Defining constants in classes

[Julie]

Hence, it seems you've overstuffed yourself on Microsoft marketing, Julia.

Name's Julie.

I don't think it is a coincidence that you're both arguing for top-posting and
dragging in baby/manager-level Microsoft marketing

I'm not formally arguing for or against top posting -- I'm advocating that it
should be a user-definiable choice in reading, which is currently not supported
in the NNTP message format.

-- for the "official"
definition of top-posting explicitly mentions Microsoft, idiot and newbie.

Didn't know there was an official definition. I didn't realize that personal
preferences needed to be officially denigrated, but I guess that is a
consequence of intolerance.

No association w/ Microsoft.

If it is a universal law that all preferential top posters are idiots, then by
that law, I must be an idiot. Name calling, labels, etc. will not change my
preference, and honestly, I don't know what purpose it serves.

Good bye.

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

I'm not formally arguing for or against top posting.

If it is a universal law that all preferential top posters are idiots, then by
that law, I must be an idiot.

 

[Dietmar Kuehl]

Never heard that one. I'd wait for a court ruling on that one, or at the
very least authoritive commentary from a copyright lawyer.

You are free to believe whatever you want! You might want to have a look

I *HIGHLY* doubt
that there is any basis for copyright infringement as the OP should assume
that their comments are released into the public domain when posting to a
public forum.

Well, have a look the above mentioned documents: essentially, everything
written here is protected by copyrights unless the author explicitly
puts the stuff into the public domain. Quoting everything and adding
just a minor statement does not fall under the "fair use" clause
mentioned there.

Again, my comments have just as much (or lack of) validity as
yours -- the courts would have to rule on that one.

Note, that this is in no way any kind of fun: although your above
statement is not really wrong, I'm positive that I'm much closer to the
mark than you are!

As I said previously, NNTP is an outdated (and severely insufficient)
protocol. It needs to be expanded to add new required features such as
the ability to separate replies from new comments, and that would allow
newsreaders the ability to let the user decide how previous comments would
be displayed:

Actually, I don't think that this is any sort of a protocol thing!
Quoting other's material is an act of authoring by itself. [Ab]Using
quotes in certain ways can provide quite a different context than the
whole quote or none at all could give and can convey rather different
meanings. Haven't you ever seen someone giving eg. an answer to a
question by just quoting the relevant portions of an article?

 

[Dietmar Kuehl]

I agree. Here Dietmar seems to be a victim of group thinking within the
clc++m moderator cliche.

Not at all: as moderators we decided early on that we are not going
do anything about copyright infringements in articles we are
processing. That is, we don't do any kind of legal assessment to
decide whether we post or reject an article. We solely base our
decison on the content of the article.

But since those guys are generally intelligent ones
it is perhaps more plausible that this is meant as irony. Difficult to
tell, these days. We have to use the American way now: "Note: above is
irony".

No, it is not irony! This stuff is dead serious. Have a look at
<http://www.copyright.com/CopyrightResources/default.asp> for some basic
information (note, that although this page talks about the U.S.
constituition, U.S. Federal stuff, etc. the overall issue applies to all
nations which have ratified the Berner Convention). I think I came across
a bunch of documents written by lawyers and dealing specifically with
copyright legislation applied to UseNet:
- there are copyrights on all articles written (and it is actually not
even always clear to whome these belong: if the article is written
as part of normal work, the copyright might be owned by the author's
employer - thus be particularily careful when quoting someone from
SCO...)
- author's are bound to the "fair use" paragraph when quoting others
- ... and this is still no irony at all

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

Not at all

Good to hear.

No, it is not irony!

Oooh, bad. Bad.

This stuff is dead serious. Have a look at
<http://www.copyright.com/CopyrightResources/default.asp> for some basic
information (note, that although this page talks about the U.S.
constituition, U.S. Federal stuff, etc. the overall issue applies to all
nations which have ratified the Berner Convention).

No thanks, and no need.

As a practical matter we can just wait till someone's been convicted in
court for copyright infringement or whatever, due to Usenet article quoting.

And as a service to society at large we _should_ do that, and perhaps more.

Being afraid of lawyers' abuse of the courts is a sickness that has infested
modern Western society. For example, in one case the relatives of a British
base jumper (who couldn't wait till he was resqued but decided to see whether
the law of gravity had perhaps been cancelled) who marooned himself halfway up
a Norwegian mountain, sued the voluntary, unpaid resquers from Red Cross etc.
We should not be afraid to help people just because they might sue us for not
helping enough, or perhaps for not taking the cost of sending up a helicopter
with a megaphone shouting "don't jump half a kilometer down you idiot, it'll
kill you!"; we shouldn't be afraid to quote anything we want on the Usenet.

I'm glad to hear that clc++m moderators decided against succumbing to the
sickness, and I'm sad to see arguments here that one should perhaps, for
one's own good presumably (certainly not other's good), decide to be sick.

 

[Programmer Dude]

(I have never understood why [top posting] is a big deal - it makes
life so much faster if you don't have to scroll, especially for a
short post like this.

I agree 100%.

Make that two.

And, as you point out, it's pointless to argue against those who
are against top posting--let alone argue in *favor* of it.

But given that people increasingly don't edit well, I very much
prefer seeing new content at top where I can quickly determine if
the post is worth reading in detail. When I pull up a message and
all I see are quotes.... I usually pull up the NEXT message!

 

[Pete Becker]

If you have any evidence that there was some informed, well-considered
decision to disallow e.g.

I was there. You weren't. I gave you the explanation. Sorry you don't
like it.

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

I was there. You weren't. I gave you the explanation. Sorry you don't
like it.

It's not that I don't like, it's that it amounted to just a "because";
saying that only compile time constants deserve to be allowed because
only they deserve to be allowed, as you did, is a bit circular.

So what _were_ the reasons?

Or, what was _one_ reason?

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* (e-mail address removed) (Dietmar Kuehl) schriebt:

 

[Stewart Gordon]

Dietmar Kuehl wrote:

There is a

There are several versions actually.

signature around which actually brings it to the point quite well but I
don't have the exact wording.

<snip>