English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

12:02 AM

@Robusto Yes, you cannot encrypt all your things.

But what happens when you use software to change your IMEI?

And if you use en encryption program on top of SMS? Or use a different messaging service?

And what if you buy disposable credit cards online?

We can mitigate this program partially.

Robusto

I dunno. There will be a record of everything you do unless you pay cash for it.

Cerberus

A record of encrypted messages...

I have just installed an application on my phone that limits the permissions of all installed applications, including the Google stuff.

Robusto

If you start encrypting all your stuff, then they're just going to look at you harder.

Cerberus

You said "how are you going to encrypt...".

Robusto

@Cerberus Interesting. How well does it work? And does it inhibit functionality or otherwise make your life miserable?

Cerberus

12:08 AM

@Robusto It seems to work well, and it's only the initial configuration of each application that is a bit of a PITA.

Robusto

What's it called?

Cerberus

Xprivacy.

You do need root.

Robusto

Ah. Well, we can go to prison if we root our phones, remember?

Cerberus

Root => install the Xposed framework (easy) => install Xprivacy.

@Robusto No, that's only carrier-unlocking, silly!

But I suppose rooting requires some work.

Cerberus

1:06 AM

> AVG, in September 2011, said it had made about 20% of its revenues (or around $40 million) from Yahoo and Google combined that year to date. People install these toolbars for the promise of security or entertainment. Then, when they conduct searches, they get back organic results and ads that are powered on the backend by Google (and Yahoo, in the case of AVG). The toolbar vendor and the search company both share in the revenue off ad clicks.

searchengineland.com/…

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

1:48 AM

@KitFox Caprica is playing, but she isn't showing the board. -_-

O0oO0oOO0ooO

3:33 AM

does it make you feel weird if you eat 10 bowls of cereal at once?

KitFox

10:48 AM

Morning.

Nobody here on a rainy Monday except the ghosts of our regular selves.

!!/define phantasm

Caprica Six

@KitFox No definition found.

@KitFox phantasm something seen but having no physical reality; a phantom or apparition.

MετάEd

11:50 AM

Phantastic.

KitFox

12:10 PM

No, no, not phantastic. You're thinking of that thing that describes the interaction of the environment with your genetics.

Robusto

12:24 PM

gene tics?

KitFox

No. How's your kitchen?

Robusto

Supposed to get the counters in today, plumbing hooked up tomorrow.

KitFox

What are you going to cook first?

Robusto

I painted and stained over the holiday, so my part is ready to go. Except for the places where the tape stripped off some of the paint. I need to touch up, but I'll do that after everything else is in place.

@KitFox Probably some eggs.

KitFox

Very exciting. We are meeting with our agent this afternoon.

Robusto

12:37 PM

Your agent?

KitFox

Real estate agent. We've got just six weeks until our (sort of made-up) deadline.

To move to the new house.

Robusto

You've bought one already?

KitFox

We're buying my mother-in-law's house.

She's building a new house on the corner.

Robusto

Oh. Same town, &c.?

KitFox

No, different town, but we're there a lot.

It's about fifteen minutes away.

Robusto

12:39 PM

Same difference.

KitFox

We were aiming to finish the work on the house by the end of March so we could list in April.

We've been really working hard at it for nearly a year now.

So sick of it.

Robusto

Yeah. Working on the house sucks.

KitFox

It looks over 9000 times better than it did when we bought the place.

And my only regret is that we are moving to a new place that will need at least as much work, and we won't have a deadline for any of it.

So it will never get done.

But it will be nice to be closer to my mother-in-law.

Robusto

I am holding my breath till the kitchen is well and truly finished. Even if all goes as planned, after tomorrow there will still be some minor finish work on the cabinets, since they ran out of molding before the last cabinet was done and one of the cabinets had the wrong side skin. Always something.

KitFox

Always something.

My MiL still has something on the roof that wasn't finished from 20 years ago.

The contractor never came back.

Robusto

12:46 PM

That's why you withhold the final payment till they're finished finished.

KitFox

sighs There must be a more elegant solution to this problem. I feel like I have a brain cloud this morning.

makes brain cloud gesture

Robusto

Ah, fuck, these idiots with their framework screwed up functionality on one of my pages.

KitFox

Speaking of the annoyances of contractors, eh?

Robusto

Yep.

I need a new job. This one suddenly sucks.

KitFox

Sorry, man. I can offer you one that would employ a tiny portion of your skill set.

Robusto

12:57 PM

I have plenty of people trying to recruit me. Just a question of what looks like it could work.

MετάEd

@KitFox Dang. I give up.

KitFox

Phenotype.

MετάEd

No, no, not phenotype. You're thinking of that sedative everybody uses.

KitFox

Phenylepherine?

I don't think that's much of a sedative.

Must be phenobarbital?

I think you're thinking of that shaving cream brand, though.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Noah whoosh

Robusto

1:07 PM

@MετάEd No, not phenobarbital, you're thinking of that brand of shaving cream from the '50s.

KitFox

Slow jinx.

Robusto

Wow, I didn't even read your answer. You should punch up the opening paragraphs.

MετάEd

@KitFox Ha! Not Barbisol. You're thinking of that German rifle cleaner.

KitFox

@Robusto I'll punch something all right.

Robusto

@MετάEd OK, I surrender. I know nothing about German rifle cleaners.

KitFox

1:12 PM

Hmm.

Karbinol.

If I were going to make something up that sounded like Barbasol and some German word that would have to do with rifle cleaning.

Which reminds me that I haven't cleaned the Mauser in god-only-knows how long.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Important notice: there are new chapters of HP:MoR up.

KitFox

gasp, runs

Eep! A few?

Like 8!

RegDwighт

@MετάEd looks so much younger now.

Did he pay a visit to the Fountain of Youth or what?

MετάEd

@KitFox The Grey one?

KitFox

In the grey, grey ghost that I call home.

In the grey, stony lonesome I call home.

RegDwighт

1:24 PM

In the grey, grey wizard I call Gandalf.

Robusto

►

Matt Эллен

what is it with giraffes and androerotica?

RegDwighт

Giraffes are androerotical. That is what is with giraffes and androerotica.

Matt Эллен

oh. that makes sesne

RegDwighт

EWW Online.

At last, a video I'm allowed to watch, and guess what: my Flash crashes.

Matt Эллен

1:27 PM

woohoo!

RegDwighт

This is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Firefox. Also, Ubuntu.

Matt Эллен

Rash flash crash double dash hash mash splash

Robusto

A beacon, an eternal beam. ' Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; ' world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
                In a flash, at a trumpet crash,

Gerard Manley Hopkins, "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection"

RegDwighт

Nice title. Is his real name Stephen King?

Robusto

No. Stephen King prefers one- or two-word titles.

RegDwighт

1:31 PM

Right. He puts the rest between the covers.

Robusto

Carrie, Christine, Cujo, Pet Sematary, Firestarter, Misery, The Stand ...

@RegDwighт Easy now, he's more disciplined than, say, Tom Clancy.

RegDwighт

Cycle of the Werewolf, The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Ghost Brothers of Darkland County...

Robusto

Tom Clancy and Dan Brown both sweat out huge tubs of prose that publishers appear to be disinclined to edit at all.

@RegDwighт Salem's Lot, It, etc.

RegDwighт

Why edit when you can sell.

Time you spend editing is time you spend not selling.

Robusto

@RegDwighт Works written by an alias don't count.

RegDwighт

1:34 PM

Okay, then The New Lieutenant's Rap.

Robusto

Fine. When Stephen King was any good he kept his titles short. OK?

RegDwighт

Yes.

Robusto

2:03 PM

single-word-request Is there a term for a coding philosophy that wants all code generalized and abstracted to within an inch of its life? (Cf. hypercorrection in grammar.)

Maybe Rubyfication?

RegDwighт

Architecture astronaucy?

Robusto

Archistricture?

RegDwighт

Arsch ist rapture?

Robusto

That's the effect, not the cause.

Kopf im Arsch Syndrome?

RegDwighт

Microsoft Live Mesh.

In case you even remember.

Robusto

2:08 PM

Happily, I don't.

RegDwighт

Well let's see.

Robusto

I'm fine. No need for a link.

RegDwighт

I think they actually got a honorable mention in Joel's article on Arsch in rapture Ass tronauts.

And sure enough they did.

Robusto

Oh, if it's a Joel article, link away.

RegDwighт

> What's Microsoft Live Mesh?

Hmm, let's see.

"Imagine all your devices—PCs, and soon Macs and mobile phones—working together to give you anywhere access to the information you care about."

Robusto

2:09 PM

Oh right. The solution looking for a problem. Yeah, I read that.

RegDwighт

Architecture astronauts take over, and the original Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You.

> The hallmark of an architecture astronaut is that they don't solve an actual problem... they solve something that appears to be the template of a lot of problems. Or at least, they try.

Robusto

Yeah. My term requires a finer granularity. It would describe when people bend over backwards to use a framework that makes all the work take 90% longer and fucks everything else up in the process.

RegDwighт

Why, that's jQuery.

Actually, that's every business ever.

First it takes them years to agree on what to buy, then everyone has to use whatever shit they bought (and it's always shit, it's never not shit).

Robusto

@RegDwighт Nah, jQuery is one framework that, in its simplest form, actually makes people's lives easier. Not so for jQuery Mobile and a few other things. But actual jQuery is pretty nifty.

RegDwighт

I know, I'm trying to yank chains here, dude.

> Another common thing Architecture Astronauts like to do is invent some new architecture and claim it solves something. Java, XML, Soap, XmlRpc, Hailstorm, .NET, Jini, oh lord I can't keep up. And that's just in the last 12 months!

My, I'm old.

Robusto

2:16 PM

Yeah.

RegDwighт

> No, Microsoft, computers are not suddenly going to start reading our minds and doing what we want automatically just because everyone in the world has to have a Passport account.

Holy crap, this really is like reading some museum plaque.

I have long forgotten the name. And it was ubiquitous!

Robusto

When will people realize that all you get from adding yet another framework to the mix is another level of complexity. You're sweeping the same dirt under a different rug, while still leaving some crunchy residue under that first rug.

RegDwighт

Spake he over TCP.

Robusto

I don't have to debug TCP in my daily life.

RegDwighт

In daily life, TCP debugs you.

Robusto

2:20 PM

At least it doesn't bug me.

RegDwighт

Sometimes it drops the de-.

Jinx.

Robusto

You planted that jinx.

RegDwighт

No, more like that's what I originally wanted to say and then screwed up.

A nucular jinx plant.

Matt Эллен

newclure jinx pants

RegDwighт

2:41 PM

What is the singular of newclure jinx pants?

Matt Эллен

now clear face palm

RegDwighт

I can see clearly now, the face is palm. I can see all the icicles in my hay.

Matt Эллен

:D

KitFox

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well. That was quite exciting.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:58 PM

@KitFox yeah.

Robusto

Holy friggin' geebis. The contractor company decided to rewrite all the links on our ginormous site (for prettification purposes) via the front end. And their code removes anchor tags that don't contain a certain className. So all the tens of thousands of links that were written not to include that className get physically stripped out of the code AFTER the page loads. I cannot begin to describe how dumb this is. I mean, I'm pretty good at English, but this shit leaves me speechless.

Matt Эллен

But... that doesn't make any sense.

Robusto

But ... you are a sane person. It wouldn't make sense to you.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

wow, they remove anchors? like, because they were left in there by accident? I hear computers do that a lot.

I mean, my website is just FULL of anchors. Actually all my HTML tags are just <A> because that's faster to type. I use jquery on the front end to rewrite it into a proper dom.

Matt Эллен

I'm going to have to go through my code to make sure all my anchors have that class name

Robusto

3:03 PM

Not because they were left in there by accident. They created a rule after all these anchors were added in various JSP pages, one which requires a certain className to be present in order for the anchor not to be stripped.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah I was being facetious.

Matt Эллен

did they then go and save all the HTML without the extra anchors, and reimplement the site as static HTML?

Robusto

I am not even picking up on jokes right now, I am so stupefied.

knocks head on desk

RegDwighт

Is it at least slow as bum? Please tell me it is slow as bum.

Robusto

It is ungodly slow, if bum is your god.

RegDwighт

3:08 PM

It only has to be theirs.

Robusto

I think it's safe to say that it is.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

what if bum is your ungod

RegDwighт

Then you're a litotes.

Robusto

Advanced math proves that bum == unbum in infinite stupid.

RegDwighт

The hoi litoi and their god Bum.

BRB writing a novel.

Matt Эллен

3:09 PM

lol

Robusto

It's shit like this that makes me want to take early retirement.

KitFox

squints Why would somebody do that?

I mean, what's the rationale there?

Noah

Hi

Has anyone tried installing OS X on a PC?

Robusto

@KitFox You ask questions for which there is no answer.

Noah

I got a copy iOAtKOS ML3U but I cannot seem to go pass the initial load screen. It gets restarted every time I click on "boot."

RegDwighт

3:23 PM

@Noah OS X has been running on PCs for half a decade now.

Noah

I am talking about Dell PCs

Not Mac PCs

RegDwighт

Nothing has been running on Dell PCs ever.

Noah

Oh, no. I have been trying to get this thing working for the past one week.

But there are some websites that claim successful installation of OS X on their stupid PCs.

@RegDwighт If they can do it, I should be able to do so as well?

Matt Эллен

@RegDwighт looks at his Dell PC, wonders what running is

Noah

He is probably lost in some sort of translation.

RegDwighт

3:28 PM

@MattЭллен simple. It's what it's not doing.

Noah

Forgive me, but if I ever catch Michael Dell, I will put him in one of his freaking big boxes and install Ubuntu on top of him.

3

That sucker seems to have messed up everything in the PC industry.

KitFox

Messed up or fixed things, depending on how you look at it.

Noah

No, messed up.

KitFox

Well, there wasn't a lot of standardization of PC parts before Dell.

That was annoying.

Noah

See with his stupid machines, I cannot run OS X.

RegDwighт

3:31 PM

There wasn't a lot of standardization of food before McDonald's.

KitFox

That's your fault and Apple's, not Dell.

RegDwighт

Standardization doesn't mean standardizing on the good stuff.

In fact it quite typically means the opposite. It has to.

KitFox

I didn't say it was good, but standardization was better than not.

Noah

Oh, you mean IBM wasn't developing standardized PCs?

RegDwighт

Who's IBM? Never heard of that one.

Matt Эллен

3:33 PM

Invisible Bubble Monsters

Noah

IBM is the chess player. The guy who beat Kasparov.

RegDwighт

I think I will just build my own PC. With standards and hookers.

@Noah Oh that Chinese guy from Ocean's Eleven who sat in that blinking blue box? Yeah I remember him.

Noah

No, I am talking about the American who was deep blue.

KitFox

@Noah Sure, standard IBM PCs. Like Compaq had their standard PC, and then let me think...Gateway was like that and Commodore...

RegDwighт

Hey I have a Compaq PC.

Noah

3:37 PM

Don't forget Lenovo, I think it's part of IBM.

@RegDwighт can you install OS X on it?

RegDwighт

The very name, Lenovo, deeply offends me.

It sounds like East-European shit.

Noah

Could be western, but they are good at doing their job, I guess.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I have to disagree with you @Kit about Dell being pro-standardization

Most of the big-name companies have not been that good at standardization of components, except the ones that have always been standard, i.e. the cpu, ram, and expansion cards.

KitFox

OK. I concede.

Noah

If I don't get OS X working on this freaking Dell Desktop, I will burn it or send it to Stephen Hawking to use it for his time machine.

Matt Эллен

3:41 PM

rofl

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

the other standards, like motherboard size, case design, etc, have always been better in the clone market, where those standards matter.

@Noah why would you expect OSX to work on anything except an Apple computer?

KitFox

I was practicing seeing situations in a good light.

Cerberus

Lenovo is as Chinese as they get!

KitFox

I think that reflecting positivity will make people like me better.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox yes. well, there's lots to like about Dell, but I'm not sure standardization is it.

Matt Эллен

3:42 PM

@KitFox here's some good light: I have a dell desktop at work and a dell laptop at home. they both work well.

Cerberus

@KitFox Well done!

Noah

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Because it's built for a PC, and it has to run on any PC out there. Plus, I got this big Dell with Windows 7 at home and I don't know how to use Windows. This thing is useless unless I get OS X on it.

KitFox

Or you could learn how to use Windows.

Matt Эллен

In fact I have two dell laptops, the first one is 10 years old, runs win 98, and still works

KitFox

You know, like the other 95% of the population.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:45 PM

@Noah It isn't built for a PC. It's built for a Mac. It doesn't have to run on "any PC". It's made to run on Macs.

Matt Эллен

The facts that Macs are x86 based these days isn't particularly important

KitFox

What's the Mac market share now?

I just made up that stat.

Noah

@KitFox When pigs fly.

KitFox

Oh wait. I'll ask Siri. brb

Robusto

@Noah hackintosh.com

KitFox

3:47 PM

Siri says "Apple's website may be able to answer your question."

Robusto

@KitFox Did Siri just tell you to go fuck yourself?

KitFox

I believe she did.

She'd do better if she talked to the Google API.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Noah Does your computer meet the very limited requirements as set out by the iATKOS people?

Matt Эллен

@KitFox too small to register

oh, wait. I misread that

about 10%

but that includes laptops

accoding to wikipedia OS X is at 7% market share

Usage share of operating systems

The usage share of operating systems is the percentage market share of the operating systems used in computers. Different categories of computers use a wide variety of operating systems, so the total usage share varies enormously from one category to another. In some categories, one family of operating systems dominates. For example, most desktop and laptop computers use Microsoft Windows and most supercomputers use Linux. In other categories, such as smartphones and servers, there is more diversity and competition. Information about operating system share is difficult to obtain, sinc...

Cerberus

@Noah You can probably get OSX working on any computer. See Robusto's link.

KitFox

3:50 PM

I just read something that says Apple phones are around 18%.

Cerberus

That's right.

Their share is highest in tablets.

40 % or so.

KitFox

Understandable. Except for the iApple-Everything annoyingness, I like the iPad much better than any other tablet I've played with.

It seems more responsive and less quirky to me.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus From Rob's link:

> You can't just install OS X on any old PC and expect it to work like it does on a Mac.

Cerberus

Right.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Maybe not any.

Matt Эллен

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 which implies you can install it on any old PC :D

KitFox

3:52 PM

But there are things that just irritate me about tablets.

Cerberus

It probably needs at least two cores now, right?

Matt Эллен

just change your success criteria

Cerberus

Right.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus definitely not any. It needs drivers. It is a pure and simple fact that there are more drivers for Windows hardware than for mac. Lots of stuff that works on Windows only works on Windows.

Cerberus

@KitFox Like which?

KitFox

3:53 PM

It's not windowed.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I think there's lots of things you can virtualise...

KitFox

So I can't task switch without loading and unloading stuff.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I'm sure Apple spends approximately zero time writing drivers for hardware they don't support.

Cerberus

@KitFox Hmm doesn't IOS keep stuff in memory?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No, Noah wants to install MacOS as a host OS. Or so I assume.

KitFox

3:54 PM

@Cerberus Well, every time I switch from one thing to another, I get a load screen. Maybe I'm not using it properly, but that means the interface is not intuitive to old schoolers like me.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox on Android, you just press a button and it shows all your recent programs, in a little preview, so you can easily switch between tasks.

KitFox

But does it load them up? I can't seem to run two things at once.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

they stay running, mostly, until Android decides to stop them. As a user you're not supposed to worry about that. And it works really well most of the time, too.

Cerberus

Can I install OS X on my PC? Read this first.

KitFox

I've been thinking about getting a new phone, since my Desire is pretty broken.

I've dropped it a few too many times on concrete.

Cerberus

3:58 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Why, oh, why!

Robusto

@Noah: Why not just use VMWare Fusion?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

> Most WiFi adapters and WiFi cards don't work with Mac OS X