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Comment "Beta" means something different to Google. (Score 3, Insightful) 221

As I remind my students, "Beta" to Google means they haven't figured out how to profit on it. If they can find a way to profit on it, it then becomes one of their many appliances. If they can't, it gets killed. Clearly, Google didn't have a way to profit on Reader, as they couldn't on Wave, as they couldn't on Health. If they can find a way to profit from Keep, it'll keep. Otherwise it'll be gone like the rest.

Comment Teachers and other "sensitive" occupations (Score 1) 445

As a teacher, I often find the need to discuss details with other teachers about a student that I don't want to document in an e-mail (that can be subpoenaed.) In addition, I have students of low-socioeconomic status who don't have a computer at home, can't use work e-mail for personal matters, and rely on the POTS to communicate with the world. I use my desk phone everyday.

Comment Why can't free mail services PGP-sign everything? (Score 2) 92

Seriously, if all the major free e-mail services signed every outgoing e-mail, wouldn't that cover about %MADEUPPERCENTAGE (but certainly more than half, perhaps closer to 90%) of all e-mail? Have Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail/whathaveyew create a public/private key for each user, create a new e-mail header for keys (so it's not lurking in the sig confusing people.) This covers most of the Joe User situations (people who run their own server would know enough to sign their own email) and puts the onus on Hotmail/Gmail/Yahoo/whathaveyew policing their own users (heaven forbid!)

Comment Did you mean "French Military Defeats?" (Score 1) 693

They already have a few jokes interspersed, like "anagram" and "french military victories". I wonder if Bing shows unexpected results for those.

"french military victories" comes from the comedy site albinoblacksheep.com. "recursion" is another one, though. More poking fun at itself or the search terms rather than "mountweazels"

Comment Re:Another story about how badly it works (Score 1) 203

Part of the reason for the poor translation is, rather than translate to the end of a sentence, it translates one line at a time. So, in the "Peligro" example (which the first word is rather blurry and thus not properly translated for that reason,) it has to translate "se require", "casco en", and "esta area" with no context of any of the other lines of Spanish. "It is required" is a good translation of the first line. "Casco" is probably not in the limited vocabulary of the app (I'd assume 5000-10000 words, and "helmet" is probably not in there.)

As for the green sign, I'd add to the above argument that it is already translated from English to Spanish by a machine, and translating back with this device provides nice opportunities for some major Engrish to develop.

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