On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 2:46 PM, Chris Bannister <cbannister@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Fri, Jan 03, 2014 at 10:41:29AM +0530, Rustom Mody wrote: >> On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 11:17 PM, Ralf Mardorf >> <ralf.mardorf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> > I will be quiet now, since I try to learn not to follow my bad habit to >> > write too much mails and to reply to myself :D. >> > >> > Just a nice joke, how far opinions could go: >> > >> > http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2013-December/255217.html >> > >> > :) >> >> Thanks Ralf for making me laugh > > Do you have to be a non English speaker to understand it? > I get the '@' symbol means 'at', but don't understand 'get' the reply, > despite it being poor English. Or is that part of the joke? > #mystified When you put it like that, I am not sure I understand either All I can say is I read it hm.. read it again hmmm... and then I laughed. Why...??? Well an explanation may be that across widely differing cultures things that were taken for granted need to be carefully asserted. Two examples: 1. Outside an elevator is the notice: "Dogs must be carried in the elevator" Now aside from obvious understanding barriers like: - not being able to read - thinking its just a design not a writing/notice - connecting 'the elevator' with THIS elevator there is one more (and to me amusing) interpretation: In order to enter the elevator you must bring a dog which you must carry 2. This is a programming example. Given an array: int a[N]; a is sorted iff a[0] <= a[1] <= ... <= a[N-1] For most programmers this would be enough to specify 'sorted' but for a math/logic proving software doing a[0] = a[1] = ... a[N-1] = 42 makes that spec true. Ruling out such manifestly improper interpretations turns out to be considerably harder And that is why that snippet of Ralf reminded me of Culture and Empire -- more and more I feel we oldies dont get what the modern world is about. In Douglas Adams words: 1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal; 2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it; 3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation Rusi PS. I 'corrected' the To list taking it as an oversight. If not my apologies -- http://blog.languager.org _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
