English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 There is the Nexus Toolkit, the S3 Toolkit...an all-in-one program to do stuff to your phone through ADB/fastboot. Made by Wugfresh, at least the Nexus Toolkits.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:26 AM

@Cerberus I would prefer to use an official tool for this purpose.

It should be possible... I don't know why the stock recovery isn't in the stock images

hm, it seems I have a "Galaxy Nexus Toolkit" file already. But this is the nexus S that I'm having issues with

which is not the same as the "Nexus Root Toolkit". hm

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 The Nexus Toolkit is better than anything out there btw.

It is as official as it gets: instead of having to use all the official ADB commands in a terminal, the program does it for you.

I don't know about the S.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

this?

Cerberus

Yes.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well, I can type a fastboot command pretty easily. What I need is the img file to flash.

Cerberus

It supposedly has the img file included.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:32 AM

hopefully.

Cerberus

That's why it has an option to flash stock recovery.

It just didn't work for me, for whatever reason.

forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1330252

This is for the Galaxy S, but...

It may be outdated.

It does not mention Android 4+.

user19161

I have gotten used to my Android phone.

Cerberus

Wait, what?

You have an Android phone??

Since when?

user19161

Since a few weeks ago. It came free with the subscription. I would not buy such a thing.

Cerberus

Great!

What type is it?

user19161

3:39 AM

I still prefer my old phone of course.

Cerberus

Of course.

user19161

It is a Sony Xperia.

Cerberus

Great!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@WillHunting gah! Kill it! Kill it!

Cerberus

@WillHunting Is there a letter after Xperia?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Now, be nice.

user19161

3:40 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I remember you have that too.

Cerberus

This must be encouraged.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@WillHunting I had an Xperia Arc S for work testing.

Cerberus

Xperia P?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I didn't like it

Cerberus

Xperia something?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Silence!

user19161

3:41 AM

Ouvert et haut !

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

so Nexus Root Toolkit's "stock recovery" is the dead android

!!!

So I held down "vol down" and "power" and a menu appeared!

damn thing wasn't dead after all!

That means I could have gone to bed an hour ago

MετάEd

Congratulations?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

now if only 4.2 would come out for the Nexus S

and if only cyanogenmod were stable on my TF101

@WillHunting Anyway, Jasper, I'm sure your phone is very nice. But if you get to like it, try a Nexus device sometime. Invariably any problems you have with the Sony will be Sony's fault and be caused by some questionable decision they made in the product design. Google's Nexus phones are the best Android, period. But I would still take an xperia over, say, an iphone.

well, I'm off. good night folks.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Huh?

But I tried that.

I specifically read exactly that, held down the buttons on the red android, but nothing happened.

Tried other button combos too.

Good night!

tchrist

4:17 AM

The rabid anti-Pelosi reactionaries are letting their politics irritate their peeve buttons again:

0

Q: Are these sentences in the _Christian Science Monitor_ acceptable English these days?

This is from a Christian Science Monitor story on Nancy Pelosi's decision to stay on as House Minority Leader. The first report I saw in the Washington Post had only one questionable sentence, but this second report has two: “Being actively involved in politics at this level is really insatia...

Cerberus

4:57 AM

Perhaps he thinks "being...involved" is the dangling modifier?

tchrist

But that’s just a gerund.

It isn’t modifying anything. ”Telling the truth is easier than confabulating.” No dangles, just gerunds.

Cerberus

If you read I am for is, that fixes insatiable (though it seems unlikely she would say that) and creates a dangling modifier.

tchrist

6:49 AM

And to think we’ve gone this long without a homeoteleuton tag!

Or even auxesis.

tchrist

7:03 AM

I’ve had to use i-mutation for what should probably be called umlaut, but that is a tag synonym for diaeresis.

soandos

9:21 AM

Can anyone tell me if this sentence is in passive voice? "Many factors were operating in concert against ..."

Matt Эллен

3

@soandos you can tell passive because the subject is being acted upon. in your sentence the subject is "many factors" and the action is "operating", since the factors are doing something, (compare with the active voice sentences "I was running" or "you were cooking") then the sentence is in the active voice.

soandos

So this is active?

Matt Эллен

yes. the factors are doing something, not having something done to them

soandos

@MattЭллен Even though what comes after against is also a subject?

Matt Эллен

I would say what comes after is an object

soandos

9:29 AM

Got it

Thank you

Matt Эллен

no problem :)

@soandos a passive version might be something like "Many factors were used in concert against..." because the factors are not doing anything themselves, but some other agent is using them.

soandos

Ah, got it. I think the grader of my paper just sees "were" and writes passive voice. Its annoying

Matt Эллен

hmmmm. Well, I'm not a teacher. let me just check wikipedia!

I'm almost certain that your original sentence is active, @soandos. You can't add a prepositional phrase to it to say who the active agent is:

(active and wrong) Many factors were operating by John
(passive and correct) Many factors were used by John

soandos

@MattЭллен thank you very much

Matt Эллен

no trouble :)

Robusto

10:55 AM

@MattЭллен I thought that publication closed its doors in the wake of the Murdoch scandal.

RegDwighт

@soandos show him this:

12

A: How can I reliably and accurately identify the passive voice in writing or speech?

A clause in the passive voice must have all the following: A form of an auxiliary verb (usually be or get) The past participle of a transitive verb No direct object The subject of the verb phrase is the entity undergoing an action or having its state changed Optionally, the agent is expressed...

It's from an actual linguist, too.

soandos

@RegDwighт thanks

I'm already attaching a note to the end of my essay (I get to revise it) with a bunch of other things (like being asked to use chicago style footnotes, and then losing points on them and the like)

Robusto

@RegDwighт I feel like editing the title to say "How can the passive voice in writing reliably and accurately be identified in writing or speech?"

RegDwighт

@Robusto not enough writings. OVER 9000 is the minimum wage.

Matt Эллен

@Robusto lol. that would certainly be a better paper.

Robusto

10:58 AM

@RegDwighт Too much memesis.

RegDwighт

Behind mememy lines.

Sweden has rednecks, too.

►

Just look at this beast.

Cerberus

11:41 AM

Hello.

@RegDwighт Just as with the Canadian rednecks, I must object.

No sun, no rednecks.

Robusto

12:00 PM

false false false true true true false false false true true true true false false false true true true true true true true false false false false false

Commute

KitFox

@Matt, how goes the writing?

Matt Эллен

@KitFox slowly, but I'm writing, so that's better than not :)

how's it going for you?

KitFox

@RegDwighт Why would you need to drive a tractor that fast?

@MattЭллен Great! I've had two really good nights in a row.

Matt Эллен

@KitFox awesome!

that's great news :)

I can see your word count has rocketed ahead :D

KitFox

Oh yeah. Two 2500 days will do that.

Matt Эллен

12:10 PM

:D

KitFox

I'm almost caught up.

I'm going to sneak in some writing time at work today and see if I can catch up ahead of the weekend.

Matt Эллен

hehehe. Well, I'm aiming for the unlikely 4K words today. we'll see

RegDwighт

@KitFox what else can you do in Sweden? Pray tell?

KitFox

@RegDwighт Wax your bikini line?

RegDwighт

Remember that one bottle of beer there costs more than two modded tractors.

Not to mention proper booze.

KitFox

12:13 PM

Oh g2g. Back after commutes.

RegDwighт

@KitFox and how is a modded tractor not helpful in that pursuit?

CU'aes.

Jonas Stein

12:51 PM

english.stackexchange.com/questions/89859/… is among correct? I thought between would be right.

KitFox

1:06 PM

@JonasStein I think among/between is a regional difference. I would use between as well.

Cerberus

By convention, I think you would rather use among with more than two things?

user19161

Hey guys, it's Friday again!

Cerberus

You don't say!

RegDwighт

Yeah it's really fast this week.

Like, Monday, Tuesday, Friday.

Cerberus

@WillHunting So what kind of Xperia did you have again? You forgot to tell us.

user19161

1:16 PM

@Cerberus MT25i is the model I think.

tchrist

@Cerberus No, it has to be between here.

Among would be wrong.

Matt Эллен

a humourous thought: being among friends is good, being between friends is not.

tchrist

22

A: "between" vs "among"

GrammarGirl did a whole post on this. She explains that there is a difference between between and among. She writes: Here's the deal: you can use the word “between” when you are talking about distinct, individual items even if there are more than two of them. For example, you could say, "She ...

Cerberus

@WillHunting Wow! That is quite modern!

@tchrist Uhm I meant to say that among sounded wrong, and I mislooked at the question.

Arg!

I failed again.

When you're in a 2D plane, I feel that between is wrong if there are more than two objects around you.

Matt Эллен

it's those six eyes. it's hard to keep tack of what you're looking at

Cerberus

1:22 PM

When used metaphorically, it's different.

@MattЭллен Haha yes.

tchrist

@Cerberus I think it is just Yoichi not knowing any better.

Cerberus

The phrase differ(ence/ent) between sounds like a cast-iron idiom to me.

@tchrist Yeah.

tchrist

0

A: Is "between" always used for two things?

Yes, sometimes you do (and must) use between for more than two things alone. In these places, you cannot swap in among, or it will sound wrong. For example, between can be used with several points of geography: My territory lies between Denver, Dallas, and Chicago. and not My territo...

Cerberus

Hmm yes, I agree.

tchrist

Differences are kinda always a 1:1 thing. So between.

Cerberus

1:25 PM

I suppose.

But I agree with @Kit that there is regional or dialectic or whatever variation: to choose among/between...

Choose between sounds slightly more neutral to me.

But I wouldn't notice choose among as unusual at all.

tchrist

I wish I could ask it what the most common word to follow "choose between" might be.

@MετάEd may know how to do that, or rather, have the means.

Cerberus

averts eyes from incongruously rounded corners

@tchrist "Them"?

tchrist

That bothered me, too. You have to crank the smoothing to fix it.

Cerberus

@tchrist No, I mean the ehm choose-between thingies are rounded, while the text boxes are not.

Nor the button on the left.

tchrist

From here.

Robusto

1:33 PM

Looks like something on SO is trying to make illegal x-domain requests to acksvr.com.

Cerberus

@tchrist Funny how people made up their minds as the War approached...

tchrist

That is the same query, just run on a different browser (note roundedness differences).

@Cerberus That’s an interesting notion.

Cerberus

@Robusto Huh?

What is that domain?

Robusto

Mar 8 at 18:57, by Robusto

@RegDwightѬſ道 Immediate disqualification for citing Grammar Girl as an authority.

@Cerberus Chrome listed a problem with a cross-domain scripting request on the SO page I was looking at.

tchrist

It was Sim, not me! I simply cited the lady.

Cerberus

1:35 PM

@Robusto Neither Site Advisor nor the Web of Trust knows this domain.

Robusto

@tchrist If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

tchrist

Is then the Web of Trust plural?

I surmise so, but would not have done so otherwise.

Ah.

Cerberus

Right, right.

tchrist

Ok.

Cerberus

Well, they could be plural each.

I don't know what intuition led me.

tchrist

1:36 PM

It would take only the nearer one.

KitFox

@MattЭллен Well, depends on how you are situated between them, I suppose.

Cerberus

It ought to.

tchrist

@Cerberus Probably that would be the intuition that talking about two things needs must demand plural concordance, despite the disjunction. Even St Billy the Bard was drawn to it.

Cerberus

I don't know.

I usually use plural for organisations.

tchrist

That may be it.

Cerberus

1:38 PM

The police are.

So it coulds be either.

tchrist

Everyone says police are. Police is is wrong.

Robusto

One more reason why assigning every word an official Part of Speech from the 8-crayon box is a totally useless activity. If you know what color it's sposta be, what have you learned about its usage, meaning, and grammar? — John Lawler 6 mins ago

Another reason to like John Lawler.

Cerberus

I thought police is was American...

tchrist

No, police is is wrong.

Matt Эллен

@KitFox true. I suppose I can think of some good ways >:D

tchrist

1:39 PM

You cannot say: *The police is here.

Robusto

@tchrist Unless you're speaking an urban dialect. "Hey, there's a police on the corner."

tchrist

But it’s one of the only ones that should always be in the plural, even cisatlantically.

Cerberus

@JohnLawler: As long as you are not committed to cramming it into a single box, I think it can be interesting to explore and draw colourful lines over the boxes. — Cerberus 8 secs ago

Robusto

@Cerberus Thanks for killing the metaphor.

KitFox

OK, let's ease up on the commentary.

Cerberus

1:41 PM

I did that on purpose.

tchrist

Now that is curious.

Cerberus

Look at a few examples.

You should always do that.

tchrist

Right.

They are things like "Though necessary for democratic life, the autonomy of the police is to be feared as well. The police are, in any society, a powerful agency that could misuse or abuse the powers granted to them. "

Notice how that has both, and how it is a false positive for the red version.

> According to public opinion polls, the crime-fighter image of the police is firmly rooted in citizens' minds and is the main reason that recruits give for joining the force.

> The idea of the police is the product of society's permanent inclination to live in peace.

> As you probably already know, the basic mission of the police is to protect life and property, to find and arrest criminal offenders, to preserve the peace, to enforce laws, and to prevent and detect crime.

Robusto

> I guess you're not a fan of The Wire. "I'm a murder police. I work murders." It does sound rather nonstandard to my Midwestern ears, but I'm not sure how folks elsewhere in the country would hear it. -- Visviva 01:14, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

tchrist

So as usual, the ngram proves nothing but its own inapplicability.

@Robusto I can’t say that.

Robusto

1:45 PM

@tchrist It's a perfect system, one that functions as designed. It was built to prove useless, and succeeds on every failure.

tchrist

I do get some hits from nonnative speakers.

Cerberus

@tchrist Exactly.

tchrist

Or rather, it’s the NNS who hitted the most.

Robusto

The opening chapter of A Confederacy of Dunces contains a passage in which New Orleans natives are talking about "a police" as well.

Cerberus

@Robusto It's not useless! With interpolation you can make it useful.

tchrist

1:47 PM

@Robusto Don’t believe everything one of those Cree yoyos tells you.

Cerberus

Examine the first 100 results and hope those are representative.

Ah! I see now what you meant. But, as far as I can find, there is no etymological connection between do and the -dition suffix... — Berthilde 4 hours ago

What is she thinking?

tchrist

> The attitude toward the police is ambiguous. ... The more the sons of the upper class are wild, violent, and destructive, and the more the upper class as a whole, including its agent, the police, is corrupt, the more the police and the state as a ...

Cerberus

Why won't she just read my answer?

Robusto

@Cerberus That's like saying "Cheerios and milk provide 11 essential building blocks for a healthy body." Take away the Cheerios and you still have those 11 blocks.

tchrist

waltzes Berthilde

Robusto

1:48 PM

@tchrist I'm only reporting what other people are reporting.

tchrist

@Robusto You’re not a janitor though.

Robusto

@tchrist I didn't say I was cleaning up after them.

tchrist

> They order the police to do all these things and they come here and plead justice and say that the police is doing their work. They are not doing it and you know it. The other day we heard hon. Kirwa say that you were going to disrupt a rally on ...

Kenyan, that one.

It scans as NNS to me.

And that is a wicked period.

Cerberus

@Robusto Not really. If you examine 100 examples from today, you can still have some idea of how phrase x was used historically based on the Ngram. If you just take any random 100 examples from, say, Google Search, you still have no idea at all.

Robusto

@tchrist The only kind Elphaba has, I reckon.

Cerberus

1:50 PM

The same applies to comparing, say, British with American.

tchrist

Several Indians seem to likes it, too.

Robusto

@tchrist Did they like it today morning?

@Cerberus So you're saying nothing is better than less than nothing. Hmm ...

tchrist

And yestermorn and tomorn.

user19161

@tchrist To likes?

user19161

Is that a whoosh?

tchrist

1:51 PM

Very like.

Robusto

If whooshes were horses, Jasper would ride.

user19161

You never know when you are whooshed in this room.

Cerberus

@Robusto Yes, and that it can be significantly more than nothing, but you won't know until you examine what you've got.

user19161

I still can't ride a bike!

Robusto

56 secs ago, by Robusto

If whooshes were horses, Jasper would ride.

See the part about horses?

tchrist

1:53 PM

A Frog he would a wooing go, Heigh-ho, says Rowley,
A Frog he would a-wooing go, Whether this mother would let him or no,
With a Roley, Poley, Gammon and Spinach, Heigh-ho says Anthony Rowley.

He saddled and bridled a great black snail, Heigh-ho, says Rowley,
He saddled and bridled a great black snail, And rode between the horns and the tail,
With a Roley, Poley, Gammon and Spinach, Heigh-ho says Anthony Rowley.

So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh-ho, says Rowley,
So off he set with his opera hat, And on the way he met with a rat,

Frog went a-courtin' and he did ride, uh-huh
Frog went a-courtin' and he did ride, uh-huh
Frog went a-courtin' and he did ride
With a sword and a pistol by his side, uh-huh.

Robusto

@tchrist Your words-to-substance ratio is dropping faster now.

tchrist