English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Q: developer specific app.config/web.config files in Visual Studio

Congrats.

Jez

1:30 PM

14

we have several .net projects where we store certain settings in config files. Now each developer will have their own config files that differ a little (different connection strings to connect to local db, different wcf endpoints etc.) At the moment we tend to check out app/web.config files and ...

the fact that this was closed is bloody ludicrous

they're really ruining stack exchange; there are some very useful answers to that question

Kit

The question closing process is drastically changing in the next 6 to 8 weeks.

Jez

?

Doushite?

►

@RegDwighт: Here's a LEGO car you can drive to work. ^

1:56 PM

@Kit ?

Hiya @Cerb.

@Robusto Yo.

Why is Reg not here 24/7?

And why did Mahnax say he was going to be absent?

I haven't noticed him much lately. Of course, I haven't been around much lately either.

Are y'all abandoning us?

sad

I can only speak for myself, not the others.

2:09 PM

Maybe if we made it illegal to smoke in here, people would start coming back.

Good idea.

Unclear.

No talking about that now, as I'm at work.

When will you know?

Ah OK.

Shhh.

Hmm.

Interesting.

2:12 PM

Whither?

Just a feeling.

@Kit what? In what way (if that is something you can divulge)?

questions will only be closed by a fight to the death Star Trek TOS style.

TRiG

2:28 PM

@tchrist I don't have nudie pics of Harry Potter. I do have nudie pics of Daniel Radcliffe, but he was playing someone else at the time, and I try to distinguish between character and actor. (This is easy for me in the case of DR, as I've never actually seen him act (except in trailers): I've seen only a few interviews and his surprisingly good stint on QI.)

3:22 PM

@MattЭллен I hear the music …

I've got a net and a pitch fork...

I found some sulfur.

who's gonna wear the pointy ears?

Sheldon.

Q: Quantify product-appropriateness score

of course!

1

I'm looking for a way to quantify and explain the scenario below to my managers. I'm really good at understanding issues, but unfortunately no so good at communicating them to others. I have written some code that works out scores or should I save appropriateness of a product for a customer. I n...

word-choice sentence

Off Topic?

@MετάEd It is off topic at writers too

in The Overlook Hotel, 8 mins ago, by Neil Fein

@MattЭллен Questions asking what to write are off-topic on Writers. There's a thread in meta somewhere.

3:43 PM

@TRiG I know all that. I was completely jesting, I promise!

@Cerberus He never was. He used to be here on workdays, and not weekends, although usually longer than the workday. Not that that tables the question, of course.

@Cerberus Pretty sure it isn’t cause he misses Jasper.

But yes, there are several rather queasy things hereabouts of late, making things just generally uncomfortable. Probably best to lie low as they work themselves out rather than picking too much at any of the scabs or shaking out skeletons from their closets.

bib

Possibility of using either verb tense and convey the same meaning

The OP is lookig for a British point of view. Does anyone want to weigh in?

TRiG

4:00 PM

@bib Which question?

@tchrist Still, naked Daniel Radcliffe is always welcome.

@TRiG There’s probably a waiting list. :)

Q: Possibility of using either verb tense and convey the same meaning

0

I have two questions: Q1: Which one(s) of the sentences below, can be grammatically correct and why? And if there are more than one correct sentence, does the meaning change when the verb tense is changed or are they synonymous and can be used interchangeably? 1- Yes, I was. I've never know...

tenses

Hello @Kit, how are you?

That's an interesting new avatar you have

🙈 🙉 🙊

@MattЭллен You are a retiarius?

@Robusto Nice red.

4:08 PM

The emperor pays us well

But you could die at any minute.

more fun than not dying at any minute

Actually, the possibility of death at any given minute is always present.

It's just greater in the arena.

Everything is greater in the arena!

Maximus! Maximus!

4:28 PM

@MattЭллен Easy to believe. That is why I have gotten in the habit of referring people to the site FAQ whenever I send them to a different site.

4:42 PM

runs away

4:59 PM

Hello

Could anyone help me with a small pasage?

It seems like some words are misssing

passage*

no one?

Hi!

How small is it? Why don't you just post it here and see who responds?

It seemed like no one was there

i want to each of you have found happiness, what has done this i.
i perish without you, shall be with you, as with sky moon, not care billeting i shall be your always.
on move you there is that without which can not, when you far i shall itself not its.

5:14 PM

Hiya!

@Monica This is OK, except for no-one with hyphen. As a more formal alternative, you might consider it seemed as though.

Hello

@aediaλ Hi!

@Monica This is ehhmm incomprehensible.

Are the words supposed to be... like that?

It's like someone tried to write about Ruth and Naomi but they only had magnetic poetry words

words are missing, I think

Does it make sense?

5:16 PM

It is worse than that.

you again say that can

No, it makes very little sense, I am afraid. It is mostly incomprehensible.

@aediaλ it says again

'no one' is given in the Oxford dictionary without a hyphen

I don't know, I was taught to write it with a hyphen. I believe that is also what most style guides recommend.

@Monica I am a native speaker of American English, and I truthfully can't understand it.

5:18 PM

I am a native dog, and woof I can't either.

I used to write it with a hyphen too

I see. A friend of mine asked me to translate it, but I managed to translate only a few phrases from this passage

does 'billeting' mean anything in it?

> n. act of providing housing for a soldier

@Cerberus If I used no-one here, people would laugh, and think I was affecting an outdated style; it would certainly not be right for my daily work. (Yet we haven't gotten rid of the hyphen in e-mail in our style guide. Grr.)

@aediaλ Grrr.

Hmm it seems Burchfield changed his mind and now recommends "no one" too.

I don't like it one bit...but fine!!

I have to go. Thanks for your help

Bye everyone

5:24 PM

Good luck.

@Monica I hope we helped! Good luck.

Do you find this slightly hard to read?

Ow my eyes!

I'll take that as a yes.

5:48 PM

@Cerberus Why the beveled edges on the type?

@Robusto That's just the standard way.

szoter.com/launch/…

Gah, Flex.

Flex?

Flash, but that app was built in Flex.

Apache Flex

Apache Flex, formerly Adobe Flex, is a software development kit (SDK) for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich Internet applications based on the Adobe Flash platform. Initially developed by Macromedia and then acquired by Adobe Systems, Flex was donated by Adobe to the Apache Software Foundation in 2011 and graduated to become a top-level project in December 2012. The Flex 3 SDK was released under the open source Mozilla Public License in 2008. Consequently, Flex applications can be developed using standard IDEs, for example Eclipse, as well as the proprietary Adobe Fla...

Sudhir

6:26 PM

@Robusto: Fortunately I'm working on Flex

:)

Are you working on it?

I used to.

Sudhir

Oh! great

Now you're working on?

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash (also Adobe Flash Platform, formerly Macromedia Flash) is a multimedia and software platform used for authoring of vector graphics, animation, games and Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) which can be viewed, played and executed in Adobe Flash Player. Flash is frequently used to add streamed video or audio players, advertisement and interactive multimedia content to web pages. Flash manipulates vector and raster graphics to provide animation of text, drawings, and still images. It supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video, and it can capture user input via mouse, k...

Hi @MattЭллен

Flex is dead except for webapp dev.

6:59 PM

How do you recognise Flex?

I had never heard of it.

JSBձոգչ

you've used flash? then you have seen flex

Oh?

JSBձոգչ

everything in flash is developed in flex

flex is the only way to develop flash apps

at least the only straightforward way

Oh...

Then what did Rob mean?

JSBձոգչ

i don't know

presumably adobe is rolling out a new dev platform

or has already done so

i don't pay much attention to that

7:07 PM

Oh...

(It's all I can say.)

7:41 PM

(I thought that was ananas)

7:59 PM

why the fuck do we have a word-meaning?

8:14 PM

What does word-meaning even mean?

I don't even

8:51 PM

@Robusto Try posting a new question ...

Huh?

"What does word-meaning mean"

Never mind me. Sleep deprived.

sleep-deprived

Can we have a new tag: belongs-on-ell?

Heh.

So can we migrate questions to ELL yet?

Apparently TPTB are being pissy about that.

8:58 PM

Really?

Why?

They gave us ELL but forbade us to migrate questions to it.

I dunno.

Hmm.

Moderator migration is possible at the moment.

Oh!

That said, probably don't want to just dump X% of your site on there right so soon.

8:59 PM

So perhaps we should flag all such questions for our moderators to migrate them?

All new questions, I was thinking.

Could save everyone a lot of drama.

I did not think we yet really had a complete description for on-vs-off topic over there.

@Cerberus except for you mr. melodramatic!

New questions should be fine for the most part, I would think.

Thinkst thou that?

So long as it's pretty clear acknowledged why it belongs there and not here.

9:01 PM

@MattЭллен If all new ELL questions shall be moved thither, everyone will be happy.

Impossible.

@Cerberus hmmm. I could have sworn I heard you say all new questions...

You can please some of the people some of the time. . . . :)

No ESL users will be offended, at any rate.

@MattЭллен If anyone isn't xenophobic with regard to questions, it is I!

@Cerberus That’s because it is the name of their site. The S is silent.

9:02 PM

@Cerberus You are a xenomorph anyway.

@tchrist Hehe. Yes.

@Cerberus hence why I thought you were being melodramatic :D

xeriscapes his environs

@Robusto And you are a characteromorph.

@MattЭллен Why?

I am an ideomorph. I exist only in my own mind.

9:04 PM

I am never melodramatic. I'm either full-on dramatic, or a blithe puppy.

@Cerberus because you think we are too harsh on new users and all of their questions. So we should just move all the questions to ELL and be done with it

Actually, for the next week, don't flag "new ELL questions" to migrate. Instead, just collect the lot of them and compile a list for me.

6

@Robusto Hmm that just means you are your own form.

@MattЭллен Exactly.

@Cerberus goes off for his favorite D.Q. dessert

which is melodramatic :D

9:05 PM

@GraceNote Good. I think that is a better idea.

@tchrist Quoi?

Dairy Queen, not Drama.

We generally avoid migrations to new beta sites, especially when they're young, so that we can focus on building that community naturally. I'd like to get a nice grasp of this period to observe the magnitude and frequency of the issue here in ELU now that ELL is public.

You forget that we do not have your brands.

Ok, Drama Queen for you then!

9:06 PM

Better.

@Cerberus That's what "exist only in my own mind" means.

I see no mindness.

No matter.

Never mind.

Neither mind nor matter.

Just fluff.

9:09 PM

This is the sort of thing that used to piss off Bertrand Russell no end.

Did.

Oh?

What sort is that?

His parents played that semantic game with him about matter and mind.

Not the best of dichotomies.

Dualism (philosophy of mind)

It is for philosophers.

In philosophy of mind, dualism is the assumption that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical, or that the mind and body are not identical. Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, and is contrasted with other positions, such as physicalism, in the mind–body problem. Aristotle shared Plato's view of multiple souls, (ψυχή psychē) and further elaborated a hierarchical arrangement, corresponding to the distinctive functions of plants, animals and people: a nutritive soul of growth and metabolism, that all three share, a perceptive soul...

In fact, if dualism isn't a dichotomy, I don't know what is.

9:11 PM

Sipholophers, ptui!

egad.

No more pimping Daniel Radcliffe in ELU chat.

@Robusto It is a dichotomy all right, but not a good one.

@Cerberus What are you, the connoisseur of dichotomies?

9:12 PM

@Robusto Why, has he gone independent?

@Robusto Yes, because I can look at a dichotomy from two sides at once. Nay, from three sides!

@Cerberus You and Joni Mitchell. And Pablo Picasso.

sings I look at dualism from both sides now, from matter and mind, and still somehow it's mind illusions I recall. I really don't know matter ... at all.

Too much Thomas Crowne.

Too much monkey business.

I endorse Jon's comment. "Operational" can mean "able to function" while "operative" has its own applications in reference to a secret agent or a private detective. And you might be intesested in our new site for English language learners. — Carlo_R. 1 min ago

Wow. He endorses Jon's comment.

Don't you have to be some kind of authority before you can endorse something?

5 hours ago, by tchrist

🙈 🙉 🙊

Carlo is always quick to endorse things.

He heard there was a need for celerity endorsements, so he stepped right up.