English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

One of my colleagues noticed someone texting and asked, "Is that the new Windows Phone?" And the person who was texting got all offended. It was very funny.

Cerberus

Haha why offended?

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, they are stuntmen, sure. Maybe with a space. But there are stunt doubles, body doubles, scale doubles, riding doubles, and even certain intimate-part doubles. And more besides.

Cerberus

Surely Windows Phone can't be that bad...

Robusto

I supposed you're one of those people who carries a Zune?

Cerberus

4:33 PM

@tchrist Oh, yuck...I wonder how often sex doubles are used.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto most MS hardware is pretty decent. I have an MS mouse and keyboard right here.

tchrist

And picture doubles.

Robusto

Forget economic models. Get me an ass model.

Cerberus

Because Carice van Houten has no problem whatsoever showing all she's got in the Game of Thrones.

tchrist

@Cerberus You’d be surprised, actually. This isn’t for porn per se, but nudity and softcore on mainstream.

Cerberus

4:34 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I love MS mice!

tchrist

@Cerberus No, she said that’s a merkin.

Cerberus

What is?

tchrist

struggles for the feminine of hoohoodilly

Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter had a body-double for the sex scenes in Game of Thrones, if I recall correctly.

Cerberus

Who is she?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I liked this one enough to keep it past it's return-by date, but now I find the middle-click isn't as good as my decades-old mouse it replaced.

Cerberus

4:35 PM

I mean which character?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hmm how is it not good? Not sensitive enough?

tchrist

> “I basically walked around making jokes,” she said. “Making fun of the merkin. This may sound weird, but we had great fun taking pictures of me and the merkin.

Cerberus

And what's a return-by date?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Too hard to click. I accidentally scroll too often.

tchrist

That’s Carice.

Chaplin’s granddaughter played the girl Robb married.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus The date after which the store no longer accepts returns. Unless it's "defective" which it probably doesn't qualify as.

Cerberus

4:37 PM

Ah.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

So I could have returned it before 30 days and they would have just given me my money, but now it's too late.

Cerberus

30 days, really?

Does it have more than 3 buttons?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yeah, no questions asked, 30 days full return

Cerberus

My loyal MS mouse has 3.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus no

Cerberus

4:38 PM

OK.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

And sometimes I middle click stuff and nothing happens.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I have never ever had that happen.

Not even after many years.

I always buy the same model.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yeah I had one like that. It was amazing. But it stopped working properly.

Cerberus

Really?

Mine still works perfectly, unlike those Trust mice.

tchrist

On Game of Thrones, Kristian Nairn playing Hodor the giant who carries Bran wore a prosthetic penis for his naked scene, but Alfie Allen as Theon did not. And it shows.

Cerberus

4:40 PM

Haha, that is silly.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I also had a nice logitech keyboard with a wheel on it on the left side. Perfect for scrolling a webpage while drinking coffee. But I replaced it with this MS cordless keyboard, which aside from the wheel is at least as good as the logitech was.

tchrist

Well, they wanted a consistent size for the giant’s tackle.

Cerberus

Hmm. But expensive?

tchrist

Rather.

Cerberus

I am using an ancient grey Compaq keyboard I bought at a second-hand shop two years ago, for € 3.

tchrist

4:41 PM

But it wasn’t shot in close-up, so not so bad. However, it was shot at 1080p, which means you have to be careful.

Cerberus

As long as it has volume keys, I need nothing more. And as long as it isn't black.

@tchrist How do you know these things??

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I used to scoff at cordless keyboards and mice. But now I am finding the cable clutter annoying. My home computer still has a trusty corded keyboard but my next one will be cordless for sure.

Cerberus

Hmm.

tchrist

@Cerberus I watch interviews with the actors.

Kristian talked about it.

Cerberus

I can see the advantage in a mouse: but in a keyboard? I don't move it around anyway?

I do have this cordless mouse + keyboard that I bought off Ebay for € 7 a while ago, for use on the couch. They are nice and fine, but...

@tchrist Oh...

tchrist

4:43 PM

nearly suppresses post about Mark Wahlberg’s super-expensive prosthetic penis in Boogie Nights

Cerberus

You're obsessed.

tchrist

Hardly.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus well, my work keyboard is on a sliding tray. So it does move. And my desk is a bit cluttered, especially with lego minifigs, so when I adjust my home keyboard slightly, a dozen little plastic men fall over.

Cerberus

...

tchrist

We were discussing what sort of doubles there were, and you said you hoped there were not many sex doubles.

And thence we turned to Carice’s merkin.

Cerberus

4:45 PM

I have nothing to hope or fear for in that regard.

tchrist

It was bound to go downhill from there.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

So @cerb I rooted my tablet, and installed cyanogenmod on it.

tchrist

Have you ever noticed how seldom people with nothing to say actually do so?

What’s wrong with that sentence?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Now it has the "random reboot" bug that it had back in the early days of Asus's Ice Cream Sandwich releases

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Oh, no!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:47 PM

And my GN got 4.2 OTA last night

Cerberus

Oh!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

my wife's like "what changed? Oh, there's a clock here now!" -- but there always had been, she just never noticed it because the new one is easier to see

Cerberus

@tchrist The scope of "so" is ambiguous: it would normally exclude "nothing", but just contain "say", while in fact you use it to mean "say nothing" here.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ah, and does she like it? Has your scheme matured?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Yeah, it's annoying. If it's like the old bug, the tablet just wakes up and reboots randomly while sleeping. So it was annoying but not really inconvenient. If it's no worse than that I may tolerate it. Otherwise, I will roll back.

tchrist

I think it is because doing so makes you think someone took some action, but saying nothing is actually not taking an action.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:49 PM

@Cerberus No, I doubt this scheme will succeed. She wants a smaller phone.

tchrist

It is an odd arrangement, is all I know.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Is CM really worth it? There is hardly anything in stock that I dislike...

@tchrist You're sort of saying the same thing in less exact words.

So has—let's call it anaphoric value.

tchrist

rhapsodizes euphorically

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Well, in this case CM is JB and "stock" is Asus ICS. So the advantage is everything in JB, plus removing some Asus bloat (there isn't much bloat, really). TBH the feature I wanted most was the ability to turn notifications off on a per-app basis. That's a new feature in JB.

Cerberus

@tchrist Normally, the antecedent would not include any negatives, so no nothing. So it would stand for "say something" or "say that" or whatever. But you want it to mean "say nothing", which is not what one would expect. That's why it sounds a little odd.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:51 PM

I have several games installed on that tablet and games are notorious for spammy notifications.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Oh, is that really a new feature? Hmm...

Spammy notifications as in Airplay??

I have never seen that.

Of course I use Adaway.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus What's "airplay'?

tchrist

But this doesn’t work: “I said I’d never go there, and so I did so.”

At least, I would have trouble with it.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Spam advertisements turning up in your notifications.

Well, I guess they are "normal" advertisements.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

so for example, "Samurai vs Zombies" has at least one notification per day that says "come back to the game and...." or "this weekend, 50% off currencies" or whatever

Cerberus

4:53 PM

Some applications are said to install them.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

They are not third-party ads

Cerberus

Oh, that's annoying.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

The game has in-game ads for other games and apps, but those are not that annoying.

Cerberus

They do cost bandwidth and power.

It is said that the majority of the energy used by Angry Birds is used up by the advertisements.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus bandwidth and power are essentially free on this tablet.

Cerberus

4:55 PM

Right.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus that may be. But this game is more cpu-intensive than AB, and also the ads are in the menu screens and not the actual gameplay

Cerberus

@tchrist There you have two problems, one of which the repetition of so.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Right. But it does need to look for 3G, and who knows how often...

tchrist

@Cerberus Then you might find this interesting.

@Cerberus So you’re saying you’re so-so on so repetition? :)

Cerberus

Yup.

tchrist

Me, I’m not so so-so myself. :)

Cerberus

4:58 PM

In your example, it would be somewhat better if you removed the first so.

Still odd, though.

tchrist

I talked to the Yahoo CTO once, really a long time ago now I guess, about adblocking software, and he didn’t see how it mattered “because almost nobody bothers to block ads”. So much for that idea!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Oh, I'm not disputing that ads are wasteful. But this tablet has no 3G and the games are typically far more demanding than angry birds. So the ads aren't the problem.

Cerberus

Because normally so cannot be used to substitute for never go there, but only for go there. However, the use of and instead of but forced one into reading it as a non-antithesis (because one would otherwise use but), enough to make it comprehensible.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah OK.

tchrist

@RegDwighт I’ve always wondered whether Shazam! weren’t somehow connected to those, like being a variant on “She-(ji)zm”.

@Cerberus Right. So doesn’t like being a stand-in for a negative. It is kinda like the do pro-verb. Maybe.

Cerberus

Yes.

I hope a good micro-payment system, like Flattr, will replace advertisements as the main source of income for websites.

Because the advertising system sucks.

The whole concept sucks.

It pays off to make your site less navigable, because then you get more page views.

And it induces superficiality.

On the other hand, it works fairly well now.

tchrist

5:07 PM

Is this a stealth “due to” dupe?

0

Q: Use of "because of"

In the high school the teacher said me that "because" is used to aswer "why" question, as below: Why you are using my shoes? I am using your shoes because I like them. However, the use of of after because looks like it changes the meaning completely different: The sun hid its li...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Micropayments are one thing. But I prefer the idea of just paying for software, or making it fully free. Like Bard's tale: You buy it, it's yours. No ads, no constant begging for money to level up, just straight-forward gameplay.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I sort of agree.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus In the old days, games were games. Now they are pavlovian experiments designed to extract revenue from players.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 However, there are also games that are free to play, and you can get all the good stuff through hard work, but you can also buy stuff.

tchrist

It’s slightly curious that we have a when tag.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:13 PM

@Cerberus Many of those games are highly flawed because their revenue goals conflict with "fun"

Cerberus

If done well, that can actually work well: you are paid only by those who really like the game or have plenty of money.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, of course it needs to be done well.

But have I read of plenty of good examples.

So it is a bit dangerous.

But that kind of price differentiation is theoretically ideal.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

The problem is that people hate to lose stuff they've paid for. So if I spend money in a game to build a new dungeon or buy a cool new sword or upgrade my car, or whatever... the game can't take that away. Whereas in classic games, anything is possible. In Half Life you have your weapons taken away from you on several occasions. Imagine if you paid money to upgrade your gun, and now it's gone!

Cerberus

How about if you play an RPG where the first half is free, then you have to pay € 5 for the next half? I will usually gladly pay up if I already like the game, and because I really want to play the other half.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus paying for a whole episode of a game is the same as paying for a game. The gameplay within the episode doesn't care if it's free or paid.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Uhm that would seem to be a minor problem. In most RPGs, you don't lose weapons, for example.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I suppose. But anyway, you can offer the first episode of the game for free that way.

Of course it needs to be longer than a demo: make it really like half a game.

user19161

5:17 PM

Still writing your novel @mahnax?

Mahnax

@WillHunting Yessir.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Never? You never lose your weapon? Why not? Anyway it's just an example. A game that doesn't have to try to squeeze you for money can do anything that improves gameplay or storytelling. A game that wants you to buy shit has to let you keep it, or you'll get annoyed and stop buying it.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don't see that as a serious problem. There are enough ways to make it so that the stuff you bought loses relevance later on.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No, what I mean is, users get annoyed when the stuff they bought loses relevance.

Cerberus

Like this sword that was very powerful when you were level 2? Now you are level 10, and you have found many swords that are more powerful.

I have bought cards in Tyrant.

Most, if not all, eventually lost relevance.

But it was my own choice, it was I who decided that perhaps I should switch to a different strategy.

Again, I agree that this can go wrong: you need to be very careful.

tchrist

5:25 PM

I swear, a Prepositions.SE site would carry its own weight in ESLlers.

Cerberus

Yeah.

I even hesitate between Dutch prepositions on a daily basis, and I see lots of mistakes made.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Cerberus

Haha.

Sure.

I'm not saying it's not an issue.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Cerberus

Although I have never bumped into it.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That sounds awful indeed...of course a company needs to be fair and honest about it.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:29 PM

@Cerberus Well, consider so many of the "build an X" games these days. You keep buying more and more crap for your X. But nothing bad ever happens. The games just reward you for touching the screen every so often, to make your X bigger. There is no risk. Nothing bad happens to your X. Spend money if you don't like to wait to get a bigger X

Cerberus

What games are you thinking of? Sim City? That was never meant to end in a disaster: your city was always supposed to grow and grow, and it was fun. (Yes, there were minor disasters, like Bowser crushing a couple of your buildings, but nothing very serious.)

If you mean the silly kind of games people play on Facebook, then I'm sure those as bad. I have never played any.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No, sim city is an example of a good game, because lots of bad things can happen to your city.

Cerberus

Well...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

No, it's true.

The people in your city can move out

buildings decay

Cerberus

Normal gameplay is that your city grows and grows, despite minor set-backs.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:33 PM

there can be fires

Cerberus

Still minor.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

you can run out of money and be unable to rescue the city from catastrophe

Cerberus

At least in RPGs, you can and will die all the time.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

sure but you just restart somewhere else and nothing is lost

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I suppose. But that usually only happens when you're a fairly new player...

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes. That applies to any game.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:34 PM

@Cerberus Well, it depends on the situation.

Cerberus

Well, you will lose a little bit of progress.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Anyway. the point is, there are games where you can never ever lose progress or be hindered in any way.

These are the top-grossing mobile games right now.

Consequently they inspire copycats

Cerberus

I remember how hard it was to set up a working city in Caesar II. After the first couple of levels, I did still fail regularly. But I was very young. I don't remember that happening in Sim City. Eventually I ran out of land on the map and I ended the game.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Oh, sure, those are stupid.

And they're very cheap to make.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Well, Sim City doesn't have an endgame. And the later versions of sim city were more ruthless in some ways. Esp on higher difficulty levels.

dammit, tablet just rebooted. sigh

Cerberus

You just grab some old icon set you had lying around somewhere, tweak the stats and names a little bit, and another farm/themepark/syndicate/castle sim is born.

Those are like soap operas.

The masses are just stupid.

And, well, even we might enjoy superficial entertainment at some time or other.

When there is little time, or when we're very tired, or in a train...

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 punches tablet in the rear

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:44 PM

Anyway, time for lunch. bye

Cerberus

Bye.

Of people aged 16–35, 86% use the Internet on a laptop, 56% use the Internet on a desktop, etc.

Johan Larsson

6:01 PM

@Cerberus There is an ergonomic issue with the numbers. Many probably access the internet 8+ a day with a device that makes an acceptable ergonomic position close to impossible.

And by the way, if you feel you can spare the time, I appreciate every time someone corrects my English.

JSBձոգչ

has anybody else here seen this?

windows95tips.tumblr.com

it's better and more terrifying than you can imagine

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 in Sim City you have to make your own endgame

mine was to reach the megalopolis threshold (20m people IIRC), which requires you to very carefully place your arcologies

nb this was SimCity 2000. i haven't played anything more recent that that

Cerberus

@JohanLarsson You mean 8+ hours? Yeah, that's definitely a problem.

Robusto

6:27 PM

@Cerberus I wonder what the weighting is in real numbers.

What I mean is, what percentage of users does each blue, red and green bar represent?

Cerberus

You mean the number of people in each age group?

Right.

Robusto

Yes.

Cerberus

Well, that will be roughly proportional the number of years.

Robusto

Are you sure?

Cerberus

Although they thin out at older ages...

Robusto

6:30 PM

55+ includes the biggest generation in history.

Cerberus

@Robusto I think the middle group will be a bit larger than the other two groups.

Or maybe not. I don't know.

@Robusto Yes...but, you know, illness also strikes past 55.

2.47 million over 65.

Robusto

@Cerberus Illness strikes any age group. Statistically you are more likely to live to age 80 if you are 60 years old than if you are 17.

Cerberus

5.85 million: 40–65.

4.23 million: 20–40.

3.93 million: under 20.

@Robusto Yes, of course.

But your year's cohort will have thinned out. It never grows, it only drops. Alas.

But it is true that the baby boom still more than compensates for that.

Let's assume people between 20 and 40 are about evenly distributed per cohort.

No, never mind, it's too hard.

Because the distribution 40–65 is too unpredictable.

Robusto

Also it doesn't correspond to your green bar.

Cerberus

I was trying to cut up the 40–65 group to redistribute them over the bars, but it isn't possible.

> 22 juli 2006 – Op dit moment zijn er 4,1 miljoen 55-plussers (CBS), 2,2 miljoen mensen ouder dan 65 jaar en 1 miljoen is ouder dan 75 jaar.

So 4.1 million people over 55 in 2006.

That already includes the brunt of the baby boom, I think, so perhaps that percentage hasn't changed much since 2006?

Yes, I see the baby boomers as something whose brunt must be borne. My mother is a baby-boomer.

Matt Эллен

6:42 PM

lucky she's not a baby exploder. Apparently that's frowned on.

Cerberus

How does that work?

She doesn't eat babies, she's not Jewish.

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus thanks! climbs back up

Cerberus

Slow fish.

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus something about feeding nitroglycerine to babies

apparently I've got to go!

CU

Cerberus

Bai.

►

@RegDwighт How easy is this for you to understand?

It is about a conflict between an Austrian privacy advocate and Facebook.

I find this surprisingly easy to follow, even though he speaks fast and his—Austrian—accent is significant, though not exactly thick.

I don't understand every single word, but more than enough to understand most of it.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…