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2b Or !2b: Shakespeare TxtMsg Contest
FortKnox writes "Reuters has an article on a contest for the most aspiring text message. It has to be under 160 characters, because it follows the trendy text-messaging for modern mobile phones. Most people will try to make long quotes with abbreviations and numbers and such to bring it down to the appropriate length."
While I am all for motivating people to come up with new poems and/or types of poetry, that is not what this contest does. Playing with not only language but with syntax, capitalizations, and even symbols has been around for awhile, just check out any good poetry mag or even (for a simpler version) go find an e.e. cummings anthology. However, if nothing else comes of this perhaps people will finally learn how to send intelligable messages in very few characters. -- Fear the Tactical Toddlers!
It is unfortunate that you have to be a subscriber in order to submit poetry. I have a good one but not only do I not subscribe, but I live about 6000 Km out of range.
/* Hamlet_monologue.c
/* There's the rub */
/* give us pause */
* William Shakespeare
* (C) 1595 Globe company software
*/
/* Compose this operation from arithmatic of the signed nature. Thusly -1 resounds as more ominous than doth 255 W.S. */
signed char question=(0x2b | ~0x2b);
int n1=nobility(suffering_slings & suffering arrows);
int n2=nobility(taking_arms & opposing_to_end);
/* Though this nobility score be calculated, meethinks that the optimizer shall remove it anon, for it does find no utility in the code W.S. */
int comparison=n1>n2;
rub();
shuffle_off(mortal_coil);
pause();
/* If Bacon thinks I shall share these codes with him, he doth have another thing coming. W.S.
All Thine Sonnet are belonging to us */
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
I wanted to set up a company called this but could never truly validate the acronymical nature of it. maybe it would work better as a zeitgeistical sms:
QQQQ
I'd love to pick up the phone and answer "hello, four queue!"
i want 1% if that goes anywhere.
2b|!2b
No spaces this way.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
There once was a man on his phone
Who could not wait 'til he got home
HIs email he read
"It's important!" he said
'Til his car toward a semi did roam
[written on paper]
Translate this hillbilly conversation:
MR Ducks
MR Not
OSAR
CM Wangs
LIB
MR Ducks
What does this say?
The answer is left as an exercise for the reader...
Somehow, this seems rather similar to SMS.
-- "I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see that I am serious!"
2b || !2b
(well, for programmers at least)
-- "I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see that I am serious!"
>
;-)
> I can't wait until colleges begin offering
> AOLSpeak 101.
>
Yay! Time for a rant. Divert your eyes if you are sensetive to ranting and raving.
I am in a third year systems analyst course at an unnamed (*coughSheridancoughCollegecough*) Canadian College. I don't expect my classmates to be brilliant computer wonders who eat design and shit code. However, I am at a loss to describe the level of illeteracy in our entire group. With a few exceptions, the average person in our class has a literacy level of about grade 9. It's disgusting to think that we will graduate in December and these people can barely read and write english (let alone program, document, or design solutions). The college is very well respected for it's animation and illustration departments (Disney and ILM take most of our anim/illus grads) and has a decent reputation for it's computer schools. What I fear is that my class will get out into the workforce and, for all intensive purposes, smear the name of the College and destroy anything my diploma will stand for.
The Slashdot crowd would enjoy some of the phrases these people have come up with in a recent report. It makes the "all your base are belong to us" look like Shakespiere in comparison. I'm not great at english (lord knows I can barely spell at times) and I don't really expect that. But they have no ideas, no opinions, no ambition, no goals, no desire, and possess nothing to offer the IT industry.
Worse yet, I see and hear everyday that I am not alone - schools across the country are experiencing the exact same thing. People are coming into "computer techology / IT" courses simply because they are told they will be successful. We now have the illeterate drop-out Bill Gates wannabe's - minus the business savvy and intelligence.
Being a systems analyst is all about communication - the ability to design and document new systems. I fear that the majority of people in my course do not possess anything close to this and should have left a long time ago.
I've tried working with them. I've tried helping them. I've tried pushing them. I've tried encouraging them. Nothing works.
Worse yet is that I am forced to do projects with them. I want to be proud of my submissions and I end up doing all of the work - including their work would be equivlant to smearing fecal matter over my work. I'm not perfect - I am trying to learn. These people, however, are only here for the money and it's pissing me off.
See? I warned you.
---
Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
You're right. I never said I was perfect and I know I make a lot of mistakes. I'll quote some of their work for your amusement.
"There is a risk that people will choose other companies over our company that's why it is important to advertise our corporation the best way we can to attract businessees or individual to us."
"If we want to hire a person for programmer position then minimum qualification would be Diploma or Degree and minimum of 6 months experience in the relative field."
"The key people within our business are basically the four co-owners of the business."
"Our products will primarily be produced within Software Solutions building. Packaging is as simple as placing the CD in a box with the appropriate documentation contained." [note: this one REALLY gets me because they NEVER explain who creates the documentation or the software. Our fictional company would develop software and documentation internally and sell that to clients.]
I had to re-write a 40 page report in less than a day - including researching potential competition, market trends, costs, etc. Even worse, it took them 4 weeks to write that bullshit (and there is A LOT more where that comes from).
Ni.
---
Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
note: Three third year college students wrote almost 10 pages of that crap. The worst thing about it is there is no substance to their work.
It's fustrating to do the work of four people.
---
Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
You are fired. Pack your bags.
Shouldn't that be '2b | !2b'?
$_ = $q.
Kevin Fox
--
Kevin Fox
private $h1, $h2;
$h1.dignity eq $h2.dignity;
setScene(VERONA);
$h1.mutiny.renew($h2);
(civil) $hands.taint((civil) $blood);
And so on...
Kevin Fox
--
Kevin Fox
It's a PHONE, for god sakes. What's wrong with actually using the NUMBER BUTTONS on the phone and using them to CALL people??? I guess voice is soo 20th century.
As soon as someone gets DeCSS down to 160 bytes, I think we have a winner. Just put that on your speed-dial and start sending to RIAA members. Anyone have their phone numbers?
I think I'll head over to
obfuscated code on perlmonks and see if I can dig up some winning entries.
"#define question (BB) || !(BB)" -- Shakespeare
------------
CitizenC
R U D 1 2 C 4 A B J? --- send that to enough ladies, and you'll eventually find a taker.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
The most ambitious text message is simply "1 4m 2 3r337 4 u" and "1 0wn j00" interspersed with large numbers of !'s and 1's.
Got Rhinos?
Prison only in thought.
Our minds are the only confine.
Let your code be free.
An optimised version. (When not trusting coimpilers...)
"This is a new literary form and it must be left to define its own parameters,'' the Guardian said.
I can't wait until colleges begin offering AOLSpeak 101.
-gerbik
in 2001 contest was bginning
what happn
somebody set up us da bmb
we get signl
what
phone screen trn on
how r u gentlemen
all your trendy txtmsg r belng 2 us
what u say
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I find predictive text input very handy indeed, and very fast too - I get about 20 wpm which, while slow compared to typing on a normal qwerty keyboard (about a quarter my normal typing speed) is still much much faster than the traditional phone text input. I can write a full-length 160-character text message in about 2 minutes, and need not use confusing abbreviations. It even gets the sentence capitalisation right automatically. :)
Admittedly, it does take a bit of getting used to - it took me about 10 messages before I really got the hang of it, but then... how long did it take you to learn to type efficiently?
One other thing to watch out for is the specific implementation of predictive text input - I find the Motorola version substantially better than the implementation on Nokias, as it provides a list of its best predictions in a line at the bottom of the screen that can be selected using the left/right or up/down keys, and it also automatically learns new words rather than having to manually add them to the dictionary.
Don't be dumb
BT Cellnet > BT Cellnet off peak = 2p/minute
Text message = 10p
I can talk for 2.5 minutes or send 160 characters
for the same price
Which is preferable?
The Master Of Muppets,
The Master Of Muppets,
CAPTAIN: TAKE OFF EVERY "SIG"!!
Then again, maybe the person just meant inspiring.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
it should be: 2b||!2b
and while we are at it, that mathematically equels "true"
which in computer land is "1"
so there you have it, the infamous Hamlett quote reduced to "1"
---------------------------------
And change the allowed length of the sig to match. What's forty more characters?
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Actually, Hamlet's quote reduces even more, and much more elegantly, to one qubit!
--
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
You can send text messages in meetings, or on the train, or ... anywhere talking is too loud. I find it pretty darn useful.
sulli
RTFJ.
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
The actual Guardian article is on-line and has some of today's submissions, plus the official rules and some hints.
From the article: aspiring "tele-poets"
Poets aspire.
Words inspire.
Athletes perspire.
Warranties expire.
Sears tower no longer tallest because it lacks a spire.
-----
D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
Actually, the use of an "OR" in that statement is n't so much right. Hamlet's contemplating suicide during that soliloquy, so "XOR" is much more appropriate - you have to choose life or death, they're mutually exclusive. That's one of the problems with English, we use "or" in speech to two different things.
Here are some handy ways to abbreviate things. ! = not, duh. + = most, max, plus, very, etc. - = least, min, minus, etc. = more @ = at. d = the e = he # = number ^ = carrot & = and ~ = tilde ? = huh, question, etc. \. = slashdot | = pipe for hard words remove vowels and double consonants and such. [] = box : = colon ; = prefix semi like ;cndctr = semiconductor
x = no
g = GEE!
o = oh
p = pee
$ = money
2 = to, too
8 = ate
6 = sex
Use acronyms as much as possible.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
We go ahead and minimize the whole English language? We've already got /., and everyone likes perl.
A few suggestions:
spm = spam
fstp = first post (fp is taken - "floating point")
ayb1 = All your base are belong to us.
$M = Microsoft is a horrible, money grabbing useless institution.
L! = Linux is a wonderful, beutiful thing.
CTO = Commander Taco
Hemos = well...its already pretty short.
ILB = I like beans.
YCUAL = you can't have any until later
HN/DTA = Have some now, but don't tell anyone
We could also use verbs as operands...
For example - kills = k
kL!$M - Linux, the wonderful, beautiful thing kills Microsoft the horrible, money grabbing institution.
Of course, we could, I don't know...just zip it up and unzip it? Its not like zip is a difficult protocol to implement on a palm...
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
quirky
say it again sam
hoochies like a mo' fo
360 degrees of Karma
if they could make a phone where, instead of just reading text messages from people, you could actually somehow talk to the person on the other end. Hey, waitaminute.....
I suppose this contest is intended to prove that wireless messaging is a legitimate medium, in that it is neither rare nor well done.