pre-ordering Elemental

once the beta is open (that is currently planned for september) there will be a time you CAN use paypal to immidiatly jump into the beta.

Its just paypal won't do preorders (order now and get charged later) so it isn't an option.  When the beta is open, you get charged right away, so pay pal will be your friend.   or should I say your pal?

If you email sales@stardock.com and explain this to them, they can probably help you out.

Don't apologize for your English - it's superb! Fantastico!

It's better than most of the native English speakers I know, although that doesn't really say a lot ......

/redden  even more

thanks

will do if i won't get a better answer ^^

Also it would be nice to receive a boxed copy of the game without having to pay 20 to 25$ in shipping. I want to be able to pre-order the game, pay online and get a box send to me from a distrubuter in Europe that will ship the game to me for a reasonable price.

So very true.   Of course, the same is for all languages.  I remember when we got a german exchange student, and the german teacher kept correcting her grammar.  She esaid she knew the teacher was right, she just had bad habits because she spoke naturally.  She took it expecting it to be an easy 'A' but she found our teacher was stricter than she expected. 

I know if I left the country to teach english, I wouldn't tollerate things like miss using who vs. whom (example:  "who is who", something I hear constantly and don't understand how people make such a mistake considering its 'noun verb noun', how do you use the subject form on both sides of the verb!? )  nor would I allow ending sentances with prepositions (example:  "where is that from?" or "assign it to the location you got it in") 

What about split infinitives?

"To boldy go where no man has gone before"

Is it really better to say,

"Boldly to go?"

YUCK!

I agree sometimes foreingers studying your own language can know or use better the grammar since a big part of the work done is just there, but the most difficult ability are  getting  the right pronunciation, and loosing your own language accent.

btw, we're going a bit OT but i think won't be bad a thread about languages, since sometimes it's not  used very well on the internet ^^

ZOMG wut u meen language not used good on the internet?

Nope. At least in formal English, it's better to write "to go boldy." Not splitting infinitives can also help make English easier to translate. I don't know much about languages worldwide, but I'm pretty sure that English is a bit unusual in having a preceding preposition be part of our infinitve verbs. Maybe Slavic languages do that, but the Romance and Germanic languages don't.

I'm not as bothered by spliting infinitives, because I can still diagram the sentance at that point without some serious rearranging (prepositions seriously mess things up)

I just havet he pet peeve about who/whom because of how often it is used.  Like, we don't make the mistake with he/him, she/her, I/me, they...err...they is a bad example >_>    And if you say something like "her is going to lunch with I" around english speakers you'll likely be seriously mocked.   But if you say "whom is it?" or "you're sending this letter to who?" many people won't even be aware you made a mistake (They might catch the 1st one, just because whom is not used very often, so they would think twice about it)

Actually, I am surprised there isn't more talk about abolishing "whom". Even I (a relatively prescise speaker compared to a lot of other people) don't use it......

I use it all the time.

Gah! Who vs. whom is about a very simply distinction--subject vs. object. Who is typing this question? To whom is the preceding question addressed?

Suggesting that we abolish "whom" sounds like some disgusting guerilla campaign in support of the larger War on Verbs. I might live long enough to give up trying to defend the formal paragraph, but I'll be damned if I quit on sentences.

Objectifying people is bad though.

What, you're a pomo-ho now?

Even the urban dictionary isn't of any use in deciphering that retort.

Wouldn't that be someone objectifying themselves for money, thus the opposite of my commentary if taken seriously?

I am assuming he meant "pro-homo", because that's the only thing that at least looks like it might make sense.

Pomo is outdated academic shorthand for postmodern (-ist, -ism), and hence closely associated with 'politically correct' prattle. A ho without the Santa context is usually a prostitute. I thought you'd enjoy the smutty, disingenous anti-intellectualism.

Could you please explain the war on verbs?  I can't really seem to find exactly what it is from that google search you linked.

Dang, the search phrase is an old idea for me, and I didn't look closely at what shows up on a fresh search--the first Google hit at the moment is for shit, IMO. But then the b*ogosphere is hardly very helpful yet for folks who at least half-like a good bibliography.

The general 'war on verbs' thing is related to how PowerPoint can make you dumb. Basically, a bunch of different factors have converged to create a context where leaders in both the public and private sectors are structurally motivated to avoid using clear language, i.e. the basic subject-verb-object sentence structure in most (all?) Indo-European languages.

At its roots, the 'war on verbs' is about being able to speak persuasively in public without serious accountability because almost all of the speaker's words are nouns or modifiers while the speaker's overall rhthym makes it seem as if the speaker is using actual sentences. It doesn't happen at every press conference, but if you listen to enough public and private sector leaders talk to a camera horde, you'll be able to notice some of them genereally avoiding anything like a real sentence, and those folks are often at the top of their particular heap.

I mistakenly read 'porno-ho'.

That says. A lot.

On a mediocre laptop screen with a small font it is very hard to see the difference between the rn and m. I even had to read the explanation of pomo to realise that it said pomo. Before that I assumed it was an insult of some kind.

then again my eyes are not what they used to be any more.