{"id":418,"date":"2008-11-15T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2008-11-15T18:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/applications-that-denigrate-network-capacity\/"},"modified":"2015-12-10T13:41:07","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T19:41:07","slug":"applications-that-denigrate-network-capacity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/11\/applications-that-denigrate-network-capacity\/","title":{"rendered":"“… applications that denigrate network capacity …”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw this on a website.<\/p>\n

Problem:<\/strong>
\nThe verb “denigrate” is inappropriate here.<\/p>\n

Explanation:<\/strong>
\nThe complete paragraph, which appeared on a page about broadband Internet service from Cricket Wireless, was “Throughput may be limited if use exceeds 5GB per month. Internet browsing does not include: hosted computer applications, continuous web camera or broadcast, automatic data feeds, machine-to-machine connections, peer to peer (P2P) connections or other applications that denigrate network capacity or functionality.”.<\/p>\n

In other words, the writer was referring to software applications that could adversely affect the capacity or functionality of the Cricket Wireless broadband Internet network.<\/p>\n

The verb “denigrate” means to derogatorily criticize<\/em>, to defame<\/em>, or to blacken<\/em>. The N-I-G-R part of this verb can be traced to the Latin verb “nigrare”, which means to make black<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So “denigrate” applies to people, not to telecommunications or computer networks.<\/p>\n

“Degrade” would be an appropriate verb to describe the act of adversely affecting network capacity or functionality.<\/p>\n

For fun, I searched Google for “denigrate network” (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about 194 matches.<\/p>\n

What I found the most interesting about those search results was that Verizon Wireless also had a page<\/a> that included “denigrate network capacity or functionality” in a discussion about its broadband Internet service.<\/p>\n

That leads to one of three conclusions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Cricket copied Verizon.<\/li>\n
  2. Verizon copied Cricket.<\/li>\n
  3. Cricket and Verizon copied a third party when writing terms and conditions for wireless broadband Internet service.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    No matter which of these three statements is true, their misuse of “denigrate” left a digital trail.<\/p>\n

    Solution:<\/strong>
    \n“… applications that degrade network capacity …”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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