English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

12:01 AM

And you liked that?

WMD

Hey, bats aren't rodents!

Cerberus

Hmm their teeth aren't very rodent-like.

WMD

Who invented the word Fledermaus?

In fact, they're more closely related to me than they are to rodents.

Journeyman Geek

@WMD: they're closer to rats than flying rats. Aka pigeons

Cerberus

Journeyman Geek

12:06 AM

oh, possum.

WMD

Oh, sorry.

possum, posse, potuí

Cerberus

Cute, huh?

@WMD Yes!

Journeyman Geek

Fossa!

WMD

That looks like an otter.

Are we playing guess-the-mammal?

It's too easy to hover over the picture and read the filename in the URL. If you want this game to be fun, @Cerberus dearest, you will need to copy the images somewhere else, changing the filename, before posting.

Cerberus

@JourneymanGeek Ding!

@WMD I figured it would be too hard.

Journeyman Geek

12:17 AM

or uploading it to imgur

Cerberus

I just thought it looked cool.

A cat-like animals that lives only on Madagascar.

WMD

Like lemurs?

Cerberus

I think those are different.

Robusto

I demur from lemurs.

Cerberus

Lemurs are primates, fossae(?) are carnivora.

WMD

12:23 AM

I know. So they're not completely alike.

Cerberus

Not completely, no.

Like cats and humans.

WMD

But they do live only on Madagascar.

Cerberus

Yes.

WMD

(unlike me or the cat that I don't have)

Cerberus

Man, there are so many mammals and orders and suborders!

WMD

12:26 AM

Over 9000

Cerberus

Quite.

WMD

An inordinate number.

cornbread ninja

are melba toast and zwieback the same thing?

and hello.

WMD

According to Wikipedia, zwieback ... produces crisp, brittle slices that closely resemble melba toast.

cornbread ninja

strokes beard I see.

WMD

12:33 AM

Whose?

cornbread ninja

My invisible thinking beard.

Cerberus

Hmm they look much thicker than Melbas.

They look hard.

WMD

I was about to say - I know I haven't shaved for three days, but that's getting a bit personal.

Cerberus

It's OK.

Dried tomatoes are also great on regular toast btw.

On anything, really.

WMD

And from Cerberus' earlier description, Melba Toast would be drieback.

cornbread ninja

12:35 AM

@WMD thrice toasted?

WMD

Making a few obvious parallels, yeah.

4

A: "Pain in the neck" and similar expressions

Found a few on google, and sorted them by least offensive. He's a headache. an eyesore. (not equivalent, but has a body part) pain in the neck. pain in the rear pain in the rear end. pain in the butt. pain in the back side. pain in the arse. pain in the ass. I would find any below the fourth...

cornbread ninja

throasted

WMD

How is "a$$" more offensive than "ar$e"?

deeply

cornbread ninja

WMD

Säugetier is my new favourite German word. It makes me think of Die Drei Säugetiere.

Cerberus

12:45 AM

Dutch zoogdier.

Saugen = to suck.

WMD

See, that's not as favouritey.

Cerberus

So mammal = suck-animal.

Robusto

Hmm, I wonder if deer and Tier are PIE cognates.

Cerberus

Whereas your words means "boobish".

@Robusto Probably.

Reindeer = rendier in Dutch, "run-animal".

Robusto

ORIGIN Old English dēor, also originally denoting any quadruped, used in the (now archaic) phrase small deer meaning ‘small creatures collectively’; of Germanic origin; related to Dutch dier,German Tier .

Cerberus

12:48 AM

But that could be a bastardisation of the Dutch word.

Robusto

That's what they're saying.

Cerberus

@Robusto Ding!

@Robusto My bastardisation was still about reindeer.

Robusto

Bastard!

Cerberus

Yes?

Naming animals can be hard.

Englishmen aren't very smart. They will call anything "OMG look!!! animal!!!".

WMD

15

Q: Cache Invalidation—Is there a General Solution?

"There are only two hard problems in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." Phil Karlton Is there a general solution or method to invalidating a cache; to know when an entry is stale, so you are guaranteed to always get fresh data? For example, consider a function getData...

Robusto

12:53 AM

Deer are unconcerned with cache invalidation, as are most animals.

WMD

And you know this how?

Seems it might be quite an issue for squirrels.

Robusto

Squirrels have L3 cheek caches, which are emptied as needed. No validation required.

WMD

But what happens when an entry becomes stale?

Robusto

The Tongue™ will taste the staleness and expel the cached items.

WMD

So any animal that is directly beneath a tree containing squirrels needs to be concerned with cache invalidation.

Robusto

1:00 AM

If you have enough cash you don't have to worry about your cache.

cornbread ninja

@tchrist or anyone else... UNIX book is teaching me expr and says I can count the length of a string with echo expr length "cat" but it say syntax error.

pretend you can see those graves

echo ` expr length "cat" `

tchrist

Here, use this grave: ˋ. It won’t trigger a code span.

Robusto

@cornbreadninja youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=00KM53yZi2A

cornbread ninja

echo ˋexpr length "cat"ˋ

Robusto

►

tchrist

1:02 AM

I’m trying to figure out what length is there. Not something my expr groks.

Robusto

Why doesn't that one use the API?

WMD

Oh, I see. I was thinking that expr was your expression, and cat was cat. Sorry.

cornbread ninja

@Robusto that's how my calico reacts to the printer.

tchrist

macbook# echo kitty | wc -c
       6

Robusto

Better

WMD

1:04 AM

Shouldn't it be wc -m instead of -c ?

tchrist

macbook# echo kitty | perl -nle 'print length'
5

cornbread ninja

the point is to use expr though

tchrist

@WMD I was getting to that. Please stop blowing my punchlines.

WMD

Also, the whole point is learning expr, not finding a different way.

Jinx! (with cornbread, but I was slower)

cornbread ninja

:D

WMD

1:05 AM

@tchrist I figured you must be. You of all people are someone that I would credit with knowing the difference between a character and a byte.

tchrist

macbook# echo tête-à-tête | wc -c
      15
macbook# echo tête-à-tête | wc -m
      12
macbook# echo tête-à-tête | perl -nle 'print length'
11
macbook# echo tête-à-tête | nfd | perl -nle 'print length'
14

The point is that "wc -c" counts bytes, not characters.

WMD

So why did you suggest it in the first place?

tchrist

Because it is the first thing people learn.

You only learn if you make a mistake.

You remember that one day you walked out of the house and tripped and broke your nose.

You don't remember the myriad others.

WMD

Not if you look at the man page, and see "-c counts bytes and -m counts characters", or whatever it says.

tchrist

I'm trying to get people to remember.

The -m is a neologism.

WMD

1:07 AM

And this helps cornbread with her expr problem how, exactly?

You teaching her the wrong way to use a completely different command?

tchrist

Plus, as you see with the nfd form, all these are just counting code points, not graphemes.

Usually people want to count bytes when they call wc.

cornbread ninja

With tchrist, you get more than ask for.

What would be the fun in him just telling me what is wrong with this book?

tchrist

This is the best way:

macbook# echo tête-à-tête | nfc | uniwc
   Paras    Lines    Words   Graphs    Chars    Bytes File
       0        1        1       12       12       15 standard input
macbook# echo tête-à-tête | nfd | uniwc
   Paras    Lines    Words   Graphs    Chars    Bytes File
       0        1        1       12       15       18 standard input

Notice the grapheme count is constant across normalization forms.

WMD

So, ss64.com/bash/expr.html lists "length" as something that "expr" should know about. So it looks like it differs from one shell to another, or from one variant of Unix to another.

tchrist

Where chars means code points, bytes means bytes, and graphs means extended grapheme clusters — graphemes to non-lawyers.

WMD

1:10 AM

@cornbreadninja - What is your Unix and what is your shell?

tchrist

Why would you read the bash manpage to see what /bin/expr does?

Next comes the one about the swallows.

WMD

Because you might not know whether it's a separate executable or a shell built-in.

cornbread ninja

teacher finally says that it isn't available on our systems

neither is substring

tchrist

macbook# /bin/expr length foobar
expr: syntax error
Exit 2

WMD

:-(

tchrist

1:11 AM

chthon(tchrist)% /bin/expr length foobar
expr: syntax error
Exit 2

I can show you on other machines.

POSIX expr is not length-aware.

"It is easier to port a shell than a shell script." --lwall

WMD

Are you sure /bin/expr is the expr we're discussing?

The page that I linked to seems to suggest that it IS a shell built-in, in bash.

tchrist

For royal versions of we, in my case, yes.

WMD

As I don't have a unix box within spitting distance, I can't check this hands-on.

tchrist

Then you don’t get to talk.

WMD

@cornbreadninja - Did you really mean to invite Tom to answer your question?

cornbread ninja

1:15 AM

@WMD tee hee. Yeah.

I'm very disappointed that it isn't available, though.

This book is rife with errata, so I was expecting that.

WMD

What is your system though?

tchrist

You have to consult the manpage for whatever shell you are using to learn whether it is a builtin or not.

Or ask it nicely:

chthon(tchrist)% which alias
alias: shell built-in command.
chthon(tchrist)% which expr
/bin/expr
chthon(tchrist)% which which
which: shell built-in command.

cornbread ninja

Supposed to be a Korn shell. At least, when I screw up, it says ksh: not found and so on

but, we are in the Bourne chapter

WMD

8 mins ago, by tchrist

Why would you read the bash manpage to see what /bin/expr does?

2 mins ago, by tchrist

You have to consult the manpage for whatever shell you are using to learn whether it is a builtin or not.

tchrist

Bourne shell does not have expr as a builtin, of course.

And even if it did, it only has to respect the POSIX expr.

Which has no length.

QED

cornbread ninja

1:20 AM

$ which expr
/usr/bin/expr

WMD

Hmm, ksh invalidation again!

cornbread ninja

but other expr things work

tchrist

man expr

cornbread ninja

did

I think it might be a school system issue.

index doesn't work, but match does

lolwut

$ echo `expr $ 4 \> 5 $ \/ $ 6 \> 7 $`
expr: division by zero

Is that supposed to be a pipe instead?

yes.

chatkillah must travel.

WMD

Why wouldn't you get a division by zero error, when you're plainly dividing by zero?

Cerberus

1:38 AM

It means you get to keep everything yourself.

tchrist

Why would you call expr in backticks merely to echo it?

Just type the expr itself.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Uhoh, Cerberus is here! Quick, hide the programming

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 catches you

It's OK.

I don't need to be talking all the time.

tchrist

It isn’t polite to talk with your mouth full.

Cerberus

Was not!!

I swallowed him whole.

I'm not a chewer.

tchrist

1:43 AM

Spit him out!

Cerberus

I mean, Mr Shiny went to visit his aunt.

He will be back, eventually.

tchrist

I prefer he exit the front end.

Cerberus

No, no.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

What an awkward time to switch to the Facebook tab, then come back here.

Cerberus

tries to hide sock label

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

1:44 AM

sock label?

Cerberus

now "Mr Shiny" talks again

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

your socks have labels?

Cerberus

see, it's always nice to have it make meta-comments, very believable

tchrist

Does anyone who is allowed to speak of it know anything more about XVH’s “voting irregularities”?

Cerberus

I know nothing, honestly!

tchrist

1:45 AM

You have one comma too many there.

Cerberus

raises sock puppet

tchrist

from the dead

Cerberus

@tchrist Now you're pushing it.

And by "it" I mean "grammar".

I have to vote tomorrow.

tchrist

Your sock is named grammar?

Cerberus

If you like.

I haven't decided which party to vote on.

tchrist

1:47 AM

The one that stays open latest.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist was xvh banned/suspended?

tchrist

Those are the best parties.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Aye.

Search the logs a few hours back.

sim and shog ferreted him out, apparently.

Cerberus

That will be the winners: their parties will last well into the next morning.

tchrist

Vote for them, then.

Cerberus

I won't know who wins in advance.

Our elections aren't rigged, alas.

tchrist

1:49 AM

It looks like Reg and I both made Marshal on SO today.

His might have been yesterday. Not sure.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

So today on Language Log: sentences where it's and its are both correct at the same time

Mahnax

Its bacon. It's bacon.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mahnax well, those two things are not proper sentences.

Mahnax

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah, yeah. I know.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

"Milk it for all it's worth"/"Milk it for all its worth" is the example given.

Mahnax

2:02 AM

Yep, I went and looked—it had piqued my curiosity.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mahnax but +1 for the bacon reference.

►

cornbread ninja

2:14 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 is that from... um...

oh, what's that show

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Truthhorse

cornbread ninja

I was thinking of another

awesome show or something

Now I can only think of Mr. Show, which isn't it

ahh, Tim & Eric

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I think truthhorse must be defunct now

their website mentions "news" from 2004

I always wonder when I see sites like that, who is paying for the hosting after all these years?

WMD

Why would anyone have to pay for it?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@WMD well, domain registration is not free

cornbread ninja

2:20 AM

video.adultswim.com/tim-and-eric-awesome-show-great-job/…

WMD

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Have you ever tried not paying for domain registration?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@WMD no

WMD

In many cases, you'll be OK, until someone else wants your domain.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@WMD I guess. That's not how I'd run a registrar/hosting company though.

@cornbreadninja Well. That was weird.

cornbread ninja

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 yep.

WMD

2:25 AM

So you'd explicitly disable sites that you're hosting when the hostee stops paying? Yeah, I guess that makes sense, but not all ISPs do so.

cornbread ninja

My ex-roommate would spend all of his free time watching that show or playing City of Heroes or Fallout: New Vegas

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@WMD I would at least remove the DNS entries and shut down the VM, after some grace period, and eventually delete the data. But I've seen sites that are still running years later. Like turnofftheinterent.com. that was current when Windows 95 was out.

WMD

Removing the DNS entries won't help much - these get cached all over the show.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@WMD Well, you know what I mean. I'd disown them or whatever, so that when the TTL runs out people get NXDOMAIN

unless you're on my ISP, where there is no NXDOMAIN, only spammy search pages from the ISP.

WMD

Hate those!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:30 AM

But I must get going. My mental functions are starting to return E_SYSTEM_IS_REBOOTING.

see you all later!

cornbread ninja

zaijian!

oh, too late

Cerberus

4:19 AM

0

Q: U-English of the 1950s: which preposition was used instead of "ON holiday"?

I am reading U and non-U by Alan S.C. Ross, written in 1956. He wrote that the preposition on was non-U in the following sentence: She's on holiday This made me wonder what the correct U preposition was. I tried some prepositions in Ngrams, like at, with, and in, but none made me any wiser;...

prepositions sociolinguistic

OMG it asks a question!

Mahnax

Wot?

Could it be?

Gah. My download just slowed from 500KB/s to 8KB/s again.

Cerberus

That sucks.

Tell it to speed up.

Mahnax

Now it's jumping between 3KB/s and 17KB/s.

Cerberus

Bleh.

Mahnax

Yeah. It's only 20MB from being done, too.

growls

How are you this morning?

Cerberus

4:28 AM

Good, good.

Still drying my tomahtoes.

Mahnax

Noice.

I hope they turn out well. I'm looking forward to making some of my own sometime.

I'm looking forward to moving out of the house, too.

Cerberus

Hmm.

Now specifically?

Okay, so you mean you're looking forward to living on your own in general.

Mahnax

Yeah.

I don't like living with my family.

They're nice, but maybe at a distance.

Or just not all-day-every-day.

Cerberus

(By the way, I've had these tomatoes in the oven for 4 hours, and they're still not dry enough, so don't take them out too soon; when in doubt, give them another half hour.)

@Mahnax Hmm in what way?

I remember my parents and brother annoyed me too, on a regular basis.

Which I think is quite normal.

Mahnax

@Cerberus They're mostly just fairly annoying, which is normal, as you've just said. I find my parents overbearing, as most kids my age do.

Living here is also a constant source of paranoia for me, but many things are.

Cerberus

4:34 AM

Paranoia?

How so?

Mahnax

Oh, I'm just freaked out that I'll be in trouble for something.

The sensible part of me knows that I won't be, but I have a tendency to obsess.

Cerberus

Hmm but what kind of things would this hypothetically be?

And why would you care if you were?

Mahnax

I don't know why I would care. And nothing major, really—just things like how I choose to spend my time, how late I stay up, the amount of soda I drink, how much I actually curse when I'm not in their presence (not that much though), etc.

Silly things.

Cerberus

What happens when you are in trouble?

Mahnax

Well, I get grounded, which doesn't bother me in the least. The part I hate is talking to my parents about "what I've done".

Cerberus

4:39 AM

I understand.

Shyam K

cotton balls in your ears... that is what I use

Cerberus

Haha.

Mahnax

Being grounded means I can't leave the house except for school, work, or church. I don't get to watch TV (oh noes!) and I can't play video games (I don't anyways).

Cerberus

Excellent.

Don't forget to look angry or frustrated when the sword swings down.

Mahnax

That was before I became almost a total recluse.

Shyam K

4:41 AM

can you use the PC? the why worry about TV?

Mahnax

I haven't been grounded in ages because I've taken to being sneaky about anything I do, no matter how minor or insignificant it is.

@ShyamK I have my own computer.

Cerberus

You have become a total recluse? But I thought you went to eat pizza with people and stuff?

Mahnax

Bought and paid for by yours truly.

Cerberus

Good.

Mahnax

@Cerberus Well, I exaggerated. But I don't do those things too often.

Cerberus

4:43 AM

But you used to?

Mahnax

Yeah.

Sort of.

Cerberus

What changed?

Mahnax

Those things you heard about me doing were pretty much the only things I did with friends though.

And since it was the end of the school year we did those things more.

Cerberus

I see.

Mahnax

Now that school has started again, and we all have crazy courseloads, we won't have much time for fun.

Shyam K

4:45 AM

Kids these days tend to be all into FB and the whole online social things...

Cerberus

Surely you can find some time to have pizza with your special-class buddies?

@ShyamK Yeah, so I hear...

Mahnax

Oh, yeah, we still hang out when we can.

Shyam K

they just hang out to update their profile pics... what a waste of time...

Mahnax

But it's just not going to happen as often as last May/June.

Cerberus

OK.

Mahnax

4:48 AM

Yep. How often do you go out and have a fun evening?

Cerberus

Ehm what counts as going out? Does going to a friend's house count? And receiving a friend?

Or does one need a group and a venue?

Mahnax

Sure, that counts.

Cerberus

All of that? Then, I don't know, perhaps every other day, on average?

Mahnax

Heh.

Cerberus

Today, a friend came over between 7 and 9.

Tomorrow I have a date.

Mahnax

4:51 AM

Oh, how nice!

Cerberus

We shall see.

My brother's girlfriend's cousin.

Mahnax

Nice.

Cerberus

She set us up.

So it will be awkward, hehe.

Mahnax

Ha, I have always thought that set-ups would be awkward.

Cerberus

Of course.

Mahnax

4:52 AM

But who knows, you could hit it off right away and have a great time.

Cerberus

But then any real date is awkward, even if you have already met at some party.

@Mahnax Oh, I'm sure we'll have enough conversation.

It's just the first couple of minutes that are really awkward.

Mahnax

@Cerberus That's good.

@Cerberus "Well, uhm, hi… I'm Cerberus… Nice to meet you, finally—oh yes, I have. Mhm."

Cerberus

Is there anyone you might like to date with?

@Mahnax Haha, no, that is impossible.

Mahnax

@Cerberus Oh?

Cerberus

You meant the scenario where you have already dated or otherwise met this person, right?

Mahnax

4:54 AM

@Cerberus Maybe, but I haven't the time nor a good reason.

Cerberus

One sec, I need to tend to my tomatoes, take a few out of the oven.

Mahnax

@Cerberus Oh, I don't know.

@Cerberus Sure.

Cerberus

@Mahnax Hmm OK. So there is someone.

Mahnax

@Cerberus It's possible.

Cerberus

@Mahnax Now I am intrigued. But I shall inquire no further...

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…