November 20, 2004

• So, did he misuse it? I mean, if there's most a whole department devoted to taking care of the spam problem, and he actually gets 4 million spam emails per day, then wouldn't that be literal? Now, if he got, say, 40k spams per day, and there were 3 people dedicated to the problem that were either spread out over multiple departments or comprising only a small percentage of a department, then I would say it's been misused. However, I don't know that that's the case. Of course, if the spam is taken care of on the server side, and it never reaches any of the inboxes on Bill's personal computer, then he cannot be said to literally receive 4 million spam messages per day. However, that's not so bad of a misuse of "literally" as it is incorrectly using "receive". Just a thought.
• Robert Fulford laments that "literally" may be on its way to becoming this generation's "basically". We could forward the essay to Steve, but I don't think he'd literally read it, har har.
• Whenever I see that usage, I literally want to tear my head off.
• shmivejournal on this story: "Please, just use your brain."
• Microsoft employs more than 55,000 people. I looked around but I couldn't find any info on how many departments there are within Microsoft, but I am sure that each one is large enough that the personal email handlers of Bill Gates do not even come close to being a department. With some software filtering + a black list to pick out all the obvious spam and a whitelist to make sure internal MSFT emails reach him half a dozen people could do it even if there were 4 million/day. I am also skeptical about the 4 million emails quote, but obviously there is no way I can prove that short of sticking a packet sniffer on his mail server.
• What's wrong with autoantonyms?
• re: autoantonyms Only the most permissive dictionaries include "figuratively" as a possible meaning of literally. As The American Heritage Dict says: "This practice does not stem from a change in the meaning of literally itself. If it did, the word would long since have come to mean 'virtually' or 'figuratively' but rather from a natural tendency to use the word as a general intensive, as in They had literally no help from the government on the project, where no contrast with the figurative sense of the words is intended." Thanks for the very cool link none the less. I was not aware that there were such things as autoantonyms.
• Or words slipping meaning. Ol'Steve just used literally to add emphasis, as thousands of us do everyday.
• Okay, so the livejournal kid: so what? I mean, any way you slice this, it's a fluff piece. I have no idea why I've seen this story from two different sources (three if you count the livejournal kid), other than perhaps a little schadenfreude. What's there to use my brain on? Either Ballmer is exaggerating and misusing words (or using autoantonyms, which would still annoy English majors, even if there's a word for it), or he's not, and Gates gets a lot of spam and employs people to fix it. The net sum of the story is that I don't really care. What goes on at Microsoft, if it doesn't involve destroying innocent companies and/or lives, means so little to my day to day life. I'm not saying it wasn't worth a front page post, but why people are investing so much emotion into this particular fluff piece is beyond me.
• "Literally" annoys me most when attached to other words that the person is (unintentionally) misusing, not just when used as an innacurate method of emphasis. I once heard a news reporter, covering some sort of disater, make reference to the village's population being "literally decimated". No. No no no. "The town's population has been decimated," or "The town's heart has been literally ripped out by this tragedy" - either would have been fine. But "literally decimated"? Grrrrrr. Oh, and can I just say that I like the term "packet sniffer" so much that I may be forced to invent a whole new fetish, just so that I can call it "packet sniffing"? Any thoughts on what such a fetish may involve are more than welcome...
• 40% of the SPAM I receive are virusses. 'nough said.
• Packet sniffing is good. Tangentially reminds me of Tron when they bring out the Logic Probe. They had no idea why they were using a logic probe, but it sounded good.
• So literally is like, the like you can use and not come off as a teenager? After all, our friend Ballmer is just trying to make a cute press release about poor Bill's spam problem.
• That Fulford article cites examples of this going back to 1863. So why not just let people have it??? You can go around playing word police and insisting "gay" means "happy" and "mad" means insane and not angry in the U.S., or you can accept that this is how language changes and get on with your life. Granted, this is not an exact example, since those two words I mentioned have actually changed meanings and the new meanings are acknowledged in the dictionary. The bottom line is: language is about communication. Ballmer communicated what he meant- Gates gets a shitload of email. oh and: ATTN: David Cross. Yeah, Mr. Show's first two seasons are great. But now you're writing rants on a confusing website about other people's alleged grammatical errors?? Might want to call your agent.
• on further thought, Cross' thing is really ironic because: and you should stop using the word FOREVER until you #!$%ing figure it out. "Forever" is just that, forever. There is no forever until something else happens. What he meant was "and you should stop using the word until you #!$%ing figure it out." But he used the word "forever" hyperbolically to drive his point home, LITERALLY the same thing Ballmer did. (unless of course he did on purpose to make his point, but I dont think so) Who will police the grammar police?
• The quote is from David Cross's album entitled "It's Not Funny" not his website. Although I have to agree with you that the design of said sight is confusing and needs much work.
• "literally decimated" Hmm. Given that "decimated" is almost universally misused, isn't it possible that the tv person meant exactly what he said? That he was using "decimated" not figuratively (as people so often do), but literally?
• It's also worth noting the Gates has perhaps the most well known email address in the world. So it may well be possible that he gets 4MM pieces of spam per day.
• When you outlaw bad grammer only the outlaws will have bad grammer.
• maybe if some more of that spam actually got through to mr. gates, his company would do more to actually stop it. would be nice to see microsoft take on an opponent that EVERYONE wants to see out of business for once. 'cause god knows microsoft is really, really good at driving people out of business...