On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 11:00:19PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> > On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 10:19 PM, Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> wrote:
> >> On 03/18/2011 09:18 PM, Robert Haas wrote:
> >>> "all balls" seems like a colloquialism best avoided in our documentation.
>
> >> It's already there, although I agree it's infelicitous.
>
> > I vote for taking it out. I think that could be interpreted as inappropriate.
>
> IIRC, the pre-existing usage refers to time 00:00:00. It does not seem
> especially useful to adopt the same terminology for network addresses;
> that's more likely to confuse people than anything else.
>
And just as a historical etymological note for the list, in case anyone
finds this in the archives: "all balls" referring to all zeros setting
shows up as NASA speak in Apollo era transcripts, for any sort of "all
zeros" setting - the one I remember off hand was actually a angle
setting for an engine firing for Apollo 13. It may have been milspeak at
one time as well. The more modern interpretation seems to be a
contraction of "all balls, no brains", so would in fact be a little off
for a changelog entry.
Ross "etymologically yours" Reedstrom
--
Ross Reedstrom, Ph.D. reedstrm@rice.edu
Systems Engineer & Admin, Research Scientist phone: 713-348-6166
Connexions http://cnx.org fax: 713-348-3665
Rice University MS-375, Houston, TX 77005
GPG Key fingerprint = F023 82C8 9B0E 2CC6 0D8E F888 D3AE 810E 88F0 BEDE
