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I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

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Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#391

Post by School-Cotton »

tialaramex wrote: post #262
School-Cotton wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but I don’t understand why this would make letter size confusing to Americans. European office workers are not sitting around marveling at the mathematical elegance of the definition of A series paper. It just doesn’t matter in daily life.

> It just doesn’t matter in daily life. Like a lot of mathematics it does matter in your daily life but you actually just don't think about it because of course this works - unless you're an American and so no it doesn't. The A-series paper sizes mean everything scales very naturally. Poster? Pamphlet? It's just the same ratios again but bigger or smaller. There is a single design where this works, and that's why the…

Can you explain concretely why it matters in daily life that I can cut the paper posters are printed on in half several times to wind up with paper of the size that letters are printed on, and that these have the same aspect ratio? Why would I ever want to do that / why should I care that it's possible?

I'm not trying to be combative; I genuinely don't know.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#392

Post by mvdtnz »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #382
dheera wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is universally accessible by design I disagree. It requires taking time out of business hours, and they don't pay you your salary while you line up multiple times for 30 minutes each. I've sometimes had to line up for 2 hours total (4 times) just to mail one thing. Once to ask "how do i mail this", once to ask for a pen (couldn't cut the line because a Karen wouldn't let me), once because I filled the wrong form, e…

I find it hard to believe that waiting two hours is normal for customers of the USPS. You can order stamps online, they have (collection) postboxes and even offer a pick-up service for parcels. At $0.73 to send a letter anywhere in the USA, that sounds like a pretty impressive offering to me.

> I find it hard to believe that waiting two hours is normal for customers of the USPS.

GP said postal services are "universally accessible". So first, it doesn't matter is it's "normal", it matters if it happens at all. And USPS does not represent postal mail universally - I have never even seen a USPS building in my life and don't expect to. Is postal mail as universally accessible to a homeless man in Laos and a 5-year-old kid in rural India? I think it's ludicrous to claim that postal mail is "universally accessible" and displays a huge Western bias.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#393

Post by seabass-labrax »

globular-toast wrote: post #131
int_19h wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an American and I did write letters in my country of origin as a kid, but one thing that annoys me about US-style envelopes to this day is that they have no lines for address - you're just expected to line text up on your own correctly. If you're used to writing on lined paper because that's the standard in your country (including envelopes!), it can be frustrating. The envelopes I'm used to look like this: h…

In the UK at school in the 90s we were taught how to write a letter including addressing and stamping the envelope. It's quite strange to see it done "wrong" like in the OP. You're supposed to have the first line of the address centred vertically, leaving the top half for stamps. At least they got the stamps on the correct (right) side, though. I've seen a lot worse.

I wouldn't say it's that different from how the Royal Mail currently recommend one write the address:

https://help.royalmail.com/personal/s/article/How-to-address...

My father writes the address staggered; that is, each subsequent line being indented a centimetre or so relative to the previous line. Were you taught to stagger the address at your school in the 90s?

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#394

Post by mjevans »

Symbiote wrote: post #169
mjevans wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offhand, I don't think I've ever mailed an International letter or package. Is return postage something that, normally, my local post office would help me with? E.G. do they have some method of marking or adding post to a package that would be accepted globally (or at least within the destination country)?

That's the International Reply Coupon mentioned in the article, but it's not supported by all countries. I think I've sent far more international letters and parcels than domestic. Christmas cards for elderly relatives in the country I was born in, and postcards when I travelled abroad. Some obscure things I sold on eBay were mostly sent abroad.

"""

United Kingdom

The Royal Mail stopped selling IRCs on 31 December 2011[26] due to a lack of demand. United States

The United States Postal Service stopped selling international reply coupons on 27 January 2013.[27]

"""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reply_coupon#Uni...

That explains why I was confounded in my efforts to search within USPS results.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#395

Post by mvdtnz »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #351
ethbr1 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly alternate take: this post (and the fact that FSF still replies to paper mail) is about accessibility Which changes as times change. In the 90s, requiring access to the internet and an email address would have been exclusionary and decreased access. Now, 30 years later, it's reversed and physical mail is difficult. But from another perspective... the goal should be to ensure that anyone who wants to do a thin…

Physical mail isn't difficult, even now, for anyone with a modicum of competence. I can understand if someone hasn't used physical mail before, but it's very easy to look up how to send a letter + buy envelopes and stamps. If someone cannot do that without difficulty, they really need to work on their basic life skills.

His difficulty was finding postage stamps for the self-addressed return envelope, and clearly the author is not American. Do you think it would be quite so easy to "buy envelopes and stamps" if you had to send a stamped return envelope to Nepal or Manila? Is that a "basic life skill" or would you have to do a little research to figure out what you'd need?

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#396

Post by mvdtnz »

Someone wrote: post #161
alias_neo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but ordering stamps... on eBay OP was ordering US stamps to include _in_ the letter, on an SAE (self-addressed envelope) they were sending _from_ the UK, so that the FSF could reply (from the US) using said stamps. As a millennial myself, I have no idea where else I'd look for stamps should I want to include them on a SAE I was sending to said country, so that they recipient wouldn't incur the cost of replying to m…

> I have no idea where else I'd look for stamps should I want to include them on a SAE I was sending to said country I would try to buy them online from their post office. For the USA, there is https://www.usps.com/business/postage-options.htm : “Print Labels Online with Click-N-Ship With your free USPS.com account, you can pay for postage and print just one label or a batch of shipping labels online” Germany has ( h…

I just priced a stamp to send to New Zealand using that USPS website and it came to over USD$20 so that's not a realistic option. To be fair I had to take some guesses with weight (what the fuck is an ounce and how many letters fit into one?) and dimensions (they don't have units on that website, so I guess my letter is 6x3 whatevers).

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#397

Post by seabass-labrax »

Alex-Programs wrote: post #248
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even a whiteboard marker? I'm in the US so I use permanent marker to write my lawyers phone number on my arm before protests

As a Brit, the concept of "My lawyer" is slightly unfamiliar. The average Brit doesn't "have a lawyer"; they would only find a lawyer if they had a specific need, eg being accused of a crime or wanting to write a contract etc. And yet as far as I can tell, most middle class Americans seem to refer to "their lawyer". Do you pay a monthly fee? Are they a criminal defence lawyer, or something broader? How often do you t…

Not an American but have been involved in lots of US legal things for a charity. Generally "their lawyer" refers to a lawyer (solicitor in British usage) who is 'on retainer', which means that the client either pays a monthly fee to secure the lawyer's availability, or has a deposit with the lawyer which will be drawn from if legal assistance is needed.

Funnily enough, Americans do not use the term solicitor; that's reserved for lawyers working for the government!

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#398

Post by WaitWaitWha »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #244
voidUpdate wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What places don't have postcards? Whenever I go to places in the UK, tourist tat shops will often have hundreds of them in every flavour of souvenir

I always like to buy a postcard. Occasionally actually post them before I leave a place (ideally soon after I arrive). Generally they arrive substantially after I get back.

Yep, same path. Arrive, get cards ASAP, usually as I walk out of the airport, give it to the hotel concierge the next morning. They will often stamp and drop it in the mail for me.

It is so much fun to watch my spawns showing me the cards they got with strange stamps and neat pictures of far away lands. I address them individually, so there are plenty to write, still fun.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#399

Post by massysett »

SpaceNoodled wrote: post #371
massysett wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I use a pen nearly every day. Sometimes I deliberately get a pen or pencil and paper rather than a phone. I was doing some home improvements in my attic, and I would often need to jot down a measurement so I could cut wood etc. I did this once or twice on my phone and realized it's much easier to do this with a pencil and small notepad. In what is perhaps the most ironic blend of high and low tech, I wrote my ow…

I prefer an app for grocery lists since it can be managed with a single hand while shopping - no need to stop in the middle of an aisle to pull out a pencil and cross something off, nor to print anything out before heading to the store, for that matter. Plus, I won't have to re-sync the list with what remain on the physical list at the end of the trip.

My software is highly idiosyncratic. I input recipes for the week, and it adds ingredients to the shopping list, but only some ingredients. Other staple ingredients are things we keep in standard inventory and these go on the shopping list periodically rather than on demand.

UNIX is a friendly environment for me to write my own software like this. Phones are hostile, they’re more like appliances. Pair up UNIX with old-school peripherals like printers and I’m in business.

But yeah I love my phone for its appliance-like uses.

Re: I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)

#400

Post by palata »

grishka wrote: post #363
SpaceNoodled wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When and where were you required to write the ZIP so strangely? I've never heard of such a bizarre requirement.

Russia. It's still a thing most likely. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russian_postal_codes...

That is cool!
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