User Comments - podster

Posted on: The Paper Chase

really? I'm still getting Latin. Maybe time to flush my cache. Hmm, somehow that doesn't sound right . . .

Posted on: The Paper Chase

Interesting that the topics tags include "wife, husbands". Further to Alexyzye's comment below about stereotypes, does this imply that a wife is an individual, but all husbands are basically alike? 囧 I still can't get the lesson to play. I think CPod's web site has either been hacked or is under heavy construction. (The "Team" tab shows no known members and is all in Latin! Has everybody left and the site is going to be re-branded as LatinPod?) 哭

Posted on: The Paper Chase

Alexyze, don't be a hater. I confess I haven't listened to the lesson yet (CPod site seems to be having technical difficulty recently) but if there are "sexist stereotypes" think of it as bonus content; its an insight into the way people in modern China (e.g., the writer, at least) think about gender roles or attributes.

Posted on: Regional Variations on Helpfulness

Re: 你想做什么尽管去做，爸爸妈妈永远支持你 -- I agree, the English translation is wrong. To complete your suggested translation, it appears that the speaker would be one of the parents telling the child to do whatever they want, " . . .. your mother and I will support you" or "your father and I will support you." ? Makes sense to me, as Chinese people will speak about themselves in the third person.

Posted on: Made-to-Order Calendars

Okay, I'm going to risk venturing a guess: At 1:24 it sounds like mu2ban3 to me, but in the dialogue tab in sounds like the speaker might be saying mu3ban3. So the question remains: Is mu3ban3 a common variant?

Posted on: Made-to-Order Calendars

I can't find any word "moban" comprised of two 3rd tones in the dictionary. It looks like the character 模 by itself has two different readings and different but similar meanings. mo2 is "model" (you even see it in the loan word 模特儿 （model, as in fashion model). mu2 means a mold or die. Looking up the words mo2ban3 and mu2ban3 I get the same results as Veronique (above). Maybe Greg misspoke, or there is a non-standard pronunciation. I'm not very good at tone discrimination (especially with two consecutive 3rd tones, so I'll leave that to someone with a better ear.

Posted on: Checking into a Hotel

And the woman's voice is so conspiratorial too . . . I guess they left out one line . . ."A wet duck only flies at midnight."

Posted on: Checking into a Hotel

Like Tales from the Crypt . . .

Posted on: Made-to-Order Calendars

Thanks, Tal. I probably don't understand the issue, so let me try again with my question. Lets assume that there is a user in China with a copy of Windows XP that just happens to be pirated. And there is another user with a "legal" copy of XP. Now Microsoft discovers a security vulnerability and releases a software patch to fix it. Will only the owner of the legal copy of XP have access, or would both users be able to download and install the patch from Microsoft?

My understanding of why almost nowhere in China have I seen Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 is that with these subsequent version Microsoft got better at authenticating users and making things difficult for those with pirate copies. So my thinking was that if there were a vulnerability discovered in Windows Vista that was also common to XP but after XP support was discontinued, then all of the computers in China would be sitting ducks for the authors of malware because they would not have access to Microsoft's fix. Or is this irrelevant because they never had access to updates anyway?

Posted on: Chinese Food at Foreign Prices

You dirty thing! Nothing like a little obscenity to send me running for my dictionary. I think the term in question was 干烧， with 干 being the source of the hilarity, but my eyesight is not good enough to be sure.