Short Shameful Milestone.
James Kibo Parry
bookmarked that my copy of Netscape crashed, burned, and tried to
eat all the other files on my computer. The limit was apparently
1000 items in that version, ones after #1000 would disappear and
garble the bookmark file. So I switched to using Microsoft
Internet Explorer to manage my bookmarks.
Since then, I've been very happy with MSIE, and have been gradually
inching towards 5,000 bookmarks.
Today I hit 4,769.
And apparently something about the number 4,769, or the way the
bookmarks are arranged, breaks my MSIE. I can pick the bookmarks off
the menu (which MSIE calls "Favorites" even though I really hate some
of the sites) and I can add new ones to the end of it. But trying to
move any of them around within my Byzantine hierarchy of nested
sub-folders causes a nice Red Screen Of Death. (Hey, what can I say --
I colorized my computer's crash screen to make it scarier. You seldom
see bright red screens on computers any more.)
So, as of today, I've switched to having no bookmarks in any of my
Web browsers. I'm managing all the bookmarks with one of those
external, third-party shareware tools which is just a big window
where you can put your bookmarks without breaking your Web browser
if you bookmark all the por^H^H^Huseful sites you find.
(I have to register the shareware thing for $30 if I want to be able
to alphabetize them. That's a cute touch -- "You can use the program
all you want for free, but stuff will be in a silly order if you
don't pay for it!")
I regret having to take this step, but it was necessary, as I haven't
finished writing my own bookmark database tool yet.
-- K.
Or my Usenet program.
Mark Hill
> Since then, I've been very happy with MSIE, and have been gradually
> inching towards 5,000 bookmarks.
>
> Today I hit 4,769.
EVERY page on the Internet is Kibo's favorite page!
Beable van Polasm
> Web browsers. I'm managing all the bookmarks with one of those
> external, third-party shareware tools which is just a big window
> where you can put your bookmarks without breaking your Web browser
> if you bookmark all the por^H^H^Huseful sites you find.
>
> (I have to register the shareware thing for $30 if I want to be able
> to alphabetize them. That's a cute touch -- "You can use the program
> all you want for free, but stuff will be in a silly order if you
> don't pay for it!")
Ummmmm, you can just store your bookmarks in a text file using
emacs, and then when you want to alphabetize them do:
sort bookmarks.txt > bookmarks_new.txt
And that is FREE! FREE! FREE! Now you owe me $30.
> I regret having to take this step, but it was necessary, as I haven't
> finished writing my own bookmark database tool yet.
Stop fighting it, d00d. Just install Emacs.
cheers
Beable van Polasm
Clothos Maximus
headaches by doing the following:
1. Download blackwidow from download.com, the extra-speshul twine-pilfering
softie! for FREE!
2. Enter as start URL: http://www.yahoo.com/
3. Enter as maximum depth: 65535
4. Start!
5. When you get a graphical approximation of this:
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
| |
| You have run out of diskspace on drive C |
| Do you want to perform disk cleanup? |
| |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
Run to the store and buy a new diamond maxtor 60!
6. Install said diamond maxtor 60
7. Repeat
Don't close the diskspace warning messages. It's a little known fact, but in
much the same way that running back and forth in N$tH$ck brings creatures
you kill and sacrifice to your god gives you a runesword of storms that will
kill a shopkeeper that will kill you collecting enough of those warning
messages activates a windows easter-egg that shows an orange cat walk across
your desktop collecting folders and making them go away and then saying
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO BILL! YOU GAVE BILL FOLDERS FOR HIS BIRTHDAY1 BILL SAYS:
"THANK YOU KIBO!"
HTH, CM
"James "Kibo" Parry" <ki...@world.std.com> wrote in message
news:kibo-20060...@192.168.200.201...
> A few years ago, I reached the point where I had enough Web sites
> bookmarked that my copy of Netscape crashed, burned, and tried to
> eat all the other files on my computer. The limit was apparently
> 1000 items in that version, ones after #1000 would disappear and
> garble the bookmark file. So I switched to using Microsoft
> Internet Explorer to manage my bookmarks.
>
> Since then, I've been very happy with MSIE, and have been gradually
> inching towards 5,000 bookmarks.
>
> Today I hit 4,769.
>
> And apparently something about the number 4,769, or the way the
> bookmarks are arranged, breaks my MSIE. I can pick the bookmarks off
> the menu (which MSIE calls "Favorites" even though I really hate some
> of the sites) and I can add new ones to the end of it. But trying to
> move any of them around within my Byzantine hierarchy of nested
> sub-folders causes a nice Red Screen Of Death. (Hey, what can I say --
> I colorized my computer's crash screen to make it scarier. You seldom
> see bright red screens on computers any more.)
>
> So, as of today, I've switched to having no bookmarks in any of my
> Web browsers. I'm managing all the bookmarks with one of those
> external, third-party shareware tools which is just a big window
> where you can put your bookmarks without breaking your Web browser
> if you bookmark all the por^H^H^Huseful sites you find.
>
> (I have to register the shareware thing for $30 if I want to be able
> to alphabetize them. That's a cute touch -- "You can use the program
> all you want for free, but stuff will be in a silly order if you
> don't pay for it!")
>
> I regret having to take this step, but it was necessary, as I haven't
> finished writing my own bookmark database tool yet.
>
zapkitty@lemmings
<kibo-20060...@192.168.200.201>:
<snip bookmark woes>
>..... So I switched to using
>Microsoft Internet Explorer to manage my bookmarks.
Of course you've downloaded and installed all 18 security patches
released for IE....
> -- K.
> Or my Usenet program.
--
Chuck Stewart
"Anime-style catgirls: Threat? Menace? Or just studying algebra?"
layos
"Kibo" Parry) si manifesto' al mondo delirando:
>I regret having to take this step, but it was necessary, as I haven't
>finished writing my own bookmark database tool yet.
of course you will distribute it as a GPL sw, isn't it?
ok, ok. I'll back to lurk.
--
Layos [gir n°19]
Questo ricordo non vi consoli, quando si muore si muore soli
Faber
Daniel Buettner
>> Web browsers. I'm managing all the bookmarks with one of those
>> external, third-party shareware tools which is just a big window
>> where you can put your bookmarks without breaking your Web browser
>> if you bookmark all the por^H^H^Huseful sites you find.
>>
>> (I have to register the shareware thing for $30 if I want to be able
>> to alphabetize them. That's a cute touch -- "You can use the program
>> all you want for free, but stuff will be in a silly order if you
>> don't pay for it!")
> Ummmmm, you can just store your bookmarks in a text file using
> emacs, and then when you want to alphabetize them do:
> sort bookmarks.txt > bookmarks_new.txt
> And that is FREE! FREE! FREE! Now you owe me $30.
I thought of that too, but of course I was planning to
suggest vi. I was also going to suggest the "-f" flag for
sort, but YMMV.
However, it occurs to me that this method has a few
shortcomings.
ZUM BEISPIEL (I've been waiting to type that):
1. I assume Kibo doesn't just want URLs in his bookmark
file. Probably some sort of "title" would be useful, maybe
even the <title> itself. How to get it in your text file?
You can't cut and paste from the Title Bar of your browser,
so you can either type it yourself or cut and paste from the
page source. Both are icky.
2. I suspect that Kibo may organize his bookmarks in some
sort of hierarchy. How to represent this with text files?
Different sections in one big file? Multiple files?
I think that text files would work well, if someone wrote a
nice python script to provide a layer of abstraction, saving
the user from having to directly manage a set of text files.
You could also have python fetch the <title> from the URL
you enter in the bookmark program, solving problem #1.
But that would be a lot of work. I guess this is why I have
about 6 bookmarks and never use any of them. It's far too
much work and I can remember the few sites I ever want to
see again. And if I don't remember, google is just a few
keystrokes away.
--
~
~
~
"Daniel Buettner" line 4 of 4 --100%--
Eli M. Balin
James "Kibo" Parry <ki...@world.std.com> wrote:
[Regarding his not-necessarily favorite bookmarks]
>of the sites) and I can add new ones to the end of it. But trying to
>move any of them around within my Byzantine hierarchy of nested
>sub-folders causes a nice Red Screen Of Death. (Hey, what can I say --
>I colorized my computer's crash screen to make it scarier. You seldom
>see bright red screens on computers any more.)
Does it also flash "ALERT" in big white letters? Does your computer warn
you of imminent danger in Majel Barrett's voice? Do the lights in your
apartment flicker on and off while the plumbing ejects thick gouts of
steam? Do things jump out at you from the shadows, and turn out to be just
the cat?
None of this happens when things go wrong with my computer. All I get is
Robert Vaughn's voice trying to seduce me with pictures of radio
telescopes.
--
elib...@panix.com http://www.panix.com/~elibalin/
Chris Costello
> Does it also flash "ALERT" in big white letters? Does your computer warn
> you of imminent danger in Majel Barrett's voice?
That's not possible. Majel Barrett is inside my computer.
- Chris Costello <ch...@FreeBSD.org>
Chris Costello
> inching towards 5,000 bookmarks.
I bet you didn't bookmark any pages I've written or been
somehow involved with.
> Today I hit 4,769.
Well 4769 is 19 * 251. 251 = 2 + 5 + 1 = 8. 19 = 1 + 9 = 10.
10 + 8 = 18. 8 + 1 = 9, which is the square of 3, which is prime
and is, in binary, 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0011. That
speaks for itself.
> So, as of today, I've switched to having no bookmarks in any of my
> Web browsers. I'm managing all the bookmarks with one of those
> external, third-party shareware tools which is just a big window
> where you can put your bookmarks without breaking your Web browser
> if you bookmark all the por^H^H^Huseful sites you find.
Wait til Mac OS X is released and use it, and you can write
neat shell scripts to keep all that stuff together, and you can
be using FreeBSD _and_ Mac OS at the same time! You want to use
FreeBSD and Mac OS together, don't you?
> I regret having to take this step, but it was necessary, as I haven't
> finished writing my own bookmark database tool yet.
> -- K.
> Or my Usenet program.
If you write a Usenet program, write it in Fortran. That's the
new hot language these days.
- Chris Costello <ch...@FreeBSD.org>
Andrew Pearson
>
<I'm sorry but it's all just too good to snip. Kibology: "too
good to snip"!>
> >> Web browsers. I'm managing all the bookmarks with one of those
> >> external, third-party shareware tools which is just a big window
> >> where you can put your bookmarks without breaking your Web browser
> >> if you bookmark all the por^H^H^Huseful sites you find.
> >>
> >> to alphabetize them. That's a cute touch -- "You can use the program
> >> all you want for free, but stuff will be in a silly order if you
> >> don't pay for it!")
>
> > Ummmmm, you can just store your bookmarks in a text file using
> > emacs, and then when you want to alphabetize them do:
> > sort bookmarks.txt > bookmarks_new.txt
> > And that is FREE! FREE! FREE! Now you owe me $30.
>
> I thought of that too, but of course I was planning to
> suggest vi. I was also going to suggest the "-f" flag for
> sort, but YMMV.
vi -f. Minus bloody "f"? Wossat then? I can't those young
whippersnapper developers at work to use vi -r. Do they ever
wonder why the machine says "you have mail" every time they log
in? Do they wonder why I send them notes mails saying "do you
want that huge file in /var/temp? I dunno, kids today! But I digress.
>
> However, it occurs to me that this method has a few
> shortcomings.
>
> ZUM BEISPIEL (I've been waiting to type that):
>
> 1. I assume Kibo doesn't just want URLs in his bookmark
> file. Probably some sort of "title" would be useful, maybe
> even the <title> itself. How to get it in your text file?
> You can't cut and paste from the Title Bar of your browser,
> so you can either type it yourself or cut and paste from the
> page source. Both are icky.
Beispielhaft! Indeed cut and paste would never do! Oh No!
>
> 2. I suspect that Kibo may organize his bookmarks in some
> sort of hierarchy. How to represent this with text files?
> Different sections in one big file? Multiple files?
>
> I think that text files would work well, if someone wrote a
> nice python script to provide a layer of abstraction, saving
> the user from having to directly manage a set of text files.
> You could also have python fetch the <title> from the URL
> you enter in the bookmark program, solving problem #1.
>
> But that would be a lot of work. I guess this is why I have
> about 6 bookmarks and never use any of them. It's far too
> much work and I can remember the few sites I ever want to
> see again. And if I don't remember, google is just a few
> keystrokes away.
Well there are two many options. How's about buying the
developer's version of Solaris and installing that on an Intel
box? Then K*bo could use the HotJava browser that comes with it
and see how many bookmarks it can handle before smoke comes out.
Or install Informix (9.21) on the Solaris box, with the web data
blade. That would be ideal for a favourites database, you could
use the buit-in JVM (to run a HotJava browser?) and store the
links in a nice traditional table or as objects, and write UDOs
to check if they're still live, or spider through the web looking
for Duraian or Archie Pu references. it could grow into MegaKibo.
In fact, if you installed it with a batch of GSM modems inside a
giant robotic lobster it would be MechaKibo.
But that would be a lot of work. What about writing them on
post-its stuck to the monitor?
--
Andrew Pearson: "exactly what the web needs less of".
James Kibo Parry
>
> James "Kibo" Parry (ki...@world.std.com) wrote:
> >
> > ..... So I switched to using
> > Microsoft Internet Explorer to manage my bookmarks.
>
> Of course you've downloaded and installed all 18 security patches
> released for IE....
(Cue Marcia Wallace looking at Jan Brady and saying "HA!")
(Cue Marcia Wallace looking at Bob Newhart and saying "HA!")
(Cue Marcia Wallace looking at Bart Simpson and saying "HA!")
The most recent version of Internet Explorer available on my platform
is 5.0.0.0.0.0.0. And it doesn't do Visual Basic scripting and it
doesn't come with its own Java (it uses Apple-brand real Java) so there
aren't too many security holes for them to fix, because it's missing
the two evil parts and it's running on an operating system that says
"Duhhh, what's a server?" when you try to let it accept connections
from the outside world. ("Hey, he's trying to start a telnet daemon.
I'll start multitasking with one-second time-slices.")
Besides, any Mac owner can tell you that whenever a product is released
for Mac OS and Windows simultaneously, afterwards they only ever fix
the bugs in the Windows versions. The only Mac products that get a
series of updates are the ones that have a big flashing "MAC ONLY,
SCREW WINDOWS!" sticker on their Web site and a little picture of
Steve Jobs that's been retouched to make him look not insane. But the
problem with those is that their products all break whenever Apple
makes any slight change to Mac OS (which they do every three months,
exactly three months behind schedule) and if you ask them to add any
normal useful features they say "Oh, no, we can't do that, because
that feature could also work under any other operating system, and
if we added a lot of those we might accidentally port the whole program
to Windows! And then we'd cry because we'd have to use TWO kinds of
computers! No human being could possibly stand learning to use
TWO operating systems! Unless one of them is Linux! And I mean the
good kinds of Linux, not the sucky kinds! They're all completely
different! There's a frame missing from the version of 'Alien' they
show on TBS!"
I wish, however, they'd fix the bug that makes Mac MSIE say
Error:
The attempt to load 'Accessing URL: http://www.sitename.com/' failed.
That just bothers me because it's a really obvious big of error-manglement
where it introduces a grammatical error while attempting to complain
in two separate ways about the same problem. They must have grafted
an old error message on top of the new one or something.
Still, it's better than the Windows 2000 beta installer error I saw
a few months ago which gave a hex code and then said "There is no
help for this error."
I did modify my MSIE myself because I wasn't happy with the choices of
interface colors -- the very simple, solid-color icons are great,
but the choices of colors are either way too loud (blueberry, tangerine,
durian, yadda yadda) or too subtle ("bronze" aka brownish black,
"black" aka gray.) I would have used brown or black but it turns out
that in order to make all the colors on the page match, they chose to
draw and Web page "Submit" buttons with the text in a light shade of
that accent color, so if I use the "bronze" color, all the "Submit"
buttons are displayed with grayish text and look like they don't want
me to click on them.
So, I took the thing apart with RedEdit and SuperHex and tracked down
the RGB triplets that defined the colors, and lo and behold, each color
was in there twice -- one copy of the color was used more most of the
colorized interface elements, the other was used only for the revolving
globe, the Web page buttons (aha), and the scroll bars. So I left the
first one brown and I bumped the second one up to a nice
when-raspberry-met-dried-blood wine-flavored maroon, and now I'm happy
because I don't have fluorescent teal or magenta icons looking at me,
just brown ones that are as easy to ignore as the other coffee stains
I'd have on my computer if I ever drank coffee.
If you've never seen the Mac version of MSIE 5, it's really weird-looking
because it mimics the bizarro "user experience" of an operating system
which hasn't been released yet. It's entirely made of moist candy.
MMM, GUMMI ALTAVISTA! GUMMI YAHOO! GUMMI PORNOGRAPHY!
It's one of those you-must-love-it-or-hate-it-because-it's-really-bad-
but-normal-people-like-bad-things things. I can tolerate it because
you can change the colors (and I could change 'em even more with my
hex editor) and because it's a far better browser, in my opinion, than
the Mac version of Netscape. (It crashes just as often, but at least
it doesn't scribble all over my disk buffers when it goes down.
Someday we need to strap Microsoft and Netscape executives to a
computer and say "Okay, feature freeze! You can't add anything new until
you hunt down all the memory leaks in your existing code! There are
programs that help you do this automatically, you pinheads!)
I don't know why Microsoft doesn't realize they could combine the
features of the Mac and Windows versions of MSIE (except for the parts
that can't be ported easily, such as Visual Basic, ColorSync support,
Sherlock support, the ability to browse the Windows filesystem, etc.)
because each of the two versions of MSIE has some really nifty features
that the other one doesn't have. Obviously Microsoft told their Mac MSIE
team to go lock themselves in a room and forbade them to have contact
with any of the 99% of Microsoft employees who develop and support
Windows products.
For instance, look at the Preferences screens of the two MSIEs and
notice that they have completely different sets of items you can customize,
in different arrangements, with different interfaces. The Windows one
allows you to switch more individual features on and off, while the Mac
one has fewer but more useful preferences (such as site-specific
cookie-handling behavior.) Even the weird little interface elements
are different: The Windows one supports fetching favico.ico files
(like the little "K" on www.kibo.com) when you bookmark a site, while
the Mac one doesn't -- but the Mac one lets you collapse the toolbars
to a vertical bar so that the page can be taller (I think they had to
put that in because they didn't want to figure out how to display
the phrase "Page Holder" not sideways. Also, "Page Holder" is another
one of those exotic features they could add to the other version.)
Now, Netscape Navigator/Communicator is just as broken on both Macs
and Windows in exactly the same way (with the aforementioned difference
that they won't fix any of the bugs in the Mac version, ever.)
At a certain point in their history they decided to _remove_ certain
minor features to make it work the same on both platforms. And they
still refuse to support certain Mac features used by _all_ other
Internet applications (I'm talking about the system-wide Internet
preferences-handling system which evolved from the freeware
Internet Config and then became part of the OS). That's like writing
a Windows program and saying "I refuse to allow my program to read
from or write to the Registry, because then it would do something that
the other versions don't do." You get the feeling that a lot of
programs are developed with the design goals of avoiding writing any
part of the program they can find an excuse for avoiding, or with
the magical fantasy goal of making all the versions of their program
so identical that they don't have to train their tech-support people
to ask, "Are you using the Macintosh, Windows, SGI, or HP/UX version?"
I wonder if they ever fixed the bug in the SGI 64-bit Netscape Navigator
that allowed you to open a "View Page Info" window which had no way of
closing it, ever.
Anyhow, computers are weird, and life would be so much less fun with
only one operating system, but programmers would love it. Of course,
it would have to be neither Windows (hard to program on) or Mac OS
(hard to program on), but an operating system that's easy to program
on, like UNIX or Lite Brite.
I like how Lite Brite now advertises "2 WAYS TO CREATE PICTURES:
HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL!" Why can't computer programmers come up
with innovations like that? MAYBE I WANT TO LOOK AT WEB PAGES SIDEWAYS!
-- K.
There's a building in Minneapolis
shaped exactly like a Radius Pivot
monitor. I tried to tip it over
to watch all the windows redraw
but it was too heavy. Get a
counterweight, bulgy building!
Chris Costello
> Error:
> The attempt to load 'Accessing URL: http://www.sitename.com/' failed.
> That just bothers me because it's a really obvious big of error-manglement
> where it introduces a grammatical error while attempting to complain
> in two separate ways about the same problem. They must have grafted
> an old error message on top of the new one or something.
They just printed the wrong buffer. I'm assuming normally
you'd see "Accessing URL: http://www.sitename.com/" in the bottom
'status bar' widget--they're probably just printing that buffer
instead of the buffer for the URL text input widget.
> I don't know why Microsoft doesn't realize they could combine the
> features of the Mac and Windows versions of MSIE (except for the parts
> that can't be ported easily, such as Visual Basic, ColorSync support,
> Sherlock support, the ability to browse the Windows filesystem, etc.)
Silly Leader Kibo, file browsing isn't file system specific.
At least it shouldn't be.
- Chris Costello <ch...@FreeBSD.org>
michael holmes
>
>Since then, I've been very happy with MSIE, and have been gradually
>inching towards 5,000 bookmarks.
>
According to the government PR flaks responsible for convincing us that we need
more funding for internet infrastructure, internet traffic is doubling in size
every 100 days
(http://www.usis-israel.org.il/publish/econews/1998/april/eco0415a.html). If
this is true, and if your total number of bookmarks is some function of the
total number of web pages out there, your troubles might only be getting
started. Of course, you can only surf so much, so after the web reaches a
certain size, the rate at which you acquire new bookmarks will no longer be
dependent on size of the web, but rather on how much sleep you're willing to do
without.
I wonder how long internet traffic can go on doubling in size every 100 days?
Seems to me that after another decade or so of that kind of growth the earth
will have acquired a new outer crust composed entirely of cables, servers, and
client computers. I'm guessing that the radiation from all of those terminals
will render the entire male population sterile, meaning that Kurzweil will have
been right and the planet will be taken over by machines. At least there will
be plenty of porn while we're waiting to die out.
Mike
Dan Mielcarz
> I'm managing all the bookmarks with one of those
> external, third-party shareware tools which is just a big window
> where you can put your bookmarks without breaking your Web browser
> if you bookmark all the por^H^H^Huseful sites you find.
Why not just put individual bookmarks in a folder in your apple menu
items? They'll be alphabetized automatically and you can organize them
into folders. No separators, though, but you can name a folder "-----"
or something.
Not that this is ideal, but it's free.
-Dan "5000 pr0n bookmarks is a lot" Mielcarz
--
Dan.Mi...@alum.dartmouth.edu
miel...@netspace.org
<http://www.netspace.org/~mielcarz/
"I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson
but to explain that school is over." -Henry Miller
Tom Tom Harrington
> Besides, any Mac owner can tell you that whenever a product is released
> for Mac OS and Windows simultaneously, afterwards they only ever fix
> the bugs in the Windows versions. The only Mac products that get a
> series of updates are the ones that have a big flashing "MAC ONLY,
> SCREW WINDOWS!" sticker on their Web site and a little picture of
> Steve Jobs that's been retouched to make him look not insane. But the
This is true. Which is why O'Reilly's new "MacOS in a Nutshell" will
never be updated, ever, no matter how many errors the first edition
has.
<snip>
> Still, it's better than the Windows 2000 beta installer error I saw
> a few months ago which gave a hex code and then said "There is no
> help for this error."
One of these days I'm going to convert the Unux "fortune" program into
an error-message system that can be used in cases like this. Wouldn't
it have been better if it had said:
Error 0xCAFEBABE1234: Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song / A medley
of extemporanea / And love is a thing that can never go wrong; / And I
am Marie of Roumania -- Dorothy Parker
It's not any more useful, but at least it's entertaining. Anything to
make the user experience more surreal.
<snip>
> If you've never seen the Mac version of MSIE 5, it's really weird-looking
> because it mimics the bizarro "user experience" of an operating system
> which hasn't been released yet. It's entirely made of moist candy.
Well, duh, it's made for iMacs, which also look like they're made of
moist candy. It's the whole consistent user experience thing again,
since Mac users would obviously go insane if they could tell where the
computer ended and the software began.
> MMM, GUMMI ALTAVISTA! GUMMI YAHOO! GUMMI PORNOGRAPHY!
Gummi porn would make a good web site.
<snip>
> the other versions don't do." You get the feeling that a lot of
> programs are developed with the design goals of avoiding writing any
> part of the program they can find an excuse for avoiding, or with
You have just discovered one of the driving principles of software
development.
> the magical fantasy goal of making all the versions of their program
> so identical that they don't have to train their tech-support people
> to ask, "Are you using the Macintosh, Windows, SGI, or HP/UX version?"
You have just discovered one of the driving principles of software
support.
> I wonder if they ever fixed the bug in the SGI 64-bit Netscape Navigator
> that allowed you to open a "View Page Info" window which had no way of
> closing it, ever.
If you didn't want the window, whyd'ya open it in the first place?
> Anyhow, computers are weird, and life would be so much less fun with
> only one operating system, but programmers would love it. Of course,
> it would have to be neither Windows (hard to program on) or Mac OS
> (hard to program on), but an operating system that's easy to program
> on, like UNIX or Lite Brite.
No, programmers would still hate it, because every platform has it's
cadre of zealots, and programmers are inevitably the most intensely
zealous of platform devotees. Programmers wouldn't be happy unless
every platform ever made, and dozens that haven't been invented was a
viable source of a living. Dammit! There's NOTHING on these systems
today that I couldn't have done on my original Timex ZX-81! Damn
marketroids killed off the best platform ever!
> I like how Lite Brite now advertises "2 WAYS TO CREATE PICTURES:
> HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL!" Why can't computer programmers come up
> with innovations like that? MAYBE I WANT TO LOOK AT WEB PAGES SIDEWAYS!
> -- K.
> There's a building in Minneapolis
> shaped exactly like a Radius Pivot
> monitor. I tried to tip it over
> to watch all the windows redraw
> but it was too heavy. Get a
> counterweight, bulgy building!
I still get misty eyed thinking about the Radius Pivot. Now _that_
was a cool idea.
--
Tom "Tom" Harrington ------------ Decode to email: tph (at) pcisys (dot) net
"And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get there?" -- Talking Heads
Watch this space, spiffy home page, "Toast Talk" coming soon
Beable van Polasm
> From a remote bunker, James "Kibo" Parry issued the following manifesto:
> > a few months ago which gave a hex code and then said "There is no
> > help for this error."
>
> an error-message system that can be used in cases like this. Wouldn't
> it have been better if it had said:
>
> Error 0xCAFEBABE1234: Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song / A medley
> of extemporanea / And love is a thing that can never go wrong; / And I
> am Marie of Roumania -- Dorothy Parker
>
> It's not any more useful, but at least it's entertaining. Anything to
> make the user experience more surreal.
You don't need to convert anything. All you need to do is to make
your data file, which is a percent-sign separated list like this:
------------8<------------startrek fortune file excerpt----8<-------
I thought my people would grow tired of killing. But you were right,
they see it is easier than trading. And it has its pleasures. I feel
it myself. Like the hunt, but with richer rewards.
-- Apella, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8
%
"I'm a doctor, not a mechanic."
-- "The Doomsday Machine", when asked if he had heard of
the idea of a doomsday machine.
"I'm a doctor, not an escalator."
-- "Friday's Child", when asked to help the very pregnant
Ellen up a steep incline.
"I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer."
-- Devil in the Dark", when asked to patch up the Horta.
"I'm a doctor, not an engineer."
-- "Mirror, Mirror", when asked by Scotty for help in
Engineering aboard the ISS Enterprise.
"I'm a doctor, not a coalminer."
-- "The Empath", on being beneath the surface of Minara 2.
"I'm a surgeon, not a psychiatrist."
-- "City on the Edge of Forever", on Edith Keeler's remark
that Kirk talked strangely.
"I'm no magician, Spock, just an old country doctor."
-- "The Deadly Years", to Spock while trying to cure the
aging effects of the rogue comet near Gamma Hydra 4.
"What am I, a doctor or a moonshuttle conductor?"
-- "The Corbomite Maneuver", when Kirk rushed off from a
physical exam to answer the alert.
%
------------8<------------startrek fortune file excerpt----8<-------
And then you run strfile to make the index file. So, GET
WORKING ON IT, D00000D!
cheers
Beable van Polasm
Greg Neill
news:RSN35.4467$bc4.3...@news1.primary.net...
> >
> >Since then, I've been very happy with MSIE, and have been gradually
> >inching towards 5,000 bookmarks.
> >
> >Today I hit 4,769.
>
> According to the government PR flaks responsible for convincing us that we
need
> more funding for internet infrastructure, internet traffic is doubling in
size
> every 100 days
> (http://www.usis-israel.org.il/publish/econews/1998/april/eco0415a.html).
If
> this is true, and if your total number of bookmarks is some function of
the
> total number of web pages out there, your troubles might only be getting
> started. Of course, you can only surf so much, so after the web reaches a
> certain size, the rate at which you acquire new bookmarks will no longer
be
> dependent on size of the web, but rather on how much sleep you're willing
to do
> without.
>
Sounds like a new business opportunity: sites to host people's bookmarks.
Crgre Jvyyneq
04:52:02 GMT]
>There's NOTHING on these systems
>today that I couldn't have done on my original Timex ZX-81!
>Damn marketroids killed off the best platform ever!
>
I don't mean to frighten anyone, but perhaps you could use a
good scare: http://members.aol.com/clubbbs/akahale.html
--
Peter Willard http://www.drizzle.com/~petew
``The fact that inhumanity is coupled with so much stupidity
makes one feel almost optimistic in a dangerous way.'' -Erich
Hecke
David DeLaney
>According to the government PR flaks responsible for convincing us that we need
>more funding for internet infrastructure, internet traffic is doubling in size
>every 100 days
Oooooo.
>I wonder how long internet traffic can go on doubling in size every 100 days?
Well, it's been, what, thirty years so far?
>Seems to me that after another decade or so of that kind of growth the earth
>will have acquired a new outer crust composed entirely of cables, servers, and
>client computers.
No - all that's required is that there be no practical upper limit on
frequencies. Unfortunately, sooner or later we run into the electron-
positron pair-production problem...
>At least there will
>be plenty of porn while we're waiting to die out.
...Now I'm envisioning the HappyPorn Manifesto. Kibo, please arrange things
so that every possible combination of pixels is newgrouped on April 1st,
2001, okay? Bye!
Dave "alt.a.a.a.a.hot-babes.a" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://panacea.phys.utk.edu/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ/ I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Joe Manfre
<kibo-20060...@192.168.200.201>:
>There's a building in
>Minneapolis shaped
>exactly like a Radius
>Pivot monitor. I tried
>to tip it over to watch
>all the windows redraw
>but it was too heavy. Get
>a counterweight, bulgy
>building!
You know, James Lileks, alt.religion.kibology's favorite
newspaper columnist, is also a Minneapolitan and has
put together a section of his Web site devoted to that
fine city's downtown. He might be able to help you track
down more information about the building, since he is
also an architecture buff. (He once supplied me, in email,
with some info about one of my favorite downtown D.C.
buildings.)
Visit http://www.lileks.com/mpls/
JM
--
Joe Manfre, Hyattsville, Maryland.------> Why have many
prominent alt.religion.kibology participants joined the
"Happy 50th Birthday, Archimedes Plutonium" list? Find
out at: http://manfre-land.com/miscellany/archie.html
Jim Vandewalker
wrote:
>...Now I'm envisioning the HappyPorn Manifesto. Kibo, please arrange things
>so that every possible combination of pixels is newgrouped on April 1st,
>2001, okay? Bye!
>
>Dave "alt.a.a.a.a.hot-babes.a" DeLaney
>--
That was the worst Mel Blanc impression EVER.
--
Jim
Joe Manfre
>So, I took the thing apart with RedEdit and SuperHex and tracked down
>the RGB triplets that defined the colors, and lo and behold, each color
>was in there twice -- one copy of the color was used more most of the
>colorized interface elements, the other was used only for the revolving
>globe, the Web page buttons (aha), and the scroll bars.
Oh, Kibo -- oh, dear Leader Kibo -- how did you, a
liberal college liberal arts liberal arts college
graduate, become such a Computer Smartypants?
Okay, okay, what you did doesn't sound extremely
complicated, but I feel like whining. It's like,
compared to most of the boneheads where I work,
I seem to come off like an eleet s00per hakk0r
sometimes, since I am often able to get my software
to do what I want it to do no matter how hard the
software developers tried to break it. Meanwhile,
a lot of people there barely know how to turn their
computers on and have never seen an MS-DOS prompt,
let alone something much more eleet.
Then I come on a.r.k and immediately start feeling
like, as I have called myself before, The Dumbest
Guy On This Newsgroup. Damn you people! Can't
you create a happy medium for me?
Dag Right-square-bracket-gren
> I regret having to take this step, but it was necessary, as I haven't
> finished writing my own bookmark database tool yet.
Here's an idea for it: Make it a CGI script. I've already done this for
my own personal use. Having all your bookmarks available online, no
matter where you are or what program you're using, is great.
--
Dag Agren <> d...@c3.cx <> http://www.abo.fi/~dagren/ <> Legalize oregano
"You know what happens when you ASS-U-ME, don't you?
You make a REASONABLE inference based on PAST behavior!" - Ted Frank
Dag Right-square-bracket-gren
> features of the Mac and Windows versions of MSIE (except for the parts
> that can't be ported easily, such as Visual Basic, ColorSync support,
> Sherlock support, the ability to browse the Windows filesystem, etc.)
> because each of the two versions of MSIE has some really nifty features
> that the other one doesn't have. Obviously Microsoft told their Mac MSIE
> team to go lock themselves in a room and forbade them to have contact
> with any of the 99% of Microsoft employees who develop and support
> Windows products.
I hear the CSS support in MSIE 5 for Mac actually works and is not broken
like in the Windows version. You'd THINK they'd want working CSS in the
Windows version too, but apparently they're too busy removing security
spots. (With most MS products you can't really talk about "security
holes" as there is more non-security than there is security, hence the
term "security spots". "Waah!!!" cried Spot, as Microsoft engineers
removed more and more of him!)
> Now, Netscape Navigator/Communicator is just as broken on both Macs
> and Windows in exactly the same way (with the aforementioned difference
> that they won't fix any of the bugs in the Mac version, ever.)
I like the Netscape 4.7 or so that I'm using on this Windows machine. It
has completely given up the pretense of needing reasons to crash, and
will happily crash while I'm not even anywhere near the computer.
Dag Right-square-bracket-gren
t...@pcisys.no.spam.dammit.net (Tom "Tom" Harrington) says...
> One of these days I'm going to convert the Unux "fortune" program into
> an error-message system that can be used in cases like this. Wouldn't
> it have been better if it had said:
>
> Error 0xCAFEBABE1234: Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song / A medley
> of extemporanea / And love is a thing that can never go wrong; / And I
> am Marie of Roumania -- Dorothy Parker
>
> It's not any more useful, but at least it's entertaining. Anything to
> make the user experience more surreal.
You'd love BeOS's web browser NetPositive. It displays a random haiku on
the subject of lost webpages everytime it can't connect to a site.
Beable van Polasm
> In article <kibo-20060...@192.168.200.201>, ki...@world.std.com
> (James "Kibo" Parry) says...
> > finished writing my own bookmark database tool yet.
>
> Here's an idea for it: Make it a CGI script. I've already done this
> for my own personal use. Having all your bookmarks available online,
> no matter where you are or what program you're using, is great.
When are you going to release your CGI program of Kibo's bookmarks?
AND WHERE DID YOU GET KIBO'S BOOKMARKS??? GIVE THEM BACK AT ONCE!
UNHAND THOSE BOOKMARKS, YOU VARLET!!
cheers
Beable Varlet Polasm
--
WHAT WOULD JOE BAY DO?
Wakky webpage of fun!!!
http://members.xoom.com/_______/index.html
David Pacheco
said:
> In article <kibo-20060...@192.168.200.201>, ki...@world.std.com
> (James "Kibo" Parry) says...
> > I regret having to take this step, but it was necessary, as I haven't
> > finished writing my own bookmark database tool yet.
>
> Here's an idea for it: Make it a CGI script. I've already done this for
> my own personal use. Having all your bookmarks available online, no
> matter where you are or what program you're using, is great.
www.backflip.com
www.deapleap.com
-dp.
Matt McIrvin
Right-square-bracket-gren) wrote:
>I hear the CSS support in MSIE 5 for Mac actually works and is not broken
>like in the Windows version.
It still has some bugs, particularly in the behavior of float under
certain nontrivial conditions, and in certain interactions of inline
styles, especially text decoration on links.
For that matter, while the parsing and rendering of CSS1 is all there,
certain other details of the standard are not supported as well as the W3C
would probably like. For instance, you *can* have your own user style
sheet, which behaves in more or less the specified way, but there's no UI
for constructing it; you have to code it up by hand. (Opera does that
part better.)
But it is so much less buggy than any other current final release
implementation (*including* Opera's) that it has impressed many people who
are not normally fond of Microsoft. You can actually be moderately
confident that a properly written style sheet will not ruin the page.
CSS1 support is pretty complete. There are random bits and pieces of CSS2
in there as well.
The Mozilla/Netscape 6 betas are widely reputed to have CSS support that
is just as good or better, but I have not verified this personally.
--
Matt McIrvin http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/
James Kibo Parry
>
> James "Kibo" Parry (ki...@world.std.com) wrote:
> >
> > So, I took the thing apart with RedEdit and SuperHex and tracked down
> > the RGB triplets that defined the colors, and lo and behold, each color
> > was in there twice -- one copy of the color was used more most of the
> > colorized interface elements, the other was used only for the revolving
> > globe, the Web page buttons (aha), and the scroll bars.
>
> liberal college liberal arts liberal arts college
> graduate, become such a Computer Smartypants?
I watched Sandra Bullock editing the "Wolfenstein 3D" icon with ResEdit
on a Power Mac 8100 in the first scene of "The Net", that's how I learned
to do that. I think she was supposed to be super-hacking her way into
a super-elite super-secure super-super-computer, but she was clearly
using ResEdit, and the name of the file she had opened was clearly
"Wolfenstein 3D".
It's one of the few cases where, in a movie, the computer screens aren't
just these goofball mockups (these giant, spare interfaces with enormous
flashing red "computery" letters) but are actually really using a computer.
Unfortunately, it's clear to anyone who has ever programmed a Mac that
she's just fiddling with ResEdit!
Not even REGEDIT.EXE, but ResEdit!
> Okay, okay, what you did doesn't sound extremely
> complicated, but I feel like whining. It's like,
> compared to most of the boneheads where I work,
> I seem to come off like an eleet s00per hakk0r
> sometimes, since I am often able to get my software
> to do what I want it to do no matter how hard the
> software developers tried to break it. Meanwhile,
> a lot of people there barely know how to turn their
> computers on and have never seen an MS-DOS prompt,
> let alone something much more eleet.
At Loser Designs we used to get customers who had never seen _Windows_,
they would come in because they needed to use the DOS version of WordPerfect
and we were the only place in town that still had Windows 3.1 and DOS
available when everyone else had gone to Windows 95. So the staff would
have to show them how to exit Windows to get to DOS just about as often
as we'd have to show people how to type "WIN" to get from DOS to Win3.1.
We also got the people who didn't know there was a difference between
Mac OS and Windows and didn't know which of the two they needed to use
and had only one copy of their entire life's work which was stored on
a single floppy that they'd been carrying around and rubbing on magnets
for ten years and would invariably die in our shop.
And the people who thought that Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator,
Adobe PageMaker, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint
were named "Adobe", "Adobe", "Adobe", "Microsoft", "Microsoft", and "Microsoft".
A lot of people don't seem to realize that Word isn't built into Windows,
a fact I am willing to testify to under oath if they need my expert testimony
at the super-elite Government-Versus-Evil-Super-Haxor-Bill-Gates trial.
> Then I come on a.r.k and immediately start feeling
> like, as I have called myself before, The Dumbest
> Guy On This Newsgroup. Damn you people! Can't
> you create a happy medium for me?
Okay... "CandyVision". Just stick your tongue into the hole in the
side of this humming box and enjoy a joyride through the candy dimension!
-- K.
I'm watching a TV commercial
where a guy in a muscle shirt
has installed a series of
angled mirrors throughout his
house to see the left front
wheel of his tire because
he just gave his tires
"the shine you can't stop
looking at", which they tell
me makes tires look wet
even when they're not, and
sure, I guess I would stare
at a wet tire all day.
Beable van Polasm
>>
[snip]
> At Loser Designs we used to get customers who had never seen _Windows_,
> they would come in because they needed to use the DOS version of WordPerfect
> and we were the only place in town that still had Windows 3.1 and DOS
> available when everyone else had gone to Windows 95. So the staff would
> have to show them how to exit Windows to get to DOS just about as often
> as we'd have to show people how to type "WIN" to get from DOS to Win3.1.
What about how to get out of Wordperfect for DOS? I had a
job interview where that was part of the test. Another part
was "Fix this machine" (the video card was mysteriously
falling out), and "install this memory". Now I have forgotten
how to exit from Wordperfect for DOS, it could be F7, Alt-F7
or Ctrl-Alt-Del. Now I would do "Delete Wordperfect and install
Emacs". HAW HAW!!! JUST BECAUSE EMACS MAKES KIBO CRY!!!11!
> We also got the people who didn't know there was a difference between
> Mac OS and Windows
There IS??? Just the SPELLING of the names, right?
> and didn't know which of the two they needed to use and had only one
> copy of their entire life's work which was stored on a single floppy
> that they'd been carrying around and rubbing on magnets for ten
> years and would invariably die in our shop.
They should have just posted their life's work to UNSENET with
a line down the bottom saying:
"FILE UNDER HTTP://CANDY.COCONUT.COM/PHYSICS/I-LIKE-COCONUT"
I hear that works really well.
> > Then I come on a.r.k and immediately start feeling
> > like, as I have called myself before, The Dumbest
> > Guy On This Newsgroup. Damn you people! Can't
> > you create a happy medium for me?
Don't worry Joe. Somebody has to be the dumbest.
> I'm watching a TV commercial
> where a guy in a muscle shirt
> has installed a series of
> angled mirrors throughout his
> house to see the left front
> wheel of his tire
That sounds like a ripoff of the Budweiser commercial with the
frogs who set up the mirrors to watch TeeVee.
cheers
Beable van Polasm
--
WHAT WOULD JOE BAY DO?
I was really surprised to be asked here tonight to honour Bob Hope.
Surprised isn't the right word... annoyed -- Ronald Reagan
http://members.xoom.com/_______/index.html
James Kibo Parry
> > they would come in because they needed to use the DOS version of WordPerfect
> > and we were the only place in town that still had Windows 3.1 and DOS
> > available when everyone else had gone to Windows 95. So the staff would
> > have to show them how to exit Windows to get to DOS just about as often
> > as we'd have to show people how to type "WIN" to get from DOS to Win3.1.
>
> What about how to get out of Wordperfect for DOS? I had a
> job interview where that was part of the test. Another part
> was "Fix this machine" (the video card was mysteriously
> falling out), and "install this memory". Now I have forgotten
> how to exit from Wordperfect for DOS, it could be F7, Alt-F7
> or Ctrl-Alt-Del.
Not "Alt-F7"! "Red Dot-F7", please!
For the uninitiated, WordPerfect for DOS (up through version 5, before
they decided to add convenient character-based drop menus) used the
F1 through F12 keys for all its commands, and each one did something
different depending on whether you pressed it by itself, or with Shift,
or with Alt, or with Control. So there was this strip with tiny printing
on it you were supposed to tape to the keyboard above the F1 to F12 keys
(an alternate version was supplied for those oldkeyboards that had those
keys all at the right edge) but because you were really really stupid
and didn't know how to find the "Shift" key, they printed the four rows
of commands in black, red, green, and blue, and gave you red, green, and
blue dots to put on the Alt, Shift, and Control keys (I forget how the
colors corresponded.) So the point of WordPerfect tech support was
usually something like:
CLUEFUL PERSON: To retrieve your document, just press shift-F9.
CLUELESS PERSON: Wha?
CLUEFUL PERSON: I mean green-dot-F9.
CLUELESS PERSON: How many are 9?
At Loser Designs we had early Gateway computers (back when they were
named "Gateway 2000", circa the early 90s) with the horrible, evil,
rotten, atrocious "Gateway AnyKey(R)" keyboards, which had extra cursor
keys in a nonstandard arrangement (EVERYONE needs to be able to backspace
diagonally!) with a mysterious blank key in the middle of the eight.
But the really rotten feature was that there was a "Macro Define"
key in the upper right, next to "Macro Suspend" and "Macro End".
It was supposed to work like this:
YOU THINK: I want to type "cat" twice, but I'm too lazy to press
all six keys. I'll define a macro.
YOU TYPE: Macro Define, X, C, A, T, End Macro, X, X.
IT MAKES: CAT! CAT!
YOU THINK: Now I just need to remember to type "Suspend Macro, X"
if I ever need to use the "X" key again.
In practice, what would happen was that idiots would flail away at
the entire keyboard at once (I don't mean they'd deliberately hit
different keys in hopes they'd do different things, I mean they'd
rest their hand by pressing it down on the entire right half of
the keyboard) and because it was trivially easy to hit "Macro Define",
the first letter of their resume would be redefined as a macro
which typed all but the first letter of their resume whenever
they pressed the first letter again.
I remember Xeroxing the page of the manual that told how to reset
the keyboard to normal, then Xeroxing it again when they lost the
first three copies I'd made. Eventually we just pried the three
Macro keys off the keyboard with a screwdriver.
Then the manager tried to install Windows 95 on the computer and
Windows 95 stopped booting so they turned the computer off forever.
Ah, those were the days. It was nice to have a job where I could
feel comfortable in knowing that no matter how many customers and
managers were in the room, I was more SUP3R-3L33T than them.
(Most of my co-workers were well-clued, just not the management.)
Joe Manfre (man...@flash.net) wrote:
> > >
> > > Then I come on a.r.k and immediately start feeling
> > > like, as I have called myself before, The Dumbest
> > > Guy On This Newsgroup. Damn you people! Can't
> > > you create a happy medium for me?
>
> Don't worry Joe. Somebody has to be the dumbest.
No they don't, Beable. Let's say that I'm smarter than you.
And you're smarter than Joe. And Joe is way, way smarter than
Archimedes Plutonium. But, due to some bizarre quirk of fate,
Archie is much smarter than me, because he's a "super-genius"
and I'm just a regular genius. Thus, none of us is the smartest
or the stupidest, and we're all smarter than half the people
and dumber than half the people. And we're all exactly average
even though no two of us have the same IQ!
Any FOUR of us might have the same IQ, but not any TWO of us.
It's like the Borromean Rings only involving math.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go make sure Martin Gardner
isn't sneaking intransitive dice into casinos again.
-- K.
How he ever got that
"Monopoly" space named
after him, I'll never know.
Jorn Barger
> of this humming box and enjoy a joyride through the candy dimension!
I bet if you peel off the sticker, the original name was 'Candy Glory
Hole'.
--
To the Sirens first shalt thou come, who bewitch all men...
I edit the Net: <URL:http://www.robotwisdom.com/>
"...frequented by the digerati" --The New York Times
Joe Manfre
>At Loser Designs we had early Gateway computers (back when they were
>named "Gateway 2000", circa the early 90s) with the horrible, evil,
>rotten, atrocious "Gateway AnyKey(R)" keyboards, which had extra cursor
>keys in a nonstandard arrangement (EVERYONE needs to be able to
>backspace diagonally!) with a mysterious blank key in the middle of the
>eight. But the really rotten feature was that there was a "Macro Define"
>key in the upper right, next to "Macro Suspend" and "Macro End".
I used to use one of those keyboards! They were fun! It
actually belonged to a friend of mine who had a Gateway 2000,
but he used a different keyboard and he loaned me the Gateway
AnyKey when the keyboard for my computer died. I accidentally
set macros at least a couple of times during the time I
used it...
>Ah, those were the days. It was nice to have a job where I could
>feel comfortable in knowing that no matter how many customers and
>managers were in the room, I was more SUP3R-3L33T than them.
>(Most of my co-workers were well-clued, just not the management.)
You know, I was unfair to my coworkers earlier...most
of them really are not *boneheads* in most areas
of reality. But they do serve as a continual reminder
of how much the average person really understands
computers, and that most people are not like the s00per
eleet people on Usenet who fuel my inferiority complex.
So I spend a lot of time in this Usenet world feeling
like the least computer-clued guy in the world, then
I go to work and am surrounded by normal people who
evince about 0.000000000001% of the computer and
Internet trivia and stuff that I have absorbed during
my years of spending 24 hours a day online.
>No they don't, Beable. Let's say that I'm smarter than you.
Defininkly!
>And you're smarter than Joe.
NO WAY DUDE!
> And Joe is way, way smarter than
>Archimedes Plutonium.
YAY!!
> But, due to some bizarre quirk of fate,
>Archie is much smarter than me, because he's a "super-genius"
>and I'm just a regular genius.
Back in 1994, didn't he say he is a super-genius because
he shaves his head bald and doesn't have sex?
[Archimedes Plutonium, "Question for Mr. Plutonium re coiffure,"
December 1994]:
--> I use an electric Braun shaver. It is the most practical and
--> pragmatic solution to hair. Of course, all of those people who
--> lead a shallow life and look at skin deep, and want sex and
--> more sex, well then, the all-shaved look is not for them. Only
--> the geniuses and supergeniuses realize that hair is close to
--> meaningless for one's lifetime. I wear hats yearround. Hats
--> are better than hair. Hair takes too much of ones time in life
--> to maintain. I know some women who probably when added up will
--> have spent 5 years out of a 50 year life just on their hair
--> alone.
Is it just my imagination or was he doing a Kurt Stocklmeir
impersonation in the middle few sentences of that paragraph?
> Thus, none of us is the smartest
>or the stupidest, and we're all smarter than half the people
>and dumber than half the people. And we're all exactly average
>even though no two of us have the same IQ!
But I had the highest SAT scores in my graduating class
in high school! So that makes me gullible! Which is
why there are no pictures of me in the dictionary!
>Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go make sure Martin Gardner
>isn't sneaking intransitive dice into casinos again.
He's in there with William Poundstone and his Comp-U-Count
blackjack computer.
I like Martin Gardner, but I still hold a grudge because
of all the Cooper Black all over the cover of the Dover
edition of "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science."
And the cover is all this pink and purple and stuff!
It's like they let an eight-year-old girl design the
jacket. I'm surprised the book doesn't have unicorns
and rainbows and glittery stars all over it.
C Willgren
(James "Kibo" Parry) wrote:
> -- K.
>
> I'm watching a TV
> commercial
> where a guy in a muscle
> shirt
> has installed a series of
> angled mirrors throughout
> his
> house to see the left
> front
> wheel of his tire because
> he just gave his tires
> "the shine you can't stop
> looking at", which they
> tell
> me makes tires look wet
> even when they're not, and
> sure, I guess I would
> stare
> at a wet tire all day.
The only thing I noticed about that commercial was that the mirror in
his bathroom reflected only the wheel. In reality, it would reflect the
surroundings of the mirror it's reflecting, and so on. The wheel would
appear far away. Also in reality, NO ONE WOULD DO THIS.
Are they special zoom mirrors?
C