Re: Things that Longhorn seems to be doing right

Richard B. Johnson
2003-11-03T20:54:22Z

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:

> On Mon, 03 Nov 2003 15:17:55 EST, "Richard B. Johnson" said:
>
> > Yeah. Nobody should ever use a word that's spelled like paradigm!
> > How about "really good example..." (which is what it means).
>
> No, a paradigm is "a way of looking at things" or "a world view".
> So this would include paradigms like "the world is flat" or "monolithic
> kernels are preferable" or "gcc is the only compiler for the kernel".
>

No. don't you think I look things up in a dictionary before I
write a definition?

The Webster's "New Collegiate Dictionary", 150th Anniversary
Edition clearly states;

1. EXAMPLE, PATTERN;esp: an outstandingly clear or typical
example or archetype.

It was stolen from the study of languages where it was used
to exhibit a word in all of its inflectional forms. It has
been corrupted to mean some "new view" of something while, in
fact, it is defined to mean EXAMPLE or PATTERN.

It is particularly irksome to me because I studied Latin in
High School, where I first encountered this word. My second
encounter was where somebody corrupted it to mean some kind
of new idea. Then some idiot named a company Paradigm and
the end was clear.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.22 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.