It's English. Just because other cultures have bastardised it,
Which cultures are these, then?
Bearing in mind that the first settlers in North America arrived in the days before there was such a thing as a dictionary. Also bearing in mind that they came from all over the UK, from areas with different dialects.
Yes, there's no such thing as "UK English", as anyone who has ever gone to Yorkshire, Newcastle, Somerset, Cornwall, Dublin, Wales, Glasgow, Leeds, Nottingham, London or in fact any two UK towns or counties will be well aware.
Which of the local English dialects is the correct one? I'm just curious.
It amuses me when people get really riled up by the American word "gotten". It's an Old English word, in fact. But many english people seem to have forgotten this fact - it's a word which we lost but they kept.
My point being: languages diverge, and this is perfectly natural and nothing to get upset about. Middle Class UK English, American English and Australian English have all changed and evolved since the people moved away from each other.
What annoys me is when people seem to indicate that everyone ought to speak and spell the same, and that the language should, in some way, be static. Given that Shakespeare invented about a third of the words he used in his plays (including "brilliant"), and spelled even his name is various different ways (sometimes in the same document), I think you could conclude that Shakespeare basardised English more than anyone else. Shall we return to pre-Shakesperian English, then, to get back to the purer tongue?
Maybe Chaucer would be better. Hey - let's go all the way back to Latin. Is Latin better English than English is, then..?
I'm sorry, I missed that passage in my Bible where it tells me to "slaughter Muslims". Could you kindly point me to it?
Given that Mohammed lived hundreds of years after Christ, you'll have a difficult time finding that one; as I suspect you know.
But (some) evangelical Christians believe that Christ cannot return for the second coming until all Jews return to Israel; which is, therefore a state created by the will of God. Which is, therefore, perfect, and can do no wrong. I have had one such Christian explain to me (with a straight face) that Israeli soldiers have never, ever killed (or even shot at) an innocent (or even unarmed, stone-throwing) civilian on purpose, that the Palastinian houses are only ever knocked down if they are booby trapped by terrorists, and that the Israeli soldiers then build new houses out of their own pockets.
Hence: Christian fundamentalism = support of Israeli no matter what = more attrocities committed against Palastinian civilians = more Palastinian terrorists = more attrocitices committed against Israeli civilians. Repeat.
I can tell you that Mohammed explicitly stated that Jews, Christians and Muslims were all "people of the same book", and that Jerusalem was a pretty nice (and very tolerant) place to live until several thousand heavily armed European Crusaders hoved into view and started eating babies
Prosperity begins at home; nobody will bring it to you on a silver platter. If you want it, you earn it.
I seeee..... so your plan for African states goes along these lines:
1- Get lots of weopons
2- invade Europe, build prosperous empire
3- Profit!
After all, that's how we did it. The UK doesn't have nearly enough natural resources to support the levels of wealth created by the British Empire; it was warfare to create trade that did the trick.
Your argument assumes a level playing field. A better analogy would be:
- a very intelligent child born born in rural Africa has every chance of becoming rich and successful as a moderately intelligent child born to wealthy parents in the US with family contacts at Harvard, for a guaranteed place.
By your argument, the fact that the child in Africa remains in poverty its whole life because it never learned to read is entirely the fault of the child, and the government which cannot afford to buy books for it or pay teachers, because it's too busy paying off debts to countries already rich.
You have to take them out. It is the only way. You can't sweet talk terrorists into being nice people.
Terrorist organisations that have increased their membership as a result of governments "trying to take them out":
- the Provisional IRA
- ETA
- PLO and PFLP
- almost all Resistance organisations in Europe during the Second World War - but especially the French
- ANC
- lot and lots and lots of others
- any organisation I would join if some other country was bombing civillian men, women and children round my way on the grounds that they may hit a terrorist as well
Terrorist organisations which have been defeated as a result of governments trying to "take them out"
- Dutch resistance during the Second World War (temporarily - and due to inflitration by native Dutch speakers and code intercepts rather than shooting and bombing).
Heh. So a sticker that states: "This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered." should be banned and somehow this is "a victory for reason?"... Evolution is a theory and like EVERYTHING, from theology to politics to science it should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.
I may have misread that, but you appear to be advocating the addition of a sticker to every single book about any subject.
The Christians cheer when their crap is stuffed down everyone's throats and you cheer when people are silenced
Actually, the cheering is about their crap not being stuffed down our throats. If anyone tried to silence their freedom of speech, I would defend those rights to the utmost.
All the WWII games, as others have pointed out? Are those just as distasteful?
No; the difference is that in this game a single individual (who was a real person with family still alive) is being targeted to be killed as part of a game. Sure it happened, but that's no reason to turn it into a game.
What next? A first-person adventure called "Son of Sam" with all the real victims? "Behead a hostage in Iraq", maybe, to help you hone your sword skills? A simulation or a movie is one thing; it's the interactive element that makes me want to barf..
I think that it is far more likely that businesses (who have come to depend on high-speed electronic communication) would set up private, propriatory networks amongst themselves. Investment banks used to use these things before the net was widespread.
Then the academic establishments, fed up with the amount of noise coming through, would set up their own little networks.
Some bright spark would probably reaslise that if you joined all these private networks together, you could get a high-speed, low noise, world-wide network that was useful to everyone.
I've not kept the originals, being that they are cumbersome to lug across 3 continents
Pardon me for being facetious, but isn't lack of proper backups a big enough problem in IT as it is? Perhaps you could get an off-site storage system up and running? I hope at the very least that your i-pod implements some kind of RAID system.
Bear in mind that this is the same man who gave the world Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Bananarama and Rick Astley within the space of a couple of years.
That kind of involvement in the music industry should really speak for itself.
I figured it sounded a bit like that.. I'm a VB programmer (bad enough in itself) and my machine has decided that it likes doing its own thing this week, thank you. So I'm pretty tetchy myself:)
It's rediculous to think someone would get their panties all in a bundle over that.
So do I, but I knew a guy whose job it was to go through every single link everyone in the company had visited. They checked everything. It was a client site, and I'm very glad I don't work there any more, thank you. Had great fun making up outrageous URLs on my last day, though..
It happens. There are plenty of paranoid/anal companies out there to work for.
turdhead is about the equivelent of "doodoo-head"
Not in this part of the world. Try "shithead" instead.
Quite right; I ought to have checked and do on most other sites I visit. But I've somehow got into this terrible habit of trusting that slashdot main stories about technology are unlikely to link to websites with URLs which include naughty-bad-words.
Of course, the admins hold our hands very nicely with links like this because of something to do with goats, I understand. Just never expected them to post one themselves.
Oh, and thanks for the pointless flame; been ages since I had one of those.. reminds me of the good old days of USENET.. sigh...
May I please ask, for the benefit of those of use whose web URLs are logged at work, that URLS like that one are highlighted as "you may not want to click this at work under any circumstances because it's got a well-dodgy URL that could stand out like a sore thumb in weblogs as being potentially offensive"?
For those that don't know, the link is to "turdhead.com"
To make sure they never get lost (the digital ones at lest) they should make a zip file of them and put them up on kazza.
They may never get lost, but they will get renamed to "Par1s H1lton s3x video - NO FAKE" and nobody who wants them will ever manage to find them again.
Slashdot Mirror
It's English. Just because other cultures have bastardised it,
Which cultures are these, then?
Bearing in mind that the first settlers in North America arrived in the days before there was such a thing as a dictionary. Also bearing in mind that they came from all over the UK, from areas with different dialects.
Yes, there's no such thing as "UK English", as anyone who has ever gone to Yorkshire, Newcastle, Somerset, Cornwall, Dublin, Wales, Glasgow, Leeds, Nottingham, London or in fact any two UK towns or counties will be well aware.
Which of the local English dialects is the correct one? I'm just curious.
It amuses me when people get really riled up by the American word "gotten". It's an Old English word, in fact. But many english people seem to have forgotten this fact - it's a word which we lost but they kept.
My point being: languages diverge, and this is perfectly natural and nothing to get upset about. Middle Class UK English, American English and Australian English have all changed and evolved since the people moved away from each other.
What annoys me is when people seem to indicate that everyone ought to speak and spell the same, and that the language should, in some way, be static. Given that Shakespeare invented about a third of the words he used in his plays (including "brilliant"), and spelled even his name is various different ways (sometimes in the same document), I think you could conclude that Shakespeare basardised English more than anyone else. Shall we return to pre-Shakesperian English, then, to get back to the purer tongue?
Maybe Chaucer would be better. Hey - let's go all the way back to Latin. Is Latin better English than English is, then..?
I'm sorry, I missed that passage in my Bible where it tells me to "slaughter Muslims". Could you kindly point me to it?
Given that Mohammed lived hundreds of years after Christ, you'll have a difficult time finding that one; as I suspect you know.
But (some) evangelical Christians believe that Christ cannot return for the second coming until all Jews return to Israel; which is, therefore a state created by the will of God. Which is, therefore, perfect, and can do no wrong. I have had one such Christian explain to me (with a straight face) that Israeli soldiers have never, ever killed (or even shot at) an innocent (or even unarmed, stone-throwing) civilian on purpose, that the Palastinian houses are only ever knocked down if they are booby trapped by terrorists, and that the Israeli soldiers then build new houses out of their own pockets.
Hence: Christian fundamentalism = support of Israeli no matter what = more attrocities committed against Palastinian civilians = more Palastinian terrorists = more attrocitices committed against Israeli civilians. Repeat.
I can tell you that Mohammed explicitly stated that Jews, Christians and Muslims were all "people of the same book", and that Jerusalem was a pretty nice (and very tolerant) place to live until several thousand heavily armed European Crusaders hoved into view and started eating babies
Prosperity begins at home; nobody will bring it to you on a silver platter. If you want it, you earn it.
I seeee..... so your plan for African states goes along these lines:
1- Get lots of weopons
2- invade Europe, build prosperous empire
3- Profit!
After all, that's how we did it. The UK doesn't have nearly enough natural resources to support the levels of wealth created by the British Empire; it was warfare to create trade that did the trick.
Perhaps the Africans could invade Europe for the right to sell us Opium? That worked out very profitable for the British.
Your argument assumes a level playing field. A better analogy would be:
- a very intelligent child born born in rural Africa has every chance of becoming rich and successful as a moderately intelligent child born to wealthy parents in the US with family contacts at Harvard, for a guaranteed place.
By your argument, the fact that the child in Africa remains in poverty its whole life because it never learned to read is entirely the fault of the child, and the government which cannot afford to buy books for it or pay teachers, because it's too busy paying off debts to countries already rich.
You have to take them out. It is the only way. You can't sweet talk terrorists into being nice people.
Terrorist organisations that have increased their membership as a result of governments "trying to take them out":
- the Provisional IRA
- ETA
- PLO and PFLP
- almost all Resistance organisations in Europe during the Second World War - but especially the French
- ANC
- lot and lots and lots of others
- any organisation I would join if some other country was bombing civillian men, women and children round my way on the grounds that they may hit a terrorist as well
Terrorist organisations which have been defeated as a result of governments trying to "take them out"
- Dutch resistance during the Second World War (temporarily - and due to inflitration by native Dutch speakers and code intercepts rather than shooting and bombing).
er... that's all I can think of.
Sure. Let's go with the proven tactic.
Heh. So a sticker that states: "This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered." should be banned and somehow this is "a victory for reason?" ...
Evolution is a theory and like EVERYTHING, from theology to politics to science it should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.
I may have misread that, but you appear to be advocating the addition of a sticker to every single book about any subject.
The Christians cheer when their crap is stuffed down everyone's throats and you cheer when people are silenced
Actually, the cheering is about their crap not being stuffed down our throats. If anyone tried to silence their freedom of speech, I would defend those rights to the utmost.
and then we can dream we will be as successful in the "War on SPAM(TM)" as we are in our "War on Terror(TM)" and "War on Drugs(TM)"
As long as it involves invading another country and re-electing a nazi, I don't see what your problem is.
Also try correct commas in lists, lists and more lists.
Ah.. but the Oxford comma is also valid in lists, as it helps distungish the last item in the list:
"To my parents, Mary and God"
as opposed to:
"To my parents, Mary, and God"
The latter does not seem to be claiming descent from a deity - but only with an Oxford comma.
You should have just patented English words that are spelled correctly and used in grammatically correct ways.
There's no prior art on slashdot for that.
Yeah, but I'd never be able to claim any royalties.
All the WWII games, as others have pointed out? Are those just as distasteful?
No; the difference is that in this game a single individual (who was a real person with family still alive) is being targeted to be killed as part of a game. Sure it happened, but that's no reason to turn it into a game.
What next? A first-person adventure called "Son of Sam" with all the real victims? "Behead a hostage in Iraq", maybe, to help you hone your sword skills? A simulation or a movie is one thing; it's the interactive element that makes me want to barf..
"is maybe not" is simply an adaptation of "IsNot."
You'll have to wait for quantum processors to use that one, though...
iSnot sounds a bit too much like you sneezed.
I've got the patent on using English words on slashdot
Damn; just realised there's a loophole.
You're OK as long as you apply ROT-13 encoding on your posts.
ROT-26 is also acceptable.
Sorry to have to break this to you all, but I've got the patent on using English words on slashdot.
Can you all please use French, Spanish, Italian or German for your comments, from now on?
Many thanks.
Of which someone should have pointed out that the United Kingdom is the nation, not Scotland.
I wouldn't say that too loudly in certain parts of Glasgow if I were you...
Is it too late to sign up to be a major FF developer?
Only asking.
I think that it is far more likely that businesses (who have come to depend on high-speed electronic communication) would set up private, propriatory networks amongst themselves. Investment banks used to use these things before the net was widespread.
Then the academic establishments, fed up with the amount of noise coming through, would set up their own little networks.
Some bright spark would probably reaslise that if you joined all these private networks together, you could get a high-speed, low noise, world-wide network that was useful to everyone.
I've not kept the originals, being that they are cumbersome to lug across 3 continents
Pardon me for being facetious, but isn't lack of proper backups a big enough problem in IT as it is? Perhaps you could get an off-site storage system up and running? I hope at the very least that your i-pod implements some kind of RAID system.
According to Pete Waterman
Bear in mind that this is the same man who gave the world Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Bananarama and Rick Astley within the space of a couple of years.
That kind of involvement in the music industry should really speak for itself.
I think you're confusing it with the Library at Conservative Party Headquarters, aren't you?
more venting than was necessary
:)
I figured it sounded a bit like that.. I'm a VB programmer (bad enough in itself) and my machine has decided that it likes doing its own thing this week, thank you. So I'm pretty tetchy myself
It's rediculous to think someone would get their panties all in a bundle over that.
So do I, but I knew a guy whose job it was to go through every single link everyone in the company had visited. They checked everything. It was a client site, and I'm very glad I don't work there any more, thank you. Had great fun making up outrageous URLs on my last day, though..
It happens. There are plenty of paranoid/anal companies out there to work for.
turdhead is about the equivelent of "doodoo-head"
Not in this part of the world. Try "shithead" instead.
Quite right; I ought to have checked and do on most other sites I visit. But I've somehow got into this terrible habit of trusting that slashdot main stories about technology are unlikely to link to websites with URLs which include naughty-bad-words.
Of course, the admins hold our hands very nicely with links like this because of something to do with goats, I understand. Just never expected them to post one themselves.
Oh, and thanks for the pointless flame; been ages since I had one of those.. reminds me of the good old days of USENET.. sigh...
May I please ask, for the benefit of those of use whose web URLs are logged at work, that URLS like that one are highlighted as "you may not want to click this at work under any circumstances because it's got a well-dodgy URL that could stand out like a sore thumb in weblogs as being potentially offensive"?
For those that don't know, the link is to "turdhead.com"
Sheesh!
That's how Queen Victoria would have said it and you can't get any more British than the Queen
This is the same Queen Victoria whose immediate ancestors were German and who married a German?
Only asking.
To make sure they never get lost (the digital ones at lest) they should make a zip file of them and put them up on kazza.
They may never get lost, but they will get renamed to "Par1s H1lton s3x video - NO FAKE" and nobody who wants them will ever manage to find them again.