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You are minority - deal with itYou are minority - deal with itPosted Oct 7, 2008 13:47 UTC (Tue) by SLi (subscriber, #53131)In reply to: You are minority - deal with it by khim Parent article: Stallman vs. Clouds (Linux Journal) Never suspected "less then 20% of potential users" is "most people" in English. Perhaps I've used wrong textbooks? Obviously you have, since you can't tell "than" and "then" apart.
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Way off topic, but hey... Posted Oct 7, 2008 20:10 UTC (Tue) by utoddl (subscriber, #1232) [Link] I confess I spent most of my time skimming over that post wondering about how to catch this most annoying and common typo/thinko. Maybe the article preview should turn any "than" or "then" into a couple of radio selects and the user would have to pick which he meant. That penalizes everybody though. Still, might be worth it. Or maybe they should all be changed to "th[ae]n" and put the burden on the reader. Oh, wait, it already is. Someday somebody's going to figure out how to turn the "than/then" problem into money, and I'm going to kick myself.
Even further off-topic, but possibly a lucrative money maker Posted Oct 7, 2008 23:59 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] Someday somebody's going to figure out how to turn the "than/then" problem into money
The nice thing about programming languages is that their formal grammar is so incredibly strict (and compilers are terribly unforgiving). One of my favorite examples is the different interpretation of the two cout statements in the below C++ program: #include <iostream> using namespace std; int main() { cout << 3 << 5 << endl; cout << (3 << 5) << endl; } The parentheses changes the whole meaning of the statement, just as the inclusion (or omission) of the apostrophe in it's changes its meaning substantially. Obviously we human readers are much more forgiving than programming language compilers. :-)
Nice things Posted Oct 8, 2008 6:24 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] The nice thing about human languages is that they can be nicely understood under such incredibly adverse conditions -- like here on LWN.net. Non-native speakers, complete absence of non-verbal cues, lots of grammatical and syntax errors -- and still we get the message across, sometimes.While the silly computer cannot even interpolate a stupid couple of parentheses when that is so obviously what you mean. And sometimes it is not even about the endpoints -- you cannot understand because the language doesn't give your enough context.
My original post is missing a ')' Posted Oct 8, 2008 14:00 UTC (Wed) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] While the silly computer cannot even interpolate a stupid couple of parentheses when that is so obviously what you mean. Speaking of parentheses, did anyone else notice the missing close parenthesis needed on the "alot" inner bullet of my original post? I promise that was accidental; even I didn't notice it missing until long after I posted it. A programming language compiler would be screaming "MASSIVE FAIL" for such an omission.
Even further off-topic, but possibly a lucrative money maker Posted Oct 8, 2008 7:23 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Some of these things I too would consider errors. But
singular-number 'data'? What you're complaining about there is that the word has lately been absorbed into the language and now follows the standard rules of regular English nouns, pluralized with -s. Just because some Latin-heads would rather English worked differently and treated 'data' as if it were still living in Latin doesn't change the fact that this is what native speakers *do* to words that don't follow the rules. It might take a few centuries but words eventually get regularized. Even ancient irregulars like 'wrought' eventually fall (and new irregulars rise, of course, the number will never fall to zero).
Even Fowler's documents that particularly 'in computing and allied
Even further off-topic, but possibly a lucrative money maker Posted Oct 8, 2008 8:40 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]
Whoa, I was rolling my eyes at that whinge for a different reason -- in my dialect, 'data' has become a mass plural, not a singular, so I say "this data", "lots of data" (compare, say, "sand" or "corn"). I would say "datums" in certain circumstances (compare "grains of sand"), but I can't say "datas" at all. You know people who pluralize it with -s?
Even further off-topic, but possibly a lucrative money maker Posted Oct 8, 2008 20:19 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Amazingly, yes. It still sounds wrong to me, but no longer very wrong.
It's a mass noun to me, but not to everyone.
Even further off-topic, but possibly a lucrative money maker Posted Oct 8, 2008 22:39 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]
How odd. The standard in academia, on the other hand, remains "data" as a count plural, with people saying "these data" etc., which I am slowly getting used to myself. So all three possibilities are attested in the wild.
I don't know what this has to do with cloud computing, but at least it's more interesting than the top part of the thread...
Even further off-topic, but possibly a lucrative money maker Posted Oct 10, 2008 4:47 UTC (Fri) by alfille (subscriber, #1631) [Link]
Actually, Steven Pinker's ¨Words and Meaning¨ points out that irregular verbs are few (<200) but account for 40% of the verbs used in common speach. Essentially, we preparse and cache them, so we don't need the rules.
Even further off-topic, but possibly a lucrative money maker Posted Oct 10, 2008 8:12 UTC (Fri) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]
That's exactly the problem -- high-frequency words can get away with irregularity, and the higher the frequency the more irregularity they can get away with (is/am/be/are/was/wtf?). But "data" isn't high frequency at all, so speakers are normalizing it to the usual English rules.
Even further off-topic, but possibly a lucrative money maker Posted Oct 11, 2008 2:50 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
The English title of this book is _Words and Rules_.
I can tell them apart but usually I don't bother... Posted Oct 8, 2008 7:37 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Obviously you have, since you can't tell "than" and "then" apart. Oh, I can tell them apart. I even can distinguish "shit" and "sheet" orally if I do big enough effort. But why bother? How often "than"/"then" change the meaning of phrase?
I can tell them apart but usually I don't bother... Posted Oct 9, 2008 12:02 UTC (Thu) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link] How often "than"/"then" change the meaning of phrase? More often then you stop to think. ;-)
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