Zylon
2901
In software, when the very first thing a status window displays is the “could not find data!” message, before it’s put even a microsecond into attempting to retrieve the data. This is one of the most purely lazy programming practices you will ever see on public display. Why bother having a timeout before displaying an error message, when you can just display the error immediately, right?
Chrome on Android does this with the bookmarks display.
Cookie Clicker does this.
Idiot VoIP companies who decide to be “helpful” by moving paying VAT from when you buy credit for their services to when you make individual calls, which means (and yes, I’ve had this confirmed by an accountant) that I will now need to itemise individual calls as expenses.
(I am looking at you, Skype!)
We watched an episode of Jack Taylor (British PI series) recently which featured a hand weapon that looked like a hacked-off poleaxe. It had the typical axe + spear head, only the handle was only about 2’ long, so it was basically a hatchet with a funny head.
In this episode they repeatedly made a point of referring to this weapon as “pike,” and the vigilantes using it as “pikemen.” No, idiot writers. Pikes are simple spears, and they’re a minimum of 10 feet long, with 18’ being more typical. They’re distinguished from ordinary spears by their size, because they’re long enough to fend off cavalry, which spears aren’t. They do not have 2’ handles, and they do not have axe heads. If you’re going to make such a point of featuring a medieval weapon and naming it, at least be arsed to do 5 minutes research on what it’s called.
RichVR
2904
Sounds closer to a halberd. Except that they didn’t have 2 ft handles either.
That was my reaction while watching as well. “That’s a friggin’ halberd, not pike!”
Wikipedia showed halberds with fairly long spearheads. This was more like a hatchet with a short spike. Under “Pole arms often mistaken for halberds” in the wikipedia article was the poleaxe, and the images there were closer.
Looking into it further, I can’t get any solid definition of the differences between the two, what would make a weapon a halberd and not a poleaxe.
RichVR
2906
I think is was invented from whole cloth by idiots. Might as well let it go.
From what I’ve read, it’s more of a historical language issue, rather than something invented in modern times. “Halberd” is a 15th century term, whereas “poleaxe” came into use in the Renaissance. If you could to talk to people when both terms were in use, what they called the weapon probably depended on who you talked to.
RichVR
2908
I understand where you’re coming from. And I agree that the terms for the actual weapons might be a historical issue. Not having watched the show I can’t speak to that. But unless they were talking about some kind of hybrid hand axe, no pole weapon ever had a shorter haft then five feet.
Just to be pedantic, the Renaissance spanned the entire 15th century, so that’s not a very powerful distinction. But I’m sure just as you suggest that the myriad polearm names for the many almost-identical weapons found in RPG weapons tables arose regionally and propagated irregularly from mercenary unit to armory and back again all around Europe. For example Poleaxe is straight Germanic whereas Halberd comes through French and Italian from the German.
As for “pike” the fourth dictionary definition is “pick used in digging” which would indeed make it a one-handed tool when used with that definition, even though the long anti-cavalry weapon is a more common usage.
I remember watching some TV-show (not important which) where the protagonists kept mentioning that the Bad Guy was a really mean SOB who would put your head on a pike if he didn’t like you. The translator doing the subtitles was clearly in a bit of a hurry as he/she managed to conjure up the image of a severed head mounted on a predatory freshwater fish…
I have one. In the Steam client, when I click VIEW FRIENDS LIST in the bottom right corner, it could be nice if clicking it a second time removed the friends panel too (i.e. a toggle).
Any time something funny or cool happens in a movie I’m basically completely expressionless so when the other person looks over to gauge my response (which actually kinda induces a slight anti-nerd rage in me) I almost feel bad about letting them down.
Almost.
This makes me think of those “Red Wedding” reaction videos on YouTube.
Zylon
2915
Speaking of Steam, a recent client update made it so launching any Steam-friendly game always pops up a Steam “toast” notification over the game. Completely useless, just “Hi, I’m Steam! Look at me!”
Arise!
Look. I understand you have “plans”. But you’re whining I’m using a perfectly good app, which lives in my status bar, rather than a pop-up window, which lives in my start bar, and has about 10% of the same functionality - it can’t even set chat to not be a horribly-squished monstrosity, not show massive icons all over the place rather than just using usernames or even display offline users and send offline messages.
(Also, I had to force the install on via disabling the addon compatibility checking in Pale Moon)
Google, what the fuck.
People who say “meow” instead of “now”.
Can we all band together and stop these people using whatever means necessary?
Edit: Before anyone objects, obviously this is excepted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXPeLctgvQI
Who does that? I’ve never encountered that.
Meow instead of now? That sounds like you’re in Hell.
Or certain parts of Scotland with a strong accent.
