I listen to both, mainly because I want to hear the opinions of both sides, along with researching myself.
What I keep finding though are people who will say "this is why I don't watch/listen to people who watch Fox News/Democracy Now" which being avid watchers/listeners of the other side.
I've been waiting for someone to develop directional EMP for some time, just so I can shut down cars with eleventyhundred subwoofers assuming everyone within half a mile radius wants to hear what they have to play.
You might not believe this, but I wasn't around during that evolution of English. Nor was I around for the Norman invasion, invasion by Nordic tribes, Northmen (vikings), influx of Latin due to the church, Greek influence as education gained popularity, exploration of new and uncharted lands giving us names for plants, etc...
All this while the written word was rare, so documenting and teaching the language was near impossible.
Of course that's been possible for a long time now, which has helped stabilize the English language. While there have been a few changes in the last 400 years, none have been as dramatic as changes made in previous periods. We now teach the English language in this crazy notion of schools everyone can attend which was unheard of as the language was transforming from old to middle English, and middle to modern English.
I could go on and on about things like the Great English Vowel Shift, which accounts for what appears to be strange spelling of some modern words but is really spelling related to older pronunciations (pre 1600 when the language really stabilized). However, I doubt that's necessary as I'm sure you did quite a bit of research before making your comment.
Apparently my skill with search engines isn't what I thought it was. I wanted to link to the two pretty funny items I simply described once I gave up searching.
There was a Saturday Night Live skit where Dan Ackroyd (I think) spoke about shortening the English alphabet. All I remember from it was compressing lmnop into one long "letter" with the example "lmnopenis."
Then the email that floated around for a while which suggested replacing some consonants and vowels until English wound up sounding more like German (it was a bit of a spoof on German world domination).
I always hated it when my teachers and my parents corrected me. I'm certain I could have become better at everything I ever tried without their constant correction;)
Other than items that hadn't been thought of before, why would it need to?
For is for. 4 is four. There is absolutely no need for the English language to "evolve" from questioning "What for?" to "wat 4?"
I get that on cellphones the lack of qwerty keyboard makes typing full centences/words difficult, and that in SMS your number of characters is limited. When I see it happen in an email someone typed from a qwerty keyboard I want to punch them in the throat.
Free markets exist all over the place, and have for a very long time.
Take a look at the auto industry. You have quite a few choices between brands, and deeper than that, models within brands.
You can choose any or none of them. And the auto manufacturers ply very hard for your purchase. Price competition, marketing, innovation, etc...
The beauty of that particular market is how US makers lost the edge to eastern Asian makers in quality, and since the 80s have vastly improved their quality. They understood that in a free market they had to compete or perish.
An even better example of free markets would be your local farmer's market. They compete with each other for your business based on price and quality. Also, a low availability drives price up if there's demand for the product.
Just look around. Free market examples are everywhere.
A quick example is googling the following "fender 5 string american jazz bass" The first link is one for sale on musiciansfriend, the second is a link to fender's site. This one doesn't shine as me having to sort through several responses, but is the first I tried.
"sharepoint implementation" gets a little more interesting. The first link to synergyonline is for consulting services. The second is a blog post with top 10 pitfalls. The third is a best practices article from techtarget. The fourth, a pdf from another consultant. Finally on the fifth you at least get an MS blog post. None of this would be solved by adding Microsoft to the search terms.
Just the first couple of examples that come to mind.
It really varies. IT and development, portal implementation, musical gear, something interesting my kids brought up, etc...
I did have a conversation here on/. recently about how I search. I refuse to do full text questions, and rather search using keywords I know will get me the results I want. Maybe that's the way google has been improving lately?
FWIW, when I search something very specific (error messages with quotes around it) google is spot on for me.
I don't think it is. I (and apparently quite a few responders here) am seeing worse results now than ever before. Anything remotely close to what I search for tends to start around the third or fourth result (not including sponsored results).
Slashdot Mirror
Don't nuke them. Instead, declare the whole area UN territory and move the headquarters there (get them the hell out of the US).
Make it a theme park and call it Holy Land. Then all religions which claim landmarks there could visit any time.
You could have the Jump for Jesus Bounce Room, the Jehovah Heights Roller Coaster, the Aqua Allah Water Slide.
You could even make it a not for profit organization whose proceeds go to all of those displaced by religious right.
I think the day after judgment day is supposed to be good. The day itself, and those leading up to it, are supposed to suck.
Or Democracy Now, Mother Jones, etc?
I listen to both, mainly because I want to hear the opinions of both sides, along with researching myself.
What I keep finding though are people who will say "this is why I don't watch/listen to people who watch Fox News/Democracy Now" which being avid watchers/listeners of the other side.
Just asking.
I've been waiting for someone to develop directional EMP for some time, just so I can shut down cars with eleventyhundred subwoofers assuming everyone within half a mile radius wants to hear what they have to play.
Maybe Lucas is involved? Oh sorry, that may be a worse joke.
Now you can get the fourth part of the trilogy (credit: Douglas Adams).
What about "my other post" appears to be asking others to make my argument for me?
English used to be as well, but modern spellings that seem strange are typically representative of pre 1600 pronunciations.
And, like Los Angeles, I like to pretend French doesn't exist :D
You might not believe this, but I wasn't around during that evolution of English. Nor was I around for the Norman invasion, invasion by Nordic tribes, Northmen (vikings), influx of Latin due to the church, Greek influence as education gained popularity, exploration of new and uncharted lands giving us names for plants, etc...
All this while the written word was rare, so documenting and teaching the language was near impossible.
Of course that's been possible for a long time now, which has helped stabilize the English language. While there have been a few changes in the last 400 years, none have been as dramatic as changes made in previous periods. We now teach the English language in this crazy notion of schools everyone can attend which was unheard of as the language was transforming from old to middle English, and middle to modern English.
I could go on and on about things like the Great English Vowel Shift, which accounts for what appears to be strange spelling of some modern words but is really spelling related to older pronunciations (pre 1600 when the language really stabilized). However, I doubt that's necessary as I'm sure you did quite a bit of research before making your comment.
So what was your argument again?
Apparently my skill with search engines isn't what I thought it was. I wanted to link to the two pretty funny items I simply described once I gave up searching.
There was a Saturday Night Live skit where Dan Ackroyd (I think) spoke about shortening the English alphabet. All I remember from it was compressing lmnop into one long "letter" with the example "lmnopenis."
Then the email that floated around for a while which suggested replacing some consonants and vowels until English wound up sounding more like German (it was a bit of a spoof on German world domination).
I always hated it when my teachers and my parents corrected me. I'm certain I could have become better at everything I ever tried without their constant correction ;)
I commented earlier that I have the same experience as someone who learned phonetically.
I didn't couple it with how much reading I did though.
Pretty insightful. Unless you read a book on that ;)
How about German? Or Tamil? Those two are off the top of my head, and I'm sure there are more.
Other than items that hadn't been thought of before, why would it need to?
For is for. 4 is four. There is absolutely no need for the English language to "evolve" from questioning "What for?" to "wat 4?"
I get that on cellphones the lack of qwerty keyboard makes typing full centences/words difficult, and that in SMS your number of characters is limited. When I see it happen in an email someone typed from a qwerty keyboard I want to punch them in the throat.
Omnivolves!
Strangely enough, I learned phonetically, and am generally the one in the house who is asked to spell everything.
That's not to say your experience is invalid, but to point out that there are certainly exceptions to it.
The ends on pentalobular are rounded, and they're not on torx.
While the tool would surely work, it's not the same, and I would assume there is at least some risk of stripping out the screw head.
Did Bing, Wolfram Alpha, and Blekko not show up on your monitor? They show up on mine.
And if you believe all I pointed out was choices, you have some reading comprehension to learn before we can continue this discussion.
Yeah, sadly I started my career in MS development on a pirated copy of DOS with a pirated C compiler, then a pirated copy of Windows.
These days I purchase MSDN subscriptions.
That makes sense, but the results are similar. It's not that big a deal though, like most /.ers I can weed through the crap pretty quickly.
All in all it's still leaps and bounds better than the days of altavista and the like.
Free markets exist all over the place, and have for a very long time.
Take a look at the auto industry. You have quite a few choices between brands, and deeper than that, models within brands.
You can choose any or none of them. And the auto manufacturers ply very hard for your purchase. Price competition, marketing, innovation, etc...
The beauty of that particular market is how US makers lost the edge to eastern Asian makers in quality, and since the 80s have vastly improved their quality. They understood that in a free market they had to compete or perish.
An even better example of free markets would be your local farmer's market. They compete with each other for your business based on price and quality. Also, a low availability drives price up if there's demand for the product.
Just look around. Free market examples are everywhere.
A quick example is googling the following
"fender 5 string american jazz bass"
The first link is one for sale on musiciansfriend, the second is a link to fender's site. This one doesn't shine as me having to sort through several responses, but is the first I tried.
"sharepoint implementation" gets a little more interesting. The first link to synergyonline is for consulting services. The second is a blog post with top 10 pitfalls. The third is a best practices article from techtarget. The fourth, a pdf from another consultant. Finally on the fifth you at least get an MS blog post. None of this would be solved by adding Microsoft to the search terms.
Just the first couple of examples that come to mind.
It really varies. IT and development, portal implementation, musical gear, something interesting my kids brought up, etc...
I did have a conversation here on /. recently about how I search. I refuse to do full text questions, and rather search using keywords I know will get me the results I want. Maybe that's the way google has been improving lately?
FWIW, when I search something very specific (error messages with quotes around it) google is spot on for me.
I don't think it is. I (and apparently quite a few responders here) am seeing worse results now than ever before. Anything remotely close to what I search for tends to start around the third or fourth result (not including sponsored results).