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Firstly, it's his sig (ie. not a post) and secondly, it's init not "i'n't".

>For example, in English we have a "shortcut," but I can't readily think of the opposite unless I use the German word "Umweg."

The opposite of shortcut is a longcut. Maybe not standard English, but certainly easy enough to come up with on your own and easily understood by whomever you are talking to. And a web search comes up with the following: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=longcut

Well I never ... "salaut" is actually a word, and the definition is quite amusing.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=salaut

But my money is still on the fact that your just an ignorant fuck who can't type worth a damn.

You cannot "salaut" a third party, by definition, it's something you can only do to yourself.

i believe that is called rule 34: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rule+34 anything from pokemans to obama

Oh Christ. See definition 3.
Modern colloquial English -- do you speak it?

When I saw CBT, I thought of a different definition. One that could also be effective in modifying behavior.

My apologies to Scandinavians who confuse orthography with phonology, but you're wrong. Easy enough to make this sort of mistake, since the written representations of your languages are almost completely phonetic, whereas written English is anything but -- please refer to photi for a rather extreme example. :)

I'm a native English speaker with a fair command of German and Spanish, and I can get by in Swedish (have been living in Stockholm for 2+ years now). Having been born in the Southeast US, grown up in the US Midwest, worked for a British publisher, and lived for many years in Australia, I also have rather more than a passing familiarity with several major different English dialects. Linguistics and phonology are lifelong interests of mine, backed by some university-level studies as well.

One thing that a lot of non-natives (such as you, apparently) fail to realise is this:

(a) English has only 5 letters representing vowels*.

(b) This has absolutely nothing to do with the number of English vowel sounds, of which there are about 20. Wikipedia lists only 13, which might be true of US "NBC Handbook" English, but this is definitely well short of the mark when you account for British, Canadian, US Southern, Australian, etc.

Just because we lack a Ø (Danish, Norwegian) or Ö (Swedish, German) character does not mean that we don't have or can't pronounce the sound. The "ou" in could or should comes quite close. If I show a Swede the letter sequence KÖD and ask him to say it aloud, my English ear will inform me that he's just said the word "should". (Not "could"; the high vowel makes the "k" soft.)

Native English speakers also have absolutely no trouble with Æ / Ä ("a" in bad, as pronounced by 90% of Americans) or Å (the "ore" in more as pronounced by many Brits and most Aussies), once they are shown what sounds these signs are intended to represent.

...

And it is annoying as fuck to have a Scandinavian keyboard and yet be forced by this site (alone amongst all those that I visit) to use the HTML entity references for Ä, Å, Æ, Ö, etc. Can we get with the 1990s and adopt Unicode sometime before the end of the decade, please?

-----

*I do not include Y, and you shouldn't, either, when talking about English vowels, because most English speakers do not consider it a vowel -- it's used 90% of the time to represent the semivowel that other Germanic languages spell with J. Depending on where you go to school, you might be taught that it's "sometimes" a vowel, or that it's simply a consonant that gets pronounced like a short "I" when it sometimes accidentally gets stuck in between other consonants, for lack of having any "real" sound of its own. It is almost never pronounced as Scandinavian Y or German Ü because that vowel sound is seldom if ever used by the majority of English-speakers, regardless of country/region.

Oh, I know. I meant freaks in this sense.

for all intensive purposes

*twitch*
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=intensive+purposes
THAT out of the way...

There's a bit of a difference between your case of the real James Bond and Ian Fleming's James Bond. The real James Bond wasn't a spy, and Ian Fleming certainly wasn't trying to pass of the books' character James Bond as if they were the real James Bond-the-spy.
The real james bond was an ornithologist, says wikipedia with some citation to lord knows whether it's a credible source, but whatever.

This Donal Blaney chap, however, is complaining that somebody else posting under the name Donal Blaney is actually trying to pass themselves off as being this particular Donal Blaney chap... using not only his name, but his picture, his actual blog's name, etc.

Whether or not he has a case will be up to the courts to decide anyway, but I do believe he's got -a- point.. even if it's not a very sharp one, given that twitter does usually look into these things to make sure celebrities get to use their own name if a fan or foe set up a twitter account with that celebrity's name and was posing as them.
( not too sure what they do if it's really just an account from somebody else with the same name and they do -not- pose as the celebrity; I should hope they'd tell the celeb to go take a hike and open a new account under a different name. )

If you buy one of these suckers, you'd best make sure your girlfriend really enjoys dusting. Oh, wait a minute...this is Slashdot. Never mind.

Dusting? Ewwwww...

Whenever someone leaves their desk at my company, they usually "hasselhoff" him. That is, as urban dictionary quotes, putting homoerotic image of David Hasselhoff (there are plenty on google images search) on their desktop wallpaper. Some nasty examples.

Does the word "cloud" have any particular meaning?

Yes. The speaker wants to customers to make it rain.

Your mom is the wind beneath my nutsack.

Ah yes, the rusty trombone. Very popular these days.

Everything that ever is or was, was on Star Trek

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Corbomite

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=413875

"The Kool Aid" isn't about Jonestown. It's about the Electric Kool Aid Acid Tests, a series of concerts where LSD was served in Kool Aid.

Perhaps that's how you see it, but I don't think that's the common interpretation.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=drink+the+kool-aid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid

I see your choice under "alternative meaning" on wikipedia, but it's a much less apt metaphor than Jonestown for buying into something just because you're deeply under the spell of its originator.

My point, however, is that it's unreasonable to compare anything in I.T. to mass suicide and murder.

You might want to read the Rule he is invoking, which is for when there is NO rule 34 application, like in this case. And how fucking sad is it that I actually knew what the hell rule 35 was before I Googled? Damn I gotta stop spending so much time on the net. My GF is right, I'm becoming a fricking net vampire. I'll take completely useless Internet Trivia for $200 Alex.

I RTFA and Pluto is 44 Kelvin. This is the average temperature, no doubt there is some crevasse on Pluto, but it hasn't been measured.

So you're saying our moon being the coldest place in our solar system just got Pluto'd by Pluto? Wha?

If you disagree on point two, please tell us what color you think they are if not black. Also explain why point one is acceptable to you and point two is not, without contradicting yourself. Thanks.

Okay, a few points [note: I'm not any of the ACs here, I'm a Pseudonymous Coward instead ;)].

Firstly, I have heard the word 'nigger' used to refer to white/brown/black/yellow/blue people (yeah, those smurfs on welfare!).

nigga, niggah etc. al.(noun)1.describes an ignorant, uneducated, foolish individual regardless of race, color, religion, sexual orientation, etc.
2. endearing term between two or more individual to describe a friendship or bond.
1. Shut up, you nigger
2. Chris, you my nigga. - Urban Dictionary (definition #4)

Secondly, most people who call themselves 'black' are brown. Yes, BROWN. As in, what you get if you use the HTML color code 'brown' (produces #802A2A). I have met many brown people but only several people who were truly black - and they were Sudanese, not 'African-American' - which is also a BS term ("Oh, you have dual citizenship? May I see your passport?") - but I'll stop that rant right there.

Third, his statement was posed in the form of "A is B", and seemingly you took it upon yourself to extrapolate "All B's are A" from it, which is a logical fallacy. I would personally discount his implication that "All A's are B", but your objection appears to reject the notion that "Some B's are A", which is most definitely a true assertion which makes your outright rejection obviously incorrect.

Finally, what the frack does this have to do with online gaming? If I knew there were a bunch of brown-o-phobes in a particular server, I would join up with a decidedly over-tanned avatar just to laugh at their reactions when they get pwned by a pseudonigger. Idiots with ridiculous bigotries are fun to abuse :)

Who cares because THEY ACTUALLY PROTEST STUFF LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME. If anyting EA should be doing this more often because of all the abuse theyve put up from these bozos.

Actually its a really good example of Poe's law.

Well hey, at least they aren't the Film Actor's Guild.

... When Natalee Portman naked and petrified stopped being funny.

On a more serious note, If _I_ was developing a Game which involves huge real looking guns, I would have employees draw lots for who gets arested in a publicity stunt where we send him outside with it and call the police.

If the cops are particularly trigger happy (as In Jamaica) we would even chat with a specific police team to have them do the arrest without anyone getting hurt.

But that's just me thinking like a rapacious capitalist :)

>I think that's probably a sensible answer to my question, but I'm not terribly sure.
"Mana"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mana_point

>"Karma" (something different to what I've got on SlashDot, whatever that is?)?

In the context of games, karma could be the same as mana, but with the implication that it was divine in origin.

>"Shallow power curve" (it's hard to stall your car, but it doesn't accelerate terribly fast?) ?

Words and phrases have different meanings in various contexts. In the case of RPGs and video game RPGs (and other types of games), power curve refers to how powerful characters become over time. In D&D and the games inspired by it, there is a steep power curve. Meaning that a 10th level character is vastly more powerful than a 1st level character. PlanetSide has a shallow power curve. A first level character and a maxed out character have access to the same abilities and weapons. The high level character is more flexible.

>"Ganking" (is it legal, in private, between consenting adults? Or doe it require too many consenting adults to be private?)

Go go gadget google!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gank
http://www.wowwiki.com/Gank
http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/bart.gif

It generally means for a high powered character to kill a low powered character. Or for a group to kill a lone player. The problem lies in that the victim has no chance to win, survive or escape. It's a by product of steep power curves.

>Is that English, some arcane dialect of Albanian, or mispronounced Klingon?

Go fuck yourself. :)

> Sounds workable at a first glance, but unless you have dictats in the game code that only certain "[game]company code" can generate new currency, then you're going to end up back in the same problem of random players generating "money" (= fuel, or bread, or beer, or whatever you're token of value is). And you'll end up back into having 3rd-world geeks wage-slaving for first-world real currency to produce in-game value. Gold farming, again.

And thus my objection to player trade driven by scarcity. In PlanetSide there is no scarcity, there's no point in trading or hording. There's nothing worth buying with real world money, aside from saving some time by purchasing a high level character.

i'd like to see emergent behaviors if consumable resources were the defacto currency.

>Problem is ... if you want to have credibly real in-game physics, then you're going to have to have some things like mineable resources, or orbital hydroponics stations that take in raw material like water-CO2-ice and trace elements and sell higher value rocket fuel and food, only taking in-game effort and sunlight to do it. Which is territory for gold farming and such like evils again.

A higher level of abstraction might do it. Instead of have a hydroponics segment producing X units of food per Y unit of time, just say "You need to build another HP segment before you can add to this station." i build a mine on an asteroid and as long as the mine exists i can build unit types A, B and C. If i have 5 mines i can build units D, E and F.

Or just prevent the quantities of stuff extracted from being traded. My mine generates 500 Iron units per hour, but i can't trade them.

The former is more RTS, the latter would be EVE - player trade. While that would appeal to me, it might not appeal to power hungry nerds who just want to live out some sociopathic fantasy. Maybe the solution is for people to just decide what kind of game they want to play. If you play EVE, expect people to destroy your days of work, expect people to run off with your money. If not, play something else. *shrugs*

Do you need me to explain what it means to put a verb between asterisks, or can you look for it yourself?

Maybe he think we "Repugs" have been "teabagging" again? I'm not sure why that's supposed to be an insult? I love sucking women's teabags. (shrug).

Women don't have "teabags"".

1. To dunk ones scrotum into the open mouth of another person

2. 1) To insert one's nuts into the mouth of another (of either gender), usually while they are sleeping. Can either be a situation of laughter or of excruciating pain, depending on whether the victim is a biter.

2. 2) When after being brutally killed in Halo 2, your opponent squats repeatedly on you, imitating the act of dipping his balls on you. Rather humiliating, especially when there's more than one of them doing it.

2. 3) A small bag of dried herbs, that magically makes tea when you add water and give it some time to steep.

2. 4) The scrotum of a man who has had his testicles removed.

There's 66 different definitions in all, most having to do with men's "package" or "nutsack".

So you have this urge to tell us you enjoy sucking on "women's teabags"? Please don't share any pics, and we'll pretend it didn't happen.

I know you specified San Fran. and I fully agree with you on the boundaries of stupidity, but still wanted to point out that Liberal-ness within California is an Urban Legend both created and perpetuated by Hollywood and intensely fed upon by the political establishment and media.

Walk away from the media's (esp. Hollywood's) portrayal and look into the reality and you find a few impossibly small pockets of Liberal thinking surrounded by miles and miles of the Conservative "mind". It's not too different from what you might find in the Midwestern states or elsewhere. The main difference is not makeup of philosphy, but scale -- California is huge. Yes, more Liberals, but also more Conservatives.

Forget not that despite the Liberalness and Gayness our minds associate with California, that state is also home to the Republican's god, Ronald Reagan and the Gay Marriage Ban. Also, California ripped out one of their previously most beloved (by the election numbers) Liberal Governors just so the Governator could take a shot.

Just a few (deep) examples, but I hope enough to make the point that any assumptions we hold about Liberalness in California are surely not well founded.


-Matt

Indeed. Anyone remember a certain flaming turd called Hellgate: London, pushed out to fail by EA ? Forums rife with publisher censorship ? Hell, HGL CREATED the word "flagshipped" as synonymous with epic game management failure, much of which can be attributed to EA pushing to deliver before really ready. . .

Nerd Rage

India's not far form Africa. Maybe it wasn't "lost" at all. Maybe it was stolen by a MOON CRICKET! Like maybe the moon cricket thought it looked like a bicycle or something.

Please replace all references to "football" in the summary with "throwball".

Thank you for your patience.

Now a proper footy game for the Wii, that would be interesting. Maybe they could strap a Wiimote to each leg or something.

From your linked page:
Since the sport barely requires you to use your feet.

I wonder how do the players move, do they float or something?

Please replace all references to "football" in the summary with "throwball".

Thank you for your patience.

Now a proper footy game for the Wii, that would be interesting. Maybe they could strap a Wiimote to each leg or something.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rotskied

He reaches into the fanny pack on the front of his tool belt

It might be funnier than you think.

How is a gay guy going to help extend battery life? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=powertop

...you can't tell if it's there because it should be or because an electron just jumped the gap.

More of this. We should make tunneling the nerd version of this or this

implies poor hygiene and flakiness, untrustworthiness

also has class overtones

skank was (is) a generalized slang term for filth

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skank

a Fashion Institute of Technology student

Odd name, is it associated with Apple somehow?

Hrmm .. my first thought was that it was called "FIT" by the students, but then I decided it might have a funnier name:

FASHion InStitute of Technology

LOL. I think you mean "whittled" not "widdled". Whittling is shaving something down in size. You know, to make it widdler than a big one.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/widdle

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=widdle

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whittle

I'm sorry for being a grammar cop but I couldn't resist.

Common language and legal definitions are not the same. I totally agree that murder means something very specific in the courtroom.

Fortunately, Slashdot is not a courtroom.

I've also heard the term used lately referring to consumption of beverages and food. Good lucking finding that in the law books or an outdated dictionary.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/murder

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=murder

4. murder
What annoying, whiney, and probably unemployed vegetarians call eating meat or wearing fur.

You think you're safer by having it off 16 hours a day?

Dude, if I was having it off for 16 hours a day, I wouldn't give a flying **** about some shitty PC security!

Dang it, dude, you actually started an intelligent (I hope) discussion instead of 'loud capping' with something like:

"'High fat foods make you dumb': that explains how I end up on Slashdot after pizza for lunch."

...but in practice, this could have potential for serious disaster.

There are just some things that should NEVER be subject to change without extensive and careful review.

Case in point: MRCs or Maintenance Requirement Cards.

Basically, they're mini manuals on how to perform preventative maintenance on your gear, some of which can be outrageously deadly if you don't follow the instructions to the exact letter. You really wouldn't believe how much stuff on a ship gets the label "MANKILLER", and I've no doubt the Army is little different, quite probably much worse. MRC cards have, quite literally in many cases, been written with the blood of those who discovered the "wrong way" to perform maintenance or took a "shortcut".

Army field manuals are much like MRC cards; they've been written either by those who've shed the blood, or by those who had to mop up the mess from those who didn't survive. They might look nice and boring in the way they read, but that dry tone of the manuals carries many, many lives behind it.

I hope these edits are subject to extensive review, and won't just pop up for everyone to follow with a click of a mouse? Otherwise, someone might try to get their lulz, and we might see subjects like...

Maintenance Requirement for the M33A1/M59 High Explosive Fragmentation Grenade

Home of the famous 'Tute Screw.

Winter in Troy is cold.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=This

The problem with one site charging an access fee and another not charging is that no one will pay when they can get something similar for free. Unless more sites or at least a critical mass work together, any charging plans won't work. The fact that everyone knows this purposed charging model won't work by itself indicates to me that there is more than likely some collusion going on with other major news players and we will hear similar announcements from others soon as well....

Collusion would not surprise me after all this is Murdoch we're talking about here. (ie. The Anti-Christ)

He is not is dumb and he has some the smartest people in the media business advising him.

This really sounds like Murdoch is trying to be a "Big Swinging Dick"
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=big%20swinging%20dick

i.e so powerful that they decide what the market will do.

...and does anybody think these kids don't already know all the dirty words anyway?

Well, I for one have my doubts that even by the age of 10, any kid knows all the dirty words. Especially considering how quickly new dirty words (or new dirty meanings for old words) are being coined in English these days.

Visit urbandictionary.com, for example, and see how many of the definitions you or your child know before reading them there.

Keeping up with the latest fashions in dirty words is more than a full-time job.

Nothing prevents, in principle, someone from securing the gorilla's cooperation.

Rule 34? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rule%2034

Every time I see "Segway", I don't see the word "Segway", I see the word "Smegway". Only because a smeghead would buy one of those.

Find me a case anywhere in the the first world where any of that has ever happened.

Hmm, how about every country in the first world that has outlawed recreational drugs? How about the 'sin taxes' that are imposed on booze and tobacco to make them more expensive? How about the fact that victimless crimes like prostitution are illegal in most jurisdictions? How about the fact that most terminally ill patients can't choose to end their own lives in most of the first world?

You also clearly have no idea what it means when hospitals refuse treatment based on inability to pay. Have fun dying unconscious in the ER because you were in an accident and no-one knows who you are or where your insurance card is.

You also clearly have no idea that charitable hospitals exist with the specific mandate to take in people who can't pay.

Or are you planning on getting yourself chipped with credit rating and insurance info? Is that the free conservative utopia you imagine? A society in which the EMTs first action is to scan a potential patient for their income and social status?

They already do that. Ever heard of a wallet biopsy? And no, I don't need myself chipped. There's these amazing technological devices called wallets that you can carry around. You can even put your drivers license and insurance card in them if you so choose.....

And so, with that, the might Woosh bird takes flight.

Kool-aid. He drank the Microsoft kool-aid.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=drink+the+kool-aid

Bug juice has a proud military history and is Disney approved.

Agree with parent.

If anything, based on the statements presented, I'd argue that the disparity in females is widening between the attractive and heifer. Attractive women, of course, can attract more males. There's a certain set of unattractive women who are particularly successful in attracting males by merely going out of their way to "get what they can." There are also a fair number of males out there merely trying to accomplish the same thing, and will lower their standards to accomplish that too.

Ever hear of a slump buster?