Reading your evaluation, I think I have to agree. This guy seems to be deciding language classification more based on it conforming to his model, rather than actually some objective measurement. So, basically, of course his regressions and statistics are going to bear out... he basically chose his classifications to be sure!
"...in der Bibliothek gehen." The dative preposition "in" changes "die" to "der". The more you know.
"in" is not an exclusive dative preposition. Those are: "aus außer bei mit nach seit von zu". It is also not an exclusively accusative preposition: "bis durch entlang für gegen ohne um wider". It is also not one of the even fewer ones that command the genitive. It is in fact, an accusative/dative preposition.
When a preposition takes both dative and accusative, the accusative refers to going TO the object, while the dative refers to moving AT the object. So, "Ich gehe in der Bibliothek" means that I was already in the library, and am now walking around the library, while "Ich gehe in die Bibliothek" means that I am going to go into the library.
As such, the GP post was indeed correct all along... The more you know.
Wrong, both of you. Yes, they are different, and as a result of those differences one or the other may be superior/inferior to the other from certain specific points of view.
Use the right tool for the job, some work better for some things and some don't. Deal with it.
Indeed... you've said a little bit better what I was hoping to say. Thank you.
Oh definitely, but for example the Tegra3 despite having four cores shuts them all down most of the time, and runs a 5th power-saving core. All of this is done silently behind the scenes, and so they never know that they're usually only running on a low-power efficiency core, rather than the roaring engine in the back.
It's like having a two-cylinder engine that is used during stop-and-go traffic (you know, the majority of what you do during your commute) that allows you to drive your Ferrari down to the store without having to fill up on gas on the way back home. But any time you have to impress someone, and pull out the e-peen, then you can just "drop the hammer" and the engine switches over to the high-performance v12, and you go "ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
It's definitely all about marketing. This is the best way that they could come up with to let you have your cake and eat it, too... "it has 4 cores, _AND_ it has excellent battery life! *mumbling under breath* because it is almost always running on an economy core unless you're showing off..."
The hard core android fan brags about having four cores in their phone, even if everything they're doing could easily be handled by a single core, gets its battery drained four times faster, and doesn't have a noticable performance improvement over the competition.
You mean, "even though their phone just turns off the three other cores 95% of the time anyways". And in fact, some even turn off all four cores, and switch over to a super power-saving core that has especially low performance, but is well enough to play music and HW-decoded video.
People who complain about this or that language being a piece of crap because of X and Y, are usually deadset in one particular mode of thinking, and cannot adapt. The question the original author should have been asking was not "how can I make this tolerable", but rather, "how can I best learn the correct way to use this tool?"
To put things in perspective, I was already doing a lot of crazy command-line parsing before I ever started using C. And when I started using C, I was upset, because I knew what I wanted to do, and I could easily accomplish it in BASIC, but C was different. The whole paradigm was new to me, and I had to learn to adapt. I haven't forgotten that, and I try to keep myself from becoming entrenched in any particular mode of thinking... it leads to inflexibly dictating that all else is inferior.
Damn you! That's the first time I've thought of that movie in years. Now it will take another five to get that gawdawful piece of crap out of my head. It's like the goatse of movies.
Huh, I never thought it was that bad... rather it was more like Rebecca Black's Friday... you know, deep down you want to like it because it has catchy elements, but it falls into that uncanny valley, where you can't particularly explain what is wrong with it. Like it's trying way too hard to be good.
Rather, I didn't think it was BAD, it just wasn't good enough to be GOOD. Which oddly makes it even worse than bad, because it's just "hoohum", or "boring".
It's no more PC than saying that it's racist to suggest that people with African ancestors have an increased chance of sickle cell anemia.
Meaning, it may align with "PC usage", but it's backed up by scientific fact. So, the protest against PC by the people who demand that the Truth is brutally honest, and we shouldn't sugar coat things, falls apart. And the rebel-against-PC response should be to such people, "suck it up, AAVE (previously known as Black English Vernacular) is a perfectly valid register and/or dialect of speech, and the only reason it's looked upon as being 'lazy' speech is because of a general cultural view of the culture that uses it."
Need more evidence? British English uses "lazy" articulation just as much as AAVE, except somehow we view the articulation as being more "proper" or "intelligent", again, strictly due to stereotypes placed upon the culture itself, rather than evaluating the properties of the language itself.
And for the record, AAVE has more tenses than Standard American English... so much for the language being "lazy" or "stupid".
Linguistics is more than just the study of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. There is also a lot of study in how languages are used by cultures, and how it intertwines itself with culture.
So, yes, everything you said is dead fucking on, but I learned about that information from linguistics classes, and linguistics studies, so while it might be "all about culture", it's also linguistics.
For what it's worth, entrapment usually involves not only originating the idea, but also use of coercion(force, blackmail etc) to get someone to commit a crime. Otherwise those pointless drug and prostitution busts wouldn't be possible, and the police could save a lot of taxpayer money by not busting people who aren't criminals:P
I'm sorry.. but where is the inducement to commit the crime with drug and prostitution busts? The police are allowed to present opportunity to commit the crime, but they cannot give the idea to the person.
Leaving a $100 bill on the ground is ok, but telling the person about the $100 and telling them to take it is inducement. While one could say that "usually" entrapment involves coercion, it's simply the easiest way to prove entrapment, not necessarily the most common.
The difference with drug and prostitution here is again, presenting opportunity, rather than inducing behavior. Placing an undercover officer dressed like a hooker on the streets is not inducing behavior. Johns are soliciting the hookers just because they look like hookers, not because a police officer told them, "hey, let's go get some hookers!" As well, police placing stings for prostitutes are answering adverts, and so they are not inducing any behavior of the hooker, as the hooker is already soliciting prostitution.
As for drugs, drug dealers regularly deal in business, and if a cop patrons that drug dealer, then the drug dealer was already doing business, and the cop isn't inducing any behavior. This is unlike the case where an undercover cop asks someone "hey, do you think you could score me some of drug XY?" If the person is not already known to be engaging in drug sales, then the officer is inducing the person into committing a crime. Note the subtle difference between "hey, can you do something unusual and get me some coke?" and "hey, you're selling coke, let me buy some from you."
I've personally been *demoted* for asking about funding continuous education!
My manager was OK with it, he even submitted the request to HR, who then submitted it to his boss for approval. His boss had an issue with it, and came to me and said, "If you think you need additional education, you're not as sharp as we need you to be." and then, since Texas is an at-will state (as in, they can fire you, at will, for any reason any time), I was summarily dismissed.
I'm sure this happens everywhere. I read your post as Insightful, not Funny. Your WHOOOSH was just disappointing.
Ah yes, sorry I fucked up in my explanation. The "lololol, you Europeans are so naive." part was the only part intended as funny satire.
The rest of it was sad and disappointing satire. You know, the kind where you tell the truth, like it's a joke, but it's not actually funny, because it's true, and everyone feels sadder for having realized it?
Sorry to hear about your situation.:( I honestly really hate the fuck out of the USA sometimes. So much injustice for employees.
This is like claiming that British English is bad orthography
British English has the virtual of having a whole country (actually many countries) where it is widely used in business. Those other variants don't. Hence, they are not "valid and correct" for general business use.
They are indeed not a good choice for general business, however that doesn't make them invalid, or incorrect.
I could speak perfectly grammatical German, and have impeccable German spelling, but that wouldn't make it a good choice for doing business in the USA. In the same way AAVE is simply not a good choice. One might say it's an "incorrect choice" as well, but it doesn't make the language "grammatically and orthographically incorrect".
I'm impressed. I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic or have actually have political correctness rammed up your arse that far.
It's called knowing fucking linguistics. The science simply does not support the prejudices of people who want to say that AAVE is just sloppy or incorrect English.
AAVE and Spanglish are mutually incomprehensible with each other and with standard American English. Whether you call them dialects or merely incorrect forms of standard American English, they're not a good choice for communication in most large American companies. If you can't speak a language/dialect closer to standard American English, that's a minus.
(Note that AAVE is usually considered a dialect, but Spanglish is not)
Indeed, they are not suitable for business and such, which is why programs have been started trying to teach Standard American English to speakers of AAVE, and Spanglish. There is a definite privilege and wider opportunities if you speak SAE, and not AAVE or Spanglish alone.
I wasn't really attempting to establish that AAVE and Spanglish don't have disadvantages, but rather solely attacking the argument that they are "orthographically and grammatically incorrect".
I know from first hand experience my boss is willing to pick up the tab for further education providing he sees the advantage of it and you stay for another two years.
It is common a new employer would pay off any remaining expenses for the course when you change job before the end of the payback period.
In short, ask your own boss what he thinks of a particular course.
lololol, you Europeans are so naive. See, when you ask your boss if online engineering coursework is good for getting a new job, they would tell you "you're fired". And if you ask them if it will be worth it in your position to do the coursework, they will tell you "I don't care, it just better not affect your work."
To be fair, some employers do cover furthering education, but again, usually it cannot come at a cost to your already full workload.
He could claim entrapment. There are articles every once in a while about some hacker that breaks into sombody's servers, and they're so impressed they recruit him right off.
You'd have to be an idiot to believe things like that, but it doesn't take a lot of brains to cause damage.
Except no one induced him into breaking the law. The very first contact that he had with Marriot contained proof that he had already committed a crime.
Entrapment only works when the originating idea for the crime came from a police officer, or an agent thereof. (If a cop tells a confidential informant to get a gang to rob a specific store, then that would be entrapment as well.)
Which is normal because "African-American Vernacular English" (so much politicaly correct terms in one expression make me dizzy) and Spanglish are, well, incorrect forms of english. It's not about being polite and respectful. It's just plain wrong grammar and orthograph.
No, it is not. They are a variant version of English, but not "incorrect". This is like claiming that British English is bad orthography, because they spell "honor" as "honour", and that it has bad grammar, because they treat collective nouns as plurals, "my bank are nice."
If you want to say that it's not the desired REGISTER of English, then you would have some traction there. However, they are valid and correct forms of English, that are nonetheless nonconformant with formal American English registers. The same way "ain't" is actually a word, and is perfectly grammatical.
Microscopic lions are not Lions as we define "Lion", so they dont count.
So, if we had an animal that was exactly identical to lions, but was half the size, that would not be a lion? Or what about a fourth of the size? At what size would such an animal stop being a lion?
Elephants, as we define them, are not invisible, so your invisible ones dont count either.
That's just because we're not accustomed to dealing with invisible elephants. However, there is nothing intrinsic about the nature of an elephant that makes it so that it semantically cannot be invisible. I mean, imagine in your mind something that is exactly identical to an elephant, only it does not interact with photons.... You would seriously tell me that you wouldn't call it an elephant?
It is entirely possible for another person to prove that the commenter is actually not dead.
But how can you trust that other person? Your psychological block prevents you from exposing the truth! Even though the 3rd party person says that the commenter is not dead, the commenter will still believe that they are dead.
Your argument fails on all levels.
My arguments fail in science due to the unfalsifiable nature of my claims... however, they do not fail semantically or philosophically. It's the whole point of unfalsifiable claims... they are semantically and philosophically valid arguments that you cannot disprove, due to conditions placed on the claim... you're right to reject them as absurd, and refuse belief in them, but you still cannot prove to me that they are wrong.
I prove negatives all the time. if (var X == null) {dostuff}. Doesn't this count? If I my code executes for the if, doesn't this prove that something was true in a negative sense?
Cue code semantics arguments in 3. 2. 1....
No, it proves a positive assertion that X is equal to the value of null.
if (var X != null) { dostuff } would be more likely. Or the perl if (not exist $hash{key}) { dostuff } would be much more equivalent to proving a negative.
But then proving a negative is possible when you can exhaustively test all possibilities.
However, if a should-be-flexible programmer does not want to attend meetings, they should still be required to send status via e-mail, code in progress, etc. to show they aren't just wasting time....
Except that when the manager makes the meeting at 9:30 AM, and makes attendance mandatory, it then becomes a slavish tool for ensuring that your programmers are working a 9 to 6 schedule, and all the flexibility that is reasonably available to a programming job disintegrates into a rigid time-card-esque factory job. (I'm almost surprised my boss didn't start enforcing a dress-code...)
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Reading your evaluation, I think I have to agree. This guy seems to be deciding language classification more based on it conforming to his model, rather than actually some objective measurement. So, basically, of course his regressions and statistics are going to bear out... he basically chose his classifications to be sure!
"...in der Bibliothek gehen." The dative preposition "in" changes "die" to "der". The more you know.
"in" is not an exclusive dative preposition. Those are: "aus außer bei mit nach seit von zu". It is also not an exclusively accusative preposition: "bis durch entlang für gegen ohne um wider". It is also not one of the even fewer ones that command the genitive. It is in fact, an accusative/dative preposition.
When a preposition takes both dative and accusative, the accusative refers to going TO the object, while the dative refers to moving AT the object. So, "Ich gehe in der Bibliothek" means that I was already in the library, and am now walking around the library, while "Ich gehe in die Bibliothek" means that I am going to go into the library.
As such, the GP post was indeed correct all along... The more you know.
Wrong, both of you. Yes, they are different, and as a result of those differences one or the other may be superior/inferior to the other from certain specific points of view .
Use the right tool for the job, some work better for some things and some don't. Deal with it.
Indeed... you've said a little bit better what I was hoping to say. Thank you.
No, the OP wasn't saying that at all. It's funny how you somehow twisted her words to imply the exact opposite of what she wrote.
TFTFY
Theft - the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
Just a nitpick here, but there are misdemeanor thefts out there as well...
Oh definitely, but for example the Tegra3 despite having four cores shuts them all down most of the time, and runs a 5th power-saving core. All of this is done silently behind the scenes, and so they never know that they're usually only running on a low-power efficiency core, rather than the roaring engine in the back.
It's like having a two-cylinder engine that is used during stop-and-go traffic (you know, the majority of what you do during your commute) that allows you to drive your Ferrari down to the store without having to fill up on gas on the way back home. But any time you have to impress someone, and pull out the e-peen, then you can just "drop the hammer" and the engine switches over to the high-performance v12, and you go "ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
It's definitely all about marketing. This is the best way that they could come up with to let you have your cake and eat it, too... "it has 4 cores, _AND_ it has excellent battery life! *mumbling under breath* because it is almost always running on an economy core unless you're showing off..."
The hard core android fan brags about having four cores in their phone, even if everything they're doing could easily be handled by a single core, gets its battery drained four times faster, and doesn't have a noticable performance improvement over the competition.
You mean, "even though their phone just turns off the three other cores 95% of the time anyways". And in fact, some even turn off all four cores, and switch over to a super power-saving core that has especially low performance, but is well enough to play music and HW-decoded video.
Please get off the intarwebs... your clear and concise explanations of matters is undesired here in this wretched hives of memes and flamewars.
Seriously though, you're totally right. It's different. It's not inferior, it's different.
People who complain about this or that language being a piece of crap because of X and Y, are usually deadset in one particular mode of thinking, and cannot adapt. The question the original author should have been asking was not "how can I make this tolerable", but rather, "how can I best learn the correct way to use this tool?"
To put things in perspective, I was already doing a lot of crazy command-line parsing before I ever started using C. And when I started using C, I was upset, because I knew what I wanted to do, and I could easily accomplish it in BASIC, but C was different. The whole paradigm was new to me, and I had to learn to adapt. I haven't forgotten that, and I try to keep myself from becoming entrenched in any particular mode of thinking... it leads to inflexibly dictating that all else is inferior.
Damn you! That's the first time I've thought of that movie in years. Now it will take another five to get that gawdawful piece of crap out of my head. It's like the goatse of movies.
Huh, I never thought it was that bad... rather it was more like Rebecca Black's Friday... you know, deep down you want to like it because it has catchy elements, but it falls into that uncanny valley, where you can't particularly explain what is wrong with it. Like it's trying way too hard to be good.
Rather, I didn't think it was BAD, it just wasn't good enough to be GOOD. Which oddly makes it even worse than bad, because it's just "hoohum", or "boring".
Oh, then it's political correctness.
It's no more PC than saying that it's racist to suggest that people with African ancestors have an increased chance of sickle cell anemia.
Meaning, it may align with "PC usage", but it's backed up by scientific fact. So, the protest against PC by the people who demand that the Truth is brutally honest, and we shouldn't sugar coat things, falls apart. And the rebel-against-PC response should be to such people, "suck it up, AAVE (previously known as Black English Vernacular) is a perfectly valid register and/or dialect of speech, and the only reason it's looked upon as being 'lazy' speech is because of a general cultural view of the culture that uses it."
Need more evidence? British English uses "lazy" articulation just as much as AAVE, except somehow we view the articulation as being more "proper" or "intelligent", again, strictly due to stereotypes placed upon the culture itself, rather than evaluating the properties of the language itself.
And for the record, AAVE has more tenses than Standard American English... so much for the language being "lazy" or "stupid".
Everything you said is true, except...
Actually, it's all about culture.
Linguistics is more than just the study of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. There is also a lot of study in how languages are used by cultures, and how it intertwines itself with culture.
So, yes, everything you said is dead fucking on, but I learned about that information from linguistics classes, and linguistics studies, so while it might be "all about culture", it's also linguistics.
For what it's worth, entrapment usually involves not only originating the idea, but also use of coercion(force, blackmail etc) to get someone to commit a crime. Otherwise those pointless drug and prostitution busts wouldn't be possible, and the police could save a lot of taxpayer money by not busting people who aren't criminals :P
I'm sorry.. but where is the inducement to commit the crime with drug and prostitution busts? The police are allowed to present opportunity to commit the crime, but they cannot give the idea to the person.
Leaving a $100 bill on the ground is ok, but telling the person about the $100 and telling them to take it is inducement. While one could say that "usually" entrapment involves coercion, it's simply the easiest way to prove entrapment, not necessarily the most common.
The difference with drug and prostitution here is again, presenting opportunity, rather than inducing behavior. Placing an undercover officer dressed like a hooker on the streets is not inducing behavior. Johns are soliciting the hookers just because they look like hookers, not because a police officer told them, "hey, let's go get some hookers!" As well, police placing stings for prostitutes are answering adverts, and so they are not inducing any behavior of the hooker, as the hooker is already soliciting prostitution.
As for drugs, drug dealers regularly deal in business, and if a cop patrons that drug dealer, then the drug dealer was already doing business, and the cop isn't inducing any behavior. This is unlike the case where an undercover cop asks someone "hey, do you think you could score me some of drug XY?" If the person is not already known to be engaging in drug sales, then the officer is inducing the person into committing a crime. Note the subtle difference between "hey, can you do something unusual and get me some coke?" and "hey, you're selling coke, let me buy some from you."
Gods are rather powerful and knowing. Can't they just deal with this stuff without involving Google?
"Um... excuse me. What does God need with a starship?"
Obviously, satire wasn't a course where you went to college.
I didn't say it was GOOD satire... I mean, I whipped it up in like five seconds. So, of course it sucked really bad... just like your joke.
I've personally been *demoted* for asking about funding continuous education!
My manager was OK with it, he even submitted the request to HR, who then submitted it to his boss for approval. His boss had an issue with it, and came to me and said, "If you think you need additional education, you're not as sharp as we need you to be." and then, since Texas is an at-will state (as in, they can fire you, at will, for any reason any time), I was summarily dismissed.
I'm sure this happens everywhere. I read your post as Insightful, not Funny. Your WHOOOSH was just disappointing.
Ah yes, sorry I fucked up in my explanation. The "lololol, you Europeans are so naive." part was the only part intended as funny satire.
The rest of it was sad and disappointing satire. You know, the kind where you tell the truth, like it's a joke, but it's not actually funny, because it's true, and everyone feels sadder for having realized it?
Sorry to hear about your situation. :( I honestly really hate the fuck out of the USA sometimes. So much injustice for employees.
lololol, you Europeans are so naive.
Or maybe, in some cases, their employers just aren't idiots prone to knee-jerk reactions like the one in your example.
The post was intended as satire.
This is like claiming that British English is bad orthography
British English has the virtual of having a whole country (actually many countries) where it is widely used in business. Those other variants don't. Hence, they are not "valid and correct" for general business use.
They are indeed not a good choice for general business, however that doesn't make them invalid, or incorrect.
I could speak perfectly grammatical German, and have impeccable German spelling, but that wouldn't make it a good choice for doing business in the USA. In the same way AAVE is simply not a good choice. One might say it's an "incorrect choice" as well, but it doesn't make the language "grammatically and orthographically incorrect".
I'm impressed. I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic or have actually have political correctness rammed up your arse that far.
It's called knowing fucking linguistics. The science simply does not support the prejudices of people who want to say that AAVE is just sloppy or incorrect English.
AAVE and Spanglish are mutually incomprehensible with each other and with standard American English. Whether you call them dialects or merely incorrect forms of standard American English, they're not a good choice for communication in most large American companies. If you can't speak a language/dialect closer to standard American English, that's a minus.
(Note that AAVE is usually considered a dialect, but Spanglish is not)
Indeed, they are not suitable for business and such, which is why programs have been started trying to teach Standard American English to speakers of AAVE, and Spanglish. There is a definite privilege and wider opportunities if you speak SAE, and not AAVE or Spanglish alone.
I wasn't really attempting to establish that AAVE and Spanglish don't have disadvantages, but rather solely attacking the argument that they are "orthographically and grammatically incorrect".
I know from first hand experience my boss is willing to pick up the tab for further education providing he sees the advantage of it and you stay for another two years.
It is common a new employer would pay off any remaining expenses for the course when you change job before the end of the payback period.
In short, ask your own boss what he thinks of a particular course.
lololol, you Europeans are so naive. See, when you ask your boss if online engineering coursework is good for getting a new job, they would tell you "you're fired". And if you ask them if it will be worth it in your position to do the coursework, they will tell you "I don't care, it just better not affect your work."
To be fair, some employers do cover furthering education, but again, usually it cannot come at a cost to your already full workload.
He could claim entrapment. There are articles every once in a while about some hacker that breaks into sombody's servers, and they're so impressed they recruit him right off.
You'd have to be an idiot to believe things like that, but it doesn't take a lot of brains to cause damage.
Except no one induced him into breaking the law. The very first contact that he had with Marriot contained proof that he had already committed a crime.
Entrapment only works when the originating idea for the crime came from a police officer, or an agent thereof. (If a cop tells a confidential informant to get a gang to rob a specific store, then that would be entrapment as well.)
Which is normal because "African-American Vernacular English" (so much politicaly correct terms in one expression make me dizzy) and Spanglish are, well, incorrect forms of english. It's not about being polite and respectful. It's just plain wrong grammar and orthograph.
No, it is not. They are a variant version of English, but not "incorrect". This is like claiming that British English is bad orthography, because they spell "honor" as "honour", and that it has bad grammar, because they treat collective nouns as plurals, "my bank are nice."
If you want to say that it's not the desired REGISTER of English, then you would have some traction there. However, they are valid and correct forms of English, that are nonetheless nonconformant with formal American English registers. The same way "ain't" is actually a word, and is perfectly grammatical.
Microscopic lions are not Lions as we define "Lion", so they dont count.
So, if we had an animal that was exactly identical to lions, but was half the size, that would not be a lion? Or what about a fourth of the size? At what size would such an animal stop being a lion?
Elephants, as we define them, are not invisible, so your invisible ones dont count either.
That's just because we're not accustomed to dealing with invisible elephants. However, there is nothing intrinsic about the nature of an elephant that makes it so that it semantically cannot be invisible. I mean, imagine in your mind something that is exactly identical to an elephant, only it does not interact with photons. ... You would seriously tell me that you wouldn't call it an elephant?
It is entirely possible for another person to prove that the commenter is actually not dead.
But how can you trust that other person? Your psychological block prevents you from exposing the truth! Even though the 3rd party person says that the commenter is not dead, the commenter will still believe that they are dead.
Your argument fails on all levels.
My arguments fail in science due to the unfalsifiable nature of my claims... however, they do not fail semantically or philosophically. It's the whole point of unfalsifiable claims... they are semantically and philosophically valid arguments that you cannot disprove, due to conditions placed on the claim... you're right to reject them as absurd, and refuse belief in them, but you still cannot prove to me that they are wrong.
I prove negatives all the time. if (var X == null) {dostuff}. Doesn't this count? If I my code executes for the if, doesn't this prove that something was true in a negative sense?
Cue code semantics arguments in 3. 2. 1....
No, it proves a positive assertion that X is equal to the value of null.
if (var X != null) { dostuff } would be more likely. Or the perl if (not exist $hash{key}) { dostuff } would be much more equivalent to proving a negative.
But then proving a negative is possible when you can exhaustively test all possibilities.
However, if a should-be-flexible programmer does not want to attend meetings, they should still be required to send status via e-mail, code in progress, etc. to show they aren't just wasting time. ...
Except that when the manager makes the meeting at 9:30 AM, and makes attendance mandatory, it then becomes a slavish tool for ensuring that your programmers are working a 9 to 6 schedule, and all the flexibility that is reasonably available to a programming job disintegrates into a rigid time-card-esque factory job. (I'm almost surprised my boss didn't start enforcing a dress-code...)