Re: OT: An odd question that has arrisen withinmy household

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 12:51:21 EDT, "Jonathan A. Zdziarski" said:
> I'm saying that the danger in doing this is that you've got a lot of
> ignorant people out there who easily forget what the original meanings
> of words are, such as anti-social, which ultimately waters down and
> degrades our language.  Yes, i think it is stupid to change the meaning
> of a word in the dictionary just because people misuse it.

Forget it, the hacker/cracker war was lost a long time ago... :)

Languages drift over time (which is why Shakespeare is sometime obtuse), and
we're stuck with that fact.  The French fail to recognize this, which is why
they had the recent sillyness over what to call e-mail.

And to tie this back to security - sometimes the interpretation of the language
makes a big difference:

> Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles will ask a court to set aside the
> conviction of a man who served 16 months in federal prison for blowing the
> whistle on an ex-employer's cybersecurity holes, officials said Tuesday.
>
> http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7202

Attachment: _bin
Description: