[OT] Indian C programmers and "u"

[Morris Dovey]

Dan if all you need is verification that there is a history of
using "u" as an abbreviation for "you" of some long standing and
reputation, that is indeed pretty easy to come by.

The use of "u" to abbreviate "you" has a *long* history with
morse code, whether American Morse (wire line) or International
Morse (radio), that began at least as far back as the 1850's, and
had been in constant use since then until very recent times as
the use of morse code over radio has slowly followed wire line
morse into almost total disuse only in the past two decades.

Is 150 years of use, including 100 years in the primary media
for news transmission around the world, enough history?

I think old morse operators find the use of 'u' in general writing
to be a bit of "theft", as previously they were the only ones
using it. It was, just as the fellows from India have described,
sort of a mark of "distinction", setting the user aside from just
anyone; and of course seeing it stolen by counter culture youths
isn't acceptable.

floyd davidson de wb0yef sry i dnt agr. cw nt spch. tnx qso
cul 73 de wb0yef

This kind of communication is limited to a relatively small and
very clearly bounded population and, even so, manages to confound
its users occasionally. Always, it's considered good manners to
moderate the degree of abbreviation to the ear/experience level
of the recipient.

It wasn't a "mark of distinction" - but rather a means of coping
with a very low data rate. Most amateur radio operators still
consider that 20 words/minute is really fast (although there are
speed demons who can send/copy much faster than that [I once met
a gentleman who could even copy RTTY (radio teletype) by ear!] I
can normally only copy about five words a minute - although I
once (when blitzed) managed to copy about an hour at 18-20 wpm.

For those who might have had difficulty, my first paragraph
can be interpreted as:
Hi, Floyd. This is Morris Dovey in the north central part
of the United States. Sorry, I don't agree. Morse code
isn't [the same thing as] speech. [But] thanks for sharing
your thoughts. Talk to you later. Best regards.

I sincerely hope that my postings to the newsgroup haven't made
my own on-air behaviorisms obvious. And no, I haven't considered
similar abbreviation in limited bandwidth communication a theft,
although I /have/ considered it an affectation when bandwidth was
not so limited. YMMV.

 

[Floyd Davidson]

Not necessarily; I wasn't arguing against the A-bomb, but against Les'
alternative for it.

And here I figured you meant the *lesser* of the two evils...


BTW, Les's article indicated to me that he has a /significantly/
better than average knowledge of the history involved. He hit
the key points dead center with every comment. And some of his
points are unusual for anyone other than a historian to really
be aware of. Such as the difficulties with communications and
the differences between the military and the civilian
government, especially in the first days after the A-bomb
attack.

Another aside, a few months ago I happened to have some
conversations with the family of the late Col. Ron Martin, who
was the individual that initiated contact between McArthur in
Manila and the Japanese government to begin the surrender
negotiations. It seems the Army tried everything they could to
make contact, and it hadn't worked, so some General asked Martin
(he had a long history in communications, including work with
the Byrd expeditions to Antarctica) if he could do it. Martin
apparently told him he'd have an answer from Japan in four
hours. And produced it.

The story he told later was that it was years before he let that
General know just how he did it. I was told he literally said,
"Some things ya just gotta keep to yourself for a while." He
waited long enough that he need not worry about a court martial!
(He knew the Japanese were monitoring 15 US weather channels, so
he broadcast a message to them, unencrypted, on every weather
frequency. Absolutely against the rules. But they did
surrender.)

Perhaps that puts communications into perspective.

 

[CBFalconer]

Something few people know is that burning coal in classical power
generators leads to more radioactive pollution than burning Uranium
and Plutonium in nuclear reactors.

Fundamentally different. Such actions simply expose existing
isotopes, they don't create new ones. You omitted the problems
with coal mining.

So, what is the clean and feasible *now* alternative to nuclear power?

ANYTHING has its plusses and minuses. Among the apparently better
choices are: Windpower, tidalpower, solarpower, hydropower.
Ultimately everything other than fission/fusion comes from the
sun, and there is a valid argument to claim that fusion power
comes from a sun.

The best solution available now is pure economy. The waste, in
the US alone, of moving solitary people in heavy, high consumption
SUVs is staggering. Another measure is the increase in power use
in large cities due to the combination of incandescent lighting
(rather than forms of fluoroscent or sunlight) and air
conditioning. A gross measure of this is the in-city
temperatures. One watt of added heat requires about two watts of
AC.

To inject a semblance of topicality, C control programs in
automotive embedded systems are slightly reducing the wastage.

 

[Dan Pop]

Fundamentally different. Such actions simply expose existing
isotopes, they don't create new ones.

A moot point, from the radioactive pollution point of view.

You omitted the problems with coal mining.

I also omitted the CO2 emission problems.

ANYTHING has its plusses and minuses. Among the apparently better
choices are: Windpower, tidalpower, solarpower, hydropower.

Neither of which is available now as a valid alternative to nuclear
power. Most of the developed countries have few unused hydropower
potential left.

The best solution available now is pure economy.

It's not a real world solution. And it doesn't work very well for the
biggest power consummer, which is the industry.

The waste, in
the US alone, of moving solitary people in heavy, high consumption
SUVs is staggering.

In *any* kind of individual cars, as opposed to public transportation.
Good luck convincing anyone to give up his car.

Dan

 

[Les Cargill]

Bah. Typical gung-ho USAnian thought. Japan is an _island_ nation with
relatively few natural resources. Just lock the bastards inside and
wait.

Richard

Cruel. And harsh, dude.

 

[Morris Dovey]

But the US sadly seems to have a tendency to think that the
lives of civilians in other countries are worth less than the
life of US soldiers.

Hmm - let me turn that around: Nearly all of the US soldiers in
that conflict were civilians before the attack of December 7,
1941. Are you of the belief that their human value was reduced
when they volunteered to defend their country and put on a uniform?

As far as I've been able to determine, the US provoked neither
the attack nor the Pacific conflict, and just wanted the killing
and maiming of the best of its young men and women to end as
quickly as possible.

Tokyo had been already been bombed to show that US forces could
cause destruction at will in the heart of the empire. Surrender
was not part of the Japanese formula for war.

The tragedy is that by the time the US political leaders reached
the point of being willing to do anything at all to bring the war
to an end, there was a new superbomb ready at hand and another
almost ready.

It's not so amazing that a bomb was not expended in some kind of
demonstration. That would have required more bombs than existed.
It was projected, correctly, that the utter destruction of one
entire city would not be enough to bring about surrender; but
that the destruction of a second city might. Tokyo was not
considered as a possible target because its complete destruction
would be catastrophic for the entire Japanese population.

Something to think about: Do you really believe that a large
number deaths from a single bomb is worse than the same number of
deaths from thousands of bombs (or starvation or drowning or
whatever)?

 

[Dan Pop]

Then we disagree about what is acceptable and not during wartime. By all
means kill every single soldier in their army, but try to keep civilians
out of the crossfire. I won't check right now but I believe the Geneva
convention agrees with me.

Sorry, but this is idealistic bullshit. To win a modern war, you have to
destroy the economic potential of your opponent. How do you propose to do
that while preserving the lives of the civilians? Both Nagasaki and
Hiroshima were economically significant. If the USA simply wanted to
maximise the civilian death count, Tokio would have been the ideal
target.

How was that worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (I'm not arguing here, I
simply don't know any details about Dresden)

It was purely gratuitous: Dresden was a cultural center of zilch
economic and military interest. Destroying it by mass bombing didn't
bring the end of the war one minute closer or spared the life of any
allied military.

Then why didn't they wait between the two bombs to give Japan time to
surrender before they had to drop the second?

They did. The bombs haven't been dropped the same day.

Yes but would you _want_to_?

Why would I want to keep fighting a war that I cannot win?

That some japanese didn't want to surrender
after the nuking makes perfect sense, having two cities wiped out wouldn't
exactly lessen a thirst for revenge would it?

That they did in fact surrender shows that fear and/or intelligence
overpowered thirst for revenge.

Thirst for revenge plays no role in modern warfare, which is not a
kindergarten game.

Dan

 

[Dan Pop]

More _radioactive_ pollution? I didn't know that and I have a hard time
believing it, could you provide some pointers?

You know, Google works for non-C topics, too...

Coal contains tiny quantities of radioactive isotopes. When you burn it,
the radioactive isotopes get spread into the atmosphere. And although
the content of such isotopes per kilogram of coal is extremely small,
it amounts to a significant figure when dealing with millions of tons of
coal. In a previous life, I was working in an applied nuclear physics
laboratory which was developing, among other things, coal radioactivity
monitoring systems for coal-based power plants and the coal mining
industry.

1. Using less power.
2. Water (some places, but ruins rivers)
3. Wind (some places, but ugly)
4. Solar (some places, but requires large areas)
5. Wave/Tidal (experimental AFAIK)

In the short term 1 will probably be most effective.

OK, how many kWh are *you* planning to spare per day starting right now?
And how?

Dan

 

[Morris Dovey]

OK, how many kWh are *you* planning to spare per day starting right now?
And how?

I can't resist.

My workspace is roughly 50ft x 50ft (2500 sq ft) or 16m x 16m
(256 sq m) and this fall I designed, built, and installed passive
solar heating panels to provide all of the heat it needs.

The space is used to manufacture high-efficiency passive solar
heating panels using (relatively) energy-efficient robotics -
controlled by software generated by my own /C/ programs.

Is this the kind of thing you had in mind?

BTW, I /don't/ drive an SUV.

 

[Manish Singh]

I've no doubt about the Zero being invented by our ancestors.
Indians developed not only the zero, they also found the positional decimal
number system, the decimal point, algebra, arithmetic, most of the astronomy,
and many other scientific systems and sub-systems. It's a pity that most of
the westerners are not aware of India's early development of science, or maybe
they purposelt deny it. Talk about ego problems!

Please use "you", not "u." "U" is a letter of the alphabet, but not an
English word.

I agree with you. Oh c'mon! we're programmers not pirates.
But then, I'm forced to think of C.
C is an alphabet, not a word. What does it mean, by the way?
I remember a friend telling me that 'C' stood for 'Compiler' or 'Compiled'.
I had a hard time making him understand that it was a mere hack. That it came
after B. Now the million dollar question is, why isn't someone asking the C
committee to explain what C stands for? LISP, Fortran, APL, PL/1, BCPL and even
the pitiful BASIC ...are all abbreviations. Ada, Pascal, Python, Java etc. are
names. I mean, someone should explain the choice of 'hackish' names like B, C
and C++.

If Dennis Ritchie is allowed to go to an extent such as to choose a name like C,
then why some are accused of being lame and backwards. What should I think of
it? Double standards? Well, I personally don't care. I don't care about the
name of the language. I can even forgive Dennis for his 'hackness'. I'm not a
purist and therefore can disregard the stupidity of C and it's hacking syntax.

[TROLL]
I really hate it when I see someon using 'u'. Yes, that's true.
I like to write in proper English. Pardon a few grammatical and spelling
mistakes. English is not my mother tongue. Well, I was telling that I like
writing neat English. I like to see descriptive posts. I like to check for
any syntax and semantic errors, and complain instantly when someone uses 'u'.
I told you how I hated 'u'(no pun intended).

But the problem is that I've been using C forever. History has it that C was
liked for it's compactness and hackish nature. It was liked and promoted for
it's obfuscated syntax. It was made to distribute source code in shrouded form.
Shamefully, I must admit that I like C for the same features explained above.
I love to post on usenet and I do it elaborately. But, when it comes to C
programming, something strange takes place inside me. I don't know it's some
curse or witchcraft (pardon the pun). I like detailed posts, but I never write
comments in my C code. I use many of the tricks to save a few words here and
a few symbols there. Yes, I do know about Andrew Koenig (sp?) but never had the
chance to read him.

Really, I HATE it when some Indian uses 'u'. I don't care about others. But, why
the *Indians* are using 'u' in place of the more elaborate 'you'. What if they
come from a non-English background. It's no excuse. They are trying to become
hackish. They are inventing 'letter words' and using it. I can't tolerate that.
This 1337 h4ckn355 belongs to us. We should even have the 'hackness' get
patented by one of us. Now the point is, why *every single* Indian is using it.
Do they even have a formal education system there? Oh my! how cheap our hackness
has become. Once upon a time, only 'cool' guys from MIT used them. Now even
the Indians are using it! Damnit!

Oh! I get a bit carried away when it comes to *Indians and u*. Let's get back
to my programming habits. As I said earlier, I like things in their fullness.
You may call me a purist. Unfortunately, because of my hackish C experience, I
regret it when my senior traces through my code and asks to let more comments
go in between the functions. Lately, I've been thinking about this strange
behaviour. I've been thinking about moving to COBOL. It's a real match for me.
We're made for each other. I like elaborated paragraphs; COBOL loves it. What
if only a few COBOL jobs are out in the wild, at least I'll save myself from
this double life and *Indian C Programmers and u*. Hah!

Please post an advice or a suggesstion. And don't write 'u'. Argghhh!
[/TROLL]

The zero was invented by the Babylonians. And the Mayans. And the
Hindus. The Babylonians were probably first.

Don't know much about the history of Zero, or its usage in Babylon.
But, I'm sure that most of the western historians believed too much in Bible
and it's false comments about the origin of the world. In fact, the date of
the origin of Indian civilzation was modified by westerners to suit the Bible's
claim of the world's origin in 4004 B.C. That's pathetic.

I urge the people of the Indian Republic to develop their very own systems of
history and science. Relying too much on foreign sources has caused this mess.
I urge my people to revive the past to make a better and brighter future. The
science of ancient India was meant to bring peace everywhere. Unfortunately,
it's western avatar is bringing the curse of destruction and ultimate chaos.

But it doesn't matter.

Ah! sure it doesn't; as long as you believe so.


Moral of the story : As some poster in this thread said, quit copying foreigners
altogether. Look at your glorious past. Long before there was any western
civilization, Indians had developed Sanskrit, Mathematics and other sciences.
Arabs and europeans stole it from us and claimed it as their own. They don't
seem to regret for it, then why should you for your hackness? When the
Christians and Mohammadens were slaying others (it's still happening), Indians
were bringing peace to other parts of the world. They were teaching others the
benefits of Yoga. They were leaving India for Japan, China, Egypt etc. to teach
and preach Hinduism and Buddism. We are proud that not a single head was ripped
in the name of Hinduism or Buddhism at that time. Dare you westerners claim it?
Talk about 'civilization' and 'nobility'.

Regards,
Manish Singh

 

[Floyd Davidson]

floyd davidson de wb0yef sry i dnt agr. cw nt spch. tnx qso
cul 73 de wb0yef

bk bt cw nt tty either bt u read this shit aloud?? ur strange bk

You read each of these messages out loud? If not, then this has
nothing to do with speech, because I doubt anyone else is
converting the text to speech either. Hence your comment is not
significant.

We've been talking about *written* communications, as opposed to
spoken. We are also clearly talking about written communications
that is relayed via encoded electrical signals.

Usenet, Internet, and for that matter the original wire line
telegraph network that was built between the 1840's and the
advent of radio systems in the early 1900's are all essentially
the same thing as far as the concept of language.

(For some interesting history, see "The Victorian Internet"
by Tom Standage.)

This kind of communication is limited to a relatively small and
very clearly bounded population and, even so, manages to
confound its users occasionally. Always, it's considered good
manners to moderate the degree of abbreviation to the
ear/experience level of the recipient.

It wasn't a "mark of distinction" - but rather a means of coping
with a very low data rate. Most amateur radio operators still
consider that 20 words/minute is really fast (although there are
speed demons who can send/copy much faster than that [I once met

You'll probably note that I mentioned "old morse operators",
which certainly does not include most amateur radio operators,
though it probably does include those who can handle 20 wpm.

But I was actually talking about professional telegraphers or
people who's level of competence is at that level. I.e., people
that read code by the word, not by the letter.

a gentleman who could even copy RTTY (radio teletype) by ear!] I

I don't believe it. Copy plain text? Or just be able to
recognize certain patterns, such as CQ? Baudot 5 level RTTY
runs at 45 baud with 6 bits per character (discounting the stop
bit) and I don't think anyone can actually "copy" it. (As for
recognizing a relatively large number of patterns, most
certainly. I used to do that...)

can normally only copy about five words a minute - although I
once (when blitzed) managed to copy about an hour at 18-20 wpm.

Then you most certainly should have realized that you were
indeed "talking" to the operator at the distant end. He had an
"accent", and you well know that you can recognize operators by
the way they "talked". The vernacular depends on what kind of
operator you are copying, and while hams pretty much all use the
same variations, commercial operators had others.

Are you old enough to have copied commercial news when it used
to be sent by CW to ships, etc.? Ever notice the *huge*
difference between the way most shore stations sent and the way
most ship operators sent? Most ships operators were sending
"blind"; they could not actually hear what they sent. That's
why they sounded so god awful horrible, yet could sit there and
knock down 30-40 wpm for hours on end.

For those who might have had difficulty, my first paragraph
can be interpreted as:
Hi, Floyd. This is Morris Dovey in the north central part
of the United States. Sorry, I don't agree. Morse code
isn't [the same thing as] speech. [But] thanks for sharing
your thoughts. Talk to you later. Best regards.

I sincerely hope that my postings to the newsgroup haven't made
my own on-air behaviorisms obvious. And no, I haven't considered

Heh, your cover is blown. You were probably whistling cw when
you were 14 years old...

similar abbreviation in limited bandwidth communication a theft,
although I /have/ considered it an affectation when bandwidth
was not so limited. YMMV.

I worked many years with a fellow who was the only one I've ever
met that could copy both Morse and International. We had a wire
between our desks, with a KOB on each desk. The only trouble is
that I can't copy a sounder, or Morse. So this was kinda one
way, as I could send to him, but he couldn't respond with much
that I'd understand. (He said that International code sounds
mighty odd on sounder, but he could copy it ok. I never did
put a buzzer or anything on it so that I'd be able to copy,
because that wasn't what it was for. It was there to harass
management about the lousy LAN they had installed that didn't
work. *Our* line worked!)

Trust me, there are people who use some of the quirks of a
telegraph operator. (Don't call it "cw", BTW, because that is
*only* radio.) They embed them into written English in the
strangest places, and they *do* note who can read it without
batting an eye, and who can't.

 

[Nilesh]

Please accompany your pride with respect, and capitalize

the word "English" as well.

regrets,

Nilesh.

 

[Morris Dovey]

I don't believe it. Copy plain text? Or just be able to
recognize certain patterns, such as CQ? Baudot 5 level RTTY
runs at 45 baud with 6 bits per character (discounting the stop
bit) and I don't think anyone can actually "copy" it.

He could copy plain text - and he claimed to have known others
who could do the same. My initial reaction was identical to
yours. FWIW, he didn't come by this ability as an amateur radio
operator. My own conclusion has been that he has some special
talent - probably related to the talent that I /don't/ have for
morse. :-(

 

[I.M.A Troll]

Richard Bos wrote:
the Dutch never speak profanely.

Ach, val dood, achterlijke kolere-trol.

Richard

I have a feeling I've been profaned; but I'll need a Dutch/English
dictionary to be sure.

 

[Christian Bau]

Get a book on English grammar, or look for examples in a
dictionary, sonny. You'll find that you've missed more than
just one clue in this thread.

Reading a dictionary is not enough. Understanding grammar is necessary
as well. If you think that "good" in "John looks good" is an adverb then
you are clueless.

"John looks..." doesn't describe an action of John, it describes his
appearance.

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

If you want to point out a pure war crime committed by the allies,
you have the bombing of Dresden.

An understandable overreaction. In hindsight, unnecessary,
foolish, callous, etc. But it was a major rail and communications
hub. Guernica was probably a bigger crime. That led to Warsaw,
Rotterdam, London, Coventry, Liverpool, and thence to Koln,
Hamburg, Berlin, Essen, etc. Nukes followed. Luckily we seem to
have gotten some sort of hold on ourselves.

At any rate virtually all of the policy makers of those days are
dead now. Even in the UK there was a large argument about
memorializing 'Bomber' Harris.

 

[Irrwahn Grausewitz]

Richard Bos wrote:
the Dutch never speak profanely.

I have a feeling I've been profaned; but I'll need a Dutch/English
dictionary to be sure.

Try: http://www.freedict.com/onldict/dut.html

(I don't know if it's any good.)

Regards

 

[Mark Gordon]

bk bt cw nt tty either bt u read this shit aloud?? ur strange bk

You read each of these messages out loud? If not, then this has
nothing to do with speech, because I doubt anyone else is
converting the text to speech either. Hence your comment is not
significant.

The only way some people can read (or indeed write in some cases) is by
internally vocalising what they are reading/writing (until about a year
ago I didn't even realise it was possible to read without internally
vocalising what was being read). If you suggest that learning things
like morse code difficult for people like this then you are absolutely
correct, I have great difficulty with any such encoding/decoding
problem. I am far from unique in this as you will find if you do some
research on Dyslexia.

We've been talking about *written* communications, as opposed to
spoken.

For a significant minority there is far less difference than you might
expect. Apart from people like me there are also blind people using
Usenet via text to speech software. I don't know of any blind posters on
this group, but I do know they exist.

We are also clearly talking about written communications
that is relayed via encoded electrical signals.

Which for certain classes of people then have to be converted back to
spoken communication.

 

[Mike Wahler]

The only way some people can read (or indeed write in some cases) is by
internally vocalising what they are reading/writing

This is also often necessary for understanding
puns, which are a rather frequent pastime here.


-Mike
Ewe guise otter right English write!

 

[Floyd Davidson]

The only way some people can read (or indeed write in some cases) is by
internally vocalising what they are reading/writing (until about a year
ago I didn't even realise it was possible to read without internally
vocalising what was being read). If you suggest that learning things
like morse code difficult for people like this then you are absolutely
correct, I have great difficulty with any such encoding/decoding
problem. I am far from unique in this as you will find if you do some
research on Dyslexia.


For a significant minority there is far less difference than you might
expect. Apart from people like me there are also blind people using
Usenet via text to speech software. I don't know of any blind posters on
this group, but I do know they exist.


Which for certain classes of people then have to be converted back to
spoken communication.

What you say is true, but misses the point. While there is
indeed the significant minority that you are speaking of, and
they do require and use different equipment and an entirely
different methodology to use Usenet, that methodology is *not*
what we've been discussing. We could discuss it, and it would
be very interesting to know just how idioms, as one example,
affect such users; but we have been discussing the typical means
of access where users read text written to a monitor screen.

And that made Mr. Dovey's statement that "cw nt spch" (where he
meant to say that "telegraphy is not speech") a Non Sequitur.