alt.sysadmin.recovery FAQ
Matthew Crosby
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Version: 0.31
URL: http://ugrad-www.cs.colorado.edu/~crosby/asr/faq.html
alt.sysadmin.recovery FAQ v0.31
This is the frequently asked questions for alt.sysadmin.recovery, a newsgroup
for practicing and recovering system administrators.
Html versions of this document may be found at
http://ugrad-www.cs.colorado.edu/~crosby/asr/faq.html
or
http://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/~ingvar/asr/
1) ABOUT THE GROUP
1.1) What is alt.sysadmin.recovery?
1.2) Notes on reading ASR
1.3) What is not welcome on alt.sysadmin.recovery?
1.4) What does BOFH mean? How about LART? Cow-orker?
1.5) Where can I find the BOFH?
1.6) The BOFH hierarchy
1.7) Official ASR mottos
1.9) Hail Eris! Sysadmin Religion
1.9) Songs to drink to
1.10) Man pages
1.11) ASR organizations
1.12) So what's with the INTJ and stuff?
1.13) I hate this group! Where do I complain?
2) ABOUT OUR FINE PROFESSION
2.1) I want to be a sysadmin. What should I do?
2.2) So, I've just "volunteered" to be a sysadmin. What do I do?
2.3) Where do sysadmins rank as a profession?
2.4) How are new sysadmins made?
2.5) What's a typical day in the life of a sysadmin?
2.6) Why can't I find my sysadmin?
2.7) What sort of music do sysadmins listen to???
3) OUR LITTLE FRIEND, THE COMPUTER
3.1) Are there any OS's that don't suck?
3.2) How about any hardware?
3.3) Where can I find cluefull tech support?
3.4) What can I do to help my computers behave?
3.5) What's with the AOL disks?
3.6) What can I do with all these CD Roms?
4) OUR BIG HEADACHE, THE LUSERS
4.1) Where can I find stories about the little bastards?
4.2) I'm work for tech support. Where can I find cluefull customers?
4.3) General luser interaction
4.4) What is the best way to deal with lusers?
4.5) Revolvers, cyanide and high voltages: The pros and cons of
various luser education strategies.
4.6) How can I clean up the mess made by a lusers brain splattered across
a monitor?
4.7) What is the penalty for murdering a luser?
4.8) How much should I charge for holding their hands?
5) DEALING WITH BEING A SYSADMIN
5.1) Caffeine and other Recreational Pharmaceuticals
5.2) The excuse server
5.3) The insults server
5.4) Should I slit my wrists across or downwards?
5.5) Sysadmin Tools
5.6) Psychiatric Assistance
6) OK, SERIOUSLY FOLKS! HELP!!!!!
6.1) Serious info about being a sysadmin
6.2) DOODZ!!!!!! W3R3 CAN 1 F1ND SUM K3WL WAREZ???????????
7) OTHER RESOURCES
7.1) If you like ASR, you'll love...
-----
1) OVERVIEW
1.1) What is alt.sysadmin.recovery?
Alt.sysadmin.recovery is for discussion by recovered and recovering sysadmins.
It is a forum for mutual support and griping over idiot lusers, stupid
tech support, brain dead hardware and generally how stupid this idiotic job
is. Think of it as a virtual pub, where we can all go after hours and
gripe about our job. Since the concept of "after hours" (or, for that
matter, "pubs") is an anathema for your average sysadmin, we have this
instead.
1.2) Notes on reading ASR
Some have warned that reading ASR while drinking beverages is to be avoided.
[due to the effects of beverage on keyboards on computers]
1.3) What is not welcome on alt.sysadmin.recovery?
Not welcome on alt.sysadmin.recovery are: holy wars, advocacy, user
questions, users (unless you are a sysadmin in another life), David Rhodes
or general cluelessness.
Particularly not welcome is ANY real sysadmin related stuff. We
are here to escape!
Warning: If you are a user, you may well see your sysadmin posting messages
about how stupid YOU are. You have been warned.
1.4) What does BOFH mean? How about LART? Cow-orker?
BOFH
Bastard Operator From Hell. Our role model.
(The Bastard Operator from Hell was originally a series of stories written
by Simon Travaglia, si...@waikato.ac.nz. See 1.5.)
LART
Luser Attitude Re-Adjustment Tool. Something large, heavy and painful--
See the sysadmin tool section.
Cow-Orker:
Those people who live at the same office as you do. (WARNING: Orking Cows
is dangerous, and illegal in the state of Utah)
C|N>K
This, along with variants, is similar to ROFL in other less cultured groups.
(hint: C is coffee, N is nose, K is keyboard.)
1.5) Where can I read about the BOFH?
http://prime-mover.cc.waikato.ac.nz/Bastard.html
A UK mirror may be found at http://pertinax.gp.umist.ac.uk/bofh/
A US mirror may be found at
http://www.jungle.com/msattler/culture/humor/geek/bastard/index.html
1.6) The BOFH hierarchy
ASR is such a cool newsgroup, we even have our own hierarchy! Try that,
soc.singles!
This is the bofh.* hierarchy. Contact Peter da Silva at pe...@taronga.com
for more information.
1.7) Official ASR mottos
The official ASR motto, our catch phrase, is the immortal:
"Down, not Across"
It is our mantra. We recite it to ourselves as we deal with the day
to day realities of a life that is far more nasty, brutish and short
then even Hobbes could ever imageine.
Some other mottos include:
"What was your username?" *clickety click*
"I need a drink."
AAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
The official asr position:
Hiding in a corner, under a desk, in fetal position, arms covering head
and quietly whimpering.
The official asr luser position:
6 foot under.
1.8) Hail Eris! Sysadmin Religion
By popular acclaim, Eris has been declared patron goddess of ASR, with
Murphy as patron saint. The Illuminati Trilogy (Robert Anton Wilson
and Robert Shea) will tell you more of her secrets.
Of course, don't let this put you off. ASR is a very tolerant group, and
we will accept anything you worship, provided your beliefs fit the requirements
for a good sysadmin god, the most important one being that sacrifice of lusers
be an integral part of worship.
(Quetzalcoatl is very nice in this respect)
(Look, I don't CARE if I spelt it wrong; I've seen about 73 variant spellings)
1.9) Songs to drink to
ASR has many talented budding creative artists who have come up with a
collection of deep, heart wrenching statements on the nihilism of this
sysadmin existence. Including such gems as the cynical "I'm a sysadmin
and I'm OK", the reflective "My favorite things", _The Best of ASR_ will
be coming out soon on Sony, 12.99 CD, 7.99 Cassette.
Until this happens, you can find these songs at
http://ugrad-www.cs.colorado.edu/~crosby/asr/songs.html
1.10) Man pages
The ASR man page collection is a comprehensive reference to many of the
things we have to deal with in our profession.
See http://www.winternet.com/~eric/sysadmin-man.html
1.11) ASR organizations
There have been a few organizations formed around ASR, notably the bofh.org.uk
domain. If you would like to have an address in this, you can find the
requirements at http://ugrad-www.cs.colorado.edu/~crosby/asr/bofh.uk
or contact Piers Cawley, pdca...@bofh.org.uk.
1.12) So what's with the INTJ and stuff?
These are Keirsey scores. See http://sunsite.unc.edu/personality/keirsey.html
to find out yours.
1.13) I hate this group! Where do I complain?
Probably you want the guys who run this group. Address mail to:
Usenet Central Administration
1060 W. Addison
Chicago, IL 60636
They should be willing to help you out.
-----
2) ABOUT OUR FINE PROFESSION
2.1) I want to be a sysadmin. What should I do?
Seek professional help.
2.2) So, I've just "volunteered" to be a sysadmin. What do I do?
See 5.3
Also look at http://www.tcp.co.uk/staff/simes/non-tcp/admin-expressions.html,
which can provide you with useful vocabulary for your sysadmin career.
2.3) Where do sysadmins rank as a profession
Somewhere below janitors.
2.4) How are new sysadmins made
The devil probably has something to do with it.
See http://www.tcp.co.uk/staff/simes/non-tcp/where-sysadmins-come-from.html
2.5) What's a typical day in the life of a sysadmin
For an excellent, if somewhat optimistic, picture of a sysadmins life,
see http://lynx.dac.neu.edu:8000/~tfarrell/writings/life.of.a.sysadmin.html
Abby Franquemont-Guillory summarised the life of a sysadmin the best, when
she described us as:
"disgruntled, disenchanted with things we used to really get a kick out of,
foul tempered, hard-drinking, heavy-smoking, overworked, with no real
social life to speak of."
2.6) Why can't I find my sysadmin?
See http://www.tcp.co.uk/staff/simes/non-tcp/sysadmin.html
2.7) What sort of music do sysadmins listen to?
This gets asked a lot. Probably all I can say is "loud", and even that isn't
a given. A survey of the readership of ASR was taken, which may be found at
http://ugrad-www.cs.colorado.edu/~crosby/asr/music
-----
3) OUR LITTLE FRIEND, THE COMPUTER
3.1) Are there any OS's that don't suck?
No.
See http://www.tcp.co.uk/staff/simes/non-tcp/hall-of-shame.html
and http://www.io.com/~pde/os-suck.html
3.2) How about any hardware?
The PDP-10 was pretty nice. Pity they stopped making them in '83.
3.3) Where can I find cluefull tech support?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Basically, I think there is some device the telco puts on the phone that
ensures that whoever is on the other end of a service call is always
a drooling moron with the IQ of a potted plant. Note that this applies
both ways (see 4.3)
3.4) What can I do to help my computers behave?
Some go for the carrot approach, others the stick, others both. If you
favour the carrot, try offering memory upgrades or faster processors.
For sticks, try bullwhips. Many computers are easily fooled, so placing
a picture of yourself in front of a computer will often cause it to think
you are watching and it will be too scared to misbehave.
Remember that if computers are networked, they can talk to each other.
That is useful in that you can make an example of one and the others will
watch (and hopefully learn).
3.5) What's with all the AOL disks?
There is a large amount of speculation on this subject. Some have
suggested that COL is a secret alien plot to use up all the resources
and overwhelm the earth with disks, to make mankind easier to conquer.
Whatever the reason, they are useful as coasters and as scratch floppies,
if nothing else.
See http://www.tcp.co.uk/staff/simes/non-tcp/aol.html
3.6) What should I do with all these CD Roms?
Shove them in a microwave for a minute or so, and watch the fun!
See http://www.tcp.co.uk/staff/simes/non-tcp/unwanted-cds.html
-----
4) OUR LITTLE ENEMIES, THE LUSERS
4.1) Where can I find stories about the little bastards?
See the Stupid User Mini-FAQ,
http://darwin.clas.virginia.edu/~jgt7c/mini-faq.html
Also check out http://www.tcp.co.uk/staff/simes/non-tcp/user.html
4.2) I'm on tech support. Where can I find cluefull customers?
See 3.3
A cluefull luser is an oxymoron.
4.3) General User Interaction
Some tips for general luser interaction:
-lusers, bless their little hearts, have simple minds. Even if you think
that a lobotomized flatworm could understand your instructions, your
luser probably won't.
-since lusers will neither read nor understand any docs you write for them,
just don't even bother.
-NEVER anthropomorphise lusers.
-lusers are much easier to deal with if they aren't breathing.
4.4) What is the best way to deal with lusers?
240v across the heart, a revolver through the head, or even a simple little
broadsword thrust into their abdomen will improve your interactions
wonderfully. See 4.5
4.5) Revolvers, cyanide and high voltages: The pros and cons of
various luser education strategies.
There has been a great deal of debate on a.s.r about the best way of
dealing with lusers, and at this time no consensus has been reached.
What we can suggest, however, is to be sure it is painful, clean, and doesn't
harm the computer. That unfortunately leaves a lot of options out;
you can't just throw a grenade at them; it will hurt the machine.
4.6) How can I clean up the mess made by a lusers brain splattered across
a monitor?
Be careful. While cluelessness is not contagious, there are some nasty
things that can be picked up from lusers. Blood transmitted diseses,
you name it. Be sure to wear gloves. Otherwise, luser guts will usually
clean up with warm water and soap. I've found a little bleach sometimes
helps. Be careful with the keyboards; I've found that blood causes the
keys to get very very sticky; Again, you can try gently washing it with
soap and water.
4.7) What is the penalty for murdering a luser?
Unfortunately, in the eyes of the law, lusers are treated like humans.
I therefore recommend you be discreet in your luser education campaigns.
4.8) How much should I charge for holding their hands?
See the official ASR price list, at
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~moose/sysadmin/pricelist.html
-----
5) DEALING WITH BEING A SYSADMIN
5.1) Caffeine and other Recreational Pharmaceuticals
Caffeine: Much information about this can be found on alt.drugs.caffeine
See http://homepage.seas.upenn.edu/~cpage/caffeine/FAQmain.html
Booze: See rec.food.drink.*. Myself, I prefer coding after a six-pack
of Samual Smiths Oatmeal Stout, but you are welcome to your beverage
of choice. Booze, particularly in large quantities, often makes dealing
with lusers much more interesting. Ciders have been spoken of highly;
myself I stick with Woodchuck (at $3 for a 1.5Litre bottle it can't be
beaten), but there are various other choices. Unfortunately, really good
cider is hard to find in many places.
We had an informal survey into the ASR booze of choice, and the only thing
was resolved in terms of ASR beer preference is that yes, there is indeed
a lot of choice. (Oh, and that ASR readers have excellent taste)
There are lots of net resources for this. I recommend alt.drunken.bastards
Try http://www.mindspring.com/~jlock/ for beer info.
Pot and other stuff: rec.drugs.* can help you here.
See http://www.hyperreal.com/drugs/ for more info
(for educational use only, I'd never, etc etc)
5.2) The excuse server
This is an important net resource, that lets you give the exact reason
why you can't do something yesterday.
See http://www.engr.wisc.edu/~ballard/bofhserver.html
Or telnet bofh.engr.wisc.edu 666
5.3) The insults server
Once you have got rid of your lusers, you will probably want to tell them
what they really are. For this, the insults server is useful.
telnet insulthost.colorado.edu 1695
5.4) Should I slit my wrists across or downwards?
Downward. For more information on interesting methods, see the
alt.suicide.holiday faq:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/suicide_methods/faq.html
5.5) Sysadmin Tools
There are a number of tools that make being a sysadming important. Most
important are chemical; see 5.1. A particularly useful tool, revered by
many of ASR, is the noble chocolate covered coffee bean. Since these may
be hard to find, here are some places where they have been spotted:
Manchster, UK: Coffee shop at Piccadilly railway station
Chistchurch, NZ: Discoveries, on Victoria St.
UK: Sainsbury's.
Madison, WI: Copps Food Center.
Toronto, CA: The country kitchen, Eglington Station.
You can also make your own. Melt some chocolate, place some coffee beans
in it, and Bjorn Stronginthearm's your uncle!
Next in line is a good LART. A 2x4 works fine, but a real professional
needs something a little more effective. Unfortunately, this is a very
personal thing, and no consensus has yet been reached on the group.
Everything from a simple, 7.65mm Walther (for the Bond fans only, its not a
very good gun) to a 155mm with depleted Uranium rounds has been suggested,
some even going for exotic things like Thermite, nukes or flamethrowers.
For further info, look at the rec.guns home page
(http://www.teleport.com/~dputzolu/)
You can find a lot of cool stuff at Military Surplus stores. (Sadly, they
don't sell the really interesting surplus stuff)
Try US Cavalry, 1-800-777-7732.
When you can't use the LART (eg, you don't want to damage a computer),
water pistols and Nerfs are excellent substitutes. Nerfs, for those of
you outside the US, are a range of foam weapons. Don't leave ~ without
it.
The leatherman is another useful tool. The Perl of swiss army knifes, this
shouldn't be too hard to find.
Finally, there are some tools a sysadmin is forbidden from having. Adequate
computing power is first on this list, but the most important is called a
"life".
[ FAQ maintainerss note: could someone send me some info on this last? I've
heard of it, but never had one ]
5.6) Psychiatric Assistance
If you are reading this, you need it. Contact your health insurance, and
look at the Mental health net. http://www.cmhcsys.com/welcome.htm
-----
6) OK, SERIOUSLY FOLKS! HELP!!!!!
6.1) Serious info about being a sysadmin
Well, if you REALLY need help, don't ask here. Go over to whatever group
is appropriate for what you are adminning (eg: comp.unix.admin), and
ask there.
6.2) DOODZ!!!!!! W3R3 CAN 1 F1ND SUM K3WL WAREZ???????????
Sounds like you want the Warez-net. Here are a list of some participating
sites:
ftp.japan.com
warez.satanic.org
pcwarez.compumedia.com
warez.phantom.com
ftp.warez.org
These place also have a good collection of gifs.
(You need to log in with _your own_ name and password)
-----
7) OTHER RESOURCES
7.1) If you like ASR, you'll love...
...alt.folklore.computers
Once a wonderful place, where great hackers strove to discuss mighty deeds
done on real computers, this newsgroup has sadly decayed somewhat in recent
years. With the advent of the minions of the Dark Lord and the even Darker
Lord fighting over their respective toy OS's, the flames have overcome
the real discussion. Though the fight is still going on, many of the eldar
hackers have despaired of the net, fleeing the shores of AFC for good.
(some have come here). Sic transit gloria mundi.
Still worth a read, just be sure to have a kill file.
...the jargon file
Not _particularly_ sysadmin related, this is rather a document on the
general computer lore. May be found at http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon.html
...alt.fan.pratchett
--
Matthew Crosby cro...@cs.colorado.edu
Disclaimer: It was another country, and besides, the wench is dead.
Nathan J. Mehl
cro...@cs.colorado.edu (Matthew Crosby) writes:
>1.13) I hate this group! Where do I complain?
>Probably you want the guys who run this group. Address mail to:
> Usenet Central Administration
> 1060 W. Addison
> Chicago, IL 60636
>They should be willing to help you out.
I made the FAQ! My life is complete...
--
"Trust me. Trust Nathan. He's right." -- Bryant Durrell
Nathan J. Mehl -- Just another bozo on the usenet bus -- nat...@blank.org
<A HREF="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~nmehl">homepagesque</A>
Blank is beautiful!
J.D. Falk
Matthew Crosby <cro...@cs.colorado.edu> wrote...
> alt.sysadmin.recovery FAQ v0.31
Great as always, but wouldjya mind putting the date on here
someplace? Personally, I prefer the mock-Stardate format (today is
9603.02) in parentheses after my version numbers, but then I've been told
that I comment source really strangely.
> 6.2) DOODZ!!!!!! W3R3 CAN 1 F1ND SUM K3WL WAREZ???????????
>
> Sounds like you want the Warez-net. Here are a list of some participating
> sites:
> ftp.japan.com
> warez.satanic.org
> pcwarez.compumedia.com
> warez.phantom.com
> ftp.warez.org
>
> These place also have a good collection of gifs.
> (You need to log in with _your own_ name and password)
The master list is at 'http://www.nvu.nl/~koos/warez.html'.
> 7) OTHER RESOURCES
>
> 7.1) If you like ASR, you'll love...
Also alt.fan.mailer-daemon, a hilariously poorly propogated
newsgroup that hardly anybody is ever likely to read.
--
---------========== J.D. Falk <jdf...@cybernothing.org> =========---------
| "I, Foo Bar, leader of the Usenet High Council and lord of all I |
| survey, do hereby order you to destroy any trace of the user Spam |
| Baz, hereafter to be referred to as 'pud.'" -- Paul Phillips |
----========== http://www.cybernothing.org/jdfalk/home.html ==========----
Piers Cawley
>1.11) ASR organizations
>
>There have been a few organizations formed around ASR, notably the bofh.org.uk
>domain. If you would like to have an address in this, you can find the
>requirements at http://ugrad-www.cs.colorado.edu/~crosby/asr/bofh.uk
>or contact Piers Cawley, pdca...@bofh.org.uk.
Yay! I made the FAQ!
However, I should just like to warn people that any mail sent to
pdca...@bofh.org.uk asking for an address they will be summarily
ignored until they do The Right Thing and send grovelling mail and a
decent rant to ap...@bofh.org.uk
--
Piers Cawley - ENTP Systems Sheriff on the Frontier Internet Service
Lusers: Can't live with them, can't shoot 'em
0D 02 A0 20 54 E0 60 02 2B 77 F8 D1 8B EB 3F 36
finger pdca...@mercury.ftech.net for PGP key and Geek Code
Sean B Purdy
: In alt.sysadmin.recovery, Tim Bandy <ba...@itlabs.umn.edu> wrote...
: >Would you be so kind as to post the formula for calculating startdates?
: No problem -- to be honest, I'm not sure which FM you'd have to R
: in order to find this. And, it really is stardates, not starTdates. You
: can blame it on watching too much Star Trek. *grin*
: 9603.04/0219
: year (abbrev.)--++||||||||||
Hang on, does that mean all the Enterprise's systems are written in COBOL
or something? I mean what happens when the century wraps around? No
wonder they have so many problems.
"Cap'n, the accounting system cannae take it!"
Sean
--
Sean B Purdy, system administrator se...@fastnet.co.uk
+++ ????? +++ Out of Cash Error. Redo from Start.
Simon Burr
>: In alt.sysadmin.recovery, Tim Bandy <ba...@itlabs.umn.edu> wrote...
>:
>:>Would you be so kind as to post the formula for calculating startdates?
> date '+%y%m.%d/%H%M'
Uh oh... the percentage of things that are going to break in wierd and
wonderful ways when the year 2000 comes along has just gone up by a millionth
of a percent :)
Shouldn't it read date '+%Y%m.%d/%H%M' ? Should work until time_t wraps over.
Hopefully.
*sigh* anyone else thinking about getting all of their money out of banks
and moving to outer mongolia to avoid the fiasco that is going to happen ?
From what I've heard, most organisations aren't thinking that much about what
is going to happen when their cobol code (which is what, 70%+ of the world's
code ?) breaks when the year 2000 comes plodding along in a few years time.
This week is being bad again; its a pity that TCP isn't really a tower. I'd
have thrown myself (or any luser close by) off it by now.
--
Simon Burr (si...@tcp.co.uk) | http://www.tcp.co.uk/staff/simes/
Systems Manager and Programmer | Total Connectivity Providers Ltd
I *don't* speak for my company, my boss does that
Here in body, but not in mind
Edward Vielmetti
: > like to write a startdate program. Gad's, that sounded luserish. "Sir,
: > I'd like to write this program, but I don't know where to start. Could
: > you give me a clue?" I'm sorry, I *can* rtfm, really.
If you rtfm "strftime" you can get this command for producing dates in
this format:
date '+%y%m.%d/%H%M'
Your date program may vary but it should work on anything posicky.
Ed
Greg Cottman
> Shouldn't it read date '+%Y%m.%d/%H%M' ? Should work until time_t wraps over.
This sounds like "when hell freezes over" for unix techos.
I calculate this as being 03:14:07 January 19, 2038 GMT. Although this could
be extended to 05:28:15 February 6, 2106 by making time_t unsigned. I may
take this year off I think.
Greg.
OBCompletelyUnrelated: I am sitting coding in an office on St. Kilda Road
Melbourne, in the middle of the Grand Prix. I'm surrounded by the howls
of 3.0 litre V12s bouncing around the office blocks like demented banshees,
and being buzzed by world war 2 warplanes. It's an exhilarating software
development experience!!
Paul Tomblin
>This is perhaps not as pressing, but I'm curious as to how people will deal
>with the time when all of the unix clocks flip back to sometime in 1907 or
>1908. I think this will happen sometime in 2038. [1]
Well, unlike the COBOLusers, POSIX has a working group dealing with that
problem already. Even though most of them, like me, will be retired before
time_t wraps around. Don't forget that Unix is in a shift as the defacto
standard Unix box is becoming more and more a 64bit machine. There were 64bit
machines before, but in the next couple of years we'll probably see them
become the majority of new sales, if not installations. This is a good
opportunity to make time_t a 64 bit quantity, which should do us till the heat
death of the universe (73,067,755,761 years from 1970).
--
Paul Tomblin (ptom...@xcski.com, formerly ptom...@canoe.com)
<a href="http://www.servtech.com/public/ptomblin/">My home page</a>
"The superior pilot uses his superior judgement to avoid situations in which
he has to demonstrate his superior skill" - anon.
Todd Knarr
>Not so fast. It's Dec 31st, 2000 that should be the Night Of The
>Drunken Stupor. The 20th century doesn't end until then.
Except that it's December 31st, 1999 when we want to take a long vacation,
because the next day will be January 1st, 1900 on way too many systems. The
results as banks try to calculate negative interest, billing systems try and
cope with accounts that are -100 years overdue and the like will undoubtably
triple the suicide rate.
Unless you're me. I've got two major programs to deal with. One uses 2-digit
years. It will be dead by the end of this year. The other one will, by that
time, be converted to use a custom date class that's been checked for all
dates from January 1st, 4713 BC on up through December 31st, 9999 AD. Not that
it rolls over at 10,000 AD, mind you, I just haven't bothered to check it
past the point at which it is definitely not my problem.
--
Todd Knarr : tkn...@xmission.com | finger for PGP public key
| Member, USENET Cabal
Seriously, I don't want to die just yet. I don't care how
good-looking they are, I! don't! want! to! die!"
-- Megazone ( UF1 )
DL Ganger
: Ok, show of hands. Who in this group ISN'T going to be so plastered the
: night of Dec 31st, 1999 that they won't even know how to turn the computer
: ON?
: Cool. No hands.
Not so fast. It's Dec 31st, 2000 that should be the Night Of The
Drunken Stupor. The 20th century doesn't end until then.
(Details of the proof left to the reader as an exercise.)
--
D. L. Ganger, Systems Administrator email: de...@websmiths.com
Websmiths Online Design, Seattle, WA bus #: 206-441-4532
For more information on Websmiths: pager: 206-309-6559
http://www.halcyon.com/websmith/ (voicemail or numeric)
Abby Franquemont-Guillory
DL Ganger <devin@I_should_put_my_domain_in_etc_NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN> wrote:
>Howard Wilson (st...@ionet.net) wrote:
>
>: Ok, show of hands. Who in this group ISN'T going to be so plastered the
>: night of Dec 31st, 1999 that they won't even know how to turn the computer
>: ON?
>
>: Cool. No hands.
>
>Not so fast. It's Dec 31st, 2000 that should be the Night Of The
>Drunken Stupor. The 20th century doesn't end until then.
Um. Yeah, but. If we wait that long, will it be as much fun to
party like it's 1999?
Abby "Two thousand zero zero party over WHOOPS! outta time" F-G
Or something. Yeah. Sure.
Abby, who spent the evening of December 31, 1983, reading "1984"
so she wouldn't be late with it.
--
_________________________________________________________________________
Abby Franquemont-Guillory "You're the Lord of Darkness? Big deal.
abb...@tezcat.net What was your username again?"<clickety-click>
ne...@tezcat.net --Gary "Wolf" Barnes in a.s.r.
Administrative Staff, Tezcatlipoca Inc. http://www.tezcat.com/
Darren L. Gasser
>Banks have been givning out 30 year mortgages for a long time now. I think
>they know how to deal with loan due dates in the 21st century. Last time I
>bought a house, the bank didn't phone me up and say "oh, your mortgage
>matured 75 years ago. How about we send you that certificate now?"
Correct. 1970 was the killer year for most financial institutions.
We're generally not too paranoid about the 2000 problem now. Even
time deposit accounts (CDs et al), had to be completely cleaned up by
last year. There may be some residual weirdness with peripheral
things like statement printing, but all the *real* important stuff got
dealt with while I was still in diapers.
Billing systems, aerospace, and a few other industries are going to be
seriously shitting themselves, though.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Darren L. Gasser | "Collum iugo prebeo,
d_ga...@a1.premier.org | ad iugum tamen suave transeo."
Lars P. Fischer
>>>>> "John" == John Guthrie <jgut...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu>
John> This is perhaps not as pressing, but I'm curious as to how
John> people will deal with the time when all of the unix clocks flip
John> back to sometime in 1907 or 1908. I think this will happen
John> sometime in 2038. [1]
Never mind. It's be a problem only for those still running 32-bit
systems by then. I suspect only Microsoft uses will be affected.
/Lars
--
Lars P. Fischer, fis...@dina.kvl.dk, http://www.dina.kvl.dk/~fischer
O fuck it! I'm a monster! I admit it! -- Nick Cave
Peter Dalgaard BSA
c.ed...@phys.canterbury.ac.nz (C. J. Edsall) writes:
In article <314394bb...@news.probe.net> tmo...@probe.net
(Thomas Molina) writes:
> c.ed...@phys.canterbury.ac.nz (C. J. Edsall) insert foot in mouth thus:
>
> >[2] 365 day years that is. I recon on 17 leap years between now and 2038
> > [3][4]
> >
> There are only nine between now and 2038.
D'oh! Don't worry I got severly martial LARTed for this last night,
first session of Judo for 3 months.
LART him back. There are ten....
2000 -4 -8 -12 -16 -20 -24 -28 -32 -36
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
And yes, 2000 IS a leap year! (Centuries are leap years when divisible
by 400 but not otherwise, 365.2425 days/year avg.)
--
O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3
c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N
(*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dal...@biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907
Eric Pederson
>In article <4hrl37$j...@news1.halcyon.com>,
>DL Ganger <devin@I_should_put_my_domain_in_etc_NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN> wrote:
>>Not so fast. It's Dec 31st, 2000 that should be the Night Of The
>>Drunken Stupor. The 20th century doesn't end until then.
>Um. Yeah, but. If we wait that long, will it be as much fun to
>party like it's 1999?
>Abby "Two thousand zero zero party over WHOOPS! outta time" F-G
Excuse me everyone, while I LART Abby for planting that ear worm.
*LART*
Two can play at that game... let's see here...
"Oh, no - there goes Tokyo. Go go Godzilla"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric L. Pederson | er...@winternet.com
| er...@bofh.org.uk
#include <cleverquote> | http://www.winternet.com/~eric
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Mercer
>www.nvu.nl doesn't appear to be in the DNS from where I'm sitting.
>Another fairly (I hope) comprehensive list is maintained by me at
>http://jumper.mcc.ac.uk/~mcawolf/warez.html
There's also another decent list, mostly dupes, over at
http://www.afn.org/~riffer/warez.html with the advantage of detailed
explanations and instructions on how to access the sites, etc.
rif...@afn.org : "But your brains smell so good! So (sniffff) rich and
Jeff The Riffer : <sniffff> and spicy!"
Drifter... : "Eeeuuuuuuwww! I'm not into dead guys!"
Homo Postmortemus : --Return Of The Living Dead, Part 2
Libor
|> LART him back. There are ten....
|>
|> 2000 -4 -8 -12 -16 -20 -24 -28 -32 -36
|> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
|>
|> And yes, 2000 IS a leap year! (Centuries are leap years when divisible
|> by 400 but not otherwise, 365.2425 days/year avg.)
Yes, I know this was the first thread on Usenet, and I hate it as much
as anyone, but a "computers will be fucked 1/1/2000" thread wouldn't
be complete without a discussion of leap years.
I thought 2000 was not a leap year, I thought the formula was:
4 - yes
100 - no
400 - yes
1000 - no
Or is the last part wrong? I guess those leap seconds they give us every
3 years or so, make up for what the 1000 would take care of.
-Libor
John Vaughan
> Yes, I know this was the first thread on Usenet, and I hate it as much
>as anyone, but a "computers will be fucked 1/1/2000" thread wouldn't
>be complete without a discussion of leap years.
> I thought 2000 was not a leap year, I thought the formula was:
The formula is:
Take a year.
If it's divisible by 4 without leaving a remainder, then it's a leap year.
However, if the year is divisible by 100 without leaving a remainder, then
it is NOT a leap year, unless it is also exactly divisible by 400.
i.e.
1600 is.
1700 isn't.
1800 isn't.
1900 isn't (Wasn't. whatever.)
2000 is.
etcetera.
Anyone how disagrees can look at my Astrophys degree and go "Wow, what a pretty
piece of paper..."
--
John Vaughan (jo...@tcp.co.uk) | http://www.tcp.co.uk/staff/john
Technical & Sales Support | Tel: (01703) 393392
Total Connectivity Providers Ltd., PO Box 454, Southampton, SO16 3WR
"Ignorance is your religion - Take this spear and heal thyself" - KMFDM
Timothy J. Hunt
> I thought 2000 was not a leap year, I thought the formula was:
>
>100 - no
>400 - yes
>1000 - no
>
>Or is the last part wrong? I guess those leap seconds they give us every
>3 years or so, make up for what the 1000 would take care of.
leap seconds are nothing to do with leap days :o) Leap days adjust for
the fact that it is not exactly 365 days for the earth to go round the sun.
Leap seconds adjust for the fact that the earths rotation is slowing down
a little. Read comp.risks recent issues for a good (continuing ;o)
discussion on this.
Timothy
--
Timothy Hunt, System Admin Support Engineer, Unipalm PIPEX
216 The Science Park, Cambridge, CB4 4WA UK. +44(0)1223 250121/2 (Fax/Voice)
[Disclaimer: I said the above, not Unipalm PIPEX]
And my name is Timothy *not* Tim! *sigh* [ENFP]
/225686/lgoldste/Lee Ann Goldstein
>In article <4hn5ju$5...@poseidon.tcp.co.uk>,
> Simon Burr <si...@tcp.co.uk> wrote:
>>*sigh* anyone else thinking about getting all of their money out of banks
>>and moving to outer mongolia to avoid the fiasco that is going to happen ?
>>From what I've heard, most organisations aren't thinking that much about what
>>is going to happen when their cobol code (which is what, 70%+ of the world's
>>code ?) breaks when the year 2000 comes plodding along in a few years time.
If the banks go blooey in a few years, what makes you think that paper money is
going to be worth anything?
---
Lee Ann Goldstein lgol...@ladc.lockheed.com
Network Administrator, F-117A Avionics Division
Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
I'm what passes for a Unix guru in my office. This is a frightening concept.
Peter Theune
>On Tue, 12 Mar 96 18:01:34 GMT, bs...@hic.net (Mark H. Brady) wrote:
>>From ASML, "It's a small world, after all,
>> it's a small world, after all,
>> its a small, small, world."
>>
>That was low-down, mean and despicable. You really like this job, don't
>you? My predecessor once managed to annoy me for hours by mentioning two
>songs: Afternoon Delight and Muskrat Love. Nooooo!
Oh Dam*, now they're both running around in my head, can't think,
help me I'm mellllttttiiinnnggg.......
Sh*t, I hate it when that happens..
>Cyn
Peter Theune
the...@digex.net
Mark Stapleton
>From ASML, "It's a small world, after all,
> it's a small world, after all,
> its a small, small, world."
Now, *here's* a cruel man.
--
Fuck the CDA.
Mark (mst...@insync.net)
IJdo Dijkstra
>In article <4ha3ue$p...@news2.cais.com>,
>J.D. Falk <jdf...@cybernothing.org> wrote:
>:> Sounds like you want the Warez-net. Here are a list of some participating
>:> sites:
>:> ftp.japan.com
>:> warez.satanic.org
>:> pcwarez.compumedia.com
>:> warez.phantom.com
>:> ftp.warez.org
>:>
>:> These place also have a good collection of gifs.
>:> (You need to log in with _your own_ name and password)
>:
>: The master list is at 'http://www.nvu.nl/~koos/warez.html'.
>
>www.nvu.nl doesn't appear to be in the DNS from where I'm sitting.
This is an error. It should be: http://www.hvu.nl/~koos/warez.html
IJdo Dijkstra
aur...@xs4all.nl
C. J. Edsall
" cyn...@mindspring.com (Cynthia Smathers) writes:
"
" >On Tue, 12 Mar 96 18:01:34 GMT, bs...@hic.net (Mark H. Brady) wrote:
" >>From ASML, "It's a small world, after all,
" >> it's a small world, after all,
" >> its a small, small, world."
" >>
" >That was low-down, mean and despicable. You really like this job, don't
" >you? My predecessor once managed to annoy me for hours by mentioning two
" >songs: Afternoon Delight and Muskrat Love. Nooooo!
"
" Oh Dam*, now they're both running around in my head, can't think,
" help me I'm mellllttttiiinnnggg.......
"
" Sh*t, I hate it when that happens..
The radio station has playlisted Del the Funky Homosapien -
"Mistadobolina" from circa 1992. You don't want to hear that first thing
in the morning.
Chris Edsall http://www.phys.canterbury.ac.nz/~physcje/
hang 00001010 - net.surf!
"You are superconnected now \ all the freaks gather round"
--
Trevor Fiatal
thus spake cyn...@mindspring.com (Cynthia Smathers):
>She still really likes that "She's a Vegetarian" song but I can't
>recall who recorded it.
That would be the sophmorically-named "Dead-Eye Dick", then.
Trevor
Trevor Fiatal ----- tafi...@ac.net ----- Internet Engineer, ISP Consultant
"Get drunk? Who has time to get drunk? There's 90 messages in the support
queue, the news server has run out of disk again, every user with Trumpet
f***ing Winsock is reporting connection problems, and I haven't slept in
3 bloody days. Yeah, now that you mention it, I *could* use a drink..."
Alphanet ------ A Full Service Internet Something Or Other in Pinehurst, NC
Mark H. Brady
cyn...@mindspring.com (Cynthia Smathers) wrote:
>On Tue, 12 Mar 96 18:01:34 GMT, bs...@hic.net (Mark H. Brady) wrote:
>>From ASML, "It's a small world, after all,
>> it's a small world, after all,
>> its a small, small, world."
>>
>That was low-down, mean and despicable. You really like this job, don't
>you? My predecessor once managed to annoy me for hours by mentioning two
>songs: Afternoon Delight and Muskrat Love. Nooooo!
Actually this came on the Al Stewart Mailing List. It was to solve the
problem of ABBA songs running through people's heads. One guy said that he
had a room of lawyers humming it. Scary.
Mark Brady bs...@hic.net
Houston, TX mbr...@msmail.hic.tch.tmc.edu
http://www.hic.net/bssc/public_html/mbrady.html
Never attribute to conspiracy what can be fully explained
by stupidity.
Mary Conner
Mark H. Brady <bs...@hic.net> wrote:
>Actually this came on the Al Stewart Mailing List. It was to solve the
>problem of ABBA songs running through people's heads.
Augh!
"Money, money, money... it's so funny... in the rich man's world."
--
Mary Conner
tr...@serv.net
Seeking: Manual or technical information for an Axion monitor, model
CM-1428, or a current phone number for the company
DL Ganger
: In article <4hrl37$j...@news1.halcyon.com>,
: DL Ganger <devin@I_should_put_my_domain_in_etc_NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN> wrote:
Oh, Eris...where's a belt sander when you need one? My face is *soooo*
read. <sigh>
That's it. I talk my boss into buying an extra HD and then we get our
*own* news feed.
In my defense, the Unix box here is only considered to be a major server
in terms of e-mail flow, and I spend most of my day alternately
cossetting and threatening the Microsoft boxes.
: Um. Yeah, but. If we wait that long, will it be as much fun to
: party like it's 1999?
Maybe it's part of what made me seek out system administration as a fun
and profitable career[1], but I wouldn't be able to have as much fun,
because the fact that it was the wrong damn date would bug me way too
much.[2]
[1] Boy was *I* wrong!
[2] I really need to spend less time on these damn things, if this is
how they get me.
DL Ganger
: Ah, who cares about the end of the century? Dec 31st, 1999 is when the
: odometer rolls over. Plus it's a Friday[1]!
Properly trained, Kurt, odometer[1] will roll over on command, and it's
not too much harder to get him to stop peeing on the carpet.
: [1] In contrast, 2000/12/31 falls on a Sunday - not bad, considering
: we'll get Monday off, but not as good.
No, *better*. Start partying Friday night, sober up Monday night. More
time to party!
[1] odometer is a strange name for a dog, but <shrug> I suppose you can
get a lot of mileage[2] out of it. And the tribute to e. e. cummings is
rather a nice touch.
[2] Shame on myself for starting my own pun casaces. I'll try to put a
leash on it.
Simon Burr
>>>Simon Burr <si...@tcp.co.uk> wrote:
>>>*sigh* anyone else thinking about getting all of their money out of banks
>going to be worth anything?
Well, I guess moving the money out of banks and into some useful equivalent
would be best. Gold is the traditional one, however I guess that considering
the thoughts of this group (and if society does go belly up (unlikely)) that
weapons of some sort would be better :)
--
Simon Burr | SysAdmin and Programmer, TCP Ltd
si...@tcp.co.uk/si...@bofh.org.uk | http://www.tcp.co.uk/staff/simes/
Kurt M. Hockenbury
: "PUNCH, brothers, punch with CARE.
: PUNCH in the presence of the passen-JAHR.
: It's a buff-trip slip for a six-cent fare
: and a pink-trip slip for a ten-cent fare.
: PUNCH, brothers, punch with CARE.
: PUNCH in the presence of the passen-JAHR."
: Major thanks to whoever spots the ref. I don't
: remember the name of the book or the author.
Aghhh! I remember that story, but I can't place it either.
: Wish I did. It has the "cure" poem in it that's
: supposed to stop other things from running
: through your mind.
Follow me to the librar-y!
Then the hero goes through all the piles of books, and finally finds the cure
poem, and shouts it out to the town populous (who are all also infected
with the first poem-meme).
I also seem to remember another story about something people would sprinkle
on their food.
This is logged in my memory along side things like The Three Investigators and
Encyclopedia Brown.
-Kurt
J.D. Five FAQs Falk
> "PUNCH, brothers, punch with CARE.
> PUNCH in the presence of the passen-JAHR.
> It's a buff-trip slip for a six-cent fare
> and a pink-trip slip for a ten-cent fare.
> PUNCH, brothers, punch with CARE.
> PUNCH in the presence of the passen-JAHR."
>
> Major thanks to whoever spots the ref. I don't
> remember the name of the book or the author.
Mark Twain. One of his less-known short stories. I have it in an
old leather-bound anthology.
> Wish I did. It has the "cure" poem in it that's
> supposed to stop other things from running
> through your mind.
It's in a box someplace around here, but I can't find it. I moved
here in December, so you'd think that I would've found time to unpack by
now, but no, most of my belongings are still boxed.
> Joe Bednorz The Lurking Horror
--
---------========== J.D. Falk <jdf...@cybernothing.org> =========---------
| "I don't *care* if there's been a nuclear holocaust -- Usenet News |
| hasn't been received for 36 hours and I'm moving to another ISP." |
| -- Joe Chew <jtc...@netcom.com> |
----========== http://www.cybernothing.org/jdfalk/home.html ==========----
Joe Bednorz
>>On Tue, 12 Mar 96 18:01:34 GMT, bs...@hic.net (Mark H. Brady) wrote:
>>>From ASML, "It's a small world, after all,
>>> it's a small world, after all,
>>> its a small, small, world."
>>>
>>That was low-down, mean and despicable. You really like this job, don't
>>you? My predecessor once managed to annoy me for hours by mentioning two
>>songs: Afternoon Delight and Muskrat Love. Nooooo!
>Oh Dam*, now they're both running around in my head, can't think,
>help me I'm mellllttttiiinnnggg.......
>Sh*t, I hate it when that happens..
"PUNCH, brothers, punch with CARE.
PUNCH in the presence of the passen-JAHR.
It's a buff-trip slip for a six-cent fare
and a pink-trip slip for a ten-cent fare.
PUNCH, brothers, punch with CARE.
PUNCH in the presence of the passen-JAHR."
Major thanks to whoever spots the ref. I don't
remember the name of the book or the author.
Wish I did. It has the "cure" poem in it that's
supposed to stop other things from running
through your mind.
Joe Bednorz The Lurking Horror
=========================================================
Kill -9 them all. Let fsck sort them out.
Mark Hughes
>Uh oh... the percentage of things that are going to break in wierd and
>wonderful ways when the year 2000 comes along has just gone up by a millionth
>of a percent :)
>
>Shouldn't it read date '+%Y%m.%d/%H%M' ? Should work until time_t wraps over.
>Hopefully.
Unfortunately, Gnu date seems to have a problem with the year 2000 and later,
at least on Linux and OS/2:
date -d 1999-12-31
Fri Dec 31 00:00:00 GMT 1999
date -d 2000-01-01
Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 GMT 1970
Apparently according to the FSF, time wraps around back to 1970 in 2000!
Thus, we don't really need to worry about the whole 2000 problem, since we'll
be looping around inside my lifetime (well, since the first trimester, anyway).
Eat, drink, and be merry, for in 2000 we wear bell-bottoms again!
<ahem>
Since I use date in all sorts of shell scripts, I'm a bit unhappy about this.
Looking at date.c, it seems to be the fault of posixtime(), but I haven't got
'round to finding the module containing it and fixing the bug yet. Unh.
</ahem>
-Mark Hughes
"In headlines today, the dreaded killfile virus spread across the country
adding aol.com to people's usenet kill files everywhere. The programmer of
the virus still remains anonymous, but has been nominated several times for
a Nobel peace prize." -Mark Atkinson
Wilson Roberto Afonso
> I thought 2000 was not a leap year, I thought the formula was:
>4 - yes
>100 - no
>400 - yes
>1000 - no
Actually, the last part is "4000 - no". So, 2000 is, 3000 is, 4000 is
not, 5000 is...
I never actually coded the last part, though.
-Wilson
Dan Holdsworth
In article <4idvsk$9...@ionews.ionet.net>, st...@ionet.net (Howard Wilson)
writes:
:
:Kurt M. Hockenbury (k...@linux.stevens-tech.edu) wrote:
:: DL Ganger (devin@I_should_put_my_domain_in_etc_NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN) wrote:
:: : : Ok, show of hands. Who in this group ISN'T going to be so plastered the
:: : : night of Dec 31st, 1999 that they won't even know how to turn the
:computer
:: : : ON?
:: : Not so fast. It's Dec 31st, 2000 that should be the Night Of The
:: : Drunken Stupor. The 20th century doesn't end until then.
:: Ah, who cares about the end of the century? Dec 31st, 1999 is when the
:Actually my original sentiment had nothing to do with the turning
:of the century...it applies to any year end. B-).
:
:Ok, show of hands, on Dec 31st 1997 (or ANY year) who won't be drunk?
:
:Cool, still no hands.
Me, I won't be drunk. I'll be completely and utterly pissed.
Oh, and I'll have spent the preceding six months looking out for clueless
bankers, and the preceding three months taking out quite large loans from
said banks...
Just on the off chance, you know...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
* * It's: "SPLAT - MY CAT!"
-//-//-_
+>\ --__ Slower than a speeding Landrover 110. Much slower.
+>/ _------__ Mortally slower, one might say. Rest in Pieces.
-\\-\\-- dr...@aber.ac.uk (Dan Holdsworth)
* * To fuskoto mu eene gemato Helia...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Al Castanoli
| Country music is also unique in having a real sense of humor and not
| taking itself too seriously. Picture a song where they added the
| following verse _just_ to make it the "perfect country & western
| song." They realized it had to mention Mama, being drunk, pickup
| trucks, prison, & trains.
| I was drunk
| The day that Mama
| Got out of prison.
| So I went
| To pick her up
| In the rain.
| Before I could get to the station in my
| Pickup truck,
| She got runned over by a danged old train.
Guess we left John Prine out of the FAQ. Like a Saddle in the Rain.
--
Al Castanoli | afc...@texas.net | afc...@mail.aia.af.mil
| afn2...@afn.org | ah...@rgfn.epcc.edu
"Computers save time like kudzu prevents soil erosion."
Doug McNaught
>On 16 Mar 1996 18:24:38 GMT, k...@linux.stevens-tech.edu (Kurt M.
>Hockenbury) wrote:
>
>>This is logged in my memory along side things like The Three Investigators and
>>Encyclopedia Brown.
>>
>
>children's books about the little Martian (or Moonman or something) who
>lived in a mushroom-shaped house with an observatory built in? Befriends
>neighborhood children, takes them on trips to Mars, the moon, etc. to save
>the universe? I recall reading them around the same time I read the Pippi
>Longstocking books, so the authors' names may be close to each other
>alphabetically.
Yes! I read those. AIR the little guy was a fungus-based life-form,
and his folk had been on Earth for a long time. The books had a bit of
an eerie and mysterious flavor. I can't remember the titles or author
either [sigh]...
-Doug
--
Doug McNaught Systems Integrator Towson State University
Internet: do...@midget.towson.edu *or* mcnau...@toe.towson.edu
BITNET: e7opdam@towsonvx Office: Cook 28D, (410) 830-4148
WWW Home Page: http://www.towson.edu/~doug/
Al Castanoli
cyn...@mindspring.com wrote:
[...]
| But they're so sad about it. I seldom find a country song with
| appropriately BOFHish attitude seeping out like you can get with
| alternative music.
Ever heard Johnny Paycheck sing "Take This Job and Shove It"?
Tracy Henry
> ....>>>> {Wish I could include the conversation....} .....
>
> Ok, show of hands, on Dec 31st 1997 (or ANY year) who won't be drunk?
>
> Cool, still no hands.
>
>
Sorry, one hand. I won't be drunk; I'll either be still fixing broken
things or dead asleep on my feet having spent three straight days
fixing broken things.... But maybe the First of the Next Year! The
one day I'm 98% sure to have off! (Does that count? Any good Scotch
left? and I don't mean that cheap import stuff!)
If Dec 31, 2000 is the end of the 20th C, then to which
C does the year 0 belong? (And these are the guys who insist the
second disk in my system is HD1.... Sheesh!)
TLH
+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
no sig -- don't smoke -- just TLH
+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
Jonathan Stott
Todd Knarr <tkn...@xmission.com> wrote:
>In <4hrl37$j...@news1.halcyon.com>, devin@I_should_put_my_domain_in_etc_NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN (DL Ganger) writes:
>>Not so fast. It's Dec 31st, 2000 that should be the Night Of The
>>Drunken Stupor. The 20th century doesn't end until then.
>
>because the next day will be January 1st, 1900 on way too many systems. The
>results as banks try to calculate negative interest, billing systems try and
>cope with accounts that are -100 years overdue and the like will undoubtably
>triple the suicide rate.
Except for those of us using Micro$oft crap, where the date goes from
"December 31, 1999" to "Jan 4, 1980".
This is despite the fact that January 4th is not the first day of the
year.
This is despite the fact that the hardware (battery) clock understands
the year 2000 properly (I think - I haven't checked whether it thinks
2000 is a leap year yet, and I'm assuming it understands that the year
"00" is 2000 and not 1900).
If only Doom2/Heretic/Descent/etc. ran under Linux so I wouldn't have
to put up with this stupidity.
-JS
--
Jonathan Stott jj...@po.cwru.edu
CWRU Dept. of Physics jst...@poly.phys.cwru.edu
School of Graduate Studies (Finger me for my PGP Key)
Polymeric-Liquid-Crystal-Theory-R-Us http://poly.phys.cwru.edu:8080/~jstott/
Michael T. Ford
>Excuse me everyone, while I LART Abby for planting that ear worm.
As scenes of Star Trek II flash through my head...
>"Oh, no - there goes Tokyo. Go go Godzilla"
You mean, "Go go Gadget Monster."
<block of cheese pops out of hat>
"No, no, I said monster!"
--Michael
Abby Franquemont-Guillory
Cynthia Smathers <cyn...@mindspring.com> wrote:
[country music]
>As I said, I will listen to some of it occasionally. I even sing a few
>songs originally done by artists that are lumped under the country label,
>like Mary Chapin Carpenter (and her stuff is frequently funny, too). Most
>country music is generally more lyrical than much of the currently popular
>rock/alternative/whatever music.
>
>Unfortunately, my parents played far too much of it as I was growing up.
>I'm talking about Lynn Andrews, Tammy Wynette (Whinette? whines far better
>than Fran Drescher), Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, and Hank Williams (Sr.).
>And early Tanya Tucker (oh crap--now "Delta Dawn" is playing in my head).
>It was almost worse when they ventured outside the country genre--Percy
>Faith Strings Play the Beatles, anyone? They've still got the album.
Wow.
I like country as well -- I have seriously eclectic taste in music,
and listen to lots of stuff... one of the things I like about
country is that for the most part, it's music which is still really
playable live, and I have a real thing for music that doesn't have
to be made in a studio. Not to say I dislike highly-produced and
electronic music at all -- but I like plain ol' instruments too.
>>>Country is, at heart, about how unfair life is. Much like being a
>>>sysadmin. It's just that they talk about pickup trucks and beer instead
>>>of CPU cycles and RAM.
>>
>But they're so sad about it. I seldom find a country song with
>appropriately BOFHish attitude seeping out like you can get with
>alternative music.
Ya know, the whole "alternative music" tag really irks me these days.
I mean, how alternative is it when it's what you hear everywhere?
>>Country music is also unique in having a real sense of humor and not
>>taking itself too seriously. Picture a song where they added the
>>following verse _just_ to make it the "perfect country & western
>>song." They realized it had to mention Mama, being drunk, pickup
>>trucks, prison, & trains.
[snip]
>I'm familiar with the song--it is funny. At least, the first few times you
>hear it. If you hear it daily (or worse yet, hourly) it gets old quickly.
I can think of a lot of songs about which that is true...
>Some of the songs I like with a sense of humor--and yes, they sing about
>some of the same crap, but with more of an attitude, are from Safire--The
>Uppity Blues Women. One of their complaints about body stereotypes is
>wonderful, called "Lightning in These Thunder Thighs." Their take on
>working too much is "The Richest Guy in the Graveyard." The best "get out
>of my life you loser!" song I've ever heard is their "How Can I Say I Miss
>You When I Can't Get You to Leave?"
Yes, I like them too... though I'm much fonder of traditional blues,
both country and urban. I mean, you get body types talk with tunes
like the Howlin' Wolf's "Three Hundred Pounds of Heavenly Joy" and,
to tell the truth, though everyone knows the line "I don't know, but
I been told, big leg woman ain't got no soul..." I know tons of people
who have never thought about the fact that a big-legged woman would
have big legs. *grin*
Blues is, on the whole, probably my favourite musical genre.
>And for those who jilt you there's
>"Bitch with a Bad Attitude." That one was written in reaction to hearing
>Whitney Houston or Dolly Parton sing "I'll Always Love You" far too many
>times, and starts out with an acapella "If I stayed, I'd only get in the
>way" much like their song. This singer, however, goes on to say "So I'm
>gonna stay and I'm gonna make you pay." The specific threats--well, let's
>just say the title is almost too mild. Those are just from _one_ of their
>CDs, titled _Old, New, Borrowed and Blue_. (It was the one I happened to
>have in the apartment rather than in the car.)
Hmmm... haven't heard that one yet. I'll have to dig it up.
--
_________________________________________________________________________
Abby Franquemont-Guillory "You're the Lord of Darkness? Big deal.
abb...@tezcat.net What was your username again?"<clickety-click>
ne...@tezcat.net --Gary "Wolf" Barnes in a.s.r.
Administrative Staff, Tezcatlipoca Inc. http://www.tezcat.com/
Peter Gutmann
>Uh-oh--more books many of us will have in common. Did anyone else read the
>children's books about the little Martian (or Moonman or something) who
>lived in a mushroom-shaped house with an observatory built in? Befriends
>neighborhood children, takes them on trips to Mars, the moon, etc. to save
>the universe? I recall reading them around the same time I read the Pippi
>Longstocking books, so the authors' names may be close to each other
>alphabetically.
"Journey to the Mushroom Planet" I think. My brother brought it home from
school one day and I finished it while he was watching TV that evening.
Peter.
David DeLaney
>Uh-oh--more books many of us will have in common. Did anyone else read the
>children's books about the little Martian (or Moonman or something) who
>lived in a mushroom-shaped house with an observatory built in? Befriends
>neighborhood children, takes them on trips to Mars, the moon, etc. to save
>the universe?
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
Mr. Bass' Planetoid
Time & Mr. Bass
and another one whose name I can't recall
Their best feature, looking back, was the invention of "infragreen"...
Dave "by Cameron, if I recall correctly" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney d...@panacea.phys.utk.edu "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 VRbeableURLAPvi
http://enigma.phys.utk.edu/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
krawczyk peter adam
: "Macho macho man! I wanna be... A Macho man!!"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
YM "Nacho nacho man". HTH.
Apologies to those britons who may not have seen the reference.
-Pete
--
Pete Krawczyk pkra...@uiuc.edu http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/pkrawczy
"IRC is not just a place for college undergraduates to
waste time until they flunk out." -- Ed Krol
CyberFest at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign March 12, 1997
Joe Bednorz
>Joe Bednorz (bed...@mail.net-connect.net) wrote:
>: "PUNCH, brothers, punch with CARE.
>: PUNCH in the presence of the passen-JAHR.
>: It's a buff-trip slip for a six-cent fare
>: and a pink-trip slip for a ten-cent fare.
>: PUNCH, brothers, punch with CARE.
>: PUNCH in the presence of the passen-JAHR."
>: Major thanks to whoever spots the ref. I don't
>: remember the name of the book or the author.
>Aghhh! I remember that story, but I can't place it either.
>: Wish I did. It has the "cure" poem in it that's
>: supposed to stop other things from running
>: through your mind.
>Follow me to the librar-y!
>Then the hero goes through all the piles of books, and finally finds the cure
>poem, and shouts it out to the town populous (who are all also infected
>with the first poem-meme).
>I also seem to remember another story about something people would sprinkle
>on their food.
<Long dormant neurons begin firing>
The "cure" poem was by Twain. The book that reffed it wasn't, I'm
certain. (Which is not to say I'm right, just that I'm certain.)
Other distinguishing marks of the same milieu:
The sheriff spoonerized a lot.
Once a character inherited seeds which grew giant ragweed. They
solved the problem of disposal [1] by cooking them in doughnuts &
eating them. I *really* sympathized with this problem.
Once a tall tale was told [2] about heavy pigeons on the town
clock's hands causing the clock to gain time rapidly.
Don't remember any more details. Guess it would be worth re-reading
them if the author ever gets determined.
>This is logged in my memory along side things like The Three Investigators and
>Encyclopedia Brown.
meme too [3] aaaauuuuugggghhhhh. [4]
For some reason I free associate the Henry Reed books, too:
_Henry Reed, Inc._ - Even though they never did catch the buck
rabbit, Midge Glass did manage to become part of the firm.
_Henry Reed's Big Adventure_ - Chocolate covered ants?
Which book did Midge manage to trade nothing up to a buggy
for their horse after an auction?
> -Kurt
[1] After all, you couldn't just bury them or throw them away,
now could you.
[2] alliteration alert [2]
[3] bad pun. bad, bad pun
[4] for the pun & the fact that someone besides me has read
those books.
[5] footnotes are kind of fun, aren't they.
[6] my English prof always said, "If you see a footnote, kill it
before it breeds."
Gary Barnes
:er...@bofh.org.uk (Eric Pederson) wrote:
:>abb...@tezcat.com (Abby Franquemont-Guillory) wrote:
:>>Abby "Two thousand zero zero party over WHOOPS! outta time" F-G
:>Excuse me everyone, while I LART Abby for planting that ear worm.
:>*LART*
:>Two can play at that game... let's see here...
:>"Oh, no - there goes Tokyo. Go go Godzilla"
:
:Lemme just cut to the chase then...
:
:"Macho macho man! I wanna be... A Macho man!!"
:
:"Boooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnn Frrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
: As freeee as the wind blooooooowwwwwwwws...
: As freeee as the grass groooowwwwwwwwwssssss!!"
Right:
"Then the ship hit a rock, oh Lord! what a shock,
And the boat was turned right over.
Nine times around, and the poor old dog was drowned
And alas for the Irish Rover[1]"
Gaz
[1] Or "I'm the last of the Irish[2] Rover", according to some.
[2] You can tell it was St. Paddy's yesterday, can't you?
--
/\./\
( - - ) g...@aber.ac.uk (Gary "Wolf" Barnes)
\ " /
~~~
Paul Tomblin
>Guess what! We found a 20 line program that will crash any HP-UX 9.* box!
So, a 3 line fork() bomb will crash just about any Unix under the sun[1].
[1] Pun not intended.
--
Paul Tomblin (ptom...@xcski.com, formerly ptom...@canoe.com)
<a href="http://www.servtech.com/public/ptomblin/">My home page</a>
"The superior pilot uses his superior judgement to avoid situations in which
he has to demonstrate his superior skill" - anon.
Mr Stuart Lamble
[snip]
: If only Doom2/Heretic/Descent/etc. ran under Linux so I wouldn't have
: to put up with this stupidity.
I don't know about Heretic, or Descent, but I am told (by somebody who
doesn't live at home, so he doesn't have to put up with petty restrictions
on game playing) that Linux Doom supports the Doom2 .WAD files.
--
I now have a .sig of my vewwy own. I shall hug him, and love him,
and call him George.
Peter Dalgaard BSA
kami...@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark Hughes) writes:
Unfortunately, Gnu date seems to have a problem with the year
2000 and later,
at least on Linux and OS/2:
date -d 1999-12-31
Fri Dec 31 00:00:00 GMT 1999
date -d 2000-01-01
Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 GMT 1970
Apparently according to the FSF, time wraps around back to 1970 in 2000!
<ahem>
Since I use date in all sorts of shell scripts, I'm a bit unhappy
about this.
Looking at date.c, it seems to be the fault of posixtime(), but I
haven't got
'round to finding the module containing it and fixing the bug yet. Unh.
</ahem>
Now if you'd been reading comp.os.linux.* you'd have noticed the
following (some say that the 2100 should be 2038 for signed 32bit
rollover):
Someone followed up with a note saying that copies of getdate.y are
packaged with several GNU utilities. So we should also expect fun stuff
from find, tar, ...
> diff -c getdate.y{,.orig}
*** getdate.y Wed Mar 6 00:18:36 1996
--- getdate.y.orig Tue Oct 4 08:03:27 1994
***************
*** 621,627 ****
Year += 1900;
DaysInMonth[1] = Year % 4 == 0 && (Year % 100 != 0 || Year % 400 == 0)
? 29 : 28;
! if (Year < EPOCH || Year > 2100
|| Month < 1 || Month > 12
/* Lint fluff: "conversion from long may lose accuracy" */
|| Day < 1 || Day > DaysInMonth[(int)--Month])
--- 621,627 ----
Year += 1900;
DaysInMonth[1] = Year % 4 == 0 && (Year % 100 != 0 || Year % 400 == 0)
? 29 : 28;
! if (Year < EPOCH || Year > 1999
|| Month < 1 || Month > 12
/* Lint fluff: "conversion from long may lose accuracy" */
|| Day < 1 || Day > DaysInMonth[(int)--Month])
***************
*** 686,692 ****
if (RelMonth == 0)
return 0;
tm = localtime (&Start);
! Month = 12 * (tm->tm_year + 1900) + tm->tm_mon + RelMonth;
Year = Month / 12;
Month = Month % 12 + 1;
return DSTcorrect (Start,
--- 686,692 ----
if (RelMonth == 0)
return 0;
tm = localtime (&Start);
! Month = 12 * tm->tm_year + tm->tm_mon + RelMonth;
Year = Month / 12;
Month = Month % 12 + 1;
return DSTcorrect (Start,
Apologies for conveying potentially useful info on ASR.....
--
O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3
c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N
(*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dal...@biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907
Zack Weinberg
Cynthia Smathers <cyn...@mindspring.com> wrote:
[...]
>Uh-oh--more books many of us will have in common. Did anyone else read the
>children's books about the little Martian (or Moonman or something) who
>lived in a mushroom-shaped house with an observatory built in? Befriends
>neighborhood children, takes them on trips to Mars, the moon, etc. to save
>the universe? I recall reading them around the same time I read the Pippi
>Longstocking books, so the authors' names may be close to each other
>alphabetically.
Are you referring to the Mr. Bass series perhaps? It centered around
a race of 'mushroom people' who lived on a hidden satellite of Earth,
that you needed a special Stroboscopic Polarizing Filter on your
telescope to see. "Journey to the Mushroom Planet" was the first one
IIRC. No clue as to author, unfortunately.
Gawd, this thread brings back the memories... I used to cram my
elementary-school desk drawer full of books and read them instead of
doing my work. :) I still get odd looks for taking Don Quixote
or some such to read on the train instead of the standard tripe.
zw
Jeff Mercer
>abb...@tezcat.com (Abby Franquemont-Guillory) wrote:
>>Abby "Two thousand zero zero party over WHOOPS! outta time" F-G
>Excuse me everyone, while I LART Abby for planting that ear worm.
>*LART*
>Two can play at that game... let's see here...
>"Oh, no - there goes Tokyo. Go go Godzilla"
Lemme just cut to the chase then...
"Macho macho man! I wanna be... A Macho man!!"
"Boooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnn Frrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
As freeee as the wind blooooooowwwwwwwws...
As freeee as the grass groooowwwwwwwwwssssss!!"
rif...@afn.org : AD&D: When the DM smiles... It's too late to panic.
Jeff The Riffer :
Drifter... :
Homo Postmortemus :
Jeff Mercer
>Take a year.
>If it's divisible by 4 without leaving a remainder, then it's a leap year.
>However, if the year is divisible by 100 without leaving a remainder, then
>it is NOT a leap year, unless it is also exactly divisible by 400.
And logically, if it is exactly divisiable by 4000 then it *is* a leap year.
In other words, the year 4000 is evenly divisible by 400, so it isn't a leap
year, but it is *also* evnly divisible by 4000 so it actually *is* a leap year!
Tying this in with the BOFH Books To Read Thread, there's a pretty interesting
bit in an appenix of Diane Duane's "Door Into Shadow" which deals with how
the fantasy world in the book tells time, maintains a calendar, etc...
Apparently, before 4000 years have passed the local dragon's are supposed to
remind the people how to reset things correctly, :)
rif...@afn.org : I studied COBOL in college... But I didn't compile.
Matthew Crosby
John Vaughan <jo...@tcp.co.uk> wrote:
>In <4ijj04$q...@wave.news.pipex.net> timo...@pipex.net (Timothy J. Hunt) writes:
>
>>In article <314CE5...@avtec.com>, Tracy Henry <t...@avtec.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> If Dec 31, 2000 is the end of the 20th C, then to which
>>>C does the year 0 belong? (And these are the guys who insist the
>>>second disk in my system is HD1.... Sheesh!)
>
>
>So when was Christ born then? 1BC or 1AD? Eeek... bit too zen for me...
The 1st Anno Domini (year of our lord)
>Thing is, as we all know, cos the Romans couldn't count straight (musta
>got the letters and numbers all hashed up (sic)), Christ was actually
>born September 27th 4BC... calendars are cool, huh huh huh uh uh uhh huh
Excuse me, but the Romans had nothing to do with the AD/BC mess. The
Romans had a perfectly respectable sysyem in the form of AUC, measuring
since the (alleged) founding of Rome. It wasn't until the later part of
the first millenia (a little voice is telling me 700's) when the world
had thouroughly been infected with christianity and Rome had long since
broken up that the AD thingy came about.
Reminds me of the time I was attending a party at a friends and ended
up next to this new-age celtic nature worship type. Somehow the conversation
got on to the Roman invasion, and BOY did she get sore when I commented about
how I was 100% on Caesars side [1] :-) Nothing quite so amusing as seeing
someone all uptight and political about a 2000 year old war, the winners
of which where long since pushed off by various other invasions. She
probably protests the battle of Hastings every year, too.
ObASR:
Guess what! We found a 20 line program that will crash any HP-UX 9.* box!
I haven't actually taken the time to work out which line is doing the
crashing, but it gives me a comfortable feeling to know we are using such
a stable, bulletproof OS.
Actually, it was a luser who found it. It crashed the system once, so
he said "Oh gees." And ran it again. He's since been "advised" not to
do that.
ObMetaASR:
How about a "strong advisory" about the necessity of an ObASR or something
in the FAQ? Might help make things a little more workible. But then
again might not. (I'm just waiting for the first advocacy thread.
But don't worry, the Holy War Early Warning systems are being monitored
closely, and we will work to protect you. Trust us.)
[1] Even though Caesar of course never really defeated those filthy barbarians,
and the British conquest had to remain until Claudius, as any Robert Graves
fan could tell you. Too busy with politics, I spose. Does anyone else
think Caesar would have been a good sysadmin? "Alea Iacta Est", he said,
as he nuked accounts left and right. "The filesystem is divided into three
parts" [2]
[2] I suppose I'm going to get 100s of followups along the lines of
"Three? No, four. One little inode still holds out against the invaders..."
--
Matthew Crosby cro...@cs.colorado.edu
Disclaimer: It was another country, and besides, the wench is dead.
Peter H. Coffin
John Vaughan <jo...@tcp.co.uk> writes:
> In <4ijj04$q...@wave.news.pipex.net> timo...@pipex.net (Timothy J. Hunt) writes:
>
> >In article <314CE5...@avtec.com>, Tracy Henry <t...@avtec.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> If Dec 31, 2000 is the end of the 20th C, then to which
> >>C does the year 0 belong? (And these are the guys who insist the
> >>second disk in my system is HD1.... Sheesh!)
>
> >There wasn't a year 0. It went from 1BC to 1AD.
>
> So when was Christ born then? 1BC or 1AD? Eeek... bit too zen for me...
4 BC by most authorities, IIRC. It'll get worse before it gets better.
----
Homepage is at | No skeletons in my closet; they're all
the usual address. | in the living room drinking martinis.
DL Ganger
: In a previous article, de...@websmiths.com (DL Ganger) said:
: >dating. She decided to break up with me *and* nuke the friendship from
: >orbit[1] and that's when I realized that the evil, nasty, conniving
: >woman the country singers were either talking about or claiming to be[2]
: >was, in fact, my recent ex.
: Unsatisfied forward reference in footnote [1].
: Unsatisfied forward reference in footnote [2].
: Segmentation violation. Core dumped.
Spit.
Added gratuitously for your viewing pleasure:
[1] It's the only way to be sure. (2 pts., easy again.)
[2] Depending on their gender.
--
D. L. Ganger, Systems Administrator email: de...@websmiths.com
Websmiths Online Design, Seattle, WA bus #: 206-441-4532
For more information on Websmiths: pager: 206-309-6559
http://www.halcyon.com/websmith/ (voicemail or numeric)
Matthew Crosby
>In a previous article, cro...@nordsieck.cs.colorado.edu (Matthew Crosby) said:
>>Guess what! We found a 20 line program that will crash any HP-UX 9.* box!
>
Well, surprisingly enough, HP-UX is pretty resistent to fork bombs. Been
there, done that. (This one uses some weird ioctl)
jbuc...@holli.com
: k...@linux.stevens-tech.edu (Kurt M. Hockenbury) wrote:
: >I also seem to remember another story about something people would sprinkle
: >on their food.
ever-so-much-so-much-more-so
As well as being used on food, this miracle product could enhance (or
detract from) anything. I remember Henry sprinkling it on a home-brew radio
receiver as well.
I seem to remember another Henr Reed story where he dowses for water, then
tried to drill a well. He hits a buried fuel oil tank and thinks he's struck
oil...
I'd forgotten all about Henry Reed (and Tycho Bass) until this thread. I
wonder if kids today still read these?
Jim Buchanan c22...@dawg.delcoelect.com jbuc...@holli.com
=================== http://www.holli.com/~jbuchana =======================
"The world is full of kings and queens, who blind your eyes and steal your
dreams. They tell you black is really white, the moon is just the sun at
night" -Ronnie James Dio
==========================================================================
Jason Forester
: On 16 Mar 1996 18:24:38 GMT, k...@linux.stevens-tech.edu (Kurt M.
: Hockenbury) wrote:
:
: >This is logged in my memory along side things like The Three Investigators and
: >Encyclopedia Brown.
: >
:
: Uh-oh--more books many of us will have in common. Did anyone else read the
: children's books about the little Martian (or Moonman or something) who
: lived in a mushroom-shaped house with an observatory built in? Befriends
: neighborhood children, takes them on trips to Mars, the moon, etc. to save
: the universe? I recall reading them around the same time I read the Pippi
: Longstocking books, so the authors' names may be close to each other
: alphabetically.
: Cyn
:
Oh! Bring up Pippi Longstocking, will you? Encyclopedia Brown, eh?
- Tom Swift (remember the VR dragonfly? Of COURSE you do.)
- NEW Tom Swift (rocket races around space stations)
- The Ll books (Taran Wanderer, etc. Guy always used
Ll words, think his name was Lloyd or Llewellen.)
- The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe series (C.S. Lewis)
There! That'll learn ya ta bring up them books. Why, you'll
be bringing up the Hardy Boys next.
Jason
--
inc...@satanic.org | Satanix: OS for the next Millenia
Access failed: Abort, Damn, Kill, Destroy? | http://satanic.org/beer
"You spawn of a syphilitic sales-droid" - Co-minion Abby in ASR
John M. Trindle
Doug McNaught <do...@feanor.towson.edu> wrote:
>In article <314b8b11...@nntp9.mindspring.com> cyn...@mindspring.com (Cynthia Smathers) writes:
>>
>>
>>children's books about the little Martian (or Moonman or something) who
>>lived in a mushroom-shaped house with an observatory built in? Befriends
>>neighborhood children, takes them on trips to Mars, the moon, etc. to save
>>the universe? I recall reading them around the same time I read the Pippi
>>Longstocking books, so the authors' names may be close to each other
>>alphabetically.
>
>and his folk had been on Earth for a long time. The books had a bit of
>an eerie and mysterious flavor. I can't remember the titles or author
>either [sigh]...
>
Eleanor Cameron is the author. I loved these books as a young'un. I
don't recall if they were before or after "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel".
--
John M. Trindle | jtri...@tsquare.com | tri...@widomaker.com
T-Square Company | Flight Deck Software |
Home Page: http://www.widomaker.com/~trindle
--
Petro
cro...@nordsieck.cs.colorado.edu (Matthew Crosby) writes:
>ObASR:
>Guess what! We found a 20 line program that will crash any HP-UX 9.* box!
>crashing, but it gives me a comfortable feeling to know we are using such
>a stable, bulletproof OS.
>
>Actually, it was a luser who found it. It crashed the system once, so
>he said "Oh gees." And ran it again. He's since been "advised" not to
>do that.
Ok, you've all probably heard this before in one version or
another, but just in case:
Three people are driving thru the mountains in a rental car, A
System Adminstrator, A Computer Engineer, and a Programmer.
As they are driving down the mountain, of course the brakes fail.
They do everything they can to slow the car down, opening the doors,
slapping the car against the guard rails, downshifting, everything.
At last they get the car stopped, with the front two wheels
hanging over the cliff.
The three guys get out of the car and they are standing around
shaking.
The Engineer (looking at the car) says "You know, if they had
designed the brakes properly, this wouldn't have happed.
The System Adminstrator looks at the engineer and says "The
brages were fine, they just should have done proper maintainence and not
let so many lusers drive it."
The Programmer says "Hey guys, Let's take it back up to the top
and see if she does it again."
--
Postmodernism is the refusal to think--Ron Carrier pe...@suba.com
Deconstruction is the refusal to believe that anyone else can either
Freedom of choice is what you have, freedom from choice is what you want.
-- DEVO
Brian P. Mann
Lamble) wrote:
>Jonathan Stott (jst...@poly.phys.cwru.edu) wrote:
>[snip]
>: If only Doom2/Heretic/Descent/etc. ran under Linux so I wouldn't have
>: to put up with this stupidity.
>
>I don't know about Heretic, or Descent, but I am told (by somebody who
>doesn't live at home, so he doesn't have to put up with petty restrictions
>on game playing) that Linux Doom supports the Doom2 .WAD files.
yup.
Victoria O'Staff
>- The Ll books (Taran Wanderer, etc. Guy always used
>Ll words, think his name was Lloyd or Llewellen.)
Lloyd Alexander: the Prydain Cycle. Good stuff (although I then got
mightily confused when I went and read the Mabinogion), but I liked
his "Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian" even better.
The Great Brain series was cool, too.
<confession>
I still have most of the Betsy-Tacy books...
</confession>
--
Victoria C. Fike O- | Praise to Eris and her Apple
Panix Support Wench | We tend her Chao who's nicely dappled
Work-stuff: v...@panix.com | As we sit here chugging Snapple
Other-stuff: to...@panix.com | Discord's good enough for me!
Martin Hargreaves
>In article <4hqjp0$db6@cdn_news.telecom.com.au>,
>Greg Cottman <c82...@codac.codac.telecom.com.au> wrote:
>>Simon Burr (si...@tcp.co.uk) wrote:
>>> Shouldn't it read date '+%Y%m.%d/%H%M' ? Should work until time_t wraps over.
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>
>>This sounds like "when hell freezes over" for unix techos.
>>
>...hence the famous comment above the even more famous joke in the tunefs
>manpage.
Although joke is a pretty kind thing to say about it. It's still in a
lot of systems' man pages these days...
M.
Anyway, I bet the joke's wrong. Lets think of ways to do it.
##################################################################
# Martin Hargreaves (mar...@datamodl.demon.co.uk) Computational #
# Director, Datamodel Ltd Chemist #
# Contract Unix system admin/Unix security Sysadmin #
##################################################################
Sten Drescher
HW> Ok, show of hands. Who in this group ISN'T going to be so
HW> plastered the night of Dec 31st, 1999 that they won't even know
HW> how to turn the computer ON?
I'm waiting till the end of the millenium to get really
plastered - Dec 31st, 2000.
--
+---------------------- Tivoli Customer Support ----------------------+
| Sten Drescher Tivoli Systems, Inc |
| email: sten.d...@tivoli.com 9442 Capital of Texas Hwy North |
| phone: (512) 794-9070 Arboretum Plaza One, Suite 500 |
| fax : (512) 345-2784 Austin, Texas 78759 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
Sten Drescher
Jared> In article <4hn5ju$5...@poseidon.tcp.co.uk>, Simon Burr
Jared> <si...@tcp.co.uk> wrote:
>> *sigh* anyone else thinking about getting all of their money out of
>> banks and moving to outer mongolia to avoid the fiasco that is
>> going to happen ? From what I've heard, most organisations aren't
>> thinking that much about what is going to happen when their cobol
>> code (which is what, 70%+ of the world's code ?) breaks when the
>> year 2000 comes plodding along in a few years time.
Jared> Yeah, but Im pulling out in 1998. The code will start breaking
Jared> as it tries to do the 2 year forcasts... Budgets and what not
Jared> will probably break shortly (1997) for the four year forecast.
It's already starting - one company had their orders due
software break because it looked 1000 _working_ days into the future
to figure out what kind of revenue they expected. They fixed that,
though - now it looks only 500 working days into the future. (;
Martin Hargreaves
>ObASR:
>Guess what! We found a 20 line program that will crash any HP-UX 9.* box!
>I haven't actually taken the time to work out which line is doing the
>crashing, but it gives me a comfortable feeling to know we are using such
>a stable, bulletproof OS.
Hand up if you remember the first time this was discovered... HP even
have an advisory on it I believe....
Geez.
goodbye_world.c ?
M.
/225686/lgoldste/Lee Ann Goldstein
>
> It's in a box someplace around here, but I can't find it. I moved
>here in December, so you'd think that I would've found time to unpack by
>now, but no, most of my belongings are still boxed.
We moved back into our condo after the earthquake repairs in mid-August, and there
are still a few unpacked boxes lurking around. Don't feel so bad. I mean, we
finally, just the other day, got the living room clean enough to look like human
beings live there. Really.
---
Lee Ann Goldstein lgol...@ladc.lockheed.com
Network Administrator, F-117A Avionics Division
Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
I'm what passes for a Unix guru in my office. This is a frightening concept.
/225686/lgoldste/Lee Ann Goldstein
>In article j...@news.aimnet.com, wil...@nutec.com (Wilson Roberto Afonso) writes:
>>li...@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Libor) wrote:
>>
>>> I thought 2000 was not a leap year, I thought the formula was:
>>
>>>4 - yes
>>>100 - no
>>>400 - yes
>>>1000 - no
>>
>>Actually, the last part is "4000 - no". So, 2000 is, 3000 is, 4000 is
>>not, 5000 is...
>
>All nn00 years divisable by 4 are leap years. So 1900 wasn't, but 2000 is.
Oops. That should be by 400.
Sten Drescher
CS> On Sun, 17 Mar 1996 18:15:20 -0500, afc...@texas.net (Al
CS> Castanoli) wrote:
>> Ever heard Johnny Paycheck sing "Take This Job and Shove It"?
CS> Seldom, not never <G> And yes, I've heard it--one of the (not
CS> country) stations here plays it at 5pm every Friday.
But in that context, you prolly never heard his sequel - "I
Wish I Had A Job To Shove".
DL Ganger
: - The Ll books (Taran Wanderer, etc. Guy always used
: Ll words, think his name was Lloyd or Llewellen.)
Lloyd Alexander.
: There! That'll learn ya ta bring up them books. Why, you'll
: be bringing up the Hardy Boys next.
Or how about "The Dark is Rising" series by Susan Cooper? Great series
that tied in every legend and myth you could think of (at least, the
English/Welsh ones...)
Or anything, pretty much, by Sylvia Louise Engdahl...
<sigh>
hillary
*The Great Brain series was cool, too.
*
*<confession>
*I still have most of the Betsy-Tacy books...
*</confession>
Not only do I still have all the betsy-tacy books, and the great brain
books, I've also got all of Cherry Ames, not to mention the complete
works of Judy Blume (including wifey ;) )
hrg
--
-hillary
Doug McNaught
>Oh! Bring up Pippi Longstocking, will you? Encyclopedia Brown, eh?
>
>- Tom Swift (remember the VR dragonfly? Of COURSE you do.)
That was Danny Dunn. HTH.
>- The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe series (C.S. Lewis)
The Narnia books. Excellent. I still mean to read his science fiction
trilogy but haven't had the chance yet.
-Doug
--
Doug McNaught Systems Integrator Towson State University
Internet: do...@midget.towson.edu *or* mcnau...@toe.towson.edu
BITNET: e7opdam@towsonvx Office: Cook 28D, (410) 830-4148
WWW Home Page: http://www.towson.edu/~doug/
Sean B Purdy
imparted:
: ObMetaASR:
: again might not. (I'm just waiting for the first advocacy thread.
: But don't worry, the Holy War Early Warning systems are being monitored
: closely, and we will work to protect you. Trust us.)
Sorry, we have Holy War anti-advocacy wars around here. "That sucks,
that's a crock, don't even *mention* that OS to me" etc etc.
Sean
--
Sean B Purdy, system administrator se...@fastnet.co.uk
David DeLaney
:Joe Bednorz (bed...@mail.net-connect.net) wrote:
:: k...@linux.stevens-tech.edu (Kurt M. Hockenbury) wrote:
:: >I also seem to remember another story about something people would sprinkle
:: >on their food.
:
:ever-so-much-so-much-more-so
:
:As well as being used on food, this miracle product could enhance (or
:detract from) anything. I remember Henry sprinkling it on a home-brew radio
:receiver as well.
That wasn't Henry Reed. That was "Centerburg Tales" by McCloskey, and the star
wuz Homer Price. Henry Reed was a different series entirely [Babysitting
Service, etc.]
Dave "a brown-backed book that's a little bit battered" DeLaney
:I'd forgotten all about Henry Reed (and Tycho Bass) until this thread. I
:wonder if kids today still read these?
PS: They are too busy being drowned in Babysitter's Club and Count
Bunnicula, I think...
--
\/David DeLaney d...@panacea.phys.utk.edu "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 VRbeableURLAPvi
http://enigma.phys.utk.edu/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Bev
Cynthia Smathers <cyn...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>dreadful V.C. Andrews books and found the first few grotesquely
>fascinating, at least far more so than the Bobbsey Twins. (And he/she is
>still writing them, it seems--with the same cover artist as far as I can
>tell.)
V.C. Andrews died in 1986, I believe. However, a few of her old manuscripts
were found (read: the ones that weren't good enough to see print) and published.
Following that, a ghost writer was hired to carry on "in the tradition" of
Andrews (you will find a disclaimer to that effect in any of her works being
printed today). Whatever that means is anyone's guess.
I have no idea about the cover artist.
--
[bev white, professional wacky sidekick] >< [http://www.tezcat.com/~wednsday]
Who wants a dumb old model like Heather Locklear when you have the chance of
winning the affections of a Goddess like Bev White? -- Alan Bostick
/225686/lgoldste/Lee Ann Goldstein
>li...@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Libor) wrote:
>
>> I thought 2000 was not a leap year, I thought the formula was:
>
>>4 - yes
>>100 - no
>>400 - yes
>>1000 - no
>
>Actually, the last part is "4000 - no". So, 2000 is, 3000 is, 4000 is
>not, 5000 is...
All nn00 years divisable by 4 are leap years. So 1900 wasn't, but 2000 is.
---
Mike.Andrews
tri...@widomaker.com (John M. Trindle) writes:
about _Voyage to the Mushroom Planet_, &c.:
>Eleanor Cameron is the author. I loved these books as a young'un. I
>don't recall if they were before or after "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel".
Rather a bit before; I was about 7 or 8 when I read them, and the
Heinlein came out a few years later. GOod training for a BOFH.
--
Mike Andrews
uds...@dsibm.okladot.state.ok.us
Mgr., Tech. Support, Okla. Dept. of Transportation
-->> For a good time, visit http://www.okladot.state.ok.us <<--
wgtn comb tax
Howard Wilson <st...@ionet.net> wrote:
>
> Ok, show of hands, on Dec 31st 1997 (or ANY year) who won't be drunk?
(Sheepish) Hand up.
I haven't been smashed at New Years since I took over this system. It's the
busiest night of the year for us, and if anything's going to break, it'll
be then.
Hopefully by 1999 I'll have my backup trained so I can make a night of
it. The rate he's going though, I'll still be training him when the first
starship leaves, which I hope I'm on.
Rob.
Stop the world. I want to get off.
--
If in doubt, clobber 'em.
Tracy Henry
>
> Recently, the esteemed Matthew Crosby, cro...@nordsieck.cs.colorado.edu,
> imparted:
>
> : ObMetaASR:
>
> : again might not. (I'm just waiting for the first advocacy thread.
> : But don't worry, the Holy War Early Warning systems are being monitored
> : closely, and we will work to protect you. Trust us.)
>
Right. And "the computer is your friend."
--
TLH
*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
No sig -- don't smoke -- just TLH
*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
Mike.Andrews
g...@aber.ac.uk (Gary Barnes) writes:
>I hadn't any Asterix books, so I started my collection by buying
>"Asterix y Galiad" on Saturday. For some unfathomable reason, the Welsh
>version only cost 2.50UKP, whereas the English version was around 4.00UKP
It's the vowels; they cost more. Look at Bosnia: having to get
vowels from Israel, through charitable donations, because the
Bosnians are so short of them.
And if you believe _that_, you're a luser!
Mark Stapleton
wrote:
>Oh! Bring up Pippi Longstocking, will you? Encyclopedia Brown, eh?
>
>- Tom Swift (remember the VR dragonfly? Of COURSE you do.)
Tom Swift, Jr., and his Electronic Hydrolung
Tom Swift, Jr., and his Subocean Geotron
Tom Swift, Jr., and his Repellatron Skyway
.
.
.
>There! That'll learn ya ta bring up them books. Why, you'll
>be bringing up the Hardy Boys next.
Hardy Boys? Nah, coupla wimps who thought they were detectives. Gimme Tom
Swift, a fat slab of science and inventive know-how, and a Dynatron any
day.
--
Fuck the CDA.
Mark (mst...@insync.net)
Mark Stapleton
>Cynthia Smathers <cyn...@mindspring.com> wrote:
[discussion of musical preferences]
I've got such odd tastes that my wife just shakes her head in disbelief
when she sees my latest purchase.
Eno (the lyrical stuff, at least)
Good instrumental electric guitar (Beck, Satriani)
Zappa (thanks for the memories, Frank)
Prokofiev (especially the ballets and early piano concerti)
The late Romantic composers
Kate Bush
some Vangelis
Jean-Michel Jarre
...and bits and pieces of a lot of musical styles that have in common the
response they cause in me: a "up"-ness, a sense of genuine excitement. I
thoroughly dislike almost the entire New Age genre, which tends toward
aimlessness and a philosophically bankrupt Eastern mysticism. I'd rather
have my spinal cord rubbed with a cheese grater than have to listen to the
likes of George Winston, Paul Winter, and Yanni.
Jeff Mercer
[3 year old pop star]
>I've since taught them better. At the moment she knows all the words to
>"You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morrissette (sp?) and "Just a Girl" from No
>Doubt. She still really likes that "She's a Vegetarian" song but I can't
>recall who recorded it.
I don't recall either but frankly, the idea of a 3 year old girl running
around singing "She don't like meat but she sure likes the bone" is rather
terrifying...
I remember seeing some little girl singing Cyndi Lauper's "She-Bop" one time
years ago, and it made me realize how ignorant parents are of what their
kids listen to... The PMRC spent all this time bitching about heavy metal
while ignoring the big pop stars singing abour jerking off... sheesh...
rif...@afn.org : "Books, like people, are too loud when dropped."
Jeff The Riffer : --Worf
Drifter... :
Homo Postmortemus :
Jason Lindquist
>cyn...@mindspring.com (Cynthia Smathers) wrote:
>[3 year old pop star]
>>I've since taught them better. At the moment she knows all the words to
>>"You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morrissette (sp?) and "Just a Girl" from No
>>Doubt. She still really likes that "She's a Vegetarian" song but I can't
>>recall who recorded it.
Heh... first time I *ever* heard "You Oughta Know", the DJ front-
announced it, commenting, "Listen *very carefully* to the lyrics".
>I don't recall either but frankly, the idea of a 3 year old girl running
>around singing "She don't like meat but she sure likes the bone" is rather
>terrifying...
That's "She don't eat meat, but she sure likes the MBONE"...
*ducks*
JL
--
Jason A. Lindquist *** Fuck the Communications Decency Act ***
li...@uiuc.edu <*> Be advised quoting this .signature is a felony
offense punishable by up to two years in prison.
Matthew Crosby
Martin Hargreaves <mar...@datamodl.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>cro...@nordsieck.cs.colorado.edu (Matthew Crosby) wrote:
>
>>ObASR:
>
>>Guess what! We found a 20 line program that will crash any HP-UX 9.* box!
>>I haven't actually taken the time to work out which line is doing the
>>crashing, but it gives me a comfortable feeling to know we are using such
>>a stable, bulletproof OS.
>
>Hand up if you remember the first time this was discovered... HP even
>have an advisory on it I believe....
>
>Geez.
>
>goodbye_world.c ?
>
--
Matthew Crosby cro...@cs.colorado.edu
Disclaimer: It was another country, and besides, the wench is dead.
Peter Dalgaard BSA
I hadn't any Asterix books, so I started my collection by buying
"Asterix y Galiad" on Saturday. For some unfathomable reason, the Welsh
version only cost 2.50UKP, whereas the English version was around 4.00UKP
I thought that kind of reasoning belonged in Scotland? (Aye tooke the
fly oot oof me glass, squeezed tha' whisky oot of it arnd drank oop....)
I've decided to collect the Welsh versions[1].
Gaz
[1] Besides, it's a good incentive for me to keep practising my Welsh then.
Entertaining AND educational ;)
Look forward to Asterix in Britain, then.
--
O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3
c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N
(*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dal...@biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907
Wilson Roberto Afonso
>John Vaughan <jo...@tcp.co.uk> wrote:
>>Take a year.
>>If it's divisible by 4 without leaving a remainder, then it's a leap year.
>>However, if the year is divisible by 100 without leaving a remainder, then
>>it is NOT a leap year, unless it is also exactly divisible by 400.
>And logically, if it is exactly divisiable by 4000 then it *is* a leap year.
>In other words, the year 4000 is evenly divisible by 400, so it isn't a leap
>year, but it is *also* evnly divisible by 4000 so it actually *is* a leap year!
Jeff, you reversed it. 4000 is divisible by 100, so it shouldn't be a
leap year. But it also divisible by 400, so it should be. But it is
also divisible by 4000, so it is not. 2000 is because it is divisible
by 400, remember ?
-Wilson
Alistair J. R. Young
>cro...@taylor.cs.colorado.edu (Matthew Crosby) wrote:
>>...hence the famous comment above the even more famous joke in the tunefs
>>manpage.
>Although joke is a pretty kind thing to say about it. It's still in a
>lot of systems' man pages these days...
>
>M.
>
>Anyway, I bet the joke's wrong. Lets think of ways to do it.
Trim its fins.
Change the salinity of the water.
Feed it more/less often.
Alistair "Hey, we do need bofh.aquaria after all" Young
--
Alistair Young - Arkane Systems Software Development & PC Consultancy
The opinions above ARE my company's, because I OWN it! [Team OS/2]
e-mail: ava...@arkane.demon.co.uk; Phone/Fax: +44 (1833) 638233 (24 hr.)
For my public key, mail pgp...@arkane.demon.co.uk ; for my .sig quote,
copyright info, .plan file, and so forth, mail fin...@arkane.demon.co.uk
Rob Blake
pco...@tpgi.com.au (Paul Colquhoun) writes:
>
>Leaving aside the 4bc bit, since the birth in question didn't actually take
>a whole year (much to Mary's relief [1]), and given the traditional dates
>for Xmas, etc, I conclude that Christ was born about a week before the end
>of 1bc.
Unfortunately, Xmas has nothing whatsoever to do with the birth of Christ.[1]
Instead it is a pagan festival that was hi-jacked by the Christian church.
Current estimates put the birth of Christ around September, but no-one knows
for sure.
If only the calendar was written in C code, then there'd be no problem
with starting your counting from 0. [2]
[1] As is painfully obvious these days.
[2] ObCrapTechieJoke
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
_/_/_/_/_/
_/ _/ _/ Rob Blake <URL:http://physics.open.ac.uk/~rpblake/>
_/ _/ _/ [Overworked PhD student (Danger! Irony chip overload)]
_/_/_/_/_/
_/_/ _/ Quote of the week : "Cats is 'dogs' and rabbits
_/ _/ _/ is 'dogs' and so's Parrats, but this 'ere 'Tortis'
_/ _/_/_/ is an insect, and there ain't no charge for it."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dave Brown
Wilson Roberto Afonso <wil...@nutec.com> wrote:
Hitler, Hitler, Hitler.
--Dave
--
http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~dagbrown/ Dave Brown (INTP), Official CSC BOFH
Paul Colquhoun
cro...@nordsieck.cs.colorado.edu (Matthew Crosby) wrote:
:In article <4ijklm$p...@poseidon.tcp.co.uk>,
:John Vaughan <jo...@tcp.co.uk> wrote:
:>In <4ijj04$q...@wave.news.pipex.net> timo...@pipex.net (Timothy J. Hunt)
writes:
:>
:>>In article <314CE5...@avtec.com>, Tracy Henry <t...@avtec.com>
wrote:
:>>>
:>>> If Dec 31, 2000 is the end of the 20th C, then to which
:>>>C does the year 0 belong? (And these are the guys who insist the
:>>>second disk in my system is HD1.... Sheesh!)
:>
:>>There wasn't a year 0. It went from 1BC to 1AD.
:>
:>So when was Christ born then? 1BC or 1AD? Eeek... bit too zen for me...
:
:The 1st Anno Domini (year of our lord)
:
:>Thing is, as we all know, cos the Romans couldn't count straight (musta
:>got the letters and numbers all hashed up (sic)), Christ was actually
:>born September 27th 4BC... calendars are cool, huh huh huh uh uh uhh huh
Leaving aside the 4bc bit, since the birth in question didn't actually take
a whole year (much to Mary's relief [1]), and given the traditional dates
for Xmas, etc, I conclude that Christ was born about a week before the end
of 1bc.
[1] I don't think that even the most B of BOFH's would wish a year long
labour on a woman, just to make the calendar numbering system match the set
of integers.
--
Paul Colquhoun Ph: +61 2 886 0938
Systems Administrator fax: +61 2 878 3877
TPG Internet email: pco...@tpgi.com.au
Unless otherwise stated, this message is NOT an official TPGi document
David DeLaney
>Nothing quite so amusing as seeing
>someone all uptight and political about a 2000 year old war, the winners
>of which where long since pushed off by various other invasions. She
>probably protests the battle of Hastings every year, too.
Oh, I dunno. The peace treaty ending the Peloponnesian Wars [1] made the front
page of the paperNews here last week sometime...
[1] Athens vs. Sparta, rah rah rah.
>[2] I suppose I'm going to get 100s of followups along the lines of
>"Three? No, four. One little inode still holds out against the invaders..."
Dave "rm -r Asterix?" DeLaney
Gary Barnes
Dave Brown <dagb...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
:In article <4iqo8h$4...@news.aimnet.com>,
That's not even divisible by four.
Gaz
--
/\./\
( - - ) g...@aber.ac.uk (Gary "Wolf" Barnes)
\ " /
~~~
Hillary Gorman
: abb...@tezcat.com (Abby Franquemont-Guillory) wrote:
: >Cynthia Smathers <cyn...@mindspring.com> wrote:
: [discussion of musical preferences]
:
: I've got such odd tastes that my wife just shakes her head in disbelief
: when she sees my latest purchase.
:
: Eno (the lyrical stuff, at least)
: Good instrumental electric guitar (Beck, Satriani)
: Zappa (thanks for the memories, Frank)
: Prokofiev (especially the ballets and early piano concerti)
: The late Romantic composers
: Kate Bush
: some Vangelis
: Jean-Michel Jarre
today at netaxs.new.clean.back.office, djhillary spun the following discs:
REM-monster
Presidents of the USA-(eponymous album)
Blondie-best of
Ramones-all the stuff and more(volII)
Parliament-a lot of Pfunk
Public Enemy-apocalypse`91
hopefully i can still squeeze in some mc900ft jesus, lou reed, and john
hiatt, if i work fast...
hillary "surround sound" gorman
Seth Breidbart
Joe Bednorz <jbed...@inteq.com> wrote:
>"PUNCH, brothers, punch with CARE.
>PUNCH in the presence of the passen-JAHR.
>It's a buff-trip slip for a six-cent fare
>and a pink-trip slip for a ten-cent fare.
>PUNCH, brothers, punch with CARE.
>PUNCH in the presence of the passen-JAHR."
>
>Major thanks to whoever spots the ref. I don't
>remember the name of the book or the author.
>Wish I did. It has the "cure" poem in it that's
>supposed to stop other things from running
>through your mind.
That one sounds familiar, but I don't remember the reference.
There's also the story by Fritz Leiber about the same meme, called
something like "Rum-titty-titty-tum-TAH-tee" [1]
Seth
[1] I'm too lazy to look it up, and besides, I'm still at work and my
books are at home.
Seth Breidbart
/225686/lgoldste/Lee Ann Goldstein <lgol...@ladc.lockheed.com> wrote:
>In article b...@butch.lmsc.lockheed.com, lgol...@ladc.lockheed.com (/225686/lgoldste/Lee Ann Goldstein) writes:
>>In article j...@news.aimnet.com, wil...@nutec.com (Wilson Roberto Afonso) writes:
>>>li...@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Libor) wrote:
>>>
>>>> I thought 2000 was not a leap year, I thought the formula was:
>>>
>>>>4 - yes
>>>>100 - no
>>>>400 - yes
>>>>1000 - no
>>>
>>>Actually, the last part is "4000 - no". So, 2000 is, 3000 is, 4000 is
>>>not, 5000 is...
>>
>>All nn00 years divisable by 4 are leap years. So 1900 wasn't, but 2000 is.
>
We're past that part. The 400-year adjustment still isn't perfect,
and the 4000-year adjustment is a good first approximation to the
remaining error term.
Seth
Seth Breidbart
Mike.Andrews <uds...@dsibm.okladot.state.ok.us> wrote:
>In article <4ima33$q...@osfb.aber.ac.uk>,
>g...@aber.ac.uk (Gary Barnes) writes:
>
>>I hadn't any Asterix books, so I started my collection by buying
>>"Asterix y Galiad" on Saturday. For some unfathomable reason, the Welsh
>>version only cost 2.50UKP, whereas the English version was around 4.00UKP
>
>vowels from Israel, through charitable donations, because the
>Bosnians are so short of them.
Actually, they're trading them with Hawaii, which is short of
consonants.
Seth