On Mon, 14 Mar 2016 00:06:51 -0000, rbowman wrote:

On 03/13/2016 03:45 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:

That's the official name, but I've never heard anyone actually use it in
everyday language.

0x23 ascii. Programmers get a little strange in their everyday language.

The last four words in your sentence were unnecessary.

--
A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says, "A beer please, and one for the road."

Don't toppost.


On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 23:50:25 -0000, Don Y wrote:

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along...

On 3/13/2016 4:03 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 22:49:29 -0000, Don Y wrote:

On 3/13/2016 3:11 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 21:32:58 -0000, rbowman wrote:

On 03/13/2016 12:22 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
What do Americans call this sign? #

Octothorpe.

And this one? €½

interobang.

I didn't think anyone had ever heard of that. I've certainly never seen it
used before.

Stop trolling.

It was just a question. Why do you consider it trolling?

Go play in the street (or, would you prefer "roadway"?)

Road for a route between towns. Street in a residential area. Don't you know
anything?





--
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 23:49:47 -0000, Don Y wrote:

On 3/13/2016 4:02 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 22:48:41 -0000, Don Y wrote:

On 3/13/2016 2:44 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 21:33:57 -0000, Don Y wrote:

On 3/13/2016 1:52 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 20:33:58 -0000, Dean Hoffman
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 13:22:28 -0500, Mr Macaw wrote:

What do Americans call this sign? #

72# = 72 pounds.
#72 = number 72.
My dad used to refer to some distances as 40 or 80 rods.
We still use gallons, pints, quarts, fluid ounces etc.

Dash, pinch, tsp, tbsp, jigger, gill, etc.

Miles, yards, feets and inches.

That must make school hell.

Why? 2T = 1oz 2oz = "double" 2 doubles = gill 2 gills = cup
2 cups = pint, 2 pints = halfG, 2 halfG = G, etc.

Way too complicated. Metric is made that way for a reason. You seem to have
chosen things that have 2 of something else in them. That is hardly ever the
case. Yards in a mile? Pounds in a stone?

Do you really think people *care* how many yards are in a mile?
We buy *fabric* by the yard. We drive our cars *miles*.
The fact that they are related is a consequence of the fact that
they are both used to measure distances.

If you build a picket fence, are the slats 0.1 meters apart?
Are each of them 1.0 meters tall?

Why do you have all those pesky other integers between 1 and 10?
And, 10 and 100? Why not just label your "rulers" with a logarithmic
scale: it's either 1mm, 10mm, 100mm or 1m. Anything else must
make school HELL!

How big is an acre? Try to imagine it in terms of square yards. Not easy.

We don't imagine acres in terms of square yards. I doubt many people want
to cover their lawns with FABRIC!

It is convenient when comparing how many times bigger someone's land is to yours, when one of you has a lot more of it.

How many liters in a swimming pool? How many liters does your BATHTUB hold?
(presumably most homes HAVE bathtubs -- wouldn't their owners want/need to
know how much water they can contain??)

Those are very useful when working out how long it will take to heat or fill one.

Why are water heaters 40G, 50G, 80G, etc. Why not 150liters?
(Ooops! Make that 100 liters cuz 150 is such an "odd" number!)

I've never heard a water heater called any of those things.

But, most folks don't care. They buy things in a "familiar
size" and think of that thing *in* that familiar size.

E.g., flour comes in 5 lb sacks; sugar (recently) in 4 lb.
OJ comes in (nominally) 56 oz containers.

Easier when everything is in the same measure, either litres or kg.

Why? If I tell someone I bought a "half gallon" of OJ, they
know exactly what I mean! They can visualize the size, shape
and weight of the container in their mind. The fact that it
*isn't* a "half gallon" isn't even important to them!

It's when you're comparing a large size with a small size it gets difficult.
For example how many pints of milk can you get from a 7 gallon drum?

I don't know anyone who buys milk in 7 gallon drums.
But, there are 8 pints in a gallon, so I'd guess 56.

So much easier when it's 10 or 100 for everything.

How many thumbtacks in a kg of thumbtacks? How many sheets
of paper in a kg of paper? How many sheets would you need to cover
your back yard with paper??

Why are you confusing weight with numerical amounts?

They buy a "sack of flour". Probably know that it is 5 pounds.
But, that's beside the point. Esp as flour tends to be consumed in
quantities of *cups*!

There's the problem again, you buy a sack of flour. How many cups can you get
out of it?

We don't care. How many servings of french fries can you salt with
a kg of salt? How many hotdogs can you dress with a liter of mustard?

You would if you owned a restaurant.

How many nails in a pound of 6d nails? Or, do you buy nails "per each"?
Ditto screws? Other hardware?

We buy a pack of 100 or 1000 nails. Why the **** would we weigh them? I know for a project I will need a certain number of them. So many per plank of wood etc.

Do you think people know how many cups
of flour are in a 5 pound sack? Do you think they care?
"I need to buy flour" or "I've got enough flour for this recipe"
That;s all it takes. We don't weigh the remaining flour and check to
see if it's enough for the next Rx we intend to make.

You need to know how much of your recipe you can make with each sack.

I have *one* recipe that uses 5 pounds (plus 2C) of flour.
Every other recipe uses some handful of cups (typ 3).

Much easier when everything is in g and kg.

I guess our brains are capable of more complex assessments than
expecting everything to "end in zero"...

Our numerical system is base 10, it makes sense to do calculations based on 10.

Yes. 3 * 7 = 21 radix 10.
What's so hard about that?

Remembering how many of each thing is in each bigger thing.

Do you buy your ketchup by the liter? (I suspect ketchup,
here, is sold in a dozen or more different "sizes")
What about your horseradish? And, are your spices sold
in 1g, 10g and 100g units? Never "3g" or "7g"?

All sorts of sizes, but we know what a gram is. The UNIT is always the same.

We also don't need to drag out a *scale* to bake things
as we KNOW that chemistries tend to require common rations
(e.g., 2:1, 4:1, etc.) and can use volumetric measures
(instead of laddling ingredients onto a scale).

We can do that if we like. But a scale is easier to get that 4:1 ratio correct
instead of guessing by how big the pile is.

How big is an "egg"? Do you have metric dozens of eggs?
Do you have 100 minutes in your hours? 100 days in your years?

It would be easier.

Metric chickens?

Obviously everything can't be made metric.

Do you even *know* that there is "no such thing" as a "large egg"?

WTF€½ Of course there is. There will be measurement for it to qualify as such.

No, there isn't. There is a large *dozen* but not a large *egg*.

Yes there is. I can buy small medium or large eggs.

How do you grade your fruit? Measure the circumference and
sort based on the nearest decimeter? Or, are "large oranges"
no more precious than "tiny oranges"??

You buy them by the kg.

And, you don't sort "large" (premium) from "small"?

I pick up the ones I want from the shelf and put them in a bag, then weight them. I pay so much per kg.

Premium oranges would be on a different shelf.

"That must make school HELL!" -- having to remember TWO different
schemes of measurement, one that deals with radix 10 and others
that deal with 12's, 24's, 60's, 365's, etc.

At least we made some of it easier.

And, when you have a third person show up for dinner, do you scale the
recipe (that "feeds two") up by a factor of *10*?

I guess we have learned to use *all* the numbers, on this side of
the pond. Not just the "easy ones"!

We use the same numbers, but we don't have to remember how many of each thing
goes into each other thing.

Bye, troll!

And here I was thinking you were at least capable of a sensible discussion, even if you are wrong.

--
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

On Sunday, March 13, 2016 at 7:25:52 PM UTC-5, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Mon, 14 Mar 2016 00:06:51 -0000, rbowman wrote:

On 03/13/2016 03:45 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:

That's the official name, but I've never heard anyone actually use it in
everyday language.

0x23 ascii. Programmers get a little strange in their everyday language.

The last four words in your sentence were unnecessary.


....your being here is unnecessary.

On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 18:02:23 -0500, Mr Macaw wrote:

A bunch snipped.

How big is an acre? Try to imagine it in terms of square yards. Not
easy.

I don't know how city people measure lot sizes. We measure farm ground
in terms of sections (640 A) , half sections (320 A) , quarter sections
(160 A),
then 80s and 40s. A parcel of ground for sale might be advertised as a
quarter
but containing 156.83 acres. The odd numbers are because the roadways
are included
in the general description I gave at the start.
Oh, almost forgot. A section is one square mile.

Using Opera's mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

On 03/13/2016 04:45 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 21:32:58 -0000, rbowman wrote:

On 03/13/2016 12:22 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
What do Americans call this sign? #

Octothorpe.

That's the official name, but I've never heard anyone actually use it in
everyday language.


I read that once, although never heard it anywhere. Also 'nanogram'. I
have usually (IIRC always) called # a number sign.

BTW, 1/60 of a second is called a third. IIRC, there was also 'solidus'
and 'virgule', names for a slash /.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not
understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand."
-- Mark Twain

On 03/13/2016 04:44 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:

[snip]

How big is an "egg"? Do you have metric dozens of eggs?
Do you have 100 minutes in your hours? 100 days in your years?

It would be easier.

"That must make school HELL!" -- having to remember TWO different
schemes of measurement, one that deals with radix 10 and others
that deal with 12's, 24's, 60's, 365's, etc.

At least we made some of it easier.

The basic unit of time is the second. For smaller amounts of time they
use metric prefixes.

I sometimes think of what it would like to use metric prefixes for
larger units, like kiloseconds.

After 86.4 kiloseconds you run into the day, a natural period of time
that doesn't fit into this metric stuff. Reality gets in the way.

How about forgetting about seconds, and use days. Then you have the
milliday, (which is still longer than a minute). A microday would be the
period of time we used to call 86.6ms (milliseconds).

BTW, in our system the average year is 365.2425 days long. Unexpectedly,
that IS a whole number of seconds. There are 31,556,736 seconds in the
average year. That's about 31.5 megaseconds per year.

1 gigasecond is approx. 31.69 years.
1 terasecond is approx. 31.69 millennia.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not
understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand."
-- Mark Twain

On 03/13/2016 09:15 PM, Dean Hoffman wrote:

[snip]

Using Opera's mail client: http://nospam.invalid/

I don't use things that make me into a spammer.

On 03/13/2016 04:11 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
And this one? €½

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish...uage#Phonology

Puzzle your way through those.

http://www.vicsmith.us/?attachment_id=5728

The state decided it would be nice to have the roadsigns on the SK rez
in SK. Don't ask me what they call the characters or how to say the words.

There's a mountain west of town that was named Squaw Peak, or Squaw Tit
originally. The Indians decided 'squaw' was derogatory, so it was
renamed 'Ch-paa-qn'. Good luck with that. It's still Squaw to me.

http://www.summitpost.org/ch-paa-qn-...aw-peak/393990

On 03/13/2016 07:06 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 03/13/2016 03:45 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:

That's the official name, but I've never heard anyone actually use it in
everyday language.

0x23 ascii. Programmers get a little strange in their everyday language.

I always preferred $23 (On the Commodore-64 hex was indicated by a
leading '$').

As to language, I was once looking at the source code for a program. One
of the error messages was "not enough memory to execute child". It made
perfect sense to me, just not anything like what it would mean to a
"normal" person.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not
understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand."
-- Mark Twain

On Sunday, March 13, 2016 at 11:08:56 PM UTC-4, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 03/13/2016 04:44 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:

[snip]

How big is an "egg"? Do you have metric dozens of eggs?
Do you have 100 minutes in your hours? 100 days in your years?

It would be easier.

"That must make school HELL!" -- having to remember TWO different
schemes of measurement, one that deals with radix 10 and others
that deal with 12's, 24's, 60's, 365's, etc.

At least we made some of it easier.

The basic unit of time is the second. For smaller amounts of time they
use metric prefixes.

I sometimes think of what it would like to use metric prefixes for
larger units, like kiloseconds.

After 86.4 kiloseconds you run into the day, a natural period of time
that doesn't fit into this metric stuff. Reality gets in the way.

How about forgetting about seconds, and use days. Then you have the
milliday, (which is still longer than a minute). A microday would be the
period of time we used to call 86.6ms (milliseconds).

BTW, in our system the average year is 365.2425 days long. Unexpectedly,
that IS a whole number of seconds. There are 31,556,736 seconds in the
average year. That's about 31.5 megaseconds per year.

Here's an interesting article on how Excel stores dates and times. If anyone ever asks why
Excel includes Feb 29, 1900 even though 1900 was not a leap year, you'll be able to tell them
that it is not a bug. It is by design.

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/datetime.htm


1 gigasecond is approx. 31.69 years.
1 terasecond is approx. 31.69 millennia.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not
understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand."
-- Mark Twain

On Sunday, March 13, 2016 at 11:21:33 PM UTC-4, rbowman wrote:
On 03/13/2016 04:11 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
And this one? €½

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish...uage#Phonology

Puzzle your way through those.

http://www.vicsmith.us/?attachment_id=5728

I'd like to know how far away is the house that belongs to the mailbox in that picture.

That looks like some wide open country.


The state decided it would be nice to have the roadsigns on the SK rez
in SK. Don't ask me what they call the characters or how to say the words..

There's a mountain west of town that was named Squaw Peak, or Squaw Tit
originally. The Indians decided 'squaw' was derogatory, so it was
renamed 'Ch-paa-qn'. Good luck with that. It's still Squaw to me.

http://www.summitpost.org/ch-paa-qn-...aw-peak/393990

On 03/13/2016 07:31 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:

[snip]

Why are water heaters 40G, 50G, 80G, etc. Why not 150liters?
(Ooops! Make that 100 liters cuz 150 is such an "odd" number!)

I've never heard a water heater called any of those things.

150,000 milliliters

[snip]

How many inches are in a light year? (you don't have to answer if you
think a 'light year' is time)

On 3/13/2016 8:25 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 03/13/2016 07:06 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 03/13/2016 03:45 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:

That's the official name, but I've never heard anyone actually use it in
everyday language.

0x23 ascii. Programmers get a little strange in their everyday language.

I always preferred $23 (On the Commodore-64 hex was indicated by a leading '$').

Limbo uses the XrR notation (i.e., 23r16) as it allows any radix to be
indicated in a consistent syntax.

As to language, I was once looking at the source code for a program. One of the
error messages was "not enough memory to execute child". It made perfect sense
to me, just not anything like what it would mean to a "normal" person.

"Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue."

"Bad magic"

"You can tune a filesystem, but you cant tuna fish"

The Amiga would often spit up diagnostic data prefaced with "Guru Meditation"

On 03/13/2016 09:32 PM, DerbyDad03 wrote:
I'd like to know how far away is the house that belongs to the mailbox in that picture.

That looks like some wide open country.

I'm guessing the other side of the road. It is fairly open although the
valley is bounded by mountains.

On 13/03/2016 21:18, Muggles wrote:
On 3/13/2016 3:45 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 20:38:17 -0000, Muggles
wrote:

On 3/13/2016 2:48 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 19:34:12 -0000, Muggles
wrote:

On 3/13/2016 1:55 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 18:51:22 -0000, Frank "frank wrote:

On 3/13/2016 2:35 PM, bob_villain wrote:
On Sunday, March 13, 2016 at 1:31:30 PM UTC-5, Frank wrote:
On 3/13/2016 2:29 PM, bob_villain wrote:
On Sunday, March 13, 2016 at 1:22:44 PM UTC-5, Mr Macaw wrote:

What do Americans call this sign? #


number or pound sign depending on use...

also hash tag for the Twitterverse

Sorry...thought he wanted to know about the real world.

We might live in the real world but may be a minority today.

I just tried searching by # on facebook, and I guess it could be
useful. But I don't see why there has to be a hash. Google can
search
the internet without search terms having to have a # on them. This
seems a backwards step. I certainly can't be bothered selecting words
that I feel are important every time I post to Facebook.

As for Twitter, that reminds me of using DOS. Where is the interface?
It's just unconnected sentences from people with no threading or
anything.


You did ask "What do *Americans* call this sign? #"

As far as I know,just like bob_villain said, we mostly call it either a
pound sign or number sign in general use. Although, twitter uses the
sign for their own purposes, I suppose that's become common place, too.


Pound sign is just wrong. It would be like me calling it a dollar
sign. A dollar is clearly $ as it's used for currency.


An American #(pound) sign is for measuring weight of things, but a
British pound sign is for measuring money. They both can represent
"pound".

lb


lb is one way we abbreviate pound, but # is a symbol we also use for pound.

I never knew that. Why don't you use the proper symbol?

--
Bod

---
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On 13/03/2016 22:11, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 21:32:58 -0000, rbowman wrote:

On 03/13/2016 12:22 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
What do Americans call this sign? #

Octothorpe.

And this one? €½

A smudge? ;-)

--
Bod

---
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On 03/14/2016 01:50 AM, Bod wrote:
I never knew that. Why don't you use the proper symbol?

What's the proper symbol for a pound weight? We don't do that L thing or
the E thing for Euros. It's not on the keyboard and I can never remember
the code to enter it manually.

On 3/13/2016 11:29 AM, bob_villain wrote:
On Sunday, March 13, 2016 at 1:22:44 PM UTC-5, Mr Macaw wrote:
What do Americans call this sign? #

--
Black holes are where god divided by zero.

number or pound sign depending on use...


To me it looks like a Mexican who got run over by a steam roller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang


"Don Y" wrote in message
...
On 3/13/2016 3:11 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 21:32:58 -0000, rbowman wrote:

On 03/13/2016 12:22 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
What do Americans call this sign? #

Octothorpe.

And this one? ?

interobang.

Stop trolling. Go play in the street (or, would you prefer "roadway"?)

On 3/14/2016 7:22 AM, Robert Green wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang


"Don Y" wrote in message
...
On 3/13/2016 3:11 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 21:32:58 -0000, rbowman wrote:

On 03/13/2016 12:22 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
What do Americans call this sign? #

Octothorpe.

And this one? ?

interobang.

grin In school, my thesis advisor (an oriental -- non-native-English
speaker) went through my thesis painstakingly correcting every (erroneous)
"doubled consonant" that I had used.

Then, lectured me on the rules regarding same.

(did I mention *I* was the "native English speaker"??)

I simply shrugged and said, "When in doubt, I figure one MORE is better
than one LESS...".

As a result of that chastisement, I am now equally likely to double
when I shouldn't -- or fail to double when I *should*!

[Amusingly, some words I consistently get right -- e.g., dessert and desert]

"Don Y" wrote in message

[Amusingly, some words I consistently get right -- e.g., dessert and
desert]

Occasionally I spell occasionally as occassionally. (-: Sssss. I had to
develop a mnemonic - the word "Casio" is embedded in the correct spelling.
Fluorescent was much harder but breaks into Flu Ore Scent. Can't ask for a
handier mnemonic (well, it could actually make sense).

--
Bobby G.

On Sunday, March 13, 2016 at 7:02:37 PM UTC-4, Mr Macaw wrote:

How big is an acre?

Half the size of the property on which my house is located.

It's when you're comparing a large size with a small size it gets difficult. For example how many pints of milk can you get from a 7 gallon drum?

The largest size container of milk sold in the grocery store
is 1 gallon. Nobody cares about 7 gallon drums.

They buy a "sack of flour". Probably know that it is 5 pounds.
But, that's beside the point. Esp as flour tends to be consumed in
quantities of *cups*!

There's the problem again, you buy a sack of flour. How many cups can you get out of it?

18 or 19, depending on how it's packed when you measure it
in a standard measuring cup. Not that any home cook very
often uses more than 4 cups of flour, or maybe 8 for a big
batch of bread.

You need to know how much of your recipe you can make with each sack.

About 10 times a typical recipe of most things. Or a great
deal of gravy, which requires only a couple of tablespoons of
flour, depending on how much dripping you have to go with
it.

Cindy Hamilton

On 3/14/2016 10:51 AM, The Peeler wrote:
On Mon, 14 Mar 2016 10:01:50 -0700, Serb bitch Razovic, the resident
psychopath of sci and scj and Usenet's famous sexual cripple, FAKING his
time zone again, farted:

What do Americans call this sign? #

--
Black holes are where god divided by zero.

number or pound sign depending on use...


To me it looks like a Mexican who got run over by a steam roller.

To me it looks like a nigga who got too uppity.

Doesn't it look like your stitched up asshole, colostomy boi? BG


OMG! WOT A BURN!!

On 3/14/2016 8:48 AM, Robert Green wrote:
"Don Y" wrote in message

[Amusingly, some words I consistently get right -- e.g., dessert and
desert]

Occasionally I spell occasionally as occassionally. (-: Sssss. I had to
develop a mnemonic - the word "Casio" is embedded in the correct spelling.
Fluorescent was much harder but breaks into Flu Ore Scent. Can't ask for a
handier mnemonic (well, it could actually make sense).

I let "oc[c]ASSionally" be the red flag for me.

I remember "not flour" when writing fluorescent.

I had a relation who lived at #356 (which I remembered as "not 365").

On 03/14/2016 09:19 AM, Colonel Edmund J. Burke wrote:

[snip]

To me it looks like a Mexican who got run over by a steam roller.

A tic-tac-toe game. Like the one in "Wargames" where the computer learns
it can't win (and then applies that knowledge to Global Thermonuclear
Warfare).

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The government ought to stay out of the prayer business." -- Jimmy
Carter

On 03/13/2016 10:21 PM, rbowman wrote:

[snip]

There's a mountain west of town that was named Squaw Peak, or Squaw Tit
originally. The Indians decided 'squaw' was derogatory, so it was
renamed 'Ch-paa-qn'. Good luck with that. It's still Squaw to me.

I never understood the "dirty word" mentality. You can call something a
"dungheap" or a "pile of manure" (of even 'Ralph' if you wanted to).
It's still the same thing as the "stinking heap of ****" it was before.

[snip]

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The government ought to stay out of the prayer business." -- Jimmy
Carter

On 03/13/2016 10:26 PM, DerbyDad03 wrote:

[snip]

Here's an interesting article on how Excel stores dates and times. If anyone ever asks why
Excel includes Feb 29, 1900 even though 1900 was not a leap year, you'll be able to tell them
that it is not a bug. It is by design.

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/datetime.htm


I like to read about those things sometimes. Thanks for the link.

[snip]

Also, I didn't expect to see many problems with Y2K, as with Y2.038K.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The government ought to stay out of the prayer business." -- Jimmy
Carter

On 03/14/2016 09:12 AM, rbowman wrote:
On 03/14/2016 01:50 AM, Bod wrote:
I never knew that. Why don't you use the proper symbol?

What's the proper symbol for a pound weight? We don't do that L thing or
the E thing for Euros. It's not on the keyboard and I can never remember
the code to enter it manually.

Before learning the proper weirdness, I called the unit of weight a lab.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The government ought to stay out of the prayer business." -- Jimmy
Carter

On 03/14/2016 02:31 PM, Cindy Hamilton wrote:
On Sunday, March 13, 2016 at 7:02:37 PM UTC-4, Mr Macaw wrote:

How big is an acre?

Half the size of the property on which my house is located.

There's a pond on my land, that covers about 2 acres (3 now since we've
just had a lot of rain). So, usually an acre is about half that pond.
That's close enough.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The government ought to stay out of the prayer business." -- Jimmy
Carter

On 03/14/2016 04:07 PM, Don Y wrote:

[snip]

I let "oc[c]ASSionally" be the red flag for me.

I remember "not flour" when writing fluorescent.

I had a relation who lived at #356 (which I remembered as "not 365").

I had some trouble with "believe" until I thought about it having LIE in it.

BTW, when I use NOT in mnemonic devices, it's usually the r's-1
(radix-1) complement, so NOT 365 is 634 (note that each digit adds up to 9).

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The government ought to stay out of the prayer business." -- Jimmy
Carter

On Monday, March 14, 2016 at 5:57:34 PM UTC-5, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 03/14/2016 04:07 PM, Don Y wrote:

[snip]

I let "oc[c]ASSionally" be the red flag for me.

I remember "not flour" when writing fluorescent.

I had a relation who lived at #356 (which I remembered as "not 365").

I had some trouble with "believe" until I thought about it having LIE in it.

BTW, when I use NOT in mnemonic devices, it's usually the r's-1
(radix-1) complement, so NOT 365 is 634 (note that each digit adds up to 9).

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The government ought to stay out of the prayer business." -- Jimmy
Carter

This will make you correct about 98% of the time. €œI before E, except after in C or words that say €œÄ�€� [ei], as in neighbor and weigh.€�

On 3/14/2016 6:26 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
I never understood the "dirty word" mentality. You can call something a
"dungheap" or a "pile of manure" (of even 'Ralph' if you wanted to).
It's still the same thing as the "stinking heap of ****" it was before.

[snip]


It's a matter of breeding and society. For example
the Queen of England (about year 1850) does not
step out of her royal carraiage, and barn stamp a
pile of horse ****.

--
..
Christopher A. Young
learn more about Jesus
.. www.lds.org
..
..

On Mon, 14 Mar 2016 08:18:32 -0000, Bod wrote:

On 13/03/2016 22:11, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 21:32:58 -0000, rbowman wrote:

On 03/13/2016 12:22 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
What do Americans call this sign? #

Octothorpe.

And this one? €½

A smudge? ;-)

It means the typewriter carriage is jammed.

--
Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

On 03/14/2016 06:16 PM, bob_villain wrote:

[snip]

This will make you correct about 98% of the time. €œI before E, except after in C or words that say €œÄ�€� [ei], as in neighbor and weigh.€�


I think there's another part to that. Something about Y or W?

BTW, How many English words do you know where W is a vowel?

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The government ought to stay out of the prayer business." -- Jimmy
Carter

On 03/14/2016 04:34 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:

Also, I didn't expect to see many problems with Y2K, as with Y2.038K.

I did some patching in the months leading up to Y2K but there really
wasn't that much. I was on call New Year's Eve but it passed
uneventfully. Luckily someone other than myself will have to worry about
Y2038.

On 3/14/2016 7:12 AM, rbowman wrote:
On 03/14/2016 01:50 AM, Bod wrote:
I never knew that. Why don't you use the proper symbol?

What's the proper symbol for a pound weight?

lb. :

The use of '#' for "number" (No.) and "pound" (lb., lbf.) is a hack.
I have a friend who uses &c. as well!

We don't do that L thing or the E
thing for Euros. It's not on the keyboard and I can never remember the code to
enter it manually.

U+20AC 0128 euro
U+00A2 0162 cents
U+00A3 0163 pound sterling
U+00A4 0164 generic currency
U+00A5 0165 japanese yen

I've got a little utility that pops up code tables so I can cut and paste
"characters" directly from that into whatever.

You can also install a Unicode font (e.g., CyberBit) and look at
the font displayed...

Hi Mark,

On 3/14/2016 3:57 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 03/14/2016 04:07 PM, Don Y wrote:

I let "oc[c]ASSionally" be the red flag for me.

I remember "not flour" when writing fluorescent.

I had a relation who lived at #356 (which I remembered as "not 365").

I had some trouble with "believe" until I thought about it having LIE in it.

Ah! I tend not to have problems with ie (i before e, except after c
or when sounding like a as in neighbor and weigh). Of course, all
of these rules to cover exceptions themselves have exceptions! :

When working on my speech synthesizer, it was frustrating to see just how
many exceptions there are to the "rules" we think we know -- but
actually have internalized and consciously forgotten!

E.g., think of the /w/ sound in:
women
what
which
one
quick

I found that "of" is one of the most commonly encountered exceptions
(there's no /f/ sound in the word!)

BTW, when I use NOT in mnemonic devices, it's usually the r's-1 (radix-1)
complement, so NOT 365 is 634 (note that each digit adds up to 9).

It's called the "nine's complement". The ten's complement is obtained
by adding one to the nine's complement. In much the same way that the
one's complement ant two's complements are related.

In my case, I subvocalize: "no, it's NOT flour -- so it must be fluor";
"it's not 365 (days in a year) so it must be 356"

On 3/14/2016 8:02 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 03/14/2016 04:34 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:

Also, I didn't expect to see many problems with Y2K, as with Y2.038K.

I did some patching in the months leading up to Y2K but there really wasn't
that much. I was on call New Year's Eve but it passed uneventfully. Luckily
someone other than myself will have to worry about Y2038.

I saw "19A0" in one case. Caught me completely off guard
("Where the hell did that 'A' come from??"). But, thinking
about it for a few microseconds and it was obvious...

I now keep dates as ascii strings. It's not that much more work.

The tougher problem (and it will NOT be solved, here! : )
is thinking about temporal "REFERENCES"!

E.g., if I have an appointment "in 35 minutes" and I *bind* that
to the current time (it is roughly 8:40P here), then that would
suggest the appointment is at 9:15P. Assume I also have something
scheduled for 10:00P.

Now, if I adjust my local clock to make "now" be 8:45P, how
does that affect these two events? Is my appointment still
35 minutes in the future? And, the 10:00 event 5 minutes sooner
than it would have been had I not updated my clock?

What if I then set my clock *back* 5 minutes? Has anything changed??

Silly example. But, think about things that are days or weeks
hence. How do you "store" those times? And, how does your choice
of storage technique (e.g., early or late binding) affect when
they ACTUALLY occur?

Do you store "relative times" using a relative notation? And,
store the reference from which they were originally specified?
Or, convert everything to absolute times?

Do you convert absolute times to relative times and store the
reference?

I.e., when a person says "I have an appointment in 35 minutes",
does that really mean they will wait for the minute hand to make
35 complete revolutions before the appointment begins? Or,
have they done some mental arithmetic and decided to express
the ABSOLUTE time of the appointment in relative terms (for
the benefit of whomever they are conversing with)?

On 3/14/2016 3:26 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 03/13/2016 10:21 PM, rbowman wrote:

[snip]

There's a mountain west of town that was named Squaw Peak, or Squaw Tit
originally. The Indians decided 'squaw' was derogatory, so it was
renamed 'Ch-paa-qn'. Good luck with that. It's still Squaw to me.

I never understood the "dirty word" mentality. You can call something a
"dungheap" or a "pile of manure" (of even 'Ralph' if you wanted to). It's still
the same thing as the "stinking heap of ****" it was before.

Controlling language is a way of controlling thought.