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Re: bug in is_numeric [message #181492 is a reply to message #181490] Sun, 19 May 2013 06:49 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
The Natural Philosoph is currently offline  The Natural Philosoph
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Registered: September 2010
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On 19/05/13 03:22, Denis McMahon wrote:
> On Sat, 18 May 2013 19:21:54 -0400, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
>
>> On 5/18/2013 5:58 PM, Denis McMahon wrote:
>>> On Sat, 18 May 2013 14:32:53 -0400, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
>>>
>>>> But no matter what the original name was - TODAY'S use is what counts.
>>>> It is a threaded discussion group, and threads exist for a reason.
>>> Technically threading is a client feature by virtue of how client
>>> software uses and displays the references and in-reply-to headers on
>>> the individual messages.
>>>
>>> As neither of those headers is mandatory in newsgroup messages, the
>>> newsgroup as such, technically, is not in and of itself threaded,
>>> rather it is a group in which threaded discussions may be posted.
>> Nope. RFC1036 defines the "References" header used to refer to a
>> previous message. It is a part of the Use net protocol.
> As I said, the header is not mandatory - I'm not discussing whether it's
> part of the protocol, it clearly is, but it is not mandatory for every
> post to have a references header[1].
>
> Nor is it mandatory for any client to pay any attention to such a header
> if present[2].
>
> [1] A "new post" (as opposed to a "follow-up" or "reply") does not
> usually have a references header, as it does not usually reference a
> prior message.
>
> [2] Although IMO it would be a pretty crap news client that didn't.
>
Drifting slightly off topic, but there is a reason, the whole concept
underlying the Internet is that it never was a set of enforced
standards: That was the way X400 /X-25 worked.
But the standards were so massive that it was extremely onerous to
comply with all of them and that made the software expensive and clunky.

Internet has always been the mininmal solution to a real world problem,
with standards being reached by mutal agreement (the RFC process) and
tested against reality at 'Interops' .

The NNTP/SMTP header files are one of those areas. You don't actually
have to set any of them. I.e. the SMTP conversation for a message
transfer is simply one where a server says 'I have a message from X to
Y' followed by the message content which may or may not include headers
at all

Anything in the headers is not the business of the transfer protocol as
such: Its the business of the user agents and the MTAS.

So the guiding philosophy of the internet has never been (much to the
chagrin of those who like the smart uniforms, the jackboots and the
polished leather) to have rules enforced by a central agency: No it is
quite simply that if you want to actually use the internet, you had
better comply with mutually agreed standards or you will simply be ignored.

Return-receipt-to: is, for example, an RFC defined part of mail
headers, but there is no requirement to send it, or to respond to it.
The RFC merely notes that if UA's want to use this, this is an agreed
format for it.

This progress by mutual agreement has resulted in the massive and rapid
development of the Internet. For one good reason. You don't have to
implement EVERYTHING in order to implement ANYTHING.

Usenet grew out of UUCP back in the 80's, UUCP itself wasn't part of
ARPAnet IIRC but simply a tool cobbled together by smart people who
wanted to send data between computers equipped with modems, One part of
this was to actually transfer files. Another part was to send mail
messages. Using the abominable source routing. And Usenet grew out of
that, as a way to propagate idle chitchat.

The paucity of the newsreader software and the bandwith avaialable led
to some early netiquette convention. Don't quote everything, phone calls
cast money, so snip. But dont snip all the content, because the
original message may long be gone, or indeed may never have arrived at
all, so make your answer succinct, and give enough context so that its
clear what you are responding to. Ditto top posting. Its not easy to
read a response before reading what is being responded to. Especially on
a Vt100 with no scrollback.

Groups already existed in order to give some base level of filtering:
Threading became a USEFUL way to organise data within a group. Remember
at this time Usenet was the nearest thing in functionality that existed
to what we call the Interweb. I.e. one post but many readers of it.
Threading was a useful way to sort through the data and select what you
wanted to read.

And in a sense that takes me back to the original thread. Which exactly
mimics the RFC process. Someone says 'hey. is this a bug?' and various
people analyse the problem, decide that its not covered adequately by
either code or documentation, and those in charge of - in this case PHP
development - make an (arbitrary?) decision that its either the way they
think it should behave, that isn't clearly explained, or maybe it ought
to behave diferrently in which case they will fix the code so that it
does. There is no enforceable standardas to what PHP is SUPPOSED to be.
It is what it is, and its there by grace and favour of the people who
created it and maintain it. They define what it is supposed to be
themselves.

And finally, noting that there is a potential grey area, in the limit
they can simply say 'behvaiour is undefined' which means 'here be
Tygers, dont use this and expect it to work in this or any later
release in a defined fashion'. Which is actually a perfectly useful
response: coders simply wont use that particular contsruction, and
plenty of alternatives exist.

Some people don't like this way of proceeding: their instinct is towards
mandated perfection. They used to write X 400/X 25 type specifications
too. With the result that an X stack was too big to fit in anything but
a mainframe, and was too expensive to be used other than by very large
companies, and was too slow to develop and got overtaken by TCP/IP and
SMTP within a few years.

You can see those people., on Usenet, still disgruntled that their way
of doing things never really worked. You can see them in politics, where
despite the manifest failure of a top down regulated communist society,
they still hanker after the order and stability, and want to have a
central authority that decides everything, no matter how much it costs.
For them there is a right way, and all other ways are wrong. Rarther
than a selection of ways, some of which work better than others, and are
faster to implement.

You can see them here, too.

--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

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