FTA:

More than a dozen countries worldwide already use the machine[...]

In fact, these have been around for about a decade, am I right?

This is not news. This is olds.

I <3 that emoticon!

I love QI, and although 'Thou Shalt Not Question Stephen Fry', they do sometimes get facts wrong. It's super-frustrating for me, because the show is designed to catch out the guests saying the incorrect things, and I'll know that people used to think A and then idea B came around and that seemed much better, but then B was debunked two years ago, and A is probably correct and they're going to trick someone into thinking they're clever and saying B.... But no, someone will say A and Stephen will say 'Actually, it's B' and I'll yell at my television. :-(

Anyway, it's a British show, so it's unsurprisingly sometimes visited by pro-UK propaganda like the above. 'Hey, Americans aren't all that, we've got more individual accents in Yorkshire alone than in all of America! Yay, us!' You know the Rule: People will believe a lie because they want it to be true, or they're afraid it might be true.

How could such a statement possibly be verified? I'd be SHOCKED if there actually more individual discernible accents in Yorkshire than in New York City alone. Was there ANY testing, and if so, were they testers British? (Perhaps all American accents sound the same to them...) Are they counting ESL accents? Are they counting ebonic variations (AAVE)? I figure it's probably more along the lines of a rough guestimation, the same type of thing that told us 'bees can't fly' (false on the face of it).

But it's entertainment, not education. ^_^ (So they don't have to cite references.)

you lot get hopelessly confused when you hear the slightest pronunciation difference.

What? Have you even BEEN to America? You'll find more pronunciation differences ABOUND here. America is a melting pot; people from all over the globe come here and put their own spin on English. (I myself was asked as a teenager where I was from, due to my apparently odd accent. I had at that time never even been outside of the country, my family had just moved around a lot inside America. I didn't think I had an accent at all.) Natural Americans have pronunciation differences even from other natural Americans, but no one is getting hopelessly confused here.

My issue here is that Fowler is effectively taking a prescriptivist standpoint: the majority usage is the only correct usage. I'm grudgingly able to accept that incorrect usages can become accepted (while reserving the right to differ on whether they are acceptable), but while a significant minority continue using the previously standard usage lexicographers should call it old-fashioned rather than unacceptable./i>

Hi, I actually agree with you for the most part (well, you did use 'beauty' and 'Perl' in that same sentence...;-). I grudgingly accept that English changes over time (though people that use phrases such as "begs the question" incorrectly do grate on my nerves). The problem I had wasn't that octopuses is more COMMON than octopodes, it was that octopodes is an origin-language pluralization of a (now English) loan-word.

I wouldn't demand (or allow) someone spell skosh (def: a little bit) as: sukoshi, even though that is the original Japanese "spelling" (of course it's not normally spelled with Latin characters in Japanese). That would be crazy. Nor do I scold people that use the term "double entendre", even now, after the French have moved on to other wording. Why? Because when an English-speaker says "double entendre", they are speaking ENGLISH, not FRENCH. So why demand (or allow) Greek word-forms for an English word?

THAT is why octopodes is unacceptably pedantic.

(sorry for returning to a dead-horse topic, but I am a former English teacher; I have Opinions On Things)

Octopodes? Are you sure?
Thus speaketh:

There are three forms of the plural of octopus; namely, octopuses, octopi, and octopodes. Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the UK as well as the US; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable.

The Oxford English Dictionary (2004 update) lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order); it labels octopodes "rare", and notes that octopi derives from the mistaken assumption that octÅpÅs is a second declension Latin noun, which it is not. Rather, it is (Latinized) Greek, from oktá"pous (á½ÎÏÏZÏÎÏ...Ï), gender masculine, whose plural is oktá"podes (á½ÎÏÏZÏÎÎÎÏ). If the word were native to Latin, it would be octÅpÄ"s ('eight-foot') and the plural octÅpedes, analogous to centipedes and mÄllipedes, as the plural form of pÄ"s ('foot') is pedes. In modern, informal Greek, it is called khtapÃdi (ÏÏαÏÏOEÎÎ), gender neuter, with plural form khtapÃdia (ÏÏαÏÏOEÎÎα).

Chambers 21st Century Dictionary and the Compact Oxford Dictionary list only octopuses, although the latter notes that octopodes is "still occasionally used"; the British National Corpus has 29 instances of octopuses, 11 of octopi and 4 of octopodes. Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists octopuses and octopi, in that order; Webster's New World College Dictionary lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order).

Fowler's Modern English Usage states that "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses," and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic.

The term octopod (plural octopods or octopodes) is taken from the taxonomic order Octopoda but has no classical equivalent. The collective form octopus is usually reserved for animals consumed for food.

End quote.

So, in summary, the ONLY acceptable plural is actually octopuses . Not to be pedantic or anything. ^_^

Why is this tagged ukonly? The DS isn't region-locked.

Don't assume the only purpose of an R4 is to pirate games.

I originally bought a DS to use as a Japanese dictionary (the DS + Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten was still MUCH cheaper than replacing my $300 Canon Wordtank that broke). After having it around for a while, I began to realize the utility of such a device, and being a computer nerd that likes to tinker, picked up an M3.

BAM, just like that, not only did I have a great dictionary, I had an e-book reader, an mp3 player, and a way to run homebrew apps, and I didn't have any more things to carry around. No longer was I limited to the meager 128 megs of song space on my phone, now I had 2 gigs of space (not that I even had 2 gigs of mp3s, but the potential was there). This made those long drives much more enjoyable (pardon me for preferring songs in English). Then I started reading e-books on it, and was hooked. Stuck in the dentist's waiting room? E-book. Stuck at the university waiting for your girlfriend and every book in the library is in Japanese? Well, you just so happened to bring a library of English books with you. Stuck in traffic for a few hours? Well, go back to listening to mp3s; you can't read e-books while driving, that would be dumb.

In short, there are a LOT of handy things you can do with an M3/R4/Cyclo _BESIDES_ illegally pirate games. (Of course, this is coming from a non-gamer who can afford to purchase the few games I do play; your mileage may vary)

I've read a number of complete books on the DS without any problems. It was quite convenient, since I always had it with me anyway (DS + Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten cartridge = *MUCH* easier shopping in Japan).

Now that I think about it, I might have actually spent more time reading books with the DS than I ever did playing games.

Word wide, throughout history, no teenager in the world has ever thought - "I want to have (unprotected) sex... but I might get Human PapillomaVirus!"

Sadly, I had a girl say (almost) those exact words to me recently. I thought she was joking. She wasn't.

I don't see her anymore.

What exactly ARE the three primary purposes of society? Serve the public trust, protect the innocent, obey the law? Don't harm humans, obey humans, protect yourself? Don't interfere with cultures on other planets, ....and whatever the secondary and tertiary directives are?

It's just, you say "one of its three primary purposes" like we all know what those are. Wait, do we all know what they are except me? Was there a memo?

send EA a message that they will refuse to purchase any game with DRM

Don't paint all DRM with the same brush. I buy Steam games all the time; they are inherently protected by Steam. That's DRM I can live with.

I do refuse to purchase any game with SecuROM.