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Bad Spelling Pays on eBay
peebeejay writes "People say that as long as they're understood, spelling is unimportant. These people are unwittingly making others a lot of money online, according to this article in the NY Times (DNA sample and clean boxers required). So, aside from clarity and respect for your reader, there's another good reason to either spell correctly or use a spellchecker: get bidders to find your eBay items and give you their money! Or you can go ahead and see how many people bid on your 'labtop computers,' 'camras,' and 'earings.'"
to tell me that they aren't called "labtop" computers? ... you could've fooled my dad.
I write code.
I would never search "camras"... a bid like that would be hard to find... right?
:: Andrea
Anime Wallpapers
Thank you Dr. Obvious...
thats what we like to call bad journalism :) :)
i cant spell either
I've been using this trick since I started using eBay, something like six years ago. When you look for something, always look for misspellings first, because you're less likely to have competition. Even got a gemstone or two this way.
It's been known for years, and it hasn't changed much. I don't think this article is going to cause much of a change, even if it's widely read.
.. whenever I use ebay, I always try "alternative" spellings of words. Of course, being from the UK, I'm used to spelling things like 'color' incorrectly [its a JOKE!] :-)
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Here
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Before the categories were as developed as they are now, a college roommate picked up a "Play Staion" for cheap.
With the categories and the "Going Going Gone" auctions these don't stay hidden as easily, but they're still there.
According to the article, Mother of Perl is spelled incorrectly. Shows what they know.
Search for "labtop" on ebay :)
Edmund White
http://flickr.com/ewwhite
One of the favorite tricks of domain squatters? Register, say, slashfot.org and have it point to a pron site or something. Regardless of how technologically advanced the internet ever gets, it'll still be used by humans, who are great at screwing things up.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
Is the glass half empty? Is the glass half full? No! The glass is simply too big! What ever happened to rewarding those who did things well, as opposed to making sure nobody gets their feelings hurt because they don't do something as well as someone else. I heard that in some schools they're not running spelling bees anymore because it makes the kids that don't win feel too bad.
No need for the shhh!, methinks -- the NYT article describes exactly the same thing and tells how people make a profit by doing this. So it's no longer a secret -- sorry.
By the way, note the following quote from the article:
Indeed, experts say the Internet -- with its discussion boards, blogs and self-published articles -- is a treasure trove of bad spelling.
Boy, do we know that here!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
I've never shoed a horse, but I once told a donkey to piss off!
Did you bother reading the article? This is exactly what the article is about. Clearly those that moderated you didn't bother, either.
Some years ago I purchased a 36 gigabyte 10,000 RPM Fiber Channel drive very inexpensively on e-bay. Drives like it were selling for two or three hundred dollars and I paid $40 for mine. Why? Because I intially spelled Fiber Channel as fibre channel.
There were two or three fiber channel products with british spelling and I think I was the only one that even bid on them.
You too, can find great deals on Sorny, Magnetbox, JCV, Keenwood. All because the manufacturer didn't spell the name right. (read "knock-offs")
But seriously, now are we going to have people naming their auctions:
Brand New Laptop Labtop Latpod Palpot PC!
?
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
A friend of mine (whose website I host) is terrible. But at least his pictures of the "rockafella center" get him on the first page of Google! :)
I used to be a good speller, but I use Google A LOT. And it is so forgiving that my skills have declined. I expect all programs to know what I mean when I type "Jva prgfamminh boolks". I just kinda hit the keys that basically represent the words I want.
No, the article is about people who leach off eBay, by buying misspelled items and selling them at a profit. I'm a genuine buyer, whose own genuine bad spelling has led me to bargains. Thats not the same.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
unnix licsene for olny $699!!1!
My dads been doing this for a couple of years with baseball items. Made a good bundle too, until most of the companies starting mass producing everything that's current.
"Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
I was looking for a BikeE recumbent bike. There weren't any on Ebay. I tried "Bike-E" with a hyphen. There was an almost brand new demo model listed for $500. (They retailed for about $1200 at the time, I think.) I bought it, didn't even take it out of the box, relisted it with the correct spelling, and sold it for $850 seven days later. (I did have to pay for the bike to be shipped to me, which was about $35, I think.) I have also found that you can buy items that are poorly described and relist them with more thorough descriptions, links to the manufacturer's website, better photos, etc., and they will typically sell for higher than you paid for them.
Athelon, Athlon, Athalon, or equally correct but alternative spellings P3, Pentium 3 Pentium III...etc.
I think I will wait a few weeks and do some bargain shoping.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
This valuable piece of advice given in the spirit of the article - ie with a crappy header that'll ensure only people looking really hard will find it.
Bidding starts at $5.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
...is why Microsoft could make the claim that people would go to mikerowesoft.com and get confused.
Because people are that fucking stupid.
That having been said, I wound up with a MITS Altair for $100 because it was listed as "Vintage Altar Comp", and a "sonydcv1" for about $300.
My point being that as geeks, we should encourage all non-geeks we know who have an interest in selling items on eBay to forgo spellchecks and not worry about spelling in general. We stand to profit from it! Any attempt to educate the general populace (as this NYT article attempts to do) will reduce the number of magic bargains to be found on eBay ;)
Almost always a good deal in that category.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I have done the same (fortunately I searched by the manufacturers name, not the product name) and got some real deals. Worth making multiple searches on different criteria - basically don't be lazy!
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
Well, so much for my bargain shopping on Ebay!!
Next they'll have a story about putting items in the wrong category...uhh, never mind.
Anything is possible given time and money.
Peeps are too illiterate to spell or know exactly what they are selling. Stolen stuff usually goes a lot cheaper than a legitimately purchased items. Just another angle at why it's cheaper.
You have to wonder when you get modded up to +5 for a comment that says "I know someone who does this".
Why is that interesting? I know lots of people who do lots of things. Does that mean that this post is worth +5?
Perhaps people should read the article and *then* post. Radical I know.
Well obvious is in the eye of the beholder. I know it snowed a lot and that the streets are bad, but they seem to like to put that on the front page a lot.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
No need for the shhh!, methinks -- the NYT article describes exactly the same thing
Yeah, but no-one reads the article, it was still a secret...
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
As other people have said this is completely obvious, and has been going on for a long time. The only thing that NYT has done is make it hard to do this because more people will be doing this. It's going to be a fad of sorts for a while. *LOOK A MONITeR!*(It's obvious and misspelled! I'll look on Ebay. Hmmm, I hate you NYT...)
They do use a spell checker, but I don't think it's quite as effective or aggressive about matching as a Google's. For example, eBay figures out that you've mis-spelled "compaq" as "compac" but doesn't catch the mis-spelling of "labtop" and recommend the correctly-spelled version. Google finds both of these.
Obligatory nerd tie-in: That's why Mozilla kicks IE's little tin arse. Quicklink "dict knive" --> no entry for knive.
Yeah, right.
That'll be 'surprised' :P
:(
I know, I know, sorry
On another note, I wouldn't mind seeing more attractive female lab workers around here wearing snug "labtops"...
The owls are not what they seem
Warning to /.ers: your going to hav too read the instructions on how too work it good, or it won't. LOL WTF!!!!!!111
Yeah, right.
that spehling is a lossed art ;P
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
For Sale: Dell labtop computer. Very fast. Perfect condition. 3 weeks old. Extended warranty, carrying case, extra battery, Windows XP, Microsoft Office 2003, DVD, 50GB hard drive, 512MB RAM, network card, 15" screen. Spell checker doesn't work.
A story on Slashdot about accurate spelling! And referring to eBay no less! Oh, the irony!
This is the first article about eBay where the editors haven't spelt (yes, "spelt" not "spelled") the company name as "Ebay".
Somehow, they alway (well, almost always) manage to correctly spell iMac, iPod and iTunes, but eBay, nVidia and ATi often become "Ebay", "Nvidia" and "ATI". It would be nice to think that this article was the start of a trend but I seriously doubt it.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
"It's ok to be a slob on the dole..."
I know this is slashdot, but if you RTFA you will see the following quote:
Jim Griffith, whose official title at eBay is dean of eBay education, teaches 40 to 50 seminars a year around the country. Although eBay points out common misspellings, he said that the most common question he gets is, "When will e-Bay get a spell checker?"
His answer? "You go to a store called a bookstore, and you buy something called a dictionary."
experts say the Internet -- with its discussion boards, blogs and self-published articles -- is a treasure trove of bad spelling.
They had to ask experts?
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Making money off of mispellings? Slashdot's been doing it for years!
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Not to be confused with earrings, ornaments for your ear, I can see how someone might be selling "earings" on Ebay:
earing : n. Nautical. A short line attaching an upper corner of a sail to the yard.
Maybe they should start using a phonetically based search engine at e-bay.
>which I guess that term isn't right if you are from Northern Ireland
>Brittish are acknowledging this month that they are a part of Europe, right?
I'm not even going to bother correcting these...
.
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
The classic example is whitehouse.gov, versus whitehouse.com (links intentionally left out, find yer own pr0n)
The former is the official US govt. website, the latter is a porn site.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Case in point: a copy of the Mohawks' "The Champ" - a famous funk record that has been heavily sampled by many greats (including the organ from "let your backbone slide.) A mint condition white (promo) label pressing, neighborhood $450-$500, was had by me for $47 because the auction title read "Mohewks." Sweet!
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
Homer: "Look at these low, low prices on famous brand name electronics!"
Bart: "Don't be a sap, Dad. These are just crappy knock-offs."
Homer: "I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there's Magnetbox, and Sorny!"
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Here's a current auction for a Tandum Recumbant. BikeE, but it never says that. If it didn't have a starting bid of $1000, I'd go for it.
His answer? "You go to a store called a bookstore, and you buy something called a dictionary."
Why ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Making money off of mispellings? Slashdot's been doing it for years!
Look before you leap. (Ie, use the preview function.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I remember back in the early days of the web, when it was just becoming popular, that John Dvorak hailed it as the coming of true mass literacy. His belief was that with so many average every day citizens posting web pages, surely this would lead to increased literacy.
It couldn't have been a year later that he retracted that prediction and instead said that the web has proven just how illiterate Americans (and I presume others) are.
Anyway, just thought I'd toss in my little anecdote.
I have always noticed the bad spelling of item names on ebay so whenever I am searching for a common item like say a Network Card I will often search for things like "NIK" and come up with hits.
A couple of years ago I got 5 IBM "NIK Cards' for $2 on ebay. I wonder if the person selling the items was curious why no one else bid on the items.
You gotta watch those typos, knowing how much fraud is on Ebay. I declined to bid on a low priced laptop because the S&H was $1500, not $15.00, and I didn't hear back from the seller until after the auction closed. No way I was going to take that chance. Too bad, because the final price was good (maybe others also declined to bid),
But what if you really do get a PlamPilot in the mail?
Just as importantly, it wasn't reinforced. Kind of like the lady who felt reassured by seeing "chandaleer" on hundreds of web sites, people whose reading consists primarily of web pages, e-mail, and chat (rather than books vetted by proofreaders) are learning to spell incorrectly. It's like the blind leading the blind. I've got nothing against spelling changes in principle; language is going to evolve. But this seems more like a case of language forking, almost geometrically.
Ironically, the internet seems to be taking us back a few centuries, to the days before English spellings were standardized by the likes of Webster and other lexicographers. Which was fine back when all parsing of text was done by humans, who could easily figure out that "Thomas Smith" and "Tomas Smythe" were the same person. But as this article points out, it can be a problem when more literal computers are concerned.
Even more shocking is that the NYT reporter didn't immediately attempt to patent searching for common misspellings as a business method.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Granted, prons are a delicoius, suculent seafod taht many enjoy. But really, they get way too much attentoin here on wwwslashdot.org, and I, for one, just don't understnd why we...
(one moment, someone is trying to tell me...)
(Really? You're sure about that?)
Never mind.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
You sure you don't mean this link?
thanks a lot!!! this is how I used to get free stuff, and now the world knows... there goes my ebay scam =(
How is this different to domain name 'squatters ' (loost term) using a domain name similar to a more popular website. Or advertising free porn to get email addresses in spam...
This is usually done by somebody in a related field, but not always. And is usually to the detriment of the more popular website
On eBay, this is used in the same way as putting random phone models after your Nokia phone so that it comes up in a search. Or the stupid people who want to sell you an ebook on how to get an XBOX for 2 dollars P&P.
It only serves to dilute the usefulness of any search engine when this happens. Trying to search on google for just about any item that Amazon might sell, you'll get leeches for the first few pages trying to earn referral fees. The same is becoming true for just about any commercial item ,try "Hotel in Paris" (or any city) and watch the middle men flood the results.
BB
Here's a great item, a set of olympic dimonds from the 1953 olympics in... Hungery.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
LOL! Priceless - look at the description for http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =3456315281&category=177
Choice quotes
"I am not lying when I say that this labtop is hands down one of the fastest computers I have ever seen in my entire life. On the other hand, I am also completely clueless when it comes to computers so please bare with me."
Oo-er - are we getting our clothes off together? (It's "BEAR with me")
"keyboard has more buttons than I know what to do with"
"a floppy drive, a CD rom drive, and another drive that I have no clue what to do with"
"And...a rechargable battery"
"some disk that I suppose you'll probably need"
and to top it off "Chances are that you'll probably want to run this computer by a shop and get it cleaned out"
Then he says "if you have any questions email me." Yeah, like he's really going to have a clue amout MHz, GB, serial ports etc. I wouldn't recommend asking anything more difficult than: "What colour is it?"
He also can't spell "I nicked it" - he says "this is not my computer (I'm selling it for a friend)"
Except that the article is about people taking advantage of those mispellings and reselling the items for a profit. It is a good article except for the people who do it because now everybody will know. Just like Ebay used to be a great place for bargains until it became popular and now most things seem to end up higher than buying it at a reputable retailer.
I am always suspicious when prices are to good to be true. Some chump will ALWAYS put a bid on something they are interested in 6 days before the end. If there isn't an initial bid, are you falling for something those idiots didn't?
On a personal note, I bought a 16x4 Rose KVM for $50 because it was mislabelled(It was marked as the chasis model only and mispelled, but pictures showed it complete so I gambled). Not all the ports work(2 bad), but 16x4!!! That is a $4K piece of equipment that I could never afford but actually needed.
Some of those liquidation lot purchasers are great when they screw up like this.
Konqueror in the upcoming KDE 3.2 has spell checking and highlighting in text forms.
You can find good deals by looking up misspellings. I bought a Sport Magazine Larry Birds that Larry Bird was on the cover of from his rookie year. It cost me $10.00. I imagine it would have gone for more if the seller didn't spell Larry Bird's name "Lary Bird".
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
Re:you mean.... (Score:3, Funny)
"When your healty... they are called laptop..."
Ill be sure to mispell my post so its moderated up!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
who the hell searches for L@@K anyways? what a waste of characters.
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
Wouldn't come up. No, I didn't search around, instead trusting the above address implicitly. But still ..... have we managed to slashdot eBay?
Is it fascism yet?
Chains of Mephistopheles
Tolarian Academy
Nicol Bolas
etc.
Click here or here.
For the hypertext challenged
Definitely screams "hot goods", with the "I have no idea what's on it" comments.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
If it's an obvious typo or dropped letter or transposed letters on a message board, it's easy to ignore. If it's a repeated error, or one where in order to be a "typo" the writer would have to have been hit by a car while typing the message and dc029in ok1n;lk;jkhhgggg ggggggggggggggggggggggggg
--- Ban humanity.
I read the news item (and some of the comments here), but am still trying to figure out what the news item was trying to convey.
Not a single figure or fact had been established (quote "No one knows how much misspelling is out there in eBay land..", "unofficial survey turned up dozens of items). It further trolls on completely unresearched bits like "Some experts say there is no evidence that people are spelling worse than they ever did".
I think the news item is another shining example of eager "news" reporting, or meeting a deadline (gee whiz! I have to submit 1000 words today again!).
Wans't tehere an emial diong ruonds soemtmie ago, taht metnoined taht huamns colud undrestand a mis-spleled wrod so lnog as the frist and lsat letetrs reamined the smae?
http://efil.blogspot.com/
"When will e-Bay get a spell checker?"
His answer? "You go to a store called a bookstore, and you buy something called a dictionary."
So that's where I've been going wrong!! I always thought it was spelt 'dickshonery'!
---
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
Answer from eBay : Did you mean... dictionary ?
;)
So, well, I did mean it, yep, but "eBay m'a tuer"
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Both parties have a responsibility to make sure communication is being understood. Hence, in the Navy, all commands are repeated back to the person making the issuing the command. When lives are at stake then you MUST be understood.
I think this requires some one who is listening, to ask questions when they don't understand. I have seen to many times in the IT field people do things, by "guessing" when they are unsure.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Yeah, no doubt. I was inches from an excellent deal on a "Cannon Elf APS Camera" 6 years ago, before I changed my mind and decided to wait for digital. Two mistakes for the price of one! Guess the secret's out now.
;)
Especially since slashdot will repeat this tomorrow for anybody who missed it.
I've always said that the best (and worst) thing about eBay is that it's full of stupid people. It's not just bad spelling that can get you the bargains, often people under-price their "Buy it now" items, or advertise things incorrectly, i.e. "This laptop has a 500MHz processor", but the model number they've stated suggests it's a 1GHz.
This 'feature' isn't going to go away because the NYT has mentioned it. The problem comes from clueless people, who will still be clueless now! I doubt people deliberately mis-spell items on eBay and now are thinking "perhaps I should spell things correctly from now on"
P.S. Remember to take full advantage, if you find cluelessness on eBay, "View Seller's Other Items" might be your key to many more bargains!
perl -e 'print "Just another Perl newbie\n";'
If we had attractive female lab workers here (which we don't), I'd honestly prefer them to not be wearing said labtops. ^_^
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
If you're looking for a better deal on eBay, search for the most common misspellings of the item that you're interested in. There's a very good chance that you'll find a few listings, especially on more common items. Those auctions will be getting less traffic which means a lower final price. I've done this several times and ended up with some really good deals.
Nothing like capitalizing on the ignorance of your fellow man.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Stolen from http://tedbarlowfaq.blogspot.com/
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
The funniest aspect of the article, to me, is that (at least when I visited the page) the New York Times helpfully added a set of three "advertiser links"--for companies that sell chandeliers.
Well, of course--anyone that reads that article is someone interested in chandeliers, right?
(Yes, it would have been even funnier if the links had been for companies selling chandaleers, but I guess I'll take my amusement where I can find it...)
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
At first I enjoyed the stories posted in this topic: "I saw a Rolex listed on eBay under Rollex. Bought it from the idiot for $10, turned around and sold it for $500. What a loser!"
Then I started to think: what if instead of trying to make a few bucks off of someone's typo, why not email them and tell them about the error? Here on Slashdot there is endless (and justified) ranting about the greed of corporate officers and their PHB minions. But are picking up a dollar off the floor in 7-11 and pocketing it even though you saw who dropped it or pulling these eBay spelling error tricks or laying off 1000 programmers to boost your stock price before cashing in your options not all acts from the same human motivation?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
On the plus side, it is five bucks and no reserve, and the username of the seller is a reassuring "legit17" (who also has 17 positive feedback, oddly enough)...
iPod was a little harder to spell.
The proper spelling is fibre channel. The british spelling of fiber is intentionally not used. (It is french IIRC)
I think that you just worded the above wrong, but I'm not sure.
Just add a line at the bottom of your listings with all possible misspellings of the main keywords.
What?
At least it's not a eunuchs license...
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
After losing 2 bids on a Aircard 555 in the 150 dollar range (Most were 200 dollar buy it now) I decided to search for just Aircard.. I found a gem of a deal for a Aircard 555 (They forgot to put the 555 in the description) I got the card for 130USD..
I'm a happy customer.
Now I can surf the web over the cell network in Linux =)
I also get a little frustrated when I see businesses, etc, helping "less than smart" people. For instance, I feel that I am a fairly decent resume writer, so it bugs me when challenged people get professional help with their resumes. I guess it doesn't matter *too* much since it all surfaces to the top in the interview.
GANNS.com
In this case, remove the space character after &item.
Or you could click on the hyperlink helpfully posted by corbettw above in message 8112289.
Chandeliers.
On a slightly separate topic, another good EBay hack is to look for items in the wrong place. I found disk drives advertised in Camera Accessories and got quite a deal.
Great Britain is part of Europe in the geographical sense and was connected to it by a land bridge at one time. No amount of voting against it is going to change that fact.
The UK is a member of a political entity called the European Union which contains a subset of the countries in Europe. We joined this organisation in 1973 I believe and there was a referendum in 1976 (or thereabouts) to determine if we should stay in. So the voters were involved.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
I'm with you - I hate receiving in my daily searches USB hubs that match extrememac - when extrememac only makes one specific hub I am looking for. Turns out the main offenders use an old trick of making white text on the white background. Some sellers have almost every single Mac product ever made in their auctions. I fI ever see that I report em at the URL above.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
A friend of mine whose first language was not English is constantly inadvertantly coming up with weird mutations of colloquialisms (like taking the "small roads" instead of the "back roads"). One day we were talking about someone getting overexcited about something and this guy says they raised a "human cry". We tried to tell him the phrase was "hue and cry", but because he was able to find at least one page through Google in which the words "human" and "cry" were next to each other it must be a common phrase.
I play Warhammer (god help me), so I always use eBay to help me find cheap minis. One of my favorite tactics is to look for misspellings, as the people who misspell the various names often don't know exactly what they're selling.
It's interesting to see how many ways people can screw up Slaanesh and Tzeentch.
"It never got weird enough for me." - HST (RIP)
Ebay should use the soundex algorithm to find similar items. It's already in Oracle if that's what they use.
select soundex('compaq'), soundex('compact') from dual
If they had an index of soundex values of keywords and the number of matches, they could return a list of popular keywords that sound the same as the one you typed.
Well then, all I have to do is run down to Second Light to check the surf (cold and flat) and come back, and when I do a very useful bit of information falls out of the sky and into my lap.
Kindest thanks!
Is it fascism yet?
In the case of an auction site, the difference can be described in easily quantifiable terms. Botch the spelling of "earrings" and the value of your goods falls through the floor.
On one of our local talk shows a few weeks back, the politician who's been sponsoring death penalty legislation for five years now made his case. He said the word "heinous" maybe twenty times, mispronouncing it every last time. (It was "hee-nee-us" for him.) Coincidentally, he also seemed to have no rejoinder to any of the basic criticisms of the death penalty. When asked about crime rates, he didn't seem to know they were adjusted for population. When asked about racially biased sentencing, he said he thought we had a pretty good justice system, and had little more to offer. After five years, you'd think he'd have at least considered how to rebut the opposition. His sloppiness over the little things did mean something; it affected his credibility, and it indicated that he wasn't to be taken seriously, at least in my book.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Clever signature text goes here.
...how many of us went to EBay immediately after reading this article and did a search for 'labtop'?
Did a search on "keyboard has more buttons than I know what to do with" - in 'in titles & descriptions' link. Returned womens suits, Palm Pilots, and laptop docking stations. Strange.
Yes, but whats that got to do with the price of tea in D'ni?
Theirs a suprise!
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
The registration is free and you don't even need a valid e-mail address. What's with the complaints? The 20 seconds you have to spend *once* to input bogus information is certainly a fair price for the online content of the NYT.
Sheesh. People here would complain if you hung them with a new rope.
Well, people aren't always evil. :)
You know, Putty, the free SSH client...
www.putty.org
See bottom-right corner
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
1. What's the point when we have a reg-free link.
2. I'm sure OSDN doesn't want to sponsor crap-flooding of other online businesses' registration data (who may or may not be partners). It looks unprofessional too.
No... 'Earings are what they 'ave in the 'Ouse of Commons, guv'nor.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
You said it... I am regularly astonished and amazed that I can buy the same item from a decent online store for less than it's going for on ebay. And often with better shipping.
I've tried to rationalize why this might be the case but just can't fathom why someone would do this other than abject stupidity.
Microsoft Word with with auto-formatting.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
There must be a witty comment that could be made about the irony of the contents of that linked page, but I'll be damned if I can think of one. :)
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Let me see if I understand this correctly. You are complaining (on a website published in U.S. English) that a publication from the U.S. did not use the British spelling of 'spelled?' (Notice here that the question mark, like all punctuation, falls inside the quotes.) Your claim that most of the world uses 'spelt' is dubious at the least.
Searched the web for words spelled correctly. Results 1 - 100 of about 161,000. Search took 0.52 seconds.
Searched the web for words spelt correctly. Results 1 - 100 of about 25,000. Search took 0.42 seconds.
There is an interesting article from the BBC (which I understand to be British) called Pupils 'struggling' with spelling , where 'spelt' is used once and 'spelled' is used at least six times.
I urge independent research into both ATI and NVIDIA.
Cmdrtaco strykes it rich on e-baY.
S
"Me fail English? Thats unpossible!"
:)
Well I still like it.
there's more truth to what you say than you may realise. We're so used to the spellchecker correcting everything automatically, that when it's not available the spelling goes down the drain.
If you were actually to go to the effort of proof reading using a dictionary everytime the chances are that you'll remember the correct spelling next time round.
That's not leeching. If somebody cannot be bothered to get a dictionary and look up the correct spelling of a word when they want to put out an advertisement that could be seen by millions of people, then to my mind they deserve what they get. You play with fire, you get burned.
You might not get far appearing on TV if you're ugly, and you might not get far on the wireless if you have an annoying voice. But anyone can learn to spell properly -- the only thing stopping them is laziness.
Actually there probably is a market for someone to charge a fee for checking spelling and usage {that would require a human being; a machine can spot "tehre" but "their" is a correctly-spelt word even if you meant "there"} -- because at some point, the benefit due to proper spelling would be greater than the amount you spent on it.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I hate to give this one away, but you're all my friends so what they hell. Search using an asterisk. Example - If you're looking for sony headphones, type in "sony head*" and it finds anything with the word head and sony in it. I get stuff cheap all the time, because this trick can get the spelling mistake listings.
I didn't complain about any publication doing anything, I only clarified that I meant to type "spelt" and rather than "spelled".
As to your other points, well, are you in any doubt that the web is US-centric in content? Especially if you discount content in non-English languages such as French, German, Spanish and Japanese? And don't you think that the writer of that BBC article was a little bit inconsistent using "spelt" and "spelled" in the same context in the same article?
As to the correct spellings of ATI and NVIDIA, I stand corrected. Put it down to writing for a publication where "ATi" and "nVidia" were house style. (I'm not certain, but I have a sneaky suspicion that it once was "ATi" but I'm not about to get into a pissing contest over that: it's ATI now and what it once was or once might have been is irrelevant. I got it wrong, and that's that.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The article right before this one "Microsoft-Funded Linux Studies Benefit ... Microsoft" has a spelling error. compairing?
You make that sound like it's a negative thing.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Something like the Contax camera. It was listed as Contact in the title, in the film section of ebay. Sold for $1000. In the medium format camera section, they go for $2000 to $2500! I just didn't have a spare grand laying around!
I recently got an HP iPaq (fairly new one) for under $65 because it was listed as "HP iPad".
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Actually, "you're" would be right in that context. "You're" could replace "you are", while "your" is the possessive of "you". You could say, "When 'You're' healthy you can call it 'your' labtop(sic)."
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Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
It's incredible to me that this late in the GUI game, I still can't just select text anywhere in Windows, right-click and select "Check Spelling". Anyone hook this up for GNOME yet?
At Apple, we developed a "styled text pane" GUI component for a hypermedia documentation browser (not HTML, in 1993) as part of the corporate switch to a C++ toolkit. We threw hooks for spellcheck and themes (a la CSS) into the class, and argued that the component ought to be part of the toolkit itself, for *every* text display in the OS, which would mean every app, entirely standard. I heard that the design was part of Apple's plans right through the demise of the Bento initiative, which drowned our approach like a rat on the Titanic. So now every app reinvents the wheel, and it takes forever to crawl back to steel-belted radials.
--
make install -not war
What's sad, is that as I read the story a woman who used the word "chandaleer" said she did an internet search on it, got some hints and assumed she was right. If she had simply googled it instead, she would have got, "Did you mean: chandelier " at the top.
Google is my spell checker - it takes less time to load than Word.
Love-em. I get lots of good stuff cheap from pur spellars.
I'm not sure that I'd want to do business with anyone who doesnt seem intelligent/caring/thorough enough to properly spell check an auction listing anymore than I'd want to go in a store that had its signs and adverts mispelled. Especially considering it's eBay, and if you're shafted, you're shafted.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
This is why eBay uses categories.
It just rolls on! That should be misspell.
Well i guess my labtop that I just got off ebay is a fake then. I got a "laptop" instead.
-Kids in the back seat causes accidents.- -Accidents in the back seat causes kids.-
why the hell did this even make it on /.??? trying misspelled words has been basic eBay-ing since the early 90s.
I would have never believed it either, but it's spelled with two Rs. eaRRing. Who would have thunk it?
... there is no patch for human stupidity.
PERL:
All of the power of Voodoo with most of the understandibility!
I woke up to the news that some people went canoeing yesterday, during a wind advisory, without life vests, and apparently not knowing how to swim, and one guy drowned. Not to be callous about such a tragedy, but the phrase "survival of the fittest" did cross my mind.
I think this story beats mine, though.
The phrase that starts "a fool an his money..." also seems to apply.
(Oh, and I spell checked this because I'm smart enough to know I'm stupid.)
Computerized language translators depend on correct spelling and grammar to correctly manage a phrase.
It takes a lot more time and processor cycles to translate misspelled words.
Language translation, that is quality language translation, will be one of the 'killer aps' of the 64-bit generation of processors.
Especially in the Mac market - one camp will sell their Macs for laughably low prices on a ghetto page. You buy from these guys. Make a nice page and resell to the *other* camp, the ones who will pay with a buy it now more than retail because, after all, if it's on eBay, it MUST be cheaper! No sense shopping around...my roommate in college made a killing off iBooks that way. I'd have done it myself if I had enough cash to buy the first one :(
With enhanced HTML effects! http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =3382073018
I can't begin to count the number of things I've bought on eBay that no one else even found that's to the seller fat-fingering the auction title and description. For example I bought a Cabletron SSR-2-B-128 for $57 the summer before last (loaded to the gills too). The reason I managed to buy it that cheap was because the seller repeated mis-spelled Cabletron as Cabeltron. He also used the S/N as the model number. Fortunately his photos of the actual unit showed the real model numbers. I can't begin to count the number of times I've had this luck. The way I find these auctions is I either fat-finger my search string or I view the seller's other auctions and find it in that list. It's well worth the effort IMHO.
Ebay does have a spellchecker, but it is not perfect. You want to make sure you have something spelled right, then use a dictionary.
He is giving seminars to people that wish to use ebay profesionally. If you are using ebay asa commercial source of revenue, then you should use a dictionary.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Me misspell on eBay? That's unpossible!
Just not as much as I might have to otherwise. :-)
Case in point: A few weeks ago, I needed a conference speakerphone for the office. Searching for "Conference Phone" returned several US Robotics CS1000 phones, which seemed to meet my needs well. At that point I searched for "CS1000" in item and description, and up popped one titled "USRobotics Conference Link CS1000". Not only would that title not tend to pop up in a more general search, but they had the item [mis]classified under the consumer electronics tree.
Long story short, due to their misclassification, cryptic title, and low opening bid, I walked away with the phone for $10 when all the others were going for $50-100.
So please, don't stop the misspellings and other assorted ways of hiding items deep in the recesses of eBay. I see it as a form of natural consequences for the sellers, and it's helpful to those of us who run on a shoestring.
The painting was one of two done before she reached iconic staus. This painting is now selling for 40,000, to the family of the painter, I believe.
The eBay auction title was off by one letter (the artist's name was spelled incorrectly), sadly, I can't remember what the title of it was.
That kind of put eBay deals in perspective for me, though.
After seeing that ad I searched for "hardrive" and found hundreds! Some are quite good deals.
Neat. I did a quick search on Overture's Term suggestion tool:
63138 rockefeller center
869 center rockafeller
310 center rockafella
128 center rockafellar
56 center rockefella
I suppose you could find more...
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Or, ya know, you could.... learn to spell and proofread. Seriously. I don't use a spell checker, ever, and I proofread everything I do. It's not that hard to do, and it's better for your mind. I can't tell you the number of times in recent years (and it's only been recent years, since the rise of editing programs with spell checkers) that a publication or a book I'm reading has misspellings in it where the word is spelled correctly, but it's the wrong spelling for the context (John picks the red card, witch is good for....). Now both the writer and the editor screw the pooch far more often because they're both trusting the computer to tell them if they got it right or not.
We as a society are letting computers, cell phones, PDAs, etc do all our memory tasks for us, and it's killing our minds. Most people can't multiply 25 x 22 in their heads, they just whip out a calculator and do it. I had a friend who lost a bag with his cell phone and keys in it off the side of a boat in Burrard Inlet. When he got back to shore he wanted to call his roommate to bring him the spare set of keys in the house, but couldn't call the roommate's cell, or anyone he knew. Why? He always used that damn speed dial feature on his phone and as a result COULDN'T REMEMBER anyone's number now that the cell phone was gone.
Seriously. Use the grey matter before it evaporates.
The most noticeable difference I've noticed in the US is the number of chocolate bars which contain peanuts. With products containing nut oils being given to more and younger children, instances of anaphylactic shock have risen sharply over the last decade or so.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
You did -- omitted two apostrophes.
I found an amazing buy on a lagtop on eBay.
Best of all I got mad 1337 sniper skillz now!
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I think it's a liability for the seller, but a windfall for the buyer. For example, I was searching for a rare item that was part of a series of collectables named after the "millennium". The seller had the product misspelled as "milennium" and had much fewer bids and I was able to pick it up for a fraction of its worth. I guess it depends upon whether you want the buyer or seller to be uneducated. The former works if you're trying to scam someone; the latter works if you're looking for a good deal.
It's a matter of economics. If the information that NYT is holding hostage is worth me sacrificing anonyminity, then ok. However, I don't trust most of the major media to be responsible with the information they collect, be it partially-bogus or not, and nowhere can that be more evidenced than an examination of the information they actually publish.
Search for item #3456315281.
Yeah, like moron spelling/grammar nazis who use non-words such as "alot" in place of "a lot".
Wierd, ins't it?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
It is highly resistant against chemical spills.
Name: slashdot2004
Password: slashdot2004
I didn't do it, can't prove anything.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
What if it really was a Plam Pilot, like maybe some weird knock-off Palm from Vanuatu or something?
Not if it has a picture of the thing, as in this one: Listing for a "Plam." You can clearly read the "Palm" for this device.
Bad spelling really turns me away from these things... Even though there's no real connection between spelling and intellect, it is very hard to read poorly crafted prose and respect it if it's badly written.
Actually, research shows that in languages like English, transposed inner letters have very little effect upon readability. In fact, such errors present great difficulty in proofreading because the human brain tends to correct the errors "on the fly." So for such errors, there is little effect upon "readability."
As for your inability to respect anyone who commits typographical errors, that's your prerogative. Personally, I'd rather take advantage of them on ebay by purchasing items at lower-than-normal prices.
And, for anyone who wants to get into a pissing contest over which is more correct, then I think I'll just remind you that the language is called "English", not "American", so guess which spelling came first?
Sounds like you're the only one engaging in said contest. For what it's worth, both spellings were valid in England during the time that America and England split. You may recall (or not) that the English language is not fixed, and enjoyed a great deal of flux in the 1600s, including a vast number of accepted spellings for words. So even your timeline analysis is flawed, as "American" English is NOT newer than modern British English. Rather, they both derive from the boundary between late Middle/early Modern English.
weird. ou'd think he'd refer people to ebay's own dictionary section
It's a pain in the ass.
heh, well spotted, I always think it's amoosing when people critisise others' spellin errors and carn't spel themselvz.
Yeah, I never did figure out how to do URLs on /.. Let's see, how about litigious bastards
Or the article I'm laughing about.
(preview...) Yeah, that seems to work ok. Now I know.
Yes, I was srot of ginettg at taht in the prat of my psot you coshe not to qtuoe. Not an isuse of drisepsect of the preosn, as the psot mkaes caler, but cretnaily drespisect of tiehr cvaialer auttidte trawod lganguae. Orwell siad it bset in "Ploitics and the Eglinsh Lungague". Bad witring lades to bad tghouht. Tehn you get bad iades and bad pocitilians.
but if i can't spell dictioanarie how do i get one off ebay?
Actually it's pretty amazing how many best sellers and other books have incorrect spellings.
Usually it's not something that spell check on a computer would catch. I.e. "there" vs. "their".
So, essentially illiteracy is on the rise even in the literate.
Ebay is a first generation html site and they are very very archaicly slow making any upgrades to thier site. The paypal merger is a good one, but watch how long it's taking them to slowly migrate the features.
.css atleast?@?!?!
I'm waiting until another company like amazon creates dynamic api tools,.. or ebay.. hello..
first generation html is what they are. They are slow to migrate because they already have the user base. I believe this is just a market willing to be filled. Fix the lacking problems of ebay, (security) advertise (only a nbc type affiliate could do something this large and trusted) and give complete open ness and consequences to bad sellers.
Everyone I talk to says they are afraid to give thier credit card out to people... these people refuse to get out of the 50's to 80's mind set)
Sometimes I believe the only answer to security is to wait until the young population are adults. The ones that have grown up with this type of standard technology.
Now that I'm thinking about it... isn't that the beauty of Evolution?
Hell in my english 121 class in college, I've been using google for my spelling, grammar and research =P
Flame-bait and off topic? It's a joke, but the point remains valid:
/. post.
No coder could make a living if their code were as full of grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors as the average
I find the dichotomy ironic.
I chose not to quote it because it seemed pompous, overly self-important, and unrelated to my point. Second, I find quotations less than authoratative on any matter. If Orwell, or you, have proof in that regard, fell free to cite it. Third, I don't see the link between typographical errors and a "cavalier" attitude toward the language, much less any implications upon one's intellect, thought, or any other matter.
Finally, one need not take one's profession so seriously. I expect I could find evidence of your "cavalier attitude" toward science (my chosen profession) were I to thoroughly examine your life, yet I feel no need for condescension, overly broad generalities, or speculative outcomes based on such attitudes. Similarly, I think you don't need to overinflate the effects of spelling errors. Here, the effect is that the ebay seller will lose up to hundreds of dollars as a result of miscommunication. I think that is sufficient penalty.
If I'm the seller, and I misspell the item I'm selling and it doesn't sell as high as it could have, doesn't that mean that bad spelling doesn't pay since I lost money?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Gimme a break. If you're taking this so seriously you really do have a problem.
Although I guess I am guilty of same for even bothering to write back!! But, enough. Cheers.
I have registered like 25 times and every time I go to another NYT story my bogus registration info is no longer valid. I don't know if this is something they're checking for or if it has to do with the way it handles cookies but I just don't look at NYT stories via links like that anymore because its too much hassle. I either read NYT via google or I read it using my lexis/nexis account if I really need the article. You can bet an article about bad spelling on ebay isn't worth thinking of new bogus information to fill in.... Oh well, at least they don't ask "Where did you hear about New York Times?"
Obviously sarcasm doesn't translate well :p
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The original post incorrectly had the possesive your in place of the contraction you're.
I merely quoted this and made grammar mistakes in my reply to draw attention to the irony of a person saying that incorrect spelling works, while spelling incorrectly.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
This coming from the person who claimed catastrophe as result of a spelling error on Ebay. Hypocrite.
I guess Griffith is only "dean of eBay education" because there isn't a post called "VP of patronising fucktards".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."