In the matter of Herb Schildt: the question of a "bad" book

[Phil Carmody]

I have no problem with Keith putting me in his kill-file. I said some
months ago that I was here largely for the beer. Occasionally (as when I
rebutted Spinny's absurd attempts to claim that C is not portable) I'll
refer to my experience of using C 20 years ago. So by and large my posts
here are going to be off-topic.

I was wondering whether a temporary killfiling or a permanent one would
be better. You've made that choice much easier.

Phil

 

[Walter Banks]

Anyone who thinks a real modern pilot is like a Lindbergh or Saint-
Exupéry is nuts, since modern piloting is like driving a bus; the
aviation writer William Langewiesche documents in his recent book "Fly
by Wire" how hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger had to rely on the A380's
built in and software controlled "refusal" to go outside its design
limits created as comfortable an airplane crash as one could expect;
the video of the crash shows the plane lifting its nose perfectly, and
according to Langieweische, this is the A380's software, not
Sullenberger.

It sure didn't hurt that Sullenberger had done literally thousands
of dead stick landings as a glider pilot. Sullenberger's landing
in the Hudson would have had very different results had most other
pilots been at the controls. He committed to a water landing very
early while he has some altitude and airspeed to work with
in hopes that some would survive the landing and no one
would be killed on the ground. He deserves the credit he got
from the media.

w..

 

[Dennis \(Icarus\)]

On 2010-05-03, Tim Streater <[email protected]> wrote:

Neither of them has any particular interest in the idea of truth as a
quality a statement could have independent of its personal convenience
to them. Nilges is obsessed with his reputation for its own sake, while

Then why on earth does he spend so much time here damaging it?

Dennis

 

[spinoza1111]

It sure didn't hurt that Sullenberger had done literally thousands
of dead stick landings as a glider pilot. Sullenberger's landing
in the Hudson would have had very different results had most other
pilots been at the controls. He committed to a water landing very
early while he has some altitude and airspeed to work with
in hopes that some would survive the landing and no one
would be killed on the ground. He deserves the credit he got
from the media.

w..

Langewiesche admits all of this. He merely wishes to also credit the
software designers of the A380. Sullenberger knew what to do, and what
not to do, which was to waste time overriding the aircraft's
decisions.

 

[Keith Thompson]

I was trolling.

[...]

Please don't.

Remember I was responding to someone who thinks
"communism" has never been shown to work.

And why would you do that in comp.lang.c?

 

[Kenny McCormack]

I was trolling.

[...]

Please don't.

Remember I was responding to someone who thinks
"communism" has never been shown to work.

And why would you do that in comp.lang.c?

Doesn't the 'c' in comp.lang.c stand for communism?

- Confused -

--
(This discussion group is about C, ...)

Wrong. It is only OCCASIONALLY a discussion group
about C; mostly, like most "discussion" groups, it is
off-topic Rorsharch [sic] revelations of the childhood
traumas of the participants...

 

[Seebs]

Then why on earth does he spend so much time here damaging it?

Because:
* He's sufficiently obsessed with his reputation that he is incapable
of accepting any data that would make him think his reputation was
bad or declining.
* Therefore, he does not think he is damaging his reputation.

You're trying to make sense of someone who accuses people of being
transvestite Nazis and calls them "faggots" as part of his campaign to
get people to stop making things into personal conflicts. Just keep that
in mind...

-s

 

[spinoza1111]

Because:
* He's sufficiently obsessed with his reputation that he is incapable
  of accepting any data that would make him think his reputation was
  bad or declining.
* Therefore, he does not think he is damaging his reputation.

You're trying to make sense of someone who accuses people of being
transvestite Nazis and calls them "faggots" as part of his campaign to

At one point, I thought it amusing to hyperbolically portray my
interlocutor in his basement in a Nazi hat and a dress. This wasn't
"accusing" anyone of anything, just having a laugh, a chortle, at
their expense.

No, Peter, when j'accuse, I get all serious. For example, I don't use
hyperbole when I accuse you of being an incompetent self-promoter,
which is bad enough, but who caps it all off by continually engaging
in the politics of personal destruction like a nasty little ****.

get people to stop making things into personal conflicts.  Just keep that
in mind...

Excuse me, Peter. When early this year, before this shit went down, I
sent you an email to discuss our issues and spare clc the subsequent
flamewar, you threw the email away unread, and told everyone that you
had done so.

This was to make it personal, wouldn't you say? Since then, you have
elected to call me, your Apress colleague, a kook and a moron
repeatedly. You have made it personal since day one, because you are
an incompetent programmer who self-promotes. There would be, in my
book, nothing apart from amusement value in that alone. Incompetent
programmers who self-promote can be rather charmimg fellows, and given
the way corporations treat programmers, corporations such as Goldman
Sachs probably don't deserve competence like mine.

But I draw the line when they start destroying people.

This where I draw the line,
This is when I say, not fine
It's OK by me if you break a computer
Ain't no thing, no tragedy:
But people deserve a quantum of dignity
People deserve respect.
And, no they don't have to earn it
Study the lesson, dickface, learn it
And boy...
Stop bein' such a vicious little Mama's toy.

 

[spinoza1111]

I was trolling. [...]

Please don't.

                      Remember I was responding to someone who thinks
"communism" has never been shown to work.

And why would you do that in comp.lang.c?

Doesn't the 'c' in comp.lang.c stand for communism?

No...it stands for confused crazy cuntfaces continually cocking code
up concomitantly with crowing concerning their competence.

 - Confused -

--
(This discussion group is about C, ...)

Wrong.  It is only OCCASIONALLY a discussion group
about C; mostly, like most "discussion" groups, it is
off-topic Rorsharch [sic] revelations of the childhood
traumas of the participants...

 

[spinoza1111]

It sure didn't hurt that Sullenberger had done literally thousands
of dead stick landings as a glider pilot. Sullenberger's landing
in the Hudson would have had very different results had most other
pilots been at the controls. He committed to a water landing very
early while he has some altitude and airspeed to work with
in hopes that some would survive the landing and no one
would be killed on the ground. He deserves the credit he got
from the media.

w..

Langeweische contrasts an Air France pilot who killed his passengers
but survived at an air show because he wanted "control", and he
overrode the 380. Clown reminds me of some programmers.

Whereas Sullenberger seems to my layperson's eye to have heroically
contented himself with deciding to land in the river because he
couldn't make Teterboro and pointing the plane in the right direction.

Langeweische's point: being a pilot has become transformed by software
and fly by wire into being nothing more than a glorified bus driver,
and the rapidly declining salaries of pilots reflect this harsh truth.
For the same reason, programmers should get used to the idea of using
Java or C Sharp, with garbage collection, and not C. Programming
should be "boring", not fun.

We still don't have the full story on the mid-Atlantic crash of 2009
which was another 380. But I really, really hope that the fly by wire
engineers do NOT use the C programming language. I'd hope it's a
special purpose language running on an OS with garbage collection
tuned for real-time avionics. And hopefully, the engineers work in
Europe and so can't be laid off at-will, and their skills with
them...including the guy writing the compiler, since the Wall Street
boys don't even know what a "compiler" is.

Any body here work in this type of software, have a contribution to
make?

 

[spinoza1111]

It sure didn't hurt that Sullenberger had done literally thousands
of dead stick landings as a glider pilot. Sullenberger's landing

In particular, Langeweische does not describe Sullenberger as managing
a dead stick. The software was doing that: it knew where the
"ground" (the water) was. And D-Day showed that you cannot let your
passengers fly in a dumb glider, even though commercial airplanes will
fly for miles as gliders; the A380 was a smart glider, since it had
power for the software.

However, you sound like you have experience as a pilot, so I welcome
your comments.

Here is my poem in Sullenberger's honor, intended to be read
accompanied by John Fahey playing "Poor Boy":

http://spinoza1111.wordpress.com/20...n-fahey-plays-poor-boys-a-long-way-from-home/

in the Hudson would have had very different results had most other
pilots been at the controls. He committed to a water landing very

Smart decision!

early while he has some altitude and airspeed to work with
in hopes that some would survive the landing and no one
would be killed on the ground. He deserves the credit he got
from the media.

Langeweische agrees, but as an excellent writer he like me treads on
toes. Langeweische, for example, documented looting by members of the
NYPD and NYFD on September 11 and his presentations in NYC were for
this reason disrupted.

His father was Willi Langeweische an aviation writer as well, and I'll
never forget reading his Dad's description of what it was like to jump
out of a plane with an old fashioned parachute.

 

[Nick Keighley]

[...]> I was trolling.

[...]

Please don't.

                      Remember I was responding to someone who thinks
"communism" has never been shown to work.

And why would you do that in comp.lang.c?

what is there in this thread that makes any meaningful contribution to
clc.
But ok I get you point. I'll desist

 

[spinoza1111]

Nick Keighley <[email protected]> writes:

[...]> I was trolling.

[...]

Please don't.

                      Remember I was responding to someone who thinks
"communism" has never been shown to work.

And why would you do that in comp.lang.c?

what is there in this thread that makes any meaningful contribution to
clc.
But ok I get you point. I'll desist

Actually, a lot. For example, the question as to whether the C
programming language should be used for "fly by wire" avionics.

I'm afraid what most people here mean by "on topic" means "within my
narrow circle of knowledge, me being a dork who doesn't read anything
but Awesome Technical Books and the sports pages, and excluding
anything that would question management's right to control my life".

 

[Colonel Harlan Sanders]

No...it stands for confused crazy cuntfaces continually cocking code
up concomitantly with crowing concerning their competence.

On top of everything else, now you have Tourette's. Change your meds.

On Thu, 6 May 2010 01:22:34 -0700 (PDT), spinoza1111

Actually, a lot. For example, the question as to whether the C
programming language should be used for "fly by wire" avionics.

Asked and answered. You think you're the first person to worry about
aviation software?

http://www.astree.ens.fr/
: ASTRÉE stands for Analyseur statique de logiciels
: temps-réel embarqués (real-time embedded software
: static analyzer). The development of ASTRÉE started
: from scratch in Nov. 2001 at the Laboratoire
: d'Informatique of the École Normale Supérieure (LIENS),
: initially supported by the ASTRÉE project, the Centre
: National de la Recherche Scientifique, the École
: Normale Supérieure and, since September 2007, by INRIA
: (Paris—Rocquencourt).
:
: In Nov. 2003, ASTRÉE was able to prove completely
: automatically the absence of any RTE in the primary
: flight control software of the Airbus A340 fly-by-wire
: system, a program of 132,000 lines of C.

But I'm sure you can do better in Visual Basic. Make that the next
Spinoza Challenge.
Extra credit if you can do so without calling anyone a **** or a Nazi
when they point out your bugs.

 

[Walter Banks]

Langeweische contrasts an Air France pilot who killed his passengers
but survived at an air show because he wanted "control", and he
overrode the 380. Clown reminds me of some programmers.

Both AC were A320 not A380's. The Paris airshow aircraft was
a early or pre production A320 and the AC that Sullenberger flew
into the Hudson was a production A320

Whereas Sullenberger seems to my layperson's eye to have heroically
contented himself with deciding to land in the river because he
couldn't make Teterboro and pointing the plane in the right direction.

Langeweische's point: being a pilot has become transformed by software
and fly by wire into being nothing more than a glorified bus driver,
and the rapidly declining salaries of pilots reflect this harsh truth.
For the same reason, programmers should get used to the idea of using
Java or C Sharp, with garbage collection, and not C. Programming
should be "boring", not fun.

We still don't have the full story on the mid-Atlantic crash of 2009
which was another 380.

The Air France crash in the atlantic was an A330-200 series if
I remember. Big difference.

But I really, really hope that the fly by wire
engineers do NOT use the C programming language. I'd hope it's a
special purpose language running on an OS with garbage collection
tuned for real-time avionics. And hopefully, the engineers work in
Europe and so can't be laid off at-will, and their skills with
them...including the guy writing the compiler, since the Wall Street
boys don't even know what a "compiler" is.

Any body here work in this type of software, have a contribution to
make?

C is used in some of the aircraft fly by wire systems. Implementation
language choice has not been cited in any of the accidents in
aircraft using fly by wire. The fundamental reason is the application
software design and testing methodology used.


Walter..

 

[Kenny McCormack]

[...]> I was trolling.

[...]

Please don't.

                      Remember I was responding to someone who thinks
"communism" has never been shown to work.

And why would you do that in comp.lang.c?

what is there in this thread that makes any meaningful contribution to
clc.
But ok I get you point. I'll desist

Nice to see Kiki reasserting his authority over you (and over this group
in general).

--

No, I haven't, that's why I'm asking questions. If you won't help me,
why don't you just go find your lost manhood elsewhere.

CLC in a nutshell.

 

[spinoza1111]

Both AC were A320 not A380's.   The Paris airshow aircraft was
a early or pre production A320 and the AC that Sullenberger flew
into the Hudson was a production A320

Correct. The pilot at the airshow claimed the plane was at fault.
Langeweische feels his override was the problem.

The Air France crash in the atlantic was an A330-200 series if
I remember. Big difference.

Still fly by wire. Pitot tubes?

 

[spinoza1111]

On top of everything else, now you have Tourette's. Change your meds.


+>


Asked and answered. You think you're the first person to worry about
aviation software?

http://www.astree.ens.fr/
: ASTRÉE stands for Analyseur statique de logiciels
: temps-réel embarqués (real-time embedded software
: static analyzer). The development of ASTRÉE started
: from scratch in Nov. 2001 at the Laboratoire
: d'Informatique of the École Normale Supérieure (LIENS),
: initially supported by the ASTRÉE project, the Centre
: National de la Recherche Scientifique, the École
: Normale Supérieure and, since September 2007, by INRIA
: (Paris—Rocquencourt).
:
: In Nov. 2003, ASTRÉE was able to prove completely
: automatically the absence of any RTE in the primary
: flight control software of the Airbus A340 fly-by-wire
: system, a program of 132,000 lines of C.

But I'm sure you can do better in Visual Basic. Make that the next
Spinoza Challenge.
Extra credit if you can do so without calling anyone a **** or a Nazi
when they point out your bugs.

I'm surprised you found that information, but that's why rednecks like
the Internet. They can sound intelligent (rarely) by simple search,
cut and paste that any Walmart greeter can learn. But hey, thanks,
asshole.

And note that French guys, with job security and three months of
vacation, were able to do it. Americans would not be able to.

The only person who has has been bacarisse. I haven't called him a
**** or a Nazi. But I'll call you one to your face the next time you
are in Hong Kong or I am in East Shithole.

I wouldn't try to develop Avionics software on .Net unless it were
ported and tuned to avionics.

 

[spinoza1111]

[...]> I was trolling.

[...]

Please don't.

                      Remember I was responding to someone who thinks
"communism" has never been shown to work.

And why would you do that in comp.lang.c?

Because the "software crisis", while it also existed in the Soviet
Union, was primarily a feature of free market capitalist societies in
which producers are subordinated to private ownership of the means of
production, and social change is replaced by passive aggressive
"revolutions" such as C which just make the problem worse.

 

[Mark]

We still don't have the full story on the mid-Atlantic crash of 2009
which was another 380. But I really, really hope that the fly by wire
engineers do NOT use the C programming language. I'd hope it's a
special purpose language running on an OS with garbage collection
tuned for real-time avionics. And hopefully, the engineers work in
Europe and so can't be laid off at-will, and their skills with
them...including the guy writing the compiler, since the Wall Street
boys don't even know what a "compiler" is.

Any body here work in this type of software, have a contribution to
make?

My wife's research area over the past decade has been safety critical
systems, specifically focused on commercial aircraft. As part of this,
she has worked closely with the CAA (UK), JAA (Europe) and FAA (US).
There has been a great deal of attention given to ensuring safety as the
industry attempts to increase computer support, particularly as they've
required much more complex controls to keep aircraft in the air - both
Boeing and Airbus's newer aircraft are an order of magnitude more
complex to fly than those designed in the '60s and '70s.

C isn't used for the most critical systems. Ada (particularly SPARK
Ada) is quite common now as it provides some of the guarantees that the
airlines and regulatory bodies demand.

As for memory: forget garbage collection. In fact, forget dynamic
memory. These systems are expected to know what they're using and when.
Not vaguely, but precisely. Garbage collection has two major counts
against it in this sphere: the GC itself upsets timing guarantees (which
the authorities still insist on develops specifying*) and the fact that
it implies you haven't cared enough about the life and scope of the
associated data structure(s).

* Modern COTS systems (increasingly in use) are causing all sorts of
problems in this area as precise timings are very hard to do on modern
chips with variable rate clocks, branch prediction, instruction
caching and so on.

To bring it back on-topic to C: a lot of safety-critical work for the
automotive industry (and, increasingly, spreading to other sectors) is
in MISRA C. It';s a set of guidelines issued by MISRA (the Motor
Industry Software Reliability Association) which sets out a standard for
C use which avoids some of the more "dangerous" features of the language
and helps developers produce code which is more easily tested against
formal requirements.