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It is only irony if it is unexpected or varies from the normal result. Since when is it unexpected for Microsoft to screw a business partner?

There's even a term for persistent incitement of litigation. It's called 'barratry'. In most jurisdictions, it's illegal. Check it out: barratry

From MW Dictionary online:

2 a : participating for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of endeavor often engaged in by amateurs <a professional golfer>

Do you drive as an amateur? Does a cab driver drive for gain or livelihood?

He's a professional. You're a dipshit. Get your rants right.

See this for the definition

From MW Dictionary online:

2 a : participating for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of endeavor often engaged in by amateurs <a professional golfer>

Do you drive as an amateur? Does a cab driver drive for gain or livelihood?

He's a professional. You're a dipshit. Get your rants right.

See this for the definition

How embarrassing is it to misspell a word when you are correcting a spelling mistake?
Is that the Definition of irony?

How embarrassing is it to misspell a word when you are correcting a spelling mistake?
Is that the Definition of irony?

Main Entry: 2chuff Function: intransitive verb Etymology: imitative : to produce noisy exhaust or exhalations : proceed or operate with chuffs

Webster has updated their definition of marriage.

Definition 1-a-1 still includes only hetero couples, but definition 1-a-2 is for persons of the same sex.

See definition #3, then let's agree to end this, huh?

From the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Main Entry: technical
Pronunciation: 'tek-ni-k&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Greek technikos of art, skillful, from technE art, craft, skill; akin to Greek tektOn builder, carpenter, Latin texere to weave, Sanskrit taksati he fashions
1 a : having special and usually practical knowledge especially of a mechanical or scientific subject [a technical consultant] b : marked by or characteristic of specialization
2 a : of or relating to a particular subject b : of or relating to a practical subject organized on scientific principles [a technical school] c : TECHNOLOGICAL 1
3 a : based on or marked by a strict or legal interpretation b : LEGAL 6
4 : of or relating to technique
5 : of, relating to, or produced by ordinary commercial processes without being subjected to special purification [technical sulfuric acid] 6 : relating to or caused by the functioning of the market as a discrete mechanism not influenced by macroeconomic factors [technical rally] [technical analysis]
- technically /-k(&-)lE/ adverb

Watch a proficient PC user at work, and you'll notice he/she is productive regardless of the speed of his/her rig. It was supposed to be humor , the mouse button thing has been done to death, just like the BSoD thing.

I was just discussing this with a friend. For those of us steeped in the lore of the internet, it's called "Kiboing"
Or better yet: Who's got the biggest ego?

Well, now you've given cause for it to be called "brunsoning", you elitist douche bag.

1) Office and suite are both common terms. That's like saying it is new and original if someone puts a collar on a dog and sells it as "Dog Collar". The two terms would not have been used together before the invention of the "dog collar", but that doesn't make "Dog Collar" an innovative name.

2) My father worked at Kimberly Clark (coincidentally enough, in the diaper plant in Memphis). I've heard it all hundreds of times. Trust me on the Kleenex thing. Huggies are in the Kleenex line. However, unlike Microsoft, K-C doesn't just throw any generic word out as the title of it's products. And therefore acheives good brand recognition. It would dilute the brand name for them to make a big deal about Huggies actually being "Kimberly Clark Kleenex Huggies Diapers". And since they chose good brand names for their products, they don't have to.

I am not the one who tried to compare "Kleenex" to "office suite". They are not at all the same.

Office suite and some of the Kleenex line of products

</rant>

1) Office and suite are both common terms. That's like saying it is new and original if someone puts a collar on a dog and sells it as "Dog Collar". The two terms would not have been used together before the invention of the "dog collar", but that doesn't make "Dog Collar" an innovative name.

2) My father worked at Kimberly Clark (coincidentally enough, in the diaper plant in Memphis). I've heard it all hundreds of times. Trust me on the Kleenex thing. Huggies are in the Kleenex line. However, unlike Microsoft, K-C doesn't just throw any generic word out as the title of it's products. And therefore acheives good brand recognition. It would dilute the brand name for them to make a big deal about Huggies actually being "Kimberly Clark Kleenex Huggies Diapers". And since they chose good brand names for their products, they don't have to.

I am not the one who tried to compare "Kleenex" to "office suite". They are not at all the same.

Office suite and some of the Kleenex line of products

</rant>

1) Office and suite are both common terms. That's like saying it is new and original if someone puts a collar on a dog and sells it as "Dog Collar". The two terms would not have been used together before the invention of the "dog collar", but that doesn't make "Dog Collar" an innovative name.

2) My father worked at Kimberly Clark (coincidentally enough, in the diaper plant in Memphis). I've heard it all hundreds of times. Trust me on the Kleenex thing. Huggies are in the Kleenex line. However, unlike Microsoft, K-C doesn't just throw any generic word out as the title of it's products. And therefore acheives good brand recognition. It would dilute the brand name for them to make a big deal about Huggies actually being "Kimberly Clark Kleenex Huggies Diapers". And since they chose good brand names for their products, they don't have to.

I am not the one who tried to compare "Kleenex" to "office suite". They are not at all the same.

Office suite and some of the Kleenex line of products

</rant>

Ahem. Commonweal is an archaic term meaning the common welfare. (Think weal as in Weal and Woe.)

According to Merriam-Webster.

I seem to recall that the "male magician" sense of mandrake is an English word as well, though I could be mistake about that. Merriam-Webster is not exactly the world's most authoritative dictionary.

There are actually three pronunciation for the word "nuclear" in the dictionary, and "nukular" is one of them.
Repeat after me: "Texas, it's a whole other country."

From Merriam-Webster:

vandalism: [The] willful or malicious destruction or defacement of public or private property [Emphasis mine]
defacement: to mar the external appearance of

Protest outside the store legally; start a direct-mailing campaign; skywrite for all I care, but don't break the law to make your point!

Main Entry: insight
Pronunciation: 'in-"sIt
Function: noun
1 : the power or act of seeing into a situation : PENETRATION
2 : the act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively

Calling copyright violators pirates IN COURT is simply an attempt to emotionally influence the jury.

They have come up with some assanine interpretation of copyright law [...]

"That's highly amusing, but you might want to look up "straw man" in your dictionary of philosophy."

I think I found it. Joy.

both are allowed.

I agree it looks like crap though.

[essay] 3 a : an analytic or interpretative literary composition usually dealing with its subject from a limited or personal point of view

Anarchy. What images does the word conjure for you? Try to picture "anarchy" in concrete images.

If you are like most people you probably picture images from the news. Depending on your age you might have images from Kent State, the Watts riots, the L.A. riots. Maybe images from Central America or China.

Consider the political environment surrounding those places and times. Was it anarchy? Anarchy is the absence of government. Hardly the case in any of the above examples. In fact the sort of chaos that comes to mind is actually associated with an over-abundance of government, not its absence.

There's more than one definition for the word .

Merriam-Webster not only defines irregardless,
but also states that the "most frequently repeated remark about it is that 'there is no such word.'"

Merriam-Webster not only defines irregardless,
but also states that the "most frequently repeated remark about it is that 'there is no such word.'"

I hate this argument because it skews the definition of obsolete. By this definition, everything you now have will be obsolete for the next 5 years. If you think of the real meaning of the word, you'd realize that if something is still usable for what you are trying to do, it is not obsolete. It may be dated, it may not perform like the newest consumer available item, but it is not obsolete.

As an aside to an aside, you're both wrong. Two words are homonyms if they are spelled the same and pronounced the same but they have different meanings. Webster's example is "quail" (the bird) and "quail" (the verb)... It's too early in the morning for me to think of another ne.

Hot button alert! It's per se. It means in, of, or by itself; intrinsically.

Never use a word you've only heard and never read.

Hear it from yourself :) http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?fedora01.wav=f edora

I write a novel. It's not a particularly good novel, but I'm proud of it. I have a copyright on the novel which I do not relinquish or alter, and I publish and sell copies of the novel.

A reader somewhere thinks it's the best novel he's ever read, or at least in his top 100. He scans the book to HTML and uploads it to a filesharing network. He has stolen my right to distribute my work on my terms.

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.

My novel is still there, but I have lost something. See also the Merriam-Webster definition, transitive senses 1b-1d.

Please put this "it's not stealing, it's infringement" argument to rest, folks. It's used as a particularly moronic crutch by some avid P2P fileswappers, and eclipses the better points that could be made (such as that we should reduce the copyright term in order to promote competition and innovation in content).

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

As a side note, your spelling is attrocious. I suppose you went to a government school, didn't you? Or are you even out of school yet?

By the way, that's spelled "atrocious." Also, you may wish to look up "siege." As the subject line indicates, the poster is not from America. Quite possibly, he is from a country that does not speak English as its first language. What's your excuse? Did Daddy not buy you a good enough education?

I write a novel. It's not a particularly good novel, but I'm proud of it. I have a copyright on the novel which I do not relinquish or alter, and I publish and sell copies of the novel.

A reader somewhere thinks it's the best novel he's ever read, or at least in his top 100. He scans the book to HTML and uploads it to a filesharing network. He has stolen my right to distribute my work on my terms.

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.

My novel is still there, but I have lost something. See also the Merriam-Webster definition, transitive senses 1b-1d.

Please put this argument to rest. It's used as a particularly moronic crutch by some avid P2P fileswappers, and eclipses the better points that could be made (such as that we should reduce the copyright term in order to promote competition and innovation in content).

No clue what you're talking about. M-W is still free. You just have to click on "verb".

There are still people who seriously believe in the Flat Earth theory, so I imagine that Dark Matter and Energy will be around for quite awhile, until the next generation of physicists are born and trained by the current rebels claiming that DM and DE is bunk. Course it would be much faster if a plausible and provable theory existed to replace the current paradigm.

Also, during the Renaissance and the birth of the modern scientific method, (al)chemists believed that flammable objects contained a substance called Phlogiston which could have positive, zero or negative weight. It took several decades after Lavoisier performed his Pelican urn experiment that disproved the existence of Phlogiston before it was taken as gospel.

You can't justify your claim that the "astro" in "astronaut" does NOT come from latin origin.

Lobbyists pay the money. Politicians need the money to buy ads to get elected. The aliterate electorate then votes for these corrupt bozos. So lobbyists do make the decisions.

( aliterate is a word! )

Mathematics ... Universal? Mathematics is a human invention that we humans have used for a blink of time to try to explain "How the Universe works" to ourselves. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem demonstrates that we can't even use mathematics to prove to ourselves that mathematics is consistent!

Why would anyone think that one life form (us) on a small planet, at best a grain of dust in a parking space in a Universal parking lot, has found the ultimate description of the physical Universe in their formal system such that every other intelligent being in the Universe uses it? I dunno, but anthropomorphism comes to mind. Hell, not that long ago we thought we were the center of the universe and the whole thing revolved around us.

What's the old saying ? Oh yes ... "Learn from history, or you are destined to repeat it."

To be a book writer without ever learning how to spell properly is like trying to teach programming by starting with assembly languages.

*sheesh*

car-bu-re-tor

If you're going to stoop so low as to make a SPELLING FLAME, at least make sure you're right before making it.

So where's the misspelling? Or perhaps it is you who needs to learn how to spell?

the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion

Your post has been bugging me two days. I realized why this morning.

You have confused the word "modern" with the idea of the "Modern Age" or "Modern Period." Your error is even exposed in your own use of capitalization.

See Merriam-Webster or Webster's 1913.

This is, of course, assuming you weren't trying to be funny. If that was, in fact, the case . . . try harder.

-Peter

On to business: When I submitted the article, I wanted to use the word, but found (as you did) that it does not appear to be defined anywhere (I was actually trying to check the spelling). In checking around, though, I saw that nevertheless it was being used.

So, like a good little sheep, I caved into peer pressure and used it. No doubt, my English teachers would be ashamed of me ("Hey, all the cool kids are saying 'completist'. You should, too. The first one is free, you know...")

CBS examined the ad, and is suppressing it, because they consider it objectionable. Therefore, they are censoring it. You can argue semantics all you want, but they are refusing to play an ad because of its message, and that's censorship. It's their right, but it's still not what many people hoped they would do.

The article linked misspells "konquering" as "conquering." I find this particularly irritating as this comes from kdenews, whose editors should really know better!

The article linked misspells "konquering" as "conquering." I find this particularly irritating as this comes from kdenews, whose editors should really know better!

Awe is also a verb. Merriam-Webster entry for "awe"