I believe the exception is if the first letter is something that is a *silent* consonant, leave it with "a." For example, honorable or university*. A lot of people (native speakers) seem to not get this as you'll see "an historic" a lot of the time but the 'h' isn't silent so it should still be 'a.'
I'll admit that the "if it's separated by another word, use that word instead" seems maddeningly inconsistent. I consider it a bonus that we don't conjugate every god damn part of speech, though. After taking a few years of German, it seems like in German you have to conjugate 6 or 7 out of 10 parts of speech, while in English it's only really 3 (pronouns, verbs, and articles). And of course the genders for 90% of nouns are completely random. My favorite is "das Mädchen." Argh!
* Do I remember correctly that Universität is begun with an "oo" pronunciation? In English it's a "yoo" pronunciation.
Ah, okay. I probably would have picked up on that if you had said "at university" instead of "at an university."
(Not sure what the rule is officially but I'd say "a university" not "an university." Cf. whether it's the spelling or the pronunciation that determines a vs. an.)
Having just recently bought a used stick-shift, I've vaguely wondered each time I had to take it in for something whether all the probably barely 20yo assistants who move the cars around at these places know how to drive stick...and if so, how to do it without mangling my transmission.
Admittedly I'm only 25 myself so hey:) But I also know the basics of assembly so I'm probably in a pretty weird demographic these days.
To clarify, I did take *a* course in COBOL and a half-course in assembly. Sadly they had crammed together the courses for Computer Architecture and Operating Systems into one, CAOS, so the other half was basically threading in Java.
Don't know about where you went, but we have separate majors for CS and SE where I graduated. The SE guys took a couple extra NIC programming classes and suchlike, while at the other end the Computer Information Systems people did a bunch of COBOL classes. I did Computer Technology, the "middle options."
CT and CIS were both internal branches of CS, and CS and SE made up the agglomerated CSSE department. Post-graduation I'm not really qualified to say, but you specifically said "at an university."
Rereading your post, it looks like you weren't implying the link between a person and a bitcoin userid like I thought. But still, part of the value of bitcoins is that there is no central authority to revoke your currency. Hence the use in black market applications etc.
Well, until that one group that has 50%+1 of the coins decides it wants to become that authority, I suppose.
During the Mongol era, "China" extended all the way to modern day Hungary.
Bullshit. The Mongol Empire was not the Chinese Empire. Maybe one or more of the chunks it disintegrated into can have some lineage traced down to China, but no.
Where did I say that China was the only one doing it? In fact, I was showing Luckyo that China wasn't somehow unique in having never conquered anyone. I was being the exact opposite of hypocritical.
Try to actually read my argument before jerking off another random Slashdot argument like hypocrisy onto the page, please. "Hypocrisy" is not a synonym for "idiot."
I'm not saying them making ICBMs is any more or less wrong than anyone else. Luckyo just made it sound like China should be the only country on Earth who doesn't get called out for having conquered their land from someone else.
I never said I supported the argument, and saying "China has always been here" sounds eminently like an argument that only a native Chinese person would ever use.
Cf. invading Tibet and those other western provinces. Or "those people were Chinese, too," I expect?
the official NATO and Russian policy is that they can respond to any attack, conventional or nuclear with nuclear force while they strongly work for non-proliferation to prevent others from having the same weapons at their disposal.
I get so tired of the arguments ad absurdum around here. The few nuclear powers we have now have--for the MOST part--proven themselves to be relatively sane and unlikely to actually use them. But no, let's just publish complete designs for The Bomb on the Internet and let every country with the raw material build their own. What could possibly go wrong?
I'm not a fan of anybody having nukes either, but they do, and your argument sounds to me like, "Wah! This other country has nukes and we don't! *I* want nukes!!"
You can be a hypocrite without necessarily being wrong. Jerkass Has A Point.
Or like the fake Polish radio station assault Hitler staged to justify the invasion of Poland. "Look, look! Somebody nuked us! Don't question how a U.S. operative with a suitcase nuke managed to get into [insert disposable Chinese metropolitan area], get out the codes, you fool!!"
Pretty sure they do not want them to starve to death bad PR and enough of the old folks remember how nasty that is. But hunger is a good motivator to break a defiant population.
Unless if they can blame the starvation on the Israelis, which they eminently can. PR victory!
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the exception is if the first letter is something that is a *silent* consonant, leave it with "a." For example, honorable or university*. A lot of people (native speakers) seem to not get this as you'll see "an historic" a lot of the time but the 'h' isn't silent so it should still be 'a.'
I'll admit that the "if it's separated by another word, use that word instead" seems maddeningly inconsistent. I consider it a bonus that we don't conjugate every god damn part of speech, though. After taking a few years of German, it seems like in German you have to conjugate 6 or 7 out of 10 parts of speech, while in English it's only really 3 (pronouns, verbs, and articles). And of course the genders for 90% of nouns are completely random. My favorite is "das Mädchen." Argh!
* Do I remember correctly that Universität is begun with an "oo" pronunciation? In English it's a "yoo" pronunciation.
The first 2 results for "a vs an" on Google agree with me, anyway. I wouldn't be surprised at a dissenting opinion.
https://owl.english.purdue.edu...
http://www.quickanddirtytips.c...
Ah, okay. I probably would have picked up on that if you had said "at university" instead of "at an university."
(Not sure what the rule is officially but I'd say "a university" not "an university." Cf. whether it's the spelling or the pronunciation that determines a vs. an.)
Having just recently bought a used stick-shift, I've vaguely wondered each time I had to take it in for something whether all the probably barely 20yo assistants who move the cars around at these places know how to drive stick...and if so, how to do it without mangling my transmission.
Admittedly I'm only 25 myself so hey :) But I also know the basics of assembly so I'm probably in a pretty weird demographic these days.
*in the same vein
*middle option
To clarify, I did take *a* course in COBOL and a half-course in assembly. Sadly they had crammed together the courses for Computer Architecture and Operating Systems into one, CAOS, so the other half was basically threading in Java.
Don't know about where you went, but we have separate majors for CS and SE where I graduated. The SE guys took a couple extra NIC programming classes and suchlike, while at the other end the Computer Information Systems people did a bunch of COBOL classes. I did Computer Technology, the "middle options."
CT and CIS were both internal branches of CS, and CS and SE made up the agglomerated CSSE department. Post-graduation I'm not really qualified to say, but you specifically said "at an university."
Is it too much to ask that whatever their course of study they take at least one class on the principles of web application security?
Yes. Explain to me how embedded programmers need to know about web security?
Rereading your post, it looks like you weren't implying the link between a person and a bitcoin userid like I thought. But still, part of the value of bitcoins is that there is no central authority to revoke your currency. Hence the use in black market applications etc.
Well, until that one group that has 50%+1 of the coins decides it wants to become that authority, I suppose.
Or maybe they started out with good intentions but got corrupted like everything else in this world.
Or stay uncorrupted and then get stomped on by all the people who went to the Dark Side I suppose.
Maybe they were just threatening not to return the money at some indeterminate point in the future unless they took it down :)
Second Law: We're apparently counting in zero-indexed binary so this law doesn't exist.
Wasn't the whole objective of Bitcoin to create a system where you *couldn't* do that?
During the Mongol era, "China" extended all the way to modern day Hungary.
Bullshit. The Mongol Empire was not the Chinese Empire. Maybe one or more of the chunks it disintegrated into can have some lineage traced down to China, but no.
Not like Mao was doing his best to eradicate that culture or anything...
Egypt is still around. How much closer together are Traditional China and Communist China than Pharaonic Egypt and Egypt Now?
Where did I say that China was the only one doing it? In fact, I was showing Luckyo that China wasn't somehow unique in having never conquered anyone. I was being the exact opposite of hypocritical.
Try to actually read my argument before jerking off another random Slashdot argument like hypocrisy onto the page, please. "Hypocrisy" is not a synonym for "idiot."
I'm not saying them making ICBMs is any more or less wrong than anyone else. Luckyo just made it sound like China should be the only country on Earth who doesn't get called out for having conquered their land from someone else.
I never said I supported the argument, and saying "China has always been here" sounds eminently like an argument that only a native Chinese person would ever use.
Cf. invading Tibet and those other western provinces. Or "those people were Chinese, too," I expect?
Generally anybody who tells you that something is "perfectly safe" can be safely assumed to be lying through their teeth. Nothing is ever perfect.
Or how they say it can be transmitted by talking to someone who's less than 3 feet away.
Less profanity and more logging in if you please.
Rogue! Not the French for 'red'!
the official NATO and Russian policy is that they can respond to any attack, conventional or nuclear with nuclear force while they strongly work for non-proliferation to prevent others from having the same weapons at their disposal.
I get so tired of the arguments ad absurdum around here. The few nuclear powers we have now have--for the MOST part--proven themselves to be relatively sane and unlikely to actually use them. But no, let's just publish complete designs for The Bomb on the Internet and let every country with the raw material build their own. What could possibly go wrong?
I'm not a fan of anybody having nukes either, but they do, and your argument sounds to me like, "Wah! This other country has nukes and we don't! *I* want nukes!!"
You can be a hypocrite without necessarily being wrong. Jerkass Has A Point.
Or like the fake Polish radio station assault Hitler staged to justify the invasion of Poland. "Look, look! Somebody nuked us! Don't question how a U.S. operative with a suitcase nuke managed to get into [insert disposable Chinese metropolitan area], get out the codes, you fool!!"
Why do you think nobody has dropped a US carrier since WWII, even though they make such great targets?
Because nobody particularly wants to start WWIII?
Technically it doesn't violate the treaty if you never sign the treaty, so from a lawyer's perspective, yes.
Hint: Almost all of China's wars were internal (or at least in the territory of current China).
*cough* And whose territory were they before they were in China?
Pretty sure they do not want them to starve to death bad PR and enough of the old folks remember how nasty that is. But hunger is a good motivator to break a defiant population.
Unless if they can blame the starvation on the Israelis, which they eminently can. PR victory!