To an Australian ear,at least, many New Englanders also say something that sounds a fair bit like 'aboot'. Perhaps a bit more like 'aboat', but still rather odd-sounding.
> Does anyone know if IBM or others still sell those nice "clickey" keyboards that don't require taking out a second mortgage to purchase?
I don't know if you can still buy them, but my son scored a heap of them by dumpster-diving out the back of where he works - I'm using one now. He's got about a dozen of them in case (not likely) the ones we're using wear out or something.
I've heard some of his weirder stuff which is very, very interesting. Can't remember any titles, but they did a retrospective on the ABC a while ago (centenary of his birth, or something).
Re:Have to be careful here with music tastes
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IT's Musical Habits
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The '60s themselves were, in fact, replete with moral cowardice (but not amongst those who stood up for what they believed in - I'm proud to have been one of them), but there's a lot more of it about now. The conservatives' claim that this is a result of the '60s mindset is misdirection however, they're just hoping no-one will notice their moral bankruptcy.
Back on topic - I don't listen to much music at work, but when I do it could be any of Zappa, the Dead, Bach, Vivaldi, Ry Cooder, Jim White, Howlin' Wolf... I don't like Metal - I find it too distracting when I'm trying to think.
And I for one am extremely pissed off about this. I hope (without much hope) that our Opposition parties (who collectively control the Senate for the edification of any non-Australians) will grow a spine and scuttle this. Unfortunately, it's already passed through the lower house with bi-partisan support.
Apropos the ownership of songs as opposed to the rights of the composer, I'm pretty sure that "That's All Right" was written by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, not Elvis, but I doubt Crudup owned the copyright (it was unusual for bluesmen to retain ownership of their material for more than a few hours). I can't remember offhand whether Crudup outlived Elvis.
Yes, this makes it _possible_ (I've used a similar solution myself when I've been forced to use a windows box for something), but what a headfuck. You shouldn't have to do so much screwing around and, in well-designed environments (like, say, UNIX), you _don't_ have to.
He probably _does_ go to school... I've noticed lately that many young people don't know how to spell, even supposedly well-educated ones. (It must be something to do with not having had correct spelling beaten into you with a stick while still young and impressionable enough for it to be useful.)
You also forgot COBOL. Now - I personally _hate_ programming in COBOL, so much so that I put my COBOL book up for sale 3 seconds after I found out I'd passed the subject that required it, but it's still superb for what it was designed to do.
For cooking, you really can't beat anything by Elizabeth David. Not so much for the food as such, but for her philosophy on cooking, ingredients, etc. She also wrote beautifully. They're actually books you can read, not just consult for a recipe. Her "English Bread and Yeast Cookery" is a classic (my copy needs to be in a loose-leaf binder...).
Thank you. I read the book in the '60s (when I was a hippy) and you're right - it's over-rated crap. I don't much care for Heinlein's stuff, except his _very_ early short stories, he was such a right-wing arsehole. And don't get me started on "A Time for Love".
If you hated "Starship Troopers", you'll really enjoy "Bill the Galactic Hero", I think written by Harry Harrison - a very funny parody.
I once read an edition of "1984" that had a foreword and afterword written by Anthony Burgess (I think it might even have been published in 1984). Two for the price of one! (if you can find it.)
I found "Soul of a New Machine" particularly interesting, because I was actually using a DG MV-series computer at the time (a slightly later architecture than that described in the book, but pretty similar). It was a really nice box - very fast, fantastic for technical computing, with a really nice FORTRAN compiler - but I didn't much care for the CLI. It had a very ugly-looking syntax, and if you wanted to write a script with a counted loop, you had to have the script call itself recursively, passing the counter as a decremented parameter. It took some getting used to.
However, I wouldn't say it changed my life. Maybe GEB, as others have suggested, or Mandelbrot's "Fractal Geometry of Nature".
Err... "amateur" is actually a French word. Hence the weird (to English-speakers) spelling. I for one habitually (and deliberately) misspell French loan-words all the time.
> the United States of America... has been instrumental in bringing such murderous governments to an end throughout its history.
Yeah. like Noriega (a former CIA drug-dealer) and the Taliban (a direct result of earlier US interference in Afghanistan) and Saddam (a former creature of the US) and sundry South Vietnamese governments - oh wait...
I'm not being deliberately obtuse, in case you start mentioning Hitler.
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To an Australian ear,at least, many New Englanders also say something that sounds a fair bit like 'aboot'. Perhaps a bit more like 'aboat', but still rather odd-sounding.
While I agree with some of your rant (particularly th bit about Bush being a serial liar), I'm unclear why you call the granparent post pro-Bush.
...
Unless you're discussing some post I missed for some reason
> Does anyone know if IBM or others still sell those nice "clickey" keyboards that don't require taking out a second mortgage to purchase?
I don't know if you can still buy them, but my son scored a heap of them by dumpster-diving out the back of where he works - I'm using one now. He's got about a dozen of them in case (not likely) the ones we're using wear out or something.
They're great. You could use them to pound nails.
I've heard some of his weirder stuff which is very, very interesting. Can't remember any titles, but they did a retrospective on the ABC a while ago (centenary of his birth, or something).
The '60s themselves were, in fact, replete with moral cowardice (but not amongst those who stood up for what they believed in - I'm proud to have been one of them), but there's a lot more of it about now. The conservatives' claim that this is a result of the '60s mindset is misdirection however, they're just hoping no-one will notice their moral bankruptcy.
... I don't like Metal - I find it too distracting when I'm trying to think.
Back on topic - I don't listen to much music at work, but when I do it could be any of Zappa, the Dead, Bach, Vivaldi, Ry Cooder, Jim White, Howlin' Wolf
Percy Grainger was an Australian, not British (although they didn't make the distinction quite as forcefully then as we do these days).
> ... and Australia ...
And I for one am extremely pissed off about this. I hope (without much hope) that our Opposition parties (who collectively control the Senate for the edification of any non-Australians) will grow a spine and scuttle this. Unfortunately, it's already passed through the lower house with bi-partisan support.
The OED is incorrect in this instance.
The thing is, Mathematical reasoning is a priori, whereas scientific reasoning is a posteriori (largely).
Um ... I think the parent post was intended to be sarcastic.
Since when was Mathematics a science?
It is the foundation of science, certainly, but the concept of mathematical proof is quite different to that of verification of a scientific theory.
Apropos the ownership of songs as opposed to the rights of the composer, I'm pretty sure that "That's All Right" was written by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, not Elvis, but I doubt Crudup owned the copyright (it was unusual for bluesmen to retain ownership of their material for more than a few hours). I can't remember offhand whether Crudup outlived Elvis.
> What advantage does the Windows Registry have over the "bunch of plain-vanilla ASCII configuration files" method that the Unices use?
None, but there are significant disadvantages.
But I'm sure you knew that and were asking a rhetorical question.
Yes, this makes it _possible_ (I've used a similar solution myself when I've been forced to use a windows box for something), but what a headfuck. You shouldn't have to do so much screwing around and, in well-designed environments (like, say, UNIX), you _don't_ have to.
He probably _does_ go to school ... I've noticed lately that many young people don't know how to spell, even supposedly well-educated ones. (It must be something to do with not having had correct spelling beaten into you with a stick while still young and impressionable enough for it to be useful.)
You also forgot COBOL. Now - I personally _hate_ programming in COBOL, so much so that I put my COBOL book up for sale 3 seconds after I found out I'd passed the subject that required it, but it's still superb for what it was designed to do.
For cooking, you really can't beat anything by Elizabeth David. Not so much for the food as such, but for her philosophy on cooking, ingredients, etc. She also wrote beautifully. They're actually books you can read, not just consult for a recipe. Her "English Bread and Yeast Cookery" is a classic (my copy needs to be in a loose-leaf binder ...).
Thank you. I read the book in the '60s (when I was a hippy) and you're right - it's over-rated crap. I don't much care for Heinlein's stuff, except his _very_ early short stories, he was such a right-wing arsehole. And don't get me started on "A Time for Love".
If you hated "Starship Troopers", you'll really enjoy "Bill the Galactic Hero", I think written by Harry Harrison - a very funny parody.
I once read an edition of "1984" that had a foreword and afterword written by Anthony Burgess (I think it might even have been published in 1984). Two for the price of one! (if you can find it.)
I found "Soul of a New Machine" particularly interesting, because I was actually using a DG MV-series computer at the time (a slightly later architecture than that described in the book, but pretty similar). It was a really nice box - very fast, fantastic for technical computing, with a really nice FORTRAN compiler - but I didn't much care for the CLI. It had a very ugly-looking syntax, and if you wanted to write a script with a counted loop, you had to have the script call itself recursively, passing the counter as a decremented parameter. It took some getting used to.
However, I wouldn't say it changed my life. Maybe GEB, as others have suggested, or Mandelbrot's "Fractal Geometry of Nature".
Err ... "amateur" is actually a French word. Hence the weird (to English-speakers) spelling. I for one habitually (and deliberately) misspell French loan-words all the time.
> the United States of America ... has been instrumental in bringing such murderous governments to an end throughout its history.
...
Yeah. like Noriega (a former CIA drug-dealer) and the Taliban (a direct result of earlier US interference in Afghanistan) and Saddam (a former creature of the US) and sundry South Vietnamese governments - oh wait
I'm not being deliberately obtuse, in case you start mentioning Hitler.
Bullshit. Even if it were a matter of user laziness, which it isn't. It's user ignorance, deliberately fostered by microsoft.
Front Populaire Judea perhaps?
> I guess Atlas Shrugged skewed my thinking ...
Sure did! Ayn Rand'll rot your brain in large doses.
No, that would've been funny too.