From cate3@netcom.com Tue May 30 11:09:23 1995
From: cate3@netcom.com
Subject: Life D.U
To: jwry.dli@netcom.com
Reply-to: cate3@netcom.com
---------------------------------------
Date: 6 Jun 94 16:26:29 PDT (Monday)
Subject: Life D.U
The following are from:
Red Rock Eater
JASBITS
pardo
----------------------------------------------------
The following are selections from the RRE mailing list
(Red Rock Eater) run by: pagre@weber.ucsd.edu [Phil Agre]
The Red Rock Eater is a mailing list of interesting things picked up on the net
--------------------------
And if California slides into the ocean
As the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing
Until I pay my bill
-- Warren Zevon
--------------------------
As a recruit is eased out of a pre-Lenz [i.e., "Rama"] life and into the
cult, computer programming is stressed as the only realistic career.
Computer careers are desirable, Lenz and his surrogates tell new students,
because working with a computer sharpens and focuses your mind. It also
isolates you from others, which is desirable to avoid people's negative
spiritual energy. Lenz never commands them to become programmers, but he
suggests that it is the only fast track to enlightenment. In practice,
all members who stay with the group more than a few months -- including
physicians, engineers, and other professionals -- go into programming.
--------------------------
"... [W]ay back 15 years ago, a hacker could sit down and write an
entire piece of software by himself. Now, that's no longer
possible. Software comes out of factories, and hackers are, to a
greater or lesser extent, assembly-line workers. Worse yet, they
may be managers who never get to write any code themselves."
Neal Stephenson, _Snow Crash_
--------------------------
San Francisco dentist James Campbell couples Virtual Vision's television
sunglasses with earphones so that his patients can watch TV or a movie as he
works on their teeth. A "nose mask" wafts a mild sedative into the patients'
snouts, making them "more receptive to the images they're watching".
--------------------------
... all my science comes ... from the psychic dimension. Anybody who is
really honest about his or her source of inspiration will admit this. Good
science is a form of channeling, only with science, you have to go work the
equations. -- Carver Mead
--------------------------
Here's an excerpt from the CPSR publication CPSR Alert 3.04, sent
out by Dave Banisar [Banisar@washofc.cpsr.org]:
The Defense Department reportedly plans to employ the Clipper
technology in a device known as a "Tessera Card." We checked the
dictionary and found the results to be kind of frightening:
Terrerea n. Lat. (pl. tessereae). Literally, "four-cornered".
Used to refer to four-legged tables, chairs, stools, etc.
Also, a single piece of mosaic tile; a single piece of a mosaic.
_Pol._: An identity chit or marker. Tessereae were forced on
conquered peoples and domestic slaves by their Roman occupiers
or owners. Slaves or Gauls who refused to accept a tesserea
were branded or maimed as a form of identification.
From Starr's History of the Classical World and the Oxford
Unabridged. (thanks to Clark Matthews)
----------------------------------------------------
The following are selections from JASBITS, a mailing list run by:
"James A. Squires" [jsquires@cerf.net]
To join, send a subject line of:
"JASBITS SUBSCRIBE [Your Name] And how you knew"
NOTE: All of James' remarks appear in brackets like this: [ blah blah blah ]
----------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ITEM_1.8 --- TALES AND TERMS FROM THE JARGON FILE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM : JARGON FILE VERSION 3.0.0, 27 JUL 1993
In 1961, students from Caltech (California Institute of Technology,
in Pasadena) hacked the Rose Bowl football game. One student posed
as a reporter and `interviewed' the director of the University of
Washington card stunts (such stunts involve people in the stands
who hold up colored cards to make pictures). The reporter learned
exactly how the stunts were operated, and also that the director
would be out to dinner later.
While the director was eating, the students (who called themselves
the `Fiendish Fourteen') picked a lock and stole a blank direction
sheet for the card stunts. They then had a printer run off 2300
copies of the blank. The next day they picked the lock again and
stole the master plans for the stunts --- large sheets of graph
paper colored in with the stunt pictures. Using these as a guide,
they made new instructions for three of the stunts on the
duplicated blanks. Finally, they broke in once more, replacing the
stolen master plans and substituting the stack of diddled
instruction sheets for the original set.
The result was that three of the pictures were totally different.
Instead of `WASHINGTON', the word ``CALTECH' was flashed. Another
stunt showed the word `HUSKIES', the Washington nickname, but
spelled it backwards. And what was supposed to have been a picture
of a husky instead showed a beaver. (Both Caltech and MIT use the
beaver --- nature's engineer --- as a mascot.)
After the game, the Washington faculty athletic representative
said: "Some thought it ingenious; others were indignant." The
Washington student body president remarked: "No hard feelings, but
at the time it was unbelievable. We were amazed."
This is now considered a classic hack, particularly because revising the
direction sheets constituted a form of programming.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ITEM_2.7 --- ODDS AND ENDS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW TO FINGER USING ONLY EMAIL
------------------------------
Write [b.liddicott@ic.ac.uk] with Subject: #finger name@site.domain
Or with Subject: #help for more info.
SOUECE: blackadd@news.delphi.com (BLACKADDER@DELPHI.COM)
BEST PUN OF WEEK (On or off Earth)
----------------------------------
On December 6, 1993, the seven-member crew of the Space Shuttle
Endeavour was awakened at 6:02 p.m CST by flight controllers who
played Jackson Browne's "Doctor My Eyes". The crew worked very hard
(and successfully) that 'day'. As their reward, the very next
'morning', they where awakend to the sounds of Johnny Nash singing
"I Can See Clearly Now". [groan here] What a way to start the day!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ITEM_2.8 --- COMPARISON OF MAC AND PCs
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
WAR AND PC AND MACS
-------------------
As a followup to Charles Wheeler's [ in the TidBITS Newsletter ]
article in the last issue about converting a Mac site to DOS-based
software, a friend passed this on. "After spending nearly a quarter
million dollars on DOS-based equipment to replace the Macs in our
company, our president was heard to ask, 'How can we make them more
Mac-like?'"
SOURCE: TidBITS#205/06-Dec-93 Info: [info@tidbits.com]
According to inside sources, ad agency Chiat Day apparently used IBM
PCs as it prepared its bid for IBM's massive personal computer
advertising account. Unruffled by such gratuitous tactics, rival
agency Merkley Newman Harty used Apple Macintoshes for its bid.
IBM awarded Merkley Newman Harty the account.
SOURCE: WiReD 2.01 - January 1994
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ITEM_3.2 --- HUMOR FROM THE NET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
]From Jim Reynolds :
The '70s BBS: 110 baud, online tic-tac-toe, over 20 files!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ITEM_4.8 --- JASBITS RANT: InfoOcean angst of the Cybersprawl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Captain Bucky (aka Mr. Appo) I\
points out : I \
I \
This is definitely I*--\
NOT I \
the InfoBahn. I \
It is : I______\
_____I__O______
THE INFORMATION OCEAN !!! \ ( ) b ^ ^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^
We are all just fishermen, _____/\____/| ^
with our poles, nets, and ]____,\---` \
big and small boats. He sees :
...a shore fisherman standing on the sand
with a long monster pole skipping these long giant
casts way out into the info surf and watching what rolls in as
the info waves pound the beach....
...a sport fisherman on one of those sport
fishing boats that go for marlin ... strapped into that
swivel chair in the back of the boat, 100 pound pole bolted to the
deck, idling along, trawling for the big one in the info ocean
under blazing virtual sunny skies...
....or something out of Captains Courageous, you know,
a deep sea trawler out of Maine fishing the Northern Info Ocean
off the Grand Data Banks, months at sea, daily dropping your mile long
net into the deep, in thick fog, pulling out tons of info fish...
...or finally Captain Ahab, "aye matey!", scouring the oceans
for the great white info whale, MOBY DICK-ROM!
----------------------------------------------------
The following are from a mailing list run by:
pardo@cs.washington.edu [Jim Paradis]
--------------------------
From: Peter Langston [psl@acm.org]
By now, the Feynman bowling-ball demo has become such a standard conservation
demonstration that I've heard it convincingly used as part of a proof of a
rather different nature. Nat Howard [nrh@uunet.uu.net] put it to me this way,
(I'm paraphrasing from memory) "Practical telekinesis doesn't work. Let's just
suppose for a moment that some small percentage of the population could move
objects from a distance simply by using their minds, especially if several such
people worked together. How many smug physics teachers doing the bowling-ball
demo for huge first-year physics classes would be undergoing reconstructive
surgery right now? I know if I had had any telekinetic powers..."
--------------------------
From: rAT [rat@instruction.CS.ORST.EDU]
Subject: Re: more phun with physics humor
That reminds me of *my* freshman physics class. One lecture, the prof
had the bowling ball pendulum set up in Weniger 151. The ceiling is
about 30 feet tall. He gave the ball a good push and went on to calmly
lecture for a while about pendulums. He turned his back to write on the
bulletin board, and the entire class was treated to the sight of the
bowling ball returning and smashing the overhead projector off of the table
it was on. It seems that the push wasn't quite straight, and the ball
had been slowly oscillating in a wide ellipse, with the projector in the
path of the eighth or ninth cycle.
Needless to say, he was quite surprised... :^)
[Hmmm... maybe I was a little hasty in ruling out telekinesis... -psl]
--------------------------
From: Peter_Graffagnino (Peter Graffagnino)
... seen recently in a .sig on the net:
Intel: Putting the backward in backward compatable.
--------------------------
From: Dennis Gentry [dennis@phoenix.cs.washington.edu]
From: Aaron Morse [Aaron_Morse]
]From Mike Feibus' "Predictions for '94" column, 12/20/93 PC Week,page A6:
"In an effort to formalize what must be a long-standing relationship,
Intel and Microsoft will announce that they will be jointly purchasing
the Federal Trade Commission from the U.S. government."
--------------------------
Announcing *new* technology, available now: scalable hype!
;-D on ( The hype o' crit ) Pardo
--------------------------
]From _The FLYER_, which showed up in a bundle of advertising:
MEN SEEKING WOMEN
Looking for the Right Woman -- I need
someone that loves me for me and not
just my money. I have a lot to offer,
big house with 2 hot tubs, speed boat,
3 cars. ...
--------------------------
From: DBABCOOK@wpmail.unmc.edu
I dreamt last night we had to give up trying to form an
organization against political correctness because
we could not come up with a name everybody liked.
--------------------------
Def. Physics: Laws which even Congress must obey.
- Greg Kuchta [Greg.Kuchta@FtCollinsCO.ncr.com]
--------------------------
From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry G. Baker)
Icons on GUI screens no longer have 'hot spots' that respond when
touched by the mouse. They're now called 'empowerment zones'.
--------------------------
From: farrell@coral.cs.jcu.edu.au (John Farrell)
Here are the meagre results of my request for computer science theory
jokes. Very bad jokes and ones I couldn't understand didn't make it.
[Horrible ones, however.... -dp]
More submissions welcome.
I guess you know that Henk Barendregt is a real cool dude and
determined nightclubber. (That part is true.) What you may
not know is that he's come up with a formal theory of Brazilian
dancing. It's called the Lambada-Calculus.
Jamie Andrews
A theoretical computer scientist is having lunch with his friend the
philosopher, and inevitably asks the standard question: "so what are
*you* working on?" The philosopher replies, "I'm working on a very old,
very difficult philosophical problem." After a bit of prodding, the
philosopher explains that the problem is the famous question, "Which came
first--the chicken or the egg?". The computer scientist thinks a bit,
comments that it's an interesting problem, and leaves. A few months
later, the philosopher receives a preprint in the mail from his friend,
entitled, "The Chicken or the Egg: a Theoretical Computer Science
Approach to Philosophy Problems". The abstract begins, "One of the
classic problems of philosophy is that of which came first--the chicken
or the egg. This problem appears extremely difficult, and has been open
for thousands of years. We present here a partial result, resolving
the question of which came first--the chicken or the boiled egg....."
Moti Yung
--
Henry Cate III [cate3@netcom.com]
The Life collection maintainer, selections of humor from the internet
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in
overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison
Back to my Life Humor Page
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