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Comment: Re:Abstraction (Score 3, Informative) 516

by JSG (#39529331) Attached to: Why Are Fantasy World Accents British?

Have you ever tried to read Chaucer? That's Middle English. As for Old English - trust me you (nor I) stand a chance! Modern English dialects are much closer together than what might have be termed dialects back then but there is still a huge difference in accents and many terms and words even today across regions. Then throw in Cumbric, Kentish and many other old languages into the mix. Cumbric was still in sporadic use in the 20th C. That's just in England. Then you have Welsh, Irish and Scots with all the same complexities that exist and existed in England with dialects and probably outright different languages in different regions and ages.

The UK and Eire are a small area landwise but a fair diversity in culture still remains - and long may it continue (IMNSHO).

Have a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaucer there's some samples from his writings with translations. I'm a native en_GB speaker and I find it tough going.

Comment: Re:Inevitable (Score 1) 473

by JSG (#39528813) Attached to: Canada To Stop Making Pennies

Well I'm just about old enough to remember the crack addled nonsense that was LSD:

£1 = 20s, 1s=12d, hence £1=240d
£=pound (libra)
s=shilling (solidus)
d=penny (denarius)

The bit in brackets (parenthesis) is why the old abbreviation was "LSD". Obviously we had lots of other weird names for various sub divisions such as a "10 bob note" which was a paper note for 10 shillings or 120d.

Then we got decimalized in 1971, the shilling got dropped as a sub unit and the d suffix replaced with p. £1 = 100p (1 pound = 100 pennies). For a while pennies were known as new pennies but the new was dropped after a few years.

Guess why the US and Canada inter alia call their cents "pennies" 8)

Comment: Re:Good luck, because... (Score 4, Insightful) 676

... so who is winning?

You say what you do and you say what ads do but no conclusion unless we have to take the last phrase of your comment as you feel that's what she thinks.

I feel your pain but apparently parents have been worried for millennia about external influences on their children. If ads is the worst you've got then that's perhaps not too bad. You might like to compare your worries with parents in say the Syrian city of Homs.

Wait until she's around 12-15. You'll really have worries then as she becomes rapidly more sophisticated and "teen" ...

Best of luck (OK - enjoy every moment, even when you are shitting yourself with worry)

Cheers
Jon

Comment: Re:I wish to express outrage over this bad reporti (Score 1) 153

by JSG (#38990335) Attached to: Hacked Emails Reveal Russian Astroturfing Program

Gosh, isn't English subtle!

You have managed to correct Mr 655733's interpretation of Mr 822545's comment with a functionally equivalent interpretation.

As for Mr 822545 - he should have done a better job of underlining. He simply should have typed the words and then used backspace on his typewriter and then put in the underscores. Isn't progress great?

Cheers
Jon

Comment: Re:We've seen this before.... (Score 3, Interesting) 214

by JSG (#38643974) Attached to: Samsung Could Soon Start To Twist Google's Arm

Nice analogy but bollocks I'm afraid. I run several Asterisk systems, including at home.

POTS n ISDN cards - Digium (Asterisk coders) and Sangoma. I'm aware of others.
Handsets - there are masses of suppliers of VoIP handsets.
The thing itself can run on pretty much any 32 or 64 based Linux system and I believe it can run on Windows
There are several specific distros - Digium's own, Trixbox, PIaF, Elastix and many more

On top of that there is FreeSwitch as an alternative software stack for VoIP.

I can't think of many more open markets.

Comment: Re:IPv6 (Score 1) 260

by JSG (#38338924) Attached to: Google Deploys IPv6 For Internal Network

Wrong 'n' epic fail.

'phone numbers == IP addresses. In telephony your number is your identification. On t'internet your IP address is simply that - a number. Your A record is your identification and that does not really care about your IP address.

IPv6 will happen. Just not overnight.

Why did you bother linking that article?

Cheers
Jon

Comment: Re:No bubble here. (Score 5, Insightful) 434

by JSG (#38338562) Attached to: Facebook Could Spawn Thousands of Milionaires

The users of FB are the _product_ and not customers. The customers are the advertisers.

Now I think it is unlikely that the number of users is going to increase significantly. Certainly not by say 100%.

So is the amount of advertising revenue going to increase by 100% - I doubt it.

I suggest you apply the term toxic to this beast - you will lose, its well over valued.

Comment: Re:Space elevator coming next? (Score 1) 159

by JSG (#38286220) Attached to: Graphene Spun Into Meter-Long Fibers

Given the length of this thing and its sheer mass, I don't think that the relatively short depth of the sea is likely to make much difference.

Granted that the water will get in the way somewhat. However the construction team that puts up (drops down?) a space elevator link are probably not going to find that a problem.

I suggest that the whole equator is fair game.

Cheers
Jon

Comment: Re:Insightful (Score 3, Interesting) 67

by JSG (#38253276) Attached to: Repurposing Anti-Spam Tools For Detecting Mutations In HIV

Yes, I've seen some classics too.

For a while I actually deliberately allowed stuff from the "Lads from Nigeria" through and put in its own inbox for everyone at the firm to laugh over. I created a second specially trained SA Bayesian classifier in front of the main filter to siphon this stuff off.

It was trained on a hand crafted corpus gleaned from a mailbox of stuff behind a sacrificial Exim daemon on its own connection that strangely runs really slow but not too slow to put off the spammers.

SA can be made to work in very strange ways. Perhaps I ought to get out more ...

Cheers
Jon

Comment: Re:But Microsoft doesn't detect spam?! (Score 2) 67

by JSG (#38253190) Attached to: Repurposing Anti-Spam Tools For Detecting Mutations In HIV

Have you ever tried it (I can't speak for 2010)? The Intelligent Message Filter is dreadful.

You pretty much only get two knobs to turn: 0-10 for either block or quarantine. On the switches front you get to use someone else's service ie DNSBLs or you can (naively) fill in blocked address lists.

That's why have been doing a roaring trade (10 odd years) in tiny Gentoo (VMs nowadays) machines with Exim 'n' Spam Assassin + Clam AV doing the stuff that Exchange just can't.

So yes his Uni probably did cock up the config of Exch but if they turn the knobs up too far he wont see any mail out side of his Junk folder. Catch 22 matey

Cheers
Jon

"That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver" -- Foghorn Leghorn

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