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...making Linux just a little more fun! The Linux Laundrette
Not LinuxThere's another lengthy Not Linux thread this month, courtesy of The Off-Topic Gang, which touches on just about everything from hydrogen fuel to science centres to politics. There's also The Case of the Mad Python Programmer. Here's a list of funny Microsoft Knowledge Base articles. My favourite, even if it isn't a real KB article, is: Q209354: HOW TO: RTFM: "This article demonstrates how to read the f*cking manual, as popularised by the RTFM directive." The Register has an anatomy of a 419 scam, as well as a survey of the musical tastes of computer professionals. Linspire have a funny parody of The Doors' "Light My Fire". Take a look at "Run Linspire", if you have a Flash player. For those who regularly read "The Foolish Things We Do With Our Computers", there's 102 ways to kill your computer, and Computer stupidities. Lastly, I found myself interested in some spam this month, from "The Sith Co, LTD"; until I found out that this was pr0n, and not a company started by actual Sith. Spam JokeWho'd've thunk it? Something interesting in Spam A Texan farmer goes to Australia for a vacation. There he meets an Aussie farmer and gets talking. The Aussie shows off his big wheat field and the Texan says, "Oh! We have wheat fields that are at least twice as large." Then they walk around the ranch a little, and the Aussie shows off his herd of cattle. The Texan immediately says, "We have longhorns that are at least twice as large as your cows." The conversation has, meanwhile, almost died when the Texan sees a herd of kangaroos hopping through the field in the distance. Amazed, he asks, "What the hell are those?!" The Aussie replies with an incredulous look, "Don't you have any grasshoppers in Texas?" 419[Sluggo] Woman falls for 419 scam, steals $670,000 from clients, gets 37 months in prison It's a little known fact that there was originally an 11th commandment, "Thou shalt not be gullible", but bringing that up might lead to a repeat of a discussion about the order of the Ten Commandments. Hell's Editors[Ben] So, I went and did it. Perhaps inspired by Jay's example, or maybe because I've been thinking about it for a long time now - and a pilot friend of mine had this one for sale at a great price. Whew. Sure brings back a lot of memories. Racing, cruising, long rides on the backroads of California and New York... <http://okopnik.freeshell.org/img/nighthawk750.jpg> Trademarks[Sluggo] I found a "tm" image on the TOC template a couple hours ago. [Rick] You could put a "Price: 50 zorkmids" sign on it; it would have the same effect. ;-> [Ben] *Say*, that's not a bad idea... we might as well make our fortunes on this thing while the going's good. But make it 200 zorkmids; baby needs shoes. Fed and Burped[Ben] The sorting machine has been fed and burped, and seems satisfied with the changes. [Jimmy] Don't forget what comes next with that analogy... [Ben] [laugh] Fortunate folks that we are, with computers that comes first. The "seems satisfied" part comes at the end. Real Life[Frodo] PS: I know I have been quiet lately... "Real life" and such kept me kinda busy. Things look like they might be calming down a bit, pretty soon, though. [Ben] Yeah, I know all about that. Man, that Real Life thing... it's weird, isn't it? Wonder if there's a pill you can take or something. Take heart, though: I hear it goes away after a while. Happens a lot faster if you can hold your breath long enough, too. Bed Time
[Thomas] Jimmy, ought you to be asleep?
[Jimmy] Yes, and I might ask the same of you!
[Ben] All right, that's it. Both of you young men get to bed, or there'll be no dessert for you at dinner tomorrow! I mean, tonight. In my day...[Jay] No motion on the mailing list stuff yet; sorry. No reply from Barry, (surprisingly), and I've been hip-deep in sheep-dip the past week, as well as down sick Thu and Fri. MWIKM. [Ben] "My Wombat Is a Known Maniac"? Don't know that one. Sucks that you've been sick, though. The list issues can wait; you get better, dammit.
[Ben] What with Mick coming off his bike and getting banged up (he's all right now, in spite of the efforts of the congenital morons at his local hospital), Jimmy playing his guitar till his wristbones fell out, and you slacking off just because your temperature is over 120, this place is going to hell in a handbasket. Why, in my day, people came to work even if somebody set'em on fire! (Made for a brisk business in fire extinguishers, lemme tell ya.) One fella dragged himself in and wouldn't leave until the company doctor sent him home for being dead. That's what I call commitment.
[Jay]
Start a man a fire and he'll be warm for a night. [Jimmy] "[He] sounded like a man straining to see a light at the end of the tunnel. ... It had turned out that the end of the tunnel was on fire."
[Jason]
``
[Ashwin N]
One more ... Advertising[Jimmy] Thanks. I'm thinking about becoming a writer when I grow up [Ben] As long as it's not an advertising writer. You don't want to have the guys with the pitchforks and the red suits waiting for you at the end. [Jimmy] Uh... you mean that when I go to hell, I don't want to go straight into a management position? [Ben] Well, that's a hell of a way to reframe the situation! Maybe you are ready to go into advertising. [Jimmy] Well... I have been advertising LG... uh oh! Phew, I can still tell a truth without coming out in a rash! [Ben] Tisk. I guess you're not ready for the Big Leagues yet. [Jimmy] Nope. Haven't started speaking in slogans or nuthin'. Sadly, a mere three days later, Ben showed that it was he who had fallen victim to the tempatations of advertising:
[Ben]
Are your games running slowly, even though you have the latest whizbang
video card? Is your Quake action more like a slow-motion low-crawl
through Jell-O than a high-FPS F(irst) P(erson) S(hooter)? You may be
using software emulation of direct rendering (DRI) instead of the real
thing, or may have outdated (or missing) GL libraries. Blink[Rick] <HR WIDTH="75%">
[Jay]
Um... I don't get it. Homework help[Sanjib Roy] how can i Clear Screen and Move Cursor to print a message in the screen from a C program that uses standard C function like printf() putch() without using ncurses. [Thomas] I'd ask your lecturer this one. [Sanjib Roy] Is there any function such as "clrscr()" and gotoxy() that are available in Dos based Turbo C++ compiler are available in Linux if not what is alternative PLEASE HELP ME
[Thomas]
Homework getting you down? Good, don't ask us, we won't help.
Wacko Topic of the MonthDead LanguagesLatin's a dead language, [Jack Carlson] Have a great day. Pax, Jack Carlson
[Ben]
Et pax vobiscum as well, Jack.
[Jason]
Ben, you should only copy commonly used Latin phrases verbatim,
otherwise it confuses me. "AND peace be with you", right? [Ben] 'Copy'?
[Ben] I've been into Roman history for the last several years, and hanging out with a bunch of like-minded folks at novaroma.org for just about the same length of time. 'Salve iterum, Amice' is not an unusual greeting for me to write these days, and 'SVBEEV' (Si vales, bene est, ego valeo) is a fairly common way to end an email when writing to other Novaromans - although I generally prefer 'Vale' or 'Cura ut valeas'.
I don't claim that my Latin is anything but rudimentary, but salutations
aren't particularly complex. Well, actually, they are
[Jason]
Ugh. TAG makes me sick. No matter the topic, there's someone who's more
knowledgeable in it than me. [Breen] That's the kind of thing that keeps me alive (and sane)!
[Jason]
Err, yes, well of course if you were talking in terms of solving
problems and getting work done, *then* it would be a good thing.
I just sometimes think it would be nice, if, for example, I said "I haven't read 'War and Peace'" and then somebody else would say, for example, "neither have I" instead of "polished that off during my lunch break today."
[Ben] I'm with Breen on this one. I love the fact that, when I find myself floundering about while trying to spread the word about LG, Jimmy steps up to the bat, says "that's easy", and hits a bunch of home runs in various Linux venues. I'm just stoked when I'm stuck behind a firewall, and Karl-Heinz comes up with some deep SSH hackery which allows me to get and send my mail without a lot of hassle. By the same token, it gives me pleasure when I can help the other folks here past a problem in return. "We should not be crippled by the knowledge that no one of us can know what all of us together know." -- The Shockwave Rider, John BrunnerBesides which, A well-rounded geek should be able to geek about anything. -- nicolai@esperi.orgIf I'm not mistaken, we've got several well-rounded geeks here... although I have lost a bunch of weight lately. [Jay] That explains nicely how I feel when I visit the USF main campus library. [Ben] [smile] Yeah. Libraries, I love'em. Centers of propagation of human knowledge, for free. One of the finest achievements of the human race, to my mind, and the only ray of hope for some of the folks trying to crawl out of the muck; I damn near _lived_ in one for a few years after coming to the States. I can't even begin to express how outraged and scandalized I was when Baltimore - "The City That Reads", if you can believe the incredible gall of the bastards! - decided to close a number of their branch libraries. I - simply - have - not - the - words. Somebody there must have experienced a fraction of a second of shame, or at least the basic decency necessary to cover the face of the deceased - they removed the magnetic stick-on signs with the above motto from the city trucks (but not the buses, where it was painted on) shortly thereafter. [Jason] But in the end, I must agree with you: I wouldn't have TAG any other way. Russell's Paradox[Kapil] The barber who shaves everyone with a stubble except himself. The regex that matches every (...) except itself. Sounds like a Russell/Godel-esque construction! [Thomas] Well, when I was studying Russell's paradox, I distinctly remember my lecturer using the anaology: "Once there was a barber of a small village who shaved the head of every man who did not shave their own head. Did he shave his own head?" ... and then I wished he'd never posed the question! :D [Ben] That's hilariously apropos. The Perl Quiz of The Week (qotw) challenge this week is to write a basic logic parser, and Russel's Paradox has seen a bit of discussion on that list... and I've just come back from my massage therapist, who mentioned Russel's Paradox as something he recently heard about in a "History of Science" course he took. The available evidence says that we're moving toward a logical world. Just think, no one will believe Bush anymore... oh, oops.
</politics> [Rick] Personally, I won't join any logicians' club that would have me as a member. But anyway: [Ben] Ah - a closet Marxist, are you? [Rick] Here's a piece you may find amusing, concerning Goodman's Paradox: http://linuxmafia.com/pub/skeptic/files-to-classify/goodman.txt [Ben] Oh, what a beeeyootiful perspective shift. Much better than "a white handkerchief proves all ravens are black", which is enough to drive me away screaming after just a few minutes of trying to understand it (until I recall that logic has nothing to do with truth, at least.) [Rick] I think I was already laughing my ass off before that bit about "Since Marby is losing his cool and beginning to turn grue" (not to mention "Do you smell a garden path? If so, what color is it?"), but that did help significantly. [Ben] Yeah. It fit squarely within my favorite category of humor. I mean, it's not the Three Stooges, but you can't have perfection every time. [Rick] The piece was originally published in BASIS, newsletter of the Bay Area Skeptics, a group I helped run for a long time (that, as originally conceived and run, made something of a specialty of those sorts of "Not so fast with the logical-positivist orthodoxy, fellah" pieces). [Ben] Wow, that's been around for a while; since the paleolithic times, by Web standards. [Rick] The (mostly) monthly newsletter was founded in August 1982, if memory serves. [Ben] I'm surprised that they don't have a machinable format for the newsletter. Great fun reading the previous issues, though. [Rick] I personally retyped into machine format many years' worth of prior issues, but then later was so annoyed about the radically changed direction of the group and its pissant new Chair (and their casual misappropriation of my copyrighted work at his direction) that I removed from the Net for several years all of the back issues I'd been hosting. Later, I put most of those back.
See also: Oh well. All of the issues I created (during my term as _BASIS_ editor) had machine-readable forms. I kept pleading with the other editors, during their terms at that post, to retain and archive their electronic work files to make it easier on my typing fingers -- but that mostly didn't happen. It could have happened...[Ben] Contrary to popular belief, [Perl's] mascot's name is not "OCaml". Sheesh.
[Jimmy] Someone actually thinks that?
[Ben]
Probably not, but it's silly - and probable enough - to laugh at. [Jay] "It could have happened, therefore it must have happened." That's the advantage of space. It's big enough to hold practically anything, and so, eventually, it does. -- Terry Pratchett, "The Last Hero" [Ben] Ah, apocrypha. This meme will come back to haunt me one day, I'm sure.
[Jay]
[Ben] Memes'R'Us! We perform remote, self-replicating in-brain installations. We also offer earworms (The Barney Song, etc.) at a discount - get yours today! Iraq-related IronyBen forwarded this e-mail from Gene Spafford. (The story referred to may be read here, if you are confused by this, you can read this or this). It appears that the US navy spokesman put up to answer journalists' questions about the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is one Lieutenant Mike Kafka. As the article in The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk) observes: "Yes, you're reading that correctly. A man named Kafka has been deployed to field questions about a prison where the criminals are only vaguely charged with crimes, can't speak to lawyers and likely will never get out." Any resemblance this reality bears to an actual fiction is entirely coincidental. Subliminal advertising[Brian]
Kapil Hari Paranjape wrote:
| I asusme you are really Debianized. So quoting from
^^^^^^
Subliminal advertising for a motherboard manufacturer. Excellent use within a text email.
[Ben]
Yes, but it's not as effective as it could be; it's missing the
<blink duty_cycle="0.01%"></blink>tags. Context[Thomas] Do not take this e-mail out of context. [Rick] Hmm, now how can I best abuse that quotation in a .signature block?
[Thomas]
I suppose in a way, if you do, you've then broken the meaning of it. Moaning GoatI found this so entertaining, I've put a copy of the MGM FAQ in with this issue.
[Rick]
Surely no desktop is complete without the Moaning Goat Meter (which used
to MGM, the Moaning Goat Meter, is the ultimate sixty-ton cast iron lawn ornament for the desktops of today's hacker set: A gorgeous, highly configurable load and status meter written entirely in Perl. Serious pink-flamingo territory. For evil geniuses only. [Ben] Must... have. Feel... irresistible... urge. [Rick] Disclaimer: MGM will not get your whites whiter or your colors brighter. It will, however, sit there and look spiffy while sucking down a major honking wad of RAM. A review on taint.org states: "Silly: The Moaning Goat Meter, by xiph.org -- a load meter written in a proper[1] programming language, and with an inexplicably spinning fish that stares at you. Je suis desolé, desolé, that the Web pages for this procmeter3-like (but much prettier) mostly-ornamental system-monitoring widget have disappeared. The FAQ in particular was priceless, not to mention the pictures with those pink flamingos in them. [Ben] Therefore, all give thanks to the Wayback Machine. Voila: <http://web.archive.org/web/20020613175800/www.xiph.org/mgm/faq.html> [Rick] Courtesy of which, I now have a complete mirror including functional download link, at http://linuxmafia.com/mgm/ . (I'll be writing to the xiph.org people to make sure this is OK.) [Ben] I have downloaded The Beast itself. Should you hear mad laughter, the sound of screeching gears, and the moaning of tortured souls, it's just me doing the installation. [Brian] While the version you've got via Wayback may indeed be the latest, while the mgm pages on Xiph are gone, and all the cvs links and instructions are borked, Moaning Goat Meter is available via Subversion from Xiph, and/or from the web interface, direct link: http://svn.xiph.org/tags/mgm-release-1-1/mgm/ It's not emerge-able in Gentoo, but Debian provides: http://packages.debian.org/stable/admin/mgm I'm getting Perl errors about "width". More digging tomorrow. [Ben]: MGM up and running [ mad laughter, other Gene Wilder-like behavior ] The world is mine! I shall rule, yesss my precioussss... Ooops. Am I allowed to mix different movie plots, or are Mad Geniuses exempt from those artificial restrictions? [sigh] Details, details. <http://okopnik.freeshell.org/img/TheGoat.png> I mentioned these last month, but they're worth another mention. [Brian] Ben mentioned someplace in this or another thread about mixing movies/story lines. Yeah, that rocks. See these: Monty Python - Fellowship of the Ring http://www.xenocorp.net/H_bardCorner/MPFOTR.htm Monty Python - The Two Towers http://www.xenocorp.net/H_bardCorner/MPTTT.htm [Jay] Ah yes, 'Osterizer pastiche'. Don't forget "Once more, with Hobbits": ESP[Kapil] Besides my ESP-enabled fortune signature generator has something to say about the time I've spent on doing all this configuration... (See below). Regards, Kapil. -- If a 'train station' is where a train stops, what's a 'workstation'? [Ben] Back when, Xerox clearly acknowledged this by producing what they referred to as "Work-Less" workstations (I used to repair those things.) Of course, we referred to them as "worthless" workstations... [Later, in another thread...] [Ben] I've spent plenty of time trying to confirm this, and have not been successful. IMO, display managers are a blight upon the land. [Kapil] I read this thread and am confused because "I Thought I Knew" (Know that you do not know and you shall know---old jungle saying). This is what I thought I knew but the thread seems to indicate otherwise! <Snip> P.S. Where does fortune derive its ESP from. (see below) P.P.S. Great author by the way. -- ... though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage from beginning to end. Linguini?[Ben] Long Block Addressing is a method the HD controllers used to use in order to access data in partitions greater than 504MB; Linux, Novell, etc. are all smart enough to do their own geometry translation, and don't need the extra help. [Jay] It's linguini, Ben. [Ben] "Linguini Block Addressing"? Are you sure, Jay? I'd have sworn... well, you're a pretty knowledgeable kinda guy, so I guess I'll believe you. Although I've only seen linguini clump into blocks when it was overcooked. [Jay] "Logical Block Addressing". [Ben] [pause] WILL you make up your mind, already? There I was, getting my fork and the spaghetti sauce, and you messed it all up again! The problem is TMT [1].
[1] Too Many TLAs [2]. MacBeth[Neil] Is that a 2c tip I see before me?
[Ben]
[Neil] No problemo, I'm sure I still have a few cans of Agent Orange left in the shed. Those black helicopters do come with spray booms, don't they? [Ben] So, I guess that line should be revised to: "Is this a gas-operated, clip-fed, air-cooled, semi-automatic M1 rifle I see before me?" [Neil] Don't be so wussy, give me an Apache any day. [Ben] Yes, but the description would take several large volumes... [Ben] I don't know. It's... just not the same, somehow. [Neil] Well, we can at least keep in the same meter:
double_entendre="off" [Ben] <p style="!important double_entendre='on'"> Nope. Neither my Honda Nighthawk nor this Ninja 500 crotch-rocket they gave me as a loaner (the shop ordered the wrong tires, so my bike sits in pieces awaiting delivery) qualify. [Bradley] Nit:
[Thomas]
[Bradley] :-O I hope that wasn't me....
[Jay]
<speculation basis="extensive mail system knowledge"> Display Managers[Ben] I've spent plenty of time trying to confirm this, and have not been successful. IMO, display managers are a blight upon the land. [Thomas] Well, KDM and GDM are separate entities in themselves. Being the bloated pile of jelly they are, not only do they consume the PC, but they also like to do thing Their Way -- to the extent that GDM actually ignores ~/.xsession . And I have no idea how the hell KDM operates -- that's just a nightmare. [Ben] [Nod] I was conflating the three of them, but yeah - "xdm" isn't quite as bad as the others, and GDM has not actually eaten any small children while I was watching (although I've heard rumors.) KDM, now - that thing should not be let out on the streets, or should at least be heavily medicated, have a transmitter strapped to its ankle, and be continuously monitored by professionals armed with tasers and nets. [Ben] Mine points to "lwm", which I haven't used for years. I don't even have the slightest idea of how it got that way. [Thomas] You didn't dist-upgrade from potato, did you? [Ben] Uh... wouldn't surprise me in the least. I go doing stuff like that regularly behind my own back, sneaking it in before I can notice those shenanigans. Boy, if I ever catch myself at it, I'll be in bad trouble... Good Cheer[Jay] Different thread entirely. [Rick] But same underlying problem of insufficient good cheer. Thus my point. [Jay] You got any good cheer you could FTP me? :-} [Rick] Well, the ".mov" files (Sorenson QuickTime) inside http://linuxmafia.com/pub/rick-moen-soundfiles/ are candidates, especially the toyota-bugger.mov one. (It's an advert that ran on Austrlian television for Toyota pickup trucks.) Hallucinating[Thomas] I wrote the vars in upper case. Are you sure nothing is lowercasing them your end? [Ben] [blink] Well, I'm not using Outlook (I'd expect that thing to rewrite "password" as "pdonkeyword", e.g.) Nothing should have messed with them - unless I somehow managed to do it manually in "vi", which I doubt. If I'm hallucinating, I'm going to be highly annoyed. Just think of all the money and time I wasted in search of getting wasted (well, in my younger days, anyway) when all I had to do was wait... Anti-Spam?[Thomas] "Lizzie" wrote: > Only Delivers The Email You Want!Hehehe, this suggests spam is only ever produced from people that send out e-mails that they never intended to send. Of course, why they'd ever waste their time doing this in the first place..... [Thomas] The only thing I will say to you is that don't always expect to submit one and see it in the preceeding release of LG. Heather and I decide which tips get published when. [Jay] If you can figure out how to publish tips in an issue of LG that's already gone out, my hat's off to you, Thomas. [Ben] The method is covered in Jim's "Retro" series. It's based on that capability of Linux that Linus talked about, executing an infinite loop in three seconds...
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