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For those who follow this rather silly story: Rathergate.com
Update, of sorts. I do not really care if this story is better for the Right wing or Left wing or whatever. These are just documents, anyone can look at them and get an opinion. Can also read what other people have to say and decide what sounds reasonable and what does not.
This, I think, is not so much a political issue (not for me, anyway) as it is a matter of journalistic integrity and ethic. My opinion about the latter (JI&E, that is) has been steadily going down for more than a decade now. I wish the trend had gone the other way. Fortunately, with the Internet, there are alternative sources of information, but the conventional media are still much more dominant, especially in certain areas such as local news. I hope things will improve in the near future, though.
Update. For those of you who, like some in the threads below, would rather take the whole thing seriously, here is an entry from the always useful, if not always unbiased, wikipedia.
Update. The Paper Trail: A Comparison of Documents from the Washington Post print edition. Did they go right wing too?
Update, of sorts. I do not really care if this story is better for the Right wing or Left wing or whatever. These are just documents, anyone can look at them and get an opinion. Can also read what other people have to say and decide what sounds reasonable and what does not.
This, I think, is not so much a political issue (not for me, anyway) as it is a matter of journalistic integrity and ethic. My opinion about the latter (JI&E, that is) has been steadily going down for more than a decade now. I wish the trend had gone the other way. Fortunately, with the Internet, there are alternative sources of information, but the conventional media are still much more dominant, especially in certain areas such as local news. I hope things will improve in the near future, though.
Update. For those of you who, like some in the threads below, would rather take the whole thing seriously, here is an entry from the always useful, if not always unbiased, wikipedia.
Update. The Paper Trail: A Comparison of Documents from the Washington Post print edition. Did they go right wing too?
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I tried to follow the usual left-wing blogs as well, but they are not particularly useful on this issue. A rather trivial issue, IMHO, with respect to the presidential elections. But an important and, unfortunately, telling issue with respect to the press corps and modern journalistic ethic.
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a. The "unavailability" arguments appear to have been debunked (yes, there exist one or two typewriter with the right combination of fonts, keys, availability at the right time...)
b. the "it looks like MS word" argument is reasonably silly - given that they guessed the font right, of course the documents will look similar.
c. the rest of it is "he said, she said"....
I am somewhat amused by the whole story, and by the self-importance that right wing blogs ascribe to themselves....
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a1. Well, those memos can be reproduced exactly with Word. You claim that 32 years ago there existed typewriters that just by chance were capable of producing documents that are point-by-point same as what Word would have created? Not just same kind of font, raised superscript, auto-centering of text, same spacing of tabs and between lines - exactly the same?
a2. Do those models have NAMES? Or the debunking does not need those pesky details?
a3. If they did exist, what was the price of those advanced models?
a4. Were they hard to operate?
a5. Do you really belive that the person, who those memos are attributed to - would have an acess to one of those super-complicated, advanced, pricely models?
Here an expert opinion
Imagine if you told me that Bush is lying that he flew to Iraq for Thanksgiving, because just two hours before that he was seen in Fargo, ND. Would you be satisfied with a response, that there exist a plane that could have delivered him to Bagdad in two hours? And here I can even NAME the model - Blackbird!
b. here is something interesting (they are not just "similar"
c. No, the rest is just the opposite: on of the people who were supposedely discussing Bush's behaviour was a year and a half retired at the time, when those memos were claimed to had been written. No wtinesses, no experts who can confirm the authenticity. Rather would not even produce the originals! He does not seek the review! It is not "he said, she said".
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Cema, this is precisely why when posting a link to the right-wing side of the story, it is appreciated that you post one where normal people debunk their idiocy.
Arbat, if you can only be bothered to read LGF for your sources of information on this matter, I cannot help it.
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Look at the documents. You are a professor, after all; can't you catch your students cheating?
Dead code optimization
Re: Dead code optimization
Re: Dead code optimization
Re: Dead code optimization
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By the way - here is an opinion of an expert: JOSEPH M. NEWCOMER, PH.D., and I mean - expert. Not some guiy, who used to repair typewriters.
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Re: Dead code optimization
Don't you see an oxymoron here?
Re: Dead code optimization
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anyways, I would presume that this guy is a better expert, then Dan Rather's second expert, whose qualification is "used to repair typewriters".
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Thanks for the link. Interesting read. In my personal opinion showing that the document looks like one created in MS Word is not sufficient. One also has to show that there was no other way to create it. That part of the Joseph M. Newcomer's, Ph.D. discussion was more important.
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Re: Dead code optimization
And, by the way, "dead code optimization" per se is not an oxymoron, it is an example of a useless activity, cf. watching infotainment that does not, or should not, affect one's behavior.
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In any case - we have yet to hear about some typewriter that was equipped with a font that exactly matched today's Times Roman.
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There is a relevant wikipedia entry now, I will list it in the main posting.
Re: Dead code optimization
Dead code optimization may not be that useless if you are graded for that, or more seriously, if the dead code is not removed by later compiling stages. Now, there is a thin line here between joking and, er, education, which affects how serious one wants to be in the thread. For example, I was about to talk about the meaning of the word "oxymoron" but then realized this is rather out of point... :-)
Re: Dead code optimization
You got it.
Speaking of education, the dead code is never executed. If it is not removed outright, the variations in its size only cause subtle changes in the I-cache behavior and it is impossible to tell by static analysis if such changes will improve or degrade performance; in any case ever so slightly.
Beating the dead horse