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5626

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Hard Disk Sentinel PRO - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2012, 08:34 PM »

(Cross-posted for relevant information.)

Just FYI.
I have been trialling Hard Disk Sentinel Pro for a couple of months and decided it was very good and that I would buy it.
I have not written a review here, because the experience will probably vary from user to user depending on their needs and their hardware.
However, I will state that one of the many features that I especially like about HDS Pro is that it can perform a SMART test on my USB-connected 500GB hard disk drives (I use them for backup). This will give me time to prepare to migrate to other backup devices as soon as the SMART tests show a degradation of a particular drive.

HDS Pro has a 20% discount coupon currently (2011-03-18) applicable to purchases of trial downloads.
 - Full price: USD35.00
 - Purchased at 20% discount: US$28

-IainB (March 18, 2011, 07:25 AM)

5627

Mini-Reviews by Members / Hard Disk Sentinel PRO - Mini-Review

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2012, 08:31 PM »

Originally posted:	2012-02-02
Last updated:	2015-01-17

Basic Info

App Name	Hard Disk Sentinel PRO
Thumbs-Up Rating
App URL	http://www.hdsentinel.com/
App Version Reviewed	Started with freeware Trial version in Dec. 2010, then later installed paid PRO Version. Free upgrades have taken this to v4.60 (7377) as at 2015-01-17.
Test System Specs	Comparison table of features between different versions (Trial, Standard, Professional, Enterprise) is here. Detailed features are listed here.
Supported OSes	Windows XP/2003/Vista/7/2008/8 and 8.1 (32/64-bit) I have used it on XP, Vista (all 32-bit) and 7, 8, 8.1, and 8.1 PRO (all 64-bit) with nary a hitch.
Support Methods	FAQ Complete Help Hardware Compatibility (index, details) Knowledge Base Discussion Board Driver Zone (index, details) Primarily concerned with hard drives, HDS seems to be able to cover not only all sorts of physical/logical disk interfaces and hardware - e.g., including IDE, S-ATA, SCSI, RAID controllers, disk enclosures, USB and other external devices - but also Ramdrives and SSDs.
Upgrade Policy	Automatic free upgrades for free Trial and for paid PRO versions.
Trial Version Available?	Yes. Features are detailed here.
Pricing Scheme	I started to use the free Trial version in December 2010. I purchased the paid PRO version in March 2011. At time of purchase, HDS PRO had a 20% discount coupon (2011-03-18) applicable to purchases of trial downloads. (The Trial is just a hobbled version of the PRO, and the full functionality is enabled on entry of the registration key.)  - Full price: US$35.00  - Purchased at 20% discount: US$28 (I did not obtain the price for the Enterprise version as I was not interested in it at the time.)

SCREENSHOTS OF APP INTERFACE:
This is the Overview tab:                   This is the Temperature tab:
                                           

Saving the Temperature graph:


This is the S.M.A.R.T. tab:                 This is the Information tab:
                                           

This is the Log tab:                           This is the Disk Performance tab:
                                           

This is the Alerts tab:                        There's a Desktop gadget too:
                                           

Introduction:
HDS PRO is an automated and integrated disk performance monitoring, management and recovery system. It maintains useful logs and charts of disk status/performance, and can take predetermined actions based on specified disk conditions/events.

Overview: (Copied from website.)
Hard Disk Sentinel (HDSentinel) is a multi-OS SSD and HDD monitoring and analysis software. Its goal is to find, test, diagnose and repair hard disk drive problems, report and display SSD and HDD health, performance degradations and failures. Hard Disk Sentinel gives complete textual description, tips and displays/reports the most comprehensive information about the hard disks and solid state disks inside the computer and in external enclosures (USB / e-SATA). Many different alerts and report options are available to ensure maximum safety of your valuable data.

No need to use separate tools to verify internal hard disks, external hard disks, SSDs, disks in RAID arrays as these are all included in a single software.

Hard Disk Sentinel monitors hard disk drive / HDD status including health, temperature and all S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) values for all hard disks. Also it measures the disk transfer speed in real time which can be used as a benchmark or to detect possible hard disk failures, performance degradations.

HDSentinel is the perfect data protection solution: it can be effectively used to prevent HDD failure and SSD / HDD data loss because it has the most sensitive disk health rating system which is extremely sensitive to disk problems. This way even a small HDD problem can't be missed. The Professional version has scheduled and automatic (on-problem) disk backup options to prevent data loss caused by not only failure but by malware or accidental delete also.

Who this app is designed for:
HDS PRO would be a useful addition for any computer system where the user wished to avoid being caught out unprepared for gradual progressive disk performance/health deterioration and sudden disk failure events.
That's why I got it, and, though I did not expect it to be of much use with my new laptop and disk, HDS PRO has already identified and warned me of a minor and non-fatal problem with my disk, within the warranty period, and advised me that the problem is not something that needs to be or could be addressed through the warranty at this stage.

Having HDS PRO provides some greater peace-of-mind, because it will give you advance warning (and it has done in my case) when something is amiss with the disk before a serious disk error occurs, so that you can monitor the status and mitigate the risk and migrate to a new disk before a complete disk failure event.

The Good:
An excellent piece of software that so far has done its job very well (as above) on my laptop.  
There is also a desktop gadget for Windows 7 and above.
I think the claim by the publishers that:

HDSentinel is the perfect data protection solution

- is a legitimate claim.
It runs unobtrusively all the time the laptop is being used, and has minimal system overhead.

The needs improvement section:
I have not observed that anything needs improvement. No annoyances.
(The software automatically gets updated periodically, to cope with improvements and new hardware and drivers.)

There has been a recurring issue of the real-time performance monitoring getting disabled in the Registry (see Edits below). This has been fixed as at 2012-09-17.
____________________________________
EDIT 2012-09-17:

Hooray! This seems to be an effective fix to the episodic real-time performance monitoring issue:
(for more info., refer HDS FAQ page http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php)

The real time performance monitoring worked per the Registry settings workaround (see earlier edit below), but after some time (for example after connecting/removing external hard disk, pendrive or similar storage device) it stopped working and I periodically had to reset the Registry settings - i.e., the Registry settings change did not "stick". This was apparently caused by a function in HDS which provides for performance monitoring when a new device - e.g., an external hard disk - is connected/detected. When this happens, Hard Disk Sentinel has a function that clears the performance object cache and re-detects the performance objects. On some systems (regardless of hardware configuration) this function apparently causes the Windows performance monitoring settings in the Registry to be disabled.

If this happens, you can disable this HDS function as follows:

• 1. click "start" (Windows) button and to the search field enter REGEDIT
• 2. open REGEDIT
• 3. navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\HD Sentinel (or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\HD Sentinel under 32 bit Windows), where you will see a lot of keys.
• 4. create a new STRING key named DisablePerfCacheClear and specify a value of 1 for that.

Then restart HDS, which now will not issue this special function to clear the performance object cache when it detects the change of configuration, so the performance counters will continue working normally - once reset in the Registry. Those Registry settings should now "stick" and not need to be reset again.    

____________________________________
EDIT 2012-06-02:

I have been having two episodic issues with HDS PRO:
(for more info., refer HDS FAQ page http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php)

• 1. It doesn't always start up with Windows like it should (this has since been fixed by putting HDS into the Startup folder).
• 2. The Registry settings to enable real-time disk performance settings do not "stick", so I have now automated the workaround changes to the registry in a .reg file, contents as follows:

Spoiler

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[BLANK]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Perfdisk\Performance]
"Disable Performance Counters"="0"
[BLANK]

The [BLANK] lines must be just that - blank lines.

The steps are:

• shut down HDS PRO (if it is running).
• in Windows Explorer, double-click on the .reg file (I call mine Enable disk perf counters.reg).
• restart HDS PRO.

That's all. The real-time disk performance monitoring should now be working in HDS PRO.
You don't need to reboot or anything.
Please note, this is in Win7-64 Home Premium. The appropriate .reg commands and even rebooting may well be different for other versions of Windows.

____________________________________

Why I think you should use this product:
If you have these points in common with me, then you will be able to make good use of HDS PRO.

• I am always concerned to maintain data integrity on my laptop, and the worst that could happen to a disk is that it could suddenly permanently fail. Such an event would be a crisis. I would then have to focus all my resources on recovering my data from backups and installing everything to a new disk - i.e., including my data and the operating system. To be caught with your pants down - e.g., without a recent data backup - in such a crisis could be a major hassle. However, the crisis could be avoidable.
• What I wanted was something to give me peace-of-mind as to the ongoing state of performance/health of the disk, so that I could get a mitigation plan under way well before the disk actually failed.
• I was unsure whether I needed this software at first, which was why I decided to use the Trial version and do a "suck-it-and-see".
• The Trial version was very impressive, and, because I wanted all the functionality of the PRO version, I purchased a licence.

How it compares to similar apps:
I have trialled different software that does good S.M.A.R.T. analysis and reporting, and, though they were good, they seemed rather rudimentary (which I found surprising) - e.g., Crystal Disk Info, Seagate Tools, SpeedFan. I have not come across anything quite like HDS PRO, which does all that and more - an automated and integrated disk performance monitoring, management and recovery system. It maintains more useful logs and charts of disk status/performance, and can take predetermined actions based on specified disk conditions/events.

Before trialling HDS, I had used SpeedFan for a long time, which also does S.M.A.R.T. analysis and reporting, but I used it mainly for system temperature and fan monitoring and control (at which it is excellent and it has negligible system overhead). I still use SpeedFan for that.

Conclusions:
Superb.
Does what it says it does, and very well.

Links to other reviews of this application:
If you google "Review Hard Disk Sentinel", you will be able to find lots of reviews, but they seem to be mostly from shareware download sites, so perhaps are not entirely independent.

5628

Living Room / Re: Main hard drive in my PC died today suddenly

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2012, 06:02 PM »

...i don't use any realtime drive monitoring tools.. i should.

-mouser (February 02, 2012, 12:30 PM)

Thanks for answering my Q.
I asked because I do use such a tool, but (being paranoid), though it gets a very good write-up and has a great spec., I don't know whether it will work for sure in warning me in advance of an imminent disk failure. I therefore wanted to learn vicariously from any relevant experience you might have had. It's HDS PRO (Hard Disk Sentinel PRO) - i.e., not the freeware version - and it notified me in October 2011 that on the disk in my 11-month old laptop:

- it had logged
2011-10-11 17:26:15     #196 Reallocation Event Count 0 -> 21
2011-10-11 17:26:15     #5 Reallocated Sectors Count 0 -> 21

- that:
     Performance = 100%
     Health = 69% (downgraded from 100% due to the above logged events)
(This is still the current status of the disk at time of writing this post.)

And it gave me the recommendation:

There are 21 bad sectors on the disk surface. The contents of these sectors were moved to the spare area.
Based on the number of remapping operations, the health of the disk was decreased in different steps.
At this point, warranty replacement of the disk is not yet possible, only if the health drops further.
It is recommended to examine the log of the disk regularly. All new problems found will be logged there.

It is recommended to continuously monitor the hard disk status.

So, "belts-and-braces", I then ran a full system CHKDSK on the disk, and then tried to enable HDS PRO real time performance monitoring.
However, though HDS PRO can continuously monitor a disk if you tell it to, the disk has to be able to support that feature, and in my case HDS PRO said:

Real time performance monitoring is not supported on this disk.

- so I have to periodically trigger HDS PRO to recheck the disk, just in case. (So far, so good.)
Not having it automated doesn't alleviate my paranoia though!

Lesson learned:

Try to ensure that any disks bought in the future do support RT performance monitoring
- i.e., for increased peace-of-mind.

5629

Living Room / Re: Beyond Gamification. Designing up Maslow’s Pyramid.

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2012, 08:49 AM »

How do you even state the criteria of a proof?

-TaoPhoenix (February 02, 2012, 07:26 AM)

I'm not sure how you would do this for Maslow's theory. At a guess it would require empiric research over several thousand people/cases, using a control group(s) and requiring defined and repeatable results.

Also I understand Maslow's theory to be a *correlation*, not a Boolean either-or-xor or such.

-TaoPhoenix (February 02, 2012, 07:26 AM)

High correlation proves that there is high correlation. It does not prove a cause/effect relationship. One of the earliest lessons I had in statistics was to gather data about the import of bananas into the UK and the amount of reported crimes in the UK, over a period of years, and then summarise conclusions from the analysis of the data. There was no doubt about it, the rate of growth in the crime rate had a high correlation with the rate of growth in the import of bananas.
So did that mean you could use the projected growth in the import of bananas to predict the crime rate?
Certainly not - but it was initially easy/tempting to think that there might be a cause/effect relationship there...   

5630

Living Room / Re: As a counter-point to the SOPA/PIPA demonstration

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2012, 08:10 AM »

@40hz: Thanks for the link. I learned something there.
The whole thing seems to stink something awful.

... where the US is heading with its latest War on Communism... International Terrorism... 'Foreign' IP Piracy.

Maybe you could add "Freedom" to that list?

5631

Developer's Corner / Re: RFID Hacking -

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2012, 08:01 AM »

Wow. It's all feasible. Great vid. Thanks.

5632

Living Room / Re: Who needs SOPA? Website accused of defamation is closed by judge

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2012, 07:50 AM »

@ wraith808: Very interesting reading. Thanks for the post.
@Renegade: For something potentially even more chilling in effect:
Secretary of State Clinton says State Department will coordinate with OIC on legal ways to implement UN's resolution criminalizing "defamation of religion" (that'll include on and off the Internet)

Spoiler

Secretary of State Clinton says State Department will coordinate with OIC on legal ways to implement UN's resolution criminalizing "defamation of religion"

Moving rapidly to criminalize telling the truth about how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to encourage violence and supremacism. Free Speech Death Watch Alert, and an update on this story: "OIC/Islamophobia: OIC Observatory warned since 2009 against the growth of the extreme right in Europe, Washington plans to host a meeting on resolution opposing defamation of religions," from the International Islamic News Agency, August 1 (thanks to all who sent this in):

JEDDAH, Ramadan 1/Aug 1 (IINA)-During the next few months, Washington plans to host a coordination meeting to discuss with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) how to implement resolution no. 16/18 on combating defamation of religions, and how to prevent stereotypes depicting religions and their followers; as well as disseminating religious tolerance, which has been endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council last March, in agreement with Western countries. The resolution was adopted after lengthy discussions held between the OIC and countries in which the phenomenon of Islamophobia is in the rise.
The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had announced the intention of the U.S. State Department to organize a coordination meeting during her participation in the meeting which she co-chaired with the OIC Secretary General, Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Istanbul on 15 July 2011. The meeting issued a joint statement emphasizing the dire need for the implementation of resolution 16/18.

According to informed sources in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the two sides, in addition to other European parties, will hold a number of specialized meetings of experts in law and religion in order to finalize the legal aspect on how to better implement the UN resolution.

The sources said that the upcoming meetings aim at developing a legal basis for the UN Human Rights Council’s resolution which help in enacting domestic laws for the countries involved in the issue, as well as formulating international laws preventing inciting hatred resulting from the continued defamation of religions.

On the other hand, the OIC Secretary General, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, stressed that the crime committed recently in Norway was a result of the rise of the extreme right in Europe and its easy mobility in political circles. He said that the OIC had warned several times against of what might be called institutionalization of the phenomenon of Islamophobia through the involvement of the European extreme right in government institutions and political action....

Posted by Robert on August 3, 2011 2:16 PM | 111

Coming soon to a State near you?
If that doesn't make sense to you, it probably will if you take the perspective that it would be the introduction of an important piece of Islamic Shariah law, which makes it an offence punishable variously up to and including by death, to criticise Islam or make offensive statements/actions about Islamic beliefs. That includes those Danish (or any other) cartoons depicting Mohammed (pbuh). It's no joking matter!    

Fair's fair, I say. If it can be illegal to deny the Holocaust of the Jews, then it should be illegal to defame Islamism. Oh, but wait...wasn't it the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who...        

Interestingly, the new law might find favour with not only Muslims, but also Christians, as it would also outlaw further exhibition of things like the so-called "art" of the Piss Christ (photo of a crucifix in a bucket of the artist's urine) and the eponymous Madonna in a condom statuette (covered in mock semen). Such exhibition of the Madonna has apparently (I gather) already been banned on at least one Internet site (in Austria).
But any exhibition of either artefact in any manner should be punishable by death anyway, as, from a purely artistic perspective, they are both egregiously poor pieces of a type of art which should be discouraged on principle - oh yes, and they are unnecessarily offensive too.   
It irked me that they had been freely displayed in Government-funded museums/galleries.

5633

Living Room / Re: Main hard drive in my PC died today suddenly

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2012, 06:39 AM »

Before the disk failure, had you been running any kind of real-time disk health status/performance monitoring tool?
If so, what (if anything) did it report?

5634

General Software Discussion / Re: Google-based services seem to be out from NZ

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2012, 06:01 AM »

Now all Google services seem to be back to normal.
Odd.

5635

Living Room / Re: Beyond Gamification. Designing up Maslow’s Pyramid.

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2012, 05:37 AM »

And as for Maslow, I'd say his pyramid isn't "disproved". Once again, it's also difficult to create any theory with *zero* use. Remember, he was among other things reacting to Skinner's rather insidious legacy of rat mazes applied to people. A lot of evil corporate managers deliberately chop off the top couple of pyramid layers to force people to keep worrying about the lower rungs, which results in getting away with lower pay rates.

-TaoPhoenix (February 01, 2012, 08:34 AM)

It would be incorrect to say that because something has not been proven and yet:

isn't "disproved"

- then it has even a grain of truth in it.
It could be possible that it might contain some truth, but you won't know until it is proven.
Thus, if your "evil corporate managers" are taking an action based on Maslow's unproven theory, then they are being irrational, by definition.

When 40hz sees it as unproven, he openly says that he accepts it on faith:

And that's the rub. There's no proof people actually do self-actualize. (Skinner would argue they didn't.) Because self-actualization argues for some higher order of existence or awareness (i.e. a soul) which amounts to a version of 'pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.'
It was something Maslow was never able to satisfactorily explain, although he did remark how horrible a world it would be if some form of self-actualization didn't really exist.
In the end, you have to take the existence of self-actualization on faith.
I do.  

-40hz (February 01, 2012, 09:17 AM)

In an earlier post in this thread, here, I covered the points that there seems to have been nothing to prove Maslow's theory, and that it apparently remains just a theory.
That does not stop it from being:

• for perhaps many people (including myself), something that seems to be intrinsically "right" in many ways.
• a potentially useful construct for considering aspects of human motivation (and that is probably why it tends to be standard fare in many business management courses).

However, as Wikipedia puts it (here):

Recent research appears to validate the existence of universal human needs, although the hierarchy proposed by Maslow is called into question

Wikipedia gives references to support this statement - here, and here.

That's why I said:

...Maslow's theory would seem to be a weak thing on which to base an argument for anything, because the research that relates to it has apparently only been able to throw the whole thing into question - i.e., the opposite of substantiating it (QED). There is apparently no proof that the theory holds out in practice (QED).
This would be quite the reverse, for example, to the validity of the theory (unverifiable at the time it was proposed) of gravitational lenses postulated by Einstein.

-IainB (October 21, 2011, 05:48 AM)

Similarly, I rather liked Arthur Conan Doyle's improbable (and still not disproved!) theory that there were pretty winged fairies at the bottom of that garden in the UK, and I felt rather disappointed when the last surviving of the two girls who showed him the photos of the fairies confessed on her deathbed that it had all been a hoax, and that she wanted to get it off her conscience before she died.
It sometimes seems to me as though we may all need to believe in fairy stories at one time or another.
Unfortunately (or not?) the exercise of reason seems to lay waste to all belief. Cold and absolute, there is only Proven or Unproven, True or False - no room for "nearly true" or "only a little bit false" (e.g., the myth of AGW). And people don't like having their cherished or preferred beliefs or their religio-political ideologies laid waste.
No wonder Galileo's life was put at risk by the RC Church because of his "heresy" - e.g., here.

5636

Living Room / Re: Beyond Gamification. Designing up Maslow’s Pyramid.

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2012, 03:00 AM »

@40hz: Apologies for the digression. And I do apologise if I offended you. I certainly meant no offense.
There was always the possibility that I was wrong and it was an entirely innocent and accidental choice of words, which is why I said (note the emphasis):

That could seem to be a rather cheap shot smacking of intellectual snobbery, and as such would do the author no credit.

That was a rational and impersonal statement.
The thing is, I have a choice if I am involved in a discussion and perceive that someone may be subjecting someone else to a put-down. I generally make the choice not to stand idly by and watch it happen, and will tend to directly address the issue when I see it - which was what I did.

If it wasn't intended as a put-down but just came out accidentally phrased in a way that could be interpreted as being patronising, then no problem. My misinterpretation.
But -and again, I could be wrong, of course - this (following) perhaps could have been intended as a put-down (my added emphasis):

Perhaps a certain sort of person might take my words as a "cheap shot."

This of course could be suggesting snidely that it is I who am "that sort of person" (in a pejorative sense).
Then again, perhaps that choice of words is accidental also. Only the speaker could know for sure.

5637

General Software Discussion / Google-based services seem to be out from NZ

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2012, 01:47 AM »

All Google-based services seem to be out from NZ - that includes Google.co.nz and Google.com
NZ time: 2012-02-02 2047hrs
I can get to all other usual non-Google services and links that I normally use.

5638

Living Room / Re: Beyond Gamification. Designing up Maslow’s Pyramid.

« Last post by IainB on February 01, 2012, 09:04 PM »

If you're interested in Maslow (and ready to move beyond Wikipedia)...

-40hz (February 01, 2012, 04:57 PM)

That could seem to be a rather cheap shot smacking of intellectual snobbery, and as such would do the author no credit. It could also seem to be irrelevant - providing neither rational substantiation of a previous argument nor disproving a previous argument.
Unless he has declared his ignorance (has he?), then suggesting by implication that someone else in a discussion is ignorant (whereas you are not, of course, because you provide an informative reference) is ad hominem (a logical fallacy). The relative ignorance of a person does not, of itself, invalidate their arguments, but it may make it difficult for them to articulate a well-reasoned argument on a subject on which they are relatively ignorant.

Note: self-actualization isn't properly a "buzz word" since Maslow coined and used that term in his writings. 

-40hz (February 01, 2012, 04:57 PM)

That would seem to be an incorrect statement - for example, from Etymonline:

Word Origin & History
self-actualization
1939, from self + actualization. Popularized, though not coined, by U.S. psychologist and philosopher Abraham H. Maslow. (1908-1970).
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper

Matching Quote
"Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualization."
-Ann Oakley

(The quote from Ann Oakley is out of context and is not a rational construct or argument with any substantiation given, so it is probably merely a statement of opinion. Example: some people may find housework to be very fulfilling (say) as in "nest-building".)

And, similarly, "self-actualisation" is arguably a buzzword if you use a common definition.
For example:

buzzword
Pronunciation: /ˈbʌzwəːd/
(also buzz phrase)
noun
informal

    a word or phrase, often an item of jargon, that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context: the latest buzzword in international travel is ‘ecotourism’
(http://http://oxforddictionaries.com/)

Generally speaking, using the above with other common definitions, you will be able to equate:
buzzwords = clichés = jargon
Which references would provide a useful working definition of the term "buzzword". Thus the general use of buzzwords/clichés/jargon is such as to make them almost meaningless (undefined terms) for the purposes of using them as logical building-blocks in articulating clear and logical thinking.
They can become effectively tools which are antithetical to reason.

5639

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 31, 2012, 12:10 AM »

Well, I never saw any connection between "Sod's Law" and "Sod off".
British colloquialisms.
"The poor sods [unfortunate people] had to endure all that warfare in the trenches" <-- is Sod's Law. Something bad/unpleasant was likely to happen to you [an unfortunate person] as a result of enlisting or being conscripted into the army for WW2.

"Oh, sod it" <--a bad/unfortunate thing just happened to me. As in "Just my sodding luck." Similar to "Oh, bollocks."

"Sod off" <-- a very rude imperative to "go away". ("Sod" in this case coming from "Sodomite".) Similar in intent to "F*** off" or "Bugger off".

You don't need to paint your face with woad to use these expressions either.

5640

Living Room / Re: As a counter-point to the SOPA/PIPA demonstration

« Last post by IainB on January 30, 2012, 11:44 PM »

I ran into this article at Forbes magazine. It's by Larry Downes and it's called: Who Really Stopped SOPA, and Why? (Web over to read it. Forbes get's pissy about quoting their text.)

-40hz (January 30, 2012, 12:49 PM)

That article is spot-on. Thanks.

5641

Living Room / Re: Beyond Gamification. Designing up Maslow’s Pyramid.

« Last post by IainB on January 30, 2012, 09:37 PM »

@Paul Keith: This is written in the hope that it may be of use in improving the clarity of this discussion.
I apologise for not replying before now, but, taking a pedantic approach, I was rather nonplussed by the above posts of yours as they seemed to be trying to make logical points/arguments all over the place, but without having a clearly perceivable (by me) logical structure or apparent solid basis for substantiation. I wondered if the posts showed evidence that either:
(a) you may be having a joke with me by using a nifty little text-generating program;
or
(b) you may have succumbed to intellectual laziness.

I could be wrong in this, of course, but I shall assume (b) to be more probable. I don't mean to be rude, as I recognise it (intellectual laziness) as something that I suffer from - from time to time. (I think we all do, on occasion.)

A lot of intellectual laziness can be equated to basic (first-principles) uncritical thinking, and can be attributed to the insufficient use of language and semantics to unambiguously convey clarity of meaning, thought and logical argument.

I was reminded of this when I reread this interesting item in my Scrapbook library. It's a post from the Harvard Business Review of 2008 (tagged under Communism, Thinking, Philosophy, Bullshit, Buzzword):
Why Jargon Feeds on Lazy Minds

Spoiler

http://discussionlea...s-on-lazy-minds.html

Why Jargon Feeds on Lazy Minds
Posted by Scott Berkun on August 7, 2008 11:40 AM

If I could give every single business writer, guru or executive one thing to read every morning before work, it'd be this essay by George Orwell: Politics and the English Language.

Not only is this essay short, brilliant, thought-provoking and memorable, it calls bullshit on most of what passes today as speech and written language in management circles. And if you are too lazy to read the article, all you need to remember is this: never use a fancy word when a simple one will do. If your idea is good, no hype is necessary. Explain it clearly and people will get it, if there truly is something notable to get. If your idea is bad: keep working before you share it with others. And if you don't have time for that, you might as well be honest. Because when you throw jargon around, most of us know you're probably lying about something anyway.

In honor of George, whose birthday was last month, here is a handy list of words I hear often in management circles that should be banned. Flat out, these words are never used for good reason.

Words that should be banned:

    Breakthrough
    Transformative
    Next-generation
    Seamless
    Game-changing
    Ideation (oh how I hate this word)
    Disruptive
    Incentivize
    Innovation Infrastructure
    Customer-centric
    Radical

These are the lazy words of 2008, and whenever i see them used I feel justified in challenging the claims. To use these words with a straight face is to assume the listener is an idiot. They are intellectual insults. They are shortcuts away from good marketing and strong thinking since they try to sneak by with claims they know they cannot prove or do not make any sense.

Marketers and managers use jargon because it's safe. No one stops them to ask: exactly what is it you are breaking through? What precisely are you transforming, and how are you certain the new thing will be better than the old (e.g. New Coke)? If no one, especially no one in power, challenges its use, jargon spreads, choking the life out of conversations and meetings forever.

Pay attention to who uses the most jargon: it's never the brightest. It's those who want to be perceived as the best and the brightest, something they know they are not. They use cheap language tricks to intimidate, distract, and confuse, hoping to sneak past those afraid to ask what they really mean.

I'm going to do my best for the rest of the year to question people who use these lazy, deceptive, and inflated terms. Maybe then they'll use their real marketing talents and tell me a story so powerful that I believe, all on my own, will transform this, or revolutionize that.

What jargon do you hear these days that you'd like to add to the list above? Let me know.
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It refers to George Orwell's essay:
Politics And The English Language

Spoiler

Politics And The English Language
by George Orwell
Published in Horizon, April 1946; Modern British Writing ed. Denys Val Baker, 1947.

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language  so the arguments runs  must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influences of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad  I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative samples. I number them so I can refer back to them when necessary:

1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien (sic) to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression).

2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes such egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate or put at a loss for bewilder.Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossa).

3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity? Essay on psychology in Politics (New York).

4. All the 'best people' from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic Fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror of the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction to proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoisie to chauvinistic fervour on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis. Communist pamphlet.

5 . If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream  as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes, or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as 'standard English'. When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school ma'amish arch braying of blameless, bashful mewing maidens! Letter in Tribune.

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery: the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose construction is habitually dodged:

Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically 'dead' (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, rift within the lute, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a 'rift', for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would be aware of this, and would avoid perverting the original phrase.

Operators, or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are: render inoperative, militate against, prove unacceptable, make contact with, be subject to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc.etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purposes verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining) . The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved from anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.

Pretentious diction.. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilise, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid processes of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien r?gime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, Gleichschaltung, Weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g., and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in English. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, sub-aqueous and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers. The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc) consists largely of words and phrases translated from Russian, German or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentatory and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

Meaningless words.. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly even expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, 'The outstanding features of Mr X's work is its living quality', while another writes, 'The immediately striking thing about Mr X's work is its peculiar deadness', the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable'. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

    I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

    Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit 3, above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations  race, battle, bread  dissolve into the vague phrase 'success or failure in competitive activities'. This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing  no one capable of using phrases like 'objective consideration of contemporary phenomena'  would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyse these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains 49 words but only 60 syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains 38 words of 90 syllables: 18 of its words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase ('time and chance') that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its 90 syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier  even quicker, once you have the habit  to say In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry  when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech  it is natural to fall into a pretentious, latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash  as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting-pot  it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski uses five negatives in 53 words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip alien for akin, making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means, (3) if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4) the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea-leaves blocking a sink. In (5) words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning  they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you  even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent  and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connexion between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions, and not a 'party line'. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White Papers and the speeches of Under-Secretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases  bestial atrocities, iron heel, blood-stained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder  one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, 'I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so'. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

    While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigours which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics'. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find  this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify  that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he 'felt impelled' to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence that I see:

    '(The Allies) have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe.'

You see, he 'feels impelled' to write feels, presumably, that he has something new to say  and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, ant that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of fly-blown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence, to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defence of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.

To begin with, it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting-up of a 'standard English' which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a 'good prose style'. On the other hand it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meanings as clear as one can through pictures or sensations. Afterwards one can choose  not simply accept  the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impression one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. .If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists  is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase  some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse  into the dustbin where it belongs.

It was this kind of thinking that has shaped my paradigms and was behind the posts that I made in this discussion.
Knowing my own fallibility, I have gone over the discussion a few times looking for some flaw in what I may have written. Maybe out of over-familiarity with what I wrote, I was yet unable to see where this thinking could be flawed in any way which could materially affect the validity of the rationale that I employed.
Certainly, though you may see a flaw, you seem to have been unable to articulate it and demolish its foundation.

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Living Room / Re: As a counter-point to the SOPA/PIPA demonstration

« Last post by IainB on January 30, 2012, 07:31 PM »

Well, looks like the government there is looking to delete the evidence...
https://rt.com/news/...les-prosecutors-031/
You have to wonder... Why would you delete the evidence? Hmmm...

-Renegade (January 30, 2012, 06:40 AM)

Wouldn't destruction of evidence by police in a pending trial be a Federal offence? I don't understand that.
Usually the people who would be interested in the destruction of evidence would be the people being charged - because the evidence provides grounds (evidence) for the charges.
That would be Mr Dotcom in this case, I presume, so it doesn't make sense here. Maybe the shady MPAA or the FBI or whoever has been pushing this thing as a major crime could actually be targeting something "hidden". For example, (say), maybe the objective is the expunging of a file or set of files in Megaupload's databases that could have some seriously incriminating evidence of another crime/crimes.

A useful question to ask if something - e.g., an artificially created situation or a deliberate action - do not make rational sense is:

"Under what conditions would this situation/action make sense?"

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Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 30, 2012, 07:06 PM »

Is there any correlation between Sod's Law and the expression Sod Off?

-Stoic Joker (January 30, 2012, 05:07 PM)

Who were you directing the question to?            

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Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on January 30, 2012, 04:12 PM »

What could go wrong? Calculate the odds on this web page, using Sod's Law.

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Living Room / Re: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

« Last post by IainB on January 30, 2012, 04:29 AM »

Speaking of Elsevier (which we were): 1000 scientists and counting boycott Elsevier journal publishing

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Living Room / Re: Knowledge Is A Universal Natural Resource - Locking It Up Hurts Everyone

« Last post by IainB on January 30, 2012, 04:20 AM »

Yes, it is a thought-provoking article.
The corporate lobbyists in Washington would seem to have deliberately created a state of irrationality/insanity that supports their commercial objectives, and they have used the US lawmakers as tools to continue/prolong that state - in the hopes of making it permanent. The Emperor will have nice new clothes wherever you look.

I normally have a high regard for the US, but, if Americans continue to tolerate or buy into all this nonsense, then they will probably richly deserve the outcomes - including the loss of their freedoms/Constitution and the loss of respect of other nations.

But there may be hope for Reason yet:

Speaking of Elsevier (which we were): 1000 scientists and counting boycott Elsevier journal publishing

-IainB (January 30, 2012, 04:29 AM)

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Screenshot Captor / Re: Screenshot Captor v3 beta

« Last post by IainB on January 28, 2012, 10:36 PM »

I have been busily trialling this ß over the last couple of days.
Very nice indeed.   
Still learning about it.
Thankyou.

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Living Room / Knowledge Is A Universal Natural Resource - Locking It Up Hurts Everyone

« Last post by IainB on January 28, 2012, 10:25 PM »

The case for knowledge being freely available and without ownership: Knowledge Is A Universal Natural Resource -- And Locking It Up Hurts Everyone

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General Software Discussion / Re: copy and combine multiple text

« Last post by IainB on January 28, 2012, 08:58 PM »

I just tried that
...the problem is that the program does not offer a display of all clips stored with the timestamp on which, each clip was created and the application from which, each clip was created, so that I can easily choose which to merge (basically, there is no column that displays the clip content)

-kalos (January 28, 2012, 06:24 PM)

Ah, I think I understand. In this instance, a picture is probably worth a thousand words...

Spoiler

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General Software Discussion / Re: ZOOM setting reminder ?

« Last post by IainB on January 28, 2012, 07:54 PM »

That could be quite handy for sites with many/large pictures for reading small fonted comments.

-Stoic Joker (January 28, 2012, 10:23 AM)

It's certainly handy. I like it because I am generally likely to be more interested in the text than the pictures. If a web page is too "noisy" with pix or ads., then I usually resort to reading it via the FF add-on Firefox Reader.   

@crabby3: This could be useful info. if you spend much time in the IE9 browser - Internet Explorer 9 keyboard shortcuts
It includes the Zoom controls (i.e., Ctrl+Plus, etc.).