Ending sentences with a preposition is an outrage up with which we will not put.
It's rather difficult to end multiple sentences with a single preposition....
In the construction "put up", the word "up" isn't being used as a preposition, but an adverb, modifying the preceding verb "put". Another legitimate interpretation is that "put up" has merged two words together into a single entity, where the words remain adjacent. Either way, there's nothing wrong with this:
Ending a sentence with a preposition is an outrage with which we will not put up.
However, it would not be grammatically proper to use "up" as an actual preposition, but then not position it "pre" another word:
Ending a sentence with a preposition drives me the wall up.
...that police will only activate the system when they can see the car, and know it can stop safely.
How does this work, exactly? Cops are pursuing a car, and they relay the license plate and description back to dispatcher, who checks registration dispatch for the VIN associated with that car, gives that to OnStar, who looks up the codes to kill the car, which they proceed to do.
But what if a criminal was clever enough to see another car that looks like the one he stole, and swaps out the license plates to confuse the cops? (Or he's really smart and made a fake license with the number of the similar car.) Now the cops don't really see the car they think they see, and the wrong car gets shut down, conveniently coasting to a stop at a railroad crossing.
I sure hope the protocol requires that they confirm via GPS that the car really is the one they think it is. TFA suggests that they don't really halt the car so much as (disengage the signal from the accelerator pedal) fade it down to idle, in which case the car would still move forward at maybe 10 mph on level ground, fast enough to avoid this worst-case scenario, but slow enough the cops could easily halt it simply by getting a vehicle in front of it and easing onto the brakes, if the suspect didn't just pull over and put it into park at that point.
So if the car is going uphill toward the tracks... Maybe instead of idle, the car could go into Valet Mode (limited to something like 20 mph, maximum distance 2 miles it can be driven before going to idle, because we saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and want this mode anyway for when we go to a fancy restaurant and leave the key with the car, but keep the security fob.)
Spoken like a web editor---you noticed the misuse of "myself" but not the incorrect use of a comma right next to it.:-D
No, I simply stopped looking for errors once I'd found that one. I had what I needed to make my point.
A comma separates lists of three or more things or complete independent clauses.
That's not right. A comma followed by an appropriate conjunction (like "and" or "but") may separate complete independent clauses, but it can't do so alone. That's the job of the semicolon. Commas do set off mild interjections and other introductory words not a part of the main clause, such as in my first sentence above ("No,...").
The previous sentence indicates yet another way a comma can be properly used.
There are many, many other valid ways to use commas in addition the two you mention. There's another! How about "Bush, George W." or "Monday, October 8"?
Oh, comma: how to count the ways that you help us?
I'm a firm believer that the Internet is GOOD for writers. . . . The Internet has blown open the market for myself, and the writers I've hired to "pen" articles.
Maybe you're a good editor when serving as that extra pair of eyes looking over someone else's work; we all tend to have that blind spot looking at our own writing.
But the point remains that the numbers in the article don't jibe with what most other people are reporting.
I just want to thank you for spelling "jibe" correctly on Slashdot. I'm so used to seeing it misspelled "jive" (a word with rather the opposite meaning from what is intended in this context) that I actually notice it when someone gets it right.
Before you could communicate that to me, you had to think of it first.
Says who? That's not an empirical claim. It's a philosophical claim, and a controversial one. E.g., Fodor supports this ("language of thought"), while (late) Wittgenstein was very much against it. When you get down to concrete and realistic psychological models, how do you propose to distinguish the parts that constitute "thinking" from those that constitute "speaking"?
Well, the part where your mouth moves and sound comes out of it is "speaking". The part that stays inside your brain, without driving motor neurons, is "thinking", even when it's "thinking about speaking". I can't see how it's possible to think about communicating in a language without an internal manipulation of the language preceding the actual communication.
Or are you suggesting that you were able to read what I'd said, and post a reply to it, without doing any thinking about what you'd read or written? You just open your mouth (or place fingers to keyboard) and let words fall out without thinking of them first? If that is your habit, then no wonder the idea is so controversial to you.
You can repeat that statement as much as you like, and it doesn't make true even the unstated presupposition that there is such a thing as a "primary" function of language.
That's an interesting turn of phrase. "Unstated presupposition". It's almost as if not thinking of a particular combination of words, much less saying them out loud, implies not thinking about the process of reasoning (as stated by those words) that leads to a conclusion. Thanks for helping out.
primaryadj1: first in order of time or development
Before you could communicate that to me, you had to think of it first. And even when you have no intention of communicating with anyone, and you're just thinking, you're still using language to do most of it.
There are some functions of language that you're not acknowledging at all, too, like establishing and maintaining group boundaries, with the obvious political and economical consequences.
Are you suggesting that one of those functions is primary?
Those are interesting things to discuss, though. For instance, by teaching various ethnic groups primarily in languages other than English, we encourage them to maintain group boundaries, with the obvious economic consequence of lower-paying jobs. Was that what you wanted me to acknowledge?
What was that name you just thought of that might apply to me? That's use of language for thinking.
I think that's the Shapir-Whorf hypothesis and I'm not so sure everyone agrees on it.
You've misspelled Sapir's name, and while the two are certainly related, they aren't the same.
Sapir-Whorf says that the language you think in influences your ability to think about certain ideas. Orwell's Newspeak was deliberately an attempt by The Party to make it impossible to think subversive thoughts. I personally find it interesting that English didn't have a word to describe the concept of enjoying someone else's misfortune, and had to press the German word "Schadenfreude" into service.
But those presuppose this more fundamental premise: one thinks thoughts in a language.
No, it's not. It's a way of how relate to the world, it's a way of being. Most of our reality is categorized through linguistic categories. If we loose [sic] them we loose [sic] our world.
The primary function of language is not communication; it's cognition. Once the human mind goes beyond the bare perceptual level of thinking, it groups like entities together and assigns them names. Those names are then used to reason about the way members of those groups behave. We use language internally to organize and discipline our reasoning without ever saying out loud or writing a single word.
Right now, all the people who are thinking I'm a "Grammar Nazi" for pointing out the 'lose -> loose' error above are using language to think it.
Even when language is being used for communication, it must first be used for cognition. You can't properly communicate what you don't yourself understand.
Only because so many people misspell the name of Novell by dropping one of the doubled l's that most of us have to impute the true meaning by context.
By the way, the above demonstrates the only way in which an apostrophe indicates plural number in Standard English: when referring to the plural of the character itself, such as "Dot your i's and cross your t's."
Is the original author bound by the terms of the license under which they release software?
The license grants permission to do some things that can't be done without the copyright holder's permission. So long as the person who has accepted the terms of the license abides by those terms, that permission is irrevocable. It's not really a 'contract', it's a specific grant of permission.
But there isn't a word in the GPL or any other license that enjoins the copyright holder from granting some other package of permissions to someone else. If I own the copyright on software, and release it under GPLv2, I can also release it under GPLv3, BSD, a commercial license that grants to my customers no redistribution rights at all, and weird stuff like "before you can use this software, you have to send a post card to this kid I know who likes to collect postcards" if I want.
In the Monsoon case, in order to claim rescission of the GPL the original licensors are basing their standing to do so on the basis an injury to "all third parties" such that they do not receive source code.
Nope.
The basis of the legal action is not an 'injury' to these third parties, but to the copyright holders. If I write software, a song, or play, I can license it under the provision that everyone who wants to copy the software, sing the song, or perform the play, must send a postcard to KUON-TV (PBS affiliate in Lincoln, NE, an example pulled straight out of my ass.) A person who fails to comply has not "injured" the station. They've violated my copyright.
The way a precedent helps your side is all this filing can cost money, so the other side might decide its cheaper not to fight you.
Well, someone needs to be a Spelling Nazi, because you've just made the opposite error. It's not uncommon to react against a common error by 'correcting' non-errors. I have lost count of the sportscasters who say things like "That's between he and the coach", overcorrecting the tendency to use objective forms like "him" in the nominative. In print, we find "and" used as an article, ("...and exception to the provision...") as if "an" were a low-class contraction for the more formal "and".
I'm proud to be a Grammar Nazi, actually. If you're going to work in technology, you know that you must use the right syntax to communicate with your compiler; why people think they can express themselves sloppily to humans but not to computers is a mystery to me. And I'm sick of trying to explain the difference between a slash and a backslash to people who don't think it matters, because "you know what I mean!"
That relates to the MS strategy to attack the GPL in this way: I think that GPLv3 gives them a lot of ammo in the Viral department. People are actually claiming that reselling Novell support certificates constitutes 'conveyance' under GPLv3, which is beyond even 'viral'. It's as if even talking to someone who distributes GPLv3 software makes you subject to its provisions.
IMHO, it is an incredibly stupid strategy to make it difficult for advanced users to do things.
The challenge is always to make the common things easy, while keeping the uncommon ones possible. A good rule of thumb is that a setting you expect to be changed by 80-90% of users needs to be on the main configuration menu, which can have an [Advanced] button or tab to handle that last 10-20%. If there's an overwhelming amount of detail there, you can make that Advanced section have tabs or submenus, but only one additional level. If people have to go beyond three levels to get to a setting, they'll be lost.
Then there's the Firefox Method that puts all of it where you can change anything you want. Not to mention the dreaded text configuration files that can be manipulated with $EDITOR.
But TFA is concerned about the wrong things. The Ubuntu installation process is designed to get you a functioning system as easily as possible, after which you can choose additional packages, if any, to install. It's one of the few distros that can install a working system from a single CD. I'm willing to trade a whole lot of install-time configurability for not having to swap CDs out. And Ubuntu has had Kickstart compatibility since 5.04, so if I have to admin a whole bunch of machines that need to be configured the same way, I have all the pre-install configuration flexibility I need.
Forthermore, you can't strip the BSD license. The license says so.
But it doesn't matter what the BSD license says, if the code is dual-licensed. Here's why. A dual license says "I hold the copyrights to this work. I'm giving you permission to make copies of it under either the BSD or GPL, your choice."
So, if I want to make a copy of the code, I get to choose whether to do so under the BSD or the GPL. If I choose the BSD, then the GPL's requirements don't concern me, because the author has given me permission to copy his work under the BSD. And if I choose the GPL, then I may freely ignore the BSD.
If the code were dual-licensed under BSD and some commercial license requiring payment, would Theo claim that every copy of BSD include the offer to pay the license fee? The license that you don't accept has nothing to do with the license you do accept, which is what allows you to copy the code. Choose a license. Obey it. Not exactly rocket science.
What on earth makes you think other people would want to listen to your phone conversations?
I don't know, some pervert might have been interested in the details of my daughters' school schedules, the routes walked home from the ones not far enough away to justify buses, or the locations of the bus stops for those that do. (They're adults now.) Maybe someone would want to know the exact dates that I'd be out of town on business (and therefore not able to personally defend my family). If The Bride of Monster called from the casino down on the river, to tell me she'd hit a tidy jackpot on one of the slot machines, a casual eavesdropper might suddenly become something more sinister.
I[f] you don't understand the GPL then don't open your mouth.
That would nearly eliminate the comments on GPL-related stories. In fact, it would pretty much prevent the stories from being posted in the first place, if the 'editors' lived up to their titles and worded the stories accurately. Then they wouldn't be sensationalist traffic generators.
Arguably, what is needed is the low-tech sort of spell-checker. Before we had automated computer programs, newspapers had people called 'copy editors' who would proofread the articles submitted by the reporters. They were looking not only for spelling, grammar, and usage problems, but they also would do fact-checking.
Perhaps we could make the distinction clear this way: A machine that sells soft drinks is often referred to as a 'vender', while the guy selling hot dogs is more likely to be called a 'vendor'. With that in mind, I have toyed with a similar convention for other verb+er nouns:
The person who checks spelling could be a spell-checkor, and the computer program would remain the spell-checker; the human surfing the Web would be a browsor, using a browser program. Programs such as vi or emacs would be editers....
It's got as good a chance of adoption as *bibyte does.
Now, if Cmdr Taco could just get editors who actually EDIT... Oh. He's the 'editor' who ran this story? Never mind.
So "up to 1% to 10% of cases" (whatever the hell that means) got cancer. Did they mention what percentage of mice that weren't implanted with RFID tags got cancer? It really matters what the baseline is, you know.
I think the Ob/Gyns that delivered the Monsterettes from the womb of The Bride of Monster produced something tangible. I think the cook and waitress that get my dinner to the table at Denny's tonight (after closing time at the library where KCLUG meets) are producing something tangible.
Oh, sure, the Monsterettes were more tangibly produced by TBoM, and the dinner is more tangibly made by the chickens who laid the eggs, or the pigs turned into bacon... But why is it that the service provided by the farmer who collected the eggs from the chickens, or saw to it the pig got fed is any different from the services provided by the trucker who hauled the produce off to processing plants, etc.?
And labor jobs are leaving
What the hell's a "labor job" (other than giving birth or helping out like the Ob/Gyn did)?
Slashdot Mirror
But what if a criminal was clever enough to see another car that looks like the one he stole, and swaps out the license plates to confuse the cops? (Or he's really smart and made a fake license with the number of the similar car.) Now the cops don't really see the car they think they see, and the wrong car gets shut down, conveniently coasting to a stop at a railroad crossing.
I sure hope the protocol requires that they confirm via GPS that the car really is the one they think it is. TFA suggests that they don't really halt the car so much as (disengage the signal from the accelerator pedal) fade it down to idle, in which case the car would still move forward at maybe 10 mph on level ground, fast enough to avoid this worst-case scenario, but slow enough the cops could easily halt it simply by getting a vehicle in front of it and easing onto the brakes, if the suspect didn't just pull over and put it into park at that point.
So if the car is going uphill toward the tracks... Maybe instead of idle, the car could go into Valet Mode (limited to something like 20 mph, maximum distance 2 miles it can be driven before going to idle, because we saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and want this mode anyway for when we go to a fancy restaurant and leave the key with the car, but keep the security fob.)
Oh, comma: how to count the ways that you help us?
Maybe you're a good editor when serving as that extra pair of eyes looking over someone else's work; we all tend to have that blind spot looking at our own writing.
Or are you suggesting that you were able to read what I'd said, and post a reply to it, without doing any thinking about what you'd read or written? You just open your mouth (or place fingers to keyboard) and let words fall out without thinking of them first? If that is your habit, then no wonder the idea is so controversial to you.
primary adj 1 : first in order of time or development
Before you could communicate that to me, you had to think of it first. And even when you have no intention of communicating with anyone, and you're just thinking, you're still using language to do most of it.
Are you suggesting that one of those functions is primary?Those are interesting things to discuss, though. For instance, by teaching various ethnic groups primarily in languages other than English, we encourage them to maintain group boundaries, with the obvious economic consequence of lower-paying jobs. Was that what you wanted me to acknowledge?
What was that name you just thought of that might apply to me? That's use of language for thinking.
Sapir-Whorf says that the language you think in influences your ability to think about certain ideas. Orwell's Newspeak was deliberately an attempt by The Party to make it impossible to think subversive thoughts. I personally find it interesting that English didn't have a word to describe the concept of enjoying someone else's misfortune, and had to press the German word "Schadenfreude" into service.
But those presuppose this more fundamental premise: one thinks thoughts in a language.
Right now, all the people who are thinking I'm a "Grammar Nazi" for pointing out the 'lose -> loose' error above are using language to think it.
Even when language is being used for communication, it must first be used for cognition. You can't properly communicate what you don't yourself understand.
By the way, the above demonstrates the only way in which an apostrophe indicates plural number in Standard English: when referring to the plural of the character itself, such as "Dot your i's and cross your t's."
But there isn't a word in the GPL or any other license that enjoins the copyright holder from granting some other package of permissions to someone else. If I own the copyright on software, and release it under GPLv2, I can also release it under GPLv3, BSD, a commercial license that grants to my customers no redistribution rights at all, and weird stuff like "before you can use this software, you have to send a post card to this kid I know who likes to collect postcards" if I want.
The basis of the legal action is not an 'injury' to these third parties, but to the copyright holders. If I write software, a song, or play, I can license it under the provision that everyone who wants to copy the software, sing the song, or perform the play, must send a postcard to KUON-TV (PBS affiliate in Lincoln, NE, an example pulled straight out of my ass.) A person who fails to comply has not "injured" the station. They've violated my copyright.
Re:Nice to see a company admit it's mistake
Well, someone needs to be a Spelling Nazi, because you've just made the opposite error. It's not uncommon to react against a common error by 'correcting' non-errors. I have lost count of the sportscasters who say things like "That's between he and the coach", overcorrecting the tendency to use objective forms like "him" in the nominative. In print, we find "and" used as an article, ("...and exception to the provision...") as if "an" were a low-class contraction for the more formal "and".I'm proud to be a Grammar Nazi, actually. If you're going to work in technology, you know that you must use the right syntax to communicate with your compiler; why people think they can express themselves sloppily to humans but not to computers is a mystery to me. And I'm sick of trying to explain the difference between a slash and a backslash to people who don't think it matters, because "you know what I mean!"
That relates to the MS strategy to attack the GPL in this way: I think that GPLv3 gives them a lot of ammo in the Viral department. People are actually claiming that reselling Novell support certificates constitutes 'conveyance' under GPLv3, which is beyond even 'viral'. It's as if even talking to someone who distributes GPLv3 software makes you subject to its provisions.
Then there's the Firefox Method that puts all of it where you can change anything you want. Not to mention the dreaded text configuration files that can be manipulated with $EDITOR.
But TFA is concerned about the wrong things. The Ubuntu installation process is designed to get you a functioning system as easily as possible, after which you can choose additional packages, if any, to install. It's one of the few distros that can install a working system from a single CD. I'm willing to trade a whole lot of install-time configurability for not having to swap CDs out. And Ubuntu has had Kickstart compatibility since 5.04, so if I have to admin a whole bunch of machines that need to be configured the same way, I have all the pre-install configuration flexibility I need.
It doesn't matter. The story submitter put two and two together, came up with 22, and the editors ran with it.
If the code were dual-licensed under BSD and some commercial license requiring payment, would Theo claim that every copy of BSD include the offer to pay the license fee? The license that you don't accept has nothing to do with the license you do accept, which is what allows you to copy the code. Choose a license. Obey it. Not exactly rocket science.
Things like that.
Perhaps we could make the distinction clear this way: A machine that sells soft drinks is often referred to as a 'vender', while the guy selling hot dogs is more likely to be called a 'vendor'. With that in mind, I have toyed with a similar convention for other verb+er nouns:
It's got as good a chance of adoption as *bibyte does.Now, if Cmdr Taco could just get editors who actually EDIT... Oh. He's the 'editor' who ran this story? Never mind.
So "up to 1% to 10% of cases" (whatever the hell that means) got cancer. Did they mention what percentage of mice that weren't implanted with RFID tags got cancer? It really matters what the baseline is, you know.
I think the Ob/Gyns that delivered the Monsterettes from the womb of The Bride of Monster produced something tangible. I think the cook and waitress that get my dinner to the table at Denny's tonight (after closing time at the library where KCLUG meets) are producing something tangible.
Oh, sure, the Monsterettes were more tangibly produced by TBoM, and the dinner is more tangibly made by the chickens who laid the eggs, or the pigs turned into bacon... But why is it that the service provided by the farmer who collected the eggs from the chickens, or saw to it the pig got fed is any different from the services provided by the trucker who hauled the produce off to processing plants, etc.?
What the hell's a "labor job" (other than giving birth or helping out like the Ob/Gyn did)?