This morning's chuckle from Google Labs: Help Stop Drunken Emails

[dianeduane]

Fortunately for me, when I’m plastered I routinely lose the ability to type — at least without committing so many typos that I simply give up on the project until the blood alcohol drops. So this isn’t for me.

But for those who have better motor skills even when inebriated, Google now introduces an app that (when enabled) slows you down with math before you send that late-night boozy message.

Fascinating…

Comments

[dewline.livejournal.com]

That would be a problem.

[tualha.livejournal.com]

Good point. Maybe they didn't know about dyscalculia - lots of people don't.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

It's better than the scheme one mailing list admin intended. Because there were flame wars with some people dashing off replies as soon as they read the mail, without waiting to think about it, he proposed delaying all messages by several days so that people couldn't do 'instant' replies. The trouble with that was that they still did 'instant' replies to the messages when they saw them, thus ensuring that not only were replies still inflamatory but they were also most of a week out of date, by which time everyone had forgoten about the problem and were then reminded...

[tualha.livejournal.com]

Love those unintended consequences :)

[tualha.livejournal.com]

Like that late night memo -- I mean mission statement -- to the entire firm.

Oh my god! They killed the plot of Jerry Maguire! You bastards!

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

May not be a bad idea. Then again, anyone who can type clearly in Anglo-Saxon (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007489.html) while drunk probably won't be slowed down by a few math problems...

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

And of course, re-reading the comment thread for my own entertainment, I discover that you saw the thread when it first happened. *facepalm*

[petermorwood.livejournal.com]

Um, that's not Anglo-Saxon (aka Old English.) It's Early Middle English with a humour-additive dollop of Rennfayre Ænglyssche.

Other commenters noticed this, but leave it to the late great John M. Ford to post in Wælisch (sort-of):
Duw prid, gwraig, rydich waeth na y Gatling-gwn; rhifo i'n tri milwrau marw.

Anglo-Saxon/OE is a lot less immediately readable than EME, and looks like this:
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum, si þin nama gehalgod.

If it looks familiar, think Rohirric from The Lord of the Rings.

[shadrad.livejournal.com]

To me, both examples given look more like a case of one-space-left-of-the-home-keys.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Anglo-Saxon/OE is a lot less immediately readable than EME

It's also really amazing how dramatically Middle English turned into Early Modern. I was discussing this page from a 1546 book by John Heywood[*] and with the exception of the spelling and the typeface, the book was surprisingly easy to read even though I don't know any ME at all, aside from what I've picked up on Making Light and Wiki (and from Bill Bryson, but I never know whether to believe him).

[*] The topic was, "Where did the expression, 'You can't have your cake and eat it too,' come from?" The short answer is that nobody knows, but the first written instance is from John Heywood's A dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue which originally came out in 1546. It's on the page linked above, third line from the top.

[petermorwood.livejournal.com]

When I was at school I discovered the Josephine Tey version of Richard III as innocent party and was fascinated. (I'm more cynical now, though I still think he wasn't as villainous as Alison Weir believes.) Anyway, I learned how to read handwritten material from the period and it, though only about 60 years before Heywood and almost certainly very similar when spoken, is much harder to puzzle out, what with all the curlicues and squiggles of clerk-hand.

I'm fairly sure that the introduction of print, and the location of those printer's shops in London, may have had quite a lot of influence on ME turning to EM and becoming a standard version of it.

Spelling was still pretty free-form, though...

[naraht.livejournal.com]

The actual phrase though is "You can't eat your cake & have it too"


Which makes much more sense.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

I know, but the other version is in wide circulation now, and that's how the question was originally posed to me.