zero_iq

You should take a look at the game Cold Waters, if you haven’t already.

In addition to other reasons already given, commercial software may contain licensed code, libraries, assets, trademarks, and other IP that cannot legally be given away for free, or under an open source licence.

Sure, it may be possible to strip those things out, but that may leave the software broken or fundamentally changed, and it may be a significant amount of work to do, which am author or publisher is not likely to spend on abandoned software, especially if their free release would compete with any current products.

3D printer that can print fully-populated functional electronic devices. Design or download a schematic for, say a new camera or phone, make whatever modifications I want, and just hit print!

Basically a replicator for electronic devices…

Sorry, but this is completely wrong.

Windows has ACLs and they are an important part of Windows administration, and used extensively for managing file permissions.

Windows has supported ACLs on NTFS since Windows NT & NTFS were released in 1993 (possibly partly influenced by AIX ACLs in the late 80s).

ACLs were not introduced to standard POSIX until c.1998, and NFS and Linux filesystems didn’t get them until 2003. In fact, the design of the NFSv4 ACL standard was heavily influenced by the design of NTFS/Windows ACL model – a specific decision by the designers to model it more like NTFS rather than AIX/POSIX.

Technically, at the filesystem level, exFAT also provides support for ACLs, but I am not sure if any implementation actually makes use of this feature (not even Windows AFAIK, certainly not any desktop version).

And I didn’t assert otherwise. Perhaps improve your own reading comprehension before wading into a discussion of the English language.

Nobody said it was of American origin

I know. Go back and read what I wrote. The only argument here was started by you. The only person putting words in others’ mouths is you.

Idk man, I think it might have some reliability issues… I tried restoring my data and all I got back was a badly-typed copy of the complete works of Shakespeare.

Language is alive

Where did I say it wasn’t? But language being alive doesn’t change history – the phrase was used by British writers before the USA even existed.

and I can’t see anyone requesting origins specifically.

So? I offered the origin as it was presented alongside a number of phrases that are of American origin, and that one stands out as not (also as being suspected far older in origin than the others). I’ve simply added some additional information to the discussion. If you find it “boring”, you are free to ignore it.

I didn’t request your reply, yet you still wrote it.

Phrases like this can be part of 2 cultures at once.

Where did I say it couldn’t? I merely stated that the phrase was not of American origin. I didn’t say it wasn’t used in the US, or that the UK somehow has some special exclusive licence to it.

and don’t even have hard proof one way or the other

I didn’t post sources because I was short on time, but here, have some… (as I apparently now have time to waste…)

• “Dogs and Cats rain’d in showre”, from the poem Upon a Cloke in Olor Iscanus (1651) by Henry Vaughan
• “…and it shall raine… Dogs and Polecats”, from The City Wit, or, The Woman Wears the Breeches (1653) by Richard Brome
• “it should rain Dogs and Cats”, from Don Juan Lamberto: or, a Comical History of the Late Times (1661) by Thomas Flatman
• “Made it rain down dogs and cats”, from Cataplus, or Æneas, … (1672) by Maurice Atkins
• “When it rains Dogs and Cats in Hell” from Maronides; or, Virgil Travesty, … (1678) by John Phillips
• “raining cats and dogs”, from A Description of a City Shower (1710) by Jonathan Swift
• “rain cats and dogs”, from Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738) also by Jonathan Swift

You will note that these are all British works by British authors. I can provide even more if you need them.

While the ultimate origin is unknown (there are many theories), any claim to it being American in origin is surely nonsense. There is no evidence for this at all. If you have some, please provide it.

What proof have you provided? Indeed, what has your comment added at all to the discussion? You could have looked up those sources and extensive etymological research on Google with less effort than you took to write your comment.

Pretty boring…

And what about your own comment? It adds absolutely zero additional information to the conversation, is rude, and you clearly misconstrued and misinterpreted my comment (apparently with the most negative interpretation possible), without even bothering to research anything for yourself.

Personally, I think some may find it interesting that a phrase they might have thought was of modern American origin is actually from another country and of far more ancient origins they expect. To me, that is interesting. If it isn’t to you, why do you bother to read and comment?

In the future, I suggest you simply ignore comments you find boring and move on instead of posting insulting low-effort replies.

That’s another one with a British origin (originally “see a man about a dog”). Still widely used in the UK to refer to leaving for any unspecified reason, although this is often to go to the toilet. (Also was used in the US during prohibition to refer to going for a drink.)

“Raiining cats and dogs” is not of American origin. The precise origin is unknown, but the first recorded uses are British, dating from the early to mid 17th century (Earliest uses are raining “dogs and cats” and “dogs and polecats”.) although it’s possible the phrase is significantly older than this.

The phrase is well known and widely used in the UK, and I doubt anyone here would consider it an American phrase.

Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t…

OMG I can’t believe you had the audacity to write an answer about cats in response to a serious question that is clearly about goats.

Is that you, John? :D

Correct me if I’m wrong

Well actually, yes, I’m sorry to have to tell you are wrong. Shannon-Fano coding is suboptimal for prefix codes and Huffman coding, while optimal for prefix-based coding, is not necessarily the most efficient compression method for any given data (and often isn’t).

Huffman can be optimal given certain strict constraints, but those constraints don’t always occur in natural/real- world data.

The best compression method (whether lossless or lossy) depends greatly on the nature of the data to be compressed. Patterns and biases can make certain methods much more efficient (or more practical) in some cases, when they might be useless elsewhere or in general. This is why data is often transformed before compression, using a reversible transformation that “encourages” certain desirable statistical characteristics in the data, so the compression method can better exploit them.

For example, compression software (e.g. gzip) may perform a Burrows-Wheeler transform and other encodings before applying Huffman coding to get a better compression ratio. If Huffman coding was an optimal compression method for all possible data, this would be redundant! Often, E.g. in medical imaging, audio/video data, the data is best analysed in a different domain to better reveal the underlying patterns and redundancies in the data so they cam be easily exploited by compression. E.g. frequency domain instead of time/spatial domain.

Fairly often, but mostly because I have a Roman Empire obsessed friend who, regardless of conversation topic, always manages to make a comparison to the Roman Empire.

You don’t need to draw a line for this case. You just need to decide if 9 years is too long.

Damn, so what’s the name of the shape that’s a flat donut with an inner and outer circular perimeters? i.e. a filled circle with another smaller radius circular area subtracted from it. Or 2D cross section of a torus seen perpendicularly to the plane that intersects the widest part of the torus. A squished donut, or chubby circle, if you like.

And many “circles” aren’t circles either, but 2D torus approximations. The edge of a true circle is made of infinitesimally small points so would be invisible when drawn. And even if you consider a filled circle, how could you be sure you aren’t looking at a 1-torus with an infinitessimally small hole? Or an approximation of all the set of all points within a circle?

Clearly, circles are a scam.

Jolly Ranchers

While a 3 year service contract was clearly overkill, your estimate of 1 hour is ridiculously tiny. Nothing of any worth can be audited with a 1 hour phone call.