int/long unification hides bugs

[Cliff Wells]

On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 09:36 -0400, Peter Hansen wrote:
> Cliff Wells wrote:

> And what about Methuselah?  He's not going to be receiving his
> social security cheques if he can't enter his age as higher than,
> say, 2**7 (as our friend kartik would arbitrarily say...).  We
> actually need 2**10 for his age, but now that's a little too
> high so maybe we'd better just kill the old bugger off at 2**9
> (hey, he's lived so long that shaving 208 years off his age
> won't bother him, right?).

Ah, the infamous Methuselah quandary.  I think actually killing him with
a program would involve specialized hardware (and possibly a gun
permit), which is why this problem has yet to be solved satisfactorily.
Without corporate interest this problem will probably remain unresolved.

Of course the Social Security Administration is one of those places
where constraints define reality, so my guess is he's already received a
letter informing him he's dead and so is no longer eligible anyway.  Yet
another example of practicality-beats-purity.

Regards,
Cliff

-- 
Cliff Wells <clifford.wells at comcast.net>