I always find these things fascinating … they recently discovered an old French secretary transcript written during the drafting of the early French language in ~1545 AD.  The discussion involves D. Boefeur, H. Biteman, and R. Ledong — the men responsible for coming up with the first draft of the language (that L. Maigret would later use for the final version).  Below is a snippet of the discussion concerning the numbers 70, 80, and 90 (translated into English).  The men had already spent the day determining the names for the numbers 10, 20, 30 ,40, 50 and 60.

Time: 16h53

Biteman: Alright, so finally that leaves us with 70, 80, and 90.  What shall we do for 70?
Boefeur: We spent over an hour debating if “soixante” should have an “O” or not … I say we just use the addition rule for the other numbers.
Ledong: So, what?  We’ll do “60+10″ as the name for 70 then?
Boefeur: Sure, “soixante-dix” is fine … then we don’t have to argue over spelling.
Biteman: Agreed.
Ledong: Okay, what should we do for 80 then?
Boefeur: Just use the addition rule again — “70+10″.
Ledong: We can’t do that, 70 is already “60+10″ … then “80″ will be “60+10+10″!
Biteman: Sacre-bleu!
Boefeur: Damn!  Well just use “vingt-quatre” and we’ll say it’s multiplied instead then.
Ledong: But “vingt-quatre” is already “24″, it will be too confusing!
 * Boefeur puts on coat, starts packing bags *
Boefeur: Shit, well just flip it around then!
Ledong: What?  So we’re going to use “4*20″ for “80″!?
Biteman: Don’t worry, I’m sure someone will come along later and fix all this crap anyhow.
Ledong: Fine, we’ll go with “4*20″ for now.  What about 90?
Boefeur: Use the addition rule.
Ledong: Wait, we’re going to go with “4*20+10″ as the name for “90″!?  Are you guys serious?
Boefeur: Do whatever the hell you want, it’s 17h … I’m going home.
 * Boefeur leaves room *
Ledong: Alright, I guess that will have to do.
Biteman: Just make a note that we have to come back and fix all of this later.
Ledong: Okay.  Eh, well it’s almost 17h01, I’ll just write the note tomorrow instead.
 * exeunt *

In memory of the late D. Boefeur, H. Biteman, and R. Ledong, I would like the carry the torch and assign names to these forgotten numbers.  From here on out, the numbers 70, 80, and 90 will go by the following names:

- 70: Septante
- 80: Huitante
- 90: Neufante

And so it was declared!

How many times have you found yourself in the position where you needed to send a large group of files (esp. over e-mail or uploading to a website) and WinZip (for instance) just wouldn’t compress it enough to make it feasible for transfer?  The only option you’d have would be to span the files over multiple chunks that need to be reassembled on the other end.  But what if there were programs out there that compressed at a much better ratio?  Well there certainly are, but how much better are they?  And at what cost?  Read the rest of this entry »

With all the talk about highly critical Microsoft blunders and botch-ups floating around lately it’s good to finally read some good news in the technology world. The Dept. of Homeland Security is providing Stanford University, Coverity, and Symantec with $1.24 million to find bugs in numerous open-source applications. Read the rest of this entry »

So if you haven’t at least heard about the latest record company debacle then you must be living in China or North Korea. In their feeble attempt to stop piracy, Sony came up with the idea of using the popular “computer fraud” method to help protect their empire. On their latest CDs with DRM, the disks contain highly dangerous software (a rootkit) that is installed without the user’s knowledge. Read the rest of this entry »

Check out some good software on the Good Software page! (updated)

“As I always say, there’s only one type of software that is worth actually spending money on … one that requires a subscription (constant updates) to function well; no one should ever pay for any other kind of software. Any software that is worth using was created recreationally by real programmers that are just doing what they love, and software like that never has a price tag. Not to say, however, that programmers should never get paid for their work; if a company comes to you wanting you to take time out of your schedule to do work for them then they’d better do something for you in return.”

… More …