Annoying printers

NY wrote:
I've always wondered... In countries where houses have mailboxes on the
roadside, how do they solve the problem of the postman having access to
the mailbox to put mail in it, without there being a problem with theft
or vandalism of mail by people walking along the sidewalk?

Sidewalk? "We need no stinkin' sidewalks!"

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 16:42:08 +0100, Jonathan N. Little wrote:

NY wrote:
I've always wondered... In countries where houses have mailboxes on the
roadside, how do they solve the problem of the postman having access to
the mailbox to put mail in it, without there being a problem with theft
or vandalism of mail by people walking along the sidewalk?

Sidewalk? "We need no stinkin' sidewalks!"

In the UK, that's where we park our cars as the roads are so ****ing narrow and there are so many stupid people who own more cars than driveway.

On 10/05/2018 01:34 PM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

[snip]

* Please try to follow the thread! 'We' weren't talking about an
English-speaking country, we were talking about the US!

Isn't Trump going to make it English speaking?

Changing the locale from en_US to en_BS :-)

On 10/6/2018 7:10 PM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

I tried slotting it in by gravity, I tried pushing it a bit further, I even tried gently pushing while it tried to feed it. It either didn't grab it at all, or only grabbed one side and screwed it up, then continued trying to print on it, whether it was there or not.


I have yet to meet a printer that jams paper.... No further comments nor
advice.

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On 10/05/2018 03:45 PM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

[snip]

I know how, I just don't see why I should waste my time doing so, when
every other person in the group knows how to quote.* In fact you just
did it correctly.

I find proper snipping and quoting to be much more important than the
top post / bottom post issue.

--
80 days until the winter celebration (Tue Dec 25, 2018 12:00:00 AM for 1
day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Access denied. Thought you could get in?"

On 10/05/2018 11:13 PM, Peter Moylan wrote:

[snip]

French has "le chat" for a male cat and "la chatte" for a female one,
but in practice not many people bother checking the sex of the cat
before talking about it.

It's often hard to tell with cats, unless you lift the tail and look for
testicles.

It's not like English, where everyone knows that every cat is "she".

In message Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 07:47:15 +0100, Lewis wrote:

In message Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 00:06:37 +0100, Char Jackson wrote:

On Fri, 5 Oct 2018 12:24:23 -0500, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 10/05/2018 08:08 AM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

[snip]

If they can't speak English that's their problem.

I think that knowing English should be a requirement for things like
registering a vehicle (in an English-speaking country). Some people don't.

I'm in the "some people don't" category, although I'm not militant or
hardcore about it. I've spent quite a bit of my adult life in other
countries and was always rather amazed at how I and my fellow travelers
just assumed that everyone we encountered would know English - because
mostly they did, to varying degrees. So in this country, (USA), I'm
willing to do my best to talk to anyone. Today, for example, there's a
crew at the house putting on a new roof. Out of the 7 people, only one
apparently speaks English. For the others, I use my High School Spanish
plus what little I picked up during my frequent visits to Spain back in
the 1980's.

When my grandparents came to this country, none of them spoke English.
They each learned, but I imagine that that took a while. To be fair, the
person who became my paternal grandmother didn't know any languages at
all when she arrived, since she was born aboard ship during the trip.

I think people should learn the language of the country they're in only
to make their own lives easier, not to make my life easier. My life is
already easy enough.

Everyone should speak the same language on the entire planet, for ease
of communication. English is the most widespread, and one of the more
sensible ones (no genderised nouns for a start). Is it true that in
French a female cat is male, as it's "le chat" no matter if it's male
or female? Preposterous!

French can't even count. The French for "84" is "four twenties and four"
It's a miracle there were any French mathematicians at all.

I like €99.99 on a radio advert: "quatre vingt dix neuf quatre vingt dix neuf" spoken very quickly.

Stupid language.

I was talking to a native French speakers this week it's he said "French
is a dead language that doesn't know it's dead yet."

I said "any language that needs a government committee to try to
preserve it is terrified of being irrelevant." He agreed.

The government is trying to preserve it? I thought all French spoke
it as their primary language.

This is news to you?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_française

A few years back, France tried to make the word 'jeans' illegal, and
banned any non-French origin words from official records, or some such.

It appears the only thing the French hate more than the creeping
influence of English is the creeping influence of non-French French
speakers, like Canadians or Algerians.

The Academy still refuses to acknowledge a female form of "minister",
which all other French speaking countries use, insisting that the
masculine form is "good enough: to include women.

Teh committe, unsurprisingly, is mostly ancient men, as the appointments
are for life and new appointees are only made to replace "immortals" who
have died. In a wild stroke of progressiveness, they will no long
appoint a new member who is over 75, so the youth quake cometh!

Some random links I found on the google.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8820304/Frances-Academie-francaise-battles-to-protect-language-from-English.html

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/15/world/ban-english-french-bicker-on-barricades.html

https://qz.com/1259707/france-bans-vegetarian-food-words-language-purists-decide-that-soy-milk-should-not-exist/

But I'm sure there are thousands of others.

--
And I was grounded while you filled the skies I was dumbfounded by
truth; you cut through lies

In message Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 05:13:42 +0100, Peter Moylan wrote:

On 06/10/18 09:13, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

Everyone should speak the same language on the entire planet, for
ease of communication. English is the most widespread, and one of
the more sensible ones (no genderised nouns for a start). Is it true
that in French a female cat is male, as it's "le chat" no matter if
it's male or female? Preposterous!

French has "le chat" for a male cat and "la chatte" for a female one,
but in practice not many people bother checking the sex of the cat
before talking about it.

It's not like English, where everyone knows that every cat is "she".

I might call a ship "she", but a cat is an "it", so is a human baby.

Around here people get very angry if you use 'it' for a baby. Or even
MORE angry if you use the wrong gender pronoun.

--
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

On 10/06/2018 01:47 AM, Lewis wrote:

[snip]

French can't even count. The French for "84" is "four twenties and four"
It's a miracle there were any French mathematicians at all.

84 - enough for a family of five (including the guy who can't get high
on just one), to use daily for a fortnight.

42 - what you get when you multiply 6 by 9 :-)

[snipp]

On 10/06/2018 07:12 AM, NY wrote:

[snip]

I've always wondered... In countries where houses have mailboxes on the
roadside, how do they solve the problem of the postman having access to
the mailbox to put mail in it, without there being a problem with theft
or vandalism of mail by people walking along the sidewalk?

I have seen some with a slot in the front, arranged so mail can not be
removed that way; then a locked door on the house side.

[snip]
--
80 days until the winter celebration (Tue Dec 25, 2018 12:00:00 AM for 1
day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Access denied. Thought you could get in?"

On Sat, 6 Oct 2018 11:59:49 -0500, Mark Lloyd
wrote:


I've always wondered... In countries where houses have mailboxes on the
roadside, how do they solve the problem of the postman having access to
the mailbox to put mail in it, without there being a problem with theft
or vandalism of mail by people walking along the sidewalk?

I have seen some with a slot in the front, arranged so mail can not be
removed that way; then a locked door on the house side.



I had friends in Connecticut who had a problem with vandalism, not
theft. Kids used to put firecrackers in the mailboxes there.

On 10/06/2018 10:28 AM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

[snip]

I do remember when I was a kid our number changed twice as they lumped exchanges
together.* I used to be able to phone next door with only 3 digits!
I grew up on a farm 5 miles from town. You could call someone in town
with 5 digits (that lasted until about 1989 when they put in the ESS
exchange). But to call someone in the next house (on a party line), you
had to dial 14 digits.

--
80 days until the winter celebration (Tue Dec 25, 2018 12:00:00 AM for 1
day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Access denied. Thought you could get in?"

"Jimmy Wilkinson Knife" wrote in message
news
The UK way is far easier. 01234, spoken as one word. Then 567890 spoken
as one word, or sometimes two - 567 890. It's been worked out that most
people can remember 7 digits easily, so 5 and 6 works well. It does
confuse me though when someone gives me their phone number in an odd
sequence, like 0123 4567 890. Mind you, we always used to have freephone
numbers beginning 0800, some of which now seem to be 08000. Not sure if
the size of the area codes changed or not, I do remember when I was a kid
our number changed twice as they lumped exchanges together. I used to be
able to phone next door with only 3 digits!

My parents' number changed from a 6-digit STD code and a 4-digit phone
number to the same digits but parsed as 4-digit STD code and 6-digit phone
number. The only difference was that if you were phoning another phone on
the same exchange, you needed to dial 6 rather than 4 digits.

The PhONEday happened and 0xxx changed to 01xxx.

At least they weren't in one of the cities that got a brand new STD code. My
grandpa lived in Leeds and his number changed from 0532 xxxxxx to 0113
2xxxxxx. He answered his phone with a pause between the new 2 and the number
that he was used to, whereas I think the "approved" way is "2xx xxxx"
(according to BT purists).

I lived near Reading at the time of PhONEday and Reading's code changed from
0734 to 0118. I was forever seeing shop fronts or headed notepaper giving
the new number as 01734 xxxxxx. So many people made that mistake (and
invested a lot of money in new signwriting or printed letterheads) that I
think BT were toying with creating 01734 as an alternative code in all their
routing tables.

NY wrote:
[...]

I had a colleague who was visiting a site in rural US, and at lunchtime he
went for a walk from the site. This involved walking along a road with a
sidewalk for a short distance. On his way back, a police car pulled up and
asked whether he needed help, and why he was walking. Apparently various
people driving past him earlier had phoned 911 to report a man walking
suspiciously along a road, who was "obviously" either up to no good or else
had broken down and was going for help. Different habits...

We had a similar experience. When I was on a temporary assignment in
the US (Bay Area, Cupertino), my wife was walking with the kids from our
appartment complex to the bank, shops, etc.. A police car pulled up and
the officer asked why she was walking!

"Mark Lloyd" wrote in message
...
On 10/06/2018 10:28 AM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

[snip]

I do remember when I was a kid our number changed twice as they lumped
exchanges
together. I used to be able to phone next door with only 3 digits!
I grew up on a farm 5 miles from town. You could call someone in town with
5 digits (that lasted until about 1989 when they put in the ESS exchange).
But to call someone in the next house (on a party line), you had to dial
14 digits.

Party lines were a pain in the arse. My friend when I was at primary school
had a party line and he and his parents were often prevented from making a
phone call because the woman next door could talk for England on the phone!
It was only a few years ago that I learned that party lines were imposed on
customers in specific areas because of lack of wires from the exchange to
the houses; I used to accuse him of having cheapskate parents who paid for a
lower standard of service, thinking that it was a matter of customer choice.

I didn't know that it was possible to dial the person on the party line. I
thought that was the one case where you still had to invoke the help of the
operator. I presume the call didn't actually go via the exchange and simply
used the exchange wire to power the two phones which were connected together
for the duration of the call.

A more modern equivalent of the party line was the DACS (digital access
carrier system) which sent two phone calls (simultaneously, if both people
wanted to use their phones) down the same wire, by frequency-multiplexing
them (like modulating two radio signals on different carriers), and both
people had a small multiplxer/demultiplexer by the master socket.

We had that at my parents' holiday cottage. DACS fell into disfavour (and
extra wires had to be installed by BT) when broadband was launched, because
AFAIK it wasn't compatible with a DACS demultiplexer box.