English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Mitch

17:00

Spaceships doing FTL travel, antigravity, replicators all accepted without a concern, but that one small tech detail ('You can't have a floating land rover act like that! Where's the rudder to keep it from slipping everywhere!) will throw me out of believability.

Faheem Mitha

@M.A.R. For example the plot point about Israel being the last country to hold out is directly from the novel.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha You have branches in git right? The history of all 'versions' of a particular file right?

Faheem Mitha

@M.A.R. It's OK. Nothing wonderful, IMO. It's just a novel about the Zombie Apocalypse.

Mitch

And you may want to search not just the current file for some code, but maybe also some past file for code that has been deleted that you want to resurrect.

I'm guessing you've never had that desire then?

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Indeed there are. But "search all branches for mention of git between you and me" obviously makes no sense, unless it's intended as a witticism. But it's more confusing than witty. Witness this exchange.

@Mitch No, I've done all those things. But not in Git.

Long time user of distributed version control here. Since 2005.

Mitch

17:03

@Vikas Good list... I will try to watch some of these. I've heard of 'The Lunchbox'.

@FaheemMitha Do you find search (like I just described) in git easy to use or difficult? Or do you have some tool that makes it easy?

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch I'm not a git user.

Mitch

Oh sorry. I mean for things other than git then

What do you use for VC?

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Mercurial.

Mitch

svn?

oh

@FaheemMitha Is search on old stuff easy there?

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Reasonably easy, yes. You use hg grep.

Robusto

17:07

Mar 21, 2020 at 15:22, by Robusto

I'm probably going out on a limb with this analogy, but git is like a high-maintenance girlfriend, very sexy but demanding your attention more than is perhaps necessary. Mercurial is like a slightly overweight girlfriend who just wants to do things for you.

Faheem Mitha

@Robusto Strange analogy.

Robusto

You can substitute "plain" for "overweight" there. Perhaps that makes things clearer.

Mitch

@Robusto 👀

Faheem Mitha

@Robusto You know one person. :-) Virtually speaking.

Mitch

I know a person

Robusto

17:10

@FaheemMitha I'm talking about organizations with lots of developers. It seems like everyone eventually decided on git.

Faheem Mitha

Actually, quite a lot of people use Mercurial. But they don't throw parades.

Mitch

Hindi profanity

The Hindi language employs a large number of profanities across the Hindi-speaking diaspora. Idiomatic expressions, particularly profanity, are not always directly translatable into other languages, and make little sense even when they can be translaed. Many English translations may not offer the full meaning of the profanity used in the context.Hindi profanities often contain references to incest and notions of honor. Hindi profanities may have origins in Persian, Urdu, or Sanskrit. Hindi profanity is used such as promoting racism, sexism or offending someone. Hindi slurs are extensively used...

Faheem Mitha

@Robusto They certainly have the lion's share of the market, yes. That reminds me, there was that LWN article I was meaning to check out.

Mitch

An extremely underwhelming page

Robusto

@Mitch Maybe you could get Vikas or Faheem to spice it up a bit?

Faheem Mitha

17:13

@Robusto I don't know any Hindi swear words, and wouldn't update the article if I did.

Mitch

@Robusto Yes, that would be great! Add some more terms, publicize it so that others know they should add to it.

All in the interests of knowledge

@FaheemMitha Do you know -any- swear words?

Not English, there's enough of them

Robusto

@FaheemMitha I'm being facetious. Again.

Mitch

@Robusto Oh

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Yes, of course. The usual ones that are repeated incessantly in every single Hollywood film, ever.

It never ceases to amaze me that people are paid, and paid well, to write this stuff.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha Sadly/Happily there don't repeat any in Bollywood movies?

Faheem Mitha

17:14

@Robusto Oh. My bad.

@Mitch I don't really watch any Hindi-language films.

LWN seems convinced I'm a bot or a spammer.

> This request has been blocked due to excessive request activity from your site. Please slow down and try again later.

But I haven't attempted to access their site in days.

Probably some kind of blanket prohibition. Dunno.

I never used to see that message. Now I see it all the time. It's really annoying.

@Robusto @Mitch Have you seen lwn.net/Articles/914041?

The article not does mention (though the comments do) that is a proposed implementation for Git of a feature that is in Mercurial. Though in an extension, not in core.

As is customary for anything related to Git, the article is quite hard to understand. Because apparently the documentation it is describing is.

Vikas

> Vladimir Putin has fallen down his stairs and bruised his tailbone, it has been claimed.

Faheem Mitha

I'm a heavy user of Evolve in Mercurial, and have been for some years. Since around 2018, I think.

Vikas

@Mitch I haven't watched it. I might not enjoy it.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha That's a new site to me. i've heard of HN and slashdot but not LWN

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Weird. That site was founded in 1998. It's quite well known.

Mitch

17:26

@Vikas I was just curious what Indians might think of it. But I suppose it probably wouldn't pose much interest there.

Vikas

Is it mainly about politics?

Faheem Mitha

I've been reading it off and on since then. Though not much in recent years.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha The world is large. Famous things aren't known by everybody

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Personally I tend to ignore the British Royal family most of the time. I suspect many Indians do.

@Mitch Sure, but I assume you are a heavy free software user.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha sure. but I can't explain my lack of knowledge since I don't know what it is I don't know.

Faheem Mitha

17:30

@Mitch I'm not sure I've asked this, but I'm guessing you either use Linux-based systems, or one of the BSDs. More likely the former.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha at this point in life I don't differentiate as much it's all *nix to me

Robusto

@FaheemMitha I don't keep up anymore since I retired. But I never saw that site when I was working.

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Well, there are some differences.

@Robusto OK. Also surprising, if you were a free software user.

Mitch

@Vikas No, mostly about things in the news about the royals (which is mostly apolitical)... troubles with Charles and Diana, who is going to pay for upgrades to the royal yacht. Every other episode you might see a prime minister.

@FaheemMitha sure

Robusto

@FaheemMitha I only worked on Windows or a MacBook, but I had to use Apache on Unix/Linux, so I was competent on that platform. As for the "free software user"—I didn't go hunting for it, I just used what the company used.

Faheem Mitha

17:41

@Robusto Yes, I see. I've only used Linux based systems since around 1998.

Robusto

A pioneer, then.

Faheem Mitha

Well, that's not quite true. For some time after that I used Sun workstations, and occasionally Macs and Windows PCs, all of these at work. The last two because I was forced to.

@Robusto Not especially. Lots of people started much earlier.

Robusto

OK, then a pioneer compared to me.

Faheem Mitha

LWN is mostly dedicated to free software. If you want to know what is going on there, you can read LWN. Though most of the time it does not make very exciting reading, especially if you aren't heavily involved with such things. Which is partly why I don't follow it as much as I did. Also, the excitement of the early days, when some thought that free software was going to change things, has worn off.

M.A.R.

18:23

@CowperKettle shrug You want a Jewish movie that's not about holocaust or WW2 or something, watch A Serious Man. Or Uncut Gems. Although in the latter (and many such movies) Judaism is besides the point

@Mitch Who IS going to pay for upgrades to the royal yacht?

tchrist

@FaheemMitha I had Star Dandelions in college.

Xerox Star

The Xerox Star workstation, officially named Xerox 8010 Information System, is the first commercial personal computer to incorporate technologies that have since become standard in personal computers, including a bitmapped display, a window-based graphical user interface, icons, folders, mouse (two-button), Ethernet networking, file servers, print servers, and e-mail.Introduced by Xerox Corporation on April 27, 1981, the name Star technically refers only to the software sold with the system for the office automation market. The 8010 workstations were also sold with software based on the programming...

Certainly there was no such thing as "Windows" when I started. Nor DOS, for that matter. CP/M was awful enough, thank you.

M.A.R.

@Mitch fill in the blanks. "The ........ language doesn't employ a large number of profanities."

tchrist

And a slightly later model of these:

Terak 8510/a

The Terak 8510/a of 1976 or 1977 was among the first desktop personal computers with a bitmap graphics display. It was a desktop workstation with an LSI-11 compatible processor, a graphical framebuffer, and a text mode with downloadable fonts. The combined weight of processor, display, and keyboard was approximately 50lb. Despite the lack of an MMU, it was capable of running a stripped version of UNIX version 6. It was the first personal machine on which the UCSD p-System was widely used. Various universities in the USA used it in the late 1970s through mid-1980s to teach Pascal programming....

There was a Symbolics Lisp machine kicking around the AI lab, too.

Symbolics

Symbolics was a computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system.The symbolics.com domain was originally registered on March 15, 1985, making it the first .com-domain in the world. In August 2009, it was sold to napkin.com (formerly XF.com) Investments. == History == Symbolics, Inc. was a computer manufacturer headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and later in Concord, Massachusetts, with manufacturing facilities in Chatsworth...

M.A.R.

> While the word is usually considered highly offensive, it is rarely used in the literal sense of one who engages in sexual activity with another person's mother,[9] or their own mother.

@tchrist no one's gonna write Wikipedia articles about the computers I use

Vikas

@Mitch You might relate "Swades" too. Reading its summary/bio on IMDb will give you some idea.

What should we call M.A.R. when he visits Mars?

tchrist

18:41

Faraway.

M.A.R.

18:51

@Vikas Mar Mar Binks

Robusto

Dead.

Vikas

Can't we call him castaway?

Robusto

If he's dead, sure.

Vikas

#Worldle #316 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

It's too easy.

Extremely easy.

Robusto

@Vikas Then why didn't you get the bonuses?

jlliagre

19:12

#Worldle #315 X/6 (96%)
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https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
Hmm, not that easy...

Oh, different day.

Faheem Mitha

19:28

@tchrist I was referring specifically to Linux-based systems in that comment, to be clear.

Vikas

@Robusto Same reason again:

yesterday, by Vikas

I have heard about its capital but couldn't remember the name.

Faheem Mitha

Personal computers had been around for a while before the Linux kernel made its appearance.

Vikas

@jlliagre 😂

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Did you use a Symbolics Lisp machine?

tchrist

@FaheemMitha Yes, but I cannot remember what I did as a teenager.

Faheem Mitha

19:34

@tchrist I was going to ask how using it was. But if you don't remember, never mind.

Mitch

20:55

@M.A.R. I don't want to spoil the story for you... OK yes I do!

The UK governement (I think it was incoming Tony Blair at the time) decided that the expenses needed for the yacht were 1) way too much 3) to be politically palatable, so they decided to tell the royalty that they (the royal family) would have to pay for the refurbishment or whatever (because prior to that the gov, not the family, paid for it). Eventually it was decided by the royal family 'Fine, no one will pay for it' and the decommissioned the boat.

@M.A.R. "........" = Dog

'grrr' means 'I'm not happy with you'

'bark bark, bark bark' means 'get off my lawn'

That's it

Or maybe Toki Pona? I don't think theu have sememes for strong obscene or threatening emotion.

I hear that in Russian instead of profanity they assuage their strong emotions by talking about their mother?

@FaheemMitha I remember having a Sinclair programmable calculator with a max length of 35 instructions and a single accumulator. Basically assembly language but only calculator functions plus a single 'Jump if zero' command.

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Is that relevant?

Mitch

Programmable calculator? You should be so lucky! All we had was a mechanical calculator. It could only add, and the max value was 10.

Faheem Mitha

I wonder why they never made Lisp calculators.

@Mitch I'm confused. You just said you had a programmable calculator.

Mitch

Calculator? You should be so lucky! All we had was a pencil with no eraser whose tip would break after 10 letters. The paper was as big as a postage stamp.

Pencil? You should be so lucky! All we had was two sticks that we would hit my little brother with, the louder he yelled, the bigger the number we had.

Faheem Mitha

21:12

@Mitch You're drifting further away. Come back.

Mitch

Sticks? You should be so lucky! All we had was our imaginations

SpongeBob Uses His Imagination 🌈 Idiot Box Full Scene | SpongeBob

►

Faheem Mitha

I remember calculators. They were useless things. And very expensive.

Oh dear. I think we lost @Mitch.

I hear you can pick up quite usable computers in the US for very cheap.

Mitch

Man that first season of Spongebob was great.

jlliagre

My first programmable device.

It is still working.

Faheem Mitha

@jlliagre Fancy. Do you still use it?

Does it run BASIC?

Robusto

21:23

My first programmable device. Around the same era.

jlliagre

@FaheemMitha I used it for a while, I don't remember when I stopped. It runs basic. I remember storing programs on a cassette-recorder and drawing graphics on its printer.

Faheem Mitha

@jlliagre I suppose it wouldn't make sense to use it now.

Other than as a regular calculator, I mean.

jlliagre

It would be hard to find something useful to do with it, outside maybe learning how not to consider memory an unlimited resource. It only has 1.6k or memory.

Robusto

21:43

I don't even remember how much memory my Cromemco had.

But it was my first exposure to Unix.

jlliagre

Mitch

@jlliagre Awe. Some.

jlliagre

My first exposure to Unix

> What is the synonym of awe?
admiration, apprehension, astonishment, consternation, dread, esteem, horror, reverence, shock, terror, wonder, wonderment, alarm, appall, astonish, daunt, dazzle, flabbergast, frighten, horrify.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha It's really wild... the use of computing tech for the first 50 years was simply numerical calculation. And now, as far as users are concerned, calculation is either invisible to the user or an extremely niche interest.

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Some people still do calculations.

Mitch

21:51

> What is a synonym of some?
few, little, a little, several, many, um.... some other words

Faheem Mitha

Well, I do calculations.

Mitch

That was not flaggable

@FaheemMitha Nice! What kinds?

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch It varies. Mostly numerical. Though not much these days.

I don't think I've ever done symbolic calculations.

Mitch

You know what is really annoying? The general insistence in almost all resources, to only treat single words as things to be defined or for synonyms.

jlliagre

@Mitch "Some" is less polysemous than "awe".

Mitch

21:53

But lots of 'things' take more than one word

Robusto

@jlliagre I would say wonderment comes closest. But it's not exact.

Faheem Mitha

Were you all excited when you got your first computer?

2

Mitch

@jlliagre Ya know, as a much more common utterance 'some' probably has more entries in the OED than awe. But that doesn't mean that awe can't have more synonyms.

@FaheemMitha Best thing ever

Faheem Mitha

I remember when I got my first one. In 1998. It was quite exciting.

Mitch

actually a hand calculator, simpler than the Sinclair I mentioned above, just an extremely simplified calculator

Robusto

21:57

@FaheemMitha I was in heaven. Or something beyond that. I spent the next 36 hours nonstop messing with it.

Faheem Mitha

@Robusto What year was that?

Robusto

1981

Personal computers were a very new thing then.

It might have been 1982, though. I can't be sure.

Faheem Mitha

@Robusto Oh. A long time ago. And yes, they were. At least PCs.

Mitch

That was just yesterday

Robusto

Seems rather like it.

Thought there has been a lot of water over the dam.

Mitch

22:00

@Vikas Oh I remember a really good movie.. Delhi Belly, a kind of heist movie with lots of complications, and the underdog main characters ... OK no spoilers this time.

@Robusto You never step in the same river twice

Robusto

I've herad that somewhere before ...

Mitch

There's nothing new under the sun

To every season there is a purpose

Robusto

Feb 23, 2015 at 14:14, by Robusto

> You can't step into the same river twice.

Oh yeah ...

Mitch

Except for fucking winter

@Robusto You just stepped into the same river

Robusto

No. It's moved on since then.

Mitch

22:03

lightning never strikes the same place twice

except lightning rods

those things really attract all the hits

Robusto

Feb 23, 2015 at 14:13, by Robusto

Fashions in language come and go the way they do in clothing.

That's still true.

Mitch

Like vowel shifts

It's like every dialect of English wants to have its -own- vowel shift

Like New Zealand

Or Northern Ireland

Robusto

Or South Effrica.

Mitch

I, on the other hand, have absolutely no accent.

Robusto

Same here.

Mitch

22:05

@Robusto Exectly

Robusto

Mine is clean, midwestern AmE, TYVM, the standard by which all others are measured.

Mitch

And what's so great about it is that there's no pride about it, it's just naturally attractive as a good accent.

Robusto

Yes. It is quite wonderful.

Mitch

There's nothing wrong with accents.

They just sound funny

I mean not haha, just different

Robusto

@Mitch No, nothing except when they pretend that they're not accents.

Mitch

22:07

I don't want to judge but...

Say what you will about Kanye but...

holy crap that guy needs intervention.

Robusto

> Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, but at least it was an ethos.

I guess that is his point, at least if he is making a point of some kind.

jlliagre

@Robusto Many French speakers, especially in Paris area, are absolutely convinced they have no accent when they speak French, and are unhappy or in denial when they are told they have one.

Mitch

Québec too.

But there the difference is much much more

@Robusto I don't know if you've ever seen Lee Mack, a British comedian, from vaguely 'up north' (meaning Yorkshire)...

A lot of British humor would be considered might be considered 'identity' humor (making fun of local ethnicities and accents.

One time Mack directly made fun of someone saying just one word very differently.

Robusto

22:26

@jlliagre How dare they!

Mitch

I think someone said the word 'poor' as /puwa/ (basically their vowel change for the NORTH lexical set?)

Robusto

@Mitch Well, we have that in American comedy. The ethnic comic whose act consists largely of things like "So a white guy's like this, and a Latin guy is like this" and so on.

Mitch

22:38

@Robusto Yeah I suppose so. But this was making fun of someone's accent right in front of them.

jlliagre

@Robusto They dare everything, that's how you recognize them ;-)

Et propter eandem rationem etiam omnes stulti, et deliberatione non utentes, omnia tentant, et sunt bonae spei.

jlliagre

23:17

@Vikas #Worldle #316 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

The seventh of its bordering countries is hardly one.

tchrist

23:53

@jlliagre Iuvenes sunt.

M.A.R.

@Mitch such sacrifice :,(

tchrist

@Mitch Edgar Allan Poe was no puma.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle that's a really good movie, and it touches on issues that affect millions of people that no one is ever honestly, impartially talking about

jlliagre

@tchrist Non omnes.

M.A.R.

@Mitch this side of the world "very refreshingly and openly anti-colonialist" is not uncommon, but the insight such productions try to provide is tainted by the agendas of the local dictators they want to peddle alongside

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…