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00:37
Anybody here ever do disk encryption?
(Not I, though I have heard True Crypt to be good freeware.)
01:25
@MattЭллен Just as I was drinking some tea, this caught the corner of my eye, and I suddenly realized how disgusting the idea was and laughed and almost got the tea up my nose.
reminds me of the time I had just finished meticulously cleaning my computer keyboard, and then I was sitting down at the keyboard to enjoy a nice cup of sweet tea, and I choked, and the tea spurted out all over the wall, the screen, my desk, and my keyboard. The keyboard was clean for about 10 minutes, maybe.
Oh NOES!
@Kitḫ Er, no. My one mac laptop has some sort of option for it (or at least to encrypt some files, probably not the whole disk) but I was afraid it would slow the poor thing down even more so I've never even tried that.
01:42
Macs. sigh
I'm so forgetful that I would also be afraid I'd never remember how to decrypt my super-secure stuff, and I'm much more concerned about backing up and not losing files (old photos, projects, etc.) than I am about privacy. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, but it's how it is.
@Kitḫ I have like five computers.
Maybe more.
Depends how alive or dead they have to be to count.
I have about that many too.
I think we might be the same person.
I'm beginning to worry about that as well.
But, wait, you're older, aren't you? Maybe you're future me.
Oh dude! That would be so freaking awesome!
I want a future me!
01:49
Are you watching Mythbusters and L&O: UK right now?
I am watching Criminal Minds
@Kitḫ No but I wish I were!
@aediaλ OMG! In the future...
In the future do I still have to vacuum?
(My family is coming to visit this weekend.)
In the future, you will watch Mythbusters and L&O: UK.
gasp My family is coming to visit this weekend too!
01:54
@Kitḫ And no vacuuming and cleaning?
Wait, it's a holiday weekend. That's not really surprising.
Poo, probably still vacuuming and cleaning, huh.
@Kitḫ You could pretend it's surprising!
STEVE. ;_;
lolwut?
@aediaλ Steve Jobs died. Not enough chatrooms are discussing it.
01:57
:(
@Mana Yeah, I saw that on Facebook statuses
I thought it was a hoax until I checked Google News
That's sad. But I also don't feel the need to discuss someone famous right when they've died. It almost seems... morbid? We'll be discussing Jobs' legacy for years to come; it doesn't seem necessary to do what some news stations do and summarize the person's life, that kind of thing... I don't know.
It seems like it presents a timely opportunity to educate but it's harsh to think that that's the one time you're going to tell people all this stuff, or like, "The guy's dead. How sad. 5 minutes later... Let's sum up his life in a few trite words!"
I guess I just don't get this big public grief process thing.
It's a reminder that we have to live the life we have, because it may not be long. I think everyone will agree that he lived his life, he accomplished a lot. I wonder if he had any regrets.
My condolences to all Apple fans and adepts of Jobs in particular.
02:23
I bet Steve Jobs is in iCloud 9 right now... We will miss you Steve.
Haha.
nice joke I came up with..
eh?
BTW, was Steve Chrisitan?
@Cerberus I am, in fact, a great fan of some aspects of Apple; I have been critical of others, but I do feel that Apple has in recent years driven innovation, and changed the way people use smartphones and other devices. Much of their visual style is beautiful, worthy of imitation. I was sorry when Jobs stepped down due to illness.
@SonicTheHedgehog That's why I laughed! And the cats are great too.
It must have been a difficult choice for him, and the whole course of his illness, very difficult on his family, I'm sure.
02:27
I heard that his illness was quicken due to the news of Samsung suing Apple the day before...
Lots of sueing these days..
I don't know much about him, and now would not be the time to criticize Apple. But I am sorry he is dead.
Amanda Knox, Conrad Murray, Apple vs. Sansung....
Nah, not criticising Apple... I use Ipod ...3 or 4... Idk, Idc...
No, I meant I wasn't going to criticize it, as I normally do.
@SonicTheHedgehog Apple and Samsung have been suing each other for a while. I'm sure that had absolutely nothing to do with his illness or death. Jobs was a businessman, there's no way he'd take patent-lawsuit-shenanigans so personally.
02:47
@SonicTheHedgehog It is unlikely that a single day's events affected the course of his illness. Pancreatic cancer simply has a low survival rate. Some reports are that Jobs had a rare type, islet cell (endocrine) tumors; the survival rates are a bit better for this, but still, the median survival is six years. In this regard, Jobs, otherwise extraordinary, was "average".
Well, I've finished an EL&U blogpost, sent email about the Grrmmrr Grrl interview, herded some cats into my Mandarin class, and various other things. I think that's enough non-work work for the evening. see you all later
It's sad to think that being really awesome doesn't allow you to cheat fate.
@MrShinyandNew安宇 G'night!
I've got to go do those chores I was complaining about and quit playing on the interwebs too.
 
9 hours later…
11:43
hello
anyone here?
This is general reference:
-1
Q: How to visualize a "drawn mouth"

Ulukamwhat could possibly mean a "drawn mouth". She looked back at us from the door, and I had a last impression of that beautiful haunted face, the startled eyes, and the drawn mouth. Then she was gone.

Jez
Jez
12:26
hello
g'mornin
good morning
or, afternoon, for you UKians
salut
I have discovered that home fries for breakfast make me less likely to plot murder.
@Kitḫ That's an interesting discovery. You should write up a paper about this, Think of the savings in policing if you can simply reduce crime by feeding potential murderers home fries!
Jez
Jez
0
Q: Why must "do" frequently be paired with "not"?

JezI've always wondered wy English insists on pairing not with do, when negating an action. For example, you say: I do not like that coat. Instead of: I not like that coat. When you're not negating, however, there is no need for do (except that it can optionally be used as an intensifie...

English could do with being more logical... think of all those contractions we have solely for the purpose of merging "do" with "not"... don't, doesn't, etc.
when we could just be saying "he not like that"
12:37
I think your question has the relationship backwards. It's "not" that is frequently paired with "do".
Jez
Jez
no it isn't; how else would you negate a sentence?
"not" is necessary, "do" isn't
Right. And yet it isn't used alone, instead it's paired with "do"
Jez
Jez
that's what i said
I'm pretty sure that's a dupe @Jez.
Your question seems to be asking about "do" when it should be asking about "not", and why "not" can't stand alone.
Jez
Jez
12:38
@Kit I looked for other questions like it, didn't see any.
It's about do support. I'm looking.
Jez
Jez
@MrShinyandNew it pretty much does ask that, when it says that "not" is described as an adverb and hence should just be allowed to be paired with the main verb (eg. "like")
Don't worry, @Reg will find it, he has an open browser tab for every question and every chat message.
@Kitḫ that sounds delicious. i hope you enjoyed them
me, i drank way too much beer for a weeknight last night
@Jez I am specifically referring to your question's title, which seems backwards to me. "Why must do be paired with not" when it seems more logical to say "why must not be paired with do"
12:40
@JSBᾶngs Very much so. I am a happy girl.
@JSBᾶngs Goodness and with little people to care for and everything!
@JSBᾶngs Wasn't last night a wednesday?
12
Q: English questions and negation with *do* in syntax

Felix DombekA former lecturer of mine once explained why, from a syntactic point of view, the English rule that negation and questions are formed with the auxiliary do follows from other syntactic facts about English. More precisely, if you gave a good syntactician not familiar with English a corpus of Engl...

Is this it?
Jez
Jez
@MrShinyandNew depends how you interpret the sentence I guess. Do you pair a girl with a chaperone, or pair a chaperone with a girl?
@MrShinyandNew安宇 yep. but my sister is visiting with her husband and baby boy, so that was our occassion
this is the first time i've met the little nephew
Jez
Jez
> "Gave you the present to Mary?" and "He went not to the cinema."
interesting examples; both sound like valid old English, and somewhat-valid quaint modern English
12:42
So does that answer your question, @Jez?
Jez
Jez
the invasion of "do" everywhere is slightly unwelcome.
It's one of Kosmo's answers, which is why I am partial to it.
Jez
Jez
hmm, but you can say "i know not where he came from"
so the rule seems to be flaky
@Jez Well, in this case it seems to me that the "not" is required, but for some reason has a "do" paired to it, whereas in other sentences the "do" is just there, and you can't put a "not" in without inverting the meaning.
@Jez You can, but it's a little odd.
Jez
Jez
12:45
@MrShinyandNew My point was that in either example, one would interpret the chaperone as being "assigned" to the girl because of context
either is acceptable
@Jez Either is technically correct but it seems to me that the emphasis is on the wrong place. Are you talking about the girl, or the chaperone? If you think the girl should be perfectly ok to go on the streets alone, you might ask why was she paired with a chaperone. If you think the chaperone should only be supervising a boy, you might ask why was the chaperone paired with a girl.
Jez
Jez
nitpicking.
@Jez Let's just say that when I read the title my first thought was "WTF is he talking about" but when I read the body I realized "Oh, he's wondering why we add "do", not why we add "not"".
Anyway, I have nothing further to add, I didn't edit the title, so if you still disagree with me, so be it.
And @Kit, I'm not fully satisfied with Kosmonaut's answer. It seems to suggest that we need a verb in there to have a verb in there, but I feel that it is begging the question.
Jez
Jez
@Kit that question doesn't seem quite the same as mine. I'm really asking why "not" needs a verb in front of it when other adverbs don't
"you are not fast"
"Do not go there"
"it is not far away"
Then why is your title about "do"?
Jez
Jez
12:57
well, because it's usually "do"
You need to clarify what you are asking because what you just said and what you wrote are two completely different things.
"is not far", is that not negating is? or far?
and also, "to be" is a very special verb in english, lots of the normal rules don't apply
Jez
Jez
@MrShinyandNew I'd say it's negating "is"
otherwise, i'd say "it is near"
@Jez you can say that, because "far" has a handy antonym.
Jez
Jez
"I like not this news - bring me some other news!!!"
13:06
Ok, so after thinking about it, it seems that there IS a difference between "I like not" and "I not like", in that the former, which sounds old-fashioned, is fine, but the latter doesn't work for some reason that is not clear to me, so we put a "do" (or "would" or "should" or some other helper verb, depending on the meaning) in front.
"I not like" is logical but not grammatical in English
Note: that IS how it would be said in Mandarin: "wǒ xīhuăn -> wǒ bù xīhuăn"
Jez
Jez
yeah, i'm just not sure why
And Kosmonaut says that it's because for some reason "not" blocks the verb tense information in a way that other adverbs don't.
And so now that I understand, sorta, why all of that is, I'm going to agree that it is a dupe, in a sense.
Good question though.
even if the title is COMPLETELY CONFUSING AND MISLEADING :)
Argh. This OP edited his post to put "thanks" back in, and then has the gall to point me to a meta post that says editing out salutations shouldn't be the only edit
1
Q: Origin & meaning of "You catch more flies with honey..."

jadarnel27I'm having trouble understanding the rationale behind the meaning of an American-English phrase of I which I just became aware. That phrase is: You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar From what (I think) I understand, now, this phrase would indicate that "You make more fri...

damnit i was writing an amazing answer for Jez
Jez
Jez
heh
13:20
Can someone help me explain to that OP why "thanks" don't go in posts?
there must be a meta post somewhere...
@simchona I added a link to this:
147
A: Should 'Hi', 'thanks,' taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?

TheTXII've always been against the greetings and salutations (along with other extraneous clutter) in questions for a number of reasons: It will leave even less room in the question preview so that we have more difficulty gauging what a question consists of by reading the preview. It takes time to re...

The top, accepted answer from the meta that Jeff linked to in the meta the OP posted.
Jez
Jez
hmm. question: how did we decide which direction clockwise would be?
Thanks @Hugo!
@Jez General reference. Clockwise is the direction of the sun and shadows on a sundial.
Circular motion can occur in two possible directions. A clockwise (typically abbreviated as CW) motion is one that proceeds in the same direction as a clock's hands: from the top to the right, then down and then to the left, and back to the top. In a mathematical sense, a circle defined parametrically in a positive Cartesian plane by the equations x = sin t and y = cos t is traced clockwise as t increases in value. Described another way, continually turning right is clockwise motion, as viewed from above. The opposite sense of rotation or revolution is (in American English) countercl...
13:26
@Jez the sun on sundials
@Jez I answered your question, but over in its duplicate
0
A: English questions and negation with *do* in syntax

Matt Эллен(I was writing this for a question that got closed as a duplicate of this (Why must “not” frequently be paired with “do”?), so sorry if it's not quite right.) If you say "I not like him" what do you mean? You need a helper verb there to correctly express the meaning: I am not like him You ...

Jez
Jez
i wouldn't be surprised if clockwise motion determined the left-to-right writing direction, and certainly the direction you turn knobs to switch from 0% -> 100%
If the Earth rotated in the opposite direction, would most people be left-handed?
@Jez I recall reading somewhere that if clocks had been invented (or popularized) by a culture from the southern hemisphere, that they would go backwards.
Jez
Jez
clocks would go the other way
the southern hemisphere?
And I'm pretty sure that writing direction is influenced by handed-ness, that is, we right from left to right so that we don't smudge our words. The (ancient) Chinese write from right to left but also top to bottom, so they don't smudge because the next word is below the previous
Jez
Jez
@MrShinyandNew and the Arabs?
13:32
and the Hebrews?
and the Japanese?
Jez
Jez
japanese is RTL?
books are
I don't know about actual writing
@MattЭллен The Japanese learned writing from the Koreans who got it from the Chinese.
Jez
Jez
JP wikipedia looks LTR
13:33
@Jez jp is traditionally top-to-bottom, with columns read RTL
Modern Chinese and Japanese are often LTR
however when written horizontally, it's LTR
maybe it's just the way that the manga are printed
like @MrShiny said
Check this:
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language. General properties Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to comprehend the text. In contrast, other possible symbolic systems such as information signs, painting, maps and mathematics often do not require prior knowledge of a spoken language. Every human community possesses language, which many regard as an innate and defining condition of mankind. ...
Egyptian hieroglyphs were written in either horizontal direction, with the animal and human glyphs turned to face the beginning of the line.
The early alphabet could be written in multiple directions,[10] horizontally (left-to-right or right-to-left) or vertically (up or down). It was commonly written boustrophedonically: starting in one (horizontal) direction, then turning at the end of the line and reversing direction.
13:34
I don't know why arabic is RTL, but I'm pretty sure that hebrew is related to arabic.
he Greek alphabet and its successors settled on a left-to-right pattern, from the top to the bottom of the page. Other scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew, came to be written right-to-left.
@MattЭллен manga are printed in the traditional style. actually all japanese books are bound in the RTL format.
Scripts that incorporate Chinese characters have traditionally been written vertically (top-to-bottom), from the right to the left of the page, but nowadays are frequently written left-to-right, top-to-bottom, due to Western influence, a growing need to accommodate terms in the Roman alphabet, and technical limitations in popular electronic document formats.
@JSBᾶngs i see. good to know :)
@Hugo has the right idea here
13:36
@Hugo It's pretty easy to read Chinese in any direction, as long as you know what direction it is supposed to be, since so many written words are a single glyph (especially ancient chinese). unlike English, where reading it RTL is hard because the words are internally also LTR
Having learned Hebrew, it's RTL
@MrShinyandNew安宇 Interesting. So how do you know the initial direction? Context, or special markers?
@MrShinyandNew安宇 lol
@Hugo Well, only two systems are really used. top-to-bottom columns in RTL order, or LTR rows in TTB order. It's easy to see by the spacing whether you're looking at rows or columns. But even if it were some other order, as long as you had some idea what that order was it should be relatively easy to read.
13:39
@MrShinyandNew安宇 Are there ever any "jokes" or clever word plays where some text can be read in either direction and say something else?
Interestingly, there are some cases where the characters appear to be RTL in a single row, because it's actually lots of RTL columns that are only 1 character tall. (Classical order is often used on signs, and a signs, for example)
@Hugo not that I know of. But I'm sure you could make the equivalent of an acrostic poem in chinese, it'd be very tricky, but surely doable.
@MrShinyandNew安宇 well, the problem is that your text would have to be a perfect square, and most texts aren't
@JSBᾶngs yeah. And depending on how many directions you wanted to support, it'd be really tricky. But I'm sure it's been done... I haven't seen any examples
however, sanskrit does this thing called slesa which is conceptually similar, except way harder: languagehat.com/archives/004380.php
You'd probably have to use poetic language and poetic license, a bit
@JSBᾶngs That kind of thing is not common in English but does exist, and would be possible in Chinese too. One trick in Chinese is to remove the spaces between words, and suddenly the reader has to infer word-breaks, and different inferences can totally change the meanings.
13:48
@MrShinyandNew安宇 isn't chinese normally written without spaces between words? i thought that word spacing was a crutch for language learners
^ please star this so that everybody sees it. (i am so not above begging for publicity)
Jez
Jez
I'd forgotten about this site
It's cool; technically you can name any possible number in English
"one hundred twenty three nongenseptenoctoginmilliaduoseptuagintillion"
its full name is about 250MB of text
14:05
awesome
Jez
Jez
three hundred sixteen quattuor-millia-millia-trecen-sex-vigin-millia-un-sexagin-tillion, [...], five hundred eleven
that's one hell of a [...]
Jez
Jez
yup
@Jez It'd read better if it ended [...], five hundred and eleven. :)
Jez
Jez
yep, but missing out the "and" is a common Americanism
like "in the year two thousand eight..."
I like "For all of the digits (25.70 Megabytes) see:" ... "Or if you must, all of the digits in text form (362.91 Megabytes):"
"if you must", lol
i must see 362 megs of text! i have need of it.
14:18
@JSBngs Really great story. I dug it.
I really, really liked it.
thanks, @Kit
Hi.
@Kit: Did you go to your boss?
@Cerberus Sorta.
hi @cerb :)
@Kitḫ Was it sort of satisfactory?
@MattЭллен Morning!
14:29
@Cerberus i would think that Kit never lets herself be only sort of satisfied
@Cerberus !! I didn't realise Amsterdam was so far ahead of the UK
@JSBᾶngs Sometimes I have little control over it.
@Kitḫ ah, well, sometimes things just don't come your way
@JSBᾶngs She is a lady you know: she is modest at heart.
@MattЭллен Yeah it's a gulf apart. Times zones, and all, you know.
Goedemorgen/middag!
14:34
@Cerberus Who is?
Goedemiddag!
@Kitḫ You, silly!
@Cerberus Kinda. Not really. But not bad.
@JSBᾶngs I guess word-spacing is optional, depends on the document.
btw, @Kit, my mental image of you is not mostly breasts. i'm more influenced by that shot of your son resting on your chest.
@Kitḫ What did you say? Or is that private?
14:35
He told me that I should tell my project lead to rein it in, if I wanted too.
Ah, OK.
That sounds like, "this is too much work for me to solve, let them solve it together; but I like the girl better and will support her if I am absolutely forced to".
This one?
yes, that's the one
Awww.
14:36
it's adorable
Aww!
Now you know what my chin looks like!
@Kitḫ that's a new one!
I can tell that he's going to conquer the world.
14:37
And you can tell I have freckles.
And share power with my cat.
@Kitḫ i can extrapolate an entire person from a chin
@JSBᾶngs It's actually about three years old.
@JSBᾶngs Yeah if we had a chunk of flesh and a DNA sequencer...
@Kitḫ funny, i would have thought that your chin was the same age as the rest of you
14:37
@JSBᾶngs Especially with a partially developed genetic haploid's face to assist you.
@JSBᾶngs The picture! That's my eldest boy.
AWWWH!
this is close to my mental image of kit:
Hmm are all women "genetic haploids"? I don't know much about biology.
(i don't particularly care how much that actually resembles kit)
@JSBᾶngs Yeah I can see what you mean. Except the glasses, they need to go.
14:40
That's pretty close actually.
@Cerberus but the whole conversation was started yesterday when kit complained about her near-sightedness
But I like the actual Kit better.
I had glasses like that until last year.
@JSBᾶngs Oh, right. But of course she wouldn't be wearing them when a picture was taken!
@Cerberus My son is my genetic haploid, only not really. He has half my genetic code.
14:40
@Kitḫ Oops. ducks
@Kitḫ Ooh, it's as simple as that, huh. I see.
OK. Gotta run. Later!
Why not really?
@Kit perhaps you can provide us with a celebrity proxy image of yourself, in much the same way that my celebrity proxy image is Daniel Craig
@Cerberus Damn. No. Not that simple. He also has all of my mitochondrial DNA, but I have to go.
And haploids are different than sharing half of DNA.
Haha OK.
14:42
But I have to go!
Later!
Ask me later.
bye @Kit!
Byes!
cya @Kit :)
Jez
Jez
14:44
3000 rep
@Jez congrats
Ploidy is the number of sets of chromosomes in a biological cell. Human sex cells (sperm and egg) have one complete set of chromosomes from the male or female parent. Sex cells, also called gametes, combine to produce somatic cells. Somatic cells, therefore, have twice as many chromosomes. The haploid number (n) is the number of chromosomes in a gamete. A somatic cell has twice that many chromosomes (2n). Humans are diploid. A human somatic cell contains 46 chromosomes: 2 complete haploid sets, which make up 23 homologous chromosome pairs. However, many organisms have more than two ...
Good luck with your closing powers, @Jez :D
I think maybe Kit said not really because no matter how we look at it, a person is diploid and it's only really sex cells that are haploid, but I dunno. We can bother her later :)
@Jez Oooh congratulations!
Jez
Jez
A sign language (also signed language) is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns (manual communication, body language) to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's thoughts. Wherever communities of deaf people exist, sign languages develop. Their complex spatial grammars are markedly different from the grammars of spoken languages. Hundreds of sign languages are in use around the world and are at th...
14:52
@aediaλ yeah it was kind of confusing. the baby is diploid (an actual haploid would have died while it was still a single cell), but it has half of her nuclear dna.
Jez
Jez
Must be a problem being deaf; I never really consider it, but I just think of "sign language"
thing is, there are a ton of mutually-unintelligible sign languages!
@Jez yep. pretty much every country has one.
Jez
Jez
imagine finding a "signer" in a new country, only to discover that they sign a totally different language
and most people who learn "sign language", at least in the US, do not actually learn sign language the way its spoken by deaf natives. they learn, at best, Signed English, which is a whole different beast.
Jez
Jez
why don't they learn the former?
14:54
@Jez because it's much harder, and a lot of people are unaware of the difference
Jez
Jez
I am quite amazed at how they can represent spoken language with the hands, though.
Like when they spell out names and stuff
or large numbers
Fingerspelling, you mean?
Jez
Jez
it can't be spelling every letter, it's more likely to be sounds or something
ASL is typologically very different from english, with different syntax and semantics that can be difficult for english speakers to grok. english speakers that just want to communicate with deaf friends usually learn signed english, since that's a word-for-word equivalent to english, only signed rather than spoken
Jez
Jez
@JSBngs perhaps because it's based on French Sign Language?
they should've based it on BSL
14:56
@Jez but the point is that real ASL is not "representing spoken language with hands". it's a purely signed language, with no relationship at all to english
Jez
Jez
then you've got technical terminology
it's interesting that sign language keeps up
@Jez from what i understand, FSL is also pretty different from spoken french.

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