Re: Ada 95 for an ARM-based bare board?

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

tmoran@acm.org wrote in message news:<klia9.74$Bg4.9214321@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com>...
> > Let's suppose that everyone adds 10 lines and quotes everything before
>   Let's suppose that everyone adds 10% to what they are quoting.  Then
> the size of message N is 1.1**N * OP.

Tom you are digging yourself in deeper here in an attempt
to justify your basic error :-)

If you make the absurd assumption that the size of replies
asymptotically increases by 10%, then the total amount of
material filed increases exponentially WITHOUT quoting.
That's of course obvious but totally irrelevant.

It is true that sometimes the drivel on this newsgroup
in some threads gives the impression of increasing with
every reply, but even the CLA folks can't keep that up
for ever :-)

> > Let's suppose that everyone adds 10 lines and quotes 
> > everything before
> > So the size of messages grows only linearly
>   Right.  In that case new messages don't grow 
> > exponentially, but linearly.

Yes, but my comment was about the size of the thread.

> > But, by elementary summing of an arithmetic series, the 
> > total amount of space
>   The reader of a message doesn't see the sum, but rather 
> > the latest
> > individual message (unless he has a really strange mail 
> > reader).

Someone reading the thread will see the quadratic 
accumulation.

>   In a more perfect world, everyone would quote, say, 2 
> lines for context,
> add a concise 3 line comment, and all messages would be a 
> constant 5 lines.

That's a silly comment, especially without a smiley. Sometimes you
have to quote quite a bit, sometimes
only a little. Sometimes you can say what you are saying
briefly, sometimes it takes longer. Some of my most useful
posts are in the form of lengthy tutorials. Now that Google
has the full archives, I am extracting these into a book :-)

The underlying annoying behavior here is people using
microjunk mailers set to quote the entire message by
default (yes, I realize some other mailers besides microjunk ones can
make this too easy as well -- people
have a nasty habit of following the MJ lead :-)