AOTC and GeekPAC

[Monty J. Harder]

> >   But as long as I'm critiquing position papers...  "preditory" won't
even
> > pass a spell-checker, because there is no such word.
> >
> Oh, it's a word, it's just misspelled.
>
> pred·a·to·ry   Pronunciation Key  (prd-tôr, -tr)

  LIS, there is no such word as 'preditory'.  Any spell-checker that has
'preditory' in it is just plain wrong (as oppposed to one that has real
words in it, but can't determine that the one used is incorrect).  If you're
going to put out a Position Paper, it's because you want people to take your
position seriously.  When you don't even run the Position Paper through a
spell-checker, it shows that you haven't done your homework.

  Maybe I'm worrying too much about this, but I've really gotten sick of
reading articles with obvious misspellings and horrendous grammar (and not
just on /.) from people who expect their words to carry some weight.  I know
it's considered 'cool' to be all anti-establishment, and denigrate things
like proper grammar, or professional business attire -- amongst us geeks
that's fine.  But when we try to communcate with the non-geek community
(which would seem to be what these proposed organizations are all about) we
need to do a better job.

  One of the big knocks on open source software is the uneven quality of
documentation.  Some times programmers forget that a system comprises* not
just hardware and  software, but documentation, configuration, data, and
user training.  It seems that if we take an even more inclusive view of the
system, we should also include the proverbial 'religion and politics'.  We
have software that does wonderful things, if people could just figure out
how to make it all work with the data files they already have, and the work
habits they've already acquired.  But we're losing the war where it counts
the most, precisely because the people who know how to communicate
effectively are on the other side(s).

  If these are the people who are trying to represent our position (assuming
that we do in fact agree with their goals) then we are in big trouble.

---
* This is a word that I've seen misused so often that the dictionaries now
include the wrong meaning, which makes the word nearly meaningless; the two
meanings are in direct opposition to one another