Domain: merriam-webster.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to merriam-webster.com.
Comments · 2,335
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Re:Rock and Roll wouldn't EXIST without "stealing"
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Re:Posture is Important
I'm guessing it's supposed to be posited. What's more "at least" is in the wrong place. I'm not sure if there even is a right place for it.
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Re:Nauseated.
http://www.merriam-webster.com...
Full Definition of NAUSEOUS
1
: causing nausea or disgust : nauseating
2
: affected with nausea or disgustUsage Discussion of NAUSEOUS
Those who insist that nauseous can properly be used only in sense 1 and that in sense 2 it is an error for nauseated are mistaken. Current evidence shows these facts: nauseous is most frequently used to mean physically affected with nausea, usually after a linking verb such as feel or become; figurative use is quite a bit less frequent. Use of nauseous in sense 1 is much more often figurative than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground to nauseating. Nauseated is used more widely than nauseous in sense 2.
Examples of NAUSEOUSThe smell of gasoline makes me nauseous.
I began to feel nauseous.
Instead what they do is all sit together and feel really bad, and pray. Nobody does anything as nauseous as try to make everybody all pray together or pray aloud or anything, but you can tell what they're doing. â"David Foster Wallace, Rolling Stone, 25 Oct. 2001 -
Re:"evolved"
Biology doesn't have exclusive claim to the noun evolution:
"a process of change in a certain direction"
"a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state" -
In the U.S., also.
Dictionary definition of Yahoo: A person who is very rude, loud, or stupid.
It amazes me that technically knowledgeable people choose names that limit their success.
TeX is 3 letters from another alphabet!
Gimp means: Usually Disparaging and Offensive. A term used to refer to a person who limps or is lame. -
Re:No. It's not.
That's "harebrained" you retard.
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Re:As a Developer of Heuristic AI ...
Until self awareness happened, human beings did not exist - they were just apes who could walk on two legs. And until an "AI" has self awareness it is just a computer.
Defining something as intelligent when it is not self aware is just meaningless playing with words. A world beating chess computer is no more intelligent than my alarm clock. It's just a machine doing a job.Funny, you should mention "meaningless playing with words". You redefine three important concepts: "intelligence", "existence", and "self-awareness" in ways that just aren't relevant.
"Existence" is the most broken concept. I'm currently sitting in a chair. By that observation, I can determine that the chair exists. Since it exists, then it must have in your sense enough "self-awareness", which puts a really, really low threshold on the amount of self awareness and intelligence that a thing needs in order to exist. None seems to be the absolute minimum threshold here.
Similarly, intelligence is not the capacity for self-awareness. Instead, it is:the ability to learn or understand things or to deal with new or difficult situations
If we are to speak of the narrow category of the things having to do with learning or understanding aspects of oneself, then I suggest that wisdom is a closer label than intelligence.
And of course, this brings up the obvious point that if we have a machine that can fulfill the definition of intelligence far better than humans can, even if it has absolutely no self awareness (say due to deliberate programming of that blind spot for safety, efficiency, or ethical reasons), then of course, it is more intelligent than we are. -
You mean, IF the revolution comes.
In the past MS used http://iconfactory.com/
They did not use internal staff.
But the managers that approve it are to go first.
At least the folks at Icon Factory know a thing or two about iconography, which is as much of an exact science as UI design ever was; part pixel art, part language. As other 'dotters here have happily provided links to not only the historical iconography of Microsoft, but other platforms as well, you can see the evolution of aesthetic choices; the playful isometric simplicity of BeOS, the monochromatic elegance of NeXT, and the neo-realism of Gnome. Saying that the flat colors is a throwback to the primitive computer era (8/16 bit) is rather ignorant, simply because the color-palette choice wasn't a matter of preference, as much as necessity. Back then, the engineers were put in charge of defining the color gamut based on just 16 or 256 'slots' to use. Naturally, the engineers approached this in an algorithmic fashion, rather than aesthetically. That's why it took us 30 years to come up with color rendering that could represent natural/earth/skin tones, because there were all these mathematical gaps in the subtle spectra of blues, browns and greens. In that sense, I suppose the selection of flat saturated colors is indeed ironic in the age of hyper-realistic imagery. I applaud an aesthetic choice for elegant iconography, however the execution can be equally delightful or disastrous.
While I agree in part with the dissent over the design choices, I don't agree that TFA is representative of any significant "majority". Let's be real here, the headline reads, "icons look like a bad joke." Do you really think that contributing readers would be unbiased? You might as well have a big sign out front, "MS-bashing Trolls Welcome!"
...majority indeed.But here's the catch. It's hard to have a serious discussion about UI choices even in this forum, one that's so inclined to conflate the design with every poor PR move, questionable politics and troubled past of the legacy platform, all making it impossible to take a step back and appreciate the design choices for what they are. It's also important to add that UI choices aren't just about making it artful, but mostly, meaningful. These mini-pictures are purpose-made to fall into the background, rather than be their own eye-candy. (that's what custom icon sets are for)
So here, I'll take a stab at it. This icon gallery clearly perpetuates the traditional Windows brand "manila folder" trope as a foundation. With flat colors and angled lines, it does an attempt at three-dimensional appearance, which arguably does look very 'flat', with or without comparison to its predecessors. While those do not make up 100% of the new icon set, the "folders" establish the overall paradigm and 'look' of the interface. I'm not convinced that the non-folder icons are even complete, since most of them still resemble Aero's photo-realistic set of devices. The icons that notably reflect the new art style are the "My Computer" and "Network" icons, which is a simple line-art treatment style. This is not consistent with the folder paradigm, not only because they don't resemble folders, but because these images are using boundary lines to define shapes, rather than flat colors. Overall, it's rather inelegant and poorly executed. The folders use subtle boundary lines, but inconsistently, and the line doesn't diminish on the smaller icons, making the left face of the folder look awkward, like a backwards "L" from a varsity jacket. Again, we see that the Redmond workshop has neglected the beauty of scale and only centers their model on an 'ideal' size, whatever size that may be, and also belies an underlying framework that is—yet again—bullishly ignorant of modern, precision rendering. As I'm running Win10-TP myself, I can also see that File Explorer attempts to express folder contents a
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Re: iPad too fucking expensive
I have seen magnate schools
You mean Harvard, Wharton, Kellogg and the like?
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Re:Or how about no jobs?
This is not the meaning of coercion.
Oh yes it is.
http://www.merriam-webster.com...
http://www.merriam-webster.com...1
: to restrain or dominate by force
2
: to compel to an act or choice
3
: to achieve by force or threatWhen you are coerced to do something, any choice you made wasn't from your own free will, it was done under force or threat. You were compelled. Ergo, you didn't actually have a choice.
And I find it interesting how coercion means removing entitlement benefits which can be done without force, but coercion doesn't mean forcing someone to pay for those entitlement benefits.
Where did I say that? I think you're confusing me with the other poster ultranova.
No. If a thing has the characteristics of being a tool, then it's a tool. You admit markets have the characteristics of being a tool, hence, you admit markets are tools.
No, you sharing traits with a dog doesn't make you a dog. Admitting you share traits with a dog doesn't mean I admit you're a dog.
It doesn't matter that you feel differently for some reason.
Speak for yourself. Markets aren't tools, regardless of how you feel for some reason.
I'm not interested in yet another attempt to redefine the English language to fit the rhetoric of the moment.
This wasn't another attempt. There wasn't even a first attempt. Regardless of how you feel
Again, yet another argument where you claim to disagree with me, but don't actually disagree.
Except I did actually disagree with you. The fact you think I didn't says more about your lack of understanding of the English language than mine.
Notice what you actually claim here. Anyone who studies markets came to the same conclusion: markets are wonderful enough to elevate to the alleged status of religion or myth. Since you don't hold to this, that means you haven't studied markets.
What makes you think I don't hold on to that? Again, I think you're confusing me with ultranova.
Maybe you should study markets too then since it appears once again that your arguments are based a combination of ignorance of what markets are combined with abuse of the English language.
My understand of markets and English is fine, sir. How things "appear" to you is detached from the truth.
We're smart enough to separate our interests from those of promoters. And I'm not going to decide on your side just because the other side has a promoter you don't happen to like.
That's nice to know, but that has nothing to do with my point.
I don't see the problem here. The argument was broken on semantics grounds since you weren't using common parlance
No, I was using common parlance. I even clarified what I mean by common parlance, just in case what passes for common for you isn't the same as me (hey, it can happen, communication is not a simple matter). But you continue to insist I mean something else and am wrong because an argument using that other definition is wrong. That's a strawman, hence your accusations on me are invalid
And really, I don't see the term, "human sacrifice" as being a relevant description at all.
That's what we're here for (well, me, I can't speak for ultranova), to open your eyes so you can "see" better.
As I said, "human sacrifice" has the connotation that you're forcing somebody else to give up something. Not all "sacrifices" are like that. You recognize yourself that "sacrificing" entitlement payments is different than "sacrificing" employers to pay for those entitlement pa
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Re:Or how about no jobs?
This is not the meaning of coercion.
Oh yes it is.
http://www.merriam-webster.com...
http://www.merriam-webster.com...1
: to restrain or dominate by force
2
: to compel to an act or choice
3
: to achieve by force or threatWhen you are coerced to do something, any choice you made wasn't from your own free will, it was done under force or threat. You were compelled. Ergo, you didn't actually have a choice.
And I find it interesting how coercion means removing entitlement benefits which can be done without force, but coercion doesn't mean forcing someone to pay for those entitlement benefits.
Where did I say that? I think you're confusing me with the other poster ultranova.
No. If a thing has the characteristics of being a tool, then it's a tool. You admit markets have the characteristics of being a tool, hence, you admit markets are tools.
No, you sharing traits with a dog doesn't make you a dog. Admitting you share traits with a dog doesn't mean I admit you're a dog.
It doesn't matter that you feel differently for some reason.
Speak for yourself. Markets aren't tools, regardless of how you feel for some reason.
I'm not interested in yet another attempt to redefine the English language to fit the rhetoric of the moment.
This wasn't another attempt. There wasn't even a first attempt. Regardless of how you feel
Again, yet another argument where you claim to disagree with me, but don't actually disagree.
Except I did actually disagree with you. The fact you think I didn't says more about your lack of understanding of the English language than mine.
Notice what you actually claim here. Anyone who studies markets came to the same conclusion: markets are wonderful enough to elevate to the alleged status of religion or myth. Since you don't hold to this, that means you haven't studied markets.
What makes you think I don't hold on to that? Again, I think you're confusing me with ultranova.
Maybe you should study markets too then since it appears once again that your arguments are based a combination of ignorance of what markets are combined with abuse of the English language.
My understand of markets and English is fine, sir. How things "appear" to you is detached from the truth.
We're smart enough to separate our interests from those of promoters. And I'm not going to decide on your side just because the other side has a promoter you don't happen to like.
That's nice to know, but that has nothing to do with my point.
I don't see the problem here. The argument was broken on semantics grounds since you weren't using common parlance
No, I was using common parlance. I even clarified what I mean by common parlance, just in case what passes for common for you isn't the same as me (hey, it can happen, communication is not a simple matter). But you continue to insist I mean something else and am wrong because an argument using that other definition is wrong. That's a strawman, hence your accusations on me are invalid
And really, I don't see the term, "human sacrifice" as being a relevant description at all.
That's what we're here for (well, me, I can't speak for ultranova), to open your eyes so you can "see" better.
As I said, "human sacrifice" has the connotation that you're forcing somebody else to give up something. Not all "sacrifices" are like that. You recognize yourself that "sacrificing" entitlement payments is different than "sacrificing" employers to pay for those entitlement pa
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Re: octopi?
Octopodes sounds incredibly stupid, because I can't think of another word in the English language which is pluralized with "podes" -- which makes it such an extreme outlier as to be doubtful.
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Re:Bastardation of English continues
1 a : to go, come, or appear suddenly —often used with up. Often, but not exclusively. If you're going to be a grammar nazi, at least be right.
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COMPRISE!
No "of" after comprise. But at least you didn't use its meaning incorrectly like most people.
http://www.merriam-webster.com...Comprise == consists of
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Re:I concur
That's funny, because every online dictionary I consulted said that it was grammatically correct to use "comprise" as a synonym for "compose." In fact Merriam Webster has this to say:
Sense 3 : compose, constitute
Usage Discussion of COMPRISE Although it has been in use since the late 18th century, sense 3 is still attacked as wrong. Why it has been singled out is not clear, but until comparatively recent times it was found chiefly in scientific or technical writing rather than belles lettres. Our current evidence shows a slight shift in usage: sense 3 is somewhat more frequent in recent literary use than the earlier senses. You should be aware, however, that if you use sense 3 you may be subject to criticism for doing so, and you may want to choose a safer synonym such as compose or make up.
I guess someone needs to go though and change them all back and add this citation.
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Too bad he's wrong.
http://www.merriam-webster.com...
Of particular note is the commentary on item 3.
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And ...
Comprise: to be made up of (something) : to include or consist of (something)
http://www.merriam-webster.com...Comprise: to have as parts or members, or to be those parts or members:
http://dictionary.cambridge.or...to include; contain
to constitute the whole of; consist of
http://www.collinsdictionary.c... -
Not a mistake according to Merriam-Webster
This is not a grammatical mistake. It is correct grammer and has been correct grammer for hundreds of years. See
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comprise
In particular, definition 3 of comprise is "compose, constitute". Merriam-Webster's Dictionary then notes that
Although it has been in use since the late 18th century, sense 3 is still attacked as wrong. Why it has been singled out is not clear, but until comparatively recent times it was found chiefly in scientific or technical writing rather than belles lettres. Our current evidence shows a slight shift in usage: sense 3 is somewhat more frequent in recent literary use than the earlier senses.
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Re:I concur
That's funny, because every online dictionary I consulted said that it was grammatically correct to use "comprise" as a synonym for "compose." In fact Merriam Webster has this to say:
Sense 3 : compose, constitute
Usage Discussion of COMPRISE
Although it has been in use since the late 18th century, sense 3 is still attacked as wrong. Why it has been singled out is not clear, but until comparatively recent times it was found chiefly in scientific or technical writing rather than belles lettres. Our current evidence shows a slight shift in usage: sense 3 is somewhat more frequent in recent literary use than the earlier senses. You should be aware, however, that if you use sense 3 you may be subject to criticism for doing so, and you may want to choose a safer synonym such as compose or make up. -
Re:"Broadband" is a stupid name
http://www.merriam-webster.com...
Sometimes words have more than one meaning.
Also, plover is a stupid name too. Sometimes people choose stupid names for things... even themselves.
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Moron
Anyone that does not read a definition before making asinine statements is not just lacking common sense, but a flippin moron.
Common sense has nothing to do with "groupthink" but a set of knowledge you can draw upon to determine an outcome without extensive analysis. E.G. The oven is hot, the pan has been in the oven, if I touch the pan with my hand I'm going to get burned.
Where you are wrong in both this and your initial statement is that Politics is based on opinion, and political opinion and implementation is impossible to measure. Extensive analysis can not be measured, because the alternative opinion has never been implemented. E.G. Would Hitler have won if the US did not get involved in WW II? We don't know, because we only have the history where we did get involved in WW II. Your opinion on the subject is impossible to prove, so save it, it's not the point. You can not measure the opinions at the time that said "Don't get involved in the War" by any means possible.
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Re:Really? Theory of Mind
From Merriam-webster
Empathy:
"the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner;"
That sounds exactly like what is going on in your scenarios.
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Re:I doubt the Republicans wrote it...
Actually, it is unconstitutional to have laws enacted in ways other than the constitution proscribes.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
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Re:i knew it was Bennett
Actually, "lede" is correct.
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Re:Jurors
Ambiguity is safer for the defense, not the prosecution. The prosecution has to demonstrate that a crime occurred and how that crime was carried out, beyond a reasonable doubt. If the prosecutor cannot describe, beyond a reasonable doubt, how the crime was conducted then the prosecutor will probably fail to get a conviction.
No, that's not true-- formally, they have only to show that a crime occurred. (That's called corpus delicti-- which, despite popular misconception, does not require a corpse.)
However, what they do have to show is how they know that the defendant is the one who did the crime. If understanding how they know this means they need to explain an internet investigation unmasking Tor anonymization, they may very well need some technical explanations.
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Re: Understandable, given the market share
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Re:Communism requires strict govt control by defin
by definition communism does not have a government.
By definition:
a way of organizing a society in which the government owns the things that are used to make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) and there is no privately owned property
So no.
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Re:Yes.
*sigh* Science is about study. It's not a frame of reference or point of view. It's about asking a question and investigating.
From Merriam Webster's dictionary: http://www.merriam-webster.com... :knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation
: a particular area of scientific study (such as biology, physics, or chemistry) : a particular branch of science
: a subject that is formally studied in a college, university, etc.
When a scientist conducts research, their research is published in a peer reviewed journal. No, it's not about being open-minded to all possible explanations - that's utter non-sense. Studies do not have 100 different explanations. They have one. In many ways scientists are adversarial, promoting one hypothesis over another. The correct hypothesis comes out in the research. As more people conduct studies and the data puts to one way or another, you begin to understand which explanations is correct. -
Re:So a dead pilot was a penny?
Must be a different Wikipedia than the one everyone else reads
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Aftermath
The nuclear-armed Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missile. The US secretly agreed to withdraw these missiles from Italy and Turkey.The compromise embarrassed Khrushchev and the Soviet Union because the withdrawal of US missiles from Italy and Turkey was a secret deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Khrushchev went to Kennedy thinking that the crisis was getting out of hand. The Soviets were seen as retreating from circumstances that they had started. Khrushchev's fall from power two years later was in part because of the Politburo embarrassment at both Khrushchev's eventual concessions to the US and his ineptitude in precipitating the crisis in the first place. According to Dobrynin, the top Soviet leadership took the Cuban outcome as "a blow to its prestige bordering on humiliation."[92]
You also might want to commit these to memory
Saber Rattling
http://www.merriam-webster.com...
VS blockade which is an act of war
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Re:Cowards by definition (Re:Fear)
The definition is not complete. Here is the formal definition. Not sure why Princeton.edu doesn't have it right.
Coward is not just fear, it's shameful. It's like saying "bad" and "worst" are the same.
http://www.merriam-webster.com...
http://www.thefreedictionary.c... -
Re:is because this is an actual problem
You're being a bit more literal than the general populace on this one.
From Merriam-Webster:
Full Definition of WITCH HUNT
1
: a searching out for persecution of persons accused of witchcraft
2
: the searching out and deliberate harassment of those (as political opponents) with unpopular views -
Re: Ya, Sure.
As for damn, it's from the Latin damnare to condemn, not exactly requiring a deity.
damnation noun \dam-n-shn\
: the state of being in hell as punishment after death
http://www.merriam-webster.com...pro-tip: not that it is the only latin word with arbitrary new meanings in english. go figure, some weird antropomorphization going on.
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Re:at the moment the only trend
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Re:Bleh
There's nothing wrong with using "personify" in this sense. It's entry #1 in Merriam-Webster
"to conceive of or represent as a person or as having human qualities or powers"
"Anthropomorphize" is incorrect in this case. Saying the article has a face to punch would be anthropomorphizing it.
Maybe you should do your homework before criticizing others' usage.
maybe you should respond to the part about the gay nigger. ignoring him just cause he's a nigger would be racist and thats bad.
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Re:Bleh
There's nothing wrong with using "personify" in this sense. It's entry #1 in Merriam-Webster
"to conceive of or represent as a person or as having human qualities or powers"
"Anthropomorphize" is incorrect in this case. Saying the article has a face to punch would be anthropomorphizing it.
Maybe you should do your homework before criticizing others' usage.
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Well, be chafed.
Nobody "discovers" anything.
That is patently ridiculous. Definition of "discover":
to see, find, or become aware of (something) for the first time
to show the presence of (something hidden or difficult to see) : to make (something) known
to learn or find out (something surprising or unexpected)The "finding of evidence" sounds exactly like what is defined here. Evidence itself is discovered. If the just-discovered evidence is sufficiently compelling to accept a conclusion, then as a matter of linguistic convenience we can say that the conclusion was also "discovered."
People discover things all the time. Your strange understanding of the word's meaning is not shared by the rest of the world, so you can count on people continuing to chafe you into the future.
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Re:WTF UK?
Mario Balotelli, a black football player with a Jewish mother is suspended a game and fined 25k pounds for posting an anti-racist picture about a multicultural Super Mario.
Twas a niggardly reaction indeed.
:(Not that I care if this gets modded badly, but just in case: http://www.merriam-webster.com...
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Re:B movie
Historically, that is correct, but the term is still in use, and its meaning has shifted. To whit (sp?):
"B movie noun
: a movie that costs little money to make and that is usually not considered to be very good" -
Re:Who will get
I applaud your effort to get people to stop misusing this term, but I'm afraid it's much too late.
The primary dictionary definition is now:
: to destroy a large number of (plants, animals, people, etc.)
: to severely damage or destroy a large part of (something)
http://www.merriam-webster.com... -
Re:calling it
spiel FTFY
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Re:News at 11..
http://www.merriam-webster.com...
pirate
noun \p-rt\: someone who attacks and steals from a ship at sea
: someone who illegally copies a product or invention without permission
: a person or organization that illegally makes television or radio broadcasts
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Re:I don't care what the user has at home
Tell that to a creative who's debating between freelancing on his own or taking a steady job.
What the hell is a "creative"? Is it anything like a "grammatically correct"?
Well, since you can't read a dictionary, here you go:
Creative (noun)
1) one who is creative; especially : one involved in the creation of advertisements
2) creative activity or the material produced by it especially in advertisingI assume he was going with the first meaning.
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Re:Cisco crying uncle
Apparently Cisco can't compete in the marketplace or buy Arista (bad blood between Arista founders and Cisco brass
So then wouldn't it be Cisco that is brazen?
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Re:The fact remains...
I think that statement needs qualifying.
For that I'll refer here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
In modern English "female" refers to gender.
That is not correct and I can prove it. I don't know which dictionary you prefer, but in the US, Merriam-Webster pretty much sets the standard for English:
http://www.merriam-webster.com...
If you're British, then Oxford sets your standard:
http://www.oxforddictionaries....
Both dictionaries seem to agree that female refers to the sex that can bear young or lay eggs. The person wouldn't fully meet that definition (and in fact still carries organs that are part of the male reproductive system, such as the prostate.)
Biological sex is not binary
The definition for male may not be, but in terms of female, the definition is pretty straightforward: Must be capable of laying eggs or bearing offspring. In most non-mammalian species, there isn't XY chromosome (reptiles, birds, and fish for example have ZW instead) but there's still a common trait for females: capable of bearing offspring or laying eggs.
Now if you want to look at the extreme and one off examples where a human has XXY (or any other variation) it still boils down to being capable of bearing offspring or laying eggs. If that person can not, or if they can't produce male gametes, then they really aren't either sex.
As far as the cultural impact of everything I've said above: Culturally a person might identify as man or woman, and whichever they choose is their choice of course, however it isn't possible to change one's sex (or at least, the technology doesn't exist.)
That also being said, even if the technology comes along that allows females to produce male sperm or males to bear offspring or lay eggs, that doesn't change the anatomy of a person's brain.
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Re:Refect instead of radiate
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They just took Google's motto
and tweaked the punctuation a bit, from "Don't Be Evil" to "Don't, Be Evil!"
BTW, am I the first one to notice that Uber is an anagram of "Rube"?
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Re:Shyeah, right.
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Re:Wrong
FSFS, it's "cut and dried". A pox on both your houses.
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O rly?
2: to debase by a wrong, unworthy, or vulgar use.
Clearly, this word has become synonymous with "vulgar." Maybe it didn't used to be, but it is now. Language changes based on popular use, so if something is popularly used incorrectly, it becomes correct. A lot of people think that isn't how English should work, but that doesn't change the fact that it does.
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Drivel
Drivel not dribble