I’m just watching the Jays beat up on the Mariners on the tube, catching up on email. Raul Ibanez of the Mariners hit a ball deep to right field, just off the line. It bounced once, about 15 feet from the wall, then quietly deposited itself in the front rows of the stands. The announcer, normally a knowledgeable guy, called this a “ground rule double”, as would, I think, most announcers.
Now the thing is, any rule which is uniformly applied, is by definition, not a ground rule, since ground rules are, well, specific to a grounds. So in fact, that wasn’t a ground rule double, it was simply a double, or an “automatic double” if you prefer.
Apparently large scale distributed systems isn’t the only context in which the extent of the applicability of uniformity isn’t fully appreciated. 8-)
Update; ah, yes, Rob Neyer, as usual, nails it.
If you’ve sent me email since Tuesday evening, please resend it, as it appears as though it’s lost … either that, or its stuck in the same queue that resulted in me receiving a message from May 3 today. Some sort of odd interaction between acm.org and my ISP, I think.