ON TOPIC: what will be the effect of Obama's victory on programming? - Programming Languages

On Nov 10, 2:29 am, Gerry Quinn <ger...@indigo.ie> wrote:[color=blue]
> In article <e5401c32-d8c5-420c-8046-61edac7b88a6
> @d42g2000prb.googlegroups.com>, spinoza1...@yahoo.com says...
>
>
>
>
>[color=green]
> > On Nov 9, 9:29 am, CBFalconer <cbfalco...@yahoo.com> wrote:[color=darkred]
> > > Gerry Quinn wrote:
> > > > spinoza1...@yahoo.com says...[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> > > >> Food prices are still rising, but even before that time, nobody
> > > >> noticed that many of the Yuppies were eating food that
> > > >> historically has fed marginal groups...[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> > > > They said that about oysters when I was a kid.[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> > > I never really noticed what oysters ate.  :_)[/color][/color]
>[color=green]
> > Drifting off topic, smartass. Why is cracking a nonprogramming book or
> > reading outside the sports pages offtopic here, but personal
> > destruction and stupid remarks by professional smartass punks on-
> > topic?[/color]
>[color=green]
> > OK, they said that food for the poor (oysters) were becoming food for
> > the rich when you were a kid. Proves my point: the pace of the
> > collapse of human society is inexorable but on a geological scale, so
> > that the frogs being boiled (us) don't notice it. The fact is that a
> > character in Aldous Huxley's novel Point Counter Point predicts the
> > collapse of human life as a consequence of industrial society...IN
> > 1929.[/color]
>
> Or it proves that such things are unreliable signatures for a putative
> "societal collapse" (whatever that is).[/color]

Huxley saw he crash of 1929 and the Second World War which for the
impoverished and the dead WERE a societal collapse, followed by a
false dawn which produced post-humanity, a humanity which is causing a
second, and perhaps final, collapse.[color=blue]
>
> I'd worry more about such issues if the poor started getting thin.[/color]

It is well known that poor people in a society without actual famine
feed on too much processed food because it is cheap and they lack the
time or resources to eat healthy food.[color=blue]
>[color=green]
> > But the sort of person that posts here, guys like Richard Heathfield,
> > make it their mission to laugh at such visionaries.[/color]
>[color=green]
> > To return to topic as if I ever left, Edsger Dijkstra predicted the
> > world collapse of organizations in 1975 as a consequence of the
> > domination of intelligent programmers (not, typically, the programmers
> > here) by management-thought and manager-talk. He was laughed at.[/color]
>
> And rightly so.  Elitist, BASIC-hating twit.[/color]

The real elite is and was the managerial priesthood which (cf
Galbraith, The Economics of Innocent Fraud) was created after WWII as
a buffer zone between labor and capital and which has systematically
(Enron, Lehmann, etc) exploited this privilege to impoverish the rest
of us including computer programmers, who were falsely accused of
wanting to be a priesthood merely when they tried to do a half-decent
job. Dijkstra was marginalized by the managerial false priests because
he spoke truth to power.

As to both the strength and the limits of his views on Basic, see my
book.[color=blue]
>[color=green]
> > Then, in 2001, al-Qaeda operatives destroyed the World Trade Center,
> > in part because FBI agents in Minneapolis could not use Boolean
> > operators in the fixed, unalterable, and proprietary computer systems
> > of the FBI: they complained that they could not enter
> > "terroristAssociate AND flightSchool".[/color]
>[color=green]
> > Then, in 2005, the response to Hurricane Katrina was delayed both by
> > racism and the inability of FEMA to use its computer systems to locate
> > buses.[/color]
>
> And society did not collapse due to those incidents.  Nor is it
> collapsing as a result of the latest financial shock.
>[/color]
The collapse is experienced one person at a time, so it's invalid for
you to reason from the fact you THINK you're doin' just fine, to "no
collapse".
[color=blue][color=green]
> > Then, in 2008, it turned out that mortgages had been so sliced and
> > diced and resold that there was no way of evaluating the mortgage
> > holder's current ability and willingness to meet the mortgage
> > payments. The Depression that has resulted may dwarf the Great
> > Depression. It may be The Thousand Years of Darkness. It may be
> > Ragnarok. It may be the time for the frost giants to fare loose.[/color]
>
> Dream on.[/color]

[color=blue]
>[color=green]
> > The fact is that until industrial fishing, supported by computer
> > models which pay more attention to the number of fish caught than to
> > the safety of the fishermen, the North Atlantic swarmed with cod and
> > now it doesn't. The fact is that mothers on the island on which I live
> > are freaking out because even if a carton of milk is labeled "made in
> > Australia" this does NOT mean that the milk wasn't made in China, and
> > laced with poison. Supply chain systems are written (in C, probably)
> > NOT for the consumer but for the suits.[/color]
>
> Mothers do tend to become upset at threats to their babies.  Again, the
> melamine scandal did not cause societal collapse, even in China.  
>
> It is the second Chinese melamine scandal - last year a similar
> occurrence killed hundreds, perhaps even thousands of American pets.  
> And again, society contrived to lumber on through the chaos.  Perhaps
> society is less flimsy than you imagine...[/color]

....or maybe you can't see the forest for the trees, like most
programmers.[color=blue]
>
> - Gerry Quinn- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -[/color]

In article <7b24b905-844c-4e5b-989a-67f77658aa21
@b38g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, [email]spinoza1111@yahoo.com[/email] says...[color=blue]
> On Nov 10, 2:29 am, Gerry Quinn <ger...@indigo.ie> wrote:[color=green]
> > In article <e5401c32-d8c5-420c-8046-61edac7b88a6
> > @d42g2000prb.googlegroups.com>, spinoza1...@yahoo.com says...[/color][/color]
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
> > > OK, they said that food for the poor (oysters) were becoming food for
> > > the rich when you were a kid. Proves my point: the pace of the
> > > collapse of human society is inexorable but on a geological scale, so
> > > that the frogs being boiled (us) don't notice it. The fact is that a
> > > character in Aldous Huxley's novel Point Counter Point predicts the
> > > collapse of human life as a consequence of industrial society...IN
> > > 1929.[/color]
> >
> > Or it proves that such things are unreliable signatures for a putative
> > "societal collapse" (whatever that is).[/color]
>
> Huxley saw he crash of 1929 and the Second World War which for the
> impoverished and the dead WERE a societal collapse, followed by a
> false dawn which produced post-humanity, a humanity which is causing a
> second, and perhaps final, collapse.[/color]

I thought it was the Great War that was usually asserted to be the end
of prelapsarian society. Society bounced back very well after WWII, and
was clearly invigorated in numerous ways.

To say that something was a societal collapse for those who suffered is
akin to arguing that society ends completely any time someone dies. The
continued existence of society does not depend on the continued
existence of all of its members.
[color=blue][color=green]
> > I'd worry more about such issues if the poor started getting thin.[/color]
>
> It is well known that poor people in a society without actual famine
> feed on too much processed food because it is cheap and they lack the
> time or resources to eat healthy food.[/color]

We have eaten processed food since we came down from the trees - what do
you think cooking is? [And cooking is not the only form of food
processing that comes down from antiquity.]

In fact modern processed food is, for the most part, pretty nutritious
(there is some crap, of course, but that is why food has labels).
Devotees of so-called 'organic' food or other eccentricities do not seem
to live noticeably longer or more healthily than those who eat cheap,
readily available foods. And one can always buy fresh or frozen
vegetables etc. and process them oneself.
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
> > > To return to topic as if I ever left, Edsger Dijkstra predicted the
> > > world collapse of organizations in 1975 as a consequence of the
> > > domination of intelligent programmers (not, typically, the programmers
> > > here) by management-thought and manager-talk. He was laughed at.[/color]
> >
> > And rightly so.  Elitist, BASIC-hating twit.[/color]
>
> The real elite is and was the managerial priesthood which (cf
> Galbraith, The Economics of Innocent Fraud) was created after WWII as
> a buffer zone between labor and capital and which has systematically
> (Enron, Lehmann, etc) exploited this privilege to impoverish the rest
> of us including computer programmers, who were falsely accused of
> wanting to be a priesthood merely when they tried to do a half-decent
> job. Dijkstra was marginalized by the managerial false priests because
> he spoke truth to power.[/color]

Nope, he was a good programmer and a bad priest/prophet.
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
> > > Then, in 2005, the response to Hurricane Katrina was delayed both by
> > > racism and the inability of FEMA to use its computer systems to locate
> > > buses.[/color]
> >
> > And society did not collapse due to those incidents.  Nor is it
> > collapsing as a result of the latest financial shock.
> >[/color]
> The collapse is experienced one person at a time, so it's invalid for
> you to reason from the fact you THINK you're doin' just fine, to "no
> collapse".[/color]

See above. Whatever happens to any individual - however tragic, unlucky
or unfair, and whether it is normal or unusual in that society - if
society carries on regardless then what happens to him is in no sense
part of a 'societal collapse'.
[color=blue][color=green]
> > Mothers do tend to become upset at threats to their babies.  Again, the
> > melamine scandal did not cause societal collapse, even in China.  
> >
> > It is the second Chinese melamine scandal - last year a similar
> > occurrence killed hundreds, perhaps even thousands of American pets.  
> > And again, society contrived to lumber on through the chaos.  Perhaps
> > society is less flimsy than you imagine...[/color]
>
> ...or maybe you can't see the forest for the trees, like most
> programmers.[/color]

I am not the one pointing to the fall of a few trees and screaming that
it represents the end of the forest.

- Gerry Quinn

Gerry Quinn wrote:[color=blue]
> [email]spinoza1111@yahoo.com[/email] says...
>[/color]
.... snip ...[color=blue]
>[color=green]
>> ...or maybe you can't see the forest for the trees, like most
>> programmers.[/color]
>
> I am not the one pointing to the fall of a few trees and
> screaming that it represents the end of the forest.[/color]

--
+-------------------+ .:\:\:/:/:.
| PLEASE DO NOT F :.:\:\:/:/:.:
| FEED THE TROLLS | :=.' - - '.=:
| | '=(\ 9 9 /)='
| Thank you, | ( (_) )
| Management | /`-vvv-'\
+-------------------+ / \
| | @@@ / /|,,,,,|\ \
| | @@@ /_// /^\ \\_\
@x@@x@ | | |/ WW( ( ) )WW
\||||/ | | \| __\,,\ /,,/__
\||/ | | | jgs (______Y______)
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
==============================================================

fix (vb.): 1. to paper over, obscure, hide from public view; 2.
to work around, in a way that produces unintended consequences
that are worse than the original problem. Usage: "Windows ME
fixes many of the shortcomings of Windows 98 SE". - Hutchinson