Warning to newbies
spinoza1111
representation".
They have no scientific content, and instead were developed to cover
up the inadequacies and very impossibility of "standardizing" a toxic
waste dump (the C programming language and its dialects).
Their use indicates intellectual fraud.
A "sequence point" is when a "standard" C compiler "must" evaluate.
The existence of the buzzword is a cover up of the fact that the
standards committees consisted of people more concerned with vendor
profits who had no remit to determine a standard semantics and a
rational evaluation order, because they were afraid of discommoding
vendors.
A "trap representation" is a pointer in some sort of theological state
of sin that points fuck knows where. The "C standardization"
philosophy is that we should close our eyes in holy dread and weave a
circle 'round it thrice when in fact in calculating a pointer, an
intermediate value might not be a legal pointer. The simplest case is
the fact that you usually don't want to point at memory location 0.
C standardization is pseudo science and snake oil. Please don't get
taken in.
jacob navia
> Beware of certain buzzwords including "sequence points" and "trap
> representation".
>
> They have no scientific content, and instead were developed to cover
> up the inadequacies and very impossibility of "standardizing" a toxic
> waste dump (the C programming language and its dialects).
Idiot
Nick Keighley
On 31 Jan, 11:15, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Beware of certain buzzwords including "sequence points" and "trap
> representation".
to those who aren't aware of it spinoza has some sort of axe to grind.
A troll in other words.
> They have no scientific content, and instead were developed to cover
> up the inadequacies and very impossibility of "standardizing" a toxic
> waste dump (the C programming language and its dialects).
these terms are well defined by the C standard. If you interested in
their defininition then look them up in the standard. If you are
interested in their practical value then check out out past posts in
this newsgroup or ask!
[rougly speaking:
sequence point: a point in the source code where the compution must be
completed. In between sequence points there may be a choice as to the
order in which various sub-computions can be doen. This gives
implementors freedom to reorganise code foroptimisation purposes.
trap value: an illegal value. Reading such a value may terminate the
program. TVs are rare in integer formats but many floating point
formats support bit patterns that are not actaully floating point
numbers (infinities and NaN (not a number) values.
}
Michael Foukarakis
> Beware of certain buzzwords including "sequence points" and "trap
> representation".
>
> They have no scientific content, and instead were developed to cover
> up the inadequacies and very impossibility of "standardizing" a toxic
> waste dump (the C programming language and its dialects).
>
> Their use indicates intellectual fraud.
>
> A "sequence point" is
<snip>
> A "trap representation" is
<snip>
Please refrain from using the aforementioned expressions, as you risk
being held liable to charges of crimes against public disorder,
irrational thought infringement, newsgroup trespassing, verbal
assault, code you have never written but fails to (inter-)operate
anyway, resistance against or obstruction of common sense, unlicensed
possession of buzzwords, brain abuse and molestation, keyboard misuse,
unlawful detention of newbies, possession of illegal arms,
contributing to delinquency of non-regulars, stalking, negligence and
other forms of not knowing what the fuck you're talking about,
alternate reality definitions of nonexistent expressions which invoke
undefined cosmic behaviour under the C0x99 Standard (SI, not ISO),
first degree brain cell murder and crimes against humanity as defined
by the Hague Statute of the ULD and outlined in the Proclamation of
Inherent Powers. Do note that all affected parties are hereby
considered being served an implied notice of aforementioned
activities, and all pertaining actions shall be implemented in the
pursuance of the related objectives, most notably Ownage of the
Defendant (aka. spinoza1111). You shall also receive formal written
announcement communicating scheduling information about your
involvement in said offenses. The original notice has already been
filed (against all parties involved) with Mr. Syndrome, Internal
Intern and expert on the field of Hypothetical Malpractice of the ULD,
A.I. Chains, Congressional Liaison and expert on Hogwartsian Law,
Vandal and Lurker Profiling, as well as Department Tail, Dr.
Happytimes, Moral Bankruptcy Law Specialist. Concluding, I remark you
have the right to abandon your keyboard immediately and the obligation
to remain silent, as anything you say slash type slash unsuccessfully
try to communicate can and will be used against you in accordance to
Usenet Law.
Richard Heathfield
> Subject: Warning to newbies
>
> On 31 Jan, 11:15, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Beware of certain buzzwords including "sequence points" and "trap
>> representation".
>
> to those who aren't aware of it spinoza has some sort of axe to grind.
> A troll in other words.
That isn't what a troll is. A troll is someone who posts deliberately
provocative material, the objective being to incite a hostile reaction
for the heck of it. A true troll has no axe to grind, just a newsgroup
to pester.
There is such a thing as a clever troll, but these are rarely seen in
comp.lang.c nowadays.
<snip>
--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line vacant - apply within
Colonel Harlan Sanders
wrote:
Of course you're correct, but:
On Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:07:50 +0100, jacob navia <ja...@spamsink.net>
wrote:
>Colonel Harlan Sanders a �crit :
>[snip off topic polemic]
>Look, here is a C group.
>You do not like somebody?
>Use private email, blog, whatever.
>You do not like spinoza111?
>DO NOT ANSWER.
>Let's discuss about C ok?
Try taking your own advice, rather than handing it our so freely and,
may I say, obnoxiously.
Nilges was clearly laying troll bait, carefully crafted to prod his
usual nemeses into engaging with him.
Seebs
> That isn't what a troll is. A troll is someone who posts deliberately
> provocative material, the objective being to incite a hostile reaction
> for the heck of it. A true troll has no axe to grind, just a newsgroup
> to pester.
As someone who spent years reading alt.religion.kibology, I'd like to
point out that, much like "hacker", the term has more than one sense.
Trolling is a kind of fishing; instead of throwing a baited hook where
you think the fish are, you move your boat around with a baited hook
in the water behind you, and some fish go for it because it's moving.
Generically, "trolling" can be used for any activity designed to provoke
*any* kind of responses, as long as the goal is the responses in and of
themselves. Asking a question because you want to know the answer isn't
trolling; asking a question because it would amuse you if people answered
it probably is.
It is worth noting that, in some cases, trolling is directed not at a
newsgroup, but at a specific person, and that a skilled troll can be an
asset to a newsgroup or forum. On some of the web-based bulletin boards
I hang around on, I've seen trolls do a very good job of dealing with
obnoxious nuisance users, by posting things that everyone else would ignore
but which would tie the nuisance users up for hours -- this having the
convenient effect of, say, keeping the nuisances from harassing people who
were actually hurt or offended by their behavior.
That works better on a forum where threads you aren't interested in don't
have to be "skipped", you just don't navigate to them.
On the other hand, many users can enjoy a successful and interesting troll
played for comedy value. Back in the day, there was a long-running thread
about whether a given number was prime; all I recall is that it was about
twelve digits, the last of which was an even number. The various pseudo-math
offered to "prove" that this number was prime was funny. (I still have fond
memories of discovering that, yes, the Internet contains people who can be
convinced that ATMs print money rather than having a supply of pre-printed
money. The best part was someone who worked at a bank, and testified that
his job included putting fresh rolls of paper in the ATM. When someone
said those were for receipts, a third party jumped in and said "Don't be
ridiculous, those are preprinted.")
-s
--
Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet...@seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
spinoza1111
> On Sun, 31 Jan 2010 12:19:37 +0100, jacob navia <ja...@nospam.org>
> wrote:
>
> >> Beware of certain buzzwords including "sequence points" and "trap
> >> representation".
>
> >> They have no scientific content, and instead were developed to cover
> >> up the inadequacies and very impossibility of "standardizing" a toxic
> >> waste dump (the C programming language and its dialects).
>
> >Idiot
>
> Of course you're correct, but:
>
> On Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:07:50 +0100, jacob navia <ja...@spamsink.net>
> wrote:
>
> >[snip off topic polemic]
> >Look, here is a C group.
> >You do not like somebody?
> >Use private email, blog, whatever.
> >You do not like spinoza111?
> >DO NOT ANSWER.
> >Let's discuss about C ok?
>
> Try taking your own advice, rather than handing it our so freely and,
> may I say, obnoxiously.
>
> Nilges was clearly laying troll bait, carefully crafted to prod his
> usual nemeses into engaging with him.
No, I'm discussing C. I suggest you do so as well.
spinoza1111
Why is it, Peter, that you can only write coherently when you're
mocking other people?
Eric Sosman
> On Jan 31, 1:15 pm, spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Please refrain from using the aforementioned expressions, as you risk
> being held liable to charges of crimes against public disorder,
"I swear to God I will see you in court."
--
Eric Sosman
eso...@ieee-dot-org.invalid
spinoza1111
wrote:
> Subject: Warning to newbies
>
> On 31 Jan, 11:15,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Beware of certain buzzwords including "sequence points" and "trap
> > representation".
>
> to those who aren't aware of it spinoza has some sort of axe to grind.
> A troll in other words.
I'm not a troll. I'm a software developer with most of the Master's
degree in CS complete with a straight A average, thirty years of
experience, who's assisted John Nash and Jon "The Fate of the Earth"
Schell with C and the Mac, who's published on CS since 1976. However,
I also don't lie and I make dishonest and silly people uncomfortable.
>
> > They have no scientific content, and instead were developed to cover
> > up the inadequacies and very impossibility of "standardizing" a toxic
> > waste dump (the C programming language and its dialects).
>
> these terms are well defined by the C standard. If you interested in
The C standard is the problem, because the C "standard" is bogus
science.
> their defininition then look them up in the standard. If you are
> interested in their practical value then check out out past posts in
> this newsgroup or ask!
>
> [rougly speaking:
> sequence point: a point in the source code where the compution must be
"Compution"?
> completed. In between sequence points there may be a choice as to the
> order in which various sub-computions can be doen. This gives
"Computions". Once is a typo. Two is a subliterate trying to tell me
something.
> implementors freedom to reorganise code foroptimisation purposes.
This is absurd. Had the members of the C standards board been
qualified they would have realized that it is not the language's job
to "help the optimizer". We know how to optimize WITHOUT changing the
order of computations in source code so as to get different results at
different times, and no other major language was designed or
redesigned "for optimization".
For example, the only way to "optimize" a+b+c correctly is to use the
commutative law. Whereas the members of the C standards team or group
(one of whom, Peter Seebach, had never taken a computer science class
and paid his way onto the group to advance his career) actually
believed that the language had to allow changes to evaluation order to
be optimized. This is the reverse of the truth: languages with
stricter rules are EASIER to optimize as long as you optimize in the
only ethical way possible, eg., preserving mathematical correctness.
>
> trap value: an illegal value. Reading such a value may terminate the
To paraphrase Dijkstra: The problems of language standardization,
which is nothing more than language design, are much too difficult for
people who think in vague and corporate ways, compounded with sloppy
English.
Do you even know what "reading" a "trap value" might be? If I can
assign a pointer to void it's been read, and I can. The dishonesty of
the C standard is that it legislates against bad practice without
empowering compilers to detect it at run time, because the C standard
was developed SOLELY to enable vendors without any effort to label
existing compilers "standard".
Reading ANY value, not just values in this poorly defined subset, may
terminate the program, therefore any value is a trap value: the
concept is NOT part of computer science, it is voodoo hoodoo developed
by psychology majors actually proud that they've never taken a CS
class.
> program. TVs are rare in integer formats but many floating point
> formats support bit patterns that are not actaully floating point
> numbers (infinities and NaN (not a number) values.
NAN is a floating point number whose use causes an interrupt (the
clown who called them "trap values" was probably some incompetent
geezer that vaguely remembered when interrupts were called traps). The
use of infinity and NAN doesn't produce "undefined" results in
sensible environments at all: if NAN occurs in an expression, the
expression is NAN, not undefined, and the same is normally the case
for infinity.
It is undefined in your mind:
Hand-waving and voodoo in the service of money is not science.
What you call "undefined" is, we find,
The name and only the name of your stupidity, greed and ignorance.
You learned in corporations intellectual dishonesty
And that form of male bonding called normalized deviance
Which is also evident in your bullying and ungracious uncharity
Towards strangers which was the sin of Sodom by chance.
You sat on your ass and you compromised,
And the evidence is in words which have no content,
Schildt took one look, and sighed,
These clowns are doing nothing important.
The only way to standardize C was to be formal and not undefined on
its semantics,
Which could have been elegantly defined in C.
But thugs in the room came from the shadows,
And said you have for this no authority.
Thou shalt not use your brains, atrophied as they were, and are:
Instead thou shalt do as money decrees if in this business, you would
go far!
>
>
>
> }
spinoza1111
> Nick Keighley wrote:
> > Subject: Warning to newbies
>
>
> >> Beware of certain buzzwords including "sequence points" and "trap
> >> representation".
>
> > to those who aren't aware of it spinoza has some sort of axe to grind.
> > A troll in other words.
>
> That isn't what a troll is. A troll is someone who posts deliberately
> provocative material, the objective being to incite a hostile reaction
> for the heck of it. A true troll has no axe to grind, just a newsgroup
> to pester.
>
> There is such a thing as a clever troll, but these are rarely seen in
> comp.lang.c nowadays.
Heathfield is right.
spinoza1111
> spinoza1111a crit :
No, Jacob, I'm not an idiot. And if you'd not be bullied, don't bully
in turn. I've programmed in several languages successfully, and I
realized in 1991 that C was overrated because it allows smart people
to make stupid mistakes in service of providing an old-fashioned form
of computing "power" that is for the most part extremely marginal
today.
This is the Walter Mitty fantasy that the programmer is somehow in
reality assisting, if not second guessing, the "real man" hardware
engineer by squeezing cycles using a language which violates rules
made for lesser men. It allows programmers to avoid thinking in the
form of better problem definition and algorithm research.
It supports the nonsensical hacker "ethic" mythos that fat,
unimaginative and uncreative corporate shitheads are in reality
creative artists when they create software that creates silly problems
because of the shortcuts those slobs have taken.
Fuck you, Monsieur. I'll certainly be less interested in defending you
against the thugs in this newsgroup since you have proven you're a
thug, who like Heathfield has prostituted himself in order to
commercially promote a product.
spinoza1111
You've just self-indulgently wasted our time with a post that
contributes NOTHING to the discussion apart from an old staple of
break rooms in corporations: the foibles of other people, as opposed
to the implied wisdom of the narrator.
People sit around and tell these stories when they in fact have no
autonomy. They are like racist jokes, since the purpose of telling
them is to imply, without any intellectual effort, that the speaker
knows everything that's worth knowing.
Mark
> On Jan 31, 7:19�pm, jacob navia <ja...@nospam.org> wrote:
>> spinoza1111a crit :
>>
>> > Beware of certain buzzwords including "sequence points" and "trap
>> > representation".
>>
>> > They have no scientific content, and instead were developed to cover
>> > up the inadequacies and very impossibility of "standardizing" a toxic
>> > waste dump (the C programming language and its dialects).
>>
>> Idiot
>
> No, Jacob, I'm not an idiot. And if you'd not be bullied, don't bully
> in turn. I've programmed in several languages successfully, and I
> realized in 1991 that C was overrated because it allows smart people
> to make stupid mistakes in service of providing an old-fashioned form
> of computing "power" that is for the most part extremely marginal
> today.
>
Edward,
If, as it sounds, you gave up on C in 1991, why hang out in comp.lang.c?
The MS enthusiast who niggles at Mac users in Mac forums will be viewed
as a troll. The same is true of many atheists in religious groups.
Why, as someone who doesn't rate C, go to a C group?
It doesn't make much sense...unless you're trolling.
Michael Foukarakis
> I'm not a troll. I'm a software developer with most of the Master's
> degree in CS complete with a straight A average, thirty years of
> experience, who's assisted John Nash and Jon "The Fate of the Earth"
> Schell with C and the Mac, who's published on CS since 1976. However,
> I also don't lie and I make dishonest and silly people uncomfortable.
None of those are mutually exclusive with the troll status you hold.
> The C standard is the problem, because the C "standard" is bogus
> science.
The C standard is not science. It does not claim to be science, let
alone "bogus" science. You are therefore talking about things that do
not exist. In that context, I believe the minotaurs should abandon C
for VB, and then you may focus on something constructive.
> "Computions". Once is a typo. Two is a subliterate trying to tell me
> something.
You are focusing on all things irrelevant because you have nothing of
substance to say. The true way of a troll.
> This is absurd. Had the members of the C standards board been
> qualified they would have realized that it is not the language's job
> to "help the optimizer".
...and that is your opinion.
> We know how to optimize WITHOUT changing the
> order of computations in source code so as to get different results at
> different times, and no other major language was designed or
> redesigned "for optimization".
The only reason you know how to do that is because the language allows
you to.
> For example, the only way to "optimize" a+b+c correctly is to use the
> commutative law.
Incorrect. This is not a math class, anyway.
> Whereas the members of the C standards team or group
> (one of whom, Peter Seebach, had never taken a computer science class
> and paid his way onto the group to advance his career) actually
> believed that the language had to allow changes to evaluation order to
> be optimized. This is the reverse of the truth: languages with
> stricter rules are EASIER to optimize as long as you optimize in the
> only ethical way possible, eg., preserving mathematical correctness.
Wrong. The strictest language, one that demands operations will appear
in machine code in the order specified in source code, cannot be
optimized in the limited context of the optimizer you are concerning
yourself with. Perhaps you need to do some studying first, because
being published since '76 hasn't helped you much.
> To paraphrase Dijkstra:
Paraphrase all you want, it's still bs.
> Do you even know what "reading" a "trap value" might be? If I can
> assign a pointer to void it's been read,
That's a write operation, not a read.
> and I can.
With help from the minotaurs, sure.
> Reading ANY value, not just values in this poorly defined subset, may
> terminate the program, therefore any value is a trap value: the
> concept is NOT part of computer science, it is voodoo hoodoo developed
> by psychology majors actually proud that they've never taken a CS
> class.
> NAN is a floating point number
"value"
> whose use causes an interrupt
No, its use AND production causes an exception.
> The use of infinity and NAN doesn't produce "undefined" results in
> sensible environments at all: if NAN occurs in an expression, the
> expression is NAN, not undefined, and the same is normally the case
> for infinity.
The C standard adopts IEC 60559 definitions and conventions for
evaluation of mathematical expressions. Does it state the result, when
one or both operands are NaN, is undefined? And what is it with
"sensible environments" people seem to be invoking all the time? There
aren't any sensible environments, they're all figments of our
imagination!
Seebs
> On Jan 31, 8:45�pm, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The C standard is not science. It does not claim to be science, let
> alone "bogus" science. You are therefore talking about things that do
> not exist. In that context, I believe the minotaurs should abandon C
> for VB, and then you may focus on something constructive.
Indeed, I would never have thought of it as being "science".
>> We know how to optimize WITHOUT changing the
>> order of computations in source code so as to get different results at
>> different times, and no other major language was designed or
>> redesigned "for optimization".
> The only reason you know how to do that is because the language allows
> you to.
Perhaps more importantly, there are many cases in which better optimizations
are possible if you allow the order of some operations to vary, because you
know that you don't care about the difference -- but it may not be possible
for the compiler to know that you don't care.
>> For example, the only way to "optimize" a+b+c correctly is to use the
>> commutative law.
> Incorrect. This is not a math class, anyway.
Indeed. In particular, it is worth noticing that there are cases where
obvious mathematical properties do not apply to C.
((a * b) / c) != (a * (b / c))
is true for some a, b, and c.
>> Whereas the members of the C standards team or group
>> (one of whom, Peter Seebach, had never taken a computer science class
>> and paid his way onto the group to advance his career)
Ooh, I like that one. Did you know, I also paid for my driver's license?
Clearly, a dishonest attempt to further my personal travel options.
>> Do you even know what "reading" a "trap value" might be? If I can
>> assign a pointer to void it's been read,
> That's a write operation, not a read.
Also, there's no such thing as a "trap value". There is such a thing as
a "trap representation". "value" and "representation" are not interchangeable
concepts!
>> and I can.
> With help from the minotaurs, sure.
Yes. I particularly like "assign a pointer to void", because I don't think
it's possible. (It may be possible to cast it to void, but a cast is not
an assignment. So far as I can tell, assignment can be done only if
you have an lvalue of the type, and you can't have a void lvalue.)
>> whose use causes an interrupt
> No, its use AND production causes an exception.
... Which may well be ignored, depending on context. :)
> The C standard adopts IEC 60559 definitions and conventions for
> evaluation of mathematical expressions. Does it state the result, when
> one or both operands are NaN, is undefined? And what is it with
> "sensible environments" people seem to be invoking all the time? There
> aren't any sensible environments, they're all figments of our
> imagination!
Yeah. And actually, I don't think that, assuming IEEE arithmetic, either
NaN or either infinity is a trap representation. Trap representations are
pretty rare, and many systems don't have any.
-s
--
Eric Sosman
> On Jan 31, 8:45 pm, spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I'm not a troll. I'm a software developer with most of the Master's
>> degree in CS complete with a straight A average, thirty years of
>> experience, who's assisted John Nash and Jon "The Fate of the Earth"
>> Schell with C and the Mac, who's published on CS since 1976. However,
>> I also don't lie and I make dishonest and silly people uncomfortable.
>
> None of those are mutually exclusive with the troll status you hold.
Whatever his failings as a computer scientist (thirty years
to not quite finish a master's degree -- maybe in another thirty
he'll not quite get a clue), he's a skilled and successful troll.
Observe that he's trolled *you*, and ponder what that means.
--
Eric Sosman
eso...@ieee-dot-org.invalid
Ike Naar
spinoza1111 <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>To paraphrase Dijkstra: The problems of language standardization,
>which is nothing more than language design, are much too difficult for
>people who think in vague and corporate ways, compounded with sloppy
>English.
That is a very liberal interpretation of what Dijkstra said.
For the record, here's the original quote:
"The problems of business administration in general and data base
management in particular are much too difficult for people that
think in IBMerese, compounded with sloppy English."
(EWD498, "How do we tell truths that might hurt?", June 1975)
Keith Thompson
> On Jan 31, 8:45 pm, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I'm not a troll.
>
> None of those are mutually exclusive with the troll status you hold.
Are you trying to convince "spinoza1111" that he's a troll? Do you
expect to be successful?
Are you trying to convince the rest of us that "spinoza1111" is
a troll? Do you think that's necessary?
--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) ks...@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"
spinoza1111
> On 2010-01-31, Michael Foukarakis <electricde...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Jan 31, 8:45 pm,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >[...]
> > The C standard is not science. It does not claim to be science, let
> > alone "bogus" science. You are therefore talking about things that do
> > not exist. In that context, I believe the minotaurs should abandon C
> > for VB, and then you may focus on something constructive.
>
> Indeed, I would never have thought of it as being "science".
What you do is not science, however there still is a computer science.
>
> >> We know how to optimize WITHOUT changing the
> >> order of computations in source code so as to get different results at
> >> different times, and no other major language was designed or
> >> redesigned "for optimization".
> > The only reason you know how to do that is because the language allows
> > you to.
>
> Perhaps more importantly, there are many cases in which better optimizations
> are possible if you allow the order of some operations to vary, because you
> know that you don't care about the difference -- but it may not be possible
> for the compiler to know that you don't care.
"So anthropomorphic thinking is no good in the sense that it does not
help. But is it also bad? Yes, it is, because even if we can point to
some analogy between Man and Thing, the analogy is always negligible
in comparison to the differences, and as soon as we allow ourselves to
be seduced by the analogy to describe the Thing in anthropomorphic
terminology, we immediately lose our control over which human
connotations we drag into the picture. And as most of those are
totally inadequate, the anthropomorphism becomes more misleading than
helpful." - Dijkstra
Compilers don't "know" jack. Instead, they should optimize while
preserving the semantics of what you've coded using mathematical and
computer-scientific realities. That the "standard" "allows" you to do
something has nothing whatsoever to do with this. Languages with
sensible and predefined execution order are EASIER to optimize than C.
>
> >> For example, the only way to "optimize" a+b+c correctly is to use the
> >> commutative law.
> > Incorrect. This is not a math class, anyway.
>
> Indeed. In particular, it is worth noticing that there are cases where
> obvious mathematical properties do not apply to C.
>
> ((a * b) / c) != (a * (b / c))
>
> is true for some a, b, and c.
We know what these are. The fact that floating point numbers are of
limited precision is a scientific and mathematical fact that can be
anticipated. It does NOT license the myth that programmers are in a
different business.
>
> >> Whereas the members of the C standards team or group
> >> (one of whom, Peter Seebach, had never taken a computer science class
> >> and paid his way onto the group to advance his career)
>
> Ooh, I like that one. Did you know, I also paid for my driver's license?
> Clearly, a dishonest attempt to further my personal travel options.
Well, did you pay the examiner to pass you after you failed to
parallel park? That is a better analogy, since you either contributed
or watched.
If you contributed, your contributions were worthless because you
don't have the applicable education.
If you did not contribute, then you unduly claimed authority wrt to
Schildt.
>
> >> Do you even know what "reading" a "trap value" might be? If I can
> >> assign a pointer to void it's been read,
> > That's a write operation, not a read.
>
> Also, there's no such thing as a "trap value". There is such a thing as
> a "trap representation". "value" and "representation" are not interchangeable
> concepts!
This is three card monte: there is when you want it, there isn't when
you don't. There are five million google hits for "trap
representation" and they are all or mostly about the C standard.
This is the corporate game of an ignorance that is in part feigned but
believable when feigned because of the sea of ignorance on which the
feigning ship sails.
>
> >> and I can.
> > With help from the minotaurs, sure.
>
> Yes. I particularly like "assign a pointer to void", because I don't think
> it's possible. (It may be possible to cast it to void, but a cast is not
> an assignment. So far as I can tell, assignment can be done only if
> you have an lvalue of the type, and you can't have a void lvalue.)
>
> >> whose use causes an interrupt
> > No, its use AND production causes an exception.
>
> ... Which may well be ignored, depending on context. :)
>
> > The C standard adopts IEC 60559 definitions and conventions for
> > evaluation of mathematical expressions. Does it state the result, when
> > one or both operands are NaN, is undefined? And what is it with
> > "sensible environments" people seem to be invoking all the time? There
> > aren't any sensible environments, they're all figments of our
> > imagination!
>
> Yeah. And actually, I don't think that, assuming IEEE arithmetic, either
> NaN or either infinity is a trap representation. Trap representations are
> pretty rare, and many systems don't have any.
Because the standard is junk science, words can conveniently mean
whatever you like.
>
> -s
> --
spinoza1111
> spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Jan 31, 7:19 pm, jacob navia <ja...@nospam.org> wrote:
> >> spinoza1111a crit :
>
> >> > Beware of certain buzzwords including "sequence points" and "trap
> >> > representation".
>
> >> > They have no scientific content, and instead were developed to cover
> >> > up the inadequacies and very impossibility of "standardizing" a toxic
> >> > waste dump (the C programming language and its dialects).
>
> >> Idiot
>
> > No, Jacob, I'm not an idiot. And if you'd not be bullied, don't bully
> > in turn. I've programmed in several languages successfully, and I
> > realized in 1991 that C was overrated because it allows smart people
> > to make stupid mistakes in service of providing an old-fashioned form
> > of computing "power" that is for the most part extremely marginal
> > today.
>
> > <snip>
>
> Edward,
>
> If, as it sounds, you gave up on C in 1991, why hang out in comp.lang.c?
> The MS enthusiast who niggles at Mac users in Mac forums will be viewed
> as a troll. The same is true of many atheists in religious groups.
In brief, science is not religion. Criticism upsets believers, but if
C is computer science, then it is on-topic here to warn newbies that C
is not a safe language, and that unethical and unqualified people are
here.
spinoza1111
> In article <a85e294c-ced7-4be9-a28b-3f668de6b...@m35g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
>
> spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >To paraphrase Dijkstra: The problems of language standardization,
> >which is nothing more than language design, are much too difficult for
> >people who think in vague and corporate ways, compounded with sloppy
> >English.
>
> That is a very liberal interpretation of what Dijkstra said.
What part of "paraphrase" don't you understand?
> For the record, here's the original quote:
> "The problems of business administration in general and data base
> management in particular are much too difficult for people that
> think in IBMerese, compounded with sloppy English."
The C standard kiddies are talking "IBMerese at level 2" because like
IBM managers of yore, they use a language in which imprecise terms of
art replace actual thought. In IBMerese this was "management
information system": in Cerese it is "trap represetation" and
"sequence point".
Buzzwords, in fine.
The English used here is if anything even more sloppy than of yore.
Most posters are unable to construct sentences beyond a certain small
upper bound.
For example, they would like to construct the thought that they have a
Higher Self that they'd prefer to command the floor, and this Higher
Self (the correct understanding of a truth) is to be admired. They are
afraid to admit to weakness and complexity.
This results in sloppy English.
spinoza1111
> On Jan 31, 8:45 pm,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm not a troll. I'm a software developer with most of the Master's
> > degree in CS complete with a straight A average, thirty years of
> > experience, who's assisted John Nash and Jon "The Fate of the Earth"
> > Schell with C and the Mac, who's published on CS since 1976. However,
> > I also don't lie and I make dishonest and silly people uncomfortable.
>
> None of those are mutually exclusive with the troll status you hold.
>
> > The C standard is the problem, because the C "standard" is bogus
> > science.
>
> The C standard is not science. It does not claim to be science, let
> alone "bogus" science. You are therefore talking about things that do
> not exist. In that context, I believe the minotaurs should abandon C
> for VB, and then you may focus on something constructive.
If the C standard is not science, what is it? Don't say "technology"
because technology has no standing unless its science + x.
>
> > "Computions". Once is a typo. Two is a subliterate trying to tell me
> > something.
>
> You are focusing on all things irrelevant because you have nothing of
> substance to say. The true way of a troll.
No, you need to be able to express yourself in writing for me to take
you seriously. In case you haven't noticed, writing is what we do
here.
>
> > This is absurd. Had the members of the C standards board been
> > qualified they would have realized that it is not the language's job
> > to "help the optimizer".
>
> ...and that is your opinion.
Men learn in the military that in the face of force, any criticism is
"just an opinion". The problem is that the corporation is run on
military lines and the result is crap.
>
> > We know how to optimize WITHOUT changing the
> > order of computations in source code so as to get different results at
> > different times, and no other major language was designed or
> > redesigned "for optimization".
>
> The only reason you know how to do that is because the language allows
> you to.
>
> > For example, the only way to "optimize" a+b+c correctly is to use the
> > commutative law.
>
> Incorrect. This is not a math class, anyway.
It is astonishing that C programmers can say "that's math, I don't
know it, so it's irrevelant".
>
> > Whereas the members of the C standards team or group
> > (one of whom, Peter Seebach, had never taken a computer science class
> > and paid his way onto the group to advance his career) actually
> > believed that the language had to allow changes to evaluation order to
> > be optimized. This is the reverse of the truth: languages with
> > stricter rules are EASIER to optimize as long as you optimize in the
> > only ethical way possible, eg., preserving mathematical correctness.
>
> Wrong. The strictest language, one that demands operations will appear
> in machine code in the order specified in source code, cannot be
> optimized in the limited context of the optimizer you are concerning
> yourself with. Perhaps you need to do some studying first, because
> being published since '76 hasn't helped you much.
That's a fundamental error. A strict language is high level since it
specifies a computation. Machine language is not even language in this
sense. In case you haven't noticed, what we need is an international
language for communicating our intentions as to using computers. This
need has been denied by corporations and governments because their
intentions are evil.
>
> > To paraphrase Dijkstra:
>
> Paraphrase all you want, it's still bs.
>
> > Do you even know what "reading" a "trap value" might be? If I can
> > assign a pointer to void it's been read,
>
> That's a write operation, not a read.
What part of read-write don't you understand?
>
> > and I can.
>
> With help from the minotaurs, sure.
>
> > Reading ANY value, not just values in this poorly defined subset, may
> > terminate the program, therefore any value is a trap value: the
> > concept is NOT part of computer science, it is voodoo hoodoo developed
> > by psychology majors actually proud that they've never taken a CS
> > class.
> > NAN is a floating point number
>
> "value"
Number
>
> > whose use causes an interrupt
>
> No, its use AND production causes an exception.
Not in all contexts.
>
> > The use of infinity and NAN doesn't produce "undefined" results in
> > sensible environments at all: if NAN occurs in an expression, the
> > expression is NAN, not undefined, and the same is normally the case
> > for infinity.
>
> The C standard adopts IEC 60559 definitions and conventions for
> evaluation of mathematical expressions. Does it state the result, when
> one or both operands are NaN, is undefined? And what is it with
> "sensible environments" people seem to be invoking all the time? There
> aren't any sensible environments, they're all figments of our
> imagination!
The C standard is not my Bible. The mathematical fact is that NAN+1
has a perfectly well-defined value. It is NAN! The mathematical fact
is that infinity aleph null (a denumerable infinity) has a perfectly
well defined value. It is infinity aleph null!
spinoza1111
> On 1/31/2010 2:44 PM, Michael Foukarakis wrote:
>
> >> I'm not a troll. I'm a software developer with most of the Master's
> >> degree in CS complete with a straight A average, thirty years of
> >> experience, who's assisted John Nash and Jon "The Fate of the Earth"
> >> Schell with C and the Mac, who's published on CS since 1976. However,
> >> I also don't lie and I make dishonest and silly people uncomfortable.
>
> > None of those are mutually exclusive with the troll status you hold.
>
> Whatever his failings as a computer scientist (thirty years
> to not quite finish a master's degree -- maybe in another thirty
Hey, asshole, I left because I had a family and worked for an employer
that thought it was cute when we worked sixty hours to meet deadlines
and wouldn't tuition reimburse. Why is it that regs like Seebs can
boast about not taking ANY computer science class WHATSOEVER, and why
will he be defended on the absurd basis that "Dijkstra didn't major in
CS"?
As Heathfield, who is not my ally or friend, has pointed out, a
"troll" does not post in good faith whereas I believe that "C
standardization" is intellectual fraud based on considerable
experience with C including assisting Nash with it. You use the word,
which is Nordic racism, because you're unqualified to discuss whether
C is a responsible language.
> he'll not quite get a clue), he's a skilled and successful troll.
> Observe that he's trolled *you*, and ponder what that means.
>
> --
> Eric Sosman
> esos...@ieee-dot-org.invalid
Seebs
> Are you trying to convince the rest of us that "spinoza1111" is
> a troll? Do you think that's necessary?
This is Usenet, where I regularly see people struggling to convince other
people of things like "computers mostly run on electricity" or "there
is no apostrophe in the third-person neuter possessive in English". I
can easily imagine people who are not convinced that Spinny is a troll.
(And honestly, I'm not yet entirely convinced that he's an *intentional*
troll.)
-s
--
Michael Foukarakis
What can I say, I love indulging everybody (inc. trolls). It's a
particularly nice way to fill my Sunday afternoons during StarCraft
breaks.
spinoza1111
> On 2010-01-31, Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.org> wrote:
>
> > Are you trying to convince the rest of us that "spinoza1111" is
> > a troll? Do you think that's necessary?
>
> This is Usenet, where I regularly see people struggling to convince other
> people of things like "computers mostly run on electricity" or "there
Babbage's machine is now working in London and it works with manual
power.
> is no apostrophe in the third-person neuter possessive in English". I
I suppose you mean the singular because there is no neuter plural. You
forgot to mention that the predicative form differs in the plural. You
didn't give examples which means you are not concerned with mentoring
but with reassuring yourself that you are "smart", which you're not.
"It is its hard drive." "The hard drive is its."
Neuter possessive is rare because in former times, ownership was not
something of which objects apart from animals and higher plants had.
The point is, jerk face, that "anything you say can be used against
you". The idiotic screeds you unleash on people rely on something of
which you're not consciously aware: that language is polysemic.
Therefore you waste our time when you could be taking remedial
computer science and reading.
I don't see people struggling in any eleemosynary fashion to help
others. I see instead thugs like you deliberately or accidentally
(through serious deficiencies in basic reading skills) showing off a
false erudition, for example, by mocking people who know that
electronic computing is an accident and that there is more than one
example of purely mechanical devices, as well as fluidic devices.
You're the typical break room creep of the corporation
A sodden little twerp.
> can easily imagine people who are not convinced that Spinny is a troll.
> (And honestly, I'm not yet entirely convinced that he's an *intentional*
> troll.)
>
> -s
> --
Michael Foukarakis
> On Feb 1, 3:44 am, Michael Foukarakis <electricde...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Jan 31, 8:45 pm,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > I'm not a troll. I'm a software developer with most of the Master's
> > > degree in CS complete with a straight A average, thirty years of
> > > experience, who's assisted John Nash and Jon "The Fate of the Earth"
> > > Schell with C and the Mac, who's published on CS since 1976. However,
> > > I also don't lie and I make dishonest and silly people uncomfortable.
>
> > None of those are mutually exclusive with the troll status you hold.
>
> > > The C standard is the problem, because the C "standard" is bogus
> > > science.
>
> > The C standard is not science. It does not claim to be science, let
> > alone "bogus" science. You are therefore talking about things that do
> > not exist. In that context, I believe the minotaurs should abandon C
> > for VB, and then you may focus on something constructive.
>
> If the C standard is not science, what is it? Don't say "technology"
> because technology has no standing unless its science + x.
Send an email to ISO, and find out for yourself.
> > > "Computions". Once is a typo. Two is a subliterate trying to tell me
> > > something.
>
> > You are focusing on all things irrelevant because you have nothing of
> > substance to say. The true way of a troll.
>
> No, you need to be able to express yourself in writing for me to take
> you seriously. In case you haven't noticed, writing is what we do
> here.
Since you're able to reply to me, I will assume that you can be
considered, for all intents and purposes, able to read what I write
but not comprehend it 100%.
> > > This is absurd. Had the members of the C standards board been
> > > qualified they would have realized that it is not the language's job
> > > to "help the optimizer".
>
> > ...and that is your opinion.
>
> Men learn in the military that in the face of force, any criticism is
> "just an opinion". The problem is that the corporation is run on
> military lines and the result is crap.
Not if you are the corporation. But you're obviously not. Tough luck,
eh?
> > > We know how to optimize WITHOUT changing the
> > > order of computations in source code so as to get different results at
> > > different times, and no other major language was designed or
> > > redesigned "for optimization".
>
> > The only reason you know how to do that is because the language allows
> > you to.
>
> > > For example, the only way to "optimize" a+b+c correctly is to use the
> > > commutative law.
>
> > Incorrect. This is not a math class, anyway.
>
> It is astonishing that C programmers can say "that's math, I don't
> know it, so it's irrevelant".
Not irrelevant, incorrect. At what point did you abandon elementary
school?
> > > Whereas the members of the C standards team or group
> > > (one of whom, Peter Seebach, had never taken a computer science class
> > > and paid his way onto the group to advance his career) actually
> > > believed that the language had to allow changes to evaluation order to
> > > be optimized. This is the reverse of the truth: languages with
> > > stricter rules are EASIER to optimize as long as you optimize in the
> > > only ethical way possible, eg., preserving mathematical correctness.
>
> > Wrong. The strictest language, one that demands operations will appear
> > in machine code in the order specified in source code, cannot be
> > optimized in the limited context of the optimizer you are concerning
> > yourself with. Perhaps you need to do some studying first, because
> > being published since '76 hasn't helped you much.
>
> That's a fundamental error. A strict language is high level since it
> specifies a computation. Machine language is not even language in this
> sense. In case you haven't noticed, what we need is an international
> language for communicating our intentions as to using computers. This
> need has been denied by corporations and governments because their
> intentions are evil.
You are assuming a collective intent behind the operations of a
collective, a concept on which I do not subscribe.
> > > To paraphrase Dijkstra:
>
> > Paraphrase all you want, it's still bs.
>
> > > Do you even know what "reading" a "trap value" might be? If I can
> > > assign a pointer to void it's been read,
>
> > That's a write operation, not a read.
>
> What part of read-write don't you understand?
The dash.
> > > and I can.
>
> > With help from the minotaurs, sure.
>
> > > Reading ANY value, not just values in this poorly defined subset, may
> > > terminate the program, therefore any value is a trap value: the
> > > concept is NOT part of computer science, it is voodoo hoodoo developed
> > > by psychology majors actually proud that they've never taken a CS
> > > class.
> > > NAN is a floating point number
>
> > "value"
>
> Number
Whatever, who am I to break your bubble?
> > > whose use causes an interrupt
>
> > No, its use AND production causes an exception.
>
> Not in all contexts.
You mean, "it is ignored in some contexts". In that case, yes. But you
still got your facts wrong.
> > > The use of infinity and NAN doesn't produce "undefined" results in
> > > sensible environments at all: if NAN occurs in an expression, the
> > > expression is NAN, not undefined, and the same is normally the case
> > > for infinity.
>
> > The C standard adopts IEC 60559 definitions and conventions for
> > evaluation of mathematical expressions. Does it state the result, when
> > one or both operands are NaN, is undefined? And what is it with
> > "sensible environments" people seem to be invoking all the time? There
> > aren't any sensible environments, they're all figments of our
> > imagination!
>
> The C standard is not my Bible. The mathematical fact is that NAN+1
> has a perfectly well-defined value. It is NAN! The mathematical fact
> is that infinity aleph null (a denumerable infinity) has a perfectly
> well defined value. It is infinity aleph null!
Again, tough luck. Computers lack in many respects against some
idealized concepts of mathematics (continuous value space, for
instance).
Concluding, I must ask that you reply to me in the same spirit of
ignoring what I actually wrote, so that I, in turn, can reply and have
something to do today, because work is so slow. Thanks in advance.
spinoza1111
>
> > Are you trying to convince the rest of us that "spinoza1111" is
> > a troll? Do you think that's necessary?
>
> This is Usenet, where I regularly see people struggling to convince other
> people of things like "computers mostly run on electricity" or "there
> is no apostrophe in the third-person neuter possessive in English". I
> can easily imagine people who are not convinced that Spinny is a troll.
> (And honestly, I'm not yet entirely convinced that he's an *intentional*
> troll.)
>
> -s
> --
In a moment of stunning integrity, Richard Heathfield has reasoned
from the definition of the troll to the conclusion that I'm not, since
he knows that I believe what I post, and he believes with good reason
that I don't post to get attention. You on the other hand seek to
label people.
spinoza1111
Most intelligent people I know work for schools, non-profits,
foundations, small businesses and start-ups. There are lots and lots
of alternatives to working for a corporation. The corporation is the
natural home of the creepy nerd.
"On?" Whatever, Preposition Rainbow. OK, some corporations are
altruistic. What are they? Where are they?
Not even grammatical ("against"?) and wrong. Computers are constructed
to follow the laws of finite mathematics, therefore they are well
understood with mathematics unless broken, in which they must be
understood with physics. Your job as a programmer is to understand
them mathematically. Clearly you do not.
Colonel Harlan Sanders
>On 2010-01-31, Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.org> wrote:
>> Are you trying to convince the rest of us that "spinoza1111" is
>> a troll? Do you think that's necessary?
>
>This is Usenet, where I regularly see people struggling to convince other
>people of things like "computers mostly run on electricity" or "there
>is no apostrophe in the third-person neuter possessive in English". I
>can easily imagine people who are not convinced that Spinny is a troll.
>(And honestly, I'm not yet entirely convinced that he's an *intentional*
>troll.)
I'm sure he's not an intentional troll. He's sincere in what he
espouses. He really believes he's a genius, a philanthropist, an
artist, etc. And that you and Heathfield are monstrously evil. He's
Don Quixote, but not so charming.
But what that means to us is that he cannot be reformed, there is no
point in even trying to argue with him regarding any of his many wacky
conspiracy theories. Waging flame wars on Usenet is the only method of
social interaction he has left. Obviously he's ended up teaching in a
cram school in Asia because they'll take any warm body with an
American passport, after making himself unemployable in any other
profession by his inability to interact with people in a civil way.
Young children are unthreatening to his ego so he's probably quite
pleasant to them. Clever teenagers though might be a problem.
spinoza1111
> On Feb 1, 1:11 pm, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
>
> > On 2010-01-31, Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.org> wrote:
>
> > > Are you trying to convince the rest of us that "spinoza1111" is
> > > a troll? Do you think that's necessary?
>
> > This is Usenet, where I regularly see people struggling to convince other
> > people of things like "computers mostly run on electricity" or "there
>
> Babbage's machine is now working in London and it works with manual
> power.
>
> > is no apostrophe in the third-person neuter possessive in English". I
>
> I suppose you mean the singular because there is no neuter plural. You
> forgot to mention that the predicative form differs in the plural. You
> didn't give examples which means you are not concerned with mentoring
> but with reassuring yourself that you are "smart", which you're not.
>
> "It is its hard drive." "The hard drive is its."
>
> Neuter possessive is rare because in former times, ownership was not
> something of which objects apart from animals and higher plants had.
should read "something which". Yes, I notice my errors and correct
them.
James
news:373b702e-25e9-487f...@o16g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
[...]
> Why is it that regs like Seebs can
> boast about not taking ANY computer science class WHATSOEVER, and why
> will he be defended on the absurd basis that "Dijkstra didn't major in
> CS"?
> As Heathfield, who is not my ally or friend, has pointed out, a
> "troll" does not post in good faith whereas I believe that "C
> standardization" is intellectual fraud based on considerable
> experience with C including assisting Nash with it.
What was Mr. Nash having trouble with?
Michael Foukarakis
I have plenty of counterexamples, but let's face it, you aren't
interested.
English isn't my first language, so I'm grateful for any and all
learning opportunities you're willing to provide me with, Grammatical
Father Figure.
Your point about "altruistic" (what?) corporations is interesting.
Care to do some research and present it to us? A Powerpoint
presentation would do just fine. 45 slides bare minimum. Assume an
illiterate viewing crowd.
You're always assuming, trying to present yourself as wise or
insightful, but you're really not.
Richard Heathfield
<snip>
> In a moment of stunning integrity, Richard Heathfield has reasoned
> from the definition of the troll to the conclusion that I'm not,
I aim for the same level of integrity in all my articles. It is a policy
that I can recommend to you. As for your trollishness, I'm not as sure
as I was.
> since
> he knows that I believe what I post,
No, I remember catching you out in at least one deliberate and provable
lie, so I don't think even you believe *everything* you post. And I
don't mean the supposed "legal action" you claimed to have taken,
either, but you and I both know that's a lie too, don't we?
> and he believes with good reason
> that I don't post to get attention.
No, I don't believe that. I believe you post because you're rebelling
against parental oppression during childhood, and you somehow think it's
cool to swear at grown-ups and mock views you don't understand.
> You on the other hand seek to label people.
Like many people, Seebs posts to pass odd moments of time, help people
out if he can, and participate in this particular community. He does it
very well. So do lots of other people here.
Richard Heathfield
> On Feb 1, 3:05 pm, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
<snip>
>> Neuter possessive is rare because in former times, ownership was not
>> something of which objects apart from animals and higher plants had.
>
> should read "something which". Yes, I notice my errors and correct
> them.
Where do you find the time?
Richard Heathfield
<snip>
> What was Mr. Nash having trouble with?
Bad C advice from a C-hating moron. If Mr Nash had asked an expert, he'd
have got far, far, far better advice.
Nick Keighley
> On Feb 1, 4:03 am, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
> > On 2010-01-31, Michael Foukarakis <electricde...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > The C standard is not science. It does not claim to be science, let
> > > alone "bogus" science.
<snip>
> > Indeed, I would never have thought of it as being "science".
>
> What you do is not science, however there still is a computer science.
I've got a degree in computer science (Computational Science to be
precise) and I don't think it's a science.
<snip>
gwowen
> James wrote:
>
> > What was Mr. Nash having trouble with?
>
> Bad C advice from a C-hating moron. If Mr Nash had asked an expert, he'd
> have got far, far, far better advice.
Gareth Owen wrote:
>> Actually, spinoza111 tends to be the principal originator of most of the
>> spinoza111. Having said that, Seebs and Richard Heathfield are his
>> facilitators
> I don't know whether you've noticed yet, but I've more or less stopped
> doing that. Why? Well, I'd tell you, only it would probably count as
> more "facilitation".
So this is "more or less stopped" looks like? I'm *astonished* I
didn't notice. You just can't resist can you?
Your pastor must be so proud.
Richard Heathfield
> On Feb 1, 8:06 am, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>> James wrote:
>>
>>> What was Mr. Nash having trouble with?
>> Bad C advice from a C-hating moron. If Mr Nash had asked an expert, he'd
>> have got far, far, far better advice.
>
> Gareth Owen wrote:
>>> Actually, spinoza111 tends to be the principal originator of most of the
>>> spinoza111. Having said that, Seebs and Richard Heathfield are his
>>> facilitators
>
>> I don't know whether you've noticed yet, but I've more or less stopped
>> doing that. Why? Well, I'd tell you, only it would probably count as
>> more "facilitation".
>
> So this is "more or less stopped" looks like?
Yeah, more or less.
> I'm *astonished* I didn't notice.
You're looking at a puddle, and confusing it with a flood.
> You just can't resist can you?
Can't resist what? Posting to Usenet? Well, it seems you can't either. So?
> Your pastor must be so proud.
You're not good at sarcasm. I suggest you either avoid it or take a class.
gwowen
> > You just can't resist can you?
>
> Can't resist what? Posting to Usenet? Well, it seems you can't either. So?
Mocking, taunting, baiting and insulting Edward Nilges.
>> Your pastor must be so proud.
> You're not good at sarcasm. I suggest you either avoid it or take a class.
I wasn't being sarcastic. For a religious man, you show a colossal
amount of malice to Nilges.
PS: This is the point where you pretend to killfile me. Again.
Mark
That sounds like you're treating it like a religion.
You sound like the man preaching loudly in the street about the wages of
sin.
C isn't safe and, while many are much safer, nor is any language. They
all screw up in interesting ways if used incorrectly. I'd never suggest
C as a first language and (these days) it's not a language I'd suggest
for many people at all.
It has its place, though.
Kaz Kylheku
> On Jan 31, 8:45 pm, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Whereas the members of the C standards team or group
>> (one of whom, Peter Seebach, had never taken a computer science class
>> and paid his way onto the group to advance his career) actually
>> believed that the language had to allow changes to evaluation order to
>> be optimized. This is the reverse of the truth: languages with
>> stricter rules are EASIER to optimize as long as you optimize in the
>> only ethical way possible, eg., preserving mathematical correctness.
>
> Wrong. The strictest language, one that demands operations will appear
> in machine code in the order specified in source code, cannot be
This is a strawman version of what it means to have a defined evaluation
order.
In reality, language specifications which define evaluation order do not
typically make ridiculous demands about what has to appear in machine
language in what way.
What order does is it helps to establish what the code /means/; it
doesn't say what the actual machine must /do/ (other than compute
the implied result, and all the visible effects in the implied order).
Actual computations can be significantly reordered even if
abstract computation is strictly ordered.
C in fact has a strict evaluation order among expressions that are
divided by sequence points. Yet, modern compilers aggressively rearrange
computation across these boundaries.
The belief that unspecified subexpression and side effect order
bolsters optimization is laughably false.
Richard Heathfield
> On Feb 1, 8:18 am, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>
>>> You just can't resist can you?
>> Can't resist what? Posting to Usenet? Well, it seems you can't either. So?
>
> Mocking, taunting, baiting and insulting Edward Nilges.
Again, you're confusing a puddle with a flood.
>
>>> Your pastor must be so proud.
>> You're not good at sarcasm. I suggest you either avoid it or take a class.
>
> I wasn't being sarcastic.
No, you were just trying.
> For a religious man, you show a colossal
> amount of malice to Nilges.
Actually, it's much more the other way around.
>
> PS: This is the point where you pretend to killfile me. Again.
No pretending about it. I did killfile you. For 30 days. Since that
period elapsed, you've seemed to me to be a fairly reasonable guy,
albeit somewhat quick to leap to judgement (as we all can be, on
occasion). The fact that we are in disagreement over this issue is no
big deal, given the general high quality of your articles.
spinoza1111
> James wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > What was Mr. Nash having trouble with?
The evaluation of an expression at compile time. The intent of the
expression was to test whether a number exceeded long precision. The
Microsoft compiler stayed inside long precision, the Borland compiler
did not.
>
> Bad C advice from a C-hating moron. If Mr Nash had asked an expert, he'd
> have got far, far, far better advice.
His problem was fully solved, so you don't know what you're talking
about. Later, he converted to using Mathematica because to use C for
his own purposes he'd had to "reinvent the wheel".
gwowen
>
> > you show a colossal amount of malice to Nilges.
> Actually, it's much more the other way around.
Oh, definitely. You are more sinned against than sinner. But there is
no point in trying to reason with him about it. He's does not appear
to be amenable reason.
Kaz Kylheku
> On 2010-01-31, Michael Foukarakis <electr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Jan 31, 8:45 pm, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> The C standard is not science. It does not claim to be science, let
>> not exist. In that context, I believe the minotaurs should abandon C
>> for VB, and then you may focus on something constructive.
>
>
>>> order of computations in source code so as to get different results at
>>> different times, and no other major language was designed or
>>> redesigned "for optimization".
>
>> The only reason you know how to do that is because the language allows
>> you to.
>
> are possible if you allow the order of some operations to vary, because you
> know that you don't care about the difference -- but it may not be possible
> for the compiler to know that you don't care.
The compiler knows that an expression that works directly with
declared objects doesn't care about order.
The troublesome cases involve objects accessed through pointers,
where optimizations may become invalid when values
are aliased.
E.g. (*p) = (*q)++ is well-defined if p != q, but
undefined if p == q. With the standard's blessing, the compiler
doesn't have to care about the p == q case, and optimize
as if p != q. If evaluation order is imposed, this freedom
is lost; the compiler can no longer optimize on
the assumption that p != q.
But as of C99, there are restrict pointers. It's possible to impose
strict ordering such that (*p) = (*q)++ normally has defined semantics
even in the case p == q; yet the program can express ``order doesn't
matter'' by using restrict on p and q. Then, the semantics
changes: optimization can proceed on the p != q assumption, since the
behavior of the expression is once again undefined for p == q.
I believe that the optimization argument in favor of unspecified
evaluation orders is fairly weak to begin with, and that local
declarative mechanisms like restrict pointers basically squash it.
spinoza1111
I can't stop you, of course, from narrating things in this way. I
would say that there's a lot of psychological transference.
If you work in corporate computing, this probably means that you are
the least "minimally competent candidate" for your job, because
computing and even embedded systems is a pure cost center. You may be
encouraged to fantasize that you are an independent professional and
creative artist, but you're not. Development of a truly cutting edge
product requires marshalling the work of others to an insane degree,
therefore the "artist" is now also a complete thug like Steve Jobs
who's not only adept at imagining new products (which many people are)
but also good at being a bully. This is evident from the complexity of
a truly disruptive product like the iPad. It's not the sort of thing a
Wozniak could do on a bench alone.
Truly competent people have I'd guess long since left your company
since my father was right: you only need to code it once. There was
never any intent to create a race of superior intellects who would
program the same things over and over, and such a race does not exist.
Instead, there's a race of Morlocks and machine tenders who resemble
the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.
I escaped the troop of monkeys singing yo he ho and this bugs you,
Bubba.
spinoza1111
Not really. I worked in corporations. The last time I had truly
intelligent co-workers (including Whit Diffie and Bob Gaskins, the
inventor of power point) was in 1982. These people fled Bell Northern
Research when BNR hired creeps in 1983. In 1986, the HR director
observed to me that when these new hires left, they mostly left IT as
well. I could see that they were simply unqualified to get jobs
elsewhere in Silicon Valley.
Most of the real work of the world is done by the self-employed and
the so-called unskilled. The latter master real skills (cf the
American socialist writer Barbara Ehrenreich and her book Nickel and
Dimed) of juggling multiple minimum wage jobs and family
responsibilities, and the actual difficult labor of real janitorial
and food service jobs, in ways that corporate types could not imagine.
Most of us who like to program have in my own experience wound up
creating tools to keep ourselves occupied while the user figures out
what the user wants, which is usually wildly at variance with what's
objectively needed. For example, at Princeton, whilst waiting for the
strategic team to figure out meeting agendas, I wrote a complete
parser generator and published a paper on it simply to keep sane:
Princeton's information centers were loosely run on corporate lines.
I was saying there's no such thing.
How would you know? The crowd of peasants with pitchforks and torches
always assume that they are being lied to because they usually are.
spinoza1111
> On 2010-01-31, Michael Foukarakis <electricde...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Jan 31, 8:45 pm,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> Whereas the members of the C standards team or group
> >> (one of whom, Peter Seebach, had never taken a computer science class
> >> and paid his way onto the group to advance his career) actually
> >> believed that the language had to allow changes to evaluation order to
> >> be optimized. This is the reverse of the truth: languages with
> >> stricter rules are EASIER to optimize as long as you optimize in the
> >> only ethical way possible, eg., preserving mathematical correctness.
>
> > Wrong. The strictest language, one that demands operations will appear
> > in machine code in the order specified in source code, cannot be
>
> This is a strawman version of what it means to have a defined evaluation
> order.
>
> In reality, language specifications which define evaluation order do not
> typically make ridiculous demands about what has to appear in machine
> language in what way.
>
> What order does is it helps to establish what the code /means/; it
> doesn't say what the actual machine must /do/ (other than compute
> the implied result, and all the visible effects in the implied order).
>
> Actual computations can be significantly reordered even if
> abstract computation is strictly ordered.
>
> C in fact has a strict evaluation order among expressions that are
> divided by sequence points. Yet, modern compilers aggressively rearrange
> computation across these boundaries.
They do so in a way that is completely unlike the C standard. The C
standard allows expressions to have different evaluation orders so
that a "standard" program can give different answers when used with
different "standard" compilers, with the blame and onus placed on the
foolish programmer who forgot the gotcha. This isn't standardization.
For example, the standard doesn't support left to right evaluation of
procedure parameters, as is well known, therefore it is a "mistake" to
use a side effect of an expression to the right of it in a list of
actual parameters. But it's also a mistake to do this to the left
since the evaluation order was made standardly undefined in order to
preserve the profits of vendors, since in the old days, tight code for
procedure call wanted to stack things by proceeding backward in the
parameter list.
This is not what modern compilers do! They rearrange an internal
representation of the source code, or the object code, in a manner
that must must must preserve the mathematical meaning of the code at
all costs.
>
> The belief that unspecified subexpression and side effect order
> bolsters optimization is laughably false.
It is indeed. I think we agree. My point was that "optimization" was
an excuse for intellectual fraud in the C standard.
spinoza1111
wrote:
Then you need to send the degree back. I for one am sick to death of
people with fancy degrees who hate learning.
>
> <snip>
Michael Foukarakis
You haven't worked in all of them. Stating facts by extrapolation is,
at the very least, not accurate. Anyway, I see your train of thought
has flown past creepy nerds to incompetent husbands..interesting (no,
I'm just kidding).
Indeed you were. And I was saying you might want to explain your
methodology and experimental results for discovering their absence in
45 slides. Thanks in advance.
You have provided us with plenty of opportunities that proved you
wrong (among other things).
> The crowd of peasants with pitchforks and torches
> always assume that they are being lied to because they usually are.
It's in their best interest. They can't handle the truth.
spinoza1111
Part of the illusion is in fact that social relations are not held to
be constant, but in fact I worked at somewhat more than the usual
number of corporations, since I job hopped in search of a better deal,
and I found that because the corporation has a fiduciary
responsibility only to make money, it is never (and I mean never)
motivated to do the best job, quite the opposite. This means that it
won't hire the "best" people.
> at the very least, not accurate. Anyway, I see your train of thought
Forming a social theory causes us to predict things. It's called
rationality. Rainier Bank in Seattle was said to be a humanistic bank.
It was. I discovered that it was selling itself to Security Pacific in
1986 precisely because its humanistic culture was a cost center.
Capitalism is an inhuman system.
> > > > > idealized concepts of mathematics (continuous...
>
> read more »
Michael Foukarakis
> On Feb 1, 7:30 pm, Michael Foukarakis <electricde...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > You haven't worked in all of them. Stating facts by extrapolation is,
>
> Part of the illusion is in fact that social relations are not held to
> be constant, but in fact I worked at somewhat more than the usual
> number of corporations, since I job hopped in search of a better deal,
> and I found that because the corporation has a fiduciary
> responsibility only to make money, it is never (and I mean never)
> motivated to do the best job, quite the opposite. This means that it
> won't hire the "best" people.
Again, extrapolating. You may well be considered nowhere near the
elite in your business, or even competent (this is getting more and
more certain). That does not mean the best people are not employed by
corporations.
I understand that you're ignoring this on purpose, though, because it
does not fit your trolling schedule. I'll play along, pretending to be
talking to someone half-sane. The day is still too slow.
spinoza1111
> On Feb 1, 1:54 pm,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 1, 7:30 pm, Michael Foukarakis <electricde...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > You haven't worked in all of them. Stating facts by extrapolation is,
>
> > Part of the illusion is in fact that social relations are not held to
> > be constant, but in fact I worked at somewhat more than the usual
> > number of corporations, since I job hopped in search of a better deal,
> > and I found that because the corporation has a fiduciary
> > responsibility only to make money, it is never (and I mean never)
> > motivated to do the best job, quite the opposite. This means that it
> > won't hire the "best" people.
>
> Again, extrapolating. You may well be considered nowhere near the
> elite in your business, or even competent (this is getting more and
> more certain). That does not mean the best people are not employed by
> corporations.
Well, part of the deal is that "competence" is redefined as
"submission". In fact, in performance reviews, I was consistently
informed that while I was highly competent at programming, I needed to
learn "teamwork". After many years of research, I discovered that
"teamwork" in the corporation means what Theodore Adorno called "the
authoritarian personality", that person who willingly submits to
power, and cultivates the fine art of taking the anger generated by
his submission on the less powerful.
For example, if I'd been on the C standard team, I would have
concluded that to be truly standardized, C would have to be reformed
semantically. "Undefined" constructs would have to be discarded.
Actual parameters in parameter lists would have had to be evaluated
from left to right so that actual C programmers, using "my" standard,
could have used the comma in such lists orthogonally with respect to
the comma operator.
But this would have implied that vendors would have had to rehire
compiler developers who'd been enthusiastically laid off, and at that
point the suits would have regarded me as a trouble-maker. They would
have worked behind the scenes to have the "senior techs" (usually the
fattest and most hirsute) present to me a variety of bogus reasons why
the old way needed to be retained, such as "an undefined result is
easier to optimize", something which Kaz here seems also to regard,
along with me, as a bald-faced lie.
I would have stood my ground. But this is "bad teamwork".
The best people are NOT employed by corporations.
Colonel Harlan Sanders
<spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>Well, part of the deal is that "competence" is redefined as
>"submission". In fact, in performance reviews, I was consistently
>informed that while I was highly competent at programming, I needed to
>learn "teamwork". After many years of research, I discovered that
>"teamwork" in the corporation means what Theodore Adorno called "the
>authoritarian personality", that person who willingly submits to
>power, and cultivates the fine art of taking the anger generated by
>his submission on the less powerful.
Or, as I said, you are incapable of working in a professional manner.
It's clear from how you act in this newsgroup that the concept of
respect for your peers is alien to you.
If you discovered an error in someone else's work, you use it as an
opportunity to crow over them, reminding them and everyone else over
and over of their mistake.
Conversely when anyone points out an error you have made, you
immediately launch an attack on all fronts, denigrating their
education, politics, family, sexuality, upbringing, while reciting
your achievements, your relationship with various famous people, your
machismo, all while completely rejecting even the possibility that you
may indeed be in error.
You can get away with that if you truly are a genius. But evidently
you are not, and so you are cut loose from every job rather than put
up with you. And of course your rationalisation for this is that
everyone who does manage to hold a job down has sold his soul and you
are the last free man; and now you have to demonise not just the
individuals who pissed you off, but everyone who has made a success of
themselves in the field that spat you out, and come here to try to
prove over and over that you are better than all of them.
osmium
> Well, part of the deal is that "competence" is redefined as
> "submission". In fact, in performance reviews, I was consistently
> informed that while I was highly competent at programming, I needed to
> learn "teamwork". After many years of research, I discovered that
> "teamwork" in the corporation means what Theodore Adorno called "the
> authoritarian personality", that person who willingly submits to
> power, and cultivates the fine art of taking the anger generated by
> his submission on the less powerful.
>
> For example, if I'd been on the C standard team, I would have
> concluded that to be truly standardized, C would have to be reformed
> semantically. "Undefined" constructs would have to be discarded.
> Actual parameters in parameter lists would have had to be evaluated
> from left to right so that actual C programmers, using "my" standard,
> could have used the comma in such lists orthogonally with respect to
> the comma operator.
>
> But this would have implied that vendors would have had to rehire
> compiler developers who'd been enthusiastically laid off, and at that
> point the suits would have regarded me as a trouble-maker. They would
> have worked behind the scenes to have the "senior techs" (usually the
> fattest and most hirsute) present to me a variety of bogus reasons why
> the old way needed to be retained, such as "an undefined result is
> easier to optimize", something which Kaz here seems also to regard,
> along with me, as a bald-faced lie.
I have known and worked with quite a few senior techs and never saw even one
that was fat. Just an observation, in case you are collecting data points
for the various studies you have apparently been doing all your life. A
senior tech (no quotes) is probably older than most of the crew and
certainly gets paid more. My guess is that the quotes you use mean someone
that you don't think *should* be a senior tech, but by some form of
skullduggery has gotten the position.
In my experience "teamwork" is code for what they call, in elementary
school, "works well with others". You will probably not believe this, but
you *can* have different beliefs than the people around you without being
obnoxious.
Charlton Wilbur
S> I suppose you mean the singular because there is no neuter
S> plural.
"theirs" -- which is not "their's."
Charlton
--
Charlton Wilbur
cwi...@chromatico.net
Richard Bos
> What was Mr. Nash having trouble with?
Billboards.
Richard
Michael Foukarakis
> Well, part of the deal is that "competence" is redefined as
> "submission". In fact, in performance reviews, I was consistently
> informed that while I was highly competent at programming, I needed to
> learn "teamwork". After many years of research, I discovered that
> "teamwork" in the corporation means what Theodore Adorno called "the
> authoritarian personality", that person who willingly submits to
> power, and cultivates the fine art of taking the anger generated by
> his submission on the less powerful.
> For example, if I'd been on the C standard team, I would have
> concluded that to be truly standardized, C would have to be reformed
> semantically. "Undefined" constructs would have to be discarded.
> Actual parameters in parameter lists would have had to be evaluated
> from left to right so that actual C programmers, using "my" standard,
> could have used the comma in such lists orthogonally with respect to
> the comma operator.
>
> But this would have implied that vendors would have had to rehire
> compiler developers who'd been enthusiastically laid off, and at that
> point the suits would have regarded me as a trouble-maker. They would
> have worked behind the scenes to have the "senior techs" (usually the
> fattest and most hirsute) present to me a variety of bogus reasons why
> the old way needed to be retained, such as "an undefined result is
> easier to optimize", something which Kaz here seems also to regard,
> along with me, as a bald-faced lie.
Alternate realities are not among my academic interests. Neither is
alchemy, magic or perfect languages which will solve the world's
problems and spread love at the mere invocation of function FixIt().
> I would have stood my ground. But this is "bad teamwork".
You obviously fail at working with others. The best know how to work
with others despite their difference in beliefs, preferences or other
aspects of their personality. Your lack of personality prevents you
from understanding this, so you are trying to compensate by trying to
forcefully convince others that your ways are correct. Of course,
since people generally tend to mock, alienate and kill-switch bullies,
you will not find any fulfillment with that attitude.
> The best people are NOT employed by corporations.
Well, you wouldn't know one of the best if he kicked you in the ass.
Richard Heathfield
> On Feb 1, 4:06 pm, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>> James wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>> What was Mr. Nash having trouble with?
>
> The evaluation of an expression at compile time. The intent of the
> expression was to test whether a number exceeded long precision. The
> Microsoft compiler stayed inside long precision, the Borland compiler
> did not.
>> Bad C advice from a C-hating moron. If Mr Nash had asked an expert, he'd
>> have got far, far, far better advice.
>
> His problem was fully solved, so you don't know what you're talking
> about.
So you fondly imagine.
> Later, he converted to using Mathematica because to use C for
> his own purposes he'd had to "reinvent the wheel".
If he'd had good advice, he would not have had to do so.
Okay, guys - I'll drop it now, and stick to technical responses only
when replying to this idiot. If I forget, please feel free to remind me!
spinoza1111
wrote:
Canned corporate nonsense. Actually, people are by nature very good at
working with others. It's the corporation that sets them at odds, and
then selects the bullies for leadership. The bullies gradually learn
to believe in nothing except power-over-others.
Can you seriously maintain that the regs here are sterling examples of
teamwork? Seebach refused to accept McGraw Hill's offer of a job in
correcting Schildt and preferred to file a libelous and silly document
("the 'heap' is a DOS term"). Heathfield and Kiki think they've
"killfiled" people when they engage in behavior that would get them
tapped on the shoulder, spun around, and punched out in meatspace:
that is, talking trash about others behind their back but within their
hearing.
Let's call a spade a spade, shall we? Corporate "team players" were in
fact named in the 1940s by a groundbreaking sociological study, The
Authoritarian Personality by one Theodore Adorno. These are people who
quickly learn where power is in a situation, and without wondering
about truth or the legitimacy of power, suck up to representatives of
power, and take their anger out by bullying people identified as
trying to stand outside power.
These are the real bullies, not people who like me stick to cases,
responding only in self-defense.
>
> > The best people are NOT employed by corporations.
>
> Well, you wouldn't know one of the best if he kicked you in the ass.
I did find any number of people with reputations as "experts" whose
"expertise" was bogus, whereas I recognized Whit Diffie and Bob
Gaskins as true experts precisely because they had outside interests
and were approachable.
What's unacceptable to the corporate "team player" is what was
unacceptable to Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. If
you in fact go along to get along, suck up and bully, you're not a
man. If you never take an unpopular stand, you're a dork.
People are told here to "ask questions". But these questions aren't
even answered properly in most cases. People are told here to "ask
questions" because the regs are to be flattered at all costs.
Heathfield makes an honest attempt, inside his limitations, to answer
questions but doesn't do a very good job. Seebach prefers to talk
about himself and how cute his ADHD is.
spinoza1111
> >>>>> "S" ==spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
> S> I suppose you mean the singular because there is no neuter
> S> plural.
>
> "theirs" -- which is not "their's."
It's not neuter. It has no gender, and can be used for any assortment
of beings. Whereas "it" is neuter. "Their's" is a misspelled "there's"
as in "there is".
"Theirs" is predicative possessive and is non-neuter, non-masculine,
and non-feminine.
It also has a new grammatical role, quite novel, since in an attempt
to be gender-neutral, "their" is attributive possessive SINGULAR
ungendered but non-neuter and "theirs" is predicative possessive
SINGULAR ungendered but non-neuter:
Each student will bring their copy of the textbook to class, or else.
Bob and Mary will take what is theirs.
These new constructions, which are used by educated native speakers
today, replace
Each student will bring his or her copy of the textbook to the class,
or else.
Bob will take what is his. Mary will take what is hers.
Each student will take what is theirs
Everybody has their share of care
Grammaticians like to split hairs
Speakers rush where angels to tread don't dare.
>
> Charlton
>
> --
> Charlton Wilbur
> cwil...@chromatico.net
spinoza1111
> spinoza1111wrote:
Not after they've drunk the Korporate Kool Ade.
John Bode
[snipping article because, really, there's no point]
You know, Nilges does serve a purpose; the more rant threads he
starts, the farther the spam gets pushed down on the front page*. It
doesn't do anything for the S/N ratio, but at least the first thing I
see *isn't* a steady stream of ads for knock-offs, drugs, and naked
Slavic women.
* Yes, I'm one of those benighted individuals using Google Groups, but
only because I can't install a dedicated news client on my work
machine and because trying to read Usenet from home always devolves
into an exercise in rage management; all that bandwidth does exactly
dick if you can't connect to a goddamned server in the first place.
GG sucks, but it's better than nothing at all.
spinoza1111
> On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 05:29:52 -0800 (PST),spinoza1111
>
>
> >Well, part of the deal is that "competence" is redefined as
> >"submission". In fact, in performance reviews, I was consistently
> >informed that while I was highly competent at programming, I needed to
> >learn "teamwork". After many years of research, I discovered that
> >"teamwork" in the corporation means what Theodore Adorno called "the
> >authoritarian personality", that person who willingly submits to
> >power, and cultivates the fine art of taking the anger generated by
> >his submission on the less powerful.
>
> Or, as I said, you are incapable of working in a professional manner.
One of George Orwell's lesser known, but important, rules for writing
in Politics and the English Language:
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are
used to seeing in print.
I'd generalize this, but only slightly. Don't even use phrases of > 1
words which you are used to seeing in print.
"Working in a professional manner" is an example; it is Human
Resources boilerplate.
"Does not work in a professional manner" usually means "fails to know
his place in the scheme of things".
You see, unlike many corporate "professionals" I had a genuinely
professional father, and his "professional manner" was to force his
views, as a doctor, down other people's throats.
Whereas I discovered that "working in a professional manner" in
corporate data processing meant being subservient to the boss even
when the boss wanted something absurd and counterfactual.
>
> It's clear from how you act in this newsgroup that the concept of
> respect for your peers is alien to you.
I have no respect it is true for Peter Seebach. Why? Because he's
bragged that he's never taken a computer science class in his life
despite the fact that this aporia caused him to make absurd claims and
inferences, including "the 'heap' is a DOS term", forbidding Schildt
to explain runtime using a stack, and fantasizing that windows and
linux use different models for multitasking when both must use some
variant of a semaphore. Furthermore, he calls people, out of the blue
and without a previous history, vile names. He wants to be tolerated
as a gay man and as having a fashionable disease, but bullies and
disrespects others like a common fagbasher and mocks them as mentally
disordered in preference to answering their objections.
I have no respect it is true for Richard Heathfield. Apart from a
certain integrity on minor matters, Heathfield talks about people to
others like a boor and makes absurd claims based on searching
comp.risks digest titles for people's names, and reporting no hits as
proof that people are lying about their background.
I have no respect it is true for Keith Thompson. This is because he
constantly claims to killfile individuals but reserves the right to
call them names.
I regard none of these people as my peers. I regard them as my
inferiors.
>
> If you discovered an error in someone else's work, you use it as an
> opportunity to crow over them, reminding them and everyone else over
> and over of their mistake.
I don't know what you are talking about. You are in fact describing
Heathfield and Seebach.
>
> Conversely when anyone points out an error you have made, you
> immediately launch an attack on all fronts, denigrating their
> education, politics, family, sexuality, upbringing, while reciting
> your achievements, your relationship with various famous people, your
> machismo, all while completely rejecting even the possibility that you
> may indeed be in error.
You look idly at a mass of postings without seeing their temporal
relationships and become what you describe.
>
> You can get away with that if you truly are a genius. But evidently
> you are not, and so you are cut loose from every job rather than put
No, in fact I stayed with all of them until receiving a better offer,
until I took a sabbatical in 2003 to write my book and live on
savings.
> up with you. And of course your rationalisation for this is that
> everyone who does manage to hold a job down has sold his soul and you
> are the last free man; and now you have to demonise not just the
> individuals who pissed you off, but everyone who has made a success of
> themselves in the field that spat you out, and come here to try to
> prove over and over that you are better than all of them.
The mere computer programmer who had the bad taste to take the Sixties
seriously has long been mythologized as having a "bad attitude" for
the same reason DeGaulle had his cops beat protesting students in
Paris in 1968. To function at all, modern society needs a complaisant
class of technicians. As it happened, it was a mistake for me to join
that class (in my book, "Build Your Own .Net Compiler and Language", I
am perfectly open about this, and I describe my career in computing as
an elaborate draft-dodging scheme that got out of hand). This is
because I demanded more than my "fair share" of autonomy in return for
16 hour days and the ruin of my marriage as a direct result of 16 hour
days, and while I could get money, I could not get any autonomy
whatsoever.
So knock yourself out. I'm the person your manager warned you about.
spinoza1111
> On Jan 31, 5:15 am,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> [snipping article because, really, there's no point]
>
> You know, Nilges does serve a purpose; the more rant threads he
Logical analysis, metrical verse, and constant returns to on-topic
matters aren't rants. The problem is that the "hacker ethos" and mass
culture have normalized deviance here to the extent that nondeviance
seems like ranting.
Look, we're all just supposed to work 16 hour days so that clowns like
Steve Jobs can take the credit for our work (and mistakenly market a
brain damaged Newton as the next big thing). Then we are REQUIRED, not
permitted, to fly to product releases and applaud the Big Man like
attendees at a speech by Kim il Jong.
In this "digital Maoism" (as Jared Lanier calls it), individuals
dependent on a paycheck who are one job away from homelessness are
called "ranters" who "rock the boat" and who "bite the hand that feeds
them" where the language conceals the reality as effectively as any
newspeak.
Richard Harter
<spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Feb 1, 3:05=A0pm, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Neuter possessive is rare because in former times, ownership was not
>> something of which objects apart from animals and higher plants had.
>
>should read "something which". Yes, I notice my errors and correct
>them.
A better correction would be "something that".
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net
http://home.tiac.net/~cri, http://www.varinoma.com
Infinity is one of those things that keep philosophers busy when they
could be more profitably spending their time weeding their garden.
Colonel Harlan Sanders
<spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Feb 1, 10:06�pm, Colonel Harlan Sanders <Har...@kfc.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 05:29:52 -0800 (PST),spinoza1111
>>
>> <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> >Well, part of the deal is that "competence" is redefined as
>> >"submission". In fact, in performance reviews, I was consistently
>> >informed that while I was highly competent at programming, I needed to
>> >learn "teamwork". After many years of research, I discovered that
>> >"teamwork" in the corporation means what Theodore Adorno called "the
>> >authoritarian personality", that person who willingly submits to
>> >power, and cultivates the fine art of taking the anger generated by
>> >his submission on the less powerful.
>>
>> Or, as I said, you are incapable of working in a professional manner.
>
>One of George Orwell's lesser known, but important, rules for writing
>in Politics and the English Language:
>
>Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are
>used to seeing in print.
>
>I'd generalize this, but only slightly. Don't even use phrases of > 1
>words which you are used to seeing in print.
>
>"Working in a professional manner" is an example; it is Human
>Resources boilerplate.
>
>"Does not work in a professional manner" usually means "fails to know
>his place in the scheme of things".
Here you simply redefine a phrase that describes what you do in a way
that makes you the hero, the romantic outlaw. That's the usual way you
deal with criticism, twisting it to something that you can interpret
as a compliment, regardless of the obvious meaning intended by the
person who used it.
People tell you that you are verbose, you convert that to "my
brilliant prose makes them swoon with envy".
>You see, unlike many corporate "professionals" I had a genuinely
>professional father, and his "professional manner" was to force his
>views, as a doctor, down other people's throats.
>
>Whereas I discovered that "working in a professional manner" in
>corporate data processing meant being subservient to the boss even
>when the boss wanted something absurd and counterfactual.
>>
>> It's clear from how you act in this newsgroup that the concept of
>> respect for your peers is alien to you.
>
>I have no respect it is true for Peter Seebach. Why? Because he's
I'm not talking about individuals. You don't respect ANYONE.
Name the people here you respect.
If there aren't any, in God's name why are you spending hours every
day on them?
And how tedious of you to try to segue everything into your obsession
with a one page review Seebach wrote DECADES AGO and everyone in the
world had forgotten till you kept bringing it up over and over and
over and over.
>....
>
>I regard none of these people as my peers. I regard them as my
>inferiors.
Is there anyone in the world who would agree with your assessment?
No? They're all so jealous of you, that must be it.
>> If you discovered an error in someone else's work, you use it as an
>> opportunity to crow over them, reminding them and everyone else over
>> and over of their mistake.
>
>I don't know what you are talking about. You are in fact describing
>Heathfield and Seebach.
How about the dozens of posts you've made complaining about
Heathfield's inability to find your posts in an obscure newsgroup? And
you jump with delight on the slightest grammatical error anyone makes
in an argument with you and use it to sneer at them as uneducated
buffoons, and much worse.
>> Conversely when anyone points out an error you have made, you
>> immediately launch an attack on all fronts, denigrating their
>> education, politics, family, sexuality, upbringing, while reciting
>> your achievements, your relationship with various famous people, your
>> machismo, all while completely rejecting even the possibility that you
>> may indeed be in error.
>
>You look idly at a mass of postings without seeing their temporal
>relationships and become what you describe.
A "mess of postings" indeed when you are trying to backpedal or change
the subject.
>> You can get away with that if you truly are a genius. But evidently
>> you are not, and so you are cut loose from every job rather than put
>
>No, in fact I stayed with all of them until receiving a better offer,
>until I took a sabbatical in 2003 to write my book and live on
>savings.
Sure.
>So knock yourself out. I'm the person your manager warned you about.
With good cause.
Antoninus Twink
> On Feb 1, 8:18 am, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>>> Your pastor must be so proud.
>> You're not good at sarcasm. I suggest you either avoid it or take a class.
>
> I wasn't being sarcastic. For a religious man, you show a colossal
> amount of malice to Nilges.
And not just to Nilges.
Heathfield is an absolutely classic religious type - all pretty words
about the love of Jesus, but behind the facade he's twisted with hate
and bitterness.
A text-book whited sepulcher.
> PS: This is the point where you pretend to killfile me. Again.
Yep. He's not good at fake killfiling. I suggest he either avoids it or
takes a class.
Seebs
> I wasn't being sarcastic. For a religious man, you show a colossal
> amount of malice to Nilges.
I have seen no malice towards him. Malice is a term of art in the field,
and there's no evidence of it in Richard Heathfield's posts towards Nilges.
There is some hostility, yes. There is criticism. But no malice. Or at
least, none I can pick up. (I'm usually pretty sensitive to it, too.)
Kindness and love do not necessarily imply pretending that false things are
true, or stupid things intelligent, or ridiculous things plausible. I would
think that one replying to Nilges would be showing no malice by pointing out
that he is ignorant of C, inconsistent, hypocritical, and shows what appears
to be extreme dishonesty in his choices of how to frame things, or how he
handles corrections to his criticisms. On the other hand, I haven't seen
anything from Richard Heathfield suggesting that, should Nilges correct these
problematic behaviors, he ought to be subjected to generalized harassment.
I've seen no threats of legal action, no attacks on his person (as opposed to
his behavior and demonstrations of his character traits; a subtle point, but
a significant one). I've seen a great deal of patiently trying to explain
things to him which would allow him to make less of a fool of himself, were
he so inclined.
That ain't malice.
-s
--
Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet...@seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
Seebs
> no point in trying to reason with him about it. He's does not appear
> to be amenable reason.
I don't think anyone who's exchanged more than a couple of posts with him
is trying to convince *him*. However, consider that other posters appear
to have formed the conclusion that he was making substantive points; that
could be real harm.
Seebs
> On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 05:29:52 -0800 (PST), spinoza1111
><spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>Well, part of the deal is that "competence" is redefined as
>>"submission". In fact, in performance reviews, I was consistently
>>informed that while I was highly competent at programming, I needed to
>>learn "teamwork". After many years of research, I discovered that
>>"teamwork" in the corporation means what Theodore Adorno called "the
>>authoritarian personality", that person who willingly submits to
>>power, and cultivates the fine art of taking the anger generated by
>>his submission on the less powerful.
> Or, as I said, you are incapable of working in a professional manner.
> It's clear from how you act in this newsgroup that the concept of
> respect for your peers is alien to you.
> If you discovered an error in someone else's work, you use it as an
> opportunity to crow over them, reminding them and everyone else over
> and over of their mistake.
You know, this raises an interesting point.
I've been reading Robert Sutton's "The No Asshole Rule". What's interesting
about this, to me, is that what Nilges describes as corporate culture is very
much an archetype of what Sutton calls a "pro-asshole" culture; one in which
people are encouraged to be abusive towards weaker people, and submissive
towards more powerful people. I have a friend who is personally convinced
(based, IMHO, on a run of bad luck) that this is the necessary structure of
"corporate" life.
But.
Sutton points out, with a great deal of information and support, that:
1. This is not universal among corporations.
2. It is not particularly effective.
3. To strengthen that, it demonstrably produces substantially inferior
outcomes.
In short, it is not *generally* the case that performance reviews reward
"submission". Some places, perhaps, they do.
There is a more significant point, though, which has some local relevance.
People get a lot of control over how to frame or understand their experiences.
Someone who is by character an asshole, and would himself rate other people on
submission or the lack thereof, might well *interpret* other results that way.
If he were rated poorly on cooperation because he habitually sabotaged
coworkers, caused fights, and generally acted in a hostile manner, he might
well *believe* that he had been rated down for not being "submissive".
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you
have is a giant chip on your shoulder, everyone you meet is looking for a
fight.
I can't say whether Nilges developed his pathologically hostile character in
response to poor treatment from corporations, or whether poor work
environments created his pathologically hostile character.
I can say that he's wrong; that is not the only way to be, not even within
corporations, not even if you want to be successful within corporations.
I mention this because I worry that some of the newbies, who may not have much
professional work experience yet, may get the feeling that respect and status
come only from abusing the weak or powerless, and it is not so. Nilges and
Twink and their friends can continue to insist that there is only a
dog-eat-dog world and that everyone has to be abusive to succeed. Me, I'll
hang out in the part of reality where people respect me more when I try
to patiently explain basic C to newbies than they would if I were derisive or
hostile to them. I like it better here.
Seebs
> And how tedious of you to try to segue everything into your obsession
> with a one page review Seebach wrote DECADES AGO and everyone in the
> world had forgotten till you kept bringing it up over and over and
> over and over.
I do not think it accurate to call it "decades ago" when I think it's
actually under 15 years. Well, maybe 15-16, but still. Another four
years and it'll be "DECADES AGO". (By which time I hope to have gotten
around to writing a new one for CTCR4E, and mothballed the previous one
as "comments on the third edition".)
>>I regard none of these people as my peers. I regard them as my
>>inferiors.
> Is there anyone in the world who would agree with your assessment?
Yes. I believe he's got Twink and Kenny (if those are in fact two people),
and I think perhaps also the "daemon helper" spammer. I think Jacob Navia has
been more sympathetic to his views than some other people, which sort of
surprised me actually.
Seebs
> You know, Nilges does serve a purpose; the more rant threads he
> starts, the farther the spam gets pushed down on the front page*. It
> doesn't do anything for the S/N ratio, but at least the first thing I
> see *isn't* a steady stream of ads for knock-offs, drugs, and naked
> Slavic women.
But aren't those more topical? :P
Ben Pfaff
> I've been reading Robert Sutton's "The No Asshole Rule". What's interesting
> about this, to me, is that what Nilges describes as corporate culture is very
> much an archetype of what Sutton calls a "pro-asshole" culture; one in which
> people are encouraged to be abusive towards weaker people, and submissive
> towards more powerful people. I have a friend who is personally convinced
> (based, IMHO, on a run of bad luck) that this is the necessary structure of
> "corporate" life.
It sounds like Sutton and Nilges both think of corporations as
being aligned on a "lawful evil" basis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_&_Dragons)#Lawful_Evil
--
Ben Pfaff
http://benpfaff.org
Josh Holland
> On Feb 1, 3:44 am, Michael Foukarakis <electricde...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Jan 31, 8:45 pm,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> > NAN is a floating point number
>>
>> "value"
>
> Number
The statement "Not a number is a number" tickled me a bit.
--
Josh "dutchie" Holland <j...@joshh.co.uk>
http://www.joshh.co.uk/
http://twitter.com/jshholland
http://identi.ca/jshholland
Richard Harter
<nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>On 1 Feb 2010 at 8:39, gwowen wrote:
>> On Feb 1, 8:18 am, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>>>> Your pastor must be so proud.
>>> You're not good at sarcasm. I suggest you either avoid it or take a class.
>>
>> I wasn't being sarcastic. For a religious man, you show a colossal
>> amount of malice to Nilges.
>
>And not just to Nilges.
>
>Heathfield is an absolutely classic religious type - all pretty words
>about the love of Jesus, but behind the facade he's twisted with hate
>and bitterness.
Judging from your obsessive abuse and peculiar perceptions it is
you that is twisted with hate and bitterness.
>
>A text-book whited sepulcher.
>
>> PS: This is the point where you pretend to killfile me. Again.
>
>Yep. He's not good at fake killfiling. I suggest he either avoids it or
>takes a class.
>
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net
Willem
) On 2010-02-01, Colonel Harlan Sanders <Har...@kfc.com> wrote:
)> Is there anyone in the world who would agree with your assessment?
)
) Yes. I believe he's got Twink and Kenny (if those are in fact two people),
) and I think perhaps also the "daemon helper" spammer. I think Jacob Navia has
) been more sympathetic to his views than some other people, which sort of
) surprised me actually.
I doubt that, actually. It's not unlikely that they just view him as a
tool for their own amusement (i.e. trolling this group).
SaSW, Willem
--
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for any of the statements
made in the above text. For all I know I might be
drugged or something..
No I'm not paranoid. You all think I'm paranoid, don't you !
#EOT
Seebs
> On 2010-02-01, spinoza1111 <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On Feb 1, 3:44�am, Michael Foukarakis <electricde...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Jan 31, 8:45�pm,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> > NAN is a floating point number
>>> "value"
>> Number
> The statement "Not a number is a number" tickled me a bit.
Yeah. This is a great example of where precision of terminology is important;
NaN is a value, but Not a Number.
Seebs
> Seebs wrote:
> ) On 2010-02-01, Colonel Harlan Sanders <Har...@kfc.com> wrote:
> )> Is there anyone in the world who would agree with your assessment?
> ) Yes. I believe he's got Twink and Kenny (if those are in fact two people),
> ) and I think perhaps also the "daemon helper" spammer. I think Jacob Navia has
> ) been more sympathetic to his views than some other people, which sort of
> ) surprised me actually.
> I doubt that, actually. It's not unlikely that they just view him as a
> tool for their own amusement (i.e. trolling this group).
Ahh, but they would agree with him. They may not believe what he says to
be true, but they would agree with him. Vociferously.
Phil Carmody
> (I still have fond
> memories of discovering that, yes, the Internet contains people who can be
> convinced that ATMs print money rather than having a supply of pre-printed
> money. The best part was someone who worked at a bank, and testified that
> his job included putting fresh rolls of paper in the ATM. When someone
> said those were for receipts, a third party jumped in and said "Don't be
> ridiculous, those are preprinted.")
Sounds worthy of a.r.k at its finest. Many many thanks for breaking
the monotony with that, I raise a glass to you.
Phil
--
Any true emperor never needs to wear clothes. -- Devany on r.a.s.f1
Phil Carmody
> On Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:27:48 -0800 (PST), spinoza1111
> <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>On Feb 1, 3:05=A0pm, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>> Neuter possessive is rare because in former times, ownership was not
>>> something of which objects apart from animals and higher plants had.
>>
>>should read "something which". Yes, I notice my errors and correct
>>them.
>
> A better correction would be "something that".
A better correction would be "As always, the one self-dubbed spinoza1111
is full of crap". Shires had ends, beds had heads, and even pain had
smarts if you were Chaucer, for example. And rooms and fires both had
their properties rendered after a 'its'. Not old enough? Even swords
possess many a property if you're the author of Beowulf.
Edward A. Falk
spinoza1111 <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Beware of certain buzzwords including "sequence points" and "trap
>representation".
>
> [drivelectomy]
I dunno if you should switch to decaf or switch to another language,
but you should definately do one or the other.
--
-Ed Falk, fa...@despams.r.us.com
http://thespamdiaries.blogspot.com/
spinoza1111
> On Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:27:48 -0800 (PST),spinoza1111
>
> >On Feb 1, 3:05=A0pm,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> Neuter possessive is rare because in former times, ownership was not
> >> something of which objects apart from animals and higher plants had.
>
> >should read "something which". Yes, I notice my errors and correct
> >them.
>
> A better correction would be "something that".
That depends on whether the "which" or "that" is to prefix a self-
contained example of indirect reported speech (where "that" would be
best) or a wh-coordinator is needed to provide the direct object of
had (where "which" is best). "That", not being a coordinator, is best
used in examples such as "Nilges said that Heathfield is a butthead"
or "Nilges proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that he knows more than
you". Whereas "had" is transitive, therefore it needs a direct object
*which* is provided by (as in "provided by") the relative coordinator
"which"!
>
> Richard Harter, c...@tiac.nethttp://home.tiac.net/~cri,http://www.varinoma.com
spinoza1111
> On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 08:13:04 -0800 (PST),spinoza1111
Yes, I have. 'Tis my vocation, Hal.
> deal with criticism, twisting it to something that you can interpret
> as a compliment, regardless of the obvious meaning intended by the
Yes, it's one of my most charming attributes. Blessings from curses.
Garbage in, food out. You clowns throw shit it comes back transformed
into something rich and strange. Your shit, gold-plated.
> person who used it.
>
> People tell you that you are verbose, you convert that to "my
> brilliant prose makes them swoon with envy".
Well, clearly, you don't have my talent. I don't say that. I show how
every word is needed and that you are the saturnine Salieri (straining
to produce a little march) and I am Amadeus in this opera *bouffa*.
>
> >You see, unlike many corporate "professionals" I had a genuinely
> >professional father, and his "professional manner" was to force his
> >views, as a doctor, down other people's throats.
>
> >Whereas I discovered that "working in a professional manner" in
> >corporate data processing meant being subservient to the boss even
> >when the boss wanted something absurd and counterfactual.
>
> >> It's clear from how you act in this newsgroup that the concept of
> >> respect for your peers is alien to you.
>
> >I have no respect it is true for Peter Seebach. Why? Because he's
>
> I'm not talking about individuals. You don't respect ANYONE.
> Name the people here you respect.
Hmm. I respect Ben Bacarisse's technical skills, but think he's a
child in other ways. I respect Kenny. I have a limited respect for
Navia. I respect Heathfield for a certain low level, scuttling
integrity.
>
> If there aren't any, in God's name why are you spending hours every
> day on them?
Primarily to clarify my own ideas.
>
> And how tedious of you to try to segue everything into your obsession
> with a one page review Seebach wrote DECADES AGO and everyone in the
> world had forgotten till you kept bringing it up over and over and
> over and over.
Because this article harmed Schildt, and I saw people harmed by office
politics in the corporation in the same way, therefore it amuses me to
show how much malice was there.
>
> >....
>
> >I regard none of these people as my peers. I regard them as my
> >inferiors.
>
> Is there anyone in the world who would agree with your assessment?
Yes.
> No? They're all so jealous of you, that must be it.
>
> >> If you discovered an error in someone else's work, you use it as an
> >> opportunity to crow over them, reminding them and everyone else over
> >> and over of their mistake.
>
> >I don't know what you are talking about. You are in fact describing
> >Heathfield and Seebach.
>
> How about the dozens of posts you've made complaining about
> Heathfield's inability to find your posts in an obscure newsgroup? And
comp.risks obscure?
And Lo, the pompous Auto Didact is so very sure
That what he doth not know is just "obscure":
The glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome,
Homer's Greek, and Vergil's account of Aeneas' journey home,
Is but Night and Fog to the block, the stone, the log
The barking and howling, path-defouling Dog
Who sits in the Cubicle and knows, come what may chance
That this which is not on TV to be not worthy of his acquaintance:
It's not on the Web, says Isaac or Rueben or Harlan or Jeb
In some little Shithole where the waters do Ebb:
Who is this guy Nilges, he's talkin' to me
But I am an Atom, a Cipher, a Zero you see:
It follows as follows the Night to the Day
That I need not listen to what he has to say.
> you jump with delight on the slightest grammatical error anyone makes
> in an argument with you and use it to sneer at them as uneducated
> buffoons, and much worse.
No, I don't. Occasionally it amuses me to check my knowledge by
analyzing a solecism.
What you don't understand is that we're all here for recognition, and
there's nothing wrong with that. The corporation would have us be self-
abnegating monks, and I don't see the point of being such even in the
service of God. It is obscene, in my view, to be so in the service of
the wealthy.
spinoza1111
Peter, I will say that my mistake was to stick to IBM and then
Microsoft environments because I did not wish to retrain in unix or
linux, and that the proportion of assholes in these environments was
somewhat higher. However, starting at Princeton University (a mixed
environment) I discovered that unix types could be even bigger
assholes.
The only non-assholes I met were people with real distinction in the
field: Whit Diffie, Bob Gaskins, and certain Microsoft execs close to
Ballmer whom I will not name.
Elsewhere I found consistently people stunted by long work hours and
the continual assault (that broke out with Reagan's election) on
middle class stability by the rich.
Younger programmers are convinced by a mythos that somewhere they will
find a technical environment in which humanistic values will reign
because everyone will be rated fairly. But in ALL these environments I
have found that managers don't wish to manage, and leave it to the
team to self-manage. The result consistently is that a few bad apples
start bullying people, and management (considering itself unable to
evaluate the technology) won't arbitrate.
The exceptions were few and far between. One was an engineering office
in a field which runs on government and defense contracts...whose
owner simply refused to have anything to do with such contracts
because he was too moral, and whose values permeated the firm, making
it a happy place. I designed them a product twenty years ago which is
still in use. I should have offered to work for them permanently for
five dollars an hour.
Elsewhere it's what Lanier calls "digital Maoism":
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html. The
crowd does the job of the elite by beating the shit out of
nonconformists like ted "xanadu" nelson out back, the rich get richer.
spinoza1111
> On 2010-02-01, Colonel Harlan Sanders <Har...@kfc.com> wrote:
>
> > And how tedious of you to try to segue everything into your obsession
> > with a one page review Seebach wrote DECADES AGO and everyone in the
> > world had forgotten till you kept bringing it up over and over and
> > over and over.
>
> I do not think it accurate to call it "decades ago" when I think it's
> actually under 15 years. Well, maybe 15-16, but still. Another four
> years and it'll be "DECADES AGO". (By which time I hope to have gotten
> around to writing a new one for CTCR4E, and mothballed the previous one
> as "comments on the third edition".)
>
> >>I regard none of these people as my peers. I regard them as my
> >>inferiors.
> > Is there anyone in the world who would agree with your assessment?
>
> Yes. I believe he's got Twink and Kenny (if those are in fact two people),
> and I think perhaps also the "daemon helper" spammer. I think Jacob Navia has
> been more sympathetic to his views than some other people, which sort of
> surprised me actually.
No, Navia thinks I'm an "idiot" because he's more loyal to C than me
and doesn't need friends, apparently. He's promoting C, like
Heathfield, and they both have a financial interest in this language,
and they are both being unprofessional because they won't pay
attention to the defective nature of C.
The best computer scientists, in my experience, don't need to have
this pathetic loyalty to shadowy ideas. I admire Navia but he's not
first-rate, and he's not first-rate because he loses his temper if C
is attacked.
>
> -s
> --
spinoza1111
> On 2010-02-01, Josh Holland <j...@joshh.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >> On Feb 1, 3:44 am, Michael Foukarakis <electricde...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> On Jan 31, 8:45 pm,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>> > NAN is a floating point number
> >>> "value"
> >> Number
> > The statement "Not a number is a number" tickled me a bit.
>
> Yeah. This is a great example of where precision of terminology is important;
> NaN is a value, but Not a Number.
They had a laugh at Gauss' expense
When he said the square root of negative one:
NAN is something which I can calculate-with
NAN is something with which we can have fun.
The ignorant take numbers seriously
I have a laugh at their expense
By showing that structurally
NaN is a number, now and from hence.
Clerks need precision of terminology
The wise laugh at them from Parnassus
Clerks understand not philosophy
And require the bridge of asses.
NaN plus one is NaN, a meaningful result:
Therefore NaN is a number, not an insult.
>
> -s
> --
Colonel Harlan Sanders
<spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Feb 2, 1:25�am, Colonel Harlan Sanders <Har...@kfc.com> wrote:
>
>> And how tedious of you to try to segue everything into your obsession
>> with a one page review Seebach wrote DECADES AGO and everyone in the
>> world had forgotten till you kept bringing it up over and over and
>> over and over.
>
>Because this article harmed Schildt,
You're lying.
He brought out 3 more editions of the same book, without bothering to
correct the errors. He wasn't harmed, he didn't and doesn't care.
>and I saw people harmed by office
>politics in the corporation in the same way, therefore it amuses me to
>show how much malice was there.
Yes, we know you're obsessed with this. But no one else cares; not
Schildt certainly despite your absurd claims to know his thoughts, so
bringing into every single post you make is very, very tedious.
> >I regard none of these people as my peers. I regard them as my
>> >inferiors.
>>
>> Is there anyone in the world who would agree with your assessment?
>
>Yes.
Very funny.
>> How about the dozens of posts you've made complaining about
>> Heathfield's inability to find your posts in an obscure newsgroup? And
>
>comp.risks obscure?
Yes. EVERY newsgroup is obscure to those who don't frequent it.
You're probably implying that it's important and that anyone who
doesn't know that is an idiot. It's importance and utility are quite
different from the fact that it is obscure. And, I was personally
acquainted with the group before it was mentioned here. I'm not so
self centred that I think that an obscure fact or publication that I
know is general knowledge. So fuck you and your doggerel.
>
>> you jump with delight on the slightest grammatical error anyone makes
>> in an argument with you and use it to sneer at them as uneducated
>> buffoons, and much worse.
>
>No, I don't.
Liar. Random example in this thread:
>> completed. In between sequence points there may be a choice as to the
>> order in which various sub-computions can be doen. This gives
>
>"Computions". Once is a typo. Two is a subliterate trying to tell me
>something.
Anyway, enough wasting time on you.
Seebs
> On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 18:54:52 -0800 (PST), spinoza1111
><spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>Because this article harmed Schildt,
> You're lying.
This is unknowable.
> He brought out 3 more editions of the same book, without bothering to
> correct the errors. He wasn't harmed, he didn't and doesn't care.
Incorrect on two counts.
1. Several easily-fixed errors are definitely fixed in the 4th
edition.
2. Only the 4th edition has come out since I wrote my critique.
I would point out, though, that the 4th edition still has some very
serious misunderstandings in it.
>>and I saw people harmed by office
>>politics in the corporation in the same way, therefore it amuses me to
>>show how much malice was there.
> Yes, we know you're obsessed with this. But no one else cares; not
> Schildt certainly despite your absurd claims to know his thoughts, so
> bringing into every single post you make is very, very tedious.
More importantly, he's done nothing to demonstrate the existence of this
alleged malice. Showing that someone was harmed by something doesn't
demonstrate malice; you'd have to show that the *purpose* was to do harm.
-s
--
Colonel Harlan Sanders
>On 2010-02-02, Colonel Harlan Sanders <Har...@kfc.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 18:54:52 -0800 (PST), spinoza1111
>><spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>Because this article harmed Schildt,
>
>> You're lying.
>
>This is unknowable.
>
>> He brought out 3 more editions of the same book, without bothering to
>> correct the errors. He wasn't harmed, he didn't and doesn't care.
>
>Incorrect on two counts.
>
>1. Several easily-fixed errors are definitely fixed in the 4th
>edition.
>2. Only the 4th edition has come out since I wrote my critique.
>
>I would point out, though, that the 4th edition still has some very
>serious misunderstandings in it.
OK, I had assumed you reviewed the 1st edn. But the point remains if
there was "just" a single new edition, few books are so successful, so
it's hard to see evidence of "harm". (Of course, Nilges could assert
your review forestalled a fifth edition.)
And to the question of "lying": Nilges has often asserted that
"Schildt was harmed" by the review, and never backed it up with any
evidence, other than he "knows" it from Schildt, he implies, but can't
reveal how. So we have no evidence either way, but I feel it's a safe
bet that Nilges just made it up. And I'm pretty sure he makes up or
vastly exaggerates all his supposed connections with important people
and institutions.
On 01 Feb 2010 18:38:24 GMT, Seebs <usenet...@seebs.net> wrote:
>On 2010-02-01, Colonel Harlan Sanders <Har...@kfc.com> wrote:
>> with a one page review Seebach wrote DECADES AGO and everyone in the
>I do not think it accurate to call it "decades ago" when I think it's
>actually under 15 years. Well, maybe 15-16, but still. Another four
>years and it'll be "DECADES AGO". (By which time I hope to have gotten
Well, I'm not sure if you have to have two or more to justify a
plural, you do say "one and a half decades". But make it "over a
decade" if you want to be safe.
Seebs
> OK, I had assumed you reviewed the 1st edn. But the point remains if
> there was "just" a single new edition, few books are so successful, so
> it's hard to see evidence of "harm". (Of course, Nilges could assert
> your review forestalled a fifth edition.)
I actually am more bothered by the fact that the garbage I found was
in the *third* edition.
> And to the question of "lying": Nilges has often asserted that
> "Schildt was harmed" by the review, and never backed it up with any
> evidence, other than he "knows" it from Schildt, he implies, but can't
> reveal how. So we have no evidence either way, but I feel it's a safe
> bet that Nilges just made it up. And I'm pretty sure he makes up or
> vastly exaggerates all his supposed connections with important people
> and institutions.
Quite possibly. However, "lying" requires not only that he be making
stuff up, but that he be at some consciously-accessible level *aware*
of this. I have seen nothing to suggest that he is capable of detecting
when he flatly contradicts himself, suggesting a fairly minimal tendency
towards any form of introspection.
In short, while I agree that all the evidence suggests a consistent pattern
of misrepresentation, the pattern it suggests is one which does not incline
me to believe that he is aware that the things he makes up are made up by
him, or that they are false.
> Well, I'm not sure if you have to have two or more to justify a
> plural, you do say "one and a half decades". But make it "over a
> decade" if you want to be safe.
I think that's safe.
Michael Foukarakis
> On Feb 2, 12:07 am, John Bode <jfb...@austin.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > On Jan 31, 5:15 am,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > [snipping article because, really, there's no point]
>
> > You know, Nilges does serve a purpose; the more rant threads he
>
> matters aren't rants. The problem is that the "hacker ethos" and mass
> culture have normalized deviance here to the extent that nondeviance
> seems like ranting.
I can imagine the book title now; "The Conformant Spinoza" - you could
go on with the Che references ad infinitum.
> Look, we're all just supposed to work 16 hour days so that clowns like
> Steve Jobs can take the credit for our work (and mistakenly market a
> brain damaged Newton as the next big thing). Then we are REQUIRED, not
> permitted, to fly to product releases and applaud the Big Man like
> attendees at a speech by Kim il Jong.
Aw..You have rights, you know. You're supposed to work 8 hours a day.
Too many people fought for you to throw it in the dumpster. If you're
struggling for 16 hours a day to make something work, then it's only
natural for others, be it clowns or generally more capable
businessmen, to profit upon your efforts while your acts of masochism
(because it can only be described as such) prove detrimental to you
and those around you. Those aren't superficial opportunities - my
grandma used to say (loosely translated; there must be a similar
expression in English but I don't know of one) "he who has no mind,
has legs", you should try to understand it.
> In this "digital Maoism" (as Jared Lanier calls it), individuals
> dependent on a paycheck who are one job away from homelessness are
> called "ranters" who "rock the boat" and who "bite the hand that feeds
> them" where the language conceals the reality as effectively as any
> newspeak.
It's Jaron Lanier, his "digital Maoism" quote is not relevant (I'm
sure the word collective in the Wikipedia article confused you), and
do you even have anything original to say, or will you keep quoting
people with one-half of a syllogism behind whatever it is they try to
say?
Nick Keighley
<snip>
> [...] all pretty words
> about the love of Jesus, but behind the facade he's twisted with hate
> and bitterness.
>
> A text-book whited sepulcher.
thanks, I had to look that one up. Handy phrase.
jamm
> Beware of certain buzzwords including "sequence points" and
WOW THANKS FOR THE TIP GUY. moving on...
--
*From the 1966 TV series:*
Robin: You can't get away from Batman that easy!
Batman: Easily.
Robin: Easily.
Batman: Good grammar is essential, Robin.
Nick Keighley
> On 2010-02-01, Colonel Harlan Sanders <Har...@kfc.com> wrote:
> > And how tedious of you to try to segue everything into your obsession
> > with a one page review Seebach wrote DECADES AGO and everyone in the
> > world had forgotten till you kept bringing it up over and over and
> > over and over.
>
> I do not think it accurate to call it "decades ago" when I think it's
> actually under 15 years.
yes, I like to be precise about these things. A physical science based
education seems to sensitise you to these things.
I think an important point, though, is that you pretty much stand by
what you wrote. I don't think spinoza is doing Mr Schildt any favours!
Amazon recomended me a schildt book just the other day!
> Well, maybe 15-16, but still. Another four
> years and it'll be "DECADES AGO". (By which time I hope to have gotten
> around to writing a new one for CTCR4E, and mothballed the previous one
> as "comments on the third edition".)
>
> >>I regard none of these people as my peers. I regard them as my
> >>inferiors.
>
> > Is there anyone in the world who would agree with your assessment?
>
> Yes. I believe he's got Twink and Kenny (if those are in fact two people),
I don't think they have opinions I think they just like being
contrary.
> and I think perhaps also the "daemon helper" spammer. I think Jacob Navia has
> been more sympathetic to his views than some other people, which sort of
> surprised me actually.
I think Jacob's divided. He probably thinks "the regs" deserve a
roasting and having the p- taken out of them, But he's criticised
Richard heathfield for responding to spinoza and continuing long off
topic threads. I don't mind 'em as long as they are confined to a
single thread with near zero technical content. You don't have to read
em if you don't want to.
--
> Look, I am French, and even worst, I live in Paris. I know
> something about fads really.
Jacob Navia
spinoza1111
> On 02 Feb 2010 05:11:24 GMT, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> >On 2010-02-02, Colonel Harlan Sanders <Har...@kfc.com> wrote:
> >><spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>>Because this article harmed Schildt,
>
> >> You're lying.
>
> >This is unknowable.
>
> >> He brought out 3 more editions of the same book, without bothering to
> >> correct the errors. He wasn't harmed, he didn't and doesn't care.
>
> >Incorrect on two counts.
>
> >1. Several easily-fixed errors are definitely fixed in the 4th
> >edition.
> >2. Only the 4th edition has come out since I wrote my critique.
>
> >I would point out, though, that the 4th edition still has some very
> >serious misunderstandings in it.
>
> there was "just" a single new edition, few books are so successful, so
> it's hard to see evidence of "harm". (Of course, Nilges could assert
> your review forestalled a fifth edition.)
>
> "Schildt was harmed" by the review, and never backed it up with any
> evidence, other than he "knows" it from Schildt, he implies, but can't
> reveal how. So we have no evidence either way, but I feel it's a safe
> bet that Nilges just made it up. And I'm pretty sure he makes up or
> vastly exaggerates all his supposed connections with important people
> and institutions.
I sent Schildt email informing him of my campaign and asking him if he
felt it was appropriate. Herb said it was and confirmed that the anti-
Schildt campaign harmed him. Herb thanked me very deeply after I was
able to get the wikipedia article cleaned up.
I have always described my connections with important and noteworthy
people and institutions with a great deal of care. I have here
described exactly how I was affiliated with Princeton as an employee
in Information Centers for five years and how during that time Nash
was referred to me for assistance on a specific question about C,
which I answered. Occasionally Nash asked other questions of me and
other staffers.
>
> On 01 Feb 2010 18:38:24 GMT, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
>
> >On 2010-02-01, Colonel Harlan Sanders <Har...@kfc.com> wrote:
> >> with a one page review Seebach wrote DECADES AGO and everyone in the
> >I do not think it accurate to call it "decades ago" when I think it's
> >actually under 15 years. Well, maybe 15-16, but still. Another four
> >years and it'll be "DECADES AGO". (By which time I hope to have gotten
>
spinoza1111
"Decisions made in the formative years of computer networking, for
instance, promoted online anonymity, and over the years, as millions
upon millions of people began using the Web, Mr. Lanier says,
anonymity has helped enable the dark side of human nature. NASTY,
ANONYMOUS ATTACKS on individuals and institutions have flourished, and
what Mr. Lanier calls a “CULTURE OF SADISM” has gone mainstream. In
some countries anonymity and MOB BEHAVIOR have resulted in actual
witch hunts. “In 2007,” Mr. Lanier reports, “a series of ‘Scarlet
Letter’ postings in China incited online throngs to hunt down accused
adulterers. In 2008, the focus shifted to Tibet sympathizers.”