Infrequently asked questions

[jacob navia]

In his web pages, D. E. Knuth wrote this:
(http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/iaq.html)

Infrequently Asked Questions

1. Why does my country have the right to be occupying Iraq?
2. Why should my country not support an international court of justice?
3. Is my country not strong enough to achieve its aims fairly?
4. When the leaders of a country cause it to do terrible things,
what is the best way to restore the honor of that country?
5. Is it possible for potential new leaders to raise questions about
their country's possible guilt, without committing political suicide?
6. Do I deserve retribution from aggrieved people whose lives have
been ruined by actions that my leaders have taken without my consent?
7. How can I best help set in motion a process by which reparations
are made to people who have been harmed by unjust deeds of my country?
8. If day after day goes by with nobody discussing uncomfortable
questions like these, won't the good people of my country be guilty of
making things worse?

 

[Ian Collins]

jacob navia wrote:

{political stuff]

Why post that here?

 

[jacob navia]

jacob navia wrote:

{political stuff]

Why post that here?

Why?

See question 8:

If day after day goes by with nobody discussing uncomfortable questions
like these, won't the good people of my country be guilty of making
things worse?

Knuth is a computer scientist, that until now never openly
took a political position.

I think that this change is significant, and represents a change
in somebody everybody knows here. We discussed here his books,
and I think it isn't without interest to quote him on this.

 

[Ian Collins]

jacob navia wrote:

{political stuff]

Why post that here?

Why?

See question 8:

If day after day goes by with nobody discussing uncomfortable questions
like these, won't the good people of my country be guilty of making
things worse?

This is an international forum. Most of the questions are irrelevant
for those of us living in small, peaceful democratic nations who have
never invaded anyone.

 

[Antoninus Twink]

In his web pages, D. E. Knuth wrote this:

1. Why does my country have the right to be occupying Iraq?

[etc.]

I'm really not sure what the point of this is.

There's no reasoned argument in this list, just a pile of emotive mush.
Lots of people will already agree with his sentiments, some people will
disagree with them. It's hard to imagine anyone's opinion being changed
by it, since there's no logical argument being put forward to convince
them.

Everyone has the right to political expression, even famous computer
scientists. You just wonder why he'd bother putting something so trite
on his website.

 

[jacob navia]

In his web pages, D. E. Knuth wrote this:

1. Why does my country have the right to be occupying Iraq?

[etc.]

I'm really not sure what the point of this is.

There's no reasoned argument in this list, just a pile of emotive mush.
Lots of people will already agree with his sentiments, some people will
disagree with them. It's hard to imagine anyone's opinion being changed
by it, since there's no logical argument being put forward to convince
them.

Everyone has the right to political expression, even famous computer
scientists. You just wonder why he'd bother putting something so trite
on his website.

Knuth is a computer scientist, not a good political analyst/historian.

His views are solely based on moral grounds. Note question 1,

Why does my country have the right to be occupying Iraq?

He doesn't analyze the war, pinpoints the people that are
making a profit from this act, nor he names any administration.

But he does ask the right question, the question of the right of
a big country to invade a small one. The question of the silence
of everyone concerning the daily killing going on in that country.

I know this is off topic, but it is precisely that the tragedy.
It is nowhere on topic. Everyone goes on making AS IF nothing
serious would happen.

I find the position of Knuth correct, correct in the moral sense,
and I was surprised when I saw that, I just did not expect it.

And then I reflected that it would be nice to remember that
silence is surely not a good reaction to this kind of
atrocity.

 

[Flash Gordon]

jacob navia wrote, On 15/10/08 23:54:

jacob navia wrote:

{political stuff]

Why post that here?

Why?

See question 8:

If day after day goes by with nobody discussing uncomfortable questions
like these, won't the good people of my country be guilty of making
things worse?

I discus politics, just not here.

Knuth is a computer scientist, that until now never openly
took a political position.
So?

I think that this change is significant, and represents a change
in somebody everybody knows here. We discussed here his books,
and I think it isn't without interest to quote him on this.

It may well be interesting somewhere that politics is topical. He might
have written interesting books on Coral 66 as well, and those would be
about computing, but they also would not be topical here.

There are plenty of places where politics are either topical or
acceptable, and at least some of them have people who are interested in
computing and even programming in C as well.

 

[Keith Thompson]

In his web pages, D. E. Knuth wrote this:
(http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/iaq.html)

Infrequently Asked Questions

1. Why does my country have the right to be occupying Iraq? [...]
8. If day after day goes by with nobody discussing uncomfortable
questions like these, won't the good people of my country be guilty of
making things worse?

9. Why do newsgroups other than comp.lang.c exist?

There is no shortage of people discussing these issues, myself
included. Most of us, unlike you, have the common sense not to
discuss them *here*.

On a partially related issue, it's ironic that you post using a
"nospam.com" e-mail address. First, though your most recent message
is not actually spam (unless you've posted it to multiple newsgroups),
it's certainly inappropriate and unsolicited. Second, nospam.com is
an actual domain; it's likely that you're cauing their incoming mail
servers to receive some of the spam that was intended for you. If you
want to avoid spam by using an invalid address, try "nospam.invalid".

 

[Peter Nilsson]

{political stuff]

Why post that here?

Why?

Yes why? Have you also spammed comp.compilers.lcc?
[checks] I see you haven't. Now I wonder why that is...

 

[Richard]

jacob navia wrote, On 15/10/08 23:54:

jacob navia wrote:

{political stuff]

Why post that here?

Why?

See question 8:

If day after day goes by with nobody discussing uncomfortable questions
like these, won't the good people of my country be guilty of making
things worse?

I discus politics, just not here.

Good for you. Jacob wishes to in one thread with people he discusses
things with every day. Maybe he wants ISO C programmers views. Well,
there's the place to get them.

It may well be interesting somewhere that politics is topical. He might
have written interesting books on Coral 66 as well, and those would be
about computing, but they also would not be topical here.

There are plenty of places where politics are either topical or
acceptable, and at least some of them have people who are interested in
computing and even programming in C as well.

Time to kill thread 0.1 seconds. Time for you to construct your nagging
reply about 2 minutes.

 

[NathanCBaker]

jacob navia wrote:

{political stuff]

Why post that here?

I believe it is almost a "tradition" for nerds to promote political
views via strictly technical channels. I just recently browsed
http://www.linuxhq.org/ and received this:

McCain is a moron.
Do you really want a walking tampon as vice president?
All who vote for them must be uneducated.
Maybe you were classmates at some point.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;
use Election::Rigged;

my $economy = 0;
my @uhaul;

if ($elected->McCain)
{
$economy--;
push(@uhaul, @possessions);
rename($us, $canada);
exit 1;
}

while ($economy < 100)
{
$economy++;
}

undef @uhaul;
exit 0;

Nathan.

 

[Ian Collins]

Ian Collins said:

Ian Collins wrote:
jacob navia wrote:

{political stuff]

Why post that here?

Why?

See question 8:

If day after day goes by with nobody discussing uncomfortable questions
like these, won't the good people of my country be guilty of making
things worse?

This is an international forum. Most of the questions are irrelevant
for those of us living in small, peaceful democratic nations who have
never invaded anyone.

I'm struggling to think of a single example of a small, peaceful democratic
nation that never invaded anyone.

Try New Zealand.

 

[NathanCBaker]

I just recently browsed
http://www.linuxhq.org/and received this:

This isn't overly informative. Who is McCain? (I know some people will
think I'm being disingenuous, but I'm not - as far as I'm aware, McCain is
a brand of oven chip.) And is the word "moron" a medical description from
a qualified professional, or just a petty insult?

Election-year politics in the U. S. of A. can get rather nasty. I'm
as clueless as you as to why the F/OSS crowd prefers to do some
stumping rather than allow us access to a wealth of F/OSS resources.

I guess we need to point our browsers to http://support.microsoft.com/
to keep our eyeballs free of political pandering.

Nathan.

 

[NathanCBaker]

I just recently browsed
http://www.linuxhq.org/ and received this:

This isn't overly informative. Who is McCain? (I know some people will
think I'm being disingenuous, but I'm not - as far as I'm aware, McCain is
a brand of oven chip.) And is the word "moron" a medical description from
a qualified professional, or just a petty insult?

He is currently a US Senator with a half-decent chance of becoming
President and he certainly is not a moron. In all honesty, his
biggest liability is bad timing.

http://www.johnmccain.com/Undecided/WhyMcCain.htm

Nathan.

 

[Nick Keighley]

Ian Collins said:

Ian Collins wrote:
jacob navia wrote:
{political stuff]
Why post that here?
Why?
See question 8:
If day after day goes by with nobody discussing uncomfortable questions
like these, won't the good people of my country be guilty of making
things worse?

This is an international forum.  Most of the questions are irrelevant
for those of us living in small, peaceful democratic nations who have
never invaded anyone.

I'm struggling to think of a single example of a small, peaceful democratic
nation that never invaded anyone. Nevertheless, the OP's question - though
important - is off-topic. It is a question that SHOULD be discussed, but
that does not mean it should be discussed HERE. The distinction is an
important one.

Island. They don't have any armed forces to invade with.

Incidentally, when I read the subject line, I assumed the article was going
to be about Peter Seebach's IAQs. They, at least, would have been vaguely
topical.

http://www.seebs.net/faqs/c-iaq.html

--
Nick Keighley

Is C an acronym?
Yes, it stands for ``C''. It's another of those funky recursive
acronyms.
-- The C IAQ

 

[Nick Keighley]

[Knuth] might have written interesting books on Coral 66 as well,

I find it vanishingly unlikely that *anyone* could
write an interesting book on Coral 66. I suppose BITS
and TABLE were pretty cool. Oh, and UNION and DIFFER and MASK.
And CODE BEGIN!

stop it.

 

[Antoninus Twink]

Knuth is a computer scientist, not a good political analyst/historian.

His views are solely based on moral grounds. Note question 1,

Why does my country have the right to be occupying Iraq?

He doesn't analyze the war, pinpoints the people that are
making a profit from this act, nor he names any administration.

But he does ask the right question, the question of the right of
a big country to invade a small one. The question of the silence
of everyone concerning the daily killing going on in that country.

OK, but I don't see how just asking the question is significant - it's
not like people won't already have thought about it.

I imagine there'll be two sorts of people:

Some will say "Hell yeah, the war was illegal and immoral and we have no
right to be occupying Iraq".

Others will say "Iraq was a hostile nation that supported terrorism and
we believed before going to war that they were developing WMD. That
gave us every right to act in pre-emptive self defense".

Now the question alone achieves nothing, because opponents of Knuth's
position already think they know the answer.

Instead, it would be more productive for him to provide *evidence* and
*careful argument* to refute the specific beliefs that the second group
rely on to answer his question.

I find the position of Knuth correct, correct in the moral sense,
and I was surprised when I saw that, I just did not expect it.

Really? I don't find it surprising at all - a huge proportion of
academics hold almost identical political and socio-economic opinions,
and academia is one the least diverse political arenas there is. Is it
surprising that Knuth is part of that wide majority consensus?

 

[Antoninus Twink]

(e-mail address removed) said:

This isn't overly informative. Who is McCain? (I know some people will
think I'm being disingenuous, but I'm not - as far as I'm aware,
McCain is a brand of oven chip.)

I don't think you're being disingenuous. I think you're LYING, plain and
simple.

You seem to enjoy parading your anti-Americanism in this group - or
"anti-USAnianism" as you'd probably describe it using your favorite word
that just happens to be deliberately provocative and insulting.

 

[Ian Collins]

Ian Collins said:

jacob navia wrote:
Ian Collins wrote:
jacob navia wrote:
{political stuff]
Why post that here?
Why?
See question 8:
If day after day goes by with nobody discussing uncomfortable questions
like these, won't the good people of my country be guilty of making
things worse?
This is an international forum. Most of the questions are irrelevant
for those of us living in small, peaceful democratic nations who have
never invaded anyone.

I'm struggling to think of a single example of a small, peaceful democratic
nation that never invaded anyone. Nevertheless, the OP's question - though
important - is off-topic. It is a question that SHOULD be discussed, but
that does not mean it should be discussed HERE. The distinction is an
important one.

Island. They don't have any armed forces to invade with.

Or banks to pay for them...

 

[Ian Collins]

I don't think you're being disingenuous. I think you're LYING, plain and
simple.

No, he isn't. McCain is a brand of oven chip.