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Don't correct someone's usage of a word if you yourself are not knowledgeable about the word. OP used the word correctly in the correct context.

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

automagical is defined as:

Etymology
Blend of automatic and magical

Adjective
automagical (comparative more automagical, superlative most automagical)
      1. Automatic, but with an apparent element of stage magic. Commonly used in computer and other technology fields, referring to complex technical processes hidden from the view of users or operators. Includes a connotation of specialness and often implies pride on the part of the process creator (especially when the person using the word is the process creator). Sometimes, also used in sarcastic way, ironically implying an impossible process.

The more you know...

I think he was using the other definition of remotely, which is admittedly confusing in that context.

[...]their sales would plummet because of rampart copying.

THE FIENDS! copying our defensive structures? No wonder the people at EA are so upset!

So why didn't you? You gave a different saying, left off the cedilla in ça, and misspelled "pareil". $RANDOMLUSER got it right, except he had to leave off the last word because it wouldn't fit in the Subject line. The full saying is, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"

wiktionary.org, and therefore google's "Define" function have it.

google's search

Wiktionary

A long-standing rule of thumb for "recession" is that it is defined as contraction in the GDP for at least two consecutive quarters (six months).

True. This is a common rule of thumb regarding recessions.

By that long-accepted definition of recession, the US is not even yet in a recession.

A rule of thumb is not a definition. It is a simple, easy-to-apply approximate guideline.

The US GDP decreased for the first time in recent history only in the third (most recent) quarter, by 0.3%.

If you define "recent history" particularly narrowly, that is as "history starting with Jan. 1, 2008", this is approximately true (it actually didn't decrease by 0.3%, it decreased at a 0.5% seasonally adjusted, annualized rate, that was initially announced as a 0.3% seasonally adjusted, annualized rate prior to revision; similarly, the 2.8% growth in Q2 2008 is a 2.8% seasonally adjusted, annualized rate, not a 2.8% increase in Q2 GDP over Q1 GDP.) But if the definition of recent extends beyond Jan. 1, 2008, then you should note that Q4 2007 saw GDP decline at a 0.2% seasonally adjusted, annualized rate (and, for completeness, Q1 2008 saw a GDP increase at a 0.9% seasonally adjusted, annualized rate.)

While the two-consecutive quarter GDP decline rule of thumb is decent as rules of thumb go, it does not reflect a "definition" of a recession so much as describes circumstances that will almost always indicate a recession, and which will usually, but not always, occur in a recession.

NBER, whose pronouncements are the official definition of recession in the US, defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other indicators" that "begins when the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends when the economy reaches its trough". They look at more than just the GDP reports from the BEA in making this determination (including employment, which has declined every month from December 2007, and Gross Domestic Income, a different measure that measures a quantity that by definition should be identical to the GDP, but because measurements of both are imperfect, varies from the measured GDP -- and this GDI declined in Q4 '07, Q1 '08, and Q3 '08.) From the official announcement of the December 2007 peak:

Because a recession is a broad contraction of the economy, not confined to one sector, the committee emphasizes economy-wide measures of economic activity. The committee believes that domestic production and employment are the primary conceptual measures of economic activity.

The committee views the payroll employment measure, which is based on a large survey of employers, as the most reliable comprehensive estimate of employment. This series reached a peak in December 2007 and has declined every month since then.

The committee believes that the two most reliable comprehensive estimates of aggregate domestic production are normally the quarterly estimate of real Gross Domestic Product and the quarterly estimate of real Gross Domestic Income, both produced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In concept, the two should be the same, because sales of products generate income for producers and workers equal to the value of the sales. However, because the measurement on the product and income sides proceeds somewhat independently, the two actual measures differ by a statistical discrepancy. The product-side estimates fell slightly in 2007Q4, rose slightly in 2008Q1, rose again in 2008Q2, and fell slightly in 2008Q3. The income-side estimates reached their peak in 2007Q3, fell slightly in 2007Q4 and 2008Q1, rose slightly in 2008Q2 to a level below its

I know you were joking but it seems a lot of people actually think "centi-" is used incorrectly here. It is perfectly legitimate to use the prefix "centi-" to mean "one hundred", as in "centipede" (one hundred feet). In the context of SI, then yes, it specifically means "one-hundredth" but outside that context, the prefix itself means either "one hundred" or "one-hundredth". The More You Know!

is that a slur against atheists, or are you really not clear on that point?

an autotheist is someone who thinks that they are a god, where an atheist thinks there are no gods, or has no belief in gods. kind of a big difference there. i would assert that there are very few sane autotheists.

is that a slur against atheists, or are you really not clear on that point?

an autotheist is someone who thinks that they are a god, where an atheist thinks there are no gods, or has no belief in gods. kind of a big difference there. i would assert that there are very few sane autotheists.

At least you didn't say "Wallah!", anyway.

One quadrillion bytes, or 1 million gigabytes. How big are the fields being sorted. Is it an exchange sort or a reference sort?

It's a bubble sort.

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

yes, it is.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crwth. And I've heard of the word before (in relation to other word puzzles), so I'm pretty sure it isn't someone just lying in Wiktionary this time.

W3C standards are never meant to obviate anything. Rather the guiding principle is to extend the framework in any direction people want to go, without ever making earlier web documents inaccessible.

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

Flash and Silverlight are not inherently opposed to web extensibilty, they simply can be misused that way. As can HTML, demonstrated by the misuse of table tags for page layout.

There's a Finnish word for people like you that can't quite be translated: uusavuton

click here

Any decent media player (e.g. mplayer) supports h.264.

Selfishness, by definition, is pursuing your own happiness to ends which are a detriment of others.

Bullshit. That's honestly the stupidest fucking thing I've heard in months. Show me the definition of "selfish" that requires you to do harm to other people.

It's not in the definition Merriam Webster uses. And it's not in Wiktionary's definition. And it's not in the definition at reference.com.

Seriously, how do you people come up with this bullshit? Fucking idiots.

If you're doing something to make yourself happy, you're being selfish. Whether it's altruistic or not.

See 3.
See 1.
See 1.
See 2.

Stop trying to be pedantic. It's obnoxious when you're right, and you're not anyway.

"America" has been an acceptable shortened name for "The United States of America" for well over 200 years. On the other hand, I've never heard anyone collectively refer to North America and South America as "America", even though this too would probably be correct.

Words can have more than one meaning. Would you make the same argument about Australia?

the correct response is neither yes or no.

Thank you, Captain Obvious!

I was going for the synecdochal aspect myself.

Do you mean synecdochical? http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/synecdochical

Britain just has/had a different alphabet song, though really Sesame Street has been shown on English TV for so long now (since 1969) the american one has long since "won". You just learn the american song says "zee" but the correct name is "zed", and learn to blame the "dumb americans", too (gotta start indoctrinating kids with prejudices early, you know!)

Note that and (&) used to be the last "letter" of the British English alphabet, so the old english alphabet song used to end "and per se and" (not "zee"), which was then corrupted into "ampersand" ...and then dropped from the alphabet: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ampersand

circumvention: "to avoid or get around something; to bypass" http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/circumvent

Yes, it's circumventing EA's production error. That's why they call it a "work-around". But it isn't circumventing a copy protection meaure because you're the rightful owner of the game and are using the game in an acceptable way.

Would it be bypassing a security measure to forget the last character of your bank login password and then guess the last character?

Would it be breaking and entering if you locked yourself out of your residence and found an open window to get through?

When Obama fails to dish out the welfare, what are they going to say now? "Sell-out?" (maybe...)

Word in the hood is the term is oreo

Without limit; forever, or until further notice; not definite.

Sarcasm: Look it up.

Beg the question. Note definition 2.

Now fuck off. Your pedantic correction has been duly noted and I really don't care. I'm a pedant myself and you're pushing it with this one. I'll give you the correctness for correctness' sake, now just bugger off. You know what I meant.

Clicko probably. :P

The point is mute

Moot.

I think what your trying to say

That's "you're" or "you are", not "your".

They don't do mondain

OK, that had me scratching my head, since I couldn't quite figure what an evil wizard had to do with anything. Maybe you meant mundane?

When I watched the add

That'd be "ad", or "advertisement", not "add" as in "addition".

HTH. HAND.

Correction: the guy that steals your girlfriend is the git. Granted, this being /. the point is somewhat moot.

Perhaps what you really want to know is how Wiktionary defines truth.

Hmmm. Seems to be an anglicization of amortiguar. Verbogeny in action.

That's a different way of defining atheism, both are valid.

This is offtopic hardcore, but you're wrong.

The greek word for god "theos" is written with a theta and pronounced with a theta, not a delta, always has been this way. Thus theist is right, and deism is, well, something else entirely.

Etymologically, deism isn't related to theos at all, it's root is the latin word deus, see here. Deus in turn stems from the greek Zeus, the king of the gods.

I'm not sure if such a confusion exists, since any greek word with a delta that I can currently think of, has kept the D in it's latin form, e.g. dermatology, daedalus, delphi, dynamic, et cetera.

The privative alpha ('a-') has nothing to do with 'anti', it's a negating prefix that goes all the way back to Proto-Indo-European. It is a cognate of 'un-' and 'in-', though.

Though apparently this isn't the point of the discussion at hand.

Thanks for the informative clarification, it makes my original point stronger.

Although I have always known "something" about the middle ages I'm certainly no historian, I became interested in English history after going "back home" a few years ago. Found out my ancestors (family name anyway) contributed 22 Viking boats to William's invasion and likely fought beside him. William's patronage set the family up as key players in English politics for the next 400yrs.

Contrary to Mel Gibson it was Roger Mortimer who was bonking Queen Isabella not William Wallace. I have my own pet theory that the British colloquialisim "a right royal rogering" was inspired by one of my ancestors (the 1st Earl of March), sticking a red hot poker up king Henry II's arse. The other lords thought he went a bit too far, so (as with Braveheart), they stuck his head on a pike, quarted him, and spread the bits around the country.

OK, I appreciate all that info you posted and probably wouldn't have mentioned this were it not that your correction missed it too, but as someone who appreciates someone pointing it out to me, let me pass on this favor to someone obviously bright enough to make use of it.

Think allot > allotment. "Allot" has its roots in the way possibly contested assignments (of land, jobs, whatever) were often distributed "in times of lore" and occasionally still are, using the process of drawing lots http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawing_of_lots. Today, it has a broader meaning of distribution in general, whether by random means or not.

"A lot" (two words) is a description of degree, meaning "very much", "a great deal". Even in the two-word form, however, until recently it was considered a colloquialism, unfit for formal use, altho (deliberate (mis)spelling) modern dictionaries seem to omit that, meaning it has graduated to being permissible in formal use only in the last few years. Taking its place has been the single-word form, "alot", which still causes many to shudder and can't be found in many dictionaries, but has come into increasingly common informal usage. Wictionary has this to say about the single-word-form "alot": "When it appears intentionally in print, it is generally either representing the original spelling in a work quoted, or is an attempt by the author to convey poor education in the character using it." Wictionary has more on the word, here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alot.

From personal observation, "a lot" of the misuse of "allot" came about due to spell checkers flagging "alot", dumbly suggesting "allot" but failing to suggest "a lot", either because it's two words or because the term has only recently been accepted for formal use and thus didn't appear. I know this was the case for my personal misuse, as I never /did/ think "allot" looked right, but sometimes accepted it as the only plausible suggestion, without bothering to look it up. Only after seeing a reply such as this one did I realize my error and correct my ways. Fortunately or unfortunately, it also sensitized me to the word, such that seeing either "allot" used improperly, or "alot" used at all, causes me to shudder.

So obviously, your usage "no allot" (I have a hard time writing it even quoting, now, as my fingers just want to do the right thing! ) was doubly wrong, thus the AC's WTF which I'm sure a lot of others thought as well. Then you corrected the no > know, but /still/ skipped the allot > "a lot", while providing a wealth of very interesting information in the same post so obviously you're intelligent enough, which /must/ mean you weren't aware of the problem at all, thus this post, hoping to correct that oversight. As I said, I'm simply passing on the favor, as I learned about the difference myself from just such a post.

Not everyone spells like an American.

Perl is a typical example of a jack of all trades, master of none

The full quote being:

"Jack of all trades, master of none, though ofttimes better than master of one." ref

Although I get what you mean. The trouble is that the thing I love about Perl - its expressiveness - is also its biggest weakness. In the hands of an inexperienced programmer Perl can be a nightmare. But in the hands of a master, a Perl solution to a problem can be brief and beautiful

quel surprise?

It's actually "quelle surprise".

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

I'm guessing that's a snide remark on my spelling..

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

is how the English spell it.. ya know, the namesake of the language?

It's also how we spell it here in Australia.

So you came up with a different list than the wikipedia entry, and somehow yours is more authoritative?

My list isn't entirely different, its a subset. I wasn't trying to come up with a new list, just make the one he used better. I don't believe I tried to sell it as "authoratative" either. That's what YMMV is there for. You could probably do exactly what I did and come up with a similar but different subset. Your list would almost certianly be better than the original too.

The reasons I gave for leaving people off actually apply to everyone you mentioned. For example, I only know Bill Joy's name because of Sun. Perhaps you are different, but I suspect some of the names I know you don't, and the effect would even out.

A special note about Jay Miner: it actually did pain me to not throw him on there. He's on my personal heroes list right under Alan Turing (how in the Hell is he not on that page?) However, then it wouldn't have been a subset. As you correctly pointed out, I'm not exactly proving anything by just throwing up a list made up entirely out of my own head. Perhaps the correct way to solve that problem is to add what we consider the "missing names" to the original wiki page, no?

You might want to check the accuracy of that statement. It has most certainly not been proved to be wrong. It has been proven to be extremely slightly inaccurate in a few cases.

Your statement here is dishonest, depending on the sensitivity and nature of an experiment then Newtonian Mechanics is completely and utterly bogus. In order to apply Newton's Laws you MUST have an inertial reference frame. Since inertial reference frames do not exist in reality, Newton's Laws are ALWAYS an approximation. So, depending on how poor that approximation is then your answer using Newton's Laws will be more wrong. This problem is not just in "fringe" cases of physics, every day phenomena do not follow Newton's laws. A simple example of this problem is the Coriolis Effect (the deflection of objects due to a rotating reference frame), which causes projectiles fired from gunships to be deflected and miss their intended target (unless the gunner compensates for this effect).

(you might say that the old dogma is a 99,99999999999999% correct simplification of the new dogma)

You are misusing the term "dogma", dogma applies to a belief in the purest sense (without proof). Unfortunately, in English we do not have a separate word for "belief with proof" so instead we normally say that we "know this to be true with a high degree of certainty." If we were German we would use the word "kennen", which has the appropriate meaning but is normally translated to English simply as "to know."

The problem is, the same goes for moral laws.

Go take some philosophy classes, especially those that concentrate on ethics. Ethical systems derived from scientific principles are VERY different from ethical systems derived from dogmatic beliefs.

You're not one of these people who gets upset about the word television, are you?

yeah... you're totally right http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/DRM

By enlarge peoples usage habits are exactly that, habits.

Did you mean "By and large"?

You really need to break that habit of reading your spam emails!

Okay, I'll bite. Here's what I think is a fair definition of socialism:

Socialism: Any of various political philosophies that support social and economic equality, collective decision-making and public control of productive capital and natural resources.

There are a number of examples of socialism in Obama's Blueprint For Change (PDF). Many of them are forced social equality through new and/or expanded government programs that will require additional funding (read: more taxation), but a number also expand government control over how private businesses are ran.

If you want specifics, some of my favorite examples are: Universal Healthcare (Section 1:6 and 1:7), More government child care (Section 1:15 among others), Free community college for everyone (Section 1:20), and goverment deciding the direction of technology and creating jobs to pursue that technology (Section 1:24). There are other examples.

And why not have this type of change, you ask?

Because by stealing money from those who work hard to earn it, the government is infringing on their freedom and liberties. They are no longer a soverign individual entitled to the fruits of their labor and instead are owned by government. Further, creating government programs in the name of good will only increases dependency on the system rather than building and fostering growth and personal responsibility.

But as someone else has pointed out, this isn't that much different from the current administration's course of action. Democrats and (today's) Republicans are both pushing headlong in the same direction of larger federal government and socialism. I think the Democrats however, and in particular Obama, are in a slightly bigger hurry to get there.

That's why I'll be voting 3rd party again. Some would say it may not make a difference, but at least I won't be responsible for voting away the fundamentals of what (used to) make this country great.

Your words, not those of Prof. Reiss, I take it. And a common theme among the disciples of Dawkins. But that is not essentially what faith means, and I don't see how someone who says so can even have begun to engage with religious thought in any significant way.

I did say I was paraphrasing ;)

Faith: Mental acceptance of and confidence in a claim as truth without proof supporting the claim.

How exactly is that radically different from "taking someone's word for it"?

You may interpret "faith in God" to imply that one believes in the bible and strives to follow the ideas expressed in it, but I'm talking about the word "faith", not "what having faith in a particular religious belief further implies".

controversy (plural controversies):
1. A debate, discussion of opposing opinions;