Re: Re: Re: Re: My disgust with MS grows almost daily
a lot of games apparently need a LOT of fluffing around and actually knowing what you're doing before they'll run on linux though.
the list of 'install under wine and go' type games is... very limited.
you can Do it, it's just a major hassle if your attitude is less 'linux is awesome and i am awesome at doing awesome things on it and thus learn and understand this for fun' and more 'microsoft is made of suck and i just want to get stuff Done without using it's stuff.'
also, Wine and multiplayer often don't play well together. again, probably ways around this if you're technically inclined, but a major pain if not.
NZ telephone system started off (like a number of things) as part of the NZ post office. at some point (probably in the 80s when we had some major economic problems) it was privatized along US corporate lines. (generally considered to have been a highly dubious move.)
the exception was this: it was still considered a vital service and consequently regulated into the ground. combine that with a usage that lead to foreign technicians thinking the were running load tests when they first saw the exchanges running (they weren't) and they couldn't afford to slack of and still meet their minimum performance requirements.
for a long time there was only one competing company, and it only existed because part of the regulation was that Telecom (the privatized ex-post office entity) had to allow it to use the pre-existing cables and such.
cue wide spread public adoption of the internet. in the mean time the competing company has merged with another and changed names a couple of times, but is still basically the same entity. only now it has Money and there's Demand. it starts running fiber optic cables to the home, among other things, but still needs to use the main (backbone?) cables and interact with the exchanges. many retail level ISPs pop up offering different connection deals. the problem at this point became that Telecom was both a retailer in it's own right And a wholesaler so far as internet connectivity was concerned. this lead to some somewhat anti-competitive business practices. which lead to a bit of a scandle and was About to lead to a government investigation and probably forced break up.
to avoid that the company reorganized and split itself up. (into retail, wholesale, and 'all the random crap needed to make everything actually interact and work', so far as i can tell.) it's a bit complicated, (especially as there was then a government project that many different companies got involved in to upgrade everything which rearranged who owned what Again) but solved the problem.
meanwhile that other major competing company, somewhere along the way, went 'hey, we can run TV signals through this shiny fiber cable we've got here...' so, we actually have cable tv these days. if you sign up with them. it's just an alternate transmision medium for the standard satellite and free-to-air tower based broadcast channels you could get here Anyway, but it's slightly (read, single dollar numbers per month) cheaper to get tv and phone and internet through them than to get satellite tv and phone internet at the same performance level otherwise, and the reception's better. not enough of a difference to make people switch over, generally, but enough to make it a slightly better deal if you're setting up a New connection and want All of those things.
anyway, point of all this: the main backbone cables and exchange are pretty much a utility which is probably best run as a highly regulated monopoly (not actually by the US government, given how That seems to work, though if it weren't so blatantly corruption prone that would be best) but with minimum performance standards which are updated regularly, and never lowered, and a very close eye kept on it's pricing. i imagine a few hundred or more ISPs are a louder voice than one 'dumb pipe' company in that regard.)
Retail ISP services should be in free competition, and generally relatively small entities. if they run cable for themselves at All it should be only the last bit, and they shouldn't need to do That unless they want a performance advantage due to new tech or there simply Isn't such cable yet (the basic cable should be owned by the town or city or whatever, really). avoidable monopolies are bad, yo? corporations just make it worse.
and that, Right There, is what is wrong with most of the big games companies, too.
"EVERYTHING must be a shooter! EVERYTHING! and we must claim that they are all RPGs too! even when they are blatantly NOT! and we shall claim they are sequels to DECADES OLD GAMES that were NOT SHOOTERS. MWAHAHAHA*dies from repeated stabbing by the entire subset of their customers that actually have functional brains and memories of games that Didn't suck.*"
meanwhile, Sega manages to crank out Really oddball games in smaller Genres that are made of Awesome, Paradox owns everyone at grand strategy games (seriously, these are abstract map based things, with historical settings, on their second or third versions each, and they're Still Awesome. let's start at some point in 1399 (or any day thereafter) as any country that existed as a cohesive entity at the time and run it up to 1821 or so... hyper-teched up representative republican Russia with a southern sea-coast in the Persian gulf, anyone? Burgundian empire stretching across the world? and that's before the fan made converters and other games that let you carry that world on until about the Korean war or so.) Koei cranks out entertaining beat-em-ups by the bucketload (a lot of them are sort of shovelware 'they barely changed much from the last version' games... but they're good Enough (actaully, the Only thing wrong with most of them is that you'd usually barely notice it if you only bought every second or iteration or so unless you were a major fan, and that Koei clearly doesn't pay enough for their review scores :P), and have a huge fanbase, which funds the production of their MUCH more adventurous projects, many of which are Brilliant, some of which aren't.)
and so on.
they actually seem to follow similar patterns in what they put out, too.
one or two franchises that are of decent but not spectacular quality and/or budget, never bad enough to drive people away but not too adventurous, change it up just enough that people come back time and again. these make money consistently and keep you in the black.
make unusual and adventurous projects on at least a semi-regular basis, to a high quality (though not necessarily a high budget. perhaps specifically NOT a high budget.) try new and interesting things. so long as the only time they're ever worse than your average bill paying product is when you tried something Really new and interesting and it didn't work out right, even if you're only serving niche markets with them, this builds up good will... and every now and then you'll stumble on the perfect combination at exactly the right time and rake it in off one of these. (at the very least, if you're making a loss more than occasionally, you're probably doing it wrong... though sometimes if you target a small niche you'll make a loss if it's too small.. but the goodwill gain is still huge.)
that seems to be at least roughly the basis of the pattern.
might even work for the movie companies. (of course, so would not rigging the entire system to be so blatantly corrupt... highest grossing film ever, film still makes a loss, film Studio makes record profits, but it's employees' jobs are in danger... riiiiight.)
i'd actually rate buying the dvd as a better idea for stuff you're unsure of than going to the theater. experience is generally no worse, if it's good enough to show your friends you can just invite them over and play it again rather than all having to shell out just shy of the dvd purchase value each, if you're not that fussed on it and one of your friends is you can give it to them as a gift, or, failing that, at the very least you can sell it and get some of your money back.
none of these are doable with a movie ticket. (and around here the movie ticket, last i checked, was, depending on time of day, theater and movie, as much as NZ$17 or so while the dvd is NZ$20.( there are some smaller theaters around that show movies from, oh, say, 9+ months ago cheaper, things like that))
personally, for rentals, i generally only ever bothered renting older stuff that other people recommended. paying almost half the cost of buying the thing to borrow it for one night? not happening. (a bit less for several dvds for a week, on the other hand, totally worth it. one of the places that used to be around here was 7 for 7 days for 7 dollars or something. though most of the rental places (not all, mind) have closed down here-abouts. it's actually that much more convenient and better value for money to buy the things yourself these days, generally speaking, even before taking into account streaming, piracy, or anything else.)
i maintain that anything which achieves 'too big to fail' must first pass through 'too big to be allowed to exist', at which point it should be broken up in the name of not crippling everything when inevitably some moron in a position of power decides screwing over half the planet is worth it for a one off few million extra on top of their already ridiculously high salaries.
seriously, at least pretend to be semi-reasonable and sound like an idiot on only One front (or at least, one less front) and invert shoes and socks in that analogy... eesh.
NZ equivalent was 'reduce, reuse, recycle'... because you'd do things in that order: buy stuff with less random packaging and the like in the first place, reuse it where at all possible, and when it's no longer reusable, recycle it.
these days they've given up campaigning for such things and just replaced the old curbside rubbish bags with separate recycling, green waste, and other rubbish bins. the default is to make the recycling bin huge and the other two smaller. they pick up the recycling Every week and alternate weeks for the other stuff. (where possible you should compost green waste, and produce as little rubbish as possible, you see) you can, however, based on various things (including being willing to pay more) get larger or additional bins. some people just suck and throw everything in the rubbish bin anyway, but most of the recyclable stuff it's just 'put it with the dishes instead of the rubbish' so it gets washed or whatever, then when putting dishes away, dump it in the bin. much easier than the old systems where you had to sort it and take it to recycling centers and so on. (and for more exotic recyclables the only change is which bin you put it in.)
Re: Backbenchers should be seen and not heard from during Question Period.
entertainingly, in NZ a while back (years now, probably) a cross-party selection of back-benchers attempted to have a law passed abolishing their own jobs, on the basis that it would save large amounts of money and they never actually DID anything. (speaking time was assigned to the Parties based on the number of MPs, not to the individuals. which lead to the top four or so (or, really, the top one or two plus whatever minister/opposition member was relevant to the issue at hand) using it all.
the back benchers' argument was basically that their job could just as easily be done by cardboard standies... or even just a diagram clearly visible at the end of the room.
(officially any MP can vote any way they like on any bill. in practice, the only way to go against your party and have any hope of getting reelected (or not tossed out, depending on whether you got in from an electorate or a party list) is if your party declares the issue to be a con...(i can never spell the bloody word well enough for the spell check to know what i'm on about. think Jimminy Cricket) vote. that said, That's only done when the issue is deemed to be 'constitutional' (basically pertaining to the processes used to elect parliament and little else) or purely moral And not part of the party's campaign platform (often stuff that the leadership kind of wants passed but they realise that Officially approving of would leave the party hemorrhaging votes)... bizarrely, This sort of vote is actually less likely to go the way the public seems to want.)
NZ's a bit better set up and more resistant to such issues... but it does have them.
currently, as a matter of fact. lack of voter participation combined with that pattern of voting for the 'least worst likely' rather than 'best fit' party and voting for candidates based on their party affiliation (we shifted to MMP Why, exactly? silly people. though at least this habit is slowly dieing out) produce weird results though.
we currently have what is Functionally a single party majority government (it actually Needs a coalition with one or two parties that got only one seat to have a majority... but given the Nature of those parties, the idea that they're independent entities is a joke) ... when roughly 1 in 4 electors Did Not Vote, largely due to media reporting 'opinion polls' leading them to believe there was no point, that's a bit suspect.
blah, had a proper point when i started.
our system has MPs elected directly for each electorate, FPP style. the party can't get rid of them from Parliament at all, but can toss them out of the party. the problem is, one out of the party, if they don't manage to make a Huge media circus out of it so everyone knows who they are and start a new party of their own, they're never getting back in. but there aren't actually as many electorates as their are seats, and the rest are filled by a proportional system. MMP uses this weird overlapping thingy where if a party's members get more electorates than it's share of the votes entitles it to it creates more seats in the house for that term so that the other parties get their proper share. if the party gets enough votes for more seats than it wins electorates (common), then members of the party off the list get in to fill 'em up. List MPs can be tossed out and replaced at the party's discretion (Not the PMs.)
our biggest problem is that our PMs have somehow managed to use the anti-cronyism measure that requires ministers to be chosen from within parliament to usurp the GG's power to appoint ministers. combine this with GGs who just rubber stamp laws, sign off on the PM's choices for ministers, and pick the PM based on who leads the largest party in the coalition that manages to get a majority (... one of the early MMP elections took Three Months or more to actually resolve a Government because of this, despite the fact that legally the GG could have just appointed whoever the hell they wanted as minsters and been done with it, as parliament itself had already been elected. (officially we don't even have a 'government' and 'opposition'. we have an 'elected parliament' and an 'appointed ministry' who's personnel happen to overlap. )
but yeah, gah, lost my point again. anyway.
basically, i sympathise. while not as extream, we do have the same sorts of issues here and the current lot are just the sort of people who would spout this sort of rubbish... were they not so adept at managing to hide any such laws and actions from the public in general. (public protest against this US inspired idea? ok, back down. there'll be a crisis in the near future and we can hide it in with the fixes for that... oh, look, earthquake devastated our second biggest city. that'll do.)
even when it doesn't cancel, it weakens, which is still movement in the same direction.
what gets Really trick is triple negatives (yes, english has these). they usually involve subclauses though. especially when one of the negatives is actually idiomatic 'not that this is far from unprecedented' is slightly forced, but a decent example. 'far from unprecedented' means previous occurrences have been very common, the negative 'un-' and idiomatic negative 'far from' canceling but the 'not' can negate the 'far' literally, making the thing mean the same as 'almost unprecedented' or the entire phrase 'far from unprecidented', which is responding to someone who said it Was, and telling them they're wrong. (actually, triple negatives would seem to usually be refutations, now that i think about it.)
english is also usually nice enough to have a negative form of the relevant verb ('forget' for 'not remember' for example) in situations where this comes up a lot, so you can avoid them if you want to.
On the post: Google Lifts The Veil On Copyright Takedowns: Reveals Detailed Data On Who Requests Link Removals
Re: Re: Re: Re: My disgust with MS grows almost daily
the list of 'install under wine and go' type games is... very limited.
you can Do it, it's just a major hassle if your attitude is less 'linux is awesome and i am awesome at doing awesome things on it and thus learn and understand this for fun' and more 'microsoft is made of suck and i just want to get stuff Done without using it's stuff.'
also, Wine and multiplayer often don't play well together. again, probably ways around this if you're technically inclined, but a major pain if not.
On the post: Broadband In Crisis: Does The US Need Regulation To Force Meaningful Competition?
the exception was this: it was still considered a vital service and consequently regulated into the ground. combine that with a usage that lead to foreign technicians thinking the were running load tests when they first saw the exchanges running (they weren't) and they couldn't afford to slack of and still meet their minimum performance requirements.
for a long time there was only one competing company, and it only existed because part of the regulation was that Telecom (the privatized ex-post office entity) had to allow it to use the pre-existing cables and such.
cue wide spread public adoption of the internet. in the mean time the competing company has merged with another and changed names a couple of times, but is still basically the same entity. only now it has Money and there's Demand. it starts running fiber optic cables to the home, among other things, but still needs to use the main (backbone?) cables and interact with the exchanges. many retail level ISPs pop up offering different connection deals. the problem at this point became that Telecom was both a retailer in it's own right And a wholesaler so far as internet connectivity was concerned. this lead to some somewhat anti-competitive business practices. which lead to a bit of a scandle and was About to lead to a government investigation and probably forced break up.
to avoid that the company reorganized and split itself up. (into retail, wholesale, and 'all the random crap needed to make everything actually interact and work', so far as i can tell.) it's a bit complicated, (especially as there was then a government project that many different companies got involved in to upgrade everything which rearranged who owned what Again) but solved the problem.
meanwhile that other major competing company, somewhere along the way, went 'hey, we can run TV signals through this shiny fiber cable we've got here...' so, we actually have cable tv these days. if you sign up with them. it's just an alternate transmision medium for the standard satellite and free-to-air tower based broadcast channels you could get here Anyway, but it's slightly (read, single dollar numbers per month) cheaper to get tv and phone and internet through them than to get satellite tv and phone internet at the same performance level otherwise, and the reception's better. not enough of a difference to make people switch over, generally, but enough to make it a slightly better deal if you're setting up a New connection and want All of those things.
anyway, point of all this: the main backbone cables and exchange are pretty much a utility which is probably best run as a highly regulated monopoly (not actually by the US government, given how That seems to work, though if it weren't so blatantly corruption prone that would be best) but with minimum performance standards which are updated regularly, and never lowered, and a very close eye kept on it's pricing. i imagine a few hundred or more ISPs are a louder voice than one 'dumb pipe' company in that regard.)
Retail ISP services should be in free competition, and generally relatively small entities. if they run cable for themselves at All it should be only the last bit, and they shouldn't need to do That unless they want a performance advantage due to new tech or there simply Isn't such cable yet (the basic cable should be owned by the town or city or whatever, really). avoidable monopolies are bad, yo? corporations just make it worse.
On the post: YouTube Uploads Hit 72 Hours A Minute: How Can That Ever Be Pre-Screened For 'Objectionable' Material?
Re:
On the post: Techdirt Threatened With Defamation Suit Over Story On Feds Getting Royalty In Movie From Mexican Drug Cartel Money Launderer
Re: Re: Re: Re:
the Implications of the comparison may or may not be a different story.
On the post: Congressional Staffers Still Can't Come To Terms With What Happened Over SOPA
Re: Re: Re: Give them time to get it right than
On the post: Congressional Staffers Still Can't Come To Terms With What Happened Over SOPA
Re:
" or to stupidity that which can be explained by ignorance"
'course, willful ignorance is ignorance caused by stupidity or malice, so it kinda comes full circle.
On the post: Why Hollywood Is Doomed: It Takes Sensible Advice Like 'Make Good Movies' And Turns It Into A Screed About Piracy
Re: Re:
and that, Right There, is what is wrong with most of the big games companies, too.
"EVERYTHING must be a shooter! EVERYTHING! and we must claim that they are all RPGs too! even when they are blatantly NOT! and we shall claim they are sequels to DECADES OLD GAMES that were NOT SHOOTERS. MWAHAHAHA*dies from repeated stabbing by the entire subset of their customers that actually have functional brains and memories of games that Didn't suck.*"
meanwhile, Sega manages to crank out Really oddball games in smaller Genres that are made of Awesome, Paradox owns everyone at grand strategy games (seriously, these are abstract map based things, with historical settings, on their second or third versions each, and they're Still Awesome. let's start at some point in 1399 (or any day thereafter) as any country that existed as a cohesive entity at the time and run it up to 1821 or so... hyper-teched up representative republican Russia with a southern sea-coast in the Persian gulf, anyone? Burgundian empire stretching across the world? and that's before the fan made converters and other games that let you carry that world on until about the Korean war or so.) Koei cranks out entertaining beat-em-ups by the bucketload (a lot of them are sort of shovelware 'they barely changed much from the last version' games... but they're good Enough (actaully, the Only thing wrong with most of them is that you'd usually barely notice it if you only bought every second or iteration or so unless you were a major fan, and that Koei clearly doesn't pay enough for their review scores :P), and have a huge fanbase, which funds the production of their MUCH more adventurous projects, many of which are Brilliant, some of which aren't.)
and so on.
they actually seem to follow similar patterns in what they put out, too.
one or two franchises that are of decent but not spectacular quality and/or budget, never bad enough to drive people away but not too adventurous, change it up just enough that people come back time and again. these make money consistently and keep you in the black.
make unusual and adventurous projects on at least a semi-regular basis, to a high quality (though not necessarily a high budget. perhaps specifically NOT a high budget.) try new and interesting things. so long as the only time they're ever worse than your average bill paying product is when you tried something Really new and interesting and it didn't work out right, even if you're only serving niche markets with them, this builds up good will... and every now and then you'll stumble on the perfect combination at exactly the right time and rake it in off one of these. (at the very least, if you're making a loss more than occasionally, you're probably doing it wrong... though sometimes if you target a small niche you'll make a loss if it's too small.. but the goodwill gain is still huge.)
that seems to be at least roughly the basis of the pattern.
might even work for the movie companies. (of course, so would not rigging the entire system to be so blatantly corrupt... highest grossing film ever, film still makes a loss, film Studio makes record profits, but it's employees' jobs are in danger... riiiiight.)
On the post: Why Hollywood Is Doomed: It Takes Sensible Advice Like 'Make Good Movies' And Turns It Into A Screed About Piracy
Re: Re:
none of these are doable with a movie ticket. (and around here the movie ticket, last i checked, was, depending on time of day, theater and movie, as much as NZ$17 or so while the dvd is NZ$20.( there are some smaller theaters around that show movies from, oh, say, 9+ months ago cheaper, things like that))
personally, for rentals, i generally only ever bothered renting older stuff that other people recommended. paying almost half the cost of buying the thing to borrow it for one night? not happening. (a bit less for several dvds for a week, on the other hand, totally worth it. one of the places that used to be around here was 7 for 7 days for 7 dollars or something. though most of the rental places (not all, mind) have closed down here-abouts. it's actually that much more convenient and better value for money to buy the things yourself these days, generally speaking, even before taking into account streaming, piracy, or anything else.)
On the post: Why Hollywood Is Doomed: It Takes Sensible Advice Like 'Make Good Movies' And Turns It Into A Screed About Piracy
Re: Current government policy argues otherwise
On the post: European Parliament Member Marietje Schaake's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
Re:
in many cases you're quite right though.
On the post: Facebook Trading Near Its IPO Price Means It Was Priced Right, Not That It Was A Disaster
Re:
On the post: Facebook Trading Near Its IPO Price Means It Was Priced Right, Not That It Was A Disaster
Re: Re: A loss
On the post: Canadian Politician Claims That Ripping A CD To Your iPod Is Like Buying Socks & Stealing Shoes To Go With Them
On the post: Canadian Politician Claims That Ripping A CD To Your iPod Is Like Buying Socks & Stealing Shoes To Go With Them
Re: 3Rss
these days they've given up campaigning for such things and just replaced the old curbside rubbish bags with separate recycling, green waste, and other rubbish bins. the default is to make the recycling bin huge and the other two smaller. they pick up the recycling Every week and alternate weeks for the other stuff. (where possible you should compost green waste, and produce as little rubbish as possible, you see) you can, however, based on various things (including being willing to pay more) get larger or additional bins. some people just suck and throw everything in the rubbish bin anyway, but most of the recyclable stuff it's just 'put it with the dishes instead of the rubbish' so it gets washed or whatever, then when putting dishes away, dump it in the bin. much easier than the old systems where you had to sort it and take it to recycling centers and so on. (and for more exotic recyclables the only change is which bin you put it in.)
all very cunning.
On the post: Canadian Politician Claims That Ripping A CD To Your iPod Is Like Buying Socks & Stealing Shoes To Go With Them
Re:
On the post: Canadian Politician Claims That Ripping A CD To Your iPod Is Like Buying Socks & Stealing Shoes To Go With Them
Re: Backbenchers should be seen and not heard from during Question Period.
the back benchers' argument was basically that their job could just as easily be done by cardboard standies... or even just a diagram clearly visible at the end of the room.
(officially any MP can vote any way they like on any bill. in practice, the only way to go against your party and have any hope of getting reelected (or not tossed out, depending on whether you got in from an electorate or a party list) is if your party declares the issue to be a con...(i can never spell the bloody word well enough for the spell check to know what i'm on about. think Jimminy Cricket) vote. that said, That's only done when the issue is deemed to be 'constitutional' (basically pertaining to the processes used to elect parliament and little else) or purely moral And not part of the party's campaign platform (often stuff that the leadership kind of wants passed but they realise that Officially approving of would leave the party hemorrhaging votes)... bizarrely, This sort of vote is actually less likely to go the way the public seems to want.)
On the post: Canadian Politician Claims That Ripping A CD To Your iPod Is Like Buying Socks & Stealing Shoes To Go With Them
Re: Re: Incompentent
currently, as a matter of fact. lack of voter participation combined with that pattern of voting for the 'least worst likely' rather than 'best fit' party and voting for candidates based on their party affiliation (we shifted to MMP Why, exactly? silly people. though at least this habit is slowly dieing out) produce weird results though.
we currently have what is Functionally a single party majority government (it actually Needs a coalition with one or two parties that got only one seat to have a majority... but given the Nature of those parties, the idea that they're independent entities is a joke) ... when roughly 1 in 4 electors Did Not Vote, largely due to media reporting 'opinion polls' leading them to believe there was no point, that's a bit suspect.
blah, had a proper point when i started.
our system has MPs elected directly for each electorate, FPP style. the party can't get rid of them from Parliament at all, but can toss them out of the party. the problem is, one out of the party, if they don't manage to make a Huge media circus out of it so everyone knows who they are and start a new party of their own, they're never getting back in. but there aren't actually as many electorates as their are seats, and the rest are filled by a proportional system. MMP uses this weird overlapping thingy where if a party's members get more electorates than it's share of the votes entitles it to it creates more seats in the house for that term so that the other parties get their proper share. if the party gets enough votes for more seats than it wins electorates (common), then members of the party off the list get in to fill 'em up. List MPs can be tossed out and replaced at the party's discretion (Not the PMs.)
our biggest problem is that our PMs have somehow managed to use the anti-cronyism measure that requires ministers to be chosen from within parliament to usurp the GG's power to appoint ministers. combine this with GGs who just rubber stamp laws, sign off on the PM's choices for ministers, and pick the PM based on who leads the largest party in the coalition that manages to get a majority (... one of the early MMP elections took Three Months or more to actually resolve a Government because of this, despite the fact that legally the GG could have just appointed whoever the hell they wanted as minsters and been done with it, as parliament itself had already been elected. (officially we don't even have a 'government' and 'opposition'. we have an 'elected parliament' and an 'appointed ministry' who's personnel happen to overlap. )
but yeah, gah, lost my point again. anyway.
basically, i sympathise. while not as extream, we do have the same sorts of issues here and the current lot are just the sort of people who would spout this sort of rubbish... were they not so adept at managing to hide any such laws and actions from the public in general. (public protest against this US inspired idea? ok, back down. there'll be a crisis in the near future and we can hide it in with the fixes for that... oh, look, earthquake devastated our second biggest city. that'll do.)
On the post: Canadian Politician Claims That Ripping A CD To Your iPod Is Like Buying Socks & Stealing Shoes To Go With Them
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
what gets Really trick is triple negatives (yes, english has these). they usually involve subclauses though. especially when one of the negatives is actually idiomatic 'not that this is far from unprecedented' is slightly forced, but a decent example. 'far from unprecedented' means previous occurrences have been very common, the negative 'un-' and idiomatic negative 'far from' canceling but the 'not' can negate the 'far' literally, making the thing mean the same as 'almost unprecedented' or the entire phrase 'far from unprecidented', which is responding to someone who said it Was, and telling them they're wrong. (actually, triple negatives would seem to usually be refutations, now that i think about it.)
english is also usually nice enough to have a negative form of the relevant verb ('forget' for 'not remember' for example) in situations where this comes up a lot, so you can avoid them if you want to.
On the post: Canadian Politician Claims That Ripping A CD To Your iPod Is Like Buying Socks & Stealing Shoes To Go With Them
Re: Re: Re: Del Mastro
On the post: Canadian Politician Claims That Ripping A CD To Your iPod Is Like Buying Socks & Stealing Shoes To Go With Them
Re: Re: Del Mastro
it's 'everyone who's not from the USA (or one of their dependencies/functionally vassal states)' English.
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