Linux file system hierarchy
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@tonyshowoff said:
@coliver I was mostly using that as a rant against young people, you know how is typical of older people. Like "those damn vidya games." It is unusual to me, but I'm not bent out of shape about it, I just wanted to explore the history of it and how the popularity does seem to be fairly new. The first time I heard it was in 2010, I think, and at first I had no idea what the guy was talking about, and I had use Unix and been apart of both BSD and Linux communities since the mid 90s, a bit earlier in a few cases, but never had once heard anyone say "etsee."
And while it doesn't change the meaning of what they're talking about, it does create needless ambiguity for an abbreviation which already has had a pronunciation since the High Middle Ages. Like I said, "sighs-op", people who use "sighs-op" often get defensive like "etsee" people, just as you did, and yeah the typical response is "I don't care." Well, that's obvious, if you did, you'd change it, so that's moot and just serves as a "nyanya I don't care" more than anything constructive, not that I'm any more constructive.
If you prefer etsee, that's fine, keep using it, but "et cetera", depending on how you say it is only 1 or 2 more syllables in length and isn't as ambiguous, though I guess in time that may change since it seems to be getting more popular.
I first started diving into Linux in highschool and first heard the pronunciation of etc in college in 2007. So not saying I don't care is something similar to "does it really make a difference?", as you've said for the past 7-8 years this is how I've heard it, it may have originally been wrong but at this point the ambiguity is gone and the majority of people understand what you mean when you say one or the other.
I have heard "e-t-c" a lot though, which is one syllable longer than "etsee," but actually I think I've heard more people say "e-t-c" than even "et cetera" and I have noticed it's heavily used among non-UK Europeans, though I've heard a lot of Americans and English say "e-t-c" too.
I've head it mentioned as e-t-c a few time but mostly with foreign (I'm obviously an American) professors, mostly from India or China, again I immediately understood their meaning behind this.
I am the same person that really dislikes that we are moving toward text speech and emoji in high school English papers.... This one doesn't really bother me.
What? Are you serious? You're pulling my chain here, right? Emoji? In some universe I can understand text to speech, but emoji?
Don't get me started, I helped grade a few English papers while I was working in a high school, I know my writing here isn't that great but I do have a fairly strong understanding of the English language. To emphasize a point the kids were using emoji at the end of specific sentences. At least they used the right ones.
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@coliver said:
Don't get me started, I helped grade a few English papers while I was working in a high school, I know my writing here isn't that great but I do have a fairly strong understanding of the English language. To emphasize a point the kids were using emoji at the end of specific sentences. At least they used the right ones.
I guess now in literature you can show, not tell
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@coliver said:
Don't get me started, I helped grade a few English papers while I was working in a high school, I know my writing here isn't that great but I do have a fairly strong understanding of the English language. To emphasize a point the kids were using emoji at the end of specific sentences. At least they used the right ones.
Did it print the text characters or the replacement graphic? LOL
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@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
Don't get me started, I helped grade a few English papers while I was working in a high school, I know my writing here isn't that great but I do have a fairly strong understanding of the English language. To emphasize a point the kids were using emoji at the end of specific sentences. At least they used the right ones.
Did it print the text characters or the replacement graphic? LOL
It was a black and white character image replacement. Which I don't believe word of google docs does natively, so they went through the effort of importing it as an image into the file. So I guess 'A' for effort?
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@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
Don't get me started, I helped grade a few English papers while I was working in a high school, I know my writing here isn't that great but I do have a fairly strong understanding of the English language. To emphasize a point the kids were using emoji at the end of specific sentences. At least they used the right ones.
Did it print the text characters or the replacement graphic? LOL
It was a black and white character image replacement. Which I don't believe word of google docs does natively, so they went through the effort of importing it as an image into the file. So I guess 'A' for effort?
What did the teacher say about that?
I'll just toss it out there, I'm with you. They should almost get a failing grade for that.
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@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
Don't get me started, I helped grade a few English papers while I was working in a high school, I know my writing here isn't that great but I do have a fairly strong understanding of the English language. To emphasize a point the kids were using emoji at the end of specific sentences. At least they used the right ones.
Did it print the text characters or the replacement graphic? LOL
It was a black and white character image replacement. Which I don't believe word of google docs does natively, so they went through the effort of importing it as an image into the file. So I guess 'A' for effort?
What did the teacher say about that?
I'll just toss it out there, I'm with you. They should almost get a failing grade for that.
The teacher has a good sense of humor, and the rest of the paper wasn't written very well. So it did indeed fail. I think he made his comments with hand drawn emoji too, although I didn't see the final result. This was the first paper that I saw, there were two to three others, then a few later in the year as well. I only helped with that one assignment.
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If I may weigh in on on the matter, I think when you allow yourself to think from only the American bubble mentality, you tend to think the world is wrong when things aren't said and done the way America do it.
The truth of the matter is there were expressions before there were true pronunciation of any words. All words have evolved over time and to be frustrated about how a world sounds is just Fudiculous (my way of saying Fk'n ridiculous). A lot of people tends to get frustrated when the world don't share such passionate nostalgia about life as they do. It's funny how the youth wants to just live life while the older generation would like to slow time down or have it to be stuck in an era that makes their heart swell. However, both mentalities are well needed. The youth brings fun to life as the elders bring wisdom.
You see, whether you care to believe it or not, like people, words and phrases have nicknames as well. Some people will choose to say "Hello, how are you today" while someone else will choose to say "w'sup". Just because the phrases are different doesn't mean that they aren't the same. With that being said, just because one may have been a professor doesn't mean LIFE gave them the authority to authorize how a word should evolve. How wise can one be to avoid the fact that culture as well as race has an effect on how words evolve? A wise man said, those who protest change in life are either lazy and or have no strength to keep up with life. Who's to say that etc wasn't another world prior to it being excepted as et cetera for most of the world?
I think I may have a lil (another way of saying "little") insight as to where the pronunciation etsee come from. I'm here watching some tutorials, time frame 2004, from CBT Nuggets on linux and they are saying etsee all over the place in the video. Which tells me that the CBT Nuggets help breath the term into existance via videos.
On one hand I think it's beautiful how @tonyshowoff is passionate about his era, but disappointed that someone of his intelligence isn't excepting that fact that each generation customize life the way they see fit for comfort with words, beliefs and music. We should appreciate our own eras as well as share the beauty of it. However, we shouldn't discourage the new generation how to customize their era just because it's not what we are use to. Hence, having the strength to keep up with life.
Sorry for the lil journal. In conclusion...we should all learn how to except others and new generations as they are and avoid forcing our own standards on them. -
@nadnerB thank you so much for sharing that chart. I really appreciate that!
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@MrWright4hire said:
.we should all learn how to except others and new generations as they are and avoid forcing our own standards on them.
People can talk how they like in their private lives, but professionally we should conform to standards so that everyone can understand each other. IT needs standards. I understand and can converse in American English, even though I'm not American, because I accept that a lot of standards in the IT industry are American. That's the common language so I have to respect that. I don't talk American down the pub though, where I might slip into my local dialect.
Doesn't mean standards can't evolve though, so long as everyone is clear. It's the first time I've ever heard of "etsee", but if that becomes the standard I'll just learn to adjust.
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@MrWright4hire said:
On one hand I think it's beautiful how @tonyshowoff is passionate about his era, but disappointed that someone of his intelligence isn't excepting that fact that each generation customize life the way they see fit for comfort with words, beliefs and music. We should appreciate our own eras as well as share the beauty of it. However, we shouldn't discourage the new generation how to customize their era just because it's not what we are use to. Hence, having the strength to keep up with life.
I really hope this doesn't come across as condescending, trust me that's not my intent, but we are talking about the pronunciation of an abbreviation when spoken still, aren't we? I don't think it's that big of a deal, I was exploring the issue, and I even said that it seems as though "etsee" may become even more popular, but I didn't say or even mean to imply that if someone says that they know less, can do less, etc. I just find it really unusual and it wasn't meant to be pronounced that way. Additionally on the issue, if you read "I like cats, dogs, etc" you wouldn't say aloud "I like cat, dogs, etsee." That's neither here nor there, it's simply not that big of a deal, it's just really unusual.
And here's where I agree with @Carnival-Boy it's important to have standards, and this is an example of a newly popular thing hurting quality of work (time-wise), because I didn't understand at first what the other guy was saying when he told me "etsee" until he described it.
I've noticed this same issue with "intranet" which has morphed to mean "internal web site" rather than essentially a LAN, and that one I think is pretty annoying actually, more so than etsee, because it's not an issue of mispronouncing (as far as I'm concerned) it's an issue of completely changing the meaning of an established term in order to describe something else which already has one. It creates potential confusion and monstrous overlap with words like "internet" and "web site." This, however, has basically become main stream so I am not suggesting a crusade to stop it, but what I do, personally is, when someone uses it properly on other forums I'm on, I praise them for doing so, even if they're not even the OP.
However, if someone uses it incorrectly, I don't bring it up unless I'm speaking directly to them about something else. Is this insane? Probably, but my view is if amateur IT people can, at a whim, completely redefine what things mean based on god-only-knows-what, then it could be a thing where we need to create an Urban Dictionary for IT terms and go on consensus what people are talking about when they're trying to get a quote for a job or trying to define a project. See why this is important?
Normal people saying something incorrectly is nothing we can control (see hacker, hacking) or even try to, but within our realm, we need to at least try to stick to established standards.
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@tonyshowoff said:
What about all those damn young people now saying "etsee" for "etc" instead of "et cetera" or the more typical European "e-t-c"?
The etc in UNIX is not short of et cetera but is actually pronounced etsee. It's a big deal that UNIX people make to make sure that people don't accidentally confuse it with et cetera.
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@tonyshowoff said:
I'm not the only person that's reporting hearing a brash, 20-something, Ubuntu sportsman saying "etsee" and not knowing what the hell he's talking about at first. I've only heard it in the last 5 years or so from really young people who use things like Ubuntu.
The pronunciation of etc as etsee was actually taught as part of the AIX / UNIX certification track back in 2000. It's certainly not a new thing. If someone called it et cetera I would think that they were young and were not aware of the history of the etc directory in UNIX.
Just like /usr is pronounced "you sir" not "user" because it is the "UNIX System Repository" and not short for "User".
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@tonyshowoff said:
I've only heard, vaguely, of reports of much older school than me people saying "etsee" though I've never once actually heard this. Also a lot of date-based searching, it seems that "etsee" is very rarely mentioned before about 2009, and almost never prior to 2004, though it does come up.
After over 20 years in UNIX administration, I've yet to hear it as anything except etsee or E-T-C. That anyone thought it was et cetera is news to me. And I know UNIX admins in the thousands including from pretty big UNIX shops including IBM itself and CitiGroup (which was the world's largest Solaris shop when I was there.) And a lot of those people had UNIX going back to 1990 or even the 80s.
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@nadnerB said:
@tonyshowoff said:
What about all those damn young people now saying "etsee" for "etc" instead of "et cetera" or the more typical European "e-t-c"?
AAAARRRRRGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!! That makes me want to S.o.I.P. (Slap over Internet Protocol)
etsee is the industry standard and, AFAIK, always has been. You could argue for several options, but as it is not et cetera, that is one that you can't say. Etsee, E-T-C, or something close could be argued as there is no central naming authority to define what it must be. But it is not Latin, et cetera is the only option that I know would be wrong as that's something completely different.
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@Dashrender said:
I've heard the use of 'etsee' but never in relation to linux.
I don't say et cetera either, I say e-t-c.
If you are in UNIX, say etsee or e-t-c. If you are using English and it is an abbreviation you should always say et cetera.
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@tonyshowoff said:
I have heard "e-t-c" a lot though, which is one syllable longer than "etsee," but actually I think I've heard more people say "e-t-c" than even "et cetera" and I have noticed it's heavily used among non-UK Europeans, though I've heard a lot of Americans and English say "e-t-c" too.
I don't agree there. If you tell me to put files in or "go to" et cetera I'm going to be pretty confused since there is no filesystem component named or intended to mean et cetera. Just because etc is also short fo et cetera doesn't mean that you can extrapolate that term from the filesystem name.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Doesn't mean standards can't evolve though, so long as everyone is clear. It's the first time I've ever heard of "etsee", but if that becomes the standard I'll just learn to adjust.
In the pure UNIX Admin space, I've never heard or heard rumour of anything but etsee. AFAIK, it is and has always been the industry standard both in official and de facto practice.
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@scottalanmiller Based on what? Even manuals as far back as 1984, which I linked, point out it is short for et cetera. If it wasn't short for et cetera, what would it possibly be short for?
/usr is user, I sort of feel like you're being sarcastic now, because /usr was the original location for home directories, like /usr/dmr for Dennis Ritchie. I don't know of early attestments at all that these are anything except abbreviations, the acronyms come much later, seemingly the late 90s and early 2000s is when they were made popular.
If there are attestments that /usr means anything other than user, and /etc means anything other than et cetera prior to 1984, I'd love to see them, and that isn't sarcasm, but it's as far back as I was able to find, granted I didn't look too hard.
I do know people have been saying etsee for a long time, I even said I've heard of people saying it for years, I've never witnessed this myself though at all.
But you mention AIX, so I'm curious now if that has something to do with it at well. We're all saying Unix and even talking about Linux, but I'm starting to wonder if the overall community also has influence on this as well. I'm surprised you've never heard "et cetera" before, even 20 years ago I remember explicitly hearing that, because early on I said "e-t-c", and this was in the Linux community at the time, later on I got heavily involved in FreeBSD and also Sun, but admittedly I didn't have voice discussions about Sun that much, mostly electronic so I can't say with any confidence how people in that community said much of anything.
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What drives me really crazy is when people are sloppy with SQL. Unlike /etc which has no defining body with authoritative pronunciation decision making power to determine what it must be, SQL, in all cases, does have a current, existing body that determines how it is pronounced in every instance. This is because the pronunciation is determined by the vendors who make the product. There is no ambiguity. Yet, for a series of products where there is no grey area, few things are pronounced more loosely!! In many cases these are commercial product or company names, not subject to personal interpretation.
SQL the language is pronounced "ess cue ell" and is owned and defined by IBM and several standards bodies. The pronunciation guide was built into the spec to make sure no one mistook the intent since SQL replaced the earlier SEQUEL language which, quite obviously, was pronounced "sequel."
MS SQL Server is also pronounced "sequel server" and is owned and defined by Microsoft. This is the only major vendor pronouncing it in this fashion.
MySQL is pronounced "my ess cue ell" and is owned and defined by Oracle.
PostgreSQL is pronounced "Post gress cue ell" and is owned and defined by PostgreSQL itself.
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@scottalanmiller said:
What drives me really crazy is when people are sloppy with SQL. Unlike /etc which has no defining body with authoritative pronunciation decision making power to determine what it must be, SQL, in all cases, does have a current, existing body that determines how it is pronounced in every instance. This is because the pronunciation is determined by the vendors who make the product. There is no ambiguity. Yet, for a series of products where there is no grey area, few things are pronounced more loosely!! In many cases these are commercial product or company names, not subject to personal interpretation.
SQL the language is pronounced "ess cue ell" and is owned and defined by IBM and several standards bodies. The pronunciation guide was built into the spec to make sure no one mistook the intent since SQL replaced the earlier SEQUEL language which, quite obviously, was pronounced "sequel."
MS SQL Server is also pronounced "sequel server" and is owned and defined by Microsoft. This is the only major vendor pronouncing it in this fashion.
MySQL is pronounced "my ess cue ell" and is owned and defined by Oracle.
PostgreSQL is pronounced "Post gress cue ell" and is owned and defined by PostgreSQL itself.
I remember talking to you about this at Spiceworks meeting and I did research (by that I mean looked it up for once) after we spoke and I saw you were right. I try to say "Sequel" for everything except the name "MySQL" but I sometimes fall back into saying "S-Q-L" for the language, but far less often than I used to. I always said "Sequel" for SQL Server and T-SQL, etc. My main confusion was calling SQL used for MySQL "S-Q-L" as well, not just in the name.
Edit: I'm now confused, are you saying the language is or is not "Sequel" since it replaced "SEQUEL"?
