Date: 4 Apr 90 10:44:45 PDT (Wednesday)
Subject: Life 6.6
----------------------------------------------------
Q: What do they call "Hee Haw" in Oklahoma?
A: A documentary.
A camel is a horse designed by committee.
A brontosaurus is a salamander designed to Mil-Spec.
I don't take drugs - I'm not even an athlete.
What is the most heavily armored vehicle in the world?
An Iranian Bookmobile!
----------------------------------------------------
At Mesa Verde in Colorado are the impressive ruins of cliff dwelling
Anasazi Indians. The local help kept a book of interesting questions
asked by tourists, including:
How much does it weigh?
Why did they build it so far from the highway?
----------------------------------------------------
Seen on a door in my appartment building:
This door must be kept closed.
By order of Saanich Fire Department.
In case of fire, it protects you from
heat, smoke, and toxic gasses.
That particular door opens to the outside world,
in particular, a major traffic intersection.
Maybe the Saanich Fire Department knows something about
local air pollution that I don't?
----------------------------------------------------
Parables of an incarcerated man:
- If Americans throw rice at weddings, do Chinese throw hot dogs?
- Was Robin Hood's mother know as Mother Hood?
- How do you know when you run out of invisible ink?
- Why does sour cream have an expiration date?
- What do they call a coffee break at the Lipton Tea Co.?
- How do you explain counter-clockwise to someone with a digital watch?
----------------------------------------------------
(From 'News of the Weird" in the San Jose Mercury News)
A company in California has started to market "camouflage toilet paper"
for use in the woods and plans to run testimonials from hunters who claim
they have been shot at while using ordinary toilet paper (by hunters who
mistook them for white-tailed deer).
----------------------------------------------------
Over heard from some IBM employees at a San Jose watering hole.
IBM: You can buy better, but you can't pay more.
----------------------------------------------------
[Remark by Clive James on `Start the Week' this morning]
Rupert Murdoch thinks an independent editor is one who says `Yes!' without
being prompted.
----------------------------------------------------
Amazing. Then again, maybe it's not. Where I work, an end-user
(now, *there's* an interesting label) called one day, and said the new
software she got was fine, but she couldn't find her any key, "like when
it says, 'press any key to continue'".
When I was a security guard, I got the "May I use the bathroom?"
query a few times. I don't think I was *that* threatening. One
morning, I had two key rings loaded with keys hanging from my belt, and
I was asked how I'd gotten into the building.
----------------------------------------------------
What is small and yellow and very dangerous?
A canary with the super-user password!
----------------------------------------------------
'Tis the dream of each programmer
Before his life is done
to write three lines of APL
And make the damn things run
----------------------------------------------------
The Meta-Turing Test:
I'll call something intelligent when it attempts to
construct objects and apply Turing tests to them.
-Lew Mammel, Jr.
----------------------------------------------------
"Forget computers; it's hard enough getting humans to pass the Turing test."
-- David Bedno
----------------------------------------------------
They say there are two types of people who fly exclusively on Boeing planes:
1. Boeing engineers.
2. McDonnell Douglas engineers.
----------------------------------------------------
"Life is like a B-grade movie. You don't want to leave in the middle of it,
but you don't want to see it again."
Ted Turner
----------------------------------------------------
Jesus saves sinners...and redeems them for valuable cash prizes!
----------------------------------------------------
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
----------------------------------------------------
Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood.
-Louise Beal
----------------------------------------------------
A guy was lost on the Mall by the Washington Monument. He stopped a
policeman and asked, "What side is the State Dept. on?"
The cop answered, "Ours, I hope."
[Heard in the halls, original source unknown.]
----------------------------------------------------
The version I heard from some friends I had in Lebanon at the time was:
[say this in a Rodney Dangerfield one-liner way]
You know the President of Syria, Hafez el-Assad (sp?), yah well
he gives all his pilots ten bucks before he sends them off to the Israellis,
-- to get a taxi back home.
----------------------------------------------------
The flagships of the British and American fleets were passing
each other sometime ago. The admiral of the American fleet signaled
to the British Admiral: 'How is the world's second largest navy?'.
The British admiral signaled back: 'Very well thank you. How
is the world's second best?'.
----------------------------------------------------
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of
things. The decayed and degraded state of
moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that
Nothing is worth war is much worse. The per-
son who has nothing for which he is willing
to fight, nothing which is more important
than his own personal safety, is a miserable
creature and has no chance of being free unless
made and kept so by the exertions of better
men than himself.
--- John Stewart Mill
----------------------------------------------------
"It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's more
true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are
usually attracted by other things than power. When they
do act, they think of it as service, which has limits.
The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insa-
tiable, implacable."
David Brin
_The Postman_
----------------------------------------------------
Article 2321 of alt.folklore.computers:
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 90 20:49 EST
From: Steve Strassmann [straz@media-lab.media.mit.edu]
To: unix-haters@ai.ai.mit.edu
Subject: [drewry@decwrl.dec.com: what to do with a PDP-11/73]
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 90 16:50:22 -0800
From: drewry@decwrl.dec.com (Raymond Drewry)
From: Michel Jackson [jackson@shs.ohio-state.edu]
From: karl@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste)
Subject: How do you measure nuclear warhead yield?
This is something I learned at the USENIX Conference in January that I've
been meaning to post here, but have managed to forget about until now.
While chatting with some network acquaintances at the hotel bar (all the
important discussion occurs at the bar, of course, preferably well past
midnight), a friend who does sysadmin work at Los Alamos National Labs
told us a marvelously funny story about how the fun folks at LANL measure
yield from nuclear detonations. After all, they have to experiment, I
guess, and one has to learn how much bang-for-the-Mbuck one is getting.
The solution at LANL (note that this is now an 8-week-old memory, details
may be somewhat inaccurate):
Find a Qbus-based PDP-11 (e.g., 11/73) "which you no longer love." Install
a DEQNA ethernet controller card in the backplane. Park the box at/near/over
the hole. Connect a cable to the DEQNA and drop it down into the hole.
DEQNAs have a TDR (time domain reflectometer) built right into the controller.
TDR is useful for finding cable shorts and, in general, learning the length
of one's ethernet cable.
Before detonation, begin having the PDP-11 repeatedly exercise the DEQNA's
TDR, recording and transmitting the length determined to some other
(presumably distant :-) site.
Detonate. As the beastie blows things to smithereens all around itself,
the cable will be rapidly eaten away. TDR readings from the DEQNA will
show a drastically reducing cable length. The speed with which the cable,
ah, degenerates will correlate very closely with warhead yield.
Just think, your tax dollars at work, ridding the world of PDP-11s...
--karl
PS- No, I'm not kidding.
----------------------------------------------------
From various sig files:
So just what ARE time flies, and why do they like an ARROW???
Life is too important to be taken seriously.
I used to think the mind was the most important part of a
person. Then I realized what part of me is telling me that.
"One must think heroically to act like a merely decent human being."
If you wish peace, work for justice.
--Pope Paul VI
"It takes a smart man to know when he's stupid."
-- Barney Rubble
Rumour has it that Larry Wall, author of RN, is a finalist in the race for
the Nobel Peace Prize for his invention of the kill file.
"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
- Last words of PANCHO VILLA
This guy comes over to my house and says, "I want to read your
gas meter." I said, "Whatever happened to the classics?"
-- Emo Philips
"Dad, what's that building?"
"That's an ancient Norman watchtower... where they would watch for Norman!
They haven't spotted him yet..." -- actual conversation between my Dad & me
The ideal situation is to have real computing power close at hand -
right at home. Something that dims streetlights and shrinks the
picture on the neighbors TV when you crank it up.
Archaeologists date anything!
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
There is one difference between a discussion and a flame. A discussion
is about an issue. A flame is about someone involved in a discussion.
"To be or not to be..."
(2b) || !(2b)
TRUE
Loses something in translation, eh?
"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's
a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they
would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view
from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as
it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes
painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time
someting like that happened in politics or religion."
-- Carl Sagan
1987 CSICOP Keynote Address
I think. Therefore I am DANGEROUS.
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't
believe this to be a coincidence. || - Jeremy S. Anderson
I can't resist (as the superconductor said).
Verily it is said, there is nobody true revolutionaries hate so much as
the man who hints that paradise might be possible without the revolution.
Or, as Santayana put it: "fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts
when you have forgotten your aim".
Remember... like.. your doen' everyone a favor man when you go lawyer hunten'.
Cause... like they destroy valuable crops and stuff... you know if money grew
on trees man lawyers would have ... like... long necks like gerafs...
no man ... they would ... honest dude...
"We are all tired of being stuck on this cosmical speck with its monotonous
ocean, leaden sky and single moon that is half useless....so it seems to me
that the future glory of the human race lies in the exploration of at least
the solar system!" - John Jacob Astor, 1894
Tip #268: Don't feel insecure or inferior! Remember, you're ORGANIC!!
You could win an argument with almost any rock!
There are actually five billion types of people in the world, but aside from
the fact that cataloging them would be more exhausting than exhaustive, this
does not allow us to generalize, and is therefore useless.
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
"Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by
deterministic means is, of course, living in a state
of sin." John von Neumann
Don't worry- I haven't lost my mind....its backed up on tape *somewhere*....
" Scientists are peeping toms at the Keyhole of Eternity "
-- Arthur Koestler
"But a machine that was powerful enough to accelerate particles to the grand
unification energy would have to be as big as the Solar System -- and would
be unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate." -- Stephen Hawking
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip
around the Sun.
Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall
be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind
person shall be deemed to be a cat.
antisesquipedalial - opposed to the use of large words
Disclaimer: My employers seldom even LISTEN to my opinions.
Meta-disclaimer: Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.
----------------------------------------------------
]From: lui@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (wayne.w.lui)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: A loo full of technology
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
(9/12) Title: a loo full of technology+ ..
japanese technology is plumbing new depths -- it's created
the intelligent toilet.
Last october, toto ltd., omron corp. And nippon telegraph and
telephone corp. (ntt) jointly developed the ultimate in informa-
tion technology: the fancy flusher.
Makers say a trip to this toilet may save you a trip to the
doctor.
the intelligent diagnostic system packs the latest state-of-
the-art goodies. the toilet bowl has a sensor to perform urine
analyses and then zaps the data onto a display screen that shows
the concentration levels of sugar, protein, urobilinogen, and
blood in the urine for the occupant's viewing.
Users can chart their blood pressure by sticking their left
index finger into a sensor-sensitive unit on the toilet. the in-
formation then can be viewed on the second screen of the diagnos-
tic system.
What goes in also comes out. the diagnostic system has a
printer and an integrated circuit (ic) memory disk card drive
that can store up to 130 examinations. the ic card can also be
inserted into a compatible computer system for simple record up-
dates.
the intelligent toilet is on display at computer architect
ken sakamura's tron intelligent house in the trendy tokyo dis-
trict of roppongi.
Ntt officials see the diagnostic system eventually having
on-line communications capabilities enabling users to send infor-
mation directly to hospitals or clinics.
the intelligent toilet is expected to go on sale in japan
sometime this year, according to toto officials.
Source: Kyodo News. Date: 03/24/90
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