You're totally right there. For a long time, we have been completely ignoring migration waves.

By that, I mean that no measures were taken for migrants to be fully integrated in society. It's fine not to take care of integration while immigration is low, but when it happens en masse, you have to regulate. Instead, we decided that it was okay to let people enter our country without much regulation, which led to the creation of ghettos.

Basically, we're reaping what we once sowed.

Ever heard about semantic drift? http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/saboter#Verbe.C2.A01

No, you cannot disagree. I'm a native speaker, as well as a language graduate.

So, basically, this is a spiritual continuation of "let's teach those fiendish left-handed kids to be right-handed instead."

Thank you for your insightful post. I had no idea what autism really was about up until now.

If what you say is true, I stand corrected. I probably didn't have that option because I had been upgrading since 11.04 or so and, as we all know, OS upgrades tend to break stuff.

I should really give you a mod point, but there's something I need to get off my chest about Ubuntu.

I mean... No fallback mode when graphic acceleration is missing? Seriously???

So here's the story. There's an HD 4670 in my dad's PC. Because of AMD (so the root of the problem isn't Ubuntu, but please bear with me), there are issues with using the legacy version of the Catalyst drivers. That's on Ubuntu 13.04. First, I added a well-known PPA to circumvent the problem (that is, get back 3D acceleration), but it reappeared a while ago.

Now, I know I could use the non-proprietary drivers. But that's not what I'm complaining about. My complaint against Ubuntu is — like I said above —, it doesn't offer you a fallback mode when graphic acceleration fails. That kind of thing is standard across all operating systems. You ought to be able to continue to use your machine when some superfluous feature suddenly stops working (unless said use requires said feature, of course).

I was a bit reluctant to install Manjaro on my dad's PC then, thinking that the constant upgrades — yes, it's a rolling-release distro — would break something sooner or later. No, sir... it's been running like a charm ever since.


My €0.02.

If you don't care, you shouldn't be trying to make a point.

If you read the quote in the grandparent post, you'll see that the wording makes you think the i3 matches the A4's power consumption while in games. Perhaps you're as good in English as you are in math.

... and that's exactly why AMD's CPU's power consumption in this article is lower. Now tell me, were you always this bad at math, or did it occur after an accident?

Sure. Unless you're using the damn CPU at full speed.

What I'd be more interested to know though, is how expensive A4 5000 CPUs are. Do they cost as much as the Core i3 3271u?

Well, that's what science is about, isn't it? It's always something like theory A, which seems to be right at first. Then someone comes up with theory B, that invalidates theory. After that, yet another guy finds out that his theory, B+, only partially invalidates B, and validates some of the points that theory A made in the beginning, but only in a different referential. And the quest for the best model goes on... Well, I'm sure you got the point already: it's an ongoing process, and we will never come up with something perfect.

I think we do need a scientific approach to understand what should and shouldn't be linguistically speaking. That's why I was talking about a set of rules in my previous post. Of course, we have to alleviate big agencies à la French academy — they come up with real shitty stuff at times.

But anyway, you already agree on needing rules while not interfering usage too much, so I don't need to go on.

My main gripe with "virii" is that it's a bad example. Supporting that word means adding complexity to the language. This is a definite case of good cause (simplifying/modernizing language), wrong argument (example is actually an exception).


P.S.: I think people who whine about split infinitives don't know that English is a Germanic language. That or they're delusional, infatuated elitists.

Compare what is comparable.

But before I the actual argument, here is a fact: even if we all agreed on "virus" being a second declension, masculine Latin word, it'd still be "viri" in the plural. Now, that kind of discredits people who think we should use "virii", doesn't it?

On the one hand, you've got a bunch of illiterate people. On the other hand, you have people who have studied languages (not just their own native language) for several years. It isn't far-fetched to think that the latter group, possessing not only practical but also theoretical linguistics skills, would be better-trained to abide by the rules.

Besides, if you throw the whole globalization thing into the mix, it's obvious that adhering to a defined set of rules benefits us. Language is a communication tool. If we stray off defined standards too much, we're hindering communication. Back when people were illiterate, communication was slow, so it was okay not to be so efficient. The same cannot be said in today's globalized world.

We didn't start talking about viruses until very recently — moreso when it comes to computer viruses.

Quite interestingly, this makes me think about the very topic of this article: what if every and each Linux distribution out there decided that the standard procedures as a whole are too weird? That things aren't systematic enough? What if, as a result, they all decided to make their own package format?


tl;dr While it is unreasonable, nowadays, to expect people to try and correct the whole of their language's vocab (which is in part very old), expecting said people to correct recent, misunderstood words isn't unreasonable.


P.S.: I don't think descriptive grammar (i.e. common use) is good enough. If you decide to solely go down that road, you'll end up with something even harder to conceive than English as it is now. I think a mix between prescriptive and descriptive is the best, as it is the best of both worlds: the theoretical aspect and its pragmatical counterpart.

Or you can install a Linux distro on said machine. (Not agreeing with Apple's philosophy here; just stating a fact.)

Seriously... When will people learn to distinguish between genes and religion? Oh, and let's not forget language: Muslims don't necessarily speak Arabic and some non-Muslims speak Arabic or a language that stems from it (I'm thinking about Maltese for that last one).

Gah, meant "sowing." This is what I get for clicking "Submit" before thinking.

I don't really understand what sewing has to do with prostitution.

I'm fine with remakes, as long as they have something new in them. It can be anything ranging from a new area to a new character or a new class. And no, graphics aren't something new to me. I expect the remake to sport new graphics, unlike Tales of Phantasia's remake on the GBA (which looked worse than the SNES version).