Jude <bookofj...@gmail.com> wrote: > William Tanksley, Jr <wtanksle...@gmail.com> wrote: >> My reaction is negative -- it looks like a ***REALLY*** superlatively >> goofy name intended as a technical pun, replacing a reasonably serious >> one (although I'm even happier with just plain "bats"). I don't recall >> any discussion, but that's probably just my terrible memory, or maybe >> I was busy when it happened. > Assuming that you're referring to "megabat" as goofy, please confer > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabat>, though perhaps that's what you > mean by technical pun. The "goofy" seems to be a cultural thing, > because "mega" as a suffix doesn't seem all that "goofy" to me as an > Australian. Perhaps I've just not been exposed to it as much as anyone > else.
"Mega" as a prefix works better with Greek roots than it does with English ones. The fact is that the genera "megabat" is an immensely varied one (as the Wikipedia entry explains, some megabats are small enough to be smaller than some microbats), and nobody would look at any existing group of bats and say "those are megabats". The common and species names are much more descriptive, and much more interesting. And much less likely to sound like you're punning on "megabyte". Huh, interesting -- apparently megabats don't typically use echolocation (except the egyptian bat), so a Silence spell shouldn't have the effect of hindering their flight. It might be fun to diversify bats as a general class, add echolocation, and maybe even the condition of darkness. > There's honestly nothing you can say on the matter that I haven't > heard at least ten or twenty times on IRC, most of which seemed to be > aimed specifically at myself. Perhaps I take too much to heart. Then why on earth did you say you hadn't heard anything negative? Sounds like the reaction was overwhelmingly negative. > Most of my negativity towards this change stems from having put up > with all of these comments for quite some time, which now seems to > have been for nought, rather than rationale for or against it. Any pointers to a decent discussion? Or for that matter, your rationale? I hold you in high respect, so I expect to be convinced -- but I know what I thought from the very first moment I saw this, and I warn you that my reaction is going to be the same as almost everyone else's; they're going to assume you're making a computer geek pun. > -J -Wm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Achieve unprecedented app performance and reliability What every C/C++ and Fortran developer should know. Learn how Intel has extended the reach of its next-generation tools to help boost performance applications - inlcuding clusters. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmay _______________________________________________ Crawl-ref-discuss mailing list Crawl-ref-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/crawl-ref-discuss
