Henry Hank wrote:
>
> Just because a manufacturer uses some board-meeting-agreed-on marketing term
> doesn't mean they are totally accurate either. Just like Canon starting that
> silly Tv and Av mode on their cameras. Time-value? Aperture-value? Wha? OH, you
> *meant* to say shutter-speed priority and aperture priority. Now I get it,
> you're just a dumbshit CEO-pawn marketing idiot out to make everyone appear to
> be as much of an idiot as you are. Okay, I get it now.
I don't think it was Canon's invention. It was once quite common.
>
> If Olympus really wanted to be accurate it should have been SZLR, for Single
> Zoom-Lens Reflex. It's a shame that this acronym has crept into common use for
> digital cameras. It's hard to take anyone seriously in this area of interest if
> they keep throwing around terms with such arcane origins and now wrongly
> applying them to unrelated devices.
I believe Olympus can call it what they like as long as the claim isn't
inaccurate.
If other people start to misapply the term then that's something else.
>
> Just how hard would it be to turn the tide of ignorance and bad habit online? If
> everyone started using SLDC and UZDC today it could also spread by wildfire just
> as fast as the wrong terms had spread. When asked what you meant, tell them. Or
> just include it in parens until they get the drift of it. I.e. "The latest SLDC
> (single lens digital camera) from So-And-So company is ..." Try to turn it now,
> or people will be looking like fools for the whole next century. You have as
> much power to use and promote more correct terms as did the idiots who started
> using and promoting the wrong ones.
Heh, well on Usenet you'd have to just use it as if everyone knows what it
means. It's like the emperor's new clothes: if you make it sound like only the
ignorant don't know, everyone will pretend they do.
>
> I for one never give into the stupidity and ignorance of others just to make it
> easy for them. That would make me just as idiotic and stupid as they are.
>
Hear hear!
>
>
> QWERTY made a lot of sense in the beginning, it stopped the typewriter hammers
> from locking up on fast typers. Today, putting a QWERTY keyboard on a small
> handheld device is just absurd. Yet they do it, and the manufacturers end up
> looking like fools to me, while making the average non-typer hunt all over
> trying to find the letters.
Yes it's origins were to avoid mechanical problems on typewriters, however you
are overlooking another fundamental aspect: familiarity. The qwerty keyboard
is well recognized as a standard, and understood by an enormous number of
people. Anyone who regularly uses a computer can use one pretty quickly and
can locate the letter they want with little thought. Those who don't normally
use a qwerty keyboard may have to hunt and peck, at least until they gain
familiarity. And that familiarity, once gained, carries over to any other
qwerty keyboard one is exposed to.
Any other layout results in hunt-and-peck typing for everyone event though
there are a lot of people that are already familiar with qwerty. If you use an
alphabetical layout, you have to break the alphabet over several rows. For
this there is no conventional mapping, the breaks are arbitrary. You may get
used to a 5-row layout and then have to use a 4-row keyboard. For example,
when typing "where" do I have to go left or right from "h" to "e"?
Anyone can come up with more rational designs for everyday items but can
rarely overcome the human interface benefits of familiarity and convention.
>
> I don't know how much of this stupidity of humanity I can take anymore. It seems
> to be growing exponentially.
>
Well the choice is yours I guess. Hamlet had it:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
I'm sure bungee jumping without the bungee would do the trick.
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