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Admin
...And, this is a perfect entrance. So personal WTF moment about confusing logging off and rebooting the computer. I'd been messing about in a bunch of places a beginning CS student has no business being in a computer, finish up for the day and turn off my laptop.
And it reboots.
And again. Thinking I have some problem at this point, I go to log out of my normal account to use my admin account to just presto-change-o, fix things.
The computer shuts off.
Cycles later, I figure out that I've managed to somehow switch all sorts of important around. A logoff prompts a shutdown, and a shutdown prompts a reboot. Reboot reboots, no word on where logoff went.
To this day I don't know what did it, but I've since moved into a field that lets me read the daily WTF's rather than become one.
Admin
WTF? I couldn't understand one word of that!
Admin
Admin
Admin
Please learn the difference between "pedantic a-hole" and "a-hole pedant". Oh, right; there isn't one. I guess you qualify 100%.
Admin
Yay! We've spotted yet another humorless moron in IT giving the rest of us a bad name! One more down!
Admin
Admin
Well, techs' lives would be simpler if they could be more precise and say, "double click on the My Computer icon". But if tech's were capable of such precision, I suppose they wouldn't be techs in the first place.
Admin
Well, that's interesting. Two of these stories are what my wife does regularly. She knows the right way to say kilobyte, but loves saying kegabyte. Whenever I tell her to click on "My Computer", she says, "How can I click on your computer?"
Admin
Have to agree with you on this one. Especially since "no budget" is no excuse, with all the free software readily available. Take the system offline, clear out the mail spool by having people download one last time (and let new mail collect at the ISP in the interim), then install Linux or FreeBSD on it. If the mail is going directly to the box and not being spooled by an ISP first, do it late night on a Saturday. Mail coming in from other organizations will still spool on the outgoing server for up to five days, and the swap should only take four hours to complete. Monday morning comes along, and the only thing anyone realizes is their mail problems no longer exist.
Admin
Admin
Well, we have our winner for the "Lack of Comment Comprehension and Common Sense Combined Award" for November 14th! Congratulations!
For your edification:
Support Tech, early in the conversation, asks the customer, "Ok. Is the computer plugged in?", to which the customer (obviously offended at being asked such a stupid question) says, "Of course it is!".
After several minutes of subsequent troubleshooting efforts, the Support Tech comes to the conclusion that the most likely problem is that the computer is NOT plugged in, in spite of the customer's earlier response. Instead of really offending the customer by asking the same question again, the Support Tech uses the pretense of a reversed "new polarized plug" to get the customer to actually look at the plug. The customer does, realizes it isn't plugged in after all, feels stupid, plugs it it, it works, and the customer covers his mistake by saying that, indeed, it was the new-fangled polarized plug in backwards that caused the problem!
You might try examining your own contact with people whom you're consulting for support; they're probably using the same type techniques with you. Only now, you might be able to spot them!
Once again, congratulations!
Admin
I'm not certain this is appropriate, but I'm going to go off on my trademarked GUI rant. Using icons is in many ways a step backwards. We've replaced words with crypt-o-graphs. So when helping someone over the phone, I have to describe the icon I want someone to click on. Most icons, don't look anything like what they are supposed to represent. Wasn't the invention of the alphabet an improvement over hieroglyphics? There are no standards, functions are represented by random pictures. To compensate someone had the idea to create helpful pop-ups when we mouse over an item. However, I use the mouse as pointer to help me keep my place on a line, so the pop-ups block my view. It's very annoying.
Admin
Wouldn't the easiest way to show someone to reset their home page be to go to the page they want, then select Internet Options and "Use Current"? Doesn't require them to type the address in the undersized box, either.
And I'd think if the owner's wife was having so much trouble with the mail, she might be able to use a little leverage to convince the owner to stop being such a cheapskate and pay to get a better system.
Admin
Actually, it's your wife's finishing position and category in the neighborhood "identify the species and quality" contest.
Tell her I said congratulations.
Admin
I understood the point of the story, Ken. My comment was relevant and needs neither defense nor apology. But that's okay. Fire again. We know you will.
Admin
Admin
Because it gives him an excuse to make a 1337 post here using "windoze" to show how awesome his skilz are.
Or because he's an a$$hat. You be the judge.
Admin
Or the one where Dilbert told PHB that the token must have fallen out of the Token Ring cable and was laying around on the floor somewhere -- good stuff!
Admin
I'll bet Homer Simpson uses WinSpiderPig!
Admin
Ha! ROFL!!
Admin
FTFY. Nice try, though.
Admin
You really haven't heard of plugs with ground contacts then? Maybe you should get out a bit...
Admin
Learn what Muphry's law is. It is not the same as Murphy's law. Here's some help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaudere's_Law
Admin
Damn, that was a much better way of telling the story than mine! I guess I'll have to brush up on my mad leet anecdote-reciting skills...
Admin
Actually the usability tests made them to redesign the UI this way: Why do you have to click the Start button to shut down?
Admin
dammit! Now I feel angry and foolish. :)
Admin
and when he got back, there was a hook hanging from the door!!!!
Admin
as if anything in wikipedia can be considered real.
Admin
Is it EVE Online?
Admin
i always make my text blue when i read it, just in case i need to delete it
Admin
i think you mean "pedagogue"
Admin
Now, a kegabyte is a different animal entirely. A full keg holds a kegabyte of beer, a pony keg holds a half-kegabyte!!
Admin
"The classic rule is to use -ize when it relates to the Greek zeta root: organize, realize, trivialize... An easier rule is to use -ise in all cases, for that will never be wrong." (Godfrey Howard, The Good English Guide).
Your position is supported by H W Fowler (Modern English Usage), but frankly I think this is one of the cases where he is wrong:
"...this suffix comes, whether direct or via Latin or French, from the Greek -izein: to employ -ise is to flout etymology and logic."
That would be fine, but for three fairly important caveats:
(a) It would be absurd to equate the zeta of Attic Greek with the 'z' of modern UK/American English. For further details, consult your local copy of Vox Graeca. It just doesn't sound the same ... and nobody is going to wander around saying "realidse" or "realisde" rather than "realize" (which is spelt "realise," btw, for reasons adduced below). (b) If we're going to throw away all phonetic transitions since 500BC, then that means that the Great Vowel Shift of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries might as well never have happened. Which means that we'd all be talking like Mountain Kentucky folk. Which most people would wish to avoid. (c) Greek verbs transitioned through Latin/French to English might reasonably be assigned the "ize" prefix. It seems a little harsh on an entire language -- in this case Latin -- to retrofit somebody else's method of nounal verbing when the damn letter doesn't even really exist. Thus "realise." It's Latin, goddamnit. It isn't Greek.
Let's hear it from another corner:
"The advice given here is to end them all in ise." (Sir Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words -- 1947)
Well, that's not a great prescription, because Fowler would bitch from the grave that you're ignoring etymology, but it does have the merit of never really being wrong (cf Godfrey Howard).
And finally, from Eric Partridge, a cow-orker with Fowler:
"Where there are, in dictionaries, the alternatives -ise and -ize, use -IZE."
I think he meant, in lower case. But with feeling. This is actually a sensible argument, because of the qualification "in dictionaries." A good dictionary, following the rules as was, would offer an etymology -- well, hopefully, any old dictionary would offer an etymology, but I'm not so sure these days -- and that etymology would indicate that the root noun is Greek, which therefore encourages both suffixes, because it has almost invariably entered the English language through either Latin or French. (I can't actually think of an example of the latter, but hell, even a blind Fowler's gonna be right once in a while.) If the etymology is Latin, the suffix should be "-ise."
Are we keeping up at the back, there?
Now, as to why the topic recurs so often, and with such stupefyingly dull and whining cross-atlantic debate:
Some would say that the American preference for "-ize" is a consequence of preferring to spell a word as it is sounded. I buy that partially, although it doesn't really explain the hostility to Ebonics ... perhaps that's just yer standard nigger-baiting hostility from pure-dee white trash.
Interestingly, it's more likely to stem from a bizarre cultural phenomenon shared by both America and the UK, to some extent. Greek has always been favoured over Latin as a sign of educational superiority. (Not by me -- I just hate Latin: it's a stinking language. Attic Greek, and arguably pre-Spartan Doric Greek, is a far more poetic language. Even the metres are more fluid.)
To prefer "-ize" over "-ise" is thus a sign that you are, well, rather better spoken than the average half-Polack, quarter-Canuck, eighth-Cherokee and eighth-Sicilian Josef.
(See Paul Fussell's extremely funny and well-observed book "Class" for further details.)
I don't suppose it matters to most {P/2, Ca/4, Ch/8, S/8} guys, but it does matter to a significant number of educational establishments in the South; wherefrom the idea is promulgated via the dubious twin mechanisms of Football and Fraternities. See Florence Foster King for further details.
(As an aside, the UK version involves the ruling class, and their hilarious self-deception during the 1940s and 1950s that "We are the Greeks to the Americans' Rome." This is otherwise known as the Special Relationship. Fortunately, the UK no longer has a Ruling Class. These days we make do with lying, self-promoting arseholes, just like everybody else.)
So, where does any of this lead us? Not very far, really. It would be nice to see responses across the Web that consist of actual analysis, rather than just random quotes from the raddled pseudo-authority de jour ... but I'm not holding my breath.
It would be particularly pleasant if people could actually pause and ask themselves whether they have any slight notion of the subject upon which they are pontificating, before launching into yet another pointless Web drone. I quite enjoy trolling, when well done. I have lost my appetite for drones.
In short (was that short? Edit at will, as we used to say), let us have no more of this taradiddle on TDWTF, which is a site with Status.
Rule Six: Do NOT taradiddlize!
Addendum (2008-11-14 17:36): There are two relevant Attic Greek apothegms, one of which summari[sz]es my position on this artificially thorny topic, and the other of which explains why you shouldn't care anyway -- as long as you understand why you shouldn't care:
(1) γνῶθι σεαυτόν (2) μηδὲν ἄγαν
vide Temple of Apollo at Delphi, should you so care.
I don't recommend
(3) ̓Εγγύα πάρα δ' ἄτη
... which I think is a later accretion. Not a good thought to hold on to if you pledged money to Barack, though.
res ipsa loquitur. Stir with 'z' for sesty tang.
Admin
WTF?!?
Admin
Be that as it may. I will resort to phonetics in defense of my preference. "Criticize" ends with the sound of the letter "z". The spelling "criticise" would logically rhyme with "precise".
Addendum (2008-11-14 17:50): Incidentally, you misspelled "goddamnit". The n is only present when the two words are separated, as in "goddamn it". When run together, the n is replaced with a second m: "goddammit".
Admin
Phonetics isn't something you should rely on in an argument about correct spelling in English -- unless you believe that 'cough' should rhyme with 'bough'?
Admin
Admin
Admin
The difference between "less" and "fewer" is nothing to do with whether the set in question is composed of discrete or of continuous items. This isn't Math, people, it's English. And as we all know, English grammar doesn't make sense.
Basically, one employs "less" to distinguish between ordinals, and "fewer" to distinguish between cardinals.
See, I told you it was nothing to do with Math.
Admin
Those congratulations were premature, as you seem to have won it. Were you to try the "polarized plug" technique in a country where you physically cannot put a plug in "the wrong way round", because they have ground pins, deprive the plug of rotational symmetry, you won't get your client to discover their foolishness, you will get them telling you to stop taking the piss and fix it.
Admin
You mean that when I came third in a race, I came less than the guy who came fourth?
I had heard that the difference was between count and mass nouns.
Admin
I once got a similar sort of support call in which the User complained that whenever he or she typed their password all they could see in the password box was stars...
Admin
IT support was not my main job description - I'm a developer and that means I've know a little bit more about PC's than the average user - so I got the task to maintain the system.
The owner would not pay anything for any IT - an example - when I started, I asked to get a laptop - and I asked to get MS Office on it - he gave me an original Office 97 CD and I asked how many licenses we got - and his answer was "I bought the CD so its mine and I can install it where I want"
Admin
-> a cow-orker with Fowler: I have heard of orks, but cow-orks? Further: I guess that a similarily lenghty comment could be written about the overuse of the hyphen - to break up words. But I'll leave that for a rainy day, today its snowing.
Scandi
Admin
[q] Bappi:
Indeed, but a much more common interpretation for agro than agriculture is aggravation (at least in the UK, where the website trades)[/q]
No, that would be Aggrosoft. At least, it would be in the UK where this replier originates.
However Agrisoft would have been a more logical choice
Admin
Lord knows that I always shake off the loose bytes before i do any work on my compaq presario.
CAPTCHA: acsi???
Admin
that last one reminded me of a story... a tech could never get his callers to check if the cables were properly attached, they would always get insulted. so, he would come up with BS reasons for them to SWAP ENDS, to re-plug the cable the opposite way. that was the ONLY way he could get them to TOUCH the cables at all!