The current solution *is* to ask people to behave differently
Really? IME, the current solution is to sit there fuming in silence, and then bitch about mobile phones in places like SlashDot...
Seriously, does anyone actually ask nicely in situations like that? What happens? (I don't expect it works every time, but as a matter of manners I think you should probably try it first anyway.)
In fact, IMO it's a better way of dealing with it all round. For one thing, people may not realise just how annoying they're being; this lets them know, and gives them a chance to improve their manners. And this gives other people the chance to make their feelings known, too; an offender who gives no thought to an isolated case may well think differently about a whole group (asking politely).
And this way needs no preparation, no equipment, and affects no-one else.
A jammer may have be shiny and give you a feeling of power, but it's still a bad solution to the problem.
Anyway, as you and others have said, the problem is one of manners, not gadgets. AFAIC, a loud and annoying mobile phone ring is no better or worse than an equally loud and annoying digital watch tune, and a loud and annoying conversation on a mobile phone is no better or worse than an equally loud and annoying conversation of any other kind.
(Who was it who said that you can't use technology to solve sociological problems?)
That's an easy one to solve: make him slow down or wait while you take notes. Don't let him get ahead of you. Either you'll end up with good discussion and good notes, or he'll get fed up and switch to emails!
I find I can do it my email. Lots of times, I'll be half-way through writing an email explaining some problem, and then find I have to rewrite parts as I come to understand them better. Often I don't need to send the email at all, as by the time I've finished it, I've solved the problem!
Of course, it does help to have someone to send email to. Right now I'm working on a piece of software with one other author; we tend to code separately, but do most of our design by email -- this not only forces us to get things clear in our heads, but the input from someone else can remind you of factors you'd forgotten, or lead you to simpler and/or more elegant solutions.
...who haven't the guts to go up to someone and say "Excuse me, could you speak more quietly please? You're disturbing everyone."
And who also don't mind disrupting other people's quiet, considerate calls or text messages. Which may be dangerous and/or illegal, and is certainly just as inconsiderate as the person you're aiming for.
'Respect for those around you'? Gosh, what a stupid, outdated, old-fashioned concept. Move out of the dark ages, buddy, and get with the times! Only losers show respect these days. How are they gonna respect you if you don't treat 'em like dirt?
Using only plain ringtones, its rather difficult to be able to have a somewhat unique ringtone.
Quite the reverse -- these days, a plain ringtone is unique! Everyone else has stupid annoying beepy tunes.
It's a shame, because there's lots of scope for sounds that are distinctive and recognisable but not annoying. I've tried lots of alarm sounds on my PDA, so I know what works for me. For example, the original Star Trek communicator chirp is great, not because it's geeky, but because it's extremely easy to hear but also very discreet. Lots of other short, sharp sounds work just as well.
And yet phones are stuck with stupid annoying beepy tunes. [fx: sigh]
(Of course, there's plenty of choice -- if you don't like the stupid annoying beepy tune, you can always choose... another stupid annoying beepy tune!)
A computer language is far more than just syntax. Otherwise code in any ALGOL-based language could be transformed into another language using an automated process, and run the same. This is very far from true.
Yes, syntax is important. But although it's the most obvious aspect of any language, in many ways it's the least important. Far more important are the semantics: what that code means. C and Java, for example, differ far more than just in a few operators and keywords. There's the type system. The memory model. The thread model. The namespaces. The execution environment. The standard library (which is a whole subclass of aspects in itself). The expression evaluation. The error and exception handling. The preprocessor. The object model. And so on.
Just as there's far more to learning English than memorising some spellings, there's far more to learning a computer language than memorising its syntax (something a good number of books would do well to learn!).
So don't lump all ALGOL-based languages together; they differ greatly. If you mean to compare procedural languages against other paradigms (which is something else), then say so.
Agreed. It's sad how many people come out of the woodwork to say how wonderful C# is.
I won't repeat all the disadvantages that have been mentioned elsewhere. I think it comes down to one simple question: do you trust Microsoft? Because by using C#, you're handing them on a plate the opportunity to pull any number of nasty tricks. And they've shown, time and time and time again, just how able and willing they are to do so.
Java, for example, is in many ways a better language. It may not have the name of a particular standards committee behind it, but it does have a very successful Community Process steering it, keeping it stable and yet improving it in a democratic manner -- which is far more than can be said for C# and its completely unstandardised libraries.
Java's mature, it's powerful, it's being used in countless enterprise systems. It has the big investments from IBM and many other big names. It works on umpteen different platforms right now -- while for all the catch-up that the Mono guys are doing, C# doesn't even work effectively on two. And M$ can keep them playing catch-up forever.
When M$ is mentioned here in any other context, they get roasted (and mostly, though not always, with good reason). Yet developers here seem perfectly happy to roll over and take whatever M$ gives them, putting all their work at risk.
I really don't understand it. Is this astroturf? Are people stupid? Are they letting the words 'standard committee' blind them to the real truth? Have the few shiny bits on M$'s cheap knock-off enticed them into overlooking everything they believe in? WAKE UP, PEOPLE!
GC may be for the lazy. But it's also for those who write large, complex systems and recognise that manual memory management can take an awful lot of work to get right, often causes subtle bugs that are a nightmare to find, and that their time is better spend elsewhere.
And, perhaps more importantly, it's for those who want to run apps written by people they don't trust to get the memory management perfect. Which, judging from all the memory leaks we see, is a fairly large number of them...
These days we don't expect programmers write directly to the file system; we have far more powerful and robust file system managers to do it for them. We don't let them do everything as the superuser; we have privilege managers to take care of that. So why do we expect them to do their own memory management?
What about the principle? If we're thinking up good reasons to dump stuff there before we've even got there ourselves, just think what good reasons we'll have once we get there. And how quickly the mess will grow from something immeasurably insignificant to something noticeable, to something problematic, to something tragic. It's the thin end of the wedge, the tip of the interplanetary iceberg.
You can't argue that because one axe cutting down one tree has little effect, that therefore the rainforests are safe. It's the same here; one canister might be inconsequential, but if we endorse it, what else will we have to allow?
My first reaction to this was rather like Thomas Jefferson's reaction to hearing about a meteorite: "I would sooner believe a yankee professor would lie than stones would fall from the heavens."
The first question should be whether we know this is actually happening. Only then can we speculate about how or why.
But it's not Apple who have to weather this storm.
Yeah, yeah, I know I'll get dismissed as another Apple yes-man. Okay, I own some of their kit, and I think they do a lot of really good things (and fewer bad ones than most companies, though still too many). But let's be realists here. Apple are just the middlemen between us and the record labels. They have to find some common ground.
Before they stepped in, there really wasn't any at all; we wanted no restrictions at all, and the labels wouldn't risk putting any worthwhile music in electronic form. Apple worked out a compromise, one that seems to suit both parties really well. Their restrictions are strong enough that most labels have made a lot of music available, and weak enough that we don't mind paying for it. They're clearly not encouraging piracy (hence the 'Don't Steal Music' stickers &c), but they recognise that fair use is important to people.
So what now? Well, I suspect that Apple themselves couldn't care less about people unprotecting their files. If anything, the immediate effect will be greater sales to people like me (who were previously wary of buying files with an unknown future and no real escape route, but who'd now be looking to buy stuff -- if the iTMS was available here, but that's another rant!). Of course, their pride will suffer a little, but they can't have been blind to this possibility.
But Apple's not the problem here; the problem is the labels. If they think their music up on the iTMS is now completely unprotected and likely to be shared with millions of people, they'll demand action, and Apple will have only two choices: do what they say, or lose large chunks of the iTMS catalogue.
I don't think it's quite as bad as that, though. For one thing, the geek world is a fairly small one compared to the number of people buying music online; and I'd imagine that a good number of them don't use the iTMS anyway. Most people will be unaware that they can unprotect their files, or won't have the technical knowledge or motivation to do so. (There's not even a GUI tool yet.) And for another, you can only unprotect your own files; I think this crack is more about fair use rights for files you've bought than about sharing files (I expect very few people will go to the trouble of unprotecting files simply so other people can use them).
What matters now is how scared the record labels get, and what Apple can do to reassure them and persuade them that further restrictions aren't a good idea. After all, they'd probably be bad for them as well as for us.
That's a very naive view. People in government doesn't work out how much money they need and then look at how to raise it -- they pitch for as much as they think they can get away with, and then work out what to spend it on! (With apologies to Yes, Prime Minister.)
As I mentioned elsewhere, it might also help if you mentioned which country's Liberal Party you were speaking of. I think ours is probably rather different from yours...
Your post perfectly illustrates the problem. It's sad, really sad, just how ignorant, blinkered, selfish, and, well, patronising it sounds.
The world is a complex place. It has billions of individual people, each with their own hopes, needs, desires -- and with their own situation, mostly created by others. Simplifying it down to 192 or so different countries is bad enough, but dividing it only into America and The Rest Of The World is ludicrously short-sighted as well as hideously unbalanced and dangerously naive.
Of course we must think of our own interests, but we must also be aware of our place in the world -- not spend half the time pretending it doesn't exist, and the other half expecting it to do our bidding (or be conquered). (And don't get me started on your views about terrorism...)
These discussions often remind me of a school playground, full of kids of different sizes and abilities. Is it right for the biggest, strongest kid to bully many of the smaller kids? And then sulk when someone complains?
To put it bluntly... We don't hate you because you're big, or rich, or powerful, or have particular economic or social or organisational structures and freedoms. In fact, there are probably far, far fewer who hate you than you think; but those who hate you do so because of your attitude: because you seem to think your size, and money, and power, and might somehow make you better than everyone else -- and give you the right to impose your own standards, rules, and interests on us.
Let me give just two small examples. (You can probably find arguments against them, but that's not the point; they illustrate your country's attitude.) First, you've made particularly strong restrictions on what you can do with copyrighted and/or encrypted material. Fine, that's your prerogative. But is it right to expect other countries to have to implement similar restrictions against their will? Or for you to force them to do so by threatening to withhold trade agreements and take other punitive measures? Or is that the act of a bully?
And second, the recent banning of an Iraqi newspaper, by a country that claims to value democracy and freedom of speech. Maybe the paper did 'incite violence' and 'mislead its readers'. But it's not democracy if another country has the power of veto, and it's not freedom of speech if it only covers things someone else wants to hear.
Your military and economic might, high standard of living, and the other things you're proud of, should inspire you to set an example to other countries. Please don't let that example be 'Power corrupts'.
____________________
I'm sorry; this post has turned out to be angrier (and longer) than I intended. I mean nothing against you personally; I just felt that your points needed replying to. That it might help to hear from a different viewpoint. Not necessarily a better one, just one whose biases and areas of ignorance are different.
Some good posts here, but I don't think any cut to the real difference in this particular case, which AISI is this:
You don't have to accept the GPL just to use software.
EULAs generally state that if you don't accept them, then you can't use the software and must return it. So, theoretically, anyone using the software has accepted the conditions and lack of liability of the producer. (Though I think it's still a legal grey area, isn't it?)
Whereas the GPL doesn't restrict usage (in fact, it doesn't restrict anything, but gives you additional rights of distribution that you wouldn't otherwise have). So you can use the software without accepting the terms of the GPL, as long as you don't distribute it.
So if you're not passing the software on, then disclaimers in the GPL would seem to be if anything less valid than the ones in EULAs... But then, as other people have said, if you didn't pay anything for it, then that should put it in a rather different light.
IMO, the same factor is behind the best in UI, the best in system design, the best in low-level coding, and everything in between: elegance. It's hard to describe, hard to teach, and impossible to distil into methodology, but it's what makes the difference between something you enjoy using and something that's a chore.
Elegance means caring about what you create, caring not only that it works but that it works well, caring that other people may work on it, caring that it may be used in different conditions than you foresaw.
Elegance often means choosing simplicity, and restricting choice; choice isn't always a good thing. Better to have one overwhelmingly good way to do something, whether it's a UI method, an API, a language construct, a business process, or a class method, than umpteen bad ones.
Elegance may mean taking time; time to think things through before you start coding, or time afterwards refactoring out ugliness. But that time is well-spent, an investment that's often repaid.
Elegance usually means consistency: uniformity makes things easy to understand and predict, whereas inconsistency draws your attention to trivia, whether in concepts, code formatting and naming, UI layout, API design, system organisation, or whatever. (Time spent getting bogged down in arbitrary differences is wasted time, even if those differences are shiny or buzzword-laden.) But it can also bring power and flexibility.
Some examples of elegance are clear: Unix pipelines, UI tabs, the iPod. But most aren't so easy to spot. It takes some care to recognise it when you first see it, and more to create it, but it's well worth the effort.
PS. As Blaise Pascal said, "I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had the time to make it shorter."
Indeed. And the other thing to be wary of is that software can often expand in many different directions, and it takes quite a bit of experience and intuition to tell which ones are likely enough and/or easy enough to allow for. Often it's a good idea to solve the much more general case or allow for particular types of future expansion, but sometimes it's just not worth the extra work.
It wouldn't surprise me to find that accents varied more throughout the UK than in any other comparable area -- from the various Scottish, Welsh and Irish accents, to the distinctive accents around Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, Cornwall, the Home Counties, the Estuary (which is where I am). It's a wonder we can still understand each other (most of the time!).
As to the 'original' accent, I remember reading that the area whose accent has changed least since Chaucerian times is the north-east of England: Newcastle, Darlington, Durham. (I spent three years at uni at that last, and even then I couldn't understand the Scousers, let alone emulate them...)
Slashdot Mirror
Really? IME, the current solution is to sit there fuming in silence, and then bitch about mobile phones in places like SlashDot...
Seriously, does anyone actually ask nicely in situations like that? What happens? (I don't expect it works every time, but as a matter of manners I think you should probably try it first anyway.)
And this way needs no preparation, no equipment, and affects no-one else.
A jammer may have be shiny and give you a feeling of power, but it's still a bad solution to the problem.
Anyway, as you and others have said, the problem is one of manners, not gadgets. AFAIC, a loud and annoying mobile phone ring is no better or worse than an equally loud and annoying digital watch tune, and a loud and annoying conversation on a mobile phone is no better or worse than an equally loud and annoying conversation of any other kind.
(Who was it who said that you can't use technology to solve sociological problems?)
That's an easy one to solve: make him slow down or wait while you take notes. Don't let him get ahead of you. Either you'll end up with good discussion and good notes, or he'll get fed up and switch to emails!
Of course, it does help to have someone to send email to. Right now I'm working on a piece of software with one other author; we tend to code separately, but do most of our design by email -- this not only forces us to get things clear in our heads, but the input from someone else can remind you of factors you'd forgotten, or lead you to simpler and/or more elegant solutions.
And who also don't mind disrupting other people's quiet, considerate calls or text messages. Which may be dangerous and/or illegal, and is certainly just as inconsiderate as the person you're aiming for.
'Respect for those around you'? Gosh, what a stupid, outdated, old-fashioned concept. Move out of the dark ages, buddy, and get with the times! Only losers show respect these days. How are they gonna respect you if you don't treat 'em like dirt?
Quite the reverse -- these days, a plain ringtone is unique! Everyone else has stupid annoying beepy tunes.
It's a shame, because there's lots of scope for sounds that are distinctive and recognisable but not annoying. I've tried lots of alarm sounds on my PDA, so I know what works for me. For example, the original Star Trek communicator chirp is great, not because it's geeky, but because it's extremely easy to hear but also very discreet. Lots of other short, sharp sounds work just as well.
And yet phones are stuck with stupid annoying beepy tunes. [fx: sigh]
(Of course, there's plenty of choice -- if you don't like the stupid annoying beepy tune, you can always choose... another stupid annoying beepy tune!)
Yes, syntax is important. But although it's the most obvious aspect of any language, in many ways it's the least important. Far more important are the semantics: what that code means. C and Java, for example, differ far more than just in a few operators and keywords. There's the type system. The memory model. The thread model. The namespaces. The execution environment. The standard library (which is a whole subclass of aspects in itself). The expression evaluation. The error and exception handling. The preprocessor. The object model. And so on.
Just as there's far more to learning English than memorising some spellings, there's far more to learning a computer language than memorising its syntax (something a good number of books would do well to learn!).
So don't lump all ALGOL-based languages together; they differ greatly. If you mean to compare procedural languages against other paradigms (which is something else), then say so.
I won't repeat all the disadvantages that have been mentioned elsewhere. I think it comes down to one simple question: do you trust Microsoft? Because by using C#, you're handing them on a plate the opportunity to pull any number of nasty tricks. And they've shown, time and time and time again, just how able and willing they are to do so.
Java, for example, is in many ways a better language. It may not have the name of a particular standards committee behind it, but it does have a very successful Community Process steering it, keeping it stable and yet improving it in a democratic manner -- which is far more than can be said for C# and its completely unstandardised libraries.
Java's mature, it's powerful, it's being used in countless enterprise systems. It has the big investments from IBM and many other big names. It works on umpteen different platforms right now -- while for all the catch-up that the Mono guys are doing, C# doesn't even work effectively on two. And M$ can keep them playing catch-up forever.
When M$ is mentioned here in any other context, they get roasted (and mostly, though not always, with good reason). Yet developers here seem perfectly happy to roll over and take whatever M$ gives them, putting all their work at risk.
I really don't understand it. Is this astroturf? Are people stupid? Are they letting the words 'standard committee' blind them to the real truth? Have the few shiny bits on M$'s cheap knock-off enticed them into overlooking everything they believe in? WAKE UP, PEOPLE!
And, perhaps more importantly, it's for those who want to run apps written by people they don't trust to get the memory management perfect. Which, judging from all the memory leaks we see, is a fairly large number of them...
These days we don't expect programmers write directly to the file system; we have far more powerful and robust file system managers to do it for them. We don't let them do everything as the superuser; we have privilege managers to take care of that. So why do we expect them to do their own memory management?
You can't argue that because one axe cutting down one tree has little effect, that therefore the rainforests are safe. It's the same here; one canister might be inconsequential, but if we endorse it, what else will we have to allow?
The first question should be whether we know this is actually happening. Only then can we speculate about how or why.
- The Mach microkernel, derived from 4.2BSD
- BSD kernel, based on 4.4BSD and FreeBSD 3.2. (This runs in kernel space, so it's not a true microkernel.)
- IOKit, a new I/O driver architecture
Unix utilities:- some derived from FreeBSD
- and some from NetBSD.
That lot together is open-sourced under the name Darwin.On top of it are:
- Aqua, the user interface.
- Quartz, the 2D graphics subsystem (based on PDF, derived from NeXT's Display PostScript).
- QuickTime, for playing multmedia.
And the APIs:- Classic, Mac OS 9 running as a stand-alone app within OS X.
- Carbon, an API extracted from the older Mac OS's Toolbox.
- Cocoa, an OO API based on OpenStep (a port of part of the NeXTStep API).
- Java
- AppleScript
HTH...You say all that as if there's something bad about it...!
Yeah, yeah, I know I'll get dismissed as another Apple yes-man. Okay, I own some of their kit, and I think they do a lot of really good things (and fewer bad ones than most companies, though still too many). But let's be realists here. Apple are just the middlemen between us and the record labels. They have to find some common ground.
Before they stepped in, there really wasn't any at all; we wanted no restrictions at all, and the labels wouldn't risk putting any worthwhile music in electronic form. Apple worked out a compromise, one that seems to suit both parties really well. Their restrictions are strong enough that most labels have made a lot of music available, and weak enough that we don't mind paying for it. They're clearly not encouraging piracy (hence the 'Don't Steal Music' stickers &c), but they recognise that fair use is important to people.
So what now? Well, I suspect that Apple themselves couldn't care less about people unprotecting their files. If anything, the immediate effect will be greater sales to people like me (who were previously wary of buying files with an unknown future and no real escape route, but who'd now be looking to buy stuff -- if the iTMS was available here, but that's another rant!). Of course, their pride will suffer a little, but they can't have been blind to this possibility.
But Apple's not the problem here; the problem is the labels. If they think their music up on the iTMS is now completely unprotected and likely to be shared with millions of people, they'll demand action, and Apple will have only two choices: do what they say, or lose large chunks of the iTMS catalogue.
I don't think it's quite as bad as that, though. For one thing, the geek world is a fairly small one compared to the number of people buying music online; and I'd imagine that a good number of them don't use the iTMS anyway. Most people will be unaware that they can unprotect their files, or won't have the technical knowledge or motivation to do so. (There's not even a GUI tool yet.) And for another, you can only unprotect your own files; I think this crack is more about fair use rights for files you've bought than about sharing files (I expect very few people will go to the trouble of unprotecting files simply so other people can use them).
What matters now is how scared the record labels get, and what Apple can do to reassure them and persuade them that further restrictions aren't a good idea. After all, they'd probably be bad for them as well as for us.
That's a very naive view. People in government doesn't work out how much money they need and then look at how to raise it -- they pitch for as much as they think they can get away with, and then work out what to spend it on! (With apologies to Yes, Prime Minister.)
As I mentioned elsewhere, it might also help if you mentioned which country's Liberal Party you were speaking of. I think ours is probably rather different from yours...
That only applies in some countries. In, er, civilised countries, the advertised price includes tax.
The world is a complex place. It has billions of individual people, each with their own hopes, needs, desires -- and with their own situation, mostly created by others. Simplifying it down to 192 or so different countries is bad enough, but dividing it only into America and The Rest Of The World is ludicrously short-sighted as well as hideously unbalanced and dangerously naive.
Of course we must think of our own interests, but we must also be aware of our place in the world -- not spend half the time pretending it doesn't exist, and the other half expecting it to do our bidding (or be conquered). (And don't get me started on your views about terrorism...)
These discussions often remind me of a school playground, full of kids of different sizes and abilities. Is it right for the biggest, strongest kid to bully many of the smaller kids? And then sulk when someone complains?
To put it bluntly... We don't hate you because you're big, or rich, or powerful, or have particular economic or social or organisational structures and freedoms. In fact, there are probably far, far fewer who hate you than you think; but those who hate you do so because of your attitude : because you seem to think your size, and money, and power, and might somehow make you better than everyone else -- and give you the right to impose your own standards, rules, and interests on us.
Let me give just two small examples. (You can probably find arguments against them, but that's not the point; they illustrate your country's attitude.) First, you've made particularly strong restrictions on what you can do with copyrighted and/or encrypted material. Fine, that's your prerogative. But is it right to expect other countries to have to implement similar restrictions against their will? Or for you to force them to do so by threatening to withhold trade agreements and take other punitive measures? Or is that the act of a bully?
And second, the recent banning of an Iraqi newspaper, by a country that claims to value democracy and freedom of speech. Maybe the paper did 'incite violence' and 'mislead its readers'. But it's not democracy if another country has the power of veto, and it's not freedom of speech if it only covers things someone else wants to hear.
Your military and economic might, high standard of living, and the other things you're proud of, should inspire you to set an example to other countries. Please don't let that example be 'Power corrupts'.
____________________
I'm sorry; this post has turned out to be angrier (and longer) than I intended. I mean nothing against you personally; I just felt that your points needed replying to. That it might help to hear from a different viewpoint. Not necessarily a better one, just one whose biases and areas of ignorance are different.
Solution: insult them and tell them they're all effectively criminals. Then they'll like us more!
Do you ever get the feeling that someone important just doesn't Get It?
You don't have to accept the GPL just to use software.
EULAs generally state that if you don't accept them, then you can't use the software and must return it. So, theoretically, anyone using the software has accepted the conditions and lack of liability of the producer. (Though I think it's still a legal grey area, isn't it?)
Whereas the GPL doesn't restrict usage (in fact, it doesn't restrict anything, but gives you additional rights of distribution that you wouldn't otherwise have). So you can use the software without accepting the terms of the GPL, as long as you don't distribute it.
So if you're not passing the software on, then disclaimers in the GPL would seem to be if anything less valid than the ones in EULAs... But then, as other people have said, if you didn't pay anything for it, then that should put it in a rather different light.
Elegance means caring about what you create, caring not only that it works but that it works well, caring that other people may work on it, caring that it may be used in different conditions than you foresaw.
Elegance often means choosing simplicity, and restricting choice; choice isn't always a good thing. Better to have one overwhelmingly good way to do something, whether it's a UI method, an API, a language construct, a business process, or a class method, than umpteen bad ones.
Elegance may mean taking time; time to think things through before you start coding, or time afterwards refactoring out ugliness. But that time is well-spent, an investment that's often repaid.
Elegance usually means consistency: uniformity makes things easy to understand and predict, whereas inconsistency draws your attention to trivia, whether in concepts, code formatting and naming, UI layout, API design, system organisation, or whatever. (Time spent getting bogged down in arbitrary differences is wasted time, even if those differences are shiny or buzzword-laden.) But it can also bring power and flexibility.
Some examples of elegance are clear: Unix pipelines, UI tabs, the iPod. But most aren't so easy to spot. It takes some care to recognise it when you first see it, and more to create it, but it's well worth the effort.
PS. As Blaise Pascal said, "I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had the time to make it shorter."
Indeed. And the other thing to be wary of is that software can often expand in many different directions, and it takes quite a bit of experience and intuition to tell which ones are likely enough and/or easy enough to allow for. Often it's a good idea to solve the much more general case or allow for particular types of future expansion, but sometimes it's just not worth the extra work.
'Gay' or 'Gaye' used to be a common name before the word acquired the, erm, connotation it has today.
In particular, there's a Gay Woods who's a singer -- she was with Steeleye Span for a while. (Though in her case, the name is short for Gabriel.)
As to the 'original' accent, I remember reading that the area whose accent has changed least since Chaucerian times is the north-east of England: Newcastle, Darlington, Durham. (I spent three years at uni at that last, and even then I couldn't understand the Scousers, let alone emulate them...)