‘Per-diem, surely?’

more like:

‘Per-diem, on a sure basis?’

Dawn of the dead here 🙂

I’ve been told there are no problems just challenges!

Unfortunately the kind of people you hear this from are those who see a challenge as problem.

I never said “I am agreeing because SFB wrote it”, you’re not that important

and I never said I thought you did

I said I agree with your argument and then noted that it is becoming more frequent that I agree with your points.

In the same circumstance I probably wouldn’t have noticed as I concentrate on the content and often don’t look to see who said it.

It’s an interesting reflection of peoples thinking that they should assume the person adopting the same stance as them was doing so because of the author, rather than the content

and not an assumption I would ever make!

I do find it amusing when people reluctantly admit to agreeing with me as if I were inevitably normally wrong 🙂

isn’t it all about the evolution of languages?

“isn’t it all about the evolution of languages?”

Not in this case IMO. There is this tension between the cultural evolution of common speech and the need for stability/formality of meaning within technical professions.

Business language seems to warrant formality, but actually it’s devoid of technical content and is marketing-led. So it’s deliberate manipulation of words rather than part of evolution.

My personal situation is an example: Engineers, being technical people, are happy talking about spiky “problems” and “bugs” etc. But to talk to managers, these must be translated into neutral “issues”, else they get confused and over-react.

It’s not enough that people don’t have the bottle to say “problem” when they mean it, but they can’t even have an issue *with* something. Oooo no. That would be too confrontational so it’s issues “around” something. MTFU junior management.

yes, that’s true. normally, it’s not even “I take issue with that” or “I have an issue with that” but “there’s an issue around x”, as if it were an agreed objective fact.

“Business language seems to warrant formality, but actually it’s devoid of technical content and is marketing-led. “

This isn’t right – in fact, I have a problem with it. 😛 When I worked in “business” (consultancy of a specific type, not a real job like engineering, obviously) we did have actual stuff to do that wasn’t marketing. (In other words, we made the product and sold it, we weren’t just selling the electronic gold that a bunch of underappreciated geniuses in black t-shirts created). And I and most of my colleagues were happy to talk about problems, glitches, **** and other things that aren’t issues.

As a techy-tw*t our IT systems don’t have problems they have features. 🙂

Issuette <grrrrr> 👿

Can I also introduce the word loose as the past tense of lost – you don’t loose something! You lose it or have lost it. The past tense of lost is lose.
Efcking US English based spellcheckers is what I blame for the proliferation of the use of loose, for the past tense of lost, amongst those whose jeans are so loose their (under)pants are showing.

SFB – you said (talking about my post I think?!):

To my mind, an argument stands or falls on its self consistency and relevance, not the personality of its author.

Suggesting I agreed based on the the personality of the author (you). I didn’t. I simply read the thread properly and noted who said what, then realised my opinion was in line with yours, which is a rarity. And therefore mentioned that 😀