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Rosetta Stone Warning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| C6Silver Newbie United States Joined 5322 days ago 6 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 33 of 53 17 April 2010 at 4:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I am not a lawyer, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. The EULA can say whatever it wants. It can say that by using their product you sign over rights to your house. Of course that is ridiculous, but the point is that just because a EULA says it doesn't make it legally binding. I think copyright law is pretty clear here which is why PC and console game companies aren't able to shut down the used sale of their products. Believe me, they don't like GameStop or anyone else selling second hand copies. If it were a simple matter of calling the software a license, this industry (which is bigger than Hollywood) would have done it a long time ago. Instead some products utilize ways to tie your installation of the product to an on-line account thus any secondhand installation wouldn't work. Again, I am not a lawyer, but I don't see how RS is any different than Electronic Arts, Activision, Ubisoft, etc. In the link I provided in my original response, many legal cases were sited which disallowed the kind of plea RS seems to be making (from what I read in this thread). Having checked, I do continue to see used copies of Rosetta Stone and others being sold so frankly I don't know if there is a real issue here or if someone is just jumping the gun over a potential problem. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5157 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 34 of 53 17 April 2010 at 10:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
A brilliant parody of that was published in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/04/13/090413sh_shouts_fr azier 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5824 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 35 of 53 17 April 2010 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think this is why RS are trying to punt an "on-line" course now. That way, they never, ever sell you the software! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| habadzi Super Polyglot Senior Member Greece Joined 5387 days ago 70 posts - 106 votes Speaks: Greek*, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Hindi, French, German, Italian, Ancient Greek, Modern Hebrew, Arabic (classical), Indonesian, Bengali, Albanian, Nepali | Message 36 of 53 17 April 2010 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I spent all evening yesterday digitizing 18 tapes of Sinhalese from 1983 (original book around 1976). The courses of that era, including the FSI that are now in the public domain, are incredibly detailed. Word for word they explain and repeat. Today's courses, like RS, say 'guess from the context, it's good for you'. It's nonsense. I have studied about 20 languages over the years, and in terms of memorabiility there is just no comparison. The more time you spend, the greater the detail, the more likely you are to remember the content. Yes, it's boring. But this how our memory works, and there is no substitution for that. But of course the various companies that produce language courses see that they can put little content and let learners 'guess' or just trust that most people will buy and not go through with them.
For anyone here learning a language, FIRST LOOK FOR THE OLD, BORING, EXPLICIT COURSES. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Master Moron Newbie United States Joined 5397 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes | Message 37 of 53 17 April 2010 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
"The Page You Are Looking For Could Not Be Found." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dolly Senior Member United States Joined 5603 days ago 191 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 38 of 53 17 April 2010 at 10:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
here...... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Slacker Diglot Pro Member United States Joined 5266 days ago 62 posts - 99 votes Speaks: Spanish, English Studies: German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Arabic (classical) Personal Language Map | Message 39 of 53 06 February 2011 at 4:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Habadzi, "adam içiyor" = "the man is drinking" in Turkish. I'm almost finished with RS Italian v.3, Level 2, and I've played with almost all of the other language versions (at least Level 1, Unit 1, Lesson 1), and so I knew exactly which picture set you're referring to. To be fair, I think that if you had done the whole lesson from the start, you would have realized that "adam" was man, as opposed to whatever the word for "woman", "boy", and "girl" are. Additionally, you picked up that "icior" is related to drinking from the picture -- you would have also been able to deduce whatever the word for "eating" is. The newer (v.3, and presumably v.4 - although I don't have access to them) versions, unlike the older ones, actually do progress from zero knowledge, and don't force you to guess (i.e. make a bunch of mistakes) to get through the first lesson and progress from there. Also, regarding your Hebrew and Urdu examples. According to dictionary.com, the English word "Adam" is from the Hebrew: "ādhām" literally, "man". According to dictionaryurdu.com, the Urdu word "aadmi" also means "man"... so I would think that the knowledge of those two would actually help you learn/remember the Turkish word for "man". -Slacker 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5157 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 40 of 53 06 February 2011 at 9:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Rosetta Stone is just a cheap expensive marketing gimmick to get unsuspecting victims
to shell out insane amount of money for something that will never get you too far. Even if you manage to complete everything they offer. You barely even scratch the level of A2 to even see the benefits of it. Naive people (the ones who do buy it), feel that as soon as they complete it that it will give them fluency that a native would have. Which it never will. Let alone, RS's bad programming job they did on the software. That it's speech recognition is horrible at best. It is very slow and very boring. How will I learn how to ask a supermodel that I want to bang her brains out on a cliff in some desert country land in some state? Oh right it doesn't teach you that. How you suppose to learn that from pictures? Sure pictures are worth a 1000 words and that's the problem with RS. Say a pencil is sitting on a table. How you suppose to guess if it's talking about a pencil, the table itself, if they are asking if it's silver, etc. All the stuff is too ambiguous at best.RS people could careless if you learn it or not. All they truly care about is the profits they are making for a less than honest product. Also how do they expect us to learn a language like we are a baby? I'm sorry, I do not think like a baby, I never will ever again think like a baby. A baby will pick up something quicker than an adult. With an adult mind, we always ask why. Look at this also. Each language is not the same like Rosetta Stone makes it out to be. German is easy for me to pick up due to English being a Germanic language. But for people who's native language isn't of an Germanic language it would probably be more difficult. It's hard for me to learn French due to it's insane pronunciation. Now if you take a Spanish or an Italian person, it would be much easier for them to pick it up than me. Because of their languages being of the Romantic language tree. 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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