Cory Doctorow  05-30-2003
08:45 PM ET (US)
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Who cares what the word meant originally? We have many senses of the word "faggot" that are completely removed from "small bundle of twigs" -- they aren't wrong. Language is usage, not the other way around.
And shibboleth means, among other things, "something that a group of people say that is distinctive of that group."
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Dan Kaminsky 05-21-2003
08:46 AM ET (US)
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OK guys, you're _all_ wrong about Shibboleths.
They're not just a way for others to identify a cultural group. They're a way for a cultural group to identify its own members. Shibboleths, if I remember correctly, were long tracts of hebrew spoken without error, akin to a secret fraternity handshake -- something that not only was difficult to execute but also difficult to learn; one would have needed to have been part of the organization for some time to execute it correctly.
Shibboleth is really the wrong word here.
--Dan
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Chris Johnson 05-19-2003
04:11 AM ET (US)
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Not to also be a dick, but it looks like the definition is more like "a pronunciation of a word that can be used to identify a particular cultral group." The definition you've used appears to be a fairly major distortion of the original. Personally, I don't trust definitions from "The American HeritageŽ Dictionary of the English Language" since I noticed that their definition of irony was in fact the definition of sarcasm.
Perhaps a better term to use would be FUD.
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Cory Doctorow 05-18-2003
10:36 PM ET (US)
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> Not to be a dick, but I don't think "shibboleth" means what you think it means.
I think it means: "A word or phrase identified with a particular group or cause; a catchword." I.e., something that a small class of linkwhoring journos repeat ad infinitum in order to drum up controversy.
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__x 05-18-2003
10:22 PM ET (US)
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Thank you. I was wondering whne someone was going to point out that nonsense. IF anything when I search Google all those lame news archives get in the way of good Blogger posts I am looking for.
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sac 05-18-2003
03:56 PM ET (US)
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Not to be a dick, but I don't think "shibboleth" means what you think it means.
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tim jansen 05-18-2003
02:54 PM ET (US)
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I never understood why a blob should be less valuable that a regular news paper. Sometimes blogs contain information that is more valueable than the information in the NYT, for example people analysed the protocol of the iTunes Music Store and put the description into their blogs, instead of adding them on a "regular" page. It certainly contained more useful information than most articles in mainstream papers.
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aha 05-18-2003
02:34 PM ET (US)
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I figured out a while back how to read NYT and WPost without signing in. Just type the headline, or author and date, into the search box on Google News. Bingo—there’s your story. Then navigate within the paper. Don’t tell anyone. Edited 05-18-2003 02:36 PM
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