Have you ever been working on a paper at the last minute, say the night before a conference, and found yourself with rather limited time for proofreading? Situations like that happen, and even if you prefer not to use a spellchecker, it's a tool that could be allowing you to do a better job when you don't have the time to be as meticulous as you'd like to be. I'd never blindly rely on one, but they can certainly help speed up the process.
The thing that seems to set people off is the fact that spelling and grammar checkers make mistakes, but maybe it would help if you tried to think of it differently. The spell checker isn't telling your where the spelling errors are, but where they're more likely to be. Think of it as a purely statistical result.
Now, as you're proofreading, you're searching through the text for errors. The result of the spelling/grammar check tells you where the probability for errors is the highest. What makes the most sense, a blind uniform search or one where you spend a little more time where you know errors are most likely?
"People would not put up with a spam filter that randomly deleted emails from their bank while marking penis enlargement spam "important", so why do they put up with grammar checkers that effectively do the same?"
This analogy is inherently flawed. The two things are only comparable if you click "fix all" which is, of course, incredibly stupid.
I think you're misinterpreting my statement that "it still will catch bad grammar 9 times out of 10". In my experience, this has been true. This doesn't mean that 9 of the 10 things flagged for bad grammar are, in fact, bad. It means that 9 of the 10 actual grammatical mistakes are caught. Along with the actual mistakes, a moderate number of false positives are also flagged.
I plugged this post along with your quote into word and it gives me no errors in either spelling or grammar. So, it seems that either you're seriously overestimating the false positive rate or you have a particularly complex writing style.
"There are way too many words in the kind of things that I write that make the spell checker freak out. "
You're a big fan of gibberish, eh?
I find that even in technical writing it's worth going through and adding the jargon I need to the dictionary. After the first few papers, it's pretty aware of the words I need and I've caught more than a few typos I would have missed otherwise.
"I certainly wouldn't tell my students to use it if I was a professor."
Why the hell not? It's far from perfect, but it still will catch bad grammar 9 times out of 10, so I fail to see how this makes it useless.
Yes, you still have to proofread. However, proofreading is imperfect, especially when it's your own work and you don't have time to set it down and come back to it with a fresh perspective. At least the grammar checker will highlight most of your mistakes, and the false positives can be quickly evaluated and ignored.
Yes, it could be significantly better, but that doesn't mean it's useless. You just have to know its limitations.
"Twice in the past year, I've submitted patches to the Linux kernel that contained code that was either copyrighted and/or patented by my employer. Both times my patches were accepted."
uhh... are you admitting to trying to poison the kernel? It'd be nice if you gave a reason for doing that and said whether the code is still in there.
You're a bit too sheltered. Here's a remedial homework assignment to make up for your lack of education:
Go to the store and buy -A 12 pack of pabst blue ribbon or equivalent -A funnel -four feet of plastic hose
Your assigment is to find the fastest way to get the most beer into your stomach. Bonus points for finishing the 12 pack before you puke (with partial credit for fininshing the 12 pack even after you puke)
HFSS is fine and all when you need three dimensional simulation but it's SLOOOOOOW so no wonder they're hitting the limitations of the machines. 64 bit XP beta has been out for a while, so if they were really on the ball they'd have a build by now.
To address both replies, small, simple screens can impart information without costing even a significant fraction of the shuffle, or using much battery life.
Sure, big fancy color screens are expensive power hogs, but that doesn't rule out any display at all. If this was a $30 MP3 player at wallmart, then i could see no display as you'd really be trying to prune every cost without regard to anything but the most rudimentary functionality. But it's not.
I agree with the "consoles are for games" sentiment a lot of the time, but any game with an FPS interface will, all else being equal, be vastly better on a pc due to control issues.
I remember when the quake3 online console version came out (dreamcast?) and someone found a way to let pc players connect to DC servers. It was fun for about 15 minutes, winning a map at like 93-4 or whatever, but watching those people struggle while you ran circles around them just made it that much clearer that you need a kb and mouse.
That's the only reason I bothered to make fun of him for it. We're all fallible, but you have to learn to take advantage of the methods available to prevent mistakes whenever possible.
Of course, we can always forget to do that, being fallible...
That guy claims you have no chargeback rights with a "debit card" (I've always heard them referred to as check cards when used as a credit card, and only debit cards when used as an ATM card, but he seems to have his own convention)
This claim goes against everything I've ever heard, though admittedly I've only heard it from check card issuing companies.
So is this guy a crank, or is there some big conspiracy and the banks are all lying to us? Without further info, I know which one I'm assuming is correct.
"I guess I'm in the mode that if a teacher writes something on the board, then it must be important."
While this may be true for professors who write some of the material on the board, it also means that by definition you're writing off everything a power point only prof says! In some cases that may be warranted, but I somewhat doubt its general applicability.
I think at least part of the reason profs use powerpoint is because they're used to it from giving talks at conferences, proposals, etc. Of course, if the material resembles a conference talk more than a lecture, their lectures really do suck.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever been working on a paper at the last minute, say the night before a conference, and found yourself with rather limited time for proofreading? Situations like that happen, and even if you prefer not to use a spellchecker, it's a tool that could be allowing you to do a better job when you don't have the time to be as meticulous as you'd like to be. I'd never blindly rely on one, but they can certainly help speed up the process.
The thing that seems to set people off is the fact that spelling and grammar checkers make mistakes, but maybe it would help if you tried to think of it differently. The spell checker isn't telling your where the spelling errors are, but where they're more likely to be. Think of it as a purely statistical result.
Now, as you're proofreading, you're searching through the text for errors. The result of the spelling/grammar check tells you where the probability for errors is the highest. What makes the most sense, a blind uniform search or one where you spend a little more time where you know errors are most likely?
"People would not put up with a spam filter that randomly deleted emails from their bank while marking penis enlargement spam "important", so why do they put up with grammar checkers that effectively do the same?"
This analogy is inherently flawed. The two things are only comparable if you click "fix all" which is, of course, incredibly stupid.
I think you're misinterpreting my statement that "it still will catch bad grammar 9 times out of 10". In my experience, this has been true. This doesn't mean that 9 of the 10 things flagged for bad grammar are, in fact, bad. It means that 9 of the 10 actual grammatical mistakes are caught. Along with the actual mistakes, a moderate number of false positives are also flagged.
I plugged this post along with your quote into word and it gives me no errors in either spelling or grammar. So, it seems that either you're seriously overestimating the false positive rate or you have a particularly complex writing style.
"I don't know much about US high school education, but I would expect that students coming into college would know how to write grammatical English"
The latter part of this statement makes me really believe the former.
"There are way too many words in the kind of things that I write that make the spell checker freak out. "
You're a big fan of gibberish, eh?
I find that even in technical writing it's worth going through and adding the jargon I need to the dictionary. After the first few papers, it's pretty aware of the words I need and I've caught more than a few typos I would have missed otherwise.
"I certainly wouldn't tell my students to use it if I was a professor."
Why the hell not? It's far from perfect, but it still will catch bad grammar 9 times out of 10, so I fail to see how this makes it useless.
Yes, you still have to proofread. However, proofreading is imperfect, especially when it's your own work and you don't have time to set it down and come back to it with a fresh perspective. At least the grammar checker will highlight most of your mistakes, and the false positives can be quickly evaluated and ignored.
Yes, it could be significantly better, but that doesn't mean it's useless. You just have to know its limitations.
"It's a lot like if your car is stolen. Just tough shit, as far as they're concerned."
No way. I had my car stolen in LA, and even though they found it the cop told me that they had detectives working in shifts to find the thieves.
Why does he still have good karma then? If he didn't have a bonus i would have been more likely to question it. Weird.
"Twice in the past year, I've submitted patches to the Linux kernel that contained code that was either copyrighted and/or patented by my employer. Both times my patches were accepted."
uhh... are you admitting to trying to poison the kernel? It'd be nice if you gave a reason for doing that and said whether the code is still in there.
"We also wouldn't have the genetic variation required for evolution. So this obviously isn't something that can happen ALL the time."
This is exactly my point, I was trying to head off the creationists trying to use this as a wedge to "prove" evolution is false.
This would only be true for these specific plants and only if this mechanism ALWAYS prevented mutation.
If these conditions applied to us, we wouldn't have cancer.
You're a bit too sheltered. Here's a remedial homework assignment to make up for your lack of education:
Go to the store and buy
-A 12 pack of pabst blue ribbon or equivalent
-A funnel
-four feet of plastic hose
Your assigment is to find the fastest way to get the most beer into your stomach. Bonus points for finishing the 12 pack before you puke (with partial credit for fininshing the 12 pack even after you puke)
"ladies, groggily add "I'm so wasted" towards the end"
Ahh, the oft heard mating call of the sorority chick.
They stole my social security number? That's totally lame. Pass the bong.
(gurgling sounds)
What's a social security number?
"Safari has run like crap on my wife's iBook since about a week after she got"
"I only bought it because I was sick of playing sysadmin for every windows box in my extended family."
You consider your wife part of your extended family?
Let me guess - you sleep in separate twin beds.
HFSS is fine and all when you need three dimensional simulation but it's SLOOOOOOW so no wonder they're hitting the limitations of the machines. 64 bit XP beta has been out for a while, so if they were really on the ball they'd have a build by now.
:)
Make your antennas planar and its a lot easier
Is your group doing antenna design with a commercial product like IE3D or is it homegrown software?
I'm just curious as to how readily available commercial EM software that takes advantage of AMD64 is.
To address both replies, small, simple screens can impart information without costing even a significant fraction of the shuffle, or using much battery life.
Sure, big fancy color screens are expensive power hogs, but that doesn't rule out any display at all. If this was a $30 MP3 player at wallmart, then i could see no display as you'd really be trying to prune every cost without regard to anything but the most rudimentary functionality. But it's not.
I agree with the "consoles are for games" sentiment a lot of the time, but any game with an FPS interface will, all else being equal, be vastly better on a pc due to control issues.
I remember when the quake3 online console version came out (dreamcast?) and someone found a way to let pc players connect to DC servers. It was fun for about 15 minutes, winning a map at like 93-4 or whatever, but watching those people struggle while you ran circles around them just made it that much clearer that you need a kb and mouse.
"And umm why do you need a screen for a simple mp3 player like a ipod shuffle?"
Are you joking? The only reason to NOT have a screen is to make it cheap.
I can see arguing for a simple GUI on an MP3 player, but are you really arguing that ignorance is bliss?
Yeah, I know, I got nothing against him.
I'm just impressed that i got a +5 for trollin Bruce Perens on slashdot. Do I get some kind of nerd award for that?
That's the only reason I bothered to make fun of him for it. We're all fallible, but you have to learn to take advantage of the methods available to prevent mistakes whenever possible.
Of course, we can always forget to do that, being fallible...
That guy claims you have no chargeback rights with a "debit card" (I've always heard them referred to as check cards when used as a credit card, and only debit cards when used as an ATM card, but he seems to have his own convention)
This claim goes against everything I've ever heard, though admittedly I've only heard it from check card issuing companies.
So is this guy a crank, or is there some big conspiracy and the banks are all lying to us? Without further info, I know which one I'm assuming is correct.
Thanks for taking the time to format that by hand, I'm sure it was tedious.
Yeah, nothing like that could ever happen here!
"I guess I'm in the mode that if a teacher writes something on the board, then it must be important."
While this may be true for professors who write some of the material on the board, it also means that by definition you're writing off everything a power point only prof says! In some cases that may be warranted, but I somewhat doubt its general applicability.
I think at least part of the reason profs use powerpoint is because they're used to it from giving talks at conferences, proposals, etc. Of course, if the material resembles a conference talk more than a lecture, their lectures really do suck.