However, is it automatically impolite to post a correction (and state someone is incorrect) as a reply to misinformation?
No, not automatically....
Regardless of if my wording was considered insulting?
This contradicts the 'automatic'. Fact is: you were being -- as Jon Stewart would put it -- dickish. Several others have pointed this out. I'm just adding my voice because you seem very intelligent, and hopefully the chorus of voices will be enough to convince you that you could have made the same correction of facts without being an asshole; And, as a bonus, people might have been educated by your presentation of the facts. Instead, most people probably just tuned out your post as soon as they saw the dickishness. I know I did. In fact, I can't even be bothered to process what you wrote even now.
You assume the woman is stupid. There are other possibilities: If something doesn't make sense to you, then yes, you could be stupid. On the other hand, the thing in question could be wrong.
I cannot think of a better definition of "stupid" then what you describe. Anyone who has no training/experience/education in a field and chooses what to believe in that field based on what "make sense to them" is fucking stupid; even worse they are willfully stupid.
Since the other guy answered your question, I'll just mention that the very fact you humbly asked to be educated proves you are not stupid, but merely ignorant on this subject. Kudos to you for putting learning ahead of pride!:-)
If people have a problem grasping 'evolution' as a concept, ask them to think about language evolution.
Are you kidding? That's even worse. Even people who accept biological evolution often cling to bizarre ideas about Language; like with e.g. British English vs. American English there is that impossible-to-kill meme that the Brits 'invented' English, so what they speak must be the 'original' English, etc... etc... ad nauseam And they will even argue those points against trained Linguists so, sorry, no salvation to be had there.
Then it wouldn't be an EO, but instead it would be the President signing a bill into law.
You misunderstood me. Many laws allow for specific powers for the President, which he can implement at need via EO. Many of those environmentally-oriented EOs were allowed for by laws previously passed by Congress and signed into law by Clinton or one of his predecessors.
...resulting in the entire planet being about 5 million kilometres closer to the sun during winter. Living in the northern or southern hemisphere would make no difference
It makes a difference as to whether "during winter" is accurate.:-P
Wish there was a -1 slightly-wrong tag. Some posts just deserve it.
Alternatively, since most of America speaks a latin derived language (except the USA and Anglo-Canada), we might start using Angloamerica for the exceptions.
We might, but... and this is a very significant 'but' since language depends on people agreeing on terms for mutual understanding... we don't.
"Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kinda cool." - Paul Begala on one of Bill Clinton's Executive Orders
I remember that quote, but I forgot the details of the situation, however, IIRC, the executive order in question was effectively the implementation of powers which had been passed by Congress. So, in that case it was really just Congressional power which was given to the President to execute, which is as it should be.
I don't like Bush, but like him or not, he's not locking up any U.S. citizens without due process;
Then you obviously don't dislike him enough: http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/11/padilla.decision/index.html 1. U.S. Citizen 2. Arrested on U.S. soil. 3. Has had to fight to get so much as visits from his lawyer, let alone anything so quaint as a trial.
With recent winners of the Nobel Peace Prize going to clearly left-wing liberals...
You seem to be suffering from myopia. What you consider left-wing might very well be an accurate description when the scale in question is the United States, but on the world scale 'centrist' would be more accurate.
You seem to be under the impression that we native English speakers are and will continue to be the center of the world.
Oh cut the politically correct crap. Translating to English isn't generally for the benefit of the native speakers, it's to allow for as broad of an audience as possible. Why the fuck do you think we're typing this in English? Hint: it's not just because Slashdot is from the U.S. And now, think about who will have the most problems reading poorly translated English? Hint: it's not native speakers.
I've travelled around quite a bit -- and lived abroad for at least a third of my life -- and I've heard many more complaints about poor English from non-native speakers than from native speakers because the non-native speakers are the ones who have more problems with it.
Incidentally, I would agree with you if the GP had been criticizing, e.g. a Slashdot post or spoken English (anyone can make a mistake), but this is from their space agency and is presumably meant for international consumption. There must be plenty of Japanese/English translators who can manage better than that. Why don't they hire one?
Wow, what a small world. My wife studied Finno-Ugric Studies at the University of Munich, and had some courses on the Samoyed people. I know, they aren't actually Finno-Ugric (right?), but as you say, that's a pretty specialized area so it got picked up by the Finno-Ugric department here. I think she even still has some books on the subject... I'll have to ask her.
Ah, I just checked your web-page and see you are currently at University of Helsinki, where my wife did an exchange semester; *and* also studying Finno-Ugrian Linguistics! I bet you know a lot of the same people:-) since that is indeed a very small community of scholars.
I just wanted to add one more tip to all that great advice from the GP: Forget the FAT32 partition. There is a pretty decent ext2 driver for Windows now, and SuSE installs everything as ext3 by default, which can be mounted as ext2.
Just to be clear, ext3 is the journaled version of ext2, so you can access your Linux partitions using that, with the caveat that it will not be journaled when using it in windows (i.e. make sure to force a file-system check in Linux if Windows doesn't end cleanly). Another problem would be that windows cannot list a directory if it contains filenames which are legal in Linux but not in Windows, e.g. ':'. But you couldn't write files like that to a FAT32 partition anyway. As long as you're sure to separate the data you want to share in it's own folder, it shouldn't be a problem. I would recommend that you install 3 partitions: swap, root (/), and home (/home). Then mount only your home dir in Windows.
Lol.. if it isn't the state your pictured, it is the state I percieved from your talking about it. SO again, am I taking you the wrong way or are you just forgetful? I dunno, maybe this is just a misunderstanding.
Probably. At least to a certain degree. I suspect we disagree, but not as strongly as either of us would like to;-) I'll leave it at that since I can't take the time to unravel our thread right now.
No. My problem was with you not an AC. So I'll ignore the parent, and focus on the hurtful and offensive grandparent post.
What? Did you even read my explanation? "Hurtful and offensive"? Let's recap..... You responded to the AC about his -- pretty humorous -- correction. I saw only your two posts and thought you were stating that you still couldn't figure out how it was spelled in response to yourself:
I knew it only had one 'c' in it, but couldn't get the spell checker to recognize it unless I put two in it, which ended up being a different word.
So I told you. Then you responded:
I kept trying seceed, secceed, succede, etc.. permutations until the spell checker allowed it. Sorry if I am not Miss Spelling Bee Champ like yourself
So, how would you characterize this? "Hurtful and offensive" maybe? Anyway, I thought it was dickish, so I started to ask why you were being a dick. Then I noticed you had already been corrected... which made my correction unnecessary but didn't make your sarcasm any less dickish; so, I added that explanation and here we are.
So, the moral of the story is: if you don't want someone to be "hurtful and offensive", then don't be a dick when they try to help out.
But if California was the "different" democrat state like your attempting to paint, then it wouldn't matter what favors who's side.
Where did I say or imply that? I disputed your 'conservative' northern California.... which I assumed referred to North of the Bay Area, because the Bay Area sure as hell isn't conservative, and anything north of the Bay area sure doesn't have 35% of the population.
Wait, now I see. I think you confused my statements where I said Arnie is not a typical Republican; I might, in fact, say California is the "different" Republic state (oh, sorry, I mean Republican) insofar as it's Republican.
But the fact is, if they split the electoral votes, 45% of them would have gone to bush last election. This is hardly the state you pictured.
Maybe you should stick to arguing with what I actually say:-P I feel like I should be looking over my shoulder for the person you are apparently answering... I agree with the first sentence. The one in bold doesn't seem to refer to any post of mine, so I'm not sure why you think I meant that.
aaaaaah. Now I see, you were originally responding to an AC, whose post I didn't see (I browse at +1). And since you didn't quote him or acknowledge his correction I thought you were responding to your own post, complaining that you couldn't figure out how it was spelled. Whatever.
I kept trying seceed, secceed, succede, etc.. permutations until the spell checker allowed it. Sorry if I am not Miss Spelling Bee Champ like yourself
No need to be a dick. I would have never corrected you, but you seemed to be asking if anyone knew the answer. I *thought* I was being helpful. Well, so fucking much for that again. Next time you want to stay ignorant about something, do it *without* posting that you're ignorant about it, mmmmkay?
This is too low level of a mistake to put petty politics into it. And it doesn't gain anyone anything in the process.
Good point.
And BTW, norther California tends to be highly conservative in their voting. This is how such great people like Ronald Reagan and Arnold were elected governors.
What? Do you mean the northern California where like 5% of the population lives? I'm not sure of the exact number, but since the 'population center' of California is near Bakersfield it must be pretty small. The voters who helped get Arnie elected weren't even the conservative ones and as for Reagan, you might as well be talking about a different state, since California had all of 15 Million residents when he was elected vs. 37 Million now.
This is also why Californian's say the conspiracy to split electoral votes based on the popular vote is a republican scheme to get elected while in other states it is touted as a way to stop republicans from getting all the votes and making the people's voice count more.
Here's where you do your alias honor. Any Republican *or* Democrat tends to stick to the position which favors his side... so Democrats in California tend to be against splitting the electoral votes, as are Replublicans in -- just to pick a name at random:-P -- Colorado. But there are exceptions on both sides, and I'm pretty sure many California Democrats are behind the idea of splitting electoral votes once a certain number of the other states have also decided to do so; the idea is to have a ballot initiative which only takes effect when a certain number of other states have the same law on the books so it doesn't become a national game of chicken.
BTW, I voted for Gore and stayed consistently in favor of the Electoral College, despite it favoring Bush in 2000.
He may be a Republican, but he's an oddity in the past 20 years or so in which California has tended to the blue side.
You can take it even further than that: He is a 'Republican' who is probably further left than half the Democratic caucus in Congress (universal health-care anyone?), and who publicly told Bush to stay out of the state during his (Arnie's) reelection campaign. I still wouldn't vote for him (probably) but he's definitely the most moderate Republican one could imagine.
He may be a Republican, but he's an oddity in the past 20 years or so in which California has tended to the blue side.
You can take it even further than that: He is a 'Republican' who is probably further left than half the Democratic caucus in Congress (universal health-care anyone?), and who publicly told Bush to stay out of the state during his (Arnie's) reelection campaign. I still wouldn't vote for him (probably) but he's definitely the most moderate Republican one could imagine.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn. I read this too late. Very big of you, and it looks like you made my other post to you redundant :-P
I cannot think of a better definition of "stupid" then what you describe. Anyone who has no training/experience/education in a field and chooses what to believe in that field based on what "make sense to them" is fucking stupid; even worse they are willfully stupid.
Since the other guy answered your question, I'll just mention that the very fact you humbly asked to be educated proves you are not stupid, but merely ignorant on this subject. Kudos to you for putting learning ahead of pride!
So let me get this straight. You think Microsoft could tell a sovereign nation what they are "allowed" to do within their borders?
...and they're off!
And they will even argue those points against trained Linguists so, sorry, no salvation to be had there.
You misunderstood me. Many laws allow for specific powers for the President, which he can implement at need via EO. Many of those environmentally-oriented EOs were allowed for by laws previously passed by Congress and signed into law by Clinton or one of his predecessors.
I remember that quote, but I forgot the details of the situation, however, IIRC, the executive order in question was effectively the implementation of powers which had been passed by Congress. So, in that case it was really just Congressional power which was given to the President to execute, which is as it should be.
Then you obviously don't dislike him enough:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/11/padilla.decision/index.html
1. U.S. Citizen
2. Arrested on U.S. soil.
3. Has had to fight to get so much as visits from his lawyer, let alone anything so quaint as a trial.
You seem to be suffering from myopia. What you consider left-wing might very well be an accurate description when the scale in question is the United States, but on the world scale 'centrist' would be more accurate.
Oh cut the politically correct crap. Translating to English isn't generally for the benefit of the native speakers, it's to allow for as broad of an audience as possible. Why the fuck do you think we're typing this in English? Hint: it's not just because Slashdot is from the U.S. And now, think about who will have the most problems reading poorly translated English? Hint: it's not native speakers.
I've travelled around quite a bit -- and lived abroad for at least a third of my life -- and I've heard many more complaints about poor English from non-native speakers than from native speakers because the non-native speakers are the ones who have more problems with it.
Incidentally, I would agree with you if the GP had been criticizing, e.g. a Slashdot post or spoken English (anyone can make a mistake), but this is from their space agency and is presumably meant for international consumption. There must be plenty of Japanese/English translators who can manage better than that. Why don't they hire one?
Wow, what a small world. My wife studied Finno-Ugric Studies at the University of Munich, and had some courses on the Samoyed people. I know, they aren't actually Finno-Ugric (right?), but as you say, that's a pretty specialized area so it got picked up by the Finno-Ugric department here. I think she even still has some books on the subject... I'll have to ask her.
:-) since that is indeed a very small community of scholars.
Ah, I just checked your web-page and see you are currently at University of Helsinki, where my wife did an exchange semester; *and* also studying Finno-Ugrian Linguistics! I bet you know a lot of the same people
An effort was in fact started... I think it was abandoned when the new policy for QT 4 was announced.
I just wanted to add one more tip to all that great advice from the GP:
Forget the FAT32 partition. There is a pretty decent ext2 driver for Windows now, and SuSE installs everything as ext3 by default, which can be mounted as ext2.
Just to be clear, ext3 is the journaled version of ext2, so you can access your Linux partitions using that, with the caveat that it will not be journaled when using it in windows (i.e. make sure to force a file-system check in Linux if Windows doesn't end cleanly). Another problem would be that windows cannot list a directory if it contains filenames which are legal in Linux but not in Windows, e.g. ':'. But you couldn't write files like that to a FAT32 partition anyway. As long as you're sure to separate the data you want to share in it's own folder, it shouldn't be a problem. I would recommend that you install 3 partitions: swap, root (/), and home (/home). Then mount only your home dir in Windows.
Probably. At least to a certain degree. I suspect we disagree, but not as strongly as either of us would like to
What? Did you even read my explanation? "Hurtful and offensive"? Let's recap..... You responded to the AC about his -- pretty humorous -- correction. I saw only your two posts and thought you were stating that you still couldn't figure out how it was spelled in response to yourself:
So I told you. Then you responded:
So, how would you characterize this? "Hurtful and offensive" maybe? Anyway, I thought it was dickish, so I started to ask why you were being a dick. Then I noticed you had already been corrected... which made my correction unnecessary but didn't make your sarcasm any less dickish; so, I added that explanation and here we are.
So, the moral of the story is: if you don't want someone to be "hurtful and offensive", then don't be a dick when they try to help out.
Where did I say or imply that? I disputed your 'conservative' northern California.... which I assumed referred to North of the Bay Area, because the Bay Area sure as hell isn't conservative, and anything north of the Bay area sure doesn't have 35% of the population.
Wait, now I see. I think you confused my statements where I said Arnie is not a typical Republican; I might, in fact, say California is the "different" Republic state (oh, sorry, I mean Republican) insofar as it's Republican.
Maybe you should stick to arguing with what I actually say
aaaaaah. Now I see, you were originally responding to an AC, whose post I didn't see (I browse at +1). And since you didn't quote him or acknowledge his correction I thought you were responding to your own post, complaining that you couldn't figure out how it was spelled. Whatever.
No need to be a dick. I would have never corrected you, but you seemed to be asking if anyone knew the answer. I *thought* I was being helpful. Well, so fucking much for that again. Next time you want to stay ignorant about something, do it *without* posting that you're ignorant about it, mmmmkay?
Good point.
What? Do you mean the northern California where like 5% of the population lives? I'm not sure of the exact number, but since the 'population center' of California is near Bakersfield it must be pretty small. The voters who helped get Arnie elected weren't even the conservative ones and as for Reagan, you might as well be talking about a different state, since California had all of 15 Million residents when he was elected vs. 37 Million now.
Here's where you do your alias honor. Any Republican *or* Democrat tends to stick to the position which favors his side... so Democrats in California tend to be against splitting the electoral votes, as are Replublicans in -- just to pick a name at random
BTW, I voted for Gore and stayed consistently in favor of the Electoral College, despite it favoring Bush in 2000.
You can take it even further than that: He is a 'Republican' who is probably further left than half the Democratic caucus in Congress (universal health-care anyone?), and who publicly told Bush to stay out of the state during his (Arnie's) reelection campaign. I still wouldn't vote for him (probably) but he's definitely the most moderate Republican one could imagine.