More on language, good times, and wishing the best for others

When you have a good time at a gathering of family and/or friends, it's not unusual to say, "I hope that you had as good as time as I did."
Courtesy suggests that we wish for better things for others than we do for ourselves. Saying "I hope that you had a better time than I did," however, doesn't have quite the effect that we're after.

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One of an occasional series.
A bunch of years ago, I worked for a software company. It was hard work for long hours. At one point, senior management made the pronouncement that the development team needed to focus more on a particular aspect of the product. The QA manager and I agreed that we'd be Focused More-ons.

Welcome to Babel fish

Fans of the Douglas Adams six-part trilogy Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will remember the  Babel fish. When inserted in the ear, the Babel fish allowed the recipient to understand any and all languages. Note that understanding the languages does not necessarily lead to understanding the person.

Anyway, we're on our way. Using Google Translate on my phone, I can type a phrase in English and have it return a credible spoken version of the translated phrase.

[caption id="attachment_3838" align="aligncenter" width="350"] Click on the image to hear the translation.[/caption]

 

Two news stories divided by a common language

The Obama administration has release a white paper outlining online privacy goals. The 60page  report, Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World, is available here  (PDF).

Here's how the New York Times Bits blog reports it:

Meanwhile, the Register, a UK tech site, brings us the story in proper English:

Tech news headline or Pogo dialog?

This morning's GigaOM (one of the very best tech news sites) included a story with this headline:

Card swipe dongle or NFC? Erply chooses both

The headline appears to be in English, but we might need some help.
For those of you who care about such things, Erply, an Estonian software company, is offering products that will allow businesses to collect payments on iPads. The company offers a somewhat traditional attachment (aka dongle) that allows the merchant to read the magnetic strip on credit cards and charge the customer for the purchase.
NFC stands for near-field communications (not the National Football Conference), a newer and sexier feature available on some mobile phones, that allows the customer to pay for products by holding their phone close to a receiver. Payments by mobile phone are more common in Europe and Asia than in the U.S.
But, back to the headline. Here's how reporting was done in the days of Pogo.

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