Is it fair for programmers to work long hours of overtime and not get
paid for the work? If you are a programmer who has been working for a
while you probably
know there can be some issues with not getting paid for overtime.
Companies can take advantage of programmers with the long hours needed
to complete projects.  If you feel you are having difficulty getting
paid for what you have
done, you are not alone. There are people out there who are willing to
lend a hand. Check out this site:
http://www.bigclassaction.com/class_action/computer.html
You can send them a complaint for free and they pass them along to
lawyers for evaluation.  This one seems to be specifically for
programmers who have worked for Computer Sciences Corporation.  There
is, however, lots of other info on the site that might be more to what
you need, but this is a currently hot subject. I hope this might help
somebody out.

kr0

Kent Ross wrote:

> Is it fair for programmers to work long hours of overtime and not get
> paid for the work?

It depends. Did you agree to do so when you joined the company?


-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Kent Ross wrote:

> Is it fair for programmers to work long hours of overtime and not get
> paid for the work?

Yes, in the U.S. they are in the "exempt" category.  Most exempt
employees are paid annually.  Most good companies will compensate
the exempt employees in other manners than money: flexible hours,
more vacation time, parties, etc.


> If you are a programmer who has been working for a
> while you probably
> know there can be some issues with not getting paid for overtime.
> Companies can take advantage of programmers with the long hours needed
> to complete projects.  If you feel you are having difficulty getting
> paid for what you have
> done, you are not alone.

The smarter "programmers" talk to their managers, then move on
to other companies if the issues are not resolved.  One can always
find a "better" company to work for.


> 
> kr0


-- 
Thomas Matthews

C++ newsgroup welcome message:
          http://www.slack.net/~shiva/welcome.txt
C++ Faq: http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite
C Faq:   http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/c-faq/top.html
alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++ faq:
          http://www.raos.demon.uk/acllc-c++/faq.html
Other sites:
     http://www.josuttis.com  -- C++ STL Library book

"Thomas Matthews" <Thomas_MatthewsHatesSpam@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message news:7dSpb.19516$LP7.5189@newssvr32.news.prodigy.com...
> Kent Ross wrote:
>
> > Is it fair for programmers to work long hours of overtime and not get
> > paid for the work?
>
> Yes, in the U.S. they are in the "exempt" category.

Actually, many of them are -not- exempt.

They are just incorrectly treated as exempt, by employers
who don't understand the Fair Labor Standards Act.

http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/

http://hr.compuserve.monster.com/articles/flsa/

Of course, the rules are up for a proposed change.

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 22:32:30 GMT, "Ron Ruble" <raffles2@att.net>
wrote:

>
>"Thomas Matthews" <Thomas_MatthewsHatesSpam@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message news:7dSpb.19516$LP7.5189@newssvr32.news.prodigy.com...
>> Kent Ross wrote:
>>
>> > Is it fair for programmers to work long hours of overtime and not get
>> > paid for the work?
>>
>> Yes, in the U.S. they are in the "exempt" category.
>
>Actually, many of them are -not- exempt.
>
>They are just incorrectly treated as exempt, by employers
>who don't understand the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Do you have documentation for that assertion? I've worked for and with
many organizations employing programmers, and all of those on the
exempt payroll qualified under the federal guidelines.
>
>http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/
>
>http://hr.compuserve.monster.com/articles/flsa/
>
>Of course, the rules are up for a proposed change.
>
>
>

-- 
Al Balmer
Balmer Consulting
removebalmerconsultingthis@att.net

Thomas Matthews wrote:
> 
.... snip ...
> 
> The smarter "programmers" talk to their managers, then move on
> to other companies if the issues are not resolved.  One can
> always find a "better" company to work for.

You haven't been looking for work in this wonderful (USA) Bush
economy, have you?

Annotation for the clueless - the above is sarcastic.

-- 
Chuck F (cbfalconer@yahoo.com) (cbfalconer@worldnet.att.net)
   Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
   <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>  USE worldnet address!

In article <3FA8200A.416D797E@yahoo.com>, cbfalconer@worldnet.att.net wrote:
>Thomas Matthews wrote:
>> 
>.... snip ...
>> 
>> The smarter "programmers" talk to their managers, then move on
>> to other companies if the issues are not resolved.  One can
>> always find a "better" company to work for.
>
>You haven't been looking for work in this wonderful (USA) Bush
>economy, have you?
>
>Annotation for the clueless - the above is sarcastic.

By all accounts the collapse of the Clinton Bubble - and the aftermath 
of a (moderately) devastating strategic attack that may well have been 
encouraged by Clinton's foreign policies, but would probably have 
happened anyway unless US policy had been markedly different over 
decades - seems to be nearing an end now.  Whether it has or not, 
there's no doubt that the current administration have been trying to 
stimulate the economy in the usual ways*, and with somewhat more success 
than in the wonderful EU economy.

Perhaps you follow Ed Nilges' thesis that Bush destroyed the US economy 
before the election by predicting economic trouble ahead.  This does get 
around the inconvenient timing of the recession, which began well before 
Bush entered office, around the time Al Qaeda were taking flying 
lessons, in fact.

*If low interest rates, tax cuts, a big drop in the currency, and even a 
war or two thrown in won't stimulate an economy, I don't know what will!

- Gerry Quinn

CBFalconer wrote:

> Thomas Matthews wrote:
> 
> ... snip ...
> 
>>The smarter "programmers" talk to their managers, then move on
>>to other companies if the issues are not resolved.  One can
>>always find a "better" company to work for.
> 
> 
> You haven't been looking for work in this wonderful (USA) Bush
> economy, have you?
> 
> Annotation for the clueless - the above is sarcastic.
> 

Actually, I've been closely monitoring the job situation.
When it improves, I want to move away from the East Coast, USA.
I really hate the damp, humid weather here as well as
the nameless streets and hanging traffic signals.

But, at least I have a job now.

-- 
Thomas Matthews

C++ newsgroup welcome message:
          http://www.slack.net/~shiva/welcome.txt
C++ Faq: http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite
C Faq:   http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/c-faq/top.html
alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++ faq:
          http://www.raos.demon.uk/acllc-c++/faq.html
Other sites:
     http://www.josuttis.com  -- C++ STL Library book

gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message news:<BA5qb.4358$bD.16733@news.indigo.ie>...
> In article <3FA8200A.416D797E@yahoo.com>, cbfalconer@worldnet.att.net wrote:
> >Thomas Matthews wrote:
> >> 
>  .... snip ...
> >> 
> >> The smarter "programmers" talk to their managers, then move on
> >> to other companies if the issues are not resolved.  One can
> >> always find a "better" company to work for.
> >
> >You haven't been looking for work in this wonderful (USA) Bush
> >economy, have you?
> >
> >Annotation for the clueless - the above is sarcastic.
> 
> By all accounts the collapse of the Clinton Bubble - and the aftermath 
> of a (moderately) devastating strategic attack that may well have been 
> encouraged by Clinton's foreign policies, but would probably have 
> happened anyway unless US policy had been markedly different over 
> decades - seems to be nearing an end now.  Whether it has or not, 
> there's no doubt that the current administration have been trying to 
> stimulate the economy in the usual ways*, and with somewhat more success 
> than in the wonderful EU economy.
> 
> Perhaps you follow Ed Nilges' thesis that Bush destroyed the US economy 
> before the election by predicting economic trouble ahead.  This does get 
> around the inconvenient timing of the recession, which began well before 

This is false by any measure. Economists in fact agree that the
recession began in March 2001 and ended in November 2001.

Of course, the actual recognition and dating of the recession is in
part a political act (it being impossible not to inject some form of
politics into discussions of such a topic as economics.) For this
reason, subsequent and more liberal economists MAY define the period
2001..2010 as another Great Depression, depending on whether the
economy stays in decline. You cannot recognize the shape of the curve,
whether it has negative "sag" or positive inflection, until the actual
data is in.

However, there was apolitical agreement that a recession is the
decline, in GDP, for two subsequent quarters and this DID NOT OCCUR
prior to 2001, by which time Bush had had a change to work on the
economy, and, destroy it with his big and very stupid mouth.

Although inflation was not a problem at the height of the Clinton
boom, Bush said the economy was overheating. This was a lie if
"overheating" implies inflation, and what Bush MEANT was that the
"reserve army of the unemployed" was disappearing. What Bush meant was
that ordinary people (including my Visual Basic students at DeVry) had
HOPE for a change.  What Bush meant was that it was basically unseemly
that ordinary people living in Cabrini Green were starting businesses
in the neighborhood owned by them and not outsiders.

There was a tech crash in April 2000 but this was none of Clinton's
doing. Instead it was a needed corrective to the entry, into
technology, of speculators and of criminals who destroyed real
companies with vaporware announcements, and who laid off good
engineers at H-P and Nortel at the height of the boom without even
knowing what those engineers DID. Who like Carly Fiorina destroyed
productive divisions of companies including the calculator division of
H-P merely because what the division produced seemed somehow not
fashionable, not something that could be advertised in Vanity
Fair...despite the utility of handheld calculators to people who do
hard and dangerous engineering jobs, in the field and away from
connection to the internet.

Since economists agree that a recession necessarily involves a GDP
decline, and since the decline did not happen until March 2001, this
PROVES that Bush deliberately talked down an economy that was
"overheated" ONLY by the standards of a person who does not himself
work for a living, who does not know what a supermarket scanner does,
how to set up an Excel spreadsheet, or program an H-P 48, but instead
depends upon bond income. This person needs an economy in which people
without his advantages are willing to work (as shop clerks and hotel
bellhops, for example) hard for him, and to be grateful when the
wealthy throw him a bone.

John Kenneth Galbraith identifies this unpleasant class of people as
the people who, during the Great Depression, liked the fact that
shopclerks were polite. They were polite because they were desparate,
and THIS is the type of basically unAmerican economy that Bush and Co.
wanted to bring about. They've succeeded.

> Bush entered office, around the time Al Qaeda were taking flying 
> lessons, in fact.
> 
> *If low interest rates, tax cuts, a big drop in the currency, and even a 

There is still no longterm reason why the wealthy will not spend the
tax cuts on unproductive ventures or even just pocket it for a rainy
day.

> war or two thrown in won't stimulate an economy, I don't know what will!
> 
> - Gerry Quinn

Greetings.

In article <7dSpb.19516$LP7.5189@newssvr32.news.prodigy.com>, Thomas
Matthews wrote:
>> Is it fair for programmers to work long hours of overtime and not get
>> paid for the work?
> 
> The smarter "programmers" talk to their managers, then move on
> to other companies if the issues are not resolved.  One can always
> find a "better" company to work for.

Perhaps one day a group of even smarter programmers will form a labour
union.

-- 
   _
  _V.-o  Tristan Miller [en,(fr,de,ia)]  ><  Space is limited
 / |`-'  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=  <>  In a haiku, so it's hard
(7_\\    http://www.nothingisreal.com/   ><  To finish what you

"Alan Balmer" <albalmer@att.net> wrote in message
news:stagqv0svdt4t8smsr6949s1bfdvdsiq91@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 22:32:30 GMT, "Ron Ruble" <raffles2@att.net>
> wrote:
> >Actually, many of them are -not- exempt.
> >
> >They are just incorrectly treated as exempt, by employers
> >who don't understand the Fair Labor Standards Act.
>
> Do you have documentation for that assertion? I've worked for and with
> many organizations employing programmers, and all of those on the
> exempt payroll qualified under the federal guidelines.
> removebalmerconsultingthis@att.net

For starters, to avoid having to qualify under the various "tests"
(such as managing x number of subordinates, etc.) you have to
paid a certain amount. (I believe it was last set at around $57,000
per year.) That amount qualifies you as exempt under the special
rules for IT workers. This is all in the government rules. (The
proposed rules changes probably won't affect IT workers, either
way.)

Not making that much doesn't mean you can't be exempt, but it
raises the bar to qualify (and I know a lot of the jobs I held at
wages less than that wouldn't have qualified). -Wm

On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 14:59:29 -0600, "William" <Reply@NewsGroup.Please>
wrote:

>"Alan Balmer" <albalmer@att.net> wrote in message
>news:stagqv0svdt4t8smsr6949s1bfdvdsiq91@4ax.com...
>> On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 22:32:30 GMT, "Ron Ruble" <raffles2@att.net>
>> wrote:
>> >Actually, many of them are -not- exempt.
>> >
>> >They are just incorrectly treated as exempt, by employers
>> >who don't understand the Fair Labor Standards Act.
>>
>> Do you have documentation for that assertion? I've worked for and with
>> many organizations employing programmers, and all of those on the
>> exempt payroll qualified under the federal guidelines.
>> removebalmerconsultingthis@att.net
>
>For starters, to avoid having to qualify under the various "tests"
>(such as managing x number of subordinates, etc.) 

which are only for executive employees.

> you have to
>paid a certain amount. (I believe it was last set at around $57,000
>per year.) That amount qualifies you as exempt under the special
>rules for IT workers. This is all in the government rules. (The
>proposed rules changes probably won't affect IT workers, either
>way.)

The amount is $250.00 per week, or $27.63 per hour (with no guarantee
of the number of hours.) The new regulations will bring it up to
$425.00 per week.

One thing I find interesting is that the new regulations delete the
requirement that an exempt computer employee "must consistently
exercise discretion and judgment."
>
>Not making that much doesn't mean you can't be exempt, but it
>raises the bar to qualify (and I know a lot of the jobs I held at
>wages less than that wouldn't have qualified). -Wm
>
>

-- 
Al Balmer
Balmer Consulting
removebalmerconsultingthis@att.net

"Gerry Quinn" <gerryq@indigo.ie> wrote in message
news:BA5qb.4358$bD.16733@news.indigo.ie...
>
> By all accounts the collapse of the Clinton Bubble - and the aftermath
> of a (moderately) devastating strategic attack that may well have been
> encouraged by Clinton's foreign policies,

You mean like the Clinton administration's focus on Al Queda?
(Largely ignored by the incoming Bush administration right up
until September 11th, 2001 despite attempts by the outgoing
administration's attempts to pass along the collected, and disturbing,
information about Al Queda. In fact, Bush's people were still turning
down FBI requests for more anti-terrorism funding just a day or two
before then.) -Wm

"Alan Balmer" <albalmer@att.net> wrote in message
news:fstiqv4hq0vfs50h880daaqnrseh8c5rp9@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 14:59:29 -0600, "William" <Reply@NewsGroup.Please>
> wrote:
> >
> >For starters, to avoid having to qualify under the various "tests"
> >(such as managing x number of subordinates, etc.)
>
> which are only for executive employees.

No, that's not true. (The qualifications are scattered throughout the
old rule - one of the things that was to be fixed in the proposed
rules changes.) There are several categories. We fall under the
IT workers category - which is a special case added under pressure
from the IT related industries. But that only applies above a certain
income level (see below). Below that level the tests apply (there are
several and some are a bit vague).

> > you have to
> >paid a certain amount. (I believe it was last set at around $57,000
> >per year.) That amount qualifies you as exempt under the special
> >rules for IT workers. This is all in the government rules. (The
> >proposed rules changes probably won't affect IT workers, either
> >way.)
>
> The amount is $250.00 per week, or $27.63 per hour (with no guarantee
> of the number of hours.) The new regulations will bring it up to
> $425.00 per week.

You're mixing two different categories. (Obviously $27.63/hr is NOT
$250 a week.) The amount was set at 6.5 times the minimum wage in the
case of IT workers. Minimum wage was $4.25 or $27.63 an hour, which
is about $57,470 a year (2080 work hours per year, including holidays
and vacation). The $250/$425 figures are part of the rules for those who
don't meet the IT category requirements.

Below the $57K mark, IT workers earn enough to fall under the
"short test" for exemption along with nearly everyone else. (The new
rules would apply a single test under the logic that the "long test" was no
longer applied since it's wage level was easily exceeded by anyone
working full time.)

A couple of months back I actually managed to read 90% of the
proposed rule changes without falling asleep. (The historical parts are
kind of interesting.) -Wm

On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 17:11:36 -0600, "William" <Reply@NewsGroup.Please>
wrote:

>"Alan Balmer" <albalmer@att.net> wrote in message
>news:fstiqv4hq0vfs50h880daaqnrseh8c5rp9@4ax.com...
>> On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 14:59:29 -0600, "William" <Reply@NewsGroup.Please>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >For starters, to avoid having to qualify under the various "tests"
>> >(such as managing x number of subordinates, etc.)
>>
>> which are only for executive employees.
>
>No, that's not true. (The qualifications are scattered throughout the
>old rule - one of the things that was to be fixed in the proposed
>rules changes.) There are several categories.

Yes, and as I read it, the "employees managed" criteria applies to the
"executive employee" category.

> We fall under the
>IT workers category - which is a special case added under pressure
>from the IT related industries. But that only applies above a certain
>income level (see below). Below that level the tests apply (there are
>several and some are a bit vague).
>
>> > you have to
>> >paid a certain amount. (I believe it was last set at around $57,000
>> >per year.) That amount qualifies you as exempt under the special
>> >rules for IT workers. This is all in the government rules. (The
>> >proposed rules changes probably won't affect IT workers, either
>> >way.)
>>
>> The amount is $250.00 per week, or $27.63 per hour (with no guarantee
>> of the number of hours.) The new regulations will bring it up to
>> $425.00 per week.
>
>You're mixing two different categories. (Obviously $27.63/hr is NOT
>$250 a week.) 

I'm not "mixing" the two categories, I mentioned both of them. When
you try to  relate 27.63/hr to 250/week, *you're* mixing the
categories.  Employees can work for a salary (must be at least
$250/week) OR for an hourly wage (must be $27.63/hr.) Employers
normally put full-time employees on salary, whereas a W-2 "contractor"
may be hired for 4 hours a week and must be paid 27.63/hour to be
called exempt.

>The amount was set at 6.5 times the minimum wage in the
>case of IT workers.
The hourly rate only Originally. Later changed to a fixed amount.

> Minimum wage was $4.25 or $27.63 an hour, which
>is about $57,470 a year (2080 work hours per year, including holidays
>and vacation). The $250/$425 figures are part of the rules for those who
>don't meet the IT category requirements.
>
>Below the $57K mark, IT workers earn enough to fall under the
>"short test" for exemption along with nearly everyone else.

Which was my original contention - practically all IT workers are
exempt, and legally so.

-- 
Al Balmer
Balmer Consulting
removebalmerconsultingthis@att.net

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 07:09:27 +0000 (UTC), Richard Heathfield
<dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote:

>Kent Ross wrote:
>
>> Is it fair for programmers to work long hours of overtime and not get
>> paid for the work?
>
>It depends. Did you agree to do so when you joined the company?
I never so the original post, so I will reply here.

In my opinion it depends.
In many jobs there are just times when things go wrong. In those
cases if overtime needs to be done, then overtime needs to be done.

On other circumstances the boss is asking you to do overtime so
he can take advantage. For example, a boss may get three people
to do the work of four and save salary. Or he may have hired
a son in law who always screws up and makes more work for everyone
else.

In cases like that I believe it is your judgement. In the first case
for example, I would not work overtime. But keep in mind that if you
refuse you might get fired. If your not willing to live with that
then...

spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311050920.2d982151@posting.google.com>...
> gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message news:<BA5qb.4358$bD.16733@news.indigo.ie>...
> > In article <3FA8200A.416D797E@yahoo.com>, cbfalconer@worldnet.att.net wrote:
> > >Thomas Matthews wrote:
> > >> 
>  .... snip ...
> > >> 
> > >> The smarter "programmers" talk to their managers, then move on
> > >> to other companies if the issues are not resolved.  One can
> > >> always find a "better" company to work for.
> > >
> > >You haven't been looking for work in this wonderful (USA) Bush
> > >economy, have you?
> > >
> > >Annotation for the clueless - the above is sarcastic.
> > 
> > By all accounts the collapse of the Clinton Bubble - and the aftermath 
> > of a (moderately) devastating strategic attack that may well have been 
> > encouraged by Clinton's foreign policies, but would probably have 
> > happened anyway unless US policy had been markedly different over 
> > decades - seems to be nearing an end now.  Whether it has or not, 
> > there's no doubt that the current administration have been trying to 
> > stimulate the economy in the usual ways*, and with somewhat more success 
> > than in the wonderful EU economy.
> > 
> > Perhaps you follow Ed Nilges' thesis that Bush destroyed the US economy 
> > before the election by predicting economic trouble ahead.  This does get 
> > around the inconvenient timing of the recession, which began well before 
> 
> This is false by any measure. Economists in fact agree that the
> recession began in March 2001 and ended in November 2001.
> 
> Of course, the actual recognition and dating of the recession is in
> part a political act (it being impossible not to inject some form of
> politics into discussions of such a topic as economics.)

Indeed, it should be properly called "political economy", which I
think addresses the inseperability of politics (of some kind) and
economics (of any kind).

> However, there was apolitical agreement that a recession is the
> decline, in GDP, for two subsequent quarters and this DID NOT OCCUR
> prior to 2001, by which time Bush had had a change to work on the
> economy, and, destroy it with his big and very stupid mouth.

I tend to doubt the capacity of a single president to so affect the US
economy, hence i tend to remin skeptical about the Clinton=good
economy, Bush=bad economy theory.  Generally, politicians steer the
economy in the same way as an oarsman steers a raft in rapid waters -
lots of overt movement, but more limited actual influence.

Indeed, whether they *should* have lots of influence over the general
economy is a broader question still:

"The statesman who should attempt to direct people in what manner they
ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a
most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely
be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate
whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a
man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to
exercise it."  (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations)

Of course, that can go for the few irresponsible board's of large
corporations we've seen collapse of late, too.

> There was a tech crash in April 2000 but this was none of Clinton's
> doing. Instead it was a needed corrective to the entry, into
> technology, of speculators and of criminals who destroyed real
> companies with vaporware announcements, and who laid off good
> engineers at H-P and Nortel at the height of the boom without even
> knowing what those engineers DID. Who like Carly Fiorina destroyed
> productive divisions of companies including the calculator division of
> H-P merely because what the division produced seemed somehow not
> fashionable, not something that could be advertised in Vanity
> Fair...despite the utility of handheld calculators to people who do
> hard and dangerous engineering jobs, in the field and away from
> connection to the internet.

http://www.hp.com/calculators/articles/49gpluspr.html

New HP calculator, October 2003.

But they don't develop them, themselves, anymore according to
http://www.hpcalc.org/

The utility of calculators to those engineers continues to be
recognised by many other companies too.

programmable ones seem to be fairly popular too.  some regulars have
posted their experiences programming them here, IIRC.

[comments on the new 'landed gentry' snipped]

> There is still no longterm reason why the wealthy will not spend the
> tax cuts on unproductive ventures or even just pocket it for a rainy
> day.

I think the hope is that they 'pocket' it by investing in companies,
ones that make calculators perhaps, at least that the banks they put
it in do so.

Unproductive activities would include wrecking the IT industry with
more speculation and vaporcorops though.

In article <f5dda427.0311050920.2d982151@posting.google.com>, spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
>gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message
>> 
>> By all accounts the collapse of the Clinton Bubble - and the aftermath 
>> of a (moderately) devastating strategic attack that may well have been 
>> encouraged by Clinton's foreign policies, but would probably have 
>> happened anyway unless US policy had been markedly different over 
>> decades - seems to be nearing an end now.  Whether it has or not, 
>> there's no doubt that the current administration have been trying to 
>> stimulate the economy in the usual ways*, and with somewhat more success 
>> than in the wonderful EU economy.
>> 
>> Perhaps you follow Ed Nilges' thesis that Bush destroyed the US economy 
>> before the election by predicting economic trouble ahead.  This does get 
>> around the inconvenient timing of the recession, which began well before 
>
>This is false by any measure. Economists in fact agree that the
>recession began in March 2001 and ended in November 2001.

The world economy has been going through a moderately stormy patch for 
some time - I don't think anyone disputes that.  Interestingly, the 
standard recession criteria haven't really flagged up anything much. Of 
course there have been considerably worse economic storms from time to 
time (assuming we're on the way out of this one, there's no guarantee 
of that yet).

It is disingenuous of you to point to such technical criteria.  A google 
search for the post or posts by you to which I alluded quickly turns up 
the following quotation:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=f5dda427.
0212261455.57723b43%
>Bush deliberately talked the economy
>into America's New Depression precisely because by 1999 ordinary
>computer programmers were beginning to get uppity and were talking
>back to the boss

That's you from December last I'm quoting, Ed, so stop the silliness..

[No point responding to following content.]

>> *If low interest rates, tax cuts, a big drop in the currency, and even a 
>
>There is still no longterm reason why the wealthy will not spend the
>tax cuts on unproductive ventures or even just pocket it for a rainy
>day.

Tax cuts are like that - they let people decide what to do with their 
own money.  Again you are being disingenuous, however - there is a 
well-recognised tendency for the better-off to put money into productive 
investments whereas the poor may spend a greater proportion of any 
windfall on Chinese imports in Wal-Mart.  

Tax cuts do have a tendency to be good for the better off - they pay 
more tax, after all.  Even God can't legislate against simple 
arithmetic.

- Gerry Quinn

>> war or two thrown in won't stimulate an economy, I don't know what will!
>> 
>> - Gerry Quinn

In article <foudnQYkG6P64TSiRVn-uA@giganews.com>, "William" <Reply@NewsGroup.Please> wrote:
>"Gerry Quinn" <gerryq@indigo.ie> wrote in message
>news:BA5qb.4358$bD.16733@news.indigo.ie...
>>
>> By all accounts the collapse of the Clinton Bubble - and the aftermath
>> of a (moderately) devastating strategic attack that may well have been
>> encouraged by Clinton's foreign policies,
>
>You mean like the Clinton administration's focus on Al Queda?

I'm thinking more about Somalia, and a perception in certain 
quarters that the US was a paper tiger, incapable of an effective 
military response to an outrage like 9/11.

But as I said, I'm not blaming Clinton directly.  What I do know, 
though, is that plans for 9/11 were well in train by the time Clinton 
left office.

Funny when you think of it, though: If you fear that Bush will leave 
office with the US economy collapsing, Palestine in flames, and 
terrorists plotting devastating suicide attacks - you are fearing that 
he'll leave it as Clinton did!

- Gerry Quinn

"Alan Balmer" <albalmer@att.net> wrote in message
news:f42jqvophrv09lr56j5n1qdihmgsh4njv0@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 17:11:36 -0600, "William" <Reply@NewsGroup.Please>
> wrote:
>
>
> Yes, and as I read it, the "employees managed" criteria applies to the
> "executive employee" category.

That's only one of the tests. The others including setting your own
hours, defining how a job gets done, etc.

> >> The amount is $250.00 per week, or $27.63 per hour (with no guarantee
> >> of the number of hours.) The new regulations will bring it up to
> >> $425.00 per week.
> >
> >You're mixing two different categories. (Obviously $27.63/hr is NOT
> >$250 a week.)
> I'm not "mixing" the two categories, I mentioned both of them. When
> you try to  relate 27.63/hr to 250/week, *you're* mixing the
> categories.

I read the "or $27.63" as an appositive clause because of the comma,
sorry.

> Employees can work for a salary (must be at least
> $250/week) OR for an hourly wage (must be $27.63/hr.)

Earning $250 a week does not automatically make you elgible for
exempt status, it just makes you elgible for the "short test" for
eligibility. You can beat $250 a week flipping burgers, but that
doesn't allow them to make you an exempt employee. If you don't
meet the other criteria the law says you are not exempt. On the
other hand, if you make the equivalent of $27.63 an hour, you are
exempt.

> Employers normally put full-time employees on salary, whereas a
> W-2 "contractor" may be hired for 4 hours a week and must be
> paid 27.63/hour to be called exempt.

Doesn't matter if they are on salary or not, if they don't qualify for
exempt status, they must be paid overtime based on the hour
equivalent. (That your pay does not vary from pay period to pay
period based on hours worked is one of the criteria - unless
commissions are involved - but not the only criteria.)

> >Below the $57K mark, IT workers earn enough to fall under the
> >"short test" for exemption along with nearly everyone else.
>
> Which was my original contention - practically all IT workers are
> exempt, and legally so.

They don't pay that much around here to most of the IT workers who
are being treated as exempt. They sure didn't throughout the 90's.
(Around 91 or 92, $25K a year was probably the average here in
Austin. I know that one company was considered outrageous because
it paid $50K to programmers.) -Wm

"TLOlczyk" <olczyk2002@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:gvikqvcg6siq5p30grs3e73320j3d535dt@4ax.com...
[...]
>
> On other circumstances the boss is asking you to do overtime so
> he can take advantage. For example, a boss may get three people
> to do the work of four and save salary.

This is exactly why the U.S. has an overtime law. It's not designed
to be fair to workers as much as it is designed to create jobs by
making it cheaper to hire additional people rather than force fewer
workers to work more hours. (Something I didn't know until I read
the historical section of the proposed rules change.) -Wm

"William" <Reply@NewsGroup.Please> wrote in message news:<foudnQYkG6P64TSiRVn-uA@giganews.com>...
> "Gerry Quinn" <gerryq@indigo.ie> wrote in message
> news:BA5qb.4358$bD.16733@news.indigo.ie...
> >
> > By all accounts the collapse of the Clinton Bubble - and the aftermath
> > of a (moderately) devastating strategic attack that may well have been
> > encouraged by Clinton's foreign policies,
> 
> You mean like the Clinton administration's focus on Al Queda?
> (Largely ignored by the incoming Bush administration right up
> until September 11th, 2001 despite attempts by the outgoing
> administration's attempts to pass along the collected, and disturbing,
> information about Al Queda. In fact, Bush's people were still turning
> down FBI requests for more anti-terrorism funding just a day or two
> before then.) -Wm

Colleen Rowley testified before Congress in 2002 that the data base
she used to track suspects could not perform And and Or queries.
Somehow, this example of mismanagement appears to me very similar to
the practice of conservatives, who, it appears to me, use digital
technology in ways suboptimal for all purposes EXCEPT a core set of
goals, which are, in most organizations, a well kept secret.

And, I can well imagine some hotshot programmer at Langley suggesting
that a simple in-house solution could implement a simple parser for
this type of query, and generate the subqueries, only to be told that
his suggestion was somehow "disruptive".

The result seems to be 3000 dead.

William wrote:

> "Alan Balmer" <albalmer@att.net> wrote in message
> news:stagqv0svdt4t8smsr6949s1bfdvdsiq91@4ax.com...
> 
>>On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 22:32:30 GMT, "Ron Ruble" <raffles2@att.net>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>Actually, many of them are -not- exempt.
>>>
>>>They are just incorrectly treated as exempt, by employers
>>>who don't understand the Fair Labor Standards Act.
>>
>>Do you have documentation for that assertion? I've worked for and with
>>many organizations employing programmers, and all of those on the
>>exempt payroll qualified under the federal guidelines.
>>removebalmerconsultingthis@att.net
> 
> 
> For starters, to avoid having to qualify under the various "tests"
> (such as managing x number of subordinates, etc.) you have to
> paid a certain amount. (I believe it was last set at around $57,000
> per year.) That amount qualifies you as exempt under the special
> rules for IT workers. This is all in the government rules. (The
> proposed rules changes probably won't affect IT workers, either
> way.)
> 
> Not making that much doesn't mean you can't be exempt, but it
> raises the bar to qualify (and I know a lot of the jobs I held at
> wages less than that wouldn't have qualified). -Wm
> 

But what if you are a programmer, but not an IT worker?

-- 
Thomas Matthews

C++ newsgroup welcome message:
          http://www.slack.net/~shiva/welcome.txt
C++ Faq: http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite
C Faq:   http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/c-faq/top.html
alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++ faq:
          http://www.raos.demon.uk/acllc-c++/faq.html
Other sites:
     http://www.josuttis.com  -- C++ STL Library book

On Thu, 06 Nov 2003 18:42:32 GMT, Thomas Matthews
<Thomas_MatthewsHatesSpam@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>William wrote:
>
>> "Alan Balmer" <albalmer@att.net> wrote in message
>> news:stagqv0svdt4t8smsr6949s1bfdvdsiq91@4ax.com...
>> 
>>>On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 22:32:30 GMT, "Ron Ruble" <raffles2@att.net>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>>Actually, many of them are -not- exempt.
<snip>
>> per year.) That amount qualifies you as exempt under the special
>> rules for IT workers. This is all in the government rules. (The
>> proposed rules changes probably won't affect IT workers, either
>> way.)
>> 
>> Not making that much doesn't mean you can't be exempt, but it
>> raises the bar to qualify (and I know a lot of the jobs I held at
>> wages less than that wouldn't have qualified). -Wm
>> 
>
>But what if you are a programmer, but not an IT worker?

Actually, the government rules refer to "computer employees", not "IT
workers." 

-- 
Al Balmer
Balmer Consulting
removebalmerconsultingthis@att.net

gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message news:<8euqb.4627$bD.17301@news.indigo.ie>...
> In article <f5dda427.0311050920.2d982151@posting.google.com>, spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
> >gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message
> >> 
> >> By all accounts the collapse of the Clinton Bubble - and the aftermath 
> >> of a (moderately) devastating strategic attack that may well have been 
> >> encouraged by Clinton's foreign policies, but would probably have 
> >> happened anyway unless US policy had been markedly different over 
> >> decades - seems to be nearing an end now.  Whether it has or not, 
> >> there's no doubt that the current administration have been trying to 
> >> stimulate the economy in the usual ways*, and with somewhat more success 
> >> than in the wonderful EU economy.
> >> 
> >> Perhaps you follow Ed Nilges' thesis that Bush destroyed the US economy 
> >> before the election by predicting economic trouble ahead.  This does get 
> >> around the inconvenient timing of the recession, which began well before 
> >
> >This is false by any measure. Economists in fact agree that the
> >recession began in March 2001 and ended in November 2001.
> 
> The world economy has been going through a moderately stormy patch for 
> some time - I don't think anyone disputes that.  Interestingly, the 
> standard recession criteria haven't really flagged up anything much. Of 
> course there have been considerably worse economic storms from time to 
> time (assuming we're on the way out of this one, there's no guarantee 
> of that yet).
> 
> It is disingenuous of you to point to such technical criteria.  A google 
> search for the post or posts by you to which I alluded quickly turns up 
> the following quotation:
> http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=f5dda427.
> 0212261455.57723b43%
> >Bush deliberately talked the economy
> >into America's New Depression precisely because by 1999 ordinary
> >computer programmers were beginning to get uppity and were talking
> >back to the boss
> 
> That's you from December last I'm quoting, Ed, so stop the silliness..

Gerry you silly man. You need to reread.

The quote is completely consistent with what I posted yesterday. In
1999, labor was getting uppity. Bush was placed in office (not,
actually, elected) because of the 1999 phenomenon of "negative"
unemployment which was constituted in the fact that software managers,
and other employers, could not fill openings.

This of course has nothing to do with technical criteria for
recessions.

Also, you messed up the link.


> 
> [No point responding to following content.]
> 
> >> *If low interest rates, tax cuts, a big drop in the currency, and even a 
> >
> >There is still no longterm reason why the wealthy will not spend the
> >tax cuts on unproductive ventures or even just pocket it for a rainy
> >day.
> 
> Tax cuts are like that - they let people decide what to do with their 
> own money.  Again you are being disingenuous, however - there is a 

Any number of jurists and economists have pointed out the fallacy, of
regarding your gross pay as your own money. It is NOT your money,
buddy-boy, until it is converted to net pay.

Next time you go to the currency exchange to repay your payday loan,
try to get the gross and not the net amount and you will understand
me.

This is because absent legal and physical infrastructure you would not
have a job in the first place. Quite apart from the rights and wrongs
of our presence in Iraq, our job is to create an environment in which
Iraqi Joe can get to work.

As should be obvious this COSTS MONEY in the form of roads, police
protection, etc., and if the working person cannot pay for his share
in some fashion, where do you think the infrastructure would come
from?

> well-recognised tendency for the better-off to put money into productive 
> investments whereas the poor may spend a greater proportion of any 
> windfall on Chinese imports in Wal-Mart.  
>
Whatever you say. What sort of fantasy land do you live in? 

Turnbull and Asser makes shirts which cost 200.00 at Needless Markup
(Neiman-Marcus). Many wealthy men make it a practice to buy
exclusively from Turnbull and Asser and the shirts are immediately
recognizable.

They typically have striped and colorful designs, derived from Art
Deco, and you often see prestige men wearing these shirts...when there
is no reason they could not get a shirt of equivalent quality from
Brooks Brothers or Ross.

Each Turnbull and Asser shirt is of such a unique pattern and shading
that in effect you have to buy a matching tie...for about
125.00...from T & A.

This is but one example of how the rich in fact waste money on luxury
goods, and it happens to be in the interest of the vendor of the
luxury to create what an economist calls "elastic" demand to replace,
wherever possible, and "inelastic" demand. The ordinary demand for
men's shirts is inelastic because a real man doesn't NEED more than
five simple white and blue shirts, therefore T & A creates an
(irrational) market by incrementally increasing the quality of the
shirt.

However, even if it uses top grade Egyptian cotton, and sweats
filipino seamstresses to hand-stitch the product, it still hasn't
differentiated the shirt sufficiently to create an elastic demand. On
top of this it creates an irrational "prestige" factor.

There are in fact countless examples of the ways in which the rich
waste money (cf. Thorstein Veblen for starters). Whereas, in an almost
tautologous fashion, the poor concentrate their spending on real
needs, such as ramen noodles.


 
> Tax cuts do have a tendency to be good for the better off - they pay 
> more tax, after all.  Even God can't legislate against simple 
> arithmetic.

Which of course constitutes an argument against them, for in fact most
Americans, without being necessarily conscious of the fact, are
egalitarians who believe that in the long run, social inequality
should be reduced.

It is in other words profoundly IRRATIONAL to set social mechanisms to
the task of making the rich richer. This is because this makes the
poor poorer, and it also destroys any implicit social contract. It
creates poor people who are indeed ready for at a minimum union bloody
mindedness (of the sort that ruined Britain in 1979) and at a maximum
for a Paris commune.

This happens to be why wealthy people with brains, including George
Soros, Bill Gates, and his father, have spoken out against excessive
tax cutting. They know that the long term result, even in America, of
continual downsizing will be the creation of a new class of
desparadoes, ready to have a go at a return to the wars over water and
grazing land that occured during the Gilded age, or the NY draft
riots, or the Paris Commune.

Conservatives are sowing the wind and will reap the whirlwind.


> 
> - Gerry Quinn
> 
> >> war or two thrown in won't stimulate an economy, I don't know what will!
> >> 
> >> - Gerry Quinn

gswork@mailcity.com (gswork) wrote in message news:<81f33a98.0311060537.7b1efb05@posting.google.com>...
> spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311050920.2d982151@posting.google.com>...
> > gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message news:<BA5qb.4358$bD.16733@news.indigo.ie>...
> > > In article <3FA8200A.416D797E@yahoo.com>, cbfalconer@worldnet.att.net wrote:
> > > >Thomas Matthews wrote:
> > > >> 
>  .... snip ...
> > > >> 
> > > >> The smarter "programmers" talk to their managers, then move on
> > > >> to other companies if the issues are not resolved.  One can
> > > >> always find a "better" company to work for.
> > > >
> > > >You haven't been looking for work in this wonderful (USA) Bush
> > > >economy, have you?
> > > >
> > > >Annotation for the clueless - the above is sarcastic.
> > > 
> > > By all accounts the collapse of the Clinton Bubble - and the aftermath 
> > > of a (moderately) devastating strategic attack that may well have been 
> > > encouraged by Clinton's foreign policies, but would probably have 
> > > happened anyway unless US policy had been markedly different over 
> > > decades - seems to be nearing an end now.  Whether it has or not, 
> > > there's no doubt that the current administration have been trying to 
> > > stimulate the economy in the usual ways*, and with somewhat more success 
> > > than in the wonderful EU economy.
> > > 
> > > Perhaps you follow Ed Nilges' thesis that Bush destroyed the US economy 
> > > before the election by predicting economic trouble ahead.  This does get 
> > > around the inconvenient timing of the recession, which began well before 
> > 
> > This is false by any measure. Economists in fact agree that the
> > recession began in March 2001 and ended in November 2001.
> > 
> > Of course, the actual recognition and dating of the recession is in
> > part a political act (it being impossible not to inject some form of
> > politics into discussions of such a topic as economics.)
> 
> Indeed, it should be properly called "political economy", which I
> think addresses the inseperability of politics (of some kind) and
> economics (of any kind).
> 
> > However, there was apolitical agreement that a recession is the
> > decline, in GDP, for two subsequent quarters and this DID NOT OCCUR
> > prior to 2001, by which time Bush had had a change to work on the
> > economy, and, destroy it with his big and very stupid mouth.
> 
> I tend to doubt the capacity of a single president to so affect the US
> economy, hence i tend to remin skeptical about the Clinton=good
> economy, Bush=bad economy theory.  Generally, politicians steer the
> economy in the same way as an oarsman steers a raft in rapid waters -
> lots of overt movement, but more limited actual influence.

It remains inescapable that Clinton ELIMINATED the Bush I deficit, and
Bush II MonkeyBoy recreated it.

> 
> Indeed, whether they *should* have lots of influence over the general
> economy is a broader question still:
> 
> "The statesman who should attempt to direct people in what manner they
> ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a
> most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely
> be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate
> whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a
> man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to
> exercise it."  (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations)
>
Bush II MonkeyBoy's military Keynesianism violates this.
 
> Of course, that can go for the few irresponsible board's of large
> corporations we've seen collapse of late, too.
> 
> > There was a tech crash in April 2000 but this was none of Clinton's
> > doing. Instead it was a needed corrective to the entry, into
> > technology, of speculators and of criminals who destroyed real
> > companies with vaporware announcements, and who laid off good
> > engineers at H-P and Nortel at the height of the boom without even
> > knowing what those engineers DID. Who like Carly Fiorina destroyed
> > productive divisions of companies including the calculator division of
> > H-P merely because what the division produced seemed somehow not
> > fashionable, not something that could be advertised in Vanity
> > Fair...despite the utility of handheld calculators to people who do
> > hard and dangerous engineering jobs, in the field and away from
> > connection to the internet.
> 
> http://www.hp.com/calculators/articles/49gpluspr.html
> 
> New HP calculator, October 2003.
> 
> But they don't develop them, themselves, anymore according to
> http://www.hpcalc.org/
> 
> The utility of calculators to those engineers continues to be
> recognised by many other companies too.
> 
> programmable ones seem to be fairly popular too.  some regulars have
> posted their experiences programming them here, IIRC.

However, H-P is out of the business when that was its only real claim
to fame. Its printers basically suck and jam.

> 
> [comments on the new 'landed gentry' snipped]
> 
> > There is still no longterm reason why the wealthy will not spend the
> > tax cuts on unproductive ventures or even just pocket it for a rainy
> > day.
> 
> I think the hope is that they 'pocket' it by investing in companies,
> ones that make calculators perhaps, at least that the banks they put
> it in do so.

It is Carly's rage of course to be ultimately an investor and not a
maker. This is because people who MAKE things are so geeky, or dirty,
or both.

She to me is of the type of a generation of "feminist" women in
business, who ignored guys with dirty white shirts and pocket
protectors to basically suck up to older men.

I remember one creature of this persuasion who mocked the best
programmer in our company for wearing two different colors of socks.

Most people outgrow judging another in this way but corporate
feminists made a game of this sort of high-school teasing and as a
result good developers have fled major corporations.
> 
> Unproductive activities would include wrecking the IT industry with
> more speculation and vaporcorops though.

Fortunately, many of the money-mad players have fled because they
cannot make money to pursue Frankenstein foods and ecological doom
through biotech.

We never solved the issue of the mere complexity of software, so let's
move on to biology, which is even more complex! Yay!

Tristan Miller wrote:
> 
> Greetings.
> 
> In article <7dSpb.19516$LP7.5189@newssvr32.news.prodigy.com>, Thomas
> Matthews wrote:
> >> Is it fair for programmers to work long hours of overtime and not get
> >> paid for the work?
> >
> > The smarter "programmers" talk to their managers, then move on
> > to other companies if the issues are not resolved.  One can always
> > find a "better" company to work for.
> 
> Perhaps one day a group of even smarter programmers will form a labour
> union.
> 
But you'd have to show that programming was labor instead of fun.
Perhaps instead of a union, a guild. We are craftsmen and artisans are
we not? Certainly not laborers. :-)
-- 
Joe Wright                                 http://www.jw-wright.com
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
                    --- Albert Einstein ---

Tristan Miller <psychonaut@nothingisreal.com> wrote:

> Perhaps one day a group of even smarter programmers will form a labour
> union.

Wishing won't make it so. Go start the comp.programming guild.

If you could come with a better scale of ability than the rather crude
degree_level + years_of_experience while you are at it...

Bill, CPG member grade "pretty good."

-- 
   The address in the reply to header is correct, but I'll
   read it quicker if you drop the word "usenet".

In article <f5dda427.0311061229.22c4b9c5@posting.google.com>, spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
>gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message

>> >> Perhaps you follow Ed Nilges' thesis that Bush destroyed the US economy 
>> >> before the election by predicting economic trouble ahead.  This does get 
>> >> around the inconvenient timing of the recession, which began well before 
>
>The quote is completely consistent with what I posted yesterday. In
>1999, labor was getting uppity. Bush was placed in office (not,
>actually, elected) because of the 1999 phenomenon of "negative"
>unemployment which was constituted in the fact that software managers,
>and other employers, could not fill openings.
>
>This of course has nothing to do with technical criteria for
>recessions.

And just where did I mention technical criteria for recessions?

>> >> *If low interest rates, tax cuts, a big drop in the currency, and even a 
>> >
>> >There is still no longterm reason why the wealthy will not spend the
>> >tax cuts on unproductive ventures or even just pocket it for a rainy
>> >day.
>> 
>> Tax cuts are like that - they let people decide what to do with their 
>> own money.  Again you are being disingenuous, however - there is a 
>
>Any number of jurists and economists have pointed out the fallacy, of
>regarding your gross pay as your own money. It is NOT your money,
>buddy-boy, until it is converted to net pay.

And that's precisely what tax cuts do - they convert it to net pay, i.e. 
your own money, which you can do what you like with.

>Next time you go to the currency exchange to repay your payday loan,
>try to get the gross and not the net amount and you will understand
>me.
>
>This is because absent legal and physical infrastructure you would not
>have a job in the first place. Quite apart from the rights and wrongs
>of our presence in Iraq, our job is to create an environment in which
>Iraqi Joe can get to work.
>
>As should be obvious this COSTS MONEY in the form of roads, police
>protection, etc., and if the working person cannot pay for his share
>in some fashion, where do you think the infrastructure would come
>from?
>
>> well-recognised tendency for the better-off to put money into productive 
>> investments whereas the poor may spend a greater proportion of any 
>> windfall on Chinese imports in Wal-Mart.  
>>
>Whatever you say. What sort of fantasy land do you live in? 
>
>Turnbull and Asser makes shirts which cost 200.00 at Needless Markup
>(Neiman-Marcus). Many wealthy men make it a practice to buy
>exclusively from Turnbull and Asser and the shirts are immediately
>recognizable.
>
>This is but one example of how the rich in fact waste money on luxury
>goods, and it happens to be in the interest of the vendor of the
>luxury to create what an economist calls "elastic" demand to replace,
>wherever possible, and "inelastic" demand. The ordinary demand for
>men's shirts is inelastic because a real man doesn't NEED more than
>five simple white and blue shirts, therefore T & A creates an
>(irrational) market by incrementally increasing the quality of the
>shirt.

You haven't yet established that buying a Turnbull and Asser shirt is of 
less benefit to the economy than buying Chinese imports at Wal-Mart.  
Indeed, one can make a strong case that luxuries are precisely what are 
needed to keep the wheels of a free enterprise society turning.  
Noodle-making emplyment, in the West or in China, is saturated, but 
well-paid jobs making non-necessities like luxury shirts come, in a 
sense, out of thin air.

One might imagine a more efficient luxury-less society in which people 
work no more than an hour a day.  But whether that is possible or 
desirable is another debate.

>However, even if it uses top grade Egyptian cotton, and sweats
>filipino seamstresses to hand-stitch the product, it still hasn't
>differentiated the shirt sufficiently to create an elastic demand. On
>top of this it creates an irrational "prestige" factor.
>
>There are in fact countless examples of the ways in which the rich
>waste money (cf. Thorstein Veblen for starters). Whereas, in an almost
>tautologous fashion, the poor concentrate their spending on real
>needs, such as ramen noodles.
>
>> Tax cuts do have a tendency to be good for the better off - they pay 
>> more tax, after all.  Even God can't legislate against simple 
>> arithmetic.
>
>Which of course constitutes an argument against them, for in fact most
>Americans, without being necessarily conscious of the fact, are
>egalitarians who believe that in the long run, social inequality
>should be reduced.

Reduced to zero, or reduced to a particular level?  Or are such fine 
distinctions moot to those who 'believe without knowing they believe'?  

>This happens to be why wealthy people with brains, including George
>Soros, Bill Gates, and his father, have spoken out against excessive
>tax cutting. They know that the long term result, even in America, of
>continual downsizing will be the creation of a new class of
>desparadoes, ready to have a go at a return to the wars over water and
>grazing land that occured during the Gilded age, or the NY draft
>riots, or the Paris Commune.

Everyone is opposed to 'excessive' tax cutting.  We just draw the line 
in different places.

- Gerry Quinn

"Gerry Quinn" <gerryq@indigo.ie> wrote in message
news:rnuqb.4628$bD.17331@news.indigo.ie...
> In article <foudnQYkG6P64TSiRVn-uA@giganews.com>, "William"
<Reply@NewsGroup.Please> wrote:
> >You mean like the Clinton administration's focus on Al Queda?
>
> I'm thinking more about Somalia, and a perception in certain
> quarters that the US was a paper tiger, incapable of an effective
> military response to an outrage like 9/11.

That was 1993 - a lot happened after that. (And anyone paying
attention would have noted, even then, the disproportoinate level
of casualties the U.S. troops inflicted.)

It doesn't make any difference, though. You can't scare away
terrorists, you have to deal with them directly.

> But as I said, I'm not blaming Clinton directly.  What I do know,
> though, is that plans for 9/11 were well in train by the time Clinton
> left office.

Yes, which is why the Clinton administration tried to impress on the
incoming Bush administration the importance of dealing with Al Queda
as soon as possible. They basically handed over a war plan (had the
plan been ready sooner, Clinton would have implemented it himself).
In fact, that plan did come in useful - after 9/11 when many of it's
features were implemented in a hurry, if a bit late.

Unfortunately, after 9/11 Al Queda got harder to find, not surprisingly.
-Wm

P.S. The guy who basically wrote the plan for Clinton, got hired by the
Bush camp to oversee it - but then never seemed to be able to get
anyone to talk to him... until 9/11 of course.

William wrote:
> 
[ much snippage }
> 
> P.S. The guy who basically wrote the plan for Clinton, got hired by the
> Bush camp to oversee it - but then never seemed to be able to get
> anyone to talk to him... until 9/11 of course.

And that guy would be who exactly?
-- 
Joe Wright                                 http://www.jw-wright.com
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
                    --- Albert Einstein ---

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 11:02:56 -0600, William wrote:

> "Gerry Quinn" <gerryq@indigo.ie> wrote in message
> news:rnuqb.4628$bD.17331@news.indigo.ie...
>> In article <foudnQYkG6P64TSiRVn-uA@giganews.com>, "William"
> <Reply@NewsGroup.Please> wrote:
>> >You mean like the Clinton administration's focus on Al Queda?
>>
>> I'm thinking more about Somalia, and a perception in certain
>> quarters that the US was a paper tiger, incapable of an effective
>> military response to an outrage like 9/11.
> 
> That was 1993 - a lot happened after that. (And anyone paying
> attention would have noted, even then, the disproportoinate level
> of casualties the U.S. troops inflicted.)

Gerry is correct about the perceptions of some people who paid a *lot*
of attention to what happened in Somalia. The disproportionate level of
casualties is meaningless to people to whom the objective is more
important than human life, especially when the lives being lost are
in large part bystanders or poorly trained recruits.

There have been and still are many (para-)military commanders who
are willing to expend thousands and thousands of lives as long as
their objective is achieved. The U.S. withdrawal from Somalia was
a great victory for the warlords there. Whether the ratio of
Somalian dead to U.S. dead was 10/1, 100/1 or 1000/1 was of little
importance to them.

Consider the case of Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon. After
almost 20 years Israel decided that the security gained from
controlling the zone wasn't worth the fairly low-level, but steady
stream of casualties they were taking. And pulled out. This was
interpreted throughout the muslim world as a sign of weakness. An
Iranian man I talked to commented approximately: "It has given us
great hope to defeat Israel in Lebanon. Now we know that we will
be able to destroy Israel. They are not willing to fight."

That is the mentality we are up against. I have no doubt whatsoever
that when the U.S. eventually pulls out of Iraq, it will be celebrated
as a victory by a lot of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. It
won't matter that the U.S. is withdrawing after the the country is
being run by freely elected Iraqis. The fighters will interpret the
withdrawal as a response to their terrorism and it will encourage them.
Their conception of war is a means to destroy the enemy. If they
haven't been destroyed, they've won.
 

gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message news:<c9Mqb.4788$bD.17612@news.indigo.ie>...
> In article <f5dda427.0311061229.22c4b9c5@posting.google.com>, spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
> >gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message
>  
> >> >> Perhaps you follow Ed Nilges' thesis that Bush destroyed the US economy 
> >> >> before the election by predicting economic trouble ahead.  This does get 
> >> >> around the inconvenient timing of the recession, which began well before 
> >
> >The quote is completely consistent with what I posted yesterday. In
> >1999, labor was getting uppity. Bush was placed in office (not,
> >actually, elected) because of the 1999 phenomenon of "negative"
> >unemployment which was constituted in the fact that software managers,
> >and other employers, could not fill openings.
> >
> >This of course has nothing to do with technical criteria for
> >recessions.
> 
> And just where did I mention technical criteria for recessions?

In the sentence embedded above. 
> 
> >> >> *If low interest rates, tax cuts, a big drop in the currency, and even a 
> >> >
> >> >There is still no longterm reason why the wealthy will not spend the
> >> >tax cuts on unproductive ventures or even just pocket it for a rainy
> >> >day.
> >> 
> >> Tax cuts are like that - they let people decide what to do with their 
> >> own money.  Again you are being disingenuous, however - there is a 
> >
> >Any number of jurists and economists have pointed out the fallacy, of
> >regarding your gross pay as your own money. It is NOT your money,
> >buddy-boy, until it is converted to net pay.
> 
> And that's precisely what tax cuts do - they convert it to net pay, i.e. 
> your own money, which you can do what you like with.

This is false.

The wealthy have a CHOICE with the tax cut money. They can indeed
invest directly, or through mutual funds, in new plant and equipment:
in job creation. In fact this is what they did in the Reagan era.

During that era, anyone working with software, as I did then and do
now, knew that American plant and equipment was aging and needed to be
upgraded, using digital technology and re-engineering.

In fact, an engineer for Siemens told me that in 1972, the technology
for cell phones could have been developed, but because of a lack of
investment capital, high taxes, and regulation, it could not be
implemented.

By the early 1980s there was a great demand pent-up in both the
consumer's world and industry for new capital goods, and, new consumer
goods such as the VCR.

Therefore, the Reagan tax cuts had their intended effect and were
seamlessly converted to new jobs and net pay.

Various economists, and Reagan himself, took credit for being geniuses
but it can be argued that they caught a wave. Surfing takes skill but
you need nature to supply the wave.

I think that today it is an open question whether a similar pent-up
demand exists, and, if it does not exist, the tax cuts won't become
"net pay".

We do know that during the last two years, many wealthy people have
either sat on their money, preferring negative interest rates to
investments, especially in technology, perceived over the past two
years as risky because of the dot.com crash.

The housing boom has attracted their dollars but note that it is
concentrated at the high end. It hasn't created affordable apartments
and inexpensive condos for the people who actually work at the
midlevel in major, expensive cities...San Francisco plans to subsidize
such units.

Instead, it creates high-margin, lavish McMansions in pricier suburbs
far from the city. The McMansions are affordable by the upper middle
class only insofar as they are built so far from the city as to
constitute a de facto fire hazard in the West, and to cause long,
stressful commutes over aging roads in the east. The Mcmansions closer
in are really only for the wealthy themselves.

Essentially, over the past two years, the tax cuts have helped a
separate, high-end economy, for the wealthy, to flourish.

The job numbers are now trickling in, and it appears that the benefits
of this economy are spreading. Capitalism, assisted by "socialism" in
the form of unemployment benefits and subsidized housing for the
people who do the work of cities like Aspen and San Francisco, works,
and it works better than planned economies. We know this. We have read
Hayek.

However, vast segments of the middle class, including you, it seems,
need to be fed a massive oversimplification of the WAY it works, such
as the automatic conversion of tax cuts to net pay, so you don't
become bloody-minded and demand socialism.

Tax cuts aren't automatically converted to net pay. The beneficiary of
the cut can take his money and put it under the mattress.

> 
> >Next time you go to the currency exchange to repay your payday loan,
> >try to get the gross and not the net amount and you will understand
> >me.
> >
> >This is because absent legal and physical infrastructure you would not
> >have a job in the first place. Quite apart from the rights and wrongs
> >of our presence in Iraq, our job is to create an environment in which
> >Iraqi Joe can get to work.
> >
> >As should be obvious this COSTS MONEY in the form of roads, police
> >protection, etc., and if the working person cannot pay for his share
> >in some fashion, where do you think the infrastructure would come
> >from?
> >
> >> well-recognised tendency for the better-off to put money into productive 
> >> investments whereas the poor may spend a greater proportion of any 
> >> windfall on Chinese imports in Wal-Mart.  
> >>
> >Whatever you say. What sort of fantasy land do you live in? 
> >
> >Turnbull and Asser makes shirts which cost 200.00 at Needless Markup
> >(Neiman-Marcus). Many wealthy men make it a practice to buy
> >exclusively from Turnbull and Asser and the shirts are immediately
> >recognizable.
> >
> >This is but one example of how the rich in fact waste money on luxury
> >goods, and it happens to be in the interest of the vendor of the
> >luxury to create what an economist calls "elastic" demand to replace,
> >wherever possible, and "inelastic" demand. The ordinary demand for
> >men's shirts is inelastic because a real man doesn't NEED more than
> >five simple white and blue shirts, therefore T & A creates an
> >(irrational) market by incrementally increasing the quality of the
> >shirt.
> 
> You haven't yet established that buying a Turnbull and Asser shirt is of 
> less benefit to the economy than buying Chinese imports at Wal-Mart.  
> Indeed, one can make a strong case that luxuries are precisely what are 
> needed to keep the wheels of a free enterprise society turning.  
> Noodle-making emplyment, in the West or in China, is saturated, but 
> well-paid jobs making non-necessities like luxury shirts come, in a 
> sense, out of thin air.

The jobs making the luxury goods are NOT necessarily well-paid.

In fact, to make a luxury good like a T & A shirt or New Balance
high-end running shoe, a great deal of exacting manual labor has to be
performed.

The founder of New Balance has claimed that he has found that
Americans won't perform the exacting work required to make a running
shoe that doesn't fall apart. What he means, of course, is that they
won't do the work at low enough pay for him to make a profit he feels
acceptable.

Therefore both products are made overseas by people making low wages,
who work very hard.

A mass-produced shirt can be made by machine tenders in humane
conditions in an 8 hour day. However, its quality will usually be
lower because the hand-stitching can be adapted by the employee to
specific, if micro, variations in the material. But such skill demands
long hours and extreme focus, of the sort Americans won't manifest
unless you pay them quite a lot of money.

Again, it is just wrong to imagine that merely because the good is of
high quality, a good wage was paid to the person making it. This is
true in some cases, but false in very many. Certainly, a luxury German
car might be manufactured in humane conditions, but this is because
the German government has legislated those conditions, and the
purchaser wants, specifically, a Krautmobile.

Whereas a Turnbull and Asser shirt could be made almost anywhere as
long as the plant manager is willing to work to T & A's
specifications.

> 
> One might imagine a more efficient luxury-less society in which people 
> work no more than an hour a day.  But whether that is possible or 
> desirable is another debate.
>

I work, consistently, 16 hours a day. However, I prefer to work in
jobs with dignity and respect. The length of the working day is not as
important as dignity and respect...expressed in part by the payment,
not of a minumum wage, but of a living and a family wage.
 
> >However, even if it uses top grade Egyptian cotton, and sweats
> >filipino seamstresses to hand-stitch the product, it still hasn't
> >differentiated the shirt sufficiently to create an elastic demand. On
> >top of this it creates an irrational "prestige" factor.
> >
> >There are in fact countless examples of the ways in which the rich
> >waste money (cf. Thorstein Veblen for starters). Whereas, in an almost
> >tautologous fashion, the poor concentrate their spending on real
> >needs, such as ramen noodles.
> >
> >> Tax cuts do have a tendency to be good for the better off - they pay 
> >> more tax, after all.  Even God can't legislate against simple 
> >> arithmetic.
> >
> >Which of course constitutes an argument against them, for in fact most
> >Americans, without being necessarily conscious of the fact, are
> >egalitarians who believe that in the long run, social inequality
> >should be reduced.
> 
> Reduced to zero, or reduced to a particular level?  Or are such fine 
> distinctions moot to those who 'believe without knowing they believe'?  

The late political philosopher John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice,
claimed to have found that equality should not be absolute. He allows
for differences in income and status. But he does find that the
differences should benefit the least well off.

In Russia of the Stalin era, everybody was reduced to "equality", and
the favors granted to the rulers and to "shock" workers (selected
because of their higher productivity) did not benefit the least well
off because Stalin was building an industrial war machine.

In reasonably functional, Third World "lite" countries like Fiji (in
which I recently worked), semi-"socialist" (by US standards)
governments allow differences to exist primarily to benefit, and raise
the standards of, the least well off.

The concern in Fiji was that the natives, lacking literacy until
rather recently, would be at a disadvantage as regards "Europeans" (a
term that in Fiji means Europeans, Americans, and Australasians) who
would steal their land, and also as regards Indians who'd been brought
over in the 19th century to work as farm laborers, but who later
succeeded in business, because their Hindu and Moslem tradition
demanded that they educate their children. For this reason the British
commencing with Sir Arthur Gordon instituted a policy, commencing in
the 1860s, of land rights in which the natives retained title to 85%
of Fiji.

This may seem to an American a "liberal, bleeding heart" policy. The
problem for conservatives was that it worked in the sense that Fiji
has enjoyed relative social peace (there have been problems but what
is striking about them is that they have consistently been followed by
periods of reconciliation, initiated by the warring parties
themselves). This is because the natives, potentially the least
well-off, were given a deliberate advantage to their benefit.

The result is today that the natives (unlike the Palestinians) while
lacking many economic advantages vis a vis the "Europeans" and the
Indian business class, have strong ties to the *bure*, or village,
which they own and to which they can return if they fail to get ahead
in Suva or Nadi (Fiji's largest cities).

It appears to me that American conservative propaganda has been so
effective that you are unaware that in fact "bleeding heart
liberalism" has an intellectual pedigree that is equal to or better
than the conservative intellectual tradition, including Hayek, in whom
there is much to admire. John Rawls, Cornel West and others are not
media "stars" like Milton Friedman, but their actual thought has
greater depth. Rawls thought through the actual reasons why so many
decent Americans simultaneously support differences of income while at
the same time valuing de Tocqueville's "equality of condition". and
Rawls did so in a manner far more sophisticated than subsequent
"neoconservatives" like the late Robert Nozick.

Neoconservative economic theory is childish, primarily because it
mistakes the idealized abstractions of classical economics for the
real world, and applies them, applauding its own genius when the math
works, and blaming "liberals" and "socialists" for warping the
idealized gameboard when the math doesn't work...which it often
doesn't.

> 
> >This happens to be why wealthy people with brains, including George
> >Soros, Bill Gates, and his father, have spoken out against excessive
> >tax cutting. They know that the long term result, even in America, of
> >continual downsizing will be the creation of a new class of
> >desparadoes, ready to have a go at a return to the wars over water and
> >grazing land that occured during the Gilded age, or the NY draft
> >riots, or the Paris Commune.
> 
> Everyone is opposed to 'excessive' tax cutting.  We just draw the line 
> in different places.

Gee, that's interesting. Is George Bush opposed to "excessive" tax
cutting?

Furthermore, conservatives are in fact deeply opposed to the very idea
of the progressive tax and literally, they want to return the 18th
century France, where you paid taxes only if you were a mope of the
Third Estate.

Conservatives feel that working people should pay taxes, through FICA,
through rates high at low incomes, and sales taxes. Whereas they feel
that the rich should be rewarded by being free of taxes on dividends
and bond income, and that the Internet, heavily weighted towards the
better-off, should be a tax haven.

And they have beguiled middle class people for years into a false
identification with the needs of the wealthy.
> 
> - Gerry Quinn

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 13:53:46 -0500, Sheldon Simms
<sheldonsimms@yahoo.com> wrote:

>That is the mentality we are up against. I have no doubt whatsoever
>that when the U.S. eventually pulls out of Iraq, it will be celebrated
>as a victory by a lot of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. It
>won't matter that the U.S. is withdrawing after the the country is
>being run by freely elected Iraqis. The fighters will interpret the
>withdrawal as a response to their terrorism and it will encourage them.
>Their conception of war is a means to destroy the enemy. If they
>haven't been destroyed, they've won.
> 
If it goes as you say ( where a freely elected government runs Iraq )
then I suspect that the removal of forces will be so gradual, that
no one will notice when the final group is pulled.
----------------------------
The reply-to email address is olczyk2002@yahoo.com.
This is an address I ignore.
To reply via email, remove 2002 and change yahoo to
interaccess.
----------------
Thaddeus L. Olczyk, PhD
Think twice, code once.

On Thu, 06 Nov 2003 16:14:14 GMT, gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
wrote:

>I'm thinking more about Somalia, and a perception in certain 
>quarters that the US was a paper tiger, incapable of an effective 
>military response to an outrage like 9/11.
That and the ineffective missle strike against Bin Laden, and...
----------------------------
The reply-to email address is olczyk2002@yahoo.com.
This is an address I ignore.
To reply via email, remove 2002 and change yahoo to
interaccess.
----------------
Thaddeus L. Olczyk, PhD
Think twice, code once.

"Sheldon Simms" <sheldonsimms@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:pan.2003.11.08.18.53.45.671463@yahoo.com...
> On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 11:02:56 -0600, William wrote:
>
> Gerry is correct about the perceptions of some people who paid a *lot*
> of attention to what happened in Somalia. The disproportionate level of
> casualties is meaningless to people to whom the objective is more
> important than human life, especially when the lives being lost are
> in large part bystanders or poorly trained recruits.

Even if they are reasonably well trained military, the results are often
the same. (And, apparently, so is the perception that it's worth it.)

> There have been and still are many (para-)military commanders who
> are willing to expend thousands and thousands of lives as long as
> their objective is achieved. The U.S. withdrawal from Somalia was
> a great victory for the warlords there. Whether the ratio of
> Somalian dead to U.S. dead was 10/1, 100/1 or 1000/1 was of little
> importance to them.

We didn't withdraw after the October battle, though. We even sent
in reinforcements. We were still there in 1995 when we assisted in
the withdrawal of all U.N. Peacekeepers.

[...]
> Their conception of war is a means to destroy the enemy. If they
> haven't been destroyed, they've won.

So it's just that if we ever leave somewhere, someone will claim it as a
victory? (That's what I believe is indeed the case, too.)  In that event,
it's
a non-issue since there's nothing we can ever do about it. Gotta look
elsewhere for solutions.

We've just never done well with fear and intimidation; we've always
had better luck forcing aid down their throats. I'm reminded of the
quote from the first President of the Phillapines, "Damn the Americans!
Why don't they tyrannize us more?" (A comment about his days as a
rebel when it was hard to recruit while the U.S. forces were building
schools and hospitals.)

-Wm

"Joe Wright" <joewwright@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3FAD3676.5DBC@earthlink.net...
> William wrote:
> >
> > P.S. The guy who basically wrote the plan for Clinton, got hired by the
> > Bush camp to oversee it - but then never seemed to be able to get
> > anyone to talk to him... until 9/11 of course.
>
> And that guy would be who exactly?

Richard Clarke - one of the few (only?) Clinton people to be retained
when the Administration changed. -Wm

In article <f5dda427.0311082043.22d150b8@posting.google.com>, spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
>gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message
> news:<c9Mqb.4788$bD.17612@news.indigo.ie>...
>> In article <f5dda427.0311061229.22c4b9c5@posting.google.com>,
> spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
>> >gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message
>>  
>> >> >> Perhaps you follow Ed Nilges' thesis that Bush destroyed the US economy
>> >> >> before the election by predicting economic trouble ahead.  This does
> get 
>> >> >> around the inconvenient timing of the recession, which began well
> before 
[-]
>> >
>> >This of course has nothing to do with technical criteria for
>> >recessions.
>> 
>> And just where did I mention technical criteria for recessions?
>
>In the sentence embedded above. 

My original statement (at the top) did not qualify the word or refer to 
technical criteria.  It was you who started quibbling about just when 
growth was below x for y months or whatever.

>> >Any number of jurists and economists have pointed out the fallacy, of
>> >regarding your gross pay as your own money. It is NOT your money,
>> >buddy-boy, until it is converted to net pay.
>> 
>> And that's precisely what tax cuts do - they convert it to net pay, i.e. 
>> your own money, which you can do what you like with.
>
>This is false.
>
>The wealthy have a CHOICE with the tax cut money. They can indeed
>invest directly, or through mutual funds, in new plant and equipment:
>in job creation. In fact this is what they did in the Reagan era.

Everyone's got the same choice with money.  A dollar is a dollar.

>We do know that during the last two years, many wealthy people have
>either sat on their money, preferring negative interest rates to
>investments, especially in technology, perceived over the past two
>years as risky because of the dot.com crash.
>
>However, vast segments of the middle class, including you, it seems,
>need to be fed a massive oversimplification of the WAY it works, such
>as the automatic conversion of tax cuts to net pay, so you don't
>become bloody-minded and demand socialism.
>
>Tax cuts aren't automatically converted to net pay. The beneficiary of
>the cut can take his money and put it under the mattress.

[I snipped the bits that don't seem to talk about dollars at all.]  What 
you seem to be saying is that people may not spend their money as the 
government wishes, and I agree with that.  What I don't agree with, and 
indeed don't understand, is that that somehow means it isn't their 
money, or isn't part of net pay.  What I think you are saying is that if 
I get an extra $100/month in net pay, and save it, I am not living as if 
I were being paid $100 more, and you don't like that (just who's trying 
to keep the workers enslaved here?).  It's still part of my net pay!

There are alternatives to tax cuts, certainly.  You can leave tax the 
same and offer credits or grants to 'productive' enterprises (where 
'productive' has an unfortunate tendency to mean 'productive of votes 
for the politicians holding the purse-strings').  Or you can do other 
things to increase or decrease savings.  There are various levers of 
fiscal influence, and governments use lots of different ones.  They 
never work as well as governments would like, and that goes for tax cuts 
too.  There's no need to go re-defining words, altering history, and 
denying the obvious, in the interest of making 'true' a statement in 
some bizarre philosophy understood only by you.  Which seems to be the 
purpose of most of your posts.
 
>> You haven't yet established that buying a Turnbull and Asser shirt is of 
>> less benefit to the economy than buying Chinese imports at Wal-Mart.  
>> Indeed, one can make a strong case that luxuries are precisely what are 
>> needed to keep the wheels of a free enterprise society turning.  
>> Noodle-making emplyment, in the West or in China, is saturated, but 
>> well-paid jobs making non-necessities like luxury shirts come, in a 
>> sense, out of thin air.
>
>The jobs making the luxury goods are NOT necessarily well-paid.

No, they are not.  Nevertheless they exist, and would not exist if the 
luxury good were not sold.  If I pay $150 for a shirt, various people 
get some of it, including the taxman.  'It's the System and everyone has 
a share.'


>The concern in Fiji was that the natives, lacking literacy until
>rather recently, would be at a disadvantage as regards "Europeans" (a
>term that in Fiji means Europeans, Americans, and Australasians) who
>would steal their land, and also as regards Indians who'd been brought
>over in the 19th century to work as farm laborers, but who later
>succeeded in business, because their Hindu and Moslem tradition
>demanded that they educate their children. For this reason the British
>commencing with Sir Arthur Gordon instituted a policy, commencing in
>the 1860s, of land rights in which the natives retained title to 85%
>of Fiji.
>
>This may seem to an American a "liberal, bleeding heart" policy. The
>problem for conservatives was that it worked in the sense that Fiji
>has enjoyed relative social peace (there have been problems but what
>is striking about them is that they have consistently been followed by
>periods of reconciliation, initiated by the warring parties
>themselves). This is because the natives, potentially the least
>well-off, were given a deliberate advantage to their benefit.

Actually it seems more of a racial discrimination policy.  

>It appears to me that American conservative propaganda has been so
>effective that you are unaware that in fact "bleeding heart
>liberalism" has an intellectual pedigree that is equal to or better
>than the conservative intellectual tradition, including Hayek, in whom
>there is much to admire. John Rawls, Cornel West and others are not
>media "stars" like Milton Friedman, but their actual thought has
>greater depth. Rawls thought through the actual reasons why so many
>decent Americans simultaneously support differences of income while at
>the same time valuing de Tocqueville's "equality of condition". and
>Rawls did so in a manner far more sophisticated than subsequent
>"neoconservatives" like the late Robert Nozick.

I am familiar with Rawls interesting work on distribution.  West is that 
rapping professor, isn't he?  I saw him in _The Matrix Reloaded_.  I'm 
not sure, however, what he brings to the table in terms of useful 
economic thought.  

However, I don't think "lack of intellectual tradition" is the main 
reason many people shun "bleeding heart liberalism".  Marxism probably 
has as much intellectual tradition as all other -isms put together, and 
we've seen what that does.

>Neoconservative economic theory is childish, primarily because it
>mistakes the idealized abstractions of classical economics for the
>real world, and applies them, applauding its own genius when the math
>works, and blaming "liberals" and "socialists" for warping the
>idealized gameboard when the math doesn't work...which it often
>doesn't.

I don't think there is any amazing new "neo-conservative economic 
theory", except in the minds of those like yourself who like to tilt at 
shadows.  A google search for the term gives a page of activist sites, 
presumably set up to tell those who are anti-it what it supposedly is 
that they should be anti, and how it's all part of a Big Evil Plot.

>> Everyone is opposed to 'excessive' tax cutting.  We just draw the line 
>> in different places.
>
>Gee, that's interesting. Is George Bush opposed to "excessive" tax
>cutting?

Of course he is.  

>Furthermore, conservatives are in fact deeply opposed to the very idea
>of the progressive tax and literally, they want to return the 18th
>century France, where you paid taxes only if you were a mope of the
>Third Estate.

>Conservatives feel that working people should pay taxes, through FICA,
>through rates high at low incomes, and sales taxes. Whereas they feel
>that the rich should be rewarded by being free of taxes on dividends
>and bond income, and that the Internet, heavily weighted towards the
>better-off, should be a tax haven.

That's does not 'literally' correspond to the first paragraph.  A 
non-progressive tax is still a tax.  As for the internet, all sensible 
people realise that some considerable regulation is needed, and tax will 
be a small price to pay for bringing civilisation to this arena.

>And they have beguiled middle class people for years into a false
>identification with the needs of the wealthy.

But those who don't aspire don't succeed, unless they live in Fiji and 
get special treatment by virtue of their race.  So maybe such 'false 
identification' is like the 'false identification' of the athlete with 
the imagined winner of a race in which he intends to compete, but 
isn't likely to win this time.  He is out training, while his more 
'realistic' friends are in the pub, bemoaning their inability to run and 
wondering can they sue somebody about their junk food 'addiction'.

- Gerry Quinn

gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message news:<34Lrb.5292$bD.19526@news.indigo.ie>...
> In article <f5dda427.0311082043.22d150b8@posting.google.com>, spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
> >gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message
> > news:<c9Mqb.4788$bD.17612@news.indigo.ie>...
> >> In article <f5dda427.0311061229.22c4b9c5@posting.google.com>,
>  spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
> >> >gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message
>  
> >> >> >> Perhaps you follow Ed Nilges' thesis that Bush destroyed the US economy
> >> >> >> before the election by predicting economic trouble ahead.  This does
>  get 
> >> >> >> around the inconvenient timing of the recession, which began well
> > before 
>  [-]
> >> >
> >> >This of course has nothing to do with technical criteria for
> >> >recessions.
> >> 
> >> And just where did I mention technical criteria for recessions?
> >
> >In the sentence embedded above. 
> 
> My original statement (at the top) did not qualify the word or refer to 
> technical criteria.  It was you who started quibbling about just when 
> growth was below x for y months or whatever.
> 
> >> >Any number of jurists and economists have pointed out the fallacy, of
> >> >regarding your gross pay as your own money. It is NOT your money,
> >> >buddy-boy, until it is converted to net pay.
> >> 
> >> And that's precisely what tax cuts do - they convert it to net pay, i.e. 
> >> your own money, which you can do what you like with.
> >
> >This is false.
> >
> >The wealthy have a CHOICE with the tax cut money. They can indeed
> >invest directly, or through mutual funds, in new plant and equipment:
> >in job creation. In fact this is what they did in the Reagan era.
> 
> Everyone's got the same choice with money.  A dollar is a dollar.

This isn't true.

Neoclassical economics assumes a freedom, from quantum "friction" such
that the typical player is a merchant who, when penniless, can buy and
sell in a pre-existing bazaar his way back to solvency. Of course, the
reality for most people is that outside the criminal economy they are
dependent on large employers.

What this means is that a "dollar" means something different to the
wealthy man, who lives more in the ideal state of neoclassical
economics, infinite in all directions, in which he can take
entrepreneural risks, and in which a dollar is a tip.

Whereas for a WalMart employee who lives in a motel as described in
Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed, a "dollar" is the
difference between existence and extinction. She lives in other words
in a financial "quantum", non "classical" world, as opposed to the
Newtonian world of the middle class.

> 
> >We do know that during the last two years, many wealthy people have
> >either sat on their money, preferring negative interest rates to
> >investments, especially in technology, perceived over the past two
> >years as risky because of the dot.com crash.
> >
> >However, vast segments of the middle class, including you, it seems,
> >need to be fed a massive oversimplification of the WAY it works, such
> >as the automatic conversion of tax cuts to net pay, so you don't
> >become bloody-minded and demand socialism.
> >
> >Tax cuts aren't automatically converted to net pay. The beneficiary of
> >the cut can take his money and put it under the mattress.
> 
> [I snipped the bits that don't seem to talk about dollars at all.]  What 
> you seem to be saying is that people may not spend their money as the 
> government wishes, and I agree with that.  What I don't agree with, and 
> indeed don't understand, is that that somehow means it isn't their 
> money, or isn't part of net pay.  What I think you are saying is that if 
> I get an extra $100/month in net pay, and save it, I am not living as if 
> I were being paid $100 more, and you don't like that (just who's trying 
> to keep the workers enslaved here?).  It's still part of my net pay!
>
The fact is most people don't save because they can't save. They have
to pay for their needs and the needs of their children as more and
more any kind of "free" health and welfare benefits are withdrawn,
because of Prop 13 style reluctance, on the part of the wealthy, to
pay taxes.
 
> There are alternatives to tax cuts, certainly.  You can leave tax the 
> same and offer credits or grants to 'productive' enterprises (where 
> 'productive' has an unfortunate tendency to mean 'productive of votes 
> for the politicians holding the purse-strings').  Or you can do other 
> things to increase or decrease savings.  There are various levers of 
> fiscal influence, and governments use lots of different ones.  They 
> never work as well as governments would like, and that goes for tax cuts 
> too.  There's no need to go re-defining words, altering history, and 
> denying the obvious, in the interest of making 'true' a statement in 
> some bizarre philosophy understood only by you.  Which seems to be the 
> purpose of most of your posts.
>  
> >> You haven't yet established that buying a Turnbull and Asser shirt is of 
> >> less benefit to the economy than buying Chinese imports at Wal-Mart.  
> >> Indeed, one can make a strong case that luxuries are precisely what are 
> >> needed to keep the wheels of a free enterprise society turning.  
> >> Noodle-making emplyment, in the West or in China, is saturated, but 
> >> well-paid jobs making non-necessities like luxury shirts come, in a 
> >> sense, out of thin air.
> >
> >The jobs making the luxury goods are NOT necessarily well-paid.
> 
> No, they are not.  Nevertheless they exist, and would not exist if the 
> luxury good were not sold.  If I pay $150 for a shirt, various people 
> get some of it, including the taxman.  'It's the System and everyone has 
> a share.'
>
Whatever. How much? The fact is that the person on the far end of
production is gradually squeezed, whether he is a Bolivian miner,
agricultural laborer, or seamstress. They are literally removed from a
position in which they have a meaningful say in the valuation of their
labor, for example by the contract system, the function of which is to
diminish the claims of the person who does the work.
 
> 
> >The concern in Fiji was that the natives, lacking literacy until
> >rather recently, would be at a disadvantage as regards "Europeans" (a
> >term that in Fiji means Europeans, Americans, and Australasians) who
> >would steal their land, and also as regards Indians who'd been brought
> >over in the 19th century to work as farm laborers, but who later
> >succeeded in business, because their Hindu and Moslem tradition
> >demanded that they educate their children. For this reason the British
> >commencing with Sir Arthur Gordon instituted a policy, commencing in
> >the 1860s, of land rights in which the natives retained title to 85%
> >of Fiji.
> >
> >This may seem to an American a "liberal, bleeding heart" policy. The
> >problem for conservatives was that it worked in the sense that Fiji
> >has enjoyed relative social peace (there have been problems but what
> >is striking about them is that they have consistently been followed by
> >periods of reconciliation, initiated by the warring parties
> >themselves). This is because the natives, potentially the least
> >well-off, were given a deliberate advantage to their benefit.
> 
> Actually it seems more of a racial discrimination policy.  
>
By a Rawlsian test, "racial discrimination" necessarily includes
injustice to the least-well-off and in fact this is the only
meaningful kind of "discrimination"...in view of the fact that under
the neocon definition of "racial discrimination", ordinary businesses
practice "discrimination" all the time under the generally accepted
rule of "bonafide occupational qualification".

I have seen for example, ads that ask for "white" people as
photographic models and the placers of these ads are using BFOQ. I
think their use is probably unjust but this is because racial
discrimination, with a component of unfairness to the least well off,
is pervasive in America.

However, the sleazeballs who place these ads are able to do so legally
under bonafide occupational qualification law.

Neocons are in fact uninterested in racial justice, because they
(conveniently) forget that Martin Luther King's protest against
discrimination was NOT a protest against bona-fide occupational
qualification or affirmative action. It was instead a critique of
poverty which INCLUDED questioning of white and rural poverty, and the
use of poor people as cannon fodder.

> >It appears to me that American conservative propaganda has been so
> >effective that you are unaware that in fact "bleeding heart
> >liberalism" has an intellectual pedigree that is equal to or better
> >than the conservative intellectual tradition, including Hayek, in whom
> >there is much to admire. John Rawls, Cornel West and others are not
> >media "stars" like Milton Friedman, but their actual thought has
> >greater depth. Rawls thought through the actual reasons why so many
> >decent Americans simultaneously support differences of income while at
> >the same time valuing de Tocqueville's "equality of condition". and
> >Rawls did so in a manner far more sophisticated than subsequent
> >"neoconservatives" like the late Robert Nozick.
> 
> I am familiar with Rawls interesting work on distribution.  West is that 
> rapping professor, isn't he?  I saw him in _The Matrix Reloaded_.  I'm 
> not sure, however, what he brings to the table in terms of useful 
> economic thought.  

I met Cornel West when he was first at Princeton and I worked at the
university and Corn was the director of religious studies, and I've
read much of his work including Race Matters, and The American Evasion
of Philosophy.

Dr. West was most literate, engaging and approachable. He did talk
"black" in the sense that he called me "mah brother" but I'd rather be
talked to like a homeboy...rather than talked down to as I was talked
down to by Noam Chomsky and Michael Albert, who assumed, merely
because I was from the Midwest, that I knew nothing.

Later on I was OUTRAGED by Lawrence Summers (the President of Harvard)
who questioned the content of West's research and teaching in a way
Summers WOULD NOT question the content of a white faculty member. West
rightfully demanded that IF his philosophical research led him to
conclude that in fact there is philosophical and political reflection
going on in soul and rap music, he had a right to analyze lyrics and
even make his own CD as part of his academic duties.

In fact, white "postmodernists" get away with "engaging popular
culture" all the time... and typically in a very shallow way, that is
not questioned by college presidents. For example, Nicholas Negroponte
produced, as director of MIT's media lab, work during the 1990s on
"being digital" that is now known to be both academically shallow, and
already based on technologies that are out of date, but the president
of MIT never challenged Negroponte's direction, which may have
represented a waste of MIT's resources...considerably out of scale to
the small amout of resources a humanities professor might "waste".

> 
> However, I don't think "lack of intellectual tradition" is the main 
> reason many people shun "bleeding heart liberalism".  Marxism probably 
> has as much intellectual tradition as all other -isms put together, and 
> we've seen what that does.

Most Americans have NO experience with any politics that in any way
tries to put "socialism" into effect, and the areas where they do are
areas that they rely on. While wealthy neoconservatives might (but
probably don't) send their Social Security and unemployment checks
back to the payer, middle-class, conservative Americans plan their
affairs around these resources, which are, to neoconservatives,
anathema.

However, apart from one Congressman from Vermont, Americans simply
don't know what a 'socialist' politician looks like, or might actually
propose.

The Russian experience was in fact the forced industrialization of a
mediaeval society under the direction of thugs who'd read volume 1 of
Capital. Current Russian history shows that the misery of this period
might equally have happened under a Putin or some other group of
thugs, perhaps Slavic fascists in league with the still-established
Russian church.

Or, Leon Trotsky might have overthrown Stalin, and brought about a
still authoritarian regime, with an actually milder form of terror,
similar to Fidel Castro's. Castro has imprisoned and jailed people but
to my knowledge the ONLY Gulag in Cuba is operated by the United
States at its base on Guantanamo. Cuban dissidents are given, I
understand, a day in court under the printed "socialist" laws of Cuba,
but at Camp X-Ray, the Bush administration wishes to imprison people
WITHOUT due process as part of the war against "terrorism".

Read the Patriot act. The constitutions of socialist countries do say
that legal processes have to be subordinate to the needs of the
"people", and Friedrich Hayek has shown how planning can
systematically ruin the rule of law in a way that lefties need to
address.

But what the US justice department wants is not a new set of laws, but
RELIEF, in the Patriot act, from time-consuming, pre-existing,
Constitutional checks on executive power. At Guantanamo, they don't
want "show trials". They want NO trials, and this means, for the
individual concerned, incarceration without any chance (even a sham
chance) at a day in court.

In article <f5dda427.0311110852.4b43ece4@posting.google.com>, spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
>gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message
>> 
>> Everyone's got the same choice with money.  A dollar is a dollar.
>
>This isn't true.
>
>Neoclassical economics assumes a freedom, from quantum "friction" such
>that the typical player is a merchant who, when penniless, can buy and
>sell in a pre-existing bazaar his way back to solvency. Of course, the
>reality for most people is that outside the criminal economy they are
>dependent on large employers.
>
>What this means is that a "dollar" means something different to the
>wealthy man, who lives more in the ideal state of neoclassical
>economics, infinite in all directions, in which he can take
>entrepreneural risks, and in which a dollar is a tip.
>
>Whereas for a WalMart employee who lives in a motel as described in
>Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed, a "dollar" is the
>difference between existence and extinction. She lives in other words
>in a financial "quantum", non "classical" world, as opposed to the
>Newtonian world of the middle class.

So a dollar means more to a WalMart employee (or shopper, no doubt).  
Nevertheless, it buys the same amount of goods.  [Your analogies 
with quantum mechanics have no meaning that I can discern.  Perhaps you 
are thinking of Brownian motion? This is small scale physics, but still 
in the classical regime.]

>The fact is most people don't save because they can't save. They have
>to pay for their needs and the needs of their children as more and
>more any kind of "free" health and welfare benefits are withdrawn,
>because of Prop 13 style reluctance, on the part of the wealthy, to
>pay taxes.

If you were surviving on X/week, and you receive an additional Y/week, 
you *can* save Y.  At least according to models of humanity that presume 
individuals have a degree of autonomy and self-control.
 
>> >The concern in Fiji was that the natives, lacking literacy until
>> >rather recently, would be at a disadvantage as regards "Europeans" (a
>> >term that in Fiji means Europeans, Americans, and Australasians) who
>> >would steal their land, and also as regards Indians who'd been brought
>> >over in the 19th century to work as farm laborers, but who later
>> >succeeded in business, because their Hindu and Moslem tradition
>> >demanded that they educate their children. For this reason the British
>> >commencing with Sir Arthur Gordon instituted a policy, commencing in
>> >the 1860s, of land rights in which the natives retained title to 85%
>> >of Fiji.
>> >
>> >This may seem to an American a "liberal, bleeding heart" policy. The
>> >problem for conservatives was that it worked in the sense that Fiji
>> >has enjoyed relative social peace (there have been problems but what
>> >is striking about them is that they have consistently been followed by
>> >periods of reconciliation, initiated by the warring parties
>> >themselves). This is because the natives, potentially the least
>> >well-off, were given a deliberate advantage to their benefit.
>> 
>> Actually it seems more of a racial discrimination policy.  

>By a Rawlsian test, "racial discrimination" necessarily includes
>injustice to the least-well-off and in fact this is the only
>meaningful kind of "discrimination"...in view of the fact that under
>the neocon definition of "racial discrimination", ordinary businesses
>practice "discrimination" all the time under the generally accepted
>rule of "bonafide occupational qualification".

So it's not racial discrimination when you discriminate by race?  I 
don't know whether Rawls would swallow that interpretation of his views. 
Still, for all I know, Fiji is an island paradise in which a majority of 
feckless but happy natives are leavened by an Asian merchant class, and 
the whole overseen by a benign European ruling class.  Whether it works 
or not, it's no longer a mainstream mode of governance.

>I have seen for example, ads that ask for "white" people as
>photographic models and the placers of these ads are using BFOQ. I
>think their use is probably unjust but this is because racial
>discrimination, with a component of unfairness to the least well off,
>is pervasive in America.
>
>However, the sleazeballs who place these ads are able to do so legally
>under bonafide occupational qualification law.

You're being ridiculous, IMO - these ARE cases of bona-fide 
qualifications, just as it's entirely in order to look for a black man 
to play Othello.  (And if their use is "probably unjust", shouldn't the 
placers just be "probable sleazeballs?".)

>Later on I was OUTRAGED by Lawrence Summers (the President of Harvard)
>who questioned the content of West's research and teaching in a way
>Summers WOULD NOT question the content of a white faculty member. West
>rightfully demanded that IF his philosophical research led him to
>conclude that in fact there is philosophical and political reflection
>going on in soul and rap music, he had a right to analyze lyrics and
>even make his own CD as part of his academic duties.

AFAIK the issue was not West's musical career (nor yet his work as an 
actor in sf movies), but an insufficiency of work of a more conventional 
academic nature.  Were Dr. Dre to present an academic thesis on 
alienation among urban blacks as fulfilment of a recording contract, I 
am sure his record company would be equally unhappy. 

>But what the US justice department wants is not a new set of laws, but
>RELIEF, in the Patriot act, from time-consuming, pre-existing,
>Constitutional checks on executive power. At Guantanamo, they don't
>want "show trials". They want NO trials, and this means, for the
>individual concerned, incarceration without any chance (even a sham
>chance) at a day in court.

In any other war, those incarcerated there would have been shot out of 
hand.  

- Gerry Quinn

gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message news:<srltb.600$nm6.1613@news.indigo.ie>...
> In article <f5dda427.0311110852.4b43ece4@posting.google.com>, spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
> >gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message
> >> 
> >> Everyone's got the same choice with money.  A dollar is a dollar.
> >
> >This isn't true.
> >
> >Neoclassical economics assumes a freedom, from quantum "friction" such
> >that the typical player is a merchant who, when penniless, can buy and
> >sell in a pre-existing bazaar his way back to solvency. Of course, the
> >reality for most people is that outside the criminal economy they are
> >dependent on large employers.
> >
> >What this means is that a "dollar" means something different to the
> >wealthy man, who lives more in the ideal state of neoclassical
> >economics, infinite in all directions, in which he can take
> >entrepreneural risks, and in which a dollar is a tip.
> >
> >Whereas for a WalMart employee who lives in a motel as described in
> >Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed, a "dollar" is the
> >difference between existence and extinction. She lives in other words
> >in a financial "quantum", non "classical" world, as opposed to the
> >Newtonian world of the middle class.
> 
> So a dollar means more to a WalMart employee (or shopper, no doubt).  
> Nevertheless, it buys the same amount of goods.  [Your analogies 
> with quantum mechanics have no meaning that I can discern.  Perhaps you 
> are thinking of Brownian motion? This is small scale physics, but still 
> in the classical regime.]

Economics as ideology substitutes abstractions, such as the "same
amount of goods" for lived reality. The lived reality is that bread to
a starving person means something different qualitatively than a loaf
of bread on the kitchen counter of the wealthy man.

This is not hard to discern. In fact, misunderstanding it means that
you do not know, in fact, how economics works, insofar as it works, as
a science.

As a science of man, economics has to make simplifying assumptions so
that it can predict, based on the simplifying assumptions, of economic
behavior in the large. These predictions allow for individual
variation and indeed for "economic irrationality" including the
willingness of the poor man to pay more (for example, at convenience
stores) than is "rational" for a staple.

In this connection, ghetto areas of major American cities have been
deprived, in recent years, of major grocery stores. They have pulled
out, and they have been replaced by so-called "convenience" stores
which peddle staples for high prices and push tobacco and alcohol to
make a profit.

Economics, in a way that parallels physics, has to disregard phenomena
like this, and assume, for its predictions to come true, that the
suburbanite and the ghetto dweller have statistically the same set of
economic choices. The economist would actually have to tell the ghetto
dweller to drive to the suburbs to make the "rational" choice to shop
at Safeway, and, when the economist is told our boy doesn't have a
car, would then probably say, take the bus (completely disregarding
the question of whether a bus even exists).

The economist has to use "Say's Law" to disregard what I do call
quantum, "nickel and dime" effects when the poor person acts in
seemingly "irrational" ways when he is close to penury. "Say's Law"
claims that for a seller, there is a buyer, at some strike point.
"Say's Law" would call the poor person not rational when she pays
overdue bills using expensive Western Union wire transfers, or takes
kids to the doctor in expensive cabs, for clearly (to the economist)
she hasn't rationally ordered her affairs by properly (and at the
right time) entering the market (the job market, in most cases) and
selling her labor for the optimal strike price.

The analogy with physics, which was lost on you because part of the
ideology is an anti-psychiatry which makes people ashamed of certain
ways of thinking, including analogy, as being primitive, was based on
the way that in the late 19th century, anomalies appeared in Newtonian
physics which were later subsumed under quantum physics, without
refuting Newtonian physics.

I claim instead that the work of Barbara Ehrenreich, Amyarta Sen (a
third world economist who questions the stress on Western economic
rationality because of the ways it has distorted the policies of Third
World countries in favor not of their people but of the developed
world) and others raises anomalies in classical economics, and, my
favorite anomaly happens to be the way in which the poor, both in the
developed and the underdeveloped world, have to be "irrational" in
terms of classical economics to merely survive.

Classical economics imagines that the destitute person without
prospects can borrow capital and, by dint of hard work and sobriety,
buy and sell using Say's law until he or she becomes a rich merchant.
Or, they can get a job.

Like Newtonian physics, it ignores quanta...nickels and dimes, these
particles which when we are well-off accumulate in the sofa, and for
which we hunt when we need exact fare...or are unemployed.

The fact is that all over the world, people do struggle in ways
approved by laissez-faire. Marx was wrong. The secret of great
fortunes is not, in all cases, "primitive accumulation" by force and
fraud (it IS in many cases). But classical economics looks at the
chaotic, if micro-ordered world (like Newton) and confuses it with the
only possible world. The problem is the margins and the outside of
this world which classical economics fails to recognize or explain.

For every person who works her way off a garbage dump in Recife, there
are many others who steal their way and still others who remain on the
dump through no moral failing. Classical economics fails to understand
who winds up the clock mechanism of the market, just as Newtonian
physics failed to account for phenomena at the extremes of time,
space, heat, pressure, etc.

> 
> >The fact is most people don't save because they can't save. They have
> >to pay for their needs and the needs of their children as more and
> >more any kind of "free" health and welfare benefits are withdrawn,
> >because of Prop 13 style reluctance, on the part of the wealthy, to
> >pay taxes.
> 
> If you were surviving on X/week, and you receive an additional Y/week, 
> you *can* save Y.  At least according to models of humanity that presume 
> individuals have a degree of autonomy and self-control.

Unlike physicists, classical economists have a nasty tendency to drop
into moral lectures on the failings, not only of the poor but also of
graduate students who fail to grok the hegemonic philosophy, as if the
failure to grok were an indication of lack of an "autonomy" and
"self-control".

Honest physicists are in fact delighted to hear about anomalies and do
not lecture graduate students for finding anomalous results, unless,
of course, these physicists have been corrupted by the economics, and
the economic ideology, of Big Science.

The "autonomy" of the successful economic actor is a myth. The
homeless man may indeed have a high degree of autonomy precisely
because he does not want to be beholden to a landlord and a job, and
conversely, the man with a job has to resign autonomy and conform to
the requirements of the job.

As to lectures about self-control, sociologists like Max Weber, unlike
typical economists, know that laissez-faire economies have to generate
new "needs" and LACK of self-control when the person steps into the
role of consumer.

The fact is that even by generally accepted guidelines, working
people, even in the USA, do not "survive" at either the minimum wage
or the poverty line. Instead, they develop stress based diseases which
terminate their "survival" in either the short or long term.

The fact is that in major cities of the US, rental, let alone
purchased, homes are out of reach of people-with-jobs who have to use
a variety of stratagems OUTSIDE "economics" to deal with this
situation. These include, today, living long term and at great expense
(relative to income) in motels, in sharing housing space, and, in many
cases, going without shelter, and showing up for work after sleeping
in the car, or in the park.

Again, and for its stupid goddamn equations, classical economists have
to treat the very word "survival" as binary when in fact there is a
continuum of "survival", from living in the park while working at
McDonald's, to living with an abusive male, to having a decent studio
apartment.

Your claim in fact rests upon an assumption which is inconsistent with
the rest of classical economics. Your claim needs a set-point called
"survival" which assumes merely because a person existed, in some
miserable fashion, before the boss gave him a raise, his income and
expenditures represented a survival wage, and, if he has "autonomy",
and "self-control", he can save the raise.

In fact, it treats existence as a predicate, and a luxury. 

But what this means is that there is a distinction between basic needs
and luxuries. The problem is that whenever government steps in to
define and to meet basic needs, neoclassical economists claim that
basic needs cannot be defined. In fact, neoclassical economists
nowhere define "needs" versus mere wants and for its stupid goddamn
equations to work, they have to take any one person's survival as a
logical primitive. Somehow, Homeless Joe survived and made it to work,
and the classical economist shrinks in horror from discovering what
extra-market stratagems Homeless Joe might have used to survive.



>  
> >> >The concern in Fiji was that the natives, lacking literacy until
> >> >rather recently, would be at a disadvantage as regards "Europeans" (a
> >> >term that in Fiji means Europeans, Americans, and Australasians) who
> >> >would steal their land, and also as regards Indians who'd been brought
> >> >over in the 19th century to work as farm laborers, but who later
> >> >succeeded in business, because their Hindu and Moslem tradition
> >> >demanded that they educate their children. For this reason the British
> >> >commencing with Sir Arthur Gordon instituted a policy, commencing in
> >> >the 1860s, of land rights in which the natives retained title to 85%
> >> >of Fiji.
> >> >
> >> >This may seem to an American a "liberal, bleeding heart" policy. The
> >> >problem for conservatives was that it worked in the sense that Fiji
> >> >has enjoyed relative social peace (there have been problems but what
> >> >is striking about them is that they have consistently been followed by
> >> >periods of reconciliation, initiated by the warring parties
> >> >themselves). This is because the natives, potentially the least
> >> >well-off, were given a deliberate advantage to their benefit.
> >> 
> >> Actually it seems more of a racial discrimination policy.  
>  
> >By a Rawlsian test, "racial discrimination" necessarily includes
> >injustice to the least-well-off and in fact this is the only
> >meaningful kind of "discrimination"...in view of the fact that under
> >the neocon definition of "racial discrimination", ordinary businesses
> >practice "discrimination" all the time under the generally accepted
> >rule of "bonafide occupational qualification".
> 
> So it's not racial discrimination when you discriminate by race?  I 
> don't know whether Rawls would swallow that interpretation of his views. 

John Rawls is passed away and therefore we cannot know if his thought
is as complex as mine. I do know, however, that individuals and
organizations "discriminate" all the time, and having, unlike you,
studied the law, I find that claims of racial and gender
discrimination cannot be easily made when in the latter case of gender
discrimination, a bona-fide occupational qualification exists. I also
know that the University of Michigan's "discrimination" was found not
to be racially discriminatory, and it was found to be so because a
majority did not apply the mindless, oversimplified tests dishonestly
favored by the right.

As far as I know, my linkage of Rawlsian political theory and
discrimination law is my own contribution. Morally speaking, to
discriminate in favor of a class that is, up to the present day and
not just in the past, the least well off or less well off, is a
DIFFERENT act from discriminating in favor of a class that is, up to
the present day and not just in the past, the better off.

In the past and up to today, American white people are better off than
people of color. In fact, many of the racial gains of the 1960s were
lost especially as regards elementary education. Therefore, whatever
the abstract rights and wrongs, discriminating in favor of people of
color in a bona-fide (good faith) attempt to end the historical wrong
is just completely different from apartheid laws which work against
the least well off and in favor of the better off.

Indeed, this is a class of simple truth so ineluctable that to differ
from it creates monsters. The women rejected from the University of
Michigan law school because of quotas had to in fact pose as the least
well off when in fact they were employed and employable in good
jobs...just not as lawyers. When in fact their race and class were a
ticket to the good life. Their
interview with the press after the
decision was just ugly for this reason.

They were whiners.

> Still, for all I know, Fiji is an island paradise in which a majority of 
> feckless but happy natives are leavened by an Asian merchant class, and 
> the whole overseen by a benign European ruling class.  Whether it works 
> or not, it's no longer a mainstream mode of governance.

Oh? And what kind of argument is this? "We shall admit only mainstream
modes of governance" even when, in 1992, the largest riot in American
history occured as a result of "mainstream modes of governance".

When, to divert attention away from corporate greed, the current
administration had to lie to 70% of the people to get its war which it
is in fact losing?

> 
> >I have seen for example, ads that ask for "white" people as
> >photographic models and the placers of these ads are using BFOQ. I
> >think their use is probably unjust but this is because racial
> >discrimination, with a component of unfairness to the least well off,
> >is pervasive in America.
> >
> >However, the sleazeballs who place these ads are able to do so legally
> >under bonafide occupational qualification law.
> 
> You're being ridiculous, IMO - these ARE cases of bona-fide 
> qualifications, just as it's entirely in order to look for a black man 
> to play Othello.  (And if their use is "probably unjust", shouldn't the 
> placers just be "probable sleazeballs?".)

In fact, there's a move in theater for racial and gender neutral
casting. A woman played Falstaff in a recent production of the two
Henry IV plays of Shakespeare. Linda Hunt played an Asian male in the
Peter Weir film The Year of Living Dangerously.

In film, Ken Branagh cast black men in roles in Hamlet that had
nothing to do with their race. I saw a Shakespeare-in-the-park
production of Richard III in 1990, in which Denzel Washington played a
white king.

Whereas when Abercrombie and Fitch contract-out their advertising
work, there is clearly someone in A & F who is demanding white bodies,
exclusively, and the photographer who placed the "whites-only" ad (in
Santa Monica) was skirting the edge of discrimination. I think he's a
probable sleazeball but I guess this violates an implicit "default"
rule: if an American white man does something, he is innocent until
proven guilty. Nothing wrong with the rule...if it were applied to all
citizens, which it isn't.

> 
> >Later on I was OUTRAGED by Lawrence Summers (the President of Harvard)
> >who questioned the content of West's research and teaching in a way
> >Summers WOULD NOT question the content of a white faculty member. West
> >rightfully demanded that IF his philosophical research led him to
> >conclude that in fact there is philosophical and political reflection
> >going on in soul and rap music, he had a right to analyze lyrics and
> >even make his own CD as part of his academic duties.
> 
> AFAIK the issue was not West's musical career (nor yet his work as an 
> actor in sf movies), but an insufficiency of work of a more conventional 
> academic nature.  Were Dr. Dre to present an academic thesis on 

By the time Summers called Dr. West on the carpet, West had published
several books including a complete history of American philosophy. His
publishing record outpaced that of his competitors in academia.

Summers, to my knowledge, made no mention of a LACK of work and he did
not beat on Dr. West for not meeting his classes (a failing of many
academic superstars, for which they are never brought to account).

Summers instead was unhappy about a creation Dr. West made over and
above his large corpus of traditional work. Had Dr. West been a white
academic, this creation would have been (I am sure) represented as
humanizing the producer, and as showing that he or she retained the
common touch.

NOT ONCE has Noam Chomsky been called to account, for writing about
politics in excess of his work in linguistics. Edward Said was
defended and not attacked by the president of Columbia for throwing a
stone towards an Israeli checkpoint. One can only conclude that
Lawrence Summers had singled out West to "make his bones" with white
academics, by demonstrating that he had the balls to confront de black
man.

In fact, this is reminiscent of Bill Clinton's attack on Sistah
Souljah for dissing white people. During the 1992, Clinton blew, out
of proportion, statements Sistah Souljah made about white people that
were "disrespectful".

Clinton of course forgot that music is not only the taming of negative
emotion but also of its expression, and black people have long used
music to both express and to tame the rage created by the daily grind
of oppression to which they are subjected (this is just the facts,
ma'am: I see every day the treatment black people get).

Summers, who was a member of the Clinton administration, was appointed
to "tame" the university. One way this happens is for male
administrators to act very "macho" in order to dampen down a public
perception (that is used by Clinton's conservative opponents) that
universities are the residence of the "failed" male, who needs tenure
and privilege because he cannot "make it" in the "real" world.

Despite the fact, and in my own experience, that education and
research are terribly difficult jobs, for which there is high demand,
we find a class of college administrator for whom Job One becomes not
fostering education and research but instead public relations stunts.
I conclude that the FAILED attempt to bring Dr. West, a gentleman and
a scholar, to de woodshed was a failed public relations stunt and an
attempt to imitate Clinton's attack on Sistah Souljah.

It had NOTHING to do with the mission of Harvard University. Dr West
was doing first-rate work from which I as a member of the public
learned not only about the history of American philosophy but also how
to be a better teacher at the much humbler DeVry Institute, where I
was able, as a result of reading Dr. West, to "connect" better than
full time faculty with all my students.

> alienation among urban blacks as fulfilment of a recording contract, I 
> am sure his record company would be equally unhappy. 
>
Sure, if they were paying for songs. But Harvard had retained Dr. West
to pursue his interests where they leaded.

If a mathematician, like John Nash in graduate school, steps outside
his field, as did Nash when he used math to prove a famous result in
economics and the theory of games ("n-player equilibrium") he is
celebrated for accomplishment. Nash, belatedly owing to his illness,
received the Nobel for this work.

Similarly, West, in a unique and brilliant way, has shown how
America's "evasion" of philosophy has damaged race relations.

Pragmatism (the only home-grown American philosophy) refuses "grand
narratives" and asks "what works?" West admired the way in which this
brings workable racial justice and was an economic motor behind the
ending of Jim Crow: having to maintain separate facilities was a
private and a public expense, which failed to work.

However, once Pragmatism had accomplished this goal, the lack of any
narrative, any theory, about what race means outside of pragmatic
goals caused the search for equality to be deprived of any force. To
even use my old-fashioned language AS A WHITE MAN (which I happen to
be) is, in a Pragmatic regime, coded as useless windage...because it
does not, or is not seen to, be "pragmatic" and to accomplish any of
my personal life goals.

West read Kant to see that over and above our personal life goals, to
be fully human is to also ask why there has to be injustice. Kant saw
how this cannot be fully "mapped" to self-seeking and at the end of
Kant's analysis, he realized that part of being human is to be
interested in justice and right for its own sake...for the hell of it.

Continuous to this, West realized that people of color were calling in
music for the enabling of this simple fairness and recognition. In
"What's Going On?", Marvin Gaye is just puzzled by the mere fact of
injustice. His puzzlement is philosophical because to be unjust (at
least in Kant's view) we have to will ourselves to be less than human,
all other things being equal.

While the racial injustice of 1968 when the song was cut created short
term advantages for whites (not as many had to die in Vietnam, for
example), American apartheid then and now did not make economic sense.
Kant's question was why when there is equal cost and equal advantage
for doing good or evil, we would even pause and reflect as to what is
the right thing to do. A machine without consciousness would have to
use an exogenous device such as a random number generator, but instead
most people hem and haw and agonize. Furthermore, many people "give
until it hurts" and do good even to their disadvantage.

The black man in America has long asked "what's going on?": "am I not
a man and a brother?", and there simply is no coherent, philosophical
argument for racial injustice.

This mean that Gaye's PHILOSOPHICAL question, "what's going on" was of
genuine concern to Dr. West.

Gilbert Harman, a philosopher at Princeton, once wrote on one of my
papers, in response to my stating that "philosophy is not interested
in physics", "philosophy is interested in everything!", and it is in a
way that physics is interested in everything: there is no physics of
philosophy but there is a philosophy of physics. Therefore, just as a
philosopher might learn quantum theory, just as John Nash pestered
Einstein and von Neumann with questions, West, in a responsible
fashion, worked with rap musicians because of his ethical concerns
with the preservation of Jim Crow in the USA.

The argument might be made that this would be "anarchy", and would
permit, say, John Nash to design ties like the designs in the first
part of the movie, which Nash sees mathematical patterns. However, if
a mathematical superstar, let us say, were to design a line of ties
with fractal patterns, note that NO WAY would Lawrence Summers condemn
him: instead, he'd be gratified by the publicity.

Furthermore, the argument of the "slippery slope", towards "anarchy",
neglects the fact that just as a coherent narrative, or story, of a
mathematician designing ties can be told, I can related rap music and
Marvin Gaye to Dr. West's academic work.

Mathematicians want to solve the Riemann hypothesis not only because a
solution might be "beautiful" but also because of its potential
physical implications (patterns discerned, in prime number research,
have appeared in physical phenomena). Why are humanists, like Dr.
West, condemned for similar creativity?
 
> >But what the US justice department wants is not a new set of laws, but
> >RELIEF, in the Patriot act, from time-consuming, pre-existing,
> >Constitutional checks on executive power. At Guantanamo, they don't
> >want "show trials". They want NO trials, and this means, for the
> >individual concerned, incarceration without any chance (even a sham
> >chance) at a day in court.
> 
> In any other war, those incarcerated there would have been shot out of 
> hand.  

Gee, do something barbaric: it will brutalize the moral sensibilities
of the people, and they will accept more barbarism.

In Shakespeare's Roman plays, he addresses the economics of crime. To
assassinate Caesar becomes an act which rewrites history, and in which
Caesar can be, retrospectively, presented as a Tarquin, as a tyrant.
The evil of the act, done to Caesar (who may, or may not, have been
planning tyranny, but who, in the Shakespeare play, seems primarily a
prize-giver at games and no more) becomes in the confused and public
mind an evil that Caesar somehow did, or was planning, to do.

Since the administration got away with the Patriot act, and has been
able to set up a concentration camp on Guantanamo, and since we assume
that we are Americans, and for this reason are "nice" people (because
we look so good on Teevee), we conclude that "in any other war, those
incarcerated would have been shot out of hand."

THIS IS ABSURD.

German POWs were sent for a rest cure, during WWII, in Arizona and fed
(unlike homeless men in San Francisco today) three (not two) meals a
day. Many of these men had participated in Einsatzgruppen actions on
the eastern front, which were round-ups of Jews for liquidation.

The Germans who landed in Florida to committ terrorist actions were
given a trial in public.

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg may, or may not, have given the secret of
the bomb to Russia. They were executed, after a trial...not "shot out
of hand".

The administration calculated that since so many Americans are TV
brains, who are convinced by electronic images that Americans are the
nice people, who age so gracefully in ads for Celebrex, it could
indeed destroy Constitutional protections for people suspected of not
being nice, and we would somehow not process this fact. The
administration calculated this correctly, and, it has readied us for
the next round of brutalization, including, perhaps, shooting a few
pour encourager.

Anne Coulter said "invade Iraq, take their oil, and forcibly convert
the Iraqis to Christianity". This barbarism was not relegated to the
talk show loony bin. Instead, the administration has done 1 and 2, and
has made a start on 3.

> 
> - Gerry Quinn

Edward G. Nilges posted this:

> Indeed, this is a class of simple truth so ineluctable that to differ
> from it creates monsters. The women rejected from the University of
> Michigan law school because of quotas had to in fact pose as the least
> well off when in fact they were employed and employable in good
> jobs...just not as lawyers. When in fact their race and class were a
> ticket to the good life. Their interview with the press after the
> decision was just ugly for this reason.
>
> They were whiners.

It seems to me that this case was decided because there was precisely *one*
justice who disagreed on the meaning of the following extract from the 15th
Amendment.

"... nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of
the laws".

When an ordinary person is unable to comprehend the meaning of what seems to
be simple English, there are bound to be side effects - some will likely be
nastier than they have been  in this case.

"Edward G. Nilges" <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f5dda427.0311152013.4461d1f9@posting.google.com...
> gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message
news:<srltb.600$nm6.1613@news.indigo.ie>...
[...]
> >
> > So a dollar means more to a WalMart employee (or shopper, no doubt).
> > Nevertheless, it buys the same amount of goods.  [Your analogies
> > with quantum mechanics have no meaning that I can discern.  Perhaps you
> > are thinking of Brownian motion? This is small scale physics, but still
> > in the classical regime.]
>
> Economics as ideology substitutes abstractions, such as the "same
> amount of goods" for lived reality. The lived reality is that bread to
> a starving person means something different qualitatively than a loaf
> of bread on the kitchen counter of the wealthy man.

Economics, though not all economists, does have the tools to account
for such things. Even the basic courses discuss "marginal utility/value"
and "non-pecuniary" (non-monetary) factors and things such as
"regressive taxes".

Good models attempt to account for all these things (and things like
the mobility of the population, infrastructure, etc.) but there's no
guarantee that a give economist (or anyone else) will create or apply
a good model to make their predictions. (Politicians tend to pick the
results based on popularity - always a bad method.)

It's valid to ignore some things in order to model certain outcomes (you
can ignore the absence of inner-city grocery stores if you are modeling
the general trend of the U.S. economy over the next  five years) but it's
distressing to see people extrapolating the outcome of one model to the
outcome for a population that is not represented in the model. (E.g.,
extrapolating the prospects for Dimebox, Texas, from a model designed
for the Greater Los Angeles Area in mind is probably not valid.*)

-Wm

* Disclaimer: I don't know that Dimebox and L.A. don't track each other
economically, but I doubt it.

"kevin collins" <kevcollins@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<jULtb.212078$HS4.1820860@attbi_s01>...
> Edward G. Nilges posted this:
> 
> > Indeed, this is a class of simple truth so ineluctable that to differ
> > from it creates monsters. The women rejected from the University of
> > Michigan law school because of quotas had to in fact pose as the least
> > well off when in fact they were employed and employable in good
> > jobs...just not as lawyers. When in fact their race and class were a
> > ticket to the good life. Their interview with the press after the
> > decision was just ugly for this reason.
> >
> > They were whiners.
> 
> It seems to me that this case was decided because there was precisely *one*
> justice who disagreed on the meaning of the following extract from the 15th
> Amendment.
> 
> "... nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of
> the laws".
> 
> When an ordinary person is unable to comprehend the meaning of what seems to
> be simple English, there are bound to be side effects - some will likely be
> nastier than they have been  in this case.

I agree that the amendment is simple and straightforward. But to apply
it substantively you have to analyze the facts.

Many conservatives want in fact to have their white candidates,
rejected for affirmative action reasons, obtain redress on the basis
that the treatment FEELS unequal. It's the court's job to determine
whether it WAS unequal in the sense of the law.

The law can treat people differently, indeed it must, to ensure the
goal of the 14th amendment.

If a white applicant exceeds the resources of a law school which is
also meeting a legal goal of admitting people of color, and, her
qualifications are not at some set point, then she is being treated
differently, from the other applicants and from the way she would have
been treated in the past.

You have to take a look, as the court did, at the entire system for
assessing applicants which is materially a set of rules applied by
data systems to files.

The question becomes not whether any one rule takes into account race
it becomes whether the system is globally fair, and, I'd add based on
my earlier analysis, fair to the least well off class in the applicant
pool.

Conservatives resemble nothing so much to me, as software managers
who, in trying to see "the big picture", actually take one or two
business rules out of context, fail to understand them, and then
direct the programmers to remove them, at which point the meaning of
the entire system changes.

Or, managers who refuse to look at the system at all and instead decry
it as somehow "too complex".

You can't just say, "OK, everybody gonna be equal from now on" and
fulfill this promise by treating everyone the same. You have to factor
in the individual's characteristics and situation, and note that
"treating everyone the same" is what the Communists tried to do.

Scalia raved on about the 14th amendment hypocritically because he has
consistently refused to apply it to death penalty cases. In effect, he
wants to get rid of the 14th. To do so, he tries to apply a law, which
calls self-reflexively for equal protection of the laws, to his
favorite cases.

The lack of simple honesty is stunning.

During the deliberations, Scalia had the gall to ask the University of
Michigan to stop being, at one and the same time, diverse, and
selective.

He said that IF the U of M wanted to be diverse, it could simply
broaden and lower its admission criteria. Or, if it wanted to be
selective, it could remove affirmative action and tighten traditional
criteria, and then make him, all happy.

In other words, in Scalia's classist world, a university may be EITHER
a diploma mill for the poor, admitting and failing to teach
unqualified people of all races, which will then be looked upon
askance by employers who will prefer to hire from racially
discriminatory "elite" schools, OR an elite, and white school which is
unable, by law, to compensate for race.

This would destroy schools like Hunter College and ensure Scalia's
real goal, which is to close the door to immigrant and native groups
other than his own, which used schools like Hunter College to gain
entry to elite law schools.

The guy makes me sick. He sits on the bench, expecting to be Chief
Justice, and has nothing good to say about anybody who disagrees with
him. He's a Tony Soprano with a few brains and no heart.

"William" <Reply@NewsGroup.Please> wrote in message news:<mL2dnQJciMa3Tyqi4p2dnA@giganews.com>...
> "Edward G. Nilges" <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:f5dda427.0311152013.4461d1f9@posting.google.com...
> > gerryq@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote in message
> news:<srltb.600$nm6.1613@news.indigo.ie>...
> [...]
> > >
> > > So a dollar means more to a WalMart employee (or shopper, no doubt).
> > > Nevertheless, it buys the same amount of goods.  [Your analogies
> > > with quantum mechanics have no meaning that I can discern.  Perhaps you
> > > are thinking of Brownian motion? This is small scale physics, but still
> > > in the classical regime.]
> >
> > Economics as ideology substitutes abstractions, such as the "same
> > amount of goods" for lived reality. The lived reality is that bread to
> > a starving person means something different qualitatively than a loaf
> > of bread on the kitchen counter of the wealthy man.
> 
> Economics, though not all economists, does have the tools to account
> for such things. Even the basic courses discuss "marginal utility/value"
> and "non-pecuniary" (non-monetary) factors and things such as
> "regressive taxes".

It "deals" with them by monetizing them which begs the question. 

Economics can't explain the existence of people. It can only account
for behavior by people taken as givens.

Furthermore, the basic courses are in fact silent on whether
regressive taxes are good or bad.

I agree that the science per se is value-neutral. But any teacher
knows how to deliver a human science with an ideological message.


> 
> Good models attempt to account for all these things (and things like
> the mobility of the population, infrastructure, etc.) but there's no
> guarantee that a give economist (or anyone else) will create or apply
> a good model to make their predictions. (Politicians tend to pick the
> results based on popularity - always a bad method.)
> 
> It's valid to ignore some things in order to model certain outcomes (you
> can ignore the absence of inner-city grocery stores if you are modeling
> the general trend of the U.S. economy over the next  five years) but it's

No model could have predicted exogenous events such as the LA riots,
caused in part by the differential treatment of the ghetto versus the
suburbs, or September 11, for that matter.

After the event, you can change the model, and expand it to include
the possibility of terrorist attacks, or civil disturbances...just
like, in SimCity, you can create natural disasters.

But there is a zone of discourse OUTSIDE the boundaries of the
existing models in which you consider how to change the model. For
example, third world economists question the assumption that if it is
in the short-term interest of a developing nation to produce for
metropolitan consumption, they should do so in the long run, or,
invest resources for homegrown infrastructure.

For example, Cuba, in the absence of Soviet support and the
continuation of the US embargo, has learned to feed its own population
which contradicts the accepted wisdom today that if a nation refuses
(as did North Korea) to join a world market, it will starve. North
Korea appears to be starving but Cuba does not, and Cuba is an
anomaly. Perhaps there is a large and invisible "underground" economy
wherein Cuban emigres send food in large quantities to Cuba: perhaps
Domino's Pizza makes deliveries in patrol boats from the Florida Keys
:-).

Or, more likely, the problem of meeting basic needs is solvable even
if you don't "globalize". I admit that this may take an authoritarian
or dictatorial regime. But the economic prediction seems to be
falsified by Cuba.


> distressing to see people extrapolating the outcome of one model to the
> outcome for a population that is not represented in the model. (E.g.,
> extrapolating the prospects for Dimebox, Texas, from a model designed
> for the Greater Los Angeles Area in mind is probably not valid.*)
>

Yeah, but this is exactly what the current administration is doing. 

Economists need, I think, to join the human race, and make a
fundamental committment to morality over and above "economics". Their
problem should be to ensure that nobody starves and all kids, at
least, receive medical care and an education.

They need to engrave this on their desks. 

Otherwise, their "value neutral" models will always be used by thugs
to convince people of the "virtue" of selfishness and the rat race.

> -Wm
> 
> * Disclaimer: I don't know that Dimebox and L.A. don't track each other
> economically, but I doubt it.

spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311161838.26259c70@posting.google.com>...
> "William" <Reply@NewsGroup.Please> wrote in message news:<mL2dnQJciMa3Tyqi4p2dnA@giganews.com>...
> > "Edward G. Nilges" <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:f5dda427.0311152013.4461d1f9@posting.google.com...

> For example, Cuba, in the absence of Soviet support and the
> continuation of the US embargo, has learned to feed its own population
> which contradicts the accepted wisdom today that if a nation refuses
> (as did North Korea) to join a world market, it will starve. North
> Korea appears to be starving but Cuba does not, and Cuba is an
> anomaly. Perhaps there is a large and invisible "underground" economy
> wherein Cuban emigres send food in large quantities to Cuba: perhaps
> Domino's Pizza makes deliveries in patrol boats from the Florida Keys
> :-).
> 
> Or, more likely, the problem of meeting basic needs is solvable even
> if you don't "globalize". I admit that this may take an authoritarian
> or dictatorial regime. But the economic prediction seems to be
> falsified by Cuba.

It has to be false though, doesn't it?  Describe an inability of a
given population (in this case 'a nation') to feed itself [unless
'helped' by other nations in some way] as a general rule , an
absolute, and it implies the world starves, which on the whole it does
not.

If Cubans can feed themselves then, variables such as population &
weather aside, it suggests that their economy is focussed very much on
agriculture.  N. America can feed itself, even more crowded western
nations, where agriculture is such a small *proportion* of the economy
- like the UK and the netherlands, could feed themselves at short
notice, if willing to drop much luxury (such as excessive meat
consumption)

There's a computer modeling exercise for CS class.

> > distressing to see people extrapolating the outcome of one model to the
> > outcome for a population that is not represented in the model. (E.g.,
> > extrapolating the prospects for Dimebox, Texas, from a model designed
> > for the Greater Los Angeles Area in mind is probably not valid.*)
> >
> 
> Yeah, but this is exactly what the current administration is doing. 
> 
> Economists need, I think, to join the human race, and make a
> fundamental committment to morality over and above "economics". Their
> problem should be to ensure that nobody starves and all kids, at
> least, receive medical care and an education.
> 
> They need to engrave this on their desks. 
> 
> Otherwise, their "value neutral" models will always be used by thugs
> to convince people of the "virtue" of selfishness and the rat race.

Don't [or rather, should] economists claim to be observers of what is,
rather than advocates of what may, much like a historian should aim to
report what really was.

When they describe an economic activity that results in starvation we
can then respond by seeking altering that, much like we should seek to
learn from history.  The economists are thus the start of the
analytical process, not the 'policy maker'.  If they go on to inform
policy, as they undoubtedly will - for they are the 'expert adviser',
then indeed - they need to start carving their desks.

"Edward G. Nilges" <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f5dda427.0311161838.26259c70@posting.google.com...
> "William" <Reply@NewsGroup.Please> wrote in message
news:<mL2dnQJciMa3Tyqi4p2dnA@giganews.com>...
> >
> > Economics, though not all economists, does have the tools to account
> > for such things. Even the basic courses discuss "marginal utility/value"
> > and "non-pecuniary" (non-monetary) factors and things such as
> > "regressive taxes".
>
> It "deals" with them by monetizing them which begs the question.

Economics deals with non-monetary factors in many ways, not always
by monetizing them. (Flexibility of supply and or demand isn't a monetary
factor, for example, but it has a big impact on economic change.)

> Economics can't explain the existence of people. It can only account
> for behavior by people taken as givens.

The psychology of people can be accounted for in a model - though
the input may come from outside of economics itself.

> Furthermore, the basic courses are in fact silent on whether
> regressive taxes are good or bad.

The ones I took weren't - "regressive" has negative connotations to
start with.

[...]
> No model could have predicted exogenous events such as the LA riots,
> caused in part by the differential treatment of the ghetto versus the
> suburbs, or September 11, for that matter.

Maybe not, but a model can be devised to allow an anomalous input
so "what-if" scenarios can be tested.

[...]
> For example, Cuba, in the absence of Soviet support and the
> continuation of the US embargo, has learned to feed its own population
> which contradicts the accepted wisdom today that if a nation refuses
> (as did North Korea) to join a world market, it will starve.

Just a clarification, Cuba is part of a world market - it imports large
amounts of its food from France, Canada, etc. It doesn't feed itself
based on its internal agriculture.

[...]
> Economists need, I think, to join the human race, and make a
> fundamental committment to morality over and above "economics". Their
> problem should be to ensure that nobody starves and all kids, at
> least, receive medical care and an education.
>
> They need to engrave this on their desks.
>
> Otherwise, their "value neutral" models will always be used by thugs
> to convince people of the "virtue" of selfishness and the rat race.


A good economist will tell you what the limits are and how
he or she thinks certain choices will affect the outcome. The best
results come from letting a bunch of them argue about it for a while,
not from letting politicians pick the popular results or letting optimists
ignore real limitations. They can't invent resources to feed the starving
no matter how much they might like to. (Not that I believe there's a
shortage of resources in general.) Morality should be the overriding
goal of econimc policy and politics, not a replacement for economics
itself. (I think that's sort of what you're getting at, though?) -Wm

William wrote:

<snip>

> Economics deals with non-monetary factors in many ways, not always
> by monetizing them. (Flexibility of supply and or demand isn't a monetary
> factor, for example, but it has a big impact on economic change.)

Could you please move this economics discussion to an economics newsgroup?

Thanks. :-)

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

"William" <Reply@NewsGroup.Please> wrote in message news:<u76dnWktyrAYqiSiRVn-hg@giganews.com>...
> "Edward G. Nilges" <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:f5dda427.0311161838.26259c70@posting.google.com...
> > "William" <Reply@NewsGroup.Please> wrote in message
>  news:<mL2dnQJciMa3Tyqi4p2dnA@giganews.com>...
> > >
> > > Economics, though not all economists, does have the tools to account
> > > for such things. Even the basic courses discuss "marginal utility/value"
> > > and "non-pecuniary" (non-monetary) factors and things such as
> > > "regressive taxes".
> >
> > It "deals" with them by monetizing them which begs the question.
> 
> Economics deals with non-monetary factors in many ways, not always
> by monetizing them. (Flexibility of supply and or demand isn't a monetary
> factor, for example, but it has a big impact on economic change.)

Ok, but it does prefer numeric reasoning to other forms of reasoning,
especially any form of qualitative reasoning. For example, in
discussing the length of the working day and the elimination of
leisure, economics misses the set-point at which the leisure is so
small as to be useless.

These set-points can be addressed mathematically but typically aren't.

The economist, for example, would want, I think, some sort of
numerical argument for labor's demand: "8 hours of work, 8 hours of
rest, 8 hours for what we will". He would want it in good faith
insofar as he'd like to go to bat for labor.

But in this he does not see that a demand can be so fundamental as to
admit of only narrative arguments, such as a narrative of how
communities and families function better when the work-day is of
humane length.

> 
> > Economics can't explain the existence of people. It can only account
> > for behavior by people taken as givens.
> 
> The psychology of people can be accounted for in a model - though
> the input may come from outside of economics itself.
> 
> > Furthermore, the basic courses are in fact silent on whether
> > regressive taxes are good or bad.
> 
> The ones I took weren't - "regressive" has negative connotations to
> start with.
> 
> [...]
> > No model could have predicted exogenous events such as the LA riots,
> > caused in part by the differential treatment of the ghetto versus the
> > suburbs, or September 11, for that matter.
> 
> Maybe not, but a model can be devised to allow an anomalous input
> so "what-if" scenarios can be tested.
> 
> [...]
> > For example, Cuba, in the absence of Soviet support and the
> > continuation of the US embargo, has learned to feed its own population
> > which contradicts the accepted wisdom today that if a nation refuses
> > (as did North Korea) to join a world market, it will starve.
> 
> Just a clarification, Cuba is part of a world market - it imports large
> amounts of its food from France, Canada, etc. It doesn't feed itself
> based on its internal agriculture.

Not solely, but it is deprived of what is "naturally" its cheapest
source of food and this would be its neighbor to the north.
Furthermore, the US places pressure on French and Canadian exports to
Cuba. The result in the middle of the 1990s was near-starvation which
the Cuban government appears to have addressed in a responsible, if
authoritarian, if dictatorial, fashion.


> 
> [...]
> > Economists need, I think, to join the human race, and make a
> > fundamental committment to morality over and above "economics". Their
> > problem should be to ensure that nobody starves and all kids, at
> > least, receive medical care and an education.
> >
> > They need to engrave this on their desks.
> >
> > Otherwise, their "value neutral" models will always be used by thugs
> > to convince people of the "virtue" of selfishness and the rat race.
> 
> 
> A good economist will tell you what the limits are and how
> he or she thinks certain choices will affect the outcome. The best
> results come from letting a bunch of them argue about it for a while,
> not from letting politicians pick the popular results or letting optimists
> ignore real limitations. They can't invent resources to feed the starving

Actually, the recent discovery that open media almost completely
prevent famines is an economic "invention". Economists have found that
if people have the information as regards food sources, famines tend
not to occur.

Microlending is another "invention" of a "resource", and that is
access to credit for poor women based on the use of computers to track
payment patterns.

Both abandon the grim psychology of a Malthus and its lack of
imagination, which results in failure to see how "soft" factors can
form the basis of "inventions".

But these "inventions" only occur when there's a basic moral
orientation. Absent this you get the Irish potato famine, which was
the dull insistence that there were no resources to feed the Irish
after the potato crop failed.

> no matter how much they might like to. (Not that I believe there's a
> shortage of resources in general.) Morality should be the overriding
> goal of econimc policy and politics, not a replacement for economics
> itself. (I think that's sort of what you're getting at, though?) -Wm

Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bpc0kl$qbj$3@hercules.btinternet.com>...
> William wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > Economics deals with non-monetary factors in many ways, not always
> > by monetizing them. (Flexibility of supply and or demand isn't a monetary
> > factor, for example, but it has a big impact on economic change.)
> 
> Could you please move this economics discussion to an economics newsgroup?
> 
> Thanks. :-)

Richard, I have recently seen you discuss children in this newsgroup
and it appears to me your rule is that as long as sentiments are of
the gaseous mainstream, they are "on-topic".

There is an economics of programming and this discussion relates. I
therefore as that you again cease and desist this trolling behavior.

Thank you.

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> news:<bpc0kl$qbj$3@hercules.btinternet.com>...
>> 
>> Could you please move this economics discussion to an economics
>> newsgroup?
>> 
>> Thanks. :-)
> 
> Richard, I have recently seen you discuss children in this newsgroup
> and it appears to me your rule is that as long as sentiments are of
> the gaseous mainstream, they are "on-topic".

I invite you to think about the concept of "percentage", if you think you're 
up to it.

> There is an economics of programming

And there are newsgroups for discussing economics. Please use them in 
future, leaving this one free for programming discussions, in which you 
appear not to have the slightest interest.

Thank you.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bpdqft$k74$1@hercules.btinternet.com>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:<bpc0kl$qbj$3@hercules.btinternet.com>...
> >> 
> >> Could you please move this economics discussion to an economics
> >> newsgroup?
> >> 
> >> Thanks. :-)
> > 
> > Richard, I have recently seen you discuss children in this newsgroup
> > and it appears to me your rule is that as long as sentiments are of
> > the gaseous mainstream, they are "on-topic".
> 
> I invite you to think about the concept of "percentage", if you think you're 
> up to it.

I have seen posts from you in this newsgroup dedicated, 100%, to topic
flames which are necessarily off-topic, and the airing of rather
conventional sentiments about family life. I have seen posts from you
which are, I believe, commercial promotions of the C language which
are off-topic, 100%, because they belong in comp.lang.c; it is
possible to violate the topicality of a newsgroup, and you do, by
posting material appropriate to a ng of narrower focus.

I suggest that your real rule is that a post is off topic if its
sentiments offend your rather conventional views.

> 
> > There is an economics of programming
> 
> And there are newsgroups for discussing economics. Please use them in 

The rule here is that the expert must be a layperson when he leaves
off speaking about his field.

Indeed, the code of ethics of the ACM states that the computist will
qualify his statements about areas of expertise outside his competence
with the statement that he is indeed stepping outside.

However, in this ng, its charter is an implicit statement that the
experts are indeed speaking, about related topics, but outside their
area of professional and certifiable competence.

I think, Richard, you have a hair up your ass about the idea that an
expert might use his expertise in a second-order fashion to address
neighboring areas in an interdisciplinary sense, and, what's
interesting is how this short circuits the ability to do progressive
thought and work.

Chomsky, for example, uses his linguistic work in a second-order
fashion to find the "grammar" of US policy. Although Chomsky himself
may not see it, he shows, I think, how a US policy must be
"well-formed", and, typically, be the bombing, murder, and general
torment of object clauses who can't hit back.

I believe, along with Knuth, that in fact programming, properly
learned (a rare event) teaches lessons about the management of
increasing complexity which are unlearned by the Bush and Blair
administration. Of course, both of those administrations need to learn
basic morality, but there has been also, in the large, a mismanagement
of all but appearance in both cases. The Iraq war was in fact a
near-run thing, and the US and Britain could have been defeated by a
couple of divisions of pissed-off, well-trained oysters on the half
shell: but, in fact, most Iraqis simply did not want the war.



> future, leaving this one free for programming discussions, in which you 
> appear not to have the slightest interest.

I do not have any interest in discussions with incompetent people. You
are not such a person, but I do not have interest in the defense of
outdated paradigms, like C, in the interest of job security. I have
only rarely found useful code or algorithms in public newsgroups.

When I attend to programming, I am intensely interested in the problem
before me. But you reason merely from an interest in, and knowledge
of, the world outside code to a lack of interest. This I am afraid
says more about you, than about me.

The subject is programmer's unpaid overtime, an ECONOMIC issue which
ordinary people need to be permitted to discuss. Indeed, and in a way
that I don't see in other posts, I returned to this theme by
mentioning, in a discussion about economics, the qualitative reasoning
behind labor's demand for a division of the day by three: "8 hours for
work, 8 hours for rest, and 8 hours for what we will."

It is clear to me that you believe that the charter of this ng allows
off-topic focus flames, off-topic bragging about home purchases,
off-topic reproduction of conventional sentiments in the effort to
portray a safe persona, and off-topic personal abuse of the vilest
sort. It is also clear to me that you are either a self-appointed
guardian of this tradition, of normalized deviance, or, you are a paid
agent whose mission it is to short-circuit progressive discussions
outside of racist and xenophobic discussions of offshore coding.

Do have a nice day.

> 
> Thank you.

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> news:<bpdqft$k74$1@hercules.btinternet.com>...
>> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>> 
>> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
>> > news:<bpc0kl$qbj$3@hercules.btinternet.com>...
>> >> 
>> >> Could you please move this economics discussion to an economics
>> >> newsgroup?
>> >> 
>> >> Thanks. :-)
>> > 
>> > Richard, I have recently seen you discuss children in this newsgroup
>> > and it appears to me your rule is that as long as sentiments are of
>> > the gaseous mainstream, they are "on-topic".
>> 
>> I invite you to think about the concept of "percentage", if you think
>> you're up to it.
> 
> I have seen posts from you in this newsgroup dedicated, 100%, to topic
> flames which are necessarily off-topic, and the airing of rather
> conventional sentiments about family life.

You're clearly not up to it. Most of the stuff I post here is topical. Most 
of the stuff you post here is not topical. You lose. Good day.

<didn't bother reading the rest>

Please, people - keep economics discussions in economics newsgroups. Thanks.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bpf83r$6fc$1@titan.btinternet.com>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:<bpdqft$k74$1@hercules.btinternet.com>...
> >> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> >> 
> >> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> >> > news:<bpc0kl$qbj$3@hercules.btinternet.com>...
> >> >> 
> >> >> Could you please move this economics discussion to an economics
> >> >> newsgroup?
> >> >> 
> >> >> Thanks. :-)
> >> > 
> >> > Richard, I have recently seen you discuss children in this newsgroup
> >> > and it appears to me your rule is that as long as sentiments are of
> >> > the gaseous mainstream, they are "on-topic".
> >> 
> >> I invite you to think about the concept of "percentage", if you think
> >> you're up to it.
> > 
> > I have seen posts from you in this newsgroup dedicated, 100%, to topic
> > flames which are necessarily off-topic, and the airing of rather
> > conventional sentiments about family life.
> 
> You're clearly not up to it. Most of the stuff I post here is topical. Most 
> of the stuff you post here is not topical. You lose. Good day.

I have not seen a single useful result of yours about programming in
this newsgroup. What I have seen are off-topic and inappropriate
commercial promotions of the out-dated C language, off-topic focus
flames, and the off-topic emotional manipulation of other posters into
off-topic flaming of participants, which prevents this newsgroup from
being used for its intended purpose, which is the discussion of
issues, in programming, that don't relate to specific programming
languages. These issues include the relationship of programming to
economics.

> 
> <didn't bother reading the rest>

If you cannot do me this elementary courtesy, you have no moral right
to post your nonsense and you are a troll. I do not care how many
posters you have emotionally manipulated into supporting you sight
unseen, your behavior appears to me as either a troll, or as a paid
agent who is being paid to disrupt, as "off-topic" any discussion
where intelligent and progressive comments aries.


> 
> Please, people - keep economics discussions in economics newsgroups. Thanks.

"Edward G. Nilges" <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f5dda427.0311182154.561b2a2a@posting.google.com...
>
> Chomsky, for example, uses his linguistic work in a second-order
> fashion to find the "grammar" of US policy. Although Chomsky himself
> may not see it, he shows, I think, how a US policy must be
> "well-formed", and, typically, be the bombing, murder, and general
> torment of object clauses who can't hit back.

According to his wife, sometimes it's just something he read that sets
him off. Sounds like he'd be right at home here :-)  -Wm

On Wed, 19 Nov 2003 08:02:50 -0800, Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bpf83r$6fc$1@titan.btinternet.com>...
>> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>> 
>> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
>> > news:<bpdqft$k74$1@hercules.btinternet.com>...
>> >> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>> >> 
>> >> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
>> >> > news:<bpc0kl$qbj$3@hercules.btinternet.com>...
>> >> >> 
>> >> >> Could you please move this economics discussion to an economics
>> >> >> newsgroup?
>> >> >> 
>> >> >> Thanks. :-)
>> >> > 
>> >> > Richard, I have recently seen you discuss children in this newsgroup
>> >> > and it appears to me your rule is that as long as sentiments are of
>> >> > the gaseous mainstream, they are "on-topic".
>> >> 
>> >> I invite you to think about the concept of "percentage", if you think
>> >> you're up to it.
>> > 
>> > I have seen posts from you in this newsgroup dedicated, 100%, to topic
>> > flames which are necessarily off-topic, and the airing of rather
>> > conventional sentiments about family life.
>> 
>> You're clearly not up to it. Most of the stuff I post here is topical. Most 
>> of the stuff you post here is not topical. You lose. Good day.
> 
> your behavior appears to me ... as a paid
> agent who is being paid to disrupt, as "off-topic" ...

Where can I get a piece of that? Why doesn't anyone pay me for posting
to usenet?

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> news:<bpf83r$6fc$1@titan.btinternet.com>...
> 
> I have not seen a single useful result of yours about programming in
> this newsgroup.

Then please learn to read for comprehension. Enlightenment will follow in 
due course.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bpgika$2pf$1@sparta.btinternet.com>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:<bpf83r$6fc$1@titan.btinternet.com>...
> > 
> > I have not seen a single useful result of yours about programming in
> > this newsgroup.
> 
> Then please learn to read for comprehension. Enlightenment will follow in 
> due course.

I really don't desire to do this. This is because my concern is at
this time that my objects delegate and should inherit. My information
is that the C language can do neither, indeed that all procedures in C
are of the type "function", a legacy type, useful only for the most
elementary operations.

It can merely point at stuff which may be void.

Since I have not used C for several years, there may have been
developments such that C, is different from, the C I used in 1992.

However, I am familiar with the manufacture of the illusion of
progress for reasons of commerce.

But I am not about to read ANYTHING you have written on C. This is
because you are an untrustworthy source, and you have deeply offended
me on repeated occasions, after initial courtesies were extended by me
including praise for what I read in your book.

You have also gone back on your word in which you promised the ng not
to pay me any mind, as a service, I would imagine, in the interest, I
fancy, of saving bandwidth for the use of the proletariat.

Have a nice day.

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> news:<bpgika$2pf$1@sparta.btinternet.com>...
>> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>> 
>> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
>> > news:<bpf83r$6fc$1@titan.btinternet.com>...
>> > 
>> > I have not seen a single useful result of yours about programming in
>> > this newsgroup.
>> 
>> Then please learn to read for comprehension. Enlightenment will follow in
>> due course.
> 
> I really don't desire to do this.

This does not surprise me in the slightest.

<snip>

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311182154.561b2a2a@posting.google.com>...
> Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bpdqft$k74$1@hercules.btinternet.com>...
> > Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> > 
> > > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> > > news:<bpc0kl$qbj$3@hercules.btinternet.com>...
> > >> 
> > >> Could you please move this economics discussion to an economics
> > >> newsgroup?
> > >> 
> > >> Thanks. :-)
> > > 
> > > Richard, I have recently seen you discuss children in this newsgroup
> > > and it appears to me your rule is that as long as sentiments are of
> > > the gaseous mainstream, they are "on-topic".
> > 
> > I invite you to think about the concept of "percentage", if you think you're 
> > up to it.
> 
> I have seen posts from you in this newsgroup dedicated, 100%, to topic
> flames which are necessarily off-topic, and the airing of rather
> conventional sentiments about family life.

Oh how unfashionable of Richard.

Would you consider Richard's sentiments regarding fmily life more
useful if they were unconventional and so, perhaps, more appealing to
your range of political and social interests?  If so, why?

> I believe, along with Knuth, that in fact programming, properly
> learned (a rare event) teaches lessons about the management of
> increasing complexity which are unlearned by the Bush and Blair
> administration. Of course, both of those administrations need to learn
> basic morality, but there has been also, in the large, a mismanagement
> of all but appearance in both cases. The Iraq war was in fact a
> near-run thing, and the US and Britain could have been defeated by a
> couple of divisions of pissed-off, well-trained oysters on the half
> shell: but, in fact, most Iraqis simply did not want the war.

You deserve credit, Edward, for stretching the boundaries of
programming discussion and drawing connections to other important
parts of our lives and challenging things.  Most posters here do this
on occasion, you being arguably the most 'stretching'.

There are occasions, however, when a topic starts to completely leave
the comp.programming root and in these cases i can't really take
offence to someone, like Richard, reminding discussants of it.

> It is also clear to me that you are either a self-appointed
> guardian of this tradition, of normalized deviance, or, you are a paid
> agent whose mission it is to short-circuit progressive discussions
> outside of racist and xenophobic discussions of offshore coding.

You're aware that Richard is always one of the first to slam the lid
back down on emerging xenophobia.  I've also shown the eonomic
malreason behind the complainants views, as have others.  Infact, if
you wanted to really wipe the floor with a xenophobe then you could do
so with what i'd imagine to be much gusto in just such a thread,
whenever it nexts raises it's ugly head in comp.programming

"Sheldon Simms" <sheldonsimms@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:pan.2003.11.19.19.51.09.780872@yahoo.com...
>
> Where can I get a piece of that? Why doesn't anyone pay me for posting
> to usenet?

You didn't see this ad?

    EARN BIG MONEY STUFFING USENET AT HOME

-Wm

gswork@mailcity.com (gswork) wrote in message news:<81f33a98.0311200139.403ad19b@posting.google.com>...
> spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311182154.561b2a2a@posting.google.com>...
> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bpdqft$k74$1@hercules.btinternet.com>...
> > > Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> > > > news:<bpc0kl$qbj$3@hercules.btinternet.com>...
> > > >> 
> > > >> Could you please move this economics discussion to an economics
> > > >> newsgroup?
> > > >> 
> > > >> Thanks. :-)
> > > > 
> > > > Richard, I have recently seen you discuss children in this newsgroup
> > > > and it appears to me your rule is that as long as sentiments are of
> > > > the gaseous mainstream, they are "on-topic".
> > > 
> > > I invite you to think about the concept of "percentage", if you think you're 
> > > up to it.
> > 
> > I have seen posts from you in this newsgroup dedicated, 100%, to topic
> > flames which are necessarily off-topic, and the airing of rather
> > conventional sentiments about family life.
> 
> Oh how unfashionable of Richard.
> 
> Would you consider Richard's sentiments regarding fmily life more
> useful if they were unconventional and so, perhaps, more appealing to
> your range of political and social interests?  If so, why?

I have no objection to Richard's views. But I do object to a complex
rule which says "offtopic posting of conventional sentiments is not
offtopic, while progressive discussions of issues with a programming
aspect is verboten".
> 
> > I believe, along with Knuth, that in fact programming, properly
> > learned (a rare event) teaches lessons about the management of
> > increasing complexity which are unlearned by the Bush and Blair
> > administration. Of course, both of those administrations need to learn
> > basic morality, but there has been also, in the large, a mismanagement
> > of all but appearance in both cases. The Iraq war was in fact a
> > near-run thing, and the US and Britain could have been defeated by a
> > couple of divisions of pissed-off, well-trained oysters on the half
> > shell: but, in fact, most Iraqis simply did not want the war.
> 
> You deserve credit, Edward, for stretching the boundaries of
> programming discussion and drawing connections to other important
> parts of our lives and challenging things.  Most posters here do this
> on occasion, you being arguably the most 'stretching'.
> 
> There are occasions, however, when a topic starts to completely leave
> the comp.programming root and in these cases i can't really take
> offence to someone, like Richard, reminding discussants of it.

The problem is that if the topic at all implies that programmers take
a concern as to the application to which their work is put, Richard
jumps in. He did so with regards, for example, to the Data Quality
Act.
> 
> > It is also clear to me that you are either a self-appointed
> > guardian of this tradition, of normalized deviance, or, you are a paid
> > agent whose mission it is to short-circuit progressive discussions
> > outside of racist and xenophobic discussions of offshore coding.
> 
> You're aware that Richard is always one of the first to slam the lid
> back down on emerging xenophobia.  I've also shown the eonomic
> malreason behind the complainants views, as have others.  Infact, if
> you wanted to really wipe the floor with a xenophobe then you could do
> so with what i'd imagine to be much gusto in just such a thread,
> whenever it nexts raises it's ugly head in comp.programming

Discussions of offshore coding get a free pass, whether or not they
are xenophobic, I think because labor is always encouraged to take its
frustrations out on other working stiffs. Most opponents of H1-B
expansion aren't xenophobes. However, I have thought really hard and I
can see no benefit in closing doors to the mobility of labor, this
being because capital is so mobile.

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> But I do object to a complex rule which says "offtopic posting of
> conventional sentiments is not offtopic, while progressive
> discussions of issues with a programming aspect is verboten".

I believe the rule is quite simple: time invested grants privilege
to depart from the norms *ON* *OCCASION*.

As Richard pointed out to you recently, it has to do with percentage.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FC3825D.7111A3B5@Sonnack.com>...
> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
> 
> > But I do object to a complex rule which says "offtopic posting of
> > conventional sentiments is not offtopic, while progressive
> > discussions of issues with a programming aspect is verboten".
> 
> I believe the rule is quite simple: time invested grants privilege
> to depart from the norms *ON* *OCCASION*.
> 
> As Richard pointed out to you recently, it has to do with percentage.

During the 2002 discussion of the US Data Quality Act, an on-topic
issue, Richard contributed NOTHING except claims that the issue was
off-topic. His claims were off-topic because they were
meta-discussion.

And I note in this connection that while companies wanted the US
government to stop releasing climate data until it met "standards"
that can be gamed, US citizens will have no access to the data and
software quality of the next election.

This is clearly a programming issue unless programming is a
self-contained clerical activity like typing or secretarial work.

The typists at MI-5 or the CIA are unconcerned, as typists, with US or
UK policy and their JOB is to accurately type documents without
considering content. It is news to me that programmers are typists in
this regard.

Also, as I have noted, Richard's posts concerning C are offtopic in
the sense of being more appropriate to comp.lang.c.

I would be the first to admit that side remarks are appropriate if
most of the posts are on-topic. But adding Richard's off-topic
trolling of the discussion of the Data Quality Act to his
inappropriately overspecialized discussion of C, I cannot give him a
free pass.

Also, note that you will always be more tolerated if you extend simple
courtesy to posters when they, in a good faith effort to resolve a
disagreement, make private email contact with you. Neither you nor
Richard Heathfield did so when I made this good-faith attempt last
year. Instead, I received hostile and discourteous replies.

And, of course, your off-topic posts on your house or family will be
more tolerated when you do not engage in systematic harassment
campaigns and online professional slurs based on arguable stylistic
concepts (such as C styles).

I would have accepted any post, last year, from Richard that said
"with all due respect, Ed, I don't think programmers can be concerned
with US or UK legislation in the area of data quality".

"This is because it is our job to do what the boss or the client
wants. I [Richard] can see no independent set of rules for data
quality."

"Unlike civil or mechanical engineers, programmers are employees pure
and simple who are not peer-reviewed and not peer-certified, and in
the US and UK legal system, the saying 'the employee is worthy of his
hire' applies. This means that the programmer need not concern himself
with data quality or software correctness in the abstract, but only
whether his boss or his user is happy with the result."

"Therefore, Ed [Richard would have, ideally, concluded], I don't see
the point of you initiating a discussion of the US Data Quality Act,
or similar Parliamentary legislation here in Britain."

Of course, Richard posted none of the above. Instead he treated the
discussion as if it were a Dadaist absurdity, and, he egged strangers
on to join a systematic campaign of libelous harassment. And, he got
his feelings hurt.

spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in
news:f5dda427.0311251956.3f8fe030@posting.google.com: 

> Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message
> news:<3FC3825D.7111A3B5@Sonnack.com>... 
>> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
>> 
>> > But I do object to a complex rule which says "offtopic posting of
>> > conventional sentiments is not offtopic, while progressive
>> > discussions of issues with a programming aspect is verboten".
>> 
>> I believe the rule is quite simple: time invested grants privilege
>> to depart from the norms *ON* *OCCASION*.
>> 
>> As Richard pointed out to you recently, it has to do with percentage.
> 
> During the 2002 discussion of the US Data Quality Act, an on-topic
> issue, Richard contributed NOTHING except claims that the issue was
> off-topic. His claims were off-topic because they were
> meta-discussion.

<snip>

You assert that it was on topic. I've just googled the original post. I'm 
sure, as I was then, that it wasn't.

Anyone out there think that this post was on topic? Let's settle the 
'topicallity of the Data Quality Act' quickly... or make a 
comp.programming.topicallity so that these discussions can have a home?

Ian Woods

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message
> news:<3FC3825D.7111A3B5@Sonnack.com>...
>> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
>> 
>> > But I do object to a complex rule which says "offtopic posting of
>> > conventional sentiments is not offtopic, while progressive
>> > discussions of issues with a programming aspect is verboten".
>> 
>> I believe the rule is quite simple: time invested grants privilege
>> to depart from the norms *ON* *OCCASION*.
>> 
>> As Richard pointed out to you recently, it has to do with percentage.
> 
> During the 2002 discussion of the US Data Quality Act, an on-topic
> issue, Richard contributed NOTHING except claims that the issue was
> off-topic.

That's because the whole thread was off-topic.

> His claims were off-topic because they were
> meta-discussion.

On the contrary, meta-discussion about a newsgroup is topical in that 
newsgroup.

<Off-topic stuff snipped>

> Also, as I have noted, Richard's posts concerning C are offtopic in
> the sense of being more appropriate to comp.lang.c.

I don't start the threads. I just reply to them. Sometimes, I redirect to 
comp.lang.c when I think it would be more appropriate to discuss the matter 
there. Mostly, though, in c.p I use C merely as a lingua franca.

> I would be the first to admit that side remarks are appropriate if
> most of the posts are on-topic.

Fine. And they are.

> But adding Richard's off-topic
> trolling of the discussion of the Data Quality Act to his
> inappropriately overspecialized discussion of C, I cannot give him a
> free pass.

Mu.

> Also, note that you will always be more tolerated if you extend simple
> courtesy to posters when they, in a good faith effort to resolve a
> disagreement, make private email contact with you. Neither you nor
> Richard Heathfield did so when I made this good-faith attempt last
> year. Instead, I received hostile and discourteous replies.

Any email entitled "Cease and Desist" is likely to get pretty short shrift 
from me. Having rather obviously failed to intimidate me in public, you 
tried to intimidate me in private. But I am not easily intimidated.

<nonsense snipped, as usual>

Let's get back to discussing programming now.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

>> I believe the rule is quite simple: time invested grants
>> privilege to depart from the norms *ON* *OCCASION*.
>>
>> As Richard pointed out to you recently, it has to do with
>> percentage.
> 
> During the 2002 discussion of the US Data Quality Act, an
> on-topic issue,...

Oh, Ed, get over it.

The DQA *itself* wasn't on-topic, because it applied to only
one nation.  And after several attempts to explore the
underlying issue with you, it became clear that the concept
itself had little--if anything--to do with programming.

> Richard contributed NOTHING except claims that the issue was
> off-topic. His claims were off-topic because they were
> meta-discussion.

Incorrect on two counts.  First, Richard *did* contribute;
second, topicality is--by definition--on topic on amUSENET.

Regarding--once again--the "DQA"... it was a **management**
issue, Ed.  It was about how **managers** manipulate data,
and Had Nothing To Do With Programming.  To cite one of your
own example, no programmer can code against a manager playing
games with the scale of a chart axis.


> Also, as I have noted, Richard's posts concerning C are offtopic
> in the sense of being more appropriate to comp.lang.c.

We, in comp.programming, are fairly casual about topic so long as
it has to do with the art and craft of Actual Compute Programming.
Regular posters here are also allowed the occasional diversion.

> And, of course, your off-topic posts on your house or family will
> be more tolerated when you do not engage in systematic harassment
> campaigns and online professional slurs based on arguable stylistic
> concepts (such as C styles).

My opinions of your coding *style* were sidebar.  The real issue
was how *broken* your code was (the C example, IIRC, crashed upon
certain basic inputs).  EVEN when you used your preferred language
(VB), the code was inefficient and broken in how it parsed tokens.
You failed to respond to any of those critiques despite numerous
attempts to engage you.


> Also, note that you will always be more tolerated if you extend
> simple courtesy to posters when they, in a good faith effort to
> resolve a disagreement, make private email contact with you.
> Neither you nor Richard Heathfield did so when I made this
> good-faith attempt last year. Instead, I received hostile and
> discourteous replies.

Yes, you did.  As I made bluntly clear to you, I Don't Like You.
You have a style of assumed superiority and of dismissal of others
that I find extraordinarily and extremely unpalatable.  Further,
conversations about programming revealed you to be no better or
worse than any of us.  In some cases, you demonstrated serious
lack of understanding of your own tools and techniques.  You also
demonstrated hypocrisy by sinking to the very level you decry.

At the time of the DQA mega-monster thread, I'd had experienced
your style on two previous occasions.  Both times you demonstrated
immunity to any point of view or logic but your own.  It became
clear there was little point in engaging you in serious debate.

After the DQA dust settled, I determined to leave you to your own
devices.  I return to that determination now.


-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FC51342.9FCE5E9C@Sonnack.com>...
> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
> 
> >> I believe the rule is quite simple: time invested grants
> >> privilege to depart from the norms *ON* *OCCASION*.
> >>
> >> As Richard pointed out to you recently, it has to do with
> >> percentage.
> > 
> > During the 2002 discussion of the US Data Quality Act, an
> > on-topic issue,...
> 
> Oh, Ed, get over it.
> 
> The DQA *itself* wasn't on-topic, because it applied to only
> one nation.  And after several attempts to explore the

Discussions of C apply only to one language. Furthermore,
anti-public-interest laws in developed nations tend owing to
globalized finance to be coordinated. Precisely because the same
economic interests obtain in the UK, we can speculate that EVEN MORE
secrecy exists in the UK.

In fact, Margaret Thatcher used the culture of secrecy to hide her
authorization of HMS Conqueror's attack on the Argentine cruiser
Belgrano in 1982, which made conflict in the Falklands inevitable.

The programming aspect is that programmers are USED, today, and were
used in 1982 to manufacture secrets in the form of obfuscatory code
and systems which make it impossible for the citizen to know. In fact,
part of the "software crisis" (which now seems to be a phenomenon in
developed countries which simply does not obtain in India or other
less-developed lands which do "offshore" coding) may very well be
management's bad faith in demanding accuracy, and secrecy at the same
time.

> underlying issue with you, it became clear that the concept
> itself had little--if anything--to do with programming.
>
It may have been clear to you only because Richard managed to
filibuster the debate by his repeated metadiscussion.
 
> > Richard contributed NOTHING except claims that the issue was
> > off-topic. His claims were off-topic because they were
> > meta-discussion.
> 
> Incorrect on two counts.  First, Richard *did* contribute;
> second, topicality is--by definition--on topic on amUSENET.

Not to the extremes and in the bad faith it was done, it isn't.
Richard did not once ask for a justification of the topicality. He
claimed without much argument that the DQA was offtopic. He refused to
"listen" to the rebut because my rebut did not alter his claim.

Richard presented two arguments, one implicit and one explicit. The
implicit argument, which he failed to elucidate because of his bad
faith (and, he may not be a good debater), was that the topic was
"outside" programming in being overbroad: for I do not think he can
refute the facts: that data, today, is produced in large measure by
automated systems which can (at a variety of chokepoints) be used to
alter the data. The activities referred to and under the DQA include
the production, using software, of data.

I would be prepared to accept the implicit argument of overly wide
scope for a parallel reason, to the reason why I find C discussion of
overly narrow scope. Merely because programming is a human activity
does not license me to discuss any human activity whatsoever...even if
a chain of narrative or other language could be created between code
and the activity.

For example, it would be against the charter to discuss pizza in this
ng despite the fact that all programmers are human beings, all humans
eat food, pizza is food, ergo and quod erat demonstratum.

But programmers and their work product are used in large measure both
to produce and to conceal (as in the programming of security controls)
data and to create quality data.

The difference between the "pizza" chain and the DQA chain is that the
logic of the pizza chain is purely external and syllogistic. In fact,
syllogistic and propositional logic, precisely by being concerned with
syntax to the near-exclusion of semantics, allows one to make
irrevelant statements similar in social effect to starting a thread in
comp.programming on pizza pies. For example, "green ideas sleep
furiously" is well-formed from the standpoint of formal logic alone.

I can only conclude that you are having trouble with internal,
semantic revelance because of a psychological state of denial. Many
American programmers, myself included, joined the field for the SAME
reason many Russian mathematicians, and Russian programmers, entered
math and technology during the Communist era.

They found that Communist "law" and "humanities" had been so corrupted
by the Stalin era that actual training, at dear old Moscow U, in law
and the human arts and sciences, was completely corrupt, and, one got
good grades in school, and professional advancement after, by
parroting conventional pieties about "the working class" and "the
revolution".

A certain type of intellect, typically attracted to the high truth
content of mathematics, and apt also to be attracted by the reified
truth of programming, is actively repelled when people in a corrupted
society advance themselves by parroting bullshit (it appears Noam
Chomsky fled into the field of mathematical linguistics, new and
uncorrupted as it was in the 1950s, for this reason.

Our society is not as epistemologically corrupt as was Communist
society at the finish of Communism...but it's getting there, courtesy
of Bush.

However, the longterm effect of the career choice has to be a form of
denial that one's work is ultimately connected.

It's not a matter of "measuring" how far data about climate change is
located from programming. It's a matter of telling True Stories,
narratives, that make sense...or not. I sense that you and Richard
have been so brutalized by the social insistence on narrow "expertise"
that you have become tone-deaf and hostile towards the narrative style
when it proceeds down paths you do not like, while at the same time,
following semantic chains down safe and acceptable and conventional
paths.

I do know that my praxis in programming, in 1998, helped me to
immediately see a major flaw in a Wall Street Journal article which
claimed that global warming was nonexistent, since I saw immediately
how small the data set was, and, when I got to the office, I created
an Excel demonstration...that could have also been a Visual Basic or C
demonstration. The demonstration showed how rapidly the trend, which
was based in the WSJ on climate data from 1981 only, switched
direction when you added or deleted data points.

I saw this because after I debugged a nonworking Fortran compiler in
object form in 1981, a statistics prof at my university asked me to
develop several modules, and provided me free instruction in how to
lie with statistics...so as to get correct and reliable results.

I remain offended by any claim that this is not a coherent, cogent and
relevant narrative and I remain convinced that it is because today,
programmers self-select, and are selected (by politically conservative
or unaware, therefore conservative) head-hunters, from the politically
conservative or unaware, therefore conservative, segment of the
American booboisie. This was not the case when I started out and I am
saddened by it. I also think it relates to the inability of today's
typical programmer to cooperate with his mates.

> 
> Regarding--once again--the "DQA"... it was a **management**
> issue, Ed.  It was about how **managers** manipulate data,
> and Had Nothing To Do With Programming.  To cite one of your
> own example, no programmer can code against a manager playing
> games with the scale of a chart axis.

The United States Code of Military Justice is controlling here,
strangely enough.

For when a private is told by an officer to committ a war crime, such
as tearing down a house in Iraq in retaliation for a terrorist act not
perpetrated by the home-owner (as has actually happened in Iraq), he
may under the USCMJ refuse the order: indeed the language of the code
is stronger: he must refuse.

Management, as management, does nothing. The programmer is the one who
does the deed and recent decisions concerning corporate governance,
while they have not, to my knowledge, nailed programmers, have nailed
people who have claimed (like Arthur Anderson personnel as regards
Enron) that they were following orders. The court was unmoved because
they KNEW the effect of following orders.

Of course, in programming, we often work on a detail of a system and
do not have the big picture. But in a striking number of real
situations, we do.



> 
> 
> > Also, as I have noted, Richard's posts concerning C are offtopic
> > in the sense of being more appropriate to comp.lang.c.
> 
> We, in comp.programming, are fairly casual about topic so long as
> it has to do with the art and craft of Actual Compute Programming.
> Regular posters here are also allowed the occasional diversion.
>
What about the profession?
 
> > And, of course, your off-topic posts on your house or family will
> > be more tolerated when you do not engage in systematic harassment
> > campaigns and online professional slurs based on arguable stylistic
> > concepts (such as C styles).
> 
> My opinions of your coding *style* were sidebar.  The real issue
> was how *broken* your code was (the C example, IIRC, crashed upon
> certain basic inputs).  EVEN when you used your preferred language
> (VB), the code was inefficient and broken in how it parsed tokens.
> You failed to respond to any of those critiques despite numerous
> attempts to engage you.

I am not going to engage your lies on that matter. Furthermore, your
behavior was completely the opposite of cooperative problem solving
which is a requirement for remote work. Read The Psychology of
Computer Programming: people whose agenda is belittling others' skills
are a major productivity drain in programming.

Your feelings had been hurt by prior discussion, therefore you
dedicated yourself to finding flaws, and repeating discussion of those
flaws using a cut and paste methodology so as to make them seem, to
ignorant people, as major flaws. It was at this point that I put the
boot in, and compared your conduct to Fascist use of media, for Hitler
did find that repeating charges on the radio and the press was a way
to make them seem more important than they were.

Of course, at that point, you and Richard lost it, and re-presented my
narrative as some sort of farting in church.

> 
> 
> > Also, note that you will always be more tolerated if you extend
> > simple courtesy to posters when they, in a good faith effort to
> > resolve a disagreement, make private email contact with you.
> > Neither you nor Richard Heathfield did so when I made this
> > good-faith attempt last year. Instead, I received hostile and
> > discourteous replies.
> 
> Yes, you did.  As I made bluntly clear to you, I Don't Like You.

I neither like you nor hate you, since I don't know you. This is just
bad behavior, and posting "I don't like you" is in contravention of
simple courtesy standards, which you and Richard have repeatedly
violated, and which are arguably more important than topicality, which
is important.

> You have a style of assumed superiority and of dismissal of others

Based on the facts, and based, chump, on thirty years of maintaining
lousy code, that me or a well-trained, pissed-off oyster on the half
shell could have done better, and ruminating on why so many
programmers talk a good game while not performing as indicated by the
written record.


> that I find extraordinarily and extremely unpalatable.  Further,
> conversations about programming revealed you to be no better or
> worse than any of us.  In some cases, you demonstrated serious
> lack of understanding of your own tools and techniques.  You also
> demonstrated hypocrisy by sinking to the very level you decry.

I "sounded" like someone who felt he was a different, and superior
order of being than you. Well, maybe I am! I am most probably older
and I've probably had more experience professionally and in
life-in-general than you.

I am well aware that the very ability to claim "experience" has been
beat out of programmers by management who DON'T want to create a guild
of old farts. But the genuine motivation to keep programming
union-free, "seniority" free has been such an unquestioned theme as to
be absurd, and it allows youngsters like you to take out their anger,
inappropriately.

In fact, about the only thing different, the only different spin, I
bring to programming is I had the opportunity on more than one
occasion to do entire systems end-to-end and to deal, not with
programmers or analysts, but real users, while remaining a coder. Many
young programmers don't have this privilege and as a result have no
idea what the user wants.

But I am certain that many programmers my age were privileged in this
way. You do not appear to be. If you'd like the experience, I suggest
you get out of the corporate cocoon and into working for small
business.

I might be subhuman, a demon and not a god. 

But I can cheerfully admit to learning new things about my trade every
day...only not ever, not ever here. There is too much data smog and
too much mere childishness for this to happen. Instead I learn new
stuff on the job and from books.

For example, I have realized in recent months the power of inheritance
versus my object praxis, which is to delegate instead. I was able to
develop systems of more than 10000 LOC rapidly by delegation but I am
now working on a job in which my boss' code uses inheritance
intensively in C#. I find that it is a complete paradigm shift, for
when you DELEGATE, you become a manager who is responsible for
employees and their interaction.

When you INHERIT, you "stand on the shoulders of giants" because your
class has pre-existing power which you can ignore or use.

Delegation is like owning a used car, where you have to look under the
hood to see if the engine has fallen out, or something.

Inheritance is like renting a car, one of my favorite activities like
staying in a Residence Inn. The power is there if you want it, but if
you don't use it, nothing bad happens.

Now, I find no discussion in this ng except about long-since resolved
trivia, such as whether I kin use a bubble sort. Indeed, any time a
poster tries to advance off of CS 101 as taught in East Come to Jesus
Community College, he is shouted down, even as I was.

In fact, Richard's stuff is the most useful, but only because he shows
how to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear of a bad decision to use
C. His expertise is in other words genuine. The problem is that it is
pretty much the apex here.

> 
> At the time of the DQA mega-monster thread, I'd had experienced
> your style on two previous occasions.  Both times you demonstrated
> immunity to any point of view or logic but your own.  It became
> clear there was little point in engaging you in serious debate.
> 
> After the DQA dust settled, I determined to leave you to your own
> devices.  I return to that determination now.

Naw, you'll probably get wrapped around the axle about something I've
said. See ya later, chump.

In article <f5dda427.0311262104.35f5304c@posting.google.com>,
Edward G. Nilges (spinoza1111@yahoo.com) wrote:

> Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message
> news:<3FC51342.9FCE5E9C@Sonnack.com>...

>> The DQA *itself* wasn't on-topic, because it applied to only
>> one nation.
> 
> Discussions of C apply only to one language.

They do, however, nearly always apply to the practice of programming,
whereas discussions of the DQA (as far as I can tell, at least) never do.

> In fact, Margaret Thatcher... [yadda yadda yadda]

Still dropping names, I see.

> The programming aspect is that programmers are USED

Some are, I suppose, but not all, and in any case it has little to do with
the fact that they're programmers and nothing to do with the practice of
programming.

Pick any group with enough members -- figure skaters, let's say -- and
some of them are used by others to further the purposes of those others.
That's true, but has very little to do with either programming or figure
skating in and of themselves.

Imagine that there was a Figure Skating Quality Act that only applied
to the costumes that figure skaters wore and even then only applied under
narrow circumstances to those figure skaters skating in a particular rink
on alternate Tuesdays during certain phases of the moon in months whose
names contain the letter "D," but that did not apply if the skater's
coach's nearest non-blood relative had a middle name that contained the
letter "e" or had a checksum that was an odd number, or that relative had
a dog and an acquaintance who also had a dog and one or more of a cat,
fish, or bird, but not any reptiles, cows, or pigs, and who didn't give a
rip about the FSQA, but only if the two dogs had never met.

The relationship of the DQA to programming is a lot like that.

--

[Mr Nilges' article weighed in at 316 lines. Let's see how much of it was 
relevant to this newsgroup, by removing all the irrelevant stuff. See end 
of article for results!]

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message
> news:<3FC51342.9FCE5E9C@Sonnack.com>...
>> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
>> 
>> >> I believe the rule is quite simple: time invested grants
>> >> privilege to depart from the norms *ON* *OCCASION*.
>> >>
>> >> As Richard pointed out to you recently, it has to do with
>> >> percentage.
>> > 
>> > During the 2002 discussion of the US Data Quality Act, an
>> > on-topic issue,...
>> 
>> Oh, Ed, get over it.
>> 
>> The DQA *itself* wasn't on-topic, because it applied to only
>> one nation.  And after several attempts to explore the
> 
> Discussions of C apply only to one language.

Very true, and so C discussion takes place in comp.lang.c, not in a general 
programming group. What we see discussed here is /programming/, in which 
sometimes C is used to make a concrete illustration possible. Sometimes 
people use C++, or BASIC, or assembly language, or Ada, or Lithp, or Perl, 
to write their illustrations. I don't hear you complaining about those.

<snip of irrelevant stuff>

>> > Richard contributed NOTHING except claims that the issue was
>> > off-topic. His claims were off-topic because they were
>> > meta-discussion.
>> 
>> Incorrect on two counts.  First, Richard *did* contribute;
>> second, topicality is--by definition--on topic on amUSENET.
> 
> Not to the extremes and in the bad faith it was done, it isn't.

The bad faith was on your part, for introducing an off-topic discussion. I 
seem to recall that several of us tried to turn the discussion in topical 
directions, and even succeeded at one point - that tokenisation stuff where 
you ended up with egg all over your face, remember?

> Richard did not once ask for a justification of the topicality. He
> claimed without much argument that the DQA was offtopic.

The charter is very clear.

> He refused to
> "listen" to the rebut because my rebut did not alter his claim.

That's a very interesting definition of "listen".

<snip>

>> > Also, as I have noted, Richard's posts concerning C are offtopic
>> > in the sense of being more appropriate to comp.lang.c.
>> 
>> We, in comp.programming, are fairly casual about topic so long as
>> it has to do with the art and craft of Actual Compute Programming.
>> Regular posters here are also allowed the occasional diversion.
>>
> What about the profession?

If you feel the need to discuss the profession and cannot find an 
appropriate newsgroup in which to hold such discussions, you can take 
advantage of a well-established procedure for creating a new newsgroup for 
that purpose.

<snip>

[Down to 84 lines, including my reply and sig block. Mr Nilges, you are 
being overly verbose. Please stick to the subject. Thank you.]

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Richard Heathfield <invalid@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<3fc5b0c6@news2.power.net.uk>...
> [Mr Nilges' article weighed in at 316 lines. Let's see how much of it was 
> relevant to this newsgroup, by removing all the irrelevant stuff. See end 
> of article for results!]
> 
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message
> > news:<3FC51342.9FCE5E9C@Sonnack.com>...
> >> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
> >> 
> >> >> I believe the rule is quite simple: time invested grants
> >> >> privilege to depart from the norms *ON* *OCCASION*.
> >> >>
> >> >> As Richard pointed out to you recently, it has to do with
> >> >> percentage.
> >> > 
> >> > During the 2002 discussion of the US Data Quality Act, an
> >> > on-topic issue,...
> >> 
> >> Oh, Ed, get over it.
> >> 
> >> The DQA *itself* wasn't on-topic, because it applied to only
> >> one nation.  And after several attempts to explore the
> > 
> > Discussions of C apply only to one language.
> 
> Very true, and so C discussion takes place in comp.lang.c, not in a general 
> programming group. What we see discussed here is /programming/, in which 
> sometimes C is used to make a concrete illustration possible. Sometimes 
> people use C++, or BASIC, or assembly language, or Ada, or Lithp, or Perl, 
> to write their illustrations. I don't hear you complaining about those.

This is a lie. You've discussed the C language in this ng as the C
language and you've promoted your outdated use of it.
> 
> <snip of irrelevant stuff>
> 
> >> > Richard contributed NOTHING except claims that the issue was
> >> > off-topic. His claims were off-topic because they were
> >> > meta-discussion.
> >> 
> >> Incorrect on two counts.  First, Richard *did* contribute;
> >> second, topicality is--by definition--on topic on amUSENET.
> > 
> > Not to the extremes and in the bad faith it was done, it isn't.
> 
> The bad faith was on your part, for introducing an off-topic discussion. I 
> seem to recall that several of us tried to turn the discussion in topical 
> directions, and even succeeded at one point - that tokenisation stuff where 
> you ended up with egg all over your face, remember?

In your dreams, buddy boy.

Richard is referring to some code I found useful in Visual Basic. In
1993 I discovered that that then new language lacked anything like C's
strspn and strcspn, a tool not for finding a unique character or
string, but for finding one of a SET of alternative characters.

As I had done in assembler language as long ago as 1974, I developed a
VB tool which I still use to provide the missing functionality.

Based on this, which I called verify following PL/I and Rexx rather
than the more gnomic C names, I developed a very, very simple parser
for a very, very common task, and this is isolating blank and other
white space character delimited strings without worrying the user
about one-n blanks when n is small.

If memory serves, and because I coded the examples special for the
discussion, I made a trivial but serious error, and openly corrected
the error, whether before or after noticing it, or having it pointed
out to me.

The error did not bother me because in my actual production library,
now a stateless object in .Net, it had long since been fixed.

But because incompetent programmers delight in pointing out other
programmer's errors, several of Heathfield's buttboys capered and
gibbered about my "incompetence" for weeks afterward.

Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
successfully. Indeed, it is to me the mark of the competent programmer
to list, to identify, to narrate and to celebrate each one of his OWN
errors whenever they occur, and to be in general silent about other
people's errors, unless he or she is engaged in a common project. 
This is in part because you learn from your mistakes.

The error in question, if memory serves, was forgetting to allow for
blanks before the first token. The lesson is to either use a regular
expression (despite the deficiencies of regular expressions) or put
one in the comments to document the manual implementation of a regular
expression. The regular expression is (if blanks only constitute white
space) ([ ]*[^ ]+)*[ ]*.

There are many other valid solutions but this solution seems to have
the least psychological or mathematical ambiguity, which is important
because different regular expression processors give different results
for hard cases.

Richard is very emphatic about my "verbosity". This is because in
service to corporate power, programmers, as part of their
deprofessionalization, are no longer expected to be able to chat
amusingly in human language about code. Increasingly, data systems are
preferred that can NOT be fully and transparently explained to labor
or the public, and in recent years programming has become a silent
brotherhood (bruder schweigen) as a result.


> 
> > Richard did not once ask for a justification of the topicality. He
> > claimed without much argument that the DQA was offtopic.
> 
> The charter is very clear.
> 
> > He refused to
> > "listen" to the rebut because my rebut did not alter his claim.
> 
> That's a very interesting definition of "listen".
> 
> <snip>
> 
> >> > Also, as I have noted, Richard's posts concerning C are offtopic
> >> > in the sense of being more appropriate to comp.lang.c.
> >> 
> >> We, in comp.programming, are fairly casual about topic so long as
> >> it has to do with the art and craft of Actual Compute Programming.
> >> Regular posters here are also allowed the occasional diversion.
> >>
> > What about the profession?
> 
> If you feel the need to discuss the profession and cannot find an 
> appropriate newsgroup in which to hold such discussions, you can take 
> advantage of a well-established procedure for creating a new newsgroup for 
> that purpose.

I asked why, given corporate lack of committment or resources to
software quality, corporations could in good faith demand that
governments (whether in the US or your tinpot 51st state with its
ridiculous monarchy) adhere to standards corporations do not enforce.

This remains a comp.programming issue unless programmers are now a
clerical class expected only to "code" rules understood to be
non-self-contradictory, perfectly clear, and not in violation of the
law.

Putting aside any political considerations, even as a technical
choice, this is a rejection of any insight into the unworkability or
self-contradiction of the rules derived from engagement with data
systems.

It is the social choice which creates the software crisis itself, and
it means that different social choices would result in clear and
maintainable code.

If this is not of interest to programmers, pal, then what is?
Deliberately using an outdated language? Buying a house?

> 
> <snip>
> 
> [Down to 84 lines, including my reply and sig block. Mr Nilges, you are 
> being overly verbose. Please stick to the subject. Thank you.]

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Richard Heathfield <invalid@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> news:<3fc5b0c6@news2.power.net.uk>...
>> [Mr Nilges' article weighed in at 316 lines. Let's see how much of it was
>> relevant to this newsgroup, by removing all the irrelevant stuff. See end
>> of article for results!]

Well, so much for that hint. I'll do what I can to keep this one short, 
folks.

>> 
>> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>> 
>> > Discussions of C apply only to one language.
>> 
>> Very true, and so C discussion takes place in comp.lang.c, not in a
>> general programming group. What we see discussed here is /programming/,
>> in which sometimes C is used to make a concrete illustration possible.
>> Sometimes people use C++, or BASIC, or assembly language, or Ada, or
>> Lithp, or Perl, to write their illustrations. I don't hear you
>> complaining about those.
> 
> This is a lie.

No, it's not.

> You've discussed the C language in this ng as the C
> language

On the whole, I discuss C in comp.lang.c. It is certainly true that C 
discussions take place here, but sometimes the context of the discussion is 
such that they would not be appropriate in clc (and sometimes we just 
forget to take them over to clc when the conversation turns in that 
direction). So I'm not saying we /never/ discuss C here, but if you see a C 
discussion that you think would be more appropriate in clc, SAY SO!

> and you've promoted your outdated use of it.

Oh, don't be so childish.

>> The bad faith was on your part, for introducing an off-topic discussion.
>> I seem to recall that several of us tried to turn the discussion in
>> topical directions, and even succeeded at one point - that tokenisation
>> stuff where you ended up with egg all over your face, remember?
> 
> In your dreams, buddy boy.

It is accurate for you to call me either your buddy or a boy.

> Richard is referring to some code I found useful in Visual Basic.

No, I was talking about your C code. I'll leave Chris to demolish your VB 
arguments, should you choose to make any, when he gets back from holiday.

<snip>

> If memory serves, and because I coded the examples special for the
> discussion, I made a trivial but serious error, and openly corrected
> the error, whether before or after noticing it, or having it pointed
> out to me.

I refer the interested reader to my discussion of his /other/ errors, the 
ones he didn't correct and didn't justify:
 
http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/compprog/nilges.html contains two of my 
Usenet articles. In the first, I give Mr Nilges credit for having addressed 
the mistakes he talks about above. In the second, I critique the mistakes 
that remain. Be warned that the Web page is rather long.

> The error did not bother me because in my actual production library,
> now a stateless object in .Net, it had long since been fixed.
> 
> But because incompetent programmers delight in pointing out other
> programmer's errors, several of Heathfield's buttboys capered and
> gibbered about my "incompetence" for weeks afterward.

I quote from my response at the time:

EGN: "I predict that many comments will be made about the above list of 
blunders by Mr Heathfield et al., [...]" 

RJH: "Well, no, I wasn't planning on berating you for problems you have  
already found yourself. The only one I'd pick up on is the prototypes  
thing, which you really ought to have known, and which might have made  
your life a little more pleasant."

EGN: "Heathfield et al. will, I imagine, want to ascribe all blunders to a 
competence level."

RJH: "Not the ones you found and fixed yourself, no. But those that /remain/ 
will obviously colour my response."
  

> Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
> compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
> successfully.

I am quite astounded that you find a 10000 line program something to boast 
about. I suspect that most of the regulars here have single-handedly 
written programs of at least that size, so why bother mentioning it?

> Indeed, it is to me the mark of the competent programmer
> to list, to identify, to narrate and to celebrate each one of his OWN
> errors whenever they occur, and to be in general silent about other
> people's errors, unless he or she is engaged in a common project.

Usenet is a common project.

> This is in part because you learn from your mistakes.

Yes, I do. I also learn from other people's mistakes, and from other 
people's kindly pointing out the mistakes I didn't realise I'd made.

<snip>

> Richard is very emphatic about my "verbosity". This is because in
> service to corporate power, programmers, as part of their
> deprofessionalization, are no longer expected to be able to chat
> amusingly in human language about code.

No, it's because some of us have 28.8Kbit modems, or even slower. Not 
everyone has access to broadband.

<off-topic stuff snipped>

> This remains a comp.programming issue unless programmers are now a
> clerical class expected only to "code" rules understood to be
> non-self-contradictory, perfectly clear, and not in violation of the
> law.

No, it remains not a comp.programming issue because it's about programmers, 
whereas comp.programming is about programming.

<more OT stuff snipped>

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Richard Heathfield <invalid@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<3fc83eba$1@news2.power.net.uk>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > Richard Heathfield <invalid@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:<3fc5b0c6@news2.power.net.uk>...
> >> [Mr Nilges' article weighed in at 316 lines. Let's see how much of it was
> >> relevant to this newsgroup, by removing all the irrelevant stuff. See end
> >> of article for results!]
> 
> Well, so much for that hint. I'll do what I can to keep this one short, 
> folks.

Richard, what intrinsic value does brevity have? You still don't
understand the issue, and as a teacher I have learned that a certain
appropriate prolixity, whether in the form of repeating the same
concept in different words, or using illustrations, is what's needed.

> 
> >> 
> >> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> >> 
> >> > Discussions of C apply only to one language.
> >> 
> >> Very true, and so C discussion takes place in comp.lang.c, not in a
> >> general programming group. What we see discussed here is /programming/,
> >> in which sometimes C is used to make a concrete illustration possible.
> >> Sometimes people use C++, or BASIC, or assembly language, or Ada, or
> >> Lithp, or Perl, to write their illustrations. I don't hear you
> >> complaining about those.
> > 
> > This is a lie.
> 
> No, it's not.
> 
> > You've discussed the C language in this ng as the C
> > language
> 
> On the whole, I discuss C in comp.lang.c. It is certainly true that C 
> discussions take place here, but sometimes the context of the discussion is 
> such that they would not be appropriate in clc (and sometimes we just 
> forget to take them over to clc when the conversation turns in that 
> direction). So I'm not saying we /never/ discuss C here, but if you see a C 
> discussion that you think would be more appropriate in clc, SAY SO!
> 
> > and you've promoted your outdated use of it.
> 
> Oh, don't be so childish.
> 
> >> The bad faith was on your part, for introducing an off-topic discussion.
> >> I seem to recall that several of us tried to turn the discussion in
> >> topical directions, and even succeeded at one point - that tokenisation
> >> stuff where you ended up with egg all over your face, remember?
> > 
> > In your dreams, buddy boy.
> 
> It is accurate for you to call me either your buddy or a boy.
> 
> > Richard is referring to some code I found useful in Visual Basic.
> 
> No, I was talking about your C code. I'll leave Chris to demolish your VB 
> arguments, should you choose to make any, when he gets back from holiday.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > If memory serves, and because I coded the examples special for the
> > discussion, I made a trivial but serious error, and openly corrected
> > the error, whether before or after noticing it, or having it pointed
> > out to me.
> 
> I refer the interested reader to my discussion of his /other/ errors, the 
> ones he didn't correct and didn't justify:
>  
> http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/compprog/nilges.html contains two of my 
> Usenet articles. In the first, I give Mr Nilges credit for having addressed 
> the mistakes he talks about above. In the second, I critique the mistakes 
> that remain. Be warned that the Web page is rather long.
> 
> > The error did not bother me because in my actual production library,
> > now a stateless object in .Net, it had long since been fixed.
> > 
> > But because incompetent programmers delight in pointing out other
> > programmer's errors, several of Heathfield's buttboys capered and
> > gibbered about my "incompetence" for weeks afterward.
> 
> I quote from my response at the time:
> 
> EGN: "I predict that many comments will be made about the above list of 
> blunders by Mr Heathfield et al., [...]" 

This ng has a lot of trivial and incorrect code. I was in the process
of illustrating how the OO paradigm avoids repetitious parsing. You
and your buttboys disrupted the conversation.

> 
> RJH: "Well, no, I wasn't planning on berating you for problems you have  
> already found yourself. The only one I'd pick up on is the prototypes  
> thing, which you really ought to have known, and which might have made  
> your life a little more pleasant."
> 
> EGN: "Heathfield et al. will, I imagine, want to ascribe all blunders to a 
> competence level."
> 
> RJH: "Not the ones you found and fixed yourself, no. But those that /remain/ 
> will obviously colour my response."
>   
> 
> > Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
> > compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
> > successfully.
> 
> I am quite astounded that you find a 10000 line program something to boast 
> about. I suspect that most of the regulars here have single-handedly 
> written programs of at least that size, so why bother mentioning it?

Because it is an optimal size. Programs larger, written by one person,
are probably intelectually unmanageable.
> 
> > Indeed, it is to me the mark of the competent programmer
> > to list, to identify, to narrate and to celebrate each one of his OWN
> > errors whenever they occur, and to be in general silent about other
> > people's errors, unless he or she is engaged in a common project.
> 
> Usenet is a common project.
> 
> > This is in part because you learn from your mistakes.
> 
> Yes, I do. I also learn from other people's mistakes, and from other 
> people's kindly pointing out the mistakes I didn't realise I'd made.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > Richard is very emphatic about my "verbosity". This is because in
> > service to corporate power, programmers, as part of their
> > deprofessionalization, are no longer expected to be able to chat
> > amusingly in human language about code.
> 
> No, it's because some of us have 28.8Kbit modems, or even slower. Not 
> everyone has access to broadband.

(Sigh). The modem is burdened only if you read the post. You have the
option of skipping it and downloading it at a more convenient time.
> 
> <off-topic stuff snipped>
> 
> > This remains a comp.programming issue unless programmers are now a
> > clerical class expected only to "code" rules understood to be
> > non-self-contradictory, perfectly clear, and not in violation of the
> > law.
> 
> No, it remains not a comp.programming issue because it's about programmers, 
> whereas comp.programming is about programming.

Bourdieu: "science without the scientist". Impossible.

The unsolved problem in programming happens to be the incompetence of
most programmers which is in part evidenced by childish and irrevelant
discussion of trivial errors of others, childish and irrevelant
discussion that does not happen in mathematics.

I was selected to assist Nash because my supervisor knew that I would
not engage in childish and irrevelant analysis of his errors. That I
would solve the problem and empower him during a sensitive period in
which the Nobel committee was concerned about his ability to receive
the prize with dignity.

I found he'd made the "error" of using the expression 2^31-1 which was
an "error" only because he used the wrong compiler, a compiler which
did not adhere to the standard. I switched him to the working compiler
and the problem was solved.

I did not waste his time as you waste my time with your trolling.

You have no answer as to why Visual Basic was denied a needed feature
(strspn/strcspn) which is provided C programmers. My suspicion is that
Chomsky is right and that it is more necessary for society to only
partly empower a technical and subordinated class who would otherwise
ask hard questions about the personnel managemant and financial
programs for which VB is used.

I can only conclude that you have capered and gibbered about trivial
errors because, as another poster has indicated, you may have answered
an ad in the Telegraph, the Mirror, or News of the World, earn quids
posting to the internet, posted by Elizabeth Kensington at MI-5, and
your day job consists in harassing progressive discussion on
comp.programming.
> 
> <more OT stuff snipped>

Ian Woods <newspub2@wuggyNOCAPS.org> wrote in message news:<Xns943F2B927AF9Dnewspubwuggyorg@217.32.252.50>...
> spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in
> news:f5dda427.0311251956.3f8fe030@posting.google.com: 
> 
> > Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message
> > news:<3FC3825D.7111A3B5@Sonnack.com>... 
> >> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
> >> 
> >> > But I do object to a complex rule which says "offtopic posting of
> >> > conventional sentiments is not offtopic, while progressive
> >> > discussions of issues with a programming aspect is verboten".
> >> 
> >> I believe the rule is quite simple: time invested grants privilege
> >> to depart from the norms *ON* *OCCASION*.
> >> 
> >> As Richard pointed out to you recently, it has to do with percentage.
> > 
> > During the 2002 discussion of the US Data Quality Act, an on-topic
> > issue, Richard contributed NOTHING except claims that the issue was
> > off-topic. His claims were off-topic because they were
> > meta-discussion.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> You assert that it was on topic. I've just googled the original post. I'm 
> sure, as I was then, that it wasn't.
> 
> Anyone out there think that this post was on topic? Let's settle the 
> 'topicallity of the Data Quality Act' quickly... or make a 
> comp.programming.topicallity so that these discussions can have a home?

Ah, but Richard claims that metadiscussion is always topical, at least
when he starts 'em.

The topicality of the Data Quality Act is established by the
possibility of discussion itself.

Had I introduced a true irrevelance, such as mediaeval economic
history, no discussion would be possible. But meaningful statements
were made on both sides.

I claimed that programmers worldwide should be concerned with the
paradox, that corporations in the USA were demanding that the US
government adhere to standards that it is now clear (due to the
corporate governance crisis) corporations do not adhere to.

For programmers as programmers are familiar with the need to
compromise quality "for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at
all." The good reason is that in engineering as a whole, you do need
to make compromises. The bad reason is that the good reason is used
disingenuously and in order to cut corners lest the data system's
development affect profit goals set independent of actual costs.

Richard Heathfield's response was meaningful, but feeble. It was that
this ng is about programming and not programmers as if there were a
programming praxis fully independent of programmer sociology.

There is a mathematical praxis fully independent of the sociology of
mathematics but this is not the case because programming is, all the
way down, applied mathematics.

There is no programming for its own sake, there is no pure
programming. Marxists happen to argue that there is no pure
mathematics but my claim is weaker and therefore more "true".

Ignoring the simple fact that programming is about someone else's
problem creates a paradoxical situation which to my knowledge only
hero computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra noticed. This was the fact
that the false view that there was even the possibility of theory
divorced from praxis which produced the strange, and completely
unproductive, view that one could design software without being able
to actually code.

Paradoxically Dijkstra was thought of as "too theoretical", but this
only shows how the original falsity generated a lie.

I conclude that it would be inappropriate of me to introduce a
discussion of the sociology of mathematics into a math ng. But since
programming is, universally, about using a device to solve a problem,
the sociology merges with the subject. I suppose that you could create
comp.programming.letEdNilgesRaveAboutTheSociologyOfProgramming.

The problem is that of the ghetto. The only discussants attracted
would be a couple of brave souls like San Francisco author Ellen
Ullman et al. who have written (in Close to the Machine) about
programming as a human art...at best.

But what concerns me is NOT a couple of wise gals like her. It is the
bruder schweigen, the silent brotherhood, which in my experience has
been SILENCED. Deprived that is of a language other than programming
language.

We of the bruder schweigen don't document MIS code because it makes us
sad, and because it is about (as in the example of IBM personnel
systems that have destroyed retirements) someone else's needs
exclusively.

This is a comp.programming issue.
> 
> Ian Woods

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Richard Heathfield <invalid@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<3fc83eba$1@news2.power.net.uk>...
>>Edward G. Nilges wrote:
<snip 100 or so lines of pointless quoting>
>>>Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
>>>compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
>>>successfully.
>>
>>I am quite astounded that you find a 10000 line program something to boast 
>>about. I suspect that most of the regulars here have single-handedly 
>>written programs of at least that size, so why bother mentioning it?
> 
> Because it is an optimal size. Programs larger, written by one person,
> are probably intelectually unmanageable.

Probably?  Ah, so that's an arbitrary limit.  An opinion.  And since I 
know of several single-person projects of >10KLOC that are quite 
manageable, it appears that your opinion is proved worthless in face of 
facts.

I guess your coding style is such that you're not able to produce 
manageable code above that length.  Please don't try to force /your/ 
limitations on the rest of us.

<snip various BS>
> I can only conclude that you have capered and gibbered about trivial
> errors because, as another poster has indicated, you may have answered
> an ad in the Telegraph, the Mirror, or News of the World, earn quids
> posting to the internet, posted by Elizabeth Kensington at MI-5, and
> your day job consists in harassing progressive discussion on
> comp.programming.

What a sad little conspiracy theorist you are.  Richard's actions are in 
no way indicative of intentional sabotage.  They seem fairly reasonable 
to me, and probably to a lot of others.  But I guess you have to find 
some reason why he doesn't just immediately agree with your /obviously/ 
superior reasoning and point of view.

And yes, that last sentence was dripping with sarcasm, in case you 
weren't aware.

Really eddie, why don't you just grow up.

-- 
Corey Murtagh
The Electric Monk
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!"

Corey Murtagh wrote:
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>> Richard Heathfield <invalid@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
>> news:<3fc83eba$1@news2.power.net.uk>...
>>>Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> <snip 100 or so lines of pointless quoting>
>>>>Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
>>>>compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
>>>>successfully.
>>>I am quite astounded that you find a 10000 line program something to
>>>boast about. I suspect that most of the regulars here have
>>>single-handedly written programs of at least that size, so why bother
>>>mentioning it?
>> Because it is an optimal size. Programs larger, written by one person,
>> are probably intelectually unmanageable.
> Probably?  Ah, so that's an arbitrary limit.  An opinion.  And since I
> know of several single-person projects of >10KLOC that are quite
> manageable, it appears that your opinion is proved worthless in face of
> facts.

Mr Nilges's reply didn't make it to my server, but I see here that he thinks 
10000 lines is optimal. Presumably he means 10000 lines or fewer, since I 
can't believe even *he* means "hello world" should be a 10 KLOCer. But why 
10000? That really isn't very much code.

> I guess your coding style is such that you're not able to produce
> manageable code above that length.  Please don't try to force /your/
> limitations on the rest of us.

I think I'd agree with you.

You can find an example of his coding style on Google if you have 
extraordinary patience, or you can read all about it in a URL I posted 
elsethread recently.

<snip>

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Richard Heathfield wrote:

> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
>> 
>> In your dreams, buddy boy.
> 
> It is accurate for you to call me either your buddy or a boy.

What a ghastly typo! I meant, of course, "inaccurate", not "accurate".

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Richard Heathfield wrote:

> Corey Murtagh wrote:
> 
<snip>
>>I guess your coding style is such that you're not able to produce
>>manageable code above that length.  Please don't try to force /your/
>>limitations on the rest of us.
> 
> I think I'd agree with you.
> 
> You can find an example of his coding style on Google if you have 
> extraordinary patience, or you can read all about it in a URL I posted 
> elsethread recently.

I disagree Richard, and retract part of my statement above... there's no 
style in that at all :)

Out of interest, since I wasn't hanging around here back then, did he 
ever retract any of the complete BS in his arguments?

BTW, my personal favorite:  "The code is efficient when factored by the 
lack of a need, in typical VB applications, for speed."  Seems to me as 
though that could be reworded, without changing the meaning, to "The 
code is efficient, because inefficiency doesn't matter."  Makes no sense 
either way.

And correct me if I'm wrong... eddie's a teacher???

-- 
Corey Murtagh
The Electric Monk
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!"

Corey Murtagh wrote:

> Richard Heathfield wrote:
> 
>> Corey Murtagh wrote:
>> 
> <snip>
>>>I guess your coding style is such that you're not able to produce
>>>manageable code above that length.  Please don't try to force /your/
>>>limitations on the rest of us.
>> 
>> I think I'd agree with you.
>> 
>> You can find an example of his coding style on Google if you have
>> extraordinary patience, or you can read all about it in a URL I posted
>> elsethread recently.
> 
> I disagree Richard, and retract part of my statement above... there's no
> style in that at all :)

Heh.

> Out of interest, since I wasn't hanging around here back then, did he
> ever retract any of the complete BS in his arguments?

Not if I recall correctly. He did, however, send out "Cease and desist" 
emails in an attempt quietly to suppress those who pointed out his nonsense 
in public, and he triggered Godwin's Law on innumerable occasions. Last I 
heard, he was threatening lawsuits. I had him in my killfile for ages. He 
just surfaced again recently.

Fairly typical Netkook, really, except that he once mentioned "programmers 
with a touch of Asperger's syndrome (like me)". I don't know what 
Asperger's Syndrome is, but it can't be helpful to him, I suppose. Neither 
can his utter failure to learn from his mistakes in debate (of which he has 
made a great many).

> BTW, my personal favorite:  "The code is efficient when factored by the
> lack of a need, in typical VB applications, for speed."  Seems to me as
> though that could be reworded, without changing the meaning, to "The
> code is efficient, because inefficiency doesn't matter."  Makes no sense
> either way.

It is in fact meaningless.

> And correct me if I'm wrong... eddie's a teacher???

I hope you're wrong, for obvious reasons.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

"Richard Heathfield" <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message <news:bqcann$cg$2@sparta.btinternet.com>...

> Richard Heathfield wrote:
>
> > Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> In your dreams, buddy boy.
> >
> > It is accurate for you to call me either your buddy or a boy.
>
> What a ghastly typo! I meant, of course, "inaccurate", not "accurate".

Of course, typos are acceptable, because all of EGN's errors are "mere
typos".  Oh wait, that only applies to errors made by EGN.  Nevermind!

Were EGN and CJ3 separated at birth, or what?

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>  "Regged" again? <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

Richard Heathfield wrote:
<snip>
> 
> Fairly typical Netkook, really, except that he once mentioned "programmers 
> with a touch of Asperger's syndrome (like me)". I don't know what 
> Asperger's Syndrome is, but it can't be helpful to him, I suppose. Neither 
> can his utter failure to learn from his mistakes in debate (of which he has 
> made a great many).

I've heard of it, but I had to go look it up to find a usable definition:

---Begin Quote---

Individuals with AS can exhibit a variety of characteristics and the 
disorder can range from mild to severe. Persons with AS show marked 
deficiencies in social skills, have difficulties with transitions or 
changes and prefer sameness. They often have obsessive routines and may 
be preoccupied with a particular subject of interest. They have a great 
deal of difficulty reading nonverbal cues (body language) and very often 
the individual with AS has difficulty determining proper body space. 
Often overly sensitive to sounds, tastes, smells, and sights, the person 
with AS may prefer soft clothing, certain foods, and be bothered by 
sounds or lights no one else seems to hear or see. It's important to 
remember that the person with AS perceives the world very differently. 
Therefore, many behaviors that seem odd or unusual are due to those 
neurological differences and not the result of intentional rudeness or 
bad behavior, and most certainly not the result of "improper parenting".

---End Quote---

That would explain a lot.  He's not a kook, he's a nutbar.  With extra nuts.

However, just because there's a possible explanation for /why/ he's an 
arsehole, that doesn't mean we have to put up with it.

>>And correct me if I'm wrong... eddie's a teacher???
> 
> I hope you're wrong, for obvious reasons.

Yeah, me too.

-- 
Corey Murtagh
The Electric Monk
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!"

Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bqcann$cg$2@sparta.btinternet.com>...
> Richard Heathfield wrote:
> 
> > Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> > 
> >> 
> >> In your dreams, buddy boy.
> > 
> > It is accurate for you to call me either your buddy or a boy.
> 
> What a ghastly typo! I meant, of course, "inaccurate", not "accurate".

I say old chap that was rather ghastly of you. I thought of calling
you out on it. But since I am a gentleman and not a retarded
adolescent I refrain from making inferences from trivial errors of any
sort whatsoever. As you are aware and to your sorrow I have other fish
to fry in your case.

"You will honor the defeated enemy" - From the vow of the French
Foreign Legion

Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.co.nz.no.uce> wrote in message news:<1070169469.537924@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > Richard Heathfield <invalid@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<3fc83eba$1@news2.power.net.uk>...
> >>Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>  <snip 100 or so lines of pointless quoting>
> >>>Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
> >>>compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
> >>>successfully.
> >>
> >>I am quite astounded that you find a 10000 line program something to boast 
> >>about. I suspect that most of the regulars here have single-handedly 
> >>written programs of at least that size, so why bother mentioning it?
> > 
> > Because it is an optimal size. Programs larger, written by one person,
> > are probably intelectually unmanageable.
> 
> Probably?  Ah, so that's an arbitrary limit.  An opinion.  And since I 
> know of several single-person projects of >10KLOC that are quite 
> manageable, it appears that your opinion is proved worthless in face of 
> facts.
> 
> I guess your coding style is such that you're not able to produce 
> manageable code above that length.  Please don't try to force /your/ 
> limitations on the rest of us.

Most programs above 10K LOC, written by one person are vast stretches
of code that should be a macro or data in a data base. Your limitation
may be your inability to write with elegance.

However, you merely have smelled blood in the water and ignorantly
join a discussion in order to deal with your feelings about your
incompetence. The issue is topicality and this dicussion in libelous
and off topic.

I am certain that if I'd claimed to write 100K, that would have been
too large because the concern of most posters to comp.programming,
thanks possibly to Richard Heathfield's authoritarian trolling, for
which he may be paid by intelligence services or a corporation, is
dealing with one's own inadequacies by finding targets.

Far more than arguable questions of topicality simple Internet
courtesy is a part of all charters and I never see Richard Heathfield
enforcing courtesy standards. This also indicates that either
objectively, or as a paid agent, supports ruling class interests in
the lack of solidarity that exists among programmers lest they
organize against their modal treatment on the job.
> 
> <snip various BS>
> > I can only conclude that you have capered and gibbered about trivial
> > errors because, as another poster has indicated, you may have answered
> > an ad in the Telegraph, the Mirror, or News of the World, earn quids
> > posting to the internet, posted by Elizabeth Kensington at MI-5, and
> > your day job consists in harassing progressive discussion on
> > comp.programming.
> 
> What a sad little conspiracy theorist you are.  Richard's actions are in 
> no way indicative of intentional sabotage.  They seem fairly reasonable 
> to me, and probably to a lot of others.  But I guess you have to find 
> some reason why he doesn't just immediately agree with your /obviously/ 
> superior reasoning and point of view.
> 
> And yes, that last sentence was dripping with sarcasm, in case you 
> weren't aware.
> 
> Really eddie, why don't you just grow up.

Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.co.nz.no.uce> wrote in message news:<1070191429.403740@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> Richard Heathfield wrote:
> 
> > Corey Murtagh wrote:
> > 
>  <snip>
> >>I guess your coding style is such that you're not able to produce
> >>manageable code above that length.  Please don't try to force /your/
> >>limitations on the rest of us.
> > 
> > I think I'd agree with you.
> > 
> > You can find an example of his coding style on Google if you have 
> > extraordinary patience, or you can read all about it in a URL I posted 
> > elsethread recently.
> 
> I disagree Richard, and retract part of my statement above... there's no 
> style in that at all :)
> 
> Out of interest, since I wasn't hanging around here back then, did he 
> ever retract any of the complete BS in his arguments?
> 
> BTW, my personal favorite:  "The code is efficient when factored by the 
> lack of a need, in typical VB applications, for speed."  Seems to me as 
> though that could be reworded, without changing the meaning, to "The 
> code is efficient, because inefficiency doesn't matter."  Makes no sense 
> either way.
> 
> And correct me if I'm wrong... eddie's a teacher???

My name isn't Eddie. And there is no responsible way for you to
research my background save for reading my own public relations at
http://members.screenz.com/ednilges. That's because anything else you
find will be worse than self-interested self-promotion. It will be of
unknown provenance.

Richard Heathfield has mounted an organized, and actionably libelous
in his country, campaign because he got his feelings hurt when I
suggested that the US Data Quality Act might be of relevance to
comp.programming, and made arguments for so doing.

He carefully keeps the libel content free to give himself freedom of
action. Had I, for example, named any program size whatsoever, he
would agree that the program was too large or too small...whatever
worked, in other words.

The problem is that Richard Heathfield has set himself up
illegitimately as the informal group moderator without qualifications
for so doing. And, as such, he is promoting the inappropriate use of
C, an outdated language, for commercial gain.

"Joe \"Nuke Me Xemu\" Foster" <joe@bftsi0.UUCP> wrote in message news:<1070219925.848495@news-1.nethere.net>...
> "Richard Heathfield" <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message <news:bqcann$cg$2@sparta.btinternet.com>...
> 
> > Richard Heathfield wrote:
> >
> > > Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> > >
> > >>
> > >> In your dreams, buddy boy.
> > >
> > > It is accurate for you to call me either your buddy or a boy.
> >
> > What a ghastly typo! I meant, of course, "inaccurate", not "accurate".
> 
> Of course, typos are acceptable, because all of EGN's errors are "mere
> typos".  Oh wait, that only applies to errors made by EGN.  Nevermind!

Sounds about right to me big fella. 

Richard refuses to engage content, and whines about "verbosity". But
if one refuses to read, one must expect to be subject to mockery about
one's typos.

Richard failed to understand why the US Data Quality Act MAY be
relevant to comp.programming. His failure to understand is independent
of agreement, and he could have disagreed in an intelligent fashion.

Instead, he mechanically applied a test with absurd results
(comp.programming is not about programmers).

He is here hoist by his own petard.

I had a boss who was a good coder. He claimed all his bugs were typos
because he felt he had the right ideas.

Making the test purely external and syntactical MEANS the application
of mindless tests of credibility. The global result happens to be the
uselessness of comp.programming for obtaining either current
information about programming or any truth about its human experience,
because everybody's so busy making sure they make no "typos".
> 
> Were EGN and CJ3 separated at birth, or what?

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Richard Heathfield has mounted an organized, and actionably libelous
> in his country, campaign

Incorrect.

<snip>

> He carefully keeps the libel content free

Mu.

> to give himself freedom of
> action. Had I, for example, named any program size whatsoever, he
> would agree that the program was too large or too small...whatever
> worked, in other words.

Incorrect.

> The problem is that Richard Heathfield has set himself up
> illegitimately as the informal group moderator

Also incorrect.

> without qualifications
> for so doing. And, as such, he is promoting the inappropriate use of
> C, an outdated language, for commercial gain.

Also incorrect.

You really are full of it today. Four incorrect statements, and a fifth that 
is based on a false assumption and is therefore meaningless.

That's one booboo every 3.4 lines of original text. Even Schildt would be 
hard-pressed to match such an error rate.

Still, you kept the length down for a change. Way to go.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Richard refuses to engage content, and whines about "verbosity".

I do not refuse to engage relevant content. Feel free to provide some. You 
appear to be using the emotive phrase "whines about" where a more neutral 
phrase, "objects to", would serve just as well. I can only presume that you 
hope to persuade by emotion rather than fact. There's nothing wrong with 
relying on a disguised emotional argument, of course, but some of us prefer 
facts when dealing with programming issues.

> But
> if one refuses to read,

I read all that is relevant.

> one must expect to be subject to mockery about
> one's typos.

Every typo deserves one gentle riposte, in my opinion - but few deserve 
more.

> Richard failed to understand why the US Data Quality Act MAY be
> relevant to comp.programming.

On the contrary, I fully understand why it is not. As was fully explained to 
you at the time, it is a local legal issue, not an international technical 
issue. If you wish to discuss it further, please take it up in a local 
legal issues newsgroup.

The USA is not the world, and law is not programming. US law is not topical 
in an international technical newsgroup. I know this is hard for you to 
understand, but it is true nevertheless.

> His failure to understand is independent
> of agreement, and he could have disagreed in an intelligent fashion.
> 
> Instead, he mechanically applied a test with absurd results
> (comp.programming is not about programmers).

But this result is far from absurd. The comp.programming newsgroup is for 
discussions about programming, not discussions about programmers.

<snip>

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bqcok7$4a$1@hercules.btinternet.com>...
> Corey Murtagh wrote:
> 
> > Richard Heathfield wrote:
> > 
> >> Corey Murtagh wrote:
> >> 
>  <snip>
> >>>I guess your coding style is such that you're not able to produce
> >>>manageable code above that length.  Please don't try to force /your/
> >>>limitations on the rest of us.
> >> 
> >> I think I'd agree with you.
> >> 
> >> You can find an example of his coding style on Google if you have
> >> extraordinary patience, or you can read all about it in a URL I posted
> >> elsethread recently.
> > 
> > I disagree Richard, and retract part of my statement above... there's no
> > style in that at all :)
> 
> Heh.
> 
> > Out of interest, since I wasn't hanging around here back then, did he
> > ever retract any of the complete BS in his arguments?
> 
> Not if I recall correctly. He did, however, send out "Cease and desist" 
> emails in an attempt quietly to suppress those who pointed out his nonsense 
> in public, and he triggered Godwin's Law on innumerable occasions. Last I 
> heard, he was threatening lawsuits. I had him in my killfile for ages. He 

Placing a person in your kill file is a committment to not respond to
that person, yet you lack the self-discipline to do so...or, your
handlers at MI-5 may have demanded that you resume these libelous
posts :-).

> just surfaced again recently.

No, your abuse has.

> 
> Fairly typical Netkook, really, except that he once mentioned "programmers 

Hans Georg Gadamer's discourse ethics show how the presumption of fair
dealing in conversation is fundamental to same. Your phrase is
therefore offensive, not so much from my viewpoint as from the
viewpoint of general Net praxis, since it creates a chilling effect on
discourse.

Lurker who may have something to contribute may be intimidated by your
use of the phrase and as a result the content of this ng is restricted
to useless information, conventional and self-protective pieties, and
abuse.


> with a touch of Asperger's syndrome (like me)". I don't know what 
> Asperger's Syndrome is, but it can't be helpful to him, I suppose. Neither 
> can his utter failure to learn from his mistakes in debate (of which he has 
> made a great many).

A recent article in Legal Affairs, a general interest magazine for the
law, pointed out that while Aristotle's Rhetoric asks the rhetor to
use self-deprecating humor, the fashion from conservative jurists (in
its example, Justice Scalia of the US Supreme Court) is to turn humor,
in a way that reverses Aristotle, systematically upon others.

The result is that none of Scalia's opinions constitute a dialog with
the Constitution. Instead they constitute a corporate-funded attempt
to eliminate equal protection of the laws.

This is because the rhetorical inversion prevents open and honest
dialog, and its commonality in this ng is why this ng is useless for
its intended purpose.

No serious researcher, no serious programmer, uses this ng for its
intended purpose and this is NOT a result of "trolling". It is instead
the result of a style of self-protective and authoritarian discourse
which may (I do not know) have resulted from the seeding of ng with
paid agents of anti-labor government and corporate entities.


> 
> > BTW, my personal favorite:  "The code is efficient when factored by the
> > lack of a need, in typical VB applications, for speed."  Seems to me as
> > though that could be reworded, without changing the meaning, to "The
> > code is efficient, because inefficiency doesn't matter."  Makes no sense
> > either way.
> 
> It is in fact meaningless.

Not if you recall that there are other forms of efficiency than speed.

> 
> > And correct me if I'm wrong... eddie's a teacher???
> 
> I hope you're wrong, for obvious reasons.

My name isn't "eddie". And I am well aware of the Fascist tendency to
bash real teachers as part of the Fascist war on coherence and memory
itself.

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> news:<bqcok7$4a$1@hercules.btinternet.com>...
>> 
>> [...] He did, however, send out "Cease and desist"
>> emails in an attempt quietly to suppress those who pointed out his
>> nonsense in public, and he triggered Godwin's Law on innumerable
>> occasions. Last I heard, he was threatening lawsuits. I had him in my
>> killfile for ages. He
> 
> Placing a person in your kill file is a committment to not respond to
> that person,

Wrong. Placing a name in your kill file is an instruction to the newsreader 
not to show articles written by that name. It does not represent a 
commitment of any kind.

> yet you lack the self-discipline to do so...

Killfiles don't have to be for all time, Nilges.

> or, your
> handlers at MI-5 may have demanded that you resume these libelous
> posts :-).

Mu.

>> just surfaced again recently.
> 
> No, your abuse has.

Mu.

<Nonsense snipped, as usual.>

>> > BTW, my personal favorite:  "The code is efficient when factored by the
>> > lack of a need, in typical VB applications, for speed."  Seems to me as
>> > though that could be reworded, without changing the meaning, to "The
>> > code is efficient, because inefficiency doesn't matter."  Makes no
>> > sense either way.
>> 
>> It is in fact meaningless.
> 
> Not if you recall that there are other forms of efficiency than speed.

In what ways, then, do you claim efficiency for your admittedly slow and (if 
I recall correctly) provenly broken VB code?

>> > And correct me if I'm wrong... eddie's a teacher???
>> 
>> I hope you're wrong, for obvious reasons.
> 
> My name isn't "eddie". And I am well aware of the Fascist tendency to
> bash real teachers as part of the Fascist war on coherence and memory
> itself.

Fascism is off-topic in comp.programming. For the record, I am not a 
Fascist. And if you could read for comprehension, you would realise that I 
wasn't bashing real teachers anyway. I was offering them support, by hoping 
fervently that you are not among their number.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bpgika$2pf$1@sparta.btinternet.com>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:<bpf83r$6fc$1@titan.btinternet.com>...
> > 
> > I have not seen a single useful result of yours about programming in
> > this newsgroup.
> 
> Then please learn to read for comprehension. Enlightenment will follow in 
> due course.

<obligatory off-topic joke>
but only under X

goose,
   *giggle* :-)

spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311190802.7391abf9@posting.google.com>...
> Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bpf83r$6fc$1@titan.btinternet.com>...

<snipped>

whoa there EGN, calm down a little ... lets see what you've written.

> > 
> > You're clearly not up to it. Most of the stuff I post here is topical. Most 
> > of the stuff you post here is not topical. You lose. Good day.
> 
> I have not seen a single useful result of yours about programming in
> this newsgroup.

lets call that point 1 (you have not seen a single useful result
from RH about programming in this newsgroup).

> What I have seen are off-topic and inappropriate
> commercial promotions of the out-dated C language,
   
lets call this point 2 (you have seen commercial promotions
of the C language).

OK, now theres only two things left to enlighten you about.

first thing:
please post link to google post of RH doing a *commercial*
promotion of C.
if you cannot do it, then you had better retract what you
said, else you just look foolish for saying "he did this,
he said that", and when we ask you "please show us what he
did or what he said", you respond "well, i never saw it  
or heard it" ... 

so please provide proof.

second thing:
before you go on about how C is an out-dated language,
bear in mind that you, right now, can not possibly live
without the applications written in C ...

you have a fancy microwave ? with all the bells and whistles ?
(samsung touch-n-think?) ? well, then, you are using an application
written in C.

your computer is connecting to the net over a tcp/ip stack, most
likely written in C. your house alarm is probably also written
in C (I have not yet come across a house alarm that has anything
more powerfull than an 8051 or a PIC). do you have access-control 
at your place of work/residence ? well, probably C again.

your DVD player ? probably C, although some people might
like to think java is making inroads nito consumer electronics.
your cellphone has symbian or similar OS ? OS is written in C
(correct me if i am wrong someone:-). the bosch ignition system
for your car ? written in C. when you purchase stuff at a supermarket
POS the POS machine is most likely written in C (although they
are much rarer these days to find them in C, you still do), if
you pay by credit/debit/smartcard, then the terminal is possibly
also programmed in C.

unless you want to give up the ability to drive somewhere,
cook, protect your valuables, make phone calls and just basically
live, you cannot live without applications written in C.

why, that OS that you are using right now is probably written in C,
isn't it ?

dont you feel just a little foolish right now, knowing that your
computer wont even boot to let you run your language of choice
if it weren't relying on C.


goose,
   C-ing is believing

spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>...

<snipped>

> 
> This is a lie. You've discussed the C language in this ng as the C
> language

what else would you refer to "the C language" as ? 
meatballs ?

> and you've promoted your outdated use of it.

there is no outdated use of it. you cannot possibly
live in todays world without using a C application
a couple of times a day.

can you say the same for any other language ?

<snipped>

> But because incompetent programmers delight in pointing out other
> programmer's errors, several of Heathfield's buttboys capered and
> gibbered about my "incompetence" for weeks afterward.

the errors of yours that I had seen where serious misunderstandings,
nothing trivial. they showed a very high level of incompetence.

> 
> Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
> compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
> successfully.

and I (and many others here) have written much more, thats been used
by millions of people ...

> Indeed, it is to me the mark of the competent programmer
> to list, to identify, to narrate and to celebrate each one of his OWN
> errors whenever they occur,
   
but you dont do this, do you ? you toss away criticism of your
code as "this is trivial, not a serious error" ... when you acknowledge
you errors, then maybe you will start learning something from them.

<snipped>

> If this is not of interest to programmers, pal, then what is?
> Deliberately using an outdated language?

for the record, an outdated language would be something that
no one uses anymore. an example wuold be VB version 4, right ?

C applications are still being developed, and C applications
are still the most used applications in the world, primarily
because it isn't outdated.

In article <bqcok7$4a$1@hercules.btinternet.com>, binary@eton.powernet.co.uk wrote:
>Fairly typical Netkook, really, except that he once mentioned "programmers 
>with a touch of Asperger's syndrome (like me)". I don't know what 
>Asperger's Syndrome is, but it can't be helpful to him, I suppose. Neither 
>can his utter failure to learn from his mistakes in debate (of which he has 
>made a great many).

I think saying "I have a touch of Asperger's" means "My superior 
logical powers and intolerance of bullshit mean that I don't have time 
for the ass-licking that is other peoples' source of social success".  
In the same way "I am a touch bipolar" means "I am an outstandingly 
creative individual, perhaps even Byronic, and I can be a moody bastard 
when I like".

- Gerry Quinn

In article <f5dda427.0311302152.56ebfa5b@posting.google.com>, spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
>
>This is because the rhetorical inversion prevents open and honest
>dialog, and its commonality in this ng is why this ng is useless for
>its intended purpose.

The rhetorical inversion is also commonly the most effective tool for 
demonstrating the illogic of a stated proposition.  And those who like 
to state illogical propositions, accordingly, tend to dislike the 
rhetorical inversion.

To them, logic is a brutal giant, trampling the flowers of phatic 
political discourse.

- Gerry Quinn

Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.co.nz.no.uce> wrote in message news:<1070191429.403740@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> Richard Heathfield wrote:
> 
> > Corey Murtagh wrote:
> > 
>  <snip>
> >>I guess your coding style is such that you're not able to produce
> >>manageable code above that length.  Please don't try to force /your/
> >>limitations on the rest of us.
> > 
> > I think I'd agree with you.
> > 
> > You can find an example of his coding style on Google if you have 
> > extraordinary patience, or you can read all about it in a URL I posted 
> > elsethread recently.
> 
> I disagree Richard, and retract part of my statement above... there's no 
> style in that at all :)

ouch :-)

(actually, I did once think, after downloading some of his code,
that perhaps my downloader "munged up" the code. I was assured 
by Programmer Dude that the code I had seen was, in fact, EGN-code)

> 
> Out of interest, since I wasn't hanging around here back then, did he 
> ever retract any of the complete BS in his arguments?

Not to my knowledge. AFAIK, he still thinks that C is an outdated
language, and that anyone who even *thinks* about using it over VB
is part of a conspiracy for commercial gain.

> 
> BTW, my personal favorite:  "The code is efficient when factored by the 
> lack of a need, in typical VB applications, for speed."  Seems to me as 
> though that could be reworded, without changing the meaning, to "The 
> code is efficient, because inefficiency doesn't matter."  Makes no sense 
> either way.
> 

<grin> thats your personal favourite ? I suspect that perhaps
you have missed a few of his howlers :-)

1. he blamed a microsoft windows NT/2000 bug on the C language
   (remember the backspace bug?), citing, in his defence,
   an article in a magazine no one could find. He then
   refused to scan the article in (it was not online) saying
   it would not be legal to copy it into the public domain.
   of course, this did not stop him asserting that the article
   in question said that it was the C language responsible for
   a bug caused by stupid array accesses.
2. he accused a good few regulars of being in the pay of some
   goverment-like-with-mafia-intentions organisations who payed
   them (the regs) to sit on usenet the entire day and "sway"
   the opinions of everyone else.
3. He asserted that C is an outdated language, not suitable
   for development (with his posting being relayed around the world
   on machines which have been programmed to a certain degree in 
   C).
4. He accuses anyone who dares ask for proof (for whatever his
   latest quote is) as a troll.

much more; he was away for roughly a year, and now seems to
have come back like a nasty rash.

anyway, dont take what he says too seriously; if you point out
flaws in his argument, he will either ignore your posting
or threaten a libel suit.

> And correct me if I'm wrong... eddie's a teacher???

I dont know about that. I suspect he might be (not used to being
corrected, although all good teachers take correction very
seriously, and try to be good students as well).

hth
goose,
   whew!!!!

ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in message news:<ff82ae1b.0312010350.10672158@posting.google.com>...
> spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311190802.7391abf9@posting.google.com>...
> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bpf83r$6fc$1@titan.btinternet.com>...
> 
> <snipped>
> 
> whoa there EGN, calm down a little ... lets see what you've written.
> 
> > > 
> > > You're clearly not up to it. Most of the stuff I post here is topical. Most 
> > > of the stuff you post here is not topical. You lose. Good day.
> > 
> > I have not seen a single useful result of yours about programming in
> > this newsgroup.
> 
> lets call that point 1 (you have not seen a single useful result
> from RH about programming in this newsgroup).
> 
> > What I have seen are off-topic and inappropriate
> > commercial promotions of the out-dated C language,
>    
> lets call this point 2 (you have seen commercial promotions
> of the C language).
> 
> OK, now theres only two things left to enlighten you about.
> 
> first thing:
> please post link to google post of RH doing a *commercial*
> promotion of C.
> if you cannot do it, then you had better retract what you
> said, else you just look foolish for saying "he did this,
> he said that", and when we ask you "please show us what he
> did or what he said", you respond "well, i never saw it  
> or heard it" ... 
> 
> so please provide proof.

RH is the author of a book on C and this is why he inappropriately
promotes C on this ng, the charter of which prohibits this behavior.
Ganz, you do your own homework and look him up on Amazon.

> 
> second thing:
> before you go on about how C is an out-dated language,
> bear in mind that you, right now, can not possibly live
> without the applications written in C ...
> 
> you have a fancy microwave ? with all the bells and whistles ?

No. I have learned to be free of such dreck.

> (samsung touch-n-think?) ? well, then, you are using an application
> written in C.
> 
> your computer is connecting to the net over a tcp/ip stack, most
> likely written in C. your house alarm is probably also written
> in C (I have not yet come across a house alarm that has anything
> more powerfull than an 8051 or a PIC). do you have access-control 
> at your place of work/residence ? well, probably C again.

Any of the local hos is more than welcome to walk right in and sit
right down, and it is my employer's interest to have access control.

> 
> your DVD player ? probably C, although some people might
> like to think java is making inroads nito consumer electronics.

Izzat right. I'll be dipped.

> your cellphone has symbian or similar OS ? OS is written in C

The only cellphone OS I worked on was written in Z80 assembly language
(and, seriously, you are ignoring the persistent preference in
embedded systems for assembler code, and the persistence of legacy
code, mine included, which unlike some punk's code works). My SL/1
compiler was written in SL/1 which was pretty slick when you think
about it (cudgel thy brains).

> (correct me if i am wrong someone:-). the bosch ignition system
> for your car ? written in C. when you purchase stuff at a supermarket

The sort of cars I drive generally carburetors.

> POS the POS machine is most likely written in C (although they
> are much rarer these days to find them in C, you still do), if

No s*t, izzat so.

> you pay by credit/debit/smartcard, then the terminal is possibly
> also programmed in C.

I pay with money which isn't programmed in anything.

> 
> unless you want to give up the ability to drive somewhere,
> cook, protect your valuables, make phone calls and just basically
> live, you cannot live without applications written in C.

My God, I'm having a vision of a world without C.

Tattered Yuppies, Gen Xers and soccer moms trudging down the highway
like refugees in a war zone.

Some of them give up, faced with the prospect of life without C, and
drop by the side of the road to die.

Primitive Stuka dive bombers, not programmed in C suddenly come
screaming from the sky. The terrified refugees scatter.

> 
> why, that OS that you are using right now is probably written in C,
> isn't it ?

Oops, nope. C++.


> 
> dont you feel just a little foolish right now, knowing that your

Oh yes I feel soooo foolish.

> computer wont even boot to let you run your language of choice
> if it weren't relying on C.
> 
> 
> goose,
>    C-ing is believing

Edward G. Nilges wrote:
<snip>
> 
> RH is the author of a book on C and this is why he inappropriately
> promotes C on this ng, the charter of which prohibits this behavior.
> Ganz, you do your own homework and look him up on Amazon.

Richard wrote a book, sure.  Now show us the posts where he promotes 
that book beyond the guidelines of the group.  If you can.

In fact it has been noted recently elsewhere in the group that Richard 
makes a point of NOT promoting his book.  Funny that.

-- 
Corey Murtagh
The Electric Monk
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!"

Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote:

<snip>

>> > What I have seen are off-topic and inappropriate
>> > commercial promotions of the out-dated C language,
    
<snip>

>> please post link to google post of RH doing a *commercial*
>> promotion of C.

<snip>
 
> RH is the author of a book on C and this is why he inappropriately
> promotes C on this ng, the charter of which prohibits this behavior.

That reply is evasive. You were asked to support your assertion by providing 
an appropriate link. You have failed so to do. I invite you to try again.

<snip>

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in
news:ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com: 

> spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message
> news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>... 
>> 
>> Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
>> compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
>> successfully.
> 
> and I (and many others here) have written much more, thats been used
> by millions of people ...

I'm one of those people who don't write tens of thousands of lines a year. 
However, I don't think the number of lines you write has any bearing on 
your ability or the amount of work you've actually done.

Most of the code I've written in the last 2 years has been programs under 
300 lines in length. They used no magic libraries, didn't have amazingly 
clicky user interfaces and they've been used by only handful of people.

However, the amount of work which has gone into them is considerable. Most 
of them are based on entirely new algorithms which had to be devised, or 
old algorithms which have been specialised to the situation in order to 
provide answers within a reasonable time.

Not all programs of worth have thousands of lines and are used by millions 
of people, and the ability of their programmers isn't automatically 
diminished.

Besides, my programs have more documentation than yours do. :)

Ian Woods

ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in message news:<ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com>...
> spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>...
> 
> <snipped>
> 
> > 
> > This is a lie. You've discussed the C language in this ng as the C
> > language
> 
> what else would you refer to "the C language" as ? 
> meatballs ?
> 
> > and you've promoted your outdated use of it.
> 
> there is no outdated use of it. you cannot possibly
> live in todays world without using a C application
> a couple of times a day.

....or being subjected to bugs which are the result of clowns using
C...
> 
> can you say the same for any other language ?
> 
> <snipped>
> 
> > But because incompetent programmers delight in pointing out other
> > programmer's errors, several of Heathfield's buttboys capered and
> > gibbered about my "incompetence" for weeks afterward.
> 
> the errors of yours that I had seen where serious misunderstandings,
> nothing trivial. they showed a very high level of incompetence.


You saw them second hand, and before you saw them, I'd probably
already admitted them.
> 
> > 
> > Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
> > compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
> > successfully.
> 
> and I (and many others here) have written much more, thats been used
> by millions of people ...

I was referring to a single file. The project of which it is a part is
100000 lines.

But part of what I have referred to as the toxic smog, which renders
this NG useless for its intended purpose, is the constant ignorant
striving to pose as one-up.

In the conversation in which Richard Heathfield and his buttboy
Sonnack analyzed my code for trivial errors, which I admitted before
they found them, my goal was in fact to show that VB with objects is
better than C. I'd not programmed in C in recent years, but in 1992,
Princeton University assigned me, as a C programmer, to assist the
real-life protagonist of A Beautiful Mind, to assist Nash with a
difficult C problem which I found rapidly. I've also written thousands
of lines in C including one compiler for a commercial client. I was
rusty about C and admitted as much.

However, Richard had had his feelings wounded because I did not roll
over and play dead when he lied repeatedly about the ng charter and
because he's an arrogant SOB, he emotionally manipulated his buttboy
into a systematic and actionably libelous attack on my character and
competence.

However, I have back-burnered wasting any money on suing Richard in a
court of law, mostly because it happens to be common knowledge, owing
to the conduct of people like Heathfield, that public access
newsgroups are today too full of toxic smog and disinformation to be
useless for anything but feeding trolls, whether isolated sad cases,
or trolls, like Richard, who have a following of other trolls.

> 
> > Indeed, it is to me the mark of the competent programmer
> > to list, to identify, to narrate and to celebrate each one of his OWN
> > errors whenever they occur,
>    
> but you dont do this, do you ? you toss away criticism of your
> code as "this is trivial, not a serious error" ... when you acknowledge
> you errors, then maybe you will start learning something from them.

As I have said, I noticed the error before that clown Sonnack found
it. It was coding a word parser which implemented, in native code, the
regular expression (^[ ]+[ ]*)* instead of the correct regular
expression ([ ]*^[ ]+)*.

This meant that the initial version of a simple, example, toy parser
required that a parsed string start with a nonblank.

You are lecturing me, you silly goose, about something that happened
long ago because, manipulated by Richard's authoritarian personality,
you have joined a flame war you will lose in the eyes of History.

I think what burns people's ass is that in fact corporate life tends
to beat genuine symbolic manipulation ability out of people and as a
result they are, nearly universally in this ng, math-anxious while
holding or seeking jobs in a mathematical technology.

Thus we see that I can present evidence such as the contrasting
regular expressions as a simple way of explaining to you the error,
nonetheless, clowns will not "get" it.


> 
> <snipped>
> 
> > If this is not of interest to programmers, pal, then what is?
> > Deliberately using an outdated language?
> 
> for the record, an outdated language would be something that
> no one uses anymore. an example wuold be VB version 4, right ?

Quite a lot of running applications are in VB-4 and are extended using
an old compiler.
> 
> C applications are still being developed, and C applications
> are still the most used applications in the world, primarily
> because it isn't outdated.

For the same reason folly isn't, I would suppose.

Goose, cudgel thy brains. The basic anxiety in this ng (evidenced by
Richard Heathfield's constant attacks on what he supposes in my
verbosity) is that programming would have been, long ago,
intellectually manageable in a just society, as opposed to one in
which complexity is generated for self-interested reasons.

Wannabe members of the middle class, whose main agenda is consumption
as opposed to producing anything, are attracted to programming in
hopes of finding secure employment.

But when they get there they are alarmed by any intellectual challenge
OTHER than a small set of challenges they've mastered. This includes
relating the content of their work to society as a whole.

[The actual title of a computer book, "Don't Make Me Think", expresses
this alienated rage to pose, as so many pose here, as experts while at
the same time not engaging in "thinking". The dialectical logic is
that the middle class scorns work, even intellectual work.]

[This is why so many people end discussions of problems at work with
the hope to win the lottery.]

[And, when work is done in a public newsgroup, as in the case where I
posted a working copy of a C program as a basis for discussion, not a
solution at all, the game becomes foul libel because in actually doing
work one might be wrong...one might look like a proletarian
maker-of-mistakes.]

[The rage, the anxiety, is extreme, and it is a rage and anxiety to
enjoy rewards without any sweat or personal embarassments.]

The basic anxiety is also that many programmers spend literally all
their time cudgeling their brains unnecessarily when in fact it's
healthier to have outside intellectual interests, and to relate them
to one's profession.

A secretary, a factory worker, fails to make this connection: a
professional does.

But owing to alienation, Richard makes the absurd claim that
comp.programming is "about programming, not programmers". This is
either because he's scared witless about the implications of
alienation, or working for hire for Dr. Evil as a paid agent of the
Dark Side.

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in message
> news:<ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com>...
>> spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message
>> news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>...
>> 
>> > and you've promoted your outdated use of it.
>> 
>> there is no outdated use of it. you cannot possibly
>> live in todays world without using a C application
>> a couple of times a day.
> 
> ...or being subjected to bugs which are the result of clowns using
> C...

If clowns use ladders incorrectly, does that make ladders outdated?
If clowns use whitewash incorrectly, does that make whitewash outdated?
If clowns post off-topic crap to comp.programming, does that make 
comp.programming outdated?

No, no, and no.

> I was referring to a single file. The project of which it is a part is
> 100000 lines.

ROTFL! "Hey, damn! They weren't impressed when I said 10000 lines! I'd 
better add an order of magnitude!"

> But part of what I have referred to as the toxic smog, which renders
> this NG useless for its intended purpose, is the constant ignorant
> striving to pose as one-up.
> 
> In the conversation in which Richard Heathfield and his buttboy

Since you revert to offensive language, I can only presume you have nothing 
of value to say, so I didn't bother reading the rest.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bo7jb7$4ua$3@titan.btinternet.com>...
> Kent Ross wrote:
> 
> > Is it fair for programmers to work long hours of overtime and not get
> > paid for the work?
> 
> It depends. Did you agree to do so when you joined the company?

This reply clearly shows what I mean.

Richard, in order to forestall the discussion of the interface of
programming and society by working programmers, has said several times
"comp.programming is about programming, and not programmers."

But here he makes under his inconsistent and dishonest guidelines an
off topic reply to an off topic post.

Of course, the real rules, which have been set in contravention of the
ng charter by Richard, perhaps as a paid agent (I do not have positive
evidence for this), are "you may discuss the interface of programming
and society only to affirm and not to question the 'real world', as
hypostatized as the free market."

Richard knows very well that the employment contract for an ordinary
programmer is based at least in part on force majeure, and the greater
staying power, vis a vis the employee, of all but the smallest
companies.

Companies are therefore at liberty to extend the working day and the
contract is in fact for results, no matter how long it takes.

Programming, unless covered by a union agreement, is in US law a
salaried, professional and exempt position: end of story.

Furthermore, I know of no way to prevent programmers, if paid straight
time overtime or time and a half, from deciding on overly elaborate
and timeconsuming designs.

The paradox is that there is no way of reconciling management and
labor interests in the same person.

spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0312010828.370a82d8@posting.google.com>...
> ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in message news:<ff82ae1b.0312010350.10672158@posting.google.com>...
> > spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311190802.7391abf9@posting.google.com>...
> > > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bpf83r$6fc$1@titan.btinternet.com>...
> > 
> > <snipped>
> > 
> > whoa there EGN, calm down a little ... lets see what you've written.
> > 
> > > > 
> > > > You're clearly not up to it. Most of the stuff I post here is topical. Most 
> > > > of the stuff you post here is not topical. You lose. Good day.
> > > 
> > > I have not seen a single useful result of yours about programming in
> > > this newsgroup.
> > 
> > lets call that point 1 (you have not seen a single useful result
> > from RH about programming in this newsgroup).
> > 
> > > What I have seen are off-topic and inappropriate
> > > commercial promotions of the out-dated C language,
> >    
> > lets call this point 2 (you have seen commercial promotions
> > of the C language).
> > 
> > OK, now theres only two things left to enlighten you about.
> > 
> > first thing:
> > please post link to google post of RH doing a *commercial*
> > promotion of C.
> > if you cannot do it, then you had better retract what you
> > said, else you just look foolish for saying "he did this,
> > he said that", and when we ask you "please show us what he
> > did or what he said", you respond "well, i never saw it  
> > or heard it" ... 
> > 
> > so please provide proof.
> 
> RH is the author of a book on C and this is why he inappropriately
> promotes C on this ng, the charter of which prohibits this behavior.

how is promoting C prohibited by the charter ?
please quote the bit of the charter that prohibits promoting  
language.
(note: he doesn't wildly promote his book)

 
> Ganz, you do your own homework and look him up on Amazon.
> 
> > 
> > second thing:
> > before you go on about how C is an out-dated language,
> > bear in mind that you, right now, can not possibly live
> > without the applications written in C ...
> > 
> > you have a fancy microwave ? with all the bells and whistles ?
> 
> No. I have learned to be free of such dreck.

ok, fair enough.

> 
> > (samsung touch-n-think?) ? well, then, you are using an application
> > written in C.
> > 
> > your computer is connecting to the net over a tcp/ip stack, most
> > likely written in C. your house alarm is probably also written
> > in C (I have not yet come across a house alarm that has anything
> > more powerfull than an 8051 or a PIC). do you have access-control 
> > at your place of work/residence ? well, probably C again.
> 
> Any of the local hos is more than welcome to walk right in and sit
> right down, and it is my employer's interest to have access control.

ok, fair enough, but you still cannot avoid 
using it, right ?

its sorta like saying "oxygen is outdated, and should not be used
anymore" :-)

> 
> > 
> > your DVD player ? probably C, although some people might
> > like to think java is making inroads nito consumer electronics.
> 
> Izzat right. I'll be dipped.

will you :-) ?????
embedded java seems to be very slowly catching on.

> 
> > your cellphone has symbian or similar OS ? OS is written in C
> 
> The only cellphone OS I worked on

nevermind what you worked on, what phone do you use ?
nokia ? samsung ? sony-eric... ???

> was written in Z80 assembly language
> (and, seriously, you are ignoring the persistent preference in
> embedded systems for assembler code,

there isn't any preference anymore, only what *needs* to be
done in assembler is done in assembler ...

> and the persistence of legacy
> code,

I have not mentioned any legacy code, only products that were
developed quite recently or are still in development.

> mine included, which unlike some punk's code works). My SL/1
> compiler was written in SL/1 which was pretty slick when you think
> about it (cudgel thy brains).


and my C compiler was written in C ... 

> 
> > (correct me if i am wrong someone:-). the bosch ignition system
> > for your car ? written in C. when you purchase stuff at a supermarket
> 
> The sort of cars I drive generally carburetors.

do they have a points and contact system ?
what car are you driving right now ?

do you think that the robot/machinery which asemblde your
carb.  car runs VB software ????

> 
> > POS the POS machine is most likely written in C (although they
> > are much rarer these days to find them in C, you still do), if
> 
> No s*t, izzat so.

yup. you cant eat without C software :-)

> 
> > you pay by credit/debit/smartcard, then the terminal is possibly
> > also programmed in C.
> 
> I pay with money which isn't programmed in anything.

but you pay to a terminal with C software ...

> 
> > 
> > unless you want to give up the ability to drive somewhere,
> > cook, protect your valuables, make phone calls and just basically
> > live, you cannot live without applications written in C.
> 
> My God, I'm having a vision of a world without C.
> 
> Tattered Yuppies, Gen Xers and soccer moms trudging down the highway
> like refugees in a war zone.

this is a rebuttal ????

> 
> Some of them give up, faced with the prospect of life without C, and
> drop by the side of the road to die.
> 
> Primitive Stuka dive bombers, not programmed in C suddenly come
> screaming from the sky. The terrified refugees scatter.
> 
> > 
> > why, that OS that you are using right now is probably written in C,
> > isn't it ?
> 
> Oops, nope. C++.

liar!!!
what OS are you using that is programmed in C++ ????

lets see, windows 9*/nt/2k/xp is programmed in C,
all unixen are programmed in C, so waht does that
leave us with ????

what OS are you using?

> 
> 
> > 
> > dont you feel just a little foolish right now, knowing that your
> 
> Oh yes I feel soooo foolish.

you look it too, so no worries there ....

goose,

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in message news:<ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com>...
> 
>>spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>...
>>
>><snipped>
>>
>>>This is a lie. You've discussed the C language in this ng as the C
>>>language
>>
>>what else would you refer to "the C language" as ? 
>>meatballs ?
>>
>>
>>>and you've promoted your outdated use of it.
>>
>>there is no outdated use of it. you cannot possibly
>>live in todays world without using a C application
>>a couple of times a day.
> 
> 
> ...or being subjected to bugs which are the result of clowns using
> C...
> 
>>can you say the same for any other language ?
>>
>><snipped>
>>
>>>But because incompetent programmers delight in pointing out other
>>>programmer's errors, several of Heathfield's buttboys capered and
>>>gibbered about my "incompetence" for weeks afterward.
>>
>>the errors of yours that I had seen where serious misunderstandings,
>>nothing trivial. they showed a very high level of incompetence.
> 
> You saw them second hand, and before you saw them, I'd probably
> already admitted them.

And that affects what exactly?  The fact is they were there, and from 
what little I've seen they were errors that no 'professional' C 
programmer would ever have produced.  They prove only that you produced 
some very nasty, bug-ridden, unworking code.  That in itself speaks 
volumes about your programming ability.

In short, you screwed up and tried to cover.  Believe it or not, it's 
the screwup that displays your ignorance, regardless of how much you try 
to cover and backfill.

>>>Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
>>>compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
>>>successfully.
>>
>>and I (and many others here) have written much more, thats been used
>>by millions of people ...
> 
> I was referring to a single file. The project of which it is a part is
> 100000 lines.

Gee, that's swell.  Going to tack another zero on it next time 'round? 
I'm fully expecting a "and that was part of an application suite 
amounting to over 1000000 lines" next time.

How sad.

> In the conversation in which Richard Heathfield and his buttboy
> Sonnack analyzed my code for trivial errors, which I admitted before
> they found them, my goal was in fact to show that VB with objects is
> better than C. I'd not programmed in C in recent years, but in 1992,
> Princeton University assigned me, as a C programmer, to assist the
> real-life protagonist of A Beautiful Mind, to assist Nash with a
> difficult C problem which I found rapidly. I've also written thousands
> of lines in C including one compiler for a commercial client. I was
> rusty about C and admitted as much.

Rusty?  Hell, you produced some of the worst C code I've ever seen from 
anyone who's not a rank amateur.  Name-drop all you like, you still 
screwed the pooch on that one.

And just so you know, a lot of the errors Richard pointed out were /NOT/ 
trivial.  You've been told that before, but maybe one day you'll 
actually read what people are saying and it'll get through.

> However, Richard had had his feelings wounded because I did not roll
> over and play dead when he lied repeatedly about the ng charter and
> because he's an arrogant SOB, he emotionally manipulated his buttboy
> into a systematic and actionably libelous attack on my character and
> competence.

Pot and kettle time.  Arrogance is, of course, your domain.  And 
apparenty lies are your favorite tool as well.

Once again, if you think it's actionable, by all means take action.  We 
wait with baited breath.

> However, I have back-burnered wasting any money on suing Richard in a
> court of law, mostly because it happens to be common knowledge, owing
> to the conduct of people like Heathfield, that public access
> newsgroups are today too full of toxic smog and disinformation to be
> useless for anything but feeding trolls, whether isolated sad cases,
> or trolls, like Richard, who have a following of other trolls.

Not to mention that you have no actual grounds, as you are well aware. 
Quit posturing and lying eddie.

> You are lecturing me, you silly goose, about something that happened
> long ago because, manipulated by Richard's authoritarian personality,
> you have joined a flame war you will lose in the eyes of History.

Gee, ain't that grand.  All of us are apparently being hypnotized or 
bullied into believing Richard, since it's /SOOOO/ obvious that we 
couldn't have come to the same conclusions.

My mind, and my opinions, are my own.  Your assertions that Richard is 
responsible for them are libellous.  Retract them.

> Wannabe members of the middle class, whose main agenda is consumption
> as opposed to producing anything, are attracted to programming in
> hopes of finding secure employment.

Excuse me, but I'm well in the middle class, as defined by the economics 
of my country.  I've been programming for quite some time now.  Your 
statement above, like many others in this post, is both false and 
insulting.  Withdraw it.

> But owing to alienation, Richard makes the absurd claim that
> comp.programming is "about programming, not programmers". This is
> either because he's scared witless about the implications of
> alienation, or working for hire for Dr. Evil as a paid agent of the
> Dark Side.

Or the more rational explanation that he's actually correct, and trying 
to lower the drek level in the group.  Take that as a personal attack if 
you like.

-- 
Corey Murtagh
The Electric Monk
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!"

Ian Woods <newspub2@wuggyNOCAPS.org> wrote in message news:<Xns9444F390B9C39newspubwuggyorg@217.32.252.50>...
> ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in
> news:ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com: 
> 
> > spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message
> > news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>... 
> >> 
> >> Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
> >> compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
> >> successfully.
> > 
> > and I (and many others here) have written much more, thats been used
> > by millions of people ...
> 
> I'm one of those people who don't write tens of thousands of lines a year. 
> However, I don't think the number of lines you write has any bearing on 
> your ability or the amount of work you've actually done.
> 
> Most of the code I've written in the last 2 years has been programs under 
> 300 lines in length. They used no magic libraries, didn't have amazingly 
> clicky user interfaces and they've been used by only handful of people.
> 
> However, the amount of work which has gone into them is considerable. Most 
> of them are based on entirely new algorithms which had to be devised, or 
> old algorithms which have been specialised to the situation in order to 
> provide answers within a reasonable time.
> 
> Not all programs of worth have thousands of lines and are used by millions 
> of people, and the ability of their programmers isn't automatically 
> diminished.

Well said.  LOC as a measure of quality is spurious anyway and as a
measure of quantity it's only partially useful.

For example, a Windows GUI program in VB is generally shorter in LOC
than it's equivalent in C & Win32API simply because VB does the API
bit itself.

Because it's a kinda-sorta handy way of measuring project size it
persists as a measure, but really a more complex measure of amount of
objects, functions or some such would better reflect project size.  or
maybe not.

> 
> Besides, my programs have more documentation than yours do. :)

As a ratio of LOD (lines of documentation) to LOC?  hmmm.......  ;)

Ian Woods <newspub2@wuggyNOCAPS.org> wrote in message news:<Xns9444F390B9C39newspubwuggyorg@217.32.252.50>...
> ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in
> news:ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com: 
> 
> > spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message
> > news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>... 
> >> 
> >> Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
> >> compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
> >> successfully.
> > 
> > and I (and many others here) have written much more, thats been used
> > by millions of people ...
> 
> I'm one of those people who don't write tens of thousands of lines a year. 
> However, I don't think the number of lines you write has any bearing on 
> your ability or the amount of work you've actually done.

That is precisely my point. What good is boasting about the
number of lines written; there is always someone who has written
more than that anyway.

<snipped>

> 
> Not all programs of worth have thousands of lines and are used by millions 
> of people, and the ability of their programmers isn't automatically 
> diminished.

which is why I now regret having answered EGNs "I'v single handedly ..."
quote. A lot of the code in use by millions and millions and millions
of people are tiny programs (embedded), whilst a lot of code in use
by millions and millions and millions of people are several hundred
thousand LOC whilst a lot of code of many millions LOC are not in
use at ll, whilst ...

(one can go on in that senseless vein all day, luckily
today I feel less verbose than usual :-)

> 
> Besides, my programs have more documentation than yours do. :)
> 

HA!!! I bet *my* comments can outcomment *your* comments !!!
so there :-)

goose,
   baselessly using stupid measurements since 1989 :-)

"goose" <ruse@webmail.co.za> wrote in message <news:ff82ae1b.0312020843.5e3111fa@posting.google.com>...

> Ian Woods <newspub2@wuggyNOCAPS.org> wrote in message news:<Xns9444F390B9C39newspubwuggyorg@217.32.252.50>...
> > ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in
> > news:ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com:
> >
> > > spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message
> > > news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>...
> > >>
> > >> Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
> > >> compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
> > >> successfully.
> > >
> > > and I (and many others here) have written much more, thats been used
> > > by millions of people ...
> >
> > I'm one of those people who don't write tens of thousands of lines a year.
> > However, I don't think the number of lines you write has any bearing on
> > your ability or the amount of work you've actually done.
>
> That is precisely my point. What good is boasting about the
> number of lines written; there is always someone who has written
> more than that anyway.

I often find that the more effort I put into writing a program, the
shorter it gets!  This seems to happen with every language I've yet
tried.  Needless to say, this has led to some extremely interesting
conversations with employers...

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>  Sign the Check! <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

"goose" <ruse@webmail.co.za> wrote in message <news:ff82ae1b.0312020113.518ba424@posting.google.com>...

> spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0312010828.370a82d8@posting.google.com>...

> do they have a points and contact system ?
> what car are you driving right now ?
>
> do you think that the robot/machinery which asemblde your
> carb.  car runs VB software ????

I've seen questions in the VB newsgroups in which someone is
attempting to operate a robot arm with a VB program...  >=)

> > > why, that OS that you are using right now is probably written in C,
> > > isn't it ?
> >
> > Oops, nope. C++.
>
> liar!!!
> what OS are you using that is programmed in C++ ????
>
> lets see, windows 9*/nt/2k/xp is programmed in C,
> all unixen are programmed in C, so waht does that
> leave us with ????
>
> what OS are you using?

What was BeOS written in?  There's probably some C in there
too, along with C++ and assembly.

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>  Auditine Addict <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0312012006.2b0a5015@posting.google.com>...
> ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in message news:<ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com>...
> > spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>...
> > 
> > <snipped>
> > 
> > > 
> > > This is a lie. You've discussed the C language in this ng as the C
> > > language
> > 
> > what else would you refer to "the C language" as ? 
> > meatballs ?
> > 
> > > and you've promoted your outdated use of it.
> > 
> > there is no outdated use of it. you cannot possibly
> > live in todays world without using a C application
> > a couple of times a day.
> 
> ...or being subjected to bugs which are the result of clowns using
> C...

what about all the bugs I am subjected to which are the result
of idiots using VB, or java, or even C# ?
does that mean that all those languages are outdated ?

<snipped>

> 
> But part of what I have referred to as the toxic smog, which renders
> this NG useless for its intended purpose, is the constant ignorant
> striving to pose as one-up.

on the contrary, I think that if you refer to google groups, you
will find most of us giving the rest of us lots of help, in 
whichever language the help is required in. RH specialises in C
(so do I, to some extent, but not as experienced as the older
posters here).

> 
> In the conversation in which Richard Heathfield and his buttboy

EGN, I really wish you would avoid vulgarities. kids read these
groups too, you know.

> Sonnack analyzed my code for trivial errors, which I admitted before
> they found them, my goal was in fact to show that VB with objects is
> better than C.

but this is an almost impossible dream (to show that language X is
better than language Y). Denouncing C (which you and just about
everybody else on the planet use daily) because C lets stupid
programmers write applications that crash is just as simplistic
as denouncing cars, because stupid drivers can cause cars to
crash as well.

> I'd not programmed in C in recent years, but in 1992,
> Princeton University assigned me, as a C programmer, to assist the
> real-life protagonist of A Beautiful Mind, to assist Nash with a
> difficult C problem which I found rapidly.

I dont quite parse that. did you perhaps miss out a word or too ?

> I've also written thousands
> of lines in C including one compiler for a commercial client. I was
> rusty about C and admitted as much.

it wasn't rust that showed in the code that I saw. I attempt to
write the best code that I can, but some "mistakes" almost *never*
get through, mainly because I take care when writing.

> 
> However, I have back-burnered wasting any money on suing Richard in a
> court of law, mostly because it happens to be common knowledge, owing
> to the conduct of people like Heathfield, that public access
> newsgroups are today too full of toxic smog and disinformation to be
> useless for anything but feeding trolls, whether isolated sad cases,
> or trolls, like Richard, who have a following of other trolls.

It is not a following of other trolls. It is a bunch of people
with more experience than you would imagine. they make up their
own mind, as do I, and came to the same conclusions that RH did.

<snipped>

> 
> You are lecturing me, you silly goose,
   
Since you know nothing about me, it may just be the case that
I *am* in a position to lecture ... consider that maybe I am
a previous superior of yuours (or even a current one).

> about something that happened
> long ago because, manipulated by Richard's authoritarian personality,

Sorry, I am manipulated by no one.

> you have joined a flame war you will lose in the eyes of History.

I am not flaming you this time round, am I ? If otoh you were to
say something inflammatory, then of course my response might in fact
be a flame.

<snipped>

> 
> > 
> > <snipped>
> > 
> > > If this is not of interest to programmers, pal, then what is?
> > > Deliberately using an outdated language?
> > 
> > for the record, an outdated language would be something that
> > no one uses anymore. an example wuold be VB version 4, right ?
> 
> Quite a lot of running applications are in VB-4 and are extended using
> an old compiler.

but very few compared to C, which must mean that VB 4 is more
outdated than C ?

> > 
> > C applications are still being developed, and C applications
> > are still the most used applications in the world, primarily
> > because it isn't outdated.
> 
> For the same reason folly isn't, I would suppose.

meaning ?

> 
> Goose, cudgel thy brains.

no need to, they function fine as is.

<snipped>

> But owing to alienation, Richard makes the absurd claim that
> comp.programming is "about programming, not programmers". This is
> either because he's scared witless about the implications of
> alienation, or working for hire for Dr. Evil as a paid agent of the
> Dark Side.

thats just a little too off-the-wall for even the grouped 
CIA-conspiracy-theorists.

Have you possibly considered that maybe your opinions are
misguided, and your logic flawed ?

goose,
   not flaming

Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message news:<1070362515.900282@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 

<snipped>

> > You saw them second hand, and before you saw them, I'd probably
> > already admitted them.
> 
> And that affects what exactly?  The fact is they were there, and from 
> what little I've seen they were errors that no 'professional' C 
> programmer would ever have produced.  They prove only that you produced 
> some very nasty, bug-ridden, unworking code.  That in itself speaks 
> volumes about your programming ability.

but only in C, his programming ability in other languages I am
not able to judge (unless its in one of the languages that I am 
familiar with).

I think that EGN has also written a BigNum library in VB, perhaps
(as VB is his language of choice) that will display more competence ?

> 
> In short, you screwed up and tried to cover.  Believe it or not, it's 
> the screwup that displays your ignorance, regardless of how much you try 
> to cover and backfill.

<grin> I'm almosy sure I posted a warning response to you about
EGN :-)

i though perhaps that that would have prepared you for what was to
come :-)

<snipped>

goose,
   C Rules!!! 
   (c manpage if u cannot c the rules :-)

"goose" <ruse@webmail.co.za> wrote in message <news:ff82ae1b.0312020929.18876814@posting.google.com>...

> I think that EGN has also written a BigNum library in VB, perhaps
> (as VB is his language of choice) that will display more competence ?

Nope.  He's floated to the top of the bowl in comp.lang.basic.visual.* too.

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>     Got Thetans? <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

"goose" <ruse@webmail.co.za> wrote in message <news:ff82ae1b.0312020922.16a16c32@posting.google.com>...

> spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0312012006.2b0a5015@posting.google.com>...

> > In the conversation in which Richard Heathfield and his buttboy
>
> EGN, I really wish you would avoid vulgarities. kids read these
> groups too, you know.

You should have seen what he spewed in comp.lang.basic.visual.misc!

> > Sonnack analyzed my code for trivial errors, which I admitted before
> > they found them, my goal was in fact to show that VB with objects is
> > better than C.
>
> but this is an almost impossible dream (to show that language X is
> better than language Y). Denouncing C (which you and just about
> everybody else on the planet use daily) because C lets stupid
> programmers write applications that crash is just as simplistic
> as denouncing cars, because stupid drivers can cause cars to
> crash as well.

Is there such a thing as a reasonably powerful language that won't
allow stupid programmers to write BSOD-o-matics?  Of course, there
are always bugs in OS services...

> > I'd not programmed in C in recent years, but in 1992,
> > Princeton University assigned me, as a C programmer, to assist the
> > real-life protagonist of A Beautiful Mind, to assist Nash with a
> > difficult C problem which I found rapidly.
>
> I dont quite parse that. did you perhaps miss out a word or too ?

He's been pining for John Nash for years.

 URL:http://popular-science.net/nobel/nash.html

> > But owing to alienation, Richard makes the absurd claim that
> > comp.programming is "about programming, not programmers". This is
> > either because he's scared witless about the implications of
> > alienation, or working for hire for Dr. Evil as a paid agent of the
> > Dark Side.
>
> thats just a little too off-the-wall for even the grouped
> CIA-conspiracy-theorists.

Perhaps he's merely emulating the only traits of John Nash he can?

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>  Wanna buy a Bridge? <http://xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message news:<1070362515.900282@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in message news:<ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com>...
> > 
> >>spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>...
> >>
> >><snipped>
> >>
> >>>This is a lie. You've discussed the C language in this ng as the C
> >>>language
> >>
> >>what else would you refer to "the C language" as ? 
> >>meatballs ?
> >>
> >>
> >>>and you've promoted your outdated use of it.
> >>
> >>there is no outdated use of it. you cannot possibly
> >>live in todays world without using a C application
> >>a couple of times a day.
> > 
> > 
> > ...or being subjected to bugs which are the result of clowns using
> > C...
> > 
> >>can you say the same for any other language ?
> >>
> >><snipped>
> >>
> >>>But because incompetent programmers delight in pointing out other
> >>>programmer's errors, several of Heathfield's buttboys capered and
> >>>gibbered about my "incompetence" for weeks afterward.
> >>
> >>the errors of yours that I had seen where serious misunderstandings,
> >>nothing trivial. they showed a very high level of incompetence.
> > 
> > You saw them second hand, and before you saw them, I'd probably
> > already admitted them.
> 
> And that affects what exactly?  The fact is they were there, and from 
> what little I've seen they were errors that no 'professional' C 
> programmer would ever have produced.  They prove only that you produced 
> some very nasty, bug-ridden, unworking code.  That in itself speaks 
> volumes about your programming ability.
> 
> In short, you screwed up and tried to cover.  Believe it or not, it's 
> the screwup that displays your ignorance, regardless of how much you try 
> to cover and backfill.

At a minimum, that clown Chris Sonnack did his friggin homework. He
made a reasonably responsible analysis of the problems he saw in my
code examples (which were a simple parser and a slightly more complex
parser for truth tables). He however confused his opinion about
programming style with the issue of errors, and, because his feelings
were wounded about what had gone on before, inflated an errors which I
found the night I posted the code, and which, if memory serves, I
corrected before he found them.

This was, again, writing code in the simple parser that parsed the
regular expression (^[ ]+[ ]*)* rather than the re ([ ]*^[ ]+)*.

But here you are clearly unaware of the situation that occured more
than a year ago and are merely dealing in a narcissistic fashion with
your own anxiety about your own competence.

I don't play these lower middle-class, petty bourgeois games. I need
to focus my energies on Richard Heathfield's abuse of this ng.
Therefore no further reply will be made.

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> news:<bo7jb7$4ua$3@titan.btinternet.com>...
>> Kent Ross wrote:
>> 
>> > Is it fair for programmers to work long hours of overtime and not get
>> > paid for the work?
>> 
>> It depends. Did you agree to do so when you joined the company?
> 
> This reply clearly shows what I mean.

Really? Cool! I've often wondered.

> Richard, in order to forestall the discussion of the interface of
> programming and society by working programmers,

I have no interest in forestalling such discussions when conducted in an 
appropriate forum. By all means feel free to find one. This isn't it.

<snip>

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

goose wrote:

> Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message
> news:<1070362515.900282@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...

<snip>

>> They prove only that [Nilges] produced
>> some very nasty, bug-ridden, unworking code.  That in itself speaks
>> volumes about your programming ability.
> 
> but only in C, his programming ability in other languages I am
> not able to judge (unless its in one of the languages that I am
> familiar with).
> 
> I think that EGN has also written a BigNum library in VB, perhaps
> (as VB is his language of choice) that will display more competence ?

One would hope so. (Apparently, it's a tad on the slow side, but then again 
speed isn't everything.) If you're desperate to see some Nilges VB code, 
you can find his string-parsing stuff on Google, and also a Chris Sonnack 
deconstruction thereof. He posted it at the same time he posted his C 
stuff, which (in case you missed it) you can see at 
http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/compprog/nilges.html - you might also want 
to home in on <3D19FAEA.DA82CD52@eton.powernet.co.uk> (an article I posted) 
to get you into the approximately correct part of Google Groups for the VB 
stuff.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> I need
> to focus my energies on Richard Heathfield's abuse of this ng.

No, you need to focus your energies on:

1) learning what Usenet is for;
2) learning what comp.programming is for;
3) getting a clue;
4) cleaning your mouth out;
5) providing actual evidence for your assertions;
6) dropping your ludicrous vendetta.

> Therefore no further reply will be made.

Yeah, right.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Edward G. Nilges wrote:
<snip various evasions>

> But here you are clearly unaware of the situation that occured more
> than a year ago and are merely dealing in a narcissistic fashion with
> your own anxiety about your own competence.

Check yourself, kid.  I have no concerns, or illusions, about my 
competence.  Don't project your own failings on to me in this 
ridiculous, offensive fashion.

Go see a shrink.  You quite obviously need one.

> I don't play these lower middle-class, petty bourgeois games. I need
> to focus my energies on Richard Heathfield's abuse of this ng.
> Therefore no further reply will be made.

Oh, that's grand.  What kind of game are you playing then kiddie?

-- 
Corey Murtagh
The Electric Monk
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!"

gswork@mailcity.com (gswork) wrote in message news:<81f33a98.0312020526.452a4750@posting.google.com>...
> Ian Woods <newspub2@wuggyNOCAPS.org> wrote in message news:<Xns9444F390B9C39newspubwuggyorg@217.32.252.50>...
> > ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in
> > news:ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com: 
> > 
> > > spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message
> > > news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>... 
> > >> 
> > >> Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
> > >> compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
> > >> successfully.
> > > 
> > > and I (and many others here) have written much more, thats been used
> > > by millions of people ...
> > 
> > I'm one of those people who don't write tens of thousands of lines a year. 
> > However, I don't think the number of lines you write has any bearing on 
> > your ability or the amount of work you've actually done.
> > 
> > Most of the code I've written in the last 2 years has been programs under 
> > 300 lines in length. They used no magic libraries, didn't have amazingly 
> > clicky user interfaces and they've been used by only handful of people.
> > 
> > However, the amount of work which has gone into them is considerable. Most 
> > of them are based on entirely new algorithms which had to be devised, or 
> > old algorithms which have been specialised to the situation in order to 
> > provide answers within a reasonable time.
> > 
> > Not all programs of worth have thousands of lines and are used by millions 
> > of people, and the ability of their programmers isn't automatically 
> > diminished.
> 
> Well said.  LOC as a measure of quality is spurious anyway and as a
> measure of quantity it's only partially useful.

Of course, and part of my issue with comp.programming is the way in
which the emotional manipulation of posters results in these crude
pissing contests.

They are based on a widespread sense of insecurity due to the lack of
anything like solidarity amongst working developers.

And this situation is exacerbated IMO by Richard Heathfield who has
repeatedly started "flame" wars based on a deliberate misreading of
the ng charter.

But note that I enter what a mathematician would call a "closed
system" precisely when I say "Mom, Dickie Heathfield is doin' it
again!! Make him stop!!"

Side by side with the pose of ersatz professionalism and ersatz
adulthood exists a closed system, in this and in other newsgroups,
such that productive interchange cannot get started.

This is because the mechanism, of psychological transference (in which
we project our failings on another), means that posters "appear" to
one another, in their mental imaging, as on a level (indeed Euclidean)
playing-field.

Due to the volume of postings, no "fact" can be thoroughly verified,
and the unprincipled poster (following a misuse of the media that was
pioneered in the use of radio by Fascist parties in both Europe and
the USA) can therefore repeat claims, using different words, to blow
them out of proportion.

But owing to the media, which is in part the message, everything
appears the same: Courier New 8.25.

The result: any claim is perceived as the mathematical equivalent of
any counter-claim.

This is also true in the wider society, and it is why, last summer,
70% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was in bed, not with the
Devil as we see on South Park, but with Osama.

The "libertarian", "a plague upon both your houses" pose despairs
therefore of the possibility of knowledge.

But principled men and women, like Cass Sunstein (author of
Republic.COM) persist in the philosophical belief that truth exists
and can be known.

I remain profoundly bored with the issue of entry-level competence
which seems to be a real hot button on comp.programming. Furthermore,
and very interestingly to me, it reminds me nothing so much as
brutalized military veterans of enlisted rank dissing and pissing each
other.

The comparision is I think apposite. Human beings deserve, in 99.99%
of cases, far more satisfaction and love than they actually get (Erich
Fromm, who alongside Theodore Adorno was a member of the Frankfurt
School, makes this point in One Dimensional Man).

But because they cannot reconcile their actual treatment by "reality"
they turn upon any demand for simple respect.

This phenomenon is, as far as I can tell, widespread on public access
groups, on the Internet, simply because the elite don't log on, or
when they do, they do in different ways.

I saw quite a lot of it in the vicious treatment of women posters in
the late 1980s...before women learned to abandon newsgroups dominated
by disappointed, wannabe alpha and are gamma, males. Inspired by 1970s
feminism, these women posters brought a measure of self-esteem and a
non-negotiable demand for respect to the Internet, and were as far as
I could tell driven from the scene.


The illusion is that one programming style is right, and all the
others are wrong (Chris Sonnack, last year, inflated his famous bug
count vis a vis my example code by equivocating the stylistic and the
mathematical error).

The RESULT of this infantile view is the praxis, nearly universal
today, of totally rewriting code, that was supposed to be changed.

I have been guilty of this as anyone, primarily because of the extreme
pressures for results in the dot.com bust. For example, to get .Net
serial communications working properly I departed from the
architecture of a C sharp system and made a VB add on...because the VB
driver worked and the C# driver did not.

It was then that I realized that the inheritance architecture of the
existing code was quite useful, if completely not documented, and
began reusing this architecture.

But generally there is, no more, any real discipline of software
maintenance, or effective review, precisely because the wider
rhetorical culture is what I have called anti-Aristotelean: Aristotle
advised the rhetor, trying to make a point using logic and rhetoric,
to respect his opponent (a good example would be Marc Antony's
"friends, Romans, and countrymen" speech in Shakespeare).

But current got-to-get-over street practice is to be as offensive as
you can be. We've seen some good examples in this in the mass flame of
the Data Quality Act thread of June 2002.

To which the response will be, in a closed system (reminiscent of a
constructed Hell), that I have been "offensive", in "calling" posters
Fascistic. But the persistence of memory in my case, and what contact
I have with culture outside cyberspace, necessarily leads me to
compare what I know, about the way in which Fascists (and for that
matter Stalinists) manipulate the media, with behavior in this ng.

> 
> For example, a Windows GUI program in VB is generally shorter in LOC
> than it's equivalent in C & Win32API simply because VB does the API
> bit itself.
> 
> Because it's a kinda-sorta handy way of measuring project size it
> persists as a measure, but really a more complex measure of amount of
> objects, functions or some such would better reflect project size.  or
> maybe not.
> 
> > 
> > Besides, my programs have more documentation than yours do. :)
> 
> As a ratio of LOD (lines of documentation) to LOC?  hmmm.......  ;)

Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message news:<1070362515.900282@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...

What's really absurd about this "flame": in June 2002 I did not claim
to be a "professional" C programmer. I abandoned my professional C use
after successfully delivering a business rules compiler in C and
assisting the real-life protagonist of A Beautiful Mind with some C
arcana at Princeton.

I abandoned C in 1993 because owing to my experience with the
compiler, I realized that UDTs with links were simply unequal to
creating great software. In fact, John Nash, the "protagonist" also
abandoned C for his work which was in 1992 crafting an extra precision
numerical calculator.

When Nash's isolation came to an end he found that Stephen Wolfram had
already written what he needed, and that of course was Mathematica.
After Nash won his Nobel, I'd guess, he saw no need for extra work to
keep him occupied.

Indeed, the bug I found on John's behalf was itself symptomatic of the
irresponsibility then and now in the C community: for the Microsoft C
compiler in use in 1993 generated an overflow when solving Nash's
constant expression for the limit value, he needed to find when one of
the base 2^31 "digits" (an int) was overflowing itself. The Borland
compiler, a superior product at the time, did not.

It appears to me from OUTSIDE the magic circle of C trolldom that safe
use of C, in the way Heathfield recommends so your code is portable,
is a full time job and beyond. But I gather from the conduct of C fans
in this ng, that it's such a full time job that it leaves no time for
learning OO, or for that matter simple courtesy.

I do not know, and I do not care, whether C has in some half-assed way
rectified the problem of overflow, or if Richard Heathfield has some
magic that he sells. That's because modern languages handle this
problem in a consistent and safe way with special values for
quantities beyond the maximum.

I wrote the code, that Corey probably hasn't even looked at, to
demonstrate in fact my thesis then and now: that VB with objects is
superior to C. I stated the above facts about my background, and also
noted that I'd spent two hours on the example for quick turnaround.

Corey has produced a tirade here about a complete fantasy because he
has projected his own fears about his own competence on me, without
doing even the lousy level of Chris Sonnack's homework.

> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in message news:<ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com>...
> > 
> >>spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>...
> >>
> >><snipped>
> >>
> >>>This is a lie. You've discussed the C language in this ng as the C
> >>>language
> >>
> >>what else would you refer to "the C language" as ? 
> >>meatballs ?
> >>
> >>
> >>>and you've promoted your outdated use of it.
> >>
> >>there is no outdated use of it. you cannot possibly
> >>live in todays world without using a C application
> >>a couple of times a day.
> > 
> > 
> > ...or being subjected to bugs which are the result of clowns using
> > C...
> > 
> >>can you say the same for any other language ?
> >>
> >><snipped>
> >>
> >>>But because incompetent programmers delight in pointing out other
> >>>programmer's errors, several of Heathfield's buttboys capered and
> >>>gibbered about my "incompetence" for weeks afterward.
> >>
> >>the errors of yours that I had seen where serious misunderstandings,
> >>nothing trivial. they showed a very high level of incompetence.
> > 
> > You saw them second hand, and before you saw them, I'd probably
> > already admitted them.
> 
> And that affects what exactly?  The fact is they were there, and from 
> what little I've seen they were errors that no 'professional' C 
> programmer would ever have produced.  They prove only that you produced 
> some very nasty, bug-ridden, unworking code.  That in itself speaks 
> volumes about your programming ability.
> 
> In short, you screwed up and tried to cover.  Believe it or not, it's 
> the screwup that displays your ignorance, regardless of how much you try 
> to cover and backfill.
> 
> >>>Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
> >>>compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
> >>>successfully.
> >>
> >>and I (and many others here) have written much more, thats been used
> >>by millions of people ...
> > 
> > I was referring to a single file. The project of which it is a part is
> > 100000 lines.
> 
> Gee, that's swell.  Going to tack another zero on it next time 'round? 
> I'm fully expecting a "and that was part of an application suite 
> amounting to over 1000000 lines" next time.
> 
> How sad.
> 
> > In the conversation in which Richard Heathfield and his buttboy
> > Sonnack analyzed my code for trivial errors, which I admitted before
> > they found them, my goal was in fact to show that VB with objects is
> > better than C. I'd not programmed in C in recent years, but in 1992,
> > Princeton University assigned me, as a C programmer, to assist the
> > real-life protagonist of A Beautiful Mind, to assist Nash with a
> > difficult C problem which I found rapidly. I've also written thousands
> > of lines in C including one compiler for a commercial client. I was
> > rusty about C and admitted as much.
> 
> Rusty?  Hell, you produced some of the worst C code I've ever seen from 
> anyone who's not a rank amateur.  Name-drop all you like, you still 
> screwed the pooch on that one.
> 
> And just so you know, a lot of the errors Richard pointed out were /NOT/ 
> trivial.  You've been told that before, but maybe one day you'll 
> actually read what people are saying and it'll get through.
> 
> > However, Richard had had his feelings wounded because I did not roll
> > over and play dead when he lied repeatedly about the ng charter and
> > because he's an arrogant SOB, he emotionally manipulated his buttboy
> > into a systematic and actionably libelous attack on my character and
> > competence.
> 
> Pot and kettle time.  Arrogance is, of course, your domain.  And 
> apparenty lies are your favorite tool as well.
> 
> Once again, if you think it's actionable, by all means take action.  We 
> wait with baited breath.
> 
> > However, I have back-burnered wasting any money on suing Richard in a
> > court of law, mostly because it happens to be common knowledge, owing
> > to the conduct of people like Heathfield, that public access
> > newsgroups are today too full of toxic smog and disinformation to be
> > useless for anything but feeding trolls, whether isolated sad cases,
> > or trolls, like Richard, who have a following of other trolls.
> 
> Not to mention that you have no actual grounds, as you are well aware. 
> Quit posturing and lying eddie.
> 
> > You are lecturing me, you silly goose, about something that happened
> > long ago because, manipulated by Richard's authoritarian personality,
> > you have joined a flame war you will lose in the eyes of History.
> 
> Gee, ain't that grand.  All of us are apparently being hypnotized or 
> bullied into believing Richard, since it's /SOOOO/ obvious that we 
> couldn't have come to the same conclusions.
> 
> My mind, and my opinions, are my own.  Your assertions that Richard is 
> responsible for them are libellous.  Retract them.
> 
> > Wannabe members of the middle class, whose main agenda is consumption
> > as opposed to producing anything, are attracted to programming in
> > hopes of finding secure employment.
> 
> Excuse me, but I'm well in the middle class, as defined by the economics 
> of my country.  I've been programming for quite some time now.  Your 
> statement above, like many others in this post, is both false and 
> insulting.  Withdraw it.
> 
> > But owing to alienation, Richard makes the absurd claim that
> > comp.programming is "about programming, not programmers". This is
> > either because he's scared witless about the implications of
> > alienation, or working for hire for Dr. Evil as a paid agent of the
> > Dark Side.
> 
> Or the more rational explanation that he's actually correct, and trying 
> to lower the drek level in the group.  Take that as a personal attack if 
> you like.

That is my belief as well.  I have always figured a person who has
written thousands of lines of code could have condensed it, use less
resources and have a very clean, comprehendible code.

And all programs have more documentation than mine.  I'm the only one
that uses them. :)

Jeff

gswork@mailcity.com (gswork) wrote in message news:<81f33a98.0312020526.452a4750@posting.google.com>...
> Ian Woods <newspub2@wuggyNOCAPS.org> wrote in message news:<Xns9444F390B9C39newspubwuggyorg@217.32.252.50>...
> > ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in
> > news:ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com: 
> > 
> > > spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message
> > > news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>... 
> > >> 
> > >> Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
> > >> compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
> > >> successfully.
> > > 
> > > and I (and many others here) have written much more, thats been used
> > > by millions of people ...
> > 
> > I'm one of those people who don't write tens of thousands of lines a year. 
> > However, I don't think the number of lines you write has any bearing on 
> > your ability or the amount of work you've actually done.
> > 
> > Most of the code I've written in the last 2 years has been programs under 
> > 300 lines in length. They used no magic libraries, didn't have amazingly 
> > clicky user interfaces and they've been used by only handful of people.
> > 
> > However, the amount of work which has gone into them is considerable. Most 
> > of them are based on entirely new algorithms which had to be devised, or 
> > old algorithms which have been specialised to the situation in order to 
> > provide answers within a reasonable time.
> > 
> > Not all programs of worth have thousands of lines and are used by millions 
> > of people, and the ability of their programmers isn't automatically 
> > diminished.
> 
> Well said.  LOC as a measure of quality is spurious anyway and as a
> measure of quantity it's only partially useful.
> 
> For example, a Windows GUI program in VB is generally shorter in LOC
> than it's equivalent in C & Win32API simply because VB does the API
> bit itself.
> 
> Because it's a kinda-sorta handy way of measuring project size it
> persists as a measure, but really a more complex measure of amount of
> objects, functions or some such would better reflect project size.  or
> maybe not.
> 
> > 
> > Besides, my programs have more documentation than yours do. :)
> 
> As a ratio of LOD (lines of documentation) to LOC?  hmmm.......  ;)

Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message news:<1070362515.900282@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> 
> What's really absurd about this "flame": in June 2002 I did not claim
> to be a "professional" C programmer. I abandoned my professional C use
> after successfully delivering a business rules compiler in C and
> assisting the real-life protagonist of A Beautiful Mind with some C
> arcana at Princeton.

Were you his roommate at Princeton?

-- 
pete

Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message news:<1070362515.900282@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in message news:<ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com>...
> > 
> >>spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>...
> >>
> >><snipped>
> >>
> >>>This is a lie. You've discussed the C language in this ng as the C
> >>>language
> >>
> >>what else would you refer to "the C language" as ? 
> >>meatballs ?
> >>
> >>
> >>>and you've promoted your outdated use of it.
> >>
> >>there is no outdated use of it. you cannot possibly
> >>live in todays world without using a C application
> >>a couple of times a day.
> > 
> > 
> > ...or being subjected to bugs which are the result of clowns using
> > C...
> > 
> >>can you say the same for any other language ?
> >>
> >><snipped>
> >>
> >>>But because incompetent programmers delight in pointing out other
> >>>programmer's errors, several of Heathfield's buttboys capered and
> >>>gibbered about my "incompetence" for weeks afterward.
> >>
> >>the errors of yours that I had seen where serious misunderstandings,
> >>nothing trivial. they showed a very high level of incompetence.
> > 
> > You saw them second hand, and before you saw them, I'd probably
> > already admitted them.
> 
> And that affects what exactly?  The fact is they were there, and from 
> what little I've seen they were errors that no 'professional' C 
> programmer would ever have produced.  They prove only that you produced 
> some very nasty, bug-ridden, unworking code.  That in itself speaks 
> volumes about your programming ability.

I really wonder about this fixation with "programming ability", and, I
think it is due to a syndrome named by C. Wright Mills, in White
Collar.

It is that white collar people know, in their heart, that their
"abilities" matter far less than their position in the firm, and
abstract, economic forces that they don't control.

Psychologically compensating for this loss of personhood, they tend,
in Mills' and my own observation, to make mountains out of molehills
to the secret, and not so secret, amusement of the CEO class and the
gliterati.

For example, in a book on Dilbert by Norman Solomon and published by
South End Press, Solomon shows how the underlying message of that
oh-so-contrarian 'toon is a scarifying contempt for people so unlucky,
so stupid, and so terminally in-duh-vidual as to not have Scott Adam's
net income.

The engineer Wally prides himself on his tech skills: but the 'toon
makes him a figure of fun.

The material reason for this should be clear to any working engineer.

In engineering, apart from professional standards set by bodies with
legal authority (which are still pretty much absent in programming),
the "quality" and "quantity" of your work (especially in "software
engineering") is, and has to be by the organization of the firm,
narrated by others within undisclosed frameworks, mostly set by time
factors.

No real and final certification of "competence" is available because
"competence" within the larger organization especially is unable to
affect, by design, the final result: the magnitude of the financial
effects is such that no one person can hold the company hostage to
EITHER his limitations OR (especially) with regards to his
skill...because the basically adversarial relationship of employer and
employee forces the genius into a confrontation with management over
"his" work product.

Therefore this overconcern with transferring one's OWN fears about
one's OWN competence to some target of opportunity.


> 
> In short, you screwed up and tried to cover.  Believe it or not, it's 
> the screwup that displays your ignorance, regardless of how much you try 
> to cover and backfill.

I hear, here, an inner voice that belongs, probably, to you, or your
father who set expectations that can never be verified in what Adorno
called the "administered" world. I suggest you DEAL with this inner
voice by taking an Outward Bound class.
> 
> >>>Didn't bother me simply because I've single handedly written several
> >>>compilers of 10000 lines or more which have been used by others
> >>>successfully.
> >>
> >>and I (and many others here) have written much more, thats been used
> >>by millions of people ...
> > 
> > I was referring to a single file. The project of which it is a part is
> > 100000 lines.
> 
> Gee, that's swell.  Going to tack another zero on it next time 'round? 
> I'm fully expecting a "and that was part of an application suite 
> amounting to over 1000000 lines" next time.
> 
> How sad.

Whatever you say. After I posted the original claim, I realized that
the program I was working on at the time, a .Net compiler, was 10000
lines only in its main project. It's 100000 lines if you count the
libraries which I wrote.

As to the (absurd) claims of people to have written multi-million line
programs, I shudder to imagine what those monsters look like.

main()
{
..
..
..
// One million lines of gar bage
..
..
..
return("Oops");
}


> 
> > In the conversation in which Richard Heathfield and his buttboy
> > Sonnack analyzed my code for trivial errors, which I admitted before
> > they found them, my goal was in fact to show that VB with objects is
> > better than C. I'd not programmed in C in recent years, but in 1992,
> > Princeton University assigned me, as a C programmer, to assist the
> > real-life protagonist of A Beautiful Mind, to assist Nash with a
> > difficult C problem which I found rapidly. I've also written thousands
> > of lines in C including one compiler for a commercial client. I was
> > rusty about C and admitted as much.
> 
> Rusty?  Hell, you produced some of the worst C code I've ever seen from 
> anyone who's not a rank amateur.  Name-drop all you like, you still 
> screwed the pooch on that one.
> 
> And just so you know, a lot of the errors Richard pointed out were /NOT/ 
> trivial.  You've been told that before, but maybe one day you'll 
> actually read what people are saying and it'll get through.
> 
I expressed my respect for Richard Heathfield in May 2002 after a
cursory examination of his C book. After his extended trolling and
discourtesy, I simply won't read anything he's written. Also,
information on C is uselss to me. I don't use it because it's an
outdated language.


> > However, Richard had had his feelings wounded because I did not roll
> > over and play dead when he lied repeatedly about the ng charter and
> > because he's an arrogant SOB, he emotionally manipulated his buttboy
> > into a systematic and actionably libelous attack on my character and
> > competence.
> 
> Pot and kettle time.  Arrogance is, of course, your domain.  And 
> apparenty lies are your favorite tool as well.
> 
> Once again, if you think it's actionable, by all means take action.  We 
> wait with baited breath.

Having considered legal action, I now realize that precisely due to
people like Richard and their disinformation and discourtesy, any
claim made by these clowns, in a ng which is drenched in clowns
because of their behavior, will not affect my credibility in the
slightest. In fact, in circles of people with taste and
discrimination, these flames will be a mark of honor, for the same
reason Spinoza proves, in The Ethics, that the disrespect a man of
intelligence receives is an accolade to like-minded souls.

Send in, in other words, the clowns. Isn't it rich. Isn't it queer.

Since 1986 (when I logged into a public ng to suggest that Jacques
Derrida get together with some French clown whose name I forget who
worked at Macintosh, an idiotic suggestion on my part, and was flamed)
I have been flamed from Hell to Huddersfeld and it's not affected my
life in the slightest.

Public newsgroups are jokes, probably due to the emplacement of paid
agents, paid to bully posters who display any self-respect, and
self-deprecating humor, and any solidarity with their fellow man.
> 
> > However, I have back-burnered wasting any money on suing Richard in a
> > court of law, mostly because it happens to be common knowledge, owing
> > to the conduct of people like Heathfield, that public access
> > newsgroups are today too full of toxic smog and disinformation to be
> > useless for anything but feeding trolls, whether isolated sad cases,
> > or trolls, like Richard, who have a following of other trolls.
> 
> Not to mention that you have no actual grounds, as you are well aware. 
> Quit posturing and lying eddie.

My name isn't "eddie". It's Edward G. Nilges.
> 
> > You are lecturing me, you silly goose, about something that happened
> > long ago because, manipulated by Richard's authoritarian personality,
> > you have joined a flame war you will lose in the eyes of History.
> 
> Gee, ain't that grand.  All of us are apparently being hypnotized or 
> bullied into believing Richard, since it's /SOOOO/ obvious that we 
> couldn't have come to the same conclusions.

Richard has of course a modicum of respect in this ng, based on his
very real abilities as a communicator and his knowledge of the
outdated and unsafe language C, which is a very good thing to have in
the event some clown screws up and writes, not, as I did, an example
program, but a mission-critical program. Richard can be called into
the nuclear reactor or bioweapons lab and unsnarl things.

For this reason, people who need his assistance on his areas of
competence think he's a god. I'd remark that many times he provides
assistance on C in comp.programming which is a violation of the
charter. It would not be an important issue save for his discourtesy
over supposed violations.

But I am familiar with how people who need to get a job done
exagerrate the capabilities of some local expert on a specific
programming language, especially when that "guru" is one of those
unpleasantly fat, large and bearded Percheron Yanks or John Bulls who
is not above using verbal and physical intimidation to get his own
sweet way.

Get a clue. Programming "skill" is constituted in computer science,
not "mastery" of a specific language. And real "skill" would find a
way to write large programs without memory leaks and bugs the first
time.

> 
> My mind, and my opinions, are my own.  Your assertions that Richard is 
> responsible for them are libellous.  Retract them.
> 
> > Wannabe members of the middle class, whose main agenda is consumption
> > as opposed to producing anything, are attracted to programming in
> > hopes of finding secure employment.
> 
> Excuse me, but I'm well in the middle class, as defined by the economics 
> of my country.  I've been programming for quite some time now.  Your 
> statement above, like many others in this post, is both false and 
> insulting.  Withdraw it.

The typical set of claims:

(1) I know everything there is to know about dem computers 'cause ah
know C
(2) I am always right about everything that's important
(3) Ah am a man of few words who don't put up with no fancy talk (or,
in the UK: I'm a plain man that's wot I am and I don't need any City
toff coming down hear, to East Lower Tooting, with his furled
umbrella)


> > But owing to alienation, Richard makes the absurd claim that
> > comp.programming is "about programming, not programmers". This is
> > either because he's scared witless about the implications of
> > alienation, or working for hire for Dr. Evil as a paid agent of the
> > Dark Side.
> 
> Or the more rational explanation that he's actually correct, and trying 
> to lower the drek level in the group.  Take that as a personal attack if 
> you like.

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message news:<1070362515.900282@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> 
>>Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>>
>>
>>>ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in message news:<ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com>...
>>>
>>>
>>>>spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>...
>>>>
>>>><snipped>
>>>>
>>>>>This is a lie. You've discussed the C language in this ng as the C
>>>>>language
>>>>
>>>>what else would you refer to "the C language" as ? 
>>>>meatballs ?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>and you've promoted your outdated use of it.
>>>>
>>>>there is no outdated use of it. you cannot possibly
>>>>live in todays world without using a C application
>>>>a couple of times a day.
>>>
>>>
>>>...or being subjected to bugs which are the result of clowns using
>>>C...
>>>
>>>
>>>>can you say the same for any other language ?
>>>>
>>>><snipped>
>>>>
>>>>>But because incompetent programmers delight in pointing out other
>>>>>programmer's errors, several of Heathfield's buttboys capered and
>>>>>gibbered about my "incompetence" for weeks afterward.
>>>>
>>>>the errors of yours that I had seen where serious misunderstandings,
>>>>nothing trivial. they showed a very high level of incompetence.
>>>
>>>You saw them second hand, and before you saw them, I'd probably
>>>already admitted them.
>>
>>And that affects what exactly?  The fact is they were there, and from 
>>what little I've seen they were errors that no 'professional' C 
>>programmer would ever have produced.  They prove only that you produced 
>>some very nasty, bug-ridden, unworking code.  That in itself speaks 
>>volumes about your programming ability.
> 
> 
> I really wonder about this fixation with "programming ability", and, I
> think it is due to a syndrome named by C. Wright Mills, in White
> Collar.
> 
> It is that white collar people know, in their heart, that their
> "abilities" matter far less than their position in the firm, and
> abstract, economic forces that they don't control.
> 
> Psychologically compensating for this loss of personhood, they tend,
> in Mills' and my own observation, to make mountains out of molehills
> to the secret, and not so secret, amusement of the CEO class and the
> gliterati.
> 
> For example, in a book on Dilbert by Norman Solomon and published by
> South End Press, Solomon shows how the underlying message of that
> oh-so-contrarian 'toon is a scarifying contempt for people so unlucky,
> so stupid, and so terminally in-duh-vidual as to not have Scott Adam's
> net income.
> 
> The engineer Wally prides himself on his tech skills: but the 'toon
> makes him a figure of fun.
> 
> The material reason for this should be clear to any working engineer.
> 
> In engineering, apart from professional standards set by bodies with
> legal authority (which are still pretty much absent in programming),
> the "quality" and "quantity" of your work (especially in "software
> engineering") is, and has to be by the organization of the firm,
> narrated by others within undisclosed frameworks, mostly set by time
> factors.
> 
> No real and final certification of "competence" is available because
> "competence" within the larger organization especially is unable to
> affect, by design, the final result: the magnitude of the financial
> effects is such that no one person can hold the company hostage to
> EITHER his limitations OR (especially) with regards to his
> skill...because the basically adversarial relationship of employer and
> employee forces the genius into a confrontation with management over
> "his" work product.
> 
> Therefore this overconcern with transferring one's OWN fears about
> one's OWN competence to some target of opportunity.
> 
> 
> 
>>In short, you screwed up and tried to cover.  Believe it or not, it's 
>>the screwup that displays your ignorance, regardless of how much you try 
>>to cover and backfill.
> 
> I hear, here, an inner voice that belongs, probably, to you, or your
> father who set expectations that can never be verified in what Adorno
> called the "administered" world. I suggest you DEAL with this inner
> voice by taking an Outward Bound class.

If you're hearing voices, perhaps it's not me who needs help.

Why don't you stop trying to psychoanalyze someone you've never actually 
met.  For the record, I have a full professional assessment of my pscyh 
problems.  You've not even come close to a single one.  As a 
pscyhiatrist you are, quite frankly, crap.

> I expressed my respect for Richard Heathfield in May 2002 after a
> cursory examination of his C book. After his extended trolling and
> discourtesy, I simply won't read anything he's written. Also,
> information on C is uselss to me. I don't use it because it's an
> outdated language.

You keep claiming that, and it keeps being untrue.  C is still a viable 
language, get over it.

And no, C is not my language of choice.

>>Once again, if you think it's actionable, by all means take action.  We 
>>wait with baited breath.
> 
> Having considered legal action, I now realize that precisely due to
> people like Richard and their disinformation and discourtesy, any
> claim made by these clowns, in a ng which is drenched in clowns
> because of their behavior, will not affect my credibility in the
> slightest. In fact, in circles of people with taste and
> discrimination, these flames will be a mark of honor, for the same
> reason Spinoza proves, in The Ethics, that the disrespect a man of
> intelligence receives is an accolade to like-minded souls.

Ah, so you're backing down.  Right.  I think that adequately proves the 
point I was trying to make... that if you had any real grounds you would 
have acted.

Now apologize to Richard et. al. for the libellous remarks you have 
made, including but not limited to the claims you rescinded in the quote 
above, as well as claims made as part of the above quote.

> Public newsgroups are jokes, probably due to the emplacement of paid
> agents, paid to bully posters who display any self-respect, and
> self-deprecating humor, and any solidarity with their fellow man.

FFS eddie, you are doing a damn good job of painting a picture of 
yourself as being highly paraniod, if not outright delusional.

>>Not to mention that you have no actual grounds, as you are well aware. 
>>Quit posturing and lying eddie.
> 
> My name isn't "eddie". It's Edward G. Nilges.

As I've stated several times in the past, I will call you 'eddie' as 
long as you act like a precocious, anti-social child.  Period.  Grow up 
and you might earn your name back.

> Get a clue. Programming "skill" is constituted in computer science,
> not "mastery" of a specific language. And real "skill" would find a
> way to write large programs without memory leaks and bugs the first
> time.

If you post source code, along with claims about said source, and said 
source turns out to be full of serious bugs... how can that not reflect 
badly on your knowledge of the principles behind it?

Furthermore, you claim to have been /very/ familiar with the language. 
I for one question this claim, since there is no evidence of it in the 
code I have seen.

And of course let's not forget the fact that the methods used in the 
code in question throw serious doubts on your vaunted computer science 
knowledge.  Your code was /abysmally/ broken.  In fact it appeared to be 
a horribly failed attempt to make C look bad by intentionally screwing 
up the program.

>>Excuse me, but I'm well in the middle class, as defined by the economics 
>>of my country.  I've been programming for quite some time now.  Your 
>>statement above, like many others in this post, is both false and 
>>insulting.  Withdraw it.
> 
> The typical set of claims:
> 
> (1) I know everything there is to know about dem computers 'cause ah
> know C
> (2) I am always right about everything that's important
> (3) Ah am a man of few words who don't put up with no fancy talk (or,
> in the UK: I'm a plain man that's wot I am and I don't need any City
> toff coming down hear, to East Lower Tooting, with his furled
> umbrella)

Your clear implication that I have either a) claimed any of the above or 
b) /will/ claim any of the above is truly offensive.  I demand a 
retraction.  Failure to do so will demonstrate effectively that you are 
a completely anti-social git.

Of course I also believe that you've already demonstrated that, so I 
won't be holding my breath.

Let's just hope that some prospective employer of yours reads this stuff 
some day.  It'd almost guarantee you were never employed again. 
Arrogance, anti-social behavior, paranoia and the other terrible traits 
you demonstrate here are not exactly appealing.

Hey, let's just forward the whole mess on to your current employer and 
see what they think.  Care to provide some details eddie?  Let's get an 
opinion, shall we?

-- 
Corey Murtagh
The Electric Monk
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!"

Richard Heathfield wrote:

>> Richard is referring to some code I found useful in Visual Basic.
> 
> No, I was talking about your C code. I'll leave Chris to demolish
> your VB arguments, should you choose to make any, when he gets
> back from holiday.

I'll pass.  There's no point in arguing with the insane.

Anyone interested in reading of that bloody past battle can Go Ogle
for posts in comp.programming circa late June 2002 through September
and later.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

Richard Heathfield wrote:

> I don't know what Asperger's Syndrome is, but it can't be helpful
> to him, I suppose.

Go Ogle for it.  It explains a LOT.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> In the conversation in which Richard Heathfield and his buttboy
> Sonnack...

[raised eyebrows] Funny how you decry bad public behavior, but
then manage to sink lower than the worst of us.

> ...analyzed my code for trivial errors, which I admitted before
> they found them,...

Liar.  To this date you've never admitted or acknowedged the
serious errors of *design* I found in your software.  I'll
remind you of those "trivial errors":

	* crashing upon normal input
	* delivering incorrect results

Maybe those are trivial in your world.  They aren't in mine.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

Richard Heathfield wrote:

> One would hope so. (Apparently, it's a tad on the slow side, but...

A tad.  For definitions of "a tad" that include multi-digit numbers.
Here's some result data from an old post (7/16/2002):



> ...then again speed isn't everything.)

No, size is.  At least, that's what they keep telling me.

> If you're desperate to see some Nilges VB code, you can find his
> string-parsing stuff on Google, and also a Chris Sonnack
> deconstruction thereof.

The originals are too long to post, but as long as we're handing
out links to that old battle (more than a year old):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I did some comparison tests -- your VB PowerString against the VB
version I whipped up (a class called TOKENS_OBJ--code was posted
upthread).  The results were surprising, even to me:

    Reading every line of a MEDIUM file (26K-chars, 1652 lines),
    breaking it into words and writing the words back out to a
    second file:

        * CJS TOKENS_OBJ  -  170 msecs
        * EGN PowerString - 5778 msecs   (over 30 times as long)

    Reading every line of a LARGE file (302K-chars, 10K-lines),
    breaking it into words and writing the words back out to a
    second file:

        * CJS TOKENS_OBJ  -  1442 msecs
        * EGN PowerString - 51724 msecs   (over 35 times as long)

Incidentally, both input files are normal text files with average text
file line lengths.  When we run our versions against your original test
data, we still find a big difference:

    Running the EGN code sample originally posted (3 Stooges strings):

        * CJS TOKENS_OBJ  -   1-10 msecs   (10 msec Windows latency!)
        * EGN PowerString -  30-40 msecs   (10 msec Windows latency!)


-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> [That clown Chris Sonnack] made a reasonably responsible analysis
> of the problems he saw in my code examples[...]. He however confused
> his opinion about programming style with the issue of errors, and
> [...] inflated an errors which I found the night I posted the code,
> and which, if memory serves, I corrected before he found them.

You *never* acknowledged the serious design and implementation
bugs of your code.  Your design was broken in that it failed
to work as designed, was horribly inefficient when it did work
and revealed your stunning lack of understanding of programming
and the VB language.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> I abandoned C in 1993 because owing to my experience with the
> compiler, I realized that UDTs with links were simply unequal
> to creating great software.
>
> [John] Nash's isolation came to an end he found that Stephen
> Wolfram had already written what he needed, and that of course
> was Mathematica.

Hmmm.... Wonder what Mathematica--arguably Great Software--was
written in....


> I wrote the code, that Corey probably hasn't even looked at, to
> demonstrate in fact my thesis then and now: that VB with objects
> is superior to C.

And--as you showed us all--your VB code was just as broken in
its *design* as your C code.  The difference was that your C
code was also very badly written.


-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> I really wonder about this fixation with "programming ability",

Similar, perhaps, to the fixation many of us have for "medical
ability" in our doctors, "mechanical ability" in those that fix
our cars, "legal ability" in our lawyers, and "building ability"
in those that make our buildings and bridges.

The only people--in my experience--that whine about a fixation
with "ability" ... are those bitterly lacking in it.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

Programmer Dude wrote:

> Richard Heathfield wrote:
> 
>> I don't know what Asperger's Syndrome is, but it can't be helpful
>> to him, I suppose.
> 
> Go Ogle for it.  It explains a LOT.

No, thanks. Since you say it explains a lot, I expect it's just a fancy way 
of saying "piles".

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

"Programmer Dude" <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message <news:3FCFA054.33ADD03B@Sonnack.com>...

> Richard Heathfield wrote:
>
> >> Richard is referring to some code I found useful in Visual Basic.
> >
> > No, I was talking about your C code. I'll leave Chris to demolish
> > your VB arguments, should you choose to make any, when he gets
> > back from holiday.
>
> I'll pass.  There's no point in arguing with the insane.
>
> Anyone interested in reading of that bloody past battle can Go Ogle
> for posts in comp.programming circa late June 2002 through September
> and later.

Yeesh, was he really trying to flog his PowerString in here too?!
He tried whipping out that bloated sluggard in fourth quarter 2001
in the comp.lang.basic.visual.* groups but fled with only a stump.

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>  Sign the Check! <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bqine7$4ct$1@hercules.btinternet.com>...
> goose wrote:
> 
> > Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message
> > news:<1070362515.900282@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> 
> <snip>
> 
> >> They prove only that [Nilges] produced
> >> some very nasty, bug-ridden, unworking code.  That in itself speaks
> >> volumes about your programming ability.
> > 
> > but only in C, his programming ability in other languages I am
> > not able to judge (unless its in one of the languages that I am
> > familiar with).
> > 
> > I think that EGN has also written a BigNum library in VB, perhaps
> > (as VB is his language of choice) that will display more competence ?
> 
> One would hope so. (Apparently, it's a tad on the slow side, but then again 
> speed isn't everything.) If you're desperate to see some Nilges VB code, 
> you can find his string-parsing stuff on Google, and also a Chris Sonnack 
> deconstruction thereof. He posted it at the same time he posted his C 
> stuff, which (in case you missed it) you can see at 

I'm almost certain that I've seen that though, some time back
when I wasn't posting from google.

> http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/compprog/nilges.html - you might also want 
> to home in on <3D19FAEA.DA82CD52@eton.powernet.co.uk> (an article I posted) 
> to get you into the approximately correct part of Google Groups for the VB 
> stuff.

that isn't the data quality act godzilla-thread, is it ?
I've been through that as well (about june last year, iirc).

goose,
   setting fine new standards in, huh ... yeah ..

Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message news:<1070543561.732831@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message news:<1070362515.900282@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> > 
> >>Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>ruse@webmail.co.za (goose) wrote in message news:<ff82ae1b.0312010407.348a1e0c@posting.google.com>...
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0311281902.1d683965@posting.google.com>...
> >>>>
> >>>><snipped>
> >>>>
> >>>>>This is a lie. You've discussed the C language in this ng as the C
> >>>>>language
> >>>>
> >>>>what else would you refer to "the C language" as ? 
> >>>>meatballs ?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>and you've promoted your outdated use of it.
> >>>>
> >>>>there is no outdated use of it. you cannot possibly
> >>>>live in todays world without using a C application
> >>>>a couple of times a day.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>...or being subjected to bugs which are the result of clowns using
> >>>C...
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>can you say the same for any other language ?
> >>>>
> >>>><snipped>
> >>>>
> >>>>>But because incompetent programmers delight in pointing out other
> >>>>>programmer's errors, several of Heathfield's buttboys capered and
> >>>>>gibbered about my "incompetence" for weeks afterward.
> >>>>
> >>>>the errors of yours that I had seen where serious misunderstandings,
> >>>>nothing trivial. they showed a very high level of incompetence.
> >>>
> >>>You saw them second hand, and before you saw them, I'd probably
> >>>already admitted them.
> >>
> >>And that affects what exactly?  The fact is they were there, and from 
> >>what little I've seen they were errors that no 'professional' C 
> >>programmer would ever have produced.  They prove only that you produced 
> >>some very nasty, bug-ridden, unworking code.  That in itself speaks 
> >>volumes about your programming ability.
> > 
> > 
> > I really wonder about this fixation with "programming ability", and, I
> > think it is due to a syndrome named by C. Wright Mills, in White
> > Collar.
> > 
> > It is that white collar people know, in their heart, that their
> > "abilities" matter far less than their position in the firm, and
> > abstract, economic forces that they don't control.
> > 
> > Psychologically compensating for this loss of personhood, they tend,
> > in Mills' and my own observation, to make mountains out of molehills
> > to the secret, and not so secret, amusement of the CEO class and the
> > gliterati.
> > 
> > For example, in a book on Dilbert by Norman Solomon and published by
> > South End Press, Solomon shows how the underlying message of that
> > oh-so-contrarian 'toon is a scarifying contempt for people so unlucky,
> > so stupid, and so terminally in-duh-vidual as to not have Scott Adam's
> > net income.
> > 
> > The engineer Wally prides himself on his tech skills: but the 'toon
> > makes him a figure of fun.
> > 
> > The material reason for this should be clear to any working engineer.
> > 
> > In engineering, apart from professional standards set by bodies with
> > legal authority (which are still pretty much absent in programming),
> > the "quality" and "quantity" of your work (especially in "software
> > engineering") is, and has to be by the organization of the firm,
> > narrated by others within undisclosed frameworks, mostly set by time
> > factors.
> > 
> > No real and final certification of "competence" is available because
> > "competence" within the larger organization especially is unable to
> > affect, by design, the final result: the magnitude of the financial
> > effects is such that no one person can hold the company hostage to
> > EITHER his limitations OR (especially) with regards to his
> > skill...because the basically adversarial relationship of employer and
> > employee forces the genius into a confrontation with management over
> > "his" work product.
> > 
> > Therefore this overconcern with transferring one's OWN fears about
> > one's OWN competence to some target of opportunity.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >>In short, you screwed up and tried to cover.  Believe it or not, it's 
> >>the screwup that displays your ignorance, regardless of how much you try 
> >>to cover and backfill.
> > 
> > I hear, here, an inner voice that belongs, probably, to you, or your
> > father who set expectations that can never be verified in what Adorno
> > called the "administered" world. I suggest you DEAL with this inner
> > voice by taking an Outward Bound class.
> 
> If you're hearing voices, perhaps it's not me who needs help.
> 
> Why don't you stop trying to psychoanalyze someone you've never actually 
> met.  For the record, I have a full professional assessment of my pscyh 
> problems.  You've not even come close to a single one.  As a 
> pscyhiatrist you are, quite frankly, crap.
> 
> > I expressed my respect for Richard Heathfield in May 2002 after a
> > cursory examination of his C book. After his extended trolling and
> > discourtesy, I simply won't read anything he's written. Also,
> > information on C is uselss to me. I don't use it because it's an
> > outdated language.
> 
> You keep claiming that, and it keeps being untrue.  C is still a viable 
> language, get over it.
> 
> And no, C is not my language of choice.
> 
> >>Once again, if you think it's actionable, by all means take action.  We 
> >>wait with baited breath.
> > 
> > Having considered legal action, I now realize that precisely due to
> > people like Richard and their disinformation and discourtesy, any
> > claim made by these clowns, in a ng which is drenched in clowns
> > because of their behavior, will not affect my credibility in the
> > slightest. In fact, in circles of people with taste and
> > discrimination, these flames will be a mark of honor, for the same
> > reason Spinoza proves, in The Ethics, that the disrespect a man of
> > intelligence receives is an accolade to like-minded souls.
> 
> Ah, so you're backing down.  Right.  I think that adequately proves the 
> point I was trying to make... that if you had any real grounds you would 
> have acted.
> 
> Now apologize to Richard et. al. for the libellous remarks you have 
> made, including but not limited to the claims you rescinded in the quote 
> above, as well as claims made as part of the above quote.
> 
> > Public newsgroups are jokes, probably due to the emplacement of paid
> > agents, paid to bully posters who display any self-respect, and
> > self-deprecating humor, and any solidarity with their fellow man.
> 
> FFS eddie, you are doing a damn good job of painting a picture of 
> yourself as being highly paraniod, if not outright delusional.
> 
> >>Not to mention that you have no actual grounds, as you are well aware. 
> >>Quit posturing and lying eddie.
> > 
> > My name isn't "eddie". It's Edward G. Nilges.
> 
> As I've stated several times in the past, I will call you 'eddie' as 
> long as you act like a precocious, anti-social child.  Period.  Grow up 
> and you might earn your name back.

Gee, what the hell is this? Vision quest? 

What an asshole.

> 
> > Get a clue. Programming "skill" is constituted in computer science,
> > not "mastery" of a specific language. And real "skill" would find a
> > way to write large programs without memory leaks and bugs the first
> > time.
> 
> If you post source code, along with claims about said source, and said 
> source turns out to be full of serious bugs... how can that not reflect 
> badly on your knowledge of the principles behind it?
> 
> Furthermore, you claim to have been /very/ familiar with the language. 
> I for one question this claim, since there is no evidence of it in the 
> code I have seen.

In June of 2002, I did not make that claim. Instead, I said that I'd
used it heavily until 1993, when I realized that true objects could
not be adequately mapped to UDTs and links, after writing the business
rules compiler, in DEC VMS C, for a major credit grantor, who of
course tech reviewed my products.

I also said that in 1992, I was selected, on the basis of my C
knowledge and people skills absent in this ng for the most part, to
assist John Nash during a critical period of his recovery.

I also said that I'd taken two hours to write the code, as well as a
VB object, in response from a demand from "programmer" "dude" for
code. He'd been emotionally manipulated by Richard Heathfield into
entering Heathfields trollwar on the Data Quality Act and he demanded
to see "code".

Upon returning home from the digital cafe after posting the code, I
realized, from memory, that I'd made an error in this parser for
delimited words, for I'd written it to find the regular expression (^[
]+[ ]*)* and not the re ([ ]*^[ ]+)*, which of course requires the
input string to start with a nonblank. If memory serves I posted a
correction which is pretty much the entire basis for "programmer"
"dude's" libelous campaign, along with his strange opinions about good
style.

> 
> And of course let's not forget the fact that the methods used in the 
> code in question throw serious doubts on your vaunted computer science 
> knowledge.  Your code was /abysmally/ broken.  In fact it appeared to be 
> a horribly failed attempt to make C look bad by intentionally screwing 
> up the program.
>
Post the code you think backs up this ridiculous claim and tell us all
why this is so. Thank you.
 
> >>Excuse me, but I'm well in the middle class, as defined by the economics 
> >>of my country.  I've been programming for quite some time now.  Your 
> >>statement above, like many others in this post, is both false and 
> >>insulting.  Withdraw it.
> > 
> > The typical set of claims:
> > 
> > (1) I know everything there is to know about dem computers 'cause ah
> > know C
> > (2) I am always right about everything that's important
> > (3) Ah am a man of few words who don't put up with no fancy talk (or,
> > in the UK: I'm a plain man that's wot I am and I don't need any City
> > toff coming down hear, to East Lower Tooting, with his furled
> > umbrella)
> 
> Your clear implication that I have either a) claimed any of the above or 
> b) /will/ claim any of the above is truly offensive.  I demand a 
> retraction.  Failure to do so will demonstrate effectively that you are 
> a completely anti-social git.
> 
> Of course I also believe that you've already demonstrated that, so I 
> won't be holding my breath.
> 
> Let's just hope that some prospective employer of yours reads this stuff 
> some day.  It'd almost guarantee you were never employed again. 
> Arrogance, anti-social behavior, paranoia and the other terrible traits 
> you demonstrate here are not exactly appealing.

My employer is generally up my ass with constant quality assurance and
demands that I be done yesterday. If some clown comes to him with
character assasination in person, he'd burst out laughing or call
security. He would treat any email from you with your libel as spam.

Indeed, because these ngs have been ruined for their intended purpose,
perhaps by the emplacement of anti-labor and anti-solidarity agents by
corporations and intelligence agencies, views expressed in these ngs
are treated by elite media as complete jokes.

> 
> Hey, let's just forward the whole mess on to your current employer and 
> see what they think.  Care to provide some details eddie?  Let's get an 
> opinion, shall we?

This threat speaks volumes about your vicious intentions. I'd sue your
ass, were it not for the fact that a court would find that BECAUSE
opinions expressed in public access newsgroups are expressed in 99.9%
of cases by mental cases, the issue of libel is moot.

Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FCFB058.D4B6CD05@Sonnack.com>...
> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
> 
> > I really wonder about this fixation with "programming ability",
> 
> Similar, perhaps, to the fixation many of us have for "medical
> ability" in our doctors, "mechanical ability" in those that fix
> our cars, "legal ability" in our lawyers, and "building ability"
> in those that make our buildings and bridges.
> 
> The only people--in my experience--that whine about a fixation
> with "ability" ... are those bitterly lacking in it.

You may think of yourself as somehow (and in spite of the actual
treatment of programmers) a professional on the level of a doctor or
lawyer, but as I showed in my review of After the Gold Rush and in the
subsequent discussion (despite Richard's attempts at trolling), this
recognition is not forthcoming.

Real "programming ability" consists in applied computer science, and
simply ignoring the known fact that any program represents a set of
possible solutions over time is profoundly unprofessional. Therefore,
advocating C for new development is a mark of incompetence because
even if the C program is written according to quality guidelines,
nothing keeps some bozo (or for that matter someone like me, who has
abandoned C for several years) from creating a new member of the
solution set with flaws, owing to C's "power".

The fundamental mistake is pridefully confusing knowledge of a
computer language (and ignorance of the wider context, whether social
or technical) with the level of professionalism that is needed by a
doctor or lawyer.

Knowledge of rules-of-thumb stylistics and the syntax/semantics of a
programming language is roughly equivalent to the sort of knowledge a
tradesman has.

I've just started heavy duty coding in C#. Great fat books are written
on C#, that unless they are organized as reference manuals simply fail
to do the job, for they concentrate for the most part on the most
trivial issues, that can be gleaned from a couple of hours with MSDN
and Intellisense.

There are elementary blunders you can make when transitioning, of
course, such as the difference between 0 origin and 1 origin strings.
But the key factor is knowing the .Net framework.

I find that the same sort of profoundly insecure people who support
testing in place of education and funding in their children's case
bring their anti-intellectualism to programming and for this reason
accentuate trivial details, and trivial errors, in order to get
temporary relief from the insecurity they feel.

Programmers won't have self-respect (and their conduct on this ng will
continue to evince this lack of self-respect, which emerges in your
trolling) until society as a whole acknowledges the mere existence of
the applied mathematics of computer science. But this it will not do
as presently constituted for it would lower "productivity" in that
time and resources would have to be devoted to peer review and legal
rules about entry to the field.

Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FCFAC99.A4944555@Sonnack.com>...
> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
> 
> > [That clown Chris Sonnack] made a reasonably responsible analysis
> > of the problems he saw in my code examples[...]. He however confused
> > his opinion about programming style with the issue of errors, and
> > [...] inflated an errors which I found the night I posted the code,
> > and which, if memory serves, I corrected before he found them.
> 
> You *never* acknowledged the serious design and implementation
> bugs of your code.  Your design was broken in that it failed
> to work as designed, was horribly inefficient when it did work
> and revealed your stunning lack of understanding of programming
> and the VB language.

The only thing I never acknowledged was your silly rules about style.
I believe I found the only error in the code before you were even
awake the next morning.

Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FCFABA6.FA73EF3E@Sonnack.com>...
> Richard Heathfield wrote:
> 
> > One would hope so. (Apparently, it's a tad on the slow side, but...
> 
> A tad.  For definitions of "a tad" that include multi-digit numbers.
> Here's some result data from an old post (7/16/2002):
> 
> 
> 
> > ...then again speed isn't everything.)
> 
> No, size is.  At least, that's what they keep telling me.
> 
> > If you're desperate to see some Nilges VB code, you can find his
> > string-parsing stuff on Google, and also a Chris Sonnack
> > deconstruction thereof.
> 
> The originals are too long to post, but as long as we're handing
> out links to that old battle (more than a year old):
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> I did some comparison tests -- your VB PowerString against the VB
> version I whipped up (a class called TOKENS_OBJ--code was posted
> upthread).  The results were surprising, even to me:
> 
>     Reading every line of a MEDIUM file (26K-chars, 1652 lines),
>     breaking it into words and writing the words back out to a
>     second file:
> 
>         * CJS TOKENS_OBJ  -  170 msecs
>         * EGN PowerString - 5778 msecs   (over 30 times as long)
> 
>     Reading every line of a LARGE file (302K-chars, 10K-lines),
>     breaking it into words and writing the words back out to a
>     second file:
> 
>         * CJS TOKENS_OBJ  -  1442 msecs
>         * EGN PowerString - 51724 msecs   (over 35 times as long)
> 
> Incidentally, both input files are normal text files with average text
> file line lengths.  When we run our versions against your original test
> data, we still find a big difference:
> 
>     Running the EGN code sample originally posted (3 Stooges strings):
> 
>         * CJS TOKENS_OBJ  -   1-10 msecs   (10 msec Windows latency!)
>         * EGN PowerString -  30-40 msecs   (10 msec Windows latency!)


Very impressive. I was indeed impressed when I saw these results you
provided last year.

There's a slight problem.

You claimed all sorts of bugs and design errors, and Corey Murtagh
believes you, being a fool.

But what the above shows is that the PowerString is ONE order of
magnitude slower than your C code.

This shows that if speed is critical, one MIGHT consider C.

However, PowerString was written for the end user who might enter
leading blanks or extra blanks, and the speed differential you found
is completely overshadowed by the need to solve a USER's problem.

Furthermore, you don't even know how to realize about software
"complexity" which means, in computer science, its speed and space
considered not as numbers or benchmarks but as mathematical formulae.

Therefore you draw an unwarrented conclusion from a single number.

Read Stephen Skiena's The Algorithm Design Manual or any decent CS
book. You will learn that the "academic" concern happens to coincide
with the concern of the competent programmer.

The competent programmer doesn't sit down and run a "benchmark".
Instead he asks for the mathematical formula that expresses the speed
of the program and its algorithm as a function of the size of its
input.

He does this because the common experience in industry is that the
user often submits far more inputs than expected.

The REAL difference therefore between "efficient" and "inefficient" is
the shape of the time/input curve as the inputs increase: logarithmic
being the ideal, straight line being acceptable, and transcendental
being UNACCEPTABLE.

In fact, your solution may well be transcendental with respect to the
input size, having to parse each token, whereas I long ago verified
that my PowerString approach, which is essentially a cache for
previously parsed strings, is in practice straight line since it
reuses former parses.

The whole point in fact was avoiding the ineffiency that is implicit
in the C approach to parsing, which seldom reuses older results
effectively since it is necessary to build the cache facility each
time.

That you are so deceived by your benchmarks means that you are not
competent.

Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FCFABA6.FA73EF3E@Sonnack.com>...

What we need to see are not these single benchmarks but instead the
execution time "curves" for the CJ and the EGN versions. There is a
possibility that the version I wrote quickly and posted had a flaw,
although my production version fails to exhibit NP complete behavior
for large files.

The fact remains that you seem to confuse genuine analysis of software
complexity with a few benchmarks.

Are you up to it? You might learn a thing or two. I will reply to any
post that contains zero personal abuse.

> Richard Heathfield wrote:
> 
> > One would hope so. (Apparently, it's a tad on the slow side, but...
> 
> A tad.  For definitions of "a tad" that include multi-digit numbers.
> Here's some result data from an old post (7/16/2002):
> 
> 
> 
> > ...then again speed isn't everything.)
> 
> No, size is.  At least, that's what they keep telling me.
> 
> > If you're desperate to see some Nilges VB code, you can find his
> > string-parsing stuff on Google, and also a Chris Sonnack
> > deconstruction thereof.
> 
> The originals are too long to post, but as long as we're handing
> out links to that old battle (more than a year old):
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> I did some comparison tests -- your VB PowerString against the VB
> version I whipped up (a class called TOKENS_OBJ--code was posted
> upthread).  The results were surprising, even to me:
> 
>     Reading every line of a MEDIUM file (26K-chars, 1652 lines),
>     breaking it into words and writing the words back out to a
>     second file:
> 
>         * CJS TOKENS_OBJ  -  170 msecs
>         * EGN PowerString - 5778 msecs   (over 30 times as long)
> 
>     Reading every line of a LARGE file (302K-chars, 10K-lines),
>     breaking it into words and writing the words back out to a
>     second file:
> 
>         * CJS TOKENS_OBJ  -  1442 msecs
>         * EGN PowerString - 51724 msecs   (over 35 times as long)
> 
> Incidentally, both input files are normal text files with average text
> file line lengths.  When we run our versions against your original test
> data, we still find a big difference:
> 
>     Running the EGN code sample originally posted (3 Stooges strings):
> 
>         * CJS TOKENS_OBJ  -   1-10 msecs   (10 msec Windows latency!)
>         * EGN PowerString -  30-40 msecs   (10 msec Windows latency!)

Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FCFABA6.FA73EF3E@Sonnack.com>...
> 
> What we need to see are not these single benchmarks but instead the
> execution time "curves" for the CJ and the EGN versions. There is a
> possibility that the version I wrote quickly and posted had a flaw,
> although my production version fails to exhibit NP complete behavior
> for large files.

It seems only fair that you post an equation for the execution time of 
your program to show us all how it's done.

> The fact remains that you seem to confuse genuine analysis of software
> complexity with a few benchmarks.

Complexity?  Tell me more!  :-)

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message
> news:<1070543561.732831@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> 
>> And of course let's not forget the fact that the methods used in the
>> code in question throw serious doubts on your vaunted computer science
>> knowledge.  Your code was /abysmally/ broken.  In fact it appeared to be
>> a horribly failed attempt to make C look bad by intentionally screwing
>> up the program.
>>
> Post the code you think backs up this ridiculous claim and tell us all
> why this is so. Thank you.

To save Corey and/or others digging through Google archives, 
http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/compprog/nilges.html contains the code in 
question, together with my critique thereof.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Richard Heathfield wrote:

> To save Corey and/or others digging through Google archives,
> http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/compprog/nilges.html contains
> the code in question, together with my critique thereof.

Other code in question may be found on:

  http://www.sonnack.com/Chris/Software/Code/Toking/index1.html

I never put the critiques on my website, but if there is a demand
for them, I suppose I can.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

I wrote:

> Other code in question may be found on:
> 
>   http://www.sonnack.com/Chris/Software/Code/Toking/index1.html

Actually, the Topic Index is more useful:

   http://www.sonnack.com/Chris/Software/Code/Toking/index2.html

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

>>     Reading every line of a MEDIUM file (26K-chars, 1652 lines),...
>>
>>         * CJS TOKENS_OBJ  -  170 msecs
>>         * EGN PowerString - 5778 msecs   (over 30 times as long)
>>
>>     Reading every line of a LARGE file (302K-chars, 10K-lines),...
>>
>>         * CJS TOKENS_OBJ  -  1442 msecs
>>         * EGN PowerString - 51724 msecs   (over 35 times as long)
> 
> You claimed all sorts of bugs and design errors,..

Yep.  Your parser did not deliver expected results.  And it ran
like a dog.  And was designed with little apparent understanding 
of the VB language.

> But what the above shows is that the PowerString is ONE order of
> magnitude slower than your C code.

Wrong.  It shows the my **VB** design blew the doors off your **VB**
design.  Plus, mine delivered correct results.


> However, PowerString was written for the end user who might enter
> leading blanks or extra blanks, and the speed differential you found
> is completely overshadowed by the need to solve a USER's problem.

My VB version handles all that just fine.  YOUR version was broken
in how it handled certain normal inputs.  I've pointed out the error
in detail to you many times with no acknowledgement.

> In fact, your solution may well be transcendental with respect to
> the input size, having to parse each token, whereas I long ago
> verified that my PowerString approach, which is essentially a
> cache for previously parsed strings, is in practice straight line
> since it reuses former parses.

So did one (or more) of the several VB versions I wrote.  You still
don't get it.  My version did ****everything**** yours did, ran
faster, performed more efficiently AND delivered correct results in
places yours didn't.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> I will reply to any
> post that contains zero personal abuse.

Given the abusive crudity of some of Mr Nilges' recent articles, am I alone 
in finding this statement extraordinarily ironic?

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> What we need to see are not these single benchmarks but instead the
> execution time "curves" for the CJ and the EGN versions. There is a
> possibility that the version I wrote quickly and posted had a flaw,
> although my production version fails to exhibit NP complete behavior
> for large files.

1. Why would NP behavior have anything to do with tokenizing input?

2. These tests were not of your C attempt.  That was so broken
   that testing it would have humiliated it.  The tests were for
   your favored child, PowerString.  *I* whipped up a couple of
   quick versions that *all* blew the doors off your PS.

3. Yours PowerString performs like a dog not because of a mere
   flaw in the code, but because of deeply broken design decisions
   that reflect an apparent lack of understanding of VB.  For
   example, I seem to recall a totally *unnecessary* string concat
   inside an inner loop.

> Are you up to it? You might learn a thing or two. I will reply to
> any post that contains zero personal abuse.

Fine, go for it.  Let's see what you can do.


-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> The only thing I never acknowledged was your silly rules about style.
> I believe I found the only error in the code before you were even
> awake the next morning.

You are either a lying hypocrite or serious deluded.

You fought to deny those errors until we rubbed your face in them
and, even then, you never acknowedge any of several posts I made
spelling out the exact nature of the problem and spelling out the
exact tests to perform to demonstrate the problem.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

Richard Heathfield wrote:

>> I will reply to any post that contains zero personal abuse.
> 
> Given the abusive crudity of some of Mr Nilges' recent articles,
> am I alone in finding this statement extraordinarily ironic?

Nope.  But then, Ed's hypocrasy was well-established last time.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

I wrote:

> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
>> ...my production version fails to exhibit NP complete behavior
>> for large files.
> 
> 1. Why would NP behavior have anything to do with tokenizing input?

In fact, Ed, do you even know what it is?  Let's hear a description
from you--without cheating and researching it--in your own words
telling us what NP complete means.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

>> The only people--in my experience--that whine about a fixation
>> with "ability" ... are those bitterly lacking in it.
> 
> You may think of yourself as somehow [...] a professional on the
> level of a doctor or lawyer,...

No, I usually compare my self (and my profession) to architecture.

> Therefore, advocating C for new development is a mark of
> incompetence....

In some cases it might be.  In others, C would be a fine solution
(for instance, any number of embedded systems or low-level systems).

> ...because even if the C program is written according to quality
> guidelines, nothing keeps some bozo (or for that matter someone
> like me,...

(You were right the first time.)

> ...who has abandoned C for several years) from creating a new
> member of the solution set with flaws, owing to C's "power".

ALL languages can suffer in the hands of bozos.

> [...blah, blah, blah...].

Yes, knowledge of language is just one part of "being a programmer."
Social skills are another valuable part.  For example, the ability
to come into a new social situation and NOT piss everyone off is
a wonderful ability.


> [...blah, blah, blah...].
>
> Programmers won't have self-respect [...] until society as a whole
> acknowledges the mere existence of the applied mathematics of
> computer science.

I doubt that would do the trick, else mathematicians would be the
most revered of all.  I understand this may be missing in your
life, but those of us who are competent ARE regarded with respect.
In some cases, I have been regarded with something akin to awe
(not that I particularly deserved it--it's just the feeling someone
has when you "saved the unsavable" for them).

I suspect that our profession is still an immature one that will
gain position as it and computer-using society evolve.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Programmer Dude" <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message <news:3FD0EDA7.1328C630@Sonnack.com>...

> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
>
> > What we need to see are not these single benchmarks but instead the
> > execution time "curves" for the CJ and the EGN versions. There is a
> > possibility that the version I wrote quickly and posted had a flaw,
> > although my production version fails to exhibit NP complete behavior
> > for large files.
>
> 1. Why would NP behavior have anything to do with tokenizing input?

I for one would not be at all surprised to see some Nilge-ware
that treated string tokenizing as an NP-complete problem.  >=)

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>     On the cans? <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

Calum <calum.bulk@ntlworld.com> wrote in message news:<bqq4lm$onq$1@news7.svr.pol.co.uk>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> > Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FCFABA6.FA73EF3E@Sonnack.com>...
> > 
> > What we need to see are not these single benchmarks but instead the
> > execution time "curves" for the CJ and the EGN versions. There is a
> > possibility that the version I wrote quickly and posted had a flaw,
> > although my production version fails to exhibit NP complete behavior
> > for large files.
> 
> It seems only fair that you post an equation for the execution time of 
> your program to show us all how it's done.

If you cache the parse of individual words the time to find a random
word is D*S+(N-1)*K where D is the number of DISTINCT words, S is the
initial search time for any word using brute force, N is an average
number of times a typical word occurs and K is a constant that
represents the roughly constant time it takes, to look up a keyed item
in a hash table such as a Visual Basic collection.

If you use a brute force search for each word and each of its
occurences the formula becomes S*T where T is the total number of
words, both distinct and the same.

The paradox is that the latter formula S*T is "simpler" than the other
formula but represents more of what the computer science professor
means by complexity.

The cache solution's execution time formula is a function of the total
number of distinct words (necessarily smaller than the total number of
words) and the average times a random word repeats: the brute force
solution's execution time formula is a function of the word count.

The operator of lowest precedence, the "major" operator, of the cache
time formula D*S+(N-1)*K is addition. The operator of lowest
precedence of the brute force formula S*T is multiplication. Unless
something's hidden in the addition-based formula, this means that
total execution time grows "more" slowly for the cache solution, at
the expense of the use of more storage.

Chris Sonnack's numbers show what may be but probably isn't a problem
in this reasoning, but my main concern in the real world is not some
absolute efficiency of a specific program, but the efficiency "trace",
the efficiency "footprint" of a family of related solutions, which is
always the real entity in the system life cycle as the user's needs
change.

I was concerned that a brute force word parser, that for any arbitrary
word passed over the words to its left, would seem to work in testing
but fail when presented with real texts. That's because unlike some
academic I've seen what it means when the user presents an actual
large file, which actually slows "working" solutions to a crawl.

I was not completely happy with the usual solution to this problem
which is to transform all the words once and for all into an array,
because in real applications the words "on the left" are usually more
important. A financial news text coming over a wire and being parsed
for words of interest to the user such as "money", "stocks", "equity",
and "prison time", might not always be completely read, and the
appearance of words to the left is more important.

In fact, if the strings are unmanageably large in the real world, the
array will probably be.

I have an essentially verbal, and some may say verbose, understanding
of the problem. I am certain that Richard Heathfield et al. will find
it distasteful.

This is because without knowing it, they are engaged in a postmodern
attack on language itself, far more serious than the attack
neoconservatives think is being made.

In this attack, comp.programming is not about programmers (har!) or if
it is they are to be subject to a new law of omerta, and must be a
bruder schweigen.

The game becomes cutting pure code with an incommunicable
understanding of the problem which in my book isn't an understanding
at all.

The campaign is part of what I consider the deprivation of language by
politics in which narration and naming become a management prerogative
over which clowns fight in this ng.

As in the cases where Richard Heathfield has informed me that I can no
longer observe that (for example) that a community "has an
understanding", the game becomes to strive for a language deprived of
the ability to talk but at the dullest and most literal level.
Paradoxically and because we still must deal with abstractions, the
dull muttering that results is riven with self-contradiction and is in
fact a language of DENIAL.

This is for example on view in a recent CSpan televised hearing of a
meeting on military "transformation" in the United States.

The truth in the USA is that a gang of thugs and criminals is in
charge but one can't say this (any more that one can say that a large
program, in which the company has invested millions and on which yer
job depends, won't work).

The result is a curious language in which certain keywords are
uttered, not to push meaning forward but instead to give signals to
Authority that one is O.K.

One can never, in this type of environment, even name or speak of the
reverse of the favored term. For example, the Rumsfeld doctrine is
that the USA military should be "fast". Fast is good: slow is bad, and
no sleep until Baghdad or until the program works.

In this sort of environment, one can't sit back and make a case for a
slow offensive even though the Russians won a war by this type of
attack.

We are familiar with this bureaucratic reality in MIS. For example, if
a manager at a conference has heard about stateless objects, you don't
want to call your objects with state non-stateless even if that's an
important piece of documentation.

You don't want to call your .Net objects thread-unsafe even though
that's important information.

You can't, in other words, document, and management wonders why
"there's no documentation."

The problem is that the military brass and DP management are
subconsciously convinced that the era of mere human difference is
over. Because language is a trace of differences, this results in a
positive hatred of language.

I am reminded in this connection of the sort of nervous breakdown the
journal Computerworld had, in the 1990s. Because it was about data
processing and in the 1970s, its content would address the material
situation of people with midlevel jobs in MIS. It became a sort of
soapbox of discontent.

But, this may have upset powerful advertisers and the result is today
that its articles resemble, in their failure to acknowledge the truth
(that MIS people as working people will have interests in common with
upper management and shareholders, and interests that diverge),
articles in Pravda or Signal, the Nazi picture magazine.

Recent content includes an article claiming that the old IBM idea of
"best effort", in which IBM customer engineers were recognized and
compensated even if the customer's problem wasn't solvable, should be
retired in favor of something else, such as shooting the failures, I
guess. Another article recommended that MIS managers go to porn sites
to see how to create attention-getting Web pages...that don't ever go
away.

I think it would be far healthier for Computerworld to simply
acknowledge that real MIS employees (who often work without health
benefits or decent pay relative to their contribution) need to have
their own voice, perhaps in the form of a page for the help to at
least vent their concerns, whether about impossible deadlines, unpaid
overtime or offshore. As it is, the denial generates nonsense such as
I've identified, and the fundamental problem is one we see in this ng.
People can't speak honestly anymore.



This is the real terrorism, in my book.
> 
> > The fact remains that you seem to confuse genuine analysis of software
> > complexity with a few benchmarks.
> 
> Complexity?  Tell me more!  :-)

There is as I hope you know a whole bunch of useful acamodemic work on
software complexity which is the mathematical manipulation and
analysis of the execution time formulae of algorithms and actual
programs.

Chris Sonnack presented some interesting numbers. But I have no way of
auditing those numbers. He may have made some stupid error.

In the example, I was trying in fact to show how bad C sucks. This is
because it completely obscures the difference between code with state
and code without state.

If you create an array or cache in the C parser, you have to finger
out where to put it. If you put it in "open code" outside of any
function, where this area contained prior only #defines and structures
that did not allocate structure instances, you have a New Thing which
needs RAM and which within this RAM develops a state.

This Thing becomes responsible for managing different strings from
different callers. Over and above the individual cache for a string it
is responsible for storing and looking up different input strings.

Whereas there's a one-to-one relationship, tightly coupled, between a
PowerString instance and its string.

Idiots, who talk about complexity metrics and mean lines of code or If
nesting, need to understand mathematics including its limitations.
Because a piece of code is complex or simple only in relation to a
reader, you CANNOT measure software complexity, except as social
research of the crudest sort which affects the phenomenon it would
describe.

"My code is simple: you code is [way too] complex" is narcissism pure
and simple. And, while it doesn't exactly break my heart, companies
have lost big bucks because schools do not teach programmers that 90%
of their real job will be (1) understanding and then (2) changing
somebunny else's code. The result is that the newbie (1) rewrites the
code.

[As usual, I've snipped heavily to avoid wading through Nilges verbiage]

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> In the example, I was trying in fact to show how bad C sucks. This is
> because it completely obscures the difference between code with state
> and code without state.

Well, it gives you the choice of whether you wish your code to maintain 
state. I don't think that's the same as "obscuring the difference".

> If you create an array or cache in the C parser, you have to finger
> out where to put it. If you put it in "open code" outside of any
> function, where this area contained prior only #defines and structures
> that did not allocate structure instances, you have a New Thing which
> needs RAM and which within this RAM develops a state.

Anything you want to store will need to be stored somewhere, obviously. But 
to put the state in the code in this code would be very silly.

> This Thing becomes responsible for managing different strings from
> different callers. Over and above the individual cache for a string it
> is responsible for storing and looking up different input strings.
> 
> Whereas there's a one-to-one relationship, tightly coupled, between a
> PowerString instance and its string.

struct foo /* so choose a better name */
{
  char *s;
  PowerString *p;
};

Wow, that was hard.

 
> "My code is simple: you code is [way too] complex" is narcissism pure
> and simple. And, while it doesn't exactly break my heart, companies
> have lost big bucks because schools do not teach programmers that 90%
> of their real job will be (1) understanding and then (2) changing
> somebunny else's code.

For once, you're right. (In fact, you have managed to be correct without 
being crude, so I will make two notes, as I promised earlier.) But that is 
all the more reason for code to be written maintainably in the first place. 
That's why, in reviewing your C code, I made so much of a fuss about the 
issues of maintainability and readability that arose in your code.

> The result is that the newbie (1) rewrites the code.

That's okay, provided the newbie is very bright and capable of writing 
clear, readable, correct, maintainable code that other newbies can 
understand. But why not just write the code to be maintainable in the first 
place?

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FD0EDA7.1328C630@Sonnack.com>...
> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
> 
> > What we need to see are not these single benchmarks but instead the
> > execution time "curves" for the CJ and the EGN versions. There is a
> > possibility that the version I wrote quickly and posted had a flaw,
> > although my production version fails to exhibit NP complete behavior
> > for large files.
> 
> 1. Why would NP behavior have anything to do with tokenizing input?

HAHAHA

This is the reduction to absurdity of "relevance" for OF COURSE,
nonpolynomially complete behavior has plenty to do with tokenizing
input. A tokenizer algorithm has a formula for its efficiency. The
theory which is of general application applies to this formula.

I now realize why people in this ng fail to see relevance. The reason
is simple ignorance.

It is also a complete contempt for theory which a Scientific American
article said was due to the predominance of religious fundamentalism
in this country.

You deal it seems in pissing contests and rules of thumb glorified
beyond all reason (see below for my discussion of concat), overlaid by
various corporate saws and maxims. As such you are a tradesman.

> 
> 2. These tests were not of your C attempt.  That was so broken
>    that testing it would have humiliated it.  The tests were for
>    your favored child, PowerString.  *I* whipped up a couple of
>    quick versions that *all* blew the doors off your PS.

oooooo I am so impressed. 

You asked for code in May 2002 because, you said, this ng is for
discussion of code. But instead of discussing code you allayed your
well-founded anxieties about your competence by conducting a pissing
contest.


> 
> 3. Yours PowerString performs like a dog not because of a mere
>    flaw in the code, but because of deeply broken design decisions
>    that reflect an apparent lack of understanding of VB.  For
>    example, I seem to recall a totally *unnecessary* string concat
>    inside an inner loop.
>
I've laid this turkey of an issue to rest, but here goes.

In older and less optimized versions of the now completely obsolete
run-time interpreter for Visual Basic versions 6 and before,
occasionally, string concatenation inside a loop was marginally
inefficient but typically in a way that is fully overshadowed by the
end user's needs and the need for clear style not only syntactically
but also semantically.

I have the very good habit, which you need to learn, "Programmer"
"Dude", of writing self-verifiying code in the sense that inspection
provides assurance of its behavior. As a result, when using Instr and
related tools to find a string which may not occur, and then
proceeding to modifying an index based on the found or not found
string, I prefer the behavior of returning one past the string end on
failure to find the string.

Therefore I accept the modicum of inefficiency implicit in an inner
concat, also because being familiar with the real issues of efficiency
(which I encountered in Knuth when you were watching scooby doo), I am
unmoved by issues which are overshadowed by I/O, by the user's needs,
and by platform upgrades.

The sentinel approach provides in one line rather than two (the Instr
line followed by a check for zero) assurance that the statement will
have a visually checkable result.

This nonsense about it being a major crime to concat in a loop is an
urban legend from the standpoint of good praxis and an example of what
the late hero computer scientist Dijkstra meant when he referred to
the "folk-lore".

It is at best a subcase of a more general rule, which is that "tight"
loops should not contain "expensive" operations IF they are not
necessary. However, in view of optimizing compiler technology, it is
no longer the programmer's job to always see to this...especially at
the expense of writing clunky code and generating extra variables.

An optimizing compiler would notice that a & b in a loop is an
invariant operation as long as a and b are not changed, and would
create the temporary variable.

It is not clear whether at any time the old VB interpreter did this,
and I do not know whether the .Net compiler performs this
optimization. But if doing the optimization by hand (by creating a
temp variable thereby bloating the code, or checking for 0 thereby
bloating the code) adds nothing to the program, the logical
possibility that the optimization exists or will be added means that
the clearest mode of expression should be used.

Clear, that is, not to some bozo corrupted by American praxis. Clear
instead to a normed reader who is aware of elementary facts including
what optimizing compilers do and also the applicability of NP
completeness to tokenizers.



 
> > Are you up to it? You might learn a thing or two. I will reply to
> > any post that contains zero personal abuse.
> 
> Fine, go for it.  Let's see what you can do.

This post contains personal abuse. I really have little interest as a
result in engaging with a mere corporate technician. I suggest you
learn some computer science and, along with Richard Heathfield, cease
jyour harassment.

Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bqqol5$gav$2@titan.btinternet.com>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message
> > news:<1070543561.732831@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> > 
> >> And of course let's not forget the fact that the methods used in the
> >> code in question throw serious doubts on your vaunted computer science
> >> knowledge.  Your code was /abysmally/ broken.  In fact it appeared to be
> >> a horribly failed attempt to make C look bad by intentionally screwing
> >> up the program.
> >>
> > Post the code you think backs up this ridiculous claim and tell us all
> > why this is so. Thank you.
> 
> To save Corey and/or others digging through Google archives, 
> http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/compprog/nilges.html contains the code in 
> question, together with my critique thereof.

You have repeatedly posted links to documents that you know nobody
will have the time to fully understand and comprehend, and this stunt
was pulled in the USA by the drafters of the Patriot act, which is
interesting.

But when confronted in one email with your absence of knowledge you
don't reply.

Richard, you've posted a Struct containing *s which shows you don't
understand encapsulation.

"Programmer" "Dude", you've asked me what relevance NP complete theory
has to tokenizers.

End of story. You are conducting a completing not working campaign of
character assassination, which doesn't work because nobunny credits
anything they read in this ng...precisely because, like Richard III in
the old play, "thou has made this happy earth thy hell, filled it with
cursing cries and deep exclaims."

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> news:<bqqol5$gav$2@titan.btinternet.com>...
>> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>> 
>> > Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message
>> > news:<1070543561.732831@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
>> > 
>> >> And of course let's not forget the fact that the methods used in the
>> >> code in question throw serious doubts on your vaunted computer science
>> >> knowledge.  Your code was /abysmally/ broken.  In fact it appeared to
>> >> be a horribly failed attempt to make C look bad by intentionally
>> >> screwing up the program.
>> >>
>> > Post the code you think backs up this ridiculous claim and tell us all
>> > why this is so. Thank you.
>> 
>> To save Corey and/or others digging through Google archives,
>> http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/compprog/nilges.html contains the code
>> in question, together with my critique thereof.
> 
> You have repeatedly posted links to documents that you know nobody
> will have the time to fully understand and comprehend,

It's your code. Are you saying your code is unreadable and incomprehensible?

> But when confronted in one email with your absence of knowledge you
> don't reply.

If you have sent me an email recently, I will consider whether to reply to 
it in due course, after having first read it. I have not yet read it. When 
I read my emails, and to which ones I choose to reply, is a matter for me 
to decide, not you.

> Richard, you've posted a Struct containing *s which shows you don't
> understand encapsulation.

I don't see how you derive the conclusion from the premise. I do see, 
however, that you appear as determined as ever to obfuscate rather than to 
illuminate.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Edward wrote:
) This is the reduction to absurdity of "relevance" for OF COURSE,
) nonpolynomially complete behavior has plenty to do with tokenizing
) input. A tokenizer algorithm has a formula for its efficiency. The
) theory which is of general application applies to this formula.

You don't seem to know what NP-complete means.
But for a laugh, could you describe the 'formula' for the efficiency of a
tokenizer with "nonpolynomially complete" behaviour ?


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

"Willem" <willem@stack.nl> wrote in message <news:slrnbt6dud.pto.willem@toad.stack.nl>...

> Edward wrote:
> ) This is the reduction to absurdity of "relevance" for OF COURSE,
> ) nonpolynomially complete behavior has plenty to do with tokenizing
> ) input. A tokenizer algorithm has a formula for its efficiency. The
> ) theory which is of general application applies to this formula.
>
> You don't seem to know what NP-complete means.
> But for a laugh, could you describe the 'formula' for the efficiency of a
> tokenizer with "nonpolynomially complete" behaviour ?

I would not be at /all/ surprised to learn that EGN's tokenizers
double their run time for every word or even character added to
the input.  Clearly, EGN has been doing too much 'tokenizing'...

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>  Sign the Check! <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<bquv1m$956$1@hercules.btinternet.com>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:<bqqol5$gav$2@titan.btinternet.com>...
> >> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> >> 
> >> > Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message
> >> > news:<1070543561.732831@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> >> > 
> >> >> And of course let's not forget the fact that the methods used in the
> >> >> code in question throw serious doubts on your vaunted computer science
> >> >> knowledge.  Your code was /abysmally/ broken.  In fact it appeared to
> >> >> be a horribly failed attempt to make C look bad by intentionally
> >> >> screwing up the program.
> >> >>
> >> > Post the code you think backs up this ridiculous claim and tell us all
> >> > why this is so. Thank you.
> >> 
> >> To save Corey and/or others digging through Google archives,
> >> http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/compprog/nilges.html contains the code
> >> in question, together with my critique thereof.
> > 
> > You have repeatedly posted links to documents that you know nobody
> > will have the time to fully understand and comprehend,
> 
> It's your code. Are you saying your code is unreadable and incomprehensible?

Nope. I am saying that you and Chris Sonnack have deliberately
obfuscated the issues by creating links to discussions, including your
time-wasting hostility.
> 
> > But when confronted in one email with your absence of knowledge you
> > don't reply.
> 
> If you have sent me an email recently, I will consider whether to reply to 
> it in due course, after having first read it. I have not yet read it. When 
> I read my emails, and to which ones I choose to reply, is a matter for me 
> to decide, not you.

This was a typo. I have confronted you not in email but in public for
you seemed to claim yesterday that somehow a C struct is an object
that encapsulates a string...when of course the string is publically
accessible in the struct, and the struct fails to create storage for
multiple instances.


> 
> > Richard, you've posted a Struct containing *s which shows you don't
> > understand encapsulation.
> 
> I don't see how you derive the conclusion from the premise. I do see, 
> however, that you appear as determined as ever to obfuscate rather than to 
> illuminate.

This is psychological transference. You have confused people on the ng
charter with the absurd claim that comp.programming is not about
programmers in addition to code. You have made repeated claims about
my competence, which would be libel if they were not so absurd, and
made in such a low-regarded community (low-regarded as a consequence
of your conduct and that of clowns like you). You have made these
claims in a manner deliberately separated from textual evidence, which
Chris Sonnack has manipulated on your behalf.

You do not allow productive discussions to initiate in this or other
threads, because your authoritarian personality keeps you entering
discussions with minatory trolling, and you respond to newbies all to
often with focus flames that question, implicitly or explicitly, their
ability to comprehend the ng charter, which you yourself do not
comprehend, or which you misconstrue deliberately as excluding
discussion of the interface of programming and society.

Willem <willem@stack.nl> wrote in message news:<slrnbt6dud.pto.willem@toad.stack.nl>...
> Edward wrote:
> ) This is the reduction to absurdity of "relevance" for OF COURSE,
> ) nonpolynomially complete behavior has plenty to do with tokenizing
> ) input. A tokenizer algorithm has a formula for its efficiency. The
> ) theory which is of general application applies to this formula.
> 
> You don't seem to know what NP-complete means.
> But for a laugh, could you describe the 'formula' for the efficiency of a
> tokenizer with "nonpolynomially complete" behaviour ?

If the formula as a function of the number of input symbols is not a
polynomial, such that its major operator is multiplication or power,
then the tokenizer slows down as the number of inputs grows.

A polynomial is a sum of terms: a nonpolynomial is a product or power
expression.

If the tokenizer repeatedly parses the entire string for each token
request then its behavior is of course nonpolynomial as a function of
the number of requests.

I am willing to admit that as an autodidact with some CS graduate
school, who is concerned with the context-free way in which "experts"
learn, and then fail to apply, isolated topics, my way of phrasing my
understanding may be unfamiliar.
> 
> 
> SaSW, Willem

Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> Calum <calum.bulk@ntlworld.com> wrote in message 
> news:<bqq4lm$onq$1@news7.svr.pol.co.uk>...
> 
>> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>> 
>>> Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message 
>>> news:<3FCFABA6.FA73EF3E@Sonnack.com>...
>>> 
>>> What we need to see are not these single benchmarks but instead 
>>> the execution time "curves" for the CJ and the EGN versions. 
>>> There is a possibility that the version I wrote quickly and 
>>> posted had a flaw, although my production version fails to 
>>> exhibit NP complete behavior for large files.
>> 
>> It seems only fair that you post an equation for the execution time
>>  of your program to show us all how it's done.
> 
> 
> If you cache the parse of individual words the time to find a random
>  word is D*S+(N-1)*K where D is the number of DISTINCT words, S is
> the initial search time for any word using brute force, N is an
> average number of times a typical word occurs and K is a constant
> that represents the roughly constant time it takes, to look up a
> keyed item in a hash table such as a Visual Basic collection.

I have not been following this thread very carefully.  Is the task to
search a document for a word?  You do it by indexing the document, he
does it by a simple search?

If you index a document, that would take k1.N time (N is the size of the
input, and k1 is a constant dependent upon your hardware and
implementation), assuming you are using a hash table.  Then to look
something up in the index would take a constant time c.  If you perform
S searches, the total cost T1 = k1.N + c.S.

Without an index, the search time is T2 = k2.N.S.  So if the number of
searches S is small, you would expect T1>T2, since it is a lot of effort
to build an index, so k1>k2.  But as soon as S grows, T1<T2.

But this assumes you don't need to rebuild the hash table before each 
search of course, and your index is implemented sensibly.

> If you use a brute force search for each word and each of its 
> occurences the formula becomes S*T where T is the total number of 
> words, both distinct and the same.
> 
> The paradox is that the latter formula S*T is "simpler" than the 
> other formula but represents more of what the computer science 
> professor means by complexity.

I don't think anyone thinks that S*T is a smaller number just because
the formula has fewer symbols!!!

> The cache solution's execution time formula is a function of the 
> total number of distinct words (necessarily smaller than the total 
> number of words) and the average times a random word repeats: the 
> brute force solution's execution time formula is a function of the 
> word count.

Yea, but storing each word is going to slow things down.  To build your
index in the first place will also be proportional to the word count.
You don't know a word is a duplicate until you have read it.

> The operator of lowest precedence, the "major" operator, of the cache
>  time formula D*S+(N-1)*K is addition. The operator of lowest 
> precedence of the brute force formula S*T is multiplication. Unless 
> something's hidden in the addition-based formula, this means that 
> total execution time grows "more" slowly for the cache solution, at 
> the expense of the use of more storage.
> 
> Chris Sonnack's numbers show what may be but probably isn't a problem
>  in this reasoning, but my main concern in the real world is not some
>  absolute efficiency of a specific program, but the efficiency 
> "trace", the efficiency "footprint" of a family of related solutions,
>  which is always the real entity in the system life cycle as the 
> user's needs change.

If your executions times are of the form k*N (anything more is
excessive), then your execution "curves" as you put it are both straight
lines.  And given that his line is under your line, it means that his
will be faster _for all N_.  Why build an index if you don't need it?

> I have an essentially verbal, and some may say verbose, understanding
>  of the problem. I am certain that Richard Heathfield et al. will 
> find it distasteful.
> 
> This is because without knowing it, they are engaged in a postmodern
>  attack on language itself, far more serious than the attack 
> neoconservatives think is being made.

They are probably objecting to excessive verbiage (aka waffle).  Why use
a hundred words when ten will do?

The problem is that natural language is imprecise.  A technical
explanation will use a different style of English to a novel.  But this
is more appropriate since it communicates more effectively.

See my later comment about jargon.

> In this attack, comp.programming is not about programmers (har!) or 
> if it is they are to be subject to a new law of omerta, and must be a
>  bruder schweigen.

A minority of programmers have big egos and superiority complexes. 
Everyone's been the victim of the "you said something I disagree with, 
therefore you are a moron" fallacy.

> The game becomes cutting pure code with an incommunicable 
> understanding of the problem which in my book isn't an understanding
>  at all.
> 
> The campaign is part of what I consider the deprivation of language 
> by politics in which narration and naming become a management 
> prerogative over which clowns fight in this ng.

I was rather enjoying people comparing beard lengths!

> As in the cases where Richard Heathfield has informed me that I can 
> no longer observe that (for example) that a community "has an 
> understanding", the game becomes to strive for a language deprived of
>  the ability to talk but at the dullest and most literal level. 
> Paradoxically and because we still must deal with abstractions, the 
> dull muttering that results is riven with self-contradiction and is 
> in fact a language of DENIAL.

You object to jargon?  This is one of the main objections "artists"
have of "scientists".  They claim that scientists deliberately obfuscate
their work in order to perputuate their "superiority".  In fact,
scientists cannot operate without jargon - you cannot explain everything
from first principles or you'd be there all day.  Artists feel left out
simply because they do not have the background to fully appreciate an
exchange between scientists, and are doubly frustrated since scientists
can usually follow the gist of what artists are talking about.  Artists
therefore assume they are the better communicators, while scientists
think that artists are just performing mental masturbation.

The same is true of computer science.  Jargon is necessary, there is no
deliberate clique, I think you are doing the various posters I have come
to enjoy reading a disrespect.

Jargon facilitates communication.

> The result is a curious language in which certain keywords are 
> uttered, not to push meaning forward but instead to give signals to 
> Authority that one is O.K.

A uniform language makes life easier.  If you choose to redefine
established phrases or invent new ones, then communication will break down.

<much stuff snipped>

> 
>>> The fact remains that you seem to confuse genuine analysis of 
>>> software complexity with a few benchmarks.
>> 
>> Complexity?  Tell me more!  :-)
> 
> 
> There is as I hope you know a whole bunch of useful acamodemic work 
> on software complexity which is the mathematical manipulation and 
> analysis of the execution time formulae of algorithms and actual 
> programs.

Indeed I do, I was merely wondering what your unique insights were.

> Chris Sonnack presented some interesting numbers. But I have no way 
> of auditing those numbers. He may have made some stupid error.

But surely you could ask him for the source code instead of attacking him?

> In the example, I was trying in fact to show how bad C sucks. This is
>  because it completely obscures the difference between code with 
> state and code without state.

C often requires more verbiage and is more prone to bugs than higher
level languages.  There are many areas where C would be the language of
choice, although its domain is shrinking.  A lot of higher level
languages "suck" for many other reasons.

> If you create an array or cache in the C parser, you have to finger 
> out where to put it. If you put it in "open code" outside of any 
> function, where this area contained prior only #defines and 
> structures that did not allocate structure instances, you have a New 
> Thing which needs RAM and which within this RAM develops a state.

If your intention was to ridicule C (and presumably, people who believe
C is the apogee of programming language design), you picked a bad
example.  C would be frightfully fast at text searching since all it
needs to do is mmap() the file into memory and pass a pointer over it.

C leaves the memory management to the programmer.  Ideally a programming
language would unburden the programmer as much as possible, but
sometimes a finer control is needed.  C programmers enjoy routinely
using malloc and free because, um er, it is faster or something, and a
good mental exercise remembering to manually free resources.

I use C++ because it has both low-level features, and some quite high
level ones.  Therefore you can pick a style that suits the problem.

> This Thing becomes responsible for managing different strings from 
> different callers. Over and above the individual cache for a string 
> it is responsible for storing and looking up different input strings.
> 
> 
> 
> Whereas there's a one-to-one relationship, tightly coupled, between a
>  PowerString instance and its string.

But this is also C's strength.  For example, your tokenizer does not
need to allocate a new string each time it matches a token.  Instead it
can return pointers into another string.  This is more efficient, at the
expense of a little more complexity.

C is a low level language.  There are times when low level control is
needed, and times when it is not.  Instead of saying "C sucks", say "C
is not for you."  A higher level language would suit you, and the
problems you like to solve, better.

> Idiots, who talk about complexity metrics and mean lines of code or 
> If nesting, need to understand mathematics including its limitations.
>  Because a piece of code is complex or simple only in relation to a 
> reader, you CANNOT measure software complexity, except as social 
> research of the crudest sort which affects the phenomenon it would 
> describe.
> 
> "My code is simple: you code is [way too] complex" is narcissism pure
>  and simple. And, while it doesn't exactly break my heart, companies
>  have lost big bucks because schools do not teach programmers that
> 90% of their real job will be (1) understanding and then (2) changing
>  somebunny else's code. The result is that the newbie (1) rewrites
> the code.

Striving for simplicity is not narcism.  An overly complicated solution 
is probably slower and contains more bugs, and takes longer to write and 
maintain.  Programmers should strive for simplicity.

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> news:<bquv1m$956$1@hercules.btinternet.com>...
>> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>> 
>> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
>> > news:<bqqol5$gav$2@titan.btinternet.com>...
>> >> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>> >> 
>> >> > Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message
>> >> > news:<1070543561.732831@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
>> >> > 
>> >> >> And of course let's not forget the fact that the methods used in
>> >> >> the code in question throw serious doubts on your vaunted computer
>> >> >> science
>> >> >> knowledge.  Your code was /abysmally/ broken.  In fact it appeared
>> >> >> to be a horribly failed attempt to make C look bad by intentionally
>> >> >> screwing up the program.
>> >> >>
>> >> > Post the code you think backs up this ridiculous claim and tell us
>> >> > all why this is so. Thank you.
>> >> 
>> >> To save Corey and/or others digging through Google archives,
>> >> http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/compprog/nilges.html contains the
>> >> code in question, together with my critique thereof.
>> > 
>> > You have repeatedly posted links to documents that you know nobody
>> > will have the time to fully understand and comprehend,
>> 
>> It's your code. Are you saying your code is unreadable and
>> incomprehensible?
> 
> Nope. I am saying that you and Chris Sonnack have deliberately
> obfuscated the issues by creating links to discussions, including your
> time-wasting hostility.

Actually, all I did was post a copy of a couple of my Usenet articles on my 
Web site; I did this because they contained a critique of your C code which 
you had claimed you could not find. That was over a year ago. You still 
haven't addressed the points I raised in that critique. That, of course, is 
your right, but others will undoubtedly draw their own conclusions from 
your silence on the matter.

>> > But when confronted in one email with your absence of knowledge you
>> > don't reply.
>> 
>> If you have sent me an email recently, I will consider whether to reply
>> to it in due course, after having first read it. I have not yet read it.
>> When I read my emails, and to which ones I choose to reply, is a matter
>> for me to decide, not you.
> 
> This was a typo. I have confronted you not in email but in public for
> you seemed to claim yesterday that somehow a C struct is an object
> that encapsulates a string...

No, I didn't claim that at all.

> when of course the string is publically
> accessible in the struct, and the struct fails to create storage for
> multiple instances.

I showed one way in which data can be associated with each other in C. 
That's all. If the way I showed you doesn't meet your requirements, well, 
there are other ways. Since you don't use C, I see little point in 
explaining these other ways to you.

>> > Richard, you've posted a Struct containing *s which shows you don't
>> > understand encapsulation.
>> 
>> I don't see how you derive the conclusion from the premise. I do see,
>> however, that you appear as determined as ever to obfuscate rather than
>> to illuminate.
> 
> This is psychological transference.

Well, perhaps it is and perhaps it isn't. Not being a psychologist, I could 
not possibly offer an informed opinion either way. In any event, psychology 
is off-topic in comp.programming.

> You have confused people on the ng
> charter with the absurd claim that comp.programming is not about
> programmers in addition to code.

There is nothing absurd in the notion that a group with the word 
"programming" in the name should be about programming. The charter also 
makes this very clear. You seem to be the only one that suffers from the 
misconception that this is a dumping ground for clapped-out sociological 
balderdash.

> You have made repeated claims about my competence,

Yet another unsupported assertion.

> which would be libel if they were not so absurd,

If your competence is self-evident from your articles, I can hardly damage 
your reputation by claiming otherwise (as *you* claim that I have done 
repeatedly). And if your competence is not self-evident from your articles, 
then what have you to complain about?

<nonsense snipped>


-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Edward wrote:
)> You don't seem to know what NP-complete means.
)> But for a laugh, could you describe the 'formula' for the efficiency of a
)> tokenizer with "nonpolynomially complete" behaviour ?
)
) If the formula as a function of the number of input symbols is not a
) polynomial, such that its major operator is multiplication or power,
) then the tokenizer slows down as the number of inputs grows.
)
) A polynomial is a sum of terms: a nonpolynomial is a product or power
) expression.

You don't even seem to know what polynomial means.
A polynomial is a mathematical expression involving a sum of powers in one
or more variables multiplied by coefficients.
(Quoted from a mathematics dictionary)

The term 'nonpolynomial' seems to be some kind of invention on your part.
As a hint: 'NP' does *not* stand for 'nonpolynomial'.

) If the tokenizer repeatedly parses the entire string for each token
) request then its behavior is of course nonpolynomial as a function of
) the number of requests.

If the tokenizer repeatedly parses the entire string, then the time
complexity is quadratic, or at worst cubic.  Which *is* polynomial.

) I am willing to admit that as an autodidact with some CS graduate
) school, who is concerned with the context-free way in which "experts"
) learn, and then fail to apply, isolated topics, my way of phrasing my
) understanding may be unfamiliar.

You may want to learn what terms like 'polynomial', 'nondeterministic',
'exponential', 'NP-complete' and 'time complexity' mean.  Otherwise, your
'way of phrasing' is just plain wrong.


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

In article <slrnbt76k4.oii.willem@toad.stack.nl>, willem@stack.nl says...
> The term 'nonpolynomial' seems to be some kind of invention on your part.
> As a hint: 'NP' does *not* stand for 'nonpolynomial'.

ROTFLMAO.

I'm pleased to say I haven't encountered (or don't remember) EGN from
previous postings.  

-- 
Randy Howard            _o     
2reply remove FOOBAR    \<,    
______________________()/ ()______________________________________________
SCO Spam-magnet: postmaster@sco.com

Randy Howard wrote:
> <slrnbt76k4.oii.willem@toad.stack.nl>, willem@stack.nl says...
> 
> > The term 'nonpolynomial' seems to be some kind of invention on
> > your part. As a hint: 'NP' does *not* stand for 'nonpolynomial'.
> 
> ROTFLMAO.
> 
> I'm pleased to say I haven't encountered (or don't remember) EGN
> from previous postings.

Oh he's been here.  And has remained in my PLONK file since.

-- 
Chuck F (cbfalconer@yahoo.com) (cbfalconer@worldnet.att.net)
   Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
   <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>  USE worldnet address!

Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<br00ns$jo7$1@sparta.btinternet.com>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:<bquv1m$956$1@hercules.btinternet.com>...
> >> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> >> 
> >> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> >> > news:<bqqol5$gav$2@titan.btinternet.com>...
> >> >> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> >> >> 
> >> >> > Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote in message
> >> >> > news:<1070543561.732831@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>...
> >> >> > 
> >> >> >> And of course let's not forget the fact that the methods used in
> >> >> >> the code in question throw serious doubts on your vaunted computer
> >> >> >> science
> >> >> >> knowledge.  Your code was /abysmally/ broken.  In fact it appeared
> >> >> >> to be a horribly failed attempt to make C look bad by intentionally
> >> >> >> screwing up the program.
> >> >> >>
> >> >> > Post the code you think backs up this ridiculous claim and tell us
> >> >> > all why this is so. Thank you.
> >> >> 
> >> >> To save Corey and/or others digging through Google archives,
> >> >> http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/compprog/nilges.html contains the
> >> >> code in question, together with my critique thereof.
> >> > 
> >> > You have repeatedly posted links to documents that you know nobody
> >> > will have the time to fully understand and comprehend,
> >> 
> >> It's your code. Are you saying your code is unreadable and
> >> incomprehensible?
> > 
> > Nope. I am saying that you and Chris Sonnack have deliberately
> > obfuscated the issues by creating links to discussions, including your
> > time-wasting hostility.
> 
> Actually, all I did was post a copy of a couple of my Usenet articles on my 
> Web site; I did this because they contained a critique of your C code which 
> you had claimed you could not find. That was over a year ago. You still 
> haven't addressed the points I raised in that critique. That, of course, is 
> your right, but others will undoubtedly draw their own conclusions from 
> your silence on the matter.

I'd only observe that you never actually confront me man to man.
Instead, you call on-topics off-topic. You make reference to
deliberately obfuscated white papers. You "snip" relevant content.
Face it, old horse: you are a sleazebag.

> 
> >> > But when confronted in one email with your absence of knowledge you
> >> > don't reply.
> >> 
> >> If you have sent me an email recently, I will consider whether to reply
> >> to it in due course, after having first read it. I have not yet read it.
> >> When I read my emails, and to which ones I choose to reply, is a matter
> >> for me to decide, not you.
> > 
> > This was a typo. I have confronted you not in email but in public for
> > you seemed to claim yesterday that somehow a C struct is an object
> > that encapsulates a string...
> 
> No, I didn't claim that at all.
> 
> > when of course the string is publically
> > accessible in the struct, and the struct fails to create storage for
> > multiple instances.
> 
> I showed one way in which data can be associated with each other in C. 
> That's all. If the way I showed you doesn't meet your requirements, well, 
> there are other ways. Since you don't use C, I see little point in 
> explaining these other ways to you.

As I do hope you are aware, a Turing machine can run Windows 2000 as
long as the code of Windows 2000 is reduced to state/symbol
quintuples, the Turing machine is given enough time and the privilege,
when it needs storage, to add squares, and we accept some sort of
convention for mapping its input and output to the list of input and
output signals acceptable to and emitted from a PC running Windows
2000.

But this does not mean that you can write Windows 2000 in a Turing
machine.

When you are called out into the open and cannot hide behind
references to obfuscated links and white papers prepared you by you or
your confederates in bad faith, your content is of a unique
feebleness, such as the claim that a four-line struct is somehow and
object. I am also reminded in this connection of Chris' claim that
software complexity theory does not relate, to tokenizers.

> 
> >> > Richard, you've posted a Struct containing *s which shows you don't
> >> > understand encapsulation.
> >> 
> >> I don't see how you derive the conclusion from the premise. I do see,
> >> however, that you appear as determined as ever to obfuscate rather than
> >> to illuminate.
> > 
> > This is psychological transference.
> 
> Well, perhaps it is and perhaps it isn't. Not being a psychologist, I could 
> not possibly offer an informed opinion either way. In any event, psychology 
> is off-topic in comp.programming.

A class of midlevel experts is in fact disciplined by language like
this. But if one could not use "psychological transference" as a
model, not being a certified psychologist, then of course one would
not be able to name a business and industrial reality, in which people
with a modicum of power or status "transfer" their unacceptable
feelings onto those with less than a modicum.

However, were I a psychologist, I suppose I'd be delighted if a
layperson actually used the results of my work. In fact, for the SAME
reason that comp.programming is about the interface of code and
society, expertise that operates in a vacuum, such that one cannot use
a language without being an initiate, an adept, is (1) no expertise at
all but (2) useful to the status quo, which appropriates the language.

This is in fact what I call the deprivation of language by politics
and it is what reduces posters to this ng to a choice between a
content-free authoritarian language and childish "flames".
> 
> > You have confused people on the ng
> > charter with the absurd claim that comp.programming is not about
> > programmers in addition to code.
> 
> There is nothing absurd in the notion that a group with the word 
> "programming" in the name should be about programming. The charter also 
> makes this very clear. You seem to be the only one that suffers from the 
> misconception that this is a dumping ground for clapped-out sociological 
> balderdash.

"Psychological transference" is "clapped-out psychological balderdash"
only to people weary of being human who would like to be brains, in a
vat, and who believe the (absurd) idea that programming has nothing to
say to programmers, in a world of Bourdieu's "science without the
scientist".
> 
> > You have made repeated claims about my competence,
> 
> Yet another unsupported assertion.
> 
> > which would be libel if they were not so absurd,
> 
> If your competence is self-evident from your articles, I can hardly damage 
> your reputation by claiming otherwise (as *you* claim that I have done 
> repeatedly). And if your competence is not self-evident from your articles, 
> then what have you to complain about?

What you are missing is that I have discovered that you are not my
professional peer. You have provably wrong beliefs about the viability
of the C language, and, you believe that a struct encapsulates.

For your information, Bjarne Stroustrup was an expert C programmer who
abandoned C (by developing the first C++ processor as a macro library)
because he wanted the text of the program to enforce and express a
vision of encapsulation such that it would NOT be easy to access, from
a remote and undetected station in a large program, the elements of a
structure.

That's because he knew, and you do not, that the "entity" produced by
a programmer is a member of a class of potential solutions which
happen to be a social construct (this was Dijkstra's insight). He
wanted to exclude, in an apriori way, members from this set that would
make pathological references.

He wanted to do so in a humanistic fashion in which the architecture
of the code would be a gentle rebuke to pathological change: you
prefer instead minatory lectures and libel because in fact, your
"programming" is in fact about programmers: it is about their
downsizing, dispossession, silencing and discipline.

My competence isn't self-evident to people with a different set of
ground rules.
> 
> <nonsense snipped>

Willem <willem@stack.nl> wrote in message news:<slrnbt76k4.oii.willem@toad.stack.nl>...
> Edward wrote:
> )> You don't seem to know what NP-complete means.
> )> But for a laugh, could you describe the 'formula' for the efficiency of a
> )> tokenizer with "nonpolynomially complete" behaviour ?
> )
> ) If the formula as a function of the number of input symbols is not a
> ) polynomial, such that its major operator is multiplication or power,
> ) then the tokenizer slows down as the number of inputs grows.
> )
> ) A polynomial is a sum of terms: a nonpolynomial is a product or power
> ) expression.
> 
> You don't even seem to know what polynomial means.
> A polynomial is a mathematical expression involving a sum of powers in one
> or more variables multiplied by coefficients.
> (Quoted from a mathematics dictionary)

You have memorized mathematics texts by rote. I have learned and
applied the theory, admittedly partly as an autodidact.
> 
> The term 'nonpolynomial' seems to be some kind of invention on your part.
> As a hint: 'NP' does *not* stand for 'nonpolynomial'.
> 
From the murk, emerges what corresponds to the incompetent programmer
who dominates this ng, and it is the academic who has memorized
without understanding.

> ) If the tokenizer repeatedly parses the entire string for each token
> ) request then its behavior is of course nonpolynomial as a function of
> ) the number of requests.
> 
> If the tokenizer repeatedly parses the entire string, then the time
> complexity is quadratic, or at worst cubic.  Which *is* polynomial.

Its x**n, which is x**n+0, which is technically polynomial. It also
grows too rapidly to scale up. By polynomial' (polynomial prime) I
mean polynomials of sufficiently low rank.

> 
> ) I am willing to admit that as an autodidact with some CS graduate
> ) school, who is concerned with the context-free way in which "experts"
> ) learn, and then fail to apply, isolated topics, my way of phrasing my
> ) understanding may be unfamiliar.
> 
> You may want to learn what terms like 'polynomial', 'nondeterministic',
> 'exponential', 'NP-complete' and 'time complexity' mean.  Otherwise, your
> 'way of phrasing' is just plain wrong.

As a working consultant, I had to grok the material rapidly and as a
humanist, I'll be the first to admit that I took what I needed and
left the rest. What I needed was the focus on the order of the
formula.

x**2 can be mathematically transformed by a degenerate operation into
a polynomial by adding zero. But as an execution time formula its
final operator is power and means that the algorithm is unacceptable.

As a working programmer you need to know (in whatever terminology
works) that there are different sets of formulae with different
characteristics and this was my point.

Chris on the other hand believes that you can "do" tokenizing without
having the courage to apply the theory, even at the risk of some
pedant, who has it appears memorized without understanding, make some
sour remark.

Chris wants to run benchmarks and he thinks they prove things. My
point was the shape and final operator of a good faith expression is
more important.

The pedant factor and fear of the same is why programmers like Chris
prefer to use rules of thumb and folklore (such as "ooo, no concat
inside a loop). It deprives them of a chance to put the folklore in
its place.

I am well aware that there's a bunch of academics who jerk each other
off about NP completeness. But the problem is that the USE of their
work becomes impossible if it uses terminology in a different way.

And, I'd remark that older engineers were able to adopt older forms of
science and mathematics without this fear since the division of
expertise into administered categories hadn't in former times gone as
far. The result is a constructed barbarism in which programmers are
deluded into thinking that "expertise" consists of fables about the
behavior of an interpreter that was retired in the transition to
VB.Net.

I am not a mathematician. At the same time, I need (like many people)
to use mathematics as best I can. I have a choice: I can follow some
thug and use his folk-lore (such as the absurd idea that a struct
encapsulates) or I can dig in to the available work and master it best
I can.

The former strategy, that of The Path of the Thug, is vastly more
popular as is seen by Richard Heathfield's following, even though
thugs tend to lie, and obfuscate, and emotionally manipulate people
for their own ends.

The latter strategy is a good way to look foolish if one fails to
understand a key point.

Of course, you could (and you'd be in the best traditions of usenet)
provide a precis of what you know about NP completeness to my benefit
and to the benefit of the group as a whole. But I expect you won't.
Some other pedant might have memorized a different text-book, and you
are AFRAID of him.

This is all reminiscent, of what I've read about the history of late
Latin literature, for it was characterized by hired thugs writing
wrong facts down for some local bully, and whacking each other over
obscurities.

As a result of the fear of actually applying academic theory, the FBI
failed to implement Boolean queries in terrorist data bases. Nobody,
in all probability, had the balls at Langley to make a knowledge claim
independent of the organization. People died, as you know.
> 
> 
> SaSW, Willem

"Willem" <willem@stack.nl> wrote in message <news:slrnbt76k4.oii.willem@toad.stack.nl>...

> Edward wrote:
> )> You don't seem to know what NP-complete means.
> )> But for a laugh, could you describe the 'formula' for the efficiency of a
> )> tokenizer with "nonpolynomially complete" behaviour ?
> )
> ) If the formula as a function of the number of input symbols is not a
> ) polynomial, such that its major operator is multiplication or power,
> ) then the tokenizer slows down as the number of inputs grows.
> )
> ) A polynomial is a sum of terms: a nonpolynomial is a product or power
> ) expression.
>
> You don't even seem to know what polynomial means.
> A polynomial is a mathematical expression involving a sum of powers in one
> or more variables multiplied by coefficients.
> (Quoted from a mathematics dictionary)
>
> The term 'nonpolynomial' seems to be some kind of invention on your part.
> As a hint: 'NP' does *not* stand for 'nonpolynomial'.

....unless he wants to prove it :-)  (See the middle of section 7)

 URL:http://db.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o/comp-faq/faq.html

> ) If the tokenizer repeatedly parses the entire string for each token
> ) request then its behavior is of course nonpolynomial as a function of
> ) the number of requests.
>
> If the tokenizer repeatedly parses the entire string, then the time
> complexity is quadratic, or at worst cubic.  Which *is* polynomial.

....or maybe he's (mis)using a GLR parser to tokenize?

> ) I am willing to admit that as an autodidact with some CS graduate
> ) school, who is concerned with the context-free way in which "experts"
> ) learn, and then fail to apply, isolated topics, my way of phrasing my
> ) understanding may be unfamiliar.

EGN, you are Humpty Dumpty, and I claim my five pounds!

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,
"it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
-- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"

> You may want to learn what terms like 'polynomial', 'nondeterministic',
> 'exponential', 'NP-complete' and 'time complexity' mean.  Otherwise, your
> 'way of phrasing' is just plain wrong.

Perhaps he is merely trying to meld Dadaism with computer science?

 URL:http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame83.html

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>   Space Cooties! <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
>> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
>> >> 
>> >> [...] Are you saying your code is unreadable and
>> >> incomprehensible?
>> > 
>> > Nope. I am saying that you and Chris Sonnack have deliberately
>> > obfuscated the issues by creating links to discussions, including your
>> > time-wasting hostility.
>> 
>> Actually, all I did was post a copy of a couple of my Usenet articles on
>> my Web site; I did this because they contained a critique of your C code
>> which you had claimed you could not find. That was over a year ago. You
>> still haven't addressed the points I raised in that critique. That, of
>> course, is your right, but others will undoubtedly draw their own
>> conclusions from your silence on the matter.
> 
> I'd only observe that you never actually confront me man to man.

On the contrary. Insofar as it is possible to do this via Usenet, I think 
I've been very straightforward in challenging your nonsense "man to man" as 
you put it.

> Instead, you call on-topics off-topic.

Nope.

> You make reference to
> deliberately obfuscated white papers.

So now you claim your C source code is deliberately obfuscated? Interesting.

> You "snip" relevant content.

No, I do not. I snip old content for the sake of courtesy to the group, and 
irrelevant Nilges psychoclaptrap for the sake of topicality and focus.

> Face it, old horse: you are a sleazebag.

Face it, Mr Nilges: for all your frantic chasing through dictionaries in 
search of le mot juste, you appear to lack the vocabulary that would allow 
you to participate in a discussion without resort to vulgar epithets.

<snip>

>> I showed one way in which data can be associated with each other in C.
>> That's all. If the way I showed you doesn't meet your requirements, well,
>> there are other ways. Since you don't use C, I see little point in
>> explaining these other ways to you.
> 
> As I do hope you are aware, a Turing machine can run Windows 2000 as
> long as the code of Windows 2000 is reduced to state/symbol
> quintuples, the Turing machine is given enough time and the privilege,
> when it needs storage, to add squares, and we accept some sort of
> convention for mapping its input and output to the list of input and
> output signals acceptable to and emitted from a PC running Windows
> 2000.

A Turing Machine can compute any computable problem. You have not 
demonstrated that to run Windows 2000 successfully qualifies as a 
computable problem. Therefore, whether a Turing Machine can "run Windows 
2000" is unproved.

> But this does not mean that you can write Windows 2000 in a Turing
> machine.
> 
> When you are called out into the open and cannot hide behind
> references to obfuscated links

By which you refer to your own source code, from which you have been running 
for over a year.

> and white papers prepared you by you or
> your confederates in bad faith,

Do you refer here to your source code, or to my critique thereof? Have you 
read it yet? What makes you think it was prepared "in bad faith"? And what 
makes you think I have confederates?

> your content is of a unique
> feebleness,

Have you read my critique of your source code yet?

> such as the claim that a four-line struct is somehow and
> object.

Oh, I didn't show you a four-line struct. I showed you a type definition of 
a struct with two members. In C, types are not objects. In C, an object is 
a region of storage in the execution environment, the contents of which can 
represent values.

Or were you using some other definition of "object"? If so, please be 
precise. Thank you.

> I am also reminded in this connection of Chris' claim that
> software complexity theory does not relate, to tokenizers.

You can take that up with Chris. I'm not aware that he's made such a claim.

<psychology stuff snipped - he can take it up in a sci newsgroup if he cares 
enough>

> "Psychological transference" is "clapped-out psychological balderdash"

I couldn't agree more.

(If you're allowed to mislead by selective quotation, so am I.)

<snip>

>> If your competence is self-evident from your articles, I can hardly
>> damage your reputation by claiming otherwise (as *you* claim that I have
>> done repeatedly). And if your competence is not self-evident from your
>> articles, then what have you to complain about?
> 
> What you are missing is that I have discovered that you are not my
> professional peer.

Damn right.

> You have provably wrong beliefs about the viability
> of the C language, and, you believe that a struct encapsulates.

Those are unproven assertions. Oh! What a surprise. The same old nonsense 
from the same old source. Or were you planning to support them?

> For your information, Bjarne Stroustrup was an expert C programmer who
> abandoned C (by developing the first C++ processor as a macro library)
> because he wanted the text of the program to enforce and express a
> vision of encapsulation such that it would NOT be easy to access, from
> a remote and undetected station in a large program, the elements of a
> structure.

Well, it's pretty trivial in C to prevent access to the elements of a 
structure, so I think perhaps he had other reasons too.

<nonsense snipped as usual>

> My competence isn't self-evident to people with a different set of
> ground rules.

I cannot find it in myself to disagree with this lucid analysis of your 
competence.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> The former strategy, that of The Path of the Thug, is vastly more
> popular as is seen by Richard Heathfield's following,

I don't /have/ a following in this newsgroup. You, however, appear to have 
cultivated an unfollowing. That is your problem, not mine. If you don't 
want people to point out your nonsense, just post sense instead of 
nonsense. Claiming that anyone disagreeing with you is either a pawn of MI5 
or a pawn of a pawn of MI5 is very silly, and shows no respect to the other 
contributors to this newsgroup.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

Edward wrote:
)> You don't even seem to know what polynomial means.
)> A polynomial is a mathematical expression involving a sum of powers in one
)> or more variables multiplied by coefficients.
)> (Quoted from a mathematics dictionary)
)
) You have memorized mathematics texts by rote. I have learned and
) applied the theory, admittedly partly as an autodidact.

Maybe someone should explain to you, in detail, what 'quoted' means.
(In this context, it means that I typed in 'mathematics dictionary' into
 google, searched for 'polynomial' and cut'n'pasted the result.)

Besides which, you seem to have completely misunderstood the term, as you
demonstrate quite clearly below.

) From the murk, emerges what corresponds to the incompetent programmer
) who dominates this ng, and it is the academic who has memorized
) without understanding.

Wow, my very first reply to you, and you already have to use insults to
back up your arguments.

) Its x**n, which is x**n+0, which is technically polynomial. It also
) grows too rapidly to scale up. By polynomial' (polynomial prime) I
) mean polynomials of sufficiently low rank.

Normal people would say something like 'linear', 'quadratic' or 'cubic' if
they wanted to describe the 'sufficiently low' rank of a polynomial.

Also, this is the very first mention of this so-called 'polynomial prime',
which indicates that you just invented it to hide your incompetence.

) x**2 can be mathematically transformed by a degenerate operation into
) a polynomial by adding zero. But as an execution time formula its
) final operator is power and means that the algorithm is unacceptable.

x^2 is a polynomial as-is.  You don't have to add anything to it to make it
a polynomial.  Sums can consist of a single term, you know.

) As a working programmer you need to know (in whatever terminology
) works) that there are different sets of formulae with different
) characteristics and this was my point.

As a working programmer you *also* need to know how to correctly describe
these different sets of formulae to other programmers.  Which you obviously
don't.
This makes it very hard for you to cooperate with any other programmer.

) I am well aware that there's a bunch of academics who jerk each other
) off about NP completeness. But the problem is that the USE of their
) work becomes impossible if it uses terminology in a different way.

Who's using terminology in a different way ?  You are.

) Of course, you could (and you'd be in the best traditions of usenet)
) provide a precis of what you know about NP completeness to my benefit
) and to the benefit of the group as a whole. But I expect you won't.
) Some other pedant might have memorized a different text-book, and you
) are AFRAID of him.

I could also simply post an URL of a very nice description of
NP-completeness, which I found at the same place I found the definition of
'polynomial'.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NP-Problem.html


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

"Joe \"Nuke Me Xemu\" Foster" <joe@bftsi0.UUCP> wrote in message news:<1070868596.373141@news-1.nethere.net>...
> "Willem" <willem@stack.nl> wrote in message <news:slrnbt76k4.oii.willem@toad.stack.nl>...
> 
> > Edward wrote:
> > )> You don't seem to know what NP-complete means.
> > )> But for a laugh, could you describe the 'formula' for the efficiency of a
> > )> tokenizer with "nonpolynomially complete" behaviour ?
> > )
> > ) If the formula as a function of the number of input symbols is not a
> > ) polynomial, such that its major operator is multiplication or power,
> > ) then the tokenizer slows down as the number of inputs grows.
> > )
> > ) A polynomial is a sum of terms: a nonpolynomial is a product or power
> > ) expression.
> >
> > You don't even seem to know what polynomial means.
> > A polynomial is a mathematical expression involving a sum of powers in one
> > or more variables multiplied by coefficients.
> > (Quoted from a mathematics dictionary)
> >
> > The term 'nonpolynomial' seems to be some kind of invention on your part.
> > As a hint: 'NP' does *not* stand for 'nonpolynomial'.
> 
> ...unless he wants to prove it :-)  (See the middle of section 7)
> 
>  URL:http://db.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o/comp-faq/faq.html
> 
> > ) If the tokenizer repeatedly parses the entire string for each token
> > ) request then its behavior is of course nonpolynomial as a function of
> > ) the number of requests.
> >
> > If the tokenizer repeatedly parses the entire string, then the time
> > complexity is quadratic, or at worst cubic.  Which *is* polynomial.
> 
> ...or maybe he's (mis)using a GLR parser to tokenize?
> 
> > ) I am willing to admit that as an autodidact with some CS graduate
> > ) school, who is concerned with the context-free way in which "experts"
> > ) learn, and then fail to apply, isolated topics, my way of phrasing my
> > ) understanding may be unfamiliar.
> 
> EGN, you are Humpty Dumpty, and I claim my five pounds!
> 
> "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,
> "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
> -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"

This quote is overused. It is overused against anything like language
creativity.

I need to avoid a practical problem which other developers ignore.
This is that their "efficient" code, written in a world of folk-lore,
doesn't scale up properly.

In fact, the existence of the theory FAQ means that I can get precise
terminology on an as-needed basis when I need to communicate with
people who aren't thugs and buffoons.

What I find is that actual systems are written using folk-lore and
then waste thousands of man-hours when applied to real data sets.

The original poster had a context-free understanding of an unapplied
specialty. For this reason, his knowledge is probably very fragile and
would not survive a change in terminology. My loose talk filled the
guy with anguish for this reason.

> 
> > You may want to learn what terms like 'polynomial', 'nondeterministic',
> > 'exponential', 'NP-complete' and 'time complexity' mean.  Otherwise, your
> > 'way of phrasing' is just plain wrong.

What's interesting is that I did not use the words "nondeterministic",
"exponential", or "time complexity" at all! I made reference to
complexity theory and I said it has relevance to lexical analysis
because of its generality.
> 
> Perhaps he is merely trying to meld Dadaism with computer science?
> 
>  URL:http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame83.html

Edward wrote:
) I need to avoid a practical problem which other developers ignore.
) This is that their "efficient" code, written in a world of folk-lore,
) doesn't scale up properly.

An accusation without proof.

) What I find is that actual systems are written using folk-lore and
) then waste thousands of man-hours when applied to real data sets.

That's because most actual systems are written by people who took a few CS
courses and are mostly autodidact.  They taught themselves a bit of
programming in some easy-to-use language, such as VB or java, and then used
their people skills to get hired for real programming jobs.

) The original poster had a context-free understanding of an unapplied
) specialty. For this reason, his knowledge is probably very fragile and
) would not survive a change in terminology. My loose talk filled the
) guy with anguish for this reason.

You can't just change around terminology without saying what you have
changed.  If you use words with well-established meanings, then people will
assume you are using them with those meanings.  If you use them
differently, that's your fault and your fault alone.

)> > You may want to learn what terms like 'polynomial', 'nondeterministic',
)> > 'exponential', 'NP-complete' and 'time complexity' mean.  Otherwise, your
)> > 'way of phrasing' is just plain wrong.
)
) What's interesting is that I did not use the words "nondeterministic",
) "exponential", or "time complexity" at all! I made reference to
) complexity theory and I said it has relevance to lexical analysis
) because of its generality.

I don't care if you used them or not.  If you want to be able to talk to
other people about the efficiency of algorithms, you had better know what
all those words mean.


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

"Willem" <willem@stack.nl> wrote in message <news:slrnbt8sg3.n6m.willem@toad.stack.nl>...

> Edward wrote:
> ) I need to avoid a practical problem which other developers ignore.
> ) This is that their "efficient" code, written in a world of folk-lore,
> ) doesn't scale up properly.
>
> An accusation without proof.

There's no way to win in Nilges-Land.  Present code demonstrating an
algorithm by itself, and EGN will claim the "moronCode" "doesn't work"
or "doesn't scale up properly".  Proceed to give him a test driver
showing that it in fact *does* work, and he'll go on to decry how the
"garbage" test driver "grabs ten million bytes" from the very mouths
of starving children of day labourers from Bangladesh.  Or something.

> ) What I find is that actual systems are written using folk-lore and
> ) then waste thousands of man-hours when applied to real data sets.
>
> That's because most actual systems are written by people who took a few CS
> courses and are mostly autodidact.  They taught themselves a bit of
> programming in some easy-to-use language, such as VB or java, and then used
> their people skills to get hired for real programming jobs.

And then people who actually know what they're doing have to come in
and clean up the mess, costing businesses and their employees a whole
lot more than if they had hired the competent person in the first place,
rather than fall for blather, name-dropping, and low-balled bids from
some nutjob "software factory".

> ) The original poster had a context-free understanding of an unapplied
> ) specialty. For this reason, his knowledge is probably very fragile and
> ) would not survive a change in terminology. My loose talk filled the
> ) guy with anguish for this reason.
>
> You can't just change around terminology without saying what you have
> changed.  If you use words with well-established meanings, then people will
> assume you are using them with those meanings.  If you use them
> differently, that's your fault and your fault alone.

In his war on ability, competence, and jargon necessary to communicate
anything to one's cow-orkers while the sun's still shining, apparently
we're all supposed to conform to *EGN's* language definitions du jour.

> )> > You may want to learn what terms like 'polynomial', 'nondeterministic',
> )> > 'exponential', 'NP-complete' and 'time complexity' mean.  Otherwise, your
> )> > 'way of phrasing' is just plain wrong.
> )
> ) What's interesting is that I did not use the words "nondeterministic",
> ) "exponential", or "time complexity" at all! I made reference to
> ) complexity theory and I said it has relevance to lexical analysis
> ) because of its generality.
>
> I don't care if you used them or not.  If you want to be able to talk to
> other people about the efficiency of algorithms, you had better know what
> all those words mean.

Those words mean whatever EGN thinks they mean at that one particular
moment in time.  Thus, he feels free to toss around "complexity theory"
and "NP" without any reference whatsoever to "nondeterministic", "time
complexity", or "exponential".  Terms are merely the half-digested corn
kernels in EGN's chronic verbal diarrhea.

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>     Greed = God? <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

In article <1070891887.561160@news-1.nethere.net>, "Joe \"Nuke Me Xemu\" 
Foster" <joe@bftsi0.UUCP> says...
> There's no way to win in Nilges-Land.  Present code demonstrating an
> algorithm by itself, and EGN will claim the "moronCode" "doesn't work"
> or "doesn't scale up properly".  Proceed to give him a test driver
> showing that it in fact *does* work, and he'll go on to decry how the
> "garbage" test driver "grabs ten million bytes" from the very mouths
> of starving children of day labourers from Bangladesh.  Or something.

Head.  Stick in sand.  Wiggle your butt.  

> > That's because most actual systems are written by people who took a few CS
> > courses and are mostly autodidact.  They taught themselves a bit of
> > programming in some easy-to-use language, such as VB or java, and then used
> > their people skills to get hired for real programming jobs.
> 
> And then people who actually know what they're doing have to come in
> and clean up the mess, costing businesses and their employees a whole
> lot more than if they had hired the competent person in the first place,
> rather than fall for blather, name-dropping, and low-balled bids from
> some nutjob "software factory".

True. However, the one "good thing" to be found here, is the fee for
bailing out a company that has been hosed in the manner above is 
usually better than the normal one.  :-)

> Terms are merely the half-digested corn kernels in EGN's chronic 
> verbal diarrhea.

He does appear to have a need to dispense words at 3.14 X the normal
rate or higher, eh?

-- 
Randy Howard            _o     
2reply remove FOOBAR    \<,    
______________________()/ ()______________________________________________
SCO Spam-magnet: postmaster@sco.com

In article <f5dda427.0312080424.502aeb79@posting.google.com>, spinoza1111
@yahoo.com says...
> > EGN, you are Humpty Dumpty, and I claim my five pounds!
> > 
> > "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,
> > "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
> > -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"
> 
> This quote is overused. It is overused against anything like language
> creativity.

Perhaps, but this is the first time I have seen it used on Usenet,
and I've been reading various groups for at least 10 years.  Perhaps
I don't hang out in the same ones you do and your posting style causes 
people to dredge this out to use against you.  It certainly seems
apropos from what I've read so far.
 
> I need to avoid a practical problem which other developers ignore.
> This is that their "efficient" code, written in a world of folk-lore,
> doesn't scale up properly.

All "efficient code" doesn't scale properly?  Could you post a single
practical example (which will compile) and your alternative that is
suppposedly more scalable and will also compile?  I'd like to see
first hand precisely the types of problem you are worried about.

Also, I suspect that your idea of a "developer" and mine differ
substantially.

> In fact, the existence of the theory FAQ means that I can get precise
> terminology on an as-needed basis when I need to communicate with
> people who aren't thugs and buffoons.

I suspect you consider "thugs" and "buffoons" to be precise terms?
If so, you apply them after NOT using precise terminology and getting
called on it?  Perhaps this is self-fulfilling for you in some sense?

> What I find is that actual systems are written using folk-lore and
> then waste thousands of man-hours when applied to real data sets.

Name three specific examples of "folk-lore" composed systems which
waste thousands of man-hours.  Or perhaps, your definition of
"man-hour" is biased by the amount of time it takes you to make
forward progress?

-- 
Randy Howard            _o     
2reply remove FOOBAR    \<,    
______________________()/ ()______________________________________________
SCO Spam-magnet: postmaster@sco.com

"Randy Howard" <randy.howard@FOOmegapathdslBAR.net> wrote in message <news:MPG.1a3e5d3cb9ba3ced98998a@news.megapathdsl.net>...

> In article <f5dda427.0312080424.502aeb79@posting.google.com>, spinoza1111
> @yahoo.com says...
> > > EGN, you are Humpty Dumpty, and I claim my five pounds!
> > >
> > > "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,
> > > "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
> > > -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"
> >
> > This quote is overused. It is overused against anything like language
> > creativity.
>
> Perhaps, but this is the first time I have seen it used on Usenet,
> and I've been reading various groups for at least 10 years.  Perhaps
> I don't hang out in the same ones you do and your posting style causes
> people to dredge this out to use against you.  It certainly seems
> apropos from what I've read so far.

I've used it against EGN once or twice before.  It's also effective
against Micro$hills.  Feel free to use it in good health.  =)

> > I need to avoid a practical problem which other developers ignore.
> > This is that their "efficient" code, written in a world of folk-lore,
> > doesn't scale up properly.
>
> All "efficient code" doesn't scale properly?  Could you post a single
> practical example (which will compile) and your alternative that is
> suppposedly more scalable and will also compile?  I'd like to see
> first hand precisely the types of problem you are worried about.

Split.  He rails against Split, perhaps because he also hallucinates
that most programs read multi-GB files into one enormous string, then
call Split on that string, perhaps multiple times, within loops, while
EGN's big 'innovation' is to grab one token at a time, preferably with
a string concatenation within its inner loop.  This is EGN's idea of a
"sentinel", which easily bloats ordinary string tokenizing to O(n**3).

> Also, I suspect that your idea of a "developer" and mine differ
> substantially.

I gather EGN and John Nash both see "developers" no one else can see.

> > In fact, the existence of the theory FAQ means that I can get precise
> > terminology on an as-needed basis when I need to communicate with
> > people who aren't thugs and buffoons.
>
> I suspect you consider "thugs" and "buffoons" to be precise terms?
> If so, you apply them after NOT using precise terminology and getting
> called on it?  Perhaps this is self-fulfilling for you in some sense?

Terminology means *precisely* whatever EGN alone decides it means.

> > What I find is that actual systems are written using folk-lore and
> > then waste thousands of man-hours when applied to real data sets.
>
> Name three specific examples of "folk-lore" composed systems which
> waste thousands of man-hours.  Or perhaps, your definition of
> "man-hour" is biased by the amount of time it takes you to make
> forward progress?

..NET's garbage collector?  Many C compiler vendors' malloc libraries?
EGN's "powerString", assuming anyone's dumb enough to actually use it?
Micro$haft's typical QuickSort implementations?  Hell, Microslop in
general qualifies, if you count the time people stare at bluescreens!

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>  DC8s in Spaace: <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

In article <1070902732.17581@news-1.nethere.net>, "Joe \"Nuke Me Xemu\" 
Foster" <joe@bftsi0.UUCP> says...
> I've used it against EGN once or twice before.  It's also effective
> against Micro$hills.  Feel free to use it in good health.  =)

Are you in charge of the Lewis Carroll trust fund?  :-)

> Split.  He rails against Split, perhaps because he also hallucinates
> that most programs read multi-GB files into one enormous string, then
> call Split on that string, perhaps multiple times, within loops, 

For crying out loud.  It's a command utility.  It's also open source.
It's not intended for manipulating the IRS database.  

> EGN's big 'innovation' is to grab one token at a time, preferably with
> a string concatenation within its inner loop.  This is EGN's idea of a
> "sentinel", which easily bloats ordinary string tokenizing to O(n**3).

Ugh.

> I gather EGN and John Nash both see "developers" no one else can see.

ROFLMAO.

> > Name three specific examples of "folk-lore" composed systems which
> > waste thousands of man-hours.  Or perhaps, your definition of
> > "man-hour" is biased by the amount of time it takes you to make
> > forward progress?
> 
> .NET's garbage collector?  Many C compiler vendors' malloc libraries?
> EGN's "powerString", assuming anyone's dumb enough to actually use it?
> Micro$haft's typical QuickSort implementations?  Hell, Microslop in
> general qualifies, if you count the time people stare at bluescreens!

I'm still trying to gather what he means by "folk-lore" composed.  I 
suppose it's some allegation that research and theory are not nearly
as good as hack and slash by a wannabe.

You seem to be implying that any inefficient implementation is "folk-
lore".  I don't suppose it really matters much, I was just curious
about what he was specifically railing against.

-- 
Randy Howard            _o     
2reply remove FOOBAR    \<,    
______________________()/ ()______________________________________________
SCO Spam-magnet: postmaster@sco.com

In article <f5dda427.0312072143.605c8c2f@posting.google.com>, spinoza1111
@yahoo.com says...
> My competence isn't self-evident ...

Truly.

-- 
Randy Howard            _o     
2reply remove FOOBAR    \<,    
______________________()/ ()______________________________________________
SCO Spam-magnet: postmaster@sco.com

"Randy Howard" <randy.howard@FOOmegapathdslBAR.net> wrote in message <news:MPG.1a3ee81c5be17df298998e@news.megapathdsl.net>...

> In article <1070902732.17581@news-1.nethere.net>, "Joe \"Nuke Me Xemu\"
> Foster" <joe@bftsi0.UUCP> says...
> > I've used it against EGN once or twice before.  It's also effective
> > against Micro$hills.  Feel free to use it in good health.  =)
>
> Are you in charge of the Lewis Carroll trust fund?  :-)

If I was, wouldn't I be trying to collect royalties, instead of
posting his work for free on Usenet, thereby stealing food from
the very mouths of his heirs?  >=)

> > Split.  He rails against Split, perhaps because he also hallucinates
> > that most programs read multi-GB files into one enormous string, then
> > call Split on that string, perhaps multiple times, within loops,
>
> For crying out loud.  It's a command utility.  It's also open source.
> It's not intended for manipulating the IRS database.

At the time I tangled with him, EGN was on a crusade against the
Split in Visual Basic 6.0, which is also not intended for the IRS
database, especially if it's sucked into one huge string, which
itself is a heuristic of a different colorability...

> > EGN's big 'innovation' is to grab one token at a time, preferably with
> > a string concatenation within its inner loop.  This is EGN's idea of a
> > "sentinel", which easily bloats ordinary string tokenizing to O(n**3).
>
> Ugh.

I forgot to mention his "folk-lore optimization" of reallocating
the array of matched tokens during each and every iteration.  Does
that help any?

> > I gather EGN and John Nash both see "developers" no one else can see.
>
> ROFLMAO.

At least John Nash has learned to ignore the invisible Martians.
EGN, on the other hand, still threatens to have them "silence"
people he doesn't like.  Too bad the invisibility serum quaffed
by EGN's invisible Martian death squads has the unfortunate side
effect of rendering them completely ineffective against anyone
who fails to believe in them...

> > > Name three specific examples of "folk-lore" composed systems which
> > > waste thousands of man-hours.  Or perhaps, your definition of
> > > "man-hour" is biased by the amount of time it takes you to make
> > > forward progress?
> >
> > .NET's garbage collector?  Many C compiler vendors' malloc libraries?
> > EGN's "powerString", assuming anyone's dumb enough to actually use it?
> > Micro$haft's typical QuickSort implementations?  Hell, Microslop in
> > general qualifies, if you count the time people stare at bluescreens!
>
> I'm still trying to gather what he means by "folk-lore" composed.  I
> suppose it's some allegation that research and theory are not nearly
> as good as hack and slash by a wannabe.
>
> You seem to be implying that any inefficient implementation is "folk-
> lore".  I don't suppose it really matters much, I was just curious
> about what he was specifically railing against.

Not only inefficient, but also uncritically cloned from somewhere,
just because "everyone does it that way", like MSFT's Quacksorts or
the .NET garbage collector cloned from Java, bugs and all.  It took
a very long time for most C compilers to include reasonable malloc
libraries, despite their known poor performance and the availability
of better ones:

 URL:http://kt.zork.net/kde/kde20010331_4.html#7

Then of course there's the usual chimp-code for calculating some
fundamental statistics using floating-point arithmetic.  Microslop
is far from the only offender here:

 URL:http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=209839

Hmm, what happens to RSum and RAvg if the first element they
encounter is much larger than all the rest, no matter how large
the sum of all but the first element might be?  In RStDev and
RStDevP, what is the usual result of subtracting two potentially
large numbers to get what might be a relatively small difference?
Numerically stable methods have been floating around for decades!

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>  "Regged" again? <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

Joe "Nuke Me Xemu" Foster wrote:

> "Randy Howard" <randy.howard@FOOmegapathdslBAR.net> wrote in message
> <news:MPG.1a3ee81c5be17df298998e@news.megapathdsl.net>...
> 
>> In article <1070902732.17581@news-1.nethere.net>, "Joe \"Nuke Me Xemu\"
>> Foster" <joe@bftsi0.UUCP> says...
> 
>> > Split.  He rails against Split, perhaps because he also hallucinates
>> > that most programs read multi-GB files into one enormous string, then
>> > call Split on that string, perhaps multiple times, within loops,
>>
>> For crying out loud.  It's a command utility.  It's also open source.
>> It's not intended for manipulating the IRS database.
> 
> At the time I tangled with him, EGN was on a crusade against the
> Split in Visual Basic 6.0, which is also not intended for the IRS
> database, especially if it's sucked into one huge string, which
> itself is a heuristic of a different colorability...

If he doesn't like the language feature (or indeed the entire language), 
there is no need for him to use it.

>> > EGN's big 'innovation' is to grab one token at a time, preferably with
>> > a string concatenation within its inner loop.  This is EGN's idea of a
>> > "sentinel", which easily bloats ordinary string tokenizing to O(n**3).
>>
>> Ugh.
> 
> I forgot to mention his "folk-lore optimization" of reallocating
> the array of matched tokens during each and every iteration.  Does
> that help any?

Well, O(n^3) is pretty sick already, but reallocating linearly can certainly 
slow it down some more. It is trivial, of course, to reallocate 
exponentially (for some reasonably low multiplier, obviously: 1.5 is 
common), but only when you're about to be out of space.

>> > I gather EGN and John Nash both see "developers" no one else can see.
>>
>> ROFLMAO.
> 
> At least John Nash has learned to ignore the invisible Martians.

I think the saddest aspect of all this Nilges nonsense is that it leads to 
statements like these. John Nash does not deserve to be mocked in public 
just because Nilges likes to name-drop.

> EGN, on the other hand, still threatens to have them "silence"
> people he doesn't like.  Too bad the invisibility serum quaffed
> by EGN's invisible Martian death squads has the unfortunate side
> effect of rendering them completely ineffective against anyone
> who fails to believe in them...
 
Ah, I wondered what I was doing wrong. 

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0312050407.441a1b06@posting.google.com>...

<snipped>

> possible solutions over time is profoundly unprofessional. Therefore,
> advocating C for new development is a mark of incompetence because
> even if the C program is written according to quality guidelines,
> nothing keeps some bozo (or for that matter someone like me, who has
> abandoned C for several years) from creating a new member of the
> solution set with flaws, owing to C's "power".

do you mean to say that nothing keeps the maintainer from 
royally screwing up the solution in C ?

and what is it precisely about other languages that stops
someone coming along and royally screwing up the original
code ?

hmm ?

<snipped>

goose

spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0312050407.441a1b06@posting.google.com>...

<snipped>

> possible solutions over time is profoundly unprofessional. Therefore,
> advocating C for new development is a mark of incompetence because
> even if the C program is written according to quality guidelines,
> nothing keeps some bozo (or for that matter someone like me, who has
> abandoned C for several years) from creating a new member of the
> solution set with flaws, owing to C's "power".

do you mean to say that nothing keeps the maintainer from 
royally screwing up the solution in C ?

and what is it precisely about other languages that stops
someone coming along and royally screwing up the original
code ?

hmm ?

<snipped>

goose

Calum wrote:

I'm answering as I read, so someone may have already addressed this...

> I have not been following this thread very carefully.  Is the task
> to search a document for a word?  You do it by indexing the
> document, he does it by a simple search?

Not exactly.  Last year+, Ed dropped by to tout the advantages of
a language like VB over C.  Discussion led to, "Well, prove your
point.  Let's see some code."

To demonstrate the imagined superiority of VB over C, Ed used an
existing VB function--just a string tokenizer--he had and made an
ill-advised attempt to render it in C to illustrate just why C
is so bad.

Unfortunately, Ed's C ability turned out to be more rust than
metal, and his code was universally reviled.  When he presented
his VB code, that, too, was not received with the adoration Ed
expected.

In fact, his C program contained crashable errors of coding (an
error I believe to be mainly a typo, since he did it correctly
in another spot, but his writing style was--IMO--so opaque that
it was hard to spot the error) AS WELL AS serious errors in the
design and how it handled data.

His VB program worked better (VB is harder to crash!), but also
turned out to have errors of design such that it does not handle
tokenizing a string correctly.  I'll ask you the question I've
asked Ed repeatedly (with no acknoweldgement):

How many comma-delimited tokens *should* be in:

	"Well,, This, Is, Fun,"

Ed's VB "PowerString" class would say five.  (I say six.)

(Actually, the answer depends on delimiter compression...if you
are compressing delimiters, the answers are four and five.)

Anyway, I re-wrote Ed's C code--for which he never forgave me--
spotted the errors and presented two corrected versions.  Also
several C versions using different designs.  I also whipped up
a couple VB examples, and my VB examples blew the doors off his
VB class (yet had the exact same functionality).

So, basic task was just a string tokenizer.  One COULD pass an
entire document for tokenizing.  Distinguishing features were:
ability to specify a set of delimiter tokens, ability to specify
delimiter compression or not, and not parsing the string until
a token in the unparsed part was requested.


>> I have an essentially verbal, and some may say verbose,
>> understanding of the problem. [...]
>>
>> This is because without knowing it, they are engaged in a
>> postmodern attack on language itself, far more serious
>> than the attack neoconservatives think is being made.
> 
> They are probably objecting to excessive verbiage (aka waffle).
> Why use a hundred words when ten will do?

Speaking only for myself, my only perception of Ed's verbosity
is that he uses it as a smoke screen to disguise his lack of
real understanding.  You know the old saying, "If you can't
dazzle'm with brilliance, baffle'm with BS."  Ed's a baffler.

This has been demonstrated over and over.  Just check out his
little performance with regard to NP-complete.

What he's never caught on to is that people *here* aren't fooled
by that sort of song-n-dance.  When you really *do* understand
something, it's very obvious to you when someone else doesn't.


> You object to jargon?  This is one of the main objections "artists"
> have of "scientists".  They claim that scientists deliberately
> obfuscate their work in order to perputuate their "superiority".

An the scientists, in turn, think a lot of that artistic talk about
motion and mood is just as exclusive.

ALL groups have a language of "shorthand" lexical icons they use
to make communication efficient and accurate.

But it is exclusionary *ONLY* to the extent a newbie is unwilling
to learn it.  IME, most groups welcome newbies with a genuine
interest in joining.

> Artists feel left out simply because they do not have the
> background to fully appreciate an exchange between scientists,
> and are doubly frustrated since scientists can usually follow
> the gist of what artists are talking about.

Only because the artists are linked more heavily to everyday
human experience, I think.  Compare that to archeologists and
other "everyday" scientists, and I think you'll find a match.

When you really start getting into leading edge art or science,
I think you'll find both groups have a language and concept set
all their own.  And needfully so!


>> Chris Sonnack presented some interesting numbers. But I have no
>> way of auditing those numbers. He may have made some stupid error.
> 
> But surely you could ask him for the source code instead of
> attacking him?

And, indeed, such were provided when those numbers were first posted.
They can easily be provided again.


>> "My code is simple: you code is [way too] complex" is narcissism
>> pure and simple.
> 
> Striving for simplicity is not narcism.  An overly complicated
> solution is probably slower and contains more bugs, and takes
> longer to write and maintain.  Programmers should strive for
> simplicity.

Indeed!!  Isn't simplicity a primary criterion of the Engineering
ineffable "Elegance"?

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

Randy Howard wrote:

> I'm still trying to gather what he means by "folk-lore" composed.

I told him it was stupid to put an unnecessary String concatenation
inside a loop.  I also demonstrated the problem with working VB
code.

He termed it "folk-lore".

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> I am saying that you and Chris Sonnack have deliberately
> obfuscated the issues by creating links to discussions,
> including your time-wasting hostility.

Heh.  Most people consider additional information helpful.

I can see why you'd find it scary, though.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> I am also reminded in this connection of Chris' claim that
> software complexity theory does not relate, to tokenizers.

Wrong again.

My claim was that you don't know what NP or NP-complete means
and that they don't apply to a problem as trivial as parsing
a string (which in most cases can be done in O(n) time).

You've shown us all the former is embarrassingly true.
Care to shoot for 2-outta-2?

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

goose wrote:

> and what is it precisely about other languages that stops
> someone coming along and royally screwing up the original
> code ?

MAGIC!!!

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

Willem wrote:

> Wow, my very first reply to you, and you already have to use
> insults to back up your arguments.

Welcome to Ed's World.

The sky is the most bizarre shade of ... what IS that color anyway??

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> [..."reasoning" snipped...]
>
> Chris Sonnack's numbers show what may be but probably isn't a
> problem in this reasoning,

The problem is not the reasoning--which, since no hash tables
were used in the software under discussion, is moot anyway--
but with your (error-ridden) design and (slow) implementation.

The reason for both errors appears to be--as far as I can tell--
ignorance of design issues and of your tools.  The simple fact
of the matter is--with very little effort--I wrote counter-
example that blew the doors off your precious PowerString POC.


> ...my main concern in the real world is not some absolute
> efficiency of a specific program, but the efficiency "trace",
> the efficiency "footprint" of a family of related solutions,...

No comment.  It was just so ... unique ... I had to quote it.
(It's such a great example of your ability to BS.)


> I was not completely happy with the usual solution to this problem
> which is to transform all the words once and for all into an array,
> because in real applications the words "on the left" are usually
> more important. A financial news text coming over a wire and being
> parsed for words of interest to the user such as "money", "stocks",
> "equity", and "prison time", might not always be completely read,
> and the appearance of words to the left is more important.

I would disagree with this reasoning, because you cannot insure that
words of interest are not "on the right" until you read them.  Thus,
in most real world applications, you do end up parsing all the words.

(In fact, it is highly unusual--in my Real World experience--to ever
tokenize *part* of a string, but I cannot claim to having worked in
all possible domains).

> [...S*N*I*P...]
> 
> Chris Sonnack presented some interesting numbers. But I have no
> way of auditing those numbers. He may have made some stupid error.

All source code was presented along with those numbers.  If you
failed to investigate the situation, you have only yourself to
blame.  Source code is still available upon request.


> I was trying in fact to show how bad C sucks. This is because it
> completely obscures the difference between code with state and
> code without state.

No, this is more of your BS.  ALL code has state of some sort, so
there is no such this as "code without state".  You seem to be
complaining that C lacks classes (or their equal) as a mechanism
of encapsulating "state".  That may be so, but C doesn't claim
to provide such a mechanism, nor does such a mechanism guarentee
safety from bad code.

> If you create an array or cache in the C parser, you have to finger
> out where to put it.  If you put it in "open code" outside of any
> function [...] you have a New Thing which needs RAM and which
> within this RAM develops a state.

(Word: "open code" == "file scope"  If you use the proper terms,
you won't have to explain what you mean to everyone.)

This is the same in any language any time you need to allocate an
object.  You seem to be complaining that C requires you to know
a little more about what you're doing.

Consider a language like Java or VB with garbage collection.  What
is the state of the object I just finished using?  Is it still
around in some fashion?  Who knows?  Answer: NO ONE!

> This Thing becomes responsible for managing different strings from
> different callers. Over and above the individual cache for a string
> it is responsible for storing and looking up different input
> strings.
> 
> Whereas there's a one-to-one relationship, tightly coupled, between
> a PowerString instance and its string.

One can easily implement a solution in C that also couples the data
with its instance.  In fact, that would often be preferred.

The problem, Ed, is that you are criticizing something you do not
truly understand or have any real skill with.  The only thing your
efforts have *clearly* demonstrated is that *you* shouldn't use C.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

>> Why would NP behavior have anything to do with tokenizing input?
> 
> HAHAHA

Ha, ha, ha, yourself.  You've embarrassed yourself pretty badly
over this one.  No dinner for you tonight.

> This is the reduction to absurdity of "relevance" for OF COURSE,
> nonpolynomially complete behavior has plenty to do with tokenizing
> input.

"nonpolynomially complete" ... HAHAHA!!

> A tokenizer algorithm has a formula for its efficiency.

Indeed.  And it will likely be a linear one.  For most tokenizers,
it *should* be O(N).


>> 2. These tests were not of your C attempt.  That was so broken
>>    that testing it would have humiliated it.  The tests were for
>>    your favored child, PowerString.  *I* whipped up a couple of
>>    quick versions that *all* blew the doors off your PS.
>
> oooooo I am so impressed.

The only thing that should impress you is your potential to improve,
grow and learn.

>> 3. Yours PowerString performs like a dog not because of a mere
>>    flaw in the code, but because of deeply broken design decisions
>>    that reflect an apparent lack of understanding of VB.  For
>>    example, I seem to recall a totally *unnecessary* string concat
>>    inside an inner loop.
>
> I've laid this turkey of an issue to rest, but here goes.

Wrong then, wrong now...

> In older and less optimized versions of the now completely obsolete
> run-time interpreter for Visual Basic versions 6 and before,...

(RT Interpreter?  VB has compiled to native code since, what, VB4?)

> ..occasionally, string concatenation inside a loop was marginally
> inefficient....

If you were anywhere close to being as smart as you believe you are,
you wouldn't need it explained that string cat operations--in any
language--on any platform--are **always** a speed issue and to be
avoided **if** **possible**.

That is, the requirement of allocating new space and moving the two
strings to it--whether you do it yourself (e.g. C) or the language
does it under the hood (e.g. VB)--is **always** significant enough
to consider during algorithm design.

The problem with a language, like VB, is that it allows less than ept
programmers to ignore these things.

> ...but typically in a way that is fully overshadowed by the end
> user's needs....

Pure Nigles BS at its best (or is that worst?).  The user has no
"need" for ***unnecessary*** string cats.

> I have the very good habit, which you need to learn, "Programmer"
> "Dude", of writing self-verifiying code in the sense that inspection
> provides assurance of its behavior.

I prefer to do unit tests during development, regression tests as
the product builds, and "full scope" tests once it's working.  That
eliminates the need for the code to verify itself constantly.

> Therefore I accept the modicum of inefficiency implicit in an inner
> concat,...

What you fail to recognize is that an improved design removes the need
and takes away none of your requirements.  BS all you like, Ed.  The
fact is, your algorithm design was naive.  For someone who claims to
have been a working programmer for so long, it was embarrassing.

> This nonsense about it being a major crime to concat in a loop is an
> urban legend...

No, simple fact.

> It is at best a subcase of a more general rule, which is that "tight"
> loops should not contain "expensive" operations IF they are not
> necessary.

And as I've said over and over, it wasn't.  I *showed* you how to
achive the same result--in all specifics--without it.  All it takes
is an open mind, a little intelligence and a willingness to learn.

>>> Are you up to it? You might learn a thing or two. I will reply to
>>> any post that contains zero personal abuse.
>>
>> Fine, go for it.  Let's see what you can do.
> 
> This post contains personal abuse.

Hypocrite.  I knew you'd weasel out of it.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> Its x**n, which is x**n+0, which is technically polynomial.

x^n is already a polynomial.


> By polynomial' (polynomial prime) I mean polynomials of sufficiently
> low rank.

[snicker]  You do realize you're talking to people who really DO
understand this stuff, don't you?  And we know you're just making
this stuff up.


> x**2 can be mathematically transformed by a degenerate operation into
> a polynomial by adding zero.

It already is.  Polynomials have the basic form:  ax^0 + bx^1 + cx^2
.....
If any of the constants (a, b, ...) are zero, that term vanishes.
If any constant is one, that term reduces to x^n.

Basic HS algebra, Ed.


> Chris on the other hand believes that you can "do" tokenizing without
> having the courage to apply the theory,..

Wrong again.  It's *because* I do understand the theory that my versions
blew the doors off yours (AND were far more maintainable and readable).

> Chris wants to run benchmarks and he thinks they prove things.

In this case they proved that your code sucked.
Other tests demonstrated that it was, in fact, broken in design.


-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FD6553D.E86B4360@Sonnack.com>...
> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
> 
> > Its x**n, which is x**n+0, which is technically polynomial.
> 
> x^n is already a polynomial.
> 
> 
> > By polynomial' (polynomial prime) I mean polynomials of sufficiently
> > low rank.
> 
> [snicker]  You do realize you're talking to people who really DO
> understand this stuff, don't you?  And we know you're just making
> this stuff up.

[snickerdoodle]: see below
> 
> 
> > x**2 can be mathematically transformed by a degenerate operation into
> > a polynomial by adding zero.
> 
> It already is.  Polynomials have the basic form:  ax^0 + bx^1 + cx^2


HA HA HA HA HA 

Wolfram research: "A polynomial is a mathematical expression involving
a sum of powers in one or more variables multiplied by coefficients."


In this definition, the polynomial is not restricted to rank 2.

I find you a most amusing fellow. Just before you were thrown out of
high school, like my former classmate Ted Nugent, you were probably
working on the subset of polynomials of rank 2.

 

> ....
> If any of the constants (a, b, ...) are zero, that term vanishes.
> If any constant is one, that term reduces to x^n.
> 
> Basic HS algebra, Ed.

Which you haven't mastered.

To the ignorant, the use of concepts in a manner independent of
authority is either wrong or so basic as to be beneath contempt: but
this is merely a symptom, of the way in which a class-based society
really needs people, including "programmer" "dudes", to learn just
enough to perform some job...and NO more.

As a result, these people are gratified to "receive" a Medicare bill
that "provides" prescription drug coverage on alternate Tuesdays
during a gibbous moon.

As a result, 70% of these people believe that Saddam Hussein is in
league with Osama bin Laden and Road Runner.

> 
> 
> > Chris on the other hand believes that you can "do" tokenizing without
> > having the courage to apply the theory,..
> 
> Wrong again.  It's *because* I do understand the theory that my versions
> blew the doors off yours (AND were far more maintainable and readable).

What understanding have you displayed above? You have made the
incorrect claim that "Polynomials have the basic form:  ax^0 + bx^1 +
cx^2".

Quite apart from your nonstandard notation, which lists the exponents
in the wrong order, you have made the WRONG STATEMENT that polynomials
are restricted to a highest power of two.

As a teacher, I could not ask you to write a C program for polynomial
addition. Your solution would be restricted to three terms and
probably would not even bother to sort the terms by rank. And I
shudder to think of how you'd handle unmatched exponents as are found
when adding ax^4+ax^2+c and bx^3+d+c.

[Hint: if you'd ever had to program a match merge you'd know how: but,
of course, now we done be gots SQL and Join so the outlook is bleak:
the prognosis is grim."

A polynomial, FYI, is of the form

     K(n)x^n ... K(2)x^2 + K(1)x^1 + K(0)x^0

where K(i) is a constant.

And if terms are missing, or the exponents are out of sequence, the
normalized expression is STILL a polynomial. Since ax^3 can be
transformed into normal form it is a polynomial. Since ax^(bx^3)
cannot be normalized it is not a polynomial.

The game in optimizing unacceptably slow code becomes (1) make sure
that the execution time formula maps to a polynomial of small rank n
and (2) reducing n to 1.

I am quite obliged to you for this post. You have giving me stunning
confirmation of your limitations and of the fact that many corporate
programmers are both math-anxious (where the anxiety emerges in
mathematical "flaming") and ignorant of math.

You have shown yourself, in fact, incapable of handling a symbolic
expression which contains iteration, since you were able only to
specify a polynomial of rank 2.

This error is of a piece with your claims about using Concat within a
loop, for your knowledge consists of insufficiently generalized
symbols and is in fact a tradesman's knowledge: the knowledge of an
officious and nasty little clerk whose world has become some little
office.

I would suggest that you buy and read Kolmgorov et al's book
Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning. First printed in the
Soviet Union in 1963, this book is accessible to the working man
because it is informed by a Marxist philosophy of mathematics which
realizes that mathematics is emergent from the struggle for existence,
which you may be losing.

This book has been reprinted by Dover and it shows how to use
mathematical symbols properly and in a way that can be applied to
practical problems.

As it is, you confirm's Willem's low regard for working people and
programmers.

For shame! For shame!
> 
> > Chris wants to run benchmarks and he thinks they prove things.
> 
> In this case they proved that your code sucked.
> Other tests demonstrated that it was, in fact, broken in design.

Programmer Dude wrote:
> Calum wrote:
> 
> > I have not been following this thread very carefully.  Is the
> > task to search a document for a word?  You do it by indexing
> > the document, he does it by a simple search?
> 
> Not exactly.  Last year+, Ed dropped by to tout the advantages
> of a language like VB over C.  Discussion led to, "Well, prove
> your point.  Let's see some code."
.... snip ...

I thought his name was Eddie <g,d,&r>

-- 
Chuck F (cbfalconer@yahoo.com) (cbfalconer@worldnet.att.net)
   Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
   <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>  USE worldnet address!

Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FD6553D.E86B4360@Sonnack.com>...
> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
> 
> > Its x**n, which is x**n+0, which is technically polynomial.
> 
> x^n is already a polynomial.
> 
> 
> > By polynomial' (polynomial prime) I mean polynomials of sufficiently
> > low rank.
> 
> [snicker]  You do realize you're talking to people who really DO
> understand this stuff, don't you?  And we know you're just making
> this stuff up.
> 
> 
> > x**2 can be mathematically transformed by a degenerate operation into
> > a polynomial by adding zero.
> 
> It already is.  Polynomials have the basic form:  ax^0 + bx^1 + cx^2
> ....

A correspondent to the group has suggested that Chris meant to use an
ellipsis which was word wrapped. Therefore, and because I do not hold
with the modal uncharity of this group, I will assume that Chris
"dude" understands that a polynomial can be of higher rank and did not
get thrown out of high school like my classmate Ted Nugent.

However:

(1) He listed the terms in the reverse of the way that is standard in
"basic HS algebra"

(2) His ellipsis should be three dots. It looks like random noise as
four dots.

(3) He did not proofread

Having created a culture of libel, Chris can only expect that I shall
respond, "in kind", limited only by the laws of war and the dictates
of humanity.

It also remains the case that if he'd known NP completeness, he would
not have proposed hard numbers in a benchmark as a proof.

I used PL/I some time ago to write polynomial addition in such a
manner that it normalized the polynomial. Hmm, I wonder if Chris is up
to the challenge? Some C code would prove his claims to having
understood polynomials.

Hint: you have an easier time if you know how to match files of
records.

> If any of the constants (a, b, ...) are zero, that term vanishes.
> If any constant is one, that term reduces to x^n.
> 
> Basic HS algebra, Ed.
> 
> 
> > Chris on the other hand believes that you can "do" tokenizing without
> > having the courage to apply the theory,..
> 
> Wrong again.  It's *because* I do understand the theory that my versions
> blew the doors off yours (AND were far more maintainable and readable).
> 
> > Chris wants to run benchmarks and he thinks they prove things.
> 
> In this case they proved that your code sucked.
> Other tests demonstrated that it was, in fact, broken in design.

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

>> Polynomials have the basic form:  ax^0 + bx^1 + cx^2 ...
> 
> HA HA HA HA HA
> 
> Wolfram research: "A polynomial is a mathematical expression
> involving a sum of powers in one or more variables multiplied
> by coefficients."
> 
> In this definition, the polynomial is not restricted to rank 2.

Of course not.  Your accuracy and attention to detail remains at
its usual low level.  You snipped (and I restored) the ellipses
that means the series continues.  

>> It's *because* I do understand the theory that my versions
>> blew the doors off yours (AND were far more maintainable
> and readable).
> 
> What understanding have you displayed above? You have made the
> incorrect claim that "Polynomials have the basic form:
>  ax^0 + bx^1 + cx^2".

Nope.  You just read it wrong.

> Quite apart from your nonstandard notation, which lists the
> exponents in the wrong order, you have made the WRONG STATEMENT
> that polynomials are restricted to a highest power of two.

Nope.  You just read it wrong.  As for the order, it *was*
deliberately reversed (not that it matters, as summation is
commutative) exactly so I could add ellipses at the end to
indicate a series.

> A polynomial, FYI, is of the form
> 
>      K(n)x^n ... K(2)x^2 + K(1)x^1 + K(0)x^0
> 
> where K(i) is a constant.

Yep.  That's another way to write the same thing.  I wasn't sure
you'd understand that more sophisticated notation, so I tried
to make it easier for you.  It seems that, in providing you with
something you didn't quite recognize, you failed to understand
it at all.

Ironically, you indulge in the same "go for the throat" attitude
you blame us for.  Shame that high moral ground is so elusive for
you, eh?  (And this is exactly why I name you Vile Hypocrite.)

> And if terms are missing, or the exponents are out of sequence,
> the normalized expression is STILL a polynomial.

Obviously.  That's why I felt free to reverse them from the
usual order.


Ed, I have to ask.  Why do you persist in a place where *everyone*
thinks you're a total idiot and utterly incompetent?  No one here
seems to have any shred of regard for you whatsoever, and it seems
this is true in other groups you've visited.  What do you get out
of this?  Is your life so empty and lonely that negative attention
is better than whatever else you have in your life?

I just don't get it.  If I got the response from people you do,
I'd be asking myself some very serious questions about why.  And
I sure don't think I'd hang out with people who had no regard
for me.

Why are you here?

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

Edward wrote:
)> > x**2 can be mathematically transformed by a degenerate operation into
)> > a polynomial by adding zero.
)> 
)> It already is.  Polynomials have the basic form:  ax^0 + bx^1 + cx^2

You snipped the ellipsis.  Deliberately, I assume.  Typical of your way to
deliberately misquote someone and then ridicule them over the misquote.

) Wolfram research: "A polynomial is a mathematical expression involving
) a sum of powers in one or more variables multiplied by coefficients."

Hey, that's, like, exactly the same definition as the one I gave, which you
claimed I memorized by rote.  Isn't it ironic that when I look up the
definition, you ridicule me, but then you yourself look up the exact same
definition ?

) To the ignorant, the use of concepts in a manner independent of
) authority is either wrong or so basic as to be beneath contempt:

You yourself are using different definitions and concepts.


) A polynomial, FYI, is of the form
)
)      K(n)x^n ... K(2)x^2 + K(1)x^1 + K(0)x^0
)
) where K(i) is a constant.

So that means that x^2 + y^2 is not a polynomial ?
Odd, I always thought that it was.

) And if terms are missing, or the exponents are out of sequence, the
) normalized expression is STILL a polynomial.

Nope, if terms are missing or terms are out of sequence, then it IS a
polynomial.  No need to transform anything.  Go read the definition thet
you yourself quoted above.


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

"CBFalconer" <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> wrote in message <news:3FD72F6A.D9179F5A@yahoo.com>...

> Programmer Dude wrote:
> > Calum wrote:
> >
> > > I have not been following this thread very carefully.  Is the
> > > task to search a document for a word?  You do it by indexing
> > > the document, he does it by a simple search?
> >
> > Not exactly.  Last year+, Ed dropped by to tout the advantages
> > of a language like VB over C.  Discussion led to, "Well, prove
> > your point.  Let's see some code."
> ... snip ...
>
> I thought his name was Eddie <g,d,&r>

"Special" Ed works just as well...

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>  DC8s in Spaace: <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

Edward wrote:
) It also remains the case that if he'd known NP completeness, he would
) not have proposed hard numbers in a benchmark as a proof.

NP completeness is a property of problems, not solutions.
As such, it has *nothing* to do with optimizing.


Oh, and about using concat in a loop and other rules of thumb:
These rules of thumb are consequeces of complexity theory.  Therefore,
anybody who understands the theory will automatically understand all
rules of thumb.  This also means that somebody who goes against such a
rule of thumb cannot possibly understand the theory.


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

"Willem" <willem@stack.nl> wrote in message <news:slrnbtei5c.1v85.willem@toad.stack.nl>...

> Edward wrote:
> ) It also remains the case that if he'd known NP completeness, he would
> ) not have proposed hard numbers in a benchmark as a proof.
>
> NP completeness is a property of problems, not solutions.
> As such, it has *nothing* to do with optimizing.

> Oh, and about using concat in a loop and other rules of thumb:
> These rules of thumb are consequeces of complexity theory.  Therefore,
> anybody who understands the theory will automatically understand all
> rules of thumb.  This also means that somebody who goes against such a
> rule of thumb cannot possibly understand the theory.

"Special" Ed's usual claim is that the dataflow optimizer should
take care of all this for him, despite the idea that a compiler's
output should have at least /some/ correspondence to the original
source code.  Perhaps EGN's HAL-9000 Optimizing Compiler can also
automagically debug his "powerString" and emit /correct/ code too!

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>  Sacrament R2-45 <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> It also remains the case that if he'd known NP completeness, he would
> not have proposed hard numbers in a benchmark as a proof.

What makes you believe that a tokenizing a string is NP complete?

> I used PL/I some time ago to write polynomial addition in such a
> manner that it normalized the polynomial. Hmm, I wonder if Chris is up
> to the challenge? Some C code would prove his claims to having
> understood polynomials.

Why don't you write a program to divide two polynomials?

Calum

In article <br3t4b$a3d$1@titan.btinternet.com>,
Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
>Joe "Nuke Me Xemu" Foster wrote:
>> At least John Nash has learned to ignore the invisible Martians.
>
>I think the saddest aspect of all this Nilges nonsense is that it leads to
>statements like these. John Nash does not deserve to be mocked in public
>just because Nilges likes to name-drop.

   I don't know the real John Nash, only the one in the
movie.  Going by the movie, when Nash devised ways to
determine how much of his world was objectively visible, I
felt that was an impressive intellectual achievement.
Phillip K. Dick novels like _Ubik_ seem to put the problem
well..  I read them but I've never had to live like that.

        Regards.        Mel.

Calum wrote:

> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> 
>> It also remains the case that if he'd known NP completeness, he would
>> not have proposed hard numbers in a benchmark as a proof.
> 
> What makes you believe that a tokenizing a string is NP complete?

As far as any of us can tell, it's not.

Let's face it guys, eddie (yes, with a little 'e') is a complete 
sophist.  Time to ignore him, no?

-- 
Corey Murtagh
The Electric Monk
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!"

Randy Howard wrote:

> In article <1070891887.561160@news-1.nethere.net>, "Joe \"Nuke Me Xemu\" 
> Foster" <joe@bftsi0.UUCP> says...
<snip>
> 
>>Terms are merely the half-digested corn kernels in EGN's chronic 
>>verbal diarrhea.
> 
> He does appear to have a need to dispense words at 3.14 X the normal
> rate or higher, eh?

Yeah, he does like to talk in circles.  It's the mark of a true sophist.

-- 
Corey Murtagh
The Electric Monk
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!"

Programmer Dude wrote:

> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
> 
>> And if terms are missing, or the exponents are out of sequence,
>> the normalized expression is STILL a polynomial.
> 
> Obviously.  That's why I felt free to reverse them from the
> usual order.

Indeed, such a reversal makes sense in this context, since it means you can 
say with a normal ellipsis what would otherwise take several lines and a 
"vertical ellipsis" to give a suficiently clear picture.


> Ed, I have to ask.  Why do you persist in a place where *everyone*
> thinks you're a total idiot and utterly incompetent?  No one here
> seems to have any shred of regard for you whatsoever, and it seems
> this is true in other groups you've visited.  What do you get out
> of this?  Is your life so empty and lonely that negative attention
> is better than whatever else you have in your life?

Perhaps he gets paid for posting here. The thought must surely have occurred 
to you. Some nefarious government agency, perhaps?

> I just don't get it.  If I got the response from people you do,
> I'd be asking myself some very serious questions about why.  And
> I sure don't think I'd hang out with people who had no regard
> for me.

Yes, but you and I don't get paid for posting here. Perhaps Nilges does. 
It's a possibility we should not discount.

(No, really, I'm joking. Or at least, I think I am.)

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> (1) [Shric] listed the terms in the reverse of the way that is
> standard in "basic HS algebra"

Greatly you confused this apparently.

> (2) His ellipsis should be three dots. It looks like random noise
> as four dots.

...............  (random?)

> (3) He did not proofread

"It wasn't wrapped on my end."  Remember those words?


> Having created a culture of libel, Chris can only expect that I
> shall respond, "in kind",...

No, I *can* expect that one who whines loud and long about bad
treatment by others would set an example of the treatment he
feels is appropriate.  Anything else would be hypocritical.


> It also remains the case that if he'd known NP completeness, he
> would not have proposed hard numbers in a benchmark as a proof.

Heh.  It remains the case you are clueless about NP-complete.
Despite all the available documentation.  Despite the *unified*
replies by others.  Hard to believe a skull can be so thick.

> I used PL/I some time ago to write polynomial addition in such
> a manner that it normalized the polynomial. Hmm, I wonder if
> Chris is up to the challenge?

Write the spec, I'll consider it.  Depending on what you want, I
may already have some working Java code from a few years ago when
I was mentoring a friend through an adult ed CS degree.

> Some C code would prove his claims to having understood
> polynomials.

I'd use C++, or maybe Lisp.  Maybe VB if I wanted pretty windows
and a nice user I/F.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

In article <1071088838.501640@radsrv1.tranzpeer.net>, Corey Murtagh <emonk@slingshot.no.uce> wrote:
>Calum wrote:
>
>> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>> 
>>> It also remains the case that if he'd known NP completeness, he would
>>> not have proposed hard numbers in a benchmark as a proof.
>> 
>> What makes you believe that a tokenizing a string is NP complete?
>
>As far as any of us can tell, it's not.

Given any conventional definition of "tokenising", it couldn't be.  
However, perhaps an unconventional definition could cover it.  To give 
an approximate example, maybe you could define primes as tokens, and say 
a string representing a long number could be "tokenised" as a series of 
its prime factors.  (Factorisation is probably not NP-complete AFAIK, 
but you get the idea - I just picked it because it's easy to describe.  
No doubt there are similar "tokenisation" processes that are 
NP-complete, and even ones that are undecideable!)

Like I say, though, it stretches conventional definitions of 
"tokenising"...

- Gerry Quinn

Richard Heathfield wrote:

>> Ed, I have to ask.  Why do you persist...
> 
> Perhaps he gets paid for posting here. The thought must surely
> have occurred to you. Some nefarious government agency, perhaps?

You know,... it hadn't.  My mind just doesn't seem to work that way.
But now that you mention it, it's as good an explanation as any.
Considering his tendancy to offload his problems on others (I LOL
when he accused *you* of transference... talk about kettle and pot!),
maybe his accusations about you come from something other than sheer
fantasy.  Deflection, perhaps?

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FD742C2.659A0577@Sonnack.com>...
> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
> 
> >> Polynomials have the basic form:  ax^0 + bx^1 + cx^2 ...
> > 
> > HA HA HA HA HA
> > 
> > Wolfram research: "A polynomial is a mathematical expression
> > involving a sum of powers in one or more variables multiplied
> > by coefficients."
> > 
> > In this definition, the polynomial is not restricted to rank 2.
> 
> Of course not.  Your accuracy and attention to detail remains at

The phrase "your accuracy and attention to detail" is lifted whole
from a corporate performance review, and in these posts, Chris, I
believe you are dealing with your dehumanization by the corporation.

> its usual low level.  You snipped (and I restored) the ellipses
> that means the series continues.  
>
An ellipsis consists of three dots. One doesn't mean to nitpick but
when in Rome.
 
> >> It's *because* I do understand the theory that my versions
> >> blew the doors off yours (AND were far more maintainable
> > and readable).
> > 
> > What understanding have you displayed above? You have made the
> > incorrect claim that "Polynomials have the basic form:
> >  ax^0 + bx^1 + cx^2".
> 
> Nope.  You just read it wrong.
> 
> > Quite apart from your nonstandard notation, which lists the
> > exponents in the wrong order, you have made the WRONG STATEMENT
> > that polynomials are restricted to a highest power of two.
> 
> Nope.  You just read it wrong.  As for the order, it *was*
> deliberately reversed (not that it matters, as summation is
> commutative) exactly so I could add ellipses at the end to
> indicate a series.
> 
> > A polynomial, FYI, is of the form
> > 
> >      K(n)x^n ... K(2)x^2 + K(1)x^1 + K(0)x^0
> > 
> > where K(i) is a constant.
> 
> Yep.  That's another way to write the same thing.  I wasn't sure
> you'd understand that more sophisticated notation, so I tried
> to make it easier for you.  It seems that, in providing you with
> something you didn't quite recognize, you failed to understand
> it at all.
> 
> Ironically, you indulge in the same "go for the throat" attitude
> you blame us for.  Shame that high moral ground is so elusive for
> you, eh?  (And this is exactly why I name you Vile Hypocrite.)
>
As I said, it is a case of when in Rome. I haven't destroyed this ng
as your behavior has.
 
> > And if terms are missing, or the exponents are out of sequence,
> > the normalized expression is STILL a polynomial.
> 
> Obviously.  That's why I felt free to reverse them from the
> usual order.
> 
> 
> Ed, I have to ask.  Why do you persist in a place where *everyone*
> thinks you're a total idiot and utterly incompetent?  No one here
> seems to have any shred of regard for you whatsoever, and it seems
> this is true in other groups you've visited.  What do you get out
> of this?  Is your life so empty and lonely that negative attention
> is better than whatever else you have in your life?
> 
> I just don't get it.  If I got the response from people you do,
> I'd be asking myself some very serious questions about why.  And
> I sure don't think I'd hang out with people who had no regard
> for me.
> 
> Why are you here?

I think the real question is why are you. I believe that you have
created a nightmare world, in which values are reversed, because you
are inadequate to the real world.

You and Richard were upset in late 2000 because of the popularity of
my thread on Steve McConnell's book After the Gold Rush. You and he
were offended by the fact that several posters said in public that
they'd not seen such a high level of discussion for several years, and
you were probably wounded by the implication that you thugs have
ruined this ng.

Therefore you waited your chance and took it when last year I posted
on the DQA to conduct a planned campaign of character assassination.

You may hypostatize, all you want, a bogus community of people who you
say don't like me. But what you remain are LonelyHearts in rooms and
isolated from each other.

I suggest you connect with your loneliness which is created by your
behavior and restore this ng to one informed by simple human
solidarity.

For fool's approval stings and honor stains.

Edward wrote:
) You may hypostatize, all you want, a bogus community of people who you
) say don't like me. But what you remain are LonelyHearts in rooms and
) isolated from each other.

Ooh, another ad hominem attack!  Cute.
Everybody who likes eddie, please raise your hands now!

So far, the score is at least three people who dislike you against none who
like you.

I personally dislike you because you weasel your way out of arguments,
you criticize people for certain things and then do the exact same a bit
later, you are abusive to people the very first time you speak to them, you
use terminology without understanding what it means and what is worse, when
people point this out you attack them.  I could go on.


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

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> You may hypostatize, all you want, a bogus community of people
> who you say don't like me.

I don't need to hypostatize.  The evidence is in plain view.

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

"Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

>> Your accuracy and attention to detail remains at [at its usual
>> low level].
> 
> The phrase "your accuracy and attention to detail" is lifted whole
> from a corporate performance review,...

Something you've heard before, then, I take it?  Not surprised.

> ...and in these posts, Chris, I believe you are dealing with
> your dehumanization by the corporation.

Actually, my corporation treats me pretty well (they are, in fact,
known for their good treatment of employees), and they appear to
have a high regard for my work and ability.  I have no complaints.

>> You snipped (and I restored) the ellipses that means the series
>> continues.
>
> An ellipsis consists of three dots. One doesn't mean to nitpick
> but when in Rome.

Fine, they're not street legal ellipsis.  [shrug] Someone as smart
as you claim to be surely wasn't thrown by an extra period.

Oh.  That's right.  You were.  Oops.


>> Why are you here?
> 
> I think the real question is why are you.

No, the real question is the one I asked and which you dodged.

But I'll answer your question anyway.  Many reasons.

* Building a network of highly competent people as a resource I
  can avail myself to at times.

* Trying to "leave the woodpile a little higher" in payback for
  all those who have aided me when I was new (and I just enjoy
  helping and teaching).

* Social group of able peers who are competent to discuss topics
  that make "normal" people's eyes glaze over.

* Getting exposure to a wide array of people, interests & topics
  (all related to my chosen field).

-- 
|_ CJSonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL  |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message
> news:<3FD742C2.659A0577@Sonnack.com>...
>> "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:
>> 
>> >> Polynomials have the basic form:  ax^0 + bx^1 + cx^2 ...
>> > 
>> > HA HA HA HA HA
>> > 
>> > Wolfram research: "A polynomial is a mathematical expression
>> > involving a sum of powers in one or more variables multiplied
>> > by coefficients."
>> > 
>> > In this definition, the polynomial is not restricted to rank 2.
>> 
>> Of course not.  Your accuracy and attention to detail remains at
> 
> The phrase "your accuracy and attention to detail" is lifted whole
> from a corporate performance review, and in these posts, Chris, I
> believe you are dealing with your dehumanization by the corporation.

This is fairly classic Nilges. Faced with the choice of facing your 
opponent's argument squarely with supporting facts or trying to deflect 
attention away from that argument by providing yet more sociological bilge, 
you almost invariably choose the latter, and almost the whole of your reply 
appears to be of this second type. What remains is mere ad hominem (and 
incorrect ad hominem to boot - the worst kind).

>> its usual low level.  You snipped (and I restored) the ellipses
>> that means the series continues.
>>
> An ellipsis consists of three dots. One doesn't mean to nitpick but
> when in Rome.

When in Rome, what? If you're going to criticise other people's use of 
English, surely your own usage should be beyond reproach?

<snip>

>> Ironically, you indulge in the same "go for the throat" attitude
>> you blame us for.  Shame that high moral ground is so elusive for
>> you, eh?  (And this is exactly why I name you Vile Hypocrite.)
>>
> As I said, it is a case of when in Rome. I haven't destroyed this ng
> as your behavior has.

Actually, Mr Nilges, nobody can destroy this newsgroup single-handed; not 
even you. Nevertheless, the archives will show anyone who cares to read 
them that the disruptive influence here is not Chris, or me, or Corey, or 
anyone else but you.

<snip>
 
>> I just don't get it.  If I got the response from people you do,
>> I'd be asking myself some very serious questions about why.  And
>> I sure don't think I'd hang out with people who had no regard
>> for me.
>> 
>> Why are you here?
> 
> I think the real question is why are you. I believe that you have
> created a nightmare world, in which values are reversed, because you
> are inadequate to the real world.

<shrug> He seems to be coping with it.

> You and Richard were upset in late 2000 because of the popularity of
> my thread on Steve McConnell's book After the Gold Rush.

That's actually not true. The concept of "thread popularity" is one that had 
not actually occurred to me. What a strange idea.


> You and he
> were offended by the fact that several posters said in public that
> they'd not seen such a high level of discussion for several years, and
> you were probably wounded by the implication that you thugs have
> ruined this ng.

No, you are simply mistaken. If anything were offensive about the thread, it 
was your abuse of the newsgroup at that time.

> Therefore you waited your chance and took it when last year I posted
> on the DQA to conduct a planned campaign of character assassination.

Ludicrous. Your DQA stuff was simply off-topic. That's it. The only person 
assassinating your character in that thread was *you*.


> You may hypostatize, all you want, a bogus community of people who you
> say don't like me. But what you remain are LonelyHearts in rooms and
> isolated from each other.

Personally I don't give two hoots whether people like you or not. That's up 
to them. It's not impossible that there are people reading this newsgroup 
who think that your dodging, weaving, and invective are admirable traits, 
and that is their right and privilege. It's just such a shame that your 
supporters are both so quiet, and your detractors so darned multitudinous.

Jonathan Swift said: "When a true genius appears in this world, you may know 
him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." And 
it has often occurred to me that you might incorrectly think that this 
applies to you. Let Carl Sagan have the final word (of this paragraph, at 
least): "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply 
that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they 
laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also 
laughed at Bozo the Clown."


> I suggest you connect with your loneliness which is created by your
> behavior and restore this ng to one informed by simple human
> solidarity.

Simple human solidarity is off-topic here in comp.programming, which is a 
technical newsgroup, not a sociological newsgroup. You may wish to consult 
the charter of soc.human.solidarity, if it exists, to find out whether 
simple human solidarity is topical there. If not, feel free to put the 
process in motion to create a group appropriate to your needs.

> For fool's approval stings and honor stains.

Ah, a misspelt misquotation without attribution. The original is:

"Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains."

BTW this is from "Little Gidding", by T S Eliot.

In future, when you quote other people's work, please acknowledge the 
source, and do try to get the quotation /right/. Thanks.

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

"Richard Heathfield" <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message <news:br3t4b$a3d$1@titan.btinternet.com>...

> Joe "Nuke Me Xemu" Foster wrote:

> > I forgot to mention his "folk-lore optimization" of reallocating
> > the array of matched tokens during each and every iteration.  Does
> > that help any?
>
> Well, O(n^3) is pretty sick already, but reallocating linearly can certainly
> slow it down some more. It is trivial, of course, to reallocate
> exponentially (for some reasonably low multiplier, obviously: 1.5 is
> common), but only when you're about to be out of space.

WHAT!  After Nilges hath proclaimeth that exponential reallocation is
Evil, Bad, and Wrong, not to mention just plain selfish, especially
in a multi-threaded, multi-processing, multi-sophist environment like
..NET, to which everyone save a few VB6 Neanderthals has already taken
like ducks to water?

 URL:http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=f5dd2807.0110151632.183ecc9f%40posting.google.com

> >> > I gather EGN and John Nash both see "developers" no one else can see.
> >>
> >> ROFLMAO.
> >
> > At least John Nash has learned to ignore the invisible Martians.
>
> I think the saddest aspect of all this Nilges nonsense is that it leads to
> statements like these. John Nash does not deserve to be mocked in public
> just because Nilges likes to name-drop.

(Ahem)  Yes, I'm sorry I went down that particular road.  The public
mockery is more appropriately reserved for "Special" Ed s/h/itself.

> > EGN, on the other hand, still threatens to have them "silence"
> > people he doesn't like.  Too bad the invisibility serum quaffed
> > by EGN's invisible Martian death squads has the unfortunate side
> > effect of rendering them completely ineffective against anyone
> > who fails to believe in them...
>
> Ah, I wondered what I was doing wrong.

There is no denying the power of (the lack of) belief, is there.  =)

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>  DC8s in Spaace: <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

Programmer Dude wrote:
> Richard Heathfield wrote:
> 
> >> Ed, I have to ask.  Why do you persist...
> >
> > Perhaps he gets paid for posting here. The thought must surely
> > have occurred to you. Some nefarious government agency, perhaps?
> 
> You know,... it hadn't.  My mind just doesn't seem to work that
> way. But now that you mention it, it's as good an explanation as
> any. Considering his tendancy to offload his problems on others (I
> LOL when he accused *you* of transference... talk about kettle and
> pot!), maybe his accusations about you come from something other
> than sheer fantasy.  Deflection, perhaps?

Could he possibly be a psychological experiment program, turned
loose to experiment with what sort of statements prod what sort of
strangers into what sort of reactions?  Has anyone ever seen a
real Eddie in the flesh?  Is this a nefarious plot of the radical
left/center/right/religious/godless/(anti)abortionists etc.  Can
we apply the Turing test? 

-- 
Chuck F (cbfalconer@yahoo.com) (cbfalconer@worldnet.att.net)
   Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
   <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>  USE worldnet address!

"goose" <ruse@webmail.co.za> wrote in message <news:ff82ae1b.0312090007.5ae55ccb@posting.google.com>...

> spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0312050407.441a1b06@posting.google.com>...
>
> <snipped>
>
> > possible solutions over time is profoundly unprofessional. Therefore,
> > advocating C for new development is a mark of incompetence because
> > even if the C program is written according to quality guidelines,
> > nothing keeps some bozo (or for that matter someone like me, who has
> > abandoned C for several years) from creating a new member of the
> > solution set with flaws, owing to C's "power".
>
> do you mean to say that nothing keeps the maintainer from
> royally screwing up the solution in C ?
>
> and what is it precisely about other languages that stops
> someone coming along and royally screwing up the original
> code ?

Why, the fact that any maintainer in her right mind would simply
delete all of EGN's bile-ware and, starting over from scratch,
code a much more performant solution which obtained the correct
results.  If EGN does not use C, the simplicity and elegance of
this scenario would be completely unavailable to C programmers.

Duh.  ;)

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>  "Regged" again? <http://www.xenu.net/>
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above        They're   coming  to
because  my cats have  apparently  learned to type.        take me away, ha ha!

Joe "Nuke Me Xemu" Foster wrote:

> "Richard Heathfield" <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> <news:br3t4b$a3d$1@titan.btinternet.com>...
> 
>> Joe "Nuke Me Xemu" Foster wrote:
> 
>> > I forgot to mention his "folk-lore optimization" of reallocating
>> > the array of matched tokens during each and every iteration.  Does
>> > that help any?
>>
>> Well, O(n^3) is pretty sick already, but reallocating linearly can
>> certainly slow it down some more. It is trivial, of course, to reallocate
>> exponentially (for some reasonably low multiplier, obviously: 1.5 is
>> common), but only when you're about to be out of space.
> 
> WHAT!  After Nilges hath proclaimeth that exponential reallocation is
> Evil, Bad, and Wrong,

Oh, did he? Well, he's wrong about that. Exponential reallocation is a 
perfectly sensible way to cope with the problem of not knowing in advance 
how much storage you need.

>> > EGN, on the other hand, still threatens to have them "silence"
>> > people he doesn't like.  Too bad the invisibility serum quaffed
>> > by EGN's invisible Martian death squads has the unfortunate side
>> > effect of rendering them completely ineffective against anyone
>> > who fails to believe in them...
>>
>> Ah, I wondered what I was doing wrong.
> 
> There is no denying the power of (the lack of) belief, is there.  =)

Indeed. Mr Nilges seems to live in a world of factoids, a world in which 
repeating a lie often enough will make it seem true. (Hence his continual, 
and bizarre, attacks on members of this newsgroup, and even on computer 
languages!)

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

spinoza1111@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote in message news:<f5dda427.0312101341.58a50ffd@posting.google.com>...
> Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<3FD742C2.659A0577@Sonnack.com>...
> > "Edward G. Nilges" wrote:

> The phrase "your accuracy and attention to detail" is lifted whole
> from a corporate performance review, and in these posts, Chris, I
> believe you are dealing with your dehumanization by the corporation.

> I think the real question is why are you. I believe that you have
> created a nightmare world, in which values are reversed, because you
> are inadequate to the real world.

[theory about Richard that follows snipped]

So here you express two beliefs about Chris presumably arrived at via
the dubious means of newsgroup psychoanalysis.  Don't you find such a
tenuous basis for theory to be of concern?

> As I said, it is a case of when in Rome. I haven't destroyed this ng
> as your behavior has.

Destroyed from what previous state?

I do think you get a hard time in here, more so than a newcomer making
the same initial comments.  That's because you have previous
encounters for folk to draw on, and it seems, a preference for
conflict with your chosen nemesis and his imagined band of brigands
over the easier, and more productive, route of engaging with regular
programming folk on a wide variety of topics as they present here on
comp.programming.

Really, you could get a lot more 'air time' and audience for your
particular views of connections between various socio-political
matters and programming if, now and then, you'd just answer some
questions posted here by regular folk.  you'd also be able to
meaningfully demonstrate any relationship between a given view and the
technical matter in hand so much better.  yet you seem to view the
regular q&a of comp.programming with disdain.  Aren't these folk the
very working programmers you say you to want to reach?

comp.programming does indeed engage in discussion of technical matters
as they relate, meaningfully, with matters of social, political an
philosophical concern.  You can see the evidence in various threads
today, and plenty in the past.  The key difference is that the focal
point is the technical matter just as in sci.math the focal point is
mathematics, etc.