Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:What What? (Score 1) 240

No user of any popular tablet or smartphone today, Android or otherwise, is exposed to the kinds of internal implementation details you mentioned. The APIs provided by both iOS and Android are very much geared to the per-app/sandbox model used by apps on those systems, and even on Android, you wouldn't normally be messing around with a FHS-style directory tree the way Linux desktop or server applications would.

Anyway, I don't know whether you are wilfully missing the point just to troll or you really can't understand that there are fundamental differences between tablet/smartphone and desktop/laptop use cases beyond the cosmetic details of their shells, but further discussion here seems unlikely to get us anywhere useful.

Comment Re:What What? (Score 1) 240

In your first paragraph you say you don't think it's just about the shell, but what you've gone on to described is the shell

The shell is important, but it's only worth as much as the underlying models the operating system provides. For example, the underlying file system has nothing to do with the shell. Nor do the security model or any related control of application installation and permissions systems. Nor do the process model and any mechanisms for inter-process communication.

The rest of my post, referring to how applications are installed, was an example. The point is that on tablet/smartphone devices, everything is simplified/dumbed down [delete as applicable] in the same way. The average tablet/smartphone app is designed to do one simple task using simple interactions. To my knowledge, no-one has yet written a smartphone or tablet app that is anywhere close to the complexity and flexibility that major desktop apps routinely offer.

Comment Re:Cult of dumb at WSJ (Score 1) 667

I think it more helpful to recognize that some dialects of English are sufficiently different from the formal SAE register that teaching it requires teaching people basic language features and areas of grammar that normally only have to be taught to foreign language speakers. (i.e. No one has to explain to kids growing up around English that it is SVO order. They get that all on their own.)

If we recognize that we have to teach written English like a foreign language to some people (very specifically for Deaf people it will always be a foreign language) then perhaps we can work better at getting them to be able to produce it when the audience deems it appropriate.

Comment Re:Can we still agree that (Score 1) 667

This is a matter of orthography, not grammar.

Orthography has good rules to follow, tighter than grammatical objections. But at the same time, the spelling of "principle" vs "principal" is entirely arbitrary, and the assignment of denotation is entirely arbitrary. And thus there is no good "rule" between them, except convention.

Comment Re:Some pedants are more pedantic than others... (Score 1) 667

As per the sibling post, and quoting from a cousin post of mine:

It's called Negative Agreement.

"I don't have any books" is ok, but "*I have any books" is wrong.

"I didn't go anywhere" is ok, but "*I went anywhere" is wrong.

Replacing "any" with "no" to form Negative Agreement doesn't actually change the state of the negation. It just changes the term used to construct Negative Agreement.

Comment Re:Some pedants are more pedantic than others... (Score 1) 667

It's called Negative Agreement.

"I don't have any books" is ok, but "*I have any books" is wrong.

"I didn't go anywhere" is ok, but "*I went anywhere" is wrong.

Replacing "any" with "no" to form Negative Agreement doesn't actually change the state of the negation. It just changes the term used to construct Negative Agreement.

Comment Re:Some pedants are more pedantic than others... (Score 1) 667

Hello, English learner here, what about the case of a sentence that *was* true in the past (not "might have been true" as the GP suggests)?

"When I was fooled, it was because I wasn't careful enough."

There's a different word between "were" and "was" in the conditionals, and so humans want and desire to create a reason for why they are different. Sometimes, they're just two different ways of saying something.

Comment Re:Dialects != Language (Score 1) 667

Indeed, the situation is more nuanced than one pithy little quote can do justice to. It's just a phrase that linguists tend to use, because they are confronted almost constantly by people insisting that some language is just a dialect or some dialect is actually a language. Often, this is for political reasons (which I shortened to reinforcing the "us" vs "them" cultural difference.). I am aware that Moldova has since changed their official language to Romanian, not Moldovan, so there's some recognition coming to the area in the last 10 years since I studied linguistics in college...

But yes, everything you posted here is awesome, thank you for expanding upon my original post.

Comment Re:Dialects != Language (Score 1) 667

but would you think it's acceptable to write a contract in "redneck"?

I wouldn't because I don't know "redneck" dialect well enough. But if two people speaking a common dialect wish to celebrate a contract in a dialect other than the formal register of the country in which they live, then I say, go for it!

Contracts, resumes, etc, are all written in a certain register (smaller than a dialect) because that is the appropriate register for the audience. However, would you walk into an urban depressed neighborhood and go around using the Received Pronunciation register? No, it's not appropriate, because of audience mismatch.

But punishing a group of people just because the formal register of power in their country is significantly more different from that spoken by a privileged class that need not learn the hojillion needling rules... that's not right.

Comment Re:Elements of Style is not authoritative (Score 1) 667

After I learned German, "wherefore" stopped confusing me. "dagegen" "darüber" "danaben" all of them composed of "there" and a preposition. The corresponding question words for them are "wogegen" "worüber" "woneben". Or "where-preposition". And where is used even when the preposition doesn't refer to a location, but an idea. (persons are composed of "preposition who"). "Wofür hast du das gemacht?" (For what purpose did you do that?)

Knowing how German works yields great insight into the grammatical usage of the English used by Shakespeare. Because English has been traveling towards a "creole-like" grammar for a very long time... i.e. before the norman invaders, and before the norse invaders.

Actually, watching Beowulf (the "horrible" CGI one, which for amateur linguists wasn't horrible at all, because OMG OLD ENGLISH THIS IS AWESOME!), I was kind of actually able to understand Grendel... or more accurately, with subtitles I could pick out words whose meaning I could accurately place in them.

Slashdot Top Deals

"No matter where you go, there you are..." -- Buckaroo Banzai

Working...