jack

There's a stuffed toy hanging from a telephone wire across Chesterton High Street. Is it worth seeing if BT care? I asked the council and they say it's not their problem and to phone BT, but if it doesn't harm the wire I don't see why BT would care.

When someone says "easy to use", a high proportion of the time they're talking about a different use cases to the one you're thinking of. It's an easy mistake to make, as often one's usage pattern is representative, but also, often it isn't. And if it isn't, it's easy to forget that someone else might be talking about how easy it is to do something else -- either something so basic you'd forgotten it was necessary, or something so complicated you simply never needed to use it.

Classic example: 3.5 ed DnD Forums. Essentially every conversation on the forum[1] went something like this:

Beginner: Which class is [most powerful/easiest to play effectively/most fun]?
Expert: Oh, that's easy. Everyone knows the best class is [wizard/cleric/non-core prestige class X]
Other beginner: What? I tried that and [I was eviscerated by a Kobold in the first encounter because I started the game with -57 hit points[1]]. What are you smoking?
Expert: NEWB!
Beginner: DICK!

Etc, etc.

The same applies to unspoken differences in GMing style, which can make social skills overwhelmingly broken, or near-useless; or make time to prepare spells before combat into an assumed right, or a rare luxury; or make finding a highly enchanted weapon suited to your skills a certainty, or an unheard of stroke of luck.

But the same applies to all sorts of other things. I recently saw a thread asking "is [version control A] [more powerful/easier to use] than [version control B]" and it turns out that whether or not it's clear what the answer is, it depends whether you mean "for going from 'never used it' to 'first check in'" or "for editing the history in creative ways", and it's easy to dismiss the other person as wrong, when "not relevant to me and so I assumed that wasn't relevant to anyone" would have been more accurate.

[1] Mild exaggeration

Tip: Don't name the last episode of your TV show after any common DVD menu navigation features :)

OK, this is going to be massively oversimplified and riddled with inaccuracies, and the networking gurus on my friendslist are probably more prominent than the Jewish ones, so expect a number of corrections in the comments, but for the benefit of Liv and anyone else interested, a very brief overview.

An ethernet packet

- Has a header containing destination address, source address, type, data and a couple of other things
- The type is a number specifying what protocol is in the data. This is typically an IP ("Internet protocol") packet.
- The addresses are addresses of the physical network cards of the computers
- Which will (always?) be MAC addresses, ie. a six-byte number which every network card manufactured has a unique one.
- It is normally written in hexadecimal with semicolons, like 00:0E:78:5D:10:04
- It doesn't matter how they're assigned, except that each manufacturer has a different set of them to assign (sequentially or randomly) to network cards they manufacture
- These do not need to be unique across the whole world, they only need to be unique within one physical LAN or wireless network. But because you don't know which computers will be plugged together, they're ALL made unique
- If a computer has an ethernet cable and a wireless card, they will have different MAC (?)
- This is transmitted by the computer by physically changing the electric voltage on the wire, or by physically transmitting a short radio burst
- That means that the computers have to take turns transmitting and so on -- how to do that is what ethernet specifies
- This will be received by all computers on the wire or within range of the wireless, but ignored unless it has the appropriate destination address (and possibly appropriate content -- a computer not listening for IP traffic will just ignore any)
- There are special MAC addresses which mean "to everyone" which everyone receives (probably FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF but I can't remember). This is not used for normal TCP/IP traffic, but for some special network uses.

An IP packet

- Directly after the ethernet packet headers typically come IP packet headers
- Again, this is a source address, a destination address, and something indicating the content
- But this is coincidence, they're all different to the ethernet fields I discussed above
- The IP addresses are four bytes, typically written with dots like: 131.111.12.20
- Originally the idea was that each individual network would communicate by ethernet, and you'd connect them together by having some computers which were on two neighbouring networks
- And every computer would have an IP address assigned by some independent body somewhere (originally Job Postel, later ICANN)
- And computers would maintain routing tables, saying that "messages for THESE IP addresses should be passed to THOSE networks, and so on"
- Which is what IP does (routes packets between networks to a specific IP address, but does NOT, for instance, combine packets into a longer message or have an acknowledgement that they got there)
- Most IP addresses (in theory) could be anywhere on the internet, but some are reserved for small networks to use themselves, so many different small networks might use 192.169.anything.anything for the computers on it, so long as they don't accidentally send messages for those IP address out onto the internet. There are also some special IP addresses not assigned to any computer but that mean "this computer" or "all computers on this network"
- Nowadays it's much more common for a home network to connect to the internet via a router, and the router (may) have a real internet IP address (though not normally the same one every day) which it uses to talk to the internet, but another, eg. 192.168.0.1 which it uses on the local network, and whenever it sends packets between the networks it switches the addresses around so they go out, and come back to the router, and then it switches them over to go to the local IP address.
- On a small internal network IP addresses are either assigned manually (by just picking 192.168.anything and making sure they're different) or by DHCP (which is much the same, except whenever a computer turns on, it asks the router for a new IP address that's no-one's using,and the router keeps a list and hands out the next free one)

TCP

- The contents of an IP packet are typically a TCP packet
- IP does the "get this packet to the right computer" but TCP does "send a reply to make sure it gets there, number all the packets I send so the other end can check they all arrive in the right order, and stitch together lots of small packets into one big message, number them so I can (eg) stream music and download a webpage at the same time, and the right messages go to the right program etc"
- There are some other protocols which are similar to TCP and use IP, but are different, eg. UDP which does a similar thing but WITHOUT all the checking.

HTTP, FTP, etc, etc

- OK so, TCP sends a potentially long message. What is a message? Many, many different protocols use TCP/IP, typically used by different applications on the same computer
- For HTTP it might be something like "Hey computer? Do you have a file called index.html? Please send me a file called index.html!" and a webserver running on that computer would send an HTTP reply saying "404. That means I don't have it." or "200. That means, that file follows. OK, here goes. [lots of html/txt/jpg/etc]"

If you want to make someone sound pretentious go ahead and have them use lots of excessively long and obscure words. But if you want someone to sound intelligent or knowledgeable, then only use longer and more obscure words if they convey a greater or more concise meaning.

Sure, if the reader is less intelligent or knowledgeable, they won't be able to tell the difference between long words used to look clever and ones used to convey information. This confusion supports politics, con artists, and parts of soft science all over the world. But if you're trying to make someone seem smart to smart people, their words need to be concise, or clear, or technically detailed[1]. Fortunately, you have the advantage of time, you can probably prepare in five minutes something that would be terribly clever if your character talks like that all the time :)

[1] In fact, many people, notably me and many of my friends, are quite smart AND quite pretentious, and strive to be precise, both from clarity, and also because they think it's funny. It's quite likely they'll go together, but I still maintain there's a difference, especially if the character was previously dumb but tenacious and then is hit by an intelligence-ray for a short humorous interlude :)

"RSVP" traditionally means exactly what it says: please respond. Whether or not you're able to come. Traditionally, not doing so is rude (assuming the invitation came from someone who had a genuine reason to invite you).

Now, a much better heuristic is: on invitations to big social events like weddings, "RSVP" retains the traditional usage. On casual social engagements, "RSVP" typically means "let me know if you're going to come" and non-response is treated like a "no". Although often positive responses are helpful even if not necessary, and often there is some flexibility to turn up at the last minute.

Unfortunately, this means that you can't really say it at all without a little bit of ambiguity. Normally the heuristic works fine, but it may be slightly better to specify what you actually mean, eg. "let me know if X, letting me know if Y would be helpful but not necessary" or "please let me know by DATE if you want to come or not, or what it depends on if still unsure". Or even to give people a little helping hand by asking them if they're probably coming, which many people can answer immediately, and is often sufficient for small social occasions, rather than if they're definitely coming, which puts many people into "let me check my diary for three months" mode.

Don't make a theme park with robots who pretend to be cowboys. Or dinosaurs. Sure, it seems like an awesome idea. A really awesome idea. But it never ended well. Ever[1]. Just don't try.

[1] Counterexamples welcome.

If you're ever in Stoke-on-Trent, go to Newcastle-under-lyme, and if you're ever in Newcastle-under-lyme go to the Hanging Mangoes restaurant, and if you're ever in the Hanging Mangoes restaurant, order the Mushroom Delight starter. It's incredible, and not just in a mushroom-and-paneer way, in a any-sort-of-food way.

If you play magic, get Agricola animal tokens to use as token creatures. They're ever so cute, and there's a small white one, a medium black one, and a large one. You can also use the sea serpents from Escape From Atlantis if you ever have five 5/5 sea serpent tokens in play at once, but that only ever happened once, and the game was pretty much over at that point.

Glee actress Dianna Agron says "I am trying to live my life with a sharpie marker approach. You can’t erase the strokes you’ve made, but each step is much bolder and more deliberate. I’m moving forward from this one, and after today, putting it to rest.[1]" I don't normally base my life around advice from actors in teen musical drama shows, but it looks like maybe I should.

[1] In response to the photo shoot for GQ she ended up participating in, which afterwards turned out very creepy :(

Really really fucking hot things are REALLY REALLY FUCKING hot.

If you want to be taken seriously as a film:

* Do not call any chemical element "unobtainium" even if you think you have a good in-universe justification

If you want to be taken seriously as a long, cross-country highway:

* Have at least two lanes all the way along. Having a roundabout where two lanes have to squish into one at a roundabout, and two lanes in two different directions have to cross each other on a roundabout or slip road, with traffic lights does NOT count for "two lanes all the way along".

If you want to be taken seriously as a country:

* Do not do things that are evil AND don't work. To be honest, you're pushing it with EITHER of those, if you're doing things that are both, you're really fucking up.