in article 39FDF453.206EB...@mindspring.com.no.spam, Lyman Taylor at lyman.tay...@mindspring.com.no.spam wrote on 2000.10.30 2:21 PM:
> A few years ago at US Higher Education Sites Microsoft as selling the basic > VC++ 5.0 (or 6.0) along with a "bonus" Windows NT 4.0. for about $99...This is > a highly sucessful marketing tool practiced but many industrial companies.
In fact, I once heard that Microsoft's development tools were funded out of the marketing budget. Makes sense to me, as long as your company isn't selling development tools as its main business. And if it is, I don't think you can expect it to do anything nearly this aggressive (e.g., Franz).
-- Chris Page
let mailto = concatenate( "page", "@", "best.com" );
Bruce Hoult <br...@hoult.org> writes: > ... I submitted projects using Modula-2, BCPL, STOIC > (a type of FORTH) and probably a couple of others that I don't recall > now ... > I thought I might get some opposition from the teachers, but I never had > a problem and always seemed to get good grades for them.
By contrast, I got in horrible trouble turning in projects in Lisp that were supposed to be done in Clu. Depends very much like the teacher.
But I did try to be tolerant of others doing this when I later became a grader for a class in computer calculus. We officially asked for things done in BASIC, but I accepted Lisp and even APL answers. It sure was a lot of work trying to decipher the APL to see if maybe it was doing something remotely like what we'd assigned. But I was determined to prove that what I'd inflicted on other teachers wasn't something I wouldn't be able to endure myself. Plus I'd have hated to kill a rebellious spirit in a world too full of conformists.
| > Last I heard deja had stopped inserting product links in messages. | > Well, apparently they haven't. The words enterprise edition in | > Friedrich's article are linked to some page about the Visual Basic | > Enterprise Edition if you read it on deja: | > | > http://x53.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/threadmsg_ct.xp?AN=687440453.1&mhitnum=11&C | > ONTEXT=972908044.1509359670 | | So use the "classic" mode -- it's still there. | | <http://deja.com/=dnc/article/687440453>
Where do you have to click to get to classic mode? I just took a look at deja and I didn't see it.
Yes, well, that's not my point. I just don't like them to insert links into my message so that it appears as if *I* have inserted them. That's my source of annoyance. I want my articles' contents as I have written them. I believe that by posting to Usenet I give people the right to copy my article more or less freely, but mucking around with the content ... I don't think so. It's bad enough that they completely break formatting (by default), but altering the message's content just goes way too far IMNSHO (and to me, hyperlinking some words in messages *is* altering its content).
They can place ads or whatever around my messages if they want to. I have nothing against that, but they should leave the content as I have written it. You might say that having plain-text and classic mode is redeeming. Well, it is a bit redeeming, but since they're not the default, it doesn't improve my view of them very much.
Incidentally, the X-No-Productlinks: yes header did not work. If you look at my original message in deja (not in classic or plain mode) then you'll see that in the quoted text the words "enterprise edition" are highlighted and in my own text the words "Visual Basic" are highlighted. Argh.
<bo...@uncommon-sense.net> wrote: > Bruce Hoult <br...@hoult.org> writes:
> | > Last I heard deja had stopped inserting product links in messages. > | > Well, apparently they haven't. The words enterprise edition in > | > Friedrich's article are linked to some page about the Visual Basic > | > Enterprise Edition if you read it on deja: > | > > | > http://x53.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/threadmsg_ct.xp?AN=687440453.1&mhitnum= > | > 11&C > | > ONTEXT=972908044.1509359670 > | > | So use the "classic" mode -- it's still there. > | > | <http://deja.com/=dnc/article/687440453>
> Where do you have to click to get to classic mode? I just took a look > at deja and I didn't see it.
In the "power Search" screen, select results type = "Deja Classic".
It is a bit unusual that you are using capitals. Is there any reason for that?
> And you still think you're smack dab in the middle of the people who > are the likely target audience of their efforts?
I should like to be told, what "smack dab" means. My English is not as good as yours.
> As far as I can > see from your past and present contributions here, you never intend > to purchase a license from them, anyway.
Well, at some point and at the price I was talking about, I probably should have at some point.
> Is it really honest of you > to complain that what you get for free is not free enough?
I did not complain, I only stated that in my opinion their scheme was strange. I did not understand, why this "new licence evry month" condition was necessary. And I think it was honest. Finally my posting had the effect that a lot of people talked a lot about Franz and I do not believe I caused them any damage. So I think that my first posting was not dishonest.
> How many customers in your price range do you think Franz Inc would > need to be able to do your bidding? I think 100,000 would be a fair > suggestion. Do you think there _are_ that many Common Lisp users > just waiting for a mass-market price? I know there aren't.
I accept this. They most likely know how to run their business.
> If Franz Inc's expensive (for them) and therefore generous Trial > Edition project means they get 100 new staying customers, while > making it possible for perhaps many more people to try it out, they > have made a huge win, both for themselves _and_ for Common Lisp.
Yes.
> That Janos Blazi, who would never become a customer, anyway, whines > and whimpers is a loss, both for Franz Inc _and_ for Common Lisp.
Mr. Janos Blazi Esq. please. But now you are exaggerating. I am completely unimportant.
> It's no secret that I think you're the stupidest person who has ever > remained a recurring phenomenon on comp.lang.lisp,
To me this was a secret as there were many other candidates and your fan club, dear Eric, is still growing. (Though for a few months I have had the impression that you have been becoming calmer.)
But your statement includes a compliment if I can follow you. So there were posters who were more stupid but they are not recurrent.
>but I still want >you to consider what you are doing to hurt the language you want to >use by your useless whining and whimpering against the free offering >of a product you never intend to purchase, anyway.
Now it would be hard to prove that the number of people who use Lisp has become less since I started my posting. I do not think either that Franz Inc. sales has gone down due to my postings.
> It is psychologically difficult to accept that you keep posting. I > suggest you stop until you have become more used to exert the effort > required to determine whether your actions are destructive or not.
It would be nice to meet you personally. Are you going to visit Germany in the near future?
J.B.
-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =----- http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! -----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----
| * "Janos Blazi" <jbl...@netsurf.de> | | It is a bit unusual that you are using capitals. Is there any reason | | for that? | | My God, your reaction time is 6 _months_. | | I'll answer your message sometime in May, 2001, or I may forget.
Well, I noticed it earlier, but never asked. You once said to someone who asked that you had already explained the reason about 5 times, but when I searched deja, I didn't find any trace of these explanations.
Would you mind explaining it a little earlier than May, 2001, or give away the Message-Id of some article where you explained it. I'm genuinely interested in your reason for this change.
* Boris Schaefer <bo...@uncommon-sense.net> | Would you mind explaining it a little earlier than May, 2001, or | give away the Message-Id of some article where you explained it. | I'm genuinely interested in your reason for this change.
Well, what I have explained several times is why randomly upcasing letters is a very bad thing to do, especially if the randomness has only _some_ systematic elements to it, such as that the word just happens to be the first in a sentence with no other reason to get upcased.
However, people being what they are, the resistance to improvements that can be easily explained and even understood undermined the goal, and so I decided to move to published quality on USENET, too, even though it is mostly initial draft quality and thus should look like it. That is, I have some code in Emacs that lets me avoid that silly initial capital letter, unless it really should be capitalized because of the word, not the position, while typing, turning it into the loser-friendly initial-capitals-anyway style before posting, but after saving the local copy.
#:Erik -- Does anyone remember where I parked Air Force One? -- George W. Bush
Erik Naggum wrote: > Well, what I have explained several times is why randomly upcasing > letters is a very bad thing to do [...] such as that the word just > happens to be the first in a sentence with no other reason to get > upcased.
Capitalizing the first letter does serve specific purposes, such as making scan reading easier. Maybe you were you encouraging a strict sequential reading of your postings?
* Robert Monfera <monf...@fisec.com> | Capitalizing the first letter does serve specific purposes, such as | making scan reading easier. Maybe you were you encouraging a strict | sequential reading of your postings?
When the purpose is information preservation, not information loss, I think scan reading is among the least interesting qualities for which to optimize anything. However, if something like this works to _discourage_ scan reading, _that_ is a very interesting quality.
#:Erik -- Does anyone remember where I parked Air Force One? -- George W. Bush
* David J. Fiander | Of course, people who've studied the history of the book (which I | haven't particularly), will happily point out that capitalization | (the use of majiscules at the beginning of sentences), punctuation | (including the use of spaces between words), and even paragraphing | were all _invented_ to ease the reading process [1].
Yeah, yeah, whatever. Please try to get the point, and try to control that trigger-itchy posting finger with your special agenda physically attached to it. Please also _try_ to use your reading skills to such astonishing endeavors as actually observing that nobody is arguing against whitespace or punctutation. Christ, guys, go nuts for all I care, but keep it within _range_ of what is being discussed, will you?
What _I_ observed when I wanted to preserve the case of _words_ was that a fairly large number of people went ballistic over this and losing their marbles in the process. Actually being able to deal with a single, isolated change to a system they do not understand how came to be, was impossible: They react as if the whole system was rejected, and spelling and grammar with it, in my cases. I must admit that I found such people tremendously entertaining for a while, but watching crazy people go lemming over the far edge of reason got old fast. I imagined a sphinxter so tight it would have saved the Kursk crew, setting new records in anal retentive behavior and the like, but really, why is it _impossible_ for those who think that the entire world order and humanity's last chance rests with capitalizing that first letter of a sentence to realize that their fears might not be true.
I am very well aware of the arguments for typography, and I have in fact studied it, but that does not mean that I have to agree that the information-destroying _print_ habit of losing case information for the first word in a sentence is smart for electronic text before it goes to print. Almost everything is improved by case sensitivity (such as Common Lisp, to keep this marginally on topic :), and search engines that didn't match all kinds of words when you search for proper names would be a good thing. But not as long as the anal retentives come crawling out of the woodwork every time they don't get the difference between source code for a book (electronic text) and published print copy.
#:Erik -- Does anyone remember where I parked Air Force One? -- George W. Bush
| Well, what I have explained several times is why randomly upcasing | letters is a very bad thing to do, especially if the randomness has | only _some_ systematic elements to it, such as that the word just | happens to be the first in a sentence with no other reason to get | upcased.
That probably was before May 1999, because I searched deja for "naggum" and several combinations of "character" and "up", "down" and "lower case" and nothing in that vein turned up. I vaguely remember it though. deja killed the archives of articles before some day in May 1999 about 6 months ago. The previous sentence shows a thing I don't like about capitalization at the beginning of sentences: "deja" just should not be capitalized, just because it's at the start of a sentence, it's their name and "Deja" looks wrong, IMHO, but in general I find texts without the usual capitalization harder to read. It might simply be lack of experience, though. I have no idea.
Anyway, the killing of the archives might explain my failure to find anything on that subject, without resorting to the other obvious explanation that I'm too stupid to search (and find).
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes: > Well, what I have explained several times is why randomly upcasing > letters is a very bad thing to do, especially if the randomness has > only _some_ systematic elements to it, such as that the word just > happens to be the first in a sentence with no other reason to get > upcased.
Of course, people who've studied the history of the book (which I haven't particularly), will happily point out that capitalization (the use of majiscules at the beginning of sentences), punctuation (including the use of spaces between words), and even paragraphing were all _invented_ to ease the reading process [1]. Before such things, one had to be trained to read _every_ text, since one had to learn where the word boundaries were supposed to be.
Think of initial majiscules as a well-founded ergonomic device in the user interface of printed text.
- David
[1] For more on this topic, see Manguel, Alberto. A history of reading. Toronto: Knopf (1996).
-- David J. Fiander | We know for certain only when we know little. Librarian | With knowlege, doubt increases | - Goethe
Is this the correct English translation of the Italian "maiuscole"? What about the opposite? "minuscole". :)
Cheers
Marco
-- Marco Antoniotti ============================================================= NYU Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488 719 Broadway 12th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122 New York, NY 10003, USA http://galt.mrl.nyu.edu/valis Like DNA, such a language [Lisp] does not go out of style. Paul Graham, ANSI Common Lisp
> Is this the correct English translation of the Italian "maiuscole"? > What about the opposite? "minuscole". :)
I think it's just the term used in typography -- majiscule & miniscule. I've never heard `majiscule' other than to refer to letters, and I've heard `miniscule' in other contexts only to mean `very small', which isn't really the same meaning.
> I think it's just the term used in typography -- majiscule & > miniscule. I've never heard `majiscule' other than to refer to > letters, and I've heard `miniscule' in other contexts only to mean > `very small', which isn't really the same meaning.
I have to apologize a bit. I misspelled it. The words are "majuscule" and "minuscule" They're not in my 8th ed. Concise Oxford, but they are in my Shorter (which is at home). www.m-w.com knows about both, but only ascribes the "lower-case" meaning to the latter.
Then again, the terms "upper-case" and "lower-case" are from the traditional relative placement of the slugs in a typecase (literally a case holding type).
- David -- David J. Fiander | We know for certain only when we know little. Librarian | With knowlege, doubt increases | - Goethe
> Is this the correct English translation of the Italian "maiuscole"? > What about the opposite? "minuscole". :)
Assuming these have the same meaning in Italian as their cognates in Portuguese, "upper case" and "lower case" are the English terms in common usage. I'm not familiar with technical usage regarding typsetting (on which someone else commented).
Thom
-- Thom Goodsell t...@cra.com Scientist (617) 491-3474 x574 Charles River Analytics http://www.cra.com/
Thom Goodsell <t...@cra.com> writes: > Assuming these have the same meaning in Italian as their cognates in > Portuguese, "upper case" and "lower case" are the English terms in > common usage. I'm not familiar with technical usage regarding > typsetting (on which someone else commented).
upper and lower case refer specifically to type, I'm not sure if the terms can be used more generally. I'm not sure if you could refer to a Carolingian minuscule as `lower case' for instance. Perhaps you can, someone is bound to know.
--tim, who may or may not be able to spell `Carolingian' and `minuscule' correctly...
Erik Naggum wrote: > When the purpose is information preservation, not information loss, > I think scan reading is among the least interesting qualities for > which to optimize anything. However, if something like this works > to _discourage_ scan reading, _that_ is a very interesting quality.
Let me assure you that your thoughts are modular enough to enable information _transmittal_ even with-scan-reading-enabled. Human readers don't do information _preservation_, Usenet does.
Speaking of discouraging scan reading, I recall how much fun it is to navigate through an automated telephone answering service when what you want is always the last option at the deepest level. That option must be the most expensive, and access is thus penalized.
> * Boris Schaefer <bo...@uncommon-sense.net> > | Would you mind explaining it a little earlier than May, 2001, or > | give away the Message-Id of some article where you explained it. > | I'm genuinely interested in your reason for this change.
> Well, what I have explained several times is why randomly upcasing > letters is a very bad thing to do, especially if the randomness has > only _some_ systematic elements to it, such as that the word just > happens to be the first in a sentence with no other reason to get > upcased.
> However, people being what they are, the resistance to improvements > that can be easily explained and even understood undermined the > goal, and so I decided to move to published quality on USENET, too, > even though it is mostly initial draft quality and thus should look > like it. That is, I have some code in Emacs that lets me avoid that > silly initial capital letter, unless it really should be capitalized > because of the word, not the position, while typing, turning it into > the loser-friendly initial-capitals-anyway style before posting, but > after saving the local copy.
> #:Erik > -- > Does anyone remember where I parked Air Force One? > -- George W. Bush
* Robert Monfera <monf...@fisec.com> | Let me assure you that your thoughts are modular enough to enable | information _transmittal_ even with-scan-reading-enabled. Human | readers don't do information _preservation_, Usenet does.
I was operating under the assumption that what is good for high information value is not good for fast scan reading and vice versa. There are lots of things we can do to the information to make it easier to digest by people, but which makes it much, much harder for machines to retrieve same. As witness the drive towards graphics and layout that makes it nigh impossible for a machine to figure out what is being communicated on "modern" web pages. Most of the stuff that is done to preserve accuracy in presentation lowers the speed of access by humans. This has to do with how our consciousness works, which has had some, but not an impressing lot, to do with how we designed our computers, writing systems, etc, mainly because we know so little about it.
| Speaking of discouraging scan reading, I recall how much fun it is | to navigate through an automated telephone answering service when | what you want is always the last option at the deepest level. That | option must be the most expensive, and access is thus penalized.
The speed at which we absorb information from the outside world is incredibly low, it could use a thousand-fold increase, but if you have an issue with linearization of presentation and representation of information, it is just silly to argue for _or_ against initial capitals, automated telephones, etc. If you really think this is an important issue, and I think it is, transcending linearization may be accomplished with more computer-friendly ways to communicate, in that the computer can scan for us and present us with a condensation of the communication, into which we can navigate once the computer understands what is going on. Ironically, this requires that we dispense with the notion that consuption by the human eye is the one true factor to optimize for, and it becomes an argument _against_ the many information-destroying aspects that the human need to make it easier to read has spawned.
Do we really need to use the _specific_ technique of abusing the capital letter to indicate sentence start when we already use it to indicate proper nams? You may have noticed that I use two spaces after a sentence-terminating punctuation, and that I don't use a period after abbreviations. (I know one guy who was so upset about the capitals that he dragged in whitespace and punctuation and who _should_ have noticed this, but didn't.) There are other ways to make that sentence start stand out than the initial capital letter that does not introduce information loss and useless ambiguity.
#:Erik -- Does anyone remember where I parked Air Force One? -- George W. Bush
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes: > Do we really need to use the _specific_ technique of abusing the > capital letter to indicate sentence start when we already use it to > indicate proper nams? You may have noticed that I use two spaces > after a sentence-terminating punctuation, and that I don't use a > period after abbreviations.
I do this, too, since that's what I was taught in typing class but it's a dwindling art form and I'm having to teach myself to unlearn it because a lot of commercially produced typesetting systems (can't remember which, but I'm thinking things like Word and FrameMaker) do poorly with this. Rather than recognize double space as a single "end of sentence" token, they either treat each space separately (creating excess space) or they contract it automatically as if it were an error or do other bizarre effects related to selection. Even Emacs assumes "Mr." at the end of a line is a sentence ender when doing meta-q (fill-paragraph), rather than having a table of common abbreviations after which it should insert only one space instead of two...
if schooling is your argument _for_ double spacing, then you should know that since the era of Desktop publishing circa 1990, people are taught that the double spacing taught to typist is not suitable for typing on computers, because computer's variable width font obviate such need for clarity, and if you check printed materials, you'll find that is true, that they are not using double spacing to start a sentence.
here we have doctor Naggum chasing his whimsy. On such a minuscule and lame proportions too. Suing every joe on his way and making a giant splash of show. I might deem it amusing if it is a cause initiated by laziness of shifting (which is a good reason in the name of convenience), but after paying attention to learn the real bloated reason, it's more laughable than ever.
this disclosure shows that visionaries have stupid ideas too. _Lots_ of it. Readers, you need to pay attention, and decide which is good, and which is amusing.
> From: Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> > Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA > Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp > Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2000 17:03:10 GMT > Subject: Re: Allegro CL 6.0 Trial Edition
>> Do we really need to use the _specific_ technique of abusing the >> capital letter to indicate sentence start when we already use it to >> indicate proper nams? You may have noticed that I use two spaces >> after a sentence-terminating punctuation, and that I don't use a >> period after abbreviations.
> I do this, too, since that's what I was taught in typing class but it's a > dwindling art form and I'm having to teach myself to unlearn it because a > lot of commercially produced typesetting systems (can't remember which, but > I'm thinking things like Word and FrameMaker) do poorly with this. Rather > than recognize double space as a single "end of sentence" token, they > either treat each space separately (creating excess space) or they contract > it automatically as if it were an error or do other bizarre effects related > to selection. Even Emacs assumes "Mr." at the end of a line is a sentence > ender when doing meta-q (fill-paragraph), rather than having a table of > common abbreviations after which it should insert only one space instead of > two...
| if schooling is your argument _for_ double spacing, then you should | know that since the era of Desktop publishing circa 1990, people are | taught that the double spacing taught to typist is not suitable for | typing on computers, because computer's variable width font obviate | such need for clarity,
Variable width fonts have been around far longer than computers, so this cannot really be the reason.
| and if you check printed materials, you'll find that is true, that | they are not using double spacing to start a sentence.
Well, I did check some books, and sure enough I did find many with increased inter-sentence spacing. Although, the only non-computer related, technical books I found with increased inter-sentence spacing are: _The Control of Nature_ by John McPhee and _Perception and Communication_ by D.E. Broadbent. The former has only very slightly increased spacing between sentences, whereas the latter has Really Big inter-sentence spaces and most certainly was not written using some non-existent (in 1958) desktop publishing software, but (as I can easily see) it _is_ typeset in a variable-width font.
| [...] I might deem it amusing if it is a cause initiated by laziness | of shifting (which is a good reason in the name of convenience)
Since when is laziness a _good_ reason for anything?
