From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1MxRM0-0007zF-Ql for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:18:49 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 35E1BE0818; Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:18:47 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-ew0-f205.google.com (mail-ew0-f205.google.com [209.85.219.205]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EEDCCE0818 for ; Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:18:46 +0000 (UTC) Received: by ewy1 with SMTP id 1so1089458ewy.34 for ; Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:18:46 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:from:to:subject:date :user-agent:cc:references:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type :content-transfer-encoding:message-id; bh=own7TnLyQ9ROKk4YsLjdngJwMVWEOMNMQbYE6AY437c=; b=uCcVbn5yAie50jZH1aeSlP5j+RKyxtzJA1hWI1uTlJXlTKqqyAiGpArC4bC/Loev6M YY6nmxaN8jYX2NXTicmbXhSnltY03OkngAImkrDj862cR/Hs+GmJaMIB4Tm3y91ZVg/S MEdUFwZITwSOgGSPys8KLJ7foIZpBNRtpA1cY= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=from:to:subject:date:user-agent:cc:references:in-reply-to :mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:message-id; b=thVeIVbBkQICEXViG8wlet6idd+m+v7ylRuq+zn95u7/mfjEbszHMEpz8epwEBk4a3 7QJ/PXftLPh6VQweUmXIjUDtdW3N/PElPlDRivsrBdx/docwV85rNbOSI+fpYVv9lXR4 V7xkXkMpyvfyfPg+wGNtuIJTGUk4GgrASBKG4= Received: by 10.211.144.9 with SMTP id w9mr4585422ebn.45.1255378726426; Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:18:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nazgul.localnet ([196.210.202.225]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id 10sm1192826eyd.22.2009.10.12.13.18.45 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5); Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:18:45 -0700 (PDT) From: Alan McKinnon To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: What is a "packet"? Was: Checksum error Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:17:47 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.12.2 (Linux/2.6.31-gentoo-r2; KDE/4.3.2; x86_64; ; ) Cc: Volker Armin Hemmann References: <20091011090443.GE21168@solfire> <200910122158.14861.volkerarmin@googlemail.com> In-Reply-To: <200910122158.14861.volkerarmin@googlemail.com> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200910122217.47047.alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> X-Archives-Salt: 34a5ddf1-2f13-4ff6-9f4d-a42f0918aded X-Archives-Hash: 07cc7ddd99d64a3ee2d13230e55a1d88 On Monday 12 October 2009 21:58:14 Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: > On Montag 12 Oktober 2009, Grant Edwards wrote: > > On 2009-10-11, Alan McKinnon wrote: > > > English is a mess. As a language it's worse than a pig's > > > breakfast and makes almost no sense whatsoever to non-native > > > speakers. Mind you, it makes about as much sense to native > > > speakers as well :-) I had to take 5 years of Latin study in > > > high school to understand how my own mother tongue works. Sad > > > indictment for a language wouldn't you say? > > > > At least we mostly got rid of the whole gender mess and only > > have to worry about objective/subjective case for a few cases. > > which makes english a horrible, horrible language. Spot on fella, spot on. If anyone disagrees with you, have them write C without parentheses. Yup, that's what English tries to do. Then we have our fancy professors who try and tell you that "will" as in "will speak" is a word. It isn't. The proof: define "will" in that sense, and do it in such a way that someone unfamilar with verb tenses can get it. It can't be done :-) What you *can* do is show how "will speak" and "have spoken" are different. But then you have defined not two words, but one compound verb. Which is how Latin and German work after all... Another idiocy: "I will speak", what does that mean? Future tense? Someone being emphatic? Something else? > > During a mostly futile attempt to learn German, I had occasion > > to read Mark Twin's essay on Germain articles. IIRC, plotting > > out all of the combinations for "the" takes something like a > > 3x9 grid > > it is always hard to go from chaos to order. I truly pity foreigners trying to learn English. But at least English is willing to absorb any idea or word from any other language and just use it (unlike say, French). In theory you could pollute English with decent German grammar and slowly deprecate the idiocies over time. Might take a few hundred years though... -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com