You don't have children do you?

other???? WTF

At least they were well-rounded

I use Linux to make a phone call in the same sense as I use Quantum Mechanics to make a cup of tea. In other words, it's true but not a necessary part of the solution.

Don't most of them start with a discovery like this. Just saying.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobsonian_telescope

Go outside and see the sun!? - you've obviously never lived in London

I'd love to see more diversity in this space but I think that Google is winning the battle. Chrome as a browser is pretty cool and Android as an OS is huge. I'd be surprised if Firefox can fight them off.

Is referenced in the article as the father of neural networks.

He has a course on them at coursera that is pretty good.

https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets

My Thai is not that good. Probably only 500 words or so and my accent is terrible. But I am unclear about ay and shy. Can you give me a clue?

I certainly haven't had time to read the supporting papers carefully and consider them. I am not a professional linguist or cognitive scientist but it is a subject that has interested me for over 40 years, It's why I got into computers in the first place. Could you post some links to resources that could be informative to a keen amateur?

Sure, cool, not starting a flame war here, it could be a coincidence but of course they are similar in a whole bunch of languages. See the articles supporting info. These words get a high score.

Plus I wasn't asserting that they were similar because they came from some 'proto-language' I was just making an observation that very, very different languages had some words that sounded rather similar and I thought it interesting.

Colin Renfrew, the editor of the paper is a highly respected linguist so I wouldn't dismiss it lightly. The article however, is very, very short on detail. I was also rather disappointed.

I'll do my best to render Thai words phonetically but it's not easy.

Mare - Mother or often in English Ma

Pore - Father or again often Pa

Fi - fire

Those are the only non-loan words that overlap that I've come across

It is interesting that there are any words in common of course

Well, yesterday a friend brought over a machine that had software issues, It took me maybe 10 minutes to fix a problem he'd been struggling with for months. While he was here he had a look at our tumble dryer that had stopped working. Whipped the back off - pointed at the broken drive belt - easy fix he said.

So he now has a working computer and I now have a working drier.

Win-win in my opinion. 10 mins work on my part in exchange for not having to spend $500 worth on a new dryer.