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Post by Verbivore on Sept 1, 2021 20:53:38 GMT
To start the month I'll have a gripe about the frequent confusion over forego (to precede) and forgo (go without). I've found misuse of these words thrice in today's news.
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Post by Verbivore on Sept 1, 2021 21:41:53 GMT
Unfortunate or deliberate? From BBC News: "Iceland's prime minister has urged the nation's football association to root out sexual abuse …" The verb root might not be understood in sexual terms by some English-speaking cultures, but surely the Beeb must know. Was the writer just trying to be 'smart'?
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Post by Dave Miller on Sept 1, 2021 23:02:23 GMT
To start the month I'll have a gripe about the frequent confusion over forego (to precede) and forgo (go without). I've found misuse of these words thrice in today's news. I’d not known that difference, Vv, so checked the three dictionaries I have easily to hand. All three say (for the ”go without” definition) forgo, forego and go on to give variants in the style of for(e)went and so on.
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Post by Verbivore on Sept 2, 2021 4:49:19 GMT
Agreed that it is so, Dave. I found the same in my on-Mac dictionaries: both the American Oxford and the complete OED 2nd edn, and I don't doubt other references would report similar usage/s should I reach for my shelf collection. But I find that too messed up. Right or wrong, my traditional / habitual styles are for~ – to refrain, etc. and fore~ – to precede. To me, even if to nobody else (?), the distinction matters, is useful. This morning's triggering trio of questionable spellings of for(e)go were contained within one article and the inconsistencies led to reading 'stumbles' and possible ambiguities. To questioning pauses. To back-reading. To a suboptimal reading experience. To my ultimate loss of interest. (Unfortunately I've already lost the link – I read too much news.) It's not the first time I've encountered this sloppiness relaxed / inconsistent approach to for~ / fore~ but this morning's three-in-one tipped the scales halfway through my cup-of-tea-with-online-news, so I needed to vent. Who, me? A creature of habit finding change sometimes challenging?
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Post by Verbivore on Sept 2, 2021 22:14:58 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Sept 2, 2021 23:23:27 GMT
A piece on business namesWhen I set up my pre-press and publishing business in the early noughties I gave a lot of thought to a suitable and catchy name, but my final choice came from a dream: somehow the term verbivore, coined by Richard Lederer, came to me in my sleep and I awoke with it at the front of my day. It caught on quickly with my potential client base and served me well. An aside on news reporting
Re the above-linked article's citing of "the example of Canadian tech firm Blackberry, which until 2013 was known as Research in Motion. 'They had done a lot of research to see how people reacted to this new name'." "Yet, while members of the public were pleased to see Blackberry the business take the name of its best-known product – Blackberry the mobile phone – it didn't help boost sales of the handsets. They were still trounced by Apple and Android handsets."
This is an example of a news service telling less than the whole truth (shock! horror!) for whatever reason, some perhaps legitimate.
I would posit that the Blackberry phone was "trounced by Apple and Android handsets" significantly because big-state security agencies such as the USA's NSA and its analogues in some other nations, including India and the UAE, pressured Blackberry over its "impenetrable" operating-system security. (BB phones had long been the go-to brand for high-fliers including national presidents, CEOs, oil sheiks, and major-league crooks.) BB eventually relented, sold its phone business, and its successor switched to a version of the extremely leaky Android platform. The phone's defection didn't save it, however, and the brand remains increasingly a minority player.
When Obama first ascended to the US presidency he was censured by the security services over his insistence on keeping his BlackBerry. The BB OS was so 'secure' that security agencies couldn't burgle it, and there's nothing a security agency dislikes more than a system it can't penetrate.
When the BB servers are finally unplugged this January I shall have to find a new phone to replace my trusty BB Passport, dammit. And I will not be getting an Android or an iPhone!Attachments:![](//storage.proboards.com/1914611/thumbnailer/FVJqRQxUxWWmezLgf0Qq.png)
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Post by Twoddle on Sept 3, 2021 8:22:49 GMT
The Contessa loved her Blackberrys. That affection had nothing to do with security, but all to do with Blackberrys having physical keyboards - virtual keyboards don't respond well to her fingers. After her latest Blackberry became senile she waited for aeons for the firm that currently holds the Blackberry licence to produce its promised new model, but promised release date after promised release date came and went until her beloved Blackberry Priv finally became unusable. Eventually she was forced to concede defeat and bought a Samsung and a pack of keyboard dabbers. Sic transit gloria mundi.
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Post by Verbivore on Sept 3, 2021 12:39:14 GMT
For me the choice of a BlackBerry was based on three features: the physical keyboard (I dislike virtual ones); security (the nearest thing to an unburglarable / unburglable – ? – phone); and price (as that last 'real' BB had recently ceased production it was being flogged off at a price too good to refuse – AU$187).
In considering its replacement, I've been moderately impressed by Nokia's new 2720, a modern re-issue of one of their famously 'unbreakable' flip phones with a few added 'smarts' that would allow me to do the one thing I really value in a mobile phone: the ability to do on-the-fly banking, which was one of the few 'smart' features I used on my BB. Any others I can do without. The Nokia runs on KaiOS which, to date, has not been much of a target for hackers. And it's only AU$100.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Sept 3, 2021 20:53:20 GMT
All I want to do with a mobile phone is to make and receive telephone calls — and as few of those as possible. I recall that, when mobile phones first became a practical reality, they were regarded as an unnecessary personal inconvenience as people who could afford them could rely on their secretaries to make and receive telephone calls for them.
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Post by Verbivore on Sept 3, 2021 22:06:17 GMT
LJH: I've always found phones – mobile and fixed – to be at least as great an annoyance as convenience. They have become, however, essential to modern life. Since Australia launched its comically (?) inept National Broadband Service, mobiles have become even more necessary as old-style landline telephony has been progressively downgraded and disconnected.
Perhaps I'd care less if the mobile-phone service were reliable, but it's far from that. A couple of months ago I experienced a pulmonary thrombosis episode (clot on lung) over a 4-day weekend when nobody else was nearby (rural life can have its drawbacks). My mobile signal was so flaky that it wasn't until day five that I could contact the ambulance service, by which time major damage had been done to my left-side windbag.
As previously mentioned, I use very few features of a smartphone except for online banking. For 'security' reasons (security being relative in the online and telephonic worlds) I move funds from a card-unrelated account to my debit-card account just before making a transaction; for that the mobile phone with browsing capability is essential. (That practice arose from an episode some 15 years ago when my card account was dudded some $1,200. Now that is far less likely happen because the account is usually empty.)
Other than for personal calls, I prefer SMS so that I have a written record of interactions.
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Post by Verbivore on Sept 3, 2021 22:08:56 GMT
Now here is the post I intended as my first for the day: A website for emojis, which I've often needed translations of. I rarely use them (I'm more stuck in my 'old' ways of emoticons using regular keyboard characters.)
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Sept 4, 2021 10:57:33 GMT
Help please. Many years ago, a letter appeared in a sociological magazine in which the writer complained about the use of “clever” jargon in academic articles. Shortly after, an article appeared in the magazine defending the use of jargon. The writer of the defence said that its use was intended to provide precise and value-free commentary on topics.
The writer exemplified his or her defence by referring to the then recent discussions about the difference between typical conversations by women and men. Women’s conversation had been characterised as “chatter” and merely serving to keep the conversation continuing. Men’s, on the other hand, had been described as “purposeful” and informative. None of this, the writer suggested, was correct or useful and suggested a better word to describe men’s use of language — and this is the word I can no longer recall. The word certainly had overtones of purpose and information-giving but appeared to me, at the time, to be reasonably value-free.
I have searched an on-line thesaurus using terms like informative, purposeful, objective, careful, functional, utilitarian and practical but can find nothing that strikes a chord with me or which is value-free. Can anyone on this forum suggest a word?
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Post by Twoddle on Sept 4, 2021 13:25:14 GMT
Bloody Hell, Vv, you kept that medical incident quiet! I'd expect an ambulance to arrive in twenty minutes, not four or five days! Is your lung recovering?
A few months ago there was a news story about an elderly man who lives in a remote part of the Ben Nevis mountain range in Scotland and who has neither landline nor mobile-phone signal, but he does have a satellite connection and subscription to an international rescue organisation (run by the Tracey family?) set up for such circumstances. He had a medical emergency, pressed his button or did whatever he needed to to, and the organisation in America immediately notified the UK emergency services who then rescued him. What a world of technology this is.
Switching from 'phones to computers, my desktop PC has just shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to join the choir invisibule, so I need to research a new one. Does any of you fine fellows have an opinion on a make, and on towers vs all-in-ones?
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Post by Verbivore on Sept 4, 2021 20:59:17 GMT
Bloody Hell, Vv, you kept that medical incident quiet! I'd expect an ambulance to arrive in twenty minutes, not four or five days! Is your lung recovering? Ah well, Twod, I didn't think it worth reporting at the time, but it did spur me to check my will for relevance and to update a few things. As of yesterday I'm now two years past my biblically allocated three-score years and ten, so every day is a bonus. I've outlived all of my Aussie age-peer friends by many years – for better or for worse, depending on whom one asks I suppose. The lung is half ruined and shortness of breath is a frequent visitor, but I'm still alive enough to annoy people, so perhaps that's a bonus (for me, not the others). […] Switching from 'phones to computers, my desktop PC has just shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to join the choir invisibule, so I need to research a new one. Does any of you fine fellows have an opinion on a make, and on towers vs all-in-ones? A thought on all-in-ones v towers: often more difficult to open and repair the former. If Apple still gave me the option I'd revert to a tower, but the only Mac tower now available starts at US$10K, closer to AU$16K, too silly a price for me. Fortunately, I've never needed to open my all-in-one Macs, but I know of people who've had that unpleasant, sometimes futile, and always costly experience. As for make: can't help; no idea.
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Post by Twoddle on Sept 5, 2021 10:19:31 GMT
As of yesterday I'm now two years past my biblically allocated three-score years and ten, so every day is a bonus. Belated Happy Birthday, Verbivore! I reached the big seven-o recently and found it exceedingly depressing and frightening. Everyone sent me jolly cards and made witty, celebratory remarks, while all I wanted to do was forget about it. I've decided it's essential that I live to at least 94. I spent 47 years of my life at school, college, university and work, doing things that I didn't want to do but that other people made me do, and I insist on having an equal amount of time doing whatever the hell I want to do.
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