Only French government agencies are involved in this story at this point, and they are forced to use "courriel" over "email". (RTFA)
And it is very different from the examples you cited. Those involve no word bans(so far as I know), and are intended to gain a more advantageous connotation. This decision bans one word in favor of another, simply based on origin(and a short memory as to origin as well).
I know the PR to be gained from the former examples, but not the latter. "STI" is stupid(barring reasonable explanation), but stupid in a different way than "courriel".
My source says it did come into English originally from Greek, through Latin and New Latin. I just mentioned the closest classical language to English(only now bothering to learn about New Latin from Wikipedia). For all that the word has changed from its roots, it doesn't make a big difference.("elektron", or thereabouts, being the original Greek).
English is probably more open to importing words from other languages because England was invaded several times in the middle ages(Normans, Vikings), and is populated with people originally from an area in northern Germany. Thus, English gets its Germanic roots, and large numbers of words from(or through) French and more German(Vikings spoke... something. Norse variant of German is as far as I got on short notice).
This story is just goofy, though. "Mail" comes into English from French. "Courrier" came into French from Italian.(Electronic and variants come directly from Latin)
Languages survive through the adoption of new words, whether they be homegrown or imported. Attaching more value for one method over the other is just silly.
(More info on borrowed words in English. French and Norse invasions mentioned a few paragraphs from the bottom of the page.)
*honk*
More than one way to assign a password
on
Inkblot Passwords
·
· Score: 1
Personally, I'd find it more helpful if this system would assign me a password based on my complexes and psychoses.
Then I could not only feel better about my data, but about myself as well.
*honk*
Just so long as your current password...
on
Inkblot Passwords
·
· Score: 1
...isn't your favorite comic book character. 20%.... *shakes head*
Man. These things really do offer interesting insights into the psyche.
*honk* Cappy "not anonymous, but cowardly enough not to write out what he sees" Red
Before doers become doers and inventors become inventors they go through a lot. The read and see a lot. How many of the people who become inventors do so at least in part because something throttled their imagination in a movie, or ignited it in a book or story.
Neither inventors nor writers do their work in a vacuum(well, some inventors do, but... gah, you get the point). Many science fiction writers are those are those without either the ability or the wherewithal to actually build or solve the things they write about themselves, so no, they don't getfull marks on invention. But they often have a hand in it. To ignore the impact upon science that science fiction has also seems like foolishness of the highest kind.
As others have said, the Internet as a right(as in birth->accessability) entail quite a bit of expense.(e.g. computer or similarly capable device, power, telephone, cable, dsl, or other connection) For basic speech, all you need is what you come with.
Now, free speech as it occurs online, the free exchange of information, those, like many nifty things, ought to be protected, but there's a difference between protecting them and declaring them rights.(see all the junk necessary that must be provided to prevent appearing to "obstruct those rights").
They just want to feel like James Bond... or Peter Graves.
Tonight on Biography, should you choose to accept it, you must retrieve a copy of the enemy's secret plans. Though their headquarters looks like a normal bookstore, do not be fooled. Every moment you spend within those walls, their operatives will be watching you, andpaying special attention to your consealed cameras. They've already been alerted to the briefcase camera, so you'll have to make do with the cell phone model. As usual, if you or any of your team is captured in the course of this operation, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your existance, as well as every having paid for "those magazines".
Each individual song may be considered such, and they may consider complete(or nearly, whatever) responsibility for them. Most CDs, however, strike me as having the way the collection of songs sounds together way down on the priority list(exceptions going to compositions that are actually designed to be listened to together, in sequence, and the relatively small number of other artists that actually do put some thought into it). For most the reasoning seems to be: "This song sells the CD, these might stand on their own, those would never sell without good songs attached". Other than that, most artists don't do their own artwork nor their own copywriting, and it doesn't sound like they're stumping for all the little people that put those together.
I think I might have seen the same thing: cars that go into auto pilot mode on a special stretch of road, or some such. I'm talking about autopilot that can function with and against human drivers doing their best to tailgate and cutoff.
Until they work out a decent "auto pilot", this is about all they're going to be able to do. Not only does this system ignore side and rear impact, but is useless in head-on collisions(two cars moving together at a combined 193kph start reacting 100m apart?)
Sometimes braking isn't the best idea... and doesn't a system that auto-brakes kinda hamper swerving?
Sheesh. Super-ultra-retro-nerdy. They're even giving a choice of accessories with every purchase:
1) Yellow super dectective hat 2) Pocket protector and sliderule with matching taped glasses. 3) Official James Bond "nuclear watch" tuxedo 4) Rubber stamp that says "I just bought a $300 watch and only got 2 megs of RAM!" It even comes with a guide to forehead application.
People generally aren't able to look down while taking a shit, and learn about commercialism in a natural manner.
As far as oral culture goes, I've heard of very few stories that teach lessons specifically about nudity and profanity. A very large number of stories concern violence and greed, and a few commercialism. Historically speaking.
Prohibiting stories about things you don't like doesn't make those things go away. Storytelling exists to teach lessons. Regardless of how small, large, or vapid the story may be, there are lessons there.
You can make a case about the censorship of nudity and profanity on television, and probably a pretty good one. But think about your favorite stories. How many of them involve some form of violence, greed, or commercialism?
"Pushed on to you" is a rather liberal usage of language. People BUY televisions and many PAY for cable or satellite. With either of those options they receive 80 or more(often a lot more) channels of programming. That doesn't sound like a very hard push from any particular vector. Then, of course, there's the fact that the individual has to actually DECIDE to turn the blamed thing on.
Now, I think most everyone paying for TV wouldn't be too happy with the idea of paying more for it, and most everyone paying for TV does not feel so far gone that they need legislative help to "fight their addiction."
Prohibiting violence, greed, commercialism, and consumerism is very different from prohibiting nudity and profanity. The latter concerns things that everyone can learn about naturally(nudity), or by exposure to adults(profanity... and probably exposure to grade school for this one as well). The former are some of the kinds of ideas that storytelling is supposed to teach about. In Star Wars, the dark side loses(no spoiler tags... sorry). The entire bent of the story suggests identification with the light side, and their ideals. Nevertheless, if someone choses to identify with the dark side, then they take the lessons of the dark side with them. So it is of the heros and villans of any story, and the lessons they hold.
Most television so far as I know tends to push what are generally considered to be good ideas. What do you do when people take the wrong ideas from a story?
That brings up a thought I had when I saw this story on macumors a little while ago. Is this decision the reason Safari exists? It kind of chicken/eggs the story... but is Microsoft cancelling mac IE development because of Safari, or was Safari created because Microsoft is cancelling IE development?
Beats dealing with the possibility of debris landing direct in or bowling its way through houses and such. All NASA needs is for some random piece of their junk to hurt or kill somebody on the ground.
Your first paragraph is offtopic. Yes, I think this is cool. It's an advancement with great possibilities. It's something that I didn't think would show up even in rudimentary form for a long time.
I wasn't asking for the actual number down to the last decimal place. I originally read the sentence when I was tired, and it confused me. Reading it now that I'm awake, I can see what the author was getting at, but it is still a boneheaded sentence. Why switch units in the middle of the sentence? There are few enough non-scientists already who understand science, there's no need to set stumbling blocks before them.
This place is full of nerds(check site logo). Look at how many posts there are about that sentence here.
Quoting the sentence once again: At 15,000 degrees Celsius (27,032 degrees Fahrenheit), the plasma valve is about 50 times hotter than room temperature when measured in degrees Kelvin.
Now, my "too far from science and math class" comment was just a piece of rhetoric... a slight attempt at humor. I actually do remember how the Kelvin and Celcius scales work, and doing a direct switch(not a conversion) of one to the other is not only bad accounting, but tremendously bad science. The difference between 15000 K and 15273 K is a lot. Switching units in practice can be catastrophic(see that crashed Mars probe of a few years ago), and switching units in explanation is extremely irresponsible.
As for Kelvins... look at the way a temperature on the Kelvin scale is written: the freezing point of water is written as "273K" . Its boiling point is "373K". Notice the lack of a degree sign? It isn't just a character set issue. While "degrees Kelvin" may be pervasive, according to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures it is incorrect. Dr Math explains it, and has a couple supporting links.
This piece of nomeclature really isn't that important to me, but but in a sentence as boneheaded as that one is, why not pick on every little flaw?
(credit also to Bill Nye the Science Guy's Big Blast of Science for confirmation on the Kelvin wording thing)
*honk*
Harping on the temperature thing one more time
on
Force Field. No, Really
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
At 15,000 degrees Celsius (27,032 degrees Fahrenheit), the plasma valve is about 50 times hotter than room temperature when measured in degrees Kelvin.
I want to say something about this, but the sentence makes my brain hurt, and not in a good way.
So... converting temperatures to Kelvin makes them lower? It may be that I'm too far removed from my math and science classes, but... well, come to think of it, I never learned it that way.
Sheesh, they didn't even say "in Kelvins." "Degrees Kelvin" indeed... amateurs...
"Well, we were getting all these, well, I don't know what they were. These weird screens with scary messages, and those were just the complaint emails. Then we got an Xserve, and it all changed."
Slashdot Mirror
Only French government agencies are involved in this story at this point, and they are forced to use "courriel" over "email". (RTFA)
And it is very different from the examples you cited. Those involve no word bans(so far as I know), and are intended to gain a more advantageous connotation. This decision bans one word in favor of another, simply based on origin(and a short memory as to origin as well).
I know the PR to be gained from the former examples, but not the latter. "STI" is stupid(barring reasonable explanation), but stupid in a different way than "courriel".
*honk*
My source says it did come into English originally from Greek, through Latin and New Latin. I just mentioned the closest classical language to English(only now bothering to learn about New Latin from Wikipedia). For all that the word has changed from its roots, it doesn't make a big difference.("elektron", or thereabouts, being the original Greek).
:)
Just more linguistic trading.
*honk*
English is probably more open to importing words from other languages because England was invaded several times in the middle ages(Normans, Vikings), and is populated with people originally from an area in northern Germany. Thus, English gets its Germanic roots, and large numbers of words from(or through) French and more German(Vikings spoke... something. Norse variant of German is as far as I got on short notice).
This story is just goofy, though. "Mail" comes into English from French. "Courrier" came into French from Italian.(Electronic and variants come directly from Latin)
Languages survive through the adoption of new words, whether they be homegrown or imported. Attaching more value for one method over the other is just silly.
(More info on borrowed words in English. French and Norse invasions mentioned a few paragraphs from the bottom of the page.)
*honk*
Personally, I'd find it more helpful if this system would assign me a password based on my complexes and psychoses.
Then I could not only feel better about my data, but about myself as well.
*honk*
...isn't your favorite comic book character. 20%.... *shakes head*
Man. These things really do offer interesting insights into the psyche.
*honk*
Cappy "not anonymous, but cowardly enough not to write out what he sees" Red
Before doers become doers and inventors become inventors they go through a lot. The read and see a lot. How many of the people who become inventors do so at least in part because something throttled their imagination in a movie, or ignited it in a book or story.
Neither inventors nor writers do their work in a vacuum(well, some inventors do, but... gah, you get the point). Many science fiction writers are those are those without either the ability or the wherewithal to actually build or solve the things they write about themselves, so no, they don't getfull marks on invention. But they often have a hand in it. To ignore the impact upon science that science fiction has also seems like foolishness of the highest kind.
*honk*
As others have said, the Internet as a right(as in birth->accessability) entail quite a bit of expense.(e.g. computer or similarly capable device, power, telephone, cable, dsl, or other connection) For basic speech, all you need is what you come with.
Now, free speech as it occurs online, the free exchange of information, those, like many nifty things, ought to be protected, but there's a difference between protecting them and declaring them rights.(see all the junk necessary that must be provided to prevent appearing to "obstruct those rights").
*honk*
They just want to feel like James Bond... or Peter Graves.
Tonight on Biography, should you choose to accept it, you must retrieve a copy of the enemy's secret plans. Though their headquarters looks like a normal bookstore, do not be fooled. Every moment you spend within those walls, their operatives will be watching you, andpaying special attention to your consealed cameras. They've already been alerted to the briefcase camera, so you'll have to make do with the cell phone model. As usual, if you or any of your team is captured in the course of this operation, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your existance, as well as every having paid for "those magazines".
*honk*
Work of art? Pssh...
Each individual song may be considered such, and they may consider complete(or nearly, whatever) responsibility for them. Most CDs, however, strike me as having the way the collection of songs sounds together way down on the priority list(exceptions going to compositions that are actually designed to be listened to together, in sequence, and the relatively small number of other artists that actually do put some thought into it). For most the reasoning seems to be: "This song sells the CD, these might stand on their own, those would never sell without good songs attached". Other than that, most artists don't do their own artwork nor their own copywriting, and it doesn't sound like they're stumping for all the little people that put those together.
*honk*
"Get Bent"
However, if this is ever marketed with that slogan I'll be shocked and disgusted... and then try to weasel some money out of the deal.
*honk*
Oh! Different auto pilot then. :Â)
Yours sound far more interesting though... got a link?
*honk*
I think I might have seen the same thing: cars that go into auto pilot mode on a special stretch of road, or some such. I'm talking about autopilot that can function with and against human drivers doing their best to tailgate and cutoff.
*honk*
Until they work out a decent "auto pilot", this is about all they're going to be able to do. Not only does this system ignore side and rear impact, but is useless in head-on collisions(two cars moving together at a combined 193kph start reacting 100m apart?)
Sometimes braking isn't the best idea... and doesn't a system that auto-brakes kinda hamper swerving?
*honk*
Sheesh. Super-ultra-retro-nerdy. They're even giving a choice of accessories with every purchase:
1) Yellow super dectective hat
2) Pocket protector and sliderule with matching taped glasses.
3) Official James Bond "nuclear watch" tuxedo
4) Rubber stamp that says "I just bought a $300 watch and only got 2 megs of RAM!" It even comes with a guide to forehead application.
*honk*
People generally aren't able to look down while taking a shit, and learn about commercialism in a natural manner.
As far as oral culture goes, I've heard of very few stories that teach lessons specifically about nudity and profanity. A very large number of stories concern violence and greed, and a few commercialism. Historically speaking.
Prohibiting stories about things you don't like doesn't make those things go away. Storytelling exists to teach lessons. Regardless of how small, large, or vapid the story may be, there are lessons there.
You can make a case about the censorship of nudity and profanity on television, and probably a pretty good one. But think about your favorite stories. How many of them involve some form of violence, greed, or commercialism?
*honk*
"Pushed on to you" is a rather liberal usage of language. People BUY televisions and many PAY for cable or satellite. With either of those options they receive 80 or more(often a lot more) channels of programming. That doesn't sound like a very hard push from any particular vector. Then, of course, there's the fact that the individual has to actually DECIDE to turn the blamed thing on.
Now, I think most everyone paying for TV wouldn't be too happy with the idea of paying more for it, and most everyone paying for TV does not feel so far gone that they need legislative help to "fight their addiction."
*honk*
Prohibiting violence, greed, commercialism, and consumerism is very different from prohibiting nudity and profanity. The latter concerns things that everyone can learn about naturally(nudity), or by exposure to adults(profanity... and probably exposure to grade school for this one as well). The former are some of the kinds of ideas that storytelling is supposed to teach about. In Star Wars, the dark side loses(no spoiler tags... sorry). The entire bent of the story suggests identification with the light side, and their ideals. Nevertheless, if someone choses to identify with the dark side, then they take the lessons of the dark side with them. So it is of the heros and villans of any story, and the lessons they hold.
Most television so far as I know tends to push what are generally considered to be good ideas. What do you do when people take the wrong ideas from a story?
*honk*
"So what's the worst that can happen? You screw up, and we all die."
Eh, had to be there I suppose...
*honk*
That brings up a thought I had when I saw this story on macumors a little while ago. Is this decision the reason Safari exists? It kind of chicken/eggs the story... but is Microsoft cancelling mac IE development because of Safari, or was Safari created because Microsoft is cancelling IE development?
*honk*
right on. I think the shuttle is the only thing older than the G4 not to be replaced... and the G4 may have just given up on waiting.
Nice that they aren't sitting on their hands until they get a new ship, though.
*honk*
Beats dealing with the possibility of debris landing direct in or bowling its way through houses and such. All NASA needs is for some random piece of their junk to hurt or kill somebody on the ground.
*honk*
Your first paragraph is offtopic. Yes, I think this is cool. It's an advancement with great possibilities. It's something that I didn't think would show up even in rudimentary form for a long time.
I wasn't asking for the actual number down to the last decimal place. I originally read the sentence when I was tired, and it confused me. Reading it now that I'm awake, I can see what the author was getting at, but it is still a boneheaded sentence. Why switch units in the middle of the sentence? There are few enough non-scientists already who understand science, there's no need to set stumbling blocks before them.
This place is full of nerds(check site logo). Look at how many posts there are about that sentence here.
*honk*
Quoting the sentence once again:
At 15,000 degrees Celsius (27,032 degrees Fahrenheit), the plasma valve is about 50 times hotter than room temperature when measured in degrees Kelvin.
Now, my "too far from science and math class" comment was just a piece of rhetoric... a slight attempt at humor. I actually do remember how the Kelvin and Celcius scales work, and doing a direct switch(not a conversion) of one to the other is not only bad accounting, but tremendously bad science. The difference between 15000 K and 15273 K is a lot. Switching units in practice can be catastrophic(see that crashed Mars probe of a few years ago), and switching units in explanation is extremely irresponsible.
As for Kelvins... look at the way a temperature on the Kelvin scale is written: the freezing point of water is written as "273K" . Its boiling point is "373K". Notice the lack of a degree sign? It isn't just a character set issue. While "degrees Kelvin" may be pervasive, according to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures it is incorrect. Dr Math explains it, and has a couple supporting links.
This piece of nomeclature really isn't that important to me, but but in a sentence as boneheaded as that one is, why not pick on every little flaw?
(credit also to Bill Nye the Science Guy's Big Blast of Science for confirmation on the Kelvin wording thing)
*honk*
At 15,000 degrees Celsius (27,032 degrees Fahrenheit), the plasma valve is about 50 times hotter than room temperature when measured in degrees Kelvin.
I want to say something about this, but the sentence makes my brain hurt, and not in a good way.
So... converting temperatures to Kelvin makes them lower? It may be that I'm too far removed from my math and science classes, but... well, come to think of it, I never learned it that way.
Sheesh, they didn't even say "in Kelvins." "Degrees Kelvin" indeed... amateurs...
*honk*
some scheme by music
"Well, we were getting all these, well, I don't know what they were. These weird screens with scary messages, and those were just the complaint emails. Then we got an Xserve, and it all changed."
[Apple logo]
"I'm AC, and I just fired my IT guy."
*honk*