ADV HEPAX goes for $1,000 at TAS !!!
#1

seeing is believing!
auction here

#2

The buyer got snagged by the reserve for $177 more than the second highest bidder wanted to pay. That is why I never bid on reserve price auctions. Does anyone recall when the last one sold, and at what price?

#3

Out of curiosity, I went to the webpage referenced in the auction. Since it is in French, I clicked the translate button. This yielded these gems:

Quote:
belongs...in the category of modules most wanted mythical lovers HP-41.

and
Quote:
"I can honestly say that this module is a module for general use the most useful that a user could buy. "

With those kinds of endorsements, it' no wonder it went so high [;-)
#4

sure but remember: the NoVRAM does all the HEPAX did plus more... (permanent RAM) - at a tenth of that price!

#5

From what I can remember from Elementary School French:

"The HEPAX module... belongs to... the category of mythical modules that are most looked after by HP-41 enthousiasts."

"I can honestly say this module is one of the most useful general use modules a user could buy"

Despite they are not perfect (yet), online translators are useful sometimes.

#6

From the practical viewpoint you're right. But be aware that a collector's mind behaves differently, he wants the original one. It's not a rational decision, it's an emotional one. However, $1000 is a lot of money, particularly with regard to the missing box. There is another auction for a clear case HP-65, with a BIN price of more than $2000! I suppose I have to play EuroMillions ;-)

#7

Quote:
Despite they are not perfect (yet), online translators are useful sometimes

... if used on a solid foundation of e.g. some Elementary School French. Else the result may be way off. There are lots of examples :-)
#8

French was well taught here back then. Teachers could actually speak the language. In 1976, when I entered high-school, English replaced French as the only foreign language taught at public schools. Most students hated it. If they had a choice they would rather study Spanish instead :-)

#9

In fact, as it is written on the page ("Simon Bradshaw wrote in HPCC Magazine (V6N7, October 1987)..."), you try to translate sentences that are extracted from the HPCC Magazine (Index of Datafile, the HPCC club magazine), and were thus in english originally.

#10

His exact words, per your reference:

"I can honestly say that this looks like one of the most useful general purpose extension modules that a User could buy."

Yours are very close:

"Je peux honnêtement dire que ce module est un des modules d'utilisation générale les plus utiles qu'un utilisateur pourrait acheter".

Perhaps "...ce module semble être un des modules..." would be slightly more faithful, but I'm not sure that's the proper way to say that in French. My French doesn't go much further than le livre est sur la table. It sure needs a brush-up :-)

Regards,

Gerson.

#11

Google Translate keeps getting better though. If you run this page through Google Translate, you will get a machine translation of Baudelair's "Enivrez-Vous" ("Get Drunk") on the left, and a translation by a human being on the right. It's remarkable how well Google does with the translation, though there's still no question the human translated version is better.

#12

Isn't the Google translation another human translation? It appears Google Translate is able to find lots of this kind of Rosetta Stone through the internet, then it presents the translation as it were its own. Plagiarism? :-)

#13

It's less sinister than that. Google tries to "crowd source" its translations, offering you alternate translations or your own preferred translation. It aggregates those results in some way, so that their translations improve based on those inputs.

I went looking for that particular poem because, once upon a time, I ran that text through Google Translate and got an obviously human produced result. That translation took account of the poetic elements in the source text, translating those ideas instead of the words themselves. This time I came up with that side-by-side translation, which I thought was interesting. But I don't think the machine translation in this example was taken from a human. It disregards the poetry, and translates the words. The human produced English on the right does better, but it still isn't as good as it could be in that regard.

edit: correct bonehead "it's" for "its."


Edited: 14 Sept 2011, 3:47 p.m.

#14

Gerson, I think your translation is the best. I put your proposition "...ce module semble être un des modules..." on the page.

Regards,
Thomas

#15

Hello Thomas,

Please notice there was no criticism intended. Anyway "it appears to be" is different from "it is" and this change might please Ángel Martin and others :-)

I don't have an opinion about HEPAX myself as I was never an HP-41 user. I skipped it (and all those interesting modules) back then. I remember I saw a 41C in 1983 in a local Carrefour store, but the price tag looked astronomical. I ended up buying a 15C instead). I have now one of those London new old stock HP-41CX and some accessories, but I seldom use it. At that time, once I was amused when a French engineer who was working with us said "Juliette Packard". I don't remember this referred to his HP-41C or HP calculators in general.

Regards,

Gerson.

#16

I can see it now! Somehow I had overlooked your important recommendation
"run this page through Google Translate". Sorry!

#17

I could have made that clearer. I am using Chrome for my web browser. If you view a page with a language that doesn't match your locale, Chrome will give you a "translate" option that does the work in place. It's very convenient, but it's not the way most people do it.

#18

I am using Chrome as well, but I have disabled the automatic translation from French offer.



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