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First implies an order.

First can also imply pre-emption. A nuclear first strike, for example, is intended to knock out the other guy's arsenal so that there is no counter, no second attack.

First can mean "before some other thing, event, etc.: If you're going, phone first." Or "[b]efore or above all others in time, order, rank, or importance: arrived first; forgot to light the oven first.". Or "[b]efore anything else; firstly. Clean the sink first, before you even think of starting to cook..

"Han shot first" is quite grammatically correct.

It is partially true that both parties represent corporate entities. The primary reason for this is that too many people do not actually make an effort to change that. They do not bother voting in primaries. They do not become active in the local party and try to direct it. On top of that, too many people who do not become active, view those who do become active and are not doing so in service of corporate interests as "whack jobs".

I agree that much of our citizenry is uninvolved in the political process. This is quite unfortunate. However, I don't know anyone who considers those who do get involved in support of the public good (or at least what they consider to be the public good) rather than special interests to be, as you put it, "whack jobs."

Many of the people I know who remain uninvolved in the political process do so because they are suspicious of and cynical about it. Often, this is because they feel that they do not have a voice, or that their voice is drowned out by the vast sums of money pumped into the political process by monied (often, but not always, corporate) interests.

Changing the political climate is work, if you are not willing to do the work, do not be surprised that politics is controlled by those who are. Of course, the best way to reduce corporate influence in politics is to reduce the return on investment that corporations receive by being active in politics. If we were to reduce the amount which government at various levels controls business activity, we would reduce the amount of value corporations receive from investing in politics.

I agree with your assessment of the lack of political involvement. However, I think limiting the influence of monied interests by removing the need for vast sums of money to run elections would have a much more salutary effect.

IMHO, there are many who work very hard to get elected to office in the hopes of making our government (at all levels) better and more responsive to the needs of the citizens they serve. The problem is that in our current environment, generally the candidate who has the most money wins. The need for huge sums of money, in many (if not most) cases, forces candidates to court monied interests to get elected. Since TAANSTAAFL, those monied interests expect results for their money.

This gives much bigger voice to monied interests. If we remove money as an incentive for candidates, we will get candidates who are not beholden to the monied interests that corrupt our political system. If anyone, regardless of their economic status or that of their supporters could compete, we would have a more robust political debate and, as a result, better government.

What is more, I believe we would find that more people would engage in the political process if they felt that elected representatives were responsible to their constituents rather than monied interests.

Which is why I take significant issue with the idea that "money is speech" in the political process. It's no secret (cf. K Street lobbyists, PACs, etc.) that those who make sizable campaign contributions or spend money (cf. Citizen's United v. FEC) on behalf of candidates have significantly more access and influence with elected officials. Eliminate the need for campaign "war chests" and you eliminate the *legal* influence of the monied interests.

Yes. I am advocating full public financing of election campaigns at all levels of government, with a requirement that political advertising time be *given* equally to all candidates by licensed media outlets.

When everyone can, based on their ideas, drive and intellectual rigor, compete on equal terms, we will get a broader political debate, a better class of candidates and, I believe, a government focused on serving the citizens in their constituencies.

Sadly, our elected officials benefit greatly from the current system, and even those who would like to change it

I am German, so please excuse me, if my English isn't that good. There once was a study in Germany, what effect almost exclusively lower case in german texts would have. The result was, that texts are better understandable with nouns written with an upper case first letter. They serve as anchors, especially, when reading fast. Furthermore, in English it is common, that the same word is used as a verb and a noun. This actually would be a damn good reason to write nouns with an upper case first letter. When you skim through an English text, and notice, for example, the word "jump", you don't even know, if it is the verb or the noun. This can also be a source of ambiguity. Another big source of ambiguity is the usage of "it" to refer to almost everything, because most words don't have a grammatical gender. You have to be aware of that, when you are creating relative sentences in English. Even people are not always gendered in English. Is the tennis player female or male? You often have to read a fair bit into a text, until he/she (see?) is referenced as "her" or "him". I have seen some discussions between native English speakers on the internet, were someone wrote sth. like "Ah, so the teacher was your mother!" or "I thought, the cat was chasing the car, not the dog." Oh, this last example has another ambiguity. I should write "I thought, the cat, not the dog, was chasing the car". This ambiguity does not occur in German because articles are declined dependent on the gender and relation. http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/... To put it in a nutshell, it seems logical, that speed reading is especially hard in English. The more possible ambiguities you have, the more likely you will have to stop and think about, what is really meant.

Ancient Greek:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ptero-
HTH,
HAND

According to sushi's etymology, its meaning has evolved from "rice fermented with raw fish" to "raw fish and rice flavored with rice vinegar." So yes, sushi kinda means raw fish.

Incorrect. Look at the very definition of the word: Wikipedia: "Nerd is a derogatory term for a person who is intellectually knowledgeable or bright, but socially inept." I way say "intellectually knowledgable" equates to "intellectual". From Wiktionary: "(slang, sometimes derogatory) A person who is intellectual but generally introverted." Again, intellectual.

If you don't think of yourself as an intellectual, then it is quite impossible to think of yourself as a "nerd", by the very definition of the word. This is a site for "nerds". It's right there at the top of the main page.

Moped Jesus is pissed.

If communion wine is really his blood, he must have been wasted 24/7.

Oh yeah, Jesus was a partying kind of guy. If there was food or drink, he was there. Jesus knew how to have fun, without selling his soul (literally). Heck, his very first documented miracle was turning water into wine. Thats gotta say something for the guy.

Moped Jesus is pissed.

If communion wine is really his blood, he must have been wasted 24/7.

Does 'gigafactory' mean 10^9 (or even 2^30) individual factories?

No, it simply means a giant factory. As opposed to your ordinary megafactory, which is just a large factory.

Does 'gigafactory' mean 10^9 (or even 2^30) individual factories?

No, it simply means a giant factory. As opposed to your ordinary megafactory, which is just a large factory.

This event demonstrates the problem with giving your company a boastful name.

Perhaps they should have named the company kapakahi instead.

>> Fruit Flies, Fighter Jets Use Similar Evasive Tactics When Attacked
> I've never seen a fighter jet flap it's wings like that...

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tactics you're welcome.

No. She didn't win a lawsuit.

She filed a lawsuit, "a case where two or more people disagree and one or more of the parties take the case to a court for resolution", an "attempt to gain an end by legal process; a process instituted in a court of law for the recovery of a right or claim". She got what she wanted. How is that not winning a lawsuit?

The actual Kozinski ruling suggests that actors HAVE a copyright in the final work despite decades of copyright law to the contrary.

That's sensible. A film actor is a co-creator of a work; if musicians covering a song have a copyright interest in a sound recording, it is inconsistent for film actors playing a scripted role to not have a copyright interest in a video recording.

This could finally establish the principle that people have a copyright interest in photographs of them in any but the most mundane situations; that's a principle that could resolve issues around "revenge porn" and around people getting upset around photos of them being posted on social media without their consent (see the hostility around Google Glass).

No. She didn't win a lawsuit.

She filed a lawsuit, "a case where two or more people disagree and one or more of the parties take the case to a court for resolution", an "attempt to gain an end by legal process; a process instituted in a court of law for the recovery of a right or claim". She got what she wanted. How is that not winning a lawsuit?

The actual Kozinski ruling suggests that actors HAVE a copyright in the final work despite decades of copyright law to the contrary.

That's sensible. A film actor is a co-creator of a work; if musicians covering a song have a copyright interest in a sound recording, it is inconsistent for film actors playing a scripted role to not have a copyright interest in a video recording.

This could finally establish the principle that people have a copyright interest in photographs of them in any but the most mundane situations; that's a principle that could resolve issues around "revenge porn" and around people getting upset around photos of them being posted on social media without their consent (see the hostility around Google Glass).

Note that when you talk about mandatory education, you are talking about giving the state power to force individuals to be influenced by some scholars rather than others, and the criteria to prefer those scholars over others is because you think they are right because they sounded more convicing to you. I think you are a bit too fast, and have too little faith in the power of truth and goodness. When the goal is to achieve success, truth and goodness will naturally beat the other options without need of political interference, as they are labels applied to advantageous concepts. When you suggest to force your views onto society, is because you are subsconsciously afraid that your views aren't good enough to persuade others without the help of an absolute authority.

Let me try to explain to you why God always was and always will be. Take a look at checkers. There's a concept sciencists call Problem space that includes all initial, final and intermediate states of checkers. The problem space of Checkers contains everything that can happen in a game of checkers. However, who created it? It probably always existed, it just was made relevant as soon as the creator of checkers picked those rules and initial state. Any person picking the exact same rules and initial state will find out the exact same problem space, even though exploring it might take long, for some games longer than the age of the universe.
Now, imagine the Christian God as the sum of all the rules, elements, and states of the entire universe, and you'll understand better why it is one, infinite, eternal, immutable, omnipotent, and the ultimate judge of actions. It also explains how can you have "free will" in an universe in an entirely determined universe. Like a checker player, you can use your power during your turn to pick one board state over another, however the resulting state will inevitably belong to the same problem space, which has existed since the beginning, and which also has perfectly laid out every possible state(including those out of our reach).

Whoosh.

“The motherboard, battery board, and display adapter board are designs from whole cloth,” Huang told us. “Every trace on those PCBs was placed by my hand.”

Let us hope he means the third definition rather than the second from http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/...

2. (figuratively, used attributively or preceded by various prepositions) The fictitious material from which complete fabrications, lies with no basis in truth, are made.

3. Something made completely new, with no history, and not based on anything else.

I pretty sure that you need to describe how you separate the cotton fibers. If someone can figure out a new way to do it, they can make their own machine without infringing you patents. They could even patent their own method.

Yes and no... I have to describe one method of separating the fibers to meet the requirements of 35 USC 112, but I can claim the general process of separating them, if I'm the first person to do so and it wasn't obvious (and before you object that of course, it's obvious, I agree - but we're talking about whether a process should be rejected as not directed to patent eligible subject matter, regardless of whether it's new or nonobvious, but simply because it's really broad).
Now, yes, you can patent your own specific method for separating fibers as an improvement on my general invention. But you can't practice it without infringing my patent. My patent is what's referred to as a "blocking" patent. Of course, I can't practice your method without infringing your patent. This is a good thing, though, as it leads to us both cross-licensing each other's patents.

That is the basic problem we have with how software patents work in the real world. They describe the idea, not the actual implementation. So anyone else who does rubber banding in the UI will infringe no matter how they implement it.

And, like I said, if no one had ever done rubber banding before and it wasn't obvious to do so, then why is that an issue? If you invent a new revolutionary field of technology (not that I'm claiming rubber banding qualifies, but stick with me), why shouldn't you get a patent covering the entire field, generally? Why should you be limited to just one part of it, if you invented the entire thing and it wasn't obvious?

I think the real issue here is that we intuitively feel that rubber banding is a stupid and obvious UI element and we would love to find prior art to invalidate the patent... but that takes effort and time, and it's much easier to simply say "UI interfaces aren't patentable". But that's not how the law should work, any more than we should just be able to say "that guy looks guilty, so let's not bother with a trial and evidence, because that takes time and effort."

English has many idioms that refer to our common culturall heritage, but Chinese has far more. You can get by in English without studying idioms specifically. In Chinese, there is no way. You have to learn them or you will fail to comprehend almost every conversation.

Bingo. For an example going in the other direction, I had to explain "cross the Rubicon" to my wife just yesterday, in fact. (Her English is good, but it's mostly everyday/around-the-house English with a big dollop of technical stuff relating to her job as a mechanical engineer--and she's had few opportunities to read much literature. I'm trying to get her started on The Hobbit and then maybe after that something from Jonathan Swift or Mark Twain.)

In any event, I always "got" the premise of that episode, but I don't believe that I really *appreciated* Darmok until I started learning chengyu. And as soon as I started learning some of them, it wasn't long before I thought of it.

(And, since you asked--No, *this* wife sounds *nothing* like Kate Mulgrew, thank $_DEITY_OR_DEITIES_.)

Viola? I think you meant "voila"

...although I'd say the devs were on something stronger than antidepressants.

All kidding aside, Win8 does seem to be a product of "Who cares what our customers want, we'll do it our way and they can just suck it", which pretty much defines comfortable complacency.

Amusingly when Apple does it, most of their users either don't complain about it, or actually appreciate it.
Hmm - maybe execution and taste matter?

Meaning - Microsoft probably not only ignored it's users, it likely ignored it's own influential employees that were critical of it (especially those who weren't vocal because it would be a CLM). That's poor taste.

According to Wiktionary: Pot as in container most likely comes from a Proto-Indo-European word reconstructed as *budnos. Pot as in cannabis appears to come from a contraction of Spanish potación de guaya, literally "drink of grief", meaning a drink made with marijuana buds in wine.

In Australia, at least as far I know, "punter" is slang for a customer (or likely customer) of a pub or betting place, e.g. "I watched the footy game with all the other punters", "I took a punt on the horses today". More broadly, also sometimes used as a substitute for "average joe" or "working class".

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/... lists some additional meanings. Seems to be of UK origin.

See the third defintion.

For all intensive purposes premium android is as removed from white label android as it is from kindle.

A link for you: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki...

Coulda is slang; -'ve is far from

could've
've

True story. A coworker bought a scissors and couldn't get it open without a scissors, but there wasn't a scissors in the office which is why he bought one.

Scissors is an interesting word. Apparently derived from the latin word for chisel => a pair of chisels.

Wikipedia:

The noun "scissors" is treated as a plural noun, and therefore takes a plural verb ("these scissors are"). Alternatively, it is also referred to as "a pair of scissors". In American English, "a pair" is singular and therefore takes a singular verb ("this pair of scissors is"). In British English, "a pair" does not take the singular ("this pair of scissors are"). The word shears is used to describe similar instruments that are larger in size and for heavier cutting. Opinions vary geographically as to the size at which 'scissors' become 'shears', but this is often at between six to eight inches (about 15 to 20 cm) in length.

And yet, Wiktionary says

(countable, plural in form, usually with a plural verb) A tool used for cutting thin material, consisting of two crossing blades attached at a pivot point in such a way that the blades slide across each other when the handles are closed.
Those scissors are sharp. (indicating singular or plural scissors)
That scissors is sharp. (less commonly to indicate singular scissors)
Scissors are used to cut the flowers.
Use a scissors to cut them if you don't have proper shears.

"tired app icon grid of Android and iOS"

Yeah, it's so tired from ButtonFly days that it stuck around. That kind of tired? Or the kind of tired something gets when it ain't broke?

Why should they make promises to a suspect of a crime?

Why are you concern trolling?

In what possible way is this concern trolling? Concern trolling is when you pretend to have a group's interests at heart, but then recommend that some beneficial action shouldn't be taken out of "concern" for some imagined and unlikely consequence: e.g. "abortion really should be legal in all cases, but because no medical procedure is 100% safe, we have to ban it in all cases to protect women."

Pointing out that cops never make promises to suspects, nor are they ever required to? No.

Sweden uses pretrial detention and holding suspects incommunicado to such an extent that it was heavily criticized by the UN Committee Against Torture. Because Sweden has a penchant for handing people over to the U.S. who are then sent overseas to be tortured.

Even if true (and frankly, the "they have a penchant for something" is such a weaselly statement that you could never show it was true), that still doesn't address why you think Sweden would make promises to Assange. In fact, if all of that was true, then you're arguing that Sweden is such an evil country that they'd never make the promises you're claiming they should make. In which case, their refusal to make those promises certainly doesn't mean they're lying, as the GP suggested.

Because, if this is about rape allegations, there is no excuse whatsoever for limiting it to rape allegations and promising not to hand Assange over to the U.S.

Except for the fact that (i) they have no power to make that promise, as I pointed out in my other reply to you; and (ii) as you noted above, Sweden never would make that promise, under any circumstances. Therefore, their refusal to make that promise doesn't somehow make this not about rape allegations.

One of the downsides of above-average intelligence is a propensity to discount contributions and/or suggestions from those cerebrally challenged.

The truth is, you can learn something from everyone, and an expert in a specific field with an IQ approaching his body temperature knows some stuff that you do not.

Yes, so long as that temperature is measured on the Kelvin scale.

The truth is, you can learn something from everyone, and an expert in a specific field with an IQ approaching his body temperature knows some stuff that you do not.

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

nobis
        for us, to us; dative plural of ego

Wiktionary disagrees with your suggestion in the terminology.

Fixed.

By the way, to understand legal terms, you might try a legal dictionary. Perhpas this one, if you insist on only using stuff that's online and free: thelawdictionary.org/prosecution/

Because ones you pay for are better. That is why government is so expensive.

Wiktionary disagrees with your suggestion in the terminology.

Fixed.

By the way, to understand legal terms, you might try a legal dictionary. Perhpas this one, if you insist on only using stuff that's online and free: thelawdictionary.org/prosecution/

Wiktionary disagrees with your suggestion in the terminology. But, it's not like anyone really gives a shit about this pedantry.

I agree about Waze. I got it as an alternative to Google and really liked it... then Google snarfed it up. (I am pretty sure "snarf" is the right word.)

"snarf" is a perfectly cromulent word.

To the editors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/...

It is either "Tesla is..." or "Teslas".

Oh god, Slashdot still doesn't support Unicode in comments? If anyone is interested, my previous comment should have contained the Chinese characters and pinyin for "gongfu" as can be seen here.

If all you have is a Nobel Prize in Economics, everything looks like an expense.

VOGL sounds like Vogel, the German word for bird, related to English fowl. If you ate badly cooked chicken, you might throw it up.

Viruses. Virus has no Latin plural; viri is the nominative plural (also genitive singular and vocative plural) of vir.

He could have gotten AP from reading the actual article. When I post about A-Levels don't refer to them as the SATs just because I'm American and we don't have A-Levels.

I was actually responding to his use of "fancy" as a verb. Sometimes Americans who like sounding British will use the phrase "fancy that," but otherwise we just don't use it much. Wiktionary lists several definitions of"fancy" as a verb, and they're almost all UK, formal, or archaic.

If you're not the sort of person who would say something awful like "Jew a person down," don't say crap like "What a gyp." http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gyp

You disagree that ownership of copyright in a work of authorship implies "ownership of the work" in any useful sense. But what is ownership? Wiktionary defines "owning" something as "hav[ing] rightful possession" of it as property, and its first non-circular, non-real-estate definition of "property" is in term of exclusive rights in a particular thing. But I understand that not everybody agrees with Wiktionary definitions. So to avoid us talking past each other, try telling me how you prefer to define "ownership" and "property", and I'll help you understand why people speak of "ownership of a work".

You disagree that ownership of copyright in a work of authorship implies "ownership of the work" in any useful sense. But what is ownership? Wiktionary defines "owning" something as "hav[ing] rightful possession" of it as property, and its first non-circular, non-real-estate definition of "property" is in term of exclusive rights in a particular thing. But I understand that not everybody agrees with Wiktionary definitions. So to avoid us talking past each other, try telling me how you prefer to define "ownership" and "property", and I'll help you understand why people speak of "ownership of a work".

Or bits. Or dits (short pulses in Morse code). Or fits. Or hits. Or JITs (rapid recompilers). Or kits. Or mits. Or nits (louse eggs). Or wits. Or zits (acne). Or gits or twits (general terms of abuse). Or a slang word meaning diarrhea.

Traveling through gaseous air?
On a more serious note, they're doing power analysis using DC/DC coil whine as a proxy.

I suspect they meant "acoustic noise," noted to differentiate it from noise in signal processing.

But who knows, maybe somebody would confuse "sound" between acoustics, water, and medical probes.

Traveling through gaseous air?
On a more serious note, they're doing power analysis using DC/DC coil whine as a proxy.

I suspect they meant "acoustic noise," noted to differentiate it from noise in signal processing.

But who knows, maybe somebody would confuse "sound" between acoustics, water, and medical probes.

> [1. It's interesting to note you can't translate "reasonableness" into Latin or modern French. It seems to be something very English-language-specific. My college's motto, "Let Reasonableness Flourish", is in English because of that oddity, and it says interesting things about other countrys' jurisprudence.]

After five years of Latin, I feel fairly confident in saying the following:

rationabilis is Latin for "reasonable" or "rational".

-itas is the Latin suffix for "-ness".

Thus, it would be fair to say that "rationabilitas" is Latin for "reasonableness". So no, reasonableness is not an English-language specific concept. And no, it doesn't imply shit about anything.

Why would you need to kite a coin? It's not like it would know how to nuke you with an AOE.