Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Usage

This doesn't look correct.

tizzie — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:27:11 -0800

Affect/Effect Affect/effect - which is correct in this phrase: "reset the confidence regarding government’s affect and role...." Thanks in advance.

Plural of "behalf'?

crLLC — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:17:24 -0800

Quick grammar/usage question. Which is the preferred usage: "I'm buying this property on their behalf," or "I'm buying this property on their behalves." The former seems right to me, and I'm surprised that "behalves" is even a word (according to the 1986 unabridged Webster's in my office, it is). My usage guide is silent on the issue. Any thoughts?

That is the question.

ageispolis — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:43:50 -0800

What is a good heuristic for the usage of 'that'? I am not referring to the distinction between 'that' and 'which', but its broader conjunctive and connective use.

I find myself overusing the word, and instead of deciding whether I should omit it or not in the editing process, it'd be great if I could learn to only use it when necessary.

Any ideas?

What items get better with use?

Earl the Polliwog — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:36:35 -0800

Which products or goods improve with age and use? Most things degrade with time, and a few are built well enough to not noticeaby decline in functionality when used properly. But how many actually get better after they have been used? I'm mostly thinking of items whose improvement requires use, although age can be a factor too.

For example, Chinese zisha (purple clay) teapots are said to improve over time. As tea is brewed in them, the semi-porous clay absorbs some tea particles, and a patina develops on the walls of the pot. This is supposed to enhance flavor when you brew new tea.

How much electricity do you use?

thewalrus — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:21:39 -0800

In the interests of science, please tell me how many kilowatt-hours (kWh) your house or apartment used last month and how much it uses in the middle of winter. If possible include variables like whether you use electric heat, air conditioning, electric or gas hot water heater, etc. The US DOE says the average American house uses 900 kWh a month. I'm trying to get a smaller but more personalized sample from metafilter users. kWh may also be marked as "units" on your electrical bill. I'm working on a design for some small and medium solar power setups and am trying to figure out whether the average person lives within the production capacity (budget $$$) of the total package of equipment.

If I can draw a broad generalization, mefi users tend to have a larger than usual number of computers and electronic gadgets, but may be more environmentally conscious than the average North American. This means that you may tend to avoid gratuitous use of laundry dryers and other power-sucking appliances. Please mention if this is true if you are telling me how much you used on your last power bill.

From a jet-setter to ordinary consumer, what happened?

l'esprit d'escalier — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 05:17:38 -0800

Having enjoyed my share of jet travel both locally and across the globe for the last couple of decades I was surprised last week on an interstate Qantas flight at the persistent use of the word "customer" in the inflight communications rather than the usual "passenger". Considering it appears to be, in Australia, mainly Virgin Blue who encourages ad lib customer communications, this usage peaked my curiosity and I'm hoping anyone actually doing or having dreamed up these communications can shed some light.

(Nothwithstanding the title of my post, I did not experience any change in the friendliness of the crew or the quality of service.)

Calculate daily KW usage?

matholio — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:35:26 -0800

If I know my current power usage, how do I calculate my daily kw? I'm monitoring my power and have a CurrentCost device providing current KW usage.

I'll sample the usage every minute, and store it in a db, but how do I calculate my totaly daily usage?

Use the average kw per hour and add them up for the day?

(this feels like a question with an obvious answer and I'm just not getting it today)

Why not just say "price?"

msbrauer — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:18:41 -0800

Why do people say or write "price point" instead of "price?" Over the past few years, I've noticed an increase in usage of the phrase "price point" where I would just say or write "price." I first noticed the phrase "price point" in writing about new iPod releases on blogs, but now I find the phrase moving outside of electronics writing and punditry. I'm sure there's confirmation bias involved in my notice of frequency of usage, but that doesn't make me any less confused about why one would use "price point" when "price" seems completely adequate.

Why do writers and speakers use the phrase "price point?" Is there a technical difference between the terms that isn't obvious to the economics or business layperson?

TV on all the time

Epsilon-minus semi moron — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 11:48:49 -0800

Craigslist HD TV deal..it was $25. The rub being it "doesn't always turn on". The first week it was fine. Then it started not turning on until later in the evening. The boyfriend (possibly) diagnosed the problem and will attempt to fix it when it becomes absolutely necessary. However, until then we are leaving it on all the time. We are keeping it on one of the video channels. Is there a chance that doing this(keeping it on a channel that is black/silent versus one with action/noise) uses less electricity? Thank you!

Need Adobe Acrobat (8 or higher) help

AstroGuy — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:34:35 -0800

Need help from someone with Acrobat 8 Pro (or higher) to add "usage rights" to a simple PDF file I have a simple form I created in Acrobat 7 Pro based on a Powerpoint document (I have no idea why he did it this way) that my professor used to create a form to be submitted for assignments. No problem, I thought, I'll just export it to a PDF, open it in 7 Pro, add form fields, and then people can use it (with the free Reader) to type in the info, save it, and submit it by email. But then I find out you can't do this in 7, and the resulting PDF will not allow typed in data to be saved by Reader.

I need help from some kind soul that can open this file in Acrobat 8 Pro or higher, enable Usage Rights to allow users with Adobe Reader to save a filled-in form. This is spelled out here: http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b4f31f.

If you can help me, please contact me via MeFi mail and I'll email you the file. Thank you!

Using Creative Commons licensed works on a political website?

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:22:57 -0800

Dear mefites, Is it legal to use creative commons stuff, properly licensed and attributed, on a political website that 1) expresses views that the original author might not like, and 2) raises money, such as for a candidate or a party's branch? Particularly interested in stuff that's got a non-commercial license but is okay to use for derivative works. This is in the U.K. Thanks!

How to better pay for shared computer supplies at a retirement village?

idad — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:02:38 -0800

My dad lives in a retirement village that provides a shared computer (in a common area) used more heavily by just a few people. Supplies (ink/paper) are covered by dues everyone pays. What's the best way to have those that use it more pay more, e.g. somehow track usage, or maybe have users pay a nominal usage fee to cover ink/paper supply costs (and cost when it's to be replaced). The people that manage the computer are not computer administrators, so if the solution is to track use by login, the results would have to be easy to generate.

Teachers, students, and the Internet

unreason — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:24:42 -0800

Do teachers have their students use the Internet? I have an idea for a web application where school teachers could post resources and work for their students. There's a problem, though... would teachers do this? Would they feel comfortable assigning Internet homework, or is this a pipe dream that wouldn't get used?

How to best provide online usage statistics to content subscribers? Should I?

chillmost — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 04:38:43 -0800

Tools for a scientific publisher to provide usage statistics for its subscribers? Is this a good idea? I am the webmaster for a small scientific publisher. Our content is presented online in a way that is similar to most other publishers. The abstracts are free to all, but the articles are restricted to subscribers by the use of IP addresses in htaccess files. Most of our subscribers are university libraries and research institutes.

Lately we have been getting many requests for usage statistics from our subscribers. I have a way of doing this using summary.net, a web log analysis program, but it is time consuming and not an elegant or simple solution requiring me to change the software's settings for each subscriber, render the log files, output an excel file, reformat excel file and then change the software's settings back for my needs. If we decided to offer this service, using this method would take up too much of my time.

Is there some sort of software that I can host on our server that the user can use to show them download statistics for certain files in certain directories based on a list of IP addresses or ranges that they enter?

I thought that a program like awstats might be able to get me in this direction but I don't have root access to our managed server in order to install it properly.

I have also looked at the Project COUNTER as a possible solution for providing statistics, but it seems to be needlessly complicated for what we are trying to accomplish.

Also, is there a way for these usage statisitcs to be measured on the user's end? Possibly with a software solution on their router/proxy server/gateway that measures outgoing requests? What are some keywords or concepts I should search for so that if I receive a request for usage statistics, I can say, "We don't provide usage statistics for practical and logistical reasons but you can roll your own by......."

Aside from how to do it, is providing this service even a good idea? I have heard from a few publishers, that they don't provide this service because it provides justification to those making spending decisions to cancel the subscription. This reasoning is described in better detail here at the American Mathematical Society's website (.pdf). I have also heard from librarians that they hate to cancel subscriptions because they hate, HATE, having gaps in serial publications, not to mention facing the wrath from the 1 or 2 people that do rely on that publication for their work/research.

I would be interested to here about experiences and solutions from the publisher side, as well as the librarian side of things.

What are people actually doing on the internet?

quiet — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:18:33 -0800

What are people actually doing on the internet? I'm looking for some good data about what people are doing on the internet broken down by protocol with preferably additional details. So something like: 20% of traffic is HTTP, 10% is SSL, 40% is P2P, 2% is NNTP and so on.

The additional detail would be identifying things like the type of P2P traffic (Bittorrent, Gnutella, etc), or the amount of HTTP traffic going to video sites. A breakdown by type of users (like Home users vs Business users vs College users) would be most useful.

I've found some very limited, very old data as well as something a little more recent, but I need more detail and a more representative sample.

Bandwidth monitoring tool needed.

jammnrose — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:39:06 -0800

I'm looking for a bandwidth monitoring tool for OSX. I need it to do some specific things. I need it to do these things:
Keep track of the bandwidth used in the past 24 hours (ie, a rolling count by the minute).
Monitor internal and external bandwidth separately.
Monitor Airport/Ethernet separately/singly.
Any ideas? Thanks.

any difference between 'acting' and 'interim' in job title?

genehack — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 13:58:12 -0800

When filling in for a superior that has resigned, before a permanent replacement for the position is identified, is there any difference between a job title of "acting $POSITION" and one of "interim $POSITION"? Specifically, does one indicate that the temporary replacement is or is not in consideration to be the permanent replacement? (This is a position in a university office, if that matters.)

Most all people don't know proper English, amirite?

ClarissaWAM — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 13:32:02 -0800

"Most all" - it is wrong. Right? So I've seen "most all" (instead of "almost all") around for a while now, generally in everydaylanguage and online. I've always assumed it is incorrect English - and I still think it is.

But I have seen it creep up a few times in contexts where you would not expect incorrect English (the printed press for instance) so I am now wondering - has it become accepted incorrect English? Or am I in fact very mistaken and it is correct? (but it does not make sense!! it's either all or most - it can't be both!)

Rise again, rise again

Johnny Assay — Mon, 07 May 2007 16:17:35 -0800

In the Stan Rogers song "The Mary Ellen Carter", what does "crumble into scale" mean? I've always loved this song, but I realized recently that I had no idea what the following line meant: "For we couldn't leave her there, you see, to crumble into scale". This isn't a use of the word "scale" that I'm familiar with. I've managed to figure out all the other nautical lingo in the song, but this one phrase stymies me. The entire lyrics can be found here if it helps.

Summoning LanguageHat

I_Love_Bananas — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 07:16:35 -0800

Wary vs. Leery- what is the distinction? This has bugged me for a long time.

What is the difference, if any, in using "wary" and "leery?" I just know that most of the time I think people are using them incorrectly, but I can't put my finger on exactly why.

LanguageHat, can you help?

List vs Laundry List

otherwordlyglow — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 13:20:05 -0800

When does a "list" become a "laundry list"? This has been bugging me a lot recently as the term seems to have hit the tipping point. Everywhere I look/read people are enumerating "Laundry Lists" but to me, they seem to just be plain old Lists. What's the difference between the two? Is Laundry List just a way of saying List that sounds smarter? Is there a subtlety between the two that I'm missing? It's kind of a simple question that I hate to waste my question on but every single time I hear the phrase it jumps out at me so I need to know if I'm justified in being annoyed at it. I'm sure there's a correct usage (informal? overly detailed?) somewhere but I don't know what it is.

"originality consists in returning to the origin" -Gaudi

primer_dimer — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 02:28:07 -0800

Correct use: "consists of" vs "consists in" I've been unable to get a straight answer to this anywhere else, but I know that mefi has more than its fair share of spelling/grammar/usage nazis, so I ask you: what's the deal with "consists of" and "consists in"? Google gives plenty of examples of both; is there a rule?

Blooperstown

stupidsexyFlanders — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 06:16:10 -0800

Bruce Sutter's Hall of Fame plaque notes that he ..."lead the league in saves five times." Is this a typo? Or this one of those things that can go either way? ("led" or "lead" for the past tense of "lead")

Correct Usage

sgobbare — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 11:51:47 -0800

So there has been an invasion of portuguese man of war jellyfish locally..... they're all gone now but the raging debate on local news has been describing them as portuguese man of war's or portuguese men of war. I am predisposed to #1 but I'm also doing the asking.....anybody?

AP Photo license?

xmutex — Sat, 20 May 2006 12:42:55 -0800

Can anyone speak to acquiring a license (if it's even necessary) to use AP Photos on your web site? I've searched and I've searched and I've searched.