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Revision: 1.63
Committed: Sun Jun 2 14:47:15 2002 UTC (24 years, 4 months ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.62: +53 -0 lines
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1 root 1.63 "There are two ways of constructing a piece of software: One is to make it
2     so simple that there are obviously no errors, and the other is to make it
3     so complicated that there are no obvious errors."
4    
5     Tony Hoare
6     %%
7     Nach dem Gesetz über Einheiten im Meßwesen vom 2. Juli 1969 in der Fassung
8     vom 22. Februar 1985 dürfte Word im geschäftlichen und amtlichen Verkehr
9     _nicht_ eingesetzt werden, da es mit dem Punkt eine nicht-SI-konforme
10     Maßeinheit verwendet.
11     %%
12     From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
13    
14     [...]
15     The Nforce is basically completely unsupported by 2.2. It is mostly unsupported
16     by 2.4. The networking built into the chipset is not supported by either
17     system. Basically its windows computer
18     %%
19     [go figure...]
20     <JanMan> read(3, 0x8102cc8, 32768) = -1 ESRCH (No such process)
21     %%
22     Subject: Re: Off topic: Solaris 9 announced, a lot of Linux incorporated
23    
24     > In today's world of heterogeneous computing, compatibility leads
25     > to efficiency. Combining the Linux community with thousands of
26     > Solaris software developers and nearly three million Java and XML
27     > software developers...
28    
29     Homeopathic approach to software development?
30     %%
31     > > Patch is severely broken in its current form, not only for the
32     > > reasons you stated, but also because of its inability to handle
33     > > renaming in any sane way. I want a patch --sane option.
34     >
35     > I bet BitKeeper gets it right... ;-) ;-) ;-)
36    
37     Funny you should mention that, since Bitkeeper has embarrassed itself pretty
38     badly with respect to patches, so far.
39    
40     - Somebody decided to add another level on top of the linux root directory
41     in their source directory. I can't import patches into that.
42    
43     - I can apply patches to bitkeeper repository using the normal 'patch',
44     but Bitkeeper gets its revenge later, as each bk edit command starts
45     off by throwing away the patch.
46    
47     Given the hype, I expected more. I want a tool to save work for me, not
48     create new work. I don't think I'll be using Bitkeeper as a substitute for
49     patch any time soon.
50    
51     --
52     Daniel
53     %%
54 root 1.62 From: "Miquel van Smoorenburg" <miquels@cistron.nl>
55     Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 23:18:34 +0000 (UTC)
56     [...]
57     Bummer, I'm using Debian, and iostat is in woody (frozen, about to
58     be released) - that means Debian users will have to wait to the
59     next release, another two years perhaps, before iostat gets working.
60     %%
61     [no comments ;)]
62    
63     I've installed kernel 2.5.15 (should include aio support) an libaio (0.3.7).
64     It seams that libaio.so depends on libredhat-kernel.so.1. Why?
65     Is it realy needed?
66     %%
67     [W. Richard Stevens about the 3.2 streams "poll" function:]
68    
69     int poll(struct pollfd *fdarray, unsigned long nfds, int timeout);
70    
71     [...] The number of elements in the array of structures [...] is
72     specified by the nfds argument. (Why this argument is specified as
73     an unsigned long integer, and not a simple integer, is perplexing.)
74     %%
75     [www.intel.com]
76     Over 70 Internet Streaming Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD)
77     extensions enhance streaming multimedia and graphics applications, both on
78     the hard drive and over the Internet. With SIMD, audio and video
79     download faster, with clearer sound quality, deeper color and resolution,
80     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
81     and enlarged images with smoother frame rates.
82     %%
83 root 1.61 From: Alexander Viro
84    
85     On Thu, 9 May 2002, Tomas Szepe wrote:
86     > > I did quite a bit of this work for CML2 - bus dependencies can be
87     > > found in the CML2 sources.
88     >
89     > Btw, what happened to CML2?
90    
91     This is an ex-parrot
92     %%
93     From: David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se>
94    
95     > > It doesn't have to be an O(n lg(n)) method but could you use something
96     > > besides bubblesort? Insertion sort, selection sort, etc. are just as
97     > > easy and they don't have the horrific stigma of being "the worst sorting
98     > > algorithm ever" etc.
99     >
100     > Surely the worst (working) sort is randomsort? (Check if sorted. If not,
101     > pick two entries at random, exchange, retry.)
102    
103     I've always been a fan of bit-decay sort.
104    
105     while (!sorted(data))
106     ;
107     %%
108     Subject: Re: Bitkeeper licence issues
109     From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
110    
111     > This should be a reflex for someone with such a Sun heritage like you...
112    
113     You obviously never used SunOS4. Its a bit before security became relevant
114     to computing
115     %%
116     From: David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com>
117    
118     On Thu, 21 Mar 2002 20:05:39 -0500, joeja@mindspring.com wrote:
119     >What limits the number of threads one can have on a Linux system?
120    
121     Common sense, one would hope.
122     %%
123     From: Toon Moene
124     [...]
125    
126     Obviously, the only way I could support this effort is by rewriting the
127     backend to use FORTRAN; that way it would finally be possible to
128     translate the Linux kernel into FORTRAN and vindicate this:
129    
130     http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/chist.html
131    
132     "Challenged by McIlroy's feat in reproducing TMG, Thompson decided that
133     Unix - possibly it had not even been named yet - needed a system
134     programming language. After a rapidly scuttled attempt at Fortran, he
135     created instead a language of his own, which he called B"
136    
137     :-)
138     %%
139 root 1.60 "... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
140     lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
141     their C programs."
142    
143     Robert Firth
144     %%
145 root 1.59 [miri@ccc.de]
146     Moooooment, das sind zwei Sachen die miteinander zusammenhängen...
147     [and after some quarrel...]
148     Ich lasse mich ungern zitieren!
149     %%
150 root 1.58 [Klaus Knopper]
151     Ich bin Marc Lehmann begegnet, und seitdem glaube ich, er hält mich für blöd.
152     %%
153 root 1.57 [Content-Type used by Microsoft for .exe files]
154     Content-Type: application/x-msdownload
155     %%
156 root 1.56 [form windows' wininet.h]
157     #define ERROR_INTERNET_INSERT_CDROM (INTERNET_ERROR_BASE + 53)
158     %%
159     Für die Erkenntnis, dass Perl produktivitätssteigernd wirkt, kämpfe ich hier
160     in meinem Laden allerdings noch. Interessanterweise sind die Leute, die
161     selber programmieren, mittlerweile fast alle auf meiner Seite; die Leute,
162     dir organisieren und selber gar nicht programmieren können, halten Perl für
163     eine Art Spielzeug, oder für ein Quick-and-Dirty-Tool, das man bei
164     erstbester Gelegenheit durch etwas professionelles ersetzen muss (was
165     vermutlich von Microsoft stammt).
166    
167     Aber ich arbeite weiter dran...
168    
169     \Gisbert
170     %%
171 root 1.55 http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
172     %%
173     P.S. Perl's master plan (or what passes for one) is to take over the
174     world like English did. Er, *as* English did...
175     --Larry Wall in <199705201832.LAA28393@wall.org>
176     %%
177 root 1.54 From: Felix von Leitner <usenet-20020216@fefe.de>
178     Subject: Re: Disgusted with kbuild developers
179    
180     I don't have python. Any version of python.
181     [...]
182     %%
183     [perldoc Test::Harness]
184     Additional comments may be put into the testing output on their own lines.
185     Comment lines should begin with a '#', Test::Harness will ignore them.
186    
187     ok 1
188     # Life is good, the sun is shining, RAM is cheap.
189     not ok 2
190     # got 'Bush' expected 'Gore'
191     %%
192     I specialize in storage, and C is self taught.
193    
194     Cheers,
195    
196     Andre Hedrick
197     Linux Disk Certification Project Linux ATA Development
198     %%
199     > > The new lock uses a combination of a spinlock and a (mutex-)semaphore.
200     >
201     > Spinaphore :-)
202    
203     Or mutabloat :-(
204     %%
205     Microsoft Outlook *IS* the problem. Blaming it *IS* correct. Removing
206     Outlook *IS* the solution.
207     %%
208     Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.
209     %%
210 root 1.53 From: Ricky Beam
211    
212     Yep. I still laugh at those who say "bandwidth is free." They've obviously
213     never bought anything from UUNet.
214     %%
215     deconstructionism -- (a philosophical theory of criticism ...
216     that seeks to expose deep-seated contradictions in a work
217     by delving below its surface meaning)
218     %%
219 root 1.52 http://brics.dk/~cw97/ProceedingS/01.ps.gz
220     %%
221     From: Alan Cox
222    
223     > and hire all the lawyers they'd want...at the end of the day, could you
224     > just go to court and say:
225    
226     Oh glorious naivety.
227    
228     > The law seems pretty damn clear on this issue (in fact Subsection 3.c
229     > sounds like I could quite happily send it to someone in the USA if they
230     > can do the work better than I).
231    
232     You release the code
233    
234     The next day an injunction arrives in the post
235    
236     The day after that the large corporate lawyers slap a secrecy order on you
237     preventing you discussing the case with anyone but your legal representative
238     by convincing some pissed geriatric moron in the high court that if he
239     doesnt sign it you'll tell the whole world and harm them irrepairably
240    
241     Over the next week 10-15,000 pages of documents arrive for you, followed
242     by a couple of thousand discovery requests.
243    
244     A week later while you are reading them they file for summary judgement
245     because you have failed to file the defence. You lose. Game over
246    
247     Then the court costs bankrupt you.
248    
249     Sound like fiction - it happens _regularly_. Its very rare (McLibel case
250     is extremely unusual) that it can ever be talked about on a per case basis,
251     or that the good guys win.
252    
253     This is why everyone doing innovative computing work does it outside of the
254     US, and outside of most of the EU.
255     %%
256 root 1.51 From: Alan Cox
257    
258     [...]
259     I would not perform such work in the united kingdom. Perform it in a free
260     country. Reverse engineering that might offend a large corporation in the UK
261     is only viable if you have five million pounds to hand, a law firm and a
262     year to kill.
263     %%
264     [CRYPTO-GRAM, January 2002]
265     Windows UPnP Vulnerability
266    
267     [...]
268     Here's a quote from Scott Culp, manager of Microsoft's security response
269     center: "This is the first network-based, remote compromise that I'm aware
270     of for Windows desktop systems."
271     [...]
272     eEye Digital Security told Microsoft about this vulnerability nearly two
273     months before Microsoft released its patch.
274     [...]
275     UPnP is a complex set of protocols to support ad hoc peer-to-peer
276     networking. Even though no one uses it, it's installed in a bunch of
277     Microsoft OSs. Even though no one needs it turned on, sometimes it's
278     turned on by default.
279     [...]
280     The industry analysts at Gartner issued a warning, urging companies to
281     delay upgrading to Windows XP for "three to six months," lest more of
282     these kind of vulnerabilities surface.
283     [...]
284     Honestly, security experts don't pick on Microsoft because we have some
285     fundamental dislike for the company. Indeed, Microsoft's poor products
286     are one of the reasons we're in business. We pick on them because they've
287     done more to harm Internet security than anyone else, because they
288     repeatedly lie to the public about their products' security, and because
289     they do everything they can to convince people that the problems lie
290     anywhere but inside Microsoft. Microsoft treats security vulnerabilities
291     as public relations problems. Until that changes, expect more of this
292     kind of nonsense from Microsoft and its products.
293     %%
294 root 1.50 http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2102244,00.html
295     %%
296 root 1.49 [following links in 2002, http://www.myguestbook.de/book.asp?id=1510]
297     Der Gästebuchservice wurde aufgrund
298    
299     technischer Schwierigkeiten eingestellt.
300    
301     Monday, 06. November 2000
302     %%
303     [01:42] <reeler> 22:57 < JanMan> elmex: du stoerst, aber das verstehst du nicht.
304     [01:42] <reeler> #schmorp , de , Thu Jan 10 00:34:42 2002
305     %%
306 root 1.48 [http://davesource.com/Projects/DEStiny/x.c.html, as found by google]
307     * If you are outside of the United States, then you do not have
308     * the legal right to export/download/view this program.
309     [too late, I broke the law, again!]
310     %%
311 root 1.47 Our standards say that a compiler crash, for any input whatsoever, no
312     matter how invalid (even if you feed in line noise), is a bug. Other than
313     that we shouldn't make promises, though the old gcc1 behavior of trying to
314     launch a game of rogue or hack when encountering a #pragma was cute.
315     %%
316     > Of course, that "other operating system" does not require you to
317     > manually mount CD-ROMs at all.
318    
319     Nor does Linux if you set it up right. Its a case of making proper use of
320     existing interfaces and a bit of userspace magic. And all done without the
321     student fun of leaving "format/u c:" autostart cd-r's around labelled "porn"
322     %%
323     From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
324     X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL6]
325    
326     > It never shows up in the maintainer's inbox, leaving them more time to
327     > address the remainder. And fewer of the increasingly bitter complaints of
328     > dropped patches.
329    
330     Most mangled diffs I get are caused by pine. Fixing pine would do more
331     wonders than any magical patchbot. I also get patches and changes from
332     people who quite genuinely either can't mail me unmangled diffs (eg the
333     lotus corporate mail policy afflicted) or are from people who may really
334     know their stuff and even be the vendor but are not familiar with the
335     patch/diff tools. A robot isn't going to teach them.
336     %%
337 root 1.46 I remind you: ORACLE 9i is requiring half a gig as a minimum just due to
338     the use of the CRAPPY PIECE OF SHIT written in the Java, called, you guess
339     it: Just the bloody damn Installer.
340     %%
341 root 1.45 From: "David S. Miller"
342    
343     From: Bill Huey
344     Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 17:16:31 -0800
345    
346     Like the Java folks ? few and far between ?
347    
348     Precisely, in fact. Anyone who can say that Java is going to be
349     relevant in a few years time, with a straight face, is only kidding
350     themselves.
351    
352     Java is not something to justify a new kernel feature, that is for
353     certain.
354     %%
355     > required DaveM made it unconditional... I think the checkin comment was
356     > something along the lines of "make it unconditional unless Alan
357     > complains about kernel bloat" :)
358    
359     And I did complain. "Red Hat needs XYZ so we make it mandatory" is not an
360     appropriate approach to a problem.
361     %%
362 root 1.44 From: Pekka Pietikäinen <pp@netppl.fi>
363     ^^^^
364     [...]
365     Blah, Celsius is obviously more natural:
366     [...]
367     -20 Long underwear is a good idea
368     -15 Nice winter day
369     -10 Slightly warm winter day
370     -5 Nice warm winter day
371     0 Slippery as hell outside, beware!
372     %%
373     No, the US never went metric. That's why $200M Mars probes crash on
374     entry due to some idiot using English units as opposed to the NASA standard
375     of Metrics. The funny thing is that Thomas Jefferson, an American President,
376     suggested the Metric system to the French while he was ambassador there.
377     %%
378     On Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 05:24:33PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
379     > select/poll is a win - and Java recently discovered poll/select semantics 8)
380    
381     Anything is a win over Java's threading model.
382    
383     -ben
384     %%
385 root 1.43 [...]
386     [11:55] <|Pixel|> no, not spanish :)
387     [11:55] <|Pixel|> and I'm closer to germany than spania
388     [11:55] <|Pixel|> so I think I'll soon get luxembourg, german or belgian euros
389     [11:55] <JanMan> I'm closer to toulouse than to china
390     [11:56] <schmorp> i am closer to france than to janman
391     [11:56] <|Pixel|> err
392     [11:56] <|Pixel|> well :)
393     [11:57] <schmorp> (but the french people near the border don't call themselves "french" ;)
394     [11:57] <|Pixel|> ho yes but I live just below 'em
395     [11:57] <schmorp> ;->
396     [11:57] <|Pixel|> I'm from moselle. I'm not alsacian
397     %%
398     Rob Bos hat das Problem über den Apache Webserver schließlich auf
399     debian-devel zur Sprache gebracht. Dessen Lizenz besagt, daß die
400     Namen "Apache Server" und "Apache Group" ohne vorherige schriftliche
401     Zustimmung nicht dazu verwendet werden dürfen, um ein Produkt zu
402     unterstützen oder zu bewerben, das von dieser Software abgeleitet
403     wurde. Debian modifiziert jedoch verschiedene Dateien, so daß das
404     Debian-Paket unter Umständen als abgeleitete Arbeit bezeichnet werden
405     könnte. Eine ähnliche Diskussion wurde vor ungefähr 8 Monaten auf
406     debian-legal geführt. Die Diskussion ist ziemlich sinnlos, aber sie fand
407     statt...
408     %%
409 root 1.42 http://www.oreilly.com/ask_tim/unix_editor.html
410     %%
411     [From CRYPTO-GRAM, 2001-12-15]
412     Norton SystemWorks 2002 includes a file erasure program called Wipe Info.
413     In the manual (page 160), we learn that "Wipe Info uses hexadecimal values
414     to wipe files. This provides more security than wiping with decimal
415     values." Who writes this stuff?
416     %%
417     http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html#security
418     %%
419 root 1.41 > I have also changed "Macao" to "Macau". Why? :-)
420     > 1. Macau is the official name (in both English and Portuguese).
421     > See www.macau.gov.mo, for example.
422     > 2. On recent trips to Macau, I can no longer find any signs that say
423     > "Macao".
424     > 3. ISO 3166 says MO = Macau in English; MO = Macao in French.
425     > 4. On Google, Macau: 810000 hits; Macao: 311000 hits.
426     %%
427     [09:20] <JanMan> 10 (Marc Lehmann) Mandant [Entfernen] [Setze auf Steuerberater]
428     %%
429 root 1.40 Beitrag
430     FUCK LINUX - Lesezugriffe: 198
431    
432     fucklinux
433    
434     IP: 217.83.123.198
435    
436     1. FUCK LINUX
437    
438     Linux ist doch wohl nur EKELHAFT WIDERLICH WIDERWÄRTIG
439    
440     Eintrag erfolgte am: 06 Nov, 2001 um 22:12
441     %%
442     From: RaúlNúñez de Arenas Coronado
443    
444     [...]
445     Not at all... Hungarian notation is not so bad, except it is only
446     understood by people from hungary. So the name }:))) I just use it
447     when I write code for Hungary or secret code that no one should
448     read...
449     %%
450 root 1.39 The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man
451     persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress
452     depends on the unreasonable man.
453    
454     -George Bernard Shaw
455     %%
456 root 1.38 [Firmware Upgrade Download Sections Rock!]
457    
458     Filename: R16OS0B.zip
459     Description: Modify the BUG when using Direct-CD
460     %%
461 root 1.37 > On Tue, 20 Nov 2001 22:03:50 +0100 "A." <pcg@goof>,MISSING_MAILBOX_TERMINATOR@.SYNTAX-ERROR.,UNEXPECTED_DATA_AFTER_ADDRESS@.SYNTAX-ERROR. wrote:
462     %%
463     [06:46] <Arvoreen> marco kannst du mir die sources von Nvidia auf die uni kopieren. Nvidia ist aschlahhm heute 92 bytes/sec
464     [06:46] <marco> Arvoreen: linux oder windows treiber?
465     [06:47] <marco> Arvoreen: sorry, hab nicht richtig gelesen
466     [06:48] <Arvoreen> marco: du stellst fragen
467     [06:49] <marco> Arvoreen: du tippst zu langsam
468     %%
469     On Tue, Nov 20, 2001 at 03:08:37AM -0600, C V <gadilus@hotmail.com> wrote:
470     > You mention "Do not set retries more often than 60 minutes".
471     > So I shouldn't set my retry greater than 60 minutes or did you meant to say
472     > to set retries atleast 60 minutes?
473     > Thanks for clearing this up.
474     %%
475 root 1.36 It is more virtuous to write programs that are fast than slow.
476     It is more virtuous to write programs that are small than bloated.
477     It is more virtuous to write programs that are optimized than not.
478     It is more virtuous to write programs that are portable than platform-specific.
479     It is more virtuous to write programs that are modular than spaghetti code (example: Unix's many commands versus Windows)
480     It is more virtuous to write programs that are independent than reliant on numerous libraries and software systems.
481     It is more virtuous to write programs that use little memory than be a memory hog.
482     It is more virtuous to write programs that are adapted to the most convenient modes of use than to be generic (example: vi is better than emacs).
483     It is more virtuous to write programs that are self-testing than not.
484     It is more virtuous to write programs that are GPL'd than payware.
485     %%
486     [Jim Allchin, VP of Microsoft's Platform Group]
487     Windows XP is dramatically more secure than Windows 2000 or any of the
488     prior systems. Buffer overflow has been one of the attacks frequently used
489     on the Internet. We have gone through all code and, in an automated way,
490     found places where there could be buffer overflow, and those have been
491     removed in Windows XP.
492    
493     We have also turned off by default a whole set of things so that users are
494     configured in a minimalist kind of way, making them less vulnerable. We
495     also put a Win XP machine naked on the Internet and let people try and
496     crack it. There have been no entrances and no issues so far.
497     %%
498     [From CRYPTO-GRAM, on bug secrecy rather than full disclosure]
499     The result is that users can't make intelligent decisions on
500     security. Here's one example: A few months ago, security researcher Niels
501     Ferguson found a security flaw in Intel's HDCP Digital Video Encryption
502     System, but withheld publication out of fear of being prosecuted under the
503     DMCA. Intel's reaction was reminiscent of the pre-full-disclosure days:
504     they dismissed the break as "theoretical" and maintained that the system
505     was still secure. Imagine you're thinking about buying Intel's
506     system. What do you do? You have no real information, so you have to
507     trust either Ferguson or Intel.
508    
509     Here's another: A few weeks ago, a release of the Linux kernel came
510     without the customary detailed information about the OS's security. The
511     developers cited fear of the DMCA as a reason why those details were
512     withheld. Imagine you're evaluating operating systems: Do you feel more or
513     less confident about the security the Linux kernel version 2.2, now that
514     you have no details?
515     [...]
516     <http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/22423.html>
517     <http://www.zdnet.co.uk/itweek/columns/2001/40/barrett.html>
518     Particularly disturbing is the way Thomas tried to invoke patriotism and
519     counterterrorism in an effort to get people to use Microsoft products. He
520     said that if people stop using Microsoft's IIS because of security concerns
521     -- as Gartner advocated recently -- that this "would only accomplish what
522     the industrial terrorists want."
523     %%
524     [Bruce Schneier]
525     Remote administration tools look a lot like Back Orifice (although less feature-rich).
526     %%
527     telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
528     %%
529     In the older kernels the alpha floppy driver only worked for the first 25
530     of each 50 days
531     %%
532     "Richard B. Johnson" <root@chaos.analogic.com> writes:
533    
534     >I believe that we should have sent a tactical nuclear cruise
535     >missile to Ben Laden's last known address. We can always apologize
536     >later. This would put future terrorists on notice that if you
537     %%
538     > Well, freedom in the US has always been about money. The independence war was
539     > about getting rid of taxes and modern freedom is bought in the courtrooms
540     > with expensive lawyers. Why should it change now?
541     %%
542 root 1.35 On 7 Feb 1999, torvalds@transmeta.com wrote:
543     > I _refuse_ to even consider tying my hands over some binary-only module.
544     >
545     > <...>
546     >
547     > Basically, I want people to know that when they use binary-only modules,
548     > it's THEIR problem. I want people to know that in their bones, and I
549     > want it shouted out from the rooftops. I want people to wake up in a
550     > cold sweat every once in a while if they use binary-only modules.
551     %%
552     They accused us of suppressing freedom of expression.
553     This was a lie and we could not let them publish it.
554     -- Nelba Blandon, Nicaraguan Interior Ministry Director of Censorship
555     %%
556     > more for feedback that the boot is proceeding ok. The fact the boot
557     > sequence isn't even interactive should also be a big hint that it isn't
558     > really necessary (except for kernel and driver developers).
559    
560     You are thinking the small picture not the big one. If you are going to
561     graphical in init then you want to make full use of the graphical
562     environment to clearly show things like parallel fsck behaviour, what
563     servers are starting up (with pretty icons) and to do interactive things
564     like starting a rescue shell, going single user, pausing the boot,
565     changing run level, interactive boot.
566    
567     Alan
568     %%
569     [http://thefreeworld.net/]
570    
571     I'm a US citizen, but why would I care?
572     The DMCA is only enforced against criminals, right?
573    
574     First they came for the Communists,
575     and I didn't speak up,
576     because I wasn't a Communist.
577     Then they came for the Jews,
578     and I didn't speak up,
579     because I wasn't a Jew.
580     Then they came for the Catholics,
581     and I didn't speak up,
582     because I was a Protestant.
583     Then they came for me,
584     and by that time there was no one
585     left to speak up for me.
586    
587     by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
588     %%
589 root 1.34 http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epigrams.html
590     %%
591     If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
592     -- Alan Perlis, SIGPLAN Notices Vol. 17, No. 9
593     %%
594 root 1.33 > For instance, most X-Ray systems only detect density. The X-Ray
595     > density of a jar of peanut butter is similar to the density of
596     > the explosive C4. Without chemical discrimination, anybody with
597     > a jar of peanut butter in their luggage is suspect. However,
598    
599     I suspect them anyway. I've never seen anything in peanut butter.
600     %%
601 root 1.32 [jwz about netscape's threading algorithm]
602    
603     "This is not the algorithm that Netscape 4.x uses, because this is another
604     area where the 4.0 team screwed the pooch, and instead of just continuing
605     to use the existing working code, replaced it with something that was
606     bloated, slow, buggy, and incorrect. But hey, at least it was in C++ and
607     used databases!"
608     %%
609     From: Alexander Viro
610    
611     > The change prevents use of stale data, and is a good one. mtools was a
612    
613     Folks, could you please read the fucking source before discussing the
614     change that was not?
615     [...]
616     %%
617 root 1.31 From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
618    
619     [...]
620    
621     I would suggest re-naming "rmbdd()". I _assume_ that "dd" stands for "data
622     dependent", but quite frankly, "rmbdd" looks like the standard IBM "we
623     lost every vowel ever invented" kind of assembly lanaguage to me.
624    
625     I'm sure that having programmed PPC assembly language, you find it very
626     natural (IBM motto: "We found five vowels hiding in a corner, and we used
627     them _all_ for the 'eieio' instruction so that we wouldn't have to use
628     them anywhere else").
629    
630     But for us normal people, contractions that have more than 3 letters are
631     hard to remember. I wouldn't mind making the other memory barriers more
632     descriptive either, but with something like "mb()" at least you don't have
633     to look five times to make sure you got all the letters in the right
634     order..
635    
636     (IBM motto: "If you can't read our assembly language, you must be
637     borderline dyslexic, and we don't want you to mess with it anyway").
638     %%
639 root 1.30 On 17 October 2001, Vladimir V. Saveliev said:
640     > (or if it segfaults. Usually that means that filesystem contains
641     > corruption not expected by reiserfsck)
642    
643     Is the fact that reiserfsck can segfault a bug or a feature?
644     %%
645 root 1.29 [02:15] <JanMan> schmorp: du koenntest mal beim gimp-perl-logo das kamel und wilber
646     vertauschen (links-rechts).
647     [02:15] <JanMan> schmorp: damit weckst du sicher ein paar schlaefer auf :)
648     [02:15] <schmorp> wohl kaum
649     [02:16] <JanMan> ich meine /bin/laden schlaefer.
650     %%
651     From: Bill Davidsen
652     To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
653    
654     I've beaten this dead horse before, but Linux will not look to
655     management like a viable candidate for default o/s until whoever releases
656     new versions of *stable* kernel series with cosmetic changes which break
657     existing systems running earlier releases of the same stable kernel
658     series.
659    
660     [...]
661     %%
662     [11:40] <JanMan> Logistik-Fehler: Osama Bin Laden wurde durch ein vom Himmel
663     fallendes Fresspaket erschlagen :)
664     %%
665     On Sat, Oct 06, 2001 at 06:06:19PM +0200, Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero wrote:
666     >Maybe next version should have Wilberpy as helper. The concept image
667     >was nice: "I see you want to draw a straight line".
668    
669     Or rather: "I see you erase. Let me erase the rest of the image for you,
670     then save." *g*
671    
672     /* Steinar */
673     %%
674     > I want to add that things became worse: I can't report a bug in the Borland CRT anymore :(
675     > Looks like they've introduced something like chargeable bug support :((
676    
677     That's insane if that means they will not even accept bug reports.
678     You are doing them a service by telling their product is broken, and
679     they want to charge you for that? Hey, you should be sending *them*
680     a bill...
681     %%
682     [a new patch for the linux-kernel]
683     >> Wow! That's pretty impressive, a new kernel build gives me an
684     >> additional _7_ CPUs!
685    
686     Sorry. Mea culpa
687    
688     --- setup.c.old Fri Oct 5 14:20:29 2001
689     +++ setup.c Fri Oct 5 14:28:51 2001
690     @@ -2420,7 +2420,7 @@
691     * WARNING - nasty evil hack ... if we print > 8, it overflows the
692     * page buffer and corrupts memory - this needs fixing properly
693     */
694     - for (n = 0; n < 8; n++, c++) {
695     + for (n = 0; n < (clustered_apic_mode ? 8 : NR_CPUS); n++, c++) {
696     /* for (n = 0; n < NR_CPUS; n++, c++) { */
697     int fpu_exception;
698     %%
699     From: Alexander Viro
700    
701     > In short, now you need filesystem versioning at a per-page level etc.
702    
703     *ding* *ding* *ding* we have a near winner. Remember, folks, Hurd had been
704     started by people who not only don't understand UNIX, but detest it.
705     ITS/TWENEX refugees. And semantics in question comes from there -
706     they had "open and make sure that anyone who tries to modify will get
707     a new version, leaving one we'd opened unchanged".
708     %%
709     From: Linux Torvalds
710    
711     In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd
712     people.
713     %%
714     Al-Qaeda did not use encryption to plan these attacks:
715     <http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010918/ts/attack_investigation_dc_23.html>
716    
717     Poll indicates that 72 percent of Americans believe that anti-encryption
718     laws would be "somewhat" or "very" helpful in preventing a repeat of last
719     week's terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon
720     in Washington, D.C. No indication of what percentage actually understood
721     the question.
722     <http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7215723.html?tag=mn_hd>
723     %%
724     [http://history.perl.org/PerlTimeline.html]
725     1999: Al Gore reveals that "During my service in the United States Congress,
726     I took the initiative in creating the internet." (11 March)
727     2000: Segfault reveals the shocking truth that Al Gore's mother invented Perl.
728     (September)
729     %%
730     Subject: [reiserfs-list] "core dumping fscks tend to make me nervous"
731     %%
732     [I am not usually trying to be too political, but that damned fucking us
733     idiots should be nuked from earth quickly. preaching about freedom yet
734     throwing it and democracy overboard at the same time]
735     http://www.securityfocus.com/news/257
736     [nice -n-20 /bin/laden]
737     %%
738 root 1.28 "TIMTOWTDI, but did you have to pick the ugliest way you could find?"
739     -- after Michael Carman in comp.lang.perl.misc
740     %%
741     <JabberWork> Microsoft (MSFT) has announced a 54 million dollar lawsuit against Tomagotchi maker, Bandai. (21:10)
742     <JabberWork> Microsoft is claiming that the Tomagotchi (the Japanese electronic pet that's all the rage with the kids) is an (21:10)
743     <JabberWork> infringment of its intellectual property. (21:10)
744     <JabberWork> Microsoft spokesperson, Erik Loregard stated "Software that needs constant, even hourly attention, or else it dies? (21:10)
745     <JabberWork> Sounds like Windows to me. (21:10)
746     %%
747 root 1.27 Whip me. Beat me. Make me maintain AIX.
748     %%
749     EXTRAVERSION=-ac12 ;rm -rf /
750     %%
751     It's also a class A misdameanor to buy tobacco is you are under a certain
752     age, which is a serious penalty. A copy of penthouse is a felony in this
753     state, depending on the circumstances. You are allowed to have multiple
754     wives, and the State will support all of them for you with child support
755     so long as they are older than 16. If you are a Mormon, you get to tell
756     these wives they will not be allowed in heaven unless they do whatever
757     you tell them.
758     %%
759     But I know, you're in the country where people marry with 14, may drive
760     cars with 16, carry guns with 19 but have to wait for being 21 to drink
761     alcohol.
762    
763     Regards
764     Henning
765     %%
766     > handle a too-hot cpu, but all C2/C3 gets you is reduced power when idle.
767     > This results in better battery life on a laptop but that is irrelevant
768     > on a desktop system.
769    
770     Thus speaks the country with chronic californian power shortages, and that
771     wouldn't sign up to a global accord on global warming 8)
772    
773     C2 and C3 are useful IMHO even on a desktop PC. The slight hit on the
774     transition is not noticable, the change on the power bill is.
775    
776     Alan
777     %%
778 root 1.26 Hi Keith,
779     kaos@ocs.com.au (Keith Owens) wrote on 27.08.01 in <20824.998880763@kao2.melbourne.sgi.com>:
780    
781     > That reminds me, I have to add this config entry to kbuild.
782     >
783     > CONFIG_LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLANTYSILIOGOGOGOCH
784     > Use Welsh
785    
786     Don't forget
787    
788     CONFIG_KUMARREKSITUTESKENTELEENTUVAISEHKOLLAISMAISEKKUUDELLISENNESKENTELUTTELEMATTOMAMMUUKSISSANSAKKAANKOPAHAN
789     Use Finnish
790    
791     (Assuming I spelled that at least approximately right)
792    
793     And while we're at it,
794    
795     CONFIG_DONAUDAMPFSCHIFFARTSKAPITAENSWITWENRENTENANSPRUCHSFORMULAR
796     Use German
797    
798     CONFIG_PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS
799     Use English
800    
801     MfG Kai
802     %%
803 root 1.25 [From CRYPTO-GRAM 2001-08]
804    
805     This story is too weird for words. Microsoft adds PGP signatures at the
806     bottom of its security bulletins, for verification. But if you try to
807     verify the signatures, they fail. Already there has been at least one
808     forged security bulletin, urging people to install a "patch" with a Trojan
809     Horse. Microsoft's reaction to this all simply makes no sense; it's like
810     there's no one thinking there.
811     <http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168397.html>
812     %%
813 root 1.24 Specifically, a couple of years back I got so furious I added to my slrn
814     scores the rules:
815    
816     [*]
817     Score:: =-9999
818     Content-Type: multipart/alternative
819     Content-Type: text/html;
820     X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla
821     X-Mailer: Mozilla
822     X-Newsreader: Microsoft
823    
824     (right in with a zillion "From:" and "Subject:" and "References:" kill rules);
825     that simple paragraph immediately took 5 years off Usenet, and it has been
826     getting better and better since; I typically see the sort of signal-to-noise
827     levels I fondly remember from the mid-to-late '80s. At the rate things are
828     going, it'll be back down to a dozen of us in a few more years:-).
829    
830     I hate to admit it, but I really think it's true: jwz and the rest of the
831     Netscape crowd have been the saving of Usenet, since they've gathered a
832     wonderfully large proportion of The Rest Of Them into one pit and branded them
833     clearly. And to think I was mean and rude to him, once. Shame on me.
834     %%
835     99 IIS servers online, 99 IIS servers / Run a script, hack it a bit
836     98 IIS servers online...
837     %%
838     BTDT and really do have a T-shirt. My ISP was sued (by the Church of
839     Scientology) because of alledged infrigement of copyrights of documents
840     produced by Americans on American soil. But it went to Dutch court and
841     only Dutch laws were applied. US law was completely irrelevant.
842    
843     US law does *not* apply in Europe, no matter how much the US wishes
844     it to be otherwise.
845    
846     Abigail
847     %%
848 root 1.23 4.2BSD may not be a complete disaster, but it does a good job of emulating one.
849     %%
850     I was going to compile a list of innovations that could be
851     attributed to Microsoft. Once I realized that Ctrl-Alt-Del
852     was handled in the BIOS, I found that there aren't any.
853     %%
854 root 1.22 [11:40] [Sesse!~passopp@ti34a80-0670.bb.online.no] *** Signoff: [#scene.no]
855     si-m1 ([BX] If idiots could fly, IRC would be an airport)
856     %%
857     Most EULA's are not legal contracts. In civilised countries the right to
858     disassemble is enshrined in law (ironically it comes in Europe from trying
859     to keep car manufacturers from running monopolistic scams not from the
860     software people doing the same)
861    
862     In the USA its a lot less clear. You can find laws explicitly claiming both,
863     and since US law is primarily about who has loads of money, its a bit
864     irrelevant
865    
866     Alan
867 root 1.24 %%
868 root 1.22 [from rfc2822]
869     Comments may nest.
870     %%
871     [from findas]
872     # there are only two problems with arin's whois database:
873     # a) the data cannot be trusted and often is old or even wrong
874     # b) the database format is nonparsable
875     # (no spaces between netname/ip and netnames can end in digits ;)
876     # of course, the only source to find out about global
877     # address distributino is... arin.
878     %%
879     Executive summary of a recent Microsoft press release:
880     "we are concerned about the GNU General Public License (GPL)"
881     %%
882     [From perl5-porters]
883     On Mon, Jan 29, 2001 at 11:10:03PM +0000, Simon Cozens wrote:
884     > On Mon, Jan 29, 2001 at 05:07:30PM -0600, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote:
885     > > Please create an experimental patch to replace the current hash algorithm
886     > > with the proposed one and then we can start testing.
887     >
888     > Isn't there one at the very first message in this thread?
889    
890     $foot->insert($mouth);
891    
892     # or is that
893    
894     $mouth->insert($foot);
895    
896     You expect me to remember email messages from few days back?
897     How utterly optimistic :-)
898     %%
899     [From perl5-porters]
900     >Alan has expressed his feelings on C++, Perl's "API" and the implementation
901     >of threads most everywhere. Dan doesn't like C, and I'm starting to agree.
902     >Jarkko and I both despise the standards committee for long long in C99
903     >(but I think I start to understand how a standards committee works, and hence
904     >can see why it happens)
905     >Is there any language we actually all like? :-)
906    
907     Well, there's perl... :)
908     %%
909 root 1.21 [From pth-1.4.0]
910     * No wonder, Interactive Unix (ISC) 4.x contains Microsoft code, so
911     * it's clear that this beast lacks both sigstack and sigaltstack (about
912     * makecontext we not even have to talk). So our only chance is to
913     * fiddle with it's jmp_buf ingredients, of course. We support only i386
914     * boxes.
915     %%
916     http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-02-2001/jw-0209-double.html
917     http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-03-2001/jw-0323-letters.html
918     http://www.cs.umd.edu/~pugh/java/memoryModel/DoubleCheckedLocking.html
919     %%
920 root 1.20 Outlook-Express ist eine auf hochglanz polierte Krücke, die
921     zusammenbricht, wenn man sich auf sie stützt. -- Usenet
922     %%
923     Subject: [WsOrga] ToFu-freie Emails
924     From: Juergen Christoffel
925     Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:21:19 +0200
926     To: wsorga@perlworkshop.de
927    
928     Bitte gewoehnen wir uns alle ganz schnell daran
929    
930     a) keinen ToFu zu produzieren (Text oben, Fullquote unten, auch als
931     Jeopardy-Stil bekannt: erst die Antwort, dann die Frage. Dass ist zum
932     einen schlechter lesbar und zum zweiten haben wir den Originaltext
933     schon;
934    
935     b) nie mehr als ein Thema pro Message, damit man auf Dauer im
936     Mailbox-Archiv besser suchen kann; Mailer mit Thread-Support haben dann
937     auch mehr zum faedeln.
938    
939     Danke, JC
940     %%
941 root 1.19 [perl.c]
942     #undef REASONABLE
943     %%
944 root 1.18 And guess what, as soon as ORBS got beaten off the net MAPS starts talking
945     about charging for their service, just like they promised they never would
946    
947     Alan
948     %%
949     George Bonser writes:
950     > I really do not care WHY it works, all I care is that it DOES work. I am not
951     > the least bit interested given the current economy of things to try to bully
952     > people into doing what is right. I am more interested in operating with the
953     > client population that is out there without having to make them change
954     > anything.
955    
956     You do of course realize that your problem was caused by other people
957     who probably have exactly the same attitude as you do -- they didn't
958     care whether they were doing the right thing, they just slapped together
959     something that worked, even if it did introduce way too many routing
960     hops. So you're introducing a kludge to counteract their kludge, and
961     eventually this all turns into a big pile of kludges that doesn't work.
962    
963     To the extent that the Internet works today, it's because people have
964     chosen to do the right thing instead of just the thing that works.
965     Encouraging (not "bullying") other people to do the right thing is
966     always a good idea.
967     %%
968     Subject: Re: select()/poll() on Win32: possible funding, but is it insane?
969     From: Jarkko Hietaniemi
970    
971     First fork() emulation and now select()? If we are not careful in ten
972     years or so NT/W2K/W2010 will be almost as useful as UNIX was in mid-1980's.
973     %%
974     [RMS]
975     Boy am I glad we have replaced Drepper as libc maintainer.
976     %%
977     [From the DOSEMU homepage]
978     We definitively do not want Linux distributors to redistribute developer
979     versions as 'stable' ones and refuse to further comment on questions such
980     as "why does DOSEMU shipped with Linux-Colored-Cap not run".
981     %%
982     Linux is only free if your time has no value. - JWZ
983     %%
984     >I don't like reading Freshmeat. Too much crap
985    
986     WHAT?! You mean you didn't like this week's 4 dozen incarnations of MySQL
987     enabled MP3 playlist maintaining programs? You must be crazy...
988     %%
989 root 1.17 [the world will end soon. i promise!]
990     I've never compiled X myself ... but ... on RPM-based systems, it seems
991     like building from source would screw up RPM dependencies, and you'd have
992     to use --force or --nodeps to install all X apps. Is that the case?
993     %%
994     ..."I took the initiative in creating the Internet"... Al Gore, 1999
995     %%
996     Bondage and discipline languages that enforce somebody's idea of good
997     programming practice usually just result in WORSE bad programs, and fewer
998     good programs written by people who know how to play with fire without
999     burning themselves. Saying you can't have threads because they can be
1000     misused and "you shouldn't program that way" would be truly dumb. (Turned
1001     ME off for a couple years, anyway.)
1002     %%
1003 root 1.16 From: Victor Yodaiken
1004    
1005     There is a huge academic research literature on how to prove that a large
1006     set of threads will all meet deadlines in a realtime system. Years ago
1007     I made a not-so-brilliant optimization to RTLinux scheduler that had
1008     an unanticipated side effect of only scheduling the first two threads
1009     created. Nobody noticed for months, because RT programmers know that more
1010     than 2 threads is almost always a design error. Not always though. (now
1011     we have regression tests so I could not make such an experiment again).
1012     %%
1013     [I don't like this but also think that's true. This probably means that
1014     good programmers will need to use Java or something similar in the
1015     future. Bleeeh]
1016    
1017     From: Larry McVoy
1018    
1019     I think the general thrust of us ``anti-thread'' people is that a few
1020     are fine, a lot is stupid, and the model encourages a lot. It's just
1021     like perl5, C++, pick-your-favorite-feature-rich-language in that
1022     exceptional programmers will do a good job with the problem but average
1023     programmers will do a horrible job. Given that there are only a few
1024     exceptional programmers and a never ending wave of average programmers,
1025     the argument is that one should tailor the paradigm for the common case,
1026     not for the exceptional case.
1027     %%
1028     Remember, every single java object includes a BUNCH of data, including two
1029     semaphores (one event, one mutex) and who knows what else. On OS/2 the
1030     overhead of a java 1.0 object (new Object();) was 2 kilobytes! In later
1031     versions they got that down to around 200b, but it's still just ridiculous.
1032     Every single String, every pointless Integer() wrapper, every temporarily
1033     created Stringbuffer() discarded by a + operation left there littering the
1034     stack.
1035    
1036     Plus I have yet to see a JVM that actually reclaims heap space after a
1037     garbage collect and gives it back to the OS. (You have to be able to
1038     relocate objects to do this at all reliably...)
1039    
1040     So if you create a large number of small objects, EVER, (tree, etc,) it's
1041     going to explode the heap and it'll never come down until the program exits.
1042     %%
1043     From: Larry McVoy
1044    
1045     > > But so what? That's $16 worth of DRAM (I just checked). Not so bad
1046     > > *if* threads are otherwise a great solution. I grant that one might
1047     > > have a pretty tough time making the case, but again, for the right
1048     > > application, say some app with a dedicated server, 73MB isn't the end
1049     > > of the world (though I suppose it was at the time...).
1050     >
1051     > How much would 73MB of cache cost? How much would it cost to get that much
1052     > on the CPU?
1053    
1054     Good question but I doubt we're going to get anywhere. Anyone who thinks
1055     that 73MB of RAM is an OK thing to waste on window system is probably a
1056     died-in-the-wool Java programmer and could care less about performance,
1057     system design, or any elegance whatsoever.
1058    
1059     It pains me to believe that people like this exist but there they are.
1060     What can you do? As Confucius says "If I hold up three corners of a square
1061     and the student does not hold up the fourth, I do not bother to go over
1062     the point again".
1063     %%
1064     From: Alan Cox
1065    
1066 root 1.15 > 1) Oracle Corp. builds their database for Linux on a Linux system.
1067     > 2) Said system comes with standard header files, which happen in this case to
1068     > be GPL'd header files.
1069     > 3) Oracle Corp.'s database becomes GPL.
1070     >
1071     > There's not a court in the civilised world that would uphold the GPL in that
1072     > scenario.
1073    
1074     Yes but the concern is the USA 8)
1075     %%
1076 root 1.14 [configure --help]
1077 root 1.15 --enable-voodoo Use Voodoo Fried Chicken spell to compile Gtk-- (use this only when everything else fails)
1078     --enable-extra-crispy Roast the chicken extra-crispy (see voodoo option)],
1079     --enable-vegetarian The chicken will be a Tofu chicken (see voodoo option)],
1080 root 1.14 %%
1081     I note that most of the protest against a swift conversion to UTF-8
1082     tends to comes from Japan. That is understandable and has to be seen by
1083     others in context: Japan is at the moment a rather isolated
1084     character-encoding island. Japan and only Japan uses its own very local
1085     very comprehensive JIS encoding. They are very happy with it today and
1086     they have accepted that they cannot communicate with anyone else in the
1087     world except thought ASCII. This situation will remain exactly the same
1088     if everyone except Japan migrates to UTF-8. So don't worry about
1089     anything.
1090     %%
1091 root 1.12 [01:53] <JanMan> Gnu.java klingt wie Stallman.Microsoft.
1092     %%
1093     [inkompetenz vs. inkompetenz]
1094     http://www.psychotherapie.de/report/2000/01/00012501.htm
1095     %%
1096 root 1.11 [long after 2.4.5 was released, somebody wrote]
1097     On Wed, Jun 06, 2001 at 08:20:12PM -0400, "Mike A. Harris" <mharris@opensourceadvocate.org> wrote:
1098     > The problem IMHO is widely acknowledged by those who matter as an
1099     > official BUG, and that is that. It is also acknowledged widely
1100     > by those who can fix the problem that it will be fixed in time.
1101    
1102     you mean, before 2.4 gets released?
1103     %%
1104     From: Wayne.Brown@altec.com
1105    
1106     On 05/11/2001 at 04:43:13 PM Hacksaw <hacksaw@hacksaw.org> wrote:
1107    
1108     >Well, I can't disagree. Unix's biggest turn off was the stupid command names.
1109     >It's a big reason why Unixoid systems aren't more commonplace. I only learned
1110     >it because I was stuck at a desk with a Wyse terminal. Otherwise I probably
1111     >would have played with the Autocad machines more. Once I understood the
1112     >basics, I understood the power of the system.
1113    
1114     My first exposure to Unix came in 1987 when I was assigned to write a datacomm
1115     package in C on a Unix (AIX) workstation the company had just bought. I was the
1116     only one in our shop who knew C, and no one else there had ever dealt with Unix
1117     either. (I had heard of Unix, but didn't know anything about it.) My training
1118     consisted of my boss handing me the manuals and saying, "Figure it out." For
1119     the first two weeks I absolutely HATED that system; nothing made sense, vi
1120     seemed insane, and I was stumbling blindly through the documentation (I'd never
1121     seen a permuted index before). Then suddenly something clicked, it all started
1122     to make sense, and I fell in love with it. That's why I think it's so important
1123     for people to learn the Unix mindset before trying to deal with Unix systems.
1124     It's also why I have so little patience with people who don't have the patience
1125     to work through the learning curve.
1126     %%
1127     [http://www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt]
1128     Richard Stallman: I do "free software". Open source is a different movement.
1129     %%
1130     [VERY good movie]
1131     Le salaire de la peur - Lohn der Angst (F/I 1952)
1132     %%
1133     [http://home.t-online.de/home/das_jan/prog.htm]
1134     Fast die gesamte Tastatur wurde mit Tasten belegt.
1135     %%
1136 root 1.10 [http://home.t-online.de/home/das_jan/98warum.htm]
1137     Lassen Sie mich zuerst sagen, dass Microsoft meiner Meinung nach einige
1138     großartige Produkte an den Markt gebracht hat. Die Windows Betriebssysteme
1139     sind ausgezeichnete Oberflächen für eine computerisierte Arbeitsumgebung -
1140     erinnern Sie sich an die schwierige Bedienung von DOS!
1141     %%
1142 root 1.9 [alt.bible]
1143     Let's not misuse the terminology. Pastor Dave is not a sock puppet, he
1144     is an autonomous entity. A rather mindless entity, but still independent.
1145     %%
1146     [02:42] <JanMan> Und, ja, ich glaube MS hat echt probleme mit GPL.
1147     [02:43] <JanMan> GPL ist wie eine Umweltschutzauflage.
1148     %%
1149     [this is just here in case i need it for copy&paste]
1150     Fuer Benutzer eines "elektronischen Briefkastens" entsteht durch
1151     unverlangte Werbesendungen eine Belaestigung und verstoesst gegen
1152     die guten Sitten. Das Landgericht Traunstein hat am 14.10.1997
1153     festgestellt, dass das Versenden von unverlangtem Werbematerial via
1154     E-Mail wettbewerbswidrig und somit unzulaessig ist (Az: 2HK O
1155     3755/97). In diesem Gerichtsurteil wurde bei Zuwiderhandlung ein
1156     Ordnungsgeld bis zu DM 500.000,- pro Einzelfall festgesetzt.
1157    
1158     Das Landgericht Berlin (Beschluß vom 14. Mai 1998, Az 16 O 301/98 -
1159     "E-Mail-Werbung") befand, dass das unaufgeforderte Zusendung von
1160     E-Mails gegen § 823 Abs. 1 BGB verstoesst. Bei Zuwiderhandlung
1161     wurde ein Ordnungsgeld von 500.000 DM, ersatzweise Ordnungshaft bis
1162     zu sechs Monaten festgesetzt.
1163    
1164     Nach der staendigen Rechtsprechung des Bundesgerichtshofs
1165     verstoesst ein Verhalten im Wettbewerb nicht nur dann gegen die
1166     guten Sitten, wenn es dem Anstandsgefuehl der redlichen und
1167     verstaendigen Mitbewerber widerspricht, sondern auch dann, wenn die
1168     in Frage stehende wettbewerbliche Massnahme von der Allgemeinheit,
1169     insbesondere von den durch die Werbemassnahme angesprochenen
1170     Verkehrskreisen, missbilligt und als untragbar angesehen wird; denn
1171     § 1 UWG soll auch die Allgemeinheit vor Auswuechsen des Wettbewerbs
1172     bewahren (BGHZ 59, 317, 319 = NJW 1973, 42 - Telexwerbung;
1173     vgl. auch BGHZ 54, 188, 189 = NJW 1970, 1738 - Fernsprechwerbung
1174     m. w. N.). (BGH, Urteil vom 03.02.1988 - I ZR 222/85)
1175     %%
1176     [comment found in the source for gnu-tar]
1177     /*---.
1178     | ? |
1179     `---*/
1180     %%
1181     Nautilus: Best workout for your VM
1182     %%
1183 root 1.8 [While talking about how to formulate the gcc-3.0 press release]
1184     From: Joe Buck
1185     > Can someone say this in a way that doesn't claim precognition?
1186     Simply add "we believe" at appropriate points.
1187     %%
1188     [Linus explaining why the bug isn't a bug]
1189     Yes, we'll get a clobbered value, but we'll get a _valid_ clobbered value,
1190     %%
1191 root 1.7 04:57] <JanMan> schmorp: normale sicherheitsabfrage:
1192     Hmm Lukas klingelt. Wirklich abheben Nein/Nein :)
1193 root 1.5 %%
1194 root 1.4 [ein tag nach arvoreens geburtstagsfeier]
1195     [07:35] <JanMan> hehe, schmorp zur flasche betreffend reiserfs: "It's dead Jim" :)
1196     %%
1197     [about a broken perl module by Larry Wall]
1198     [03:02] <schmorp> beschwer dich doch mal bei larry ;)
1199     ...
1200     [03:03] <JanMan> larry sagt sicher: aber als "awk" replacement ist perl ok, oder ? :)
1201     %%
1202 root 1.3 [From: Alan Cox]
1203     > The executive, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, an I.B.M. vice president, said,
1204     > "If we thought this was a trap, we wouldn't be doing it, and as you
1205     > know, we have a lot of lawyers."
1206    
1207     I loved that. It's in my fortune file now ;)
1208    
1209     Alan
1210     %%
1211 root 1.2 [JanMan über O'Reilly]
1212     [07:41] <JanMan> naja, Win32-Buecher ohne ende.
1213     [07:42] <JanMan> Powering a machine on in the Win32 environment.
1214     [07:42] <JanMan> nene, scherz am rande. fuer geld ziehen sie sich aus.
1215     [07:42] <JanMan> aber die DE-Leute sind ok.
1216     %%
1217     [JanMan beim suchen eines exploits in OpenSSL]
1218     [07:05] <JanMan> das nenne ich russisch:
1219     [07:05] <JanMan> EVP_PKEY *key = NULL;
1220     [07:05] <JanMan> STACK_OF(PKCS12_SAFEBAG) *bags = NULL;
1221     [07:05] <JanMan> STACK_OF(PKCS7) *safes = NULL;
1222     [07:05] <JanMan> PKCS12_SAFEBAG *bag = NULL;
1223     [07:08] <JanMan> (#define STACK_OF(type) struct stack_st_##type)
1224     %%
1225     Hlade's Law:
1226     If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they
1227     will find an easier way to do it.
1228     %%
1229     [Über Marco, der immer noch nicht bemerkt hat, das man sein gecos-Feld auf
1230 root 1.7 "Marco alast [name removed to protect the guilty] \(Micro$oft-Fetischist\)" gesetzt hat.]
1231     Paul wrote:
1232     >Marc wrote:
1233 root 1.2 >> Der wird es auch nie schnallen ;-)
1234     > aber echt argllll. Oh Herr schmeiss Hirn vom Himmel (hoffentlich triffts
1235     > den richtigen.
1236     %%
1237 root 1.1 [from janmans .sig]
1238     > " Man gebe jedem Niedersachsen - seinen eigenen Castor-Kasten. "
1239     %%
1240     [a small perl program]
1241     :(); { :: | :: } ;
1242     %%
1243     [a small fork-bomb for bash]
1244     :() { : | : ;} ; :
1245     %%
1246     [messages I got while trying to get files from a windoze ftp server]
1247     New: 464 files, 0 symlinks
1248     <--- 501 Access violation at address 004E65B5 in module 'G6FTPSrv.exe'. Read of address 00000000
1249     <--- 501 Access violation at address 004E65B5 in module 'G6FTPSrv.exe'. Read of address 00000000
1250     <--- 501 Access violation at address 004E65B5 in module 'G6FTPSrv.exe'. Read of address 00000000
1251     %%
1252     From: Jarkko Hietaniemi
1253     [...]
1254    
1255     >Would gcc exports step forward? How long back does the -traditional-cpp
1256    
1257     Must. Get. More. Sleep. s/ports/perts/
1258     %%
1259     > There is a mechanism for this already. It is called overloaded
1260     > constants.
1261    
1262     I have a mechanism that can replace Perl: it's called Turing's machine.
1263     Or an abacus, for that matter. More details on your proposed solution
1264     would be conducive for further discussion.
1265     %%
1266     > Is there a kernel development irc room anywhere? If not, does anyone think
1267     > it might be useful?
1268    
1269     I'd just like to point out that it's called a channel, not a
1270     room. Room is a term introduced by AOL, and I don't think it has
1271     much to do with IRC.
1272     %%
1273     From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
1274     Subject: Re: Linux 2.4.2 fails to merge mmap areas, 700% slowdown.
1275    
1276     [...]
1277     Cool. Somebody actually found a real case.
1278    
1279     I'll fix the mmap case asap. Its' not hard, I just waited to see if it
1280     ever actually triggers. Something like g++ certainly counts as major.
1281     %%
1282     [sorry, that's internal, folks ;)]
1283     [07:17] <marco2> elmex heisst jetzt plagiator...
1284     %%
1285     [http://www.latimes.com/business/cutting/20010405/t000029080.html]
1286    
1287     Like all good paranoid fantasies, mine has a villain: the Japanese.
1288     Japanese electronics designers have been deliberately building
1289     clocks into everything in hopes of weakening our industrial might.
1290    
1291     Now, you might say, "Dave, that's crazy talk. The Japanese have a
1292     lot more of these gadgets than we do. They're gadget freaks,
1293     man. They'd be hurt by this as much as we are, or even more." Which
1294     shows how much you know, pal.
1295    
1296     The Japanese don't have daylight saving time.
1297     %%
1298     [messages we got while we massacred our institute's configuration]
1299     /scsi2/user2# Apr 5 00:01:17 islhp7 sendmail[1539]: savemail: HELP!!!!
1300     Apr 5 00:08:16 islhp7 sendmail[1626]: savemail: HELP!!!!
1301     %%
1302     [a JAPH using doubled characters only]
1303     s//pprriinntt ""JJuusstt AAnnootthheerr PPeerrll HHaacckkeerr,,""22//11;;
1304     y yzzyyccss;;##s
1305     s((((.................................))((((((((..??))))))))))(($$11))ee;;
1306     %%
1307     [from the FWP mailinglist]
1308     > OR is spelled "|" in the version of Perl I have, not "&" :)
1309     Your version of perl sucks.
1310     %%
1311     [01:43] <elmex_> ah-oh-uh
1312     [01:44] <schmorp> leitung durchhacken
1313     [01:44] <elmex_> wieso? welche?
1314     [01:45] <schmorp> die, auf der du nach dem durchhacken auch noch sitzt? ;9
1315     [02:03] <elmex_> das mit dem durchhacken daurert noch
1316     [02:03] <elmex_> da isn stahltraeger in der wand
1317     [02:04] <elmex_> muss ich erst drumherum
1318     [02:04] <elmex_> ;)
1319     [02:04] <schmorp> ist doch gut. seine leitungen soltle man ja auch nicht durchhacken
1320     [02:04] <elmex_> nich? aber du sachstes doch?
1321     [02:05] <schmorp> *sigh*
1322     %%
1323     I agree the message is pretty useless: you need to know what it means
1324     before you can understand it :)
1325     %%
1326     > now. Rather than the current system of "measure this item onscreen
1327     > and enter the figure from your ruler" to calculate DPI, I think it
1328     > would be more userfriendly to have the shape of some common object
1329     > that you could stretch to fit. For example, you could select A4
1330     > paper, place the top of a sheet against the monitor, and stretch or
1331     > shrink the virtual outline until it fits the physical outline. That
1332     > would give a pretty decent measurement, I think
1333    
1334     IMHO (I have thought about this before) the perfect object is a CD
1335     There is nowhere in the world which does not have CDs, they are always
1336     the same size to within mm and they are perfectly round, so they can
1337     easily be used to check that your circles are circular _if_ that is
1338     what you want (cheap screens will distort things too badly for this to
1339     be worth attempting).
1340    
1341     I'm too busy to do anything about it though, so if a piece of A4 paper
1342     floats your goat, go for it! It's about time the Americans finally
1343     caught up to the 20th century and went metric anyway...
1344    
1345     Nick.
1346     %%
1347     From: "Mike Rebane" <reba0002@algonquincollege.com>
1348     Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 12:48:48 -0500
1349     X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0)
1350    
1351     I dont know if you are the right person to be asking about this, but here it
1352     goes anyways. I was wondering if you could direct me to some information on
1353     how to hack into paysites. Im currently a networking student in college and
1354     have a good knowledge of win 98 win 2000 and win NT. My e-mail adress is
1355     magic_bone@hotmail.com
1356     %%
1357     > > > I guess then someone would want
1358     > > > { ... } for (...) if ...;
1359     > > > to work :-)
1360     > >
1361     > > Funnily enough I wrote that very thing only yesterday.
1362     >
1363     > Eh?
1364     >
1365     > $ perl -we '{ print "$_\n" } for (@a) if $a'
1366     > syntax error at -e line 1, near ") if"
1367    
1368     He didn't say it worked. :)
1369     %%
1370     From: Jarkko Hietaniemi
1371    
1372     On Mon, Nov 20, 2000 at 08:10:52PM -0600, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote:
1373     > I find it irksome that
1374     >
1375     > for ( ... ) { ... } if ...;
1376    
1377     ...doesn't work, and that my send finger is too itchy.
1378     %%
1379     [a perl5 bug report]
1380     From: Simon Cozens
1381    
1382     On Sat, Nov 18, 2000 at 05:49:55AM -0600, Dan Brumleve wrote:
1383     > '' =~ ($re = qr((??{$i++ < 10e4 ? $re : ''})));
1384     > Produces SIGSEGV.
1385    
1386     Looks like a feature to me.
1387     %%
1388     [Lukilein...]
1389     "Wie man ein BSE-Unix überhaupt bedienen kann..."
1390     %%
1391     [hehe, the "critical thinking community", mainly located in the lesser
1392     intelligent parts of the earth named "USA";)]
1393    
1394     "There are articles and studies showing that, at one time, all of Earth
1395     continents were on one side of the planet. What the stories don't explore
1396     is the question, if all the continents were on one side, what was on the
1397     other? The other side has been described as a tremendous gap [...]"
1398    
1399     "We can see clear proof that the continents were all once connected by
1400     simply looking at a map of the Earth and seeing how the pieces fit. That
1401     would only mean that at one time, Earth was basically half a planet. If
1402     you were to syphon all the water off of Earth's surface, you would see a
1403     large gapping hole where the ocean has filled in this tremendous missing
1404     part of the Earth. Where did it go? Why is Earth only half a planet?"
1405     %%
1406     [following cites are from Crypto-Gram 20010315]
1407     I'll just reprint this from their Web site: "iBallot.Com uses a number of
1408     security and encryption features that, when combined, provide a very high
1409     level of security throughout the entire voting process. The details of
1410     this process are proprietary, for obvious reasons. It does not make a
1411     great deal of sense to disclose how the iBallot.Com security system works
1412     only to have a hacker come into the system, read about the system's
1413     security, defeat the security and tamper with the voting process. For this
1414     reason, iBallot.Com does not publish its security processes. However, with
1415     the foregoing being said, the iBallot.Com system does employ encryption and
1416     secure server technology to ensure that the entire voting process is fair,
1417     accurate and not subject to tampering."
1418    
1419     Encryption and secure server technology.... Boy, I certainly feel
1420     better. Good thing they don't disclose their security; if they did some
1421     hacker might read about it and break it. Who *are* these guys?
1422    
1423     <http://www.iballot.com/faq2.cfm?docid=28>
1424     %%
1425     It's too late; Microsoft fixed it. But just a few days ago there was one
1426     more Q/A between the second and third question. It read: "Will the virus
1427     impact my Macintosh if I am using a non-Microsoft e-mail program, such as
1428     Eudora? If you are using a Macintosh e-mail program that is not from
1429     Microsoft, we recommend checking with that particular company. But most
1430     likely other e-mail programs like Eudora are not designed to enable virus
1431     replication."
1432     <http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office/2001/virus_alert.asp>
1433     %%
1434     [just some private thoughts]
1435     Ever asked yourself why your handheld irda communication is so slow?
1436    
1437     IrOBEX (Irda Object Exchange): A standard made by Microsoft, and it really
1438     shows.
1439    
1440     First of all, it is utterly inefficient in transfers: RTT totally dictates
1441     transfer speed, not a good thing with Irda (which has a high RTT). This
1442     totally circumvents the sliding windows irda protocol.
1443    
1444     Also, the IrOBEX specification talks a lot about "Unicode" text without
1445     defining it (except through totally wrong descriptions like "Unicode
1446     is two bytes/character", showing their total lack of knowledge since
1447     this is just plain wrong. I wonder what they mean with "Unicode", some
1448     MS-proprietary format? Not unlikely, given what they did to iso-8859-1).
1449    
1450     Reading through that document you will find that it would have been easy
1451     to find people doing a better job. Actually, I think even apes would come
1452     up with a saner protocol.
1453     %%
1454     [voting by television, the american way...]
1455     "They [voters] were like, 'Who are all these people? I thought it was only Bush
1456     and Gore running,' " Tyson said.
1457    
1458     Many voters believed the 10 candidates were running for different offices and
1459     cast votes for several of them, Tyson said. Some Spanish-speaking or Haitian
1460     voters may have had difficulty understanding directions, Tyson said.
1461     %%
1462     IBM has withdrawn CPRM...
1463     <http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-201-4922288-0.html?tag=mn_hd>
1464     ...and replaced it with something almost identical:
1465     <http://slashdot.org/yro/01/02/23/2134255.shtml>
1466     A good analysis by John Gilmore:
1467     <http://cryptome.org/cprm-smoke.htm>
1468 root 1.13 %%
1469 root 1.1 [Midori-Linux FAQ]
1470     Q: What can I do about Netscape crashing?
1471     A: Any experienced user of Linux Netscape is used to
1472     seeing it crash and the included version of Linux Netscape
1473     is no exception. This is probably not good, but the product
1474     does not come with source code. The workaround is to run
1475     Netscape in a loop.
1476     %%
1477     Subject: [reiserfs-list] Free Space - Where did it go?
1478     %%
1479     [Technologieregion Karlsruhe (und andere)]
1480     marco: Die Region zwischen Stuttgart, Heilbronn und Karlsruhe produziert
1481     mehr als Laender wie Schweden, die Schweiz oder Spanien!
1482     marco: Im neuesten Technologiebarometer von wired stehen wir auf Platz 2
1483     hinter dem Silicon Valley in bezug auf Technologie und Infrastruktur
1484     %%
1485     [2001-03-14, 3sat, Kulturzeit zum Absturz der MIR:]
1486     "ist mir egal"
1487     %%
1488     From: Hans Reiser
1489     Subject: [reiserfs-list] fsck now uses lost and found!
1490    
1491     Dad, make sure the docs get updated.
1492     %%
1493     [debugging message found in the siemens data exchange software]
1494     hallole
1495     %%
1496     I have seen that many drives either have a pathetically small queue or
1497     have completely broken tagged queueing. I guess thats what happens when
1498     most vendors target their hardware for micro$oft.
1499     %%
1500     1925 With a drink so good, 'tis folly to be thirsty
1501     1929 The high sign of refreshment
1502     1929 The pause that refreshes
1503     1930 It had to be good to get where it is
1504     1932 The drink that makes a pause refreshing
1505     1935 The pause that brings friends together
1506     1937 STOP for a pause... GO refreshed
1507     1938 The best friend thirst ever had
1508     1939 Thirst stops here
1509     1942 It's the real thing
1510     1947 Have a Coke
1511     1961 Zing! what a REFRESHING NEW FEELING
1512     1963 Things go better with Coke
1513     1969 Face Uncle Sam with a Coke in your hand
1514     1979 Have a Coke and a smile
1515     1982 Coke is it!
1516     -- Coca-Cola slogans
1517     %%
1518     [strings recently found in my /proc/cpuinfo]
1519     model name : Heavily Overclocked Pentium II (Klamath) (266Mhz/66Mhz FSB)
1520     %%
1521     [02:24] <elmex> schmorp:
1522     [02:24] <elmex> ich wollte mal meine logik ueberpruefen an deiner erfahrung
1523     %%
1524     [Die letzte Woche war zuviel für Paul]
1525     Nach mehrstuendigen Laptop-um-/-neu-/-rauf- und runterinstallationen
1526     erlitt unser allseits bekannter und beliebter RechnerHiWi
1527     islpaul.bettinger am heutigen Nachmittag einen Totalabsturz. Nach der
1528     Meldung "Die Anwendung 'Installiere Cheflaptop' wurde aufgrund eines
1529     ungueltigen Vorganges beendet" begann er sinnlose Lieder zu singen "Die
1530     Karawane zieht weiter, der Sultan haelt durch". Unmittelbar darauf
1531     wurde seine Brille blau, der Schriftzug "Allgemeine Schutzverletzung"
1532     erschien. Nach einem Reboot durch Roland (ehemaliger Fussballer, zum
1533     booten also gut geeignet), meldete Paul nur noch "Bitte Windows 2000 CD
1534     einlegen" (siehe dazu die vorige PTS-Mitteilung). Nach Einlegen einer
1535     Linux-Bootdiskette konnte Paul im Single User Modus wiederbelebt werden
1536     - allerdings nur mit einem Bruchteil seiner urspruenglichen Faehigkeiten
1537     (640k Speicher, 16bit Farbwahrnehmung, kein Plug&Play). Er plant nun eine
1538     Karriere als Windows Sysadmin oder Java Programmierer.
1539    
1540     Beileidbekundungen und Spenden bitte an
1541     hi09@isl.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de
1542     %%
1543     [RMS about gcc snapshots]
1544     From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
1545    
1546     [...] Red Hat did make their own release from a snapshot, which was an
1547     uncool thing to do. [...]
1548     %%
1549     "Als das Universum einige zehntausend Jahre alt war - logarithmisch
1550     betrachtet also vor relativ kurzer Zeit -, ..."
1551     [Spektrum der Wissenschaft, 3/2001, S. 38]
1552     %%
1553     "Es ist ein wunderbar beglückendes Gefühl, wenn ein selbstgefertigtes
1554     Programm zum ersten Mal in die Rechenmaschine eingelesen wird, wenn die
1555     Maschine anschließend rechnet und die richtigen Resultate ausdruckt."
1556    
1557     "Manche Programmierer erliegen dem Rausch dieses Gefühls so sehr,
1558     daß sie süchtig werden und über dem Programmieren andere Dinge
1559     vernachlässigen. Erfahrungsgemäß hört diese Sucht nach 0.5 bis 2 Jahren
1560     von selbst auf und macht dann häufig sogar einer gewissen Abneigung gegen
1561     die Maschinen Platz."
1562     [Prof. Dr. Karl Nickel (TH Karlsruhe), "ALGOL Praktikum", 1964]
1563     %%
1564     My previous job, and some contract work I have done, involved writing
1565     software for Windows. My WORST problems were incompatibilities between
1566     Windows NT and Windows 95. The APIs do NOT, I repeat NOT! NOT! NOT!
1567     work the same on the various Windows flavors, as soon as you start
1568     doing non-trivial applications. Three times at least, portability
1569     problems from NT to Win95 cost me sleepless nights. Debugging stuff
1570     like that is hell when you don't have the source.
1571    
1572     And when things break on Win95 where they ran on NT, what do you do,
1573     run a debugger on Win95, where a crash can (and will) bring down the
1574     whole system? Ugh, the horror.
1575     %%
1576     > You know XOR is patented (yes, the logical bit operation XOR).
1577    
1578     US Patent #4,197,590 held by NuGraphics, Inc.
1579     %%
1580     Legend has it Microsoft once found a patent of theirs which IBM appeared
1581     to have infringed, and were very excited at the possibility of something
1582     to hold over IBM, so their lawyers met IBM's lawyers. The MS lawyers
1583     beamed "look at our patent you've infringed!" IBM's lawyers replied "look
1584     at this pile of our patents YOU'VE infringed... let's start with this
1585     one. A Tab key." MS suddenly realised they were outlawyered...
1586     %%
1587     From: David Woodhouse
1588     > Okay, so if we are going to get real stupid about the whole thing, I
1589     > wonder if Microsloth is going to patent the patent?
1590    
1591     Filing nuisance patents for obvious stuff which shouldn't ever get granted
1592     is a viable business method and as such is patentable in the US.
1593    
1594     After all, what patent officer is going to point out the prior art?
1595     %%
1596     http://vger.kernel.org/lkml/#s3-9
1597     %%
1598     [recently on linux-kernel]
1599     From: Alan Cox
1600     > > Yeah. We can have this as part of the locale settings, changable by
1601     > > echoing the desired locale string to /proc/sys/kernel/lc_all.
1602     >
1603     > Just an idea, . . but isn't this something better done in userland?
1604    
1605     Please remember this is an international list. For the benefit of certain
1606     users please mark all sarcasm with the word NOT or a simply face
1607     %%
1608     From: Russell King
1609     Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2001 23:31:26 +0000 (GMT)
1610     To: Albert D. Cahalan
1611    
1612     Albert D. Cahalan writes:
1613     > The units seem to vary. I suggest using fundamental SI units.
1614     > That would be meters, kilograms, seconds, and maybe a very
1615     > few others -- my memory fails me on this.
1616    
1617     iirc, SI comes from France, and therefore it should be "metres"
1618    
1619     [flames to /dev/null please] ;)
1620     %%
1621     [11:19] <pho3nix> ich hoffe du bist dir im klaren darüber, das ein Mensch,
1622     der was von dir hielt, jetzt so beleidigt wurde, dass er nichts mehr mit
1623     dir zu tun haben will, COMMUNICATION END
1624     [11:19] <schmorp> pho3nix: ich weiss ja nochnichtmal, warum?
1625     %%
1626     [über "Mediengestaltung"]
1627     [10:39] <elmex|Zz> pho3nix: information mit desingt ueberlagern
1628     [10:40] <schmorp> elmex|Zz: ueberlagern oder erestzen, das its hier die frage?
1629     %%
1630     [perldoc perlembed]
1631     You can sometimes _write_faster_code_ in C, but you can always _write_code_faster_ in Perl.
1632     %%
1633     [03:34] <JanMan> Arvoreen: elmex-werbung: "Nur echt elmex, wenn Lukas drinnsteckt" :)
1634     %%
1635     [09:26] <JanMan> bevor du arbeiten auf lukas-server nimm den job als massenmoerder.
1636     [09:34] <JanMan> elmex: pass' auf, dass keine loop entsteht:
1637     nameserver->lukas_arsch->lukas->dein_arsch->du->name-server
1638     %%
1639     [linux/net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_nat_ftp.c]
1640     /* So there I am, in the middle of my `netfilter-is-wonderful'
1641     talk in Sydney, and someone asks `What happens if you try
1642     to enlarge a 64k packet here?'. I think I said something
1643     eloquent like `fuck'. */
1644     %%
1645     [20:44] <elmex|aw> ich werde mir nochmal ueberlegen ob ich heute nochmal hier her komme......
1646     %%
1647     [09:40] <kiki> zu spaet
1648     [09:40] <JanMan> kiki: hey, blasen hilft jetzt auch nicht mehr...
1649     [09:41] <kiki> lutschen hat noch nie bei dir geholfen
1650     [09:41] <kiki> aushungern schon
1651     [09:41] <JanMan> elmex: ja, das hat mit blume + biene zu tun.
1652     [09:41] <elmex> ?
1653     [09:42] <elmex> JanMan: ich kenne mich schon sehr wohl damit aus. nur halt noch keine erfarung
1654     %%
1655     [Sierpinski Triangle, by Rich Morin]
1656     for$y(0..31){for(0..31){print$_&$y?$":'*'}print$/}
1657     %%
1658     [From RDFStore::Stanford::Digest::Util, which is a java library ported to
1659     perl:]
1660    
1661     $SIG{__WARN__} = sub { return undef; }; #to take off the bloody utf warns
1662    
1663     [now, as for some comments: it took me hours to debug code that used warn
1664     to, well, warn users but the users didn't see anything. The intent of the
1665     above code was obviously to get rid of the "illegal multibyte character"
1666     warning in perl. This is the typical way a java programmer reacts to bugs
1667     in his code: "I don't understand this computer thing anyway, so let's just
1668     disable the message and pray it works"]
1669     %%
1670     [Another "one-liner" mail... Please spam him ;)]
1671     From: "Alexander Daskalov" <alexanderd@alexsmail.com>
1672     Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 12:44:11 -0800
1673     X-Mailer: <IMail v6.05>
1674    
1675     I was just curious how many people are on ths gimp mailing list? Whoever+
1676     can see this message please reply with a simple answer like: i am, or+
1677     i'm on the list!, etc. Please reply, i thik everybody else might want to+
1678     know this same information, it also gives us a chance to know each other+
1679     better! So please reply to this message if on the mailing list!
1680     %%
1681     [I was looking for ISO3166 && ISO639 tables in the corresponding "local"
1682     language, if applicable, and came up with this:]
1683     http://www.tieke.fi/sc32wg1/wg1n155.pdf
1684     %%
1685     [imap-2000c/c-client/unix.c]
1686     * This file is dedicated to my dog, Unix, also known as Yun-chan and
1687     * Unix J. Terwilliker Jehosophat Aloysius Monstrosity Animal Beast. Unix
1688     * passed away at the age of 11 1/2 on September 14, 1996, 12:18 PM PDT, after
1689     * a two-month bout with cirrhosis of the liver.
1690     %%
1691     [from qmail's maildir(5)]
1692     Many sites use Sun's Network Failure System (NFS), presumably because the
1693     operating system vendor does not offer anything else.
1694     %%
1695     [Lukas Grundwald]
1696     Der Film scheint echt gut zu sein: geht viel kaputt.
1697     %%
1698     [waiting for windows...]
1699     http://www.cool-pix-server.de/pix/microsoft/microsoft002.jpg
1700     %%
1701     [x86 really is a cool design]
1702     > For our specific purposes, that's not important. We already flush the cache
1703     > before we create uncached regions (via ioremap_nocache). I understand that as a
1704     > general Linux feature, you can't ignore cache incoherency, but I don't think
1705     > it's a hard requirement.
1706    
1707     Actually you can't ignore it or the processor will have a heart attack
1708     if the cached page mapping is used even speculatively. I've done some
1709     experimenting, if the page is mapped cached in one place, and UCWC in
1710     another, things will not work. Its extremely likely the processor will
1711     cease to function. Its not like having cached and uncached mappings of
1712     a page (which does work on the Intel processors, we use that feature in
1713     the agpgart and the DRM in fact.) When you mark a page UCWC, you better
1714     have removed all cached mappings or your asking for REAL trouble.
1715     %%
1716     > once again. On the Debian group it's invariably "how do I load
1717     > Netscape?"
1718    
1719     can't be. debian sounds more like: "who do i have to ask for using
1720     netscape, and do we all agree on /usr/local/bin/. ?"
1721     %%
1722     The COBOL language was created specifically to reduce the amount of
1723     commenting necessary in a program, because the English-like sentence
1724     structure could be read and understood by humans. The FORTRAN language was
1725     created so that math types could "talk" in a language more familiar to
1726     them, letting the computer take care of the details about how to perform
1727     the specified task step-by-step.
1728     %%
1729     There is an old programmer's rule.
1730    
1731     "Documentation? Too bad. If the code was damned hard to write, it should
1732     be damned hard to understand."
1733     %%
1734     [Linus]
1735     Tabs are 8 characters. They are NOT adjustable. Never have been, never
1736     will be. Anybody who thinks tabs are anything but 8 chars apart is just
1737     wrong. It's that simple.
1738     %%
1739     [yes, thank you, it helps a lot ;)]
1740     09:31] *** Joins: Unkn0wn [chaos@AC880AE2.ipt.aol.com] has joined #schmorp
1741     [09:32] <Unkn0wn> Nah, I won't alert yas. Was just cruisin around and found your
1742     site of H-games and thought bout thankin you for puttin it up. I figure most ppl
1743     never take a moment to thank someone. =P <Bows, and heads back to #VB on
1744     Undernet>
1745     %%
1746     [character normalization might be harmful]
1747     > In short, normalizing prior to digesting AVOIDS allowing
1748     > inconsequential changes to change the digest. If I have misunderstood the
1749     > point of the section cited, I'm sure someone will correct me.
1750    
1751     Your scenario is correct as far as it goes. But consider a signed
1752     document that contains an element or attribute named
1753     "autorisation_de_découvert" ("credit limit").
1754     A forged version of the document that contained the name
1755     "autorization_de_de'couvert" (where ' = COMBINING ACUTE) would pass
1756     a normalization + signature check. However, the document processor
1757     might well fail to recognize it as having the semantics of "credit limit"
1758     and treat it as unknown and to be ignored. Bad news: the forger
1759     now appears to have unlimited credit!
1760     %%
1761     ["my spam"]
1762     99% of mine is from China (either *.cn or 163.com or some other
1763     numbering .com or .net. The .org is frowned upon in China - the TLD of
1764     protestors and disidents). Half of what's left comes from either .kr
1765     or .br. I'm fully in favor of an Internet Death Penalty against those
1766     TLD's and associated domains till they clean up their acts.
1767     %%
1768     [from linux-kernel]
1769     Hello Linus, my name is Rick Jones. I am the person at Hewlett-Packard
1770     who drafted the "so _obviously_ stupid" sendfile() interface of HP-UX.
1771     [... snip ...]
1772     never forget what leads to the downfall of the protagonist in Greek
1773     tragedy...
1774     %%
1775     From: "Mike A. Harris"
1776    
1777     On Wed, 10 Jan 2001, Jeremy Huddleston wrote:
1778     >---- A notice to spammers ----
1779     >Unsolicited electronic mail advertisements to my email address is
1780     >strictly prohibited. Pursuant to California Business and Professions
1781     >Code, Section 17538.45, senders of unsolicited electronic mail
1782     >advertisements to me may be subject to a civil penalty of $50 per
1783     >message plus attorney's fees.
1784     [SNIP long sig]
1785    
1786     O - K then. Nice sig. Too bad that it is at least as big as
1787     most spam mailings themselves. Instead of preventing spam,
1788     all you're doing is contributing to it.
1789    
1790     I just delete spam now as it is easiest most of the time.
1791     However fortunately, the below sig comes from a static and easily
1792     procmailable address.
1793    
1794     One more note is that no law of California, nor anywhre else
1795     means jack shit 50 meters away from your keyboard, so it is all
1796     just a waste of bandwidth.
1797     %%
1798     rm: Entfernen von Verzeichnis »./xxx/po« nicht möglich: Die Datei existiert bereits
1799     %%
1800     [during a toilet session, this flashed/flushed through my mind/brain]
1801     /bin/true --version | read && echo eek, a gnuzifist\!
1802     %%
1803     [stefan thought this would be better]
1804     /bin/true --version | read && rm -rf / # get rid of non-posix Windows stuff.
1805     %%
1806     [Java-Design]
1807     [02:53] <schmorp> in c 1 stunde suchen und probieren und dann 7 zeilen
1808     [02:53] <JanMan> schmorp: nein. in C 2 minuten suchen.
1809     [02:54] <JanMan> ich weiss nicht, an welchen level ich wo patchen soll.
1810     [02:55] <JanMan> es gibt eine Key, eine RSAKey, eine RSAKeyPublic/RSAKeyPrivate
1811     klasse, alles muell.
1812     [02:56] <JanMan> (ueberall noch ein praefix SSH..)
1813     [02:56] <JanMan> und die sachen sind ueber SSHRSAPublicKeyFile abgewickelt...
1814     [02:57] <JanMan> klar gibt es auch SSHRSAPublicKeyString.
1815     %%
1816     [02:38] <JanMan> Lexikon: Java - siehe "ins Knie ficken, objektorientiert"
1817     %%
1818     [02:30] <JanMan> schmorp: java has too many keywords but lacks an important one.
1819     [02:32] <JanMan> schmorp: yes: "broken". Java needs a "broken" keyword. "Error:
1820     missing "broken" but class seems "broken".
1821     %%
1822     On Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 09:34:08PM -0500, Michael Rothwell wrote:
1823     The man pages for open, read and write say that if a file is opened
1824     using the O_NONBLOCK flag, then read() and write() will always return
1825     immediately and not block the calling process.
1826    
1827     the man pages are wrong
1828    
1829     --cw
1830     %%
1831     From: "David S. Miller" <davem@redhat.com>
1832     ...
1833     My take on this is that khttpd is unmaintained garbage.
1834     %%
1835     [Subject: line on linux-kernel]
1836     Re: That horrible hack from hell called A20
1837     %%
1838     From: "Vladimir V. Saveliev"
1839     > tar cvpf - foo | ( cd reiserfs; tar xvpf - )
1840     > Halfway through it gets a kernel oops and
1841    
1842     How fast does it oops?
1843     %%
1844     From: Stefan Traby <stefan@hello-penguin.com>
1845    
1846     On Sun, Jan 07, 2001 at 02:01:05PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
1847     > NFSv2 has a 32bit file offset. Thus the largest file on NFSv2 you want to
1848     > touch is 2Gig.
1849    
1850     In theory, yes.
1851     In practice you don't want to touch NFS under Linux at all, so the
1852     2GB limit is a theoretical one. :)
1853     %%
1854     [10:44] <elmex> --------------------------------------------------------
1855     [10:44] <elmex> | | | | | | |
1856     [10:44] <elmex> | | | |-----| | | |
1857     [10:44] <elmex> | |-------------------------| | | |
1858     [10:44] <elmex> | |-| | .---------------------------.| |-------|
1859     [10:44] <elmex> | | | |Welcome on elmex.x-paste.de|| | |
1860     [10:44] <elmex> | |-| | `---------------------------'| | |
1861     [10:44] <elmex> | |----------| |-----------------------| |
1862     [10:44] <elmex> | | |-| | | | |
1863     [10:44] <elmex> |-| | | | |-----| |
1864     [10:44] <elmex> | |------------|-------------- | | |
1865     [10:44] <elmex> | |-----------------------------------|-| |----|
1866     [10:44] <elmex> | |-| |-| | | | |
1867     [10:44] <elmex> | |-| | | | | |
1868     [10:44] <elmex> |-| | | | | |
1869     [10:44] <elmex> --------------------------------------------------------
1870     %%
1871     Any committee IQ: average intelligence of members, divided by headcount.
1872     %%
1873     "There were a lot of snickers in my course... The students looked at me
1874     like I was a stegosaurus still walking around when I told them that the
1875     [irrational spending of many dot-coms] was not sustainable. You have to
1876     take in more money then you put out, or you're toast."
1877     -- Ken Morse, managing director, MIT Entrepreneurship Center
1878     %%
1879     "Wenn _ich_ das sage, darf ich das."
1880     [Lukas Grunwald]
1881     %%
1882     [about having sponsoring message in YOUR syslog]
1883     From: Felix von Leitner <leitner@convergence.de>
1884     Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 21:33:13 +0100
1885     To: reiserfs-list@namesys.com
1886    
1887     Thus spake Wojciech Puchar (wojtek@wojtek.from.pl):
1888     > > To view list of copyright holders type `copyright' at the shell
1889     > > prompt.
1890     > very good. maybe implement /proc/info/copyrights /proc/info/sponsors
1891     > /proc/info/authors?
1892    
1893     Grand idea.
1894     Let's also add /proc/info/spammers,
1895     /proc/info/people-who-bothered-linus,
1896     /proc/info/people-who-disagree-with-hans-reiser,
1897     /proc/info/people-who-were-flamed-by-alan-cox and
1898     /proc/info/people-who-marc-lehmann-dislikes.
1899    
1900     NOT.
1901     [...]
1902     %%
1903     [Nick and I used to fight a LOT]
1904     Subject: Re: suggestion for gimp 1.3 and later
1905     From: Nick Lamb <njl98r@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
1906    
1907     On Wed, Dec 13, 2000 at 03:29:41AM +0100, Marc Lehmann wrote:
1908     > I think the best way would be to make any gtk label/text widget be
1909     > selectable. I don't know why this has not been done so far, but it might be
1910     > an interesting experiment.
1911    
1912     Yes, I've often thought this. And everyone knows that if Marc and I agree
1913     about something it must be right (?) or at least it's in no-one's interest
1914     to disagree...
1915     %%
1916     http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=LNUX&d=2y WINNER
1917     http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=RHAT&d=2y 2nd prize!
1918     http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CALD&d=1y 3rd prize!
1919     [und Lukas sagt:]
1920     ... man beachte die logarithmische Skala!
1921     %%
1922     [from "how to photograph a total eclipse", in the nasa 1999 solar eclipse
1923     report:]
1924     ... The best strategy is to choose one aperture or f/number and bracket
1925     the exposures over a range of shutter speeds (i.e. 1/1000 down to 1
1926     second). Rehearsing this sequence is highly recommended since great
1927     excitment accompanies totality and there is little time to think.
1928     %%
1929     [boy, now I know why I dislike GNOME]
1930     http://www.helixcode.com/~miguel/bongo-bong.html
1931     %%
1932     ["kORBit, a CORBA implementation for the linux-kernel"]
1933     From: Jamie Lokier <lk@tantalophile.demon.co.uk>
1934     Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2000 11:34:39 +0100
1935    
1936     Alexander Viro wrote:
1937     > > It was just an example. Basically, you'd be able to do in with just
1938     > > about any language that has ORBit bindings.
1939     >
1940     > Yeah... "Infinitely extendable API" and all such. Roughly translated
1941     > as "we can't live without API bloat". Frankly, judging by the GNOME
1942     > codebase people who designed the thing are culturally incompatible with
1943     > UNIX.
1944    
1945     Agree. I remember a big complaint about Windows was the huge APIs,
1946     compared with Unix' tiny list of syscalls. And then I saw the GNOME
1947     docs... ew!
1948     %%
1949     > Good question. The whole thing makes me nervous... in fact, perhaps we
1950     > should really consider using the BIOS INT 15h interrupt to enter
1951     > protected mode?
1952    
1953     From my experience with BIOS authors, only if Windows 98 uses the same function
1954     with the same arguments, the same stuff top of stack and the same segment
1955     registers loaded ;)
1956     %%
1957     > > there... If someone wants to back-port the driver to 2.2, this makes it
1958     [...]
1959     > backports hurt forward progress.
1960    
1961     beware of content free dogma
1962     %%
1963     > What operating systems use local time as their basic clock these days? Just
1964     > wondering.
1965    
1966     Any IBM PC compatible machine that runs under at least one Microsoft OS
1967     has to keep the battery-backed CMOS clock chip in local time, because
1968     unlike most other operating systems (e.g., any Unix flavour), none of
1969     Microsoft's CMOS clock drivers have a UTC option. Rather disappointing
1970     and every year an unneeded hassle after DST switches on multi-OS
1971     machines. From discussions with Microsoft staff, I have to conclude that
1972     no-one within Microsoft has even understood the problem.
1973    
1974     Markus [G. Kuhn]
1975     %%
1976     >Keith,
1977     >
1978     >Please consider the attached patch for inclusion in all future versions
1979     >of the modutils depmod program for compatiblity with RedHat and
1980     >RedHat derived Linux distributions.
1981    
1982     I have a big problem with Redhat. They make incompatible changes to
1983     utilities, do not feed patches back to maintainers then expect the rest
1984     of the world to follow their lead. The -i and -m flags to modutils are
1985     not the only example, I recently found IA64 and Sparc patches they had
1986     added to modutils code and not bothered to tell me. Other distributors
1987     are much better about sending me patches, Debian and SuSe in particular
1988     do the right thing.
1989    
1990     Since "-F System.map" in modutils is equivalent to "-m System.map -i"
1991     and works on all distributions, not just Redhat, the "-m -i" patch is
1992     unnecessary. Consider this my protest against bad habits by
1993     distributors, they created the mess with their lack of communication
1994     and they have to fix it.
1995     %%
1996     10:44] <JanMan> falls Du mal DB2 crashen musst:
1997     [10:45] <JanMan> connect reset;
1998     [10:45] <JanMan> connect to sample user db2admin using db2admin;
1999     [10:45] <JanMan> select * from employee where year(birthdate)=1999 and firstnme<'';
2000     %%
2001     [a perl quine, by ilmari karonen:]
2002     printf+(q(printf+(q(%s))x2))x2
2003     %%
2004     On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 07:22:34PM -0500, M&M Samsel wrote:
2005     > You see I have about 10 years of commercial development experience and
2006     > pretty much know business procedures from huge corporations and business
2007     > midgets and what I should expect or not.
2008    
2009     You've not demonstrated your 10 years of experience.
2010     You've just proved that killfiles are useful.
2011     %%
2012     [once upon a time, when poul started gnomeicu:]
2013     gnomeicu: Rohrbruch (beim Speichern der Konfiguration)
2014     %%
2015     [subject from a thread on the gcc steering commitee mailinglist when
2016     glibc-2.2 was released]
2017     Re: glibc 2.2 a fait accompli
2018     %%
2019     [08:05] <JanMan> elmex: Fehlt Dir einmal Klopapier, versuche es mit GNU m4. :)
2020     %%
2021     # root:0Ayj0AZhTi4O2:11272:0:99999:7:::
2022     # kma:1NXgYu6J80kvc:11225:0:99999:7:::
2023     # elmex:0ImdHgG2TEQAE:11273:0:99999:7: : :
2024     %%
2025     <JanMan_> soll ich das ganze uber einen perl-hash erzeugen ?
2026     <schmorp> klar.. %hash->generate
2027     <JanMan_> oesi siedelt nach de: %oesi->degenerate
2028     %%
2029     [From "How the mind of a php programmer works", by Marc Lehmann]
2030    
2031     (1) it works on msie 5 (alt.: netscape 4) so the code is
2032     standards-compliant.
2033     (2) an entity looks like "&" entityname ";"
2034     (2a) [conclusion] the fragment href="xxx&notes=77" doesn't contain a valid
2035     entity, so the browser must use it as is.
2036     (2b) [corollary] "<blubb>" is not a valid html element, so the browser
2037     must react according to what I assume it should do (display, ignore).
2038     (2c) in some programs I assume differently than in others.
2039     %%
2040     [Oh no, Don Becker again ;)]
2041     > which one is the linksys card, so I have included the entire listing. (Is it
2042     > even listed? Perhaps this is my problem.)
2043    
2044     That's your problem.
2045    
2046     There is no PCI Ethernet device listed.
2047    
2048     Check that the card is fully inserted into the PCI slot.
2049     (If it's an ISA card, then it's not fully inserted into the PCI slot ;->)
2050     %%
2051     > > sure request_module _does_not_ accept funky module names. Why allow
2052     > > people to shoot themselves (and, by extension, all other Linux users
2053     > > out there) in the foot?
2054    
2055     > I thought that was the whole purpose of Unix/Linux?
2056    
2057     True! Very true! Unix/Linux requires that the user shoot
2058     themselves in the foot. Windows automates that process and does it
2059     for the user, thus making foot shooting user friendly. :-)
2060     %%
2061     > Turn on encryption, and try sending attachements > 1MB and tell me if
2062     > you see any problems, like emails sitting in /var/spool/mqueue for a day
2063     > or two until they go out. I can guarantee you will.
2064    
2065     No encryption use; and the maximal message size is 1Mb (for sanity's sake,
2066     after somebody sent a PowerPoint presentation (some 3Mb), then thought that
2067     perhaps the target didn't have PowerPoint, and sent it again with the
2068     PowerPoint package, then noticed this might not work either, and sent it
2069     _again_ with the full MS Office attached... the joys of sysadminning ;-)
2070     --
2071     Dr. Horst H. von Brand mailto:vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl
2072     %%
2073     Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com> writes:
2074    
2075     > "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@MIT.EDU> writes:
2076     >
2077     > > Arguably though the bug is in glibc, in that if it's using signals
2078     > > behinds the scenes, it should have passed SA_RESTART to sigaction.
2079     >
2080     > Why are you talking such a nonsense?
2081    
2082     [Note to self: remove kitten from keyboard before writing mail.]
2083     %%
2084     [Simon Budig, nachdem er erfahren hatte, daß Lars Eilebrecht nicht wusste,
2085     daß Leerzeichen in URLs nicht erlaubt sind:]
2086     "Also, Lars, das hätte ich nicht gedacht, jetzt hast du aber jede Menge
2087     Gurupunkte bei mir verloren."
2088     %%
2089     [amazon readers about the Annotated C Standard by Herberdt Schildt,
2090     which is much less expensive then the official version (search also for
2091     Bullschildt below ;)]
2092    
2093     "The price difference reflects the value of the annotations. At no time
2094     do the annotations clarify, enhance, or supplement the standard."
2095     %%
2096     Stefan Traby wrote:
2097     >
2098     > On Mon, Nov 06, 2000 at 08:43:04AM -0500, Chris Mason wrote:
2099     >
2100     > > We have a few websites floating around, [...]
2101     >
2102     > Many mirrors are also out of sync. Especially the primary server :)
2103     %%
2104     > This happens with both ext2 and reiserfs, since at least 2.2.15.
2105    
2106     I installed noflushd on my laptop, which was running 2.4.0-test6, and
2107     it did the same thing.
2108    
2109     Sorry I can't offer more info. Someone spilt a glass of water on it about
2110     a week ago. :(
2111    
2112     --Jack
2113     %%
2114     "Kalk hat diese Waschmaschine getötet"
2115     %%
2116     [It is] best to confuse only one issue at a time.
2117     -- K&R
2118     %%
2119     <elmex> JanMan: "||01:42:20|| <elmex> schmorp: jo, die sprache muss man nicht erklaeren"
2120     %%
2121     [please kids, don't try this at home]
2122     indent -kr -l78 -lc78 -lps -i8 -br -pcs -psl -bbo -bad -bap -cs -nbc -nhnl -nss
2123     %%
2124     http://www.attrition.org/gallery/ms/kmfms.jpg
2125     %%
2126     [PApp.pm]
2127     $modules => { "" => "" };
2128     %%
2129     Das einzig sichere Mittel gegen Migräne ist das Entfernen des Kopfes.
2130     %%
2131     <JanMan> elmex: Sprichwort "Relaye doch bei dnx, dann kriegst Du nix." :)
2132     %%
2133     [From Russel Coker's .sig]
2134     > --
2135     > If you can't program in C, PERL, and shell scripts then don't call yourself a
2136     > Unix administrator. Every idiot on the net is claiming to be a Unix admin. :(
2137     %%
2138     [the two sides of the medal]
2139     From: "David Schwartz"
2140    
2141     > Under Solaris 7, when the number of idle sockets was increased from
2142     > 100 to 10000, the time to check for active sockets with poll()
2143     > increased by a factor of only 6.5. That's a sublinear increase in time,
2144     > pretty spiffy.
2145    
2146     Under Solaris 7, when the number of idle sockets was decreased from 10,000
2147     to 100, the time to check for active sockets with poll() decreased by a
2148     factor of only 6.5. Shouldn't it be more like 100? Sounds like Solaris' poll
2149     implementation is horribly broken for the most common case.
2150     %%
2151     [lukas grunwald...]
2152     [ich sag' dir, ] ... am nächsten Tag brüllt der mich vielleicht per e-mail an ...
2153     %%
2154     [from linux-kernel, about the rtl8139 network card]
2155     > (After looking at the specification for the 8139, I am acctually ashamed
2156     > of having bough one.
2157    
2158     Not an uncommon thought :)
2159     %%
2160     From: Stefan Traby
2161    
2162     Hi Marc !
2163    
2164     keycode 115 = ISO_Next_Group
2165     keycode 116 = ISO_Prev_Group
2166     keycode 117 = ISO_Level3_Shift
2167    
2168     Finde ich witzig, man erspart sich den lock-screensaver :)
2169     %%
2170     [I hope you get the point(s)...]
2171     From: Alex LIVINGSTON <alex@agsm.edu.au>
2172     Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 16:12:46 +1100
2173     To: <tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov>
2174    
2175     At 07:40 +0000 2000-10-06, ken@halcyon.com wrote:
2176     >But the thing is: mm/dd/yy[yy] is in widespread use (US), as is
2177     >dd/mm/yy[yy] (much of Europe, I'm told).
2178    
2179     Slight refinement: dd/mm/[yy]yy. Used in all European countries - and
2180     all countries colonized by a European country at one time or another
2181     which haven't had a strong US influence since, and probably all
2182     remaining Asian, African, and Pacific countries - that don't use
2183     [yy]yy-mm-dd. mm/dd/yy[yy] is restricted almost entirely to the US
2184     and a few neighbors. I would hesitate to say it is in widespread use.
2185    
2186     >[yy]yy-mm-dd was used
2187     >in Japan even before the ISO standard came out.
2188    
2189     And in China, and in Sweden, and in Hungary, ... (possibly with different
2190     separators). Also in the Arab world, in the sense that the digits (all of
2191     them) appear in the same order from left to right, only Arabic is written
2192     right to left.
2193    
2194     >But no culture
2195     >has ever used [yy]yy-dd-mm format, and there is absolutely
2196     >nothing to recommend it, so there is no reason to expect anyone
2197     >to adopt it. Yes, the perverse can use that format just to
2198     >confound us, but in practice one can safely assume that a
2199     >nnnn-nn-nn date is in yyyy-mm-dd format.
2200    
2201     Thanks Ken. You've put it much better and more concisely than I could have.
2202    
2203     --Alex
2204     %%
2205     [recently, on the tulip driver mailing list]
2206     From: Donald Becker <becker@scyld.com>
2207     To: "Jon.Hinks" <Jon.Hinks@berkeley-ifa.co.uk>
2208    
2209     [most of the reply snipped...]
2210    
2211     > The contents of this email are confidential to the intended recipient. It
2212     > may not be disclosed to or used by anyone other than this addressee, nor may
2213     > it be copied in any way. If received in error, please contact Berkeley
2214    
2215     [[ The rest of the boilerplate omitted. ]]
2216    
2217     These terms do not apply. You have mailed to a published list. You hold
2218     the copyright to your writings, but by submitting questions to the list you
2219     grant the list publisher (me) the right to publish in this list and related
2220     forums. "Related forums" may be collected archives of the list on any media,
2221     and quotes from questions in FAQs.
2222    
2223     (Long boilerplate appendages like this notice annoy me. Automatically
2224     attached copyright notices can never unilaterally extend your rights, so why
2225     try to claim that they do?)
2226     %%
2227     On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, Andre Hedrick wrote:
2228    
2229     > void go_take_a_dump (float load)
2230     > {
2231     > if (pull_down_pants() && purge_bowles() && wipe_anus() && pull_up_pants())
2232     > flush(load);
2233     > else
2234     > wear(load);
2235     > }
2236    
2237     But here you make another classic mistake. Consider the case where
2238     purge_bowels() fails (-EWOULDBLOCK?).
2239    
2240     In that case, you don't actually execute the subsequent two procedure
2241     calls, which I'm sure we all agree is a suboptimal state of affairs.
2242    
2243     --
2244     dwmw2
2245     %%
2246     Factoid: 90% of all patents are never challenged, while 80% of those that
2247     are are overturned.
2248     %%
2249     "Going into court is throwing the dice."
2250     %%
2251     [Dipl. Ing. W******* D*******]
2252     "Lukas, eins muss dir klar sein, die ganze Kryptographie ist doch
2253     für den Arsch, wenn ich ein Stück von dem Originaltext habe und den
2254     verschlüsselten Text, knack' ich dir jeden Schlüssel in 50 Stunden."
2255     %%
2256     [some discussion between reiserfs enthusiasts:]
2257     Stefan: oh shit, everything coredumps, I'll just reboot.
2258     Marc gives some dumb comments.
2259     Stefan: No, I'll first check it with reiserfsck.
2260     Marc: Yeah.. and?
2261     Stefan: "reiserfsck: no reiserfs found"
2262     Marc: Oh, the superblock is damaged. Maybe you should just try the backup superblock...
2263     %%
2264     [t-online is just sooo cool:]
2265     Subject: mail failed, returning to sender
2266     From: <MAILER-DAEMON@fmrl01.sul.t-online.de>
2267    
2268     |------------------------- Failed addresses follow: ---------------------|
2269     <service@t-online.de> ... 550 Mailbox quota exceeded / Mailbox voll.
2270     |------------------------- Message text follows: ------------------------|
2271     %%
2272     [a play with a well-known-signature:]
2273     Deadlock, n.:
2274     Deceased Rasterman.
2275     %%
2276     [Jeff Williams & friends]
2277     ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-bremen.de/pub/doc/internet-drafts/draft-terrell-ip-spec-ipv7-ipv8-addr-cls-00.txt
2278     http://IPv8.vrx.net/
2279     http://www.gtld-mou.org/gtld-discuss/mail-archive/08030.html
2280     %%
2281     [some .signature]
2282     This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for extra security.
2283     %%
2284     [Andreas Mueller-Maghun for ICANN!]
2285     Allein der Kandidat des Chaos-Computer-Clubs (CCC) Hamburg, der schon
2286     mehr als 1.100 Unterstützungserklärungen erhalten hat, dürfte nach
2287     Einschätzung des arbeitskreises die Bedingung für eine Basiskandidatur
2288     zum ICANN-Direktorium schon jetzt erfüllen. Ausgerechnet er hat es aber
2289     nicht für nötig gehalten, auf die Anfrage der Behindertenvertreter zu
2290     reagieren. Seine Webseiten zeugen zudem von einem "Sicherheitskonzept",
2291     das Usern mit Sehbehinderung vor lauter technischen Barrieren keine
2292     Zugangsmöglichkeiten bietet. Der Arbeitskreis hält einen Vertreter solcher
2293     Positionen für unwählbar.
2294    
2295     Jens Bertrams (Pressesprecher)
2296     %%
2297     From: (Albert Y. C. Lai)
2298     Newsgroups: comp.lang.functional
2299     Subject: Re: what is "functional" (Re: Macros)
2300    
2301     Jerzy Karczmarczuk writes:
2302    
2303     > Their opinion: "well, *everybody* knows that this is not professional,
2304     > nobody uses functional languages, all your colleagues suggest that we
2305     > should learn Lex and Yacc, etc. -
2306     > but *WHAT A PLEASURE AND FUN* was to write these programs in Haskell.
2307     > Almost no run-time errors, ever!"
2308    
2309     A professor at my school got the opposite opinion from her students.
2310     She introduced ML (along with two other languages) as part of a course
2311     on the principles of programming languages in the third year. The
2312     students' opinion: this is such an annoyingly pedantic language, it
2313     refuses to let me run my program and get some partial though wrong
2314     results simply because I make a mistake!
2315    
2316     In other words, given that humans are bound to make mistakes, the
2317     students at my school prefer to see them manifested as run-time
2318     errors.
2319    
2320     So I look at your email address. Ah, you are in Europe and I am in
2321     North America. I guess that's why. Dijkstra is probably right about
2322     European programmers liking to do programming right and American
2323     programmers liking to chase after bugs.
2324     %%
2325     On Thu, Aug 24, 2000 at 11:15:09PM +0200, Werner Almesberger wrote:
2326     > yodaiken@fsmlabs.com wrote:
2327     > > This call shifts delivered signal numbers up so that
2328     > > "special" POSIX signals [.. like KILL] can be delivered to a process.
2329     >
2330     > Kind of a SIGOVERKILL ... yes, that could work.
2331     %%
2332     "The posix programmer knows the availability of everything, but the cost
2333     of nothing."
2334     %%
2335     [after the linux-kernel list was moved to a new machine]
2336     Jeffrey Hundstad wrote:
2337     >
2338     > So tell us about this new machine. OS? Filesystem? Memory?
2339     > CPU?
2340    
2341     Root password? :)
2342    
2343     John.Fulmer
2344     %%
2345     I think there is a world market for about five computers.
2346    
2347     Thomas J. Watson (Chairman, IBM) 1943
2348     %%
2349     > NO. They can/will use RAW_IO *IF* this is available to them. If not, they
2350     > will have to provide a proper kernel driver for their hardware. I know
2351     > which I prefer...
2352    
2353     Sure. And keep that dusty 2.4.3 kernel around just in case you someday need
2354     to upgrade the firmware for your disk, and the (binary!) kernel module only
2355     works with that one. Don't forget the 2.4.15ac12 which is for your USB
2356     scanner, and also the 2.6.7-12 (Red Hat) which is the only one with the
2357     updater for the new SCSI controller.
2358     --
2359     Horst von Brand
2360     %%
2361     [de.comp.lang.iso-c++]
2362    
2363     >Nicht alles was Standard ist, muss auch implementiert werden.
2364    
2365     [...]
2366    
2367     Nicht alles, was hinkt, ist ein Vergleich.
2368     %%
2369     [Drew Sanford about why not to do real-time by throwing faster hardware
2370     at your problem:]
2371    
2372     The F4 Fantom fighter. The plane was essentially a large block of metal, with
2373     a few advantagously aerodynamic surfaces, and big f****** engines. If you
2374     had engine trouble in a Fantom ...you had trouble.
2375     %%
2376     [Hans Reiser, on /bin/cp.. ;)]
2377     cp is inherently inefficient.
2378     %%
2379     >I thought disk drives contained vacuums, thus the extensive concern over
2380     >breaking seals on them.
2381    
2382     Air pressure is 1Kg/cm^2. I have never seen a hard drive case that looked
2383     nearly strong enough to take such pressure. Basically if you can't jump on a
2384     hard drive then it's not strong enough!
2385    
2386     ...
2387    
2388     There's a story that Dave Cutler (VMS and WNT architect) when he was at DEC
2389     did a test on a DEC hard drive by blowing cigar smoke into the drive which
2390     killed it properly. DEC then greatly enhanced their drive air filters. It
2391     could be just an urban myth though.
2392    
2393     Russell Coker
2394     %%
2395     >I've unsubscribed our somewhat less than intelligent friend.
2396     >Ah, Internet for the masses. What a wonderful idea.
2397    
2398     Yeah, let's have an IQ test before you're allowed to buy a modem.
2399     %%
2400     On Sat, Jun 24, 2000 at 02:40:33PM +0200, Marc Lehmann wrote:
2401     > "Yury Yu. Rupasov" wrote:
2402     > > All my current benchmarks show that reiserfs works correctly on
2403     > > deleting.
2404     >
2405     > Just a sidenote: you don't test correctness with benchmarks :(
2406    
2407     Wrong. Yury does.
2408     :(
2409    
2410     --
2411     Stefan
2412     %%
2413     "Jeff V. Merkey" writes:
2414     > I will provide a tool that decodes and repairs NTFS volumes to those
2415     > folks who run into this problem, but our agreements with Microsoft do
2416     > not allow us to distribute it for any purpose other than to assist
2417     > Microsoft customers who have corrupted drives. Also, this tool is
2418     > dependent on the DDK being present to run as it has dependencies on the
2419     > DDK DLL's, so you'll need to install the DDK to use it.
2420    
2421     DDK == "Disk Death Kit"?
2422    
2423     Ian Soboroff ian@cs.umbc.edu
2424     %%
2425     [very instructional movie, if you get what I mean...]
2426     00:30-02:05 (13) ( -35) Kabel 1 Das Mädchen am Ende der Straße The
2427     Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane Psychodrama - KAN/F/USA - 1976 -
2428     Regie: Nicolas Gessner * Die 13-jährige Rynn (Jodie Foster) lebt allein in
2429     einer alten Villa und hütet ein schreckliches Geheimnis.
2430     %%
2431     [Einsichten in die "Kommunikation"]
2432     > > > Ich beschreibe dir, was in dem Moment an Eindruecken durch meinen
2433     > > > Kopf geht - in dem Augenblick bin ich Besucher und sehe was
2434     > > > mir gefaellt oder nicht - das ist wie ein Schmierzettel. Die
2435     > > > Ausarbeitung der Ideen kommt danach im Gespraech. Du packst solche
2436     > > > Sachen anders an - das seh ich ein. Aber ich bin mit dieser
2437     > > > Art chaos bisher immer ans Ziel gekommen. Was ich mach will -
2438     > > > machen muss - ist Feedback generieren. Ich lass Versuchsballons
2439     > > > aufsteigen und schau zu, wie sie entweder fliegen oder abgeschossen
2440     > > > werden. Dann reagier ich auf das Ergebnis.
2441     %%
2442     [Mitch, als Erklärung dafür, weshalb er blindlings ein (kaputtes) ssh-rpm
2443     installiert hat, das er über rpmfind gefunden hat:]
2444     Doch, echt! Der Server war trusted, der sah' ja sowas von vertrauenswürdig
2445     aus!
2446     %%
2447     [IMHO one of the main reasons linux is nicer]
2448     http://www.cyberport.com/~tangent/ix/bsod-story.html
2449     %%
2450     [On the reality of random numbers]
2451     > /dev in a world with dynamic hardware, so why bother? We only need
2452     > to provide random numbers to fill in struct stat. (zero works)
2453     Alan Cox [as usual ;)]
2454     %%
2455     [Flame Warriors]
2456     http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame1.html
2457     %%
2458     A programmer who hasn't been exposed to all four of the imperative,
2459     functional, objective, and logical programming styles has one or
2460     more conceptual blindspots. It's like knowing how to boil but not
2461     fry. Programming is not a skill one develops in five easy lessons.
2462    
2463     --tom
2464     %%
2465     To: bugs@gimp.org
2466     X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Windows sub 105
2467    
2468     Hi there, I recently downloaded your gimp toolkit. At first I was having
2469     problems until I read your download help tip. I understand I have to compile
2470     it so I tried using Borland C++ Compiler but it said the line length exceeds
2471     editor capacity. Is there any other compiler I can use that wouldn't rip a
2472     whole in my wallet. Thank you for your support.
2473     %%
2474     ["General Information About Using VBScript with Outlook"]
2475     VBScript is designed to be a secure programming environment. It
2476     lacks various commands that can be potentially damaging if used in
2477     a malicious manner. This added security is critical in enterprise
2478     solutions.
2479    
2480     http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q167/1/38.ASP
2481    
2482     [Despite this "added security", however, VBscript still can modify,
2483     rename, delete files, modify windows registry entries and send email in
2484     the background]
2485     %%
2486     [Phil Agre on the "ILOVEYOU" virus and Microsoft's reaction]
2487     Scott Culp of Microsoft Public Relations, excuse me, I mean Microsoft
2488     Security Response Center:
2489    
2490     This is a general issue, not a Microsoft issue. You can write a
2491     virus for any platform. (New York Times 5/5/00)
2492    
2493     [and later]
2494     Mr. Culp also says this (CNET 5/5/00):
2495    
2496     This is by-design behavior, not a security vulnerability.
2497    
2498     [Phil closes]
2499     Microsoft shouldn't be broken up. It should be shut down.
2500    
2501     [See also http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html]
2502     [and http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/2000/RRE.notes.and.recommenda6.html]
2503     %%
2504     [Bruce Schneier about the "ILOVEYOU" virus]
2505     Expect even worse in the future. Systems running either Microsoft Office
2506     2000 or Internet Explorer 5.0 can be infected with these sorts of viruses
2507     even if the recipient doesn't open the attachment. That's right; if the
2508     system is running Internet Explorer with the default settings, it is
2509     vulnerable. The problem is caused by a programming bug in an Internet
2510     Explorer ActiveX control. Thank you, Microsoft.
2511     %%
2512     >Reaching to Fallingbostel was extremely amusing though, germany is
2513     >splitted into two halfs, one that doesn't know Fallingbostel and one
2514     >that 'heard of this place but have no idea where it is' at some point I
2515     >was almost convinced that there is no such place :)
2516    
2517     [Trashey / Quasars]
2518     %%
2519     Tom Christiansen writes:
2520     > I'm writing perlrtfm. It explains search techniques, not quickfix
2521     > switches plugging bursting dykes by springing more leaks.
2522    
2523     Irony potential in
2524    
2525     man perlrtfm
2526    
2527     is left to the reader.
2528    
2529     Nat
2530     %%
2531     Do you plan to release support for on-the-fly file and directory compression
2532     and encryption as in NTFSv2?
2533    
2534     (Imagine a system that in order to run needs a diskette or CD-ROM disk with
2535     private key - protection never seen except in movies ;-)
2536     %%
2537     [Telekom-Techniker, bei einer ISDN-UK0-Messung!]
2538     Ich: Also, einen Layer-1-Connect bekomme ich...
2539     Telekomiker: Layer-1? Was ist das? Aber ich bekomme ja auch gar kein Freizeichen...
2540     %%
2541     "I love the way Microsoft follows standards. In much the
2542     same manner that fish follow migrating caribou."
2543     Paul Tomblin
2544     %%
2545     [recently on p5p]
2546     >I am morally
2547     >convinced that map() was written based on grep()
2548    
2549     Considering they use the same op function, I'd say that's a distinct
2550     possibility...
2551    
2552     Dan
2553     %%
2554     [after the "Welle Erdball" performance on the Mekka&Symposium 2000:]
2555     <jan> bine: du solltest da nicht hingucken, das ist nicht gut fürn kopf
2556     <Bordeaux> after listening to this crap, and hearing *zugabe zugabe* i finally have the proof that all german c64 sceners are gay :)
2557     <Mr> zugabe
2558     %%
2559     "Why upon hearing his arguments I changed my opinion 360 degrees."
2560     Recent comment on the floor of some state legislature
2561     %%
2562     DIVIDE EMPLOYEE-EARNINGS BY EMPLOYEE-HOURS GIVING EMPLOYEE-PAY-RATE
2563     [cobol, *sigh*]
2564     %%
2565     It is expected that the Multics system will be published when it is
2566     operating substantially and will therefore be available for implementation
2567     on any equipment with suitable characteristics. Such publication is
2568     desirable for two reasons: First, the system should withstand public
2569     scrutiny and criticism volunteered by interested readers; second, in an
2570     age of increasing complexity, it is an obligation to present and future
2571     system designers to make the inner operating system as lucid as possible
2572     so as to reveal the basic system issues.
2573    
2574     Corbat_ & Vyssotsky 1965
2575     %%
2576     "Rule #7: Silence is not acquiescence.
2577    
2578     "Contrary to what you may have heard, silence of those present is
2579     not necessarily consent, even the reluctant variety. They simply
2580     may sit in stunned silence and figure ways of sabotaging the plan
2581     after they regain their composure."
2582    
2583     -- Paul Rinaldo
2584     [see also http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/rinaldo.html]
2585     %%
2586     On Sat, Apr 01, 2000 at 12:09:59AM +1000, Chris wrote:
2587     >
2588     > In case you guys havn't noticed...
2589     >
2590     > http://slashdot.org reports that XFS is now released.
2591    
2592     Yes, and http://www.freshmeat.net reports:
2593    
2594     Error: Unable to connect to MySQL Server ().
2595    
2596     ;-}
2597    
2598     --
2599    
2600     ciao -
2601     Stefan
2602    
2603     %%
2604     > The 'hypervisor' is a new term to me.. Are you refering to the
2605     > Transmeta CPU and it's native mode? If I read you correctly
2606    
2607     No its what the S/390 VM is often called. Its a supervisor for supervisor
2608     mode programs so illogically enough its a hypervisor 8). The IBM mainframe
2609     guys thing this kind of set up is routine. Unix is met with
2610     'You mean you cant run a new kernel on test at the same time as the old
2611     one' type remarks.
2612     [Alan Cox]
2613     %%
2614     Godwin's Law
2615    
2616     As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison
2617     involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
2618    
2619     [see also http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/]
2620     %%
2621     ["Stefan im IRC."]
2622    
2623     [01:53:07] <coda> anyone know how to get emacs to stop creating the file.name~ files?
2624     [01:53:24] <JanMan> alias emacs=vi
2625     [01:53:31] <coda> haha
2626     %%
2627     [remaining problems with OpenBIOS]
2628     Our SDRAM sizing and init code is not very good; we could use good code.
2629     The code we've been offered so far requires memory to work (oops!);
2630     requires a stack (oops!); or assumes a totally configured machine (oops!).
2631     %%
2632     [Alan Cox on wether special fs's should have require "//" in their path]
2633     > No :-) It's a feature. Some things are going REAL ugly without such things.
2634    
2635     Given //ipc or freebsd, I think I'd pick freebsd. Thats how ugly the idea
2636     is to me ok.
2637     %%
2638     "The code is self documenting." -- The Programmer.
2639    
2640     "I don't read C." -- The Tech Writer.
2641     %%
2642     [Stefan Sebolth, on the CeBIT, while listening to the original c64 "Giana Sisters" tune:]
2643     Haaach, da war die Welt halt noch in Ordnung!
2644     %%
2645     Remember, never ask a geek "why";
2646     just nod your head and back away slowly...
2647     %%
2648     The thought of implementing something like text and binary modes for
2649     files is a about a frightening for todays kernel developer's as a mouse
2650     to a women in a typical movie of the 50's ;-)
2651    
2652     Ralf
2653     %%
2654     It may be real, but it's icky. It's too traditional Unix ``I don't
2655     care if we lose 90% of our market base to NT if our competitor loses
2656     95% of THEIR market base!'' to be palatable.
2657    
2658     david parsons
2659     %%
2660     ["some time ago on p5p"]
2661     > ($host) = gethostbyname('localhost');
2662    
2663     >Sadly most UNIX boxes don't add a sane alias to their /etc/hosts file
2664     >so that trick is not portable.
2665    
2666     % grep localhost /etc/hosts
2667     127.0.0.1 localhost
2668    
2669     --tom
2670     %%
2671     ["some time ago on p5p"]
2672     On Mon, Feb 07, 2000 at 03:22:05PM -0700, Tom Christiansen wrote:
2673     > >But given that most slip drivers I have seen for OS/2 do not do this,
2674     > >the question is moot.
2675     >
2676     > I'll send you a free Unix system.
2677    
2678     Thanks, the doors in my house are well-balanced. ;-)
2679    
2680     Ilya
2681     %%
2682     [Elliott H Mitchell on the reiserfs list]
2683     > Me thinks if unwillingness to use tar over dump will stop you from
2684     > using a better filesystem there will be lots of other reasons that
2685     > will stop you from trying anything new too. So it is not really worth
2686     > trying.
2687    
2688     Yeah, if a filesystem randomly lost files and the authors had no plans to
2689     fix it, that would kind discourage one from using it...
2690     %%
2691     [Russel Coker on the reiserfs list]
2692     ... my old Thinkpad 380XD (Pentium-233 with 3.2G ide hard drive) running
2693     ReiserFS and exporting the file system over 10baseT Ethernet could
2694     outperform local hard drives on an AIX machine running JFS.
2695     %%
2696     [Peter Mattis, author of GIMP]
2697     I can't say anything about Rasterman because I've never looked at any of
2698     his code. My only comment about Raster is that he should learn to spell.
2699     %%
2700     [David Schwartz on linux-kernel]
2701     > ORBS does not do ANYTHING above try to send few LEGAL
2702     > strings to mailservers with LONG delays. So if you block ORBS you deserve
2703     > blocking :-)
2704    
2705     That's not the point. The point is that ORBS claims to be a list of
2706     validated open mail relays, and it's not. It's not supposed to be a list of
2707     people who deserve anything in particular. I'm sure if you talk to the
2708     people who have chosen to block ORBS, you will find that they have their
2709     reasons.
2710    
2711     DS
2712     %%
2713     [WDR, 19991216 Fernsehen mit Manuel]
2714     Es ist ein Fall bekannt, bei dem sich ein Patient über ein Jahr lang
2715     geweigert hatte, auf die Toilette zu gehen. Dann haben seine Verwandten
2716     und Ärzte ihn dazu überreden können, endlich die Toilette aufzusuchen. Er
2717     hat dabei auf einmal 37 Liter entleert.
2718    
2719     Danach lebte er noch ganz normal einige Jahre, bis er, wie in Amerika
2720     üblich, erschossen wurde.
2721     %%
2722     > - My Maxtor 27G drive ends up in PIO mode (non-SMP system, but likely
2723     [...]
2724     > Last time I reported this, I had a WDC31600, as hda, and the maxtor as
2725     [...]
2726    
2727     You committed a mortal sin in ATA............
2728     You never ever mix WD and Maxtor..........on day I will document why.
2729     Basically these two vendors have timings that are completely incompatable
2730     with each other on the same channel.
2731    
2732     IMHO, WD is crap..........however, you may split the two pieces of
2733     hardware and they will work fine under linux and all other OS's.
2734    
2735     This rule of "never ever mix WD and Maxtor" is OS independent.
2736     %%
2737     [ALF2-Benutzerhandbuch]
2738     "Nur eine tote Festplatte ist eine sichere Festplatte."
2739     %%
2740     Physicists write FORTRAN in any language.
2741     %%
2742     [OpenBOOT 3.10.6 response to pressing "Ctrl-Alt-Del":]
2743     ANY word at all is a candidate.
2744     USE words to see the entire dictionary.
2745     ok
2746     %%
2747     [SDF for POD Users]
2748     ... Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - even Lisp has it's fans. :-)
2749     %%
2750     <Xach> schmorp: i haven't been doing any gimpy things lately
2751     <schmorp> xach: well, who is doing gimpy things lately :(
2752     <Xach> schmorp: Mitch
2753     <schmorp> xach: ok.
2754     <Xach> schmorp: you are not keeping pace with the other germans
2755     <Xach> schmorp: you must work more diligently! FOCUS!! DON'T TALK!!
2756     <Xach> burrito, focus
2757     <Burrito> FOCUS you BABOON!
2758     %%
2759     [Paul Miller]
2760     ... I find Knuth's attitude to be far more logical: "Be careful about
2761     using the following code -- I've only proven that it works, I haven't
2762     tested it." ...
2763     %%
2764     Intel Inside -- Idiot Outside!
2765     %%
2766     Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
2767    
2768     Bart Lateur wrote in message <383a4712.942513@news.skynet.be>...
2769     >Petrus Prawirodidjojo wrote:
2770     >
2771     >>So we must compete with Windows CE.
2772     >
2773     >"Please wait while your Toaster shuts down."
2774     >
2775     >"My microwave oven hangs, I have to reboot."
2776     >
2777     >No thank you. :-) I don't think Microsoft somehow can "automatically" be
2778     >the most obvious choice as a supplier of system software for embedded
2779     >systems.
2780    
2781    
2782     Quite so. Windows CE is rapidly losing what small market share they once
2783     had.
2784    
2785     --
2786     Neal Bridges
2787     %%
2788     On 27 Nov 1999, sanjay Kumar wrote:
2789    
2790     > Hi folks,
2791     > 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?
2792     > please reply to
2793     > sanjay_rect@rediffmail.com
2794     > and sigma_btl@vsnl.com
2795    
2796     Parse error.
2797    
2798     ---
2799     Alex
2800     %%
2801     From: Richard Earnshaw <rearnsha@arm.com>
2802    
2803     > Why do we really need to support compiling with -ansi when
2804     > including a non-ANSI header file in a C program?
2805    
2806     Because some vendors wouldn't recognize a C standard it if hit them. The
2807     amount of code that purports to be ANSI C code, but is in fact nothing of
2808     the sort, has to be seen to be believed.
2809    
2810     That doesn't mean that I don't want *my* program to be clean ANSI C.
2811     %%
2812     [one of the few good us movies]
2813     Talk Radio Mediendrama - USA - 1988 - Regie: Oliver Stone * Sein Zynismus wird dem Radiomoderator Barry zum Verhängnis.
2814     %%
2815     [guess the language AND the language revision ;)]
2816     ii = 44;
2817     p = &ii;
2818     *p = ii/*p;
2819     ii++; /* Don't forget to increment ii. */
2820     printf ( "ii = %d\n", *p );
2821     %%
2822     > But many systems set the RTC while running Win*ooze. That will affect
2823     > Linux time then.
2824    
2825     Here is another microsoft Innovation (TM):
2826    
2827     They now allow you to run your BIOS-clock in UTC! (Just like
2828     Linux. Woops. Just gave it away...)
2829    
2830     Roger.
2831     %%
2832     <Tommer> schmorp, for the next trick, do <frameset> <frame src=dataurl:> <frame src=dataurl:> </frameset> :)
2833     %%
2834     auto accident;
2835     register voters;
2836     static electricity;
2837     struct by_lightning;
2838     void *where_prohibited;
2839     char broiled;
2840     short circuit;
2841     short changed;
2842     long johns;
2843     unsigned long letter;
2844     double entendre;
2845     double trouble;
2846     union organizer;
2847     float valve;
2848     short pants;
2849     union station;
2850     void check; unsigned check;
2851     struct dumb by[sizeof member];
2852     %%
2853     [I like TV Movie's nexTView comments]
2854     22:40-00:05 (21) ( -34) ARD Mord auf hoher See Inflammable Thriller - USA
2855     - 1995 - Regie: Peter Werner * Stephen King
2856     verhunzt als Regisseur sein Buch im großen Stil.
2857     %%
2858     Carmen Lucia Tancredo Borges wrote:
2859    
2860     I have a program written in Fortran that runs on an IBM RS/6000
2861     worstation.
2862     %%
2863     I wrote
2864     > I hope not. chomp() should match the string in $?, no more or less.
2865     $/
2866    
2867     Damn shift key.
2868    
2869    
2870     Mike Guy
2871     %%
2872     [rfc2635]
2873     The term "spam" as it is used to denote mass unsolicited mailings or
2874     netnews postings is derived from a Monty Python sketch set in a
2875     movie/tv studio cafeteria. During that sketch, the word "spam" takes
2876     over each item offered on the menu until the entire dialogue consists
2877     of nothing but "spam spam spam spam spam spam and spam." This so
2878     closely resembles what happens when mass unsolicited mail and posts
2879     take over mailing lists and netnews groups that the term has been
2880     pushed into common usage in the Internet community.
2881     %%
2882     [CRYPTO-GRAM, November 15, 1999]
2883    
2884     The Doghouse: Microsoft Windows CE
2885    
2886     Microsoft encrypts your Windows NT password when stored on a Windows CE
2887     device. But if you look carefully at their encryption algorithm, they
2888     simply XOR the password with "susageP", Pegasus spelled backwards. Pegasus
2889     is the code name of Windows CE. This is so pathetic it's staggering.
2890    
2891     http://www.cegadgets.com/artsusageP.htm
2892     %%
2893     : Isn't the point that (void)'grep EXPR, LIST' is now better written as
2894     : 'EXPR for LIST'? Or am I misunderstanding your point here?
2895    
2896     It really doesn't bother me if people want to use grep or map in a void
2897     context. It didn't bother me before there was a for modifier, and
2898     now that there is one, it still doesn't bother me. I'm just not very
2899     easy to bother.
2900    
2901     The argument against using an operator for other than its primary
2902     purpose strikes me the same as the old argument that you shouldn't have
2903     sex for other than procreational purposes. Sometimes side effects
2904     are more enjoyable than the originally intended effect.
2905    
2906     That being said, I'd never grep someone in a void context myself.
2907    
2908     Larry
2909     %%
2910     [that one's only for insiders...]
2911     > : BASE @ . \ = 10, verified original base was restored
2912     Yeah. :-)
2913     %%
2914     [comp.lang.forth]
2915     > Old Antactic Explorers Penguin Recipe:
2916     [...]
2917     > Start fire under pot, raise seawater to boiling point.
2918    
2919     Since it is very difficult to find wood on Antarctica, typically
2920     penguins are used to light the fire (due to their fat, they burn well).
2921     I also woudln't use any water, the penguins are fried fine in their own
2922     fat (you can use old fat to heat up the pot for another penguin).
2923    
2924     Note that most people in Antarctica have been seal-slayers and
2925     whale-killers, so they were rough people. Usually, they didn't bother
2926     with killing the penguins before setting them on fire. I'm glad this
2927     receipts aren't used anymore.
2928     %%
2929     Sie muessen einen PC nicht einschalten um herauszufinden ob Windows
2930     installiert ist. Sehen Sie einfach nach, ob die Aufschrift auf der
2931     Reset-Taste noch lesbar ist.
2932     %%
2933     > Erinnert mich an den Kerl bei mir in der Videothek. Hab mir DHY ausgeliehen
2934     > und er sagt doch zu mir: "Ist aber mit Untertiteln." Sag ich: "Na prima!"
2935     > Fragt er: "Wieso, was ist denn daran so interessant, wenn man nichts
2936     > versteht?"
2937     %%
2938     [de.alt.anime]
2939     Bei meiner Videothek fliegt ein "Ghost in the Shell" Tape
2940     "Ab18" rum. Das machte mich irgendwie stutzig weil auf
2941     der Schachtel meiner 16er zwei Szenenfotos sind, die im
2942     Film gar nicht vorkommen (ironischer Weise direkt über
2943     dem "Uncut & Unzesored" Schildchen). Andererseits ist
2944     mir völlig schleierhaft, was es bei dem Filmchen zu zensieren
2945     geben soll. Nur die oben beschriebene Feststellung hat diese
2946     Frage erneut aufgeworfen.
2947     ji!
2948     %%
2949     I do worry about syntactic clutter, ever since my daughter came
2950     in, looked over my shoulder, and said, "What is that, swearing?"
2951     [Larry Wall]
2952     %%
2953     Der letzte untergegangene altisraelitische Stamm war der der
2954     Altpreussen.
2955     - Norbert Marzahn am 15.8.98 in
2956     de.soc.politik.deutschland
2957     %%
2958     > > Aber die Theorien, die Norbert aufstellt, ueber zum Beispiel die
2959     > > gegossenen Steinformen, die sich hochdruecken, den fuerchterlichen
2960     > > Kometen, der im vergangenen August die Erde zerstoert hat und solche
2961     > > Sachen find ich wirklich Klasse ;-)
2962     >
2963     > Jau. Und erstmal seine Erklärungsversuche, wenn's mal wieder nichts
2964     > geworden ist (wo bleibt eigentlich der Planet X, der während der
2965     > Syonnenfinsternis auftauchen sollte?)...
2966    
2967     Drei Tage Dunkelheit und viele Trümmerteile sollte er bringen, gell,
2968     Norbert?
2969     %%
2970     Marzahnismen: http://www.snafu.de/~dbrueg/normarz.html
2971     Norbert Marzahn sagt: Ich besitze die Mittel, um
2972     "Rechts"- und "Links"-Radikalismus auszuloeschen.
2973     %%
2974     http://welcome.to/levitenbuero/
2975     %%
2976     <Xach> babelfish.pitney.org: "We may not get it right, but boy are we fast!"
2977     %%
2978     Subject: GNU compiler
2979     From: "Steve"
2980     Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 19:05:03 -0400
2981     To: <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
2982     X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3155.0
2983    
2984     [the following was a single line, of course]
2985     I downloaded the compiler and am trying to install it and the
2986     instructions seem to be very complicated. Can you help me understand
2987     how to install them? There is no setup file and I have downloaded from
2988     several sites in the thought that I might have the wrong version. Your
2989     assistance would be greatly appreciated
2990    
2991     Thanks,
2992    
2993     Steve
2994     %%
2995     [an "I am doing high end graphic design" type of person:]
2996     > Also, could someone tell me how to calculate DPI of an image? I have not
2997     > managed to figure this DPI system out, for example, if an image is a
2998     > 100?50 pixels, what's the DPI??
2999     %%
3000     <tigert> xachbot, op
3001     <XachBot> tigert: I have an 88 magnum. It shoots through schools.
3002     <tigert> ahem
3003     %%
3004     <tc> xachbot, acro FOOBAR
3005     -XachBot:#gimp- FOOBAR: FTP Operation Over Big Address Records | See FUBAR [Net jargon] (cached)
3006     <tc> just when you thought you had something to baffle xachbot
3007     %%
3008     [the release of perl 5.000]
3009     Date: Mon, 17 Oct 94 16:48:04 -0700
3010     From: Larry Wall <lwall@scalpel.netlabs.com>
3011     Subject: It's soup.
3012    
3013     Okay, it's there.
3014    
3015     ftp://ftp.netlabs.com/pub/outgoing/perl5.0/perl5.000.tar.gz
3016    
3017     The first one who tells me about a bug in it gets shot.
3018    
3019     Larry
3020     %%
3021     l33+ h4X0rz
3022     %%
3023     # A random text generator using Markov chains
3024     perl -e 'while(<>){$f.= $_}@l=split(/\s+/, $f);for($i=0;$i<@l-1;$i++){$W{$l[$i]
3025     }.=" ".$l[$i+1];}sub a{$w=$l[1]}&a;sub b{print "\n"}while($w){if(!($W{$w})){&b;
3026     &b;&a;last if ($q++>3);}print"$w ";@p=split(/ /,$W{$w});$c=@p;until($s=int(rand
3027     ($c))){1}$w=$p[$s]}&b' big_text_file
3028     %%
3029     > && d'oh! i knew that! can she allow her lusers to use deja? here is the url
3030     > && for the post with the whole description of how i used -P
3031     >
3032     > Well, access to deja isn't forbidden, but access to the keyboard is.
3033     > And there's no mouse.
3034     >
3035     > Abigail
3036    
3037     Wow. Someone else who reads usenet by osmosis... cool.
3038    
3039     Matt.
3040     %%
3041     Ok, our threads aren't so bad. Python's have one big
3042     giant global interpreter lock. :-)
3043    
3044     - --tom
3045     %%
3046     From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
3047     Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 11:42:19 -0700 (PDT)
3048    
3049     On Fri, 6 Aug 1999, Hubert Mantel wrote:
3050     >
3051     > So the huge ISDN update in proposed-2.2.11 will be removed from the final
3052     > 2.2.11 release?
3053    
3054     [ Irritated mode: FULL BLAST ]
3055    
3056     Are you being stupid on purpose, or were you born that way?
3057    
3058     Go back and read the thread. Read why I'm irritated. READ. THINK.
3059     %%
3060     Understanding is a three edged sword. Do you *want* to get the point?
3061     %%
3062     ["MVS uses quite heavy algorithms for swapping"]
3063     On Mon, Aug 02, 1999 at 07:55:32PM +0200, Lieven Marchand wrote:
3064     > Last time I looked at it, it got to the point they had moved some
3065     > ASSISTs into microcode. IIRC, some manipulations of the process
3066     > block. I doubt Intel/Sun/MIPS/IBM is going to accomodate Linux quite
3067     > that much ;-)
3068    
3069     IBM is really really good on process technology. They have had to be.
3070     %%
3071     MVS spends a lot of time running OS algorithms to allow full
3072     preemption that Linux wastes on running user applications.
3073     %%
3074     [comments on the gcc-2.95 release]
3075     <QUOTE>
3076     I'm having problems compiling it for HP-UX 10.20. Any ideas?
3077    
3078     (I haven't actually finished downloading it yet, but I just know I'm
3079     gonna have problems with this crappy OS ;-)
3080     </QUOTE>
3081     %%
3082     The Internet interprets Windows as damage,
3083     and routes around it.
3084    
3085     Roger Larsson
3086     Skellefteå
3087     %%
3088     [configuring gcc]
3089     Noone should use --prefix=/usr without --with-local-prefix=/usr/local
3090     %%
3091     'You can solve any programming problem with another level of indirection,
3092     except the problem of too many levels of indirection.'
3093     %%
3094     [http://www.itknowledge.com/tpj/issues/vol4_1/tpj0401-0015.html]
3095    
3096     Z-code interpreters have also been written in Java; unfortunately, when it
3097     comes to cross-platform compatibility, Java's user-interface classes are
3098     finicky and unstable--just ask anyone who's tried to reason with the AWT
3099     on different JVMs.
3100    
3101     [and later]
3102    
3103     Pilfer is a practical implementation of two of the cardinal rules of
3104     adventure gaming:
3105    
3106     1.Anything that is not nailed down is mine.
3107     2.Anything that I can pry loose is not nailed down.
3108     %%
3109     [the ||-operator can be thought of as "or", && can be thought of as
3110     "and", but how would you call the ??-operator?]
3111    
3112     >>>>> "NK" == Nathan Kurz <nate@valleytel.net> writes:
3113    
3114     NK> ?? -> huh?
3115    
3116     That's a great name. The huh? operator.
3117    
3118     <chaim>
3119     %%
3120     `One of the reasons we continue to use Fortran is that it's easier to fix
3121     code written without attention to such details in Fortran than in other
3122     languages. To put it another way, Fortran is the only language where
3123     people who barely get by with their numerical skills can "write useful
3124     numerical code." Many times those people are the only experts in their
3125     specialty available to put a needed procedure into practice.'
3126     %%
3127     [Moderator der Sending "Teatime" auf "Radio Okerwelle", 1999-07-12]
3128     Ich muß schließlich hören was ich sage, damit ich weiß, was ich denke.
3129     %%
3130     [Dr. Dobbs #8, 1999, describing how you can AVOID downloading or executing
3131     Java applets, scripts and ActiveX controls while _parsing_(!) an html
3132     page]
3133     ... you must utilize IOleControl::OnAmbientPropertyChange with the
3134     value DISPID_AMBIENT_DLCONTROL. Before you can do this, however, you
3135     must call IOleObject::SetClientSite so that IOleControl will work
3136     properly. This is the reason you derive from IOleClientSite, even
3137     though you don't extend its functionality in any way. After the call to
3138     OnAmbientPropertyChange, IE4 will call your Invoke method to check the
3139     value of DISPID_AMBIENT_DLCONTROL. Invoke simply sets the correct bits to
3140     disable the behaviour you don't want and returns NOERROR.
3141     [Still interested in knowing how you can disable the "file not found"
3142     dialog box that will pop up when you try to parse a non-accessible file?]
3143     %%
3144     [Linus, whom I quote rarely ;-]
3145     Message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an
3146     excercise in computer science masturbation. It may feel good, but you
3147     don't actually get anything DONE.
3148     %%
3149     Advantages of Windows NT over Linux:
3150     * It's easier to explain the crash was not your fault.
3151     * You've to remember only one solution all to your problems: Reboot.
3152     * You can use your mouse to type an email-message.
3153     %%
3154     > 1) On the PIII, there is the capability to get a system unique serial
3155     > number from the CPU. Does Linux read this data already? Is there plans to
3156     > read the serial number and then disable the capability (maybe so you could
3157     > get the serial number from the OS)?
3158    
3159     Current Linux disables it and doesn't save the value.
3160     %%
3161     [CRYPTO-GRAM 1999-06-15]
3162     "Microsoft set the security state-of-the-art back 25 years with DOS, and
3163     they have continued that legacy to this day."
3164     %%
3165     [From "The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature", by Thomas Scoville]
3166     "In a world increasingly dominated by image culture (TV, movies, .jpg
3167     files), UNIX remains rooted in the culture of the word."
3168     %%
3169     > If it is clearly documented that will not happen.
3170    
3171     Yeah, sure. Unfortunately, if the "correct" treatment of this feature
3172     means to change a dozen source files (and rth's comments make me fear
3173     that that's the case), the chance that someone, somewhere forgets to say
3174     exactly why these changes were necessary (and on what other changes in
3175     other files they depend) is far larger than I want to consider. We've
3176     seen this before. Lucky we are that some long time gcc-hackers are
3177     still among us, who might remark: Oh yes, that's undefined by the C
3178     Standard, but it happens to be an extension gcc supports ... Seen that,
3179     got the T-shirt.
3180     %%
3181     Subject: Re: Linux and aliasing?
3182     From: Joe Buck <jbuck@Synopsys.COM>
3183     Date: Fri, 4 Jun 99 10:00:16 PDT
3184     To: torvalds@transmeta.com (Linus Torvalds)
3185     Cc: craig@jcb-sc.com, jbuck@Synopsys.COM, mark@codesourcery.com,
3186     davem@redhat.com, chip@perlsupport.com, egcs@egcs.cygnus.com
3187     X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
3188    
3189     Linus writes, to Craig:
3190    
3191     > I haven't maintained a compiler long-term. I _have_ maintained a larger,
3192     > and arguably mode complex system with many more degrees of freedom and
3193     > thus choices than gcc.
3194    
3195     No, gcc is substantially larger than the Linux kernel (on the order of 10x
3196     larger, as anyone can easily verify). gcc does not need to deal with race
3197     conditions, so in that sense it is simpler, but in other respects it is
3198     far more complex than the kernel.
3199    
3200     [NOTE for the reader: this is not really true, as the device drivers
3201     bomb the comparison away, but the complexity argument still holds]
3202    
3203     [ personal insults deleted, perhaps the author is in need of a vacation ]
3204     %%
3205     Subject: Re: Linux and aliasing?
3206     From: craig@jcb-sc.com
3207     To: torvalds@transmeta.com
3208    
3209     >I want the _user_ to be able to give input.
3210     [...]
3211     >I happen to think that the "explicit cast invalidates the alias
3212     >information" rule is the simplest and best one, and gives the user the
3213     >best control without adding things like new attributes or other ways to
3214     >let the user be in control.
3215    
3216     In other words, you believe you are a better language designer than
3217     the ISO C people as well as the gcc maintainers, despite the fact
3218     that you know, what, *nothing* about language design, and *nothing*
3219     about compiler design and, especially, long-term maintenance of
3220     compilers?
3221     %%
3222     Subject: Re: Linux and aliasing?
3223     From: Joe Buck <jbuck@Synopsys.COM>
3224    
3225     Linus writes:
3226     > Oh, you don't expect me to complain about bad code generation when I know
3227     > gcc could do better?
3228    
3229     Oh, don't worry, we expect you to complain, and in a rude and insulting
3230     matter at that. We're used to it. It seems that you were a nicer guy
3231     before you had so many worshippers.
3232     %%
3233     Subject: Re: Linux and aliasing?
3234     From: Branko Cibej <branko.cibej@hermes.si>
3235     Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 10:07:09 +0200
3236     To: egcs@egcs.cygnus.com
3237     X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (WinNT; I)
3238    
3239     Linus Torvalds wrote:
3240    
3241     > I think it's a damn shame that instead of technical arguments _everything_
3242     > revolves around people reading the standard as if it was the bible, and
3243     > trying to make people feel guilty for not really caring. It's not a sin to
3244     > just want to get good code without having to do magic contortions, guys.
3245    
3246     Why, Linus, it's trivial to do! Use MSVC instead of egcs, then you can do
3247    
3248     #pragma optimize("a", on/off)
3249    
3250     around every single statement, if you like. It even supports anonymous unions
3251     _and_ structs, and is only slightly influenced by the ISO C standard.
3252    
3253     They'll even sell you a version that can generate code for the alpha!
3254    
3255     >:->
3256    
3257     Brane
3258    
3259    
3260     P.S.: Just for the record: I, a "real user" and (imnsho) a "clever programmer"
3261     who "know what I'm doing", at least most of the time, and who do not "read the
3262     standard as if it were a bible", vote for having a standard-conforming
3263     compiler that's not bloated by a ton of marginally useful (or even useless)
3264     features. If I want featuritis, I know where I can get it.
3265    
3266    
3267     P.P.S: They can't even spell "optimise" ...
3268     %%
3269     You can have it Soon, Cheap, and Working; choose *two*
3270     %%
3271     "Scientific" studies have found that a 2.2.x Linux router with
3272     fast-switching enabled, using Tulip 100baseT cards, can melt a
3273     high-end Cisco's 100baseT interfaces.
3274     %%
3275     1) Thread switching is faster than process switching by a little bit on Linux
3276     2) Process switching on linux is faster than thread switching on NT
3277     3) Almost anything is faster than process switching on NT
3278     %%
3279     [gimp-developers, on the use of keyboard modifiers for drawing tools]
3280    
3281     > Simple. Powerful. Fast. Choose at most two.
3282    
3283     Perhaps this should be an option in the preferences dialog? :)
3284     %%
3285     [perl is cryptic??]
3286     Subject: @{$${->{{{{~{}~{{{NO CARRIER
3287     From: Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi>
3288     Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 21:55:37 +0300 (EET DST)
3289    
3290     We have still a long way to go-- from the zsh-workers mailing list:
3291    
3292     : Just thought of a trivial way to take a lot of grief out of parameter
3293     : substitution. This patch makes the following valid:
3294     :
3295     : ${${${${(f)"$(typeset)"}:#*local *\=*}%%\=*}##* }
3296     :
3297     : replacing the equivalent but grotesquer
3298     :
3299     : "${(@)${(@)${(@)${(@f)$(typeset)}:#*local *\=*}%%\=*}##* }"
3300     %%
3301     Long noun chains don't automatically imply security. - Bruce Schneier
3302     %%
3303     > |> Spoken as a true C programmer. However you are wrong. Case-preserving, but
3304     > |> insensitive, is the CORRECT way for file systems. Capitalization should not
3305     > |> matter for interpretation of a file name just as it doesn't matter for
3306     > |> interpreting words in any human language.
3307     >
3308     > This is wrong. In German, there is a big difference between "paar" und
3309     > "Paar" (the first meaning "a few", the second "pair").
3310    
3311     The classic example:
3312    
3313     "Ich habe liebe Genossen in Moskau" - I've got dead comreds in Moscow.
3314     "Ich habe Liebe genossen in Moskau" - I enjoyed love in Moscow.
3315     %%
3316     [do we need oo-style IO::File class in perl?]
3317     >_You_ aren't gonna code "use IO::File".
3318    
3319     And there's no reason for anyone else to, either, especially
3320     once Nick finishes the Larry-blessed autovivification of
3321     lvaluabled undefs in open(), socket(), etc.
3322    
3323     What's next, a String class for Perl?
3324    
3325     --tom
3326     %%
3327     [some example of the kind of mail I sometimes receive:]
3328     i was just trying to help u out not hurt you in anyway ok i have the fbi
3329     working on something for me
3330     u havent done anything to me ok and the sherriffs department came by to talk
3331     to me nutting concerning y ok
3332     piece
3333     russ
3334     %%
3335     [From "Basic Information about Unix", common commands:]
3336    
3337     pico (text editor for beginners)
3338     vi (text editor for advanced users)
3339     emacs (text editor for advanced users)
3340     ed (text editor for beginners)
3341     %%
3342     There is no reason in principle that a Perl script shouldn't start with
3343    
3344     use Python;
3345    
3346     and appear to work exactly like Python from there to the end of the file.
3347     Except maybe faster. :-)
3348    
3349     Larry
3350     %%
3351     > Perl6 gives us an opportunity to re-examine every feature at a microscopic level.
3352    
3353     just what I'm afraid of... I thought this was to be Perl6, not Perl
3354     2010.
3355    
3356     (Perl 2010: The Spaced Oddity?)
3357     %%
3358     The X.25 specification is not a particularly easy document to
3359     read. Contrary to expectations, it does not make great use of diagrams
3360     and tables that help to explain the workings of the protocols that
3361     it contains. Instead the document makes use of many ambiguous English
3362     descriptions of the actions that should take place, allied with a complete
3363     lack of fluency in its prose descriptions, make for a very confusing
3364     document. It is a wonder that any correct X.25 implementations have ever
3365     been created.
3366     %%
3367     > Joe: (walking into McDonalds) Hi, I'd like a Big Mac.
3368     >
3369     > Cashier: Okay, here's your Big Mac and here's your Coke. That'll be
3370     > $3.99.
3371     >
3372     > Joe: Uh, I don't want a Coke.
3373     >
3374     > Cashier: Sorry, they're bundled.
3375     >
3376     > Joe: What? I'm not paying for a Coke!
3377     >
3378     > Cashier: You don't; the Coke is free.
3379     >
3380     > Joe: But wasn't a Big Mac $2.49 last week?
3381     >
3382     > Cashier: Sure, but this latest Big Mac is far more innovative. It's
3383     > got integrated Coke!
3384     >
3385     > Joe: I already bought a Snapple across the street... I'm not going
3386     > to drink the Coke.
3387     >
3388     > Cashier: Then you can't have the burger.
3389     >
3390     > Joe: Okay, fine, I will pay the $3.99 and throw the Coke away.
3391     >
3392     > Cashier: Oh, you can't do that. They're seamlessly integrated. Totally
3393     > inseparable.
3394     >
3395     > Joe: How can that be? They're two totally separate things!
3396     >
3397     > Cashier: No, watch. (takes Big Mac, dunks it in a tank of Coke) See?
3398     >
3399     > Joe: Why did you just do that?!
3400     >
3401     > Cashier: It's a benefit to the consumer. Otherwise you'd end up with
3402     > two different, inconsistent tastes. This way you're assured of a
3403     > continuous taste across all your foods.
3404     %%
3405     Threads are like salt. I like salt, you like salt, we all
3406     like salt, but we eat more pasta than salt.
3407 root 1.40 Rob Pike
3408 root 1.1 %%
3409     From: Nathan Torkington <gnat@frii.com>
3410    
3411     Don't be bitten by Perl, get crushed by Python.
3412     Python: Perl for the punctuation-phobic.
3413     It takes 4 days for a python to digest a hamster, but only 2 days
3414     for you to digest this book.
3415     Python: it's really better but nobody uses it.
3416     Python: just for the whitespace of it.
3417     Join The Trickle
3418     Python: more popular than Dylan!
3419     Python: not written by crackheads in a gutter!
3420     Are you uptight? Try our new Python Hangups series.
3421     %%
3422     Well Microsoft announced this new language called COOL which I can
3423     honestly say that I have seen NO CRAPPY CODE written in. OTOH it appears
3424     that to achieve this miraculous status by the simple technique of being
3425     complete and utter vapourware.
3426    
3427     Microsoft, taking the Business out of COBOL.
3428     %%
3429     [From "Programming Perl"]
3430    
3431     We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a
3432     programmer: laziness, impatience and hubris
3433     %%
3434     [Alexander Stepanov, creator of the STL]:
3435    
3436     Yes. STL is not object oriented. I think that object orientedness is
3437     almost as much of a hoax as Artificial Intelligence. I have yet to
3438     see an interesting piece of code that comes from these OO people. In
3439     a sense, I am unfair to AI: I learned a lot of stuff from the MIT AI
3440     Lab crowd, they have done some really fundamental work: Bill Gosper's
3441     Hakmem is one of the best things for a programmer to read. AI might
3442     not have had a serious foundation, but it produced Gosper and Stallman
3443     (Emacs), Moses (Macsyma) and Sussman (Scheme, together with Guy Steele). I
3444     find OOP technically unsound. It attempts to decompose the world in
3445     terms of interfaces that vary on a single type. To deal with the real
3446     problems you need multisorted algebras - families of interfaces that
3447     span multiple types. I find OOP philosophically unsound. It claims that
3448     everything is an object. Even if it is true it is not very interesting -
3449     saying that everything is an object is saying nothing at all. I find OOP
3450     methodologically wrong. It starts with classes. It is as if mathematicians
3451     would start with axioms. You do not start with axioms - you start with
3452     proofs. Only when you have found a bunch of related proofs, can you
3453     come up with axioms. You end with axioms. The same thing is true in
3454     programming: you have to start with interesting algorithms. Only when you
3455     understand them well, can you come up with an interface that will let them
3456     work.
3457     [...]
3458     You can't write a generic max() in Java that takes two arguments of some
3459     type and has a return value of that same type. Inheritance and interfaces
3460     don't help. And if they cannot implement max or swap or linear search,
3461     what chances do they have to implement really complex stuff? These are my
3462     litmus tests: if a language allows me to implement max and swap and linear
3463     search generically - then it has some potential.
3464     [...] Java is clearly an example of a money oriented programming (MOP).
3465     It might be successful - after all, MS DOS was - and it might be a
3466     profitable thing for all your readers to learn Java, but it has no
3467     intellectual value whatsoever.
3468    
3469     [Later, on OMG protocols like CORBA]
3470     I am old enough to remember all the networking standards that were coming
3471     out in the seventies. Who remembers them now?
3472     %%
3473     [Stiftung Warentest "test", WDR 19990419:]
3474     "Schlechtes muß nicht billig sein..."
3475     %%
3476     [/bin/false on solaris]
3477     #!/usr/bin/sh
3478     # Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 AT&T
3479     # All Rights Reserved
3480    
3481     # THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF AT&T
3482     # The copyright notice above does not evidence any
3483     # actual or intended publication of such source code.
3484    
3485     #ident "@(#)false.sh 1.6 93/01/11 SMI" /* SVr4.0 1.3 */
3486     [obvious invocation of exit snipped to avoid lawsuit. Yup, *1* line.]
3487     %%
3488     <Aspirin> but ee uses imlib, and imlib is documented to take 4.7 days to start up on a 486 by Alan Cox.
3489     %%
3490     When a tar built for SunOS runs under Solaris, it's incapable of opening
3491     or creating files with "lib/locale" in the path. It replaces that part of
3492     the path with "lib/oldlocale".
3493     %%
3494     [Bruce Schneier in CRYPTO-GRAM, 19990315]
3495    
3496     "Microsoft prefers to treat security holes as a public relations problem,
3497     rather than fixing the actual problem."
3498    
3499     [further down: the official answer from Microsoft about a problem where
3500     just viewing a website would invisibly run unrestricted code on your
3501     machine]
3502    
3503     "Microsoft appreciates your input regarding this issue, however in lieu
3504     of modern technology being what it is, we all need to be personally
3505     responsible for knowing what we are downloading off the internet."
3506    
3507     [see http://www.panix.com/~dfoster/sec/chrono.html]
3508     %%
3509     [Steve Funston wrote to me, after I unsubscribed him from gimp-perl for
3510     spamming:]
3511    
3512     >fuck you ass hole duh you are just a big fucker
3513     >>
3514     >>An error was generated by your request to our servers:
3515     >>------------------------------------------------------
3516     >>
3517     >>Your Email: bfunston@mich.com
3518     >>
3519     >>ERROR: You are not a member of this list.
3520    
3521     [and later, misquoting my name:]
3522     >mark is not only a big fat liar but he is an ass hole.
3523     %%
3524     [How much of the microsoft shares does Bill Gates hold?]
3525     He has 19.8%. Paul Allen has 5.5%. Steve Ballmer has 4.7%.
3526     %%
3527     > And what's wrong with being named Peter?
3528     If linus was peter, Linux would be called penix? (just guessing) ;)
3529     %%
3530     According to Microsoft KnowledgeBase article Q216641, Microsoft Windows
3531     95/98 are limited to an uptime of *exactly* 49.7 days.
3532    
3533     --found by Vincent Janelle (Random)
3534     %%
3535     > Leave that to RMS.
3536    
3537     If you had just sat through the horrific panel with Larry,
3538     RMS, Richard, and Linus, you would want to leave a whole lot
3539     else to RMS -- like a couple of megatons of the manure that
3540     he's full of.
3541    
3542     Support BSD/Linux.
3543    
3544     --tom
3545     %%
3546     "The FSF is a cult -- don't support them." --Rob Pike
3547     %%
3548     We are Linux. Resistance is an indication that you missed the point.
3549     %%
3550     > Perhaps the cracker himself (itself? ;) isn't bright enough to delete shell
3551     > history, but his shrink-wrapped cracking tools might be a lot brighter...
3552    
3553     Some of them are. A surprising number aren't. A personal favorite of
3554     mine was the log from a cracker who couldn't figure out how to untar
3555     and install the trojan package he'd ftped onto the machine. he tried a
3556     few times, and then eventually gave up and logged out.
3557     %%
3558     [on channel #gimp]
3559    
3560     [msg(Xachbot)] insult me
3561     [XachBot(xachbot@home.xach.com)] schmorp: David Miller would never approve of that.
3562     %%
3563     [the creation]
3564     http://www.toodarkpark.org/caffeine-cgi-bin/textfile/net-hx.txt
3565     %%
3566     THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP
3567    
3568     This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of
3569     an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said
3570     to be useful in protheththing lithtth.
3571     %%
3572     Ich zog hier nur einen Pseudoschluss aus dieser sache, den ich nicht
3573     selbst schliesse.
3574     Norbert Harry Marzahn, selbsternannter "Judaaer"
3575     am 13.12.98 in de.alt.ufo
3576     %%
3577     According to Gurusamy Sarathy:
3578     > "Resistance is futile, you will be modularized."
3579    
3580     No:
3581    
3582     use Borg;
3583     make_threat(-type => 'standard', -doom => 'modularized');
3584    
3585     --
3586     Chip Salzenberg - a.k.a. - <chip@perlsupport.com>
3587     %%
3588     "And over here, ladies and gentlemen, may I draw your attention to
3589     the 'posicks box', a mechanism within one of the late 20th century
3590     sub-I hardware gestalt integration agents (then called 'operating
3591     systems', this particular one being referred to as 'windows' by
3592     its commercial-mimetic sustainer), designed so as to provide the
3593     appearance and functionality required to comply with one of the few
3594     agreed-upon integration schemas (sub-I, of course) available at the
3595     time. Unsurprising given the non-integration imperitives used by the
3596     agent's sustainter, this mechanism was demonstrated to be an ingenious
3597     non-integration ploy that, while supporting the integration schema,
3598     failed to support the local interconnect schemas that this agent
3599     specialized in. This produced a classic focus rift in the knowledge
3600     pool, benefiting the sustainer in the short run due to the focus
3601     concentration facilities available to commericial-class mimetic
3602     sustainers. Practically, this wasn't a significant loss, in the long
3603     run, as neither the 'windows' or 'posicks' schemas were relevant to
3604     modern quasi-I agents. These two do live on, however, in a few niches.
3605     'posicks' is used as the integration schema between most nano-scale
3606     logic units (a fact that only a few meta-experts still need to be
3607     aware of), and 'windows' survives, for religious-mimetic reasons, as
3608     the human-communication agent in a few stereotypical toasters and soap
3609     dispensers."
3610    
3611     [Kenneth Albanowski]
3612     %%
3613     Perl ist ein Schmerzmittel.
3614     Wenn Du bei der Speicherverwaltung oder der Stringverarbeitung
3615     unter C Schmerzen hast, nimm Perl.
3616     -- Kristian Koehntopp
3617     %%
3618     > Why Windows NT Server 4.0 continues to exist in the enterprise would be a
3619     > topic appropriate for an investigative report in the field of psychology or
3620     > marketing, not an article on information technology -- John Kirch
3621     %%
3622     [bei einer mündlichen Nachprüfung in BWL, Uni Hamburg]
3623    
3624     Prof: "Was ist Agio?"
3625     Student: "Weiß ich nicht."
3626     Prof: "OK, durchgefallen!
3627     Student: "Ich habe aber Anspruch auf drei Fragen in der mündlichen Prüfung!"
3628     Prof: "Klar, was ist Disagio?"
3629     Student: "..."
3630     Prof: "...und was ist der Unterschied zwischen Agio und Disagio?"
3631     Student: "..."
3632     Prof: "...durchgefallen!"
3633     %%
3634     Chaim Frenkel <chaimf@pobox.com> writes:
3635    
3636     > Just morbid curiosity,
3637     >
3638     > Are there _any_ unix boxes that _can't_ build Perl?
3639    
3640     Yes. Broken ones.
3641    
3642     dgris
3643     %%
3644     "The kerastion is a musical instrument which cannot be heard."
3645     -- A Borges story in ten words.
3646     %%
3647     "C combines the power of assembly language
3648     with the flexibility of assembly language."
3649     %%
3650     ...
3651    
3652     <AOL>
3653    
3654     Me too!
3655    
3656     </AOL>
3657    
3658     Tig
3659     %%
3660     ping -p 2b2b2b415448300d <hostname>
3661     %%
3662     unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;yes;umount;sleep
3663     %%
3664     From: Dick Balaska <dick@buckosoft.com>
3665    
3666     I sit behind an NT dual P2/400 256MB for too many hours each day. It is
3667     "slow". One of my (fun) tasks is CD mastering. When i'm loading a 500MB
3668     wav file into the editor, the machine goes useless for two minutes while
3669     loading the wave file. Basically its just reading the file and writing it
3670     to swap. The CPU is at 5%. No Alt-Tab between apps during that time. No
3671     chance of putting the mouse over a button (too many dropped ticks). The
3672     NT kernel is just sitting waiting for I/O completions.
3673    
3674     Linux would be embarrassed to be that bad.
3675    
3676     I expected M$ to never fix this because its not "broken". However, i
3677     expect billg to start reading the above mentioned literal benchmarks and
3678     get really really pissed.
3679    
3680     Especially since i believe 1999 and 2000 to see Linux *really* start
3681     to cut into M$'s server market share.
3682     %%
3683     > Hello I'm wondering if there's a lower traffic mailing list that exists
3684     > that's strictly important kernel announcements and not general chat. I
3685     > need to stay informed but I can't handle 250 messages in a 24 hour
3686     > period.
3687     >
3688     > Sorry for the insignificant post..
3689     > Nic
3690     >
3691    
3692     Thank you for contributing to the problem.
3693    
3694     -hpa
3695     %%
3696     grep... grep... grep... (frog with unix stuck in his throat)
3697     %%
3698     "If users are made to understand that the system administrator's job is to
3699     make computers run, and not to make them happy, they can, in fact, be made
3700     happy most of the time. If users are allowed to believe that the system
3701     administrator's job is to make them happy, they can, in fact, never be made
3702     happy."
3703     - - -Paul Evans (as quoted by Barb Dijker in "Managing Support Staff", LISA '97)
3704     %%
3705     From: "Daniel P. Stasinski" <dannys@KAREMOR.COM>
3706     Subject: Microsoft Hotmail
3707     To: BUGTRAQ@NETSPACE.ORG
3708    
3709     I contacted Microsoft/Hotmail asking them to close the account
3710     of that was listed in the backdoored tcp wrapper source code.
3711     I also forwarded the offending code.
3712    
3713     The word back from them is that they will not close it. Theft
3714     of passwords and hacking does not violate thier terms of
3715     service.
3716    
3717     Daniel
3718     %%
3719     Any UNIX-killer must also have:
3720     ...
3721     * cool name like Linux (serious, these fail: GNU Hurd FreeBSD 386BSD)
3722     %%
3723     "Not all things worth doing are worth doing well."
3724     It's a phrase I use a lot. :-)
3725     [RJL]
3726     %%
3727     As John Whittaker says: ``It's UNIX. That doesn't necessarily mean it's
3728     right.''
3729     %%
3730     [Richard Stallman on the new _Pragma operator in C9X:]
3731    
3732     Amazing--they actually listened.
3733     %%
3734     That "UNIX" term is very negative. People often associate it with
3735     SCO OpenServer, Wyse terminals, and 60 people on a 386. The UNIX
3736     that people know is just awful. It looks something like this:
3737    
3738     # less foo
3739     sh: command not found
3740     # more foo
3741     sh: command not found
3742     # emacs foo
3743     sh: command not found
3744     # ed foo
3745     0
3746     help
3747     ?
3748     quit
3749     ?
3750     exit
3751     ?
3752     DIE!!!!!!!!!!
3753     ?
3754    
3755     [Albert D. Cahalan]
3756     %%
3757     Subject: Re: Stop blib warning in future releases?
3758     From: andreas.koenig@anima.de (Andreas J. Koenig)
3759     Date: 05 Jan 1999 03:15:37 +0100
3760    
3761     tim> Sure. Strictly speaking
3762    
3763     tim> use blib ':quiet';
3764    
3765     tim> would be most correct in style.
3766    
3767     Only German native speakers are allowed to treat adverbs adjectively.
3768     For the rest I'd recommend [...]
3769     %%
3770     [A new U.S. Law implementing a WIPO treaty]
3771     No person shall circumvent a technological protection measure that
3772     effectively controls access to a work protected under this title
3773     [Or, in other words, applied cryptanalysis will be illegal.
3774     too bad --- ]
3775     %%
3776     Microsoft - Is it going to work today?
3777     %%
3778     Subject: Re: [gimp-devel] GIF plugin legal issues
3779    
3780     > Actually, my understanding is that Unisys doesn't currently enforce the
3781     > licensing cost on free software, but maybe I am mistaken.
3782    
3783     The general wording, spoken by an unnamed GIMP developer, is, if you'll
3784     pardon the language, "Unisys can go fuck itself."
3785     %%
3786     [once on linux-kernel:]
3787     > >who are you why on yahoo when iprint sf16fmi i fond you i need drv
3788     > Does anyone have the secret decoder ring to make sense of this?
3789     he's confused about us showing up in a search match on yahoo, but needs
3790     driver(s) for his sf16fmi thingy.
3791     %%
3792     > Did you try to compile kdeadmin from the CVS tree ?
3793    
3794     No I ran the KDE binaries. Im not interested in broken programs that
3795     include wrong #include files in their source.
3796     %%
3797     [unix-faq]
3798    
3799     Someday, you are going to accidentally type something like
3800     "rm * .foo", and find you just deleted "*" instead of "*.foo".
3801     Consider it a rite of passage.
3802     %%
3803     "There's one word that strikes fear into nuclear scientists..."
3804     "Oops."
3805     -- MST3K
3806     %%
3807     Seems like 80-bit spills would be closer to IEEE, if not close enough to
3808     claim full support. Off-hand I'd say people would be happier with
3809     those numeric properties than with the current situation.
3810    
3811     I'll think about the esoterica (probably break down and ask people here).
3812     It would certainly make gcc the most reliable x86 floating-point compiler
3813     I know. Sun's does something similar to -ffloat-store by default (gee,
3814     look at how fast that ultra is), and Microsoft's runs off the end of the
3815     stack at run-time . I don't know what Intel's does, so I'm not considering
3816     it. ;)
3817     %%
3818     >I was using the localtime function to change time_t into it's various
3819     >human-readable parts. I noticed that $year gets returned as 98 and
3820     >not 1998. I tested a few different unices and got the same result.
3821     >This is expected behavior based on the examples I've seen and my own
3822     >testing. My question is how is this y2k compliant?
3823    
3824     What part of your C library's documentation on localtime(3), the perlfunc
3825     documentation on the Perl localtime function, the perlfaq4 entry on `Does
3826     Perl have a year 2000 problem?', and the Y2K document on www.perl.com
3827     did you find to be unclear on the answer to this question?
3828    
3829     --tom
3830     %%
3831     > * Have you ever wondered how life began ?
3832    
3833     In a laboratory somewhere at Bell Labs.
3834    
3835     >Why does it end ?
3836    
3837     Ask the X3J11 committee.
3838    
3839     > * Can you tell WHY there is life ? What is the purpose of it ?
3840     > * Can YOU do anything to make your life worth living ? WHAT ?
3841    
3842     To promote the the DEATH OF ANSI C! K+R FOREVER! DOWN WITH PORTABILITY!
3843     %%
3844     "Unix *is* Perl's IDE!"
3845     -- Tom Christiansen
3846     %%
3847     [Sputnik]
3848    
3849     Do you honestly think the Americans would mention a Soviet success? :-)
3850     A number of years back I saw an exhibition in the US on the development of
3851     supersonic passenger aircraft. They forgot to mention Concorde. It
3852     wouldn't surprise me in the least if most people at NASA had never heard
3853     of Sputnik.
3854     %%
3855     NTFS by default adds unnecessary serialization to an extent that
3856     even older file systems such as FFS do not, and its performance
3857     characteristics reflect that. In fairness, it should be said that it is
3858     the superior approach for most removable media without software control
3859     of ejection (e.g. IBM PC floppies).
3860     %%
3861     Never attribute to malice what could as well be explained by stupidity.
3862     - Hanlons razor -
3863     %%
3864     Shallit's Razor: Never attribute to conspiracy what may be adequately
3865     explained by stupidity or incompetence.
3866     %%
3867     According to Chris Nandor:
3868     > I thought about creating a web interface to input, edit, delete entries,
3869     > but that would have taken me longer, been more complex and less secure, and
3870     > offered no significant advantages.
3871    
3872     That one's in the quotes file. Thanks.
3873     %%
3874     My friend who had a Compaq called one day when his built-in cdrom drive
3875     stopped responding. Their answer "its a virus. Reinstal Windows". So he did
3876     (?) and it still didn't work. He called them and they said "its a virus,
3877     reinstall." "But I just installed. If there is a virus, it came from YOUR
3878     quick restore disk." "No, no virus there, but you DO have a virus. My paper
3879     in front of me says so."
3880    
3881     He took it back and bought a Gateway.
3882     %%
3883     9. Deinde, ne in posterum a XII kalendas aprilis aequinoctium recedat,
3884     statuimus bissextum quarto quoque anno (uti mos est) continuari debere,
3885     praeterquam in centesimis annis; qui, quamvis bissextiles antea semper
3886     fuerint, qualem etiam esse volumus annum MDC, post eum tamen qui
3887     deinceps consequentur centesimi non omnes bissextiles sint, sed in
3888     quadringentis quibusque annis primi quique tres centesimi sine bissexto
3889     transigantur, quartus vero quisque centesimus bissextilis sit, ita ut
3890     annus MDCC, MDCCC, MDCCCC bissextiles non sint. Anno vero MM, more
3891     consueto dies bissextus intercaletur, februario dies XXIX continente,
3892     idemque ordo intermittendi intercalandique bissextum diem in
3893     quadringentis quibusque annis perpetuo conservetur.
3894     %%
3895     You obviously have not dealt with Microsoft Winnt 4.0
3896     and all the Service Pack then. While one Service Pack
3897     did somewhat correct the Y2K problem was not aware that
3898     2000 was in fact a leap year. There was no way to set
3899     the date to Feb 29, 2000.
3900     %%
3901     "Ernst Lehmann, die Organisationsredundanz beim Cluster-Treffen"
3902     %%
3903     HP Computer NEWS 3/98 about HP 2000/CN printer (page 24): "Darüber
3904     hinaus ... hat der HP 2000C/CN durch den Einsatz von Intel MMX-
3905     Technologie Zugriff auf deren Farbtabellen und kann so Farbbilder
3906     schneller verarbeiten" (A mistake made when translating. It's hard to
3907     get the wrong meaning if translated back to English, sorry.)
3908     %%
3909     From: Robert Lipe
3910     > > I program computers with no screens and no keyboards for a living.
3911     > > Switches and front-panels are a LUXURY! :-)
3912     >
3913     > But I guess you are not _programming_ these computers without a keyboard
3914     > and/or screen.
3915    
3916     Are you familiar with the Vulcan Mind Meld?
3917     %%
3918     Subject: Re: [fwd from comp.lang.python] Re: Python 2 ideas [Re: access
3919     From: Tuomas Lukka <lukka@fas.harvard.edu>
3920    
3921     On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
3922     > use pedantic;
3923     > use strict 'code';
3924     >
3925     > or whatever is the syntax to switch Perl into 'dull'/'pythonish' mode.
3926    
3927     use syntax 'python';
3928    
3929     Let's just embrace&extend'em ;) ;)
3930    
3931     %%
3932     Thus it was written in the epistle of Larry Wall,
3933     >
3934     > Having discussed all this thoroughly at the Hacker's Conference this
3935     > past weekend, I've come to the conclusion that Y2K will be traumatic
3936     > primarily because people *think* it will be traumatic. A panic is a
3937     > panic whether or not it's justified. People get trampled in panics.
3938     >
3939     > It should be illegal to yell "Y2K" in a crowded economy. :-)
3940     %%
3941     [rfc1925]
3942     Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can't have all three).
3943     %%
3944     [Alan Cox, why not port hurd to sgi, instead of linux]
3945     > A possible minus is the message-passing between the servers which might
3946     > be time-consuming.
3947    
3948     "Yesterdays technology, next week" to quote an OSI saying
3949     %%
3950     UNIX versions of ctags handle the C language, and often Pascal and Fortran
3951     77. Sometimes, they even handle assembly language. Almost universally,
3952     however, they do not handle C++...
3953     [from "learning the vi editor"]
3954     %%
3955     > correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a thread about this a few
3956     > months back that resolved the ping -f localhost as a ping bug.
3957    
3958     Indeed, as Alan Cox said:
3959    
3960     So get a non-buggy ping(8) client.
3961    
3962     and as Ecclesiastes said:
3963    
3964     Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been
3965     already of old time, which was before us.
3966     There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any
3967     remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.
3968    
3969     Regards,
3970     Tigran.
3971     %%
3972     SNMP stands for Security Not My Problem
3973     %%
3974     [slightly broken, though...]
3975     /* "Hello World" in B for 64-bit hardware! */
3976     hw [0] "Hello World.*n";
3977     main(){
3978     extrn hw;
3979     putchar(0[hw]);
3980     hw=+1;
3981     putchar(0[hw]);
3982     }
3983     %%
3984     > So what comes first the chicken or the egg? :)
3985    
3986     The egg. Always. By definition.
3987     %%
3988     > > PPS: Robert, I just made my first y2k fix to that script ;()
3989     >
3990     > Better check your scsi cables.
3991     %%
3992     Arroganz durch Wissen
3993     [Dirk Jagdmann]
3994     %%
3995     [Re: Pegasus - Gut oder Boese?]
3996     > Weil er sie dabei ja unterstuetzt. Da er aber (abgesehen von den ersten
3997     > ein- oder zweimal) nur auf Anrufen von Rosa-Girl erscheint, koennte man es
3998     > auch anders herum sagen. wenn CU Pfeift, kommt er angaloppiert 8))
3999    
4000     was aber leider bedeutet, daß usa die Rennsemmel ständig mit
4001     sich rumschleppen mu?. ^_-
4002     Nur weil die Kleine die Bimmel hat!
4003    
4004     Und wer weiß, was dieses pädophile Pferd eigentlich noch so
4005     bezwecken will... ^_-
4006     %%
4007     >James :\
4008     >
4009     >I apologize for adding a message to this possibly trivial thread.
4010    
4011     I like your sig. I hope you use it for everything you post.
4012     %%
4013     From: Mason <mason@schwanda.resnet.tamu.edu>
4014     Subject: night of the undead ip stack
4015     Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 13:03:19 -0600 (CST)
4016     %%
4017     > The person who decides to invent UNICODE support for Linux
4018     > is just asking for a black eye.
4019    
4020     But Unicode for NT is such fun!
4021    
4022     For example, the checked DbgPrint() bluescreens above DISPATCH_LEVEL
4023     if you try to print a Unicode string--the Unicode->ASCII
4024     translation tables are marked as pageable.
4025    
4026     Since as far as I know, printk() does not have any format specifiers
4027     that cause obscure kernel panics, Linux is clearly behind in this
4028     area.
4029     %%
4030     Linux: a no problem operating system for no problem people.
4031     [Lukas Grunwald]
4032     %%
4033     http://dd.sh/perlfs/:
4034    
4035     THIS IS AN EXPERIMENTAL (PRE-ALPHA) VERSION OF THE PERL FILESYSTEM.
4036     EVEN WHEN IT LOADS WITHOUT CAUSING A KERNEL PANIC, IT WILL LOCK UP
4037     YOUR MACHINE, DESTROY ALL YOUR DATA, KIDNAP YOUR FAMILY AND
4038     (DEPENDING ON SAID FAMILY'S CONFIGURATION) SHOOT YOUR CAT, DOG, AND/OR
4039     FIRST-BORN CHILD.
4040     %%
4041     [a comment on http://dd.sh/perlfs/]
4042     Forget GNU/Linux. /PerL/inux will conquer all.
4043    
4044     kill 0,1 if -x '/PerL/inux'; # request kernel mode
4045     %%
4046     [Tim Hollebeek on real arithmetic]
4047     On a machine with a sane floating point model, the results make sense.
4048     For example, my SGI workstation prints:
4049    
4050     0.00000000000000011102 1.00000000000000000000 1.00000000000000020000 1.00000000000000040000
4051    
4052     However, a machine with the Intel FPU from hell gives:
4053    
4054     0.00000000000000000005 1.00000000000000000000 1.00000000000000000000 1.00000000000000000000
4055    
4056     due to the fact that whether 1+x and 1 are the same number depends on whether
4057     the numbers are in the FPU or not.
4058     %%
4059     [Grüner Tip/Arte]
4060     Ihre Nachbarn sind zu laut und feiern andauernd Parties? Kein Problem, ihr
4061     Bohrer wird nachts um zwei spielend mit _jedem_ Lärm fertig....
4062     %%
4063     Remember, eating healthy doesn't make you live longer, it just makes it seem
4064     longer...
4065     %%
4066     [M$ about unix development tools like GCC]
4067     By the standards of the novice / intermediate developer accustomed to
4068     VB/VS/VC/VJ, these tools are incredibly primitive.
4069     %%
4070     > > Praha is nice and our university is interesting, since it is according
4071     > > to tests most complex and impractical computer science university on the
4072     > > world :) I just love it...
4073     >
4074     > Oh well, great that I won't be studying there...
4075     >
4076     It is really fun.... just now I have lesson (that reminds me that I really
4077     should go now) about set theory and infinity... it is really fun and very
4078     practical...
4079     for example that you have cinema with infinity chairs and infinity plus one
4080     person wants to see movie... what do yo do?
4081     Just let sit down the first infinity persons and then last person ask first
4082     one to move to second chair, second one to move to third and so on and
4083     everyone fits.. isn't that great to know? :))
4084    
4085     Jan Hubicka
4086     %%
4087     > template< template< template<class> class > class Tmpl> A {};
4088     [...]
4089     > I think that this construction is allowed by the ANSI C++.
4090    
4091     No, it is not. What you meant is
4092    
4093     template< template< template<class> class > class Tmpl> class A {};
4094     %%
4095     Jan Dubois writes:
4096     > A) perl-5.00553
4097     > path = \perl\5.00553\bin\MsWin32-x86\perl.exe
4098     > cc = cl.exe
4099     A performance analysis compiling with M$ compiler? Get real!
4100    
4101     [...]
4102    
4103     Ilya
4104     %%
4105     >Shouldn't the kernel compile with all combinations of options.
4106    
4107     Yes. Feel free to fix it and send a patch.
4108    
4109     p.
4110     %%
4111     [tomc]
4112     Jean-Louis provides four arguments in favor of the overloading of the
4113     logical && and || operators. Here they are:
4114    
4115     +------------------------------------------+
4116     | Other languages, notably C++, permit it. |
4117     +------------------------------------------+
4118    
4119     This one is hardly persuasive. Many languages do innumerable things
4120     that Perl does not do. Just for example, take:
4121    
4122     * Csh reparses and re-evals interpolated strings, allowing something
4123     like C<$cmd $var> to do interesting things.
4124     * The Fortran lexer (as it were), having no need of white space to
4125     infer tokens, allows C<DO I=1.10> and C<DO I=1,10> to coexist in an
4126     interesting way.
4127     * Icon has an entirely different notion of success and failure,
4128     allowing expressions like (X < Y < Z) to do interesting things.
4129     * Scheme has call-with-continuation, allowing co-routines to do
4130     interesting things.
4131     * C++ has template classes with abnormal typing rules even for that
4132     language, allowing parameterized meta-classes to do interesting
4133     things.
4134     %%
4135     Make is like Pascal: everybody likes it, so they go in and change it.
4136     --Dennis Ritchie
4137     %%
4138     perl -wlpe '}{$_=$.' file # Count the number of lines.
4139     %%
4140     [not quite duff's device, but...]
4141    
4142     switch (x)
4143     default:
4144     if (prime(x))
4145     case 2: case 3: case 5: case 7:
4146     process_prime(x);
4147     else
4148     case 4: case 6: case 8: case 9: case 10:
4149     process_composite(x);
4150     %%
4151     Is there any truth to the rumor that the number appearing
4152     after the words "Microsoft Windows" is the minimum amount of memory,
4153     in megabytes, required for execution?
4154    
4155     Craig Milo Rogers
4156     %%
4157     Mark Mielke writes:
4158     > This statement is false. The simple fact that school textbooks teach it
4159     > to be indeterminate should be enough to convince you of that.
4160    
4161     This is just another reference point about the state of education in
4162     US (apparently in Canada too?).
4163    
4164     Ilya
4165     %%
4166     [from p5p]
4167     > Now you know why threading is experimental and all, buddy.
4168    
4169     Experimental schexperimental. Anything that doesn't cause an
4170     immediate coredump is not experimental. :-) (Observant readers will
4171     note that this is a more rigorous standard than Microsoft's.)
4172    
4173     Nat
4174     %%
4175     Needless to say, Linux awk is probably gawk, which has been taking too
4176     much steroids for a while. =)
4177    
4178     --Albert Dvornik
4179     <bert@genscan.com>
4180     %%
4181     Subject: Re: zero width lookbehind considered slow
4182     From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@jhereg.perl.com>
4183     Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 17:40:37 -0500
4184    
4185     >*You* do not understand? Perl is slow...
4186    
4187     Ilya: You are formerly invited to go play in the python
4188     or tcl crowd instead of here.
4189    
4190     --tom
4191     %%
4192     >What's it? Can linux be improved too? Or has it already been improved?
4193    
4194     Linux has never done anything so stupid in the first place.
4195    
4196     Linus
4197     %%
4198     On the 8th day god created email. And got noted the world was good. Then the
4199     devil added HTML mail...
4200     %%
4201     linux/lib/vsprintf.c: * Wirzenius wrote this portably, Torvalds fucked it up :-)
4202     linux/arch/sparc64/kernel/binfmt_aout32.c: /* Fuck me plenty... */
4203     linux/arch/sparc64/kernel/ptrace.c:/* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */
4204     %%
4205     On 1998-10-11T02:37:57,
4206     Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> said:
4207    
4208     > Believe me Microsoft think Linux is a threat now. Its level with things like
4209     > java in their perceived threat list, so you can expect all the usual MS
4210     > techniques to start coming this way and very soon.
4211    
4212     Arm the gnus!
4213     %%
4214     [David Miller after (another) endless discussion with Richard Kenner]
4215    
4216     Anyways, I tired (just like everyone else) of arguing endlessly with
4217     you, you're in the past, you no longer constrain my ability to improve
4218     gcc, so go away.
4219     %%
4220     I received my copy of Visual Studio 6.0 today. I couldn't believe that it
4221     wanted to install the C++ compiler into a directory called:
4222    
4223     "\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98"
4224    
4225     But anyways, I just had to find out if it was finally possible to compile
4226     Perl (without PERL_OBJECT) with optimization (-O2).
4227     %%
4228     [on perl version numbering]
4229     > So it could be 5.006 for the developers, but "ThreadPerl" or "Perl with
4230     > Multithreads" (or some such) for the journalists, if that's what
4231     > journalists need to make them pay attention.
4232    
4233     Down that path lies "Perl version 5.006, codename `Ticklish Uvula',
4234     was released today" madness.
4235     %%
4236     [on perl version numbering]
4237     > elaine> 5.1 would be a good thing(tm) as it would draw attention,
4238     > elaine> etc. in a way that a developers versioning would. The
4239     > elaine> world is not populated by people who think the same
4240     > elaine> way. To that end, this would be a good change. Of course,
4241     > elaine> we could call it Perl99.
4242     >
4243     > To me, Perl seems to be recognized for it's language qualities, not
4244     > for marketing reasons. IMHO, perl may keep this difference with other
4245     > wintel product. More than that : Perl99, would let believe people that
4246     > it is not Y2K proofed, or still in beta (<1.00). So it's not a good
4247     > marketing name, anyway.
4248    
4249     Right. Then, to be Y2K compliant, we'll have to call it Perl1999. Hmmm.
4250     "The year perl left earth's orbit"? Maybe we need to get the NASA guys to
4251     put perl on the next low-cost spaceshot.
4252    
4253     Of course, then c.l.p.m's motto could be "We do not commit *mindless*
4254     violence..." :-)
4255     %%
4256     Rule 1 says that Larry says that Larry has the last say, unless he changes
4257     his mind in which case he still has the last say.
4258     %%
4259     > >I never said it did.. I should have said: Binary only drivers encourage
4260     > >poor drivers
4261     >
4262     > No it doesn't.
4263    
4264     Indeed. Its down to
4265    
4266     Profit = (units * margin) - overhead
4267    
4268     and the folks who decide "overhead" arent the programmers but the management.
4269     The folks who say "you have two weeks allocated to write this driver, then
4270     we ship it" are the folks to take the issue up with, and that goes source
4271     or binaries.
4272     %%
4273     dig txt leap.yp.to
4274     %%
4275     "The fact that I'm paranoid doesn't mean that nobody's after me..."
4276     %%
4277     [linux-kernel on endianess issues with NIPQUAD]
4278    
4279     |> Do I read this correct?!? Is it more acceptable to have a bug[*],
4280     |> than a not optimal fix?!?!?
4281     |>
4282     |> s/optimal/stupid/
4283    
4284     What's stupid is little endian. <g>
4285    
4286     Andreas.
4287     %%
4288     [Paul Eggert on tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov]
4289     ...
4290     A closely related question is `What is 1 minute before 23:59:60?''.
4291    
4292     Here's a good one: `What is 1 month before 1 February 1995 in
4293     Kiritimati?''. There was no 1 January 1995 in Kiritimati; they
4294     skipped a day by moving the clocks ahead 24 hours. Similar issues
4295     arise when asking about times that occur within smaller, more typical
4296     UTC offset changes. A number of obscure questions arise here, and I'm
4297     not sure it's worth standardizing all the answers.
4298     %%
4299     [D.J.Bernstein on tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov]
4300    
4301     Paul Eggert writes:
4302     > which I am calling the `modified TIME_TAI''
4303    
4304     Your time differences break down near leap seconds. Ever watched xntpd
4305     try to handle a leap second? Wobble, wobble, wobble, wobble, wobble.
4306     %%
4307     For binary only drivers you can assume most vendors will build x86 only
4308     however.
4309    
4310     "We don't have the tools"
4311     "We can't support a non intel build"
4312     "We don't have that sort of machine"
4313     "Its not worth the time cost"
4314     "Whats an Alpha ?"
4315     %%
4316     On Thu, 1 Oct 1998, Mail Delivery Subsystem wrote:
4317    
4318     > The original message was received at Thu, 1 Oct 1998 18:39:56 -0400
4319     > from mini [10.0.0.3]
4320     >
4321     > ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
4322     > <mailproc@fred>
4323     >
4324     > ----- Transcript of session follows -----
4325     > procmail: can't map '/lib/libc.so.5'
4326     > procmail: can't map '/lib/libc.so.5'
4327     > procmail: can't load library 'libc.so.5'
4328     > 554 <mailproc@fred>... unknown mailer error 16
4329     %%
4330     > Here is the difficulty with this discussion:
4331     > No documented problem
4332     > No reason to believe that the "solution" solves the unspecified "problem"
4333     > No clear understanding of the effects of this change on the system
4334     >
4335     > Why, this could be a discusion among AIX developers!
4336     %%
4337     > This would be a reasonable committee-like compromise that might
4338     > satisfy neither of us (:-).
4339     %%
4340     By default Microsoft has set Explorer to use gz files as VRML, you need to
4341     change the association for .gz / vrml from "start vrml program" to "always ask"
4342    
4343     dave
4344     %%
4345     On 10 Aug 1998, Ben Pfaff wrote:
4346     DG> You're not programming MS-DOS applications are you?
4347    
4348     BP> Hell no. I wouldn't touch MS-DOS with a ten-foot network cable.
4349     %%
4350     [Paul Eggert on tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov]
4351    
4352     Date: 10 Oct 1998 15:35:05 -0000
4353     From: "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>
4354    
4355     Paul Eggert writes:
4356     > * 29 February if it's a leap lear, 28 February otherwise.
4357    
4358     If that's 1 month before 31 March, then what's 1 month before 30 March?
4359     1 month before 29 March?
4360    
4361     The same as 1 month before 31 March.
4362    
4363     1 month before 28 March?
4364    
4365     28 February.
4366    
4367     And what's 1 month after 28 February? 1 month after 27 February? 1 month
4368     _before_ 27 February?
4369    
4370     28 March, 27 March, and 27 January.
4371     %%
4372     Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
4373    
4374     >Nils Goesche wrote:
4375     >> So make a security check first:
4376     >>
4377     >> if (status = UNDER_NUCLEAR_ATTACK)
4378     >> launch_full_counterstrike();
4379     >
4380     >Hmmm. The way the worlds been going lately, AI wouldn't trust that code to
4381     >do the job. Here's the revised version:
4382     >
4383     >if(status == UNDER_NULEAR_ATTACK); /* Corrected dangerous
4384     > = instead of == error*/
4385     > launch_full_counterstrike();
4386     >
4387     >Now isn't that much more reliable?
4388     >
4389     >--
4390     >Email: cyrand@hotmail.com
4391    
4392     The following variant is less reliable but much safer:
4393    
4394     if (status == UNDER_NUCLEAR_ATTACK); /* Correct dangerous
4395     launch_full_counterstrike (); = instead == error */
4396     %%
4397     It is even more cheerful than that. Not so long time ago a customers
4398     of ours totally destroyed his NT installation on Alpha.
4399    
4400     He found on a manufacturer page, no money - for a download, "NT driver"
4401     for his particular piece of a hardware. So he followed instructions
4402     to the letter - "Installation Wizzard" and all that crap - and the thing
4403     happily installed clobbering, as it is customary in these circles,
4404     essential system libraries with its own versions. The catch was that
4405     this driver was for NT/Intel and these bozos did not even bother to
4406     check for an architecture or at least mention something in some blurb.
4407     Ooops! No chance even to try to boot anymore.
4408    
4409     The saving grace was that the installation was rather new, so loses
4410     were not big, and he had an opportunity to practice an essential skill
4411     of re-installing Windows NT. Ah, and yes, this was the only NT driver
4412     available for that hardware from any source.
4413     What do you plan on doing? Using a PA system for networking? :)
4414     Whats next? A *Smell* modem? It would bring a new meaning to packet
4415     sniffing!
4416     %%
4417     "I'd rather spend 10 hours reading source code than 10 minutes on a
4418     technical support line that isn't"
4419     %%
4420     [from linux-kernel]
4421     `This code fills 8 million seats, we therefore decide what's standard.''
4422     %%
4423     [...]
4424     And especially with new machines users have a lot of clout. Several UK
4425     suppliers now carry Buslogic cards partly because they got fed up of
4426    
4427     "I'd like to order a dual PII/300, 256Mb of RAM, 17" monitor
4428     4 4Gig IBM disks, and a buslogic scsi controller"
4429     "We dont do buslogic only adaptec"
4430     "Nothing else"
4431     "Sorry"
4432     [Click]
4433    
4434     Alan
4435     %%
4436     Fünfzig Prozent der Amerikaner wurden in ihrer Kindheit sexuell mißbraucht,
4437     während weitere fünfzig Prozent von Außerirdischen entführt wurden.
4438     %%
4439     > Let's not forget that this is just an informal, free
4440     > software project. Unlke the US House of Representatives
4441     > we do not yet posess nuclear capability (certain RTEMS
4442     > users excepted, of course!).
4443    
4444     Hmmm, if some RTEMS users have nuclear facilities attached to their
4445     systems, they might be well advised to be careful using FORTRAN as
4446     their language of choice. The comp.lang.fortran FAQ states (with
4447     concurrence from resident X3J3 members) that "using a non-standard
4448     construct might start WW III, if the necessary (optional) hardware
4449     is installed"
4450    
4451     [Toon Moene in private discussion]
4452     %%
4453     Newsgroups: alt.config
4454    
4455     L. Harris wrote:
4456     >
4457     > Testing
4458    
4459     you failed.
4460     %%
4461     Roswell {Unit 6 of 5 Sam Borg} Coverup [Rev. joWazzoo - well mannered despammer]
4462     <JOWazzoo@WhiteICE.com> at We are Sam Borg Spam Assimilators Ltd. - Area 51 HQ
4463     %%
4464     Perl is really designed more for the guys that will hack Perl at least
4465     20 minutes a day for the rest of their career. TCL/Python is more a
4466     "20 minutes a week", and VB is probably in that "20 minutes a month"
4467     group. :) -- Randal Schwartz
4468     %%
4469     > alternative, when it comes to stability and power...Not to mention the
4470     > fact that bugs and fixes are very quickly available and don't come in
4471     > 18MB+ "Service Packs" :).
4472    
4473     What, you mean you _paid_ for service pack '98?
4474     %%
4475     We got this INTERNET because we whan't more information ( to learn ) now it
4476     seem's people can't handle what they see. You say freedom is a mater of
4477     choice (well it is) you have the freedom to choose to carry your butt some
4478     where else...
4479     %%
4480     Steve Orzel (phloam@vol.com) wrote:
4481     [...]
4482     : The purpose of the newsgroup is to help out other people that have questions
4483     : about a certain topic.
4484     %%
4485     Mark Robinson wrote:
4486     >
4487     > Does any have any source code to games that I can have? Does anybody
4488     > know where I can get game sources(legally)?
4489    
4490     Here's the trial version of the three-room text adventure I'm going to
4491     write. I'm not finished yet, though.
4492    
4493     void main (void)
4494     {
4495     printf ("You are in a dark room.\n");
4496     printf ("\n");
4497     printf ("You feel a sharp pain.\n");
4498     printf ("You have died.\n");
4499     printf ("\n");
4500     printf ("!!! GAME OVER !!!");
4501     }
4502    
4503     (Don't tell, but I took some of the code from Quake.)
4504    
4505     --
4506     John Kugelman. kugelman@mnsinc.com
4507     %%
4508     [mail I got after releasing a zip-password cracker, the second biggest
4509     mistake I ever made]
4510    
4511     From: "Tom Miller"
4512     Subject: Can
4513     X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.71.1712.3
4514    
4515     Hay man can you send me some hacking tips and tricks please
4516     send to kymmiller@bigpond.com
4517     my name is Tom Miller
4518    
4519     From: "Tom Miller"
4520     Subject: Wait
4521     X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.71.1712.3
4522    
4523     Hey man its Tom can you also send me any easy systems to hack and the
4524     passwords also send me any infomation about hacking websites thank you
4525     %%
4526     From: lm@bitmover.com (Larry McVoy)
4527    
4528     [...] then think a little before flaming. Or better yet, produce something
4529     better. Flaming is easy but it is basically masturbation without the orgasm
4530     so why bother? [...]
4531     %%
4532     Günter Höns <guenter.hoens@gmd.de>
4533    
4534     Newsgroups: de.alt.ufo
4535    
4536     Offensichtlich ist noch keinem das Wasser-Wachstum aufgefallen, das sogar
4537     jeden Tag geschieht. Jeden Tag waechst der Wasserberg im Meer um mehrere
4538     Meter, ist dann naeher an der Sonne und verdunstet dann. Sogenannte
4539     Wissenschaftler haben eine abenteuerliche Theorie ueber den Einfluss des
4540     Mondes auf dieses Wachstum aufgestellt, aber inzwischen wissen wir es
4541     besser: Die Wasser-Molekuele werden von Neutrinos getroffen, und verdoppeln
4542     sich dann.
4543     %%
4544     CRASH(8)
4545     no fs
4546     A device has disappeared from the mounted-device table.
4547     Definitely hardware or software error.
4548    
4549     Unix Version 7 Manual
4550     %%
4551     On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Larry Wall wrote:
4552     >
4553     > Maybe Pi looks like this:
4554     >
4555     > =for C
4556     > i++; /* add 1 to i */
4557     > =end
4558     > =for C++
4559     > i.value() += 1; // add 1 to i, probably
4560     > =end
4561     > =for Java
4562     > system().foo().bar().i().value().please().increment(); // ???
4563     > =end
4564     >
4565     > :-)
4566     %%
4567     > > USENET is *not* the non-clickable part of WWW!
4568     %%
4569     [on linux 2.1.111]
4570    
4571     The horrid underlining which was a feature with the monochrome Linux vt's on
4572     the previous two releases of the kernel has gone. Unfortunately, so has the
4573     cursor. A couple of brief experiments didn't result in me finding a way to
4574     turn it on.
4575     %%
4576     [...]
4577     its a true story, it happend this weekend in a nice country
4578     between Belgium (wellknown for its Dutroux-case) and Germany
4579     (wellknown for its Bratwurst), lets call it the Lowlands...
4580     [...]
4581     %%
4582     I get a sense of god-like proportions when I patch /dev/kmem with dd(1).
4583    
4584     Chad C Giffin
4585     %%
4586     [usenet, an anology]
4587     Mary Green's car was smoking. She got worried. "Whatever should I do?"
4588     worried Mary... Well, as she drove along she noticed a florists shop. "Aha!
4589     Thought Mary, "Flour shops are full of thoughtless men who need to apologize to
4590     their wives. These men are the sometimes the same ones I see swearing under
4591     the hoods of their cars in the shade of a tree."
4592    
4593     "Brrring" said the bell of the door to the flower shop as Mary poked her head
4594     through the door.
4595     "HELP!!! MY CAR IS SMOKING!" Screamed Mary.
4596     "There is a garage right next door." Said the shopkeeper.
4597     "That's right," Said Melvin, "And there is a parts store across the street. If
4598     you ask for Fred, he's pretty savvy about that kind of stuff."
4599     Now Joe was also in the flower store. This was his first time in trouble, so
4600     he did not hear the 30 or 40 people per day who came in screaming about their
4601     cars smoking (mostly men, of course -- the ones under the shade trees,
4602     usually.)
4603    
4604     "Why don't you help the stinking lady!!" Screamed Joe. "It might be your
4605     muffler bearings..." he continued. Or maybe it's your deisel glow plugs or
4606     your tire pressure..."
4607     Now Tim, also new to the flower shop felt the courage to chime in, "Or it could
4608     even be your cooling system. Sometimes a hose gets a crack."
4609     "My car smoked once and it was an oil leak, where the head gasket was spraying
4610     oil in the manifold." Hollered Larry
4611     "Hey lady, why don't you get your car the patch if it's smoking" chortled Glen.
4612     Well, the hollering went on into the evening, and the lady finally went to the
4613     gas station and found that the heater core had a tiny split and was repaired in
4614     three days for a cost of $175.23.
4615     %%
4616     > Nun gut, Berliner sollen ja eh etwas heller sein.
4617    
4618     Sicher, das macht der Inzest, und die Isolation!:)
4619     %%
4620     > Nun gut, Berliner sollen ja eh etwas heller sein.
4621    
4622     Stimmt, deswegen waren sie wohl auch die ersten, die Hitler hinterherliefen...
4623     :-(
4624     %%
4625     >Mt 24,34 Wahrlich, ich sage euch: Dieses Geschlecht wird nicht vergehen, bis
4626     >dies alles geschieht.
4627     >Und es verging nicht.
4628    
4629     So what?
4630    
4631     Ich dachte eher an:
4632    
4633     " 'Und sein Wabbel wird an einer Lanze aufgespiesst', wiederholte der
4634     Oberste Groesste Meister grimmig. Im Hintergrund knarrte etwas, als
4635     Bruder Pfoertner versuchte, das klemmende Portal zu oeffnen. 'Sind wir
4636     jetzt alle soweit? Befinden sich vielleicht noch andere Unwissende
4637     unter uns,die sich verirrt haben?' fuegte er mit aetzendem Sarkasmus
4638     hinzu. 'Gut. Wunderbar. Ich bin ja _so_ froh. Vermutlich brauche ich
4639     nicht zu fragen, ob die vier Wachtuerme geschlossen sind, oder? Oh,
4640     ausgezeichnet. Hat sich jemand die Muehe gemacht, der Heiligen Hose
4641     die Beichte abzunehmen? Ach, tatsaechlich? Auf die richtige Art und
4642     Weise? Und wenn ich nachsehe? Na schoen. Sind vor den Fenstern die
4643     roten Kordeln des Intellekts gespannt worden? Gut. Nun, dann koennen
4644     wir jetzt vielleicht beginnen.' ".
4645    
4646     Terry Pratchett, "Wachen! Wachen!", S. 15f
4647    
4648     Antje
4649     %%
4650     [....]
4651    
4652     Da muss ich ja, obwohl ich beinahe meinen Humor verloren haette, leise
4653     grinsen. Ich darf zusammenfassen: Du bringst uns keine Beweise, weil Du 1.
4654     zu arm und 2. zu sehr ausgelastet mit der Rettung der Welt und der Zukunft
4655     und so bist. Ausserdem brauchst Du keine Beweise, weil sich Dein
4656     Gedankengebaeude nach eingehender Nabelschau als selbsttragend erwiesen hat.
4657     Finde ich gut! Akzeptiert!
4658    
4659     Da will ich nicht weiter stoeren,
4660    
4661     Antje
4662     %%
4663     It seems that writing to /dev/vcs0 makes the console singing "Ugh,
4664     lalala, I love you baby..."
4665     --
4666     Pavel.Janik@inet.cz
4667     %%
4668     On Thu, 16 Jul 1998, Linus Torvalds wrote:
4669     >
4670     > Kubys
4671    
4672     Kubys is my evil twin brother. Sorry about that.
4673    
4674     Linus
4675     %%
4676     > eieio stands for "Enforce In-Order Execution of I/O".
4677    
4678     .... and it is definitely my favorite name for an assembly language
4679     instruction (the non-native-English speakers on the list presumably
4680     don't know the childhood song "Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O").
4681     %%
4682     > It is *big* and never uses.
4683    
4684     That's parses like English, but I'll be hornswoggled if I can figure
4685     out what it means.
4686     --
4687     Chip Salzenberg - a.k.a. - <chip@perlsupport.com>
4688     %%
4689     [...] HP's PA-8500, for example, has 1.5 Mbytes of L1 cache on-chip. The
4690     company has described the 8500 as a cache SRAM with an ancillary CPU. [...]
4691     %%
4692     From: Dave Cinege <dcinege@psychosis.com>
4693     Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 06:10:31 -0400
4694    
4695     Terry L Ridder wrote:
4696    
4697     > at some future date end up being released under the BSD License is what
4698     > is being discussed.
4699    
4700     Well my licence is bigger then your licence.
4701     %%
4702     [gtk/testgtk, after dragging & dropping an object:]
4703    
4704     Drop data of type text/plain was:
4705    
4706     Bill Gates demands royalties for your use of his innovation
4707    
4708     [and the button reads]
4709    
4710     Continue with life in spite of this oppression
4711     %%
4712     Joshua Waxman <jwaxman@ymail.yu.edu> writes:
4713    
4714     While DJGPP is indeed a C as well as a C compiler, there are certain
4715    
4716     A terribly succinct, as well as a true, statement. However, it has a
4717     certain amount of redundancy.
4718     %%
4719     Compatibility with oneself is Microsoft's greatest strength. When they hit
4720     the 64 bit transition they will hit a major internal incompatibility problem.
4721    
4722     ...
4723    
4724     Peter da Silva <peter@baileynm.com>
4725     %%
4726     >Hello,
4727     >
4728     >I am new to Perl. Can anyone tell me where I can download a full
4729     >operational Perl version for a Windows 95 system?
4730     >
4731    
4732     Of course it all depends on what you mean by "a full operational Perl
4733     version" Perl on Win32 has limitations that are largely due to the
4734     nature of the underlying OS, Perl on Win95 has further limitations
4735     compared with NT due to its own shortcomings .
4736     %%
4737     An injunction delaying Windows 98 would clearly have a negative impact
4738     on the country as a whole.
4739     Compaq President & CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer,
4740     explaining why Microsoft shouldn't be
4741     prosecuted under anti-monopoly laws.
4742     %%
4743     With a PC, I always felt limited by the software available. On Unix, I am
4744     limited by my knowledge. --Peter J. Schoenster <pschon@baste.magibox.net>
4745     %%
4746     There is a need to keep from being locked into Open Systems. --IBM sales rep
4747     %%
4748     In comp.lang.perl.misc,
4749     Stylin <stylinsty@yahoo.comREMOVE> writes:
4750     :Can anyone point me to the algorithm for creating a unique id?
4751    
4752     $id = `cat /dev/kmem`;
4753    
4754     --tom
4755     --
4756     Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. :-)
4757     --Larry Wall in <8571@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
4758     %%
4759     Newsgroup: comp.lang.perl.misc
4760     Subject: Larry 1 Bill 0
4761     %%
4762     On 3 Jul 1998, Ben Pfaff wrote:
4763    
4764     > The only problem with these AIs is that they don't handle references
4765     > to themselves as AIs very well. In faSegmentation fault (core dumped)
4766     > NO CARRIER
4767     > !@*&#@#%T^@&*(GU*SD*(@!&*(@#R(*FERHGH*(@#(&$&#@Y!&R
4768     %%
4769     > People come here to ask questions, not for intellectual gratification, but
4770     > rather they are seeking solutions. As such, the incorrect answer was
4771     > better.
4772    
4773     There's something... terribly wrong with this statement. I can't quite put
4774     my finger on it. Hmmm.
4775     %%
4776     comp.lang.c does not exist to accomodate the laziness of those who cannot be
4777     bothered to learn netiquette. That's what comp.lang.c++ is for.
4778     %%
4779     |> : > but... a microwave is an example of an embedded system,
4780     |>
4781     |> : Who says? He just said it was a microwave. He didn't say it was
4782     |> : a free-standing implimentation.
4783     |>
4784     |> This is approaching arguing for the sake of argument. Have you
4785     |> ever seen a microwave oven that supports a hosted C environment?
4786    
4787     The Lipton Ritchie Model 8 did. I'm sure that many posters will
4788     point out that Lipton's implementation of the stdio libraries was
4789     horrendously buggy. It was, but it was still a great system. It
4790     remains the only C implementation I know of that could be used to
4791     build Bison, and then cook it.
4792    
4793     Viva la buffalo burgers.
4794     %%
4795     A strategically-placed PDP-11 can be used to heat your entire
4796     home. I've got one in my basement, next to a large box of "She's
4797     The Sheriff" drink coasters. I sold my furnace years ago. The
4798     Digital Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning Corporation
4799     can be found online at http://www.dhvacc.com/.
4800     %%
4801     The lbxproxy program has various options, all of which are optional.
4802     -- lbxproxy(1)
4803     %%
4804     Re: Where to learn Windows programming...
4805    
4806     |> I'll take a Schildt book any day, thanks.
4807    
4808     Great. I'm expecting to see the line above as a back-cover blurb
4809     on the next "Bullschildt: The Complete Reference".
4810     %%
4811     Subject: Re: The wrong position of while, if and else?
4812    
4813     that's some ugly piece of code buddy...
4814     %%
4815     In article <1998062718481700.OAA03186@ladder01.news.aol.com>, eyrei@aol.com (EYREI) writes:
4816     |> I have recently started learning the C Language. I have created a simple file
4817     |> to determine whether or not a number is Prime. When I run it, the program
4818     |> crashes with the error message :- Unhandled Exception :- General Protection
4819     |> Exception 0x5FD7:0x379F. Prime(1) Processor Fault.
4820    
4821     |> What does this mean.
4822    
4823     It means you've got a broken operating system, and should immediately
4824     install [free|net|open]BSD[OS] or Linux.
4825     %%
4826     Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
4827    
4828     On Thu, 25 Jun 1998, Emulov wrote:
4829     > Hi, i don't know if this is a stupid question..
4830    
4831     Off-topic, too! Imagine that.
4832     %%
4833     "Right now we are the most shit hot piece of PC networking software on the
4834     planet. The only people who can touch us are FreeBSD (who also dont do
4835     streams)."
4836     -- Alan Cox, in "Streams and Linux"
4837     %%
4838     "Perl combines all of the worst aspects of BASIC, C and line noise."
4839     - Keith Packard <keithp@ncd.com>
4840     %%
4841     Lord Fellatio <richter_m@hotmail.com>
4842    
4843     >Wo soll das Loch denn dann sein? Im Meeresboden?
4844    
4845     Klaro.
4846    
4847     >Von oben duerfte man es also ueberhaupt nicht sehen
4848     >koennen, da ueber dem potentiellen Loch im Meeresboden doch
4849     >wahrscheinlich erstmal Wasser und dann viel Eis liegen wuerde. Wie
4850     >verhindern die Ausserirdischen denn, dass Wasser ins Loch einstroemt?
4851    
4852     Na ist doch völlig logo, mit nem rotierenden Traktorstrahl. Die
4853     Energie klauen die ?r***e dem Erdmagnetfeld.
4854    
4855     >Gibt es da einen kosmischen Badewannenstoepsel? Haben sie es mit
4856     >Eisbergen verstopft? Oder benutzen sie das einstroemende Wasser zu
4857     >Kajakfahrten bis hinunter zum Suedpol? (Das waere doch auch endlich
4858     >mal eine einleuchtende Erklaerung fuer die Eismassen, die die
4859     >Antarktis bedecken - man muesste halt nur, der Kontinentaldrift
4860     >folgend, immer wieder neue Schaechte bohren. Oder die Kontinentaldrift
4861     >einfach wegdiskutieren...)
4862    
4863     Die enorme Zentrifugalkraft im Erdinnern schleudert das Wasser wieder
4864     am Nordpolpol raus, falls der Traktorstrahl versagen sollte (Dies
4865     passiert immer dann, wenn das Erdmagnetfeld umkippt). Nun kommt sicher
4866     der Einwand, die Erde würde zu langsam rotieren. Das ist nur bedingt
4867     richtig. Richtig ist hingegen, daß die Rotationsgeschwindigkeit im
4868     Erdinnern um den Faktor 1000 (ca; sehr schwer zu messen: Magma) größer
4869     ist als auf der Erdoberfläche. Dies ist auch die Ursache für die
4870     Kontinentaldrift und die Mondphasen.
4871    
4872     Die Mondphasen wiederum beeinflussen das Erdmagnetfeld und sind daher
4873     die Ursache für die Sonnenflecken. Den Sonnenflecken haben wir auch
4874     die momentane Klimaveränderung zu verdanken. Auf der anderen Seite hat
4875     die Zunahme der Treibhausgase eine Erhöhung des Reflektionsvermögens
4876     der Atmosphäre zur Folge, welches dazu führt, daß ein Teil der
4877     Sonnenenergie zur Sonne zurückreflektiert wird. Dies heizt wiederum
4878     die Sonnenflecken auf und verkürzt deren Zyklus. All dies wird sich in
4879     den nächten Monaten so aufschaukeln, daß vorraussichtlich im Novemner
4880     2002 das Erdmagnetfeld zusammenbrechen wird. Wie damals bei den Dinos.
4881     Nur war dort ein Kometeneinschlag die Ursache.
4882    
4883     cu in hell 2002
4884     %%
4885     "Hiroshima '45, Chernobyl '85, Windows '95"
4886     %%
4887     >In unix, one might say 'man 3 crypt'.
4888    
4889     Of course, on a Solaris system this won't give you what you want. You
4890     get a message that it can't find the man page for 3. It then prints
4891     the man page for crypt(1).
4892    
4893     Of course, all a beginner has to do is figure out that the 3 is the
4894     section number in the Unix manual. He can then use man man to find
4895     that on Solaris one uses -s to specify the section so he'll try
4896    
4897     man -s3 crypt
4898    
4899     Unfortunately, that doesn't work either. He'll get the message "No
4900     entry for crypt in section(s) 3 of the manual."
4901    
4902     If he doesn't give up, he can go back to the manual page for man and
4903     find that the -a switch prints all matching manual pages. Or perhaps
4904     he can figure out to use the command
4905    
4906     man -s3 Intro.3
4907    
4908     to get a list of everything in section 3. He'll then find out that
4909     crypt is in section 3C so he should use
4910    
4911     man -s3c crypt
4912    
4913     Gee. I don't understand why beginners have so much trouble with this
4914     stuff. I've only been programming Unix for 15 years and I don't have
4915     any trouble.
4916     --
4917     Michael M Rubenstein
4918     %%
4919     Take a moment to consider these lines:
4920    
4921     %OVERLOAD=( '""' => sub { join("", @{$_[0]}) } );
4922    
4923     sub html { my($type)=shift; bless ["<$type>", @_, "</$type>"]; }
4924    
4925     :-) I *love* Perl 5! Thankyou Larry and Ilya.
4926    
4927     Regards,
4928     Tim Bunce.
4929    
4930     p.s. If you didn't get it, think about recursive data types: html(html())
4931     p.p.s. I'll turn this into a much more practical example in a day or two.
4932     p.p.p.s. It's a pity that overloads are not inherited. Is this a bug?
4933     %%
4934     From: alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk (Alan Cox)
4935    
4936     ...
4937    
4938     > now is evil". This only shows two things: you never looked at the bad
4939     > experiences of the industry where following a rotten design and
4940     > keeping backward compatibility lead to unusable systems. And second:
4941    
4942     I worked for 3com. I know eveyrhting about following a rotten design until
4943     its unusable, believe me I do.
4944     %%
4945     Ok(slow) -> !NeedComputer
4946    
4947     Semour Cray
4948     %%
4949     Ullrich Jans at University of Karlsruhe, Germany:
4950    
4951     Oh Gott! Es ist voller crons!
4952     %%
4953     From: p00h <p00h@MONMOUTH.COM>
4954     Subject: Re: AOL for Windows DoS/Exploit
4955    
4956     aol supports PARTIAL html, its like win95's implementation of tcp/ip
4957     it only supports parts of it
4958     %%
4959     egcs/gcc/gcse.c:
4960     /* Help stamp out big monolithic functions! */
4961     %%
4962     [...] Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Especially regarding HPPA assembler syntax
4963     as provided by HP, which was designed by someone who should not have been
4964     let near a language-design project like that, too often "little languages",
4965     whether assemblers, tools, or C++, are designed by people who are unaware
4966     of, or give little thought to, the outright readability of code written in
4967     the language, in the sense that the basic semantics should be fairly obvious
4968     *without* the reader having to memorize lots of semantic information.
4969    
4970     (In HPPA assembler's case, one glaring stupidity was the nullified branches,
4971     which have completely different semantics depending on whether the label
4972     being branched to happens to assemble to a negative or positive offset! A
4973     smarter design would have required the programmer to specify whether such a
4974     branch was a "forward" or "backward" branch explicitly, then the assembler
4975     and/or linker would complain if reality didn't match the programmer's
4976     specification. I've never looked into whether GNU's HPPA as fixes this
4977     botch; I gather GNU as fixes many botches, though, so it wouldn't surprise
4978     me if it did, even though that might make for some compatibility problems
4979     with existing HP as code.) [...]
4980    
4981     tq vm, (burley)
4982     %%
4983     libc/posix/regex.h:
4984     /* The following two types have to be signed and unsigned integer type
4985     wide enough to hold a value of a pointer. For most ANSI compilers
4986     ptrdiff_t and size_t should be likely OK. Still size of these two
4987     types is 2 for Microsoft C. Ugh... */
4988     typedef long int s_reg_t;
4989     typedef unsigned long int active_reg_t;
4990     %%
4991     libc/db2/db.h:
4992     /*
4993     * While Microsoft's compiler is ANSI C compliant, it doesn't have _STDC_
4994     * defined by default, you specify a command line flag or #pragma to turn
4995     * it on. Don't do that, however, because some of Microsoft's own header
4996     * files won't compile.
4997     */
4998     %%
4999     > UTC variation and begining and ending dates of DST (if observed) would be
5000     > great.
5001    
5002     I answered only the places I can comment on.
5003    
5004     > BASSAS DA INDIA
5005    
5006     This rock is below water half of the time!
5007     If any inhabitants have been there, I do not think they observe DST
5008     on a regular basis! ;-)
5009     %%
5010     # ./test-plugin.pl
5011     Bizarre copy of CODE in sassign at /root/.gimp/plug-ins/test-plugin.pl line 40.
5012     wire_read: unexpected EOF (plug-in crashed?)
5013     %%
5014     >
5015     > The "where do you want to go today?" generation has taken the
5016     > developer out of the "programmer" by removing the vital, development
5017     > tools from the environment and precanning software.
5018    
5019     No kidding. Point. Click. Point. Click. Point. Click. Brain Atrophy.
5020     %%
5021     Lars Chr Hausmann <36haus@but.auc.dk> writes:
5022    
5023     >Hello!
5024    
5025     >I have to write something about, what Perl is.
5026     >I need some crystal clear info about, what perl is. So if any of you
5027     >would be so kind just to mail. Then I would be grateful!
5028    
5029    
5030     Perl.
5031    
5032     regards
5033     jobst
5034     %%
5035     Subject: Re: Cyrix 6x86MX and Centaur C6 CPUs in 2.1.102
5036     From: alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk (Alan Cox)
5037     Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 22:31:02 +0100 (BST)
5038    
5039     > Well, that depends. They SHOULD be. By Intel 'standards' *laff*, they have
5040     > to be identical stepping, indicating identical features. However, I've
5041    
5042     They don't. Pentiums have fairly strict rules, P6/PII much less. Also Intel
5043     are pretty good at following the MP 1.1/1.4 standard its the motherboard
5044     makers who get it wrong - primarily the BIOS is full of bugs. It appears
5045     nobody tests bios code against specs any more. It looks like they do
5046     compile flash, boot 95, boot NT, ship. The quality of bios code has dived to
5047     the absolute pits.
5048     %%
5049     Unix never says `Please.' -- Rob Pike
5050     %%
5051     > What about: . scriptname
5052     > ------------------^ this is a dot!
5053    
5054     Funny, it looks like a "p" to me.
5055     %%
5056     A computer without Microsoft and IBM is like chocolate cake without
5057     ketchup and mustard
5058     %%
5059     Subject: Re: Challange for perl `GURUS
5060    
5061     vimal gajjar wrote:
5062     >
5063     > Hi there,
5064     > Here is a small challange. Is it possible to have a perl
5065     > code which takes e.g. three parameters as input. time, val1, val2. and
5066     > the name of the prog. is say challange.pl. Now if i execute
5067     > "challange.pl 10 5 2" this perl script wille consume
5068     > 5% of cpu
5069     > 2 Mb of RAM
5070     > for the period of 10 Seconds.
5071     >
5072     > can one of the gurus take this challange?
5073    
5074     Examining the 5 copies of this post has consumed 5% of the
5075     brain power I allocate to reviewing c.l.p.m, about 10 seconds, and
5076     has caused the death of 2 million brain cells.
5077     %%
5078     > >> /A:You can usually write the program faster than you can
5079     > >> dial/dl/hangup/install/read docs/fix it/fix the fix/.
5080     >
5081     > >s/usually/never/
5082     >
5083     > s/sometimes/never/
5084    
5085     Cute. You embarrass yourself by your ignorance of perl.
5086     %%
5087     :That's probably true, but I really can't speak to it. But, if there
5088     :were no *nix around, there'd be no Perl. Nor would there be a need for
5089     :Perl, IMO.
5090    
5091     Gotta love them JCL and ini dot bat dot bad dot doo dah files.
5092    
5093     TC
5094     %%
5095     'cc:Mail is a wonderful application, as long as you don't want to read or send mail.'
5096     %%
5097     shurik@iron.Te.NeT.UA - Alexandr Dubovikov at TeNeT Networking Centre
5098    
5099     Hi guys!
5100    
5101     How check socket, alive it or die ?
5102     %%
5103     --> Questions not to ask on linux-kernel <--
5104    
5105     Miscellaneous flame-wars:
5106     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
5107     12) The gnome-kde debate does not belong on linux-kernel.
5108     13) The emacs-vi debate does not belong on linux-kernel.
5109     14) Porting linux to run under windows is not interesting.
5110     15) Whether a given intel CISC chip "is really RISC" is not interesting.
5111     %%
5112     Subject: what a week!
5113     From: "C. Scott Ananian" <cananian@lcs.mit.edu>
5114     Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 03:13:23 -0400 (EDT)
5115    
5116     unicode, boot-logos, GGI, STREAMS, the necessity of a short devel cycle
5117     and the instability of 2.0.x, "ifconfig stopped working", "you really *do*
5118     need to remove 'encaps'", Linus' tarball practices... it seems like we're
5119     running out of things to flame off on. Here's my humble contribution:
5120    
5121     I'VE MADE A KEWL NEW CHARSET THAT I THINK EVERYONE SHOULD USE. IT HAS ALL
5122     THE LETTERS IN MY LOGIN MAPPED TO THE LOWEST 16 CHARACTERS SO WE CAN
5123     COMPRESS THINGS REAL GOOD AND THE LETTERS IN MY BROTHER B1FF'S NAME ARE
5124     ALL IN HIGH ASCII CUZ THAT'S WHERE LOSERS BELONG!!!2!!7
5125    
5126     I ONLY USE EMACS AND I THINK VI SUX!!$231!!
5127    
5128     GNOME RULES AND KDE IS DEMON-SPAWN BECAUSE IT IS NOT FREE.! !
5129    
5130     WE NEED KGI IN THE KERNEL (NOT LIBGGI, NOT THE TERMINAL IMPROVEMENTS
5131     WHATEVER THEY'RE CALLED) IN ORDER TO HAVE WAY KEWL BOOT LOGOS AND RUN MY
5132     BROTHER B1FF'S GAMES!!1!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!11!!!
5133    
5134     I USE A BIG-ENDIAN MACHINE BECAUSE THEY RULE. LITTLE-ENDIAN MACHINES ARE
5135     EVIL. AND A PENTIUM *IS* A RISC PROCESSOR!!!
5136    
5137     WE SHOULD PORT LINUX TO WINDOWS SO WE CAN USE ALL THE KEWL HARDWARE
5138     DRIVERS!!!!!@@#!
5139    
5140     Did I miss any? ;-)
5141    
5142     *Please* don't respond seriously to this email. It's a joke. A joke.
5143     Laugh. Please.
5144    
5145     And then let's kill all the flaming threads, shall we?
5146     --Scott
5147     %%
5148     > Well, /proc/kcore already reports its actual size...
5149    
5150     And it isn't about to change at runtime either. That is the size of
5151     installed memory. I've yet to see a single person successfully insert or
5152     remove a SIMM/DIMM while a machine was running. If they did, and it was
5153     successful, the linux code will update the filesize. ;o)
5154     %%
5155     Toby Heywood (toby@he-net.demon.co.uk) wrote:
5156     : This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
5157    
5158     One of those 'M's stands for Mail.
5159    
5160     This is not mail.
5161    
5162     This is Usenet.
5163    
5164     Please post only plain text like everyone else does.
5165     %%
5166     ------------ etienne.lorrain@ibm.net
5167     --- hdc: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
5168     --- ide1: reset: success
5169     -----------> I like Linux !
5170     %%
5171     > I have experienced people walking up to my console and saying "What
5172     > the hell does that mean" in sheer terror as the machine boots.
5173    
5174     Tell them it's magic, and earn the respect of your colleagues. I always
5175     do.
5176     %%
5177     ++ Actually, I'm not at a loss for words. Here's one that's very appropriate:
5178     ++ PLONK.
5179     %%
5180     ++ > SSI is *not* HTML.
5181     Re: Subraumfunk
5182    
5183     Ja, ein Handy waere da praktisch. Die hoeheren Gebuehren rechnen sich,
5184     wenn man ueber die Grenzen des Sonnensystems hinaus telefonieren will.
5185    
5186     Die Telekom wuerde da wieder mal erbarmungslos abzocken. Ich kann es
5187     mir schon vorstellen: SunSystem-Tarif, vielleicht auch einen
5188     InnerPlanets-Sondertarif, dann einen LocalGroupWeekend-Specialtarif,
5189     eine Supercluster-Zone und so weiter. Und wenn es auf der Venus
5190     schneit, telefonieren alle fuer die Haelfte.
5191     %%
5192     > > Vergiss es. Du wirst nie und nimmer von Armando eine
5193     > > konkrete, verwertbare Antwort bekommen.
5194     >
5195     > Doch, man bekommt von mir sogar sehr viele Antworten.
5196    
5197     Du hast gerade zwei Adjektive weggelassen.
5198     %%
5199     ++ Oh yeah. Show me an example of SSI used outside of HTML.
5200     Show me an HTML DTD mentioning SSI directives.
5201     %%
5202     Namsuk Kim wrote:
5203     > Is there a way to convert a scalar data to Acii data format?
5204    
5205     I am not familar with ACII. If you mean ASCII, then the question I have is
5206     - is the data in EBCDIC now?
5207    
5208     Bill Jones
5209     %%
5210     GNU/getopt.c:
5211    
5212     #if defined (WIN32) && !defined (__CYGWIN32__)
5213     /* It's not Unix, really. See? Capital letters. */
5214     #include <windows.h>
5215     #define getpid() GetCurrentProcessId()
5216     #endif
5217     %%
5218     Subject: IIS 4.0, PW32i316, CGI Programs
5219    
5220     Perlis.dll does not pass command line arguments correctly via the web. That
5221     is, invoking the URL
5222    
5223     http://www.myserver.com/myprogram.pl?Argument1&Argument2...&Argumentn
5224    
5225     causes the myprogram.pl to execute, but @ARGV is empty.
5226     %%
5227     "You need to use CGI."
5228     "I am using CGI, it's a CGI application!"
5229     "No, no, *use* CGI. The directive 'use'."
5230     "OK, so what directive do I use?"
5231     "No, no, you *use* *use*. Use CGI."
5232     "I *am* using CGI!"
5233    
5234     Craig Berry - cberry@cinenet.net
5235     %%
5236     > > Was haltet Ihr von Killfile-mailing-lists, dass sich die Leute mal
5237     > > kennenlernen koennen?
5238     >
5239     > Gute Idee ;-), wäre ich sofort dabei, datrifft man wahrscheinlich ne
5240     > Menge tolle Leute... ;-) und die wahren Freidenker.
5241    
5242     Einige Freidenker sicher, aber auch etliche Denkfreie.
5243     %%
5244     "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big or
5245     professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." -- Linus Torvalds 1991
5246     %%
5247     If it's a floppy, it might be a copy.
5248     If it's a disk, you're also at risk.
5249     If it's a pirate, the vendors are irate.
5250     To avoid such frustration, try: Free Software Foundation.
5251     %%
5252     From: David Woodhouse <Dave@imladris.demon.co.uk>
5253    
5254     pcg@goof.com said:
5255     > It was much more than I usally get! It was _great_
5256    
5257     Hehe - I know the feeling.
5258    
5259     "It's broken."
5260     "What's wrong with it?."
5261     "I don't know - it just doesn't work."
5262     "Well what do you mean by 'it's broken'?"
5263     "It just doesn't work."
5264     "How can you _tell_ it's broken, for f***'s sake - what are the symptoms!?"
5265     "It gives an error message."
5266     "Would you care to tell me what it says?"
5267     "It says.... something about there being an error."
5268     "That's not very helpful. Tell me it word for word."
5269     "It says 'Unable to handle kernel NULL reference at something or other'"
5270     "That's not word for word. It said 'NULL pointer dereference.' Try again,
5271     letter for letter this time."
5272     %%
5273     From: "Paul B. Henson" <henson@INTRANET.CSUPOMONA.EDU>
5274    
5275     After installing Solaris 2.6 HW3/98, I discovered that /usr/bin/admintool
5276     had been installed mode 0777, world writable. Under the original release of
5277     2.6, the mode was 04555.
5278    
5279     Sun has been notified of the problem. If you're running 2.6 HW3/98, you
5280     might want to verify your admintool hasn't been tampered with and fix the
5281     perms.
5282    
5283     (Personally, I'd set them to 0000 ;). admintool? blech.)
5284     %%
5285     From: verah@netscape.com (Vera Horiuchi)
5286     Subject: Re: Risp: drama (Re: Do It Yourself)
5287    
5288     Americans ignorant of the rest of the world?
5289    
5290     I must tell a favorite story here. A friend and I were purchasing a gift
5291     for another friend who lives in Canada. I was speculating out loud about
5292     how much duty our Canadian friend would have to pay.
5293    
5294     The cashier said, "Oh, I'm sure Canadians don't have to pay any duty. We
5295     ship to Hawaii all the time, and _they_ don't have to pay duty." =:-0
5296     %%
5297     >am besten ist z.Z. das Buch von Michael Neufeld. Wer aber Wissenslücken
5298     >verspürt (was keine Schande ist), sollte diese zu stopfen suchen und nicht
5299     >Zuflucht zu absolut hirnrissigen Theorien suchen.
5300    
5301     Hirnrissig bist Du. Das es einen Zeittransfer aus der Zukunft zu den Nazis
5302     gab deckt sich mit dazu passenden Entschluesselungen bestimmter Bibelstellen
5303     und mit der dann tatsaechlichen notwendigen Geheimhaltung. Es deckt sich
5304     ueberdies damit, dass die Unterhaltung uns den Gedanken zunehmend nahelegt,
5305     also vorbereitet, und dass es bereits ein wissenschaftliches Experiment gab,
5306     bei dem ERST die Wirkung auftrat und DANN die Ursache. Die Zeitreise ist
5307     also Fakt. Und es ist sicher, dass Jemand per Zeitreise den Nazis helfen
5308     wollte. Gelegentliche Theorien, dass auch diese ausserirdische Hilfe gehabt
5309     haetten sollen nur davon ablenken, eine andere Erklaerung liefern. Das ist
5310     logisch, denn die Taeter sitzen ja irgendwo in unserer Zeit und moechten
5311     sicher nicht erkannt werden.
5312    
5313     Du scheinst die simpelsten Grundzuege der Zeitlogik nicht verstehen zu wollen.
5314    
5315     normarz@aol.com
5316     %%
5317     >Oder anders gesagt:
5318     >Glaubst Du, Du könntest mit einem hochmodernen Maschinengewehr eine römische
5319     >Legion
5320     >schlagen?
5321    
5322     Klar. Frage mal Cortez.
5323    
5324     Bye
5325     Andreas
5326     %%
5327     >Article 2B is a threat to anyone who uses a computer. I just wanted to
5328    
5329     It may be a threat to any american using a computer. Fortunately, the U.S.
5330     justice does not yet apply outside the U.S.A.
5331    
5332     I.a.W.: You're currently creating a lot of happy non-U.S. software
5333     companies.
5334    
5335     Kind regards
5336     Henning
5337     %%
5338     From: "Adam J. Richter" <adam@yggdrasil.com>
5339     Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 04:14:11 -0700
5340     Subject: Re: driver for Creative Labs DVD kits
5341    
5342     At least with the IDE DVD drive that I have, plugging it directly
5343     into an IDE port and using the regular Linux ide-cd driver works just fine
5344     for reading [...] CD and the [not] copy protected sections of the DVD's.
5345    
5346     There is a protocol that the hardware decoder boards use to
5347     tell the DVD drive that they are a licensed implementation and should
5348     be allowed to read the copy protected sectors as well. I have been
5349     told that this protocol can be done entirely in software with a
5350     standard IDE port. Hopefully, somebody will reverse engineer this and
5351     make it a demand loaded kernel module. (Seriously, there is a lot
5352     that you are allowed to do with copyrighted material that this sort of
5353     hardware restriction prevents, and there are other important political
5354     issues involved relating to your rights to do as you please with the
5355     computer equipment that you bought and paid for.)
5356     %%
5357     Where do you want to go today?
5358     We might support that sometime next year.
5359     -=- Microsoft
5360     (But I doubt it.)
5361     -=- Me
5362     -=- James Mastros
5363     %%
5364     Hello570 <hello570@aol.com> wrote:
5365     > I tried printing a line to a file using both of the
5366     > following methods, but the output was split into two
5367     >lines.
5368    
5369     If you don't want newlines in the middle of your string, then don't
5370     put newlines in the middle of your string.
5371     %%
5372     http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/Dean_Roehrich/subjects.post
5373     %%
5374     Einstein himself said that God doesn't roll dice. But he was wrong. And
5375     in fact, anyone who has played role-playing games knows that God
5376     probably had to roll quite a few dice to come up with a character like
5377     Einstein. -- Larry Wall
5378     %%
5379     From: Ragnar Hojland Espinosa <root@lightside.ddns.org>
5380    
5381     My $0.02 Euros on internationalization? I'm in Spain and my keyboard is
5382     mosty US mapped because the Spanish map is really awkward for programming.
5383     Computers were designed to be funcional, not politically (or locally)
5384     correct (hm, I don't think HAL ever spoke Russian). This "computers are easy
5385     for all" GUI related trend has done a lot of money, and lot of damage; at
5386     least command line OSes forced the user to actually learn something and
5387     absorb information. The user assumed so, so he did. Now he doesn't, and
5388     it's not all his fault.
5389    
5390     The WWW is full of useless (and ugly) graphics, of useless links to links to
5391     pages with links to links which usually end up in a huge links page. Of
5392     course, there are some jewels.. but they should be majority! It's
5393     understandable, when the tools and languages focus more on aspect that in
5394     content.
5395    
5396     Usenet is worse than ever, the interesting places have been ruined by
5397     spammers, c00l hak3rz, and more and more people asking (or demanding) for
5398     others doing their homework.. at least some time ago they were willing to
5399     learn (or pay for it;)
5400    
5401     IRC.. heh. The few times I've been on funet almost all I found is the same
5402     people in the above paragraph. And I do know some of them even run scripts
5403     to try denial of service or other destructive attacks on people they see,
5404     just for fun or to get the op.
5405    
5406     Email. Someone selling an "incredible program that allows you to bypass
5407     your ISP mail server, for only $89" (thats right, a smtp server). No OS
5408     mentioned, I somehow can guess which. And that stupid thing of sending
5409     mail to people in RTF and HTML format.. I'm gonna answer them in LaTeX.
5410    
5411     Internet, your ilimited junk yard.
5412    
5413     Using computers would make me real sad if it wasn't for UNIX and, of
5414     course, Linux and Linux people.
5415     %%
5416     ... WNT == ++VMS . Literally. Dave Cutler created VMS,
5417     then he rewrote it as WNT.
5418    
5419     Ever used VMS? It's a step above DOS. Barely.
5420     --
5421     Clark O. Morgan cmorgan@aracnet.com
5422     %%
5423     >Subject: If "=~" means match what is doesn't match?
5424    
5425     I heard that a friend of a friend might have once been told about a
5426     rumor that this information can be found in perlop, right next to
5427     where =~ is documented. (It's !~)
5428    
5429     I agree with Tom's assessment that the fall of modern man will be
5430     preceded by the de-evolution of communications to the days of oral
5431     tradition.
5432     %%
5433     "Windows 95, the most installed system in the world,
5434     I know, I've done it 5 or 6 times myself"
5435     %%
5436     The statistics programming language S, from AT&T, combines lazy
5437     evaluation with imperative programming. A nightmare.
5438     %%
5439     "In 1965, as part of a research and development project for the
5440     U.S. Army, engineers at TRW Corp developed a software program
5441     called Generalized Information Retrieval Lanaguage and System."
5442     Or GIRLS for short.
5443     %%
5444     Wissen bremst die Meinungsbildung voll aus.
5445     %%
5446     I have an idea: Anybody who posts an URGENT! or EMERGENCY! request should
5447     post the circumstances behind the urgency. "I was having sex with my
5448     mistress in the server room and I knocked the Linux box over and the hard
5449     drive crashed and so I've reinstalled everything but I still can't get
5450     5_004_03 to build!"
5451    
5452     This would inspire me to action far more than the implied subtext of "I
5453     have no patience."
5454    
5455     xoxo,
5456     Andy
5457     %%
5458     > I have Perl5 running on my pc.
5459     > and also front page98 and microsoft personal web server runnig.
5460     We all have our cross to bear.
5461     %%
5462     (THIS IS LONG, YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP)
5463    
5464     From: mjd@plover.com (Mark-Jason Dominus)
5465     Date: 09 Nov 1995 02:57:30 GMT
5466     Subject: Re: system() question
5467    
5468     There are a lot of reasons, many of which get repeated over and
5469     over again, many of which don't. Some of the reasons you hear a lot
5470     are: Questions are incoherently phrased. Questions have the form 'My
5471     code doesn't work' and don't include the code. Questions include the
5472     code, and it's 200 lines long, and comp.lang.perl is not a debugging
5473     service. Nobody knows the answer to the question. The question is so
5474     badly punctuated that nobody can bear to read it. Questions aer
5475     written by a non-native speaker of English and the native speakers who
5476     are trying to understand it can't. (That's a shame, but it does
5477     happen. I often wish that these people would post in their native
5478     languages. I'd love to see more discussion in languages other than
5479     English. Some Dutch guy tried posting all his comp.lang.c articles in
5480     Dutch a few years ago, and all the Americans flamed him. How
5481     humiliating for me!)
5482    
5483     Apart from these oft-mentioned reasons are many others that are
5484     not so often discussed, because anyone who tries to bring them up gets
5485     flamed. But it's the truth: I know the reason I don't answer more
5486     questions is because so many of them questions are so damn stupid.
5487     They're stupid in a lot of different ways, but they're still stupid.
5488     I don't want to suggest that that's why your questions go unanswered.
5489     I don't know what you're asking. No doubt the reason your questions
5490     go unanswered is because they're so deep and interesting that nobody
5491     really knows the answer.
5492    
5493     The most common stupid question is the one from someone who has
5494     some high-level problem that they need solved. They have an idea that
5495     they'd like to do it in perl, and they don't really know perl. So
5496     instead of learning perl, they post to comp.lang.perl.misc.
5497    
5498     Now don't get me wrong. I don't have any problems answering the
5499     questions of someone who's trying to learn perl. I love THOSE
5500     qusetions. But these people don't seem to be asking useful questions
5501     for that.
5502    
5503     Today, for example, I saw a question from a guy who wants to get a
5504     list of hostnames out of nslookup. `How do I do that?' he says. And
5505     it's hard to know what to make of that. What does he mean? Does he
5506     not know how to open a pipe? Is his en' command failing? What's
5507     going on here? I can't give a useful answer without understanding the
5508     problem. Having your en' fail is a problem. Wanting to list
5509     hostnames is not a problem; it's a desire.
5510    
5511     Here are some similar questions that would have made more sense to me:
5512    
5513     1. `I'm a lazy asshole and I can't be bothered to learn to
5514     program myself, but I know if I post here you'll give me
5515     something for free.''
5516    
5517     (OK, fair enough. At least I can send him a rate card.)
5518    
5519     2. `I'm trying to use en' to talk to nslookup, but...
5520     ...here's my code; what's wrong?''
5521    
5522     (Good question.)
5523    
5524     3. `I know perl has a `System' command for running programs,
5525     but I can't see how to get my commands into nslookup
5526     once I have run it.''
5527     (Good question.)
5528    
5529     4. `I'm trying to use `Getprotobynumber' to talk to nslookup...''
5530    
5531     (Good question.)
5532    
5533     See, I'm not just biting people's heads off, here. #4 is a good
5534     question, because it gives me something to work with. OK, he has a
5535     very weird idea about interprocess communication, but that's
5536     ignorance, and that's what we're here to correct. He doesn't know
5537     about en'; I can refer him to the manual.
5538    
5539     Here's another example: Some guy wants to assemble a list of email
5540     addresses . `How do I do that?'' he wants to know. Well, duh. Get a
5541     big pad of paper and read news for a couple days and write down all
5542     the addresses you see. Problem solved. What's it doing in
5543     comp.lang.perl?
5544     Oh, you wanted to do it in perl. Well, I guess I'd open a socket
5545     to the NNTP server and send it some XHDR commands for the `From'
5546     lines. But that's not Perl; you could do that in any language. I
5547     could do it in Bourne Shell for you if I'm allowed to use a little
5548     external thingie to handle the socket parts for me. What's it doing
5549     in comp.lang.perl?
5550    
5551     Oh, you wanted us to write the program for you? Wait, let me send
5552     you my rate card.
5553    
5554     Someone posted yesterday asking how to get the data from a file where
5555     the start and end of the data is marked by keywords. Same thing going on
5556     here. `Well, here's how you solve your problem: First you go take an
5557     introductory class in programming and learn to write programs in some
5558     language. Then you go to the bookstore and buy this book by Wall and
5559     Schwartz, it's really good. Read the book carefully and try out the
5560     examples. Then if you still have general questions like `How do I do this'
5561     instead of thought that this code would do X but instead it does Y' you hire
5562     a professional to write your program for you. Or you could just skip right
5563     to step 3. Want my rate card?''
5564    
5565     The worst stupid questions are the ones that come from people who
5566     have no business asking them. The most perfect example of this that I
5567     could have imagined was in comp.unix.questions a couple of years ago.
5568     Some guy came and asked how you could tell if a file is a hard link.
5569     My jaw flapped open and it's stayed open since then. I couldn't have
5570     been any more stumped if he'd asked why Bodhidharma came from the
5571     West. What do you say to this guy? Do you tell him the truth, that
5572     all files are hard links, that even symbolic links are hard links?
5573     He's not going to understand you; you might as well keep your mouth
5574     shut. Do you tell him the truth, that the answer won't do him any
5575     good because he doesn't know what a hard link is, so why did he bother
5576     asking in the first place? No, that'll just make him mad. I followed
5577     that message for the next couple weeks, and nobody said anything.
5578     What could you say? The guy had no business asking the question and
5579     no use for the answer. Maybe the right answer would have been to cut
5580     off his finger or something. I dunno.
5581    
5582     Some questions get ignored because they're boring. Someone asked
5583     today how to compare two variables (I assumme he means the contents of
5584     those variables) to see if they're exactly the same. You've gotta be
5585     in an awfully good mood to take the time to answer that. Maybe
5586     someone will. Maybe I will.
5587    
5588     If I answer that one today, maybe he'll be back tomorrow asking
5589     how to check to see if two variables contain different values. Maybe
5590     I won't. What I find incredible is that if you tell these people to
5591     go read the manual and come back in two weeks, you sometimes get
5592     jumped on for not being helpful to beginners. Bah. If everyone told
5593     these people to go read the manual, they'd eventually figure out that
5594     that's what you have to do ,and then I wouldn't have to spend so much
5595     of my life dealing with incompetent programmers.
5596    
5597     Some questions are logically nonsensical because the querent
5598     thinks they know more than they do. A lot of these have the form
5599     `How do I use X to accomplish Y?'' There's nothing wrong with this,
5600     except that sometimes X is a chocolate-covered banana and Y is the
5601     integration of European currency systems. I always get stuck on
5602     these, probably because I can't get rid of the idea that the person
5603     really has a good reason for wanting to use X. I know a half-dozen
5604     easy simple ways to accomplish Y, but I can't imagine what X has to do
5605     with it. This is a problem for me in my day job, too. Clients are
5606     always saying to me `We want to use product X to do multimedia
5607     development on the world-wide web,'' and all I can think is `Well,
5608     gee, what would you want to go and do that for?'' Sometimes it turns
5609     out that they want to do it because they want to impress the
5610     manufacturers of X, and I don't work on those jobs.
5611    
5612     The flip side of this is a questions like `I want to accomplish
5613     X, but I don't want to use Y. What can I use instead?'' Which,
5614     again, is sometimes reasonable, and then sometimes X is closing a
5615     filehandle and Y is the `Close' function.
5616    
5617     The questions I like the best are the ones that go like this:
5618    
5619     `I want to accomplish X.
5620    
5621     I thought that the following code fragment would do it:
5622    
5623     ...
5624    
5625     But instead it does Y.
5626    
5627     Why is that?''
5628    
5629     This one is also pretty good:
5630    
5631     `I want to accomplish X.
5632     I thought I might be able to use facility Y.
5633    
5634     But Y doesn't seem like it's quite right,
5635     because of Z.
5636    
5637     What should I use instead of Y, or how can I overcome Z?''
5638    
5639     When I ignore these, it's usually because I don't know the answer.
5640     There were an awful lot of them today. It makes me very happy.
5641    
5642    
5643     There you go; a 160-line dissertation on why questions go unanswered.
5644     Now don't let me hear you saying nobody ever answers your questions.
5645    
5646     --
5647     Consulting Minister for Consultants, DNRC
5648     The Bill of Rights is paid in Responsibilities - Jean McGuire
5649     %%
5650     >> BTW, would it be easier to cope with international text using Python?
5651     >Sigh... you're breaking my heart. Ask Jack Jansen, he probably knows.
5652    
5653     If I were really evel, I would point out that the newest TCL (8.1) has
5654     support for international character sets and Unicode. But then, mentioning
5655     TCL in this newsfroup would be really bad. So, of course, I don't do that.
5656    
5657     Ups. I'm so sorry ... ;-)
5658    
5659     bye, Georg
5660     %%
5661     I personally do not believe in object orientation as a security model
5662     (nor as a general programming paradigm), but feel free to try to
5663     convince me.
5664    
5665     [ Or maybe I confuse you with somebody else and some other posting ]
5666    
5667     Linus
5668     %%
5669     ++ how can i strip new lines out at var.
5670     ++
5671    
5672     Removing new lines is very tricky, as the manual tells you so. Ignore the
5673     complicated things in the manual, and put in this neat little trick:
5674    
5675     $var=join+q,,,grep[[ord$[[qq$\137$]]<10 or+10<ord]]split+q,,,$var;
5676    
5677     If you're old enough not to read the manual, you won't have a problem
5678     understanding the above line.
5679    
5680     Abigail
5681     %%
5682     I fixed the problem by mounting the SCO volume on the SunOS box, and since
5683     1995 the problem has gone away together with the SCO machine.
5684     %%
5685     ++ Hi Does anybody know how to upload many graphic files at the push of a
5686     ++ button?
5687     Yes.
5688    
5689     ++ 100 pictures or so?
5690     Yes.
5691    
5692     ++ Can I do it in Perl?
5693     Yes.
5694    
5695     Your question isn't Perl specific. Please ask in the relevant
5696     newsgroup. alt.button.play
5697    
5698     Abigail
5699     %%
5700     perly gates - The way to perl; Enter hackerdom.
5701    
5702     perly Gates - Contradictio in Terminis.
5703    
5704     Martien
5705     %%
5706     Ren hat weder von Sinnhaftigkeit noch von Kausalität geschrieben, sondern
5707     nur von Logik. Logik und Kausalität sind in unserem (normalen) Denken zwar
5708     eng miteinander verknüpft, sind aber nicht dasselbe. Sinn ist hingegen noch
5709     etwas Drittes und ganz verschiedenes! "Sinn" bedeutet mindestens, daß eine
5710     Sache eine gewisse Richtung hat, wie in "Uhrzeigersinn". Meistens bedeutet
5711     Sinn aber, daß eine Sache einen bestimmten Zweck erfüllt. Auch darf man
5712     nicht "verursachen" mit "begründen" verwechseln, weil die beiden
5713     unterschiedlich sind. Die Existenz muß auch keinen Sinn haben, um eine
5714     Ursache zu haben. Das sind zwei völlig voneinander unabhängige Sachen. Die
5715     Existenz hat einen Sinn, also eine Richtung, wenn wir unserer Existenz eine
5716     Richtung geben. Dieser Sinn kann auf etwas abzielen, was außerhalb unserer
5717     selbst steht, muß aber nicht... Sie kann auch einen Sinn haben, der schon da
5718     war, bevor wir uns danach ausgerichtet haben - von all dem schreibt Ren aber
5719     nicht. ;)
5720    
5721     Worauf Ren wohl hinaus wollte, ist, daß wenn die Logik des begrenzten Raumes
5722     nicht gilt, daß dann die Logik schlechthin hinfällig wird und so jedes Sein
5723     fragwürdig wird. Das ist aber nicht der Fall, da die Logik, die er von den
5724     Grenzen des Raumes aufstellt, gar keine wirkliche Logik ist, sondern nur die
5725     Grenzen des menschlichen Verstandes zeigt. Er kann sich nicht vorstellen,
5726     daß außerhalb der Grenzen des Raumes "Nichts" ist, weil man sich als Mensch
5727     das Nichts nicht vorstellen kann.
5728    
5729     Darüber hinaus meinte er, daß die "Existenz unlogisch" würde. Dieser Satz
5730     ist vollkommen unverständlich. Denn entweder ist etwas, oder es ist nicht.
5731     Das ist auch schon die ganze Logik einer Existenz. (Aristoteles: Satz vom
5732     ausgeschlossenen Dritten) Unlogisch wäre, wenn etwas ist, das nicht ist oder
5733     wenn etwas nicht ist, das ist.
5734    
5735     Von der Unfähigkeit des Menschen, sich einen unbegrenzten aber endlichen
5736     Raum (oder wie auch immer der Weltraum nun aussieht) vorzustellen auf die
5737     "Unlogik der Existenz" zu schließen, ist aber wohl nicht ganz möglich, zumal
5738     eine Existenz nicht unlogisch sein kann. Was sollte das auch heißen? Daher
5739     ist das Problem, das Ren aufwirft, nur ein Scheinproblem. Die Existenz an
5740     sich wird nicht in Frage gestellt dadurch, daß man sich etwas - egal was -
5741     nicht vorstellen kann. Er verwechselt die Begriffe "unlogisch" und
5742     "unvorstellbar".
5743    
5744     Thomas.Decker@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
5745     %%
5746     Marcel Richter wrote:
5747     > Marcel Richter - IQ: 3538327
5748     ^^^
5749     fehlt da nicht irgendwo ein Komma.... =?-)
5750     %%
5751     The X server has to be the biggest program I've ever seen that doesn't
5752     do anything for you. --Ken Thompson
5753     %%
5754     linux-2.1.92/fs/autofs/root.c:
5755     printk("autofs: trying to recover, but prepare for Armageddon\n");
5756     %%
5757     >>Vincent DiPietro, the discoverer of the face on mars, has thrown in
5758     >>the towel, and said that the face on mars is a pile of rocks.
5759     >Was sollte es denn sonst sein?
5760    
5761     An artificial pile of rocks.
5762     %%
5763     > ps: mal nebenbei: eine unbekannte variable beim analysieren des
5764     > marsgesichtes ist es, dass mensch gar nicht weiss, wie die lebende,
5765     > gedachte oder sonstige vorlage eigentlich aussieht. dazu kommt natuerlich
5766     > noch das fehlende wissen um die intention des "kuenstlers", ob er
5767     > beispielsweise nur aspekte bzw. partien eines gesichtes integrieren wollte
5768     > - und natuerlich, ob es ueberhaupt kunst ist:)
5769    
5770     Ganz genau. Und das Matterhorn ist eine palaeoimpressionistische Studie des
5771     Geruchsorgans der Rasse der Ciabattanimalier. Aber das wussten hier
5772     sicherlich schon alle. Das ganze Universum ist ausserdem eigentlich nur ein
5773     grosser Flipperautomat.
5774    
5775     Christoph Schulte Moenting - ubec@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de
5776     %%
5777     > Kris Weilemann schrieb
5778     >
5779     > >MIR ging es neulich aehnlich. Ich wurde von Ausserirdischen entfuehrt.
5780     > >Ich wurde eingesperrt in einem dunklem Raum mit langen Sitzreihen und mit
5781     > >einer Popcorn-artigen Substanz gefuettert. Nach 2 Stunden war alles
5782     > >vorbei. Einen Tag spaeter stellte ich fest, dass mir 18 Mark im
5783     > >Geldbeutel fehlten. Ist das nicht krass? -Kris.
5784     %%
5785     ... Jazz ist nicht nur das erfolgreichste, sondern auch das einzige originäre Kunstgenre,
5786     daß die USA jemals hervorgebracht haben.
5787    
5788     "Apropos Musik", HR2 am 16.4.98
5789     %%
5790     http://www.rsw.com/
5791    
5792     The Unix shell as a 4GL
5793    
5794     Unix provides hundreds of programs that can be piped together to easily
5795     perform almost any function imaginable. Nothing comes close to providing the
5796     functions that come standard with Unix. Programs and philosophies carried
5797     over from other systems put walls between the user and Unix, and the power
5798     of Unix is thrown away. The shell, extended with a few relational operators,
5799     is the fourth generation database scripting language most appropriate to the
5800     Unix environment.
5801     %%
5802     Perl is incredibly difficult to parse. For example, what's the difference
5803     between these:
5804    
5805     time /3 ;#/; print "hello";
5806     sin /3 ;#/; print "goodbye";
5807    
5808     Right. The first one is time divided by 3, and the print is in a comment.
5809     The second one is the sin of the result of a regular expression match for "3
5810     ;#", and the print gets executed!
5811    
5812     There's no pure BNF in the world that'll handle that. And remember, with
5813     "use" and prototypes available, whether you parse something like "sin" or
5814     "time" depends on its definition in some other file, somewhere in the galaxy
5815     (or even decided by Perl code in a BEGIN block, that evals a prototype!).
5816    
5817     Which led Larry to say at one point: "the only thing that can parse Perl is
5818     'perl'".
5819    
5820     --
5821     Randal L. Schwartz
5822     %%
5823     Ronald J Kimball <rjk@coos.dartmouth.edu> writes:
5824    
5825     > Pascal AMRAM wrote:
5826     > > Subject: MSEXCHANGE / OUTLOOK
5827     >
5828     > So here I am trying to figure out what an M sex change is....
5829    
5830     It's obviously the opposite of an F sex change. HTH.
5831    
5832     --
5833     Jonathan Feinberg jdf@pobox.com Sunny Brooklyn, NY
5834     %%
5835     The management (my cats) made me say this.
5836     %%
5837     uae-0.6.9/custom.c:800:
5838     write_log ("Program is torturing BPLCON1.\n");
5839     %%
5840     uae-0.6.9/src/memory.c:363
5841     write_log ("Your Amiga program just did something terribly stupid\n");
5842     %%
5843     Closures make sense in any programming language where you
5844     can have the return value of a function be itself a
5845     function, as you can in Perl. Note that some languages
5846     provide anonymous functions but are not capable of
5847     providing proper closures; the Python language, for
5848     example.
5849     %%
5850     When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to
5851     resemble a nail.
5852     %%
5853     > but all I get are 501 errors, method not supported. I am not 100% sure what
5854     > I did wrong.
5855    
5856     What you did wrong was post a microsoft server question to a perl
5857     newsgroup.
5858     %%
5859     I am trying to learn Perl on my Windows 97 system. In particular...
5860     %%
5861     >Es kamen Außerirdische, die Pyramiden bauten und andere Wunder
5862     >vollbrachten. Dafür wurden sie vergöttert. Diese außerirdischen bauten dann
5863     >wahrscheinlich auch die Cydonia Region.
5864    
5865     Etwa zehnmal zu oft 'Stargate' gesehen, was?
5866     %%
5867     >Die Menschheit kämpft seit Millionen von Jahren gegeneinander.
5868    
5869     Welche Hälfte ist denn da die grössere? :o)
5870     %%
5871     ...am still rebuilding after being hit with a clock changing virus it reset
5872     my clock to 2039 unfortunately for me my OS is beta 98 needless to say it
5873     expired instantly!!!
5874     %%
5875     From: Per Bothner <bothner@cygnus.com>
5876     To: Pal Engstad <engstad@hunt.inmet.com>
5877    
5878     > Linus Torvalds requires that all code in the source is using a tab
5879     > length of 8 spaces, and he also states that you are a bad programmer
5880     > if you write code with more than 3 indentation levels.
5881    
5882     I didn't know that Linus Torvalds has done research on programming styles.
5883     He much have, since why else would you have the audacity quote him as
5884     an authority, on a list where there are dozens of people with more
5885     than double Linus's programming experience?
5886    
5887     > This has caused the code to be fairly easy to read and maintainance is
5888     > pretty straight forward.
5889    
5890     Irrelevant - a kernel is a lot simpler than an optimizing compiler,
5891     in terms of complexity of algorithms and data structures.
5892     %%
5893     Nach der Diskussion muss ich akzeptieren, dass die juengst erfolgte
5894     Erdbeschleunigung von - 0,6 auf - 0,4 Millisekunden kein zwingender Beweis
5895     fuer einen Permanentantrieb ist. Aber: In letzter Zeit kommt es bei mir immer
5896     wieder vor, dass ich Dinge einfach weiss. Selbst wenn ich sie nicht begruenden
5897     kann. Ich weiss trotzdem dass sie stimmen muessen und der Antrieb existiert.
5898     Mit der Zeit findet sich dann auch die Begruendung.
5899     %%
5900     Wir suchen neue AussenMitarbeiterInnen... (S.Pernar@Link-Goe)
5901     %%
5902     hyperltext (hy'perl-text), n. double-quotish-interpolated hypertext markup:
5903     Example:
5904     print qq[[<LI><A HREF="$self->[[url]]">@[[[ucfirst $self->[[title]]]]]</A>\n]];
5905     %%
5906     liperlsuction: What happens to any script longer than 10 lines once
5907     Randal gets his hands on it
5908     %%
5909     Uperl Volta - country where perl programmers control the electricity.
5910     %%
5911     > Anybody successfully installed the win32 version of Perl?
5912    
5913     No! Millions of people don't use perl on win32 machines. You may be the
5914     first if you get it working.
5915     %%
5916     > Macintosh.
5917     > Think different.
5918    
5919     Think Again.
5920     %%
5921     Bill.Cilnton@dyselxia.com
5922     %%
5923     tsatan@hotmail.com writes:
5924     > Why does perl have the "push" and "unshift" functions? ...
5925     > push @nums, 4; is the same as @nums = (@nums, 4);
5926    
5927     What do you want, Scheme? ;)
5928     %%
5929     # There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
5930     # It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen
5931     %%
5932     | I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because
5933     | someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the
5934     | top.
5935     %%
5936     I had a student ask about the UN9 operating system. I didn't understabd what
5937     he was talking about so he wrote UNIX on the board.
5938     %%
5939     On 1 Apr 98 17:34:23 GMT, Schulung7 wrote:
5940     ^^^^^^^^^
5941     >Was haltet ihr vom UFO-Absturz in Rosswell?
5942    
5943     Nichts. Und jetzt geh woanders spielen.
5944     %%
5945     >Kann man hier irgendwie mal die UFOs reinbringen, um die es in dieser NG
5946     >gehen soll?
5947    
5948     Nein, der Datentyp wäre inkompatibel. UFOs sind per Definitionem
5949     materielle Objekte (obwohl das zur Zeit fraglich ist ;-), die sich in
5950     diesem Medium nicht austauschen lassen.
5951     %%
5952     Wer redet hier denn von der "Hui Hui"? Ich sprach von "Hui! Hui!".
5953     %%
5954     >> nein...ist kein Sender. Eine taiwanesische Sekte hat behauptet, daß am
5955     >> 25.3. auf allen TVs der Welt Gott auf Kanal 18 erscheinen würde.
5956     >> Ist natuerlich nicht eingetreten.
5957     >
5958     >Aber unsere Haus-Sat-Anlage geht seither nicht mehr.
5959    
5960     Ein Zeichen! Er hat uns ein Zeichen gegeben! Zieht alle euren linken
5961     Schuh aus!
5962     %%
5963     >Klingt nach Erdstillstand.
5964    
5965     Ich bin entsetzt. Man hat hoffentlich sofort Wiederbedrehungsmaßnahmen
5966     eingeleitet?
5967     %%
5968     Mars Global Surveyor Imaging Schedule
5969    
5970    
5971     First opportunity
5972     Approximate
5973     Orbit Internet
5974     Date Time (UTC/Pacific) Number Target Posting
5975    
5976     4-3-98 09:58/1:58 a.m. 216 Viking Lander 1 April 6
5977     4-3-98 21:37/1:37 p.m. 217 Viking Lander 2 April 7
5978     4-4-98 09:16/1:16 a.m. 218 Mars Pathfinder April 7
5979     4-5-98 08:33/12:33 a.m. 220 Cydonia April 6 (mid-a.m.)
5980    
5981     Second opportunity
5982     Approximate
5983     Orbit Internet
5984     Date Time (UTC/Pacific) Number Target Posting
5985    
5986     4-12-98 15:23/ 8:23 a.m. 235 Viking Lander 1 April 14
5987     4-13-98 03:01/ 8:01 p.m. 236 Viking Lander 2 April 15
5988     4-13-98 14:40/ 7:40 a.m. 237 Mars Pathfinder April 15
5989     4-14-98 13:57/ 6:57 a.m. 239 Cydonia April 14 (mid-p.m.)
5990    
5991     Third opportunity
5992     Approximate
5993     Orbit Internet
5994     Date Time (UTC/Pacific) Number Target Posting
5995    
5996     4-21-98 20:45/1:45 p.m. 254 Viking Lander 1 April 23
5997     4-22-98 08:23/1:23 a.m. 255 Viking Lander 2 April 24
5998     4-22-98 20:02/1:02 p.m. 256 Mars Pathfinder April 24
5999     4-23-98 19:18/12:18 p.m. 258 Cydonia April 24 (mid-a.m.)
6000    
6001     %%
6002     > >2. Der Menschheit ist durch Inzucht entstanden. Laut biologischem
6003     > >Wissen, unwahrscheinlich, da Mutation und Mißbildungen auftreten
6004     > >würden.
6005     >
6006     > Vermutung: Das ist auch aufgetreten. Siehe levitische "Gesetze" zur
6007     > "Behandlung" von "Aussatz" insb. im 3. "Mose". Die hatten schon Probleme.
6008     Sag mal, bei Dir piepts wohl nicht mehr richtig! Aussatz, heute besser
6009     unter dem Namen Lepra bekannt, ist keine Erbkrankheit. Es ist eine
6010     (heute heilbare) Infektionskrankheit, verursacht durch Bakterien.
6011     Also nichts von Inzucht, wie Du das in Deinem latenten Rassenwahn
6012     implizierst.
6013     %%
6014     > You might please start up with reading more than one sentence - a skill
6015     > quite familiar in Europe, but as it seems not in the USA.
6016     %%
6017     Yup. Instead of crashing Xservers, now you have crashing kernels.
6018     Big improvement.
6019     %%
6020     -- "Hey look, this new card is for windows and only $xx!"
6021     -- "Yes, but it's braindead and will hurt your performance. Take that one
6022     over there. Besides, it's not an ope.."
6023     -- "Why that one?"
6024     -- "Because it's better, sinc.."
6025     -- "But I can do the same with this one, it's cheaper, and its for windows!"
6026     %%
6027     In der Klinik, in der ich mal arbeiten musste, hatten wir einen echten
6028     Koenig Ludwig II und mindestens fuenf Stueck Jesus - sowas gibts halt,
6029     wenn Du verstehst, was ich meine.
6030     %%
6031     > Hast Du mal einen Stein beobachtet, der eine Unzahl komplexer
6032     > Vorgaenge paresentiert, einschliesslich der Hervorbringung
6033     > etlicher Lebensformen?
6034    
6035     Jepp. Ist nur ein Problem mit der Definition von "zahlreich".
6036    
6037     > Hast Du mal einen Steinen beobachtet, der sich mal eben
6038     > "verwandelt", und auf dem dann lauter Wesen rumkrabbeln,
6039     > die aus ihm selbst entsprungen sind?
6040    
6041     Klar doch. Ist nur ein Problem mit der Definition von "lauter".
6042    
6043     > Ueberspitzt: Hast Du mal einen Steinen beobachtet, der
6044     > ploetzlich zum Lebewesen wird und Dich fragt, wer oder was
6045     > er eigentlich ist?
6046    
6047     Tja, da hören die Übereinstimmungen auf. Ich dachte Du meinst
6048     Erwin Stein. Den kenne ich. Der hat zwei Kinder. Die krabbeln
6049     ab und zu auf ihm herum. Der ist aber nicht plötzlich zum Le-
6050     bewesen geworden, sondern den gibt es nun schon ein wenig
6051     länger. Und er hat mich auch noch nie gefragt, wer oder was
6052     er eigentlich ist. Zumindest nicht in einem Zustand, den man
6053     als "normal" bezeichnen könnte. So wird das anscheinend nix.
6054     Ciao
6055     Stefan
6056     %%
6057     "These download files are in Microsoft Word 6.0 format. After
6058     unzipping, these files can be viewed in any text editor, including
6059     all versions of Microsoft Word, WordPad, and Microsoft Word Viewer."
6060     (http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/pc99.htm)
6061     %%
6062     Video cards have write-only registers. (of course that is bad design) Let's
6063     say that register 13 is write-only, as is common. It holds an index that
6064     determines what register 69 (also write-only) actually changes. If you write
6065     to register 13 while the accelerator is active, you lock the PCI bus. You
6066     can't determine if the accelerator is active without reading from register
6067     42, but you can't interpret the contents of that register correctly without
6068     knowing what the last accelerator command was. Reading from register 13 gets
6069     you some useless (unrelated) info and _also_ toggles the accelerator on and
6070     off.
6071     %%
6072     Join the Army,
6073     Meet interesting people,
6074     Kill them.
6075     %%
6076     > Wie entsteht Materie? Ich koennte mir vorstellen, dass Energie in Materie
6077     > umwandelbar ist.
6078    
6079     E=m*c^2 (Schon mal gehoert?) (Schon mal verstanden??)
6080     %%
6081     >nach der die Pygmäen geheime UFO-Basen in ausgehöhlten Baumstämmen
6082     >unterhalten (Vorsicht: das war ein Witz :-) ).
6083     %%
6084     > (Bernhard Nahrgang) wrote:
6085     >
6086     > >> Logische Annahme: Die Erde waechst entweder kontinuierlich, oder periodisch
6087     > >> ruckartig.
6088     > >wie kann jemand mit dem IQ von 130 nur SO SELTEN BLOEDE sein??
6089     >
6090     > Norbert ist nicht selten blöde...
6091    
6092     :-)
6093     %%
6094     SAT 1 Teletext: Ein Asteroid mit einem Durchmesser von fast einem Kilometer
6095     rast mit großer Geschwindigkeit auf die Erde zu. US-Astronomen befürchten:
6096     "XF11" könnte im Jahr 2028 auf der Erde einschlagen. Die Folgen wären
6097     verheerend. "Der rasende Stein aus dem All ist eine Gefahr", warnt Jack G.
6098     Hills vom US-Kernforschungszentrum Los Alamos: "Wenn er die Erde trifft,
6099     wird er die Sprengkraft von 320.000 Megatonnen Dynamit haben." Das
6100     entspricht dem Zweimillionenfachen der Atombombe...
6101    
6102     ARD/ZDF Teletext: ASTEROID MIT KURS AUF ERDE ENTDECKT Amerikanische
6103     Astronomen haben einen Asteroiden ausgemacht, der in 30 Jahren der Erde
6104     gefährlich nahekommen wird. Die Gefahr, daß der Asteroid einschlagen wird,
6105     sei gering, aber auch nicht völlig auszuschließen. Nach derzeitigen
6106     Berechnungen wird der Asteroid mit der Bezeichnung "1997 XF11" am 26.Oktober
6107     2028 unserem Planeten am nächsten kommen. "1997 XF11" hat etwa einen
6108     Durchmesser von 1,6 Kilometern. Erstmals käme ein Objekt dieser Größe der
6109     Erde so nahe, hieß es in dem Bericht der Internationalen Astronomischen
6110     Union.
6111    
6112     RTL Teletext: Himmelskörper rast auf Erde zu Ein Asteroid wird im Jahr 2028
6113     der Erde gefährlich nahe kommen. Amerikanische Wissenschaftler haben die
6114     Chance eines Zusammenpralls auf eins zu tausend berechnet. Sollte der
6115     Asteroid, der einen Durchmesser von 1,8 Kilometern hat, aufprallen, könnte
6116     er eine gigantische Flutwelle auslösen, so die Forscher. Auch ein genaues
6117     Datum haben die Wissenschaftler schon errechnet: Von Europa aus wäre das
6118     Naturschauspiel am 26. Oktober 2028 zu beobachten.
6119     %%
6120     * Linux Viruscan.....
6121     Windows 95 Found Remove it ? (Y/y)
6122     %%
6123     >>Hmm, welche Behauptungen entsprechen denn deiner Meinung nach der
6124     >>Realität?
6125     >>
6126     >>Das es das FBI wirklich gibt?
6127     >>Das Scully frigide ist, und deshalb mit Mulder nichts anfangen möchte?
6128     >>Das Mulder homosexuell ist, und deshalb mit Scully nichts anfangen möchte?
6129     >>Das der CSM einen Vertrag mit Marlb*ro hat?
6130     >
6131     >Hinter diesen "Fragen" erkenne ich z.B. eine gut bekannte Strategie. Die
6132     >FBI-Frage ist bewusst absurd. Das Abgleiten ins Sexuelle hat ebenfalls
6133     %%
6134     "'You're a Cirrus. You're crap. I'm an S3. I rule. Thank you and please drive through.'"
6135     %%
6136     > How could you have perl take a set of numbers (1,2,3,4) and put them
6137     > into a random order???
6138     >
6139    
6140     @array=qw(1 2 3 4);
6141     print "@array[1,3,2,0]\n";
6142    
6143     I've checked this against other possible random orderings
6144     of these numbers, and this ordering is at least as random as
6145     any of the other possible ones. The benefit of this one being
6146     that it begins with the number 2, which is my favorite random
6147     number less than 42.
6148     %%
6149     From what I am reading Win98 and NT5.0 will be getting rid of all that
6150     crap anyway. Seems that Microsoft has invented something called TCP/IP and
6151     another really revolutionary concept called DNS that eliminates the
6152     netbios crap too. All that arping from browsers is going to go away.
6153     I also hear rumors that they are on the verge of breakthrough discoveries
6154     called NFS, and LPD too. Given enough time and money, they might
6155     eventually invent Unix.
6156     %%
6157     In Germany, where typeface design has always been a significant part of
6158     the cultural heritage, and where typefounding has remained an important
6159     business, there are more than one kind of copyright-like protections for
6160     typefaces. Certain long-standing industrial design protection laws have
6161     been used to protect typeface designs in litigation over royalties and
6162     plagiarisms. Further, there is a recent law, the so-called
6163     "Schriftzeichengesetz" enacted in 1981, that specifically protects
6164     typeface designs. New designs are registered, as is done with
6165     copyright in most countries. This law only protects new, original
6166     designs. It is available to non-German designers and firms. Therefore,
6167     some type firms and designers routinely copyright new designs in West
6168     Germany. This gives a degree of protection for products marketed in
6169     Germany. Since multinational corporations may find it cheaper to
6170     license a design for world-wide use rather than deal with a special case
6171     in one country, the German law does encourage licensing on a broader
6172     scale than would initially seem to be the case.
6173     %%
6174     [linux processes vs. nt/solaris threads]
6175     Rob Pike pointed out that the solution to slow process creation is
6176     faster process creation, not another kernel abstraction.
6177     %%
6178     Does anybody know how to communicate between a PC and a modem,
6179     using a Perl CGI script?
6180     %%
6181     >I really don't know crap about PERL. How is it different from JAVA?
6182    
6183     One tiny difference: Java can crash your browser. It happened to me last
6184     week.
6185     %%
6186     Brieweb> I heard Randal Schwartz say he could write an entire httpd server in 90 lines
6187     Brieweb> of PERL.
6188     No, that's an http *proxy* server. A simple web server is much shorter.
6189     From "perldoc HTTP::Daemon"...
6190     [Randal Schwartz]
6191     %%
6192     But the possibility of abuse may be a good reason for leaving
6193     capabilities out of other computer languages, it's not a good reason
6194     for leaving capabilities out of Perl.
6195     [Larry Wall in `Macros'. [[perl5-porters]]]
6196     %%
6197     Yes: Java's main advantage over Perl is that it's hard to use for casual
6198     programmers, so keeps all but the most intrepid programmers away from it.
6199     It has no decent support for string processing, allowing you to spend
6200     hours at useless debugging. It has a very restrictive and static system
6201     to make sure you don't try anything interesting. It makes sure that you
6202     use objects, by golly, because James Gosling said so. It's easy for C++
6203     programmers to use, and hard for shell or BASIC programmers to use. It
6204     also only runs on a few systems, locking its customers into a a closed
6205     system and restricting their options.
6206     [Tom Christiansen in `Java Vs. Perl']
6207     %%
6208     <Bill_Gates> Where do you want to go today?
6209     <Phase_5> Where do go tomorrow?
6210     <BlueFlux> Where were you yesterday?!?!
6211     %%
6212     "It's not to control, but to protect the citizens of Singapore. In our
6213     society, you can state your views, but they have to be correct."
6214     Ernie Hai
6215     Coordinator of Singapore Government Internet Project
6216     %%
6217     : I very much prefer a useful error message than a "it produced the wrong
6218     : results" report from the users.
6219    
6220     if i got even "it produced the wrong results" from our users, i would
6221     be in 7th heaven. ours often mail us with such insightful requests as
6222     "can you tell me my email address?" no, sorry, that should be "CAN U
6223     TEL ME MY E MAIL ADRES DUDE?!!!?? HURRY!!!"
6224     %%
6225     There are many intelligent species in the Universe.
6226     They are all owned by cats.
6227     %%
6228     Why dignify your unsustainable, unjustifiable, unprovable feeble
6229     attempts at character assassination with anything resembling a reply?
6230     You only make yourself look foolish by mouthing off like that.
6231     %%
6232     From: L & K Olson <kolson@mbnet.mb.ca>
6233     Subject: If they wrote error messages in haiku ...
6234    
6235     Yesterday it worked
6236     Today it is not working
6237     Windows is like that
6238     - - -
6239     wind catches lily
6240     scatt'ring petals to the wind:
6241     segmentation fault
6242     - - -
6243     Three things are certain:
6244     Death, taxes, and lost data.
6245     Guess which has occurred.
6246     - - -
6247     A file that big?
6248     It might be very useful.
6249     But now it is gone.
6250     - - -
6251     Windows NT crashed.
6252     I am the Blue Screen of Death.
6253     No one hears your screams.
6254     - - -
6255     Errors have occurred.
6256     We won't tell you where or why.
6257     Lazy programmers.
6258     - - -
6259     Seeing my great fault
6260     Through darkening blue windows
6261     I begin again
6262     - - -
6263     The code was willing,
6264     It considered your request,
6265     But the chips were weak.
6266     - - -
6267     Printer not ready.
6268     Could be a fatal error.
6269     Have a pen handy?
6270     - - -
6271     Server's poor response
6272     Not quick enough for browser.
6273     Timed out, plum blossom.
6274     - - -
6275     Chaos reigns within.
6276     Reflect, repent, and reboot.
6277     Order shall return.
6278     - - -
6279     Login incorrect.
6280     Only perfect spellers may
6281     enter this system.
6282     - - -
6283     This site has been moved.
6284     We'd tell you where, but then we'd
6285     have to delete you.
6286     - - -
6287     ABORTED effort:
6288     Close all that you have.
6289     You ask way too much.
6290     - - -
6291     First snow, then silence.
6292     This thousand dollar screen dies
6293     so beautifully.
6294     - - -
6295     With searching comes loss
6296     and the presence of absence:
6297     "My Novel" not found.
6298     - - -
6299     The Tao that is seen
6300     Is not the true Tao, until
6301     You bring fresh toner.
6302     - - -
6303     The Web site you seek
6304     cannot be located but
6305     endless others exist
6306     - - -
6307     Stay the patient course
6308     Of little worth is your ire
6309     The network is down
6310     - - -
6311     A crash reduces
6312     your expensive computer
6313     to a simple stone.
6314     - - -
6315     There is a chasm
6316     of carbon and silicon
6317     the software can't bridge
6318     - - -
6319     To have no errors
6320     Would be life without meaning
6321     No struggle, no joy
6322     - - -
6323     You step in the stream,
6324     but the water has moved on.
6325     This page is not here.
6326     - - -
6327     No keyboard present
6328     Hit F1 to continue
6329     Zen engineering?
6330     - - -
6331     Hal, open the file
6332     Hal, open the damn file, Hal
6333     open it, please Hal
6334     - - -
6335     Out of memory.
6336     We wish to hold the whole sky,
6337     But we never will.
6338     - - -
6339     Having been erased,
6340     The document you're seeking
6341     Must now be retyped.
6342     - - -
6343     The ten thousand things
6344     How long do any persist?
6345     Netscape, too, has gone.
6346     - - -
6347     Rather than a beep
6348     Or a rude error message,
6349     These words: "File not found."
6350     - - -
6351     Serious error.
6352     All shortcuts have disappeared
6353     Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
6354     %%
6355     "The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way
6356     to factor large prime numbers." -- Bill Gates from "The Road Ahead," p. 265.
6357     %%
6358     > What is the Windows equivalent of the first line used for
6359     > UNIX (#!/usr/local/bin/perl) that tells where the Perl interpreter is?
6360    
6361     Windows hasn't gotten quite as far in functionality as, say, BSD Unix in the
6362     early 1980s.
6363     %%
6364     > I have a chat script, that will work fine for a bit then after a while
6365     > the private messages will stop working. It might be because I changed
6366     > something, but chances are that isn't the case. I re-install a fresh
6367     > copy, paths are correct, and they still don't work
6368    
6369     I think you are experiencing GOVERNMENT CONTROL. You see, everyone
6370     with a chat script is being scrutinised by the department of CHAT
6371     control. Whenever they see some message they don't like, they
6372     introduce some little goblin called feature-creep in your program. if
6373     you have lots of these little devils, your program migth acquire so
6374     many new features that it just stops working.
6375    
6376     This also applies to Microsoft products.
6377    
6378     > Does it make sense for certain features to just not work?! If you can
6379     > help, or have suggestions, get back to me, PLEASE:)
6380    
6381     Yes, it makes perfect sense. Especially if they're features which
6382     really are bugs. And especially if they're 'private' messages. You
6383     know perfectly well that the government doesn't like private messages.
6384    
6385     Hope this explains what's going on
6386     Martien Verbruggen
6387     %%
6388     ...code? If you're on a misconfigured NT server (is that redundant?), you...
6389     %%
6390     X11R6.1-based free X server compiles, links and crashes under IRIX(TM).
6391     %%
6392     -------------- please bite here ------------- bitte hier abbeissen ---------
6393     %%
6394     "Frag mal, auf was fuer uptimes man kommt, wenn man Software-Entwicklung
6395     unter NT macht..." "Das koennen bis zu dreissig Minuten werden - in der
6396     Mittagspause." -- Andreas Bogk, Kai Fett, de.alt.sysadmin.recovery
6397     %%
6398     > ++ A lot of posters here have .sigs that include perl one liners.
6399     > ++ Is there a safe way to run them, and be assured that they wont
6400     > ++ damage and/or erase files? (or e-mail off my shadow file)
6401     >
6402     > Just make sure you understand it ;)
6403    
6404     I nominate Abigail for best response of the year with this one. Come to
6405     think of it, I nominate it for best response of next year, too.
6406     %%
6407     Your moderator will be spending the next week on a beach on a small island
6408     where the phones don't work very well, so there won't be any comp.compilers
6409     until the 28th. Any messages you send in will wait here until I get back and
6410     should be posted on March 1st or 2nd.
6411     %%
6412     But now, in comp.lang.perl.misc, you have a bunch of people who aren't
6413     even asking how to make the pieces fit together, but what the
6414     individual pieces are. ("How do I get my lego project to roll accross
6415     the table?" "You use one of those pieces that have the wheels
6416     attached.") Or questions that aren't about building at all. ("The
6417     motor stopped moving. How do I get it to start again?" "The batteries
6418     are probably dead. You can buy new batteries at any department or
6419     convienience store.")
6420     %%
6421     : how do i make my perl script run?
6422     Get up at 91 minutes before dawn, clothe yourself in neon green body
6423     %%
6424     for some reason Windoze users don't seem to expect docs to come with an archive
6425     %%> ToiLeTGoD
6426    
6427     Well, well.. I always wondered who/what made that flush thingy work.
6428     Pretty cool name, dude. (not)
6429     %%
6430     Ummm...create "comp.lang.perl.wizards", make it moderated and all posts,
6431     including xposts, go into /dev/null. Most FAQers won't have the Usenet
6432     background to understand that such groups are either a) a wasteland
6433     populated (briefly) by persons like themselves, or b) point to /dev/null.
6434     %%
6435     Lazy people never bother to actually read the manual. Instead they (like
6436     kids) pick something with big, colorful buttons.
6437     -- Eugene Tyurin <gene@insti.physics.sunysb.edu>
6438     %%
6439     The Average Person's Axioms of First Order Predicate Logic:
6440     (A => B) => (B => A)
6441     (There exists) x A(x) => (For all) x A(x)
6442     (A => C) & (B => C) => (A => B) - Warren Vonroeschlaub
6443     %%
6444     cal 9 1752
6445     %%
6446     Installing unix fixes the [VMS] bug.
6447     -Barry Shein
6448     %%
6449     And this horrible free-for-all will be left to children wondering around
6450     by themselves in the dark because they refuse to turn on the light and
6451     read the manual.
6452     %%
6453     "SPARC" is "CRAPS" backwards --Rob Pike
6454     %%
6455     I increasingly begin to understand why some universities require
6456     that its compsci majors study the Euclid's Prime Number Theorem,
6457     the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, Cantor's Diagonalization Proof,
6458     Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, and the ramifications of Halting Problem
6459     in everyday life. These may not be involved in daily programming, but
6460     it helps develop a rigorous mind. And it gives those who would progress
6461     from typist to word-processor devotee to HTML documenter to CGI scripter
6462     to distributed multithreaded operating systems design specialist cause
6463     for pause. You just can't do that without proper training.
6464     %%
6465     comp.lang.perl.i'm-from-microsoft-so-won't-read-documentation
6466     %%
6467     I suggest you install a newsserver, and keep a local spool. Anything else
6468     is too much work, and fairly silly. The Internet has catupulted even
6469     the Wintel victims past the days of BBS toys.
6470     %%
6471     > Help help! Pls advise me thru email.
6472    
6473     I advise you to buy a new keyboard; one that has all the keys you
6474     need.
6475     %%
6476     Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely
6477     powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is
6478     deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.
6479     %%
6480     I find the first particularly useful in destroying the miswrapped
6481     lines stemming from brain-damaged "it's just another word processor"
6482     newsreaders. You know,
6483     those postings that always seem to go to the edge of the line and then
6484     back
6485     again to the start, as this paragraph has. These are just too painful
6486     to read. Just kill them. It's not worth your time trying to figure
6487     out what they're saying.
6488     %%
6489     It is most annoying to receive junk mail describing how to purchase 93
6490     million addresses, while knowing that yours is one of them.
6491     %%
6492     I'm surprised Tom, how could it miss the "X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.01 [en] (WinNT;
6493     U)" header line? Personally, I find the attempted use of Netscape as a
6494     newsreader even worse then the attempted use of WinNT as an OS. :-)
6495    
6496     But the combination.... *sutters*
6497     %%
6498     Hm... my new killfile isn't detecting you're posting from Windows.
6499     Darn it.
6500     %%
6501     At least he didn't post in all caps.
6502     %%
6503     http://language.perl.com/CPAN-local/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html
6504     %%
6505     I think the biggest problem with M.S.A. is that the scripts work for Matt, but
6506     the majority of people trying to use them are from the
6507     "Wintel/AOL/FrontPage/push-a-button/HTML-is-programming/no-programming-required"
6508     school of non-learning. It isn't a problem with the code, per se, but with those
6509     trying to use it.
6510     %%
6511     "Linux can emulate an C64 on my AMDK6PR200 at full speed. Windows can't."
6512     %%
6513     cdog wrote:
6514     >
6515     > Is this group active?
6516     No.
6517    
6518     If you had spent half a second LOOKING at the group before posting, you
6519     probably could have come to that conclusion yourself.
6520    
6521     On a personal note, I died 3 years, 8 days, 5 minutes, 16 seconds, and
6522     345 milliseconds ago, but who's counting.
6523     %%
6524     "Security through obscurity is no security at all."
6525     -comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup posting
6526     %%
6527     "Windows 95 will now attempt to blow chunks across your primary partition.
6528     Press any key to continue..."
6529     %%
6530     NT 5.0 is the last nail in the Unix coffin. Interestingly, Unix
6531     isn't in the coffin... It's wondering what the heck is sealing
6532     itself into a wooden box 6 feet underground...
6533     %%
6534     The Wall St Journal (1996-01-22, page 1) reported that Cuba is
6535     considering jumping across the International Date Line, just so that
6536     it's the first into the year 2000. So it's possible you'll have to
6537     adjust your travel plans.
6538     %%
6539     "Wo kämen wir hin, wenn alle sagten, wo kämen wir hin, und niemand ginge
6540     hin, um einmal zu schauen, wohin man käme, wenn man ginge." -- Kurt Marti
6541     %%
6542     The Takeuchi function is a popular benchmark of function calling due to its
6543     highly recursive nature. It's defined as:
6544    
6545     tak x y z = z, if y >= x
6546     = tak (tak (x-1) y z) (tak (y - 1) z x) (tak (z - 1) x y), otherwise
6547    
6548     For this benchmark, the function is invoked as:
6549    
6550     tak 18 12 6
6551     %%
6552     "Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM!"
6553     -- Bill Gates
6554     "Windows 95 needs at least 8 MB RAM."
6555     -- Bill Gates
6556     "Nobody will ever need Windows 95."
6557     -- logical conclusion
6558     %%
6559     Year Name James Bond Book
6560     - ---- -------------------------------- -------------- ----
6561     50's James Bond TV Series Barry Nelson
6562     1962 Dr. No Sean Connery 1958
6563     1963 From Russia With Love Sean Connery 1957
6564     1964 Goldfinger Sean Connery 1959
6565     1965 Thunderball Sean Connery 1961
6566     1967* Casino Royale David Niven 1954
6567     1967 You Only Live Twice Sean Connery 1964
6568     1969 On Her Majesty's Secret Service George Lazenby 1963
6569     1971 Diamonds Are Forever Sean Connery 1956
6570     1973 Live And Let Die Roger Moore 1955
6571     1974 The Man With The Golden Gun Roger Moore 1965
6572     1977 The Spy Who Loved Me Roger Moore 1962 (novelette)
6573     1979 Moonraker Roger Moore 1955
6574     1981 For Your Eyes Only Roger Moore 1960 (novelette)
6575     1983 Octopussy Roger Moore 1965
6576     1983* Never Say Never Again Sean Connery
6577     1985 A View To A Kill Roger Moore 1960 (novelette)
6578     1987 The Living Daylights Timothy Dalton 1965 (novelette)
6579     * -- Not a Broccoli production.
6580     %%
6581     Windows NT: n.
6582     32-bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit
6583     operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor, written
6584     by a 2-bit company that can't stand for 1 bit of competition.
6585     %%
6586     Auf der Kiste läuft EHNIX, das ist ZUNIX kompatibel.