Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 05:07:03 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey) Cc: mike@smith.net.au, joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: INB question Message-ID: <199709190507.WAA10450@usr05.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <19970919114014.62916@lemis.com> from "Greg Lehey" at Sep 19, 97 11:40:14 am
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> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. > Without going into detail which the original discussion didn't > warrant, I believe it's correct to say "tending to be 0xff". This is > a statistical statement for those who don't have a logic analyzer > probe coming out of their left forefinger. I wanted to get a guaranteed detection of something I knew would have certain buts 1 and certain bits 0 were the hardware present. The idea of "it's black magic; don't concern yourself with it" is intensely irksome and not very useful to boot. I believe it *did* merit the level of detail which the discussion got into, since that is the only way I could have obtained a cannonically correct answer to my question -- a question that required more than a "somtimes, maybe" answer. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to look this up offline, since I no longer have access to some of the documentation I'd have used to obtain this information (my MindShare book that would have told me is on order and has been on order for practically forever). In any case, now I know, and spin-doctoring the answer to make it "correct" in light of the already contradictory proofs serves no useful purpose. You are entitled to one spin-doctor to clarify the question which you thought you were answering, and that is granted you only so you can point out that it wasn't the answer to the question being asked (I personally do this on occasion, mostly to make sure that it's not a question of "who they believe" as to whether or not they get the right answer). Persistant spin-doctoring is not going to make the question answered any closer to the question origianlly asked, and serves no useful purpose, since it can't make you any more "right" about the *other* question you *did* answer. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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