2297. Tom 7 (h-67-100-132-172.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) –
30 Mar 2005 11:29:56
[ NEW: Escape Beta 2! ]
Max: are you still using a one-button mouse? ;)
I'll fix it in the next version.
Stephan:
(1) I don't see this on either of my XP installations. Are you using a theme or something?
(2) Oops, I'll fix it.
(3) Yeah...
(OT) Sure. |
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2296. Dwindlehop (c-24-20-130-246.client.comcast.net) –
30 Mar 2005 11:07:05
[ They are a woman ]
Why, no, I believe the underlying point she was trying to express makes her sound like an idiot. |
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2295. Marc (c-24-62-124-147.hsd1.ma.comcast.net) –
30 Mar 2005 09:29:27
[ They are a woman ]
Tom, this isn't necessarily an instance of "the use of 'they' as a singular pronoun" since "they" references "people" which is plural. It's just that it then is messed up by switching to singular after that point ("a woman"), which is what shouldn't have happened. |
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2294. cdqr (ool-435392aa.dyn.optonline.net) –
30 Mar 2005 01:12:32
[ They are a woman ]
Well, that certainly falsified my theory of italics-production. Whither semantic markup, I ask you? |
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2293. cdqr (ool-435392aa.dyn.optonline.net) –
30 Mar 2005 01:03:31
[ They are a woman ]
Let's give Clinton the benefit of the doubt. Note that we obtain a perfectly grammatical sentence if we parse "they" as an anaphoric reference to "kids". Try it! The kids are a woman; therefore, the gaming industry teaches them it's OK to diss people. It seems to me the gaming industry is both sexist <em>and</em> possessed of a voodoo theory of compound beings. |
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2292. jcreed (wittgenstein.wv.cc.cmu.edu) –
30 Mar 2005 00:42:19
[ They are a woman ]
Yeah, some grammatical verb phrases, to my ear are:
(1) "insult a person just because they're a woman"
(2) "insult a person just because she's a woman"
(3) "insult people just because they're women"
The given one,
"insult people just because they're a woman"
sounds wrong to me because, as catamporphism pointed out, there's number disagreement. I have no problem reading "they" as third-person plural and third-person singular (just as I have no problem hearing "who" as being nominative and accusative - have we already argued about this point? Do you think people are wrong for not ever using "whom"? Does eliminating "whom" make the language more/less elegant or consistent?) but that sentence contradictorily forces both interpretations, the singular interpretation from the (syntactically "plural" in the conjugation of "to be", but semantically singular) "they're a woman", the plural interpretation coming of course from "people".
In fact I would slightly prefer (1) to (2), because the noun person still sounds gender-neutral to my ear as a noun, even though later context means it's female. |
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2291. Stephan (fl-69-68-129-98.dyn.sprint-hsd.net) –
29 Mar 2005 23:58:46
[ NEW: Escape Beta 2! ]
Oh yeah, one more thing:
3)In the editor, the right-click region select area doesn't scale properly at different zoom levels. (The purple selection rectangle is drawn too large). Presumably this isn't a bug so much as just being still in development.
(OT: Is this the preferred location for bug reports?)
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2290. Donna (pool-141-158-121-37.pitt.east.verizon.net) –
29 Mar 2005 23:50:55
[ They are a woman ]
She used the word 'diss', therefore I ignored the rest of the sentence. :)
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2289. Stephan (fl-69-68-129-98.dyn.sprint-hsd.net) –
29 Mar 2005 23:29:32
[ NEW: Escape Beta 2! ]
Found two bugs in escape 200503290, under Windows XP:
1) When the screen is maximized, the graphics raise too high, and approximately half the top line of tiles are 'cut off' under the window's title bar. (This affects the editor too.)
2) In the editor, setting random 'how' mode to 7 and clicking random will crash the application. (This is repeatable.) |
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Do you think you could add extra commands for mac users to correspond with middle-click and right-click so we can access those controls? apple-click, ctrl-click or option-click, for instance? |
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2287. Tom 7 (h-67-101-139-227.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) –
29 Mar 2005 20:03:01
[ NEW: Escape Beta 2! ]
Ah, good.
It changed a little because multiple solutions are now supported, but that shouldn't affect the 'ratings' section. |
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They'll probably let you get away with it if you put nifty illustrations in. What you're fighting is people's eyes glazing over and deciding not to expend the (large cognitive) cost to process your complex technical information. If you were to have the comics section of the conference/journal in <em>your</em> paper, they'd probably be more forgiving.
Well, either that, or you could fully explain <a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=805852&dl=ACM&coll=GUIDE">all modern programming language features</a> in twenty pages. |
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2285. Tom 7 (h-67-101-139-227.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) –
29 Mar 2005 19:24:56
[ They are a woman ]
Very funny Heather. ;) |
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2284. Anonymous (cobamide4.bio.pitt.edu) –
29 Mar 2005 19:23:36
[ They are a woman ]
Tom, why do you hate women so much?
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2283. mjn (pool-151-205-107-113.ny325.east.verizon.net) –
29 Mar 2005 18:14:37
[ NEW: Escape Beta 2! ]
Yup, it's with the text format. |
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Uhh, I just thought of something... did you do this with the new text player file format? I changed it a while ago, but I don't know if I did a release with it. |
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catamorphism, I disagree: I think that the use of 'they' as a singular pronoun caused the speaker to be confused. There are, however, many other ways of saying this, including perfectly good uses of 'they' (like you point out). |
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2280. nebulawindphone (c-67-171-71-142.client.comcast.net) –
29 Mar 2005 17:52:13
[ They are a woman ]
There's no need for the singular here, either. "...okay to diss people because they're women..." would have been just as good. |
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2279. http://catamorphism.livejournal.com/ (198.144.202.78) –
29 Mar 2005 17:52:11
[ They are a woman ]
It's not "they" that's the problem -- "diss people because they are women", or "diss people because they are female", would be completely correct. |
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2278. jetfuel (rhydon.omnigroup.com) –
29 Mar 2005 17:06:07
[ They are a woman ]
"They" is a good pronoun when the gender is unknown or irrelevant. As for this speaker, they have taken it too far. :D |
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That's part of my point: aside from all of the problems with this sentence, the pronoun 'she' works great because we're talking about women! Why not just use it? |
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Yeah, I have done that before, and I think it's a decent solution to the problem. But there's no information about that in the call for papers, so I guess I have to wait for press time, if I'm lucky enough to have it accepted this time. ;) |
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Actually, I think there are many reasons why she sounds like an idiot here, including the use of the word, 'diss'.
Really, it's just her idiotic construction of the sentence in the first place more than her use of the TATPSP, because "...because he or she is a woman..." would probably sound even more idiotic... |
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That's a good idea! Papers that aren't too great (like the ones I write) could have fewer pages, and ones that are better could be alotted another page.
Can you buy a page? I've heard you can do that with some conferences.
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And, ironically, that last post came from when I was working on the submission for the prequel of the paper I'm editing now. Get back to work! |
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