Does anybody know of research that compares this to regular corn syrup (i.e., that which has not been "treated" to convert some of the glucose into fructose to bring the sweetness to table-sugar levels)? I'm just curious if it's corn syrup in general or if there's something peculiar to HFCS.
In any case, I think people need to realize that neither table sugar nor HFCS is "good"--they're both concentrations of sweetness far greater than those found anywhere in nature, and they are purely empty Calories. Avoid them both and eat whole foods as much as you can--and, of course, get some exercise. (If only you could put that into the US healthcare bill!)
The summary alludes to this, but just in case (since 90% of people who comment probably won't read past the headline):
Update: I just got off the phone with the team at Mozilla, who apologized and clarified a few things. The design which used our site’s design elements was a development build and according to them the design has been changed in newer builds. That said, it was used in their launch video as well as their blog post announcing the product. They told me that that the team who put together the blog post and video was unaware of the similarities at the time of inclusion. We’ve asked for a public apology, and I’ll be doing a follow-up post tomorrow [and they did].
My wife signed up for "Amazon Prime" and unbeknownst to her they turned it on as part of that process.... I cannot imagine for the life of me why anyone would want a single, large, shiny button (actually, no, two of them) on the information page that commit you to buying something the instant you click it. I'm sure there's a good reason (other than Amazon wanting to sell more stuff via accidental clicks), but I can't think of it.
I have the same problem on my Kindle, which essentially uses the one-click model as well (all you have to do is accidentally move the joystick to the right button--or, better yet, do it without realizing it because the screen is relatively slow at refreshing--and click down). It seems like a terrible idea to me, too, without even so much as an "Are you sure?" confirmation.
Luckily, the one time I accidentally bought a book, I e-mailed customer service, deleted the book (per their request, although we all know now they can do it themselves), and they refunded my money. (Then they charged me again, I called again, and they refunded me again. Don't know what that happened, but, if we ignore this second mixup, it was easy to get fixed.)
The bigger issue is not Flash or HTML5, it's which codec implementers of HTML5 will choose to support. Mozilla, for good reasons (IMHO), is not willing to support H.264, but that seems to be the direction YouTube is heading. But as good and open as Theora is, I think don't believe there is any hardware with a Theora accelerator (yet?).
In any case, some support browsers both H.264 and Ogg Theora, some support only one, and we all know Microsoft is unlikely to support either any time soon.
Somebody needs to mod the parent up. (And, no, I'm not lazy--I'm a linguist, and we care about studying the way language actually works, not the way a handful of people think it "should.")
Language does change. Every generation interprets language a bit differently from the previous generation, and over time these changes add up. It's why we speak Modern English instead of Middle or Old, and it's why we have English, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Frisian, Scots, Icelandic, and other Germanic languages instead of some sort of modern Proto-Germanic. It's why we have Germanic, Italic, Hellenic, and other Indo-European languages instead of Proto-Indo-European. (You might be able to take this farther, a la Nostradic Hypothesis, but I think the evidence is sketchy for connecting most major language families.) In any case, it's clear: language changes.
"Standard" varieties (which are somewhat artificial to begin with--they're partly just an arbitrary list of rules people have proposed of "do's" and "don'ts"), however, are usually much slower to change. For example, until the last century, speakers of Chinese (which today is actually a diverse collection of varieties that are often called both languages and dialects) spoke in their vernacular (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) but wrote in the standard language--Classical Chinese. It took centuries for the standard written language to change; they were almost completely different by this point. We're obviously nowhere close to this point with English, but I think it illustrates the point that language does change, and that it's neither good or bad. It just happens. For languages with standardized writing, the written language is often much slower to change, but it usually happens eventually--or, alternatively, you wind up with two essentially different languages. (I'm not saying this is bad, either, but I'm just noting an observation.) There is nothing to fear.
"I be working" is ungrammatical to you because your variety of English has a rule that establishes an agreement between the verb and it subject (at least, in this tense). Some varieties of English--AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) in particular--do not have this rule. Standard English has taken sides with your variety, but this is mostly a historical accident (well, or due to the power and influence of the people who spoke such varieties). There is no intrinsic reason to prefer one over the other; neither way is inherently "better," and it is not appropriate to call this construction "misuse." It would be equally valid to say your construction is misuse. Additionally, there are entire languages--most, if not all, Chinese languages/dialects, for one--that do not have this relation at all. Languages and language varieties differ widely (although, interestingly, seemingly within parametric bounds) in features they choose to use or not to use.
Contrary to popular belief, there is not one "correct" way to speak or write. There are, of course, conventions, which we may broadly refer to as "Standard English"--and, of course, one's use (or not) of this variety often shapes others' views. But all languages and language varieties have a set of rules, which we call "grammar." No variety is simply a random or "lazy" variation, nor does its use reflect the intelligence of the speaker/writer. (On the other hand, the educational system and certain other areas of culture expect Standard English, and I'm not arguing that this is good or bad; I'm just arguing that speakers of the standard variety should stop perpetuating the falsehoods I've outlined here.)
No, "their" is plural in Standard English. That was my point: in the *actual* English spoken by many, perhaps even most speakers, "their" is a perfectly acceptable way of referring to singular antecedents--in fact, it is *the* way to do so when the gender is unknown.
Before you call people naughty words, you should learn a thing or two about descriptive versus prescriptive grammar (i.e., actual usage versus whatever self-appointed experts say people "should" do for whatever reason) and maybe take a linguistics class.
It would be far better to create and use a new and actually gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun...
Good luck with that. Pronouns are an example what linguists refer to as grammatical (as opposed to lexical) categories. One way in which grammatical classes are different from lexical categories is that they are generally a "closed" class, meaning they do not readily admit new members. You can make up new nouns, verbs, and adjectives (lexical categories) at will, but if you try to invent, for example, a new preposition (a grammatical category), it probably won't catch on (and you'll sound funny, if not unintelligible). And since pronouns are also a grammatical class, you guessed it: same thing. Of course, grammatical classes do change, but it's normally at a significantly slower rate.
Additionally, many people already have this base covered with "they"--while Standard English hasn't (yet?) accepted it, it's certainly a part of the (actual) English of many speakers.
...one should always use a masculine pronoun when the gender is mixed or unknown. Also, the last occurrence of the word "need" is redundant.
Actually, many varieties of English prefer "their" when the gender is mixed or unknown. "He" or "he or she" is probably something your English teacher forced on you instead (although there may be people who natively prefer it).
Of course, your English teacher forced it on you because self-appointed grammar "experts" and prescriptivists demand it in formal language, so it's kind of a double-edged sword: sound stifled and use "he," "he or she," or the potentially too-PC "she" because you know the antecedent is singular, or use "they" and do what most speakers say naturally but risk being caught by a self-proclaimed grammar maven or sounding insufficiently formal for the occasion.
So now we have to wait until 2011 for Firefox 4 to get tab previews in the taskbar? Time to investigate ad-block addons for IE8.
That's what IE does, and I hate it--then it takes even more work to switch back to my browser when I'm in another application. (Instead of my windows, I see all my tabs, making the list much longer and harder to navigate since I have to remember which tab I was on, unless I want to jar my experience by unintentionally switching tabs.)
But, if that's the way Windows 7 is "supposed" to work, I suppose it will be more consistent...
Where is Google in this? Why are they dragging their feet?
After all, without openness where would they be?
It's not up to Mozilla, it's up to YouTube: if they switch from Flash to HTML5 video, the browsers and users will follow. (The question then is which codec they will choose.)
Which, of course, is another way of saying it's all up to Google.
Anyone who's trying to set an IP address probably has more than one computer to work with, anyway--but even if you were genuinely stumped (GUI or CLI), you can use Help (directly accessible from the Start menu) to figure out how.
Still, the GP's point stands: you can do it from the CLI (or the GUI) in either, but the OP didn't know how in Windows and just figured it wasn't possible. (And you can hardly expect the command to be the exact same, so did he really think he wouldn't have to look it up?)
Shows how long it's been since I've built Mozilla on Windows...glad to see the new system looks a bit better.
Re:Does this do something SFU doesn't?
on
Cygwin 1.7 Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The biggest--perhaps only--reason I install Cygwin on Windows is because so many cross-platform applications require it for compilation (Mozilla, I'm looking at you). Of course, whether they coud ue MinGW and/or the Windows "Services for Unix" layer to accomplish something similar is another story, but until they decide to change and support it, Cygwin it is.
And personally, having had to install Cygwin, I've never even paid attention to the POSIX layer for Windows, but it looks like it might be worth looking into. I think part of the reason some projects use Cygwin owes to their current or not-to-far-in-the-past support of Windows 9x/Me (the POSIX layer, of course, is only for the NT family) and probably no benefit (or perhaps even more problems, having to work out compatibility issues with yet another set of tools) from changing.
That's the point. Dictionaries do include the word "irregardless", and they describe it as an incorrect words. Apparently this is also the way this word is used most often; explicitly meant as an incorrect word.
It's kinda like "edumacation". The word is used quite often, but rarely does anybody actually think it is the way to spell "education". It is used for stylistic purposes.
I think we agree on everything except what it means for a dictionary to limit language. I must have a broader definition of what it means to try to limit (as opposed to describe) language, and I think there are far too many dictionaries that fall into the former category.
As you know, nobody uses "irregardless" to mean "not regardless," but plenty of people use it (genuinely) to mean what in Standard English is "regardless." Nobody that I am aware of, on the other hand, says "edumacation" (except when trying to be funny) to mean "education." We can disregard the latter a being part of the language for all practical purposes, but any dictionary that refuses to include the former can hardly be said to "describe" language.
As a linguist, when looking for/at data, it's quite interesting to compare actual usage to what definitions and even what words dictionaries choose to include. I realize I probably have a stricter definition of what it is to "describe" language that most people, but it's probably because I've seen so much of this discrepancy. If you're looking for data on usage, a corpus is a far better place to go than most dictionaries (though some, like the OED I mentioned, can be helpful for words or definitions that are sufficiently widespread).
Dictionaries consider "irregardless" as incorrect. Then again, dictionaries follow language, they neither create nor limit it.
Actually, I would say you're wrong: most dictionaries do attempt to "limit" language by providing "advice" on usage. Most people actually expect dictionaries to do this--to make judgements about usage that is widespread enough to warrant mention in the dictionary but not part of the "prescriptive grammar" of Standard English.
The OED is an example of a dictionary that, from what I can see, does a better job of describing language as people actually use it; this is a favored source among linguists, who also seek to describe language as people actually use it ("descriptively") as opposed to how some people think they "should" ("prescriptively"). But if a dictionary refuses to include a word because some people don't like it--like 'irregardless'--then it's not a descriptive analysis; it clearly has prescriptive influence.
Did you go to okstate.edu, Oklahoma State University's home page? They refer to themselves as "OSU" on multiple occasions, most notably the big "About OSU" link at the home. Just because Ohio State snatched the domain first doesn't mean they can't both be called "OSU". (You should try living in Iowa but close to Illinois and guess which "U [of] I" people are talking about.)
This post puts words in Mozilla's mouth. While this was a high-profile Mozilla figure (Asa Dotzler), it is his personal blog, so keep in mind it's just what he thinks, not any recommendation on behalf of Mozilla.
In any case, his exact words were, "And here's how you can easily switch Firefox's search from Google to Bing. (Yes, Bing does have a better privacy policy than Google.)" That's not exactly a whole-hearted recommendation; it's saying, "Here's something bad, but this is how you can switch it to something better." And again, of course, it's just his opinion based on the respective privacy policies--but, if someone appeals to the PATRIOT Act like Google was talking about, I'm not convinced it matters either way. (Just because it's not tied to your account doesn't mean they can't figure it out.)
Not much: the OED, in fact, does have an entry for 'ginormous' -- and the first attestation is from 1948, so I don't think it's as new as some people think.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. If I were a small company like Google, I'd be really hoping that Slashdot could provide some much-needed publicity.
Does anybody know of research that compares this to regular corn syrup (i.e., that which has not been "treated" to convert some of the glucose into fructose to bring the sweetness to table-sugar levels)? I'm just curious if it's corn syrup in general or if there's something peculiar to HFCS.
In any case, I think people need to realize that neither table sugar nor HFCS is "good"--they're both concentrations of sweetness far greater than those found anywhere in nature, and they are purely empty Calories. Avoid them both and eat whole foods as much as you can--and, of course, get some exercise. (If only you could put that into the US healthcare bill!)
The summary alludes to this, but just in case (since 90% of people who comment probably won't read past the headline):
My wife signed up for "Amazon Prime" and unbeknownst to her they turned it on as part of that process. ... I cannot imagine for the life of me why anyone would want a single, large, shiny button (actually, no, two of them) on the information page that commit you to buying something the instant you click it. I'm sure there's a good reason (other than Amazon wanting to sell more stuff via accidental clicks), but I can't think of it.
I have the same problem on my Kindle, which essentially uses the one-click model as well (all you have to do is accidentally move the joystick to the right button--or, better yet, do it without realizing it because the screen is relatively slow at refreshing--and click down). It seems like a terrible idea to me, too, without even so much as an "Are you sure?" confirmation.
Luckily, the one time I accidentally bought a book, I e-mailed customer service, deleted the book (per their request, although we all know now they can do it themselves), and they refunded my money. (Then they charged me again, I called again, and they refunded me again. Don't know what that happened, but, if we ignore this second mixup, it was easy to get fixed.)
Hixie might not expect it to be "finished" until 2022, but, to paraphrase him, "finished" is a big deal, and you'll be able to use it before then.
The bigger issue is not Flash or HTML5, it's which codec implementers of HTML5 will choose to support. Mozilla, for good reasons (IMHO), is not willing to support H.264, but that seems to be the direction YouTube is heading. But as good and open as Theora is, I think don't believe there is any hardware with a Theora accelerator (yet?).
In any case, some support browsers both H.264 and Ogg Theora, some support only one, and we all know Microsoft is unlikely to support either any time soon.
Ceres was classified as a planet for 50 years, but we got over that--we can probably get over this, too.
Somebody needs to mod the parent up. (And, no, I'm not lazy--I'm a linguist, and we care about studying the way language actually works, not the way a handful of people think it "should.")
Language does change. Every generation interprets language a bit differently from the previous generation, and over time these changes add up. It's why we speak Modern English instead of Middle or Old, and it's why we have English, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Frisian, Scots, Icelandic, and other Germanic languages instead of some sort of modern Proto-Germanic. It's why we have Germanic, Italic, Hellenic, and other Indo-European languages instead of Proto-Indo-European. (You might be able to take this farther, a la Nostradic Hypothesis, but I think the evidence is sketchy for connecting most major language families.) In any case, it's clear: language changes.
"Standard" varieties (which are somewhat artificial to begin with--they're partly just an arbitrary list of rules people have proposed of "do's" and "don'ts"), however, are usually much slower to change. For example, until the last century, speakers of Chinese (which today is actually a diverse collection of varieties that are often called both languages and dialects) spoke in their vernacular (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) but wrote in the standard language--Classical Chinese. It took centuries for the standard written language to change; they were almost completely different by this point. We're obviously nowhere close to this point with English, but I think it illustrates the point that language does change, and that it's neither good or bad. It just happens. For languages with standardized writing, the written language is often much slower to change, but it usually happens eventually--or, alternatively, you wind up with two essentially different languages. (I'm not saying this is bad, either, but I'm just noting an observation.) There is nothing to fear.
"I be working" is ungrammatical to you because your variety of English has a rule that establishes an agreement between the verb and it subject (at least, in this tense). Some varieties of English--AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) in particular--do not have this rule. Standard English has taken sides with your variety, but this is mostly a historical accident (well, or due to the power and influence of the people who spoke such varieties). There is no intrinsic reason to prefer one over the other; neither way is inherently "better," and it is not appropriate to call this construction "misuse." It would be equally valid to say your construction is misuse. Additionally, there are entire languages--most, if not all, Chinese languages/dialects, for one--that do not have this relation at all. Languages and language varieties differ widely (although, interestingly, seemingly within parametric bounds) in features they choose to use or not to use.
Contrary to popular belief, there is not one "correct" way to speak or write. There are, of course, conventions, which we may broadly refer to as "Standard English"--and, of course, one's use (or not) of this variety often shapes others' views. But all languages and language varieties have a set of rules, which we call "grammar." No variety is simply a random or "lazy" variation, nor does its use reflect the intelligence of the speaker/writer. (On the other hand, the educational system and certain other areas of culture expect Standard English, and I'm not arguing that this is good or bad; I'm just arguing that speakers of the standard variety should stop perpetuating the falsehoods I've outlined here.)
No, "their" is plural in Standard English. That was my point: in the *actual* English spoken by many, perhaps even most speakers, "their" is a perfectly acceptable way of referring to singular antecedents--in fact, it is *the* way to do so when the gender is unknown.
Before you call people naughty words, you should learn a thing or two about descriptive versus prescriptive grammar (i.e., actual usage versus whatever self-appointed experts say people "should" do for whatever reason) and maybe take a linguistics class.
Dear mods: funny? No, this is fact--read the article. (I was surprised too.)
It would be far better to create and use a new and actually gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun...
Good luck with that. Pronouns are an example what linguists refer to as grammatical (as opposed to lexical) categories. One way in which grammatical classes are different from lexical categories is that they are generally a "closed" class, meaning they do not readily admit new members. You can make up new nouns, verbs, and adjectives (lexical categories) at will, but if you try to invent, for example, a new preposition (a grammatical category), it probably won't catch on (and you'll sound funny, if not unintelligible). And since pronouns are also a grammatical class, you guessed it: same thing. Of course, grammatical classes do change, but it's normally at a significantly slower rate.
Additionally, many people already have this base covered with "they"--while Standard English hasn't (yet?) accepted it, it's certainly a part of the (actual) English of many speakers.
...one should always use a masculine pronoun when the gender is mixed or unknown. Also, the last occurrence of the word "need" is redundant.
Actually, many varieties of English prefer "their" when the gender is mixed or unknown. "He" or "he or she" is probably something your English teacher forced on you instead (although there may be people who natively prefer it).
Of course, your English teacher forced it on you because self-appointed grammar "experts" and prescriptivists demand it in formal language, so it's kind of a double-edged sword: sound stifled and use "he," "he or she," or the potentially too-PC "she" because you know the antecedent is singular, or use "they" and do what most speakers say naturally but risk being caught by a self-proclaimed grammar maven or sounding insufficiently formal for the occasion.
So now we have to wait until 2011 for Firefox 4 to get tab previews in the taskbar? Time to investigate ad-block addons for IE8.
That's what IE does, and I hate it--then it takes even more work to switch back to my browser when I'm in another application. (Instead of my windows, I see all my tabs, making the list much longer and harder to navigate since I have to remember which tab I was on, unless I want to jar my experience by unintentionally switching tabs.)
But, if that's the way Windows 7 is "supposed" to work, I suppose it will be more consistent...
I really hope Mozilla can make it happen.
Where is Google in this? Why are they dragging their feet? After all, without openness where would they be?
It's not up to Mozilla, it's up to YouTube: if they switch from Flash to HTML5 video, the browsers and users will follow. (The question then is which codec they will choose.)
Which, of course, is another way of saying it's all up to Google.
Anyone who's trying to set an IP address probably has more than one computer to work with, anyway--but even if you were genuinely stumped (GUI or CLI), you can use Help (directly accessible from the Start menu) to figure out how.
Still, the GP's point stands: you can do it from the CLI (or the GUI) in either, but the OP didn't know how in Windows and just figured it wasn't possible. (And you can hardly expect the command to be the exact same, so did he really think he wouldn't have to look it up?)
Shows how long it's been since I've built Mozilla on Windows...glad to see the new system looks a bit better.
The biggest--perhaps only--reason I install Cygwin on Windows is because so many cross-platform applications require it for compilation (Mozilla, I'm looking at you). Of course, whether they coud ue MinGW and/or the Windows "Services for Unix" layer to accomplish something similar is another story, but until they decide to change and support it, Cygwin it is.
And personally, having had to install Cygwin, I've never even paid attention to the POSIX layer for Windows, but it looks like it might be worth looking into. I think part of the reason some projects use Cygwin owes to their current or not-to-far-in-the-past support of Windows 9x/Me (the POSIX layer, of course, is only for the NT family) and probably no benefit (or perhaps even more problems, having to work out compatibility issues with yet another set of tools) from changing.
That's the point. Dictionaries do include the word "irregardless", and they describe it as an incorrect words. Apparently this is also the way this word is used most often; explicitly meant as an incorrect word.
It's kinda like "edumacation". The word is used quite often, but rarely does anybody actually think it is the way to spell "education". It is used for stylistic purposes.
I think we agree on everything except what it means for a dictionary to limit language. I must have a broader definition of what it means to try to limit (as opposed to describe) language, and I think there are far too many dictionaries that fall into the former category.
As you know, nobody uses "irregardless" to mean "not regardless," but plenty of people use it (genuinely) to mean what in Standard English is "regardless." Nobody that I am aware of, on the other hand, says "edumacation" (except when trying to be funny) to mean "education." We can disregard the latter a being part of the language for all practical purposes, but any dictionary that refuses to include the former can hardly be said to "describe" language.
As a linguist, when looking for/at data, it's quite interesting to compare actual usage to what definitions and even what words dictionaries choose to include. I realize I probably have a stricter definition of what it is to "describe" language that most people, but it's probably because I've seen so much of this discrepancy. If you're looking for data on usage, a corpus is a far better place to go than most dictionaries (though some, like the OED I mentioned, can be helpful for words or definitions that are sufficiently widespread).
Dictionaries consider "irregardless" as incorrect. Then again, dictionaries follow language, they neither create nor limit it.
Actually, I would say you're wrong: most dictionaries do attempt to "limit" language by providing "advice" on usage. Most people actually expect dictionaries to do this--to make judgements about usage that is widespread enough to warrant mention in the dictionary but not part of the "prescriptive grammar" of Standard English.
The OED is an example of a dictionary that, from what I can see, does a better job of describing language as people actually use it; this is a favored source among linguists, who also seek to describe language as people actually use it ("descriptively") as opposed to how some people think they "should" ("prescriptively"). But if a dictionary refuses to include a word because some people don't like it--like 'irregardless'--then it's not a descriptive analysis; it clearly has prescriptive influence.
Did you go to okstate.edu, Oklahoma State University's home page? They refer to themselves as "OSU" on multiple occasions, most notably the big "About OSU" link at the home. Just because Ohio State snatched the domain first doesn't mean they can't both be called "OSU". (You should try living in Iowa but close to Illinois and guess which "U [of] I" people are talking about.)
This post puts words in Mozilla's mouth. While this was a high-profile Mozilla figure (Asa Dotzler), it is his personal blog, so keep in mind it's just what he thinks, not any recommendation on behalf of Mozilla.
In any case, his exact words were, "And here's how you can easily switch Firefox's search from Google to Bing. (Yes, Bing does have a better privacy policy than Google.)" That's not exactly a whole-hearted recommendation; it's saying, "Here's something bad, but this is how you can switch it to something better." And again, of course, it's just his opinion based on the respective privacy policies--but, if someone appeals to the PATRIOT Act like Google was talking about, I'm not convinced it matters either way. (Just because it's not tied to your account doesn't mean they can't figure it out.)
Not much: the OED, in fact, does have an entry for 'ginormous' -- and the first attestation is from 1948, so I don't think it's as new as some people think.
Thanks, Klarity Kommittee!
There, fixed that for you.
The Chrome OS image is only a bit over 300 megs, so it's a fast download.
I'm on dial-up, you insensitive clod!