now, i'm no expert in languages, but i do see that google translate also translate to/from chinese also, so i'm surprised that you claim it is a non-existant language?

also, wikipedia have a page about the chinese language - whereas, conversely, and in support of the other half of your statement, they don't have a page for the indian language, instead having a page for the languages of india.

perhaps we differ over uses of semantics here? perhaps you would've been happier if they'd specified traditional or simplified chinese?

like i say - i'm no expert, i'm just sayin' - that's all. ;-)

i think ibm have some catching up to do! ;) - google translate does a lot more languages than that (51 in total) - in fact i'm kinda surprised google have not built it into their chromium-os or the android platform (erm, i dunno - maybe they have - it's difficult to keep up with it all)

and, to top it all, google recently added the ability to view romanisations of characters such as chinese han, and input transliteration of phonetics for hindi, arabic and persian.

to my technical yet non-linguistically educated mind (i'm english by birth, so - thanks mostly to our poor education system, at least when it comes to languages - i only read, write and speak one language, and to be honest it's somewhat debatable how well us english folk are at our own language, although at least we don't speak americanese [/me ducks and runs] - although it's creeping into the common vernacular more and more thanks to the telly - 'though i digress somewhat), it'd be interesting to see how the technology that powers google's translate differs from that which powers ibm's n.fluent - to my mind the end result looks similar, so i wonder how much these kinds of technologies differ and/or how much they have in common?

here's a link to a blog by someone on the mars rover team, Mars and Me

i've been following it for a while now - it's truly fascinating

actually, i've just noticed i often do my two-finger scroll with my third finger + pinky when i am smoking a cigarette (because i'm holding the ciggy between my first + second finger) - and it's just as comfortable.

also, after a little thought i wonder if four finger pinch might not be too bad (depending on sensitivity of the software) using all four fingers and sliding the first finger left and right.

it's interesting to make such observations - most of these things go unnoticed generally (for me at least) and become natural / second-nature - i'm sure a lot of research has likely been done in this field

...it's just as easy/comfortable to lift up the first finger instead of the pinky (possibly moreso) - my macbook touchpad has two-finger scrolling (it's an older model, and doesn't have the same multi-touch support as their newer models), and i generally use the second+third finger to scroll (and rest my pinky down when reading/not scrolling) - i find it more comfortable than using the first+second finger

that said, i imagine a four finger pinch (using thumb movement to pinch) is still not particularly accurate - but the proof of the pudding is in the eating as they say (ie. i would have to try it out to know for sure)

i'll put my hands up and say i've not read the article - and i'll certainly not be wasting my time doing so.

but is anyone really so stupid to think that email (which is based upon open standards and is already running on hundreds of thousands of servers and comes installed by default on most servers) will ever be replaced by fecebook and twatter???

a few years ago i guess the same idiots would also be including myspaz on that list too? (and what is next years fad?)

email dying? pffffft - what a bunch of idiots (can't they see that?)

Accelerando - Charlie Stross

simply superb! :)

enjoy - there's lots to see! :)

i might be wrong, but here in the UK the biggest concentration of neolithic sites is generally understood to be in the Wiltshire area - that's where you'll find Stonehenge (and its 'complex' / associated sites) and also Avebury and its 'complex' including Silbury Hill (plus lots of minor sites which are still interesting) - but there are also a lot of stone circles and henges in various parts of Scotland too.

personally i'd like to see the stuff in France like the awesome stone rows at Carnac - which are not just fascinating, they're truly mind boggling to comprehend imo!!

to be honest, sites that are simple henges - such as Thornborough in Yorkshire (which is undoubtedly of great significance), and many many others, aren't actually that interesting to visit - the more interesting sites are those which also feature standing stones. Avebury (and the sites in the surrounding area) is truly amazing - the henge is hundreds of meters across, and contains the whole village, pub and all! the stones are pretty huge, and the earthworks / bank and ditch is much bigger than that at Stonehenge - imo Stonehenge is only more impressive because of the trilithon arrangement of the stones. Silbury Hill (near Avebury) is (i believe) the largest man-made hill in Europe! - of course no one knows what it was for...

be sure to check out the recent 'Time Team' TV programme's episodes on Stonehenge (and indeed any of their other episodes on neolithic/prehistoric sites) which i linked to in another post of mine - hopefully you can still watch these from the US and they've not limited viewing to the UK only.

there's a wikipedia page on henges - though you've likely already seen that if you followed links from the pages i've already linked?

(btw, i'm not after mod points - i already have excellent slashdot karma, and have had for years - i'm just providing this info because this is something that i'm truly interested in)

have fun! :)

i think they concluded the holes were sockets for stones for a number of reasons - one of which is because of the amount of chippings of Bluestone they found in the area, and another being that holes which have had stones in them have a variety of archaeological evidence to support such a conclusion, including the way the earth is packed, the way the hole is cut, and whether there's evidence for packing stones, etc, having been used to hold the stones in place.

the combination of this kind of evidence plus the lack of evidence needed to support the hypothesis of wooden posts being in the holes (organic material would likely be left if wooden posts had been in the sockets) is generally how archaeologists draw their conclusions -- it's become quite a science over the years, and, as time passes, technological advances combined with a greater understanding gathered from other excavations/investigations allows them to build a better picture.

they have found sites with sockets which they believe held wooden posts - so it's not as if they discount such a possibility outright, such things do indeed exist (see Woodhenge for example - but there are plenty of other sites which feature 'post holes', although not usually in large circular arrangements such as discovered at Woodhenge)

of course none of these conclusions/hypotheses can be proven as totally and absolutely 100% accurate, and it is often the case that archaeologists will draw new conclusions in later years, as technology improves and more information is gathered from other digs - which is exactly what they've been doing with these recent excavations in the Stonehenge area.

personally, i'm of the opinion that if they say they don't think it was wooden posts but it was stones, then they're likely right - they are experts after all, and they don't really just make this stuff up, it's based upon the evidence at hand at the site and the culmination of years of study and research across many similar sites.

(in some ways it's like if i repair a pc, and tell my customer that i think it's a hard-disk failure - i've based my decision upon years of experience and the evidence at hand - in such a situation, ie. being the repair-man, i am the 'expert' in that equation - of course, Joe Public may say 'how do you know? it could be the motherboard or the power-supply or something' - and sure, it could be open to interpretation and later discoveries of related information, but i'm likely to be right)

evidence exists for literally hundreds and hundreds of henges across the UK - a lot of them don't have any stones (not because they've been removed, a lot of them just never had them) - the term 'henge' is generally taken to be a circular/oval bank and ditch earthwork.

...uhm, maybe it's because in day-to-day conversation people don't generally talk about pre-historic / neolithic sites very much? (sorry, couldn't resist pointing out the obvious there! ;)

people familiar with ancient / pre-historic sites do often use the term henge when talking about this kind of thing - i guess it depends on where you live, and who you speak with? -- i'm kinda assuming from your question that you likely aren't living in the UK (or France) where there are a lot of henges (and barrows and standing stones / stone arrangements) scattered all over the countryside - some are big and impressive, like Stonehenge (obviously), Avebury and Thornborough, all of which are in the UK, and Carnac in France -- whereas others are only known about because of circular markings left in farmers fields (often only visible from the air nowadays), eg. Bow Henge.

hth

here in the UK Channel 4's "Time Team" covered some of the recent excavations in the Stonehenge area in a couple of episodes earlier this year - this includes the initial discovery of this 'Bluehenge' site, although when the programmes were made they had not got as far as finding the evidence for a complete henge at this site.

check out the two 'specials' here and here. fwiw, the second programme is the more detailed of the two and covers more of the later discoveries.

these recent digs are particularly interesting because they're the most up-to-date excavations to have taken place in the Stonehenge area so far, and they also include the re-excavations of older digs which took place before we had some of our modern techniques, technologies and understanding.

truly fascinating stuff! :)

hi,

would you mind telling me where you got your 30 degree size for the front-facing arc from? i couldn't find that info in either articles - maybe i missed something?

from a diagram on the back of the unit (shown in a photograph referenced in another post), the front-facing arc of effectiveness looks to be approximately 120 degrees, with semi-safe zones being to the far right and far left (being approx 30 degrees in size each, arcing towards the forward direction from left and right right-angles / tangents) -- with a safe zone behind the unit (of course).

if there's something about arc size in either article, i missed it, and would love to know where it is?!

hi - i read both the Guardian's article and the NYT's article - but i didn't see anywhere where it mentions the size of the arc / angle of effectiveness, in either of the linked articles (nor the Slashdot summary - although that's to be expected! ;)

maybe i missed something? i'd love to know what the arc actually is, because i'd like to correct some calculations i made which were based upon visual estimates of arc size from a diagram on the back on the unit (whereupon it shows it to be approximately 120 degrees).

would you mind telling me which article it was? and/or perhaps quoting the part of the article where it says the arc size?

(forgive me if i seem stupid and have missed the obvious here...)

thanks! x

oh, my bad - if the red pie slice is approx 120 degrees, then the yellow pie slices to the left and right are not 35 degrees each, but 30 degrees each.

but that mistake doesn't affect any of the maths that follow - and i'm hoping that's my only mistake.

hi

i did a few simple calculations for beam width, based, admittedly, on some fairly vague 'safety' information shown in a photograph of the back of the unit someone else posted.

i posted my calculations as a reply to the original post with the flickr link - you can find both here.

hth?

(heh, i'm hoping my maths is correct!)