Re: CHAT: browsers

En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:

>
> I thought WinME was supposed to be about as unstable as Windows 98
> (first ed.)?
People who said that don't know what they're talking about. And I have
experience in both, so I know what I'm talking about. My only complains with
Windows ME is that it's not good at shutting down (it tends to block quite
often) and that it loses resources fast (and it has this strange habit of
having programs "not responding", even a simple Explorer! But nothing that a
Ctrl-Alt-Del can't solve :)) ). And of course it's not nearly as stable as
Windows NT (but that's quite relative. I never got a crash or a bad shut down
with NT, but my computer at work under NT died twice in one year. Here the OS
is still alive and kicking after the same year). No, compared to the 9X
generations, ME is the most stable OS Microsoft ever had. It's far behind NT
and 2k though...

 I have heard of WinXP being practically unsuable, but in
> the end it always seems to be solvable by changing the faulty RAM.
>
What I've heard didn't involve hardware problems. Even after a clean install,
people just couldn't get it to work properly and reinstalled Windows ME
instead. I guess XP is just too young and needs a few Service Packs...

>
> Exactly why your usage of 'largely fit' was wrong.
>
Why? I didn't get rid of *any* feature. And unless the English language has
changed since last time I learned the expression, "largely fitting" means
fitting with a lot of free space left, which is quite the case when you put a
360KB programme on a 1.41MB floppy.

>
> I don't know. I generally define myself before they have a chance to
> ask
> me what it means. ;)
>
The defense rests :) .

>
> Oh, whoops... A major miscalculation. /me hits himself with a bat.
>
Leave the poor animal alone!!! ;))))

>
> LOL. Maybe that's why you need to use Linux. Use Linux: you'll be able
> to give Windows credit where it's due.
>
Oh, I give it *some* credit. Windows still handles fonts much better than Linux
(can anyone tell me how to get Mozilla to antialias its fonts under Linux? It's
driving me crazy!!!) and when you install the right programs (meaning: a steel-
strong uptodate Antivirus - and not this Norton nonsense -, a good spyware
detector - the new Ad-Aware is just perfect -, and plenty of free but well-done
programs - there *are* people who believe in free quality software for
Windows :)) -) modify slightly some of the Internet options to add a bit more
security and get rid of most of the crap that goes on at start-up (and
uninstall Messenger!!!), then it works acceptably well. A well-tuned Windows
works OK. The problem is that it *needs* to be well-tuned, and that's not an
easy business :(( .

And to Windows's defense, I admit that I get problems only when I forget that
it's not good at multitasking ;)) .

>
> Okay, either I'm misremembering or I was half asleep when I saw it.
Possible :)) .

> I'm
> convinced I've seen it by you recently though... I guess not.
>
Indeed not. Or you have such a memory that you consider 2001 to be
recent ;)))) .

>
> 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).
>
Hehe, my spelling wouldn't look too much out of place in Australia I guess ;)) .

>
> **'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.
>
LOL. At least Maggel doesn't have (yet) much spelling variants. It's already
difficult enough to make words, I'm not gonna mess with alternate spellings
yet, especially in a language where each letter can have any phonetic value
whatsoever.

>
> Really? Oh. I thought they didn't, at least with borrowings...
>
But most recent borrowings keep the original orthography, and that's the advice
of the Academie ;))) . As for strange things like the alternative |mél| for "(e-
)mail (address)" proposed by the Academie, I've actually seen it quite often in
use!!! (in this case, I must admit that the parallel with |tél| for "telephone
number" has made it easier to accept).

>
> We were certainly taught to use it as a measurement...
>
Then you were taught wrong. It's as much a measurement as saying that water is
salty! It's an adjective that describes a particular kind of solution, whose
particularity can be connected to some measurement. But it's not a measurement
in itself, and certainly not a unit (you *never* say *"a molar of". It's
meaningless).

>
> 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.
>
OK, then people are lazy (and anyway, it's such a hassle to write SMSs that I
understand the people here).

>
> Symbols, actually.
Symbol is the term used by logographic-handicapped people (or alphabet-enhanced
ones) to refer to logographs ;)) .

 They shouldn't be italicised, for example, and
> should
> never have full stops after them unless they end a sentence.
Indeed.

 But
> whatever; it's how people think of them that matters. We don't think
> of
> m as a symbol,
I do, when "m" stands for "metre" and I'm pretty sure everybody I know does,
since they never fail to read it correctly.

 we think of it as a letter: em.

Don't generalise your opinions on everyone.

 Likewise, M is also em.

Not for me, nor for any person I know. Even when they think of M as a letter,
it's "capital em", never "em" alone.

> 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.
>
How difficult isn't it? ;)) I don't think it's a real problem. It's just the
laziness of the people here, and when it's about writing, it seems English
speaking people are the champions of laziness (I surely never saw that among
French people, and not even among Dutch people, even the ones of the course I
had to grade and who failed so miserably - 25% of success at the final exam,
that had never been seen before, the normal rate of success was always more
than 75% in the last few years -). And I don't see why something like
scientific abbreviations should adapt to the laziness of people. That's taking
the problem at the wrong end.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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