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Wednesday, November 12, 2008
many living language types are guilty of what they complain about
Now, wouldn't you be pretty goddamn sensitive about how people are running around, misusing hammers? I imagine you would! If misuse of individual hammers devalued hammers, I mean really devalued them in a physical sense, and you depended on hammers, well... I'm sure the subject of hammer use would be a bit of a sore spot with you. This is precisely the situation those of us who value and treasure language find ourselves in, and this exact kind of degradation through misuse is what Stephen Fry is cheerleading.
Words are communal objects. They are owned by everyone who speaks a given language. Their meaning is not static but fluid, and dependent on how people use them. Never let me say that language's meaning is anything else than socially constructed. Language is always a process. It is never a product.
So why would I object to Fry's "hey, however you want to use it" approach to language? Because as I've said, words are damaged when they are misused; and while "misuse" is entirely a function of perspective, my preference is no less meaningful for my acknowledgment that it is indeed a preference. When a word changes, it changes for everyone, which is why the social construction of language is both a freedom and a responsibility. (Societal responsibility! Imagine that.) Those who would say that a word only has what meaning we give it are correct. The failure lies in thinking that these communal acts of definition must be for the good, or for the right, or should go unquestioned. The fact that I acknowledge the social origins of meaning in no way entails that I have to agree with where society takes meaning. The definitions of words change according to how they are used. But I will keep my own counsel on the efficacy, wisdom and prudence of that change.
Words have value in their ability to distinguish and to discriminate. And they are only ever damaged in one direction: they become more abstracted, more broad, less specific, less forceful, less memorable, less powerful, more middling, less individual. When people misuse "anticipate" to the point where it is identical to "expect," there's nothing to cheer for anyone. Why? Because where we once had two words for two concepts, we now have two words for the same concept-- and no word that means "anticipate". You and I are rapidly losing that wonderful word. In it's place is a vague shell. Irony is a fantastic concept, wonderfully precise. The word "ironic," at this point, is close to having no individual meaning whatsoever. When "ironic" can mean any kind of sort of strange, sort of funny happenstance, we no longer use that word to access a specific and incisive idea.
Go in fear of abstraction, the man said, and I want to. But it becomes harder and harder to do that, when words become a pale mush, when "anything goes" is the rallying cry for language. There are many many more examples out there of words that, once powerful and cutting, have become more dull dross, spooned out to no particular effect whatsoever. (How I mourn you, "literally.") I am not, in fact, one of the carpenters. I'm not paid to write and entertain no particular desire to do so. But I'm an amateur writer, and I care about language, and I want a language that functions as a scalpel, not as a dull axe, capable of only force and not precision. I can have that only insofar as words have specific and individual meanings. These misused words are not being misused in the direction of increased specificity, and once lost, I'm afraid very few of these wonderful words are being replaced by equally specific, and equally valuable, language.
Fry invokes George Orwell, which I find sad and funny. Orwell is perhaps overquoted and referenced these days. But the man knew the consequences of allowing language to lose actual meaning. If words are allowed to be stripped of their specific meaning by misuse, and by the reverse snobbery of faux-populist appeals to letting the people have it the way they want, we'll be left with just more "double plus ungoods", sad shades of poetic and meaningful language.
Do I resist all changes in language? No. Some changes I welcome, some I resist. Again, no one is obligated to agree with me on the preferred direction of word use. I just don't cotton to being told that there is something immoral or phony about believing that I have the right to have an opinion about what kinds of word use are better for language. Let words evolve, but let them evolve in a marketplace of ideas where people are allowed to argue in good faith for one meaning or another. Let people who want to keep the traditional meaning of a word argue so without being attacked with the dull blade of bastard reverse snobbery. I don't trust most people manipulating language for the same reason I don't trust democracy. Most people are no more qualified to craft a coherent and meaningful language than they are to craft a workable civic government. I defy anyone to claim that our evolving language is evolving in the direction of specificity, or discrimination, or clarity. Now, I can't force people to keep the traditional meaning of words, and I wouldn't want to. What I can do, though, is argue that it is better that, say, "literally" means literally, rather than being yet another meaningless intensifier. (He literally took my head off back there!)
But this is what Fry is attacking, and attacking with almost comic self-righteousness. No, to want to preserve a word like "literally," to want it to have its own meaning, to want it to have some specific use and not relegate it to the status of any dozen of other words that can intensify or enlarge, why, that must only be the act of a "semi-educated loser." No one who genuinely cared about language could want to work to preserve traditional meanings, no. No one could think that perhaps there is value in the way certain words have usually been defined.
Fry's line is self-aggrandizement masked as populism, a pious attack on piety, pretension sold as criticism of pretension. I disagree with many people on how language should proceed into the future. I wouldn't pretend, like Fry does, that there is something inherently elitist or malign in someone arguing a meaning that I don't agree with. Fry has resorted to the most juvenile mode of argument, attacking what he perceives to be the people making an argument, rather than the argument itself. Well, I'll keep pushing back, because I think violence is done to language when it is drained of meaning to the point where words are sad, gray, limp facades. I'll keep pushing back because I want words that mean something beyond a vague direction like "good" or "bad" or "pretty" or "ugly". I'll keep pushing back because I want both "huge" and "gargantuan," and I want them to have their own individual meanings, because if they mean the same thing then that is one less tool I have in my shed. I do like to play with words, actually, I just don't want to play on exactly the terms Stephen Fry wants to, and I won't allow him to pretend (as people so often do) that his insistence that there are no rules isn't just his way of leveraging rules that he prefers himself.
Update: I'm not arguing that language doesn't change. I'm arguing that Fry is using the fact that it changes as a way to leverage a particular vision of language and act as though that's an inevitable consequence of the social origin of language. This is one of the problems of postmodernism: very often, people arguing that there is no authority is really just another tool to invest themselves with authority. Thus, again, the Sultan says "Am I Sultan or am I Sultan?" In doing so he subjects the old rules about who can marry the sultan's daughter to a postmodern critique, but in a way that reinforces his power as sultan-- a power derived entirely from tradition, from social construction. Never mistake the postmodern project for being inherently liberating.
The fact that it is true that much of our ways of knowing are social constructions doesn't change the fact that the people who say they're social constructions are often doing so because it helps them assert control over others. The will to power is an excellent adapter.
20 comments:
Oh, I wouldn't call it reverse snobbery.
- November 12, 2008 at 6:11 PM
- jens said...
Much of that was really an apology for past fuddy-duddyism, rather than cheerleading.
(which includes some amusing clips)
Language has been around a long time, and as old distinctions die, new ones arise. Don't worry too much about it being "damage"
- November 12, 2008 at 8:51 PM
I wouldn't worry too much. People have been writing about the death of the English language for centuries, and they haven't been right yet. You might not notice new & more specific words coming into being, but I'm optimistic it'll happen. I get far more upset about the basic inability of many people to construct a grammatically correct sentence than I do about their somewhat limited vocabulary.
- November 12, 2008 at 11:21 PM
Why this post is downright . . . conservative!
Come to the dark side.
- November 13, 2008 at 10:06 AM
- Zathras said...
"And they are only ever damaged in one direction: they become more abstracted, more broad, less specific, less forceful, less memorable, less powerful, more middling, less individual."
Not relevant to your central point (which is very well exposited here), but this statement is certainly wrong. Words can also become damaged by becoming more specific, but in a non-uniform way. Take the word "conservative." 50 years ago this word was very broad and vague. Now, you have religious conservatives, economic conservatives, etc., using the word in a more specific way, but not in the same way as each other. This type of "Tower of Babel" effect erodes language because different people use these words very differently, until they lose the ability to speak to one another.
- November 13, 2008 at 2:54 PM
- Colin said...
Hm. If words "are only ever damaged in one direction", where did "anticipate" come from in the first place?
New words are coined ("blog") or appropriated ("spam") or given new dimensions of meaning ("avatar") all the time. You're only seeing half the picture if you think entropy is the only kind of change.
- November 13, 2008 at 2:58 PM
- Robert S. said...
"I'm arguing that Fry is using the fact that it changes as a way to leverage a particular vision of language and act as though that's an inevitable consequence of the social origin of language."
- emphasis added
your virulent attack on what was quite a fine verb saddens me, sir. heh.
- November 13, 2008 at 3:11 PM
- Robert S. said...
Additionally, I'd argue that "anticipate" hasn't lost it's meaning at all. It's still used with the same denotation in some contexts. It's simply acquired another denotation in another context. As Colin said, it's how language evolves. I doubt anyone could empirically argue our language is getting more simplistic. I suspect it's really only getting more complex.
- November 13, 2008 at 3:33 PM
Terrific post, and I couldn't agree more. (And David Cross had a great bit on the bastardization of "literally.")
I hate to bring politics into this, but it's hard to avoid the fact that a certain party has bitterly attacked diction, grammar and even literacy in general as a hallmark of snobbery. Nothing outs you as coastal elite scum like knowing "a lot" is two words or that "nuclear" is not pronounced with two u's.
And then, of course, there's texting, twittering, IMing and all the other modern short-forms of communication, which have made our discourse even more lazy and childlike.
- November 13, 2008 at 4:05 PM
- TheWurx said...
You need a new analogy for your opening. It is pure nonsense that another's misuse of a hammer degrades your expert use of one. Your hammer is every bit as capable of driving nails into wood as it was before your friend used it to open a wine bottle. In fact, if anything, his hammering incompetence underscores your hammering brilliance.
I tend to cringe at the use of apostrophes for anything but possessives and contractions, and I try to appreciate the finer distinctions among the definitions of words. But there is little use to bemoan the sloppiness of other people's word usage. Usually one only comes off rude and irritating.
I once got into a ferocious argument with a friend who used the word "adverse" when she meant "averse." I blithely corrected her, and immediately said I was sorry for my pedantry. She then said, "Good, but I meant 'adverse'" Because she was wrong, and since she was a lawyer and might one day make this mistake at a moment where the perception of her intelligence might be of some import, I felt compelled to correct her and explain why. This led to a two-hour argument that escalated in intensity and personal animosity.
Man, she was stubborn. I, of course, was being quite reasonable.
In any case, my basic point is other people's misuse of the language usually only makes those of us who only slightly misuse the language look all the more intelligent. And it is rubbish to imply that the language will die. A few words' definitions may die on the vine, but some of us still remember the original definition of "anticipate", and if we don't, perhaps someone will have the forethought to come up with a new word for it.
- November 13, 2008 at 4:05 PM
In it's place is a vague shell.
Now, that's ironic.
- November 13, 2008 at 4:32 PM
- Freddie said...
How is that ironic? Again, I'm not arguing for some ultra-traditionalist vision of language. I'm not arguing that language doesn't evolve. I'm not arguing against colorful or artistic use of language.
I'm arguing against the attitude that because language changes, it's unfair or illegitimate to argue in favor of traditional definitions of words. And I'm reacting against a common turn in postmodernism, where the language of liberation is used as just another way of asserting authority.
- November 13, 2008 at 4:46 PM
- Colin said...
How is that ironic?
- November 13, 2008 at 5:17 PM
When you say irony is a "fantastic concept", do you really mean that it is (literally) fantastic? Or is "fantastic" just something in the vague direction of "good"?
- November 13, 2008 at 5:18 PM
- Freddie said...
Really, I should have seen this coming. Refer to my previous comment.
- November 13, 2008 at 5:24 PM
swift loris, it's only Skitt's Law. Typos don't really have anything to do with Freddie's argument here.
- November 13, 2008 at 6:30 PM
- Brendan said...
Nice preaching, Freddie. I'm pretty much already in your choir, but it was still a fine sermon even so.
To your list of words robbed of meaning, leaving a meaning without its own word, please add unique. Maybe you feel this is such an old complaint that it isn't worth repeating, but it is. I can't stand when people add modifiers ("very unique," "one of the most unique") to one word which -- literally -- should stand alone.
I anticipate blowback.
- November 14, 2008 at 4:37 AM
- Nick said...
Thank you for posting this.
Having many friends who overuse 'random', 'literally', and 'ironic', I couldn't agree more.
That being said, I find myself choosing my words very carefully and self-consciously as I write this.
It's not the inventive poets we need to worry about: it's the Alanis Morissettes of the world, the faddish, the lazy.
I'll gladly drink to anyone who can open a bottle of wine with a hammer in a moment of linguistic need. But to use it instead of a screwdriver...
- November 14, 2008 at 10:22 AM
- The Chimp said...
"thou shalt not question Stephen Fry"
- November 14, 2008 at 10:39 AM
- Joseph said...
As a technical writer, I know exactly what you are talking about. In my work, I am constantly exposed to meaningless words.
By this I mean words that add no information to a statement. In other words, if they removed a word or phrase, the meaning of the sentence would not change at all.
I believe that littering are language with utterances disconnected from an object make our language unnecessarily complex and disadvantage both speaker and listener. Or writer and reader if you like.
- November 15, 2008 at 11:51 AM


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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Hundreds of locals ventured to the Crowfield Golf and Country Club Saturday at the third annual "Shuckin' For Shelter" oyster roast fundraiser for the Carolina Youth Development Center's Callen Lacey Center for Children in Berkeley County.
Staff from Sticky Fingers restaurant dumped buckets of hot, steaming oysters onto two long wooden tables as attendees smiled while shucking open oyster shells and consuming the briny mollusks.
Others ate more standard fare from Sticky Fingers such as barbeque, mac and cheese and coleslaw on the cool, sunny afternoon. Children hula-hooped in a grassy area in front of a mobile disc jockey who played a variety of popular music.
President of the Callen Lacey Board Brenda Myers said at least 120 tickets were presold. The roast is the first of two large annual fundraisers to make sure the non-profit gets funding to support children in Berkeley County.
Callen Lacey Volunteer Coordinator Kendra Wilson said this is the 15th year the non-profit has served the county.
"When a child is taken away from their home because of abuse or neglect, for many children it's the first place they can call home," Wilson said. "They may be with us for one day or several months."
She said the children range from infants all the way to age 17 and come to Callen Lacey through the Department of Social Services.
"The revenue we generate is solely from donations," Wilson said. "We're so grateful for the support from the community. The 'Shuckin' For Shelter' oyster roast is the kickoff to the fundraising season.
"We're extremely grateful to see such a great crowd today."
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text:
Dynamix take 1st at World Cup Asia in Langkawi!!!
Wednesday, December 18th, 2013
After a tiring 27 hours of travel from South Africa,
the team finally landed in the beautiful Langkawi
We were greeted by the pleasant and friendly Dye staff,
Devon and Ellen who handed over to us 2 Big Boxes of
Dye goodies with one of them being the all new powerful
DM14 along with the new Formula 1 Purple C14 gear – Purple Power!
Our first day we dominated all our prelim games.
We rocked with the new DM14′s straight out the box.
The feel of the gun was very different to the DM13
giving us more gun control and accuracy when laning.
Due to the new positioning of the fore grip and no
Microcline, making it easier to swop hands.
The gun is very smooth and gave us good air efficiency.
In the semi's we played against Lost Boys, it was a tough
game but we ended up beating them 3-2 with one second left on the clock.
Our next game against Datis we beat 4-1. Which took us to the finals facing Rascals.
only to dig deep and never give up! We won 4-3!!
Thanks to everyone that helped and to all our friends, family
and supporters sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for the scores
Much love
Very importantly, Thanks to Dye for the great gear and the best gun ever – DM14!!
And thanks to South Africa Blades n Triggers and Haviannas.
Also thx to STK for all there help, was also good to see all the Dye teams working together,
One big happy family


text:
I don't get these results at all, having loaded 9 different websites on my iPad 2. Switching between open tabs/sites causes each page to reload, with the standard checkerboard effect also occurring. Perhaps you should have tried loading pages from a site other than your own? Granted loading pages is faster on iPad 2 vs. Original.
iPad vs iPad 2: RAM performance in Mobile Safari
As you can see from the video above, the iPad 2 using the Apple A5 chip combined with more RAM performs much better than the original iPad when browsing in Mobile Safari. If you load up all nine tabs, you'll see that the original iPad starts to choke up pretty badly when compared to the iPad 2. This is due to the original iPad only coming with 256MB of RAM while iPad 2 comes packed with 512MB. (We hoped for as much as 1GB in the video before getting more test results back. Maybe next year!.)
The original iPad tends to "kill" background tabs whenever it runs out of available memory, which can get pretty annoying if you use the iPad primarily for web browsing. The iPad 2 performed flawlessly and had no hiccups when browsing. Also the dreaded "checkerboard effect" -- where significant lag would occur before Safari could render the web page content -- is nowhere to be found. Scrolling in Safari is smooth as butter, and gone are the days when switching between tabs meant loading the entire page from scratch.
The difference in performance is quite clear, and browsing on the iPad 2 is definitely a step up from the original iPad in every way. If you were able to pick up an iPad 2 then let us know your thoughts on RAM performance and how it compares to the first iPad in the comments below!
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Reader comments
iPad vs iPad 2: RAM performance in Mobile Safari
And they're both running 4.3 right?
4.3 increases the speed at which Mobile Safari can render pages due to the Nitro JavaScript engine and other tweaks. It doesn't do anything to help caching pages in RAM. My iPad 1 on 4.3 is still abysmally bad at it.
"My iPad 1 on 4.3 is still abysmally bad at it."
Those are some pretty strong words against a device that got stellar reviews. Web browsing is touted as a strong suit of the iPad, but now that the iPad 2 is out that has changed?
I understand that the focus and comments here are about caching, but where was this information in the original reviews? Will the iPad 2 be abysmally bad at it with the 1GB iPad 3 comes out?
No, rene is 100% correct. I didnt really listen to the reviews when the first one came out. The loading of web pages on iPad one was horrible. TONS OS checker board effect. I have tested the second iPad and there is almost none of it. Darn good improvement because that really annoyed me about the first one. The reason I didn't buy the first one wa because it was not at all powerful enough and I felt the entire system to be sluggish. I think they designed the A4 processor for the smaller screen on the iPhone, and although it ran well on the iPad, I really did feel the speed difference between the iPad and the iPhone. Now, this A5 processor is really speeding things up. And the browser's engine is great. I still think iOS Is severely lacking in a LOT of aspects, especially now that I own an iPhone, so I still have issues justifying my purchase of an iPad. But hey, it's very stable. Which more than any other system in the market can do.
When iPad 1 came out I didn't get Ine mainly because my iphone4 actually performed better, even though the CPU was only running 800MHz compared to the iPads 1GHz. It made up for this by having twice the RAM.
Now iPad2 had 2 1Ghz cores, and the same RAM as the iPhone4, it will make using the iPad feel much better.
Nothing wrong with the original performance, but really does show where the compromises were made to keep the really low price point.
At work, intranet open most of the time in one tab. The the staff contact directory in another, then there is our whatsup gold monitor page, and the webmin page I often have open on my development server. Then my igoogle page, and google reader page for news. Then anything else that I open ad hoc. It adds up. This is just on my phone, I have no ideas if an iPad would be used as much as I would nt always have it with me like my phone.
It's a YouTube video. iOS has supported that since 2007 and it's playing fine on both my iPad and iPad 2 right now (if it doesn't play for you there may be a problem on YouTube's end.
Also, Xoom doesn't currently support Flash. So, um... LOL.
Actually you are able to install flash 10.2 beta on the Xoom. It was leaked.
Hahaha!!! Yeah that's funny. Xoom was a premature launch. No microsd support, no flash, no 4G. Even though it has the capability to do all three..... "soon"
a failed troll lol
Boy, you Roid Trollers have been quiet of late......and to think this is the comment you post as your "wakeup"?
Xoom......Samsung Tab........hmm, iPad killers?
Back to the drawing board, boys.
Fail troll got owned badly LOL. Try using Xoom and go to Motorola website. Xoom = the biggest joke = DOA
i dont think the point was website comparison, the author is showing you that on the same website, with the same multiple tabs open, the refresh is more frequent on the first gen iPad. there is no creditability issue.
My point is that points about no checker boards and live loaded pages vs iPad 1 were debunked by the comment. If you are ok with that review then that's that. Some my have cast that review in stone and used as a reason to buy the pad. I just think more testing should have been done. Jumped the gun. Just my opinion. I don't want to get into a pissing contest about it.
Actually, loading pages from one website is a good test of the iPad 2's increased RAM because images files and HTML code will have a common URL under a common refresh hash in the cache. This almost exclusively tests the cache, which presumably can be larger on a device with twice the available RAM. If you use multiple sites you will likely run into multiple refresh requirements as dictated by the different sites' content rules (e.g. - CNN wants you to get new content every few seconds vs. MacRumors which is OK every hour). Checker boarding seems to be some secret sauce in the algorithm that Apple uses to free up RAM by prioritizing top of fold content, especially on no active pages. More RAM obviously means more content can be stored until you have to make the decision to push it out of RAM.
Give the guy a break, it's not like he's trying to sell you government health care. If you don't want to buy an iPad 2 then buy an iPad 1 on Craigslist, or become and Andriod fanboy where you can have a lot more opportunity to compare and complain about speeds and feeds.
@JBone...I am typing this reply on my ipad 1. The second one I have purchased. I also own an iphone 4 and previously a 3g and 3gs (recently sold on Craigslist). I also owned a ipod Touch 2g which I gave to my kid then replaced his 2g with a 4g Touch for xmas. Oh steered my mom and aunt to purchase ipod touches 3g and 4th gen. I dont know why you injected the Android comment.
So you see I am not a Android Troll. Quite the opposite but just dont let it rule my opinion. Having a comment that does not bow to the author does not make me a Android Troll.
This Apple vs Android crap is rediculous. I am a graphic artist who works on PC and there was once a time when the mac vs pc thing was as rediculous as this. Very childish. If we can afford Ipad's we cam afford Xoom, Galaxy's etc so it's about preference. None of us should be on a high horse just because we chose to by ipad's.
Things have been flawless for me so far. The checkers have only shown for me when there was lag on my network. At least that's how it has seemed so far. Nothing hardware related has struck me as slow yet. As for flash, I downloaded an app last night that lets you browse sites with full flash support for free... It's not absolutely flawless, but it sure beats paying an extra $300 for one feature.
I noticed the iPad 1 is jailbroken so is probably running iOS4.2.1 (if it's running 4.3, that makes you my new best friend :). That makes the comparison flawed. I agree that cacheing isn't affected by the Nitro tweaks but the page drawing (checkerboard when scrolling) might be.
A better comparison would have been with both running 4.3.
Why bring up xoom on a Apple blog. I love everything Apple and I don't go to androidcentral and brag about it. I just don't go there makes sense right?
The page reloading looks like cache to me too. What I'd like to know is whether the tests were started with clean memory on both devices. That is, if the iPad 2 has it's memory full (the switcher loaded with other apps) before you launch Safari, does it perform differently? That would be real world usage.
I think the checkerboarding might be more related to rendering speed, where the faster processor obviously helps.
I still don't have my iPad 2, but the demo units at the Apple store and best buy both had checker boarding on sites like Engadget with a lot of images and it still takes a good 2-3 seconds to load. I hope this gets fixed soon. I really hate waiting for a web page to load on a site that has already been pre loaded. That having been said,I really look forward to safari not closing my browsing tabs.
This was my biggest comolaint about my iPad 1. I would rather pick up my iPhone 4 and look at the web instead of waiting for page to load, and then dealing with the checkerboarding.
I do call BS on Rene though. He's been touting his iPad love for a year now and now he admits the web experience is "abysmally bad" (his words, not mine). We still love you though Rene...
I love the original iPad, but do have to admit that web browsing using multiple tabs could be better. Perhaps "abysmally bad" is a little strong, but the fact that tabs reload almost every time you switch between them does get annoying. However, single tab web browsing on the iPad rocks.
I'm glad to hear that pages don't reload. On the original iPad, I would have 2 or 3 tabs open and each time I would switch back and forth, they would reload. I can't wait to get an iPad 2, with this just being one of the many reasons.
I know this test was supposed to show how much faster iPad2 is compared to it's predecessor... but how many people are going to have 9 pages open at once? :)
Big LOLZ at people calling iPad1 speed "horrible" and "abysmal"... and just think, you didn't even have these things to complain about until last year :)
I can safely say I just opened 9 tabs with high memory websites in each one like sky news ect.. And when I had 9 tabs open it switched between each one without loading. In your test did you have any games or apps open in multitasking?
All these people who love the iPad and think it's the best thing since sliced bread.. Its crap.
The iPad 1 has 256mb of ram, the iPad 2 has whoa 256mb WOW. My mobile phone has 768mb of ram, my mobile also has dual core cpus, unlike the iPad 1.
So tell me why an iPad is so expensive when they're technically crap? And to be fair browsing on them is pathetic, it can be painfully slow and stutter on decent websites, god help anyone using HTML5 sites on a iPad 1 with its crap CPU and total lack of RAM.
Here's a joke for you, my phone has more free RAM than the iPad 2 has, why bother with an iPad?
Hardware is only half of the story. Ram is only slow when all used up. With apps and a browser you don't really need lots of ram. My pc has 4gb but rarely uses over 1gb. Software is key with apple products, not hardware.
Plenty of checkerboarding? Don't see how the reviewer missed this checkerboarding..
I must not have used that many tabs on my original iPad. I tend to just read one webpage at a time and just flick around using that.
Saying that I got rid of my iPad after a couple of months after realising that a MacBook Pro and iPhone 4 was enough.
Good write-up, I am regular visitor of one's site, maintain up the excellent operate, and It's going to be a regular visitor for a long time. "He who seizes the right moment is the right man." by Johann von Goethe.
I might give it a shot but it's just that is too much money for it
Just like they don't number the Mac book or iMac line, not a issue to me


text:
The idea of the website is to let one or more people in a group manage a collection of quotes from users, links to online reviews, email testimonials, and feedback comments.
Many websites keep a collection of links to reviews, awards, email comments, etc. that praise their products. Typically this list is created by hand and placed in a box on a website somewhere, with a heading something like "What people say about us" or "Awards we have won."
But there are problems with maintaining such a list by hand and UserQuotes.com was designed to solve these problems:
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text: Hi Gang, Sorry for not contributing much recently. I purposely avoided the Canuck/Bruin diatribe as it had been beaten to death by many far more articulate than me. That said, I couldn't believe the latest news to come out of Bruin land. First we have Ference's three-game suspension which doesn't come as much of a surprise given the reality check that team needs to take now that Campbell is no longer in the consequence dispensing business. The other is the "political stance" taken by Tim Thomas by not attending the team's meeting with President Obama. That one did take me by surprise. Personally, I don't give a crap as to what Thomas' political persuasion is, this was a team honour, meeting with the President. Thomas put his individual views on a higher plain than that of his team and I see no justification for that what-so-ever. Whether Thomas would vote for Obama or not shouldn't matter. He may want to portray this as a noble gesture but I see this as a cheap political stunt. From the outside looking in, this is typical of the entrenched political affiliations that seem to plague US Politics. I get that we are in the final stages of the four-year long campaign for the next Presidency and that some wouldn't change how they might vote no matter what the platform of the opposing party might be. That said, what the hell does this have to do with an election? A team based in the US won the Stanley Cup. The traditional Meet and Greet takes place and the only US born player on the team chooses not to attend because the President isn't from his party of choice. Grand gesture, my ass. No, I'll rephrase that - childish gesture, Thomas is an ass.


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Water Water Everywhere!
There's a brand-new program here at the Science Museum: WATER WATER EVERYWHERE. Presented through a generous grant from the Manhasset Bay Protection Committee, WATER WATER EVERYWHERE is a hands-on learning experience for fifth through eighth grade students. Offered FREE OF CHARGE to all school districts within the 19 different communities comprising the 9,947-acre land area of Manhasset Bay Area's watershed,  WATER WATER EVERYWHERE lets students explore the natural course of storm water and water run-off in the local environment. By means of a field experience and classroom lab experiments lasting about two hours, this program will present the various connections between local residential areas, Leeds Pond, and Manhasset Bay, as well as why these connections are so important.  Â
WATER WATER EVERYWHERE consists of an outdoor hike, following the path of storm water as it passes through local discharge areas and along Leeds Pond, all the way to Manhasset Bay itself. Examination of local flora and fauna found along the hike will be included, as well as discussions of the ecological role they play. Common byproducts of human interference, such as phosphate-related Eutrophication, will be explained. At the conclusion of this program, water samples taken throughout the hike will be tested by students for such concerns as pollution levels, dissolved oxygen content, and salinity. Vocabulary relevant to the topic will also be addressed throughout the program.
Teachers, this interactive program fits in well with any Life Science, Earth Science, or Physical Science curriculum. We at the Museum are more than willing to help customize the Water Water Everywhere program to your curriculum's specific needs. Please contact Marisa Puglisi (516 627-9400 extension 15) at the Science Museum of Long Island to book a program. Programs are offered outdoors, RAIN OR SHINE, October through December.


text:
Audie Award Finalist, Thriller/Suspense, 2014
From John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald, there have been more than two dozen assassination attempts on the President of the United States.
Four have been successful.
But now, Beecher White - the hero of the number one New York Times best seller The Inner Circle - discovers a killer in Washington, D.C. who's meticulously re-creating the crimes of these four men. Historians have branded them as four lone wolves. But what if they were wrong?
Beecher is about to discover the truth: that during the course of a hundred years, all four assassins were secretly working together. What was their purpose? For whom do they really work? And why are they planning to kill the current President?
Beecher's about to find out. And most terrifyingly, he's about to come face-to-face with the fifth assassin.
©2012 Brad Meltzer (P)2012 Hachette Audio
"I had to stop listening a little bit into the book"
This is a service to those Brad Meltzer fans out there- BEFORE you listen to The Fifth Assassin, which I was really looking forward to, you need to re-listen to The Inner Circle so that you are caught up on all of the nuances at the beginning of the book. It has been awhile between book releases, so frankly I had forgotten all but the major premise of the previous book.... so just a heads up to reread the prequel to this book first in order to get the most enjoyment from it.
I am the author of "Inner Fears", a thriller by MFKing. I am a social media manager for Jazz Social Media. Audio books are my main entertainment, and I think the best entertainment offered today.
"Not the Meltzer I'd hoped for...just bad"
After The Millionaires, which sucked me in in 2 paragraphs and let me listen over and over with joy, I was willing to give Brad Meltzer a lot of latitude.
But I'm on Chapter 9, and still can't figure out what the point of this narrative is. I know his wife is in congress or something. I know he is proud of his historical snippets. But this is just bad.
The story he is continuing is a boring one, and the characters are non-existent.
I'm turning it off.
"You must concentrate..."
...or you'll be befuddled with all the twists and turns. Meltzer has his ups and downs with his books. This was an "up". Brick has his ups and downs with his narrations. This was an "up".
"I can't take it anymore"
I have actually enjoyed some of Brad Meltzer's ridiculous rides before (I listen for entertainment). This was not one of those. When the Culpa Ring "story" (a "secret club" riddled with such incompetent members that it would be amazing to think they could have survived a month, needless to say a century) degenerated into "the real name of Jesus" I KNEW I had to stop listening (I have to admit that I was tempted to drop the audiobook way before). The storyline is ridiculous. I really couldn't care less what happens to ANY of the characters in this story. A bunch of self-centered idiots bound by a bunch of ludicrous coincidences.
"Still clueless Beacher"
Smart, educated, well read Beacher continues to be unbelievable in this second installment of political mysteries. A previous reviewer stated this book is best understood if listened to right after Inner Circle, I followed that advice listening to the books back to back. By the end I found Beacher's culpability doubtful but he does seem to get himself into endless, difficult situations. Sometimes he really does not learn from past experience, Still they are entertaining stories. Based on the ending I know there will be a third book in the series and I look forward to listening!
"Disjointed Story Melodramatically Narrated"
The plot and writing of it could have been less disjointed and more cohesive. The narration could have been less melodramatic. Additionally, the historical connections could have been more succinctly and clearly presented toward the beginning of the novel to provide a better framework for the storyline.
The story jumped around too much without sufficient connection or explanation.
Normally, I like Scott Brick, but in this book, he over-dramatized the characters from the beginning. Maybe it was the writing, but compared to his other great narrations (Robert Littel's "The Company" for example), Brick's narration of this book falls flat. It is like he's reading every sentence as if it were the climax of the story.
I don't know that I would cut the scenes so much as rearrange them for better continuity. There are a lot of flashbacks.
"Could be a true story... For all we know"
Depends on what that particular friend likes, if that person likes "50 shades of Grey" or "Harry Potter"...not so much. If this, so called friend, were to like ..."the Panther" or spy thrillers then I would say "YES, by all means, I would recommend it to them.
Huh? What am I, a casting director ?
Scott Brick is phenomenal, always puts my brain to work. I see his characters, feel their love, pain, and joy and angst! One of the Best readers ever. I especially like how every character has their own way of speaking, giving them depth pulling me further into the story!
Say something about yourself!
"Tough to get thru :-/"
I bought this one without previewing it first. Big mistake!!
The story is OK enough, but Scott Brick was almost impossible for me to listen too.
Where he came up with the voice for (Beecher?) is hard to imagine....just about the worst he could have done.....I hope.
However, if you can struggle thru Brick's performance,(my daughter couldn't) the story is entertaining.
I was curious about Meltzer, having never read him before....might be a while before I try him again..
Not so much..
might try one with a different narrator.
"Not well written. Confusing."
I could not follow this book. Not sure if it was the naration or the way it was written but it seemed very confusing so I gave up. Pity since I adore Scott Brick and have listened to many in this series.
"A Lesson In History"
I love Scott Brick ability to bring the characters to life with his voice, so yes I would definitely buy another one of his narratives as long as it's not written by Brad Meltzer. At this time, I have no intention of ever buying another novel by him.
No, I actually enjoyed reading James Rollins who stories are usually about a secret order of some kind.
Yes, Scott Brick showed enough emotion to suit the story line.
I was sorely disappointed with this novel. I was expecting real drama, mystery and excitement, and got none.
I like Brad Meltzer's early works, so I was really looking forward to this one, but the Fifth Assassin, like the novel that proceeded, the Inner Circle, was dull and left a lot to be desired. There was way too much history and fact and not nearly enough fiction and excitement. I felt like I was in history class and dreading every single moment of it. I hope his next fictional novel will be more entertaining. It is why I select to read fiction instead of non-fiction. I think Meltzer is a great fictional writer, but unfortunately he seems to be stuck in a boring writers realm. I hope he finds his way out because I miss the days when he wrote stuff like the Zero Game.
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