Is it my imagination or...

[Weedpacket]

...is programming hazardous to people's shift keys?

Or maybe people are terrified of having keyboards explode if they hit those keys?

Or perhaps they just don't want to kill off the sentient moulds that are building a little civilisation under them?

Sorry, it's just that I've just been using English lately and it's hard to kick the habit.

[tekky]

shift key? I use charmap and right click+paste... and no idea about this english thing you mentioned.... can you post a link? :confused:




:D

[bubblenut]

ithinkthereareanumberofkeyswhicharenowbeingfogotten ipersonallyblamethewholefenomenonontheinternetrevolution wenolongerhavetoreadfrombookswhichhavebeenbyintellegentpeopleandeditedbyotherintellegentpeopleallofwhomnohowtowrite thewrittenwordcannowbedisplayeduncheckedbyanyonewithaninternetconnectionwhichalthoughithasitsgoodpointsishavingaverybadeffectonlanguage ithinkthatlanguagetheworldoverisgoingtogothroughadrasticandunprecedentedmetomorphosisoverthenextfewyearsforeaxactlythisreason imonlygratefullthatasyetihavenotbeenaffected
bubblenuT

[andymoo]

I think I understand what you're saying here.

English may be the main language globally yet soo many people fail with it when written. Not just coders but customers (bless em) are terrible too. I get stacks of badly written emails like "iv probz wimmi tone" - not only is it badly written crap the worse thing is when that's all they say. Could these people try a little harder to be any less specific?

A lot of the time I'll write everything lower case as I'm lazy. No excuses and no point in lying.

My keyboard is a Mac pro one - the kind without any screws that you can turn to get in and clean. There's not just a mould civilisation under there it's managed to develop and mutate to something far worse, there's something under there that looks a bit nasty, I suspect that might be the leader of all the bits of tobacco and dead skin cells.....

Mmm how tasty a thought..... urgh :rolleyes:

[andymoo]

Originally posted by bubblenut
ithinkthereareanumberofkeyswhicharenowbeingfogotten....... That is class, lmao.

I've a friend* who sends me emails like that, just condensed text and no subject. He's a jouno and is now wondering why the BBC have not offered to renew his contract.

How well can you cope with a pen? I think real writing is a skill which took thousands of years for us mammals to learn and we're forgetting it in two decades, I'm terrible with ink, my handwriting changes from day to day yet I type at silly words per minute.

* A friend? Yes it's true. I even go outside sometimes though daylight scares me and I dislike people en-masse ;)

[dalecosp]

HI WEEDPACKET,

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. I MEAN, WHAT IN THE WORLD HEY WAIT A MINUTE ?>?<>?:?<>?ZZXCZCZZVz ahh, that's much better. I think my "shift key" was stuck. Must be all the programming I (don't?) do.... :D

The state of education (at least in the States) is not so good; this is likely because the state of society in the States is also on a downward path.

It is, perhaps, our sense of aesthetics that is suffering the most, and the earliest. First, we lost our appreciation of the fine arts, then poetry, then music. Now language in general is going the way of the dodo. I'm sure that we could discuss (perhaps not intelligently, in my case) the state of religion and philosophy and gain some insight into this phenomenon....

I'd just blame IRC if that were the real reason, but it seems like that isn't the case.... :eek:

[Moonglobe]

I know someone who, up until last year, didn't know what the shift key did. For every capital letter he would hit caps, type the letter, then turn off caps :p

[Elizabeth]

Originally posted by dalecosp
Now language in general is going the way of the dodo. Yes, we're going back to the caveman way (http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=10475164&highlight=caveman#post10475164) aren't we? :)

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by andymoo
How well can you cope with a pen? Very badly, it's true; I can write (well, print) clearly and legibly when I have the time (and I expect my writing to be readable by others), but handwriting is just so frustratingly low bandwidth! It takes forever to get anything down. I guess that's why when I'm writing "at speed" all of the letters end up approximately 2mm wide and 7mm tall. I've got a whole kit of ligatures that don't appear in any typesetter's case (containing digraphs like "th" and "tt" and so forth). That's why I taught myself how to type; it's faster and looks better. And, on a PC, much easier to edit. But at least it's still spelled correctly and grammatical. The only time the abbreviations take over is when I'm just jotting a brief note to serve as a mnemonic that only needs to serve for a few minutes.

Funnily enough, when I'm writing mathematical notation, it's a lot clearer....

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by Elizabeth
Yes, we're going back to the caveman way (http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=10475164&highlight=caveman#post10475164) aren't we? :) From point and grunt to point and click, you mean?

[dalecosp]

Originally posted by Elizabeth
Yes, we're going back to the caveman way (http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=10475164&highlight=caveman#post10475164) aren't we? :) Well, I'm *trying* not to. But we who type correct English face at least two battles: one, we can't expect some folks to be proficient (disabled individuals come to mind, as well as the fact that we should probably allow a tad of liberty to those for whom English is a tertiary language), and two, the hosts of "|33tSP33|<Inq" script kiddies who believe that unpunctuated strtolower()'d (and oft mispelled) is completely acceptable and no one has the right to expect any better from them.

I personally do want to thank the large majority of the regulars to this site who have taken time from their valuable schedules to type their messages correctly.... :cool:

As to the caveman stuff, and noting you're moving back to an older title, how does "/you slave /me Dicky B" grab you ... (yeah, I guess the pun is intended :rolleyes: but per the usual, no offense is ... :eek: )

:D

[Moonglobe]

well, I'm sorry if I've been guilty of strtolower()ed posts (especially "i"), but i like to think I have fairly good english. Of course, I don't quite stack up with teh likes of Weed or dale, but I'm happy enough to read your posts, basking in what I clearly realize is better writing than my own :cool:

[goldbug]

omg u r so rite!

:D:D:D

[Merve]

http://origins.racknine.net/*****/msn.html

:D:D

Sorry for the profanity in the link...

[andymoo]

From that URL: You're telling me that these people deserve to live? Erm, no they don't but anyone so bold to say so is normally hushed up in this age of politically correct madness or seen as a threat to global security.

I think an internet proficiency test should be introduced with candidates being sent to net boot camp to teach them once and for all ThIS AiNt dA WaY 2 TIPe and CAPITALS translate to being shouted at.

If you're not allowed on the roads till you can drive well enough why should the net be any different, it is afterall said to be a superhighway?

[dalecosp]

Fact: Many people tried discussing this article but used "MSN Talk" and no one understood each other so they all gave up and killed themselves. Good.

This brought a hearty chuckle, indeed...now, if it were only *true*!!

[dalecosp]

Originally posted by andymoo
If you're not allowed on the roads till you can drive well enough why should the net be any different, it is afterall said to be a superhighway? Hmm, yes; I quote myself, actually, as saying that "Truth was the first casualty on the information superhighway..." (apologies if anyone else said it first; I've never heard it but from me AFAIK).

The problem with proficiency testing for the Internet is that it would break Microsoft's business model ....

[andymoo]

Originally posted by dalecosp
The problem with proficiency testing for the Internet is that it would break Microsoft's business model .... True, very true but would that be a bad thing?

$£$£$ for a CD / licence of M$ filth = A fool as his money are easily parted.

If money is the route of al evil then Mr Gates (aka his dark lordship) must be the devil?

Thinking about it the Penguins might be our true spiritual leaders and the ones with Red Hats are Gods? It's more logical than the mice in hitchikers?

Dalecosp - you mentioned religion so I'll herald you as inspiration for my moment of oddness there. It is Easter so what better time to shatter 2,000 year old myths.......

[bubblenut]

Originally posted by dalecosp
The state of education (at least in the States) is not so good; this is likely because the state of society in the States is also on a downward path.

I thought semi-colons were supposed to seperate independant clauses in a sentance? :rolleyes: ;) Where is the line between appreciating good use of language and being anal? Did I just cross it?

[bubblenut]

A really funny book on the state of the English language (which my Mother gave for Christmas and was easily the best present I recieved) is Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance approach to Punctuation (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1861976127/qid=1081622866/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_11_1/202-9445655-4437466). I haven't read the "perfect partner" but I'm deffinately going to get it.

[dalecosp]

Originally posted by bubblenut
I thought semi-colons were supposed to seperate independant clauses in a sentance? :rolleyes: ;) Googling for "define:independant" produces this output:No definitions were found for independant.
Suggestions:

- Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
- Search the Web for documents that contain "independant"


As for the content of your post, try doing this:The state of education (at least in the States) is not so good. This is likely because the state of society in the States is also on a downward path. I'm not sure the wording is great, but the clauses are "independent" (unlike this sentence, which uses a comma because the conjunction makes the 2nd clause dependent....)

Where is the line between appreciating good use of language and being anal? Did I just cross it? I think I just did ... ;)

[dalecosp]

Originally posted by andymoo
True, very true but would that be a bad thing? No; and I was not attempting to make you think so. It's just that a lot of people *do* think so, so it hasn't been done, nor seriously discussed, I should imagine....

It used to be that connecting a computer to the Internet was difficult enough that it served as a proficiency test. M$'s "wizards" have ruined all that....

Wanna talk about shattering a religion, how 'bout "pragmatism"?? ;)

[LordShryku]

Originally posted by andymoo
Thinking about it the Penguins might be our true spiritual leaders and the ones with Red Hats are Gods? It's more logical than the mice in hitchikers?
Actually, I'd be looking towards the Novell/Suse/Ximian group to overthrow the Red Hat guys. Red Hat did great things to bring Linux to where it's at today, but Suse seems to be the ones who will pick up where they left off...

[andymoo]

Babylon Zoo, Space Man (http://www.lyrics007.com/Bablyon%20Zoo%20Lyrics/Spaceman%20Lyrics.html) : Electronic information tampers with your soulGetting connected hell yeah, what a total nightmare! AOL on floppies, a near dead 486 with 3.1 that work was throwing out, modem conflicts and even more modem conflicts...

After hours and hours of tampering I finally got "Welcome to AOL" - life changed at that point.

I've come a long way when I look back but chat of Novell/Suse/Ximian makes me realise that I'm still a total noob with a longer way to go and a lot to learn.

Urgh. http://novell.com/linux is poor on a Mac

Oh, happy easter if you subscribe to it or like chocolate eggs ;)

[LordShryku]

Man, I actually have that CD :D

[Merve]

It always comes back to Microsoft-bashing :D

We, as the computer-literate and proficient population of society, believe that those who are computer-illiterate should stay away from computers. What I say is that those who are computer illiterate should just stay away from trying to make website and should stop polluting the web with useless crap. I don't think we need to stop people from using the web.

As for suse, that is the linux distro that I'll install on my computer come summer (I depend too much on the computer to install something major on it now.) I think that it's great that companies are offering free downloads of their distros, but you would have to pay for a version with more features. It makes sense and it's good business tactics. We know that Microsoft would never do that.

So back to the beginning, shift-keys! We know we've all been culprits of not capitalizing stuff; I think most of posts on this site use bad grammar anyway. I think what the problem is that "MSN talk" crap that Microsoft has incited with those crappy icons. You, want some icons M$? Get a load of these :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: !

[piersk]

Originally posted by andymoo
How well can you cope with a pen? [/B]

I don't. If I wanna right a note and I'm not at my computer, I use the mini keyboard on my Axim :p