["Followup-To:" header set to alt.folklore.computers.]
On 2024-10-04, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
> rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
>>
>> Who knows what might have happened but in 1952 Stalin proposed reuniting
>> Germany with Germany becoming a neutral state not aligned with either
>> side. Adenauer turned down the offer ensuring over 30 years of misery for
>> the east. As one of my links pointed out reintegrating the east is still a
>> problem.
>>
> Probably wise not to take the offer. Stalin wold have bribed his way to
> controlling a united Germany, just like Putin is doing now in the US and
> several EU countries.

At the very least Finlandization style, yes, very likely.

Niklas
--
"As someone noted, the US government is basically a highly-armed insurance
company."
-- Robert Uhl

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024, Louis Krupp wrote:

>
> Good sales folks -- like the guy at the first company -- treat nerds like
> human beings, and I always enjoyed working with them.
>
> Louis
>

This is the truth! I started out as a technologist and moved more and
more into sales as time progressed. If the technologist is interested, I
always love to bring them with me to customer meetings, and get them
involved in the business side as much as their time and interest allows.

For the customer it is great, and brings a lot of technical credibility
to the deal. For the technologist it is also great, because they get
first hand experience with the problems of the customer and I have seen
that it changes how they think about what they do.

At least two who I loved to get involved in the business side, today run
their own companies. I always like to think, although I of course have
no proof, that perhaps a small inspiration was that I involved them in
the business side. ;)

On 05/10/2024 03:37, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2024-10-04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Is Canada more party-based, like the UK and NZ?
>
> Yes - and unfortunately we're starting to accumulate our share of
> right-wing whacko candidates, both federally and provincially.
>
Well you have had a generation of left wing whackos. Only fair.,

--
No Apple devices were knowingly used in the preparation of this post.

rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 20:26:12 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> Ranked-choice is technically not “proportional representation”, but it
>> does have a lot of the same effect. And it might be a better fit for
>> places (like the US) where individuals matter more than parties.
>
> A couple of initiatives are on the ballot in this state that might lead to
> a ranked choice system. One is a 'top four' open primary and the other is
> a requirement for a majority rather than a plurality.
>
> It's somewhat controversial on both sides. In many parts of the state 'top
> four' becomes a de facto Republican primary which isn't quite what the
> supporters envision.
>
> It will be interesting. The Democrats tried to get the Greens thrown off
> the ballot. Not very democratic of them, is it?
>

Everybody complains about rigging when they’re the ones getting cut out,
but then, if they get the chance, turn around and do it to everybody else.

--
Pete

According to rbowman <bowman@montana.com>:
>On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 20:18:33 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> Their voting system was put in place under Konrad Adenauer after World
>> War II, and was designed specifically to ensure a dictator could never
>> take power again. It worked so well, that’s why we in NZ copied it.
>
>Who knows what might have happened but in 1952 Stalin proposed reuniting
>Germany with Germany becoming a neutral state not aligned with either
>side. Adenauer turned down the offer ensuring over 30 years of misery for
>the east. As one of my links pointed out reintegrating the east is still a
>problem.

Who knows. It worked surprisingly well for Austria in 1955.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 20:26:12 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> Ranked-choice is technically not “proportional representation”, but it
>> does have a lot of the same effect. And it might be a better fit for
>> places (like the US) where individuals matter more than parties.

On 2024-10-04, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
> A couple of initiatives are on the ballot in this state that might lead to
> a ranked choice system. One is a 'top four' open primary and the other is
> a requirement for a majority rather than a plurality.
>
> It's somewhat controversial on both sides. In many parts of the state 'top
> four' becomes a de facto Republican primary which isn't quite what the
> supporters envision.
>
> It will be interesting. The Democrats tried to get the Greens thrown off
> the ballot. Not very democratic of them, is it?

Ranked choice eliminates the "wasted vote" issue with third parties, and
can allow a startup party to gradually become viable. And it tends to
drive the candidates towards the center. If the "top four" are all
republicans, the winner will be the one who is least offensive to the
minority democrats.

By the way - which state are you in?

Peter Flass wrote:
> rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 20:26:12 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> Ranked-choice is technically not “proportional representation”, but it
>>> does have a lot of the same effect. And it might be a better fit for
>>> places (like the US) where individuals matter more than parties.
>>
>> A couple of initiatives are on the ballot in this state that might lead to
>> a ranked choice system. One is a 'top four' open primary and the other is
>> a requirement for a majority rather than a plurality.
>>
>> It's somewhat controversial on both sides. In many parts of the state 'top
>> four' becomes a de facto Republican primary which isn't quite what the
>> supporters envision.
>>
>> It will be interesting. The Democrats tried to get the Greens thrown off
>> the ballot. Not very democratic of them, is it?
>>
>
> Everybody complains about rigging when they’re the ones getting cut out,
> but then, if they get the chance, turn around and do it to everybody else.
>

Given that Ralph Nader's candidacy in 2000 had a lot to do with Dubya
being elected, I can understand it. When did a third-party candidate
last win? The last one who got anywhere at all was Ross Perot and the
major effect of his candidacy was to let Bill Clinton through to defeat
Dubya's Daddy.

According to R Daneel Olivaw <Danny@hyperspace.vogon.gov>:
>Given that Ralph Nader's candidacy in 2000 had a lot to do with Dubya
>being elected, I can understand it. When did a third-party candidate
>last win?

In 1860, of course.

Since then in 1912 T. Roosevelt took enough votes from his former party that
Wilson ("America's Most Overrated President") beat Taft.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

On 9/24/24 3:04 PM, Lester Thorpe wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 02:45:16 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>>
>> Me, I'd rather use 'C' ... which was a brand new
>> language when I got into computers - it was the
>> Cool New Thing on PDP-11s. However the syntax IS,
>> and especially can be MADE, a bit obscure. More
>> 'obvious', 'self-documenting' langs DO have an
>> advantage.
>>
>
> C is just shorthand for assembly, and assembly,
> i.e. machine, language is the language to which
> EVERYTHING else reduces.
>
> Yes, C is just shorthand for assembly. Whenever I
> write C code I can always "see" the assembly instructions
> that lie beneath every C statement.
>
> In fact, when it comes to SIMD programming, there are C
> functions known as "intrinsics" that allow direct access
> to SIMD hardware assembly instruction (e.g. SSE2, AVX).
> (These do not exist for any other language.)
>
>
> Conclusion:
>
> Those who understand the machine use C (assembly) and only
> C.
>
> All dumb-fuck idiots and retards, of which there are hordes
> in commercial (i.e. paid) programming, MUST use other "crutch"
> languages.

We 'old guys' did a fair amount of ASM back in
the day - microcontrollers, even up to early CP/M
and DOS before there were (affordable) high-level
compilers.

Knew one ultra-geek who wrote clones of popular
video games for C64/PET. He was one of those
'critically intelligent' people - right on the
very edge. Ever see that old Val Kilmer movie
about the genius school ? He was kinda like the
guy who lived inside the walls. He didn't even
do ASM, but wrote in raw 6502 binary. Said it
gave him a buzz ! Watched him do it.

It's very frustrating - being JUST smart enough to
really smell the ultra-IQ, see its possibilities,
but knowing you can never GET there :-)

I downloaded a copy of the ancient Aztec 'C'
compiler for CP/M-86. Haven't done anything
with it yet. CP/M-86 WILL run on VirtualBox.
Aztec was well-respected back in the day.
The most interesting feature though is the
MANUAL ... very deep into optimization and
smarter bit-field representations and ops.
You do NOT see that anymore. Those people
REALLY knew their product and wanted you to
know ALL the task-specific options.

On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 07:57:27 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

> Everybody complains about rigging when they’re the ones getting cut out,
> but then, if they get the chance, turn around and do it to everybody
> else.

This is why you need elections to be conducted (and relevant boundaries
drawn) by an Electoral Commission that is free of any political
interference.

That’s how they conduct free and fair elections in all the good
democracies.

On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 12:40:26 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 05/10/2024 03:37, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> On 2024-10-04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> Is Canada more party-based, like the UK and NZ?
>>
>> Yes - and unfortunately we're starting to accumulate our share of
>> right-wing whacko candidates, both federally and provincially.
>>
> Well you have had a generation of left wing whackos. Only fair.,

When somebody who expresses support for abortion rights gets tarred with
the “radical left” brush, you have to wonder who the right-wingers would
consider “moderate left”.

Seems like the concept of being “moderate”, or having a diversity of
views, doesn’t exist for them: if you are not 100% for them, then you must
be against them.

On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 08:08:50 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On 5 Oct 2024 07:00:35 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> There are quite a dew other tools to automate GUI testing.
>
> We’re talking about automating GUIs to actually get things done.

And, as usual, you're not familiar with the subject matter.

On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 11:55:56 +0200, D wrote:

> For the customer it is great, and brings a lot of technical credibility
> to the deal. For the technologist it is also great, because they get
> first hand experience with the problems of the customer and I have seen
> that it changes how they think about what they do.

I've worked closely with a couple of clients but in general it's not a
good idea to let programmers talk to the clients. Programmers don't have
very good filters.

On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 19:04:16 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

> Ranked choice eliminates the "wasted vote" issue with third parties, and
> can allow a startup party to gradually become viable. And it tends to
> drive the candidates towards the center. If the "top four" are all
> republicans, the winner will be the one who is least offensive to the
> minority democrats.

I will vote for the initiatives but I really don't think it will have much
effect. I received the voter information pamphlet today. It's put out by
the Montana secretary of state and for initiatives it has the text of the
initiative, arguments for and against, and the rebuttals.

The problem it's trying to solve is somewhat unique to Montana. There
isn't the concept of being a registered Republican or whatever. For this
years primary I received 4 ballots, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, and
Green. Fill out one and discard the other three.

Suppose I pick the Democrat ballot but feel that for a particular office
the Green candidate is better. Can't do it. There's another little facet.
Suppose I'm a Libertarian. Their ballot often only has one person for each
office so there's no need to fill it out. I can fill out the Republican
ballot and select what I feel is the worst candidate.

Those against the initiative point out that with one primary ballot with
everyone on it you might have 13 candidates for dog catcher, 4
Republicans, 5 Democrats, and 2 each Libertarian and Green. Good luck
sorting that mess out.

Then in the general election you get the top 4. From the historic patterns
the Greens and Libertarians won't make it. As is they struggle to get
enough votes to even stay on the ballots. State wide I think the Democrats
will get the short end so you might have 3 Republican dog catcher
candidates and 1 Democrat. It's a purple state so you can get odd results.
I forget which was which but for a while the governor and lieutenant
governor were from different parties.

The connected initiative requires a majority, not a plurality. That seems
like a recipe for a least one run off for almost every office.

The other objection which I can't evaluate completely is that both
initiatives were heavily funded by out of state interests rather than a
real grass roots attempt and that the interests are trying to use Montana
for an experiment. If it devolves into a fiasco they can say 'well that
was interesting' and leave Montana to pay for the clean up.

> By the way - which state are you in?

Montana. With a total population of about 1 million this tail isn't
wagging any dogs. Nationally only the Senate race is attracting interest
-- and a lot of out of state money.

On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 07:57:27 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

> rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 20:26:12 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> Ranked-choice is technically not “proportional representation”, but it
>>> does have a lot of the same effect. And it might be a better fit for
>>> places (like the US) where individuals matter more than parties.
>>
>> A couple of initiatives are on the ballot in this state that might lead
>> to a ranked choice system. One is a 'top four' open primary and the
>> other is a requirement for a majority rather than a plurality.
>>
>> It's somewhat controversial on both sides. In many parts of the state
>> 'top four' becomes a de facto Republican primary which isn't quite what
>> the supporters envision.
>>
>> It will be interesting. The Democrats tried to get the Greens thrown
>> off the ballot. Not very democratic of them, is it?
>>
>>
> Everybody complains about rigging when they’re the ones getting cut out,
> but then, if they get the chance, turn around and do it to everybody
> else.

Absolutely. It's a pretty red state so it's usually the Democrats trying
to be tricky. The Green votes will potentially hurt them more so get rid
of the Greens. One year they promoted Libertarians figuring that vote
would hurt the Republicans more to the point where the Libertarian
candidate they were trying to promote said "DON'T VOTE FOR ME."

On 10/5/24 2:12 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On 4 Oct 2024 22:47:30 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> ... many people using a high level abstraction like Python think
>> of it as some sort of magic ...
>
> What we have seen in this thread (and others) is many of the younger ones
> think C is that “magic” out of which all else is woven.

MOSTLY true ...

Well, in the end, it's the CPU microcoding ... all else
is just a way to make use of that :-)

Almost everything in Python ... well, it's a 'C' app
really, just made to LOOK like another computer language.

Quite a number are even more like that, the GNU compilers
especially. They're just syntax translators, turn your
'FORTRAN' or 'COBOL' or FORTH or whatever into kinda
unreadable 'C' to then be compiled.

On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 22:52:21 +0200, R Daneel Olivaw wrote:

> Given that Ralph Nader's candidacy in 2000 had a lot to do with Dubya
> being elected, I can understand it. When did a third-party candidate
> last win? The last one who got anywhere at all was Ross Perot and the
> major effect of his candidacy was to let Bill Clinton through to defeat
> Dubya's Daddy.

Montana has went blue twice in the last 70 years or so. Once was the
Goldwater fiasco and the other was Perot. It certainly wasn't love for
Clinton although truth be told GHWB wasn't a real winner either.
Personally, I couldn't stomach the man.

On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 23:20:17 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> ... the GNU compilers especially.
> They're just syntax translators, turn your 'FORTRAN' or 'COBOL' or
> FORTH or whatever into kinda unreadable 'C' to then be compiled.

No they’re not.

On 6 Oct 2024 02:29:46 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 08:08:50 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On 5 Oct 2024 07:00:35 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> There are quite a dew other tools to automate GUI testing.
>>
>> We’re talking about automating GUIs to actually get things done.
>
> And, as usual, you're not familiar with the subject matter.

Is that the best you can do now? Just say “you don’t know anything”?

On 10/5/24 4:07 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On 5 Oct 2024 07:03:07 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 06:22:02 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> I would describe your system as “soft corruption”: it seems like, as
>>> long as you cannot directly tie particular dollar campaign
>>> contributions to particular votes, anything less than that is perfectly
>>> fine.
>>
>> It used to be cleaner when 'vote early and vote often' was the slogan
>> with free shots and beers to keep the voters motivated.
>
> Putting strict limits on campaign spending would be a good start.

They WILL put work-arounds, loopholes and cheats into
any such laws. Politics and honesty/integrity have
NOTHING in common. Such laws only amplify the influence
of a more elite Elite.

The old "free beer & BBQ" elections though, they DID
have a certain charm :-)

I remember when George Wallace came thru town trying
to get votes. Not that everyone was for Wallace, but
the free beer (even we underaged could sneak some) and
BBQ and live music DID have a certain "Americana"
aspect that appealed. It was "cultural" - and to
any of us geeks who actually read stuff, fully
understandable within its context.

On 2024-10-06, 186282@ud0s4.net <186283@ud0s4.net> wrote:

> We 'old guys' did a fair amount of ASM back in
> the day - microcontrollers, even up to early CP/M
> and DOS before there were (affordable) high-level
> compilers.

Those of us in the mainframe world wrote a lot of
assembly language too, e.g. for the IBM 360 family.
Back when memory was really tight, you might not
even be able to run a compiler (although RPG would
run in 16K or less). And even if you had a compiler,
the resulting code might not fit into memory for
anything other than trivial applications.

> Knew one ultra-geek who wrote clones of popular
> video games for C64/PET. He was one of those
> 'critically intelligent' people - right on the
> very edge. Ever see that old Val Kilmer movie
> about the genius school ? He was kinda like the
> guy who lived inside the walls. He didn't even
> do ASM, but wrote in raw 6502 binary. Said it
> gave him a buzz ! Watched him do it.
>
> It's very frustrating - being JUST smart enough to
> really smell the ultra-IQ, see its possibilities,
> but knowing you can never GET there :-)

That's pretty amazing, all right. I could toggle
code in through the front panel, though; sometimes
I would patch a loaded program to save the time
it would take to re-assemble it. (Programmers had
rock-bottom priority on the machine, so there was
a strong incentive to make the most of what time
you could get.) IBM 360 machine code was relatively
straightforward, so it wasn't quite as hard to do
as on many microprocessors.

> I downloaded a copy of the ancient Aztec 'C'
> compiler for CP/M-86. Haven't done anything
> with it yet. CP/M-86 WILL run on VirtualBox.
> Aztec was well-respected back in the day.
> The most interesting feature though is the
> MANUAL ... very deep into optimization and
> smarter bit-field representations and ops.
> You do NOT see that anymore. Those people
> REALLY knew their product and wanted you to
> know ALL the task-specific options.

Aztec had a C compiler for the Amiga which was
pretty good if you could pony up the bucks.
I wrote an Amiga assembler and open-sourced
it. Matt Dillon hooked it up to the C compiler
that he had written, which emitted assembly code.
The result was a complete, freely-distributable
C compiler for the Amiga.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On Sun, 06 Oct 2024 06:05:38 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> IBM 360 machine code was relatively
> straightforward, so it wasn't quite as hard to do as on many
> microprocessors.

There was the handy little reference card that would fit nicely into a
pocket protector :) I may be thinking of another processor but as I
recall you could twiddle octal locations in the opcodes.

On 2024-10-06, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 11:55:56 +0200, D wrote:
>
>> For the customer it is great, and brings a lot of technical credibility
>> to the deal. For the technologist it is also great, because they get
>> first hand experience with the problems of the customer and I have seen
>> that it changes how they think about what they do.
>
> I've worked closely with a couple of clients but in general it's not a
> good idea to let programmers talk to the clients. Programmers don't have
> very good filters.

On the other hand, if the salesman is a dork you can accomplish a lot
more by letting a programmer jump in. (I've been said programmer.)
Best of all is if one of the client's techies is present - then the
two of you can bypass your filters and really get things worked out.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On Sun, 6 Oct 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 11:55:56 +0200, D wrote:
>
>> For the customer it is great, and brings a lot of technical credibility
>> to the deal. For the technologist it is also great, because they get
>> first hand experience with the problems of the customer and I have seen
>> that it changes how they think about what they do.
>
> I've worked closely with a couple of clients but in general it's not a
> good idea to let programmers talk to the clients. Programmers don't have
> very good filters.
>

I never had any problems, but on the other hand, perhaps I either was
lucky to never work with any madmen, or I'm a good judge of character.

All programmers I've worked with, except one, were generally very nice
people, and the ones who had no interest in being involved in the
commercial side, I would obviously not drag in front of the customer.

On Sun, 6 Oct 2024, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-10-06, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 5 Oct 2024 11:55:56 +0200, D wrote:
>>
>>> For the customer it is great, and brings a lot of technical credibility
>>> to the deal. For the technologist it is also great, because they get
>>> first hand experience with the problems of the customer and I have seen
>>> that it changes how they think about what they do.
>>
>> I've worked closely with a couple of clients but in general it's not a
>> good idea to let programmers talk to the clients. Programmers don't have
>> very good filters.
>
> On the other hand, if the salesman is a dork you can accomplish a lot
> more by letting a programmer jump in. (I've been said programmer.)
> Best of all is if one of the client's techies is present - then the
> two of you can bypass your filters and really get things worked out.
>

That is an excellent situation! When that happens, and I know I have the
best technology, I just sit back and let the techies talk. They will then
do my job for me! =)