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Son of Devil's AdvocateStan Kelly-Bootle
Back to NormalNormal, like unique and pregnant, is one of those predicates that resists formal comparatives and superlatives. Even so, we often get away with saying that X is more unique than Y, Mary is more pregnant than Elizabeth, and I am more normal than thou. Such are the quirks of Natural Languge, again inviting the recursive quiz: what is more or less "natural?" Is there a valid property worth debating that cannot admit some plusses and minusses? Else, perish the thought, we are stuck in some deep, transcendental mud. And there's no deeper, more transcendental mud. QED. Before Cantor and that crowd, we had incomparably infinite sets (seen one, seen them all), but now we face endless sequences of such, each more infinite than before. At the other "end," our views of an absolute zero have suffered in both physics and maths. In modern analysis (the core of practical calculus that predicts our eclipses and lands us on the Moon) we still mess with the fleeting ghosts of damn-near zero. Note, en passant, that the symbol for the Euro currency unit is rather like our maths "epsilon," standing for something smaller than you would wish to admit. QED? The physical zero is no longer the vacuum that Nature abhors. Such a state is inconsistent with Heisenberg. Indeed, there's nothing more normal, unique or pregnant than empty space. It just can't wait to burst out into one or more universes. Voila! No smoke or mirrors! I Have Safe Mail ======================== To: "Stan Kelly-Bootle"
Stan
With some loony sending anthrax virus by post, only the e-mail
version is safe!
Terry Heath
==========================
I was recently in Madrid, New Mexico on the Turquoise Trail from
Alberquerque to Santa Fe. A pub called the Choking Canary devoted
to the pre-Davey-safety-lamp coal-mining days when poor birds
gave their lives warning of methane gas.
Alas, whom can we expose to PC pre-Anthrax sniffing?
Which reminds me that we must STILL also watch out for CyberTerrorism.
There's Bob Toxen's Real World Linux Security (Prentice Hall,
2001. isbn 0-13-028187-5
And many security guides/conferences from
Devil's Advocate, UNIX Review November 1986 - Stan Kelly-Bootle
A Quiz Is Just a Quiz
I seem to have been invited to sit on a DECUS conference panel
next month (or last month, when you read this), so naturally my
thoughts have been focused on the whole linguistic mess known as
the Interrogatory Mode. I have resolved at least one ancient
"Question and Answer" question: Which came first? Jahweh, no
less, settled that one by asking Adam, "Where art thou?" as early
on as Genesis 3:9 (I know because I was there, re-coiling behind
the tree of life). Some would argue that this was a rhetorical
question, the only kind that can conceivably be posed by an
omniscient creator. Ironically, in the first reported question
asked by Man, we find Cain chopping rhetoric with God: "Am I my
brother's keeper?" (Op Cit 5:9).
Conference panelists are accustomed to this form of non-
question:
"Would the learned panel not agree that in view of...."
Flattery is the first warning sign that rhetoric is in the air.
After fifteen minutes of moreovers and howevers, the questioner
pauses at a nevertheless just long enough for the Chairperson to
cough nervously and say "Do you have a question?"
The other side of the Q&A coin, of course, is the perfectly
direct Yes/No question that the panel steadily refuses to answer:
"An excellent question, if I may say so, and one that reveals a
commendable acuity. It is rare, indeed, to encounter a question
that so boldly thrusts itself into the heart of the matter.
Dijkestra once asked me the selfsame question, in 1968, I
believe...we were on the way to Nijmegan, in a rented DAF, you
know that now defunct 4 cylinder.."
Once again, the Chairperson fidgets and says "Do we have an
answer?"
I was once told that the Cambridge Tripos for Diplomacy
started with the instruction: "Candidates MUST evade Question 1
and then dodge any two from Questions 2 to 5."
Well-run computers never resort to evasion, in fact they
would rather die, and sometimes do! I was reminded of this
during a recent re-run of the TV series "The Prisoner." Patrick
McGoohan (spelchek?) submits what he claims is the unanswerable
question to the superintelligent CIA-type system. Sure enough,
the machine huffs and puffs and glows (computers in films always
have endless panels of 1950 vintage lamps and dials) and finally
distintegrates. The killer question, it turns out is the one
word "WHY?" A really smart machine would have replied "WHY NOT?"
without hesitation.
My own system has recently gained in the smarts-department
with the addition of PWP, the Professional Writer's Package from
Emerging Technology, Boulder, CO. There are versions for UNIX
and PC-DOS. My main motivation was the growing frustration in
switching from editor to editor for different tasks, and having
to remember whether ^T would delete a word, scroll up a page, or
globally replace all occurrences of "misstake" with "eror". My
new EDIX editor has cunning macro facilities whereby I can set up
any sequence of ALT+^+Fn to do whatever I want.
At first, the instant on-line THESIX thesaurus was a mixed
blessing. You simply ALT+q with the cursor over any word to get
a window full of synonyms. Not only can you select and replace
any word with a chosen synonym (ALT+r), you can also "chain"
through synonyms of synonyms, or just browse (PgUp and PgDn)
through adjacent unrelated entries in the thesaurus. You can
have great fun until your publisher or editor calls about the
deadline!
I used to have some qualms about sneaking the odd peek at
the old Roget until I read that Dylan Thomas, my model for
spontaneous mot juste outpourings, was not averse to hunting for
equivalent words. As an experiment, I subjected Shakespeare's:
"The {quality} of {mercy} is not {strained}"
to a dose of THESIXation. Of the 15 x 11 x 20 resulting
permutations I am particularly proud of:
"The condition of clemency is not percolated"
"The status of discretion is not seeped through"
If the word is not located in THESIX, you are told the two
entries between which your target would have fallen
lexicographically. And therein lies a whole new world of word
games. Here is an actual screen obtained by highlighting UNIX in
your text:
UNIX: - is not in the thesarus.
It would fall between universe and unjust
Similarly:
fornicate: - is not in the thesaurus.
It would fall between formulate and forsake
Who dares to mock the advances of AI? Well, actually AI is
NOT in THESIX but it does fall between "agreement" and "aid"!
Can any of you guess what falls between "frustrate" and
"fulfill"? Or between "coax" and "code"? Your answers in a
plain envelope, please.
Most of us, however, earn our daily bread by answering questions in
one guise or another, without the aid of an instant ALT+q. These
are often in a form known as the Imperative-Interrogatory:
"Would you be so kind as to get your dumb act together and do
something?"
Which reminds us that there are those who make a living by
asking questions. In some societies, for instance, the torturing
trade is highly regarded. You can imagine the high school career
counselor asking young Jimmy why he wants to join the
Inquisition. Jimmy says brightly, "Well, I like meeting people,
getting to know them...seeing what they're made of."
My local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, runs a
popular daily feature known as "The Question Man." A mysterious
reporter, known only as Conti, stops people at random and pops
them la question du jour, as it were. Conti also has a
photographer with him, so the lucky pollees get their pictures
and their opinions on a million editorial pages the following
day. Andy Warhol promised us all at least 15 minutes of fame in
our lifetime; the Question Man is doing his best. The questions
posed range from the trivial to the insignificant, from "Do you
Come Here Often?" to "What's your favorite ice-cream-flavor?"
The answers are predictably prosaic and mercifully short.
One of my more mentionable fantasies is to be The Question
Man for a day, and add some class and relevance to this
enterprise. To shun the mundane, my question would need to cut
deeply into the cosmic, quintessential fiber of epistemological
t'ingy. Easy for me to say.
"Do you sleep in pajamas?" would be replaced by "What is
your favorite feature in System V Release 3?" "Do you prefer
cats to dogs?" might become "Does Modula-2 need multi-dimensional
conformal arrays?"
The nearest I ever got to fulfilling this dream was asking
"Whither UNIX?" in a crowded bar. Crowded is not a particularly
good epithet. Neither is overcrowded. Steaming-hot-jammed-
packed is getting closer. The bar was the "Plough and Stars" and
the occasion was the late evening of a St. Patrick's Day. As I
explained to the police later, it was not the ideal place or time
for a meaningful discussion on Operating System methodology.
In fact, when I come to think of it, this column already
gives me a wonderfully safe opportunity to query an Expert System
known as the UNIX Review readership. In my August 1986 piece,
you may recall, I quoted an unascribed gem and asked if any
reader could supply the original source. I did not reveal my own
private theory that Henry V, having been offered a choice of
battle flags from his various regiments on the eve of Agincourt,
proudly proclaimed:
"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many
different ones to choose from."
Alfred J. Bruey of Jackson, MI wrote that the remark in
question can be traced back to the Emperor Constantine. Having
accepted Christianity, he was then faced with the choice between
Catholicism, Presbyterianism, Baptism or Lutheranism. Good try,
Alfred: "De regulis quod est bonum multipluribus sunt!"
Correct entries were received from John Hooper of Advanced
Digital Systems, San Diego CA and Carl E Davidson of Apollo
Computer Inc., Detroit, Michigan:
"Having finished yukking at your droll Devil's Advocate column in
the August 86 UNIX Review, I am stable enough to help with the
quote mentioned at the end. Please refer to "Computer Networks"
by Andrew S. Tanenbaum (Prentic-Hall, 1981). The quote is from
page 186, last sentaence in the second full paragraph.
As you will note, the original is even better than the partial
quote. Tanenbaum is my choice as one of the two best writers on
technical subjects in English (the other is Tom DeMarco, founding
President of MODUS).
Your humor is much appreciated. Your bit on book clubs started a
sympathetic vibration in my ribs which hasn't yet completely
dampened. Good thoughts, John Hooper."
Carl Davidson wrote:
"I read with interest your column in the August issue of UNIX
Review, especially the postscript regarding the quotation on
standards. As is often the case with an unattributed quotation
Mssrs. Nagler and Siegl have slightly misquoted the original
source." Carl then gives Tenenbaum's words as:
"The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to
choose from, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait
for next year's model"
My sincere thanks to all who wrote. I also take this
opportunity to thank Edward R. Byrne of Madison, NJ for
correcting my faux pas in June's [1986] column. I referred to
the mathematician Benjamin Peirce as Pierce. I was about to send
my innards to the local sushi bar, but on second thoughts decided
to buy a stronger Bausch und Lomb for my microcondensed Oxford
English Dictionary; also I plan to sue all my teachers and/or
their next of kin, who made me recite: "i before e except after c
when the sound is eeeeeeee!"
Liverpool-born Stan Kelly-Bootle has been exposed to computing, on and off
and vice-versa, since 1953 when, after graduating in Pure Mathematics at
Cambridge University, he switched to impure post-grad work on the
wondrous EDSAC I. After some trenching with IBM and Univac in the 1960s
and 70s, Stan opted for self-employment as a consultant, writer, folk-song
revivalist, after-dinner entertainer, and cunning linguist.
His monthly DA ("Devil's Advocate") column ran and ran in UNIX Review (aka
Performance Computing) from 1984 until January 2000 (a date that will
live in infamy) but lives on as SODA ("Son of DA") via www.sarcheck.com
the homepage devoted to UNIX performance.
The latest of his umpteen books are "The Computer Contradictionary" (MIT
Press) and "UNIX Complete" (Sybex). More on his biblio- and disco-graphy
can be found on http://www.feniks.com/skb/ soon
due for its millennial update.
Stan welcomes reader reaction: skb@atdial.net
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