Should sudo be used?

[Jerry McAllister]

On Fri, Apr 06, 2007 at 12:08:04PM +0100, Alex Zbyslaw wrote:

> Jerry McAllister wrote:
> 
> >I noticed one grammatical thing of question.   In the first paragraph 
> >under "Use ssh instead of Telnet or rsh/rlogin"  it says 
> >
> >  "they should never be used to administrate a machine over a network,"
> >
> >I think the word should be 'administer'  instead of 'administrate' 
> >unless this is some sort of British thing.     I know, picky picky, but
> >it just stood out to me as I was reading.
> > 
> >
> 10 years ago you might have been correct.  An old dictionary on the 
> shelf does not list "administrate".  However both modern dictionaries I 
> tried listed it with the same meaning as administer in it's "oversee" sense.
> 
> On-line, try, for example, WordNet http://wordnet.princeton.edu/ (web 
> interface: http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn).  I can find over a 
> dozen references with a google for "administrate meaning".
> 
> I can't find any etymology for this specific (and I would agree, in some 
> sense wrong) form however it is clearly in common usage.
> 
> Language evolves, not always in ways that everyone likes.  Administer is 
> a perfectly good word, and there's no need for "administrate" to exist.  
> But language skills being what they are, someone looks at 
> "administration" and it's quite understandable how they get to a verb 
> "administrate".  C.f compensation, for example.

Geeez, the language is falling apart.
I was afraid of that.   Why did I ever take 8th grade English
and have to learn about verb infinitives when I could have been
trying to spy on girls gymn class...

////jerry

> 
> --Alex
>