South Korea Bans Selfie-Stick Sales

Rambo Tribble writes "South Korea has instituted large fines for selling unregistered "selfie-sticks". The problem arises because many of the devices are using Bluetooth radio spectrum, and must be certified to do so legally. Expressing doubts that the regulations and stiff fines will influence sales, one official said of them, "It's not going to affect anything in any meaningful way, but it is nonetheless a telecommunication device subject to regulation, and that means we are obligated to crack down on uncertified ones."

Comments

Selfie Stick?

[Bigbutt]

For those of us who don't know, a "selfie stick" is just a long pole or boom with a mount for a phone so you can take a picture from farther away or without the phone being in the picture.

I've seen them mostly for folks riding on the dirt where they have a GoPro or something on the end and are taking shots of the front of the vehicle zooming through the dirt.

[John]

so that's what those are ....

[nblender]

I thought they were 'under-skirt sticks'...

Re:Fuuuuuck

[schnell]

* "wer", adult male (survives in a few words like virile and werewolf)

(Puts on pedantic hat.) You are correct that the Germanic/Old English "were" survives in words like "werewolf" and, for Tolkien fans only, "weregild" (as in "This I will have as weregild for my father's death" from the Silmarillion).

"Virile," however, comes from the Latin "virilis" via French. They are kinda sorta related but not really.

This is a gross oversimplification as any language scholar can tell you, but a fun exercise for any English language speaker is to study the roots of common "vulgar" vs. "high-class" words and find that their roots map very closely to Latin vs. Germanic. Old English was - once the native Celts and Romano-Britons had been displaced - largely a relic of its "Germanic" (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) conquerors and the language of the people. After the Norman Conquest in 1066 (Normans "Nord-mann" being transplanted Vikings who learned French) the language of the nobility in England became French (which was based on Latin) for hundreds of years. While over time the two melded together, you can still (again, oversimplifying) in many cases tell the upper-class terms for things (derived from French/Latin) from the lower-class terms for things (derived from Old English/Germanic). For example:

• Lower-class English term: shit (viz. German scheisse); upper-class English term: excrement (viz. French excrement)
• Lower-class English term: house (viz. German haus); upper-class English term: mansion (viz. French maison)

It doesn't hold true in all cases but it is in general a pretty fascinating window into the evolution of the English language, FWIW.