Yeah, but before the 1985 "Back to the Future" movie came out, how many "general public" people knew the prefix "Giga"? Yeah, even though Professor Brown should have known better than to pronounce 'gigawatts' as 'jiggawatts'. I guess you can't expect scriptwriters to know much about science. So where was the science advisor on this flick?
Too true. While I do do a lot of my shopping at Wal-Mart (because of the low prices, natch!) I still occasionally get stuck with junk. Such as the $5 scientific calculator I've got in front of me right now. It's branded as 'Le World' and has a 'made in China' sticker on the back. I bought it a few months ago thinking "Hey, a really small sci-calc, and at a great price, too!" Well, it didn't take more than two days for the 'hinged' cover to fall off, which didn't bother me too much. What did bother me, however, was that a couple of months later the printing on the unit's buttons started wearing off! Now I've got a calculator that works - if only I can remember which button does what! Buyer beware!
You're right, it is pretty recent. It began changing about when PCs were introduced. I don't think that there can be any other cause for it. Actually, it should have been this way all along. Logic dictates (sorry to sound like Mr. Spock) that since the period ends the sentence, not the quote, it should be on the outside. Maybe it started on the inside because it looked better that way.
And yes, you're right about apostrophes being used in contractions. I overlooked that. It was late and my brain must have been a bit contracted then.:D
i don't think rules of grammar should arbitrarily change They didn't arbitrarily change. The widespread use of personal computers changed them. 1000's is now possessive-only and 1000s is now the only accepted way of pluralizing 1000. Consider how you would pluralize an acronym: XYZ is singular nonpossessive, XYZs is plural nonpossessive, XYZ's is singular possessive, XYZs' is plural possessive. For a similar reason that when closing a sentence with a quote you must place the period after the endquote mark, not before it. The reasoning is that the quote marks belong only to the quote while the period belongs to the entire sentence, not just the quote. Similarly, an apostrophe now always denotes possessivity (except when you bracket a word or phrase with two of them). It didn't used to matter (much) which way you did things, now it does, due to the unforgiving way computers handle text. This requires us fuzzy-logiced humans to be more (not less!) careful with our use of language. Of course, considering how much mutilated English I see every day (especially online), no doubt I'm in the minority here. I realize that people can't help thinking that their technology will compensate for their laziness (hence spell-checkers, etc.) but this attitude is what is leading all of us into an appallingly pro-ignorance future. Oops, sorry, I'm off on a rant again.
In my experience most people (religious or otherwise) get irrational when their core beliefs are challenged. They will spout logical fallacies left and right...
This seems to be a psychological defense mechanism...
The people I've known who don't get irrational when their core beliefs are challenged were usually philosophers (by formal study). Also, they seemed to like it when they suddenly realized that the issues were deeper and less clear than previously thought. In other words, they didn't find uncertainty disturbing, hence they didn't need defense mechanisms, and hence they could remain rational when being challenged, and hence they could actually authentically be considered open minded. You're closer to the basic truth than you might realize. It's not a psychological defense mechanism, it's more along the lines of a genetic defect. One that interferes with the proper operation of the person's critical thinking ability and that predisposes him/her to need a "superior 'knows-all' father figure" to fall back on in times of uncertainty. This defect differentiates the religious mind from the scientific mind. This is why religious people get agitated when their beliefs are shown to be false and why scientific/philosophic people don't. Perhaps the brains of religious people have a tighter connection between their logical sides and their emotional sides as opposed to the brains of scientifically-minded people. (This could also be why 'miracles' seem to be seen only by the more emotional people among us.) I think this warrants some serious research.
We will inevitably evolve into these machines. If we ever get seriously into the exploration of interstellar space we will have to. As mere humans our meager lifetimes would never be adequate for this.
Besides being a comment upon MikeBabcock's post above, this is also an addendum to my reply to AHumbleOpinion's post a bit higher up.
The best way to understand this issue is to visualize it from an individualist point-of-view. There are two entities involved here, you and the map/virtual globe/window/webpage/whathaveyou. The only one you have control over is yourself. You are only one tiny little human being and cannot in any way affect (i.e. edit/crop/filter/etc.) the other entity that you are interacting with. The only thing you can do is to change your point-of-view of it. So just think of it as your cyberself floating over a vast immovable landscape and moving your location around. Using this analogy you would zoom in to get yourself closer to the immovable map, not the other way around.
This also applies to the viewing of text documents and webpages. You don't know just how long the document/webpage is because you have only a small window to use for viewing it. So you drag the scrollbar/slider down to move your limited viewpoint further down the very long document/webpage.
Using the pdf-style grab&drag method is the opposite of this but that is not as much of a problem as it could be because the pointer conveniently changes to a hand to imply that you are about to 'grab' the document.
Moving the fingers apart to zoom out makes sense to me, you are enlarging the piece of the world/map to be displayed on the display. What you are describing is known to us normal humans as 'zooming in', not 'zooming out'. Think of it as if you were hovering far above the Earth and you wanted to get closer to a particular area. You would zoom in, that is, you would get closer to the Earth.
It's perfectly understandable. Most everyone from the past few generations seems to be a careless slacker (of one kind or another, more or less) who obviously thinks that proper English usage is totally passé. Even you, it seems:
...proof-reading there words......site Op's... s/b 'site's ops'
...Punctuation......Letter's... Five mistakes! Maybe the next time you feel the urge to criticize someone else's spelling and grammar you'll check your own (thoroughly) first.
Hey now! Don't knock the Pinto! I once owned one. A very nice one. And it was still (almost as) nice even after the hatchback (and rear bumper) was caved in more than a foot after some nitwit with no brakes rammed its rear. And I'm still here - no explosion, even though the car was not yet equipped with one of those gas tank guard plates. Was that luck? Or could it have been a case of the public's (mistaken?) belief in its exaggerated vulnerability in thinking think that the car was badly designed? Who knows? I wish I still had the car. It'd be worth some serious bucks today.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, even though Professor Brown should have known better than to pronounce 'gigawatts' as 'jiggawatts'. I guess you can't expect scriptwriters to know much about science. So where was the science advisor on this flick?
I dunno. I sure wouldn't want 512 men-in-black hounding me .
Too true. While I do do a lot of my shopping at Wal-Mart (because of the low prices, natch!) I still occasionally get stuck with junk. Such as the $5 scientific calculator I've got in front of me right now. It's branded as 'Le World' and has a 'made in China' sticker on the back. I bought it a few months ago thinking "Hey, a really small sci-calc, and at a great price, too!" Well, it didn't take more than two days for the 'hinged' cover to fall off, which didn't bother me too much. What did bother me, however, was that a couple of months later the printing on the unit's buttons started wearing off! Now I've got a calculator that works - if only I can remember which button does what! Buyer beware!
That's a bit irregular.
You're right, it is pretty recent. It began changing about when PCs were introduced. I don't think that there can be any other cause for it. Actually, it should have been this way all along. Logic dictates (sorry to sound like Mr. Spock) that since the period ends the sentence, not the quote, it should be on the outside. Maybe it started on the inside because it looked better that way.
:D
And yes, you're right about apostrophes being used in contractions. I overlooked that. It was late and my brain must have been a bit contracted then.
They didn't arbitrarily change. The widespread use of personal computers changed them. 1000's is now possessive-only and 1000s is now the only accepted way of pluralizing 1000. Consider how you would pluralize an acronym: XYZ is singular nonpossessive, XYZs is plural nonpossessive, XYZ's is singular possessive, XYZs' is plural possessive. For a similar reason that when closing a sentence with a quote you must place the period after the endquote mark, not before it. The reasoning is that the quote marks belong only to the quote while the period belongs to the entire sentence, not just the quote. Similarly, an apostrophe now always denotes possessivity (except when you bracket a word or phrase with two of them). It didn't used to matter (much) which way you did things, now it does, due to the unforgiving way computers handle text. This requires us fuzzy-logiced humans to be more (not less!) careful with our use of language. Of course, considering how much mutilated English I see every day (especially online), no doubt I'm in the minority here. I realize that people can't help thinking that their technology will compensate for their laziness (hence spell-checkers, etc.) but this attitude is what is leading all of us into an appallingly pro-ignorance future. Oops, sorry, I'm off on a rant again.
Could you be referring to xerography? This is the process that photostat machines use and where Xerox got its name.
Hey, stop dangling a carrot in front of us. How's about giving us some 'sorted' details on that? Maybe start a blog?
I believe you meant 'sordid', not 'sorted'. ROFL!
This seems to be a psychological defense mechanism...
The people I've known who don't get irrational when their core beliefs are challenged were usually philosophers (by formal study). Also, they seemed to like it when they suddenly realized that the issues were deeper and less clear than previously thought. In other words, they didn't find uncertainty disturbing, hence they didn't need defense mechanisms, and hence they could remain rational when being challenged, and hence they could actually authentically be considered open minded.
You're closer to the basic truth than you might realize. It's not a psychological defense mechanism, it's more along the lines of a genetic defect. One that interferes with the proper operation of the person's critical thinking ability and that predisposes him/her to need a "superior 'knows-all' father figure" to fall back on in times of uncertainty. This defect differentiates the religious mind from the scientific mind. This is why religious people get agitated when their beliefs are shown to be false and why scientific/philosophic people don't. Perhaps the brains of religious people have a tighter connection between their logical sides and their emotional sides as opposed to the brains of scientifically-minded people. (This could also be why 'miracles' seem to be seen only by the more emotional people among us.) I think this warrants some serious research.
I'll bet you're a Republican (or maybe even a Conservative).
More bad spelling! (Or, rather, punctuation.) Sheesh!
If we ever get seriously into the exploration of interstellar space we will have to. As mere humans our meager lifetimes would never be adequate for this.
Besides being a comment upon MikeBabcock's post above, this is also an addendum to my reply to AHumbleOpinion's post a bit higher up.
The best way to understand this issue is to visualize it from an individualist point-of-view. There are two entities involved here, you and the map/virtual globe/window/webpage/whathaveyou. The only one you have control over is yourself. You are only one tiny little human being and cannot in any way affect (i.e. edit/crop/filter/etc.) the other entity that you are interacting with. The only thing you can do is to change your point-of-view of it. So just think of it as your cyberself floating over a vast immovable landscape and moving your location around. Using this analogy you would zoom in to get yourself closer to the immovable map, not the other way around.
This also applies to the viewing of text documents and webpages. You don't know just how long the document/webpage is because you have only a small window to use for viewing it. So you drag the scrollbar/slider down to move your limited viewpoint further down the very long document/webpage.
Using the pdf-style grab&drag method is the opposite of this but that is not as much of a problem as it could be because the pointer conveniently changes to a hand to imply that you are about to 'grab' the document.
What you are describing is known to us normal humans as 'zooming in', not 'zooming out'. Think of it as if you were hovering far above the Earth and you wanted to get closer to a particular area. You would zoom in, that is, you would get closer to the Earth.
Those dang Mexicans added an 'El' to beginning of it and hauled it away!
Theodore Sturgeon said it all: 90% of everything is crap.
At least he/she knows "there're" and "entirety". Two pluses against one minus.
Oops, you got me, pal. I've just got too much on my mind right now to look that closely at simple posts, even if they're not so simple. Kudos to you.
...proof-reading there words...
... P unctuation...Five mistakes! Maybe the next time you feel the urge to criticize someone else's spelling and grammar you'll check your own (thoroughly) first.
Preys???
Very informative. This should have been modded much higher than a mere 1.
That's very interesting. How about providing some factual references to back up that claim?
Hey now! Don't knock the Pinto! I once owned one. A very nice one. And it was still (almost as) nice even after the hatchback (and rear bumper) was caved in more than a foot after some nitwit with no brakes rammed its rear. And I'm still here - no explosion, even though the car was not yet equipped with one of those gas tank guard plates. Was that luck? Or could it have been a case of the public's (mistaken?) belief in its exaggerated vulnerability in thinking think that the car was badly designed? Who knows? I wish I still had the car. It'd be worth some serious bucks today.