How to enter non-Latin text on a latin-based website
How to enter non-Latin text on a latin-based website08/04/2004 11:43 AM First you shall need to grab this a useful little freeware by
earthlingsoft, UnicodeChecker 1.6. This little Cocoa application will
give your Services menu a service menu called Unicode. Now, this is
how it works...
First,...
The use of mobile phones in Latin America continues to rise with approximately 123 million mobile phones in Latin America compared with 89 million fixed line phones
economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=2281
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Latin Extended Unicode keyboards 1.2.3
Latin Extended Unicode keyboards 1.2.301/16/2004 01:00 PM Provides access to an extended set of Unicode characters. More
comprehensive than the U.S. Extended keyboard.
Latin Americans grieve for Pope
Latin Americans grieve for Pope04/08/2005 12:32 PM Millions of Catholics across Latin America mourn Pope John Paul II on
the day of his funeral in Rome.
Fraying of a Latin Textile Industry
Fraying of a Latin Textile Industry03/25/2005 07:04 AM Shifting global trade rules threaten to reverse El Salvador's
industrial revolution by destroying its garment industry.
Latin America on Alert for Terror (AP)
Latin America on Alert for Terror (AP)08/21/2004 01:12 PM AP - Governments throughout Mexico and Central America are on alert as
evidence grows that al-Qaida members are traveling in the region and
looking for recruits to carry out attacks in Latin America — the
potential last frontier for international terrorism.
Al-Qaida Said to Recruit in Latin America (AP)08/21/2004 08:22 PM AP - Governments throughout Mexico and Central America are on alert as
evidence grows that al-Qaida members are traveling in the region and
looking for recruits to carry out attacks in Latin America — the
potential last frontier for international terrorism.
Telefonica bets on Latin America03/08/2004 11:27 PM The Spanish telecommunications company agrees to buy the Latin
American assets of US firm BellSouth for $5.85bn.
No need to fly beyond Miami to visit Latin Americans
Greetings from beautiful Quito, Ecuador at an elevation of
9000'. Quito has its advantages over the U.S., notably the ease
of connecting to the Internet (cybercafe on every block) and the
low prices (haircut and lunch in the nicest part of downtown for less
than $10 total). After a stopover in Miami, however, I'm not
sure that one needs to leave the U.S. in order to visit Latin
America.
In 24 hours in Miami, most of which was spent with my cousin
Jennifer, I met people from Columbia, Cuba, Dominican Republic,
Ecuador, Venezuela, and probably a few more countries. A trip
onto the highways reveals the driving style of every Latin American
country on display as every driver tends to follow the rules of
whatever country he or she is from (sadly this results in an average
of more than 10 serious accidents every day and a lot of snarled
traffic).
HotBrick Expands to Europe & Latin America
HotBrick Expands to Europe & Latin America02/01/2005 10:07 PM HotBrick Network Solutions, is truly becoming a global player, last
month it officially opened 2 new offices, Holland and Brazil. [PRWEB
Jan 19, 2005]
Univision Movil Goes Live With the Latin Grammys09/19/2004 02:24 AM American Greetings Corporation, and Univision Online Inc., the
Internet division of Univision Communications Inc., have launched
Univision Movil, a brand of targeted downloadable services. Verizon
Wireless, the number one carrier for the Hispanic demographic, is the
first U.S. carrier to offer Univision Movil with more carriers
expected to join soon. [PRWEB Sep 19, 2004]
Latin Grammys honour singer Sanz
Latin Grammys honour singer Sanz09/02/2004 06:29 AM Spanish singer Alejandro Sanz wins four Latin Grammy awards, while
Brazilian singer Maria Rita collects two.
Office 2003 Add-in: Latin and Cyrillic Transliteration
Office 2003 Add-in: Latin and Cyrillic Transliteration08/12/2004 02:34 AM This download enables you to select an area of text within Word 2003
or PowerPoint 2003 to convert it from Cyrillic script to Latin script
or vice-versa. This can be also be used for Microsoft Office Outlook
2003 when Word 2003 is used as the e-mail editor.
Latin America's anti-Bush champion
Latin America's anti-Bush champion03/17/2005 02:48 AM Casts Himself as the Anti-Bush .. Washington Post Article ..
"Anti-Bush" .. today's
profile
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35193-2005Mar14.html track
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Fixing HTML with the WDG HTML Validator01/19/2003 08:07 AM But what's this? My page has a link to
http://news.google.com/news?q=linux&scoring=d to easily catch up on
the Linux-related news. But the Validator says: ...
Sanz Leads Early Winners at Latin Grammys (AP)
Sanz Leads Early Winners at Latin Grammys (AP)09/01/2004 07:21 PM AP - Spanish crooner Alejandro Sanz collected awards for best male pop
vocal album and song of the year Wednesday at a Latin Grammys
celebration aimed at uniting Spanish- and Portugese-language music
with the flash and sizzle of American pop.
Gov't to dispatch economic mission to Latin America
Cruz, Martin, Juanes Lead Latin Awards (AP)04/29/2004 11:17 PM AP - The late salsa queen Celia Cruz was a triple winner while
crossover star Ricky Martin and Colombian rocker Juanes — cheered
by a raucous, glittery crowd — also took home trophies at
Thursday night's Billboard Latin Music Awards.
Envoy Puts Latin Post, and Stormy Past, Behind Him
Envoy Puts Latin Post, and Stormy Past, Behind Him06/17/2004 10:07 AM Otto J. Reich, President Bush's special envoy to Latin America,
resigned, taking with him a lifetime of experience fighting enemies of
U.S. foreign policy.
HTML TOOLBAR (free): Adds a toolbar to Windows Explorer and IE which contains your own HTML display
EU, Latin America Condemn U.S. Prison Abuse in Iraq (Reuters)
EU, Latin America Condemn U.S. Prison Abuse in Iraq (Reuters)05/28/2004 07:51 PM Reuters - European and Latin American
leaders condemned the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops
on Friday and pushed Washington to work with the United Nations
rather than go it alone in its war on terror. Grok Description matches for HTML Tip: Learn To Speak Latin GrokA matches for HTML Tip: Learn To Speak Latin
I am a big fan of tools which hide the
underlying complexities of code from developers. I argue constantly
with a developer collegue of mine about this. He advocates source code
level control. I want to ditch source code all together. It becomes
too messy even with source control tools and tracking systems. I've
seen RAD environments try to incorporate Flowcharting instead of code.
This worked to an extent, but was never robust enough.
The development tools which came from
NEXT and are now part of Mac OS X begin to create a "building" block
style of framework. Users still create code, but then items in the GUI
are wired together simply by dragging and dropping icons that
represent objects, adapters and other abstractions of the underlying
code. This is powerful. What's needed here is the visual tools to edit
and create source code via similar "blocks" and then those block can
be reused and refactored as code is developed.
I think may of the advances in programming will
not come into being until operating systems begin to embrace Virtual
Reality and 3D spaces are part of their interfaces. 2D representations
of code are usable, but in order to work quickly, developers will need
a 3D space in which to operate. Source code is structured, but in
multiple dimensions, and layers of code exist on different planes.
More advanced visualization equipment and OSes are needed before some
advances can begin.
Source code as
structure rathe than text … bring it on
Gosling explained that treating
programs as structures lets you perform powerful refactorings:
It’s a very different world when a program is an
algebraic structure rather than a bag of characters, when you can
actually do algebra on programs rather than just swizzling characters
around. A lot of things become possible … If you look at any of
the refactoring books, most of those refactoring actions become much
more straightforward, in ways that are fairly deep.
In
addition, he illustrated how views can be flexible:
[O]nce it’s not text, all of a sudden you can
display it in really interesting ways … You can, for example,
turn the square root function into the obvious mathematical notation.
You can turn the identifier theta into the Greek letter theta. You can
turn division into the horizontal bar with numbers stacked. And
we’ve done experiments with wackier things, such as trying to
generate real time flow charts.
Software developers,
we need to eat our own dog food. Through the magic of software,
we’ve allowed end-users to view and manipulate databases in
countless ways. A single corporate database might be viewed and edited
via any number of command-line interfaces, charts, text reports, and
web pages. But how about source code? Just a glorified text editor
will do, mate.
Eclipse and Idea advance the idea somewhat. They
do treat code as structure and are much more powerful on the
refactoring side. Also, plugins are available that manipulate this
structure to render code as UML. But there is so much more to go.
In
terms of manipulation, you should be able to manipulate code like a
GUI — altering the source code text of an attribute performs a
rename refactoring; dragging one class into another makes it
an inner class.
In terms of display, data structures could be
represented visually (and manipulated that way too). For instance, a
multi-dimensional array could be depicted as a filled-in table. This
view would be especially useful during debugging. Lines between words
could be shown to indicate relationships. These views don’t all
have to be on; the point is to make them flexible, in much the same
way as systems for experts in other domains. That’s the magic of
software, and something you can’t do with paper: infinite
representations of the same data; the right combination chosen based
on the user’s disposition and situational needs.
As a
side note, the idea of representing the code in XML is actually a
non-issue. As Jon Udell points out, programmers themselves don’t
have to touch the underlying structure, and Eclipse/Idea are living
proof.
Poor writing style, like bad manners, makes someone appear less
intelligent than they are. Writing style, like manners, can be learned
in many ways. Reading and writing a lot is the first step. Having
people critique your writing is probably the next best thing. There
are many basic writing mistakes that people make, which can easily be
avoided by being aware of them.
I have never been a great writer and I am self-concious about my
writing style. If you are serious about your blogging, I think that
time spent polishing your writing style is well worth the
investment.
Free Writing and Music - as in Speech01/11/2004 02:42 AM I'd like you all to take a moment to browse the Common Content
catalog. It is a categorized index of work which has one of the
several Creative Commons licenses. Free licenses aren't just for
software anymore. The top-level categories in the index are images,
movies, audio, text and web sites. I'm taking the trouble to
recommend Common Content just now because I don't think either the
catalog or the Creative Commons licenses are as well known as they
deserve to be.
The blogless Steve Raker
regularly sends us his creative and sometimes apoplectic writing by
e-mail. Whenever I'm tempted to republish his work on my blog, I find
that Mark Hoback has already beat me to it, posting the best of
Steve's
work on his excellent blog Fried
Green Al-Qaedas, or in his wonderful e-zine Virtual Occoquan.
Here's an example of Steve at his finest, with his wry sense of humour
aimed this time at contrivances in writing, in a two-part post. The
photo above is also his:
Cupla years ago I
overslept. It musta been that morning when the great comet hit
the earth and killed all the editors for disposable
mystery/detective/lawyer fiction. Since a stopgap measure is
needed, I offer the following helpful hints for writers:
Hire somebody, anybody, to proofread your work.
Most
of your errors in word choice, minor plot points, etc. can be caught
and corrected by a bright high school student.
Absolutes are
rare. Please stop your characters from
incessantly tripping over them or being them. e.g. in a recent
read, a minor character, an attractive woman, was used as bait in a
sexual harassment scam. Her beauty grew with every
mention.
In short order, 'quite attractive' became 'irresistible to any man,
dead or alive'. The freakin' Pope was in line for a shot at this
gal. I was afraid to read further, least her beauty become
so intense that the sun should fall from the sky.
When you
need to speak of things mechanical, don't just
throw out a few mechanical sounding words. Get help.
Please
don't have a character get stuck on a lonely road because of a 'bad
engine block'.
You will be allowed one extraordinary
coincidence per book;
use it wisely. e.g. a woman phones her husband who is a jazz musician;
he answers his jazz musician cell phone while fishing. Their
baby
(named after a jazz musician) is with him in the boat (built from the
ribs of dead jazz musicians). During the wife's ensuing rant
about baby safety and jazz musician husband irresponsibility, he
notices his fishing rod wobble. He catches a **5 POUND
BASS**. note: this was not a story about a man catching a 5
POUND
BASS, the 5 POUND BASS did not reappear in the story, nor did this
extraordinary coincidence lack for company, lots of company. P.S. the
woman's husband is a jazz
musician.
If a character has a distinctive
characteristic or job,
show some respect for your readers' ability to catch that plot point
during the first twelve or fifteen times it's mentioned. If say,
your protagonist's husband is a jazz musician, perhaps you could limit
your references to his jazz musicianship to three or four per
page. Maybe then it might be a surprise and a neat literary
trick
to have the husband (what is his job again?) kill the 100% evil bad
guy
with a musical instrument (remember now what he does for a living, are
you following this?).
Sorry, I must go now. My incredibly beautiful ex-wife, a ten
time
Miss Universe, that we all thought had died in the volcano, just
stopped by to tell me I won the biggest lottery in the world. We fall
in love again in five minutes. We almost have sex but, "Oh no, here
comes another volcano. Quick, lets find a helicopter. Sure, I know how
to fly a helicopter. ..Wow, that was close. Wait a minute,
you're
not my ex-wife, you're her identical twin sister. My real ex-wife
would
have known all about my helicopter flying from our last adventure. And
where did you catch that 5 POUND BASS?" Dang, now my car won't
start; must be the engine block again. Ha ha, that's life.
Recently I wrote a piece of drivel where
I bitched
in a light-hearted and heart-warming way about lazy-ass fiction
authors
who insert extraordinary coincidences into their stories. I'm
speaking of the superfluous extraordinary coincidences, over
and above the string of wacky coincidences upon which the plot
balances, like a fat ballerina on tiny feet. As you may recall,
the novel that set me off involved a jazz musician catching a 5
POUND BASS during a phone call with his wife. An S.E.C. plopped
into the story for no reason other than, "I bet this'll fill up a
few pages and be easy as Paris Hilton* to write."
...Let's start calling an extraordinary
coincidence that does nothing to advance the plot, a '5 POUND
BASS'. This'll be great. You too can be in on the ground
floor of this newest pop culture phrase. ...Imagine warming yourself
by
a glowing fireplace, tucked in your favorite chair, adoring children
clutching at your cuffs (black lace apron); "Grampa (ma), tell us
about
your literary experiences", followed by a chorus of, "Pleeeeez".
"Well children, many years ago, before we had flying cars and
computer edited fiction, I was instrumental (you are interrupted
here by several of the adults gathering round, "Go on Pop (Mom), we
love this story."). I was instrumental in the popularization of the
literary put-down '5 POUND BASS'. I would say things like,
'You've
got a 5 POUND BASS on every other page here Dude'."
There are visible admiration rays flashing from the children's eyes,
heads are nodding, hopeful wives nuzzle their husbands; the world
becomes a warm and forgiving place. "Yes, this is the beauty of age,"
you think, as several of the smaller children faint in the crush.
"This is fulfilment writ large on my soul". ...Destiny knocks
but
once**; start popularizing now.
* I don't know for sure that PH is easy, but that is the consensus
among
humorists so I'm going to pretend I'm with them. And I'm not
saying that 'easy' is bad; don't try and hang
that 'double standard' anchor around my neck, ya
bastards. As my Aunt Hazel used to say, "It takes two to be
easy."
** Again, I don't know for sure
If Thomas King is right, and
stories are all we are,
then it seems to me we have two choices in life. We can either live
the
story that others have written for us, or we can write our own
story.
The story of our culture, the story others wrote for us, teaches
us:
that we are at heart
sinful, lazy, untrustworthy, in need of salvation or
redemption
that our world is a place of danger, frightening,
cruel, brutal, plagued with scarcity and adversity
that we should do what we're told by our betters, and
be grateful for what we have
that the world was created for
man and man alone, as his dominion
that we should multiply and
fill the earth, regardless of the consequences for the rest of
life
that we should spend our life working hard and acquiring,
because our worth is measured by what we own
that our heroes
are fighters, warriors, those who struggle and conquer and
overcome
that no matter what we do, god will forgive us and clean up
our mess before it gets too bad
There are several novel resources that those of us who find this story
unsatisfactory, counter-instinctive, and dangerous, can use to write a
different story, a New Story:
Steve Denning, formerly of the World Bank, has a whole
archive of
storytelling resources, including how to write a 'springboard'
story -- one that precipitates change
Inner Self, drawing on the work of Daniel Quinn,
suggests a setti
ng for a new story, almost the antithesis of the adversarial
setting in which most of our culture's stories are written
In
business the process of writing a Future State Vision is
very similar to creating a new story -- envision a possible world, a
few years in the future, from the perspective of your 'representative'
character, where her/his objectives have been met and her/his problems
resolved -- and let the reader fill in the blanks on how the future
state was achieved (in other words, invent the possible)
Not that we should not be bound by how others say stories should be
written. I think we know instinctively how to tell stories. Children
start telling stories, to themselves and anyone who will listen,
almost
as soon as they can talk. And it's only later when they fall victim to
the cultural biases that say that a story needs tension, drama,
heroism, conflict, resolution, and substantial length. Some of the
best
stories are joyful, simple and brief.
Economists Peter Jay and Marshall Sahlins have both told stories that
have essentially rewritten 'pre-civilization' history, changing our
conception of hunter-gatherer cultures from poor, dirty and brutish to
affluent, comfortable and carefree. Regardless of their focus, good
stories change the way we
think and therefore change who we are. They can even show us a
new way to live, and hence be transformational.
As I've written often in these pages, I believe the only hope for our
world is for some, then many, and finally most of us to walk away from
the old culture, the old economy, the old politics, the old business
models, the old religions, that are driving us headlong to ecocide,
endless war, violence, psychosis, oppression, and physical and
imaginative destitution. We can't fight them, change them. But we can
create new ones that will undermine and replace them. But to walk away
from the old, we need something to walk to.
Through stories, we can invent a new world, a new culture, completely
different from the one we live in now. Instead of teaching us the
eight
dreadful lessons bulleted in red above, these new stories could teach
us some things almost unimaginatively positive and astonishing, things
that we somehow forgot when the existing culture took hold 30 thousand
years ago:
that we are magic,
perfect, wonderful
that our world is a paradise, and we are
inextricably part of it and welcome in it
that we should trust
our instincts, and that by listening to the earth we will always know
what to do
that the world is a sacred organism of sacred
organisms, and that it belongs to all of us and to none of
us
that our purpose is to be and to let others be, in balance and in
harmony
that we should spend our life experiencing and sharing
joy and learning
that we do not need heroes, leaders, hierarchy,
order, possessions, property -- earth works perfectly well without
them
that we are all responsible for sustaining the balance of
the natural world to which we belong
Is it naive to believe we could achieve a world like this? Maybe. Is
it
contrary to basic human nature? Not at all. Our destructive,
acquisitive, fearful modern culture has only been around for a mere 30
thousand years. For three million
years before that humans at least behaved as if they believed, for the
most part, the green bullets above. I think we know, in our hearts,
instinctively, that there is something very wrong with our culture and
what it's done to our planet. I think we know that if we really knew
what sustains our current culture -- what goes on in prisons, third
world child labour camps, slaughterhouses, corporate and political
backrooms, torture centres, factory farms, schoolyards, dictatorships,
hospitals and asylums and old-age homes, and behind the closed doors
of
private homes where women and children are beaten and abused -- we
could not allow this culture to continue, we could no longer believe
its false stories. But in the absence of an alternative, a New Story,
we turn away, preferring not to know the terrible truth about our
culture.
Imagine that the Nazis had 'won' WW2. Do you think today we would be,
most of us, angry and ready to overthrow the Thousand Year Reich? We
wouldn't. The opponents would have been exterminated and the rest of
us
brainwashed to believe that aryans are 'naturally' the master race,
and
that corporatism (that's what Mussolini called the complete
integration
of corporate and government power and the suppression of opposition to
it via a ruthless police state, before the historians renamed it
fascism) was necessary to the order and good government of society.
The
education system would have taught us, elite and masses alike, stories
that reinforced the rightness of this status quo, and ensured our
obedience, our subservience to the powerful, our fear of scarcity if
we
didn't conform, our inability to imagine any other way of living.
Our situation today isn't all that different. Don't believe me? If my
Ten Things To Keep You Awake
list wasn't enough to convince you, consider this: The most successful
story-teller of 2003 (his was the best selling CD of the year),
entitled (and there is no irony in the title) Get Rich Or Die Tryin
is a guy named 50 Cent. The number two best sellers were a band (can't
remember their name) who have made their entire fortune around a new
line of sneakers (they have a 20-foor Reebok sneaker that they dance
around during their numbers). MTV and MuchMusic have entire programs
devoted to which celebrities are currently endorsing which products,
including customized six-figure limited edition 'gangsta' vehicles
issued by the Big 3 US auto makers. These artists don't care if people
download their songs free -- they make their big money on endorsements
from Nike and the Gap, who in turn make their
real money from third world sweatshops, offshoring American jobs and
child and slave labour. Now, guess what the messages of the very
powerful stories in these artists' very popular songs are (check out
the lyri
cs if you doubt me):
money and power and property are the measure of every
man
life is brutal and violent and you must be ruthless and
competitive to survive or succeed
it's OK to kill, cheat, rob,
rape, lie if your victim is
even vaguely associated with your 'enemy' -- the end justifies the
means
women are chattels, property to be collected for the
pleasure of rich and powerful men, for display
god is on the
side of the rich and powerful -- why else would they still be alive
and have money and power?
Sound a lot like the red bullet list above? Sound like the belief
system of some corporate and government leaders you know? Today's best
selling artists are bombarding a generation of sadly under-educated
kids and uncritical young adults with the fiercest corporatist
might-makes-right neocon cultural propaganda since the McCarthy and
Nixon Eras, and they're eating it up.
This is why we desperately need new stories. We are running out of
time. The defenders of our bankrupt, reckless, out-of-control culture
know what they're selling is counter-intuitive, irrational, unethical,
but they have everything tied up in its continuance, everything to
lose, and they're holding on, throwing all their money and influence
at
keeping it going, at subverting opposition and attacking other ways of
thinking. Our only defence is three million years of instinctive
knowledge, and the power of stories. The power to change
everything.
672 Skydivers Set Mass Free-Fall Record (AP)
672 Skydivers Set Mass Free-Fall Record (AP)01/24/2004 08:24 PM AP - In a world record for a mass jump, 672 skydivers from 42
countries leaped from six aircraft over the Thai capital on Saturday,
organizers said. At least three jumpers were injured upon landing.
Anti-Virus Firms Fearing A Lack Of High Profile Viruses -- Pump Up Low Profile O
Anti-Virus Firms Fearing A Lack Of High Profile Viruses -- Pump Up Low Profile O03/29/2005 02:05 PM Six years after the famous "Melissa" mass mailing viruses, some
started to say that mass mailing viruses were on the decline. Of course, for the
publicity departments of anti-virus firms, that's bad news. They need
some sort of virus scare every other day or so to prop up sales. So,
wouldn't you know it, just as we're told that mass mailing viruses are
on the decline, Symantec comes out with a screaming warning about some new mass mailing virus.
Of course, when you look at the details, even they admit that it's a
"low" or "moderate" threat. However, that's never stopped the company
from ringing the fear bell to try to drum up some extra sales.
Apple Store cashes in on Mass. tax-free holiday
Apple Store cashes in on Mass. tax-free holiday08/16/2004 12:26 PM The Boston Globe reports that Apple's Cambridgeside retail store in
Massachusetts was plenty busy during the state's sales tax holiday
Saturday...
Mass. Apple Stores open 24 hours for tax-free holiday
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