You USA-nians really have to work on changing your high school culture. Statements like this are so frequent yet so foreign to me... why is aggression and abuse frequent? Why is it tolerated? Why is it aimed towards those with "intelligence and ability"? Why don't you work on changing your society once you grow up? women rights, end of racial segregation, etc. prove that you can change the society you live in in a relatively short period of time. Why you all complain but don't try to change it?
The Øresund (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Bridge) was built Lego style in Spain, shipped piecewise and assembled on site.
I will quote this.
I would have thought TB and RAM were easier than RHEL and NUMA.
Say that you are trying to pass a new amendment to U.S. Constitution. You have to stay away from the most partisan issues like, say, gun control.
1. Electoral Law: In Spain votes are counted according to D'Hondt method in regional demarcations. It favours big parties while penalizing small parties. It makes votes in less densely populated regions more valuable. Both things are perceived as very unfair by many Spaniards. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method)
2. Separation of Power: In Spain, Congress is very powerful while Senate is mostly decorative. People vote once every four years for Congress, then they elect the President. There is no separation between Executive and Legislative. In the U.S. or France you can have a Democrat President and a Republican Congress. That is not possible in Spain, Executive and Legislative are always in the hands of the same party by design. Judicial power is not independent as judges are appointed by the party in power. Older judges (some people may remember Garzon, the guy who tried to incarcerate Pinochet) are independent but younger ones ALWAYS vote whatever is decided by the party that granted them the seat.
3. Political regeneration: In Spain you cannot vote for a person for Congress, you can only vote for a party list. The party will put whoever they want in the list in whatever the order they want. This system has led to a progressive degeneration where only friends and family of powerful party members are listed. Many of the candidates in the upcoming elections (22nd of May) have been found guilty of corruption. Many more are awaiting trial. Almost all of them have no leadership qualities at all. Their only quality is to be a disciplined party member with connections. Parties in Spain are not democratic themselves. Primary elections within a party are almost unheard of. Candidates for any election are decided by the senior management. In Spain, when a candidate loses, they just wait for the next election, or the next, or the next... until they finally grab power. It is a case of "waiting your turn".
In Spain we frequently use "partitocracy" (rule of parties) and "fingercracy" (rule of those who have been chosen by a powerful party member by pointing at them with his finger) to describe our political system.
Subvention => The government gives you free money if they believe that your startup is "good". In practice, there is some corruption (example: I will grant you a 2 million euros subvention if you casually happen to subcontract all the work to mi niece's company for 1.9 million). Even if you find honest people, there is A LOT of bureaucratic stuff to do to be eligible.
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
This question was originally asked at Barrapunto, a Slashdot clone in Spanish: http://preguntas.barrapunto.com/article.pl?sid=10/10/27/1045237I'm interested to see what HNers think, so I'm translating it:"From your point of view, which is the best software in the world? I mean software for end users, MQSeries or a virtual machine with a JIT compiler would not be valid answers. Some examples...
Both things will earn you downvotes.
http://www.pronunciationlondon.co.uk/joe.html http://www.anenglishaccent.com/author.html
He is very good. We spent half of every session learning 'high level' stuff (phrases, paragraphs) and the other half practising 'low level' elocution (where to place your tongue and your lips for each sound).
The BEST on-line material is BBC's "The sound of English" http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pr... Just watch it and practise with a mirror many, many, many times and you will improve.
If you are willing to spend some money, I recommend doing an elocution "soften your accent" course. I did it a couple of years ago (sorry, don't remember the name of the company, it was close to St. Pancras Station) and I improved a lot.
Pay special attention to "intonation patterns". Even if you make every individual sound right, natives will have trouble understanding you. You have to make all sounds in a sentence flow together in one of the few predefined sound patterns found in British English in order to get understood. Just changing the intonation pattern changes the meaning, even in the same phrase.
Example: 'I like YOUR new blue dress' vs. 'I like your new BLUE dress' vs. 'I like your new blue DRESS'.
Say 'cucumber'. The sound of the first syllable is very different from the second, even though both are written the same.
Say 'stake' and 'steak'. Different graphs for the same phonemes.
Say 'E as in elephant'. Two different sounds for 'e'.
etc.
Present day English is so bad that written language is divorced from spoken language, but it is not bad enough to unite all speakers behind a spelling reform.
Spanish speakers tend to spanify Portuguese words, for convenience and for the fun of watching Portuguese speakers get annoyed :P
Sao Paulo => San Pablo