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...microsoft gains suppremissy by using...

It's "supremacy". Dude, you weren't even close.

Here, my treat:
http://www.dictionary.com/
http://www.m-w.com/

Knock yourself out.

• "piracy" [is] an improper usage of an emotionally loaded word

Unfortunately, it's a perfectly proper usage, according to both Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com.

• the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright [Merriam-Webster]
• The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material: software piracy. [Dictionary.com]

No, I don't like it either, and use "sharing" by preference. But the usage has changed right under our noses.

Um, careful calling the kettle black. Both are used, but he used it right. Try Merriam-Webster's dictionary and look up "beck" (related to "beckon") before you lambaste someone for an error. You'll see the phrase "beck and call" under the third definition.

It seems like a mighty small trickle to me.

1. a : to issue or fall in drops b : to flow in a thin gentle stream
2. a : to move or go one by one or little by little b : to dissipate slowly

Yes it's a Mediterranean herb (Mandragora officinarum) of the nightshade family with ovate leaves, yellowish or purple flowers, and a large forked root traditionally credited with human attributes b : the root of a mandrake formerly used especially to promote conception, as a cathartic, or as a narcotic and soporific

Go and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root
Donne

Well all those applications Ive seen being written using asp/ie must be my delustions then. If a OS is the thing to display these things then does it not follow the os should include the things it needs to display them? OS definition

• As for coherent (I believe you mean consistent),...

I meant coherent. Which, in this context is a synonym for consistent.

I don't really understand your points. Are you saying that it would be as stable and consistent (I'll use you're word since you seem so hung up over it) either way?

I'm not sure if it would or not. If the unbundled version is more unstable, it may well be MS's intentional design. Doesn't matter really. The threat that it would be a support problem would scare the OEMs, who have enough headaches in this department.

The abortion right

Uhh, there are at least as many marching against this one. It's interesting that you refer to it as a 'right'. Since when is the freedom to kill your own offspring a 'right'? It may currently legal, but it will never be 'right'.

According to Merriam Webster:
1. Righteous - err, nope it's not righteous.
2. being in accordance with what is just, good, or proper - err, nope it's not that either
4. suitable, appropriate - not either of those
10. acting or judging in accordance with truth or fact - not, not at all
12. most favorable or desired - no, not desired (even by those who want it to be legal)
13. often capitalized : of, adhering to, or constituted by the Right especially in politics - nope, tends to be more 'Left' than 'Right'

Hmm, maybe we'd better try the noun:
1. qualities (as adherence to duty or obedience to lawful authority) that together constitute the ideal of moral propriety or merit moral approval - nope, not this
2. something to which one has a just claim: as a : the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled - is this what you think it is?

Hmm, what's 'justly'?
2(a). acting or being in conformity with what is morally upright or good

Abortion isn't morally upright, or good. What, then, makes you think it is a right? Seems like it is something that is quite wrong, yet has been made legal.

If these multicolored pillows don't convince her, may I suggest a trip to this dictionary, which returns the following:

One entry found for organdy.

Main Entry: organdy
Variant(s): also organdie /'or-g&n-dE/
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -dies
Etymology: French organdi
Date: 1835
: a very fine transparent muslin with a stiff finish

In fact even Emily Dickinson seems to think it's a type of cloth.

I know I can't talk as far as spelling goes, and I know this is way off topic, but PLEASE! Then and than are different words. They do not mean the same thing.

I know I can't talk as far as spelling goes, and I know this is way off topic, but PLEASE! Then and than are different words. They do not mean the same thing.

gravlaks...

I thought pirates got their profits from robbery on the high seas?

Main Entry: piracy
Function: noun
1 : an act of robbery on the high seas; also : an act resembling such robbery
2 : robbery on the high seas
3 : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright

Entry Word: pirate
Function: noun
Text: a robber on the high seas <little boys dreaming of sailing as pirates>
Synonyms buccaneer, corsair, freebooter, picaroon, rover, sea dog, sea robber, sea rover, sea wolf
Related Word viking; privateer; looter, marauder, pillager, plunderer, raider

Entry Word: pirate
Function: noun
Text: a robber on the high seas <little boys dreaming of sailing as pirates>
Synonyms buccaneer, corsair, freebooter, picaroon, rover, sea dog, sea robber, sea rover, sea wolf
Related Word viking; privateer; looter, marauder, pillager, plunderer, raider

maggard wrote:
The "Mictation Flex Rate"? The "Eyebrow Lift/Tongue Roll"?

lowry wrote:
wtf is "Mictation"?

I went to my sister's HS graduation, and the principal gave his speech... he used the word epitome, but pronounced it "epi-tome" instead of "e-pit-o-me". And that's one of those words I consider a classic high-school-english-paper word. Of course, this was about the time Ernest P. Worrell was pronoucing the word that way, and it took me a little bit to figure out that there were two words, but then again I wasn't the principal.

Thanks for the heads up on dachshund -- you just saved me some future embarassement! So far in my life I (luckily) haven't to spell either doxen or pronouce dachshund.

A friend of mine doesn't sound out the words AT ALL when he reads, and homophones cause him big trouble. When something is poorly written and the wrong word is used, he gets completely stumped .. he realizes that the sentence is messed up, but doesn't quite no wear. I read a little differently: when reading non-technical stuff, I usually sound out a lot of things (partially because I have a minor in poetry and love the sound of words). I don't sound out the more technical stuff (especially when it's "words" like SCSI or PCMCIA). Homophones stick out like a sore thumb to me, but they don't hinder my comprehension.

True story. What kind of reader are you? Did you notice the too homophones I used? Ok, there were three.

Come on Aaaaaron (in your average dictionary proper names are not to be found)

I don't know who you're refering to, but my name (Aaron) appears in most dictionaries. It's a biblical name (that my mother chose for secular reasons, not that it matters), so the reference is almost always listed. Aaron was the grandfather of Eli, and the brother of Moses and the first high-priest of the Hebrew nation.

you will find several references to it in on-line dictionaries as well....

If you can't be bothered to check even a fact that exists at the very beginning of your dictionary, this conversation is really not worth having.

It depends on how one means it.

For now, though, this helfpul tip from Merriam-Webster is pretty informative (and interesting):

"The confusion of the verbs affect and effect is not only quite common but has a long history. Effect was used in place of 3affect as early as 1494 and in place of 2affect as early as 1652. If you think you want to use the verb effect but are not certain, check the definitions in this dictionary. The noun affect is sometimes mistakenly used for effect. Except when your topic is psychology, you will seldom need the noun affect." -- From the "effect" entry in Merriam-Webster's online Collegiate Dictionary.

That comment was sarcasm

And here I was thinking they named it the narcotic. :

Merriam-Webster:"the root of a mandrake formerly used especially to promote conception, as a cathartic, or as a narcotic and soporific"

I thought that one could not own the rights to something that is an actual word, other than as they have trademarked it within their industry?

But then again, I never did spend much time studying legalese beyond understanding that in the courts being "right" often does not matter.

-S

Actually, evolution, in its most general sense, is simply change in a certain direction. This comes up often when I am unfortunate enough to discuss evolution with a creationist. They are rarely well-informed enough to understand that what they disagree with is biological macroevolution and end up trying to debate whether things change at all, in order not to appear to be giving ground. *sigh*.

If not, why does it need an itinerary?

This is what they want us to pay for.

-Peter

We have one: doublespeak

I think you meant perhaps "panacea"?

Definitions:
placebo
panacea

-josh

I think you meant perhaps "panacea"?

Definitions:
placebo
panacea

-josh

From m-w.com:

Main Entry: [2] ape
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): aped; aping
Date: 1632
: to copy closely but often clumsily and ineptly
synonym see COPY

Plus, language is relatively simple and has quite a patterns compared to an encrypted stream that runs through many different circuits before popping out the other end.

I'd have to disagree with you there. An encryption algorithm can be described in a page of text or two lines of perl code; a language can be described approximately by a fat book. An encryption algorithm can be broken by a high school student, languages require large teams to understand.

*sigh* saying M-x ispell-buffer is like saying M-x shell, then ispell filename. It's not an intrinsic, built-in function, in the same way that, say, echo is a built-in part of tcsh. tcsh can do echo "in its head," so echo is built-in. tcsh needs a fork(); exec() to run ispell, so ispell is not built into tcsh. I don't think Word requires a fork(); exec() to get to the spellcheck mode, so it seems safe to say that spell check is "built-in" to Word.

And for those of you who think that elisp == spell checker, I'll argue then that your CPU has a spell-checker, Postscript has a spell-checker, and the steam-powered Turing machine has a spell-checker...

Why don't you go recompile your kernal and leave us in pease!

Why don't you go recompile your kernal and leave us in pease!

Why don't you go recompile your kernal and leave us in pease!

and a song for everyone too!

It would be nice if Slashdot had an integrated spelling and grammar checker. Maybe that's a feature people would find worth paying a subscription for? Especially if editors were forced to use it :)

It would be nice if Slashdot had an integrated spelling and grammar checker. Maybe that's a feature people would find worth paying a subscription for? Especially if editors were forced to use it :)

chipset will loose

chipset will loose

Unsure whether the kid was a thief or an out-of-uniform employee, Webb watched as he left the store. "I thought there's no point in getting any more involved in this imbroglio," Webb said. "Besides, this is Texas. You never know what he might have been carrying."
One entry found for imbroglio.
Main Entry: imbroglio Pronunciation: im-'brOl-(")yO Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural -glios Etymology: Italian, from imbrogliare to entangle, from Middle French embrouiller -- more at EMBROIL Date: 1750 1 : a confused mass 2 a : an intricate or complicated situation (as in a drama or novel) b : an acutely painful or embarrassing misunderstanding c : a violently confused or bitterly complicated altercation : EMBROILMEN
Found it here.

"As for the third charge -- that copyrighted movies are destroying digital innovation -- what the critics mean by "innovation" is legalizing the breaking of protection codes, without which there is no protection.

Really? And here I thought innovation meant creation of something new or 'innovative'. Apparently I was wrong. Never one to leave such a thing alone though I checked Webster's Online Dictionary. Imagine my further supprise when I found this:

One entry found for innovation. innovation Pronunciation: "i-n&-'vA-sh&n Function: noun Date: 15th century 1 : the introduction of something new 2 : a new idea, method, or device : NOVELTY - innovational /-shn&l, -sh&-n&l/ adjective

Never one to give up on a trusted source so lightly I returned now to (drum roll) the Thesaurus! again however I come up dry getting only:

innovation Function: noun Text: Synonyms CHANGE 2, mutation, novelty, permutation, sport, vicissitude Related Word deviation, introduction, wrinkle

But then I noticed something. I noticed vicissitude. Webster's defines this as:

vicissitude Pronunciation: v&-'si-s&-"tüd, vI-, -"tyüd Function: noun Etymology: Middle French, from Latin vicissitudo, from vicissim in turn, from vicis change, alternation -- more at WEEK Date: circa 1576 1 a : the quality or state of being changeable : MUTABILITY b : natural change or mutation visible in nature or in human affairs 2 a : a favorable or unfavorable event or situation that occurs by chance : a fluctuation of state or condition b : a difficulty or hardship attendant on a way of life, a career, or a course of action and usually beyond one's control c : alternating change : SUCCESSION

Note the term Unfavorable Change. At last the mystery was solved. Jack Valenti was not (to my everlasting dsmay) wholly misdirected. Neither was my trusted Dictionary/Thesaurus wrong. Obviously Jack was just employing a nontypical pair of synonyms in an effort to drag the complex language of "unfavorable events", "difficulty or hardship attendant on a way og life, a career, or a course of action and usually beyond one's control" into the language of everyday life. Because, as he points out elsewhere in his letter: "Other ingredients are necessary to protect digital content, but it gets too complex to explain in a few sentences." Jack is just tying to save space.

Well my friends all that I can say is: Up with VICISSITUDE!

even the friendliest distros still have a point the user will reach, within a few weeks (or even days) of installing it, where they will need to perform some task made painfully easy by any other modern operating system, but beyond the grasp of 90% of the computer-using population.

i have to admit, even with an abundance of experience on *nix platforms, i've had to refer to howto's more than once since i started using redhat - that is, to get this OS as functional as a mac or a windows environment is for me out-of-the-box. my latest build for my primary development machine is redhat 7.2, kde 2.2.2.

i don't think the average person will have the chutzpah to take on a task that would require them to edit a .conf file, track down & install dependencies for RPMs, or troubleshoot why their soundcard doesn't work.

i think where most of the problems occur are:

1. when having to upgrade programs / system
2. when trying to connect to remote devices
3. when attempting to use peripherals that haven't been around for years and years

these are where i've seen the most difficult challenges - mounting the SMB shares i need to work off of, being able to print to non-lpd network printers (still working on that one) and syncing my palmpilot to any remotely useful calendar (altho i don't think i'll ever get to sync it with my company's shared netscape calendar without a whole lotta patience & twiddling).

this leaves me with times when even i have to reboot into windows - it's just a fact of life. luckily, my time spent in windows is relegated to less than 10% of my day anymore. but linux won't be pervasive as a mainstream desktop operating system until it gets that last 10%, and gets it without having to ever see a command-line.

I electrocuted myself with it a week after it was recalled.

Really? I am so glad you believe in the Constitution, and have library skills. Here is some food for thought from that Constitution:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably
to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

And from the dictionary:

Main Entry: abridge
1 a archaic : DEPRIVE b : to reduce in scope : DIMINISH [attempts to abridge the right of free speech]

(definition ironically abridged in order to satisfy slashdot's troll filters...) :(

Just because our illustrious government has been ignoring the constitution for the past century and you seem to think that the right to peaceably assemble and speak your mind are too radical to stomach does not make it so.

As for your reference to the "20th terrorist" I would be concerned too if I was a lawyer whose client was being charged with crimes which occurred while he was in jail.

As for your claim this guy is a "skinhead." Well, that is just unjustified, as he clearly is not. IN fact our government routinely protects skinheads and the Klan when they protest, even when they are in town to gloat over their recent killing of a black man by being dragged to death by a pickup truck. Protestors of logging, war, US-sponsored terrorism, racist trade agreements, and pollution, well, they are clearly dangerous and must be immediately gassed and attacked.

Main Entry: inherent
Function: adjective
: involved in the constitution or essential character of something : belonging by nature or habit : INTRINSIC

Makes sense to me.

Not according to Mirriam-Webster. Research is a "careful or diligent search," "studious inquiry or examination," or "the collecting of information about a particular subject."

I see what you are getting at, though. While scientific research is involved with pushing the boundaries of human knowledge outward, research at this (K-12) level involves students learning how to find information. Using computers and the Internet can be beneficial to learning, used in moderation.

One huge problem I see with computers/Net is sloppy scholarship. Facts asserted without sources and taking someone else's thoughts as if they were yours is easier than ever with copy-and-paste. I see it too frequently, and I am in graduate school.

Psychotic restriction of freedom is not a liberal or conservative tenant. It is a tenant of power.

What does it matter where he lives?

(I think you mean "tenet", although I don't understand how a fundamental mental derangement could be a "tenet" of power, either.)

Psychotic restriction of freedom is not a liberal or conservative tenant. It is a tenant of power.

What does it matter where he lives?

(I think you mean "tenet", although I don't understand how a fundamental mental derangement could be a "tenet" of power, either.)

Psychotic restriction of freedom is not a liberal or conservative tenant. It is a tenant of power.

What does it matter where he lives?

(I think you mean "tenet", although I don't understand how a fundamental mental derangement could be a "tenet" of power, either.)