On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 18:00:03 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 wrote:

>
> Yeah, I'm also somewhat bad with following POSIX standards..
>

Don't worry about it.

Your code will always be totally inconsequential.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

On Thu, 3 Oct 2024 23:03:05 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> On 10/2/24 11:52 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>> POSIX figured this out decades ago.
>
> But programmers with deadlines don't always FOLLOW that stuff .....

They do USE a lot of “that stuff”, though: most in-house projects these
days are crucially dependent on Open Source at some level.

On 2024-10-04, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 04/10/2024 09:20, D wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 3 Oct 2024, Peter Flass wrote:
>>
>>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 03 Oct 2024 23:55:51 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Thomas Malthus figured this out over 200 years ago.
>>>>
>>>> He was wrong, though. Human ingenuity (i.e. science and technology) kept
>>>> things going long after he thought they would fall apart.
>>>
>>> Population in developed countries is now declining. Europe, US and
>>> Canada,
>>> Japan, even China. Hucksters are now complaining about this, as they have
>>> fewer people to peddle their junk to.

This includes politicians, of course. Gotta have more people
from whom to collect taxes, and more subjects to rule.

>> I think these are two strong arguments against any population-doom
>> scenarios that are often written about by climate-hysterics.
>>
>> Malthus was obviously wrong, and many people for the past 200 years have
>> been wrong about how many people this planet can support.
>
> However even the most hard right moron doesn't claim an infinite number
> of people.
> We are not querying the principle, merely where the limit lies.
> The same goes for fossil fuel. Fuck climate change, there is not an
> infinite amount left in the earth.

'zackly. And this doesn't square with a philosophy of infinite growth.
Malthus pointed out that populations tends to experience exponential
growth, while production of food and other essentials only manages
arithmetic growth. Under such circumstances, a crash is inevitable.

>> Science has grown that nr (nr of people the planet can support)
>> enormously over time, and will continue to do so.
>>
> A totally unsubstantiated assumption. At a given point there will be
> insufficient energy arriving from the sun and the nuclear fuel will run
> out on earth

As one pundit put it, science can't make the sun shine brighter,
or the rivers run faster. But if population grows enough,
we'll soon need exactly that.

>> And, it is a known trend (but not a law of nature) that when a society
>> "matures" has social security etc. birth numbers drop. On the other side
>> of the spectrum, when a society "hardens" and brings with it enormous
>> competition, requirements and demands on the young, by the old,
>> birthrates also plummet (see china).
>
> Exactly. In a world populated by anb excess of brats, whi wants to breed
> another one?

Besides, I believe that we should work on taking care of the people
who are already here, before we think about making or importing more.

>> So I think Hans Roslings prediction was that we'll stabilize on around
>> 12-14 billion or so. But most here will probably get to see if he was
>> right or not by themselves.

That might be a workable future. But our current economic model is
based on infinite growth. We'll have to find a new model - but it
will likely be over the dead bodies of the current ruling classes.

>> You can also throw in the joker of exploiting space, sea bottoms etc.
>> for resources as well, but that's many years into the future, so usually
>> I'm ridiculed for mentioning this, but as a techno-optimist I am
>> convinced this will happen.

The transportation bottleneck will be unable to sustain infinite growth.

> In a limited way yes, but not if the Greens take control
>
> It will be back to the middle ages and a pandemic that wipes out 90% of
> the world

Yes, that's the usual end result: the Malthusian crash.

--
/~\ 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 2024-10-04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On Thu, 03 Oct 2024 23:55:51 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> The kind of people who benefit from "winner take all" (a.k.a
>> "first past the post") generally do their best to dismantle
>> those checks and balances. And they have centuries of experience
>> in gaming the system.
>
> Here in NZ we got the system changed as a result of a referendum in 1993,
> getting rid of British-style first-past-the-post in favour of German-style
> MMP.
>
> It can be done, if there is the political will to do it.

And there you have the problem. Here in Canada (and British
Columbia within it), we have made several desultory attempts
at getting rid of "first past the post". All have failed.

The con men con but life goes on for the city never sleeps.
-- Gordon Lightfoot: Home from the Forest

--
/~\ 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 2024-10-04, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 04/10/2024 02:11, Peter Flass wrote:
>
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 03 Oct 2024 23:55:51 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thomas Malthus figured this out over 200 years ago.
>>>
>>> He was wrong, though. Human ingenuity (i.e. science and technology) kept
>>> things going long after he thought they would fall apart.

In the end, it just delays the inevitable.

>> Population in developed countries is now declining. Europe, US and Canada,
>> Japan, even China. Hucksters are now complaining about this, as they have
>> fewer people to peddle their junk to.
>
> And political economists are shaking in their shoes, since government
> debt is a reverse Ponzi scheme and always requites more people to pay
> the accumulated interest.
> Hencc mass importation of migrants

Make that skilled migrants. This has the <sarcasm>added benefit</sarcasm>
of allowing the education system to crumble, since workers will come
pre-educated. As for the locals, George Orwell's slogan "ignorance
is strength" will apply.

--
/~\ 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 2024-10-04, 186282@ud0s4.net <186283@ud0s4.net> wrote:

> WAY back, latter 70s, Bill Gates used to participate
> in 'contests' to see How To Do It In The Least
> Bytes/Cycles/Mem - and often won. I do REMEMBER his name
> from Way Back When. As such, despite all after, I do
> NOT doubt his coding acumen.

Perhaps, but would you like to maintain his code?

I thought not.

--
/~\ 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 Fri, 04 Oct 2024 16:46:04 GMT
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:

> As you say.
>
> Also, 'candy cane' didn't note that Southwest had just completed
> a complete overhaul of most of their mission critical systems after
> two scheduling meltdowns in 18 months.

If anything, it's a graphic object-lesson in the perils of monoculture
and hyper-centralization; but then, we keep getting those, year after
year, and people keep failing to learn from them, because Being Robust
Is Hard, and CEOs don't care about the long term when there's the
quarterly growth report to think about... :/

According to 186282@ud0s4.net <186283@ud0s4.net>:
> Ya know ... most of Python IS 'C'-based libs.
> Never really looked into it, but the 'advanced'
> Python function may just be strtok() with a
> lot of handy fixes/cheats in disguise :-)

> Oh, Python 'strings' are ULTIMATELY just
> a stretch of memory filled with various
> values. The "object" stuff, a carefully-
> crafted ILLUSION :-)

I can assure you it considerably more than that. Python has a complicated string
representation which can switch among different representations from ASCII to
UTF-32 depending on the contents of the string and what's being done to it.

> I started with ASM ... pre-4004/8008 ... as
> such I see things more at their basic level.

I started toggling programs into a PDP-8, but we have learned to use higher
level abstractions along the way since then.

--
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 10:41:17 -0700, John Ames wrote:

> On Fri, 04 Oct 2024 16:46:04 GMT scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
> wrote:
>
>> As you say.
>>
>> Also, 'candy cane' didn't note that Southwest had just completed a
>> complete overhaul of most of their mission critical systems after two
>> scheduling meltdowns in 18 months.
>
> If anything, it's a graphic object-lesson in the perils of monoculture
> and hyper-centralization; but then, we keep getting those, year after
> year, and people keep failing to learn from them, because Being Robust
> Is Hard, and CEOs don't care about the long term when there's the
> quarterly growth report to think about... :/

That goes beyond software. Thousands of contiguous acres of dent corn or
other crops might not be the best long term strategy for agriculture.

On 4 Oct 2024 19:11:29 GMT
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

> That goes beyond software. Thousands of contiguous acres of dent corn
> or other crops might not be the best long term strategy for
> agriculture.

Just ask the Irish... :/

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 10:21:54 +0200, D wrote:

> I think they declared AfD to be a terrorist organization in some german
> states in an attempt to stop them. Didn't work well at all looking at
> the current performance in elections.

Branding political parties as far right wing fascists doesn't seem to be
working in Europe. Even the kids are saying 'Hmmm... Might be something
there.'

Non Sequitur: I read an article this morning about 'boomer ellipses'
driving Gen Z nuts. They should try reading Céline,Louis-Ferdinand, not
Dion.

On Fri, 04 Oct 2024 17:06:43 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> And there you have the problem. Here in Canada (and British Columbia
> within it), we have made several desultory attempts at getting rid of
> "first past the post". All have failed.

Like campaign finance reform, term limits, and pay raises you can hardly
expect the class receiving the benefits to vote against them. Democracy in
action.

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 10:47:28 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 04/10/2024 04:26, rbowman wrote:
>> t's fossil water, meaning it's leftover from the last ice age. Because
>> of the soil structure and the fact it is still a semi-arid region,
>> recharge is extremely slow. In other words, when it's gone, it's gone
>> and it's time to try to pull another rabbit out of the hat.
>
> Read up what the Russians did to the Aral sea.
> Capitalism is not the problem

Not at all. In the US Chaco Canyon is a great object lesson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Historical_Park

Like parts of Africa they managed to create a desert. Trees aren't a
renewable crop in semi-arid environments.

The Phoenix area is another example. The Hohokam built an extensive
network of irrigation ditches and made the desert arable. Without a
copious amount of water to flush the soil salinity builds up and defeats
your efforts.

The Central Arizona Project canal follows some of the prehistoric routes
and pulls water from the Colorado to enable growing crops like cotton in
the desert to say nothing of supporting the growing population of Phoenix.
It may be of interest of future archaeologists trying to figure out what
happened to the civilization -- if there are future archaeologists.

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 10:44:11 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Apparently when the Gaulish people were given the option of 40% taxes
> and being kept safe by Rome, or paying the people that Rome was keeping
> them safe from 15%, strangely they opted for barbarian overlords. Since
> Roman civilisation hadn't really done the peasants all that much good
> anyway.

The Teutons apparently weren't interested. "where are my legions, Varus?".
Varus had enough honor to fall on his sword something that hasn't happened
recently outside of Japan.

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 10:39:04 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Exactly. In a world populated by anb excess of brats, whi wants to breed
> another one?

The ones too stupid to understand biology?

On 04/10/2024 17:40, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>> On Thu, 03 Oct 2024 23:55:51 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> Thomas Malthus figured this out over 200 years ago.
>>
>> He was wrong, though. Human ingenuity (i.e. science and technology) kept
>> things going long after he thought they would fall apart.
>
> For a short time, in the context of human history. Without
> the agricultural use of fossil fuels (fertilizer, mechanization),
> Malthus and Ehrlich estimates would have been quite realistic.
>
> The EROEI for oil is has already dropped by a factor of
> 10 (even more for the oil sands/tar sands/fracking plays, some
> of which aren't far from unity).
>
> Hoping that some new paradigm comes along that allows global
> energy growth to continue to grow by 2.3% p.a. is wishful
> thinking, not good planning. Regardless, there is a hard-limit
> on that growth as well (due simply to waste heat from energy
> production and use).
>
Completely true.

quadrupling human population would impact the environment far far more
than a few tenths of a percent of CO2 in the air
--
Climate is what you expect but weather is what you get.
Mark Twain

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 12:48:14 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> One less keystroke in C.
>
> [:=] -> [=] -1

But then you need another keystroke for equality comparisons.

> [->] -> [?] -2

Pascal:

ptr^.field

C:

(*ptr).field
ptr->field
ptr[0].field

Then you try another pointer level:

Pascal:

ptr^^.field

C:

(**ptr).field
ptr[0][0].field

C definitely loses here. Pointer indirection should have been a postfix,
not a prefix, operator.

On 4 Oct 2024 07:40:54 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 06:56:38 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> But C = “machine language” under the hood. That’s what Python uses.
>
> It's turtles, turtles, turtles all the way down...

One thing we learned in Comp Sci was the concept of “abstract machines”.
There is no fundamental difference between hardware and software:
“hardware” is just what you start with when you turn the power on, but
does that include “firmware” and “microcode”?

A lot of what we do in programming/scripting is building one layer of
“abstract machine” on top of another, until we get to something optimized
for solving our particular problem.

Of course, all this goes out the window once you get to the GUI layer;
that is the end of the line, with no more programmability (easily)
possible on top of that. From that point on, the human user has to do all
the work.

On 4 Oct 2024 07:42:44 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 03:53:28 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On 4 Oct 2024 02:53:36 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 00:37:13 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>
>>>> Here in NZ we got the system changed as a result of a referendum in
>>>> 1993, getting rid of British-style first-past-the-post in favour of
>>>> German-style MMP.
>>>
>>> That has worked so well for Germany.
>>
>> Yes it has. It has kept them from having another storming of the
>> Reichstag. Unlike what happened in the USA during the term of your own
>> would-be dictator.
>
> Oh, horseshit.

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.

Perhaps time for the US (one of those Allies who defeated Germany,
remember) to give it a try?

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 10:21:54 +0200, D wrote:
>
>> I think they declared AfD to be a terrorist organization in some german
>> states in an attempt to stop them. Didn't work well at all looking at
>> the current performance in elections.
>
> Branding political parties as far right wing fascists doesn't seem to be
> working in Europe. Even the kids are saying 'Hmmm... Might be something
> there.'
>
> Non Sequitur: I read an article this morning about 'boomer ellipses'
> driving Gen Z nuts. They should try reading Céline,Louis-Ferdinand, not
> Dion.
>

Of course it doesn't work. If anything, branding them as terrorists just
makes them the underdog, and the party of the people. People love to say
"f*ck you political nobility, if you don't like this party we'll vote for
it." That's basically the only thing the public can do to fight back
against our globalist overlords. Sadly many of the extreme parties are
equally full of maniacs as the globalist and eco-fascist parties. Only the
outlet for that mania differs.

On Fri, 04 Oct 2024 17:06:43 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-10-04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 03 Oct 2024 23:55:51 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> The kind of people who benefit from "winner take all" (a.k.a "first
>>> past the post") generally do their best to dismantle those checks and
>>> balances. And they have centuries of experience in gaming the system.
>>
>> Here in NZ we got the system changed as a result of a referendum in
>> 1993, getting rid of British-style first-past-the-post in favour of
>> German-style MMP.
>>
>> It can be done, if there is the political will to do it.
>
> And there you have the problem. Here in Canada (and British Columbia
> within it), we have made several desultory attempts at getting rid of
> "first past the post". All have failed.

It is possible to have some successes in that part of the world. In the
US, Alaska put in a ranked-choice system to elect their sole Federal House
of Representatives, um, Representative. That was used in the 2022 election
where Mary Peltola won over Sarah Palin. I see some other US states either
have adopted, or are considering the idea, too.

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.

(We went through a discussion of all the main options in the lead-up to
the 1993 referendum.)

Is Canada more party-based, like the UK and NZ?

On 4 Oct 2024 19:22:50 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> Like campaign finance reform, term limits, and pay raises you can hardly
> expect the class receiving the benefits to vote against them. Democracy
> in action.

Here in NZ, there is a lot of scrutiny of the perks that politicians get.
(One of the benefits of having a free press.) We just managed to shame our
own Prime Minister out of collecting a sizeable accommodation allowance
for living in a property in the capital that he owns.

And we had strict controls on campaign finance spending right from the
early days. And there have been occasional prosecutions, just to keep
everyone in line.

As for term limits, that doesn’t seem to be a common thing in
Parliamentary systems. Look at Germany, where past Chancellors like Helmut
Kohl and Angela Merkel served (nearly) four terms, and nobody felt that a
special law needed to be passed to bring them to heel: the democratic
system managed that itself.

On 4 Oct 2024 07:45:56 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 03:53:53 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> Just a realist. You know, looking at what happens in the real world,
>> instead of inside your head.
>
> You know, the Romans had some really nifty technological solutions.

Let’s see, their empire lasted over 700 years.

How long do you think your one will last?

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 10:44:11 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Since Roman civilisation hadn't really done the peasants all that much
> good anyway.

Cue the “What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us?” scene from Monty Python’s
“Life Of Brian” ...

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 12:15:31 -0700, John Ames wrote:

> On 4 Oct 2024 19:11:29 GMT rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
>
>> That goes beyond software. Thousands of contiguous acres of dent corn
>> or other crops might not be the best long term strategy for
>> agriculture.
>
> Just ask the Irish... :/

But they managed to be a net exporter of food while starving. Just ask the
Brit beef eaters.