@FaheemMitha assets.amuniversal.com/44fc8cf09d240133333a005056a9545d

@dn-ʞɔɐqɹW That's funny. Thanks for the link, though I am not sure why I am so favored.

@dn-ʞɔɐqɹW Fabby, is that you?

And for the record, I'm not a fan of upside down nicks. Though I'm impressed that's it is even possible to do that.

@FaheemMitha Because it made me think of you!

;-)

@FaheemMitha yes!

@FaheemMitha They're just a bunch of characters picked from the UNICODE set to just look like they're upside down!

E.G. D and N are the first letters of my new name...

then a dash, a Runic symbol, etc...

hello @dn-ʞɔɐqɹW :)

as u seem the only one still being online

Hello @JeffSchaller

@privetDruzia hello

@privetDruzia sorry, i wasn't... I closed my browser before logging out...

Does the Linux man program not support per man-tree whatis databases? I can't seem to get makewhatis to behave, let alone man -k/apropos or man -f/whatis.

Even when you give the Linux makewhatis program a man directory argument, the Linux tries to touch the system /var/cache/man, which of course users cannot do.

Surely there must be some mistake here.

Oh for goodness sake, they're still running that horrible 1992 version.

Which is a shell-script-from-hell.

is disappoint

I'll have to run my own. Again.

You'd think that after so many years they could have made something that worked better, but apparently they never have.

sees dead programmers

@dn-ʞɔɐqɹW How nice! It's good to be thought of. And yes, I don't think I'd say something like that, but the general tone is on-target.

@dn-ʞɔɐqɹW Well, it looks like "Mr. back-up" upside down. Consider switching back to Fabby, I like it better. And it has the considerable merit of not being upside down.

I'm old-fashioned. I favor my letters right-side up.

Question for people who understand regexes: If I want apt-file to match /usr/bin/gcc exactly, how would I do that?

I tried:

apt-file search /usr/bin/gcc$

but that didn't give me anything.

Ah, I need to use the -x flag.

^/usr/bin/gcc$ should be more precise, if someone decides that you need another gcc binary for arm architecture

@Braiam ^ means nothing before it, right?

@FaheemMitha start of the string, yes

@Braiam Ok. Thanks.

Wow, that guy is really into shell commands.

@terdon LOL

Maybe he thinks erotic means something different from what it actually means.

I'm pretty sure that's the case.

Either that, or he really likes shell.

That's actually not so unusual, especially among the young.

It's normally less likely for a "native" speaker, though.

I think he's saying "sexy" or "stimulating" or "interesting"

yep, google agree google.com/…

@Braiam That's a bit of a stretch.

Unless there is some new slang perversion of English that I'm not aware of.

erotic has always meant something explicitly sexual. And it's direct from the Greek root.

Of course, popular usage doesn't give a toss about etymology. Vide "fabulous" (pet peeve).

Latin fabulosus ‘celebrated in fable'. Nothing to do with its more common usage of "excellent". As though there aren't enough words meaning that.

<Pedant mode off.>

@Braiam I think so too but sexy != erotic. Sexy has taken on another meaning, that of cool or interesting. The word erotic has not.

@terdon Yes, sexy is a bit more general, though IMO is would still be an odd term to use in this context. And erotic would really be pushing it.

@FaheemMitha come on! Usage cannot always take heed of etymology. Should we use fornication to refer to high vaulted ceilings? Or sycophant for those who speak ill of you as the original Greek word meant? Words evolve. It's just that erotic hasn't done so in the direction Dylan thought it has.

In case you're wondering about the fornication:

Except that it already had that meaning in Roman times:

> Prostitutes in ancient Rome waited for their customers out of the rain under vaulted ceilings,[3] and the Latin word for vaults, fornix, became a euphemism for brothels, and the Latin verb fornicare referred to a man visiting a brothel.

Fair point, I only mentioned it since I find it amusing. My general point still stands though. Words evolve away from their etymology.

I'm not saying you should bow down and worship etymology, but nor should one throw it out of the window.

Usage trumps it. Always.

And in recent times people are distressingly likely to do so.

Especially in English where the words usually come from very different languages.

@terdon That justifies things like "revert to you". Which I've already stated my opinion about.

@FaheemMitha They always have. Usage is defined by the people speaking a language, very few of which will ever know or care about etymology.

If "revert to you" becomes standard English one day, I may have to hurt myself.

@FaheemMitha Sadly, it does, yes. I'll be damned if I'm ever going to use it but that's just how language evolves. We use things today that would have made people of a few hundred years ago cringe. That doesn't make them wrong.

In the case of "fabulous", people are now vanishingly likely to use it in the sense of its original meaning.

Yes. But why is that wrong?

@terdon For example?

@terdon Well, the original meaning was a good one. IMO.

The same is true for ejaculate, for example, but I doubt you'd use it as a synonym of exclaim.

And we don't need yet another word meaning "very good".

@FaheemMitha Off the top of my head, the loss of the subjunctive in BrE and the loss of the familiar thy,thou etc.

@terdon Hmm. True. I think people are about as likely to use "ejaculate" in its original sense as "fabulous". Maybe a little less.

Not to mention the loss of forms like knowest

@terdon I'm unclear what that was used for.

@FaheemMitha Precisely. But even curmudgeonly language geeks like ourselves don't object to it.

Is it a tense thing?

Yes

@terdon What, ejaculate? It's not a word I either use or come across often.

Actually, I'm guessing it arrived in English via medical terminology. Though I don't know.

@FaheemMitha My condolences. But be that as it may, if you were to come across it (no pun intended) you would take it to mean something very different from exclaim.

@terdon Depends on the context.

Point is, words change their meanings. I used to cringe every time I heard hopefully used to mean I hope as opposed to full of hope. I still don't use it that way myself, but I have made my peace with it.

It was still quite common relatively recently.

@terdon Hmm. I didn't notice that one, I admit.

@FaheemMitha Well, I once read a Saki (I think) novel which mentioned that "the neighbor came out onto the landing in his underwear, ejaculating wildly". I had to look the word up.

@terdon well, but I see where he comes from: if erotic is synonym of sexy, and sexy is syn of interesting, then erotic is synonym of interesting (a classic case of A=B, B=C, then A=C)

@terdon Yes, it was still in common use in the early 20th century. But it's now becoming rare outside the work of consciously literary writers. Like David Lodge, say.

@Braiam Yeah, but no. I mean, I understand the train of thought, it just really doesn't work in that context.

@terdon Who's curmudgeonly now? :-)

There's also momentarily which has taken up the meaning of in a moment rather than the original for a moment.

@FaheemMitha Hey, I never claimed not to be!

Lodge likes to use words and expressions that are in increasingly rare usage. I find it quite charming, actually.

Then again, he is an English professor.

I also don't say I use such monstrosities. I have just had to accept that they are an integral part of language evolution.

@terdon Well, explaining to people that they're wrong does not work so well.

We were born with a specific snapshot of the language. Any change from that, we consider devolution. Those changes that happened before we were born, we're fine with.

Though maybe we should pass a law...

@terdon I suspect that particular usage of "fabulous" is quite old. Probably predates my birth.

That only the language we grew up with is "correct"? So our grandparents and our children are just "wrong"?

> early 15c., "mythical, legendary," from Latin fabulosus "celebrated in fable;" also "rich in myths," from fabula "story, tale" (see fable (n.)). Meaning "pertaining to fable" is from 1550s. Sense of "incredible" first recorded c. 1600, hence "enormous, immense, amazing," which was trivialized by 1950s to "marvelous, terrific." Slang shortening fab first recorded 1957; popularized in reference to The Beatles, c. 1963.

Yup

Sense of "incredible" first recorded c.1600. Slang shortening fab first recorded 1957; popularized in reference to The Beatles, c.1963.

Yes, I'd say it predates me by quite a bit. I wish I had been around in 1600, though.

Hmm, I think we're looking at the same source.

@FaheemMitha Ah, but then you'd have the grandfathers complaining about the destruction of language and how their generation spoke "correctly". So it has ever been.

@FaheemMitha Of course, etymonline is the best.

@terdon A law that people can't say "revert to you", and if they do, they get beaten over the head with rolled-up newspapers.

Ah, OK, so we outlaw our (or your) pet peeves? I could get behind that.

The thing is that the root of fabulous is still very much alive in common usage (e.g. fable or fabled), so one is constantly being reminded of it.

Cognitive dissonance. Or some linguistic cousin.

Do you also object to terrific then?

@terdon I'd not terribly keen on it. But it doesn't make me grind my teeth to the same extent.

@FaheemMitha Do I need to point out that the two cases are very much equivalent?

Not to mention terribly. Which I assume you used on purpose.

In contrast fornix is not in common usage. Though maybe I'd know about it if I was an architect.

Or assume which used to mean to receive up into heaven"

@terdon I need to make a list of etymologically oblivious usages, and go around objecting to them.

@terdon That one I was not aware of.

@FaheemMitha You have your work cut out for you.

@terdon I will.

I don't see that usage of "assume" listed.

Source?

And it's not suggested by the etymology either.

Hey, you know what? We're in the wrong chat room.

For this kind of conversation, anyway.

@terdon So, how's the Python learning going?

nono please, continue... we aren't doing anything interesting anyways

@FaheemMitha etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=assume

@FaheemMitha Back to perl for the moment. Learning git though.

@terdon Git, ugh.

But weren't you using it already?

Nope.

Don't tell anyone, but I wasn't actually using a vcs at all.

@terdon "assumption". That's different from "assume". That one I knew about.

@terdon Shock horror. Don't worry, I'll take your secret to my grave.

Great. I'm sure it will be safe under your syntactically correct and etymologically sound tombstone.

:P

I thought bioinformaticians were force-fed Python these days. But maybe Perl is close enough.

@terdon Well, I might get eaten in a Zombie Apocalypse.

Well, that changed right after me. The lab I started in was all Perl. The younger students were all about python. Still, both languages are very heavily used in bioinformatics. They each have their bio- package (bioperl adn biopyhthon).

EnsEMBL, one of the largest, most important sequence databases only offers a Perl API, for example.

I see.

@terdon You should give Common Lisp a try. It's fabulous.

Man, if I had a nickel... :P

:-)

Actually, awful bothers me more than terrific. Though they're both bad.

And awesome is even worse.

Yeah, OK, awesome meaning excellent bugs me too.

Doesn't mean I'm right though.

Yes, I definitely don't like awesome. Especially as the job it was doing isn't really being done by any other word.

Now it's just another word meaning "very good". Like we don't have enough words... Wait, I said that already.

@FaheemMitha not when it's an audit on Stack Overflow

@Braiam Hmm?

@FaheemMitha Your repeated denunciations of the redundancy in superlative vocabulary are getting repetitive.

@terdon I think I'm done.

Awesome.

;p

lol

You were just biding your time to make the perfect entrance weren't you @Seth?

@terdon actually I just sat down :p

Still getting used to /dev/chat. Keeps throwing me off.

@terdon In Seth's case, it's natural talent.

@FaheemMitha is actually haskell, but I think you will get it meta.stackoverflow.com/q/283428/792066

Alas, all thinking.

@Braiam Well, it's possible Haskell requires extra brain cells.

@terdon Do you happen to have read the Grossman triology, "The Magicians"? Or even the first novel.

no. should I?

@terdon Well, it's not required reading, as far as I know.

But it's a good read. At least for someone like me.

It's been turned into a TV series. I was just watching it. Not a bad effort.

Cool, I just finished a book, might give it a go.

@terdon It's fairly dark.

I think the central conceit is: suppose a place like Narnia actually existed. What would it be like?

That's not the only theme in the story, but it's a big part of it.

Heh, sounds like fun.

@terdon Well, if you try it, let me know what you think.

It's certainly memorable. I read the trilogy some time ago (2014?), but remember it well. Though the first book is the best, imo.

@FaheemMitha How abour mr backup in normal letters?

@dn-ʞɔɐqɹW That's a kind of weird nick.

But no weirder than some, I suppose.

and if you do like that better, you'd better be a mid as i'm stuck with this one for 30 days...

Did you get tired of Fabby? You could try Fabulous instead, I suppose.

@dn-ʞɔɐqɹW mid?

Mod

on phone, autocorrect off...

😋

@dn-ʞɔɐqɹW I'm not. If I was, I would probably become drunk with power and do all sort of bad things.

Power corrupts.... 😉

puny mod: i.stack.imgur.com/yLn9Q.gif

And, now that you've seen it, let's stop it from repeating ad nauseum.

Hey, it's an annoying British actor pretending to be a Norse God!

Is that an animated GIF?

Yes. Seth made it.

@terdon I see. I've got animated gifs disabled here.

Curmudgeon.

@terdon I've seen that one before somewhere! >:-)

Just can't remember where!

:D