Re: ISP vs "newsgroup server provider":

On Wed, 14 Dec 2005 08:34:11 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
<kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx> said:

> Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> > On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 14:36:52 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
> > <kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx> said:

> >> Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> > [...]

> >> Again, an ISP provides "Internet service", not "Internet
> >> services".

> > That's like saying a garden-tool store sells only one garden tool,
> > or a stamp collection contains only one stamp. We don't say "stamps
> > collection", but that's what we mean when we say "stamp collection".

> If you really think that those are parallel, I dont know what to say.

They are parallel when I interpret your "Again, an ISP
provides 'Internet service', not 'Internet services'" as an
argument against thinking of any source that supplies
Internet services as an Internet service provider. If you
didn't mean that, I don't know what your point was.

> > When some of us say "Internet service provider", we mean
> > "Internet services provider", but we don't say it that way,
> > because it's not idiomatic.

> That's what I meant when I said that if people think about it that
> way, then they've reanalyzed what the phrase means.

"Reanalyzed" is a pretty fancy word for perceiving a word to
have a different meaning from the one intended, which may be
what a large part of language change is based upon. In
looking at dictionary definitions of "analyze", I see no
basis for calling simple misperception of meaning analysis.
> I suspect that it must be confusing for such people, as
> they will typically deal with many providers of "Internet
> services".

So they'll have many different Internet service providers.
What's confusing about that?

But we should keep in mind the basis for this subthread. It
arose from someone's telling me that newsgroups are not
provided by an Internet service provider but by a "newsgroup
server provider". (That was clumsy wording, by the way. A
newsgroup-server provider would be something that provided
newsgroup servers.) My reaction was that a newsgroup
provider--which I took to be the intended meaning--would be
one of the services provided by an Internet service
provider, not something distinct from it. It's a big
stretch from there to considering whether or not to call
Amazon.com an Internet service provider.

> Let me be sure that I understand you, though: Active-News, as a
> provider of newsgroups (and nothing else); Google, as a provider of
> search;

"Google" subsumes "Google Groups", and the latter does more
than provide search: as you know, it also provides e-mail
service.

> Amazon, as a provider of on-line shopping; Yahoo, as a
> provider of e-mail and stock quotes and instant messaging; and
> weather.com, as a provider of weather reports are all ISPs to such
> people. I can't say that I've heard them described as such, but I'm
> not going to second guess your experience or introspection.

Okay.

> >> Someone who provides only e-mail service or only newsgroups is not
> >> an ISP. You have to already *have* Internet service in order to
> >> use it.

> > I accept that your remarks conform to the technical-jargon
> > definition of "Internet service provider". Lay people greatly
> > outnumber technogeeks.

> In my experience, lay people talk about their ISP as the company
> they pay money to to get them "Internet". No other provider of
> Internet services that they use is their ISP (or even "an ISP").

> I'll buy that people may have reanalyzed the name to mean "services"
> and think of their ISP as providing services, as (and because) most of
> them now do. But I haven't heard people use "ISP" to refer to other
> service providers (even of the services they rely on their ISP for)
> and I suspect that when people start going elsewhere for the
> "fundamental" services, as many do these days to Google for news and
> to Yahoo or Gmail for e-mail, that for them the scope of what an ISP
> provides will shrink back to its original meaning. The ISP will again
> be like the phone company, the cable company, the gas company, or the
> mail service--the one that hooks you up.

The gas company provides gas, the phone company provides
communication by telephone, and the cable company provides
cable television and broadband Internet access (plus some
other things I don't subscribe to). It would do me no good
to connect to them if they didn't provide something useful.

> >> > Keep in mind that I'm discussing this topic from the point of
> >> > view of a Joe or Jane Sixpack who has no need to be concerned
> >> > with the jargon of technogeeks.

> >> If this is the case, then Jane and Joe have reanalyzed what the
> >> phrase means.

> > Anyone who thinks English terms have only one meaning is living in a
> > fool's paradise.

> You certainly couldn't be talking about me. Besides the fact that
> you've been reading my articles for too long, the very setence you're
> replying to assumes that words can have more than one meaning.

You made what Jane and Joe do sound like something
reprehensible. From that it would follow that new meanings
resulting from their "reanalysis" should be rejected.

> >> Certainly at one point "ISP" meant "The company that allowed me to
> >> get on the net". I don't believe that I've ever heard anybody
> >> consider Google or Amazon as an ISP, even though they manifestly
> >> provide "services".

I gave an example of an alt.usage.english poster who thought
Dejanews was her Internet service provider (see more below).
The way statistics works, one occurrence can be taken to
imply the existence of a substantial number of others.

> > One name for a picture tube is "kinescope". In the early days of
> > television, coast-to-coast distribution of shows was done by making
> > a recording from the face of a kinescope. The result was first
> > called a kinescope recording. People began calling the shows
> > themselves kinescopes. Technogeeks laughed at that "error", but the
> > general public found the usage convenient and were content to
> > continue its use. In the contexts where it was used, it was correct
> > terminology.
>
> Sure. That's why what you say is plausible. I'd still like to see
> some evidence that it is, in fact, true for a substantial portion of
> the population.

I'm not sure what the antecedent of your "it" that is, in
fact, true is. If you mean by "it" the fact that
"kinescope" was used for a kinescope recording, the fact
that the meaning found its way into dictionaries--both
British and American--should be evidence enough to show that
it had substantial use. But the kinescope recording, so far
as I know, is only a matter of history since the advent of
microwave relays and video recorders. In looking at Google
hits on "kinescope", I get the impression that people who
use the word are talking about what used to be.

> >> I don't believe that I've ever heard anybody consider Google or
> >> Amazon as an ISP, even though they manifestly provide "services".

You already said that, and I responded to it. See above.

> > A number of years ago there was an alt.usage.english newcomer who
> > posted from Dejanews, the forerunner of Google Groups. She was
> > asking questions about the mechanics of posting. I mentioned a time
> > or two that she should consider Dejanews a temporary means and that
> > she should plan to sign up with a regular Internet Service Provider.
> > She commented at one point, "But I thought Dejanews *was* my
> > Internet Service Provider". I would expect to find that there are
> > lots of people who feel the same way.

> And I suspect otherwise, although the population is big enough that
> "lots" isn't a very high bar. Now all we have to do is figure out a
> way of finding out which of us is correct.

In this case, "correct" itself would be a relative term, but
it probably isn't the right word to convey your intended
thought. You may better have said "which of us can find the
most evidence to support his position".

Your task would seem more difficult than mine, because it's
easy to show that there are at least a couple of examples to
support my position, but I can't imagine how you would find
even one example to show that my position has no validity at
all.
.

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