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

["Jim O'Connell" <oconnell@example.com>]

On Tue, 27 May 2003 00:15:00 -0400
John Limouze <jmanjiro@example.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: [OT] Terrific - was: [tlug] email programs 
> 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.  

Welcome.  Looks like you've been lurking a bit to get the feel of the group. Smart move.

>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.  

Find the Macintosh (9.x) section of the TA's manual - I remember finding the answer there, when the Windows setup stuff was unhelpful.  At that time, my Japanese-reading ability was much less, but by squinting at the example screenshots, I was able to pick out the init string I needed.

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.
> 
If you got that far, you seem to have hardware that knows AT commands.  Now, it's just a matter of getting the right string.
If you're still having trouble, drop me a note, off-list and I will try to find my notes on the setup.  It was a couple of years ago, so no guarantees that I'll still have them.  (I was using a FreeSCO single-floppy router and remember that there were some oddities in the Init Strings.)

Though I'm hesitant to join the OT part of this thread, I'm going to...

> 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.
>  >
I don't think that you can apply extrapolation to words.  Words really are only the representation of the intent of the speaker, (except, perhaps in Law and such, ) which is often difficult to express in a written form.  (Sarcastic writing, for example.)

>  >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.

Are you sure?  Eventually, it does, or we'd all still be speaking Aramaic or Latin or something, I think.
Consider a word like "Decimate".  It has come to mean "Destroy", where originally, it meant to reduce by ten percent.  
(I believe it was a Roman tactic of intimidation to line up an army and kill every tenth man, or DECI-mate.)
But if you were to use that word in that sense now, you would be quite mis-understood.
> 
> 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.

Word meaings often vector illogically from any sort of rule that you can apply across them.  Consider the next few words:
	
	Horror
	Horrible
	Horrific

	Terror
	Terrible
	Terrific

Very similar words with similar origins and meanings, yet where Horrific remains true to its root "Horror", terrific has fairly well abandoned its own root of Terror.   ("Root of Terror" - sounds like a new kind of BOFH...)
Languages just *do* that.  There's no stopping it.  At best, you can enjoy seeing the changes if you are aware of them.

And at very least, we can forgive a non-native speaker, who explained that he looked up the word, found ambiguity and asked for clarification?  "KMail is Terrific."  "KMail is Horrific." A non-English speaker armed with a dictionary and lacking colloquial familiarity and context, could reasonably argue that the two statements have the same meaning.  

Would it be possible to move this discussion off the TLUG mailing list?  While it is an interesting discussion, it hardly relates to Linux, or Japan.  I'd recommend "alt.usage.english" on Usenet.  They have these discussions all the time.

Cheers,
Jim
mmdc.net


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