Subj : Stephenson errata, was Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : Arthur J. O'Dwyer
Date : Wed Aug 24 2005 03:27 pm


On Wed, 24 Aug 2005, Randy Howard wrote:
>[I wrote:]
>> (BTW, I
>> noticed that his Web site says, "If you want to tell me about
>> typographical errors in /Cryptonomicon/, thank you, but don't bother.
>> I am aware that the book has many typos. The publisher and I are trying
>> to fix as many as we can in a subsequent printing."
>
> Troubling.  If he was really concerned with that, he would want
> as many reports as he could get.

   Not really. Stephenson's like Knuth --- he doesn't have time to read his 
mail. But I take it that unlike Knuth, he doesn't have a secretary to read 
his mail for him. Also unlike Knuth, he doesn't typeset his own work --- 
so his books have many more errors in them. This is just a tactic to make 
sure he doesn't open his inbox in 2007 and find a hundred messages from 
different people /all/ complaining about the extra semicolon on page 732, 
or something.

-Arthur

.