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Yucks Digest V1 #31
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To: yucks
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Subject: Yucks Digest V1 #31
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From: spaf (Gene "Chief Yuckster" Spafford)
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Date: Fri, 8 Mar 91 20:25:14 EST
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Reply-To: Yucks-request
Yucks Digest Fri, 8 Mar 91 Volume 1 : Issue 31
Today's Topics:
Another lightbulb joke
Blood & guts again
But some just display them at boot time and leave them there...
Doctors 1, Lawyers 0?
fun ideas for spring break
Groucho lives!
Here ya go ...
JJOTD
The first clean sheep joke I ever heard
Touch tone Christmas
Translated seminar announcement
Translations...
The "Yucks" digest is a moderated list of the bizarre, the unusual, the
possibly insane, and the (usually) humorous. It is issued on a
semi-regular basis, as the whim and time present themselves.
Back issues may be ftp'd from arthur.cs.purdue.edu from
the ~ftp/pub/spaf/yucks directory. Material in archives
Mail.1--Mail.4 is not in digest format.
Submissions should be sent to spaf@cs.purdue.edu
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Date: Wed, 6 Mar 91 22:43:10 -0500
From: "Gunter Ahrendt" <cmc@beach.cis.ufl.edu>
Subject: Another lightbulb joke
To: spaf
"How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
'In C it would take three programmers, and the light bulb would have to be
removed and reinserted several times before they got it to work. Moreover,
nobody would be able to change the light bulb after that. In Ada it would
take only one programmer, but before s/he could begin work, 87 bureaucrats
would have to write proposals justifying the expense of changing the light
bulb.
'Lisp would actually require no programmers, for once the programmer wrote
the basic code, the bulb would change itself.
'In Forth, the bulb would change the programmers. And in Pascal, we'd just
buy a new lamp, as it would be too much trouble to change the bulb.'"
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 91 12:03:47 PST
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Blood & guts again
To: spaf
HELP FOR GULF WAR JUNKIES
Now that the War in the Gulf is over, war junkies will have to
settle for the next best thing--computer war SIMULATIONS.
War games are one of the most popular categories of computer
software. These amazingly realistic and historically accurate
programs make it possible to view the strategy of combat close up,
but without the bloodshed. It's a much more peaceful way to wage
war.
Just about every software publisher markets programs that simulate
war on computer screens, and two companies specialize in
them--Strategic Simulations Inc. of Sunnyvale, California and
Microprose Software of Hunt Valley, Maryland. Microprose was
founded by Bill Stealey, a former Air Force jet fighter pilot.
There are simulations of virtually every war ever fought. Three
battles from the American Revolution--Bunker Hill, Saratoga and
Monmouth--are recreated in "Sons of Liberty" (SSI). You can relive
the Vietnam War with "Conflict in Vietnam" (Microprose).
Civil war buffs can re-enact the battles of Gettysburg ("Gettysburg:
The Turning Point" by SSI), Shiloh ("Shiloh" by SSI), Chickamauga
("The Battle of Chickamauga" by Electronic Arts) and Antietam
("Battle of Antietam" by SSI).
World War II is the most heavily represented. "Patton Vs. Rommel"
puts you on Normandy beach on D-Day. You can see what it would have
been like to be in MacArthur's shoes with "Carriers at War" or take
control of the RAF or Luftwaffe with "Europe Ablaze" All three are
made by Electronic Arts.
"First Over Germany" by SSI will have you lead the first daylight
B-17 bombing raids on Hitler in October, 1942. Or you may prefer to
take on the Japanese with SSI's "Typhoon of Steel," "Warship," or
Microprose's popular submarine simulation "Silent Service."
All that high tech weaponry we've been hearing about comes to life
on a computer screen. "F-15 Strike Eagle II" (Microprose) lets you
fly the plane and drop M-82 bombs on Libyan oil refineries.
"Tomahawk" (Datasoft) and "Gunship" (Microprose) put you at the
controls of the AH-64 Apache helicopter. You can evade enemy radar
with "Project: Stealth Fighter" (Microprose).
Since the computer SIMULATES war, you can imagine yourself in wars
that never took place. "Theatre Europe" (Datasoft) makes you the
Commander-in-Chief of NATO with a mission to stop a Russian
invasion. A similar scenario takes place in "NATO Commander"
(Microprose).
Thanks to computers, the good old Cold War can live on forever.
And if you're not satisfied with these canned wars, you can even
create your OWN with SSI's "Wargame Construction Set." It allows
the user to make maps, troops, weapons and wage a battle.
The next few months are going to be tough on a lot of us. The
yellow ribbons will come down. CNN will go back to reporting the
recession, the S&L scandal and plain old boring news. The Scuds and
Patriots will no longer be flying. Newspaper headlines won't go
all the way across the front page anymore. In six short weeks, we
had become addicted to excitement of war.
But take heart. Microprose Software is adding an Iraq scenario to
their new version of "F-19 Stealth Fighter." There will be a new
disk for "F-15 Strike Eagle II" that reflects the current situation.
There's a new game called "The Med Conflict" (Three Sixty) that
features 16 Middle East war scenarios.
Even as you read this, computer programmers are frantically working
on simulations of the War in the Gulf.
So don't get down because the war is over. Just turn on your
computer and give peace a chance.
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Date: Thu, 7 Mar 91 21:19:58 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: But some just display them at boot time and leave them there...
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU
From a short news item on the AT&T patent claims on updating obscured
portions of windows, in the latest EE times:
Most graphical user interfaces, including Microsoft Corp.'s
MS-Windows, UNIX X Window-based systems and Apple Computer
Inc.'s Macintosh, update their windows.
------------------------------
Date: 5 Mar 91 21:23:11 EST (Tue)
From: meo@Dixie.Com (Miles ONeal)
Subject: Doctors 1, Lawyers 0?
To: spaf
From a signature file:
Ian Taylor airs!ian@uunet.uu.net uunet!airs!ian
>From a courtroom deposition quoted in the Boston Globe of February 18, 1991:
Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies have been on dead people.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 91 20:14:24 -0500
From: "Gunter Ahrendt" <cmc@beach.cis.ufl.edu>
Subject: fun ideas for spring break
To: spaf
What I Did Over Break.
I bought 200 acres of land but they were all stacked on top of each other.
I used my TRS-80 to start World War III, but I got arrested for disturbing
the peace.
I built an anti-gravity device and strapped it to my skis, but I forgot to
install an 'off' switch so I had to pay for the chairlift rides down.
I found the Loch Ness monster and discovered the reason it so seldom emerges
is that it has cable.
I divided eight by three and discovered a previously unknown integer called 'eithreeght.'
I sprinkled some baking powder over a couple of potatoes but it didn't work.
I had a paper due and I asked for more time so now the universe is going to
last an extra week. When I asked for more time right away I got six days all at once.
I taped David Letterman and you should have heard him scream when he pulled
it off his chest.
I squeezed some fresh orange juice but soon discovered that orange juice is
incompressible.
I bought one of those key rings that beeps when you clap, then I lost my hands.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 91 01:47:59 PST
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Groucho lives!
To: spaf
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)
Groucho Marx displayed his comic genius in such celluloid capers
as "Animal Crackers" and "Duck Soup." But was the mustachioed madcap
smart, too?
You bet your life, the Court of Historical Review & Appeals ruled
Thursday.
In proceedings marked by groans, giggles and guffaws, Judge George
T. Choppelas declared that Marx should be enshrined among the
intellectual elite of Phi Beta Kappa.
Stretching things further, Choppelas also ruled Marx was alive, a
requirement for election to the brainy honor society.
"I think that in spirit Groucho does live," Choppelas said after
presiding over the 66th session of the informal court that convenes
every so often at lunch time and has decided such issues as the
origin of the martini.
Repartee ricocheted around the City Hall courtroom, with Frank D.
Winston, a former vice president of the State Bar of California,
coming in for much of the abuse as he tried to argue that Marx's
brain was good only for a laugh.
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception,"
Gerald F. Uelmen, dean of the School of Law at Santa Clara, told his
brother counselor from behind a pair of "Groucho glasses."
"That's a nice sweater. Somewhere in San Jose there's a Pinto
without seat covers," cracked local comic Michael Pritchard, who
testified in favor of the proposal based on his theory that comedians
are highly intellectual.
A burly fellow, Pritchard freely announced that he suffered from
"anorexia ponderosa," and told the court, "I've been on that cable TV
diet where you only eat things out of a satellite dish."
Santa Clara law professor Robert Peterson, masquerading as humor
instructor Hugo Hackenbush, also wore "Groucho glasses," although the
black mustache contrasted with his own full gray beard. He let loose
a series of silly sallies, including a plea to give Marx a
"post-humorous" induction.
After describing his job as a professor of humor, Winston asked:
"Is that a tenured position?"
"No, I've been there 11 years," Peterson responded, going on to
list Marx's achievements as the author of six books, star of 13
movies and host of television's popular "You Bet Your Life" quiz show.
Lawyers on both sides of the issue acknowledged that one of Marx's
most famous sayings was that he would never belong to a club that
would have him as a member, but Uelmen said he was sure Marx would
approach the honor in the same way he received induction into the
Hollywood Hall of Fame:
"Thank you very much for the honor, shabby though it is."
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 91 14:05:10 -0500
From: ofut@hubcap.clemson.edu (A. Jeff Offutt)
Subject: Here ya go ...
To: spaf
I don't know who this chuck guy is, this is in somebody's .plan file.
[Chuck?? --spaf]
RULE 1: The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going "Beep-Beep!"
RULE 2: No outside force can harm the Coyote--only his own ineptitude or the
failure of the Acme products
RULE 3: The Coyote could stop anytime--IF he were not a fanatic.(Repeat: "A
fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his
aim." - George Santayana)
RULE 4: No dialogue ever, except "Beep-Beep!"
RULE 5: The Road Runner must stay on the road--otherwise, logically, he would
not be called Road Runner.
RULE 6: All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two
characters--the southwest American desert.
RULE 7: All materials, tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be
obtained from the Acme Corporation.
RULE 8: Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy.
RULE 9: The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 91 11:16:47 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: JJOTD
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU
Saddam Hussein went to a fortune teller to determine his fate and she said,
"I have bad news. Soon you will die."
Saddam was shocked, and asked "Do you know when?" "There is more bad news,"
she replied. "You will die on a Jewish holiday."
Saddam made a sour face, and asked, "Do you know which one?"
"No, they haven't named it yet."
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Date: 7 Mar 91 00:30:06 GMT
From: USERSUPY@ualtamts.bitnet (Allen George Supynuk)
Subject: The first clean sheep joke I ever heard
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
A man walks up to a sheep farmer and says "If I can tell you exactly
how many sheep you have down there, can I keep one?"
The farmer glances at the vast array of sheep, snickers, and says "sure."
The man looks carefully at the sheep, then says "5,279."
The farmer, startled, says "how did you do that?"
The man says "I'd rather not say. Can I have my animal?"
"I guess so," says the farmer. The man picks up an animal and starts to
walk away.
"Wait!" yells the farmer. "If I can guess where you went to school,
will you give me my animal back?"
The man snickers, and says "sure."
"You're a grad of Indiana University," says the farmer.
The man, startled, says "how did you do that?"
The farmer says "I'd rather not say. Can I have my dog back?"
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Date: 5 Mar 91 00:30:04 GMT
From: ddern@world.std.com (Daniel P Dern)
Subject: Touch tone Christmas
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
"If You've Been Good, Press One"
by Daniel P. Dern
(c) Copyright 1990 Daniel P. Dern
-------------------------------------------------------
May be reproduced and distributed freely in unmodified form
on a noncommercial basis PROVIDED THAT this notice remains
intact. All rights reserved; contact author (Daniel Dern,
ddern@world.std.com, 617-926-8743) for any other intended
usage, e.g., reprinting in trade or general press.
-------------------------------------------------------
My schedule this fall was been too hectic for my annual visit
to the North Pole Toy Works, where I see what new information
technologies "Pops" Kringle, NPTW's technophilic CEO, has brought
on board in the intervening months (and, as often as not, what's
gone awry).
So I reached out and called.
Instead of the usual cheery operator's voice, a deadpan
recording answered.
"Hello, you've reached the North Pole Toy Works. If you've
been good, press 1. If you've been bad, press 2. If you aren't
sure, or need other assistance, please press 3 or stay on the
line. Happy holidays -- we'll be right with you!"
I pressed the "3" on my phone, and started reading
yesterday's Wall Street Journal while New Age holiday melodies
danced in my ear.
After twenty seconds, a familiar voice broke in, garnished in
speakerphone acoustics.
"So you've moved," Pops commented without preamble. "How's
your new video system working out? And the robot coffee-maker?"
"How'd you know that, Pops?" I asked. "For that matter,
how'd you know it was me on the line?"
"Voice technology," he chortled proudly. "Automatic number
ID -- we didn't even need ISDN! You're on the list who gets
routed to me automatically, and the system also did a lookup to
the consumer purchases and credit record CD-ROMs, and popped the
highlights on a window at my workstation. Piece of cake! By the
way, it says you've been good, more or less."
"Thanks for the readout, Pops." I made a mental note to pay
by cash more often. "It sounds like you've gotten pretty strong
into voice and phone processing applications."
"We couldn't get by without them," he responded. "Those
letters to the North Pole take five to seven handlings each.
We're working on document scanning and image management for next
year -- but voice processing takes much less elfpower.
"We've gone totally cellular," he continued. "We've given
pagers to all our staff, and installed cellular phones on all the
delivery vehicles, with voice, fax and modem capability."
"That's quite an investment."
"It's worth it. After all, we positively, absolutely have to
get there overnight."
"What else have you been up to, MIS-wise, Pops?" I asked.
"CD-ROM is big this year, as you've seen. We're getting a
lot of population demographics from the Census bureaus, map
graphics, and airline flight guides so we know where to steer.
Next year, we'll probably add CD-ROM players on the vehicles, and
have in-house facilities to put our naughty/nice lists and
routing schedules onto disk for them."
"So you're planning ahead," I observed.
"Yes -- but not too far. You should see the stack of five-
year plans we've never gotten more than two years into. We're
currently working twenty months out. In February, we start
rolling in any new systems -- and at the end of May, we do a
freeze on all mission-critical stuff till after Delivery Day,
which gives us about four months to get the bugs out. But we
still have our all-nighters -- and up here, that's a long time!"
"But it sounds like you've got things under control," I said.
"Well, yes and no," he acknowledged. "The individual new
technologies we deploy have gone in pretty smoothly. But the
business and operational environment has been wicked flaky this
year. For example, deregulation meant we could pick our carriers
of choice ... but try getting one of them to bring a line this
far north. And the walruses keep nibbling on the cable, which
doesn't take the cold that well anyway. We've tried VSAT, but
the aurora borealis zaps the heck out of the signal. I'm
thinking strongly of moving some of the service centers closer to
our user base concentrations."
"Have you tried out-sourcing?" I asked.
"Grrrrr." I heard a background sound, like teeth grinding on
a pipestem.
"Problems?"
"Let's just say, I don't recommend out-sourcing for critical,
non-standard resources. Instead of reindeer, I nearly had a
mish-mash including moose, caribou, two Scottish Highland cattle,
and a gnu. 'Just as good, and more cost-effective,' they told
me. When I heard they were going to use these mutant 'stealth'
turtles, I hit the roof! I don't care if they're fast and
invisible. Total control is worth the effort. But we are
exploring a joint service bureau effort with EasterBunCo and a
few others."
"Have you made a decision between Windows 3.0, OS/2 or Unix?"
"We've got one of each in the test lab, and are trying to
decide if they're bad or good."
"What's hot for this year in the gift department?"
"We've combined the Virtual Reality glove with those
eyeglass-size video screens, and come up with something we call a
Look and Feel Suit. I may try one myself -- but I'll have to do
a little personal downsizing first. Whups, the backbone just
crashed again -- see you next year!"
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 91 15:25:26 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Translated seminar announcement
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU
Here's a translation of a recent seminar announcement:
WHAT HE SAYS | WHAT HE MEANS
Autonomous Navigation Using | How to Get Around
Evidential Reasoning Techniques | the Office by Yourself
Purposeful autonomous behavior requires hav- | You must know where you are
ing reliable locative information in order | in order to get around.
to help assess the desirability of pursuing |
particular actions to sense, perceive, or |
alter one's position in the environment. |
Having the ability to ascertain location | You'd like to be able to get
based on imperfect perceptual cues that | around with your glasses off
are extracted from real-world contexts is a | or with your eyes closed.
critical requirement for truly autonomous |
closed-loop behavior.
While some of the |
well known non-perceptual locative techniques | You can walk around with your
such as dead reckoning, registration of | eyes closed, but it's hard.
inertial or geo-stationary-satellite loca- |
tion data with an environmental map, and | Some people have tried
maintaining a global cartesian-map | navigating with satellite
representation throughout movement activi- | uplinks, but this didn't
ties remain topics of investigations, they | work well in our office.
require near perfect measurements of direc- |
tion and traversed distances, significant |
computation resources, and are limited by the |
range of their sensors.
To extend current |
autonomous navigation capabilities that are | We have found that we can get
limited by these requirements, increasing at- | around by feeling our way along
tention has focused on developing robust | the wall of our office.
perceptual-based inference techniques that |
derive location hypotheses through the in- |
terpretation of perceptual cues within |
the context of environmental map descrip- |
tions.
Some recent work on perceptual-based naviga- | You can feel your way around
tion schemes has emphasized the integration | better if you know the room
of distinct sensor modality data within the | (that's why we're using our
context of an environmental model to assess | office).
location.
In this talk, we discuss an ap- |
proach to autonomous perceptual-based naviga- | Sometimes you have to flip
tion that uniquely exploits evidential rea- | a coin.
soning (ER) techniques which embody interval |
probabilistic methods that are based on |
work of Dempster and Shafer.
We will |
describe how such ER techniques can be used | We describe how to get around
to fuse and interpret multisensor data within | our office on a skateboard
the context of a sparse spatial map of an of- | that we built ourselves.
fice environment to infer location, and show |
the results of preliminary experiments with |
an autonomous mobile platform.
Translated by Paul Heckbert and Seth Teller
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 91 19:00:50 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Translations...
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU
Here's a handy guide for those of you who have to deal with vendors,
customers, or other divisions on the left coast.
East Coast West Coast
---------- ----------
absolutely not maybe
yes maybe
action item by Feb 12 for joe Joe's working on the problem
bozo subcontractor
brawl design review
dictator facilitator
do it and do it now can you sign up for this program?
do it right or you're fired I'm confident you'll get it done
f... off trust me
follow the spec is there a spec?
get out of my office let's get concensus on this one
he's a jerk he's not signed on to our plan
he's a subordinate he's a team player
I'll cover your ass consider me your resource
ignore him, he's new I'm bringing him up to speed
local bar offsite facililty
meet me in the parking lot let's take that discussion offline
oh shit thanks for bringing that to my attention
overdesigned robust
punch his lights out constructive confrontation
shut the f... up thank you for your input
shut up a minute let me share this with you
that's totally incompetent let me build on that point
unemployed consulting
over budget on schedule
under budget we haven't started yet
we finished early (no translation available)
we're done how do you feel about that?
what's your problem? I certainly understand your feelings
where's the spec? what's a spec?
where's the schedule what's the game plan?
your plan sucks let me share my feelings on this plan
------------------------------
End of Yucks Digest
------------------------------