>content as Jason's bug report. It doesn't help my peace of mind that I have
>reason to believe that Jason's attempts to explain himself were removed from
>the newsgroup. I am not defending him, but I've had enough of people attacking

I'd like to know on what basis you place that fairly nasty accusation. We do
not involve ourselves in that sort of selective editing. On the very rare
occasion that something is removed from this server, the entire thread goes,
lock stock and barrel, with no exception. As far as we are aware Jason has
never posted any message on this server, period.

Please now explain where this baseless implication comes from.

-- Newsadmin

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povray.org admin team wrote:
 
> Over the years, Americans have modified various parts of the English
> language to create these variants (another good example is the US
> 'color' vs the English 'colour'). That's all well and good - we don't
> dispute the right of Americans to change the language they speak.

I do believe the English have also changed the language a bit over the
centuries.  The English of Chaucer was not the English of the Beowolf
poet, nor is Shakespere's English that of Chaucer.  The Brittish English
of today is not exactly that which was spoken by Shakespere, either. 
Language altering is not strictly an American habit, but in the passing
of history nearly every language has developed it's own dialects, and
every written language has made extensive changes to its orthography. 
Let's be fair....
-- 
+---------------------+-------------------------------------+
:Benjamin Keil        : If she's a liar, I'm her lover      :
:bke### [at] indianaedu    : If she's a priestess, I'm her cover :
:Now at Indiana Univ. : If she's a lady, I'm her man        :
:at Bloomington       : If she's a man, I'll do what I can! :
+---------------------+-------------------------------------+

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Benjamin Keil <bke### [at] indianaedu> wrote:

>povray.org admin team wrote:
> 
>> Over the years, Americans have modified various parts of the English
>> language to create these variants (another good example is the US
>> 'color' vs the English 'colour'). That's all well and good - we don't
>> dispute the right of Americans to change the language they speak.
>
>I do believe the English have also changed the language a bit over the
>centuries.  The English of Chaucer was not the English of the Beowolf
>poet, nor is Shakespere's English that of Chaucer.  The Brittish English
>of today is not exactly that which was spoken by Shakespere, either. 
>Language altering is not strictly an American habit, but in the passing
>of history nearly every language has developed it's own dialects, and
>every written language has made extensive changes to its orthography. 
>Let's be fair....

I was fair ... hence our statement that it's their right to change it.

Nevertheless, we don't sit in English class critisizing Shakespere for his
spelling :). We know that the language has changed. We know that, at the time
Shakespere wrote, the spelling he used was correct in the context of his time.

We (the collective 'we' here being, I suppose, any non-American English
speaker, though I can hardly profess to speak for all of them) don't mind
Americans changing the language in the least, as long as they don't act as if
they invented it, and give us a tongue-lashing when we don't spell it as they
choose. Which, after all, is the cause of this entire, long, thread.

Post a reply to this message

Hans-Detlev Fink wrote:

> I went through all
> dictionaries my wife (she's an English teacher) owns
> (about 5). They are all British and say unisono "organize,
> optimize, ...". (E.g. "Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary
> of Current English").

That is correct.

> So shouldn't it be the other way around: Z=British, S=US?

Nope.

> Forgive me being nit-picking, it's just out of curiosity.

Sorry for being a bit late replying, but Z=verbs (or everything in the
US), S=anything else in European English.In England, you say
organisation, in the US you say organization. Well, such was the way I
was taught.

I looked up my very British dictionary and they quote
both spellings without preference S or Z. Also in the text they claim
that since the dictionary originates in Britain it tends to show more
of the British English rather than other variations, yet their main
introductory text uses [Organization] rather than [Organisation], the
dictionary I'm referring to is the Collins Cobuilt which I would agree
is not the best one, but is British nethertheless.

Just my two pence worth,
Al.

--
ANTI SPAM / ANTI ARROSAGE COMMERCIAL :

To answer me, please take out the Z from my address.

Post a reply to this message

Robert H. Morrison wrote:

> > We also would like to officially nominate Jason Barlow for the 'Rudest Support
> > Email of 1998' award.
> He's GOT MY VOTE!!
> Jason your chances of winning look REALLY, REALLY GOOD!!

He's good indeed.

> What COLOUR is his award certificate?

According to COLLINS COBUILD again, this is definitely the British spelling and
COLOR is definitely the American one.

> Does he MAXIMISE his EGO by MINIMISING his KNOWLEDGE?

But these few examples are usualy with a Z in British English as well as American
English.

> Does he even OWN an English language dictionary?

Because one person is rude does that excuse YOU to be rude towards that person or
any other ?

Al.

--
ANTI SPAM / ANTI ARROSAGE COMMERCIAL :

To answer me, please take out the Z from my address.

Post a reply to this message

> Please now explain where this baseless implication comes from.

One thing, before I quote an e-mail I received from Jason: Upon reflection, it
was probably a mistake to include that line in my post. No matter what the
response might be, it can only continue this, which isn't what I want. Also, I
said that I had reason to believe this, not that I am convinced of it. For him
to accuse you of removing his posts would not be proof enough for me, but
would instead be a further descent into this rather nasty subject. Here are
two quotes from an e-mail he sent following my first post in this thread:

>Any
>attempt I have made to post publicly to the newsgroup in response to
>this matter has been thwarted as well it would seem - my posts are being
>deleted.

...

>I am shamed, hurt, embarrassed, and humiliated because of this, and
>I am extremely remorseful for the people my words have offended
>because of the public posting of what was meant to be a private
>exchange of e-mail (albeit a sorry work it was).  I hold no value that
>believes "The American Way" prevails over any other way of thinking,
>speaking, and even spelling.  I desperately wish I could communicate
>that to the people who have flamed me, spammed me, macro-mail
>bombed me, etc, but I fear I would be writing personal apologies for
>the next 6 months.
>
>As such, I don't have any intention of making any further public replies
>to this matter, since any attempt I've made has been censored.

I will e-mail him to see whether or not he would object to letting me post his
entire e-mail, since it's not exactly possible for anyone else to see it,
right now... but this would be my reason. However, I shouldn't have mentioned
that in my post, and for that I apologize. I have no first hand evidence that
you have done so, merely Jason's word. Since he has e-mailed me, without me
e-mailing him, I can only suppose that he has been following the thread, and
if he has, than it's a reasonable to suppose that he has tried to post an
explanation, but that too is far from solid evidence. I would like to explain
that I don't mean to accuse you (or any of the team) for acting so unfairly.
But that I have to consider it in the first place is unfortunate. Again,
please accept my apologies for that sentence, I should not have written it.
That was a mistake on my part.

-Mark R.

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I think the original e-mail was posted here as a catharsis.  I imagine they get a
lot of mail that is rather silly and it can be mentally draining to have to sort
through it for legitimate problem reports.  The tone of the e-mail also seemed to
be taking a shot at the work of the POV-Ray Team, so a little bitterness over it
is understandable.

If it's true that people went after Jason with mail bombing and such I think
that's reprehensible.  As far as his problems posting to this newsgroup, it sounds
like a software problem.  Otherwise he would have seen it right after sending it.

I agree that this thread has gotten out of hand, but I think it's also succeeded
in making the point that you should think about what you are going to say before
writing a 'bug' report.

-Mike

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>We (the collective 'we' here being, I suppose, any non-American English
>speaker, though I can hardly profess to speak for all of them) don't mind
>Americans changing the language in the least

If we exclude the English and the Americans then we are left with the Kiwis,
Aussies, Irish, Welsh and the Scots. Any one who has heard those
interpretations of English should have little to say about American English.
American arrogance is another matter entirely...

Tom

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>>attempt I have made to post publicly to the newsgroup in response to
>>this matter has been thwarted as well it would seem - my posts are being
>>deleted.

This is not so. He has never (to our knowledge) posted to this server. His
accusation that his posts are being deleted are false (unless someone has
forged cancel messages for his posts, which would then be visible in the
'control' group of this server. We don't see any there.)

We ourselves have never deleted any message sent by him.

A scan through DejaNews DID indicate that he has posted a single message (that
we can find anyhow) to povray.general via news.xmission.com.

Before proceeding, let us say that the implication (that we read from the above
message) that we had sent an email to him containing expletives is false. Nor
did we indulge in 'American bashing', though we left him in no question as to
the fact that we don't like having our intelligence questioned as he so clearly
did in his report to us. But that's beside the point.

His main problem is that he apparantly posted to news.xmission.com. Why he did
that we have no idea. news.xmission.com is not news.povray.org (no surprises
about that we would expect). There is no way that any posting from xmission.com
is going to get onto this server since news.povray.org is not connected to
USENET (unless someone posts it manually). We do NOT take in articles from the
world (see http://www.povray.org/groups.html for an explanation as to why).

And we had our way, articles would not get out, either. Until about 24 hours
ago we were unaware that several sites had been feeding articles from this
server out into the world (this had been done without our permission).

So Jason's posting - far from being deleted, as he claims (wrong yet again,
Jason) - simply never even made it to this server, and thus to the bulk of the
POV-Ray user community. Had he wanted to reply to this thread he would have
been best off doing exactly what everyone else does, and that is to post
directly to news.povray.org (the existance of which is documented in the povwin
help file).

If he wants we will delete the entire thread (and any related threads), lock
stock and barrel, from this server, such that there is no record of it ever
existing (at least not here). That way he will receive no further emails from
users who don't think much of the tone of his bug report.

If he doesn't want that then fine, it'll say there. It doesn't bother us either
way. And if he chooses to followup here in the newsgroup then that's fine, too.
[IMO however, it wouldn't do much good since we would be obliged to reply to
it, and then there'd be replies to replies and followups and so forth, and the
thing would drag out all over again. As it is the thread has more or less died
out. But if he wants to he's welcome, as he always has been.]

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povray.org admin team wrote:

> world (see http://www.povray.org/groups.html for an explanation as to why).

Sorry for being off topic but I noticed on the above list
you don't have a lising for povray.binaries.programming.
An oversight or omission ?

Ken Tyler

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