Nell’imparare la lingua inglese mai sottovalutare la pronuncia. Altrimenti succede che (se) vi intercettano, venite mal interpretati e finite nei guai.

Dall’Eco di Bergamo:

La Big Babol non era la tangente. Orietta Rocca disse «big brothers»

Era stata scodellata anche l’esegesi cromatica per quella definizione in codice: «Big Babol», le famose gomme da masticare tendenti al violaceo come il colore delle 200 banconote da 500 euro che Pierluca Locatelli e la moglie Orietta Rocca stavano andando a consegnare a Giuseppe Rotondaro, il funzionario dell’Arpa che avrebbe dovuto poi recapitarle all’allora vice presidente del consiglio regionale Franco Nicoli Cristiani.

Per chi, quel 26 settembre, ascoltava la conversazione dei coniugi grazie alla «cimice» piazzata sull’Audi Q7 dell’imprenditore di Grumello, le chewing-gum non erano altro che un modo da parte della donna di definire la mazzetta da 100 mila euro da versare dopo aver ottenuto l’autorizzazione di una discarica nel Cremonese.

«Stai parlando delle Big Babol?», avrebbe chiesto lei al marito, dimostrando – per gli inquirenti che indagano sulla vicenda Brebemi – una certa dimestichezza con lo slang cifrato di chi agisce nel torbido. La gommosa metafora aveva pure scatenato la fantasia dei titolisti e partorito l’irridente cartellonistica dell’Idv. S’è invece scoperto che Orietta Rocca aveva letteralmente pronunciato: «Stai parlando dei big brothers?», riferendosi a due fratelli soci in una delle aziende del marito. Lei stessa, durante l’interrogatorio davanti al gip, ci aveva tenuto a precisarlo. Andandosi a riascoltare il passaggio, gli inquirenti hanno scoperto che la donna, difesa dall’avvocato Marco De Cobelli, aveva ragione.

La nuova avventura di Marco inizia da qui. Good luck!

Ecco la locandina dell’evento. Ci vediamo lì?

Java User Group Milano ha il piacere di invitarti al 45° JUG MEETING, giovedì 19 gennaio 2012, presso la sede di Glass, via S.Maria alla Porta, 9 – 20123 Milano.

Programma dell’incontro:
h 18:30 JUG news e attività in corso
h 18:45 “REST interfaces for WebApps with Spring”, a cura di David Gómez
h 20:00 “CSS for non-designers”, a cura di Nacho Coloma
(entrambi gli interventi saranno in inglese)

Al termine dell’incontro (h 21:00 circa) per chi lo desidera, ci troviamo per andare a mangiare una pizza tutti insieme.

ATTENZIONE: fra chi parteciperà alla pizzata, verrà estratto a sorte un posto gratuito per il corso ufficiale “Spring Core” che si terrà a Milano dal 24 gennaio (http://extrema-sistemas.com/it/training/corso-ufficiale-core-spring).

COME ARRIVARE
La sede di Glass si trova in centro, vicino alla fermata MM Cairoli della metropolitana rossa.

Per chi fosse interessato a partecipare,è gradita conferma all’URL:
http://www.jugevents.org/jugevents/event/registration.form?event.id=43355

Per informazioni: http://www. jugmilano. it
oppure iscriviti alla mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/it-milano-java-jug/

Non lo sapevo e per me, come per Nick, è stata una sorpresa. In sintesi: nel 18esimo secolo Americani ed Inglesi avevano lo stesso accento (più o meno, è una semplificazione, ma rende bene l’idea). A partire da quel momento gli abitanti del sud dell’Inghilterra, soprattutto quelli delle classi più agiate, iniziarono a parlare sempre più un inglese “non-rothic“.

L’articolo completo di Nick è qui sotto; se avete poco tempo, invece, vi consiglio di leggere solo questo passaggio del libro “The Cambridge History of the English Language: English in North America”.

Nick Patrick: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

Reading David McCullough’s 1776, I found myself wondering: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? If so, when did American accents diverge from British accents?

The answer surprised me.

I’d always assumed that Americans used to have accents similar to today’s British accents, and that American accents diverged after the Revolutionary War, while British accents remained more or less the same.

Americans in 1776 did have British accents in that American accents and British accents hadn’t yet diverged. That’s not too surprising. What’s surprising, though, is that those accents were much closer to today’s American accents than to today’s British accents. While both have changed over time, it’s actually British accents that have changed much more drastically since then. First, let’s be clear: the terms “British accent” and “American accent” are oversimplifications; there were, and still are, innumerable constantly-evolving regional British and American accents. What most Americans think of as “the British accent” is the standardized Received Pronunciation, also known as “BBC English.” While there are many differences between today’s British accents and today’s American accents, perhaps the most noticeable difference is rhotacism. While most American accents are rhotic, the standard British accent is non-rhotic. (Rhotic speakers pronounce the ‘R’ sound in the word “hard.” Non-rhotic speakers do not.)

So, what happened?

In 1776, both American accents and British accents were largely rhotic. It was around this time that non-rhotic speech took off in southern England, especially among the upper class. This “prestige” non-rhotic speech was standardized, and has been spreading in Britain ever since. Most American accents, however, remained rhotic. There are a few fascinating exceptions: New York and Boston accents became non-rhotic. Irish and Scottish accents are still rhotic.

If you’d like to learn more, this passage in The Cambridge History of the English Language is a good place to start.

Sources:

• American English, Rhotic and non-rhotic accents, Received Pronunciation - Wikipedia
• The Cambridge History of the English Language - Google Books

Seen on TV last night: nice to go back in time!

Red Hat Films is proud to unveil this documentary looking at the past, present, and future of Red Hat and the evolution of open source.

Take a look back at the beginnings of open source, and its growth through the 80s and 90s. Meet the people involved, and understand how Red Hat got started, went public, and changed the technology industry along the way.

Experience this story from some of the people that helped craft it, including DeLisa Alexander, Jeremy Allison, Paul Cormier, Alan Cox, John Halamka, Venky Hariharan, Lawrence Lessig, Alex Pinchev, Brian Stevens, Michael Tiemann, Mark Webbink, Jim Whitehurst, Jan Wildeboer, and Bob Young.

See what the early days were like, and what they think the future might hold for open technology and the software business.

Having read Marco‘s yesterday message (no, not this one you sly editor! This one instead), I was trying to help him in finding “something challenging, different”, a new book to read. Here’s my proposal: a very non-technical book, usually boring since the subject (“Sales”), but short, honest and ingenious. The electronic version is free and can be downloaded here.
It’s titled: “UnSelling – Sell less to win more“, by Peter Bourke.
Easily written, well exposed, nice to read, it’s the way I do ‘sales’, in practice, every day. The underlying message (morality?) is that to be a good “UnSelling Professional” -as I like to define myself lately- you have to be prepared and honest, which means being able to create a real trusted, longlife and collaborative relationship between you and your clients.
It’s a book for everybody because “everybody sells”.

Here below some of the quotes I like from the book:

“Nothing but the truth“.
“The challenge with the ‘selling’ approach is that the more we sell, the less we collaborate with the client (and the less they share)”.
“The most successful UnSelling professionals have become students of their client’s business and their industry”.
“If a prospect won’t allow us executive access (and we haven’t been involved in helping them define their initial requirements) you’re likely not a serious for their business anyway”.
“At the risk of being trite: even though the truth sometimes hurts, honesty is clearly the best policy in UnSelling to win more business”.
“In essence -focus on your seet spot and be an expert in that!”
“So often the sales team is inclined to make the prospect believe that the implementation and change management they are about to embark on will be simple and achievable”.
“We adopt the philosophy that effective selling is entirely about the client’s success, regardless of wether we are the chosen solution provider”.
“UnSelling doesn’t stop at contract signing”.

The last one, simply the greatest, could be applied wisely in every life situations:

“Effective listener -we were given 2 ears and 1 mouth for a reason- to use them proportionately”.

]]> http://lucabonesini.it/2011/12/21/unselling-professional/feed/ 1 http://lucabonesini.it/2011/12/02/goodbye-marco/ http://lucabonesini.it/2011/12/02/goodbye-marco/#comments Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:15:28 +0000 luca http://lucabonesini.it/?p=5492

I’m happy.

I was eight when many relatives gathered at my parents’ house for a eat & drink party; they had just said goodbye for the last time to uncle Gino, who passed away few days before.

I asked my father: “Uncle Gino is no more with us, why are you all celebrating?”
He replied: “For two reasons: we had the privilege to know him and we’re sure he’s gone to a better place“.

I’m happy. That’s why.

Worldwide Driving Orientation by Country

This map shows worldwide which side of the road traffic drives on by country:

• number of countries drive on the right-hand side of the road: 165 countries and territories;
• number of countries drive on the left-hand side of the road: 75 countries and territories.

Due paginette ben fatte, il “bigino“, pubblicato dal NIST. L’originale è qui.

Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.

Essential Characteristics:

• On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.
• Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations).
• Resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, and network bandwidth.
• Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time.
• Measured service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

Service Models:

• Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through either a thin client interface, such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email), or a program interface. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited userspecific application configuration settings.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the application-hosting environment.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, and deployed applications; and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

Deployment Models:

• Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization comprising multiple consumers (e.g., business units). It may be owned, managed, and operated by the organization, a third party, or some combination of them, and it may exist on or off premises.
• Community cloud. The cloud infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a specific community of consumers from organizations that have shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be owned, managed, and operated by one or more of the organizations in the community, a third party, or some combination of them, and it may exist on or off premises.
• Public cloud. The cloud infrastructure is provisioned for open use by the general public. It may be owned, managed, and operated by a business, academic, or government organization, or some combination of them. It exists on the premises of the cloud provider.
• Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds).

“Watch Rick Perry’s Campaign End Before Your Eyes”