> As a child in the South in the Forties, I was taught that we were speaking essentially pure Elizabethan English and every other form was a corruption. My linguist uncle, OTOH, says that the true story is that children of colonial farmers, isolated from other white children by the sparsity of the population, were each given a slave child to play with...with the obvious linguistic outcome.
I don't know about your uncle's explanation of the mechanism, but the suggested outcome is certainly correct. When sociolinguistics classes cover Black English, Ebonics, AAVE, or whatever the current politically correct name of it is, and give a summary of (say) 10 features of that sociolect, the majority of White southern students will say "Heck, I use 7 of those features", or "My granny talks just like that", or something to that effect.
FWIW, a linguist friend says that most of the studies of BE/E/AAVE are done by northern linguists who have never bothered to find out how southerners speak.
> We were just talking about how the British English language was the true "natural" English language, all other derived languages that were English with an accent. For example, If I (a person who lives in America and speaks US English; no born American (thank goodness)) were to go to England and converse with an Englishman; who would have the accent, me or him? The obvious answer, as a lot of Americans fail to realize, is me.
Maybe not. It's a curious but well-known phenomenon in dialectology that peripherial/frontier dialects tend to be conservative while innovations accumulate more rapidly in the core areas. IIRC, scholars study the isolated communities on the islands along the US Atlantic coast to see what Shakespeare's actors would have sounded like.
> On a first order approximation, I'd take what the original moon landing program cost and then adjust for inflation. Its gotta be several hundreds of billions anyway.
And getting a crew to Mars and back (alive) is a vastly more difficult problem than the moon missions were.
I, for one, will be surprised if it can be done for a trillion dollars. Especially if you throw in the lunar sideshow. But more likely we'll spend half that much, and then drop the project.
> But as there are way too many deployments of Outlook as it is, and because it is Outlook/IE that is being exploited, the first solution would be to increase diversity in that field.
IMO e-mail viruses don't result from monoculture; they result from bad software design. Namely, e-mail clients that execute attachments.
We'd have Linux e-mail viruses in a minute if the popular e-mail clients added support for automatic execution of attachments. (Assuming anyone was foolish enough to use them.)
> I don't think we are even a little bit closer to that dream today than we were 24 years ago.
The problem, IMO, is that providing a specification that is detailed enough and correct enough to generate a correct program from is just as hard as writing the correct program in the first place.
OK, maybe only as hard as writing it in a slightly higher-level language, but if so, just huse the HLL.
> It must be a little odd to know that a growing plurality of your tissue used to be someone else's.
In rare cases, the cells of non-identical twins in the very early stages of development can merge into a single embryo, and develop into a normal "patchwork" adult, called a chimera.
IIRC this phenomenon was only discovered recently, when modern DNA testing revealed that these people have different DNA in different parts of their body.
"Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)"
Get Get (ge^t), v. i....
2. To arrive at, or bring one's self into, a state, condition, or position; to come to be; to become; -- with a following adjective or past participle belonging to the subject of the verb; as, to get sober; to get awake; to get beaten; to get elected.
> Better start practicing singing a song in your head to block out the thought police. "Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, Mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow..."
Slashdot Mirror
...has been replaced by a bold new "don't tax, and spend" policy.
> As a child in the South in the Forties, I was taught that we were speaking essentially pure Elizabethan English and every other form was a corruption. My linguist uncle, OTOH, says that the true story is that children of colonial farmers, isolated from other white children by the sparsity of the population, were each given a slave child to play with...with the obvious linguistic outcome.
I don't know about your uncle's explanation of the mechanism, but the suggested outcome is certainly correct. When sociolinguistics classes cover Black English, Ebonics, AAVE, or whatever the current politically correct name of it is, and give a summary of (say) 10 features of that sociolect, the majority of White southern students will say "Heck, I use 7 of those features", or "My granny talks just like that", or something to that effect.
FWIW, a linguist friend says that most of the studies of BE/E/AAVE are done by northern linguists who have never bothered to find out how southerners speak.
> We were just talking about how the British English language was the true "natural" English language, all other derived languages that were English with an accent. For example, If I (a person who lives in America and speaks US English; no born American (thank goodness)) were to go to England and converse with an Englishman; who would have the accent, me or him? The obvious answer, as a lot of Americans fail to realize, is me.
Maybe not. It's a curious but well-known phenomenon in dialectology that peripherial/frontier dialects tend to be conservative while innovations accumulate more rapidly in the core areas. IIRC, scholars study the isolated communities on the islands along the US Atlantic coast to see what Shakespeare's actors would have sounded like.
> On a first order approximation, I'd take what the original moon landing program cost and then adjust for inflation. Its gotta be several hundreds of billions anyway.
And getting a crew to Mars and back (alive) is a vastly more difficult problem than the moon missions were.
I, for one, will be surprised if it can be done for a trillion dollars. Especially if you throw in the lunar sideshow. But more likely we'll spend half that much, and then drop the project.
> I always thought that there was a plutonic friendship between our two worlds!
We have a lot in common, what with both planets being ruled by plutocracies.
> But as there are way too many deployments of Outlook as it is, and because it is Outlook/IE that is being exploited, the first solution would be to increase diversity in that field.
IMO e-mail viruses don't result from monoculture; they result from bad software design. Namely, e-mail clients that execute attachments.
We'd have Linux e-mail viruses in a minute if the popular e-mail clients added support for automatic execution of attachments. (Assuming anyone was foolish enough to use them.)
d. Read your mail on someone else's computer
I see you're trying to extract free cash from a bolloxored ATM cum jukebox. May I help you?
In Russia, chances give you a.
> If they did this as a round table, I would have been sad to have missed it.
Yeah, I wanted to see them work out who got which fork.
> I don't think we are even a little bit closer to that dream today than we were 24 years ago.
The problem, IMO, is that providing a specification that is detailed enough and correct enough to generate a correct program from is just as hard as writing the correct program in the first place.
OK, maybe only as hard as writing it in a slightly higher-level language, but if so, just huse the HLL.
No wonder I was always so square; I spent all my time cultivating an image of rugged individualist.
Got to change with the times, I suppose.
> More cryptic acronyms to the people!
That's MCATTP around here, chum.
> It must be a little odd to know that a growing plurality of your tissue used to be someone else's.
In rare cases, the cells of non-identical twins in the very early stages of development can merge into a single embryo, and develop into a normal "patchwork" adult, called a chimera.
IIRC this phenomenon was only discovered recently, when modern DNA testing revealed that these people have different DNA in different parts of their body.
> Some may call it flamebait. I call it realpolitik.
I call it stupidity. Or perhaps prejudice so blind that you can't see where your own best interest lies.
FWIW -
> The word "get" is so over and badly used in American English. It grates after a while. "The US prepares to be nuked"
So, you'd rather be laid than get laid?
Now viral e-mail can spread even when your computer's down.
> > Out of curiosity, which crime would they be committing?
> The same crime we commit every night, Pinky...
I worry about a guy who talks to his pinkie.
...everyone answers to "Nerd".
> Better start practicing singing a song in your head to block out the thought police. "Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, Mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow..."
Kind of like A Clockwork Orange in reverse?
> INTERROGATOR: "I'll ask you once more - Did you kill Mrs. Finkelstein?"
PRISONER: [God, what a fine set of tits!] "No."
INTERROGATOR: [Me, or Mrs. Finkelstein?] "We have the evidence."
> pantalla azul de la muerte!
French: "Merde!"
> What about languages that don't have direct translations for key words like "security hole", "patch", "bug", "unstable" and "hotfix"?
Surely every language has words for closely related concepts:
> Give them some credit where it is due. Microsoft has always pushed multi language support at every level long before OSS was a serious contender.
Yes, and the demoronizer can render it in English!