Photoshop “to photoshop” out of your lexicon

They begin the Photoshop section with the phrase “Trademarks are not verbs”. Here, they’re objecting to the ubiquitous use of “to photoshop”, meaning “to use Adobe® Photoshop® software or similar image manipulation software to manipulate an image”. This prohibits phrases like “Dude, that is so photoshopped” or “the printing company photoshopped it for us”. This seems to be a common theme, with paralells to Xerox fighting to stop us from Xeroxing documents, but it’s still a bit crazy.

I think it’s ridiculous that they think they can stop this usage. One of the unifiying features of human language is our lazyness, and our desire to only do the minimum amount of speaking necessary. To think that we’ll gladly surrender “Could you photoshop this real quick?” in favor of “Could you enhance this image using Adobe® Photoshop® software real quick?” is completely insane.

The fact of the matter is that the verbed form is more versatile as well. In English, we can use other particles to change the meanings of an established verb, and “to photoshop” is no exception. One can photoshop something in, photoshop it out, photoshop something away, and so on. However, one cannot “enhance using Adobe® Photoshop® software out the guy in the background”. Instead, we’re asked to “enhance an image using Adobe® Photoshop® software in such a way that the guy in the background is removed from the picture”. Yeah, we’re going to do that, Adobe. Sure thing.

Adobe doesn’t know what they want

The real beauty comes in that the next heading: “Trademarks are not nouns”. Adobe, you’re in blatant violation of your own trademark policies on this very website.

…and Photoshop is one of Adobe’s most valuable trademarks…
…Adobe and Photoshop are either registered trademarks or trademarks…
…Get everything in Photoshop CS3 plus tools for editing 3D and motion-based content and performing image analysis….

In each of the above phrases, “Photoshop” is acting as a noun. So, I don’t think noun-like usage is what Adobe’s really worried about. Let’s look at their explanation:

CORRECT: The image pokes fun at the Senator.
INCORRECT: The photoshop pokes fun at the Senator.

It looks like what they’re really trying to ban is “Photoshop-Related Metonymy“. Metonymy is where a commonly associated element (or part of something) is used to refer to the whole thing. For instance, “The White House was silent on the corruption charges” or “The press is more and more biased every day” are both metonymic expressions, using parts of these establishments to represent the whole.

So, although I suspect they have no problem with noun form use (“Photoshop® is exceptionally good at what it does”), they’re worried about metonymy with manipulated images, like “Photoshops are causing more scandals every day for the embattled prince”. Perhaps they should be clarifying that on their website, lest they be forced to sue themselves.

Other miscellaneous escapes from reality

According to Adobe, “Trademarks may never be used as slang terms”. This is just charming because it’s an attempt to control casual usage. I can understand their not wanting an ad campaign with “Help Photoshoppers Photoshop better”, but trying to regulate casual conversation shows Adobe to be out of touch with not only language usage, but with reality.

Finally, I’m not sure I buy this “Proper Adjectives” thing. To claim that “Adobe Photoshop” is incorrect and meaningless without adding “software” is a bit ridiculous. Whether or not they want to pretend that Photoshop isn’t a noun, it won’t really change how speakers view and use the term. It just makes them seem stodgy and delusional.

Adobe Systems Incorporated v. Continental Drift

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: A speaker (or grammarian) trying to stop language from changing is like a gardener trying to stop continental drift.

Adobe can write this up, and heck, they can even try and enforce parts of it with marketing and high-profile cases. However, I hope they realize the folly of trying to change established words and constructions, especially when the ones suggested are longer and less useful than the originals. No matter what they do, in everyday speech, people will photoshop images, those images will be photoshops, and photoshopping will be an entertaining pastime on the internet.

Know, however, that we’re not doing it to hurt you, Adobe. Our language is a language of love for your software, and the fact that “Photoshop” is so ubiquitous is a sign of our respect for your work. So, dearest Adobe, please stick to manipulating images, and leave the language manipulation to us.

On Saturday, I posted about Apple’s guide to blocking “profanity” in the Dictionary application. Well, shortly after I finished the post, I became curious about the blocking itself, and began to wonder what Apple actually considers to be profane, and how effective this filter actually is.

Ask the experts

I assume that, when looking for a good definition of profanity, Apple would check their own dictionary. Here’s how it defines “Profanity”:

profanity |prəˌfønədi| |proʊˌfønədi| noun ( pl. -ties)
• blasphemous or obscene language : an outburst of profanity.
• a swear word; an oath.
• irreligious or irreverent behavior.

ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: from late Latin profanitas, from Latin profanus ‘not sacred’ (see profane ).

For the record, I disagree with their IPA pronunciation (/prəfænəɾi/ is how I say it), but everything else sounds reasonable. So, according to Apple, all words that are swears, irreligious, “irreverant”, or obscene should be removed from the dictionary.

The hunt for profanity

Then, I set off to find obscene, irreligious, offensive, and swear-ish words. Gathered both from my own corrupted mind and from other sources (Urbandictionary, George Carlin’s Seven words you can’t say on TV, and more), I assembled these words in a list, and then slowly started plugging them in to Dictionary.app. Surprisingly, only one word that I came up with wasn’t in the dictionary, “Asshat”, not shocking given its relatively recent birth online. Everything else was included and defined quite academically. I also checked a few words that aren’t really obscene, but describe a tabooed act or subject (“fellatio” or “penis”)

Once I’d checked to see what was in the dictionary, I went about enabling the parental controls. This was actually a royal pain, and requires OS X server maintenance software along with some technical knowledge, but eventually, I got it done. (No, I don’t feel any need to post a walkthrough, read my last post).

Finally, I went back through and tried all the words on the list again. The results were fascinating, and words broke down into three categories.

Beware, this post gets rather packed with profanity after this point. It’s still all in academic context, I’m just trying to minimize the “Oh, think of the children” backlash.

Category One: Unchanged

Some of the words were present in the censored dictionary in exactly the same form as in the normal dictionary. There was no change at all to the dictionary entries for these words, and they were just as easily found as before.

To Apple’s credit, all the “innocent yet tabooed” terms (penis, vagina, fellatio, cunnilingus, dildo) were in this category, showing that they seem to have a healthy (in my eyes) idea of the difference between discussing naughty things and using profanity.

Also, Apple struck a good balance with religious terms considered to be swears by some. “Hell” and “Damn” were both uncensored, and their “profane” uses were discussed as well. “Blasphemy”, the most irreligious word I can imagine, remained.

Some of the entries in this category were a bit more surprising. “Bitch” and “Bastard” were fully present, even discussing derogatory meanings. “Boob” referring to the female breast (although not profane, still viewed negatively) was there. “Slut” and “Whore” were both present as well, unedited.

Much to my relief, “cum” was present and unchanged, both in latin and in English, even keeping the reference to it being an alternate spelling of “come”, whose orgasmic meaning is still present in its entry.

Category Two: Redacted Entries

This surprised me a bit, but there were a number of words which were still present in the dictionary, but redacted such that the “profane” uses were missing.

One example of this is the word “Pussy”. Here’s the normal entry:

pussy |ˌpʊsi| noun ( pl. -sies)
1 (also pussycat) informal a cat.
2 vulgar slang a woman’s genitals.
• offensive women in general, considered sexually.
• offensive sexual intercourse with a woman.
• informal a weak, cowardly, or effeminate man.

Here’s the censored, redacted version:

pussy |ˌpʊsi|
noun ( pl. -sies)
1 (also pussycat) informal a cat.

So, not only is the sexual meaning taken out, but the pejorative (insulting) “coward” meaning is removed as well.

There were other examples of redacted entries in the censored version. When you enable parental controls, “Cock” refers only to roosters, “Crap” is a dice game, “tits” are little gray birds, and a “prick” comes only from a needle.

Interestingly, some slurs were redacted to only include their normal meanings, so “fag” and “faggot” are no longer anti-gay slurs, just terms for a bundle of sticks, and a “dyke” isn’t an offensive term for a lesbian, but instead an alternate spelling for a large, water-blocking structure.

Category Three: Disappeared Entries

Some words were evidently too obscene to include at all (or lacked non-profane meanings). These entries were just taken out of the censored dictionary altogether, and a search redirects you to the closest word (“asshole” goes to “ashore”, for instance).

Some of these weren’t surprising. The F-Bomb and its derivatives (“fuck”, “fucker”, “motherfucker”) were all disappeared by the Parental Controls option. Vulgar terms for bodily functions and areas (“shit”, “asshole”, “piss”, “cunt”, “twat”, “bollocks”) all disappeared as well. Highly obscene sexually charged terms (like “poontang” and “cocksucker”) disappeared with the censorship as well.

Finally, perhaps the most tabooed word in American society, “nigger”, is taken out completely, even though the original entry explains the taboo-ness as well as discussing the contemporary self-referential usage by those of the term within the African-American community.

So, what is profane in Cupertino?

I must say, I’m fairly impressed with Apple’s technology and their restraint. Although they did a very good job of censoring patently offensive words (category three) that have little value except as swear words, they also dealt with double meanings (“cock” or “pussy”) very well by redacting entries. Their censorship was neither too zealous nor too lax, and frankly, if they insist on allowing this, they did it well.

However, as I said last time, I still believe that the dictionary shouldn’t be censored. Kids will find the words sooner or later, and it’s better they find out what they mean from an academic source than from a google search.

I’ve brought my dictionary back to normal mode now, and I encourage people to keep theirs there as well. Parents should be attentive to their children’s language development, and explain what swearing is, why those words are a problem, and what’s not approriate to say at Grandma’s house. What you consider to be obscene may be very different than what Apple’s engineers do, so there’s no sense in having them tell you what you can look up.

Oh, and for those who are curious, “Windows” does show up in the Censored version. I guess that proves that it’s not Steve Jobs making the call…

So, a friend of mine on Twitter recently linked me to a post in Apple’s Support manuals entitled “How to prevent profanity from appearing in Dictionary”.

The obscene and filthy people at Oxford American Dictionary

As most OS X users know, Apple includes a wonderful program called “Dictionary.app” with every copy of OS X 10.4. This program lets you access an electronic copy of the Oxford American Dictionary and Thesaurus. There, you can find good definitions, etymologies, and pronunciations. You can even have it give pronunciation in the IPA if you tell it to do so in the application’s Preferences dialog.

The beautiful part of this is that it’s an entire dictionary. It may not be the full, unabridged version, but it’s very good for free software. You can find nearly any word you’d like in there, ranging from phone to phoneme to allophone. However, you can also find all sorts of profanity, defined in academic terms.

Take, for example, the treatment of one of the more vulgar words in the English language, “fuck”:

fuck |fək| vulgar slang verb [ trans. ]
1 have sexual intercourse with (someone). • [ intrans. ] (of two people) have sexual intercourse.
2 ruin or damage (something).
noun an act of sexual intercourse.
• [with adj. ] a sexual partner.
exclamation used alone or as a noun ( the fuck) or a verb in various phrases to express anger, annoyance, contempt, impatience, or surprise, or simply for emphasis.

(There’s much, much more about this fascinating word)

So, although it definitely contains the word and examples of the usage, one could hardly argue that it’s truly wanton and profanely using them.

Why censor the Dictionary?

Yes, the Dictionary app contains uses of profanity. However, these uses are all academic, and used in the context of describing the profanity itself. So, this raises the obvious question of why one would bother censoring the dictionary at all.

Perhaps a parent might be afraid that little Jimmy will learn those horrid, horrid terms. However, in order for little Jimmy to find them, he’d have to seach for them.

Once little Jimmy knows the terms well enough to search for them, chances are, his mind is already “corrupted” and he’s heard or seen the terms elsewhere. No matter how much fundamentalist parents desire to do so, you can’t make him unlearn what a word means, so there’s not a whole lot of point to keeping the largely academic discussion of the words away from him.

However, even if little Jimmy stumbles across a profane word online, perhaps it’s better that he looks it up immediately and gets the relatively tame information from the Dictionary App, rather than asking his third grade teacher what it means.

Either way, Profanity is a fact of life, and no matter how badly some people don’t want to hear it, it exists. Blocking objective, academic analysis of it won’t make the “problem” go away, and really, it’ll only make the word more tantalizing.

So, don’t censor the Dictionary Application. In the age of the Internet, little Jimmy will always be able to find out what a given word means, no matter how hard you try to censor him. Let Jimmy use the dictionary to find out what words mean in an educational sense.

Unless, of course, you’d prefer he just type “fucking” into a Google Image Search and start browsing. I didn’t think so…

Now, as somebody who uses the IPA very, very frequently, such a thing would be wonderful if it worked well. However, I think it would be impossible to actually create a program that goes from English writing to IPA transcriptions without incredible advances in Artificial Intelligence and speech recognition. Here’s why…

Transcription, not translation

At the surface, this doesn’t seem so crazy. Apple includes a widget to do rough, automated translations with Dashboard, and although I never trust automated translations, it does alright for basic words and phrases. I suspect that our anonymous searcher saw that widget and thought “Wow, cool! I wonder if it can help me put something into the IPA”. However, the fundamental difference between translating a sentence into Spanish and putting that same sentence into the IPA is that the IPA isn’t really a language at all, but instead, it’s a method of writing sounds.

The International Phonetic Alphabet is really a set of symbols, each of which represents a sound, sound characteristic, or other element of spoken language. What the IPA allows a linguist (or speech pathologist, or teacher…) to do is to take spoken language and put it onto paper (‘transcription’) with a great deal more precision than most other writing systems. The IPA isn’t a language in itself, it’s just an alternative, phonetic writing system for other languages. The beauty of this is that the IPA is designed to be able to be used not just for English, but for any language. The IPA symbols can be used to transcribe sounds not just from English, but from languages all over the world.

Broad vs. Narrow Transcription

The IPA can be used to transcribe sounds with two different degrees of precision.

If one takes advantage of all the symbols and diacritics, one can make a “narrow” or “phonetic” transcription. At this level, the linguist aims to capture all the detail possible about the word or phrase, including variations across word boundaries, sounds that occur in speech but are unnoticed or unrecognized by native speakers, and even features like intonation and pauses. From these transcriptions, a well-trained linguist could pronounce the words and phrases almost exactly as the speaker did, based simply on the transcriptions. The first, smallest line in the title graphic is a narrow transcription of me pronouncing the site’s title.

This degree of precision would be impossible for a modern computer widget to produce, simply because narrow transcriptions are based on actual words and phrases by a speaker, and really, one needs a fairly trained ear to make an accurate narrow transcription of a word or phrase. Sure, it could use a database of narrowly transcribed words from other speakers, but really, that’s not a narrow transcription. It’s not going to pick up on the variations that each speaker produces, like accents, vowel changes, unusual sound choices, or even tiny speech errors.

The alternative is called “broad” or “phonemic” transcription, expresses the basic sounds of a language or phrase, often more precisely than the native writing system, but at the same time, leaves out detail that’s not necessary to a native speaker. The middle line in the title graphic for this page is a phonemic transcription. Some dictionaries, including the built in OS X dictionary (if you enable IPA in Dictionary Preferences), can show you the standard american IPA Broad transcription form of a word.

Now, using a dictionary of words in a given language and their IPA equivalents, a computer could likely match things and give a passable broad transcription. However, there are variations that occur between people that show up even at a broad level, and are large enough to identify a speaker’s accent, dialect, or even idiolect. For some people (myself included), “caught” and “cot” have the same vowel, but for others, they’re two distinct vowels. So, even at a broad level, you’re not going to get any sort of reliable transcription of one’s actual speech from a computer widget, just a rough approximation.

Why are you transcribing anyways?

In the end, whether such a widget would be useful at all boils down to your reason for needing a transcription. Some people might be learning English and would want a better method of knowing how a given word is supposed to sound. For that, any good dictionary’s pronunciation key should do the trick.

Some people might be interested in the IPA, or want to know how a given word sounds. For that, they’d be better off getting a good phonetics textbook and learning a bit of the IPA themselves, along with some knowledge of phonetics.

However, our widget searcher might just be stuck in an introductory Linguistics course, having to transcribe their speech for an assignment. If so, I offer just one piece of advice: Don’t plagarize transcriptions off the web or from a dictionary. Your professor should have no trouble noticing if you’re not transcribing your own dialect, and everybody’s got a dialect.

Remember, if there’s one thing that phonetics professors are good at, it’s picking out a phone-y.

Getting the fonts and layout

The beauty of this method is that it uses software built into Mac OS X, and that you can use IPA fonts in any application that supports Unicode (translation: lots of them), not just specific programs. You also don’t need to install a separate program to clutter up your computer, just a few free fonts and a keyboard layout. So, here’s your freeware shopping list:

Necessary files:
1. Charis SIL IPA Font – The best free IPA font out there (in my opinion) because it has bold, italic, and all sorts of other characters outside of IPA. The download link is around halfway down the page, grab the file with “(Windows, Macintosh and Linux)” next to it. Thanks to the Summer Institute of Linguistics, it’s completely free!
2.An IPA Keyboard Layout for OS X – SIL has created two versions. There’s a more comprehensive and modern version with every key you can imagine and more at The IPA-SIL key layout site. However, I use the Version 0.6 Alpha, not the more recent one on the above page. Although the more recent one works, it’s just a bit more complex. The instructions here are for the older, alpha version, which is no longer available through SIL and which I’ve hosted with documentation here: IPA-SIL Keyboard Layout Version 0.6 Alpha). Both layouts say that they’re specific to Doulos SIL, but that’s a blatant lie, as I’ve used both with the Charis SIL font.

Optional Files
Doulos SIL – A differently styled IPA font from SIL, missing the bold and italic forms that Charis has. Still free :)
SILIPA93 Fonts – These are desperately outdated, but occasionally necessary when reading other people’s old IPA.

Download at least the CharisSIL and the Keyboard layout, save them to your desktop (or a location of your choosing), and then proceed to the next step.

Power User’s Summary: Download CharisSIL and an IPA-SIL keyboard Layout from the above links

Installing the font

Now, double-click the CharisSIL(version).zip file that you saved to your desktop. It’ll unzip into a similarly named folder on your desktop. Take the CharisSILfontdocumentation.pdf file and move it to a safe place, it’s a handy guide to have around, and feel free to take a look at the readme and license files in the folder.

Now, if you want to install this font for yourself and every other user on your computer, place the four font files from the folder (CharisSILB.ttf, CharisSILBI.ttf, CharisSILI.ttf, CharisSILR.ttf) along with any other fonts you’re installing into the /Library/Fonts folder. You’ll need to give an administrator password to install them into that folder.

To install for yourself alone, do the same as above, except by copying things into /Users/yourname/Library/Fonts. No admin access needed for this route.

Power User’s Summary: Install the font files in either /Library/Fonts or /Users/you/Library/Fonts

Installing the layout

Double click “IPA-SIL keyboard(version).dmg” on your desktop. Now click the newly opened “IPA-SIL Keyboard” Disk Image on the desktop and examine the contents.

The very first step is to save IPA-SIL.pdf! In fact, frame it. Wallpaper your wall with copies of it. Get a version tattooed on your chest. Just make sure you have it. Without this, you’ll have trouble figuring out exactly which keypresses result in which characters, and this method won’t work very well at all.

Now, drag BOTH IPA-SIL.icns and IPA-SIL.keylayout into either /Library/Keyboard Layouts or /Users/yourname/Library/Keyboard Layouts. As before, you’ll need Admin access to install in /Library/Keyboard Layouts. Also, you might have to create the …/yourname/Library/Keyboard Layouts folder if you’re installing for yourself only.

Once you’ve placed the files in the right folder, restart your computer.

Power User’s Summary: Save IPA-SIL.pdf. Drag BOTH IPA-SIL.icns and IPA-SIL.keylayout into either /Library/Keyboard Layouts or /Users/you/Library/Keyboard Layouts. Restart.

Final Configuration

Once you’ve restarted, go to the System Preferences Application. Click the ‘International’ preference pane (Renamed “Language and Text” for Snow Leopard), then, click the “Input Menu” tab inside the International Pane, and you’ll be presented with a window like this:

In this window, make sure and select “Keyboard Viewer” (to see what symbols are where at a glance), “Allow a different input source for each document”, and “Show input menu in menu bar”. Also, feel free to change the shortcut to switch input methods to make things faster for you down the road.

Now, use the scroll bar to scroll through the list of options until you finally see “IPA-SIL”, and select it. It’s right below the Eskimo languages. See below:

Now that you’ve done that, you should have a little American flag (which regrettably cannot be changed, even if you’re using a US keyboard outside of the US) in your menu bar. Congratulations! You’re now set up to use the IPA on your mac.

hɛloʊ wɜɹld!

To test it out, fire up any text editor (OpenOffice, TextEdit, my personal favorite, Mellel, or even MS Word, if you insist) and open a document. Be very sure to select Charis SIL for your font in the document.

Now, click the little menu in the menubar and select IPA-SIL:

Start typing and you’ll find yourself typing IPA symbols! You’ll slowly learn the reasonably intuitive set of keypresses (e.g: Shift+N = Angma, Shift+R = Alveolar Tap), and soon, you’ll be typing in IPA nearly effortlessly in nearly any application. You can even IM your linguist friends in IPA if they have the font as well.

The best part? Thanks to these free and open source fonts and layouts, you’ll never need to write a Word macro again on OS X. oʊ, wəɾə wʌndɛrfl wɜɹld!

EDIT: I’ve heard that sometimes, Word doesn’t play nicely with this sort of input method. I’d highly recommend that if you have troubles, you try using TextEdit (built in), Mellel, or the free Office suites for OS X, OpenOffice and NeoOffice, all of which I’ve tried and know to work well.

At the very least, you should be able to copy/paste your IPA text into a word document, or hopefully even make the switch entirely to a better word processor. Although MS Word may be the most well known word processor, it’s far from being the best on OS X, and I highly encourage you to check out all the options.

I’m very pleased to say that now, as of version 4.5.14, this has been fixed, and Praat is now back to full, Universal Health on the Mac OS (in addition to its windows and Linux versions). Thanks, David and Paul!

For those of you who might not be familiar with it, Praat is an open-source Phonetics program, recording short bits of sound, and producing spectrograms and waveforms which can be studied by the phonetically inclined. Here’s an example of a spectrogram and waveform of a sentence produce by Praat from a recording of myself saying “Phonetics makes me very, very happy”:

Praat is completely free, and it’s not Spyware or Adware. If you’re at all curious about it or want to check it out, I’d give it a download. Even if you don’t know much about it, it’s interesting to look at waveforms of spectrograms.

So, to the authors of Praat, thanks a great deal for providing this software, for making it free, and for keeping it up to date. It’s a wonderful tool, and I really appreciate it. :)

For those unfamiliar with the expression, “To Eat Crow” (or “eating crow”) is an American English expression which refers to humbling yourself by admitting that a previously (and often strongly) stated opinion was wrong or incorrect. It’s roughly equivalent to the British expression “to eat humble pie” (colorfully discussed here). Now, here’s an example from this very blog to better show you the meaning.

A Brilliant Example of Crow Consumption

A few weeks ago, in my post “A Conditional Surrender”, I said the following:

I still don’t care for the Intel Chips, and would still love nothing more than a new line of PPC Macs, produced by Apple Computers, which would ideally be split off from Apple Music Whoring™.

(and)

6) I will be allowed to maintain my prior sentiments that iTunes, Spotlight, iChat, and, most importantly, the Intel Switch, suck.

Why am I eating crow, you ask? Well… I’m currently writing this post from an Intel Mac (MacBook Pro), and quite frankly, it’s a wonderful machine.

Recently, our family business lost one of its laptop computers, the poor old Powerbook was cracked in half in a terrible stroller-folding accident. Because of this, I was given the opportunity to upgrade my machine and pass my old one down to replace the less-used machine. After doing some research, I realized that, even though the soul might be different, the Intel Macs have a lot going for them in terms of specs.

So, I upgraded to a 17″ MacBook Pro, and have been very impressed. I’ve only run into a few bugs with the Intel software. (One is worth mentioning here: Praat‘s amplitude bars don’t work during recording, but it still records. It’s a known issue in the Intel version, and the creator is working to fix it as soon as he can.) The performance gain is huge, and the software (front row and photo booth) is slick. The MagSafe adapter alone is worth the price of admission.
Here’s the part where I eat crow: The Intel switch might not have been such a bad idea after all. It gets us better specs, more efficiency, and a whole new set of chip options. Yeah, the transition might have cost a little of the computer’s essence, but given the performance I’ve seen, it’s worth it. If you’ve got the cash to do so, upgrading to a MacBook Pro is definitely worth it. I was wrong, and you can disregard my previous knocks on the Intel Macs. (Note, however, that the iTunes Music Store still sucks. That’s not gonna change any time soon.)

How about the Idiom?

So, now that I’ve eaten my share of crow (purely for linguistic benefit, mind you), let’s discuss this beautiful idiom. Another wonderful example of conventional usage comes from a pet project of mine, the EnronSent Corpus:

enronsent24:33788:I’m back in the office today. Well I see you have to eat crow! I didn’t get a chance to watch the game but I saw CU play Kansas St. and CU looked good. I even think CU has a good chance of beating UT in Austin this weekend.

So, it’s mainstream enough to have been used in the emails of Enron employees. The next question, of course, it where the idiom came from. This article explains the origins as follows:

The origin seems fairly obvious: the meat of the crow, being a carnivore, is presumably rank and extremely distasteful, and the experience is easily equated to the mental anguish of being forced to admit one’s fallibility.

The author also gives a very inventive folk etymology (a story about the origin of a word created by people at large, which is usually just as colorful as it is wrong) for the expression involving two officers in the war of 1812, but then points out that the expression didn’t show up until the 1850′s, and even then, was in the form “to eat boiled crow”.

Wikipedia comes up with another wonderful etymology (explanation of the word’s origin) for the term:

Another possible connection comes from a short story by Rudyard Kipling. In his story ‘The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes’ Morrowbie Jukes falls into a place from which he cannot escape. Another man trapped there catches wild crows and eats them, but Morrowbie in his pride declares, ‘I shall never eat crow!’ After days of nothing to eat, his hunger and desperation finally forces him to do what he swore he would never do – literally eat crow.

However, I’m tempted to say that this is another folk etymology. If the first article is to be trusted, the expression first showed up in the 1850′s, and Rudyard Kipling was born in 1865. Unless he had a pension for prenatal storytelling, the expression was likely not coined by him, although he may well have written it into a story.

Interestingly, my electronic etymology dictionary mentions the existence of a “Walter Etecroue” in the 1361 calendar of letter books of London. It also dates the expression’s first appearances to 1877 (when Rudyard Kipling was 12), so the Kipling hypothesis is still doubtful.

So, really, like so many other expressions and words, the origins of this idiom are lost. However, it’s still a great expression. Recanting a badly thought out belief is never pleasant for anybody, but I should really be more cautious then I am. I’m a vegetarian, and it wouldn’t do to be eating crow often. I wonder if Soy Crows count…

“You can now get GPLed JVM sources from Sun. Everyone seemed to be expecting the desktop version (J2SE) but J2ME has been released first. It looks to be buildable for Linux x86, MIPS, and ARM platforms. Sun now calls it ‘phoneME.’ Enjoy.”

For those without the technical background, Sun Microsystems, who created the original code to the popular Java programming language (used by many applications and websites), has decided to release the source code to that language, making it usable for anybody. This is very cool, and will be a huge step for open source software. w00t for Sun!

What caught my eye, though, is the name: “PhoneME”, which is a recapitalization of “Phoneme“, a linguistics term, indicating a group of sounds, which, although different in terms of sound and articulation, sound the same to a native speaker of a certain language (think the L’s in “People” and “Light”).

I’m not certain why they chose this particular name, but hey, whatever. Perhaps it’s a commentary on the fact that, although Java has many distinctly different libraries and implementation, all users view it as one thing. That, or maybe they just don’t have a clue what they did. Yeah, I’m gonna go with the second option there.

I love Open Source Software, I really do. It’s good stuff, and most of the time, you’ll find what you need without paying for code. However, there are some software titles for the Mac that, frankly, are worth every penny. Also, it’s worth noting that although some of these are by large groups or corporations, lots of them are independent developers, so for those, Piracy just isn’t cool. Rest assured that anything that makes this list is, in my mind, worth every penny.

Note, I’m not getting a kickback on any of these links or programs. I just want to share some of the software I use that makes my life better.

The Grand Prize: LaunchBar ($19.95 for Home Users)

This is the first thing I install when I wipe my drive. Because of this, I can have a 2 icon dock, and just call up the obscure applications I don’t use often with a few keystrokes. In addition, it learns, based on your past habits, what you’re looking for with a given keystroke, and brings that up first. Add in the excellent iTunes search capabilities, and this software is worth every penny.

The Other Grand Prize: Mellel ($49.00, $35 for Students and Educators)

This is the single best Multilingual word processor in existence for OS X. Support for right to left as well as left to right writing, different languages, all sorts of obscure typesetting, and character style settings you’ll never know you need, Mellel’s got it all. Linguists, you’d better be buying this, there’s nothing better for writing grammars and making complex tables/glossed examples. Now with an XML format, for more document portability. This is what Office for Mac wishes it was. Great stuff.

The Third Grand Prize: Escape Velocity: Nova ($30.00) (No Universal Binary, Windows version available)

My vote for one of the greatest computer games ever. Great gameplay, great stories, and a really addictive experience. Prepare to sacrifice hours to this game, but know that it’s worth it. Also, if you do get it, look for a “Return to Earth” mission for the single most creative storyline ever. Great language use, too, discussed here.
The Runner Up: TextMate (€39)

Great for programming, great for TeX, great for just plain plaintext. If you’re CompSci, a programmer, or just somebody who messes around with scripts and files, the context highlighting and advanced features will make this worth your while. Also, it just works, and elegantly, at that. Worth every penny of the (admittedly large) price.

Other Recommendations (in no particular order):

Apple’s Keynote Software ($79, with *blech* Pages)

Imagine if Powerpoint were Mac-friendly, well supported, and just plain beautiful. Powerpoint can do everything Keynote can, but Keynote does it with style. Combine with Mellel and NeoOffice to eliminate your need for Office altogether. Keynote’s worth paying the Apple Tax. (Of note, I wouldn’t recommend “Pages”, Apple’s attempt at a typesetting program, if it weren’t included in the bundle with Keynote. It’s just a bit clunky, and not quite good enough at anything to be worth it alone).

The Missing Sync for PalmOS ($39.95)

Got a Treo/Lifedrive/Tungsten/Other Palm device? Got a Mac? Good. Now, throw out the CD that came with your device, and download Missing Sync. It integrates with Address Book, iCal, iTunes and more. Also, it lets you easily perform a Bluetooth sync with supported devices (press a button, and your phone and computer will sync from your belt). It’s really an incredible program, and handles everything Palm’s software does, except, you know, well.

Transmit 3 for OS X ($29.95)

This is, hands down, the best FTP/SFTP client for OSX. Compatible, easy, slick, and full featured, Transmit makes FTP a pleasure. This was one of the programs I really missed on Linux. If you do lots of FTP, this is what you’ve been searching for.

VoodooPad ($29.95)

Want to make your own Wiki for your everyday life? This is a great way to do it. Organize files, documents, and even pictures in Wiki form, with easy exportability and lots of great features. They’ve updated it since I got my license, so I’m sure it’s only gotten better.

Adobe Photoshop CS2 ($ Your Left Arm) (No Universal Binary)

It’s great for any sort of Graphics editing, and Bridge is as good of a Photo album viewer as exists. However, it’s really, really, really, really, really expensive. Not to mention the draconian licensing scheme. However, it’s really the only decent option for graphics editing (the Gimp or its derivatives don’t count, sorry), so it’s here.

Command and Conquer Generals Deluxe Pack ( $54.00)

It’s a guilty pleasure, and a great Mac port.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic ( $44.00) (No Universal Binary)

A great game with great graphics and an engaging storyline. A must for any Star Wars fans.

Cheating a bit: Joyent Connector ($15-100 per month)

This is cheating because it’s not actually a mac app, but a hosted web application for all platforms. I’ve been with Textdrive Hosting (great stuff) for a long time, and have always loved and recommended them. Recently, they merged with Joyent, and the Connector is Joyent’s flagship project. The Connector is a WebApp that handles your Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Bookmarks, and some files, with an emphasis on collaboration. However, even if you don’t collaborate with anybody, it’s great software for organizing your life and accessing it from anywhere. It’s got some bugs still, but they’re still offering lifetime plans (I’ve got one), so this is a good time to get in on the ground level if you’re expecting to use the service for a long time. (Update: Sadly, Joyent is still having trouble getting the bugs out and the basic functionality in. I can’t really recommend this as your sole email and productivity solution at this point. Sorry, Joyent.)

Conclusion:

Take a look at these programs, and see if they look right for you. As always, your mileage may vary, and although I hope you love them as much as I do, everybody’s got a different style. Many of these products have demos, so try before you buy. Take this with the appropriate grain of e-salt, and enjoy!

Free or Open-Source Software for OS X:

Adium X (http://www.adiumx.com)

Free and Open Source, this is the best IM client for OSX, period. Unlike iChat, it supports AIM, Jabber, Yahoo, MSN, and even more services you’ve never heard of, and the interface is much nicer. A gem of the Open Source Mac community.

The Charis SIL Font (http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=CharisSILfont)

A free, beautiful, and complete International Phonetic Alphabet (and more) font. Good stuff.

Firefox 2.0 (http://mozilla.com)

It might not be the fastest browser available, or the most OSX-like, but it’s still my pick. Combine it with extensions like CookieCuller, AdBlock Plus, and DownThemAll, and you’ve got a great, vastly compatible browser.

Freemind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)

A good piece of mind mapping software. It takes some getting used to, but once you do, you’re golden.

IPA-SIL Keyboard Layout for OSX (http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=ipa-sil_keyboard)

A free keyboard layout for OSX that allows you to type in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Very good stuff.

iStumbler (http://www.istumbler.net/)

Software for finding open wireless networks. Not that you’d ever do that.

MplayerOSX (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18580)

Mplayer is a great piece of software on Linux, and the OSX port isn’t bad either. It’s necessary for playing most .avi files and some exotic Mpeg files. Not perfect, but free and necessary. Pair it with VLC and Flip4Mac to be able to open damned near any movies you come across. Make sure to use Version 1.0x as opposed to 2.x. These are two different versions of the software, and 1.x is far more recent and updated. It’s also universal.

NeoOffice (http://neooffice.com)

Repeat after me: “I do not need Office for Mac”. This is great FOSS software, a port of OpenOffice.org that really takes advantage of OS X’s features. I’ve not had a copy of Office installed for at least 5 years, and I’ve never been happier.

Onyx (http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/onyx.html)

Free, easy system maintenance software for OSX.

Praat (http://www.praat.org)

Phonetics software, with a very functional OSX port. It’s even universal. A bit niche, but if you’re analyzing speech, there’s none better.

Tofu (http://amarsagoo.info/tofu/index.shtml)

Sooner or later, everybody stumbles upon a 500 page plaintext document that they really want to read. Tofu is designed to do just that. It formats the text in a nice font of your choosing, on the “paper color” of your choosing, with single or multi-column display. It even replicates page turning. It’s a niche tool, but it does a great job of it. 2.0 (coming soon) will be universal.

TinkerTool (http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html)

Tinkertool lets you change little hidden preferences within OS X, some of which can be handy. Font size, finder prefs, etc. Ever wanted to have your dock in the lower right or lower left corner of your screen? This is the way to do it. Just don’t go crazy with it.

UnRarX (http://www.unrarx.com/)

This is a great little piece of software that opens RAR archives, and does it damned well. Support for multi-part files, password protected RAR’s, and lots of other little small things. Most importantly, though, it makes the overzealous and buggy Stuffit Expander even less necessary.

Vienna (http://www.opencommunity.co.uk/vienna2.php)

A FOSS RSS reader. RSS (Really simple syndication) is a way to let people watch your site, without visiting it manually. Vienna is a free reader for the RSS format, and is already a great piece of software that can only get better from here.

Conclusion!

So, check out these programs if it sounds like you’ve got a need. If you’re looking for something else, check out OpenSourceMac. In a few days, I’ll post my list of commercial software that’s worth paying for on OS X. In the mean time, enjoy the free world, and have a good day!