Open Sarcasm Fighting Copyrighted Punctuation 155
pinkushun writes "SarcMark is a copyrighted punctuation mark, that claims 'It's time that sarcasm is treated equally!' Pretty damn cheeky while they're charging for their software, which only inserts their punctuation through a hotkey. Open Sarcasm is destroying SarcMark by advocating a new punctuation mark (not displaying here properly — alt+U0161) as the new open and free sarcasm symbol. Either way, this will be one interesting turnout. With bad unicode support across the web, displaying the characters properly might be an issue. PS Left out sarcastic end sentence as Slashdot doesn't display the U0161 character."
The 21st century (Score:5, Funny)
Meta(meta)[m e t a] (Score:4, Informative)
Slashdot is written in Perl, a language that tends to self-obfuscate within minutes of having been written. Consequently, updating the code base for trivial things like correct display of posted text is highly problematic. Also, even if the Perl implementation was written in non-standard (that is, comprehensible) fashion, to quote Rob Malda in a recent letter to me, "Unfortunately there really isn't any engineering time available to make any changes these days"
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...to quote Rob Malda in a recent letter to me, "Unfortunately there really isn't any engineering time available to make any changes these days"
What the hell are they so busy doing? Clearly not editing article submissions.
Re:Meta(meta)[m e t a] (Score:5, Funny)
It is a careful balance between collecting ad revenue and ignoring the shortcomings of the moderation mechanism.
Only the most modern of management techniques have been used to arrive at this complex and deeply nuanced operating strategy; only here, at the heart of the technical community, can we find an implementation that so perfectly reflects (in the sense of reflection about the opposite axis) the technical nature of its users.
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I think it should be pointed out that slashcode (http://www.slashcode.com/) is open source, so feel free to submit patches.
And perl is incomprehensible to everyone, so not knowing the language may actually help you.
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Slashdot is written in Perl, a language that tends to self-obfuscate within minutes of having been written.
I sighed.
I nodded.
I shook my head.
I put my palm to my face.
If only it weren't true.
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I write, and revise, a *lot* in perl. Also python, C, and others.
I go back to python code a year later, it's blatantly obvious what it's doing.
I go back to perl code a year later, it might as well be sanskrit. It is *loaded* with bullshit like $_, $., $? and similar that are towards the APL end of the scale in absolute opacity; if you use these (and you should), your code will devolve into unreadable crap, because reading it isn't possible... you have to interpret it on the fly, it's simply not human-r
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Is this another another Jibe at koda ?
Sorry filtered so [U0161]koda ....
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I'd be sarcastic here... (Score:5, Funny)
Support for the character: (Score:2)
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But if you can't figure out when it's sarcasm, then the problems with you, not the comment.
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Some people just seem to use that to signal a word that's pronounced in an elongated way, but not necessarily sarcasm..
Re:Support for the character: (Score:4, Funny)
I always used the tilde to indicate "moustache" or "backwards 'S' taking a nap"
since those two concepts rarely entered my on-line conversations, I rarely used the tilde.
But, hey! yeah... I could use the tilde to indicate sarcasm! What a ~great~ idea!
Re:Support for the character: (Score:4, Insightful)
cd ~
pwd
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What happened to the tilde (~), I thought that was pretty universal as sarcasm.
In fansubbing it's used to indicate a long vowel, eg waaaaaaaaaaaah --> waah~
I'm personally in the habit of using it to end sentences where a full stop seems too sudden, and ellipsis are too emo~
I've only ever seen it used for sarcasm a couple of times, both on slashdot, both by people with "~ = sarcasm" in their sigs to explain it, so I have my doubts about the universality of it
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What happened to the tilde (~), I thought that was pretty universal as sarcasm.
Seems a lot more practical than an all-new proprietary mark for sarcasm, and also a lot clearer than the "open sarcasm" Ethiopian option, which kind of looks a lot like a lower-case "I"...
So, yeah, I'm totally on board with the whole idea of adopting the SarcMark@ (At-sign is the closest thing I've got to a spiral around a dot...)
And I think the Open Sarcasm thing is gonna work out really, really welli
Jokes really out to be marked so there's no question you're joking around~
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no wonder! i've been typing 'cd ~userid' and it puts me in .Trash
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And if you can't figure out when someone is being sarcastic in plaintext, the problem is DEFINITELY with you and not them.
(Yes, that was sarcasm. It's often impossible to tell whether a comment is sarcastic or serious, especially between strangers on the internet. Duh.)
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Slashdot filters out just about all useful Unicode for no good reason other than laziness. People were abusing control characters, but they were too lazy to make a proper blacklist and instead opted for an almost nonexistent whitelist.
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Indeed, many omissions make no ¢s.
My comment is destroying story topic (Score:2)
by advocating a new story topic (not displaying here properly - alt-ctrl-del) as the new form of grammar and coherence. Either way, this will be one interesting turnout. With bad grammar and coherence across the web, advocating a new story topic properly might be an issue. PS Left out new story topic end sentence as Slashdot doesn't display the alt-ctrl-del character.
Re:My comment is destroying story topic (Score:4, Funny)
The special offtopic character is (not displaying here properly, alt-F4) used when you want to steer the conversation toward a disastrous end, a.k.a. trolling. PS I left out the troll I had prepared for the end of this post because Slashdot doesn't display the alt-F4 character.
Humor Mark (Score:1)
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Time to come up with marks for Humor, and mood and patent them. Wait...perhaps Chinese already has it!
So does the Internet: emoticons. For example, "=)" means happy, "=(" means unhappy, ">=(" means angry, "=p" is sticking out his tongue, mocking you, laughing at you, haunting your dreams! "=^_^=" is a soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur. I could go on, but I think I've made my point.
Pfft. (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, a sarcasm punctuation mark. That's a real useful invention!
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We clearly need a new symbol to indicate irony as well.
so use it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_mark#Irony_mark [wikipedia.org]
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If I had mod points, I'd mod you informative.. (I was just reading that page, after I looked up interrobang, thinking it sufficed for what the summary mentions.)
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We clearly need a new symbol to indicate irony as well.
We've already got one of those - Fe
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I've used that one, but I gave up because nobody understood it.
Next time, try writing (Score:4, Insightful)
If you need a punctuation mark to express sarcasm then you are not doing it right.
It is like a laugh track or a drum rimshot to indicate a joke's punchline. It only accompanies the worst forms of humor.
I'm reminded of Laurence Olivier's remark to Dustin Hoffman, who had subjected himself to sleep deprivation to prepare himself for his role in "Marathon Man". Hoffman came onto the set, looking like hell, and explained what he did to prepare. Olivier said, "Dear chap, next time try acting." No special punctuation mark needed.
No, it's absolutely essential (Score:1)
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Hard to argue that it is essential if we've had 2500 years of written Indo-European languages and we managed to express sarcasm just fine without requiring another character. If we lacked something essential I assume the Gauls would have added it 1800 years ago. They were far more sarcastic than us moderns.
Note I have nothing against a parenthetical expression or other notation using existing characters. This might be good for expressing a variety of things, like "This sentence is funny" or "This phrase
Re:Next time, try writing (Score:4, Insightful)
You're wrong.
Within a spoken conversation sarcasm is usually accompanied by a change in facial expressions or in the voice. It doesn't make it worse, it only makes it better. A sarcastic mark could stand for that, just like an exclamation mark is used when you'd raise your voice, or an emoticon gets used for other emotions. Now, it will probably be abused, just like emoticons and exclamation marks do !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111 :PPPPPP, but nevertheless it serves a purpose. Online sarcasm seems too harsh without a sarcastic mark.
One problem is that there are different expressions that go with sarcasm, not one, both friendly and unfriendly, but written conversation doesn't try to match spoken exactly. They are different forms of conversations with their own intricacies. Adding another mark that allows you to add more to those intricacies is only good.
Re:Next time, try writing (Score:5, Insightful)
But ditto for other things as well. I can ask a normal question, a rhetorical question, a negative question, a hesitant question, a imperative question, a leading question, a disbelieving question, even a sarcastic question. Should we have a glyph for each of them? Really? Are you kidding? What makes sarcasm so special compared to every other language nuance that it requires its own glyph?
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What makes sarcasm so special? The inability of many persons to tell apart sarcasm from a regular assertion, I am afraid.
I am not a sarcastic person, but I tend to see a lot of misunderstandings among persons that are, and other random Average Joes. You can see examples in any forum or mailing list.
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Re: tardicons (Score:2)
I think there's a fair degree of overlap between people who use emoticons and those who dot every "i" and "j" with hearts or smiley faces.
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"It is like a laugh track or a drum rimshot to indicate a joke's punchline. It only accompanies the worst forms of humor."
To the contrary sometimes the laugh track is thrown in because the humor is considered too sophisticated for the audience. (Gilligan's genius was too cutting edge for us.)
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If you need a punctuation mark to express sarcasm then you are not doing it right.
Unfortunately, this isn't true. It is always possible for somebody to misunderstand. Indeed, to misappropriate a law, any sufficiently idiotic honestly held point of view is indistinguishable from sarcasm.
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Well, duh. Writing is not the same as speaking. There are lot of things that are lacking in writing: accents, intonation, gesture, body language, etc. Should we encode them all? Should we write in the International Phonetic Alphabet with notated choreography and stage directions?
Of course not. Writing is different than speaking, and we adapt our use of language to the medium. One is not worse than the other. They are merely different. But trying to pretend they are two forms of the same thing... thi
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.aipe'a It's actually not such a bad idea.
.e'u Lojban contains a syntax for assembling "attitudinals" -- interjections which describe someone's emotional state (with a syntax allowing complex composition -- indicating strength, nega
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There are lot of things that are lacking in writing: accents, intonation, gesture, body language, etc. Should we encode them all?
Should we encode none of them?
Your examples (accents, intonation, gesture, body language) generally serve to add to what's being said. Sometimes, however, they are essential parts of the message being communicated, and therefore need to be encoded in writing. The question mark is one example. When speaking, we use inflection to communicate the fact that our sentence is a question. In writing, we replace the customary period with a question mark.
Sarcasm is generally the use of words to mean something other t
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>Well, duh. Writing is not the same as speaking.
This wasn't an issue even 30 years ago. Writing was a much rarer thing - nearly everything written beyond a yellow sticky note was at least somewhat formal. Hell we even had typograpical rules we all had to learn for writing a letter to your granny to thank her for the nice whatevers.
Trouble is - we don't LIVE in that world anymore. The internet and cellphones have turned writing into a conversational medium as much so as talking used to be.
Nobody every WRO
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I think the general trend over the last 100 years has been to reduce the variety of punctuation marks in use, not increase them. The semi-colon is seldom seen these days, at least not used correctly. It is being replaced by the comma in many cases. Ellipsis is now generally replaced by periods. Hyphens, em- and en-dash are now all conflated, except by typographers and the more fastidious editors. So the general trend is to reduce the number of punctuation marks in use.
Generally, if it is not on their k
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But it isn't the sarcasm that failed. It is generally quite a bit funnier when someone, or even better a thundering herd, takes it seriously.
Similarly, when an earnest statement is interpreted as humour. The answer is not to lower the bar. Much better to beat the clueless mercilessly with it.
That's crazy! (Score:2)
Introducing a new symbol for "something new" can also happen.
But copyrighting it is something I'm not prepared to.
Debian? (Score:2)
I can't see the open alternative website because its slashdotted, but the sarcmark is obvious based on the Debian logo. I'm thinking that's not a coincidence?
Please make up your minds... (Score:2)
...as to whether this thing claims to be protected by patent (not patentable) or copyright (only the exact image would be protected, if that).
Actually, it appears that they are claiming that it is a registered trademark. In that case you are completely free to use it as punctuation.
! already works (Score:2)
Can we all agree to use the exclamation point at the beginning of a sentence to denote sarcasm?
A question mark at the end makes sense as it's right at the end, if you read the main part in your 'mind voice', raising tone at the end makes sense.
For sarcasm, you need to know at the beginning of the sentence, so the punctuation needs to go there.
! would work I think
!Oh, that's such a good idea.
!Have we forgotten our pants today?
See? Compatible for other punctuation too.
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No.
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I prefer letting each individual display sarcasm on their screen as they prefer. That's why I enclose my sarcasm in <P> and </P> tags. Aren't those the sarcasm indicators?
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Then you just look like a clueless spaniard.
Adios amigos!
Wait. (Score:1)
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we need to be using the INTERROBAAAANAGGGGGNGNGNGGNGNGN http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang [wikipedia.org]
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The first thing mentioned on that wikipedia page is "Punctuation Chess"..... Which , when you think about it, totally explains whee this "sarcasm mark" comes from.
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Just a simple dodge for libel (Score:2)
As others have noted, if you need special punctuation for sarcasm, you aren't doing it right.
On the other hand, what a great way to dodge accusations of libel alt+U0161
President (Bush | Obama) has sex with baby chickens every Sunday while listening to old 8-tracks of Jerry Fallwell alt+U0161
PROSECUTION: You have deceived millions of your fellow Americans into believing their (former president | president) engages in sexual relations with assorted poultry while taking communion.
DEFENSE: No I didn't. It's
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Problems -
Does not Display on Slashdot ...
Is not easy to type ...
Either makes most Finns and eastern Europeans seem constantly sarcastic, or stops them using it altogether because it's a letter not a punctuation mark
Please use a real punctuation mark .... and not one with an already well established meaning ....
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Does not Display on Slashdot
Sarcasm Detector Fail? On Slashdot?
No! Really?
"Slashdot doesn't display the U+0161 character" (Score:5, Funny)
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Does Slashdot display any Unicode characters correctly, apart from English letters and punctuation?
Only if you use HTML entities, and even then only if they're named; being this poor must be © slashcode...
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As a HTML reference, and not as UTF encoded unicode character. You can see it in the source. They might have hacked together a fix so I'll give it a try:
€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€
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Well, what do ya know. It works *clapclap*
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sarcasm tags (Score:2)
Why? (Score:2)
If sarcasm is done right, as a previous poster mentioned, then it should be obvious, and thus a symbol is not needed.
If the inventor of the sarcasm symbol needs help understand sarcasm, why should the rest of us point it out to him? And, for that matter, why should we pay him for the privilege of point it out to him.
Anyway, there is already a well know symbol that doesn't require any addition to the Unicode standard, nor any addition to any existing fonts. :-p
Easy as that, really!
Reminds me of a joke where
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"Reminds me of a joke where an American actually 'got' sarcasm for the first time."
Whatever. I was watching "As time goes by" (britcom starring Judy Dench) with some friends. Jean and Lionel took a trip to Hollywood to shop a story to a production company. A production assistant (obviously an American character played by a British actor) came on the set and asked where Lionel was (he was in the toilet.) When Dench replied he was taking a leak the "American" looked toward the ceiling and covering his head. Everyone of my friends laughed and one of them said "The British must be idiots!"
A b
Trogdor ? (Score:3, Funny)
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Overloading Unicode (Score:2, Interesting)
Please please please please please, dot NOT overload Unicode by assigning a punctuation to U+0161. This is the code for a small s with caron, and is necessary for writing Czech, Estonian, Finnish, Slovak, and other languages. If you want to support a new character, put it in the Private Use Areas. There's over 130,000 code points that are set aside, just for this sort of thing. It's like those idiots trying to support the new Indian Rupee symbol, but end up calling in to question the interpretation of all s
Character in question (Score:2)
A sarcasm punctuation mark? Really? (Score:2)
.
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I don't know if you are being sarcastic, but I don't agree that they are geniuses.
What it looks like (Score:4, Informative)
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U0161 is Latin Small Letter S With Caron
While that may be true, TFA says that the open sarcasm mark is U+00A1, an upside-down exclamation point, to be used at the end of a sentence.
Graphically indistinguishable from U+00A1 () Temherte Slaqî differs in semantic use in Ethiopia. Temherte Slaqî will come at the end of a sentence (vs at the beginning in Spanish use) and is used to indicate an unreal phrase, often sarcastical in editorial cartoons. Temherte Slaqî is also important in children’s literature and in poetic use.
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Sigh. At the time I posted, TFA was slashdotted and unavailable, so I couldn't see it.
About the Ethiopian Sarcasm Mark Temherte Slaq (Score:2, Interesting)
I really care about this (Score:2)
I really care about this. It's probably the most important thing I've read this year.
See? No special punctuation needed. Next!
Why do we need this symbol, anyway? (Score:2)
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U+0161 already exists (Score:2)
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0100.pdf [unicode.org]
"Small Latin Letter S with Caron"
"Czech, Estonian, Finnish, Slovak, and many other languages."
-molo
A Profoundly Stupid Thing (Score:2)
The beauty of sarcasm lies in its inherent ambiguity and its delayed-action effect.
A sarcasm symbol is crude and ugly.
Is it April 1?
Unicode support (Score:2)
To what "bad unicode support" is the submitter referring? The Web has excellent Unicode support. Every browser supports just about every BMP Unicode character I can throw at it (except IE in Windows XP, but even that does at least a fair job).
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Okay, I see your point. Too much of the software supporting the web is not Unicode-aware.
Slashdot isn't the only site where I've had to make a conscious effort to avoid non-Latin-1 characters, because I fear it will break the underlying software.
Hmmm (Score:2)
Sarcasm mark - that's real useful.
We don't need a sarcasm punctuation mark (Score:2)
If you can't read something and know it's sarcasm, well...stupidity should be painful. Just ask all those news organizations who keep quoting The Onion stories as real news. [wikipedia.org]
You wouldn't want that kind of fun to stop, would you? That's one of the best parts of sarcasm. Pitching it over the heads of stupid people and watching them not get it. There is an element of sadism to really good sarcasm, and a punctuation mark to make it obvious would ruin that.
Support Michigan Jobs! (Score:2)
Sarcasm, Inc., is based in Washington, Michigan, a bit north of Detroit. I, for one, will be paying the buck ninety-nine to support the Michigan economy. We're at over 13% unemployment, and we never recovered from losing our manufacturing economy. And now, my great state has once again started building something: punctuation! If you support open punctuation, you're destroying Michigan jobs!
Oh, I just visited their website, and there's no Linux version of the SarcMark software.
Fuck you guys, SarcMark.
Euro symbol anyone ? (Score:2)
Behold! (Score:2)
i give you sarcastrophes!
i just ^love^ being modded down.
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A couple of thousand people? Oh yeah, let's completely halt technological progress for their sake!