Social Media

  • The importance of the space bar and proofreading

    The Wig and Pen public house in Truro, Cornwall had some unexpected publicity earlier this week when a badly temporary temporary sign was snapped by an amused regular before being hurriedly removed by embarrassed staff, according to yesterday’s Western Daily Press.

    By the time the sign came down, its fame had spread round the world by social media; and it’s easy to see why.

    sign saying The Wig & Penis Is Open For Business

    However, according to the Western Daily Press article, the sign itself was not the only linguistic clanger involved in the episode:

    But a remember [sic] of staff named Georgie-Tim later took to Twitter to say: “Well, it got you’re attention!

  • Crash course in language

    Have you ever noticed the language used when road traffic incidents are reported?

    As a typical example, look at this story from Wednesday’s Bristol Post.

    The headline reads:

    Man taken to hospital after his car collided with road sign in Avonmouth

    The first sentence outlines how the incident occurred:

    A man in his 40s had to be removed on a spinal board after his car collided with a road sign in Avonmouth.

    Note how the car’s occupant – presumably its driver – plays a passive role; the car apparently collided with a road sign of its own volition without any human intervention. One would almost think that cars and other motor vehicles are so capricious and flighty that conscious action by human beings is imperative to stop the public highway becoming a large linear scrapyard in next to no time and remaining such permanently.

    Perhaps a more accurate headline would have been Man taken to hospital after driving into road sign.

    Similar examples of this use of English can be found in any local paper in the country.

    However, such language is not confined to the print media. An similar example from inside the BBC in Bristol was posted on Twitter this morning (screenshot below).

    tweet screenshot

    Note the absence of any human involvement in the incident: a horse was killed by a fast car. Was it an unoccupied, autonomous vehicle? A more accurate rendition would be that a horse was killed by a fast driver.

    Then there’s the way large swathes of the media report collisions using the noun accident to describe them. In the vast majority of cases, there’s nothing accidental about them. According to RoSPA, 95% of all road ‘accidents’ involve some human error, whilst a human is solely to blame in 76% of road ‘accidents’.

    According to the Collins English Dictionary, accident has the following definitions:

    an unforeseen event or one without an apparent cause
    anything that occurs unintentionally or by chance; chance; fortune
    a misfortune or mishap, esp one causing injury or death

    It would seem that the third definition is the one relied upon by the media. Interestingly, the British police stopped using the term Road Traffic Accident (RTA) some years ago; the police now refer to a Road Traffic Incident (RTI) instead.

    Perhaps the media should follow the example of the police if they wish to retain their alleged reputation for truth and accuracy.

  • My Valentine

    It’s February 14th, St Valentine’s Day, a busy day for florists, restaurateurs and people selling greetings cards.

    I love Free Software heartI’m declaring my love here online: I love free software.

    If you are unaware what free software is – and it has far more to do than merely being gratis (think free as in speech, rather than free as in beer. Ed.) – look at the Free Software Foundation’s free software definition.

    From the Debian GNU/Linux operating system to the Gimp graphics package and the LibreOffice productivity suite, I couldn’t do without it.

    If you love free software too, show your passion too in one of the following ways:

    • Writing an e-mail or letter to contributors expressing how much you like what they are doing.
    • Sharing your feelings about free software on social networks and microblogs using the hashtag #ilovefs. Or you can write a blog post about your favourite piece of free software.
    • Buying your favourite contributor a drink. Or buy someone else a drink and while enjoying it, tell her/him about your favourite free software program.
    • Giving a contributor a hug (ask for permission first). You might be amazed how many free software developers live in your area!
    • Helping the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) collecting quotes for its testimonials of people who love free software. Ask developers, artists, politicians, or other users to send their quotes to FSFE.
    • Taking a picture of yourself showing your feelings for free software and posting it online.
    • Donating to free software initiatives or the FSFE to express your gratitude. They depend on your contribution to continue their work.
    • Finally you can help spread the love by sharing the campaign banners by e-mail, (micro)blog or by social media (please use the hashtag #ilovefs for this).
  • Chinese internet suffers major breakdown

    keyboard showing Chinese flag on enter keyAt the start of the week, China suffered a major internet outage for several hours, Le Monde Informatique reported yesterday. Experts are wondering about the cause; was it hacking (to use the verb ‘to hack’ in its Daily Mail sense. Ed.) or a technical problem with the country’s censorship mechanisms?

    Last Tuesday more than two-thirds of Chinese websites were inaccessible and millions of users were deprived of internet access for some 8 hours, according to Qihoo 360, a Chinese security software supplier best known for supplying anti-virus products. Security experts are wondering about the origin of this outage. Some believe it was hacking whilst others think there was a fault with the country’s so-called ‘Great Firewall’ censorship system.

    After the outage, Chinese authorities conducted a preliminary inquiry which focussed on hacking. The Chinese CERT team is continuing its inquiry. giving priority to the hacking theory, Chinese specialists believe that they hijacked a root DNS server in China to reroute all the traffic. The Greatfire.org website, which analyses Chinese online censorship, disputes this diversion, stating that Google’s DNS servers were affected.

    A poorly blocked traffic hijack?

    However, Greatfire.org also showed that some of the user traffic had been redirected to an IP address in the United States and more specifically to the Dynamic Internet Technology site which has links to the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is heavily repressed in China. Greatfire.org believes the origin of the breakdown was due to a technical problem with the ‘Great Firewall’.

    China regularly blocks sites whose content is critical of its government, including Facebook, Twitter and the New York Times. By wanting to block the Dynamic Internet Technology site, the Chinese authorities would have inadvertently rerouted the whole nation’s traffic, according to Greatfire.org.

  • Clueless Crapita tweets its ignorance

    This blog has drawn attention before to the lamentable lack of knowledge of certain bodies, e.g. the BBC and various newspapers, to the difference between translating and interpreting.

    As the screenshot below shows, these bodies have now been joined by Capita Translation & Interpreting, that arm of the Crapita empire which is busy wasting public money by failing to provide interpreters – or those of good enough quality – for courts and tribunals under a contract with the Ministry of Justice (posts passim).

    screenshot of exchange of tweets on Twitter

    This exchange came into my Twitter timeline on the same day as the Law Gazette reports that Capita T&I has never managed to reach its 98% performance target under its Framework Agreement with the Ministry of Justice in the 2 years it has held the contract and just a few days before Ursula Brennan, Permanent Secretary at the MoJ, is due to appear before the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee as they examine the interpreting contract for a second time (posts passim).

    As the Crapitards in charge of the Capita T&I are clearly confused by the difference between translators and interpreters, I can only recommend they too read my illustrated guide post.

  • Kremlin to step up monitoring of its online detractors

    Friday’s Le Monde reports that Russian State security agency the FSO is going to step up its surveillance of bloggers and others who are critical of the Russian government.

    online spying imageWhile Russian state security agencies already have surveillance systems in use, the administration has decided “to entrust this part of the work to professional computer specialists“.

    Quoting Izvestia, Le Monde states that an invitation to tender with a maximum budget of 31.8 mn. roubles (€700,000) has been issued for the procurement of a centralised data collection system for data published on the internet.

    The subject of the invitation to tender is the creation of a system comprising a database of citizens who have a “negative” opinion of the government and the provision of a daily summary of publications concerning the president, his administration, the prime minister or even the opposition. The procurement of this system is reportedly not a case of “turning up the heat” by the authorities, but more enabling them to anticipate some events by the early detection of protests being organised (a likely story. Ed.)

  • Piper and penguin

    I’ve been aware of Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton et al. and their expeditions to Antarctica since my childhood and on Christmas Eve this year was made aware through social media of the exploits of the 1902-1904 Scottish National Antarctic Expedition.

    Although its work was overshadowed by more prestigious expeditions, the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition nevertheless completed a full programme of exploration and scientific work, including the establishment of the first manned meteorological station in Antarctic territory, as well as the discovery of new land to the east of the Weddell Sea.

    Below is a photograph taken on that expedition; a suitably light-hearted one of piper Gilbert Kerr serenading a penguin.

    Gilbert Kerr, piper, with penguin. Photographed by William Speirs Bruce during the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, 1902-04
    Gilbert Kerr, piper, with penguin. Photographed by William Speirs Bruce during the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, 1902-04. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    However, penguins did more for the expedition than provide an audience for pipers. They were a regular item on the menu too!

    A typical day’s diet there might have been: breakfast of porridge and penguin eggs, with bacon on Wednesdays and Thursdays and coffee or cocoa week about. Lunch of eggs with bully beef or bread and cheese and tea. Dinner of penguin “hare soup”, then stewed penguin, with some farinaceous pudding or preserved fruit to follow.

    The above comes from the text accompanying a splendid photo of Bill Smith, the expedition’s cook from Glasgow Digital Library, which has a fine collection of photographs from the expendition. I also love the final sentence on the page too for its description of Smith:

    Smith’s substantial physique is a good advertisement for the value of his own work.

    Season’s greetings all.

  • A salutary lesson in social media for business

    A message to all businesses: if you sack a member of staff, you should consider changing your Twitter password, particularly if that person had access to the account.

    The Plough, a pub in Great Haseley, Oxfordshire, didn’t… and at the time of posting it has nearly 1,700 followers.

    You can enjoy the results in the screenshot below.

    screenshot of tweets

    Update 12 noon, 16/12/13: According to Buzzfeed, Jim Knight, the chef in question, created the Twitter account with the permission of his now former employers. Furthermore, he has also now been offered a new job, in which I wish him well. 🙂

    Hat tip: Eugene Byrne

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