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When I went to Law School and Business School this book was praised: The Elements of Style by Strunk available here: http://www.bartleby.com/141/

As for 30 hour work weeks? I wish it had been like that when I was in the UK. The latest figures I can find are around 37.5 hours on average in the UK, which is admittedly less then the US. I think that might have more to do with the Government structure and restrictions than any work ethic or management differences.

Sources:
http://www.bartleby.com/151/fields/72.html
http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/wrkgtime/general/uk workhrs.htm?IsSrchRes=1

Right. There's no evidence, just the fanatical ravings of the lunatic who claim to follow Christ.

Simon Greenleaf the Royall professor of law at Harvard, wrote Treatise on the Law of Evidence which was the standard in US legal education for a VERY long time.

He began an investigation of the evidence that backs up the story of the resurrection and concluded that any cross-examination of the eyewitness testimonies recorded in Scripture would result in "an undoubting conviction of their integrity, ability, and truth." The essence of his verdict after studying the evidence was that any unbiased jury openly examining the evidence would inevitably come to the conclusion that Christ had risen from the dead.

Is there any evidence that you would consider sufficient to cause you to believe that Jesus Christ did come back from the dead?

Here's an online copy:

The Elements of Style

Strunk and White recommend limiting the use of presently to when you mean in a short while.

Then there is this from The Columbia Guide to Standard American English.

This is because, technically, you are not supposed to split your infinitives.

There is no clear consensus on this.

Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference tilts pretty strongly toward not splitting, but isn't absolute in the case that it's less akward to split the infinitive. It gives the example of "We decided to actually enforce the law" versus "We decided actually to enforce the law" as an example of where you would want to. (Note that both have a shade different meaning from "We actually decided...")

The American Heritage Book of English Usage says that they have been frowned on but been in common use (even among acedemics) for centuries and really shouldn't be.

The Wikipedia article indicates that most grammarians of this century accept them, and says that "all reference texts of grammar deem simple split infinitives unobjectionable."

This debate reminds me of people who condem the use of the word "snuck."

But you are doing exactly what you are doing when you writing an academic paper-- communicating your ideas.

You wouldn't write "BTW" on an academic paper, but in informal communication I think it's OK.

silently assume you are stupid and discount whatever you say.

Again, my message to all of you GT and SN is I try to take your damn message to heart, just add something to the message rather than just belittling my entire message for an error, it doesn't add to the general conversation.

I have a set of the Harvard Classics on my bookshelf, the "five-foot-shelf" that is a very good collection of Great Books. (http://www.bartleby.com/hc/). Biography, history, drama, literature, fiction, philosophy, science, politics, religion... it's all there. I've been working my way through it for almost twenty years. Well worth having around, as it means you will never lack for high-quality reading material.

My alma mater, the University of Chicago (http://www.uchicago.edu/), is very much a Great Books kind of place. Here's a good list to start with (from "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, 1972):

1. Homer (9th Century B.C.?)
Iliad
Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus (c.525-456 B.C.)
Tragedies
4. Sophocles (c.495-406 B.C.)
Tragedies
5. Herodotus (c.484-425 B.C.)
History
6. Euripides (c.485-406 B.C.)
Tragedies
(esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae)
7. Thucydides (c.460-400 B.C.)
History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates (c.460-377? B.C.)
Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes (c.448-380 B.C.)
Comedies
(esp. The Clouds, The Birds, The Frogs)
10. Plato (c.427-347 B.C.)
Dialogues
(esp. The Republic, Symposium, Phaedo, Meno, Apology, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Sophist, Theaetetus)
11. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Organon, Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, The Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics)
12. Epicurus (c.341-270 B.C.)
Letter to Herodotus
Letter to Menoeceus
13. Euclid (fl.c. 300 B.C.)
Elements
14. Archimedes (c.287-212 B.C.)
Works
(esp. On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating Bodies, The Sand-Reckoner)
15. Apollonius of Perga (fl.c.240 B.C.)
Conic Sections
16. Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Orations, On Friendship, On Old Age)
17. Lucretius (c.95-55 B.C.)
On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil (70-19 B.C.)
Works
19. Horace (65-8 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Odes and Epodes, The Art of Poetry)
20. Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17)
History of Rome
21. Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 17)
Works
(esp. Metamorphoses)
22. Plutarch (c.45-120)
Parallel Lives
Moralia
23. Tacitus (c.55-117)
Histories
Annals
Agricola
Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl.c. 100 A.D.)
Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus (c.60-120)
Discourses
Encheiridion (Handbook)
26. Ptolemy (c.100-170; fl. 127-151)
Almagest
27. Lucian (c.120-c.190)
Works
(esp. The True Way to Write History, The True History, The Sale of Creeds)
28. Marcus Aurelius (121-180)
Meditations
29. Galen (c. 130-200)
On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus (205-270)
The Enneads
32. St. Augustine (354-430)
Works
(esp. On the Teacher, Confessions, City of God, On Christian Doctrine)
33. The Song of Roland (12th century?)
34. The Nibelungenlied (13th century?)
(Völsunga Saga is the Scandinavian version of the same legend)
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274)
Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Works
(esp. The New Life, On Monarchy, The Divine Comedy)
38. Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400)
Works
(esp. Troilus and Criseyde, The Canterbury Tales)
39. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)
The Prince
Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus (c.1

http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html#1

Rule number 1 of security, if the attacker gains unsupervised physical access to the box, game over. What in the world did they think was going to happen?

You can raise the bar quite high if you use various crypto signature techniques, but ultimately a soldering iron and a flash burner will defeat that. A CPU that can check the BIOS signature in micricode on powerup would raise it much higher still(probably beyond a student's reach, in fact), but could be defeated by a determined attacker with the right laser and microscope.

Despite all of that, the real crime here is school administraters who have forgotten why they are there and who they serve. They are supposed to provide the students with a safe learning environment where they not only learn what's in the books, but how to get along in society. Part of that includes the school modeling society in microcosm. Part of that includes demonstrating that poor choices have unpleasant consequences while protecting them from the worst of those consequences while they are learning. Whenever outside law enforcement is called in, the school has failed in it's primary purpose. When outside law enforcement is unnecessarily brought in, the school has WILLFULLY derelected it's duty to the students, parents, and society.

Schools often claim to be acting in loco parentis and so need not recognize a student's 4th ammendment rights amongst others. Courts tend to agree with that. What they have forgotten here is that there are duties and responsabilities that go along with acting in loco parentis. Would any decent parent file felony charges in retribution if their high school aged child hacked their computer to bypass the parental netfilter?

The administraters are embarrassed that the students got the best of them. In their embarrassment, they have rather childishly decided to do as much harm to the students as the law will let them get away with. It sounds like the administraters responsable for this shouldn't be allowed anywhere near responsability for children until they spend some quality time with a qualified psychologist. In addition, given that the administraters have demonstrated an emotional age equal to or lower than that of the students, perhaps they should serve a few weeks of detention as well.

Were I one of the parents, I would probably petition for the administraters' immediate dismissal for incompetance.

Not necessarily. Per Falstaff in Henry IV Part 1: "Discretion is the better part of valor".

Since when is Dictionary.com an accepted standard for any language. It is not. Go back to the books my friend. Here I will even help you. Lose the conjecture and the blogish references from you arguements and you might learn how to win.

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Diction ary&va=vaporware&x=0&y=0

http://www.bartleby.com/61/64/V0026400.html

Just a couple of standards accepted by most colleges and schools in our country. Wiki's do not count, sorry. You cannot use sources that take user submissions as source material and call it fact. There has to be certifiable work behind it to prove it. Dictionary.com does not have neither the work nor the certifiable material. Just their own thoughts mixed in with the submissions of users. That doesn't make it fact, lol. Just as the sources for the article under discussion are flakey, misrepresented and full of conjecture, so are your references. Perhaps you think one bad reference can be supported by another?

The Elements of Style , Strunk & White. Originally published in 1918.

"The pronominal possessives hers, its, theirs, yours, and oneself have no apostrophe."

Try to get the 3rd edition, though. The 4th is much weaker.

Best advice evar: "Omit needless words."

The Elements of Style , Strunk & White. Originally published in 1918.

"The pronominal possessives hers, its, theirs, yours, and oneself have no apostrophe."

Try to get the 3rd edition, though. The 4th is much weaker.

Best advice evar: "Omit needless words."

The Elements of Style , Strunk & White. Originally published in 1918.

"The pronominal possessives hers, its, theirs, yours, and oneself have no apostrophe."

Try to get the 3rd edition, though. The 4th is much weaker.

Best advice evar: "Omit needless words."

Here's what I want to know: How do you work with raw rock, when there's no gravity?

They will do all the same things that they do when working underwater and underground.
Why do think astronauts train underwater?

If you need to transport stuff while keeping it contained, you can use an Archimedean screw, which oddly enough, can also be used as a drill bit.

but most all math specific routines

It looks like you're not also a scientific paper writer. It should be "but almost all math-specific routines". Having said that, the "most all" error is far too common. Think about it. Most. All. Most all. It almost sounds contradictory. Really, though, it's just bad style. See Strunk's commonly misused words and phrases.

WORD HISTORY:
It is fitting that the name of an authoritarian political movement like Fascism, founded in 1919 by Benito Mussolini, should come from the name of a symbol of authority. The Italian name of the movement, fascismo, is derived from fascio, bundle, (political) group, but also refers to the movement's emblem, the fasces, a bundle of rods bound around a projecting axe-head that was carried before an ancient Roman magistrate by an attendant as a symbol of authority and power. The name of Mussolini's group of revolutionaries was soon used for similar nationalistic movements in other countries that sought to gain power through violence and ruthlessness, such as National Socialism.

http://www.bartleby.com/61/57/F0045700.html, emph. mine.

I see; since the US Govt. is neither violent nor ruthless, all is well. phew, that was close. thanks for your anonymous hint at semantics...

socialist rats

Here in Germany, fascism began to become really bad when the Nazis started comparing people with "objectionable opinions" to animals, justifying all the WWII crimes and prosecution.

They could uncork the vengeance of JHVH over hostile countries. Just so long as they don't have chariots of iron (Judges 1:19).

gall

The term inform and, hence informed, suggest the imparting of information. The term information isn't necessary in terms of our exchange and it's tricky. The term informative suggests a definition closer to what you have used in your point that a question can be informed. Informative suggests instruction and I think a question, well formed, is instructive. Therefore I think a question is, in our context, better defined in terms of being informative than informed. A question could be said to have implicit within it's structure an informative nature.

The term inform and, hence informed, suggest the imparting of information. The term information isn't necessary in terms of our exchange and it's tricky. The term informative suggests a definition closer to what you have used in your point that a question can be informed. Informative suggests instruction and I think a question, well formed, is instructive. Therefore I think a question is, in our context, better defined in terms of being informative than informed. A question could be said to have implicit within it's structure an informative nature.

The term inform and, hence informed, suggest the imparting of information. The term information isn't necessary in terms of our exchange and it's tricky. The term informative suggests a definition closer to what you have used in your point that a question can be informed. Informative suggests instruction and I think a question, well formed, is instructive. Therefore I think a question is, in our context, better defined in terms of being informative than informed. A question could be said to have implicit within it's structure an informative nature.

The term inform and, hence informed, suggest the imparting of information. The term information isn't necessary in terms of our exchange and it's tricky. The term informative suggests a definition closer to what you have used in your point that a question can be informed. Informative suggests instruction and I think a question, well formed, is instructive. Therefore I think a question is, in our context, better defined in terms of being informative than informed. A question could be said to have implicit within it's structure an informative nature.

Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before?

My dictionary calls atheism "denial of the existence of God or gods and of any supernatural existence, to be distinguished from agnosticism, which holds that the existence cannot be proved".

Actually, the LOVE of money is the root of all evil. Ironically, it's from Paul, in the Gospels.

I'm not real clear to me how any of that stuff is supposed to be bad for you - sounds pretty healthy to me.

But it's all lies. Comfortable, well-meaning lies, but also hurtful, destructive lies, too. I just couldn't stand it. Better to know the truth, even if it isn't what you want to hear, than to waste your life.

Can you prove that "it's all lies"? As an aside, a fellow named Kurt Gödel believed that he was in possession of a proof that they were not all lies. And plenty of other geeks, like Donald Knuth, and Fred Brooks, don't think they're lies. Who knows - maybe even John McCarthy, as well.

I'm glad I'm a scientifically-minded geek who can appreciate the numinous in this universe without having to also believe in a white-bearded old man who condemns every human being who doesn't follow his bizarre, evil rules to an eternity of torture and suffering.

Which of his rules are evil? There's a rather succinct summary of them here:

The Rules, Part I
The Rules, Part II
The Rules, Part III

I'm not real clear to me how any of that stuff is supposed to be bad for you - sounds pretty healthy to me.

But it's all lies. Comfortable, well-meaning lies, but also hurtful, destructive lies, too. I just couldn't stand it. Better to know the truth, even if it isn't what you want to hear, than to waste your life.

Can you prove that "it's all lies"? As an aside, a fellow named Kurt Gödel believed that he was in possession of a proof that they were not all lies. And plenty of other geeks, like Donald Knuth, and Fred Brooks, don't think they're lies. Who knows - maybe even John McCarthy, as well.

I'm glad I'm a scientifically-minded geek who can appreciate the numinous in this universe without having to also believe in a white-bearded old man who condemns every human being who doesn't follow his bizarre, evil rules to an eternity of torture and suffering.

Which of his rules are evil? There's a rather succinct summary of them here:

The Rules, Part I
The Rules, Part II
The Rules, Part III

I'm not real clear to me how any of that stuff is supposed to be bad for you - sounds pretty healthy to me.

But it's all lies. Comfortable, well-meaning lies, but also hurtful, destructive lies, too. I just couldn't stand it. Better to know the truth, even if it isn't what you want to hear, than to waste your life.

Can you prove that "it's all lies"? As an aside, a fellow named Kurt Gödel believed that he was in possession of a proof that they were not all lies. And plenty of other geeks, like Donald Knuth, and Fred Brooks, don't think they're lies. Who knows - maybe even John McCarthy, as well.

I'm glad I'm a scientifically-minded geek who can appreciate the numinous in this universe without having to also believe in a white-bearded old man who condemns every human being who doesn't follow his bizarre, evil rules to an eternity of torture and suffering.

Which of his rules are evil? There's a rather succinct summary of them here:

The Rules, Part I
The Rules, Part II
The Rules, Part III

These are Substandard reflexive pronouns, made on analogy with myself, yourself, herself, itself, ourselves, and themselves. Theirselves and themself for themselves are limited to Vulgar English speech or imitations of it; both are shibboleths. Themself can also occur as an unfortunate result of trying to avoid using a gender-explicit reflexive pronoun by using a blend of the plural them with the singular self. The choices are themselves or himself or herself or both the last two: Everyone must take responsibility for themselves [or himself or herself].

Themself

Granted I'm playing loosely with the definition of improvisation. Improvisation is probably better applied to Jazz or a cadenza, so maybe it's my bad, but I think there's room to move within a broad definition of improvisation. Other than the obligatory years of piano lessons as a kid and an ongoing love of jazz and classical music I haven't the education or musical ability to back my usage up.

Um, many (most?) scientists argue that cooperation is more common than competition in nature.

Really?

Here is at least one scientist who disagrees with you.

I have not read one scientific paper that refutes his original thesis.

IIRC Robert Graves in his weird & wonderful book The White Goddess points out that 42 is the numerological answer to the Greek concept of the Christ as the incarnataion of logos. The term has been applied to the "historical" figure of Jesus Christ, but the idea is much more ancient and hitched a ride with Christianity. Logos suggests a transcendental realm of pure reason. This ancient idea of a Christ figure who embodies luciditiy brought to Christianity a sort of changling Christ and embedded in Christianity a search for transcendent reason that could be seen as the spark for science. I don't believe in God and find it amusing that Christianity in its hubris and eclectic method may have taken on a hitchhiker that spawned science and worked to transcend tribal religions.

All sorts of reference, fiction, nonfiction, even poetry.

The word nerd was invented by Dr Seuss http://www.bartleby.com/61/32/N0063200.html

It's more like 90% pattern matching, 5% positive feedback effector systems and 5% adaptive selection of all engrams*.

Source
* A physical alteration thought to occur in living neural tissue in response to stimuli, posited as an explanation for memory.
Um. Yeah. Or something like that.

teh ponite es tat fi u wnate 2 talcker aboot sumethin, eu meyeght wahnt to acteuale canvey waht u gotz 2 sey affectevely.

It's like brushing your teeth, standing up with decent posture, wearing clean clothes, i.g... You can say it's big bad academics who are at fault for not listening to every malpropism-ridden sentence anyone has to say, but if you present yourself like an uneducated bum, you're going to be treated like one.

You can appeal to Chaucer all you want, but you negate the effect with your very own statement that language changes. We have dictionaries, and relatively standardized spelling now, much unlike the 15th century. Do you propose we recind the Great Vowel Shift just because it occured after Chaucer?

"I know several phrases in Latin" is a strawman argument. Nobody's saying knowing Latin is the greatest thing in the world. More important is the statement "I can communicate effectively," which is the entire point of language. In some circles it's necessary to know the (correct) Latin to communicate with other people. If this isn't your circle, then nobody's forcing you to learn the Latin, but you can't claim knowing the correct Latin is universally irrelevant or a "sign of hubris".[1]

Final point: yes, language changes. But the ultimate definition of what a word means comes from what others will understand it to mean. If I said "o.k." when I meant "No," then I would clearly be in the wrong. You can argue that "ok" is starting to be understood as "no" by some people, but the question of whether it's "right" or "wrong" lies ultimately with how people will interpret it. That's why (good) dictionaries have usage panels.[2]

[1] Cf. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archive s/001843.html
[2] I happen to trust what these people believe to be "right": http://www.bartleby.com/64/12.html

Yes this is horribly pedantic, but can't the editors at least abide by this one page from Strunk & White?

i.e. Gates's, not Gates'

There's only one 'n' in Tanhauser. It's a reference to Wagner.

It's Tannhauser in the Columbia Encyclopedia and Wikipedia. There's an umlaut too, but I can't remember the html entity for it and whether /. would eat it or not. :)

Probably because it worked like that in Latin or Greek and they're 'Proper' languages, so therefore English must be shoehorned into following their rules.

Interesting you should say that -- it's exactly why we have that "thou shalt not split thy infinitive" rule in English -- it comes from Latin. It is an unnecessary rule, I might add, as some English constructs require a split infinitive. For example, "We expect our output to more than double in a year." Try combining the infinitive and keeping the English sounding normal! This quotation, and other information on the origin and analysis of this rule in English, try http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/059.html.

True, I was confused about your use of the terms "mechanics" and "material".

Game material is story content. That's what the monopoly junior example was about - it's the monopoly story content, the titles, the text, the character, the branding. That is copyrightable

"Color" like that is easily replaceable while preserving the mechanics.

Game mechanics are patentable.

Unlike copyrights and trademarks, patents expire. How long has the tile crossword game been around?

Using a slashdot user's rule of thumb to identify appropriate grammar is like using Michael Jackson to watch your kids after school.

For one thing, I have checked this rule of thumb against other authorities on the English language. Notably, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law disagree with you, preferring copyrighted (not *copywritten).

As the Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White and Fowler's Modern English all clearly agree, the past tense of the verb "to copyright" is "copywritten."

Are those three references online where I can search them and view their full text? I even registered at CMOS's web site, but its searchable index displays only paragraph numbers, not full text. The latest public domain edition of The Elements of Style does not seem to list a section giving the principal parts of "to copyright". I am not in a position to purchase books before I reply to your comment.

The patent [on falling tetramino games] is Russian, and was covered under international patent law.

Even if there is Russian patent, I thought that a patent enforceable in the United States had to have a counterpart with a U.S. patent number, unlike copyrights. For instance, the German patent on MP3 encoding has a U.S. counterpart, namely U.S. Patent 5,579,430. Where does 35 USC state that a United States citizen residing in the United States and operating a web site from the United States can be sued for violating a patent granted in the Soviet Union (and presumably still enforceable in its former republics)? My understanding of the applicable patent treaties is that 1. filing a patent application in one country establishes priority of invention under the Paris Convention, giving an inventor 12 months to file counterpart applications in other countries, and 2. the Patent Cooperation Treaty has standardized the patent application process, letting an inventor file in more than one country with one application.

If you would research this in good faith

Would you please help me come up with appropriate Google keywords?

The US Patent and Trade Office doesn't maintain foreign trademarks.

But it does maintain trademarks registered internationally through the Madrid System, as you allude. "TETRIS" is in fact registered in the States, but Elorg/TTC's competitors can merely change their products' name to get around that.

Your assertion about the fossil record is ludacris.

Fossil record

Ludacris

Ludicrous

Ironic

A Grammar Lesson for Slashdot Posters (the first of a continuing series) ...

Rearranging the first sentence in the original post yields:

[I]f you go to heavily poluted areas like Bangladesh ... a parallel is.

Duh. Like ... is what??

The rule is that a gerund demands the possesive. e.g. My posting such comments may be indicative of deep-seated frustrations.

Alternatively, the tortured construction could have been avoided and the sentence rephrased to say something along the lines of:

A parallel can be found in heavily polluted areas like Bangladesh.

Much better, innit?

It sounds like a marketing buzzword to me. Besides, I don't think the use of the suffix naut is applicable to Internet use.

It's almost as bad as banning the word e-mail in favor of courriel .

I'm not really into carnivorous plants, so I hadn't heard this word before.

Here's a WAV pronunciation.

tur-e-on

Not very phonetic. Shouldn't product names be easy to read without hearing them?

I imagine that I'll hear many tur-yun's, tur-eye-un's, and too-rye-un's.

A time-saving appliance only makes sense if it:

- Works reliably in real-life situations
- Has no learning curve
- Costs no more than the "time" you "get back" from it

Ah yes, but you are possibly forgetting the all-important complification/coolness/necessary-time-taker factor.

Often, new time-saving ideas/devices are exploited so as to fulfill Parkinson's law.

As a classically-trained draftsman (hint: I learned to draw with a T-square, protractors and triangles; TI calculators were new and expensive and exotic), I've seen Parkinson's Theory at work even when using such newfangled, "time-saving" tools such as 3D CAD, hyper-powerful RPN handhelds and FEA software.

Somehow, it always seems to take the same amount of hours to get a job done, and the hypothetical savings by using computers is usually eaten-up by software/hardware issues, complications and "beat-your-head-against-the-wall" frustration because a program cannot do what can be done in about 20 seconds by a competent designer. Add to that multi-tasking, whereby chaos is the natural order and designers/engineers typically bounce around from one task to the next with little continuity of state of mind.

If you add to this the fact that some managers get it set into their heads that "it's all on the computer, so it should take no time at all" and "we'll just modify the old (poorly-designed) project and sell it as a new one" (much profit and personal accolades to be gained) attitude, it's pretty clear how things don't get done despite the use of high technology. Think of that McDonald's restaurant where the employees are rushing around and harried but the customers are waiting for an inordinate amount of time. Lots of action, not much result. Maybe this should be termed "activity theatre".

i call b.s.

i am, currently, being shifted/shafted out of the lab, and into the board-room, and i don't like it [politics], one bit (well... i do like the increased salary, but not the politics).

i keep on telling my boss that i just want to be left alone in the lab, and have people slipp projects onto my desk when i am not looking -- i'll leave the results on their desks while they're out to lunch... but i'm being groomed for a management position. my boss hates the politics just as much as i do, from what i can tell... HIS boss seems to like politics, though.

my point is: don't over generalize.

you might also want to consider some classic socio-economic theories such as the Peter Principle, and the Dillbert Principle

-disgruntaled_lab_rat

The Columbia Guide to Standard American English disagrees with you.

Google's initiative to digitalize

Am I the only one who thought this was a spelling mistake? But no, according to American Heritage Dictionary:

1. To administer digitalis in a dosage sufficient to achieve the maximum therapeutic effect without producing toxic symptoms.
2. To digitize.

In light of the first meaning, however, "digitalize" still sounds vaguely medical to me in a drop-your-pants-and-bend-over fashion...