Re: [OT] Terrific - was: [tlug] email programs

[John Limouze <jmanjiro@example.com>]

First, an introduction.  I don't know if that's usually done, this is my 
first mailing list.  My name's John; I'm new to Linux and new to 
Japan.     Before you start cursing at the monitor, let me assure you that 
I am aware of the principles behind this list and have no intention to 
start begging for anything. I live in rural Hokkaido, not Tokyo, so the 
chances I'll actually meet anyone on this list seems slim.  Right now I'm 
still reading and tinkering with the basic setup, especially regarding 
internet access.  I have an  external ISDN TA that the people at NTT and 
SuSE support (my distro) tell me won't work because there are no 
drivers.  But elsewhere (on SuSE's site for instance), I have read that no 
drivers are necessary for external TAs, just the correct init strings, 
which I took from the .inf files for windows.  No success though; with 
wvdial and kppp it stalls out waiting for an OK response to the initial AT 
command.  Kinternet tells me it's connected to an IP address that I later 
saw listed as an example in one of the Kinternet config files.  I'm 
currently trying to write my own chat script, just to see if that works 
better.  I don't know too much about the process but between the books I've 
acquired and the web, I should be able to figure it out.  I'm a little 
worried though that I'm wasting my efforts.  I've tried searching the web 
for pages talking both about linux and my TA, an NTT INSmate V30slim.  To 
the best of my marginal reading ability, nobody else had successfully 
gotten a dial-up connection from it yet either.

I have some thoughts on the role of the dictionary.

 >If those 200,000,000 semi-literate Americans
 >mistakenly assume that the following sentence:
 >
 >When the building exploded it made a "terrific" mess.
 >
 >to mean...
 >
 >When the building exploded it made a "good" mess.
 >
 >Then of course the dictionary is right, and they are illiterate.  Unless
 >of course you consider the Humpty Dumpty approach to language somehow
 >valid.  Common misusage doesn't make it correct.

As an American, I think those two example sentences are roughly the 
same.  Terrific is a little more colorful, but "good" can often mean 
"big."  And "bad" for that matter.  Sometimes both at the same time.  For 
instance, I could say "my girlfriend is a good-sized girl," and it really 
means she's fat and unattractive.  You could say that I am illiterate, I 
guess, but then you're just calling names rather than arguing your 
point.  I enjoy a good amount of written communication.  I also think 
common misusage DOES make language correct, though not immediately.  But 
certainly dictionaries are only a temporary yardstick by which we measure a 
set of vocabulary which is constantly in flux, both in terms of its size 
and the links between its members and their external referents.