From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,751584f55705ddb7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kst@thomsoft.com (Keith Thompson) Subject: Re: Ada is almost useless in embedded systems Date: 1996/02/19 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 140002391 sender: news@thomsoft.com (USENET News Admin @flash) x-nntp-posting-host: pulsar references: <823906039.22113@assen.demon.co.uk> <4fgrq3$mc4@qualcomm.com> <4g54r5$57j@toads.pgh.pa.us> organization: Thomson Software Products, San Diego, CA, USA newsgroups: comp.lang.ada originator: kst@pulsar Date: 1996-02-19T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In <4g54r5$57j@toads.pgh.pa.us> tore@lis.pitt.edu (Tore Joergensen) writes: > Off topic: I'm just a little curious about this use of 'troll'... > Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (1984) lists > two interpretations; "(in Scandinavian myth) supernatural being, a giant, > or, in later tales, a mischievous but friendly dwarf" and "fish with rod > and line by pulling bait through the water behind a boat". Even a 'Current > English'-dictionary from 1984 isn't current anymore :-), so I'm wondering: > Is this a common use of 'troll', and if it is, is it a noun made from the > 'fishing' verb? Still off topic: Quoting The Jargon File, version 3.3.0: > :troll: v.,n. To utter a posting on {Usenet} designed to > attract stupid responses or {flame}s. May derive from the > phrase "trolling for {newbie}s" or some similar construction. > The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies > and flamers to make themselves look even more like idiots than they > already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and > experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't > fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. > > Some people claim that the troll is properly a narrower category > than {flame bait}, that a troll is categorized by containing > some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial. (I'm not commenting on whether the article that started this thread was a deliberate troll.) -- Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst@thomsoft.com TeleSoft^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Alsys^H^H^H^H^H Thomson Software Products 10251 Vista Sorrento Parkway, Suite 300, San Diego, CA, USA, 92121-2718 "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." -- Arthur Carlson, WKRP