If you consider the close example "I READ it", you don't know if it's present or past tense. That's a loss of information. Anyway, the point is moot, no one in France is seriously pushing for changing the language. People even want to keep their local idioms, although they're slowly dying out.
It's actually something that pops up every few decades. Each time without effect, because everyone is used to make do with AZERTY. There already are French-optimized layouts of course (dvorak-fr, bepo, etc), but they are not standardized and are sadly probably too different to get any kind of traction.
Not sure what you are talking about. The point here is that French people can't properly type their own language on their keyboards. It's not about legislating the language, it's about being able to type it correctly.
Not using a word because you can't type it easily is annoying. As is realizing that because you didn't type the accented version of a letter, your sentence changes meaning.
In short, it's about giving people control so that they can actually write whatever they want.
Use a DSLR if you want to take and keep nice pictures. It's what a DSRL is designed for. It might be bulky, but I'd rather carry that and take a beautiful picture, than not and get a flat or blurry picture on my phone.
Cellphones can come in handy, but the pictures they take are flat and boring. They're also very slow and suck in low light. They're nice to share pictures quickly with family, but they won't be the pictures you come back to years later...
I don't own a mirrorless camera, but maybe it can be a nice middle ground?
Well, in France for example, class actions just don't exist, but we do have special judges for small disputes that seem to work pretty well, and don't even require you to get a lawyer.
For starters, why would you care about homicides by guns in particular?
Isn't this all about guns?
Your argument about rape being prevented by guns is weird. Also, it's completely false. You say UK has 4x more rapes than US, but wikipedia has 28.6/100,000 rapes for US and 24.1/100,000 for UK. France has 16.6/100,000.
Well, for example, if you look at this wikipedia page you would see that in the US there are 4.14 deaths by homicides with guns for every 100,000 pop, while in France, where there is strict gun control, there are only 0.44/100,000.
I suspect there are a lot less police-related deaths too since French police do not assume everyone has a gun and therefore should be less likely to use their own weapon. In Germany, in 2011, police shot a grand total of 85 bullets, with 6 fatalities...
In what world can owning a car be compared to owning a gun? Quick reminder: one is designed to go from one place to another, the other is designed to kill other people.
Ironically, independent is apparently spelled that way because the English couldn't (or wouldn't) spell the French "indépendant" correctly.
To get back to the point, communicating means conveying meaning to another. If you do not play by the grammatical rules, you lessen the probability of your meaning getting across, because they are a standard that all parties implicitely decide to use. English has comparatively few grammatical rules, but I can assure you that errors in French can easily alter and degrade understanding. Also, if you put the strain of trying to understand you on others, you are just wasting their time because you did not want to spare yours. Others recognize it and a less liable to repeat the effort.
You seem to imply that the meaning of a message is independant of the message itself. That's clearly not true. A small grammatical error can dramatically alter the overall meaning of a sentence. How far do you rely on the recipient to put himself in your shoes to try to infer what you meant?
Grammar used to be something that you learned in school. Using correct grammar means that you can express your thoughts clearly, which means that you can think clearly. You can use tools to catch typing mistakes, but if you need them to correct grammar, the problem lies with you.
For private conversations, maybe. At work, though, bad grammar always makes you look like an idiot. How would you like to hire someone who can't even spell correctly on their resume?
This happened to me once. At first I thought it was a hard drive problem, it took me a while to figure it out. I lost many pictures in the process, and had rsync'd corrupted files over my backup.
To me the problem now is: how to make sure what I'm backing up is not corrupted and that my previous backup, about to be overwritten, is not cleaner than my source?
They have more than 20 millions users in France. Facebook is probably better off paying a few lawyers to modify their ToS.
They do have servers and offices in France.
If you consider the close example "I READ it", you don't know if it's present or past tense. That's a loss of information. Anyway, the point is moot, no one in France is seriously pushing for changing the language. People even want to keep their local idioms, although they're slowly dying out.
Have you maybe thought that other languages use accents and extra letters because they need them to describe phonemes that are not used in English?
It's actually something that pops up every few decades. Each time without effect, because everyone is used to make do with AZERTY. There already are French-optimized layouts of course (dvorak-fr, bepo, etc), but they are not standardized and are sadly probably too different to get any kind of traction.
Revising a language because of a keyboard layout sounds much more of an exercise in futility than just switching to a better layout.
Not sure what you are talking about. The point here is that French people can't properly type their own language on their keyboards. It's not about legislating the language, it's about being able to type it correctly. Not using a word because you can't type it easily is annoying. As is realizing that because you didn't type the accented version of a letter, your sentence changes meaning. In short, it's about giving people control so that they can actually write whatever they want.
Gogs is very nice and easy to deploy. Not a full-featured as github, but getting there.
Use a DSLR if you want to take and keep nice pictures. It's what a DSRL is designed for. It might be bulky, but I'd rather carry that and take a beautiful picture, than not and get a flat or blurry picture on my phone. Cellphones can come in handy, but the pictures they take are flat and boring. They're also very slow and suck in low light. They're nice to share pictures quickly with family, but they won't be the pictures you come back to years later... I don't own a mirrorless camera, but maybe it can be a nice middle ground?
yes, you can.
Well, in France for example, class actions just don't exist, but we do have special judges for small disputes that seem to work pretty well, and don't even require you to get a lawyer.
For starters, why would you care about homicides by guns in particular?
Isn't this all about guns?
Your argument about rape being prevented by guns is weird. Also, it's completely false. You say UK has 4x more rapes than US, but wikipedia has 28.6/100,000 rapes for US and 24.1/100,000 for UK. France has 16.6/100,000.
Statistics plainly doesn't support your argument.
Well, for example, if you look at this wikipedia page you would see that in the US there are 4.14 deaths by homicides with guns for every 100,000 pop, while in France, where there is strict gun control, there are only 0.44/100,000. I suspect there are a lot less police-related deaths too since French police do not assume everyone has a gun and therefore should be less likely to use their own weapon. In Germany, in 2011, police shot a grand total of 85 bullets, with 6 fatalities...
You must be mistaken. Accidents only happen to other people. And accidents only happen to idiots.
TFA isn't about American politics. Neither was my comment.
That's not really a problem since according to TFA they can be opened in seconds. Your 3-year old can even retrieve it for you!
In what world can owning a car be compared to owning a gun? Quick reminder: one is designed to go from one place to another, the other is designed to kill other people.
Best way to be gun safe is to have no gun in the first place.
Ironically, independent is apparently spelled that way because the English couldn't (or wouldn't) spell the French "indépendant" correctly. To get back to the point, communicating means conveying meaning to another. If you do not play by the grammatical rules, you lessen the probability of your meaning getting across, because they are a standard that all parties implicitely decide to use. English has comparatively few grammatical rules, but I can assure you that errors in French can easily alter and degrade understanding. Also, if you put the strain of trying to understand you on others, you are just wasting their time because you did not want to spare yours. Others recognize it and a less liable to repeat the effort.
You seem to imply that the meaning of a message is independant of the message itself. That's clearly not true. A small grammatical error can dramatically alter the overall meaning of a sentence. How far do you rely on the recipient to put himself in your shoes to try to infer what you meant?
Grammar used to be something that you learned in school. Using correct grammar means that you can express your thoughts clearly, which means that you can think clearly. You can use tools to catch typing mistakes, but if you need them to correct grammar, the problem lies with you.
For private conversations, maybe. At work, though, bad grammar always makes you look like an idiot. How would you like to hire someone who can't even spell correctly on their resume?
You're forgetting the part where using improper grammar makes you look like an idiot.
This happened to me once. At first I thought it was a hard drive problem, it took me a while to figure it out. I lost many pictures in the process, and had rsync'd corrupted files over my backup. To me the problem now is: how to make sure what I'm backing up is not corrupted and that my previous backup, about to be overwritten, is not cleaner than my source?
The quote in the summary is funny. Nietzsche wrote something much more interesting and thorough about cause and effect and what it means for science in 1882. That's right, Wired's newfound worry about science today has already been dealt with 130 YEARS AGO.
http://books.google.fr/books?id=Vf8KETLiKXMC&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=nietzsche+gay+science+cause+effect&source=bl&ots=7pQG91yPvP&sig=JFwAumRAPzIqqwwMDk2XPbpqqIE&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=X0spT-fROYje8QODzZ2kAw&ved=0CFoQ6AEwAw