But since they used angle brackets, which eventually HTML also used, they were doomed to obsolesence... after all, posting them on slashdot is way too complicated.:)
Re:may god forgive him for what he has unleashed
on
The First Smiley :-)
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The smiley teaches writers that anything they write will pass as humor as long as it is punctuated properly. It teaches readers that they must ignore their better judgment, and look only at punctuation to determine intent.
Adding even more, it also makes sense that we should not use commas to indicate pauses -- or periods for sentence stops -- since that should be clear from context. We wouldn't want readers coming to rely upon mere punctuation, now would we?
Re:may god forgive him for what he has unleashed
on
The First Smiley :-)
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Blockquoth the poster, quoting Jim Showalter:
It teaches readers that they must ignore their better judgment, and look only at punctuation to determine intent
I understand completely. That's why, when I tell a joke, I make sure to do it in a total monotone, completely deadpan. That way I don't accidentally teach my audience to ignore their better judgment or to rely on body language.
This is why, I believe, these fictional stories rarely do things that are irreversable, like have Peter Parker age [much] or main characters get married (last I looked, Marvel was still struggling with that one, even having MJ disappear).
... and this is why, all his many faults aside, Joe Straczynski was an absolute genius in designing Babylon 5. By building in an explicit ending, he freed himself to make the major changes necessary -- in both the characters and the larger fictional world -- to keep the show fresh and to keep viewers a little off-edge. You can't do that when your prime directive is to Protect the Franchise.
The problem is, trying to be write something "balanced" when talking about something that evil ends up being just a mouthpiece for them. There is nothing at all that can justify "Palladium" (or KKK if that matters) without saying a lie.
No. "Fair and balanced" means that you do not let your personal view of the situation edit the reporting. If the KKK had a march and 10,000 people showed up, that indicates real support from at least, well, 10,000 people. In a truly open society, that fact deserves to be out in front of the public.
If the newspaper reported, "One hundred thousand people attended the Klan rally" -- knowing full well that it was 10,000 -- I think we would all recognize that as unfair and unbalanced and, really, simply wrong. But some would do so only because it "magnified" the Klan. I feel strongly that if the newspaper reported "1,000 people attended", that would be equally as wrong -- even though it tends to marginalize a group I happen to find totally reprehensible.
I want the Klan to go away in American politics. I want their brand of hate and fear to lose its currency and be seen as the worthless tripe it is. But I want to win the fight honestly... I no more want my newspapers manipulating the news to beat the Klan than I want them manipulating the news to support it. What's more, I have faith that, if the facts are presented as fairly as humanly possible, that the great self-corrective mechanisms of democracy in fact will lead to the marginalization and disappearance of the Klan.
A fair and open press is a much bigger issue than Palladium, or even the Klan. It is the fundament of a well-informed citizenship, and that is the keystone of a vibrant true democracy. And before all you nay-sayers comment snidely about how "well-informed" our citizenry is, consider this: Maybe there's a correlation between the decline of the informed citizen and the rise of megaculture, hypersecurity, and the current evolving police state.
Books and movies are available from libraries. I'm sure they hate that too.
Oh, they do, they do. Don't think the Content Cartel isn't aiming for the effective elimination of public libraries through the imposition of increasingly restrictive access control mechanisms. And don't think that dead-tree publishers are any more moral or public-spirited than bit-pushers. To quote Ralph Oman, former US Registrar of Copyright, under whose regime the expansion of intellectual "property" rights occured,
A long list of special pleaders now gets free use of copyrighted works, including small businesses, veterans' groups, bars, scholars, restaurants, fraternal groups, marching bands, Boy Scout troops, nursing homes, libraries, radio broadcasters and home tapers. [emphasis added]
As we can see, public libraries are no more than thieving "special pleaders" who scavenge off the public domain without ever returning anything to society. Oh, wait, that's more a description of Disney, but oh, well... The Registrar of Copyright himself apparently dismissses public libraries. You don't think the Content Cartel drools over the prospect?
Then again, when they find they can't rip their buddy's CDs maybe that will start to focus their minds...
Bingo. When my sister (former assistant DA and a total law-and-order type) and my mom (retired do-gooder public school teacher) both start to ask me about ripping CDs to hard disk and space-shifting music, then I know that the Content Cartel is doomed. People are getting used to this whole musical frededom thing, and taking it away hits them a lot closer to home than, say, the Microsoft monopoly.
It's like "fair abd balanced story" about, say, KKK. Some things just should be never encouraged.
Ah, another person whose commitment to a free press is only skin deep. Of course reporting about Palladium -- or the Klan, for that matter! -- should be "fair and balanced". That's the unflinchinhg goal for honest jounralism. Show a little faith that maybe, just maybe, when John Q. Puublic or Jane Sixpack gets the actual facts in a fair and balanced matter, he/she will make the right choice.
Stop trying to save the peoples of the world from themselves. Give them the facts and let them save themselves. If your position, after an admittedly "fair and balanced" presentation, cannot survive, then it doesn't deserve to.
"Our goal is simple: come September 7, 2002, we want everybody who turns on a television set to know that date is the anniversary of the day the medium arrived on this planet - and to know the name of the man who delivered it."
-- Paul Schatzkin, Author of The Boy Who Invented Television
Well, TV has given us some nice moments. But in between all those nice moments has been a high-volume sewer hose of cultural sludge. So my personal goal today is to convince everyone to not watch TV at all, at least for this day. Let's remind the Content Cartel that there are other options...
So instead of trying to change your speech to fit old rules, why not just come up with a new rule to describe that sentence.
Well, the purpose of language is to communicate. So, yes, it's possible that an over-fixation on grammar could lead to a blockage of communication. But it's just as possible -- and I would say, even more likely -- that everyone striking out on their own and establishing their own "new rules" will lead to linguistic fragmentation and the death of communication. Look at it this way: Try picking up an early but still Modern English text -- something written back before printing presses and dictionaries. Try to read it. Pick up a New York Times article from, say, 100 years ago. Try to read it.
Which of those, do you think, would be more readily comprehensible? And don't you think it might have something to do with the standardized spelling and grammar employed in the Times?
As someone scientifically trained, I am simply aware that non-standard usages can be deadly to communication and the progress of the field.
Finally, I'd like to comment on
I think correcting people's grammar is very obnoxious. Not only that, it implies that there is some sort of "correct" way of speaking, which there isn't.
Actually, no. Usage of "[sic]" and other correction of grammar does not imply that there is a correct way of speaking. These do imply there is some sort of "correct" way of writing... which there is. Conversation is fluid and uneditied, and generally less formal. Things in print are, of course, static and should be edited. That's why there's a distinction between "spoken English" and "formal English". It's a good distinction, IMHO. Clearly, your mileage varies.
in my observation 95% of the time [sic] is used, it is both obnoxious and gratuitous.
No, the obnoxious thing would be to suggest that it seems "gratuitous" to you so often because you miss the grammatical error, too.:) Seriously, "[sic]" serves an extremely important function, which is to absolve the printer of blame for errors in the original source of a quote. (Interestingly, this heightens the blame for errors in non-quoted material, IMHO.) I for one get extremely ticked off when stupid or common grammatical errors slip through the long and allegedly thorough process of proofing. If I want errors, I'll go to a real-time feedback forum like slashdot. If I pay $40 for a hardcover, I expect it to have been proofread.
From a purely practical viewpoint, "[sic]" is in the printer's best interest, because I will avoid a publication or publishing house that tolerates a high level of error.
Again, I don't think there is anything wrong there, because you extracted you're data from a piece of art that I hold the copyright on - the picture of me holding the album!
You underestimate the power of the Content Cartel. In real life, they would get a judge to rule that you, with the picture of the album, had already violated the copyright. And it gets worse: This legal argument will then be extended to say that photos of album covers -- even if they're only incidental in the picture -- are violations. And then....
Generally, people deride something like "sic" as "elitist" when they don't want to admit they didn't know what it meant, either (or when they don't want to admit they didn't catch the mistake themselves).
It doesn't have to be scientifically sound, any explaination to keep the disbelief going.
You know, "suspension of disbelief" is not the same as "unbelievable". When the plot device used is outrageously stupid, it's not a clever trick to "suspend your disbelief". It's just outrageously stupid.
Growing a human being for energy is outrageously stupid... because growing a human being consumes far more energy than it produces. It's like running SLAC to produce antimatter to use in your reactor -- you invest many, many times more energy than you get out. If they have the energy to keep the human population alive and reproducing -- and if that energy is enough to nourish the machines -- then they have enough energy to run the machine civilization without the humans.
If they need the people as batteries, then they could just as well use, say, dogs. Or, for that matter, humans whose cerebral cortex had been damaged. No will = no desire to "awake" or revolt = no need for The Matrix at all.
This wasn't a legitimate plot device to keep the action rolling. It was a careless stupid device chosen for aesthetics alone, whose actual effect is to bring the action to a screeching halt as you sit there and ponder, "Whaaa?"
Unless of course you just let the movie wash over you... in which, an intelligent conversation on this matter will be impossible.
Oh, and by the way... deuterium comes from, among other things, seawater. No need to go to the Moon.
Well, I'm not much of a hardware engineer, but how could the bit respond unless it was powered? If it could respond to inquiry (i.e., be measured as to which state it happens to be in) then that means it was in fact powered. Yet it had three states while powered, and so therefore it was not a bit at all.
Ummm... when queried, the bit had only two states (Yes and No). I too am not a hardware person but it seems to me that the query is exactly what powered the bit and applied whatever bias was needed to have a state.
The Black Hole, another piece of drek, deserves a sequel before Tron, and The Black Hole is perhaps Disney's worst film ever.
But wait. The Black Hole deserves a sequel first because (one must conclude) it's a better film than Tron. But it is also "Disney's worst film ever", meaning that any other Disney film is better than The Black Hole.
Yet Tron was a Disney film! So it must be better than The Black Hole, even though it has been posited to be worse than The Black Hole. You, my friend, have reasoned to a contradiction. Pffft! You disappear in a puff of mis-logic.
That way, nobody knows a damn thing about it until it comes out. I mean, we don't want to generate any buzz, develop a fan community, or leak out info that might drive potential customers mad with lust for the sequel, right?
All these posts complaining about the gag order and wondering what Tron 2.0 is really about... you don't think this qualifies as "buzz"??
The Matrix on the other hand was well explained/executed and the only question I had leaving was what the Oracle was.
Duh-huh, what?? The Matrix is like the soggy paper towel of movies: The more you watch it, the more it decomposes into little lint balls. The AIs use humans for power?? So, they store and feed billions of people, plus expend untold megajoules on the whole distribution system, instead of tapping the nuclear fusion plants directly? Or sending up solar satellites above the atmospheric inteference?
There exists on the face of a mechanized Earth a city which is simultaneously (a) utterly secret and camouflage yet (b) densely populated and technologically extravagant?
The humans know enough to bend the rules and make 5-mile jumps but not to escape agents?
The Matrix was the worst kind of psuedo-mystic comic-book cookie-cutter claptrap to come down the pike in many a year. Fun to watch, soemwhat, but hardly a great movie.
imagine the uproar that would occur if the mona lisa was copied, altered, and then passed off for the original. this is just wrong.
Indeed. But let me do a little editing of my own:
imagine the uproar that would occur if the mona lisa was copied, altered, and then clearly and prominently labelled as edited for language, sex, or violence. this is just wrong.
Now, it's not so clear-cut. Editing the Mona Lisa destroys a work of art. Editing the master print for a film would be the same. But are you really going to sic the law on the guys who transformed the Mona Lisa into a "Got Milk?" ad?
There is a huge market for these films, and if they won't fill it then obviously someone else should.
Whaaa? That's a pretty extreme form of capitalism: Solely because there's a market for something, there's an implicit moral imperative to provide the desired goods? A lot of people want heroin... does that by itself justify either legalization or the black market that currently exists?
Indeed, there's a pretty strong market desire for, say, a small nuclear tactical device. You could find a lot of people interested in acquiring an old Soviet one. So are the efforts of the civilized world, to interdict such arms transfers, morally wrong?
Look, there might be a market but that doesn't mean it has to be satisfied. We usually lambaste Hollywood for its profit motive and its sacrifice of artistry for cash. If there is such a market, and if they could make such a killing meeting the demand, then they must be pretty principled to stand their ground. Is that necessarily wrong?
Noone is forcing you to rent these or view them, all it is doing is providing a choice to those of us who want some of our favorite films to be a little bit cleaner.
No one is forcing you to rent or view the original versions, either. I'm not sure I side with the DGA, and I'm not sure that I buy their rhetoric about the "integrity of the vision". But I also view most of the "let us do this" arguments as boiling down to, "In this cold, evil world, a righteous parent must make hard choices... but could you make mine a little easier?" If the language, sex, or violence offend you, then don't rent or watch the movie.
There is an interesting analogy to open software... the[sic] preserves the integrity of everyone's IP, including the author of the edit list. Everybody's happy!?
Sure, if the creator of the work agreed to your Open Source License. But it wouldn't be right to take Microsoft's code and "open" it via, say, the GPL, against the express wishes of Microsoft. Likewise it wouldn't be right to take someone's film and "open" it without express permission.
Open software is about giving the user more choices, not about seizing the decision from someone else. People choose to release a program as open. Unless a director chooses to release his/her film "open"ly, then you don't have the right to "fork" his/her vision.
Sure it does, unless all consumers have perfect information (fat chance!)
True enough. But one of the features of the Internet is that it makes lots more information available much more easily and -- for now -- with little economic cost. That's why it's not too surprising that the revolution, when it comes, will start in the information fields...
Just as democracy is the system where you decide what to do instead of being told by some dictator, capitalism is the system where you decide what you want to spend the fruits of your labor on, rather than taking what is alotted to you by some bureaucracy.
It's all OK until it devolves -- just like bureaucracy -- into letting you decide where you want to spend the fruits of somebody else's labor...
Well if they knew anything, they should know that the majority of all meteorites that fall to earth are COLD to the touch when they hit earth, do to the fact that they are 'burning' so fast when they enter the atmosphere that the heat doesnt transfer to the core of the meteor.
Um, doesn't the fact that "the majority of all meteorites" are cold imply that some, at least, are not cold? (I suppose technically not necessarily -- 100% is also a majority -- but it's an extremely unusual way to say it.) And unless the good people of the Hayden Planetarium were lying to me all those years ago, I've seen meteorites that were pitted and melted.
It can be a 1 in 10^9 occurance and still occur...
Slashdot Mirror
But since they used angle brackets, which eventually HTML also used, they were doomed to obsolesence... after all, posting them on slashdot is way too complicated. :)
Adding even more, it also makes sense that we should not use commas to indicate pauses -- or periods for sentence stops -- since that should be clear from context. We wouldn't want readers coming to rely upon mere punctuation, now would we?
I understand completely. That's why, when I tell a joke, I make sure to do it in a total monotone, completely deadpan. That way I don't accidentally teach my audience to ignore their better judgment or to rely on body language.
Oh, in case it wasm't clear:
My God, this sounds like the return of Abian...
No. "Fair and balanced" means that you do not let your personal view of the situation edit the reporting. If the KKK had a march and 10,000 people showed up, that indicates real support from at least, well, 10,000 people. In a truly open society, that fact deserves to be out in front of the public.
If the newspaper reported, "One hundred thousand people attended the Klan rally" -- knowing full well that it was 10,000 -- I think we would all recognize that as unfair and unbalanced and, really, simply wrong. But some would do so only because it "magnified" the Klan. I feel strongly that if the newspaper reported "1,000 people attended", that would be equally as wrong -- even though it tends to marginalize a group I happen to find totally reprehensible.
I want the Klan to go away in American politics. I want their brand of hate and fear to lose its currency and be seen as the worthless tripe it is. But I want to win the fight honestly... I no more want my newspapers manipulating the news to beat the Klan than I want them manipulating the news to support it. What's more, I have faith that, if the facts are presented as fairly as humanly possible, that the great self-corrective mechanisms of democracy in fact will lead to the marginalization and disappearance of the Klan.
A fair and open press is a much bigger issue than Palladium, or even the Klan. It is the fundament of a well-informed citizenship, and that is the keystone of a vibrant true democracy. And before all you nay-sayers comment snidely about how "well-informed" our citizenry is, consider this: Maybe there's a correlation between the decline of the informed citizen and the rise of megaculture, hypersecurity, and the current evolving police state.
Oh, they do, they do. Don't think the Content Cartel isn't aiming for the effective elimination of public libraries through the imposition of increasingly restrictive access control mechanisms. And don't think that dead-tree publishers are any more moral or public-spirited than bit-pushers. To quote Ralph Oman, former US Registrar of Copyright, under whose regime the expansion of intellectual "property" rights occured,
As we can see, public libraries are no more than thieving "special pleaders" who scavenge off the public domain without ever returning anything to society. Oh, wait, that's more a description of Disney, but oh, well... The Registrar of Copyright himself apparently dismissses public libraries. You don't think the Content Cartel drools over the prospect?
Bingo. When my sister (former assistant DA and a total law-and-order type) and my mom (retired do-gooder public school teacher) both start to ask me about ripping CDs to hard disk and space-shifting music, then I know that the Content Cartel is doomed. People are getting used to this whole musical frededom thing, and taking it away hits them a lot closer to home than, say, the Microsoft monopoly.
Ah, another person whose commitment to a free press is only skin deep. Of course reporting about Palladium -- or the Klan, for that matter! -- should be "fair and balanced". That's the unflinchinhg goal for honest jounralism. Show a little faith that maybe, just maybe, when John Q. Puublic or Jane Sixpack gets the actual facts in a fair and balanced matter, he/she will make the right choice.
Stop trying to save the peoples of the world from themselves. Give them the facts and let them save themselves. If your position, after an admittedly "fair and balanced" presentation, cannot survive, then it doesn't deserve to
It's called democracy, people.
Well, TV has given us some nice moments. But in between all those nice moments has been a high-volume sewer hose of cultural sludge. So my personal goal today is to convince everyone to not watch TV at all, at least for this day. Let's remind the Content Cartel that there are other options...
Well, the purpose of language is to communicate. So, yes, it's possible that an over-fixation on grammar could lead to a blockage of communication. But it's just as possible -- and I would say, even more likely -- that everyone striking out on their own and establishing their own "new rules" will lead to linguistic fragmentation and the death of communication. Look at it this way: Try picking up an early but still Modern English text -- something written back before printing presses and dictionaries. Try to read it. Pick up a New York Times article from, say, 100 years ago. Try to read it.
Which of those, do you think, would be more readily comprehensible? And don't you think it might have something to do with the standardized spelling and grammar employed in the Times?
As someone scientifically trained, I am simply aware that non-standard usages can be deadly to communication and the progress of the field.
Finally, I'd like to comment on
Actually, no. Usage of "[sic]" and other correction of grammar does not imply that there is a correct way of speaking. These do imply there is some sort of "correct" way of writing
No, the obnoxious thing would be to suggest that it seems "gratuitous" to you so often because you miss the grammatical error, too.
From a purely practical viewpoint, "[sic]" is in the printer's best interest, because I will avoid a publication or publishing house that tolerates a high level of error.
You underestimate the power of the Content Cartel. In real life, they would get a judge to rule that you, with the picture of the album, had already violated the copyright. And it gets worse: This legal argument will then be extended to say that photos of album covers -- even if they're only incidental in the picture -- are violations. And then....
Generally, people deride something like "sic" as "elitist" when they don't want to admit they didn't know what it meant, either (or when they don't want to admit they didn't catch the mistake themselves).
You know, "suspension of disbelief" is not the same as "unbelievable". When the plot device used is outrageously stupid, it's not a clever trick to "suspend your disbelief". It's just outrageously stupid.
Growing a human being for energy is outrageously stupid
If they need the people as batteries, then they could just as well use, say, dogs. Or, for that matter, humans whose cerebral cortex had been damaged. No will = no desire to "awake" or revolt = no need for The Matrix at all.
This wasn't a legitimate plot device to keep the action rolling. It was a careless stupid device chosen for aesthetics alone, whose actual effect is to bring the action to a screeching halt as you sit there and ponder, "Whaaa?"
Unless of course you just let the movie wash over you... in which, an intelligent conversation on this matter will be impossible.
Oh, and by the way... deuterium comes from, among other things, seawater. No need to go to the Moon.
Ummm... when queried, the bit had only two states (Yes and No). I too am not a hardware person but it seems to me that the query is exactly what powered the bit and applied whatever bias was needed to have a state.
But wait. The Black Hole deserves a sequel first because (one must conclude) it's a better film than Tron. But it is also "Disney's worst film ever", meaning that any other Disney film is better than The Black Hole.
Yet Tron was a Disney film! So it must be better than The Black Hole, even though it has been posited to be worse than The Black Hole. You, my friend, have reasoned to a contradiction. Pffft! You disappear in a puff of mis-logic.
All these posts complaining about the gag order and wondering what Tron 2.0 is really about
Duh-huh, what?? The Matrix is like the soggy paper towel of movies: The more you watch it, the more it decomposes into little lint balls. The AIs use humans for power?? So, they store and feed billions of people, plus expend untold megajoules on the whole distribution system, instead of tapping the nuclear fusion plants directly? Or sending up solar satellites above the atmospheric inteference?
There exists on the face of a mechanized Earth a city which is simultaneously (a) utterly secret and camouflage yet (b) densely populated and technologically extravagant?
The humans know enough to bend the rules and make 5-mile jumps but not to escape agents?
The Matrix was the worst kind of psuedo-mystic comic-book cookie-cutter claptrap to come down the pike in many a year. Fun to watch, soemwhat, but hardly a great movie.
Indeed. But let me do a little editing of my own:
Now, it's not so clear-cut. Editing the Mona Lisa destroys a work of art. Editing the master print for a film would be the same. But are you really going to sic the law on the guys who transformed the Mona Lisa into a "Got Milk?" ad?
Whaaa? That's a pretty extreme form of capitalism: Solely because there's a market for something, there's an implicit moral imperative to provide the desired goods? A lot of people want heroin
Indeed, there's a pretty strong market desire for, say, a small nuclear tactical device. You could find a lot of people interested in acquiring an old Soviet one. So are the efforts of the civilized world, to interdict such arms transfers, morally wrong?
Look, there might be a market but that doesn't mean it has to be satisfied. We usually lambaste Hollywood for its profit motive and its sacrifice of artistry for cash. If there is such a market, and if they could make such a killing meeting the demand, then they must be pretty principled to stand their ground. Is that necessarily wrong?
No one is forcing you to rent or view the original versions, either. I'm not sure I side with the DGA, and I'm not sure that I buy their rhetoric about the "integrity of the vision". But I also view most of the "let us do this" arguments as boiling down to, "In this cold, evil world, a righteous parent must make hard choices... but could you make mine a little easier?" If the language, sex, or violence offend you, then don't rent or watch the movie.
It seems simple enough to me.
Sure, if the creator of the work agreed to your Open Source License. But it wouldn't be right to take Microsoft's code and "open" it via, say, the GPL, against the express wishes of Microsoft. Likewise it wouldn't be right to take someone's film and "open" it without express permission.
Open software is about giving the user more choices, not about seizing the decision from someone else. People choose to release a program as open. Unless a director chooses to release his/her film "open"ly, then you don't have the right to "fork" his/her vision.
True enough. But one of the features of the Internet is that it makes lots more information available much more easily and -- for now -- with little economic cost. That's why it's not too surprising that the revolution, when it comes, will start in the information fields...
It's all OK until it devolves -- just like bureaucracy -- into letting you decide where you want to spend the fruits of somebody else's labor...
Um, doesn't the fact that "the majority of all meteorites" are cold imply that some, at least, are not cold? (I suppose technically not necessarily -- 100% is also a majority -- but it's an extremely unusual way to say it.) And unless the good people of the Hayden Planetarium were lying to me all those years ago, I've seen meteorites that were pitted and melted.
It can be a 1 in 10^9 occurance and still occur...