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or has it been taken already? See Merriam-Webster for how it is currently used in English.

or some other foreign language word for Windows. The average american will have no idea what it means but that is ok, they still have blinking clocks on their VCR's as well.

Yes, according to Merriam-Webster. I guess it depends on who you trust more American Heritage or M-W.

Companies do not "give you a reference"

Companies will confirm or deny your date of employment, that is it.

Why????

DEFAMATION LAWSUIT!!!!

How does this work?

Glad you asked!

You hire a law firm which specializes in defamation lawsuits. They hire a company which calls your old employer and asks them leading questions about you:

Was she a drunk? Lesbian? Stole pencils? Republican? etc. etc...

Then your lawyer files a defamation lawsuit based on the bullshit that your PHB spewed over the phone..

Result:

You get a few 10s or hundreds of K, your old PHB gets roasted with a blowtorch..

Win Win!

Remember, half the people on /. are like you, the other half are hired by your bosses to post misinformation to keep you in check and in line. These trolls can be recognized by post which say things like:

You are not eligible for unemployment if you do not kiss your companies ass...

The only people who decide what you are eligeble for are at the unemplyment office.

CALL THEM!!!!

God, If, when I was a dumb impressionable kid, I had a nickel for ever time I took some random persons (wrong!!) opinion as fact, rather than ACTUALLY CHECKING with the real authority involved, I'd have like 5 bucks of nickels, plus about 100K in real money.

The saddest part, I guess, is that it is almost impossible to get kids today (no offense meant, seriously, I was one myself once) to listen to advice which empowers them rather than making them whores and bitches of their employers.

Bah.

Then again, I deserve it, cause I never listened to anyone older than me either.

Actually, he is correct in this particular usage.

Data is the singular. DATUM IS THE PLURAL

Merriam-Webster begs to differ: Etymology: Latin, plural of datum

Although I don't think I've heard many people ever talk about datum either... maybe because it's always always plural. When was the last time you had only one piece of datum? :)

Try again, monkey boy. Your source agrees that ellipse [definition 2] can be used synonymously with ellipsis.

Actually it's an ellipsis.

While Merriam-Webster defines vandalism as the "willful or malicious destruction or defacement of public or private property," this definition is insufficient to describe the inherent self-propagating nature of computer virii, therefore the definitions are not one and the same.

In order for the analogy to work, dropping the wrench into an engine would have to cause not only that engine to fail, but also have the same effect on any engines nearby and so on.

The only circumstance that comes close would have to be a real virus, created and spread intentionally by some malicious party. Then again, no one is expected to actually die from computer virii.

Are you kidding me? Is your head stuck in some odiferous oriface?? iPod sells like hotcakes.

And your ignorance as to not recognizing this as a hoax, baffles me.

Here's the text of the article to relieve the stress from the site. Slashdot operators: please link to it from the feature.

Introducing the RMS-Lint

Introduction

A new tool aims to revolutionize the way people communicate with the famous free software evangelist Richard M. Stallman, (also known by his initials - "RMS"). Its project leader Shlomi Fish has more to say of it:

"RMS-Lint is called RMS-Lint because like most lints it warns on many things that are obviously not errors, because there's a chance that they are. RMS-Lint is an interactive speller that runs over the document word by word with a sophisticated look-ahead and look-behind and warns the user over any word or combination of words that may irritate Stallman, or otherwise will be frowned upon by him."

RMS-Lint's Rules

In accordance to the Free Software Foundation's list of words to avoid and other documents available on the FSF Site, the following rules are recognized by RMS-Lint:

• Warns on every use of the term "Linux" not preceded by "GNU/". This is due to the fact that Stallman advocates using "GNU/Linux" instead of just "Linux" to refer to the entire operating system. It especially warns on "the Linux kernel" (because the kernel part is redundant as Linux is just the kernel).

  Legitimate use of the term "Linux" to refer to just the kernel are also warned about, but can be overridden.

• Warns on every use of the term "open source" and even the word "open". Replacements are "free software", "free", "revealed", "viewable", and the bootload of synonyms from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary". Also warns on the terms "closed-source" or "closed".

• Warns on every use of the term "free" for fear it may be used to imply costlessness. As for legitimate uses of the term ("free as in free speech"), it should be noted that being a lint, RMS-Lint attempts to cover every possible error, not just the ones that actually are such. Replacements are "liberal", "libre", "costless", "gratis", and you also have an option to ignore it.

• Warns on every use of the term "pirate" or "piracy". It is our belief that when talking to Dr. Stallman, people won't usually wish to talk about the sea-faring robbers, but instead on illegitimate copying of one form of media or another. Thus, RMS-Lint warns on every such use and suggests the alternatives of "illegal copier/copying", or "bucanneer".

• Warns on every use of "Intellectual Proprety" or "IP" (a common short form of it). The developers of RMS-Lint realize that IP can also mean the "Internet Protocol" (as in "IP address", "my IP is '192.168.1.1'"), but we believe that when corresponding to RMS, such use will be relatively uncommon, and does not justify risking mentioning "intellectual property" to him.

• And much, much more...

Opinions on RMS-Lint

Eric S. Raymond, a long time friend of Stallman, and the chief leader of the open source movement, expressed a great deal of content from the availability of this tool. "I've been waiting for such a thing all my life. Communicating with Richard has become more and more difficult, and RMS-Lint can easily make it much better."

Raymond's long time collaborator Bruce Perens also expressed happiness that RMS-Lint has become available. "Modern-day open source enthusiasts find it more and more difficult to communicate with Richard Stallman due to his terminological whims. RMS-Lint is just the tool that can help them validate their E-mails for RMS' correctness."

Meanwhile, Richard Stallman himself expressed dismay from this project: "RMS-Lint is an unsatisfying symptomatic cure for a big problem.

Do we really want to risk our young daughters eating abnormal quantities of lactoferrin and risking a higher rate of gigantomastia and breast cancer?

I think you mean gynecomastia. Women don't get it, so I'd be more concerned about our young sons looking like young daughters, more than anything else. But your point is taken. Messing with the natural way of things hasn't always worked in ways we have intended. Putting iodine in salt worked pretty well, but the creation of a rice-based pharmacy when a substantial number of people depend on rice as their sole staple does merit some cause for concern, IMHO.

I'm not sure I follow your definitions. One of the definitions at m-w is "to appropriate to oneself or beyond one's proper share". By this definition, I don't have to take from you (that is, reduce what you have) in order for my having it to be stealing.

Calling it "infringement" seems to dramatically decrease the force of the term over "stealing". You have something that doesn't belong to you. (Minus the general slashdot "bits are always free" notion, which is a separate argument.)

"Piracy" is certainly loaded the other way. "Piracy" connotes violence, which is certainly not the case.

Main Entry: royalty
...
5 b : a payment to an author or composer for each copy of a work sold or to an inventor for each item sold under a patent

Yes, in that context it would be a PC. However, Sun Fire servers aren't marketed or intended to be used as PCs. G5s are.

Entry: American English

Is that the best you can say? I related a TRUE STORY about my experience working at Apple, and all you do is refer to me as a slang term for the female pudendum

Concentration camp? WTF? I'm sorry, but even if you don't agree with what we are doing at Gitmo (personally I don't have a problem with it -- I do have a problem when they start holding American citizens without being charged but that's another story)

Its oh so bad that they hold American citizens, but you don't give a shit about the holding other people - oh yeah, there is a shorter word for that: Hypocrite.
Again we have a situation where the current American government twists international rules to keep people imprisoned against law and morals. We'll have to assume these are all innocent people, because if they weren't it would have been documented a long time ago, and they would have been put infront of a judge. (Hell, they have even arrested some of the people who work at Guantanamo because they were to "sympathetic" towards the prisoners - McCarthy would have loved it!) Instead we have people who's lives have been destroyed after sitting imprisoned there for years. Now some of the innocents have finally been let out and seem to be starting lawsuits, good for them, though some just want to peace. Again most countries have protested, but there isn't much you can do when the big bully with the abomb says "I'm going to do what i want, and what do you wanna do about it?"

Do you really think we are using gas chambers and forced labor at Gitmo?


While the world at large has generally agreed (and condemned) the use of practices which amount to torture (sleep deprivation for instance) no one has mentioned gas chambers.

You do a disservice to every holocaust survivor by using that analogy.

And you do sentience everywhere a disservice by your asinine post.

Gitmo is nothing like a concentration camp. Perhaps you should educate yourself on the subject before you go making such an asinine analogy.

And perhaps you should get your head out of your ass and get some real education!
"Concentration camp" is a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained or confined. It existed a long time before the second world war, and evidently a long time after.

Real concentration camps are true examples of pure human evil.

Where they won't allow Amnesty International? Wait.. just like Guantanamo! (Bad move Amnesty, calling it a "blatant violation of international human rights and the laws of war")

Where children under the age of 16 are imprisioned... wait just like Guantanamo!

Where The Red Cross, which normally has a policy of no condemnation actually breaks it to express worry about the dismal conditions.

Where the countries (more than 40 of them!) of the prisoners all say "hand them over and show us the evidence and we'll put them in prison" - and not one shred of evidence has been show.

And a smentioned even three staffers are being prosecuted because they expressed sympathy with the detainees (You wouldn't happen to be in the army would you? Then we understand, you had no choice - you are only following orders)

Gitmo is nothing of the sort -- whether you agree with what we are doing or not.

And of course that's what the Germans said during the second world war... Because having a moral backbone is harder than turning the other cheek.

Of course as has been evident of late, there are good and intelligent people in the US, lets hope for the good of everybody they manage to turn the tide at the next election.

Philipinians (?)

The word you're looking for here is "Filipino".

If copyright violation can be considered theft of intellectual property, then I suppose the creation of that property could be considered manufacturing.

If copyright violation can be considered theft of intellectual property, then I suppose the creation of that property could be considered manufacturing.

If copyright violation can be considered theft of intellectual property, then I suppose the creation of that property could be considered manufacturing.

How stupid are you exactly? An operating system provides a ***platform*** for applications, applications are what run on that platform and allow you use to browse the web and play media. Hell, I want to play FPS games on my PC, should MS bundle Doom 3 into their "OS" since, according to your expanded definition of an OS, it should include every application I might want? You need to put on your thinking cap, concentrate, and try to learn to differentiate between a platform and an application.

BTW, TacoBell called and you've been moved to the dinner shift, so you're going to have to have somebody take notes for you at your MCSE class tonight.

Tell me that paper wasn't YOUR idea and that he didn't just STEAL it!

This is a repost from something else I wrote, addressing the same misleading rant.

A user of the filesharing network downloads the scanned copy of my novel. He too has stolen my right to choose the means and scope of my distribution.

Rights can't be stolen, only infringed. If the government censors you unfairly, they haven't stolen your right to free speech (where'd it go?) they've infringed it. Even Merriam-Webster defines infringement this way:

1 : to encroach upon in a way that violates law or the rights of another

It's used as a particularly moronic crutch by some avid P2P fileswappers [...]

It's also used this way by lawyers and the law, particularly 17 USC Section 501, the part of law that defines exactly what is a violation of the exclusive rights of copyright holder.

Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 121 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be.

Copyright. Violation of a right is infringement, not theft. Repeat early and often. It's the law.

-jdm

bad
1 a : failing to reach an acceptable standard
3 : inadequate or unsuited to a purpose

poor
2 a : less than adequate
4 a : inferior in quality or value

bad
1 a : failing to reach an acceptable standard
3 : inadequate or unsuited to a purpose

poor
2 a : less than adequate
4 a : inferior in quality or value

Site (n)
Etymology: Middle English, place, position, from Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin situs, from sinere to leave, allow
1 a : the spatial location of an actual or planned structure or set of structures (as a building, town, or monuments) b : a space of ground occupied or to be occupied by a building
2 a : the place, scene, or point of something b : one or more Internet addresses at which an individual or organization provides information to others often including links to other locations where related information may be found

Sight (n)
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English gesiht faculty or act of sight, thing seen; akin to Old High German gisiht sight, Old English sEon to see
[... other definitions elided...]
6 a : a perception of an object by or as if by the eye "never lost sight of the objective" b : the range of vision "was nowhere in sight"

Site (n)
Etymology: Middle English, place, position, from Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin situs, from sinere to leave, allow
1 a : the spatial location of an actual or planned structure or set of structures (as a building, town, or monuments) b : a space of ground occupied or to be occupied by a building
2 a : the place, scene, or point of something b : one or more Internet addresses at which an individual or organization provides information to others often including links to other locations where related information may be found

Sight (n)
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English gesiht faculty or act of sight, thing seen; akin to Old High German gisiht sight, Old English sEon to see
[... other definitions elided...]
6 a : a perception of an object by or as if by the eye "never lost sight of the objective" b : the range of vision "was nowhere in sight"

Er... not quite.

From Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary:

Main Entry: common sense
Function: noun
1 : the unreflective opinions of ordinary people
2 : sound and prudent but often unsophisticated judgment

You see, the word "common" doesn't refer to the wisdom being "commonly" available, it refers to the wisdom of "common" people. The reason you probably think so highly of "commonsense" is that you are from "common" people, in which case, having "commonsense" is something to aspire to.

Well, according to Meriam Webster.com, it's both, an Acronym and an abbreviation, like FBI.

Merriam-Webster calls you a liar.

I guess pointing out spyware is now a troll.

oh, please. it wasn't the spyware stuff. look it up :

usage Nigger in senses 1 and 2 can be found in the works of such writers of the past as Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens, but it now ranks as perhaps the most offensive and inflammatory racial slur in English.

I would be just as appauled [...]

see here

So everybody is shrieking: "Jailtime for the vigilantes!"

Well duh. Vigilantes generally break the law to be vigilantes.

But they do it for a reason. I didn't get through more than 90 of the highest modded comments, but I saw very little honestly asking why somebody would choose to go outside the law like this.

Hint: read the definition in the link above.

Another hint: read the part in parenthesis.

Now my question: is it true? Then why can't anybody admit it?

Transition isn't a verb.

Yes yes! How about building real robots rather than glorified remote control cars? According to Merriam-Webster Online (sorry, I don't have a link to the entry) a robot is capable of being controlled automatically. All I've ever seen on these shows are machines being controlled remotely by a human. Where are the machines that think for themselves with some sort of AI? Those are the sort of robot battles I would be interested in watching.

Not to mention "Journeyman" which does not mean someone who wanders but is actually the combination of the middle-english journey meaning "A Day's Labor" + Man.

Hense, a Journeyman is someone who does work on a per-day basis for someone else.

(thanks Webster!)

(Here's a link that's guaranteed to make you laugh.)

Hackles? As in "the erectile hairs along the neck and back, especially of a dog"? Why are dogs being aroused by Project Guteberg? ;)

This release should clear the most litigious point against GTK+ : the file dialog.

Oh really? How many people have been sued over the old file dialog? Or maybe you meant contentious.

1. I never said the record companies were monopolies, though they arguably are. You said "If the market is willing to pay what the seller's asking, then that's the price. That's how markets work. If you don't like the pricing, don't buy.". This is a general statement. By this definition, monopolies are fair, regardless of the market or context.

As to whether the record/movie companies are a monopoly or not, it's a grey area. First, there's the RIAA and MPAA which set policy for their member companies. Second, you missed the point that these companies control both the recording services and the distribution, and lock the artist into these. If you want to buy music from a certain artist, the competition only shows up at the record store level, and at that point the costs have already been jacked up because of the recording and distribution costs. These companies benefit by being inefficient and charging the end user for their inefficiency. We can't get the same product through a competitor who is more efficient.

2. Now you are saying there's no such thing as "jacking up" prices? This rules out the possibility of gouging. Are these just made up words? You seem to rule them out as possible by your definition that whatever they want to charge is a fair price.

3. That's fine. If your mom wants to pay more for what is "easiest" for her, that's her prerogative. Nobody said they couldn't still produce CDs and distribute them in the same way. The point is that this inefficient approach is not necessary and artificially inflates the prices for end-users.

The technology is there, give us the option. Stop forcing us into a bloated inefficient business model that costs us extra. Competition is supposed to create progress and lower prices in this way. The RIAA approach is counter to the point of competition. That's the point you're missing.

Please, for the love of god! It is implementation, not implimentation. If I have to see this word misspelled one more time, I have to barf.

Dictionaries are your best friend!

No, it is clearly a better distribution system in terms of efficiency, cost, and convenience. (For example, see Eban Moglen's discussion of the topic.)

If the market is willing to pay what the seller's asking, then that's the price.

1. Have you never heard of a monopoly?
2. If a company (or group of companies) jacks up the price because people will pay it, that is by definition over-inflated.
3. The price would be a lot cheaper if they fixed the business model and using modern technology. Right now, the recording industry benefits most by overspending. It makes money on both ends: performing recording services, and selling the recordings. Because of their monopoly on the sales, they benefit most by being inefficient in the recording services.

[I would like to know how you woudl start a modern car without a starter, but that's not the real issue here.]

I guess our definitions of "failure" are different.

From above link: "1 a : omission of occurrence or performance; specifically : a failing to perform a duty or expected action b : a state of inability to perform a normal function"

Passport-auth'd services were definitely deficient in function, therefore had failed.

Also, we (the US) were NEVER a democracy. There has never been a stable democracy on the face of the earth that was able to sustain growth and self-regulate (at least of any meaningful size (country-sized, that is)).

"Begs the question" is a technical term, not a solecism.

I'm not sure you know the meaning of word anarchy. How can a union of 25 governments passing laws which limit freedom be considered anarchy, when anarchy is the absence of government and laws? More information in the Anarchist FAQ.

Yes, I know that people (ab)use the word 'anarchy' when they actually mean 'chaos', but using fancy words does not make your point stronger if you don't know what they mean. If you mean 'chaos', then say 'chaos'.

i doubt you've electrocuted yourself before. perhaps you gave yourself an electric shock?

Not to nitpick, but when the previous post used the term "Western States" he was using this definition of "state":

5 a : a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory; especially : one that is sovereign b : the political organization of such a body of people

(Courtesy Merriam-Webster Online)

"Indemnify" implies that if the Linux user lost, and had to pay damages to SCO, Red Hat would pay the bill for the damages awarded by the court.

What the prior poster was saying is that if SCO sues, Rad Hat will pay for a defense (help you fight the lawsuit), but if you lose and the court orders you to pay damages to SCO, Red Hat won't pay that bill.

Personally, I have no idea what the scope of Red Hat's protections are nor can I comment on who is or is not correct. I'm just playing Websters.