English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

03:00

What I'm saying is that the market is divided in these little sealed-off pockets, and that they are trying to intimidate you to keep it that way.

Spare Oom

@simchona Did you get the same storm? Maybe it originated near you? They called it Derecho.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Which part of their statement wasn't true? "If you bought a phone from someone who isn't selling Authorized Rogers Products (tm) then it might not work here", well, yeah, I'm an engineer and I'm not always clear on which phones work where, and "If your phone might otherwise work here, but was reported stolen, it is a brick and will not work here": fair enough

@SpareOom Didn't you know? simchona is really Ororo Monroe

@Cerberus In fact they don't really need to intimidate you to keep it sealed off. They just need to confuse you.

Cerberus

Who said they were lying?

It's just manipulation and intimidation.

Spare Oom

No, I didn't know. Umm, Огого or Ororo? The fonts are too small on my laptop.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

But furthermore, the phones are already "free", so bringing your own phone is a losing proposition, since nobody offers you a real discount for doing so.

@Cerberus It's not intimidation to say "If you bought a phone and it's a Bell phone, it won't work here"

Cerberus

03:07

@MrShinyandNew安宇 It is intimidating if you go on to insinuate that a phone from the "grey" market is "unauthorized" and could be "stolen".

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Anyway, most people know that our mobile market is crappy.

Cerberus

Yes.

Ours is still crappy, but somewhat better.

Partly thanks to the EU.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus meh. That warning doesn't bother me at all, except for the use of the words "grey market"

Cerberus

Our roaming charges are/were far worse than what you pay, I believe.

What do you pay per minute if you make a call in a different province?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well, don't you also pay per minute for landline calls? both parties?

Cerberus

03:09

Only the caller.

Noöne ever pays anything except the caller. Except when the recipient is abroad.

(Which means 200 km from here).

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I don't know what roaming charges are like here. I'm not sure we pay per-minute roaming charges if we're in a different province. We do pay long-distance though... if I am not in my home city and someone calls me, I am charged LD for "Toronto-to-Calgary" or wherever.

And airtime is always paid by both parties here, according to whatever agreement they each have with their carrier.

So if my wife and I go to a city where we pay LD, and I call her, we pay LD twice, because I am calling LD to Toronto and she is receiving a call from Toronto

Cerberus

By "long-distance" you mean landline?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

no, I mean Long Distance

Cerberus

Oh, so mobile.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

you don't have Ld there?

it's not a mobile concept, it's a phone concept

Cerberus

03:12

We have no distance.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

ah

Cerberus

Certainly no long distance.

We have 300 km tops.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

So how it works here is there are two kinds of calls: local and long-distance

local calls are free

(but for mobile you pay airtime)

Cerberus

That is what I would call "roaming".

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Ld calls cost per-minute

no, roaming is different

Cerberus

03:14

It means you have crossed some silly boundary.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

it is LD for someone in Toronto to phone Ottawa, regardless of mobile or landline

but all Toronto-Toronto calls are free (+ airtime for mobile users)

But if I take my mobile phone out of my coverage area, like say I'm a Bell user and I go to Manitoba where there is no Bell network, I am roaming

Cerberus

So you pay airtime + LD, both fees per minute, if you call mobile from Toronto to Ottawa?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yes, and it's per-minute billing usually (some companies have per-second but it's rare)

Cerberus

Yeah I meant per minute.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

When I am in the US, if I make a call, I have to pay per-minute roaming charges

Cerberus

03:15

So the airtime fee is fixed? What do you pay?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus The airtime fees are complicated. most people have unlimited evenings or weekends and a certain number of free minutes for weekdays, and then a typical fee might be 10c/min

My plan is unlimited airtime while I'm in a Wind Zone

So let's say I'm in Vancouver with my wife and we have Toronto phones.

If I call a vancouver number, because I'm IN vancouver, it's a local call, but I pay airtime (whatever airtime I usually pay). I don't think I pay roaming anywhere in Canada.

But if I call Toronto, I pay airtime and LD, because it's LD from vancouver to Toronto

Cerberus

And how much is LD?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

and if someone calls me it's LD because I'm not in my home city

LD can be as much as 0.35/min but usually it's cheaper. LD is more expensive on mobile and the plans aren't as good, which is annoying because I almost never make LD calls, EXCEPT when I'm in a different city and then maybe all my calls are LD

Cerberus

How much from Edmonton to Ottawa or something?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

on landlines many people pay a monthly fee for unlimited LD in their province or in Canada. plus now we have these third-party LD providers where you can call internationally for 0.05/min

@Cerberus actually the distance doesn't matter

it just depends on what kind of LD plan you have

Cerberus

03:26

Oh...

So and how are these fees charged?

Do you have some kind of monthly bundle?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yeah, you get a monthly bill, which has two parts. the first part is the fees for next month's service, and the second part is the fee for per-minute charges you incurred this month.

Cerberus

Do these fees normally come out of your regular service? Or do you actually have to pay them on top of what you normally pay?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus the per-minute fees are on top of whatever you normally pay

Cerberus

And what do you pay normally?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

So let's say you have a plan that's 200 daytime minutes, free evenings and weekends, caller id, call waiting, and voicemail, and you pay $40/month. If you make more than 200min weekday calls, you pay 10c/min for the over-200 part. And all your LD is over that as well.

Cerberus

03:30

Oh wait, you said free minutes on weekedays.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus It depends.

@Cerberus Yeah, a plan typically includes some free stuff.

Cerberus

Okay, and from what distance does LD start?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus it's not distance, it's zones

Cerberus

Ah.

How large is a zone?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

it's just the same zones they set up way back in the day when the local city dialing was set up for landlines

Cerberus

03:32

And what do you pay for LD per minute?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus how long is a piece of rope?

13 mins ago, by Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

LD can be as much as 0.35/min but usually it's cheaper. LD is more expensive on mobile and the plans aren't as good, which is annoying because I almost never make LD calls, EXCEPT when I'm in a different city and then maybe all my calls are LD

Cerberus

The zones have no meaningful typical size?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus they usually correspond to a metropolitan area, such as a town or city

Cerberus

You didn't say what you paid for LD mobile.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I have unlimited LD in my home zone

Cerberus

03:33

Are the zones the same for all providers?

Oh, I see.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus the LD zones are

Cerberus

But what if you are outside your home zone?

There are other kinds of zones?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I'm not sure. It rarely comes up

Cerberus

Jesus.

Your system does suck, if only for the mind-boggling complexity.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yes, my cell carrier has "coverage zones", i.e. the places where it has its own network and can give you the good service, vs the places where you're roaming on some other network and you pay extra

@Cerberus It's a confusopoly

Cerberus

03:35

Taraxiopoly.

Trying to think of a nicer word.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

This is why I had to spend about 8 hours compiling a spreadsheet the last time I wanted to switch carriers.

Cerberus

Haha.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus too late, Scott Adams already coined confusopoly and it's gaining traction

Cerberus

Meh.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

In fact he used "mobile providers" as the canonical example

Cerberus

03:36

How about rounding?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus rounding?

Cerberus

My provider rounds data per session per 100 KB.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

oh... I have no idea about that

I know that per-minute charges are rounded up to the nearest minute

Cerberus

So if you open and close a data session every minute to send one byte, you pay for 6 MB/hour.

So then perhaps I have found something where we can beat you.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Interesting. I'm not sure about that at all... I've never had a data plan before and mine is "unlimited" so.....

Cerberus

03:38

By the way, until this month, if I went to Belgium just over the border, 100 km from here, I would pay € 3 or something per MB.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus beat us in terms of making it harder to understand? I'm sure we do the same here

Cerberus

Yes.

And € 2 per minute, I think.

And if I don't have a data bundle in my own country, I might also pay € 2 per MB.

Thankfully the EU has reduced roaming costs a lot, to € 0,30 per MB or something.

We also have net neutrality.

So it's slowly going in the right direction.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah, if you don't have a data plan the data costs are redonkulous. But if you DO have a plan I'm not sure how the round the accounting.

My roaming data charges with Wind are redingdonkulous, even.

Cerberus

I heard some data plans in America round by the MB...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus per socket connection? that'd be insane

Cerberus

03:41

Redingdonkylous, I see.

Oops, I misspelled.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Is that a data session?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus it means "more ridiculous than redonkulous"

@Cerberus I don't know what a "data session" is

Cerberus

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I know.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Nor I.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It's just something they invented to fuck you harder.

Cerberus

But apparently you keep open a "data session" if you use push e-mail.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

well, that's a socket connection for sure

Cerberus

03:43

OK.

Then that it is.

My provider automatically closes a data/socket session if it has been idle for 30 minutes.

Could that be considered normal, or is it in order to bump up the rounding?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I wouldn't consider it abnormal. I don't know how common it is. It might have the effect of bumping billing, but it also has the effect of freeing network resources so that others can use the over-provisioned network

Anyway, I should get going

All this talk of cell networks makes me want to buy a new phone

But the GS2, GN and GS3 are not significant enough upgrades for me to pay for a new phone or throw away the outstanding $150 I owe on this phone

sadly, Rogers has 250 Galaxy S phones that they are trying to sell for $0.01 with activation. I would like to buy 10 of them with no activation, but I bet they'd want $400 each, so screw that

Cerberus

Hmm...

Very annoying.

I pity your mobile-phone market.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

they don't even have the phone on the normal part of their website, just the clearance section

Cerberus

I would still try to find out which networks you could use your phone on...

And maybe go pre-paid.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

03:58

@Cerberus my current phone works on Wind and T-Mobile. That's it

Rogers has a different variant of the Nexus and Bell didn't even get it at all

Cerberus

You checked bandwidths?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No, I already knew it from before

Cerberus

By the way, you could use a Dutch plan from Vodafone Netherlands...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus how would that be practical?

Cerberus

Then you would pay € 0,55 per minute, no other monthly costs, I think.

I'm just theorizing here.

And showing how ridiculous the system is.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

04:00

@Cerberus It's the data that makes things expensive

Cerberus

Let me see what their data costs are for Canada...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

The data is what sent me to Wind in the first place. Ironically their data network is crap

So I don't pay much but it barely works

Cerberus

Yes, they want you to pay € 5 for 4 MB.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

But I should get going. Staying up late educating you on the intricacies of the North American phone market is almost as tiring as convincing you that there's an impending energy crisis.

@Cerberus That's kinda high

Cerberus

Very. But then it is across the ocean.

It is still much cheaper than it was last month from Belgium.

Anyway, good night!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

04:06

Wind charges $1/MB... it's gone down, I guess.

anyway, good night!

clabacchio

07:53

Hi guys

can I ask a very small question?

cpx

08:07

Of course, I hope someone would come up with an answer.

RegDwight ΒВB

08:40

0

Q: Why "please" in an answer?

I'm not a native English speaker. I don't understand why some answers start with the word please. For example: Please follow this link... Or else: Please try the following solution... It seems like I have to do a favor to those who respond to me.

Another question for ELL.

clabacchio

@cpx what goes after "multiply"?

@cpx multiply x by y?

times?

RegDwight ΒВB

By.

Times already means "multiply".

Check a dictionary, they list prepositions.

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/multiply

> When you multiply 3 by 7, you get 21.

user19161

@clabacchio Yes, multiply x by y. What sentence do you want to write?

cpx

@clabacchio Yes, or you could say, x times y is z.

clabacchio

@JasperLoy something like "multiplying current by time

@RegDwightΒВB thanks! :)

it was very small as promised :)

RegDwight ΒВB

08:48

We always have room for small things.

user19161

@clabacchio No, I mean the sentence. That is not a sentence.

clabacchio

@JasperLoy it's not a full sentence, but an explanation within parentheses, and it's like "charge is current multiplied by time", but actually I changed it using "it's the integral of the current over time"

RegDwight ΒВB

Math is hard. Let's do physics!

cpx

Can you say, x dot y is z for integers? 5 dot 6 is 30.

RegDwight ΒВB

-2

A: Origin of jive slang

Aca tiene que venir un castro o un franco, a mi no me la cuentan,a la final siempre somos los mismos boludos que laburamo 15 horas arriba del tacho, anda a cagar, sabe que pasa? aca hay que entrar a bajar y no se salva nadie

¡Hola!

0

A: Is there any full form for NEWS?

yes it has to be NEW.. we just got used to use plural of new, NEWS.. north east west south comes easily to the mind but it's not.. let me know if anyone has more deep view on this..

Oh my, so many flags today.

user19161

08:55

@cpx We usually don't read it as dot for multiplication even though the dot notation is used.

clabacchio

@RegDwightΒВB but f I have something new to tell, can I still say "I have a news"?

user19161

@cpx You can just say 5 times 6 is 30.

RegDwight ΒВB

9

Q: "The news is good." Why?

We use "the news is good" instead of "the news are good." What is the rationale behind this? Are there similar situations in English?

grammatical-number present-tense

"The" is okay. "A" is not.

clabacchio

@RegDwightΒВB thanks!

@RegDwightΒВB so how to deal if you want to tell something (just one thing) that happened recently?

RegDwight ΒВB

"I have news for you."

"Here's news for you."

You can throw in a "some" if you wish.

Just like with other uncountable nouns.

"Here's some cheese for you". "I have water for you."

You can also say "a piece of news", just like you can say "a piece of cheese".

clabacchio

09:04

@RegDwightΒВB ok thanks, can I also use "novelty"?

RegDwight ΒВB

Hm I guess "novelty" can mean "piece of news", but its primary meaning is "the abstract quality of being new".

Either way it sounds stilted.

clabacchio

@RegDwightΒВB maybe the problem is that I'm trying to translate literally an italian sentence

RegDwight ΒВB

Maybe.

Literal translation is seldom a good idea. Even less so if the languages are not closely related.

clabacchio

@RegDwightΒВB yes :) but, changing context

if instead of talking about news, the novelty is an object?

like a new thing?

RegDwight ΒВB

A new thing is okay I guess. A product can be a novelty.

clabacchio

09:11

@RegDwightΒВB ok, so I may have gotten the meaning of novelty

Matt Эллен

09:36

58

Q: Stack Exchange Blogs Compromised and Passwords Reset

Some of our WordPress instances were exploited yesterday at 11 AM UTC. We noticed that the compromise had taken place today and took the blogs offline as soon as we noticed. We have since restored the WordPress files from backup* to a new set of servers. Using our logs we were able to identify th...

support blog blog-overflow

anyone who bogged for EL&U will have had their password reset

Matt Эллен

10:12

ahem I mean blogged, not bogged.

RegDwight ΒВB

Of course you would say that.

Matt Эллен

I suppose waiting for someone else to say it was an option?

RegDwight ΒВB

It still is!

Matt Эллен

12:53

Hmmmm. MailS deleted his own question and then reasked it. How odd.

well, not odd so much as devious.

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