I just made new rules about English because I thought it suited my needs. What do you think?
The rules of grammar are not there to look pretty, they're there so that when you say something, the meaning I construct in my head has a good chance of being similar to the meaning you had in your head before you said it. If everyone makes up language whenever it suits them, that starts to break down (which is *exactly* what we're talking about here - PHB says a word, and the geek he's talking to doesn't have the means to construct any meaning from it). If you really have a problem that English doesn't address, such as the lack of a gender-neutral pronoun, then maybe you can get creative. But this case is so asinine I can't believe anyone would defend it - as the earlier poster said, WTH is wrong with "do"? I'll tell you what's wrong with it: it sounds too plain and not technical enough. So instead of using the word that is PERFECTLY suited to the meaning he wants to communicate, he abuses a different word that's a completely different part of speech, just so he can be using business lingo. There is no excuse for it.
Hey now... I was a business major with a business degree. I got my degree in Information Systems, and now I'm a programmer. Your brush is just a little bit wide.:-)
The question is, what's the purpose of manager-speak? Some possibilites:
Communicate faster and more precisely
Make the speaker sound more important or knowledgeable
Exclude those who don't speak it
Conceal the dishonorable nature of the subject matter via euphemism
Reduce liability through purposeful vagueness
Maybe there are others I'm not thinking of. Now 1 is a possibility, but the others seem more likely to me. This is (IMO) different from Geekspeak, because there #1 is definitely of primary importance. 2 and 3 often come into play as well, but I'm not aware of any cases of 4 or 5. At worst, I would say Geek is used much less often for those purposes than Manager. What do you think?
If what you say is true, then it doesn't improve anything. Now I object to c-speak because it's slimy, not because it's stupid. If you're doing something you're ashamed of, don't find some way to talk about it that masks your shame, stop doing it. If you're doing something you're not ashamed of, don't be afraid to talk about it clearly.
But Dell going out of business is very different from Dell going to AMD. Almost everyone who would have bought an Intel Dell would buy an AMD Dell if Dell switched. So it's not as though Intel wouldn't lose any customers because someone else would step up - the overall market for PCs would be the same size, but with the biggest vendor taking business away from Intel and giving it to AMD. I would guess that Dell has quite a bit of influence with Intel. MS, on the other hand, doesn't have much to worry about. What is Dell going to threaten them with, switching their entire lineup to Linux? There's no alternative to Windows for Dell, and they both know that.
"I don't know anyone, not even my great-uncles and great-aunts, not anyone who doesn't have VOIP-capable kit already in their homes (ie. 40kbps+ unmetered TCP/IP connection, PC, speakers and microphone)."
Well if you count random/. users as people you know, then you do now.:-)
Or wait until the next day and watch it on Tivo, skipping the commercials. Oh, right, I forgot - that isn't free. Everything has to be free, or else we'll get it from a torrent site.
"allowed to profit from" == "allowed to patent"? Therefore "not allowed to patent" == "not allowed to profit from"? Without patents, there would be no profits? Or are you saying something else?
"The problem that patents purport to solve is when A invests his resources inventing a new widget, then B reverse-engineers it and sells it."
I thought the problem they purport to solve is when A invents something amazing, and dies without telling anyone how to do it. Which is no longer a problem, so if that's really the purpose of patents maybe we should get rid of them. Or if their purpose is what you say, then we should try to find out if they actually do that. If Giantcorp sees a small company doing something great (that isn't patented) wouldn't it be cheaper and better to buy them out than to copy them? Do patents really prevent secrecy, or are the applications (for the actually innovative inventions) so vague as to be useless for that purpose?
What UI headache? And the article contradicts you on the lost laptop issue: "It can protect data when a person's computer or device is lost, stolen or hacked, for example." Could it be you... *gasp*... didn't RTFA??
Saying that the rich drive big vehicles that burn more gas doesn't make the tax progressive. It's still regressive. No, not every law has to redistribute wealth. But among the laws that do, why redistribute it from the poor to the rich?
OK, I know this is off topic, but how does wearing a long-sleeved shirt to the beach (or more generally, outdoors) not address the root cause of skin cancer?
Great rebuttals to this already. I wonder if you can argue with the following facts:
1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas 2) We produce CO2
If you think that humans are not contributing to global warming, then it seems to me that you either dispute the physics of how CO2 works to trap heat in the atmosphere, or you dispute whether or not humans produce any CO2. The latter seems too brain dead even for/. which leaves the former. That seems pretty stupid too, so maybe you're just saying that we don't contribute to the warming as much as other factors do. Even if that's true, where does that leave us? Maybe global warming will be a disaster and maybe not. I haven't heard anyone, even the most pro-industry, anti-environment freaks saying that we know for sure it won't cause major problems. So if there's a significant chance that it could be a disaster, the only way we should not try to avert it is if we can conclude confidently that we're unable to do so, and I haven't heard anyone claiming that either. Playing the odds on the stock market or poker is one thing, but playing them with billions of lives is something else.
I'd be interested to see what your position is on what we ought to do about this possible problem, and why.
"The worst one is "the Internet industry is being outspent in Washington by more than a 3-to-1 margin." This ignores the tremendous lobbying the Internet industry does in every state, lobbying public utility commissions to shut out rivals everywhere. In Louisiana, the Internet industry is lobbying the state to shut down the free emergency WiFi mesh network in New Orleans--not only disgusting, but an act that requires money that McCullagh isn't counting."
It sounds like you're taking "the internet industry" (a terribly vague moniker) to mean the telcos/ISPs. I think what he meant by the term is Microsoft, Google, eBay, Yahoo, et al: "AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon spent $230.9 million on politicians from 1998 until the present, while Amazon, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo spent only a combined $71.2 million." The telcos are the big spenders compared to the software/web service companies.
1) There is no way anybody is going to spin off their most profitable divisions to avoid some regulation 2) Just the SUV division alone of any major manufacturer would have way too high a volume to qualify for any "boutique" manufacturer exemption 3) Just taxing the gas is a regressive tax that places a higher burden on lower incomes than on upper ones. Maybe you don't have a problem with this, but I do.
Ah, yes there are definitely major cost considerations for the whole list. But as far as mandating higher MPG, I have no doubt the auto industry would figure it out if it was a small increase, since the alternative would be not selling cars anymore. They haven't been sitting on any huge increases for the last 30 years, but they've managed to steadily improve mileage anyway. The biggest gains are to be had at the beginning, but I'm sure that there's still plenty of improvement that can be made with gasoline engines. Given the right incentives (either coercion or profit) the manufacturers will make those improvements. And if it's via coercion, the consumer will pay for them.
Any time a monopolist urges you not to permit your customers to use the competition (or, to be more exact, to use the competition without paying for the monopolist's product first) I would consider that strongarm tactics. If MS were just one commercial OS vendor among many equals, I wouldn't care so much.
Well there is one difference. Whether you find it meaningful or not I don't know, but the RIAA doesn't need the settlement money to make ends meet. His ex-wife might need the alimony.
They're coming close, though. Piracy is the smokescreen they're putting up to try to strongarm the PC makers. That's the part that really has me steamed about this story. I wouldn't care if they just went to the sellers and said look, we make money when you sell Windows. So we would really like it if you would do everything possible to sell as many copies of Windows as you can so we can make more money. This practice of pretending that they have a legitimate position in telling PC sellers which legal practices to engage in, to prevent an unproven possible future act of piracy by a party outside the seller's control is despicable.
Um, Fox News would be about the last people to make any of those claims about the US. At least from my limited understand of it - I don't actually watch Fox.
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I do what think you said just sense not.
I just made new rules about English because I thought it suited my needs. What do you think?
The rules of grammar are not there to look pretty, they're there so that when you say something, the meaning I construct in my head has a good chance of being similar to the meaning you had in your head before you said it. If everyone makes up language whenever it suits them, that starts to break down (which is *exactly* what we're talking about here - PHB says a word, and the geek he's talking to doesn't have the means to construct any meaning from it). If you really have a problem that English doesn't address, such as the lack of a gender-neutral pronoun, then maybe you can get creative. But this case is so asinine I can't believe anyone would defend it - as the earlier poster said, WTH is wrong with "do"? I'll tell you what's wrong with it: it sounds too plain and not technical enough. So instead of using the word that is PERFECTLY suited to the meaning he wants to communicate, he abuses a different word that's a completely different part of speech, just so he can be using business lingo. There is no excuse for it.
Hey now... I was a business major with a business degree. I got my degree in Information Systems, and now I'm a programmer. Your brush is just a little bit wide. :-)
- Communicate faster and more precisely
- Make the speaker sound more important or knowledgeable
- Exclude those who don't speak it
- Conceal the dishonorable nature of the subject matter via euphemism
- Reduce liability through purposeful vagueness
Maybe there are others I'm not thinking of. Now 1 is a possibility, but the others seem more likely to me. This is (IMO) different from Geekspeak, because there #1 is definitely of primary importance. 2 and 3 often come into play as well, but I'm not aware of any cases of 4 or 5. At worst, I would say Geek is used much less often for those purposes than Manager. What do you think?If what you say is true, then it doesn't improve anything. Now I object to c-speak because it's slimy, not because it's stupid. If you're doing something you're ashamed of, don't find some way to talk about it that masks your shame, stop doing it. If you're doing something you're not ashamed of, don't be afraid to talk about it clearly.
But Dell going out of business is very different from Dell going to AMD. Almost everyone who would have bought an Intel Dell would buy an AMD Dell if Dell switched. So it's not as though Intel wouldn't lose any customers because someone else would step up - the overall market for PCs would be the same size, but with the biggest vendor taking business away from Intel and giving it to AMD. I would guess that Dell has quite a bit of influence with Intel. MS, on the other hand, doesn't have much to worry about. What is Dell going to threaten them with, switching their entire lineup to Linux? There's no alternative to Windows for Dell, and they both know that.
It's "mores" not "morays", though the pronunciation is the same.
"I don't know anyone, not even my great-uncles and great-aunts, not anyone who doesn't have VOIP-capable kit already in their homes (ie. 40kbps+ unmetered TCP/IP connection, PC, speakers and microphone)."
/. users as people you know, then you do now. :-)
Well if you count random
Or wait until the next day and watch it on Tivo, skipping the commercials. Oh, right, I forgot - that isn't free. Everything has to be free, or else we'll get it from a torrent site.
He didn't mean hiring practices, he meant deciding what law firms to do business with.
"allowed to profit from" == "allowed to patent"? Therefore "not allowed to patent" == "not allowed to profit from"? Without patents, there would be no profits? Or are you saying something else?
"The problem that patents purport to solve is when A invests his resources inventing a new widget, then B reverse-engineers it and sells it." I thought the problem they purport to solve is when A invents something amazing, and dies without telling anyone how to do it. Which is no longer a problem, so if that's really the purpose of patents maybe we should get rid of them. Or if their purpose is what you say, then we should try to find out if they actually do that. If Giantcorp sees a small company doing something great (that isn't patented) wouldn't it be cheaper and better to buy them out than to copy them? Do patents really prevent secrecy, or are the applications (for the actually innovative inventions) so vague as to be useless for that purpose?
What UI headache? And the article contradicts you on the lost laptop issue: "It can protect data when a person's computer or device is lost, stolen or hacked, for example." Could it be you... *gasp* ... didn't RTFA??
Saying that the rich drive big vehicles that burn more gas doesn't make the tax progressive. It's still regressive. No, not every law has to redistribute wealth. But among the laws that do, why redistribute it from the poor to the rich?
OK, I know this is off topic, but how does wearing a long-sleeved shirt to the beach (or more generally, outdoors) not address the root cause of skin cancer?
Great rebuttals to this already. I wonder if you can argue with the following facts:
/. which leaves the former. That seems pretty stupid too, so maybe you're just saying that we don't contribute to the warming as much as other factors do. Even if that's true, where does that leave us? Maybe global warming will be a disaster and maybe not. I haven't heard anyone, even the most pro-industry, anti-environment freaks saying that we know for sure it won't cause major problems. So if there's a significant chance that it could be a disaster, the only way we should not try to avert it is if we can conclude confidently that we're unable to do so, and I haven't heard anyone claiming that either. Playing the odds on the stock market or poker is one thing, but playing them with billions of lives is something else.
1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas
2) We produce CO2
If you think that humans are not contributing to global warming, then it seems to me that you either dispute the physics of how CO2 works to trap heat in the atmosphere, or you dispute whether or not humans produce any CO2. The latter seems too brain dead even for
I'd be interested to see what your position is on what we ought to do about this possible problem, and why.
Actually it seems to me that we're trying to engage in unsustainable behavior without going extinct. Clearly there's a problem with this plan.
"The worst one is "the Internet industry is being outspent in Washington by more than a 3-to-1 margin." This ignores the tremendous lobbying the Internet industry does in every state, lobbying public utility commissions to shut out rivals everywhere. In Louisiana, the Internet industry is lobbying the state to shut down the free emergency WiFi mesh network in New Orleans--not only disgusting, but an act that requires money that McCullagh isn't counting."
It sounds like you're taking "the internet industry" (a terribly vague moniker) to mean the telcos/ISPs. I think what he meant by the term is Microsoft, Google, eBay, Yahoo, et al: "AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon spent $230.9 million on politicians from 1998 until the present, while Amazon, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo spent only a combined $71.2 million." The telcos are the big spenders compared to the software/web service companies.
I think his reply could have been phrased as "the service you're proposing is never going to happen". Which I agree with.
1) There is no way anybody is going to spin off their most profitable divisions to avoid some regulation
2) Just the SUV division alone of any major manufacturer would have way too high a volume to qualify for any "boutique" manufacturer exemption
3) Just taxing the gas is a regressive tax that places a higher burden on lower incomes than on upper ones. Maybe you don't have a problem with this, but I do.
Ah, yes there are definitely major cost considerations for the whole list. But as far as mandating higher MPG, I have no doubt the auto industry would figure it out if it was a small increase, since the alternative would be not selling cars anymore. They haven't been sitting on any huge increases for the last 30 years, but they've managed to steadily improve mileage anyway. The biggest gains are to be had at the beginning, but I'm sure that there's still plenty of improvement that can be made with gasoline engines. Given the right incentives (either coercion or profit) the manufacturers will make those improvements. And if it's via coercion, the consumer will pay for them.
Any time a monopolist urges you not to permit your customers to use the competition (or, to be more exact, to use the competition without paying for the monopolist's product first) I would consider that strongarm tactics. If MS were just one commercial OS vendor among many equals, I wouldn't care so much.
Well there is one difference. Whether you find it meaningful or not I don't know, but the RIAA doesn't need the settlement money to make ends meet. His ex-wife might need the alimony.
The music labels aren't the RIAA's customers, they're its members. The closest thing the RIAA has to customers are its members' customers.
They're coming close, though. Piracy is the smokescreen they're putting up to try to strongarm the PC makers. That's the part that really has me steamed about this story. I wouldn't care if they just went to the sellers and said look, we make money when you sell Windows. So we would really like it if you would do everything possible to sell as many copies of Windows as you can so we can make more money. This practice of pretending that they have a legitimate position in telling PC sellers which legal practices to engage in, to prevent an unproven possible future act of piracy by a party outside the seller's control is despicable.
Um, Fox News would be about the last people to make any of those claims about the US. At least from my limited understand of it - I don't actually watch Fox.