MS admits Vista is bloatware

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Thu 01 Nov, 2007 4:49 pm

Alright that's complicated, but who can even say "gek" (crazy (adjective), fool (noun)) properly? even half of the native Dutch speakers can't, so speak-recognition tools should understand the wrong pronunciation as well.

And the nice "open-syllable" 'rule'? peer -> peren (pear pears) could get confusing: in steel + stelen, stelen usually isn't the plural of steel (usually it's a verb, in which case it means to steal), though it could be.
Inconsistent use of "i" or "ie" at the end of words: macaroni etc end on "i", but no other words (afaik)

It may not be the hardest language on earth, but I doubt it's really coincidence that it's the only west-european language they left out..

CoBB · Post by **CoBB** » Thu 01 Nov, 2007 4:58 pm

King Harold wrote:It may not be the hardest language on earth, but I doubt it's really coincidence that it's the only west-european language they left out..

Only?

What happened to Portuguese? Or Italian? Not to mention all the languages that have no associated blobs on the map, like Catalan, Basque, all the Celtic languages...

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Thu 01 Nov, 2007 6:00 pm

Well, portugese is really more of an south-european language (since it's close to Spanish) and so is Italian (and Greek)
Let's say "major west-european languages"

They could have made support for English only, less effort, everyone* speaks it to some degree, and the differences between English-UK and English-US aren't that big (not as much as between English and a random language anyway), would've been cheaper for them..

JoostinOnline · Post by **JoostinOnline** » Thu 01 Nov, 2007 10:05 pm

Am I the only one who has noticed how far off topic we have gotten?

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Thu 01 Nov, 2007 10:08 pm

nah it's just that almost everyone agreed, how can you argue without disagreeing?

note: this is just as far off topic anyway

Timendus · Post by **Timendus** » Fri 02 Nov, 2007 8:40 am

CoBB wrote:
Timendus wrote:I stick to Dutch... try making a computer understand how to type "verschrikkelijk" or "schoenenreus"... you people probably can't even pronounce it
What is so special about these words?

The fact that characters combined can have totally different sounds than seperately (which is also true for several combinations of letters in English, but we have a bit more) and the fact that those combined sounds are pretty much unique to our language. To name only the ones present in my two example words: "sch" is one sound, and it does not exist in English, French or whatever (only German has something similar, but they pronounce it a bit different). Same goes for "ij" (a bit like a Texan would pronounce the "y" in "why", but sharper), "oe" (pretty much like "ou" in "you"), "eu" (doesn't exist in English). So those words are hard (if not impossible) to pronounce for a foreigner, and because of that I expect they are hard to translate to text for a computer, that's why I chose them.

Also, there's the fact that in Dutch you can combine some words (schoenenreus literally means "shoes giant", it's the name of a store) but not others. So while a program could theoretically have a limited database of English words and their pronouciation, that's a no-go for Dutch, because there are "endless" combinations. You'd have to store words seperately, and also keep a database of which words you can combine, which you can't, et cetera...

And if you think your language is hard to pronounce, let me introduce Ithkuil.

That's pretty cool... insane, but cool

Tim, youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re disappointing me with this nonsense.

Sorry if I am

I don't have the time and energy to treat every topic with the same seriousness... Browsing through Maxcoders is still my leisure time between working hours, you know...

CoBB · Post by **CoBB** » Fri 02 Nov, 2007 9:43 am

Timendus wrote:The fact that characters combined can have totally different sounds than seperately (which is also true for several combinations of letters in English, but we have a bit more) and the fact that those combined sounds are pretty much unique to our language.

The same can be said about most languages, don’t worry.

Timendus wrote:So those words are hard (if not impossible) to pronounce for a foreigner, and because of that I expect they are hard to translate to text for a computer, that's why I chose them.

Why, which language can you learn to pronounce perfectly when you’re past your childhood?

Timendus wrote:Also, there's the fact that in Dutch you can combine some words (schoenenreus literally means "shoes giant", it's the name of a store) but not others. So while a program could theoretically have a limited database of English words and their pronouciation, that's a no-go for Dutch, because there are "endless" combinations.

Oh my, stop comparing it to English!

English has probably the simplest morphology among European languages (compensated by complex syntax, however).

Timendus wrote:You'd have to store words seperately, and also keep a database of which words you can combine, which you can't, et cetera...

Well, the situation is much worse with agglutinative languages, because there are lots of suffixes that can be combined in various ways, but many combinations are impossible, and it is also an interesting question how many endings you can stack before the resulting word stops being meaningful. And there are lots of potential misspellings that happen to coincide with formally correct words (i.e. they could be generated by the grammar) that no-one in their right mind would use, which can only be handled with a long list of hard-coded exceptions.

Timendus wrote:That's pretty cool... insane, but cool

I think it’s ridiculous. I can’t but laugh when I hear things like ‘OumpeÃƒÂ¡ ÃƒÂ¤x’ÃƒÂ¤ÃƒÂ¤ļuktÃƒÂ«x.’

Timendus wrote:Sorry if I am I don't have the time and energy to treat every topic with the same seriousness... Browsing through Maxcoders is still my leisure time between working hours, you know...

I’m in the same boots.

thecheat · Post by **thecheat** » Sat 03 Nov, 2007 3:48 pm

woah! that language is...

...

wow, I wouldn't want to speak that. sounds retarded... like they're throwing up all over themselves while trying to drool and yawn at the same time.

Andy_J · Post by **Andy_J** » Wed 14 Nov, 2007 3:34 pm

You all lost me around the beginning of the second page, so I apologize if something I'm saying has already been said.

First, MinWin *does not* have a GUI at all. That is why it is so small. Text only.

Second, Parallels needs no help from OS X to run Windows in the way that it does. It does everything just fine on Tiger, and Apple surely didn't add anything to that. The big change in Leopard is that Boot Camp (which *IS* dual-booting) is out of beta and included with the OS, instead of a separate beta download (which expired the weekend Leopard came out I think -- so your BIOS extension in the EFI would no longer work unless you upgrade to Leopard). All Boot Camp is, in and of itself, is a tool to resize your HFS+ partition to make room for an NTFS or FAT32 partition, a BIOS compatibility module for EFI, and a driver installer for Windows. While you do need it to properly install Windows, it isn't really a feature of the OS so much as it is a firmware patch.

Pre-Intel Macs running Windows did so in a completely emulated virtual machine, since those Macs had PowerPC processors which of course can't run x86 code. Completely emulating a computer is a helluva lot slower than contemporary VMs which run the code natively on the processor and just emulate the rest of the hardware. Nevermind the fact that newer Intel processors (all of the ones used in Macs I believe) have built-in support for running virtual machines.

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Wed 14 Nov, 2007 5:05 pm

So Apple forces dual-booters to get Leopard?
That is even worse than Microsofts continual campaign to force their newest overly expensive software on people.

MinWin *does not* have a GUI at all. That is why it is so small. Text only.

Almost exactly, it's obvious that a GUI of more than text doesn't need to be as hugely bloated as it is.
by the way, text is a form of GUI as it's graphical (unless you don't show it, but that's just stupid)

I have been told that using the special VM-features is slower than doing some weird software tricks, but I don't know anything about that

Post by **benryves** » Wed 14 Nov, 2007 5:15 pm

King Harold wrote:by the way, text is a form of GUI as it's graphical (unless you don't show it, but that's just stupid)

Not necessarily. EDIT is an example of a textmode GUI (having Windows, Menus and Pointers and some limited Icons), but you can also have command-line interfaces (DOS) or menu-driven interfaces (the ATM at your bank).

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Wed 14 Nov, 2007 5:34 pm

Most command lines show text, any UI that is visible must be a GUI (G stands for "graphical" right? anything visible...)

Andy_J · Post by **Andy_J** » Wed 14 Nov, 2007 10:48 pm

Now you're just nitpicking...

CoBB · Post by **CoBB** » Thu 15 Nov, 2007 7:53 am

King Harold wrote:Most command lines show text, any UI that is visible must be a GUI (G stands for "graphical" right? anything visible...)

Hmm, a doorknob is definitely a UI and it is visible as well, does that make it a GUI?

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Thu 15 Nov, 2007 8:34 am

now I wouldn't go that far..
so let's say it has to be virtual..?