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A comment on The Deal That Makes No Sense. Parent comment

Re:The Deal That Makes No Sense by fnordfnordfnord on Tuesday September 03, 2013 @08:21AM (#6320449)
Somebody gave one of my students a fairly (< 1yr old) new laptop the other day because they got it loaded up with viruses, (virii?) There is a market segment with more money than brains, it is large.
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Re:The Deal That Makes No Sense by singlow on Tuesday September 03, 2013 @09:16AM (#6320719)
Word is from Latin - Latin plural is viri. The double i would only occur if the stem already ends in i, such as radius: radi- + -us.

http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/WORDS.EXE?virus

In English the plural is viruses.

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Re:The Deal That Makes No Sense by itsameta4 on Tuesday September 03, 2013 @01:39PM (#6322375)
In Latin, "virus" is a mass noun, like "stuff", "water", or "poison", its original meaning. There is no attested plural. Being of originally Greek origin doesn't help matters.

In English, there's never a reason to use anything other than "viruses".

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Re:The Deal That Makes No Sense by lloeki on Tuesday September 03, 2013 @01:41PM (#6322383)
> Latin plural is viri

Actually, virus is a "mass noun" (uncountable) and has no plural. If it ever had a nominative plural it would be vira, and out of anything, viri is its genitive singular.

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Re:The Deal That Makes No Sense by dragonwriter on Tuesday September 03, 2013 @01:56PM (#6322510)
> Word is from Latin - Latin plural is viri.

No, that's the Latin plural of vir; viri means "men" not "poisons" ("virus" means "poison" in Latin.) [1]

http://www.google.com/#q=translate+viri+from+latin+to+englis...

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Re:The Deal That Makes No Sense by singlow on Tuesday September 03, 2013 @04:06PM (#6323404)
Oops. I mistook the genitive listing in Whitaker for a plural.
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Re:The Deal That Makes No Sense by bad_user on Tuesday September 03, 2013 @09:34AM (#6320822)
I don't see how (a) one example of stupidity is representative for the populace at large and (b) how this particular example is relevant at all.

If one person is ignorant in one domain, that doesn't mean that person doesn't excel in another domain. Stupidity is relative.

E.g. my father can't use a computer and thinks his computer is broken whenever he has minor problems with it. On the other hand he has a perfect track record in managing government institutions and the family's business and he's also extremely good at handling money and being a cheap bastard. He never learned to use a computer simply because he can delegate such tasks to his subordinates (or me).

And yet you've placed him in the bucket of people with more money than brains, simply because somebody on this planet sold his computer because it was virused.

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Re:The Deal That Makes No Sense by slurry on Tuesday September 03, 2013 @08:53AM (#6320589)
Viruses.
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