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Anticosti Island (French, Île d'Anticosti) is an island at the outlet of the Saint Lawrence River into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, in Quebec, Canada, between 49° and 50° N., and between 61° 40' and 64° 30' W. At in size, it is the 90th largest island in the world and 20th largest island in Canada. Anticosti Island is separated on the north from the Côte-Nord region of Quebec (the Labrador Peninsula) by the Jacques Cartier Strait and on the south from the Gaspé Peninsula by the Honguedo Strait. Anticosti Island is large but sparsely populated (281 people in 2006), with...

Kitḫ

You can see my house in that picture.

Cerberus

Yay!

I forgot the name of your town.

Kitḫ

@Cerberus I've probably seen it on maps a hundred times. I never knew the name of it though.

@Cerberus Well, I won't share it here, but it's in that picture!

I'm pretty sure anyway.

Cerberus

@Kitḫ Oh, I remember. I see it now.

@Kitḫ The frogs own it anyway.

Kitḫ

@Cerberus Easy now. Some of my friends and relations are frogs.

Cerberus

3:10 AM

Oops.

Epomis beetle, do you hear that, my love?

Kitḫ

@Cerberus Oh, well, it might be a bit south of there.

@Cerberus Hehe.

Cerberus

I see its name on the actual map, I think it's just off that picture.

Kitḫ

Weird. My actual town name? But it's such a small town.

Cerberus

@Kitḫ No, probably the larger town/city nearby. I have no idea how many live there.

Kitḫ

@Cerberus Oh right, yes. My hometown. That's not where I live now though.

Cerberus

3:13 AM

Ohh OK.

Then I forgot.

Kitḫ

@Cerberus I might not have told you the name of that one.

Cerberus

Or never knew. Same thing.

Kitḫ

@Cerberus Is that one of our lakes?

Cerberus

"Our"?

Kitḫ

One in my state?

Cerberus

3:16 AM

Nope.

Kitḫ

It's so round. It looks like our reservoir.

Oh! Round lake! Is it US?

Cerberus

@Kitḫ I don't think the time is ripe for hints yet.

Kitḫ

Shit. Well, I was thinking it might be Lake Okachobee.

Cerberus

Ding!!

Kitḫ

That's the only really round lake I can think of.

Cerberus

3:18 AM

See? You knew it.

Kitḫ

Although Lake Victoria is also pretty round.

But it is deeper and blacker and the borders aren't as clean.

Also, mountains next to it.

TrueTrue.

Puerto Rico?

Nope.

There's also a really round lake in Russia, but I can't remember the name of it right now.

Cerberus

3:20 AM

The bay is peculiar.

The Aral Sea? I don't think that's Russia?

And it's mostly dry now.

Kitḫ

@Cerberus Yes, I was thinking so.

@Cerberus No, not sea. Lake.

Hang on. I'll get a screenshot.

Cerberus

Well, the Aral Sea is pretty much a lake.

In Dutch it is called Aralmeer, meer = lake.

Kitḫ

Cerberus

Oh! Hmm...

Kitḫ

It's...oh, do you want me to tell you?

And I guess it's actually Mongolian.

Cerberus

3:24 AM

Yeah I'm pretty sure I don't know its name.

Kitḫ

Lake Uvs.

Cerberus

Haha.

Odd name.

Kitḫ

Really cool formations in Mongolia.

Cerberus

Looks remarkably like the lake in Florida.

Kitḫ

Also, a saline lake.

Cerberus

3:25 AM

Ah!

Cool.

Kitḫ

@Cerberus That's what I was saying. There are only a couple really round lakes in the whole world.

Cerberus

Kitḫ

Oh right. Um.

Cerberus

So you know the name of this Bay.

It's highly controversial.

You wouldn't want to be there.

Kitḫ

Guantanamo?

Cuba?

Cerberus

3:27 AM

Ding!

Kitḫ

Huh. I will have to look at Cuba again. I don't remember it looking like that.

Cerberus

@Kitḫ I'll call Google so they can correct their map. Will you send them a sketch?

Kitḫ

I can't remember which side is Haiti and which side is the Dominican Republic.

Anyway, I have to go now. Good night!

Cerberus

Haiti!

Good night!

Sleep well.

No pondering.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Good evening

Cerberus

3:32 AM

Hi!

My XP is fresh as spring.

I thought you'd like to know.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

fresh as spring 12 years ago

Cerberus

And I have used Autopatcher to update all the patches and whatnot from MS.

Spring is the same every year.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

excellent!

Cerberus

And I am not going to install a virus scanner, hehe.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Now you're merely a luddite and not a terrorist! Though the Luddites were terrorists, in a sense.

Cerberus

3:34 AM

Haha.

Throw me in an airport scanner then, if you must.

I only have 20 icons in my tray now.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

No, honestly, I do sympathize with your resistance to change for change's sake.

haha, only 20

Cerberus

Four are from Process Monitor, five Autohotkey scripts.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

you know, Vista and 7 (and XP, akshully) have gone to great lengths to hide "unneeded" tray icons

Cerberus

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Thanks.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Yeah I know. But I like seeing what's active on my computer.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I guess I have 11 icons in my "tray" on Linux.

Cerberus

3:35 AM

The icons don't bother me.

I bet it's called a "drawer" on Mac.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

actually it's not even called a tray on Windows.

Cerberus

System tray.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It was called a tray before Windows 95 was released but by the time it was released it was the "system notification area"

Cerberus

Hmm it says notification area here.

Funny.

Tray is clearer.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

however, the program responsible for it was called "systray.exe", because of the original name, and somehow the old, unreleased, unofficial name seems to have superseded the real name.

Cerberus

3:37 AM

Yeah, because it is short and clear.

Whereas SNA...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/09/10/54831.aspx

That blog I just linked, "Old New Thing", is a wonderful source of stories about how Microsoft is ACTUALLY working hard for their customers, despite the issues they've had. The guy who writes it is a senior engineer who's worked on Windows for decades and knows a LOT. It's really quite fascinating.

Cerberus

> One of the most common errors is to refer to the Taskbar Notification Area as the "tray" or the "system tray".

Oh, no! I'm living in sin!

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Yeah I think MS is doing its best; it always has, but it used to be very bureaucratic, I think.

They were sluggish and didn't do enough with what customers wanted.

And they have always had annoying DRM stuff.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well, the real "problem" is that they are conservative about change. They want to keep your old programs running. This has held them back on occaision

@Cerberus well, that's a relatively recent thing. XP was the first version to start including DRM and they barely scratched the surface. Windows 8 will finally close it all up.

Cerberus

Right, well, that is in itself a good thing. But I don't think that means they couldn't have applied some of the interface changes earlier, which is what's most noticeable for customers.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Yeah, 8 will be horrible, from what I hear.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus If you read the posts on oldnewthing, you'll find out that interface changes are a huge source of problems for buggy programs.

Cerberus

3:43 AM

Then again, I would never buy an actual computer anyway.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Really? Hmm.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus i don't know if it will be horrible. I think it will be ok, and possibly really good for tablets. My biggest fear is if they somehow cripple the desktop version through a boneheaded UI change.

@Cerberus yeah, like how certain programs rely on the window manager sending certain messages in certain orders. If you change the UI, maybe the window manager needs to send different messages or not send messages at all, and those programs start hanging.

Cerberus

Exactly, that; and also the DRM that supposedly makes it impossible to install Linux or OSX on computers that come with Win8 preinstalled.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Hmm, well, I don't know. If they had just added certain buttons and bars, and made others optional...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus it's more complicated than that. For example, windows used to minimize to icons (in Win 3.1 days, or Win NT < 4). Now they minimize to taskbar buttons. This was a complicated change.

See, ideally, programs would be well-written. But in practice, they aren't. And users don't blame the buggy program when a windows upgrade breaks their program, they blame Windows, even though it's the program that didn't obey the contract in the first place.

Cerberus

And this contract would be the manual that explains how to write software for Windows?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yeah, sorta

Computer software is broken up into modules which communicate using an interface. And those interfaces are documented to behave in certain ways. And other stuff is not documented. So if your program relies on something that's not documented, your program is potentially defective. Because that part of the interface might change.

It's like if you learned to play basketball by bouncing the ball off the ceiling. The rules don't disallow it, but neither do they require the ceiling to be a certain height. When the arena renovates to add more seating, suddenly that ceiling is too far away, but you're still hurling the ball up there, trying to bounce it.

It seems like a simple change, raising the roof and adding stadium seating while keeping the court the same size. But suddenly, the arena owners are getting flak because the players are flinging balls everywhere and nobody can score. "It used to work!" scream the coaches.

Cerberus

3:56 AM

Yeah I got it.

But you can't always have perfect software.

So when did you switch to 7, and what was your main reason?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus well, no. But who's fault is it?

@Cerberus I switched to 7 when my notebook (which ran Vista) died. I needed a new PC right away. I got 7 because it was there, and got 64-bit because I have 6GB ram.

Cerberus

It may be the software's fault, but that doesn't matter for users who have to make the decision to switch or stay.

Ah OK, so you even switched to Vista! Why?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I bought the notebook because I was having a baby, and our condo was too small to have a dedicated computer set up permanently. At that time only Vista notebooks were available. So, I was forced to switch to vista, but it worked just fine for me.

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