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printf("goodbye, Dennis");

economist.com

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Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");

#51

Post by jfb »

pradocchia wrote: post #48
jfb wrote: post #24

People who don't regularly read The Economist probably ought to. It wears its biases on its sleeve, and is the only place in the English language press to find quality, in-depth coverage of parts of the world other than the Lower East Side and the Isle of Dogs.

Let's not forget their stalwart support of war with Iraq in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion. Well-written obits and cultural pieces are one thing. Propaganda to turn the minds of Anglo-American movers and shakers is quite another.

Absolutely. And they never cloaked it in faux-objective reportage of the sort that Judith Miller and her ilk rammed down the throats of American newspaper readers under the guise of "just the facts, ma'am" style journalism.

The Economist has repudiated its support for the war; has the Times repudiated theirs?

Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");

#52

Post by mc32 »

ansy wrote: post #47
InclinedPlane wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being that there is a metric pants-load of evidence of the free market system producing better results in terms of individual wealth, individual liberty, life expectancy, and quality of life than other systems. You are basically saying that both the journal Nature and Astrology Today both have a heavy degree of dogmatism (one in the scientific method, the other in superstition) and that puts them on eq…

Good journalism in my book attempts to report the truth objectively no matter the subject. By-lines are an important part of that. It puts the author out there so his or her biases and conflicts of interests are not protected. The Economists shields its authors from scrutiny and lends its credibility to who knows who. How do I know if the writer of an article criticizing one industry doesn't have interests in its riv…

I agree with JFB here. It's impossible to be completely objective. There is bias in everything --so it's a fool's errand to try and think one can achieve that.

As many have stated, they have their biases, but they don't hide them. I have the utmost respect for them. They don't shy away form their mistakes and readily admit to them, unlike others who try to explain their mistakes away.

Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");

#53

Post by uiy887 »

ansy wrote: post #47
InclinedPlane wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being that there is a metric pants-load of evidence of the free market system producing better results in terms of individual wealth, individual liberty, life expectancy, and quality of life than other systems. You are basically saying that both the journal Nature and Astrology Today both have a heavy degree of dogmatism (one in the scientific method, the other in superstition) and that puts them on eq…

Good journalism in my book attempts to report the truth objectively no matter the subject. By-lines are an important part of that. It puts the author out there so his or her biases and conflicts of interests are not protected. The Economists shields its authors from scrutiny and lends its credibility to who knows who. How do I know if the writer of an article criticizing one industry doesn't have interests in its riv…

This is just completely absurd and just shows complete ignorance of economics. Among economists (yes, I am one), there are no longer debates about free markets. Krugman and DeLong, both heavy and prominent Democratic supporters, heavily support free trade. Krugman, for instance, "likened the opposition against free trade and globalization to the opposition against evolution via natural selection." [1] The current Administration's economic policy team are all free market advocates. Even Obama calls himself a "fierce" free market advocate. [2] I really can't find any economist who doesn't advocate free markets.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman

[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...

Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");

#54

Post by sometimes »

Is it wrong to wonder about Dennis' personal life? Did he marry, have kids, take a lover? Like to garden, travel, read? He is such an important and influential figure in the history of computing, but it feels like we know little about him beyond his professional accomplishments.

Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");

#55

Post by crag »

luckydude wrote: post #41

As an old dude, been around since uucp was the only way we talked to each other, was on the arpa net when we had the 11th IMP that connected people in real time, I really can't honor Dennis enough. He was the real deal, very quiet, very passionate about what he did, he wrote, both in code and in papers, in a terse way that just got to the point. If you have not gotten copies of the Bell Labs Technical Journals that h…

I could not agree more. I remember reading about dmr and Bell labs back in the Byte days; when Microsoft and Apple were radical and the tech world revolved around IBM.

I can't stress enough how fundamental this man, his work and Bell Labs was to our industry. These guys, they created the foundation that much of what have today is built on.

Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");

#56

Post by crag »

shn wrote: post #45
ced wrote: post #35

I'm curious about what a world without Mr. Ritchie would look like. What were the popular alternatives to C and Unix in 1970?

We would all be living in Windows (DOS?) hell. :) Early in my career I was lucky to use Unix System V. I found those voluminous unix manuals so natural. I could find anything came to my mind less than a minute. Unix system was so coherent, so intuitive. I still enjoy unix prompt, shell to this day. His book "The C Programming Language" has been the best language book I have ever read. So succinct, but so rewarding fo…

Actually I'm not so sure about that. There was much debate at the time (when Windows 3.11 was everywhere) whether it was a subset of UNIX.

At the very least, it was inspired by UNIX.

Where would we be? Probably all running VMS (which by the way runs on PC's). Or maybe WangVS or something owned by CA now.

//edited for typos

Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");

#57

Post by crag »

orblivion wrote: post #49
shn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would all be living in Windows (DOS?) hell. :) Early in my career I was lucky to use Unix System V. I found those voluminous unix manuals so natural. I could find anything came to my mind less than a minute. Unix system was so coherent, so intuitive. I still enjoy unix prompt, shell to this day. His book "The C Programming Language" has been the best language book I have ever read. So succinct, but so rewarding fo…

> We would all be living in Windows (DOS?) hell. :) Would they program Windows in Pascal?

When I went to school, they taught using Pascal. Then you moved to C. Now I think it's just Java?

Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");

#58

Post by nobody31415 »

bodyfour wrote: post #40
ansy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the Economist's lack of by-lines. Also, it has more of a dogmatic free market ideology than a bias [1]. Whether you agree with that ideology or not, I think it is bad journalism. The Economist basically puts itself on the same level of China's People's Daily nationalist newspaper. Not matter how good the writing might be, it is just propaganda of a different sort. [1] http://www.economist.com/help/abo…

I can't argue that their ideological bent is pretty strong (and not one I altogether share, really) but the financial and international reporting is consistently superb. Even though I disagree with them often, I always learn something in the process.

it's not like they hide their ideology though - the paper is called the economist!

Oddly enough they and The Telegraph (the most conservative UK daily) were the only places with decent science reporting, which is an interesting difference with 'conservative' in the USA

Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");

#59

Post by davidw »

bodyfour wrote: post #38
awflick wrote: post #3

Its a bit sad but the obituary is often the best article in the economist. In this case it was a very fitting tribute to a tech hero.

Based on the tone of the article I guess it was destined to be this weeks obituary, but Qaddafi died just before they went to press. So unfortunately it looks like dmr's obit is only online, unless they run it next week.

Yep, Quaddafi got the obit in the Android app, at least.

Re: printf("goodbye, Dennis");

#60

Post by JDShu »

uiy887 wrote: post #53
ansy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good journalism in my book attempts to report the truth objectively no matter the subject. By-lines are an important part of that. It puts the author out there so his or her biases and conflicts of interests are not protected. The Economists shields its authors from scrutiny and lends its credibility to who knows who. How do I know if the writer of an article criticizing one industry doesn't have interests in its riv…

This is just completely absurd and just shows complete ignorance of economics. Among economists (yes, I am one), there are no longer debates about free markets. Krugman and DeLong, both heavy and prominent Democratic supporters, heavily support free trade. Krugman, for instance, "likened the opposition against free trade and globalization to the opposition against evolution via natural selection." [1] The current Adm…

There is a difference between the free market dogmatism displayed in the Economist, and the simple idea that the free market works better than planned economies. And yes, free markets fail, this is a staple idea in economics.

That said, i agree with others that I don't think the biases in the Economist are a problem. They make their opinions very obvious.

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