English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:42 AM

hello

I need to know if this user is angry at me, he said this chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/1203346#1203346 "dig at me?"

I just pointed him a misspell by using a picture of a meme, I think because we are not friends he thought I was being unfriendly but it was the opposite... does "dig at me?" mean he is angry?

Cerberus

@ajax333221 Hi! To dig at someone is not very serious, usually.

It is like poking at someone, could be friendly teasing or annoying.

google.com/…

So he could be annoyed or amused, hard to say.

tchrist

cornbread ninja

the more you suffer / the more it shows you really care / right? yeah

tchrist

Flag queue is down 50%. People have been busy today.

But it still insane.

A few of those are mechanically generated.

For example, this is the “excessively long” one, which I cannot begin to see why it got:

0

A: Delphi : WSDL Import can't Handle Object

The problem lies in the fact that the programmer has been lazy and made one ArrayOf_xsd_anyType declaration for all calls that return in fact an array of objects. The WSDL importer tries to map this type as good as it can to an array of variant. Since you have the documentation you know exactly w...

And you think our answers are low quality?

0

A: Why am I getting "Unrecognized identifier" in my SSRS custom code?

yes not is important the "Unrecognized identifier" run and deploy... and you will obtenin a nice solution... but is very annoying you are reason

cornbread ninja

@tchrist SO has way more pineapples.

tchrist

12:54 AM

I have 58 flags on SO.

I can burn through those in less than a half-hour.

Correction, I have more flags than that.

0

A: Error using ==> plot Vectors must be the same lengths

you're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an assyou're an a...

Because that does not get the not-an-answer flag that people have been giving it.

That gets a spam flag, which comes out of another pool.

Apparently I only get 53 spam flags to go along with my 58 inform moderator flags. I guess I am not as a reliable a spam-caller.

Do you ever look at our flag queue? I mean on ELU, not here in chat.

It is usually empty.

Now this is strange. Half the disputed flags are against autoflags — which indeed appear to be wrong. Smells buggy to me.

This one has 0 closevotes, which is crazy:

-6

Q: Clarification about magento cms pages

I am new to magento.I am ok with some mvc type frameworks,but I find that magento is different.I have seen that there is a cms page for homepage in magento.So, the home page can be easily edited. But where are other cms pages .i.e., i mean other than home page.Please clarify me about it. Thanks..

magento

The SO close-vote queue is up to 51.4k.

tchrist

1:26 AM

Hm, some SO people seem to be using Too Localized for lack of a General Reference close reason. Curious, eh?

For example, this is from the FAQ:

1

Q: perl From a file, shuffle the lines in the file

So I have a file. Lets say it looks like this (it's actually longer): 1234 2134 3124 4123 What is the best way to shuffle the lines in the file?

perl

So it has a Too Localized close vote on it. Although I am sure it is dupe.

Cerberus

1:41 AM

@DavidWallace Remember our discussion about how much it cost NZ to have The Hobbit filmed it its soil?

> "How much taxpayer money can Warner Bros. demand from the government of New Zealand to keep production there (rather than, say, in Australia or the Czech Republic)?"

> "That answer turns out to be about $120 million, plus the revision of New Zealand's labor laws to forbid collective bargaining among film-production contractors, plus the passage of three-strikes Internet-disconnection laws for online copyright infringement, plus enthusiastic and, it turns out, illegal cooperation in the shutdown of the pirate-friendly digital storage site Megaupload and the arrest of its owner, Kim Dotcom."

> Again, if this actually created the economic activity that Hollywood claims it does, perhaps it would be worth it. But both articles highlight how this isn't true at all. It just shifts money from local taxpayers to Hollywood execs. "The worst part is that, for most of the wannabe Hollywoods, it's bad economic policy on every level. The productions bring in mostly low-end, temporary jobs, while the high-end jobs remain in Hollywood or New York."

"The Hobbit Took $120M From Kiwi Taxpayers - Maybe They Should Own The Rights"

So who paid more for creating this film—Hollywood or NZ taxpayers?

Isn't $120 million half the film's budget?

Insane.

tchrist

@Cerberus I wouldn’t in this case say the Hobbit Took. More like Baggins.

Cerberus

I...suppose no Tooks were involved.

But Tooks are odd fellows.

They would have done the same thing.

Look at Pippin.

tchrist

Always Bucking the trend.

Cerberus

Bucking?

tchrist

Hm, I don’t seem to be limited to close-reviewing only 20 questions on SO. Interesting. With a >50k, that makes sense.

Brandybucking.

Cerberus

1:47 AM

Is that Merry's name?

tchrist

It is.

The Tooks and Brandybucks both had Fallohide blood, making them a bit wild.

Cerberus

Right.

tchrist

I heard someone on the radio say that Dutch would be the first current European language to go extinct, because you are too good at other languages. It was a funny point of view. They said that you can get by living in Amsterdam speaking only English. Do you think that that is true?

Cerberus

Sure, you can get by...it depends on what you want to do, of course.

He may be right.

But it will still take a very long time.

Your language even survived the French onslaught, after all.

What we face is nothing compared to that.

tchrist

They estimate two centuries. I have no Dutch, but I could always get by with English, and certainly never had cause to resort to French or German there. This was more true there than in any other non-Britain-ish capital in Europe.

Cerberus

1:54 AM

Certainly, nobody here speaks better French or German than English.

But you can order food and converse with people in English in Paris too.

It's not that hard.

tchrist

I didn’t find that to be so true there.

Cerberus

Especially not if you mostly hang out with fellow foreigners.

tchrist

I feel that I would have been cut off from things if I had had no French.

Cerberus

I speak French in Paris, but they often reply in English.

tchrist

It may be changing.

Cerberus

1:56 AM

You will always be cut off from some things.

tchrist

I haven’t been in Paris for quite a while now.

Cerberus

I prefer to speak Dutch.

tchrist

In Paris?

Cerberus

Anywhere.

tchrist

That is something else.

Cerberus

1:57 AM

If we're in a group with a foreigner, we have to speak English, but Dutch is always more comfortable.

tchrist

I didn’t find English as widely used in Nice as I did in Geneva.

Cerberus

Sure.

tchrist

I was surprised by the amount of English in Switzerland, actually.

Cerberus

You can get by here more easily than in Paris.

It's all relative.

The Swiss are fairly multilingual, I think.

It's not as much an issue as in Belgium.

tchrist

You really can’t get by in Spain with English. Oh maybe in Madrid sometimes, or in place Barcelona, but not out in the smaller towns. In Lisbon, you can do a bit better. It is odd.

Cerberus

1:59 AM

What does get by mean?

I got by in Granada.

And in Istanbul, where they really only speak Turkish.

tchrist

Not really what I was thinking of by smaller town, but really? Did you stay in nice hostels and such?

Cerberus

Cabbies don't speak a single word of English.

Hostels? Where?

tchrist

In Granada.

I am a tiny bit surprised at that much English there.

Cerberus

I've never stayed in a place where you had to share anything with strangers, if that's what you mean. It's not worth the tiny difference in cost.

tchrist

I may not have noticed, since I’ve never tried.

Cerberus

2:01 AM

@tchrist There wasn't any.

Well, hardly any.

But one still gets by.

tchrist

If you stay at a high-class hotel in a major city, you usually can make do with English.

The class of hotel may vary by country though.

Cerberus

We rented a cheap apartment in Granada.

In Istanbul, a medium-priced hotel.

tchrist

That is the absolute best way to do it.

Cerberus

Yeah, it was nice.

tchrist

Were you there for a week or two, or some such?

Cerberus

2:02 AM

In Granada? A week.

tchrist

I do not know that I could spend two weeks in Granada without a particular plan.

Cerberus

We witnessed snow on Alhambra.

tchrist

The Sierra Nevada is there.

So it is fitting.

Cerberus

Well...

It isn't that high.

tchrist

Well, it is not in the Sierra, that’s right.

Cerberus

2:03 AM

And they only get snow once every twenty years or so.

tchrist

Highest paved road in Europe.

Granada is odd culturally, because it is a “new” city.

Cerberus

So anyway, when you say "get by", you need a definition.

tchrist

So they do not have the same sort of al-Andaluz accent as the other places down there.

They do not have the “seseo” much in Granada; they sound more like northerners.

Most Americans know the name only from Washington Irving’s Tales from the Alhambra.

Cerberus

They did say serbesa.

tchrist

Unless they go to Balboa Park. :)

Cerberus

2:06 AM

And Granada, new? Not nearly as new as Madrid!

tchrist

Did they? Perhaps it depends whom you talk to. But if you look at seseo/ceceo/distinción maps, Granada is a blue island.

Cerberus

It was fairly touristy, even in winter.

tchrist

That is why I said “new” city. It is newly resettled by Christians after 1492.

Cerberus

Lots of hippies.

Well, I don't know what to call them.

tchrist

I was wondering.

Cerberus

2:07 AM

How do you mean resettled?

tchrist

They kicked out the Moors.

Cerberus

They have a Moorish quarter.

Albayzín, or what was it called?

cornbread ninja

I'm sorry, the card says Moops.

Cerberus

Hello.

tchrist

The orthography looks off there.

Cerberus

2:08 AM

There.

Added the accent for you.

tchrist

Albaicín

El Albaicín (o Albayzín ) es un barrio del este la ciudad española de Granada. Está situado a una altitud de 700 a 800 m sobre el nivel del mar. Historia Se comenzó a poblar en época íbera, y existió poblamiento disperso romano. No hay datos de asentamiento islámico anterior a la llegada de los bereberes ziríes, por lo que se supone que la ciudad se abandonó desde el final del imperio romano hasta la fundación del reino zirí (1013) que fue cuando se rodeó de murallas (Alcazaba Cadima). Según algunos lingüistas debe su nombre actual a los pobladores de la ciudad de Baeza que, desterra...

It “should” not have the y or the z. That is why I said it looked off.

The zi- combo is a vestige of Arabic.

Cerberus

Of course.

tchrist

It should be ci- in Castilian.

Cerberus

It starts with Al- after all.

cornbread ninja

@Cerberus hello!

Cerberus

2:10 AM

Lo hell!

cornbread ninja

Had to restart firefox.

Cerberus

Many tabs?

cornbread ninja

update.

Cerberus

Ahh.

I stopped updating.

cornbread ninja

It kept them.

Wherefore?

tchrist

2:11 AM

> Otros lingüistas aseguran que el topónimo viene del árabe al-bayyāzīn (en su pronunciación granadina con imala, al-bayyīzīn), que significa el arrabal de los halconeros.

Cerberus

Apparently they made tabs-on-bottom impossible, so I stopped updating.

Last time they broke one of my essential extensions anyway.

tchrist

That is stupid.

Cerberus

So why would I update?

tchrist

I need tabs-on-side.

cornbread ninja

tabs on side!

I dig the app tab thing.

Cerberus

2:12 AM

You can probably still put them on the side with some add-on, but no longer at the bottom.

cornbread ninja

Then you really get too many tabs going.

tchrist

Of course. It is the only sensible thing to do with wide screens.

Cerberus

Yeah I have some app tabs, but those load automatically on restart.

So can't have too many.

@tchrist Well, I often have my screen in vertical position.

tchrist

Cerberus

I wouldn't want to have to switch tab positions all the time.

Further, the side bar interfered with some other things.

tchrist

2:13 AM

On a 1920 by 1080 screen?

Cerberus

That is irrelevant.

tchrist

Oops.

1920 by 1240.

Cerberus

It caught some tabbing.

I have 1080.

tchrist

I wonder what site that was. I would like to see it.

Cerberus

What?

tchrist

2:16 AM

The one that is messed up by side-tabs.

Cerberus

No site was messed up.

tchrist

Then I have misunderstood you.

Cerberus

But I couldn't tab around as easily. And it intercepted some hotkey that I relied on.

tchrist

GOD I HATE THAT!

More and more sites seem to do that.

Cerberus

Indeed.

tchrist

2:18 AM

Pisses me off.

Cerberus

I use an AHK script to circumvent that.

tchrist

It is getting that I want a key-interceptor–blocker.

Cerberus

It's ugly, but it works.

tchrist

Like a popup-blocker.

Cerberus

Yes.

There should be an option in the browser to prevent any website from stealing certain system hotkeys. And scrolls.

tchrist

2:19 AM

Exactly.

cornbread ninja

tchrist

Hm, scrolls there might be.

@cornbreadninja See, I quite don’t like that.

Please do not take it personally.

Cerberus

But some guy at Google Chrome recently said on Ars Technica that it was really important to let people save documents in Google Docs with control-S and such.

But there should be an option.

cornbread ninja

@tchrist side tabs would be neat. I don't mind bookmarks on the left, so why not?

Cerberus

@cornbreadninja How modest!

But...do you use arrows?

cornbread ninja

2:20 AM

@Cerberus I have to be gentle; this is babytop.

A 10.1" Acer Aspire One.

tchrist

Cerberus

@cornbreadninja Aww!

tchrist

It uses the space more wisely. And it doesn’t contract the tabs.

Wow, don’t like text much, do you? :(

cornbread ninja

women can tell a cheating man just by . . . smelling him?

Cerberus

@tchrist What text?

cornbread ninja

2:23 AM

@Cerberus wait, whoa, why does your gmail show the number like that?

Cerberus

Umm I don't know, could be some Greasomonkey script?

tchrist

Well, you have a huge whole lot of hieroglyphics at the top, but even the tabs are unlabelled by text.

Cerberus

Let me check...

cornbread ninja

I want that. Mine just turns an overhead light on over tabs with new shit.

wishes for side tabs

Cerberus

Gmail Favicon Alerts 3

@cornbreadninja Then use All-in-one Sidebar?

cornbread ninja

2:25 AM

@Cerberus ! Thank you.

tchrist

I can’t remember hieroglyphics, but I can always read text.

Cerberus

That's what we have Firefox for, to customise it!

@cornbreadninja You do need Greasemonkey installed for that.

A Firefox add-on.

tchrist

Cerberus

@tchrist I know what all my bookmarklets do.

As to the tabs...what can I say?

tchrist

Well, it is very short. Only one letter. This is the problem with the horizontal compression.

Cerberus

2:27 AM

Of course.

tchrist

I don’t use the big thumbnails either, but some people do.

Cerberus

But I'm supposed to have only 10 tabs or so open.

So theoretically this shouldn't be a problem.

See?

tchrist

Nice theory.

Cerberus

Thumbnails? No, those interfere with normal use.

I hate stuff that pops up unasked.

Besides, they are little use.

Just clicking the tab is easier.

tchrist

Here, this is with all the normally hidden toolbars exposed:

Yes, I could customize it to have my own favorite hieroglyphs, but I prefer not having symbols. Words I can always read.

Cerberus

2:31 AM

@cornbreadninja Wait, I made a mistake.

tchrist

The menubars are all in all-text, save the tabs, which have the little site icon.

Cerberus

It isn't the script that does it.

tchrist

But they still have text.

Cerberus

It must be something else, an add-on or something.

cornbread ninja

I have broken firefox.

Cerberus

2:32 AM

Oh no!

I hope it's not my fault?

cornbread ninja

that sidebar shows me everything but my tabs. no way.

and my tabs died.

but I shouldn't be in here, and worse, I interrupted your conversation.

oooh, new meta meata.

Cerberus

@cornbreadninja Huh what happened?

cornbread ninja

@Cerberus dunno.

Cerberus

By the way, I have no idea what displays that number next to my Gmail.

tchrist

@cornbreadninja Considering the earlier conversation today between @RegDwighт and @MετάEd &c, the new MELU post is sure to tickle.

Cerberus

2:35 AM

I disabled Greasemonkey and Better Gmail, and yet it's still there.

Could it be some option inside Gmail?

cornbread ninja

:x

tchrist

I’m not going to answer him. He’d just use the opportunity to rant and rave and get all pissy. Pissier.

And he has no insight into the deleted questions, either.

Cerberus

So the extension "Tab Sidebar" apparently does this.

I could have sworn All-in-one Sidebar did it too. Perhaps that was combined with some other extension.

Too much to remember!

By the way, Session Manager is the most reliable extension to save sessions (tabs).

Never lets me down.

My browser can crash however often it likes.

(Which happens to be rarely.)

tchrist

Mine always starts up with whatever it last had, including full history. I never forget anything.

Even if it crashes. Or if I kill it.

I hate browsers that work other than that way. They seem broken to me.

cornbread ninja

@Cerberus goes to the mozilla mall

Cerberus

2:42 AM

@cornbreadninja Good luck!

@tchrist All browsers are supposed to have that option (I want it to be optional), but the default mechanism in FF sometimes fails.

cornbread ninja

"This add-on has not been updated to work with your version of Firefox."

>_<

Wow, these butter rum lifesavers taste more like rum than butterscotch.

Cerberus

And it doesn't give you a list of sessions to pick from; nor can you select and deselect individual tabs to load. It is very rare, but sometimes loading a certain tab crashes your sessions...this happens maybe once every two years. But then I don't want to be locked out of my profile. I suppose I could use safe mode.

@cornbreadninja Bah!

There are other extensions that work the same way...

Google "firefox tabs sidebar".

cornbread ninja

it's cool; I will get it on a bigger computer.

Cerberus

Good.

The bigger, the better, 's what my mother always taught me.

cornbread ninja

@Cerberus heh.

Cerberus

2:46 AM

It's true!

cornbread ninja

There's an upper limit, though.

Cerberus

I suppose.

Didn't you know, dogs can eat themselves to death?

cornbread ninja

Oh dear.

tchrist

There must be a better way to put that.

Truly.

I know horses have that issue. Or is that drinking? I forget.

Cerberus

Then how would you put it?

cornbread ninja

2:51 AM

@tchrist An elephant wouldn't.

tchrist

thinks

Cerberus

Dogs can eat themselves, 'tis well known.

cornbread ninja

that's worse.

tchrist

@Cerberus You have had too much Straight Dope, I can see.

“Eat so much that they die”?

“Fatal overeating”?

Using a dative of interest, here necessarily reflexive, leads your horse to a highly infelicitous misparse, as you yourself just observed.

> Which animals will actually eat until they die?

That’s another poster’s question.

Death by Gluttony.

Timeline of Overeating Deaths.

Cerberus

That doesn't sound so...forceful.

Defense Department Overclassifies Memo On Avoiding Overclassification

tchrist

3:01 AM

Foie gras.

Cerberus

Talk about Kafka.

cornbread ninja

3:17 AM

@tchrist the gras is always greener on the other . . . forget it.

Foyer?

tchrist

So many people come to ELU for programming help. . . .

1

Q: Connotation of terms regarding one's profession

I'm wondering if there are more-commonly-than-not held connotations for terms regarding occupation that would differentiate between one's own personal experience in a field versus the description of the field as a whole. E.g. I am an engineer at company A, this is my job, but engineer is my profe...

differences connotation

Gosh, Norty won himself a reöpen vote!

2

Q: Be Apportioned Among

I don't quite understand some sentence structure: link Davis' Asian population of 14,355 was apportioned among 1,631 Indian Americans, 6,395 Chinese Americans, 1,033 Filipino Americans, 953 Japanese Americans, 1,560 Korean Americans, 1,185 Vietnamese Americans, and 1,598 other Asian America...

meaning grammar usage

tchrist

4:03 AM

Well, I found 13 related questions for the new meta question. I had to stop there because those 13 extra occurrences of "meta.", which necessarily added up to 65 char units, precluded me from using a 14ᵗʰ. They could probably be better ordered, like most to least related, or by age, or by uid number. But the edit time has expired, so we’ll just live with what we have there.

Cerberus

4:21 AM

@cornbreadninja Okay, I have found it: it is in Gmail's own settings. Settings > Labs > Unread message icon.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…