Billgates
Steve Hayes
suggested word for the online malapropisms that have become common since the
rise of electronic written comunication.
A friend suggested that these should be called "billgates", singular
"billgate", because of the contribution of spelling checkers to their
proliferation
I have a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea ...
Perhaps we could make a collection of them, a kind of definitive list.
Here's what I have so far:
baited breath
pour over (books, newspapers etc)
tow the line
pre-madonna
another words
another thing coming
waisting time
long behold
for all intensive purposes
minus well
could care less
sort after
Any more?
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Arcadian Rises
You should of known that Bill Gates is the pineapple of success.
Peter Moylan
>baited breath
>pour over (books, newspapers etc)
>tow the line
>pre-madonna
>another words
>another thing coming
>waisting time
>long behold
>for all intensive purposes
>minus well
>could care less
>sort after
>
>Any more?
The straight and narrow
Viola
--
Peter Moylan peter at ee dot newcastle dot edu dot au
http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au (OS/2 and eCS information and software)
R H Draney
>
>You should of known that Bill Gates is the pineapple of success.
That second one's more of a classical malapropism, innit?...(and anyway, it
should read "the pinochle of success")....r
rban...@shaw.ca
Dunno about that. The chap's widely regarded as a handgrenade under
the sensible evolution of software, I believe.
Arfur Million
I've just seen this example in another ng:
"I think he's talking about the time you defiantly know you put your
screw driver in your tool box. But when you open the box next it's not
there."
I'd say that was definately the result of a spell-checker. Google shows
a fair few similar examples.
Regards,
Arfur
Adrian Bailey
news:42099611...@news.saix.net...
> I couldn't find the malapropism thread, so I'm starting a new one with the
> suggested word for the online malapropisms that have become common since
the
> rise of electronic written comunication.
>
> A friend suggested that these should be called "billgates", singular
> "billgate", because of the contribution of spelling checkers to their
> proliferation
>
> I have a spelling chequer
> It came with my pea sea ...
>
> Perhaps we could make a collection of them, a kind of definitive list.
I think other NGroupies are on the case...
> minus well
Oh dearie, dearie me. Another knot in my depression. :(
Adrian
John O'Flaherty
And that's definitely the result of the lack of one.
--
john
[Skitt's law mgnet]
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>The straight and narrow
>Viola
For a while I was puzzled about who this Viola was that you were attributing
"straight and narrow" to, and then I twigged... but the one I've ususally see
is "Wallah"
Harvey Van Sickle
> I couldn't find the malapropism thread, so I'm starting a new one
> with the suggested word for the online malapropisms that have
> become common since the rise of electronic written comunication.
>
> A friend suggested that these should be called "billgates",
> singular "billgate", because of the contribution of spelling
> checkers to their proliferation
>
> I have a spelling chequer
> It came with my pea sea ...
>
> Perhaps we could make a collection of them, a kind of definitive
> list.
>
> Here's what I have so far:
>
-snip-
> could care less
Nitpick: I thought that one pre-dated the Internet.
--
Cheers, Harvey
Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years;
Southern England for the past 22 years.
(for e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van)
Roland Hutchinson
Which would, entomologically speaking, make him the pomegranate of success.
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it.
Arfur Million
I think that you may have missed the point :-)
Regards,
Arfur
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
Or just "waist" for "waste" in any situation.
> > >>long behold
> > >>for all intensive purposes
> > >>minus well
> > >>could care less
> > >>sort after
Non-rhotic for "sought after"?
> > >>Any more?
"loose" for "lose"
I think all of those are regular old malapropisms that have nothing to
do with computers (except for "could care less", which seems to have
arisen in some other way). We see them more because the Internet makes
a tremendous amount of unedited text available and possibly because
other entertainment media have made reading less popular.
> > > I've just seen this example in another ng:
> > >
> > > "I think he's talking about the time you defiantly know you put
> your
> > > screw driver in your tool box. But when you open the box next
it's
> not
> > > there."
> > >
> > > I'd say that was definately the result of a spell-checker. Google
> shows
> > > a fair few similar examples.
> >
> > And that's definitely the result of the lack of one.
> >
>
> I think that you may have missed the point :-)
Right, but oddly enough, you may have too. When I was in high school,
my best friend and I liked to knowingly say "defiantly" instead of
"definitely". Possibly someone else could have the same affectation.
Does that poster also say "I'm irresponsible for that" to mean "I'm not
responsible for that" or "unusual" for "bizarre"? (I can't remember
any others, but there were others. I may have picked all of them up
from my friend.)
--
Jerry Friedman
Arfur Million
I know what you mean, I used to do this too ("manganous" for
"magnanimous" springs to mind). It's hard to say for sure, but skimming
over the 60-odd results I get from Google for "defiantly know" most of
them seem like mistakes to me, with one or two that are clearly
jocular.
Regards,
Arfur
Areff
> Right, but oddly enough, you may have too. When I was in high school,
> my best friend and I liked to knowingly say "defiantly" instead of
> "definitely". Possibly someone else could have the same affectation.
> Does that poster also say "I'm irresponsible for that" to mean "I'm not
> responsible for that" or "unusual" for "bizarre"? (I can't remember
> any others, but there were others. I may have picked all of them up
> from my friend.)
I remember some of us saying "incredulous" for "very incredible".
Truly was a staunch (= SparkE "stonch") defender of "irregardless", but
that might be a whole nother thing. (Say, where is ...?)
--
Steny '08!
David Wright Sr.
news:1107969426.4...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> Right, but oddly enough, you may have too. When I was in high school,
> my best friend and I liked to knowingly say "defiantly" instead of
> "definitely". Possibly someone else could have the same affectation.
> Does that poster also say "I'm irresponsible for that" to mean "I'm not
> responsible for that" or "unusual" for "bizarre"? (I can't remember
> any others, but there were others. I may have picked all of them up
> from my friend.)
>
>
Technically, 'irresponsible' does indeed mean 'not responsible' as it
consists of the Latin derived 'iR' morpheme[1] meaning 'not' plus
'responsible', but it is mostly used, ISTM, in the context of b: or c:
below as everyone is probably aware.
From M-W online
Main Entry: ir·re·spon·si·ble
Pronunciation: "ir-i-'spän(t)-s&-b&l
Function: adjective
: not responsible: as a : not answerable to higher authority <an
irresponsible dictatorship> b : said or done with no sense of
responsibility <irresponsible accusations> c : lacking a sense of
responsibility d : unable especially mentally or financially to bear
responsibility
[1] but not the same morpheme as in 'inflammable' or 'impregnate'
BTW. Here's a teaser. Why does 'impregnate' have such a distinct
diference in meaning from 'impregnable'?
--
David Wright
http://home.alltel.net/dwrighsr/index.html
To e-mail me, remove 't' from dwrightsr
Maria Conlon
> ... Google shows a fair few similar examples.
"A fair few"?
Maria Conlon
I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not
pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "No good in a bed, but
fine against a wall." [Eleanor Roosevelt]
(The preceding sig quote is not intended to be relevant to this thread.
MC)
rban...@shaw.ca
don groves
dado...@spamcop.net hath writ:
Actually, he's taken up bridge.
--
dg (domain=ccwebster)
Harvey Van Sickle
Eloquimpotence?
Ray Heindl
> The straight and narrow
What's wrong with that?
--
Ray Heindl
(remove the Xs to reply)
Wood Avens
<vortre...@yaxhoo.com> wrote:
>pe...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au (Peter Moylan) wrote:
>
>> The straight and narrow
>
>What's wrong with that?
<mutter, mutter> think of Gibraltar <mutter> What *do* they teach
them in these schools? <wanders off shaking head>
--
Katy Jennison
spamtrap: remove the first two letters after the @
Skitt
> (Peter Moylan) wrote:
>> The straight and narrow
>
> What's wrong with that?
Good question. Are we to use the earlier form, or is the current usage, as
documented by MWCD10, unexceptionable?
Main Entry: straight and narrow
Function: noun
Etymology: probably alteration of strait and narrow; from the admonition of
Matthew 7:14 (AV), "strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth
unto life"
: the way of propriety and rectitude -- used with the
Just to clarify:
Main Entry: 1strait
Pronunciation: 'strAt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French estreit, from Latin strictus
strait, strict, from past participle of stringere
1 archaic : STRICT, RIGOROUS
2 archaic a : NARROW b : limited in space or time c : closely fitting :
CONSTRICTED, TIGHT
3 a : causing distress : DIFFICULT b : limited as to means or resources
One of the meanings under 2 is, most likely, the applicable one.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/
Jordan Abel
>> "I think he's talking about the time you defiantly know you put your
>> screw driver in your tool box. But when you open the box next it's not
>> there."
>>
>> I'd say that was definately the result of a spell-checker. Google shows
>> a fair few similar examples.
>
> And that's definitely the result of the lack of one.
To its credit, the current microsoft spell-checker not only
auto-corrects "definately" to "definitely", it doesn't even offer
"defiantly" as an option if you backtrack out of the autocorrect.
Adrian Bailey
news:l6uk01dq12qos96h7...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 20:42:47 GMT, Ray Heindl
> <vortre...@yaxhoo.com> wrote:
>
> >pe...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au (Peter Moylan) wrote:
> >
> >> The straight and narrow
> >
> >What's wrong with that?
>
> <mutter, mutter> think of Gibraltar <mutter> What *do* they teach
> them in these schools? <wanders off shaking head>
"Straight and narrow" makes sense, at least. Very unlike "minus
well"...<mutter>
Adrian
Adrian Bailey
news:36v3u3F...@individual.net...
> Arfur Million wrote:
>
> > ... Google shows a fair few similar examples.
>
> "A fair few"?
Half the googles are UK, so I guess it's pondian.
Adrian
irwell
wrote:
>On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 20:42:47 GMT, Ray Heindl
><vortre...@yaxhoo.com> wrote:
>
>>pe...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au (Peter Moylan) wrote:
>>
>>> The straight and narrow
>>
>>What's wrong with that?
>
><mutter, mutter> think of Gibraltar <mutter> What *do* they teach
>them in these schools? <wanders off shaking head>
Sounds like a bunch of Malacca.
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> Ray Heindl wrote:
> > (Peter Moylan) wrote:
>
> >> The straight and narrow
> >
> > What's wrong with that?
>
> Good question. Are we to use the earlier form, or is the current
usage, as
> documented by MWCD10, unexceptionable?
>
> Main Entry: straight and narrow
> Function: noun
> Etymology: probably alteration of strait and narrow; from the
admonition of
> Matthew 7:14 (AV), "strait is the gate and narrow is the way which
leadeth
> unto life"
> : the way of propriety and rectitude -- used with the
And as I'm always saying, "straight and narrow" is one of the two
misquotations I know that improves on the original. (The other is
"gild the lily". Well, maybe also "You cannot serve cod and gammon.")
--
Jerry Friedman
Mike Lyle
And, for your greater transpontine pleasure, we proudly present
"quite a few", and "a good few".
Mike.
Harvey Van Sickle
> On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 20:42:47 GMT, Ray Heindl
><vortre...@yaxhoo.com> wrote:
>
>> pe...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au (Peter Moylan) wrote:
>>
>>> The straight and narrow
>>
>> What's wrong with that?
>
><mutter, mutter> think of Gibraltar <mutter> What *do* they teach
> them in these schools? <wanders off shaking head>
An uncertain battle, that one.
OED records "straight" as a variant spelling for "strait", so it's not
clear if the modern form is rooted in usage or in orthography.
Collins recognises this: the historical note under "straight and
narrow" (there is no entry for "strait and narrow") allows only that it
is "probably" an alteration of the line from Matthew.
In any event, a Google count makes it clear that fighting it involves
the conjunction of heads, walls, and bricks:
"straight and narrow" -"strait and narrow" = 190,000
"strait and narrow" -"straight and narrow" = 7,090
Robin Bignall
<mariaco...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Arfur Million wrote:
>
>> ... Google shows a fair few similar examples.
>
>"A fair few"?
>
It's a BrE expression which means "a significant number of".
--
wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Hertfordshire
England
Carmen L. Abruzzi
> I couldn't find the malapropism thread, so I'm starting a new one with the
> suggested word for the online malapropisms that have become common since the
> rise of electronic written comunication.
>
> A friend suggested that these should be called "billgates", singular
> "billgate", because of the contribution of spelling checkers to their
> proliferation
>
> I have a spelling chequer
> It came with my pea sea ...
>
> Perhaps we could make a collection of them, a kind of definitive list.
Here's one, fresh and warm, from rec.travel.usa-canada, and with an
added special extra bonus treat!:
L.A is a city of cars. [...] Taxi's can be difficult to find
especially in any oulining areas.
>
> Here's what I have so far:
>
> baited breath
> pour over (books, newspapers etc)
> tow the line
> pre-madonna
> another words
> another thing coming
> waisting time
> long behold
> for all intensive purposes
> minus well
> could care less
> sort after
>
> Any more?
>
>
R H Draney
>
>And as I'm always saying, "straight and narrow" is one of the two
>misquotations I know that improves on the original. (The other is
>"gild the lily". Well, maybe also "You cannot serve cod and gammon.")
You savage beast, you!...r
Richard Chambers
Arfur Million wrote
>
> I've just seen this example in another ng:
>
> screw driver in your tool box. But when you open the box next it's not
> there."
You presumably mean " ... its not their ".
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
John Varela
> On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 20:42:47 GMT, Ray Heindl
> <vortre...@yaxhoo.com> wrote:
>
> >pe...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au (Peter Moylan) wrote:
> >
> >> The straight and narrow
> >
> >What's wrong with that?
>
> <mutter, mutter> think of Gibraltar <mutter> What *do* they teach
> them in these schools? <wanders off shaking head>
But strait *means* narrow, so "strait and narrow" is an archaic tautology.
The "straight and narrow" version makes more sense in current English.
--
John Varela
(Trade "OLD" lamps for "NEW" for email.)
I apologize for munging the address but the spam was too much.
Richard Chambers
Arfur Million
> > > "I think he's talking about the time you defiantly know you put
> your
> > > screw driver in your tool box. But when you open the box next it's
> not
> > > there."
> > >
> > > I'd say that was definately the result of a spell-checker. Google
> shows
> > > a fair few similar examples.
> >
> > And that's definitely the result of the lack of one.
> >
>
> I think that you may have missed the point :-)
>
Has he really mist the point, or is he just putting on heirs and graces? I
cant say because I simply don't no.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>On 09 Feb 2005, Steve Hayes wrote
>
>> could care less
>
>Nitpick: I thought that one pre-dated the Internet.
Many of them probably predated the internet, but before the internet nobody
had that kind of writing disseminated so widely, unedited.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Steve Hayes
<jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>And as I'm always saying, "straight and narrow" is one of the two
>misquotations I know that improves on the original. (The other is
>"gild the lily". Well, maybe also "You cannot serve cod and gammon.")
Are you ready fotr a straight jacket?
The Grammer Genious
> rban...@shaw.ca wrote:
>
>
>>On 8 Feb 2005 22:08:09 -0800, R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Arcadian Rises filted:
>>>
>>>>You should of known that Bill Gates is the pineapple of success.
>>>
>>>That second one's more of a classical malapropism, innit?...(and anyway,
>>>it should read "the pinochle of success")....r
>>
>>Dunno about that. The chap's widely regarded as a handgrenade under
>>the sensible evolution of software, I believe.
>
>
> Which would, entomologically speaking, make him the pomegranate of success.
I consider him an exampler, a belle weather, a pro
to type.
\\P. Schultz
don groves
Bignall at docr...@ntlworld.com hath writ:
> On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 13:43:18 -0500, "Maria Conlon"
> <mariaco...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Arfur Million wrote:
> >
> >> ... Google shows a fair few similar examples.
> >
> >"A fair few"?
> >
> It's a BrE expression which means "a significant number of".
Masters of understatement, you Brits. It's actually one of my
favorite things about over there. When I do it here, I get funny
looks -- "What do you mean fair, that was great!"
--
dg (domain=ccwebster)
Jitze Couperus
>
>And as I'm always saying, "straight and narrow" is one of the two
>misquotations I know that improves on the original. (The other is
>"gild the lily". Well, maybe also "You cannot serve cod and gammon.")
>
Isn't that rather like lutefisk (alert for Minnesotans) which is
defined as "the piece of cod that passeth all understanding"?
Jitze
Wood Avens
wrote:
>Masters of understatement, you Brits. It's actually one of my
>favorite things about over there. When I do it here, I get funny
>looks -- "What do you mean fair, that was great!"
Ah, well, you see, that's because if you meant great you should have
said "pretty fair".
Robin Bignall
wrote:
>On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 15:56:09 GMT, Harvey Van Sickle <harve...@ntlworld.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On 09 Feb 2005, Steve Hayes wrote
>>
>>> could care less
>>
>>Nitpick: I thought that one pre-dated the Internet.
>
>Many of them probably predated the internet, but before the internet nobody
>had that kind of writing disseminated so widely, unedited.
Personally, I think it went over with the Mayflower. Miss Humility
Cooper, a passenger who was one at the time, was learning to speak but
either got personally attached to master Love Brewster, or intimidated
by his brother Wrestling Brewster, and couldn't say "couldn't". The
rest is history. Had she been taught by Mr Thomas English, things
might have been different.
Arfur Million
Maria Conlon wrote:
> Arfur Million wrote:
>
> > ... Google shows a fair few similar examples.
>
> "A fair few"?
>
> I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was
not
> pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "No good in a bed,
but
> fine against a wall." [Eleanor Roosevelt]
> (The preceding sig quote is not intended to be relevant to this
thread.
> MC)
As has already been pointed out, it means "a significant number". I
would never have guessed that "a fair few" exhibited pondian
differences.
Regards,
Arfur
Charles Riggs
wrote:
>I couldn't find the malapropism thread, so I'm starting a new one with the
>suggested word for the online malapropisms that have become common since the
>rise of electronic written comunication.
>
>A friend suggested that these should be called "billgates", singular
>"billgate", because of the contribution of spelling checkers to their
>proliferation
>
>I have a spelling chequer
>It came with my pea sea ...
>
>Perhaps we could make a collection of them, a kind of definitive list.
>
>Here's what I have so far:
>
>baited breath
>pour over (books, newspapers etc)
>tow the line
>pre-madonna
>another words
>another thing coming
>waisting time
>long behold
>for all intensive purposes
>minus well
>could care less
>sort after
>
>Any more?
sure and
--
Charles Riggs
There are no accented letters in my email address
Arcadian Rises
Belle, eh?
You shod be band on all forums.
Seriously, when I red your massage, I spilt my coffee on the moniker's
scree.
Donna Richoux
> Maria Conlon wrote:
> > Arfur Million wrote:
> >
> > > ... Google shows a fair few similar examples.
> >
> > "A fair few"?
>
> As has already been pointed out, it means "a significant number". I
> would never have guessed that "a fair few" exhibited pondian
> differences.
Difference in the sense that it's just not said in the US, by and large.
It's always hard, isn't it, to notice that the other side *never* says
something, unless they point it out.
And since we already know that "few/a few" and "quite few/quite a few"
have significantly different meanings, we have to ask which way the
"fair" shades the meaning.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
An American living in the Netherlands
Mike Lyle
> On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 15:56:09 GMT, Harvey Van Sickle
> <harve...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>> On 09 Feb 2005, Steve Hayes wrote
>>
>>> could care less
>>
>> Nitpick: I thought that one pre-dated the Internet.
>
> Many of them probably predated the internet, but before the
internet
> nobody had that kind of writing disseminated so widely, unedited.
And before the Internet there was a much smaller industry of telling
people who didn't like such vagaries that they were evil
prescriptivists.
Mike.
Harvey Van Sickle
But but but...they were, weren't they? And they still are, aren't
they?
[Yes -- a smiley thing goes here.]
Mike Lyle
[...]
> And since we already know that "few/a few" and "quite few/quite a
few"
> have significantly different meanings, we have to ask which way the
> "fair" shades the meaning.
It's highly dependent on tone of voice, I'm afraid. I could make it
mean anything from "bloody _billions_" to "oh, all right, I concede
that there are some; but not enough to bother with in this context".
I think of an American admiral I heard saying the Russian Navy were
"fair seamen" when it was clear that he meant "very good seamen". And
the astronaut who said when asked if the lauch wasn't extremely
frightening, "It engages your attention". US understatement is just
as good as the Brit version: I think it's the context in which it's
used which can be confusingly different. (Possibly something to do
with the much larger proportion of Americans who are only first or
second generation Anglophones?)
Mike.
don groves
Avens at wood...@askjennison.com hath writ:
> On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 22:23:43 -0800, don groves <dgr...@domain.net>
> wrote:
>
> >Masters of understatement, you Brits. It's actually one of my
> >favorite things about over there. When I do it here, I get funny
> >looks -- "What do you mean fair, that was great!"
>
> Ah, well, you see, that's because if you meant great you should have
> said "pretty fair".
I do that too, but to no avail. I don't know if understatement
is a lost art here, or a never-gained one.
--
dg (domain=ccwebster)
John O'Flaherty
I defiantly mist it. I was mistified. :-)
--
john
Ray Heindl
>>> "A fair few"?
>> Half the googles are UK, so I guess it's pondian.
> And, for your greater transpontine pleasure, we proudly present
> "quite a few", and "a good few".
"Quite a few" is very common in Leftpondia; "a good few" much less so.
But wouldn't "transpontine" mean "across the bridge"?
--
Ray Heindl
(remove the Xs to reply)
Mike Lyle
No, that's transPontiac. No, seriously, I'm thinking of _pontus_=
sea, not _pons_= bridge. Collins2000 disagrees with me; but COD9
recognizes both.
Mike.
don groves
mike_l...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk hath writ:
No, no, Pontiac makes (= BrE "make") the "Trans Am".
--
dg (domain=ccwebster)
Adrian Bailey
news:pmrm01h71jn8m93cp...@4ax.com...
> sure and
?
Adrian
Peter Moylan
>[Yes -- a smiley thing goes here.]
I've just been testing Thunderbird, and have discovered inter alia
that it does graphical renditions of smilies. That is, it converts
every colon-hyphen-parenthesis combination into a little yellow
Pacman figure. I know that some other mail/news clients do this,
but this is the first time I've encountered it myself.
It's amazing how _ugly_ writing becomes when it's peppered with
smilies. As long as they're punctuation marks your eyes can blip
over them, but when they're intrusive graphics they reach out and
grab you by the throat. I'm tempted to write to the Thunderbird
crew and ask them to implement automatic deletion of smilies.
My other impressions, in case anyone is interested: I don't like
the user interface, which has that space-wasting three-pane design
which seems to be so common in Windows applications, so I'll
probably stick to my existing e-mail client. Apart from that it
looks pretty good. In particular, it has integrated junk mail detection.
--
Peter Moylan peter at ee dot newcastle dot edu dot au
http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au (OS/2 and eCS information and software)
don groves
at pe...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au hath writ:
> Harvey Van Sickle infrared:
>
> >[Yes -- a smiley thing goes here.]
>
> I've just been testing Thunderbird, and have discovered inter alia
> that it does graphical renditions of smilies. That is, it converts
> every colon-hyphen-parenthesis combination into a little yellow
> Pacman figure. I know that some other mail/news clients do this,
> but this is the first time I've encountered it myself.
>
> It's amazing how _ugly_ writing becomes when it's peppered with
> smilies. As long as they're punctuation marks your eyes can blip
> over them, but when they're intrusive graphics they reach out and
> grab you by the throat. I'm tempted to write to the Thunderbird
> crew and ask them to implement automatic deletion of smilies.
I think it's optional and can be turned off by the user.
Surprising they would have it on by default.
> My other impressions, in case anyone is interested: I don't like
> the user interface, which has that space-wasting three-pane design
> which seems to be so common in Windows applications, so I'll
> probably stick to my existing e-mail client. Apart from that it
> looks pretty good. In particular, it has integrated junk mail detection.
IMO, statistical junk mail filters are worthless. You still need
to look through the blasted stuff in case something was filtered
that you really want.
--
dg (domain=ccwebster)
Peter Moylan
>In article <cugv8o$bgb$2...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au>, Peter Moylan
>at pe...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au hath writ:
>> the user interface, which has that space-wasting three-pane design
>> which seems to be so common in Windows applications, so I'll
>> probably stick to my existing e-mail client. Apart from that it
>> looks pretty good. In particular, it has integrated junk mail detection.
>
>IMO, statistical junk mail filters are worthless. You still need
>to look through the blasted stuff in case something was filtered
>that you really want.
I get about 200 emails/day, of which about 90% is junk. Before I
started using Bogofilter I wasted huge amounts of time deleting the
junk. Now I just have to glance through the "junk" folder and
delete it in huge chunks. I get less than 1 message/day misfiled as
junk, and I can usually recognise it by sender's name. (It's
almost always someone who insists on sending mail in HTML format;
accidental loss of such mail would not be a great burden to me.)
The filter is now so accurate that I'm almost ready to automate the
junk deletion without any manual checking.
don groves
> don groves infrared:
> >In article <cugv8o$bgb$2...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au>, Peter Moylan
> >at pe...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au hath writ:
>
> >> My other impressions, in case anyone is interested: I don't like
> >> the user interface, which has that space-wasting three-pane design
> >> which seems to be so common in Windows applications, so I'll
> >> probably stick to my existing e-mail client. Apart from that it
> >> looks pretty good. In particular, it has integrated junk mail detection.
> >
> >IMO, statistical junk mail filters are worthless. You still need
> >to look through the blasted stuff in case something was filtered
> >that you really want.
>
> I get about 200 emails/day, of which about 90% is junk. Before I
> started using Bogofilter I wasted huge amounts of time deleting the
> junk. Now I just have to glance through the "junk" folder and
> delete it in huge chunks. I get less than 1 message/day misfiled as
> junk, and I can usually recognise it by sender's name. (It's
> almost always someone who insists on sending mail in HTML format;
> accidental loss of such mail would not be a great burden to me.)
> The filter is now so accurate that I'm almost ready to automate the
> junk deletion without any manual checking.
Hmmm, if Bogofilter is that good, I guess I'll have to look into
using it myself.
--
dg (domain=ccwebster)
Bob Cunningham
(Peter Moylan) said:
[...]
> Before I started using Bogofilter I wasted huge amounts of time deleting the
> junk.
At http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net/ I reed
Bogofilter is written in C. Supported platforms: Linux,
FreeBSD, Solaris, OS X, HP-UX, AIX, RISC OS,
SunOS, OS/2 ...
So I wonder what the ellipsis signifies. Does it mean "and
others too numerous to mention", and could those others
include Windows XP?
Richard Maurer
I've just been testing Thunderbird, and have discovered inter alia
that it does graphical renditions of smilies. That is, it converts
every colon-hyphen-parenthesis combination into a little yellow
Pacman figure. I know that some other mail/news clients do this,
but this is the first time I've encountered it myself.
It's amazing how _ugly_ writing becomes when it's peppered with
smilies. As long as they're punctuation marks your eyes can blip
over them, but when they're intrusive graphics they reach out and
grab you by the throat. I'm tempted to write to the Thunderbird
crew and ask them to implement automatic deletion of smilies.
Was just thinking about what it would look like if it did similar for
all similes ... no need for the animations to stay put, they could
jump to conclusions. Eye candy beats content.
-- ---------------------------------------------
Richard Maurer To reply, remove half
Sunnyvale, California of a homonym of a synonym for also.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(and how about those bright pixel signs at the side of the freeway?)
Peter Moylan
The last time I looked, nobody had ported it to any flavour of
Windows. Thunderbird, however, is available on Windows inter alia,
and its built-in junk filter is probably based on Bogofilter.
That's a guess, but I'm reasonably confident of it.
The key to these probability-based filters is training. They
make mistakes for the first couple of hundred e-mails, so it
helps to feed it with a batch of junk initially so that you
can tell the filter "this is junk". (Although, these days, the
spammers provide such a heavy volume of junk that you can
afford to wait for the training material to arrive automatically.)
One other thing that helps, I've found, is to keep the "junk"
folder sorted by subject. That allows you to select a huge
collection of subject lines starting with the word "Viagra"
(for example) with a single sweep of the mouse, thus speeding
up the deletion process. It also makes the misclassified
items stand out.
My experience with Bogofilter is based on using it for several
months with PMMail on OS/2. By now it's so well trained that
it hardly ever makes a mistake. It's less well trained on my
wife's computer, because she receives non-junk mail in three
different languages and many different styles (e.g. some HTML,
some not); but even for her it's a big time-saver.
My experience with Thunderbird has lasted only a couple of days,
so I can't say a lot about it, but so far it's looking good.
And, it's worth adding, it's elementary to install. The only
hard part is waiting for the huge installer file to download.
Laura F. Spira
> Harvey Van Sickle infrared:
>
>
>>[Yes -- a smiley thing goes here.]
>
>
> I've just been testing Thunderbird, and have discovered inter alia
> that it does graphical renditions of smilies. That is, it converts
> every colon-hyphen-parenthesis combination into a little yellow
> Pacman figure. I know that some other mail/news clients do this,
> but this is the first time I've encountered it myself.
>
> It's amazing how _ugly_ writing becomes when it's peppered with
> smilies. As long as they're punctuation marks your eyes can blip
> over them, but when they're intrusive graphics they reach out and
> grab you by the throat. I'm tempted to write to the Thunderbird
> crew and ask them to implement automatic deletion of smilies.
You can turn it off quite easily - Tool>Options>Message Display and
clear the box that says "Display emoticons as graphics".
>
> My other impressions, in case anyone is interested: I don't like
> the user interface, which has that space-wasting three-pane design
> which seems to be so common in Windows applications, so I'll
> probably stick to my existing e-mail client. Apart from that it
> looks pretty good. In particular, it has integrated junk mail detection.
Why is the three-pane design space-wasting? There are three different
layouts possible. I haven't tried the junk mail feature since I use
Mailwasher.
I think Thunderbird is great, I just wish it was completely integrated
with Firefox so I didn't have to open them separately.
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email)
Peter Moylan
>Peter Moylan wrote:
>> My other impressions, in case anyone is interested: I don't like
>> the user interface, which has that space-wasting three-pane design
>> which seems to be so common in Windows applications, so I'll
>> probably stick to my existing e-mail client. Apart from that it
>> looks pretty good. In particular, it has integrated junk mail detection.
>
>Why is the three-pane design space-wasting? There are three different
>layouts possible. I haven't tried the junk mail feature since I use
>Mailwasher.
If you try to fit three things on the screen simultaneously, it doesn't
leave a lot of space to display the actual message. I'm used to
a two-pane main display, with a separate window (which I have sized
so that it's close to full-screen) to hold the message text. That
way I don't have to keep scrolling to find the rest of the message.
Gradually I'm finding, though, that Thunderbird is configurable
enough so that I can read mail that way. I didn't realise it, but
it was possible to add "forward" and "back" icons to the message
window. Now all I need are the other four buttons that I use nearly
all the time: delete current message and read previous/next; and
store current message and read previous/next. But it's looking as
if I can get close to that by memorising keyboard shortcuts, which
will be a relief to my mouse-clicking finger.
Getting the fonts right is tedious. I'm used to just dropping a
font from the font palette to the window area I want to customize,
but with a non-object-oriented desktop I have to learn a new
technique for each application. Still, with a bit of fiddling
I've improved the readability a fair bit. I'm still stuck with
the glare of a black-on-white message display, but I imagine
that with more searching I'll find a way to get a more restful
background colour.
(Now somebody's going to tell me that XP has a colour palette
in some completely obvious place that I've never noticed.)
>I think Thunderbird is great, I just wish it was completely integrated
>with Firefox so I didn't have to open them separately.
The "Tools" menu of Firefox gives a way to open Thunderbird. I
don't know about the converse.
Charles Riggs
wrote:
Instead of 'sure to', as in 'Be sure and call me'.
Stewart Gordon
> I couldn't find the malapropism thread, so I'm starting a new one with the
> suggested word for the online malapropisms that have become common since the
> rise of electronic written comunication.
> Here's what I have so far:
>
> baited breath
> pour over (books, newspapers etc)
I guess that half of these don't tend to be so much spellcheckos as
phrases made of otherwise unfamiliar words, and so people are bound to
use a similar-sounding familiar word in its place. Maybe it's time that
whoever effectively orphaned these phrases got his/her/its just
desserts.... :-)
And I can imagine grammar checkers doing some amusing things as well.
OK, maybe I've actually seen them do amusing things. But I haven't yet
seen one that suggests "married to three children", though it has
cropped up....
http://www.fig.net/commission7/officers/vandermolen.htm
Stewart.
--
My e-mail is valid but not my primary mailbox. Please keep replies on
the 'group where everyone may benefit.
Skitt
> "Adrian Bailey" wrote:
>> "Charles Riggs" wrote
>>> sure and
>>
>> ?
>
> Instead of 'sure to', as in 'Be sure and call me'.
I usually try and get that right.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/
John Varela
<mike_l...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> the astronaut who said when asked if the lauch wasn't extremely
> frightening, "It engages your attention".
I believe that may have been something of a catchphrase in the US Air Force
circa 1970. I heard it as "it captures your entire attention" in the context
of a medical procedure.
--
John Varela
(Trade "OLD" lamps for "NEW" for email.)
I apologize for munging the address but the spam was too much.
rban...@shaw.ca
wrote:
>Charles Riggs wrote:
>> "Adrian Bailey" wrote:
>>> "Charles Riggs" wrote
>
>>>> sure and
>>>
>>> ?
>>
>> Instead of 'sure to', as in 'Be sure and call me'.
>
>I usually try and get that right.
If one can't be bothered anymore one says 'ensure that'; puts the
young ones in their proper place it do.
Ray Heindl
> I'm still stuck with
> the glare of a black-on-white message display, but I imagine
> that with more searching I'll find a way to get a more restful
> background colour.
If you find a way, please let me know. I've asked on one of the
Mozilla newsgroups but never found a way to tell it to change the
background color of the message display pane. There's probably a way
to do it by editing one of the CSS files, but I haven't seen any
explanation of how to do that and don't really want to invest that kind
of time.
> (Now somebody's going to tell me that XP has a colour palette
> in some completely obvious place that I've never noticed.)
Thunderbird seems to ignore the system color settings. (I hope that
statement will spur someone to tell me how I'm wrong.)
John Varela
<la...@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
> I think Thunderbird is great, I just wish it was completely integrated
> with Firefox so I didn't have to open them separately.
Take a look at Mozilla, parent to them both.
Bill Bonde ( ''The chamber was in confusion, all the voices shouting loud'' )
You should put a filter ahead of this filter that grabs all the known
send addresses messages. Then your junk filter could look only at what
was left. In any case, the way to build a powerful filter is to have
thousands, even millions, of e-mail addresses out in the aether, on
usenet, the web, all over everywhere where the spammers cull their
trough of loot, and see what comes into them knowing that everything
arriving there is junk, especially arriving at more than one of these
addresses. That's probably how these filters actually work but maybe
not. It seems like they are mostly openly talking about how they are
searching on common words that spammers use, stuff like that. It's a bit
like how you can filter usenet thread subject headers that have any $ or
! in them or are written in all caps, and not see many spammers here.
--
What I can't figure out is why no one seems to point out that while
private accounts won't solve the 2042 problem, perhaps they will push it
back a ways, they certainly will help solve the 2017 problem, when the
general fund has to start paying back its loans from Social Security
while the general fund is still, presumably, in massive deficit.
Bill Bonde ( ''The chamber was in confusion, all the voices shouting loud'' )
Richard Maurer wrote:
>
> Peter Moylan wrote:
> I've just been testing Thunderbird, and have discovered inter alia
> that it does graphical renditions of smilies. That is, it converts
> every colon-hyphen-parenthesis combination into a little yellow
> Pacman figure. I know that some other mail/news clients do this,
> but this is the first time I've encountered it myself.
>
> It's amazing how _ugly_ writing becomes when it's peppered with
> smilies. As long as they're punctuation marks your eyes can blip
> over them, but when they're intrusive graphics they reach out and
> grab you by the throat. I'm tempted to write to the Thunderbird
> crew and ask them to implement automatic deletion of smilies.
>
> Was just thinking about what it would look like if it did similar for
> all similes ... no need for the animations to stay put, they could
> jump to conclusions. Eye candy beats content.
>
Is there some reason why you cannot quote properly? When you don't use
the standard form, the leading >s, I end up accidentally reading what
amounts to requote, the previous person's material, as if it were from
you. That means reading your message takes a lot longer.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Bob Cunningham infrared:
>>On 11 Feb 2005 05:58:29 GMT, pe...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au
>>(Peter Moylan) said:
>>
>>[...]
>>
>>> Before I started using Bogofilter I wasted huge amounts of time
>>> deleting the junk.
>>
>>At http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net/ I reed
>>
>> Bogofilter is written in C. Supported platforms: Linux,
>> FreeBSD, Solaris, OS X, HP-UX, AIX, RISC OS,
>> SunOS, OS/2 ...
>>
>>So I wonder what the ellipsis signifies. Does it mean "and
>>others too numerous to mention", and could those others
>>include Windows XP?
>
> The last time I looked, nobody had ported it to any flavour of
> Windows. Thunderbird, however, is available on Windows inter alia,
> and its built-in junk filter is probably based on Bogofilter.
> That's a guess, but I'm reasonably confident of it.
Those who use Outlook might want to take a look at SpamBayes
http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/
It does spam detection by training a Bayesian network, and I've found
that it does quite a nice job. It appears also work as a POP and IMAP
filter.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Usenet is like Tetris for people
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |who still remember how to read.
Palo Alto, CA 94304
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Charles Riggs
wrote:
>Charles Riggs wrote:
>> "Adrian Bailey" wrote:
>>> "Charles Riggs" wrote
>
>>>> sure and
>>>
>>> ?
>>
>> Instead of 'sure to', as in 'Be sure and call me'.
>
>I usually try and get that right.
That is a better example, Alec. It is a mistake one hears nearly every
day.
Adrian Bailey
> On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 10:44:07 -0800, "Skitt" <ski...@comcast.net>
> wrote:
>
> >Charles Riggs wrote:
> >> "Adrian Bailey" wrote:
> >>> "Charles Riggs" wrote
> >
> >>>> sure and
> >>>
> >>> ?
> >>
> >> Instead of 'sure to', as in 'Be sure and call me'.
> >
> >I usually try and get that right.
>
> That is a better example, Alec. It is a mistake one hears nearly every
> day.
Maybe it's a sign of my (relative) youth, but I wouldn't class it as a
mistake. A colloquialism, maybe. Anyway, it doesn't really belong in
this thread: "try and" is not a misunderstanding.
Adrian
Charles Riggs
wrote:
It's a mistake, as is 'sure and'. I don't have the time to figure out
if it belongs in this thread or to wonder who, besides you, gives a
flying rat's ass fuck if it does.
lightbulb
Just to be argumentative, the sentence "I usually try and get that right"
could be of an intentional and accurate construction; it denotes that the
EIQ (effort in question) is usually successful. I agree that "I usually try
and get that right" is incorrect if the intent is that an effort to "get
that right" is usually "tried."
Mike
Wood Avens
"Tarnished with the same brush" (from a guest on the Today programme)
and "deemed to failure" (a guest on You & Yours).
--
Katy Jennison
spamtrap: remove the first two letters after the @
R H Draney
>
>Two from BBC Radio today, for Steve's collection:
>
>"Tarnished with the same brush" (from a guest on the Today programme)
>and "deemed to failure" (a guest on You & Yours).
Without context, I can't tell if that second one is EstE pronunciation or
someone coining a parodistic variant....r
Charles Riggs
<ligh...@chartermi.net> wrote:
>
>"Charles Riggs" <chriggs@éircom.net> wrote in message
>news:jgrv015mkq9kseqd2...@4ax.com...
>> On 13 Feb 2005 12:41:25 -0800, da...@hotmail.com (Adrian Bailey)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Charles Riggs <chriggs@éircom.net> wrote in message
>news:<8emq01h71omagj5rp...@4ax.com>...
>> >> On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 10:44:07 -0800, "Skitt" <ski...@comcast.net>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >Charles Riggs wrote:
>> >> >> "Adrian Bailey" wrote:
>> >> >>> "Charles Riggs" wrote
>> >> >
>> >> >>>> sure and
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>> ?
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Instead of 'sure to', as in 'Be sure and call me'.
>> >> >
>> >> >I usually try and get that right.
>> >>
>> >> That is a better example, Alec. It is a mistake one hears nearly every
>> >> day.
>> >
>> >Maybe it's a sign of my (relative) youth, but I wouldn't class it as a
>> >mistake. A colloquialism, maybe. Anyway, it doesn't really belong in
>> >this thread: "try and" is not a misunderstanding.
>>
>> It's a mistake, as is 'sure and'.
>
>Just to be argumentative, the sentence "I usually try and get that right"
>could be of an intentional and accurate construction; it denotes that the
>EIQ (effort in question) is usually successful.
It does? I'm having trouble seeing that. I'm especially interested
because it is a mistake, as I see it, I often make in conversation. I
catch myself when in print, but I talk a whole lot faster than I can
type. Editing conversations is tricky, as well.
> I agree that "I usually try
>and get that right" is incorrect if the intent is that an effort to "get
>that right" is usually "tried."
Perhaps I need another cup of coffee.
Django Cat
wrote:
I've never managed to keep my attention span going through a complete
sentence on 'You and Yours'.
DC
Adrian Bailey
> "Charles Riggs" <chriggs@éircom.net> wrote in message
> news:jgrv015mkq9kseqd2...@4ax.com...
> > On 13 Feb 2005 12:41:25 -0800, da...@hotmail.com (Adrian Bailey)
> > wrote:
> > >Maybe it's a sign of my (relative) youth, but I wouldn't class it as a
> > >mistake. A colloquialism, maybe. Anyway, it doesn't really belong in
> > >this thread: "try and" is not a misunderstanding.
> >
> > It's a mistake, as is 'sure and'. I don't have the time to figure out
> > if it belongs in this thread or to wonder who, besides you, gives a
> > flying rat's ass fuck if it does.
> Just to be argumentative, the sentence "I usually try and get that right"
> could be of an intentional and accurate construction; it denotes that the
> EIQ (effort in question) is usually successful. I agree that "I usually try
> and get that right" is incorrect if the intent is that an effort to "get
> that right" is usually "tried."
Don't call being silly "be[ing] argumentative".
love, Adrian
Wood Avens
wrote:
>Wood Avens filted:
>>"Tarnished with the same brush" (from a guest on the Today programme)
>>and "deemed to failure" (a guest on You & Yours).
>
>Without context, I can't tell if that second one is EstE pronunciation or
>someone coining a parodistic variant....r
No, he really did say "deemed", and he really did use it in the
"doomed" context. I paid particular attention.
R H Draney
>
>On 15 Feb 2005 06:33:51 -0800, R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net>
>wrote:
>
>>Wood Avens filted:
>
>>>"Tarnished with the same brush" (from a guest on the Today programme)
>>>and "deemed to failure" (a guest on You & Yours).
>>
>>Without context, I can't tell if that second one is EstE pronunciation or
>>someone coining a parodistic variant....r
>
>No, he really did say "deemed", and he really did use it in the
>"doomed" context. I paid particular attention.
Kein problem then...just making sure we'd eliminated all other
possibilities....r
lightbulb
"So you're going to try potting the eight ball in the corner even though you
could scratch in the side?"
"Well, I've practiced that shot a lot, so when it comes up in games I
usually try *and* get it right."
"Hey, wow."
Mike