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Old October 2nd 05, 11:44 PM
Jeremy Nixon
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Floyd Davidson wrote:

And now you have what used to be a perfectly good term, "prime lens", that,
having become ambiguous, is now *useless* for *either* of the meanings we
are talking about here. It is a dead term. It can't be used to mean


Why would you say that? Prime had several meanings long before
this happened, and yet you say it was not ambiguous then but is
now???? That's not logical.


I refer to the term "prime lens", not "prime". "Prime lens" is a specific
enough term that it can have only one useful meaning in one technical
field; were that not the case, this very discussion would not be happening.

This is in some contrast with another dead term, "zoom lens", which has
for all intents and purposes entirely lost its real meaning and had it
replaced. This is also pure entropy -- there were two terms that meant
two different things, and now they both mean the same thing -- but it
can be used with its new meaning without a discussion like this ensuing.

You need to look up the word "evolution" and find out what it
means.


"The process of unrolling, opening out, or disengaging from an envelope."

Hmm, no, probably not that one. No, I'm not being facetious; it's worth
noting that terms having very different meanings in different contexts does
not cause any particular problem; the problem arises when the two meanings
exist in the *same* context. As with "prime lens", and "zoom lens" before
it.

And as to whether change is "a good thing", that is subjective and your
opinion that it is not really isn't worth a plugged nickel. (Neither is
mine, so don't be upset that the world continues to turn even if we don't
like it.)


Well, I would find it difficult to appreciate an argument that brutally
removing things from the language can have any positive effect.

The changes made by marketing people, for example, are always bad.


As a guy who worked my whole life in Operations (and never
stopped making fun of Marketing), even I have to tell you that
you've over stated the case there.


Can you think of any change to the language perpetrated by marketing
that was good?

Some words: awesome, amazing, astounding, incredible, unbelievable. All
of these words now mean "very good". That's stupid. There is nothing
good about that; it has removed meaning and variety from the language
and not replaced it with anything of equal value.

--
Jeremy |