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Comment Re:why not? (Score 3, Informative) 573

From: http://techland.time.com/2012/04/04/a-little-girl-finds-her-voice-thanks-to-threatened-new-ipad-app/#ixzz1xfwxflS6 Maya smiles and gives me a big hug as soon as I sit on the couch, or as big a hug as a tiny three-year-old girl can manage. Her mother, Dana Nieder, laughs and explains that because Maya has difficulty speaking, she often has to express herself in other ways. She is as smart and curious as any other girl her age; the problem is that the muscles that control her speech are weak and disorganized, making saying a single word incredibly difficult. Doctors have run multiple tests but all they can determine is that it is probably a genetic condition.

Comment Re:Japan: legally required to have an ID at all ti (Score 1) 380

Replied to the parent already but apparently, it's because of bicycle theft. My brand new bicycle was stolen a while ago. The worst is that it was parked in parking area of my apartment. Seriously, just reporting the theft case took me an afternoon as they wanted me to get precise times on the last time I saw it and wanted to confirm this info with my wife. At least I was lucky, because they kept a kid all afternoon after he reported a lost sock on the street. Too much spare time...

Comment Re:Japan: legally required to have an ID at all ti (Score 1) 380

I do live in Osaka but I spend a lot of time cycling at night. Apparently, there was a surge in bicycle theft recently so they tend to check every young people (not only foreigners) riding a bike at night. Since it's dark, they're usually surprised to see that I'm a foreigner and ask the ARC to check for visa too. Since I changed addresses and visa status quite a lot during these 5 years and that these amendments are handwritten, they usually call the Police Post to check I'm legit. I guess the cops in my area have just too much time to spare :)

Comment Japan: legally required to have an ID at all time (Score 5, Interesting) 380

As a foreigner in Japan, law forces me to carry my "Alien Registration Card" at all time. Policemen stop foreigners here once or twice a month to check for visa overstay. I also carry my French ID, in case of an earthquake or nuclear meltdown so I can get assistance from the Embassy. Most of the time I use my Japanese Driver's License though, as this carries less sensitive information. This is the de facto standard ID here to buy booze or cigarets as Japanese do not have ID cards and insurance cards do not have pictures. This plus my IC work card that I use to buy food at the University restaurant :)

Comment American thing? (Score 1) 169

Pardon my ignorance, bu why exactly should today be a grill day? Is it a US thing? I'm just asking because I never heard of a specific day for grilling. P.S. I live in Japan.

Comment Web servers? (Score 1) 296

Depends of the definition of "my computing time". I'm a web developer, so if it means "time spent in front of my computer w.r.t to another computer" then it's almost 100%. If it's the CPU cycles, since I spend a lot of time on a SSH console, it would somewhere around 40%.

Comment Re:Difficulty with non-standard orthography (Score 1) 91

Disclaimer: I work on finding new ways to use machine translation in intercultural collaboration. What happens most of the time with slang is as you say, a simple mapping. The most efficient way to deal with slang syntactically incorrect terms is to use a custom dictionary in the machine translator. For example, "U" is translated as "you". To make it more complete, you might want to use a complete translation memory, not taking single words. To make it short, you just need a custom element in your translation, to adapt to your domain. That's why machine translation such as Google Translate can't work very well since it can't get the context of the content you want to translate.

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