Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => Ctrl-Alt-Del => Topic started by: Afasoas on 04 November, 2012, 09:02:58 pm
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There are some computer terms that's really annoy me when they are misused. One good example has to be screen.
What does screen really mean? Oh there's a fault with it? Is it plugged in? Turned on? Oh, you didn't mean the monitor, you meant the desktop/window/dialog box?
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There must be some others out there...
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screen? that is so interactive stuff can run when I am not connected.
ctrl-A D
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Coming from a technical background, there are loads!
"Doesn't boot" - In what way, there's no POST or Windows doesn't load?
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"My disk is full so I need to buy some bigger memory".
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I'm afraid me & WJ junior take responsibility for calling PCMCIA cards, "Pick & Mix" cards. ::-)
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"DVD Disks"
"DAT tapes"
"DIMM memory modules"
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screen (skrn)
n.
7.
a. Electronics The phosphorescent surface on which an image is displayed, as on a television, computer monitor, or radar receiver.
b. Computer Science The information or image displayed at a given time on such a computer monitor.
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screen (skrn)
n.
7.
a. Electronics The phosphorescent surface on which an image is displayed, as on a television, computer monitor, or radar receiver.
b. Computer Science The information or image displayed at a given time on such a computer monitor.
man screen
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"ping" when used like "can you ping me the output..."
"floppies" - the 90mm variety that were anything but, more appropriately called "stiffies"
But the best one I once had from an IT bod: "Can you take a dump and send it over" :o
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I can't find my google.
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The internet is broken.
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"?..
But the best one I once had from an IT bod: "Can you take a dump and send it over" :o
Fond memories of analysing a dump at three in the morning. :D
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I inboxed you.
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I'm afraid me & WJ junior take responsibility for calling PCMCIA cards, "Pick & Mix" cards. ::-)
Ah, you mean Personal Computer Manufacturers Can't Invent Acronyms, or Pretty Complicated May Cause Intense Anxiety? (I remember spending many happy hours building a PCMCIA interface using Xilinx FPGAs to allow a portable thermal imager to use flash memory cards).
Anyway, one that gets me is when people say "Hard Drive" when referring to the system case.
Or saying "screensaver" when they mean wallpaper.
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People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
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I'm afraid me & WJ junior take responsibility for calling PCMCIA cards, "Pick & Mix" cards. ::-)
Anyway, one that gets me is when people say "Hard Drive" when referring to the system case.
Yes, that, in spades. Those same people seem to think the monitor is "the computer" and the enormous box of tricks is the "Hard drive" They then go on to say their Microsoft isn't working...
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"floppies" - the 90mm variety that were anything but
Yes they were. They just came in a hard case.
How about "USB" to refer to a USB flash drive, and "Bluetooth" to refer to a bluetooth headset? Those bug me immensely.
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The internet is broken.
It might have got left in the pub, and it's battery has run down. It's surprisingly small.
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"floppies" - the 90mm variety that were anything but
Yes they were. They just came in a hard case.
...there was an ill fated movement to try to call them crunchies, though....
I'm afraid me & WJ junior take responsibility for calling PCMCIA cards, "Pick & Mix" cards. ::-)
Anyway, one that gets me is when people say "Hard Drive" when referring to the system case.
Yes, that, in spades. Those same people seem to think the monitor is "the computer" and the enormous box of tricks is the "Hard drive" They then go on to say their Microsoft isn't working...
From the confession stack: back in the early 80's I was at an architect's practice and we were early adopters of IT - z80 PC/M first then twin floppy IBM DOS, then in '83... the PC XT. As ever, everything had to be run from the C> prompt. The secretaries were very decorative sloane ranger types. It was a source of silly amusement to me when I named the disks "hardon" (well, they were hard drives) and trained the girls to tell me they had trouble with a hardon.
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The internet is broken.
Ask them if they typed "google" into Google. That breaks the internet!
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The internet is broken.
Problem with things like that is they start to get used ironically by those in the know. This is amusing, but I'm sure it perpetuates the sloppiness.
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The internet is broken.
Problem with things like that is they start to get used ironically by those in the know. This is amusing, but I'm sure it perpetuates the sloppiness.
The Internet can be broken in a meaningful sense. For example, if the UK backbone system gets it's knickers in a twist then the UK Internet is broken.
IT people are famously pedantic and many words and phrases are ridiculous overloaded with multiple meanings depending on the context like the example "screen" above
So if non IT people get it wrong sometimes it is not at all surprising and only bothers pedants. That is to say, the IT people.
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From my sis:
"The Internet, it's massive, you know".
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They then go on to say their Microsoft isn't working...
In my experience they are usually right when they say this.
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Help Desk.....
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Running out of memory on the hard disk.
Screen resolution seems to confuse people as well.
If somebody says "Make it larger", I increase the resolution of the screen. The is opposite to what some people expect. They expect the icons to get larger.
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The confusion between resolution and definition.
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People who say chairlift when they mean stairlift.
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People who say chairlift when they mean stairlift.
If a stairlift gets you upstairs, does a chairlift get you upchairs?
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I find using VDU is a good way of confusing people at work, then again we seem to have moved now to the point where people don't understand what I mean by RAM as all the suppliers are just calling it 'Memory'.
'Interweb' and 'ww.' are my pet hates.
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'Interweb' and 'ww.' are my pet hates.
Yeah, it's 'Interwebs' :D
(see above comment about the danger of irony)
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Oh, another one is "wet string". Originally a colourful metaphor for a network link with some kind of hardware fault, I see it increasingly abused, usually by non-geeks with geeky family and friends, to describe any kind of internet problem. Occasionally there's added assumption that the performance of the metaphorical string will improve if it's allowed to dry out :facepalm:
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Running out of memory on the hard disk.
Screen resolution seems to confuse people as well.
If somebody says "Make it larger", I increase the resolution of the screen. The is opposite to what some people expect. They expect the icons to get larger.
Now that's IT pedantry, as you you perfectly well what they mean.
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Running out of memory on the hard disk.
Screen resolution seems to confuse people as well.
If somebody says "Make it larger", I increase the resolution of the screen. The is opposite to what some people expect. They expect the icons to get larger.
Now that's IT pedantry, as you you perfectly well what they mean.
I do now I've been exposed to it.
The first time it happened I was boggled. I really didn't understand.
I was demonstrating an application to my boss.
"Make your screen larger" said my boss.
I supposed he wanted to check that the GUI parts worked correctly with a larger screen.
I increased the resolution from 1024 up to 1280, then maximized the application to show that it still worked.
"No, larger" he said.
I was amazed he would still be able to read the font, but increased the resolution to 1400 (something mumble).
"Stop making it smaller" he said.
"It's not smaller" said I, "Look how much more I can fit on it!"
"No, make it so the icons are bigger" he said.
I reduced the screen to 800x600, and he was satisfied.
Now if people ask me to "Make it bigger" I ask them what they mean. Most of the time they want things to appear larger on the screen, not make the desktop contain more space.
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I find that as a general rule most people don't understand resolution, especially in the context of printing or scanning.
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These days people understand 'zoom in' and 'zoom out'. They are used to it on smartphones.
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I find that as a general rule most people don't understand resolution, especially in the context of printing or scanning.
Or indeed in the context of television.
A recent example: A file was delivered to be used in editing, with a bitrate of 1.4Mb/s and a resolution of 720x480.
When placed on an HD timeline and displayed on the 1920x1080i50 output, there was a degree of shock as to how dreadful it looked. Apparently it was 'all blocky' and didn't look anything like that on his laptop. Explaining that the file was not only a quarter of the required resolution, not to mention that the bitrate was on the order of 1/1000th of that required for full uncompressed HD, was not seen as helpful. GIGO.
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I find that as a general rule most people don't understand resolution, especially in the context of printing or scanning.
Or indeed in the context of television.
Yeah, but with television the ignorance around resolution fades into insignificance behind the far more stunning ignorance of aspect ratios. :hand:
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Ah. Yes.
It is one of my missions in life.
As I make my way around this life, I find myself looking at aspect-ratio distorted pictures, which are so jarring to the eye as to be painfull. And yet most people just go "<shrug> looks fine to me".
The most galling thing is where the material is 16:9, broadcast at 16:9, displayed on a 16:9 TV, but still wrong.
The digi-box has defaulted to assume a 4:3 display, and has cropped the image to 4:3.
But the TV is really 16:9, so it s t r e t c h e s the mutilated image in an even more grotesque way.
I seek out the remotes, and go into the digibox menus and correct the aspect ratios, and normality is restored.
Untill next time I visit, where I find the horrors have returned.
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That's because the aspect ratio controls double as "that setting that makes the black bars go away".
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Ask them if they typed "google" into Google. That breaks the internet!
Is it possible to make your computer 'ping' every other computer on the internet? I suppose that might temporarily break the internet, at least from one's own perspective.
I'm not sure about computer terminology, per se, but there are people at my work who double-click hyperlinks. :facepalm: I can cheerfully ignore that, but get frustrated when my work's publishing guidance requests digital images should be supplied at "no less than 300dpi". Obviously you can partially reverse-engineer their requirements based on anticipated page layout, but I think I eventually phoned the designer at the publishing company to find out what they actually needed.
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Is it possible to make your computer 'ping' every other computer on the internet? I suppose that might temporarily break the internet, at least from one's own perspective.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smurf_attack
There are simpler (and more useful) ways of overloading one's local network.
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:o I was with the article all the way up to 'The'.
This is probably why I'm not a computer network boffin.
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Is it possible to make your computer 'ping' every other computer on the internet?
If you mean *all* the Internet ( I'm talking IPv6 ) then you'd best start now. May take a while.
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:o I was with the article all the way up to 'The'.
This is probably why I'm not a computer network boffin.
On your network, you are behind a router.
On your own private network.
You might not know this, but on your private network, there exists a special address, called the Broadcast Address.
All machines on your network pick up packets directed to that address.
Now, that may have use *within* your LAN.
But: how ought a router which connects you to the Internet behave when it recieves an external packet destined for the broadcast address?
Should it actually flood it to all devices on your LAN?
Technically, yes.
But that's a recipe for mischief.
A single ping to the broadcast address, if the router expanded that to the whole LAN, would result in *many* replies.
That's a smurf attack, and why most routers are configured not to expand external traffic to the LAN Broadcast address onto the LAN.
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I'm all for stupidifying computers. I want to just open the lid and do stuff. I want computers to be useful tools not dictionaries of acronyms and enumerations of gigabytes. People shouldn't need to worry about codecs and aspect ratios and bit rates. Let the silicon take the strain and absorb the pain. Box make magic light!
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Box make magic light!
That's a good point. The TV is a magic box with little people inside it.
The computer is just the same except the people are all ladies. Who don't possess any clothes.
Or is that just mine?
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Running out of memory on the hard disk.
Screen resolution seems to confuse people as well.
If somebody says "Make it larger", I increase the resolution of the screen. The is opposite to what some people expect. They expect the icons to get larger.
Now that's IT pedantry, as you you perfectly well what they mean.
Only after experiencing this problem before. The first time I found it utterly baffling.
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I find that as a general rule most people don't understand resolution, especially in the context of printing or scanning.
Or in the context of pointless arguments.
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I find that as a general rule most people don't understand resolution, especially in the context of printing or scanning.
Or in the context of pointless arguments.
Are the arguments better with Ems?
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Screen resolution seems to confuse people as well.
If somebody says "Make it larger", I increase the resolution of the screen. The is opposite to what some people expect. They expect the icons to get larger.
The best comparison I can think of here would be showing a kid a bug under a microscope.
If he/she/it says "Make it bigger!!!" they want to see the bug's hairs, not more of the slide it is sat on.
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If there are hairs on the bug then it is probably a Microsoft bug.
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/dev/null has no hair.
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Running out of memory on the hard disk.
Referring to RAM as 'Memory' (a lost battle I know). Running out of 'Memory' (ROM) on the hard disk could be considered correct in the instance you quote if you're being pedantic, although I'd use 'space' myself.
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Running out of memory on the hard disk.
Referring to RAM as 'Memory' (a lost battle I know). Running out of 'Memory' (ROM) on the hard disk could be considered correct in the instance you quote if you're being pedantic, although I'd use 'space' myself.
And then there is virtual RAM aka swap that lives on the hard drive (or maybe out on the SAN) just to confuse things.
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Actually, that reminds me of a slightly more subtle, and pretty ubiquitous, one: the failure to distinguish between virtual memory (i.e. the existence of some kind of mapping scheme between logical and physical address spaces) and swapping. The latter would be extremely challenging to implement without the former, but loads of systems run with VM but no swap.
I think I'm onto a losing battle here...
Seymour Cray almost certainly didn't say "memory is like an orgasm, it's much better if you don't have to fake it." But I wish he had!
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"Bunch of pedantic IT geeks who should shut the feck up and make my Internet work" when clearly it's "Bunch of pedantic IT NERDS who should shut the feck up and make my Internet work"
It's a classic mistake.
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Screen resolution seems to confuse people as well.
The best comparison I can think of here would be showing a kid a bug under a microscope.
If he/she/it says "Make it bigger!!!" they want to see the bug's hairs, not more of the slide it is sat on.
Yeah, but confusing resolution with magnification is what causes the problem in the first place. They're different - almost but not quite opposite - concepts. If the child says "Show me more!!" should you increase or decrease the microscope's magnification?
In my experience, children (who presumably spend a significant amount of time mucking about with graph paper) understand resolution just fine when you explain what it means. It's adults who weren't using computers during the period where a working knowledge of video and publishing terminology[1] was required to achieve anything useful with them who have the problem.
[1] I'd argue that a lot of the terms on this thread come from those fields, and have been - quite sensibly - adopted for the computing context to avoid having to make up a whole new set of terms.
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Help Desk.....
+1 ;D
'Pinging' e-mails
'My Microsoft isn't working again' = 'IE has, once again, crapped out because I refuse to use that weird Chrome thingy, mainly because it doesn't have 'internet' in it's name'
'Turn it on and off, that'll fix it' :facepalm:
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2 problems mentioned below have the same solution:
"Show me more!" -> "more what?"
"Make it bigger/larger!!!" -> "what is 'it' ?"
Or have I overcomplicated ...
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2 problems mentioned below have the same solution:
"Show me more!" -> "more what?"
"Make it bigger/larger!!!" -> "what is 'it' ?"
Or have I overcomplicated ...
See: Fuzzy's post re: 'Help Desk' :)
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The majority here seem to be pointing at users being the culprit, but IT people are just as bad, to wit:
Conversation had too many times by myself (other person speaking first)
"LDAP isn't working"
"How do you know?"
"Entrust is no longer issuing certificates"
"OK, so how is that LDAP's fault?"
"Well Entrust puts the certs into LDAP"
"Yes I know how the system hangs together, but how does what you are telling me mean that LDAP is broken?"
"Entrust has stopped working"
"Yes I know, but what is your proof that LDAP has caused it?"
"It's no longer issuing certificates and the last time this happened it was LDAP"
"That doesn't mean it is this time, lets work through this, have you tried connecting from the Entrust box to LDAP?"
"No"
"OK, go do that then come back and tell me LDAP isn't working"
...
9 time out of ten it is not UNDERSTANDING what is happening or how to test it that is the issue, not that X, Y or LDAP is broken...
My personal pet hate, as others have mentioned, though is "Ping" you an email, my usual reply is "I tried that and just got destination unreachable" or if I am feeling particularly mean, printing off the POP, IMAP and SMTP RFCs and asking them to explain where ICMP packets come into it. Usually they just ask me to send them an email after that :)
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My personal pet hate, as others have mentioned, though is "Ping" you an email, my usual reply is "I tried that and just got destination unreachable" or if I am feeling particularly mean, printing off the POP, IMAP and SMTP RFCs and asking them to explain where ICMP packets come into it. Usually they just ask me to send them an email after that :)
[shouting into the kitchen]
Ducttape: "Bill, could you ask Alex what he's cooking?"
Morti: "Alex! What're you cooking?"
Creature: "Spaghetti bolognese."
Ducttape: "Is it bean feast?"
Morti: "Is it bean feast?"
Morti: "Is it bean feast?"
Morti: "Is it bean feast?"
Morti: "Three packets transmitted, zero received, 100% packet loss."
Ducttape: "Alex! Could you come here please?"
Creature: "Yes?"
Ducttape: "Are you cooking bean feast?"
Creature: "Yes."
Ducttape (to Morti): "See, I used a connection based protocol..."
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[shouting into the kitchen]
Ducttape: "Bill, could you ask Alex what he's cooking?"
Morti: "Alex! What're you cooking?"
Creature: "Spaghetti bolognese."
Ducttape: "Is it bean feast?"
Morti: "Is it bean feast?"
Morti: "Is it bean feast?"
Morti: "Is it bean feast?"
Morti: "Three packets transmitted, zero received, 100% packet loss."
Ducttape: "Alex! Could you come here please?"
Creature: "Yes?"
Ducttape: "Are you cooking bean feast?"
Creature: "Yes."
Ducttape (to Morti): "See, I used a connection based protocol..."
I think that goes in Colloquial food terms that annoy. Just because it has tomatoes and pasta in it something is not Bolognese. Benfeast 'Bolognese' doesn't even taste similar.
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It fixed a number of dodgy voting machines last night, for example.
It's surprisingly effective, which is why we tell you to do it. :D
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'Turn it on and off, that'll fix it'
A reboot is actually the opposite: turn it off and then back on. There are times when it is worth doing.
It fixed a number of dodgy voting machines last night, for example.
It's surprisingly effective, which is why we tell you to do it. :D
I seem to have been painted as a luser instead of a mere user... The reason it annoys me is not its simplicity, it is the back to front phraseology that is so often trotted out... I'm looking at you, Dell Helldesk.
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It fixed a number of dodgy voting machines last night, for example.
It's surprisingly effective, which is why we tell you to do it. :D
That is true - which is why it has already been done before I phone helpdesk. It annoys to be told to do it again anyway.
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Arguably more engineering than IT, although you get active speakers.
M&S are currently driving me nuts with their "active waistbands" on mens' trousers that "adjust in size with you" or something. That's the definition of passive. They are passive waistbands; stop calling them active >:( >:( >:(
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Bit scared you may shout at me .... in Comic Sans ... but:
I suspect they're 'active' in the sense of 'suitable for active wearers' i.e. walking about, not just sitting at a desk [this is as active as M&S customers get, you're not expected to climb Everest].
It's marketing speak - not something from a technical user manual!
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The use of the word 'Download' for any computer activity.
"I downloaded excell and it crashed" ( I started up XL. ).
"I downloaded the game from the CD and ... " ( I installed the game... )
etc, etc.
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Bit scared you may shout at me .... in Comic Sans ... but:
I suspect they're 'active' in the sense of 'suitable for active wearers' i.e. walking about, not just sitting at a desk [this is as active as M&S customers get, you're not expected to climb Everest].
It's marketing speak - not something from a technical user manual!
Nah, it's the waistband that's being called active, not the wearer. I suspect you're right; some marketing guy thinks it sounds good. Trouble is, using terms to mean their opposites makes them not that useful.
Still calls up visions for me of a waistband with pistons and a power-pack to change the sizing :o
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I also hate the BBC's (and others') use of "...for more information, log on to our Web site", when logging on is precisely what you don't have to do.
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There is no such word as "logon".
If there were, then the next page would say "you have successfully logonned" and the information page would say "take care when logoning".
The site in question can manage "log off" so why TF "logon"?
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I get slightly annoyed by people saying 'cut & paste' when they mean 'copy & paste' ::-) It saves a syllable, I suppose.
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My favourite was an overheard conversation between a sales person and their customer:
"I think your fuel pumps are lost in the computer"
This was back in the days of BOFH