I may have not been writing many Oracularities recently, but that doesn't mean I haven't noticed...

[sniffnoy]

...that it's now been 13 days since the last digest! What's going on here? A lack of humor in the system, apparently...

-Sniffnoy, worried
...did you realize that the LJ spellchecker doesn't think "spammers" is a word?

--
"God created lamprey, cockroaches, maggots, mosquitos, fleas, ticks,
slugs, leeches, and intestinal parasites... If He didn't create spammers
He at least gave them role models."
-i_will_tossit (ahbou)

Comments

What could be more tref than spam?

[forcemajeure.livejournal.com]

One thing I've noticed about the LJ spellchecker (and there seem to be two of them: one for comments, one for journal entries entered on the web form, the latter still choking on nearly all contractions) is that it's periodically updated to include topical names. For a while, for example, it would flag the names of presidential candidates, like Lieberman, but eventually stopped. So it seems someone somewhere is dynamically updating it, or swapping one dictionary database for another.

I know the Hormel company, which owns the trademark to Spam^TM, has discouraged the use of the term for unsolicited e-mail (a battle they don't seem to be winning) for fear that they will lose their trademark because it becomes a common noun (as happened in decades past with words like aspirin, escalator, and heroin). Perhaps the dictionary-makers are afraid if they, uh, destigmatize an unambiguously common noun form of "spam" they will incur, at minimum, a cease-and-desist letter from Hormel's lawyers.

Speaking of such things, they're sometimes different in different countries. In my native Canada, "aspirin" is still a recognized trademark of the Bayer Corporation; other brands of aspirin are sold freely, but cannot call themselves aspirin.

Re: What could be more tref than spam?

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

Actually, Hormel specifically said they don't mind so long as you don't write the word in allcaps, as *that* would refer to their product. Let me find it... http://www.spam.com/ci/ci_in.htm

Interesting theory, though...

Re: What could be more tref than spam?

[forcemajeure.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I recall seeing stuff in the press from them a few years ago in which they were apoplectic that people were calling unsolicited commercial e-mail "spam" with impunity. I wonder if that's a position they're taking because, if they asserted a trademark over the word in lower-case, they would already pretty much have met the standard for trademark loss. In other words, I wonder if they're making a virtue of necessity. Or, uh, something of necessity.

About the digest thing

[grenadier32.livejournal.com]

Infrequency in the Oracle email digests actually isn't all that rare, it just...happens.

Must be because I haven't be very active with the Oracle lately. ;) (JK)

Re: About the digest thing

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

2 weeks? That's not exactly common. I've seen it happen before, but still, 2 weeks? Now if it gets to 3, I'll really start to worry...