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Thrice.

Although I do admit to be very confused (in general), I feel that when taking a common definition of morality, that is, principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour along with the common practice of attributing certain actions and behaviors to corporations, my statements do not appear "out of context". Rather, it seems that your personal use of the term "morality" has been limited in some ineffable (by me at least) manner to exclude corporations. You say that they "exhibit a tendency towards some set of values", yet you do not seem to see that if that "tendency" stems from principles distinguishing "good" and "bad" (for the corporation) with the "values" being those distinctions, then you are actually saying that they do have morality, in the common sense of the word. Granted that you may look upon corporations purely mechanistically, in which case your statement would only be an analogous (and rather poor) way of speaking. Akin to saying that rain in temperate zones has a tendecy to help farmers, or that your car has a tendency to help you get your job done, as it is totally accidental to the subject that it "benefit" the object.

Selfish/self-centered/pragmatic sets of values/beliefs are still morality, in the common sense of the word.

To paraphrase the late George Mallory, "Because they're there."

Re those "splitinfinitive" taggers: Split infinitives are perfectly legal in English. Yes, in American English as well. And if they are used to change the emphasis in a phrase, they often are very useful too. They can even allow for improved clarity. So just stop to stupidly impose latin grammar rules and conventions on another language. By the way: Ending sentences with prepositions is generally OK as well.

We can thank the niggers and their contributions to the English language for all of the above. In every country in which they are found and with every language they speak, they never speak the language correctly (with the possible exception of Swahili). It's always some kind of pidgin form, and that's despite multiple generations born and raised within that country. If you put one rotten apple in an entire basket full of good apples, the good apples do not transform the rotten apple; rather, the single rotten apple corrupts all of the good apples. This is the niggers' contribution to the English language and has resulted in the lowering of standards everywhere, because after all, we'd hate to offend anyone.

There are people who are idiots and don't think things through. That's why they think someone would say what I just said out of hatred. I can desire that we stop lowering the fucking standards and I can be honest about why they were lowered without hating anyone. Just because you can't fathom that doesn't make it automatically false. So why do I use the word "niggers?" To distinguish the people I am talking about from the black people who give a shit, at least enough not to allow this to happen to them. The problem is the media doesn't have an obsession with fine, upstanding, law-abiding people who happen to be black. It has a love affair with fifth-street gangsta thug-wannabe niggers who abuse women and kill each other for money so they can buy crack, because that's just so cool, right?

Re those "splitinfinitive" taggers: Split infinitives are perfectly legal in English.
Yes, in American English as well.

And if they are used to change the emphasis in a phrase, they often are very useful too. They can even allow for improved clarity.
So just stop to stupidly impose latin grammar rules and conventions on another language.

By the way: Ending sentences with prepositions is generally OK as well.

OK, that's fair enough. Maybe years of receiving spam and being online has lowered the 'English proficiency' bar for me. ;) Or maybe I should have paid more attention. (The last time I checked though, 'impact' can be used as a verb and "may impact the organized activities of..." is appropriate usage (IANAEP [English Professor]); although I would probably have chosen to use 'affect' myself.)

As it happens, I'm far less on her side now than when I wrote my previous comment. The more I think about it, the more I keep coming back to her 'uppity' reaction, and it bugs me.

I still don't think what she did was with anything but good intent and in this case I wouldn't class it as spam. However, when all is said and done, she didn't appear to give the network admins much of a reason not to pursue action against her. Some politeness and respect for the processes involved would have gone a long way here, particularly after she had apparently had those processes pointed out to her.

Can't we all just get along.

If you're going to be a grammar nazi, learn some grammar. "Stupider" is perfectly acceptable usage.

If you're going to be a grammar nazi, learn some grammar. "Stupider" is perfectly acceptable usage..

a process of change in a certain direction
a process of gradual, peaceful, progressive change
gradual development
any sort of progressive development

HAND

Given your spelling of behavior, I'd say you're prone to casual use of the English language overall

Given your parochial outlook on spelling, I'd speculate that you're an American.

failing
is
a word

"Stadiums" is perfectly acceptable unless you are talking about the Greek measurement for length. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "sports stadia".

From Merriam Webster
From Oxford

http://www.grammarmudge.cityslide.com/articles/article/992333/8992.htm

http://www.askoxford.com/betterwriting/classicerrors/grammartips/lyingandlaying

If you are in the process of putting something down, you are laying it down, but that object once it is there, it is lying. The verb lay has a direct object that the action is performed on. He is laying the book credenza. She is laying her purse on the counter. Once it has been laid, it is now lying. The book is lying on the credenza. The purse is lying on the counter. IP addresses are lying unused.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laying

if SMART is complaining about an immanent disk failure I'd *really* like to know.

An immanent disk? Computers really are getting everywhere.

It's English idiot... http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/spelt?view=uk British English (the original) not American (broken English).

Text is a noun, not a verb.

Welcome into the English language. Any noun gets turned into a verb, adjective, whatever else that's not a noun, verb or adjective, and it's been like this for a while.

Text is a noun, not a verb.

Try searching for the word and looking at the definition and etymology of the "-age" suffix.

Merriam me no Websters and Bartleby me no Scriveners, Sir!

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/synchronicity?view=uk

No, it wasn't.

It may or may not be improper American English, but "misspelt" is certainly correct English. Consult the OED if you don't believe me.

This is far from the first time I've had an ignorant American attempt to "correct" my proper English into your regional dialect. It's pretty annoying and reinforces negative aspects of your national stereotype.

Actually, you're wrong. Misspelt is perfectly good English. It may not be perfectly good American English, but hardly anyone uses misspelled in England (though it is also valid). It is wise to research things you are correcting people on prior to doing the correction. The OED backs this up, since you complained about another link to a "random" website.

It may or may not be improper American English, but "misspelt" is certainly correct English. Consult the OED if you don't believe me.

This is far from the first time I've had an ignorant American attempt to "correct" my proper English into your regional dialect. It's pretty annoying and reinforces negative aspects of your national stereotype.

I assume you mean Fascism and not the non-word Facism (pronounced Face-ism?)

Oxford English defines Fascism as:
noun 1 an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government. 2 extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice.

Don't think that describes the U.S.?

Take a look at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and Iraq for some great modern examples.

I made a spelling mistake. Your incorrect.

http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=dict&freesearch=authored&branch=13842570&textsearchtype=exact
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=4939&dict=CALD
http://www.yourdictionary.com/search?ydQ=authored&x=0&y=0&area=entries
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/authored (especially the bottom part)

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/banal?view=uk

It's used among slightly more educated English speakers.

Just being kind of pedantic, but I think those could be called accidents. An accident can also mean an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, so getting tortured for writing a blog could be an accident if you didn't expect to, and didn't intend to, be tortured for writing it.

Seems I wasn't wrong after all. Cambridge points out that people is the plural of person, so you must use the plural form of the cerb: "People live much longer than they used to". There's another example here with the sentence "People like to be made to feel important.", and AskOxford also confirms that. So I have better english skills than I thought :)

Oxford English Dictionary

"a state of affairs that appears perversely contrary to what one expects"

"Dear god, the mind damage from Fortran don't just effect your logic skills, they effect your language centers as well! You can't even remember the difference between "fond" and "hell on earth"."

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

effect vs. affect

My usage conforms completely to the usage in my office.

• 3. (intransitive) (of a computer program) to terminate extraordinarily
• d of a computer system, component, or program : to suffer a sudden major failure usually with attendant loss of data
• 12. Computers. to shut down because of a malfunction of hardware or software.
• 6 Computing fail suddenly.
• 3. computer breakdown: a sudden complete failure of a computer system, device, or program, usually with an accompanying loss of data

You're not entirely correct. Only for lowercase letters. Plural of T is Ts. Plural of t is t's. see here http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutsp elling/pizza?view=uk/

It's amazing how far politically-correct morons will go in defending weird and non-standard usages against the charge of being "wrong". Read the post that this person was replying to. Was the word "wrong" used anywhere? No. Pure paranoia.

Now, is "surpize" a correct spelling that you will find in the OED? No, of course not. You must be thinking of "surprize". Is that a correct spelling in the OED? Look it up. It's not there. I imagine it would be in the unabridged print version of the OED, but that is not a dictionary of current English but an etymological dictionary that contains very many totally archaic forms. I am an English teacher and I would correct "surprize" to "surprise" in any work handed to me by my students.

I'm aware of Huxley's views:

"Science and Christian Tradition,"

It really is unreasonable to ask any rejector of the demonology to say more with respect to those other matters, than that the statements regarding them may be true, or may be false; and that the ultimate decision, if it is to be favourable, must depend on the production of testimony of a very different character from that of the writers of the four gospels. Until such evidence is brought forward, that refusal of assent, with willingness to re-open the question, on cause shown, which is what I mean by Agnosticism, is, for me the only course open.

This does essentially agree with your explanation of Huxley's view. However, his having invented the term does not make his view authoritative. Agnosticism is a formal, philosophical term which means what I had written previously. It is essentially universally agreed to have this definition, in spite of its distinction from Huxley's. "Real definition" is an interesting term; I suppose it depends what you mean by that. Philosophical dictionaries almost universally do not contain the definition you speak of, and respected dictionaries such as merriam-webster prefer the one I've mentioned. The hypothetical opinion of one man who invented the term is not really relevant--the etymology of a word is interesting, but it doesn't determine the definition.

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Dictionary.h tml
http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=dict&freese arch=agnosticism&branch=13842570&textsearchtype=ex act http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/ncd00225.htm

If you go to the library and use any dictionary of philosophy, you'll find that it uses the term the way I've defined it.
Dan

I see eight nontrivial words to encode {"morning", "sun", "big", "hairy", "dog", "ate", "black", "cat"} which is way more than "~6 bytes"; try ~16.

I never claimed to know Chinese or how it works and that is why I said "possibly". Either way 16 bytes is still a hell of a lot less bytes than 55 and this is the compression for ONE SENTENCE.

A Chinese glyph is like a word, not a letter. It contains about two bytes.

I know it is like a word and not like a letter, that is why I said it could be kind of like "compression" and for my example that is why I guess that it may be possible to compress my sentence down to maybe 3 Chinese symbols taking up 6 bytes instead of 55 bytes. Even if the translation only got it down to 16 bytes that would still be a big improvement over the 55 bytes.

Not knowing Chinese, I can encode each English word with about 2 bytes of information as its ordinal position within an English dictionary (with a 65536 word vocabulary).

Okay, now WHY would you want to do that? You will be leaving out A LOT of words. One source of information that I trust claims there are over 170,000 words in the English language although about 47,000 are obsolete. However, even if you excluded the obsolete words you would still be looking at a table with over 120,000 entries in which case 2 byte encoding would just NOT work. Source here:

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/abouten glish/numberwords

That is just WAY too many entries. Now compare this to Chinese symbols in which case there are only around 60,000 symbols which would work perfectly for 2 byte encoding:

"The Hanyu dacidian that came out recently in mainland China lists over 60,000 characters."

http://www.logoi.com/notes/chinese_symbols.html

The resulting bytes from Chinese-level compression have much higher entropy (per byte) than raw English letters and don't compress as well because you've already resolved the alphabet to a 16-bit symbol table.

As long as your data storage or transmission uses ECC and EDC then the entropy of the data should not be too much of a factor. Also, who cares if it doesn't compress well after it is translated to Chinese symbols, the whole point of doing the translation was to compress the text in which case it probably did a much better job than any compression algorithm in existence. How well the translated file compresses does not matter because it already is compressed although I bet it could compress just a little bit more. The real test is to compare the size of the original text file compressed with a standard compression algorithm to the size of the same text files size after being translated to Chinese symbols, my guess is the Chinese translation will be much smaller.

It will compress down further to about the same number of bytes as compressed ordinary English

Do you understand how compression like ZIP and RAR work? I have written a ZIP compression library so I know what I am talking about. There is some overhead involved, the final archive does not only contain the compressed data. In the case of creating a text file containing the sentence I originally mentioned and then compressing it using the best possible compression in ZIP and RAR the "compressed" file actually ends up LARGER. Sure, this probably would not happen if the file contained a whole lot more text but I still think the Chinese translation would end up with much higher compression in the end.

I recently had this same fight with a guy at work who wanted to tokenize common patterns in URLs ("http", "javascript:", "img src" etc.) before we applied gzip encoding to some HTML. He wanted to implement JavaScript on the other end that would query the server for his goofy token table over AJAX after the browser decompressed the HTML "halfway" at

You most certainly can use an apostrophe when pluralizing.

In this case "Nazi" is an abbreviation, for which an apostrophe is acceptable.

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutsp elling/pizza

However, in order to deflect the inevitable pedantry to follow, there is a lack of consensus on this issue.

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/row_3

The press loves to tell us that China is now post-communism since it allows citizens to own businesses. There is still only one political party there, they have very strict policies against just about everything

Ah but China is post communist seeing as how communism is an economic system wherein the state owns all property and businesses and controls the markets. However China never was Marxist, which is political as well as economic, as Marxism focused on industrial workers whereas Mao and the Chicoms focused on peasants, farmers and farm workers.

Falcon

the bottom line is: if you talk about how much you love gpl, then turn around and download spider-man 3, then you are a hypocrite. agree/disagree?

Algorithms are designed according to the availability of several functional units not offered by the human brain.

You may want to revise your definition of algorithms. Originally algorithms were simply a problem-solving procedure or noun a process or set of rules used in calculations or other problem-solving operations. Neither of these require a computer or anything else other than the human brain.

I found this entry from the Concise Oxford English Dictionary helpful in addressing that particular question...

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Showing compassion for the death of another is hardly sociopathic, nor antisocial. Some of the things Valenti lobbied for, on the other hand...

You're absolutely right, one should always check one's sources.

Start here: http://www.askoxford.com/dictionaries/quotation_di ct/?view=uk
Search for "Voltaire" and see result #1.

You could try this: http://www.bartleby.com/66/40/63040.html
That's an incomplete fragment from a letter, and, although similar in spirit, not the quote in question.

Anything Wiki is a questionable authority, but even so, here's one on quotes, which was your proposed criterion:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire#Misattribute d
More details from the same site:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Evelyn_Beatrice_Hall

I'd be interested to know of any trustworthy sources which attribute the actual quote to Voltaire.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "orient" is defined as, "the countries of the East, especially east Asia."

Therefore, an "oriental" person would be someone of the countries of the East, especially East Asia.

Therefore, the word is correct, so stop your arguing.

According to the Oxford English Dictonary:
history noun (pl. histories) 1 the study of past events. 2 the past considered as a whole. 3 the past events connected with someone or something. 4 a continuous record of past events or trends. addition - from my the history dept. in my HS: History, n, Written interpretation of past events In other words, history has multiple angles, to understand an event one must find as many as possible. By banning wikipedia, they eliminate multitudes of angles.