On Apr 24, 5:15=A0pm, James Dow Allen <jdallen2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> (My whining diatribe complains about whining and
> is thus oxymoronic, or in violation of the Barber's
> Paradox. I've combined 2 or 3 whining diatribes
> into a single message so that the few who've not yet
> killfiled me will need but a single, if vicious, punch
> on the 'n' key.)
>
> On Apr 20, 6:44=A0pm, Richard <de...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > James Dow Allen <jdallen2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
> > > ...=A0The ease with which arrays can be embedded in
> > > structures (and vice versa), as well as the fact that C's
> > > elegant syntax depends on the "peculiar" relation****p
> > > of pointer and array means, IMHO, that the views of
> > > OP and Mr. navia imply gross failure to understand and
> > > appreciate C.
> > ...
> > This post has Heathfield sockpuppet written all over it.
>
> Perhaps I can't fully rule out being controlled by an
> alien intelligence, but I did double-check my birth
> certificate and found that my name, as I have long
> suspected, is indeed shown as James Dow Allen III.
> (I dropped the pretentious-seeming "III" several
> decades ago. I hope the medionym "Dow" doesn't seem
> pretentious -- I started using it in the Google era,
> since "James Allen" gets almost as many search-engine
> hits as "Usenet trolling" or "George Bush idiot.")
>
> And while I agree with *many* of Mr. Heathfield's
> views, I don't think my alleged puppet master and
> his sockpuppet will be sharing each other's code,
> at least without a re-indent utility: I use wholesome
> and generous 8-space tabs, while Mr. Heathfield
> insists on the infuriating and anal-retentive 2-space
> tabs which are probably responsible for my rare
> ophthalmological disorders.
>
> =A0 =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0*
=A0* =
=A0* =A0*
>
> Excepting spam, posts in this ng can be divided roughly
> into five categories: homework/work problems, technical
> answers, boring or boorish gibberish, witticisms, and
> whining. There are also posts on various meta-topics,
> but these can be treated roughly as combinations of
> boorishness, witticisms and whining.
>
> There are a few posters whose contributions consist almost
> entirely of correct and useful technical information.
> Eric Sosman and Chris Torek are among the most obvious
> examples of this category, though I don't intend to slight
> several other excellent participants.
>
> Of course the best posters are usually also witty people.
> Mr. Sosman, for example, once accused me of making a
> Pascal's wager. This was probably intended as a euphemism
> for hypocrisy but I chose to take it as a flattering
> comparison with the discoverer of the Mystic Hexagram! =A0:-)
>
> Usenet would be a boring place without wit and whining,
> but if we do want only homework problems and their answers,
> a simple solution is possible: authorize only Mr. Sosman
> and a few others to respond to queries and provide a bot
> which responds after 36 hours to any unanswered query with:
>
> > Apparently your homework problem was too boring or insipid
> > for our experts. Please check the FAQ again, or ask
> > your Professor to recommend a remedial text.
>
> Since most homework problems will have a single obvious
> answer, it follows that most of the posts here will be
> whining or witticisms. (I'll lump boring gibberish with
> whining though usually the whining is more interesting.)
>
> There are many examples of postings I find far more
> annoying than even Dr.Nilges' whining. Many posters
> don't even understand the concept of "fragment" where
> a program excerpt is provided for brevity, even though
> it's not a self-contained compilable unit. I don't
> have any problem with an otherwise appropriate answer
> that contains a line like> BTW, don't forget to #include stdio.h when
call=
ing
> > printf().
>
> but lately I've seen several responses to homework which
> consist *solely* of such trivia. In most of these cases
> it would take any competent C programmer about 20 seconds
> to identify and fix the student's actual bug, but the whiner
> who trots out his pretentious stdio.h cliche -- though
> wasting several *man-hours* of other people's time since
> thousands of c.l.c. readers will need to hit their 'n'
> key -- can't be bothered to spend 20 seconds answering
> the homework question!
>
> (Another annoyance is the Chuckie_BF bot which sends an
> automated reply to every "top poster." We can be sure
> *this* is a bot since any real human who uses the
> Internet would be well aware that the annoyance of
> improper quoted-material editing in e-mail and newsletters
> dwarfs any minor transgressions in this newsgroup.)
>
> Anyway, after ignoring spam, homework problems, and the
> rarish useful responses, c.l.c is simply another forum
> for wits and whiners. No need to complain about that --
> the level of debate here is still better than, say, much
> of Rupert Murdoch's media -- but of course we all prefer
> to read posters with a high wit-to-whine ratio (WWR).
>
> IMHO, Mr. Heathfield has a higher wit-to-whine ratio
> than most of his detractors, though I'm afraid many
> of his helpful but ironic responses are over-clever.
>
> It will be difficult to get general agreement on any
> particular poster's WWR score. Many witticisms will seem
> like whining, especially to a thin-skinned OP. I'm sure
> my WWR score will be judged as quite poor, but this is
> partly due to my Scottish sense of irony and whimsy.
> (Mr. Heathfield, do you also have Scottish ancestry? =A0:-)
> Adding a winking smile ;-) is contrary to the whole tone
> of Scottish irony, but perhaps I should change my ways:
> I recall once making an absolutely hilarious reply,
> advising an OP on pharmaceuticals for obsessive-compulsion
> disorder and felt any emoticon would be redundant, but
> OP shot back an enraged rejoinder about my own
> pathologies and pharmaceutical needs!
>
> =A0 =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0* =A0*
=A0* =
=A0* =A0*
>
> Many many of the technical newsgroups seem dominated
> by B-grade level sophomores showing off to C-grade
> level freshmen, but I don't mean to impugn sophomores
> or even B-grade students. (After all, the probable
> next Pres. of the U.S. graduated near the bottom of
> his class.) PhD's are no bargain either, as anyone
> with real-world experience knows. Dr.Nilges' degrees
> are probably authentic and he may well be capable of
> adequate work when he takes his meds. Mr. navia seems
> like a sophomore but he could have a degree for all
> I know (though I doubt if he's ever written the world's
> fastest image compressor, or coded an OS from scratch
> in 9 weeks). Here, I've given him a chance to improve
> his wit-to-whine ratio with something like:
>
> >James wrote:
> >>> BTW, don't forget to #include stdio.h when calling
> >>> printf().
> > You've made 11 syntax errors here in just 2 lines, Bozo.
> > Also, calling printf() with no arguments may cause
> > your hard disk to be trashed, and I hope that happens!
>
> Well, I hope this diatribe amuses someone, and doesn't
> detract too much from the on-going discussions about
> the evils of a "void main()" declaration. =A0I also hope
> I've offended no Scotsmen with my comments on "Scottish
> sense of humor" -- I now wonder if this concept was just
> an invention of my mother who had to live with the
> sarcasm of my father (whose name, coincidentally
> enough, was James Dow Allen Jr.).
>
> Sincerely,
> James Dow Allen =A0 ... (I think!)
Navia? Didn't he implement C? Perhaps I'm not the only person to
accomplish something in the real world, only to encounter a **** storm
of abuse from people who've done nothing and use anonymous demiblogs
to spit their resentment at people who have. Schildt wrote Tiny C and
best selling books, but fatass creeps target him on wikipedia.
Life sucks!
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