why I cannot stop this loop at 50 points? (code)

[R J C]

Kenny McCormack scribbled:

(Just keepin' in the Aspergers spirit of the place, doncha know...?)

Has it occurred to you that HfC may have a history as one of those
Aspergers "regs" you despise? Or do you not think it unusual that someone
would materialize out of thin air to commence trolling on a newsgroup, all
the while being able to pinpoint material in the ISO standard and shed
light on nuances (when not doing same to be a jackass)? I'm almost
entirely unfamiliar with the ISO C standard, tho I'm highly familiar with
several other ISO standards, and I think the following still applies:
People can't study those standards in isolation. There has to be a back
and forth, an interaction among peers, a process of refinement spanning
many years. I can't think of any other place where that process could
have occurred than this newsgroup. Has that occurred to you?

Curious: Have you met anyone suffering from Aspergers? These references
to Aspergers, "autistic pedantry", &c. are pretty callow, if you ask me.

Rob

 

[Keith Thompson]

Keith Thompson scribbled: [...]

I ignore him as much as I feel I can, but sometimes I have to warn
people.

It's painful watching a knowledgeable and valuable contributor like you
fall into that trap, Keith. I propose that warnings be issued only when
there is a clear sign of an attempt to provide deliberately misleading
material.

[...]

That's pretty much what I do.

I can no longer tell whether the bulk of his "advice" is accurate or
not, since I've killfiled him. I warn about him only when I feel it's
necessary and/or appropriate. That's all I can do.

Well, it's all I'm *willing* to do; I suppose I could read all his
articles, but I decline to do so.

 

[Barry Schwarz]

FSX wrote:
snip

                       if(dice1 == 6)
                                score1 = score1 + 25; [...]
                       if(dice2 == 6)
                                score2 = score2 + 25; [...]
        }

[...]

What happens when dice1 or dice2 has the value 49, and then one of those
if statements adds 25 to it? It'll reach 74, then the loop will terminate..

Presumably you meant score1 or scor2 since neither dice variable ever
exceeds 6.

 

[Barry Schwarz]

Keith Thompson said:

Making the program work reasonably with a floating-point time_t is
more challenging.  Suppose time() yields a floating-point number
of days since some defined epoch.  Then converting to unsigned
loses the fractional part, so the same value is passed to srand()
every time the program is run on a given day.

Here is Lawrence Kirby's fix (which I've posted several times
before):

#include <stddef.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <limits.h>

/* Usage: srand (time_seed ()); */

/* Choose and return an initial random seed based on the current
time.
   Based on code by Lawrence Kirby <[email protected]>. */
unsigned
time_seed (void)
{
  time_t timeval;
  unsigned char *ptr;
  unsigned seed;
  size_t i;

  timeval = time (NULL);
  ptr = (unsigned char *) &timeval;

  seed = 0;
  for (i = 0; i < sizeof timeval; i++)
    seed = seed * (UCHAR_MAX + 2U) + ptr;

Will this work as intended if sizeof(int) is 1 and UCHAR_MAX ==
UINT_MAX? In that case, will not UCHAR_MAX + 2U evaluate to 1?

 

[Ben Bacarisse]

A constant resolution integer time is simply a better design.

If I could, I'd re-phrase that. It is better interface, but when wide
integers are no available, something has to give, and a floating point
time might be a better design given all the constraints.

 

[James Kuyper]

Keith Thompson wrote:
[...]

Here's the problem: Just ignoring him doesn't work. We get people
showing up here who don't know the history, and, through no fault of
their own, they're susceptible to HfC's trolling.

It's really quite simple: Han goes after people who give him reason to (no
different than any other human).

More accurately, they are people who he claims have given him reason to.
He's usually mistaken. There's few, if any, reasons that could ever
justify some of the things he's done, and the reasons he's given for
doing them aren't on that list; and many of his purported reasons are
simply nonsense.

... Some people here suffer from delusions
about their behavior, and thus are unable to see what they do to provoke
him, which leads to some good comedy (IMO). But I think I suffer from a
lack of pigeon-hole-itis.

Even if he had been provoked into some of his attacks, he has also give
deliberately incorrect advice to complete newbies who posted legitimate
questions with no known posting history to justify a claim of provocation.

 

[Keith Thompson]

Keith Thompson wrote:
[...]

Here's the problem: Just ignoring him doesn't work. We get people
showing up here who don't know the history, and, through no fault of
their own, they're susceptible to HfC's trolling.

It's really quite simple: Han goes after people who give him reason to (no
different than any other human). Some people here suffer from delusions
about their behavior, and thus are unable to see what they do to provoke
him, which leads to some good comedy (IMO). But I think I suffer from a
lack of pigeon-hole-itis.

He goes after people "who give him reason to"? Perhaps there's
some reason in his own mind, but I never saw any justification for
any of his attacks. If he's a rational being, he's responsible
for his own behavior; he doesn't *have* to disrupt this newsgroup.
Beyond killfiling him, I see no reason why I should modify my own
behavior to avoid "provoking" him.

If you think he's "no different than any other human", you're
missing the fact that most humans are not trolls.

 

[Kenny McCormack]

He goes after people "who give him reason to"? Perhaps there's
some reason in his own mind, but I never saw any justification for
any of his attacks. If he's a rational being, he's responsible
for his own behavior; he doesn't *have* to disrupt this newsgroup.
Beyond killfiling him, I see no reason why I should modify my own
behavior to avoid "provoking" him.

I'm trying to remember my mythology. Isn't there some king or other
figure in history (or fiction) who is famous for this sort of thing?
Claiming not to see something/that the something doesn't exist when all
around him can see it as clear as day?

Can someone help me out with this?

(Note: It is sort of a variation on Emperor's New Clothes, which is
another frequently observed metaphor/phenomenon in this NG)

If you think he's "no different than any other human", you're
missing the fact that most humans are not trolls.

The level of comedy provided here by Kiki simply must be seen to be
belived...

 

[R J C]

James Kuyper scribbled:

More accurately, they are people who he claims have given him reason to.

But it's a testable claim he's made. He's said that Heathfield is the
only one he's ever attacked without prior provocation and that everybody
else attacked him first. He has offered to provide evidence of this for
any person we care to name. Keith has given his reasons for why he's not
open to such a consideration of the evidence, and I can sort of understand
his point. OTOH, while I consider his unprovoked attacks on Heathfield
completely unjustified and trollish (he even claimed to be trolling, which
is the point some of his defenders appear to be forgetting), it's an
unfair standard of judgement to say that HfC's unprovoked attacks were
wrong while the unprovoked attacks that have been made against him are
right (popping up for no reason in a thread and calling him a troll when
his behavior in that thread doesn't warrant it). I'm sure it's easy to
justify the unprovoked attacks on HfC as a sort of karma, but that's the
same crappy excuse he's used to justify his unprovoked attacks on
Heathfield. Surely the other side is better than that.

He's invited people to act as monitors to see who makes unprovoked attacks
first on this newsgroup. Why would someone do that unless he believed
himself capable of demonstrating a point by doing so? For a while there
he was restricting himself to pointing out the unprovoked attacks from the
other side without insulting back, yet the other side kept the insults
coming. It's easy to see how blargg would hold the view he does.

There's few, if any, reasons that could ever justify some of the
things he's done, and the reasons he's given for doing them aren't
on that list; and many of his purported reasons are simply nonsense.

That remains to be seen. The reason it remains to be seen is that, sadly
enough, HfC is the only one backing his claims up with evidence and
adhering to standards of reason. This evidence may be skewed in his
favor, but we can't be sure, because the other side is making only flat
assertions and is unwilling to engage him on that level. He produces
threads and message IDs that back his claims, and when he asks others to
do the same thing, he gets only silence. It's also undeniable that he
quickly demolishes fallacious arguments when it comes to
on-topic/off-topic and that he produces embarrassing evidence of double
standards on this group. He may be (and definitely was) an annoying
troll, but you can't ignore someone who has evidence and reason and, as in
this thread, technical accuracy in his favor, and like it or not, nobody
is going to check the archives to learn posting history (he even refers
people to the archives himself, ironically enough, and doesn't deny making
unprovoked attacks on Heathfield). As the blargg response and past
responses from others show, he has rapidly earned the respect from a lot
of posters here, whether fully deserved or not and whether indicative of
collective amnesia or not.

Contrast these M.O.'s:

"Han is an XXX. Best plonked."
"FYI, Han is an XXX who's trying to destroy this newsgroup."

"[ISO standard references]. XXX is an idiot."
"So why isn't XXX whining about YYY's 7-line sig?"
"If that's true, I invite XXX to produce a Message-ID showing
that to be the case."
"XXX says one thing here about his killfile which is contradicted
there, as you can see."
"Here's a thread reference showing XXX doing such and such."
"That is a logical fallacy known as XXX."
"Evidence for the above can be found here: ..."
"The claim that most people don't read/reply to my posts is
a lie. Here are people who have made civil replies to me in
the last few weeks: ..."

See the difference the other side is fighting?

Even if he had been provoked into some of his attacks, he has also give
deliberately incorrect advice to complete newbies who posted legitimate
questions with no known posting history to justify a claim of provocation.

He's claimed he's only posted the occasional gag answer that many others
post. They struck me as worse than gag answers too, since you don't
provide gag answers to legitimate help requests. Regardless, I haven't
seen those answers for a very long time (I started lurking this group on
and off circa July '08). He's now employing a far different trolling
M.O., as it were---it's a sad reflection on a group when a troll's toolkit
includes being affable and amiable to posters (presumably to curry favor,
since I don't believe him to be naturally affable and amiable), throwing
in some legitimate help, being civil to those who don't attack him,
complimenting some who attack him, quoting ISO standards on an expert
level (whether for benign or malicious purposes), pointing out undeniable
double standards, and at least /ostensibly/ adhering to virtues of reason
and evidence (ten-year-old insults aside).

I say, have someone call the potential bluff and come forward as a monitor
to identify unprovoked attacks. At the very least, he'll be so intent on
proving his point that we'll likely see far less of the negativity around
here. All the others would have to do is not say a word about him, and we
have a recipe for instant calm.

Rob

 

[Keith Thompson]

James Kuyper scribbled:

More accurately, they are people who he claims have given him reason
to.

[...]
OTOH, while I consider his unprovoked attacks on Heathfield
completely unjustified and trollish (he even claimed to be trolling, which
is the point some of his defenders appear to be forgetting), it's an
unfair standard of judgement to say that HfC's unprovoked attacks were
wrong while the unprovoked attacks that have been made against him are
right (popping up for no reason in a thread and calling him a troll when
his behavior in that thread doesn't warrant it). I'm sure it's easy to
justify the unprovoked attacks on HfC as a sort of karma, but that's the
same crappy excuse he's used to justify his unprovoked attacks on
Heathfield. Surely the other side is better than that.

[...]

Calling HfC a troll is not an unprovoked attack. It is a warning to
others. HfC *is* a troll. He has said so himself on many occasions,
and made it abundantly clear by his behavior.

This isn't about attacking HfC.

I'm not entirely sure what he's done lately, but his behavior before I
killfiled him was, in my opinion, sufficiently despicable that he has
permanently forfeited my attention. I speak only for myself, but I'm
sure there are plenty of others who feel the same way.

 

[Kenny McCormack]

It wasn't a bluff, but I know that will never happen. I don't think
you understand the level of KiKi's mix of Asperger's syndrome and
OCD and the level of social impairment we're dealing with here. That
should be apparent from his intense anxiety attacks when exposed to
a few extra lines in a Usenet sig and his threats to hold back C help
until such sigs get fixed. It should also be apparent from his
inability to ignore people and his desire to control this newsgroup
and make it fit a rigid mold. What you've gotta understand is that
we are, in all likelihood, dealing with someone who wakes up at
a specific time, does a certain number of circles around a table,
chides the milkman for not placing the milk evenly within the
designated red square, does the Robot dance move for 21 minutes
and 13 seconds, and then sits down in front of his newsreader
in an almost catatonic state and commences compilation of the
comp.lang.c translation units for the next 12 hours.

Indeed. Quite.

Everytime I read one of his recent posts, I just can't help thinking...

Kiki, don't lose that number.
It's the only one you own...

 

[James Kuyper]

James Kuyper scribbled:

But it's a testable claim he's made. He's said that Heathfield is the
only one he's ever attacked without prior provocation and that everybody
else attacked him first.

So what? Revenge is not the only thing that can justify an attack; in
fact it seldom does justify it. He was attacked because of his actual
faults.

wrong while the unprovoked attacks that have been made against him are
right (popping up for no reason in a thread and calling him a troll when
his behavior in that thread doesn't warrant it).

That's not an attack; that's warning people about why they shouldn't
listen to him.

....

That remains to be seen.

No, it does not remain to be seen; I saw examples of everything
described in that paragraph before I stopped reading his messages.

assertions and is unwilling to engage him on that level. He produces

We're unwilling to engage him in further discussion because of the
results of our previous attempts to do so.

troll, but you can't ignore someone who has evidence and reason and, as in
this thread, technical accuracy in his favor

I can and have ignored someone who, before I started ignoring his
"contributions", used evidence, reason, and technical accuracy only to
give his deliberately bad advice to newbies a false appearance of validity.

He's claimed he's only posted the occasional gag answer that many others
post.

And is lying, as usual. Gag answers are a legitimate response to
questions which are clearly attempts to get other people to do someone's
homework. That has nothing to do with the cases where his behavior
angered me. No one can ever be sure what anyone else's motives were.
However, the cases I'm referring to seemed intended only to provoke a
response from those sufficiently expert to recognize the errors, and
they were the kind of errors that could only be thought up by someone
fully aware of their erroneous nature. I can't be sure why he felt a
desire to do that, though one possible explanation is that some people
had already announced that they were killfiling him, and he wanted to
provoke them into proving that they were not actually doing so.

 

[Richard Bos]

So Han is successful in his deliberate attempts to disrupt this
newsgroup, and it's *our* fault?

Seriously?

To be honest: yes. I've known forums where he wouldn't have stood a
fart's chance in a firestorm.

Or are you one of those people who believes that in any situation, there
can only be one single person at fault? Ok, it _is_ a popular view in
your country, but I'd thought you less stereotypically USAlien than
that.

Richard

 

[Dik T. Winter]

> A bit of Googling indicates that time_t represents the number of
> seconds since the epoch. Earlier releases used an epoch of Jan 1,
> 1900, but later releases use the POSIX epoch of Jan 1. 1970 (but
> there's a mechanism to redefine the epoch used).
>
> One obvious disadvantage is that the resolution varies over time. For
> times sufficiently close to the epoch, you can distinguish between one
> yottasecond and the next. By now, the resolution (given FLT_RADIX ==
> 16 and DBL_MANT_DIG == 14, thus 56 bits of precision) is around 3.7
> nanoseconds, and it will remain there for some time. If that's finer
> than the resolution of the system time-of-day clock, I suppose that's
> not a real problem. But I still think it would have been better to
> use a large integer representing, say, a number of nanoseconds.

Would make it not Posix compliant (Posix requires seconds since the epoch).

 

[Keith Thompson]

To be honest: yes. I've known forums where he wouldn't have stood a
fart's chance in a firestorm.

Or are you one of those people who believes that in any situation, there
can only be one single person at fault? Ok, it _is_ a popular view in
your country, but I'd thought you less stereotypically USAlien than
that.

So how would you suggest dealing with the situation? Seriously.

 

[R J C]

Keith Thompson scribbled:

So how would you suggest dealing with the situation? Seriously.

I would suggest a halt to the negative attention. This newsgroup
hasn't exactly blown up with HfC on it, and if the few who don't
like his presence would stop providing negative attention, then
I think there'd be a lot more calm. Other people here do the right
thing of giving him attention when he restricts himself to C
posts.

A halt to the negative attention is apparently going to require
a level of self-control that some people here can't muster. I
would suggest the use of a killfile---a /proper/ killfile, one
that filters out replies to HfC's posts. Otherwise, it makes
no sense for people to say they don't like reading replies to
HfC, especially if those same people state that they've killfiled
him. Some people here are failing to see the point behind the
whole "fake killfile" thing---whether true or not, we at least
have a number of "fake killfilers" here on an /appearance/ level.
Failure to filter out replies to HfC suggests that people want to
pretend to have killfiled him while still being able to attend to
their fixation and get the insults in there on the side. There's
simply no other explanation for not wanting to read replies to
HfC and yet not doing something about it.

Rob

 

[Kenny McCormack]

By reading replies to HfC's posts, we can see when he's causing actual
damage and warn people about it. It's not a perfect solution, but I'm
not going to read everything he posts, for reasons I've already
stated.

If I criticize HfC, it's not because I dislike him and enjoy insulting
him. It's to let others know about what he's doing. I have no
"fixation" on HfC. I just care about this newsgroup, and try to do
what I can to minimize the damage he can cause to it.

Whatever you do, Kiki, don't lose that number!

(You'll be lost without it)

 

[R J C]

James Kuyper scribbled:

However, the cases I'm referring to seemed intended only to provoke a
response from those sufficiently expert to recognize the errors, and
they were the kind of errors that could only be thought up by someone
fully aware of their erroneous nature.

There's the HANlon's Razor possibility (Couldn't resist!)

Nonetheless, I'm inclined to agree with you. I don't pretend to be
capable of making those discriminations, t.f. I can only observe the
responses from you, Keith, &c. BUT I can't shake off the thought that
someone couldn't possibly do that without a long history on this
newsgroup. IOW, you, Keith, &c. may have had many interactions with this
person spanning years, t.f. there would have to at least be a sense of
familiarity. The only other alternative would be someone involved in
compiler or standard library development. Speaking as an Average Joe C
Programmer, I can tell you that my kind can enjoy productive careers in C
programming without ever having laid eyes on the ISO standard.

Something here doesn't fit. I believe the obsession with the ISO standard
was prior to the trolling, not the other way around. At times, James,
you've given the impression that you know more about this character than
you let on, and sometimes you've even defended his statements. I suppose
what I'm getting at is this: Is it, for you, more a case of knowing that
someone, /anyone/, couldn't think up those misleading statements without
being aware of their erroneous nature, or that you think /he/ in
particular couldn't be unaware of their erroneous nature?


Rob

 

[James Kuyper]

James Kuyper scribbled:

There's the HANlon's Razor possibility (Couldn't resist!)

When someone has expressed as much unambiguous malice as Han has, he's
no longer covered by Hanlon's Razor in what would otherwise be
considered the ambiguous cases.

....

newsgroup. IOW, you, Keith, &c. may have had many interactions with this
person spanning years,

That may be true of the others, but I doubt that it applies to me. If
Han has a prior history with me, it would most likely have been
elsewhere than c.l.c. Until relatively recently I posted mainly to
comp.std.c, and posted to comp.lang.c mainly as an accidental
side-effect of responding to cross-posted messages on comp.std.c.

....

was prior to the trolling, not the other way around. At times, James,
you've given the impression that you know more about this character than
you let on, and sometimes you've even defended his statements.

I have no hidden knowledge of him; everything I know about him is
deductions from his postings on this newsgroup, and you give the
impression of having made more deductions from the same evidence than
I've ever bothered to.

... I suppose
what I'm getting at is this: Is it, for you, more a case of knowing that
someone, /anyone/, couldn't think up those misleading statements without
being aware of their erroneous nature, or that you think /he/ in
particular couldn't be unaware of their erroneous nature?

Absolute statements are seldom true; I don't know that it would be
impossible to possess the right combination of misconceptions to write
such statements without being aware of their erroneous nature. However,
I think it very unlikely, especially in this case. That judgment call
was certainly influenced by the malicious streak he's displayed in less
subtle ways in other messages. It was not, however, based in any way on
any source of information other than his postings to this newsgroup.

 

[Keith Thompson]

Keith Thompson wrote: [...]

HfC has a history of posting deliberately misleading responses to new
posters. You suggest we ignore this, and letting those responses
stand? Just let him do whatever he likes without interference?

No, just reply with a correction, as you'd do for anyone else posting
incorrect information.

I'd have to remove him from my killfile. I won't do that.