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Comment Re: You keep using that word. I don't think it mea (Score 2) 45

"Penultimate" isn't a synonym for "ultimate"—it means the thing before the ultimate. Likewise we have penumbra for the blurry edge of a shadow (umbra). This results in some truly special words like "antepenult," meaning "the thing before the thing before the final thing," commonly used when discussing where the stress/accent falls in a Greek or Latin word.

"Invaluable" does indeed mean "not able to be valued" when analyzed morphologically, but the standard usage of it is indicating something is beyond value, i.e. infinitely or inestimably valuable. A value of zero is still a value, after all.

"Inflammable" however actually means "able to be inflamed," as in "put in flame" or "set on fire." The confusion comes from assimilation of the Latin preposition "in" (which we have as "in" or "on") instead of the more typical prefix "in-" (which demarcates negation.) You don't have to look very far for other words where "in" doesn't mean "not": indicate, inherit, imply, investigate, indict, involve...

Comment Re:Markdown (Score 1) 27

How about this, then: It fills a niche, but it is full of bad decisions (and fragmentation), and survives mainly by its existing momentum. It's crap in the same sense that Unix is crap: the founder effect has made its flaws impossible to dislodge or rethink.

A popular solution to a problem is not necessarily a good solution to that problem.

Comment Re:How do they know? (Score 1) 44

There's nothing much to doubt. The evidence is always the same: "our web server logs show scrapers originating from IP addresses owned by someone who didn't pay us."

The Verge article is a little clearer. 100,000 threads pilfered over the past year with scraping! Oh no!

(See also: the actual legal filing. I have to admit the headings sound a little unstable.)

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