Mt. Gox Has Been Hacked by People Trying to Find Out What Happened?

Complicated grammar in general generally comes from historical traces: there often is a literature associated to it, nuances that express best the ambiguities of life and what you might want to hide from. Case in point: relationship statuses, and the many way to say ‘mmh friend’.

When associated to people via honorifics, these are things people care deeply about, both because they came at what seem a cost (PhDs are hard, promotions longed for, and Noblesse Oblige) and, after being repeated every time one was addressed to, became a core part of your identity. The fact that they are flattering makes it even more crucial. Think of parents who insist on being called ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’: of course you know what their first names are, but using them can be seen as a lack of love, or respect for their authority, or consideration for the spectacular sacrifice they made. It remains hard to explain why on the spot: it just hurts, and comes off as defiant.

There is finally (and that is certainly true in Japanese high society) an attachement to class & country, a way to protect what was once precious and unique and unpregnable. That actually takes the form of genuine and sincere preference for the formal and appropriate: I would be offended if someone told ‘I love opera, it's so-o fricking cool!’ Yes, it is, and I consider the Opera to be a very buoyant and accessible art form, like Hollywood; but it still comes with a decorum that became part of my enjoyment of it.

Japanese, especially business people, are confronted to foreigners enough to understand that doesn't come naturally. Kerpeles however does more than ignore that: even in French (probably the second most culture riddled with grammatical antique quirks -- and I'd know, I am French and love those) he comes off as defiant, irrespectful, and likely to have willingly commited what some accuse him off. That’s not ignorance from his part, but open lack of respect for institutions. Those could be modernised and improve, but they still serve a purpose. Like anyone who's worked at university, I don’t call ‘doctor’ anyone with a PhD, but I still think it’s the most compelling experience someone can go through and I’d understand if, like in Italy and Germany, that remains part of everyday interactions.

As explained below, Karpeles referred to himself as "ore". "Ore" is mostly used by men, and carries a boastful tone. Moreover, pronouns aren't necessary to make grammatical sentences, e.g. "I went to the bank" = "Ginko ni ikimashita" = "[Bank] [to] [did go]".

The only function of the word "ore" is to emphasize your own high status relative to whomever you're speaking to. In a bar, after a couple of drinks, among equals, it's quite typical for all the men (usually not women) to use "ore". But in a formal business meeting --- this is known to be an absolute no-no by anyone who has formally learned even a small amount of Japanese.

A fairly close analogy in English would be to randomly sprinkle the word "fuck" in your speech.

In summary I have spent at least five to ten minutes (and likely more) on spam brought to me by Dropbox without any compensation. How about a fixed payout of, say, 100€ per leaked detail (username, password, email etc.), payable immediately to each customer? At least companies with bad security would be out-of-business soon.

I have stopped using Dropbox shortly after receiving the first such spam email, so I cannot comment on more recent leaks.

After some back and forth with them I somehat angrily provided ID and got my money returned. It later turned out that they had either been dishonest or incompetent in their argument for providing ID, and I got them to promise me that they had deleted any and all ID docs I sent them, specifically because of scenarios like this one.

Well, I hope they were telling the truth.

(even controlling inputs/outputs is not enough, since internally they sometimes split the values into 40%/60% for transfers)

Or you just stick to ints (or whatever type has unlimited integer range in a given language). Simple solution here is safer than the clever one. Especially if you're sometimes confused about the types and write `round(mt_rand($amount 0.4, $amount 0.6))` even though mt_rand returns ints.

1ex or 10^x is what you probably want.

Why e was chosen to represent that may be due to 7-segment-only displays on (some) (early) calculators. I still think it was a bad choice because of this very issue.