View source for User:Nahaj

{{Template:userpage}}{{NoMultiLicense}}{{Babel|en-4|c-3|perl-3|html-2|Ada-2|for-3}}<!-- sh-3 is now some language I don't speak.  I'd originally had sh-3 here to refer to the unix shell[ask me about lopts] but have removed it now that wikipedia uses it to refer to something else.-->
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Since the nickname "Nahaj" isn't that informative, and I assume you are reading this to look up who reallly authored some article or correction...

'''*** Warning...  I sometimes go months between logins ***'''
= Who am I? =

My home page [http://www.cc.utah.edu/~nahaj/] is much more likely to be updated and current than this page.

Name: John Halleck, Born in Europe, back in the early 1950's some time.

Sr. Systems' Programmer and Analyst for the University of Utah (Office of Information Technology)

Webmaster for the [http://www.utah.edu/utahlogic Utah Logic Group] webpages. *Warning* those pages require a good "tongue in cheek" tolerance. (Besides being somewhat out of date lately)

Interests:
Needlepoint, surveying, mathmatics, logics (especially [[modal logic]]s), cave rescue, computer ethics instruction, SHA, Cryptography, Division free factoring, Block Given's Rotations, Orthogonalization methods, Making Arrowheads, "Primitive" rope making, Lava fields, historical "different" bicycle designs that haven't survived, Non-standard arithmetic algorithms, minimal non-blocking switch networks, and other topics in common with them.

I am the author of an open source, government validated, SHA-1 implementation. (It was the *only* open source validated SHA-1 from September 2000 until July 2005, when OpenSSL was validated) It was the third implimentation to pass the full validation suite for bit strings (out of 15 or so now), instead of just the tests for byte oriented data.

= What am I doing here? =

Tentitive Wikipedia "to do" list:
<ul>
<li><s>Page for Irish logician [[Carew Meredith|C. A. Meredith]]</s>(Started stub)</li>
<li><s>Meredith's [[Condensed Detachment]] (particularly in light of both the historical significance,and the recent new work referencing it) [Google "Condensed Detachment Meredith" for a long list of current applicibility.] (Started stub)</s> Need to update to a formal or at least coherent discription. Need to add text for why this is of any interest to begin with.</li>
<li><s>Page for Logician [[Hugh MacColl]] (C.I.Lewis credits the ideas of his early Modal Logic papers to MacColl) <i>(started stub)</i></s>, which some anonymous editor has made major improvements in.  Thanks anonymous.</li>
<li>Page for H. B. Smith (Early logician, his is an example an example of a (very historical) modal logic that doesn't admit to "possible world" semantics</li>
<li>Fix Modal logic history to reflect the context that Lewis' ideas came from.</li>
<li><s>The "Beth Salay" effect (A paradoxical result on "independent" verification in an environment of search engines). Hmm... maybe not worth it... wikipedia already has an entry for the [[bathtub hoax]], which deals with an earlier form of the topic.  (The fact that it can now get "reprinted" around the world almost immediately, and then attempts to verify it see those apparently "independent" pages, is just a change in technology.)</s>
<b>Update:</b> (: Beth Salay herself started a "Beth Salay Effect" page here.  While it was eventually removed for reasons that include it being original research (and being more or less content free), it is humorous to me that one wikipedia editor argued there was <b>no</b> evidence of the hoax, and that claiming it a hoax was maligning some obscure real person that really did all those things.  It is a fine hoax indeeded that is so well done that people that haven't researched it well enough leap to its defense against the charge that it is a hoax :) And I find humor in the fact that the databases that were hoaxed started removing the hoaxed entries as soon as the (later deleted) page on the hoax appeared in wikipedia.</li>
<li>Fleshing out the Program Verificaton stub with the classic "X by repeated Y" algorithm, or maybe "addition by successive incrementation/decrementation" ??? Hum...  There doesn't seem to be a stub any more ???</li>
<li>An example set of [[Balanced Ternary]] algorithms</li>
<li>fillin of information on "free piston" [[Stirling Cycle]] engines</li>
<li>Create section on diaphram [[Stirling Cycle]] engines</li>
<li>Notes and corrections on [[Cryptology]] section on implementation, testing, and validation of cryptographic algorithms</li>
<li><s>Make templates for the shell as a programming language.  The other computer languages I regularly use already have templates.</s>  The name I used ("sh") apparently refers to some human language (which, admittedly should have the stronger right to it).  So at a bare minimum it will have to be called something else...</li>
<li><s>Make a wikipedian logicians category (Looks like someone beat me to it.  Thanks!)</s></li>
</ul>

= Categorized stuff =

== Programming ==

Why do I only see "gnu" style option processing in only a very few languages (Usually C and perl) ?  I personally ship shell scripts (sh for those that care) that have [syntaticly] type checked options, plus the standard --help, --version, etc..  Could it be that the other languages are that much harder to work in then the shell? :)

== Google and Wikipedia ==

It is bizarre to me that anything with a long publication history in the real world, but not appearing significantly in Google, really doesn't appear here either.  I look at the discussions of whether pages should be deleted, and they are full of "I google'd this or I google'd that."  But they don't have "I checked a reference book", or "I checked the library", or even "I looked through a book on the topic.".

I've seen cases of bogus items being intentionally put onto web pages, crafted in a manner that they are intended to be stolen, that now return LONG lists in Google that appear to verify them. (Many apparently independent sites, in many different countries, and in many languages!) [The network equivalent of the [[bathtub hoax]].] While items of significant historical interest [particularly in the development of technologies], aren't generally written about by current workers [who, understandably, write about their cutting edge work instead].

It is also amusing to me to see how many pages on "obscure" regions and/or history are obviously written by someone with an ax to grind on some local issue.  (Which I'm only aware of because I've dealt with students on both sides.) Since the other side is not well represented on the web, it being one half of a debate is invisible to folk Googling the topic. (Since the first side with a significant web presence will be the "majority" view from a Google search, the other side can safely be accused of being a fringe group, even if the local opinion is split 50/50.)

I wonder what the implications are for future historical analysis?

Update:  Hmm...  I just witnessed a long debate of "I googeled this", "I goodeled that", etc. without a single person checking a reference book on the topic.  (Although, in my opinion, the debate would have been completely settled by just looking it up in a standard text.)  I wonder how common those are.

== Templates ==

I consider myself an advanced writer of shell scripts, but there does not seem to be a template for it that I can find.
I had guessed it would eventually be called "sh".   But, lo, that became the tag for some specific human language.  I guessed wrong, I lose.  Not a problem.
* <b>HOWEVER</b>, if you look at the history of my page, wikipedia uses the new template (which didn't even exist at the times the history claims to be covering) making them look as if I had a certain language tag at the time, although anyone that saw my page at the time would not have seen any such tag.  In my personal opinion, this is a programming bug...

I also note that templates are generally marking existance of an attribute, but not the non-existance of an attribute.   (I.E. I don't see templates that would say, for example, "This user is certifiedably <b>not</b> a Bavarian Separatist", although one that said "This user <b>is</b> a Bavarian Separatist" might appear someday if the right political fights were around.)

== Logic ==

I maintain an index of [http://www.cc.utah.edu/~nahaj/logic/structures/systems/index.html Modal Logics] that <i>tries</i> to at least document the current mess of names of Modal Logic Systems, and a few of the popular ones.  I think the current mess on the names of the Modal Logic Axioms is generally so bad that no order can really be made from it.

[[Category:Wikipedian logicians|Nahaj]]