Re: CHAT: browsers

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:
>
>>I think you're being overly hard on Windows there. A well-kept Windows
>>XP installation isn't all that crashable.
>
> It's not what a few Windows XP users told me lately. And I've seen quite a few
> people going to XP from ME and then reverting to ME because XP was unusable...
I thought WinME was supposed to be about as unstable as Windows 98
(first ed.)? I have heard of WinXP being practically unsuable, but in
the end it always seems to be solvable by changing the faulty RAM.

>>Then you misunderstood me. If BloggsBrowse was 1.45 MB, but if you
>>could
>>remove the options dialog it would be 1.37 MB, and SmithBrowse was 1.2
>>MB, and suchlike they would largely fit.
>
> But if you need to get rid of a feature to make it fit, isn't that
> cheating? ;)))
Exactly why your usage of 'largely fit' was wrong.

>>I use it. I'm not a great fan of ambiguity or misuse of prefixes,
>>remember?
>
> No ;)) . Are you understood when you use it? ;)
I don't know. I generally define myself before they have a chance to ask
me what it means. ;)

>>We're talking about fifty kilobits here. That's about six bytes.
>
> Please give me again the definition of "byte" and then explain me how fifty
> kilobits can make about six bytes ;))) .
Oh, whoops... A major miscalculation. /me hits himself with a bat.

>  Give
>
>>it
>>some credit!
>
> I happen to use it. It makes it difficult to give it some credit... ;)
LOL. Maybe that's why you need to use Linux. Use Linux: you'll be able
to give Windows credit where it's due.

> Just checked all my posts to [latex-for-conlangers], and the only post I could
> find where I talked about some file size, I used Gb (instead of the correct
> GB). No 'o' there either ;)) .
Okay, either I'm misremembering or I was half asleep when I saw it. I'm
convinced I've seen it by you recently though... I guess not.

>>If there's one US spelling I can't stand (and there is), it's 'liter'.
>>I always read it as 'lighter'.
>
> Agreed. But I'm used to the US spelling of -er/-re (if only because I'm often
> afraid that writing -re will be wrong and influenced by my French...) and it's
> difficult to change this use.
Try writing in Australia. Most house styles want -our in normal words
but -or in proper nouns where that's how it's spelt, so you have the
British/New Zealand Labour Parties, the Australian Labor Party,* Sydney
Harbour and Pearl Habor** (and HMS(?) _Enterprize_ and places named
after it). And that's without considering quotations (which should have
the same spelling as the original if you can, even if it's a mistake).

*It's often said to be because some of the founders were American
expats, but apparently it's because back in the late 1800s/early 1900s,
-or spellings were common enough (take that, people who blame -or on the
net!) and during the Great War, the just happened to standardise on
'Labor' and kept it for good or ill.

**'Pearl Harbour' is not uncommon in print, though, and the _Age_, from
its inception in the mid 1800s (as the _Argus_) till late 2001, always
used -or in normal words, which included Australian proper nouns like
Sydney Harbor, but excluded others, like the British and New Zealand
Labour Parties. I'm sure this is all enough to make a sane person pull
his hair out and learn a simple language, like Maggel.

>>Yeah, and the French always obey the Acadamie Franczais?
>
> Yep! (when they don't, it's only because they don't know the orders of the
> Academie ;)) ) I am an exception in knowing very well how the latest spelling
> reform works and completely refusing to use it. But then, I'm not a normal
> French guy ;)) .
Really? Oh. I thought they didn't, at least with borrowings...

> Oh! I see now what you mean! It's indeed an adjective, *not* a measurement
> unit. It's an adjective used to refer to a solution containing one mol/L of the
> interesting product. You *can't* refer to *"one molar" (which you could if it
> was a unit). You say "a solution at one mol/L" or "a molar solution". It's a
> qualificative adjective, not a measurement (a solution at 2 mol/L is bimolar,
> not "two molar"). As for its abbreviation as M, it's an unofficial one (it's
> even disencouraged in France).
We were certainly taught to use it as a measurement...

> By the way, measurement units are nouns.
I thought so.

>>Tell that to the new generation of IM-ing, SMS-ing writers. They don't
>>have capitalisation unless the phone they're using defaults to it for
>>the first character entered (like mine).
>
> But that's a fault of the technology, not otherwise.
No it's not, it's a choice on the part of the writers. You *can* use
capital letters in IM (the same way I include capital letters in this
email) and SMS (using the phone's shift/caps key). People simply choose
not to.

>>I have nothing against capitalisation, but each letter is only in the
>>alphabet once, so it should only have one meaning.
>
> Why? We're talking about abbreviations here. We have got out of the realm of
> the alphabet and into the realm of the logograph. And in this realm, capitals
> and small letters are different glyphs.
Symbols, actually. They shouldn't be italicised, for example, and should
never have full stops after them unless they end a sentence. But
whatever; it's how people think of them that matters. We don't think of
m as a symbol, we think of it as a letter: em. Likewise, M is also em.
Normally, capitals are dictated by general rules, so you don't have to
remember capitalisation. It's only when it comes to metric measurement
symbols that that guideline has to be ignored, and we have to remember
each capitalisation.

Tristan.

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