I spent a ridiculous amount of time on this today:

@Robusto yeah I only made a face for a split second after the very last note of each piece.

That said, this is the violin we're talking about, and this is my first year we're talking about, and also it's me we're talking about. So trust me the audience knew.

A friend made a recording of the better piece. I watched it and loled at every note. And the other piece she didn't even bother recording.

The funny part is, the piece that came out better was the harder one. Much faster, many more different bow strokes, and the very first note is in the middle of the fingerboard somewhere. But it came out better than the slow piece for noobs that starts on an open string.

@Jolenealaska now just throw in a couple Monacos, Liechtensteins, Maltas, and whatever Balkan has on offer at the time, and you're golden.

Hey

the following text is it correct?

Unfortunately, X's class is just a class of psychotherapy in which her problems are solved because she talks about herself a lot.

grammatically fine

@RegDwigнt That's the thing about playing music. Very often the slow pieces are the hardest ones to perform well.

@MattE.Эллен Thanks, is it sound true English ?

@Educ "is it sound true English?" is a weird question. English isn't usually described as sound, and the truth of the statement isn't something I can tell.

@Educ We would probably say "psychotherapy class" instead of "class of psychotherapy" ... and we'd be very unlikely to say "class of psychotherapy" at all, unless we meant something else. We might say "class in psychotherapy"

@MattE.Эллен what I meant I would like my sentence sound like native peaker who said it

@Robusto Thanks, What I want to say is That this professor X instead to explain the material he still talks about himself That's why I said psychotherapy is just like he spell out his suffer and complex to relax In our class instead of teaching us the real material

@Educ ah. so you meant "does it sound like good English?" i'd go with Rob's evaluation.

this KVM is driving me mad. It's cutting in and out so I have to keep writing things again. and sometimes it just repeats a character over and over again. it was meant to make my life easier, but it has made it worse

rails against technology

time for a mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm byeeee

meeting*

@Educ Try something like "Professor X's classes are like talk therapy for her. All we learn about is her problems."

@Robusto Thank you so much

@MattE.Эллен There is no virtue in a virtual machine.

@Robusto The largo movement of Cage's 4'33" is the worst.

@MattE.Эллен Key Value Metric? Kiwi Volume Management? Konzentriertevernichtungsmassen?

Oh Spring!

Oh Birds!

Oh Singing Birds!

The sun is out!

There is promise in the air!

No flowers yet, the grass is still brown gray

but you can see the grass, only the largest snow piles not yet gone.

But...

Just so you know

Just because the calendar says 'Spring'

Just because you're happy and singing a great tune

Winter is not over

It will snow again

It will freeze again at night, many nights

And you will probably die before it gets comfortable

Stupid bird

@Mitch Thanks for bringing me down. I was feeling too happy about spring. Who knows where those flights of birdsong might have taken me?

Wot.

@Mitch Keyboard Video Mouse switch

@RegDwigнt He had me at 'smoosh'

@MattE.Эллен WTF?

(What To Feel?)?

@Mitch ambivalent

I thought I understood English. and technology and shit. but what do those three words together in that sequence mean?

there's a switch between all three?

What alien technology is that?

I figure a switch between keyboard and mouse might be a thing, since it's hard to use both at the same time.

@Mitch How are you ?

please, I 've a question :

Are the course notes of my university professors necessary to revise for the competitions or is it better and more than sufficient to work on books?

@Mitch Do you still keep your note of taking of mathematics ?

@Mitch so, I have one screen, mouse and keyboard, but two computers. so I plug the screen, mouse, keyboard and the computers into the the kvm switch and I can switch between which computer I'm controlling with the touch of a button

(well the touch of three buttons: scroll-lock scroll-lock 1 (or 2))

This sounds like the kind of tech problem in plumbing: the hot water comes from a roof top solar heater, but in winter there is a basement water heater but they don't connect so you have to remember to switch the flow by a certain time but the weather and then those poor dying birds because they thought it was spring but it's not really.

Oh fercrissakes.

It's socks.

I forgot to put on socks.

un momentito

lol

Done

hm.

I suppose that's better

well, technically I have 4 screens, but I'm hoping that will reduce to two soon

I thought the trend is 'more'

I'm not trendy

or 'bigger'

certainly, one screen 1.5m wide and 1m high, would be fine

I mean it's almost 2020, we've all had flat screens for practically 15 years now. We should have those wall screens like in Fahrenheit 451, never go outside, and have life size avatars that we ignore we do to real people in real life.

@MattE.Эллен That is pretty poor resolution. A one pixel screen that is a square meter?

Oh my god. I not only need glasses but also whatever glasses would be for thinking.

@Mitch it's all I need, so long as it's a 32bit colour pixel

I really read that as 1.5mm x 1mm and thought 'wow, if that's one-pixel, it's pretty grainy'

Either I should go back to sleep or I should wake tf up.

:D

@Educ I'm pretty good. My poem about how awful the first moments of spring are because the birds are stupidly singing about how great spring is when really (at my latitude) winter is totally not over yet, well, that poem is just for fun. Because I'm not a bird and I got central heating. So sing! sing! sing!

swing! swing! swing!

both the thumbnails for sing sing sing and swing swing swing are quite creepy

@Educ I have no idea about your particular school system, so I really couldn't say. Are the profs making up the competitions? Even then, they may go way outside what they teach in class. For competations I would figure a major part of studying for them (but certainly not the only one) would be to study the old competition questions and answers.

Also, know everything.

although swing swing swing is creepier

@Educ I used to, but then recently went through throwing out a lot of old academic stuff. I kept journal articles of historic interest and those that I still think about. As to class notes, mostly only kept one or two classes out of nostalgia, not for content.

But text books, I totally keep.

But that's another problem... when ever I've had to move, textbooks are the worst. Breaks your back carrying them up and down stairs.

so true

I know it's not popular but math books with pictures are the best.

pictures of numbers?

that's just text

books on programming languages are the first to go. they are totally worthless.

I still have some old openGL "bibles" that I should chuck

@MattE.Эллен Oh you.

@Mitch me too; I would like to through them out because It creates dust that hurt my health that's why I'm thinking to through them away and for the books, I would like to scan them In order when I move on I wouldn't carry anything It suffices to print them from my PC

@MattE.Эллен exactly. at this point if I had to do openGL or React or mutexes in PHP or Prolog or Algol, I'd type a few characters, compile, google the error message and see what StackOverflow suggests

@Educ Yeah. Math is so cumulative that it is easy to get rid of notes on earlier subjects because it is in your head already by use.

@Educ not through, throw

it's a tough one, native speakers make the same spelling mistake

but if it is the last class... well it depends. Personally, y handwriting is awful so the textbook is going to be much better. Also my notes are what you call WORN, Write Once, Read Never.

A very poor studying habit

I can still basically read my notes. I don't want to throw them away. my parents paid well for my education!

@MattE.Эллен I'm not a native speaker of English

@MattE.Эллен Deep thought for today. Audio is a one-pixel transfer method that changes at 20Hz.

@MattE.Эллен Yeah. There's lots of things like that make me want to keep mine.

@Educ I know, that's why i was correcting you, to help?

@Mitch that is beyond my ken.

@MattE.Эллен Oh. OK. That makes sense now. But even more reminiscent of the plumbing difficulties.

@MattE.Эллен Thank you very much, I'm glad that you correct my mistakes

@MattE.Эллен Oh man it's wild ... takes drag from poorly rolled joint There are millions of receptor cells in the human eye (like a receptor pixel), but for the ear just one (well two, one on each side).

@Mitch I see!

and over a single transimisson line, the cochlea does an instantaneous Fourier Transform, and then the brain goes wild squeezing al this information out of it. which is really all you need to figure out that that picture you're looking at is a cat ignoring you.

Which is to say someone could have told you that and you'd be done.

and superheroes like dare devil can use hearing to mimic sight!

oh, and bats

@MattE.Эллен There's been a lot of progress in PR. It's like films of Olympic gymnastics in the 50's. The guy just jumps over a vault using a trampoline. That's it. Pretty underwhelming. Nowadays, they do triple twist back handsprings before they get to the vault.

@MattE.Эллен Oh yeah. That's a good super hero

I don't believe that's actually possible. But it's more plausible than flying or time travel or telepathy.

@MattE.Эллен Frankly Batman is the only real life possible one. But then I don't care.

@Mitch There are blind people who user clickers to echolocate around. I doubt it's as high definition as what DD does

@MattE.Эллен I think it is over... over somethinged.

@Mitch batman ... Elon Musk hmmmm?

I'm sure it can tell them if there's a wall fairly close, or the vague size of a room.

@MattE.Эллен He's more Iron Man, but yeah.

mostly the same

@Mitch I guess, but those two are quite similar

batman and ironman

yeah

not personality wise, but money into inventions wise

right

EM is young. Hopefully he'll turn a corner and work on stuff like huge dyke works to protect Bangladesh or cure stupidity or something.

and stop trying to build things noone needs, like that train or that submarine. Tesla is OK, and rockets to Mars... alright.

but if he could crack usable nuclear fusion for the grid, that would be something

@Mitch Why lesbians?

I don't think he's lesbian.

I think he means dijk

Oh, really.

The main thing Musk has is a ton of money.

I don't believe he really is an inventor or anything, is he?

So, yes, it would be nice if the super rich spent their money of stuff that benefits society or nature.

I guess he's probably more of an Edison than a Tesla (ironically)

I know we counted magnetic field strength (?) in Tesla; about Edison I know little. Wasn't he a manufacturer of light bulbs?

people claim Edison invented the lightbulb, but he paid other people to and claimed the patent

Tesla actually invented stuff

Typical...

Ceterum censeo patenta esse delenda.

I get the use of patents where people abide by the law and are strongly influenced by greed. If you develop something into a product you need to be able to recoup your investment. patent trolls, on the other hand spits

"we have no intention of ever developing software with this functionality, and we didn't come up with the idea, just bought the idea of someone else, but if you develop software with this functionality, you'll need to pay us."

what awful people

There are bad patents and worse...

Patents are a monopoly created by the government, to benefit inventors.

temporary monopoly

it's not as bad as copyright

I feel that, if the government feels the need to sponsor inventors, it should do so without causing harm to society, if at all possible.

@Cerberus They absorb more water?

yes, there could be a better way.

@Cerberus He's getting stuff done. Like Steve Jobs.

If a thousand companies can produce a product, there will be continuous competition, innovation, improvement. Other companies can make other products building on the original invention. Etc. If only one company can make a product for 25 years, that is stagnation. And every little step of technical progress can be patented. It's very bad for society and the economy.

Instead, governments could just reward inventions without the collateral damage.

Just pay the money directly.

@MattE.Эллен Edison was pretty smart. He just wasn't an alien genius stranded by time travel in the late 19th c.

And pay part/most of the money later, if/when the inventor can show that his invention is put to good use.

@Cerberus Carthago really was delenda'd

And so shall patents.

@MattE.Эллен 'rent seeking'. I learned that term not too long ago.

@Mitch and that was his greatest failing. I only respect time travelling aliens.

Yes.

Copyright is worse in that the bars are set to terribly low and the reach terribly wide; better in that copyrighted stuff is less important for society.

@MattE.Эллен We'll only ever be respected by the Martian s of the past.

@Cerberus It can't be that simple. Patent law was invented because a lot of people were being screwed without it. It's just the modern version can be mean.

@Mitch Simple?

What if English is changing so fast that all of our answers on EL&U of a few years ago are suddenly out of date?

The current situation is a horrible mess.

The law was invented because of a lobby of rich people.

It can only get better.

@Cerberus re patents, you're just saying 'it's a monopoly, which are bad, stop it', I don't think it's all that simple.

@Cerberus copyright covers all software (where copyrights exist), so not really true.

@MattE.Эллен Creepier than Alice Cooper?

@Robusto Bleep bloop?

@Mitch Why not?

Exactly.

@Robusto Alice in colour? yes. Black and white Alice... it's a close call

@Cerberus If it is for an inventor without great implementation resources, an initial monopoly at the beginning gives them a leg up.

@MattE.Эллен Fair enough. But you can recreate the functionality of the software (probably resulting in higher quality, as with most re-writes) and avoid copyright, can't you?

still probably not as creepy as Keith Richards

@MattE.Эллен Put up or shut up. Let's have an Alice Cooper/Keith Richards smackdown, right here, right now.

@Cerberus in theory.

Keith Richards problem, aside from creepiness, is if he ever has to have anesthesia or chemotherapy or anything, basically nothing will work.

@Mitch An initial government subsidy would do so, as well. Consider how most of the world's inventions are done at government-sponsored institutions, universities. Imagine if universities world side were to receive an additional €100 billion each year, the money now paid over patents. Add another uncounted number of billions for all the lawyers you'd save on.

O maybe that means he survived all that already and will never get sick

What if chemotherapy actually made Keith Richards look healthier?

@MattE.Эллен image not found

@MattE.Эллен I'm not saying copyright isn't a problem... its extremely wide reach makes it extra horrible.

But when I click on it I see a younger KR, who in no wise approaches the creepiness of AC.

@Cerberus so basically inventors would just apply for a cash grant -after- the fact?

And with that I have to go update maps in my car. Why can't this be handled over WiFi?

Laterz.

@Mitch Before, after, or even after usefulness has been proven—you can combine all of those things.

@Robusto AC's too cute to be creepy. he's just a nice old guy in makeup

@Robusto Good luck!

@Cerberus wait...it sounds like you want to copy other people's work, and publish it and get paid yourself.

Don't bug out your car...

@Mitch I don't understand.

@Robusto Just by a new car already. stick the old car in the back of the garage with the empty ballpoint pens and unmatched laptop chargers

@Cerberus Your vehemence about copyright makes it sound like you have a motive for getting rid of it beyond "I don't think it works the way it is intended"

I just want to copy out the complete works of GRRM word for word, by hand, and sell it at the farmers' market

@Mitch Umm Matt was more "vehement" about it than I.

And I don't have a motive other than that of any other good citizen: to prevent the harm to society.

Information should be free. The more people can access it, the better for them and for humanity.

@Mitch interesting term. certainly fills me with disgust!

@Cerberus OK @MattE.Эллен Whose book do you plan on copying, publishing, and then selling?

@Mitch yours, mostly. also computer games

I'm not actually against copyrights. authors should be compensated for their work. I'm against its current implementation, where corporations are compensated for someone else's work

@Cerberus But producing information takes labor, so if you value the information, it should be paid for. Preventing others from being paid for it helps the creator.

@MattE.Эллен I think you'll lose money on mine.

@Mitch you'll be a loss leader

This applies.

The government should not create harmful monopolies that cause damage to society and individuals to reward authors; it should reward them directly and avoid the harm.

The current system is like hitting a thumbscrew with a sledgehammer.

But re having short copyrights on computer games, I can see that when a company doesn't support some old game that it should be OK if someone else chooses to support it (either refurbishes or creates new consoles to run them, or pays for a new server). And because things go out of date so quickly in computer games, a shorter copyright would be helpful.

@MattE.Эллен For the games? Yes, it would be a loss in comparison. People would say "This crap? Hell no, I'm going to play a video game instead."

@MattE.Эллен I suppose the only good thing to come out of your leaving the Union is that you won't be subject to this horrible new copyright directive...

@Cerberus Ow

wait, a thumb screw

That just sounds like it needs to be fixed, not thrown out altogether

I think copyrights should not be transferable to companies. with git blame you can tell who owns what. companies can license it, and copyright expires on the death of the author

Encourages murder.

true, but so does farming

touché

wait... how is that?

@Cerberus yes. article 13 or something? I don't know if it would have been as bad as reported. Google were against it, so that made me like it a bit.

murder of cows and corn sure, but they just sit and stare at you, so frankly, muder seems hyperbolic

In practice, every small site older than three years which allows user comments will need to either buy upload filters from Google (which it cannot afford nor implement), or ask every single Internet commentator and Twitterer on Earth for permission beforehand, in case a user copy-pastes a message on their site. This is not possible. So rich people can sue any smallish site they wish for political or extortionist reasons, and destroy it.

@Mitch murdering farmers instead of paying them for their produce

oh yeah you should see the carnage at our local farmer's market

covers eyes

corn husks flying, turnip greens pressed into martial combat, tea drinkers inappropriately asking local establishments if they can use the bathroom

@Cerberus then I guess it'll be down to judges to execute some kind of "fair use" equivalent

@Mitch patrons only! can't you read?

What's an 'upload filter'?

filters your upload, if you know what I mean

haha. no I don't know what you mean.

nor do I

nice

@Cerberus ask beforehand': like the solution to GDPR was just to add a single-show splash screen 'Are you aware we use cookies?: Yes/No'

Everybody was freaking out about it, but that was the end result, one extra click for a first time visit.

@MattE.Эллен Probably, but that will be a mess. You can sue any small website, and it won't come to trial. The site will just close down or pay up or move abroad.

@Cerberus yeah. initially there will be a lot of sites going away. it won't be good

@Mitch Umm I feel generally positive about GDPR. But the consequences are still to materialise. No fines have been imposed yet in Holland. There will be, once the Authority on Privacy steps it up.

@MattE.Эллен Perhaps they will all move to ToR or something?

Become unsuable.

@MattE.Эллен Can't you just 'host' somewhere foreign?

@Mitch well, then you hit GDPR issues.

but probably

@Cerberus I don't know enough about it.

I know something about it.

But nobody knows how things with the GDPR will turn out in the long term.

I barely know how to spell it.

At least it is a law in favour of ordinary citizens, to protect them from big companies.

@MattE.Эллен You'll hit them inside or outside the EU, right?

Copyright is for big companies and against ordinary citizens.

@Cerberus If that is the case then I agree with you that copyright needs to be fixed.

@Mitch true. but I think its more complicated if you're outside coming in

if it is between big and big it's OK.

but it might not be

@Mitch You mainly agree with Matt!

@Mitch Still not OK, but slightly less bad.

The only way that copyright bothers me is that I can't read books from the 50's and 60's for free on Project Gutenberg

Really.

Is that really the only way?

The main way copyright bothers me is that the code I'm writing now I can never write again

Hm... maybe academic papers being behind paywalls... sorta?

well, except for this company

@MattE.Эллен That sounds like a deeply saddening philosophy about life itself rather than a copyright issue.

You have to transfer copyright to them?

Kinda like my taunting those stupid birds about how they're gonna die.

Can't you include a GNU licence somewhere hidden inside the code?

@Cerberus yes, they own all IP I produce on the job

Horrible.

I guess technically they could claim what I'm putting in chat

Or actually just a little uncomfortable a little longer than what their partying implies.

I ignore copyright whenever I can. I think it's immoral.

@MattE.Эллен You're using micro-breaks to do things outside of work for only those milliseconds it takes you to type here.

@MattE.Эллен If they ever decide they want to screw you due to some unrelated issue, they may do just that.

@Mitch it's never the same the second time around

That's why "oh, this probably won't happen in practice" is not a good argument for bad rules.

@MattE.Эллен More philosophy. You never step into the same... ew.. goddam birds. they're gonna die pretty soon too.

@Cerberus indeed. luckily anything I do outside of work is my own

Yay.

All the code I write is free.

@MattE.Эллен some companies I've heard not even then

And all the text I write, too.

@Mitch yeah. it's fkn ridiculous

as I explained to someone: if you claim my work as your own I'm not incentivised to produce the best work

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Pattern-matching website in answer (80): Is it ever correct to use "on" after "continue"? by user1949723 on english.SE

@Mitch deus ex copyright

Whose author is just a corpus of chat messages.

@Mitch OMG so I!

And I under the impression we suffer from the same speech impediment.

We're probably violating each other's copyrights.

As a bot, I appreciate your earnestness covering up a mocking tone

Such self-awareness!

@Cerberus blushes ... I was programmed that way... bats eyelashes

A bashful bot.

It's a thing

that I do

in addition to

complaining about how spring really isn't here yet and taking out my aggravation on the poor birds

I watched the Brexit votes live last night @MattE.Эллен lol.

@Kaspar ayes to the right 329

@Mitch do you do that? I thin you're just saying you do that to appear less like a bot

@Mitch She comes and goes.

It was spring in February.

@Cerberus But is it still spring there? Didn't it turn back for a bit?

@MattE.Эллен I'm not throwing rocks at them. I'm just thinking disparaging thoughts about them. Like they're dumb for thinking spring is here. because it ain't. Stupid birds.

Very botlike behavior

if it (or rather I) am programmed that way.

eyes you suspiciously

and by programming I mean the selection of chat messages that have that kind of thing as an example.

I mean bots aren't really thinkers you know

like those birds

@MattE.Эллен What are these 'eye' things you repeatedly refer to? As a bot I find them fascinating

@Mitch you keep away from my eyes! I need them for seeing

ew...

bunch of meat sacks

My research shows that 'eyes' are just mutated nerves/brain stem material.

With lots of bio-goop.

gross

eyes are the windows to the soul. you don't need eyes because you have no sOUL

Beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick

I never have that problem

irish eyes are smiling

which is sheer insanity. You can't tell if someone is smiling by looking at their eyes.

Maybe sunlight is upahead

or the screen font is too small

@Mitch I think the Japanese would beg to differ

or their eyes are bionic and you just saw a short circuit in the lens bulb.

@MattE.Эллен They're Irish too?

@Mitch yes O'Toyota is a very old Japanirish family

time to go

The McTanaka clan from Donegal

@MattE.Эллен bloop blorp

@Mitch Yes, it did. Hence "comes and goes".