@Reg: An add-on for FF and Chrome that lets you watch blocked videos on Youtube, Hulu etc. by using proxies when necessary (haven't tried it because I already have Tunnelbear). lifehacker.com/5913286/…

@Cerberus That seems evil.

@DavidWallace Evil? How?

blocked by who/what?

@Mitch By the German RIAA, for example, called GEMA.

Who are extremely block happy.

Reg can never watch the Youtube videos that we can.

I just tried signing up for Netflix, which is said to be nearly impossible.

But it seems with a proxy and a virtual credit card it should be possible.

But they make it so hard that just getting films and series elsewhere is less trouble, even though I would gladly pay (a reasonable price) for it.

all you tube videos, or just select ones?

@Cerberus OK, not evil. I guess I'm just not familiar with the concept of the government censoring stuff. Ours doesn't.

@Mitch A great many select ones, apparently, as he seems to be unable to watch about 50 % of the videos we link to in this chat.

@DavidWallace It's not the government but big corporations that censor, in these cases.

Just as you can't watch Netflix, Hulu, the BBC...for no good reason, because they could very well make a handsome profit selling subscriptions to you at a reasonable price.

Just as you can't buy all kinds of music and films from Amazon, I believe (since I can't).

In case you're not sure how to discuss football with random people.

> @Vit: In its latest annual Internet security threat report, Symantec, the maker of Norton AntiVirus software, found that “religious and ideological sites” have far surpassed pornographic websites as targets for criminal hackers. According to the company you’re now three times as likely to encounter malware—insidious software that can steal your data, pelt you with spam, or enslave your machine in a botnet—on your local church blog as you are on a porn site.

— slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/05/…

So you are at risk.

@Cerberus because Vitaly spends far too much time on his local church blog.

@DavidWallace He spends to much time on every church blog, for he is always posting images and quotations.

It's bed time here. Say hi to Gigi!

In case you speak to her.

@Cerberus If I speak to her, I will certainly say hi.

washingtonpost.com/national/…

"works like a champ" vs "works like a charm"

charm

Is the first one rarely used?

@Meysamرهادربند I've never heard it. But there must be some parts of the world where it's used - Google has 4.23M hits on it; as opposed to 23.9M for "works like a charm".

@Meysamرهادربند works like a champ is in the eggcorn database. The original is "works like a charm".

@MattЭллен I feel that if that comment is to be useful to Meysam, someone should probably explain what an eggcorn is.

oh, well I thought that was common knowledge here...

@Meysam: an eggcorn is an accidental alteration of a common idiom to one that sounds similar and logical.

My wife used to make me pizza with egg, corn and pineapple.

I spent today trying to make my rep on ELU and my rep on SO equal. I just about had it, then someone downvoted me here, and my day was wasted.

lol

Took you a month.

Oh heh.

Why must you post these things on our National Holiday?

I was far removed from Internet access.

In any case, it turns out the reason is not so much related to religion directly, but rather to the fact that church sites are usually run by amateurs.

You mean you don't read the log? Such sacrilege!!!

Of course I don't.

Do you?

Not that everything people say here isn't terribly interesting cough.

> A new report indicates that Facebook, fresh off its initial public offering, is in talks to acquire Web browser maker Opera Software.

HELL NO. Please don't let that happen. Ramen!

Yuck.

Why do they even want Opera?

Facebook is annoying.

They want their own browser, apparently.

It seems the big four are converging in their activities.

But how profitable is a browser?

Google, MS, FB, and Apple all seem to want to do all the same things: search engine, mobile phone, browsers, operating system, social network, online file-sharing, e-mail.

@Cerberus no idea, but fb wants to expand into the mobile market, and guess what browser is huge there? opera mobile

Hmm good point, it could be the mobile browsers they're after.

I use Opera Mini every day.

I've used Opera since like forever as my primary browser

I know.

I can't imagine what horrors would happen if FB were to acquire them :(

I use it occasionally, and I have used Opera Unite for a long time.

I don't even have an account there, for FSM's sake.

At Facebook?

FSM?

Yes; Flying Spaghetti Monster

Oh haha.

BRB

Hmm I'm trying to log into Stackexchange with Opera...

But OpenID/Stackexchange always sucks as to logging in.

Ah, I am there.

> Opera 5, released on December 6, 2000, was the first version which was ad-sponsored instead of having a trial period.[16] Version 5 also supported ICQ, but this was dropped from later versions.

Yeah, it sucked at that time that they dropped ICQ support from later versions.

I‎CQ was the primary mode of Internet texting in Russia back then.

I remember ICQ.

It had a flowery icon, hadn't it?

Yeah.

Too bad I lost the password for my 5-digit ICQ UIN.

Aww.

Haha wtf.

@MattЭллен Thanks for the info Matt, and @DavidWallace :)

Does this ^ help?

Haha.

Hey, you are using an older version of the same theme, it seems.

Which theme?

Opera?

Yeah.

I never changed anything.

No?

That doesn't look like the standard Opera skin.

The green is just my regular Windows interface colour.

I mean the buttons.

No idea, never changed anything.

Shift+F12, Skins, what do you have selected there?

Huh.

Oh, I must be remembering the standard Opera 9 skin.

Heh.

I don't know, I'm using Opera 11 or something.

I don't remember seeing that skin.

Not even on Opera 9.

@Cerberus I wanted to star it but it's dropboxed.

There, for posterity.

That's nice. How is it doing?

@Cerberus You'll be delighted to know that the spider survived the Russian winter, and is now feeding on a fly I caught for him.

Very.

So it's a guy?

Apparently.

You aren't sure?

Where do you keep it?

It lives on the balcony, duh.

Exactly where I found him and his spider web a year ago.

Ah.

Is he big?

No. :(

Picture!

Males don't grow big.

Could it be that you anthropomorphise your spidey?

Is that a verb?

@Cerberus We have an understanding. You wouldn't understand!

I...guess I wouldn't.

Why "would"?

Why not?

Determine it.

determines

And what is your determination?

Next thing you'll be asking is how much my spider spends on mobile phones.

Uhh...

Spider ≠ owl.

Unless your spider has somehow developed wings.

My only grievance is that it's not a particularly bright spider. Whenever he gets some food, he runs into his hidey spot afraid of his own flapping and twitching food, sits there while getting himself together, and only then decided to be brave enough and take a look at his food.

It's annoying because sometimes I need to catch the same frigging fly or weevil over and over and over again and put it back if it escapes.

Good thing I don't need to do it that often: the spider only needs to feed once a week or two, and doesn't eat at all during moulting.

@Vitaly decides*

Oh well. Genius-level spiders are hard to come by in Moscow these days.

Who says it isn't smart?

It may be very wise not to come running as soon as food presents itself.

Natural selection has not trained it for nothing.

P.S. I hate when people confuse natural selection with evolution.

Nope. The patterns of web twitching for wasps (and other dangerous insects) and flies (and other edible insects) are very different.

But who knows what the fly could mean?

It could mean that an evil human is trying to lure it out.

Hah.

Not running after food immediately is a safeguard against unknown dangers, probably.

Again, the patterns are very different.

Especially when certain things like sunlight or large vibrations of mammal steps are present.

That particular spider is just not very bright and can't figure it out.

It may be pretending not to be bright.

I know because I've seen smarter garden spiders.

The smartest people know how to play dumb when necessary.

Why do you always try to turn small pet talk into some metaphorical philosophy?

I was joking, silly.

I was bored.

How do I hyphenate small pet talk? Small-pet talk or small pet-talk?

Probably small-pet talk, depending on what you mean.

You know how it works, right?

But I mean both.

If no pair of words belong closer together than the other words, don't use any hyphens.

The hyphens serve to disambiguate. If they cannot do that, they should not be used.

On a tangentially related note, get Biology of Spiders from that site. Now!

Then what?

Then read.

Especially the part about different types of vibrations (wind, courtship signals from conspecifics, prey, etc).

I trust your insights.

I always figured they would be able to distinguish various causes very well.

sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347211003356

Ah, the assassin bug.

Have you seen the video of the assassin bugs going after a young bat?

Quite interesting.

How where is the oscillogram from that paper?

The full text doesn't have it. :-/

Oh, that was from another paper

> Representative waveforms of vibrations generated by (a) bug plucking web, (b) leaf impacting web, (c) single aphid vibration making a small leg or body movement, (d) single vinegar fly vibration making a small leg or body movement, (e) aphid impacting web, (f) vinegar fly impacting web, (g) male spider making a small movement or step, (h) male spider ‘stridulating’ in web, (i) aphid wing beats in web and (j) vinegar fly wing beats in web. Note differences in time and amplitude scales.

Interesting.

I know!

@Cerberus Oh, and one more thing. In 2011, the spider got two flies at once because I had to move elsewhere, and he forgot where the second fly was after he returned to continue to feed on his first fly.

Spiders are supposed to have good memory skills for things like that. But not that one. :(

Oh...that is silly.

Perhaps he imitates his master.

You are his master?

Tell him to stop annoying me then.

^ points to master of silliness

Anyway, now that I know the spider is still there, I have to get a supply of maggots again, so that there are always fresh, juicy flies.

Can't you just feed it maggots?

I haven't tried, and I won't.

And how did it survive so long without your feeding it? Or does it need no feeding at all?

Maggots' biochemistry is radically different, I'd think.

Can't you let the spider decide for itself whether it likes maggots?

Oh, and maggots' pattern of twitching and moving is very different from that of an adult fly.

Have you never seen maggots or what? :P

Try it.

@Cerberus No, it doesn't. Not in winter.

It hibernates?

Kind of.

I think there is a more precise word for what spiders do when they overwinter, but I can't remember it.

No doubt. Hibernation makes me thing of mammals.

Or warm-blooded animals.

> In autumn the house spider Tegenaria deposits mainly fat, but also some carbohydrates and proteins in its body; this fuel is then metabolized during the winter, when no sources of food are available. After 50 days of starvation, 60% of the stored carbohydrates, 47% of the fatty acids, and 9% of the original proteins have already been metabolized (Collatz and Mommsen, 1974).

Granted, it's not the garden spider.

I'm trying to find the word.

I seem to also remember that large spiders are not exactly poikilothermic: they can keep the temperature of their abdomen significantly higher than the surroundings.

Hmm.

I keep reading about how they use insulation to keep fairly warm in winter.

> Most garden spiders ( Araneus species) can withstand temperatures of minus 20 °C, even in unprotected locations (Kirchner, 1973). It is not quite clear how these spiders achieve their remarkable resistance to cold. The spider’s hemolymph contains glycerol, which acts as an antifreezing agent, and the glycerol content is markedly higher in winter than in summer.

> Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that the glycerol alone can account for such resistance to cold, since this chemical lowers the freezing point of the spider’s hemolymph by only 1 °C

From Biology of Spiders.

Not to mention that my balcony is obviously adjacent to one of the rooms, which is kept warm in winter by central heating.

D'oh.

Well, whatever. I can't find the word.

Is there even a word?

Yeah.

See, scientists don't know how spiders survive! Azathoth does it!

All hail Azathoth!

@Cerberus Did you know that some garden spiders maintain their webs at night? I didn't until I saw it do its thing at 2 AM.

Hi. Would it be possible to know If a word is commonly used in everyday English?

Hi. What word?

Or are you asking in general? If yes, then it's possible to use certain corpora of English to determine the word's frequency across different registers.

For example?

For example, the freely available Corpus of Contemporary American English and British National Corpus.

But it's easier to just ask native English speakers if you have them around (none are present in this room at the moment, but Cerberus is quite close to one).

Here's the COCA chart for malarkey:

Cool.

And the chart for nonsense:

Malarkey is used 0.40 times per million words in the spoken genre, while nonsense is used 10.24 times per million.

@Vitaly You mean mend?

@cpx Do you have a specific word in mind?

I guess it makes sense to keep one's web in good condition at night, since there are all kinds of nocturnal bugs that one might want to catch.

Or is that not what you mean?

@Cerberus I mean that the spider sits in his retreat during the daytime, and mostly gets out to maintain his web at night. I have absolutely no idea why it is the case because 1) garden spiders are ectotherms 2) there are certainly no nocturnal bugs to catch.

If the web is damaged, the spider ignores that until night, and only then he gets out to repair it.

Besides, web maintenance doesn't necessarily involve mending.

What else, then?

The sticky threads get less sticky over time, and the spider might need to eat those that have become less sticky and produce new ones.

All right, I would consider than mending.

Either way, why do you say there are no nocturnal bugs?

Or do you mean for a particular species of spider in a specific habitat?

Bugs in the temperate areas are, uh, ectotherms? :P

Yes, so?

I mean my particular species of spider, yes.

I see all kinds of bugs at night, notably mosquitos.

Ah.

The one on my balcony.

And you have no bugs at night?

@Cerberus You consider mosquitos bugs?!

Sure?

I hate them sure enough.

Well, even if you do, a typical mosquito isn't nearly large enough to be caught by that spider's web.

Speaking of mosquitos…

Why would you not consider mosquitos bugs?

Eww.

As to why your spider only goes out at night, perhaps because predators are active mainly by day?

I hate those pests more than anything.

Well, I hate them as much as wasps and ticks.

It may very well be so, but as I said, I have no idea.

@Cerberus Then you have to love spiders.

I sort of like spiders.

As long as their sting doesn't hurt and they aren't scary and/or too close.

I would not kill spiders.

Nor do I destroy spider webs, except when they're in my way.

@Cerberus And by bug I mean a true bug. :P

It was I who used the word bug.

@Cerberus Good doggy.

I would kill spiders that hurt, if we had any here.

Like the brown recluse spider.

@Cerberus I'm explaining why I wouldn't consider mosquitos bugs.

@Cerberus Bad doggy.

No, bad spidey for stingey me.

@Vitaly All right, as long as you realize that most people won't mean true bugs when they are talking about a spider catching bugs.

As your exclamation mark seemed to challenge.

By the way, did you consider LotR III a sad film?

Haven't seen it.

Read the book?

Long ago.

Did you find it sad?

Because of what those mean hobbits did to poor Shelob?

No.

Why not?

Why on Earth would I get sad over a story?

No compassion for Shelob?

Look how cute.

No it isn't.

That thing looks as much like a spider as this one looks like a human:

Surely both humans and that thing have a head, upright posture, and two arms?

Matter of fact, the alien thing is closer to humans than that representation of Shelob to spiders: the latter doesn't even have a prosoma.

@Cerberus Actually I have multiple words in mind like acquaintance, intricate, elusive.

@cpx You would certainly hear those words in an educated environment.

And acquaintance as in "person you know" is probably more common than the others.

@Vitaly The humans in various LotR drawings probably don't resemble real humans very well either.

But it's nice that you have finally posted a picture of yourself.

So I decided to join a tournament at only 50m left and got Atlas and EMP. Figures. @Cerberus

I have a Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary - 3rd Edition on my S60 phone. Some words are marked as Easy, Intermediate, Advanced but the others such as intricate or elusive aren't.

So I take it because the words aren't used in spoken English?

@cpx That's because it's a learner's dictionary and the Advanced label corresponds to roughly B1 or B2 in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (intermediate or upper intermediate, respectively). That is, a learner at that level is expected to know the so-called “Advanced” words, but if your command of English as a foreign language is better (C1 or C2), it is assumed that you'd know better whether you should use words like intricate or elusive in some context

@cpx As Cerberus said, those words are used in an educated environment.

But I wouldn't expect your average American teenager to use them.

@Vitaly Such as college, universities or among people with that level of education?

I suppose so.

For elusive:

Yeah, 2.61 per mil can be said to be relatively low, but not low enough to ignore the word.

High frequency for Magazine and Academic Level

Oh, there might have been a misunderstanding. Those are not levels, they are genres.

The corpus is a collection of various texts sorted by genre, including transcripts of spoken English.

So the chart shows that you are more likely to encounter the word elusive in a newspaper or academic book than in spoken English.

If you click on “MAGAZINE” to display the subgenres of the magazine genre, you get this chart:

Which, in turn, shows that you are most likely to encounter elusive in magazines that publish articles about science and technology.

I see

Now, I have to register for continued use of the corpus.

I used 10-15 queries.

If you don't need detailed breakdowns by genres, you can get word frequency lists that are based on that very corpus here: wordfrequency.info

The freely available lists should suffice.

A registered non-researcher can use 100 queries per day, BTW.

@Vitaly: Usage note: "Just so that you know ..." => "Just so you know ..." You almost never hear the that used there.

@Robusto Thank you for keeping my English just so!

De nada.

In other news,

Hasn't happened in a while.

Grats.

Gracias.

@Vitaly: Could you tell me about the FREQ and PER MIL thing on the chart again please?

@cpx corpus.byu.edu/coca/help/display_charts_e.asp

PER MIL:

> The frequency of the matching strings per million words (normalized, to permit comparison across registers)

FREQ:

> The raw frequency of the matching strings in each register.