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Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/math/Marijke_Van_Gans_dead.html
Xah Lee, 2010-10-07
Just discovered that a long time acquaintance is dead. She is a mathematician, her name is Marijke Van Gans. Here's the obituary from London Mathematical Society at lms.ac.uk newsletter. Quote:
Dr Marijke van Gans, who was elected a member of the London Mathematical Society on 18 February 2003, died on 21 April 2009, aged 53.
Robert Curtis writes: Marijke was a highly original and exceptionally talented scholar and mathematician, who had become known internationally as a solver of demanding mathematical problems on the internet. She was a brilliant computer programmer and an inspirational mathematical expositor, as is witnessed by the many accolades to her on the web from people who have been enlightened by her insight.
She was born at Harns or Harlingen in the Netherlands but studied at the University of London from 1987–90, and later lived in Ireland, England and Scotland. Indeed, at one point she was one third of the winning Compuserve SCIMATH Forum Team whilst living on the Isle of Bute. One imagines her in a croft with a state-of-the-art laptop computer, but few other creature comforts! The other two members of her team lived in Wigan and in Memphis, Tennessee, and no two of the trio had ever met face to face.
Encouraged and commended by the many people she had impressed through her problem-solving online, she came to the University of Birmingham in 2004 to research into combinatorics under the supervision of Robert Curtis. Her thesis was entitled Topics in trivalent graphs and she was awarded the PhD degree in 2007.
She fell ill earlier this year and, sadly, the seriousness of her condition was not immediately recognised. The disease proved particularly virulent and she died rapidly; thus a unique mathematical talent is lost to us.
I “met” her online, in CompuServe, in around 1991 to 1994. At those time, i was a college student, and just started to learn math, at calculus level. In fact, was obsessed with math, and in particular enamored with recreational mathematics. I spend several hours online daily in CompuServe's math forum. At the time, internet as we know it today isn't really there. Instead, there are few popular online services such as CompuServe in the era of BBS (Bulletin boards systems). (others popular at the time includes Delphi, Prodigy, AppleLink, and later on AOL.) In those times, you connect to the service by phone modem. I think my first modem is 300 baud rate. (roughly 300 bit/s.)
CompuServe has a Math forum. Basically, all math enthus gather and discuss math, of any sorts in all levels. Marijke is there all the time, one of the top poster (contributor) in the forum. I learned many things from her, and have exachanged many personal writings with her. (there's no email as we know it today) I'll have to dig up my CompuServe archive to post some of her writings.
After 1994, i moved to Illinois to work as a intern at Wolfram Research. By 1995 the internet started in earnest, and BBS and CompuServe waned. I have not used CompuServe since about 1994. But have exchanged a email or two with Marijke once every few years. The last of our email exchange is in mid 2000s (will dig up and possibly put here later.)
Marijke is a very idiosyncratic person, and she is a genius, in the sense that she is extremely intelligent, and diligent at solving hard problems, and completely love her subjects. She is the first person, in early 1990s, that i've seen to consistently use lower case “i” for “I”. (See: On “I” versus “i”)
In 2002, she solved a numerical analysis problem published by Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Here's a quote from her page:
This "Hundred Digit" Challenge consisted of ten numerical analysis problems, each having a single real number answer. For each, a maximum of ten points were available (one per correct significant digit).
The problems were published in SIAM News of Jan/Feb 2002, and later in Science and elsewhere. The answers and winners have now been announced by the Challenge's organiser, Prof. L. N. Trefethen of Oxford Univ., and a write-up will appear in the July/Aug 2002 issue of SIAM News.
94 teams (of one to six members each, and from all across the world) entered. Of these, 20 teams became joint winners by scoring a full hundred points. Among those is the team that was formed in the CompuServe SCIMATH forum, an online discussion message board, and consisted of Brian Medley (front, in the picture), Bernard B. Beard (centre), and Marijke van Gans (me, at the back).
I don't know Marijke really well, but from what i know of her, she does not seem to have strong formal math background at least during early 1990s, but is rather a persistent and inventive lone genius who can solve hard professional math problems on her own, at age 40 or so. She is also a exert in physics.
Of what i know of her personally, she is a expert in Windows DOS/80x86 programing with the C language. I would estimate that her expertise here is probably within the world's top 1000 programers in this area. She has written several DOS programs. As usual with her works, her software is usually very idiosyncratic, however, is the most efficient. For example, when in late 1990s, DOS is practically obsolete, but she would still write her Windows software in DOS mode, with text based graphical user interface.
She has 2 websites. One is 〔silicon-alley.com〕, started in 1996. It hosts her software. I started my website in 1997, using the same hosting service known as best.com at the time. And in 1999 she started 〔maxwellian.demon.co.uk〕, which is her personal site with her writings about math, physics, software. You can see her sites at archive.org:
Some of her pages on archive.org seem to have been hacked by sex site spammers. Just disable background image.
Here's a screenshot of her silicon-alley site as i remember it.
Marijke's Silicon Alley website. ❐
Two particular programs i've use are 〈rotate〉 Source and one called neganaut i think.
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/comp/unicode_support_ruby_python_elisp.html
Xah Lee, 2010-10-07, 2011-02-06
This page exams several language's support for unicode. In particular, whether variables or function names can have unicode characters in them.
I looked at Ruby 2 years ago. (See: Why Not Ruby? ) One problem i found is that it does not support Unicode well. I just checked today, it still doesn't. Just do a web search on blog and forums on “ruby unicode”. e.g.:
Perl's exceedingly lousy unicode support hack is well known. In fact it is the primary reason i switched to python for my scripting needs in 2005.
However, perl might have improved over the years. It can, in fact, use unicode in var or function names. For code examples, see: Unicode in Perl and Python.
Python 2.x's unicode support is also not ideal. You have to declare your
source code with header like #-*- coding: utf-8 -*-, and you have
to declare your string as unicode with “u”, e.g. u"α β λ".
In regex, you have to declare unicode with a flag e.g. re.search(r'\.html$',child,re.U).
And when processing files,
you have to read in with unicode(inF.read(),'utf-8'), and printing
out unicode you have to do outF.write(outtext.encode('utf-8')). If
you are processing lots of files, and if one of the file contains a bad char or
doesn't use encoding you expected, your python script chokes dead in the middle,
you don't even know which file it is or which line unless your code print file
names. If you are processing a few thousand files in a dir with all sub-dirs,
good luck in finding out which files have already been processed.
Python 2.6.x does not support unicode char for var or function names.
Python 3 supposedly fixed the unicode problem, but i haven't used it. I do not know if Python 3 support unicode in var names.
Last time i looked into whether i should adopt python 3, but apparently it isn't used much. (See: Python 3 Adoption) (and i'm quite pissed that Python is going more and more into OOP mumbo jumbo with lots ad hoc syntax (e.g. “views”, “iterators”, “list comprehension”. (See: What's List Comprehension and Why is it Harmful?.)))
Not related to Python lang but a related problem is, if the output shell doesn't support unicode or doesn't match with the encoding specified in your python print, you get gibberish. It is often a headache to figure out the locale settings, what encoding the terminal support or is configured to handle, the encoding of your file, the which encoding the “print” is using. It gets more complex if you are going thru a network, such as ssh. (most shells, terminals, as of 2010-10, in practice, still have problems dealing with unicode. (e.g. Windows Console ◇ PuTTY. Exception being Mac's Apple Terminal.))
Javascript support unicode in var name and function name, but it really depends on the browser. As of today (2011-02-06), all browsers support it.
My test is done with the following browser versions: IE8, Firefox 3.6.13, Chrome 8.0.552.237, Safari 5.0.3 , Opera 11.00. All on Windows Vista.
Here's a page you can test yourself. javascript unicode support test.
I'll have to say, as far as text processing goes, the most beautiful lang with respect to unicode is emacs lisp. In elisp code (e.g. Generate a Web Links Report with Emacs Lisp ), i don't have to declare none of the unicode or encoding stuff. I simply write code to process string or files, without even having to know what encoding it is. Emacs the environment takes care of all that.
Emacs Lisp also support unicode in var/function names. For example:
(defun insert-β () "alpha!" (interactive) (let ((α "β")) (insert α) ) )
Mathematica support unicode extensively, in variable names, function names, or as operators. (but, technically, it does not even use unicode.)
Java supports unicode fully, including use in var/class names. See: Java Tutorial: Unicode in Java
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/js/html_more_than_one_class.html
Xah Lee, 2010-10-06
This page is a tutorial on HTML.
You can specify more than one class for a html tag, using space as separators, like this:
<span class="bk1 bk2">Alice In Wonderland</span>
You should not use multiple “class” attributes.
<span class="bk1" class="bk2">INCORRECT! INVALID! WRONG!</span>
The order of your class values does not matter.
If you have styles that conflict, such as:
.bk1 {color:blue}
.bk2 {color:red}
The last css takes priority. (in general, css conflicts are resolved by complicated CSS priority rules)
Here's code you can test yourself:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title>Test HTML</title> <style type="text/css"> .bk1 {color:blue} .bk2 {color:red} </style> </head> <body> <p class="bk1 bk2">Something</p> </body> </html>
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/emacs/elisp_change_space-hyphen_underscore.html
Xah Lee, 2010-10-05
This page shows a example of writing a emacs lisp command that changes space to underscore of the current line, or among hypen, underscore, space. If you don't know elisp, first take a look at Emacs Lisp Basics.
I often need to change all underscore “_” characters to space, or hypen “-” to underscore, or any combination between them.
This is most often used on file name, or moving file name to article title.
In the beginning, i simply wrote these commands:
(defun space2underscore-region (start end) "Replace space by underscore in region." (interactive "r") (save-restriction (narrow-to-region start end) (goto-char (point-min)) (while (search-forward " " nil t) (replace-match "_")) ) ) (defun underscore2space-region (start end) "Replace underscore by space in region." (interactive "r") (save-restriction (narrow-to-region start end) (goto-char (point-min)) (while (search-forward "_" nil t) (replace-match " ")) ))
The code is very simple to understand.
After a few months, i find it annoying that i have to choose which command to call. So, i thought: why not create a function that simply toggles? So, i wrote this:
(defun replace-underscore-space-toggle () "Replace underscore/space in the current region or line. If the current line contains more “_” char than space, then replace them to space, else replace space to _. If there's a text selection, work on the selected text." (interactive) (let (li bds) (setq bds (if (region-active-p) (cons (region-beginning) (region-end)) (bounds-of-thing-at-point 'line))) (setq li (buffer-substring-no-properties (car bds) (cdr bds))) (if (> (count 32 li) (count 95 li)) (progn (replace-string " " "_" nil (car bds) (cdr bds))) (progn (replace-string "_" " " nil (car bds) (cdr bds))))))
The code is smart. If you have a text selection, it works on the text selection, else the current line. Also, it looks at your text and count the number of occurrence of “_” and “ ”. If there are more “_” than “ ”, then it replaces it that way, else it does the other direction.
After using this for 1 year, today i also find that sometimes i need to replace hypen “-” to underscore. At first i just quickly wrote a “hypen2space-region”, but quickly realized that i've got too many special case functions. It would be great, to have a function that cycle between these chars. Here it is:
(defun cycle-hyphen-underscore-space () "Replace underscore to space, or hypen, in region or current line. If there's a text selection, apply on that, else, the current line. When called repeatedly, this command cycles the “ ”, “_”, “-” characters." (interactive) ;; this function sets a property “state”. Possible values are 0 to length of charList. (let (meat charList p1 p2 currentState nextState changeFrom changeTo startedWithRegion-p ) (if (region-active-p) (progn (setq startedWithRegion-p t ) (setq p1 (region-beginning)) (setq p2 (region-end)) ) (progn (setq startedWithRegion-p nil ) (setq p1 (line-beginning-position)) (setq p2 (line-end-position)) ) ) (setq charList (list " " "_" "-" )) (setq currentState (if (get 'cycle-hyphen-underscore-space 'state) (get 'cycle-hyphen-underscore-space 'state) 0)) (setq nextState (% (+ currentState (length charList) 1) (length charList))) (setq changeFrom (nth currentState charList)) (setq changeTo (nth nextState charList)) (setq meat (replace-regexp-in-string changeFrom changeTo (buffer-substring-no-properties p1 p2)) ) (delete-region p1 p2) (insert meat) (message "Changed “%s” to “%s”" changeFrom changeTo ) (put 'cycle-hyphen-underscore-space 'state nextState) (when startedWithRegion-p (goto-char p2) (set-mark p1) (setq deactivate-mark nil) ) ) )
Here's the gist of how this function works.
The function sets up a state. So when called repeatedly, it knows which to cycle to.
The state is done in elisp as “properties”. In htm/xml, a tag can have several pairs of name/value attributes. This is similar to lisp's “properties”. Any elisp function can have a property. A property is basically name/value pairs. A function can have any number of properties, each with any name. The name's type can be a elisp “symbol”, “string”, or others. You can get and set properties using “get” and “put”. (info "(elisp) Property Lists")
In our function, first we set a character list like this 「(setq charList (list " " "_" "-" ))」. Our property name is “state”, and possible values are integers, 0, 1, 2, corresponding to the index of charList.
To cycle thru states, we just use modular arithmetics. For example, if current state is “n”, then next state is “mod(n+1,2)”. Here's the corresponding code:
(setq currentState
(if (get 'cycle-hyphen-underscore-space 'state)
(get 'cycle-hyphen-underscore-space 'state) 0))
(setq nextState (% (+ currentState (length charList) 1) (length charList)))
The rest of the code is easy to understand.
When this command is called with a text selection, by default emacs will de-activate the text selection after a command is finished. However, for this command, we want the text selection to stay, because user might call the command again to cycle replace. So, if region is active, we set “startedWithRegion-p” to true. At the end of the code, we restore the region's active status. Emacs has a global variable “deactivate-mark” used to control whether the mark is automatically de-activated when a command is called (when “transient-mark-mode” is on). When emacs invokes a command, it sets this variable to true. When the command is finished, emacs checks this variable to see if it should de-activate the mark. So, in our code, at the end we put: 「(setq deactivate-mark nil)」.
You can define a hotkey for any of the above commands. See: How to Define Keyboard Shortcuts in Emacs.
Without these commands, the quickest way to replace underscore to space is by selecting a region then 【Alt+x replace-string】 then “_” Enter, “ ”, Enter. However, this is several keystrokes more, and requires that half a second of brainwork. When you need do this daily many times a day, a custome command with a brainless push of button makes it easier.
Emacs is fantastic!
How about writing a function that cycles your favorite fonts? (answer: How to Quickly Switch Fonts in Emacs). How about cycling among your most frequently used files? or perhaps your several org-mode files?
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/js/why_google_helps_seo.html
Xah Lee, 2010-10-05
I have been wondering in the past 2 years, why Google spend much effort to tell webmasters about how they rank web sites etc. For example, Google's
What Google is doing is creating a whole market of SEO gaming, resulting bad search results, lots of bad sites with lots of ads that are returned as top results in web search, and the perpetual tech escalation fight between search engines and quick money schemers. (See: Tech Geekers vs Spammers and Spy vs Spy.)
Why doesn't Google shut up about how how their search engine works? After all, it's not something relevant to consumers or web site creators. If a site wants to be popular, there's the universal method, just like books, art, film: make it a good quality site.
This way, people who run questionable business with underhand tactics, have less clue on what to do. Google and other search engines have less to worry about site ranking manipulation, link manipulation, link spamming, cloaking, hidden css, obfuscated javascript, and lots of underhand techniques.
Today, Google's Matt Cutts talks about it.
“Why does Google give SEO advice?”
Google's point of view is that, by giving SEO advices, Google helps webmasters create quality websites. So, when more sites are quality, people enjoy the web more, and it also helps Google in making money as well.
A good perspective. Though, am not sure, that the overall effect of this approach is better.
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/bangu/use_passive_voice.html
Xah Lee, 2010-10-04
Been fret with the issues of “active voice vs passive voice” of English grammar in the past days. (See: What's Passive Voice? What's Aggressive Voice?). A thought occurred to me while i was trying to concoct a true definition of passive voice for our infomation era. I wrote, that passive voice can be likened to the opposite of aggressive voice. It is then, at that moment, i realized a problem besieging the countless young girls today.
Whenever i go to facebook, i am inundated with all these attractive chicks all seeking me — a man. (See: Facebook Girls.) You know, women, the loving and gentle half of mankind. Why do they have problems in finding a mate these days? I think the ultimate answer is that they've been screwed, bad, by the writing guilds. It all has to do with bad advice of “active voice”.
You see, when you write your profiles in facebook or matebook using active voice, men may mistake you to be a aggressive butcher dyke. Y'know, hirsute, brawny, and can bench press 500 pounds. And real man get scared off thinking you are like that. In order to show your true self, you need to use passive voice. Here are some examples.
For example, when filling out what movies you like. Don't say “I like Sex In The City”; that's active voice. Instead, say “Sex In The City made me like it.” When asked what color you like, “I like pink” will convey the wrong image. Instead, say: “Pink dictates the color of me”. When describing sexual orientation, don't just put “men” or “women” or “men and women”. Put down “i submit to men”, “i submit to women”, or you submit to both. When stating relationship status, say “taken” or “yet to be taken”. But don't stop at your profiles. Spread passiveness all over your chats and blogs. In all seriousness, this is a aspect of marketing, and psychology, topics that are studied in academia for thousands of years, and big corporations spend billions on advertising research. You want to advertise yourself in the most effective way. Imagine, the ultimate efficiency is that when a man happened upon your blog, he immediately succumbs to your charm, and start to send you gift cards for shoes amazon.
I would like to give you a example on this passive voice writing style. If you have a blog article, show it me, and i can show you a passive voice version personalized just for you. My fee is very reasonable, at $5 a piece. (your article must be less that 500 words) Paypal me at my email address, and lonely no more.
(legal disclaimer: money back guaranteed within 1 week after service.)
Google introduced encrypted search: https://www.google.com/.
It keeps hackers from knowing what you are searching and results.
If you don't know already, when you use the browser, anything sent and received by your browser is sent in the open. That means, any hacker can trivially listen in. Unless the url is “https”, which means its encrypted (typically the login/password page is https, or banking sites).
This means your facebook, blog, are all sent in the open. Some IM chat such as AOL, MSN, Yahoo offer encryption, but you have to turn it on. Skype skype.com chat is ALWAYS encrypted. (See: Skype Chat Encryption and Screen Sharing.)
Also, if you are worried about privacy, you can turn off cookies in your browser. Or, in your browser start Privacy mode. Though, note that all it does is things like turning off cookies and stop saving browsing history. These are useful if you are in a public computer such as library. But at your own computer at home, it is basically not relevant.
Note that if you use Flash (e.g. youtube, movie sites, games sites), the Flash will store cookies separate from your browser's cookies. Sites with Flash can track you. You can turn it off here: macromedia.com, but it is a pain to do. I really hate Flash. Don't use it if you can.
Also, today there are so many technologies that even if your are a pro web programer, none actually knows well all these techs. For example, html5 and tech on mobile devices, see: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/09/rldguid-tracking-cookies-in-safari-database-form.ars.
If you are really paranoid, one thing you can do is to turn off javascript (besides cookies). Turning off javascript will prevent vast majority of privacy problems, but it also means that many interactive sites will not work.
How to automatically post from Twitter tweets to Facebook?
Twitter to Facebook: http://twitter.com/widgets/facebook.
How to automatically post from Blogger to Twitter?
If you are using Google's FeedBurner, then just go to FeedBurner, click on the one of your feed, then Publicize tab on top, then “Socialize” on the left.
If not, just signup at http://feedburner.google.com/.
See also: Advantages Of FeedBurner And Some Web Feed History
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/mswin/windows_cust.html
Xah Lee, 2009-06, 2010-10, 2011-01-22
This pages gives some advanced tips on Windows customization for power users. The tips are tested in Windows Vista, but should work for Windows 7 too.
Press 【Win+Ctrl+Tab】 to go into Flip 3D. You get a preview of your windows and you can switch among them with scroll wheel or arrow keys.
Flip 3D. ❐
If you have a Microsoft mouse or keyboard, you can use the bundled software IntelliPoint or IntelliType to set a mouse button or keyboard key to activate it.
Press 【Alt+Ctrl+Tab】 to start Instant Viewer.
Windows Instant View
Instant Viewer lets you see all your windows in a glance. This feature is available since 2002. This is better than Flip 3D, because: ① See all windows at the same time. ② Each window also shows the app's icon for quick recognization. ③ Faster to activate the window you want by mouse. (no need to flip thru)
Microsoft and Logitech mouse also has bundled software to let you set a button to activate Instant Viewer.
How to Swap Caps Lock, Alt, Control Keys On Windows
For programers, you probably want to show file extensions and full path.
This is under Control Panel, Folder Options. In particular, uncheck the “Hide extensions for known file types”, “Display the full path in the title bar”, “Show hidden files and folders”.
You can set you system to require pressing 【Ctrl+Alt+Delete】 to start the login screen. The advantage is that this prevent the possibility of some rogue program spoofing as the login screen and steal your password. For some detail, see: Secure attention key.
To set it up, press 【Win+r】, then type “netplwiz” in command prompt to start the Advanced User Accounts control panel. Then, check the box “Require users to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete”.
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/funny/Google_ice_cream.html
〈"Don't Be Evil?" video - beta version〉
This ad is from a non-profit organization in USA, called Consumer Watchdog. It's home page is at consumerwatchdog.org.
This video, can be seen at their site at: insidegoogle.com.
I'm a programer in web dev industry. I've been watching google grow up, so to speak, from the very early days when google started in 1998, and over the past 10+ years, from one single web search product to tens of services ( gmail, orkut (social networking), google news, blogger, google groups (online forum), Google Video and YouTube, google sites and google doc, picasa (image hosting), gTalk (IM, chat), adSense and AdWords, Google webmaster tools and Google Analytics, Google Code (code hosting), Google Chrome (browser), ... ). Today, i use almost all of them, gradually over the years.
I'm quite picky and sensitive about which company's products and services i choose, and i've followed closely about Google's practices and news. I must say, Google is pretty safe, their products are usually much better than competitors, and Google is more trust-worthy than competitors, all things considered.
When you attack companies, you really need to think about, are you attacking them just because they are big and successful? Or are you attacking them because some specific issues? I think it is true that any company, however ethical, when becoming one of the biggest in the industry, gets attacked. Or, in other words, any ethical company, when you are so successful to become number 1, you get attached the “monopoly” label, and you became the target of fear and hate.
It was IBM, then it was Microsoft, now, it's Google's turn.
I'm sure Google has some issues here and there, but we need to look at the big picture, not grabbing a pigtail and blame. Whether Google is trust-worthy tomorrow, we'll have to see.
See also:
Answer to yesterday's question is posted, at: what's active voice? passive voice?.
World of Warcraft (WoW) players are all excited about the upcoming new system〈World of Warcraft: Cataclysm〉 amazon
By the way if you don't already, WoW is known as the most addictive game in existence. here's some quotes from Wikipedia:
World of Warcraft, often referred to as WoW, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
The third expansion set, Cataclysm, was announced at BlizzCon 2009,[10][11] and entered into closed beta testing in late June 2010.[12][13]
With more than 11.5 million monthly subscriptions in December 2008,[14][15] World of Warcraft is currently the world's most-subscribed MMORPG,[9][16][17] and holds the Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG by subscribers.[18][19][20][21] In April 2008, World of Warcraft was estimated to hold 62 percent of the MMORPG subscription market.[22]
On the net, there are quite a few articles, groups, about addiction problems with WoW. Here is a YouTube video.
World of Warcraft Addict
I remember reading online that there are cases of death in China and Korea. Where, it is reported that the gamer just played non-stop, then dropped dead. There are also news about suicide. The suicide cases is not surprising and likely happens now and then, but am not sure about playing to death by exhaustion.
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/bangu/active_voice_passive_voice.html
Xah Lee, 2010-10-02
In writing, you know that there is passive voice and active voice, right? And the writing style guilds tell us, that we should use active voice. In the following sentences, can you tell which is active voice and which is passive voice?
Take 5 min to answer before you read on.
The Language Log recently has a blog asking readers to identify passive/active voice. (Apparantly, they've been beating this horse for a while, but i only started to read Language Log last month.) Before i tackle the question and post my redoubtable comment with implicit offense at grammarians, i thought to myself: it's been some 17 years when i read anything technical about passive/active voice in Strunk & White... so let me make a quick stop at Wikipedia to refresh myself just so i won't come out a fool.
So, my first stop is at: Passive voice. And WHAM! It is incomprehensible, and to ME!? To understand the article well, i'll have to delve into my brain and read it carefully about all the “subject”, “verb”, “object”, “adjective”, “adverb”, “aux verb”, and perhaps reacquaint myself with the evil “split infinitives”. Fuck that. By my mastery of info age, i took the shortcut and went directly to the article English passive voice instead. The article there is still a bit dense, but i found the above 4 examples about passive voice, quoted right from “Strunk & White”, except that 3 of them are actually active voice! The source of this is from:
Quote:
The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students' grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it.
...
What concerns me is that the bias against the passive is being retailed by a pair of authors so grammatically clueless that they don't know what is a passive construction and what isn't. Of the four pairs of examples offered to show readers what to avoid and how to correct it, a staggering three out of the four are mistaken diagnoses. “At dawn the crowing of a rooster could be heard” is correctly identified as a passive clause, but the other three are all errors: ...
- “There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground” has no sign of the passive in it anywhere.
- “It was not long before she was very sorry that she had said what she had” also contains nothing that is even reminiscent of the passive construction.
- “The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired” is presumably fingered as passive because of “impaired,” but that's a mistake. It's an adjective here. “Become” doesn't allow a following passive clause. (Notice, for example, that “A new edition became issued by the publishers” is not grammatical.)
So here we are.
I pride myself as a good writer (n i'd like to think within top 100 on this earth), albeit with unique usage and style. (See: The Writing Style on XahLee.org.) I read “Strunk & White”'s The Elements of Style in the early 1990s, i think twice, among quite a few other writing guides and advices. I've seen countless advices for active voice in the past 20 years, everywhere. For example, here's quote from GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual: Documentation Tips. Quote:
Write documentation strings in the active voice, not the passive, and in the present tense, not the future. For instance, use “Return a list containing A and B.” instead of “A list containing A and B will be returned.”
Not until today, i realized, just how much i did not understand what is Active voice and Passive voice, and when you look into this issue, such as Wikipedia article on it, you see that it is quite technical. Unless you have a good study of linguistics, you wouldn't understand it. And of course, the common advices on “active” voice, even from professional style guides, are just totally clueless.
Today, “passive voice” simply means sentences that do not sound dynamic or in action. The word “passive” in “passive voice” just mean the opposite of “aggresive”. So, if a sentence sounds lame, it is passive voice! And, actually, for pop communication, i think i endorse this interpretation; screw linguistic history.
Here's one of the article from Language Log about this issue:
PS for those you who got it wrong, don't feel bad. Few people on this earth can get it right, and most of them mob toilets at McDonalds. Just be happy that we all understand split infinitives, at least.
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/bangu/bopomofo_pinyin.html
Xah Lee, 2010-10-01
Bopomofo (aka Zhuyin) is a set of symbols to indicate Chinese character pronunciation. It is used mostly in Taiwan. It was invented in 1912. It is very similar to Pinyin. Basically, symbols in each corresponds to the other.
| Bopomofo | Pinyin | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ㄅ | b | 八 (ㄅㄚ, bā) |
| ㄆ | p | 杷 (ㄆㄚˊ, pá) |
| ㄇ | m | 馬 (ㄇㄚˇ, mǎ) |
| ㄈ | f | 法 (ㄈㄚˇ, fǎ) |
| ㄉ | d | 地 (ㄉㄧˋ, dì) |
| ㄊ | t | 提 (ㄊㄧˊ, tí) |
| ㄋ | n | 你 (ㄋㄧˇ, nǐ) |
| ㄌ | l | 利 (ㄌㄧˋ, lì) |
| ㄍ | g | 告 (ㄍㄠˋ, gào) |
| ㄎ | k | 考 (ㄎㄠˇ, kǎo) |
| ㄏ | h | 好 (ㄏㄠˇ, hǎo) |
| ㄐ | j | 叫 (ㄐㄧㄠˋ, jiào) |
| ㄑ | q | 巧 (ㄑㄧㄠˇ, qiǎo) |
| ㄒ | x | 小 (ㄒㄧㄠˇ, xiǎo) |
| ㄓ | zhi 〖zh〗 | 主 (ㄓㄨˇ, zhǔ) |
| ㄔ | chi 〖ch〗 | 出 (ㄔㄨ, chū) |
| ㄕ | shi 〖sh〗 | 束 (ㄕㄨˋ, shù) |
| ㄖ | ri 〖r〗 | 入 (ㄖㄨˋ, rù) |
| ㄗ | zi 〖z〗 | 在 (ㄗㄞˋ, zài) |
| ㄘ | ci 〖c〗 | 才 (ㄘㄞˊ, cái) |
| ㄙ | si 〖s〗 | 塞 (ㄙㄞ, sāi) |
| Bopomofo | Pinyin | Example(Bopomofo, Hanyu) |
|---|---|---|
| ㄚ | a | 大 (ㄉㄚˋ, dà) |
| ㄛ | o | 多 (ㄉㄨㄛ, duō) |
| ㄜ | e | 得 (ㄉㄜˊ, dé) |
| ㄝ | ê | 爹 (ㄉㄧㄝ, diē) |
| ㄞ | ai | 晒 (ㄕㄞˋ, shài) |
| ㄟ | ei | 誰 (ㄕㄟˊ, shéi) |
| ㄠ | ao | 少 (ㄕㄠˇ, shǎo) |
| ㄡ | ou | 收 (ㄕㄡ, shōu) |
| ㄢ | an | 山 (ㄕㄢ, shān) |
| ㄣ | en | 申 (ㄕㄣ, shēn) |
| ㄤ | ang | 上 (ㄕㄤˋ, shàng) |
| ㄥ | eng | 生 (ㄕㄥ, shēng) |
| ㄦ | er | 而 (ㄦˊ, ér) |
| ㄧ | yi 〖i〗 | 逆 (ㄋㄧˋ, nì) |
| ㄧ | yin 〖in〗 | 音 (ㄧㄣ, yīn) |
| ㄧ | ying 〖ing〗 | 英 (ㄧㄥ, yīng) |
| ㄨ | wu 〖u〗 | 努 (ㄋㄨˇ, nǔ) |
| ㄨ | wen 〖un〗 | 文 (ㄨㄣˊ, wén) |
| ㄨ | weng 〖ong〗 | 翁 (ㄨㄥ, wēng) |
| ㄩ | yu 〖u, ü〗 | 女 (ㄋㄩˇ, nǚ) |
| ㄩ | yun 〖un〗 | 韻 (ㄩㄣˋ, yūn) |
| ㄩ | yong 〖iong〗 | 永 (ㄩㄥˇ, yǒng) |
〖〗represents the form used in combination with other letters.
| IPA | ɑ | ɔ | ɤ | ɛ | aɪ | eɪ | ɑʊ | ɤʊ | an | ən | ɑŋ | ɤŋ | ɑɻ | ʊŋ | i | iɛ | iɤʊ | iɛn | in | iŋ |
| Pinyin | a | o | e | e | ai | ei | ao | ou | an | en | ang | eng | er | ong | yi | ye | you | yan | yin | ying |
| Zhuyin | ㄚ | ㄛ | ㄜ | ㄝ | ㄞ | ㄟ | ㄠ | ㄡ | ㄢ | ㄣ | ㄤ | ㄥ | ㄦ | ㄨㄥ | ㄧ | ㄧㄝ | ㄧㄡ | ㄧㄢ | ㄧㄣ | ㄧㄥ |
| example | 阿 | 哦 | 俄 | ◇ | 艾 | 黑 | 凹 | 偶 | 安 | 恩 | 昂 | 冷 | 二 | 中 | 一 | 也 | 又 | 言 | 音 | 英 |
| IPA | u | uɔ | ueɪ | uaɪ | uan | uən | uɤŋ | y | yœ | yɛn | yn | iʊŋ |
| Pinyin | wu | wo | wei | wai | wan | wen | weng | yu | yue | yuan | yun | yong |
| Zhuyin | ㄨ | ㄨㄛ | ㄨㄟ | ㄨㄞ | ㄨㄢ | ㄨㄣ | ㄨㄥ | ㄩ | ㄩㄝ | ㄩㄢ | ㄩㄣ | ㄩㄥ |
| example | 五 | 我 | 位 | 外 | 完 | 文 | 翁 | 玉 | 月 | 元 | 云 | 用 |
| IPA | p | pʰ | m | fɤŋ | tiou | tuei | tʰ | ny | ly | kɤɻ | kʰ | xɤ |
| Pinyin | b | p | m | feng | diu | dui | t | nü | lü | ger | k | he |
| Zhuyin | ㄅ | ㄆ | ㄇ | ㄈㄥ | ㄉㄧㄡ | ㄉㄨㄟ | ㄊ | ㄋㄩ | ㄌㄩ | ㄍㄜㄦ | ㄎ | ㄏㄜ |
| example | 玻 | 婆 | 末 | 封 | 丟 | 兌 | 特 | 女 | 旅 | 歌儿 | 可 | 何 |
| IPA | tɕiɛn | tɕiʊŋ | tɕʰin | ɕyɛn | ʈʂɤ | ʈʂɨ | ʈʂʰɤ | ʈʂʰɨ | ʂɤ | ʂɨ | ʐɤ | ʐɨ | tsɤ | tsuɔ | tsɨ | tsʰɤ | tsʰɨ | sɤ | sɨ |
| Pinyin | jian | jiong | qin | xuan | zhe | zhi | che | chi | she | shi | re | ri | ze | zuo | zi | ce | ci | se | si |
| Zhuyin | ㄐㄧㄢ | ㄐㄩㄥ | ㄑㄧㄣ | ㄒㄩㄢ | ㄓㄜ | ㄓ | ㄔㄜ | ㄔ | ㄕㄜ | ㄕ | ㄖㄜ | ㄖ | ㄗㄜ | ㄗㄨㄛ | ㄗ | ㄘㄜ | ㄘ | ㄙㄜ | ㄙ |
| example | 件 | 窘 | 秦 | 宣 | 哲 | 之 | 扯 | 赤 | 社 | 是 | 惹 | 日 | 仄 | 左 | 字 | 策 | 次 | 色 | 斯 |
| Tones IPA | ma˥˥ | ma˧˥ | ma˨˩˦ | ma˥˩ | ma |
| Pinyin | mā | má | mǎ | mà | ma |
| Zhuyin | ㄇㄚ | ㄇㄚˊ | ㄇㄚˇ | ㄇㄚˋ | ㄇㄚ・ |
| example (traditional/simplfied) | 媽/妈 | 麻/麻 | 馬/马 | 罵/骂 | 嗎/吗 |
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/emacs/GNU_Emacs_dev_inefficiency2.html
Xah Lee, 2010-10-01, 2010-10-04
Xah Lee wrote:
...
Right now xahlee.org is a static site. No forum or any type of interaction. Am not sure what technology i can use with my hosted server to make it Web 2.0. Also, i wish to keep the html valid, but i think that's hopeless. Possibly i could start a forum using WordPress.
Jonas Stein <n...@jonasstein.de> wrote:
I think the community is very spread. There are many pages and most need more manpower.
I would rather suggest to fusion some communication channels. One newsgroup with mirror to Mail (perhaps gmane?) would be fine. One wiki with easy public editing.
All services should not be bound to one individual. It should be possible to pass the admin-job to someone else, if the maintainer has no more spare time for the project.
I like your website and i am glad about your contributions, but i think you should not create another micro-forum.
Perhaps you can cooperate with the maintainer of the emacswiki? Or we could try to start a project in the wikimedia world.
But we need the support of the community.
Thanks a lot for the input.
I also like the idea.
I think that it is difficult to get these all together, precisely because one might say selfish motives, including myself. FSF has its own agenda, emacswiki too. FSF is kinda haughty in that it wants to be stand-alone and does not want to take in any other's work except subsumed into FSF/GNU. Xemacs's years of superior tech going basically away now is a good example. FSF could use emacswiki too, but it just doesn't. For example, many of its FAQ or pages and document could link to emacswiki. e.g. Emacs's Menu Usability Problem. (See also: My Experience of Emacs vs XEmacs.)
If FSF wants, FSF people could easily initiate the talk to Alex of emacswiki, so that emacswiki can function and provide many services emacs users need such as a coherent library depository, coherent online emacs interactive help center, or even a coherent emacs Web 2.0 social networking for emacs users... so many potentials.
Emacswiki has its own agenda. For example, Alex Schroeder prefers to use his own wiki software the oddmuse. He doesn't want to switch to the much widely used and far more powerful MediaWiki used by Wikipedia. The links on the emacswiki seems to want to stick to sister sites such as meatballwiki.org instead of the much better quality Wikipedia. (See: Problems of Emacswiki.)
FSF does not want to bundle Visual Basic mode into emacs, even though it is top 5 most used lang. Similar for PHP mode, or code from Lennart's EmacsW32, or the incredibly non-trivial js2-mode by Steve Yegge, and many other modes written by others... POV-Ray mode was discussed and i think paper signed perhaps 2 years ago but still not in GNU Emacs and i don't think it's even in the agenda...
It just take years for a mode to get into GNU emacs even when the mode author is fully enthusiastic about it and willing to sign the paper and FSF willing to include it. There are so much obstacles and frustrations. The primary communication for GNU emacs dev is its dev mailing list . It is very messy and inefficient. In today's twitter, instant messaging, and voice and video chat days ( Skype, gtalk, msn, yahoo, aol ...) that just about any joe uses to communicate across the globe, but gnu emacs dev stuck with the ancient mailing list software the GNU Mailman (1999), then the web version is done by using the 1999's software MHonArc, a Perl script that converts email texts to plain html the upload periodically to web server as static html pages. It doesn't have a modern web interface. No forum, no admin/management structure, no user profile, no image/file archive, no sitefeed updates, no integration with bug database, no integration with source code revision system, no who's online, etc. (See: “Free” Software Morality, Richard Stallman, and Paperwork Bureaucracy.)
In the mailing list, there's huge amounts of opinion throwing. Some appear to be from just Emacs users. People don't agree on things. Evaluation of opinions are not based on a person's existing programing work and knowledge, or established factors such as user base of his emacs mode or distro, or any scientific basis such as social research (e.g. polls) or systematic analysis. Many recognized experts such as Steve Yegge, Ilya Zakharevich, Randal L Schwartz ... or Aquamacs's David Reitter and EmacsW32's Lennart Borgman in the list all seem to have to behave very sheepishly to conform to the culture there. Constantly half of the discussion is about FSF's concept of freedom... e.g. in recent discussion about incorporating some emacs mode that hookup google services break out into tens or over a hundred messages about the cons/pro of freedom and legality issues (and that's just a recent example). Any discussion on User Interface is a immediate bomb shell.
Many bugs, suggestions, even if accepted as better, but it is tremendously difficult to get code in or contribute. The culture of the list just kills it. The FSF emacs list has a attitude... for example, say someone made a suggestion and actually submitted a patch. Instead of giving warmest welcome and spend time to help the coder to get his patch in, typically the coder has to do all the work, learn all the systems used by FSF, learn all the ways of FSF's philosophies, learn and follow the full culture of FSF's workings. Then, almost completely on his own without much verbal encouragement, the coder has to make the code work well with the whole elisp code base. The whole experience as i've observed, seems to be like this: “you want your code in gnu emacs? go spend a year learning about FSF, then if your patch passes all checks and we like it, then sign paper to give us the copyright, then it might be in, but we might change many things of your code even rewrite or not even include it if we so happens to forget or end up not using it. You'll get a ‘thank you’ mention in our acknowledgement page that contains hundred other names. Thank you for your efforts and hail to the great freedom commune. Happy hacking!”.
There's also emacser.com, a emacs wiki for serving Chinese emacs users in Asia. Although we all try to do best for the community, but there's just little chance for these perhaps largest ones to merge in some way. Similarly, there's quite a few emacs blogs: emacs-fu.blogspot.com, emacsblog.org, planet.emacsen.org (blog collection), are the better known ones, and there are several twitter ones twitter emacs (2k followers), twitter learnemacs (1.5k followers).
Similarly, GNU emacs, Aquamacs Emacs, Carbon Emacs, EmacsW32 and ErgoEmacs, Xemacs, SXemacs ... almost all are started or maintained by one single person. Merge between any two of them is just impossible for social reasons.
I really wished emacswiki could be like wikipedia so that the articles there are coherent and comprehensive but for various reasons Alex has his own approaches and ideas.
I think the practical solution is just for individuals to make things happen, especially with commercial vision, as in Stack Overflow site. Though, it takes tremendous time to make it happen.
If i am to start a emacs web 2.0 site, i'll need to register a domain name first, then figure out a hosting package that allows any of php, ruby, python, and arbitrary libraries that i can actually install, then research into software for web 2.0, features to consider (do i want it to be a lib repository like CPAN, or social network like Facebook with chats, or more as comprehensive expositions like Wikipedia, or more a efficient Questions and Answers place like Stack Overflow, or all of the above?). Then, time will be spent to admin and managing the software, and maybe coding and modifying too. Then gather community, advertise, writing tutorial... in the past 3 to 5 years am basically spending on average perhaps 3 hours a day on just writing my emacs tutorial and ErgoEmacs... and the little donation and advertisement i make out of this effort is perhaps $5 a month.
Thinking about your suggestion... if i start a site, make it full open source, no commercial backing, call for collaboration with open source spirit... it might end up just another blog/emacswiki without being high quality as it could be... when i'm out of time, some contributor become maintainers on their spare time... and it's just another wiki that lingers among the thousands. Unless me or someone have sufficient charisma to get all others to unite into a vision on a single goal, such as Richard Stallman with his GPL or Linus Torvalds with Linux. Or, with lots of money to burn as Ubuntu linux by millionaire Mark Shuttleworth.
Humm... this post started as just few word of thanks but typing and typing turned into a rant. ☺ Hope it didn't offend anyone. I hope emacs the best.
For Alex Schroeder's reply and the original thread at comp.emacs, see: groups.google.com.
If you have some ideas about improving emacswiki, Alex has opened a discussion at http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/2010-10-02. (thanks Alex)
See also: GNU Emacs Developement Inefficiency.
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/Taiwanese_tongyong_pinyin.html
Xah Lee, 2010-10-01
Xah wrote:
John DeFrancis Idiot on Chinese Language
In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, and a large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers have long maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China.[6]
Percival P Cassidy wrote:
Interesting. One of my KMT-supporting teachers in Taiwan insisted that the introduction of simplified characters was a Communist plot to render the people incapable of understanding their history and culture.
The issue is very political, but the degree of your friend's opinion is quite out there.
The politics of Taiwan is quite funny in the past 2 decades. When the nationalist party government the Kuomintang (KMT) was dictatorshipping Taiwain from about 1950 to 1980s. China is equated with communism and evil with big E, thanks to KMT (and USA). But since subset of native Taiwaness Party came to power in 1990s, now Evil equates both China and KMT, and the rational is kinda very complicated. This subset of native Taiwan people, hates KMT for obvious reasons of suppressive rule. But why do they hate China? That's must be because KMT made Taiwan so prosperous and independent and not hating China would mean accepting China's will to take it back.
Foolish thing Taiwan in recent years did was to re-invent pinyin. Basically, they need alphabetized chinese for street signs etc for foreigners, and pinyin is already there as a international standard for several decades, but some taiwaness can't use it because that's invented by communists. So after much ado, they invented their own, called Tongyong Pinyin , by brushing up a few symbols or rules of pinyin. Because not all people in taiwan agree to this new wheel, so the law ends up that some district's street signs goes by Pinyin while others goes by Tongyong Pinyin, depending on which political party has what power in which district. Quite funny. Wikipedia quotes:
On 10 July 2002 the ROC's Ministry of Education held a meeting for 27 members. Only 13 attended. Two left early, plus the chairman could not vote, so the bill for using Tongyong Pinyin was passed by ten votes.[1] In August 2002 the government adopted Tongyong Pinyin through an administrative order which local governments have the authority to override within their jurisdiction. In October 2007, with the DPP administration still in power, it was announced that the ROC would standardize the English transliterations of its Chinese Mandarin place names by the end of that year, after years of confusion stemming from multiple spellings, using the locally developed Tongyong Pinyin.[8]
During 2008, the Kuomintang won both the legislative and presidential elections. In September 2008, it was announced that Tongyong Pinyin would be replaced by Hanyu Pinyin as the ROC government standard at the end of the year. Since January 1, 2009, Hanyu Pinyin is the only official romanization system in the Republic of China.[3][4]
The good thing is, finally this mess is done for, and taiwan officially adopted pinyin in 2008.
Thanks to the stealing Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian. (money laundering, bribery, insider trading, embezzlement... to the tune of 10 to 22 mega USD, and deposit it in Swedish bank. lol) While he's in jail in 2009, he filed lawsuit in US at president Obama and Robert Gates (Secretary of Defense) for failing to rule taiwan well by the deem of Treaty of San Francisco. (see: 陳水扁.)
LOL. He thinks Uncle Sam should come over and do him justice.
Btw, what's with Swedish bank? why's it always the destination of money of riches in James Bond et al?
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/comp/comp_tech_progress.html
Xah Lee, 2010-10-01
Amazon now has Video On Demand. You go to the site, find the released movie you want, pay something like $4.00, then you can watch it on your computer screen. You need a fast internet connection.
Pretty nice. Tech has advanced.
My first computer that i bought was Macintosh IIsi, in ~1991. The computer costs $2k. It got 1 mega bytes of memory, 40 mega bytes of hard disk. CPU is Motorola 68030 at 20 MHz, with Motorola 68882 FPU. (gosh, i haven't heard of FPU for perhaps 10 years.)
The monitor i bought with it is a high-end model, the AppleColor High-Resolution RGB Monitor. It costs $1k. It has a 13 inch (33 cm) diagonal. The viewable area is about 22 cm in width and height. It can display 640x480 pixels. Weights 22 kg.
Today, your iPod amazon, which is palm-sized, got 8 giga bytes of data storage capacity, and 960×640 pixels screen dimension. The storage size is 400 times larger, the screen's number of pixels 2 times more. The cost is 7%. Am not sure how much better is the computing power. Perhaps 100 times faster.
The first consumer video tech for computer, is Apple's QuickTime, released in 1991. The videos are about stamp sized, about 200×200 pixels.
This is 640×480 screen size
This is 200×200 video size
Today's video size, the DVD, is 704×480. High-definition video (Blue-ray DVD and HDTV) is 1280×720 to 1920×1080.
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