[HN Gopher] Man overcharged 20 rupees for India train ticket win...
___________________________________________________________________
Man overcharged 20 rupees for India train ticket wins 22-year legal
battle
Author : nigerian1981
Score : 271 points
Date : 2022-08-12 10:42 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's worth noting that in the Indian judicial system a large
| number of judges are related to previous judges. There is a
| system where the previous judges appoint subsequent ones, which
| results in widespread nepotism.
|
| The length of the battle comes from an overcrowded judicial
| system which has many reasons like this to be overcrowded via
| constraint of supply.
|
| Supply constraint mechanisms are a way for labour to extract
| value from society. It happens with the AMA here and the
| judiciary there.
| wahern wrote:
| A law professor who consulted around the world on transactional
| banking law with litigants and even courts recounted a sardonic
| bit of legal advice from India: Always pick a lawyer with a son.
| (Because the case will outlive the first lawyer, and better that
| it's passed on to someone with familiarity.)
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| The needful hath been done.
| robaye wrote:
| It helps he's a lawyer. I don't know if it would be worth
| fighting for that amount over 22 years and paying a lawyer at the
| same time.
| pseudolus wrote:
| Periodically stories emerge about cases in Indian courts that
| have been pending for centuries. [0]. Such cases, not only in
| India, have also been the fodder for literature, including
| Charles Dicken's "Bleak House" set against the backdrop of the
| interminable fictional probate case "Jarndyce v Jarndyce" which
| is implied to have lasted for generations.
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-21446272
| mherdeg wrote:
| A piece of Internet culture I miss dearly is the FatWallet
| Finance forums, which had an ongoing thread called "kinship
| proceedings: what can go wrong":
| https://web.archive.org/web/20171009102701/https://www.fatwa...
|
| When Rakuten finally shuttered the forums I think the thread
| was about 13 years old; it was about a minor estate (mid 7
| figures??) from someone who died inestate being divided up
| among an extended family, complicated by a random multi-year
| pause in the proceedings while no lawyers did anything to
| advance the case, and by the periodic appearance of purported
| long-lost relatives.
|
| I have no idea what happened there and I'll always wonder. I do
| see that one of the bureaucrats from the thread was in the news
| ( https://nypost.com/2013/06/29/administrators-mishandled-
| more... ).
| balderdash wrote:
| I feel like he should also get lawyers fees
| lom wrote:
| He represented himself
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| His time isn't free, so a person could reasonably make the
| argument still. Granted, I'm not sure how that would look
| exactly.
| epgui wrote:
| Idk about India, but in other common law countries, courts
| often don't even award basic costs to self-represented
| applicants, as a matter of policy. I never really
| understood the rationale.
| balderdash wrote:
| he is a lawyer, he spent time on this case, theoretically at
| the expense of other work, why shouldn't he be paid his
| normal hourly rate?
| Aeolun wrote:
| Absolutely not a hill worth dying on, but I can't help but be
| impressed with the tenacity.
| Tepix wrote:
| Just imagine how great that must have felt!
| teddyh wrote:
| All progress depends on the unreasonable man.
| lbriner wrote:
| But what progress here?
|
| Someone who worked for us 20 years+ ago charged you too much.
| Sorry, it wouldn't happen now.
| balderdash wrote:
| If that was the case, why didn't the railway concede the
| case and move on.
| xeromal wrote:
| The rail company probably lost a lot more money that they
| anticipated so maybe they're be more careful about pricing.
| jonatron wrote:
| I'm currently over 2 months and 4 emails into a battle to get a
| tiny amount of compensation for a train delay in the UK. Similar
| situation, it's not about the money, it's the principle.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| i am a legal practitioner operating in these courts and let me be
| the party pooper, cases like these are the reason why the
| judiciary is fucked shit.
|
| courts in india have like 100 year backlog or something crazy
| amount. reason? i get the whole "principle" thing but get in
| line.
|
| because of "principled people" like this man, inmates
| incarcerated for 10+ years without a trial are being delayed
| because once admitted, each case has to be completed to the full
| and these shall i say "worthless petty cases" are one of the
| causes of delay. want to know how much delay? apparently the
| case, over 22 years had over 100 hearing. that means, the 100
| times the court was in session, some other case got pushed back,
| just a tiny bit but over 100 times, that counts to a lot.
|
| now, i am not saying people should not fight for "principle" but
| when you are being pompous assholes for fighting over pennies
| while innocent men and women are being subjected to horrendous
| conditions in indian jails or thousands of victims of sexual
| crimes or other more serious issue, these principled people are
| causing the delay.
|
| why dont you do arbitration whereby you go outside the
| traditional court system and fight your battles however long you
| like. why are they holding up courts?
| em-bee wrote:
| fair point. but why does it take 100 hearings to resolve a case
| like this?
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| legal incompetence, bureaucracy, case load of judges, yada
| yada.
|
| the judge looks at his calender, thinks "hmm, how about 3
| months from now".
|
| on that date, either of the lawyers says "judge, i need more
| time for an affidavit, why dont you give me 4 more
| months"...... on and on..
|
| oh, btw, the next time the court does hear your case, its a
| different judge so you have to explain it once again and then
| the judge goes "next hearing date 4 months"....
| mulmen wrote:
| How are any of those things the victim's fault? Your
| _country_ has a problem, not the plaintiff.
| ryandrake wrote:
| These problems seem to be fixable either by judges
| themselves or by lawmakers who presumably have the power to
| pass laws that speed up the legal system.
|
| Lawyer: "judge, i need more time for an affidavit, why dont
| you give me 4 more months"
|
| Judge: "gtfo. judgment is for the prepared party"
| epgui wrote:
| Yeah this isn't even judicial leniency, it's a judicial
| joke.
| sokoloff wrote:
| IMO, the stubborn party who is in the wrong is far more to
| blame than the principled party who is in the right.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| The US has small claims courts, that expedite these sorts of
| issues.
|
| Does India have something similar?
| JSavageOne wrote:
| It is not this man's fault your country has a 100 year backlog
| on court cases, it is your country's fault. Take responsibility
| for your country's failure in managing its judicial system
| efficiently rather than trying to scapegoat a man who was
| ripped off by your country's railway system.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| how is the court at fault here? i just said if the case is
| admitted, it has to run its course. why did the other side
| not budge in the first place? why did it take them 22 years
| and a court to tell them they were wrong? didn't they know
| that?
|
| they did and they still didn't care. that is the problem, not
| the courts per se.
| abc_lisper wrote:
| Hear you! This sort of unprincipled pragmatism, that
| overlooks any long term benefit over short term inconvenience
| is pretty much how things are done in India.
| [deleted]
| wccrawford wrote:
| Why blame the person who was wronged, instead of the company
| that wronged him?
|
| If they had just given up, none of that needed to happen. Why
| is that not your focus for fixing the courts?
| jopython wrote:
| Maybe you should be complaining about not having enough judges
| to investigative the 40 millions pending cases?!
| sonthonax wrote:
| Hacker News is really going to the dogs. This comment shouldn't
| be downvoted. It's a dissenting viewpoint that comes from a
| vastly more informed place than the top comment which is a
| petty-minded justice boner about 'principle'.
| akudha wrote:
| This case is extra special, as anyone who has ever dealt with any
| Indian bureaucracy can attest to. I went to my university for
| some paperwork (years after I had gotten my degree) - I was
| treated like a leper and openly asked for a bribe.
|
| This man is a hero! As he says, it is not about the money
| adharmad wrote:
| "Equally surprising was that Indian Railways, the country's
| largest employer, chose to continue fighting the case."
|
| There needs to be some sort of common sense oversight in the
| Raliways (and most probably in other Indian government
| organizations also).
|
| Also I wonder on what grounds the Railways was fighting on? The
| prices of the tickets are well known and widely published, and
| even though they do change over time, a lawyer like Chaturvedi
| would have kept all documentation.
| dmos62 wrote:
| > Equally surprising was that Indian Railways, the country's
| largest employer, chose to continue fighting the case.
|
| If you think it's crazy for this lone lawyer to have gone through
| this crusade, keep in mind that Indian Railways fought in a 100
| hearings for ~25 cents, and their lawyers don't work for free.
| How bonkers is that?
| csomar wrote:
| Not that bonkers really. I think the manager or responsible
| party is legally required to exhaust all options before
| refunding. It's not about the money but about covering his
| bases.
| bongoman37 wrote:
| closetohome wrote:
| I think real justice would include an absolutely enormous fine
| to the company for tying up 20 years of court resources over a
| case they were clearly wrong about.
|
| The plaintiff may not have incurred any legal costs, but the
| railway certainly cost the court a lot of money over the years.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Makes perfect sense if you have any experience with Indian
| Railways or bureaucracy. It's even worse than American
| bureaucracy.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| If you prove it takes 20 years to successfully sue you, you can
| get away with just about anything.
| ssizn wrote:
| It's a public company. They don't give a shit about wasting
| money.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I know nothing about the Indian legal system other than it
| draws a lot from the British one, but generally in cases like
| this the seemingly obtuse behavior is to prevent a
| precedential decision that others might refer to.
|
| If they are suddenly on hook for refunds in a way they
| weren't before, there's a loss of potential future revenue
| and the additional cost of refund issuance bureaucracy. In a
| country the size of india even a 0.1% overcharge rate could
| add up to significant money. I can see why they would want to
| limit customers to disputing prices at the time of ticket
| issue.
|
| It's not hard to find examples of private companies
| litigating over matters that seem superficially petty.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Indian Railways probably have inhouse counsels who get paid the
| same salary irrespective of the no. of cases handled.
| linux_devil wrote:
| Me and my friends often debate as most of the cases follow
| certain pattern, it should be easier to categories the majority
| of the cases and if not fully but partially automate the process.
|
| Most of the paper work(judiciary / non judiciary) involves
| similar template , SSH/SSA , agreements etc. It need not be this
| complex. Most of the manual work involved in the process should
| be automated
| shmde wrote:
| My granddad had to fight a case for more than 30 years because
| the tenant wouldn't leave. 30 fucking years just to get back a
| house which he bought. The only mistake he made was buying the
| house with the tenants still inside. They even went onto to take
| the deal outside the court where we would pay 1/4 of the house
| price to make them leave the house.
|
| Indian legal battles stretch for so long that many times people
| die without hearing a judgement for the case but my granddad was
| lucky enough to get the house back a few years before he died.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| This happens in the US as well, for example
| https://www.foxnews.com/us/long-island-man-who-hasnt-paid-hi...
| [deleted]
| vinay_ys wrote:
| Possession is 9/10th of the law.
| bananapear wrote:
| What would have happened if he had paid some intimidating
| people to forcibly evict the tenants and take possession?
| Tepix wrote:
| Is there a way (money?) to speed things up?
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| You can pay clerks to move your file around but the judiciary
| is so overloaded and understaffed that unless yours is a high
| priority or high profile case, it will just need to wait its
| turn. Which can be months in between hearings.
| Anunayj wrote:
| bribe* clerks. and if you can bribe them to move the date
| forward, you can probably bribe them to move the date
| backward.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| > The only mistake he made was buying the house with the
| tenants still inside.
|
| I'm not sure how strong tenant protection is in India, but here
| in the Netherlands, it's well-understood that purchasing a
| property is not a valid reason to evict its tenants. Rental
| properties are sold and purchased with the understanding that
| they are investments, and that the property owners will not be
| able to live there (unless the tenants voluntarily leave).
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| My FIL has a similar story of a piece of land that was stolen
| by someone. He filed the case in 2011. No progress yet.
|
| Real estate is the riskiest asset class in India
| foobazzy wrote:
| Reminds of the time I had an argument over the phone with a guy
| from a UPI app (PhonePe). There was a hack going around on
| dormant accounts. I had one account with them which was (maybe?)
| used only a few times.
|
| I called customer care and asked if they could delete my account.
| They said, and I quote, "due to RBI regulations, we can't".
| Naturally, I asked "which regulation document? do you have a
| number?". The other person did not have an answer and escalated
| my call. They said they would get back to me and in the meantime,
| I read all the regulations there were. The regulations clearly
| stated that issuers shall give an option to close the account at
| any time. There was no such option in the app.
|
| I pressed again to close the account to prevent misuse and/or
| fraud. The person on the other end of the call asked me
| (beratingly) to logout and delete the app. Because it was the
| same as deleting the account. I argued that it is not the same
| thing. To which his tone was more or less like, [my words, this
| is how it sounded] "you blithering idiot, you blasphemous
| imbecile, do you know how miniscule you are in the grand scheme
| of things. I am God here and you should bow down to my
| superiority and accept my solution"
|
| I wonder if I should have sued.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Simply filing a complaint with the office of the ombudsman[0]
| would have sufficed. My friend made a complaint regarding
| misbehavior by a banking official and the branch manager called
| in a few days grovelling apologies.
|
| [0]: https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/Complaints.aspx
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I wonder how quickly he would have dropped the case if he had any
| more dire need of the court system over the past twenty years.
| manholio wrote:
| This is not a story about tenacity or an overloaded court system.
| It's a story about deliberate bad governance to keep corruption
| money flowing in an impoverished country.
|
| The political leadership could easily find solutions to stop such
| abuses of the public legal system, and direct resources to high
| priority cases with large public impact. By deliberately allowing
| such cases to bog down the justice system and waste limited
| public resources, they ensure rule of law cannot operate
| effectively. It's a typical story.
| cm42 wrote:
| Ever since we tossed out Divine Right, our overlords have had
| to resort to increasingly-inscrutable systems to do the
| needful, and inscrutable systems are effectively the same as
| "no system" in this regard.
|
| I tire of hearing excuses like "our judges can't adjudicate
| simple matters in fewer than three generations [because they
| are busy and have A Hard Job]", or "we can't have healthcare
| because the sous chef du jour did not include it on the menu,
| and we must respect the venerable and time-honored tradition of
| the sous chef du jour in designing the menu"
|
| Just once, I'd rather hear them say "Obama of Nantucket relayed
| a vision in which 12 great dragons appeared, all pissed about
| the price of oil, the upcoming NATO summit, the Franklin County
| Republican primaries, and the wearing of pocket squares with
| striped suits. On healthcare, saith the Orange Dragon: put an
| onion in your sock and go to MedExpress if you get sick, and
| you'll probably be fine."
|
| Even if nothing substantive changed, at least the comments
| sections and over-the-shoulder graphics on the news would be
| cooler, anyway.
| obscur wrote:
| Interesting perspective, where did you read about this?
| poisonborz wrote:
| >> The case highlights India's overloaded court system, where
| around 40m cases are clogging up the system. Legal cases have
| been known to take 10-15 years to reach a conclusion.
|
| Most interesting tidbit for me. Is this really true?
| drexlspivey wrote:
| A _lot_ of countries are like this, the main reason justice is
| swift in the US is the out-of-court settlement scheme where
| 95%-99% of the cases don't reach trial.
| mfrye0 wrote:
| Yes. One of my friends is a lawyer in India.
|
| He shared a story with me of a particular lawyer that ends up
| being paid millions of dollars per hour, because he's able to
| leverage his connections to help corporate clients jump to the
| front of the line.
| tecoholic wrote:
| I am not sure about the 40m cases. But the 10-15 years is true.
| The civil cases in the country can drag on for a generation or
| more. I have personally witnessed one such case where the
| plaintiff has died of old age.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| Yes. Part of the reason is that lower courts have a very
| lenient attitude towards no-shows that encourages continual
| postponement of cases. Any random excuse like "my lawyer has a
| stomach ache" will delay the hearing to the next date. It's
| then not a surprise that many folks use this to delay out of
| malice.
| paskozdilar wrote:
| I don't know about India, but it really _is_ the case in less-
| developed countries. The sluggishness of the legal system is a
| catalyst to corruption - so anyone can do anything, and suing
| is useless because the case won 't even be heard until years
| later.
|
| The only way anyone is gonna get sued is because of such
| "stubborn" individuals that keep on going. But alas, a few
| individuals can't fix the whole system.
| lokar wrote:
| This is a main reason corporations choose Delaware. Fast
| predictable outcomes to litigation.
| fillskills wrote:
| Yes, sadly this is true and one of the biggest bottlenecks in
| India. There are many ways (bribing and legal) to delay a case.
| I have known cases to last 20-30 years because more time will
| benefit one of the parties. For example if a rich person sues a
| poor person, lets say for an inherited property, the rich
| person benefits from making the case go longer. They dont even
| have to have a valid case, just after enough delays, the poor
| person is going to move on. Replace 'poor' above with any
| disadvantaged group.
|
| Edit: The rich/powerful people give a return of their
| "winnings" to the judges/court-employees. This is one of the
| main reasons for delays on cases that can be easily closed.
| linux_devil wrote:
| Yes it is true, and this is just one small example which
| managed to get some news . Cases drag for years and years ,
| there are hearings etc. Unless something gets in the news or
| fast tracked , legal battles seems never ending in most of the
| cases.
| pseudostem wrote:
| Absolutely, a more interesting tidbit is this -
|
| Telecom companies cannot take small subscribers to court in
| India. You don't pay your bills, they can send legal notices,
| but not much beyond that. We have ~1B+ subscribers. Even if a
| small percentage goes into dispute, our judicial system will
| completely collapse.
| seanhandley wrote:
| If ever I saw a story of the Sunk Cost Fallacy in action, this is
| it.
|
| You have to value your time and energy. 22 years of hearings for
| such a small amount of money really isn't worth it.
|
| There was a time in my life when I would probably have fought
| this on principle, but I value my time a lot more now.
| 88 wrote:
| De minimis non curat lex
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I have immense respect for people like this.
|
| They fight tiny battles and when they win, they benefit everyone.
| lbriner wrote:
| Does it really benefit anyone? Massive organisations like the
| Indian railways don't blink at a fine of $160 and they
| certainly aren't going to change anything. Presumably most
| people don't get over-charged so there isn't necessarily
| anything they can improve anyway.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I don't know what the particulars of this case were, but a
| lot of similar cases led to companies being forced to adopt
| more consumer-friendly policies.
|
| Like this story of a man who fought for a similar amount
| which ended up forcing the railways to refund hundreds of
| thousands to thousands of people:
|
| https://www.news18.com/news/business/a-5-year-fight-with-
| rai...
|
| Another case I remember off the top of my head was vendors
| charging beyond MRP for beverages in airports. Someone fought
| that in court over years and as a result, every vendor is now
| forced to sell bottled beverages at MRP now.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| And there is a clear cost to society, as 100 hearings isn't
| exactly cheap.
| gotts wrote:
| Rule of law is restored so to me it looks like it was worth
| every penny.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Rule of law is restored
|
| I bet Indian Railways mischarged someone in the time it
| took for you to make this comment.
| akudha wrote:
| Measuring everything is terms of money is wrong and
| extremely bad attitude. Rules and laws exist for a reason.
| You can't put a price on upholding the law
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >You can't put a price on upholding the law
|
| So you'd be fine paying say 99% of your income to hire
| someone to follow you around and cite you for speeding or
| jaywalking or any other infraction you commit?
|
| Obviously this is hyperbole, but every society places a
| price on upholding the law, and a hundred hearings over a
| quarter is a huge waste of that budget. The only benefit
| anyone gets is a small smug feeling that for once things
| went right.
| akudha wrote:
| I am not sure this argument is made in good faith.
| Governments and government bureaucracy have enormous
| power over an ordinary citizen - part of the reason why
| there is rampant corruption in India (in the govt sector)
| is because people don't fight back. For example, paying
| the bribe is way cheaper and faster than fighting back,
| in terms of energy/time/money. Same way, we let all kinds
| of nasty behavior from government slide because we are in
| a hurry (totally understandable).
|
| _The only benefit anyone gets is a small smug feeling
| that for once things went right._
|
| I can't understand why you are upset at this man for
| keeping up the case for so long and not at Indian
| Railways for the same? All Indian railways had to do was
| say sorry and refund 20 bucks. The fact that they kept
| fighting him for a measly 20 rupees for over two decades
| tells you everything you need to know about what they
| think of the ordinary citizen. This attitude is not
| unique to Indian railways or to India, btw.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >I can't understand why you are upset at this man for
| keeping up the case for so long and not at Indian
| Railways for the same?
|
| None of my criticism has been directed solely at the man,
| but at all three parties that let this happen. The
| Railways should have accepted their mistake at the time,
| the courts should have immediately thrown out or ruled on
| a case over a quarter, and the man should have accepted
| that sometimes small mistakes happen.
|
| You seem to hold this as some hero fighting the good
| fight over corruption, and I don't see that position at
| all. Yes corruption is an issue, in India and elsewhere.
| This waste of time had nothing to do with it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Of course you can, it happens all the time. I suggest you
| temper your idealism in the cold water of pragmatic
| awareness. A simple example of cost-capping is the idea
| of _barratry_ , where a person can be deemed a vexatious
| litigant - legalspeak for a troll who harasses others
| with frivolous lawsuits that are substantively deficient
| but require expensive procedural work to dismiss.
|
| What's notable here (and often true in stories like this)
| is that the litigant is a lawyer. They have the skill to
| manage the case and it is only costing them personal
| time, which might pay for itself in terms of professional
| or commercial reputation in addition to emotional
| satisfaction.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| If there is any chance that this very public news has caused
| even an iota of embarrassment to the publicity-sensitive
| government and maybe a review of similar useless cases
| underway, it is well worth it.
| carabiner wrote:
| He has truly done the needful.
| politelemon wrote:
| I love little cases/stories like this. I think many of us have
| some things that we will doggedly pursue, which in the greater
| scheme of things may be small... but it becomes a matter of
| principal mixed with amusement.
|
| In London our transport network is managed by TFL. Their website
| lets you search for routes, and in the route options you can go
| for the fastest route, or choose this option: "Routes with the
| least changes". Every year on the same date, I would contact them
| and ask them to change that to "Routes with the fewest changes"
| and they would respond with something to the effect of "thanks
| for the feedback, passed it on, go away now".
|
| I think I did this for over 10 years until one day it did get
| changed on their site. They did accompany it with a greater set
| of changes, that made the results more convoluted with pointless
| waypoints that clutter the results, but that's a new matter to
| pursue.
| yumraj wrote:
| > but it becomes a matter of principal mixed with amusement.
|
| I'll say it's more likely to be amusement or entertainment
| value, something to distract us from our mundane lives, and
| perhaps some PR value as well.
|
| If I were a lawyer, I wouldn't mind doing this, provided the
| cost, including time spent, is not too much.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| There's no reason to use fewest instead of least here (or fewer
| instead of less more generally)
|
| A few people have decided to start a strange grammatical
| crusade on the usage of less and fewer, despite the fact that
| for all recorded history with the usage of these words up and
| including modern day, less is used for both countable and
| uncountable nouns. Some people have a preference for using
| fewer instead but that doesn't make the usage of less incorrect
| verisimilitudes wrote:
| This is a disgusting perspective. The same people who
| champion descriptivism conveniently tend also to champion
| prescriptivism selectively, such as with the transexual
| madness over pronouns. No, I'm a prescriptivist, and I feel
| so strongly about it that I'd kill. Languages have rules,
| damn it, and damn those who disagree with this.
|
| Tell me, do either of us see people championing this for
| other languages? I don't. I think, if a white man learned
| Chinese and butchered it, and a Chinese man corrected him,
| that would be fine. Why is it different for English?
|
| Without prescriptivism, we'll see "Me love you long time" be
| considered to be as acceptable as "I will love you for a long
| time" and the very thought sickens me.
| addisonl wrote:
| Disgusting? Get a grip.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| As a descriptivist[1] I'm sure you understand that languages
| evolve. Just as the learn/teach distinction was made up by
| grammarians, so was the least/fewest one. Likewise it stuck.
| Most attempts at linguistic innovation fail. This one didn't.
|
| [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/descr
| ipt...
| ryandrake wrote:
| While language can evolve, "Language Evolves" is very often
| just used as a blanket excuse for incorrect usage. Both can
| be true.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| > Most attempts at linguistic innovation fail. This one
| didn't.
|
| Didn't it? I've never seen a "10 items or fewer" lane at a
| supermarket but I sure see "10 items or less"
|
| In terms of language I see and read daily I see less
| occurrences of fewer than less (In London, UK. I'm sure it
| varies slightly by region)
| inglor_cz wrote:
| From the point of view of a foreigner who attempts to
| speak correct English, this is a beautiful nightmare.
| Even the natives cannot agree among themselves.
|
| Neverthefewer (/s), I try to use _fewer_ when the items
| are obviously countable. But _less_ seems to have a
| natural advantage of having one syllable only; people
| usually try to express their point as quickly as
| possible, and -1 syllable is better.
| aabhay wrote:
| > I see fewer occurrences of fewer than less
|
| Fixed that for you
| iso1631 wrote:
| Last time I was in a supermarket (Tesco near blackpool) I
| saw a sign for "5 items or fewer". I don't remember
| seeing an "or less" sign for a long time.
| david422 wrote:
| Hannaford supermarkets in New England has "10 items or
| fewer". At first it seems strange since "10 items or
| less" is so common.
| Dyac wrote:
| I often see "up to 10 items" which sidesteps the issue
| neatly.
| leoedin wrote:
| Do you have any information on the learn/teach distinction
| you mention? I couldn't find anything by googling -
| although those are very common words. Those two words seem
| very distinct in my mind, so it would be interesting to
| learn that it didn't used to be the case.
| lioeters wrote:
| In some languages, "learn" and "teach" are the same word.
|
| For example in Czech, the former is in reflexive form, to
| "teach oneself". ucit se (learn) and ucit
| (teach)
|
| And in other languages, the meaning of "teach" can be
| expressed using the word for "learn", by adding the
| learner as indirect/transitive object: to
| learn someone how to play the piano
|
| But I don't know what the parent comment meant by this:
|
| > the learn/teach distinction was made up by grammarians
|
| That distinction exists in some languages, and not in
| others. Perhaps they mean that this difference didn't
| used to exist in English, but in later years grammarians
| popularized it..?
|
| Looking up the etymology of "learn", I found the answer.
|
| > Transitive use (He learned me (how) to read), now
| considered vulgar (except in reflexive expressions, I
| learn English), was acceptable from c. 1200 until early
| 19c.
| k1t wrote:
| Someone just needs to learn you some better Google
| skills.
|
| https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/14778/is-
| learn-t...
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/teach-em-
| or-le...
| dahart wrote:
| I'd argue there could be a reason to use 'least' over
| 'fewer': they may be intending to emphasize the lesser impact
| of some changes over others, and not simply be referring to
| the number of changes that were made. It is possible to have
| a larger number of changes to a route and still end up with a
| lower impact to riders than another route than technically
| has fewer changes.
|
| Completely agree on the language crusade, we have these fads
| and memes all the time where some people decide there's only
| one way and try to forcefully correct others without
| understanding the history of these words. I have even been
| guilty of doing this on occasion in the past but have learned
| over time that language policing is almost never correct. It
| is not wrong to say "myriad of". The word "literally" has
| been used for figurative emphasis for hundreds of years by
| some of our greatest writers. Responding to a 'how are you?'
| with "I'm good" or "I'm doing good" rather than "well" is not
| incorrect and does not communicate that you're an angel.
| People, all of us I think, are just prone to getting notions
| about what's right and wanting to demonstrate our found
| knowledge, but it's easy to not be aware of alternatives.
| alecst wrote:
| I'm a descriptivist as much as the next guy, but fewer to me
| sounds better with countables. Like I still use things like
| "less cars" to sound casual but it does sound wrong to my
| ear.
| dahart wrote:
| > They did accompany it with a greater set of changes
|
| Doesn't your wording here clarify why using 'fewer' might
| actually be incorrect from their point of view? You're
| referring to changes that are _qualitatively_ larger, just like
| TFL may have been trying to communicate changes that are
| qualitatively smaller, routes with less noticeable changes to a
| smaller number of riders, or even a smaller number of rider-
| trips, without having to include an explanatory paragraph. The
| number of changes might be irrelevant to most people, and it's
| a good thing if TFL is trying to tell you whether statistically
| you should expect to notice changes based on your usage, and
| not whether the potentially somewhat meaningless total number
| of changes is lower.
|
| 'Least' is a word that allows subjective interpretation, while
| 'fewer' is not. Saying 'fewer changes' implies something more
| specific than saying 'least changes', and in making it more
| specific it may literally communicate the wrong thing.
| IanCal wrote:
| > You're referring to changes that are qualitatively larger,
|
| No, a change in this context (TFL messaging on result) very
| explicitly means getting off the train and onto another one,
| possibly at a different station. The GPs use of "changes"
| later just refers to changes in the UI.
|
| > The number of changes might be irrelevant to most people
|
| The number of changes is a key bit of information to everyone
| as it's vital to how you actually get to your destination.
| dahart wrote:
| Ah thank you, I misinterpreted. I assumed it was talking
| about changes to the routes themselves over time. I don't
| know why, but train-to-train transfers makes more sense.
| Okay, in that case, I agree fewer is the better word. ;)
|
| There _could_ still be reasons to use 'least' subjectively
| - for example the locations, time of day, traffic, and wait
| time between transfers may matter.
| riverdweller wrote:
| Fewest is the correct word. There is no subjectivity about
| it.
|
| They could have said (albeit hideously): "The routes with the
| least change". In this case, change is an uncountable noun.
|
| But they didn't. They said "The routes with the least
| changeS", which uses the plural of the _countable_ noun
| "change". So quantifier "fewest" is correct. The quantifier
| "least" is not.
| dahart wrote:
| You're right. If you read the crappy first reply I deleted,
| please accept my apologies.
|
| That said, there are still two separate reasons why "least"
| might be acceptable, the first reason that I used above is
| weaker, while the second reason is stronger IMO.
|
| 1- not all changes are equivalent. The main factor most
| people care about, I assume, is total trip time. It's
| definitely possible to have two routes to a destination
| where one route has more transfers but the shortest trip
| time. In that specific case, "least changes" can mean
| something different than "fewest changes". I'm stretching a
| little, and I have no idea if any pair of TFL routes does
| this, but purely from a language perspective, it might not
| be as black and white as you say.
|
| 2- Use of "least" to compare countable quantities has
| existed for a long time. Yes there's a rule of thumb for
| fewest vs least, but this is by no means absolute.
|
| "This rule is simple enough and looks easy enough to
| follow, but it's not accurate for all usage. The fact is
| that less is also sometimes used to refer to number among
| things that are counted.
|
| "Origins of The Fewer vs Less Rule
|
| "This isn't an example of how modern English is going to
| the dogs. Less has been used this way for well over a
| thousand years--nearly as long as there's been a written
| English language. But for more than 200 years almost every
| usage writer and English teacher has declared such use to
| be wrong. The received rule seems to have originated with
| the critic Robert Baker, who expressed it not as a law but
| as a matter of personal preference. Somewhere along the way
| --it's not clear how--his preference was generalized and
| elevated to an absolute, inviolable rule."
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/fewer-vs-less
| IanCal wrote:
| Also "the least change" wouldn't really make sense. A
| change is changing trains, this is a discrete thing.
| [deleted]
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| "Least" with uncountable nouns is perfectly cromulent
| usage.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| I don't think great minds engage in such small battles. It's a
| matter of time to not fight over some negligible matter of
| principle. time is limited for us all and is way too valuable
| to be wasted for such petty pursuits.
| the_jeremy wrote:
| Like obliquely insulting people on Hacker News?
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| After reading such things I have to make a statement so as
| to not get infected by such thinking. it's more for myself.
| dxuh wrote:
| My story is not nearly as cool, but one day I could not visit
| my bank's website via "<bank-name>.tld" and I thought something
| was broken. After a few days I called and they said that it
| works fine for them and there was no recent problem and they
| told me to just type "www.<bank-name>.tld" into my browser,
| which.. worked. The person on the other end of the phone call
| clearly thought I did not know how to use a computer (arguably
| I actually don't, because I did not try out prepending "www."
| myself). I explained to them that it worked without "www." in
| the past and this likely was a mistake and they should inform
| someone, if possible. For a while I called them every couple of
| months and after about 2 years I finally got someone on the
| phone that did not think I am being an idiot and calling for
| something silly and a few days later it was fixed :)
| cesarb wrote:
| If you're really old-school, you know that it makes sense to
| require the "www" prefix. Why should the machine pointed to
| by the bare domain be the web server, instead of for instance
| the FTP server or the Gopher server? It's not necessarily the
| same machine which provides all these protocols, and putting
| the web server there is privileging one protocol over
| another.
|
| Of course, that ship has long sailed; everyone uses HTTP now,
| even for things where it doesn't make sense, and one should
| at least have a tiny web server pointed to by the bare domain
| which redirects to the correct "www"-prefixed address. The
| fate of bare domains was sealed when browsers started
| prefixing "www." and suffixing ".com" whenever one typed a
| bare word in the address bar.
| sigg3 wrote:
| I recall getting the "no-www" button for my weblog footer
| table.
| Mo3 wrote:
| > instance the FTP server or the Gopher server?
|
| Lol, I see your point, but if a bank has an un-firewalled
| FTP or Gopher server on their domain there might be a
| couple of bigger issues to contemplate
| cperciva wrote:
| If you're opening a connection to TCP/80 it's a safe
| assumption that you want the web server.
|
| That said, I think it's a shame SRV hasn't been more widely
| adopted.
| cesarb wrote:
| > If you're opening a connection to TCP/80 it's a safe
| assumption that you want the web server.
|
| Yes, and if you're opening a connection to TCP/21, it's a
| safe assumption that you want the FTP server. But what if
| these two are different machines, possibly even in
| separate and distant networks?
| cperciva wrote:
| There's nothing stopping your routers from looking at the
| TCP port number to decide which network/host to route
| packets to. ;-)
| xxpor wrote:
| What if we called these routers with L4 decision making
| "load balancers"? ;)
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| "it makes sense to require the "www" prefix."
|
| Not at all. It makes sense to allow it, but never makes
| sense to require it.
|
| "Why should the machine pointed to by the bare domain be
| the web server, instead of for instance the FTP server or
| the Gopher server?"
|
| We use ports to distinguish protocols. A more salient
| question is: Why should there only be one web server in a
| domain?
|
| In fact, it used to be common to have dozens of web servers
| on differently named hosts in a domain, all of which might
| be running several internet servers like http, ftp, etc. If
| you're actually old-school you'll remember knowing the
| names of individual machines at a site and visiting urls
| like http://foo.building.company.com
|
| There are some technical reasons why you might not want
| your web server's A record in the @ for a zone, but they
| mostly no longer apply.
|
| www has never, ever been required.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Actually, what makes sense is to put the most important
| server people may access from your systems at the shortest
| possible host name. If you're mainly doing FTP file
| hosting, it makes sense for your FTP server to be
| domain.net, while your less used web server can live at
| www.domain.net. Bonus, if you can, run your FTP and your
| HTTP servers on the same physical system, and allow the L4
| port to determine which to talk to.
|
| Of course, it's even better if you can use an L4 load
| balancer, put that on the root domain, and tell it what
| internal machines to access based on port.
| jrockway wrote:
| I always wanted user agents and DNS to do a little bit
| more coordination here. The user agent should ask the DNS
| server "how do I get to http for example.com", and then
| DNS should reply with an IP address and a port number (so
| if you can't bind 443, you don't have to). Additionally,
| these records should have extra information, perhaps
| related to location (so that the entire world has a
| consistent view of A records associated with the host,
| but can still find the CDN edge node closest to them),
| and health checking (so if you have 1.2.3.4, 1.2.3.5, and
| 1.2.3.6 as options, and 1.2.3.6 is being rebooted, the
| browser could test them all and use the one that is
| supposedly working). Oh, and maybe we could go totally
| crazy and add some information about authentication, so
| the user agent could get a token from its identity
| provider of choice and send that with the initial request
| (if the user's preferences allow it), and save engineers
| from ever having to implement sign up / sign in / account
| recovery / etc.
|
| As it stands now, we have conventions for port numbers,
| and load balancers / VIPs for mapping the address in the
| DNS response to an actual computer running the desired
| services. We could kill a lot of complexity by letting
| user agents do the work of the load balancer here.
|
| (The port number is a personal pet peeve of mine. I want
| to run HTTP/3 for my website, but my cloud provider's
| load balancer can't represent a configuration where port
| 443/TCP and port 443/UDP are both managed by the same
| load balancer. Interestingly, browsers are configured to
| do HTTP/3 with an Alt-Svc on an HTTP/2 or HTTP/1.1
| response, which includes the port number. Chrome refuses
| to use anything other than port 443, while Firefox is
| happy with something like 30443. As a result, I have to
| reconfigure my network, or my cloud provider has to fix
| their bugs... and there is just no need. The browser
| could do this for me for free!)
| fragmede wrote:
| You need a layer 4 load balancer instead of a layer 7
| balancer in that case.
| jrockway wrote:
| It's worse than that. It seems to be a Kubernetes defect
| around merge keys; using the port number and not the
| protocol + port number.
| https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/39188 But
| it is possible to create Kubernetes services that work
| correctly serving UDP and TCP on the same port; look at
| any old kube-dns/coredns service, for example. Indeed, I
| can easily create such a service for my HTTP proxy
| (sending TCP 443, TCP 80, and UDP 443 to my L7 proxy),
| but the cloud provider's software explicitly rejects it
| because it can't possibly work. (Meanwhile, going into
| their UI and modifying their object behind the k8s
| reconciler's back works fine, but not well enough that I
| trust it to announce HTTP/3 support.) I think they got
| spooked by a bug, but didn't realize it's a corner case
| and not something that happens 100% of the time. I hope
| it will be fixed, because I'm pretty sure they added UDP
| support to load balancers specifically for HTTP/3.
| t_mann wrote:
| > browsers started prefixing "www." and suffixing ".com"
| whenever one typed a bare word in the address bar
|
| Your browser does that? Mine opens a (hard to change)
| default search engine.
| MarkSweep wrote:
| This does work if you press Control+Enter instead of just
| Enter.
| cesarb wrote:
| Nowadays they do that, but in the past (think of the old
| Netscape and MSIE days) they used to just prefix "www."
| and suffix ".com"; there was no "default search engine"
| back then.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| So what protocol should the bare domain point to in order
| to not privilege one protocol over the others? Or should it
| not resolve at all?
| cesarb wrote:
| > Or should it not resolve at all?
|
| Exactly.
|
| To put it simply, in that old-school thinking, the bare
| domain should have only SOA and NS (these two being
| required for the domain to work), MX and SRV (these two
| being protocol-specific), things like TXT for SPF, and
| the DNSSEC stuff, but _not_ A or AAAA or CNAME (and AFAIK
| using CNAME in a bare domain can cause problems, since it
| 's not supposed to be used together with anything else,
| and a bare domain always has at least SOA and NS).
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| This is inaccurate. There's never been a reason to not
| assign an A record to @.
|
| The historic structure of DNS is that names were given to
| systems within a domain. So you might have
| pikachu.company.com, squirtle.company.com, etc. It
| wouldn't make sense to just assign an address to the
| domain itself because we simply didn't have the
| technology to drive sophisticated consolidated sites on
| one system. You might need to get some files off one
| host, and some off another. We didn't have load
| balancers, and we often didn't have drive space to hold
| everything in one place.
|
| MX doesn't have this problem of scale, as MX specifies
| multiple systems per SMTP spec.
|
| Sometimes people would create www.pikachu.company.com,
| and sometimes they wouldn't. The www prefix was sometimes
| a handy default, but certainly wasn't ubiquitous.
|
| The real change here is the rise of single endpoints for
| a domain. This began by assigning "www" as place to look
| for web content for the entire domain and almost in
| unison people began to also add A records to the domain
| itself. After all, why wouldn't we?
|
| CNAME is different, of course, because CNAME aliases all
| record types - not just A records.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| Domains do not point to protocols. They point to
| addresses, to systems.
|
| Any protocol can be used to talk to a system. They are
| all equal.
| petesergeant wrote:
| I bitched and whined about Google Flight service being
| useless for searching for long business class flights with a
| change in them, because it would assume you were fine with
| the shorter leg being in economy -- even if the shorter leg
| ended up being 7 hours long. I did eventually get one of
| their PMs on LinkedIn to apparently take it seriously, but I
| note it's still very broken on their site putting in a
| Vancouver to Bangkok flight (10hr in J YVR-NRT, 7hr in Y NRT-
| BKK)
| saghm wrote:
| > I did eventually get one of their PMs on LinkedIn to
| apparently take it seriously, but I note it's still very
| broken on their site putting in a Vancouver to Bangkok
| flight (10hr in J YVR-NRT, 7hr in Y NRT-BKK)
|
| How long did his LinkedIn say he was still at Google
| afterwards? I have to imagine that sometimes being
| reasonable in the face of infallible bureaucracy would
| either drive you crazy enough to leave or drive your
| coworkers crazy enough to get someone to make you leave.
| april_22 wrote:
| Agree that Google Flights isn't perfect, though I do find
| it better than any other flight search engine. Especially
| the 'explore' option is so good for finding very cheap
| flights across Europe.
| dmd wrote:
| Until a year or so ago 'nasa.gov' didn't work; you had to use
| 'www.nasa.gov'.
| marketerinland wrote:
| Premierleague.com only fixed this issue around 2015-2016. I
| first noticed it in the early 2000s
| julianlam wrote:
| https://blogs.nasa.gov/nasadotgov/2011/05/31/post_130686081
| 6...
|
| FWIW I don't understand why forwarding the bare domain to
| the www subdomain would increase traffic so much so that
| they'd need to provision extra servers...
|
| ... but hey, I'm not working for NASA, so I can't say.
| dmd wrote:
| I'm 98% sure whoever wrote this had no idea what they
| were talking about.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| you wanna know a secret? well when indian income tax
| department announced a new web portal, they made a big deal
| out of it but guess what, they still haven't gotten the memo
| how incompetent they are and that they know it and don't
| care.
|
| case in point, www.incometax.gov.in works but
| incometax.gov.in does not.
|
| haven't you learned in domain setup tutorials to set your A
| records straight? i guess they didn't and its been like 1.5/2
| years and its still a problem. go figure
| jopython wrote:
| Talking about incompetence, Why are most Indian government
| websites look like they were designed in the 90's?
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| wanna know more about this incometax.gov.in url that
| doesn't even work without www.incometax.gov.in ?
|
| apparently the government spent like INR 4500 Crores or
| almost $ 500 Million US building this.
|
| it regularly crashes, has weird bugs, half the website
| doesn't work most of the time....
| thumbsup-_- wrote:
| Because they were either designed in 90s or are being
| approved by people who are stuck in 90s. Like you still
| can't use back/forward buttons, paste text on many indian
| gov websites
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| at least on the banking side, i do suppose that is a good
| thing.
|
| looking at all the scammer payback videos, most of the
| scammers take your remote tool, make you open the banking
| website and then they edit the source, reload and here is
| your money. Indian banks don't let you do that, they make
| you give an OTP for every transaction, if you reload, you
| get logged out, you can't paste or open inspect element
| which actually makes these scams very very difficult on
| indian netbanking customers....
|
| that makes me wonder,why don't american banks have reload
| security for one? like if you reload a page it should log
| you out?
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| > Indian banks don't let you do that, they make you give
| an OTP for every transaction, if you reload, you get
| logged out, you can't paste or open inspect element [...]
|
| I don't see how these four things are related. Banks in
| the Netherlands require 2FA (i.e. smartphone or dedicated
| 2FA device) for every transaction, but this does not
| prohibit you from pasting an account number or reloading
| the page.
|
| In particular, I don't see how opening the developer
| tools and reloading the page are related. If you reload a
| page, changes you made using the developer tools are
| lost.
| martin_a wrote:
| > like if you reload a page it should log you out?
|
| why would you do that? reloading is a normal process,
| what if you are on a bad connection and sometimes files
| don't load? you hit reload and now everything works...
| [deleted]
| petesergeant wrote:
| one of my least favourite things about the GCC countries
| is an apparent enduring fascination with disabling paste
| on password fields
| samarthr1 wrote:
| It's changing slowly tbh.
|
| Some stuff still uses the LCB look ASP.net, but the newer
| .nic websites seem to be much better done.
| [deleted]
| dt123 wrote:
| > but it becomes a matter of principal mixed ...
|
| principle
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