[Oberon] Re: Wirth's plea against bloat is lost in the noise.

[Chris Glur]

On 19 May 2007, Chris Glur <easlab at absamail.co.za> wrote:
> > So now this post will generate another 100 goog-entries about
> > 'oberon+Blackfin' !
> >
> > Is goog becoming evil like M$ ?
> 
Jack Johnson wrote:-
> Google isn't generating those cross-posts, it's just finding them for
> you.  They were always there.
> 
That's correct. But as a deeper analogy: the 'just reporting press' 
often contributes greatly to the rioting & looting or to the war.
I'm trying to see the broader evolution of the 'organic' net.
And I'm worried that I'm already so dependant on google.

> > And the curse of the proliferation of 'text representations';
> > what's wrong with using plain text (single bytes) for single-quote
> > and back-quote, instead of "a^8099", "a^8098",  "&rsquo",
> > "&lsquo" ...etc.
> 
> What's wrong is people asking what's wrong.  UTF-8 and its
> HTML-equivalents are probably the best way to incorporate what was
> with what needs to be without assuming English and a tiny subset of
> Western European languages are the only ones that need adequate
> representation on the net.
> 
No ! If ascii doesn't suffice, then by all means use 'more'.
An example : recently I received what a standard browser sees as:
  `A'-> `B'
but when I saved it and read-back via [linux] N-0 [ because N-O
allows me to eg. colour the text and paste graphics and search
& replace better than any of your "moved forward" alternatives]
I see:
#A#->#B#
where the '#' chars indicate that N-O hasn't got a font for the
char-representation used.
On closer inspection I see that of the 4 chars: "`'->",
the N-O browser translates the 2: ">-", but not "`'".
But all four of these are standard ascii chars.
So why should they need to be translated ?!
Perhaps the "`'" were considered to look too small with the
original font, and they prefered a fatter version.
But then say so; don't give me political slogans about 
moving-forward.
IMO the marketers just put the non standard feature there, and 
make it their default, and when/if enough clowns use it, it becomes
the standard.    It's like pdf: excellent to caputure reprints of old
documents [by photographing], but inappropriate for net published
text which has no graphics or need for pdf.

> What would be better is to move forward in the simplest fashion,
> instead of remaining rooted in the status quo under the veil of
> simplicity.

BTW. I got a ten word reply from the old-chappie, who was told
that he needed to buy VISTA because he was having trouble
emailing; where his ten word intelligence was followed by
3K-bytes of html crap.

There IS a problem.
And as I've previously noted google has [perhaps not intentionally]
killed some newsgroups.
I was reading how because AT&T had the monopoly & the sole
authority for the telco. wiring INSIDE your house in the old days,
the initial answering-phones had to mechanically lift and replace 
the receiver.

There are potentially great problems for freedom resulting from
market control; and software having the new/unique attribute of
zero reproduction cost brings problems which aren't handled by
old proven laws.

It's like spam, I don't know what the solution is, but there IS a 
problem; which BTW gmail solves and replaces with it's own 
disadvantages.
So perhaps google has a motive to promote spam ?
Like the virus-protection companies have a motive to promote
virus ?

== Chris Glur