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Assume v. Presume

I employed a Random Walk. Much better value for money. Kept me entertained and my wrists exercised for days.
 
Black Hole said:
(BTW - I employed group theory to devise a general method to solve the Rubik's Cube when it came out)
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Me too! I devised a very obscure and difficult to use set of generators for a solution. I used a more practical method usually, but did this as an exercise.

Rubik was a cousin of a former colleague, so we saw Rubik's cube before the rest of the world. The originals, from Hungary, were made of a very soft plastic and were quite friable. It wasn't the group that amazed us so much at first as the fact that it was possible to make it, as it felt like it should fall apart, until we delved inside, of course.

Rubik sent us a further toy later and I remember invigilating an exam in a small hall at the university and playing with it. At the end of the exam, the students all wanted to know what we had been doing! I think it must have been Rubik's Snake.
 
Can't stand it when Gollum does the output for building exFAT support on the T2:

Code: 
>>> Building exFAT support.
>>> Downloading exfat-utils (1.0.0) from exfat.googlecode.com
>>> Building exfat-utils (1.0.0)
>>> Installing exfat-utils (1.0.0)
scons: Reading SConscript files ...
Checking whether the C compiler worksyes
Checking off_t is 8 bytes... yes
scons: done reading SConscript files.
scons: Building targets ...
 
I know you (we) don't want an answer, but application was coined to describe a complete systems program such as a point-of-sale terminal, or library database interface, or anything where the system starts up automatically when turned on and "ordinary" users interface with it and never go back to an OS system prompt.

From there we go to a program which never runs to termination, eg the utility programs in a multitasking environment such as an iPhone, hence an app.
 
Black Hole said:
I know you (we) don't want an answer, but application was coined to describe a complete systems program such as a point-of-sale terminal, or library database interface, or anything where the system starts up automatically when turned on and "ordinary" users interface with it and never go back to an OS system prompt.

From there we go to a program which never runs to termination, eg the utility programs in a multitasking environment such as an iPhone, hence an app.
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Not sure about that. Possibly an end user program, eg, a word processor, but not necessarily a whole system interface. Anyway, there was no real need to invent the term, any more than folder was necessary.
 
I agree with "folder" for making the concept easier for the public to grasp.

"Directory" is a misnomer - it works when you are considering the actual directory file (or whatever the particular file system uses as a directory file), but of course a real directory doesn't actually contain anything. Much easier that the public be presented with a paradigm where there are folders that do actually contain the items, filed and categorised like in a filing cabinet.

This works while the next layer of penetration for computer acceptance are office workers; unfortunately computer technology is now in the hands of people who have never seen a filing cabinet, and if they ever did would say "clever - that's just like how things are stored on my computer".
 
I have a problem with deciding when to use singular and plural. "Common practice" is decidedly irregular.

A herd of cows is singular ("look, there is a herd of cows", not "look, there are a herd of cows"), so why is it "there are a number of reasons" not "there is a number of reasons"?
 
It's all to do with collective nouns. 'Herd' is a collective noun for cows, so is, as you say, singular, but 'number' is not a collective noun for reasons so 'number' in this context is not singular so needs 'are' rather than 'is'.

And I have a feeling that there is a murder of crows waiting eagerly to pick the bones out of that one.
 
Well, I've chewed on those bones for a short while, and I think it helps. The problem (I think) is to resolve whether the preceding word(s) constitute a collective noun or a pronoun.

There is a collection of pots

There are a number of pots
 
Trev: It's all to do with collective nouns.
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Who decides what the collective noun should be?, don't get me wrong, I have no objection to herd, but a charm of goldfinches, a boil of hawks?. The terms a whoop of gorillas and a flange of baboons were created by the Not the O Clock News comedy sketch show, but to my mind they are just as valid as the official ones, is there a committee somewhere that decides this sort of thing?
 
Black Hole said:
Much easier that the p:D blic be presented with a paradigm where there are folders that do actually contain the items, filed and categorised like in a filing cabinet.
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Not many folders have folders inside them, to any depth!

Directory: A file that consists solely of a set of other files (which may themselves be directories)

Seems clear enough to me! "Folder" was only ever a poor metaphor.

"clever - that's just like how things are stored on my computer" ---NOT! Mind you, a desktop with filing cabinets on it, with some folders containing other filing cabinets and also the odd calculator and typewriter, as well as your road atlas and encyclopedia, darkroom and film studio, does have a cranky feel to it! :p
 
On Breakfast this morning: "one in four workers is... er, are? part time"

Whichever is correct, it doesn't rest easily on my ear.
 
It's 'is', as it's singular, as they are talking about one worker out of a total of four workers, but 25 out of 100 workers would qualify for an 'are'.
 
Wee is pleesd abowt dat. Dis ar a dedley serius conversashun abowt one's and many's and was not ment too be funy.
 
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