User talk:Toby Bartels/2003 June

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Toby, I left a question/comment for you at Talk:Axiom schema of replacement. AxelBoldt

Toby, you know Fwappler? Do you possess a Fwappler-English dictionary by any chance? -- Tarquin 19:55 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

I've met him on USENET. Unfortunately, he seems less comprehensible now than he did then. You can see me trying to still communicate with him on his user page -- it has worked in the past. -- Toby 20:08 Jan 11, 2003 (UTC)

Are you still around? Best, Koyaanis Qatsi

I'm trying to be -- I'm more limited now that I was before in times that I can access the Net. Axel's been waiting for some stuff from me on Axiom schema of replacement, but I think that I did some good there in the end! If anybody's trying to reach me, I still check my email more often than Wikipedia. -- Toby 03:44 Jan 27, 2003 (UTC)

I agree with your change in Germanic language. Maybe my change was a bit like saying that Chinese can also be written in Pinyin or Wade-Giles. Sebastian 10:21 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

Toby, I saw your comment on User talk:Cochise, so I translated the comment by User:Cochise for you. --Chuck SMITH

Toby, comment on meta for you, in case that page isn't on your watchlist. Thanks for your careful attention to the LS business but there are some concerns.

Hi Toby,
You are wrong on the AA. AA does mean Automobile Association. In fact for many, they they think of it before any other meaning. It may be called the American Automobile Association in the US, but in Britain and Ireland it is simply the Automobile Association. I've reverted the page. STÓD/ÉÍRE 09:48 Mar 8, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! I realised after my edit that I should have checked for names in other places before editing instead of (as was my plan) after. But you caught it anyway, while I was working on Å. (In fact, I should probably just go to bed right now ^_^.) -- Toby 09:58 Mar 8, 2003 (UTC)

I see that you commented on the article on John Baez, and edited it, but you did not add it to the list of mathematical topics or the list of physics topics. I have now done so, and notified him that he may now consider himself famous. Michael Hardy 01:48 Apr 18, 2003 (UTC)

I don't use those lists, so I often forget to add things to them -- and certainly don't if I only edit the page instead of starting it. So good for you for being more conscientious than I! ^_^ -- Toby 06:53 Apr 18, 2003 (UTC)

Toby, I changed the definition of local base because the old one didn't fit with the use on local compactness and regular space. I also changed the definition of "locally connected" on Topology glossary accordingly. Do you think the change of definition of "local base" has any other ramifications? AxelBoldt 17:55 Apr 21, 2003 (UTC)

I can't find any. Generally, I wouldn't expect the change to cause any problems, since given a local base, you can always find an open local base by taking interiors. Typically (IME), this makes everything work out that needs to work out.

In fact, don't think that locally connected should be changed either. I can't find an example where it makes a difference (nor prove that it never does), but the only independent definitions that I can find use a definition that doesn't require the local base to be open. With that in mind, I'll change it back -- but let me know if you can think of any ramifications of that.

-- Toby 01:36 Apr 24, 2003 (UTC)

I'm a bit afraid that there are spaces which are locally (path-) connected in one sense and not the other, and the open-local-base defintions seem somewhat more comforting to me. It is also the definition used in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Mathematics, and (equivalent to) the definition given in the article on locally connected. But I don't know any counter examples either, so let's wait until a specialist shows up and shoots us down. AxelBoldt 18:39 Apr 24, 2003 (UTC)

They are the same; here's the proof: Let U be an open nhood of x; I want an open (path-)connected subnhood. Let C be the (path-)connected component of U that owns x; I claim that C is open. So suppose that y belongs to C. Since C is contained in the open set U, local (path-)connectedness provides a (path-)connected nhood V of y that is contained in U. Since V is (path-)connected, it's actually contained in a single (path-)connected component of U, which must be C. Thus C contains a nhood of y, so C must itself be a nhood of y. Since y was an arbitrary element of C, this proves that C is indeed open; it is the (path-)connected nhood of x that I wanted.

This proof shows something a bit stronger: that (path-)connected components of open sets must be open in a locally (path-)connected space. This is Theorem 25.3 in the 2nd edition of Munkres, whose proof I adapted. (Compare also Exercise 25.6, since nhoods are open for Munkres.)

-- Toby 05:37 Apr 25, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! I have reopened the front on Talk:Axiom schema of replacement. AxelBoldt 17:25 Apr 26, 2003 (UTC)

Hi! I was under the impression that Wikis strive to set things in Wiki format! And since I had a replace all function on my browser, I thought I'd do that. If you were unhappy with it, please let me know!

"unhappy" may be too strong a word. I do think that that math markup works better with <i> and <b> than with '' and ''', because they really do mean different things. When I edit those files next, the parts where I edit them will change back, but I won't change them back now. <i> and <b> really are wiki markup, BTW; it's just that since they're rare, no wiki abbreviation shorter than the HTML tags has been devised, so we use the HTML tags as the markup. (On some wikis, <i> and '' really are the same thing, but not here.)

As for the CS connection, we still do use set theory as well as type theory, where set theory is used more in design and theoretical computer science. In a few of my classes, we used several set theories, including Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, to design hypothetical databases. --PY

Cool! -- Toby 03:29 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

See my reply to you on my talk page -- Moshe Nackmen

Thanks for summing up why we shouldn't keep that link around on Talk:Joseph McCarthy. I couldn't bear to keep reading that... tripe, to put it nicely, after the first couple of sentences. I think you did a pretty good job of laying out just why it shouldn't be there. :) -- John Owens 04:43 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

You're welcome. I have a certain fascination with hate speech, so I can get through it all right, thinking of it as a psychological examination. I only get the pit in my stomach when they start attacking queers (as I am one). And I suppose that it's good that they do get around to giving me that pit in the stomach, since otherwise people that read hate speech because they're fascinated by it have been known to succumb to it. '_` -- Toby 05:27 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

With Quantity--I really had no interest in making an article at that point. I simply wanted "something" to be there. Would it be possible to no longer have the page which lists the amount of edits a user has made, it bothers me to a significant degree. It makes me feel as if Im not a valued contributor until I am at the top of the list, which, I'm sure isn't official policy but the list clearly insinuates that to be the case. Pizza Puzzle

I'm not really involved with that list; you'll have to take it up on its talk page. -- Toby Bartels 04:35 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Also, if I use preview and my connection dies, then I lose all my edits and I have to start all over. Perhaps there should be a client one can download which allows them to edit and preview offline. Pizza Puzzle

This has been discussed before, but I'm not sure where to find it. Ask on wikitech-L, and they'll be able to tell you. -- Toby Bartels 04:35 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hey, I just saw the new and improved Separation axiom for the first time. A true beauty! AxelBoldt 17:26 20 May 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! -- Toby Bartels 04:08 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It is not appropriate to revert my edits, marking them as minor, and not even bothering to tell me. Pizza Puzzle

The only minor reversion that I can think of was of moving the content of Number to Real number. That seemed like it was obviously a mistake -- that you must have hit the wrong button somewhere. If you really mean to move those things, then I won't mark them minor when I revert -- but I'll still revert, because such a move would be quite wrong! (Of course, I'd also explain things on the talk pages.) -- Toby Bartels 04:08 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I just added some stuff to groupoid, maybe you can pitch in. Do you know anything about Lie groupoids, and how they are used to study manifolds and stuff? AxelBoldt 23:54 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'll ask my advisor for some references. -- Toby Bartels 04:08 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hello, sorry but I reverted your renaming an article Negative and non-negative numbers. It is because I have never heared of a word signed number besides there seems no agreement made to renaming yet in the talkpage. -- Taku 04:27 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Re: Mark up in e-mails. (My mailer is in read-only mode for some reason). The convention I pointed to is in the Jargon file [1]

"Also, it is common to use bracketing with unusual characters to signify emphasis. The asterisk is most common, as in "What the *hell*?" even though this interferes with the common use of the asterisk suffix as a footnote mark. The underscore is also common, suggesting underlining (this is particularly common with book titles; for example, "It is often alleged that Joe Haldeman wrote _The_Forever_War_ as a rebuttal to Robert Heinlein's earlier novel of the future military, _Starship_Troopers_."). Other forms exemplified by "=hell=", "\hell/", or "/hell/" are occasionally seen (it's claimed that in the last example the first slash pushes the letters over to the right to make them italic, and the second keeps them from falling over)."

and, as cprompt pointed out, used in Mozilla. I should have pointed out that they're not canonical though. -- Jim Regan 22:30 8 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That Mozilla has accepted a standard (I hope overridable!) is a good reason to adopt that. I may consider how these slashy things work for me. -- Toby Bartels 05:00 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to be in the preferences, though there's probably a line or two you can put in the prefs.js. It only lets you turn off smileys being shown as graphics. -- Jim Regan 18:33 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You mean they render fonts (or otherwise alter the given text) without its being an explicit user option? For shame! (Even if you can affect it using prefs.js ... Mozilla is aimed at the ordinary user these days, and most won't know about editing the preferences file directly.) -- Toby Bartels 22:16 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It's probably in the new beta (my modem's too slow to even consider grabbing it), or in the new mail app they're doing. If not, that's what Bugzilla's for :) -- Jim Regan 20:26 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

In reference to this mailing list post (Mozilla still won't send mail for me) -- PML has been repeatedly calling Zoe a vandal on Talk:U.S. Virgin Islands and on Talk:List of British English words not used in American English. -- Jim Regan 17:29 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yes, as I acknowledged in this mailing list post. Zoe seems to think that because she stands strong against people like PML, thus she must be right in all of her conflicts with people like GrahamN, Martin, and anthere; or that because PML has been rude to her and called her a vandal, thus all of her other opponents must have done the same thing. This is not true. Often she is right, but sometimes she is wrong, and the issues in New River Gorge Bridge are not the same as those in the articles that you cited. Indeed, that constrast was basically the point of my two posts. -- Toby Bartels 06:39 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought she was out of order in those threads too. A bit moot, now that she seems to have gotten fed up and moved on, though. -- Jim Regan 06:47 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I suppose that you're right -- I hadn't yet realised that she'd left when I wrote those posts. Zoe's been a good contributor, but there've been some good contributors -- JHK was another -- that don't seem to me to be cut out for the way that Wikipedia works. It's times like these that I wish that Larry's Sifter project had gotten off the ground. Something like that must come along eventually, however! -- so they may all be back in the end. ^_^ -- Toby Bartels 07:06 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It's a pity it didn't take off -- it might have cut down on some of the American vs British English arguments! (Or at least, just moved them) -- Jim Regan 17:59 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)