Date: 23 Nov 92 15:03:08 PST (Monday)
Subject: Life 9.2
----------------------------------------------------
The following is stuff Leif Bennett collected through
the mid 80's from internal Xerox mailing lists.
--------------------------
From: RGutierrez.ES
Quote of the Day
"Men argue, nature acts."
Voltaire
--------------------------
From: JimDay.Pasa
SOLUTION (Yodar & the drummer)
YODAR & THE DRUMMER
The homes in ancient Lankhmar were built very close together, for space
within the walled city was at a premium. The young son of Hakim, one of
Yodar's neighbors, had been given a toy drum by his aunt, and the boy
insisted on beating the drum incessantly. Hakim was very hard of hearing
and didn't mind the noise. Finally, Yodar's wife begged him to ask Hakim
to take the drum away from the boy. "There is no need," said Yodar,
"I have already taken care of the matter without offending Hakim or the lad.
The drum will soon be silent." What had Yodar done to silence the drum?
----
From: Ozarka.ES
Yodar gave the kid a knife and asked him if he knew what was inside the drum.
--------------------------
From: Smebye.ES
Need Garbage Collection Algorithm
I can see it now . . .
Ol' Denber wakes up early one morning and hears the garbage truck banging away.
He jumps out of bed and goes running out with the garbage can as the truck is
about to pull away.
"Am I too late?" Denber asks.
"No," replies the driver. "Jump in!"
(With apologies to Diller, Youngman, Dangerfield, and thousands of other
comics who have used this line a lot better than I have.)
--------------------------
From: Jef Poskanzer [Poskanzer.SV]
Face.
An excerpt from THE PIRATES OF ROSINANTE, by Alexis A. Gilliland. Admiral
Kogo of the Imperial Japanese Navy has just phoned Prime Minister Ito to
inform him of how Japan has been outsmarted by the small asteroidal nation
of Rosinante:
----
"How unfortunate," the Prime Minister said at last. "We seem to have
lost a little face. A small and insignificant amount of face. The least
measurable quantity of face. We shall have to break diplomatic relations
with Rosinante, of course."
"Of course," Kogo agreed. He wondered if Ito would resign.
"I may have to resign," the Prime Minister said. "Rest assured, however,
that I shall praise your wisdom, sagacity, and profoundly excellent judgment
to my successor." The Prime Minister coughed. "In the most glowing terms,"
he added, as he slammed down the receiver.
"Well," Kogo said, looking at the receiver. "You didn't have to be nasty."
----
Some questions:
- What units is face measured in?
- Does face obey any symmetry laws? For instance, is face conserved?
- "The least measurable quantity of face" implies that face is quantized.
What shall we call its fundamental particle? The nip-on, perhaps?
- Is there such a thing as anti-face?
- Is there any application for anti-face in the Strategic Defense Inititive?
Yours in speculation,
--------------------------
From: Russell Lear [Lear.es]
Reprinted from World Press Review (who reprinted it from the Financial Post
of Toronto. WPR had permission, I don't).
To help you sort your way through your junk mail, here is a lexicon of favorite
openers from the trade - with translations.
I don't know how you can pass up this opportunity.
Our motivational psychologists guaranteed us a high rate of return with
this opening. Besides, it worked when I was selling vegatable slicers
door-to-door.
Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Very true. We can show you the ninety-nine-year-old man who owns the
lifetime named in this mailing. And should he pass away in the next cold
snap, we will start again with his 104 year-old brother.
You have been specially selected.
Our computer says you are more than twelve years old and live in an urban
center of at least 10,000.
Send no money.
Just give us that credit-card authorization and we're off to the races.
If you don't like the product simply return it after your free inspection.
You'll hate it - who really needs a gold-plated executive shock absorber
from a 1947 Mack truck? But we're gambling you will be too weak to jam it
back into our specially designed non-reusable packing case.
Wouldn't you lie to be rich?
We sure would, so we have cooked up this wonderful little mail-order
business.
Send for your free gift.
And one of our salesmen will bring it along before noon - accompanied by a
three-hour presentation.
Your name has been referred
We bought it from a man who assures us that his names have a 7 per cent
probability of buying.
I am writing you on an urgent matter.
Frankly this quarter looks like a troglodyte's breakfast and we've got the
presses working overtime. We got your name from the Edsel owners' list.
You may already be a winner.
The odds are good that you are already a loser. But what kind of sell is
that?
Postage and handling extra.
We do not expect to make much on the product and we will only beak even on
postage, but our handling cost does include some depreciation on the
building and a tiny percentage of the last sales conference.
Our operation is nonprofit.
But we did not design it that way and we are counting on people like you
to pull us out of the hole.
You may never get a chance like this again.
At least not until we repeat this offer in thirty days.
Act now at this low price.
Please, please act now. The response has been so poor that we are going
to have to knock a couple more dollars off the mail-order price next
month. Our bottom line needs help
Here is how you will benefit.
And since you are benefiting you will not mind if we make a buck or two.
Special bonus offer.
We sincerely hope you have forgotten all those things we tried to sell in
our previous mailing because now that we have a hot new line we are
offering those bow-tie calculators as bonus incentives.
What can you lose?
Well, a little time, perhaps a few dollars, not much else. Besides, we
will get your name on a lot of lists and you will never worry about an
empty malbox.
--------------------------
[I thought I already had this, but I couldn't find it.]
From: Steve Tom [Tom]
The Parable of the Two Programmers
Reprinted without proper authorization from
ACM Software Engineering Notes, Jan 1985
The Parable of the Two Programmers
Neil W. Rickert
Once upon a time, unbeknown to each other, the "Automated Accounting
Applications Association" and the "Consolidated Computerized Captial Corporation"
decided that they needed the identical program to perform a certain service.
Automated hired a programmer-analyst, Alan, to solve their problem.
Meanwhile Consolidated decided to ask a newly hired entry-level
programmer, Charles, to tackle the job, to see if he was as good as he pretended.
Alan, having had experience in difficult programming projects, decided
to use the PQR structured deisgn methodology. With this in mind he asked his
department manager to assign another three programmers as a programming team.
Then the team went to work, churning our preliminary reports and problem analyses.
Back at Consolidated, Charles spent some time thinking about the
problem. His fellow employees noticed that Charles often sat with his feet
on the desk, drinking coffee. He was occasionally seen at his computer
terminal, but his office mate could tell from the rythmic striking of keys
that he was actually playing Space Invaders.
By now, the team at Automated was starting to write code. The
programmers were spending about half their time writing and compiling code,
and the rest of their time in conference, discussing the interfaces between
the various modules.
His office mate noticed that Charles had finally given up on Space
Invaders. Instead he now divided his time between drinking coffee with his
feet on the table, and scribbling on little scraps of paper. His scribbling
didn't seem to be Tic Tac Toe, but it didn't exactly make much sense, either.
Two months have gone by. The team at Automated finally releases an
implementation timetable. In another two months they will have a test version
of the program. Then a two month period of testing and enhancing should yield
a completed version.
The manager of Charles has by now [become] tired of seeing him goof
off. He decides to confront him. But as he walks into Charles's office, he
is surprised to see Charles busy entering code at his terminal. He decides
to postpone the confrontation, so makes some small talk then leaves. However,
he begins to keep a closer watch on Charles, so that when the opportunity
presents itself he can confront him. Not looking forward to an unpleasant
conversation, he is pleased to notice that Charles seems to be busy most of
the time. He has even been seen to delay his lunch, and to stay after work
two or three days a week.
At the end of three months, Charles announces he has completed the
project. He submits a 500 line program. The program appears to be clearly
written, and when tested it does everything required in the specificatins.
In fact it even has a few additinal convenience features which might
significantly imporve the useability of the program. The program is put
into test, and, except for one quickly corrected oversight, performs well.
The team at Automated has by now completed two of the four major
modules required for their program. These modules are now undergoing testing
while the other modules are completed.
After another three weeks, Alan announces that the preliminary version
is ready one week ahead of schedule. He supplies a list of the deficiencies
that he expects to correct. The program is placed under test. The users find
a number of bugs and deficiencies, other than those listed. As Alan explains,
this is no surprise. After all this is a preliminary versin in which bugs were
expected.
After about two more months, the team has completed its production
version of the program. It consists of about 2,500 lines of code. When tested
it seems to satisfy most of the original specifications. It has omitted on or
two features, and is very fussy about the format of its input data. However
the company decides to install the program. They can always train their
data-entry staff to enter data in the strict format required. The program is
handed over to some maintenance programmers to eventually incorporate the
missing features.
SEQUEL:
At first Charles's supervisor was impressed. But as he read through
the source code, he realized that the project was really much simpler than
he had originally thought. It now seemed apparent that this was not much of a
challenge even for a beginning programmer.
Charles did produce about 5 lines of code per day. This is perhaps
a little above average. However, considering the simplicity of the program,
it was nothing exceptional. Also his supervisor remembered his two months
of goofing off.
At his next salary review Charles was given a raise which was about
half the inflation over the period. He was not given a promotion. After about
a year he became discouraged and left Consolidated.
At Automated, Alan was complimented for completing his project on
schedule. His supervisor looked over the program. With a few minutes of
thumbing through he saw that the company standards about structured
programming were being observed. He quickly gave up attempting to read the
program however; it seemed quite incomprehensible. He realized by now that
the project was really much more complex that he had originally assumed,
and he congratulated Alan again on his achievement.
The team had produced over 3 lines of code per programmer per day.
This was about average, but, considering the complexity of the problem,
could be considered to be exceptional. Alan was given a hefty pay raise,
and promoted to Systems Analyst as a reward for his achievement.
--------------------------
From: Jef Poskanzer [Poskanzer.PA]
The official computer of the -MXCII olympics.
A new IC, the Floating-Point Roman-Numeral Arithmetic Processor
Unit (FPRNAPU) is a monolithic MOS/LSIV device that can replace at least
XLV scribes working in III shifts. Featuring XII-digit precision, it
offers several interface options.
You program the device's output either for clay tablets or for
papyrus rolls with automatic vertical scrolling an optional interface
is available for driving a heavy-duty impact printer for marble documents.
You can configure the III-column outputs for Doric, Ionian, or Corinthian
characters. The IC's standard interface handles a standard floppy discus.
The exponent field of the floating-point format takes advantage of a
new compact structure called quad extended decimal (QED). The mantissa
uses the ad hoc rounding standard (ie, IEEE). Overflow errors caused by
the Vesuvius function are automatically corrected by the Pompeii algorithm.
The part's allowed rise and fall times are quite long see Gibbon for
details. All parts undergo burn-in at the firm's Nero facility.
Hannibal handles all environmental and stress tests in the field.
Infant mortality is limited to the first born of each process batch, all
parts are tested to MIL-STD-SPQR except those destined for Gaul.
You use the internal VIII-bit modus-operandi register to select
operating-mode options and to enter Latin commands. To use the IC as
a slave processor, you can specify automatic chaining operations. The
FPRNAPU's internal state is reported in the status-quo register.
Samples are available off-the-shelf -- Et Tu Electronics has
agreed to take a stab at IInd-sourcing the device. Users should
beware, however, as OEM quantities won't be available until the
Ides of March. The processor is priced at $XIV.XCV
(M). For further information, call the company any time except
during July and August.
Ancient Micro Devices
CMI Thompson Pl
Sunnyvale, CA CCCVI+CDL
Phone tribute-free (DCCC) DXXXVIII-LXXXIV-L.
--
Henry Cate III [cate3@netcom.com]
The Life collection maintainer, selections of humor from the internet
"The Greatest Management Principle in the World" by Michael LeBoeuf:
The things that get rewarded, get done.
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