I received a number of links and material from people all across the world, and here's my thanks.
TTT H H A NNN K K Y Y OOO U U T HHH AAA N N KK Y O O U U T H H A A N N K K Y OOO UUU
I've collected them into a fortune-compatible file and am going to publish them on my page at some point soon. It'll be available at: htt://saturn.math.uaa.alaska.edu/~crippenj when I get it up, which probably won't be for a week or more since I've got to write the prospectus for my Lambda paper RSN.
And yes, I'll be blithely ignoring all copyright issues since most of the quotes were either spoken by individuals (you can't copyright human speech), snarfed from other fortune databases like the ITS LINS (thanks again Alan), taken from personal communication, or so obvious that it's impossible to mistake. Most are correctly attributed, and if they aren't I'd appreciate being informed of the correct attributation if possible.
And as always, if you happen upon any, know any, or know somebody that knows any good ones that I haven't listed, please mail me.
* Eric Marsden <emars...@mail.dotcom.fr> | [To come back to Lisp:] For me, one of the primary weaknesses of Common | Lisp is the lack of libraries. Other languages such as Python and Perl | have a huge user-contributed library of functions for networking, | database access, text processing, graphics, which make many non-trivial | tasks easy. In CL you have to write these from scratch (heck, there isn't | even a portable socket or regexp interface!).
you know, C doesn't have a socket or regexp interface, either. the reason that doesn't bother you is that the environment provides it almost wherever you go and that the environment providers, for whatever reason, are able to agree to at least the major parts of the socket function call protocol, but as for regexps, you're pretty much on your own. heck, no two regular expression matchers accept the same input language!
why is _Common Lisp_ to blame for this? why is it a strength for C and a weakness for Common Lisp? this makes no sense at all.
rather than talk about "the primary weakness of Common Lisp" (I can't _wait_ to hear of the _next_ primary weakness once we've dispensed with the current primary weakness), go out there and fix whatever is wrong! the reason there _are_ a bunch of "libraries" and packages for all those fucked-up languages is that people probably didn't feel bad about not having something nice, so they went ahead and made something ugly but at least functional. now, everyone's happy, right? why not repeat this for Common Lisp, too?
my guess is that there are psychologically powerful reasons behind the whining for and the resulting lack of packages: (1) Common Lisp is expected to be so great that if you want to add something, you need to be just as good or preferably even better, and if you don't feel you are up to that, you just don't publish the code, like you just wouldn't "help" Michelangelo with his ceiling work. (2) Common Lisp is expected to be so great that if you aren't fully satisfied, that somehow translates to dissatisfaction or a weakness, like you would want somebody to fix any minor detail at a fine gourmet restaurant that you wouldn't even notice elsewhere. (3) Common Lisp is expected to be such a clean language that you would never want to dirty your hands by implementing something in it that would look nice and clean as seen from the outside but would involve a lot of dirty, machine-level work underneath.
to dispell these unreasonably high expectations, let's look at what made Common Lisp so great: (1) lots of people worked really hard. beauty and simplicity have _enormous_ costs. it's worth it, though, so just get started, and in time, you may get there. the only thing you know for certain is that if you don't start, you'll never get there. greatness shows after the fact, and you cannot optimize for greatness, but you can do what it takes. (2) lots of people were really focused on getting the language and the specification good enough for them and it is evident they had high standards. set yourself high standards, too, but _do_ and _redo_ until you achieve them. there is no other way. (3) the clean facade or interface or design always requires a lot of dirty work, from the concerted effort to hide what cannot be clean to daily polishing the exterior.
another way to say this is that elegance is necessarily _unnatural_, only achieveable at great expense. if you just do something, it won't be elegant, but if you do it and then see what might be more elegant, and do it again, you might, after an unknown number of iterations, get something that is very elegant. the key is not to stop, but still to publish.
if this looks like I'm talking about fine art, it's because I am. fine art is about very hard work, very high standards, and never giving up.
now that the "fine art" probably seems like an unreasonable analogy, you can relax and write something less beautiful but at least functional. I trust you won't create something really crappy that is hard to use and which comes with a disclaimer like this fantastic quote from the manual page for the `rename' system call under Linux:
On NFS filesystems, you can not assume that if the operation failed the file was not renamed. If the server does the rename operation and then crashes, the retransmitted RPC which will be processed when the server is up again causes a failure. The application is expected to deal with this.
in brief: library packages don't exist because people don't publish what they write. whatever the actual reason may be, the only thing that will actually _change_ this situation is if people write and publish the packages they want and evidently would need to write from scratch, anyway. those who want others to write something for them should inspire (e.g., fund) them to do it, not complain that it doesn't exist.
incidentally, as a long-time contributor to various "causes", I can very well understand and sympathize with those who want to contribute nothing, but I have a very hard time sympathizing with those who want something for free. in a similar vein to Kent Pitman's concerns over copyright, I urge those who want various packages to appreciate the creators' view: their motivation, their desire for rewards, recognition, etc, and not the least their rights: just because you need it gives you no right to take it, nor demand it. and whoever wants to give anything to unappreciative whiners, anyway? give those who can create something you cannot or do not want to create yourself a _reason_ to do something for you, instead.
#:Erik -- The Microsoft Dating Program -- where do you want to crash tonight?
* g...@hugo.westfalen.de (Georg Bauer) | The point here is "creative work". We are not talking about creative | work but short citations, quotes, silly jokes and such.
so, e.g., my current signature was not "creative work" on my part? I wonder how you would distinguish coming up with it from coming up with a line of code, or a line in a newspaper article I'm writing. if anything, the signature was _more_ creative than a line that is part of a much greater whole, which could be argued to be "creative work" made up of lines meaningless by themselves.
I'd hate to contribute anything to a "community" who would decide whether _they_ wanted to give me credit for my work.
#:Erik -- The Microsoft Dating Program -- where do you want to crash tonight?
Barry Margolin <bar...@bbnplanet.com> wrote: +--------------- | Rob Warnock <r...@rigden.engr.sgi.com> wrote: | >But the really sad thing is that the individual contest winners had their | >names stripped off of the bootleg versions, thus denying them even their | >brief moment of fame -- exactly what Kent was warning about. | | I notice that you didn't add it back when you quoted the example haiku in | your post. Shouldn't you practice what you preach? +---------------
[Petard, own, hoist by?]
Mea culpa. While I *did* in that same article include the URLs containing the complete original haiku (including the original attributions) for anyone who wished to go look, at the time I wrote that article I was not at a terminal capable of running a Web browser [yes, simple ASCII does still exist, sometimes], so that I was not able to go fetch the contents of the URL and cut&paste from the original, with proper attribution. (At least, not easily. I suppose I could have stopped, gone and fetched a copy of Lynx from somewhere with FTP, gotten it to compile on the box I was reading news on at the moment, and used *it* to fetch the "Salon" article, but then I would have gotten *no* sleep that night, instead of only a little.)
Instead, I cribbed the example from a saved email message I'd received (containing the "stripped" versions) from a mailing list, and the relevant URLs of the Salon site from a saved copy of a reply I'd sent to the list blasting the redistribution! Thus taking the easy way to Perdition...
+--------------- | My feeling is that short works like these may suffer from problems similar | to popular trademarks. If they become too well known, they may become part | of "folk humor", much as trademarks may become generic (e.g. "aspirin"). +---------------
Exactly the problem! ...and so you were quite right to call me on it. Had I put in only a little more time (well, a *lot* more, last Wednesday) I could have given the proper attribution. So (having a browser handy this time) I will do so now (snip, snip):
+--------------- | Like the Craig Sherbourne "dying child wants postcards" email | (which, amazingly, seemed to stop circulating a few years ago)... +---------------
Uh... Isn't it "Shergold"? And no, it still keeps popping up.
-Rob
[p.s. Apologies in advance: Back from sabbatical 11/2/98, but until then email will still get a "vacation" bounce message...]
----- Rob Warnock, 8L-855 r...@sgi.com Applied Networking http://reality.sgi.com/rpw3/ Silicon Graphics, Inc. Phone: 650-933-1673 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. FAX: 650-964-0811 Mountain View, CA 94043 PP-ASEL-IA
Eric Marsden <emars...@mail.dotcom.fr> writes: >[To come back to Lisp:] For me, one of the primary weaknesses of >Common Lisp is the lack of libraries. Other languages such as Python >and Perl have a huge user-contributed library of functions for >networking, database access, text processing, graphics, which make >many non-trivial tasks easy. In CL you have to write these from >scratch (heck, there isn't even a portable socket or regexp >interface!).
In theory, you are right, but I don't think it is that much worse than in other languages.
Every Common Lisp implementation in wide distribution has a socket interface and CLX offers a common abstraction.
For Common Lisp, there actually is a regular expression string library. For perl and python, there are none, they use C libraries.
How many perl implementations share the same regex interface? 1 How many python implementations share the same socket interface? 1
If you want to use a web-browser on ASCII-only terminals, use lynx. That works. BTW: I didn't quote in this reply because Erik Naggum might sue me on copyright infringments ;-)
In article <3118308291731...@naggum.no>, Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.no> wrote: > I'd hate to contribute anything to a "community" who would decide whether > _they_ wanted to give me credit for my work.
Where did I say that one shouldn't give credits to the author? I explicitly said that you should give credits to the author. The only thing is, I don't think that _copyright_ issues do apply in this scenario. It's more a problem of good behaviour than law and order.
If you have a problem with the above, you shouldn't contribute to Usenet at all - actually it is quite common to cite small snippets of Usenet-postings in one's .sig. And everybody who replies to a posting usually quotes a part of the original. As I do abovce. BTW: as you might see, I give full credit to you for what you wrote.
>>>>> "mc" == Martin Cracauer <craca...@not.mailable> writes: >>>>> "en" == Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.no> writes:
[no portable socket or regexp interface for CL]
en> my guess is that there are psychologically powerful reasons en> behind the whining for and the resulting lack of packages: en> ... [(1), (2), (3)]
I might suggest a (4): most of the people using CL are in big companies or organizations which don't encourage code sharing. Or a (5): there is no central repository for library code to compare with CPAN.
mc> How many perl implementations share the same regex interface? 1 mc> How many python implementations share the same socket interface? 1
For Perl you are correct, but there are two Python implementations, one written in C, and the other[1] working on the Java virtual machine.
* g...@hugo.westfalen.de (Georg Bauer) | Where did I say that one shouldn't give credits to the author? I | explicitly said that you should give credits to the author. The only | thing is, I don't think that _copyright_ issues do apply in this | scenario. It's more a problem of good behaviour than law and order.
why did you skip the part of my reply that was relevant to copyright? did I ask too hard questions for your comfortably non-commital stance?
| If you have a problem with the above, you shouldn't contribute to Usenet | at all - actually it is quite common to cite small snippets of | Usenet-postings in one's .sig. And everybody who replies to a posting | usually quotes a part of the original. As I do abovce. BTW: as you | might see, I give full credit to you for what you wrote.
I once heard a phrase for this kind of bullshit argumentation: knocking down strawman arguments. you should try to understand what people tell you, and then argue against that, not pretend they said what you would _like_ to argue against, and then argue against that.
I appreciate the credit, but that really isn't the issue. the issue is: "who gets to decide whether my work is mine?" you fail to answer this, which I must admit I expected.
#:Erik -- The Microsoft Dating Program -- where do you want to crash tonight?
* g...@hugo.westfalen.de (Georg Bauer) | If you want to use a web-browser on ASCII-only terminals, use lynx. That | works. BTW: I didn't quote in this reply because Erik Naggum might sue me | on copyright infringments ;-)
what a fucking moron you are. no wonder you don't worry about copyright issues -- whatever could _you_ produce that would be worth protecting in a commercial setting?
#:Erik -- The Microsoft Dating Program -- where do you want to crash tonight?
In article <70vih4$rk...@counter.bik-gmbh.de>, craca...@not.mailable
(Martin Cracauer) wrote: >How many perl implementations share the same regex interface? 1 >How many python implementations share the same socket interface? 1
Uhm. Actually there are 2 python-implementations that share the same socket-interface (Python and JPython). They even share the same regex interface, if I recall correctly. There is only 1 perl implementation, so sharing isn't an issue there (except you treat the different system-versions as different implementations - but then they share one common socket interface and one common regex interface).
In article <3118389551260...@naggum.no>, Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.no> wrote: > what a fucking moron you are. no wonder you don't worry about copyright > issues -- whatever could _you_ produce that would be worth protecting in > a commercial setting?
If you had something like humor (or at least would understand the concept of it, if you even don't share it), youre comments might sometimes not be so totally off-road as they sometimes are. But then - it is far easier to let off steam. Even if you forget that steam is just hot air and bubbles ...
* g...@hugo.westfalen.de (Georg Bauer) | If you had something like humor (or at least would understand the concept | of it, if you even don't share it), youre comments might sometimes not be | so totally off-road as they sometimes are.
so first my signature is not creative work and now it isn't even humor? why prove that you are indeed a moron? I would have thought it better to try to refute my accusation than to prove it.
| But then - it is far easier to let off steam.
then why did you think what you did was humor to begin with, when it is obvious that you were letting off steam in completely random directions?
this would have worked to refute my accusation, and made it a _little_ harder for me to use the same accusation against the next fucking moron to rear his ugly humor:
"it was admittedly a cheap shot. I'm sorry it offended you."
but thanks to your pathetic retort, I can once again claim accuracy in identifying the morons walking among the rest of us. thanks.
until next time, spend some time trying to understand the concept of copyright and infringement suits, will you? that's what this was about before you came along, anyway. you see, _I_ cannot sue _you_ for your violation of _Rob_Warnock's_ copyright in anything, and since he's the one you replied to, your attempt at humor was only amazingly stupid, and we got a very unwelcome snapshot of your brain at work.
#:Erik -- The Microsoft Dating Program -- where do you want to crash tonight?
In article <3118474307041...@naggum.no>, Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.no> wrote: > * g...@hugo.westfalen.de (Georg Bauer) > | If you had something like humor (or at least would understand the concept > | of it, if you even don't share it), youre comments might sometimes not be > | so totally off-road as they sometimes are.
> so first my signature is not creative work and now it isn't even humor? > why prove that you are indeed a moron? I would have thought it better to > try to refute my accusation than to prove it.
> | But then - it is far easier to let off steam.
> then why did you think what you did was humor to begin with, when it is > obvious that you were letting off steam in completely random directions?
> this would have worked to refute my accusation, and made it a _little_ > harder for me to use the same accusation against the next fucking moron > to rear his ugly humor:
> "it was admittedly a cheap shot. I'm sorry it offended you."
> but thanks to your pathetic retort, I can once again claim accuracy in > identifying the morons walking among the rest of us. thanks.
> until next time, spend some time trying to understand the concept of > copyright and infringement suits, will you? that's what this was about > before you came along, anyway. you see, _I_ cannot sue _you_ for your > violation of _Rob_Warnock's_ copyright in anything, and since he's the > one you replied to, your attempt at humor was only amazingly stupid, and > we got a very unwelcome snapshot of your brain at work.
In article <joswig-2710981243220...@pbg3.lavielle.com>, jos...@lavielle.com says...
> Jetzt wird es mir auch zuviel.
It may be a month or two early, but God Jul. -- Remove insect from address to email me | You can never browse enough will write code that writes code that writes code for food
