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Applications of language


jmsstnr

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Something that has bothered me for the past year, or so, is the phrase "Real Time."

One can find real-time innovations, real-time information, real-time stock quotes, real-time embedded solar wind critical components up to the minute out of my mind with this shit real-time.

Logically is there a false time, a fake time, an existence of time that seems real, but is not? How do you feel about the quote, "Get the latest in real-time info."

That is the past.

How can real-time exist? Shit, light must be slower than real-time.

This combination of words is so full of shit, some genius of marketing is spending their paycheck by the creation of said b&^%$*t statement ON their own time.

Real-time has achieved the status, "If I ever meet the m*&^%$#@%er of this invention/statement, I'll ......."

Other words in this "who was the stupid m!@#$%&*%^er" category include: ergonomics, tactical, et. al.

Virulently against Idiocy

James Stiner

Edited by Jon Merricks
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I feel your pain. I'm a translator and interpreter, and translating marketing or PR documents is a major PITA. It's a nice intellectual exercise to try and make the text sound "natural" in my language, plus it pays the bills, but I try to avoid it as much as possible.

I think what we're witnessing is an inflation of the language.

Somehow, mass media and advertising have caused some words to lose meaning. Words like "dedication", "challenge", "commitment", etc. are virtually empty. They just come in handy when you don't know what you want to say but you just want to look like you do.

Then there's the redundancy like "top priority" and the like...Don't even get me started on that :wacko: :puke icon:

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Time as we experience it is a figment of our feeble human imaginations.... "Real-time" is no different! :D

As to the phrase "real time" being used to refer to "getting information much more closer to the point it occurs", I don't have a problem w/ that. I do agree that hearing it being used as the "phrase of the day" to describe just about *everything* is excessively pathetic, though..... :wacko:

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Language indeed is a funny thing. BTW, M*th3rf@(k seems to be an acceptable substitute, though I have no earthly idea why. The offending word is still understood although not spelled out....just like the omni-present WTF? I personally have made a twleve year effort to give up the use of curse words in order to appear more lady like. When I first started in IPSC, I developed a reputation for being coarse because I told fairly crude, off-color jokes that I had learned at the police range...Guys can be vulgar all day long and no one notices. Tell one gay refridgerator joke and you're labeled for life. With age, I have gained wisdom and actually do understand that there are more elegant ways to express yourself, all double standards aside. It takes more wit. And, it keeps me from teaching my toddler bad things to say in front of the Sunday school teacher. I confess though that when I really bozo a stage, I am mentally creating the world's largest string of explicitives all run together into a glorious smorgasbord of smut.

As to phrases like "real-time," thank the world of business consultants. All of the paradigm-shifting neo-speak is only but a method to collect money for not doing much of anything.

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I think what we're witnessing is an inflation of the language.

Somehow, mass media and advertising have caused some words to lose meaning.

Amen & Amen. I have been watching the real time coverage from the Weather Channel this morning and hearing the meteroligist constatly grope for new ways to say its "raining" or "snowing." Pounding, throbbing, smothering, choking and etc. Whatever happened to light, steady or heavy?

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...I thought this forum was programmed to disallow the printing of the word SH*T. I guess not. :huh:

"real time"..... reminds me of the forum discussion we had last year about words like "proactive" and the like. ALong with the more recent thread about all the words 'n phrases we absolutely loathed--now, THAT was interesting. B)

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The Honda CRV sport utility has Real Time All Wheel drive. I think it even says that on the back of the trucklet.

Honda sells alot of them here in the USA.

I'm not sure if this means anything.

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Time is empirically real, but transcendentally ideal. It is a necessary condition of humans that we perceive in time, but that doesn't mean that time is, in fact, real in a broader sense.

Excuse me... I have to go remove the Kantian portion of my brain with a corkscrew.

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Time is finite. The old saying "the are only so many minutes in a day", regardless of how you measure time, is true.

Real-time screams of impatience..for the "I want it yesterday" and "time is money" types. These are the kind of people that calulate if it is worth their time to pick up a $10 bill.

Another word...segway. I thought that was an electric scooter not a diversion or detour. :angry:

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"Timeframe" is the word that's been irritating me lately.. everybody uses it for everything (including me :o ), even when it makes little sense: "We'll have that in the October timeframe.."

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A programmer once explained to me that real time meant that a program that was absolutely critical (like a heart monitor for example) needed to do things in such a way that it was guaranteed not to be off in la-la land for an unspecified amount of time like a lot of normal programs can do without any real consequences. It had to be able to respond within a certain amount of time (milliseconds or whatever was needed) every time.

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Another word...segway.  I thought that was an electric scooter not a diversion or detour.  :angry:

Let me use that point to segue into mine. I worked in marketing for a couple of years and one maxim held that “one should never use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.” :lol:

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IPSCDRL,

Although my Italian / Latin is horrible, I agree. But I saw segway, not seque (which I belive is a musical term), used in a local newpaper article..and that is not the only place, either.

"a weekend segway makes for an interesting way for couples to retreat ..."

Although English is a dynamic language, ARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!

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