HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ivie@cc.usu.edu (CP/M lives!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: CyC project
Date: 27 Aug 92 11:52:05 MDT
Organization: Utah State University

In article <BERRY.92Aug25155608@athos.pei.com>, berry@athos.pei.com (Berry Kercheval) writes:
> 
> This of course, leads to the question:  "If CyC is intelligent, is
> turning it off murder?" (much beloved of SF writers...)
> 
> Is it still murder if you turn it back on?  If you restore from a
> backup?  Does it have rights?  Can it make contracts?  Own property?
> Vote?

I'm more interested in the status of the backups. Is a backup of CyC a
person? Is erasing a backup tape murder?

Roger Ivie
ivie@cc.usu.edu
From: mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Flash illiteracy; was: Re: Deutsches Museum (was: Zuse Computers
Date: 27 Aug 92 04:03:25 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <1992Aug21.072019.14385@grmbl.saar.de> me@grmbl.saar.de writes:
>In <4058@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us> aki@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us writes:
>>In article <1992Aug16.200705.58190@cc.usu.edu>, ivie@cc.usu.edu (CP/M lives!) writes:
>>> It was kind of funny seeing people try to take flash pictures of the
>>> planetarium screen...
>>Will those tourists _EVER_ learn?
>No. 
>I once visited the Peter's Church in Rome, the biggest church in
>Christianity. You can see the tourists standing there, trying to
>lighten the really huge dome with the flash of their pocket cameras.

I have been asked whether one needs flash to photograph a solar eclipse.


-- 
+ Michael Covington - Artificial Intelligence Programs - U of Georgia - USA 
+ Unless otherwise noted, these are private opinions, not official statements.
+ VOTE NO GEORGIA LOTTERY - don't tie education to an unpredictable income.
From: bevan@cs.man.ac.uk (Stephen J Bevan)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Indentation
Date: 31 Aug 92 08:23:33 GMT
	<BEVAN.92Aug29165714@tiger.cs.man.ac.uk>
	<1992Aug30.192545.13342@dscomsf.desy.de>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester
In-reply-to: hallam@zeus02.desy.de's message of 30 Aug 92 19:25:45 GMT

In article <1992Aug30.192545.13342@dscomsf.desy.de> hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phill Hallam-Baker) writes:
   I write :-
   |>Agreed.  Given that DWW is no fool, I assumed that what was meant was
   |>that _some particular mathematical technique_ that fell apart, not
   |>proofs in general.  Maybe I assumed too much and DWW was wrong; only
   |>DWW knows ...

   Actualy *every* language that requires variables to be declared
   before use is context sensitive and cannot be parsed using an LR(1)
   parser. There are (obvious) standard hacks for this though.

And so is any language which requires uniqueness of declarations.
But what does this have to do with the original point?
From: grog@adagio.UUCP (Greg Lehey)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Flash illiteracy; was: Re: Deutsches Museum (was: Zuse Computers
Date: 28 Aug 92 06:51:20 GMT
Organization: LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, W-6324 Feldatal, Germany

In article <1992Aug27.040325.14733@athena.cs.uga.edu> mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes:
>I have been asked whether one needs flash to photograph a solar eclipse.

Of course. You need to fill in the details in the shadow. Of course,
you also need to consider a couple of technical problems:

1. You will need a very bright flash
2. Flash should be set to fire 2.5 seconds before shutter opens.
-- 
Greg Lehey                       | Tel: +49-6637-1488              
LEMIS                            | Fax: +49-6637-1489
Schellnhausen 2, W-6324 Feldatal, Germany
*** NOTE ***: Headers get mangled at backbone - reply to grog%lemis@Germany.EU.net
From: rfd@po.CWRU.Edu (Richard F. Drushel)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: An interesting book for the ASM vs. HLL argument
Date: 2 Sep 92 17:36:58 GMT
Reply-To: rfd@po.CWRU.Edu (Richard F. Drushel)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: thor.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, rfd@po.CWRU.Edu (Richard F. Drushel) says:

>	Sammet, Jean E. (1969).  Programming languages:  History and
>fundamentals.  Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliff,s NJ).  785 pp.
>Library of Congress # 68-28110.

[stuff deleted]

>                              For instance, at the very end of the
>book, Sammet cautiously tenders a few speculations about the future
>of programming languages.  Her guess was that FORTRAN and COBOL
>would probably survive, with FORTRAN on top, but that there was a
>chance that JOVIAL would conquer both of them.

	Apologies, but I have mis-remembered this.  Here is the
actual quotation:

	"Within 3 years from the start of the project, PL/I had already
had a profound impact upon the computing industry and caused many
debates.  Its place in the future is unknown, but there is a good chance
that eventually it will replace the major existing languages, most
specifically FORTRAN, COBOL, ALGOL, and JOVIAL" (p. 542).

	So it was PL/I, and *not* JOVIAL, which was Sammet's
guess as to the "victor" in the HLL wars.

	Glad I caught this myself :)
-- 
Rich Drushel ** rfd@po.CWRU.edu *** Biology Ph.D. Student ** Cleveland FreeNet
Co-Sysop, Coleco ADAM Forum --- Assistant Sysop, Science Fiction & Fantasy SIG
"Solda pung apfashat ro des-marno, / Marn ladir o armag noth yeni arno. / Hell
miryat it, / Jambo iat it, / Os lasse wei ticip kati baldo." / Old Ennish poem
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: khchung@monu1.cc.monash.edu.au (Mr KH Chung)
Subject: Re: CyC project
Summary: Wow, reproduction
Organization: Monash University, Australia.
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 10:43:12 GMT

In article <1992Aug27.115205.58436@cc.usu.edu>, ivie@cc.usu.edu (CP/M lives!) writes:
> In article <BERRY.92Aug25155608@athos.pei.com>, berry@athos.pei.com (Berry Kercheval) writes:
> > 
> > This of course, leads to the question:  "If CyC is intelligent, is
> > turning it off murder?" (much beloved of SF writers...)
> > 
> > Is it still murder if you turn it back on?  If you restore from a
> > backup?  Does it have rights?  Can it make contracts?  Own property?
> > Vote?
> 
> I'm more interested in the status of the backups. Is a backup of CyC a
> person? Is erasing a backup tape murder?
> 
> Roger Ivie
> ivie@cc.usu.edu

Now, that's cloning, isn't it?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: jimf@centerline.com (Jim Frost)
Subject: Re: The need for an assembler (was: Favorite CPU)
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 13:46:53 GMT

lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:

>In article <jimf.715271557@centerline.com> jimf@centerline.com (Jim Frost) writes:
>>I take it you seldom (if ever) have to deal with code that's needed
>>extensive modification by several people over many years.  It didn't
>>take a lot of that for me to realize that organization is *everything*
>>in a large program if it's to live a long time.  Everything else is
>>secondary (including performance for all but a tiny fraction of code).
>>Anything that helps naturally organize code is a bonus IMHO.

>Sorry to disappoint you there, but I was the 20-somethingth person to work
>on some bad code.  The program was poor throughout not due to bad organization
>but rather due to sloppy implementation, and not being true to its own form.
>OF course organization is important.  Your "brand" of organization is not
>unique.

Sloppy code very often results from poor organization.  Was it broken
into subunits badly?  Did it bounce around too much?  Did it use too
many global symbols?  Did it have an inconsistent interface?  These
things are all caused by poor organization.  An HLL can't enforce all
of them, but it can make it easier to avoid organizational mistakes by
limiting the scope of things the programmer must deal with and by
enforcing interfaces.  Since humans are particularly poor at seeing
everything in a large complex object at once, limiting scope is a
really effective organizational technique.

I don't have any particular "brand" of organization.  I merely
maintain that it's easier for most people to write and maintain
organized code when they have some help doing so -- and usually that
help is some kind of HLL.  There's over twenty years of hard evidence
showing that HLL use results in less buggy code and much better
overall programmer productivity in mid-size to large projects to back
up my opinion (if you don't think so then compare MULTICS to OS/360
and contrast the ESS projects -- they provide excellent examples).

>I always assume that I am writing for someone as good
>as I am, or is there a problem with that?

Yes, there is a problem with that.  If you're any good at all then
statistically speaking it's very likely that the next person to play
with your code will *not* be as good as you are.  They'll need to be
able to understand and modify your code anyway.  And what if you're
the next person and *you're* not as good as the guy who wrote it?
Have you ever come across an algorithm implementation you just plain
couldn't understand, but which you needed to fix or modify anyway?

Have you ever tried to explain your code to someone who just doesn't
get it?  If so, you've already seen the problem.  Now imagine how
often that happens in a million line project.

Happy hacking,

jim frost
jimf@centerline.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: dsiebert@icaen.uiowa.edu (Doug Siebert)
Subject: Re: Indentation
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 21:52:57 GMT
Organization: ISCA

In article <714755204.F00002@tdkt.kksys.com> ddb@tdkt.kksys.com (David Dyer-Bennet) writes:
>
>I'd like to try a C/C++ compiler with an option to issue a warning
>message if a subservient statement were farther left than the
>statement it's subservient to.  Note I said warning, and of course
>all warning should be individually disableable (is that a word? well,
>it is now :-).  This would catch the occasional misindentation, or
>the (very rare, I'm glad to say) cases where I got confused and
>stayed confused for an extended period.

Isn't that one of the values of indent(1)?  If you run your source through it
and the indentation suddenly looks strange (assuming you have given it the
options to produce your normal style as output) you can go hunting and compare
both versions and see where you went wrong, even if your source would otherwise
compile properly, but most likely run incorrectly.

-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------\
| Doug Siebert                             | "I don't have to take this abuse |
| Internet:  dsiebert@icaen.uiowa.edu      |  from you - I've got hundreds of |
| NeXTMail:  dsiebert@chop.isca.uiowa.edu  |  people waiting in line to abuse |
|     ICBM:  41d 39m 55s N, 91d 30m 43s W  |  me!"  Bill Murray, Ghostbusters |
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------/
Hi, I'm a .signature worm.  I've already copied myself into your .signature.
From: bevan@cs.man.ac.uk (Stephen J Bevan)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: The need for an assembler (was: Favorite CPU)
Date: 28 Aug 92 19:16:15 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester
In-reply-to: Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca's message of 27 Aug 92 21:17:37 GMT

In article <14644@mindlink.bc.ca> Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca (Charlie Gibbs) writes:
   >That's what happens when you have type-safe languages.  You'll find
   >that predeclaration is also necessary in most other type-safe
   >languages.  It's true, it's to help out the compiler.  So what?

	This is part of the HLL zealots' argument that I've always had
   trouble with.  Supposedly the purpose of a high-level language is
   to allow you to write your code in a straightforward way that
   readily illustrates the structure of your application.  If we're
   supposed to be free from picky internal details, why then do we
   have to write things in an unnatural order just to satisfy the
   compiler?

Your obviously using the wrong HLL :-)
Haskell doesn't have the stupid ``define before use'' rule.

bevan
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: aeg03@rrz.uni-koeln.de (Jan T. Kim)
Subject: Re: Unlistable BASIC (was: YAFP: TRS-80 Super Graphics)
Organization: Regional Computing Center, University of Cologne, F. R. Germany
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 92 14:36:30 GMT


GFA basic (the almost  undisputedly  best  basic  for  the  Atari
ST/TT/... computer series) offers a "PSAVE" command. It will save
the  source  in  a  tokenized  (well,  that's  always  done)  and
additionally encrypted form. A psaved source can only be executed
by the interpreter, you can't edit it anymore.

Just thought this may be interesting in this context.

Greetinx, Jan

 +- Jan Kim -- X.400:    S=kim;OU=vax;O=mpiz-koeln;P=mpg;A=dbp;C=de -+
 |             Internet: kim@vax.mpiz-koeln.mpg.dbp.de               |
 |                                                                   |
 *----=<  hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans  >=-----*
From: koen@blade.stack.urc.tue.nl (Koen Holtman)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: Good source code to read?
Date: 26 Aug 92 13:20:51 GMT
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers

avg@rodan.UU.NET (Vadim Antonov) writes:

>In article <1992Aug23.234300.3595@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au>
>parry@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Tom J Parry) writes:

>>There is a very nifty way of showing that the Hal;ting problem is
>>unsolvable. 

>>funny(P)
>>{
>>	if halt(P,P)
>>		while (1) do {};
>>	else
>>		exit;
>>}

>Wow. I'm impressed by the quality of Western education. This stuff
>was in the first month lectures in Moscow U -- and it is a classical
>example of "false" proofs.

Nope. It is not a false proof, it is a small part of a proof.

>Basically the algorithm above is an equivalent of Russel's paradox
 [.....]

The main part of the proof is the construction of a kind of
self-reference that has nothing to do with Russell's paradox. (You can't
construct a paradox in a sound system...) 

This construction is definitely not trivial, and I don't pretend to know
how it is done.  Being a programmer I don't care that mutch about the
subtle details found in incompleteness proofs.  I use logic for other
things, like proving that (some) programs terminate :-)

 [...]
>All implications of the existance of the paradox are too many to
>comprehend.

Of the Russell paradox? It does not have that many implications. Not in
real life, because human language doesn't work that way, and not in
mathematics, because we all work with sound systems (at least we hope we
do..), and one can't derive a paradox in a sound system.  Or did you
mean philisophical(sp?) implications?

> But is has nothing to do with the mathematics of finite
>machines.

And nothing with the mathematics of infinite machines.

In fact, you don't need a different kind of mathematics when dealing
with infinite machines.  It is even more easy to (proof a) program for
an infinite machine, because you don't have to worry about overflows: the
variables simply have an infinite range.

>--vadim

>				...believing that P != NP :-)

Koen.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Koen Holtman                  TUE computing science     "Dat zieje wel"
koen@blade.stack.urc.tue.nl    (Ax:*p)==(*p&p!=&x)         --Multatuli
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: thomas@bitrot.in-berlin.de (Thomas Driemeyer)
Subject: Re: You know when you're hacking too long when...
Organization: Thomas Driemeyer, Berlin
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 08:07:30 GMT

In article <a=anyyn@lynx.unm.edu> quirk@pioneer.unm.edu (Gym Z. Quirk) writes:
>Come to think of it, It's probably some marketoid's miscalculation.
>He included the bun in the list of ingredients (making a total of 10)
>and forgot to consider the consequences of *not* having a bun.

No, wait, I am positively *addicted* to the very first choice on the list:
No bun, no meat, no mayo, no lettuce, no everything else. I wonder if I
would still have to pay the regular price? :-)

Thomas
-- 

--
Thomas Driemeyer      thomas@bitrot.in-berlin.de      voice/fax: +49 30 8924936
               1.-20. Oktober: trane!thomas@pacbell.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: zrepachol@cc.curtin.edu.au (Paul Repacholi)
Subject: Re: Better dead than IBM
Organization: Curtin University of Technology
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 14:44:55 GMT

In article <14681@mindlink.bc.ca>, Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca (Charlie Gibbs) writes:
> PS/2: a Piece of Shit Too
No, no, it's half a PS. You need half an OS for it.

No one seems to have mentioned the cannonical 'Itty Bitty Micro' yet.

~Paul
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What You See Is All You Get
From: thomas@datamark.co.nz (Thomas Beagle)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 22:45:43 GMT
Organization: Datamark International Ltd.

In article <CKD.92Aug31074738@loiosh.eff.org> ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis) writes:
>What the user wants and what the user should want are not always
>synonymous.  I used to do resume design (on WYSIWYG systems) but I
>always used tabs, style sheets, etc, where possible.
>
>Then there were the people who used spaces to center and indent... in
>proportional fonts.  Ack.  Barf.

There was a recent thread in one of the MS-Windows groups about the
opinion that Word for Windows is not true WYSIWYG.

One of the examples used to prove this was the fact that some luser's
father couldn't get text to align by using spaces...

There's no such thing as WYSIWYG until the display dpi is the same as
the output dpi.
-- 
    Thomas Beagle | thomas@datamark.co.nz    or | A beagle a day keeps        
Datamark Intl Ltd | thomas@cavebbs.welly.gen.nz | the doctor at bay.
 Technical Writer | 		      Vote MMP!
     Email is good.  Email is fun.  Getting up and walking is evil.
From: gadbois@mcc.com (David Gadbois)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: CyC project
Date: 28 Aug 1992 20:47:18 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

    Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 05:26 CDT
    From: xexeo@dxcern.cern.ch (Geraldo Xexeo)

    A recent issue of Scientific American cited the CyC being done at
    MCC, Austin. The CyC (say 'psych') is a database with currently 2
    Mrules, and its creators say when it arrives 10Mrules it should be
    intelligent. If I am not hacking for too long time, D.Lenat is the
    creator.

Disclaimer:  When I am not wasting my time reading news or otherwise
avoiding working on my dissertation, I work on the aforementioned Cyc
project.

I heard a great saying the other day:  "Asking if a machine can be
intelligent is like asking if a submarine can swim."  The goal of the
Cyc project is to put together enough basic, common sense knowledge and
learning facilities to use it so that we can have systems that can
"swim."  The number of rules and facts is not so important as the
connections between them and how much they leverage off each other,
though it is also clear that even the basics of common sense are a lot
of information.

    In another direction, Thinking Machines wants to use CM-5 to process
    the CyC database, eventually to create an AI.

The Cyc "code," i.e., the hardwired accessors, inference mechanisms for
the knowledge base, and whatnot, is written in a language called CycL,
which itself is currently implemented in and has a great similarity to
Common LISP.  The choice of a back-end language is largely irrelevant.
Some maniacs have even proposed porting it to C, which would be tricky
to do well because the system generates, compiles, and runs a lot of
code on the fly.  As for platforms, fast machines with lots of memory
are very nice, but the current implementation will run on just about
anything and is supported on Macintoshes, Symbolics LISP machines, and
reasonable UNIX boxes.  I sure wouldn't mind having a thousand SPARC
processors and many gigabytes of memory to run Cyc on, though.

Bonus folklore tidbit:  The name "Cyc" is short for "Encyclopedia."  It
comes from the early days of the project when folks thought that
amassing a huge amount of encyclopedic knowledge would be sufficient to
get some kind of emergent intelligence.  They quickly discovered that a
huge amount of knowledge was required to even begin to understand things
like "Austin is the capital of Texas" in a useful way and so set out to
put it together.

--David Gadbois
gadbois@mcc.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: b645zhy@utarlg.uta.edu (Mark Luckstead)
Subject: Re: Nonfiction Computer History Book List Wanted
Summary:  Bell and Newell. Computre Strcutres: Readings and Examples
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: The University of Texas at Arlington
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 15:58:00 GMT

(If it hasn't been mentioned) The following is good:

Bell, C. Gordaon and Newell, Allen.  Computer Structures: Readings and
   Examples.  McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1971.

   ISBN 07-004357-4

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Musical Peripherals
From: don@zl2tnm.gen.nz (Don Stokes)
Date: 29 Aug 92 09:07:38 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: The Wolery

lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
> The PDP-8 and PDP-11 share a dubious trait:
> They both have to support configurations where the console device could be
> anything from a model 33 teletype on up through a VT-4xx or whatever today
> with all stops along the way being supported (LA36, VT05, VT50, VT52, VT100,
> etc.).

VAXes support pretty much anything as a console device too (apart from those
with a Pro 350 or 380 as a console processor).  All of the above devices 
share the characteristic that they use ASCII on an RS232 (or occasionally
20mA) link, which is pretty easy to support.  One could say that any RS232
device is "supported" -- I used to use a Hazeltine Esprit as a console 
terminal on my pdp11/34A and pdp11/73.

All pdp11s require a DL11-compatible board with its CSR at 177560 as a console
interface.  On later LSI-series CPUs (KDF11-B, KDJ11-[BCDE]), this is built
onto the CPU board, but still looks like a DL11.  Of course, if the console
interface is a separate board, you can have a 20mA interface instead of an
RS232 one.

VAXes all have their console interface on the CPU, which appears as a 
set of processor registers rather than an interface on the bus.
 
> I have a PDP-8/e system whose console is a DECmate III emulating a VT-220.

I have a TK50 in a DECmate III box.  A friend of mine (then) in DEC FIeld 
Circus told me how a site had a MicroVAX II with its TK50 and RX50 outboarded 
in a Rainbow chassis, with what was left of the Rainbow running its built-in
VT100 emulation as the console terminal....

--
Don Stokes, ZL2TNM (DS555)                        don@zl2tnm.gen.nz (home)
Network Manager, Computing Services Centre            don@vuw.ac.nz (work)
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand              +64-4-495-5052
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: IQTI400@INDYCMS.IUPUI.EDU (macphil)
Subject: Re: The need for an assembler (was: Favorite CPU)
Organization: IUPUI
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 14:54:40 GMT

In article <1992Sep1.051740.16218@sequent.com>
dafuller@sequent.com (David Fuller) writes:
 
>2) Make things simple.  But no simpler (Einstein).
 
 
This is not a quote from Einstein...he may have cited it, but it's much,
much older.   You got the first letter of the last name right, however.
From: tim@sinix.UUCP (Tim Bissell)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: You know you've been hacking too long...
Date: 1 Sep 92 15:56:47 GMT
Organization: SNI AG Muenchen, STO XS


 In <1992Aug22.011322.16554@vitsemi.com> rob@vitsemi.com (Rob Eccles) writes:
 
 [...]
 
 >Also, when a person looks at an object, their eyes scan a scene.  The brain
 >then assembles a total picture.  It does not examine an entire scene at once.
 >The pulsing of the LED will not be in synch with the eyes and thus it can
 >appear to move independantly.
 

Now here is a case of someone who *really* has been hacking too long...
Raster eyeballs... interesting concept.

Tim.
-- 
Tim Bissell		|      best...	tim@athen.uucp
Work:+49 89 636 49542	| 	hmm...	tim%sinix@germany.eu.net
Home:+49 89 692 5263	|   UK only...	uk.co.uel!sinix!athen!tim
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers