Condoleeza Rice recently stated that America can defend itself against missile attacks from North Korea.

Riiiight.

Maybe she got confused from all this 'Star Wars: Episode III' hype.

(Potentially relevant link)

They had this large LCD representation of a processor. The registers were labeled 1, 2, 3, 4. . . .there was no 0.

When you told it '1+4=' it stored '1' in register 1, '+' in register 2, '4' in register 3, and '=' in register 4.

It's similar to the above link for this post. Great fun.

Pressing the 2 key alerts the microprocessor and signals the Prefetch Unit to ask the computer's main memory for a specific instruction on the new data since there is nothing about it in the Instruction Cache.

Ther user presses the the '2' key so the computer looks up the number 2 in memory?

And check out the technical glossary at the end:

DOS
An acronym for disk operating system. The term DOS can refer to any operating system, but it is most often used as a shorthand for MS-DOS (Microsoft disk operating system). Originally developed by Microsoft for IBM, MS–DOS was the standard operating system for IBM-compatible personal computers. It can apply to any /disk/ operating system. MS-DOS was not developed by Microsoft, for the most part.

gigabyte
1024 megabytes. Literally meaning one billion bytes. Abbreviated GB, Gbyte or G-byte.

Gibibyte != gigabyte.

Internet IP address
A unique number identifying each host machine on the Internet network. Also called the IP address or TCP/IP address. A numeric address such as 123.231.32.2 that the domain name server translates into a domain name

Internet Internet Protocol addresses, also called Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol Protoccol. The domain server translates from IP to domain.

navigate
To find one's way around on the World Wide Web by following hypertext links from document to document, and from computer to computer.

I have a friend who used to (~seventh grade) think that 'ambiguous' was computer term (from DOS), not a real word. I guess Intel has people thinking the same of 'navigate.

Fun!

(Potentially relevant link)

The 1913 edition of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary has this to say about 'Sufficience':

Suf*fi"cience (?), n.

Sufficiently.
[Obs.]

And this on 'Sufficiently':

Suf*fi"cient*ly, adv.

To a sufficient degree; to a degree that answers the purpose, or gives content; enough; as, we are sufficiently supplied with food; a man sufficiently qualified for the discharge of his official duties.

Last I checked, nouns and adjectives were rarely synonyms.

That was a fun test.

I figured I'd do quite poorly. Graduate-level Cryptography with one of the tougher professors. Yes, it was a Gopal test: a test that makes you think. I love those.

I studied more than usual, but considerably less than I should've. And the test half-killed me. I'd guess that I got a C. Or maybe a B, since he grades on a fifteen-point scale.

So I did poorly. But that's alright. I sat in that classroom with a bunch of graduate students and not one left before five+ minutes after the end of class. He finally kicked the last three of us out about twenty minutes after the class was supposed to end. And you could tell nobody was happily dotting their final 'i' and turning in their test with a cheerful 'I'm done!' No, it was clearly an 'I give up. I just don't know the answer to this question'. Nobody was on top of that test.

That was a fun test.

Last semester I found what is I suppose is a plastic toy walkie-talkie in the street. It's just soft, hollow grey plastic. It's not in good shape. You know how it's a front half and a back half, like, and it's splitting some. Especially the antenna, half of which is missing.

It's nice though. I've been carrying it around in my pocket ever since. A number of times I've let people borrow my cellphone.

One kid's trash is another's instrument of comedic genius.

(Potentially relevant link)

I'm sitting in the computer lab in Austin listening to the Science and Technology Building's fire alarm

The SciTech building several buildings away. See buildings six and sixteen on the map? And I'm on the far side of Austin (well, left side of the lower branch of the T). Granted, one window is open, but jeez. All this probably because someone (Hark! It stopped! Took about fifteen minutes) microwaved their popcorn for too long. (Hark! I started again. But just for a second.)

You know, if administrators everywhere got clever, they'd ban microwave popcorn from their buildings. Consequent: microwave popcorn makers figure out a way to make popcorn that won't burn when over-microwaved, or at least burns in a non-smoky manner. People rejoice!

I went to the ECU 'Mardi Gras' celebration last night. At one point, the DJ commented 'We're celebrating Mardi Gras ECU-style!' Yeah: on Thursday. They do this every year. Always on Thursday.

Totally ECU. In addition to this bit of silliness, every semester they'll officially designate a Monday to be a Wednesday or a Tuesday to be a Monday or something like that so that all the classes will have the same number of meetings.

Anyhoo, before that, I went to the Philosophy Club, which was surprisingly interesting. Dr. Wall presented on State v. Guido and one other case. He'd done the case I can't name before, but it was better this time. Bigger crowd, for one.
In the nameless case, some guy killed his grandfather in order to get his inheritance. (Being only fifteen, he was merely sent to juvie.) Later, his sisters sued to prevent him from getting the inheritance. However, at the time the statue specified the certain conditions under which a will is invalid, and murder was not among them. Should he get the money?
(The correct answer, of course, is yes.)
The majority opinion says 'no' and provided several reasons:
* Original intent of the law: surely the legislators would've listed murder if it'd occurred to them.
* Undue influence. (this 'argument' may be strengthened by the fact that the kid murdered his grandfather partly because he thought he was going to be written out of the will soon.)
* Intent of the testator: the grandfather wouldn't have wanted the kid to get the money if he'd known the kid was going to murder him.

Let's consider these arguments:

The original intent of the law

(Specifically either a) they wouldn't have wanted the kid to get the money or b) they wanted it interpreted against a background of justice, to handle any screwups they made.

These both seem semi-reasonable, but if you interpret enough 'original intent' into the law, no one but the judges after the fact can know what is and isn't illegal. It's somewhat post ex facto. That's uncool. Still, a decent view, perhaps.

Undue influence

If I force your hand as you write the will, that invalidates it. But I contend that killing you is different. Consider a will that says (being freely written) 'Luca gets my estate, even if he murders me'. It seems obvious to me that this is a valid will and should be followed (even if they've updated the statute to say murder makes it invalid). Yet if I force you to write in your will 'Luca gets my estate even if he forced me to write this', that clearly isn't a valid will. These things are quite distinct, and it's not clear that they should both fall under the 'undue influence' basis for invalidating the will.

Intent of the testator

Suppose you leave me 100 000USD and I blow it all in Vegas. Maybe you wouldn't have left me the money if you'd known I'd do that, but that doesn't warrant the courts denying me the money. If you don't include the clause '...but you can't blow it all in Vegas', then sure. Same if you say '...unless he murders me'.

But that case isn't my point with this post. I wanted to comment on State v. Guido.
Some guy had the habit of abusing his wife. She ran away, but he caught her and told her he'd kill her if she tries running away again.
One day, she gets his run, and is going to kill herself, but opts not to. Then on the way to put the gun away, she sees her husband sleeping on the couch, and decides to shoot him. She does and he dies.
Because he was asleep, she was unable to get by on a self-defense claim, so she went for neurosis, or something similar. Extreme anxiety, basically.
Anyway, it's obvious to me (not being put in the actual situation) that the optimal solution would be to keep the gun and run away again (theft?), and if he catches her, then shoot him (preferably in the leg or somewhere most likely non-fatal). This brought up the suggestion of poking the sleeping husband and then when he jumps up to beat her, shoot him, arising to a very nice term: Premeditated self-defense.
Should premeditated self-defense be a crime?

(Lack of posts followed by a pathetic ramble. Oh well.)

Apparently, I'm WRONG and I'm a GROTESQUELY UGLY FREAK¹.

Dr. Ceruti ('Greek and Latin for English Vocabulary Building professor) today started complaining about people using the word 'utilise'. 'Never use "utilise" when you can use "use", and you can always use "use"'. He says it's the same as 'irregardless' (except it's not a double negative; just pompous). He supports the idea of never using a long word when a diminutive one will suffice.

In my post yesterday, I argued essentially that no two words are complete synonyms², so no word is universally replaceable. And I'll maintain that position. 'Utilise' has a place in English, and not only in sardonism³. However, I seem unable to come up with a perfect example at the moment, so instead I'll fallaciously attack what Dr. Ceruti had us do in class.

For the homework, we were to take the listed Latin words, find the stems, and come up with an English word that comes from them. Then he wanted us to say what they meant strictly going by the root and suffix type (noun, adjective, verb, &c.). e.g., 'annual' means simply 'having the quality or characteristics of a year'.
But the nouns! For nouns to prevent us from adding all the extra information the English word now holds, he'd correct people with 'just say "bigness"', or 'just say "sharpness"'. Fine, sure. 'malice' is 'badness' and 'acrity' is 'sharpness', but then he corrected a girl's definition of 'novice' to simply be 'newness'. Now, maybe I'm nuts⁴, but I consider 'newness' an abstract quality, not a physical thing, whereas a 'novice' is a physical thing.^4.5 These suffixes make a difference. Obviously he was trying to keep it really simple and keep us to the stems-and-type-of-speech thing, but what's so big and scary about 'a thing that is new'? He did something similar with '-age' (He'd mentioned 'roughage' earlier, and when against another stem he said we could just make 'Xage' and it was the same as 'Xness'. Wrong.⁵)

'There are no rules in language', he says. You can take a stem and put on whatever ending you want, and that's fine. I'll agree entirely with that, but the suffix adds a lot more than just 'this is a noun'. '-ness' adds 'this is an abstract quality'. '-ice' adds...well, the book says it adds 'an abstract state or quality' and that '-ness' (Greek) adds 'a state or quality. But a novice is typically a physical thing. I know that much.

Knowing the etymology is a good way to recognise the gist of a word, but there's ever so much more to learn.

¹ I've been using this line for years. It's a good line. Nothing to do with what I'm talking about though.
² I didn't put it quite so strongly, but I think that's probably the case.
³ 'Sardonism' isn't in any dictionary I can find, but I think 'sardonicism' is there simply because people weren't thinking when they tried to nounise 'sardonic'. Here, Dr. Ceruti would probably support me.
⁴ I am, but I'm right.
^4.5 (Inserted late; it's easier than renumbering number five) Actually, maybe the quantitativeness of it is what's important. I'd think about that some, but I'm afraid I'd have to rewrite this ramble, I don't don't feel like doing that at the moment.
⁵ Actually, while 'roughage' is a physical thing, 'homage' isn't, so maybe 'age' is fine. But what this demonstrates is that prefixes+root+suffixes don't determine the entire meaning. The roughage of Bob's personality' is different from the roughness of Bob's personality. Heck, as he's pointed out, 'money' comes from 'warning' simply due to a Gaulish attack and some noisy geese.

(Potentially relevant link)

Dictionaries give definitions of words. That's bad. Probably worse than dictionaries are 'Word of the Day' things.

I have no good way of explaining what the heck I'm talking about, but one example I've come across is 'appease'. Some silly person I know learned the word not by seeing it in use a thousand times, but by coming across it once and asking for/looking up the definition.
Now she uses the word. Based on the definition.

Like most words, 'appease' has connotations and tendencies of usage that a dictionary cannot capture with a simple definition and a single example sentence. So I'll be reading something written by aforementioned friend and suddenly I'll be verbally slapped in the face by the word 'appease' being used in a manner that just grates the mind.

Now, I'm all for words being used in unusual ways, but only if they fit. Being the belegwain ned Amar, the first example that comes to my mind is Legolas commenting 'Unless my eyes are cheated...' That's not the typical usage of 'cheated', but it perfectly suits the context.

The next time you're wondering what a word means, rather than pulling out a dictionary, try reading through a few hundred examples (better search terms welcome). Sure it might take you a couple hours for each new word, but it's well worth it.

ECU had a blood drive today. It occurred to me while walking back to the lab afterward that it's ever-so-slightly amusing that they tell you 'no smoking for at least half an hour' after giving blood. Because smoking shortly after giving blood can be detrimental to your health, you see. e.e