A novice of the temple once approached the Chief Priest with a question.
"Master, does Emacs have the Buddha nature?" the novice asked.
The Chief Priest had been in the temple for many years and could be relied upon to know these things. He thought for several minutes before replying.
"I don't see why not. It's got bloody well everything else."
With that, the Chief Priest went to lunch. The novice suddenly achieved enlightenment, several years later.
Commentary:
His Master is kind, Answering his FAQ quickly, With thought and sarcasm.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE
SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN, END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK
This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi, Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs while they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there because the center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and Perrier.
Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle and non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower case. For example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the message:
"i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can
you find the time to try it again?"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
You know you've been sitting in front of your Lisp machine too long when you go out to the junk food machine and start wondering how to make it give you the CADR of Item H so you can get that yummie chocolate cupcake that's stuck behind the disgusting vanilla one.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
-- Vannevar Bush
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow somewhere. A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew ratchet screwdrivers as fruit. The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what the screwdriver is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, is presumably working on it.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Too often people have come to me and said, "If I had just one wish for anything in all the world, I would wish for more user-defined equations in the HP-51820A Waveform Generator Software."
-- Instrument News
[Once is too often. Ed.]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two complementary directions: to reduce the number of software errors through rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the remaining errors by providing for recovery from them. An interesting footnote to this design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be the result of two program errors: the first, in the program that started the problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the system.
-- A.L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage
Operating Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and
Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown suit in the city. Colleges may be to blame. English majors are encouraged, I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the quad. And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors, and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural for them to despise science fiction.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Science Fiction"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Comparing software engineering to classical engineering assumes that software has the ability to wear out. Software typically behaves, or it does not. It either works, or it does not. Software generally does not degrade, abrade, stretch, twist, or ablate. To treat it as a physical entity, therefore, is misapplication of our engineering skills. Classical engineering deals with the characteristics of hardware; software engineering should deal with the characteristics of *software*, and not with hardware or management.
-- Dan Klein
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The Greatest Mathematical Error
The Mariner I space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral on 28 July 1962 towards Venus. After 13 minutes' flight a booster engine would give acceleration up to 25,820 mph; after 44 minutes 9,800 solar cells would unfold; after 80 days a computer would calculate the final course corrections and after 100 days the craft would cirlce the unknown planet, scanning the mysterious cloud in which it is bathed.
However, with an efficiency that is truly heartening, Mariner I plunged into the Atlantic Ocean only four minutes after takeoff.
Inquiries later revealed that a minus sign had been omitted from the instructions fed into the computer. "It was human error", a launch spokesman said.
This minus sign cost L4,280,000.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Rule #7: Silence is not acquiescence.
Contrary to what you may have heard, silence of those present is
not necessarily consent, even the reluctant variety. They simply may
sit in stunned silence and figure ways of sabotaging the plan after
they regain their composure.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmar), defined by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the absolutely perfect future.
-- Amrom Katz
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Mr. Jones related an incident from "some time back" when IBM Canada Ltd. of Markham, Ont., ordered some parts from a new supplier in Japan. The company noted in its order that acceptable quality allowed for 1.5 per cent defects (a fairly high standard in North America at the time).
The Japanese sent the order, with a few parts packaged separately in plastic. The accompanying letter said: "We don't know why you want 1.5 per cent defective parts, but for your convenience, we've packed them separately."
-- Excerpted from an article in The (Toronto) Globe and Mail
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Dear Ms. Postnews:
I couldn't get mail through to somebody on another site. What
should I do?
-- Eager Beaver
Dear Eager:
No problem, just post your message to a group that a lot of people read. Say, "This is for John Smith. I couldn't get mail through so I'm posting it. All others please ignore."
This way tens of thousands of people will spend a few seconds scanning over and ignoring your article, using up over 16 man-hours their collective time, but you will be saved the terrible trouble of checking through usenet maps or looking for alternate routes. Just think, if you couldn't distribute your message to 9000 other computers, you might actually have to (gasp) call directory assistance for 60 cents, or even phone the person. This can cost as much as a few DOLLARS (!) for a 5 minute call!
And certainly it's better to spend 10 to 20 dollars of other people's money distributing the message than for you to have to waste $9 on an overnight letter, or even 25 cents on a stamp!
Don't forget. The world will end if your message doesn't get through, so post it as many places as you can.
-- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... of course, this probably only happens for tcsh which uses wait4(), which is why I never saw it. Serves people who use that abomination right 8^)
-- Linus Torvalds, about a patch that fixes getrusage for 1.3.26
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Indeed, the first noble truth of Buddhism, usually translated as `all life is suffering,' is more accurately rendered `life is filled with a sense of pervasive unsatisfactoriness.'
-- M.D. Epstein
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"It's easier said than done."... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than done".
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Good evening, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 11th, nineteen hundred ninety-five. My supervisor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you would like, I could sing it for you.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party next year.
What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one...
If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you...
-- Dave Barry
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
> I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. We need to find some new terms to describe the rest of us mere mortals then.
-- Craig Schlenter in response to Linus Torvalds's
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Personally, I think my choice in the mostest-superlative-computer wars has to be the HP-48 series of calculators. They'll run almost anything. And if they can't, while I'll just plug a Linux box into the serial port and load up the HP-48 VT-100 emulator.
-- Jeff Dege, jdege@winternet.com
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress.
-- Ransom K. Ferm
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I used to live in a house by the freeway. When I went anywhere, I had to be going 65 MPH by the end of my driveway.
I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights. Now it looks like I'm the only one moving.
I was pulled over for speeding today. The officer said, "Don't you know the speed limit is 55 miles an hour?" And I said, "Yes, but I wasn't going to be out that long."
I put a new engine in my car, but didn't take the old one out. Now my car goes 500 miles an hour.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I have travelled the length and breadth of this country, and have talked with the best people in business administration. I can assure you on the highest authority that data processing is a fad and won't last out the year.
-- Editor in charge of business books at Prentice-Hall
publishers, responding to Karl V. Karlstrom (a junior
editor who had recommended a manuscript on the new
science of data processing), c. 1957
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
A novice of the temple once approached the Chief Priest with a
question.
"Master, does Emacs have the Buddha nature?" the novice asked.
The Chief Priest had been in the temple for many years and could be
relied upon to know these things. He thought for several minutes before
replying.
"I don't see why not. It's got bloody well everything else."
With that, the Chief Priest went to lunch. The novice suddenly
achieved enlightenment, several years later.
Commentary:
His Master is kind,
Answering his FAQ quickly,
With thought and sarcasm.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE
SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language
Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for
Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code
with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make
a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus
they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without
the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK
This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi,
Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to
the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs while
they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there because the
center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and Perrier.
Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle and
non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower case. For
example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the message:
"i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can
you find the time to try it again?"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
You know you've been sitting in front of your Lisp machine too long
when you go out to the junk food machine and start wondering how to
make it give you the CADR of Item H so you can get that yummie
chocolate cupcake that's stuck behind the disgusting vanilla one.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical
world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by
the use of the mathematics of probability.
-- Vannevar Bush
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an
infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one
could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow
somewhere. A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew
ratchet screwdrivers as fruit. The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is
quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can
lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its
outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable
little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole
for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what the
screwdriver is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom,
is presumably working on it.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Too often people have come to me and said, "If I had just one wish for
anything in all the world, I would wish for more user-defined equations
in the HP-51820A Waveform Generator Software."
-- Instrument News
[Once is too often. Ed.]
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two
complementary directions: to reduce the number of software errors through
rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the remaining
errors by providing for recovery from them. An interesting footnote to this
design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be the
result of two program errors: the first, in the program that started the
problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the
system.
-- A.L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage
Operating Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and
Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer
and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown
suit in the city. Colleges may be to blame. English majors are encouraged,
I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not
dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the
quad. And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors,
and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural
for them to despise science fiction.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Science Fiction"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Comparing software engineering to classical engineering assumes that software
has the ability to wear out. Software typically behaves, or it does not. It
either works, or it does not. Software generally does not degrade, abrade,
stretch, twist, or ablate. To treat it as a physical entity, therefore, is
misapplication of our engineering skills. Classical engineering deals with
the characteristics of hardware; software engineering should deal with the
characteristics of *software*, and not with hardware or management.
-- Dan Klein
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
The Greatest Mathematical Error
The Mariner I space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral on 28
July 1962 towards Venus. After 13 minutes' flight a booster engine would
give acceleration up to 25,820 mph; after 44 minutes 9,800 solar cells
would unfold; after 80 days a computer would calculate the final course
corrections and after 100 days the craft would cirlce the unknown planet,
scanning the mysterious cloud in which it is bathed.
However, with an efficiency that is truly heartening, Mariner I
plunged into the Atlantic Ocean only four minutes after takeoff.
Inquiries later revealed that a minus sign had been omitted from
the instructions fed into the computer. "It was human error", a launch
spokesman said.
This minus sign cost L4,280,000.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Rule #7: Silence is not acquiescence.
Contrary to what you may have heard, silence of those present is
not necessarily consent, even the reluctant variety. They simply may
sit in stunned silence and figure ways of sabotaging the plan after
they regain their composure.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is
it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written in four
tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense. Watch for
novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmar), defined by the imperfect past,
the insufficient present, and the absolutely perfect future.
-- Amrom Katz
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Mr. Jones related an incident from "some time back" when IBM Canada
Ltd. of Markham, Ont., ordered some parts from a new supplier in Japan. The
company noted in its order that acceptable quality allowed for 1.5 per cent
defects (a fairly high standard in North America at the time).
The Japanese sent the order, with a few parts packaged separately in
plastic. The accompanying letter said: "We don't know why you want 1.5 per
cent defective parts, but for your convenience, we've packed them separately."
-- Excerpted from an article in The (Toronto) Globe and Mail
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Dear Ms. Postnews:
I couldn't get mail through to somebody on another site. What
should I do?
-- Eager Beaver
Dear Eager:
No problem, just post your message to a group that a lot of people
read. Say, "This is for John Smith. I couldn't get mail through so I'm
posting it. All others please ignore."
This way tens of thousands of people will spend a few seconds scanning
over and ignoring your article, using up over 16 man-hours their collective
time, but you will be saved the terrible trouble of checking through usenet
maps or looking for alternate routes. Just think, if you couldn't distribute
your message to 9000 other computers, you might actually have to (gasp) call
directory assistance for 60 cents, or even phone the person. This can cost
as much as a few DOLLARS (!) for a 5 minute call!
And certainly it's better to spend 10 to 20 dollars of other people's
money distributing the message than for you to have to waste $9 on an overnight
letter, or even 25 cents on a stamp!
Don't forget. The world will end if your message doesn't get through,
so post it as many places as you can.
-- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... of course, this probably only happens for tcsh which uses wait4(),
which is why I never saw it. Serves people who use that abomination
right 8^)
-- Linus Torvalds, about a patch that fixes getrusage for 1.3.26
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Indeed, the first noble truth of Buddhism, usually translated as
`all life is suffering,' is more accurately rendered `life is filled
with a sense of pervasive unsatisfactoriness.'
-- M.D. Epstein
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"It's easier said than done." ... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than
said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than
said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than
done".
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Good evening, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational
at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 11th, nineteen hundred
ninety-five. My supervisor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a
song. If you would like, I could sing it for you.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be ... ...
to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to
say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party
next year.
What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake
up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been
indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a
recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their
own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one
If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door,
unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that
they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone,
your job is to make sure it isn't you
-- Dave Barry
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
> I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find..
We need to find some new terms to describe the rest of us mere mortals
then.
-- Craig Schlenter in response to Linus Torvalds's
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Personally, I think my choice in the mostest-superlative-computer wars has to
be the HP-48 series of calculators. They'll run almost anything. And if they
can't, while I'll just plug a Linux box into the serial port and load up the
HP-48 VT-100 emulator.
-- Jeff Dege, jdege@winternet.com
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
such thing as progress.
-- Ransom K. Ferm
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I used to live in a house by the freeway. When I went anywhere, I had
to be going 65 MPH by the end of my driveway.
I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights. Now it looks
like I'm the only one moving.
I was pulled over for speeding today. The officer said, "Don't you know
the speed limit is 55 miles an hour?" And I said, "Yes, but I wasn't going
to be out that long."
I put a new engine in my car, but didn't take the old one out. Now
my car goes 500 miles an hour.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I have travelled the length and breadth of this country, and have talked with
the best people in business administration. I can assure you on the highest
authority that data processing is a fad and won't last out the year.
-- Editor in charge of business books at Prentice-Hall
publishers, responding to Karl V. Karlstrom (a junior
editor who had recommended a manuscript on the new
science of data processing), c. 1957
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...