The Assembly

Michael Mrozek

18:09

God exists. Thoughts?

Aarthi

I thought S/He was a static pointer.

Thomas Owens

I want God to do an AMA on Reddit.

phwd

God doesn't exist

Manishearth

@MichaelMrozek Banana

Aarthi

@ThomasOwens don't we all?

I feel like that IAmA would be a good time.

Michael Mrozek

18:10

@phwd Checkmate

voretaq7

there may or may not be a supreme being. They may or may not be supremely bored and toying with all of us for their amusement.

Thomas Owens

I'd ask if he can microwave a burrito so hot that he can't eat it.

voretaq7

(yanno, like @Aarthi does in the Teacher's Lounge)

Aarthi

@voretaq7 Like that N'Sync video.

voretaq7

Also there's really only one video appropriate to this room... and it's just audio

►

Aarthi

18:11

►

Anyway

I'm glad @WarriorBob is back! He'd been gone for a while.

Thomas Owens

Aarthi

ooo ponies

voretaq7

@Aarthi ...they used to be mildly attractive...

Aarthi

in a very 90s kinda way.

voretaq7

@ThomasOwens the floaty pony is obviously a mod.

Warrior Bob

18:12

@Aarthi Aw, thanks! Yes, life's been very busy, but I've been trying to lurk when I can

Thomas Owens

Gangnam Style ponies. I'd post the GIF, but I'm at work

voretaq7

@Aarthi they clean up good.

Aarthi

@voretaq7 certainly JT does

@ThomasOwens omg. I love that song.

like, too much.

Thomas Owens

A friend posted one that has Rainbow Dash all gangnam style.

Ben Brocka

Arg I opened both of these in chats in tabs and I keep mixing them up

Thomas Owens

18:13

It's 20% cooler than the GIF.

Ben Brocka

This is the room where I post user's SSN and credit card numbers right?

Aarthi

@ThomasOwens awesome. excellent reference :D

@BenBrocka of course! @MarkTrapp told me so

Thomas Owens

@BenBrocka Yes.

Aarthi

@voretaq7 noooo spanish sounds awesome

and not like gunnery AT ALL.

French sounds silly. Now, colonial French sounds so cool.

and Creole is truly fun.

voretaq7

@Aarthi you and I must have learned from different speakers :-)

Creole is an awesomely fucked-up language

Aarthi

18:17

@Manishearth I think every language has a "test" word like that.

voretaq7

it's right on a par with the Hawaiian Pidgin

Aarthi

@manish I usually use rural for English

Manishearth

> @Aarthi ण and ळ can be the shibboleth of Marathi, I guess.

Aarthi

@voretaq7 Actual Hawaiian is lovely.

Manishearth

@Aarthi Yeah :)

voretaq7

18:18

@Aarthi "the" is a good test for english (thee, thuh, tha, and a few other less common variations)

Manishearth

@Aarthi rulal!

Aarthi

@voretaq7 rural, though, will make clear which part of the country you grew up in.

Ben Brocka

@ThomasOwens perfect

Manishearth

@voretaq7 Even "love". You correctly pronounce it "luff"-ish. And "pronunciation". Lots of people do "Pronounciation"

voretaq7

@Aarthi roo-rull (rurr-ull, ruh-rall...)

Ben Brocka

18:19

Aarthi

Denouement is a fun one, too

@voretaq7 there's also rull

Manishearth

Aah :)

voretaq7

@Aarthi You can't use co-opted french words to test Americans - most of them can't figure out the pronunciation anyway.

@Aarthi yeah, for the almost-canadian crowd.

Aarthi

@voretaq7 why noooot? it adequately demonstrates the failings of our education system

@voretaq7 ...and southerners.

voretaq7

@Aarthi So does asking people to do basic math.

@Aarthi southerners pronounce it as two syllables though (at least all the southerners I've met, which admittedly isn't a comprehensive sampling)

Aarthi

18:21

@voretaq7 Mental arithmetic is even more fun. I can do complex percentages in my head thanks to business school.

voretaq7

and then there's people like me with a completely fucked up accent :-)

Aarthi

@voretaq7 Long Island. Actually, did you grow up there?

voretaq7

@Aarthi I can do complex percentages and trends over time in my head thanks to system administration :)

Aarthi

fine you win

voretaq7

@Aarthi kinda, but people never place that as where I'm from

Aarthi

18:22

where's @Gilles he can tell us what the shibboleth for French is.

voretaq7

I get California a lot

Aarthi

@voretaq7 neutral with a certain drawl?

voretaq7

@Aarthi ...a baguette and a bottle of wine.

Manishearth

@Aarthi It's probably a word with no audible syllables

wax eagle

@voretaq7 what I can say for certain is that "head" is pronounced with 15 vowels.

voretaq7

18:23

@Aarthi yes, but not the standard california drawl which confuses people :-)

Aarthi

lots of extra letters and accents? :P

@voretaq7 i find that the LA drawl is actually really irritating

voretaq7

The French language is not intended to be written down - paper can not capture its beauty and majesty.

To prevent barbarians from attempting to do so we hang all sorts of baroque decorations on the letters!

@Aarthi ...not as bad as OMG Valley Girl

which has since escaped the valley and infested so many high schools

Manishearth

Hmm, LAN going down in 10 mins :(

@voretaq7 So accents should be translated as "abandon hope all ye who enter here"?

Aarthi

@voretaq7 I read an interesting article where, thanks to movies like Clueless where rich white girls affect the accent for irony, a lot of lower-income women of color perceive that the Valley Girl accent is the mainstream-appropriate diction choice, though actual reality would demonstrate otherwise.

voretaq7

@Manishearth When they're placed on damn near every word in the language? Yes. :-)

Manishearth

18:26

:P

Aarthi

To put it another way, low-income girls of color think Valley Girl implies being higher class than inner city urban vernacular/diction.

voretaq7

@Aarthi "There is no limit on human stupidity" -- People who watch movies like that and can't quite grasp the irony inherent in the accent frighten me :(

Aarthi

hey @YannisRizos what's the shibboleth for Greek?

@voretaq7 but for some of us, movies like that are our only glimpse into that lifestyle. the irony is lost without context.

wax eagle

@Aarthi pecan

Aarthi

@waxeagle pee-can vs pi-cahn?

wax eagle

18:28

@Aarthi yep

roof too

Aarthi

yes but

ruff == roof is WRONG

a roof is rough, and those words should sound different!

voretaq7

@Aarthi Clearly you've never slid down one...

@Aarthi tell that to the dog.

Ben Brocka

@Aarthi Rat's Right Raarthi!

Ruh-roh

voretaq7

Don't worry, we'll have a repair crew in to change your voice box on Tuesday

Yannis Rizos

@Aarthi no idea what you're talking about ;)

Aarthi

18:30

@YannisRizos so there's certain words that are basically a test of fluency

how well/poorly you can say the word changes how people perceive your proficiency

so like the word "rural" in English is very challenging

Aarthi

oh no! @Shog9 is here!

voretaq7

@Aarthi He came for the Cheech and Chong song? :-)

Aarthi

apparently

Thomas Owens

HIGH FIVES ARE FREE!

Aarthi

EW HUMAN CONTACT GROSS UGH

:P

i think this is the most activity this room has seen ever

we need to have more Assembly Parties

Warrior Bob

18:37

@Aarthi Consider the room starred.

voretaq7

@Aarthi I would need to find more angry substitute teacher style songs.

mmyers

@Aarthi You realize that every Assembly party ever has been because you kicked people out of the lounge for discussing topics you didn't want?

Thomas Owens

I don't know how to star a room. I forgot. :(

Warrior Bob

@ThomasOwens Star is in the upper-right next to the description and name

I think it's called "favoriting" technically, I can't remember.

Thomas Owens

No, no it's not.

voretaq7

18:38

@ThomasOwens they're "favorite rooms"

Keen

@WarriorBob Starring is what I did to your chat message there.

Thomas Owens

I don't see it...

wtf.

mmyers

@Aarthi So in other words, name your time for a party and I'll start a religion discussion in the lounge about thirty minutes earlier

Aarthi

@mmyers yup!

voretaq7

Warrior Bob

18:39

@ThomasOwens At least for me, I see a grey star that I can click and turn gold.

@voretaq7 Beat me to it :)

Aarthi

Thomas Owens

@WarriorBob I don't see one.

Warrior Bob

@Keen Right, the ambiguity comes in since the title text reads "Toggle this as a favorite room"

Aarthi

@mmyers but hey, if TL gets too rollicking, we gotta push to somewhere

plus, some stuff? should be somewhere that nonmods can see it

Warrior Bob

Although woo, chat stars!

Thomas Owens

18:41

So using that pic, I can hover over it.

But it's not visible.

Even clicking it doesn't make it visible. I don't know what's up.

Aarthi

hmm. can you take a screencap and show us?

Thomas Owens

I can't upload it anywhere from the office...no sharing sites.

If it affects me at home, I will.

Chrome 21.0.1180.89 m is what I'm using at both places.

Aarthi

how very strange.

Keen

@ThomasOwens 1. Take Screenshot, save to file. 2. Click upload button to right of chat message box. 3. Point it to the file from step 1.

mmyers

@ThomasOwens Is sstatic.net blocked?

Aarthi

18:44

oh hey @phwd you know how you wish there was more anime on the sites? I'm asking FMA questions on Science Fiction and Fantasy

Thomas Owens

Does that work?

imgur is blocked, so I have no clue.

Aarthi

yes and huh that is super weird.

Thomas Owens

Changing the size of the browser does nothing, either.

Aarthi

and also, my gmail checker addon is also giving me that ? icon too

@ThomasOwens really odd :<

it must have something to do with your work blocks

Thomas Owens

I haven't refreshed it.

Probably.

Webnonsense.

Aarthi

18:46

refreshed it?

Thomas Owens

We have to authenticate against a proxy when we connect to the internet. It fails before I authenticate. If I click on it or visit gmail, it'll update normally.

Until then, it's that ?.

mmyers

@ThomasOwens, can you hit or.cdn.sstatic.net/chat/Img/sprites.png? That's the file that all the stars come from

Aarthi

ah but mine has no such blocks

and still the gray thing

Thomas Owens

OMG. Someone got hit by the Red Line.

Yannis Rizos

@Aarthi We have a lot of common words with diphthongs that usually confuse the hell out of non native speakers, for example είμαι (I am).... But if you want challenging try saying σκουλικομυρμηγκότρυπα ;) What's very common for foreigners is to use the English pronunciation for common English words with Greek roots, think agora, plethora, ethos, almost every medical term, etc.

And I guess my name is pretty hard to pronounce, had an american gf once that pronounced it yawn-nis... Perhaps she was trying to tell me something though.

phwd

18:49

@Aarthi coolio

I'll check it out

Aarthi

:D

@YannisRizos meh, she sounds like a yawn herself.

lame.

@Gilles That's true, though my mentor once told me the trick to speaking French well is to keep one's mouth closed! :P

There's a joke there.

PS: this is awesome @JonEricson:

6

Q: Does having a positive teleology require an entity that has intention exist?

One of the criticisms of Aristotle's final cause category is that if a thing has a purpose, there must exist some entity that has intention to set up that cause. Generally speaking, skeptical thinkers reject any sort of positive, universal teleology on the grounds of Occam's Razor: until we can ...

Gilles

@Aarthi between French and English? or between dialects of French?

for French-English… maybe rue?

Aarthi

rue?

street?

Gilles

must be hard for an English speaker to distinguish from roue, lue, loue

@Aarthi yes

Yannis Rizos

@Aarthi Nah, she was lovely, just couldn't get it right, we were together for over a year. For some reason her parents had named her after Chiron, and she didn't really like it and spelled it Charon... Till we met and I mentioned that Charon is a Greek word for death, that is. ;)

mmyers

19:02

Yes. As in: "You will street the day you met me."

Gilles

for northern French vs southern French, the standard phrase is un lapin brun

Aarthi

@YannisRizos from the myths!

Gilles

because the un sound is different from the in sound in the south but not in the north

Aarthi

@mmyers dork! :D

@Gilles huh that's actually really interesting.

in spanish, certain letters/dipthongs are pronounced slightly differently by nation/region

Gilles

there are other vowel sounds with regional distinctions: é vs è (it's all é in the south-west), open vs closed o (ditto)

and then there's a vs â, where no one understands the boundaries

we have a few questions on this topic on French Language and Usage

Aarthi

19:06

this is why i never learned French, man.

Gilles

compared to English, French pronunciation is dead simple and uniform

Aarthi

haha touche. you're totally right. english is inconsistent as hell

Gilles

the grammar is more complicated

Aarthi

hugs Spanish

hey @Keen @Gilles lemme know if I need to go and retag my FMA questions :) I'm a little concerned about the tagging scheme there

Gilles

-1

Q: Where in LA area can I find clubs which is popular among sci-fi, nerd or "science"loving girls?

I am going to LA in 4 month and I was wondering if you can recommend some clubs or bookclubs or disco clubs etc or locations in general where I can find girls that are interested in science, sci-fi etc. I guess it will be somewhere around campus etc. so any clubs names are appreciated.

science

WHO UPVOTED THAT???

mmyers

19:09

@Gilles Move to Travel.SE

Gilles

@mmyers <checks> no, he hasn't reposted there, or else he didn't associate his account

Aarthi

close and move to reddit.

Gilles

-11

Q: Is the technology the engineers use in Prometheus based on Java or C++?

I saw Prometheus where the alien engineers have pretty sophisticated technology, spaceships and cryostasis chambers. But are their software technologies based on Java or C++? Since there are medical equipment and C++ and assmebly usually is used to develop medical equipment I would say that the a...

prometheus

@mmyers and that ^^^^ to SO

mmyers

@Gilles No, it's clearly an architectural question. Move to Programmers.

Yannis Rizos

@mmyers I'll re-open it, sneak in a Perl answer and close it again...

mmyers

19:17

@YannisRizos Perl is an alien language? Figures.

yoda

19:41

hmm... why am I seeing stars from july?

wax eagle

@yoda cuz it's the assembly and not much has been starred here

yoda

oh duh.

wax eagle

pins age, stars do not :)

yoda

I saw the list of users online and blindly clicked, thinking this must be the TL

mmyers

It's okay, your evil plans are still safe with us

yoda

19:44

Phew!

user2334

20:05

I see the quarterly "why are people using TL for fun go use Assembly TL is serious business" talk has occurred

user2334

Welcome welcome, how do you like my desk? I made it myself, and I have all these pieces left

wax eagle

@MarkTrapp hey mark!

Aarthi

@MarkTrapp hush, they were having a cool convo that i insisted be public

@yoda laughs I was worried about this

Gilles

-1

Q: modprobe: FATAL: Could not load/lib/modules/2.6.35-22-genric/modules.dep: No such file or directory

Gave up waiting for root device Common problems: -Boot args (cat/proc/cmdline) -Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?) -Check root= (did the system wait for the right device?) -Missing modules (cat/proc/modules: ls/div) ALERT! /dev/sda2 does not exist. Dropping to a shell Busy B...

10.10 boot ubuntu-netbook bittorrent modprobe

THEN NOTHING ELSE THAT I KNOW WHAT TO DO SO I HIT - CTRL,ALT, DEL TO REBOOT TO WINDOW 7 BECAUSE I COULD NOT GET IT TO WORK WHEN I CHOSE BOTH CHOICES TO BOOT TO UNBUNTU THAT WERE ON THE LIST. I HAD DOWNLOADED UBUNTU 10.10 FOR NETBOOKS FROM A DOWNLOADED TORRENT FILE AND TRIED TO BURN A DISK AND IT DID LOAD AND SOMETHING CAME UP THE FIRST TIME AS FAR AS A DESKTOP AND I GOT IT TO ADD SOME PROGRAMS ON TO IT BUT THEN THE SECOND TIME I OPENED IT I KEEP GETTING THIS MESSAGE AND COULD NOT GET UBUNTU TO WORK AGAIN.

wow

phwd

caps on caps on caps

Gilles

20:17

that, and downloading an old version from a torrent

Aarthi

wooow.

just wow.

also wow: a huge number of this room's users just dropped out for me

wax eagle

@Aarthi you sure you're in the right room?

Aarthi

i should hope so

assemble etc

we should just be All Avengers, All the Time in here

I bet @BilltheLizard would love it

wax eagle

@Aarthi dvd comes out in 1 week :) will be arriving on my doorstep :)

Aarthi

@waxeagle :D SO EXCITED I LOVED THAT MOVIE OMG

user2334

20:28

Comes out today I thought

wax eagle

@MarkTrapp 25th

user2334

YES JUST ON ITUNES LOL SUCKERS AND YOUR PHYSICAL MEDIA

user2334

Oh wait never mind, they pushed it back even on iTunes

user2334

This injustice shall not go unreciprocated iTunes

wax eagle

@MarkTrapp all about the extras anyways :P

Aarthi

20:55

omg deleted sceeeeeenes

will there be a director's cut of the film?

random

> 8. Am I being an asshole to others? - How to Be a Good Commenter

phwd

21:52

@random Where does ~~Summer~~ Fall of ???? come in?

random

22:37

The summer is over. Time to get back to making comments about the content and not about the +1 fluffy dice

user2334

@phwd It's the Fall of Malfeasance

user2334

Which will be followed by the Winter of Discontent, and then the Spring of Animosity

random

Which brings us back to the summer of Jennifer Love Hewitt knowing what you did with that ghost last summer

Caleb

@Gilles Oy oy oy.

Transcript for