C Standard Regarding Null Pointer Dereferencing

[Colonel Harlan Sanders]

I contain multitudes, Bubba. Most decent people are scared of posting
here. I speak for them.

http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Lurkers_Support_Me_in_Email

:: To the tune of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean":
::
:: The Lurkers support me in e-mail
:: They all think I'm great don't you know.
:: You posters just don't understand me
:: But soon you will reap what you sow.
::
:: The lurkers support me in e-mail
:: "So why don't they post?" you all cry
:: They're scared of your hostile intentions
:: They just can't be as brave as I.



And it's easy to create a pseudonym, as I do, to prevent being
harassed and stalked in the real world, or other fora, by obsessive
loonies.

True. But the elegant shits of the 1930s did say "ignore the Jew" at
parties.

You claimed, specifically and by name, that it was "Hitler". And the
"elegant shits"? No names given, you just put whatever words in their
mouths you like.
So again, you were lying.

Yes. I wrote a correct C program to replace "troll" by "Jew" in an
arbitrary rant, and when you do that you get prose that sounds like
it's from Mein Kampf.

So after you changed all the inoffensive words to something offensive,
it was offensive.

Next you can change the letters in my name to numbers, add them up and
divide by your age and get 666, thus proving I am the Anti-Christ.

Bullshit. Anyone who's cracked a book, or read fairy stories, knows
that it's a funny little creature. People who've read more know that
the Ayrans manufactured the word to accomplish genocide.

Learn some history, boy.

Again "troll" as a noun is a back formation from the verb, derived
from a method of fishing. As is well documented, in e.g. the Jargon
File.

http://catb.org/jargon/html/T/troll.html
1. v.,n. To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable
responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase
“trolling for newbies” which in turn comes from mainstream “trolling”,
a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot
hoping for a bite.


http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/troll
1a To fish for by trailing a baited line from behind a slowly moving
boat.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English trollen, to wander about, from Old French
troller, of Germanic origin

So you are lying about this.

By the way, how about you actually cite the Nazi propaganda that uses
the word "troll" as you claim?

Of course, the whole fucking point is that "trolling" is a behaviour
that you exhibit. Nothing to do with your race, which as you enjoy
giving us rundown of your life story, is:

1) American
2) White
3) Christian (at least by upbringing)
4) German Anglo Saxon heritage.

For you to claim this is racial discrimination comparable to the
Holocaust is grossly offensive to anyone who has suffered real
discrimination.


And by the same "logic":

Hitler was a vegetarian, Gandhi was a vegetarian. Therefore Gandhi was
a Nazi.

Actually, that's more logical than your conclusion, because I didn't
have to use search and replace to change any words to make my analogy.

**** you, asshole. This ng is about C and you never post about C. You
don't seem to know programming.

So **** the Christ off, you piece of shit.

The return of Mr Collegial.

 

[Nick Keighley]

Some people think a troll is anyone saying anything they don't like, or
posting off topic.  Though I don't agree, I have encountered trolls.

Criticism is one thing.  But when it's mean and personal, it's trolling..

the usual definition is related to a particular form of fishing.
Trolling is posting controversial opinions to attract a response. It's
generally extended to any form of deliberatly contrived annoyance or
attention-seeking behaviour

Have a nice day.

isn't that sometimes a term of abuse in New York?

 

[Nick Keighley]

You're sounding like a spinoza alter ego.  It's hard to see how a
rational person could draw that conclusion from so few words.

it's freudian analysis. It isn't based on rationality. It just another
source for cheap insults.

 

[Nick Keighley]

Being deaf to you is the most sensible reaction, I try to practice it
myself, though occasionally I lapse, as now.

This statement of yours is such a perfect distillation of you being
"fractally wrong", wrong in every detail and at every level, as Seebs
defined some time ago, that I couldn't resist, thus demonstrating your
mastery of the art of trolling.

Okay:
1) "people who ask you .. " People? You, and you alone "ask" this.
Not even the fellow travelers, who sometimes support you on the "enemy
of my enemy" principle" have been nutty enough to buy into this.

2) "Use "troll" like Hitler used "Jew". Hitler didn't say "ignore the
Jew", as far as I know. He was rather more pro-active. So that fails
to make any sense.




3) By putting the exhortation  "Please don't talk to the Jew" in
quotes you imply that it's a quotation from a very unsavoury source.
That's true: a Google search for this phrase finds one hit: you. As is
your habit, you just made it up.

4) Your oft-repeated statement, that "troll" is a racially charged
term, is bogus, and unsupported by any dictionary. The word comes from
a form of net fishing. You've been told that dozens of times, of
course, you "are deaf to it" as to any inconvenient facts.

And what makes this perfect is that your both incredibly offensive and
incredibly stupid statements are the essence of trolling.  You are so
desperate not to be ignored that you are compelled to  interject such
loony abuse into any thread you are involved in to turn the subject to
your original and favourite: you.

<applause>

I hadn't thought, until I read your post, that he was wrong in so many
ways.

 

[Nick Keighley]

Most of us have got to earn a living. Admitting to serious mistakes is
usually interpreted as a sign of psychological weakness, and therefore
unsuitability for any role involving responsibility for the work of
others, dealing with clients, or even technically crucial systems.

sounds like a recipe for disaster. In fact it *is* the usual recipe
for a disaster. I bet that oil rig in the gulf was stuffed with people
who couldn't admit they might be wrong.

 

[Nick Keighley]

...and so Release 1.0 always sucks, and Blue Screen of Death is
ignored.

once in a while you say something I am in complete resonance with

 

[John Kelly]

isn't that sometimes a term of abuse in New York?

It's not used much anymore, except for sarcasm, as in, HAVE A NICE DAY,
ASSHOLE.

 

[Kenny McCormack]

sounds like a recipe for disaster. In fact it *is* the usual recipe
for a disaster. I bet that oil rig in the gulf was stuffed with people
who couldn't admit they might be wrong.

Quite so. And the same is true of many (the so-called "regs") in this ng.

Malcolm's point is that you have to be like that in order to survive in
today's world.

 

[spinoza1111]

once in a while you say something I am in complete resonance with

Sure! You know that the products of software technicians have many
errors. Now, read this passage (from TW Adorno's Minima Moralia).

That the world has meanwhile turned into the system which the Nazis
unjustly berated as the lax Weimar Republic, is evident in the pre-
established harmony between institutions and those who they serve. A
humanity is secretly emerging, which hungers for the compulsion and
restriction, which the nonsensical continuation of domination imposes.
These human beings however have, favored by the objective social
arrangement, seized hold of the functions which by rights ought to
generate dissonance against the pre-established harmony. Among all the
cashiered slogans, one stands out: “pressure produces counter-
pressure” – yet if the former becomes powerful enough, then the latter
disappears, and society appears to want to contribute considerably to
entropy, by a deadly equilibrium of tensions. The scientific
enterprise has its exact equivalent in the kind of minds [Geistesart],
which it harnesses: they need hardly do any violence to themselves,
proving eager and willing administrators of their own selves. Even
when they prove to be quite humane and reasonable beings outside of
the enterprise, they freeze into pathic stupidity the moment they
think professionally. Far from perceiving such prohibitions on thought
as something hostile, the candidates – and all scientists are
candidates – feel relieved. Because thinking burdens them with a
subjective responsibility, which their objective position in the
production-process prevents them from fulfilling, they renounce it,
shake a bit and run over to the other side. The displeasure of
thinking soon turns into the incapacity to think at all: people who
effortlessly invent the most refined statistical objections, when it
is a question of sabotaging a cognition, are not capable of making the
simplest predictions of content ex cathedra [Latin: from the chair,
e.g. Papal decision]. They lash out at the speculation and in it kill
common sense. The more intelligent of them have an inkling of what
ails their mental faculties, because the symptoms are not universal,
but appear in the organs, whose service they sell. Many still wait in
fear and shame, at being caught with their defect. All however find it
raised publicly to a moral service and see themselves being recognized
for a scientific asceticism, which is nothing of the sort, but the
secret contour of their weakness. Their resentment is socially
rationalized under the formula: thinking is unscientific. Their
intellectual energy is thereby amplified in many dimensions to the
utmost by the mechanism of control. The collective stupidity of
research technicians is not simply the absence or regression of
intellectual capacities, but an overgrowth of the capacity of thought
itself, which eats away at the latter with its own energy. The
masochistic malice [Bosheit] of young intellectuals derives from the
malevolence [Bösartigkeit] of their illness.

There is a lot of meat here. Adorno, unlike so many members of "the
chattering classes" actually had a real white collar low level job.

The key passage for computing is this: "The more intelligent of them
have an inkling of what ails their mental faculties, because the
symptoms are not universal, but appear in the organs, whose service
they sell."

That is, they are intelligent, even cultivated people who might be
musicians on the side, yet the gigantism of "the organs", combined
with the need to make things accessible to the stupid, results in
Microsoft Bob, or for that matter the C99 Standard.

 

[spinoza1111]

it's freudian analysis. It isn't based on rationality. It just another
source for cheap insults.

And what has the disappearance of psychoanalysis given us? People who
sit back and assume that their rationality and lack of compassion will
not result in disasters such as the inability of the Pakistan
government, compared to Islamic charities, to actually help flood
victims.

**** your "rationality". It's basically tautologous, for it has to
assume a constant ceteris paribus, and other things are never equal.
You become windowless and blind people like Seebach who believes that
everyone should be like him.

If rationality evolved as a mechanism for human survival then anything
that doesn't contribute to COLLECTIVE survival isn't rational.

 

[Seebs]

once in a while you say something I am in complete resonance with

Me too.

If you encounter people who think that admitting to serious mistakes is a
sign of psychological weakness, RUN AWAY. They are not sane, and projects
they are involved with WILL fail. Catastrophically. *And it will somehow
appear not to be their fault.*

Which means that all the energy they could have been putting into making it
so there'd be a chance of success was actually put into setting things up
to blame you. Which means that, if you were actually trying to make things
work, you'll get blamed. So don't do that; work with people who are fine
with saying "yeah, I really screwed the pooch that time", and you'll find
that, when projects succeed, there's just not that much blame to be dodged.

-s

 

[blmblm]

I would regard it as pretty strongly negative. The only reason I'd be saying
that is to imply that it is surprising or new information, meaning I didn't
think the code was any good at all. I didn't say that it worked, or did what
it was supposed to do; in context, that strikes me as making the statement
strongly negative. Basically, it raises the question: Why didn't I say "it
worked" or "it looked solid" or something else that got to qualities beyond
some kind of absolute minimum level of acceptability? Even atrocious code
often compiles.

Well, when you put it that way .... Yes, I agree. I was thinking
in other terms [*], I guess -- or arguably not thinking at all,
or not very well. Sigh.

[*] Something about how "it compiled" is at least a good start, and
at some point in program development *is* a good thing? which one
hopes is followed by further progress in a good direction.

 

[blmblm]

Yeah .... Just following up to say that you didn't really need to
explain to me at greater length why continuing a public debate isn't
a good idea, though I don't suppose it (explaining more) hurts.
The problem isn't that I don't *know* what the sensible [*] thing
to do is ....

[...]

Ok. All I can do is offer my own opinion of what the sensible
thing to do is. For certain posters (spinoza1111 is definitely
one of them), I think the only sensible response is to completely
ignore them. If that means letting them have the last word, so
be it. If it means they write something utterly offensive or just
plain wrong and nobody ever refutes it, so be it. That's my advice,
whicn you are of course free to take or leave.

Agreed. It *is* difficult -- especially when the inducements
include phrases as inflammatory as "how dare you", and ....

No, no, to finish that list would be almost as bad as actually
responding, wouldn't it?

Little public good [*] has come of previous wrangles, as I well
know, but -- some of us are slow learners, I guess. Whether it
will be different this time -- judge by results, I guess.

[*] I put it this way because sometimes there *have* been
non-public good results -- sometimes I've learned a lot in the
process of trying to find out whether some particularly irritating
claim might actually be true!

 

[Seebs]

[*] I put it this way because sometimes there *have* been
non-public good results -- sometimes I've learned a lot in the
process of trying to find out whether some particularly irritating
claim might actually be true!

True. On the other hand, I think that per hour of time spent, there are
probably better ways to learn stuff. Shao pushes a few too many of my
buttons, but I think there's a lot more point to arguing with him than
there is to arguing with Spinny.

-s

 

[spinoza1111]

Yeah ....  Just following up to say that you didn't really need to
explain to me at greater length why continuing a public debate isn't
a good idea, though I don't suppose it (explaining more) hurts.
The problem isn't that I don't *know* what the sensible [*] thing
to do is .... [...]

Ok.  All I can do is offer my own opinion of what the sensible
thing to do is.  For certain posters (spinoza1111is definitely
one of them), I think the only sensible response is to completely
ignore them.  If that means letting them have the last word, so
be it.  If it means they write something utterly offensive or just
plain wrong and nobody ever refutes it, so be it.  That's my advice,
whicn you are of course free to take or leave.

Agreed.  It *is* difficult -- especially when the inducements
include phrases as inflammatory as "how dare you", and ....

"Agreed. These Jews can be very tiresome, can't they?"

No, no, to finish that list would be almost as bad as actually
responding, wouldn't it?

"We shouldn't really answer their complaints. Best to just ignore
them. Those reports of Jews being beaten and killed by the SA are
probably their own imagination, their own propaganda."

Little public good [*] has come of previous wrangles, as I well
know, but -- some of us are slow learners, I guess.  Whether it
will be different this time -- judge by results, I guess.

And so, with an urbane smile, Lady Windermere Puff-Adder allowed Lord
Thompson to escort her to tea.

[*] I put it this way because sometimes there *have* been
non-public good results -- sometimes I've learned a lot in the
process of trying to find out whether some particularly irritating
claim might actually be true!

"These claims of death camps are of course nonsense, although there
may be isolated instances of abuse, your Ladyship. Our German workers
are spirited and apt to be annoyed."

 

[spinoza1111]

Me too.

If you encounter people who think that admitting to serious mistakes is a
sign of psychological weakness, RUN AWAY.  They are not sane, and projects
they are involved with WILL fail.  Catastrophically.  *And it will somehow
appear not to be their fault.*

Which means that all the energy they could have been putting into making it
so there'd be a chance of success was actually put into setting things up
to blame you.  Which means that, if you were actually trying to make things
work, you'll get blamed.  So don't do that; work with people who are fine
with saying "yeah, I really screwed the pooch that time", and you'll find
that, when projects succeed, there's just not that much blame to be dodged.

You don't seem to have accomplished enough to say this. I see a book
on shell scripting and the co-authorship of another, and input to the
C standard, itself a horror. You've given no evidence of being able to
write a program of one line.

However, I am familiar enough from the 1970s and the introduction of
various misunderstandings of structured programming to realize that
many people who just cannot code, like you, greeted the "rhetoric" of
structured programming, its crude meta-language, with glad cries,
because it represented a career path.

Instead of actually learning their business (in your case, taking any
classes in computer science) they found the "career path" of using
"structured programming" to mean "I understand it", and generalizing
this introspective result to "take down" people who could code. They
found, in any number of nasty little business offices, that they could
make a reputation by constantly attacking others based on this
confusion.

If you are engaged in great projects of pith and moment, then you
would probably not have enough time to post here, although there are
exceptions to this rule. When I am engaged in such work, an organic
part for me, but probably not for you, is creating a project diary.
But such a document does not consist of constant attacks on strangers.

 

[spinoza1111]

[*] I put it this way because sometimes there *have* been
non-public good results -- sometimes I've learned a lot in the
process of trying to find out whether some particularly irritating
claim might actually be true!

True.  On the other hand, I think that per hour of time spent, there are
probably better ways to learn stuff.  Shao pushes a few too many of my
buttons, but I think there's a lot more point to arguing with him than
there is to arguing with Spinny.

You are not arguing with him. You are bullying him because you've been
bullied yourself on online forums but lack the strength of character
to deal with bullying by questioning how bullying supports
illegitimate authority. You want him to use words in a theological way
that has nothing whatsoever to do with mathematics or computer science
and which instead justify the mistakes of C as sanctified and made
perversely holy in the C99 standard.

 

[spinoza1111]

Quite so.  And the same is true of many (the so-called "regs") in this ng.

Malcolm's point is that you have to be like that in order to survive in
today's world.

Quite. My boss at Princeton had to protect me from the higher ups
because when I see the results of bad code, I use foul language. I
don't get mad, today, at kids K-12 and uni during my 8 hour days and 6
day weeks as a teacher, no matter what. But I swear at computers.

Whereas today the fashion is to find all sorts of fault with people
and with schoolkids, but to applaud Microsoft's new crap (if one's in
that camp) or the latest Linux uncritically.

People are becoming post-human, so inundated with Calvin Klein and
Steve Jobs visions of perfection that they assault real people and
hate themselves for not being like the ads. We all feel like the dorky
"PC Guy", who's in the "PC v Mac" ads far more interesting and complex
than the dead-eyed "cool" Mac guy, with his utterly false humility and
claims to support the PC guy, and we hate ourselves for it.

As a result, environmental holocausts are as I write killing Russians
and Pakistanis, because their governments hate people so clueless as
to live in unfashionable districts. The only people really helping the
Pakistani are al-Quaeda, because ever since the West destroyed Bung
Sukarno and Nasser, real leaders of the developing world, it's the
religious people who as a matter of principle love their fellow man.
If you make socialism unmentionable, you get terrorism, which is the
refusal to hate one's fellow man turned into hatred.

Shao comes in here with a funny first name, a stranger, and Peter
attacks him. Nice.

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities
of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the
name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of
darkness for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost
children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and
furious anger those who would poison and destroy my brothers. And you
will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee!"

The corporate style is to be dead emotionally no matter what.

 

[spinoza1111]

<applause>

I hadn't thought, until I read your post, that he was wrong in so many
ways.

"I had not thought, until I attended the Nuremburg rally, that Hitler
was so spot on on the Jews".

 

[Nick Keighley]

On Aug 9, 4:56 pm, Nick Keighley <[email protected]>

"I had not thought, until I attended the Nuremburg rally, that Hitler
was so spot on on the Jews".

you as well?