User talk:Fubar Obfusco/Archive 2002-2004

Hello there, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you need any questions answered about the project then check out Help or drop me a line. BTW nice work on the squid article. Cheers! --maveric149

Thanks for edit of Nazism. I liked the comment about plural nouns!  It's that public school education..... Dobbs 02:36 Oct 30, 2002 (UTC)

I feel your deletion of my type checking explanation was a bit extreme. The section specifically dealt with how python does type checking, and provided a great comparison to another language. user_Talk:hfastedge

&#26627&#32933&#27841&#28151 (horse+dung+situation+confuse) - &#35918&#30505

it takes a lot more justification to delete something than add. what i've added is not garbage that you can just label as cleaning up. re python.

its time for you to respond at my talk page. the conversation should stay in one area, there. i replied minutes after you did, which was 10 days ago.

responded at python discuss now, just like you wanted. --user_Talk:hfastedge

Thanks for cleaning up phreaking. It was unnerving to see two parts of the article contradict each other. Paullusmagnus 22:24, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

-

Hi,

instead of blanking articles like clogging, please list them on Votes for deletion. This ensures that they don't linger in the database for months without being detected. Thanks.&mdash;Eloquence 07:44, Aug 7, 2003 (UTC)

Over at VfD User:Mintguy mentioned that you had grown frustrated by some controversial edits to some computing articles. In response, there's now a new WikiProject Computing and WikiProject Computing/Controversial articles to help form consensus on computing topics. Please consider watching the talk pages there and using them to let others know of issues you believe merit peer review. JamesDay 15:49, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

On the Interrupt page, you changed my Computer Science to Computer Engineering. As a computer engineering major (which means this hits close to home), I say ketchup, catsup (*GRIN*)

Seriously, you learn about interrupts in both. More so in architecture, but also in any operating systems class as well. Regardless, your edit is fine by me. --Raul654 04:51, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Your commentary on Talk:Datatype was enlightening and insightful, and I was just about to make the same points myself, so I implemented some of your ideas in the article. Kudos to you, I say! :) Dysprosia 22:16, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I wish to remind you that personal attacks such as the one you made against User:Mr-Natural-Health, on the page Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Theresa knott vs. Mr-Natural-Health, calling him a stupid pig, using the language, "it is against my policy to attempt to teach a pig to sing. " is contrary to well-established Wikipedia policy. Fred Bauder 12:09, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)

Wikicode
Hi! I noticed you've contributed to computer science articles. I've started a project on WikiProject Computing to propose a standard pseudocode for use throughout the Wikipedia that I call wikicode. Please join the WikiProject (no commitment required) and please participate in the discussion about wikicode. Thanks!

Deco 16:52, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Almost everywhere
I am no mathematician, but it would be useful to see in this article what distinction is being made between "almost everywhere" and "everywhere". Does the latter apply to neighborhoods rather than elements? --FOo 20:47, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * The only way I see to construe the first sentence of this article as failing to answer this question is to think that "null set" means "empty set", which is how it is defined in many books, so the sentence is confusing. I've corrected it. Michael Hardy 00:44, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Almost everywhere
I am no mathematician, but it would be useful to see in this article what distinction is being made between "almost everywhere" and "everywhere". Does the latter apply to neighborhoods rather than elements? --FOo 20:47, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * The only way I see to construe the first sentence of this article as failing to answer this question is to think that "null set" means "empty set", which is how it is defined in many books, so the sentence is confusing. I've corrected it. Michael Hardy 00:44, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Stop!
Kindly refrain for 48 hours from any further action concerning either Marcel Cerdan or Sendmail or their talk pages. Due temporarily inconsistent data, which can be expected to resolve within that time frame, you have no idea what you are messing with. (Your edit may be harmless, but don't tempt fate. The situation is likely to be over your head without an hour's study, but if you're really that interested i'll steer you there.)  Thanks for your concern, and TIA, --Jerzy(t) 20:01, 2004 Aug 18 (UTC)


 * That was not very coherent. Since Talk:Sendmail is no longer an incorrect redirect, I'm not going to do anything now anyhow. --FOo 22:18, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[The following was written while you were entering your response; please ask a question if it doesn't help.] Thank you for your patient restraint. The server's background activity following up on the deletion, move, and undeletion has completed, and those operations are now fully effective, so i finished the job, including cleaning up Talk:Sendmail. Some of what you'll see on those pages will make more sense in light of How to fix cut and paste moves (even tho that title does not describe this situation). I'll offer three tips (not so much for the future avoidance of similar situations -- since the conditions that led you into it are so rare -- as for their value in a large number of more frequent situations). In any case, all my concerns about the possibility of irreverisible damage are over, and please feel at home with those pages if your interest continues. --Jerzy(t) 23:01, 2004 Aug 18 (UTC)
 * 1) The move tool precisely formats the summary entry for the "edit" of a page into a move-tool-generated redirect, and that format should make you ask yourself, of a "nonsense" redir, "what kind of move would have led to this redir? (Or "why would someone forge such a link and summary?"; if you came up with a theory that you think that applied to, i doubt your response was approriate to that situation.)
 * 2) Blanking a page is almost never an appropriate edit, to the extent that i had never seen a blank page in nearly 7500 edits, and had to stop and think about whether i was seeing that or some kind of malfunction. Believing that being blank would a better state for a page is probably  a good rule of thumb for when it should be added to VfD. A more sensible response to a nonsense link would be a counter-move (which, if it succeeds, proves that you've put things back to where they were before the "nonsense" started.
 * 3) Editing a page consisting of a (non-forged) move-tool-generated redir is always destructive, and thus should be done only when you are sure what's going on.  (Probably by asking.) Once you do so, the move can never be truly reversed (except at the cost of abusing a developer), so in practice repair would have to be by essentially the repair procedure for a cut-and-paste move.

Variable
Re: your question on my talk page. My only edit to this page was a disambiguation for the link to 'square'. I'm afraid I'm not interested in a debate on the actual content of the article. Best, mat_x 08:08, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Creationism/What_is_wrong_with_the_lead_section
You may want to state your case here--FeloniousMonk 17:51, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikicode: Thanks
I just wanted to thank you for updating the overly bold Wikicode page. While I hope it will gain acceptance in time, I certainly don't want to trick people into thinking it's an established standard, especially when there are still so many objections. Thanks for this edit. Deco 05:03, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You removed the "minimal lisp" section from the lisp page but you did not remove the references to the minimal lisp section on that page. Now they dangle.

(see minimal lisp below)

Kstailey 02:56, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Plural of virus
Hi. I see you removed a paragraph from the computer virus article about the plural of viruses. From you edit summary, I understand that you think that the viri and virii forms do not need to be mentioned, since they are not given as correct plurals in English dictionaries.

In my opinion, these forms deserve mentioning just because they are used widely (a google search of 'virii' gives a few hundred thousand hits) and because some people think that they are correct. There already is a discussion about this issue on plural of virus, so I was thinking about just providing a pointer to that article. Something like this:


 * The plural of virus has three forms in use in English language: viruses, viri, and virii. Some people think that viri and virii are not correct plurals (see plural of virus for a discussion).

I'd like to hear if you think that that's an acceptable version as a NPOV middle way. Sietse 20:06, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is not for the publication of "original research" or the idiosyncratic opinions of its editors. In English, including in computer jargon as used by subject-matter experts (e.g. security researchers and antivirus companies) the plural of "virus" is "viruses".


 * I'm sorry - that statement is not true. - in 1979 the form viri was already in use in academic environments. For example at Gene Spafford's alma mater State University of New York at Brockport, I was there.  Please start reading the discussion pages on an article before arbitrarily making them conform to your view of the universe.  For example, if there is a controversy about a particular subject, the encyclopedic way to treat it is to mention the controversy and publish an article about that subject as well.  As was done with Plural of virus Jjk


 * There is no "NPOV" matter at issue; Wikipedia does not have to "balance" between the facts and whimsy.User:Fubar Obfusco


 * I'm glad you are interested in the facts rather than whimsy. On english pages searched by Google, the term "computer viruses" shows up 1,240,000 times, computer virii shows up 111,000 times and computer viri shows up 30,000 times.So the ratio is about 10 to 1 for viruses vs the alternate forms. Clearly viri(i) has entered the lexicon.  The numbers don't lie.  Please read on below, (next section), and read the discussion pages at plural of virus and the article Plural of Virus. Jjk


 * A few people's whimsical usage simply doesn't enter into it, any more than if I decided that "some people" call Communists "Shits of Stalin" and decided to add this "fact" to the page on communism. --FOo 21:40, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

More Plural of Virus, and prescriptivism
Please keep in mind that the rules for making plurals and conjugating verbs were made up out of whole cloth to explain how already existing lanuages work. They do not exist to to "rule" languages. Languages are dynamic. In order for Wikipedia to become a leader and authority as a reference it has to lead, not follow.

Example, The OED just added 'bootyliscous' to its online dictionary. Prescriptivists would insist that it is not a word, but words are... 'whatever people are using, whether they follow the static rules or not'. When the words people are using don't follow the rules then it is the rules which are incorrect and out of date, not the word. (Note - yes it is understood that not all made up words enter a given language. There has to be some minimum amount of large scale adoption, but how much adoption it takes is a grey area.)

The reference to viri has been in this page for quite some time, albiet in a non-NPOV form. Please don't remove it without some discussion first so we can reach a consensus. The place for that discussion is on the discussion page for that article so that all who are interested in the page can follow the history and reasons for the changes on the page. Also please see Plural of virus for discussion on the form. Jjk 22:47, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Please use logic rather than insults to promote your arguments. Saying "This is the English Wikipedia, not the Script-Kiddie k3wl d00d Slang Wikipedi" is clearly meant to be insulting and has no place in the Wikipedia

Also trying to delimit any other opinion except your own as 'Whimsy' simply highlights how vested you are in your own POV. Cut it out. It has no place in the Wikipedia.


 * The proper place for this discussion is the talk page. I've responded there. --FOo 23:41, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

please respond
Please respond to my comment on the talk page for Real Person Fiction - I would like to know more about what you had in mind when you added it to pages needing attention, and I wouldn't mind having a civil discussion about it with you. Unless you'd rather have it here, I'm perfectly content with that. --AmethystAngel 01:57, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:


 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Talk:Spam (e-mail)
What the devil are you doing removing comments from article Talk: pages? This is something you should never, ever do (unless it's vandalism of some kind). I will fix this one - have you done this anywhere else? If so, please restore them immediately. Noel (talk) 12:53, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Excuse me? Please show me in Wikipedia policy where I'm not supposed to remove my own comments when they become irrelevant. Thanks. --FOo 13:23, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

They weren't "irrelevant" - they provided the whole justification for the rename. Proof of which was that I didn't understand why "Email spam" was a consistent name until I read the deleted comment. As to policy, it's at Talk_page under "Archive rather than delete". Only in this case there was no need to archive anything, the page was not long enough to warrant it. Noel (talk) 13:49, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Sorry I got a little cranky there. I was completely lost trying to figure out what was going on, without the deleted stuff from the Talk: page. Noel (talk) 20:02, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Unverified image
Thanks for uploading the image I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use if you release it under the GFDL, or  if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know where you got the image and I'll tag it for you. Thanks, Kbh3rd 01:19, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Image:Karnaugh map.png