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From: PaulJK on 2 Mar 2010 02:25

Brian M. Scott wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:23:39 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
> <grammatim(a)verizon.net> wrote in
> <news:5e098d02-5018-444d-b31f-d21303931f38(a)t20g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>
> sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.lang,alt.usage.english:
>> On Feb 28, 9:50 pm, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote:
>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>> On Feb 28, 1:42 am, "PaulJK"
>>>> <paul.kr...(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> [...]
>>>>> Whoops, sorry, I didn't realise that by "Pacific
>>>>> states" you meant "US Pacific states".
>
>>>> We very, very, very rarely use "state" to mean
>>>> 'independent nation'.
>
> For some values of 'we'.
>
>>> And we very, very, very rarely use the expression
>>> "Pacific states" which would exclude the majority of
>>> Pacific states (i.e. non-US states in the Pacific).
>
>> "Pacific states" is a wel-established term -- sometimes it
>> includes AK and HI, sometimes not.
>
> It may be, but I've not encountered it much; in the absence
> of any context I'd lean towards Paul's interpretation.
>
>>> This just shows that no matter how hard I try I still
>>> sometimes fail to correctly translate Merkin E.
>>> semantics to English E.
>
>> "State" is not a useful term for 'nation-state'
>
> Horsefeathers.
>
>> because it is serving a different, much more salient
>> function not only in the US, but also in (at least)
>> Mexico and Brazil, and I think Germany.
>
> Not really: the usual term is <(Bundes)land>, though the
> L�nder can also be termed Glied- or Teilstaaten. Better
> examples would be Australia and India.

Perhaps, Australia is not a perfect example either.

I don't know about India, but Australia was my home for
more than a decade. There are states (states of Australia)
and territories in Australia, however, as far as I remember,
Australians may also refer to the "Commonwealth of Australia"
as "state of Australia".

pjk

From: PaulJK on 2 Mar 2010 03:01

James Silverton wrote:
> jmfbahciv wrote on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:37:01 -0500:
>
>> Peter Moylan wrote:
>>> jmfbahciv wrote:
>>>> James Silverton wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> You always could "start" at numbers other than one. Or
>>>>>> are you talking about the actual memory assigned to the
>>>>>> array?
>>>>> Yes, there were ways of doing that but when you defined an array
>>>>> with, say,
>>>>>
>>>>> DIMENSION A(100)
>>>>>
>>>>> The array elements were A(1) to A(100).
>>>>>
>>>>> I think it was Fortran77 where, say,
>>>>>
>>>>> REAL (0:99) :: A
>>>>>
>>>>> became a valid declaration.
>>>>>
>>>> Thanks. I swear I read the 77 ANSI proposal but I don't
>>>> remember this stuff. That one had to cause bugs.
>>>
>>> I've never used Fortran 77, but I don't see how that would
>>> cause bugs. If the array bounds have to be declared, the
>>> compiler can insert checks for subscripts being out of
>>> bounds, and in fact that is what is done in most of the
>>> modern programming languages I know something about.
>
>> Those checks are usually done at compile time, not runtime. Your
>> FORTRAN example implies that indexing doesn't have to be an integer.
>> That's what I was thinking about when I made the
>> statement about "had to cause bugs". Someday I should reread the 77
>> standard again.
>
> The REAL statement refers to the contents of the array, You could also
> have, say,
>
> INTEGER (-33:33) :: A.
>
> I believe Fortran90 allows non integer indices

Algol 60, i.e. thirty years before Fortan90, allowed general
expressions in array declarations, e.g.

real array A(i*2 : fcall(p,3));

It wasn't particularly difficult to compile, since all code to
compile general arithmetical expressions was already there.
The expression (i*2) and the function call (fcall(p,3)) had to
be evaluated at run time but that wasn't difficult either.
The whole array declaration was evaluated at run time
as if it were a function call which resulted in an area of
memory being reserved on the top of the stack by pointing
the top of the stack pointer beyond it.

pjk

> but how they worked, I
> don't know, since I only scanned a book on that. I had been using C and
> C++ for a while then. Fortran compilers did not check for "out of
> bounds" errors as far as I remember.

From: Nick on 2 Mar 2010 03:04

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim(a)verizon.net> writes:

> Then where are you posting from?

You're the persistent Google groups user IIRC. Look it up, or don't
care.

Actually, of course, it's "somewhere in England".
>
>> > Don't you know the difference between converses and inverses versus
>> > contrapositives?
>>
>> No I don't.
>
> It's very simple. Given the statement "If A, then B," there is only
> one valid inference: "If not B, then not A." The inferences "If not A,
> then not B" and "If B, then A" are not valid.
>
> For instance:
>
> If "state" means 'nation-state', then it has some sort of
> qualification.
>
> If "state" doesn't have some sort of qualification, then it doesn't
> mean 'nation-state'.
>
> But not
>
> If "state" doesn't mean 'nation-state', then it doesn't have some sort
> of qualification.
>
> and not
>
> If "state" has some sort of qualification, then it means 'nation-
> state'.
>
> (And, of course, I didn't say "never"; I said "not useful.")
>
>> I don't know why I'm doing this either. But let's try again.
>>
>> In the world according to you, "state" means a state of the US
>> because that's what state always means when used by an American. Unless
>
> Where did I say "always"?
>
>> it's qualified. When it's qualified by "rogue" or "failed" then it
>> means a country, but when it's qualified by "Pacific" it goes back to
>> meaning a part of the US.
>>
>> So what rule applies? Is a "govinde state" part of the US or not? And
>> how on earth are the rest of us meant to know?
>
> Why do you think there is a single "rule" that applies?

Because you said there was. First you said words to the effect that
"state means part of the US", then you changed that "not when qualified
it doesn't".

> I've no idea what a "govinde state" is, if such a thing exists.

So how do you know whether it's a "US-type" or a "nation-type" state?
And if you don't, how can you make such absolute statements about what
"state" means in the mouth of a speaker of US English?

Face it, you made another gross generalisation. Just for once, accept
it and move on.
--
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Plan trips, see photos, check facilities | http://canalplan.org.uk

From: PaulJK on 2 Mar 2010 03:25

Adam Funk wrote:
> On 2010-03-01, Hatunen wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 16:16:10 +1300, "PaulJK"
>> <paul.kriha(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote:
>>
>>> Hatunen wrote:
>
>>>> When mentioning temperatures I always try to remember to use "C"
>>>> or "F".
>>>
>>> Don't forget "R" and "K" !
>>
>> I, for one, make very few posts requiring either.
>
> I don't think I've every seen an R or K thermometer (except in
> books).

Still, that shouldn't stop you from mentioning temperatures in
Kelvins or Réaumurs. :-)

BTW, when I was growing up in my old family's home we had
a room thermometer with a C scale on one side and R scale
on the other. When I asked my mum what was the R scale
for, she said: "Oh, they are some Reomírs, don't worry
about them."

pjk

From: Tak To on 2 Mar 2010 03:50

Peter Moylan wrote:
> [...]
> Besides, it's been true for a number of years now that software written
> in high-level languages often runs faster (up to about a 5% improvement)
> than the same software written in C.

I have serious doubt about this claim. Any reference?

> than the same software written in C. That's because modern compilers do
> a lot of code optimisation, but with a low-level language a lot of
> optimisation possibilities aren't applicable.

The usual argument is that the possibility of pointer aliasing
(i.e., two lvalue expression giving to the same memory location)
forces the compiler to assume every lvalue is volatile, and
thus cannot do intelligent prefetch. However, pointer aliasing
rarely happens in actual programs and any compiler worth its
salt will have pragmatics that tell the compiler to ignore this
consideration.

They typically compare C to optimized Fortrain in calculations
involving large arrays. Needless to say, few people use C
for that purpose.

Tak
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