C: The Complete Meta-Nonsense

This thread shall be the center for compaints about Peter Seebach's
document "C: The Complete Nonsense", which is as far as I can tell the
sole source of the false rumors about Herb Schildt's books, a source
amplified by the confusion of a citation with that of a citation of a
citation.

I shall start the ball rolling: Peter, what goes around, comes around.

"Page 284
All of the header files are listed in capitals; the standard specifies
them in lower case. It is not required that a C compiler reject all-
caps, but nor is it required that it accept them. "

Herb here relies on the relative prevelance of case insensitivity in
Windows systems and before them, in IBM systems. It has long been a
sort of fashion statement in unix to be case sensitive. There are
arguments pro and con both ways, but by omitting this information
Peter is able to make Yet Another unwarranted implication about
Seebach's competence.

It is tribalism to confuse shibboleths such as these with knowledge,
where a "shibboleth" is used to recognized tribe members. It is a
barbarism.

Seebach implies that the practice is indeed standard but cites this to
pad his antiresume re Schildt.

Also, "but nor" is completely illiterate.

spinoza1111

On 2009-11-01, spinoza1111 <> wrote:
> This thread shall be the center for compaints about Peter Seebach's
> document "C: The Complete Nonsense",

Wonderful!

> which is as far as I can tell the
> sole source of the false rumors about Herb Schildt's books,

There are a number of problems with this clause.

The first is the implicit assertion that there are false rumors about
Schildt's books, an assertion not yet demonstrated to be true. But let
us handwave that away and assume that the phrase "false rumors" is
a poor choice of words for "wholly accurate beliefs" or something similar.

Then it remains only to ask: What about the multiple other sources which
people have referred you to? Why is it that, shortly after some anonymous
user started harassing the Wikipedia staff using various proxies to circumvent
a justified ban, and they finally told him that my page on the topic was
sufficient to qualify as a citable source, suddenly you're obsessed with
that PARTICULAR page rather than any of the other sources?

Hmm. Questions for the ages.

> a source
> amplified by the confusion of a citation with that of a citation of a
> citation.

Not noticably.

> I shall start the ball rolling: Peter, what goes around, comes around.

Round round round round I get around?

> "Page 284
> All of the header files are listed in capitals; the standard specifies
> them in lower case. It is not required that a C compiler reject all-
> caps, but nor is it required that it accept them. "

> Herb here relies on the relative prevelance of case insensitivity in
> Windows systems and before them, in IBM systems. It has long been a
> sort of fashion statement in unix to be case sensitive. There are
> arguments pro and con both ways, but by omitting this information
> Peter is able to make Yet Another unwarranted implication about
> Seebach's competence.

Lots of noise, but you miss the key point: If you use all-caps names
for headers, they're likely to not work on some fairly common systems.

Your focus has, time and again, come back to a vague notion that the
goal is to teach, not to be correct. But how does it help the reader
if you consistently use capital letters where they aren't particularly
guaranteed to work?

I did not claim that I had presented every last possible shred of relevant
data -- I merely pointed out that the names Schildt shows may not work.

If you had some kind of argument for why writing the names in all caps
would be essential to effective teaching, you could argue the case, but
merely pointing out that it's possible that they work somewhere is not
so persuasive.

> Seebach implies that the practice is indeed standard but cites this to
> pad his antiresume re Schildt.

> Also, "but nor" is completely illiterate.

Ahh, yes. Complete illiteracy, once thought to be the realm of being
unable to distinguish letters from random markings, is now revealed to
be the use of a conjunction in conjunction with another conjunction,
when only the second of the pair is needed. Absolutely, this is
the sort of thing up with which we must not put.

But I can see that you're not going to be happy until I've gone back to
that document, not as a kid fresh out of college with no particular
credentials, but as a veteran of a decade or so of standards work with
hundreds of thousands of my own words published, to go clean the page
up and make it a much stronger and more persuasive document. Seems silly
given that the book's ten years old, but I have to listen to my fans.

-s
--
Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!

Seebs

On Nov 1, 7:16*pm, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
> On 2009-11-01,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > This thread shall be the center for compaints about Peter Seebach's
> > document "C: The Complete Nonsense",
>
> Wonderful!
>
> > which is as far as I can tell the
> > sole source of the false rumors about Herb Schildt's books,
>
> There are a number of problems with this clause.
>
> The first is the implicit assertion that there are false rumors about
> Schildt's books, an assertion not yet demonstrated to be true. *But let
> us handwave that away and assume that the phrase "false rumors" is
> a poor choice of words for "wholly accurate beliefs" or something similar..
>
> Then it remains only to ask: *What about the multiple other sources which
> people have referred you to? *Why is it that, shortly after some anonymous
> user started harassing the Wikipedia staff using various proxies to circumvent
> a justified ban

It wasn't a justified ban. I was welcome as a contributor in
2005..2006 and a number of pages including Kant and Adorno retain a
lot of my material. Then, in 2006, a poster to Kant named
amerindianarts, who was unqualified to write about philosophy, was
offended by one of my private responses and started issuing all sorts
of bans...despite the fact that a professor of philosophy who was at
the time moderating the Kant page wanted me to contribute. The issue
snowballed to the point where I was supposed to undergo some sort of
Star Chamber proceeding where I would have to admit the wisdom of
wikipedia and the new crop of convenience store clerks who'd appointed
themselves editors, and as you know I don't eat ****.

>, and they finally told him that my page on the topic was
> sufficient to qualify as a citable source, suddenly you're obsessed with
> that PARTICULAR page rather than any of the other sources?

Your page isn't citable according to standards of citeability and
common decency, since it itself is based on no source except your own
fantasies and prejudices. You could have at least have had it peer
reviewed and you did not. It is not an adequate source merely because
a bunch of half-literate convenience store clerks at Wikipedia say it
is.
>
> Hmm. *Questions for the ages.
>
> > a source
> > amplified by the confusion of a citation with that of a citation of a
> > citation.
>
> Not noticably.
>
> > I shall start the ball rolling: Peter, what goes around, comes around.
>
> Round round round round I get around?
>
> > "Page 284
> > All of the header files are listed in capitals; the standard specifies
> > them in lower case. It is not required that a C compiler reject all-
> > caps, but nor is it required that it accept them. "
> > Herb here relies on the relative prevelance of case insensitivity in
> > Windows systems and before them, in IBM systems. It has long been a
> > sort of fashion statement in unix to be case sensitive. There are
> > arguments pro and con both ways, but by omitting this information
> > Peter is able to make Yet Another unwarranted implication about
> > Seebach's competence.
>
> Lots of noise, but you miss the key point: *If you use all-caps names
> for headers, they're likely to not work on some fairly common systems.

This is arguably a bug of those systems, but had been Herb I would
have mentioned this issue.
>
> Your focus has, time and again, come back to a vague notion that the
> goal is to teach, not to be correct. *But how does it help the reader
> if you consistently use capital letters where they aren't particularly
> guaranteed to work?

The computer science or programming teacher is not, whatever his
students might claim, required to teach sub-academic mechanics. The
student is in part responsible for figuring out lab assignments.


>
> I did not claim that I had presented every last possible shred of relevant
> data -- I merely pointed out that the names Schildt shows may not work.

Your point had not to do with substance but with mechanics. In my own
C classes I did more presentation on IBM v unix differences than did
Herb because I knew more than he and/or made a choice he did not. His
omission of your hobby-horse justified you pointing this out on Amazon
or in a review in a computer journal. It did not justify what you did.
>
> If you had some kind of argument for why writing the names in all caps
> would be essential to effective teaching, you could argue the case, but
> merely pointing out that it's possible that they work somewhere is not
> so persuasive.

I have known about this problem for 20 years since I worked from 1981
to 1986 at Bell Northern Research Mountain View, which had both a DEC
20 and an IBM mainframe. At BNR I noticed that the less competent DEC
specialists made big deals about this difference whereas the best
people (Bob Gaskins, who invented Power Point, and Whitfield Diffie,
the cryptography expert) did not. Bob worked closely with my boss,
who'd come from IBM and Whitfield and I had a cordial relationship.
The DEC people who made a big "deal" out of the innate superiority of
case sensitivity were incompetent for the most part.

>
> > Seebach implies that the practice is indeed standard but cites this to
> > pad his antiresume re Schildt.
> > Also, "but nor" is completely illiterate.
>
> Ahh, yes. *Complete illiteracy, once thought to be the realm of being
> unable to distinguish letters from random markings, is now revealed to
> be the use of a conjunction in conjunction with another conjunction,
> when only the second of the pair is needed. *Absolutely, this is
> the sort of thing up with which we must not put.

OK, point taken. We must not generalize from too small a data set.
Therefore I look forward to your withdrawing the Vicious Little
Tirade.

In pointing these errors out, I hope to teach you perspective and the
reality of the Homeric nod, although I, and as I am sure Herb would
admit, he, are closer to Homer Simpson than the poet.

>
> But I can see that you're not going to be happy until I've gone back to
> that document, not as a kid fresh out of college with no particular
> credentials, but as a veteran of a decade or so of standards work with
> hundreds of thousands of my own words published, to go clean the page
> up and make it a much stronger and more persuasive document. *Seems silly
> given that the book's ten years old, but I have to listen to my fans.

No, you are not qualified to publish documents of this nature. Please
replace it by an apology and get on with your life.
>
> -s
> --
> Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. *Peter Seebach / usenet-nos...@seebs.nethttp://www.seebs.net/log/<-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictureshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!

spinoza1111

On 2009-11-02, spinoza1111 <> wrote:
> It wasn't a justified ban.

I don't think I buy it. You have a mysterious tendency to rant about
things without understanding them, pick fights, and end up becoming
unpopular.

> wikipedia and the new crop of convenience store clerks who'd appointed
> themselves editors, and as you know I don't eat ****.

Just spew it.

> Your page isn't citable according to standards of citeability and
> common decency, since it itself is based on no source except your own
> fantasies and prejudices.

The opinions of a qualified expert in the field are sufficient to qualify
something as justifying a claim.

> You could have at least have had it peer
> reviewed and you did not. It is not an adequate source merely because
> a bunch of half-literate convenience store clerks at Wikipedia say it
> is.

That may well be.

But it sure is suspcious that, now that they've said it is, you're suddenly
hugely obsessed with this particular page, despite having had several other
sources for similar opinions and observations presented to you.

>> Lots of noise, but you miss the key point: *If you use all-caps names
>> for headers, they're likely to not work on some fairly common systems.

> This is arguably a bug of those systems,

Or a bug of systems where it's not the case. Just about anything can
be argued.

> but had been Herb I would have mentioned this issue.

Which would be a lot of hassle to go to when there is simply no need to
ever write the names in anything but the canonical form. No problem, no
hassle, everything works.

> The computer science or programming teacher is not, whatever his
> students might claim, required to teach sub-academic mechanics. The
> student is in part responsible for figuring out lab assignments.

That's a bullshit excuse. The job of a writer is to cover the material
clearly and correctly. Especially, I might add, in a book claiming to
be "The Complete Reference".

> Your point had not to do with substance but with mechanics.

It turns out that mechanics are part of the substance of using computers
effectively.

> His
> omission of your hobby-horse justified you pointing this out on Amazon
> or in a review in a computer journal. It did not justify what you did.

Because putting something up on your personal web page is WAY more serious
than publishing a review in a computer journal, right?

> OK, point taken. We must not generalize from too small a data set.



> Therefore I look forward to your withdrawing the Vicious Little
> Tirade.

Ahh, but it's not generalized from too small a data set; it's cherry-picked
from a much larger data set. That's different.

> In pointing these errors out, I hope to teach you perspective

You'd have to have some.

> No, you are not qualified to publish documents of this nature.

Actually, I sort of am.

> Please replace it by an apology

I refer you to the Defendant's response in Arkell v. Pressdram.

> and get on with your life.

For reading Usenet, I normally use an irony meter that's certified to
be able to survive the EMP from a 50 megaton bomb, but you just slagged
it anyway.

-s
--
Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!

Seebs

On Sun, 1 Nov 2009 18:21:07 -0800 (PST), spinoza1111
<> wrote:


>It wasn't a justified ban. I was welcome as a contributor in
>2005..2006 and a number of pages including Kant and Adorno retain a
>lot of my material. Then, in 2006, a poster to Kant named
>amerindianarts, who was unqualified to write about philosophy, was
>offended by one of my private responses and started issuing all sorts
>of bans...despite the fact that a professor of philosophy who was at
>the time moderating the Kant page wanted me to contribute. The issue
>snowballed to the point where I was supposed to undergo some sort of
>Star Chamber proceeding where I would have to admit the wisdom of
>wikipedia and the new crop of convenience store clerks who'd appointed
>themselves editors, and as you know I don't eat ****.


http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...:S pinoza1111

>12:12, 25 October 2006 Shell Kinney (talk | contribs) blocked Spinoza1111 (talk | contribs) with an expiry time of indefinite ?(user claims to have left Wikipedia but continues to harass and attack other users via talk pages)
>04:36, 20 October 2006 Luna Santin (talk | contribs) blocked Spinoza1111 (talk | contribs) with an expiry time of 48 hours ?(Continued personal attacks)
>04:36, 20 October 2006 Luna Santin (talk | contribs) unblocked "Spinoza1111 (talk | contribs)" ? (unblock to change duration)
>05:29, 19 October 2006 Luna Santin (talk | contribs) blocked Spinoza1111 (talk | contribs) with an expiry time of 24 hours ?(Personal attacks)
>08:54, 6 September 2006 Andrew Norman (talk | contribs) blocked Spinoza1111 (talk | contribs) with an expiry time of 1 week ?(Personal attacks)

Pages and pages of your own words linked there condemning you.

You insisted on inserting your opinions into various articles, simply
asserting they are facts. When asked to support these, you just do as
you do here, shouting down any conflicting facts and call the
questioner an idiot.

Wikipedia has evolved procedures for dealing with assholes like you,
so eventually you were banned, temporarily, at which point you
redoubled your abuse using anonymous IPs, then finally the ban was
made permanent.

Usenet is where you always return to, since more structured
communities all eventually spit you out.

But it's obvious that the real reason you act like this is you enjoy
the conflict. You don't have any friends (except for John Nash, who
you last saw 30 years ago), but you can always come here and get a
rise out of Heathfield, or more recently Seebach. Though of course
either or both of them may be just stringing you along for their own
amusement. (Seebach for instance suckered you by feeding you the
"autistic" line, which you now regurgitate at every opportunity.)

One thing is sure, the only effect your crusade is having on Schildt's
reputation is to highlight his failings. But that's secondary to the
real object of all these 500 post threads; to make you the center of
attention.

Colonel Harlan Sanders

On Nov 2, 10:39*am, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
> On 2009-11-02,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > It wasn't a justified ban.
>
> I don't think I buy it. *You have a mysterious tendency to rant about
> things without understanding them, pick fights, and end up becoming

....or understanding them at greater depth, perhaps. But yes, I like
fighting.

> unpopular.
>
> > wikipedia and the new crop of convenience store clerks who'd appointed
> > themselves editors, and as you know I don't eat ****.
>
> Just spew it.
>
> > Your page isn't citable according to standards of citeability and
> > common decency, since it itself is based on no source except your own
> > fantasies and prejudices.
>
> The opinions of a qualified expert in the field are sufficient to qualify
> something as justifying a claim.

Who is the qualified expert at "C: The Complete Nonsense?" You admit
you were a kid when you wrote it.
>
> > You could have at least have had it peer
> > reviewed and you did not. It is not an adequate source merely because
> > a bunch of half-literate convenience store clerks at Wikipedia say it
> > is.
>
> That may well be.
>
> But it sure is suspcious that, now that they've said it is, you're suddenly
> hugely obsessed with this particular page, despite having had several other
> sources for similar opinions and observations presented to you.

Excuse me, where were those source presented? Give yourself some
credit. "C: the Complete Nonsense" is the single stop source for anti-
Schildt bullshit, and I know of no independent source of criticism of
Schildt.

>
> >> Lots of noise, but you miss the key point: *If you use all-caps names
> >> for headers, they're likely to not work on some fairly common systems.
> > This is arguably a bug of those systems,
>
> Or a bug of systems where it's not the case. *Just about anything can
> be argued.


>
> > but had been Herb I would have mentioned this issue.
>
> Which would be a lot of hassle to go to when there is simply no need to
> ever write the names in anything but the canonical form. *No problem, no
> hassle, everything works.
>
> > The computer science or programming teacher is not, whatever his
> > students might claim, required to teach sub-academic mechanics. The
> > student is in part responsible for figuring out lab assignments.
>
> That's a bullshit excuse. *The job of a writer is to cover the material
> clearly and correctly. *Especially, I might add, in a book claiming to
> be "The Complete Reference".
>
> > Your point had not to do with substance but with mechanics.
>
> It turns out that mechanics are part of the substance of using computers
> effectively.

That's untrue. The mechanics can be the work of low-level
functionaries.
>
> > His
> > omission of your hobby-horse justified you pointing this out on Amazon
> > or in a review in a computer journal. It did not justify what you did.
>
> Because putting something up on your personal web page is WAY more serious
> than publishing a review in a computer journal, right?

Wrong. You had no independent reviewer as did I in my published
articles in .Net Programmer's Journal and "Build Your Own .Net
Language and Compiler, nor as Herb had at McGraw-Hill. A reasonably
competent editor would have rejected your copy: that's why McGraw Hill
shitcanned it. It was a disorganized mass of trivia and opinion
masquerading as fact.

You pussies pick your fights carefully and still lose. I note you
don't comment on the C version of the infix2Polish grammar-based
conversion, because when you can't make cheap shots you don't fire,
yet I want your opinion because you're good coders all the same.

>
> > OK, point taken. We must not generalize from too small a data set.
>
>
>
> > Therefore I look forward to your withdrawing the Vicious Little
> > Tirade.
>
> Ahh, but it's not generalized from too small a data set; it's cherry-picked
> from a much larger data set. *That's different.

Where is the big data set? I've asked this repeatedly.

>
> > In pointing these errors out, I hope to teach you perspective
>
> You'd have to have some.
>
> > No, you are not qualified to publish documents of this nature.
>
> Actually, I sort of am.

No, you're sort of not.
>
> > Please replace it by an apology
>
> I refer you to the Defendant's response in Arkell v. Pressdram.
>
> > and get on with your life.
>
> For reading Usenet, I normally use an irony meter that's certified to
> be able to survive the EMP from a 50 megaton bomb, but you just slagged
> it anyway.
>
> -s
> --
> Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. *Peter Seebach / usenet-nos...@seebs.nethttp://www.seebs.net/log/<-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictureshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!

spinoza1111

On Nov 2, 9:30*pm, Colonel Harlan Sanders <Har...@kfc.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Nov 2009 18:21:07 -0800 (PST),spinoza1111
>
> <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >It wasn't a justified ban. I was welcome as a contributor in
> >2005..2006 and a number of pages including Kant and Adorno retain a
> >lot of my material. Then, in 2006, a poster to Kant named
> >amerindianarts, who was unqualified to write about philosophy, was
> >offended by one of my private responses and started issuing all sorts
> >of bans...despite the fact that a professor of philosophy who was at
> >the time moderating the Kant page wanted me to contribute. The issue
> >snowballed to the point where I was supposed to undergo some sort of
> >Star Chamber proceeding where I would have to admit the wisdom of
> >wikipedia and the new crop of convenience store clerks who'd appointed
> >themselves editors, and as you know I don't eat ****.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...ype=block&page....
>
> >12:12, 25 October 2006 Shell Kinney (talk | contribs) blockedSpinoza1111(talk | contribs) with an expiry time of indefinite ?(user claims to have left Wikipedia but continues to harass and attack other users via talk pages)
> >04:36, 20 October 2006 Luna Santin (talk | contribs) blockedSpinoza1111(talk | contribs) with an expiry time of 48 hours ?(Continued personal attacks)
> >04:36, 20 October 2006 Luna Santin (talk | contribs) unblocked "Spinoza1111(talk | contribs)" ? (unblock to change duration)
> >05:29, 19 October 2006 Luna Santin (talk | contribs) blockedSpinoza1111(talk | contribs) with an expiry time of 24 hours ?(Personal attacks)
> >08:54, 6 September 2006 Andrew Norman (talk | contribs) blockedSpinoza1111(talk | contribs) with an expiry time of 1 week ?(Personal attacks)
>
> Pages and pages of your own words linked there condemning you.
>
> You insisted on inserting your opinions into various articles, simply
> asserting they are facts. When asked to support these, you just do as
> you do here, shouting down any conflicting facts *and call the
> questioner an idiot.
>
> Wikipedia has evolved procedures for dealing with assholes like you,
> so eventually you were banned, temporarily, at which point you
> redoubled your abuse using anonymous IPs, then finally the ban was
> made permanent.
>
> Usenet is where you always return to, since more structured
> communities all eventually spit you out.
>
> But it's obvious that the real reason you act like this is you enjoy
> the conflict. You don't have any friends (except for John Nash, who
> you last saw 30 years ago), but you can always come here and get a
> rise out of Heathfield, or more recently Seebach. Though of course
> either or both of them may be just stringing you along for their own
> amusement. (Seebach for instance suckered you by feeding you the
> "autistic" line, which you now regurgitate at every opportunity.)
>
> One thing is sure, the only effect your crusade is having on Schildt's
> reputation is to highlight his failings. But *that's secondary to the
> real object of all these 500 post threads; to make you the center of
> attention.

It's not an opinion that to write the history of philosophy one has to
do philosophy. Nor is it an opinion to say that wikipedia has been
taken over by 14 year old Hitler Youth and convenience store clerks.
It's an acknowledged fact. Do your homework: there are any number of
bitter former wikipedians blowing the whistle on the fraud and tax
cheat Jimmy Wales, and I hope to see his hairy ass in jail on tax
charges.

spinoza1111

Colonel Harlan Sanders a écrit :
> But it's obvious that the real reason you act like this is you enjoy
> the conflict. You don't have any friends (except for John Nash, who
> you last saw 30 years ago), but you can always come here and get a
> rise out of Heathfield, or more recently Seebach.

There is not a lot of posters here that care about C. Specially
heathfield apparently is the major promoter of endless discussions
about anything where he can write about his prejudices about everything
(assembly, Design patterns, whatever).

For heathfield and Kiki, Spinoza1111 is a welcome partner.

jacob navia

"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig enjoys
it" (attributed variously).

I'd also suggest what is reportedly a Malagasy proverb "In a fight
with a fool, it's the wise man who quits".

Mark Bluemel

On Nov 2, 10:10*pm, jacob navia <ja...@nospam.org> wrote:
> Colonel Harlan Sanders a écrit :
>
> > But it's obvious that the real reason you act like this is you enjoy
> > the conflict. You don't have any friends (except for John Nash, who
> > you last saw 30 years ago), but you can always come here and get a
> > rise out of Heathfield, or more recently Seebach.
>
> There is not a lot of posters here that care about C. Specially
> heathfield apparently *is the major promoter of endless discussions
> about anything where he can write about his prejudices about everything
> (assembly, Design patterns, whatever).
>
> For heathfield and Kiki,Spinoza1111is a welcome partner.

Jacob, they prefer to stay away from code apart from telling people
their code sucks. I came in here on topic only to find Heathfield et
al. changing the topic to the incompetence of the people who disagreed
with them.

Above all, Heathfield et al. love pointers. Instead of taking the risk
to write code extempore here and discuss it, they prefer pointers to
sources that putatively affirm the incompetence of their enemies, and
dismissing open questions as having been answered. This is to avoid
being wrong, for they so abuse people they think wrong, or who make
trivial mistakes, that they are afraid of the treatment they visit on
others.

They multiply pointers to the failings of Schildt et al. deliberately
with the malign and dishonest intent of deceiving people into
reasoning from large N (where N==the number of times a canard, or a
citation of a canard, or a citation of a citation of a canard, is
repeated) to the largeness of what usually turns out, on
investigation, to be small n, where n==the actual number of data
points.

For example, "C: the Complete Nonsense" lists ONLY 20 separate anti-
Schildt canards, most of which are trivia and all of which were
rejected by technical editors at McGraw Hill as errata. It identifies
this small n set as "currently known" while in a self-contradictory
and dishonest fashion it ALSO implies that "several hundred" are
known! Yet this single document appears to be the sole source for the
anti-Schildt case, since on the Internet a "buzz" is created by
repetition.

I am not, *mon cher Monsieur*, here to do Heathfield et aliter any
favors. I am here to rip them a new asshole and destroy their
dominance of this newsgroup, so that it can be a fair and open forum.

spinoza1111