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I wrote an email about this before I got to the end of the show and found out there was a discussion forum, but I had associated the vapors with the miasma theory of disease which held that disease was carried by bad smells, vapors, and mist. This was what prompted people to avoid the night air. Of course the association with misty areas producing disease isn't unreasonable since those would be areas where stagnant water might collect as well.
I'm not sure why it would be more prevalent in the South.
This was all before germ theory came into prevalence.
Sure, people and cities may have nicknames, but how many of us have purposefully mispronounced or mangled the names of businesses in a derogatory way to express our displeasure?
For instance:
Home Depot => Home Despot
Best Buy => Worst Lie
Circuit City => Shircuit Sh**ty
Radio Shack => Rat Shack or Radio Snack
Whole Foods => Wh**e Foods
Comcast => Comcr*p
Or even with places that we like, my friends and I often just do it for the sake of doing it, and it seems to be mostly restaurants.
McDonalds => McDoggies
Pizza Hut => Pizza Sl*t
O'Charlie's => O'Chuckie's
Logan's (or Texas) Roadhouse =>
And we also tend to genericize chains into one long word that's partially all of them:
WalDalton-Borders & Noble-A-Million
And let's not forget things like "EverCrack" for "EverQuest."
Nicknames ABOUND. 🙂
Kaa said:
WalDalton-Borders & Noble-A-Million
Reminds me of a music course titled “Babrarchtohmsk” which taught about Bach, Brahms, and Bartok in one package.
janus said:
I had associated the vapors with the miasma theory of disease which held that disease was carried by bad smells, vapors, and mist. This was what prompted people to avoid the night air.
janus, that actually makes sense. I had a similar association of vapors with illness; in this case, giddiness. Your comment also makes me think of malaria as coming from “mal” (bad) and “aria” (air) which attempted to explain the cause of this malady originating from bad air around swamps and marshes.
Re: the “retiree” conundrum: how 'bout just saying the simple truth “we're moving on”? (Sorry if that was no help… )
I, too, was once victim of the “Dilemna Dilemma”, which word I now spell “dilemma”. Victimn no longer! — OK, that was a little too silly.
What would be awesome is if they truely were amalgamated in the sense of what they served, etc.
A: “Do you want to go to T.G.I.F.'s?”
B: “Hmm. Well, I was kind of thinking of Chilis.”
C: “How about Applebee's?”
D: (out of nowhere, some random spokesman pops up) “Guys, why go to one when you can go to all of them?”
ABC: (incredulously) “Whaaaat?”
D: “That's right, folks! All of your favorite family restaurants can now be found in your favorite restaurant! T.G.I. Chilibees!”, etc., etc., etc.
Wordsmith said:
What would be awesome is if they truely were amalgamated in the sense of what they served, etc.
A: “Do you want to go to T.G.I.F.'s?”
B: “Hmm. Well, I was kind of thinking of Chilis.”
C: “How about Applebee's?”
D: (out of nowhere, some random spokesman pops up) “Guys, why go to one when you can go to all of them?”
ABC: (incredulously) “Whaaaat?”
D: “That's right, folks! All of your favorite family restaurants can now be found in your favorite restaurant! T.G.I. Chilibees!”, etc., etc., etc.
To me, that sounds much better than certain combinations of Yum! Brands fast food chains I've seen. The KFC / Taco Bell combination seems unappealing enough to me, but there's even KFC / Long John Silver's combinations!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kfc-longjohnsilvers.jpg
I think a TB/LJS combination would be even more unappetizing.
Considering all the chains Yum! Brands runs, perhaps we could start seeing all-in-one, Wal-Mart-like "big box" fast-food joints?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yum%21_Brands
I guess we have mall food courts, but that's not really the same thing, since that's essentially a fast food mall of separate "restaurants" rather than one big all-encompassing restaurant.
I guess, though, that more general restaurants (like T.G.I. Chilibees) serve all sorts of things like this, so perhaps it's the fast food angle (along with the spotty history of fast food joints, such as the famously rat-infested KFC / Taco Bell in NYC a while back) that really makes me cringe about these combinations...
I just paused listening this episode to check out the Wordsmart webpage. Shouldn't someone tell them how to spell "phenomenon?"
In other news, I'm a bit baffled by the whole "dilemma" issue. The way I understood it a logical argument or a minor mathematical proof was a lemma, and so when there were two of them as in two arguments that you had to or two possible solutions that both have their problems, it was a DIlemma. I can't see where the "n" would pop up at all. What's the greek/latin spelling of lemma? Is there an "n" sound in the original language or something?
Grant Barrett said:
“Honeypot computer” is a somewhat awkward construction, much like if you said “pick-up truck automobile”. The word computer is extraneous.
Kevin, I worked in IT for more than 15 years for a variety of companies big and small here in New York City and I know of at least two other kinds of “honeypots”: honeypot networks and honeypot routers. So, the specification of “computer” was necessary to make clear what I was talking about.
The first part of your answer has been bothering me for quite some time now. I wouldn't mind a difference of opinion, but your argument by authority just bugged the heck out of me, and left me unable to enjoy the newer episodes.
I know that a counter-argument by authority would be pointless, so I decided that I would do some research and post the results, whether they favored my original argument or not.
You claim that "honeypot computer" is an appropriate construction in your sentence, whereas I claim that "honeypot" is the correct term for your usage. I figured that an appropriate way to investigate this would be to search for both terms against computer security mailing list archives.
The first site I'm testing is securityfocus.com, which houses the well-known. BUGTRAQ archives.
1,380 results from securityfocus.com for honeypot.
1 result from securityfocus.com for "honeypot computer"
The single usage of "honeypot computer" is as I described in my previous rebuttal, meaning a computer that has been allowed to be authorized and cannot be trusted. (The value of the research being done external to that computer, in the proper honeypot.)
The second site I'm testing is seclists.org, which houses the Full Disclosure mailing list archives.
2,590 results from seclists.org for honeypot
6 results from seclists.org for "honeypot computer"
4 of those results do not actually include the phrase "honeypot computer". Two use the term fairly similarly to how you used it.
The third site I'm testing is lists.grok.co.uk which contains archives of Aleph One's original Full-Disclosure list.
187 results from lists.grok.org.uk for honeypot
No results for "honeypot computer"
I think that offers fairly conclusive evidence that your example of "honeypot computer" was, at the very best, using the term in a manner that is several orders of magnitude less common than "honeypot".
As for your continued defense of "white hat" meaning somebody who attempts to "catch" hackers, I continue to believe that the only possible way that your definition is accurate is if you define catch to mean "stop", instead of the more common usage meaning "capture" or "intercept and hold".
In that case you would simply be guilty of sloppy word use in a definition, something that would surely happen to me as well, if I had a weekly radio show. Unfortunately, that doesn't explain your continued defense of your original definition.
As such, I'll posit the question, can you cite any evidence to back up your claim, or are we simply supposed to accept it on the basis that you worked in the IT industry for 15 years.
I'm hoping you have a reply that's stronger than your original argument. The original "I worked in the IT industry for 15 years" was incredibly insulting, especially since it appears clear that you were unambiguously incorrect, and my credentials on that matter are almost certainly as strong or stronger than yours. (Seriously, your appeal to authority accomplished nothing except making me think that I was stupid for having ever respected you.)
Kevin, you're peeved at my flaunting my authority, but I don't know what to tell you about that. I've got the authority. I didn't work my way up to IT director with my good looks. These days I keep my guns in their holsters as I concentrate on matters linguistic and lexicographical, but my skills haven't dulled enough to make the kind of mistake you think I've made.
In any case, you still come up short of proving your bill.
Your first mistake was proving me right even within your search's limited scope. Your argument was that "honeypot computer" was awkward. My point was that, awkward or not, the term is in use. In your post above, you have now shown that the terms are indeed in use. Yes, they are less common, but they're real. They exist. Awkwardness has nothing to do with it. You've scored a home goal in my favor.
From a lexicographical standpoint, your second mistake is to limit your search to a tiny corpus. In statistical terms, your sample size is too small. When lexicographers search for the existence, meaning, and history of words, we search trillions of words. Trillions. You've searched a small percentage of that.
We also search across domains, including within the popular press, to show that a word has circulated. If we just barely scratch the surface and search Lexis Nexis, Factiva, Google Books, and Google Groups, we find even more uses of "honeypot computer," "honepot network," and "honeypot router." Even a bare Google search will return some of each.
So, while I appreciate that you care enough to argue your point, Kevin, I can't agree with you any more now than I could before. The terms exist and they are in use.
Nicknames!
Grant, in your 4/5 show, you talked about coming from St Louis, but not knowing any nicknames for it.
Why, Mound City, of course! (Despite the fact that all of the hundreds of Indian mounds in the city, except one, were levelled in the 1800s.)
When I double-checked Wikipedia, it reminded me that it is also the Gateway City (or Gateway to the West).
I always thought that was just an advertising slogan from the people who wanted to sell the Arch, but I guess it deserves the Gateway moniker too. It was, of course, the East-West railroad gateway, starting with the 1857 Eads Bridge, where it was the first non-ferry crossing of the Mississippi, and there are hundreds of miles of track in marshalling yards on both sides of the river. It was also the gateway for Lewis & Clark and all those 1840s+ wagon trains. (Henry Shaw, of St Louis's Shaw Arboretum, etc., made his coin selling shovels to most every wagon that went west.)
I lived just south of the town of Des Peres, Missouri. For us, it didn't mean the Catholic fathers, for which the River des Peres was named. Rather, we knew those long hot summer days as
Despair in Misery
And, Martha, when I went to college in West Lafayette, Indiana, we had lots of students up from Louisville. We were taught to pronounce it what they considered "properly". Without vowels, it's nearly a nickname -- "LLVLL". I like it a lot -- just "LLLL" with a little lip flip in the middle.
My favorite personal nickname is Bay Buchanan (whose older sibling couldn't say the second syllable of "baby", and she became the "Bay"). But I want to divide personal "nicknames" into two words. A nickname should be something that the others made up for you, like Bay. But I would distinguish something standard that derives from your formal name, like Bill for William. Bill feels more like an inherent variation of the name, not a "nick" name. But what do you call that (besides nickname)?
Grant Barrett said:
Kevin, you're peeved at my flaunting my authority, but I don't know what to tell you about that. I've got the authority. I didn't work my way up to IT director with my good looks.
The problem wasn't that you flaunted your authority, it was that you cited it as your primary evidence. The fact that you've done so again in your reply (this time dropping your title, and implying that it's superior to what I have accomplished) is rude, dismissive and insulting. It's not conducive to discussion, debate, or resolution. Frankly, it's as though you're trying to "win" the conversation.
It's also funny, because I have excellent credentials. I've refrained from citing my work experience and professional references because I don't believe that my personal experience has any bearing on my correctness. I take a consensus-based approach to vocabulary, such that if a majority of people believe a term to be correct it is correct. And if a majority eschew usage of a term, that perhaps I should follow suit.
I'd be very interested in seeing the results of "proper" lexicographical research, as I fully admit that I'm not a lexicographer. My use of three major security related mailing list archives was designed to capture a snapshot of how security professionals use the terms. I knew it wouldn't be completely accurate, but I thought that 1500:1 usage ratio would indicate that your use of the additional "computer" was in fact unnecessary and awkward, though you are correct that I did prove that there are at least 3 public usages of the term.
The reason I care is because your show introduces large numbers of people to these words, and as such it seems that some significant care should be taken to ensure that they come away knowing the common usage and meaning of the terms. It seems strange and misguided to teach them usage patterns that are several orders of magnitude less common, even if they have been used several times.
That said, it's clear you believe that it's acceptable to teach least-common usages, and introduce them with an implication that they are primary definitions. Perhaps this is really where our split lies.
After all, this split explains your adherence to your strange definition of "white hat" as well, in which the "white hats" are attempting to catch hackers, rather than attempting to stop them, monitor them or analyze their actions. I'm sure that there are a few "white hat" hackers who will attempt to identify the individuals behind attacks. Similarly, I'm absolutely certain that there are several orders of magnitude more "white hat" hackers who do not "catch" hackers.
I think it's strange and silly to teach these minor cases in a context that implies dominant usage, especially when the entertainment value would not be diminished by the increased accuracy. It's clear you disagree.
Perhaps you'll continue to disagree, but it'd be nice if you wouldn't start off your rebuttals with a haughty assumption that you're better than me. Even if it were true, it would have no bearing on your correctness.
Grant, I have some terrible news: Kevin has a point.
I, myself, have had some experience as a lexicographer and I cringe at each mistake I make, but I make a point not to cover it up.
I think Kevin's main point here is that of frequency vs. commonness. An IT word may be common in San F. but not have much currency outside of that. True, many terms do originate there but whether or not they take hold is something that can't be guessed. If your knowledge of “white hat” and “honeypot computer” is canonical (i.e., orthodox) then it could be that those two terms have been supplanted by either simpler ones or a different nuance of meaning.
Kevin really made a very good point when he said:
I've refrained from citing my work experience and professional references because I don't believe that my personal experience has any bearing on my correctness.
If we could reach a consensus on which terms have more currency than the other in IT, that would be a boon to both sides of the argument. Since, it's not about being right, it's about being open to and aware of the fluxes to which language (esp. jargon) is inevitably prone.
Sigh. I'd stopped following this forum when it switched to the new format. (Oh no! Math problems!)
Now that I'm trying to follow the discussions again, I'm finding a disturbing volume of... argument, for lack of a better word. I wonder if I should bother to keep reading if this is mainly what I'm going to get.
Wordsmith said: I, myself, have had some experience as a lexicographer and I cringe at each mistake I make, but I make a point not to cover it up.
Wordsmith, there's no coverup. It wasn't a mistake. It was a remark based upon personal experience that did not match the experience of someone else.
Kevin Way said: It seems strange and misguided to teach them usage patterns that are several orders of magnitude less common, even if they have been used several times.
A rare usage is no less a word or term than a common one. I specialize, in fact, in outliers: slang and new words.
At this point, perhaps this conversation should end. You had a dispute about usage, I responded in kind, and we've both said our pieces twice over. No ground is being gained. Okay?
Greyaenigma said: Now that I'm trying to follow the discussions again, I'm finding a disturbing volume of… argument, for lack of a better word. I wonder if I should bother to keep reading if this is mainly what I'm going to get.
I hope you stay, Greyaenigma. I believe that conversation—even spirited conversation—about language is a profitable exercise. In many cases, I think it is more important than any possible resolution because it lays bare differences in opinion that might not otherwise be known. Many people might now see Kevin's argument and say, "You know, I hadn't thought of that. He has a point." And some others might see mine and say, "I can see how that makes sense." The debate is the thing here more than right or wrong and we wouldn't want anything less than everyone giving their utmost when trying to persuade others, as long as the persuasion is polite and civil, as Kevin's has been. So, do please stick around and join in. Wordsmith and others are good role models for behavior here: informed, humorous, and on-topic.
Martha Barnette
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