On 31 Jan 2004, Jules Richardson wrote: "Microsoft will provide the monetary rewards for information resulting in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for launching malicious viruses and worms on the Internet." I'm turning in Bill Gates and collecting the reward. P.S. One more reason to NOT USE OUTLOOK EXPRESS!!! There are very nice free or cheap alternative mail clients out there peoople! -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Williams" <dan_williams(a)ntlworld.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, February 01, 2004 11:54 AM Subject: Re: Vhmrrxutkvbziepg That makes more sense, the nice mr. Norton must of taken it away., Sorry to nitpick , but I've seen this on so many posts now , it should be - " the nice mr. Norton must HAVE taken it away " . It's the curse of the modern world - a homonym - all the newspapers do it e.g. - " Tow the line " instead of " Toe the line " etc. It's all down to people not reading enough books. This is not a nasty post but it really does get me going , another whisky and I'll be fine. Keep smiling (: ^ } . Geoff.

On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: ^^^^^^^^ fauxs pas ^^^^^^^^^^ up-and-coming Well, maybe if they had the right carthridge in it.... <runs away laughing, nonetheless with alacrity and velocity> Cheerz JH0N D00D

John Lawson wrote: ^^^^^^^^ cartridge

Err ... "d00d" Shirley? -- --------------- Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org

----- Original Message ----- From: "Geoffrey Thomas" &lt;geoffreythomas(a)onetel.net.uk&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 3:14 PM Subject: Re: Vhmrrxutkvbziepg be - What is the burning desire that makes people go out of their way to correct grammar in posts? Unlike in programming where a decimal point in the wrong place means something completely different , you can misspell a word and the target audience still knows exactly what your talking about. The English language is full of words bastardized by the locals to communicate with whatever society conquered England at the time (Vikings, Normans, etc). The language and spelling changes slightly every year and can be used to figure out what society and era the text came from (I bet bootyliscious is in the dictionary by now).

On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Teo Zenios wrote: ^^^^ you're <running augmented by further alacrity> chz jhn BIG PS: One kin only hope that Y'all knows I'm Jokin'!!

----- Original Message ----- From: "John Lawson" &lt;jpl15(a)panix.com&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 4:04 PM Subject: Re: Vhmrrxutkvbziepg correct wrong the I knew I would get a correction or two since math and science were more my specialty in school and English class put me to sleep. Anyway I just find it amusing that there can be a heated debate or argument going on either in a newsgroup or mailinglist and somebody will jump in to correct grammar or spelling with nothing useful to say about the topic being discussed.

Well, speaking purely personally (ie, not for "people"), grammar and spelling mistakes bother me not so much in themselves as as evidence of sloppiness and/or carelessness. A few of the worst - such as confusing "its" and "it's", or "lose" and "loose" (which latter aren't even homonyms!), or treating "criteria" as a singular noun - I have found myself becoming sufficiently sensitized to that they grate on my eye, to mix a metaphor, and make the text significantly less pleasant (and marginally slower) to read. I do usually reserve on-list corrections for only the most egregious examples, though. :) Occasionally they can be amusing, as when someone knew "faux pas" from spoken speech, wanted to write it, and ended up writing "pho pa". Ever since, I've thought of that as the Vietnamese mistake, because that spelling looks very Vietnamese to me. :-) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

----- Original Message ----- From: "Doc Shipley" &lt;doc(a)mdrconsult.com&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 4:54 PM Subject: Re: Vhmrrxutkvbziepg As time goes on and I type 95% of my correspondence instead of writing it to paper with pen I find my handwriting has grown worse then in my school days and I rely more on a spellchecker then proofreading. If I did writing for a living, or better yet proofread technical writing on a daily basis my skills probably would not have grown worse with time. Twenty years from now I would be embarrassed to read something I posted earlier that was technically incorrect and wouldn't worry too much about an obvious spelling mistake. I don't think topics posted on this mailinglist are going to be published, but people will be googling through it to get technical information. Judging from your reply if I would have written a book outlining the real origins of the universe you would quit reading it after you found the 3rd spelling or grammar mistake? Granted if I did print such a book I would have it proofread by experts in English grammar, but I feel that the knowledge your trying to convey is more important then the few easy to spot errors in grammar. In a perfect world everybody would have the same skills in everything, but that's not the way things are. I will take correct content over correct grammar anyday.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Vintage Computer Festival" &lt;vcf(a)siconic.com&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 6:58 PM Subject: Re: Vhmrrxutkvbziepg Must be nice, I find that when your word processor has a spell checker and grammer checker you start to rely on it (you get lazy) while if your using paper and pen you tend to be more careful (and if your publishing something to be read by your peers your really carefull). Maybe its just me, I dont know. While everything you post on the net stays around for quite a while the probablility of somebody finding and actually reading something I posted here on how to get an MFM drive working on a P200 PC when they are looking up a patent I filed for process control are not very high. too many hits on a search engine are as bad as none at all. Most mistakes are obvious typos or wordprocessor screwups based on typos ("I walked down to the see" instead of sea), while sloppy it doesnt keep you people with a higher level of education then yourself your going to have problems even without grammar errors (some legal documents and medical reports come to mind). Then you have people who like to weave a string of grammatically correct worthless crap like 90% of the dotcom era websites did for what the company actually produced. I have read quite a few manuals for process controllers coming from japan that showed you what you needed to do to make then function, but were a pain to read because of the translation somebody did from japanese to english. Festival

I try to develop images of who people are in this little community based on what they write. When there's a lot of typos, grammar problems, voltage/current problems, attitude problems, honesty problems, sanity problems, or whatever I tend to try to guess more about the person. A lot of people on this list get judged to be 14 year-olds trying to save the bux* on computers by picking up free hardware. There's a core group of about ten or twenty people that get my utmost respect**, and the rest tend to keep quiet until something comes up where their comment can Add value. Thanks for that. John A. *intentional. **note: not necessarily judged by volume of a persons messages.

OK, I get the point. I must be more tolerant to a small amount of grammar mistakes then most people here. Its time to get some hot chocolate and dig out the old grammar book for some remedial grammar before you guys come and lynch me. Peace.

On Feb 2, 2004, at 6:42 PM, Teo Zenios wrote: *AAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!* A Troll, it's a troll! Run, for your sanity! Dude, if I found it possible to take that sentence seriously, or as anything but a troll, I believe that my head would explode. Doc

----- Original Message ----- From: "Vintage Computer Festival" &lt;vcf(a)siconic.com&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 5:08 PM Subject: Re: Vhmrrxutkvbziepg correct wrong the http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bootyliscious is where I got the spelling from using google (don't believe everything on the web) http://www.geocities.com/destinyschildlyrics/survivor_lyrics/bootylicious.h… spelled the way you mentioned from destiny childs album (the group that came up with the term).

Vintage Computer Festival wrote: Wrongly, surely? Cheers, Dave.

On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Dave Woodman wrote: Not in Ebonics, yo. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

Ok, my take on this... Well it annoys me to see people who can't spell or use correct punctuation when using their first language. I'm not irritated at them, but at the school system which taught them, because if they've been through a reasonable schooling system then they should be using correct spelling and punctuation without even thinking. I also get annoyed at myself when I come back to read things that I've written and notice mistakes (I expect I've made a few in this post!) I suppose I like to take pride in my work, no matter what form it takes - and it's my own failing not to realise that when it comes to the written word, some others don't :-) Ahh, but aren't spelling changes due to foreign influences (meaning outside of community, not necessarily country) different from spelling changes through laziness or bad tuition? Plus, the former are more likely to be adopted by a smaller community first and then spread to a wider area, whilst the latter tend to be isolated and random occurances across a far wider area. As an example researching the use of 'thief' and 'theef' (a far older equivalent) will give you some useful data. Researching 'theif', a reasonably common modern-day error, will not likely yield anything useful as it will have roughly the same chance of occuring throughout the educated English-speaking world independant of location (yes there will be some discrepancies to that) Dialects are another matter; English and American English being good examples. It's amazing how many American English spellings are now becoming commonplace over here. bootylicious in these parts, I believe ;) Joking aside, that is - as far as I know - a new word rather than something that's originated in a common mis-spelling... If anyone's got this far without falling asleep, the "Common Errors in English" page at http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/errors.html is an interesting resource for language nuts (although it should be "Common Errors in American English" - see 'ax', 'offense' etc.) Similarly, the World Wide Words page at http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles gives a nice history of some English words and how they have altered over the years, particularly due to overseas influences. Thus endeth the lesson... cheers Jules