Oh, people here like to bitch around. Actually, that's all they do. But usually in a good-hearted way. It's much like Meta.SO.

Haha, good comparison.

@balpha And the "scariest thing I heard all day" competition ends early today!

I love the traditional S-Bahn announcements. The ones made by the drivers themselves. The very definition of snotty

Not wanting to go all gushy on you or anything, but I do think your English is bloody amazing (@balpha, @Pekka, @badp, @system, and anyone else I might unwittingly offend by omitting them from the list)

vat arr you torking abaut?

Mine's note eeh thate eeh goode

@Benjol Siao ah, ma Engrish dat good mah?

not me really, I'm still learning and writing Stack Overflow duct-tape answers kinda help :)

@YiJiang I already complimented you for your English once, remember? :)

Thanks! Oh man, let's make April 1st native speaking day... Evryvun zes everysing in zer cliché local accent

@Pekka Or we just all invade SO with native-language questions and answers :)

@Benjol or that, yeah!

Bute I don'te knowe whate eeeh accent eeeh itàlians usually eeeh speake with

There must be a Babelfish converter that adds some local colour to ze proper english

@badpssockpuppet's english is impressive, you surely have not learned it in our poor School environment

@badpssockpuppet Drawing your vowels out.

@Pekka 我真的没有什么口音

(I'm just basing myself off the characterization a German said of an Italian speaker at a Microsoft conference once.)

@badpssockpuppet It's the Godfather. Hide!

@badpssockpuppet pretty much the last thing I learnt to do in French was fake an English accent :) Or let's say it's something I had to relearn at the end...

不过这样也不错

@YiJiang Ich auch nicht. En minäkään

French? Oh, mais je parle Fransez comm se nent fuss

(only @systempuntoout has a chance of getting the above)

@badpssockpuppet Fuss is a french word?

@Pekka No. It's not.

@Pekka Fransez != Francais; it must be some Italian in-joke.

@PopularDemand that must be french with an italian accent.

@Pekka 嗯，谷歌翻译真的帮不了忙

It's maccheronich Francais

@YiJiang You are so lucky balpha decided to support Unicode.

@YiJiang 我确定工程

@Benjol You eh... confirm construction?

@Pekka A parody of french, more accurately. «I speak French very naturally ("come se niente fosse")»

@PopularDemand \o/ Well, the funky accents probably won't survive if that was the case

@YiJiang Going in it said "works ok for me", coming back out it says "I'm sure works"

@YiJiang more or less, yeah

But it's not perfect!

@Pekka I said it's not helpful!

glares at Google Translate

@YiJiang ah, I see! Well, that confirms that :)

哈，你们都听不懂我在讲什么

@YiJiang Kylläpäs!

@YiJiang, looks like it's only any use cn->en

But Finnish <-> english seems badly broken.

@YiJiang Doch doch!

@Benjol The correct translation would actually be none of you can understand what I'm saying

"Ha, you do not understand what I'm talking about" is close enough for me :) especially with the Ha

Hello, @Nyuszika7H. I'm not sure whether to applaud your dedication or tell you to get help....

It should have replaced "you" with "y'all"

@PopularDemand hey, let him take part in the conversation! I still thinks it stinks he can't even be on chat. But well, what are we going to do in the face of U.S. legislation...

@Benjol It lost the idea of none of you, hrump...

@YiJiang it's the you/ye thing. Translates plural in french though

Yeah, it's more a quirk in the target language

@Benjol Possibly, hmmm...

But it translates "you" (singular) in German, too, even though it would have a plural

@Pekka Well, you could convince balpha to lobby Jeff 'n' Joel to move the company to Germany. It'd be good for a laugh at a minimum.

@Pekka, yup, french is ambiguous, 'vous' could be du or sie (if I remember my german right)

@PopularDemand I wouldn't be so sure about that. We are going to get even more terrible legislation if the current government survives the next election

@Benjol yup

Liverpudlian has a plural for you, "youse"

Other regional accents have, too, if I'm not mistaken

And of course the southern "y'all"

@Pekka Ah. If you say so. As an American, it is my right and duty to ignore [your country here]'s politics.

@PopularDemand I think that's normal, not necessarily just in America :)

@PopularDemand Ha, in Europe we do better, we ignore our own countries politics :)

I, for example, learned only a year ago that Switzerland has no president, and that they somehow take turns in some sort of council

washingtonpost.com/opinions/…

It seems to depend on what size the country is, though. Major political developments in Germany freuently make the headlines in Finland

While most Germans couldn't locate Finland on a map.

@Pekka The 7 members of the 'federal council' take it in turns, one year each. Way to go for international recognisability :)

time to go, have a nice day y'all ;)

@system later, you too!

@Benjol true! But it surely has huge advantages. There's less concentration on whoever is top dog, and maybe more room for sanity over drama and theater.... Although that may be a pipe dream :)

@Pekka I think so. I think the definition of good government in a country where things are globally ok is "don't try to fix it"

@Benjol heh, nicely put!

My mega-upvoted answer has become some kind of heat sink for angry comments. I think that might be a good thing. Like fly tape ;)

> Water under the bridge, you say, but man, you need some PR

dixit Aarobot :)

Hahahaha! Let's just not hope that the question goes the way of the fly tape when it's full. :)

Yeah, maybe I should add a comment telling people to cut it out, or I'll lose my reps :)

Also, yay, I've gained my first Pundit!

@badpssockpuppet congratulations

@badp nice. Say, what were you talking about over in Welbog's room?

Was that a case of "wrong window"? Because I'm not seeing any deleted messages, and nothing new in Welbog's profile

@Pekka He was advocating for not deleting the posts that cause a suspension. Think spambots.

@badpssockpuppet but where was he advocating that? I'm not seeing that part of the conversation

> could you star rchern's "Oy"s for me, please?

dixit @Nyuszika7H :)

@Benjol we shall.

@balpha are you there? Do you happen to have half a minute?

sure

Trying to create an account over at Apple.SE, I get Apple - Stack Exchange requires cookies for authentication -- are your browser cookies enabled for this domain?

With Chrome 10, no cookie settings changed

Just checking whether that's something unusual/important, will try with a different browser now

This is after clicking "Google" in the OpenID provider dialog, and allowing SE access

@Pekka was this problem for the chat

@Richardakacyberkiwi you have to know you had it to lose in the first place

or just for the site

@Trufa no, the site. In the process of creating an account there

@Pekka weird. I can login fine -- you're creating a new account?

@balpha never mind, I tried again and it worked the third time. Sorry

@Pekka ahh ok, because I have that problem login to chat

Yeah, creating a new account

ah, k

@balpha he's sock putppeting

shh

@Trufa no, on Apple.SE

I'm new there

@Pekka (just in case) just kidding

?

@Pekka bought something ?

:D

@Trufa no, but thinking about getting an iPad for a friend

But unsure what it can do in terms of word processing, simple image editing and such

@Pekka ipad2?

without having to spend $500 in the app store

@Trufa I don't know, a first-generation one might do

@Pekka not worth it now

Really, is the 2 one that much better?

@Pekka the thing is like this

@Pekka yes.

It is not worth to upgrade (well that is up to you)

but If you don't have the 1st, you should definitly buy the secon

But it's better to buy a new one if given the choice?

Right

@Pekka yes

price wise

power wise

cool wise

I see!

everything wise

I see. I wonder whether there is any Android based device out there that is as polished and cool

But from experience, there isn't

At least not as polished and cool as Apple's stuff

@Pekka what can't be achived yet is the feel

Because when it comes to Android you have to vendors working in tandem with a split on costs and dev time to produce something.

that the ipad gives

Yeah. Apple are cold, greedy bastards, but their products are top notch, can't argue with that

With Apple it's all from one shop, with a unified set of teams working on the thing, and a singular project lead.

@drachenstern very true!

You can't beat that for design.

@Pekka you pay an "apple tax" for that

but if you ask me

Imagine if you hired a mechanical engineer to design the frame of your house and all its internals, and then hired a decorator to design the interior of the house, but they couldn't share their own visions moreso than generalities.

it's worth your money

It's so very worth the money.

@Pekka do you want any quick help without asking a question

Re money: Yeah, I see. And that unified design has its consequences, especially for less experienced users... There is something to it that Apple machines just work, while you're still looking for the right graphics card driver that works with your PC's chip set in that specific revision

I think I could guide you a little

@Trufa trufa oh that would be very nice! They are really stupid questions, hang on

almost thought this was a sarcastic post... programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58637/…

@Pekka shoot

2. Are there simple Image editing apps comparable to Photoshop Elements?

3. What kind of E-Mail client comes with the system? Is it any good? Does it do IMAP?

1 & 2: not natively, you'll have to buy from the App Store

3. MobileMail, very good, does IMAP, Exchange, POP, and has a special Gmail template

Are there any big names in the market re 1.) and 2.)?

Mail : apple.com/ipad/built-in-apps/mail.html

@LoïcWolff sweet, thanks.

@Pekka For Word processing, Pages (edited by Apple), for $9

A friend of mine has the ipad2 with apple's mini bluetooth keyboard

@LoïcWolff I second that

I don't know for image editing, but there surely is some

and it's pretty sweet, basically like a netbook just lighter

he had something that resembled notepad

@Pekka The email sysem is fantastic (IMO)

@LoïcWolff looks good, and the price is reasonable. Hmmm, looking more and more attractive

@Trufa nice! It's starting to look like exactly what my friend needs

@Pekka albeit not for very long/complex technical mails

@Pekka Jobs uses it for email all the time.

@Pekka I have it, it's erally nice. But I havent tried "share" the file produced with MS Word

@Trufa yeah, but that won't be a requirement

@Pekka Yes, the Apple version of Office is available. Go play with one at a Verizon store or something.

I don't know if there's compatibility issue

@LoïcWolff There are a zillion image editing apps for iOS

@LoïcWolff @drach yeah, I will walk into a store and play around with it.

@LoïcWolff that's manipulated through iTunes tho...

Another thing @Trufa, the file storage system sounds a bit restricted, is that true?

@drachenstern I'm sure there is, I'm not interested in them, so I don't know any good one (what he asked)

Is it possible to exchange files with other computers through the WLAN?

@Pekka yes, that's very true.

@LoïcWolff ah, there we go then

@Pekka yes indeed

@Pekka not like on a Windows or Linux box.

it is more for a cloud based idea for it's used

Right. How would one go about that?

Is there an App, or do you need iTunes on the client side?

That's the dark side of Apple's streamlined design... A newspaper commentator here recently called Apple the "GDR of the technology world" :)

So you shouldn't be using this if you want to create and manage lots of business documentation. The iPad is about an intimate experience with media. Whether that media is a letter or if it's music or what, that is the focus of your usage. If you want a general purpose computer use a general purpose computer.

(GDR meaning the old German Democratic Republic :)

The target of this device is not every single person.

The target of this device is a specific subset of computing.

It's that ole 80 20 adage.

@drachenstern You know, that is what most iPad detractors can't get

(stupidly enough)

The device should be about 20% useful to about 80% of the population, and about 80% useful to about 20% of the population. It's not going to be 100% for 100%

@TimPost, eh, way to go on the mugshot :)

This pretty much sums up my impression of the technology.

And notice that my 80% and 20% of the population are overlapping pieces of a venn diagram, not 80+20=100

The ease of use is great at any rate and exactly the right thing for my friend

The question will be whether it provides enough freedom to work with it.