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The online world's sheer wealth of informative sites, guides, and peoples rivals any university alone. To use it effeciently for the manner of learning is a different matter altogether. It is easily to be disported at the sundry delights of online porn, the action-packed online FPS, or the vacuum that is Slashdot at times. I obviously do not spend my day here, but when I first came unto this website before I registered it was a portal into the world of Linux which has helped me greatly. Now I would consider it a nexus of the raw talent of a goodly portion of the Linux and even Windows sysadmin, programmers and tech support jockies out there. RTFM is a good reply to many people. When you depend so much on others that you cannot use a book or a website to learn virtually anything conceptually without hand holding, how is that going to affect you in the real world after school? Are you going to be the guy who leans on the cubicle wall every 15 minutes asking him how to use this pointer, fix this tech support problem, or the like? Learning how to learn on your own is the most important thing I learned in school, and that was when I was in 6th grade. Going to class for me is more a social call than anything. I learn alone with source material, why won't people respect that?

No, for a proper noun, or for a plural ending in "s", it is not necessary to add the extra "s" after the apostrophy. So Mr Burns' is infact quite correct.

I usually make fun of the grammar snobs since I violate the rules so much... ;)

But I think in this case, I may become one:

I'm afraid you are wrong.

From World Wide Words:

[Q] From W S McCollom: "I was looking at a UK magazine and ran across gobsmack. What can you tell me about this term?"

[A] It's a fairly recent British slang term: the first recorded use is only in the eighties, though verbal use must surely go back further. The usual form is gobsmacked, though gobstruck is also found. It's a combination of gob, mouth, and smacked. It means "utterly astonished, astounded". It's much stronger than just being surprised; it's used for something that leaves you speechless, or otherwise stops you dead in your tracks. It suggests that something is as surprising as being suddenly hit in the face. It comes from northern dialect, most probably popularised through television programmes set in Liverpool, where it was common. It's an obvious derivation of an existing term, since gob, originally from Scotland and the north of England, has been a dialect and slang term for the mouth for four hundred years (often in insulting phrases like "shut your gob!" to tell somebody to be quiet). It possibly goes back to the Scottish Gaelic word meaning a beak or a mouth, which has also bequeathed us the verb to gob, meaning to spit. Another form of the word is gab, from which we get gift of the gab.

It used to be strictly improper, but now that use of the phrase has become more and more accepted.

To say that Massachusetts labour unionists are influential in government would be to say that the Antarctic continent is freezing cold.

Your analogy FAILS IT! You're supposed to use understatement, like so:

To say that Massachusetts labour unionists are influential in government would be to say that the Antarctic continent is "chilly."

Furthermore, please note that it is "case IN point," not "case and point."

Mr. Winchester wrote another book, The Meaning of Everything, which covers the history of the OED in more detail. I just finished reading the book yesterday; quite a fun (for a book about a dictionary), and often touching, read.

From: Turns of Phrase

This word is becoming fairly common but can be confusing, as it has two meanings. It was coined in 1980 by the futurist Alvin Toffler--in his book The Third Wave--as a blend of producer and consumer. He used it to describe a possible future type of consumer who would become involved in the design and manufacture of products, so they could be made to individual specification. He argued that we would then no longer be a passive market upon which industry dumped consumer goods but a part of the creative process. Derrick de Kerckhove has called this mass customisation, in which everybody is in effect a member of a niche market, something Internet e-commerce is encouraging through cutting out the middleman between maker and buyer. This sense of prosumer has been taken up by some marketing people, but remains limited in its application.

The second usage describes a purchaser of technical equipment who wants to obtain goods of a better quality than consumer items, but can't afford professional items (older terms for goods of this intermediate quality are semi-professional and industrial quality). Here, the word is a blend of professional and consumer. Prosumers of this sort are famed for their enthusiasm for new products and their tolerance of flaws and, from the marketing point of view, have much in common with early adopters. This usage is common among those selling video equipment, digital cameras, and similar goods (and the examples below illustrate this sense). Some manufacturers treat the SOHO (Small Office, Home Office) market as being much the same thing.

[Q] From Geoff Bird: "In one of the Monty Python movies, as a woman falsely accused of being a witch is being carted off to her destiny she says under her breath, that's a fair cop! Is this the common British slang for being arrested?"

[A] It's a well-understood British expression, though it has been used so often in second-rate detective stories and police television series down the decades that it has long since ceased to be possible to use it seriously (the Monty Python team was playing on its cliched status).

It comes from the same root as the term cop for a policeman. This may be from the slang verb cop, meaning to seize, originally a dialect term of northern England that by the beginning of the nineteenth century was known throughout the country. This can be followed back through French caper to Latin capere, to seize or take, from which we also get our capture. (See also the piece on cop, a policeman.) So a cop in this sense was an example of a seizure or capture.

It's a fair cop was what the essentially good-natured thief with a typically British sense of fair play was supposed to say as his collar was fingered by the fuzz, meaning that the arrest was reasonable and that he really had done what he was accused of doing. You will understand that this is, and always has been, an entirely fictitious view of the relationship between British criminals and the police.

Now look here, my good chap....

Amazing thing, this Google. I just did 'British slang "fair cop" ' and hit "I'm feeling Lucky!" (because I was), and there you have it. Fair cop, eh wot?

It'll be a shame when SCO sues Google out of business...

Background on Hungarian notation, in case people don't get what this C comment (probably) refers to.

Sorry about not making those links nice and friendly clicky-clicky style. They link to a couple references on the "I could care less" construction.

• Bartleby's
• A second opinion

Mercury should prove (or else support) his reasoning. We may get some answers there as early as October 2007.

But they didn't. Nor did they call it a white drive/black drive. They called it master/slave, where master means "One that has control over another or others" and slave means "one who serves". Is master/slave not a good term for master/slave drives?

My wife is one clever lady.

Listen, man, I don't know your wife... I'm sure she is a smart lady... but saying what she said was not "clever"... it's the same kneejerk PC crap that almost everyone in the US is saying now. I mean, imagine what could happen if someonee used the word 'niggardly'? Should they be forced to resign? Or, do you think that the asswipes behind the controversy would realize they were jackasses?

Indeed, it's 'Quatre-vingt-dix neuf', which is 'Four-twenty ten-nine'... there is no explicit 'times'. (And if you're going to criticise, learn to spell first).

My point is that most languages do addition to express numbers - that's what the 'y' is doing in Spanish. I feel that 'dix-neuf' is pretty much equivalent to the Spanish 'diecinueve', so I suppose your difficulty is purely this 'quatre-vingt' construct...

Perhaps it would help you to look at the reason for this - which, as I say, is pretty much superseded outside mainland France by these 'septante', 'octante', 'nonante' constructs. Since Babylonian times, humanity seems to have had a habit of counting, rather than in hundreds, in sixties. (See 'Number words and number systems' by Karl Menninger, or this site). The link suggests a number of reasons for the popularity of the number sixty, including the two that I was given as a (British) child for the popularity of currently popular non-base ten systems like the foot or the dozen - firstly, that such numbers (12, 60...) maximise the number of divisors - secondly, that there are three joints on each finger, five fingers on each hand, allowing one to count up to 60 by pointing at one of the twelve parts of the fingers of the left hand with one of the five fingers of the right hand...

One can see the importance of the number 12 in Germanic languages, like English, whereas Latin languages actually inherit a simple base-10 system (undecim, duodecim, tredecim...) Germanic languages use 'one left after ten, two left after ten' - many hundreds of years of accent and erosion have simply hidden the meaning of the terms 'eleven' and 'twelve'.

The number 20 also has a special significance in English - it is the score, 'Three score and ten'. In fact, this 'score' is exactly the equivalent to the French 'eighty' that upsets you so much. The French are simply using a somewhat Biblical expression; "Four score".

Base sixty is indeed a little further from English-speaking experience, though, as I have said, it has a remarkably long historical pedigree. However, it was historically in use in Germanic languages, including English, where I believe sixty were given a special name (like 'score' - in the case of English, it was apparently 'shock'). Dictionary.com informs me that the term 'shock' is still in use in some Baltic ports to refer to a set of sixty loose items.

Until very recently, English included a good number of these peculiarities - and still does - English as a second language is full of irregularities, in and outside the language of mathematics. Remember, Americans didn't raise an eyebrow at the term when Lincoln said "Four score and seven years ago"... when the French say it, neither should you.

It doesn't beg the question.

Sure it does.

The usage is actually evolving, much in the same way we say a point is moot when we don't mean that it is a matter for debate.

Anyway, Dean's first responsibility viz. taxes would be to roll back the tax cuts that have failed to revive the economy and, likely, will wind up hurting it by keeping the budget in deficit and adversely influencing interest rates. A healthy economy helps all of us, including geeks.

I would also beg to differ (heh) about the median income of geeks. It has been dropping over the past few years as many of our jobs are run by fewer people working longer hours, plus a general downturn in technology spending and investment. It is not taxes that have done this to us, but poor economic policy and predatory investment schemes.

Ignoring the misuse of the phrase "beg[ging] the question" for the moment...

The following comes from http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-bai1.htm:

"Where does the term baited breath come from, as in: 'I am waiting with baited breath for your answer'?"

The correct spelling is actually bated breath but it's so common these days to see it written as baited breath that there's every chance it will soon become the usual form, to the disgust of conservative speakers and the confusion of dictionary writers. Examples in newspapers and magazines are legion; this one appeared in the Daily Mirror on 12 April 2003: "She hasn't responded yet but Michael is waiting with baited breath".

It's easy to mock, but there's a real problem here. Bated and baited sound the same and we no longer use bated (let alone the verb to bate), outside this one set phrase, which has become an idiom. Confusion is almost inevitable. Bated here is a contraction of abated through loss of the first vowel (a process called aphesis); it has the meaning "reduced, lessened, lowered in force". So bated breath refers to a state in which you almost stop breathing through terror, awe, extreme anticipation, or anxiety.

Shakespeare is the first writer known to use it, in The Merchant of Venice: "Shall I bend low and, in a bondman's key, / With bated breath and whisp'ring humbleness, / Say this ...". Nearly three centuries later, Mark Twain employed it in Tom Sawyer: "Every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale".

Indeed Apparently, bated breath refers to hushed, anxious anticipation, while "baited breath" is perhaps a reference to the scent of a just eaten garlic bagel.

No, that's really how to spell "blathering". Hmm, maybe you meant "actually"? That's right too, sorry. Unless...no, you couldn't have meant "bated breath", could you?

How embarrassing! ;)

What are you talking about?
If its the phrase "bated breath," then you are wrong. Bated is the correct spelling.
Check this out.

A few helpful links from Google.

But "Kilroy" had a meaning, and was just graffiti spread by WWII soldiers, which came to represent American soldiers presense around the world. It was a meme that spread like "All your base" or "In soviet russia", though noone is 100% sure where it came from. I remember an old war era Bugs Bunny cartoon where he goes to the moon and "Kilroy was here" is scrawled on a moon rock.

These tiles are supposedly the work of the same person/group as they're all the same composition and tarred to the road in the same way. At least so the articles say. I'd guess some are spray painted or whatever, most are the work of copycats.

Unfortunately the meaning appears to be changing, gidds and I (and probably others) are familiar with with the original usage and the new form grates. See The Skeptics Dictionary and The alt.usage.english Home Page for explanation of the original (and correct!) usage, while World Wide Words for a discussion on the changing meaning.

(emphasis added by me)

They are just trying to make a buck and do it all in one foul swoop.

Though I appreciate that SCO's tactics may be foul, the phrase you're looking for is one fell swoop, as used by Shakespeare. And while you may feel that the use of "foul" may be an appropriate exchange in this case, I assure you that fell is much more so. Observe:

fell, adj.

1. Of an inhumanly cruel nature; fierce: fell hordes.
2. Capable of destroying; lethal: a fell blow.
3. Dire; sinister: by some fell chance.

(definition taken from dictionary.com)

Thank you! I've met my quota of learning one new thing a day!

Michael Qunion, who runs World Wide Words, has an excellent explantion of "beg the question":
http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-beg1.htm

... and Kerfuffle for unplanned development.

For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard

It is straight-ahead, grammatically incorrect to use a pronoun other than "he" when one refers to a gender-nonspecific third person.

Nice way to emphasize a point with "straight ahead." Unfortunately, you're wrong for a few reasons.

1. It is arguable that "he" is the only acceptable neutral gender pronoun.

2. It is "staight ahead" sexist. Right or wrong, it's still sexist (period, bold, underline, exclamation mark.)

3. It's isn't "unfortunately" the same word used for the male pronoun, it was made to be that way by sexist dominant males because most people in gender neutral situations were men. Now it's changing, and the language needs to change too.

4. Your last statement is unnecessary.

>Incidentally, the locals refer to non-locals as grockles.

Another term used is "emmet" which also means "ant".
Emmets & Grockles
Matt

Just found the name: "The Big Ball of Wax: A Story of Tomorrow's Happy World", by Shepherd Mead, written before 1954. Apparently it's been out of print for ages. *sigh*

FWIW some people apparently claim that this book is the origin of the saying "the whole ball of wax" (cf. http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-who5.htm). Go figure.

Anyway...

Cheers,

Ethelred

http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-hav2.htm

Case in point:

More info on the naming issue, and here.

Do the police have to resort to riot-slime?

In the UK we have had plenty of violent demonstrations and the police have done an excellent job (with some *very* notable exceptions) at controlling violence, without needing firearms in the bulk of cases and without resorting to tear gas etc., I think to a certain extent having easier methods of dispelling demonstration would allow cheaper and less skilled policing.

This is not a new problem. The 1715 Riot act tried to address these problems

reference 1

reference 2

reference 3, mentioning your movie

I am in like flint

Bad movie, stole the real quote.

In like Flynn

Actually, it appears Aluminium is the more correct spelling, considering the British guy who found it settled on the -ium ending himself. There's a whole article devoted to the subject at World Wide Words.

I don't know about your one mistake, but you seem to be posting on very shaky ground :) The etymology of the phrase is completely unclear, to the point where anyone's interpretation or usage could be considered correct.

I just did look it up and his usage is perfectly correct. He would have been wrong 2350 year ago when Aristotle was writing, but since then usage has changed. That's what language does. It evolves and changes. Deal with it.

According to this it's probable that you know about double your initial guess of 30,000.