On Mon, 23 Jul 2001, Laurie Brown wrote:
Adam Bower wrote:
representation of the "hacker" was very lacking. It seemed to infer that
Infer? I think you mean "imply", which may explain any misunderstanding... Infer != imply...
Aah yes, I have just looked at this. I did actually mean infer! albeit that the inference was made from what we (real hackers) would describe as false data or information. I would of said the program implied something but they made it very clear that hackers were once good and are now bad hence (I believe) the inference.
I have just looked them (infer & imply) up in the OED though and it is interesting to note that I probably meant something between infer and imply as I didn't actually know the complete difference between the two (and the several pints of lager I had just drunk also probably didn't help!) but there was some nagging feeling at the time of writing. Also noteworthy is that "over 20% of the citations for infer in the British National Corpex are erroneous for imply." source OED.
Adam PS this is now on alug social only so that ppl don't get upset.