Xubuntu 11.10. It Came To Stay

Yeh thats it :)

You folks are being a little hard on DarkDuck. I work with Russians, and though they are brilliant with computer science and math, their English writing skills are a bit rough. Sheesh, I dare anybody here to write a coherent technical article in Russian, and have it critiqued by Russian geeks.

@herz, well said, I know I couldn't do it.

@herzeleid... +1

Mea culpa.

Despite my above negative implication, I've generally found his articles more interesting. This last article however, was a trial.

My advice is proof, revise, and resubmit!

DrGeoffrey, do you want to proof? I definitely would like to have an editor who can edit my writeups before I submit them. So far I'm the only person who works on the blog: try OS, get notes, write, revise and publish. Volunteers to help?

Aaaaand another Internet-based collaboration is born!

Quoting: You folks are being a little hard on DarkDuck. I work with Russians, and though they are brilliant with computer science and math, their English writing skills are a bit rough. Sheesh, I dare anybody here to write a coherent technical article in Russian, and have it critiqued by Russian geeks.

English is harder to master than C... big surprise. It became technology's lingua franca because it was first, not because it was best, and brave souls have been posting in it (to uucp, RCPM BBSes, FidoNet, Usenet, etc...) ever since, and sometimes it's kinda obvious but the message gets through.

If you browse through http://www.fanfiction.net you're likely to get really depressed about Internet handling of the English language by its native speakers... And then there's 4chan, where some of the new memes are mocking extrapolations of others' lingual difficulties.

I can generally pick my way past the modest linguistic lumps in DarkDuck's postings. He's usually not doing stuff that I focus on, so I don't do that overmuch, but I find him tolerably readable when I do. At least he tries.

The ultimate painful read:

http://www.rdrop.com/~hutch/argon

N.B.: if you click that and your eye sockets bleed, it's your fault for clicking it.

In his *really bad* nightmares, Stephen King dreams that he wrote that...

- - - -

edit: just to be clear, I'm talking about the work of "Jim Theis", not the work of "DarkDuck"

Mel Gilden used to mention the Eye Of Argon on Hour 25 back when I was a KPFK listener. I've had that saved to disk for near a decade; I might someday work up the nerve to read it.







Nahhhh.

In his *really bad* nightmares, Stephen King dreams that he can write

DarkDuck's articles are fairly entertaining to read at times, because of the Russian accent. Obviously, since they're written, there's no spoken accent, but if you turn on your inner monologue as you read them, the way they're written will force your brain to simulate a thick Russian accent, since he writes exactly the way a Russian with a shaky grasp of English would talk.

Edit: I'd like to also add that while I don't read that many of DarkDuck's posts, I'll gladly read any of them before I read any of the tripe that Ken Hess writes. Ken Hess is almost as low as Rob Enderle in my book.

@tracyanne

Quoting: In his *really bad* nightmares, Stephen King dreams that he can write

Now that's funny!

Oh, he can write just fine, and quite well, too. On the other hand, aside from a little attention to styling on the sentence or paragraph levels, he doesn't usually bother.

It is also clear that the success -- ie. popularity and sales -- of his various works does not appear to bear much correlation with how well they are written. And his work sells more than well enough that his editors are not going to argue with him about what needs improvement or how to improve it.

I suspect he saves his "good writing" for the (relatively few) stories he himself really cares about, and the rest is more to pay the bills.

But you're right, that could be even scarier. :-)

Negativity is a disease of the current times. There is little to be hopeful about. War, poverty, crisis, greed... You name it, humanity has got it.

Let me say this. Practise makes perfect and Dark Duck has the courage to put his stuff out there. With time that is bound to have a positive impact on the writing skills.

@gu3 The Eye of Argon is an absolute classic, have read it many a time, it makes you treasure life, like why in the h#ll did I waste a part of it that I will never get back reading the d@mn thing so many times :)

LXer: Linux news and writing-skills lab.

We have a lot of people whose native language is not English and yes some are better than others in that regard but I believe in giving people an opportunity to express their thoughts and to get better at their writing..

I think he is doing fine, could it be better of course, but he is doing fine if you ask me.

Scott

Scott, are you talking about me all if a sudden?

Oh, wait...

@gus3: Maybe..;-)