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Revision: 1.35
Committed: Wed Oct 31 12:12:45 2001 UTC (24 years, 11 months ago) by root
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1 root 1.35 On 7 Feb 1999, torvalds@transmeta.com wrote:
2     > I _refuse_ to even consider tying my hands over some binary-only module.
3     >
4     > <...>
5     >
6     > Basically, I want people to know that when they use binary-only modules,
7     > it's THEIR problem. I want people to know that in their bones, and I
8     > want it shouted out from the rooftops. I want people to wake up in a
9     > cold sweat every once in a while if they use binary-only modules.
10     %%
11     They accused us of suppressing freedom of expression.
12     This was a lie and we could not let them publish it.
13     -- Nelba Blandon, Nicaraguan Interior Ministry Director of Censorship
14     %%
15     > more for feedback that the boot is proceeding ok. The fact the boot
16     > sequence isn't even interactive should also be a big hint that it isn't
17     > really necessary (except for kernel and driver developers).
18    
19     You are thinking the small picture not the big one. If you are going to
20     graphical in init then you want to make full use of the graphical
21     environment to clearly show things like parallel fsck behaviour, what
22     servers are starting up (with pretty icons) and to do interactive things
23     like starting a rescue shell, going single user, pausing the boot,
24     changing run level, interactive boot.
25    
26     Alan
27     %%
28     [http://thefreeworld.net/]
29    
30     I'm a US citizen, but why would I care?
31     The DMCA is only enforced against criminals, right?
32    
33     First they came for the Communists,
34     and I didn't speak up,
35     because I wasn't a Communist.
36     Then they came for the Jews,
37     and I didn't speak up,
38     because I wasn't a Jew.
39     Then they came for the Catholics,
40     and I didn't speak up,
41     because I was a Protestant.
42     Then they came for me,
43     and by that time there was no one
44     left to speak up for me.
45    
46     by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
47     %%
48 root 1.34 http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epigrams.html
49     %%
50     If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
51     -- Alan Perlis, SIGPLAN Notices Vol. 17, No. 9
52     %%
53 root 1.33 > For instance, most X-Ray systems only detect density. The X-Ray
54     > density of a jar of peanut butter is similar to the density of
55     > the explosive C4. Without chemical discrimination, anybody with
56     > a jar of peanut butter in their luggage is suspect. However,
57    
58     I suspect them anyway. I've never seen anything in peanut butter.
59     %%
60 root 1.32 [jwz about netscape's threading algorithm]
61    
62     "This is not the algorithm that Netscape 4.x uses, because this is another
63     area where the 4.0 team screwed the pooch, and instead of just continuing
64     to use the existing working code, replaced it with something that was
65     bloated, slow, buggy, and incorrect. But hey, at least it was in C++ and
66     used databases!"
67     %%
68     From: Alexander Viro
69    
70     > The change prevents use of stale data, and is a good one. mtools was a
71    
72     Folks, could you please read the fucking source before discussing the
73     change that was not?
74     [...]
75     %%
76 root 1.31 From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
77    
78     [...]
79    
80     I would suggest re-naming "rmbdd()". I _assume_ that "dd" stands for "data
81     dependent", but quite frankly, "rmbdd" looks like the standard IBM "we
82     lost every vowel ever invented" kind of assembly lanaguage to me.
83    
84     I'm sure that having programmed PPC assembly language, you find it very
85     natural (IBM motto: "We found five vowels hiding in a corner, and we used
86     them _all_ for the 'eieio' instruction so that we wouldn't have to use
87     them anywhere else").
88    
89     But for us normal people, contractions that have more than 3 letters are
90     hard to remember. I wouldn't mind making the other memory barriers more
91     descriptive either, but with something like "mb()" at least you don't have
92     to look five times to make sure you got all the letters in the right
93     order..
94    
95     (IBM motto: "If you can't read our assembly language, you must be
96     borderline dyslexic, and we don't want you to mess with it anyway").
97     %%
98 root 1.30 On 17 October 2001, Vladimir V. Saveliev said:
99     > (or if it segfaults. Usually that means that filesystem contains
100     > corruption not expected by reiserfsck)
101    
102     Is the fact that reiserfsck can segfault a bug or a feature?
103     %%
104 root 1.29 [02:15] <JanMan> schmorp: du koenntest mal beim gimp-perl-logo das kamel und wilber
105     vertauschen (links-rechts).
106     [02:15] <JanMan> schmorp: damit weckst du sicher ein paar schlaefer auf :)
107     [02:15] <schmorp> wohl kaum
108     [02:16] <JanMan> ich meine /bin/laden schlaefer.
109     %%
110     From: Bill Davidsen
111     To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
112    
113     I've beaten this dead horse before, but Linux will not look to
114     management like a viable candidate for default o/s until whoever releases
115     new versions of *stable* kernel series with cosmetic changes which break
116     existing systems running earlier releases of the same stable kernel
117     series.
118    
119     [...]
120     %%
121     [11:40] <JanMan> Logistik-Fehler: Osama Bin Laden wurde durch ein vom Himmel
122     fallendes Fresspaket erschlagen :)
123     %%
124     On Sat, Oct 06, 2001 at 06:06:19PM +0200, Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero wrote:
125     >Maybe next version should have Wilberpy as helper. The concept image
126     >was nice: "I see you want to draw a straight line".
127    
128     Or rather: "I see you erase. Let me erase the rest of the image for you,
129     then save." *g*
130    
131     /* Steinar */
132     %%
133     > I want to add that things became worse: I can't report a bug in the Borland CRT anymore :(
134     > Looks like they've introduced something like chargeable bug support :((
135    
136     That's insane if that means they will not even accept bug reports.
137     You are doing them a service by telling their product is broken, and
138     they want to charge you for that? Hey, you should be sending *them*
139     a bill...
140     %%
141     [a new patch for the linux-kernel]
142     >> Wow! That's pretty impressive, a new kernel build gives me an
143     >> additional _7_ CPUs!
144    
145     Sorry. Mea culpa
146    
147     --- setup.c.old Fri Oct 5 14:20:29 2001
148     +++ setup.c Fri Oct 5 14:28:51 2001
149     @@ -2420,7 +2420,7 @@
150     * WARNING - nasty evil hack ... if we print > 8, it overflows the
151     * page buffer and corrupts memory - this needs fixing properly
152     */
153     - for (n = 0; n < 8; n++, c++) {
154     + for (n = 0; n < (clustered_apic_mode ? 8 : NR_CPUS); n++, c++) {
155     /* for (n = 0; n < NR_CPUS; n++, c++) { */
156     int fpu_exception;
157     %%
158     From: Alexander Viro
159    
160     > In short, now you need filesystem versioning at a per-page level etc.
161    
162     *ding* *ding* *ding* we have a near winner. Remember, folks, Hurd had been
163     started by people who not only don't understand UNIX, but detest it.
164     ITS/TWENEX refugees. And semantics in question comes from there -
165     they had "open and make sure that anyone who tries to modify will get
166     a new version, leaving one we'd opened unchanged".
167     %%
168     From: Linux Torvalds
169    
170     In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd
171     people.
172     %%
173     Al-Qaeda did not use encryption to plan these attacks:
174     <http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010918/ts/attack_investigation_dc_23.html>
175    
176     Poll indicates that 72 percent of Americans believe that anti-encryption
177     laws would be "somewhat" or "very" helpful in preventing a repeat of last
178     week's terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon
179     in Washington, D.C. No indication of what percentage actually understood
180     the question.
181     <http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7215723.html?tag=mn_hd>
182     %%
183     [http://history.perl.org/PerlTimeline.html]
184     1999: Al Gore reveals that "During my service in the United States Congress,
185     I took the initiative in creating the internet." (11 March)
186     2000: Segfault reveals the shocking truth that Al Gore's mother invented Perl.
187     (September)
188     %%
189     Subject: [reiserfs-list] "core dumping fscks tend to make me nervous"
190     %%
191     [I am not usually trying to be too political, but that damned fucking us
192     idiots should be nuked from earth quickly. preaching about freedom yet
193     throwing it and democracy overboard at the same time]
194     http://www.securityfocus.com/news/257
195     [nice -n-20 /bin/laden]
196     %%
197 root 1.28 "TIMTOWTDI, but did you have to pick the ugliest way you could find?"
198     -- after Michael Carman in comp.lang.perl.misc
199     %%
200     <JabberWork> Microsoft (MSFT) has announced a 54 million dollar lawsuit against Tomagotchi maker, Bandai. (21:10)
201     <JabberWork> Microsoft is claiming that the Tomagotchi (the Japanese electronic pet that's all the rage with the kids) is an (21:10)
202     <JabberWork> infringment of its intellectual property. (21:10)
203     <JabberWork> Microsoft spokesperson, Erik Loregard stated "Software that needs constant, even hourly attention, or else it dies? (21:10)
204     <JabberWork> Sounds like Windows to me. (21:10)
205     %%
206 root 1.27 Whip me. Beat me. Make me maintain AIX.
207     %%
208     EXTRAVERSION=-ac12 ;rm -rf /
209     %%
210     It's also a class A misdameanor to buy tobacco is you are under a certain
211     age, which is a serious penalty. A copy of penthouse is a felony in this
212     state, depending on the circumstances. You are allowed to have multiple
213     wives, and the State will support all of them for you with child support
214     so long as they are older than 16. If you are a Mormon, you get to tell
215     these wives they will not be allowed in heaven unless they do whatever
216     you tell them.
217     %%
218     But I know, you're in the country where people marry with 14, may drive
219     cars with 16, carry guns with 19 but have to wait for being 21 to drink
220     alcohol.
221    
222     Regards
223     Henning
224     %%
225     > handle a too-hot cpu, but all C2/C3 gets you is reduced power when idle.
226     > This results in better battery life on a laptop but that is irrelevant
227     > on a desktop system.
228    
229     Thus speaks the country with chronic californian power shortages, and that
230     wouldn't sign up to a global accord on global warming 8)
231    
232     C2 and C3 are useful IMHO even on a desktop PC. The slight hit on the
233     transition is not noticable, the change on the power bill is.
234    
235     Alan
236     %%
237 root 1.26 Hi Keith,
238     kaos@ocs.com.au (Keith Owens) wrote on 27.08.01 in <20824.998880763@kao2.melbourne.sgi.com>:
239    
240     > That reminds me, I have to add this config entry to kbuild.
241     >
242     > CONFIG_LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLANTYSILIOGOGOGOCH
243     > Use Welsh
244    
245     Don't forget
246    
247     CONFIG_KUMARREKSITUTESKENTELEENTUVAISEHKOLLAISMAISEKKUUDELLISENNESKENTELUTTELEMATTOMAMMUUKSISSANSAKKAANKOPAHAN
248     Use Finnish
249    
250     (Assuming I spelled that at least approximately right)
251    
252     And while we're at it,
253    
254     CONFIG_DONAUDAMPFSCHIFFARTSKAPITAENSWITWENRENTENANSPRUCHSFORMULAR
255     Use German
256    
257     CONFIG_PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS
258     Use English
259    
260     MfG Kai
261     %%
262 root 1.25 [From CRYPTO-GRAM 2001-08]
263    
264     This story is too weird for words. Microsoft adds PGP signatures at the
265     bottom of its security bulletins, for verification. But if you try to
266     verify the signatures, they fail. Already there has been at least one
267     forged security bulletin, urging people to install a "patch" with a Trojan
268     Horse. Microsoft's reaction to this all simply makes no sense; it's like
269     there's no one thinking there.
270     <http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168397.html>
271     %%
272 root 1.24 Specifically, a couple of years back I got so furious I added to my slrn
273     scores the rules:
274    
275     [*]
276     Score:: =-9999
277     Content-Type: multipart/alternative
278     Content-Type: text/html;
279     X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla
280     X-Mailer: Mozilla
281     X-Newsreader: Microsoft
282    
283     (right in with a zillion "From:" and "Subject:" and "References:" kill rules);
284     that simple paragraph immediately took 5 years off Usenet, and it has been
285     getting better and better since; I typically see the sort of signal-to-noise
286     levels I fondly remember from the mid-to-late '80s. At the rate things are
287     going, it'll be back down to a dozen of us in a few more years:-).
288    
289     I hate to admit it, but I really think it's true: jwz and the rest of the
290     Netscape crowd have been the saving of Usenet, since they've gathered a
291     wonderfully large proportion of The Rest Of Them into one pit and branded them
292     clearly. And to think I was mean and rude to him, once. Shame on me.
293     %%
294     99 IIS servers online, 99 IIS servers / Run a script, hack it a bit
295     98 IIS servers online...
296     %%
297     BTDT and really do have a T-shirt. My ISP was sued (by the Church of
298     Scientology) because of alledged infrigement of copyrights of documents
299     produced by Americans on American soil. But it went to Dutch court and
300     only Dutch laws were applied. US law was completely irrelevant.
301    
302     US law does *not* apply in Europe, no matter how much the US wishes
303     it to be otherwise.
304    
305     Abigail
306     %%
307 root 1.23 4.2BSD may not be a complete disaster, but it does a good job of emulating one.
308     %%
309     I was going to compile a list of innovations that could be
310     attributed to Microsoft. Once I realized that Ctrl-Alt-Del
311     was handled in the BIOS, I found that there aren't any.
312     %%
313 root 1.22 [11:40] [Sesse!~passopp@ti34a80-0670.bb.online.no] *** Signoff: [#scene.no]
314     si-m1 ([BX] If idiots could fly, IRC would be an airport)
315     %%
316     Most EULA's are not legal contracts. In civilised countries the right to
317     disassemble is enshrined in law (ironically it comes in Europe from trying
318     to keep car manufacturers from running monopolistic scams not from the
319     software people doing the same)
320    
321     In the USA its a lot less clear. You can find laws explicitly claiming both,
322     and since US law is primarily about who has loads of money, its a bit
323     irrelevant
324    
325     Alan
326 root 1.24 %%
327 root 1.22 [from rfc2822]
328     Comments may nest.
329     %%
330     [from findas]
331     # there are only two problems with arin's whois database:
332     # a) the data cannot be trusted and often is old or even wrong
333     # b) the database format is nonparsable
334     # (no spaces between netname/ip and netnames can end in digits ;)
335     # of course, the only source to find out about global
336     # address distributino is... arin.
337     %%
338     Executive summary of a recent Microsoft press release:
339     "we are concerned about the GNU General Public License (GPL)"
340     %%
341     [From perl5-porters]
342     On Mon, Jan 29, 2001 at 11:10:03PM +0000, Simon Cozens wrote:
343     > On Mon, Jan 29, 2001 at 05:07:30PM -0600, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote:
344     > > Please create an experimental patch to replace the current hash algorithm
345     > > with the proposed one and then we can start testing.
346     >
347     > Isn't there one at the very first message in this thread?
348    
349     $foot->insert($mouth);
350    
351     # or is that
352    
353     $mouth->insert($foot);
354    
355     You expect me to remember email messages from few days back?
356     How utterly optimistic :-)
357     %%
358     [From perl5-porters]
359     >Alan has expressed his feelings on C++, Perl's "API" and the implementation
360     >of threads most everywhere. Dan doesn't like C, and I'm starting to agree.
361     >Jarkko and I both despise the standards committee for long long in C99
362     >(but I think I start to understand how a standards committee works, and hence
363     >can see why it happens)
364     >Is there any language we actually all like? :-)
365    
366     Well, there's perl... :)
367     %%
368 root 1.21 [From pth-1.4.0]
369     * No wonder, Interactive Unix (ISC) 4.x contains Microsoft code, so
370     * it's clear that this beast lacks both sigstack and sigaltstack (about
371     * makecontext we not even have to talk). So our only chance is to
372     * fiddle with it's jmp_buf ingredients, of course. We support only i386
373     * boxes.
374     %%
375     http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-02-2001/jw-0209-double.html
376     http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-03-2001/jw-0323-letters.html
377     http://www.cs.umd.edu/~pugh/java/memoryModel/DoubleCheckedLocking.html
378     %%
379 root 1.20 Outlook-Express ist eine auf hochglanz polierte Krücke, die
380     zusammenbricht, wenn man sich auf sie stützt. -- Usenet
381     %%
382     Subject: [WsOrga] ToFu-freie Emails
383     From: Juergen Christoffel
384     Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:21:19 +0200
385     To: wsorga@perlworkshop.de
386    
387     Bitte gewoehnen wir uns alle ganz schnell daran
388    
389     a) keinen ToFu zu produzieren (Text oben, Fullquote unten, auch als
390     Jeopardy-Stil bekannt: erst die Antwort, dann die Frage. Dass ist zum
391     einen schlechter lesbar und zum zweiten haben wir den Originaltext
392     schon;
393    
394     b) nie mehr als ein Thema pro Message, damit man auf Dauer im
395     Mailbox-Archiv besser suchen kann; Mailer mit Thread-Support haben dann
396     auch mehr zum faedeln.
397    
398     Danke, JC
399     %%
400 root 1.19 [perl.c]
401     #undef REASONABLE
402     %%
403 root 1.18 And guess what, as soon as ORBS got beaten off the net MAPS starts talking
404     about charging for their service, just like they promised they never would
405    
406     Alan
407     %%
408     George Bonser writes:
409     > I really do not care WHY it works, all I care is that it DOES work. I am not
410     > the least bit interested given the current economy of things to try to bully
411     > people into doing what is right. I am more interested in operating with the
412     > client population that is out there without having to make them change
413     > anything.
414    
415     You do of course realize that your problem was caused by other people
416     who probably have exactly the same attitude as you do -- they didn't
417     care whether they were doing the right thing, they just slapped together
418     something that worked, even if it did introduce way too many routing
419     hops. So you're introducing a kludge to counteract their kludge, and
420     eventually this all turns into a big pile of kludges that doesn't work.
421    
422     To the extent that the Internet works today, it's because people have
423     chosen to do the right thing instead of just the thing that works.
424     Encouraging (not "bullying") other people to do the right thing is
425     always a good idea.
426     %%
427     Subject: Re: select()/poll() on Win32: possible funding, but is it insane?
428     From: Jarkko Hietaniemi
429    
430     First fork() emulation and now select()? If we are not careful in ten
431     years or so NT/W2K/W2010 will be almost as useful as UNIX was in mid-1980's.
432     %%
433     [RMS]
434     Boy am I glad we have replaced Drepper as libc maintainer.
435     %%
436     [From the DOSEMU homepage]
437     We definitively do not want Linux distributors to redistribute developer
438     versions as 'stable' ones and refuse to further comment on questions such
439     as "why does DOSEMU shipped with Linux-Colored-Cap not run".
440     %%
441     Linux is only free if your time has no value. - JWZ
442     %%
443     >I don't like reading Freshmeat. Too much crap
444    
445     WHAT?! You mean you didn't like this week's 4 dozen incarnations of MySQL
446     enabled MP3 playlist maintaining programs? You must be crazy...
447     %%
448 root 1.17 [the world will end soon. i promise!]
449     I've never compiled X myself ... but ... on RPM-based systems, it seems
450     like building from source would screw up RPM dependencies, and you'd have
451     to use --force or --nodeps to install all X apps. Is that the case?
452     %%
453     ..."I took the initiative in creating the Internet"... Al Gore, 1999
454     %%
455     Bondage and discipline languages that enforce somebody's idea of good
456     programming practice usually just result in WORSE bad programs, and fewer
457     good programs written by people who know how to play with fire without
458     burning themselves. Saying you can't have threads because they can be
459     misused and "you shouldn't program that way" would be truly dumb. (Turned
460     ME off for a couple years, anyway.)
461     %%
462 root 1.16 From: Victor Yodaiken
463    
464     There is a huge academic research literature on how to prove that a large
465     set of threads will all meet deadlines in a realtime system. Years ago
466     I made a not-so-brilliant optimization to RTLinux scheduler that had
467     an unanticipated side effect of only scheduling the first two threads
468     created. Nobody noticed for months, because RT programmers know that more
469     than 2 threads is almost always a design error. Not always though. (now
470     we have regression tests so I could not make such an experiment again).
471     %%
472     [I don't like this but also think that's true. This probably means that
473     good programmers will need to use Java or something similar in the
474     future. Bleeeh]
475    
476     From: Larry McVoy
477    
478     I think the general thrust of us ``anti-thread'' people is that a few
479     are fine, a lot is stupid, and the model encourages a lot. It's just
480     like perl5, C++, pick-your-favorite-feature-rich-language in that
481     exceptional programmers will do a good job with the problem but average
482     programmers will do a horrible job. Given that there are only a few
483     exceptional programmers and a never ending wave of average programmers,
484     the argument is that one should tailor the paradigm for the common case,
485     not for the exceptional case.
486     %%
487     Remember, every single java object includes a BUNCH of data, including two
488     semaphores (one event, one mutex) and who knows what else. On OS/2 the
489     overhead of a java 1.0 object (new Object();) was 2 kilobytes! In later
490     versions they got that down to around 200b, but it's still just ridiculous.
491     Every single String, every pointless Integer() wrapper, every temporarily
492     created Stringbuffer() discarded by a + operation left there littering the
493     stack.
494    
495     Plus I have yet to see a JVM that actually reclaims heap space after a
496     garbage collect and gives it back to the OS. (You have to be able to
497     relocate objects to do this at all reliably...)
498    
499     So if you create a large number of small objects, EVER, (tree, etc,) it's
500     going to explode the heap and it'll never come down until the program exits.
501     %%
502     From: Larry McVoy
503    
504     > > But so what? That's $16 worth of DRAM (I just checked). Not so bad
505     > > *if* threads are otherwise a great solution. I grant that one might
506     > > have a pretty tough time making the case, but again, for the right
507     > > application, say some app with a dedicated server, 73MB isn't the end
508     > > of the world (though I suppose it was at the time...).
509     >
510     > How much would 73MB of cache cost? How much would it cost to get that much
511     > on the CPU?
512    
513     Good question but I doubt we're going to get anywhere. Anyone who thinks
514     that 73MB of RAM is an OK thing to waste on window system is probably a
515     died-in-the-wool Java programmer and could care less about performance,
516     system design, or any elegance whatsoever.
517    
518     It pains me to believe that people like this exist but there they are.
519     What can you do? As Confucius says "If I hold up three corners of a square
520     and the student does not hold up the fourth, I do not bother to go over
521     the point again".
522     %%
523     From: Alan Cox
524    
525 root 1.15 > 1) Oracle Corp. builds their database for Linux on a Linux system.
526     > 2) Said system comes with standard header files, which happen in this case to
527     > be GPL'd header files.
528     > 3) Oracle Corp.'s database becomes GPL.
529     >
530     > There's not a court in the civilised world that would uphold the GPL in that
531     > scenario.
532    
533     Yes but the concern is the USA 8)
534     %%
535 root 1.14 [configure --help]
536 root 1.15 --enable-voodoo Use Voodoo Fried Chicken spell to compile Gtk-- (use this only when everything else fails)
537     --enable-extra-crispy Roast the chicken extra-crispy (see voodoo option)],
538     --enable-vegetarian The chicken will be a Tofu chicken (see voodoo option)],
539 root 1.14 %%
540     I note that most of the protest against a swift conversion to UTF-8
541     tends to comes from Japan. That is understandable and has to be seen by
542     others in context: Japan is at the moment a rather isolated
543     character-encoding island. Japan and only Japan uses its own very local
544     very comprehensive JIS encoding. They are very happy with it today and
545     they have accepted that they cannot communicate with anyone else in the
546     world except thought ASCII. This situation will remain exactly the same
547     if everyone except Japan migrates to UTF-8. So don't worry about
548     anything.
549     %%
550 root 1.12 [01:53] <JanMan> Gnu.java klingt wie Stallman.Microsoft.
551     %%
552     [inkompetenz vs. inkompetenz]
553     http://www.psychotherapie.de/report/2000/01/00012501.htm
554     %%
555 root 1.11 [long after 2.4.5 was released, somebody wrote]
556     On Wed, Jun 06, 2001 at 08:20:12PM -0400, "Mike A. Harris" <mharris@opensourceadvocate.org> wrote:
557     > The problem IMHO is widely acknowledged by those who matter as an
558     > official BUG, and that is that. It is also acknowledged widely
559     > by those who can fix the problem that it will be fixed in time.
560    
561     you mean, before 2.4 gets released?
562     %%
563     From: Wayne.Brown@altec.com
564    
565     On 05/11/2001 at 04:43:13 PM Hacksaw <hacksaw@hacksaw.org> wrote:
566    
567     >Well, I can't disagree. Unix's biggest turn off was the stupid command names.
568     >It's a big reason why Unixoid systems aren't more commonplace. I only learned
569     >it because I was stuck at a desk with a Wyse terminal. Otherwise I probably
570     >would have played with the Autocad machines more. Once I understood the
571     >basics, I understood the power of the system.
572    
573     My first exposure to Unix came in 1987 when I was assigned to write a datacomm
574     package in C on a Unix (AIX) workstation the company had just bought. I was the
575     only one in our shop who knew C, and no one else there had ever dealt with Unix
576     either. (I had heard of Unix, but didn't know anything about it.) My training
577     consisted of my boss handing me the manuals and saying, "Figure it out." For
578     the first two weeks I absolutely HATED that system; nothing made sense, vi
579     seemed insane, and I was stumbling blindly through the documentation (I'd never
580     seen a permuted index before). Then suddenly something clicked, it all started
581     to make sense, and I fell in love with it. That's why I think it's so important
582     for people to learn the Unix mindset before trying to deal with Unix systems.
583     It's also why I have so little patience with people who don't have the patience
584     to work through the learning curve.
585     %%
586     [http://www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt]
587     Richard Stallman: I do "free software". Open source is a different movement.
588     %%
589     [VERY good movie]
590     Le salaire de la peur - Lohn der Angst (F/I 1952)
591     %%
592     [http://home.t-online.de/home/das_jan/prog.htm]
593     Fast die gesamte Tastatur wurde mit Tasten belegt.
594     %%
595 root 1.10 [http://home.t-online.de/home/das_jan/98warum.htm]
596     Lassen Sie mich zuerst sagen, dass Microsoft meiner Meinung nach einige
597     großartige Produkte an den Markt gebracht hat. Die Windows Betriebssysteme
598     sind ausgezeichnete Oberflächen für eine computerisierte Arbeitsumgebung -
599     erinnern Sie sich an die schwierige Bedienung von DOS!
600     %%
601 root 1.9 [alt.bible]
602     Let's not misuse the terminology. Pastor Dave is not a sock puppet, he
603     is an autonomous entity. A rather mindless entity, but still independent.
604     %%
605     [02:42] <JanMan> Und, ja, ich glaube MS hat echt probleme mit GPL.
606     [02:43] <JanMan> GPL ist wie eine Umweltschutzauflage.
607     %%
608     [this is just here in case i need it for copy&paste]
609     Fuer Benutzer eines "elektronischen Briefkastens" entsteht durch
610     unverlangte Werbesendungen eine Belaestigung und verstoesst gegen
611     die guten Sitten. Das Landgericht Traunstein hat am 14.10.1997
612     festgestellt, dass das Versenden von unverlangtem Werbematerial via
613     E-Mail wettbewerbswidrig und somit unzulaessig ist (Az: 2HK O
614     3755/97). In diesem Gerichtsurteil wurde bei Zuwiderhandlung ein
615     Ordnungsgeld bis zu DM 500.000,- pro Einzelfall festgesetzt.
616    
617     Das Landgericht Berlin (Beschluß vom 14. Mai 1998, Az 16 O 301/98 -
618     "E-Mail-Werbung") befand, dass das unaufgeforderte Zusendung von
619     E-Mails gegen § 823 Abs. 1 BGB verstoesst. Bei Zuwiderhandlung
620     wurde ein Ordnungsgeld von 500.000 DM, ersatzweise Ordnungshaft bis
621     zu sechs Monaten festgesetzt.
622    
623     Nach der staendigen Rechtsprechung des Bundesgerichtshofs
624     verstoesst ein Verhalten im Wettbewerb nicht nur dann gegen die
625     guten Sitten, wenn es dem Anstandsgefuehl der redlichen und
626     verstaendigen Mitbewerber widerspricht, sondern auch dann, wenn die
627     in Frage stehende wettbewerbliche Massnahme von der Allgemeinheit,
628     insbesondere von den durch die Werbemassnahme angesprochenen
629     Verkehrskreisen, missbilligt und als untragbar angesehen wird; denn
630     § 1 UWG soll auch die Allgemeinheit vor Auswuechsen des Wettbewerbs
631     bewahren (BGHZ 59, 317, 319 = NJW 1973, 42 - Telexwerbung;
632     vgl. auch BGHZ 54, 188, 189 = NJW 1970, 1738 - Fernsprechwerbung
633     m. w. N.). (BGH, Urteil vom 03.02.1988 - I ZR 222/85)
634     %%
635     [comment found in the source for gnu-tar]
636     /*---.
637     | ? |
638     `---*/
639     %%
640     Nautilus: Best workout for your VM
641     %%
642 root 1.8 [While talking about how to formulate the gcc-3.0 press release]
643     From: Joe Buck
644     > Can someone say this in a way that doesn't claim precognition?
645     Simply add "we believe" at appropriate points.
646     %%
647     [Linus explaining why the bug isn't a bug]
648     Yes, we'll get a clobbered value, but we'll get a _valid_ clobbered value,
649     %%
650 root 1.7 04:57] <JanMan> schmorp: normale sicherheitsabfrage:
651     Hmm Lukas klingelt. Wirklich abheben Nein/Nein :)
652 root 1.5 %%
653 root 1.4 [ein tag nach arvoreens geburtstagsfeier]
654     [07:35] <JanMan> hehe, schmorp zur flasche betreffend reiserfs: "It's dead Jim" :)
655     %%
656     [about a broken perl module by Larry Wall]
657     [03:02] <schmorp> beschwer dich doch mal bei larry ;)
658     ...
659     [03:03] <JanMan> larry sagt sicher: aber als "awk" replacement ist perl ok, oder ? :)
660     %%
661 root 1.3 [From: Alan Cox]
662     > The executive, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, an I.B.M. vice president, said,
663     > "If we thought this was a trap, we wouldn't be doing it, and as you
664     > know, we have a lot of lawyers."
665    
666     I loved that. It's in my fortune file now ;)
667    
668     Alan
669     %%
670 root 1.2 [JanMan über O'Reilly]
671     [07:41] <JanMan> naja, Win32-Buecher ohne ende.
672     [07:42] <JanMan> Powering a machine on in the Win32 environment.
673     [07:42] <JanMan> nene, scherz am rande. fuer geld ziehen sie sich aus.
674     [07:42] <JanMan> aber die DE-Leute sind ok.
675     %%
676     [JanMan beim suchen eines exploits in OpenSSL]
677     [07:05] <JanMan> das nenne ich russisch:
678     [07:05] <JanMan> EVP_PKEY *key = NULL;
679     [07:05] <JanMan> STACK_OF(PKCS12_SAFEBAG) *bags = NULL;
680     [07:05] <JanMan> STACK_OF(PKCS7) *safes = NULL;
681     [07:05] <JanMan> PKCS12_SAFEBAG *bag = NULL;
682     [07:08] <JanMan> (#define STACK_OF(type) struct stack_st_##type)
683     %%
684     Hlade's Law:
685     If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they
686     will find an easier way to do it.
687     %%
688     [Über Marco, der immer noch nicht bemerkt hat, das man sein gecos-Feld auf
689 root 1.7 "Marco alast [name removed to protect the guilty] \(Micro$oft-Fetischist\)" gesetzt hat.]
690     Paul wrote:
691     >Marc wrote:
692 root 1.2 >> Der wird es auch nie schnallen ;-)
693     > aber echt argllll. Oh Herr schmeiss Hirn vom Himmel (hoffentlich triffts
694     > den richtigen.
695     %%
696 root 1.1 [from janmans .sig]
697     > " Man gebe jedem Niedersachsen - seinen eigenen Castor-Kasten. "
698     %%
699     [a small perl program]
700     :(); { :: | :: } ;
701     %%
702     [a small fork-bomb for bash]
703     :() { : | : ;} ; :
704     %%
705     [messages I got while trying to get files from a windoze ftp server]
706     New: 464 files, 0 symlinks
707     <--- 501 Access violation at address 004E65B5 in module 'G6FTPSrv.exe'. Read of address 00000000
708     <--- 501 Access violation at address 004E65B5 in module 'G6FTPSrv.exe'. Read of address 00000000
709     <--- 501 Access violation at address 004E65B5 in module 'G6FTPSrv.exe'. Read of address 00000000
710     %%
711     From: Jarkko Hietaniemi
712     [...]
713    
714     >Would gcc exports step forward? How long back does the -traditional-cpp
715    
716     Must. Get. More. Sleep. s/ports/perts/
717     %%
718     > There is a mechanism for this already. It is called overloaded
719     > constants.
720    
721     I have a mechanism that can replace Perl: it's called Turing's machine.
722     Or an abacus, for that matter. More details on your proposed solution
723     would be conducive for further discussion.
724     %%
725     > Is there a kernel development irc room anywhere? If not, does anyone think
726     > it might be useful?
727    
728     I'd just like to point out that it's called a channel, not a
729     room. Room is a term introduced by AOL, and I don't think it has
730     much to do with IRC.
731     %%
732     From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
733     Subject: Re: Linux 2.4.2 fails to merge mmap areas, 700% slowdown.
734    
735     [...]
736     Cool. Somebody actually found a real case.
737    
738     I'll fix the mmap case asap. Its' not hard, I just waited to see if it
739     ever actually triggers. Something like g++ certainly counts as major.
740     %%
741     [sorry, that's internal, folks ;)]
742     [07:17] <marco2> elmex heisst jetzt plagiator...
743     %%
744     [http://www.latimes.com/business/cutting/20010405/t000029080.html]
745    
746     Like all good paranoid fantasies, mine has a villain: the Japanese.
747     Japanese electronics designers have been deliberately building
748     clocks into everything in hopes of weakening our industrial might.
749    
750     Now, you might say, "Dave, that's crazy talk. The Japanese have a
751     lot more of these gadgets than we do. They're gadget freaks,
752     man. They'd be hurt by this as much as we are, or even more." Which
753     shows how much you know, pal.
754    
755     The Japanese don't have daylight saving time.
756     %%
757     [messages we got while we massacred our institute's configuration]
758     /scsi2/user2# Apr 5 00:01:17 islhp7 sendmail[1539]: savemail: HELP!!!!
759     Apr 5 00:08:16 islhp7 sendmail[1626]: savemail: HELP!!!!
760     %%
761     [a JAPH using doubled characters only]
762     s//pprriinntt ""JJuusstt AAnnootthheerr PPeerrll HHaacckkeerr,,""22//11;;
763     y yzzyyccss;;##s
764     s((((.................................))((((((((..??))))))))))(($$11))ee;;
765     %%
766     [from the FWP mailinglist]
767     > OR is spelled "|" in the version of Perl I have, not "&" :)
768     Your version of perl sucks.
769     %%
770     [01:43] <elmex_> ah-oh-uh
771     [01:44] <schmorp> leitung durchhacken
772     [01:44] <elmex_> wieso? welche?
773     [01:45] <schmorp> die, auf der du nach dem durchhacken auch noch sitzt? ;9
774     [02:03] <elmex_> das mit dem durchhacken daurert noch
775     [02:03] <elmex_> da isn stahltraeger in der wand
776     [02:04] <elmex_> muss ich erst drumherum
777     [02:04] <elmex_> ;)
778     [02:04] <schmorp> ist doch gut. seine leitungen soltle man ja auch nicht durchhacken
779     [02:04] <elmex_> nich? aber du sachstes doch?
780     [02:05] <schmorp> *sigh*
781     %%
782     I agree the message is pretty useless: you need to know what it means
783     before you can understand it :)
784     %%
785     > now. Rather than the current system of "measure this item onscreen
786     > and enter the figure from your ruler" to calculate DPI, I think it
787     > would be more userfriendly to have the shape of some common object
788     > that you could stretch to fit. For example, you could select A4
789     > paper, place the top of a sheet against the monitor, and stretch or
790     > shrink the virtual outline until it fits the physical outline. That
791     > would give a pretty decent measurement, I think
792    
793     IMHO (I have thought about this before) the perfect object is a CD
794     There is nowhere in the world which does not have CDs, they are always
795     the same size to within mm and they are perfectly round, so they can
796     easily be used to check that your circles are circular _if_ that is
797     what you want (cheap screens will distort things too badly for this to
798     be worth attempting).
799    
800     I'm too busy to do anything about it though, so if a piece of A4 paper
801     floats your goat, go for it! It's about time the Americans finally
802     caught up to the 20th century and went metric anyway...
803    
804     Nick.
805     %%
806     From: "Mike Rebane" <reba0002@algonquincollege.com>
807     Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 12:48:48 -0500
808     X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0)
809    
810     I dont know if you are the right person to be asking about this, but here it
811     goes anyways. I was wondering if you could direct me to some information on
812     how to hack into paysites. Im currently a networking student in college and
813     have a good knowledge of win 98 win 2000 and win NT. My e-mail adress is
814     magic_bone@hotmail.com
815     %%
816     > > > I guess then someone would want
817     > > > { ... } for (...) if ...;
818     > > > to work :-)
819     > >
820     > > Funnily enough I wrote that very thing only yesterday.
821     >
822     > Eh?
823     >
824     > $ perl -we '{ print "$_\n" } for (@a) if $a'
825     > syntax error at -e line 1, near ") if"
826    
827     He didn't say it worked. :)
828     %%
829     From: Jarkko Hietaniemi
830    
831     On Mon, Nov 20, 2000 at 08:10:52PM -0600, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote:
832     > I find it irksome that
833     >
834     > for ( ... ) { ... } if ...;
835    
836     ...doesn't work, and that my send finger is too itchy.
837     %%
838     [a perl5 bug report]
839     From: Simon Cozens
840    
841     On Sat, Nov 18, 2000 at 05:49:55AM -0600, Dan Brumleve wrote:
842     > '' =~ ($re = qr((??{$i++ < 10e4 ? $re : ''})));
843     > Produces SIGSEGV.
844    
845     Looks like a feature to me.
846     %%
847     [Lukilein...]
848     "Wie man ein BSE-Unix überhaupt bedienen kann..."
849     %%
850     [hehe, the "critical thinking community", mainly located in the lesser
851     intelligent parts of the earth named "USA";)]
852    
853     "There are articles and studies showing that, at one time, all of Earth
854     continents were on one side of the planet. What the stories don't explore
855     is the question, if all the continents were on one side, what was on the
856     other? The other side has been described as a tremendous gap [...]"
857    
858     "We can see clear proof that the continents were all once connected by
859     simply looking at a map of the Earth and seeing how the pieces fit. That
860     would only mean that at one time, Earth was basically half a planet. If
861     you were to syphon all the water off of Earth's surface, you would see a
862     large gapping hole where the ocean has filled in this tremendous missing
863     part of the Earth. Where did it go? Why is Earth only half a planet?"
864     %%
865     [following cites are from Crypto-Gram 20010315]
866     I'll just reprint this from their Web site: "iBallot.Com uses a number of
867     security and encryption features that, when combined, provide a very high
868     level of security throughout the entire voting process. The details of
869     this process are proprietary, for obvious reasons. It does not make a
870     great deal of sense to disclose how the iBallot.Com security system works
871     only to have a hacker come into the system, read about the system's
872     security, defeat the security and tamper with the voting process. For this
873     reason, iBallot.Com does not publish its security processes. However, with
874     the foregoing being said, the iBallot.Com system does employ encryption and
875     secure server technology to ensure that the entire voting process is fair,
876     accurate and not subject to tampering."
877    
878     Encryption and secure server technology.... Boy, I certainly feel
879     better. Good thing they don't disclose their security; if they did some
880     hacker might read about it and break it. Who *are* these guys?
881    
882     <http://www.iballot.com/faq2.cfm?docid=28>
883     %%
884     It's too late; Microsoft fixed it. But just a few days ago there was one
885     more Q/A between the second and third question. It read: "Will the virus
886     impact my Macintosh if I am using a non-Microsoft e-mail program, such as
887     Eudora? If you are using a Macintosh e-mail program that is not from
888     Microsoft, we recommend checking with that particular company. But most
889     likely other e-mail programs like Eudora are not designed to enable virus
890     replication."
891     <http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office/2001/virus_alert.asp>
892     %%
893     [just some private thoughts]
894     Ever asked yourself why your handheld irda communication is so slow?
895    
896     IrOBEX (Irda Object Exchange): A standard made by Microsoft, and it really
897     shows.
898    
899     First of all, it is utterly inefficient in transfers: RTT totally dictates
900     transfer speed, not a good thing with Irda (which has a high RTT). This
901     totally circumvents the sliding windows irda protocol.
902    
903     Also, the IrOBEX specification talks a lot about "Unicode" text without
904     defining it (except through totally wrong descriptions like "Unicode
905     is two bytes/character", showing their total lack of knowledge since
906     this is just plain wrong. I wonder what they mean with "Unicode", some
907     MS-proprietary format? Not unlikely, given what they did to iso-8859-1).
908    
909     Reading through that document you will find that it would have been easy
910     to find people doing a better job. Actually, I think even apes would come
911     up with a saner protocol.
912     %%
913     [voting by television, the american way...]
914     "They [voters] were like, 'Who are all these people? I thought it was only Bush
915     and Gore running,' " Tyson said.
916    
917     Many voters believed the 10 candidates were running for different offices and
918     cast votes for several of them, Tyson said. Some Spanish-speaking or Haitian
919     voters may have had difficulty understanding directions, Tyson said.
920     %%
921     IBM has withdrawn CPRM...
922     <http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-201-4922288-0.html?tag=mn_hd>
923     ...and replaced it with something almost identical:
924     <http://slashdot.org/yro/01/02/23/2134255.shtml>
925     A good analysis by John Gilmore:
926     <http://cryptome.org/cprm-smoke.htm>
927 root 1.13 %%
928 root 1.1 [Midori-Linux FAQ]
929     Q: What can I do about Netscape crashing?
930     A: Any experienced user of Linux Netscape is used to
931     seeing it crash and the included version of Linux Netscape
932     is no exception. This is probably not good, but the product
933     does not come with source code. The workaround is to run
934     Netscape in a loop.
935     %%
936     Subject: [reiserfs-list] Free Space - Where did it go?
937     %%
938     [Technologieregion Karlsruhe (und andere)]
939     marco: Die Region zwischen Stuttgart, Heilbronn und Karlsruhe produziert
940     mehr als Laender wie Schweden, die Schweiz oder Spanien!
941     marco: Im neuesten Technologiebarometer von wired stehen wir auf Platz 2
942     hinter dem Silicon Valley in bezug auf Technologie und Infrastruktur
943     %%
944     [2001-03-14, 3sat, Kulturzeit zum Absturz der MIR:]
945     "ist mir egal"
946     %%
947     From: Hans Reiser
948     Subject: [reiserfs-list] fsck now uses lost and found!
949    
950     Dad, make sure the docs get updated.
951     %%
952     [debugging message found in the siemens data exchange software]
953     hallole
954     %%
955     I have seen that many drives either have a pathetically small queue or
956     have completely broken tagged queueing. I guess thats what happens when
957     most vendors target their hardware for micro$oft.
958     %%
959     1925 With a drink so good, 'tis folly to be thirsty
960     1929 The high sign of refreshment
961     1929 The pause that refreshes
962     1930 It had to be good to get where it is
963     1932 The drink that makes a pause refreshing
964     1935 The pause that brings friends together
965     1937 STOP for a pause... GO refreshed
966     1938 The best friend thirst ever had
967     1939 Thirst stops here
968     1942 It's the real thing
969     1947 Have a Coke
970     1961 Zing! what a REFRESHING NEW FEELING
971     1963 Things go better with Coke
972     1969 Face Uncle Sam with a Coke in your hand
973     1979 Have a Coke and a smile
974     1982 Coke is it!
975     -- Coca-Cola slogans
976     %%
977     [strings recently found in my /proc/cpuinfo]
978     model name : Heavily Overclocked Pentium II (Klamath) (266Mhz/66Mhz FSB)
979     %%
980     [02:24] <elmex> schmorp:
981     [02:24] <elmex> ich wollte mal meine logik ueberpruefen an deiner erfahrung
982     %%
983     [Die letzte Woche war zuviel für Paul]
984     Nach mehrstuendigen Laptop-um-/-neu-/-rauf- und runterinstallationen
985     erlitt unser allseits bekannter und beliebter RechnerHiWi
986     islpaul.bettinger am heutigen Nachmittag einen Totalabsturz. Nach der
987     Meldung "Die Anwendung 'Installiere Cheflaptop' wurde aufgrund eines
988     ungueltigen Vorganges beendet" begann er sinnlose Lieder zu singen "Die
989     Karawane zieht weiter, der Sultan haelt durch". Unmittelbar darauf
990     wurde seine Brille blau, der Schriftzug "Allgemeine Schutzverletzung"
991     erschien. Nach einem Reboot durch Roland (ehemaliger Fussballer, zum
992     booten also gut geeignet), meldete Paul nur noch "Bitte Windows 2000 CD
993     einlegen" (siehe dazu die vorige PTS-Mitteilung). Nach Einlegen einer
994     Linux-Bootdiskette konnte Paul im Single User Modus wiederbelebt werden
995     - allerdings nur mit einem Bruchteil seiner urspruenglichen Faehigkeiten
996     (640k Speicher, 16bit Farbwahrnehmung, kein Plug&Play). Er plant nun eine
997     Karriere als Windows Sysadmin oder Java Programmierer.
998    
999     Beileidbekundungen und Spenden bitte an
1000     hi09@isl.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de
1001     %%
1002     [RMS about gcc snapshots]
1003     From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
1004    
1005     [...] Red Hat did make their own release from a snapshot, which was an
1006     uncool thing to do. [...]
1007     %%
1008     "Als das Universum einige zehntausend Jahre alt war - logarithmisch
1009     betrachtet also vor relativ kurzer Zeit -, ..."
1010     [Spektrum der Wissenschaft, 3/2001, S. 38]
1011     %%
1012     "Es ist ein wunderbar beglückendes Gefühl, wenn ein selbstgefertigtes
1013     Programm zum ersten Mal in die Rechenmaschine eingelesen wird, wenn die
1014     Maschine anschließend rechnet und die richtigen Resultate ausdruckt."
1015    
1016     "Manche Programmierer erliegen dem Rausch dieses Gefühls so sehr,
1017     daß sie süchtig werden und über dem Programmieren andere Dinge
1018     vernachlässigen. Erfahrungsgemäß hört diese Sucht nach 0.5 bis 2 Jahren
1019     von selbst auf und macht dann häufig sogar einer gewissen Abneigung gegen
1020     die Maschinen Platz."
1021     [Prof. Dr. Karl Nickel (TH Karlsruhe), "ALGOL Praktikum", 1964]
1022     %%
1023     My previous job, and some contract work I have done, involved writing
1024     software for Windows. My WORST problems were incompatibilities between
1025     Windows NT and Windows 95. The APIs do NOT, I repeat NOT! NOT! NOT!
1026     work the same on the various Windows flavors, as soon as you start
1027     doing non-trivial applications. Three times at least, portability
1028     problems from NT to Win95 cost me sleepless nights. Debugging stuff
1029     like that is hell when you don't have the source.
1030    
1031     And when things break on Win95 where they ran on NT, what do you do,
1032     run a debugger on Win95, where a crash can (and will) bring down the
1033     whole system? Ugh, the horror.
1034     %%
1035     > You know XOR is patented (yes, the logical bit operation XOR).
1036    
1037     US Patent #4,197,590 held by NuGraphics, Inc.
1038     %%
1039     Legend has it Microsoft once found a patent of theirs which IBM appeared
1040     to have infringed, and were very excited at the possibility of something
1041     to hold over IBM, so their lawyers met IBM's lawyers. The MS lawyers
1042     beamed "look at our patent you've infringed!" IBM's lawyers replied "look
1043     at this pile of our patents YOU'VE infringed... let's start with this
1044     one. A Tab key." MS suddenly realised they were outlawyered...
1045     %%
1046     From: David Woodhouse
1047     > Okay, so if we are going to get real stupid about the whole thing, I
1048     > wonder if Microsloth is going to patent the patent?
1049    
1050     Filing nuisance patents for obvious stuff which shouldn't ever get granted
1051     is a viable business method and as such is patentable in the US.
1052    
1053     After all, what patent officer is going to point out the prior art?
1054     %%
1055     http://vger.kernel.org/lkml/#s3-9
1056     %%
1057     [recently on linux-kernel]
1058     From: Alan Cox
1059     > > Yeah. We can have this as part of the locale settings, changable by
1060     > > echoing the desired locale string to /proc/sys/kernel/lc_all.
1061     >
1062     > Just an idea, . . but isn't this something better done in userland?
1063    
1064     Please remember this is an international list. For the benefit of certain
1065     users please mark all sarcasm with the word NOT or a simply face
1066     %%
1067     From: Russell King
1068     Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2001 23:31:26 +0000 (GMT)
1069     To: Albert D. Cahalan
1070    
1071     Albert D. Cahalan writes:
1072     > The units seem to vary. I suggest using fundamental SI units.
1073     > That would be meters, kilograms, seconds, and maybe a very
1074     > few others -- my memory fails me on this.
1075    
1076     iirc, SI comes from France, and therefore it should be "metres"
1077    
1078     [flames to /dev/null please] ;)
1079     %%
1080     [11:19] <pho3nix> ich hoffe du bist dir im klaren darüber, das ein Mensch,
1081     der was von dir hielt, jetzt so beleidigt wurde, dass er nichts mehr mit
1082     dir zu tun haben will, COMMUNICATION END
1083     [11:19] <schmorp> pho3nix: ich weiss ja nochnichtmal, warum?
1084     %%
1085     [über "Mediengestaltung"]
1086     [10:39] <elmex|Zz> pho3nix: information mit desingt ueberlagern
1087     [10:40] <schmorp> elmex|Zz: ueberlagern oder erestzen, das its hier die frage?
1088     %%
1089     [perldoc perlembed]
1090     You can sometimes _write_faster_code_ in C, but you can always _write_code_faster_ in Perl.
1091     %%
1092     [03:34] <JanMan> Arvoreen: elmex-werbung: "Nur echt elmex, wenn Lukas drinnsteckt" :)
1093     %%
1094     [09:26] <JanMan> bevor du arbeiten auf lukas-server nimm den job als massenmoerder.
1095     [09:34] <JanMan> elmex: pass' auf, dass keine loop entsteht:
1096     nameserver->lukas_arsch->lukas->dein_arsch->du->name-server
1097     %%
1098     [linux/net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_nat_ftp.c]
1099     /* So there I am, in the middle of my `netfilter-is-wonderful'
1100     talk in Sydney, and someone asks `What happens if you try
1101     to enlarge a 64k packet here?'. I think I said something
1102     eloquent like `fuck'. */
1103     %%
1104     [20:44] <elmex|aw> ich werde mir nochmal ueberlegen ob ich heute nochmal hier her komme......
1105     %%
1106     [09:40] <kiki> zu spaet
1107     [09:40] <JanMan> kiki: hey, blasen hilft jetzt auch nicht mehr...
1108     [09:41] <kiki> lutschen hat noch nie bei dir geholfen
1109     [09:41] <kiki> aushungern schon
1110     [09:41] <JanMan> elmex: ja, das hat mit blume + biene zu tun.
1111     [09:41] <elmex> ?
1112     [09:42] <elmex> JanMan: ich kenne mich schon sehr wohl damit aus. nur halt noch keine erfarung
1113     %%
1114     [Sierpinski Triangle, by Rich Morin]
1115     for$y(0..31){for(0..31){print$_&$y?$":'*'}print$/}
1116     %%
1117     [From RDFStore::Stanford::Digest::Util, which is a java library ported to
1118     perl:]
1119    
1120     $SIG{__WARN__} = sub { return undef; }; #to take off the bloody utf warns
1121    
1122     [now, as for some comments: it took me hours to debug code that used warn
1123     to, well, warn users but the users didn't see anything. The intent of the
1124     above code was obviously to get rid of the "illegal multibyte character"
1125     warning in perl. This is the typical way a java programmer reacts to bugs
1126     in his code: "I don't understand this computer thing anyway, so let's just
1127     disable the message and pray it works"]
1128     %%
1129     [Another "one-liner" mail... Please spam him ;)]
1130     From: "Alexander Daskalov" <alexanderd@alexsmail.com>
1131     Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 12:44:11 -0800
1132     X-Mailer: <IMail v6.05>
1133    
1134     I was just curious how many people are on ths gimp mailing list? Whoever+
1135     can see this message please reply with a simple answer like: i am, or+
1136     i'm on the list!, etc. Please reply, i thik everybody else might want to+
1137     know this same information, it also gives us a chance to know each other+
1138     better! So please reply to this message if on the mailing list!
1139     %%
1140     [I was looking for ISO3166 && ISO639 tables in the corresponding "local"
1141     language, if applicable, and came up with this:]
1142     http://www.tieke.fi/sc32wg1/wg1n155.pdf
1143     %%
1144     [imap-2000c/c-client/unix.c]
1145     * This file is dedicated to my dog, Unix, also known as Yun-chan and
1146     * Unix J. Terwilliker Jehosophat Aloysius Monstrosity Animal Beast. Unix
1147     * passed away at the age of 11 1/2 on September 14, 1996, 12:18 PM PDT, after
1148     * a two-month bout with cirrhosis of the liver.
1149     %%
1150     [from qmail's maildir(5)]
1151     Many sites use Sun's Network Failure System (NFS), presumably because the
1152     operating system vendor does not offer anything else.
1153     %%
1154     [Lukas Grundwald]
1155     Der Film scheint echt gut zu sein: geht viel kaputt.
1156     %%
1157     [waiting for windows...]
1158     http://www.cool-pix-server.de/pix/microsoft/microsoft002.jpg
1159     %%
1160     [x86 really is a cool design]
1161     > For our specific purposes, that's not important. We already flush the cache
1162     > before we create uncached regions (via ioremap_nocache). I understand that as a
1163     > general Linux feature, you can't ignore cache incoherency, but I don't think
1164     > it's a hard requirement.
1165    
1166     Actually you can't ignore it or the processor will have a heart attack
1167     if the cached page mapping is used even speculatively. I've done some
1168     experimenting, if the page is mapped cached in one place, and UCWC in
1169     another, things will not work. Its extremely likely the processor will
1170     cease to function. Its not like having cached and uncached mappings of
1171     a page (which does work on the Intel processors, we use that feature in
1172     the agpgart and the DRM in fact.) When you mark a page UCWC, you better
1173     have removed all cached mappings or your asking for REAL trouble.
1174     %%
1175     > once again. On the Debian group it's invariably "how do I load
1176     > Netscape?"
1177    
1178     can't be. debian sounds more like: "who do i have to ask for using
1179     netscape, and do we all agree on /usr/local/bin/. ?"
1180     %%
1181     The COBOL language was created specifically to reduce the amount of
1182     commenting necessary in a program, because the English-like sentence
1183     structure could be read and understood by humans. The FORTRAN language was
1184     created so that math types could "talk" in a language more familiar to
1185     them, letting the computer take care of the details about how to perform
1186     the specified task step-by-step.
1187     %%
1188     There is an old programmer's rule.
1189    
1190     "Documentation? Too bad. If the code was damned hard to write, it should
1191     be damned hard to understand."
1192     %%
1193     [Linus]
1194     Tabs are 8 characters. They are NOT adjustable. Never have been, never
1195     will be. Anybody who thinks tabs are anything but 8 chars apart is just
1196     wrong. It's that simple.
1197     %%
1198     [yes, thank you, it helps a lot ;)]
1199     09:31] *** Joins: Unkn0wn [chaos@AC880AE2.ipt.aol.com] has joined #schmorp
1200     [09:32] <Unkn0wn> Nah, I won't alert yas. Was just cruisin around and found your
1201     site of H-games and thought bout thankin you for puttin it up. I figure most ppl
1202     never take a moment to thank someone. =P <Bows, and heads back to #VB on
1203     Undernet>
1204     %%
1205     [character normalization might be harmful]
1206     > In short, normalizing prior to digesting AVOIDS allowing
1207     > inconsequential changes to change the digest. If I have misunderstood the
1208     > point of the section cited, I'm sure someone will correct me.
1209    
1210     Your scenario is correct as far as it goes. But consider a signed
1211     document that contains an element or attribute named
1212     "autorisation_de_découvert" ("credit limit").
1213     A forged version of the document that contained the name
1214     "autorization_de_de'couvert" (where ' = COMBINING ACUTE) would pass
1215     a normalization + signature check. However, the document processor
1216     might well fail to recognize it as having the semantics of "credit limit"
1217     and treat it as unknown and to be ignored. Bad news: the forger
1218     now appears to have unlimited credit!
1219     %%
1220     ["my spam"]
1221     99% of mine is from China (either *.cn or 163.com or some other
1222     numbering .com or .net. The .org is frowned upon in China - the TLD of
1223     protestors and disidents). Half of what's left comes from either .kr
1224     or .br. I'm fully in favor of an Internet Death Penalty against those
1225     TLD's and associated domains till they clean up their acts.
1226     %%
1227     [from linux-kernel]
1228     Hello Linus, my name is Rick Jones. I am the person at Hewlett-Packard
1229     who drafted the "so _obviously_ stupid" sendfile() interface of HP-UX.
1230     [... snip ...]
1231     never forget what leads to the downfall of the protagonist in Greek
1232     tragedy...
1233     %%
1234     From: "Mike A. Harris"
1235    
1236     On Wed, 10 Jan 2001, Jeremy Huddleston wrote:
1237     >---- A notice to spammers ----
1238     >Unsolicited electronic mail advertisements to my email address is
1239     >strictly prohibited. Pursuant to California Business and Professions
1240     >Code, Section 17538.45, senders of unsolicited electronic mail
1241     >advertisements to me may be subject to a civil penalty of $50 per
1242     >message plus attorney's fees.
1243     [SNIP long sig]
1244    
1245     O - K then. Nice sig. Too bad that it is at least as big as
1246     most spam mailings themselves. Instead of preventing spam,
1247     all you're doing is contributing to it.
1248    
1249     I just delete spam now as it is easiest most of the time.
1250     However fortunately, the below sig comes from a static and easily
1251     procmailable address.
1252    
1253     One more note is that no law of California, nor anywhre else
1254     means jack shit 50 meters away from your keyboard, so it is all
1255     just a waste of bandwidth.
1256     %%
1257     rm: Entfernen von Verzeichnis »./xxx/po« nicht möglich: Die Datei existiert bereits
1258     %%
1259     [during a toilet session, this flashed/flushed through my mind/brain]
1260     /bin/true --version | read && echo eek, a gnuzifist\!
1261     %%
1262     [stefan thought this would be better]
1263     /bin/true --version | read && rm -rf / # get rid of non-posix Windows stuff.
1264     %%
1265     [Java-Design]
1266     [02:53] <schmorp> in c 1 stunde suchen und probieren und dann 7 zeilen
1267     [02:53] <JanMan> schmorp: nein. in C 2 minuten suchen.
1268     [02:54] <JanMan> ich weiss nicht, an welchen level ich wo patchen soll.
1269     [02:55] <JanMan> es gibt eine Key, eine RSAKey, eine RSAKeyPublic/RSAKeyPrivate
1270     klasse, alles muell.
1271     [02:56] <JanMan> (ueberall noch ein praefix SSH..)
1272     [02:56] <JanMan> und die sachen sind ueber SSHRSAPublicKeyFile abgewickelt...
1273     [02:57] <JanMan> klar gibt es auch SSHRSAPublicKeyString.
1274     %%
1275     [02:38] <JanMan> Lexikon: Java - siehe "ins Knie ficken, objektorientiert"
1276     %%
1277     [02:30] <JanMan> schmorp: java has too many keywords but lacks an important one.
1278     [02:32] <JanMan> schmorp: yes: "broken". Java needs a "broken" keyword. "Error:
1279     missing "broken" but class seems "broken".
1280     %%
1281     On Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 09:34:08PM -0500, Michael Rothwell wrote:
1282     The man pages for open, read and write say that if a file is opened
1283     using the O_NONBLOCK flag, then read() and write() will always return
1284     immediately and not block the calling process.
1285    
1286     the man pages are wrong
1287    
1288     --cw
1289     %%
1290     From: "David S. Miller" <davem@redhat.com>
1291     ...
1292     My take on this is that khttpd is unmaintained garbage.
1293     %%
1294     [Subject: line on linux-kernel]
1295     Re: That horrible hack from hell called A20
1296     %%
1297     From: "Vladimir V. Saveliev"
1298     > tar cvpf - foo | ( cd reiserfs; tar xvpf - )
1299     > Halfway through it gets a kernel oops and
1300    
1301     How fast does it oops?
1302     %%
1303     From: Stefan Traby <stefan@hello-penguin.com>
1304    
1305     On Sun, Jan 07, 2001 at 02:01:05PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
1306     > NFSv2 has a 32bit file offset. Thus the largest file on NFSv2 you want to
1307     > touch is 2Gig.
1308    
1309     In theory, yes.
1310     In practice you don't want to touch NFS under Linux at all, so the
1311     2GB limit is a theoretical one. :)
1312     %%
1313     [10:44] <elmex> --------------------------------------------------------
1314     [10:44] <elmex> | | | | | | |
1315     [10:44] <elmex> | | | |-----| | | |
1316     [10:44] <elmex> | |-------------------------| | | |
1317     [10:44] <elmex> | |-| | .---------------------------.| |-------|
1318     [10:44] <elmex> | | | |Welcome on elmex.x-paste.de|| | |
1319     [10:44] <elmex> | |-| | `---------------------------'| | |
1320     [10:44] <elmex> | |----------| |-----------------------| |
1321     [10:44] <elmex> | | |-| | | | |
1322     [10:44] <elmex> |-| | | | |-----| |
1323     [10:44] <elmex> | |------------|-------------- | | |
1324     [10:44] <elmex> | |-----------------------------------|-| |----|
1325     [10:44] <elmex> | |-| |-| | | | |
1326     [10:44] <elmex> | |-| | | | | |
1327     [10:44] <elmex> |-| | | | | |
1328     [10:44] <elmex> --------------------------------------------------------
1329     %%
1330     Any committee IQ: average intelligence of members, divided by headcount.
1331     %%
1332     "There were a lot of snickers in my course... The students looked at me
1333     like I was a stegosaurus still walking around when I told them that the
1334     [irrational spending of many dot-coms] was not sustainable. You have to
1335     take in more money then you put out, or you're toast."
1336     -- Ken Morse, managing director, MIT Entrepreneurship Center
1337     %%
1338     "Wenn _ich_ das sage, darf ich das."
1339     [Lukas Grunwald]
1340     %%
1341     [about having sponsoring message in YOUR syslog]
1342     From: Felix von Leitner <leitner@convergence.de>
1343     Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 21:33:13 +0100
1344     To: reiserfs-list@namesys.com
1345    
1346     Thus spake Wojciech Puchar (wojtek@wojtek.from.pl):
1347     > > To view list of copyright holders type `copyright' at the shell
1348     > > prompt.
1349     > very good. maybe implement /proc/info/copyrights /proc/info/sponsors
1350     > /proc/info/authors?
1351    
1352     Grand idea.
1353     Let's also add /proc/info/spammers,
1354     /proc/info/people-who-bothered-linus,
1355     /proc/info/people-who-disagree-with-hans-reiser,
1356     /proc/info/people-who-were-flamed-by-alan-cox and
1357     /proc/info/people-who-marc-lehmann-dislikes.
1358    
1359     NOT.
1360     [...]
1361     %%
1362     [Nick and I used to fight a LOT]
1363     Subject: Re: suggestion for gimp 1.3 and later
1364     From: Nick Lamb <njl98r@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
1365    
1366     On Wed, Dec 13, 2000 at 03:29:41AM +0100, Marc Lehmann wrote:
1367     > I think the best way would be to make any gtk label/text widget be
1368     > selectable. I don't know why this has not been done so far, but it might be
1369     > an interesting experiment.
1370    
1371     Yes, I've often thought this. And everyone knows that if Marc and I agree
1372     about something it must be right (?) or at least it's in no-one's interest
1373     to disagree...
1374     %%
1375     http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=LNUX&d=2y WINNER
1376     http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=RHAT&d=2y 2nd prize!
1377     http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CALD&d=1y 3rd prize!
1378     [und Lukas sagt:]
1379     ... man beachte die logarithmische Skala!
1380     %%
1381     [from "how to photograph a total eclipse", in the nasa 1999 solar eclipse
1382     report:]
1383     ... The best strategy is to choose one aperture or f/number and bracket
1384     the exposures over a range of shutter speeds (i.e. 1/1000 down to 1
1385     second). Rehearsing this sequence is highly recommended since great
1386     excitment accompanies totality and there is little time to think.
1387     %%
1388     [boy, now I know why I dislike GNOME]
1389     http://www.helixcode.com/~miguel/bongo-bong.html
1390     %%
1391     ["kORBit, a CORBA implementation for the linux-kernel"]
1392     From: Jamie Lokier <lk@tantalophile.demon.co.uk>
1393     Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2000 11:34:39 +0100
1394    
1395     Alexander Viro wrote:
1396     > > It was just an example. Basically, you'd be able to do in with just
1397     > > about any language that has ORBit bindings.
1398     >
1399     > Yeah... "Infinitely extendable API" and all such. Roughly translated
1400     > as "we can't live without API bloat". Frankly, judging by the GNOME
1401     > codebase people who designed the thing are culturally incompatible with
1402     > UNIX.
1403    
1404     Agree. I remember a big complaint about Windows was the huge APIs,
1405     compared with Unix' tiny list of syscalls. And then I saw the GNOME
1406     docs... ew!
1407     %%
1408     > Good question. The whole thing makes me nervous... in fact, perhaps we
1409     > should really consider using the BIOS INT 15h interrupt to enter
1410     > protected mode?
1411    
1412     From my experience with BIOS authors, only if Windows 98 uses the same function
1413     with the same arguments, the same stuff top of stack and the same segment
1414     registers loaded ;)
1415     %%
1416     > > there... If someone wants to back-port the driver to 2.2, this makes it
1417     [...]
1418     > backports hurt forward progress.
1419    
1420     beware of content free dogma
1421     %%
1422     > What operating systems use local time as their basic clock these days? Just
1423     > wondering.
1424    
1425     Any IBM PC compatible machine that runs under at least one Microsoft OS
1426     has to keep the battery-backed CMOS clock chip in local time, because
1427     unlike most other operating systems (e.g., any Unix flavour), none of
1428     Microsoft's CMOS clock drivers have a UTC option. Rather disappointing
1429     and every year an unneeded hassle after DST switches on multi-OS
1430     machines. From discussions with Microsoft staff, I have to conclude that
1431     no-one within Microsoft has even understood the problem.
1432    
1433     Markus [G. Kuhn]
1434     %%
1435     >Keith,
1436     >
1437     >Please consider the attached patch for inclusion in all future versions
1438     >of the modutils depmod program for compatiblity with RedHat and
1439     >RedHat derived Linux distributions.
1440    
1441     I have a big problem with Redhat. They make incompatible changes to
1442     utilities, do not feed patches back to maintainers then expect the rest
1443     of the world to follow their lead. The -i and -m flags to modutils are
1444     not the only example, I recently found IA64 and Sparc patches they had
1445     added to modutils code and not bothered to tell me. Other distributors
1446     are much better about sending me patches, Debian and SuSe in particular
1447     do the right thing.
1448    
1449     Since "-F System.map" in modutils is equivalent to "-m System.map -i"
1450     and works on all distributions, not just Redhat, the "-m -i" patch is
1451     unnecessary. Consider this my protest against bad habits by
1452     distributors, they created the mess with their lack of communication
1453     and they have to fix it.
1454     %%
1455     10:44] <JanMan> falls Du mal DB2 crashen musst:
1456     [10:45] <JanMan> connect reset;
1457     [10:45] <JanMan> connect to sample user db2admin using db2admin;
1458     [10:45] <JanMan> select * from employee where year(birthdate)=1999 and firstnme<'';
1459     %%
1460     [a perl quine, by ilmari karonen:]
1461     printf+(q(printf+(q(%s))x2))x2
1462     %%
1463     On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 07:22:34PM -0500, M&M Samsel wrote:
1464     > You see I have about 10 years of commercial development experience and
1465     > pretty much know business procedures from huge corporations and business
1466     > midgets and what I should expect or not.
1467    
1468     You've not demonstrated your 10 years of experience.
1469     You've just proved that killfiles are useful.
1470     %%
1471     [once upon a time, when poul started gnomeicu:]
1472     gnomeicu: Rohrbruch (beim Speichern der Konfiguration)
1473     %%
1474     [subject from a thread on the gcc steering commitee mailinglist when
1475     glibc-2.2 was released]
1476     Re: glibc 2.2 a fait accompli
1477     %%
1478     [08:05] <JanMan> elmex: Fehlt Dir einmal Klopapier, versuche es mit GNU m4. :)
1479     %%
1480     # root:0Ayj0AZhTi4O2:11272:0:99999:7:::
1481     # kma:1NXgYu6J80kvc:11225:0:99999:7:::
1482     # elmex:0ImdHgG2TEQAE:11273:0:99999:7: : :
1483     %%
1484     <JanMan_> soll ich das ganze uber einen perl-hash erzeugen ?
1485     <schmorp> klar.. %hash->generate
1486     <JanMan_> oesi siedelt nach de: %oesi->degenerate
1487     %%
1488     [From "How the mind of a php programmer works", by Marc Lehmann]
1489    
1490     (1) it works on msie 5 (alt.: netscape 4) so the code is
1491     standards-compliant.
1492     (2) an entity looks like "&" entityname ";"
1493     (2a) [conclusion] the fragment href="xxx&notes=77" doesn't contain a valid
1494     entity, so the browser must use it as is.
1495     (2b) [corollary] "<blubb>" is not a valid html element, so the browser
1496     must react according to what I assume it should do (display, ignore).
1497     (2c) in some programs I assume differently than in others.
1498     %%
1499     [Oh no, Don Becker again ;)]
1500     > which one is the linksys card, so I have included the entire listing. (Is it
1501     > even listed? Perhaps this is my problem.)
1502    
1503     That's your problem.
1504    
1505     There is no PCI Ethernet device listed.
1506    
1507     Check that the card is fully inserted into the PCI slot.
1508     (If it's an ISA card, then it's not fully inserted into the PCI slot ;->)
1509     %%
1510     > > sure request_module _does_not_ accept funky module names. Why allow
1511     > > people to shoot themselves (and, by extension, all other Linux users
1512     > > out there) in the foot?
1513    
1514     > I thought that was the whole purpose of Unix/Linux?
1515    
1516     True! Very true! Unix/Linux requires that the user shoot
1517     themselves in the foot. Windows automates that process and does it
1518     for the user, thus making foot shooting user friendly. :-)
1519     %%
1520     > Turn on encryption, and try sending attachements > 1MB and tell me if
1521     > you see any problems, like emails sitting in /var/spool/mqueue for a day
1522     > or two until they go out. I can guarantee you will.
1523    
1524     No encryption use; and the maximal message size is 1Mb (for sanity's sake,
1525     after somebody sent a PowerPoint presentation (some 3Mb), then thought that
1526     perhaps the target didn't have PowerPoint, and sent it again with the
1527     PowerPoint package, then noticed this might not work either, and sent it
1528     _again_ with the full MS Office attached... the joys of sysadminning ;-)
1529     --
1530     Dr. Horst H. von Brand mailto:vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl
1531     %%
1532     Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com> writes:
1533    
1534     > "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@MIT.EDU> writes:
1535     >
1536     > > Arguably though the bug is in glibc, in that if it's using signals
1537     > > behinds the scenes, it should have passed SA_RESTART to sigaction.
1538     >
1539     > Why are you talking such a nonsense?
1540    
1541     [Note to self: remove kitten from keyboard before writing mail.]
1542     %%
1543     [Simon Budig, nachdem er erfahren hatte, daß Lars Eilebrecht nicht wusste,
1544     daß Leerzeichen in URLs nicht erlaubt sind:]
1545     "Also, Lars, das hätte ich nicht gedacht, jetzt hast du aber jede Menge
1546     Gurupunkte bei mir verloren."
1547     %%
1548     [amazon readers about the Annotated C Standard by Herberdt Schildt,
1549     which is much less expensive then the official version (search also for
1550     Bullschildt below ;)]
1551    
1552     "The price difference reflects the value of the annotations. At no time
1553     do the annotations clarify, enhance, or supplement the standard."
1554     %%
1555     Stefan Traby wrote:
1556     >
1557     > On Mon, Nov 06, 2000 at 08:43:04AM -0500, Chris Mason wrote:
1558     >
1559     > > We have a few websites floating around, [...]
1560     >
1561     > Many mirrors are also out of sync. Especially the primary server :)
1562     %%
1563     > This happens with both ext2 and reiserfs, since at least 2.2.15.
1564    
1565     I installed noflushd on my laptop, which was running 2.4.0-test6, and
1566     it did the same thing.
1567    
1568     Sorry I can't offer more info. Someone spilt a glass of water on it about
1569     a week ago. :(
1570    
1571     --Jack
1572     %%
1573     "Kalk hat diese Waschmaschine getötet"
1574     %%
1575     [It is] best to confuse only one issue at a time.
1576     -- K&R
1577     %%
1578     <elmex> JanMan: "||01:42:20|| <elmex> schmorp: jo, die sprache muss man nicht erklaeren"
1579     %%
1580     [please kids, don't try this at home]
1581     indent -kr -l78 -lc78 -lps -i8 -br -pcs -psl -bbo -bad -bap -cs -nbc -nhnl -nss
1582     %%
1583     http://www.attrition.org/gallery/ms/kmfms.jpg
1584     %%
1585     [PApp.pm]
1586     $modules => { "" => "" };
1587     %%
1588     Das einzig sichere Mittel gegen Migräne ist das Entfernen des Kopfes.
1589     %%
1590     <JanMan> elmex: Sprichwort "Relaye doch bei dnx, dann kriegst Du nix." :)
1591     %%
1592     [From Russel Coker's .sig]
1593     > --
1594     > If you can't program in C, PERL, and shell scripts then don't call yourself a
1595     > Unix administrator. Every idiot on the net is claiming to be a Unix admin. :(
1596     %%
1597     [the two sides of the medal]
1598     From: "David Schwartz"
1599    
1600     > Under Solaris 7, when the number of idle sockets was increased from
1601     > 100 to 10000, the time to check for active sockets with poll()
1602     > increased by a factor of only 6.5. That's a sublinear increase in time,
1603     > pretty spiffy.
1604    
1605     Under Solaris 7, when the number of idle sockets was decreased from 10,000
1606     to 100, the time to check for active sockets with poll() decreased by a
1607     factor of only 6.5. Shouldn't it be more like 100? Sounds like Solaris' poll
1608     implementation is horribly broken for the most common case.
1609     %%
1610     [lukas grunwald...]
1611     [ich sag' dir, ] ... am nächsten Tag brüllt der mich vielleicht per e-mail an ...
1612     %%
1613     [from linux-kernel, about the rtl8139 network card]
1614     > (After looking at the specification for the 8139, I am acctually ashamed
1615     > of having bough one.
1616    
1617     Not an uncommon thought :)
1618     %%
1619     From: Stefan Traby
1620    
1621     Hi Marc !
1622    
1623     keycode 115 = ISO_Next_Group
1624     keycode 116 = ISO_Prev_Group
1625     keycode 117 = ISO_Level3_Shift
1626    
1627     Finde ich witzig, man erspart sich den lock-screensaver :)
1628     %%
1629     [I hope you get the point(s)...]
1630     From: Alex LIVINGSTON <alex@agsm.edu.au>
1631     Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 16:12:46 +1100
1632     To: <tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov>
1633    
1634     At 07:40 +0000 2000-10-06, ken@halcyon.com wrote:
1635     >But the thing is: mm/dd/yy[yy] is in widespread use (US), as is
1636     >dd/mm/yy[yy] (much of Europe, I'm told).
1637    
1638     Slight refinement: dd/mm/[yy]yy. Used in all European countries - and
1639     all countries colonized by a European country at one time or another
1640     which haven't had a strong US influence since, and probably all
1641     remaining Asian, African, and Pacific countries - that don't use
1642     [yy]yy-mm-dd. mm/dd/yy[yy] is restricted almost entirely to the US
1643     and a few neighbors. I would hesitate to say it is in widespread use.
1644    
1645     >[yy]yy-mm-dd was used
1646     >in Japan even before the ISO standard came out.
1647    
1648     And in China, and in Sweden, and in Hungary, ... (possibly with different
1649     separators). Also in the Arab world, in the sense that the digits (all of
1650     them) appear in the same order from left to right, only Arabic is written
1651     right to left.
1652    
1653     >But no culture
1654     >has ever used [yy]yy-dd-mm format, and there is absolutely
1655     >nothing to recommend it, so there is no reason to expect anyone
1656     >to adopt it. Yes, the perverse can use that format just to
1657     >confound us, but in practice one can safely assume that a
1658     >nnnn-nn-nn date is in yyyy-mm-dd format.
1659    
1660     Thanks Ken. You've put it much better and more concisely than I could have.
1661    
1662     --Alex
1663     %%
1664     [recently, on the tulip driver mailing list]
1665     From: Donald Becker <becker@scyld.com>
1666     To: "Jon.Hinks" <Jon.Hinks@berkeley-ifa.co.uk>
1667    
1668     [most of the reply snipped...]
1669    
1670     > The contents of this email are confidential to the intended recipient. It
1671     > may not be disclosed to or used by anyone other than this addressee, nor may
1672     > it be copied in any way. If received in error, please contact Berkeley
1673    
1674     [[ The rest of the boilerplate omitted. ]]
1675    
1676     These terms do not apply. You have mailed to a published list. You hold
1677     the copyright to your writings, but by submitting questions to the list you
1678     grant the list publisher (me) the right to publish in this list and related
1679     forums. "Related forums" may be collected archives of the list on any media,
1680     and quotes from questions in FAQs.
1681    
1682     (Long boilerplate appendages like this notice annoy me. Automatically
1683     attached copyright notices can never unilaterally extend your rights, so why
1684     try to claim that they do?)
1685     %%
1686     On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, Andre Hedrick wrote:
1687    
1688     > void go_take_a_dump (float load)
1689     > {
1690     > if (pull_down_pants() && purge_bowles() && wipe_anus() && pull_up_pants())
1691     > flush(load);
1692     > else
1693     > wear(load);
1694     > }
1695    
1696     But here you make another classic mistake. Consider the case where
1697     purge_bowels() fails (-EWOULDBLOCK?).
1698    
1699     In that case, you don't actually execute the subsequent two procedure
1700     calls, which I'm sure we all agree is a suboptimal state of affairs.
1701    
1702     --
1703     dwmw2
1704     %%
1705     Factoid: 90% of all patents are never challenged, while 80% of those that
1706     are are overturned.
1707     %%
1708     "Going into court is throwing the dice."
1709     %%
1710     [Dipl. Ing. W******* D*******]
1711     "Lukas, eins muss dir klar sein, die ganze Kryptographie ist doch
1712     für den Arsch, wenn ich ein Stück von dem Originaltext habe und den
1713     verschlüsselten Text, knack' ich dir jeden Schlüssel in 50 Stunden."
1714     %%
1715     [some discussion between reiserfs enthusiasts:]
1716     Stefan: oh shit, everything coredumps, I'll just reboot.
1717     Marc gives some dumb comments.
1718     Stefan: No, I'll first check it with reiserfsck.
1719     Marc: Yeah.. and?
1720     Stefan: "reiserfsck: no reiserfs found"
1721     Marc: Oh, the superblock is damaged. Maybe you should just try the backup superblock...
1722     %%
1723     [t-online is just sooo cool:]
1724     Subject: mail failed, returning to sender
1725     From: <MAILER-DAEMON@fmrl01.sul.t-online.de>
1726    
1727     |------------------------- Failed addresses follow: ---------------------|
1728     <service@t-online.de> ... 550 Mailbox quota exceeded / Mailbox voll.
1729     |------------------------- Message text follows: ------------------------|
1730     %%
1731     [a play with a well-known-signature:]
1732     Deadlock, n.:
1733     Deceased Rasterman.
1734     %%
1735     [Jeff Williams & friends]
1736     ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-bremen.de/pub/doc/internet-drafts/draft-terrell-ip-spec-ipv7-ipv8-addr-cls-00.txt
1737     http://IPv8.vrx.net/
1738     http://www.gtld-mou.org/gtld-discuss/mail-archive/08030.html
1739     %%
1740     [some .signature]
1741     This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for extra security.
1742     %%
1743     [Andreas Mueller-Maghun for ICANN!]
1744     Allein der Kandidat des Chaos-Computer-Clubs (CCC) Hamburg, der schon
1745     mehr als 1.100 Unterstützungserklärungen erhalten hat, dürfte nach
1746     Einschätzung des arbeitskreises die Bedingung für eine Basiskandidatur
1747     zum ICANN-Direktorium schon jetzt erfüllen. Ausgerechnet er hat es aber
1748     nicht für nötig gehalten, auf die Anfrage der Behindertenvertreter zu
1749     reagieren. Seine Webseiten zeugen zudem von einem "Sicherheitskonzept",
1750     das Usern mit Sehbehinderung vor lauter technischen Barrieren keine
1751     Zugangsmöglichkeiten bietet. Der Arbeitskreis hält einen Vertreter solcher
1752     Positionen für unwählbar.
1753    
1754     Jens Bertrams (Pressesprecher)
1755     %%
1756     From: (Albert Y. C. Lai)
1757     Newsgroups: comp.lang.functional
1758     Subject: Re: what is "functional" (Re: Macros)
1759    
1760     Jerzy Karczmarczuk writes:
1761    
1762     > Their opinion: "well, *everybody* knows that this is not professional,
1763     > nobody uses functional languages, all your colleagues suggest that we
1764     > should learn Lex and Yacc, etc. -
1765     > but *WHAT A PLEASURE AND FUN* was to write these programs in Haskell.
1766     > Almost no run-time errors, ever!"
1767    
1768     A professor at my school got the opposite opinion from her students.
1769     She introduced ML (along with two other languages) as part of a course
1770     on the principles of programming languages in the third year. The
1771     students' opinion: this is such an annoyingly pedantic language, it
1772     refuses to let me run my program and get some partial though wrong
1773     results simply because I make a mistake!
1774    
1775     In other words, given that humans are bound to make mistakes, the
1776     students at my school prefer to see them manifested as run-time
1777     errors.
1778    
1779     So I look at your email address. Ah, you are in Europe and I am in
1780     North America. I guess that's why. Dijkstra is probably right about
1781     European programmers liking to do programming right and American
1782     programmers liking to chase after bugs.
1783     %%
1784     On Thu, Aug 24, 2000 at 11:15:09PM +0200, Werner Almesberger wrote:
1785     > yodaiken@fsmlabs.com wrote:
1786     > > This call shifts delivered signal numbers up so that
1787     > > "special" POSIX signals [.. like KILL] can be delivered to a process.
1788     >
1789     > Kind of a SIGOVERKILL ... yes, that could work.
1790     %%
1791     "The posix programmer knows the availability of everything, but the cost
1792     of nothing."
1793     %%
1794     [after the linux-kernel list was moved to a new machine]
1795     Jeffrey Hundstad wrote:
1796     >
1797     > So tell us about this new machine. OS? Filesystem? Memory?
1798     > CPU?
1799    
1800     Root password? :)
1801    
1802     John.Fulmer
1803     %%
1804     I think there is a world market for about five computers.
1805    
1806     Thomas J. Watson (Chairman, IBM) 1943
1807     %%
1808     > NO. They can/will use RAW_IO *IF* this is available to them. If not, they
1809     > will have to provide a proper kernel driver for their hardware. I know
1810     > which I prefer...
1811    
1812     Sure. And keep that dusty 2.4.3 kernel around just in case you someday need
1813     to upgrade the firmware for your disk, and the (binary!) kernel module only
1814     works with that one. Don't forget the 2.4.15ac12 which is for your USB
1815     scanner, and also the 2.6.7-12 (Red Hat) which is the only one with the
1816     updater for the new SCSI controller.
1817     --
1818     Horst von Brand
1819     %%
1820     [de.comp.lang.iso-c++]
1821    
1822     >Nicht alles was Standard ist, muss auch implementiert werden.
1823    
1824     [...]
1825    
1826     Nicht alles, was hinkt, ist ein Vergleich.
1827     %%
1828     [Drew Sanford about why not to do real-time by throwing faster hardware
1829     at your problem:]
1830    
1831     The F4 Fantom fighter. The plane was essentially a large block of metal, with
1832     a few advantagously aerodynamic surfaces, and big f****** engines. If you
1833     had engine trouble in a Fantom ...you had trouble.
1834     %%
1835     [Hans Reiser, on /bin/cp.. ;)]
1836     cp is inherently inefficient.
1837     %%
1838     >I thought disk drives contained vacuums, thus the extensive concern over
1839     >breaking seals on them.
1840    
1841     Air pressure is 1Kg/cm^2. I have never seen a hard drive case that looked
1842     nearly strong enough to take such pressure. Basically if you can't jump on a
1843     hard drive then it's not strong enough!
1844    
1845     ...
1846    
1847     There's a story that Dave Cutler (VMS and WNT architect) when he was at DEC
1848     did a test on a DEC hard drive by blowing cigar smoke into the drive which
1849     killed it properly. DEC then greatly enhanced their drive air filters. It
1850     could be just an urban myth though.
1851    
1852     Russell Coker
1853     %%
1854     >I've unsubscribed our somewhat less than intelligent friend.
1855     >Ah, Internet for the masses. What a wonderful idea.
1856    
1857     Yeah, let's have an IQ test before you're allowed to buy a modem.
1858     %%
1859     On Sat, Jun 24, 2000 at 02:40:33PM +0200, Marc Lehmann wrote:
1860     > "Yury Yu. Rupasov" wrote:
1861     > > All my current benchmarks show that reiserfs works correctly on
1862     > > deleting.
1863     >
1864     > Just a sidenote: you don't test correctness with benchmarks :(
1865    
1866     Wrong. Yury does.
1867     :(
1868    
1869     --
1870     Stefan
1871     %%
1872     "Jeff V. Merkey" writes:
1873     > I will provide a tool that decodes and repairs NTFS volumes to those
1874     > folks who run into this problem, but our agreements with Microsoft do
1875     > not allow us to distribute it for any purpose other than to assist
1876     > Microsoft customers who have corrupted drives. Also, this tool is
1877     > dependent on the DDK being present to run as it has dependencies on the
1878     > DDK DLL's, so you'll need to install the DDK to use it.
1879    
1880     DDK == "Disk Death Kit"?
1881    
1882     Ian Soboroff ian@cs.umbc.edu
1883     %%
1884     [very instructional movie, if you get what I mean...]
1885     00:30-02:05 (13) ( -35) Kabel 1 Das Mädchen am Ende der Straße The
1886     Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane Psychodrama - KAN/F/USA - 1976 -
1887     Regie: Nicolas Gessner * Die 13-jährige Rynn (Jodie Foster) lebt allein in
1888     einer alten Villa und hütet ein schreckliches Geheimnis.
1889     %%
1890     [Einsichten in die "Kommunikation"]
1891     > > > Ich beschreibe dir, was in dem Moment an Eindruecken durch meinen
1892     > > > Kopf geht - in dem Augenblick bin ich Besucher und sehe was
1893     > > > mir gefaellt oder nicht - das ist wie ein Schmierzettel. Die
1894     > > > Ausarbeitung der Ideen kommt danach im Gespraech. Du packst solche
1895     > > > Sachen anders an - das seh ich ein. Aber ich bin mit dieser
1896     > > > Art chaos bisher immer ans Ziel gekommen. Was ich mach will -
1897     > > > machen muss - ist Feedback generieren. Ich lass Versuchsballons
1898     > > > aufsteigen und schau zu, wie sie entweder fliegen oder abgeschossen
1899     > > > werden. Dann reagier ich auf das Ergebnis.
1900     %%
1901     [Mitch, als Erklärung dafür, weshalb er blindlings ein (kaputtes) ssh-rpm
1902     installiert hat, das er über rpmfind gefunden hat:]
1903     Doch, echt! Der Server war trusted, der sah' ja sowas von vertrauenswürdig
1904     aus!
1905     %%
1906     [IMHO one of the main reasons linux is nicer]
1907     http://www.cyberport.com/~tangent/ix/bsod-story.html
1908     %%
1909     [On the reality of random numbers]
1910     > /dev in a world with dynamic hardware, so why bother? We only need
1911     > to provide random numbers to fill in struct stat. (zero works)
1912     Alan Cox [as usual ;)]
1913     %%
1914     [Flame Warriors]
1915     http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame1.html
1916     %%
1917     A programmer who hasn't been exposed to all four of the imperative,
1918     functional, objective, and logical programming styles has one or
1919     more conceptual blindspots. It's like knowing how to boil but not
1920     fry. Programming is not a skill one develops in five easy lessons.
1921    
1922     --tom
1923     %%
1924     To: bugs@gimp.org
1925     X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Windows sub 105
1926    
1927     Hi there, I recently downloaded your gimp toolkit. At first I was having
1928     problems until I read your download help tip. I understand I have to compile
1929     it so I tried using Borland C++ Compiler but it said the line length exceeds
1930     editor capacity. Is there any other compiler I can use that wouldn't rip a
1931     whole in my wallet. Thank you for your support.
1932     %%
1933     ["General Information About Using VBScript with Outlook"]
1934     VBScript is designed to be a secure programming environment. It
1935     lacks various commands that can be potentially damaging if used in
1936     a malicious manner. This added security is critical in enterprise
1937     solutions.
1938    
1939     http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q167/1/38.ASP
1940    
1941     [Despite this "added security", however, VBscript still can modify,
1942     rename, delete files, modify windows registry entries and send email in
1943     the background]
1944     %%
1945     [Phil Agre on the "ILOVEYOU" virus and Microsoft's reaction]
1946     Scott Culp of Microsoft Public Relations, excuse me, I mean Microsoft
1947     Security Response Center:
1948    
1949     This is a general issue, not a Microsoft issue. You can write a
1950     virus for any platform. (New York Times 5/5/00)
1951    
1952     [and later]
1953     Mr. Culp also says this (CNET 5/5/00):
1954    
1955     This is by-design behavior, not a security vulnerability.
1956    
1957     [Phil closes]
1958     Microsoft shouldn't be broken up. It should be shut down.
1959    
1960     [See also http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html]
1961     [and http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/2000/RRE.notes.and.recommenda6.html]
1962     %%
1963     [Bruce Schneier about the "ILOVEYOU" virus]
1964     Expect even worse in the future. Systems running either Microsoft Office
1965     2000 or Internet Explorer 5.0 can be infected with these sorts of viruses
1966     even if the recipient doesn't open the attachment. That's right; if the
1967     system is running Internet Explorer with the default settings, it is
1968     vulnerable. The problem is caused by a programming bug in an Internet
1969     Explorer ActiveX control. Thank you, Microsoft.
1970     %%
1971     >Reaching to Fallingbostel was extremely amusing though, germany is
1972     >splitted into two halfs, one that doesn't know Fallingbostel and one
1973     >that 'heard of this place but have no idea where it is' at some point I
1974     >was almost convinced that there is no such place :)
1975    
1976     [Trashey / Quasars]
1977     %%
1978     Tom Christiansen writes:
1979     > I'm writing perlrtfm. It explains search techniques, not quickfix
1980     > switches plugging bursting dykes by springing more leaks.
1981    
1982     Irony potential in
1983    
1984     man perlrtfm
1985    
1986     is left to the reader.
1987    
1988     Nat
1989     %%
1990     Do you plan to release support for on-the-fly file and directory compression
1991     and encryption as in NTFSv2?
1992    
1993     (Imagine a system that in order to run needs a diskette or CD-ROM disk with
1994     private key - protection never seen except in movies ;-)
1995     %%
1996     [Telekom-Techniker, bei einer ISDN-UK0-Messung!]
1997     Ich: Also, einen Layer-1-Connect bekomme ich...
1998     Telekomiker: Layer-1? Was ist das? Aber ich bekomme ja auch gar kein Freizeichen...
1999     %%
2000     "I love the way Microsoft follows standards. In much the
2001     same manner that fish follow migrating caribou."
2002     Paul Tomblin
2003     %%
2004     [recently on p5p]
2005     >I am morally
2006     >convinced that map() was written based on grep()
2007    
2008     Considering they use the same op function, I'd say that's a distinct
2009     possibility...
2010    
2011     Dan
2012     %%
2013     [after the "Welle Erdball" performance on the Mekka&Symposium 2000:]
2014     <jan> bine: du solltest da nicht hingucken, das ist nicht gut fürn kopf
2015     <Bordeaux> after listening to this crap, and hearing *zugabe zugabe* i finally have the proof that all german c64 sceners are gay :)
2016     <Mr> zugabe
2017     %%
2018     "Why upon hearing his arguments I changed my opinion 360 degrees."
2019     Recent comment on the floor of some state legislature
2020     %%
2021     DIVIDE EMPLOYEE-EARNINGS BY EMPLOYEE-HOURS GIVING EMPLOYEE-PAY-RATE
2022     [cobol, *sigh*]
2023     %%
2024     It is expected that the Multics system will be published when it is
2025     operating substantially and will therefore be available for implementation
2026     on any equipment with suitable characteristics. Such publication is
2027     desirable for two reasons: First, the system should withstand public
2028     scrutiny and criticism volunteered by interested readers; second, in an
2029     age of increasing complexity, it is an obligation to present and future
2030     system designers to make the inner operating system as lucid as possible
2031     so as to reveal the basic system issues.
2032    
2033     Corbat_ & Vyssotsky 1965
2034     %%
2035     "Rule #7: Silence is not acquiescence.
2036    
2037     "Contrary to what you may have heard, silence of those present is
2038     not necessarily consent, even the reluctant variety. They simply
2039     may sit in stunned silence and figure ways of sabotaging the plan
2040     after they regain their composure."
2041    
2042     -- Paul Rinaldo
2043     [see also http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/rinaldo.html]
2044     %%
2045     On Sat, Apr 01, 2000 at 12:09:59AM +1000, Chris wrote:
2046     >
2047     > In case you guys havn't noticed...
2048     >
2049     > http://slashdot.org reports that XFS is now released.
2050    
2051     Yes, and http://www.freshmeat.net reports:
2052    
2053     Error: Unable to connect to MySQL Server ().
2054    
2055     ;-}
2056    
2057     --
2058    
2059     ciao -
2060     Stefan
2061    
2062     %%
2063     > The 'hypervisor' is a new term to me.. Are you refering to the
2064     > Transmeta CPU and it's native mode? If I read you correctly
2065    
2066     No its what the S/390 VM is often called. Its a supervisor for supervisor
2067     mode programs so illogically enough its a hypervisor 8). The IBM mainframe
2068     guys thing this kind of set up is routine. Unix is met with
2069     'You mean you cant run a new kernel on test at the same time as the old
2070     one' type remarks.
2071     [Alan Cox]
2072     %%
2073     Godwin's Law
2074    
2075     As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison
2076     involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
2077    
2078     [see also http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/]
2079     %%
2080     ["Stefan im IRC."]
2081    
2082     [01:53:07] <coda> anyone know how to get emacs to stop creating the file.name~ files?
2083     [01:53:24] <JanMan> alias emacs=vi
2084     [01:53:31] <coda> haha
2085     %%
2086     [remaining problems with OpenBIOS]
2087     Our SDRAM sizing and init code is not very good; we could use good code.
2088     The code we've been offered so far requires memory to work (oops!);
2089     requires a stack (oops!); or assumes a totally configured machine (oops!).
2090     %%
2091     [Alan Cox on wether special fs's should have require "//" in their path]
2092     > No :-) It's a feature. Some things are going REAL ugly without such things.
2093    
2094     Given //ipc or freebsd, I think I'd pick freebsd. Thats how ugly the idea
2095     is to me ok.
2096     %%
2097     "The code is self documenting." -- The Programmer.
2098    
2099     "I don't read C." -- The Tech Writer.
2100     %%
2101     [Stefan Sebolth, on the CeBIT, while listening to the original c64 "Giana Sisters" tune:]
2102     Haaach, da war die Welt halt noch in Ordnung!
2103     %%
2104     Remember, never ask a geek "why";
2105     just nod your head and back away slowly...
2106     %%
2107     The thought of implementing something like text and binary modes for
2108     files is a about a frightening for todays kernel developer's as a mouse
2109     to a women in a typical movie of the 50's ;-)
2110    
2111     Ralf
2112     %%
2113     It may be real, but it's icky. It's too traditional Unix ``I don't
2114     care if we lose 90% of our market base to NT if our competitor loses
2115     95% of THEIR market base!'' to be palatable.
2116    
2117     david parsons
2118     %%
2119     ["some time ago on p5p"]
2120     > ($host) = gethostbyname('localhost');
2121    
2122     >Sadly most UNIX boxes don't add a sane alias to their /etc/hosts file
2123     >so that trick is not portable.
2124    
2125     % grep localhost /etc/hosts
2126     127.0.0.1 localhost
2127    
2128     --tom
2129     %%
2130     ["some time ago on p5p"]
2131     On Mon, Feb 07, 2000 at 03:22:05PM -0700, Tom Christiansen wrote:
2132     > >But given that most slip drivers I have seen for OS/2 do not do this,
2133     > >the question is moot.
2134     >
2135     > I'll send you a free Unix system.
2136    
2137     Thanks, the doors in my house are well-balanced. ;-)
2138    
2139     Ilya
2140     %%
2141     [Elliott H Mitchell on the reiserfs list]
2142     > Me thinks if unwillingness to use tar over dump will stop you from
2143     > using a better filesystem there will be lots of other reasons that
2144     > will stop you from trying anything new too. So it is not really worth
2145     > trying.
2146    
2147     Yeah, if a filesystem randomly lost files and the authors had no plans to
2148     fix it, that would kind discourage one from using it...
2149     %%
2150     [Russel Coker on the reiserfs list]
2151     ... my old Thinkpad 380XD (Pentium-233 with 3.2G ide hard drive) running
2152     ReiserFS and exporting the file system over 10baseT Ethernet could
2153     outperform local hard drives on an AIX machine running JFS.
2154     %%
2155     [Peter Mattis, author of GIMP]
2156     I can't say anything about Rasterman because I've never looked at any of
2157     his code. My only comment about Raster is that he should learn to spell.
2158     %%
2159     [David Schwartz on linux-kernel]
2160     > ORBS does not do ANYTHING above try to send few LEGAL
2161     > strings to mailservers with LONG delays. So if you block ORBS you deserve
2162     > blocking :-)
2163    
2164     That's not the point. The point is that ORBS claims to be a list of
2165     validated open mail relays, and it's not. It's not supposed to be a list of
2166     people who deserve anything in particular. I'm sure if you talk to the
2167     people who have chosen to block ORBS, you will find that they have their
2168     reasons.
2169    
2170     DS
2171     %%
2172     [WDR, 19991216 Fernsehen mit Manuel]
2173     Es ist ein Fall bekannt, bei dem sich ein Patient über ein Jahr lang
2174     geweigert hatte, auf die Toilette zu gehen. Dann haben seine Verwandten
2175     und Ärzte ihn dazu überreden können, endlich die Toilette aufzusuchen. Er
2176     hat dabei auf einmal 37 Liter entleert.
2177    
2178     Danach lebte er noch ganz normal einige Jahre, bis er, wie in Amerika
2179     üblich, erschossen wurde.
2180     %%
2181     > - My Maxtor 27G drive ends up in PIO mode (non-SMP system, but likely
2182     [...]
2183     > Last time I reported this, I had a WDC31600, as hda, and the maxtor as
2184     [...]
2185    
2186     You committed a mortal sin in ATA............
2187     You never ever mix WD and Maxtor..........on day I will document why.
2188     Basically these two vendors have timings that are completely incompatable
2189     with each other on the same channel.
2190    
2191     IMHO, WD is crap..........however, you may split the two pieces of
2192     hardware and they will work fine under linux and all other OS's.
2193    
2194     This rule of "never ever mix WD and Maxtor" is OS independent.
2195     %%
2196     [ALF2-Benutzerhandbuch]
2197     "Nur eine tote Festplatte ist eine sichere Festplatte."
2198     %%
2199     Physicists write FORTRAN in any language.
2200     %%
2201     [OpenBOOT 3.10.6 response to pressing "Ctrl-Alt-Del":]
2202     ANY word at all is a candidate.
2203     USE words to see the entire dictionary.
2204     ok
2205     %%
2206     [SDF for POD Users]
2207     ... Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - even Lisp has it's fans. :-)
2208     %%
2209     <Xach> schmorp: i haven't been doing any gimpy things lately
2210     <schmorp> xach: well, who is doing gimpy things lately :(
2211     <Xach> schmorp: Mitch
2212     <schmorp> xach: ok.
2213     <Xach> schmorp: you are not keeping pace with the other germans
2214     <Xach> schmorp: you must work more diligently! FOCUS!! DON'T TALK!!
2215     <Xach> burrito, focus
2216     <Burrito> FOCUS you BABOON!
2217     %%
2218     [Paul Miller]
2219     ... I find Knuth's attitude to be far more logical: "Be careful about
2220     using the following code -- I've only proven that it works, I haven't
2221     tested it." ...
2222     %%
2223     Intel Inside -- Idiot Outside!
2224     %%
2225     Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
2226    
2227     Bart Lateur wrote in message <383a4712.942513@news.skynet.be>...
2228     >Petrus Prawirodidjojo wrote:
2229     >
2230     >>So we must compete with Windows CE.
2231     >
2232     >"Please wait while your Toaster shuts down."
2233     >
2234     >"My microwave oven hangs, I have to reboot."
2235     >
2236     >No thank you. :-) I don't think Microsoft somehow can "automatically" be
2237     >the most obvious choice as a supplier of system software for embedded
2238     >systems.
2239    
2240    
2241     Quite so. Windows CE is rapidly losing what small market share they once
2242     had.
2243    
2244     --
2245     Neal Bridges
2246     %%
2247     On 27 Nov 1999, sanjay Kumar wrote:
2248    
2249     > Hi folks,
2250     > i got some problem in using linux.When segmentation fault happens four five times continously OS is not working properly,insted of I remove the core dump and core dump bug ,Why?
2251     > please reply to
2252     > sanjay_rect@rediffmail.com
2253     > and sigma_btl@vsnl.com
2254    
2255     Parse error.
2256    
2257     ---
2258     Alex
2259     %%
2260     From: Richard Earnshaw <rearnsha@arm.com>
2261    
2262     > Why do we really need to support compiling with -ansi when
2263     > including a non-ANSI header file in a C program?
2264    
2265     Because some vendors wouldn't recognize a C standard it if hit them. The
2266     amount of code that purports to be ANSI C code, but is in fact nothing of
2267     the sort, has to be seen to be believed.
2268    
2269     That doesn't mean that I don't want *my* program to be clean ANSI C.
2270     %%
2271     [one of the few good us movies]
2272     Talk Radio Mediendrama - USA - 1988 - Regie: Oliver Stone * Sein Zynismus wird dem Radiomoderator Barry zum Verhängnis.
2273     %%
2274     [guess the language AND the language revision ;)]
2275     ii = 44;
2276     p = &ii;
2277     *p = ii/*p;
2278     ii++; /* Don't forget to increment ii. */
2279     printf ( "ii = %d\n", *p );
2280     %%
2281     > But many systems set the RTC while running Win*ooze. That will affect
2282     > Linux time then.
2283    
2284     Here is another microsoft Innovation (TM):
2285    
2286     They now allow you to run your BIOS-clock in UTC! (Just like
2287     Linux. Woops. Just gave it away...)
2288    
2289     Roger.
2290     %%
2291     <Tommer> schmorp, for the next trick, do <frameset> <frame src=dataurl:> <frame src=dataurl:> </frameset> :)
2292     %%
2293     auto accident;
2294     register voters;
2295     static electricity;
2296     struct by_lightning;
2297     void *where_prohibited;
2298     char broiled;
2299     short circuit;
2300     short changed;
2301     long johns;
2302     unsigned long letter;
2303     double entendre;
2304     double trouble;
2305     union organizer;
2306     float valve;
2307     short pants;
2308     union station;
2309     void check; unsigned check;
2310     struct dumb by[sizeof member];
2311     %%
2312     [I like TV Movie's nexTView comments]
2313     22:40-00:05 (21) ( -34) ARD Mord auf hoher See Inflammable Thriller - USA
2314     - 1995 - Regie: Peter Werner * Stephen King
2315     verhunzt als Regisseur sein Buch im großen Stil.
2316     %%
2317     Carmen Lucia Tancredo Borges wrote:
2318    
2319     I have a program written in Fortran that runs on an IBM RS/6000
2320     worstation.
2321     %%
2322     I wrote
2323     > I hope not. chomp() should match the string in $?, no more or less.
2324     $/
2325    
2326     Damn shift key.
2327    
2328    
2329     Mike Guy
2330     %%
2331     [rfc2635]
2332     The term "spam" as it is used to denote mass unsolicited mailings or
2333     netnews postings is derived from a Monty Python sketch set in a
2334     movie/tv studio cafeteria. During that sketch, the word "spam" takes
2335     over each item offered on the menu until the entire dialogue consists
2336     of nothing but "spam spam spam spam spam spam and spam." This so
2337     closely resembles what happens when mass unsolicited mail and posts
2338     take over mailing lists and netnews groups that the term has been
2339     pushed into common usage in the Internet community.
2340     %%
2341     [CRYPTO-GRAM, November 15, 1999]
2342    
2343     The Doghouse: Microsoft Windows CE
2344    
2345     Microsoft encrypts your Windows NT password when stored on a Windows CE
2346     device. But if you look carefully at their encryption algorithm, they
2347     simply XOR the password with "susageP", Pegasus spelled backwards. Pegasus
2348     is the code name of Windows CE. This is so pathetic it's staggering.
2349    
2350     http://www.cegadgets.com/artsusageP.htm
2351     %%
2352     : Isn't the point that (void)'grep EXPR, LIST' is now better written as
2353     : 'EXPR for LIST'? Or am I misunderstanding your point here?
2354    
2355     It really doesn't bother me if people want to use grep or map in a void
2356     context. It didn't bother me before there was a for modifier, and
2357     now that there is one, it still doesn't bother me. I'm just not very
2358     easy to bother.
2359    
2360     The argument against using an operator for other than its primary
2361     purpose strikes me the same as the old argument that you shouldn't have
2362     sex for other than procreational purposes. Sometimes side effects
2363     are more enjoyable than the originally intended effect.
2364    
2365     That being said, I'd never grep someone in a void context myself.
2366    
2367     Larry
2368     %%
2369     [that one's only for insiders...]
2370     > : BASE @ . \ = 10, verified original base was restored
2371     Yeah. :-)
2372     %%
2373     [comp.lang.forth]
2374     > Old Antactic Explorers Penguin Recipe:
2375     [...]
2376     > Start fire under pot, raise seawater to boiling point.
2377    
2378     Since it is very difficult to find wood on Antarctica, typically
2379     penguins are used to light the fire (due to their fat, they burn well).
2380     I also woudln't use any water, the penguins are fried fine in their own
2381     fat (you can use old fat to heat up the pot for another penguin).
2382    
2383     Note that most people in Antarctica have been seal-slayers and
2384     whale-killers, so they were rough people. Usually, they didn't bother
2385     with killing the penguins before setting them on fire. I'm glad this
2386     receipts aren't used anymore.
2387     %%
2388     Sie muessen einen PC nicht einschalten um herauszufinden ob Windows
2389     installiert ist. Sehen Sie einfach nach, ob die Aufschrift auf der
2390     Reset-Taste noch lesbar ist.
2391     %%
2392     > Erinnert mich an den Kerl bei mir in der Videothek. Hab mir DHY ausgeliehen
2393     > und er sagt doch zu mir: "Ist aber mit Untertiteln." Sag ich: "Na prima!"
2394     > Fragt er: "Wieso, was ist denn daran so interessant, wenn man nichts
2395     > versteht?"
2396     %%
2397     [de.alt.anime]
2398     Bei meiner Videothek fliegt ein "Ghost in the Shell" Tape
2399     "Ab18" rum. Das machte mich irgendwie stutzig weil auf
2400     der Schachtel meiner 16er zwei Szenenfotos sind, die im
2401     Film gar nicht vorkommen (ironischer Weise direkt über
2402     dem "Uncut & Unzesored" Schildchen). Andererseits ist
2403     mir völlig schleierhaft, was es bei dem Filmchen zu zensieren
2404     geben soll. Nur die oben beschriebene Feststellung hat diese
2405     Frage erneut aufgeworfen.
2406     ji!
2407     %%
2408     I do worry about syntactic clutter, ever since my daughter came
2409     in, looked over my shoulder, and said, "What is that, swearing?"
2410     [Larry Wall]
2411     %%
2412     Der letzte untergegangene altisraelitische Stamm war der der
2413     Altpreussen.
2414     - Norbert Marzahn am 15.8.98 in
2415     de.soc.politik.deutschland
2416     %%
2417     > > Aber die Theorien, die Norbert aufstellt, ueber zum Beispiel die
2418     > > gegossenen Steinformen, die sich hochdruecken, den fuerchterlichen
2419     > > Kometen, der im vergangenen August die Erde zerstoert hat und solche
2420     > > Sachen find ich wirklich Klasse ;-)
2421     >
2422     > Jau. Und erstmal seine Erklärungsversuche, wenn's mal wieder nichts
2423     > geworden ist (wo bleibt eigentlich der Planet X, der während der
2424     > Syonnenfinsternis auftauchen sollte?)...
2425    
2426     Drei Tage Dunkelheit und viele Trümmerteile sollte er bringen, gell,
2427     Norbert?
2428     %%
2429     Marzahnismen: http://www.snafu.de/~dbrueg/normarz.html
2430     Norbert Marzahn sagt: Ich besitze die Mittel, um
2431     "Rechts"- und "Links"-Radikalismus auszuloeschen.
2432     %%
2433     http://welcome.to/levitenbuero/
2434     %%
2435     <Xach> babelfish.pitney.org: "We may not get it right, but boy are we fast!"
2436     %%
2437     Subject: GNU compiler
2438     From: "Steve"
2439     Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 19:05:03 -0400
2440     To: <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
2441     X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3155.0
2442    
2443     [the following was a single line, of course]
2444     I downloaded the compiler and am trying to install it and the
2445     instructions seem to be very complicated. Can you help me understand
2446     how to install them? There is no setup file and I have downloaded from
2447     several sites in the thought that I might have the wrong version. Your
2448     assistance would be greatly appreciated
2449    
2450     Thanks,
2451    
2452     Steve
2453     %%
2454     [an "I am doing high end graphic design" type of person:]
2455     > Also, could someone tell me how to calculate DPI of an image? I have not
2456     > managed to figure this DPI system out, for example, if an image is a
2457     > 100?50 pixels, what's the DPI??
2458     %%
2459     <tigert> xachbot, op
2460     <XachBot> tigert: I have an 88 magnum. It shoots through schools.
2461     <tigert> ahem
2462     %%
2463     <tc> xachbot, acro FOOBAR
2464     -XachBot:#gimp- FOOBAR: FTP Operation Over Big Address Records | See FUBAR [Net jargon] (cached)
2465     <tc> just when you thought you had something to baffle xachbot
2466     %%
2467     [the release of perl 5.000]
2468     Date: Mon, 17 Oct 94 16:48:04 -0700
2469     From: Larry Wall <lwall@scalpel.netlabs.com>
2470     Subject: It's soup.
2471    
2472     Okay, it's there.
2473    
2474     ftp://ftp.netlabs.com/pub/outgoing/perl5.0/perl5.000.tar.gz
2475    
2476     The first one who tells me about a bug in it gets shot.
2477    
2478     Larry
2479     %%
2480     l33+ h4X0rz
2481     %%
2482     # A random text generator using Markov chains
2483     perl -e 'while(<>){$f.= $_}@l=split(/\s+/, $f);for($i=0;$i<@l-1;$i++){$W{$l[$i]
2484     }.=" ".$l[$i+1];}sub a{$w=$l[1]}&a;sub b{print "\n"}while($w){if(!($W{$w})){&b;
2485     &b;&a;last if ($q++>3);}print"$w ";@p=split(/ /,$W{$w});$c=@p;until($s=int(rand
2486     ($c))){1}$w=$p[$s]}&b' big_text_file
2487     %%
2488     > && d'oh! i knew that! can she allow her lusers to use deja? here is the url
2489     > && for the post with the whole description of how i used -P
2490     >
2491     > Well, access to deja isn't forbidden, but access to the keyboard is.
2492     > And there's no mouse.
2493     >
2494     > Abigail
2495    
2496     Wow. Someone else who reads usenet by osmosis... cool.
2497    
2498     Matt.
2499     %%
2500     Ok, our threads aren't so bad. Python's have one big
2501     giant global interpreter lock. :-)
2502    
2503     - --tom
2504     %%
2505     From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
2506     Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 11:42:19 -0700 (PDT)
2507    
2508     On Fri, 6 Aug 1999, Hubert Mantel wrote:
2509     >
2510     > So the huge ISDN update in proposed-2.2.11 will be removed from the final
2511     > 2.2.11 release?
2512    
2513     [ Irritated mode: FULL BLAST ]
2514    
2515     Are you being stupid on purpose, or were you born that way?
2516    
2517     Go back and read the thread. Read why I'm irritated. READ. THINK.
2518     %%
2519     Understanding is a three edged sword. Do you *want* to get the point?
2520     %%
2521     ["MVS uses quite heavy algorithms for swapping"]
2522     On Mon, Aug 02, 1999 at 07:55:32PM +0200, Lieven Marchand wrote:
2523     > Last time I looked at it, it got to the point they had moved some
2524     > ASSISTs into microcode. IIRC, some manipulations of the process
2525     > block. I doubt Intel/Sun/MIPS/IBM is going to accomodate Linux quite
2526     > that much ;-)
2527    
2528     IBM is really really good on process technology. They have had to be.
2529     %%
2530     MVS spends a lot of time running OS algorithms to allow full
2531     preemption that Linux wastes on running user applications.
2532     %%
2533     [comments on the gcc-2.95 release]
2534     <QUOTE>
2535     I'm having problems compiling it for HP-UX 10.20. Any ideas?
2536    
2537     (I haven't actually finished downloading it yet, but I just know I'm
2538     gonna have problems with this crappy OS ;-)
2539     </QUOTE>
2540     %%
2541     The Internet interprets Windows as damage,
2542     and routes around it.
2543    
2544     Roger Larsson
2545     Skellefteå
2546     %%
2547     [configuring gcc]
2548     Noone should use --prefix=/usr without --with-local-prefix=/usr/local
2549     %%
2550     'You can solve any programming problem with another level of indirection,
2551     except the problem of too many levels of indirection.'
2552     %%
2553     [http://www.itknowledge.com/tpj/issues/vol4_1/tpj0401-0015.html]
2554    
2555     Z-code interpreters have also been written in Java; unfortunately, when it
2556     comes to cross-platform compatibility, Java's user-interface classes are
2557     finicky and unstable--just ask anyone who's tried to reason with the AWT
2558     on different JVMs.
2559    
2560     [and later]
2561    
2562     Pilfer is a practical implementation of two of the cardinal rules of
2563     adventure gaming:
2564    
2565     1.Anything that is not nailed down is mine.
2566     2.Anything that I can pry loose is not nailed down.
2567     %%
2568     [the ||-operator can be thought of as "or", && can be thought of as
2569     "and", but how would you call the ??-operator?]
2570    
2571     >>>>> "NK" == Nathan Kurz <nate@valleytel.net> writes:
2572    
2573     NK> ?? -> huh?
2574    
2575     That's a great name. The huh? operator.
2576    
2577     <chaim>
2578     %%
2579     `One of the reasons we continue to use Fortran is that it's easier to fix
2580     code written without attention to such details in Fortran than in other
2581     languages. To put it another way, Fortran is the only language where
2582     people who barely get by with their numerical skills can "write useful
2583     numerical code." Many times those people are the only experts in their
2584     specialty available to put a needed procedure into practice.'
2585     %%
2586     [Moderator der Sending "Teatime" auf "Radio Okerwelle", 1999-07-12]
2587     Ich muß schließlich hören was ich sage, damit ich weiß, was ich denke.
2588     %%
2589     [Dr. Dobbs #8, 1999, describing how you can AVOID downloading or executing
2590     Java applets, scripts and ActiveX controls while _parsing_(!) an html
2591     page]
2592     ... you must utilize IOleControl::OnAmbientPropertyChange with the
2593     value DISPID_AMBIENT_DLCONTROL. Before you can do this, however, you
2594     must call IOleObject::SetClientSite so that IOleControl will work
2595     properly. This is the reason you derive from IOleClientSite, even
2596     though you don't extend its functionality in any way. After the call to
2597     OnAmbientPropertyChange, IE4 will call your Invoke method to check the
2598     value of DISPID_AMBIENT_DLCONTROL. Invoke simply sets the correct bits to
2599     disable the behaviour you don't want and returns NOERROR.
2600     [Still interested in knowing how you can disable the "file not found"
2601     dialog box that will pop up when you try to parse a non-accessible file?]
2602     %%
2603     [Linus, whom I quote rarely ;-]
2604     Message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an
2605     excercise in computer science masturbation. It may feel good, but you
2606     don't actually get anything DONE.
2607     %%
2608     Advantages of Windows NT over Linux:
2609     * It's easier to explain the crash was not your fault.
2610     * You've to remember only one solution all to your problems: Reboot.
2611     * You can use your mouse to type an email-message.
2612     %%
2613     > 1) On the PIII, there is the capability to get a system unique serial
2614     > number from the CPU. Does Linux read this data already? Is there plans to
2615     > read the serial number and then disable the capability (maybe so you could
2616     > get the serial number from the OS)?
2617    
2618     Current Linux disables it and doesn't save the value.
2619     %%
2620     [CRYPTO-GRAM 1999-06-15]
2621     "Microsoft set the security state-of-the-art back 25 years with DOS, and
2622     they have continued that legacy to this day."
2623     %%
2624     [From "The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature", by Thomas Scoville]
2625     "In a world increasingly dominated by image culture (TV, movies, .jpg
2626     files), UNIX remains rooted in the culture of the word."
2627     %%
2628     > If it is clearly documented that will not happen.
2629    
2630     Yeah, sure. Unfortunately, if the "correct" treatment of this feature
2631     means to change a dozen source files (and rth's comments make me fear
2632     that that's the case), the chance that someone, somewhere forgets to say
2633     exactly why these changes were necessary (and on what other changes in
2634     other files they depend) is far larger than I want to consider. We've
2635     seen this before. Lucky we are that some long time gcc-hackers are
2636     still among us, who might remark: Oh yes, that's undefined by the C
2637     Standard, but it happens to be an extension gcc supports ... Seen that,
2638     got the T-shirt.
2639     %%
2640     Subject: Re: Linux and aliasing?
2641     From: Joe Buck <jbuck@Synopsys.COM>
2642     Date: Fri, 4 Jun 99 10:00:16 PDT
2643     To: torvalds@transmeta.com (Linus Torvalds)
2644     Cc: craig@jcb-sc.com, jbuck@Synopsys.COM, mark@codesourcery.com,
2645     davem@redhat.com, chip@perlsupport.com, egcs@egcs.cygnus.com
2646     X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
2647    
2648     Linus writes, to Craig:
2649    
2650     > I haven't maintained a compiler long-term. I _have_ maintained a larger,
2651     > and arguably mode complex system with many more degrees of freedom and
2652     > thus choices than gcc.
2653    
2654     No, gcc is substantially larger than the Linux kernel (on the order of 10x
2655     larger, as anyone can easily verify). gcc does not need to deal with race
2656     conditions, so in that sense it is simpler, but in other respects it is
2657     far more complex than the kernel.
2658    
2659     [NOTE for the reader: this is not really true, as the device drivers
2660     bomb the comparison away, but the complexity argument still holds]
2661    
2662     [ personal insults deleted, perhaps the author is in need of a vacation ]
2663     %%
2664     Subject: Re: Linux and aliasing?
2665     From: craig@jcb-sc.com
2666     To: torvalds@transmeta.com
2667    
2668     >I want the _user_ to be able to give input.
2669     [...]
2670     >I happen to think that the "explicit cast invalidates the alias
2671     >information" rule is the simplest and best one, and gives the user the
2672     >best control without adding things like new attributes or other ways to
2673     >let the user be in control.
2674    
2675     In other words, you believe you are a better language designer than
2676     the ISO C people as well as the gcc maintainers, despite the fact
2677     that you know, what, *nothing* about language design, and *nothing*
2678     about compiler design and, especially, long-term maintenance of
2679     compilers?
2680     %%
2681     Subject: Re: Linux and aliasing?
2682     From: Joe Buck <jbuck@Synopsys.COM>
2683    
2684     Linus writes:
2685     > Oh, you don't expect me to complain about bad code generation when I know
2686     > gcc could do better?
2687    
2688     Oh, don't worry, we expect you to complain, and in a rude and insulting
2689     matter at that. We're used to it. It seems that you were a nicer guy
2690     before you had so many worshippers.
2691     %%
2692     Subject: Re: Linux and aliasing?
2693     From: Branko Cibej <branko.cibej@hermes.si>
2694     Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 10:07:09 +0200
2695     To: egcs@egcs.cygnus.com
2696     X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (WinNT; I)
2697    
2698     Linus Torvalds wrote:
2699    
2700     > I think it's a damn shame that instead of technical arguments _everything_
2701     > revolves around people reading the standard as if it was the bible, and
2702     > trying to make people feel guilty for not really caring. It's not a sin to
2703     > just want to get good code without having to do magic contortions, guys.
2704    
2705     Why, Linus, it's trivial to do! Use MSVC instead of egcs, then you can do
2706    
2707     #pragma optimize("a", on/off)
2708    
2709     around every single statement, if you like. It even supports anonymous unions
2710     _and_ structs, and is only slightly influenced by the ISO C standard.
2711    
2712     They'll even sell you a version that can generate code for the alpha!
2713    
2714     >:->
2715    
2716     Brane
2717    
2718    
2719     P.S.: Just for the record: I, a "real user" and (imnsho) a "clever programmer"
2720     who "know what I'm doing", at least most of the time, and who do not "read the
2721     standard as if it were a bible", vote for having a standard-conforming
2722     compiler that's not bloated by a ton of marginally useful (or even useless)
2723     features. If I want featuritis, I know where I can get it.
2724    
2725    
2726     P.P.S: They can't even spell "optimise" ...
2727     %%
2728     You can have it Soon, Cheap, and Working; choose *two*
2729     %%
2730     "Scientific" studies have found that a 2.2.x Linux router with
2731     fast-switching enabled, using Tulip 100baseT cards, can melt a
2732     high-end Cisco's 100baseT interfaces.
2733     %%
2734     1) Thread switching is faster than process switching by a little bit on Linux
2735     2) Process switching on linux is faster than thread switching on NT
2736     3) Almost anything is faster than process switching on NT
2737     %%
2738     [gimp-developers, on the use of keyboard modifiers for drawing tools]
2739    
2740     > Simple. Powerful. Fast. Choose at most two.
2741    
2742     Perhaps this should be an option in the preferences dialog? :)
2743     %%
2744     [perl is cryptic??]
2745     Subject: @{$${->{{{{~{}~{{{NO CARRIER
2746     From: Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi>
2747     Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 21:55:37 +0300 (EET DST)
2748    
2749     We have still a long way to go-- from the zsh-workers mailing list:
2750    
2751     : Just thought of a trivial way to take a lot of grief out of parameter
2752     : substitution. This patch makes the following valid:
2753     :
2754     : ${${${${(f)"$(typeset)"}:#*local *\=*}%%\=*}##* }
2755     :
2756     : replacing the equivalent but grotesquer
2757     :
2758     : "${(@)${(@)${(@)${(@f)$(typeset)}:#*local *\=*}%%\=*}##* }"
2759     %%
2760     Long noun chains don't automatically imply security. - Bruce Schneier
2761     %%
2762     > |> Spoken as a true C programmer. However you are wrong. Case-preserving, but
2763     > |> insensitive, is the CORRECT way for file systems. Capitalization should not
2764     > |> matter for interpretation of a file name just as it doesn't matter for
2765     > |> interpreting words in any human language.
2766     >
2767     > This is wrong. In German, there is a big difference between "paar" und
2768     > "Paar" (the first meaning "a few", the second "pair").
2769    
2770     The classic example:
2771    
2772     "Ich habe liebe Genossen in Moskau" - I've got dead comreds in Moscow.
2773     "Ich habe Liebe genossen in Moskau" - I enjoyed love in Moscow.
2774     %%
2775     [do we need oo-style IO::File class in perl?]
2776     >_You_ aren't gonna code "use IO::File".
2777    
2778     And there's no reason for anyone else to, either, especially
2779     once Nick finishes the Larry-blessed autovivification of
2780     lvaluabled undefs in open(), socket(), etc.
2781    
2782     What's next, a String class for Perl?
2783    
2784     --tom
2785     %%
2786     [some example of the kind of mail I sometimes receive:]
2787     i was just trying to help u out not hurt you in anyway ok i have the fbi
2788     working on something for me
2789     u havent done anything to me ok and the sherriffs department came by to talk
2790     to me nutting concerning y ok
2791     piece
2792     russ
2793     %%
2794     [From "Basic Information about Unix", common commands:]
2795    
2796     pico (text editor for beginners)
2797     vi (text editor for advanced users)
2798     emacs (text editor for advanced users)
2799     ed (text editor for beginners)
2800     %%
2801     There is no reason in principle that a Perl script shouldn't start with
2802    
2803     use Python;
2804    
2805     and appear to work exactly like Python from there to the end of the file.
2806     Except maybe faster. :-)
2807    
2808     Larry
2809     %%
2810     > Perl6 gives us an opportunity to re-examine every feature at a microscopic level.
2811    
2812     just what I'm afraid of... I thought this was to be Perl6, not Perl
2813     2010.
2814    
2815     (Perl 2010: The Spaced Oddity?)
2816     %%
2817     The X.25 specification is not a particularly easy document to
2818     read. Contrary to expectations, it does not make great use of diagrams
2819     and tables that help to explain the workings of the protocols that
2820     it contains. Instead the document makes use of many ambiguous English
2821     descriptions of the actions that should take place, allied with a complete
2822     lack of fluency in its prose descriptions, make for a very confusing
2823     document. It is a wonder that any correct X.25 implementations have ever
2824     been created.
2825     %%
2826     > Joe: (walking into McDonalds) Hi, I'd like a Big Mac.
2827     >
2828     > Cashier: Okay, here's your Big Mac and here's your Coke. That'll be
2829     > $3.99.
2830     >
2831     > Joe: Uh, I don't want a Coke.
2832     >
2833     > Cashier: Sorry, they're bundled.
2834     >
2835     > Joe: What? I'm not paying for a Coke!
2836     >
2837     > Cashier: You don't; the Coke is free.
2838     >
2839     > Joe: But wasn't a Big Mac $2.49 last week?
2840     >
2841     > Cashier: Sure, but this latest Big Mac is far more innovative. It's
2842     > got integrated Coke!
2843     >
2844     > Joe: I already bought a Snapple across the street... I'm not going
2845     > to drink the Coke.
2846     >
2847     > Cashier: Then you can't have the burger.
2848     >
2849     > Joe: Okay, fine, I will pay the $3.99 and throw the Coke away.
2850     >
2851     > Cashier: Oh, you can't do that. They're seamlessly integrated. Totally
2852     > inseparable.
2853     >
2854     > Joe: How can that be? They're two totally separate things!
2855     >
2856     > Cashier: No, watch. (takes Big Mac, dunks it in a tank of Coke) See?
2857     >
2858     > Joe: Why did you just do that?!
2859     >
2860     > Cashier: It's a benefit to the consumer. Otherwise you'd end up with
2861     > two different, inconsistent tastes. This way you're assured of a
2862     > continuous taste across all your foods.
2863     %%
2864     Threads are like salt. I like salt, you like salt, we all
2865     like salt, but we eat more pasta than salt.
2866     %%
2867     From: Nathan Torkington <gnat@frii.com>
2868    
2869     Don't be bitten by Perl, get crushed by Python.
2870     Python: Perl for the punctuation-phobic.
2871     It takes 4 days for a python to digest a hamster, but only 2 days
2872     for you to digest this book.
2873     Python: it's really better but nobody uses it.
2874     Python: just for the whitespace of it.
2875     Join The Trickle
2876     Python: more popular than Dylan!
2877     Python: not written by crackheads in a gutter!
2878     Are you uptight? Try our new Python Hangups series.
2879     %%
2880     Well Microsoft announced this new language called COOL which I can
2881     honestly say that I have seen NO CRAPPY CODE written in. OTOH it appears
2882     that to achieve this miraculous status by the simple technique of being
2883     complete and utter vapourware.
2884    
2885     Microsoft, taking the Business out of COBOL.
2886     %%
2887     [From "Programming Perl"]
2888    
2889     We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a
2890     programmer: laziness, impatience and hubris
2891     %%
2892     [Alexander Stepanov, creator of the STL]:
2893    
2894     Yes. STL is not object oriented. I think that object orientedness is
2895     almost as much of a hoax as Artificial Intelligence. I have yet to
2896     see an interesting piece of code that comes from these OO people. In
2897     a sense, I am unfair to AI: I learned a lot of stuff from the MIT AI
2898     Lab crowd, they have done some really fundamental work: Bill Gosper's
2899     Hakmem is one of the best things for a programmer to read. AI might
2900     not have had a serious foundation, but it produced Gosper and Stallman
2901     (Emacs), Moses (Macsyma) and Sussman (Scheme, together with Guy Steele). I
2902     find OOP technically unsound. It attempts to decompose the world in
2903     terms of interfaces that vary on a single type. To deal with the real
2904     problems you need multisorted algebras - families of interfaces that
2905     span multiple types. I find OOP philosophically unsound. It claims that
2906     everything is an object. Even if it is true it is not very interesting -
2907     saying that everything is an object is saying nothing at all. I find OOP
2908     methodologically wrong. It starts with classes. It is as if mathematicians
2909     would start with axioms. You do not start with axioms - you start with
2910     proofs. Only when you have found a bunch of related proofs, can you
2911     come up with axioms. You end with axioms. The same thing is true in
2912     programming: you have to start with interesting algorithms. Only when you
2913     understand them well, can you come up with an interface that will let them
2914     work.
2915     [...]
2916     You can't write a generic max() in Java that takes two arguments of some
2917     type and has a return value of that same type. Inheritance and interfaces
2918     don't help. And if they cannot implement max or swap or linear search,
2919     what chances do they have to implement really complex stuff? These are my
2920     litmus tests: if a language allows me to implement max and swap and linear
2921     search generically - then it has some potential.
2922     [...] Java is clearly an example of a money oriented programming (MOP).
2923     It might be successful - after all, MS DOS was - and it might be a
2924     profitable thing for all your readers to learn Java, but it has no
2925     intellectual value whatsoever.
2926    
2927     [Later, on OMG protocols like CORBA]
2928     I am old enough to remember all the networking standards that were coming
2929     out in the seventies. Who remembers them now?
2930     %%
2931     [Stiftung Warentest "test", WDR 19990419:]
2932     "Schlechtes muß nicht billig sein..."
2933     %%
2934     [/bin/false on solaris]
2935     #!/usr/bin/sh
2936     # Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 AT&T
2937     # All Rights Reserved
2938    
2939     # THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF AT&T
2940     # The copyright notice above does not evidence any
2941     # actual or intended publication of such source code.
2942    
2943     #ident "@(#)false.sh 1.6 93/01/11 SMI" /* SVr4.0 1.3 */
2944     [obvious invocation of exit snipped to avoid lawsuit. Yup, *1* line.]
2945     %%
2946     <Aspirin> but ee uses imlib, and imlib is documented to take 4.7 days to start up on a 486 by Alan Cox.
2947     %%
2948     When a tar built for SunOS runs under Solaris, it's incapable of opening
2949     or creating files with "lib/locale" in the path. It replaces that part of
2950     the path with "lib/oldlocale".
2951     %%
2952     [Bruce Schneier in CRYPTO-GRAM, 19990315]
2953    
2954     "Microsoft prefers to treat security holes as a public relations problem,
2955     rather than fixing the actual problem."
2956    
2957     [further down: the official answer from Microsoft about a problem where
2958     just viewing a website would invisibly run unrestricted code on your
2959     machine]
2960    
2961     "Microsoft appreciates your input regarding this issue, however in lieu
2962     of modern technology being what it is, we all need to be personally
2963     responsible for knowing what we are downloading off the internet."
2964    
2965     [see http://www.panix.com/~dfoster/sec/chrono.html]
2966     %%
2967     [Steve Funston wrote to me, after I unsubscribed him from gimp-perl for
2968     spamming:]
2969    
2970     >fuck you ass hole duh you are just a big fucker
2971     >>
2972     >>An error was generated by your request to our servers:
2973     >>------------------------------------------------------
2974     >>
2975     >>Your Email: bfunston@mich.com
2976     >>
2977     >>ERROR: You are not a member of this list.
2978    
2979     [and later, misquoting my name:]
2980     >mark is not only a big fat liar but he is an ass hole.
2981     %%
2982     [How much of the microsoft shares does Bill Gates hold?]
2983     He has 19.8%. Paul Allen has 5.5%. Steve Ballmer has 4.7%.
2984     %%
2985     > And what's wrong with being named Peter?
2986     If linus was peter, Linux would be called penix? (just guessing) ;)
2987     %%
2988     According to Microsoft KnowledgeBase article Q216641, Microsoft Windows
2989     95/98 are limited to an uptime of *exactly* 49.7 days.
2990    
2991     --found by Vincent Janelle (Random)
2992     %%
2993     > Leave that to RMS.
2994    
2995     If you had just sat through the horrific panel with Larry,
2996     RMS, Richard, and Linus, you would want to leave a whole lot
2997     else to RMS -- like a couple of megatons of the manure that
2998     he's full of.
2999    
3000     Support BSD/Linux.
3001    
3002     --tom
3003     %%
3004     "The FSF is a cult -- don't support them." --Rob Pike
3005     %%
3006     We are Linux. Resistance is an indication that you missed the point.
3007     %%
3008     > Perhaps the cracker himself (itself? ;) isn't bright enough to delete shell
3009     > history, but his shrink-wrapped cracking tools might be a lot brighter...
3010    
3011     Some of them are. A surprising number aren't. A personal favorite of
3012     mine was the log from a cracker who couldn't figure out how to untar
3013     and install the trojan package he'd ftped onto the machine. he tried a
3014     few times, and then eventually gave up and logged out.
3015     %%
3016     [on channel #gimp]
3017    
3018     [msg(Xachbot)] insult me
3019     [XachBot(xachbot@home.xach.com)] schmorp: David Miller would never approve of that.
3020     %%
3021     [the creation]
3022     http://www.toodarkpark.org/caffeine-cgi-bin/textfile/net-hx.txt
3023     %%
3024     THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP
3025    
3026     This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of
3027     an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said
3028     to be useful in protheththing lithtth.
3029     %%
3030     Ich zog hier nur einen Pseudoschluss aus dieser sache, den ich nicht
3031     selbst schliesse.
3032     Norbert Harry Marzahn, selbsternannter "Judaaer"
3033     am 13.12.98 in de.alt.ufo
3034     %%
3035     According to Gurusamy Sarathy:
3036     > "Resistance is futile, you will be modularized."
3037    
3038     No:
3039    
3040     use Borg;
3041     make_threat(-type => 'standard', -doom => 'modularized');
3042    
3043     --
3044     Chip Salzenberg - a.k.a. - <chip@perlsupport.com>
3045     %%
3046     "And over here, ladies and gentlemen, may I draw your attention to
3047     the 'posicks box', a mechanism within one of the late 20th century
3048     sub-I hardware gestalt integration agents (then called 'operating
3049     systems', this particular one being referred to as 'windows' by
3050     its commercial-mimetic sustainer), designed so as to provide the
3051     appearance and functionality required to comply with one of the few
3052     agreed-upon integration schemas (sub-I, of course) available at the
3053     time. Unsurprising given the non-integration imperitives used by the
3054     agent's sustainter, this mechanism was demonstrated to be an ingenious
3055     non-integration ploy that, while supporting the integration schema,
3056     failed to support the local interconnect schemas that this agent
3057     specialized in. This produced a classic focus rift in the knowledge
3058     pool, benefiting the sustainer in the short run due to the focus
3059     concentration facilities available to commericial-class mimetic
3060     sustainers. Practically, this wasn't a significant loss, in the long
3061     run, as neither the 'windows' or 'posicks' schemas were relevant to
3062     modern quasi-I agents. These two do live on, however, in a few niches.
3063     'posicks' is used as the integration schema between most nano-scale
3064     logic units (a fact that only a few meta-experts still need to be
3065     aware of), and 'windows' survives, for religious-mimetic reasons, as
3066     the human-communication agent in a few stereotypical toasters and soap
3067     dispensers."
3068    
3069     [Kenneth Albanowski]
3070     %%
3071     Perl ist ein Schmerzmittel.
3072     Wenn Du bei der Speicherverwaltung oder der Stringverarbeitung
3073     unter C Schmerzen hast, nimm Perl.
3074     -- Kristian Koehntopp
3075     %%
3076     > Why Windows NT Server 4.0 continues to exist in the enterprise would be a
3077     > topic appropriate for an investigative report in the field of psychology or
3078     > marketing, not an article on information technology -- John Kirch
3079     %%
3080     [bei einer mündlichen Nachprüfung in BWL, Uni Hamburg]
3081    
3082     Prof: "Was ist Agio?"
3083     Student: "Weiß ich nicht."
3084     Prof: "OK, durchgefallen!
3085     Student: "Ich habe aber Anspruch auf drei Fragen in der mündlichen Prüfung!"
3086     Prof: "Klar, was ist Disagio?"
3087     Student: "..."
3088     Prof: "...und was ist der Unterschied zwischen Agio und Disagio?"
3089     Student: "..."
3090     Prof: "...durchgefallen!"
3091     %%
3092     Chaim Frenkel <chaimf@pobox.com> writes:
3093    
3094     > Just morbid curiosity,
3095     >
3096     > Are there _any_ unix boxes that _can't_ build Perl?
3097    
3098     Yes. Broken ones.
3099    
3100     dgris
3101     %%
3102     "The kerastion is a musical instrument which cannot be heard."
3103     -- A Borges story in ten words.
3104     %%
3105     "C combines the power of assembly language
3106     with the flexibility of assembly language."
3107     %%
3108     ...
3109    
3110     <AOL>
3111    
3112     Me too!
3113    
3114     </AOL>
3115    
3116     Tig
3117     %%
3118     ping -p 2b2b2b415448300d <hostname>
3119     %%
3120     unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;yes;umount;sleep
3121     %%
3122     From: Dick Balaska <dick@buckosoft.com>
3123    
3124     I sit behind an NT dual P2/400 256MB for too many hours each day. It is
3125     "slow". One of my (fun) tasks is CD mastering. When i'm loading a 500MB
3126     wav file into the editor, the machine goes useless for two minutes while
3127     loading the wave file. Basically its just reading the file and writing it
3128     to swap. The CPU is at 5%. No Alt-Tab between apps during that time. No
3129     chance of putting the mouse over a button (too many dropped ticks). The
3130     NT kernel is just sitting waiting for I/O completions.
3131    
3132     Linux would be embarrassed to be that bad.
3133    
3134     I expected M$ to never fix this because its not "broken". However, i
3135     expect billg to start reading the above mentioned literal benchmarks and
3136     get really really pissed.
3137    
3138     Especially since i believe 1999 and 2000 to see Linux *really* start
3139     to cut into M$'s server market share.
3140     %%
3141     > Hello I'm wondering if there's a lower traffic mailing list that exists
3142     > that's strictly important kernel announcements and not general chat. I
3143     > need to stay informed but I can't handle 250 messages in a 24 hour
3144     > period.
3145     >
3146     > Sorry for the insignificant post..
3147     > Nic
3148     >
3149    
3150     Thank you for contributing to the problem.
3151    
3152     -hpa
3153     %%
3154     grep... grep... grep... (frog with unix stuck in his throat)
3155     %%
3156     "If users are made to understand that the system administrator's job is to
3157     make computers run, and not to make them happy, they can, in fact, be made
3158     happy most of the time. If users are allowed to believe that the system
3159     administrator's job is to make them happy, they can, in fact, never be made
3160     happy."
3161     - - -Paul Evans (as quoted by Barb Dijker in "Managing Support Staff", LISA '97)
3162     %%
3163     From: "Daniel P. Stasinski" <dannys@KAREMOR.COM>
3164     Subject: Microsoft Hotmail
3165     To: BUGTRAQ@NETSPACE.ORG
3166    
3167     I contacted Microsoft/Hotmail asking them to close the account
3168     of that was listed in the backdoored tcp wrapper source code.
3169     I also forwarded the offending code.
3170    
3171     The word back from them is that they will not close it. Theft
3172     of passwords and hacking does not violate thier terms of
3173     service.
3174    
3175     Daniel
3176     %%
3177     Any UNIX-killer must also have:
3178     ...
3179     * cool name like Linux (serious, these fail: GNU Hurd FreeBSD 386BSD)
3180     %%
3181     "Not all things worth doing are worth doing well."
3182     It's a phrase I use a lot. :-)
3183     [RJL]
3184     %%
3185     As John Whittaker says: ``It's UNIX. That doesn't necessarily mean it's
3186     right.''
3187     %%
3188     [Richard Stallman on the new _Pragma operator in C9X:]
3189    
3190     Amazing--they actually listened.
3191     %%
3192     That "UNIX" term is very negative. People often associate it with
3193     SCO OpenServer, Wyse terminals, and 60 people on a 386. The UNIX
3194     that people know is just awful. It looks something like this:
3195    
3196     # less foo
3197     sh: command not found
3198     # more foo
3199     sh: command not found
3200     # emacs foo
3201     sh: command not found
3202     # ed foo
3203     0
3204     help
3205     ?
3206     quit
3207     ?
3208     exit
3209     ?
3210     DIE!!!!!!!!!!
3211     ?
3212    
3213     [Albert D. Cahalan]
3214     %%
3215     Subject: Re: Stop blib warning in future releases?
3216     From: andreas.koenig@anima.de (Andreas J. Koenig)
3217     Date: 05 Jan 1999 03:15:37 +0100
3218    
3219     tim> Sure. Strictly speaking
3220    
3221     tim> use blib ':quiet';
3222    
3223     tim> would be most correct in style.
3224    
3225     Only German native speakers are allowed to treat adverbs adjectively.
3226     For the rest I'd recommend [...]
3227     %%
3228     [A new U.S. Law implementing a WIPO treaty]
3229     No person shall circumvent a technological protection measure that
3230     effectively controls access to a work protected under this title
3231     [Or, in other words, applied cryptanalysis will be illegal.
3232     too bad --- ]
3233     %%
3234     Microsoft - Is it going to work today?
3235     %%
3236     Subject: Re: [gimp-devel] GIF plugin legal issues
3237    
3238     > Actually, my understanding is that Unisys doesn't currently enforce the
3239     > licensing cost on free software, but maybe I am mistaken.
3240    
3241     The general wording, spoken by an unnamed GIMP developer, is, if you'll
3242     pardon the language, "Unisys can go fuck itself."
3243     %%
3244     [once on linux-kernel:]
3245     > >who are you why on yahoo when iprint sf16fmi i fond you i need drv
3246     > Does anyone have the secret decoder ring to make sense of this?
3247     he's confused about us showing up in a search match on yahoo, but needs
3248     driver(s) for his sf16fmi thingy.
3249     %%
3250     > Did you try to compile kdeadmin from the CVS tree ?
3251    
3252     No I ran the KDE binaries. Im not interested in broken programs that
3253     include wrong #include files in their source.
3254     %%
3255     [unix-faq]
3256    
3257     Someday, you are going to accidentally type something like
3258     "rm * .foo", and find you just deleted "*" instead of "*.foo".
3259     Consider it a rite of passage.
3260     %%
3261     "There's one word that strikes fear into nuclear scientists..."
3262     "Oops."
3263     -- MST3K
3264     %%
3265     Seems like 80-bit spills would be closer to IEEE, if not close enough to
3266     claim full support. Off-hand I'd say people would be happier with
3267     those numeric properties than with the current situation.
3268    
3269     I'll think about the esoterica (probably break down and ask people here).
3270     It would certainly make gcc the most reliable x86 floating-point compiler
3271     I know. Sun's does something similar to -ffloat-store by default (gee,
3272     look at how fast that ultra is), and Microsoft's runs off the end of the
3273     stack at run-time . I don't know what Intel's does, so I'm not considering
3274     it. ;)
3275     %%
3276     >I was using the localtime function to change time_t into it's various
3277     >human-readable parts. I noticed that $year gets returned as 98 and
3278     >not 1998. I tested a few different unices and got the same result.
3279     >This is expected behavior based on the examples I've seen and my own
3280     >testing. My question is how is this y2k compliant?
3281    
3282     What part of your C library's documentation on localtime(3), the perlfunc
3283     documentation on the Perl localtime function, the perlfaq4 entry on `Does
3284     Perl have a year 2000 problem?', and the Y2K document on www.perl.com
3285     did you find to be unclear on the answer to this question?
3286    
3287     --tom
3288     %%
3289     > * Have you ever wondered how life began ?
3290    
3291     In a laboratory somewhere at Bell Labs.
3292    
3293     >Why does it end ?
3294    
3295     Ask the X3J11 committee.
3296    
3297     > * Can you tell WHY there is life ? What is the purpose of it ?
3298     > * Can YOU do anything to make your life worth living ? WHAT ?
3299    
3300     To promote the the DEATH OF ANSI C! K+R FOREVER! DOWN WITH PORTABILITY!
3301     %%
3302     "Unix *is* Perl's IDE!"
3303     -- Tom Christiansen
3304     %%
3305     [Sputnik]
3306    
3307     Do you honestly think the Americans would mention a Soviet success? :-)
3308     A number of years back I saw an exhibition in the US on the development of
3309     supersonic passenger aircraft. They forgot to mention Concorde. It
3310     wouldn't surprise me in the least if most people at NASA had never heard
3311     of Sputnik.
3312     %%
3313     NTFS by default adds unnecessary serialization to an extent that
3314     even older file systems such as FFS do not, and its performance
3315     characteristics reflect that. In fairness, it should be said that it is
3316     the superior approach for most removable media without software control
3317     of ejection (e.g. IBM PC floppies).
3318     %%
3319     Never attribute to malice what could as well be explained by stupidity.
3320     - Hanlons razor -
3321     %%
3322     Shallit's Razor: Never attribute to conspiracy what may be adequately
3323     explained by stupidity or incompetence.
3324     %%
3325     According to Chris Nandor:
3326     > I thought about creating a web interface to input, edit, delete entries,
3327     > but that would have taken me longer, been more complex and less secure, and
3328     > offered no significant advantages.
3329    
3330     That one's in the quotes file. Thanks.
3331     %%
3332     My friend who had a Compaq called one day when his built-in cdrom drive
3333     stopped responding. Their answer "its a virus. Reinstal Windows". So he did
3334     (?) and it still didn't work. He called them and they said "its a virus,
3335     reinstall." "But I just installed. If there is a virus, it came from YOUR
3336     quick restore disk." "No, no virus there, but you DO have a virus. My paper
3337     in front of me says so."
3338    
3339     He took it back and bought a Gateway.
3340     %%
3341     9. Deinde, ne in posterum a XII kalendas aprilis aequinoctium recedat,
3342     statuimus bissextum quarto quoque anno (uti mos est) continuari debere,
3343     praeterquam in centesimis annis; qui, quamvis bissextiles antea semper
3344     fuerint, qualem etiam esse volumus annum MDC, post eum tamen qui
3345     deinceps consequentur centesimi non omnes bissextiles sint, sed in
3346     quadringentis quibusque annis primi quique tres centesimi sine bissexto
3347     transigantur, quartus vero quisque centesimus bissextilis sit, ita ut
3348     annus MDCC, MDCCC, MDCCCC bissextiles non sint. Anno vero MM, more
3349     consueto dies bissextus intercaletur, februario dies XXIX continente,
3350     idemque ordo intermittendi intercalandique bissextum diem in
3351     quadringentis quibusque annis perpetuo conservetur.
3352     %%
3353     You obviously have not dealt with Microsoft Winnt 4.0
3354     and all the Service Pack then. While one Service Pack
3355     did somewhat correct the Y2K problem was not aware that
3356     2000 was in fact a leap year. There was no way to set
3357     the date to Feb 29, 2000.
3358     %%
3359     "Ernst Lehmann, die Organisationsredundanz beim Cluster-Treffen"
3360     %%
3361     HP Computer NEWS 3/98 about HP 2000/CN printer (page 24): "Darüber
3362     hinaus ... hat der HP 2000C/CN durch den Einsatz von Intel MMX-
3363     Technologie Zugriff auf deren Farbtabellen und kann so Farbbilder
3364     schneller verarbeiten" (A mistake made when translating. It's hard to
3365     get the wrong meaning if translated back to English, sorry.)
3366     %%
3367     From: Robert Lipe
3368     > > I program computers with no screens and no keyboards for a living.
3369     > > Switches and front-panels are a LUXURY! :-)
3370     >
3371     > But I guess you are not _programming_ these computers without a keyboard
3372     > and/or screen.
3373    
3374     Are you familiar with the Vulcan Mind Meld?
3375     %%
3376     Subject: Re: [fwd from comp.lang.python] Re: Python 2 ideas [Re: access
3377     From: Tuomas Lukka <lukka@fas.harvard.edu>
3378    
3379     On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
3380     > use pedantic;
3381     > use strict 'code';
3382     >
3383     > or whatever is the syntax to switch Perl into 'dull'/'pythonish' mode.
3384    
3385     use syntax 'python';
3386    
3387     Let's just embrace&extend'em ;) ;)
3388    
3389     %%
3390     Thus it was written in the epistle of Larry Wall,
3391     >
3392     > Having discussed all this thoroughly at the Hacker's Conference this
3393     > past weekend, I've come to the conclusion that Y2K will be traumatic
3394     > primarily because people *think* it will be traumatic. A panic is a
3395     > panic whether or not it's justified. People get trampled in panics.
3396     >
3397     > It should be illegal to yell "Y2K" in a crowded economy. :-)
3398     %%
3399     [rfc1925]
3400     Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can't have all three).
3401     %%
3402     [Alan Cox, why not port hurd to sgi, instead of linux]
3403     > A possible minus is the message-passing between the servers which might
3404     > be time-consuming.
3405    
3406     "Yesterdays technology, next week" to quote an OSI saying
3407     %%
3408     UNIX versions of ctags handle the C language, and often Pascal and Fortran
3409     77. Sometimes, they even handle assembly language. Almost universally,
3410     however, they do not handle C++...
3411     [from "learning the vi editor"]
3412     %%
3413     > correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a thread about this a few
3414     > months back that resolved the ping -f localhost as a ping bug.
3415    
3416     Indeed, as Alan Cox said:
3417    
3418     So get a non-buggy ping(8) client.
3419    
3420     and as Ecclesiastes said:
3421    
3422     Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been
3423     already of old time, which was before us.
3424     There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any
3425     remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.
3426    
3427     Regards,
3428     Tigran.
3429     %%
3430     SNMP stands for Security Not My Problem
3431     %%
3432     [slightly broken, though...]
3433     /* "Hello World" in B for 64-bit hardware! */
3434     hw [0] "Hello World.*n";
3435     main(){
3436     extrn hw;
3437     putchar(0[hw]);
3438     hw=+1;
3439     putchar(0[hw]);
3440     }
3441     %%
3442     > So what comes first the chicken or the egg? :)
3443    
3444     The egg. Always. By definition.
3445     %%
3446     > > PPS: Robert, I just made my first y2k fix to that script ;()
3447     >
3448     > Better check your scsi cables.
3449     %%
3450     Arroganz durch Wissen
3451     [Dirk Jagdmann]
3452     %%
3453     [Re: Pegasus - Gut oder Boese?]
3454     > Weil er sie dabei ja unterstuetzt. Da er aber (abgesehen von den ersten
3455     > ein- oder zweimal) nur auf Anrufen von Rosa-Girl erscheint, koennte man es
3456     > auch anders herum sagen. wenn CU Pfeift, kommt er angaloppiert 8))
3457    
3458     was aber leider bedeutet, daß usa die Rennsemmel ständig mit
3459     sich rumschleppen mu?. ^_-
3460     Nur weil die Kleine die Bimmel hat!
3461    
3462     Und wer weiß, was dieses pädophile Pferd eigentlich noch so
3463     bezwecken will... ^_-
3464     %%
3465     >James :\
3466     >
3467     >I apologize for adding a message to this possibly trivial thread.
3468    
3469     I like your sig. I hope you use it for everything you post.
3470     %%
3471     From: Mason <mason@schwanda.resnet.tamu.edu>
3472     Subject: night of the undead ip stack
3473     Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 13:03:19 -0600 (CST)
3474     %%
3475     > The person who decides to invent UNICODE support for Linux
3476     > is just asking for a black eye.
3477    
3478     But Unicode for NT is such fun!
3479    
3480     For example, the checked DbgPrint() bluescreens above DISPATCH_LEVEL
3481     if you try to print a Unicode string--the Unicode->ASCII
3482     translation tables are marked as pageable.
3483    
3484     Since as far as I know, printk() does not have any format specifiers
3485     that cause obscure kernel panics, Linux is clearly behind in this
3486     area.
3487     %%
3488     Linux: a no problem operating system for no problem people.
3489     [Lukas Grunwald]
3490     %%
3491     http://dd.sh/perlfs/:
3492    
3493     THIS IS AN EXPERIMENTAL (PRE-ALPHA) VERSION OF THE PERL FILESYSTEM.
3494     EVEN WHEN IT LOADS WITHOUT CAUSING A KERNEL PANIC, IT WILL LOCK UP
3495     YOUR MACHINE, DESTROY ALL YOUR DATA, KIDNAP YOUR FAMILY AND
3496     (DEPENDING ON SAID FAMILY'S CONFIGURATION) SHOOT YOUR CAT, DOG, AND/OR
3497     FIRST-BORN CHILD.
3498     %%
3499     [a comment on http://dd.sh/perlfs/]
3500     Forget GNU/Linux. /PerL/inux will conquer all.
3501    
3502     kill 0,1 if -x '/PerL/inux'; # request kernel mode
3503     %%
3504     [Tim Hollebeek on real arithmetic]
3505     On a machine with a sane floating point model, the results make sense.
3506     For example, my SGI workstation prints:
3507    
3508     0.00000000000000011102 1.00000000000000000000 1.00000000000000020000 1.00000000000000040000
3509    
3510     However, a machine with the Intel FPU from hell gives:
3511    
3512     0.00000000000000000005 1.00000000000000000000 1.00000000000000000000 1.00000000000000000000
3513    
3514     due to the fact that whether 1+x and 1 are the same number depends on whether
3515     the numbers are in the FPU or not.
3516     %%
3517     [Grüner Tip/Arte]
3518     Ihre Nachbarn sind zu laut und feiern andauernd Parties? Kein Problem, ihr
3519     Bohrer wird nachts um zwei spielend mit _jedem_ Lärm fertig....
3520     %%
3521     Remember, eating healthy doesn't make you live longer, it just makes it seem
3522     longer...
3523     %%
3524     [M$ about unix development tools like GCC]
3525     By the standards of the novice / intermediate developer accustomed to
3526     VB/VS/VC/VJ, these tools are incredibly primitive.
3527     %%
3528     > > Praha is nice and our university is interesting, since it is according
3529     > > to tests most complex and impractical computer science university on the
3530     > > world :) I just love it...
3531     >
3532     > Oh well, great that I won't be studying there...
3533     >
3534     It is really fun.... just now I have lesson (that reminds me that I really
3535     should go now) about set theory and infinity... it is really fun and very
3536     practical...
3537     for example that you have cinema with infinity chairs and infinity plus one
3538     person wants to see movie... what do yo do?
3539     Just let sit down the first infinity persons and then last person ask first
3540     one to move to second chair, second one to move to third and so on and
3541     everyone fits.. isn't that great to know? :))
3542    
3543     Jan Hubicka
3544     %%
3545     > template< template< template<class> class > class Tmpl> A {};
3546     [...]
3547     > I think that this construction is allowed by the ANSI C++.
3548    
3549     No, it is not. What you meant is
3550    
3551     template< template< template<class> class > class Tmpl> class A {};
3552     %%
3553     Jan Dubois writes:
3554     > A) perl-5.00553
3555     > path = \perl\5.00553\bin\MsWin32-x86\perl.exe
3556     > cc = cl.exe
3557     A performance analysis compiling with M$ compiler? Get real!
3558    
3559     [...]
3560    
3561     Ilya
3562     %%
3563     >Shouldn't the kernel compile with all combinations of options.
3564    
3565     Yes. Feel free to fix it and send a patch.
3566    
3567     p.
3568     %%
3569     [tomc]
3570     Jean-Louis provides four arguments in favor of the overloading of the
3571     logical && and || operators. Here they are:
3572    
3573     +------------------------------------------+
3574     | Other languages, notably C++, permit it. |
3575     +------------------------------------------+
3576    
3577     This one is hardly persuasive. Many languages do innumerable things
3578     that Perl does not do. Just for example, take:
3579    
3580     * Csh reparses and re-evals interpolated strings, allowing something
3581     like C<$cmd $var> to do interesting things.
3582     * The Fortran lexer (as it were), having no need of white space to
3583     infer tokens, allows C<DO I=1.10> and C<DO I=1,10> to coexist in an
3584     interesting way.
3585     * Icon has an entirely different notion of success and failure,
3586     allowing expressions like (X < Y < Z) to do interesting things.
3587     * Scheme has call-with-continuation, allowing co-routines to do
3588     interesting things.
3589     * C++ has template classes with abnormal typing rules even for that
3590     language, allowing parameterized meta-classes to do interesting
3591     things.
3592     %%
3593     Make is like Pascal: everybody likes it, so they go in and change it.
3594     --Dennis Ritchie
3595     %%
3596     perl -wlpe '}{$_=$.' file # Count the number of lines.
3597     %%
3598     [not quite duff's device, but...]
3599    
3600     switch (x)
3601     default:
3602     if (prime(x))
3603     case 2: case 3: case 5: case 7:
3604     process_prime(x);
3605     else
3606     case 4: case 6: case 8: case 9: case 10:
3607     process_composite(x);
3608     %%
3609     Is there any truth to the rumor that the number appearing
3610     after the words "Microsoft Windows" is the minimum amount of memory,
3611     in megabytes, required for execution?
3612    
3613     Craig Milo Rogers
3614     %%
3615     Mark Mielke writes:
3616     > This statement is false. The simple fact that school textbooks teach it
3617     > to be indeterminate should be enough to convince you of that.
3618    
3619     This is just another reference point about the state of education in
3620     US (apparently in Canada too?).
3621    
3622     Ilya
3623     %%
3624     [from p5p]
3625     > Now you know why threading is experimental and all, buddy.
3626    
3627     Experimental schexperimental. Anything that doesn't cause an
3628     immediate coredump is not experimental. :-) (Observant readers will
3629     note that this is a more rigorous standard than Microsoft's.)
3630    
3631     Nat
3632     %%
3633     Needless to say, Linux awk is probably gawk, which has been taking too
3634     much steroids for a while. =)
3635    
3636     --Albert Dvornik
3637     <bert@genscan.com>
3638     %%
3639     Subject: Re: zero width lookbehind considered slow
3640     From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@jhereg.perl.com>
3641     Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 17:40:37 -0500
3642    
3643     >*You* do not understand? Perl is slow...
3644    
3645     Ilya: You are formerly invited to go play in the python
3646     or tcl crowd instead of here.
3647    
3648     --tom
3649     %%
3650     >What's it? Can linux be improved too? Or has it already been improved?
3651    
3652     Linux has never done anything so stupid in the first place.
3653    
3654     Linus
3655     %%
3656     On the 8th day god created email. And got noted the world was good. Then the
3657     devil added HTML mail...
3658     %%
3659     linux/lib/vsprintf.c: * Wirzenius wrote this portably, Torvalds fucked it up :-)
3660     linux/arch/sparc64/kernel/binfmt_aout32.c: /* Fuck me plenty... */
3661     linux/arch/sparc64/kernel/ptrace.c:/* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */
3662     %%
3663     On 1998-10-11T02:37:57,
3664     Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> said:
3665    
3666     > Believe me Microsoft think Linux is a threat now. Its level with things like
3667     > java in their perceived threat list, so you can expect all the usual MS
3668     > techniques to start coming this way and very soon.
3669    
3670     Arm the gnus!
3671     %%
3672     [David Miller after (another) endless discussion with Richard Kenner]
3673    
3674     Anyways, I tired (just like everyone else) of arguing endlessly with
3675     you, you're in the past, you no longer constrain my ability to improve
3676     gcc, so go away.
3677     %%
3678     I received my copy of Visual Studio 6.0 today. I couldn't believe that it
3679     wanted to install the C++ compiler into a directory called:
3680    
3681     "\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98"
3682    
3683     But anyways, I just had to find out if it was finally possible to compile
3684     Perl (without PERL_OBJECT) with optimization (-O2).
3685     %%
3686     [on perl version numbering]
3687     > So it could be 5.006 for the developers, but "ThreadPerl" or "Perl with
3688     > Multithreads" (or some such) for the journalists, if that's what
3689     > journalists need to make them pay attention.
3690    
3691     Down that path lies "Perl version 5.006, codename `Ticklish Uvula',
3692     was released today" madness.
3693     %%
3694     [on perl version numbering]
3695     > elaine> 5.1 would be a good thing(tm) as it would draw attention,
3696     > elaine> etc. in a way that a developers versioning would. The
3697     > elaine> world is not populated by people who think the same
3698     > elaine> way. To that end, this would be a good change. Of course,
3699     > elaine> we could call it Perl99.
3700     >
3701     > To me, Perl seems to be recognized for it's language qualities, not
3702     > for marketing reasons. IMHO, perl may keep this difference with other
3703     > wintel product. More than that : Perl99, would let believe people that
3704     > it is not Y2K proofed, or still in beta (<1.00). So it's not a good
3705     > marketing name, anyway.
3706    
3707     Right. Then, to be Y2K compliant, we'll have to call it Perl1999. Hmmm.
3708     "The year perl left earth's orbit"? Maybe we need to get the NASA guys to
3709     put perl on the next low-cost spaceshot.
3710    
3711     Of course, then c.l.p.m's motto could be "We do not commit *mindless*
3712     violence..." :-)
3713     %%
3714     Rule 1 says that Larry says that Larry has the last say, unless he changes
3715     his mind in which case he still has the last say.
3716     %%
3717     > >I never said it did.. I should have said: Binary only drivers encourage
3718     > >poor drivers
3719     >
3720     > No it doesn't.
3721    
3722     Indeed. Its down to
3723    
3724     Profit = (units * margin) - overhead
3725    
3726     and the folks who decide "overhead" arent the programmers but the management.
3727     The folks who say "you have two weeks allocated to write this driver, then
3728     we ship it" are the folks to take the issue up with, and that goes source
3729     or binaries.
3730     %%
3731     dig txt leap.yp.to
3732     %%
3733     "The fact that I'm paranoid doesn't mean that nobody's after me..."
3734     %%
3735     [linux-kernel on endianess issues with NIPQUAD]
3736    
3737     |> Do I read this correct?!? Is it more acceptable to have a bug[*],
3738     |> than a not optimal fix?!?!?
3739     |>
3740     |> s/optimal/stupid/
3741    
3742     What's stupid is little endian. <g>
3743    
3744     Andreas.
3745     %%
3746     [Paul Eggert on tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov]
3747     ...
3748     A closely related question is `What is 1 minute before 23:59:60?''.
3749    
3750     Here's a good one: `What is 1 month before 1 February 1995 in
3751     Kiritimati?''. There was no 1 January 1995 in Kiritimati; they
3752     skipped a day by moving the clocks ahead 24 hours. Similar issues
3753     arise when asking about times that occur within smaller, more typical
3754     UTC offset changes. A number of obscure questions arise here, and I'm
3755     not sure it's worth standardizing all the answers.
3756     %%
3757     [D.J.Bernstein on tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov]
3758    
3759     Paul Eggert writes:
3760     > which I am calling the `modified TIME_TAI''
3761    
3762     Your time differences break down near leap seconds. Ever watched xntpd
3763     try to handle a leap second? Wobble, wobble, wobble, wobble, wobble.
3764     %%
3765     For binary only drivers you can assume most vendors will build x86 only
3766     however.
3767    
3768     "We don't have the tools"
3769     "We can't support a non intel build"
3770     "We don't have that sort of machine"
3771     "Its not worth the time cost"
3772     "Whats an Alpha ?"
3773     %%
3774     On Thu, 1 Oct 1998, Mail Delivery Subsystem wrote:
3775    
3776     > The original message was received at Thu, 1 Oct 1998 18:39:56 -0400
3777     > from mini [10.0.0.3]
3778     >
3779     > ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
3780     > <mailproc@fred>
3781     >
3782     > ----- Transcript of session follows -----
3783     > procmail: can't map '/lib/libc.so.5'
3784     > procmail: can't map '/lib/libc.so.5'
3785     > procmail: can't load library 'libc.so.5'
3786     > 554 <mailproc@fred>... unknown mailer error 16
3787     %%
3788     > Here is the difficulty with this discussion:
3789     > No documented problem
3790     > No reason to believe that the "solution" solves the unspecified "problem"
3791     > No clear understanding of the effects of this change on the system
3792     >
3793     > Why, this could be a discusion among AIX developers!
3794     %%
3795     > This would be a reasonable committee-like compromise that might
3796     > satisfy neither of us (:-).
3797     %%
3798     By default Microsoft has set Explorer to use gz files as VRML, you need to
3799     change the association for .gz / vrml from "start vrml program" to "always ask"
3800    
3801     dave
3802     %%
3803     On 10 Aug 1998, Ben Pfaff wrote:
3804     DG> You're not programming MS-DOS applications are you?
3805    
3806     BP> Hell no. I wouldn't touch MS-DOS with a ten-foot network cable.
3807     %%
3808     [Paul Eggert on tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov]
3809    
3810     Date: 10 Oct 1998 15:35:05 -0000
3811     From: "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>
3812    
3813     Paul Eggert writes:
3814     > * 29 February if it's a leap lear, 28 February otherwise.
3815    
3816     If that's 1 month before 31 March, then what's 1 month before 30 March?
3817     1 month before 29 March?
3818    
3819     The same as 1 month before 31 March.
3820    
3821     1 month before 28 March?
3822    
3823     28 February.
3824    
3825     And what's 1 month after 28 February? 1 month after 27 February? 1 month
3826     _before_ 27 February?
3827    
3828     28 March, 27 March, and 27 January.
3829     %%
3830     Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
3831    
3832     >Nils Goesche wrote:
3833     >> So make a security check first:
3834     >>
3835     >> if (status = UNDER_NUCLEAR_ATTACK)
3836     >> launch_full_counterstrike();
3837     >
3838     >Hmmm. The way the worlds been going lately, AI wouldn't trust that code to
3839     >do the job. Here's the revised version:
3840     >
3841     >if(status == UNDER_NULEAR_ATTACK); /* Corrected dangerous
3842     > = instead of == error*/
3843     > launch_full_counterstrike();
3844     >
3845     >Now isn't that much more reliable?
3846     >
3847     >--
3848     >Email: cyrand@hotmail.com
3849    
3850     The following variant is less reliable but much safer:
3851    
3852     if (status == UNDER_NUCLEAR_ATTACK); /* Correct dangerous
3853     launch_full_counterstrike (); = instead == error */
3854     %%
3855     It is even more cheerful than that. Not so long time ago a customers
3856     of ours totally destroyed his NT installation on Alpha.
3857    
3858     He found on a manufacturer page, no money - for a download, "NT driver"
3859     for his particular piece of a hardware. So he followed instructions
3860     to the letter - "Installation Wizzard" and all that crap - and the thing
3861     happily installed clobbering, as it is customary in these circles,
3862     essential system libraries with its own versions. The catch was that
3863     this driver was for NT/Intel and these bozos did not even bother to
3864     check for an architecture or at least mention something in some blurb.
3865     Ooops! No chance even to try to boot anymore.
3866    
3867     The saving grace was that the installation was rather new, so loses
3868     were not big, and he had an opportunity to practice an essential skill
3869     of re-installing Windows NT. Ah, and yes, this was the only NT driver
3870     available for that hardware from any source.
3871     What do you plan on doing? Using a PA system for networking? :)
3872     Whats next? A *Smell* modem? It would bring a new meaning to packet
3873     sniffing!
3874     %%
3875     "I'd rather spend 10 hours reading source code than 10 minutes on a
3876     technical support line that isn't"
3877     %%
3878     [from linux-kernel]
3879     `This code fills 8 million seats, we therefore decide what's standard.''
3880     %%
3881     [...]
3882     And especially with new machines users have a lot of clout. Several UK
3883     suppliers now carry Buslogic cards partly because they got fed up of
3884    
3885     "I'd like to order a dual PII/300, 256Mb of RAM, 17" monitor
3886     4 4Gig IBM disks, and a buslogic scsi controller"
3887     "We dont do buslogic only adaptec"
3888     "Nothing else"
3889     "Sorry"
3890     [Click]
3891    
3892     Alan
3893     %%
3894     Fünfzig Prozent der Amerikaner wurden in ihrer Kindheit sexuell mißbraucht,
3895     während weitere fünfzig Prozent von Außerirdischen entführt wurden.
3896     %%
3897     > Let's not forget that this is just an informal, free
3898     > software project. Unlke the US House of Representatives
3899     > we do not yet posess nuclear capability (certain RTEMS
3900     > users excepted, of course!).
3901    
3902     Hmmm, if some RTEMS users have nuclear facilities attached to their
3903     systems, they might be well advised to be careful using FORTRAN as
3904     their language of choice. The comp.lang.fortran FAQ states (with
3905     concurrence from resident X3J3 members) that "using a non-standard
3906     construct might start WW III, if the necessary (optional) hardware
3907     is installed"
3908    
3909     [Toon Moene in private discussion]
3910     %%
3911     Newsgroups: alt.config
3912    
3913     L. Harris wrote:
3914     >
3915     > Testing
3916    
3917     you failed.
3918     %%
3919     Roswell {Unit 6 of 5 Sam Borg} Coverup [Rev. joWazzoo - well mannered despammer]
3920     <JOWazzoo@WhiteICE.com> at We are Sam Borg Spam Assimilators Ltd. - Area 51 HQ
3921     %%
3922     Perl is really designed more for the guys that will hack Perl at least
3923     20 minutes a day for the rest of their career. TCL/Python is more a
3924     "20 minutes a week", and VB is probably in that "20 minutes a month"
3925     group. :) -- Randal Schwartz
3926     %%
3927     > alternative, when it comes to stability and power...Not to mention the
3928     > fact that bugs and fixes are very quickly available and don't come in
3929     > 18MB+ "Service Packs" :).
3930    
3931     What, you mean you _paid_ for service pack '98?
3932     %%
3933     We got this INTERNET because we whan't more information ( to learn ) now it
3934     seem's people can't handle what they see. You say freedom is a mater of
3935     choice (well it is) you have the freedom to choose to carry your butt some
3936     where else...
3937     %%
3938     Steve Orzel (phloam@vol.com) wrote:
3939     [...]
3940     : The purpose of the newsgroup is to help out other people that have questions
3941     : about a certain topic.
3942     %%
3943     Mark Robinson wrote:
3944     >
3945     > Does any have any source code to games that I can have? Does anybody
3946     > know where I can get game sources(legally)?
3947    
3948     Here's the trial version of the three-room text adventure I'm going to
3949     write. I'm not finished yet, though.
3950    
3951     void main (void)
3952     {
3953     printf ("You are in a dark room.\n");
3954     printf ("\n");
3955     printf ("You feel a sharp pain.\n");
3956     printf ("You have died.\n");
3957     printf ("\n");
3958     printf ("!!! GAME OVER !!!");
3959     }
3960    
3961     (Don't tell, but I took some of the code from Quake.)
3962    
3963     --
3964     John Kugelman. kugelman@mnsinc.com
3965     %%
3966     [mail I got after releasing a zip-password cracker, the second biggest
3967     mistake I ever made]
3968    
3969     From: "Tom Miller"
3970     Subject: Can
3971     X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.71.1712.3
3972    
3973     Hay man can you send me some hacking tips and tricks please
3974     send to kymmiller@bigpond.com
3975     my name is Tom Miller
3976    
3977     From: "Tom Miller"
3978     Subject: Wait
3979     X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.71.1712.3
3980    
3981     Hey man its Tom can you also send me any easy systems to hack and the
3982     passwords also send me any infomation about hacking websites thank you
3983     %%
3984     From: lm@bitmover.com (Larry McVoy)
3985    
3986     [...] then think a little before flaming. Or better yet, produce something
3987     better. Flaming is easy but it is basically masturbation without the orgasm
3988     so why bother? [...]
3989     %%
3990     Günter Höns <guenter.hoens@gmd.de>
3991    
3992     Newsgroups: de.alt.ufo
3993    
3994     Offensichtlich ist noch keinem das Wasser-Wachstum aufgefallen, das sogar
3995     jeden Tag geschieht. Jeden Tag waechst der Wasserberg im Meer um mehrere
3996     Meter, ist dann naeher an der Sonne und verdunstet dann. Sogenannte
3997     Wissenschaftler haben eine abenteuerliche Theorie ueber den Einfluss des
3998     Mondes auf dieses Wachstum aufgestellt, aber inzwischen wissen wir es
3999     besser: Die Wasser-Molekuele werden von Neutrinos getroffen, und verdoppeln
4000     sich dann.
4001     %%
4002     CRASH(8)
4003     no fs
4004     A device has disappeared from the mounted-device table.
4005     Definitely hardware or software error.
4006    
4007     Unix Version 7 Manual
4008     %%
4009     On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Larry Wall wrote:
4010     >
4011     > Maybe Pi looks like this:
4012     >
4013     > =for C
4014     > i++; /* add 1 to i */
4015     > =end
4016     > =for C++
4017     > i.value() += 1; // add 1 to i, probably
4018     > =end
4019     > =for Java
4020     > system().foo().bar().i().value().please().increment(); // ???
4021     > =end
4022     >
4023     > :-)
4024     %%
4025     > > USENET is *not* the non-clickable part of WWW!
4026     %%
4027     [on linux 2.1.111]
4028    
4029     The horrid underlining which was a feature with the monochrome Linux vt's on
4030     the previous two releases of the kernel has gone. Unfortunately, so has the
4031     cursor. A couple of brief experiments didn't result in me finding a way to
4032     turn it on.
4033     %%
4034     [...]
4035     its a true story, it happend this weekend in a nice country
4036     between Belgium (wellknown for its Dutroux-case) and Germany
4037     (wellknown for its Bratwurst), lets call it the Lowlands...
4038     [...]
4039     %%
4040     I get a sense of god-like proportions when I patch /dev/kmem with dd(1).
4041    
4042     Chad C Giffin
4043     %%
4044     [usenet, an anology]
4045     Mary Green's car was smoking. She got worried. "Whatever should I do?"
4046     worried Mary... Well, as she drove along she noticed a florists shop. "Aha!
4047     Thought Mary, "Flour shops are full of thoughtless men who need to apologize to
4048     their wives. These men are the sometimes the same ones I see swearing under
4049     the hoods of their cars in the shade of a tree."
4050    
4051     "Brrring" said the bell of the door to the flower shop as Mary poked her head
4052     through the door.
4053     "HELP!!! MY CAR IS SMOKING!" Screamed Mary.
4054     "There is a garage right next door." Said the shopkeeper.
4055     "That's right," Said Melvin, "And there is a parts store across the street. If
4056     you ask for Fred, he's pretty savvy about that kind of stuff."
4057     Now Joe was also in the flower store. This was his first time in trouble, so
4058     he did not hear the 30 or 40 people per day who came in screaming about their
4059     cars smoking (mostly men, of course -- the ones under the shade trees,
4060     usually.)
4061    
4062     "Why don't you help the stinking lady!!" Screamed Joe. "It might be your
4063     muffler bearings..." he continued. Or maybe it's your deisel glow plugs or
4064     your tire pressure..."
4065     Now Tim, also new to the flower shop felt the courage to chime in, "Or it could
4066     even be your cooling system. Sometimes a hose gets a crack."
4067     "My car smoked once and it was an oil leak, where the head gasket was spraying
4068     oil in the manifold." Hollered Larry
4069     "Hey lady, why don't you get your car the patch if it's smoking" chortled Glen.
4070     Well, the hollering went on into the evening, and the lady finally went to the
4071     gas station and found that the heater core had a tiny split and was repaired in
4072     three days for a cost of $175.23.
4073     %%
4074     > Nun gut, Berliner sollen ja eh etwas heller sein.
4075    
4076     Sicher, das macht der Inzest, und die Isolation!:)
4077     %%
4078     > Nun gut, Berliner sollen ja eh etwas heller sein.
4079    
4080     Stimmt, deswegen waren sie wohl auch die ersten, die Hitler hinterherliefen...
4081     :-(
4082     %%
4083     >Mt 24,34 Wahrlich, ich sage euch: Dieses Geschlecht wird nicht vergehen, bis
4084     >dies alles geschieht.
4085     >Und es verging nicht.
4086    
4087     So what?
4088    
4089     Ich dachte eher an:
4090    
4091     " 'Und sein Wabbel wird an einer Lanze aufgespiesst', wiederholte der
4092     Oberste Groesste Meister grimmig. Im Hintergrund knarrte etwas, als
4093     Bruder Pfoertner versuchte, das klemmende Portal zu oeffnen. 'Sind wir
4094     jetzt alle soweit? Befinden sich vielleicht noch andere Unwissende
4095     unter uns,die sich verirrt haben?' fuegte er mit aetzendem Sarkasmus
4096     hinzu. 'Gut. Wunderbar. Ich bin ja _so_ froh. Vermutlich brauche ich
4097     nicht zu fragen, ob die vier Wachtuerme geschlossen sind, oder? Oh,
4098     ausgezeichnet. Hat sich jemand die Muehe gemacht, der Heiligen Hose
4099     die Beichte abzunehmen? Ach, tatsaechlich? Auf die richtige Art und
4100     Weise? Und wenn ich nachsehe? Na schoen. Sind vor den Fenstern die
4101     roten Kordeln des Intellekts gespannt worden? Gut. Nun, dann koennen
4102     wir jetzt vielleicht beginnen.' ".
4103    
4104     Terry Pratchett, "Wachen! Wachen!", S. 15f
4105    
4106     Antje
4107     %%
4108     [....]
4109    
4110     Da muss ich ja, obwohl ich beinahe meinen Humor verloren haette, leise
4111     grinsen. Ich darf zusammenfassen: Du bringst uns keine Beweise, weil Du 1.
4112     zu arm und 2. zu sehr ausgelastet mit der Rettung der Welt und der Zukunft
4113     und so bist. Ausserdem brauchst Du keine Beweise, weil sich Dein
4114     Gedankengebaeude nach eingehender Nabelschau als selbsttragend erwiesen hat.
4115     Finde ich gut! Akzeptiert!
4116    
4117     Da will ich nicht weiter stoeren,
4118    
4119     Antje
4120     %%
4121     It seems that writing to /dev/vcs0 makes the console singing "Ugh,
4122     lalala, I love you baby..."
4123     --
4124     Pavel.Janik@inet.cz
4125     %%
4126     On Thu, 16 Jul 1998, Linus Torvalds wrote:
4127     >
4128     > Kubys
4129    
4130     Kubys is my evil twin brother. Sorry about that.
4131    
4132     Linus
4133     %%
4134     > eieio stands for "Enforce In-Order Execution of I/O".
4135    
4136     .... and it is definitely my favorite name for an assembly language
4137     instruction (the non-native-English speakers on the list presumably
4138     don't know the childhood song "Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O").
4139     %%
4140     > It is *big* and never uses.
4141    
4142     That's parses like English, but I'll be hornswoggled if I can figure
4143     out what it means.
4144     --
4145     Chip Salzenberg - a.k.a. - <chip@perlsupport.com>
4146     %%
4147     [...] HP's PA-8500, for example, has 1.5 Mbytes of L1 cache on-chip. The
4148     company has described the 8500 as a cache SRAM with an ancillary CPU. [...]
4149     %%
4150     From: Dave Cinege <dcinege@psychosis.com>
4151     Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 06:10:31 -0400
4152    
4153     Terry L Ridder wrote:
4154    
4155     > at some future date end up being released under the BSD License is what
4156     > is being discussed.
4157    
4158     Well my licence is bigger then your licence.
4159     %%
4160     [gtk/testgtk, after dragging & dropping an object:]
4161    
4162     Drop data of type text/plain was:
4163    
4164     Bill Gates demands royalties for your use of his innovation
4165    
4166     [and the button reads]
4167    
4168     Continue with life in spite of this oppression
4169     %%
4170     Joshua Waxman <jwaxman@ymail.yu.edu> writes:
4171    
4172     While DJGPP is indeed a C as well as a C compiler, there are certain
4173    
4174     A terribly succinct, as well as a true, statement. However, it has a
4175     certain amount of redundancy.
4176     %%
4177     Compatibility with oneself is Microsoft's greatest strength. When they hit
4178     the 64 bit transition they will hit a major internal incompatibility problem.
4179    
4180     ...
4181    
4182     Peter da Silva <peter@baileynm.com>
4183     %%
4184     >Hello,
4185     >
4186     >I am new to Perl. Can anyone tell me where I can download a full
4187     >operational Perl version for a Windows 95 system?
4188     >
4189    
4190     Of course it all depends on what you mean by "a full operational Perl
4191     version" Perl on Win32 has limitations that are largely due to the
4192     nature of the underlying OS, Perl on Win95 has further limitations
4193     compared with NT due to its own shortcomings .
4194     %%
4195     An injunction delaying Windows 98 would clearly have a negative impact
4196     on the country as a whole.
4197     Compaq President & CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer,
4198     explaining why Microsoft shouldn't be
4199     prosecuted under anti-monopoly laws.
4200     %%
4201     With a PC, I always felt limited by the software available. On Unix, I am
4202     limited by my knowledge. --Peter J. Schoenster <pschon@baste.magibox.net>
4203     %%
4204     There is a need to keep from being locked into Open Systems. --IBM sales rep
4205     %%
4206     In comp.lang.perl.misc,
4207     Stylin <stylinsty@yahoo.comREMOVE> writes:
4208     :Can anyone point me to the algorithm for creating a unique id?
4209    
4210     $id = `cat /dev/kmem`;
4211    
4212     --tom
4213     --
4214     Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. :-)
4215     --Larry Wall in <8571@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
4216     %%
4217     Newsgroup: comp.lang.perl.misc
4218     Subject: Larry 1 Bill 0
4219     %%
4220     On 3 Jul 1998, Ben Pfaff wrote:
4221    
4222     > The only problem with these AIs is that they don't handle references
4223     > to themselves as AIs very well. In faSegmentation fault (core dumped)
4224     > NO CARRIER
4225     > !@*&#@#%T^@&*(GU*SD*(@!&*(@#R(*FERHGH*(@#(&$&#@Y!&R
4226     %%
4227     > People come here to ask questions, not for intellectual gratification, but
4228     > rather they are seeking solutions. As such, the incorrect answer was
4229     > better.
4230    
4231     There's something... terribly wrong with this statement. I can't quite put
4232     my finger on it. Hmmm.
4233     %%
4234     comp.lang.c does not exist to accomodate the laziness of those who cannot be
4235     bothered to learn netiquette. That's what comp.lang.c++ is for.
4236     %%
4237     |> : > but... a microwave is an example of an embedded system,
4238     |>
4239     |> : Who says? He just said it was a microwave. He didn't say it was
4240     |> : a free-standing implimentation.
4241     |>
4242     |> This is approaching arguing for the sake of argument. Have you
4243     |> ever seen a microwave oven that supports a hosted C environment?
4244    
4245     The Lipton Ritchie Model 8 did. I'm sure that many posters will
4246     point out that Lipton's implementation of the stdio libraries was
4247     horrendously buggy. It was, but it was still a great system. It
4248     remains the only C implementation I know of that could be used to
4249     build Bison, and then cook it.
4250    
4251     Viva la buffalo burgers.
4252     %%
4253     A strategically-placed PDP-11 can be used to heat your entire
4254     home. I've got one in my basement, next to a large box of "She's
4255     The Sheriff" drink coasters. I sold my furnace years ago. The
4256     Digital Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning Corporation
4257     can be found online at http://www.dhvacc.com/.
4258     %%
4259     The lbxproxy program has various options, all of which are optional.
4260     -- lbxproxy(1)
4261     %%
4262     Re: Where to learn Windows programming...
4263    
4264     |> I'll take a Schildt book any day, thanks.
4265    
4266     Great. I'm expecting to see the line above as a back-cover blurb
4267     on the next "Bullschildt: The Complete Reference".
4268     %%
4269     Subject: Re: The wrong position of while, if and else?
4270    
4271     that's some ugly piece of code buddy...
4272     %%
4273     In article <1998062718481700.OAA03186@ladder01.news.aol.com>, eyrei@aol.com (EYREI) writes:
4274     |> I have recently started learning the C Language. I have created a simple file
4275     |> to determine whether or not a number is Prime. When I run it, the program
4276     |> crashes with the error message :- Unhandled Exception :- General Protection
4277     |> Exception 0x5FD7:0x379F. Prime(1) Processor Fault.
4278    
4279     |> What does this mean.
4280    
4281     It means you've got a broken operating system, and should immediately
4282     install [free|net|open]BSD[OS] or Linux.
4283     %%
4284     Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
4285    
4286     On Thu, 25 Jun 1998, Emulov wrote:
4287     > Hi, i don't know if this is a stupid question..
4288    
4289     Off-topic, too! Imagine that.
4290     %%
4291     "Right now we are the most shit hot piece of PC networking software on the
4292     planet. The only people who can touch us are FreeBSD (who also dont do
4293     streams)."
4294     -- Alan Cox, in "Streams and Linux"
4295     %%
4296     "Perl combines all of the worst aspects of BASIC, C and line noise."
4297     - Keith Packard <keithp@ncd.com>
4298     %%
4299     Lord Fellatio <richter_m@hotmail.com>
4300    
4301     >Wo soll das Loch denn dann sein? Im Meeresboden?
4302    
4303     Klaro.
4304    
4305     >Von oben duerfte man es also ueberhaupt nicht sehen
4306     >koennen, da ueber dem potentiellen Loch im Meeresboden doch
4307     >wahrscheinlich erstmal Wasser und dann viel Eis liegen wuerde. Wie
4308     >verhindern die Ausserirdischen denn, dass Wasser ins Loch einstroemt?
4309    
4310     Na ist doch völlig logo, mit nem rotierenden Traktorstrahl. Die
4311     Energie klauen die ?r***e dem Erdmagnetfeld.
4312    
4313     >Gibt es da einen kosmischen Badewannenstoepsel? Haben sie es mit
4314     >Eisbergen verstopft? Oder benutzen sie das einstroemende Wasser zu
4315     >Kajakfahrten bis hinunter zum Suedpol? (Das waere doch auch endlich
4316     >mal eine einleuchtende Erklaerung fuer die Eismassen, die die
4317     >Antarktis bedecken - man muesste halt nur, der Kontinentaldrift
4318     >folgend, immer wieder neue Schaechte bohren. Oder die Kontinentaldrift
4319     >einfach wegdiskutieren...)
4320    
4321     Die enorme Zentrifugalkraft im Erdinnern schleudert das Wasser wieder
4322     am Nordpolpol raus, falls der Traktorstrahl versagen sollte (Dies
4323     passiert immer dann, wenn das Erdmagnetfeld umkippt). Nun kommt sicher
4324     der Einwand, die Erde würde zu langsam rotieren. Das ist nur bedingt
4325     richtig. Richtig ist hingegen, daß die Rotationsgeschwindigkeit im
4326     Erdinnern um den Faktor 1000 (ca; sehr schwer zu messen: Magma) größer
4327     ist als auf der Erdoberfläche. Dies ist auch die Ursache für die
4328     Kontinentaldrift und die Mondphasen.
4329    
4330     Die Mondphasen wiederum beeinflussen das Erdmagnetfeld und sind daher
4331     die Ursache für die Sonnenflecken. Den Sonnenflecken haben wir auch
4332     die momentane Klimaveränderung zu verdanken. Auf der anderen Seite hat
4333     die Zunahme der Treibhausgase eine Erhöhung des Reflektionsvermögens
4334     der Atmosphäre zur Folge, welches dazu führt, daß ein Teil der
4335     Sonnenenergie zur Sonne zurückreflektiert wird. Dies heizt wiederum
4336     die Sonnenflecken auf und verkürzt deren Zyklus. All dies wird sich in
4337     den nächten Monaten so aufschaukeln, daß vorraussichtlich im Novemner
4338     2002 das Erdmagnetfeld zusammenbrechen wird. Wie damals bei den Dinos.
4339     Nur war dort ein Kometeneinschlag die Ursache.
4340    
4341     cu in hell 2002
4342     %%
4343     "Hiroshima '45, Chernobyl '85, Windows '95"
4344     %%
4345     >In unix, one might say 'man 3 crypt'.
4346    
4347     Of course, on a Solaris system this won't give you what you want. You
4348     get a message that it can't find the man page for 3. It then prints
4349     the man page for crypt(1).
4350    
4351     Of course, all a beginner has to do is figure out that the 3 is the
4352     section number in the Unix manual. He can then use man man to find
4353     that on Solaris one uses -s to specify the section so he'll try
4354    
4355     man -s3 crypt
4356    
4357     Unfortunately, that doesn't work either. He'll get the message "No
4358     entry for crypt in section(s) 3 of the manual."
4359    
4360     If he doesn't give up, he can go back to the manual page for man and
4361     find that the -a switch prints all matching manual pages. Or perhaps
4362     he can figure out to use the command
4363    
4364     man -s3 Intro.3
4365    
4366     to get a list of everything in section 3. He'll then find out that
4367     crypt is in section 3C so he should use
4368    
4369     man -s3c crypt
4370    
4371     Gee. I don't understand why beginners have so much trouble with this
4372     stuff. I've only been programming Unix for 15 years and I don't have
4373     any trouble.
4374     --
4375     Michael M Rubenstein
4376     %%
4377     Take a moment to consider these lines:
4378    
4379     %OVERLOAD=( '""' => sub { join("", @{$_[0]}) } );
4380    
4381     sub html { my($type)=shift; bless ["<$type>", @_, "</$type>"]; }
4382    
4383     :-) I *love* Perl 5! Thankyou Larry and Ilya.
4384    
4385     Regards,
4386     Tim Bunce.
4387    
4388     p.s. If you didn't get it, think about recursive data types: html(html())
4389     p.p.s. I'll turn this into a much more practical example in a day or two.
4390     p.p.p.s. It's a pity that overloads are not inherited. Is this a bug?
4391     %%
4392     From: alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk (Alan Cox)
4393    
4394     ...
4395    
4396     > now is evil". This only shows two things: you never looked at the bad
4397     > experiences of the industry where following a rotten design and
4398     > keeping backward compatibility lead to unusable systems. And second:
4399    
4400     I worked for 3com. I know eveyrhting about following a rotten design until
4401     its unusable, believe me I do.
4402     %%
4403     Ok(slow) -> !NeedComputer
4404    
4405     Semour Cray
4406     %%
4407     Ullrich Jans at University of Karlsruhe, Germany:
4408    
4409     Oh Gott! Es ist voller crons!
4410     %%
4411     From: p00h <p00h@MONMOUTH.COM>
4412     Subject: Re: AOL for Windows DoS/Exploit
4413    
4414     aol supports PARTIAL html, its like win95's implementation of tcp/ip
4415     it only supports parts of it
4416     %%
4417     egcs/gcc/gcse.c:
4418     /* Help stamp out big monolithic functions! */
4419     %%
4420     [...] Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Especially regarding HPPA assembler syntax
4421     as provided by HP, which was designed by someone who should not have been
4422     let near a language-design project like that, too often "little languages",
4423     whether assemblers, tools, or C++, are designed by people who are unaware
4424     of, or give little thought to, the outright readability of code written in
4425     the language, in the sense that the basic semantics should be fairly obvious
4426     *without* the reader having to memorize lots of semantic information.
4427    
4428     (In HPPA assembler's case, one glaring stupidity was the nullified branches,
4429     which have completely different semantics depending on whether the label
4430     being branched to happens to assemble to a negative or positive offset! A
4431     smarter design would have required the programmer to specify whether such a
4432     branch was a "forward" or "backward" branch explicitly, then the assembler
4433     and/or linker would complain if reality didn't match the programmer's
4434     specification. I've never looked into whether GNU's HPPA as fixes this
4435     botch; I gather GNU as fixes many botches, though, so it wouldn't surprise
4436     me if it did, even though that might make for some compatibility problems
4437     with existing HP as code.) [...]
4438    
4439     tq vm, (burley)
4440     %%
4441     libc/posix/regex.h:
4442     /* The following two types have to be signed and unsigned integer type
4443     wide enough to hold a value of a pointer. For most ANSI compilers
4444     ptrdiff_t and size_t should be likely OK. Still size of these two
4445     types is 2 for Microsoft C. Ugh... */
4446     typedef long int s_reg_t;
4447     typedef unsigned long int active_reg_t;
4448     %%
4449     libc/db2/db.h:
4450     /*
4451     * While Microsoft's compiler is ANSI C compliant, it doesn't have _STDC_
4452     * defined by default, you specify a command line flag or #pragma to turn
4453     * it on. Don't do that, however, because some of Microsoft's own header
4454     * files won't compile.
4455     */
4456     %%
4457     > UTC variation and begining and ending dates of DST (if observed) would be
4458     > great.
4459    
4460     I answered only the places I can comment on.
4461    
4462     > BASSAS DA INDIA
4463    
4464     This rock is below water half of the time!
4465     If any inhabitants have been there, I do not think they observe DST
4466     on a regular basis! ;-)
4467     %%
4468     # ./test-plugin.pl
4469     Bizarre copy of CODE in sassign at /root/.gimp/plug-ins/test-plugin.pl line 40.
4470     wire_read: unexpected EOF (plug-in crashed?)
4471     %%
4472     >
4473     > The "where do you want to go today?" generation has taken the
4474     > developer out of the "programmer" by removing the vital, development
4475     > tools from the environment and precanning software.
4476    
4477     No kidding. Point. Click. Point. Click. Point. Click. Brain Atrophy.
4478     %%
4479     Lars Chr Hausmann <36haus@but.auc.dk> writes:
4480    
4481     >Hello!
4482    
4483     >I have to write something about, what Perl is.
4484     >I need some crystal clear info about, what perl is. So if any of you
4485     >would be so kind just to mail. Then I would be grateful!
4486    
4487    
4488     Perl.
4489    
4490     regards
4491     jobst
4492     %%
4493     Subject: Re: Cyrix 6x86MX and Centaur C6 CPUs in 2.1.102
4494     From: alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk (Alan Cox)
4495     Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 22:31:02 +0100 (BST)
4496    
4497     > Well, that depends. They SHOULD be. By Intel 'standards' *laff*, they have
4498     > to be identical stepping, indicating identical features. However, I've
4499    
4500     They don't. Pentiums have fairly strict rules, P6/PII much less. Also Intel
4501     are pretty good at following the MP 1.1/1.4 standard its the motherboard
4502     makers who get it wrong - primarily the BIOS is full of bugs. It appears
4503     nobody tests bios code against specs any more. It looks like they do
4504     compile flash, boot 95, boot NT, ship. The quality of bios code has dived to
4505     the absolute pits.
4506     %%
4507     Unix never says `Please.' -- Rob Pike
4508     %%
4509     > What about: . scriptname
4510     > ------------------^ this is a dot!
4511    
4512     Funny, it looks like a "p" to me.
4513     %%
4514     A computer without Microsoft and IBM is like chocolate cake without
4515     ketchup and mustard
4516     %%
4517     Subject: Re: Challange for perl `GURUS
4518    
4519     vimal gajjar wrote:
4520     >
4521     > Hi there,
4522     > Here is a small challange. Is it possible to have a perl
4523     > code which takes e.g. three parameters as input. time, val1, val2. and
4524     > the name of the prog. is say challange.pl. Now if i execute
4525     > "challange.pl 10 5 2" this perl script wille consume
4526     > 5% of cpu
4527     > 2 Mb of RAM
4528     > for the period of 10 Seconds.
4529     >
4530     > can one of the gurus take this challange?
4531    
4532     Examining the 5 copies of this post has consumed 5% of the
4533     brain power I allocate to reviewing c.l.p.m, about 10 seconds, and
4534     has caused the death of 2 million brain cells.
4535     %%
4536     > >> /A:You can usually write the program faster than you can
4537     > >> dial/dl/hangup/install/read docs/fix it/fix the fix/.
4538     >
4539     > >s/usually/never/
4540     >
4541     > s/sometimes/never/
4542    
4543     Cute. You embarrass yourself by your ignorance of perl.
4544     %%
4545     :That's probably true, but I really can't speak to it. But, if there
4546     :were no *nix around, there'd be no Perl. Nor would there be a need for
4547     :Perl, IMO.
4548    
4549     Gotta love them JCL and ini dot bat dot bad dot doo dah files.
4550    
4551     TC
4552     %%
4553     'cc:Mail is a wonderful application, as long as you don't want to read or send mail.'
4554     %%
4555     shurik@iron.Te.NeT.UA - Alexandr Dubovikov at TeNeT Networking Centre
4556    
4557     Hi guys!
4558    
4559     How check socket, alive it or die ?
4560     %%
4561     --> Questions not to ask on linux-kernel <--
4562    
4563     Miscellaneous flame-wars:
4564     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4565     12) The gnome-kde debate does not belong on linux-kernel.
4566     13) The emacs-vi debate does not belong on linux-kernel.
4567     14) Porting linux to run under windows is not interesting.
4568     15) Whether a given intel CISC chip "is really RISC" is not interesting.
4569     %%
4570     Subject: what a week!
4571     From: "C. Scott Ananian" <cananian@lcs.mit.edu>
4572     Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 03:13:23 -0400 (EDT)
4573    
4574     unicode, boot-logos, GGI, STREAMS, the necessity of a short devel cycle
4575     and the instability of 2.0.x, "ifconfig stopped working", "you really *do*
4576     need to remove 'encaps'", Linus' tarball practices... it seems like we're
4577     running out of things to flame off on. Here's my humble contribution:
4578    
4579     I'VE MADE A KEWL NEW CHARSET THAT I THINK EVERYONE SHOULD USE. IT HAS ALL
4580     THE LETTERS IN MY LOGIN MAPPED TO THE LOWEST 16 CHARACTERS SO WE CAN
4581     COMPRESS THINGS REAL GOOD AND THE LETTERS IN MY BROTHER B1FF'S NAME ARE
4582     ALL IN HIGH ASCII CUZ THAT'S WHERE LOSERS BELONG!!!2!!7
4583    
4584     I ONLY USE EMACS AND I THINK VI SUX!!$231!!
4585    
4586     GNOME RULES AND KDE IS DEMON-SPAWN BECAUSE IT IS NOT FREE.! !
4587    
4588     WE NEED KGI IN THE KERNEL (NOT LIBGGI, NOT THE TERMINAL IMPROVEMENTS
4589     WHATEVER THEY'RE CALLED) IN ORDER TO HAVE WAY KEWL BOOT LOGOS AND RUN MY
4590     BROTHER B1FF'S GAMES!!1!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!11!!!
4591    
4592     I USE A BIG-ENDIAN MACHINE BECAUSE THEY RULE. LITTLE-ENDIAN MACHINES ARE
4593     EVIL. AND A PENTIUM *IS* A RISC PROCESSOR!!!
4594    
4595     WE SHOULD PORT LINUX TO WINDOWS SO WE CAN USE ALL THE KEWL HARDWARE
4596     DRIVERS!!!!!@@#!
4597    
4598     Did I miss any? ;-)
4599    
4600     *Please* don't respond seriously to this email. It's a joke. A joke.
4601     Laugh. Please.
4602    
4603     And then let's kill all the flaming threads, shall we?
4604     --Scott
4605     %%
4606     > Well, /proc/kcore already reports its actual size...
4607    
4608     And it isn't about to change at runtime either. That is the size of
4609     installed memory. I've yet to see a single person successfully insert or
4610     remove a SIMM/DIMM while a machine was running. If they did, and it was
4611     successful, the linux code will update the filesize. ;o)
4612     %%
4613     Toby Heywood (toby@he-net.demon.co.uk) wrote:
4614     : This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
4615    
4616     One of those 'M's stands for Mail.
4617    
4618     This is not mail.
4619    
4620     This is Usenet.
4621    
4622     Please post only plain text like everyone else does.
4623     %%
4624     ------------ etienne.lorrain@ibm.net
4625     --- hdc: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
4626     --- ide1: reset: success
4627     -----------> I like Linux !
4628     %%
4629     > I have experienced people walking up to my console and saying "What
4630     > the hell does that mean" in sheer terror as the machine boots.
4631    
4632     Tell them it's magic, and earn the respect of your colleagues. I always
4633     do.
4634     %%
4635     ++ Actually, I'm not at a loss for words. Here's one that's very appropriate:
4636     ++ PLONK.
4637     %%
4638     ++ > SSI is *not* HTML.
4639     Re: Subraumfunk
4640    
4641     Ja, ein Handy waere da praktisch. Die hoeheren Gebuehren rechnen sich,
4642     wenn man ueber die Grenzen des Sonnensystems hinaus telefonieren will.
4643    
4644     Die Telekom wuerde da wieder mal erbarmungslos abzocken. Ich kann es
4645     mir schon vorstellen: SunSystem-Tarif, vielleicht auch einen
4646     InnerPlanets-Sondertarif, dann einen LocalGroupWeekend-Specialtarif,
4647     eine Supercluster-Zone und so weiter. Und wenn es auf der Venus
4648     schneit, telefonieren alle fuer die Haelfte.
4649     %%
4650     > > Vergiss es. Du wirst nie und nimmer von Armando eine
4651     > > konkrete, verwertbare Antwort bekommen.
4652     >
4653     > Doch, man bekommt von mir sogar sehr viele Antworten.
4654    
4655     Du hast gerade zwei Adjektive weggelassen.
4656     %%
4657     ++ Oh yeah. Show me an example of SSI used outside of HTML.
4658     Show me an HTML DTD mentioning SSI directives.
4659     %%
4660     Namsuk Kim wrote:
4661     > Is there a way to convert a scalar data to Acii data format?
4662    
4663     I am not familar with ACII. If you mean ASCII, then the question I have is
4664     - is the data in EBCDIC now?
4665    
4666     Bill Jones
4667     %%
4668     GNU/getopt.c:
4669    
4670     #if defined (WIN32) && !defined (__CYGWIN32__)
4671     /* It's not Unix, really. See? Capital letters. */
4672     #include <windows.h>
4673     #define getpid() GetCurrentProcessId()
4674     #endif
4675     %%
4676     Subject: IIS 4.0, PW32i316, CGI Programs
4677    
4678     Perlis.dll does not pass command line arguments correctly via the web. That
4679     is, invoking the URL
4680    
4681     http://www.myserver.com/myprogram.pl?Argument1&Argument2...&Argumentn
4682    
4683     causes the myprogram.pl to execute, but @ARGV is empty.
4684     %%
4685     "You need to use CGI."
4686     "I am using CGI, it's a CGI application!"
4687     "No, no, *use* CGI. The directive 'use'."
4688     "OK, so what directive do I use?"
4689     "No, no, you *use* *use*. Use CGI."
4690     "I *am* using CGI!"
4691    
4692     Craig Berry - cberry@cinenet.net
4693     %%
4694     > > Was haltet Ihr von Killfile-mailing-lists, dass sich die Leute mal
4695     > > kennenlernen koennen?
4696     >
4697     > Gute Idee ;-), wäre ich sofort dabei, datrifft man wahrscheinlich ne
4698     > Menge tolle Leute... ;-) und die wahren Freidenker.
4699    
4700     Einige Freidenker sicher, aber auch etliche Denkfreie.
4701     %%
4702     "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big or
4703     professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." -- Linus Torvalds 1991
4704     %%
4705     If it's a floppy, it might be a copy.
4706     If it's a disk, you're also at risk.
4707     If it's a pirate, the vendors are irate.
4708     To avoid such frustration, try: Free Software Foundation.
4709     %%
4710     From: David Woodhouse <Dave@imladris.demon.co.uk>
4711    
4712     pcg@goof.com said:
4713     > It was much more than I usally get! It was _great_
4714    
4715     Hehe - I know the feeling.
4716    
4717     "It's broken."
4718     "What's wrong with it?."
4719     "I don't know - it just doesn't work."
4720     "Well what do you mean by 'it's broken'?"
4721     "It just doesn't work."
4722     "How can you _tell_ it's broken, for f***'s sake - what are the symptoms!?"
4723     "It gives an error message."
4724     "Would you care to tell me what it says?"
4725     "It says.... something about there being an error."
4726     "That's not very helpful. Tell me it word for word."
4727     "It says 'Unable to handle kernel NULL reference at something or other'"
4728     "That's not word for word. It said 'NULL pointer dereference.' Try again,
4729     letter for letter this time."
4730     %%
4731     From: "Paul B. Henson" <henson@INTRANET.CSUPOMONA.EDU>
4732    
4733     After installing Solaris 2.6 HW3/98, I discovered that /usr/bin/admintool
4734     had been installed mode 0777, world writable. Under the original release of
4735     2.6, the mode was 04555.
4736    
4737     Sun has been notified of the problem. If you're running 2.6 HW3/98, you
4738     might want to verify your admintool hasn't been tampered with and fix the
4739     perms.
4740    
4741     (Personally, I'd set them to 0000 ;). admintool? blech.)
4742     %%
4743     From: verah@netscape.com (Vera Horiuchi)
4744     Subject: Re: Risp: drama (Re: Do It Yourself)
4745    
4746     Americans ignorant of the rest of the world?
4747    
4748     I must tell a favorite story here. A friend and I were purchasing a gift
4749     for another friend who lives in Canada. I was speculating out loud about
4750     how much duty our Canadian friend would have to pay.
4751    
4752     The cashier said, "Oh, I'm sure Canadians don't have to pay any duty. We
4753     ship to Hawaii all the time, and _they_ don't have to pay duty." =:-0
4754     %%
4755     >am besten ist z.Z. das Buch von Michael Neufeld. Wer aber Wissenslücken
4756     >verspürt (was keine Schande ist), sollte diese zu stopfen suchen und nicht
4757     >Zuflucht zu absolut hirnrissigen Theorien suchen.
4758    
4759     Hirnrissig bist Du. Das es einen Zeittransfer aus der Zukunft zu den Nazis
4760     gab deckt sich mit dazu passenden Entschluesselungen bestimmter Bibelstellen
4761     und mit der dann tatsaechlichen notwendigen Geheimhaltung. Es deckt sich
4762     ueberdies damit, dass die Unterhaltung uns den Gedanken zunehmend nahelegt,
4763     also vorbereitet, und dass es bereits ein wissenschaftliches Experiment gab,
4764     bei dem ERST die Wirkung auftrat und DANN die Ursache. Die Zeitreise ist
4765     also Fakt. Und es ist sicher, dass Jemand per Zeitreise den Nazis helfen
4766     wollte. Gelegentliche Theorien, dass auch diese ausserirdische Hilfe gehabt
4767     haetten sollen nur davon ablenken, eine andere Erklaerung liefern. Das ist
4768     logisch, denn die Taeter sitzen ja irgendwo in unserer Zeit und moechten
4769     sicher nicht erkannt werden.
4770    
4771     Du scheinst die simpelsten Grundzuege der Zeitlogik nicht verstehen zu wollen.
4772    
4773     normarz@aol.com
4774     %%
4775     >Oder anders gesagt:
4776     >Glaubst Du, Du könntest mit einem hochmodernen Maschinengewehr eine römische
4777     >Legion
4778     >schlagen?
4779    
4780     Klar. Frage mal Cortez.
4781    
4782     Bye
4783     Andreas
4784     %%
4785     >Article 2B is a threat to anyone who uses a computer. I just wanted to
4786    
4787     It may be a threat to any american using a computer. Fortunately, the U.S.
4788     justice does not yet apply outside the U.S.A.
4789    
4790     I.a.W.: You're currently creating a lot of happy non-U.S. software
4791     companies.
4792    
4793     Kind regards
4794     Henning
4795     %%
4796     From: "Adam J. Richter" <adam@yggdrasil.com>
4797     Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 04:14:11 -0700
4798     Subject: Re: driver for Creative Labs DVD kits
4799    
4800     At least with the IDE DVD drive that I have, plugging it directly
4801     into an IDE port and using the regular Linux ide-cd driver works just fine
4802     for reading [...] CD and the [not] copy protected sections of the DVD's.
4803    
4804     There is a protocol that the hardware decoder boards use to
4805     tell the DVD drive that they are a licensed implementation and should
4806     be allowed to read the copy protected sectors as well. I have been
4807     told that this protocol can be done entirely in software with a
4808     standard IDE port. Hopefully, somebody will reverse engineer this and
4809     make it a demand loaded kernel module. (Seriously, there is a lot
4810     that you are allowed to do with copyrighted material that this sort of
4811     hardware restriction prevents, and there are other important political
4812     issues involved relating to your rights to do as you please with the
4813     computer equipment that you bought and paid for.)
4814     %%
4815     Where do you want to go today?
4816     We might support that sometime next year.
4817     -=- Microsoft
4818     (But I doubt it.)
4819     -=- Me
4820     -=- James Mastros
4821     %%
4822     Hello570 <hello570@aol.com> wrote:
4823     > I tried printing a line to a file using both of the
4824     > following methods, but the output was split into two
4825     >lines.
4826    
4827     If you don't want newlines in the middle of your string, then don't
4828     put newlines in the middle of your string.
4829     %%
4830     http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/Dean_Roehrich/subjects.post
4831     %%
4832     Einstein himself said that God doesn't roll dice. But he was wrong. And
4833     in fact, anyone who has played role-playing games knows that God
4834     probably had to roll quite a few dice to come up with a character like
4835     Einstein. -- Larry Wall
4836     %%
4837     From: Ragnar Hojland Espinosa <root@lightside.ddns.org>
4838    
4839     My $0.02 Euros on internationalization? I'm in Spain and my keyboard is
4840     mosty US mapped because the Spanish map is really awkward for programming.
4841     Computers were designed to be funcional, not politically (or locally)
4842     correct (hm, I don't think HAL ever spoke Russian). This "computers are easy
4843     for all" GUI related trend has done a lot of money, and lot of damage; at
4844     least command line OSes forced the user to actually learn something and
4845     absorb information. The user assumed so, so he did. Now he doesn't, and
4846     it's not all his fault.
4847    
4848     The WWW is full of useless (and ugly) graphics, of useless links to links to
4849     pages with links to links which usually end up in a huge links page. Of
4850     course, there are some jewels.. but they should be majority! It's
4851     understandable, when the tools and languages focus more on aspect that in
4852     content.
4853    
4854     Usenet is worse than ever, the interesting places have been ruined by
4855     spammers, c00l hak3rz, and more and more people asking (or demanding) for
4856     others doing their homework.. at least some time ago they were willing to
4857     learn (or pay for it;)
4858    
4859     IRC.. heh. The few times I've been on funet almost all I found is the same
4860     people in the above paragraph. And I do know some of them even run scripts
4861     to try denial of service or other destructive attacks on people they see,
4862     just for fun or to get the op.
4863    
4864     Email. Someone selling an "incredible program that allows you to bypass
4865     your ISP mail server, for only $89" (thats right, a smtp server). No OS
4866     mentioned, I somehow can guess which. And that stupid thing of sending
4867     mail to people in RTF and HTML format.. I'm gonna answer them in LaTeX.
4868    
4869     Internet, your ilimited junk yard.
4870    
4871     Using computers would make me real sad if it wasn't for UNIX and, of
4872     course, Linux and Linux people.
4873     %%
4874     ... WNT == ++VMS . Literally. Dave Cutler created VMS,
4875     then he rewrote it as WNT.
4876    
4877     Ever used VMS? It's a step above DOS. Barely.
4878     --
4879     Clark O. Morgan cmorgan@aracnet.com
4880     %%
4881     >Subject: If "=~" means match what is doesn't match?
4882    
4883     I heard that a friend of a friend might have once been told about a
4884     rumor that this information can be found in perlop, right next to
4885     where =~ is documented. (It's !~)
4886    
4887     I agree with Tom's assessment that the fall of modern man will be
4888     preceded by the de-evolution of communications to the days of oral
4889     tradition.
4890     %%
4891     "Windows 95, the most installed system in the world,
4892     I know, I've done it 5 or 6 times myself"
4893     %%
4894     The statistics programming language S, from AT&T, combines lazy
4895     evaluation with imperative programming. A nightmare.
4896     %%
4897     "In 1965, as part of a research and development project for the
4898     U.S. Army, engineers at TRW Corp developed a software program
4899     called Generalized Information Retrieval Lanaguage and System."
4900     Or GIRLS for short.
4901     %%
4902     Wissen bremst die Meinungsbildung voll aus.
4903     %%
4904     I have an idea: Anybody who posts an URGENT! or EMERGENCY! request should
4905     post the circumstances behind the urgency. "I was having sex with my
4906     mistress in the server room and I knocked the Linux box over and the hard
4907     drive crashed and so I've reinstalled everything but I still can't get
4908     5_004_03 to build!"
4909    
4910     This would inspire me to action far more than the implied subtext of "I
4911     have no patience."
4912    
4913     xoxo,
4914     Andy
4915     %%
4916     > I have Perl5 running on my pc.
4917     > and also front page98 and microsoft personal web server runnig.
4918     We all have our cross to bear.
4919     %%
4920     (THIS IS LONG, YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP)
4921    
4922     From: mjd@plover.com (Mark-Jason Dominus)
4923     Date: 09 Nov 1995 02:57:30 GMT
4924     Subject: Re: system() question
4925    
4926     There are a lot of reasons, many of which get repeated over and
4927     over again, many of which don't. Some of the reasons you hear a lot
4928     are: Questions are incoherently phrased. Questions have the form 'My
4929     code doesn't work' and don't include the code. Questions include the
4930     code, and it's 200 lines long, and comp.lang.perl is not a debugging
4931     service. Nobody knows the answer to the question. The question is so
4932     badly punctuated that nobody can bear to read it. Questions aer
4933     written by a non-native speaker of English and the native speakers who
4934     are trying to understand it can't. (That's a shame, but it does
4935     happen. I often wish that these people would post in their native
4936     languages. I'd love to see more discussion in languages other than
4937     English. Some Dutch guy tried posting all his comp.lang.c articles in
4938     Dutch a few years ago, and all the Americans flamed him. How
4939     humiliating for me!)
4940    
4941     Apart from these oft-mentioned reasons are many others that are
4942     not so often discussed, because anyone who tries to bring them up gets
4943     flamed. But it's the truth: I know the reason I don't answer more
4944     questions is because so many of them questions are so damn stupid.
4945     They're stupid in a lot of different ways, but they're still stupid.
4946     I don't want to suggest that that's why your questions go unanswered.
4947     I don't know what you're asking. No doubt the reason your questions
4948     go unanswered is because they're so deep and interesting that nobody
4949     really knows the answer.
4950    
4951     The most common stupid question is the one from someone who has
4952     some high-level problem that they need solved. They have an idea that
4953     they'd like to do it in perl, and they don't really know perl. So
4954     instead of learning perl, they post to comp.lang.perl.misc.
4955    
4956     Now don't get me wrong. I don't have any problems answering the
4957     questions of someone who's trying to learn perl. I love THOSE
4958     qusetions. But these people don't seem to be asking useful questions
4959     for that.
4960    
4961     Today, for example, I saw a question from a guy who wants to get a
4962     list of hostnames out of nslookup. `How do I do that?' he says. And
4963     it's hard to know what to make of that. What does he mean? Does he
4964     not know how to open a pipe? Is his en' command failing? What's
4965     going on here? I can't give a useful answer without understanding the
4966     problem. Having your en' fail is a problem. Wanting to list
4967     hostnames is not a problem; it's a desire.
4968    
4969     Here are some similar questions that would have made more sense to me:
4970    
4971     1. `I'm a lazy asshole and I can't be bothered to learn to
4972     program myself, but I know if I post here you'll give me
4973     something for free.''
4974    
4975     (OK, fair enough. At least I can send him a rate card.)
4976    
4977     2. `I'm trying to use en' to talk to nslookup, but...
4978     ...here's my code; what's wrong?''
4979    
4980     (Good question.)
4981    
4982     3. `I know perl has a `System' command for running programs,
4983     but I can't see how to get my commands into nslookup
4984     once I have run it.''
4985     (Good question.)
4986    
4987     4. `I'm trying to use `Getprotobynumber' to talk to nslookup...''
4988    
4989     (Good question.)
4990    
4991     See, I'm not just biting people's heads off, here. #4 is a good
4992     question, because it gives me something to work with. OK, he has a
4993     very weird idea about interprocess communication, but that's
4994     ignorance, and that's what we're here to correct. He doesn't know
4995     about en'; I can refer him to the manual.
4996    
4997     Here's another example: Some guy wants to assemble a list of email
4998     addresses . `How do I do that?'' he wants to know. Well, duh. Get a
4999     big pad of paper and read news for a couple days and write down all
5000     the addresses you see. Problem solved. What's it doing in
5001     comp.lang.perl?
5002     Oh, you wanted to do it in perl. Well, I guess I'd open a socket
5003     to the NNTP server and send it some XHDR commands for the `From'
5004     lines. But that's not Perl; you could do that in any language. I
5005     could do it in Bourne Shell for you if I'm allowed to use a little
5006     external thingie to handle the socket parts for me. What's it doing
5007     in comp.lang.perl?
5008    
5009     Oh, you wanted us to write the program for you? Wait, let me send
5010     you my rate card.
5011    
5012     Someone posted yesterday asking how to get the data from a file where
5013     the start and end of the data is marked by keywords. Same thing going on
5014     here. `Well, here's how you solve your problem: First you go take an
5015     introductory class in programming and learn to write programs in some
5016     language. Then you go to the bookstore and buy this book by Wall and
5017     Schwartz, it's really good. Read the book carefully and try out the
5018     examples. Then if you still have general questions like `How do I do this'
5019     instead of thought that this code would do X but instead it does Y' you hire
5020     a professional to write your program for you. Or you could just skip right
5021     to step 3. Want my rate card?''
5022    
5023     The worst stupid questions are the ones that come from people who
5024     have no business asking them. The most perfect example of this that I
5025     could have imagined was in comp.unix.questions a couple of years ago.
5026     Some guy came and asked how you could tell if a file is a hard link.
5027     My jaw flapped open and it's stayed open since then. I couldn't have
5028     been any more stumped if he'd asked why Bodhidharma came from the
5029     West. What do you say to this guy? Do you tell him the truth, that
5030     all files are hard links, that even symbolic links are hard links?
5031     He's not going to understand you; you might as well keep your mouth
5032     shut. Do you tell him the truth, that the answer won't do him any
5033     good because he doesn't know what a hard link is, so why did he bother
5034     asking in the first place? No, that'll just make him mad. I followed
5035     that message for the next couple weeks, and nobody said anything.
5036     What could you say? The guy had no business asking the question and
5037     no use for the answer. Maybe the right answer would have been to cut
5038     off his finger or something. I dunno.
5039    
5040     Some questions get ignored because they're boring. Someone asked
5041     today how to compare two variables (I assumme he means the contents of
5042     those variables) to see if they're exactly the same. You've gotta be
5043     in an awfully good mood to take the time to answer that. Maybe
5044     someone will. Maybe I will.
5045    
5046     If I answer that one today, maybe he'll be back tomorrow asking
5047     how to check to see if two variables contain different values. Maybe
5048     I won't. What I find incredible is that if you tell these people to
5049     go read the manual and come back in two weeks, you sometimes get
5050     jumped on for not being helpful to beginners. Bah. If everyone told
5051     these people to go read the manual, they'd eventually figure out that
5052     that's what you have to do ,and then I wouldn't have to spend so much
5053     of my life dealing with incompetent programmers.
5054    
5055     Some questions are logically nonsensical because the querent
5056     thinks they know more than they do. A lot of these have the form
5057     `How do I use X to accomplish Y?'' There's nothing wrong with this,
5058     except that sometimes X is a chocolate-covered banana and Y is the
5059     integration of European currency systems. I always get stuck on
5060     these, probably because I can't get rid of the idea that the person
5061     really has a good reason for wanting to use X. I know a half-dozen
5062     easy simple ways to accomplish Y, but I can't imagine what X has to do
5063     with it. This is a problem for me in my day job, too. Clients are
5064     always saying to me `We want to use product X to do multimedia
5065     development on the world-wide web,'' and all I can think is `Well,
5066     gee, what would you want to go and do that for?'' Sometimes it turns
5067     out that they want to do it because they want to impress the
5068     manufacturers of X, and I don't work on those jobs.
5069    
5070     The flip side of this is a questions like `I want to accomplish
5071     X, but I don't want to use Y. What can I use instead?'' Which,
5072     again, is sometimes reasonable, and then sometimes X is closing a
5073     filehandle and Y is the `Close' function.
5074    
5075     The questions I like the best are the ones that go like this:
5076    
5077     `I want to accomplish X.
5078    
5079     I thought that the following code fragment would do it:
5080    
5081     ...
5082    
5083     But instead it does Y.
5084    
5085     Why is that?''
5086    
5087     This one is also pretty good:
5088    
5089     `I want to accomplish X.
5090     I thought I might be able to use facility Y.
5091    
5092     But Y doesn't seem like it's quite right,
5093     because of Z.
5094    
5095     What should I use instead of Y, or how can I overcome Z?''
5096    
5097     When I ignore these, it's usually because I don't know the answer.
5098     There were an awful lot of them today. It makes me very happy.
5099    
5100    
5101     There you go; a 160-line dissertation on why questions go unanswered.
5102     Now don't let me hear you saying nobody ever answers your questions.
5103    
5104     --
5105     Consulting Minister for Consultants, DNRC
5106     The Bill of Rights is paid in Responsibilities - Jean McGuire
5107     %%
5108     >> BTW, would it be easier to cope with international text using Python?
5109     >Sigh... you're breaking my heart. Ask Jack Jansen, he probably knows.
5110    
5111     If I were really evel, I would point out that the newest TCL (8.1) has
5112     support for international character sets and Unicode. But then, mentioning
5113     TCL in this newsfroup would be really bad. So, of course, I don't do that.
5114    
5115     Ups. I'm so sorry ... ;-)
5116    
5117     bye, Georg
5118     %%
5119     I personally do not believe in object orientation as a security model
5120     (nor as a general programming paradigm), but feel free to try to
5121     convince me.
5122    
5123     [ Or maybe I confuse you with somebody else and some other posting ]
5124    
5125     Linus
5126     %%
5127     ++ how can i strip new lines out at var.
5128     ++
5129    
5130     Removing new lines is very tricky, as the manual tells you so. Ignore the
5131     complicated things in the manual, and put in this neat little trick:
5132    
5133     $var=join+q,,,grep[[ord$[[qq$\137$]]<10 or+10<ord]]split+q,,,$var;
5134    
5135     If you're old enough not to read the manual, you won't have a problem
5136     understanding the above line.
5137    
5138     Abigail
5139     %%
5140     I fixed the problem by mounting the SCO volume on the SunOS box, and since
5141     1995 the problem has gone away together with the SCO machine.
5142     %%
5143     ++ Hi Does anybody know how to upload many graphic files at the push of a
5144     ++ button?
5145     Yes.
5146    
5147     ++ 100 pictures or so?
5148     Yes.
5149    
5150     ++ Can I do it in Perl?
5151     Yes.
5152    
5153     Your question isn't Perl specific. Please ask in the relevant
5154     newsgroup. alt.button.play
5155    
5156     Abigail
5157     %%
5158     perly gates - The way to perl; Enter hackerdom.
5159    
5160     perly Gates - Contradictio in Terminis.
5161    
5162     Martien
5163     %%
5164     Ren hat weder von Sinnhaftigkeit noch von Kausalität geschrieben, sondern
5165     nur von Logik. Logik und Kausalität sind in unserem (normalen) Denken zwar
5166     eng miteinander verknüpft, sind aber nicht dasselbe. Sinn ist hingegen noch
5167     etwas Drittes und ganz verschiedenes! "Sinn" bedeutet mindestens, daß eine
5168     Sache eine gewisse Richtung hat, wie in "Uhrzeigersinn". Meistens bedeutet
5169     Sinn aber, daß eine Sache einen bestimmten Zweck erfüllt. Auch darf man
5170     nicht "verursachen" mit "begründen" verwechseln, weil die beiden
5171     unterschiedlich sind. Die Existenz muß auch keinen Sinn haben, um eine
5172     Ursache zu haben. Das sind zwei völlig voneinander unabhängige Sachen. Die
5173     Existenz hat einen Sinn, also eine Richtung, wenn wir unserer Existenz eine
5174     Richtung geben. Dieser Sinn kann auf etwas abzielen, was außerhalb unserer
5175     selbst steht, muß aber nicht... Sie kann auch einen Sinn haben, der schon da
5176     war, bevor wir uns danach ausgerichtet haben - von all dem schreibt Ren aber
5177     nicht. ;)
5178    
5179     Worauf Ren wohl hinaus wollte, ist, daß wenn die Logik des begrenzten Raumes
5180     nicht gilt, daß dann die Logik schlechthin hinfällig wird und so jedes Sein
5181     fragwürdig wird. Das ist aber nicht der Fall, da die Logik, die er von den
5182     Grenzen des Raumes aufstellt, gar keine wirkliche Logik ist, sondern nur die
5183     Grenzen des menschlichen Verstandes zeigt. Er kann sich nicht vorstellen,
5184     daß außerhalb der Grenzen des Raumes "Nichts" ist, weil man sich als Mensch
5185     das Nichts nicht vorstellen kann.
5186    
5187     Darüber hinaus meinte er, daß die "Existenz unlogisch" würde. Dieser Satz
5188     ist vollkommen unverständlich. Denn entweder ist etwas, oder es ist nicht.
5189     Das ist auch schon die ganze Logik einer Existenz. (Aristoteles: Satz vom
5190     ausgeschlossenen Dritten) Unlogisch wäre, wenn etwas ist, das nicht ist oder
5191     wenn etwas nicht ist, das ist.
5192    
5193     Von der Unfähigkeit des Menschen, sich einen unbegrenzten aber endlichen
5194     Raum (oder wie auch immer der Weltraum nun aussieht) vorzustellen auf die
5195     "Unlogik der Existenz" zu schließen, ist aber wohl nicht ganz möglich, zumal
5196     eine Existenz nicht unlogisch sein kann. Was sollte das auch heißen? Daher
5197     ist das Problem, das Ren aufwirft, nur ein Scheinproblem. Die Existenz an
5198     sich wird nicht in Frage gestellt dadurch, daß man sich etwas - egal was -
5199     nicht vorstellen kann. Er verwechselt die Begriffe "unlogisch" und
5200     "unvorstellbar".
5201    
5202     Thomas.Decker@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
5203     %%
5204     Marcel Richter wrote:
5205     > Marcel Richter - IQ: 3538327
5206     ^^^
5207     fehlt da nicht irgendwo ein Komma.... =?-)
5208     %%
5209     The X server has to be the biggest program I've ever seen that doesn't
5210     do anything for you. --Ken Thompson
5211     %%
5212     linux-2.1.92/fs/autofs/root.c:
5213     printk("autofs: trying to recover, but prepare for Armageddon\n");
5214     %%
5215     >>Vincent DiPietro, the discoverer of the face on mars, has thrown in
5216     >>the towel, and said that the face on mars is a pile of rocks.
5217     >Was sollte es denn sonst sein?
5218    
5219     An artificial pile of rocks.
5220     %%
5221     > ps: mal nebenbei: eine unbekannte variable beim analysieren des
5222     > marsgesichtes ist es, dass mensch gar nicht weiss, wie die lebende,
5223     > gedachte oder sonstige vorlage eigentlich aussieht. dazu kommt natuerlich
5224     > noch das fehlende wissen um die intention des "kuenstlers", ob er
5225     > beispielsweise nur aspekte bzw. partien eines gesichtes integrieren wollte
5226     > - und natuerlich, ob es ueberhaupt kunst ist:)
5227    
5228     Ganz genau. Und das Matterhorn ist eine palaeoimpressionistische Studie des
5229     Geruchsorgans der Rasse der Ciabattanimalier. Aber das wussten hier
5230     sicherlich schon alle. Das ganze Universum ist ausserdem eigentlich nur ein
5231     grosser Flipperautomat.
5232    
5233     Christoph Schulte Moenting - ubec@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de
5234     %%
5235     > Kris Weilemann schrieb
5236     >
5237     > >MIR ging es neulich aehnlich. Ich wurde von Ausserirdischen entfuehrt.
5238     > >Ich wurde eingesperrt in einem dunklem Raum mit langen Sitzreihen und mit
5239     > >einer Popcorn-artigen Substanz gefuettert. Nach 2 Stunden war alles
5240     > >vorbei. Einen Tag spaeter stellte ich fest, dass mir 18 Mark im
5241     > >Geldbeutel fehlten. Ist das nicht krass? -Kris.
5242     %%
5243     ... Jazz ist nicht nur das erfolgreichste, sondern auch das einzige originäre Kunstgenre,
5244     daß die USA jemals hervorgebracht haben.
5245    
5246     "Apropos Musik", HR2 am 16.4.98
5247     %%
5248     http://www.rsw.com/
5249    
5250     The Unix shell as a 4GL
5251    
5252     Unix provides hundreds of programs that can be piped together to easily
5253     perform almost any function imaginable. Nothing comes close to providing the
5254     functions that come standard with Unix. Programs and philosophies carried
5255     over from other systems put walls between the user and Unix, and the power
5256     of Unix is thrown away. The shell, extended with a few relational operators,
5257     is the fourth generation database scripting language most appropriate to the
5258     Unix environment.
5259     %%
5260     Perl is incredibly difficult to parse. For example, what's the difference
5261     between these:
5262    
5263     time /3 ;#/; print "hello";
5264     sin /3 ;#/; print "goodbye";
5265    
5266     Right. The first one is time divided by 3, and the print is in a comment.
5267     The second one is the sin of the result of a regular expression match for "3
5268     ;#", and the print gets executed!
5269    
5270     There's no pure BNF in the world that'll handle that. And remember, with
5271     "use" and prototypes available, whether you parse something like "sin" or
5272     "time" depends on its definition in some other file, somewhere in the galaxy
5273     (or even decided by Perl code in a BEGIN block, that evals a prototype!).
5274    
5275     Which led Larry to say at one point: "the only thing that can parse Perl is
5276     'perl'".
5277    
5278     --
5279     Randal L. Schwartz
5280     %%
5281     Ronald J Kimball <rjk@coos.dartmouth.edu> writes:
5282    
5283     > Pascal AMRAM wrote:
5284     > > Subject: MSEXCHANGE / OUTLOOK
5285     >
5286     > So here I am trying to figure out what an M sex change is....
5287    
5288     It's obviously the opposite of an F sex change. HTH.
5289    
5290     --
5291     Jonathan Feinberg jdf@pobox.com Sunny Brooklyn, NY
5292     %%
5293     The management (my cats) made me say this.
5294     %%
5295     uae-0.6.9/custom.c:800:
5296     write_log ("Program is torturing BPLCON1.\n");
5297     %%
5298     uae-0.6.9/src/memory.c:363
5299     write_log ("Your Amiga program just did something terribly stupid\n");
5300     %%
5301     Closures make sense in any programming language where you
5302     can have the return value of a function be itself a
5303     function, as you can in Perl. Note that some languages
5304     provide anonymous functions but are not capable of
5305     providing proper closures; the Python language, for
5306     example.
5307     %%
5308     When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to
5309     resemble a nail.
5310     %%
5311     > but all I get are 501 errors, method not supported. I am not 100% sure what
5312     > I did wrong.
5313    
5314     What you did wrong was post a microsoft server question to a perl
5315     newsgroup.
5316     %%
5317     I am trying to learn Perl on my Windows 97 system. In particular...
5318     %%
5319     >Es kamen Außerirdische, die Pyramiden bauten und andere Wunder
5320     >vollbrachten. Dafür wurden sie vergöttert. Diese außerirdischen bauten dann
5321     >wahrscheinlich auch die Cydonia Region.
5322    
5323     Etwa zehnmal zu oft 'Stargate' gesehen, was?
5324     %%
5325     >Die Menschheit kämpft seit Millionen von Jahren gegeneinander.
5326    
5327     Welche Hälfte ist denn da die grössere? :o)
5328     %%
5329     ...am still rebuilding after being hit with a clock changing virus it reset
5330     my clock to 2039 unfortunately for me my OS is beta 98 needless to say it
5331     expired instantly!!!
5332     %%
5333     From: Per Bothner <bothner@cygnus.com>
5334     To: Pal Engstad <engstad@hunt.inmet.com>
5335    
5336     > Linus Torvalds requires that all code in the source is using a tab
5337     > length of 8 spaces, and he also states that you are a bad programmer
5338     > if you write code with more than 3 indentation levels.
5339    
5340     I didn't know that Linus Torvalds has done research on programming styles.
5341     He much have, since why else would you have the audacity quote him as
5342     an authority, on a list where there are dozens of people with more
5343     than double Linus's programming experience?
5344    
5345     > This has caused the code to be fairly easy to read and maintainance is
5346     > pretty straight forward.
5347    
5348     Irrelevant - a kernel is a lot simpler than an optimizing compiler,
5349     in terms of complexity of algorithms and data structures.
5350     %%
5351     Nach der Diskussion muss ich akzeptieren, dass die juengst erfolgte
5352     Erdbeschleunigung von - 0,6 auf - 0,4 Millisekunden kein zwingender Beweis
5353     fuer einen Permanentantrieb ist. Aber: In letzter Zeit kommt es bei mir immer
5354     wieder vor, dass ich Dinge einfach weiss. Selbst wenn ich sie nicht begruenden
5355     kann. Ich weiss trotzdem dass sie stimmen muessen und der Antrieb existiert.
5356     Mit der Zeit findet sich dann auch die Begruendung.
5357     %%
5358     Wir suchen neue AussenMitarbeiterInnen... (S.Pernar@Link-Goe)
5359     %%
5360     hyperltext (hy'perl-text), n. double-quotish-interpolated hypertext markup:
5361     Example:
5362     print qq[[<LI><A HREF="$self->[[url]]">@[[[ucfirst $self->[[title]]]]]</A>\n]];
5363     %%
5364     liperlsuction: What happens to any script longer than 10 lines once
5365     Randal gets his hands on it
5366     %%
5367     Uperl Volta - country where perl programmers control the electricity.
5368     %%
5369     > Anybody successfully installed the win32 version of Perl?
5370    
5371     No! Millions of people don't use perl on win32 machines. You may be the
5372     first if you get it working.
5373     %%
5374     > Macintosh.
5375     > Think different.
5376    
5377     Think Again.
5378     %%
5379     Bill.Cilnton@dyselxia.com
5380     %%
5381     tsatan@hotmail.com writes:
5382     > Why does perl have the "push" and "unshift" functions? ...
5383     > push @nums, 4; is the same as @nums = (@nums, 4);
5384    
5385     What do you want, Scheme? ;)
5386     %%
5387     # There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
5388     # It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen
5389     %%
5390     | I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because
5391     | someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the
5392     | top.
5393     %%
5394     I had a student ask about the UN9 operating system. I didn't understabd what
5395     he was talking about so he wrote UNIX on the board.
5396     %%
5397     On 1 Apr 98 17:34:23 GMT, Schulung7 wrote:
5398     ^^^^^^^^^
5399     >Was haltet ihr vom UFO-Absturz in Rosswell?
5400    
5401     Nichts. Und jetzt geh woanders spielen.
5402     %%
5403     >Kann man hier irgendwie mal die UFOs reinbringen, um die es in dieser NG
5404     >gehen soll?
5405    
5406     Nein, der Datentyp wäre inkompatibel. UFOs sind per Definitionem
5407     materielle Objekte (obwohl das zur Zeit fraglich ist ;-), die sich in
5408     diesem Medium nicht austauschen lassen.
5409     %%
5410     Wer redet hier denn von der "Hui Hui"? Ich sprach von "Hui! Hui!".
5411     %%
5412     >> nein...ist kein Sender. Eine taiwanesische Sekte hat behauptet, daß am
5413     >> 25.3. auf allen TVs der Welt Gott auf Kanal 18 erscheinen würde.
5414     >> Ist natuerlich nicht eingetreten.
5415     >
5416     >Aber unsere Haus-Sat-Anlage geht seither nicht mehr.
5417    
5418     Ein Zeichen! Er hat uns ein Zeichen gegeben! Zieht alle euren linken
5419     Schuh aus!
5420     %%
5421     >Klingt nach Erdstillstand.
5422    
5423     Ich bin entsetzt. Man hat hoffentlich sofort Wiederbedrehungsmaßnahmen
5424     eingeleitet?
5425     %%
5426     Mars Global Surveyor Imaging Schedule
5427    
5428    
5429     First opportunity
5430     Approximate
5431     Orbit Internet
5432     Date Time (UTC/Pacific) Number Target Posting
5433    
5434     4-3-98 09:58/1:58 a.m. 216 Viking Lander 1 April 6
5435     4-3-98 21:37/1:37 p.m. 217 Viking Lander 2 April 7
5436     4-4-98 09:16/1:16 a.m. 218 Mars Pathfinder April 7
5437     4-5-98 08:33/12:33 a.m. 220 Cydonia April 6 (mid-a.m.)
5438    
5439     Second opportunity
5440     Approximate
5441     Orbit Internet
5442     Date Time (UTC/Pacific) Number Target Posting
5443    
5444     4-12-98 15:23/ 8:23 a.m. 235 Viking Lander 1 April 14
5445     4-13-98 03:01/ 8:01 p.m. 236 Viking Lander 2 April 15
5446     4-13-98 14:40/ 7:40 a.m. 237 Mars Pathfinder April 15
5447     4-14-98 13:57/ 6:57 a.m. 239 Cydonia April 14 (mid-p.m.)
5448    
5449     Third opportunity
5450     Approximate
5451     Orbit Internet
5452     Date Time (UTC/Pacific) Number Target Posting
5453    
5454     4-21-98 20:45/1:45 p.m. 254 Viking Lander 1 April 23
5455     4-22-98 08:23/1:23 a.m. 255 Viking Lander 2 April 24
5456     4-22-98 20:02/1:02 p.m. 256 Mars Pathfinder April 24
5457     4-23-98 19:18/12:18 p.m. 258 Cydonia April 24 (mid-a.m.)
5458    
5459     %%
5460     > >2. Der Menschheit ist durch Inzucht entstanden. Laut biologischem
5461     > >Wissen, unwahrscheinlich, da Mutation und Mißbildungen auftreten
5462     > >würden.
5463     >
5464     > Vermutung: Das ist auch aufgetreten. Siehe levitische "Gesetze" zur
5465     > "Behandlung" von "Aussatz" insb. im 3. "Mose". Die hatten schon Probleme.
5466     Sag mal, bei Dir piepts wohl nicht mehr richtig! Aussatz, heute besser
5467     unter dem Namen Lepra bekannt, ist keine Erbkrankheit. Es ist eine
5468     (heute heilbare) Infektionskrankheit, verursacht durch Bakterien.
5469     Also nichts von Inzucht, wie Du das in Deinem latenten Rassenwahn
5470     implizierst.
5471     %%
5472     > You might please start up with reading more than one sentence - a skill
5473     > quite familiar in Europe, but as it seems not in the USA.
5474     %%
5475     Yup. Instead of crashing Xservers, now you have crashing kernels.
5476     Big improvement.
5477     %%
5478     -- "Hey look, this new card is for windows and only $xx!"
5479     -- "Yes, but it's braindead and will hurt your performance. Take that one
5480     over there. Besides, it's not an ope.."
5481     -- "Why that one?"
5482     -- "Because it's better, sinc.."
5483     -- "But I can do the same with this one, it's cheaper, and its for windows!"
5484     %%
5485     In der Klinik, in der ich mal arbeiten musste, hatten wir einen echten
5486     Koenig Ludwig II und mindestens fuenf Stueck Jesus - sowas gibts halt,
5487     wenn Du verstehst, was ich meine.
5488     %%
5489     > Hast Du mal einen Stein beobachtet, der eine Unzahl komplexer
5490     > Vorgaenge paresentiert, einschliesslich der Hervorbringung
5491     > etlicher Lebensformen?
5492    
5493     Jepp. Ist nur ein Problem mit der Definition von "zahlreich".
5494    
5495     > Hast Du mal einen Steinen beobachtet, der sich mal eben
5496     > "verwandelt", und auf dem dann lauter Wesen rumkrabbeln,
5497     > die aus ihm selbst entsprungen sind?
5498    
5499     Klar doch. Ist nur ein Problem mit der Definition von "lauter".
5500    
5501     > Ueberspitzt: Hast Du mal einen Steinen beobachtet, der
5502     > ploetzlich zum Lebewesen wird und Dich fragt, wer oder was
5503     > er eigentlich ist?
5504    
5505     Tja, da hören die Übereinstimmungen auf. Ich dachte Du meinst
5506     Erwin Stein. Den kenne ich. Der hat zwei Kinder. Die krabbeln
5507     ab und zu auf ihm herum. Der ist aber nicht plötzlich zum Le-
5508     bewesen geworden, sondern den gibt es nun schon ein wenig
5509     länger. Und er hat mich auch noch nie gefragt, wer oder was
5510     er eigentlich ist. Zumindest nicht in einem Zustand, den man
5511     als "normal" bezeichnen könnte. So wird das anscheinend nix.
5512     Ciao
5513     Stefan
5514     %%
5515     "These download files are in Microsoft Word 6.0 format. After
5516     unzipping, these files can be viewed in any text editor, including
5517     all versions of Microsoft Word, WordPad, and Microsoft Word Viewer."
5518     (http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/pc99.htm)
5519     %%
5520     Video cards have write-only registers. (of course that is bad design) Let's
5521     say that register 13 is write-only, as is common. It holds an index that
5522     determines what register 69 (also write-only) actually changes. If you write
5523     to register 13 while the accelerator is active, you lock the PCI bus. You
5524     can't determine if the accelerator is active without reading from register
5525     42, but you can't interpret the contents of that register correctly without
5526     knowing what the last accelerator command was. Reading from register 13 gets
5527     you some useless (unrelated) info and _also_ toggles the accelerator on and
5528     off.
5529     %%
5530     Join the Army,
5531     Meet interesting people,
5532     Kill them.
5533     %%
5534     > Wie entsteht Materie? Ich koennte mir vorstellen, dass Energie in Materie
5535     > umwandelbar ist.
5536    
5537     E=m*c^2 (Schon mal gehoert?) (Schon mal verstanden??)
5538     %%
5539     >nach der die Pygmäen geheime UFO-Basen in ausgehöhlten Baumstämmen
5540     >unterhalten (Vorsicht: das war ein Witz :-) ).
5541     %%
5542     > (Bernhard Nahrgang) wrote:
5543     >
5544     > >> Logische Annahme: Die Erde waechst entweder kontinuierlich, oder periodisch
5545     > >> ruckartig.
5546     > >wie kann jemand mit dem IQ von 130 nur SO SELTEN BLOEDE sein??
5547     >
5548     > Norbert ist nicht selten blöde...
5549    
5550     :-)
5551     %%
5552     SAT 1 Teletext: Ein Asteroid mit einem Durchmesser von fast einem Kilometer
5553     rast mit großer Geschwindigkeit auf die Erde zu. US-Astronomen befürchten:
5554     "XF11" könnte im Jahr 2028 auf der Erde einschlagen. Die Folgen wären
5555     verheerend. "Der rasende Stein aus dem All ist eine Gefahr", warnt Jack G.
5556     Hills vom US-Kernforschungszentrum Los Alamos: "Wenn er die Erde trifft,
5557     wird er die Sprengkraft von 320.000 Megatonnen Dynamit haben." Das
5558     entspricht dem Zweimillionenfachen der Atombombe...
5559    
5560     ARD/ZDF Teletext: ASTEROID MIT KURS AUF ERDE ENTDECKT Amerikanische
5561     Astronomen haben einen Asteroiden ausgemacht, der in 30 Jahren der Erde
5562     gefährlich nahekommen wird. Die Gefahr, daß der Asteroid einschlagen wird,
5563     sei gering, aber auch nicht völlig auszuschließen. Nach derzeitigen
5564     Berechnungen wird der Asteroid mit der Bezeichnung "1997 XF11" am 26.Oktober
5565     2028 unserem Planeten am nächsten kommen. "1997 XF11" hat etwa einen
5566     Durchmesser von 1,6 Kilometern. Erstmals käme ein Objekt dieser Größe der
5567     Erde so nahe, hieß es in dem Bericht der Internationalen Astronomischen
5568     Union.
5569    
5570     RTL Teletext: Himmelskörper rast auf Erde zu Ein Asteroid wird im Jahr 2028
5571     der Erde gefährlich nahe kommen. Amerikanische Wissenschaftler haben die
5572     Chance eines Zusammenpralls auf eins zu tausend berechnet. Sollte der
5573     Asteroid, der einen Durchmesser von 1,8 Kilometern hat, aufprallen, könnte
5574     er eine gigantische Flutwelle auslösen, so die Forscher. Auch ein genaues
5575     Datum haben die Wissenschaftler schon errechnet: Von Europa aus wäre das
5576     Naturschauspiel am 26. Oktober 2028 zu beobachten.
5577     %%
5578     * Linux Viruscan.....
5579     Windows 95 Found Remove it ? (Y/y)
5580     %%
5581     >>Hmm, welche Behauptungen entsprechen denn deiner Meinung nach der
5582     >>Realität?
5583     >>
5584     >>Das es das FBI wirklich gibt?
5585     >>Das Scully frigide ist, und deshalb mit Mulder nichts anfangen möchte?
5586     >>Das Mulder homosexuell ist, und deshalb mit Scully nichts anfangen möchte?
5587     >>Das der CSM einen Vertrag mit Marlb*ro hat?
5588     >
5589     >Hinter diesen "Fragen" erkenne ich z.B. eine gut bekannte Strategie. Die
5590     >FBI-Frage ist bewusst absurd. Das Abgleiten ins Sexuelle hat ebenfalls
5591     %%
5592     "'You're a Cirrus. You're crap. I'm an S3. I rule. Thank you and please drive through.'"
5593     %%
5594     > How could you have perl take a set of numbers (1,2,3,4) and put them
5595     > into a random order???
5596     >
5597    
5598     @array=qw(1 2 3 4);
5599     print "@array[1,3,2,0]\n";
5600    
5601     I've checked this against other possible random orderings
5602     of these numbers, and this ordering is at least as random as
5603     any of the other possible ones. The benefit of this one being
5604     that it begins with the number 2, which is my favorite random
5605     number less than 42.
5606     %%
5607     From what I am reading Win98 and NT5.0 will be getting rid of all that
5608     crap anyway. Seems that Microsoft has invented something called TCP/IP and
5609     another really revolutionary concept called DNS that eliminates the
5610     netbios crap too. All that arping from browsers is going to go away.
5611     I also hear rumors that they are on the verge of breakthrough discoveries
5612     called NFS, and LPD too. Given enough time and money, they might
5613     eventually invent Unix.
5614     %%
5615     In Germany, where typeface design has always been a significant part of
5616     the cultural heritage, and where typefounding has remained an important
5617     business, there are more than one kind of copyright-like protections for
5618     typefaces. Certain long-standing industrial design protection laws have
5619     been used to protect typeface designs in litigation over royalties and
5620     plagiarisms. Further, there is a recent law, the so-called
5621     "Schriftzeichengesetz" enacted in 1981, that specifically protects
5622     typeface designs. New designs are registered, as is done with
5623     copyright in most countries. This law only protects new, original
5624     designs. It is available to non-German designers and firms. Therefore,
5625     some type firms and designers routinely copyright new designs in West
5626     Germany. This gives a degree of protection for products marketed in
5627     Germany. Since multinational corporations may find it cheaper to
5628     license a design for world-wide use rather than deal with a special case
5629     in one country, the German law does encourage licensing on a broader
5630     scale than would initially seem to be the case.
5631     %%
5632     [linux processes vs. nt/solaris threads]
5633     Rob Pike pointed out that the solution to slow process creation is
5634     faster process creation, not another kernel abstraction.
5635     %%
5636     Does anybody know how to communicate between a PC and a modem,
5637     using a Perl CGI script?
5638     %%
5639     >I really don't know crap about PERL. How is it different from JAVA?
5640    
5641     One tiny difference: Java can crash your browser. It happened to me last
5642     week.
5643     %%
5644     Brieweb> I heard Randal Schwartz say he could write an entire httpd server in 90 lines
5645     Brieweb> of PERL.
5646     No, that's an http *proxy* server. A simple web server is much shorter.
5647     From "perldoc HTTP::Daemon"...
5648     [Randal Schwartz]
5649     %%
5650     But the possibility of abuse may be a good reason for leaving
5651     capabilities out of other computer languages, it's not a good reason
5652     for leaving capabilities out of Perl.
5653     [Larry Wall in `Macros'. [[perl5-porters]]]
5654     %%
5655     Yes: Java's main advantage over Perl is that it's hard to use for casual
5656     programmers, so keeps all but the most intrepid programmers away from it.
5657     It has no decent support for string processing, allowing you to spend
5658     hours at useless debugging. It has a very restrictive and static system
5659     to make sure you don't try anything interesting. It makes sure that you
5660     use objects, by golly, because James Gosling said so. It's easy for C++
5661     programmers to use, and hard for shell or BASIC programmers to use. It
5662     also only runs on a few systems, locking its customers into a a closed
5663     system and restricting their options.
5664     [Tom Christiansen in `Java Vs. Perl']
5665     %%
5666     <Bill_Gates> Where do you want to go today?
5667     <Phase_5> Where do go tomorrow?
5668     <BlueFlux> Where were you yesterday?!?!
5669     %%
5670     "It's not to control, but to protect the citizens of Singapore. In our
5671     society, you can state your views, but they have to be correct."
5672     Ernie Hai
5673     Coordinator of Singapore Government Internet Project
5674     %%
5675     : I very much prefer a useful error message than a "it produced the wrong
5676     : results" report from the users.
5677    
5678     if i got even "it produced the wrong results" from our users, i would
5679     be in 7th heaven. ours often mail us with such insightful requests as
5680     "can you tell me my email address?" no, sorry, that should be "CAN U
5681     TEL ME MY E MAIL ADRES DUDE?!!!?? HURRY!!!"
5682     %%
5683     There are many intelligent species in the Universe.
5684     They are all owned by cats.
5685     %%
5686     Why dignify your unsustainable, unjustifiable, unprovable feeble
5687     attempts at character assassination with anything resembling a reply?
5688     You only make yourself look foolish by mouthing off like that.
5689     %%
5690     From: L & K Olson <kolson@mbnet.mb.ca>
5691     Subject: If they wrote error messages in haiku ...
5692    
5693     Yesterday it worked
5694     Today it is not working
5695     Windows is like that
5696     - - -
5697     wind catches lily
5698     scatt'ring petals to the wind:
5699     segmentation fault
5700     - - -
5701     Three things are certain:
5702     Death, taxes, and lost data.
5703     Guess which has occurred.
5704     - - -
5705     A file that big?
5706     It might be very useful.
5707     But now it is gone.
5708     - - -
5709     Windows NT crashed.
5710     I am the Blue Screen of Death.
5711     No one hears your screams.
5712     - - -
5713     Errors have occurred.
5714     We won't tell you where or why.
5715     Lazy programmers.
5716     - - -
5717     Seeing my great fault
5718     Through darkening blue windows
5719     I begin again
5720     - - -
5721     The code was willing,
5722     It considered your request,
5723     But the chips were weak.
5724     - - -
5725     Printer not ready.
5726     Could be a fatal error.
5727     Have a pen handy?
5728     - - -
5729     Server's poor response
5730     Not quick enough for browser.
5731     Timed out, plum blossom.
5732     - - -
5733     Chaos reigns within.
5734     Reflect, repent, and reboot.
5735     Order shall return.
5736     - - -
5737     Login incorrect.
5738     Only perfect spellers may
5739     enter this system.
5740     - - -
5741     This site has been moved.
5742     We'd tell you where, but then we'd
5743     have to delete you.
5744     - - -
5745     ABORTED effort:
5746     Close all that you have.
5747     You ask way too much.
5748     - - -
5749     First snow, then silence.
5750     This thousand dollar screen dies
5751     so beautifully.
5752     - - -
5753     With searching comes loss
5754     and the presence of absence:
5755     "My Novel" not found.
5756     - - -
5757     The Tao that is seen
5758     Is not the true Tao, until
5759     You bring fresh toner.
5760     - - -
5761     The Web site you seek
5762     cannot be located but
5763     endless others exist
5764     - - -
5765     Stay the patient course
5766     Of little worth is your ire
5767     The network is down
5768     - - -
5769     A crash reduces
5770     your expensive computer
5771     to a simple stone.
5772     - - -
5773     There is a chasm
5774     of carbon and silicon
5775     the software can't bridge
5776     - - -
5777     To have no errors
5778     Would be life without meaning
5779     No struggle, no joy
5780     - - -
5781     You step in the stream,
5782     but the water has moved on.
5783     This page is not here.
5784     - - -
5785     No keyboard present
5786     Hit F1 to continue
5787     Zen engineering?
5788     - - -
5789     Hal, open the file
5790     Hal, open the damn file, Hal
5791     open it, please Hal
5792     - - -
5793     Out of memory.
5794     We wish to hold the whole sky,
5795     But we never will.
5796     - - -
5797     Having been erased,
5798     The document you're seeking
5799     Must now be retyped.
5800     - - -
5801     The ten thousand things
5802     How long do any persist?
5803     Netscape, too, has gone.
5804     - - -
5805     Rather than a beep
5806     Or a rude error message,
5807     These words: "File not found."
5808     - - -
5809     Serious error.
5810     All shortcuts have disappeared
5811     Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
5812     %%
5813     "The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way
5814     to factor large prime numbers." -- Bill Gates from "The Road Ahead," p. 265.
5815     %%
5816     > What is the Windows equivalent of the first line used for
5817     > UNIX (#!/usr/local/bin/perl) that tells where the Perl interpreter is?
5818    
5819     Windows hasn't gotten quite as far in functionality as, say, BSD Unix in the
5820     early 1980s.
5821     %%
5822     > I have a chat script, that will work fine for a bit then after a while
5823     > the private messages will stop working. It might be because I changed
5824     > something, but chances are that isn't the case. I re-install a fresh
5825     > copy, paths are correct, and they still don't work
5826    
5827     I think you are experiencing GOVERNMENT CONTROL. You see, everyone
5828     with a chat script is being scrutinised by the department of CHAT
5829     control. Whenever they see some message they don't like, they
5830     introduce some little goblin called feature-creep in your program. if
5831     you have lots of these little devils, your program migth acquire so
5832     many new features that it just stops working.
5833    
5834     This also applies to Microsoft products.
5835    
5836     > Does it make sense for certain features to just not work?! If you can
5837     > help, or have suggestions, get back to me, PLEASE:)
5838    
5839     Yes, it makes perfect sense. Especially if they're features which
5840     really are bugs. And especially if they're 'private' messages. You
5841     know perfectly well that the government doesn't like private messages.
5842    
5843     Hope this explains what's going on
5844     Martien Verbruggen
5845     %%
5846     ...code? If you're on a misconfigured NT server (is that redundant?), you...
5847     %%
5848     X11R6.1-based free X server compiles, links and crashes under IRIX(TM).
5849     %%
5850     -------------- please bite here ------------- bitte hier abbeissen ---------
5851     %%
5852     "Frag mal, auf was fuer uptimes man kommt, wenn man Software-Entwicklung
5853     unter NT macht..." "Das koennen bis zu dreissig Minuten werden - in der
5854     Mittagspause." -- Andreas Bogk, Kai Fett, de.alt.sysadmin.recovery
5855     %%
5856     > ++ A lot of posters here have .sigs that include perl one liners.
5857     > ++ Is there a safe way to run them, and be assured that they wont
5858     > ++ damage and/or erase files? (or e-mail off my shadow file)
5859     >
5860     > Just make sure you understand it ;)
5861    
5862     I nominate Abigail for best response of the year with this one. Come to
5863     think of it, I nominate it for best response of next year, too.
5864     %%
5865     Your moderator will be spending the next week on a beach on a small island
5866     where the phones don't work very well, so there won't be any comp.compilers
5867     until the 28th. Any messages you send in will wait here until I get back and
5868     should be posted on March 1st or 2nd.
5869     %%
5870     But now, in comp.lang.perl.misc, you have a bunch of people who aren't
5871     even asking how to make the pieces fit together, but what the
5872     individual pieces are. ("How do I get my lego project to roll accross
5873     the table?" "You use one of those pieces that have the wheels
5874     attached.") Or questions that aren't about building at all. ("The
5875     motor stopped moving. How do I get it to start again?" "The batteries
5876     are probably dead. You can buy new batteries at any department or
5877     convienience store.")
5878     %%
5879     : how do i make my perl script run?
5880     Get up at 91 minutes before dawn, clothe yourself in neon green body
5881     %%
5882     for some reason Windoze users don't seem to expect docs to come with an archive
5883     %%> ToiLeTGoD
5884    
5885     Well, well.. I always wondered who/what made that flush thingy work.
5886     Pretty cool name, dude. (not)
5887     %%
5888     Ummm...create "comp.lang.perl.wizards", make it moderated and all posts,
5889     including xposts, go into /dev/null. Most FAQers won't have the Usenet
5890     background to understand that such groups are either a) a wasteland
5891     populated (briefly) by persons like themselves, or b) point to /dev/null.
5892     %%
5893     Lazy people never bother to actually read the manual. Instead they (like
5894     kids) pick something with big, colorful buttons.
5895     -- Eugene Tyurin <gene@insti.physics.sunysb.edu>
5896     %%
5897     The Average Person's Axioms of First Order Predicate Logic:
5898     (A => B) => (B => A)
5899     (There exists) x A(x) => (For all) x A(x)
5900     (A => C) & (B => C) => (A => B) - Warren Vonroeschlaub
5901     %%
5902     cal 9 1752
5903     %%
5904     Installing unix fixes the [VMS] bug.
5905     -Barry Shein
5906     %%
5907     And this horrible free-for-all will be left to children wondering around
5908     by themselves in the dark because they refuse to turn on the light and
5909     read the manual.
5910     %%
5911     "SPARC" is "CRAPS" backwards --Rob Pike
5912     %%
5913     I increasingly begin to understand why some universities require
5914     that its compsci majors study the Euclid's Prime Number Theorem,
5915     the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, Cantor's Diagonalization Proof,
5916     Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, and the ramifications of Halting Problem
5917     in everyday life. These may not be involved in daily programming, but
5918     it helps develop a rigorous mind. And it gives those who would progress
5919     from typist to word-processor devotee to HTML documenter to CGI scripter
5920     to distributed multithreaded operating systems design specialist cause
5921     for pause. You just can't do that without proper training.
5922     %%
5923     comp.lang.perl.i'm-from-microsoft-so-won't-read-documentation
5924     %%
5925     I suggest you install a newsserver, and keep a local spool. Anything else
5926     is too much work, and fairly silly. The Internet has catupulted even
5927     the Wintel victims past the days of BBS toys.
5928     %%
5929     > Help help! Pls advise me thru email.
5930    
5931     I advise you to buy a new keyboard; one that has all the keys you
5932     need.
5933     %%
5934     Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely
5935     powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is
5936     deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.
5937     %%
5938     I find the first particularly useful in destroying the miswrapped
5939     lines stemming from brain-damaged "it's just another word processor"
5940     newsreaders. You know,
5941     those postings that always seem to go to the edge of the line and then
5942     back
5943     again to the start, as this paragraph has. These are just too painful
5944     to read. Just kill them. It's not worth your time trying to figure
5945     out what they're saying.
5946     %%
5947     It is most annoying to receive junk mail describing how to purchase 93
5948     million addresses, while knowing that yours is one of them.
5949     %%
5950     I'm surprised Tom, how could it miss the "X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.01 [en] (WinNT;
5951     U)" header line? Personally, I find the attempted use of Netscape as a
5952     newsreader even worse then the attempted use of WinNT as an OS. :-)
5953    
5954     But the combination.... *sutters*
5955     %%
5956     Hm... my new killfile isn't detecting you're posting from Windows.
5957     Darn it.
5958     %%
5959     At least he didn't post in all caps.
5960     %%
5961     http://language.perl.com/CPAN-local/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
5962     %%
5963     I think the biggest problem with M.S.A. is that the scripts work for Matt, but
5964     the majority of people trying to use them are from the
5965     "Wintel/AOL/FrontPage/push-a-button/HTML-is-programming/no-programming-required"
5966     school of non-learning. It isn't a problem with the code, per se, but with those
5967     trying to use it.
5968     %%
5969     "Linux can emulate an C64 on my AMDK6PR200 at full speed. Windows can't."
5970     %%
5971     cdog wrote:
5972     >
5973     > Is this group active?
5974     No.
5975    
5976     If you had spent half a second LOOKING at the group before posting, you
5977     probably could have come to that conclusion yourself.
5978    
5979     On a personal note, I died 3 years, 8 days, 5 minutes, 16 seconds, and
5980     345 milliseconds ago, but who's counting.
5981     %%
5982     "Security through obscurity is no security at all."
5983     -comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup posting
5984     %%
5985     "Windows 95 will now attempt to blow chunks across your primary partition.
5986     Press any key to continue..."
5987     %%
5988     NT 5.0 is the last nail in the Unix coffin. Interestingly, Unix
5989     isn't in the coffin... It's wondering what the heck is sealing
5990     itself into a wooden box 6 feet underground...
5991     %%
5992     The Wall St Journal (1996-01-22, page 1) reported that Cuba is
5993     considering jumping across the International Date Line, just so that
5994     it's the first into the year 2000. So it's possible you'll have to
5995     adjust your travel plans.
5996     %%
5997     "Wo kämen wir hin, wenn alle sagten, wo kämen wir hin, und niemand ginge
5998     hin, um einmal zu schauen, wohin man käme, wenn man ginge." -- Kurt Marti
5999     %%
6000     The Takeuchi function is a popular benchmark of function calling due to its
6001     highly recursive nature. It's defined as:
6002    
6003     tak x y z = z, if y >= x
6004     = tak (tak (x-1) y z) (tak (y - 1) z x) (tak (z - 1) x y), otherwise
6005    
6006     For this benchmark, the function is invoked as:
6007    
6008     tak 18 12 6
6009     %%
6010     "Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM!"
6011     -- Bill Gates
6012     "Windows 95 needs at least 8 MB RAM."
6013     -- Bill Gates
6014     "Nobody will ever need Windows 95."
6015     -- logical conclusion
6016     %%
6017     Year Name James Bond Book
6018     - ---- -------------------------------- -------------- ----
6019     50's James Bond TV Series Barry Nelson
6020     1962 Dr. No Sean Connery 1958
6021     1963 From Russia With Love Sean Connery 1957
6022     1964 Goldfinger Sean Connery 1959
6023     1965 Thunderball Sean Connery 1961
6024     1967* Casino Royale David Niven 1954
6025     1967 You Only Live Twice Sean Connery 1964
6026     1969 On Her Majesty's Secret Service George Lazenby 1963
6027     1971 Diamonds Are Forever Sean Connery 1956
6028     1973 Live And Let Die Roger Moore 1955
6029     1974 The Man With The Golden Gun Roger Moore 1965
6030     1977 The Spy Who Loved Me Roger Moore 1962 (novelette)
6031     1979 Moonraker Roger Moore 1955
6032     1981 For Your Eyes Only Roger Moore 1960 (novelette)
6033     1983 Octopussy Roger Moore 1965
6034     1983* Never Say Never Again Sean Connery
6035     1985 A View To A Kill Roger Moore 1960 (novelette)
6036     1987 The Living Daylights Timothy Dalton 1965 (novelette)
6037     * -- Not a Broccoli production.
6038     %%
6039     Windows NT: n.
6040     32-bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit
6041     operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor, written
6042     by a 2-bit company that can't stand for 1 bit of competition.
6043     %%
6044     Auf der Kiste läuft EHNIX, das ist ZUNIX kompatibel.