According to the OED the plural of forum is forums. Fora is only use when referring to Roman public spaces.
According to both American Heritage and Webster's, forums and fora are both valid plurals of forum, without qualification. You can keep your English English on your side of the pond and I'll stick with my American English, thank you very much.
For every one of those words which uses a native plural, usually in academic contexts (surprise, surprise), there are a dozen others which do not...And again, for every exception like that, there are a dozen nativized plurals:...
Congratulations. You've established that it's a mixed bag, where we sometimes use native plurals and sometimes use English conventions. I believe you proved my point better than your own, which was that we never do that for any language other than Latin.
Why should English nouns use Latin plurals? After all, we don't do that for any other language.
False. We do that for most languages. Japanese, Chinese, Greek, Latin, Hebrew. What's the plural of "samurai"? Nobody ever says "samurais". Ninja is pluralized to "ninjas" in common usage, but pluralizing to "ninja" is not considered improper English, or douchey, and is the preferred form among scholars and writers on the subject.
We don't use German plurals for nouns adopted from German.
Actually, nouns that have been adopted from modern German into modern English are often given German pluralization forms. The English plural of übermensch is übermenschen, not übermensches. But if, by "nouns adopted from German", you mean every English noun that predates the Norman conquest, then that's a false comparison. Of course the treatment of these words would shift as the morphology of the language shifts, by definition, just as the pluralization rules in German have no doubt also changed as that language evolved.
Speaking English properly is not. Speaking Latin properly in the middle of English sentences often is. Pleb.
I don't think that epithet had quite the effect you're hoping for. Given that the plebs did the work of Rome while the patricians profited off their work, and that the plebs invented the general strike, I'm proud to be called a pleb.
well, the EULA probably has the standard 'no warranty' terms. Adobe probably wanted to hide behind that to avoid the otherwise default position that you have to sell a functioning product; the plantiff showed that since it hadn't been displayed, it wasn't agreed to, and didn't count, leaving Adobe holding the bag for having sold a non-functioning product.
Really? Cool beans! But doesn't anyone who represent themselves have a fool for a client?;)
Not necessarily. Sometimes it's massively advantageous to represent yourself. A very good example is the so-called "McLibel" case, where Helen Steel and Dave Morris defended themselves against a libel action by McDonalds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's_Restaurants_v._Morris_%26_Steel. They would have come out of it much worse off (financially and legally, probably) if they'd had representation.
I can't figure out from that article why they would have been worse off with representation. I have another example, though. My roommate once represented himself in a criminal case, cross-examined a police officer, and was able to prove the officer was lying, resulting in the case being thrown out. I don't recommend trying that unless you're really sharp, but he pulled it off.
The article inexplicably fails to mention the failing product. Was that Adobe's idea? Was that the article's editor's idea? Useful information was omitted to prevent advertisers from pulling their ads I suspect.
Forget the product, I want to know: what was the remedy? If the claim is just that the product is uninstallable, you would probably be suing for a refund, but then why would you have to prove the EULA didn't apply? That seems like something you would do if the product worked but had some sick license term like "Adobe owns all your data" and you were trying to get out of that.
Dude, relax. They were talking about getting the kid started, not determining his life path.
No matter how mildly you put it, you're still wrong.
Trying to force children into enjoying something they haven't expressed interest in is just beyond idiotic.
Good thing nobody was talking about forcing anyone. I'm sorry your sister had a bad experience, but letting that convince you that the OP was saying something they weren't saying isn't going to help anyone.
These days gaming is as mainstream as television. Equating the the two makes about as much sense as noticing your kid likes TV, and encouraging him/her to produce their own TV show.
Actually, that sounds like a great idea. In fact, that's how a lot of really successful entertainers got their start. You say encouraging like it's a bad thing. In my world, suggesting new things to your kid and encouraging them to get involved in their interests is called good parenting.
My mom saw me playing Super Mario Brothers when I was 8 and asked if I'd like to learn to make my own games.
This is the key point. You don't start with asking Slashdot how to get the kid into programming.
Now you're just being a pedantic asshole. Asking was a way of getting me interested. The bunch of books that you give the kid are also a way of getting them interested. Two very different selections of introductory books will have two very different effects on the kid's interest. The way you go about presenting the subject also has an effect. Asking for advice about how to get the kid interested is a perfectly reasonable part of this. If he likes it, then it doesn't matter whether the person introducing it came up with some scheme to make it more likable, or the kid was just born with a latent desire to program. All that matters is that the kid has found a healthy hobby. When you introduce potential hobbies to your kid, which your kid thinks of only in terms of whether they're fun but which you've picked out to be healthy for growth, that's not some evil conspiracy. That's just basic parenting. Heaven forbid parents should engage in actual interactive parenting. By your logic and GP's, we should never teach our kids the habits of brushing their teeth and eating their vegetables unless they express a pre-conceived interest in these things, because that's pressuring and controlling.
Coming from the exact same world that you are, my advice is not to try to teach the kid any "real programming", that is actual programming languages that could be used to make independent products, but to start with something super-high-level within one of the games. You know, the built-in languages that you can use to make bots or scenarios or whatever. Then later on, if that's fun, he can learn a normal language like C or Java. Think about it: when we were kids, the games we had were guess the magic number, or lemonade stand, or text-mode Oregon Trail if you were really fancy, so learning BASIC put us pretty much right on the level of modding those types of games. Teaching a young gamer BASIC or even C nowadays would still put them miles away from the gaming they're already interested in, so start with the built-in languages the games use for mods instead, and that will be the hook; if anything will lead to C or Java later, that will.
Also, Java is a good choice once they are ready to make the jump to a full-featured programming language, because the applet system makes it relatively easy to make a game they can share and have others play, by embedding it in their personal web page. It also allows makes it easier to get into GUI programming with all those pre-made widgets 'n' things that don't require them to already know as much of the nuts and bolts of the language as something like GTK would, and although some argue Java teaches beginners bad habits, it's nowhere near as bad as VB for that (spoken as someone whose first OOP experience was several years of VB, from which I later had to resuscitate my mind...)
Coding isn't something someone else chooses for you, it's something you choose for himself....Politely tell your friend to ask his son what *HE* wants to do with his life.
Dude, relax. They were talking about getting the kid started, not determining his life path. Programming is a perfectly valid hobby, and if he likes it, maybe he'll choose it as a profession, and if not, well at least he tried it and found that out instead of having elrous0 determine for him that he wouldn't be into it because he wasn't already into it.
And it has NOTHING to do with him being a gamer.
Funny, 'cuz when I started it had EVERYTHING to do with me being a gamer. My mom saw me playing Super Mario Brothers when I was 8 and asked if I'd like to learn to make my own games. Then when I was 9 she handed me her accumulated programming books (back then it was normal when you bought a computer for the manual to cover the version of BASIC included with that computer). When I started out programming my only interest was in making games, based on my interest in gaming, and I didn't come to appreciate algorithms, data structures, and elegantly solving problems until years later.
Relating "He likes to game" with "He will like to code games" is no less absurd than relating "He likes to game" with "He will like to be an electrician."
Yeah, and that's about as absurd as, "He likes horses" being related to "He will like to be a veterinarian." Of course being into electronic devices is a partial predictor for being interested in how said devices work. Come back to us when someone asks slashdot how to get a kid to study quantum physics because he's into pro wrestling. Of course it would be silly if someone considered being into gaming to be a 100% predictor of enjoying programming, but I don't think OP was making that judgment...merely that it might be fruitful to introduce programming because it might be something the kid ends up enjoying. Which is a perfectly fair supposition, because the two are actually quite related.
How do you get a kid to play football? You take them outside, throw a football to them and ask them to throw it back. If they like it, they do the same thing with their friends while you're not around.
How do you get a kid into coding? Guess.
Excuse me, but what part of football includes *throwing* a ball?
Most of the plays in American Football. You know, what we living in the country where/. is based just call "Football".
That somehow gives them the right to go rummage through that server uninvited, reading and analyzing what they found and publishing it? Now, I know the vigilante in all of us wants to say "yes", but it's not clear to me that the law permits that kind of activity.
"Selective enforcement" does in fact exist, but it is almost always used unfairly.
Selective enforcement, by definition, is ALWAYS used unfairly. Sort of like how water is wet.
Not necessarily. I say this having had a law selectively enforced against me. In my state, it is illegal to gamble, except in the state lottery or at Indian casinos. This is selectively enforced, and everybody knows it. It's even in the case law. The purpose of the law is not to stop gambling from occurring, but to stop it from becoming a racket or other public nuisance. It would be nearly possible to write all the distinctions into law for the types of gambling our state considers okay and the types we consider problematic. Leaving enforcement up to the discretion of the police allows them to employ the law as intended, not to stop a friendly poker game, but to stop a poker house that's being used to launder mob money. Or that's disturbing the neighbors with frequent, raucous noise late at night, as was the case with me and my roommates, who ran a poker house that was shut down by the police.
My point is, it was perfectly fair to selectively target us with this law. Yes, it was selective, and yes, it kinda sucked to be on the end of it, but to call it unfair would be a stretch. On the other hand, if my city didn't have the finest and most professional police force I know of, I could see the potential for abuse. So GP's "almost always" is a substantially more accurate generalization than your "always by definition." Whether it's fair or not depends on whether the criteria for selection are fair, not whether or not there is any selection at all.
They also PAY to have the stolen account reactivated and thus raise no flags with Blizzard...All told, I logged back in about 6k richer, more then enough to get back into the swing of things.
At least that is what happened to my account.
Whoa. It's brilliant! Pay for someone else's account to be reopened, and spend time making the unsuspecting victim richer. They're criminal masterminds!
Society is so fucked up that people are being paid 7 figure salaries to develop smarter gambling algorithms, that produce no real value, when they could help solving science hardest problems. Specially people with this knowledge.
I doubt, at this stage in scientific history, that logicians are going to help solving science's hardest problems.
Slashdot Mirror
According to the OED the plural of forum is forums. Fora is only use when referring to Roman public spaces.
According to both American Heritage and Webster's, forums and fora are both valid plurals of forum, without qualification. You can keep your English English on your side of the pond and I'll stick with my American English, thank you very much.
For every one of those words which uses a native plural, usually in academic contexts (surprise, surprise), there are a dozen others which do not...And again, for every exception like that, there are a dozen nativized plurals:...
Congratulations. You've established that it's a mixed bag, where we sometimes use native plurals and sometimes use English conventions. I believe you proved my point better than your own, which was that we never do that for any language other than Latin.
Why should English nouns use Latin plurals? After all, we don't do that for any other language.
False. We do that for most languages. Japanese, Chinese, Greek, Latin, Hebrew. What's the plural of "samurai"? Nobody ever says "samurais". Ninja is pluralized to "ninjas" in common usage, but pluralizing to "ninja" is not considered improper English, or douchey, and is the preferred form among scholars and writers on the subject.
We don't use German plurals for nouns adopted from German.
Actually, nouns that have been adopted from modern German into modern English are often given German pluralization forms. The English plural of übermensch is übermenschen, not übermensches. But if, by "nouns adopted from German", you mean every English noun that predates the Norman conquest, then that's a false comparison. Of course the treatment of these words would shift as the morphology of the language shifts, by definition, just as the pluralization rules in German have no doubt also changed as that language evolved.
Speaking English properly is not. Speaking Latin properly in the middle of English sentences often is. Pleb.
I don't think that epithet had quite the effect you're hoping for. Given that the plebs did the work of Rome while the patricians profited off their work, and that the plebs invented the general strike, I'm proud to be called a pleb.
...he used "fora" as the plural for "forum" and triggered some kind of douchebag filter.
Because speaking English properly is such a douchebag move.
well, the EULA probably has the standard 'no warranty' terms. Adobe probably wanted to hide behind that to avoid the otherwise default position that you have to sell a functioning product; the plantiff showed that since it hadn't been displayed, it wasn't agreed to, and didn't count, leaving Adobe holding the bag for having sold a non-functioning product.
Ah. That makes perfect sense, thanks.
Not necessarily. Sometimes it's massively advantageous to represent yourself. A very good example is the so-called "McLibel" case, where Helen Steel and Dave Morris defended themselves against a libel action by McDonalds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's_Restaurants_v._Morris_%26_Steel. They would have come out of it much worse off (financially and legally, probably) if they'd had representation.
I can't figure out from that article why they would have been worse off with representation. I have another example, though. My roommate once represented himself in a criminal case, cross-examined a police officer, and was able to prove the officer was lying, resulting in the case being thrown out. I don't recommend trying that unless you're really sharp, but he pulled it off.
Really? Cool beans! But doesn't anyone who represent themselves have a fool for a client? ;)
Perhaps, but who's the bigger fool, the fool or the fool who follows him?
The article inexplicably fails to mention the failing product. Was that Adobe's idea? Was that the article's editor's idea? Useful information was omitted to prevent advertisers from pulling their ads I suspect.
Forget the product, I want to know: what was the remedy? If the claim is just that the product is uninstallable, you would probably be suing for a refund, but then why would you have to prove the EULA didn't apply? That seems like something you would do if the product worked but had some sick license term like "Adobe owns all your data" and you were trying to get out of that.
Dude, relax. They were talking about getting the kid started, not determining his life path.
No matter how mildly you put it, you're still wrong.
Trying to force children into enjoying something they haven't expressed interest in is just beyond idiotic.
Good thing nobody was talking about forcing anyone. I'm sorry your sister had a bad experience, but letting that convince you that the OP was saying something they weren't saying isn't going to help anyone.
These days gaming is as mainstream as television. Equating the the two makes about as much sense as noticing your kid likes TV, and encouraging him/her to produce their own TV show.
Actually, that sounds like a great idea. In fact, that's how a lot of really successful entertainers got their start. You say encouraging like it's a bad thing. In my world, suggesting new things to your kid and encouraging them to get involved in their interests is called good parenting.
My mom saw me playing Super Mario Brothers when I was 8 and asked if I'd like to learn to make my own games.
This is the key point. You don't start with asking Slashdot how to get the kid into programming.
Now you're just being a pedantic asshole. Asking was a way of getting me interested. The bunch of books that you give the kid are also a way of getting them interested. Two very different selections of introductory books will have two very different effects on the kid's interest. The way you go about presenting the subject also has an effect. Asking for advice about how to get the kid interested is a perfectly reasonable part of this. If he likes it, then it doesn't matter whether the person introducing it came up with some scheme to make it more likable, or the kid was just born with a latent desire to program. All that matters is that the kid has found a healthy hobby. When you introduce potential hobbies to your kid, which your kid thinks of only in terms of whether they're fun but which you've picked out to be healthy for growth, that's not some evil conspiracy. That's just basic parenting. Heaven forbid parents should engage in actual interactive parenting. By your logic and GP's, we should never teach our kids the habits of brushing their teeth and eating their vegetables unless they express a pre-conceived interest in these things, because that's pressuring and controlling.
Coming from the exact same world that you are, my advice is not to try to teach the kid any "real programming", that is actual programming languages that could be used to make independent products, but to start with something super-high-level within one of the games. You know, the built-in languages that you can use to make bots or scenarios or whatever. Then later on, if that's fun, he can learn a normal language like C or Java. Think about it: when we were kids, the games we had were guess the magic number, or lemonade stand, or text-mode Oregon Trail if you were really fancy, so learning BASIC put us pretty much right on the level of modding those types of games. Teaching a young gamer BASIC or even C nowadays would still put them miles away from the gaming they're already interested in, so start with the built-in languages the games use for mods instead, and that will be the hook; if anything will lead to C or Java later, that will.
Also, Java is a good choice once they are ready to make the jump to a full-featured programming language, because the applet system makes it relatively easy to make a game they can share and have others play, by embedding it in their personal web page. It also allows makes it easier to get into GUI programming with all those pre-made widgets 'n' things that don't require them to already know as much of the nuts and bolts of the language as something like GTK would, and although some argue Java teaches beginners bad habits, it's nowhere near as bad as VB for that (spoken as someone whose first OOP experience was several years of VB, from which I later had to resuscitate my mind...)
Coding isn't something someone else chooses for you, it's something you choose for himself....Politely tell your friend to ask his son what *HE* wants to do with his life.
Dude, relax. They were talking about getting the kid started, not determining his life path. Programming is a perfectly valid hobby, and if he likes it, maybe he'll choose it as a profession, and if not, well at least he tried it and found that out instead of having elrous0 determine for him that he wouldn't be into it because he wasn't already into it.
And it has NOTHING to do with him being a gamer.
Funny, 'cuz when I started it had EVERYTHING to do with me being a gamer. My mom saw me playing Super Mario Brothers when I was 8 and asked if I'd like to learn to make my own games. Then when I was 9 she handed me her accumulated programming books (back then it was normal when you bought a computer for the manual to cover the version of BASIC included with that computer). When I started out programming my only interest was in making games, based on my interest in gaming, and I didn't come to appreciate algorithms, data structures, and elegantly solving problems until years later.
Relating "He likes to game" with "He will like to code games" is no less absurd than relating "He likes to game" with "He will like to be an electrician."
Yeah, and that's about as absurd as, "He likes horses" being related to "He will like to be a veterinarian." Of course being into electronic devices is a partial predictor for being interested in how said devices work. Come back to us when someone asks slashdot how to get a kid to study quantum physics because he's into pro wrestling. Of course it would be silly if someone considered being into gaming to be a 100% predictor of enjoying programming, but I don't think OP was making that judgment...merely that it might be fruitful to introduce programming because it might be something the kid ends up enjoying. Which is a perfectly fair supposition, because the two are actually quite related.
How do you get a kid to play football? You take them outside, throw a football to them and ask them to throw it back. If they like it, they do the same thing with their friends while you're not around.
How do you get a kid into coding? Guess.
Excuse me, but what part of football includes *throwing* a ball?
Most of the plays in American Football. You know, what we living in the country where /. is based just call "Football".
How do you get a kid into coding? Guess.
Take them outside, throw an exception to them and ask them to throw it back?
No! You teach him to throw it on down the stack! What kind of a coder are you trying to raise here?
Get them started on the classics.
Or grow a spine, be a fucking parent's friend, and quit relying on discussion forums to help your friend raise your friend's child.
There, fixed that for you.
That somehow gives them the right to go rummage through that server uninvited, reading and analyzing what they found and publishing it? Now, I know the vigilante in all of us wants to say "yes", but it's not clear to me that the law permits that kind of activity.
Yes.
I think you should write a note to ask the author. If he doesn't respond with an objection, you can take that as permission.
Also, enclose a towel with your note. He'll appreciate that.
"Selective enforcement" does in fact exist, but it is almost always used unfairly.
Selective enforcement, by definition, is ALWAYS used unfairly. Sort of like how water is wet.
Not necessarily. I say this having had a law selectively enforced against me. In my state, it is illegal to gamble, except in the state lottery or at Indian casinos. This is selectively enforced, and everybody knows it. It's even in the case law. The purpose of the law is not to stop gambling from occurring, but to stop it from becoming a racket or other public nuisance. It would be nearly possible to write all the distinctions into law for the types of gambling our state considers okay and the types we consider problematic. Leaving enforcement up to the discretion of the police allows them to employ the law as intended, not to stop a friendly poker game, but to stop a poker house that's being used to launder mob money. Or that's disturbing the neighbors with frequent, raucous noise late at night, as was the case with me and my roommates, who ran a poker house that was shut down by the police.
My point is, it was perfectly fair to selectively target us with this law. Yes, it was selective, and yes, it kinda sucked to be on the end of it, but to call it unfair would be a stretch. On the other hand, if my city didn't have the finest and most professional police force I know of, I could see the potential for abuse. So GP's "almost always" is a substantially more accurate generalization than your "always by definition." Whether it's fair or not depends on whether the criteria for selection are fair, not whether or not there is any selection at all.
You know "IMHO" can sometimes be interpretted as "honest" and not "humble" right?
IMHO, no it can't.
Oh for the love of humanity the things people will do in the name of wasting time.
One man's wasted time is another man's Sistine Chapel, or pornography collection, or fictitious language for a fantasy book series.
I don't think that last example really helps your case...
They also PAY to have the stolen account reactivated and thus raise no flags with Blizzard...All told, I logged back in about 6k richer, more then enough to get back into the swing of things.
At least that is what happened to my account.
Whoa. It's brilliant! Pay for someone else's account to be reopened, and spend time making the unsuspecting victim richer. They're criminal masterminds!
...from operation Junk Shot? 'cause that's no operation I want to see.
...and it isn't to tell them when their schemes make no damn sense?
Society is so fucked up that people are being paid 7 figure salaries to develop smarter gambling algorithms, that produce no real value, when they could help solving science hardest problems. Specially people with this knowledge.
I doubt, at this stage in scientific history, that logicians are going to help solving science's hardest problems.