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Last.fm: "Techcrunch are full of shit"

blog.last.fm

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Re: Last.fm: "Techcrunch are full of shit"

#61
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is British: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_di...

And if you get any news from bbc.co.uk or read British bloggers you'll get accustomed to sports teams and corporations being considered plural. e.g.: "Apple today are releasing..."

Well it's accurate, a corporation isn't an individual and when you're dealing with big business it is always controlled by multiple people so any decision is decided by a group.

Re: Last.fm: "Techcrunch are full of shit"

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to have the same form as something in order to replace it. I don't think the number of breaking stories has any effect on the quality of HN.

In fact, I think that more 'breaking' stories is going to have a negative effect.

Agreed, more emphasis on 'breaking stories' means that there'll be more fake 'breaking stories'. Look at tabloids, the more news they 'break' the better they sell and now everything is outright lies.

Re: Last.fm: "Techcrunch are full of shit"

#63
post #13
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In British English company names act as plural nouns.

I usually do this, and editors always want to change it. I never realized it was an English thing.

I have the same problem, I just don't approve of 'style' when it comes to writing. There are lots of personal style and it does amazing, but there are company style guides and printing houses all have different ones.

I have a serious problem using '...' in writing unless it's from the person's mouth. I always learnt if someone says something directly to you then use '...' and if it comes indirect you use "..." so all novels should use "..." because it's fiction and was never said. Yet so many printing houses have gone away from using "..." and have switched to using the quotation form '...'.

I'm unsure why I get worked up over this, I guess I just think it's stupid so few people have control over how the masses perceive the English language. This is a prime example, in the US most institutions use 'is' in this situation, to such a degree that 'are' looks bizarre and the opposite happened in the UK.

The same is with 'ise' and 'ize'. Using 'ize' is so prevalent in the US that in many words the letter S is being supplanted with Z in situations it's not supposed to be. The prime example is how analyse is incorrectly spelled (even in spell checkers) as analyze and I'm sorry but it is technically correct to substitute the suffix 'ise' for 'ize', however analyse is a complete word without suffix, it's not discussing anal.

Re: Last.fm: "Techcrunch are full of shit"

#64
post #18

If people didn't like Techcrunch, they wouldn't go to the site. If Techcrunch was irrelevant, they wouldn't generate massive leads for pet projects that people create. There was an article a week or so ago about how people were complaining every time Techcrunch posted a story about some Twitter application. The author of the article wrote back in protest basically saying, "well if you don't like the articles, don't c…

I agree - Although the quality may be slipping, I still find the site useful enough to check it out daily in my news/info gathering routine in the mornings. If something interests me, I'll read the full post (which is becoming rare now days).

A while back I had sworn the site off because of link baiting headlines and the fantastically smarmy tone of some of the stories, but hey, there is still an occasion nugget or two.

Re: Last.fm: "Techcrunch are full of shit"

#65
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually do this, and editors always want to change it. I never realized it was an English thing.

I have the same problem, I just don't approve of 'style' when it comes to writing. There are lots of personal style and it does amazing, but there are company style guides and printing houses all have different ones. I have a serious problem using '...' in writing unless it's from the person's mouth. I always learnt if someone says something directly to you then use '...' and if it comes indirect you use "..." so all…

Style is not a matter of control, it's a matter of consistency. There are many, many areas in English where there is no clear rule as to what's "right", so to ensure consistency style guides make explicit what a given publication will do in that instance. Numerals for example, are often written out one through nine, but digits after that. Others will always use digits. Neither is "right", but consistency matters.

As for the quotes, I suspect you'll need to unlearn that rule. I'm not even sure how you got there, except perhaps by misunderstanding the rules for nested quotations, Eg:

"She was absolutely furious, she shouted, 'I hate you' and then ran off," said John

(If it helps any US readers to understand the British usage of plurals, think about the police. You wouldn't write "Police says it has arrested two suspects, but it is still hunting for two more", right? That dissonance is exactly the same as how US usage of the singular, particularly when it comes to music groups -- "U2 says it will tour in the fall" -- sounds to Brits. )

Re: Last.fm: "Techcrunch are full of shit"

#66
post #46
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, but don't you think if someone spit on you, that you would have at least chased them down to kick their ass? I mean the guy must have been pretty close to land a hit.

I'll assume Arrington is a nerd, like me, and that he's not the sort of person who'd kick anybody's ass. Frankly, I think that people who react to aggression with more aggression are wasting their time and looking pretty stupid.

Sorry chap. Mike was the kid who was picking on you in school.

Re: Last.fm: "Techcrunch are full of shit"

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In breaking news, people in Europe get divorced, and HIV isn't transmitted through spitting.

> HIV isn't transmitted through spitting. I believe you are correct. I have no clue whether vaksel is American, but I do think Americans (I'm one) have absorbed--been fed?--a fair amount of hooey about HIV transmission and how to be "safe." Keep in mind, if you're old enough, AIDS was/is "that gay disease" and something quite a small number of injecting druggies were getting--as the "need" for a War on Drugs was buil…

If you absolutely KNEW that someone had HIV and they spit (say) into your mouth, wouldn't you worry about it at least a little bit? Even though you know it's silly?

I think most humans are irrationally fearful about things like HIV.

Re: Last.fm: "Techcrunch are full of shit"

#68
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll assume Arrington is a nerd, like me, and that he's not the sort of person who'd kick anybody's ass. Frankly, I think that people who react to aggression with more aggression are wasting their time and looking pretty stupid.

Sorry chap. Mike was the kid who was picking on you in school.

I've always found statements like this baffling. In my school there was very little picking on. The kids who did one thing did their thing, the other kids did the other. The whole era of bullying disappeared when we all turned 14 or so.

Mike is running a start-up. I can respect that. He sacrifices a lot of quality to be the first man on the scene: I don't like that, but I'm impressed as hell at his track record. He has a history of being a socialite and a bit of a jerk, neither of which I like, but at the same time that doesn't make him a bad person, just a person period.

I spent my high school life fiddling with computers, writing, and talking to teachers, and I had incidents of bullying myself. The whole "picked-on pickers-on" idea is a false dichotomy.

Re: Last.fm: "Techcrunch are full of shit"

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same problem, I just don't approve of 'style' when it comes to writing. There are lots of personal style and it does amazing, but there are company style guides and printing houses all have different ones. I have a serious problem using '...' in writing unless it's from the person's mouth. I always learnt if someone says something directly to you then use '...' and if it comes indirect you use "..." so all…

Style is not a matter of control, it's a matter of consistency. There are many, many areas in English where there is no clear rule as to what's "right", so to ensure consistency style guides make explicit what a given publication will do in that instance. Numerals for example, are often written out one through nine, but digits after that. Others will always use digits. Neither is "right", but consistency matters. As…

The diff seems to be that Americans take a group's name as a synecdoche while Brits apparently think of it as a plural noun.

Would the British rendition be "U2 say it will" or "U2 say they will"?

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