• Jay (unregistered)

    When my daughter was little I bought her some dinosaur zoo video game. At a few points in the game it would display a message saying, "Great job, Sally! You've reached Level 2" or whatever. The first time this popped up she asked, "How does it know my name?" "Because it asked your name when you started the game and you typed it in, remember?" I replied. "But how can they say my name on the screen?" she asked. No matter how much I tried to explain that it was just printing back the name she had typed in, she found this incredibly impressive, that the computer would actually remember her name and use it. All the complex animation of dancing dinosaurs, little animated people wandering around the zoo, fitting together all the pieces that you said to put where you said to put them ... none of that impressed her. But popping up a message box with her name, wow, that was way cool.

  • Jay (unregistered)

    On the Sinclair, there really was an advantage to using one letter variable names! Otherwise you might run out of memory.

  • Lego (unregistered)

    It's only a bunny!

  • (cs) in reply to Daniel
    Daniel:
    (In Dutch, "Peter" is sometimes shortened to "Peer")
    Peer is just a polite variant of Pisser.
  • Noah (unregistered) in reply to Byzantine_Squirrel
    Byzantine_Squirrel:
    instead of Ataris and Commodes it was ZX81s...

    Mmmm, yes, I'm now visualizing my Commode prompting me while whispering my name. Thank you so much!

  • HAL (unregistered)

    I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

  • (cs)

    1. Peer Gynt

    2. On IRC I like my quit message to be "Connection reset by Pierre" but I don't know why I like it. I guess I think it's funny.

  • (cs) in reply to Kef Schecter

    +1 for MP reference

  • (cs)

    I wonder what kind of labels they use in their configuration tool.

    Release214_Build004_For_TIM Release215_Build034_For_JOHN ....

  • Single User (unregistered) in reply to Daniel
    Daniel:
    Makes me think of the time before I was into programming. When browsing the internet in college (when I was about 17, in 1999) I would often get a "connection reset by peer" error. It took me several weeks and multiple emails to the IT department before I found out that "Peer" isn't actually an admin who's f*cking with me
    You were luckier than this poor sod.
  • Gerrit (unregistered) in reply to Daniel
    Daniel:
    (In Dutch, "Peter" is sometimes shortened to "Peer")

    I join the legions of Dutch who didn't know Peer is short for Peter. I did however know the name.

    For the non-Dutch: ee is pronounced like the a in lake, and peer is also the name of a fruit (pear), which is the reason I always thought the name sounds a bit funny (although naming your child Banaan would be much worse).

  • Noah (unregistered) in reply to BentFranklin
    BentFranklin:
    1. Peer Gynt

    is Norwegian, not Dutch.

  • Jon H (unregistered) in reply to BentFranklin
    BentFranklin:
    1. Peer Gynt
    1. On IRC I like my quit message to be "Connection reset by Pierre" but I don't know why I like it. I guess I think it's funny.

    There are 193 male persons in Norway named "Peer". http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/00/navn_en/

  • (cs) in reply to Gerrit
    Gerrit:
    peer is also the name of a fruit (pear), which is the reason I always thought the name sounds a bit funny (although naming your child Banaan would be much worse).
    Pfff, I know of a guy named Appel! Or wait a minute, that could be his last name. Never mind.
  • Still Not Tim (unregistered)

    I'm a native English speaker, who speaks neither Dutch nor Norwegian, and I'm not named Peter either, so these observations may be completely wrong :)

    In English "peer" is pronounced in a way that is quite close to the French pronounciation of Pierre - which is itself the French equivalent of... Peter.

    In fact, it's quite easy to envision a French man stating his name as "Pierre", only for a non-Francophone English speaker to write down "Peer".

    Are the Dutch pronounciations of these words close enough for something similar to happen ?

    An additional factor:

    It has been asserted in previous comments that only "some" Dutch people "use Peer for Peter". Is that use concentrated in specific locations ? Locations that have seen inward immigration perhaps ?

    Mandatory reference: The Asimov scenario - the name was initially mis-spelt on arrival in the USA - it ought to have been spelt "Azimov". On discovering this, Isaac retained that "mis-spelling" as a mark of pride and for its uniqueness.

  • Mark (unregistered) in reply to Dlareg

    Did you see the part where the hard coded message in the software says "Hi Tim?"

  • (cs) in reply to Jon H
    Jon H:
    BentFranklin:
    1. Peer Gynt
    1. On IRC I like my quit message to be "Connection reset by Pierre" but I don't know why I like it. I guess I think it's funny.

    There are 193 male persons in Norway named "Peer". http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/00/navn_en/

    You searched for the male name: Per

    There are 41504 with Per as their first name. There are 9269 with Per as their only first name.

    Still not Tim:
    It has been asserted in previous comments that only "some" Dutch people "use Peer for Peter". Is that use concentrated in specific locations ? Locations that have seen inward immigration perhaps ?
    My guess: it's more common in the east of the Netherlands, near the German border. The more common form of the name in Scandinavia is Per (I think in Sweden it's occasionally spelled Pär). In northern Germany, both Per and Peer are common, Per is the more common spelling near the Danish border, Peer near the Dutch.
  • HNKelley (unregistered) in reply to TimmyT
    TimmyT:
    Not Tim:
    The following may be apocryphal, so anyone who can confirm or deny it wins a fabulous No-Prize ( to coin a phrase ) ...

    A very long time ago, the Atari 8-bit computers - the 400 and 800 - had "demonstration software" intended to run on the machine when on display in a shop.

    Part-way through the run, it would pause with a phrase something like: "For more information about these great features, just type in your name", then wait for some passerby to type in their name.

    But, apparently, if nothing was typed within a certain number of seconds, the demo would continue with the hardcoded name Neil.

    Why Neil ? Presumably Mike, (p)Rick and Vyvyan were overlooked.

    Back in those days, '81-'82 or so, I was about 12 and had mostly mastered BASIC on Atari/Commodore/TRS-80 computers so when I went to the mall and passed by Radio Shack, they always had one of those computers on display. Being the 12-year-old punk that I was, I would go to the terminal and type in a short BASIC program that would sit there and prompt for your name, and regardless of what you typed in (except for my name of course) it would respond with "<name> is a crappy name! Your parents should be shot!" or something along those lines. Then we would sit on the bench just outside and wait for some unsuspecting grandma and her grandson to fall for it. Hilarity ensued, and watching the store employees scratch their heads was the icing on the cake! Good times, good times...

    I did similar things to these little computers. I enjoyed the speech synthesizer cartridge for the Radio Shack Color Computer. If you used phonetic spelling, you could make it speak any language, so I made it say rude things in German (learned in high school around that time) until a German lady overheard it and got really pissed. Oops!

  • Patriot (unregistered) in reply to Still Not Tim
    Still Not Tim:
    I'm a native English speaker, who speaks neither Dutch nor Norwegian, and I'm not named Peter either, so these observations may be completely wrong :)

    In English "peer" is pronounced in a way that is quite close to the French pronounciation of Pierre - which is itself the French equivalent of... Peter.

    In fact, it's quite easy to envision a French man stating his name as "Pierre", only for a non-Francophone English speaker to write down "Peer".

    Are the Dutch pronounciations of these words close enough for something similar to happen ?

    An additional factor:

    It has been asserted in previous comments that only "some" Dutch people "use Peer for Peter". Is that use concentrated in specific locations ? Locations that have seen inward immigration perhaps ?

    Mandatory reference: The Asimov scenario - the name was initially mis-spelt on arrival in the USA - it ought to have been spelt "Azimov". On discovering this, Isaac retained that "mis-spelling" as a mark of pride and for its uniqueness.

    First of all, you are pronouncing "Pierre" WAY wrong if it sounds the same as Pierre (which is pronounced like Pee-air, with the usual French 'softness' in your voice).

    Second, there are not going to be any misunderstandings because the pronounciations of Peter (Pay-tir -- "tir" as in "stir) and Peer (which sounds alot like deer, except for the ending 'r' which you Americans are never ever going to be able to pronounce correctly ;)) are not similar to Pierre in any way.

    Anyway, I don't think Peter can just be arbitrarily shortened to Peer like that. It might be appropriate in certain places, but in general it's not.

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