Slashdot Mirror

Why does it rile you up? Why is the usage in context to Mechanical/Electrical more correct than to Systems? according to dictionary.com and m-w.com (Merriam-Webster), the term's etymology comes from the Latin word for "skilled", and the accepted definition on dictionary.com and Wikipedia is "one who applies scientific and technical knowledge to solve human problems". None of those seem more suited to an EE than to a Systems Engineer, or really even a Sanitational Engineer.

If it's the dissolution of the prestige associated with the title, well... it's unfortunate, but perhaps you should find a more specific word or phrase to accomodate that. Oh wait, there are already such phrases.

Interestingly, Google's search toolbar will be available only when Shockwave is downloaded for use with Internet Explorer on Windows.

You, like many who don't understand science, throw the word "prove" around like it's some minimum threshold for accepting a statement as factual or useful.

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
prove
2 entries found for prove.
To select an entry, click on it.
    proveprove out

Main Entry: prove
Pronunciation: 'prüv
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): proved; proved or proven /'prü-v&n, British also 'prO-/; proving /'prü-vi[ng]/
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French prover, from Latin probare to test, approve, prove, from probus good, honest, from pro- for, in favor + -bus (akin to Old English bEon to be) -- more at PRO-, BE
transitive senses

2 a : to test the truth, validity, or genuineness of b : to test the worth or quality of; specifically : to compare against a standard -- sometimes used with up or out c : to check the correctness of (as an arithmetic result)

Wow. You're like, really, really, REALLY wrong. And I have proof.

Matasano??? I would not let them treat me (matasanos = quack [4, noun] in Spanish)

I think we agree that "expect" is a stronger form of "hope", just that we might not agree precisely on the strength. ;)

The phrase I latched onto specifically was "expected of you", rather than just "expected", which (IMHO) has a subtle but very different meaning. The relevant entry in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary is here. Specifically:

    to consider bound in duty or obligated

which gives meaning to the original phrase something as: "If a 19 year old takes you to dinner and a movie and you agree to go back to his place certain (sexual) things are expected of you (you are bound in duty to deliver these sexual things or obligated to deliver these sexual things)". Obviously there is big problem with this, hence why I hope the GP really didn't mean it like that.

Of course, if the GP really meant that, I wouldn't be the only one ripping them a new one, they'd be modded to oblivion, so forth. I don't think the GP has bad intent. I just think the choice of words is... unfortunate.

I think you have the definition of morality mixed up. moral[ity] refers to "principles of right and wrong in behavior." Morality is based on values - social and personal. Legislating morality is certainly none of government's business; it cannot dictate people what to value. So, in saying that "Enforcing morality is the government's ONLY job" you are contradicting yourself.

I do agree that protecting liberty and security are two of the most important functions of a government. This includes protection of citizens against aggression, fraud, theft, etc. This does not include dictating right from wrong, especially when it comes to things like entertainment. Defining and promoting moral behavior is the job of individuals and parents.

Hobbiest is not a word.

Google isn't a word either according to Merriam-Webster.
It does appear here and is obviously a branding reference.

Anchor tags don't seem to work today. References:
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/google
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=google

First, in scientific circles, "massive" means "has mass". A hydrogen atom is "massive". Look at defintion 3 in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.

Second, where is your source that Jupiter generates more radiant energy than it reflects?

not to be pedantic or anything, but you didn't say what you thought you did:
gambit
gamut

not to be pedantic or anything, but you didn't say what you thought you did:
gambit
gamut

WTF focii? This has to end. The word is focuses.

High (adj) 8: of greater degree, amount, cost, value, or content than average, usual, or expected

Definition (noun) 4b (2): clarity especially of musical sound in reproduction

Radio (noun) 1a : the wireless transmission and reception of electric impulses or signals by means of electromagnetic waves

According to my (admittedly limited) understanding of "Standard" English, this would seem to describe some sort of means to transmitting signals over electromagnetic waves that reproduce sound with a level of clarity that is of a greater degree than expected.

High (adj) 8: of greater degree, amount, cost, value, or content than average, usual, or expected

Definition (noun) 4b (2): clarity especially of musical sound in reproduction

Radio (noun) 1a : the wireless transmission and reception of electric impulses or signals by means of electromagnetic waves

According to my (admittedly limited) understanding of "Standard" English, this would seem to describe some sort of means to transmitting signals over electromagnetic waves that reproduce sound with a level of clarity that is of a greater degree than expected.

High (adj) 8: of greater degree, amount, cost, value, or content than average, usual, or expected

Definition (noun) 4b (2): clarity especially of musical sound in reproduction

Radio (noun) 1a : the wireless transmission and reception of electric impulses or signals by means of electromagnetic waves

According to my (admittedly limited) understanding of "Standard" English, this would seem to describe some sort of means to transmitting signals over electromagnetic waves that reproduce sound with a level of clarity that is of a greater degree than expected.

Bah, that's like saying Bill Gates doesn't have any friends. Then who i ask you are all those people grovelling at his feet jumping whenever he makes some asinine statement regarding the future of computing?

Those are called "groupies".

Clicky.

From Merriam-Webster:
Piracy: 3 : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright.

Stealing: 1 : to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as an habitual or regular practice.
1 a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully
b : to take away by force or unjust means
c : to take surreptitiously or without permission
(© 2005-2006 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated)

Those words sure describe "copy right infringement." But I expect you will have to reply to this comment in order to justify your immoral actions and help you remove any guilty feelings....

From Merriam-Webster:
Piracy: 3 : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright.

Stealing: 1 : to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as an habitual or regular practice.
1 a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully
b : to take away by force or unjust means
c : to take surreptitiously or without permission
(© 2005-2006 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated)

Those words sure describe "copy right infringement." But I expect you will have to reply to this comment in order to justify your immoral actions and help you remove any guilty feelings....

From Merriam-Webster:
Piracy: 3 : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright.

Stealing: 1 : to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as an habitual or regular practice.
1 a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully
b : to take away by force or unjust means
c : to take surreptitiously or without permission
(© 2005-2006 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated)

Those words sure describe "copy right infringement." But I expect you will have to reply to this comment in order to justify your immoral actions and help you remove any guilty feelings....

There are three parts of censorship. Part one is having an agenda of some sort. Part two is becoming empowered by the state to carry out that agenda through censorship. Part three is to find items and have them removed from circulation on the grounds that they violate that agenda.

Rubbish. Despite the desire of some Slashdotters to redefine censorship as necessarily involving government action, that is not true.

AskOxford - censor, verb: suppress or remove unacceptable parts of (a book, film, etc.).

Merriam-Webster Online - censor, transitive verb : to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable

Where did you get your definition from?

i have yet to see a use for "affect" as a noun.

Irregardless is not a word. Regardless is a word, and probably means what you are trying to say.

Didja bother looking it up?

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/relatedly
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/relatedly

It's interesting that a television episode (which was hilarious, by the way) started using a different word, clearly to make it quirky and funny, and now everyone has adopted this new definition. Ok, maybe not surprising, but interesting nonetheless.

You are making the same mistake the teacher did - only looking at one aspect of privacy (secrecy). It is also an invasion of privacy to interfere with others without having any particular information about them. Even Webster's shallow and incomplete definition encompasses this (see 1(b), and to some extent 1(a)). You seem to be limiting your concept of privacy to the paragraph 3 of the definition, so placed because it is not the most important part of the term.

If you spend any time seriously studying privacy this is all second nature. The great writers on the subject would never consider the issue of privacy as being so narrowly constrained, and would regard themselves as not having dealt with the issue at all if they only looked at secrecy - see, for example, the writings of Brandeis, Warren, and Douglas. It is only common ignorance that allows people to get away with thinking of only "secrecy" when they hear (and use) the term "privacy".

Most people may have an excuse, but educators should know better. It is their ignorance that leads to mass ignorance, and while others can be excused for not knowing these things, an educator is rightly called a moron for propagating such stupidity.

I'm sure I'm not the only Windows Vista tester, that could say the core is improoving- ALOT!

1.) http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/improoving
2.) misplaced and unneeded comma
3.) misuse of dash character
4.) http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/alot

Regular users find Vista to be excellent, indeed. And I didn't even get past the first paragraph.

~Will

I'm sure I'm not the only Windows Vista tester, that could say the core is improoving- ALOT!

1.) http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/improoving
2.) misplaced and unneeded comma
3.) misuse of dash character
4.) http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/alot

Regular users find Vista to be excellent, indeed. And I didn't even get past the first paragraph.

~Will

Analogy: resemblance in some particulars between things otherwise unlike : SIMILARITY b : comparison based on such resemblance.

And may I introduce you to Merriam Webster which apparently provides more nuance than Answers.com. Note that the primary definition of literate is "can read and write". The secondary definition refers to writing of exceptional quality. Intersting for this topic however, the 3rd example under the secondary definition is "computer literate".

From MW:
Treason
1 : the betrayal of a trust : TREACHERY

Sounds like AT&T and the Bush Administration are guilty of treason.

42 entries found for open. The first 10 are listed below.

1 : having no enclosing or confining barrier : accessible on all or nearly all sides
2 a (1) : being in a position or adjustment to permit passage : not shut or locked (2) : having a barrier (as a door) so adjusted as to allow passage b : having the lips parted c : not buttoned or zipped
3 a : completely free from concealment : exposed to general view or knowledge b : exposed or vulnerable to attack or question : SUBJECT
[and so on - read all definitions before you respond to the ones I've quoted.]

OK, I did, and here's what it says...

The Cambridge Dictionary

Mirriam-Webster Dictionary

So, it's not just "[My] definition of pagiarism only" - it appears that is the common dictionary definition of the word. There is a difference between plagiarize, and infringe copyright, and while they are both illegal, they aren't synonyms.

As for bloggers, it's a given that probably 90% of bloggers aren't very good, and aren't worth paying much attention to. If a blogger has to just copy other people's material in order to have content, I'm sure not gonna pay any attention to them - I'll go read the people they are copying *from*, instead. And if someone else think's that a particular blogger is violating their copyright, well, we already have laws about that, and they can try to enforce their copyright. Whether a blogger can get away with copying 'too much' material has nothing to do with "people like [me]", or what definition we use - that's between the person they infringed, the blogger, their lawyers, and the judge.

Erm, why didn't you link to an actual definition?

Oh, 'cause there they don't have one

Got any more 'credible' sources for us?

From http://m-w.com/dictionary/enhertiently

The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search box to the right.

Suggestions for enhertiently:

          1. interdentally
          2. intermittently
          3. interdental
          4. intolerantly
          5. inheritances
          6. intertidally
          7. antirealist
          8. antihunter
          9. antinarrative
        10. antirealists

Huh? At first I thought it was a real word because I couldn't think of a word that made sense in that position.

Main Entry: whistle-blower

Pronunciation: -"blO(-&)r

Function: noun

: one who reveals something covert or who informs against another

whistle-blower noun informal: a person who informs on someone engaged in an illicit activity.

Sounds like he's a whistle-blower to me!

No, there *was* debris outside but it's hard to see what you want to ignore in order to further an agenda.

1- Of course there's debris, there was an explosion: That scaters debris. There was, however, no PLANE debris to account for an entire airliner.
You can find many pictures of the same lonely piece, but no engines, no luggage...

2- What is my supposed agenda?

...it doesn't seem to discriminate from virile files and good files...

Bloody radical feminists these days... *grumblegrumble*

For anyone that still doesn't get it.

Here are a few of mine:
http://images.google.com/images?q=%25s
http://www.imdb.com/find?q=%25s
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=%25s
http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=%25s&section=projec ts
http://search.cpan.org/search?mode=all&query=%25s
http://dir.gmane.org/search.php?match=%25s
http://search.gmane.org/search.php?query=%25s&sort =date

3 a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruity

I don't mean to troll, but I find zero appeal in the show. It falls in the category I call "psuedo-literature,"

1- You are trolling: Going in a thread about a show and saying "this show sucks and people who like it are dumb", even if obfuscated in a lot of big words, is trolling.
2- Literature is for books. This is a television show. You just wrote 4 paragraphs about how you don't think a televesion show is litterature. Four paragraphs based on an obvious fallacy!

The complexity is internalized in the characters; the plot itself is simple.

That statement applies perfectly to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
The plot itself is simple: Giant monsters attack, people fight back with giant robots.
The complexity is internalised in the characters, such as the father who murdered his wife but is now having sex with her adolescent clones while he recklessly uses his son to further his own agenda, also murdering his mistress along the way.

You, sir, did not "get it". And as a snob, instead of admitting you didn't get it, you started a long trollish tirade about how a television show is not literature. Congradulations on sucessfully subverting the moderation system.

release
Pronunciation: ri-'lEs
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): released; releasing
Etymology: Middle English relesen, from Middle French relessier, from Latin relaxare to relax
1 : to set free from restraint, confinement, or servitude ; also : to let go : DISMISS
2 : to relieve from something that confines, burdens, or oppresses
3 : to give up in favor of another : RELINQUISH
4 : to give permission for publication, performance, exhibition, or sale of; also : to make available to the public
synonym see FREE

So it's ok for web sites to require FireFox but the moment they say that about IE it's suddenly wrong? No... It's hypocritical.

I never said anything about one being "right" or "wrong". I implied that doing the same is vindictive and spiteful, which would make me all warm and fuzzy inside. But, my no means hypocritical

Last I checked, FireFox and OSS was about choice and forcing people to change sure seems to disregard choice and adds to the general perception of snobbery on the OSS side.

There have always been many choices
  firefox did not create "choice". You make it sound as if there was "only" IE, since Netscape 4.0. Firefox is about a lot more than choice. There is a history, and it has its purpose (re: AOL vs Microsoft; Netscape vs IE, Mozilla, Firefox; Linux popularity and backing by big companies).

Beside, people are too ignorant to want choice. Most people just want to be told what to do. Popular opinion never picks the "best" thing, just the most populare (as made so by advertising). Think VHS vs Beta, early windows vs os/2 or macintosh, Bush vs anyone. Personally, I don't want the average windows users using linux - they will taint it, and make it "dumbed down". I just like the concept of blocking IE users to be a dick, as vengence for not being able to bank online with a secure browser.

OSS is more like a computer socialist revolution than choice.

So it's ok for web sites to require FireFox but the moment they say that about IE it's suddenly wrong? No... It's hypocritical.

I never said anything about one being "right" or "wrong". I implied that doing the same is vindictive and spiteful, which would make me all warm and fuzzy inside. But, my no means hypocritical

Last I checked, FireFox and OSS was about choice and forcing people to change sure seems to disregard choice and adds to the general perception of snobbery on the OSS side.

There have always been many choices
  firefox did not create "choice". You make it sound as if there was "only" IE, since Netscape 4.0. Firefox is about a lot more than choice. There is a history, and it has its purpose (re: AOL vs Microsoft; Netscape vs IE, Mozilla, Firefox; Linux popularity and backing by big companies).

Beside, people are too ignorant to want choice. Most people just want to be told what to do. Popular opinion never picks the "best" thing, just the most populare (as made so by advertising). Think VHS vs Beta, early windows vs os/2 or macintosh, Bush vs anyone. Personally, I don't want the average windows users using linux - they will taint it, and make it "dumbed down". I just like the concept of blocking IE users to be a dick, as vengence for not being able to bank online with a secure browser.

OSS is more like a computer socialist revolution than choice.

So it's ok for web sites to require FireFox but the moment they say that about IE it's suddenly wrong? No... It's hypocritical.

I never said anything about one being "right" or "wrong". I implied that doing the same is vindictive and spiteful, which would make me all warm and fuzzy inside. But, my no means hypocritical

Last I checked, FireFox and OSS was about choice and forcing people to change sure seems to disregard choice and adds to the general perception of snobbery on the OSS side.

There have always been many choices
  firefox did not create "choice". You make it sound as if there was "only" IE, since Netscape 4.0. Firefox is about a lot more than choice. There is a history, and it has its purpose (re: AOL vs Microsoft; Netscape vs IE, Mozilla, Firefox; Linux popularity and backing by big companies).

Beside, people are too ignorant to want choice. Most people just want to be told what to do. Popular opinion never picks the "best" thing, just the most populare (as made so by advertising). Think VHS vs Beta, early windows vs os/2 or macintosh, Bush vs anyone. Personally, I don't want the average windows users using linux - they will taint it, and make it "dumbed down". I just like the concept of blocking IE users to be a dick, as vengence for not being able to bank online with a secure browser.

OSS is more like a computer socialist revolution than choice.

In other news, I learned two new words today :)

http://m-w.com/dictionary/putatively

http://m-w.com/dictionary/pejorative

Not that I've never heard those words before, but to really understand a word it's good to look it up on more than one occasion.

In other news, I learned two new words today :)

http://m-w.com/dictionary/putatively

http://m-w.com/dictionary/pejorative

Not that I've never heard those words before, but to really understand a word it's good to look it up on more than one occasion.

That is false. He used the correct word.

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/affect

Wait, taking or obtaining access to something that doesn't belong to you nor do you have premission to access/use isn't stealing? No matter how often you repeat it and want to deny it, it sill is stealing.

And people copying software and not paying for it are not pirates.
Oh really?
piracy
3 : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright (© 2005-2006 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated)

Why can't you theives just be honest with yourselves, and quit using stuff like these "word games" to justify this & remove any guilty feelings your immoral actions bring?

Relatedly is a word. It's in Merriam-Webster as well as dictionary.com as the adverb form of the adjective "related". And it's in common usage.

You're not a language-Nazi, you're just an idiot. You read a word which:
1) you understand the meaning of and
2) follows the conventions of English (forming an adverb with -ly)
3) Is in common use

And then you promptly claim that it "isn't a word".

Well, what the fuck is your definition of a word then, you pretentious moron?

I'm afraid that you were attacked by a Semantics Nazi, not a Grammar Nazi;

your mistake was not in choosing the wrong form of, or position for, a word, but in choosing a word with a different meaning from the meaning which you intended.

1 : a substance (as an enzyme) that enables a chemical reaction to proceed at a usually faster rate or under different conditions (as at a lower temperature) than otherwise possible
2 : an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action

If it makes you feel better, I can play the part of the Grammar Nazi by mentioning that "Nazi" isn't a verb.