Thanks for the explanation, I must admit I was laboring under the impression that the editors did a bit of correction.
I'll admit that I could have been slightly more polite about it, but I think my correction was a valid one which may well be informative to many people who are unaware that there is a difference between "effect" and "affect". I often come across the words being misused, and I felt that this was a good opportunity to correct it. The karma is irrelevant to me - indeed I was surprised that it got modded at all, let alone generated a small flurry of comments. I simply couldn't allow it to go by unremarked...
You are, of course, correct. However the point I was trying to make was that in the context of the sentence, "effect" is the noun form of the verb that should have been in the sentence, "affect". Using the verb form would change the meaning entirely, so I assumed it was "affect" that was intended.
I must admit, I simply made the comment because the misuse of the word annoys me. I didn't expect to generate a mini-storm:)
Correct, of course. However, in the context of the title of the article, either the word should be "affect" or a mysterious force caused Pioneer 10 & 11 to come into being.
What I meant by my comment was that "effect" was the noun of "affect", which is what is needed in the context of the statement. You're right though, "effect" as a (intentional) noun is very infrequently seen these days, people have enough trouble with one meaning for the word:)
You're right, "effect" is also a verb. As in, "to effect a change in something." I'm well aware of this, thanks all the same. However, if you read what is being discussed, I corrected the use of "effect" as a verb where the correct form is "affect". "Effect" is the noun form of the action which "affect" denotes - something which can affect another thing has an effect on that other thing. Before you go correcting my (perfectly correct) grammar, perhaps you should check the context I wrote it in?
Furthermore, I don't see that being a grammar-nazi about the edited articles that appear on a commercial news site is a bad thing. I'm not correcting the language of the poster of the article, nor am I correcting the language of a comment poster, for either of whom English may not be their first language. I'm correcting the language of the guy who's job it is to make the article coherent and correct, which he did incorrectly. How exactly am I a grammar-nazi for pointing out a glaring language error on an English language news site?
I agree wholeheartedly here. Here in South Africa ISDN is a relatively new (a few years) introduction, and most people still surf on dial-up (56K, or in many cases, less). ADSL has recently become available, but it has a 3GB/month cap, with a data rate of far less than 10 megabits.
Indeed, the only TelCom ("only" by law) is paying most of its attention to providing basic telephony to the rural masses who have none at all (which is quite right.)
I agree entirely with the parent - just because only 50% of the US has broadband access doesn't mean that the situation is bad - almost everyone has access to basic telephony if they desire it, which is a situation many countries do not find themselves in.
Meatloaf came to mind as I wrote this, but I don't consider him a pop artist - his songs are mostly written by Jim Steinman (who is no looker himself) and can stand as pieces of music in their own right. I'm fairly sure his success didn't come from his sexy music videos (since they aren't), but rather from music that would (and to a large degree did) make it on the radio alone. So I think my point still holds.
I'm with you on the fact that he's not going to take first prize in beauty contests though:)
Personally I don't think manufactured necessarily equates to bad. What gets me is that to have a successful pop career (where pop is things like Britney, Avril etc) you have to be attractive and sexy. Ever seen an ugly *pop* star? Would most pop survive on the radio, without sex-on-TV music videos to back it up?
Some other genres of music (hard rock, metal, jazz etc) do not rely on attractive people to make it sell, they rely on good music.
Having said that, I listen to and enjoy many pop tunes. However, what I also object to is the fact that media and listeners give the singer all the credit for the song. All the singer did is sing (and occasionally an effect is even added, presumably because they can't even sing that well). Why aren't we crediting the people who wrote the music, the people who played their instruments etc.?
I know that a solo musician's band is hardly ever credited and it has been this way for decades, but IMHO it is becoming more and more prevalent and very annoying. At least most solo musicians of the 60's, 70's and some of them in the 80's wrote their own songs (or wote most of them at least).
You're right of course, it was spelled hideously incorrectly. It looked wrong when I wrote it, but other things came up and I never came back to check it, I simply submitted the comment and moved on to the crisis. I am a bit of a spelling Nazi myself, so it galls me that I got it wrong - let's keep this to ourselves shall we:)
Secondly: again, correct. Entrepreneurship does not properly convey what I meant, although we don't know that the people who set up the business aren't entrepreneurs. They may well have organised, operated and assumed the risk for the business venture which they set up to provide these services, which makes them entrepreneurs. However, the phrase quite an innovative bit of entrepreneurship would function better as quite an innovative commercial service, or something along those lines.
Thanks for pointing those out, I must have had an off day at the keyboard. It annoys me as well when I come across the hideous language deployed by many people on Slashdot (excluding, of course, those for whom English is not a first language), and I am deeply shamed to have messed up so badly myself.
Re:This is not the worst kind.
on
Cheating Made Easy
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Actually, the author of the article did just this - she bought 2 papers on Gatsby, one pre-written and one written specially for her. (At an appropriately higher price, of course).
The pre-written one was apparently pretty badly written (arguably like your average high-school student would write it), and the custom one was written with such excellent language that it was very well done. However, as she points out, most students can't write nearly as well as this paper was written, so in fact using an individually written paper could actually be more dangerous to the student in this case. As you say, a judgement on grades to determine if student X could actually have written the paper is needed here.
Personally, I think it's quite an innovative bit of entrepeurneership from the websites point of view, but what kind of study skills does it promote? So you prove you can find the easy way out - remind me never to drive over a bridge you built after doing all your studying by paying other people to buy it for you...
If it makes you feel any better, it's only 19C in Durban today, but that's cold. It was 28C yesterday, like it is most days (or hotter).
I was in Minneapolis last year, in winter, and it got to about 20 below, which was more than cold enough for me.
You are a brave oke, and the rest of us normal Serfrican chaps salute you - if you can't raise your fingers to salute back due to frostbite that's perfectly cool.
In Zimbabwe, yes, there is a dismal failure. I wouldn't put it down to race relations all that much though, although they do play a part. Bob Mugabe (the president) is severely abusing his own people, most of whom are black, as is the majority of the political opposition. Personally I think he's simply grown power hungry and arrogant. My own country's relationship and attitude toward him I find shocking and disgusting, treating him like there's nothing wrong, but I have no reason to believe that what has transpired in Zimbabwe will repeat themselves in South Africa - we don't have a Mugabe.
In South Africa I don't see overwhelming trouble in the near future. Economically we are growing, but too slowly. This can only worsen when Aids starts hitting our labour force (this sounds heartless, but it is the bigger picture. Obviously I feel for the human element as well). This will hurt our economy, certainly. However, I don't think the country will descend into civil anarchy or anything like that - if anything I think the overall situation will improve despite all these problems.
The government appears to be beginning to get a handle on many issues which have plagued the country since democracy in '94. It is widely predicted that the ruling ANC, which currently has 70% of the vote and accordingly the 2/3's majority they need to pass any bill in parliament, will not see a majority anywhere near that big again. Accordingly politics will become more representative in the near future (say after two voting periods - 10 years), where the ANC will be in charge most likely but the other parties will wield considerable parliamentary influence as well. This can only be a healthy and good thing for a democracy.
Let me put it this way: I'm a white male Masters student at a South African university, and I have no intention of leaving the country when I graduate. I feel positive about the country's prospects. A good intro to the country can be found at this site, while this is the official internet gateway to the country.
Onto the cricket...
Yes, a Test cricket match, one of the two major international varieties, is scheduled to take 5 days. The other version takes about 6 hours, while a newer, shorter version recently introduced takes about 3 hours. The basic rules are explained here much better than I am capable of doing so. I personally think it is the most awesome of sports, which may of course be slighly tempered by the fact that South Africa is quite good at it...
An excellent cricketing link if you have a further interest is here.
Hope this is concise enough. Always a pleasure to spread some info about my home or my favourite sport!
Thanks for clearing that up about the slugger - I always have wondered why it popped up in so many odd-seeming references:)
There is no equivalent in cricket for that kind of thing though - the standard argument intensifier, in South Africa at least, is a plank, golf club or what we call a knobkerrie - an Afrikaans word for a weapon used by the Zulu tribe of South Africa. What a font of useless trivia I'm turning into...
Also, cricket bats are always made of English Willow, in England and around the world - it's unthinkable these days to use anything else. I don't know what makes it good for cricket bats, but it's always used.
You may have noticed that I'm a bit of a cricket fan, and that I'm South African...
I assume you mean "louisville slugger" to stand for the perfect baseball bat?
In that case, cricket doesn't really have one. Many manufacturers make bats - Gunn & Moore, Stuart Surrey (SS), Kookaburra, Wizard and Wasp are just a few, there are many more. Depending on which professional cricketer you choose to believe, one maufacturer's bat is better than the others, but there is no one bat which stands out as the epitome of all that is good about a cricket bat, with the other bats unfit to touch the English Willow it's made of.
You are correct, the term 419 does refer to the Nigerian penal code. However, it has long since been used as a general term for the type of letter we all know and love promising untold riches because you are a person of esteemed trustworthiness.
It is in such general use these days to describe any such letter that it no longer can be applied solely to Nigeria - only Nigeria can fix violations of its 419 code, but many other countries, African and otherwise, need to fix violations of their own versions of the laws (whatever number they may have.)
Why do we always assume these people are actually Nigerian? From the way they write, they clearly aren't native English speakers, but there are many countries here in Africa that don't speak English fluently.
They could be Zimbabwean as an example, or maybe they're Kenyan - hell, maybe they're South African like me. For that matter, what if they're Tibetan?
[Note: Countries picked at random as places where English is not universally spoken].
I don't think blaming the Nigerians for all the spamming and demanding that Nigeria fix the problem is realistic. Let the Nigerian government sort out its own 419'ers (whether it will or not is not the point of my comment), but other countries have spammers too - the western world has its own share as well, after all.
I've seen plenty of spam purporting to come from Zimbabwe or even from nonexistant government departments of my own country.
Do you happen to have any URL's with more on this? You've piqued my curiosity...
Yes, I am aware that google will yield many should I just take a look, but I thought someone that wrote about might have more relevant links than the tons of dross google would probably serve up.
You seem to assume that everyone else's windows come in imperial measurements and we all spend our time converting to metric to do difficult sums just for the hell of it. In a metric country, like South Africa, our windows come in nice round metric numbers (138cm is a common one), like all our other measurements.
Obviously you would find it difficult to use metric if all the products you are using are made with imperial measurements that are "nice" numbers. Just bear in mind that other peoples products come with "nice" metric measurements.
Also, I prefer metric becasue I was born after it was adopted and it's all I know, certainly. But it does seem that if everything is ten more than the previous level it's a lot more consistent than imperial where the number of x's in y differs depending on what type of measurement you're talking about.
I'm a South African, so admittedly I don't know too much about the US tertiary education system. But it seems to me, from what little I do know, that going to university is pretty much expected of most school-leavers. (Perhaps I'm wrong, ignore the rest of this if I am). That necessitates having enough college facilities to handle everyone who desires to study, which is the point I'm making - does the US perhaps not make higher education too easy to get into?
Here in SA you need pretty good school marks to get into university, and most people do not have a degree, nor is it considered unusual not to have one. Is there perhaps a danger in the US that with so many people studying, the ones who will truly excel and increase your research output are being bogged under by those who are there "because they can" and not necessarily because the degree and research is what they want to do in life?
I agree entirely here - why is this a problem? If a cop pulled you over for a routine investigation and called in your plate number to have it checked to determine that all is above board, which is certainly common in South Africa (I'm assuming it's common in the US), is this a problem? Since this has been going on for many years without too much of a problem, how is it a problem when the process simply becomes more efficient?
Perhaps I don't fully understand the US law or methods US cops use, but I must admit I really don't see how taking an accepted practice and implementing exactly the same thing with a bit of technology is suddenly a serious problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the explanation, I must admit I was laboring under the impression that the editors did a bit of correction.
I'll admit that I could have been slightly more polite about it, but I think my correction was a valid one which may well be informative to many people who are unaware that there is a difference between "effect" and "affect". I often come across the words being misused, and I felt that this was a good opportunity to correct it. The karma is irrelevant to me - indeed I was surprised that it got modded at all, let alone generated a small flurry of comments. I simply couldn't allow it to go by unremarked...
You are, of course, correct. However the point I was trying to make was that in the context of the sentence, "effect" is the noun form of the verb that should have been in the sentence, "affect". Using the verb form would change the meaning entirely, so I assumed it was "affect" that was intended.
:)
I must admit, I simply made the comment because the misuse of the word annoys me. I didn't expect to generate a mini-storm
Correct, of course. However, in the context of the title of the article, either the word should be "affect" or a mysterious force caused Pioneer 10 & 11 to come into being.
:)
What I meant by my comment was that "effect" was the noun of "affect", which is what is needed in the context of the statement. You're right though, "effect" as a (intentional) noun is very infrequently seen these days, people have enough trouble with one meaning for the word
You're right, of course.
/me attempts to loftily ignore own stupid error in grammar :)
Oops.
You're right, "effect" is also a verb. As in, "to effect a change in something." I'm well aware of this, thanks all the same. However, if you read what is being discussed, I corrected the use of "effect" as a verb where the correct form is "affect". "Effect" is the noun form of the action which "affect" denotes - something which can affect another thing has an effect on that other thing. Before you go correcting my (perfectly correct) grammar, perhaps you should check the context I wrote it in?
Furthermore, I don't see that being a grammar-nazi about the edited articles that appear on a commercial news site is a bad thing. I'm not correcting the language of the poster of the article, nor am I correcting the language of a comment poster, for either of whom English may not be their first language. I'm correcting the language of the guy who's job it is to make the article coherent and correct, which he did incorrectly. How exactly am I a grammar-nazi for pointing out a glaring language error on an English language news site?
Note to Hemos: The verb is spelled "affect". You know, with an "a". The noun is spelled "effect", but it's the verb needed in the title.
Sorry, don't mean to sound curmudgeonly and grumpy and so forth, but so few people get this right that I can't stand by and let it slide.
I'll put the cantankerous old grouch away now...
I agree wholeheartedly here. Here in South Africa ISDN is a relatively new (a few years) introduction, and most people still surf on dial-up (56K, or in many cases, less). ADSL has recently become available, but it has a 3GB/month cap, with a data rate of far less than 10 megabits.
Indeed, the only TelCom ("only" by law) is paying most of its attention to providing basic telephony to the rural masses who have none at all (which is quite right.)
I agree entirely with the parent - just because only 50% of the US has broadband access doesn't mean that the situation is bad - almost everyone has access to basic telephony if they desire it, which is a situation many countries do not find themselves in.
Meatloaf came to mind as I wrote this, but I don't consider him a pop artist - his songs are mostly written by Jim Steinman (who is no looker himself) and can stand as pieces of music in their own right. I'm fairly sure his success didn't come from his sexy music videos (since they aren't), but rather from music that would (and to a large degree did) make it on the radio alone. So I think my point still holds.
:)
I'm with you on the fact that he's not going to take first prize in beauty contests though
Personally I don't think manufactured necessarily equates to bad. What gets me is that to have a successful pop career (where pop is things like Britney, Avril etc) you have to be attractive and sexy. Ever seen an ugly *pop* star? Would most pop survive on the radio, without sex-on-TV music videos to back it up?
Some other genres of music (hard rock, metal, jazz etc) do not rely on attractive people to make it sell, they rely on good music.
Having said that, I listen to and enjoy many pop tunes. However, what I also object to is the fact that media and listeners give the singer all the credit for the song. All the singer did is sing (and occasionally an effect is even added, presumably because they can't even sing that well). Why aren't we crediting the people who wrote the music, the people who played their instruments etc.?
I know that a solo musician's band is hardly ever credited and it has been this way for decades, but IMHO it is becoming more and more prevalent and very annoying. At least most solo musicians of the 60's, 70's and some of them in the 80's wrote their own songs (or wote most of them at least).
I know it's OT and slightly nitpicky, but shouldn't that read "Language matters?"
You're right of course, it was spelled hideously incorrectly. It looked wrong when I wrote it, but other things came up and I never came back to check it, I simply submitted the comment and moved on to the crisis. I am a bit of a spelling Nazi myself, so it galls me that I got it wrong - let's keep this to ourselves shall we :)
Secondly: again, correct. Entrepreneurship does not properly convey what I meant, although we don't know that the people who set up the business aren't entrepreneurs. They may well have organised, operated and assumed the risk for the business venture which they set up to provide these services, which makes them entrepreneurs. However, the phrase quite an innovative bit of entrepreneurship would function better as quite an innovative commercial service, or something along those lines.
Thanks for pointing those out, I must have had an off day at the keyboard. It annoys me as well when I come across the hideous language deployed by many people on Slashdot (excluding, of course, those for whom English is not a first language), and I am deeply shamed to have messed up so badly myself.
Actually, the author of the article did just this - she bought 2 papers on Gatsby, one pre-written and one written specially for her. (At an appropriately higher price, of course).
The pre-written one was apparently pretty badly written (arguably like your average high-school student would write it), and the custom one was written with such excellent language that it was very well done. However, as she points out, most students can't write nearly as well as this paper was written, so in fact using an individually written paper could actually be more dangerous to the student in this case. As you say, a judgement on grades to determine if student X could actually have written the paper is needed here.
Personally, I think it's quite an innovative bit of entrepeurneership from the websites point of view, but what kind of study skills does it promote? So you prove you can find the easy way out - remind me never to drive over a bridge you built after doing all your studying by paying other people to buy it for you...
Nog Lekker!
If it makes you feel any better, it's only 19C in Durban today, but that's cold. It was 28C yesterday, like it is most days (or hotter).
I was in Minneapolis last year, in winter, and it got to about 20 below, which was more than cold enough for me.
You are a brave oke, and the rest of us normal Serfrican chaps salute you - if you can't raise your fingers to salute back due to frostbite that's perfectly cool.
Totsiens, sharp-sharp and Hamba Gashle...
I know this is somewhat OT, but you're a fellow South African right? No one else would be quoting "Ja Well No Fine" after all :)
Thanks for the website compliment - I try :)
In Zimbabwe, yes, there is a dismal failure. I wouldn't put it down to race relations all that much though, although they do play a part. Bob Mugabe (the president) is severely abusing his own people, most of whom are black, as is the majority of the political opposition. Personally I think he's simply grown power hungry and arrogant. My own country's relationship and attitude toward him I find shocking and disgusting, treating him like there's nothing wrong, but I have no reason to believe that what has transpired in Zimbabwe will repeat themselves in South Africa - we don't have a Mugabe.
In South Africa I don't see overwhelming trouble in the near future. Economically we are growing, but too slowly. This can only worsen when Aids starts hitting our labour force (this sounds heartless, but it is the bigger picture. Obviously I feel for the human element as well). This will hurt our economy, certainly. However, I don't think the country will descend into civil anarchy or anything like that - if anything I think the overall situation will improve despite all these problems.
The government appears to be beginning to get a handle on many issues which have plagued the country since democracy in '94. It is widely predicted that the ruling ANC, which currently has 70% of the vote and accordingly the 2/3's majority they need to pass any bill in parliament, will not see a majority anywhere near that big again. Accordingly politics will become more representative in the near future (say after two voting periods - 10 years), where the ANC will be in charge most likely but the other parties will wield considerable parliamentary influence as well. This can only be a healthy and good thing for a democracy.
Let me put it this way: I'm a white male Masters student at a South African university, and I have no intention of leaving the country when I graduate. I feel positive about the country's prospects. A good intro to the country can be found at this site, while this is the official internet gateway to the country.
Onto the cricket...
Yes, a Test cricket match, one of the two major international varieties, is scheduled to take 5 days. The other version takes about 6 hours, while a newer, shorter version recently introduced takes about 3 hours. The basic rules are explained here much better than I am capable of doing so. I personally think it is the most awesome of sports, which may of course be slighly tempered by the fact that South Africa is quite good at it...
An excellent cricketing link if you have a further interest is here.
Hope this is concise enough. Always a pleasure to spread some info about my home or my favourite sport!
There is no equivalent in cricket for that kind of thing though - the standard argument intensifier, in South Africa at least, is a plank, golf club or what we call a knobkerrie - an Afrikaans word for a weapon used by the Zulu tribe of South Africa. What a font of useless trivia I'm turning into...
Also, cricket bats are always made of English Willow, in England and around the world - it's unthinkable these days to use anything else. I don't know what makes it good for cricket bats, but it's always used.
You may have noticed that I'm a bit of a cricket fan, and that I'm South African...
In that case, cricket doesn't really have one. Many manufacturers make bats - Gunn & Moore, Stuart Surrey (SS), Kookaburra, Wizard and Wasp are just a few, there are many more. Depending on which professional cricketer you choose to believe, one maufacturer's bat is better than the others, but there is no one bat which stands out as the epitome of all that is good about a cricket bat, with the other bats unfit to touch the English Willow it's made of.
A link or two to bat manufacturers if you want some graphical confirmation:
Wasp's Bats
Gunn and Moore's Bats
Hope this helps.
Thanks for mentioning that, I wasn't aware of the FBI's view on the matter.
To nitpick: I know Tibet is under the Red Dragon's wing and spammers would be pretty daft to operate from there, but I just picked it at random.
Of course, there are plenty of countries in Africa and scattered throughout the world that are failed states without functioning law enforcement...
It just seems to me that it's a little too easy for scammers from other places to lay the blame on Nigeria and continue merrily on their way.
You are correct, the term 419 does refer to the Nigerian penal code. However, it has long since been used as a general term for the type of letter we all know and love promising untold riches because you are a person of esteemed trustworthiness.
It is in such general use these days to describe any such letter that it no longer can be applied solely to Nigeria - only Nigeria can fix violations of its 419 code, but many other countries, African and otherwise, need to fix violations of their own versions of the laws (whatever number they may have.)
Why do we always assume these people are actually Nigerian? From the way they write, they clearly aren't native English speakers, but there are many countries here in Africa that don't speak English fluently.
They could be Zimbabwean as an example, or maybe they're Kenyan - hell, maybe they're South African like me. For that matter, what if they're Tibetan?
[Note: Countries picked at random as places where English is not universally spoken].
I don't think blaming the Nigerians for all the spamming and demanding that Nigeria fix the problem is realistic. Let the Nigerian government sort out its own 419'ers (whether it will or not is not the point of my comment), but other countries have spammers too - the western world has its own share as well, after all.
I've seen plenty of spam purporting to come from Zimbabwe or even from nonexistant government departments of my own country.
Would that not make the Mexican criminal a one-armed bandit?
Do you happen to have any URL's with more on this? You've piqued my curiosity...
Yes, I am aware that google will yield many should I just take a look, but I thought someone that wrote about might have more relevant links than the tons of dross google would probably serve up.
Obviously you would find it difficult to use metric if all the products you are using are made with imperial measurements that are "nice" numbers. Just bear in mind that other peoples products come with "nice" metric measurements.
Also, I prefer metric becasue I was born after it was adopted and it's all I know, certainly. But it does seem that if everything is ten more than the previous level it's a lot more consistent than imperial where the number of x's in y differs depending on what type of measurement you're talking about.
Here in SA you need pretty good school marks to get into university, and most people do not have a degree, nor is it considered unusual not to have one. Is there perhaps a danger in the US that with so many people studying, the ones who will truly excel and increase your research output are being bogged under by those who are there "because they can" and not necessarily because the degree and research is what they want to do in life?
Perhaps I don't fully understand the US law or methods US cops use, but I must admit I really don't see how taking an accepted practice and implementing exactly the same thing with a bit of technology is suddenly a serious problem.