HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: guido@cwi.nl (Guido van Rossum)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.edu,comp.human-factors,comp.misc,comp.programming
Subject: Re: Indentation
Date: 17 Aug 92 09:14:25 GMT
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers

bosullvn@unix1.tcd.ie (Bryan O'Sullivan) writes:

>A more modern example is Guido van Rossum's Python language, used
>in Amoeba.

In the past two years, Python has developed itself into a generally
usable extensible, object-oriented prototyping language usable on
UNIX, Mac and PC.

>It uses indentation as follows:
>
>if (x == y)
>	do something

Make that

if x == y:
	do something

>... the scope of the "if" is shown as being intented by one set of
>white space characters.  Personally, I don't like the idea at all,
>but maybe it simplifies parsing (and writing scripts) some.

It certainly doesn't simplify parsing (to the contrary) but was chosen
(following the example of ABC) because scripts and programs become
smaller this way, and because of the effect noted by a previous
poster: if the indentation mismatches the syntactic structure, novices
may get confused.  By making the indentation the syntax, this effect
is impossible.

I am interested, though, why you say that you don't like the idea at
all.  Do you have bad personal experiences with systems using this?
From a fairly large user base of Python I find that only a very small
number (5-10 percent) complain about this initially, and most of them
are convinced after a while.

--Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <guido@cwi.nl>
"There is no such thing as a bloody cat licence."
From: guy@Auspex.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: what is halt_and_catch_fire?
Date: 20 Aug 92 21:07:58 GMT
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara

>EM	Emulate 407              (407 was an early model line printer
>                                  used to list cards.

No, it was an "accounting machine".  It did have a card reader and a
printer, but it also had counters that could do some amount of
arithmetic on data from the cards, and comparators to detect if the card
being read had a value, on one of the fields on the card, different from
the value in the same field on the previous card (and could dump the
counters to print totals if that happened), and was wired up with a
plugboard that controlled what fields on the card went to the counters,
what fields went to the comparators, etc..

>				   Lots of jokes
>                                  went around about million dollar
>                                  360s doing nothing but card-to print jobs.)

Yup, RPG was (probably still is, in RPC II form) a programming language
with an accounting-machine-like model of the world (although it's since
acquired other capabilities, I think).
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: magnasco@research.nj.nec.com (Marcelo Magnasco)
Subject: Re: You know you've been hacking too long.
Summary: Eyeglasses and color crt's don't mix
Originator: magnasco@asterion
Organization: NEC Research Institute
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 92 22:19:25 GMT

In article <1992Aug14.215848.8326@nrao.edu> cflatter@nrao.edu writes:
>In article 605@zia.aoc.nrao.edu, dbriggs@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Daniel Briggs) writes:
>>In article <1992Aug13.154430.5880@nrao.edu>
>>  cflatter@nrao.edu writes:
>>>This seems to be a demonstration that red and blue light are focussed at
>>>different depths by a lens.  This applies to the lens in the human eye as
>>>well as Bill's glasses: hence the design principle against using bright
>>>primary colours in near proximity on a computer display (the eye has to
>>>continually shift focus between the two colours which can lead to eyestrain
>>>after prolonged use).
>>What does primary colors have to do with it?  I'd think that you would want
>>to minimize the wavelength difference between colors in near proximity.
>Correct.  Saturated primary colours tend to have large wavelength differences
>between them (in general avoid the use of highly saturated colours).  

If you have strong myopia, ONLY highly saturated colors will work. I have
14 dioptries, meaning my eyes, unaided, can't focus anything beyond about
three inches from my face. When I wear glasses, I see the red/blue/green
planes of a crt monitor separated by about 2 millimiters (in depth, they 
move sideways if I move my head). Pure white on a color crt looks to me 
like those bad pulp magazines. A simple way to understand the sideways 
motion is to notice that looking down a lens at an angle the lens behaves
like a simple lens plus a prism. The power of the prism changes with the 
angle and so you separate the colors and have them move around. 

Only solution is to use contact lenses, which move with the eye as the 
eye dances around, so that you are always looking through the optical center.

High Regards,
Marcelo Magnasco
marcelo@mjf.rockefeller.edu	magnasco@research.nj.nec.com
From: murphy@npri6.npri.com (David P. Murphy)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: why is it called a CD-ROM?
Date: 12 Aug 92 15:11:06 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: NPRI, Alexandria VA

>>A sub-peeve of mine is the term "CD-ROM".  I really wish they would have
>>called it CD-Data, CD-ReadOnlyStorage, ROCD, or something.
>>
>>anthony@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Anthony J Stieber)

 >Don't you think that the term Compact Disc is already quite ridiculous?
 >Naming a medium after its *size*? Laser Disc would be a much better name,
 >but unfortunately this is nowadays applied to *video* discs. Oh my.
 >
 >Anyway, for CD-rom I propose 'Laser Data'.
 >
 >eijkhout@cupid.cs.utk.edu (Victor Eijkhout)

but you've gotta admit, at the time they had the READ-ONLY part right.  :-)

ok
dpm
-- 
murphy@npri6.npri.com 602 Cameron St. Alexandria, VA 22314 (703) 683-9090

              When every one is dead the Great Game is finished.  Not before.
                              --- Hurree Babu, "Kim"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: Josef Moellers <mollers.pad@sni.de>
Subject: Re: The need for an assembler (was: Favorite CPU)
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 13:09:19 GMT
Organization: Siemens Nixdorf Info.Sys. AG, Paderborn, Germany

In <1992Aug13.092106.29539@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> ecmtwhk@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Thomas Koenig) writes:

>bjj@ecl.psu.edu (Bryan J. Jensen) writes:

>[not about me :-)]
>>You, however, favor giving an abstract description of the program
>>to a compiler, tinkering with compiler switches to see if it gets
>>any better, then declaring it perfection.

>Some of the performance problems with most HLL's are due to the fact
>that the problems are not described in an abstract enough manner.

[ Example of replacing loops by higher level instruction deleted ]

Take another, even better example: The classical "sort" problem.
If You specify to the machine the method of sorting, let's say, as a
bubblesort, there is very little the compiler can do to optimize this
above the n^2 order (was it n^2?).
If, however, You would just specify "sort(...)", then the compiler of
such a high-level-language could choose whatever sorting algorithm might
be best suited for this problem. It might even choose quicksort or
heapsort, or revert to external sorting methods if they seem
appropriate.

Of course, there is always the question of "How does the compiler know
what the data actually looks like?", especially when one sorting
algorithm might be better than others for a certain structure of the
data (quicksort might be good if the data is already mostly sorted, but
looses badly if the data is exactly the other way sorted. But that's how
WE make our money, by selecting the best algorithm in whatever language
we seem appropriate (and available B-{)

>The same holds for parallelizing, of course.

>Come to think of it, APL would be quite a good language for vector
>computers... does anyone know wether it is actually being run somewhere?
>-- 
>Thomas Koenig, ecmtwhk@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz, ib09@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de
>The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double logarithmic
>diagram.
-- 
| Josef Moellers		| c/o Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG  |
|  USA: mollers.pad@sni-usa.com	| Abt. STO-XS 113	   | Riemekestrasse   |
| !USA: mollers.pad@sni.de	| Phone: (+49) 5251 835124 | D-4790 Paderborn |
From: klaus@diku.dk (Klaus Ole Kristiansen)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Computers killing people? (WAS Re: 9 track data storage???)
Date: 20 Aug 92 13:15:24 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen

oliver@cs.uwindsor.ca (Timothy Oliver) writes:

>In article <1992Aug12.163016.11684@cbnews.cb.att.com> lbd@cbnews.cb.att.com (linda.b.dunlap) writes:
>>
>>I remember hearing a rumor that printers sent to Iraq were programmed to
>>upload (something) into radar installations to give erroneous data.
>>
>>First, is it possible?  Second, anyone else heard such a thing?


>No, it is NOT possible.  There are not data lines that go FROM the
>printer TO the computer. The only line that go to the computer 
>are status lines (in a PARELLEL port).

>With a SERIAL port, maybe. But very unlikely. Few printers have
>the transmit data line hooked up. But any signal that comes in though
>the serial port MUST be read by a programme and any programme that
>writes to a serial printer will reject anything other than the paper out
>signal, pinter not ready signal, etc.

In this day and age, it is not uncommon for a printer to be placed
directly an a LAN, rather than connected to one computer. Such a
printer could send fake messages. Doing any real damage this way requires
very detailed knowledge of the target system.

Klaus O K
From: dhartung@chinet.chi.il.us (Dan Hartung)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Computers killing people?
Date: 19 Aug 92 16:26:31 GMT
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX

oliver@cs.uwindsor.ca (Timothy Oliver) writes:
>lbd@cbnews.cb.att.com (linda.b.dunlap) writes:
>>
>>I remember hearing a rumor that printers sent to Iraq were programmed to
>>upload (something) into radar installations to give erroneous data.
>>
>>First, is it possible?  Second, anyone else heard such a thing?

Please note that this was NOT a rumor, but an April Fool's joke started
by Infoworld on April 1, 1991.  It spread beyond the computer community
that could see it as a joke and gained credence by being published in
_Foreign Affairs_, of all places, and thence to the _WashPost_ and _NYT_.

-- 
HYPOCRISY HALL OF FAME:                  | Dan Hartung               |  Ask me
"I would think very hard and long about  | dhartung@chinet.chi.il.us |  about
voting for a presidential candidate who  | Birch Grove Software      | Rotaract!
has had an affair."  -- Gennifer Flowers!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: zowie@daedalus.stanford.edu (Craig "Powderkeg" DeForest)
Subject: Re: CASIO watch display question
Organization: Stanford Center for Space Science and Astrophysics
	<1992Aug16.201331.58192@cc.usu.edu>
Date: 16 Aug 92 12:43:38

ivie@cc.usu.edu (CP/M lives!) writes:
   helen@nomad.urich.edu (Helen C. O'Boyle) writes:
   > ...  Is the above just another
   > symptom of a nearly-dead battery, or is it necessary to take the thing
   > in for service?

   Probably, especially since running the light probably takes more power than
   the rest of the watch put together. When you turned on the light, you 
   probably lowered the power supply far enough to drive the machine crazy. 

Actually, this is a big problem for the Casio data banks and large
calculators.  The light is controlled through *software*.  It's relatively
easy to cause the light to stay on permanently, simply by holding it
on when the power's low.  The chip gets confused and `forgets' that the
light is still running.  Then you lose everything...
--
Craig DeForest:  zowie@banneker.stanford.edu  *or*  craig@reed.bitnet

"So, if you guys make a living looking at the SUN, why do you spend so much
        time at the SYNCHROTRON, working UNDERGROUND at NIGHT?"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: phillips@swanee.ee.uwa.oz.au (Christopher Phillips)
Subject: Re: Peet Peeves! (was Re: pronouncing "bps"?)
Organization: Elec Eng, Univ of Western Australia
Date: 14 Aug 92 06:28:32 GMT

anthony@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Anthony J Stieber) writes:

>In article > lesley@cavebbs.welly.gen.nz (Lesley Walker) writes:
>>Reminds me of a converstation I heard tonight:
>>
>>A: My PC crashes mysteriously
>>B; It's probably running out of memory
>>A: But I just deleted a whole lot of files

>Yeah!  Another one of my pet peeves!  People who don't understand the
>difference between memory and storage.  It's unfortunate that the two
>..

The way I explained the difference between the two to my mother, was
to continue the desktop metaphor:
Memory is like space on your desk; It's where you put things that
you are in the middle of working on.
Hard disk spaceis like a filing cabinet; it's where you keep bits and
pieces while you aren't playing with them.

This worked quite well.

Jeremy Nelson (sitting beside me as I enter this msg) suggests using
cardboard boxes as a metaphor for floppies.  I have yet to test the
usefullnes of this one for explaining things to the non storage literate.




--
Christopher Jam	__________________________________________________
'Another day, another try.  But remember, SHOOT OR DIE!' -turrican
phillips@swanee.ee.uwa.oz.au		c64 forever!!!!
------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: zrepachol@cc.curtin.edu.au (Paul Repacholi)
Subject: Re: The need for a cow
Organization: Curtin University of Technology
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 09:30:28 GMT

In article <Bt8Gt6.EBH@sunic.sunet.se>, bygg@sunet.se (Johnny Eriksson) writes:
> In article <bqt.714224577@Minsk> bqt@Minsk.docs.uu.se (Johnny Billquist) writes:
> 
> ! Nope, you don't need to know how a microwave oven works to heat
> ! a chees burger. To call this cheesburger perfect is a lie every
> ! day though. To get a perfect cheesburger, get yourself a cow,
> ! a knife, a fryingpan or an open fire. Cut and chop the meat from
> ! the really good parts of the cow, and cook it.
> ! Don't heat it in a microwave, that produces something edible, not
> ! something perfect.
> ! Then there is the question of cheese as well...
> 
> You should be able to get that from the same cow.
> 
> (Seems like we just switched from assembly to disassembly... :-)
> 

And invented the race condition in passing!!

~Paul

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.misc
From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
Subject: Re: The need for an assembler (was: Favorite CPU)
Organization: Mount Holyoke College
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 17:29:24 GMT

High-level language programmers are software designers.

Assembly language programmers are mere implementers which
can be replaced by a good compiler.

   8-)  8-)  8-)

--
Jurgen Botz                  |   Internet: JBotz@mtholyoke.edu
Academic Systems Consultant  |     Bitnet: JBotz@mhc.bitnet
Mount Holyoke College        |      Voice: (US) 413-538-2375 (daytime)
South Hadley, MA, USA        | Snail Mail: J. Botz, 01075-0629
From: infidel+@pitt.edu (Todd J Derr)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Computers killing people? (WAS Re: 9 track data storage???)
Date: 14 Aug 92 05:09:10 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh

In article <1992Aug14.040015.23666@mullet.gu.uwa.edu.au> john@mullet.gu.uwa.edu.au (John West) writes:
>I believe it is possible, given the right sort of printer and the right sort
>of computer, but it is incredibly unlikely. Also, this story is not true. It
>originated in an article in some newspaper or techincal journal or something
>in early April. Like around the 1st of April. The original article was quite
>obviously a joke (to people who knew anything about the subject), but then a
>journalist or someone was writing a book about a year after the event, found
>this article, and didn't see the joke. So the story got published (as a true
>story). Newspapers saw this, thought it was a great story, and spread it.
>It never happened. It was a joke.

well, I saw the article in either U.S. News and World Report or Newsweek
a while back, and the author was being completely serious... It was kind
of a 'sidebar' to an article all about computer virusues... and I
believe thye major focus of the article was Michelangelo, which probably
dates the article before April 6... so maybe it was April Fool's, but
judging from whichever of the tho mags it was in, the guy would have had
to have pulled a pretty good stunt to get it past the editors...  But it
seemed OK for me for a few microfortnights until I thought "Hey, I doubt
that even our LPS-40's could give a virus to our VMS cluster" and then I
started giggling inside about the whole thing....


oh well...



todd "although in my youth i was never one to believe that lightning
could stike a computer, one day, after a severe thunderstorm, my printer
(Star ??-10), my interface (Atari 850- quite a rare-and-in-demand item
when it got hit with those 4 serial ports [IBMers quit whining about
COM3: and COM4:] and parallel port), and my beloved Atari 1200xl ceased
to function... forever...  maybe we just hit them with lightning" derr

-- 
todd j. derr - the c.o.m.a. moderator!  "i've got nothing to say but
infidel+@pitt.edu       (412) 363-9027   it's ok."
infidel@pittunix (BIT)  work: 648-1247 
if your mail bounces, send it to infidel@unix.cis.pitt.edu.  thanks!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch
From: zrepachol@cc.curtin.edu.au (Paul Repacholi)
Subject: Re: Babbage books (was: Proposal: Computer History Project)
Organization: Curtin University of Technology
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 16:54:16 GMT

In article <1992Aug10.221441.13454@walter.cray.com>, wws@craywr.cray.com (Walter Spector) writes:
> 
> Babbage also had major problems with organ grinders.  He used to haul them
> into court for disturbing the peace.  They would retaliate by playing
> 'concerts' in front of his house.  Kuck has a humorous account of this
> in his classic 1976 computer architecture text.
> 

His use of chamber-pots on them is an obvious de-ja vu reaction to MS/DOS. Lucky
he didn't know about windows...  :-))

~Paul
From: weberwu@inf.fu-berlin.de (Debora Weber-Wulff)
Subject: Re: Indentation
Reply-To: dww@inf.fu-berlin.de
Organization: Free University of Berlin
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 16:44:10 GMT

[I'm joining this thread late, too]
We had a good fight on indentations over at comp.compilers a
while back. There are fanatics on both sides :-)

Indentations as block markers were introduced by Peter Landin in
his ISWIM article in CACM back in the dark ages (1966?) callen
"The next 700 Programming languages". He calls it the offside rule.
This was invented before we really used context-free grammars for
defining syntax for parsers, and so no one noticed that indentation
cannot be described with a finite context-free grammar. This means
you need a hack to use indentations in your compiler.

It's cute to use indentations for very small programs (looks a lot
like mathematics without all the begin/end pairs), but when you get
a 300 page listing of occam plunked on your desk to maintain you
do not find it funny that you cannot see which block a statement
belongs to without a ruler...

I got bit by the tabs not only on an occam compiler, but while
trying to write a paper about the indentation problem - either
emacs of LaTeX or both would conspire to eat the blanks, even
in {verbatim} blocks. Drove me nuts. 

I feel that forcing an indentation structure on people is not
good, and I think that redundancy (indentation and begin/end
braces) is a good thing to have in a programming language the
xxx that *people* (who are only human, after all) are going to
use.

Let's get the flame wars started!

-----
-- 
Debora Weber-Wulff                       dww@inf.fu-berlin.de
ZI Fachdidaktiken, Did. der Informatik   +49 30 838 6334
Habelschwerdter Allee 45                 (INCLUDE "standard.disclaimer")
D-W-1000 Berlin 33                       (PRINTN (WITTY-MESSAGE TODAY))
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Subject: Re: The need for an assembler (was: Favori
Reply-To: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 16:56:28 GMT

In article <1992Aug14.135743.11606@exu.ericsson.se> exuhag@exu.ericsson.se writes:
>Charles Lasner writes:
>>
>>This gets to the heart of the matter: hll programmers depend on the compiler
>>to do "magic" of various hues and colors for them; for most of them, they
>>haven't a clue as to what's going on, and the best they can do is to "tinker"
>>with what little options are available to them, namely the command-line
>>switches to operating the compiler.
>
>But isn't the goal to write a program for solving the problem at hand in
>a clear and algorithmically "optimal" way?  In 95% or more cases I really
>don't care what the compiler does.  That's why I wrote the program in
>a HLL to begin with.

If that's true, then you have come to the wrong place; use BASIC :-).

>
>I have two irrational :-) gripes with HLLs though:
>
>(1) Many programmers use the "no thought, quick coding" capabilities of HLLs
>    far too much.  Normally you don't have to worry about minute speed
>    improvements and such, but it seems that many people are also not
>    worrying about other little things like algorithms and overall program
>    organization.

This gets back to the analogy between cars and compilers.  Assembler is the
manual transmission vehicle with the better controls, etc., and in this
case C is the "muscle" car with a sloppy automatic transmission that allows
a bad driver the ability to make it go fast in spite of itself (bigger engine
overcomes lossage in driver's lack of coordination and/or transmission
slippage, etc.)  The result is that both get the their respective end
destination points, but the muscle car leaves a trail of large clouds of
exhaust caused by running too much of the time in inefficient acceleration
mode.

>
>(2) Popular HLLs are too complex.  Using a C compiler from any major vendor
>    requires tremendous devotion.  The Bible would be a quicker read than
>    the manuals for any currently hot compiler.  Not to mention all of the
>    quirks and bugs that you have to know about and work around.  You almost
>    have to know what's going on under the hood.  I won't even go into all
>    the standards changes and continually changing vendor dependent features.
>    Assembly is actually a win in terms of simplicity.
>

But isn't that contrary to why most people came to C in the first place?  Gee,
maybe there is a movement to push quick and dirty off the map entirely, or
at least force them elsewhere.  My point is that if that much devotion is
necessary, then some of the arguments against assembler disappear entirely.

cjl
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.misc
From: mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum)
Subject: Re: The need for an assembler (was: Favorite CPU)
Keywords: Pascal
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Washington ULTRIX Resource Center
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 04:38:48 GMT

>You are ALL wrong.  The right way to write code is to do it all in a
>high-level lanauge, then recode the speed-critical parts in assembly
>language.

	Nzzzt.

	You forgot the "if" clause.

	"The right way to write code is to do it all in a high level
language and then *IF* *NECESSARY* recode speed critical parts in
assembly language."

	Some applications are bounded by I/O and further effort (other
than improving basic algorithms) is wasted.

mjr.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers