gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith) (01/23/86)
In a recent counter-flame, Tim Snyder complained about Bob Silverman's
complaint about David Hough's submission of a problem filled with computerese
gibber and concering floating point operations in C (or Pascal) on various
systems. Tim announced that many people believe that such problems
are in fact mathematical. Unfortunatly, these people are wrong. I
suspect a lot of us would support the efforts of Bob Silverman or anyone else tokeep such submissions *off* of net.math, especially when the person posting
seems to be well-supplied with places to post. If the "people who post" don't
know or don't care what mathematics is, what is wrong with telling them so,
instead of "letting them decide". The world of mathematics is a massive
one, and for just that reason we might resonably want to keep it clear of
other massive worlds such as computer science.
Gene W. Smithmatt@oddjob.UUCP (Matt Crawford) (01/24/86)
I would have more sympathy for your crusade to uphold the pruity of net.math if one of the original crusaders hadn't posted some relative idiocy on net.physics a short while back. Cast not the first stone ... _____________________________________________________ Matt University crawford@anl-mcs.arpa Crawford of Chicago ihnp4!oddjob!matt
tim@fisher.UUCP (Tim Snyder) (01/27/86)
> .... Tim announced that many people believe that such problems > are in fact mathematical. Unfortunatly, these people are wrong. I > suspect a lot of us would support the efforts of Bob Silverman or anyone else tokeep such submissions *off* of net.math, especially when the person posting > seems to be well-supplied with places to post. If the "people who post" don't > know or don't care what mathematics is, what is wrong with telling them so, > instead of "letting them decide"... > > Gene W. Smith Gene: As I mentioned before, we have more than one definition of what mathematics is. Moreover, if ANY article is posted by somebody to net.math since they believe it is mathematical in nature, one of two things can happen: (1) the other net.math subscribers will find it either non-mathematical or uninteresting and the topic will die, leaving the "net.police" happy and not wasting their time; or (2) net.math subscribers will find it to be worthwhile and will respond appropriately. In this latter case, if one becomes upset with the given topic, he can use the "n" or "u" (unsubscribe) keys. For those who believe this "meta-discussion" is not mathematical, forgive the posting. I deem it necessary to retain the integrity of the net. Let us allow people the freedom of discussing mathematics without fear of being blasted by others. Without this, the entire purpose of the net is destroyed, no? ...in the eye of the beholder... Tim Snyder