[EM] Invitation for anyone to copy, web-post, or distribute my articles &/or postings

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Though I've retired from voting systems, I'd like to reply to e-mail that I 
received yesterday, about permission to copy or use my voting system 
material. It was pointed out to me in that e-mail that I haven't posted 
anything about that, and of course I should--especially since I believe that 
good information is more useful if it's made available to more people.

So:

I encourage anyone, other than Russ Paiellil, to freely use, however they 
wish, any web article of mine on voting systems, any mailing-list posting of 
mine on voting systems, or any private e-mail from me about voting systems. 
Use it entire or in part.

By "use", I mean use it in any way. That includes, but is not necessarily 
limited to, : Put it up at a website, distribute it via any medium, copy it, 
quote from it. Have I left anything out?

Try not to change the wording, because when precision is important, changing 
the wording tends to lose the meaning. But, if you do change the wording, 
please indicate that you've changed the wording. That's my only requirement.

I have voting system articles at:

http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/vote/sing.html

Jan mentioned that articles from the old electionmethods.org website (before 
I withdrew permission for Russ to host my articles) is available in an 
archive. Jan could tell you how to find it.

One caution, if you use articles from electionmethods: Russ heavily reworded 
my articles that I sent to him. That often or usually changed the meaning, 
or made the meaning vague and ambiguous. Several people have written to EM 
to complain about that ambiguity or incorrect meanings. That was why I said 
that Russ was (and is) unfit to host my articles. So: If you use articles 
from elecionmethods.org, be warned that the wording may be all messed-up by 
Russ's rewording.

I recommend, instead, my articles at the barnsdle website:

http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/vote/sing.html

Yes, I know I gave that URL above, but no harm in stating it twice.

The only articles that are as good or better at the pre-falling-out 
electionmethods website, as compared to the barnsdle website, are the 
Approval strategy articles. That's because the more recent electionmethods 
versions of those articles are the latest version. I invite the owner of the 
barnsdle website to copy those articles to his website, from the archive 
that Jan referred to, or to link to them there. Other than that, the 
articles at the barnsdle website are the better ones, because their wording 
hasn't been messed up.

But I've posted things to EM about Approval strategy that didn't make it 
into a web article. Same with other topics too, which is why I include 
mailing list postings, such as EM postings, among the material that I invite 
you to use anytime any way.

It was brought to my attention that, some time after Russ's angry EM 
postings about me, maybe even after my retirement from voting systems, Russ 
Paielli put up, at his website, an angry message about me. I haven't looked 
at it, and I've been told that he's since removed it, and so I can't comment 
on it directly. But Russ tends to repeat his false statements, and so I can 
guess what a few of them might have been.

I was the one who sent to Russ a Condorcet algorithm, in the form of a 
Python program. I'd bought a book on Python, believing that I should send 
the algorithm in a programming language. In hindsight, it would have been 
easier, and just as good, to send it in pseudocode. When Russ was angry 
because of my withdrawal of permission to host my articles, he made a few 
false statements on EM about the Python program that I'd sent to him.

He said that he had explained to me that, by starting a line with a certain 
symbol, that line becomes a comment, and the compiler or interpreter doesn 
't interpret that line as a program line. He said that, after he'd taught 
that to me, I'd  included with my Python program that I sent to him, a long 
message, obviously a message to Russ, that was written with the program and 
marked with the comment marker.

1. The "message" was not something obviously to Russ. It was something that 
was obvioiusly to the user of the program. It was instructions to the user 
of the program. That was obvious. But, in case it wasn't obvious, I'd 
explicitly told Russ that that was what it was. But Russ isn't very 
truthful, and I guess he felt that his incorrect account would make a good 
story.

2. Russ didn't teach me about comment markers in program listings. Every 
programming language has a symbol that it uses, at the beginning of a line, 
to indicate that what is on that line is a comment, and that that line is 
not a program line. I'd used a number of programming languages prior to that 
time, and taken courses on some. I'd read that Python book, and, on pretty 
much every page of that book were sample programs, with comments marked with 
Python's comment marker. Russ did not teach me about comment markers.

After the falling-out, Russ said that the "amateur" algorithm (the one I'd 
sent) had been replaced at his website with a "professional" one, one copied 
from the Floyd algorithm and sent by Markus.

What was the difference between the amateur version and the professional 
version? I used the obvious, intuitive, natural index ordering. The Floyd 
algorithm changes the order of the index numbers in a few program lines. It 
does that in order to greatly improve the execution speed, by allowing the 
algorithm to need only one pass through the permutations.

When I found out that the Floyd algorithm was different from what I'd sent 
to Russ, and that the Floyd algorithm was faster, I immediatrely e-mailed 
Russ, and told him what I'd found out. I suggested leaving the algorithm 
as-is, because 1) Execution time won't be a problem, and the obviousness and 
natualness of the algorithm that I'd sent seemed more important; and 2)No 
one had, at that time, demonstated to me that that Floyd algorithm is faster 
in that way.

I'd repeatedly asked Markus to demonstrate that, but he didn't, and neither 
did anyone else. Yes, now he might find the proof somewhere, and copy it and 
post it here. During discussion on a different mailing list, just before my 
retirement, I posted to that mailing list a demonstration that the Floyd 
algorithm needs only one pass through the permutations. Markus was on that 
mailing list, and so now he presumably knows why the Floyd algorithm is 
faster.

Anyway, not having heard a demonstration, when I first heard that the Floyd 
algorithm was different from, and faster than, what I'd sent to Russ, that 
was one reason why I recommended to Russ that he leave the algorithm as-is.

That was a long time before the falling-out. But then, all of a sudden, Russ 
acted as if he'd discovered that the Floyd algorithm was better, though he'd 
been told about it long previous.

One other thing about the Python program that I'd sent to Russ: The Python 
book that I'd bought was vague about how to use the multidimensional arrays. 
Programming language books should be written either by the designer of the 
programming language, or by a mathematician. Russ experimented till he found 
how the multidemensional arrays are used. I didn't have Python, and so I 
didn't use Python multidimensional arrays. I made multidimensional arrays 
using Python's 1-dimensional array, and a function.

Speaking of new discoveries by Russ, made right after I withdrew permission 
for him to host my articles, he also "discovered", at that time, that 
everything I'd written was wrong. And, as I'd predicted in advance, he even 
reversed his Condorcet advocacy, switching to a different Condorcet version. 
As soon as I told him that I was the first proponent of winning-votes, Russ 
began saying, for the first time, that margins was better than winning 
votes. And no, Markus, I won't debate, again, with you whether I was was the 
first proponent of winning-votes. (But I was).

Before the falling-out, Russ had said that I was a world-class expert on 
voting systems, and maybe a genius. Immediately after the falling-out, Russ 
began saying that I was a pathetic amateur. I mention that because it 
demonstrates Russ's complete lack of honesty. I realize that this is 
difficult to believe, because it's rare for someone to be like that, but 
there's no reason to believe that Russ believes anything that he says. Maybe 
he actually doesn't know the difference, doesn't know what honesty is. 
You've heard  of pathological liars, and, with Russ, now you've met one.

While calling me all the names he could think of, Russ grandly praised 
himself. I suggest to you that the great things that Russ said about himself 
should be interpreted with reference to the fact that Russ has demonstrated 
himself to be someone with no honesty, a pathalogical liar.

And no, the "flame-war" was not symmetrically two-sided. Though I 
occasionally used namecalling, during legitimate voting system discussion, 
when someone showed himself to be an ill-mannered idiot, Russ's namecalling 
was of an entirely different nature. Russ used namecalling as a substitute 
for valid argument, and that's a whold different thing. And it was not I who 
devoted long postings (except just for this one) to evaluating another list 
member, with no voting system comment in the posting.

That was what I wanted to say.

Mike Ossipoff

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! 
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/