User talk:Ilmari Karonen/archives/15

Thanks - Fisher-Yates

Ilmari, hello
Just wanted to say thanks for all the great work you've done on Fisher-Yates!
Superb!
u r ugly Dav!dB (talk) 21:09, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Name

Just curious about "Ilmari" — I read the Kalevala some time ago (in English translation; I know nothing of Finnish) and remember Ilmarinen. Is Ilmari derived from Ilmarinen, and is it a very common name?

Also, I was quite interested in "Normally humans have five digits on each hand{{fact}}"; perhaps you should add the edit summary for the edit when the tag was removed  :-) Nyttend (talk) 02:01, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Fairly common, yes: according to the Finnish Population Register Centre, it's the tenth most common male first name overall in Finland. (Although it wasn't quite as popular when I was born — it was very common in my parents' generation, and has been gaining popularity again over the last decade, but it was somewhat out of fashion for several decades in between. Anyway, I inherited it from a relative.) It does share an etymology with Ilmarinen, and was popularized during the national romantic period in Finland (late 19th and early 20th century) along with several other Kalevala-inspired names. We even have an article on it, though it's little more than a disambiguation page; the Finnish Wikipedia does have a bit more information. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:35, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

rev:41876

rev:41876 breaks things like:

{{#ifeq:{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}|{{ns:3}}:{{BASEPAGENAMEE}}

by outputting (essentially):

{{#ifeq:User_talk:Ilmari_Karonen/archives/15|User talk:Ilmari_Karonen/archives

Kind of a bad breaking change for a bit of consistency, no? This will break a lot of templates both on WMF wikis and on other installs of MediaWiki. (And wasn't it you who was recently kvetching about things like canonical names changing... ;-) What do you think about reverting it? --MZMcBride (talk) 07:26, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

The reason I changed it is that the former output of {{ns:}} matched neither {{NAMESPACE}} (which uses spaces instead of underscores) nor {{NAMESPACEE}} (which URL-encodes non-ASCII characters) in all cases. I figured that, since we were messing with namespace names anyway, I might as well slip in a fix so that {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{ns:3}}|...}} works consistently even on non-English wikis. For a demonstration, see e.g. fi:Keskustelu käyttäjästä:Ilmari Karonen/nstest. Yes, this is a breaking change, and I probably should've advertised it better, but the fix is pretty simple: just drop the final "E" from any magic words you're comparing with {{ns:}}. The "E" hack never worked properly on non-English wikis anyway. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:17, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Anyway, thanks for letting me know that the change is live now. I've somewhat belatedly posted an announcement at the Village pump. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:00, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Main Page redesign

The Main Page Redesign proposal is currently conducting a straw poll to select five new designs, before an RFC in which one will be proposed to replace the Main Page. The poll closes on October 31st. Your input would be hugely appreciated! Many thanks, Pretzels^Talk! 10:20, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

A quick note

Hi there. Does this licencing looks OK? I don't think its right. I'm not good in the copyright issues anyways. Cheers Wiki San Roze ^†αLҝ 17:49, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

You're right, it's not. Even if the image had been Madan lmg's own work (as the bogus license claimed), rather than obviously from ISRO, Harsha850 would've had no right to release it on Madan lmg's behalf. Only the copyright holder, or someone explicitly authorized by the copyright holder, can do that. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:42, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Image:Leaf morphology disposition.png

In my current browser (Mozilla Firefox 3.0.something) the thumbnail came up with the 'grey warning screen' that it was not able to be rendered due to technical problems. I don't have any problems with the reset- as long as it's rendering correctly! SkierRMH (talk) 15:59, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry - should have explained it a bit clearer - the odd part was that in Firefox it wouldn't give me the full sized version when I clicked on the date. Gave the "unable to render..." message on the "big" image -and on the thumbnail. I've switched it IE7 on a different computer, and the image seems to render fine on it, but still gives an error message on my other Firefox usin' computer! When I get back to that computer later I'll see if it's possibly a problem with the specific version/build of Firefox, as it doesn't seem to be an issue with IE7. Skier Dude (talk) 21:55, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Long edit summaries

Hello, about your script, User:Ilmari Karonen/longeditsummary.js, there is a far nicer way to do this:

//prevents wpSummary from cheating you out of those last few characters
addOnloadHook(function()
{
    var wpSummary = document.getElementById("wpSummary")
    if (wpSummary)
    {
        wpSummary.onkeyup = function()
        {
            wpSummary.setAttribute("maxlength", 250 - encodeURI(wpSummary.value).split("%").length + 1)
        }
    }
})

This script simply adjusts the maxlength of wpSummary as you type to allow you the maximum number of characters without being able to run off the edge, even if multibyte characters are used. What do you think? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 21:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

That's clever. At a glance, though, I don't think the math's quite correct: you're subtracting the number of URL-encoded bytes from the length, even though a) encodeURI() encodes even some single-byte characters, and b) what you really should be subtracting is the number of encoded bytes minus the number of characters.

Hmmm... I think it would work if you replace split("%") with split(/%[89AB]/i), though. Ha. I've replaced the script with a new version based on your code; it's slightly more complicated to deal with some rare corner cases, but the basic idea is the same. Thanks! —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:34, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Siisti! I wouldn't have thought of doing that.

One problem I've noticed with both my original script and your improved version of it is that when you preview, everything beyond 200 characters is sliced off by the maxlength parameter that is sent with the document. Maybe what we could do is get the developers to increase maxlength to 250 and then include this script in MediaWiki itself.

That's odd, it doesn't do that for me. I think it may be a browser compatibility issue. I don't think raising the default maxlength to 250 is necessarily a good idea, since the 50-character margin is still good to have for users with javascript disabled. Hmm... of course, if MediaWiki were to reject attempts to save with an overlong summary, rather than truncating it silently... —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. Firefox 2 slices the characters, Firefox 3 does not. I suppose it's not a big deal; we can just encourage Firefox 2 users to upgrade. Oh, and the script doesn't appear to work at all in Internet Explorer. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:57, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Also, if a user pastes a bunch of characters in and exceeds the limit, it would probably be better to cut off the excessive characters from the end rather than reverting the entire paste.

I tried that, but it behaves somewhat badly if the addition that pushes it over the limit is somewhere in the middle of the summary. I suppose there might be ways to do it "right", either by taking a simple diff between the new and old strings or checking the cursor position, but both would add yet more complexity. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

The main problem I see is that when the script modifies the edit summary box, the cursor jumps back to the beginning instead of to wherever the user happened to be typing. And on top of that, reverting means that none of the paste goes through, instead of as much as possible of the paste as the user expects.

I think the best thing to do would be to try to prevent the user from going off the edge, and in the rare case that the user does go off the edge inform them in an unobtrusive manner. I wrote up code to do this and left it below. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:57, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

By the why, what corner cases might your script not work with? And why is it that all UTF-8 continuation bytes start with "10"? [1] It seems inefficient to me, although it is really useful for scripts like this. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:43, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

The main difference to your version is simply the revert if the length is exceeded. I wasn't actually thinking mainly about pastes when I added it, but simply about the case where the user tries to type a non-ASCII character when only one byte of space is left. As for the continuation bytes starting with 0b10, that's a deliberate part of the design of UTF-8: in particular, along with the redundant encoding of the sequence length in the first byte, it ensures that no valid UTF-8 character can be a substring of another valid character, which makes things safer and easier when doing things like substring matching or dealing with data that might be truncated in the middle of a multi-byte character. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation! —Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:57, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Code

// LIMIT EDIT SUMMARIES TO EXACTLY 250 UTF-8 BYTES
// see EditPage::importFormData() in MediaWiki source for the source of the limit
// new, simpler and improved version, thanks to [[User:Remember the dot]] for the idea
 
addOnloadHook(function () {
    var wpSummary = document.getElementById("wpSummary")
    if (wpSummary)
    {
        var adjustMaxLength = function ()
        {
            // subtract the number of UTF-8 continuation bytes (0x80-0xBF) from the maxlength
            var maxLength = 250 - encodeURI(wpSummary.value).split(/%[89AB]/i).length + 1
            wpSummary.setAttribute("maxlength", maxLength)
 
            // the last character or group might've pushed us over; if so, inform the user
            var errorMessage = document.getElementById("editSummaryTooLong")
            if (wpSummary.value.length > maxLength)
            {
                if (!errorMessage)
                {
                    wpSummary.style.border = "3px solid red"
                    document.getElementById("wpSave").disabled = true
                    var editSummaryTooLong = document.createElement("div")
                    editSummaryTooLong.id = "editSummaryTooLong"
                    editSummaryTooLong.style.color = "red"
                    editSummaryTooLong.style.fontWeight = "bold"
                    editSummaryTooLong.textContent = "Your edit summary is too long."
                    var wpMinoredit = document.getElementById("wpMinoredit")
                    wpMinoredit.parentNode.insertBefore(editSummaryTooLong, wpMinoredit)
                }
            }
            else
            {
                if (errorMessage)
                {
                    wpSummary.style.border = ""
                    document.getElementById("wpSave").disabled = false
                    errorMessage.parentNode.removeChild(errorMessage)
                }
            }
            oldValue = wpSummary.value
        }
        addHandler(wpSummary, "keyup", adjustMaxLength)
        addHandler(wpSummary, "change", adjustMaxLength)
        adjustMaxLength()
    }
})

—Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:57, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Image:Florent_Gheeraert.jpg

Hello Ilmari Karonen, I temporarily restored the image as requested by you on my Dutch talk page (see nl:Image:Florent_Gheeraert.jpg). I hope that will help you to solve the problem. Please inform me when the local version is no longer needed so it can again be deleted. - Robotje (talk) 17:43, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Whitman and Newbie error

Sorry about that. But FYI, the information is wrong in the photo about being used in a court case. It is a crime scene photo only. Since Whitman was killed on the tower, what court could have heard a case, except a Probate Court to determine damages and distribution of Whitman's estate, which did happen, but the photo was not used. Cheers!Victor9876 (talk) 01:48, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

HinduMeasurements.svg

I liked the way you did the Hindu measurements drawing. It made me curious about you. Also because it is the first time I have heard a name like yours.

You have accomplished a lot for one so young. Congratulations. satyask (talk) 00:54, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi

Hey there. You edited my javascript page thingy. Don't worry, I'm not going to revert it as I trust your judgment. Can I ask what was wrong though? I have jvs-negative50 skills, so I have no idea a) what I meant to put in there, b) what was actually there or c) why it was a problem. Thanks! -- THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 20:31, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, on the first line you were importing the page MonoBook (default) as a script. That means if the page existed, your browser would've executed everything on it as JavaScript. Since that's an unprotected page that anyone can edit, that's not really so good — any script put there could've hijacked your account, for example.

The rest of the code on your page wasn't JavaScript at all, it was CSS. Your browser, trying to execute it as JavaScript, probably threw a syntax error on it. You should put CSS styles on monobook.css, not monobook.js. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:12, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Oops. Thanks for catching it! I'm not even sure what I wanted the monobook to do, so I'll leave it as it is now. Thanks again. -- THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 21:21, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Re. User:Ilmari Karonen/searchnsmenu.js

Can you maybe make the script go to the specific page on the chosen namespace? As it is now choosing a namespace and entering the page name redirects the browser to the mainspace, but it would be more logical if it went to the specified namespace I think. -- Mentisock 17:38, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Another thing... similar to your prefixindex.js can you create one for logs like this? It's like the inverted action of the 'logs' link in the toolbox but I think its inversion, seeing whether the user was blocked etc. is also useful. -- Mentisock 19:32, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

That's long been a known bug (or missing feature) of the multi-NS search script. It shouldn't really be that hard to fix, although there are some corner cases to consider. I'll see what I can do.

For the second thing, I believe this existing script should do what you ask. I just saved a slightly updated copy here in userspace, if you'd prefer that. The name of the link ("Page logs") may be somewhat confusing, but it accurately reflects what it does: MediaWiki logs actions by the performing user and the target page. Actions that affect a user rather than a page are simply logged as affecting the user's userpage. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:12, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I made a quick change to the searchnsmenu script. Is it better now? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:23, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah although there's a slight glitch when selecting (Article) - it searches for the page along with '(Article)'. On a side note it isn't possible to search for special pages in that manner, is it?

logslink.js is nice as well... I see I wasn't the only one who thought it was useful. :-) (I wonder why they didn't implement it yet through the normal interface (but without having to go to history)? Is it because they think normal people wouldn't much need it?) Thanks. -- Mentisock 15:36, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

That's odd... it doesn't do that for me (on Firefox 3.0.4). What browser are you using?

No, it's not possible to search for special pages — the closest thing to that is the list at Special:SpecialPages. (And even that doesn't list quite all of them, though the ones left out — like Special:Blankpage or Special:Blockme — are mostly not ones you'd ever need to use. I do notice that it's missing the fairly handy Special:Mypage and Special:Mytalk, although neither of those is particularly useful on its own.)

I'm not sure why there is no link to the page logs in the toolbox by default. I suspect no-one simply ever thought to add it there, perhaps precisely because it's not that useful to casual editors. It shouldn't be too hard to do — you might want to propose it at the village pump or directly at bugzilla. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:23, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I've tried it with the latest edition of Portable Firefox, although it doesn't seem to be an interface issue, just the way the search is handled. As an example this is when 'moo' was entered, (Article) selected and go pressed. I also noticed that it doesn't work (like it does normally with just articles) when pressing enter directly, instead just searching for it (the inversion of the normal function, since enter equals go usually). -- Mentisock 18:05, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay... I think I've fixed it. Try clearing your cache and see if it works now. Actually, I'm not sure why it seemed to work for me, since there was an obvious off-by-one bug. :/ —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:31, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Yep, it does. Thanks! -- Mentisock 14:25, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey again. Can you turn this link into something like the page logs script you have (possibly only displaying an * near page logs since it's related and with the username parameter that varies)? It seems useful to find out whether enwiki was affected by meta or such since sometimes the logs are empty here even though the effects are visible. -- Mentifisto 02:21, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't seem like it should be too hard. In fact, looking at the script, I don't think it's even needed for what you're looking for — it's easier to just link to the correct log on meta directly. Here's a quick attempt, does it do more or less what your want? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:35, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (Image:Peräsmies.gif)

Thanks for uploading Image:Peräsmies.gif. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 05:49, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

TUSC token fa325f47822bf8410db2c3669621900e

I am now a proud owner of a TUSC account! —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:12, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Image -> File

Hi, I've noticed that the transition to using File: instead of Image: has resulted in the links at the bottom of the page showing the image categories being completely lost. The categorization still happens, though. This can't have possibly been by design, but I'm unsure as to who to report the problem to. Could you help with this? Thanks. Warren -talk- 00:32, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Can you give a link to a page where that happens? I can't immediately see anything wrong. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:41, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

File:InkBall Vista.png. The categorization on this page is done by the {{non-free software screenshot}} template, which hasn't been changed in a long time. Warren -talk- 01:00, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Aha. The template had the expression {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Image|...}} in it. Fixed, thanks! —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:16, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

File:SecondOrderCARule242.png listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:SecondOrderCARule242.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Skier Dude (talk) 05:56, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

MfD nomination of File:Scotch regions.svg/legend

File:Scotch regions.svg/legend, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/File:Scotch regions.svg/legend and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of File:Scotch regions.svg/legend during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. MBisanz ^talk 07:43, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with File:ALE-Uniform-BOS-Green.PNG

Thanks for uploading File:ALE-Uniform-BOS-Green.PNG. You've indicated that the image is being used under a claim of fair use, but you have not provided an adequate explanation for why it meets Wikipedia's requirements for such images. In particular, for each page the image is used on, the image must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Can you please check

• That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for each article the image is used in.
• That every article it is used on is linked to from its description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --FairuseBot (talk) 06:00, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Long edit summary code revisited

Hi again,

I noticed that you brought up User:Ilmari Karonen/longeditsummary.js on the wikitech-l mailing list. I think I've improved on it considerably; I have my own copy at User:Remember the dot/Long edit summary.js. My version only executes in response to the few DOM events that might cause a change, gives a warning if the user goes over instead of jerkily reverting the user's last change, and is compatible with Internet Explorer 7, so it should be suitable for general use. We might have to filter out Firefox < 3 though, because as we discovered before old versions of Firefox clip the edit summary no matter what. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:26, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

ifdthumbnails.js

Hi Ilmari, someone has been moving Images for Deletion to Files for Deletion breaking this script. I've copied it and tried fixing in User:Peripitus/ifdthumbnails.js and though I get no errors, I get no images. Could you help please ? - Peripitus (Talk) 01:29, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

That is a neat tool! I've updated it to work with the new name, so if you bypass your cache it should start working again. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 01:47, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. :-) Seems to be working fine now. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 07:46, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Your edit to my talk page

[2] ??? SpinningSpark 23:43, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

The "arxiv.org/PS_cache" link points to a temporary page, which may be deleted if the article is not accessed within some period of time. I (or rather, my script) changed it to point to the official and stable URL of the article. You don't really need to worry about it; the link still works just fine. (Also, the corrected URL points to the abstract page, from which you can choose to download the full article in several formats, not just PDF. If you want to link directly to the PDF file, replace the "/abs/" in the stable URL with "/pdf/".) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:01, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I wouldn't have given it a second thought in article space, it just seemed strange that talk pages were being modified in this way. But obviously a good idea now I understand. SpinningSpark 10:45, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Indefinitely blocked IPs

I'm not sure if you meant to, but you currently have two IPs blocked indefinitely ( 64.56.135.200 & 209.188.169.34 ) and as far as I can tell these weren't requested blocks. I would like to lift these blocks, since blocking policy notes that we do not typically block IPs indefinitely. Note these blocks were mentioned here. –xeno (talk) 18:27, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I can't remember anything about either block, and couldn't find anything in my e-mail either, so I've gone ahead and unblocked them. (I made one indef schoolblock by request around that time, but it's neither of those IPs.) As usual, feel free to reblock if vandalism resumes. In general, I don't really mind anyone else undoing my blocks, either — if I'd had some specific non-obvious reason why a particular IP or user should not be unblocked, I'd have noted it in the block log. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:28, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

cheers, I'll keep that in mind for the future. I'll keep an eye on these two as well. regards, –xeno (talk) 14:05, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Cellular Automata versus a Cellular Automaton

Iimari (or is the second letter an L?), there is a problem with denying that a configuration is an automaton. GoL is a system of cellular automata (each cell has an automaton, and collectively they define the plural automata), and the patterns therein expressed are cellular automatons. An automaton is a machine of certain character. William R. Buckley (talk) 17:13, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

You may have a point there (although I don't think that usage really agrees qith established practice). But even so, I would not call a specific configuration of cell states a cellular automaton (or cellular automata) any more than I'd call a single state of a finite state automaton an automaton. A state (or a configuration of states) is something an automaton (or a system of automata) has, not what it is. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:49, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

It is not the state which is important. Rather, the important component is the finite state automaton that is found in each cell of a system of cellular automata. Moreover, each configuration constitutes an abstract machine, which is itself a cellular automaton. It is often the case that established practice is fraught with error. For instance, it is common for American's to refer to the rearing of children by the term *raise*; Man raises vegetables, and rears children. The commonality of error does not yield correctness. William R. Buckley (talk) 21:22, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

The discussion was about whether "a configuration is an automaton". A configuration, such as the "breeder" in GoL, is a specific arrangement of cell states evolving under the rules of a particular cellular automaton. It is no more an automaton itself than a program is a computer; yes, there is a sense in which both statements are true, but it's still generally useful to maintain the distinction. (Oh, and I'd have to disagree with your claim that a common error cannot become correct, at least as far as natural language is concerned. Remember that what you're writing here is the bastard offspring of bad Norse and worse Latin. A native speaker of, say, Middle English would consider our bastardization of that fine language corrupted beyond all hope.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:04, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Your view would change, were the cells actual physical units which could be agglomerated to form larger physical structures. On such demonstration, your claim that configurations are not machines would fail. Such systems are in the offing. Also, I am happy if you choose to raise your children, as opposed to rearing them, iff it happens that you would be satisfied should your children turn out to be intellectually little more than vegetables. William R. Buckley (talk) 15:58, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why. Indeed, I'm sure any half-way competent electronics student could design a single-GoL-cell-on-a-chip and have enough of them fabbed to run, say, the breeder. That doesn't change the fact that, while the entire cell with its transition rules is indeed a machine, the state it is in at any given time (which is what makes the difference between, say, the breeder and the blinker) is merely an ephemeral feature of the machine's operation. Analogously, a bicycle is a machine, but "left pedal lower than right" or "moving forward at 20 km/h" are merely features of its possible momentary states. So is "alive with two live neighbors" for a GoL cell. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:24, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

My point is not that such FSA could not be constructed, or agglomerated. The point is that such agglomerations are machines; you are focused upon each cell, not the whole configuration. So, individual FSAs agglomerate to build more complicated FSA. They are all automatons, and collectively constitute automata. Also, even if this conversation fails to yield either of us convincing the other, it is clearly more fun than working. William R. Buckley (talk) 19:15, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the agglomorations are machines, just like their individual parts are. But they are machines capable of running any pattern (up to some size limit) under the rules they embody, not just a single one — if they were not, they wouldn't really be implementations of the cellular automaton as defined, would they? I don't call my computer a "web browser", even though it can be, and indeed currently is, running one. Nor do I call my web browser a "computer", even though it's running on one. I find this perfectly analogous to not calling a specific pattern, such as the breeder, a "cellular automaton", even though it too is running on one. A cellular automaton is more than a single pattern, just like a computer is more than a web browser. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:57, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I would not argue that the cells of such an agglomeration can accept any state. Rather, the states of the cells of such agglomerations have been fixed, into a specific pattern, where only the passage of bits occurs. Typically, a right-pointing ordinary transmission state in vNCA will remain in that state, for as long as the configuration remains. This consistent behavior of the agglomeration is what makes it a specific machine, like a self-replicator. Even though biological organisms are composed of cells (which are organisms in their own right), their agglomerations are considered to also be organisms. I think my term usage is more consistent but, I recognise the concerns you have for doing likewise. Thanks for an engaging discussion. Also, is your name pronounced in the manner of "ILL" + "MARY" (and could you mention the emphasis upon the final I)? Is Karonen Finish, Swedish, ? William R. Buckley (talk) 23:04, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

It's a typically Finnish name, both halves of it. Your pronunciation is close to correct, except that the Finnish "a" is an open back unrounded vowel. And the stress, such as there is, goes on the first syllable as usual in Finnish. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:50, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the details on pronunciation of your name. I will offer to you that most US Americans (there are two continents of Americans, and I tend to think the US attitude that they are the only Americans is manifestly wrong) would therefore pronounce your name properly were it presented in this form:

ILMAHRI

Clearly not the spelling you expect but, it conveys the open a you mention. William R. Buckley (talk) 16:38, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Ifd thumbnails

Your ifd thumbnails script doesn't seem to be working at WP:PUF, although it's fine at WP:FFD. –Drilnoth (T • C) 14:05, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. The script was still looking for the old title Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images. It should be working now. (You may need to clear your cache.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:02, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Yep, it works now. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C) 17:07, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:OP

Greetings, I'm just trying to get a current feel for who is still active in the project and if anybody would object to cleaning out inactive users of the verified user list. Thank you for your time. Q ^{T C} 03:34, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, I haven't really been very active on Wikipedia at all lately, so feel free to take me off the list. I can always ask to be put back if I ever decide to start doing proxy scanning again. (Perhaps it might be a good idea to add a new section to the list for inactive/former members? That way, the list could be kept up to date while still also providing historical information on who used to be active.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:52, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Translation request

Hiya... digging through the list of names at Wikipedia:Translators available#Finnish-to-English and you're the first one who seems to be active so... <G>

Would it be possible for you to translate the short article at http://www.mtv3.fi/viihde/uutiset/muut.shtml/893031?swede_puma for me please? I have an editor who's trying to make some changes to Puma Swede's article using the Finnish language article as the basis and I want to make certain it says what he's purporting...

TIA! Tabercil (talk) 21:28, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Here you go! It's a pretty quick and literal translation, but it should get the facts across. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:01, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Diane Stanley photo

		The Minor Barnstar
		For quick work on finding the correct photo for the above article. GeorgeLouis (talk) 06:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

User scripts

Ilmari Karonen, Syed Kazim has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Go on, smile! Cheers, and happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Thanks for making so many useful user scripts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Syed Kazim (talk • contribs) 16:37, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I really need the signcheck.js user script...;) --Syed Kazim | Talk 17:28, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Nice to know it's useful. I just went and updated the script a bit: it should now work a little more reliably even on talk pages with funny titles and for users with a language other than English chosen in their preferences. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:59, 3 July 2009 (UTC)