The Person-Above-You Game!

[Harpic fraîcheur]

^ does know < has the answer to everything.

[Reese Riverson]

^ does indeed! For ^ has answered <.

[Harpic fraîcheur]

Is ^ in the mood for a posting spree today?

[Reese Riverson]

^ calls it a spree when < doesn't.

< has a bit to do today, but we'll see what later brings.

[Harpic fraîcheur]

^ is informed < wasn't calling this a spree. But we could've had one.

[Reese Riverson]

^ is sounding like Master over the 'spree' thing.

[Fifo]

^’s probably happy to be back here talking to all of us again.

[Reese Riverson]

^ apparently misses talking to < about Final Fantasy VIII and the new iPhone X that ^ owns.

[Fifo]

^ apparently misses talking to < about Final Fantasy VIII and the new iPhone X that ^ owns.

Nah, ^’s informed that I’m okay with iPhone 8 – the X is too big (and expensive).

[PluMGMK]

Does ^ have any idea why they followed Microsoft's lead in skipping 9?

[Fifo]

^ is told that I don’t have any idea why.

[Reese Riverson]

^'s guess could be like <'s. That maybe it's not really a skip, since iPhone 8 and X came around the same time, right?

The X was just a really high end attempt or something?

[PluMGMK]

Yeah, ^ reminds < about something < read about the iPhone X being something outlandishly high-end and expensive to make the 8 look like a good deal in comparison. < can't think of the name of the effect.
< has a crazy notion that the skip could be rooted in an Ancient Greek superstition…

[Reese Riverson]

Would ^ care to explain about the superstition?

[PluMGMK]

< is glad ^ asked! Well, apparently the Greeks were somewhat afraid of writing the numeral nine. This is because in their system it was represented with the letter theta, Θ, which also stood for θανατος, "death". In fact they sometimes euphemized by writing delta epsilon, ΔΕ, instead, which stood for "four plus five". Maybe Microsoft were spooked by all the talk of their becoming irrelevant and were nervous of naming a Windows release "death".
^ is free to hoot at this! < doesn't see Microsoft being so readily spooked, or putting any stock in a superstition relating to an ancient numeral system which isn't even used in the naming of their products.

[Master]

^ might be interested to know that they've skipped 13 in the past, look at MS Office version numbers.

[PluMGMK]

^ pointed out something that < had not noticed! Still, that's a relatively modern superstition, which is independent of the specific numeral system used.

[Reese Riverson]

^ bought up something rather interesting, though that didn't seem to stop them over Windows 95/98... but unless the two digits made it null and void...

< just recalls someone thinking software would mistaken Windows 9 for 95 or 98 over some crappy OS checks.

[PluMGMK]

^ is right that the two digits would make it null and void. The number ninety in Greek numerals is qoppa, which could represent the city of Corinth, not theta. < knows about the OS-check excuse but thinks it would have been very easy to work around, not least because the actual version numbers for Windows 9x begin with the number 4.

[Reese Riverson]

^ brings up an interesting point there.

< was also told that Microsoft really wanted Windows One, to go with the Xbox One, but since Windows 1.0 existed... though < isn't sure how true that bit is.