comp.lang.c - 11 new messages in 5 topics - digest

comp.lang.c
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c?hl=en

comp.lang.c@googlegroups.com

Today's topics:

* seebs/schildt - 5 messages, 3 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/0c84debf9a4f144b?hl=en
* Line drawing with Bresenham more than one pixel thick - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/a26c26d92f082ac7?hl=en
* lvalues and rvalues - 2 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/0bcad112a3ad97f0?hl=en
* Personal attacks by moderators in a moderated group are unprofessional - 2
messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/fcaffc6b8db42751?hl=en
* C the complete nonsense - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/fee08dfa5e4cbaaa?hl=en

==============================================================================
TOPIC: seebs/schildt
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/0c84debf9a4f144b?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 5 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 9 2010 7:51 pm
From:

schildt: rich off of book publishing royalties. fucks super models on a
private jet.
seebs: poor. has never touched a woman.

== 2 of 5 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 9 2010 8:09 pm
From: cri@tiac.net (Richard Harter)

On Fri, 9 Apr 2010 22:51:17 -0400, <thegist@nospam.net> wrote:

>schildt: rich off of book publishing royalties. fucks super models on a
>private jet.
>seebs: poor. has never touched a woman.
>

It's a matter of priorities. Which would you prefer, being rich,
famous, and having hot sex with lots of beautiful women or being
right. The choice is obvious.

Richard Harter, cri@tiac.net
http://home.tiac.net/~cri, http://www.varinoma.com
It's not much to ask of the universe that it be fair;
it's not much to ask but it just doesn't happen.

== 3 of 5 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 9 2010 8:48 pm
From: Seebs

On 2010-04-10, Richard Harter <cri@tiac.net> wrote:
> It's a matter of priorities. Which would you prefer, being rich,
> famous, and having hot sex with lots of beautiful women or being
> right. The choice is obvious.

I was gonna say that I was surprised that Nilges had escalated to the
next level so quickly, but it occurs to me that Nilges seems to have
decided that I'm gay, and would thus be unlikely to use "has never
touched a woman" as an insult.

Kenny, maybe? It's so hard to tell.

It's funny, anyway. Whoever it is clearly ran out of ammo.

-s
--
Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nospam@seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!

== 4 of 5 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 9 2010 9:19 pm
From: cri@tiac.net (Richard Harter)

On 10 Apr 2010 03:48:17 GMT, Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net>
wrote:

>On 2010-04-10, Richard Harter <cri@tiac.net> wrote:
>> It's a matter of priorities. Which would you prefer, being rich,
>> famous, and having hot sex with lots of beautiful women or being
>> right. The choice is obvious.
>
>I was gonna say that I was surprised that Nilges had escalated to the
>next level so quickly, but it occurs to me that Nilges seems to have
>decided that I'm gay, and would thus be unlikely to use "has never
>touched a woman" as an insult.
>
>Kenny, maybe? It's so hard to tell.
>
>It's funny, anyway. Whoever it is clearly ran out of ammo.

I opine it's not any of the usual suspects. It may be a case of
having a good line stashed away and finally having had an
occasion for using it. Some people's entire life revolves around
the possibility of having the perfect occasion for delivering a
bon mot.

Richard Harter, cri@tiac.net
http://home.tiac.net/~cri, http://www.varinoma.com
It's not much to ask of the universe that it be fair;
it's not much to ask but it just doesn't happen.

== 5 of 5 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 9 2010 10:15 pm
From: Seebs

On 2010-04-10, Richard Harter <cri@tiac.net> wrote:
> I opine it's not any of the usual suspects. It may be a case of
> having a good line stashed away and finally having had an
> occasion for using it. Some people's entire life revolves around
> the possibility of having the perfect occasion for delivering a
> bon mot.

Wow. Shame to have wasted it, then.

-s
--
Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nospam@seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Line drawing with Bresenham more than one pixel thick
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/a26c26d92f082ac7?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 9 2010 8:06 pm
From: Dann Corbit

In article <ef2503e6-6606-4c72-94fb-ce3fc3588c41
@q23g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>, christian.bau@cbau.wanadoo.co.uk says...
>
> On Apr 8, 9:35 am, Gazza <garyw...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I am using the Bresenham algorithm to draw single pixel lines with no
> > problems. However I would like to draw some lines which are more than
> > one pixel thick. Is there a modification to this algorithm that I can
> > use or can anyone point me to an algorithm or resource that I can use
> > to investigate / achieve this?
>
> Sure. But I think you would first have to define what you actually
> want to draw. If the line is say ten pixel thick, do you want to draw
> a rectangle rotated into the right position, or a parallelogram?

Typically neither.

When I had the same problem, I inserted pie slices into the gaps where
the segments change direction (for non-raster devices like pen
plotters). If you have a raster device, then you can just add a circle
the same diameter as the the line segments at the ends of all interior
direction changes.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: lvalues and rvalues
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/0bcad112a3ad97f0?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 9 2010 9:00 pm
From: Keith Thompson

Joe Wright <joewwright@comcast.net> writes:
> On 4/9/2010 01:00, Keith Thompson wrote:
>> Uno<merrilljensen@q.com> writes:
>>> Keith Thompson wrote:
>>>> You very nearly *can* tell whether an expression is an lvalue or
>>>> not just by looking at it.
>>>
>>> Is there an extra negative in this sentence?
>>
>> No, no, of course not.
>>
>> Rephrasing:
>>
>> You very nearly *can* tell
>> whether or not an expression is an lvalue
>> just by looking at it.
>>
> I don't understand the 'very nearly' qualifier. Can we identify an
> expression which designates an object by looking at it? How else?

Case 1:

int x;
/* The expression ``x'' is an lvalue. */

Case 2:

enum { x };
/* The expression ``x'' is not an lvalue. */

In many cases ("very nearly" may have been an overstatement), you can
tell whether a given expression is an lvalue or not just by looking at
it. ``*x'' and ``x[y]'' are lvalues; ``&x'' and ``2+2'' are not.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 10 2010 12:07 am
From: J de Boyne Pollard

> >> You very nearly *can* tell whether an expression is an lvalue or
> >> not just by looking at it.
>
> > Is there an extra negative in this sentence?
>
> No, no, of course not.
>
> Rephrasing:
>
> You very nearly *can* tell
> whether or not an expression is an lvalue
> just by looking at it.

For what it's worth: Several authorities consider "whether or not"
to be synonymous with "whether", and the "or not" to be, as M.
Uno might have been enquiring, superfluous.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Personal attacks by moderators in a moderated group are unprofessional
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/fcaffc6b8db42751?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 9 2010 10:55 pm
From: spinoza1111

On Apr 10, 5:32 am, rigs <rigor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 9, 3:13 pm,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Apr 5, 8:14 am, Julienne Walker <happyfro...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Apr 4, 5:28 am,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Apr 4, 4:22 am, Julienne Walker <happyfro...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > On Apr 3, 2:49 pm,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > > > On Apr 3, 9:44 pm, Julienne Walker <happyfro...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > <snip the usual time vampire of a post from a self important asshole>
>
> > > > > > > > So that's funny? How about blonde jokes? Women driver jokes?
>
> > > > > > > If they're good jokes, yes. I'm not so full of myself that I can't
> > > > > > > appreciate a joke at my expense.
>
> > > > > > We are beyond joking, kiddo. I think McGraw Hill and Schildt should
> > > > > > sue Seebach.
>
> > > > > *I* think you should butt out of their business. It's not your place
> > > > > to provide unsolicited "self-defense" for others, and I strongly doubt
> > > > > Schildt would approve of how you're doing it. Fortunately, he has no
> > > > > need to worry about your dragging his good name through the mud by
> > > > > bringing up old embarrassments. The chances of anyone who might
> > > > > escalate the damage reading your posts (and blogs) are vanishingly
> > > > > small.
>
> > > > In ways that shall remain confidential, I did check, after getting the
> > > > wikipedia biography to conform to wikipedia's "biographies of living
> > > > persons" policies, whether interested parties on the other side of
> > > > this issue cared either way about my participation. I received their
> > > > approval.
>
> > > Bullshit. I can see it one of two ways:
>
> > > 1) You're a liar and received no such approval. I see this as likely
> > > because you're prone to throw around names as a way to make yourself
> > > seem more credible.
>
> > Well, darlin' I love you too:
>
> > 1.  I might use the names to establish credibility in a medium where
> > everyone is so filled with hatred and fear that nobody has any, but
> > unfortunately I rilly helped Nash with C, I rilly interviewed Peter
> > Neumann for a real book, Whit Diffie was a coworker and so on.
>
> > 2.  Don't call me a liar. It makes you a liar.
>
> > > 2) You received positive feedback for the Wikipedia edits and took
> > > that to mean approval for ALL of your vindictive escapades.
>
> > 2.  Hmm. Do you do that? Because I think you think I'm some sort of
> > depraved person who would do that, and not learn instead that success
> > is based on doing one's homework as I did when I asked wikipedia to
> > remove the real garbage from the Schildt article. Do me the courtesy
> > of not confusing me with your depraved associates. I mean, if everyone
> > in your circle is for shit, and if every guy here is filled with
> > hatred, and every gal with fear and hatred, there's also the exception
> > that proves the rule.
>
> > > I'd love to see what Schildt thinks of how you've been championing him
> > > here on clc. Were I him, I'd rush to send you a cease and desist email.
>
> > Solidarity is rare, isn't it? My boss got in trouble for hugging a
> > laid off co-worker. And I've already addressed in writing this issue,
> > in a post where I described how Leon Trotsky's dissidence got his
> > extended family murdered. Stalin killed Trotsky's son: not Trotsky.
> > And if we can't point out that Seebach is stalking, that Seebach
> > initiated the campaign with CTCN-3, then anyone, anywhere in the
> > world, will be able to denounce any one else and depending on his
> > access to the technical apparatus, will be able to incite a mob.
> > Delightful world we live in, isn't it. Darlin.
>
> > Anyway, this is the moment when the women start screeching, isn't it,
> > excited at some bestial level by the blood and glass but frightened
> > that the men will turn on them all the same.
>
> > Blood and glass, blood and glass
> > This is merely what has come to pass.
>
> Are you drunk?

No. I understand that people have to get drunk today to talk poetry,
but I have to teach it, so I figured it out as you see up there and at
different places in these discussions. I find it amusing that when
people try to match me, they can't put together a single metrical line
(when English professors try and fail they claim that I don't scan in
sour grapes)...the words don't come, or foulness comes, or half
remembered rock lyrics.

And its SUCH an an a pest I am
When I shout iamb
Way down upon de Spondee river
Trochee me honey bunny

I mean: what we've found here is that someone with no academic
preparation in computer science and serious personal problems has
stalked and harassed Herb Schildt for fifteen years, using wikipedia
and the internet to amplify himself and make himself Legion. Rather
than subject him to the same treatment which would encourage the
criminal chorus of tu quoque, I propose to demonstrate in verse that
he's not dealing with what he thinks he's dealing. Something new, I'd
wot.

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Fri, Apr 9 2010 11:58 pm
From: J de Boyne Pollard

> > Best example:  You know the thing where summing the digits of a
> > number can tell you whether it's a multiple of 3 or 9?  How does
> > that work in bases other than base 10?  (I freeze up for 10 seconds
> > or so, not tracking movement if people wave hands in front of me,
> > etc.)  "N-1 and its factors."  I then spent the next hour and a half
> > trying to explain why this was obvious.
>
>  Neat!  I just tried this out in binary (N==2), and it works!

I know you were joking there; but nonetheless try it out in octal.
It actually has a use, there. Calculate the octal "digital root"
(for that is what it is called) of a day number (i.e. the number
of days since some fixed starting point that happens to be a
Sunday, such as 1899-12-31), and you get the day of the week.

Not so useful in software, perhaps, since a mod operator
produces the same answer. But in hardware even several adders
are usually preferable to a divider.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: C the complete nonsense
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/t/fee08dfa5e4cbaaa?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Apr 10 2010 12:13 am
From: spinoza1111

On Apr 10, 5:01 am, John Bode <jfbode1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 9, 3:05 am, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 2010-04-09, Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nos...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On 9 Apr, 03:57,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >> On Apr 9, 2:53 am, Walter Banks <wal...@bytecraft.com> wrote:
> > >> > Seeb's and Clive's reviews have been posted for a long time
> > >> > on the internet and essentially forgotten until Nilges brought
> > >> This is not correct. They were referenced in making the Schildt
> > >> "biography" on wikipedia in 2006 and over these years, there has
> > >> always been a high frequency of references. Furthermore, newbies have
> > >> always been directed to the C FAQ which makes a libel a fact.
> > > the FAQ does not mention the book being discussed here. It mentions
> > > the _Annotated ANSI C Standard_. Would you like to open *that* can of
> > > worms? To be honest it is (or was) a cheap way to acquire a copy of
> > > the standard. I own a copy. The annotations are worthless.
>
> > They are indeed exceptionally bad.
>
> > I think that's the key bit missing from the Nilges analysis; he's assuming
> > that negative statements about something are "libel", but that's only the
> > case *if they are untrue*.
>
> Even that's not enough; there must be actual malice -- IOW, a
> deliberate attempt to harm someone's reputation by spreading
> falsehoods.

In the case of a private person, spreading discreditable truths is
also libel, I'm afraid. Here's what Blackstone's commentaries say
(4-150):

"For the same reason it is immaterial with respect to the essence of a
libel, whether the matter of it be true or false; since the
provocation, and not the falsity, is the thing to be punished
criminally: though, doubtless, the falsehood of it may aggravate its
guilt, and enhance its punishment."

Here's the unabridged Oxford definition of the Law use of Libel as a
noun:

"Any published statement damaging to the reputation of a person"

In Seebach's case, there is an aggravating falsehood in Blackstone's
sense. This is his inference from what he considers an "error" in
Schildt to the conclusion that Schildt doesn't know about the facility
or C in general. When Seebach fucks up one line strlen, we're not
supposed to make this inference.

This is unwarranted, since anyone with publishing experience knows
that the production process introduces errors (both Seebach and
Heathfield have admitted that there own books contain errors).
>
> It could be argued that C:TCN is a deliberate attempt to harm
> Schildt's reputation as an authority on the C programming language,

This is what it would appear to be.

> but it is not using falsehoods to do so; it is using examples of

"The 'heap' is a DOS term" is a falsehood, and, absent working face to
face to Schildt, Seebach had no right to make inferences about his
competence, inferences which are proven false by Schildt's large
number of books, each of which has been more commercially successful
than Seebach or Heathfield.

> Schildt's own writing compared to the language definition to

The "language definition" as found in the standards cannot be used to
write compilers or even understand how to use C (Seebach's code is
exhibit A). They fail to define significant semantics, because by the
time they were drafted, there existed several incompatible
implementations, and the standards writers appear to have no mandate
to make these compilers incompatible with a standard.

The only way to square this circle was to create a non-deterministic
semantics, in which (to take only one simple example) the programmer
cannot code a(b=0, b) and expect in all cases that the values of the
formal parameters will both be zero.

In this code

#include "stdio.h"
#define MAX_SIZE 100
void b(int c, int d)
{
printf("%d %d",c,d);
}
int main()
{

int e = 4;
b(e = 0, e);
return 0;

}

my Microsoft C++ express compiler in C mode prints 0 0, but I'm not
"supposed" to expect this because in "standard" C the order of
evaluation has been "defined" as nondeterministic.

But if the order of evaluation is nondeterministic, this means that a
truly conformant compiler would have to use a random number generator
to generate code for matching formal and actual parameters.

This is a result of vendor greed, and the Bush-Clinton spirit of
allowing the private sector to highjack the public good.

A sensible compiler cannot be written for "standard" C nor can a
sensible book for real programmers be written about it. Schildt is at
most guilty of a little *schlamperei* in going along to get along to
get along with a marketing plan at McGraw Hill, which deliberately
ignored, as you clowns ignore, the essential problem.

Schildt compromised himself as I compromised myself when the Registrar
of my university, for whom I'd written a lot of software and who
considered me a genius, counseled me to get my ass to Champaign-Urbana
and learn (as Herb there learned) REAL computer science using real DEC
gear instead of IBM mainframes. Although I did go to grad school in
Chicago, I wound up wasting time by having to reinvent structured
programming in assembler and Cobol.

But all programmers do this, because they have relationships and
children as I did. The real evil are programmers handed access to
higher-level platforms who then stalk and shit upon their brothers and
sisters for having to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and being
underwhelmed by the void main issue...because it's 3:00 AM in the
server room and they have to get it working.

> demonstrate his lack of authority.
>
> In short, it is not libel to point out that someone doesn't know what
> they're talking about if you can demonstrate that they really don't
> know what they're talking about (at least in the US).

Seebach hasn't demonstrated this, since as Dr McClean has pointed out,
his tone is biased and he makes errors of his own. But see Blackstone:
the malice and not the truth is what determines libel.

>
> And honestly, the intent is not to harm Schildt; the intent is to

The tone implies something that is in fact the secret fear of every
programmer; you guys are secretly soiling yourselves in fear that your
incompetence will be discovered. This is because American business
highjacked computers in order to give a gloss of Science and Reason to
the game of expropriation. In so doing, they needed programmers able
to get code to "work" in the sense of running with or without errors.
In the "hacker ethos" this became "rough consensus and working code",
and despite the hackers' illusion that they were free men, they were
men so willing to compromise and fuck with truth-as-software-
correctness that they, and not educated or cultivated men or women,
program computers today and create the ongoing software crisis.

Schildt was made "it" by Seebach because Seebs was able to get
corporate jobs as a programmer but had never taken computer science
nor been certified as one who knew his trade except in the most sloppy
ways: that approbation which one can get from making things work, or
run, or appearing to. By stalking Schildt, Seebach tried to exorcise
Seebach's demons, but it gives him only temporary Nepenthe.

> alert non-experts that this reference is substantially flawed and
> should not be used.  The reason we pile on Shildt is that a) he is
> advertised as an authority on the language, b) his books on C have
> been *consistently* awful, and c) after *four* editions he *still*
> makes stupid mistakes.

You have never made this case, because you can only criticise his lack
of conformance to Linux and his "failure" to tell his readers about
nondeterministic operations...information which is useless on a
specific compiler and platform which works deterministically.

>
> I agree with Harter that Seebs' updated page could be substantially
> improved upon by focusing less on individual mistakes and addressing
> larger structural failings (sins of both omission and commission).
> It's clear that, as a C programmer, Schildt is pretty damned lazy and/
> or sloppy; his examples are riddled with stupid runtime errors (such
> as redirecting stdout *before* prompting for input, using the wrong
> conversion specifiers in printf() statements, etc.) and bad practice
> (gets() still appears in his examples, feof() as a loop condition,
> etc.).  It's also clear that some (much?) of his explanatory text is
> at variance with the language definition (be it the standard or a
> specific implementation).  But something that I think Seebs needs to
> make clearer is how much Schildt *doesn't* explain about the language
> (the point about structure padding is a good one).

As I have said, no professional programmer or educated person such as
Dr McClean expects to self-moronize and blindly type in code. I
realized in my first computer science class that the assembler code
for the IBM 7094 wasn't going to work on a 1401; tyros, contrary to
mythos, are in my experience often smarter than "experienced"
programmers who are moronized by corporate life.

And when Seebach turns to the vastly more important expository Schildt
text, Seebach's lack of education is plain.

Here's a howler from CTCN-4 that shows this: "similarly, "the heap" is
not necessarily a single region."

To the uneducated, whether in CS or other fields, a grave skepticism
is their simulation of the education they do not have, as in the case
of Creationist "scholars" who express doubt about a "theory" and trust
to the ignorance of their readers on the nature of a scientific
"theory".

To the half-educated fraud, whether Seebach or the Creationist, the
best kind of statements are open-ended and nondeterministic because
these types of statements, as opposed to e=mc**2, four colors suffice,
or three control structures suffice, are harder to FALSIFY.

Because Seebach never took a single class in CS, nor, apparently, a
class in philosophy of science, nor, apparently International
Baccalaureate classes in Theory of Knowledge that I teach, he believes
that he can get away with gravely intoning "the heap is not
necessarily a single region". This is because he skipped computer
hardware -oftware architecture which despite the passing of highly
leveled architectures such as the VAX still uses Dijsktran "separation
of concerns" to make things CLEAR.

At some implementation level, the heap may not "necessarily" be a
single region. It may be a linked list of pointers or chunks of
storage. It may in fact be several linked regions. At the level of
engineering it might be scattered over several chips on a board, and
you may be able to watch it being used in several different places. At
the level of physics it's particles dancing in a void who do not know
what they do.

But the computer SCIENTIST as opposed to the hacker, or stalker, knows
that it's her job to e pluribus unum, and to make at some
comprehensible singular HEAP out of lower-level implementation
details. To assault and stalk based on denying the scientist the
ability to form a concept is not only libel and stalking. It's also
digital Maoism.

Exhausted middle-aged mothers and grandmothers bring their shining
sons and daughters to my classes in Hong Kong in hopes that they will
major, in some cases, in computer science in Hong Kong. In many cases,
these mothers and grandmothers lived in mainland China in the 1960s
and 1970s and were denied an education by thugs who disrupted classes
and stalked decent teachers and authors based on what these assholes
thought were "errors". Seebach is not as destructive as they but he is
as evil, and contemptible because so impotent in the long run. And the
Teabaggers are Seebach scaled up: Fascism.

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