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| Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Wednesday, March 13 2013 @ 04:39 PM EDT |
Gauche or sinister have long lost any meaning associated with left handedness in
English. I doubt even the French ever think anything about it.
Similarly hacking and hacker have pretty much lost any association with the
earlier usage in the minds of most people and are irreversibly associated with
bad actors.
As Humpty Dumpty said to Alice in a rather a scornful tone,
'When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor
less.'
To which Alice responded
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many
different things.'
BTW Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started out building boxes to crack the
telephone network.
http://www.paulgraham.com/bluebox.html
---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.
"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk
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- Humpty Dumpty - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 14 2013 @ 06:33 AM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, March 13 2013 @ 04:57 PM EDT |
I agree with the previous reply, and will add that I think very few Americans
know that the root of sinister has any connection with left-handedness. Maybe
the British are better :)
In addition, I haven't heard the phrase "left-handed compliment". I
always thought it was "back-handed", though I now see that Wikipedia
includes "left-handed" in its section on back-handed compliments.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insult)
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, March 13 2013 @ 07:30 PM EDT |
I am wondering about Sony.
Of course there is a reason that a company wants its name on products,to let
people know where it came from and take some meaning from that. (hopefully
positive)
So indeed when a company has a bad name, all its products are infected.
I know, and very much dislike, that Sony made use of a rootkit and the issue
with maiming its playstation.
But (maybe) to their defence I recently saw that a lot of its tv sets where
linux based.
What to make of that, did they better their life ?
otoh playstation could be / was linux too.
Still wondering.
Perhaps the company should split into a Bad Sony and a Good Sony to make things
clear.
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