I, however, do not think of myself as a nazi at all.
Nor do I. Anyway, by picking on split infinitives, I was clearly being nitpickier than an individual who is employed in the profession of picking nits, who then goes home each night and practises picking nits and in his dreams imagines nits which are so great in number that never could they all be picked. Even the OED now acknowledges the use of split infinitives to be perfectly grammatical. I can't imagine why a germanic language would even acknowledge the existence of such a thing. I still have one English prof who maintains that split infinitives are in all cases inexcusable, but I think he's just a dinosaur.
To roughly quote Churchill on the topic (and this is an almost ALWAYS misquoted phrase. This version is from the Oxford Companion to the English Language and is merely a suggestion for the unknown original form)
"This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put"
How do you know that icon exists? Did you or your staff install Windows on their machine? How come YOU don't know what version YOU installed?
Does this warrant answering? For that matter, have you ever done tech? Users will frequently deny the existence of that which is right in front of their face. Sure, when a user denies the existence, of My Computer, it's possible they're running Win3.x, but I've only encountered one Windows 3.x user in the last 6 months and NEVER once has it been the explanation for a user denying the existence of My Computer. It's also possible they've renamed 'My Computer' 'poopypants'. Unlikely, and never happened before, but possible. And we're an ISP, we didn't install their OS.
What IT shop allows users to install their own version of Windows?
Again, ISP.
Oooo, a swipe at Linux distros....
Swipe? Not really. But I would agree that if all my entry-level users were to sporadically install Linux distros at random, I'd probably be driven to suicide.
Well here's the one concession to Microsoft's defence. The more 3rd parties are able to modify the layout and content of Windows, the more it will be a support nightmare. It's just a fact that, at my workplace, one quarter or so of windows users calling tech support don't know what version of Windows they're running and wouldn't know how to determine said version. It's also a fact that around one half of this category, when asked to right-click 'My Computer' on their desktop, will deny that such at icon exists. At this point, they must be told that this icon does in fact exist and that they are a moron. What do we do when the users are using Dell Windows XP, Micron Windows XP or (God help us) Circuit City Windows XP? Trying to support an OS the layout of which may be modified at all is a pain (Windows XP's minimally modifiable GUI is a big enough one), but trying to support an OS stripped apart and reassembled by the OEM to have their logo in every nook and cranny could be the nightmare Microsoft mentioned. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of a maximally modular OS, I just think my users should have to take an IQ test before they're allowed to use one.
Really, can the world stand one more character named Asriel/Azriel? To me, choosing a name like this is the equivalent of declaring that you are creating a completely original superhero comic and the protagonist's name will be...Bat-Man! Maybe I'll write a play about a prince named Hamblet. It would at least have greater cultural meaning than "Asriel" does to the audience. The point is that 1) 'Asriel' doesn't mean anything to the majority of readers, 2) whether the author is making some sort of insightful reference to the mythological 'Azriel' is seemingly doubtful and, therefore, 3) It ends up coming off as just having been chosen because it's 'the kind of thing spooky sci-fi characters are named'. Next, it'll be 'Alucard'. Yeesh.
Yes, the English phonemes 'g' and 'c' are articulated in the same position, both dorso-velar (dorsum of the tongue contacting the velum, the flap of skin behind the palate). They're both also 'stops' (the passage is momentarily completely blocked). But discerning sounds of identical position is actually somewhat less problematic in English than it might be in certain other languages. You hit upon a really important point when you mentioned 'the air' which accompanies 'c' word-initially in English (called 'aspiration'). Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, distinguishes between aspirated and unaspirated stops (e.g., the first 'k' in 'kook' is an aspirated stop, the second is unaspirated, but English speakers don't distinguish between them). How could this system possibly tell the difference? The only difference between the first 'k' and second 'k' in 'kook', as you point out, is the quick expulsion of air which accompanies the first. Even more confusingly, the first 'k' in 'keel' is not even articulated in the same position at all as the first 'k' in 'kook'. 'k' in 'keel' is palatal (further forward), where 'k' in 'kook' is velar (further back). But, for some reason, in English, we consider them the same phoneme (the subjective perception of what constitutes a unique sound in a given language. 'Keel' and 'kook' start with the same English phoneme, because we can't tell the difference). This is just impressing the point that where a phone is articulated is only a tiny piece of the puzzle. Making a system which understands language on the basis of position alone is ludicrous. That's impossible.
As you point out a workable system would have to detect 'voicing' (the vibration of the vocal cords), as voicing, AFAIK, differentiates at least some phonemes in every language on earth.
What about nasalisation (where the nasal passage is opened in pronouncing a vowel)? The only difference between the French words 'main' (hand) and 'mais' (but) is that the first is pronounced with resonance in the nasal cavity. How is this system to divine that one has opened a tiny passage to one's nasal cavity for the duration of the vowel?
Speaking of point of articulation, how about glottals (articulated in the larynx) and pharyngeals (articulated in the pharynx. We have none in English, but they exist in Semitic languages)? Without a camera rammed down the subject's throat, sensing articulation in there is going to be hard.
If we have some way of determining the position of the tongue, vowels will be comparatively easy to distinguish, as they're distinguished by 'rounding' (i.e., of the lips), position of the tongue and nasalisation alone (a caveat: Japanese has a 'voiceless vowel', but it's a total phonetic red-herring, really). And detecting nasalisation still seems a difficulty.
At any rate, the idea of recognising language mechanically would seem to at least necessitate detection of 1) position and character of vibration in the nasal cavity, pharynx and mouth and 2) exact position of the tongue at all times. At any rate, I'll leave the last word on this 'invention' to others:
Dr. Scott: This sonic transducer... it is I suppose, some kind of audio-vibratory physio-molecular transport device?
Brad: You mean...
Dr. Scott: Yes, Brad, it's something we ourselves have been working on for quite some time. But it seems our friend here has found a means of perfecting it..."
I have to agree as to the CPU's questionable capabilities. I can't speak for the Dragonball, but I know under PocketPC OS on my Casio EM-500 running the MIPS CPU at 200MHz (hardware overclocked), I really couldn't expect MPEG1 to decode at a reasonable framerate at any resolution higher than 320x200, even at a lower bitrate. At 150MHz (standard), there wasn't much point even trying. That's under either Casio's built-in MPEG app or PocketTV. Even IPAQ users have to tweak a bit to get adequate video playing (and they've got it easy, cause they have a software overclocker). I find it hard to believe that the Dragonball is going to be able to do it better at one third the clock rate, MHz Myth notwithstanding. I know, I know. Playing The Matrix in your pocket isn't everything (I can fit the whole thing on a 128MB SD Card at an adequate res to watch), but if that isn't what these devices are about, what are they about? If I wanted a Palm III, I'd use the one I have. I'm getting one of these machines because I want to play Pocketquake and music videos. But is my now ancient Casio going to be significantly more capable than this new technology, cause EM-500s sell on ebay for $180 at the moment.
For those of you who believe, like I do, that LoTR got, not only as much honour as was due it, but far more than was due it at the Oscars, here's a delicious piece of vicious criticism. Not very pithy, but satisfyingly vicious.
My personal position is that character development was so completely absent from the movie that there was no real reason I could find to sympathise with any of the characters. Sure, the world's about to end, but if the world ends and I don't identify with any of the characters in it, the accompanying dramatic flourishes will just seem tacked on. And so they did in LoTR. What can I say? The music was largely of an unimaginative, generic canned orchestral variety. Characters were thrown into the plot in medias res. It had about the Action Scene/Character Development Scene ratio of Commando (but I'll stop my kvetching...)
If you take a look at this very useful document, you'll see that "Shakespere" is a perfectly legitimate spelling of the man's name and occurs frequently. Other attested spellings are
Humperdink: "I don't believe I'm familiar with that phrase."
Westley: "I'll explain, and I'll use small words so you'll be sure to understand, you warthog-faced buffoon."
Humperdink: "That may be the first time in my life a man has dared insult me."
Westley: "It won't be the last. To the pain means the first thing you lose is your feet below the ankles. Then your hands at the wrist. Next your nose."
Humperdink: "Then my tongue, I suppose. I killed you too quickly the first time, a mistake I do not mean to duplicate tonight."
Westley: "I wasn't finished. The next thing you lose will be your left eye, followed by your right."
Humperdink: "And then my ears, I understand, let's get on with it."
Westley: "WRONG! Your ears you keep and I'll tell you why. It's so that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish. Every babe that weeps at your approach, every woman who cries out 'Dear God, what is that thing' will echo in your perfect ears. That is what to the pain means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever."
This is getting more than a little nitpicky, I know, but here's the authoritative version:
Mitchell and Robinson's A Guide to Old English glosses 'dom' as 'judgment' and 'dæg' as 'day' ('dæg' being just the pre-invasion West Saxon spelling of 'day'). '-es' in 'domes' is just the genetive singular inflection for masculine nouns. So "Judgment's Day" is the closest you'll get. 'Domdæg' is actually the original (10th century West Saxon) Old English term, literally translating as "judgment day", in the Mitchell and Robinson text.
A caveat: Because the word 'Domesday' was written post-invasion, it's technically Middle English, but comes directly on the heals of the Old English period and so has more to do with King Ælfred's language than Chaucer's.
Wait a sec. If we're moving towards liquid-cooled consumer-level systems, what becomes of my plans to warm my house in the winter with my Beowulf cluster of 110GHz IBM PCs?
User: "The server is down." Me: "Could you describe in detail the nature of the problem you are experiencing?" User: "I can't get my mail. The server is down." Me: "And you are using the same username and password which you use to connect to the Internet?" User: "I don't want to be connected to the Internet. I want to download my mail."
Rule #1 for entry-level users calling into tech support:
1) "The server is not down. You are an idiot".
In such circumstances as Rule #1 does not apply and the server is actually down, it being our fault:
I think looking for a 'locus' of the web may be missing the point entirely. As everyone on Slashdot's aware, one major phenomenon (though perhaps not the major phenomenon, as I will leave that genre of journalistic oversimplification to Mr. Katz) shaping the web right now is P2P networking, which is based largely on the premise of decentralisation. Maybe the central phenomenon defining the web right now is the elimination of a 'centre'. At any rate, looking for formative phenomena doesn't seem to be helpful in any way, in creating an understanding of the web. If anything, that kind of practice just generates problematic, quickly outdated generalisations to confound the general populace. And please, no metaphors, for god's sake. All we need is another 'information superhighway'.
On the other hand, bringing personal telecommunications back to the level of decentralisation that the BBS era allowed will be a difficult thing to do.
Main Entry: meta-
Variant(s): or met-
Function: prefix
Etymology: New Latin & Medieval Latin, from Latin or Greek; Latin, from Greek, among, with, after, from meta among, with, after; akin to Old English mid, mith with, Old High German mit
1 a : occurring later than or in succession to : after b : situated behind or beyond c : later or more highly organized or specialized form of
2 : change : transformation
3 [metaphysics] : more comprehensive : transcending -- used with the name of a discipline to designate a new but related discipline designed to deal critically with the original one
4 a : involving substitution at or characterized by two positions in the benzene ring that are separated by one carbon atom b : derived from by loss of water
Looks like 'meta', as a prefix, can mean a great deal of abstract things. Presumably, the idea of transcendence is what they're looking for here.
Rightly or wrongly, when I say first-gen Pentium, I'm talking about the P60 and P66, which were released in 1993. The P90,P100 and P75 (with funky 50MHz bus) were released a year later. And I guess I'd think of 150MHz as third-gen.
Mozilla, in my experience, under most circumstances, is less than zippy on a first-gen Pentium (but why would anyone want to run it on one, when they could run it on a lightning-fast 486DX4/120?)
That's a pretty funny rumor, whether it be true or not is of course another story....
Wow! I just have to take a moment to applaud you, sir, for being the first person in a long, long time I have seen use a verb in the subjunctive mood on the web. "Be that as it may" and a couple other intact subjunctive expressions aren't all that uncommon, but a use of the verb 'be' in its subjunctive form, independent of any familiar expression is remarkable.
The subjunctive may be dead in English, much as differentiation between the nominative and accusative cases in pronouns (e.g., who/whom) is currently going the way of the dodo, but its still nice to see linguistic traditionalism popping up here and there. To a grammar geek like me (if I, like many people, acknowledged the imminent death of the nominative/accusative noun cases, I would have awkwardly said "To a grammar geek like myself") a rare appearance of a verbal mood largely dead now for at least a century is a point of real interest.
Yeah, the age of a given product seems to have little to do with whether the company still protects its copyright. It seems to have more to do with the direness of that particular company's copyright-obsessed neuroses. For example, things that I have, in pursuit of nostalgic computing, found seem still to be considered "warez" include
- Game ROMs for the TI 99/4A
- Some (not all) Apple II games by MECC (Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation). For example, Odell Lake.
- Windows 1.x, 2.x, etc.
Of course, most of these can still be located here or there on the web with a little work, but their copyrighted status is, nevertheless, ludicrous.
We are bringing justice to a people that have no concept of what justice really is
It's sentiments like this that have directly resulted in the anti-americanism that currently exists throughout the world (and in America, too). I'm not talking about the anti-americanism of the bin Ladens of the world. I'm talking about that of the academics, the Noam Chomskys out there.
No matter who is the speaker, nor who the audience, the above phrase reaks of a spectacular arrogance. When you say "people who have no concept of what justice really is", are you talking about the terrorists? If so, don't you think they, more than anyone else on earth have an extremely firm idea, in their religious dogma, of what is just and what must be fought for at all cost?
More likely, when you say "no concept of what justice really is", you mean they have the wrong concept of justice. To take it further, you mean they do not have your concept of justice (and I will presume that your concept of justice necessarily the correct one any more than mine is infallible. That's a difference of opinion and it's vastly different from what you're portraying. Our problem isn't that bin Laden desires to commit evil or injustices, it's that he desires to commit good and fight for justice, except his good is our evil.
Saying that bin Laden has the wrong idea about justice is all well and good. Anyone writing here would agree with you on that. However, saying that an entire people has "no concept" of justice is ridiculous. It's reminiscent of the arrogant ideology on which much of colonialism was based.
Slashdot Mirror
Nor do I. Anyway, by picking on split infinitives, I was clearly being nitpickier than an individual who is employed in the profession of picking nits, who then goes home each night and practises picking nits and in his dreams imagines nits which are so great in number that never could they all be picked. Even the OED now acknowledges the use of split infinitives to be perfectly grammatical. I can't imagine why a germanic language would even acknowledge the existence of such a thing. I still have one English prof who maintains that split infinitives are in all cases inexcusable, but I think he's just a dinosaur.
To roughly quote Churchill on the topic (and this is an almost ALWAYS misquoted phrase. This version is from the Oxford Companion to the English Language and is merely a suggestion for the unknown original form)
"This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put"
Would that be "like also to point out" then, in grammar nazi terms? Split infinitive? Ja, mein herr!
an error of grammar
Doesn't seem to be an error of grammar at all. Seems to be an error of the person using said grammar.
Just reciprocating, grammar nazi to grammar nazi. I can feel the love.
Good sir troll,
How do you know that icon exists? Did you or your staff install Windows on their machine? How come YOU don't know what version YOU installed?
Does this warrant answering? For that matter, have you ever done tech? Users will frequently deny the existence of that which is right in front of their face. Sure, when a user denies the existence, of My Computer, it's possible they're running Win3.x, but I've only encountered one Windows 3.x user in the last 6 months and NEVER once has it been the explanation for a user denying the existence of My Computer. It's also possible they've renamed 'My Computer' 'poopypants'. Unlikely, and never happened before, but possible. And we're an ISP, we didn't install their OS.
What IT shop allows users to install their own version of Windows?
Again, ISP.
Oooo, a swipe at Linux distros....
Swipe? Not really. But I would agree that if all my entry-level users were to sporadically install Linux distros at random, I'd probably be driven to suicide.
Well here's the one concession to Microsoft's defence. The more 3rd parties are able to modify the layout and content of Windows, the more it will be a support nightmare. It's just a fact that, at my workplace, one quarter or so of windows users calling tech support don't know what version of Windows they're running and wouldn't know how to determine said version. It's also a fact that around one half of this category, when asked to right-click 'My Computer' on their desktop, will deny that such at icon exists. At this point, they must be told that this icon does in fact exist and that they are a moron. What do we do when the users are using Dell Windows XP, Micron Windows XP or (God help us) Circuit City Windows XP? Trying to support an OS the layout of which may be modified at all is a pain (Windows XP's minimally modifiable GUI is a big enough one), but trying to support an OS stripped apart and reassembled by the OEM to have their logo in every nook and cranny could be the nightmare Microsoft mentioned. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of a maximally modular OS, I just think my users should have to take an IQ test before they're allowed to use one.
Really, can the world stand one more character named Asriel/Azriel? To me, choosing a name like this is the equivalent of declaring that you are creating a completely original superhero comic and the protagonist's name will be...Bat-Man! Maybe I'll write a play about a prince named Hamblet. It would at least have greater cultural meaning than "Asriel" does to the audience. The point is that 1) 'Asriel' doesn't mean anything to the majority of readers, 2) whether the author is making some sort of insightful reference to the mythological 'Azriel' is seemingly doubtful and, therefore, 3) It ends up coming off as just having been chosen because it's 'the kind of thing spooky sci-fi characters are named'. Next, it'll be 'Alucard'. Yeesh.
How does one express in an image one's adoration for Linux? I think Vampire Nuns Having Sex With Penguins was a pretty good idea.
Yes, the English phonemes 'g' and 'c' are articulated in the same position, both dorso-velar (dorsum of the tongue contacting the velum, the flap of skin behind the palate). They're both also 'stops' (the passage is momentarily completely blocked). But discerning sounds of identical position is actually somewhat less problematic in English than it might be in certain other languages. You hit upon a really important point when you mentioned 'the air' which accompanies 'c' word-initially in English (called 'aspiration'). Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, distinguishes between aspirated and unaspirated stops (e.g., the first 'k' in 'kook' is an aspirated stop, the second is unaspirated, but English speakers don't distinguish between them). How could this system possibly tell the difference? The only difference between the first 'k' and second 'k' in 'kook', as you point out, is the quick expulsion of air which accompanies the first. Even more confusingly, the first 'k' in 'keel' is not even articulated in the same position at all as the first 'k' in 'kook'. 'k' in 'keel' is palatal (further forward), where 'k' in 'kook' is velar (further back). But, for some reason, in English, we consider them the same phoneme (the subjective perception of what constitutes a unique sound in a given language. 'Keel' and 'kook' start with the same English phoneme, because we can't tell the difference). This is just impressing the point that where a phone is articulated is only a tiny piece of the puzzle. Making a system which understands language on the basis of position alone is ludicrous. That's impossible.
As you point out a workable system would have to detect 'voicing' (the vibration of the vocal cords), as voicing, AFAIK, differentiates at least some phonemes in every language on earth.
What about nasalisation (where the nasal passage is opened in pronouncing a vowel)? The only difference between the French words 'main' (hand) and 'mais' (but) is that the first is pronounced with resonance in the nasal cavity. How is this system to divine that one has opened a tiny passage to one's nasal cavity for the duration of the vowel?
Speaking of point of articulation, how about glottals (articulated in the larynx) and pharyngeals (articulated in the pharynx. We have none in English, but they exist in Semitic languages)? Without a camera rammed down the subject's throat, sensing articulation in there is going to be hard.
If we have some way of determining the position of the tongue, vowels will be comparatively easy to distinguish, as they're distinguished by 'rounding' (i.e., of the lips), position of the tongue and nasalisation alone (a caveat: Japanese has a 'voiceless vowel', but it's a total phonetic red-herring, really). And detecting nasalisation still seems a difficulty.
At any rate, the idea of recognising language mechanically would seem to at least necessitate detection of 1) position and character of vibration in the nasal cavity, pharynx and mouth and 2) exact position of the tongue at all times. At any rate, I'll leave the last word on this 'invention' to others:
I have to agree as to the CPU's questionable capabilities. I can't speak for the Dragonball, but I know under PocketPC OS on my Casio EM-500 running the MIPS CPU at 200MHz (hardware overclocked), I really couldn't expect MPEG1 to decode at a reasonable framerate at any resolution higher than 320x200, even at a lower bitrate. At 150MHz (standard), there wasn't much point even trying. That's under either Casio's built-in MPEG app or PocketTV. Even IPAQ users have to tweak a bit to get adequate video playing (and they've got it easy, cause they have a software overclocker). I find it hard to believe that the Dragonball is going to be able to do it better at one third the clock rate, MHz Myth notwithstanding. I know, I know. Playing The Matrix in your pocket isn't everything (I can fit the whole thing on a 128MB SD Card at an adequate res to watch), but if that isn't what these devices are about, what are they about? If I wanted a Palm III, I'd use the one I have. I'm getting one of these machines because I want to play Pocketquake and music videos. But is my now ancient Casio going to be significantly more capable than this new technology, cause EM-500s sell on ebay for $180 at the moment.
My personal position is that character development was so completely absent from the movie that there was no real reason I could find to sympathise with any of the characters. Sure, the world's about to end, but if the world ends and I don't identify with any of the characters in it, the accompanying dramatic flourishes will just seem tacked on. And so they did in LoTR. What can I say? The music was largely of an unimaginative, generic canned orchestral variety. Characters were thrown into the plot in medias res. It had about the Action Scene/Character Development Scene ratio of Commando (but I'll stop my kvetching...)
Shake-speare (very common)
Shakespear
Shakspeer
Shaksperr
and
Sheakspear
"A wide range of programs exist for the Texas Instruments Home Computer"
- found on the box to my TI99/4A
(No, I'm not (that much of) an idiot and those are not my actual passwords)
From The Princess Bride
This is getting more than a little nitpicky, I know, but here's the authoritative version:
Mitchell and Robinson's A Guide to Old English glosses 'dom' as 'judgment' and 'dæg' as 'day' ('dæg' being just the pre-invasion West Saxon spelling of 'day'). '-es' in 'domes' is just the genetive singular inflection for masculine nouns. So "Judgment's Day" is the closest you'll get. 'Domdæg' is actually the original (10th century West Saxon) Old English term, literally translating as "judgment day", in the Mitchell and Robinson text.
A caveat: Because the word 'Domesday' was written post-invasion, it's technically Middle English, but comes directly on the heals of the Old English period and so has more to do with King Ælfred's language than Chaucer's.
Wait a sec. If we're moving towards liquid-cooled consumer-level systems, what becomes of my plans to warm my house in the winter with my Beowulf cluster of 110GHz IBM PCs?
User: "The server is down."
Me: "Could you describe in detail the nature of the problem you are experiencing?"
User: "I can't get my mail. The server is down."
Me: "And you are using the same username and password which you use to connect to the Internet?"
User: "I don't want to be connected to the Internet. I want to download my mail."
Rule #1 for entry-level users calling into tech support:
1) "The server is not down. You are an idiot".
In such circumstances as Rule #1 does not apply and the server is actually down, it being our fault:
2) "The server is not down. You are an idiot".
The Triforce 3D Rendering Engine: Because if you don't have the Triforce, then GAME OVER RETURN OF GANON
I suppose this would mean that each session of congress would thenceforth begin with a bunch of backbenchers yelling
F1R5T P05T!!!!!
I think looking for a 'locus' of the web may be missing the point entirely. As everyone on Slashdot's aware, one major phenomenon (though perhaps not the major phenomenon, as I will leave that genre of journalistic oversimplification to Mr. Katz) shaping the web right now is P2P networking, which is based largely on the premise of decentralisation. Maybe the central phenomenon defining the web right now is the elimination of a 'centre'. At any rate, looking for formative phenomena doesn't seem to be helpful in any way, in creating an understanding of the web. If anything, that kind of practice just generates problematic, quickly outdated generalisations to confound the general populace. And please, no metaphors, for god's sake. All we need is another 'information superhighway'.
On the other hand, bringing personal telecommunications back to the level of decentralisation that the BBS era allowed will be a difficult thing to do.
From www.m-w.com:
Main Entry: meta-
Variant(s): or met-
Function: prefix
Etymology: New Latin & Medieval Latin, from Latin or Greek; Latin, from Greek, among, with, after, from meta among, with, after; akin to Old English mid, mith with, Old High German mit
1 a : occurring later than or in succession to : after b : situated behind or beyond c : later or more highly organized or specialized form of
2 : change : transformation
3 [metaphysics] : more comprehensive : transcending -- used with the name of a discipline to designate a new but related discipline designed to deal critically with the original one
4 a : involving substitution at or characterized by two positions in the benzene ring that are separated by one carbon atom b : derived from by loss of water
Looks like 'meta', as a prefix, can mean a great deal of abstract things. Presumably, the idea of transcendence is what they're looking for here.
Mozilla, in my experience, under most circumstances, is less than zippy on a first-gen Pentium (but why would anyone want to run it on one, when they could run it on a lightning-fast 486DX4/120?)
(to put it another way, on my first-gen Pentium, no matter what version of mozilla I use, it'll take all day to load slashdot)
Wow! I just have to take a moment to applaud you, sir, for being the first person in a long, long time I have seen use a verb in the subjunctive mood on the web. "Be that as it may" and a couple other intact subjunctive expressions aren't all that uncommon, but a use of the verb 'be' in its subjunctive form, independent of any familiar expression is remarkable.
The subjunctive may be dead in English, much as differentiation between the nominative and accusative cases in pronouns (e.g., who/whom) is currently going the way of the dodo, but its still nice to see linguistic traditionalism popping up here and there. To a grammar geek like me (if I, like many people, acknowledged the imminent death of the nominative/accusative noun cases, I would have awkwardly said "To a grammar geek like myself") a rare appearance of a verbal mood largely dead now for at least a century is a point of real interest.
Yeah, the age of a given product seems to have little to do with whether the company still protects its copyright. It seems to have more to do with the direness of that particular company's copyright-obsessed neuroses. For example, things that I have, in pursuit of nostalgic computing, found seem still to be considered "warez" include
- Game ROMs for the TI 99/4A
- Some (not all) Apple II games by MECC (Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation). For example, Odell Lake.
- Windows 1.x, 2.x, etc.
Of course, most of these can still be located here or there on the web with a little work, but their copyrighted status is, nevertheless, ludicrous.
It's sentiments like this that have directly resulted in the anti-americanism that currently exists throughout the world (and in America, too). I'm not talking about the anti-americanism of the bin Ladens of the world. I'm talking about that of the academics, the Noam Chomskys out there.
No matter who is the speaker, nor who the audience, the above phrase reaks of a spectacular arrogance. When you say "people who have no concept of what justice really is", are you talking about the terrorists? If so, don't you think they, more than anyone else on earth have an extremely firm idea, in their religious dogma, of what is just and what must be fought for at all cost?
More likely, when you say "no concept of what justice really is", you mean they have the wrong concept of justice. To take it further, you mean they do not have your concept of justice (and I will presume that your concept of justice necessarily the correct one any more than mine is infallible. That's a difference of opinion and it's vastly different from what you're portraying. Our problem isn't that bin Laden desires to commit evil or injustices, it's that he desires to commit good and fight for justice, except his good is our evil.
Saying that bin Laden has the wrong idea about justice is all well and good. Anyone writing here would agree with you on that. However, saying that an entire people has "no concept" of justice is ridiculous. It's reminiscent of the arrogant ideology on which much of colonialism was based.