Wikipedia vandalism

[spinoza1111]

The following comments are being edit-warred by Barsoomian at the Herb
Schildt page, which has been tagged for deletion based on research by
myself, and Malcolm McClean. Seebach's claims are being left alone,
although they are NNPOV and deeply offensive to me.

I call upon decent members of this group to REVERT BARSOOMIAN when he
deletes these comments in response to Seebach. I take full
responsibility for them.

Here they are in response to Seebach:

The "claims" in both articles [CTCN-3 and CTCN-4] are unsubstantiated.
In both, you "claim" that there must be hundreds of errors because
from your NNPOV, you can find a few matters of style, and a few
genuine errors which exist in all computer books...to the extent that
all computer publishers indemnify themselves against warranty.

Your incompetent code posted this year at comp.lang.c shows that you
are far less competent and Schildt as a programmer, therefore not
qualified to write either document from the NPOV. You tried to prove
that it was easy to write strlen: and your result was off by one. You
posted a virtual file system that uses the c switch() statement in an
unstructured way unnecessarily and out of vanity. You posted what
should have been a shell procedure as C code that failed utterly to
replace %s by a name because it replaces all occurences of % by the
name. You posted code that declared a constant using the preprocessor
and then failed to use that symbol in 50% of cases.

I have never seen a decent line of code from you. Yet you have 20
years of experience. Your draft this year of CTCN-4 demonstrates, in
being informed by the same childish methodology of finding random
errors, that like the Bourbons, you've learned nothing.

The real puzzle, in which I sense something of the malignant and
daemonic, is that after your miserable strlen you said "I'm actually
not very good at this". Elsewhere, you have claimed to be ADHD and to
have a learning disorder.

If this is a request for charity, we'd be happy, as I have said many
times before, to extend it save for your abominable treatment of more
advanced errors made by Jacques Navia and myself on clc. You've
harassed and insulted Navia, the author of the lccwin compiler, which
is in use worldwide, and you've called me a "moron" and a "kook".

You descend into deep absurdity...something that reminds me of the
Director's descent into babble at the end of CS Lewis' novel That
Hideous Strength...when you dismiss others' efforts on clc as "first
year compsci" when at the same time, you are perversely, obscenely,
proud of never having taken a single class in computer science.

You're a grubby, physically repulsive (yeah, I did an image search)
and odious little man who knows or thinks he has a mob behind him.

This response will probably be vandalized by being removed. I can only
say that my blog is being vandalized, using sock puppets, by one or
more people here, in all probability.

Peter Seebach is the main instigator of the Schildt canard. He is not
who he presents himself to be. He paid his way onto the C99 committee
by his own admission in order to advance his career. He is undegreed
in computer science while Herb Schildt holds the BS and MSCS. His
current position, after 20 years in the field, is finding bugs and
sending them for fixing to actual programmers. He attacked Schildt,
perhaps on the basis of Steve Summit's unhappiness with Schildt's book
on the 1989 standard, to make himself look good.

Most of the other "references" are copycat drive-by shootings based on
and citing Seebach. For this reason, as Dr. Malcolm McClean pointed
out last month on clc, the article's negative claims about Schildt are
in serious violation of Wikipedia's Biographies of Living Persons
policies. The positive claims are also NNPOV apart from the mention of
Starcastle, but Schildt has not pursued a musical career. Therefore,
the article needs to be taken down.

 

[Seebs]

On the other hand, I cannot imagine that Herbert Schildt is happy at
all that some obsessed lunatic drags this up. He was likely happy
enough that his incompetent writing was mostly forgotten until you had
to drag it up.

In particular, without the tireless efforts of Nilges to draw attention to
the differences between the 3rd and 4th editions, we'd never have found that
Schildt made the exact same error in two function descriptions in the third
edition, and corrected the one listed in the original C:TCN but not the
other one two pages away... Meaning that now we know that Schildt was aware
of the page and attempting to deflect criticism by showing that these issues
were "addressed", but that he didn't actually understand the underlying
issues or fix the book.

So far as I can tell, no one realized this until just recently, so he now
looks much worse than he would have if Nilges hadn't made a big deal about
his discovery that every competent reader or programmer we've been able to
find thinks Schildt's books are crud.

-s

 

[Tim Streater]

In particular, without the tireless efforts of Nilges to draw attention to
the differences between the 3rd and 4th editions, we'd never have found that
Schildt made the exact same error in two function descriptions in the third
edition, and corrected the one listed in the original C:TCN but not the
other one two pages away... Meaning that now we know that Schildt was aware
of the page and attempting to deflect criticism by showing that these issues
were "addressed", but that he didn't actually understand the underlying
issues or fix the book.

So far as I can tell, no one realized this until just recently, so he now
looks much worse than he would have if Nilges hadn't made a big deal about
his discovery that every competent reader or programmer we've been able to
find thinks Schildt's books are crud.

Either he, or someone else, appears to be posting the same distortions
and half-truths on the Wikipedia entries for keeping/deleting the
Schildt bio, that he has tried to make here. The notion that "Seebs paid
his way onto the Standards Body", for example. Given that this in
particular has been comprehensively rebutted here, and Spinny knows
this, indicates to me that he doesn't actually give a shit about
Schildt. It's just another forum for beating up those he doesn't like
while trying to make it look otherwise.

 

[Seebs]

Either he, or someone else, appears to be posting the same distortions
and half-truths on the Wikipedia entries for keeping/deleting the
Schildt bio, that he has tried to make here. The notion that "Seebs paid
his way onto the Standards Body", for example. Given that this in
particular has been comprehensively rebutted here, and Spinny knows
this, indicates to me that he doesn't actually give a shit about
Schildt. It's just another forum for beating up those he doesn't like
while trying to make it look otherwise.

To be fair, I, like everyone else, paid my way onto the standards body --
except for the one year where they gave me a waiver because my participation
was worth more to them than the dues were.

-s

 

[spinoza1111]

Fact is that Herb Schildt wrote a very successful book that claimed to
explain the C Standard but was full of mistakes big and small that
caused immeasurable damage to the readers who paid good money to get
less than nothing. Herb Schildt did nothing to correct his mistakes,
so criticism, every serious criticism, was required and deeply
deserved. If the criticism hurts, that's not because of the way
Schildt is criticised, but because the truth hurts, and sometimes it
hurts a lot.

On the other hand, I cannot imagine that Herbert Schildt is happy at
all that some obsessed lunatic drags this up. He was likely happy
enough that his incompetent writing was mostly forgotten until you had
to drag it up.

Nobody can be "damaged" by a book; only Fascists believe there's such
a thing as a "bad" book.

Hegel said we often learn the true by way of the false. For example,
the assigned text in my first computer science class covered the IBM
7094 and not the machine to which the class had access, and from this
I learned a valuable distinction that was important at the time,
between fixed length and variable word length machines.

To so childishly and obsessively focus on "bad" books usually betrays
the hatred of books one finds in the following populations:

* Fascists
* Attention-disordered Mama's boys
* Unemployed programmers working at Costco
* Religious fundamentalists

The Schildt bullies have "won" the delete case. How? Opposing views
were simply removed from the discussion. As a result, the decision was
a plebiscite of such an absurdly small number of votes that it is
meaningless, and a biased jury selected by the prosecuting attorney.
Because of the abominable treatment I received (posts immediately
removed despite the fact that I was the major advocate of deletion),
decent people sympathetic to Schildt were frightened away and the
result was foreordained.

Nonetheless, enough information emerged to destroy Seebach's
credibility in the archives and in my posts that were let stand, and
to demonstrate (by examination of the audit trail) that pro-Schildt
posters were being suppressed. I had no wish to so destroy Seebach's
credibility; in fact, at the beginning of this year, I sent him email
asking that we discuss these issues offline.

His response was to discard the email unread and to say he had done so
on clc. It was then, and only then, that I realized what sort of
person he is, and nothing I have discovered since (incompetent
programming, lack of academic credentials, Tea Bag socioeconomic
background) has changed my mind.

I have somewhat higher access to print and moderated group media than
unemployed programmers working at 7-11 and people with ADHD. I have
written successful proposals. Therefore the next step shall be a
submission to the moderated Risks group concerning this issue, and a
story proposal to John Markoff of the New York Times describing this
as an instance of how readily wikipedia is used by bullies.

 

[Colonel Harlan Sanders]

The Schildt bullies have "won" the delete case. How? Opposing views
were simply removed from the discussion. As a result, the decision was
a plebiscite of such an absurdly small number of votes that it is
meaningless, and a biased jury selected by the prosecuting attorney.
Because of the abominable treatment I received (posts immediately
removed despite the fact that I was the major advocate of deletion),
decent people sympathetic to Schildt were frightened away and the
result was foreordained.

As usual, Nilges is lying.

The discussion of the proposal to delete is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Herbert_Schildt

An estimate:
Total discussion : 6872 words
Total verbiage of Nilges: 3889 words.
4 votes for Delete (including Nilges)
15 for Keep.


So all alone he took up 57% of the discussion, more than the other 18
people who commented put together, in his usual one-man-blitzkrieg
method of "debate".

(Note that he uses anonymous accounts, as his account, Spinoza1111,
was blocked years ago because of his abuses and attacks on other
editors. Consequently his continued vandalism of various pages,
including the Herbert Schildt one, are properly reverted when anyone
notices them. However, he was given free rein for this discussion.)

And despite him wallpapering the discussion, still this lunatic claims
he was censored. That no one was allowed to present an opposing view.
His rambling diatribes making the case for deletion (mostly by
accusing Seebach of various sins) certainly attracted attention and no
doubt helped make the vote a landslide.

I have somewhat higher access to print and moderated group media than
unemployed programmers working at 7-11 and people with ADHD. I have
written successful proposals. Therefore the next step shall be a
submission to the moderated Risks group concerning this issue, and a
story proposal to John Markoff of the New York Times describing this
as an instance of how readily wikipedia is used by bullies.

Go for it. Be sure to let us know if you find anyone in the whole
world who cares.

 

[Chris H]

In message <[email protected]

Nobody can be "damaged" by a book; only Fascists believe there's such
a thing as a "bad" book.

Godwins law?

 

[Kenny McCormack]

Nobody can be "damaged" by a book; only Fascists believe there's such
a thing as a "bad" book.

Godwins law?[/QUOTE]

Hardly. Unless your concept of "Godwins Law" has been expanded
to encompass any reference to any bad man at all.

Hint: Hitler was not, by any normal usage of terms, a Fascist.

Anymore than GWB was a Democrat.

--
(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]

Godwins law?

Hardly.  Unless your concept of "Godwins Law" has been expanded
to encompass any reference to any bad man at all.[/QUOTE]

Godwin's Law helps "libertarians" ignore the fact that if there is no
law, the bullies take over. The Hitler Mashup videos prove that the
common man IS Hitler, and this is the reason for the Godwin
convergence to unity. The common man is angry at the iPad or the
victory of the Dallas Cowboys, and loses it.

Hint: Hitler was not, by any normal usage of terms, a Fascist.

No, in the academic and historical sense he was a leader of a movement
which marshaled the lower middle class and part of the working class
against their own interests by way of scapegoating "the Jews", in a
macro way corresponding to the micro way in which "Schildt" reassures
"programmers" who can't code dick that they are competent.

Basically, all politics becomes either Fascist or Communist, and while
both parties are stinkers, the Communists have human and creative
intentions whereas Fascism is all about destruction.

Or, as Rosa Luxembourg said, "socialism or barbarism".

Anymore than GWB was a Democrat.

--
(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...

 

[Tim Streater]

Basically, all politics becomes either Fascist or Communist, and while
both parties are stinkers, the Communists have human and creative
intentions ...

Ha ha very witty, Spinny. Try looking here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes

Actually, come to think of it, I suppose rape is a "human and creative
intention".

So you were right all along, Spinny - silly me.

 

[spinoza1111]

As usual, Nilges is lying.

The discussion  of the proposal to delete is here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Herbert_...

An estimate:
Total discussion : 6872 words
Total verbiage of Nilges: 3889 words.

Literacy of Nilges: university A-level
Literacy of others: grade school

4 votes for Delete (including Nilges)
15 for Keep.

If this was a plebiscite, it was as meaningless as a Soviet election
because 19 total votes is too small to reflect any general opinion.
Most people attracted to the discussion "knew" the "urban legend"
spread by Linux wads about Schildt, therefore their vote was pre-
ordained. Most sensible people find Wikipedia to be a toxic waste dump
dominated by convenience store clerks, therefore they stay out.

If it was on the other hand a jury, it was a biased jury for the above
reasons.

So all alone he took up 57% of the discussion, more than the other 18
people who commented put together, in his usual one-man-blitzkrieg
method of "debate".

Damn right. It's because (1) I do my homework and (2) I can write.

(Note that he uses anonymous accounts, as his account, Spinoza1111,
was blocked years ago because of his abuses and attacks on other
editors. Consequently his continued vandalism of various pages,
including the Herbert Schildt one, are properly reverted when anyone
notices them. However, he was given free rein for this discussion.)

No, I was blocked when making contributions to the article on Kant
that were invited by a college professor who was the informal
moderator of the site. These contributions were vandalized by one of
the new "editors" who were in 2006 overrunning wikipedia so Jimbo
Wales could make money on Wikimedia, AmerindianArts, a person with no
philosophical training.

I invited him, after several cases of vandalism, to go **** himself.
Whereupon he used his "super powers" which apparently had been given
convenience store clerks and other ignorant "editors" by "higher
powers" to eradicate real contributors to label me a troublemaker. I
was then expected to undergo some sort of kangaroo court or Stalinist
show trial in which I would admit my errors, and, like Shakespeare's
Caliban, "seek for grace hereafter".

Since I'd been vandalized, I was not about to do this.

And despite him wallpapering the discussion, still this lunatic claims
he was censored. That no one was allowed to present an opposing view.
His rambling diatribes making the case for deletion (mostly by
accusing Seebach of various sins) certainly attracted attention and no
doubt helped make the vote a landslide.

The "rambling", I'm afraid, is an artifact of your lack of education
and personal decency. It is in fact "off topic" to remind computer
thugs and snot-nosed convenience store clerks that there is such a
thing as personal decency, and that this includes not singling out a
computer author, who wishes to be a private person, for abuse. I also
referred to what educated and cultured people do, which doesn't
include foaming at the mouth about "bad" books.

Go for it.  Be sure to let us know if you find anyone in the whole
world who cares.

I found four people who cared at the wikipedia delete case. I
anticipate finding more as I raise my sights to the level of educated
and culture people. Lawyers, too.

 

[William Hughes]

Hint: Hitler was not, by any normal usage of terms, a Fascist.

Since the normal usages of the term "Fascist" include "authoritarian"
and "bad" your statement is nonsense. Even if you are considering
more technical meanings of the word, there is a large group
(which includes Hitler) who think that Nazi-ism is a form of
fascism.

- William Hughes

 

[spinoza1111]

Since the normal usages of the term "Fascist" include "authoritarian"
and "bad" your statement is nonsense.   Even if you are considering
more technical meanings of the word, there is a large group
(which includes Hitler) who think that Nazi-ism is a form of
fascism.

                  - William Hughes

Most technical white males and upper caste Indian males are in my
thirty years of software experience, highly authoritarian using
Adorno's definition. They dare not speak truth to managerial or group
power because, owing to their lack of professional certification with
traction, they owe their position to management grace and favor, 'at-
will'.

The lower middle class is always being fooled by the educational
system to believe that if they "learn a skill" they will have
autonomy, only to learn that a "professional marketer" or
"professional programmer" is nothing like a doctor or a lawyer.

This creates anger because they are subject to constant reminders of
their lack of personal autonomy and dignity. For example, when I
worked on a Motorola team in the late 1970s, helping to create the
first OS for the first cellphone, some of us were expected to work in
an area where workmen were installing drywall using blank .45 caliber
bullets; every few minutes a shot would ring out, and despite the fact
that Motorola's management was angry at the constant delays in the
delivery of the software, they could not be bothered to provide a
decent workspace.

[For more on how management treatment of white collar employees is
irrational surplus to the "rational" need to create technology on
time, see Harry Braverman's book Labor and Monopoly Capital.]

The result at Motorola was an early form of shibboleth and bullying.
Management was forcing the OS team, whose target machine was the Z-80,
to use the IBM mainframe under TSO (one of the worst OSen ever
written) instead of developing its tools on the Z-80. As a result,
Z-80 team members, too cowardly to confront management over working
conditions and direction, bullied the IBM team members on an
individual basis.

Their personalities were "authoritarian" and in them I witnessed the
dawn of what Adorno called "coldness": the systematic preference, in
the name of "science and reason" for ideas and hardware to people and
their needs.

These people are now in some measure part of the Tea Bag movement
whose disregard for personal decency is slowly but surely approaching
that of the Nazis, since it is unprecedented to physically threaten
congress people in person.

 

[Colonel Harlan Sanders]

Literacy of Nilges: university A-level
Literacy of others: grade school

In other words, you can't deny that you lied about having your posts
removed. You completely made up the idea that "people were frightened
away". Your pretension that a democratic vote was thwarted is -- you
guessed it -- a falsehood.

What you mean is that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot.
Therefore no one else's opinion counts.

Really, you should just start Nilgeopedia and fill it with your
opinions. At your rate of excretion you could equal Jimmy Wales'
piddling version in a few months. You don't need anyone else, just
your "university A-level" brain is obviously enough to summarise all
fields of knowledge in jig time.
(The sad thing is that to Nilges, this is not satire.)
Though for Nilges, and "summarise" could be a problem.

Sorry to CLC for this silliness, but this topic was pretty much
signposted Nilgewater from the first post.

 

[Moi]

Topicality of Nilges: 1%
Topicality of others: 99%

What you mean is that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot.
Therefore no one else's opinion counts.

Really, you should just start Nilgeopedia and fill it with your
opinions. At your rate of excretion you could equal Jimmy Wales'
piddling version in a few months. You don't need anyone else, just your
"university A-level" brain is obviously enough to summarise all fields
of knowledge in jig time.

Exactly.
"void main()" requires a void brain.
Nilges qualifies.

AvK

 

[spinoza1111]

Topicality of Nilges: 1%
Topicality of others: 99%

Please note that "Colonel Harland Sanders" doesn't belong here. He
doesn't contribute to technical discussions. Instead, he finds a many-
one bullying situation and piles in, because this makes him feel like
a Big Man. If he agrees with you, it means nothing.

Exactly.
"void main()" requires a void brain.

No, shell procedure writers check the source code or documentation of
anything they call to make sure it returns something useful. If it
doesn't, they do not test the return code. Problem solved.

 

[Herbert Rosenau]

Please note that "Colonel Harland Sanders" doesn't belong here. He
doesn't contribute to technical discussions. Instead, he finds a many-
one bullying situation and piles in, because this makes him feel like
a Big Man. If he agrees with you, it means nothing.

No, shell procedure writers check the source code or documentation of
anything they call to make sure it returns something useful. If it
doesn't, they do not test the return code. Problem solved.

You've proven once again that you are nothing than a dumb liar with no
knoledge of the real world.

--
Tschau/Bye
Herbert

Visit http://www.ecomstation.de the home of german eComStation
eComStation 1.2R Deutsch ist da!

 

[jacob navia]

Herbert Rosenau a écrit :

You've proven once again that you are nothing than a dumb liar with no
knoledge of the real world.

WOW!

An almost correct sentence by rosenau, that must have costed him weeks of efforts!

Wunderbar Rosenau, du bis jetzt FAST am Ende deine Sorgen gekommen. Nur noch ein bischen Anstrengung
und du wirst endlich an dein Ziel kommen.

Tschuss

jakob

 

[Seebs]

An almost correct sentence by rosenau, that must have costed him
weeks of efforts!

I'm not seeing the relevance to C.

Obviously, Nilges doesn't understand how return types factor into function
behavior. Since that would actually be topical, I'll jump over to that
for a brief moment:

It is permissible in C for the return type to be a sufficiently important
part of a function's signature that an incorrect return type matters
*even if you do not look at the returned value*. Calling sequences may depend
in some way on what, if anything, a function is expected to return.

The issue is that if the implementation is expecting main() to be a function
returning int, and you declare it as a function returning void, this can
cause the initial call to not even successfully transfer control to main(),
at least in principle. I don't know whether any systems have blown up in
that particular case, but it wouldn't particularly surprise me.

-s

 

[spinoza1111]

At Nazi Camp!

I'm not seeing the relevance to C.

Obviously, Nilges doesn't understand how return types factor into function
behavior.  Since that would actually be topical, I'll jump over to that
for a brief moment:

It is permissible in C for the return type to be a sufficiently important
part of a function's signature that an incorrect return type matters
*even if you do not look at the returned value*.  Calling sequences may depend
in some way on what, if anything, a function is expected to return.

You've obviously never written a compiler, nor taken a class in
compiler theory. The usual practice is to identify each function not
only by its name but also by its return type and the enumerated types
of its parameters. In an object oriented language with polymorphism
this completely avoids the need for syntax that declares that a
function "overloads" a function of identical name but different
configuration.

In the case of a C program with void main(), the handling is identical
to int main(). The first call is represented by the tuple (main, void)
with a null parameter list. The second is represented by the tuple
(main, int). The standard syntax int main(int argc, char **argv) is
represented by (main, int, int, char**).

Since implicit overloading isn't allowed in C, two main() procedures
with the same name can be flagged as an error whether or not their
parameters or return types are identical.

If the executable is linked with another program, the complete tuple
is available. If the executable is called by a shell processor, the
shell processor will have to be written by competent people who will
understand that any executable is ONLY guaranteed to start at the
location defined for the single main() procedure. If this main is
void, it will still in most calling conventions return to the address
supplied it on the "stack" with which people with a clue know about.

The only danger point is when your idiot shell procedure BLINDLY tests
the return code from a procedure declared as void main(). But
competent programmers never assume that an executable will return
anything. They consult the "man" page or the source code!

Your ignorance of runtime in fact appeared in CTCN-3 when you
foolishly criticized Schildt for talking about stacks. Your uninformed
speculations about what "might" happen are characteristic of your
desire to replace knowledge by ignorance.

The issue is that if the implementation is expecting main() to be a function
returning int, and you declare it as a function returning void, this can
cause the initial call to not even successfully transfer control to main(),
at least in principle.  I don't know whether any systems have blown up in
that particular case, but it wouldn't particularly surprise me.

To the ignorant, the world is full of fabulous monsters and unknown
terrors. However, main will always have an address and most
architectures will simply branch to this address when the executable
is called, with (in the standard case) the stack preloaded with the
return address, the argument count, and a pointer to a pointer to a
char. If main is declared without parameters the second and third
items will be ignored. If it is declared with different parameters an
error will result. But if the operating system expects in all cases to
find the stack with a usable single value past pre-existing contents,
this is an OS with a bug. This is because the OS can know the
difference, or lack thereof, in stack size before and after it calls
an executable, and when the size does not change, set the return code
to a suitable value.

If the shell procedure makes an explicit request for the return code,
usually using a keyword such as rc, the programmer risks a crash or
worse (continued execution based on garbage results). But all this
means is that competent writers of shell procedures shall diligently
inform themselves as to the main signature of any routine they call.
Certainly, latter-day competent C authors writing main() procedures
should use int main(), but this is a norm, it doesn't describe what's
out there.