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Death of a Troll

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Xah Lee

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Jun 25, 2009, 6:08:42 PM6/25/09
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• Death Of A Troll
http://xahlee.org/Netiquette_dir/death_of_a_troll.html

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Death Of A Troll

Xah Lee, 2009-06-25

Erik Naggum is dead. He's born in 1965, died in 2009, this month. I
wanted to write a essay about it, my impressions of him, our
exchanges, ... but it'll take probably a week to write a account or
obituary sort of thing in a way that is to my satisfaction. It'll
involve digging my unorganized newsgroup archive that are scattered in
different places on my hard drive, and endless painful hours in google
newsgroup archive search... Seems rather a formidable task, because i
want to write it well and fully linked.

For now, see our past exchanges at google group: Source. Roughly, our
first exchange is in ~1999, when i was learning lisp (Scheme) for the
first time and was asking about the cons business. (see: Xah Lee's
Computing Experience Bio) I read comp.lang.lisp almost exclusively for
Erik's posts. (See: Why do I Rant In comp.lang.lisp? ) Since he
stopped posting sometimes in ~2004 or so, i have stopped reading
“comp.lang.lisp”. Only started again in maybe 2007 or so, more as a
poster than reader now. I clearly remember his last message on
comp.lang.lisp. Here:

Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: Erik Naggum
Date: 03 Feb 2004 14:48:22 +0000
Local: Tues, Feb 3 2004 7:48 am
Subject: Re: moderation of abuse?

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/115c62ec642e392c

According to groups.google.com, there are 338 results of posts in
comp.lang.lisp that contains both “naggum” and “xah”. I think that the
number of posts i addressed him is probably less than 20, and his
reply to me is probably less than 10. During about 1999 to 2004 when i
read comp.lang.lisp mostly of his posts, i also post maybe a couple a
month on average. Most of my posts are trolls (of the good sort (see:
Netiquette Anthropology)), and part of it is riding his name,
criticizing or making fun of his attackers, and criticizing or lampoon
him too. They are mostly not technical. Most are part of writing
exercise too.

(Note: google group search is quite not reliable or comprehensive, as
far as my experience goes in the past few years. It used to be very
good and quite comprehensive when they first acquired dejanews,
because back at that time, the search is quite simple, but now they
have all sort of filters and indexes that tries to smart things up and
deal with the massiveness (including having to deal with a machine
generated spams that are probably a significant percentage of
newsgroup posts now). It used to be, that if know a exact sentence or
phrase of a post, then you can find the post. But not today. Nor can i
find a comprehensive list of my own posts as searched by my email
x...@xahlee.org or xah...@gmail.com.)
Orkut Incidence

In 2004, we made friendship on google's social networking site Orkut.
Then, we exchanged instant message a few times. However, he got really
pissed and de-friended me. This incident actually made me angry,
because, honestly, i felt i was just trying to make a friend, and he
is behaving like a complete, motherfucking, ass. According to him, i
think he said i offended him by incessantly querying him of his work
or invading his privacy without respect, or something to that nature.
I don't remember fully now, but i do have everything completely
logged. So, i'll have to dig it up and put it here. I was frankly
very, very pissed off by this incident. I'm no fucking bugging him
about his work or anything. His accusation is totally a shock out of
the blue. To even have to defend myself seems silly.

I recall, at the time, i contemplated of writing a full account of it,
spending perhaps a day or two to do that, with full records and logs,
and publish it on my website and announce it to comp.lang.lisp.
Because i felt that his behavior is schizophrenic and totally
unreasonable. Also, i was unsure i really want to do that. I recall i
thought about it for long. On one hand, i was really pissed and wanted
to express my anger, but on the other hand, i have a discipline of my
own to follow, that i should be a loving person, as well powerful and
in full control, not some loser who'd trip over a online relationship
misstep.

Whatever emotional problem he caused me in our process of getting
acquainted as computing professionals or friends, i considered for
long whether i should just forgive him. Apparently, he's got severe
psychological problems so to speak, of which, his newsgroup behavior
is sufficient to certify. So, in the end, i did not write a account of
it. I think i might actually have spent a hour or two writing it, but
didn't complete or publish it. I'll have to dig all these out someday.
(i recall now, that i was angry because in our last im he started to
lash out in his typical newsgroup manner at me. I think i was rather
quite controlled, and didn't respond much or AT ALL, simply stared his
incoming IM chat with disbelief, although in my mind i have a thousand
words racing to tell him to shut the motherfucking up and have a
million words followup for explanations and justifications. I was
angry because he was a few human animal that i would care to contact,
partly precisely because of his lone and unusual personality, and a
free thinker, a non-conformist, like myself. The fact i befriend him
was partly out of high respect, and in our last couple IM exchange, i
was thwarted and taken aback.)

In any case, when we initially hooked up as online friends on orkut,
it was pleasant, albeit we exchanged little. He told me he's sick, and
now works as some sort of librarian, and can not code much. (something
to that effect)
Erik on XahLee.org and His Vocabulary

Just some more quick note... here's few essays i wrote that has been
published (some edited) on my website that either mentioned Erik or
was originally addressing him.

* On Microsoft Hatred
* On Ignoring Trolls
* Subject: Re: Separate namespaces [was: Re: please tell me the
design faults]

Erik's English vocabulary usage has been used in my English Vocabulary
Compendium. In fact, miming his vocabulary usage is one of the major
reason i read him. Here are the entries from him.

scaremonger
A conservative estimate of the number of people who would die during a
period of five years after only _half_ of the electronic
infrastructure in the United States had collapsed is 30 million
people. This is part of unclassified disaster planning that surfaced
because of the Y2K scare, and it has been published widely by
scaremongers that a decimation, in the technical meaning of 10% loss,
of the population is considered a tolerable loss.
Computer language online forum posting “comp.lang.lisp” (1999) by Erik
Naggum. Source
scaremonger = a person who spreads frightening rumors and stirs up
trouble.

out of the woodwork
I'm so ... intrigued by the evolutionary refuse that keeps crawling
out of the woodwork to share their putrid mind with the world.
Sneering by Erik Naggum in “comp.lang.lisp” newsgroup, 2000-03-06.
Source
out of the woodwork = Emerging from obscurity or a place of seclusion.
It often is put as come (or crawl) out of the woodwork, as in The
candidates for this job were coming out of the woodwork. The
expression alludes to insects crawling out of the interior wooden
fittings of a house, such as baseboards and moldings. (AHD)

steamroll
“Oleg” is not the first person to encounter a text that presents the
reader with two simultaneous impossibilities: (1) a different view to
a reality he does not recognize but feels he should, and (2) such a
powerful model (or set of models) that the reader has two choices: (a)
to bow to and accept it, or (b) be steamrollered by it. The failure to
deal with such impossibilities causes people to take to the street to
protest against high prices of necessities, to fight globalization
with riots, etc. The /right/ way to deal with it is of course to
challenge the underlying model, but this requires both skill and
intelligence; hence his profound sense of powerlessness.
online computing forum message, by kook persona Erik Naggum,
2003-01-10, “comp.lang.lisp” Source

logorrhea
I thought I said that: I concluded that Dylan was a waste of time.
What kept me interested in it for a while was the Lisp-like syntax. I
didn't find the semantics and the “feature set” sufficiently
attractive on their own, and knowing how fixed-grammer languages
evolve (rampant keyworditis and logorrhea), didn't appear to be
something worth investing in at the time.
Erik Naggum on comp.lang.lisp; 2000-07-01
See also: logorrhea

ascetic
“So I was wondering why call/cc is not implemented.”. Because the
Common Lisp crowd doesn't want you to implement manually all the
control flow mechanisms that CALL/CC is used to implement, and that is
because there is no desire to pare the language down to “essentials”
or Scheme's ascetic/annorexic notions of “elegance”.
“continuations and cl” (2000-02-14) by Erik Naggum. Newsgroup posting
on comp.lang.lisp.
annorexia = Loss of appetite for food. annorexia.
Scheme is a computer language. Call/cc is short for Call-with-current-
continuation. It is a technical feature of programing languages.
ascetic = A person who renounces material comforts and leads a life of
austere self-discipline.
annorexia

-f ipso facto | Your posting here makes you ipso facto part of the
Lisp community. [Erik Naggum in comp.lang.lisp]

-l wherewithal | OK, I understand this to mean that you do not have
the mental wherewithall to understand that focusing on people is a
choice, opposed to focusing on the arguments, on information, on
ideas, on knowledge, on understanding, etc. [Erik Naggum in
comp.lang.lisp, 2002-09-28]

-w defeatist | ... and I frankly do not quite understand the
depressingly defeatist attitude of those who think there is no use — a
long journey starts with the first step ... [Erik Naggum on
comp.lang.lisp]

-w minutiae | as long as you wish to fuss about minutiae, at least get
them right. [Erik naggum, 1996-11-09, comp.emacs]
Evaluation of Erik

Another thing i want to say here quickly is that i don't regard Erik
as some kinda god or admirable person for his computing knowledge.
Among human animal's history, in the field of theoretical computer
science or practical programing, in this century, if you multiply
Erik's contributions 10 fold, he probably wouldn't have a place. So,
the bunch of tech geekers online all praising Erik being some sort of
genius, is ludicrous to me. (they do that partly because Erik is dead.
Human animals, esp males, love to approve people when they are dead.
All those eulogies and posthumous awards and memorials fuck. (See:
Support Living Artists) )

Erik's social insights, as far as i've read from 1999 to about 2003 (a
period i think i read all his comp.lang.lisp writings), wasn't
anything substantial in any academic or science contexts, nor are they
particularly award-winning material when judged as a letter of art in
academia.

When you evaluate someone's work, especially in the context of a dead
person, you have to judge it from the appropriate field or community.
So, taken Erik's work into the computer science community, you might
ask, has he invented some notable theory? No. Of his code, are they
widely used, praised, or otherwise influential to computing? Well, no.
If you survey theoretical computer science, there are probably some
tens of thousands papers published each year, and of these, probably
less that 0.1% that is actually noteworthy, and of these 0.1%, most
only meaningful to a few human animals in esoteric fields. Erik's life
time work, when taken in this context, probably don't even make it
into that 0.1% barely noteworthy. Now on the aspect of industrial
code, there is a designer or coders behind every protocol and its
implementation (say the whole TCP/IP protocol suite and apps),
languages (tens of general popular ones or hundreds of notable domain
specific ones), software (say, the well known web browsers, email
apps, IM/IRC programs, notable websites (e.g. top 5000 trafficked
sites), encryption software, banking software, tele-communication
software, software in commerce, business software such as spreadsheets
and word processors, scientific software from calculators to weather
prediction... There are probably few hundred thousand software that
are used by significant number of people today), each one of these
software, has a person (or more) that actually coded it. Consider
Erik's contribution to humanity in terms of software he's written,
then it's probably nowhere notable. As a more concrete example, today
google has maybe a hundred or more technologies and services, e.g.
google chrome, gmail, google news, google sites, webmaster tools,
analytics, google code, google groups, orkut social networking site,
blogger, google docs, igoogle, google talk, youtube, AdSense ... and
so on. Some of these, are written by a single programer, or few lead
programers. Any one of these people, probably has equal, if not more
significance, then the code Erik's written in his lifetime. Google is
just one company, among the top Fortune 500 or fortunate 10 hundred
thousand successful tech companies. Each company, probably has 10 or
hundreds notable lead programers, technologists, research scientists,
“fellows”. When you consider this, you can see that Erik's code,
however fantastic, but in the sense of posthumous evaluation, probably
isn't anywhere notable.

A lot people say Erik has important insight. I don't deny it. After
all, he is the person i read in comp.lang.lisp for several years. But
if we seriously want to evaluate the quality of his contributions, his
insights in his newsgroup rants, are not that much worthy. His rants
are often technically incoherent. For example, this piece of criticism
on XML that one of the more well known among his postings:

Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: Erik Naggum
Date: 28 Dec 2002 03:08:55 +0000
Local: Fri, Dec 27 2002 8:08 pm
Subject: Re: S-exp vs XML, HTML, LaTeX (was: Why lisp is growing)
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/9a30c508201627ee
(local copy: erik_naggum_on_xml.txt)

Out of the 2.7k words, some 1/3 is irrelevant rant on human animals,
about babies, breasts, rape, American male, George Bush the
motherfucker... If we remove these, and look at his technical content,
they are mostly opinions, and not that informative, coherent, or
valuable. This piece, at best, is a brilliant rant, but nowhere comes
close as a brilliant tech commentary, criticism on XML, history of
SGML, nor as a good practical piece of myth-debunking on XML/SGML for
web professionals. However you dice it, his writings at best are in
the category of rants and ravings than criticism proper or educational
or informative value.

His, almost only, well-known published piece in some professional
context, is about date format. “The Long, Painful History of
Time” (1999-10) by Erik Naggum. http://naggum.no/lugm-time.html.
(local copy: Erik Naggum — A Long, Painful History of Time) I recall,
i read it twice in separate times. I wasn't impressed. At best, its
value is about as great as some good piece of RFC writing, and there
are few thousands of RFCs, and there are some millions of good tech
documents like that. Some people, probably has written tens or
hundreds of such good tech pieces, and these people are mostly
unknown.

Note also that i think Erik sometimes attacked technologies that he
later may have changed his stance. I recall, he has written raving
pieces against unicode (dated late 1990s i think), in his typical
fashion, calling it a piece of fucking shit or political disruption or
something to that effect.

According to Wikipedia, Erik has contributed significantly to emacs.
Quote:

Erik Naggum contributed to the free software project Emacs text
editor for almost a decade.[8].

The citation, is one of Erik's own posting:

Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: Erik Naggum
Date: 24 Aug 2002 04:05:25 +0000
Local: Sat, Aug 24 2002 12:05 am
Subject: Re: The Next Generation of Lisp Programmers
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/e239591cbc9eb18d

I have become a emacs lisp programer since 2006. I recall, in 2007 or
so, out of boredom and curiosity, i tried to check what code Erik has
put in emacs. My check is only casual and not in anyway thorough or as
research, but i recall, all i can find on the surface is one obscure
lisp package, i think it was related to date time format. (much of the
hand-waving in this article will be solidified or corrected in the
coming months, as i find more time to search my archive or check
facts)

I also recall, that Erik doesn't give a shit about Xemacs during the
heated years of the GNU emacs vs Xemacs war (this period is roughly
~1990 to ~2004). During that time i was reading Erik (~1999 to 2004),
Xemacs in my opinion, is much more robust and useful than emacs. (See:
My Experience of Emacs vs XEmacs) So, this is a tech issue that i find
Erik's opinion is directly contrary to my own experiences in a area i
have expertise. (even consider that much of his misgivings about
xemacs may be founded on political aspects, i'm more inclined to side
with the Lucid/Xemacs on political or social aspects too.)

Although i think all of my posts regarding Erik are positive (while
he's alive), and he was the only reason i read comp.lang.lisp,
however, his newsgroup behavior is really mean, base, despicable. My
principle of life is love and knowledge. (See: (Knowledge + Love) /
Disrespectfulness) I may hate unix, tech geeking fuckheads, or think
that Larry Wall is a criminal (e.g. Larry Wall and Cults), but these
are expressions of hatred towards things, towards behaviors, criticism
of celebrities. In a term of social science, they are “of public
interest”. In particular, i don't hate in the fucking American's blown-
up sensibilities of so-called “hate crime”, where any negative
commentary or remark about any so-called “minority” is considered a
hate crime, any alternative views of Nazis that is not absolutely
negative is “hate crime” (fuck the American motherfuckers that are
typically well-to-do WASPs). Newsgroup's culture has always been harsh
and pissing-fights are its daily rituals among participants. However,
Erik has the energy to keep on and on attacking individuals, on any
nameless joe, he'd spend tens of hours, insulting their moms, devising
ever creative writings telling them to kill themselfs, etc. In reading
the sheer quantities of such posts, and you can tell that some (or
most) of them are simply pure hatred. Quite ugly and bothersome to
see. I don't know if Erik truely wished death or mishap to happen to
his antagonists, but his writings, by any reasonable interpretation,
express exactly that.

On the other hand, i think most of Erik's views are shared and
vehemently expressed by me. We both hated Perl, Tex/LaTeX, unix, to
extreme degrees. (See: The Unix Pestilence, Pathetically Elational
Regex Language, The TeX Pestilence. ) And, we both HATE moralists, and
are not afraid to express it.

I miss Erik, if for anything, for losing a non-conformist compatriot,
a free thinker.

Xah
http://xahlee.org/


fft1976

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Jun 25, 2009, 8:40:43 PM6/25/09
to
On Jun 25, 3:08 pm, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:

> fuck the American motherfuckers that are typically well-to-do WASPs

Why do you hate white people?

D Herring

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Jun 25, 2009, 10:11:59 PM6/25/09
to
Skimming this classic Xah Lee stuff, the following caught my
attention, and I felt the need to provide some facts.

Xah Lee wrote:
> According to Wikipedia, Erik has contributed significantly to emacs.
> Quote:

...


> I have become a emacs lisp programer since 2006. I recall, in 2007 or
> so, out of boredom and curiosity, i tried to check what code Erik has
> put in emacs. My check is only casual and not in anyway thorough or as
> research, but i recall, all i can find on the surface is one obscure
> lisp package, i think it was related to date time format. (much of the
> hand-waving in this article will be solidified or corrected in the
> coming months, as i find more time to search my archive or check
> facts)

Erik authored roughly 176 emacs commits, most of which were small
bugfixes. Not a prolific coder, Erik definitely cared about details,
often cleaning up after RMS himself.

# git-clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git
# cd emacs
# git log | grep 'Erik Naggum' | wc -l
176


Later,
Daniel

Barry Margolin

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Jun 25, 2009, 10:36:44 PM6/25/09
to
In article <4a442e6f$0$29136$6e1e...@read.cnntp.org>,
D Herring <dher...@at.tentpost.dot.com> wrote:

> Erik authored roughly 176 emacs commits, most of which were small
> bugfixes. Not a prolific coder, Erik definitely cared about details,
> often cleaning up after RMS himself.

Hmm, he could have been my evil twin. Although I didn't contribute to
any public software projects, that's the kind of stuff I've been good at
over the years in my professional life.

For several years I was the principle maintainer of Multics Emacs when I
worked for Honeywell (later Bull), and I cleaned up after BSG himself
quite a bit.

--
Barry Margolin, bar...@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***

magicus

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Jun 26, 2009, 7:15:07 PM6/26/09
to
On Thu Jun 25 2009 20:40:43 GMT-0400 (EDT) fft1976 <fft...@gmail.com>
typed:

> On Jun 25, 3:08 pm, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> fuck the American motherfuckers that are typically well-to-do WASPs
>
> Why do you hate white people?

I didn't see the original. It may be because I kill file idiots as soon
as I identify them as such. Then again perhaps I am being harsh, it
could be a forger...

ciao,
f

--
"A sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so
far devised."
-- Tom Robbins

George Neuner

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Jun 26, 2009, 9:47:26 PM6/26/09
to
On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:15:07 -0400, magicus <magi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Thu Jun 25 2009 20:40:43 GMT-0400 (EDT) fft1976 <fft...@gmail.com>
>typed:
>> On Jun 25, 3:08 pm, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> fuck the American motherfuckers that are typically well-to-do WASPs
>>
>> Why do you hate white people?
>
>I didn't see the original. It may be because I kill file idiots as soon
>as I identify them as such. Then again perhaps I am being harsh, it
>could be a forger...

Xah's off his meds again ... not that they ever worked well to begin
with. I've been following his rants for a couple of years now and
he's getting progressively more paranoid and neurotic.

George

Kenneth Tilton

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Jun 26, 2009, 10:26:37 PM6/26/09
to

That's funny, I see it exactly the opposite. And Xah's write-up was one
of the better I have seen on Erik.

kt

Xah Lee

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Jun 30, 2009, 5:04:29 PM6/30/09
to
> According to Wikipedia, Erik has contributed significantly to emacs.
> ...
> I have become a emacs lisp programer since 2006. I recall, in 2007 or
> so, out of boredom and curiosity, i tried to check what code Erik has
> put in emacs. My check is only casual and not in anyway thorough or as
> research, but i recall, all i can find on the surface is one obscure
> lisp package, i think it was related to date time format. (much of the
> hand-waving in this article will be solidified or corrected in the
> coming months, as i find more time to search my archive or check
> facts)


On Jun 25, 7:11 pm, D Herring <dherr...@at.tentpost.dot.com> wrote:
> Erik authored roughly 176 emacs commits, most of which were small
> bugfixes. Not a prolific coder, Erik definitely cared about details,
> often cleaning up after RMS himself.
>
> # git-clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git
> # cd emacs
> # git log | grep 'Erik Naggum' | wc -l
> 176

Thanks for the info.

I've update my essay on Erik on this and there some other minor
editing work. Here's some of the more informative pieces on Erik.

* “Erik Naggum” (2009-06-20) by Luis Fernandes (aka elf). Source
(Luis is one of the person in emacs community i respect, for his love
of humanity. I think Luis is mostly known to public as the author of
Emacs Logo.)
http://www.elfworld.org/vis_dag.php?id=643

* “Erik Naggum, R.I.P.” (2009-06-24) by Kent Pitman Source (Kent
is a major figure in the Common Lisp community, most well known for
having co-authored many lisp standards or part of the design
committee. He also post frequently on comp.lang.lisp for as far as i
know over the past decade. (according to google, he's the all time
most frequent poster there as of today (2009-06). He and Erik used to
tie for the 1st or 2nd place over the years. Since Erik stopped
posting in 2004, Erik's is now all-time 5th.))
http://open.salon.com/blog/kent_pitman/2009/06/24/erik_naggum_rip

* “RIP, Erik Naggum” (2009-06-21) by “Xach” (aka Zach) Source
(Xach is a regular in the Common Lisp community. Of his commentary, he
collected and sorted some of Erik's writings.)
http://xach.livejournal.com/221433.html

* “My Dinner with Erik” (2009-06-26) by Ron Garret. Source (Ron
Garret (aka Erann Gat) was a frequent poster to comp.lang.lisp too,
most notable for his Common Lisp involvement at his work NASA. He is
one of the person who got into fights with Erik. Some of the most
abusive posts from Erik is directed at Ron. (Note: Erik has such
standing with a number of high profile lispers too, including, for
example, lead programers at Franz Lisp.))
http://rondam.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-dinner-with-erik.html

* “RIP Erik Naggum (1965-2009)” (2009-06-27) by Rolf Marvin Bøe
Lindgren. Source. (Erik's personal friend since highschool. This one
is interesting because it gives some glimpse of how Erik is in real
life.)
http://www.grendel.no/blog/2009/06/27/rip-erik-naggum-1965-2009/

* Wikipedia. Offers some summary of Erik's works.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum

* Emacs wiki. Offers some summary of Erik's contribution to emacs.
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ErikNaggum

Xah
http://xahlee.org/


Vassil Nikolov

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Jul 1, 2009, 12:16:34 AM7/1/09
to

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:04:29 -0700 (PDT), Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> said:
> ...

> Since Erik stopped posting in 2004, Erik's is now all-time 5th.

As far as <http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/about>'s
statistics are telling us as of this writing [*], and assuming none
of these "from" addresses were faked, Kenny Tilton has posted 6384
times on comp.lang.lisp, Pascal Costanza has posted 5191 times, Erik
Naggum 4877 times, and Kent Pitman 4127 times. Of course, there
isn't any good answer to "so what?" as a reaction to the above...

[*] "All time
4127 pit...@world.std.com
3768 ktil...@nyc.rr.com
3692 p...@informatimago.com
3126 p...@p-cos.net
2822 e...@naggum.no
2616 kentil...@gmail.com
2332 t...@cley.com
2277 r...@rpw3.org
2065 costa...@web.de
2055 e...@naggum.net"

---Vassil.


--
"Even when the muse is posting on Usenet, Alexander Sergeevich?"

Rob Warnock

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Jul 1, 2009, 5:07:38 AM7/1/09
to
Vassil Nikolov <vnik...@pobox.com> wrote:
+---------------

| As far as <http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/about>'s
| statistics are telling us as of this writing [*], and assuming none
| of these "from" addresses were faked, Kenny Tilton has posted 6384
| times on comp.lang.lisp, Pascal Costanza has posted 5191 times, Erik
| Naggum 4877 times, and Kent Pitman 4127 times. ...

| isn't any good answer to "so what?" as a reaction to the above...
| [*] "All time
| 4127 pit...@world.std.com
| 3768 ktil...@nyc.rr.com
| 3692 p...@informatimago.com
| 3126 p...@p-cos.net
| 2822 e...@naggum.no
| 2616 kentil...@gmail.com
| 2332 t...@cley.com
| 2277 r...@rpw3.org
| 2065 costa...@web.de
| 2055 e...@naggum.net"
+---------------

Several of those addresses are different only because they changed
at some point. Aggregating the well-known ones that are obviously
the same person, one gets this list instead:

6384 ktil...@nyc.rr.com / kentil...@gmail.com
5191 costa...@web.de / p...@p-cos.net
4877 e...@naggum.net / e...@naggum.no
4127 pit...@world.std.com
3692 p...@informatimago.com
2332 t...@cley.com
2277 r...@rpw3.org

But to do this "properly" would require starting with a *very* much
longer list, and then aggregating all of the obviously-identical people.


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607

Vassil Nikolov

unread,
Jul 1, 2009, 7:41:05 AM7/1/09
to

On Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:07:38 -0500, rp...@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) said:

> Vassil Nikolov <vnik...@pobox.com> wrote:
> +---------------

> | ...


> | Kenny Tilton has posted 6384
> | times on comp.lang.lisp, Pascal Costanza has posted 5191 times, Erik
> | Naggum 4877 times, and Kent Pitman 4127 times. ...

> | ...
> ...

Exactly.

> ...


> But to do this "properly" would require starting with a *very* much
> longer list, and then aggregating all of the obviously-identical people.

Definitely.

netsettler

unread,
Jul 2, 2009, 3:08:30 PM7/2/09
to
On Jul 1, 5:07 am, r...@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) wrote:

> | [*] "All time
> |     4127      pit...@world.std.com
> |     3768      ktil...@nyc.rr.com
> |     3692      p...@informatimago.com
> |     3126      p...@p-cos.net
> |     2822      e...@naggum.no
> |     2616      kentil...@gmail.com
> |     2332      t...@cley.com
> |     2277      r...@rpw3.org
> |     2065      costa...@web.de
> |     2055      e...@naggum.net"
> +---------------
>
> Several of those addresses are different only because they changed
> at some point. Aggregating the well-known ones that are obviously
> the same person, one gets this list instead:
>
>     6384   ktil...@nyc.rr.com / kentil...@gmail.com
>     5191   costa...@web.de / p...@p-cos.net
>     4877   e...@naggum.net / e...@naggum.no
>     4127   pit...@world.std.com
>     3692   p...@informatimago.com
>     2332   t...@cley.com
>     2277   r...@rpw3.org

My address changed to be my last name @nhplace.com at some point.

fortunatus

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Jul 2, 2009, 3:31:56 PM7/2/09
to


1: I don't find that text in Xah's post.

2: This statement has a strong qualification: the writer did not say
he slight all Americans, nor all motherfuckers, nor all well-to-do
folks, nor all WASPs. Only folks that are all of the above. I don't
conclude the writer "hates white people" from that.

Kenneth Tilton

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Jul 2, 2009, 4:08:26 PM7/2/09
to

You also must consider that Xah use "motherfucker" as a synonym for
"person", and that a Usenet post is no indicator of what a person feels.

kt

Tim Bradshaw

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Jul 2, 2009, 5:13:14 PM7/2/09
to
On 2009-07-01 10:07:38 +0100, rp...@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) said:

> But to do this "properly" would require starting with a *very* much
> longer list, and then aggregating all of the obviously-identical people.

Yes, for instance I had different addresses before around 1999, and
after around 2004 as well.

And of course Xah is actually me.

Xah Lee

unread,
Jul 2, 2009, 5:47:10 PM7/2/09
to
On Jul 2, 2:13 pm, Tim Bradshaw <t...@cley.com> wrote:

Thank you.

To add me too, me too have changed my address although i really don't
like that.

from 1995 to 2000, i'm x...@best.com in newsgroup posts, before i had
my own domain name.

from 2000 to about 2008, i'm x...@xahlee.org.

When google mail (gmail) came out, i have a account xah...@gmail.com.
But didn't use it until 2 or 3 years after. When google group came
out, i have x...@xahlee.org as the account name. Over the past decade,
google gradually rolled out now their tens of online services. (gmail,
blogger, orkut, picassa, google code, web master services, igoogle,
analytics, youtube... almost all doesn't provide a account merge at
least in the early years of the service. Sometimes, when there's a
major upgrade such as happened with blogger, they require you to
create a new account.) So, i end up with x...@xahlee.org or
xah...@gmail.com or others when using various google services, and has
to remember which is used on what, quite confusing and a pain in the
ass.

but got tired of switching or relogging my google group accounts, and
tried to consolidate it. So now my google newsgroup post is mostly
xah...@gmail.com.

Some misc notes regarding this:

Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2008 01:02:48 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: merge google accounts
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Accounts-API/browse_thread/thread/a179b4fd348900aa?tvc=2

Xah
http://xahlee.org/


Xah Lee

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Jul 2, 2009, 6:40:39 PM7/2/09
to
Xah Lee wrote:
> * “Erik Naggum” (2009-06-20) by Luis Fernandes (aka elf). Source
> http://www.elfworld.org/vis_dag.php?id=643

A correction from one of Erik's personal friend emailed to me.

the above article is not from Luis, it's by Hogne Bø Pettersen.

Xah
http://xahlee.org/


Miles Bader

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Jul 6, 2009, 4:24:05 AM7/6/09
to
Tim Bradshaw <t...@cley.com> writes:
> Yes, for instance I had different addresses before around 1999, and
> after around 2004 as well.
>
> And of course Xah is actually me.

I knew that foul mouth sounded familiar!

-Miles

--
"An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that
there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the
evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on
the werewolf question." [John McCarthy]

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