[plug] Spelling check needed by list posters was RedHat vs. Debian

[Michael Hunt]

Hiya all,

I have recently noticed a degradation in the spelling of list postings and
thought I might point out a few humorous uses of words by plug members that
are quite evidently spelling mistakes but add substantially to the meaning
and enjoyment of the posts. Take for example the following:

On a recent RedHat vs. Debian post the honorable Anthony J. Breeds-Taurima
wrote on the subject of comparing distributions:

'{it is} like asking "Catholic or Prodestant?" in a room full of Irish men.'

Was he just trying to get across the full Irish ness of the lads by
accentuating there accents or was the scenario the more likely one of a
"pub" full of Irish men all standing around drinking Guinness ???

Maybe Tony has been drinking some of the brown stuff himself because he goes
on to make more errors (which could only be taken as a slurring of speech).
Take a look at:

'RedHat is easier to install for a nwebie'
'Debian's package managent is a great ally'
'In terms of functionalyity for a network server'

And the greatest one of all (proving to me that something of an alcoholic
nature has been consumed in Tony's lifetime):

'it really is 6 of one half-a-dozen of thew other'

Not to be out done by Tony, our good friend Gavin tries to out wit Tony by
posting:

'in my opinion outway the advantages'

I'm sorry to say this Gavin but I think you have been out gunned by Tony by
a ratio of 1:5.

My question to both Tony and Gavin is:

'What were you doing up at 2 and 4 in the morning ???'

Maybe the original poster Joel Fraser started this all off when he wrote:

'which is a better RedHat or Debian'

Okay this may not be a true spelling mistake, maybe more a case of
grammatical misuse then anything. However I've never heard of a better
reason for starting a PLUG pub crawl than for the purpose of discussing this
topic. (Well maybe a discussion of vi vs. emacs could go this way as well).

Matt if you have been feeding spark any of the brown stuff that resulted in
this happening then keep it up as it has made my reading of the list most
enjoyable.

Michael Hunt

An Aussie in Africa.

P.S. Maybe I have too much time on my hands at the moment, but I was
thinking that it would be interesting to write a program that searches the
plug archives and records the number of spelling mistakes against a posters
email address as well as the number of words written. We would have to make
some assumptions like:

All content in a mail message would have to be considered to have been
written (or spell checked)  by the poster. Trying to sort out original
content by the poster would difficult.
Spark scores points for mistakes in the headers.
Tony is not allowed to run a spell check on posts he has made before he runs
the script.

Any suggestions on how to go about this. I was thinking of a perl or python
script.


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