dkeskar

The Internet does accelerate the death of languages. Isolation created divergence, instant participatory communication will erase those differences. There is simply too much overhead to continue translating new terms (e.g. smartphone) which build on other English connotations. I wonder how the Académie_française does its job.

Movies and TV did this too, but being broadcast media, they could - with state support - throw a fig leaf for "regional" languages.

As patio11 said, this is a good approach and that was a well written post. I wrote twilioflow for similar reasons, including ease of testing interactions.

https://github.com/dkeskar/twilioflow

Its been 3 years and Twilio has come a long way. All the best to you guys!

Sanskrit is considered a "refined" language, implying serious effort to systematize phonemes, grammar, declension and even verb classification distinguishing recipient of actions (1-10 ganas, PP/AP padas, etc.). Refinement can give subtlety, accuracy, concision etc. but does not automatically and objectively mean "universal", "perfect" or "excellent", even though proponents conflate those aspects.

IMO, Sanskrit persisted as the language of metaphysical and scientific treatises for a long time because of practical advantages. A large library of concepts, allowed easy reuse and concision [1]. Being trained in Vedanga (phonetics, metre, grammar, etymology, etc.) allowed practitioners to compose new sutras easily, much like PhD students using mathematical notations and proofs in papers.

It was used conversationally, at least in courts and debates. Its decline into a quasi-venerated read-only language over the last 1000 years would be an interesting (and contentious) topic for dissertation.

[1] Patanjali Yoga Sutras http://www.arlingtoncenter.org/Sanskrit-English.pdf

Caveat: Still early[1], less featured than Google/RSS Reader. But also more.

[1] http://memamsa.com/start/gr

Email me (@memamsa.com). Also, you might want to put your email in your profile.

SEEKING FREELANCER

Portland, OR. Ruby, Redis, MySQL. Full stack with jQuery a plus. Double plus if you have written an app, mashup or gem.

Unless I am mistaken, there are two changes: a) no points display and b) no downvote arrow for many of us. Both are good.

There used to be many responses triggered by consternation over downvotes. This way, most people can only upvote iff they resonate with the comment, without the possibility of jumping on a bandwagon (or trying to derail one)

Suggestion: Moving the comment box to the bottom would nudge people to scan the thread before responding, duplicating, etc.

http://mavenn.com - collectively monitor, share and discover information.

All software is meta. Even when it is controlling effectors.

A competent generalist is a specialist too.

One ventures into a market hoping it would be profitable. It does not, so one tries to "train the customers".

That letter probably didn't increase sales.

But this guy and his company managed to hang around making revenues until they were approached as a partner by some large company that knew how to get customers to pay through their noses.