English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

I'm good thanks! how are you?

The only thing going for you is the fact that the other guy's pawns suck as well.

I like complexity, but not the kind which involves an infinite number of discrete steps to think ahead. I like rough complexity better.

@Robusto Castling didn't work, so I gave up on that.

makes note: Cerberus likes it rough

2

3:26 PM

@Cerberus So, basically, you're saying you like complexity that has all those uncomfortable facets planed off.

I couldn't get the king and he castle to swap.

@Robusto No, I like complexity that is more like reality.

I actually do like it in coding.

Although that is quite discrete.

@Cerberus I don't think you give reality enough credit for complexity then.

@Cerberus and this is why I am no longer trying to teach you how to code.

@Robusto On the contrary: fuzzy complexity is more complex than discrete complexity, if you know what I mean.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Excuse me?

Gigili

@MattЭллен Let's buy something rough for his birthday, a set of rough complexity.

3:28 PM

@MattЭллен Oops, I am playing against the computer.

@Cerberus complexity in coding is something to avoid, as a general rule, as much as possible.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Oh, sure. I'm not talking about coding as in a piece of code, but the process.

You need to think ahead and weigh all sorts of complex things.

But it's way more fun than chess.

For me.

If I enjoyed chess more than coding, I'd be playing chess for a living

Okay, failing any specific advice, I will just play a random piece.

It's usually not so adversarial. Until you start writing code that users have to use. Then it is.

3:30 PM

Heh.

@MattЭллен Could you?

@Cerberus me? no I suck at chess

Ah OK.

I think I won't make any next move. I have lost interest already.

There.

@Cerberus move your left knight up to the right of the left-most black pawn

that looks like progress

Sorry, too late.

Tab closed.

But let's assume that I would have won with your move.

yesssss!

victory is ours

3:33 PM

You mean victory would be ours!

well, the computer can't tell if we're lying, so...

By the way, @MrShinyandNew, did you still think the plan I posted would be expensive/bad knowing that it was for mobile calls/data?

@Cerberus I can't really say.

@MattЭллен ...so we must lie?

It's cheaper than what is offered around here.

3:35 PM

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Oh OK.

Oh is it?

@Cerberus rogers.com/web/…

What would you expect for a good deal for calls + data?

That is a sample of a typical cell company's plans

@Cerberus There are no good deals in Canada.... so i'm not really familiar with the concept.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Wow. Just wow.

200 minutes + 100(!) MB for 44/m?

Canada has among the worst cell prices in the world.

3:37 PM

And they call it "unlimited"?

So it appears indeed.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Haha, meaning that you don't even recognise a good deal when you see it—it will just be gibberish to you.

@Cerberus I'm not sure what is supposed to be implied by that "unlimited" banner

I think it is about unlimited calls in the weekend or something.

Or data.

But then you can use Wifi anyway so...

I still have my old 2-GB data bundle.

I am personally paying $45 for an "unlimited" plan from a different provider, and it really is unlimited everything. unlimited minutes, texts, long-distance charges, and data.

Oh, that is much better.

yeah, that sounds like a great plan!

3:39 PM

I pay exactly that now, and I get less than unlimited.

but there are two problems: 1. that plan isn't offered anymore to new subscribers, and 2. the data speeds SUCK. and 3. it only works in my city; if I leave the city my cell provider has no coverage and I'm "roaming". So, three problems.

I get about 350 minutes and 2 GB.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Oh, wow, then it still sucks, yes.

How low are your speeds?

my data speeds are so bad that in many cases I may as well not even have it. my phone spends 90% of its time on wifi.

@Cerberus freakishly low

I get maybe 2 Mbps down.

And 500 Kbps up I think.

Which is fine. I barely notice the difference when I tether and browse normally on my PC.

No idea how low your speed is?

@Cerberus I just did a speed test: 24kbps down, 16kbps up

3:43 PM

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Oh come on! You've got to be kidding.

The network is, in theory, capable of 3G or 4G speeds. But I have never once seen it.

How can you even carry out a speed test?

At that speed I mean.

That is GPRS or what?

Worse?

I suppose you can load a text page if you have to.

whoops. I am sharing the screenshot on google+ but I forgot to turn wifi back on and so I am uploading it over mobile.... sigh

there.

so your choice in Canada is crappy service at a fair price, or fair service at a crappy price.

2

4:07 PM

@MrShinyandNew安宇 OMG.

Never in my life have I seen such an abomination.

Mobile providers suck.

Gigili

@Cerberus Are you sure?

It's okay that mobile providers suck, but internet service providers?

@Gigili our internet providers are pretty bad too. for the most part they're the same companies.

@Gigili All right, you probably win...

@MrShinyandNew安宇 They are the same companies here, but I think we get decent prices. Though nowhere nearly as good as in Moscow.

So I did another speed test and got 185kbps down, 38kbps up.

I get 20 Mbps down for € 25.

Up speed sucks, though (850 Kbps).

Unlimited data, of course.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Hmm that is much better.

4:14 PM

@Cerberus I think I am getting 7Mbps down

Still crap, but you should eb able to browse the web.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Yeah that's what I usually get in practice. Officially, though, it's 20 Mbps max.

What do you pay?

@Cerberus holy smokes! 627kbps down! 17kbps up!

@Cerberus I pay about $60/mo

I forget exactly. they make it confusing on purpose. my internet is bundled with my wife's cell phone and our tv and there are some extra fees and discounts, blah blah.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Wowie!

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Oh that is way too much.

40 mins ago, by Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus There are no good deals in Canada.... so i'm not really familiar with the concept.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Oh that sucks. They try to tie you up in combined plans and whatnot here too. I never saw he advantage in that.

4:18 PM

@Cerberus oh, the advantage is that it's much cheaper

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Let me explain this alien concept to you. It is when you get average speed at a non-outrageous price.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Is it really?

It would have to be a big discount.

I am not tying up services together for a few piek a month.

("Piek" is slang for guilder(s), or, more recently, euro(s).)

@Cerberus If you have two or more services from the same company, a typical discount is ((number of services -1) * 5)% off

Okay, that's peanuts.

so I get 10% off for having three services with them

I use mobile + landline internet, so that's two services.

4:20 PM

It's free money

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Peanuts. Chances are close to 100 % that you would be able to get a better total by combining different services from separate companies.

Because mobile prices vary so wildly.

@Cerberus Well, I know for a fact that the chances are zero because prices do not vary wildly at all here.

And flexibility itself is worth money as well.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Hmm okay, I guess your market is really crap haha.

In fact the only area that has any useful competition is the wired internet, because the regulators force the providers to lease bandwidth to competitors, who resell it cheaper than the main providers.

Huge oligopoly.

4:21 PM

@Cerberus yes, it's shitty

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Here we have mobile providers who lease bandwidth to competitors. So that's probably forced as well, then?

And the interesting thing is that the big three (Vodafone, KPN, T-Mobile) have daughter companies that sell at a bargain too.

@Cerberus it might not be forced. depends... I mean, why not lease the bandwidth? But you' have to pay for that.

Same as with airlines.

@Cerberus yes, we have that too. But their bargain prices here are not that different from the regular prices. And furthermore the plans are never easily comparable.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 When you're in an oligopoly with hugely inflated prices, you will do anything to stifle competition.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 It's never easy, but it can be done.

But if yours don't even offer much better prices, why bother.

4:24 PM

@Cerberus perhaps. There is at least one provider here, Virgin Mobile, who leases bandwidth from a big player but is not owned by them. I don't know if Bell (their provider) is forced to sell them bandwidth or just finds it profitable.

I have ordered a pre-paid card for € 2,50 from Vodafone's daughter Hollands Nieuwe, to test out their call and data quality.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I suppose it is possible that Bell should find it a convenient way to get out of the trust and profit from it.

@Cerberus I mean it's so complicated to compare prices between rival carriers (including their sub-carriers) that it literally took me hours of work on a big-ass spreadsheet and my comparison was still taking into account maybe 75% of the factors that mattered.

Trust, cartel...what do you call it?

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Haha yes, it is the same here.

@Cerberus Bell isn't a cartel.... there is just a huge barrier to entry in the mobile space.

I don't do it so systematically: I just estimate what my typical usage would cost for each provider on the fly when I look at their pricing, and add some hypothetical value for flexibility.

4:27 PM

Oh, and for extra fun: all the carriers use different radio technology. So even if they sold unlocked phones, which they don't, the phones probably don't work on any network but theirs anyway.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 They may not actually fix prices, but you don't need to in an oligopoly, and it works the same way.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Oh yes, I heard the same applies to your southern neighbours.

@Cerberus Yeah, that's all I ended up doing too. But because their pricing is INTENTIONALLY confusing it still took me hours. And I was lucky that all the providers had the phone I wanted (Google Nexus S)...

Same here. But I must say I was rather impressed with footnotes numbering in the tens on that page you linked to.

Considering that not all carriers have the same phones, or if they have the same phones it might be a different variant of that phone, that adds just one more confusing parameter to the question of switching.

We usually have maybe 5 footnotes.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Don't people order their phones separately?

I just buy the phone I want.

4:29 PM

@Cerberus gods no

Nearly always cheaper than getting tied to some plan.

You always pay more, just spread out over time.

@Cerberus It doesn't work that way here.

Why not?

What stops you?

Because the carriers heavily subsidize the phones and also hold a virtual monopoly on sales of the phones so they control the "retail" price.

So if you want the Galaxy Nexus, pretty much every carrier sells it for $600. All the retailers who sell it sell it for $600 because they sell it through an agreement with the carriers, not simply on their own.

amazon.com/Samsung-I9250-Galaxy-Nexus-Unlocked/dp/B005ZEF01A/…

4:32 PM

So if you dont' want to pay $600 for the phone, you enter a service contract with a carrier and they give you $450 off or more.

> $419.99

Listen: amazon shipping phones to canada is not a factor in the market at all

So why not?

And finally: even if you bring your own phone to the table, you get no discount whatsoever.

Discount? Oh, so all those prices you showed me are all including a new phone?

And you can't get a plan without a new phone?

That is outrageous.

4:33 PM

@Cerberus including a new phone if you have not bought a phone recently from them.

I thought you also had cheaper plans without a phone.

@Cerberus nope

What if you call pre-paid?

That may have a different name.

@Cerberus pre-paid, I'm not so familiar with. It's not that popular.

I guess you have to buy the phones outright. Often the carriers simply refuse to offer certain phones pre-paid.

bell.ca/Mobility/Cell_phone_plans/Prepaid_plans

@MrShinyandNew安宇 You don't buy a phone at a provider, but just off Ebay or wherever. Heck, I could send you one.

4:36 PM

@Cerberus but would it work on this carrier?

You check the bandwidth requirements.

And GSM v. CDMA. Or what is it called?

@Cerberus It's confusing and not always easy to tell what kinds of service your carrier offers and if it's compatible with a given phone.

@Cerberus yes, CDMA

As long as the SIM card works, it should work?

I would expect any CDMA phone to work with any CDMA provider?

But I guess availability is much lower for CDMA phones.

Still, there should be plenty, for the phone market is huge.

@Cerberus yes, for calls. Not necessarily for data.

Hmm. Here everything goes with anything.

4:39 PM

And those pre-paid plans are not that great. The data prices are ridiculous. And the plans themselves are somewhat confusing. Basically the only advantage pre-paid has is that you can't get shocked by a large bill because your service cuts off instead of your bill getting larger.

@Cerberus Do you?

anyway, i'm going to get lunch. cya

Their monthly prices are also much lower, than is the big advantage. Yes, the data plans look awful, but then don't the non-pre-paid data plans look awful too?

Mahlzeit.

Bye!

@Vitaly Get as in should get, see above. In practice, it is between 8 and 14.

4:41 PM

And hey @Cerberus:

12 hours ago, by Vitaly

@Reg While playing in a standard tournament against a WB-heavy Sycophant deck: http://i.imgur.com/UAJpO.png (I got 13 points outta it.)

Not that it matters.

@Vitaly Oh, what lovely orbi!

Indeed!

Such is the power of Heracles.

It wins on its own even with a Heal 1 commander.

Nice.

So are mobile plans cheap in Moscow?

What do you pay, and what do you get?

It's on a per minute basis. IDK about mobile Internet access.

How much do you pay per minute?

4:44 PM

Typically about $0.04—0.07/min (depends on the specifics of the plan).

Oh, that is not so bad.

The plan I am going to switch to is € 0,0382 per minute/sms/MB.

@Cerberus Yeah, it was frustrating that time we torrented.

@Vitaly That wasn't the problem. It couldn't have been.

Oh, nice.

@Cerberus No?

I got nothing, where I should have got 1 MB /s at least.

With 8 Mbps.

4:46 PM

Huh?

The problem was that nothing happened for the first couple of hours, wasn't it?

I remember your d/l speed oscillating around 500 KB/s.

user19161

@Mitch Nothing. It's just that they are canonically answered by checking OED or etymonline. In that sense they could almost all be closed as GR.

Q: can someone say the difference between send/sent?

0

I'm usually mistaken the use of send and sent, please say the difference between the following sentences.. I'll send a report within two minutes or I'll sent a report within two minutes

word-usage

@Vitaly Oh. Well, that is nowhere near my max.

4:47 PM

Gen ref

@Vitaly When I download Game of Thrones, for example, I get 1200 KB/s.

user19161

@Robusto GR saves some typing.

@Cerberus Exactly. Do you care to try again?

@Robusto General looking. One is spelled with a d the other with t.

So it is rather something about bittorrent specifically that slows things down, perhaps combined with distance?

4:48 PM

@JasperLoy It didn't save you any.

user19161

@Robusto I like to sacrifice myself for your benefit.

Gee, thanks.

@JasperLoy argh..I''ve forgotten what we were talking about...how can I jump back to what you are referring to?

user19161

@Mitch Use the left arrow.

@Cerberus I'm pretty sure I have seen some IPs getting data off me at 8 MB/s. Can't be something bittorrent-specific.

So are you curious enough to try again right now? I have a bunch of new references. :P

4:50 PM

@JasperLoy nothing in there says 'jump back to reference'. if your item is on the same page it highlights, but your reference was many pages back (I think) so I have no idea.

@Mitch It should open the transcript in a new tab

(if the message is too far back)

which link? (in the left hand arrow)

You have to click that.

and in there what?

user19161

@Vitaly Thanks for the pictorial representation.

4:53 PM

@Vitaly A combination of bittorrent and something else, like distance/path or whatever. Did you not read my comment that I can get 1200 KB/s otherwise? It can't be my connection alone.

user19161

@Mitch See the part marked yellow? That is the arrow to click.

@Mitch Not the triangle that appears when you hover over the message but the grey arrow.

(Which is highlighted with yellow in the picture.)

and once you've clicked that...which link in that popup takes you to the referring item (from some time before)?

@Cerberus Well, let's try again?

user19161

Sometimes you send XXX 10 messages and then XXX comes here to reply with @YYY and you are left wondering which message it is a reply to.

4:54 PM

argh!!! I get it now.

@Vitaly My hard drive is a bit full...how much?

Congrats. :D

user19161

@Mitch We learn new SE stuff every day.

my apologies.

@Vit Last Survivor has changed his def deck to four Pathrazers. Still with Whisper. I'm trying to figure out a deck that would give me 45 pts. So far I got it to 43.

4:54 PM

@Cerberus Hmmm let me see.

Gigili

@JasperLoy That's the oldest thing one could learn.

So was it obvious or are those both 'arrows' that are easy to confuse?

Yes, sure, it's obvious if you're intelligent you'll say

I have about 1.5 GB free.

user19161

@Mitch Both left and right arrows are not easy to find to the chat novice. I have enlightened many of them.

user19161

It is a matter of looking in the right places, as with many things in life.

Q: Term, blend-word, or metaphor for being social but with boundaries

4:57 PM

0

I'm looking for a term, word or metaphor for being social but within rules or boundaries. I don't like the word privacy as it has a negative connotation. I think the word social is overused or misunderstood, especially in the online realm. I assume real social interactions operate on trust and th...

metaphors terms blend-words

> Etiquette is too stogy

@Vitaly Hey, why don't we test my downloading a single large file from you through Opera Unite?

@RegDwightΒВBẞ8 I have an idea but I need to test it, sec

Someone doesn't like cigars, eh?

user19161

Who downvoted me today? Confess!

user19161

Hello @kosmo!

4:57 PM

@Vitaly I'm running Malort with two Asyla and a Blood Grunt. Obviously quick rally is the way to go but I'm too lazy to think up of something Raiders.

@RegDwightΒВBẞ8 Ugh.

@JasperLoy now back to content. oh. hm... you have a point (in that it is factually correct). On the other hand many of the direct questions like 'where did X come from?' are closed as gen ref with a link to etymonline (which uses a number of reputable sources like OED or AHD or MW or whatever).

No, doesn't work. I thought Emanuel with Rancor would work

Picture of an etiquette.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe !

Kosmonaut

Hello folks

user19161

4:59 PM

@Mitch Exactly. I was remarking earlier today to Matt that I now think that all answers should be posted in the answers, however simple. A comment is a comment; an answer is an answer.