asciilifeform: (not even speaking of cross-platform portability, but the fact of any two compilers on same platform eating up the same input and producing comparable, valid output)
asciilifeform: even the standard aspects have questionable solidity of specification.
asciilifeform: esp. since the 'jewel of simplicity' aspect tends to dissipate very, very quickly in unskilled hands trying to implement a modicum of actual optimization
asciilifeform: what is difficult is to implement one that is worth -using-
asciilifeform: there are approximately as many of them as there are folks with comp sci. degrees.
asciilifeform: but in general 'simple lisps' are not hard to implement
asciilifeform: pete_dushenski: the basic concept is due to hanbot's 'shall be delivered'
asciilifeform: if anyone recalls, iirc it was in a mircea_popescu article that we find observation that 'to this day the holes in the mains socket have to remain small'
asciilifeform: while people, to the extent that they cannot be connected with a key, are just bags of meat.
asciilifeform: that - to a historian, or whatever other kind of remote third party - it is keys that 'are people'
asciilifeform: since mircea_popescu is asleep, i shall fill in for him, and point out that: not signed - not vouched for by anyone in wot - may as well be a piece of litter on the street.
asciilifeform: (if he had, we wouldn't necessarily know, the greenwald gang mutilated all beyond recognition)
asciilifeform: thing is, plenty of folks who have never killed so much as a rat, happily howl for blood of this or that enemy
asciilifeform: just as an exterminator probably has some idea of what the ant hill experiences
asciilifeform: pete_dushenski: it is difficult to imagine that cia employee would have no concept of what usg dishes out to the rest of the planet (as well as own subjects)
asciilifeform: but could so much as admit that 'though i am a german, a good nazi is a dead one'
asciilifeform: not as if he were personally asked to work the guillotine
asciilifeform: by failing to immediately reply with exactly this.
asciilifeform: in a way he is buying into the inquisitor's proposition.
asciilifeform: pete_dushenski: at any rate, snowden deserves his share of being pissed on for his failure to say 'yes, if you are a servant of usg i want to see your miserable existence end on headsoff.com'
asciilifeform: the american puritans invented a term of art for this, 'love the sinner and hate the sin'
asciilifeform: ready to hug him, kiss him good-night before lighting the pyre, so long as he repents
asciilifeform: pete_dushenski: it is the 'sympathy' of torquemada for the heretic
asciilifeform: it isn't, as far as i can tell, a pretense
asciilifeform: pete_dushenski: the interesting, and perhaps nonobvious - tidbit - is that these folks -actually- perceive 'american law' and 'god's law' (whether or not they worship any gods) to be one and the same
