Your region for free !!! no fees !!!

Hey, you got something right! My kids call me GOD, and I will leave the derivation of *that* acronym as a (pretty simple) challenge for you.

IBTL!

Wow, 17 pages of IBTL.

Add in my IBTL.. which isn't looking likely for some reason. Mods taking a full week of vacation?

I'm not really clear on why they will lock it.

Is it because you're their Good Old Dad? Or because you are a higher authority on words than the OED and you write better than Sam Clemens?

The idea of advertising competing virtual worlds on the LL forum. They've been locked in the past.

And I'm still waiting for Pep to respond to the history lesson on TINSTAAFL (that is, admit he was completely wrong) which he received at the hands of "the dragon".

By my counts this is the third time you have posted the same unfounded comment, which I answered elsewhere the first time.

Pep (But then, it is evident that you don't necessarily read threads before you post)

PS I am still waiting for anybody other than the error-prone dragon to claim that they knew of the existence of TINSTAAFL before this thread, or even prefer it as the initialism of the philosophy widely propagated by Heinlein

What history lesson? I haven't noticed any justification for TINSTAAFL other than the dogmatic refusal of a pedantic dragon to admit that he got it wrong inthe first place.

Pep (And still waiting for anyone else to admit to recognising that form rather than the vastly more widespread TANSTAAFL)

Why wait? READ some of the 11,600 hits on Google for it and see what they say:

"Any freshman economics student knows the acronym TINSTAAFL – there is no such thing as a free lunch."

"One sounds better, one is more widely used. Message is the same, but my Economics prof preferred TINSTAAFL, so that's what I use."

"Engineers often say, "There is no such thing as a free lunch" (abbreviated TINSTAAFL) to imply that no benefit is without cost."

"Outside hacker circles the variant TINSTAAFL ("There is No Such Thing..." is apparently more common, and can be traced back to 1952 in the writings of ethicist Alvin Hansen. TANSTAAFL may well have arisen from it by mutation."

"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress popularized the concept of There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, or TANSTAAFL. (Actually, the phrase may have its roots in the writings of ethicist Alvin Hansen in 1952, only he used the phrase “there is no such thing as a free lunch” or TINSTAAFL.)"

From this research, it appears that the use of TINSTAAFL predates TANSTAAFL, hence:

http://books.google.com/books?id=d6JZryGvfxYC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&source=bl&ots=-GHHab8s5R&sig=z0_LgER-q75XVQZStj3MzGAxmzc&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result

However, don't let facts get in the way of a good argument.

BTW, by now going after American literature here and American culture in that other thread, on an server housed in the US, whose readership is on average American, you are now by *any* definition trolling.

... 1952 in the writings of ethicist Alvin Hansen

Only if you are *extremely* sensitive and likely to be provoked by the tiniest hints of criticism that would be recognised...

And as The WhingeBot has pointed out elsewhere in this thread "fayre" is considered archaic and used by a minority because "fair" was considered by the large majority as better.

Pep (Talarus was arguing against himself, and you have painted yourself into a corner with him)

I've never heard of either. And still keep forgetting what they mean.

Initialism is an ugly looking word. Makes my skin crawl.

Sure, iff taken in isolation, you'd be right. But there's a pattern with your posts which builds a larger truth. And that truth is: troll.

Wriggle and squirm all you want.

Your arguments falling apart? Recognising me as being right and falling back on over-emotional unsubstantiated opinions? You are entitled to think whatever you like, but you aren't correct. Just because I disagree with you and voice those disagreements logically doesn't make me a troll. Your irrational behaviour on the other hand is much closer to the recognised definition.

Pep (You remind me of those politicians whose best defence to a justifiable charge is simply to say the opposite more loudly and more often)

My using your own arguments against you is "wriggling and squirming"?

Pep (It seems to me you are now running on empty)

tough rat on lazy legs holding a rock.

troll-har

(brand new acronym, or italizism or whatever. Created 200

You can't argue, Pep. That you are a troll is irrefutable.

(I learned the "irrefutable" technique of being right from you - so thank you!)

I have refuted it.

Pep (And one more time: You remind me of those politicians whose best defence to a justifiable charge is simply to say the opposite more loudly and more often)

So pep, if the OED is the definitive reference to the English language... why so many volumes and changes?

It's not definitive, it's representative of how some see the English language.

It's no more definitive than any other dictionary