command line vs gui
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From: Lee Sau Dan on 14 Dec 2005 00:44 >>>>> "Roger" == Roger Blake <rogblake10(a)iname10.com> writes: Roger> I do prefer the touchpad to the little joystick thingie in Roger> the middle of the keyboard that some notebooks come with. I prefer the touch-point to the touchpad, because it doesn't require my fingers to move away from the home row. -- Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´° ~{@nJX6X~} E-mail: danlee(a)informatik.uni-freiburg.de Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
From: Lee Sau Dan on 14 Dec 2005 00:51 >>>>> "Tobias" == Tobias Brox <tobias(a)stud.cs.uit.no> writes: Tobias> To learn a language, exposure is extremely important - Tobias> it's not enough to just learn it, one also have to use it Tobias> and practice it with different speakers. I think I also Tobias> learnt English at age 12 in the school, but I had some Tobias> exposure before that. I remember the first English I Tobias> learnt was "run game", which I was frequently entering at Tobias> the command line ;-) Yeah. I also learnt English from the commands. I learnt the word "if" from the BASIC programming language! And "procedure" from Pascal. I also learnt "register" and "accumulator" from assembly language. And I learnt some Middle English from the game Ultima. :) >> I don't believe in this. I think it's doable, if you would dig >> into phonetics or a person with good phonetics knowledge could >> help you get rid of the accent. Tobias> Though I cannot dig up any references at the moment, I've Tobias> read several times that it's easier to learn languages the Tobias> younger one is. Because you have more free time to spend on the learning? I have never seen any evidences that can refute "abundance of time" as a factor to account for the general observation that younger people learn languages more easily. Tobias> One of my teachers at the gymnasium was from the east Tobias> Europe, he had been living here teaching at the same Tobias> school for around 30 years, and still he had a very Tobias> distinctive accent - though, rumors had it the accent was Tobias> just a gimmick, and that he sometimes was seen in the Tobias> public speaking without any noticable accent. I don't Tobias> believe that rumor :-) Many people from Shanghai and northern China still bear a notable accent when speaking Cantonese, even after more than 30 years of being immersed in a Cantonese-speaking society. They simply have no intention to improve their Cantonese, as long as they have got people to understand them. Tobias> Bilingual children can learn two languages amazingly fast. Tobias> I was hanging around on a mailing list for bilingual Tobias> families for a while (but finally gave up, too much Tobias> activity). According to the experience (expressed by Tobias> several people on the list), quite often a 3-4 year old Tobias> child has already started bypassing adult non-native Tobias> speakers of a language, like if the father if trying to Tobias> speak the language of the mother, the child can often Tobias> start correcting mistakes. Again, it could be due to abandance of time. How many hours a day does the child spend with his mother? And how many hours a day does the husband spend with his wife? -- Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´° ~{@nJX6X~} E-mail: danlee(a)informatik.uni-freiburg.de Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
From: Lee Sau Dan on 14 Dec 2005 00:57 >>>>> "blmblm" == blmblm <blmblm(a)myrealbox.com> writes: >> But still, many HKers who learned English in the same >> education system and environment as I do, do not learn it that >> well. Many of them has a very Chinese accent. blmblm> So what's the difference between them and you? You reject blmblm> the most ego-boosting explanation (unusual ability on your blmblm> part) :-), so it must be something else? I bother to improve my pronounciations; they don't. I bother to learn IPA so that I can check pronunciations with a dictionary; they don't. I bother to learn some phonetics to find out how the similar sounds (to my ears) are distinguished and how they are pronounced; others don't. blmblm> This subtopic started when I disagreed with the claim that blmblm> learning a new language was easy for adults. I *think* blmblm> what you've been saying is that it doesn't take any blmblm> special abilities, but it does take an investment of time blmblm> and energy that a lot of people seem unable or unwilling blmblm> to make? Basically. Of course, there are physical differences. E.g. children may more relatively sensitive ears than adults. And children may have better memory than adults, too. But I think these differences are not big enough to be *significant*. They get exaggerated (and repeated) only because many adults want to use them as excuses not to learn a new language. blmblm> which puts us closer to agreement, I think, than might be blmblm> apparent, since for me "easy" sort of implies "doesn't blmblm> take much effort". Well... OK. -- Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´° ~{@nJX6X~} E-mail: danlee(a)informatik.uni-freiburg.de Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
From: Lee Sau Dan on 14 Dec 2005 01:06 >>>>> "Tobias" == Tobias Brox <tobias(a)stud.cs.uit.no> writes: Tobias> I still think it could be useful for those who are using Tobias> "find" seldom enough to forget the options and the syntax Tobias> between each time, and who don't like to read the manual - Tobias> plus all of those who have heard that find is a good Tobias> thing, but who do not care reading the manual pages. Tobias> Actually, I think there are quite many such users out Tobias> there. Then, offer them a choice of several common recipes. These are set-meals. No variations allowed. >> Easy. In the place of -exec, use -print to have a dry-run. >> Any *competent* user of 'find' knows how to do this. Tobias> How often do you do that? When I'm using a query that is not similar to something I've used before. Tobias> Every now and then I do serious Tobias> mistakes because I trust my own abilities too much. Tobias> Anyway, it is not that easy when having lots of files. Being able to check the list with "less" (or even in Emacs: find-dired) is very helpful in these cases, because you can use regular expressions to check if you have included/excluded something unexpectedly. Tobias> You could tail the output to less, head or tail or even Tobias> wc, or write it to a file and do investigations on the Tobias> file - but this kind of thing is actually much easier to Tobias> do through a user interface. The UI has not been built yet. Even if one is built, it's not flexible enough. By comparison, unix text utilities, include head, tail, wc, sort, uniq, cut, etc. are all there ready to be exploited. And they are very very flexible. Tobias> It would be neat to add a file counter there - so the user Tobias> will at once see the head of the list and the size of the Tobias> list up immediately, and if he would get cold feets, he Tobias> can do different sortings, show different columns and Tobias> browse up and down in the list before pressing the Tobias> "delete"-button. Use Emacs's find-dired, then. There, you can mark files with "tags", and then instruct Emacs to delete files with a particular tag. Tobias> I'm asserting that it's possible to implement this, but Tobias> I'm not going to prove it. Sorting/unique-test is trivial Tobias> using a high-level programming language or apropriate Tobias> libraries. Such as unix text utils? Tobias> Sort does not have any option for "sort from character Tobias> #x", and that would often be useful when sorting Tobias> space-aligned text. >> How are you going to support the "load search" without parsing >> the whole search query? And how are you going to represent in >> your UI a query that your UI cannot express? Tobias> Why should I need to represent it other places than in the Tobias> right section (actual command + listing of files found)? Maintenance. People familiar with your tool would want to use it to *edit* find commands that other people have written, or modify an old one for new needs. If your tool can't read in an existing command, then, it would be much less attractive. -- Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´° ~{@nJX6X~} E-mail: danlee(a)informatik.uni-freiburg.de Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
From: Tobias Brox on 14 Dec 2005 01:27
[Lee Sau Dan] > Tobias> Though I cannot dig up any references at the moment, I've > Tobias> read several times that it's easier to learn languages the > Tobias> younger one is. > Because you have more free time to spend on the learning? I think you do have a point, but still - the brain of a newborn is hardwired to learn language. I don't think that there are less "abundance of time" for an adult living in a foreign country for 40 years, than for a newborn spending some few years on learning the mother-tongue. > I have never seen any evidences that can refute "abundance of time" as > a factor to account for the general observation that younger people > learn languages more easily. A factor, probably, but I'm quite sure it's not the only one. I think there exists quite some adults living in foreign countries speaking almost nothing but the foreign language; they do get at least as much practice every day as a child. Very few of those can communicate perfectly in the foreign language, and I think it's too simple to attribute their lack of perfection to _lazyness_. There are studies showing that those adults are using different parts of the brain for the foreign language and their native language, while adults beeing bilingual from early childhood is using the same parts of the brain. While this doesn't prove that children learn languages better than adults, it does tell that there are differences in the way children and adults learn language. -- This signature has been virus scanned, and is probably safe to read Tobias Brox, 69?42'N, 18?57'E |