dcminter

To be fair, that really is about a startup, though that's an amusingly oddball way to categorise it, not to mention a niche category of business! Wouldn't have occurred to me to suggest it, but I quite like the thought now someone has. 1984.

I must say it hadn't aged all that well when we saw it fairly recently. Not horrible, just a bit slow paced and not quite as funny as I remembered it being.

I taught myself BASIC on a ZX81 (from the manual) at a tender age, and even I think this book is pretty niche. Amazing! I'm tempted...

Replying to myself as we reached the thread limit. Slightly bad form, but I doubt there are many (any) others listening in the thread:

>> You did. Quote "It may annoy you,". But nevermind.

You misinterpret. It may annoy you. It may not. A cat may look at a king.

>> I think you also believe this, we only disagree in which grammatical forms. Or are you arguing that "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?" is grammatically correct?

I'm arguing that the question is meaningless. Some will sound correct to my ear. Some will not. Some will sound correct to nobody. None of them are "wrong" because there is no authority beyond convention to dictate which is "correct" - and conventions differ between different users of language.

I would never say "on accident" but it would be fatuous to say that it was "wrong" just because I don't use it when millions do.

> ...only disagree on where the line is.

I don't really agree that there's a line. If one person uses an unconventional construction is it wrong? Not really, though they may be hard to understand. Or not. Half the art of great usage of the language is coming up with unconventional forms.

> No bad feelings anyway. Nice chat.

None felt, none intended. Likewise.

Who said you were annoyed? I'm just pointing out that English is a democratic language, has no centralised institute defining correctness, and drawing borders around areas of it is completely pointless.

You're entitled to believe that some grammatical forms are "wrong" and I'm entitled to have no respect for that opinion.

I, for example, strongly dislike the change of meaning of "disinterested" to mean "uninterested", but have no illusion that there's some absolute truth of His Majesty's Royal English Language to prop up my ego.

In practice, where such institutes do exist, they trail after the language bringing the rules into alignment with it, or are utterly ignored by all but the most officious.

There is no English Grammar Institute to tell us what is right and wrong, so English grammar is necessarily descriptive and not prescriptive.

It may annoy you, and you may be convinced that you are right and others are "wrong" but if a substantial body of people use English in a way that you dislike then it's just tough shit I'm afraid.

> But then "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?".

Because nobody actually talks like that, that's why.

You don't speak Elizabethan English, or Regency English, or late Saxon, or Old English, but you presumably don't think those are "wrong" - why do you think Estuary English is wrong; could it be gasp because you're in a different linguistic group? /me clutches pearls...

FYI it's a somewhat regional or (in the UK) class stratified grammar distinction.

While nobody would say "fewer sand", "less" is in practice often used by native English speakers for both count and non-count nouns so it's not really wrong so much as it is revealing.

Blocked for me in Sweden though, seems unlikely they'd have one nordic but not another.

Projection by the look of it.

Yes, I said I tried this when I was a kid.

My point is that while you can see the full subject you get it from the exact same point of view as that part of the hologram before it was chopped up.

If you couldn't see part of the subject from part of the intact plate you won't be able to after either.

The phrasing you used, "two copies of the hologram" is very misleading in the same way that my Usborne book was.

Chopping a hologram in half gives you two copies of the hologram in exactly the same sense that chopping a photo in half gives you two copies of the photo.

In both cases what you can see from that part of the plate/print is the same before and after you chop it up.

It's not even compliance. You're required to make consent and decline require equal effort. A large percentage of them make it much easier to consent.

Not to mention the large number of "legitimate interest" exceptions that are absolutely not justifiable.

The main problem with the legislation is its lack of teeth and enforcement.