
| That was due to stupid mistakes by our former political leaders, who were deeply influenced by soviet thought.:(.They granted absolute powers to the bureaucracy, which thereby set about acquiring monopolies. The communications media are still government controlled and monopolies. Hence the problem. Standard monopoly. The idea was that the government should finance development initially was good, but the controls were too many. We have had metered connections for quite a while and now they have increased the rates as well. We haven't been fighting for our rights (except for those who are politacally prodded to do so) for the simple reason that survival comes first. Okay, this might be slightly more than justifiable, but it is very close to reality in most of India. And of course, we have the problem of illeteracy, increased by the desire of politicians to manipulate gullible people. no eternal vigilance, therefore no freedom. but things seem to be improving. |
| uhmph, it has since 1990 (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @03:04PM EST (#146) |
| since 1990, and continuing now, India has left its centrally controlled soviet-socialistic type of economy. :p |
| Re:India nees economic freedom more. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:39PM EST (#215) |
| "I HAD TO HAVE THIS BOY!" The cold air stung my lungs at I glanced over at Matt. It was so cold his breath was frosty in the air. He looked at me and quickly glanced away. I was extremely drunk. I had just broken up with my long-term boyfriend earlier in the week, and had attended my college friends New Years Eve party. After seeing all the happy couples I vowed to get completely smashed for the entire weekend. Now here I was, being escorted home by a freshman 'cause my friends didn't want me walking home alone. I had been crying, because I was so drunk at the party, I had insisted on going home NOW and so they grabbed Matt and told him to walk me home because everybody else was either too drunk to drive or busy getting on somebody. My heart raced when our eyes had briefly met. I knew this boy had a crush on me, and it drove me wild. I had just wanted to say, "Awwwwhhhh..." All year, whenever he came up with a lame excuse to talk to me, to stand near me, whenever he had gathered the courage to utter a word to me. It made my stomach flutter when he stammered mid-sentence as he tried des- perately to find something to say next. It didn't hurt that he was "to die for cute" with his thick chestnut blonde hair, cut in a prince Edward style. His tanned smooth skin made me wonder what he'd look like naked. I remember the time his buddies grabbed me at lunch, yelling, "Hey Matt, it's your girl! It's your girl!" What could I do but look away, pretending I didn't hear as he told them to shut up, red faced. I felt bad for him, the way his buddies teased him. Well, maybe he was rather immature, even for a freshman. I couldn't help but remember the senior I had had a crush on when I was a freshman, and wondered if Matt had some of the same thoughts about me, especially at night, as I had had about that guy. But right then I was so drunk, I nearly tripped over the curb as I stepped over it. I wanted to say some- thing to him, but the silence was deafening. I started crying again, saying how I hated my ex-boyfriend and how my life sucked. "Oh, come on," Matt said. "Maybe you're better off without him." "Really?" I asked. "Yeah. Yeah, you deserve better." "Thanks. You're so nice Matt!" I exclaimed, fawning (my usual drunk line: "You're so nice!"). His blue eyes, framed by long lashes, studied my face as we walked in the moonlight. I knew he knew I was drunk. I wondered what he was thinking, if he had had some grand plan all along to get me into bed that he never *quite* got a chance at, considering I had always had a boyfriend since we had known each other. Maybe some plan that he was always altering here and there, while he never gave up. I wondered if he was thinking that was now his big chance. I leaned against him suddenly, wrapping my arms around him while I sobbed into his shoulder, "Matt, you're so nice..." He awkwardly put his arm around me, whispering, "Don't cry Lauren," as we tried to continue walking while I was nearly backward, my arms still around him as I clung to him tightly. I continued crying as we reached my house. He stood awkwardly on my doorstep as I tried to unlock the door and undo the security system at the same time. I'm sure he didn't know what to, if he should listen to his common sense that was telling him I would laugh at him hysterically and tell him to get lost if he asked to come in, or whether to go with his primal urges and stay around. I wondered if he could ignore the bulge I had felt in his pants as I had clung to him, my body pressing against his. I wondered if I could ignore it. The door swung open, into the pitch black house. "Come in with me," I pleaded, grabbing his hands as my eyes tried to focus. "Until I get the lights on," my voice croaked. "Okay," he whispered, staring at my hand as I grabbed his clumsily and pulled him in. The door closed behind us and we were emerged in darkness. I pulled him toward my bedroom. I could hear his rapid breathing over the soft sounds of his tennis shoes on the hall carpet. Thank God, roommates were out of town for the holidays. He reached in to my room and turned on the light. He glanced around my room, taking in everything instantly: from the box on my floor filled with picture frames and miscellaneous junk left over from my rela- tionship with Ryan, to my stuffed animals on the shelf, and finally to my double bed with the soft pillows and down comforter. His eyes stopped dead at the bed, and he swallowed. I wondered if he'd fantasized about my bed before, me sleeping in it, himself being in it, maybe about making love to me under its covers. I walked past him into the room and switched on the bed side lamp. I sat on the bed and put my head in my hands. God, I was drunk. I don't know how long I sat like that as Matt stared at me, but finally I heard his low voice stammer, "Um, um, do you want me to leave?" My eyes refused to focus as I looked at him standing in the doorway. "Wait, comere..." I said to him. He walked over to me slowly, swallowing. I pulled him by the hand down to the bed next to me. He was so nervous. He rubbed his palms on his thighs -- was he sweating? "Are you gonna go back to Dana's?" (Dana was my best friend whose house the party at been at; Matt was friends with her little brother Mike, which was how he got to a senior party in the first place). "I dunno," he said. I might just walk home, it's not that far." "But it's so cold!" I exclaimed, looking at him like he was the bravest man in the world. "Oh," he said shyly, smiling down at his hands, which were in his lap, conveniently hiding his bulge from me. I stood up, and he immediately stood too. I walked around to the end of my bed, where I paused, not remembering what I was looking for or where I had been going. Instinctively, he followed me and stood next to me as I began laughing drunkenly, incoherently ex- claiming about how funny it was that I didn't know what I had been going to get. He smiled at me, still studying my face with his huge blue eyes. I grabbed his jacket and laughed hysterical- ly into his shoulder. I put my arms around him and snuggled to him. I could feel his heart pounding in his chest. My arms still around him, I drew back and smiled at him. My smile faded, and his eyes grew panicky as I just looked at him. I rose up on my tip toes and kissed him gently on the mouth. He sucked in air rapidly; God, I thought the boy was going to hyper- ventilate. I didn't pull back though, and he began to kiss me back. I opened my mouth and slipped my tongue in to touch his. My arms wrapped tightly around his broad shoulders while we kept kissing. His hands slid down my back, bravely resting on my ass. My insides were quivering. I pulled away again, and slid my hands down his hard chest as he stared at me. "Matt," I whispered. "Have you ever made love to a woman before?" He gulped again, and shook his head, not looking me in the eye, as he hung his head. Oh, I thought, he's embarrassed about his virginity! My heart swelled. I began kissing him again, his neck and his ear while he breathed out in a rush. As we stood they in an embrace, I began slowly undres- sing him, unbuttoning his shirt and pulling it off while I kissed the soft tanned skin of his chest. My tongue licked his hard young nipple. We lay on the bed and kissed. Eager, and not knowing exactly what he was supposed to do, he practically tried to enter me before we were even completely un- dressed. "No, no," I gently said. "Not yet... Not that yet." I pushed him off me gently, and got him on his back. First I kissed his mouth, and his ears, and his neck. I licked both his nipples, watching them swell up hard at my touch. Finally I laid my head down on his muscular chest as it heaved up and down rapidly. Then I pulled my self up into a kneeling position next to him on the bed and leaned over him, he stared up at me, touching my face softly, and I returned his stare. I was excited, more excited than I think I had ever been before with my x-boyfriend, I was amazed at the soft velvety feel of his skin as my fingers lightly ran over his ribs, and I kissed each one. Slowly moving south, teasing, I stuck my tongue in his belly button and he groaned, knowing I'm sure the direction I was headed in, and what I was after. I kissed the baby fine hairs below his navel. They ran in a streak down into his jeans. My lips traveled all over his stomach, and his hips. I finished unbuttoning his jeans, and he lifted up so I could pull them off. His hard cock stuck out of the hole in his underwear. Odd thought, I wondered if his mother folded her son's underwear. I wondered what she would think if she could see him now... I crawled between his marvelous thighs. He was posi- tively shaking, his hands fumbling about on the bed by his sides. He is inexperienced, I thought. I crawled back up, supporting myself above him, and kissed him again. "It's okay," I whispered as I looked into his eyes. "Yeah?" He nodded. I touched his face lightly, and smiled at him in the dim light. I smoothed his hair back on his forehead while he swallowed. I kissed him again. He touched my hair too, and nodded again, reassuring me. I went back down to nice looking boytoy. His underwear off completely, I began teasing him as his breathing became even more coarse and rapid. I began licking his thighs, and then kissing his pubic hair as his cock rubbed in my long hair. He stared down at me, his eyes glassy. I kept massag- ing his thighs and running my tongue through his pubic hair. He groaned. I knew I was driving him crazy. I looked up at him; our eyes locked. "Please," he whispered hoarsely, begging me for more. I continued kissing his thighs, then moved my head up and let my tongue slightly touch his warm balls. He gasped, his hips jerking up, as I swallowed one of his balls. He moaned, "Oh my God..." Encouraged by the shiver that ran through his nicely muscled young body, I slid my tongue up the length of his long hard dick. I swirled my tongue around, and slid it back down to his heavy balls. I again gently took one into my mouth and sucked it a little. I tongued the underside of his cock-head, and he groaned. I licked it up and down. All the while he was whimper- ing like a baby, squirming around on the bed. I finally took the swollen head into my mouth and suck- ed it, hard. He cried out. I rubbed his shaft with my hands while his hands gripped my head, his fingers run- ning through my hair. I took the whole thing into my mouth and began pumping, sucking his dick rapidly. His hips began slowly rocking, bucking to meet my mouth instinctively. I glanced up at him without letting go of my prize. His head was thrown back on the pillow, his eyes closed and his mouth open. His hip thrusts became faster, sticking his cock into my throat and nearly gagging me while he gripped my head. My God, I thought, he's fuck- ing my mouth. His whimpering became louder and he started to yell while I sucked faster, wondering if he could last much longer. "God, God, YES!" he yelled, as his whole body stiffened. His sperm exploded into my mouth and down my throat. His hips were lifted off the bed completely as he tried desperately to get as deep as he could. He came so much I couldn't handle it all and it seeped out of the corners of my mouth. "Yeah, baby, yeah!" he grunted. With one final, "Unngghh!" he collapsed on the bed and tried to catch his breath. I looked up at him from between his sweaty thighs and saw his facial expression. Oh God, I thought, he looks like an angel that just reached heaven. I made him jump when I licked the rest of his cum off of his dick. I crawled up to him and laid next to him, putting my head on his chest and hugged him while he stroked my hair. I kissed his pecs and rubbed his shoulders. I held him to me for awhile, then I lay on my back and looked up at the ceiling. I wondered what he would do. He looked over at me first, then leaned over and kissed me. He began kissing my neck and fondling my breasts. He was too rough at first, squeezing my nipples and kneading my tits, pinching them, fascinated with the new toys I had presented him with. I gasped in pain and he looked pleased, probably think- ing I was in pleasure. The darling boy was so eager to please. I pushed his hands away and he looked at me, questioningly. "No, you're being too rough," I said. I looked down at myself. "Don't you think I have pretty breasts?" "Yeah..." he said. "Don't you want to kiss them?" I asked. Matt jumped into action without another word. He start- ed by gently tonguing my nipples and kissing my chest all over, then began sucking on them. His hand explored my cunt, and he inserted a couple of fingers in, ex- claiming how wet I was. I gasped aloud and moaned when his tough fingers found my clitoris, and he quickly looked up in surprise. "Do you like that?" he asked in delight. "Oh Matt, yes," I moaned. "Here?" he asked, curious, rubbing my clit. "Yeah, right there oh God don't stop!" Happy where he was, he continued sucking my breasts and finger fucking me while his thumb rolled over my clit. Spreading my legs apart, I gently pushed him lower. I lifted one knee up. He stared at me, maybe nervous about being inexperi- enced. But he set his mind to go for it. His hard cock stuck out like a pole from his belly as he repositioned himself between my legs. I gasped in pleasure as his wet mouth attached itself to my quivering cunt. His tongue slipped in to my vagina and explored my insides. Armed with his new information, he didn't neglect my clitoris, but instead worshipped it with his tongue and lips. I kept encour- aging him with groans and yelps and words. "Oh Matt, honey!" I groaned. "God, Matty, don't stop! Don't stop!" It's not like I was in any danger of him going anywhere; he was glued between my open thighs, happily eating his first pussy. He kept sucking and licking me and pretty soon the room began to spin. "Ohhh, I'm cumming I'm cumming!" I shrieked while every nerve in my body danced. I shook all over and grabbed his head and pushed his face into me. He looked a little alarmed, but extremely pleased with himself, which drove me crazy like nothing before ever had. My heart rate, pounding in my ears, slowed as my orgasm subsided. He continued eating me, making me horny again. Besides, I'm insatiable when I'm drunk. I noticed he was absentmindedly stroking his virgin cock while his tongue plunged into my cunt. I motioned for him to move up. He scrambled up next to me and began kissing me. I spread my legs apart and wondered if he'd get the implied invitation. He was on top of me in a flash, after all, *this* is what he had been waiting for for eighteen years. *This* is what he thought of constantly, what every other guy told him about constantly. Heaven awaited him between my spread thighs. I didn't mind, he'd earned it. With one arm supporting him, the other gripped the head of his purple cock which he aimed at my dripping box. He searched for the entrance, then eased in the head. Then he shoved the entire length in while we both gas- ped in pleasure. He lay on top of me, and thrust his dick in deeper, banging against my cervix while I cried out in pain. My sweaty thighs gripping his hips, he pumped a few times more, but he was too excited, and began to cum. In his innocence and extreme excitement he pulled out completely and got off center. "Oh God I'm cumming," he gasped into my ear. "Cum, Matt, cum!" I whispered back. His hands supporting him while I cradled his head on my shoulders, completely withdrawn out of me, he desper- ately began humping my thighs and pubic mound. He frantically tried to get it back into me but failed and began shooting his hot cum all over my thighs and sheets. His voice wavered as he let out a cry. Momentarily spent he collapsed onto me. I held him in my arms and began kissing him. He pulled away, and didn't look me in the eye as he whispered, "I'm sorry," and looked down between us at the mess. "I know, I came too soon," he said sadly, "I'm sorry..." My stomach leapt to my throat as I thought of how sen- sitive he was being of me and my needs, how desperate to please me he was. The thought of him being upset by his perceived lack of a "good" performance made me want to kiss him. I grabbed his face and made him look at me. "No, don't be sorry," I said. "It was wonderful; I loved it." It was the truth. He gave me a shy smile and looked again at the sticky mess that we were encased in. He rolled off me and lay on his back staring at the ceiling, still smiling em- barassedly. I told him not to worry about it and grabbed some Kleenex and cleaned us off. "See?" I said. "All gone!" I snuggled up close to him underneath the covers. We kissed and rubbed each other and giggled. We lay on our sides facing each other, our fronts pressing to- gether hugging. His dick soon stiffened again, poking against my belly. He grinned at me, and rolled onto his back, pulling me on top of him. I spread my legs and guided it in. I lay on him at first, my breasts pinned against his chest, and fucked him hard. Then I sat up and rode him while he lay back with a huge smile on his face, fondling my tits. I couldn't believe how much pleasure I was experiencing with this boy. After a moment of playing cowgirl, I decided to experi- ment a little and crawled off of him and lay on my side with my back to his chest. I pulled his glistening young dick between my legs. Our hands met down there as both of us together put his wonderful dick into my cunt. He began thrusting into me rapidly from behind, grunt- ing his approval. I led one of his hands to my clit which he played with, While the other roamed all over the front of my body. It was heavenly! After a moment he shyly whispered "Could we do it doggy style?" "Oh, doggy style, huh?" I laughed, at his initiative. "You like doggy style!" "Hell yeah," he grunted at me. I banged him backwards, meeting each of his thrusts and drowning in pleasure. He massaged my ass, gripping my hips and then reaching down with one hand for my clit, his new best friend. I shrieked in pleasure from his fingers manipulating my clit like that. He was a quick learner, that's for certain. He leaned over me, his chest pressed into my back while his arms supported him next to mine. His large hands covered my small ones on the bed, while he kept thrusting his slippery dick into me, breathing and groaning in my ear. I groaned back, and kept encouraging him with words and noises. Then not wanting to miss any of the good positions I sat up suddenly, knocking him back into a sitting position on his knees. "Sit, sit," I told him. We kept it in somehow and I sat on him like that, my ass grinding into his groin while my thighs straddled his. He clasped me to him, and held my breasts with one hand while the other went between my legs. I fondled his balls between my thighs and he played with my clit. My head lolled backward on his shoulder as I moaned, and I twisted around and we kissed. "I'm gonna cum again," he groaned. "No," I ordered playfully. "You're not allowed! Matty, you're not ALLOWED to come yet!" "Awright, but I'm gonna if you don't hold still," he warned. I stopped moving and held still. He didn't move a muscle, and in fact he was holding his breath. I'm almost started to laugh, but he was gripping my body so tightly I could barely breathe myself. He let his breath out, and said okay. I returned to rocking him back and forth. It was too much for me, his fingers pressed into my clit rubbing it around, plus his hard dick lodged into me, all made me come again. "Ohh, ohhhhhh! Yes!" I breathed. "I'm cumming, Matt you're making me cum again you fucker! OooOOOOooh...!" "No, you're not allowed, not allowed to at all!" he joked. My world went white, my body exploding in pleasure as I laughed. The combination of laughing hysterically and coming at the same pushed poor Matt over the edge, and was unbelievably incredible. I ground my hips into him violently, trying to milk every ounce of pleasure out of him that I could. He groaned loudly as my vagina spasmed several times, clenching his dick tightly. I breathed hard, spent. Exhausted, and teasing a little, I got off him and fell on my back on the bed, covering my eyes with my forearm and crossing my legs at the ankles. "That was great Matty, really great..." I murmured, moving my arm a little so I could see him. Matt still sat on the end of the bed, his swollen dick still hard throbbing in time to his heartbeat up in down, still needing me desperately. I removed my arm completely and, raising my knees up, smiled at him. "Comere!" I said, holding my arms out to my boy. "Comere..." He was in me again quickly, this time with my raised legs over his shoulders. We kissed passionately, our wet mouths open and our tongues prying in and inter- twining, while his hips bucked, his cock in me so deep. He thrust again and again. Soon, his breathing became even more rapid and he cried out as he shot jets of his sperm into me again. He groaned and kept thrusting faster and faster, then eventually slower, and slower, until finally he fell out and we just lay holding each other, spent. He kissed me. "I love you," he whispered, his eyes shining. I was much wiser than Matt, older and wiser and perhaps I knew a lot more about love than him. But, at that moment, held tightly in his arms, I loved him too, desperately. "I love you too..." I told him. Matt grinned at me and kissed me again. The End |
| Re:India nees economic freedom more. (Score:1) by Squeeze Truck (xmsho@!SHPAM!NEIN!yahoo.com) on Sunday January 30, @05:46PM EST (#219) (User Info) |
| Sounds great. Lower all those stupid trade barriers, and all of India will know the pride of working in a foreign-owned factory! Progress and prosperity HERE WE COME! "You can't say whatever you want about a company." -- John Roberts |
| Re:India nees economic freedom more. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @01:33AM EST (#298) |
| The good part of it might be that money has no home. The americans will soon start to discover that when it makes sense to invest outside US they will invest outside US. But of course they've already protected themselves from that by laws that make it very attracttive to have your QA and HQ in the US. -- The most protective economy in the world! Why else did they form the WTO? -- PS. If you feel trolled by Russ to talk, visit his website and soon you will be able to just sigh and leave the discussion. |
| A modem costs more than a cow. (Score:3, Interesting) by georgeha on Sunday January 30, @12:21PM EST (#17) (User Info) http://www.frontiernet.net/~ghaberbe/george2.htm |
| Dang that's harsh, especially considering all the spare modems I have sitting around, well, a 19.2, 14.4 and some PCMCIA ones. We need a modem bank where we can donate old modems, too slow for American lines, but just right for old infrastructure. George |
| Re:A modem costs more than a cow. (Score:2) by e-gold (_NOSPAM_jray@e-gold.com) on Sunday January 30, @01:16PM EST (#71) (User Info) http://pcs.e-gold.com/demo.html |
| We need a modem bank where we can donate old modems, too slow for American lines, but just right for old infrastructure. This is an incredibly good idea. The only problem I'd foresee is the shipping, and assuming sponsorship by an international shipper (say, DHL) that could be solved, too. Might be very good PR for DHL in India to be the source of free US surplus modems. JMR regards, Jim Ray Opinions are my own. |
| Re:A modem costs more than a cow. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @02:07PM EST (#113) |
| We have a barn full of old modems. Its a cow barn. Seriously. But we dont treat our modems like gods. |
| I'll trade a modem for a cow! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @02:49PM EST (#138) |
I have several modems (9600/14400/28800/33600) that I would be happy to exchange for a cow -- dead, preferably, but I suppose I could find a butcher locally. Hmmm ... getting the cow through customs might be a problem too. |
| Re:A modem costs more than a cow. (Score:1) by komet on Sunday January 30, @03:45PM EST (#167) (User Info) http://www.microsoft.com |
| And another thing is that those older modems (say 9600 bps) are probably better at getting your data through crap phone lines. Modern V.34 modems more or less assume the phone system is gonna digitize your signal at the earliest possible opportunity. Of course, I'm talking out of my rectum here. Does anyone have and hard evidence? |
| Re:A modem costs more than a cow. (Score:1) by Crosseyed & Painless on Sunday January 30, @03:52PM EST (#172) (User Info) http://slashdot.org |
| Would US modems even *work* in India? Or are telcos standardized, these days? "This post moderated down for your protection!" |
| Re:A modem costs more than a cow. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:48PM EST (#222) |
| No, no, no, no, no...non-Americans don't want your old crap any more than you do. You can keep your container shiploads full of 286s and 386s...they're just as useless here as they are in your country. Now, if you want a more American view of the situation, why don't you take your box of crappy modems to India, trade them for a herd of cattle, and become a rancher. A much more fulfilling life, close to the land, and a good way to raise children away from the toxic influences of American television. |
| Dream on.... (Score:1) by evilpete (peter@goodtech.spamstinks.co.uk) on Monday January 31, @06:13AM EST (#307) (User Info) http://ds.dial.pipex.com/setchells/pete/ |
| About 5 years ago I was trekking in Himachal Pradesh -- one of the bits of india up near the himalayas. I was surprised to see that some of the small villages (just a few muddy huts) had a satellite dish like the one on the death star.... Moral: Even if you live in the indian himalayas your kids'll still be able to skip school and watch jerry springer at a friends house. +++++ sorry i'm late, fell asleep meditating. |
| Re:A modem costs more than a cow. (Score:1) by King of Noth on Sunday January 30, @06:14PM EST (#242) (User Info) http://members.xoom.com/Ori0n |
| A modem bank is a GREAT idea. I thought of the exact same thing while reading this article. I suggest a further look into this, along with research into some kind of business sponshorship, like one said DHL i believe it was? The Law of Identity: Something is what it is. |
| Re:A modem costs more than a cow. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @08:08PM EST (#261) |
| While this might SEEM a good idea, here's the catch.. STANDARDS.. The wonderful world of standards makes modems made for the American phone-lines not work on say European phone-lines. How much would you bet that this isn't the same thing with India ? The same things go for televisions, cellular phone networks, cable nets.. The list goes on. |
| US modems work fine in UK (Score:2) by Cato (rdonkin@SPAMLESSbigfoot.com) on Tuesday February 01, @07:50AM EST (#346) (User Info) http://www.bigfoot.com/~rdonkin/ |
| Check your facts before posting - most US modems work fine in the UK and other countries once you set them to blind dial (AT X3, i.e. ignore dialtone). They may have difficulty detecting engaged tones as well but this is not too important for hearing modem users. The important issue is power supplies, which are always different (but a 110-240V supply will do fine, and suitable local adapters can usually be found), and telephone socket standards (there are literally tens of different ones... See http://www.teleadapt.com/ for examples). Internal modems, probably ISA, are the best bet. As for the other hardware, any PC is better than none IMO - a 386 or above would be fine for browsing the Net with Lynx, or doing email, which is the key app for many people. However, a 486 or Pentium would be able to support a GUI better, allowing better internationalisation support normally. |
| Re:A modem costs more than a cow. (Score:1) by kenro on Monday January 31, @01:54AM EST (#302) (User Info) |
| Especially people in India who want to work on free software projects should receive donations of old equipment, if there's an inexpensive way to ship it. Maybe the Linux user groups could organize something. Speaking of old computers, I've got a 6800 homebrew (1976), LSI-11, 286, 386. Kept the old systems for sentimental reasons. (pathetic isn't it?) |
| Alternative directory trees? (Score:1) by No Such Agency on Sunday January 30, @12:21PM EST (#18) (User Info) |
| I kinda like the idea that the "File/Folder" paradigm is western-centric. I mean, really it does deal in organizational concepts geared towards tie-wearing office drones. That said, I can't think of a better way of expressing the heirarchical tree concept. Would anybody else who's actually from India care to comment on the matter, and perhaps suggest a more culturally appropriate scheme? |
| Re:Alternative directory trees? (Score:1) by rgmoore (glandauer@worldnet.att.net) on Sunday January 30, @01:28PM EST (#87) (User Info) |
I kinda like the idea that the "File/Folder" paradigm is western-centric. I mean, really it does deal in organizational concepts geared towards tie-wearing office drones. That said, I can't think of a better way of expressing the heirarchical tree concept. Would anybody else who's actually from India care to comment on the matter, and perhaps suggest a more culturally appropriate scheme? I would imagine that an image like bags or boxes might be more appropriate than folders. One comment that I remember hearing is that the file/folder image is actually somewhat inappropriate because people rarely use deeply nested heirachies of folders. Putting one box or bag inside another is much more common, so it's intuitively more reasonable. I also think that the file metaphor is a bit dated. After all, many "files" these days are the function equivalent of things very different from physical files. They include a wide variety of things from movies and photgraphs to movie players and game boxes. You can see that people already feel that way from the icons that they choose to represent their files, and most of those objects would never fit into a file folder. |
| Re:Alternative directory trees? (Score:1) by SEE (see@mailops.com) on Sunday January 30, @01:43PM EST (#95) (User Info) http://www.easypages.net/hosting/personal/see/index.html |
| You yourself called it a hierarchical tree. How about replacing file/folder with leaf/branch? Steven E. Ehrbar see@mailops.com |
| Re:Alternative directory trees? (Score:1) by johnhebert (john@SPAMOLATOR.ospreysolutions.com) on Sunday January 30, @02:58PM EST (#143) (User Info) http://www.eatel.net/~john |
| Agreed. I had the same idea when I read the question. You didn't mention it, but "root" would apply equally well to this metaphor. I did a little research work with a friend back in school about 1990 who proposed the same metaphor. Guess he was thinking far ahead. "Classic UFO's ... crafts for kids..." Interpretations from hell.com |
| I'm not indian but a few ideas. (Score:1) by |deity| on Sunday January 30, @02:23PM EST (#124) (User Info) |
| I'm not from india but I have a couple of ideas for representing directory structures. Directories represented as 3d hallways with files represented by 3d objects. Directories and files represented in html as links and lists. Basically what's being done on the web. Would definately make home computers more organized. How about a library representation. Each book a directory with chapters and subchapters as subdirectorys and all linked back to an index. Also a very organized way to represent data. Or for the virtual reality buffs how about a 3d representation organized using objects. A virtual notebook containing all your letters. A virtual tv with channels linked to your favorite videos. A library for all your ebooks and a museum for your artwork. You could take this kind of representation as far as you want. This type of representation would be easy for todays computers. Just some ideas do what you want with them. I never think of directorys as folders anyway. I grew up using DOS. |
| Re:I'm not indian but a few ideas. (Score:1) by NiteEyes on Sunday January 30, @03:17PM EST (#153) (User Info) |
| Are you suggesting someone create Microsoft Bob for Linux? anyone remember this product? Incidentally, I liked Bob. But then again, I also like cartoons and computer games. Bob was definetly not for the office user. |
| Re:I'm not indian but a few ideas. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:36PM EST (#210) |
| This type of representation would be easy for todays computers.! Yes, but a programmer is still a programmer, and that is the bottleneck in your little UI dream. |
| HunduFS (Score:2, Funny) by Squeeze Truck (xmsho@!SHPAM!NEIN!yahoo.com) on Sunday January 30, @05:51PM EST (#227) (User Info) |
| I propose the Lakshmi file system. The root could be a "god" (your choice), and each subdirectory could be one of many "arms". "You can't say whatever you want about a company." -- John Roberts |
| That would be HinduFS (Score:1) by Jace (jace@SraPdiAolMink.net) on Monday January 31, @09:34AM EST (#318) (User Info) http://www.ufies.org/~trion |
| Hahahohohehe HinduFS, BTW. Kiran Jonnalagadda http://lunateks.com |
| Re:Alternative directory trees? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 03, @11:47AM EST (#349) |
| Who needs complex metaphores? There exist only Unities/atoms/files and Multiples/lists/directories. Heirarchical systems of organizing stuff have existed since the discovery of the container. No goo-ee is needed to represent one. Since '.' in geek-speak already means "this" and '..' means "context of this", and '*' means "every", '$' means "last", and '^' means "first" , then perhaps '&' could mean "Multiple", '!' could mean "Unity", '+' could mean "next" and '-' could mean "previous". The Multiple encapsulates an association of other Unities, and optionally contains the direction of the path to each Unity. Externally, a Multiple must also be a Unity. Internally, the Unity is unconstrained, but the Multiple is a nexus in a Path/network/graph. Each Path contained in the Multiple may have a property associated with it indicating one of the possible directions. e.g. for two directions any of the following might be used: up/down; left/right; white/black; greater/lesser; higher/lower; good/bad; heaven/hell; whatever/wherever. "Context" is any member of a Multiple which has an "unusual" direction indicated on its path. It should be possible, and no big deal, for anyone to pick any graphic they wanted to use to represent these. "sun & stars" could be my preference today; tomorrow it could be "leaf and tree". Once the respective symbols for Unity, Multiple and Direction have been identified, merely knowing that it's graph is enough to understand how to navigate it. |
| And this is the way the World is won... (Score:5, Insightful) by FFFish on Sunday January 30, @12:26PM EST (#25) (User Info) |
| ...person by person, country by country -- and starting with the corners of the world that are ignored: where there are barriers to language, barriers to affordability, barriers to access, barriers to the type of application that is needed. China (slashdot story), Mexico (slashdot story), India... those are significant populations. It's a step in the right direction. Remove language barriers: internationalize all parts of Linux. Remove affordability barriers: release up-to-date packages that are designed to be useable on old 386 systems. In a lot of countries, Pentium are unaffordium. Remove barriers to access: donate your old hardware to third-world countries. Help get Linux distributed -- donate a diskette-set to an emerging-world school. Remove application barriers: internationalize applications. Identify what old software (running on DOS, Commodore, other old iron) should be ported to Linux. Support the world outside of the little space you inhabit. Think outside the USA, think outside white Europe. Most of the world isn't like you. Look after them, and it'll pay back a hundredfold... |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:1) by jawad (jawad(at)nycap.rr.com) on Sunday January 30, @12:38PM EST (#41) (User Info) http://jawad.org/ |
| I think Linux will win out, not because of the language issue (which sure as hell helps), but because that it doesn't require the most bitching hardware available. Running Windows98 on a 486 is possible (I believe) but painful. Linux doesn't give you issues if you'er not running the fastest computer available. sid=moderation |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:59PM EST (#57) |
| It would be sad running a 486 still. Really sad. |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @06:31PM EST (#247) |
| They make a kick ass firewall. |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:1) by QuMa (fvw+slashdot@var.cx) on Sunday January 30, @01:29PM EST (#88) (User Info) http://www.var.cx |
| That's nothing. I've had win95 running on a 386-33, with 4mb ram. Not a nice sight. |
| language issue? (Score:1) by elegant7x (elegant7x(a)hotmail.com) on Sunday January 30, @01:52PM EST (#103) (User Info) |
| I think Linux will win out, not because of the language issue (which sure as hell helps), Huh? what the hell crack are you smoking? Windows is way way ahead of us as far as language issues. Trust me. Amber Yuan (--ell7) Taipai Taiwan 2000AD |
| Re:language issue? (Score:1) by Mudi (mudi@gmx.net) on Sunday January 30, @04:00PM EST (#177) (User Info) http://www.inter-i.net/ |
| I think you're absolutely right. I've seen chinese versions of windows, all seems to be integrated very well. and with win2000 and office 2000, you can even do all this with an ordinary English version of windows. i checked it out, my girlfriend (who is chinese) could finally write chinese on my computer WITHOUT those icky addon programs she needed before. In Linux, there is still a far way to go. OK, for example, if you use (X)Emacs with MULE and LaTeX, you can also write foreign language texts rather easy. But the rest? Especially if it's about multibyte character sets i'd guess it's a total mess. --- thomas m., inter one networking group |
| Re:language issue? (Score:1) by jawad (jawad(at)nycap.rr.com) on Sunday January 30, @04:38PM EST (#188) (User Info) http://jawad.org/ |
| What I meant was not the current language issue, but that Linux, with the speed of improvement, etc. would catch up fairly quickly & overtake. And yes, I am on crack. sid=moderation |
| Re:language issue? (Score:1) by Squeeze Truck (xmsho@!SHPAM!NEIN!yahoo.com) on Sunday January 30, @05:56PM EST (#231) (User Info) |
| S'true. Win2K absolutely rocks with regard to language support. I have my entire mp3 collection labelled in the character set of each song's country of origin, and they all list correctly together on the command line "You can't say whatever you want about a company." -- John Roberts |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:4, Insightful) by Surak (surak@<TINLC>.thepentagon.com) on Sunday January 30, @01:08PM EST (#62) (User Info) |
| Remove language barriers: internationalize all parts of Linux. This brings up a good point: do you internationalize the source code? Seriously, think about it: the free software movement is all about bringing access to source code and the ability to modify that source code. Do you internationlize the source (meaning comments, variable and function names, etc.)? I think for the sake of complying with the open source movement, I think maybe it needs to be discussed and thought about. The problem that becomes classic is that international versions of programs tend to be much further behind than current, U.S./English versions. It would be even more so if you decided to internationalize the source code, because while the original source is very much English, international versions would need to be translated. It would be an interesting discussion. Maybe an Ask Slashdot forum would be appropriate? We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time -- T.S. Eliot |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @02:23PM EST (#123) |
English is the current standard for programming - standard are good. If people are going to go to the trouble of learning how to program, learning English isn't all that difficult by comparision. |
| Um? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @03:40PM EST (#163) |
| Programming is not hard! Perhaps it is in the MS-world (I've never been there), but it certnatly is not difficult in Linux Land. |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:5, Insightful) by Menthos (m e n t h o s @ m e n t h o s . c o m) on Sunday January 30, @02:31PM EST (#128) (User Info) http://www.menthos.com |
| I don't think that everything about an application should be internationalized. It's the UI of the application, and the documentation, that needs translation. Internationalization of comments? This would indeed be useful to the non-English world, but I don't think that it's a high-priority thing. I'm translating programs myself (GNU utilities into Swedish) and there's a reason why we (translators) have a strict policy not to translate such things as command-line switches. This would break things. So "--verbose" should be left intact in the translated strings, no matter if it is Hindi, Swahili, Esperanto, Dutch or Swedish. But the explaination of "--verbose" in "--help", and the documentation, is translated. To sum things up: Since many wonderful programs lack proper UI translation in many languages (not to mention the documentation!), I think this is where the main efforts should be concentrated. So even if programs are translated, there's still more left to do to make it internationalized.
|
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:5, Insightful) by ianezz on Sunday January 30, @02:47PM EST (#135) (User Info) http://linuxtrent.trew.it |
| > This brings up a good point: do you internationalize the source code? Just my 0.02 Euro here. I'm Italian, and I live in Italy. I'm just a C/C++ programmer like many others. The source code I write has all the comments and symbols names in English. This mainly for 2 reasons: 1) Technical language: programming needs a whole new class of technical terms. Simple words like `formatting', `font', etc. didn't have equivalents in Italian when they were introduced to the mass in the former '80. Simply, we adopted (and distorted) the usual English words. Attempts to create a brand new tech gerg just failed. After 20 years the mass starts using the Italian form for "directory", but still it's a minorty. Just figure yourself when it comes to source code... 2) Technical documentation: good technical documentation is written in English. Programmers like me avoid translations, just because they make life more complex (the effort is doubled: first you read it, then you try to figure out how the terms used are related to the well known English terms). I'm translating the GNU Emacs manual in Italian in my spare time, and it's a damn difficult work (and it's not at all about programming - figure it yourself when it comes to programming books). 3) I18n: English is good for symbol names, just because you don't have to do with accents. Italian words just look ugly without accents, and using ISO-8859-1 is still not a viable option for sources... :-) 4) Last but not least: English is the de facto `lingua franca' for programmers, just like Latin was for the europeans in the passed ages. If you start writing your sources using one of the 18 languages of India for comments and symbol names, probabilities are that only indians will ever peek into them, just taking out the rest of the world. And since most people giving help and advice on programming out there speak English well enough to make one understand them (perhaps except Alan Cox, sometimes ;-), probabilities are that one's best choice is (for now) learn English. Of course, I just use Italian in every other context, just like everyone else... I hope this is a bit clarifying. |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:2) by dsplat on Sunday January 30, @05:33PM EST (#207) (User Info) |
| Do you internationlize the source (meaning comments, variable and function names, etc.)? There's a problem with that. A variable or function has a name. The whole point of internationalization is to allow a program to dynamically look up message text at run-time for the user's language. That doesn't make a great deal of sense for a static part of the program, the source code. However, I can see two ways in which your question, if not taken literally, is useful. First, there is good reason to internationalize programming tools. There's nothing wrong with the idea that gcc should be able to handle comments and literals in any language. Identifiers present a more difficult problem because the code may be compiled on a system that doesn't have the original programmer's locale. Thus, the set of valid characters for identifiers should not depend on the locale. For that matter, neither should the valid set of characters anywhere else in the code. The other useful interpretation of this question is the obvious one that there is a need for documentation that can make the internals of the code clear to a non-English-speaking audience. Certainly, English is the language of programming. Any project in which programmers can't communicate with each other is likely to fragment. But that is no reason that a team of programmers sharing some non-English common language should not be able to read the system header files for example. [This space intentionally left blank] |
| i18n and l10n, where and when (Score:1) by Late (late@mbnet.fi) on Sunday January 30, @05:51PM EST (#226) (User Info) http://www.mbnet.fi/~late/ |
| > This brings up a good point: do you > internationalize the source code? Isn't i18n the process of designing programs to support several languages and currency/time/decimal notations and i10n the process of actually making changes for a specific language? And I don't think code really should be localized. Coders will probably have to understand English to read documentation they need anyway and your average non English-speaking end user probably won't look at the code. I18n and l10n of programs and documentation is of much wider use at laest at the moment. Of course one could develop a translation engine that only translated the comments in source files :) Oh. I would recommend that everyone started localization on documents about localization. That way as many people as possible can help. -Late |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:1) by bonebill on Sunday January 30, @07:55PM EST (#260) (User Info) |
Programmers see source code. Users see user interfaces. For every one programmer there are going to be many times that number of users (10000 times?). Any effort spent on i18n of source code is therefore going to be (say) 10000 times less valuable than effort spent on i18n of UIs. So to me it looks pretty pointless. A lot of effort for at best a tiny gain. I guess more likely it would simply be counter-productive. |
| Time for another preprocessor (Score:1) by nels_tomlinson on Monday January 31, @08:49AM EST (#310) (User Info) |
| How about a translator program? c2hindi to change the keywords in c-code to Hindi equivalents, and hindi2c to take c-code written using those Hindi equivalents and translate back to standard c. Table-driven, of course, so it could be Inuit-2-c or Urdu-2-c just as quickly and easily. This would internationalize the functional part of the source code quickly and easily, and let the international version stay just hours behind the english version. Translating the comments would be many orders of magnitude harder, so this isn't a complete solution, but at least someone who is literate in Hindi could look at the source code and get a clue about what's going on. This might be a great project for the Linux internationalization effort, since it might simplify teaching programming. You wouldn't have to learn english to learn c, and you wouldn't have to make some strange, non-standard language for non-english speakers. Do any programmers from non-english-speaking countries have any thoughts on this? Nels |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:1) by rgmoore (glandauer@worldnet.att.net) on Sunday January 30, @01:14PM EST (#68) (User Info) |
...person by person, country by country -- and starting with the corners of the world that are ignored: where there are barriers to language, barriers to affordability, barriers to access, barriers to the type of application that is needed. Support the world outside of the little space you inhabit. Think outside the USA, think outside white Europe. Most of the world isn't like you. Look after them, and it'll pay back a hundredfold... This last is possibly underappreciated. India in particular is often regarded as a country with a lot of untapped programming talent. If all or most of those programmers wind up using free software, that's going to contribute a huge developer pool. Many of those people are going to be working on old hardware that still requires clever programming to get decent performance, and that could be helpful, too. We all know that even good programs can often be improved by detailed hand optimizing of the code, and that's an itch that those third world programmers are likely to want to scratch. An army of good programmers writing free software and pumping out carefully optimized code sounds like a very nice payback. |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:4, Insightful) by QuMa (fvw+slashdot@var.cx) on Sunday January 30, @01:27PM EST (#82) (User Info) http://www.var.cx |
| While I agree with the 'this is the way the world is won' comment, I'm actually not to wild about internationalisation. I think internationalisation is going to put up barriers in the long run, not break them down. If everybody gets used to 'computers speak english', everybody can communicate. So untill a real technological babelfish is made (no, altavista's babelfish doesn't count), people who don't speak english will be cut off large parts of the net. English is any easy language to learn, (It isn't my first language, and yes, it might show, but I'm reasonably understandable), compared to all other 'major' languages. So I say, everybody learn english. Don't waste time internationalising. |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:2) by Menthos (m e n t h o s @ m e n t h o s . c o m) on Sunday January 30, @03:32PM EST (#158) (User Info) http://www.menthos.com |
| I disagree. This may seem natural since I do program translations. I do them for free, so my views are completely unaffected of economical reasons, if anybody thought that. While I agree that the world would be better if everybody spoke the same language, I also think that this is never going to happen. Even if it was, I don't think that "locking out" potential users from using a computer by not translating programs is the right way to go. This just makes the language barrier even worse - many people would love to learn English well, but they may not be able to do it for various reasons. My parents, for example, don't understand English very well (they learned it in school in the 50ies) and speak it even worse - but that's not going to change. For old people (over 45-50), a language is hard to learn. Some say that the ability to easily learn a language is already decreasing in the age of 10 to 15 - this is why we learn languages early in school. These are some of my arguments why I translate programs:
|
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:2) by QuMa (fvw+slashdot@var.cx) on Sunday January 30, @04:51PM EST (#193) (User Info) http://www.var.cx |
| You do have a few valid points, however I think if you translate now, lots of kids will grow up with localised software, and will not learn enough english to be comfortable with it. And, in the long run, will not be able to communicate with a large part of the internet. If we don't translate, half a generation is lost, true. But after that, english will be standard. Maybe this will happen with localised versions available, but maybe not. I don't think this is robbing people of their culture, or anything in that direction. First of all, nobody is preventing them from say making their own or whatever, if they must. Culture isn't bad in itself, but you shouldn't let a too strong urge for tradition stand in the way of progress. |
| [OT] Your english isn't bad. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @03:44PM EST (#166) |
| Your english is quite readable, in fact, It's a good bit better then some Americans on mailing-lists. :) (I'm one of the english as first language but poor-english speakers :) ) |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:1) by Lozzer on Sunday January 30, @04:44PM EST (#189) (User Info) |
| Hell, why don't we make everyone program in Assembler. Then we could all understand each others programs... Variety is the spice of life. Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster. |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:1) by QuMa (fvw+slashdot@var.cx) on Sunday January 30, @08:09PM EST (#262) (User Info) http://www.var.cx |
| Actually, assembler is less portable and universally understandable, as you well know. Being different is nice, but I prefer to do it in a way that doesn't lock out others. |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:1) by bradipo (bradipo@NOSPAMxmission.com) on Sunday January 30, @11:17PM EST (#283) (User Info) http://www.xmission.com/ |
| I have to agree with your points. Computer Science is about defining standards in computing and I think this should also apply to communications. What we need is a global communication language, not the attachment of hundreds of languages into a global Internet. I too speak another language, but while it was difficult at first to learn, it has definitely been rewarding. -- fides est et probitas tuum retinere |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:2, Insightful) by gaijin_yutz on Monday January 31, @02:17AM EST (#303) (User Info) |
| I'm going to assume that you live in Europe based on your email address. I don't know about your ethnicity, so I can't say if you have ever lived outside of your home country. If you have never been outside of the West, I understand why you assume English is "easy to learn". If you have never lived outside your home country or outside of the West, try it for a year or so then come back and say what you said. Most of the world does not speak English and is perfectly happy with their local language. The Japanese part of the Internet is doing quite well without English, thank you. This is the only place I have lived besides the U.S. and I can clearly say that even though studying English is a popular hobby here, 99% of all communications in the .jp name space are in Japanese. All of our 6 monthly Linux magazines are in Japanese. There are more Linux books in Japanese than I can keep track of. AFAIK most of the O'Reilly books have been translated as well. If people did not "waste time internationalizing," only the people who want to spend time going through the work of reading in another language could enjoy the Internet. My mother in law, who is in her late 50's, really dislikes reading English, but thanks to localized OS' and software she can send and recieve email in Japanese from everyone in the family. just because it was easy for you to learn English does not mean it is easy for everyone else. |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:1) by WillWare on Monday January 31, @09:54AM EST (#321) (User Info) http://world.std.com/~wware/ |
until a real technological babelfish is made (no, altavista's babelfish doesn't count)Are there any open-source machine translation projects? The prodigious bug-fixing rate for open source software would mean that even a poor translator could lead eventually to an excellent one, if bad assumptions were not built into it at some fundamental level. And if they were, somebody would notice them and start a second project. I don't work in the field of machine translation, but I'm guessing that an important first step is to invent a sufficiently rich interlingua so that you can do something like EnglishinterlinguaHindi or EnglishinterlinguaTamil. One benefit of an interlingua would be that adding a new language would be an O(1) operation rather than O(N), where you already have N languages. Another is that it centralizes many assumptions in one place, where they can be better subjected to scrutiny and peer review. An open-source translator would be an excellent thing. It would be a boon for Internet access to many people throughout the world who would otherwise miss out. BTW, I got 2/3 of the way thru your post before I learned that you weren't a native English speaker, and that only because you specifically mentioned it. |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:1) by WillWare on Monday January 31, @10:03AM EST (#324) (User Info) http://world.std.com/~wware/ |
I wrote: EnglishinterlinguaHindi or EnglishinterlinguaTamilI had intended to punctuate that so it would be more readable. Maybe English<->Interlingua<->Hindi or English<->Interlingua<->TamilApologies for illegibility. |
| More of the struggle here (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:27PM EST (#84) |
| CNN Entertainment |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:1) by maxmaxmax on Sunday January 30, @01:29PM EST (#89) (User Info) |
| By having free OSes we can get so much of the world on the net that eventually we'll run out of Linux names. IndLinux, AfghanLinux, ZimbaLinux, UzbekiLinux... When will it all end? -Max Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken. |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:1) by Gray on Sunday January 30, @06:47PM EST (#252) (User Info) http://www.ph.nu |
| Indeed, and it's being won by a bunch of people I have no common language with.. Inside 10 years, only speaking english is probably going to make it extreamly hard to stay current.. Visions of a Snowcrashed west, this is the way.. The rest of the world could just leave our close-source-whoring asses behind.. |
| You mean nationalization, not internationalization (Score:2) by Morgaine on Sunday January 30, @09:52PM EST (#270) (User Info) |
| Actually, if you internationalize computing and the Internet, one of the things you're doing is playing into the hands of nationalists. The Internet is a superb melting pot for all nationalities, but the reason for its success in this role is that the use of English removes the primary barriers separating people. You can see it daily on the national-language forums: they're nowhere near as free from nationalist tension as the ones that use English, which are truly international. (Try IRC.) I love languages and I'm a great advocate of multi-linguism for everyone. Sharing a language brings people together so that the more languages people are taught in school or learn later on, the better they tend to get on with each other (unless politics has got to them first). Furthermore, the use of English on the Internet is a strong lever in the same direction of broad social understanding and cohesion. In contrast, the "internationalization" of computing systems is a complete misnomer: it's really nationalizing them, in the original sense of the term, ie. giving them a national orientation. Of course one might argue that it helps those that know only the national language and no other, but that's precisely the point: they no longer need to gain an international viewpoint once that has been done. And that's not to mention the dark side, namely the benefit to those that seek advantage from nationalism, ie. the politicians and puppet masters. This "internationalization" bandwagon is unstoppable, but alas it has disadvantages as well as the more obvious advantages. And don't believe that the promoters (I'm talking about politicians here) are all altruistic. Pigs don't fly, not even abroad. |
| It's called localisation, and should be available! (Score:2) by Cato (rdonkin@SPAMLESSbigfoot.com) on Monday January 31, @09:59AM EST (#322) (User Info) http://www.bigfoot.com/~rdonkin/ |
| First of all, the accepted term for translating a program's text and other conventions is 'localisation' - technically, internationalisation is the process of ensuring that software is very easily localised. More importantly, why do so many people think that they should have the choice of using the Internet in their native language (which I'd guess is English for many people with this view), but that other people should not? Why don't you all learn written Chinese so *you* can benefit from an international outlook. Just because English happens to be the language most used on the Internet does not mean that everyone should be forced to use it. In fact, I think it would do a lot of good to some anglophones to have to use another language occasionally. On a practical note - for any Linux users who want a nicely internationalised + localised distribution - check out Mandrake 6.1 or later (7.0 is now downloadable). This has a great default setup that includes all the fonts required to surf to Japanese, Chinese, Korean and other sites using my normal Netscape 4.7 (English version). Even though I only know a few Chinese characters, it's great to at least be able to see the page and maybe send it to a friend who can read it (as an image attachment, no doubt...). Mozilla (http://mozilla.org) has a great page on i18n and l10n, with some good resources. |
| Not just localisation but internationalisation too (Score:1) by Sivaraj on Monday January 31, @12:43PM EST (#337) (User Info) |
| It is not just l10n that indian languages need. But good i10n too. Almost all the indian scripts fall under the category of complex scripts. That means, for example, if you want to display a unicode document for, say Hindi, a simple unicode font will not suffice. The unicode text needs to converted into a set of ligature glyphs based on a complex set of formating rules. As of date there is no API that can do this formating for Linux. Microsoft has the Uniscribe API for doing such tasks which will be available for Windows 2000. While there are few efforts to bring similar tools into Linux world, one significant effort that needs support is the Pango library. ( http://people.redhat.com/otaylor/pango). Unless there is a good framework that supports these complex requirements in Indian scripts localisation would not be a possibility. -Siva. |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:1) by GMOL on Sunday January 30, @11:53PM EST (#289) (User Info) |
| Like I said in earilier posts, this is a non-proposal. Just what parts of linux are you going to internationalize? All the shells, installation scripts, all possible system utils, compiler switches? There are plenty of pentiums in india...why the hell would india want/need millions of 386's boxes running vi and lynx? IS this really providing technology to the masses? THere is also plenty of inet access and cd burners, schools do not want your garbage disks...send money if you really want to help. How does /. rate "yay linux" crap like this so high? |
| Re:And this is the way the World is won... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @11:40AM EST (#331) |
| GDP per capita of USA: $31 500 GDP per capita of India: $1 720 US pop. poverty: 13% India pop. poverty: 35% US inflation: 1.6% India inflation: 14% Yah, I'm sure India is just frigging overflowing with Pentium-class machines, what with *those* sorts of economic indicators. |
| What about coding? (Score:2, Interesting) by rwv3 (rwv4.a@t.po.cwru.edu) on Sunday January 30, @12:27PM EST (#27) (User Info) |
| While it would be nice to translate user apps into some of the 18 (Yow!) languages spoken in India, a major point of Linux is to allow the user to modify the software to taste. What (spoken) language will the software be written in? Most existing software written in C++, or whatever your preference is, uses the English language, especially the kernel. While I understand that the intent of the article is directed to India's lower classes, what happens to the hacker who wishes to collaborate on an Enligsh-language project, who does not speak Engligh? |
| Re:What about coding? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:24PM EST (#79) |
| The thing is, English is used as the "lingua franca" (and I know what that means liuterally, I'm using it to mean the "trade language") of the Indian subcontinent. There are many dialects and races in india, at least as different as French from Spanish, or Irish from British. Most of the big money transactions are conducted through english. Most of the computer users will be middle-class (India has a large middle class), and will have a fair knowledge of english anyway. |
| Re:What about coding? (Score:1) by theMAGE on Sunday January 30, @02:12PM EST (#120) (User Info) |
| Please excuse me but C plus Linux Kernel is way harder to understand and learn... till the point you can modify something, compared to English. [I don't think I need to prove it statistically :)] So, it's fine for average Joe (or Mowgli (sorry it's the only generic indian name I can think of)) to have the library software localized in English but if he is willing to hack that code... he needs much more than to be able to read the comments. And by the way, why stop to indian if we start to translate the comments? Chineze, Mexican, French, German comes to mind. And let's suppose that decides to translate all the comments in the aforementioned languages: all development has to stop while all the comments are done. Have you ever looked to a piece of comment hanging above a piece a code and those two saying completely different stories? If English comments tends to be outdated, what can we expect about multilanguage...? There is a very good argument up somewhere that even that average (indian)Joe will have access to a web in hindi[1-18] he will not be able to access the rest of it and I cannot imagine milions of translators translating it for him... And yes, my mother tongue is not English. |
| Re:What about coding? (Score:1) by Chandon Seldon (acorn@gis.net) on Sunday January 30, @02:28PM EST (#126) (User Info) http://www.calug.net/ |
Realistically, the only solution is for the person who wants to join in to learn Engilish. Given that to learn to program your going to have to put a lot of effort into learning to use the computer, learning the programming languages, etc, learning English really isn't that much more to ask, especially considering that, reguardless of how good i18n gets, you're still only going to be able to get most resources in English. At some point, if people want to work together they have to settle on a standard, and the de-facto standard human language for dealing with computer stuff is English. |
| Re:What about coding? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @03:05PM EST (#147) |
| don't forget that those 18 languages are only the major ones. theres tens of thousands of localized dilects of such. |
| Localization is (Score:2, Interesting) by predictive on Sunday January 30, @12:28PM EST (#29) (User Info) |
I think most would agree that while English remains the de-facto language of technology, a great need for locale support exists. Many disciplines benefit from contributors who do not speak or read English. Mathematics comes immediately to mind; a significant portion of development in pure mathematic research stems from Russian speaking scientists. I'd hate to think how many advances would be lost to that community if support for that paticular locale wasn't widely available. Open Source software definitely provides the best avenue for international support - reference the support of the Finnish government for Linux for educational use over Windows due to Microsoft's unwillingness to provide them with the proper langauge support. Providing non-English speaking developers the power to support their local language is a prime reason for the power and popularity of Open Source. Diversity is often a Good Thing(TM). Open Source empowers that diversity in a big way.
So E is relatively prime to (P-1)(Q-1)... Odd, that. |
| Linux is taking over the World! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:31PM EST (#33) |
| Why is it that only Slashdot is on to this BIG story. Why are the other online computer news sites missing this BIG story. Linux is taking over the WORLD! Step by step, day by day. But only Slashdot and its readers seem to notice. |
| Re:Linux is taking over the World! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:00PM EST (#58) |
| And when Linux owns 99% of the OS market, we can start bashing them!!! Woo-hoo! |
| Put down your Kool-aid (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:27PM EST (#83) |
| The hallucinogens are working now. |
| Slashdot: "We Put the Borg in Dot Org" (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @12:37AM EST (#294) |
| We will RULE WITH AN IRON FIST. All of the dirt-sucking peasants of the world will endure A THOUSAND AND ONE YEARS of absolute domination by the irresistable forces of Linux Thought. Truth comes not from the barrel of a gun, but from the barrel of a gun operated by a Geeks with Guns Geek! You will obey. We will rule. We will control the infrastructre; it is Written that "He who pulleth the Cable shall inherit the kingdoms of the Earth", an eternal hegemony of sysadmins and webmonkeys, and goddammit it's obvious to me that within fifty years, every live "human being" (so-called) on the "face" of the "Earth" will be chained to a commodity beige box with an IRON CABLE running into HIS QUIVERING, GELATINOUS BRAIN, and every damned one of these wretched Delta-minuses will be crunching keys for all he's worth (note the male pronoun: women can't use computers -- I read it on Slashdot!) and/or locating aliens as they slowly and gracefully revolve around far stars, twitching their tendrils and sipping frozen fucking ammonia cocktails. Will they invest? Oh, yes, they will invest. And Linux Shall Roool. |
| PR People (Score:2) by razvedchik (rybolov@spam.cyber-dyne.com) on Sunday January 30, @12:32PM EST (#35) (User Info) http://eugene-linux.cyber-dyne.com |
| I can see the PR people when they get ahold of this: "Linux, the official OS of the largest democracy in the world. Get yours today." The problem with e-mail lists is that you can't post as the "Anonymous Coward". |
| Re:PR People (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @08:44PM EST (#266) |
| "The problem with e-mail lists is that you can't post as the "Anonymous Coward" Yahoo mail? |
| incompatibility (Score:1) by Mints (Aitrus@linuxstart.com) on Sunday January 30, @12:33PM EST (#36) (User Info) http://www.userfriendly.org |
| The Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Information Technology must keep open communication because the worst thing that can happen is incompatibility. When the institutes finish work on such localized versions (dialects?) they must above all be compatible even if it means modifying the original language slightly. As for whether to call a file a "file", look at the hundreds of translations of linux. Numbers anyone?? I would also like to note that i'm happy that the majority of the population of India and China are starting out with a real operating system, so when Microsoft tries to go and gain ground in the Indian OS debate the enlightened Indians will simply laugh at the silly little operation system. "listen, there's a hell of a universe next door: let's go!" -e.e. cummings |
| Hmmm (Score:1) by Signal 11 (signal11@mediaone.net?Subject=Slashdot comment) on Sunday January 30, @12:38PM EST (#42) (User Info) http://www.malign.net/~bojay/ |
| Call me cynical, but what's going to happen once their economy develops more? Once they have the money to afford more "standard" solutions like Windows NT and company... will they switch (bowing to popular pressure), or will they stay with the linux solution? Even more important, what's going to happen to all these indians (not american ones!) who have all this linux expertise if/when linux is accepted in the marketplace on a wide-scale? -o Question authority! Yeah, says who? o- |
| Re:Hmmm (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:52PM EST (#51) |
| History shows us that people are reluctant to change. The biggest challenge is going to be getting the population computer literate. If they learn on a Linux box, not many people would be willing to change that. And what's going to happen to Indians with Linux expertise if/when it becomes mainstream? That depends on where. It may become mainstream in the US before it does in India, or vice versa. People will follow the money, in either case. |
| Re:Hmmm (Score:1) by Ian Schmidt (ischmidt@cfl.xuS-mapS.rr.com) on Sunday January 30, @12:55PM EST (#54) (User Info) |
| What if World Domination(tm)'s happened by the time that situation comes around and Linux *is* the popular pressure? |
| Exactly (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:28PM EST (#86) |
| Microsoft already has a development campus in India. |
| Other way around, Sig. (Score:2) by Russ Nelson on Sunday January 30, @02:47PM EST (#134) (User Info) http://russnelson.com/ |
| I've got an Indian customer who is switching to Open Source solutions as promptly as they can. They have found that the amount of money they spend on a solution is only lightly correlated with its ability to solve their problems. They've got US investors, so money isn't a problem. -russ |
| Port Indians to English... (Score:4, Funny) by Bill-Gates (BillGates@microsoft.com) on Sunday January 30, @12:41PM EST (#44) (User Info) http://www.microsoft.com |
| It would be even better to port the Indians to English. Sure, they're not very portable, but with a little re-programming, they will even be able to get onto the internet. In addition, not only will they benefit from [cough]Open Source, but then they'll be able to use my wonderful Windows Products in English. It will save a lot of work for my programmers, to not have to port Windows to another language, and they can use the free time to implement some other features I've been wanting. Security, stability, are a couple of features I've heard good things about. Platform independance sounds kinda neat, for hardware anyway... Regardless, it is very important that you cease your efforts to port Linux to Indian languages, but rather port Indians to English.. Sincerely, Bill Gates (Score 5, Monopoly) Have you tried my newest software? Microsoft.com |
| indians already speak english (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:54PM EST (#105) |
| See subject, dumbass. |
| It's been tried already (Score:2) by Russ Nelson on Sunday January 30, @02:50PM EST (#139) (User Info) http://russnelson.com/ |
| I think that some people have felt in the past that the large number of official languages in India have been responsible for its poverty. The government tried forcing people to learn a different language, with some success at great human cost. I think you'll find that most Indians who haven't learned English have refrained for (their own) very good reasons. -russ |
| 2 Lingua Francas (Score:1) by sumana (sumanah@uclink4.berkeley.edu) on Sunday January 30, @05:14PM EST (#200) (User Info) |
| My parents are from India and they each speak about 5-7 languages with varying degrees of fluency. They are very fluent in English, Hindi, Kannada (the native language of their state/region), and Sanskrit, with some Farsi, Punjabi, Urdu, Tamil, etc. Then again, my parents are VERY highly educated. Indians who are highly educated already know English. Witness the Bangalore Boom, the SiliValley of India -- they already know enough English to get by in the Anglic world of modern software. (By the way, my parents are from Karnataka, the state which contains Bangalore. Visit sometime, if you can.) Somewhat educated people know at least a smattering of English, if nothing else for terms for which their native languages don't have words. "Refrigerator," "globalization," etc. (for example). BUT, somewhat educated people almost ALWAYS know, if not English, Hindi! Hindi and English are the lingua francas (?) of India. At least translating some stuff into Hindi -- comments, etc. -- would make it SO much easier for somewhat educated people to make Linux their own. Of course, maybe the next step will be for people to translate from Hindi into their 14 individual native tongues. I'm just saying that any attempt to translate Linux docs/source into Indian languages should start with either Kannada or Hindi. Kannada has its advantages, too, since most Indian computer programmers already speak Kannada (they're in Bangalore).
|
| Re:Port Indians to English... (Score:2) by dsplat on Sunday January 30, @05:51PM EST (#225) (User Info) |
| It would be even better to port the Indians to English. Yes, I know this was a joke. I did laugh. But I wanted to raise a point that isn't always obvious to monolingual English speakers. I'm the team leader for the Esperanto Translation Team for the Free Translation Project. Esperanto is unusual among languages. To the best of my knowledge, there is not a single monolingual Esperantist anywhere in the world, nor is there likely to be one any time soon. We have no native country as a language and aren't seeking one. For anyone who is confused by this, Esperanto is an artificial language created in 1887. It is usually learned as a second, third or subsequent language. Everyone on the Esperanto Translation Team could be using free software under other languages for which the localization has already been done. I use Linux with English literals except when I an validating translations. But there is a reason to have complete locales for any language that users might want to use software in conjunction with. I can read English just fine, but when I want to write to a non-English-speaking friend in Esperanto, I need an e-mail client that can handle the character set. And when I am writing in Esperanto, it takes me a moment to switch back and forth. I don't do it instantly. Having messages, menus, etc., in the same language I am working in is a great help. Teaching the entire world a single common language will not eliminate the need for computing environments that support their native languages. The only thing that would accomplish that would be if we all learned a single language and abandoned all others. That would involve abandoning names, literature, culture. It isn't a step many people are willing to take. Certainly, teach the world English, or French, German, Russian, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Latin, Esperanto or any other language. Don't ask them all to give up the perfectly good languages they already have. [This space intentionally left blank] |
| Super Power? (Score:1) by cfish on Sunday January 30, @12:44PM EST (#46) (User Info) |
...It is sad that in spite of claims that India is a software superpower, we cannot harness IT for the benefit our own nation's citizens and the greatest stumbling block is a lack of agreement on standards. "Software SuperPower?" Is that like, India's "Nuclear Super Power?" |
| Re:Super Power? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:57PM EST (#55) |
| You are aware of the many Indian programmers that immigrate to the US, right? Well, in that sense they are a superpower. It is a breeding ground for a lot of intelligent, technical workers. What he means is that despite the large amount of talent, they all leave and therefore India does not reap the benefits of having them. |
| Re:Super Power? (Score:1) by cfish on Sunday January 30, @10:56PM EST (#278) (User Info) |
| The indian programmers you see are minorities. The cream of the crop. Consider the population and the fact that Indians speaks English, that's not too surprising. If Chinese high society speak English, you would see a lot more Chinese programmers, too. The English speaking part of India has contributed to this population you have seen. Had they all speak Indian instead of English, there wouldn't be as many Indian programmers. In this sense, population counts. The word "Super Power" just shows Indian's typical point of view - not acknoledging the fact that India needs a lot of work. There is some foundamental problems that source back to the colonization of India, and this "super power" term shows how serious it is. The entire country constantly shows typical signs of low self-esteem. I strongly believe that Linux or free software has nothing to do with it. Indians need to take a lot of painful but necesary foundamental changes in thier thinking and viewpoint in order to really change the situation. just my 2c- i'm not pakistanian. |
| Re:Super Power? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:11PM EST (#64) |
| For example many software companies have subcontractors in India. Like it or not, it's true. |
| Be careful (Score:2, Insightful) by Binar1 (use_my_public_key) on Sunday January 30, @12:47PM EST (#49) (User Info) |
| On one hand, Hindi support brings computer access to millions of people (in a best case scenario). On the other hand, the fact that software is being specialized to work under certain languages establishes barriers for non-Hindi speakers. Hindi software will have to break down to the english language at some point on the code level, but documentation and system-specific language operations will reduce portability. Although many deny it, English dominates the languages of the world in terms of the power wielded by English-language speakers. I respect, and am, in fact, facinated by non-English languages. However, while Hindi support is definatly a plus for Linux, we need to keep in mind that the end goal is to open the possibility of communications between everyone, not one single group. |
| Re:Be careful (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @02:32PM EST (#129) |
All that should be nessisary to internationalize a properly written GNU App is to plug in the appropriate gettext dictionary... |
| Common mistake in reasoning (Score:2, Informative) by nbor (nitin@nospam.borwankar.com <remove nospam>) on Sunday January 30, @02:40PM EST (#132) (User Info) |
| While it is important that Indian programmers learn English and become computer literate (most Indian programmers are, by the way), it is not at all essential for all Linux users in India to be English literate. When Linux is embedded in kiosks and handhelds with handwriting input, the user is not really "using Linux" or "computing" - they are just communicating. While the language used to print assembly docs for the Boeing 737 are in English, a large proportion of the people flying Indian Airlines' 737's are neither airplane mechanics nor aeronautical engineers. Yes, the Information Economy is where it's at - however it is not necessary for the whole population to be "computer literate" to be "computer users" and gain the benefits of the Information Economy. The last farmer in India will be "computer literate" about the same time that the last homeless person on the streets of San Francisco becomes computer literate. In other words there will be (for a long time) people at the other end of the Information continuum that will not get immediate benefits. It is a common mistake in reasoning (often seen on Slashdot and other forums) to assume all Linux users are or need to be programmers. An ATM user uses computers and is part of the Information Economy without necessarily being a computer programmer or even what we call a "computer user" In fact the future success of Linux and of computing lies in making it ubiquitous so that people everywhere use it and it works and they don't want or need to know what lies underneath. Only a small fraction of the population needs to understand English, computer programming and Linux before Linux is everywhere. So let's focus on achievable goals closer to reality than to keep putting out the absurd requirement that 900+ million people in India need to learn English first before they are able to get the benefits of Linux. I would be quite impressed if the 200+ million people in the US all learned English and computer programming and yet a good proportion of them are beneficiaries of the Information Economy. Nitin Borwankar, CEO and President, Borwankar Research Inc. Aunt Edna's moped took a wrong exit off the Information Superhighway and landed in a microwave oven in Peoria |
| Just one thing..... (Score:3, Insightful) by browser_war_pow on Sunday January 30, @01:05PM EST (#61) (User Info) http://digitalheresy.tripod.com |
| I don't want to sound like a troll, but shouldn't the indians be more concerned about overpopulation, poverty and the usual like disease, famine and war with pakistahn? It's just like the UN talking about taxing the west's email use to build better telecom infrastructures in 3rd world nations despite the fact that most of the people in those countries are either too poor to afford the necessary equipment or are starving to death. Welcome to the 21st century: megacorporations crush personal liberty and individual rights and the government calls it "capitalism" |
| Re:Just one thing..... (Score:2) by 0xdeadbeef on Sunday January 30, @01:37PM EST (#91) (User Info) |
| Um, what do think is going to fix that? Government propoganda, or selling out their resources to western interests? What the hell do think "telecom infrastructures" are for if not economic development? Linux helps unindustrialized countries develop their own infrastracture, without going into debt to foreign corporations. (And geez man, get an education. You seem to think India is some big shanty town. It's the largest democracy in the world and its software industry is huge, probably second to the US). |
| Re:Just one thing..... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:51PM EST (#102) |
| (And geez man, get an education. You seem to think India is some big shanty town. It's the largest democracy in the world and its software industry is huge, probably second to the US). And half the people there can't even read. I guess they'll be able to look at porn once they get net-connected. |
| Re:Just one thing..... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @03:11PM EST (#149) |
| wait, that was from the 1990 census. From the 1980 to 1990, it increased from 34% literacy to 52%. In conservative estimates, literacy will go up 70% in the next census in this year. Oh yah... that's 700 million million we are talking about. :p |
| Re:Just one thing..... (Score:1) by komet on Sunday January 30, @03:50PM EST (#169) (User Info) http://www.microsoft.com |
| And half the people there can't even read. Perhaps having a public Internet terminal in the vicinity will give them incentive to learn to read? I know tons of people who only learned to type at a reasonable speed after being introduced to online chat systems. |
| Re:Just one thing..... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:38PM EST (#213) |
| Nope. The republic of Ireland is second to the US. |
| Re:Just one thing..... (Score:1) by elegant7x (elegant7x(a)hotmail.com) on Sunday January 30, @02:04PM EST (#109) (User Info) |
| I don't see why worrying about any of those things would preclude them from worrying about telecom/computer issues. And the UN never said they wanted to tax email, they wanted to tax bandwidth. They gave an example of email, because it would have been very cheap (whereas watching streaming video would have cost you a fortune...) Anyway, just because one country has problems, doesn't mean that they exclusively have to worry about nothing else. "...overpopulation, poverty and the usual like disease, famine and war...". Other then overpopulation, the US is facing all of those issues as well (and I would take issue with the idea that India is overpopulated. Just because there are 'a lot' of people doesn't mean that there are too many, the world isn't anywhere near being overpopulated yet). And think about it, having an educated populous is the first step toward having a happy, productive populous. Additionally, there are a lot of middle class people in India, middle class people who speak English for that matter. Just like Americans. Why should they not be allowed to have a decent telecom system just because other people in the country have problems? Should Americans be striped of there cable modems because of inner city Crystal Meth use? Amber Yuan (--ell7) Taipai Taiwan 2000AD |
| information->education->population reduction (Score:1) by snorks on Sunday January 30, @03:14PM EST (#152) (User Info) |
| The web is a very effective information provider |
| Re:Just one thing..... (Score:3, Insightful) by costas (costas@nospam.malamas.com) on Sunday January 30, @03:34PM EST (#159) (User Info) http://malamas.com/ |
| Telecommunication and transportation infrastructure is what improves wealth, education and peace; not the other way around. Look in your back yard: the interstate highway system in the US was built when the US economy was doing rather poorly; yet it stimulated growth and development. What exactly was California before the coast-to-coast rail lines were built? Definitely not the 7th largest economy in the world... That is what creates wealth: Free Trade, Free Speech. Just imagine how irrelevant the US would be in the world today without proper telecomm and transportation infrastructure. After all, America (OK, Australia too) is the only non-contiguous land mass on this planet. engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth. AegeanTimes: Greek and Turkish News |
| Re:Just one thing..... (Score:2, Interesting) by spuri (spuri@csclub.uwaterloo.ca) on Sunday January 30, @07:05PM EST (#255) (User Info) http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/u/spuri |
| Don't you think the US (and every other 1st world) country should also take care of their poor, the hungry, the homeless, the high crime rate in particular areas, the victims of racism, sexism (pay inequity for women), homophobia, those unable to afford a university or college education despite their opportunities, the arms race with China, etc... instead of wasting resources on wiring the nation to make Net access ubiquitous or providing 500 TV channels? There are problems at all levels of society that need to be addressed simultaneously. You don't just ignore group A to help group B, just because group A has their essential needs met. Furthermore, better IT access enables the economy to grow. The taxes collected during a growing economy can be used to address the problems you mentioned. Sunil Puri spuri@csclub.uwaterloo.ca |
| unicode (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:12PM EST (#66) |
| sure, unicode does great things for internationalization, but it's 16bits vs 7bits for ascii. oh well. |
| Re:unicode (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:20PM EST (#72) |
| No big deal. If all you want is the ABC's in ASCII, then just use the UTF-8 encoding for Unicode, which is backwards compatible with ASCII. No size inflation whatsoever. |
| Re:unicode (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @06:05PM EST (#236) |
| And a lot of people don't seem to know that unicode UTF-8 mode is already in linux. On RH or Mandrake, just type unicode-start at the command prompt... |
| Re:unicode (Score:1) by chrischow (christian@SPAMAWAY.trash80.org.uk) on Monday January 31, @09:31AM EST (#317) (User Info) http://www.trash80.org.uk/ |
| can anyone tell me how many characters are allowed in unicode, from a number i heard before theres not enough space for chinese *alone* - never mind all the other languages in the world |
| Re:unicode (Score:1) by chrischow (christian@SPAMAWAY.trash80.org.uk) on Monday January 31, @12:14PM EST (#333) (User Info) http://www.trash80.org.uk/ |
| aha it always pays to look it up first before u type =D 65000 characters in total, lets see... it might be enough but u have to fit traditional, simplifiied chracters in there plus japanese and korean versions of chinese characters plus the few thousand cantonese only characters... so maybe you'll need to use about 35000 spaces for CJK |
| Re:unicode (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @01:20PM EST (#338) |
| Try this: http://deall.ohio-state.edu/grads/chan.200/cjkv/charcount.html |
| Local programming languages (Score:2, Interesting) by nan0ok (nanook linux nu) on Sunday January 30, @01:15PM EST (#69) (User Info) |
| Will this spawn local (non-english-romano) programing languages? Will they have to "re-invent the wheel"? Obviously, all programming languages today are a subset of english with some punctuational and structual differences. A non-english speaking (reading) person confronted with a totally non-english computer environment will surely not have that much incentive learning english (not at least to operate his computer). This way, if the person in question want to program his computer, how will he be able to do that ? Why not port C to punjabi ? it should be a matter of patching gcc, now wouldn't it ? This is just so cool! cat ~/.signature: segmentation fault |
| Re:Local programming languages (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:26PM EST (#80) |
| Probably the place to look for an answer is Japan, who fit the non-English, non-Roman criteria, and are already a developed and established example. However, at some level, there is always backwards compatibility with ASCII, so someone who needs to get behind the scenes to program can do it. Even the Engish-esque programming languages are a hindrance to users of highly inflecting languages--how many forms can "program" take in Russian? |
| Re:Local programming languages (Score:1) by ben_ (ben@last.uk.com.nospam) on Sunday January 30, @04:01PM EST (#178) (User Info) |
| When I did O-level Computer Studies many, many years ago (it's a UK education thing, okay?) in Wales, we actually looked at a Welsh programming language. All the keywords in Welsh. Very, very bizarre. Anyone else remember BASEG? Or the Welsh version of CESIL? ben_ the technologist and platform agnostic |
| Japanese and programming languages (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @06:20PM EST (#244) |
| I've seen computer programs with comments and labels in many languages, spanish, french, german... A language like C is hardly English, there are a dozen or so keywords which are derived from English, but you could easily #define while someotherword I've never seen Japanese. I've seen mixtures of english and japanese-word romaji but never kanji or anything like that. For the quite simple reason that type of writing japanese is not something easily done on a computer keyboard (yes, I know what hiragana is, and hiragana!=japanese in the general sense. This is even more true for Chinese.) Yes, for the final end-user display they do make it look nice with all the proper kanji symbols and such, but I've never seen the code written this way. |
| Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:3, Insightful) by Tim Behrendsen (tim{at}behrendsen{dot}com) on Sunday January 30, @01:21PM EST (#74) (User Info) http://www.behrendsen.com |
First let me say that I understand the need for computers that work in native languages. But, it seems as if much of the point of essay is to improving the Indian economy and help them get "plugged in" to the world. If that's the goal, then it's much more important to change the education infrastructure so that the majority of the population learns English as a second language. As the professor himself points out, most of the web is in English. Once Indians are on the web, they will still be limited in the information that they can use. Imagine the effect of citizens being able to access all the information of the web, not just information that originates in India (or is written in an Indian language). English is the standard international language of the world (Yes, I know French is "officially" the international language, but... that's a joke). For any country that wants to break out of "third world" status, a population fluent in English is absolutely critical. -- |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:1) by dodobh (d o d o b h @ v s n l . c o m) on Sunday January 30, @02:10PM EST (#117) (User Info) |
| The Logic behind the localization arguements runs as follows: If you have localized language support, you have people who will provide content in those languages. So the total local content increases, which provides further support for local language upport. Its a self feedig cycle, and we are trying to kickstart it. |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:1) by dancingmad on Sunday January 30, @02:56PM EST (#141) (User Info) |
| As a American-born Bangladeshi I think I can say this: What is this, Kipling's "White Man's Burden"? Do you have to civilize the backwards desi by teaching them English? That's pure and utter nonsense. If an Indian (esp. one who can afford a computer)wants to learn English he or she can. It doesn't need to be forced on them "Who in cholesterol's name are you?" -Mog, Chocobo Racing |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:2) by Tim Behrendsen (tim{at}behrendsen{dot}com) on Sunday January 30, @03:51PM EST (#171) (User Info) http://www.behrendsen.com |
Who is talking about civilizing? That's your own bigotry and prejudice speaking. I'm talking about growing your economy, and bringing your country out of starvation. Wouldn't it be nice if your farmers could read the latest agricultural journals? Oh wait, they better wait until they're translated. International business is conducted in English. Should the average citizen have the opportunity to engage in international business, or should that only be reserved for the Elite who can afford to become fluent in English? And if you haven't noticed, most of the information on the web is in English. Is this information only "appropriate" for the rich in India? Are they only to learn "outside" information that the Elite (or the government) deems appropriate to translate? Yes, it's easy to say "if they need it, they'll learn it", and this argument might even fly in richer countries, but something tells me that India doesn't have quite the same infrastructure for the poorest citizens to be able to access English tutoring. Once a citizen knows English, and has access to a computer in a library, even the poorest individual has access to much of the knowledge of the world. That citizen can bypass "approved" translations (which might or might not be accurate). -- |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:1) by chrischow (christian@SPAMAWAY.trash80.org.uk) on Monday January 31, @09:19AM EST (#312) (User Info) http://www.trash80.org.uk/ |
| And if you haven't noticed, most of the information on the web is in English. because the net got its headstart in the US, now other langauges are definately catching up |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:2) by Detritus (jlimpert@acm.org) on Sunday January 30, @04:26PM EST (#187) (User Info) |
| If someone wishes to remain ignorant of English, fine, that is their choice and handicap. A knowledge of Latin used to be mandatory for educated Europeans and Americans. It was the lingua franca of its day. It is still useful for some professions. German had a similar standing in chemistry. The reality is that you need to be able to communicate with people in other countries. Today, the most useful language is English. Tomorrow, who knows. Don't confuse practicality with colonialism. Many of my coworkers are Chinese, Indian, Korean and Vietnamese. Their only common language is English. |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:2, Insightful) by aziraphale on Sunday January 30, @02:56PM EST (#142) (User Info) |
| Sorry, I must have missed the insight that got this moderated up. The point is that even a small percentage of the Indian population getting online would lead to a massive increase in the amount of Indian web content out there, in Indian languages, aimed at Indian people. Amazon.com is not likely to be as popular in Bangalore as Ganges.in... The sooner Westerners realise that they are a small minority and that the first two letters of WWW mean World-Wide, the better. Posts like this just show how far away that eventuality is. |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:2) by Tim Behrendsen (tim{at}behrendsen{dot}com) on Sunday January 30, @03:38PM EST (#161) (User Info) http://www.behrendsen.com |
No, answers like yours show how far away India is from become a world-dominant country. When Asian countries wanted to grow their economies, did they whine that everyone wouldn't learn Asian languages? No, they learned English because they realized that international business is conducted in English. If you want to produce Indian-language content for Indian-language people, go right ahead. But to argue that the Indian people should be closed off from the world's information until the world's information is translated is just stupid. -- |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:2) by Cato (rdonkin@SPAMLESSbigfoot.com) on Tuesday February 01, @07:54AM EST (#347) (User Info) http://www.bigfoot.com/~rdonkin/ |
| Many better-educated Indians do speak English and thus have access to the rest of the Internet. But why is it necessary for (say) a grandmother to learn English just to send email to her grandchildren? Learning English is a good thing for many people, but it's not an either/or - many people will learn English, many other people will use localised interfaces. |
| French is International? (Score:1) by alexhmit01 (alexh@mtaepi.mit.edu) on Sunday January 30, @03:24PM EST (#156) (User Info) |
| Didn't "International English" replace French as the International language about 50 years ago? I thought that French as the international language collapsed when France did in WWI. I could of course, be wrong. Alex |
| Re:French is International? (Score:2) by Tim Behrendsen (tim{at}behrendsen{dot}com) on Sunday January 30, @03:34PM EST (#160) (User Info) http://www.behrendsen.com |
When I got my passport about 15 years ago, it listed everything in English and French. When I asked why, I was told that "French was the official international language". It could be that it's not "official" any more, but at the passport office at least, there is still some French momentum. -- |
| Re:French is International? (Score:1) by Jace (jace@SraPdiAolMink.net) on Monday January 31, @10:10AM EST (#325) (User Info) http://www.ufies.org/~trion |
| My passport dated September 1992 is all English. I'm Indian. Kiran Jonnalagadda http://lunateks.com |
| Re:French is International? (Score:1) by Crosseyed & Painless on Sunday January 30, @03:51PM EST (#170) (User Info) http://slashdot.org |
| I don't seem to recall the collapse of France in WWI. Perhaps you are referring to France's graceless capitulation in WWII, and their slavish bootlicking of the Nazi overlord? "This post moderated down for your protection!" |
| Re:French is International? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @06:04PM EST (#235) |
| The whole of France was overrun in a mere six weeks in summer 1940, and a similar result would have been obtained in 1914, if not for the occurence, by French admission, of a Miracle. That being out of the way, at the turn of the previous century, English was known as the language of Trade, German the language of Science, and French the language of Diplomacy. This diplomatic background is why my American passport has French along with English on it. |
| Knowing only 1 language is living with 1 eye open (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @03:38PM EST (#162) |
| I can appreciate your misguided intention to help the Indian people better themselves economically by learning English before acquiring better information technology. But you might want to consider the fact that the majority of the world's people do not speak only English. Another sobering fact is that the majority of the world's population speaks more than one language. Compare that statistic to the population of the United States. We here in the U.S. are smart enough to learn multiple-languages but we are either too lazy or too busy making money to do so. Knowing multiple languages would enrich our lives and give more meaning to it than just watching the Super Bowl would give. Before you jump to any conclusions, let me say that I am a citizen of the United States. I am of French-Canadian descent from Acadian exiles in 1755 and I speak American English and a little Cajun-French. I have much much respect for Indian science, culture and philosophy. Though I read about their ideas in English translation, I know that I would understand the subtleties of their ideas much better if I read their ideas in the language it was originally conceived in. You fall into error when you believe that all ideas can be conceived or communicated in only one language. I look upon the fact that I am only fluent in one language as a deficiency on my part and not a reflection of efficiency. I prefer diversity and multi-culturalism. |
| Re:Knowing only 1 language is living with 1 eye op (Score:2) by Tim Behrendsen (tim{at}behrendsen{dot}com) on Sunday January 30, @03:57PM EST (#174) (User Info) http://www.behrendsen.com |
You'll notice that I said "as a second language". I agree that it's enriching to learn other languages, but the reason that most of the world speaks (and is taught) multiple languages is practicality. English is the international language, so it makes sense for someone who speaks non-English to learn the "standard" language. In the US, we already speak the "standard" language, so there is no great incentive to learn another one, except for cultural purposes (as you point out). -- |
| What do you call ... (Score:2) by sumana (sumanah@uclink4.berkeley.edu) on Sunday January 30, @05:16PM EST (#201) (User Info) |
| What do you call someone who knows 3 languages? Trilingual. What do you call someone who knows 2 languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who knows 1 language? American. |
| Re:Practicality of learning multiple languages (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @06:33PM EST (#248) |
| I can read several languages, because if something that I want to read is written in a different language then I don't have much choice (and you are naive if you think everything is written in English). Even though I can read many languages I only speak one, quite simply because that's all anyone around here speaks. I could try speaking another language, but nobody is listening. And there is a big difference between understanding a language and actually getting the grammar and pronounciation correct. |
| Re:Knowing only 1 language is living with 1 eye op (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @06:42PM EST (#249) |
| Jeez, the reasons that white Americans don't learn foreign languages? Could be that there's not mandatory foreign language instruction in secondary schools? In Japan, for instance, schoolkids are given six years of English lessons. In my high school, four years of Spanish were offered, and a mere two years of German or French...as well, foreign language courses were always viewed as a frill, part of the optional Social Studies curriculum, rather than as a base part of any education. And, let's face it, most American schoolkids are destined for jobs in the service sector, ringing up purchases at Wal-Mart, or stocking the shelves at the Bugle Boy store at the mall. Another perfectly obvious reason, that is always overlooked by non-Americans, is that Americans don't have to learn another language...North America is a huge place, as big as two or three Europes put together, and there are only two languages spoken upon the whole of it (if we ignore our Quebecois friend for a moment, as it is perfectly safe to do). Which brings me to yet another facet of America that is painfully obvious to Americans, and yet either escapes the notice of, or is wilfully ignored by foreigners: Many Americans ARE bilingual...in the two most heavily-populated states, Texas and California, a substantial percentage of the population speaks Spanish as well as English. Even the least clueful white mall-rat picks up at least some Spanish by simply growing up around it all the time. |
| Japanese (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @10:24PM EST (#273) |
| "In Japan, for instance, schoolkids are given six years of English lessons." This is simply untrue. As a matter of fact, the Japanese govt is very concerned that the Japanese speak less english than all of the other Asian countries, and point to a lack of schooling in English as the reason why. |
| Re:Knowing only 1 language is living with 1 eye op (Score:1) by Jace (jace@SraPdiAolMink.net) on Monday January 31, @10:14AM EST (#326) (User Info) http://www.ufies.org/~trion |
| Hmm, I've done my schooling in English, but with ten years of Hindi and eight years of Kannada. Wonder why English is still the only language I can speak... |
| Re:Knowing only 1 language is living with 1 eye op (Score:1) by mpe on Tuesday February 01, @07:10AM EST (#345) (User Info) |
| Jeez, the reasons that white Americans don't learn foreign languages? Could be that there's not mandatory foreign language instruction in secondary schools? In Japan, for instance, schoolkids are given six years of English lessons. In my high school, four years of Spanish were offered, and a mere two years of German or French.. Anyway can Spanish really be considered a forign language in the USA? |
| If it is so important... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @10:27PM EST (#275) |
| "I look upon the fact that I am only fluent in one language as a deficiency on my part and not a reflection of efficiency" If being multilingual is SO IMPORTANT, then why don't you learn another language? Put up or shut up. Another liberal heard from. Multiculturalism is not a strength. |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:1) by MoNickels on Sunday January 30, @05:18PM EST (#203) (User Info) http://www.monickels.com/ |
| What, in the name of God or whoever's in charge, do you people think is happening in Japan and China? Do you actually think users or even programmers there are all learning English? They're using their mother tongues! Chinese in all of its variations! Japanese! They even play games in those foreign languges. It's happening all over the world. It will be the same in India. You need only port the system, apps and manuals. Programmers will do and learn what they have to to master their trade. Indians do not need to learn English. They may not even need to learn to use computers. But once they use the new machines, they'll begin creating their own content, the same way all non-English-speaking nations have. Just seven short years ago it was impossible to find more than a handful of pages in any but a few Romance languages. Now look at it. Have you people visited, say, http://kr.yahoo.com/, lately? Or http://www.wanado.fr/? Teaching English to the the poor and powerless is a mistake. I visited Ecuador a couple of years ago. One of my acquaintances there ran a program in a school for homeless children, teaching them English. They couldn't read. Couldn't do written math. They had little clothing. They worked from sun-up to sun-down scrambling to shine shoes. And they had no homes. What use is English to them, except to talk to condescending tourists? Wouldn't that money and time have been better spent on permanent homes? http://www.monickels.com/ |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:1) by pasokan on Sunday January 30, @11:41PM EST (#285) (User Info) http://www.os4.com |
| >they'll begin creating their own content, It may surprise some of you, but we already have content in our languages. We are not content (eeks :->) with the amount though. I am from India and I am connected with a website that is in Tamil. this is not the only site in Tamil and there are many sites in other languages too. My company employs nearly 40 people of whom 12-15 are html/scripting guys. SOme of the chaps who are manning these jobs are people whose mother tongue is NOT Tamil! So all of them speak English, after a fashion, communicate in Tamil interspersed with English; not necessarily only the technical words. If the programmers' tools are available then we will create the content in our languages and English (and French, German ... ). |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:2) by Tim Behrendsen (tim{at}behrendsen{dot}com) on Sunday January 30, @11:52PM EST (#288) (User Info) http://www.behrendsen.com |
First of all, programming is not done in Asian languages, because there is no computer language that uses an Asian language (Is there an Chinese symbol for 'printf'?). Moving past the obvious to your argument about learning English... You could make EXACTLY the same argument about education in general... "They worked from sun-up to sun-down scrambling to shine shoes. And they had no homes. What use is education to them, except to talk to condescending tourists? Wouldn't that money and time have been better spent on permanent homes?" The point of education is to give people the tools to raise themselves above their standing. Maybe if that shoeshine guy knew English, he could study the innumerable amount of information on the web in order to learn a better skill. Or heck, the person could order any number of textbooks (how many are printed in his particular dialect?) He would be able to read CNN to get accurate information about his government in order to help affect change. The problem with your line of reasoning is that the needs never end. Yes, yet more money could be spent on food and shelter, but this is not a long term solution, because you've done nothing to make the people self sufficient. There simply is not enough resources (in ANY country) to take care of every individual. You have to give each individual an opportunity to better themselves through hard work. And that opporunity begins with an open flow of information. -- |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:1) by MoNickels on Monday January 31, @09:20AM EST (#313) (User Info) http://www.monickels.com/ |
| They need to learn to read, not speak English. They need to learn to do written math, not speak English. English is not the only answer. It may not even by AN answer. [Regarding programming in other than English: programmers are learning English only to program, not to create "an open flow of English." They're certainly not learning it merely to browse the web.] http://www.monickels.com/ |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:2) by Tim Behrendsen (tim{at}behrendsen{dot}com) on Monday January 31, @09:47AM EST (#319) (User Info) http://www.behrendsen.com |
Er, I never said that English should be taught to the exclusion of all other education. Obviously that would be absurd. -- |
| Re:Teaching English would be much more valuable (Score:1) by amit_kr (amit(at)usc.edu) on Sunday January 30, @08:23PM EST (#264) (User Info) http://netweb.usc.edu/~amit |
| (I'm an Indian student working on my PhD at USC.) As it turns out, almost the entire technically literate population of India knows/converses in English, with varying levels of proficiency, of course. If you know something about India, you'd probably have heard that we have like hundreds of languages spoken all over India (18 are official). For that reason, English has for some time been the language for inter-regional communication. Unfortunately, we have a major illiteracy problem in the regional languages themselves to aggressively promote English too. ie, our priority is to have most of the population literate first in the regional language (ie the language prevelant in the region they stay in), and then move on to promoting English. As a result, in the urban areas, English is taught right from kindergarten; in semi-urban areas, English is taught from Grade 6 upwards, and of course rural areas don't do English at all. I really doubt if this has happened as a result of goverment policy, but that is the situation now. I, coming from this background, am pretty comfortable with this; especially since government rules mandate that the entry to technical schools will not be related to demonstrable profiency in English, but the same will be the language of higer education (in most cases). This way, a person from a different background gets a chance to learn English after getting through the (very tough!) entrance examinations. Coming to Internet; in India it's still an urban phenomenon. However, there is lots of scope for computer deployment in semi-urban and rural areas; not for surfing the net, but for infrastructure, just like here in the US. The hitch, obviously, is that the very areas that are most useful in terms of computerization are the ones that have the least English proficiency. Hence the need of language distributions of Linux. Its absence will be a major deterrant in its deployment in the field (as opposed to in the urban areas, where it already has significant presence) Finally, an off-topic point. Even MS Windows doesn't really have very good support for indian languages, even if it is available. (Compare Chinese/Korean/Japanese...) This funny fact is due to the aforesaid reality: computer deployment (not even talking about internet here) has traditionally been in areas where a significant computer-handling population knows English: a situation quite unlike any other country (Compare China/Korea/Japan). Hence, never has there been a strong motivation for any major company to develop language OS/software for India: we don't care, we'll use the English version . In Sum: if Linux does provide good support for the regional languages, combined with the fact that it's so cost-effective, it'll be lapped up by the government/NGOs like anything. This will be good both for India AND Linux: imagine the numbers! |
| But if the content isn't in an Indian language... (Score:2, Interesting) by Moe Yerca (moyerca@netscape.net) on Sunday January 30, @01:21PM EST (#75) (User Info) |
| The United States is primarily English speaking. Sure, there is a large Spanish speaking population, but by and large most everyone speaks English. I don't know much about India except what I learned from an Indian roommate I had in college (he was born in America). Through him I was exposed to a little (VERY VERY little, he could understand it but wouldn't even TRY to speak it) Hindi and Punjabi. How many different languages are spoken in India? Is it more? How prolific are the differnt languages? And what happens when you get a native language operating system out to a population who than can then understand less than 1% of all web content. Sure, there are a lot of purty graphics, but it's the text, man! I guess the question applies to more than just India, but all non-English speaking countries trying to break in to the Internet. Maybe someone could develop a "Learn English for Web Browsing" site in multiple languages... but then again after taking years of Spanish in high school and college (which I promptly forgot) I don't think I could learn it from a web site.
Ah, screw it, lets just internationalize the stuff and see what happens. Worst case scenario: using their new found informational power India takes over the world (and the web) and I can't understand any of the content... :) Got a web site? Want to know if it's up? Try @watch for free! |
| dk() is in Indian (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @02:49PM EST (#137) |
| Open dk |
| Pirated Software is the problem (Score:1) by gupg on Sunday January 30, @01:54PM EST (#104) (User Info) http://www.ics.uci.edu/~sumitg |
| The reason why people so far have been embracing Windows and not Linux in India (an even among the young "hackers") is due to the fact that pirated copies of Windows can easily obtained. Also, Microsoft is making bigger inroads because they already have "Indianized" versions of Windows. Linux may be a smart alternative in India, but it still isn't a popular one. Majors such as Redhat need to put in a lot of money and advertising in India to capture the market and develop localized products. |
| Magazines distribute Linux (Score:1) by Jace (jace@SraPdiAolMink.net) on Monday January 31, @10:27AM EST (#327) (User Info) http://www.ufies.org/~trion |
| Computer magazines have been taking the initiative where vendors haven't. PC Quest has been carrying Linux on a cover CD once every year since 1996 (Slackware the first two years, RH since). CHIP Magazine (where I work) put RH 6.0 on it's August 99 CD with an eight-page article on installing and the first few steps. PC World has Corel Linux on the current issue's CD. All major magazines here come with monthly cover CDs. It's how we make up for lack of bandwidth to download individually. Kiran Jonnalagadda http://lunateks.com |
| Dynamic translation. (Score:1) by be-fan on Sunday January 30, @01:57PM EST (#107) (User Info) |
| I have always wondered why this hasn't been done before! Couldn't the OS or the browser (preferably the OS so other apps could use it) implement some translation services so that content could easily be translated into different langauges? I know for example BeOS already supports UNICODE as its charecter set, so writing in languages that use a different character set shouldn't be hard. I know there is a GPLed translation program so couldn't you implement something along the lines of... Web sites sends text in english. Browser parses words, feeds it through a translator, then displays it in a givin character set. Hell, altavista already does something like that. Anyway, language modules could be implemented under the translator so people could add support for their favorite language into it. It would be a little slower, and you'd end up with stuff like, "he greeted the bloated blue desk" but you'd get (most) of the basic idea across. |
| Re:Dynamic translation. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @06:44PM EST (#251) |
| Yeah, it's possible, but you get a lot of garbage. The biggest problem is that the computer doesn't understand what it's doing. For example, does "bank" mean "financial institution" or "storage location" or does it mean "river's edge"? Without understanding the context of the usage you can't provide a proper translation. |
| India has much bigger problems (Score:2, Informative) by Kenneth Stephen (ksteph1@ibm.net) on Sunday January 30, @02:08PM EST (#115) (User Info) http://www.linux-learn.org |
Alright, the Indian population is estimated at close to a billion people. But this does not constitute a potential market of a billion people. For starters, lets look at the literacy rate. Slightly more than the 50% of the Indian population are literate. where the Indian government defines being literate as the ability to read and write a letter. Now lets look at affordability. About 30% of the people live around or below the poverty line - which is a hand-to-mouth existence. For such people, the basic necessities of life like food, clothing, and shelter are more of a priority than being able to surf the web. And what about the infrastructure? Telecommunication quality in India sucks when compared to western standards. While I have never used a modem in India, I would not be surprised to hear that 28.8K speeds are the upper limit of what can be achieved over normal phone lines. High speed access is mostly a dream. The top-end educational and research institutes (one of which is where the good professor is located) do have high speed access - but we are talking about the common man - not the engineers who earn 10 times what the common man makes. And last, but not least, lets look at the languages. The Sahitya Academy (the premier institute in India dealing with Indian literature) considers 21 languages worthy of study. These many language constitute a divisive force in getting things to work. It would be far better to improve the standard of education in English, since the people who cant afford to learn English would probably be the same people who cant afford to use the web. In other words, while Prof. Hariharan may be right about free OS'es being most-suited for India (mainly due to economic reasons), it is wrong to think that it means a huge increase in the free-software community.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck. |
| Re:India has much bigger problems (Score:1) by komet on Sunday January 30, @03:54PM EST (#173) (User Info) http://www.microsoft.com |
| Slightly more than the 50% of the Indian population are literate. where the Indian government defines being literate as the ability to read and write a letter. Wow! By this definition, AOL has a literacy rate of below 10%, and yet Time Warner saw fit to merge with them. What does this say? I dunno. (The ability to write "hi i swa yur mesaj can i hav it 2 tx" is not the same as the ability to write a letter). |
| Language, Software, Web, and Microsoft! (Score:4, Informative) by kbahey (khalid.at.baheyeldin.dot.com) on Sunday January 30, @02:09PM EST (#116) (User Info) http://khalid.baheyeldin.com |
| The article raises very good points about the issue of software localization / internationalization. Many of the points above are shared with other non-Western languages (lack of a single standard character set, the issue of linguitics, user interface, ...etc.) Here in the Middle East, we face a strikingly similar set of problems, with some added bonus. People who speak Arabic as a first language were about 181 million in 1997 (according to this Times article), making it the Fifth language in the world after Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish and Hindi. Arabic is unique in that it needs the peripherals (the VT100 terminal and the printer) to support automatic contextual character shaping on the fly, and Right-to-Left orientation. It shares these qualities with other Semitic language (Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Nabatean). So, a character set and a font is not enough, like the case in most western language. Several years ago, there were lots of character sets, each in use by a different hardware vendor, and even many vendors had several character sets. A standard (called ASMO-708) emerged, and was adopted by almost all vendors using ASCII (IBM was EBCDIC, so they were different). In the early 1990s, a company called Al Alamia developed a version of Microsoft Windows 3.x that supports many character sets, including ASMO-708. Microsoft hired (read stole!) the main developer from Al Alamia, there was a law suit. When Windows 95 came, the battle was won (by MS!) in the Arabic arena. When the web arrived, things got even worse (from a standard point of view) and a Netscape version (called Sindbad) was developed by Sakhr to navigate the web in Arabic, and lately released it as a plug-in to Navigator 4.x. It is terribly slow though. Microsoft won the browser wars, and virtually all the Arabic users are now using Windows 95/98/NT with MS Internet Explorer. New development of Arabic web pages is almost done entirely for MS Internet Explorer. Not good! Dynamic fonts are great and are used by a few sites. They work great with MS IE or NS Navigator, but are not widely used. So, where does this leave Linux? There are:
I have some links on Arabic on the web (scroll to the bottom of the page on what is available for Arabic on the net. -- |
| Re:Language, Software, Web, and Microsoft! (Score:1) by noc on Sunday January 30, @03:14PM EST (#151) (User Info) |
I am still using Netscape for e-mail and browsing (even on Windows, and fed up with its problems!), but have to use MS IE for browsing Arabic web pages! Sad! This is far from a general solution, but for you personally, have you tried to get IE running under linux? I've heard, with some work, it's possible to get the last Solaris version of IE working under linux. It might at least keep you from having to reboot to read Arabic. Does anyone know if Mozilla is Semitic-languages-friendly? Or if Gnome or KDE are going to be any time soon? |
| Re:Language, Software, Web, and Microsoft! (Score:1) by Linux Socialist on Sunday January 30, @03:42PM EST (#165) (User Info) |
| I've seen pictures of KDE using a Hebrew character set with right to left. I don't think it would be too hard to modify it to use Arabic characters because the hard parts have already been coded. I like Linux, socialism, and guns. Any questions? |
| Re:Language, Software, Web, and Microsoft! (Score:1) by zerblat (zerblatNOSP@Mearthling.net) on Sunday January 30, @04:48PM EST (#190) (User Info) |
| When it comes to bi-directional web-browsing, have you checked out Mozilla? There seems to be some work on bi-directional text, but I don't know if/how it's working. Maybe you should get in touch with them, and maybe offer them your help? |
| Don't worry (Score:2) by / on Sunday January 30, @02:15PM EST (#121) (User Info) |
| Cows will get more expensive, if the substance of this article ever comes to pass. Then the ratio of modem prices to cow prices will be much closer to one, and everyone will be happy, right? I would expect the local value of a cow to be much smaller in a place where cows are traditionally not eaten. I'd rather see a comparison made to something that is more universally consumed and valued, such as wheat. And don't forget to throw in some comparisons to countries like Israel where computer parts are heavily taxed in a (still) war-time economy. [Don't mind the links -- Slashdot is munging some perfectly good code, again. Maybe the urls are just too big?...] "If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes |
| Re:Don't worry (Score:1) by MoNickels on Sunday January 30, @05:21PM EST (#204) (User Info) http://www.monickels.com/ |
| Cows are not sacred to all of India, kid. Only certain religions. http://www.monickels.com/ |
| Re:Don't worry (Score:1) by / on Sunday January 30, @05:43PM EST (#216) (User Info) |
| "Kid" yourself. It's a preponderance of the population, and it's enough to make a big economic impact, which is all I claimed. "If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes |
| Re:Don't worry (Score:1) by pasokan on Sunday January 30, @11:47PM EST (#287) (User Info) http://www.os4.com |
| Might surprise you to know Wheat is not universally eaten in parts of India like South India |
| uh oh... pakistan won't like this (Score:1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @02:26PM EST (#125) |
| now that the hindus believe in free will, and open source, the muslims will have to use microsoft, because they believe in one god, and one operating system. |
| Re:uh oh... pakistan won't like this (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @10:51PM EST (#276) |
| yay!!! i finally got moderated to something other than score 0. I know that was kinda dumb humour, and i didn't really know how to say it, but i'm so happy i was actually moderated up for once! BTW, if you haven't figured out yet, i'm the poster of the previous comment |
| Re:uh oh... pakistan won't like this (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @09:24AM EST (#316) |
| That is actually interesting, as well as funny. Consider if Microsoft were to be found guilty of some crime or other, perhaps there would be a need for a fatwa or religious edict to prevent contributing to the criminal organization. Anyone out there with an understanding of Islamic law care to comment on the religious implications of this ? Is there such a thing as a Halal vs a Haram operating system ? This is a serious(ish) question. |
| Some Statistics about India (Score:3, Informative) by gupg on Sunday January 30, @02:38PM EST (#131) (User Info) http://www.ics.uci.edu/~sumitg |
| Since a lot of people are asking these questions, let me give some statistics about India: 1 billion people 66 % literacy rate 20 Major/Different languages with 1000s of dialects each 30 % of the country can speak Hindi 10 % can speak, read and write English Official Govt language Hindi, however actual Government Language is English - nearly all communication from the government is in local language and English ! Home PC Penetration; a few million. ISP and internet connections extremely affordable especially for students. Did I miss anything ? |
| LOW ISP rates? (Score:2) by sumana (sumanah@uclink4.berkeley.edu) on Sunday January 30, @05:24PM EST (#206) (User Info) |
| Be glad that VSNL's monopoly on the ISP biz got broken. The prices are SO much lower now, from what I know. My cousin in Bangalore can chat with my Dad in California, USA, instead of paying out the nose for telecom rates. The only reason it's cheaper, AFAIK, is because there are now MULTIPLE ISPs in the country! Geez, one ISP servicing an area the size of half the US, and not nearly as well-wired (i.e., quality of wiring)....think how the characters on UserFriendly would do....(-;
|
| What is the state of i18n libs for Linux? (Score:1) by jonabbey (jonabbey@burrow.org) on Sunday January 30, @02:48PM EST (#136) (User Info) http://www.arlut.utexas.edu/gash2 |
I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with internationalization issues with Linux.. how well established is Unicode and localization support on Linux? Are there web pages dedicated to it? How does one find out? I know Java has support for internationalization and localization (Unicode + a system for using resource files for messages), but it still depends on having national fonts on the system it is installed on. Do any of the JDK ports for Linux come with a full set of Unicode fonts for XFree86? Does XFree86 itself have Unicode support? Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX http://www.arlut.utexas.edu/gash2 |
| Re:What is the state of i18n libs for Linux? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @06:02PM EST (#234) |
| Linux is pretty ready to go unicode-wards. Most distros come with the shell commands unicode-start and unicode-stop. They put all the command line tools into UTF-8 Unicode mode. There's a nifty demo where the contents of a driectory are all musical notes, or something... |
| Re:What is the state of i18n libs for Linux? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @02:18PM EST (#340) |
| Well, some of the more commonly used language sets are supported, at least to some degree. I'm thinking of Russian and Ukrainian, that's what I know. I exchanged a couple of emails with the Ukrainian distro manager of KSI-Linux, who basically said most of the error messages and the console have been converted into Ukrainian, and I think all have been converted into Russian. As I understand it, a lot of the work has to be done on apps themselves. For example, there is a "Russian" version of Apache, and the guy I talked to just finished "converting" TED, which is an RTM word processor, into Ukrainian - ie, it uses Cyrillic text and the menues and error messages come up in Cyrillic as well. One problem being, there can be several implementations of one alphabet. For Ukrainian, there is one which is a superset of the Russian (some chars are different), and I think an older one which is used rarely but seems to crop up on certain web pages. |
| Problems I have with this essay (Score:2, Interesting) by GMOL on Sunday January 30, @02:50PM EST (#140) (User Info) |
Coin some new terms, add the words MP3, Linux and opensource (okay he didn't say it but I'm generalizing), connect them with some yarn and scotch tape and you've got a cool new Slashdot- approved infomative essay. "Yet, India faces a peculiar problem in that almost all popular operating systems and applications packages are available only in English, a language which is spoken by a mere ten percent of the population." (Let's not forget to mention that we are actually dealing with 42% of the population, 52% of india is literate, and it's a safe bet that all 10% who speak english are literate)
Virtually all high school educated people in india (=those who have enough money to buy a computer) have enough command of the english languge to use software, understand help bubbles etc. I am not saying that a high scool education should be a pre-req for using a computer; however a massive xlation project would cause too many splits; and not return on the money it would take to maintain and produce indian versions of all sorts of software (you realize how much there is? who deicdes what GPL software gets xlated?) and to maintain all the fun compatability issues that will happen. "One development that can help India out of this deadlock is a national-level, collaborative effort to localise Linux to Indian languages." Localise linux? Localizing the kernel and device drivers wouldn't do much good IMHO. Oh wait you mean all the software available for linux (most of it which it intended to run on many different unicies)?? Oh I get it...so you plan on xlating all GPL utilies (ssh, ls, mv, cron), their input and output file formats, display information, KDE, GNOME, all software documentation (what good is software if you don't know how to use it), error messages?...and keep up with anything that joe blow releases under GPL? The above proposal is just catagorically wrong. "Linux is a free operating system that has gained phenomenal popularity in recent times because it allows users to modify it to suit their own needs." While Linux's development grwoth has stemmed from kernel hackers modifying linux at the base; it "phenomenal popularity" has nothing to do with it. Linux is a stable, free UNIX; one can run all sorts of wonderful wide-spread UNIX stuff on it, and use it as a solid server; that's why it is popular. In general, users do not modify linux beyond any other OS, changing drivers, installing libraries and applications, and system settings; everybody does this with every OS. "The growth of content in platform-independent file formats (HTML, MP3 etc) has also reduced the dependence on a specific operating system, making Linux a viable option." I can't think of any widely used content before html (really platform independant?) that was OS dependant. ASCII, UNICODE, gif, wav, jpg, etc. Linux is no more or less viable due to the fact that we are using platform independant content...we have generally always been. Application independant is another story, which would definately point to a negative for linux (for tools that would be in most general use wp's, spreadsheets, database creation tools etc...) "The existing user interface paradigm of files and folders evolved because computers were essentially designed for a western audience familiar with real-life files and folders. There is no reason to assume why the same paradigm should apply to a trader in Tamil Nadu or a farmer in Madhya Pradesh. " Well assuming that the complaint is about the graphical representation of the underlying OS representation of files n' directories (which is the same as linux) under the Windows shell...under a graphical desktop environment (KDE/GNOME) of linux, they are represented the same way. And anyone could write a shell for either OS that pictured directories as books and pages or whatever... "The openness of Linux (and other free operating systems like Free BSD) allows local linguistic groups to customise user interfaces in ways that are far more culturally sensitive than any centrally controlled approach. Linguistic groups that may be considered too small a market by vendors can also take their destiny in their own hands by customising the Linux interface to their own needs." The abstraction level at which UI software as described is as easily implimented under ,say, windows as linux. In terms of development, the UI really doesn't have much to do with the OS as any other application...linux isn't any more or less easily localizeable than any other OS. I won't even get into cost issues, besides the fact that it is debatable... To me, the article is just another "be cool, say linux" essay clone...but hell it might be a good a way of getting the government to get scared of not being cool and to pump some money in which can help some people. I suppose the only practical solution is to invest in language xlation research and come up with a good translator for the non-english readers. |
| Files and Folders are not particularly western (Score:4, Interesting) by Effugas (effugas@best.com) on Sunday January 30, @02:59PM EST (#144) (User Info) http://www.doxpara.com |
| Apart from these, there are cultural reasons that make Linux attractive. The existing user interface paradigm of files and folders evolved because computers were essentially designed for a western audience familiar with real-life files and folders. There is no reason to assume why the same paradigm should apply to a trader in Tamil Nadu or a farmer in Madhya Pradesh. Interesting that the author brings this up. I was recently reading about a very specific form of brain damage, caused by an operation to remove a tumor from the brain. A very small but highly focused amount of damage was done to a patient's language system: He could name people. He could name objects. He could name cities. He couldn't name a living animal. He would consistently mix up dog, cat, and any other term belonging to the family of "living animal". If there's one thing linguists have found, it's that the core roots of language are not cultural--they're genetic. The base objects of communications--nouns, verbs, and so on--are by no means the only theoretical communication paradigms, but they're shared by every non-artificial human language. You might wonder why I bring this up: In designing a method for interacting between a human and a computer, the properties of language are indeed important for establishing relationships. While there may not be literal files and literal folders in Indian culture, the concept of items existing within the branches of a tree is engrained deep within the structure of the human brain. Now, "File" and "Folder" themselves are western analogies, to be sure. But there's a difference between recontextualizing an idiom and dismissing a natural paradigm. Yours Truly, Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com ==== Some people live life in the fast lane. I live life in oncoming traffic. ==== |
| Re:Files and Folders are not particularly western (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @07:08PM EST (#256) |
| Yes, this is true... I always think it's strange when psychology professors describe the human brain like a computer, when in fact people designed computers to work in ways which made most sense to them - ie the way the human brain naturally works. Another strange thing is the observation that the process of reading English and reading Japanese - two languages which seem to have nothing in common - are virtually identical from a neurological standpoint. Japanese people read words from glyphs (kanji) that symbolize a concept. You might think that English speaking people read every letter and sound out the word, but except for beginners they don't. English speakers read basically the same way as japanese people do - they look at the shape of the word and maybe one or two letters and derive the meaning from that. (This is why English-speaking people still recognize a word even if it is mispelled - they aren't actually looking at all the letters.) Weird, huh? |
| what about the URLs? (Score:1) by Deslack (omark@!SPAM!linux.com.my) on Sunday January 30, @03:10PM EST (#148) (User Info) http://omark.virtualave.net/ |
| URLs uses roman alphabets, right? Well, perhaps it is all written. Anyone who wishes to use the Internet must be able to differentiate a and b. --- Deslack |
| Linux Internationalisation Initiative (Score:2, Informative) by Hiro (satoh.at.kage.net) on Sunday January 30, @03:19PM EST (#154) (User Info) |
| I don't know what's their status right now, but it's worth looking into it. http://www.li18nux.org/ |
| Contrary to most of your beliefs (Score:1) by xerafin on Sunday January 30, @03:23PM EST (#155) (User Info) |
| I just read an article today that estimates that by 2003 the U.S. will account for only 35% of all internet users, down from 70% and that 30% will be from Europe and another 20% from Asia. This means that the Internet will not only be in English anymore and as much as you would like to think English will be a unifying language that everyone in the world will use, if it happens it will not happen for a long time. This means companies that want to compete globally will have to create localized versions of their software and internet sites or they will lose out to someone else who will. Linux will in fact fare better in India and China because it is cheaper, if they can localize the OS. The U.S. may have launched the internet but it will not be a U.S. English only internet for very much longer as the rest of the world catches up to our technologies. Anyone who thinks in U.S.-centric terms will be left out in the cold with the era of Globalization. |
| Linux is its own language (Score:1) by Ukab the Great on Sunday January 30, @03:29PM EST (#157) (User Info) |
| I love linux, don't get me wrong, but how the hell can linux be ported to hindi, tamil, whatever when it hasn't been ported to English? Just take a look at your /etc folder. How many of those file names can be found in webster's dictionary? Or take the cryptic linux commands, for example. Is dd a word in the english language? Or mv, cpio, umount, or anything else. One cannot take seriously the idea of porting linux for non-english speakers when it *hasn't* yet been ported for English speakers. |
| Menus aren't that important. . . (Score:1) by zerblat (zerblatNOSP@Mearthling.net) on Sunday January 30, @03:40PM EST (#164) (User Info) |
| While localization is nice and makes computers accesible to more people, the most important thing isn't the language of the menues, buttons and other parts of the UI, or even to translate documentation. What's most important for me as a non-english user is that the software works with my language, that I can use my alphabet when creating documents and writing text, that my web browser shows web pages in my language correctly, that I can check the spelling of my own language etc It isn't that difficult to learn enough English to be able to use English software. Instead, using computers and of course, the Internet, is a great way to learn English. Not knowing English means most of the content on the web is totally useless to you. Also, any non-english content on the web is totally useless for anyone who doesn't speak that specific language. So, while I think it's vital that people can use their own languages so that they survive, you need to speak English to communicate with the rest of the world. |
| Surprising (Score:1) by Alik (aswst16+@pitt.edu) on Sunday January 30, @03:49PM EST (#168) (User Info) |
| I'm a bit surprised that the big corporations haven't pursued the market for Indian-language computing more aggressively. Many of them have large numbers of bilingual programmers brought over on work visas. Given the sheer size of the potential market in India, I'd expect them to leverage this advantage. One thing to note (and a possible reason for the lack of translation) is that there is no single "Indian language"; as with Chinese, there are several regional dialects which don't always bear much resemblance to each other. In practice, English ends up getting used a lot of the time as a universal standard. If you walk through Bombay, most of the billboards you see will be in English. The few times I've been there, most of the shopkeepers understood enough English to successfully complete a transaction. Now, out in the villages, this is not true. On the other hand, I doubt the people in the villages care whether or not they have Internet access just yet. They need sanitation, electricity, and other basic health-improving technology. Once that's in place, then worry about whether or not they can be happy Amazon consumers. Alik |
| This is going to cause social upheaval! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @04:01PM EST (#179) |
| linux for india is very very bad! if we introduce india and pakistan into the wily charms of linux the entire world order will collapse! think about it... who will run our 7-11's? who will drive our cabs? who will work at our gas stations? JUST SAY NO TO LINUX IN INDIA! |
| Re:This is going to cause social upheaval! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @10:17PM EST (#271) |
| There are 80 million Bangladeshi's who all take the same size uniform waiting for those roles. |
| Re:This is going to cause social upheaval! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02, @05:20PM EST (#348) |
| Who will start US companies like Bose! Who will write good software! Who will provide a spiritual counterbalance to US consumerism! |
| An opposing view. (Score:1) by Damien Neil (neild at einstein.org) on Sunday January 30, @04:09PM EST (#182) (User Info) http://www.acm.rpi.edu/~neild/ |
| The CIA World Factbook has this to say about Indian languages: English enjoys associate status but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication, Hindi the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people, Bengali (official), Telugu (official), Marathi (official), Tamil (official), Urdu (official), Gujarati (official), Malayalam (official), Kannada (official), Oriya (official), Punjabi (official), Assamese (official), Kashmiri (official), Sindhi (official), Sanskrit (official), Hindustani (a popular variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India) Think about that. Twenty-four mutually-unintelligible languages in common use. English has become the standard language for all but local purposes in India, because there are far too many local tounges to try to translate between them. Professor Hariharan's article states that only 10% of Indians speak English. According to the factbook, only 52% of Indians are literate, in any language. Assuming that the English speakers are a subset of the literate people, that means that roughly 20% of the literate population can understand English. That's the same as the percentage of Indians who speak the most common non-English language, Hindi. It seems to me that what India needs is more literacy, and more English speakers. English has, for better or worse, become the most common language in international trade. (And, in India's case, intranational trade.) I would certainly applaud the efforts of any people who choose to localize Linux, or any other software, to Indian languages. I do not think, however, that placing Indian computer users into a localized ghetto, separate from the rest of India and the rest of the world, will prove to be the means that the "digital revolution" will be brought to that country. This is especially the case if, as Professor Hariharan implies, an Indian-localized system would remove such commonly-used concepts as "files" and "folders". Does he envision a system based on "mud huts" and "clay slabs"? (And would any intelligent Indian react with anything other than offense to such a translation which assumes he is not intelligent enough to understand the original system?) Or does he rather imagine replacing the entire concept of a hierarchical directory structure with something else? If the latter, what possible purpose is served by making the systems used by Indians radically different than those used by the remainder of the world? While this article makes a valid point in that more localized versions of Linux (or any software!) is a good thing, I feel that it far overstates its case and misses the point. -Damien |
| linux-india (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @04:16PM EST (#184) |
| Viva la revolution at http://linux-india.com/!!! |
| Re:linux-india (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @07:27PM EST (#258) |
| Sick faggot fuck. |
| I've been reading a lot of stories lately... (Score:1) by ronfar on Sunday January 30, @04:23PM EST (#186) (User Info) http://members.tripod.com/gamesandpolitics/ |
| ...about the pre-eminence Indian society places on a technological education. Because of this fact, I think what OS the graduates of the countries are most comfortable with is going to be important: I happen to know that Microsoft actively recruits in India: This is not because Micros~1 is engaging in charity work, it is because it wants access to excellent human resources. I've read a few people saying something about "poor villagers not needing Internet access," but according to that Salon article one way for a person to improve life for him/herself and his/her family is to get into technology. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that India is very important in computer technology. (A former computer of mine was from an Indian company, and wasn't Hotmail owned or run by an Indian before Microsoft gobbled it up?) Anyway, I had an Indian professor who was a huge UNIX fan (he thought Linux was cool because it was more like UNIX than MS-Windows.) Come to think of it, most of my professors have been Indian, which says something about the country right there. My Signature: Join the EFF DeCSS, view source! |
| Mac OS 9: Devanagari, Gurmukhi, Gujarti (Score:1) by MoNickels on Sunday January 30, @04:48PM EST (#191) (User Info) http://www.monickels.com/ |
| Apple's Mac OS 9 has full support at no cost for Devanagari, Gurmukhi, Gujarti, as well as Unicode, 8-bit characters, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Korean, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic and Cyrillic language systems. You merely need to locate the installer on the OS 9 system disk. This, however, is only the first step: applications need localization, too. http://www.monickels.com/ |
| the file and folder metaphor (Score:1) by Holgate (nsweeney at jesus dot ox dot ac dot uk) on Sunday January 30, @04:59PM EST (#196) (User Info) |
| It's a little surprising that the Professor suggests that the file/folder metaphor is alien to Indian culture, given that India is reputed to have the world's most impenetrable democracy, cursed by endless red tape and form-filling. (That certainly was the case when I was there some years ago!) But that's slightly beside the point: English has always been important as a unifying factor within the Indian nation, given the huge cultural and linguistic variations across the states. It's also meant that Indian programmers have been responsible for some highly significant work: whatever you think of MS, a glance at their credits list gives away the fact that a fair number of their developers come from the sub-continent. What's important now is to gain leverage from this state of affairs: perhaps it would be useful for the big Linux vendors to start recruiting bilingual programmers to push on the development process. It should be a case of "English AND local language" rather than a XOR. |
| SUCKS (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @05:03PM EST (#197) |
| To bad India sucks fat hairy balls, and should probably just be nuked off the map. I mean what have they done that has helped mankind? Worshiped cows? |
| Re:SUCKS (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @06:06PM EST (#237) |
| India discovered Zero. The Arabs copied them, the greeks copied the arabs, the romans copied the greeks, and so western civilisation learned to do useful maths. |
| Re:SUCKS (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @01:37AM EST (#300) |
| "India discovered Zero. The Arabs copied them, the greeks copied the arabs, the romans copied the greeks, and so western civilisation learned to do useful maths." Imagine how much money they'll make if they copyright there zero ;) |
| Re:SUCKS (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @06:07PM EST (#238) |
| India had a technological civilisation while most of europe was untouched forest. |
| Zinc was discovered by India (Score:1) by Hydrophobe on Monday January 31, @12:42AM EST (#296) (User Info) |
Zinc was first discovered and refined in India, centuries before Europe did so. The trick is, zinc is a vapor at the temperatures required to extract it from its ore. So refining it with medieval technology was nontrivial. |
| The Free Translation Project (Score:3, Informative) by dsplat on Sunday January 30, @05:23PM EST (#205) (User Info) |
| Yes, there is a project for localization of free software. The Free Translation Project is an ongoing project to localize free software into as many languages as possible. If yours isn't one of the one's we're already doing, there are a number of people who can mentor you in starting a translation team for your language. This is not the only project handling translation of free software. Several of the distributions have projects going to translate their installation tools and documentation. And both Gnome and KDE have internationalization projects. [This space intentionally left blank] |
| Languages, Natural and programming (Score:1) by evilned (bned@mindless.com) on Sunday January 30, @05:47PM EST (#220) (User Info) |
| We all have seen how differences in programming languages generates different solutions, some better, some worse. I think the same logic can be placed on natural languages, they provide a different structure for humans to understand their world. Someone who speaks a language that is barely related at all to the predominate language in programming culture, English, would have a different perspective of the logic puzzles inherent in programming. Learning the different semantics in Japanese helped me immensely in programming, not because source code is written in Japanese, but it made me more aware of how different languages are suited to different things. This is why we need to internationalize linux, not just because we need more linux users, but we need more linux users that grew up with a different language and culture than the standard Western European/North american linux standard. The Computers aren't taking over, the programmers are. |
| Give me the docs then (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @06:16PM EST (#243) |
| I have had to work on some I18N stuff for a while. Now aside from 10 out of 11 programmes not prepared to handle multibyte / wide character strings one of the worst issues had been to finde decent documentation. It磗 in Japanese, it磗 in Chinese, it磗 in some language that makes me think I have just been beamed up to some other planet. At least there is a site for Linux regarding that issues but without some help from people of other countries .. lower your expectations. It it comes to India, well, as long as women get burned there I think they are having some other problems to solve. |
| Re:Give me the docs then (Score:1) by Jace (jace@SraPdiAolMink.net) on Monday January 31, @11:22AM EST (#330) (User Info) http://www.ufies.org/~trion |
| It it comes to India, well, as long as women get burned there I think they are having some other problems to solve. Women get burnt? Where? Certainly not here. Sati was abolished in the 1700s. |
| Re:Give me the docs then (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @04:02PM EST (#341) |
| Its one thing to have a law banning something, and totally another to implement it. Sati is still prevalent in Jat-dominated areas of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana. However much, the Indian intellectuals try to close their eyes to it, it is still there. But that is not the only social evil in India nor is it the worst of them. |
| Re:Give me the docs then (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @04:25PM EST (#342) |
| Its one thing to have a law banning something, and totally another to implement it. Sati is still prevalent in Jat-dominated areas of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana. However much, the Indian intellectuals try to close their eyes to it, it is still there. But that is not the only social evil in India nor is it the worst of them. I don't know where you got this information from, but I am from this region (Rajasthan), and Sati is very, very rare. Maybe one instance per year or two? You call that prevalent? You've got to be kidding! Why is it that any discussion on India gets dragged by ignorants into Sati or Dowry? Every country has its ills. If you are in the U.S., have you seen how many cases of child molestation happen here? By your logic, child molestation is prevalent in the U.S.! Give me a break! |
| Why MacOS makes sense for India (& elsewhere) (Score:1) by epeus (fromslashdot@mmcorp.com) on Sunday January 30, @06:44PM EST (#250) (User Info) |
| Mac OS 9 includes multiple language kits, so you can mix Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Korean and more in a single document. (They aren't in the default install, but they are there in Custom). The APIs have been in MacOS for years, but the language kits used to be hard to get - now they are in the shipping OS. |
| what makes more sense (Score:1) by samantha (samantha@isis.aurinia.com) on Sunday January 30, @07:01PM EST (#253) (User Info) |
| What makes more sense is for humanity to finally go to a common spoken and written language that is taught universally. It is a sign of just how primitive this species is that we can't seem to make any headway on such an obviously beneficial project. Of course, if we get automagical translators for speech and text anytime soon that actually work well (no Babel-fish) the point could become moot. |
| This is the real issue (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @07:20PM EST (#257) |
| Forgive me, but M$ have been dealing with this issue since M$-DOSh. I've seen MACs in Greek - menus and all. And to be fair, M$ developers have .rc files which can be switched to give a whole app a different language. OSS (incl. Linux) needs this. Not necessarily a standard to which we're all tied in, but we need a paradigm whereby we don't write: printf("ERROR: Invalid Filename"); but print_error(INVALID_FILENAME); so a local library can cope with the language issues and print the appropriate response in the language the user has chosen. Be that English, American, Urdu, Finnish, whatever. This *does* create overhead, sure, but it's what's needed. As some poster pointed out, M$ have been doing this well since the year dot. I am even envious of their ability to cope with languages like Chinese and Japansese. This takes a massive amount of organisation in the development stages. But it's worth it. The OSS model allows for extensive internationalisation, if we let it. Comments can come in about a new development if they do not fit a given locale; they should be taken on by the developer. I know that some people are coders and others are linguistics; this is ideal for open source; the coder writes: error(FN_NOEXIST), the local people write the #includes to say #define FN_NOEXIST="This file does not exist", #define FN_NOEXIST="Il n'yest pas un file q'cest name" --- you'll see I'm pretty bad at French. A French coder can take care of that. All I have to write is error(FN_NOEXIST). This needs to be ingrained throughout the OSS community before we can beat the (international - not just USA) M$ and others. Steve. |
| errrrr nonononono (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @07:35PM EST (#259) |
| Oh god dammit, I am getting sick of this. What's the point of having large computer companies switching to the gay pinguin computing whenever I use Windows 95 as my defult operating system?? Have this conclusion comes where all the people and other large companies switch to Linux and more and more programs and game gets released for Linux only and having the other people that uses Windows being left behind the times. I can tell this is pointless. |
| xlinux (Score:1) by tookish on Sunday January 30, @10:19PM EST (#272) (User Info) |
I haven't come across any reference to xlinux at /. I think it's relevent here, as it may be the first large-scale attempt to "globablise" linux - it's a commercial venture that is translating linux text into 12 asian languages - recently got some coverage on cnbc asia http://www.xlinux.com/index_1.html cheers |
| The big problem with Linux and l8n/i18n.... (Score:2) by rcromwell2 on Sunday January 30, @11:12PM EST (#282) (User Info) |
| is not the kernel and device drivers supporting it (which they do), but the fact that there isn't an easy to use, widely adopted API for locating language resource strings. In userland, thousands of GNU utilities and scripts shipped with Linux all have hardcoded English language strings in them. Thus, for any company that wants to create a "RwandaLinux", not only do they have to translate documentation, but they must hire programmers (not writers) who can translate embedded strings in the thousands of userland utilities that ship with typical Linux distributions, and that is a monumental task. In addition to translating them, they must make sure they are kept up to date with their English counterparts. None of this is going to change until programmers stop writing code like printf("The task completed successfully.") and if(!strcmp(argv[c], "-delete")) and start writing code like printf(getResource(TASK_COMPLETION_MESSAGE)); if(!strcmp(argv[c], getResource(CMDLINE_OPTION_DELETE)) When that happens, there will be no need to keep localized versions "up to date" with the newest CVS trees, but the program text will be separated from the logic. |
| what point ? (Score:1) by serialk (-sld@themail.com) on Monday January 31, @12:34AM EST (#293) (User Info) http://aboutguide.tripod.com |
| whats he trying to conclude ? |
| project implementing i18n/unicode in NetBSD-curren (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @02:56AM EST (#304) |
| Hello HIRO! Anything similar for NetBSD? |
| Yeah right give the developing country linux (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @05:04AM EST (#306) |
| Yeah right- as if the use of linux will instantly solve all problems facing India: Aids, starvation, poverty, illiteracy and many more. I think India will be a lot better off (IMHO, ofcourse) if they would start with ONE UNIFORM language. And, perhaps, some common sense!!!!! (been there, done that) :( |
| Hey People (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @06:45AM EST (#308) |
| Can you actually post some *News for Nerds* Instead of this suckass salesmenship crap for Linux.. Fucking retarded queerbait corporate blowjob giver. |
| Couldn't we all just learn... (Score:1) by Wiwi Jumbo on Monday January 31, @11:16AM EST (#329) (User Info) |
| ...a constructed language like Esperanto? http://www.esperanto.org/ or http://www.esperanto.net/ (Mark my words, some idiot will have a web page talking about Open Sourcing the English language... and be completely serious.) Wiwi -- "I trust in my abilities, but I want more then they offer" -The Odds, "At Your Word" off the album "nest" |
| Universal Networking Language (Score:1) by Wiwi Jumbo on Monday January 31, @11:43AM EST (#332) (User Info) |
| Description from (http://www.quetzal.com/conlang/intern.html): A United Nations University project to create an interlanguage for use on the internet; the idea being that you'd use special tools to create a document in this language and it would be automatically translated into any of the UN member languages on demand. They plan to make this feasible by restricting the grammar and vocabulary of the interlanguage, and have translation be only one-way, from the interlanguage to national languages. The interlanguage's vocabulary will be English words, with probably some type of grammatical markup added -- not intended for people to read or use directly. [Institute of Advanced Studies, United Nations University] Seems like a possible answer for making programs more "international" if an interperter could be incorporated directly. For those of you smarter then I (which means just about all of you..), check out http://www.unl.ias.unu.edu for more information. Wiwi -- "I trust in my abilities, but I want more then they offer" -The Odds, "At Your Word" off the album "nest" |
| Re:Universal Networking Language (Score:1) by Remote (jesus at oliveira dot com) on Monday January 31, @04:47PM EST (#343) (User Info) |
I worked for a swedish company with many subsidiaries around the world and all technical exchange was done in English (I'm in Brazil). But because of a couple of misunderstandings someone in Sweden came up with this idea of using some sort of "company_name English", with only one word to address similar but different things and grammar that was shaped all wrong. It's terrible, believe me! I am puzzled, because the UNU guys must be smart guys, but I've seen this before, and it doesn't work. OTOH, once I had to mess around with the setup of a Laptop and it had something called "doze" mode (maybe some MS-Windows-specific mode). I still don't know what it means (I didn't look it up). Emacs documentation said something about a "yank" command, and that I *had* to look up. So, although I'm against limiting one's vocabulary to a small set of words in some pre-defined structures, people who expect their intellectual output to be understood by someone who speaks English as a second language should avoid using expressions that they suspect to be too colorful. "People ask FAQ's all the time" - David Allen |
| Re:Daring Article For Slashdot (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:20PM EST (#16) |
| it is stuff of interest to the readership. |
| How many languages do you know? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:23PM EST (#21) |
| He seems pretty fluent in English, in addition to his native tongue. Give the guy a break. |
| 10+ (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:45PM EST (#48) |
| He is an IT professor. To misuse a computer science term (I guess you're not familiar with it) is unforgivable. |
| Re:10+ (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:21PM EST (#73) |
| It looks right to me. Two things waiting on each other to finish before they can proceed is what I've always understood to be a deadlock in the CS sense, and that's just what he described. What do you think it means? |
| oh yeah? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @02:28PM EST (#127) |
| name the processes and the resources. |
| Re:oh yeah? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @03:11PM EST (#150) |
| You're an idiot, mister. |
| why bother (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @06:08PM EST (#239) |
| yes it would gain more ground for linux, freedom blah blah blah, which is about time, microsft are c#nts but they are the easiest to use, which counts to a h$ll of a lot of people, not to mention the are as good as freeware (hachers are gods) sorry i get side tracked... i want to say, if everyone learned english (or one language) so we could all comunicate we would end so much bulls#it conflict and differences that arise from not being able to talk to each other. this will never happen i know but it would be good jtc4@ihug.co.nz |
| Maybe it's correct in Indian English ... (Score:1) by divec on Sunday January 30, @12:27PM EST (#28) (User Info) |
| ... but even if it's not, then picking somebody up about a single word is harsh. |
| Indian English? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @12:51PM EST (#50) |
| WTF? |
| Re:Indian English? (Score:1) by chrischow (christian@SPAMAWAY.trash80.org.uk) on Sunday January 30, @01:24PM EST (#76) (User Info) http://www.trash80.org.uk/ |
| yeah different regions of the world have different flavors of english, accented like the usual language in the country and using slang and words from other languages. like singlish (from s'pore), chenglish (from HK) and so on |
| Re:Indian English? (Score:1) by elegant7x (elegant7x(a)hotmail.com) on Sunday January 30, @01:28PM EST (#85) (User Info) |
| People in India speak English just like people in America speak English. Its there official language. And just like Americans have some different words for some things, Indians probably have some different words from America. That said, I don't think the word 'deadlock' is strictly in the domain of computer science. Therefore you are an idiot (a word common in all strains of English, btw) Amber Yuan (--ell7) Taipai Taiwan 2000AD |
| Re:Indian English? (Score:1) by timster (timster@earthling.net) on Sunday January 30, @09:13PM EST (#267) (User Info) |
| You are of course correct, the word "deadlock" has been in use for over 200 years. |
| No you are an idiot! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @01:35AM EST (#299) |
| Its there In what strain of English is that correct? We should be taking advice from you? |
| Re:Indian English? (Score:1) by psaltes (vox@tmbg.org) on Sunday January 30, @01:39PM EST (#93) (User Info) |
| english != american english != indian english etc etc |
| Re:Indian English? (Score:1) by dodobh (d o d o b h @ v s n l . c o m) on Sunday January 30, @02:00PM EST (#108) (User Info) |
| You might have a problem with the fact that we Indians recognise quite a few variants of English (or if I may use it phonetically Inglish). Try Hinglish (Hindi+English) or Tamil English or simbly Keralite English. These are only examples and not to be taken as representative of the whole. ps, simbly is not a typo. Thats how Keralites pronounce simply :). |
| India / China interesting cases (Score:2, Insightful) by divec on Sunday January 30, @12:36PM EST (#39) (User Info) |
| Most people in India can't read anything which can be written in ASCII. This is not true in Peru (Spanish) or AFAIK any of your other examples. Right now, software is generally bad at handling text which is not ASCII-ish (i.e. "Romaniform", so Greek and Russian are OK). The first Operating System to have good support for a non-romaniform language will be a big step in the history of computers, in my opinion. If it's going to be a Free operating system then it's even bigger news in this community. So I think the story is interesting, and relevant. |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:2, Interesting) by laptop lounger (lee_spam_this@yahoo.com) on Sunday January 30, @12:45PM EST (#47) (User Info) |
The article mentioned 10% as able to read English. What percentage of the population are literate, yet cannot read English? I'm not disagreeing that a customized interface using the prevelant language is desirable. I'm just curious about the numbers? How many people can read Hindi but cannot read English?
|
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:37PM EST (#92) |
| Literacy is around 25-30% - well, those are government figures... But most people in a position to use a computer are likely to know atleast some english - government clerks, small businessmen, school teachers, etc. So, a decent office app suite with indian language support over an OS with multi-lingual help/documentation should suffice now. Things could, of course, change, when all the promised prosperity comes... |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:47PM EST (#99) |
| The CIA World Fact Book lists a literacy of 52% for India. |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:1) by dodobh (d o d o b h @ v s n l . c o m) on Sunday January 30, @02:04PM EST (#110) (User Info) |
| Total Literacy = 52%, according to the last census. It may have increased, but not by much. So about 40 - 45% (Depending on 10% of literates or 10% of total) of total population (Thats about 1 billion = 10^9, slightly more). |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:1) by uid8472 on Sunday January 30, @01:01PM EST (#59) (User Info) |
| I think the MacOS already has some halfway decent support for non-romaniform script systems, but... 1) Price is very much an issue here. Inexpensive PC's are still better in this respect than Macs. 2) The author of the article also wanted to throw out some of the Western-centric interface ideas (e.g. the metaphor of files and folders) and replace them with stuff that would be more intuitive specifically to Indians; right now, only Unices support this level of customization. |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:09PM EST (#63) |
| > I think the MacOS already has some halfway decent support for non-romaniform script systems I think that would be a tremendous understatment! |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:1) by elegant7x (elegant7x(a)hotmail.com) on Sunday January 30, @01:46PM EST (#98) (User Info) |
| I think the MacOS already has some halfway decent support for non-romaniform script systems, but... Windows has perfict support for unicode, and a very good inputer for Chinese (I don't know enough about the other languages to say if they work well or not, I hope to learn japanese, then Maybe I could tell you :) Not all the applications support unicode, but IE, Outlook, and word2k work fine (as does winamp, for some strange reason...). Windows NT uses unicode to the core, as well. So, you can still have your $500 PC, and with a little trip to windowsupdate, all the unicode you could want. After that, pirate word2k, and your set :) Amber Yuan (--ell7) Taipai Taiwan 2000AD |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:56PM EST (#106) |
| Windows international support is a joke. It boggles the mind how sucky it is compared to the MacOS support(as if that was a surprise). Apple has been on this for at least ten years. The international support in MacOS is simply phenomenal. If you want a benchmark as to what is involved in across the board international support in an os, check out the MacOS. Unicode is one minor - very minor - part of international support. |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:1) by elegant7x (elegant7x(a)hotmail.com) on Sunday January 30, @02:11PM EST (#119) (User Info) |
| Unicode is one minor - very minor - part of international support. Well, what else do you need? Up until this year you had to pay $110 for each language you wanted to add to the operating system. I know its possible to change all the dialog boxes, input methods, help files, etc on IE/office... what else would you want? Can you give me some specific examples? Amber Yuan (--ell7) Taipai Taiwan 2000AD |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:12PM EST (#65) |
| The first Operating System to have good support for a non-romaniform language will be a big step in the history of computers, in my opinion. What are you smoking? Windows has had support for non-ASCII languages for ages, as does Solaris. It's OK to not like non-Open-Source systems, but before you rant, you should at least know what's going on in the outside world. |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @01:13PM EST (#67) |
| Even a lot of recently designed Linux software, like Gnome and KDE, assume text that is "simple" and 8 bit, geared towards Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, etc. scripts. Kind of like the "Y2K" bug of data interchange. (Gee, why didn't anyone think of using Unicode as the infrastructure?) Fortunately there is enough pressure and inertia (since the late 70's and 80's on MS-DOS and other systems) for there to be people to get CJK scripts (Chinese-Japanese-Korean) to work on Linux, which are "simple", but require 16 bits. (Work is still not complete, though.) But there are still tougher hurdles. Although Hebrew and Arabic only need 8 bits, they need to be able to flow from right-to-left, and at least Arabic should have fonts that render each letter differently depending on where it is in the word, plus things like ligatures. Indic scripts can fit in 8 bits (why hasn't anyone mentioned ISCII?), but need the same kind of fancy rendering and fonts that Arabic needed. (Is there some reason that there are multiple fonts proliferating? Are people ignoring or unaware of the ISCII standard? Or is this because of fonts with unencoded glyphs for contextual rendering?) Even something as simple as Vietnamese isn't completely handled--8 bit Latin script, but needs more than one diacritic on letters--the European "dead key" concept isn't completely perfect for it. (Well, Vietnamese prefer the Telex system, anyway...) And Vietnamese has the problem of competing character sets too-- TCVN in Vietnam, CP1258 from Microsoft, VISCII overseas, and a mess of proprietary vendor ones. Already Apple and Microsoft are kicking Linux's butt in the multilingual and internationalization arena (note I did not say "localization", which led Microsoft down the code-forking path in the 80's and 90's with their OS's and application software). You can get the CJK, Arabic, Hebrew stuff *today*, and some of the Indic scripts--mostly just Devanagari for Hindu speakers (and on the Mac a lot earlier than Windows), if you want. But some Linux advocates get excited over minor advances like man page or KDE translations into "yet-another-Latin-script-using-language". Of course there's more than just translation and storing the data--fonts and their renderers have to be built, input methods (like for CJK text) have to be built, etc etc. |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @02:08PM EST (#114) |
| FYI, KDE is about to switch to Unicode. See http://developer.kde.org/kde 2arch/KDE-Unicode-Howto.html |
| You don't have a clue what this is all about (Score:1) by sig_sig on Sunday January 30, @01:27PM EST (#81) (User Info) |
| As some AC mentioned, support for multibyte characters is readily available in several (non-free) operating systems. The problem is translation of the software. All the major stuff is available for CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) because that's where money can be made. The article mentions the 18 official languages in India, and that's the problem. None of the big commercial vendors has taken the effort of translating into these languages, and this is where Open Source can help, by enabling the locals to do it themselves. |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:3, Informative) by elegant7x (elegant7x(a)hotmail.com) on Sunday January 30, @01:40PM EST (#94) (User Info) |
| Uh, English is the official language of India. (Along with Hindi, IIRC) About 10% of the population can speak it. Official government business is done in English(I think), just as in the US. Also, just about any language can be written in roman characters. Take Chinese for examplewo mei you wenti, ne kan ma? The first Operating System to have good support for a non-romaniform language will be a big step in the history of computers, Wow, you're way behind the times then, aren't you? From where I'm sitting windows supports non-romaniform languages perfectly well. Take Chinese for example: 我 没有 问题, 你看 马? If your running m13 (with the Chinese character set) you should be able to see that (IE5 supports unicode input, but not multiple character sets in one page mozilla does. But I don't know what slash is doing ether), maybe. I could also write in Japanese, Arabic, Korean, or anything else I felt like. I don't know where Linux is in this capability, but windows is already there. Amber Yuan (--ell7) Taipai Taiwan 2000AD |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:1) by dodobh (d o d o b h @ v s n l . c o m) on Sunday January 30, @02:17PM EST (#122) (User Info) |
| English isn't an official language. Its a third language after the state language and Hindi. A list of all languages would be long and offtopic, so I won't post them here. |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:1) by Flenser (flenser@softhome.net) on Sunday January 30, @05:47PM EST (#221) (User Info) http://descent.gamestats.com |
| >>Also, just about any language can be written in >>Roman characters. Take Chinese for example >>wo mei you wenti, ne kan ma? Are you an idiot? A fool? I'll assume you're simply ignorant. Chinese words change meaning COMPLETELY depending on their inflection - that is, the enunciation. That's why Chinese cannot be transliterated. How do you know if a word is supposed to be spoken with the rising inflection, or another? You can't, without a wierd and inaccurate accenting system. Furthermore, transliteration always loses a lot, such as exact pronunciation and inflection. Ever tried to read from a Chinese restaurant menu and seen the waiter wince? More than that - Chinese is and will be a sort of special case. There are dozens of dialects of it, many of which are so diverse that they're almost different languages. What allows the country to hold together? The writing is always the same. Transliterations of Chinese render unreadable the text to everyone who didn't learn that dialect of Chinese. If you're actually outputting genuine Chinese characters, people who speak Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese (The only two dialects whose actual names I know) will have no trouble chatting over the Chinese equivilant of AOL. (Mao Online?) -- "Of course the meek shall inherit the earth. They're welcome to it. As for the rest of us - Pavonis Mons, here we come!" --- The Third Book of Flenser |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @08:29PM EST (#265) |
| >Are you an idiot? A fool? I'll assume you're >simply ignorant. Chinese words change meaning >COMPLETELY depending on their inflection - that You're the one who's really ignorant. A single Chinese word does not have different meanings because of the tone used--instead, there are multiple Chinese words that otherwise sound the same and have different meanings are distinguished by tone alone. >That's why Chinese cannot be transliterated. How >do you know if a word is supposed to be spoken >with the rising inflection, or another? >You can't, without a wierd and inaccurate >accenting system. Really? The Vietnamese have no problem indicating their tones in their Latin-based writing system. The Thai have no problem indicating their tones in their Indic-based writing system, either. >Furthermore, transliteration always loses a lot, >such as exact pronunciation and inflection. No viable writing system captures all the details of speech. You might as well go read a spectrogram if that's what you want. >Ever tried to read from a Chinese restaurant menu >and seen the waiter wince? You wouldn't have that problem if you knew Chinese. >More than that - Chinese is and will be a sort of >special case. There are dozens of dialects of >it, many of which are so diverse that they're >almost different languages. What allows the >country to hold together? The writing is always >the same. Transliterations of Chinese render >unreadable the text to everyone who didn't learn >that dialect of Chinese. This is about the only thing you have gotten right. However, with the pro-Mandarin policies of China, Taiwan, and Singapore, this is only a temporary problem until everyone speaks some degree of Mandarin. Getting people to change their writing system, is a political and cultural matter--something else entirely. >If you're actually outputting genuine Chinese >characters, people who speak Cantonese and >Mandarin Chinese (The only two dialects whose >actual names I know) will have no trouble >chatting over the Chinese equivilant of AOL. (Mao >Online?) Unfortunately that's not always the case. Certainly those Cantonese chatters will write in Cantonese, and the Mandarin chatters won't be able to make any sense of it. Just take a look at the hk.* newsgroups. Even if those Cantonese chatters don't use their own weird characters that Mandarin chatters don't recognize, the sentences will still be gibberish. |
| Re:India / China interesting cases (Score:1) by chrischow (christian@SPAMAWAY.trash80.org.uk) on Monday January 31, @10:50AM EST (#328) (User Info) http://www.trash80.org.uk/ |
| calm down guys, mandarin and cantonese will in a few decades become to only major dialects of chinese used i think, the first because of official support, the second because its the language of entertainment. as for two people speaking different dialects, well they can communicate using writing, but only if both use modern standard chinese (AKA mandarin). actually most chinese writing has always been then is, AFAIK the only dialect to have many special characters is cantonese, though even if cantonese uses standard characters the meaning and sentence structure can be different. that makes, for example, reading cantonese song lyrics tricky to someone mandarin literate. btw u got your pinyin wrong |
| offtopic (Score:1) by timster (timster@earthling.net) on Sunday January 30, @09:18PM EST (#268) (User Info) |
| is "tao" pronounced with a t sound or a d sound? |
| IE does support multiple character sets in a page (Score:2) by rcromwell2 on Sunday January 30, @11:03PM EST (#281) (User Info) |
| For example, view http://www.servlets.com/servlet/HelloRosetta via IE5/Win2000. Mozilla is probably the only open-source app that has the right architecture to support localization and i18n. For instance, Mozilla stores language resources as XML entities, making them easy to localize. Very nice solution IMHO. Both the Windows and Java API's have significant support for i18n and l18n, such as full support for various character encodings, support for resource files builtin, Collation (being able to do String comparisons and sorting on non-English languages), Time, Date, Metric, and Money formating, etc. |
| Re:Daring Article For Slashdot (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @02:07PM EST (#111) |
| Wow, you're really going out on a limb with this one. NOT! Will we be subjected to more drivel like this: Why Linux makes sense for Zimbabwe. Why Linux makes sense for Peru. Why Linux makes sense for South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. Why Linux makes sense for Tuvalu. Roblimo, why don't you go get a job in the MS marketing department. I'm sure it pays better than writing rah-rah Linux marketing material for Slashdot. Unmoderated! |
| uhh, india makes 1/7th of world pop. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @03:02PM EST (#145) |
| linux reaching 1/7th more of the world population is a big thing. it definatly deserves a slashdot article ;p |
| Re:uhh, india makes 1/7th of world pop. (Score:1) by ramas on Monday January 31, @07:20AM EST (#309) (User Info) |
| Its not just about reaching 1/7 or 1/5 of the population .. its more about making available to a large population a choice... which at the present moment does not exist.. most people in India simply use pirated copies of Windoze.. cos its easliy available to the present computer users...even tho they live under the threat of software piracy raids etc.. Redhat/Caldera and others(flamers >. /dev/null) and other co's need to be proactive and spend some effort marketing their services in India..it maybe small today.. but just wait and watch.. |
| Re:Daring Article For Slashdot (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, @04:00PM EST (#176) |
| Why was this moderated down? I fully agree. |
| Let's talk about English: (Score:1) by timster (timster@earthling.net) on Sunday January 30, @06:13PM EST (#241) (User Info) |
| dead-lock, n (1779) 1: a state of inaction or neutralization resulting from the opposition of equally powerful uncompromising persons or factions : STANDSTILL 2: a tie score --Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary so if you want to talk about English, shut up and buy a dictionary. |
| Hey genius!!! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, @03:38AM EST (#305) |
| explain the "opposition of equally powerful persons or factions". |
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