[Lazarus] Error messages: cannot versus can't

Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl.lazarus at telemetry.co.uk
Fri Oct 17 20:27:58 CEST 2014


Péter Gábor wrote:

> I agree with Hans-Peter! :)
> 
> In Hungarian there are four(!) form of addressing the partner in a
> communication:

Etc. Thanks for that, interesting. What is the position in Hungarian and 
other languages and their attendant cultures as far as the computer's 
assuming personhood is concerned? In English, there's now a tendency 
(which I think came in with Windows '95) for a computer to ask "Should I 
delete this file?" rather than the older "Delete this file (Y/N)?" and 
so on?

(I'm reminded of the situation where some New York apartment blocks set 
their elevators to stop at every floor on Saturday, so that Jewish 
residents don't break the Sabbath by giving orders to a servant- even 
though that servant is a machine.)

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]




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