Boffin speak, punter talk comes under attack

I read your articles every week and I enjoy all of them, except for a very substantial language barrier. Most of your stuff is written in her Majesty's English, but a fair bit is written in some other language. I only speak English so it is difficult for me to understand some of the language that you use.

You seem to be using the word “punters” in a way that I cannot understand. A “punter”, to me, is someone who kicks a football. I have a feeling this is probably not what you are referring too. I looked in the dictionary and I am confirmed my belief that a “punter” is someone who kicks a football, at least here in Canada.

Do you think it would be possible for you to include, somewhere on the page, or at the end of your articles, a translation of some of the more arcane language used? “Punter” would be an excellent choice. What the hell is a “punter”, if not someone who kicks a football?

I have written frequently to members of your staff, to those who write the stories, and have never received so much as the courtesy of a reply.

You folks should realize that you are writing for an international audience and you might want to consider writing in a plain English form that the rest of us can understand. I have heard some of these terminologies referred to as East End gutter slang. I'm not convinced that the rest of the world has to be exposed to this stuff.

If Winnie could hear and read some of the garbage language you people use, he would turn over in his grave, and rightly so.

Lorne Babcock Sr.

Andrew "Spinola" Thomas replies
Lorne,

There is no such thing as a 'pure' form of any language, with the possible exception of 'dead' languages such as Latin.

Any language must evolve or die. Would you prefer that we ran stories in the version of English used by Chaucer? Or perhaps the later variant used by Shakespeare?

Perhaps we should revert to Norman French in order to help our friends in Quebec.

I believe (without looking it up) that the word 'boffin' originated in the Second World War. I'd have thought that a word almost seventy years old could hardly be dubbed jargon. (apologies for using the word 'dubbed', which I believe may not be in common parlance on your side of the pond (Atlantic Ocean))

The whole point about language is that it's there to enjoy. It's encouraging to have a reader who can even spell, even if you appear to have trouble with the surname of our esteemed editor.

A technical news site is somewhat hamstrung in relying on jargon. Stories would have to be five times longer if we explained terms such as CPU, iPod or Rambus each time they were mentioned. We have to assume a basic knowledge on the part of our readers. One has only to look at the quality of technical reporting on mainstream news sites such as the BBC to see what an awful mess can be made by non-specialist reporters.

No offence taken. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Please note that opinions expressed in this eMail are those of the author and may not reflect those of the management of The Inquirer who have yet to sign off my last invoice.

Cheers (apologies for the colloquialism)
Andrew

Intel man accuses AMD of lying about dual cores

Reminded me more of the bit with the black knight in monty python

legless, armless Black Knight continues to challenge, "come back and fight like a man"

AB

Intel multicore approach needs psychoanalysis, claim

Our Pimp Nathan never mentioned that our AMD dual cores have to share the external memory bus as well.

Me Hector want to thank you low life pimps for dinging our competition and making us at AMD look so freaking smart.

Aren't we all getting rich?

Suing and Puking and Gestapo Raids at Dawn - Hector

Longhorn

Hey,

You guys must be anxious to get your hands on the next 'N' versons, but I'll bet your more interested in Longhorn Server and the next version of asp.vole and IIS7. You know, the technology that runs your web site - that you conceal by never letting an '.aspx' come across the address bar. Surely asp.vole has been good to you. I know it has been good to me. Asp.vole 2.0 is a major improvement.

:)

"Cheers", or what ever y'all say over there. (Sorry, any good Texan has to drop a "y'all" every now in then. It adds flavour to the language. On a serious note I once used 'colour' in my senior year of highschool and my teacher/instructor counted it wrong. I argued that it is correct (wouldn't you?) but she was insistant and would not budge.)

What happend to the podcast?

Name supplied

Defrag your files with Perfect Disk

One VIP missing bit:

In the Perfect Disk GUI:

Pull down "Defragment".
Select "Drive Properties".
Select the "Online Defrag Settings" tab.
Tick the "Agressive Free Space
Consolidation". box.
Defrag.

Perfect Disk will now due a much more thorough (though more time consuming) defrag, & (particularly) re-arrangement of your files).

I highly recommend using this method, if you can schedule the additional down/slack time, vs the abbreviated "fast default" method, used in the article.

Best regards,
Ed Zurek

Congratulations on a fine job of avoiding the real issue: namely, do defragmenters like Perfect Disk actually do much practical good and, if so, how much? For instance, are they cost effective compared to, say, buying an extra hard drive or some more RAM?

Modern file systems are carefully designed and tuned to work efficiently with fragmented files. Many of the files that are actually being used at any given time are in the cache, anyway, so the number and distribution of extents on disk is more or less immaterial. Besides, while a 100% defragmented disk may look aesthetic, it is going to get messed up again just as soon as anyone uses the computer for any real useful work.

It is fairly obvious that a heavily fragmented drive is going to slow down performance, especially if it is more than 90% full. But if a disk is half empty - as your first and second illustrations show - maybe the Windows defragmenter is right to say that nothing needs to be done.

The real question, of course, is how much does a given degree of fragmentation slow down the actual work you want to do? I most cases, I would suggest, the answer is that the effect is imperceptible.

Tom

No Lenovo
No Lenovo for me. Wally World (Wal-Mart) provides enough support to that commie country without me buying one of their homegrown PCs.

Unfortunately this country's corporations (USA) have sold out the US all in the name of profit margins. Sad, very sad.

Glenn

The Eton Wall Game

Strange that you should mention the Eton Wall Game. How many of your readers would know that in the Wall Game, one team has a "goal" which is much smaller and harder to hit than the other team? Not all like playing against the EU, where one team doesn't even have a goal for the other team to try to shoot for.

I always thought that the best remedy in the US case (given that breaking up the company will be objected to one way or another) is to require them to put, in para 1, in large letters, in every single contract (government, corporate, or shrink-wrap) and prominently on the outside of every pack and in every advertisement, the words "Microsoft has been found guilty of illegal anticompetitive activity in the US Courts, and is required by the courts to disclose this fact to all customers and potential customers". Like they successfully imposed on the cigarette companies.

James M