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You're using "unravel" when you mean "ravel." Ravel means to separate the threads of something, e.g. to pull a sweater apart. The phrase "to unravel a mystery" means to take the threads and try to put the sweater back together again.

I'm very sorry... what was I thinking?

Looks like it's a buggy USB keybaord.

No, it's called a typo. You know... like the typing mistakes you make when you're jerking off with one hand and typing with the other. Because anal retentive nerds like yourself can't get a date.

"Hi I'm Scott."

"Hey Scott. I'm Sarah and this is Jennifer. Me and her are going to see a movie."

[Scott shifts to Mr. Brainiac mode] "Hahah. You should have said *Her and I* are going..."

[Sarah and Jennifer walk away and Scott hears one of them say "What a fucking dork."]

What did they loose? A broadside?

There are significant between loose and lose
I know, I should just let it go, but I'm curious: What is so difficult about spelling "lose" properly?
The correct spelling even saves you one keystroke per occurrence.

Ah, well, back to work.

What did they loose? A broadside?

There are significant between loose and lose
I know, I should just let it go, but I'm curious: What is so difficult about spelling "lose" properly?
The correct spelling even saves you one keystroke per occurrence.

Ah, well, back to work.

virii
viruses

virii
viruses

(and, er, what's the difference between a virus and a germ?)

Doesn't "germ" generally just mean "small nasty things"? It isn't, as far as I'm aware, a scientific term, but rather is a historic term used before the things that affect us were classified, and hence includes viruses, bacteria, or even really tiny bugs if one were so inclined as to stretch the interpretation that far (goatse style).

Regarding viruses: I've often been fascinated to here people talk about viruses "replicating", or about some sort of viral intelligence: Perhaps I'm just way out there (medicine is NOT my field, although my wife is a researcher for a drug company, so I..err...have proximity basis to say these things :-)), but is a virus nothing more than a spec of organic matter that causes interference in living organisms? While the differentiation may seem irrelevant, I find it questionable when news reports talk about viruses adapting, or as some evil force, when in reality I believe they are really our own bodies hurting themselves by reproducing and being confused by little strands of genetic matter. Bacteria is a little life form, whereas viruses are just a water droplet that, if it gets in that chip in your cars paint, will lead to internal rusting throughout. Blah.

"Virii" isn't not a Latin plural of any known word. The most plausible latin nominative plural would be "viri", but some people don't buy that.

There's the rub. Micro fuel cells may not be allowed on airplanes because the hydrogen-based devices use a highly flammable gas, while the methanol-based devices include an inflammable liquid.

This part makes me cringe for a different reason. Flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. Using them both in one sentence can only lead to confusion. I would assume hydrogen and methanol both burn pretty well, but it's hard to be sure what they meant.

There's the rub. Micro fuel cells may not be allowed on airplanes because the hydrogen-based devices use a highly flammable gas, while the methanol-based devices include an inflammable liquid.

This part makes me cringe for a different reason. Flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. Using them both in one sentence can only lead to confusion. I would assume hydrogen and methanol both burn pretty well, but it's hard to be sure what they meant.

A handy
link than might help you understand.

Finally someone gets it right!

Affect:

Usage Note: Affect and effect have no senses in common. As a verb affect is most commonly used in the sense of "to influence" (how smoking affects health). Effect means "to bring about or execute": layoffs designed to effect savings. Thus the sentence These measures may affect savings could imply that the measures may reduce savings that have already been realized, whereas These measures may effect savings implies that the measures will cause new savings to come about.

but they obviously affect the grammatical skills of the editors.

Take a look at this. The word emulate means to try to equal. There is no reason that the word emulate can only be used to describe implementing hardware in software.

\Theft\, n. [OE. thefte, AS. [thorn]i['e]f[eth]e, [thorn][=y]f[eth]e, [thorn]e['o]f[eth]e. See Thief.]

1. (Law) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny.

Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position ; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief. See Larceny, and the Note under Robbery.

-Dictionary.com

So "Everyman", we meet again.

Time for me to critique your article again. I'm mostly going to cut-and-paste from our discussions earlier this month at Search Engine Forums and alt.internet.search-engines. Once again, here are the key problems with your essay:

The argument that PageRank buries sites in the results is useless. Any method of choosing sites out of a large database is going to bury listings at the bottom. Getting rid of PageRank won't change the fact that "somebody has to lose", it just changes how they lose. (Which, as everyone else here has pointed out, the real problem you have with Google: You want someone else to lose.)

Nitpicking the definition of democracy is a cheap rhetorical trick. Go look up the definition of the word. It's both simpler and more complex than your inane "one man, one vote definition" -- democracy is based on the will of the people, but there are a lot of ways besides "one man, one vote" that the will of the people can be measured. (If democracy was as simple as you think it is, we've have to disband the U.S. Senate for disproportional representation.)

You're attacking Google for not being democratic enough (by a shallow definition of democracy) when it's the most democratic major engine on the Web. Linkpop is one of two approaches (the other being clickpop) that makes the opinions of others important in the algorithm, and the only one judges content-producters based on the opinions of their peers. In essence, content-producers are judged by other content-producers, not by Google. Google is not a tyrant, Google is a naive populist that's trying to quantify peer review.

The repeated mentions of dot com failures and Altavista is an even cheaper rhetorical trick. You're repeatedly mentioning failed and suspect ("false promise") businesses to prime the reader into assuming Google must be crooked, too. Why don't you just ask if they've stopped beating their wives? It would be quicker.

You have a weird definition of "objective". (So weird, I'm not sure what it is.) The FTC definition of objective is "not influence by money". Yours seems to be "not influenced by anything". You're never going to convince the FTC (or anybody else) that it's illegal to judge content by its reputation.

The complaint that Google doesn't crawl everything is just, well, stupid. Nobody crawls everything. Singling out Google for a "flaw" that every engine has is foolish. That's not a failing of Google, it's just the state of the technology today. For every webmaster who says search engines don't crawl enough of his site, there's a webmaster who says search engines crawl too much too fast. Google and the other engines are still trying to find the balance between the two extremes.

Wrapping things up, none of your proposed "reforms" will create a better engine, they'll just create a different engine. More importantly, it would be an engine that's more dictatorial than the current models, because it would depend on text-analysis. Text analysis is the most autocratic way of finding websites, because it's controlled entirely by one actor (the engine).

You're not arguing for democracy or for the people. You're just arguing for a return to the kind of autocracy you think will benefit you more. You want content-providers to matter less not more, and to give all the power back to the engines. That's not a step forward.

As for cookies, you're insisting on singling out Google for something lots of sites do. Checking my Temporary Internet Files folder right now, I see 10-year or longer cookies from Altavista, Yahoo, and Looksmart, as well as from non-search companies like TV Guide, Sprint PCS, and Metafilter. Long-lived cookies aren't a government conspiracy, they're just a (widespread) sign of lazy programming.

You're just fixating on Google because Matt Cutts used to work for the NSA, and your obvious obsession with government intelligence agencies is affecting your judgement.

Wait, what's flava mean?

flavor (flay' v@r), flava (flay' v@), n.

1. Distinctive taste; savor: a flavor of smoke in bacon. See Synonyms at taste.
2. A distinctive yet intangible quality felt to be characteristic of a given thing: "What matters in literature... is surely the idiosyncratic, the individual, the flavor or color of a particular human suffering" (Harold Bloom).
3. A flavoring: contains no artificial flavors.
4. Archaic. Aroma; fragrance.

(Source: American Heritage Dictionary)

When spelled flava, the word most often refers to definition 2, especially in a sense of "look and feel".

Wait, what's flava mean?

flavor (flay' v@r), flava (flay' v@), n.

1. Distinctive taste; savor: a flavor of smoke in bacon. See Synonyms at taste.
2. A distinctive yet intangible quality felt to be characteristic of a given thing: "What matters in literature... is surely the idiosyncratic, the individual, the flavor or color of a particular human suffering" (Harold Bloom).
3. A flavoring: contains no artificial flavors.
4. Archaic. Aroma; fragrance.

(Source: American Heritage Dictionary)

When spelled flava, the word most often refers to definition 2, especially in a sense of "look and feel".

"Sure, a magician might find it handy when he's checking his spells but, for the rest of us, a spelling checker would be a much more useful addition."

I don't know about you, but most of us do just fine with our Spell Checker. We often use it to spell check our documents.

"Sure, a magician might find it handy when he's checking his spells but, for the rest of us, a spelling checker would be a much more useful addition."

I don't know about you, but most of us do just fine with our Spell Checker. We often use it to spell check our documents.

Corrected, maybe, but you still spelled lose as loose

Corrected, maybe, but you still spelled lose as loose

As I said in my post, I was referring to the country and not the island.

My source of information as to the official name of the country is the very constitution that you provided a link to - article 4 says that

The name of the State ... in the English language [is] Ireland.

So, unless there is such a significant difference between a country and a state as to affect the argument we are having (and I am not aware of such a difference), then the official english-language name of the country is Ireland and not The Republic of Ireland. Indeed, www.dictionary.com defines a country as "a nation or state"!

You may remember that the linkage between the country and the island was dropped by referendum passed by something like 95% of the voters of the country.

So, the official name of both the island and the state whose territory is (now) a subset of the island plus some of it's offshore islands is Ireland. Confusing? - yes! But true.

Look here.

It actualy has non-biased reviews of software and hardware. Linuxdevices.com is an asset to the Linux software revolution that many new linux users will surely visit for information on the linux world. Linuxnewbies.org also is a great asset; a place where both new users and prophesional linux programmers visit and converse in the many applications and usage of an operating system utilizing a linux kernel. I tenderly clap my hands in applaud for linuxdevices.com. I remember when linuxdevices.com was a small website running slashcode and its editors posted quality stories, interviews, observations, and thoughts on the computer industry with the precision of true journalists. My red hat comes off for you; may you live long and prosper.

[end non-troll comment]

It actualy has non-biased reviews of software and hardware. Linuxdevices.com is an asset to the Linux software revolution that many new linux users will surely visit for information on the linux world. Linuxnewbies.org also is a great asset; a place where both new users and prophesional linux programmers visit and converse in the many applications and usage of an operating system utilizing a linux kernel. I tenderly clap my hands in applaud for linuxdevices.com. I remember when linuxdevices.com was a small website running slashcode and its editors posted quality stories, interviews, observations, and thoughts on the computer industry with the precision of true journalists. My red hat comes off for you; may you live long and prosper.

[end non-troll comment]

"This guy will start hollering for a human soon... "

And hopefully, you will one day "holler" your way out of the sticks, mister redneck.

Even the dictionary knows you're a hick

Code Description
6999 Divine Light Mission
2911 Divine Science
0003 Do not attend church
0003 Do not profess
7010 Don't follow any
0003 Don't know
0003 Doubtful
6011 Dreamtime
6132 Druidism
6132 Druids
6071 Druse
6071 Druze
0002 Dualist
2252 Dutch Australian Reformed
2252 Dutch Christian Church
2252 Dutch Church

Judging by some of the responses that get assigned a coding number they do not only count recognised religions e.g. Doubtful or Zilch (which means nothing).

Obviously, you haven't tried Indian coffee; South Indian yard-long coffee, to be precise. It's made out of a decoted powdered mix of chicory and plantation/ peabury beans, so has that caffeine edge. Pretty fun to watch it being made, the waiter allegedly extends the pouring coffee for a yard before collecting it in a steel tumbler. (Hence the Anglo-Indian slang "yard-long coffee")

(I should have probably used the correct Indian English term for "waiter"; he's a server (#1a in the link), but this would confuse the /. crowd; nothing Apache about this folks)

"up pisting pussing pussy first post"

pisting?

What a gay first post. That word doesnt even exist, LAMER.

Note the capital H. Brings up a question, which way is correct? I've always done Ghz, but have seen GHz also.

Since Hertz is a unit of measurement named after the German physicist who was the first to produce electromagnetic waves artificially, it should be capitalized.

And I really hate with a passion, seeing m where M should be, considering m is 1,000,000,000 times smaller than M.

There is, of course, a perfectly valid reason, but the disembodied spirit of Grover Cleveland demands worcestershire sauce.

Pay close attention to number two:

robot Pronunciation Key (rbt, -bt)
n.
1. A mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human and is capable of performing a variety of often complex human tasks on command or by being programmed in advance.
2. A machine or device that operates automatically or by remote control.
3. A person who works mechanically without original thought, especially one who responds automatically to the commands of others

From Dictionary.com/robot

I just think it's about hilarious that the word "standards" is actually used.

If there is more than one, how can it even be standard? Sure, I realize that they individally have their own protocol , but having more than one nullifies the word standard right? Or no?

There's a reason the site's called "Voodoo Physics":

voodoo:
4. Deceptive or delusive nonsense.

It's simple English comprehension of a clumsy sentence, a sentence he has admitted could have been better worded and that people who really do have the right to claim co-inventorship of the Internet, such as Vint Cerf, say doesn't mean what the wingnuts claim it means and is a justified boast for what it does mean.

He is sticking to what he said. He just didn't say what you've decided he said. And, be honest, if you really thought he said that he invented the Internet then wouldn't you actually say the words he said each time, rather than "Al Gore said he invented the Internet."?

OK, I'll take the troll bait....

So we have witnessed one species become another? Where was I? Rather, we have witnessed dogs get big, small, and get new colors, shorter tails, bigger eyes, But over thousands and thousands of years, they're still dogs.

I don't think you (or most people) really understand what evolution is. It's not one species suddenly becoming another, like monkeys turning into people, or a thing that happened once or twice in the distant past. It is a continous process of change, small or large, that is happening now. The example you cited about the dogs is actually an excellent example of biological evolution, even though the evolution in this case is artificially accelerated and forced down certain paths by man. Evolution is also happening right under your skin, as we speak. Our immune system is constatnly spawning new species (yes, species) of antibodies to fight foreign invaders. We end up with millions of species of antibodies by the time we die.

Then am I wrong when I say it is called the Theory of Evolution?

No, it is indeed called the theory of evolution, but gravity is also called the theory of gravity. ( So you shouldn't mind if I throw you from the roof of my building. You'll have about 4 or 5 seconds to fold your arms and explain how gravity is just a theory before you become part of the pavement on Market Street.) Don't confuse "theory" with "unproven idea". In fact, the scientific definiton of theory is nearly the opposite of "unproven idea". A theory, according to Dictionary.com is "[a] set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena." I would say Creationism hardly falls under that classification.

For the record, I bought a 512k Mac in 1985 and have owned or supported Mac OS pretty much continously since then. I'm saving for a TiBook right now. I also work or have worked with everything else you've listed, plus a hell of a lot more. In that time, I've learned not to take myself, or my choice in computing environments very seriously. I recommend the same for you. It'll save you a fortune in blood-pressure medication.

Which definition of take are you referring to?

Also, the dictionary says "To take the property" not "to take a copy", like you did. Big difference.

And we'll laugh at you because we are superior.

Now go back to your cricket and croquet, and leave being the worlds super power to US.

>> What the heck is a forth quater?
>
> 25% of a FORTH program?

Er, no. That would be a FORTH quarter. Also notice that forth is not capitalized.

So a " forth quater " is something like "going forward four times" or maybe "stuck FF button".

<obGeek> "FORTH quater" would be something like:

: quater (n1 -- n1) dup 2dup ;

</obGeek>

Burn karma, burn!

No Electronic Theft Act. Ok.

Here's the definition of theft:


\Theft\, n. [OE. thefte, AS. [thorn]i['e]f[eth]e, [thorn][=y]f[eth]e, [thorn]e['o]f[eth]e. See Thief.] 1. (Law) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny.

Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position ; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief. See Larceny, and the Note under Robbery.

Emphasis mine. That should be easy; no file sharing programs remove files from RIAA hard drives. Problem solved!

"Was trying to cd-to-cd copy some juarez...

Juarez? The city in Mexico? Don't you mean warez?

here's a deep link especially for you.

Of, relating to, or suggestive of a proprietor or to proprietors as a group: had proprietary rights; behaved with a proprietary air in his friend's house.

Exclusively owned; private: a proprietary hospital.

Owned by a private individual or corporation under a trademark or patent: a proprietary drug.

I know I'll probably get flamed for this, but you know, I always thought property rights were a good thing. WINE chose to license their work as they did just so that someone like Transgaming *could* come along and do what they're doing. Besides that, Transgaming has been putting forth an effort to both (1) make a profit and (2) give back to the community. If someone works hard and choses to not give that work away to the community for free, that's their choice, but it's not BAD.

'learnt' may not be in your dictionary but it is in Dictionary.com and it was in the dictionaries I used in school. I will note that I am British, now living in Canada, but I am not sure if that makes a difference as Dictionary.com is American.

Read the usage note

If proper English is to be saved, it must start with Slashdotters!

individualism != selfishness

individualism != selfishness