Why won't they listen?????

[Mav]

I just need to vent, I know I'm preaching to the choir.
But when I fscking tell them to check something, based on available data,
they proceed to shotgun and replace everything AROUND the problem.

Me: "OK, from what I'm seeing, check this cable"
Field Circus Tech: *replace server* "Hey, this cable wasn't plugged in"
Me: "Was that the cable I said to check?"
Field Circus Tech: "Um, yes..."

So instead of listening to what I told them on FRIDAY, they proceeded to
monkeyfuck around and swap parts at OUR expense and downtime, for two
FSCKING DAYS, until they check what I told them to. Lo and Behold, there's
the problem.

And to think I was supposed to be on vacation last week. Five calls in a
week does not a vacation make.

If anyone needs me tomorrow, I'll be on the lake, with the wife and son,
fishing. "Sorry, I'm 2 hours from home, and no laptop with me."

FFS

--
TechMav AKA The Guy In The Funny Black Hat
When the FBI/CIA/NSA/FDA/and other three-letter government agencies come
looking, you don't know me, you never saw me, never heard of me. get it?
got it? good!

[Lawns 'R' Us]

On 2012-09-03, Mav <tech...@nospam.com> wrote:
> If anyone needs me tomorrow, I'll be on the lake, with the wife and son,
> fishing. "Sorry, I'm 2 hours from home, and no laptop with me."

Wrong answer.

"Hello. You've reached the voicemail of Mav. I'm not sorry at all that
I am unable to take your call, because I am taking a mental health
day. If you need me, please feel free to leave a message, which I
shall completely ignore until I come into the office tomorrow. Or next
week. Or maybe next month. I'm not sure at this stage. Even then, I
may or may not call you back. It depends on the mood I'm in, and just
how pissed off your message makes me. I'd wish you a nice day, but
that would be hypocritical, since I don't want you to have one, so
instead, I'll tell you to sod off and die. Thanks for listening."

[Mav]

On 2012-09-03, Lawns 'R' Us <nob...@nowhere.example.com> bent the will
of the universe to say:

>
> Wrong answer.
>
> "Hello. You've reached the voicemail of Mav. I'm not sorry at all that
> I am unable to take your call, because I am taking a mental health
> day. If you need me, please feel free to leave a message, which I
> shall completely ignore until I come into the office tomorrow. Or next
> week. Or maybe next month. I'm not sure at this stage. Even then, I
> may or may not call you back. It depends on the mood I'm in, and just
> how pissed off your message makes me. I'd wish you a nice day, but
> that would be hypocritical, since I don't want you to have one, so
> instead, I'll tell you to sod off and die. Thanks for listening."

Actually, I found out that there's a certain spot on the lake with zero
coverage. I have a feeling I'm going to be fishing a lot more.

Or standing around like a fool, holding a rod, but really, in the end,
if they can't reach me, what's the difference??

I got nothing, the son caught a turtle, and the wife caught a 4 pound catfish.

[Cipher]

On 9/2/2012 11:10 PM, Mav wrote:
> I just need to vent, I know I'm preaching to the choir.
> But when I fscking tell them to check something, based on available data,
> they proceed to shotgun and replace everything AROUND the problem.

If they hear, they do not listen.
If they listen, they do not understand.
If they understand, they do not learn.
If they learn, they do not *obey*.


--
The word "urgent" is the moral of the story "The boy who cried wolf". As
a general rule I don't believe it until a manager comes to me almost in
tears. I like to catch them in a cup and drink them later.
-- Matt Holiab, in the Monastery

[Maarten Wiltink]

"Mav" <tech...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:k231q6$q4$1...@tygr-labs.motzarella.org...
[...]

> I got nothing, the son caught a turtle, and the wife caught a 4 pound
> catfish.

Are those the cute fish that learn to recognise you, and that you can
pet?

I bet there's good eating on one of those.

Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink

[stevo]

Joe Thompson <sp...@orion-com.com> wrote:
> On 2012-09-03, Mav <tech...@nospam.com> wrote:

>> So instead of listening to what I told them on FRIDAY, they proceeded to
>> monkeyfuck around and swap parts at OUR expense and downtime, for two
>> FSCKING DAYS, until they check what I told them to. Lo and Behold, there's
>> the problem.
>

> The thing I've learned is that a lot of places aren't actually paying
> their sysadmins for expertise any more. They're paying so they can
> tick a box -- "yes, we have an on-site staff with X, Y and Z
> attributes". In an emergency, higher-ups can be told "yes, we consulted
> IT" so that the buck is officially passed even if they cause disaster by
> ignoring the advice they were given by that staff. By the same token,
> since they're just hiring a checklist and don't actually care how *good*
> you are, they get a lot of useless IT staff so don't trust *any* of
> them.
>
> A disturbing amount of this happens in government contracting. My
> previous orkplace was crippled by it -- to the point where I predicted a
> disastrous failure, which came to pass, and when questions were asked my
> manager told many people "No, this was not unexpected. Joe warned you
> about this months ago."
>
> Cynical, me? -- Joe
Cynical? No, just experienced.


On my cubicle wall I currently have the following pinned up:

Askhole - A person who constantly asks for your advice, yet always does
the opposite of what you told them.

Everyone who reads it, nods ans says "Yeah, I know too many of them".
Including the askholes themselves.

--
Stevo st...@madcelt.org

[Joe Zeff]

On Mon, 03 Sep 2012 19:52:38 +0000, Mav wrote:

> I got nothing, the son caught a turtle, and the wife caught a 4 pound
> catfish.

How convenient. Not only did you come back with dinner, but with an
excellent excuse not to do any of the fish cleaning.

--
Joe Zeff -- The Guy With The Sideburns:
http://www.zeff.us http://www.lasfs.info
"This message represents the official view of the voices in my head."

[David Gersic]

On Mon, 3 Sep 2012 19:52:38 +0000 (UTC), Mav <tech...@nospam.com> wrote:
> I got nothing, the son caught a turtle, and the wife caught a 4 pound catfish.

You got some peace, quiet, and time with the family.

[Shmuel Metz]

In <LL2dnav0fZ2u29jN...@supernews.com>, on 09/03/2012

at 07:07 PM, stevo <st...@madcelt.org> said:

>Askhole - A person who constantly asks for your advice, yet always
>does the opposite of what you told them.

Then what do you call a person who constantly asks for your advice,
always does the opposite of what you told them, yet blames you because
it did not work?. Other than "Legion", that is.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <http://patriot.net/~shmuel> ISO position
Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+bspfh to contact me.
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

[John F. Eldredge]

I don't think anyone except a Mama catfish would call a catfish cute.
They are tasty if properly prepared, though.

--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly
is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

[Mav]

On 2012-09-04, David Gersic <usenet_s...@zaccaria-pinball.com>

bent the will of the universe to say:
>

> You got some peace, quiet, and time with the family.
>
>

And that was the important part. That and the peace and quiet.

[Cipher]

On 9/4/2012 9:35 AM, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
> In <LL2dnav0fZ2u29jN...@supernews.com>, on 09/03/2012
> at 07:07 PM, stevo <st...@madcelt.org> said:
>
>> Askhole - A person who constantly asks for your advice, yet always
>> does the opposite of what you told them.
>
> Then what do you call a person who constantly asks for your advice,
> always does the opposite of what you told them, yet blames you because
> it did not work?. Other than "Legion", that is.

Management.

[Hans Klager]

On Tue, 04 Sep 2012 09:35:29 -0400, Shmuel Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
> In <LL2dnav0fZ2u29jN...@supernews.com>, on 09/03/2012
> at 07:07 PM, stevo <st...@madcelt.org> said:
>
>>Askhole - A person who constantly asks for your advice, yet always
>>does the opposite of what you told them.
>
> Then what do you call a person who constantly asks for your advice,
> always does the opposite of what you told them, yet blames you because
> it did not work?. Other than "Legion", that is.

Meanwhile what do you call people who never answer you
questions, or give you a brief and then ask why you havn't done
anything?

Q. Why isn't this vital Ap running?
A. Because there is no server for it.
Q. Why isn't there a server?
A. Because you wouldn't approve one.


--
"By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of
wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East?"
- Kurt Vonnegut

[David Gersic]

On Wed, 5 Sep 2012 02:24:22 +0000 (UTC), Hans Klager <hans....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Q. Why isn't this vital Ap running?

<clickity-click>

"Our change management system doesn't contain any requests to shut it
down, therefor it must still be running."

[Lawns 'R' Us]

"It also does not contain any requests to open up the firewall to
allow access to the application, so you won't be able to reach it. If
you want to change this, you will need to file your form, in
triplicate, on the same day as the third full moon in a given month
..."

[stevo]

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
> In <LL2dnav0fZ2u29jN...@supernews.com>, on 09/03/2012
> at 07:07 PM, stevo <st...@madcelt.org> said:
>
>>Askhole - A person who constantly asks for your advice, yet always
>>does the opposite of what you told them.
>
> Then what do you call a person who constantly asks for your advice,
> always does the opposite of what you told them, yet blames you because
> it did not work?. Other than "Legion", that is.
>

Manager!
--
Stevo st...@madcelt.org

[Wojciech Derechowski]

On 2012-09-05, ab...@127.0.0.1 <ab...@127.0.0.1> wrote:

> On 2012-09-05, Hans Klager <hans....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Q. Why isn't this vital Ap running?
>

> A. Because we never developed it past the prototype stage.
>
> Q. Why?
>
> A. Because you said we "made a good progress" and should now
> move on to developing that Vital Ap #2.
>
> Q. Why isn't this Vital Ap #2 running?
>
> Etfc.

Despite formidable advances made at the ASR aiming to explain suckiness in
number-, set-, or measure-theoretical, algebraic, topological (Banach-Tarski),
quantum-mechanical, or general-relativistic terms there is still no undisputed
theory of suckage or its standard unit.

Even socio-pathological explanations like dialectical or historical materialism
are much too limited due to their strong affinity with the object orientedness
by way of class struggle, inheritance, polymorphism, overloading and such. I'd
say they are all narrowly Hegelian.

But there is a pressing need to at least characterize if not define suckage in
terms of primitive operations similar to primitive recursive functions in order
to attain some form of finitism or constructivism and consistency of the
theory.

WD
--
Who is Entscheidungs and what is his problem?

[Howard S Shubs]

In article <slrnk4gmt7...@um5000.mystora.com>,

Wojciech Derechowski <wdd...@um5000.mystora.com> wrote:

> But there is a pressing need to at least characterize if not define
> suckage in terms of primitive operations similar to primitive
> recursive functions in order to attain some form of finitism or
> constructivism and consistency of the theory.

That... makes too much sense.

The Helen (H) has been defined as a unit of beauty sufficient to launch
1000 ships. It's too large, so the common unit is the milliHelen (mH),
sufficient to launch 1 ship.

While there is the PHB, who is defined as asymptotically maximum
suckage, there's no quantitative value for this. That might be treating
it like entropy, which increases over time. Values might increase with
suckage, such that the level of suckage of a company, increases to the
point of declaring Chapter 7 of the Title 11 of the United States
Bankruptcy Code (liquidation), as a maximum value of suckage. I don't
think that works quite right, though.

I do think that a company declaring liquidation would work as a maximum
value, though. I define the unit "SCO" as Chapter 7 (liquidation). A
company must suck less than a SCO to continue, and can not continue once
it reaches this level. While I might say there are lots of possible
unit names which fit this, none are as reviled. Declaring the unit a
"Kodak", for instance, doesn't work as well as the SCO, as the suckage
of a Kodak is not as high as that of the SCO, which is so bad that it
infects other companies for years at a time. However, I'm sure someone
else can come up with a better example, though perhaps not as recent.

Quantitative mismanagement might be defined by Custer units, which is
suckage bad enough to kill 268 people, including the manager. Please,
suggest a better unit for this! The Helen has the benefit of being
metric, at least.

OTOH, why did 1000 ships launch with Helen? Was it that she was, in
fact, that ****UGLY**** that 1000 ships' crews just HAD to get away from
her as fast as possible? I suppose we need to accept the ancient
documentation that this wasn't the case, though. So that'd require an
inverted Helen (1/H) to define the level of ugly required to repel 1000
ships. I'll leave that to someone else who is less tired.

--
Don't bother with piddly crap like "gun control".
Life is 100% fatal. Ban it.

[Koos van den Hout]

Lawns 'R' Us <nob...@nowhere.example.com> wrote in <slrnk4fiil...@invalid.hostname.does.not.exist.666.au>:

Don't forget that firewall changes have to be approved by the security
manager who hasn't been out of meetings since the Y2K working group.

--
Camp Wireless, the site about wireless Internet | Koos van den Hout
access at campsites http://www.camp-wireless.org/ | http://idefix.net/
PGP keyid DSS/1024 0xF0D7C263 | IPv6 enabled!

[Brian Kantor]

>> But there is a pressing need to at least characterize if not define
>> suckage in terms of primitive operations similar to primitive
>> recursive functions in order to attain some form of finitism or
>> constructivism and consistency of the theory.

I do not recall the standard dimensional definition of the unit, but
for many many years the unit of suckage has been the "Lovelace", in
honor of Linda Lovelace, perhaps best known for her cinematic prowess
in illustrating the unit.
- Brian

[Wojciech Derechowski]

On 2012-09-06, Brian Kantor <br...@karoshi.ucsd.edu> wrote:
> I do not recall the standard dimensional definition of the unit, but
> for many many years the unit of suckage has been the "Lovelace", in
> honor of Linda Lovelace, perhaps best known for her cinematic prowess
> in illustrating the unit.

Yes, it's in the FAQ and I've watched the DVD. However it's hard
to imagine a kind of Turing test, let alone a CAPTCHA, that would
allow to apply the concept and the related unit to HW/SW suckage
with any degree of clarity.

For instance, HW/SW suckage is meant to be rather repulsive...
Or maybe it's just the language thing...

[Joe Zeff]

The definition's in the FAQ. However, if you don't want to wait until
it's posted again, you can also find it here: http://www.wlug.org.nz/
LoveLace

--
Joe Zeff -- The Guy With The Sideburns:
http://www.zeff.us http://www.lasfs.info

This has been a D'oh! moment.

[Wojciech Derechowski]

On 2012-09-06, Wojciech Derechowski <wdd...@um5000.mystora.com> wrote:
> On 2012-09-06, Brian Kantor <br...@karoshi.ucsd.edu> wrote:
>> I do not recall the standard dimensional definition of the unit, but
>> for many many years the unit of suckage has been the "Lovelace", in
>> honor of Linda Lovelace, perhaps best known for her cinematic prowess
>> in illustrating the unit.
>
> Yes, it's in the FAQ and I've watched the DVD. However it's hard
> to imagine a kind of Turing test, let alone a CAPTCHA, that would
> allow to apply the concept and the related unit to HW/SW suckage
> with any degree of clarity.

...even in seemingly trivial cases, e.g.:

Q. Path separator?
A. \

That somehow sucks more than:

A. .

But, in standard units, how much more?

[Alan J Rosenthal]

Joe Zeff <the.guy.with....@lasfs.info> writes:
>The definition's in the FAQ. However, if you don't want to wait until
>it's posted again,

A google search for "ASR FAQ" uncovers many candidates, including
http://www.ask.com/faqcentral/CISCO_ASR.html

[Wojciech Derechowski]

On 2012-09-08, ab...@127.0.0.1 <ab...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>> ...even in seemingly trivial cases, e.g.:
>>
>> Q. Path separator?
>> A. \
>>
>> That somehow sucks more than:
>>
>> A. .
>>
>> But, in standard units, how much more?
>

> You could zoom in to the pixel matrix and see how many more
> pixels it takes to draw the backslash. In a perfectly spherical
> well-calibrated reference font.
>
> That would be the qualitative measure, for quantitative work out
> how many more electrons it took, recall that there is no gravity
> (Earth sucks) and proceed from the mass of an electron and 9.8 of
> whatever that is.

Oh yeah? Here is a counterexample. Watch this:

Q. Path separator?
A. \

Which somehow sucks more than

A. /

See? See? Not clear about quantitative aspect at
all.

It seems though that certain isometries of path
separators are good candidates for primitive
suction operations.

Some other likely candidates may be found perhaps
in transformations like camel notation.

[Simon Smith]

In message <slrnk4hcdi...@um5000.mystora.com>

[Enchicken post A, then abandon it and post non-enchickened post B. Then
wonder why your gem of wisdom does not appear. Doh.]

I'm kind of inclined to take the idea of a suckage index semi-seriously. If
this bugs anyone, moan pre-emptively and I'll take it to email. Email
address is valid with or without the _news.

I was thinking that something like the Purity Test might be a suitable model
to follow, but with a perfect score of zero for the Mythical Non-Sucking
<foo>, and with real-world <foo>s losing points for doing things that suck,
with particular implementations that suck mightily losing more points than
things that suck by the least possible amount.

For example: The Purity-1 version has a single question - Are you pure? with
a Yes/No answer. The Suckiness Test equivalent would be Do this <foo> suck?,
again with a Yes/No answer. A perfect score in the test would be zero, and a
response of 'yes' would score -1 while 'no' would score -2. Thus anyone dumb
enough to claim their particular <foo> doesn't suck is hit for an extra
penalty, and a <foo> that got lots of 'nos' would correctly be flagged as
sucking harder than a <foo> that scored a greater proportion of 'yeses'. I
think this is the scoring philosophy we'd need to follow.

I also think we would need separate Suckiness tests for hardware, operating
systems, and so on, so unfortunately this is likely to be rather more work
than the original purity tests.

The original purity tests grew by accretion - purity-1000 with 1000
questions was significantly later than purity-400 (although purity-1 was
quite a late addition to the oeuvre). But by following that model we can
start with a manageable number of questions - OS-Suckiness-50 or so to begin
with, and then add more with time.

For questions like the directory separator issue, it's clear some choices
are better than others. By being plain about the principles we're trying to
identify, we might be in with a slight chance of articulating /why/ some
choices are bad, and, you know, there might even be a slim chance of
avoiding them in the future. Heh.

For that particular issue I'd suggest scoring of -1 for . (unless someone
can come up with a very good reason for why it deserves to score 0), -2 for
/ and -3 for \

If someone finds some way to implement directory separators that's even
stupider, we can add a new entry to the list. Possibly the scoring per
question will need to be weighted and/or normalised, so it already seems
likely that Suckiness tests are also going to suck.

I am going to keep mulling the issue for a OS-Suckiness test. Things like
scriptability, the directory separator, filename length, case sensitivity of
filenames, ability to do stuff (or not) from the command line, and so forth
is barely the start.

But it does seem strangely fitting to me that my proposed Suckiness test is
itself, quite clearly, going to suck.

--
Simon Smith

When emailing me, please use my preferred email address, which is on my web
site at http://www.simon-smith.org

[Maarten Wiltink]

"Simon Smith" <simon_sm...@zen.co.uk> wrote in message
news:306d32cc5...@zen.co.uk...

[...]

> The original purity tests grew by accretion - purity-1000 with 1000
> questions was significantly later than purity-400 (although purity-1
> was quite a late addition to the oeuvre).

So was relativity.


[...]

> For that particular issue I'd suggest scoring of -1 for . (unless
> someone can come up with a very good reason for why it deserves to score
> 0), -2 for / and -3 for \

Something _really_ odd happens with forward slash. My right eye (my good
eye) keeps wanting to anti-alias it better than backslash. It depends on
distance and exact location on screen, but the difference is quite
noticeable.

> If someone finds some way to implement directory separators that's
> even stupider, we can add a new entry to the list.

The OS used on Tandems uses . as a sort-of directory separator. File
names are split into four parts using dots in the name. By convention
only, the first part is something like a volume, the second something
like a directory, the third a filename, the fourth an extension. Or
something like that. (Volumes were physical, if I recall correctly.)


[...]

> But it does seem strangely fitting to me that my proposed Suckiness test
> is itself, quite clearly, going to suck.

Of course it will. Perhaps it should, even. It feels related to the
second law of thermodynamics. I will reflect on this, if I can remember
to, during my coming week of vacation.

Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <504c3a00$0$6928$e4fe...@news2.news.xs4all.nl>,

Maarten Wiltink <usene...@mfw.dds.nl> wrote:

>The OS used on Tandems uses . as a sort-of directory separator.

VMS uses '.' as an actual directory separator. (This does not
conflict with its use as the file type delimiter because the directory
part of a filespec is enclosed in brackets.) Multics used '>'. Apple
deliberately chose ':' rather than '/' or any of the other
possibilities on the theory that colons were less likely to be used
than slashes in titles of documents.

Many early systems used nonhierarchical file systems, of course; when
those systems were multiuser, they often had a one directory (or at
least one view of the directory) per user. ITS separated the four
parts of a filename with ':', ';', and ' ', in that order
("AI:MRC;JARGON >"). WAITS had the user in brackets at the end
(so the Jargon File instance at SAIL was "AIWORD.RF[UP,DOC]",
and IIRC TOPS-20 put it in angle brackets between device and filename.

You can give an argument for why all of these suck. These days,
hierarchical file systems seem to be fairly unpopular, perhaps because
naive users rarely take advantage of them.

-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993

[TimC]

On 2012-09-09, Garrett Wollman (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

> In article <504c3a00$0$6928$e4fe...@news2.news.xs4all.nl>,
> Maarten Wiltink <usene...@mfw.dds.nl> wrote:
>
>>The OS used on Tandems uses . as a sort-of directory separator.
>
> VMS uses '.' as an actual directory separator. (This does not
> conflict with its use as the file type delimiter because the directory
> part of a filespec is enclosed in brackets.) Multics used '>'. Apple
> deliberately chose ':' rather than '/' or any of the other
> possibilities on the theory that colons were less likely to be used
> than slashes in titles of documents.

Did Jobs determine this by setting up some focus group of hipsters
that somehow never learnt about the colon in their very own special
reality distortion field?

--
TimC
Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of someone else.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

[Erwan David]

wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) disait le 09/09/12 que :

> You can give an argument for why all of these suck. These days,
> hierarchical file systems seem to be fairly unpopular, perhaps because
> naive users rarely take advantage of them.

These days email seems to be quite unpopular, but amo,g people who
impose the use of some piece of crap as MUA which is 20 years late on
some essential features...


--
Le travail n'est pas une bonne chose. Si ça l'était,
les riches l'auraient accaparé

[Mike A]

Garrett Wollman <wol...@bimajority.org> wrote in <k2hgbn$1uca$1...@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>:

> In article <504c3a00$0$6928$e4fe...@news2.news.xs4all.nl>,
> Maarten Wiltink <usene...@mfw.dds.nl> wrote:
>
>>The OS used on Tandems uses . as a sort-of directory separator.
>
> VMS uses '.' as an actual directory separator. (This does not
> conflict with its use as the file type delimiter because the directory
> part of a filespec is enclosed in brackets.) Multics used '>'. Apple
> deliberately chose ':' rather than '/' or any of the other
> possibilities on the theory that colons were less likely to be used
> than slashes in titles of documents.

All descendants of IBM's very first "OS for System 360", the Primary Control
Program use "." as an actual directory separator. A "." may represent a
descent into the same or a different catalog for the next level of the name.
These influde PCP, MFT, MFT-II, MVT, VS/1, MVS, MVS/ESA, and so on, to the
current z/OS Version 2.

--
Physics graduate: "I wonder why that works."
Engineering graduate: "I wonder how that works."
Accounting graduate: "I wonder how much it cost to make that work."
English graduate: "Do you want fries with that?" -- Deforest

[Wojciech Derechowski]

On 2012-09-08, Simon Smith <simon_sm...@zen.co.uk> wrote:
> I was thinking that something like the Purity Test might be a suitable model
> to follow, but with a perfect score of zero for the Mythical Non-Sucking
><foo>, and with real-world <foo>s losing points for doing things that suck,
> with particular implementations that suck mightily losing more points than
> things that suck by the least possible amount.

It may be the only viable thing to do. Consider the function f(foo) = 1 if
foo sucks and f(foo) = 0 if foo very suprisingly doesn't. The program to
compute f is essentially a complete and consistent proof system, something
I very much doubt exists if foo describes anything other than first order
property.

So trying to construe f as a computable function is either extremely risky
or clueless or both. That's why it's fun.

[Niklas Karlsson]

On 2012-09-09, Mike A <mi...@mikea.ath.cx> wrote:
> All descendants of IBM's very first "OS for System 360", the Primary Control
> Program use "." as an actual directory separator. A "." may represent a
> descent into the same or a different catalog for the next level of the name.
> These influde PCP, MFT, MFT-II, MVT, VS/1, MVS, MVS/ESA, and so on, to the
> current z/OS Version 2.

Presumably all the puns on PCP have been done to death long ago, as have
the ones about the significance of missing your period.

Niklas
--
We've got a SCO box which we've had no complaints over. No maintenance
hassles either.
We might get around to switching it on one day.
-- Peter Gutmann

[Shmuel Metz]

In <7v1vh9-...@mikea.ath.cx>, on 09/09/2012

at 12:58 PM, Mike A <mi...@mikea.ath.cx> said:

>All descendants of IBM's very first "OS for System 360", the Primary
>Control Program

I'm not sure that I would count the other options of OS/360 as
descendants of PCP[1]; wasn't the code written in parallel? Earlier
ship date is not the same as paternity.

[1] A street drug that only runs one task at a time.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <http://patriot.net/~shmuel> ISO position
Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+bspfh to contact me.
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

[Shmuel Metz]

In <504c3a00$0$6928$e4fe...@news2.news.xs4all.nl>, on 09/09/2012

at 08:41 AM, "Maarten Wiltink" <maa...@kittensandcats.net> said:

>The OS used on Tandems uses . as a sort-of directory separator.

So do OS/360 and it's children, although it's a bit more complicate
than you might guess. More would be UI and would lead to a sobriety
test.

[Alan J Rosenthal]

wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) writes:
>Apple deliberately chose ':' rather than '/' or any of the other
>possibilities on the theory that colons were less likely to be used
>than slashes in titles of documents.

I'm imagining a document entitled

Colon as pathname component separator: An argument against

which none of the advocates of the colon could read.

-- aj "they remind me of you, sir" r

[Wojciech Derechowski]

On 2012-09-10, ab...@127.0.0.1 <ab...@127.0.0.1> wrote:

> On 2012-09-08, Wojciech Derechowski <wdd...@um5000.mystora.com> wrote:
>
>> Q. Path separator?
>> A. \
>>
>> Which somehow sucks more than
>>
>> A. /
>

> Why?

Well, why not? My guess however is that \ goes against total spin
angular momentum which I'm sure you can measure judging from your
excellent recipe for comparing the values of \ and . where you,
sir, show the true spark of fearless experimenter.

[Peter Corlett]

Oh, that's OK, it just appears as "Colon as pathname component separator/ An
argument against" in the Finder. Usually.

This is even more hateful than it first appears, because now that MacOS is
layered atop Unix, ":" and "/" swap places depending on which hat you are
wearing. Finder does of course wear both POSIX and Classic Mac hats. So both
characters are off-limits if you want consistency.

[Shmuel Metz]

In <kDd3s.880$HM2...@newsfe09.iad>, on 09/10/2012
at 04:02 AM, ab...@127.0.0.1 said:

>The lesser-known fact is that forward slashes
>work on backslash-based system, usually,

Usually isn't good enough. More would be UI.

Yes, it does suck. Why do you ask?

Did I mention that I also hate the use of Tab as a delimiter in
configuration files?

[Alex Elsayed]

TimC wrote:

> Did Jobs determine this by setting up some focus group of hipsters
> that somehow never learnt about the colon in their very own special
> reality distortion field?
>

A strong enough distortion field may have resulted in them denying the
existence of colons, despite the fact that they also argue that what comes
out of theirs is odorless.

[Erwan David]

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> disait le 09/10/12 que :

> In <kDd3s.880$HM2...@newsfe09.iad>, on 09/10/2012
> at 04:02 AM, ab...@127.0.0.1 said:
>
>>The lesser-known fact is that forward slashes
>>work on backslash-based system, usually,
>
> Usually isn't good enough. More would be UI.

MS-DOS was the last version before DOS became Unix, so was said by the
boss of the company. Thus no surprise...

[Graham Reed]

ab...@mooli.org.uk (Peter Corlett) writes:
> So both characters are off-limits if you want consistency.

And if you're going to expose a filesystem via SMB to your media PC,
there's a whole area of other Oddness with reserved path characters.
Violate that rule and you get some weird hashcode instead of a filename,
which is OK if it's only one episode of a series, but if 5 of them all
turn into hash codes it's hard to watch in the right order.

So now I abuse UNICODE FULLWIDTH SOLIDUS to get around that, along with
FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK. The media PC can't render those glyphs, but at
least Samba doesn't turn the name into hash soup.

--
But it is for a good reason. Not dying on the job is cool.
-- Randy the Random in the Monastery

[Shmuel Metz]

In <m2lighk...@rail.eu.org>, on 09/10/2012

at 09:32 PM, Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> said:

>MS-DOS was the last version before DOS became Unix, so was said by
>the boss of the company.

[Mike A]

Satya <sat...@satyaonline.cjb.net> wrote in <slrnk4ud4b...@gort.thesatya.com>:

> On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:01:24 -0400, Graham Reed wrote:
>> So now I abuse UNICODE FULLWIDTH SOLIDUS to get around that, along with
>> FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK. The media PC can't render those glyphs, but at
>> least Samba doesn't turn the name into hash soup.
>

> Okay, I want to see those words in Stross's next Laundry book.
>
> I meant the glyph names, not Samba.

OK, then, *you* get to figure out how to render them in Enochian. Good
luck. Be sure that the nested pentacles are fully functional. If you run
into trouble, don't call me.

--
"First they had me cuttin' out smokin'
then they had me cuttin' out drinkin'
then they had me cuttin' out wimmen'
now I'm cuttin' out paper dolls" -- used by Tom NX0JMY - AAR7FV

[er...@rail.eu.org]

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> disait le 09/10/12 que :

> In <m2lighk...@rail.eu.org>, on 09/10/2012
> at 09:32 PM, Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> said:
>
>>MS-DOS was the last version before DOS became Unix, so was said by
>>the boss of the company.
>
> ?

Sorry, I forgot the version. MS-DOS 3.11 was the last version...

Or so it was said at that time...


--
Le travail n'est pas une bonne chose. Si �a l'�tait,
les riches l'auraient accapar�

[Wojciech Derechowski]

On 2012-09-11, er...@rail.eu.org <er...@rail.eu.org> wrote:
> Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid>
> disait le 09/10/12 que :
>
>> In <m2lighk...@rail.eu.org>, on 09/10/2012
>> at 09:32 PM, Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> said:
>>
>>>MS-DOS was the last version before DOS became Unix, so was said by
>>>the boss of the company.
>>
>> ?
>
> Sorry, I forgot the version. MS-DOS 3.11 was the last version...

Peu importe la version. Si c'etait vrai nous aurions deja eu standard
d'UNIX.

[Shmuel Metz]

In <87liggu...@regulateur.rail.eu.org>, on 09/11/2012

at 03:28 PM, er...@rail.eu.org said:

>Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> disait
>le 09/10/12 que :

>> In <m2lighk...@rail.eu.org>, on 09/10/2012
>> at 09:32 PM, Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> said:
>>
>>>MS-DOS was the last version before DOS became Unix, so was said by
>>>the boss of the company.
>>
>> ?

>Sorry, I forgot the version. MS-DOS 3.11 was the last
>version...

It's "DOS became Unix" that I was questioning. Certainly BAT is not to
be Bourne, and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

[Erwan David]

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> disait le 09/11/12 que :

> In <87liggu...@regulateur.rail.eu.org>, on 09/11/2012
> at 03:28 PM, er...@rail.eu.org said:
>
>>Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> disait
>>le 09/10/12 que :
>
>>> In <m2lighk...@rail.eu.org>, on 09/10/2012
>>> at 09:32 PM, Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> said:
>>>
>>>>MS-DOS was the last version before DOS became Unix, so was said by
>>>>the boss of the company.
>>>
>>> ?
>
>>Sorry, I forgot the version. MS-DOS 3.11 was the last
>>version...
>
> It's "DOS became Unix" that I was questioning. Certainly BAT is not to
> be Bourne, and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

It was announced by the then head of MS. Should we think it was false ?

[Mike A]

Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> wrote in <m2zk4wi...@rail.eu.org>:

> Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> disait le 09/11/12 que :
>
>> In <87liggu...@regulateur.rail.eu.org>, on 09/11/2012
>> at 03:28 PM, er...@rail.eu.org said:
>>
>>>Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> disait
>>>le 09/10/12 que :
>>
>>>> In <m2lighk...@rail.eu.org>, on 09/10/2012
>>>> at 09:32 PM, Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> said:
>>>>
>>>>>MS-DOS was the last version before DOS became Unix, so was said by
>>>>>the boss of the company.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>
>>>Sorry, I forgot the version. MS-DOS 3.11 was the last
>>>version...
>>
>> It's "DOS became Unix" that I was questioning. Certainly BAT is not to
>> be Bourne, and that's only the tip of the iceberg.
>
> It was announced by the then head of MS. Should we think it was false ?

I would say "yes", simply because of his position.

But let us say that his position is irrelevant. If he were, then to declare
that down henceforth would be up, would you accept that simply because he
said it?

If yes, then why? And have we always been at war with Eastasia?

--
Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives at passport control in Poland:
"Nationality?" asks the immigration officer. "German" she replies.
"Occupation?" "No, just here for a few days."
-- Via John Forster

[Wojciech Derechowski]

"My dog has no nose." "How does it smell?" "Awful!"

[Joe Zeff]

On Tue, 11 Sep 2012 14:49:34 -0400, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:

> It's "DOS became Unix" that I was questioning. Certainly BAT is not to
> be Bourne, and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, I'm sure we all have ample reason to Bash MS-DOS.

--
Joe Zeff -- The Guy With The Sideburns:
http://www.zeff.us http://www.lasfs.info
The light at the end of the tunnel is the explosives around
that little ball of Pu239

[Kevin Goebel]

On 12 Sep 2012 03:22:25 GMT, Joe Zeff

<the.guy.with....@lasfs.info> wrote:

>On Tue, 11 Sep 2012 14:49:34 -0400, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:

>> It's "DOS became Unix" that I was questioning. Certainly BAT is not to
>> be Bourne, and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

>Yes, I'm sure we all have ample reason to Bash MS-DOS.

This should be a pun game with a "man" at .bat

[David Cameron Staples]

Not without .com pounding the issue.

--
David Cameron Staples | staples AT unimelb DOT edu DOT au
Melbourne University | ITS | Hosting | Unix Operations
gravity is a resource hog. -- bash.org/?243112

[Joe Zeff]

Are you sure? I thought that the script called for a shell game.

--
Joe Zeff -- The Guy With The Sideburns:
http://www.zeff.us http://www.lasfs.info

I generally support rugged individualism, but only when it is backed
by clue.

[Robert Uhl]

wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) writes:
>
> VMS uses '.' as an actual directory separator. (This does not
> conflict with its use as the file type delimiter because the directory
> part of a filespec is enclosed in brackets.) Multics used '>'. Apple

> deliberately chose ':' rather than '/' or any of the other
> possibilities on the theory that colons were less likely to be used
> than slashes in titles of documents.

I sometimes think that there shouldn't _be_ a directory separator, and
thus that namestrings shouldn't exist and pathnames should be
programmatically constructed.

It has the virtue of trading one set of messy problems for another set
of messy problems.

--
I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it. --Dogbert

[Wojciech Derechowski]

On 2012-09-13, Robert Uhl <eadm...@NOSPAMgmail.com> wrote:

> I sometimes think that there shouldn't _be_ a directory separator, and
> thus that namestrings shouldn't exist and pathnames should be
> programmatically constructed.
>
> It has the virtue of trading one set of messy problems for another set
> of messy problems.

Yesterday I noticed another cool Lispism: at least you can pretend there aren't
any namestrings and paths are virtually gauranteed to cause problems, cf.

http://lintool.github.com/MapReduceAlgorithms/MapReduce-book-final.pdf

[Alan J Rosenthal]

Robert Uhl <eadm...@NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
>I sometimes think that there shouldn't _be_ a directory separator, and
>thus that namestrings shouldn't exist and pathnames should be
>programmatically constructed.

Ah yes, then instead of being able to type "cat /foo/bar" you'd have to write
a little C program. Every time.

Except of course that you'd write a program to turn something of the form
/foo/bar into that data structure instead, so you wouldn't have to write
a separate program for each path name, and then we'd be back to where we
started except for having added an extra layer of cruft in the middle.

[Robert Uhl]

fl...@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal) writes:

> Robert Uhl <eadm...@NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
>>I sometimes think that there shouldn't _be_ a directory separator, and
>>thus that namestrings shouldn't exist and pathnames should be
>>programmatically constructed.
>
> Ah yes, then instead of being able to type "cat /foo/bar" you'd have to write
> a little C program. Every time.

No, it'd be more like having to type `cat (make-pathname :directory
'(:absolute "foo") :name "bar")` every time.

Or not typing at all...

As I noted, it'd trade one set of messy problems (e.g. not being able to
use any name as a filename, not being able to compatibly move files
around and use the same name) for a different set of messy problems (e.g
having to type ridiculously long strings at a command prompt).

--
There are many types of bigotry, some of them completely OK and
acceptable. This is the acceptable type called `postjudice.'
--Mike Andrews

[Shmuel Metz]

In <4l533k...@phb.lart.ca>, on 09/16/2012
at 09:14 AM, dagb...@LART.ca (Dave Brown) said:

>How much alcohol did it take?

Not enough to remove memories of the IBM 650.