On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 19:55:10 +0100 Anthony W. Youngman wrote: > In message <[🔎] 20100424232537.8e656ac4.frx@firenze.linux.it>, Francesco > Poli <frx@firenze.linux.it> writes > > Walter - Would you like to have an apple, a pear, or an orange? > > Carl - I would prefer having a chocolate cake! > > Walter - You can have the chocolate cake, as well, but which fruit > > would you prefer among apples, pears, and oranges? > > Carl - An apple, please. > > > >The fact the Carl prefers cakes over fruits does *not* mean that there > >is *no* fruit which he prefers (over other fruits)... > > > Mmmmm > > You do know, of course, that the W in my sig stands for Walter? :-) I didn't know, at all! :-) I just picked two random names, no joke intended... > > Let's say it's Carl asking the question, this Walter's (true) answer, > actually, would be "none, thanks, fruit makes me sick" :-) > > So you are going from the specific (you have a favourite fruit) to the > general (everyone has a favourite fruit), and getting it wrong. Sorry. I am *not* talking about a favorite fruit, but about a fruit that you prefer over the others. Preferring it does *not* necessarily imply that you like it: you may just dislike it *less* than the others! While conceiving the example, I have been shortly tempted to use something cruder: such as a choice among death penalty methods (like in "you'll be executed: do you prefer hanging, firing squad, or electric chair?"). This would have probably been a bad taste example, but, maybe, it would have made it clearer that you do not necessarily like any of the choices; you just have to choose, and your choice is, by definition, your preferred one. Coming back to the fruit example: the fact is, there *must* be a fruit that you prefer, among the above mentioned three. If all of them are equally desirable or equally distasteful for you, then they are all equally preferred (since the maximum of a set of identical numbers is just that number). [...] > My wife's just interrupted me, and I think she's accidentally given me > the "correct" answer. "There is no such thing as 'source' for an > artistic work". Programming is maths, and as such there is a direct > correlation between the version we can understand, and the version the > computer can understand - they are "equivalent but different". There's > no such similarity for art. :-) I think Ben already replied to this point in a way I agree with. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/progs/scripts/pdebuild-hooks.html Need some pdebuild hook scripts? ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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