 |
|
|
I expect most of you will have seen (or variations of) the following quiz:
"Read the sentence below and count the F's. Count them only once and do not go back and count them again:
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-
IC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS"
And the usual result is you get three and there are actually six. So far, so contrived. However, I have some questions which, given the international nature of this community, I think is as good as any a place to ask:
1) Is this sort of thing unique to English? Do similar things happen in other written languages based on the latin alphabet (French, German, Italian etc. etc.)
2) Are the results swayed one way or another by the individual's familiarity with English? For example, if the reader doesn't understand English are his or her results better or worse than the average of three?
3) Do similar things happen in languages not based on the latin alphabet (such as Sanskrit, Hanzi, Kanji or Hanja)?
print "http://www.codeproject.com".toURL().textAin't that Groovy?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hi, I'm MidWestLimey from the Grammer Equality Taskforce.
You may remember me from such shows as "Articles of Faith" and "The Karma Sutra for Nouns".
We here at GET greatly appreciate the work you are doing for the under appreciated Preposition.
Your display here has shown the world how overlooked these hardy little workers truely are.
Whilst the verbs and nouns may steal the show, without the prepositions where would they be?
Falling place think!
On behalf of all ofs everywhere: ofofofofof to you.
10110011001111101010101000001000001101001010001010100000100000101000001000111100010110001011001011
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dear The League of OF (AKA GET),
I have written to you before, on a number of occasions, to request that you stop contacting me. I am not interested in sponsoring your campaign to increase the awareness of "of", nor am I interested in sponsoring your militant splinter group (GITS) dedicated to enforcing the word "throughout" throughout the Western world.
I must advise you, again, that I shall not promote, advertise or endorse any of your activities, especially fetes, cake sales, tombola’s and other "jamborees", and that if this constant harassment continues I shall feel it necessary to mount a campaign to remove all prepositions from the English language.
Yours (With much hate and anger),
martin_hughes.
print "http://www.codeproject.com".toURL().textAin't that Groovy?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
martin_hughes wrote: FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-
IC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS"
Please don't shout. You should know by now this is considered extremely rude.
Furthermore it undermines your research since the text is unreadable as such, all I could do was read and count the letters, and FYI there are 6 F's no matter what the language actually was.
PS: for people counting only 3 F's, I suggest you buy a dictionary and start studying polysyllable words.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
The quality and detail of your question reflects on the effectiveness of the help you are likely to get. Show formatted code inside PRE tags, and give clear symptoms when describing a problem.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Luc Pattyn wrote: PS: for people counting only 3 F's, I suggest you buy a dictionary and start studying polysyllable words.
It's monosyllables that are always missed, and then usually only prepositions that are only prepositions because there's nothing else to pin them as (the word "of" doesn't actually do any prepositioning)(Perhaps because it doesn't want to be slapped).
And yes, it does happen in other languages. Curiously, Italians tend to miss the "d" in "di", but not so much the one in "da" (both words translate to "of", not-so-coincidentally).
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mark Wallace wrote: It's monosyllables that are always missed
I am aware that is what the theory says, however the actual test wasn't well chosen as it did not offer any proof one way or the other. There should have been a difference of F's in mono- and polysyllables.
I had seen the same kind of test in Dutch, counting D's (I guess you know "de" is the male/female definite article  ); I trust same principles apply to all languages having short articles and prepositions that don't add much value, i.e. people reading and trying to grasp the meaning of the text will not see some words/letters, while people trying to do what was asked, will ignore the semantics and just count.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
The quality and detail of your question reflects on the effectiveness of the help you are likely to get. Show formatted code inside PRE tags, and give clear symptoms when describing a problem.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Anyone know of a good billing / crm, offline, open source, .net, application?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Not .NET but I found that Uniform web server (a portable, standalone Apache web server with PHP built in) and Bamboo Invoice[^] were a pretty neat combination. Just whack it onto a USB stick and away you go.
I doubt it. If it isn't intuitive then we need to fix it. - Chris Maunder
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Marking my calendar as "unavailable" from 1pm - 1:30pm so I can take my narcolepsy nap and yet once a week I get a meeting request for 1pm? Grrr...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
meetings are for napping anyway. what's the problem? you just need to master the trick of sleeping with your eyes open.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yeah, kind of hard for a narcoleptic! Plus my meds dry out my mucus membranes. When I went to a new eye doctor, he asked, "Did you know you have dry eyes?"
I wanted to respond, "Oh, you mean that when I blink it feels like steel wool shredding my lenses is caused by dry eyes? Glad you paid for that higher education. I buy so much Clear Eyes I think I'm dating Ben Stein by default." (Apologies to those outside the US who don't get that reference.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
ouch that sounds painful... sleeping with eyes open is definitely out then.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pair of glasses with 'eyes' painted on them?
------------------------------------
"When Belly Full, Chin Hit Chest"
Confucius 502BC
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
That's what 32oz Red Bulls are for.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
ugh. Just do a few energy shots. The best I can say about redbull is that it doesn't taste as gross as monster, on the flip side monster isn't a diuretic.  I'm not going to call rockstar shots good, but at only 3oz they're done and over will in a few seconds.
The European Way of War: Blow your own continent up.
The American Way of War: Go over and help them.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I tried that once and got fired. The boss thought I was drunk. I couldn't quite keep my eyes open, they wanted to close, so they rolled back.  I had been up all night writing a paper on copyright law.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I do the same thing, though not for napping. There are lots of times that I block off a couple of hours a day, just so I can get some important stuff cleared up. And just like you, there is always some numbskull that sets up a meeting and sends me an invite. I just decline the invite with a terse note that says, "Sorry, but I'm busy with something more important". Eventually the message sinks in.
Chris Meech
I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar]
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra]
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Just bring a pillow with you. As a subtle hint...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Oh, I declined that puppy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
leckey wrote: once a week I get a meeting request for 1pm?
So don't go.
Seriously, meetings are like parasites - looking for hosts to attach themselves to.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes. My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Onyx
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I like meetings. One of the few people, never mind developers, that do. As long as it isn't solely for one person's sermon, it's the time to connect everybody to an idea you want to express, without the delays and distortions otherwise involved.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I hope there's a treatment program for people like you  .
Good luck  .
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pete O'Hanlon wrote: meetings are like parasites - looking for hosts to attach themselves to.
Another great quote
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you do have to go, don't sit down. That conveys a message.
|
|
|
|
|
General 
News 
Question 
Answer 
Joke 
Rant 
Admin 
