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Help needed with History of logic post-WWII

The article History of logic has been nominated for a featured article here. The nominating editor has asked for help concerning the post-WWII period (see this post). Any assistance would be appreciated

Nomination of Invasive weed optimization algorithm for deletion

The article Invasive weed optimization algorithm is being discussed concerning whether it is suitable for inclusion as an article according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Invasive weed optimization algorithm (2nd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruud Koot (talk • contribs) 19:18, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Request for feedback: Y-fast tries

I wrote an article about y-fast tries, a data structure for bounded universes that improves on x-fast tries. Any and all constructive feedback is appreciated. Rf insane (talk) 20:13, 15 April 2011

Expert system

Could someone have a look at Expert system? See Talk:Expert system#Changes by User Pat Grenier for details. —Ruud 12:25, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The whole article is in sad shape. The history was bad but the article is incorrect and incomplete in many aspects any way. But not on my path now. But this whole ProjComputing project is pretty low quality in many cases: hardware and software. History2007 (talk) 14:56, 23 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ones' complement or one's complement?

Should we refer to "one's complement" which a majority of sources say or "ones' complement" which Knuth who is a recognized expert says is right but is used in few sources (the other common form is "ones complement")? Dmcq (talk) 01:03, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See Ones' complement#Linguistic note.

The point of discussion here is that while "ones' complement" is correct, both grammatically and technically, the incorrect form "one's complement" is widespread through the literature to the extent that its use outweighs the correct form. I have (perhaps unwisely, but AGF) gone through and changed all the occurrences of "one's complement" with "ones' complement" on the grounds that "correct" should have precedence over "popular". However, there is a counter-argument which suggests that "what's in the literature" (whether technically "correct" or not) is allowed to supersede what is "technically correct", on the grounds, presumably, of reflecting what is current in the evolution of language.

While I appreciate that language changes, the approach I was advised (many years ago, at school!) to take in such situations is that it is recommended that reference material should as a general rule "lag behind" popular usage.

What should be done?

This discussion has also been raised on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics page. --Matt Westwood 09:07, 5 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've tried to centralize discussion here. Dmcq (talk) 09:55, 5 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
One's complement is completely correct. Knuth was just being silly. The arithmetic uses one's complement. I actually checked the assertion that ones' complement is referred to in the C++ standard by searching through the latest version. It says one's complement. It does not say ones' complement. Anyway whatever about correctness this is Wikipedia and the mantra is still verifiability not truth. The C99 standard says ones' complement like the article says but its rationale says one's complement! Dmcq (talk) 09:49, 5 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have just removed speedy tags from a number of redirects from alternate and erroneous forms of this expression. Whatever is the result of this discussion, these redirects should probably remain, or else get changed so they point to whatever turns out to be the preferred form. Redirects are supposed to be from both alternative and from erroneous forms. They serve the purpose of letting people get to the information they are looking for. DGG ( talk ) 18:18, 5 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think "Knuth was just being silly" does him a bit of a disservice. Fact is, "one's complement" means "complement of one" not "complement of ones", which is what is meant. If an attempt at being grammatically accurate equates to "being silly" then, oh good grief don't get me started. --Matt Westwood 10:53, 5 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
He tried being grammatically accurate but needn't have done so. It is arithmetic where one is complemented. It is one's complement arithmetic. It may also be viewed as an arithmetic where all the ones are complemented, in that case it is ones' complement arithmetic. Either is correct. He chose one way unnecessarily and against common usage. And it makes a mess in 1s' as well. Dmcq (talk) 11:24, 5 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I started a couple of reverts (please, never change comments to "fix" grammar, particularly comments made in 2004). The linguistic argument is not relevant as Wikipedia follows common usage; changing such common usage is not our role (interminable arguments about kibibytes comes to mind). Johnuniq (talk) 10:04, 5 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wot-EVV-er ... --Matt Westwood 19:36, 5 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yep there's a guideline about it WP:TPO. Dmcq (talk) 19:52, 5 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggestion To avoid problems with WP:JARGON how about "Ones compliment"? It sounds exactly the same in ones head as one says it and could be simply explained better at a central location (its own page?). That would leave all uses of the term free of confusing punctuation and arguable correctness'. fgtc 01:11, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Not free of misspellings, though (sorry, cheap shot, but if we're going to be arguing about apostrophe placement...) Anyway, my own feeling is that we should stick to "one's complement" as it has more than twice as many hits as "ones complement" in Google books. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:32, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sory yez ov corse, ei shood'av sed "Wuns kompliment". Cillie mee. fgtc 02:46, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
See information below where the history seems to actually support this choice without an apostrophe at all and forget about the two forms the original question was about! Dmcq (talk) 21:12, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's worth having a look at those hits as they don't refer to the exact forms, Google tends to common up when it decides things are close enough. The disparity is actually quite a bit bigger. Dmcq (talk) 12:37, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reliable sources: Do we have any reliable sources claiming that "one's complement" is correct, or do we just have many sources that just happen to use it? (Maybe because they didn't know better, because they copied it from somewhere, because it looked consistent with two's complement. We shouldn't judge by Google hits, but by reliable sources that say which is the correct spelling. Wikipedia is not just about counting what is used in literature. Ones' complement seems to be the correct way of spelling it (says Knuth?), and we should stick to the correct spelling. We should of course discuss the alternative versions, as it is currently done in the article. Just because "Whassup?" is maybe more popular in TV commercials than "What's up" doesn't mean we have to use it everywhere either. "One's complement" is probably just another popular spelling mistake. That just means we should mention it and have a redirect. --Chire (talk) 10:40, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • WP:COMMONNAME doesn't quite agree with you: "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's 'official' name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. [...] The term most typically used in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms" --Cybercobra (talk) 11:40, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We are talking about spelling level differences, not about "Bill Clinton" vs. "William Jefferson Clinton". It's perfeclty recongizable (which is the motivation to not use the official name sometimes, but prefer e.g. artists names), so this reasoning does not apply. --Chire (talk) 19:16, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
None of the three alternatives is an official name. It's a question of a name that an expert says is correct compared to what's generally used. Dmcq (talk) 19:50, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
While probably all three are somewhat commonly used, it's not just Knuth using the "ones'" variation. --Chire (talk) 20:52, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Have a look through the returns from Google for the different searches. The Knuth form is definitely infrequent. The ones form without any apostrophe is the common alternative. Dmcq (talk) 21:06, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My point was that "the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources" contradicts your "by reliable sources that say which is the correct spelling". That is, we look at the preponderance of usage in reliable sources, rather than just reliable sources that explicitly address the spelling issue. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:56, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Information I did a search as best I could with Google for books before 1950. Ones and twos complements aren't mentioned much but the nines and tens complements are. And in fact then the most common form by far was "nines complement" or "nines-complement" I found a single case of "nines' complements" (notice the plural complement) and no other nines' and one of "nine's complement". There were a number of cases of nines complements. If we were going by the original forms we'd go for the second most common form now i.e. "ones complement" without any apostrophe at all. Dmcq (talk) 21:06, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I would consider this situation as an absence of the language norm: if there is no clear consensus between the people who use the term professionally (and by that mean decide the language norm), there should be no enforcement for any of the options. I would keep all three variants in editors' discretion and advise to leave the already existing wordings as is. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 10:53, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We need a decision because an editor has gone around changing all occurrences of one's complement to ones' complement en masse. Another editor was going to go around and change them all back again. Should they be reverted? As the original editor said "Otherwise we'll be in a pointless edit war." Dmcq (talk) 12:29, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Then I would stick to the dominant use among references on the main articles title. In this case it's Knuth's position. You may also consider calling linguist expert with {{Expert-subject|Linguistics|proper wording}}. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:42, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
For 'dominant' read 'the single reference' in the article. If it was a dominant use we would need this discussion. Anyway I take your sense as correct use as defined by an expert even when rare trumps common usage. Dmcq (talk) 14:16, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Where "common use" is now what, "ones complement" or "one's complement"? As far as I can tell, there is already more than one somewhat common way of writing it? Lets's use 0 for "ones", 1 for "one's" 2 for "ones'", then a quick google books gives me 1001210101 101120210_. The last one was a false hit, that is 9/19 using "one's", 7/19 using "ones", and 3/19 using "ones'". So to me, none is here the true winner, and we could as well go with the version that at least has prominent support (and reasoning, not just use), and even more if we get a linguist to confirm that reasoning. --Chire (talk) 08:04, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I would suggest again calling for professional linguists' help, as this is a question of language, not math.
Another possible direction — to count (as Chire did) the claimed right variant in discussions about what variant is the right one if such occurred. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 09:43, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Both one's and ones' are okay as far as I can see from a grammatical point of view, it just depends on what you think you are referring to, on grounds like that an argument could be made for "one complements" instead of "ones complement"!. Also on the googling the search needs to be for "one's complement" etc with the complement in rather than just "ones'" and actually check the responses as Google often treats punctuation as space even in quote marks. Dmcq (talk) 10:06, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment If ones' complement is correct, it's the one we should be using. Otherwise Wikipedia will perpetuate the incorrect term. It's also worth checking the Wiktionary entries (ones' complement, two's complement). On a related note, the lead states swapping 0's for 1's and vice-versa - shouldn't this be swapping 0s for 1s and vice-versa? -- Trevj (talk) 09:45, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wiktionary is something set up by Wikipedia, we'd be referring to a place where it might be exactly the same person putting in this stuff. Try out '"ones' complement" dictionary' in google and you'll see that other dictionaries don't bother with that form. As far as I can see "ones" with no apostrophe is the common for dictionaries beating "one's" and Wiktionary is the only place that mentions "ones'". Dmcq (talk) 10:06, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's not about pedantic correctness, it's about prevalence. See WP:COMMONNAME. --Cybercobra (talk) 11:11, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The wiktionary entries were both created on 19 January 2005 by wikt:User:Dmh, who doesn't have a SUL account, but is here as Dmh and hasn't contributed to Ones' complement on Wikipedia. As for WP:COMMONNAME, it states [...] ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. -- Trevj (talk) 20:17, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But then again: The term most typically used in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms --Cybercobra (talk) 20:48, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but my interpretation is that that refers to alternative (full) names such as
Bill Clinton (not William Jefferson Clinton)
Venus de Milo (not Aphrodite of Melos)
Caffeine (not 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione)
Nazi Party (not Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
rather than grammatical misunderstandings. -- Trevj (talk) 21:09, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • All three forms are used by at least several reputable authors, and in the descriptivist theory of language usage is all that is relevant (so we need not settle this by getting out our grammar rulebooks). In my opinion the article should list all three variants, but be named after the most common form occurring in the literature (one's complement). However, I think it would be perfectly acceptable to name the article after either of the other variants. Dcoetzee 12:22, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • In today's world of spelling correction, common use may be being created automagicly without authors or editors even noticing. My fingers will probably always type "ones'", but then I learned to program on a series of CDC machines that used ones' complement (CDC 3600.) When I've been questioned about that spelling, I've always cited Knuth, but he's an old main-frame guy in the eyes of the modern hip crowd, who may be using other spellings just to show they're new. This could become one of the great battles of Wikipedia, I suppose, three sides with each being correct in their eyes. htom (talk) 16:02, 17 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ones complement This is a matter of style not sourcing. I presume "one's" is derivative from "1's" - the apostrophe here is to separate the number from the "s" plural, and is commonly seen "...in the 1990's he went..." However house style is not to use such an apostrophe "1990s" and presumably "1s". Hence we should write "ones complement" "twos complement" "threes complement" etc.. No possessive is involved, it is not the complement of the nines. "Nines" is an adjective, you could write "three's complement in the nines complement system is six." Rich Farmbrough, 16:52, 17 November 2011 (UTC).
    I don't think that style [is] the issue. (And 1990's is incorrect for the plural anyway: it's either 1990s or '90s.) Ones' is the posessive of the plural Ones, like hives' inhabitants (the inhabitants of the hives). FWIW I think this discussion should be moved to Talk:Ones' complement#Discussion on apostrophe position in "one's complement", for reference by future editors. -- Trevj (talk) 18:36, 17 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That's exactly my point. 1990's is incorrect in the vast majority of uses, according to our style guide. (I politely allow that the people who use the apostrophe may be doing so legitimately according to another style, but that is almost irrelevant. The important point is that it is a common usage that we don't use.) I understand what "one's" and "ones'" should mean, and they don't make sense in the places we would use them, whereas "ones" does. I came via the RFC - I'm happy for tyou to move the discussion there if you want. Rich Farmbrough, 23:11, 19 November 2011 (UTC).
  • Ones complement per Rich Farmbrough. Gerardw (talk) 13:02, 27 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

hardisks

simplest algorithm or technique applied to read a hard disk.......preinstalled in a computer system......any one who wud answer dis one????... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baneet sethi (talk • contribs) 16:21, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Best asked at Wikipedia:Reference desk - however it is a rather too vague. If you mean "IBM compatible PC" then the bios I believe reads the boot sector. Whether this constitutes the simplest algorithm or technique, depends on what you mean. Rich Farmbrough, 16:56, 17 November 2011 (UTC).
I thought he was asking about read-head technology! Very much too vague. htom (talk) 18:19, 17 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

User:Comps / Commitment ordering

There are currently a number of AfDs of articles created by User:Comps/Yoav Raz:

The following articles still need to be reviewed:

There may be some neutrality issues with (overemphasis on commitment ordering and strong strict two-phase locking):

—Ruud 14:07, 17 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are these two the same person? Anyway, at first glance, putting it bluntly looks like self promotion arising from illusions of grandeur and the use of Wikipedia as Craigslist. I would block the user to save everyone time. History2007 (talk) 18:29, 1 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have cleaned up Snapshot isolation. Some of the added content was valuable, most felt irrelevant to the article regardless of whether it was self-promotion. If anyone else agrees it's okay now, please go ahead and remove the NPOV marker. --Chris Purcell (talk) 15:15, 23 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Looks Ok, but the normal form violation needs a better ref. I do not even remember that topic that well any more (it was long ago and far away) but it was not clear at first reading which normal form is violated etc. And if it is a dimensional DB that problem may not even come up, etc. But I have not thought through those issues for a while. By the way the history section below it is also unref and I barely recall Interbase, given that it was so short lived, but would be surprised if it had SI. Did it for sure? History2007 (talk) 15:58, 23 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Prototypes in list of functions

Does anybody have comments to have prototypes to function in an article like C string handling, please comment at the talk page talk:C string handling. Christian75 (talk) 12:49, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Class projects to clean up articles

I have seen several class projects / assignments in other projects. Is there a way to get some type of algorithms for getting some free work out of students (as part of their class assignment) to clean up and add refs to some articles that are simple enough and need help, e.g. context switch, Preemption (computing), etc. Given the totally unkempt state of these articles (well over 100 articles I guess) and the current resources available, that may be the only way they will ever get cleaned up. Ideas? History2007 (talk) 18:36, 1 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In the current Global Education Projects the lists of topics seem to have been selected by the students or lecturers. Given the fiasco with the India Education Program this may change in the future. It might be a good idea to create a few lists of articles - corresponding to common computer science courses - with suitable articles. If another CS related school or university project comes along, we can just point to the list. —Ruud 18:45, 1 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know the India fiasco story, but I was thinking of an ACM type route where some structure is brought into it. As is, these articles will sit there unkempt almost for ever.
I wonder if one could set up some type of "virtual prize" (money free) award for the 3 students who make the best improvements to a Wikipedia article. That way they could put it on their resume and that would be an incentive. As is I do not see any other way these hundreds of articles will ever get cleaned up. And they are not hard to clean up, but there are just to many of them and too few editors. History2007 (talk) 01:04, 2 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reliable sources question

There is a question of reliability of academic conferences over at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Academic_Conferences, in which computer science sources are particularly mentioned. Any comments welcome. Failedwizard (talk) 07:52, 31 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Web?

I know there is already a WikiProject Internet, but I'd like to argue that the Internet is simply the platform that the Web was built on. Whereas WikiProject Internet focuses on protocols and such, WikiProject Web would deal more in the area of HTML and CSS, various W3 APIs, and the like. The Internet and the Web are very different things. 75.138.226.104 (talk) 14:06, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We're trying to prevent fragmentation of the computing-related WikiProjects (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing#WikiProject restructuring), so starting yet another project (or splitting an existing one) probably wouldn't be a very good. —Ruud 19:31, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Index (computer science)

A community input is required due to recent conflict on the page "Index (computer science)". Thanks in advance. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:50, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Computer language

I advise to reverse the decision of 2008 and consider splitting this back – for 3 years computer language redirects to "programming language" which is a semantically incorrect redirect from a general notion to a partial, narrow case. This seems to be yet a severe mistake of early en.WP editors who used such invalid arguments as a poor current state of an article to merge it. Note that separate articles about "computer languages" (not necessary programming) exist in more than a dozen of languages – fr:Langage informatique and interwikis. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 22:53, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't call a decision made in 2008 to be one made by "early" Wikipedians... I think the desire to have an article instead of a redirect at that place is a reasonable one. Looking at the last version before it was turned into a redirect shows that restoring that version wouldn't be a good idea, however. Having a discussion without an actual replacement doesn't seem useful either, so I suggest that the best course of action would be to develop a well-written and well-referenced sandbox version of the article first. —Ruud 04:06, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Harvard references

A number of articles of interest to this WikiProject use the {{harv}} method for referencing. That template is up for deletion: see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 January 24#Template:Harvard citation. Please comment there. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:00, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

cool and cutting edge VR topic for collaboration

how can we implement biometrics techniques into the VPN

i am a looking for a research topic related to virtual private network and biometrics for my Phd.

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