Mozilla FireFox gains and IE Looses

The dogs of war? A plague of locusts upon an unsuspecting populace? Microsoft has an abundance of loose screws and loose morals. But none of these seem to apply to the article.

I suspect the author is not a native English speaker, so at least in this instance there is an excuse. (excoose?)

Actually, I emailed the editor about it and got this back:

Hey Steve, I hope you are having great time. Thanks for pointing that out, but we here in india spell it like that, m not sure about what americans or rest of world says about looses or loses. Thanks for your intrest

Regards Sub Editor Express Newsline

Hehe, there are indeed more than two orthographic traditions in English. The British have colours and measure things more and more in metres, while the Americans have colors and use feet but no meters ;) . And then come the Indians who loose it... ;)

Hehe, the wonders of a transnational language with no central power to control it... :)

It's all too complicated for me, I'm loosing my mind.

actually, I didn't really learn how to deploy the English language in article format until I started web publishing. Do a couple of articles and let the flame build up -- you learn to correct the smallest things.

One of the funniest ones was "Panty Waste" -- I got corrected using the phrase (seriously -- this was like 1998). And I'm (at the time) completely baffled. How the hell can someone know (or even care) that it's that. But it turns out -- yeah, it's Panty Waist, as in underwear.

I hate it when that happens. What an English language pantywaste I was. ;)

The context was the first Rant mode = 1 (about idiot journalists that dared called the command line archaic). I need to do that one again, the horse isn't dead yet.

I'll cut it there so someone can flame me and say something sarcastic like "Are you sure you learned anything there Paul?!?"

But seriously, English is hard to master. Cut em some slack ;) --Paul

Ranting against tech-ignorant journalists is a waist of time.*

I know that language skills come more easily to some folks. I'll cut slack to non-native speakers. In fact a lot of my European chums have far better command of American English, including slang and idioms, than most native speakers. At least written, I have no idea how well they speak.

I'll even cut some slack to helpful persons in forums. After all, it's better to be talking and supporting each other, regardless of language skillz. But surely learning good English skills is no harder than learning to write good code, or running servers, or doing network administration. To be sure it isn't cool, except to old fogies like me. :)

*Sometimes I slay me.