Specifically, we're interested in knowing whether you should refer to more than one virus as virii. Latin-lovers and viral votaries alike know that the noun virus is a borrowing from Latin. In that tongue, a virus (pronounced WEE-russ) is a venom, a poisonous emanation, a slimy liquid, or a stench. In fact, when virus first slithered its way into our language in the late 16th century, it named a "venom emitted by a poisonous animal."
The word's Latin ancestry has given some English speakers the idea that the only logical way to pluralize virus is to replace the terminal -us with the letters -ii . This idea seems especially popular among folks who are referring to more than one computer virus. But before you catch the bug for that new spelling, consider this: the notion that Latin words ending in -us must take an -ii plural is a flat-out fallacy. In fact, there is no evidence that any plural form of the classical Latin virus was ever recorded; some lexicographers even suspect the Latin virus was a mass noun (and thus needed no separate plural).
In addition, when you look at the historical record of English usage, you find viruses, not virii, as the established plural. So although virii has turned up upon recent occasions, that word is far from standard.
Redundant systems are abhored by most engineers and programmers...
This is not always true. For example, Apache spawns off a bunch of children and watches if they get hung up. If so then it kills them and restarts them. If a child process dies of natural causes, then it restarts it.
Your robot idea in your last sentence is a neat idea, but if the robot could stand having it's legs blown away, and fall a great distance, then how would that protect the human?
> That wasnt a flame, simply an observation of the code quality in really large c++ projects. I think that the whole article deserves a big -1 Flamebait. Your comment, however, has valid points.
I think that the major problems with IT management are as follows: Bad Managers -- Let's face it, as the IT field grows older, the management styles will evolve until it grows better. New things ideas and methods are already being tested (Some very successfully, e.g.Donna Shirley's Mar's Global Surveyor). Eventually the bad managers will be weeded out, or at least we will have the definition of a 'good manager'. I don't think that the standard MBA program is capable of producing good IT managers, but MBA programs are changing. Math depts. around the USA are starting Industrial Mathematics Master's degree programs that provide a 'Technical' degree similar to a MBA (intense business classes combined with intense mathematics/programming).
Expensive Labor -- Face it, large companies would rather have software generate code than have programmers write it. The kill the good programmer, as AC puts it, because they want to pay less for programmers. I work for a large government contractor, and the 'Systems Engineer' approach is to use expensive packages to layout OCDs and OODs and then the packages generate code to be used in run-time systems. This effectively eliminates the programmer all together, with the exception of someone to go in and fix all of the machine generated code. Every programmer finds it fun to deal with machine generated code/sarcasm. When machine code can't be generated, the SE has specified the object or procedure so much that it there is not much room or reason to be creative when developing the code.
Finally, I don't claim to be an expert on IT management. I find it an interesting area to learn about and I welcome all comments from people who disagree with me. I do recommend Donna Shirley's book, however.
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Please allow the grammar nazi to clear this up:
Specifically, we're interested in knowing whether you should refer to more than one virus as virii. Latin-lovers and viral votaries alike know that the noun virus is a borrowing from Latin. In that tongue, a virus (pronounced WEE-russ) is a venom, a poisonous emanation, a slimy liquid, or a stench. In fact, when virus first slithered its way into our language in the late 16th century, it named a "venom emitted by a poisonous animal."
The word's Latin ancestry has given some English speakers the idea that the only logical way to pluralize virus is to replace the terminal -us with the letters -ii . This idea seems especially popular among folks who are referring to more than one computer virus. But before you catch the bug for that new spelling, consider this: the notion that Latin words ending in -us must take an -ii plural is a flat-out fallacy. In fact, there is no evidence that any plural form of the classical Latin virus was ever recorded; some lexicographers even suspect the Latin virus was a mass noun (and thus needed no separate plural).
In addition, when you look at the historical record of English usage, you find viruses, not virii, as the established plural. So although virii has turned up upon recent occasions, that word is far from standard.
--this is only slightly plagerised
Good point friend. I wish I could have gotten to this story sooner before timothy magically fixed it. I would've had to fix timothy!
Your robot idea in your last sentence is a neat idea, but if the robot could stand having it's legs blown away, and fall a great distance, then how would that protect the human?
soon to headline at /. ...
Spam email virus hits PS1 through mobile phones...
Come on, you have to admit that it was cool when Keanu plugged RAM doubler into the back of his head so that he could store more information in there!
I think that the whole article deserves a big -1 Flamebait. Your comment, however, has valid points.
I think that the major problems with IT management are as follows: /sarcasm. When machine code can't be generated, the SE has specified the object or procedure so much that it there is not much room or reason to be creative when developing the code.
Bad Managers -- Let's face it, as the IT field grows older, the management styles will evolve until it grows better. New things ideas and methods are already being tested (Some very successfully, e.g. Donna Shirley's Mar's Global Surveyor). Eventually the bad managers will be weeded out, or at least we will have the definition of a 'good manager'. I don't think that the standard MBA program is capable of producing good IT managers, but MBA programs are changing. Math depts. around the USA are starting Industrial Mathematics Master's degree programs that provide a 'Technical' degree similar to a MBA (intense business classes combined with intense mathematics/programming).
Expensive Labor -- Face it, large companies would rather have software generate code than have programmers write it. The kill the good programmer, as AC puts it, because they want to pay less for programmers. I work for a large government contractor, and the 'Systems Engineer' approach is to use expensive packages to layout OCDs and OODs and then the packages generate code to be used in run-time systems. This effectively eliminates the programmer all together, with the exception of someone to go in and fix all of the machine generated code. Every programmer finds it fun to deal with machine generated code
Finally, I don't claim to be an expert on IT management. I find it an interesting area to learn about and I welcome all comments from people who disagree with me. I do recommend Donna Shirley's book, however.