Re: puzzle


In article <d8sd3h$2sp2$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Christopher Barber <cbarber@xxxxxxxx> writes:
> spinoza1111@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > Christopher Barber wrote:
>
> >>Not true. Most modern languages do support bitwise operations on integers.
> >>What languages are you thinking of that do not? True that many languages
> >>will not let you access the bit-pattern of arbitrary data structures.
> >
> > Incorrect. Only C lets you "see" the bitwise representation of an
> > integer.
>
> C, C++, C#, Java, VB all support efficient bitwise operations, including XOR,
> on integers. What language are you thinking of that doesn't support this?

The current (ISO 2002) COBOL standard includes bitwise operations, too.
So does APL. And Scheme. Fortran 95 has an ieor intrinsic, I believe.
Perl has bitwise xor. Hey, Ruby has it too.

I seem to be able to see the bitwise representation of an integer in
all of those languages, too. Apparently they're all dialects of C.

> > Using XOR, you just happen to get lucky, in the sense that XOR just
> > happens to be independent of bigendian and smallendian.
>
> It doesn't "just happen" to be independent of byte order, it is an inherent
> quality of the operation.

Indeed. Out of curiousity, Tisdale, how would endianness, or any
ordering, affect any Boolean operator?

> > But the
> > corrupting effect of this puzzle is that it will teach the tyro to keep
> > on the lookout for bitwise stunts and sooner or later, said tyro will
> > find some stunt that does depend on the order of bits.
>
> Any "stunt" involving XOR will not depend on the order of the bits.

And ditto any "bitwise" stunt, which by definition cannot depend on
the order of the bits. That's what makes it "bitwise".

There are *bit-level* operations in which the ordering of bits in
larger structures makes a difference, but they're not "bitwise".

> > But owing to corporate surveillance and its Benthamite potential, the
> > speech is silenced by posters who have to treat the theory as a set of
> > dead answers.
>
> You keep spewing this "corporate surveillance and Benthamite potential"
> mantra. What does it mean?

It's a half-assed allusion to Michel Foucault's _Discipline and
Punish_ (the title of the English translation), which elaborates a
theory of the conditioning of the subject through surveillance, based
in part on the example of Jeremy Bentham's "Panopticon" prison
design.

In brief, the "Benthamite" part of Foucault's argument goes like
this: the point of the Panopticon is that prisoners cannot tell when
they are being observed by the guards. Because they are always
potentially under surveillance, they learn to police their own
actions - and so they internalize the function of the guards,
becoming guards of themselves.

D&P is actually one of Foucault's more accessible books, and it
contains some interesting ideas. Like any other body of critical
theory, though, it's easy to claim it applies in any given situation,
and rather harder to make a convincing case for it.

> Whose speech is being silenced?

Doesn't matter. ERT's claim that someone is being silenced is vacant
and closed to refutation, because you'd have to prove a negative to
refute it. Unless and until he comes up with a real argument on the
subject, there's no point in paying any attention to it. (Even then,
of course, there may not be any point.)

(The quintessential critical-theory argument for the silencing of a
group through competing discourses is Gayatri Spivak's classic "Can
the Subaltern Speak?", either in its original form from _Oxford
Literary Review_ 9, or the longer version that appears in _Marxism
and the Interpretation of Culture_, which includes a lengthy coda
explaining Spivak's choices regarding theories of culture. But
"Subaltern" is based primarily on Jacques Derrida's deconstruction
and secondarily on the schema Freud outlines in "A Child is Being
Beaten"; in the long version of the article, Spivak explicitly
rejects Foucault's methodology for her project. Foucault, converse-
ly, was rarely interested in the *repressive* aspects of power,
focussing instead on the *compulsive* ones - so he'd be more appro-
priate for considering how people are compelled to speak than on how
they're prevented from doing so.)

--
Michael Wojcik michael.wojcik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely preferable to
the presence of those who think they've found it. -- Terry Pratchett
.

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