Awshit? (etc.)
The first exclamation when you realize that your baby has been owned by someone else.
Drum roll, please .... Results are in for the collective noun for security vulns
We've closed the poll, and the results for our attempts to weed out candidates for a collective noun for security vulnerabilities are in. To recap: the recent rash of Android vulnerabilities has made it clear that a new collective noun for such flaws, and possibly a separate one for security bugs in general, was required. We …
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Sunday 30th August 2015 09:32 GMT SuccessCase
Re: Awshit? (etc.)
Isn't this just evidence that crowdsourcing doesn't always produce good results?
Still what do we expect. When Greenpeace tried to crowdsource the name for a whale, the Internet piled in and made "Mr Smartypants" the favourite :) Strangely, if I remember rightly, the "name a whale" competition was quietly removed about 2 days before the results were due to be announced.
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Saturday 29th August 2015 05:45 GMT T. F. M. Reader
Re: we're offering all seven of those that did well in the poll ...
@ElRegUser007: "What's the collective noun for collective nouns?"
A homology or autology? I have a mild stylistic preference to the first one.
See Grelling-Nelson paradox for the inspiration.
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Friday 28th August 2015 21:08 GMT Electron Shepherd
I know some poeple who won't be too happy...
Those who run this global financial IT consultancy
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Friday 28th August 2015 21:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I know some people who won't be too happy...
I know some poeple who won't be too happy...
Those who run this global financial IT consultancy
Nah, they use the word "cyber", which immediately classifies them as irrelevant plonkers that deserve to be ignored with the rest of them. Cyber was IMHO old 10 years ago.
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Saturday 29th August 2015 21:57 GMT John H Woods
Re: Wait, more than one collective noun?
"A set cannot be a member of itself" -- DavCrav
(Apologies to Bertrand Russell and the very large set [or class] of people whose maths is better than mine if I've got this wrong but I think that ...)
... this is equivalent to saying that "the set of all sets that don't contain themselves" is the same as "the set of all sets" But clearly, because the set of all sets does contain itself, your statement is self contradictory.
In practice I seem to recall it is undecidable - you either say you are working within a system where sets can contain themselves (ZFC) where the ZF refers to Zermelo and Fraenkel and the C stands for 'Choice' (as in the Axiom of), or you say that you aren't.
Bonus AofC joke:
Q) What's yellow and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice?
A) Zorn's lemon.
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Monday 31st August 2015 18:17 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: Wait, more than one collective noun?
Yes, as far as I know (which admittedly isn't very far), DavCrav's claim is incorrect under any version of ZF. ZF doesn't formalize the notion of classes. Wikipedia says "In some extensions of ZFC, objects like R [Russel's set-of-all-sets-that-contain-themselves] are called proper classes". But that usage isn't universal.
I don't think the AoC is required under ZF for sets to contain themselves in general (that is, sets can contain themselves under ZF and ZFC), but I may well be wrong about that.
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Sunday 6th September 2015 11:44 GMT DavCrav
Re: Wait, more than one collective noun?
"Yes, as far as I know (which admittedly isn't very far), DavCrav's claim is incorrect under any version of ZF. ZF doesn't formalize the notion of classes. Wikipedia says "In some extensions of ZFC, objects like R [Russel's set-of-all-sets-that-contain-themselves] are called proper classes". But that usage isn't universal.
I don't think the AoC is required under ZF for sets to contain themselves in general (that is, sets can contain themselves under ZF and ZFC), but I may well be wrong about that."
Yes, you are wrong. There is no model of ZF in which there is a set consisting of all sets, because it wouldn't satisfy the axiom of separation. Therefore it cannot exist in any (consistent) extension of ZF, such as ZFC, ZF+CH, and anything else. Under intensional dependent type theory one can do better, but that's still under development.
So the object containing all sets, or the object containing all ordinal numbers, etc. can never be a set. It is called a proper class in general mathematical parlance, but it is not constructible in first-order logic. But then, lots of things aren't constructible there, that's why we don't always use it. It's nice to have Cat, for example.
(Source: me, a professional pure mathematician.)
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Sunday 6th September 2015 11:52 GMT DavCrav
Re: Wait, more than one collective noun?
"In practice I seem to recall it is undecidable - you either say you are working within a system where sets can contain themselves (ZFC) where the ZF refers to Zermelo and Fraenkel and the C stands for 'Choice' (as in the Axiom of), or you say that you aren't."
I just want to say this again, in case people read this and think it is true.
A set can never contain itself under any extension of ZF.
This is Russel's paradox, and led to the development of ZF, which set out what can and can not be a set, specifically to forbid something like this from becoming a set. If you want to work with non-well founded sets, which in computer science you often do, you have to work inside a different axiomatic system, and be very careful, as traps abound. But then traps abound in normal ZFC, such as Banach--Tarski, the space-filling curve, and not being able to swap integral and summation signs.
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Saturday 29th August 2015 08:39 GMT VinceH
Re: Pwnie
As I was reading the article, I thought a word just 'fell out' and was eminently suitable - but not pwnie. I was thinking "shame" as a result of this quote from the piece:
"there's no collective noun for vulnerabilities, for shame"
Given that most vulnerabilities are a result of what should be facepalm moments for the people who let it slip in, a shame of vulnerabilities works for me.
Hmmm... saying that, a facepalm of vulnerabilities... :)
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Saturday 29th August 2015 00:45 GMT Sgt_Oddball
From the hall(ways) of power
I can sort of see why a hat stand considering the constant talk of black/white/grey (seriously, there are other games with hats besides spy v. spy) hats. And well they'd need a hat stand wouldn't they since thats where they all come together.
(hat)Stands to reason...
Mines the one with the top hat and cane...
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Monday 31st August 2015 01:57 GMT Robert Helpmann??
Re: Goosed geese
See what happens when I rely on memory alone? I read An Exaltation of Larks a while back, and it stuck that there is more than one term for geese depending on whether or not they are in flight. I had another look after your post, Sarah Balfour, and it turns out that it is more complicated than just one or the other:
"...when in flight, they are called a skein, a team, or a wedge; when flying close together, they are called a plump" - Wikipedia
Have one on me for the correction. As to your point about sheep, I dunno. Why is a shepherd called a shepherd and not a flocker?
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Saturday 29th August 2015 13:17 GMT JonP
Re: The actual collective noun is "Malware".
Yeah, but this is a collective noun for security vulnerabilities; malware is something that might use or cause a vulnerability, but wouldn't be the vulnerability. It's entirely possible for the malware itself to contain vulnerabilities... then it would all gets a bit recursive.
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Sunday 30th August 2015 11:56 GMT jake
@ JonP (was: Re: The actual collective noun is "Malware".)
"malware is something that might use or cause a vulnerability"
The very vulnerabilities are malware in the world of ones and zeros.
Multi-national corporations[0] releasing untested code on the GreatUnwashed are the cause of this blight. In my opinion, of course.
[0] Cupertino, Redmond, wherever google et alia claims to live, etc.
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Monday 31st August 2015 18:22 GMT Michael Wojcik
Shocker: Nonsense criteria allow nonsensical results
English, of course, allows for more than one collective noun for a group of things.
English has no say in the matter. Human beings use natural languages in any manner they like. And English lacks even the weak authority of a generally-recognized arbiter of use (contrast French and the Académie française - which itself has only the power that Francophone users grant it).
For example, the collective noun for dragons is "flight" but "weyr" or "wing" are also permissible.
The "collective noun for dragons" is whatever the writer or speaker feels like using. To claim that one particular noun "is" the collective for something, or that others are "permissible", is rank foolishness.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
