Techdirt. Stories filed under "words" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "words"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Wed, 5 Dec 2012 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Making Up Words Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090723/1815425639/dailydirt-making-up-words.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090723/1815425639/dailydirt-making-up-words.shtml
  • The usage of "OMG" apparently dates back as far as 1917 -- when Lord John Fisher used it in a letter to Winston Churchill. However, the Oxford English Dictionary only added OMG to its lexicon in 2011. [url]
  • How many words exist in the English language? Unabridged dictionaries have hundreds of thousands of entries, but scientific estimates put it closer to a million. A 2011 Culturonomics paper suggests the English language is growing at a rate of about 8,500 new words per year, but that rate is actually slowing down. [url]
  • Lingodroids are creating new words that humans might be able to use. Perhaps fittingly, these bots are generating a whole lot of new 4-letter words. [url]
    • If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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    ]]>     urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090723/1815425639     Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:53:36 PDT Apparently The Word 'Piracy' No Longer Sufficiently Derogatory For Entertainment Industry Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100318/1326228625.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100318/1326228625.shtml highly misleading report about how many jobs "piracy" was going to "cost" Europe. However, a bunch of folks have been sending in the Reuters coverage of the announcement of the report, which included some fascinating comments from Agnete Haaland, the president of the International Actors' Federation, who argues that there needs to be an even stronger word for infringement than "piracy," claiming that the "pirate" connotation is too glamorous:
    "We should change the word piracy," she told reporters at the unveiling of the report on Wednesday.

    "To me, piracy is something adventurous, it makes you think about Johnny Depp. We all want to be a bit like Johnny Depp. But we're talking about a criminal act. We're talking about making it impossible to make a living from what you do," she said.
    Ok. Pick your jaw up off the floor. First, this is stunning in that it's been the entertainment industry itself that pushed and popularized the term "piracy" for copyright infringement. They did so very deliberately in an attempt to demonize the act of infringement, presenting it as something much worse. That some have since taken that term and embraced it hardly changes that initial fact. Second, she's wrong about the fact that they're "talking about a criminal act." Yes, in some cases copyright infringement may be a criminal act, but in most cases the use of "piracy" these days refers to civil issues between two parties and not criminal acts at all.

    Then again, given that this was a statement made in favor of a blatantly misleading report, perhaps it's not surprising that the speakers were blatantly misleading as well.

    In the meantime, does anyone have any suggestions for Ms. Haaland on what we should call the act of copyright infringement?

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    ]]>     what's-next? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100318/1326228625     Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:26:54 PDT Internet Companies Pay Lip Service To Human Rights Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081027/1946252660.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081027/1946252660.shtml controversy, and threats of Congressional action, over actions by companies like Yahoo and Google to appease foreign governments against what many consider basic human rights issues, various internet companies have agreed on a set of "guidelines" for how they deal with human rights issues. While it's nice that they're actually thinking about these issues, the guidelines on the whole are pretty weak and don't bind the companies to do anything. Basically, it just says that the companies will consider the human rights issues in their decision making. If anything, this seems like an attempt to just keep the government from legislating on the issues, and it may not be very successful on that front. The real test will be in seeing how these companies actually act, rather than what sorts of guidelines they've signed.

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    ]]>     actions-speak-louder-than-words http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20081027/1946252660