03:16
<MikeSmith>
Hixie: in the "Coercing an HTML DOM into an infoset" section
03:16
<MikeSmith>
editorial nit:
03:16
<MikeSmith>
"Tools that cannot convey the out-of-band information using out-of-band mechanisms, or that cannot convey the DOM exact as prescribed by this specification"
03:17
<MikeSmith>
s/exact/exactly/
03:20
<MikeSmith>
also, "Form controls being associated with forms that aren't their nearest ancestor (use of the form element pointer"
03:20
<MikeSmith>
is missing closing paren character
03:23
<Hixie>
actually it was missing an >
03:23
<Hixie>
:-)
03:23
<Hixie>
thanks
04:01
<takkaria>
Hixie: those fixes are great, thanks
06:19
<hsivonen>
hmm. so in www-archive Jonathan Chetwynd wants the W3C to cater to the illiterate as an accessibility issue and then cites a study that attributes his illieracy rate figure to poor schooling (not disability)
06:19
<hsivonen>
yay, I mistyped illiteracy
06:20
<jruderman>
so? accessibility isn't only about disabilities.
06:21
<MikeSmith>
illieracy is no laffing matter
06:21
<hsivonen>
jruderman: in the W3C context it is
06:21
<hsivonen>
also, the right solution to poor schooling is good schooling--not making it easier to avoid becoming literate
06:22
<jruderman>
and the right solution to blindness is not being careless with BB guns. so?
06:25
<roc>
how is accessibility for the illiterate different from accessibility for the blind?
06:25
<roc>
I guess the illiterate can't type
06:25
<hsivonen>
jruderman: are you just being provocative or are you actually equating disability and poor schooling?
06:26
<jruderman>
hsivonen: some of both
06:26
<hsivonen>
roc: accessibility for people who can't learn to read is like accessibility for the blind
06:26
<hsivonen>
roc: poor schooling in the UK is something for the UK government--not the W3C to address
06:26
<roc>
except that blind people can type and, I assume, illiterate people can't
06:27
<roc>
I'm less confused now. Somehow I'd received the impression that Jonathan wanted the W3C standards process to be accessible to the illiterate
06:32
<hsivonen>
(100% literacy of adults who don't have a learning *disability* is certainly achievable: http://hsivonen.iki.fi/literacy/ )
07:12
<Hixie>
my own literacy is clearly waning
07:12
<Hixie>
i typed "ratio" so often earlier than i later mistyped "rather" as "ratio"
07:16
<shepazu>
hmmm... roc is gone... but I think his initial impression was correct: Jonathan does want the W3C process to directly involve people with cognitive disabilities and literacy problems
07:17
<shepazu>
and presumably that same group of people would have to be insane, if they want to get involved in Web standards
07:18
<hsivonen>
Hixie: you just specced syntax that could be commandeered for overriding doctype sniffing over the wire :-/
07:19
<Hixie>
i'm happy to change it to something else
07:28
<hsivonen>
Hixie: do you have a preference regarding new bugs vs. comments on bugs marked FIXED?
07:32
<Hixie>
not at all, just make sure the bug is reopened if you comment
07:32
<Hixie>
i don't read the bugmail, i only look at the list of open bugs
07:32
<hsivonen>
Hixie: ok.
07:35
<hsivonen>
commented and reopened
07:36
<Hixie>
thx
07:36
<Hixie>
(generally speaking i think i prefer mail, fwiw)
07:36
<Hixie>
(but bugs are fine too)
07:38
<Hixie>
hsivonen: how can you avoid name clashes with a mapping function?
07:39
<Hixie>
hsivonen: can't the author just predict what attribute name you're going to use and use that himself?
07:39
<hsivonen>
Hixie: you salt the result of the mapping function with some upper-case letters.
07:40
<Hixie>
o_O
07:40
<hsivonen>
Hixie: as zcorpan pointed out, the result can't clash as the tokenizer lowercases input
07:40
<Hixie>
oh, i see, you're assuming we don't take the svgwg's idea
07:40
<Hixie>
hmm
07:46
<Hixie>
hsivonen: also, I don't see how the the text you have is any less vague than what the spec says
07:46
<Hixie>
hsivonen: in particular, i don't understand what is too vague about what the spec says
07:47
<hsivonen>
"Construct the DOM as if appropriate namespace declarations were in scope." what does that mean? does it mean the implementation isn't required to create synthetic declarations?
07:48
<hsivonen>
"Construct the DOM as if these were default namespace declarations." What does that mean?
07:48
<Hixie>
what's a synthetic declaration?
07:48
<Hixie>
a default namespace declaration is an xmlns="" attribute being interpreted as per [XMLNS]
07:48
<hsivonen>
Hixie: a synthetic declaration is a declaration that the parser communicates to the app but that doesn't correspond to an attribute in the source
07:49
<Hixie>
how is that different from acting as if appropriate namespace declarations were in scope?
07:49
<hsivonen>
Hixie: so does "Construct the DOM as if these were default namespace declarations. " mean that a declaration should be exposed or that it doesn't need to be exposed?
07:50
<Hixie>
i don't understand what that question means
07:50
<hsivonen>
Hixie: a parser can expose namespaced nodes to the app without exposing any declarations at all
07:50
<hsivonen>
see? it's not clear enough. :-)
07:51
<Hixie>
i don't understand why not
07:51
<Hixie>
i don't care if the app internally shows declarations or not
07:51
<Hixie>
the whole point is that different pipelines are able/not able to show those declarations
07:51
<Hixie>
and this is saying that you should do whatever is needed by your pipeline
07:52
<hsivonen>
Hixie: right, but if I read the spec, it's not at all obvious that the position on declarations is "I don't care. Drop or synthetize at will."
07:53
<Hixie>
the spec explicitly says you can drop whatever, or construct the DOM as if the "xmlns" attributes were actual namespace declarations
07:53
<hsivonen>
Instead, the spec covers different cases and calls for "as if"s where it's not 100% clear what API behavior "as if" refers to
07:53
<Hixie>
i don't know how to make it more obvious
07:54
<hsivonen>
Hixie: you could say: "The parser may drop attributes whose name starts with "xmlns" or that are in the XMLNS namespace. The parser may expose synthetic namespace declarations to the application."
07:56
<Hixie>
well that allows all kinds of bad stuff
07:56
<hsivonen>
Hixie: what's the bad stuff?
07:56
<Hixie>
e.g. it allows dropping <embed xmlnsy> and allows putting random namespace declarations on elements that don't even match the namespaces being used
07:56
<Hixie>
the former is easy to fix
07:57
<Hixie>
but the latter is what the current text is trying to avoid
07:57
<hsivonen>
Hixie: if your position is that you don't care about the API exposure of declations, why is overdeclaring namespaces synthetically on random nodes a problem?
07:58
<hsivonen>
Hixie: fwiw, if I implement synthetic declarations, my plan was to declare the XLink namespace speculatively even when it isn't actually used
07:58
<Hixie>
what i don't care about is whether the declarations are visible or not
07:58
<Hixie>
if we're going to define a mapping, the mapping had better be a proper mapping
08:02
<hsivonen>
Hixie: how about this: "The parser may drop attributes whose name is 'xmlns', whose name starts with 'xmlns:' or that is in the XMLNS namespace. When an element node does not have a parent or the parent has a different namespace, the parser may syntethize a namespace declaration on the element node declaring the namespace of the element as the default namespace. When a declaration of the SVG namespace or the MathML namespace is synthetized this way,
08:03
<Hixie>
that cut off at "this way,"
08:03
<hsivonen>
MathML namespace is synthetized this way, the parser should also synthetize a namespace declaration that binds the prefix 'xlink' to the XLink namespace."?
08:03
<Hixie>
but that precludes taking xmlns="" attributes on random HTML nodes and turning them into real xmlns="" attributes
08:04
<hsivonen>
Hixie: I don't mind if you allow that as well.
08:07
<Hixie>
eh screw it, i'm going to change this section into a "pass it out of band or drop it" thing, getting rid of the __ crap
08:07
<Hixie>
and will just say that whatever namespace declarations the app feels like showing or fine
08:07
<hsivonen>
Hixie: what about name munging?
08:08
<Hixie>
drop 'em
08:08
<hsivonen>
munging is easier
08:08
<hsivonen>
and makes things more obvious to someone looking at a data dump
08:09
<Hixie>
munging won't work with the svgwg's proposal
08:09
<hsivonen>
Hixie: the SVG WG's proposal has many other problems
08:13
<Hixie>
it's not clear that they're willing to fix the problems
08:14
<hsivonen>
I'd prefer not integrating it into the HTML5 parsing algorithm with the problems.
08:16
<Hixie>
so far, you're the only implementor who has indicated that you prefer the current prose
08:16
<hsivonen>
Hixie: did I misread takkaria's comments?
08:18
<hsivonen>
Hixie: has any implementor shown preference to passing data to an XML parser a character at a time?
08:19
<Hixie>
is andrew working a parser?
08:19
<Hixie>
so far implementors haven't said much of anything
08:20
<Hixie>
except for opera and apple presumably backing the svg's proposal (since they're on that group)
08:22
<hsivonen>
Hixie: he is. As far as I can tell, 100% of the public implementor feedback (two datapoints: takkaria and me) prefers the commented out stuff over the SVG WG's proposal
08:22
<Hixie>
(cool. which parser? do you have a link?)
08:22
<hsivonen>
Hixie: "I much prefer the HTML5 model over having to incorporate an XML parser as the SVG WG suggests" http://www.w3.org/mid/487B650D.6080803⊙acu
08:22
<Hixie>
oh i agree that he was not in favour of the svgwg proposal
08:22
<Hixie>
i didn't realise he was writing a parser
08:23
<Hixie>
anyway, let's just say that ignoring or rejecting a working group's requests is not done lightly
08:23
<hsivonen>
Hixie: Hubbub parser for the NetSurf browser
08:23
<Hixie>
oh he works in riscos?
08:23
<Hixie>
nice
08:23
<Hixie>
i had no idea
08:24
<Hixie>
it would be helpful if we had feedback from the parser writers for major browsers
08:49
<hsivonen>
(some validator.nu virtual host are going down for maintenance. the validator functionality should be up on another server)
08:57
<Hixie>
hsivonen: what should happen if we parse an element or attribute name with a colon in it? (notwithstanding xlink: and xml: prefixes)
08:58
<hsivonen>
Hixie: in the Infoset coercing mode? it should trigger name munging
08:58
<Hixie>
k
08:59
<hsivonen>
since it's not an XML 1.0 4th ed. plus Namespaces 2nd ed. NCName
08:59
<Hixie>
<foo:bar> would be a well-formed NCName
08:59
<Hixie>
foo: just wouldn't be bound
08:59
<Hixie>
which is a separate problem
08:59
<hsivonen>
Hixie: it would be a Name but not an NCName
09:00
<Hixie>
oh i see what you mean
09:00
<Hixie>
but then what about the attributes that _do_ have colons?
09:01
<hsivonen>
the name that is interesting is the local name after the possible XLink adjustments
09:02
<hsivonen>
so xlink:href on an HTML element would get munged but on a foreign element it wouldn't
09:03
<Hixie>
aah, yes, defining in terms of local name, that's the key
09:03
<Hixie>
ok
09:03
<Hixie>
thanks
09:11
<hsivonen>
Hixie: btw, contrary to previous note about UTF-8, I now do the name munging as hex UTF-16 code units
09:11
<hsivonen>
(because the UTF-8 conversion wasn't portable to GWT)
09:12
<Hixie>
i'm speccing the name munging to just be "replace the bad character with 'U' followed by the five character codepoint", as in '.foo' -> 'U0002Efoo'
09:12
<hsivonen>
I suppose UTF-16 to UTF-32 conversion is doable, but not too useful
09:13
<Hixie>
well it doesn't really matter unless you're providing a library anyway
09:13
<Hixie>
and are any astral characters that UTF-16 can express disallowed in NCNames?
09:14
<hsivonen>
Hixie: off the top of my head, no.
09:16
<Hixie>
actually i can't find where 4th ed allows astral characters at all
09:17
<hsivonen>
Hixie: umm. right. top of my head was wrong
09:18
<Hixie>
could have sworn it allowed them
09:19
<hsivonen>
Hixie: it's the char production that allows everything above the BMP
09:19
<Hixie>
sigh
09:19
<Hixie>
i hate arbitrary restrictions
09:20
<hsivonen>
the restrictions on XML names are particularly silly considering perf
09:23
<Hixie>
but don't forget, xml is faster!
09:23
<Hixie>
because it has no error handling code!
09:24
<gDashiva>
and no errors
09:27
<Hixie>
ok hsivonen
09:27
<Hixie>
i've revamped the coercions
09:27
hsivonen
reloads
09:31
<hsivonen>
Hixie: looks good except I'd prefer permitting no-namespace attributes called "xmlns" or starting with "xmlns:" to be dropped.
09:31
<Hixie>
ok
09:31
<hsivonen>
thanks
09:32
<hsivonen>
(particularly this avoids munged attributes in docs that have conforming xmlns talismans)
09:36
<Hixie>
commited
09:36
<Hixie>
forgot to mark it 't', sorry
09:39
<hsivonen>
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22942#c104
09:50
<Hixie>
boy is that a long comment
11:02
<gsnedders>
Colloquy crashed :\
11:02
<Lachy>
finally, a way for socially inept people to use phones without actually talking directly to people! :-) http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/22/1558236
11:04
<gsnedders>
Yay! I'm saved!
11:07
<Hixie>
why would you need a reason to use a phone
11:08
<gsnedders>
heh: "What rational person would want to spend time talking about Web standards?" — Doug
11:09
<gsnedders>
Hixie: Because it's a full-duplex method of communication, and it works even when the other person doesn't use any such thing online.
11:09
<Hixie>
but it's synchronous
11:09
<gsnedders>
Hixie: I only just got up!
11:10
<gsnedders>
(e.g., what I say is bullshit by definition)
11:12
<gsnedders>
Hixie: OK, but compared with email/snail-mail, if those are the alternatives
11:13
<Hixie>
irc, im
11:13
<Hixie>
sms
11:13
<Hixie>
e-mail
11:13
<Hixie>
all those are superior
11:13
<gsnedders>
If they don't have IRC or IM, if you don't know their mobile number.
11:13
<Hixie>
to a synchronous audio channel
11:13
<gsnedders>
e-mail is asynchronous
11:13
<Hixie>
well if i don't have their phone number, i can't call them anyway
11:13
<gsnedders>
(so is SMS, really, even though a lot of people use it as if it isn't)
11:13
<Lachy>
Hixie, with this, it makes phones asynchronous
11:13
<Hixie>
and since i don't have a phone number, they can never call me
11:14
<gsnedders>
Hixie: a home phone number?
11:14
<Lachy>
Hixie, do you have an office phone?
11:14
gsnedders
wonders when he last used his phone
11:14
<Hixie>
Lachy: yes, this mechanism is a good idea. i was just responding to your statement which implied that a reason to use a phone was something we were waiting for :-)
11:15
<Hixie>
i don't have a phone at all at home (no land line, no mobile)
11:15
<Hixie>
and i am never in my office so my office phone is essentially useless
11:15
<hsivonen>
speaking of SMS: any recommendations on a Web site monitoring service that sends SMS when the monitored site is down?
11:16
<hsivonen>
is this one any good: http://rootinternet.co.uk/ ?
11:16
<Hixie>
hsivonen: use twitter direct messages
11:16
<Hixie>
though twitter might not be reliable enough for his purpose
11:16
<Lachy>
twitter is the most unreliable service ever
11:17
<gsnedders>
It is finally getting better, at least
11:17
<Lachy>
I'm still waiting for them to restore IM support, but I hope when they bring it back, they make it far more reliable than it was before.
11:19
<hsivonen>
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2008/07/02/authoritative-true#c1216242757 is that a hypothetical or is authoritative=true being implemented in a non-IE browser?
11:21
<Lachy>
it seems hypothetical to me
11:40
<Hixie>
can someone with a more recent build of opera check the result of http://damowmow.com/playground/demos/global-object/008.html ?
11:40
<Hixie>
click navigate, then click test
11:41
<virtuelv>
result: true false false true true
11:41
<virtuelv>
9.52/2069
11:41
<Hixie>
cool thanks
11:41
<Hixie>
all other browsers do true true true true true
11:41
<Hixie>
fwiw
11:45
<hsivonen>
http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2008-July/015368.html is rather defeatist about captioning :-(
11:47
<zcorpan>
someone should make the webapps-tracker provide links to bugs mentioned in the checkins in a separate column
11:55
<hsivonen>
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg52473.html
12:00
<Hixie>
ugh, their new text versions suck compared to the old text versions
12:01
<hsivonen>
getting on the bandwagon when others are getting off
12:02
<gDashiva>
http://www.iana.org/assignments/aaa-parameters/aaa-parameters.xhtml (new HTML version) <-- no x!
12:05
<hsivonen>
whoa. they'll even turn off the old formats
12:05
<Lachy>
wow, that sucks
12:05
<hsivonen>
how nice for software that reads existing IANA data
12:08
<Lachy>
it wouldn't be a problem if they would just continue generating the old text format from the XML, instead of inventing a new text format
12:08
<hsivonen>
perhaps the old format is hard to generate from XSLT
12:08
<Lachy>
then that's a reason to not use XSLT, not a reason to change the format
12:09
<gDashiva>
Maybe just leave the old text files alone, even
12:10
<Lachy>
gDashiva, then they would go out of date
12:10
<gDashiva>
out of date files for out of date applications :)
12:16
<Hixie>
this global object stuff is way more annoying that i'd like
12:16
<Hixie>
i'm going to bed
12:24
<MikeSmith>
http://blog.mozilla.com/meeting-notes/archives/26
12:25
<MikeSmith>
I'm wondering what the crossed-out stuff means
12:25
<MikeSmith>
e.g., "worker threads (under review)" striked out
12:26
<MikeSmith>
and "native JSON (under review)"
12:26
<Philip`>
I thought it just meant it won't be in alpha 1
12:26
<MikeSmith>
ah, OK
12:27
<Philip`>
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3.1/StatusMeetings/2008-07-22 is a better view of that list since it has indentation
12:33
<MikeSmith>
Philip`: ah, thanks
12:41
<zcorpan>
Hixie: the html parser can't emit an element ".foo<bar"
12:41
<zcorpan>
Hixie: <. is the same as &lt;.
12:42
<zcorpan>
Hixie: s/element/attribute/ works though
12:43
<zcorpan>
Hixie: btw, perhaps <embed> should disallow attributes with ascii uppercase
12:44
<hsivonen>
zcorpan: the same reasoning with apply to data-FOO
12:44
<zcorpan>
hsivonen: yes
12:57
<zcorpan>
Hixie: the coerce section should mention comments ending with a -
13:21
<Windstoss>
err, whats wrong with contenteditable in Opera?
13:22
<Windstoss>
Works in FF, Safari… Opera claims to support it?
14:10
<Lachy>
Hixie, http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2008Jul/0064.html
14:11
<Lachy>
Hixie, you could just make the colour the same as it is in the whatwg copy of the spec, which is #222
15:13
<zcorpan>
why is the w3 version suddely extremely ugly?
15:16
<Lachy>
zcorpan, ugly in what way?
15:16
<Lachy>
it looks the same as it always has
15:16
<zcorpan>
Lachy: it used to have nice blue background for element definitions for one
15:17
<zcorpan>
and orangered <code>
15:17
<Lachy>
oh, but the .warning styles look horible - yellow text on brown background
15:17
<zcorpan>
yeah
15:19
<Lachy>
I don't really care what it looks like, I always use the whatwg copy anyway
15:19
<Philip`>
zcorpan: In case you missed it while away: http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20080712#l-66 and http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20080712#l-81
15:19
<zcorpan>
Philip`: saw those, cheers
15:19
<Philip`>
zcorpan: (I've uploaded a new http://philip.html5.org/tests/canvas/suite/source.tar.bz2 which hopefully has those fixes, though I haven't updated the HTML files on that site)
15:20
<zcorpan>
Philip`: thanks
15:21
<zcorpan>
Philip`: perhaps there are more instances of lineTo(0, 0) that should be moveTo(0, 0)? i haven't gone through all tests but it would be a simple thing to search for if you feel like it :)
15:26
<zcorpan>
hsivonen: trying to validate http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/charref always gives "Internal Error: Oops. That was not supposed to happen. A bug manifested itself in the application internals. Unable to continue. Sorry. The admin was notified."
15:26
<Philip`>
zcorpan: I don't see any other incorrect lineTo(0, 0)s, though it's not impossible that there are some other unintentional lineTo(x, y)s in there
15:26
<zcorpan>
Philip`: ok
15:28
<zcorpan>
Hixie: had you updated to phpbb3?
15:33
<takkaria>
Hixie: I'm surprised you didn't know I was writing a parser, it has been mentioned a fair bit. :)
15:33
<gsnedders>
Hixie is a complete n00b anyway :P
15:34
<takkaria>
Hixie's employer is even paying me to write it
15:35
<gsnedders>
Hixie's employer is rather large, though
16:59
<hsivonen>
zcorpan: the reason is insufficient heap space. sorry about that. Validator.nu is running on a backup server while the main server undergoes an update to higher RAM spec
17:01
<hsivonen>
zcorpan: tweaking heap setting now...
17:02
<hsivonen>
(the real solution, of course, would be to eliminate Schematron...)
17:03
<hsivonen>
hmm. this happens even without schematron
17:03
<hsivonen>
very interesting...
17:05
<hsivonen>
even more interesting is that it runs out of heap in the same place even after increasing heap
17:13
<kangax>
What would be the best way to represent (store) custom shapes which are later to be imported to canvas? Set of curves, points, lines?
17:18
<zcorpan>
hsivonen: no worries, i just thought i'd let you know since it seemed to work fine for other resources
18:21
<zcorpan>
hsivonen: "<body></html><html>" gives "19: Stray “html” start tag." twice in parsetree.validator.nu
18:36
<zcorpan>
hsivonen: also, parsetree.validator.nu says "XML; don’t load external entities"
18:49
<zcorpan>
i love how http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_5 puts so much weight on the codec issue relative to the rest of the article
18:50
<zcorpan>
i mean if it would be balanced then the codec issue wouldn't get more than a single sentence
18:51
<hsivonen>
zcorpan: the codec issue is what made to slashdot and that non-HTML5 technical people have an opinion about
18:52
<hsivonen>
(I'll look into the parse tree issues tomorrow)
18:54
<zcorpan>
hsivonen: indeed
19:25
<hdh>
"An html element's end tag may be omitted if the html element is not immediately followed a comment" is a "by" missing?
19:26
<zcorpan>
hdh: yeah
20:11
<gsnedders>
Can someone write docs so I don't have to for the spec-gen?
20:11
<gsnedders>
:P
20:18
<jgraham>
gsnedders: There's no point in getting anyone else to do it because they won't do it well wnough to satisfy you and you'll have to do it yourself eventually anyway
20:19
<gsnedders>
jgraham: True :P
20:19
<Lachy>
gsnedders, I could do it if you write down everything it does for me to base it on
20:19
<gsnedders>
Lachy: :P
20:19
<gsnedders>
Lachy: That kinda wrecks the point of getting someone else to do it
21:56
<Hixie>
takkaria: i probably forgot and got you confused with all the other people writing parsers :-)
21:57
<Hixie>
gsnedders: assuming takkaria is talking about summer of code, the company being large doesn't really act as an excuse for me since i work on the team that does summer of code :-)
21:57
<gsnedders>
Hixie: Ah. That is problematic for that excuse.
21:59
gsnedders
guesses that police car isn't going to bust his friends who are currently breaking the law as it is going the wrong way
22:15
gsnedders
notes he still won't be old enough for GSoC next year
22:15
<jcranmer>
there's a min age onGSoC?
22:17
<gsnedders>
jcranmer: yeah, 18.
22:17
<jcranmer>
ah
22:17
jcranmer
only turned 18 a few mos ago
22:18
gsnedders
only turns 18 in 2010
22:18
Philip`
feels old :-(
22:19
<gsnedders>
Philip`: At least you don't have to look at my youthfulness now :P
22:19
<jcranmer>
well, I'm technically a second-semester sophomore at college, IIRC
22:19
jgraham
is even older than Philip` :(
22:19
<jgraham>
(unless I'm not of course)
22:20
<jcranmer>
everyone is 5 standard geosystems units old
22:20
<gsnedders>
jcranmer: a sophomore?
22:20
<jcranmer>
gsnedders: AP + dual-enrollment course credits :-)
22:20
<gsnedders>
jcranmer: huh?
22:20
<gsnedders>
jcranmer: We need more i18n here.
22:20
<jgraham>
jcranmer: You may have o convert to non-US :)
22:20
<jcranmer>
gsnedders: sophmore = 2nd-year of college (university)
22:20
<gsnedders>
jcranmer: Ah.
22:21
gsnedders
needs to decide where to apply… and soon.
22:21
<gsnedders>
s/apply/apply to/
22:21
<jcranmer>
gsnedders: which locale?
22:21
<gsnedders>
jcranmer: en-gb-x-sneddy, or en-gb-oed if you can't manage the former
22:22
<jgraham>
gsnedders: Presumably your university will just be en-gb unless you plan to self educate
22:22
<jcranmer>
ah, so someone who can understand me if I refer to the subjunctive mood?
22:22
<gsnedders>
I thought jcranmer meant what language to localize to :P
22:23
<gsnedders>
jgraham: That's making the assumption I go to the UK :)
22:23
<gsnedders>
jcranmer: Only possibly
22:26
<jgraham>
jcranmer: Why would en-gb-* people be better at grammar than anyone else?
22:26
<jcranmer>
jgraham: he said en-gb-oed
22:26
<jgraham>
Oh. Well I guess that he could look it up then
22:27
<jgraham>
But we have essentially no education in grammar here
22:27
<jcranmer>
just like an en-us-x-harvard would understand it but not an en-us-x-hillbilly
22:27
<gsnedders>
My parents own a paper copy of the "compact" OED, which is basically the same as the full OED just printed in 8pt type with four normal OED pages to the page
22:28
<Philip`>
Hooray for www.oed.com
22:30
<gsnedders>
jcranmer: ("only possibly" because the OED merely defines words in terms of other words, and eventually falls about with recursive definitions, so it isn't certain I can understand anything)
22:30
<jgraham>
Philip`: Hooray for university subscriptions to hugely expensive reference works
22:30
<jcranmer>
I use dictionary.oed.com through school's proxy
22:31
gsnedders
needs to write his personal statement
22:31
gsnedders
sighs
22:31
<Philip`>
jgraham: and for SSH proxying so I can access it from home
22:31
<jgraham>
Philip`: Yeah, that's cool too
22:31
jgraham
only discovered that recently
22:32
<gsnedders>
I also know whatever I write in the first draft of it will be completely thrown out and rewritten as I over-edit it.
22:32
<Philip`>
though usually I'm lazy and use rdesktop to a Windows machine instead, because that's easier than complicated port forwarding and faster than simple X forwarding
22:35
<Philip`>
gsnedders: In that case you can fill your first draft with jokes and terrible puns and obvious fabrications, which will make it more interesting
22:35
<gsnedders>
Philip`: But only make the first draft more interesting.
22:35
<Philip`>
That's better than nothing
22:36
<gsnedders>
Which will result in the second draft being what the first draft normally is :)
22:36
<jcranmer>
I wrote on of my college apps the night it was due grumbling about it in IRC
22:36
<jcranmer>
s/on/one/
22:37
<gsnedders>
jcranmer: At least here we have a centralized admissions process :)
22:37
<jcranmer>
http://quotes.burntelectrons.org/3042
22:37
<gsnedders>
But I may end up applying to MIT and Stanford…
22:38
<jcranmer>
didn't like Stanford's campus, and there was a certain haughtiness on the staff's part as well
22:38
<jcranmer>
then again, it seems that every American university's admissions director
22:39
gsnedders
has the disadvantage of being unlikely to be able to see either before going there
22:39
<jcranmer>
s' job is to try to make it seem like you can't get in
22:39
<jgraham>
Hey the OED is 50% cheaper in the USA!
22:39
<jcranmer>
but our money is twice as cheap as yours...
22:40
<gsnedders>
I sent an email asking one or two questions to MIT Admissions, the reply I got had a reassuring start: "Hello Geoggrey,"
22:40
jcranmer
curses the until-recently negative average savings rate
22:40
gsnedders
wonders where else is better than Cambridge for Comp.Sci.
22:41
<jcranmer>
and lack of fiscal sanity on the part of elected officials, but you can't have it all
22:41
<jgraham>
gsnedders: Whilst I may not be sampling the ull distribution function, all the MIT people I have met have been both excepionally bright and excepionally nice
22:42
<jgraham>
s/ull/full/
22:42
<Philip`>
gsnedders: I don't think there exists a total ordering of the goodness of universities, so it doesn't make sense to ask if somewhere is "better" than somewhere else :-p
22:42
<gsnedders>
jgraham: I have the same experience. My uncle went their briefly as a post-grad, then went off to Kenya before completing his PhD, as he got a job offer
22:42
<gsnedders>
Philip`: True :P
22:42
gsnedders
is listening to I Want It All by Queen from Greatest Hits II
22:42
<gsnedders>
jcranmer: Will that do? :P
22:43
<gsnedders>
However, being somewhere like CA would be good for my CFS…
22:43
<jcranmer>
I never really looked at MIT that much
22:43
<jgraham>
gsnedders: Sunlight?
22:44
<gsnedders>
jgraham: Heat.
22:44
<jgraham>
?! Really?
22:44
<gsnedders>
jgraham: For all the various things it does to your muscles at least :P
22:44
gsnedders
is on obscene amounts of painkillers and anti-inflamatores for all that pain
22:45
<jgraham>
All I recall about Stanford is that the asrophysics department is in the bsement
22:45
<gsnedders>
jgraham: Light helps some people, and not others. Not so much me. Being this far north means I get plenty here in summer :)
22:46
<gsnedders>
jgraham: Peh! You don't need sunlight for astrophysics! :P
22:47
<gsnedders>
Lack of sunlight just screws with me mentally more than physically, esp. when I get really bad at winter, and end up never seeing any sunlight
22:47
<roc>
"didn't like Stanford's campus"? You are mad
22:47
<jgraham>
gsnedders: Well if you did the people at MRAO in Cambridge would be screwed (the Physics department has a negligible number of windows)
22:47
<gsnedders>
jgraham: Hehe. I am aware :)
22:49
gsnedders
is currently leaning towards applying for Edinburgh (Comp. Phys.), York (Phys.), Cambridge (Comp.Sci.), MIT (Comp.Sci), Stanford (Comp.Sci.)
22:50
<gsnedders>
(sorry, s/(Phys/Theoretical Phys./)
22:52
<gsnedders>
roc: You like it then, I take? :P
22:53
gsnedders
bursts out laughing at Chris Wilson's latest tweet: "Twitter's usual web presence = EPIC WHALE"
22:53
<roc>
it's a lovely campus
22:54
<roc>
now, I chose to go to CMU instead of Stanford, so the campus isn't everything
22:54
<gsnedders>
Challenge: convince me why I should go to one of those universities?
22:54
<Hixie>
the only experience i have of stanford is the couple of times we were trying to drive from el camino onto university to go to dinner and took a wrong turn and ended up driving up the big stanford avenue in an attempt to find somewhere to u-turn
22:54
<Hixie>
that avenue sure looked nice
22:55
<roc>
apply to Stanford, CMU, MIT and Berkeley
22:55
<roc>
and study CompSci at one of those
22:55
<gsnedders>
roc: Berkeley is near-impossible to get into as an international student
22:55
<roc>
oh yeah
22:55
<Hixie>
yeah if you're going to do compsci then those are the ones to do it at
22:55
<roc>
sorry
22:55
<roc>
ok the other three
22:55
<gsnedders>
roc: CMU?
22:55
<roc>
Carnegie Mellon University
22:55
<roc>
the best CompSci program that the average person hasn't heard of
22:56
<gsnedders>
Pittsburgh… I think I went there.
22:56
<roc>
but it's as good as the other big three
22:56
<gsnedders>
(I went to the USA once when I was five, I don't remember that much)
22:56
<gsnedders>
(I remember I don't like LA, and one or two things I didn't really like in Boston)
22:57
<gsnedders>
(and the other place we went to was some random place where my father was giving a paper at a conference, which was the whole reason for going)
22:58
gsnedders
sighs
22:58
<gsnedders>
choices.
22:59
<gsnedders>
Someone (not me) should just make a choice from my above list and be done with it :P
23:00
<jgraham>
gsnedders: Someone (not you) will decide whether to let you in to those places or not :)
23:00
<gsnedders>
jgraham: :P
23:00
<Hixie>
if you have money, pick stanford
23:00
<gsnedders>
The US unis are pushing it in terms of money
23:01
<Hixie>
then you're near google, apple, and mozilla, which might be helpful
23:01
<Hixie>
(e.g. for internships)
23:01
gsnedders
sighs
23:01
<gsnedders>
I can't even decide what subject to do :P
23:01
<gsnedders>
I probably won't get into such good places for physics though
23:02
gsnedders
notes Cambridge has the advantage of being able to switch to that after the first year of comp.sci. without having to do any catching up
23:12
<takkaria>
it's bad that I read comp.sci as a newsgroup name
23:21
<jcranmer>
yay, I'm not the only person who reads newsgroups!