Random thought of the day
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@Gąska I'm fine with
WinAIMP.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Random thought of the day:
AIMP
But does it whip the llama's ass, or any asses of any camelids at all?
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@hungrier said in Random thought of the day:
whip the llama's ass
Saying it is probably a bannable offense on Twatter these days. Not good for marketing.
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It's been several months now since xkcd discovered that their discussion board database had been compromised. The page that's up there now is the same one that went up the day they closed the board, the one that says they're closed "until we can go over them and make sure they're secure". Anybody heard any progress in this area?
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http://www.doesnotplaywellwithothers.com/comic/pwc-0446
It’s actually kind of weird how no Robin Hood story has decided to end with Robin shooting King Richard, considering that he died in real life from an infected wound he got during a failed assassination attempt by an angry guy with a crossbow.
Random thought:
If he died from it, then it wasn't a failed assassination attempt, now was it?
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@Zerosquare said in Random thought of the day:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in Random thought of the day:
I wonder how nobody thinks 96kbps MP3s encoded with 1999 version of LAME are super artsy?
I'm pretty sure there is some equivalent of Rule 34 for music, and such people actually exist somewhere.
You just need those bitrates to be gold plated, then you're set.
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@acrow said in Random thought of the day:
Random thought:
If he died from it, then it wasn't a failed assassination attempt, now was it?If someone gets, say, a limp after an assassination attempt, and years later dies because they fall in the stairs because of their limp, was the assassination attempt successful after all?
(edit: though it's less of a theoretical dumb question than you might think, I remember something similar being discussed a few years ago to decide whether someone should be counted (and their family compensated) as a "terror victim" if they got wounded in a terror attack but only died long after)
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Summoning all grammar nazis!
In the previous post, should I have written "die" instead of "dies"?
The subject of the verb is "someone" and thus it should be "dies."
The next clause is "they fall" where I used "they" as a gender-neutral (yes, I know...) singular pronoun and as far as I know there is no clear rule (as if there are clear rules for anything in English grammar!) as to whether that should be used as singular or plural, but I tend to prefer using the plural form because I find the other one to be too ugly. Hence "they fall."
The juxtaposition of the two clauses makes it obvious that "someone" is "they", and the proximity of the words make me associate "die" with "they", not with "someone" (which is the same subject, in the global meaning of the sentence, but a different word grammatically speaking). So "dies because they fall" sounds ugly but grammatically correct, while "die because they fall" sounds better, but formally wrong.
Opinions? ? ?
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@remi said in Random thought of the day:
So "dies because they fall" sounds ugly
@remi also said:
"die because they fall" sounds better
I disagree completely; but what do I know?
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@Zecc Well if you add "they" at the start (because this is what my brain does instinctively due to the layout of the sentence), I feel that "they die because they fall" sounds much better than "they dies because they fall."
(of course I could have gone for the whole they-as-singular route and written "they dies as they falls" everywhere, but I personally find that even uglier)
Though I take your point that "ugliness" of a sentence is largely subjective and therefore my whole question may be .
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@acrow said in Random thought of the day:
http://www.doesnotplaywellwithothers.com/comic/pwc-0446
It’s actually kind of weird how no Robin Hood story has decided to end with Robin shooting King Richard, considering that he died in real life from an infected wound he got during a failed assassination attempt by an angry guy with a crossbow.
Random thought:
If he died from it, then it wasn't a failed assassination attempt, now was it?Failed assassination attempt followed by a failed treatment attempt.
/r/therewasanattempt
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@remi said in Random thought of the day:
Opinions? ? ?
You have two options: what you wrote, or the more extravagant intrepretation of singular they: "someone dies and they falls ill" that some progressives tried to push on people back when gender neutrality started being a thing. Every other way is even worse than these two.
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@remi said in Random thought of the day:
Well if you add "they" at the start (because this is what my brain does instinctively due to the layout of the sentence), I feel that "they die because they fall" sounds much better than "they dies because they fall."
Sure. But when using "somebody" at the start, the 'plurality' matches.
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@Gąska said in Random thought of the day:
they falls ill ... progressives
They falls ill ayn' they done fucked, I tells ya
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@Zecc said in Random thought of the day:
I guess no one ever looks at the footer.
Or the current calendar...
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@dcon said in Random thought of the day:
You found 's husband!
More like son. Or son-in-law. Maybe nephew. Of course, not mutually exclusive
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(watch the video)
Is American Sign Language normally this demonstrative, or is the interpreter overdoing it?
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@Zerosquare He's just like that apparently.
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Status: I wonder if I wrote a potentially-lewd journal, would anyone care to censor it?
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/508499422028627969/695423833984729178/unknown.png
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Random thought of the day:
if I wrote a potentially-lewd journal
Isn't what you're doing already?
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@Zerosquare said in Random thought of the day:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Random thought of the day:
if I wrote a potentially-lewd journal
Isn't what you're doing already?
Have you seen me describe my clitoris yet?
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No. And before you ask, I definitely don't want to, thank you very much.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Random thought of the day:
@Zerosquare said in Random thought of the day:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Random thought of the day:
if I wrote a potentially-lewd journal
Isn't what you're doing already?
Have you seen me describe my clitoris yet?
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@HardwareGeek said in Random thought of the day:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Random thought of the day:
@Zerosquare said in Random thought of the day:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Random thought of the day:
if I wrote a potentially-lewd journal
Isn't what you're doing already?
Have you seen me describe my clitoris yet?
It's pretty sensitive, but if you rub it too much it tends to get sticky and slip.
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@remi said in Random thought of the day:
@acrow said in Random thought of the day:
Random thought:
If he died from it, then it wasn't a failed assassination attempt, now was it?If someone gets, say, a limp after an assassination attempt, and years later dies because they fall in the stairs because of their limp, was the assassination attempt successful after all?
(edit: though it's less of a theoretical dumb question than you might think, I remember something similar being discussed a few years ago to decide whether someone should be counted (and their family compensated) as a "terror victim" if they got wounded in a terror attack but only died long after)
The legal question is of course not identical to the philosophical question, but I remember reading that legally it's not generally considered murder if the victim dies more than a year after the attempt.
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Reasoning on any issue is similar to reasoning in programming. In programming, if there's an error in a program, you should be able to find at least one line in the code which is incorrect. You may have hundreds of compile errors, but you start off with fixing the first error. Sometimes fixing the first remaining error will fix many of the subsequent errors.
If someone cannot understand the concept of finding a particular line in a program that is the source of an error, then they're probably not capable of being a programmer. Many people aren't. Doesn't mean that they're not good at other things, like art, or cooking.
If you're trying to refute someone's argument, you should be able to find at least one particular sentence in what they said that is incorrect, or at least misleading. If a person can't focus their mind to that level, I can't really take their refutation seriously.
I come here, believe it or not, because the people who post here are smarter than average. But few, if any, have reached the level of analytical focus. A typical example, slightly exaggerated for illustrative purposes: Someone will make a specific point in physics. Another person will "refute" them by throwing at them the Wikipedia entry for physics. The first person will then ask for a specific line from that page that contradicts what they said. The replier will then randomly pick a sentence from that page which has nothing to do with they're claiming to refute. They'll then get half a dozen up-votes because of the brilliance of their reply.
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@jinpa said in Random thought of the day:
Reasoning on any issue is similar to reasoning in programming.
There. Found the fault in your reasoning.
You're right, sometime it really is the first error you encounter.
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@Luhmann said in Random thought of the day:
@jinpa said in Random thought of the day:
Reasoning on any issue is similar to reasoning in programming.
There. Found the fault in your reasoning.
Would you be able to give a specific example of where correct reasoning on an issue is not similar to reasoning in programming or would that contradict the point you are making?
You're right, sometime
s it really is the first error you encounter.
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Technically piano rolls were the first digital audio format.Well, they're analog in the time dimension, but otherwise it's true.
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@jinpa said in Random thought of the day:
you should be able to find at least one line in the code which is incorrect.
You logic errors are astounding.
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@jinpa said in Random thought of the day:
If someone cannot understand the concept of finding a particular line in a program that is the source of an error, then they're probably not capable of being a programmer. Many people aren't. Doesn't mean that they're not good at other things, like art, or cooking.
Are you trying to make a joke about BA's working at McDonald's?
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@Gąska said in Random thought of the day:
@jinpa said in Random thought of the day:
If someone cannot understand the concept of finding a particular line in a program that is the source of an error, then they're probably not capable of being a programmer. Many people aren't. Doesn't mean that they're not good at other things, like art, or cooking.
Are you trying to make a joke about BA's working at McDonald's?
Not exactly. I try not to assume a maximum level of intelligence for any credential or job.
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The government should have an office dedicated to finding wastes of government money. With proper safeguards to prevent abuse, rewards should be offered to employees and contractors who report a confirmed waste of money.
There are already whistleblower programs, but
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As far as I know, there is no reward as part of these
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It is generally for concrete examples of wrongdoing; my suggestion is more for cases which fall short of clear criminal intent;
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AIUI, the existing whistleblower programs are primarily for large-scale wrongs.
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@jinpa the problem is that it's surprisingly hard to show that something wastes money. Every expenditure has been approved by someone at some point after all, and they've done so because they were convinced it's needed.
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@jinpa said in Random thought of the day:
The government should have an office dedicated to finding wastes of government money.
Many countries (including the USA) already have something like that:
Whether it works as intended is another question.
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@jinpa said in Random thought of the day:
In programming, if there's an error in a program, you should be able to find at least one line in the code which is incorrect.
This is, of course, actually wrong.
Sometimes, the error is something critical simply being absent. Such errors can be much harder to find and fix.
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@dkf said in Random thought of the day:
@jinpa said in Random thought of the day:
In programming, if there's an error in a program, you should be able to find at least one line in the code which is incorrect.
This is, of course, actually wrong.
Of course, it is actually not wrong.
Sometimes, the error is something critical simply being absent. Such errors can be much harder to find and fix.If it is something critical being absent, at the very least you should be able to find a closing brace where something was not included in the block it is closing.
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@jinpa said in Random thought of the day:
If it is something critical being absent, at the very least you should be able to find a closing brace where something was not included in the block it is closing.
It really doesn't follow that simply. When you have, say, an absent reference count increment then the places where the crashes happen are quite literally unrelated to where the bug is. In theory, you can eventually tie the fault back to a specific location, but the reality is that not all bugs have strong evidence that they are missing something from anywhere in particular.
Protocol-level bugs (where the implementation is correct, but what they've implemented is wrong in the first place) are also very difficult to hunt. In those cases, you have to use more theoretical approaches to validate the spec first. Those sorts of problems are particularly bad as the implementations may struggle on for quite a while before (randomly) hitting a state that they absolutely cannot recover from.
To return to what analogies were being drawn, not all arguments have something obviously wrong. Some would be right, but lack critical pieces of the argument (often but not always because they're part of the fundamental assumptions made by the arguer, but which the listener/reader lacks). Others are utterly wrong in terms of concepts, and to argue that a simple fix to the argument will resolve the problem is to miss the point: when someone asks you whether a broken bottle or an old shoe is right for hammering in a screw into child's helium balloon, saying that they should use a claw hammer instead isn't right despite it being a far superior tool for hammering!
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You folks have those Mexican drive-thru restaurants with names like Julioberto's, Filiberto's and other names ending in -berto's? While they're not connected to a franchise or anything, they can be spotted from quite a distance by the signs, which always feature a yellow background with the name of the place in red.
In cursive.
I wonder if their clientele from the generation who can't read cursive see the script lettering as just a random squiggle.
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@da-Doctah said in Random thought of the day:
I wonder if their clientele from the generation who can't read cursive see the script lettering as just a random squiggle.
I like responding to rhetorical questions as if they were actual questions. (Yes, I know that's not technically a question.) When I was a kid, there was about three years (?) in between learning how to read printing and learning how to read cursive. I had no problem recognizing that it was writing, but I could not read it.
It's like a secret code for s.
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Some of my quarterly statements came in the mail today. I look forward to dining exclusively on ramen in a rented shed during my retirement.
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@da-Doctah said in Random thought of the day:
the generation who can't read cursive
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@jinpa said in Random thought of the day:
Yes, I know that's not technically a question.
It's a sentence with a question mark, so technically it's a question.
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@dkf Not to mention the absentee may not be in the software, but rather in the underlying assumption about the hardware.
Had this MCU with an I2C controller that locks up on certain clock prescaler settings which are legit according to the datasheet. So your code may be all correct. Except it still locks up the whole system.
Edit: nat -> not
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@Luhmann said in Random thought of the day:
@jinpa said in Random thought of the day:
Yes, I know that's not technically a question.
It's a sentence with a question mark, so technically it's a question.
"I wonder if their clientele from the generation who can't read cursive see the script lettering as just a random squiggle." No question mark in that sentence. We must be referring to different sentences.
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@jinpa
No, you where referring a specific sentence, I was speaking in a general form.