Orphaning package

Michael Schwendt mschwendt at gmail.com
Sat Apr 26 20:27:27 UTC 2008


On 26 Apr 2008 13:17:11 -0500, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:

> >>>>> "MS" == Michael Schwendt <mschwendt at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> MS> There is no such implication.
> 
> My apologies.  Perhaps it's just the language barrier.  FYI, when you
> use the phrase "in the past", many English speakers will read an
> implication that the behavior has changed.

Okay. Reading too much between the lines/words can change the meaning. I
understand that one can interpret a lot into it. "Do you know the shortest
way to Tower Bridge?" -- "[When I was in England] In the past, I would
have taken a cab. *But* nowadays it's faster to take a bus." Without
the "But..." sentence, what would the first sentence imply?

There are other phrases that are much more explicit, ranging from
"formerly" and "previously" to the very clear: "FESCo _used to_ do
conflict resolving". I would have chosen such a phrase if I knew that
things are different nowadays.

What I wanted to point out with the initial comment is that the old FESCO,
which I was more familiar with, would have looked into such issues. There
is only a different implication, and that is that someone in the committee
either gets informed about the issues or notices a discussion on one of
the prominent communication channels. Hence my question whether the
problems "have been discussed elsewhere before" (i.e. not just in this
thread).

> The same goes for phrases
> like "until now", which I believe have quite different connotations on
> other languages.

"Until now" is an explicit comparison of past and present, because it
refers to a time-span that ends "now". Something during that time now is
different. "In the past" or "in former times" refers to an
imprecise/unspecific period of time somewhere in history.

> Sorry for lecturing, but I figured you might want to understand how I
> read your message.

Never mind. I don't mind corrections/hints at all.

-- 
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) - Linux 2.6.23.15-137.fc8
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