I was correcting the spelling and grammar of someone whose language skills are even worst than mine and I was about to correct his usage of the word "till."
I'm pleased you did; every time someone writes "'til", a kitten dies. ("'Til" is the only misspelling which makes my blood boil, but I make no apologies for that.)
Till was itself derived from "til" so even without the apostrophe, it's correct.
That logic is not correct. "Debt" was at one stage spelt "det" and "dette", but neither of those spellings are correct today.
OT, but just to let you know, the word "till" is spelt like that, not "'til"; it's not a contraction. The word "until" in fact is derived from the word "till" with the prefix "un-" (obviously not using its English meaning of "not", but an old Norse meaning that was similar).
If that's true, wouldn't be a great idea just to collect all the fallen leaves and put them underground? Every autumn here in Victoria (state in south eastern Australia) the Department of Sustainability and the Environment, who are responsible for fires on Crown land, perform "backburning" or "controlled burns". Basically the idea is that the Australian bush will burn—our trees are full of oil precisely to make sure they burn every few years—so the DSE chooses when and how much it'll happen, and makes sure there's people around to put them out if they go places they're not meant to. Of course, the process is hugely controversial---they release a shitload of smoke and practically every year one fires get out of control and spread like, ahem, wildfire. This process is not new; it was performed just the same by the Aborigines before white people came, except with less technology.
If what you say is true, instead of backburning, they should go round picking up all the fallen matter and bury it surely. And once it's been perfected here (where removing it is vital) the techniques used should spread like, ahem, wildfire to the rest of the world. The fact that driving around picking up leaves and sticking them in the ground releases carbon into the atmosphere should be countered by the fact that it's not being released from the leaves.
Of course there's other reasons the Australian bush must burn—in particular, the native environment doesn't regenerate till it's been burnt. So burning will have to continue, but whatever...
The closest thing to a "psychological week" I have, I guess, it starts on Monday and ends on Friday and the weekend doesn't enter into it. The weekend's always been special; when I was at Uni, the weekend was the days to earn money. Now I'm working, the weekend is the days *not* to earn money.
But if the week has seven days, then as far as a start and an end works, it only matters for writing it down, and then you should have one form in a diary and another form on a calendar, because starting on a Monday has some advantages in a book, and starting on a Sunday has different advantages on a wall. But now I repeat myself.
I was about to observe that having just finished summer a month and a half ago, I wouldn't be having another till mid next year, and wonder why Microsoft would take so long to release it, and why the heat would have anything to do with it. Then I realised I don't run Windows anyway, so it's a moot point.
It depends on how the calendar goes. If it's a page to a week, then yeah, sure Monday starts the week. But those new-fangled monthly wall calendars which put Monday at the start of the week shit me. Wednesday should be in the middle of the week, so Sunday should be at the start.
As for me, I'm sick of paying tribute to Mars every March, and regardless of whether you can count in latin, I know "octo" means "eight", not "ten". I demand we switch to English numbers for dates, which is how we write shortform dates anway (i.e. I write that my birthday is 25/7, and say "my birthday is the twenty-fifth of the seventh"). IIRC the Japanese almost do this, although I think the say "shichi gatsu" i.e. "seven month".
My post had nothing to do with intelligence. It was about the fact that communication (and, having thought about it some more, and I think I was getting there in my last post but never direcetly said it, similarity to me) is the basis for empathy. All the evidence I have for a pig's intelligence and a pig's feelings are the words of scientists and the annecdotes of people. Anyway, if a particular instance's intelligence was all that counted, why shouldn't I prefer to kill and eat a person I know is in a persistant vegitative state? or why not eat a person who'd tragically died in a car crash?
It's like the pig in Hitchhiker's Guide --- I wouldn't eat it even though it asked me to, because it asked me to.
I haven't had time to read your awfully long post just yet, so I apologise if you counter these points later on...
None of them have anywhere near the sort of *communication* skill that humans have, but communication is hardly a reason not to eat something, now isn't it?
Why not? A person can tell me he doesn't want to be eaten. All a pig can do, is play back a canned response to try and stop me from killing it. But it shows no evidence of understanding the significance of beyond that. Now, some people can't tell me they don't want to be eaten, and some people will tell me they do want to be eaten. It's still a problem to eat those people. In the first case, the can't tell me only because of some disability, but I can project my feeling on to them quite readily. I feel empathy towards them; but I have no basis for feeling the same sort of empathy towards an animal other than my own incapacity to imagine different sorts of beings (which I can do, and thus don't feel empathy towards the pig). In the second case, the human is simply deluded and not thinking properly. They should see a shrink, rather than a butcher.
I have no desire to lecture you on the subject of base ten vs base two prefixes, nor to be lectured by you, but your sig strikes me as ambiguous. Is that the point, or do you have a preference for the 1000 or 1024 multiplier for bytes? Computational convenience for people would dictate the 1000 multiplier, and 1024 would be arbitrary to us; but 1024 would be computationally convenient for computers, and 1000 would be arbitrary to them. Obviously computers do more calculations with bytes than people do, but (lacking emotions) they can feel no inconvenience.
Oh sorry, I didn't see it, on account of it not being moderated up. Apologies!
I'm afraid I can't say whether the vowel in "Prost" is long or short --- I have begun taking German classes because I plan on going over there later this year (Christmas in winter? What a novel idea!), but after only one lesson it's no surprise I haven't come across that vowel yet. In any case, if it's long, it's/o:/ indeed, but if it's short it's// (a backwards c, if the Unicode gets stripped). But that would be its German pronunciation, or German-accent English, and not its English pronunciation.
Wikipedia's IPA disagrees with you, claiming the middle syllable is "gress" (in your notation), and this is how I've always understood it should be said. Quite what to make of the first syllable, which uses a vowel not found in British or American English (/o:/) I'm not sure; I imagine it's intended as a poor representation of the vowel in "post" (many foreign learners of English use/o:/ for that vowel, and it's also similar to the/o/ used in American English and many regional British dialects). (The vowel/o:/ exists in Australian English, which would make the first syllable "pawst" --- but that doesn't seem likely.)
Nah, I can't stand full screen windows. One task rarely uses only one program, unless occasionally when you're using an IDE or a word processor, and then you have a program poorly implementing a window manager in a very constraining way. But I probably repeat myself now.
I use ROX-Filer as well, but I prefer focus strictly follows mouse over the ROX/RISC OS method of click-to-focus but raise only when clicking the decorations --- I use my pointer to represent my attention. Once you get into the habit, it because very intuitive: Just move the mouse pointer as you move your eyes significantly. ("Strictly" meaning there's no circumstance when the window with the focus is not the window with the pointer over it, and vice versa; I tried "sloppy focus" where the focus stays on a window when you move onto the desktop, but I found it strangely confusing.)
My computer is set up very differently from most people's, and I don't claim it's remotely normal or useable by anyone other than me (it might be! dunno..). But I guard it jealously and do not look kindly upon any attempt to separate it from me!
Can you side-effect in functions like you can in Delphi and Pascal? If so, what's the advantage of the distinction? I've never understood it, as I went through some badly maintained code with functions that never set the value of "Result".
Learn a language with type inference (e.g. Haskell). Love it. All the advantages of static typing (speed, compiler finds the errors), along with all the advantages of dynamic typing (not having to write them, more type flexibility).
(The latest C# has a primitive form of type inference. I don't know whether its limitations are caused by lack of imagination on the part of the developers (unlikely), not crediting users with the intelligence to understand it, problems of syntax, or because an imperetive language is necessarily hamstrung. But if C#'s the only time inference you've seen, look further afield.)
Fontforge uses the same UI setup as the Gimp. Inkscape's predecessor, Sodipodi, also did, but it's UI needed a lot of work, and unfortunately (from a perspective of consistency) the Windows weenies got to it.
Of course, I'm usually using small and simple windows from dozens of programs to do a task (e.g. GVim, Xpdf, an xterm, a web browser window, and a single detached email window); it has the same sort of feel. Completely different from the feel of using an IDE, an Office suite, or a Photoshop style app.
Unfortunately for me, I only have two 1920x1200 monitors --- not nearly enough resolution to be able to get away without virtual desktops unless I want to have to use a taskbar and keep minimising windows. Maybe when we have wall monitors...
And yes, Debian and Ubuntu does have virtual desktops by default. I don't know about other distros.
Indeed; my suspicion is that the Windows port is actually a bad thing for Gimp. People use the Gimp on Windows, conclude the interface is horrible (it is horrible given the Windows UI) and demand it should be fixed. Of course, the Gimp has a very nice UI if you use it in the sort of environment it's made for — and I do at home. Thus, for me the Windows port is a Good Thing; it lets me use a tool I'm comfortable with from home at work. But anyone who thinks the Gimp on Windows is a good way to convert Photoshop users, or is intended as such, is going to be disappointed
Yes, exactly. I was one of the numerous readers who submitted this story, and my write-up focused on that point. So has most of everything I've seen about this. I couldn't wait until the "terrorism" thing got so far stretched that it was obviously stupid to anyone who cared to look; I think with this piece of news we've finally got there. Now hopefully people will start thinking about the link between terrorism and a proposed infringement on our rights --- not constitutional rights, because we, as Australians, have none. Just the rights we've always assumed we have.
Well, the price includes line rental and a certain number of telephone calls, so it's not entirely the most honest comparison, but seeing as I don't care about the landline phone it seems a fair one to me. My parents got it while I wasn't living here (two year contract); and I've only moved back in until I move overseas later this year. (It also might actually be an ADSL2 service, so faster than 1.5 Mbps. But I don't think so.)
But personally I think 320 sek are quite expensive, especially since I don't download much stuff and IRC are dead nowadays which was why I needed it anyway.
According to Google, 320 SEK is about 60 AUD. For 100 AUD, I'm getting 1.5 Mbps for 20 GB (upload & download) and 64 kbps thereafter. I would kill for Internet that good and that cheap.
Click to focus is what confuses me; the fact that it's mandatory in Mac OS and Windows is one of the main reasons I don't use them. (In Windows, there's tools that can enable X-style mouse, but it isn't very nice to use because many programs --- including the new versions of Internet Explorer, Office and Visual Studio, which I have to use for work --- misbehave when it's enabled.)
On my home computer, I have Sawfish set to move the mouse pointer if Alt-Tab is used, but I only very rarely use Alt-Tab. In fact, I'm struggling to remember when the last time I used it on my home computer was. I very much doubt it was any time this year.
Which is frigging annoying and there's nothing more confusing --- well, except the way my attention (represented by the mouse pointer) and the keyboard focus can be on different windows.
Unfortunately even on Linux I have that problem, with Pidgin and Skype keeping running once I've closed the buddy list. More than once I've wanted to leave my computer on overnight and closed those windows, only to discover people showing "hey zsau, wossup?" at me the next morning. I might use Linux so I can care about the technical details I want to — but you should not assume you're so important that I should want to care about yours, too.
To be perfectly honest, I have got bigger and bigger screens, but I have kept my webbrowser roughly the same width; it's rarely more than 900 pixels wide, and usually closer to 800 px. For most sites, it works fine; I usually only fullscreen the browser to view large images like world maps on wikipedia that simply can't be viewed any other way. I have customised my Mozilla CSS file in such a way that it prevents websites that otherwise would have horizontal scrolling from having horizontal scrolling. It's not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than having to view websites on 1920 pixel wide window. (My lord how hard is that! So many people simply don't realise I think and just put it down to hating reading off computer screens, or reading at all. The largest browser any webpage should want, including spacing for a side bar and some padding and stuff, is 1000 pixels wide --- and even that is way excessive.)
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I was correcting the spelling and grammar of someone whose language skills are even worst than mine and I was about to correct his usage of the word "till."
I'm pleased you did; every time someone writes "'til", a kitten dies. ("'Til" is the only misspelling which makes my blood boil, but I make no apologies for that.)
Till was itself derived from "til" so even without the apostrophe, it's correct.
That logic is not correct. "Debt" was at one stage spelt "det" and "dette", but neither of those spellings are correct today.
OT, but just to let you know, the word "till" is spelt like that, not "'til"; it's not a contraction. The word "until" in fact is derived from the word "till" with the prefix "un-" (obviously not using its English meaning of "not", but an old Norse meaning that was similar).
If that's true, wouldn't be a great idea just to collect all the fallen leaves and put them underground? Every autumn here in Victoria (state in south eastern Australia) the Department of Sustainability and the Environment, who are responsible for fires on Crown land, perform "backburning" or "controlled burns". Basically the idea is that the Australian bush will burn—our trees are full of oil precisely to make sure they burn every few years—so the DSE chooses when and how much it'll happen, and makes sure there's people around to put them out if they go places they're not meant to. Of course, the process is hugely controversial---they release a shitload of smoke and practically every year one fires get out of control and spread like, ahem, wildfire. This process is not new; it was performed just the same by the Aborigines before white people came, except with less technology.
If what you say is true, instead of backburning, they should go round picking up all the fallen matter and bury it surely. And once it's been perfected here (where removing it is vital) the techniques used should spread like, ahem, wildfire to the rest of the world. The fact that driving around picking up leaves and sticking them in the ground releases carbon into the atmosphere should be countered by the fact that it's not being released from the leaves.
Of course there's other reasons the Australian bush must burn—in particular, the native environment doesn't regenerate till it's been burnt. So burning will have to continue, but whatever...
I don't have any mod points because I don't usually moderate so I've disabled them, but what they hey:
+1 funny
+1 insightful
The closest thing to a "psychological week" I have, I guess, it starts on Monday and ends on Friday and the weekend doesn't enter into it. The weekend's always been special; when I was at Uni, the weekend was the days to earn money. Now I'm working, the weekend is the days *not* to earn money.
But if the week has seven days, then as far as a start and an end works, it only matters for writing it down, and then you should have one form in a diary and another form on a calendar, because starting on a Monday has some advantages in a book, and starting on a Sunday has different advantages on a wall. But now I repeat myself.
I was about to observe that having just finished summer a month and a half ago, I wouldn't be having another till mid next year, and wonder why Microsoft would take so long to release it, and why the heat would have anything to do with it. Then I realised I don't run Windows anyway, so it's a moot point.
It depends on how the calendar goes. If it's a page to a week, then yeah, sure Monday starts the week. But those new-fangled monthly wall calendars which put Monday at the start of the week shit me. Wednesday should be in the middle of the week, so Sunday should be at the start.
As for me, I'm sick of paying tribute to Mars every March, and regardless of whether you can count in latin, I know "octo" means "eight", not "ten". I demand we switch to English numbers for dates, which is how we write shortform dates anway (i.e. I write that my birthday is 25/7, and say "my birthday is the twenty-fifth of the seventh"). IIRC the Japanese almost do this, although I think the say "shichi gatsu" i.e. "seven month".
My post had nothing to do with intelligence. It was about the fact that communication (and, having thought about it some more, and I think I was getting there in my last post but never direcetly said it, similarity to me) is the basis for empathy. All the evidence I have for a pig's intelligence and a pig's feelings are the words of scientists and the annecdotes of people. Anyway, if a particular instance's intelligence was all that counted, why shouldn't I prefer to kill and eat a person I know is in a persistant vegitative state? or why not eat a person who'd tragically died in a car crash?
It's like the pig in Hitchhiker's Guide --- I wouldn't eat it even though it asked me to, because it asked me to.
I haven't had time to read your awfully long post just yet, so I apologise if you counter these points later on...
None of them have anywhere near the sort of *communication* skill that humans have, but communication is hardly a reason not to eat something, now isn't it?
Why not? A person can tell me he doesn't want to be eaten. All a pig can do, is play back a canned response to try and stop me from killing it. But it shows no evidence of understanding the significance of beyond that. Now, some people can't tell me they don't want to be eaten, and some people will tell me they do want to be eaten. It's still a problem to eat those people. In the first case, the can't tell me only because of some disability, but I can project my feeling on to them quite readily. I feel empathy towards them; but I have no basis for feeling the same sort of empathy towards an animal other than my own incapacity to imagine different sorts of beings (which I can do, and thus don't feel empathy towards the pig). In the second case, the human is simply deluded and not thinking properly. They should see a shrink, rather than a butcher.
I have no desire to lecture you on the subject of base ten vs base two prefixes, nor to be lectured by you, but your sig strikes me as ambiguous. Is that the point, or do you have a preference for the 1000 or 1024 multiplier for bytes? Computational convenience for people would dictate the 1000 multiplier, and 1024 would be arbitrary to us; but 1024 would be computationally convenient for computers, and 1000 would be arbitrary to them. Obviously computers do more calculations with bytes than people do, but (lacking emotions) they can feel no inconvenience.
Oh sorry, I didn't see it, on account of it not being moderated up. Apologies!
/o:/ indeed, but if it's short it's // (a backwards c, if the Unicode gets stripped). But that would be its German pronunciation, or German-accent English, and not its English pronunciation.
I'm afraid I can't say whether the vowel in "Prost" is long or short --- I have begun taking German classes because I plan on going over there later this year (Christmas in winter? What a novel idea!), but after only one lesson it's no surprise I haven't come across that vowel yet. In any case, if it's long, it's
Wikipedia's IPA disagrees with you, claiming the middle syllable is "gress" (in your notation), and this is how I've always understood it should be said. Quite what to make of the first syllable, which uses a vowel not found in British or American English (/o:/) I'm not sure; I imagine it's intended as a poor representation of the vowel in "post" (many foreign learners of English use /o:/ for that vowel, and it's also similar to the /o/ used in American English and many regional British dialects). (The vowel /o:/ exists in Australian English, which would make the first syllable "pawst" --- but that doesn't seem likely.)
Nah, I can't stand full screen windows. One task rarely uses only one program, unless occasionally when you're using an IDE or a word processor, and then you have a program poorly implementing a window manager in a very constraining way. But I probably repeat myself now.
I use ROX-Filer as well, but I prefer focus strictly follows mouse over the ROX/RISC OS method of click-to-focus but raise only when clicking the decorations --- I use my pointer to represent my attention. Once you get into the habit, it because very intuitive: Just move the mouse pointer as you move your eyes significantly. ("Strictly" meaning there's no circumstance when the window with the focus is not the window with the pointer over it, and vice versa; I tried "sloppy focus" where the focus stays on a window when you move onto the desktop, but I found it strangely confusing.)
My computer is set up very differently from most people's, and I don't claim it's remotely normal or useable by anyone other than me (it might be! dunno..). But I guard it jealously and do not look kindly upon any attempt to separate it from me!
Can you side-effect in functions like you can in Delphi and Pascal? If so, what's the advantage of the distinction? I've never understood it, as I went through some badly maintained code with functions that never set the value of "Result".
Learn a language with type inference (e.g. Haskell). Love it. All the advantages of static typing (speed, compiler finds the errors), along with all the advantages of dynamic typing (not having to write them, more type flexibility).
(The latest C# has a primitive form of type inference. I don't know whether its limitations are caused by lack of imagination on the part of the developers (unlikely), not crediting users with the intelligence to understand it, problems of syntax, or because an imperetive language is necessarily hamstrung. But if C#'s the only time inference you've seen, look further afield.)
Fontforge uses the same UI setup as the Gimp. Inkscape's predecessor, Sodipodi, also did, but it's UI needed a lot of work, and unfortunately (from a perspective of consistency) the Windows weenies got to it.
Of course, I'm usually using small and simple windows from dozens of programs to do a task (e.g. GVim, Xpdf, an xterm, a web browser window, and a single detached email window); it has the same sort of feel. Completely different from the feel of using an IDE, an Office suite, or a Photoshop style app.
Unfortunately for me, I only have two 1920x1200 monitors --- not nearly enough resolution to be able to get away without virtual desktops unless I want to have to use a taskbar and keep minimising windows. Maybe when we have wall monitors...
And yes, Debian and Ubuntu does have virtual desktops by default. I don't know about other distros.
Indeed; my suspicion is that the Windows port is actually a bad thing for Gimp. People use the Gimp on Windows, conclude the interface is horrible (it is horrible given the Windows UI) and demand it should be fixed. Of course, the Gimp has a very nice UI if you use it in the sort of environment it's made for — and I do at home. Thus, for me the Windows port is a Good Thing; it lets me use a tool I'm comfortable with from home at work. But anyone who thinks the Gimp on Windows is a good way to convert Photoshop users, or is intended as such, is going to be disappointed
An unusual place to lie; that drunken decision is probably what killed him.
Yes, exactly. I was one of the numerous readers who submitted this story, and my write-up focused on that point. So has most of everything I've seen about this. I couldn't wait until the "terrorism" thing got so far stretched that it was obviously stupid to anyone who cared to look; I think with this piece of news we've finally got there. Now hopefully people will start thinking about the link between terrorism and a proposed infringement on our rights --- not constitutional rights, because we, as Australians, have none. Just the rights we've always assumed we have.
Actually, if I'm not mistaken --- and I'm not an American --- it was also a problem six or seven years ago, during the dot bomb crash
Well, the price includes line rental and a certain number of telephone calls, so it's not entirely the most honest comparison, but seeing as I don't care about the landline phone it seems a fair one to me. My parents got it while I wasn't living here (two year contract); and I've only moved back in until I move overseas later this year. (It also might actually be an ADSL2 service, so faster than 1.5 Mbps. But I don't think so.)
But personally I think 320 sek are quite expensive, especially since I don't download much stuff and IRC are dead nowadays which was why I needed it anyway.
According to Google, 320 SEK is about 60 AUD. For 100 AUD, I'm getting 1.5 Mbps for 20 GB (upload & download) and 64 kbps thereafter. I would kill for Internet that good and that cheap.
Click to focus is what confuses me; the fact that it's mandatory in Mac OS and Windows is one of the main reasons I don't use them. (In Windows, there's tools that can enable X-style mouse, but it isn't very nice to use because many programs --- including the new versions of Internet Explorer, Office and Visual Studio, which I have to use for work --- misbehave when it's enabled.)
On my home computer, I have Sawfish set to move the mouse pointer if Alt-Tab is used, but I only very rarely use Alt-Tab. In fact, I'm struggling to remember when the last time I used it on my home computer was. I very much doubt it was any time this year.
Which is frigging annoying and there's nothing more confusing --- well, except the way my attention (represented by the mouse pointer) and the keyboard focus can be on different windows.
Unfortunately even on Linux I have that problem, with Pidgin and Skype keeping running once I've closed the buddy list. More than once I've wanted to leave my computer on overnight and closed those windows, only to discover people showing "hey zsau, wossup?" at me the next morning. I might use Linux so I can care about the technical details I want to — but you should not assume you're so important that I should want to care about yours, too.
To be perfectly honest, I have got bigger and bigger screens, but I have kept my webbrowser roughly the same width; it's rarely more than 900 pixels wide, and usually closer to 800 px. For most sites, it works fine; I usually only fullscreen the browser to view large images like world maps on wikipedia that simply can't be viewed any other way. I have customised my Mozilla CSS file in such a way that it prevents websites that otherwise would have horizontal scrolling from having horizontal scrolling. It's not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than having to view websites on 1920 pixel wide window. (My lord how hard is that! So many people simply don't realise I think and just put it down to hating reading off computer screens, or reading at all. The largest browser any webpage should want, including spacing for a side bar and some padding and stuff, is 1000 pixels wide --- and even that is way excessive.)