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Yes, apparently even you. I was under the impression that censoring simply meant to screen and edit out any material found to be objectionable.

This ad, was, apparently, objectionable as far as CBS was concerned in terms of their goals: To keep and maintain as many viewers as possible to maximise their advertising revenue.

A book publisher not publishing a book that he finds objectionable is censorship too.

Of course, most people these days presume that censorship is only evil government dictates, but that is not at all true. If a parent decides they don't want their child to watch a TV program, they are censoring the child's TV watching habits. For some reason people seem to think censorship==evil, which is just not true (certainly not by the definition of the word). By all means, be wary of state mandated censorship, but don't go misusing a perfectly good word.

Jedidiah

I think you meant capitulate

If you're going to be a pedantic asshole, at least use proper spelling.

Saboteur comes from the french, not the dutch.

HA HA HA HA HA!

First of all, the word 'ascus' has greek etymology, not latin. And it doesn't mean "character" either. And it's plural is 'asci', not ascii. And the computer term ASCII is not a greek or latin word, it is an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. And the plural of 'virus' is indeed viruses.

So basically, every single thing that you said was wrong, yet you accuse others of not "knowing" latin.

HA HA HA HA!

HA HA HA HA HA!

First of all, the word 'ascus' has greek etymology, not latin. And it doesn't mean "character" either. And it's plural is 'asci', not ascii. And the computer term ASCII is not a greek or latin word, it is an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. And the plural of 'virus' is indeed viruses.

So basically, every single thing that you said was wrong, yet you accuse others of not "knowing" latin.

HA HA HA HA!

While this may be a worthy point, you may want to check a dictionary.

just brainless male bushido

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

Perhaps, you meant machismo instead of bushido?

just brainless male bushido

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

Perhaps, you meant machismo instead of bushido?

Yo, dumbass. The plural of potato IS potatoes. Quayle's mistake was spelling the singular form "potatoe." Learn English.

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Diction ary&va=free+trade

what exactly is your definition of free trade, and how can you reconcile it with what the rest of the world defines it as?

Just to be pedantic, the correct word would be "bracer". A gauntlet is a glove; a bracer is worn on the wrist or forearm.

gauntlet
bracer

Doug

Just to be pedantic, the correct word would be "bracer". A gauntlet is a glove; a bracer is worn on the wrist or forearm.

gauntlet
bracer

Doug

I'm not a great fan of Media Player, though it does it's job pretty well,

Whether or not it does is of absolutely no consequence to the matter at hand.

but doesn't the modern definition of a desktop OS contain a media player?

No, it doesn't. Please do remove your head from Mr. Gates ass, it's getting crowded in there.

Thus endeth the grammar lesson for the day.

Not really. From Merriam-Webster:

1 : proceeding from the will or from one's own choice or consent
2 : unconstrained by interference : SELF-DETERMINING
3 : done by design or intention : INTENTIONAL
4 : of, relating to, subject to, or regulated by the will
5 : having power of free choice
6 : provided or supported by voluntary action
7 : acting or done of one's own free will without valuable consideration or legal obligation

Only the final definition requires that no monetary payment is involved. They're volunteers as opposed to being contractually obligated to produce. And they're not guaranteed to be paid, even if they do produce.

In addition to being FOUND GUILTY of using its monopoly to crush Netscape (the PUNISHMENT has been a matter of dispute, not the VERDICT), Microsoft was also FOUND GUILTY of stealing compression technology from Stac Electronics.

Bill Gates is the same quality of man as the railroad and oil barons of the early 20th century who made their money by breaking the law and (for the most part) getting away with it.

I had thought the standards of Knighthood did not include "deceitful cunning" (the definition of guile), but obviously I was wrong. I still dispute it being a quality worthy of admiration or commendation.

Fate gave Mr. Gates the advantages of being the son of a rich lawyer, and he obtained the rest by lying and stealing. He certainly did not earn it by merit and the granting of Knighthood based on such success is a disgrace and dishonors those truely worthy of it.

I will no choice but to accept the corrupt reality of his Knighthood, but I will never regard it as justified.

<sotto-voice>I think you meant seque </sotto-voice>

Some things are just not worth knowing.

You see all of these other examples work becouse the shipping costs out way any possible advantage of pricing.

The word you're looking for is outweigh: to exceed in weight, value, or importance.

No, it can mean the "group who has the most power". It doesn't necessarily mean greater then 50%:

4 : the group or political party whose votes preponderate.

The political party, group, or faction having the most power by virtue of its larger representation or electoral strength.

Purely symantics. The way I see it writing(even on slashdot) benefits from having 30 seconds of proofing applied before submission.

Is this a private grammar war, or can anybody join in?

Anyway, perhaps you meant semantics ?

Peace in our time.

"I don't think it's being disingenuous," he said. "I'm not lying to anybody."

The definition of a lie . Merriam-Webster has a more detailed definition, but no direct links.

So yes, jackass, you are lying to your listeners. That's all it boils down to.

Of course, some people ( of which I am one ) would argue that almost all media has been lying to us for quite some time.

Tell that to Ford - a motor company that's named after a shallow river crossing.

I would speculate that 'window' is a much more common term in our parlance than 'ford'. There's also a strong bias in your favor when you're naming something after yourself, whatever your name is, than when you're using a generic term which is purely descriptive of a part of your product.

Well, dictionary.com says it's a man devoted to the pursuoit of pleasure.

Ain't didn't make it into the dictionary for a long time after it was in common usage. 'Swell' was listed in the dictionary only as a surge or increase for quite a time before its adopted vernacular meaning made it into the dictionary. You can't always use the dictionary as a guide.

A man was often referred to as a 'playboy' when it was well-known that he was often after women for sex. Errol Flynn and Duke Ellington are good examples of this - famous lovers who were unable or unwilling to settle down and be mated for life to one woman. The term was in use for them long before "Playboy" first hit the newsstands in 1953. Be careful not to confure 'definition' with 'connotation'.

Why can't they produce the same level of brand awareness?
Let's face it, most companies aren't that smart. Besides, how many ads do you see on a daily basis which allude to (or compare outright) their own product favorably against a well-known brand? Would you have a problem if this lawsuit was because another company had said in their ad copy: "Like Playboy? You'll love our product!" What's stopping this judge from outlawing that sort of promotion? We're getting dangerously close to giving companies absolute control over their trademark, even when it is identical to a common English word. That's a scary thing to me.

And when did "leverage" become a verb?

1937.

From Merriam Webster:

Main Entry: [2]leverage
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -aged; -aging
Date: 1937
: to provide (as a corporation) or supplement (as money) with leverage; also : to enhance as if by supplying with financial leverage

You're off your rocker son :) Someone searching for playboy is obviously interested in NAKED WOMEN. Presenting competing products is HOW ADVERTISING WORKS.

That's not how advertising works.. that's how trademark infringement works.

This would be like me constructing a building that looks like a Burger King, putting the Burger King logo on the front, but when customers come in the door, informing them that it's actually a McDonalds..

"Burger" & "King" are certainly English words.. but you are using their popularity which was gained from someone elses hard work to profit from it. That's obviously unfair, and exactly why trademarks exist.

You're off your rocker son :) Someone searching for playboy is obviously interested in NAKED WOMEN. Presenting competing products is HOW ADVERTISING WORKS.

That's not how advertising works.. that's how trademark infringement works.

This would be like me constructing a building that looks like a Burger King, putting the Burger King logo on the front, but when customers come in the door, informing them that it's actually a McDonalds..

"Burger" & "King" are certainly English words.. but you are using their popularity which was gained from someone elses hard work to profit from it. That's obviously unfair, and exactly why trademarks exist.

I don't disagree with you but I don't think "Linux" is a good example. "Linux" is trademarked and only used when referring to the Linux Kernel/Operating System (ok, there is some confusion here as well...) - hence it is not a word that is part of the English language. "Playboy", however, also has other meanings besides the trademarked one: "A man who lives a life devoted chiefly to the pursuit of pleasure."

Also, since it is inflammable

I think you mean nonflammable. Inflammable is the same as flammable.

Funny comment, but FYI it's "hors d'oeuvres". It's a french phrase for appetizers that literally means "outside of work".
see here.

Not as long as the majority of music downloaders use p2p primarily to search for new music and purchase the stuff they like.

Now, I'm not necessarily doubting the veracity of your claim, but I see that brought up here everytime there's a RIAA vs. World story, and I don't remember ever having seen any hard evidence to back it up.

Sure, I've seen lots of anecdotal evidence, from people here saying that that's what they do, but that doesn't actually prove anything. They could be telling the truth, they could be lying; either way, they may well not be representative of P2P users in general.

Do you (or anyone else reading this) actually have any hard data to support this sort of claim? If nothing else, it would be useful ammunition.

Not that it really matters either way to me, I guess - here in the UK, beneficial or not, copyright law (as I understand it - IANAL, etc) forbids unauthorised copying full stop. That includes ripping CDs I've bought to mp3, or taping them to play in a car cassette player, etc. Ain't the lack of a fair use clause grand?

Oh, and for what it's worth, the whole "piracy vs copyright infringement" argument is pretty much a lost cause unfortunately, just like "hacker vs cracker", especially as it's now in the dictionary. I personally wouldn't waste too much time or effort pursuing it; you're not going to convince people to change now. At worst, you'll just end up confusing the issue, and detracting from your main points.

Recently, a conversation was overheard in the slashdot lounge...

AC: Zaphod Beebelbrox, meet Irony. He is a literary style.

AC: Irony, meet Zaphod Beeblebrox. He is a none too bright slashdot reader who runs his fingers faster than his brain.

AC: Thank you, thank you, I will be performing across the street at the kuro5hin lounge all this week, come on out and see my act!

Your point? Art, insofar as it can be defined, is "the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects". While it's certainly subjective, I don't consider a urinal, a soup can, or a page of blinking gibberish to be aesthetic, and therefore, they are not art.

You might not have heard of metonymy but even the dumbest person understands it. Clearly you don't.

I was going to mod this up, but instead I'll reply for all those interested; as I was.

Metonymy is defined by Merriam-Webster to be "a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (as "crown" in "lands belonging to the crown")".

(Now, what I don't understand, is the parent's name. exp(pi*sqrt(163)) = ~ 2.62*10^17. Can anyone explain this?)

Heritrix (sometimes spelled heretrix , or misspelled or missaid as heratrix / heritix / heretix / heratix) is an archaic word for inheritess.

I know some grammar nazi is going to see this, so I might as well get it first. What about heretic: one who dissents from an accepted belief or doctrine.

Luckily, for the posters here, these posts will be ignored by the writers of any history of software.
Richard Stallman operates according to principles.

There is more wisdom in Richard Stallman's nail clippings than the majority of posters here possess.

Main Entry: geek
Pronunciation: 'gEk
Function: noun
Etymology: probably from English dialect geek, geck fool, from Low German geck, from Middle Low German
Date: 1914
1 : a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake
...

Cheers to Merriam-Webster.

I would prefer to be a nerd--at least they make better eating.

Now I would like to hear more about how you have come to the conclusion that God's incredible gift of sacrificing his son's life so that the human race could rejoice in the heavens instead of being cast to the fiery depths of hell equates to "intolerance, oppression and torture"?

By helping to establish recognized boundries and promoting that absolute separation (Labels like Haitains instead of just American or HUMAN) you are in fact promoting bigotry and maybe even racism. But this is not about our ignorance as a species, but rather a small group of crybabies who cannot recognize this is a fucking game. Sure, for the most part parents these days are not parents, failed parents, but more accurately they are genetic donors providing very minor supervision to maybe just barely help kids avoid major accidents. Because most people have decided that schools, society, TV, movies, games, and cartoons should instill moral values and lifetime behavioral habits in their children does not mean everybody should suffer. If you are offended by the game for whatever reason, sell the game or don't buy it.

If you think this will "force" or "influcene" kids and/or people to act upon a giant wad of binary to make it a reality then maybe you should try addressing the real problem. Don't try to make the game disappear..it won't stupid, it's been released and copies will be traded, sold, and burned. How much more could be accomplished with a crusade to make parents parent again? How much could be accomplished by removing labels that force distinctions and differences? How about getting somebody mostly honest into a political office that comes from the working class that knows what reality is like living like %98 of how most Americans do? Best yet work on finding a way to help better things so both parents do not have to work to afford to survive in their hovel and just barely make it.

This suit is a waste of time and resources that should be used to put vermin where they belong, not cater to a cadre of narrow sighted whiners. Don't make the game go away, make the problem go away.

By helping to establish recognized boundries and promoting that absolute separation (Labels like Haitains instead of just American or HUMAN) you are in fact promoting bigotry and maybe even racism. But this is not about our ignorance as a species, but rather a small group of crybabies who cannot recognize this is a fucking game. Sure, for the most part parents these days are not parents, failed parents, but more accurately they are genetic donors providing very minor supervision to maybe just barely help kids avoid major accidents. Because most people have decided that schools, society, TV, movies, games, and cartoons should instill moral values and lifetime behavioral habits in their children does not mean everybody should suffer. If you are offended by the game for whatever reason, sell the game or don't buy it.

If you think this will "force" or "influcene" kids and/or people to act upon a giant wad of binary to make it a reality then maybe you should try addressing the real problem. Don't try to make the game disappear..it won't stupid, it's been released and copies will be traded, sold, and burned. How much more could be accomplished with a crusade to make parents parent again? How much could be accomplished by removing labels that force distinctions and differences? How about getting somebody mostly honest into a political office that comes from the working class that knows what reality is like living like %98 of how most Americans do? Best yet work on finding a way to help better things so both parents do not have to work to afford to survive in their hovel and just barely make it.

This suit is a waste of time and resources that should be used to put vermin where they belong, not cater to a cadre of narrow sighted whiners. Don't make the game go away, make the problem go away.

Your concept of "regulation" is unAmerican. People will always lie and cheat. Free people make laws to punish liars and cheats. Liers and cheats make regulations that screw everyone else. Thomas Jefferson contrasted the condition of Native Americans, who he thought had too few laws, with the condition of French nationals, who he though had too many laws and decided that the Indians were better off.

Anne Rynd did a nice job of Americanizing the concept of "capitalism", a British term from 1877. Her greatest fear was "altruism" defined as you and me helping ourselves to someone else's wealth on behalf of ourselves, others, or some larger social good. "Regulations" frequently have this goal.

In any case, there's nothing wrong with either your or the previous poster's aversion to fraud. You suggesting that fraud is compatible with freedom, however, is misguided. When you feel like bowing to someone else, ask yourself who's gaurding the gaurds.

It's both dumbass

You cave troll. I'll be nice and feed you some.

Well, I for one have never heard the word collective used in connection with Communism, and there's no mention of a connection at m-w.com.

Besides which, not everyone considers a link with Communismn to automatically be a bad thing; some of the basic ideas are fine, it's just that every implementation so far has failed badly.

Might want to invest in a more worldly dictionary there. American spelling is not the ultimate authority.
Merriam-Webster

s/peaked/piqued/

Look here: piqued/

Moron.

According to Merriam-Webster:

Highway:
a public way; especially : a main direct road

Freeway:

1. an expressway with fully controlled access
2. a toll-free highway

Expressway:
a high-speed divided highway for through traffic with access partially or fully controlled

Interstate Highway:
any of a system of expressways connecting most major U.S. cities

Ummm...it's a highway. Bikes and pedestrians have no business on the highway.

In California, bikes and pedestrians are welcome anywhere except freeways. In Oregon, AFAIK, they are even allowed on freeways.

Well, m-w.com lists 'actual' as an antonym of virtual, so that would mean that a virtually indestructible keyboard is the opposite of an actually indestructible keyboard .

Umm.... not quite.

According to Merriam Webster it means "light-bearing". Seems like an important distinction to me. Though the meanings overlap, it's the difference between allowing for one to be the "universal light originator", and for one to be "carrying, bearing" or "giving off" light.

Lux (light) + -ferous (bearing).

[...]ENSURE, INSURE, and ASSURE are interchangeable in many contexts[...]

For the record, it's not censorship for a retailer to choose what they're willing to sell...A Government saying that no retailer can sell the unedited version, that'd be censorship.

That is often claimed, but Webster says otherwise: censor
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): censored; censoring /'sen(t)-s&-ri[ng], 'sen(t)s-ri[ng]/
Date: 1882
: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable

Censorship doesn't imply action by the state.