Laudably level-headed response from Martin.

Laudably level-headed response from Martin.

He's Canadian. He's always level-headed and polite.

Wait, no, Canadians always are getting into brawls.

I can't keep my stereotypes straight.

Typical unpredictable Canadian.

Typical unpredictable Canadian.

Good thing the USA provides a wide buffer, otherwise those crazy Canucks would be on their 4th Mexican War.

Much ado aboot nothing.

"I did not feel ready to go out there and compete."

But if they let me play a position I've never played before, I would have been ready to go out there and compete...

But if they let me play the position they agreed to let me play, the one I likely prepared to play that puts far less wear and year on my body than catcher , I would have been ready to go out there and compete...

FYP.

I respect his opinion, it doesn¹t bother me. Same thing with Justin. I did not feel ready to go out there and compete. It¹s not that I don’t want to represent Canada.

Okay, I'm genuinely curious: how the heck did these superscript 1's end up where apostrophes were supposed to go? Did the author hand-write Martin's quotes and feed them into a character recognition program, at which point the computer misread them and the author failed to notice the error?

Okay, I'm genuinely curious: how the heck did these superscript 1's end up where apostrophes were supposed to go? Did the author hand-write Martin's quotes and feed them into a character recognition program, at which point the computer misread them and the author failed to notice the error?

I'm too cheap to buy Office, so for almost 10 years now I've been writing papers on whatever free knock-off version of Office I have, and then using a library computer to convert to Word. The process occasionally spits out all sorts of ridiculous changes that make no sense...though I have never seen the superscript for apostrophe game.

EDIT: It's also interesting to note (or maybe it isn't) that Chris Robinson, the catcher Canada ended up using instead of Martin, was one of their better players of the tournament.

Hasn't Open/LibreOffice handled that fine or a long time? Personally I have no qualms about pirating MS Office or anything MS really, for obvious reasons.

Hasn't Open/LibreOffice handled that fine or a long time? Personally I have no qualms about pirating MS Office or anything MS really, for obvious reasons.

Yeah I use Open Office at the moment. It works a lot better than other programs I've used in the past, but it still spits out random footnotes that are superscripted, or turns the occasional quotation mark into a dollar sign or something when you convert it to Word.

They're richer than you so it's OK to steal from them?

Microsoft may be evil, but at least they don't wreck the formatting of threads.

They're richer than you so it's OK to steal from them?

They're an anti-trust lawyer's wet dream, so it's OK to steal from them.

They are basically a leveraged quasi-legal monopoly with a long history of very shady business practices and a recent history of spectacularly stupid and arrogant ones(ty Ballmer) which is the only reason their stranglehold on the IT ecosystem is slipping despite their ability to buy and sell elected officials to help maintain their monopoly. Yes, it is ok to steal from them, though Greg makes a good point.

Yes, it is ok to steal from them, though Greg makes a good point.

The telling part of your rationalizations is that you fail to recognize that you help perpetuate their market position by pirating their software, if you had been in it for the principles you wouldn't have touched it with a ten-foot pole.

I guess we have different opinions about the relative morality of anti-trust violations and intellectual property theft. As Swedish states, if you want to put it to the Man, use Open Office and fastidiously report all bugs to them. Extra points if you download the free version of Microsoft Visual Studio, compile Open Office for debug, fix the bugs yourself and send the bug fixes in to Open Office.

16) If it was so easy to avoid using their products then they wouldn't be a monopoly now would they? As an IT professional I often do not have a choice at all and even when possible finding, setting up and using alternatives to MS products that are compatible with them in a broader sense is often a long, complex and annoying process often specifically due to the very nature of what I am complaining about. After doing so for some time I no longer have the desire to devote significant chunks of my life dealing with this on a personal or professional level in order to meet your standards of ideological purity so take your ten foot pole and shove it somewhere.

Well this thread went exactly where I expected it to.

Even depletion's interestingly colored quote formatting faux pas?

Don't use code to id a quote, folks.

I see many of you have adopted the endearing practice
of writing all the way across the screen, forcing
others to scroll left and right to try to make sense
of the discussion. That'll learn 'em!

See the discussion of depletion f**king up the thread above.

To get back to the original point, Martin has only caught three games for the Pirates so far this spring,
the first of which was last Sunday. So by the time he was ready to start catching the Canucks were already
on their way out the door.

Friends. I cut and pasted jyjjy's comment as a quote. Added nothing, subtracted nothing. I'm not sure why the page got wider. I find that annoying as well, but I would venture a guess that it's a BBTF issue. Nulls and carriage returns, or lack of therein, shouldn't do this to a page.

You used code, not quote, as der k pointed out.

Friends. I cut and pasted jyjjy's comment as a quote. Added nothing, subtracted nothing. I'm not sure why the page got wider. I find that annoying as well, but I would venture a guess that it's a BBTF issue. Nulls and carriage returns, or lack of therein, shouldn't do this to a page.

It's not a site issue, but a clumsy fingers issue :-)

In your defense, "code" is unusably shitty and shouldn't be there. Clever people use <pre></pre>

 Like this

It's one thing to have to work with MS products because of their monopoly in business life. It's a wholly other thing to download and use their products in your personal life when there's other options available. I have to use Microsoft Office for work, but at home I'm happy to use Open Office.

I'm not saying it's a moral failing, but if you'd otherwise have bought the product then it is a lost sale for Microsoft.

And unbearably twee people use colored font!

edit: Aww, the p tag doesn't work. So much for that joke.

I almost pirated MS Windows yesterday. I wanted to install my ancient copy of XP from my PC onto my Mac but it requires my license ID. I tried using my Dell install disk, but no license number anywhere on it or in it (apparently). I booted my ancient Dell, and was shocked it actually ran. I looked all over Windows but could not find it because, as it turns out, MSFT refuses to make it simple or easy for their own customers to find or get their license numbers.

I searched the web (on my mac) and found lots of programs that would read an encryted version from my copy of Windows and unencrypt it to make it usable , but my Dell doesn't have wifi, my mac doesn't have any disk drive, and I don't have an ethernet cable anymore, so I couldn't figure out how to get one of the programs on the PC.

I found other directions that gave me three (!) unique serial numbers in files on my Dell PC, but all were declared invalid by MSFT. Finally, after a few hours of my life wasted, I found the original ID on a sticker still on the PC (thank god), in a location that wasn't apparent.

Another 15 minutes and I pirate, and without an ounce of guilt, but with a great deal of angry self justification.

Ok, I'll say this really slowly.
Either fix the width problem,
or STOP WRITING SENTENCES THAT GO ACROSS
THE ENTIRE SCREEN.

Thank you.

I think you guys need bigger screens.