Huh? Other large countries that switched also had pre-existing systems that worked (in many cases, the very same system you still use) and huge amounts of legacy infrastructure. It's not like the change was made in the distant past - just a few decades ago for many countries. My father (who isn't particularly old) grew up with the 'old' system and went through the change when he was in his late teens/early 20s. This was in Australia which has a similar physical size and Federal/State system of government to the US. A smaller population (i.e. less infrastructure) admittedly, though that means you also have a proportionally smaller tax base to fund the change and proportionally smaller teams of people available to perform the necessary work - so I'm not sure that invalidates the comparison.
And yes there's a cost involved (though not as much as you think - the switch occurs in stages and the cost is amortized across several years). You don't have to throw away old infrastructure (except obvious things such as road signs - and they aren't that expensive in the scheme of things), you just gradually introduce stuff built to the new standard and let the old stuff expire through attrition. A lot of measuring equipment these days is already switchable to metric anyway (scales in grocery stores, newer gas pumps etc.), or could be modified through a software patch.
Noone is claiming that the switch is easy or cheap or without inevitable teething issues. But it'll need to happen at some point, unless you truly believe 100, 200 years from now the US will still be using US traditional units in an otherwise completely metric world. I think the appeal and efficient of having a single global standard for measurement will inevitably force the change at some point - industry and manufacturing would love it as it allows simplification of product lines and easier trade between the US and other countries. I suspect though that it won't happen until the US is no longer the #1 consumer market in the world and/or no longer the largest economy. That's only a few decades away at most though...
Seriously, in non-US English, it's not. A hamburger and a sandwich are two different things (insert non-overlapping Venn diagram here). That's like saying "how is a cat not a dog". They are both pets (or in this case, food items with fillings between pieces of bread), but they aren't the same thing.
Or to put it a different way, Americans use 'sandwich' as an all-encompassing term that includes burgers and many other food items, including what non-US English speakers call 'sandwiches', whereas for the rest of us, sandwich is a specific term that doesn't 'include' any other subset of food items.
The definition you are using is from Merriam-Webster, an American English dictionary. So of course what Subway and McDonalds sell fits that definition.
The key difference is the "or a split roll..." part. Here (Australia, but also in the UK, NZ, other English-speaking countries), the word 'sandwich' means something between two pieces of (normal, flat, sliced) bread. Something with fillings in bun, or a roll, etc. is not called a sandwich. It's called a (ham)burger, or a roll, or something else that's more descriptive of the particular type of bread used (e.g. focaccia).
Or to put it another way, Americans use the word 'sandwich' as a generic term encompassing a whole class of food items that feature fillings between some kind of bread, whereas in other places, 'sandwich' is a specific term referring to a subset of what Americans would call a sandwich. (Incidentally, I can't think of any equivalent 'generic' term in UK/AU/NZ English equivalent to the US usage of 'sandwich').
Same here in Australia - people are not expected or pressured to give up their holidays and/or weekends in this way. Indeed, most managers actively discourage this kind of mentality. It's a work to live country and I suspect there'd be rioting in the streets if someone tried to change that.
This kind of article, combined with the tiny amount of vacation Americans get per year compared to every other country makes it sound like (working) hell on earth. Or maybe Americans just love working:)
You miss the point. Americans call things 'sandwiches', that would not be called 'sandwiches' in the rest of the world (or by the Earl of Sandwich for that matter). This includes things like the things Subway sells. It also includes burgers (I've seen American fast food restaurants refer to things like the Big Mac as a 'sandwich', or asking whether you wanted the 'sandwich only', or a drink with that).
Revenge for all the US-made products (including some software) that won't switch to metric, or d/m/y, or metric paper sizes etc, even if you tell it you don't live in the US:)
Here in metric-using Australia, I'm 178 cm, spoken "one seventy-eight". Barely any longer to say than the approximate equivalent "five eleven". Noone says "one point blah blah metres" - height is in centimetres (specifically to avoid using decimal points and/or mixing units).
Also, as a Celsius-user, I think of each 5-degree increment as a "different sort of clothing" marker (or at least a "different type of weather feel"). Centered on 20 C (comfortable room temperature), which is no more difficult than thinking about departure from comfortable room temperature in F (i.e. ~70 F).
Australia, Canada, NZ and many other countries that have vast areas of land divided up into neat blocks based on miles and acres seemed to manage just fine.
Also your comment regarding temperature and 'feel' is simply rooted in what you're used to, and would be no different if using Celsius. As a 'native' Celsius user, I feel the same way about C. To me, each interval of 5 C has a similar associated 'feel', centered neatly around 20 C (room temperature, typically what you'd have a thermostat set to). So I think of the 15-20 range much like you'd think of "60s", and 20-25 like you'd think about "70s" etc. (Obviously neither maps neatly to the other, but the principal is the same).
I wonder why they chose such a random, 'un-neat' number as 44, regardless of whether it's a round-down or round-up? 45 would have achieved the same effect (=28 mph, so still a slight 'round down')...
It's not that the US system is hard to use, it's that you're the last outliers (among major developed countries at least) not to switch. It's for the sake of consistency rather than anything else. No more having to program two separate measurement systems into every bit of software. No more wondering WTF 'letter' size paper is anymore when your printer demands it for some reason (i.e. someone in the US has emailed you a document that wants to print on that size paper). Etc.
It'd be no different if everyone ELSE used the US system, and the US were the only people using metric - it would make sense to change. It's not about which system is better, it's about being consistent.
If there were several major countries not using metric yet, then I don't think there'd be the same 'annoyance' with the Americans. But you guys are literally the... last... ones. Cmon!:)
It's perfectly acceptable to use the world 'mileage' in English-speaking metric countries to refer generically to 'distance' - the units that distance is measured in don't matter. Though here in Australia they tend to just call them distance signs.
Hm seriously? Doesn't speak well for Windows 8, does it.
Throwing in a free copy of Office might raise the probability of me moving to Windows 8 from 0% to 5% I guess. But I still think I'll be using Win 7 until they no longer support it.
Dialup is just too slow. Most light (or even average) internet users might not use much data, but when they DO use it, they want it fast.
This includes people like me. I don't use much data per month compared to most Slashdotters (typically under 20 GB), but I do want to download something, I want it fast. I don't care that the amount I can get each month is limited, but it would piss me off having to wait an hour to download a music track, or 40 seconds to load a basic webpage (like on dialup).
I live in Australia where most ISPs sell a variety of plans with different download limits (from tiny, just a few GB, to massive multi-TB caps). ADSL/VDSL plans are 'tiered' by their download limits, not by their speed as they are in the US (here, you simply get the maximum speed your phone line can manage - this will be faster the shorter your phone line is, up to the 24 Mbps maximum for the ADSL2+ standard, or up to the 60 Mbps maximum my local VDSL2 provider gives).
So I buy myself a 30 GB/month plan and that fits my needs. In the US, for the same cost, I could get an unlimited plan... BUT it's artificially speed-capped (since in the US the plans are differentiated by speed and thus are artificially limited to a certain speed depending on your plan, e.g. 3 Mbps/6 Mbps/12 Mbps etc.) For me, I much prefer my 'limited downloads @ uncapped speed' than the 'unlimited downloads @ much slower speed' I'd get for the same money in the US. I always have the option of upgrading to a higher cap if I need it... but in the meantime at least I can grab the files that I do need very quickly.
I actually tried a dialup connection a few months ago as a bit of a laugh. First time I'd used a dialup connection in over a decade. It was way more painful than I remember - web pages are so much more bloated than they used to be. Dialup is essentially unusable now for ANY purpose other than text-only email so I don't think it's a valid option even for light internet users.
Uh - like most technology and communications-related things over the last 30 years, the price constantly decreases, rather than increases. Look at countries where you have always paid per GB (or where home internet plans have always had traffic caps). Prices per GB are orders of magnitude less than five or ten years ago.
I always get shouted down on Slashdot but I actually think metered bandwidth is the way to go. You pay for what you use, like any other utility.
This means ISPs can offer a range of plans, from dirt-cheap $9.95 plans that offer just a few GB, for your grandmother who just checks her email a few times a week and browses a few web pages, to plans with insane multi-terabyte caps for heavy downloaders. It leads to a greater choice of plans and opportunities to save money for most average users. It also means ISPs can very accurately predict their traffic needs (because they know they've got X subscribers on various plans totalling Y petabytes of traffic per month), and thus provision their network appropriately (i.e. more heavy users = more cost to the ISP for backhaul and transit, but also means more revenue coming in because those heavy users are on more expensive plans, so the ISP can afford to buy the necessary equipment etc.).
It also removes the need for ISPs to consider throttling certain kinds of traffic (P2P) or prioritising certain source of traffic over others. I.e. metered internet plans make 'net neutrality' a non-issue. If the users are paying per GB, then the ISP doesn't care what they use those GBs on. The ISP knows in advance what their traffic requirements per month will be and can provision their network appropriately. No port blocking/filtering/throttling/packet inspection/other QoS shenanigans are needed to ensure network performance is reasonable for all users.
Replying to own post here, apologies. But wanted to add something. I see this as analogous to another error you often see: 'all intensive purposes' being used where 'all intents and purposes' is meant. This is basically the same kind of situation:
- Both are similar sounding; - Both are valid, grammatical English in their own right, but mean completely different things; - The misuse results from a mishearing, which then gets repeated and propagated; - Both are seen quite regularly, enough to say that they are in common usage
I would argue that if you accept 'hone/honed in' as a valid evolution, then you also have to accept 'intensive purposes', via the same reasoning. But I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone that argued that 'intensive purposes' was acceptable...
Language does indeed evolve. A genuinely new word that reaches a given level of common use should be added to a dictionary, yes. But in this case, it's not a new word, it's merely a mishearing of something else. The only reason for it being in "common use" is that it sounds so similar to the actual word/phrase concerned. It would never have happened if 'hone' and 'home' didn't sound so similar to begin with. The 'evolution' of language in this case is not due to some genuine need to add meaning or increase descriptiveness or make communication more efficient or effective. It's just a mistake that propagated.
'Hone in' might have been in use for literally decades where you are, though I've only seen it start popping up relatively recently around here). The OED (which I think we can safely say is generally considered the most authoritative English dictionary out there, if there is such a thing) describes the usage as an apparent alteration of “to home in.” It traces the alteration to confusion caused by the somewhat similar meanings of the verbs “home” (to be guided to an objective) and “hone” (to refine a skill). It notes references for “to hone in” going back more than four decades - but these appear to be almost all American references. I'm Australian, not American, but I can tell you any proof reader would NOT allow you to use 'hone in' here (or, I suspect, in the UK/NZ... maybe in Canada due to its greater exposure to American English?)
Honed in is not the past tense of hone in, because neither 'honed in' or 'hone in' actually exists. They are mishearings of 'home in' and 'homed in' respectively.
Also I'm not sure 'Merriam-Webster' and 'reputable' belong in the same sentence? Maybe it's recognised as an authority in America (I'm honestly not sure) but it's considered a joke anywhere else. A genuinely new word in common use should be added to a dictionary, yes, but in this case, they seem to be ignoring the fact that it's not a new word, it's merely a mishearing of something else. The only reason for it being in "common use" is that it sounds so similar to the actual word/phrase concerned.
Interesting point about the way Americans mostly perceive knives as tools. Makes a lot of sense - I had to admit when I visit the US I notice a LOT of guys carry knives of some description. You would almost never see that here (Australia). Most people see them as weapons. In fact in many (if not all?) States you are simply not permitted to carry knives. For instance, in Queensland:
Weapons Act 1990 (Qld):
A person must not physically possess a knife in a public place or a school, unless the person has a reasonable excuse. A reasonable excuse is includes:
to perform a lawful activity, duty or employment; or to participate in a lawful entertainment, recreation or sport
So if you are a farmer or hiker or circus performer who juggles knives, or doing something else that would reasonably require a knife, it's OK. But if you're just walking down the road to buy some milk, it's an offence. Each State's law varies a bit but you get the picture. In practice you'd have to be incredibly unlucky for a cop to issue you a fine for having a Swiss Army Knife or something on you... but it's something they can add to the charge sheet if they catch you doing something else, I guess.
Whereas, in the US I'd be talking to someone, just a regular, nice guy... and then he'd pull out some pocketknife to open a package or something (including some varieties that would be classed as prohibited weapons in ~any~ situation here). Makes me do a bit of a 'WTF' double-take. Just a different cultural attitude I guess. Only place here you'll find a knife around here is in a tool box or a kitchen drawer.
I think it's just baggage fees in the US that are the problem. People carrying insane amounts of carry on baggage and the whole "get on the plane early so you can get a spot for all your stuff in the overhead lockers" rigmarole is unique to the US - I'd never seen anything like it before I travelled in the US.
Here in Australia airlines still include at least one checked bag as part of the ticket price. It's always been that way. Not for the discount airlines admittedly (Tiger, Jetstar), but they only have a small part of the market. I'm talking about the mainline airlines that account for the majority of flights (i.e. Qantas, Virgin). So most people check most of their stuff and carry on merely a small laptop bag or purse or something. In fact for short flights (2 hours) I don't carry anything on at all (except for my wallet and phone).
You don't appreciate how good air travel is in Australia (small to non-existent security lines, RFID check-in and baggage tagging so no check-in lines (on Qantas at least), no need to take your shoes off, no liquids restrictions on domestic flights etc.) until you've compared it to the US. Flying in the US is a chaotic, stressful experience... here it's a breeze 9 times out of 10.
"Honed in" may be in common usage but that doesn't make it correct.
One can hone a blade. In the same sense, one can hone their skills (in the sense of sharpening or improving them). However one cannot 'hone in' on something. It's a mishearing of "home in" (to zero in on/zoom in on/narrow a wider field down to) - a common one to be sure, but mistaken nonetheless.
The 'Tight' encoding isn't too bad, performance-wise, especially if you tunnel it over SSH with compression on. Things like RDP log you in as a separate session which is no good if you are trying to see what the user is actually looking at on their screen/share control with them. Things like X-forwarding are more difficult to set up across all platforms. So VNC works best for me.
I have DynDNS + TightVNC on quite a few of my non-techie relatives' computers (scattered across more than one continent, no less) and it works great. Tunnel it through SSH if you're paranoid, but I usually don't bother - I run the service on an odd port and the password itself is encrypted when transmitted, even if the session data thereafter is sent in the clear. Noone is going to be sitting there sniffing my VNC traffic on the one or two occasions per year that I might actually be using it.
VNC isn't the most efficient remote control protocol but unlike RDP/X11 etc. it's cross-platform, and allows you to take control of the user's CURRENT session (even sharing control if necessary). RDP logs you in as a separate session which is completely useless if you are trying to see exactly what they see on their screen.
To be fair, most people seeking H-1B (or other non-immigrant, employer-sponsored visas like L-1B etc.) don't qualify for a 'normal' immigration status. A lot of them would apply, if they could.
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Huh? Other large countries that switched also had pre-existing systems that worked (in many cases, the very same system you still use) and huge amounts of legacy infrastructure. It's not like the change was made in the distant past - just a few decades ago for many countries. My father (who isn't particularly old) grew up with the 'old' system and went through the change when he was in his late teens/early 20s. This was in Australia which has a similar physical size and Federal/State system of government to the US. A smaller population (i.e. less infrastructure) admittedly, though that means you also have a proportionally smaller tax base to fund the change and proportionally smaller teams of people available to perform the necessary work - so I'm not sure that invalidates the comparison.
And yes there's a cost involved (though not as much as you think - the switch occurs in stages and the cost is amortized across several years). You don't have to throw away old infrastructure (except obvious things such as road signs - and they aren't that expensive in the scheme of things), you just gradually introduce stuff built to the new standard and let the old stuff expire through attrition. A lot of measuring equipment these days is already switchable to metric anyway (scales in grocery stores, newer gas pumps etc.), or could be modified through a software patch.
Noone is claiming that the switch is easy or cheap or without inevitable teething issues. But it'll need to happen at some point, unless you truly believe 100, 200 years from now the US will still be using US traditional units in an otherwise completely metric world. I think the appeal and efficient of having a single global standard for measurement will inevitably force the change at some point - industry and manufacturing would love it as it allows simplification of product lines and easier trade between the US and other countries. I suspect though that it won't happen until the US is no longer the #1 consumer market in the world and/or no longer the largest economy. That's only a few decades away at most though...
Seriously, in non-US English, it's not. A hamburger and a sandwich are two different things (insert non-overlapping Venn diagram here). That's like saying "how is a cat not a dog". They are both pets (or in this case, food items with fillings between pieces of bread), but they aren't the same thing.
Or to put it a different way, Americans use 'sandwich' as an all-encompassing term that includes burgers and many other food items, including what non-US English speakers call 'sandwiches', whereas for the rest of us, sandwich is a specific term that doesn't 'include' any other subset of food items.
The definition you are using is from Merriam-Webster, an American English dictionary. So of course what Subway and McDonalds sell fits that definition.
The key difference is the "or a split roll..." part. Here (Australia, but also in the UK, NZ, other English-speaking countries), the word 'sandwich' means something between two pieces of (normal, flat, sliced) bread. Something with fillings in bun, or a roll, etc. is not called a sandwich. It's called a (ham)burger, or a roll, or something else that's more descriptive of the particular type of bread used (e.g. focaccia).
Or to put it another way, Americans use the word 'sandwich' as a generic term encompassing a whole class of food items that feature fillings between some kind of bread, whereas in other places, 'sandwich' is a specific term referring to a subset of what Americans would call a sandwich. (Incidentally, I can't think of any equivalent 'generic' term in UK/AU/NZ English equivalent to the US usage of 'sandwich').
Same here in Australia - people are not expected or pressured to give up their holidays and/or weekends in this way. Indeed, most managers actively discourage this kind of mentality. It's a work to live country and I suspect there'd be rioting in the streets if someone tried to change that.
This kind of article, combined with the tiny amount of vacation Americans get per year compared to every other country makes it sound like (working) hell on earth. Or maybe Americans just love working :)
You miss the point. Americans call things 'sandwiches', that would not be called 'sandwiches' in the rest of the world (or by the Earl of Sandwich for that matter). This includes things like the things Subway sells. It also includes burgers (I've seen American fast food restaurants refer to things like the Big Mac as a 'sandwich', or asking whether you wanted the 'sandwich only', or a drink with that).
L/100km is about comparing the efficiency of different vehicles on a linear scale. It's not about estimating how far you can get on a tank.
Revenge for all the US-made products (including some software) that won't switch to metric, or d/m/y, or metric paper sizes etc, even if you tell it you don't live in the US :)
Here in metric-using Australia, I'm 178 cm, spoken "one seventy-eight". Barely any longer to say than the approximate equivalent "five eleven". Noone says "one point blah blah metres" - height is in centimetres (specifically to avoid using decimal points and/or mixing units).
Also, as a Celsius-user, I think of each 5-degree increment as a "different sort of clothing" marker (or at least a "different type of weather feel"). Centered on 20 C (comfortable room temperature), which is no more difficult than thinking about departure from comfortable room temperature in F (i.e. ~70 F).
Australia, Canada, NZ and many other countries that have vast areas of land divided up into neat blocks based on miles and acres seemed to manage just fine.
Also your comment regarding temperature and 'feel' is simply rooted in what you're used to, and would be no different if using Celsius. As a 'native' Celsius user, I feel the same way about C. To me, each interval of 5 C has a similar associated 'feel', centered neatly around 20 C (room temperature, typically what you'd have a thermostat set to). So I think of the 15-20 range much like you'd think of "60s", and 20-25 like you'd think about "70s" etc. (Obviously neither maps neatly to the other, but the principal is the same).
It'll look so cheap on the signs, too :)
I wonder why they chose such a random, 'un-neat' number as 44, regardless of whether it's a round-down or round-up? 45 would have achieved the same effect (=28 mph, so still a slight 'round down')...
It's not that the US system is hard to use, it's that you're the last outliers (among major developed countries at least) not to switch. It's for the sake of consistency rather than anything else. No more having to program two separate measurement systems into every bit of software. No more wondering WTF 'letter' size paper is anymore when your printer demands it for some reason (i.e. someone in the US has emailed you a document that wants to print on that size paper). Etc.
It'd be no different if everyone ELSE used the US system, and the US were the only people using metric - it would make sense to change. It's not about which system is better, it's about being consistent.
If there were several major countries not using metric yet, then I don't think there'd be the same 'annoyance' with the Americans. But you guys are literally the ... last ... ones. Cmon! :)
It's perfectly acceptable to use the world 'mileage' in English-speaking metric countries to refer generically to 'distance' - the units that distance is measured in don't matter. Though here in Australia they tend to just call them distance signs.
Hm seriously? Doesn't speak well for Windows 8, does it.
Throwing in a free copy of Office might raise the probability of me moving to Windows 8 from 0% to 5% I guess. But I still think I'll be using Win 7 until they no longer support it.
Dialup is just too slow. Most light (or even average) internet users might not use much data, but when they DO use it, they want it fast.
This includes people like me. I don't use much data per month compared to most Slashdotters (typically under 20 GB), but I do want to download something, I want it fast. I don't care that the amount I can get each month is limited, but it would piss me off having to wait an hour to download a music track, or 40 seconds to load a basic webpage (like on dialup).
I live in Australia where most ISPs sell a variety of plans with different download limits (from tiny, just a few GB, to massive multi-TB caps). ADSL/VDSL plans are 'tiered' by their download limits, not by their speed as they are in the US (here, you simply get the maximum speed your phone line can manage - this will be faster the shorter your phone line is, up to the 24 Mbps maximum for the ADSL2+ standard, or up to the 60 Mbps maximum my local VDSL2 provider gives).
So I buy myself a 30 GB/month plan and that fits my needs. In the US, for the same cost, I could get an unlimited plan ... BUT it's artificially speed-capped (since in the US the plans are differentiated by speed and thus are artificially limited to a certain speed depending on your plan, e.g. 3 Mbps/6 Mbps/12 Mbps etc.) For me, I much prefer my 'limited downloads @ uncapped speed' than the 'unlimited downloads @ much slower speed' I'd get for the same money in the US. I always have the option of upgrading to a higher cap if I need it ... but in the meantime at least I can grab the files that I do need very quickly.
I actually tried a dialup connection a few months ago as a bit of a laugh. First time I'd used a dialup connection in over a decade. It was way more painful than I remember - web pages are so much more bloated than they used to be. Dialup is essentially unusable now for ANY purpose other than text-only email so I don't think it's a valid option even for light internet users.
Uh - like most technology and communications-related things over the last 30 years, the price constantly decreases, rather than increases. Look at countries where you have always paid per GB (or where home internet plans have always had traffic caps). Prices per GB are orders of magnitude less than five or ten years ago.
I always get shouted down on Slashdot but I actually think metered bandwidth is the way to go. You pay for what you use, like any other utility.
This means ISPs can offer a range of plans, from dirt-cheap $9.95 plans that offer just a few GB, for your grandmother who just checks her email a few times a week and browses a few web pages, to plans with insane multi-terabyte caps for heavy downloaders. It leads to a greater choice of plans and opportunities to save money for most average users. It also means ISPs can very accurately predict their traffic needs (because they know they've got X subscribers on various plans totalling Y petabytes of traffic per month), and thus provision their network appropriately (i.e. more heavy users = more cost to the ISP for backhaul and transit, but also means more revenue coming in because those heavy users are on more expensive plans, so the ISP can afford to buy the necessary equipment etc.).
It also removes the need for ISPs to consider throttling certain kinds of traffic (P2P) or prioritising certain source of traffic over others. I.e. metered internet plans make 'net neutrality' a non-issue. If the users are paying per GB, then the ISP doesn't care what they use those GBs on. The ISP knows in advance what their traffic requirements per month will be and can provision their network appropriately. No port blocking/filtering/throttling/packet inspection/other QoS shenanigans are needed to ensure network performance is reasonable for all users.
Replying to own post here, apologies. But wanted to add something. I see this as analogous to another error you often see: 'all intensive purposes' being used where 'all intents and purposes' is meant. This is basically the same kind of situation:
- Both are similar sounding;
- Both are valid, grammatical English in their own right, but mean completely different things;
- The misuse results from a mishearing, which then gets repeated and propagated;
- Both are seen quite regularly, enough to say that they are in common usage
I would argue that if you accept 'hone/honed in' as a valid evolution, then you also have to accept 'intensive purposes', via the same reasoning. But I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone that argued that 'intensive purposes' was acceptable...
Language does indeed evolve. A genuinely new word that reaches a given level of common use should be added to a dictionary, yes. But in this case, it's not a new word, it's merely a mishearing of something else. The only reason for it being in "common use" is that it sounds so similar to the actual word/phrase concerned. It would never have happened if 'hone' and 'home' didn't sound so similar to begin with. The 'evolution' of language in this case is not due to some genuine need to add meaning or increase descriptiveness or make communication more efficient or effective. It's just a mistake that propagated.
'Hone in' might have been in use for literally decades where you are, though I've only seen it start popping up relatively recently around here). The OED (which I think we can safely say is generally considered the most authoritative English dictionary out there, if there is such a thing) describes the usage as an apparent alteration of “to home in.” It traces the alteration to confusion caused by the somewhat similar meanings of the verbs “home” (to be guided to an objective) and “hone” (to refine a skill). It notes references for “to hone in” going back more than four decades - but these appear to be almost all American references. I'm Australian, not American, but I can tell you any proof reader would NOT allow you to use 'hone in' here (or, I suspect, in the UK/NZ ... maybe in Canada due to its greater exposure to American English?)
Honed in is not the past tense of hone in, because neither 'honed in' or 'hone in' actually exists. They are mishearings of 'home in' and 'homed in' respectively.
Also I'm not sure 'Merriam-Webster' and 'reputable' belong in the same sentence? Maybe it's recognised as an authority in America (I'm honestly not sure) but it's considered a joke anywhere else. A genuinely new word in common use should be added to a dictionary, yes, but in this case, they seem to be ignoring the fact that it's not a new word, it's merely a mishearing of something else. The only reason for it being in "common use" is that it sounds so similar to the actual word/phrase concerned.
Interesting point about the way Americans mostly perceive knives as tools. Makes a lot of sense - I had to admit when I visit the US I notice a LOT of guys carry knives of some description. You would almost never see that here (Australia). Most people see them as weapons. In fact in many (if not all?) States you are simply not permitted to carry knives. For instance, in Queensland:
Weapons Act 1990 (Qld):
A person must not physically possess a knife in a public place or a school, unless the person has a reasonable excuse. A reasonable excuse is includes:
to perform a lawful activity, duty or employment; or
to participate in a lawful entertainment, recreation or sport
So if you are a farmer or hiker or circus performer who juggles knives, or doing something else that would reasonably require a knife, it's OK. But if you're just walking down the road to buy some milk, it's an offence. Each State's law varies a bit but you get the picture. In practice you'd have to be incredibly unlucky for a cop to issue you a fine for having a Swiss Army Knife or something on you ... but it's something they can add to the charge sheet if they catch you doing something else, I guess.
Whereas, in the US I'd be talking to someone, just a regular, nice guy ... and then he'd pull out some pocketknife to open a package or something (including some varieties that would be classed as prohibited weapons in ~any~ situation here). Makes me do a bit of a 'WTF' double-take. Just a different cultural attitude I guess. Only place here you'll find a knife around here is in a tool box or a kitchen drawer.
I think it's just baggage fees in the US that are the problem. People carrying insane amounts of carry on baggage and the whole "get on the plane early so you can get a spot for all your stuff in the overhead lockers" rigmarole is unique to the US - I'd never seen anything like it before I travelled in the US.
Here in Australia airlines still include at least one checked bag as part of the ticket price. It's always been that way. Not for the discount airlines admittedly (Tiger, Jetstar), but they only have a small part of the market. I'm talking about the mainline airlines that account for the majority of flights (i.e. Qantas, Virgin). So most people check most of their stuff and carry on merely a small laptop bag or purse or something. In fact for short flights (2 hours) I don't carry anything on at all (except for my wallet and phone).
You don't appreciate how good air travel is in Australia (small to non-existent security lines, RFID check-in and baggage tagging so no check-in lines (on Qantas at least), no need to take your shoes off, no liquids restrictions on domestic flights etc.) until you've compared it to the US. Flying in the US is a chaotic, stressful experience ... here it's a breeze 9 times out of 10.
"Honed in" may be in common usage but that doesn't make it correct.
One can hone a blade. In the same sense, one can hone their skills (in the sense of sharpening or improving them). However one cannot 'hone in' on something. It's a mishearing of "home in" (to zero in on/zoom in on/narrow a wider field down to) - a common one to be sure, but mistaken nonetheless.
Nothing wrong with 'lent' though, as you say.
The 'Tight' encoding isn't too bad, performance-wise, especially if you tunnel it over SSH with compression on. Things like RDP log you in as a separate session which is no good if you are trying to see what the user is actually looking at on their screen/share control with them. Things like X-forwarding are more difficult to set up across all platforms. So VNC works best for me.
Yep this is the way to go.
I have DynDNS + TightVNC on quite a few of my non-techie relatives' computers (scattered across more than one continent, no less) and it works great. Tunnel it through SSH if you're paranoid, but I usually don't bother - I run the service on an odd port and the password itself is encrypted when transmitted, even if the session data thereafter is sent in the clear. Noone is going to be sitting there sniffing my VNC traffic on the one or two occasions per year that I might actually be using it.
VNC isn't the most efficient remote control protocol but unlike RDP/X11 etc. it's cross-platform, and allows you to take control of the user's CURRENT session (even sharing control if necessary). RDP logs you in as a separate session which is completely useless if you are trying to see exactly what they see on their screen.
To be fair, most people seeking H-1B (or other non-immigrant, employer-sponsored visas like L-1B etc.) don't qualify for a 'normal' immigration status. A lot of them would apply, if they could.