🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5vfr90$s...@winter.news.erols.com>,  <mei...@erols.com> wrote:
>But that is the opposite of Micha's point.  His point is not that
>Halacha require a particular level of precision in spelling, but that
>whatever level we have, if it is sufficient for Halacha, why is it not
>sufficient for codes? (I almost said 'It is not...' but I checked what
>Micha wrote, RK)

Actually, there are cases in which the halakhah can be dependent on
spelling issues. But this whole tack would be tangential to the matter
at hand, so I'd rather leave it alone. The fundamental issue is that
manuscript variations, not to mention the fluidity of spelling in the
pre-Masoretic era, would destroy the underlying statistical basis of
the codes.

>Wouldn't they have to be idiots to say they had run tests on these
>works if there were no computer-stored copies?  How hard would it be
>to type in copies of these works?  If War and Peace is published in
>Hebrew, someone had to type it at least once.  Do you think these guys
>are idiots?

Depends on your definition of the word "idiot." To be honest, I'm
beginning to think that I'm an idiot for wasting my time on this
nonsense. To answer your real question, it is a lot of work to digitize
a Hebrew manuscript. Much more so than a text which may already exist
in some sort of digitized format (or which may be scanned in, which is
not the case for Biblical codices) such as "War and Peace." To the best
of my knowledge, only one Hebrew manuscript has been digitized, and
even that one, not completely. As for the whether or not such "codes"
can be found in other works, I defer to Brendan McKay and others, I
know something about Biblical manuscripts, but only as much statistics
as I need to program simple business problems. McKay says that he can
demonstrate the same effect in other documents and I see no reason to
doubt him.

>> However, if you are merely 
>>claiming that some form of "codes" can be reproduced via this method,
>>I don't disagree. As Brendon McKay has stated repeatedly, *any* text
>>of sufficient length can be made to yield up "codes."
>
>Adding the word "repeatedly" doesn't add anything to your sentence,

I disagree. I think it demonstrates quite clearly that religious
fanatics are at the core of this colossal waste of bandwidth.

[Balance deleted for the sake of sanity.]
-- 
-----------------------
Jack F. Love
Opinions expressed are mine alone, unless you happen to agree