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[Starver]

Query:  Is the "ATM" a machine?  Yes?  Good.

In the given context yes.  (Automatic Teller Machine.  An American term that has still crept into the UK to join "cashpoint", "cash machine", "hole-in-the-wall machine" and various other names that may well be copywrit to certain individual banking institutions or outright slang.)

If you refer to something by its proper name, then you want to clarify what object you are referring to, it is standard to include more information like the class of objects that the one you're referring to is a member of.

Not that I can think of many other things that are called ATMs, but still.

"The server's RAID has failed," is pretty obvious.  ("The server's redundant RAID has failed," might be RAS Syndrome or even more serious, while "A server's RAID disk has failed" could be RASS or a relatively trivial occurence for which the RAID as a whole is designed to deal with.)

The "Ministry Of Transport test" is correctly called an "MOT test" (despite some people's thoughts that the T=Test), although is often abbreviated so "I'm taking the car in for its MOT" is also standard use.

Back to PINs, if it's P-type/Intrinsic/N-type diodes you're talking about, then "PIN numbers" in a particular circuit is actually a relevant term.

Acronyms becoming proper names creates a potential for confusion.  A L.A.S.E.R. (in proper, full-on punctuated glory) or LASER (the lazy way) becomes a Laser or laser.  And then you've got to wonder about whether a "visible light Laser" should be a "visible Laser" (arguably yes), although "laser light" would definitely be Ok given it's light which is created from Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation as opposed to any other form (e.g. incandescence), and even "laser radiation" means other than a mere repetition.  Usually.

And from all the above you might say that a "PIN" (that you enter) is a distinct word from a "pin" (that you use to make clothes with).  But the PIN is still in and of itself a number (even when the likes of hexadecimal in form, although once the meaning spreads to those that are fully alphanumeric and really "passwords", "passphrases" or the the like, you can only really describe it as a number insofar as the binary number it forms as raw data).  "Enter your number".  "Enter your PIN".  And taking into account that context is all, you have the option of "Stick your [PIN|PIN|pin] into [the cash machine|the breadboard|that bit of cloth]", where the first choices might instead be "[number|diode|sharp thing*]".  But it's still a PIN (upper or lower or whatever mix of case is required).

(* No, I couldn't think of another unambiguous term for a dressmaker's pin, off-hand.  I'm sure there are some (other than all the different types of "<foo> pin", such as 'safety'), albeit perhaps culturally distinct or brand names or just more precise terms used by people in the clothesmaking business for distinct pin-types.)

Not to mention all the other potential uses of PIN the acronym (at least two of them medical, that I've heard about in the past, during past crusades on this subject).

But when in a shop, having slotted your card into the card-reading machine and having fumbled the original entry of the required code, there's absolutely no reason to be told (by either the machine display or the till-operator) to re-enter your "PIN number".  As a particular type of programmer I could easily be tempted to argue that this would be just "4" (the value obtained when interpreting the referenced array of PIN digits in a scalar context), or an arbitrarily assigned value representing the number of total iterations of different PINs that occurred up to this particular one.

I know what they mean, but something in me cracks when I hear or read the term.  Although it didn't before the incongruity was first pointed out to me, which perhaps proves that "ignorance is bliss".


Sorry, this was not supposed to derail so far from the whole Steam thing.


So, what's your Steam username and password, eh?  I have some Nigerian gold that I want to play the Luxembourg lottery with in order to buy myself a nice Russian bride, and if I send 50 copies of a free game to people who will send 50 copies to other people, my CPU will enter an infinite-loop race condition, melt down and I will attain Nirvana, understand the whole concept of the Time Cube and lead me onto Thetan Level 3, and "Profit!".