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Yucks Digest V1 #92
Yucks Digest Mon, 21 Oct 91 Volume 1 : Issue 92
Today's Topics:
Another reason to look forward to 1992
Apple vs. Apple: The Beatles Apparently Win
Avis vs. Spaf
Better living through chemistry
from an old fortune file
Gross, true story
jokes - more interesting? movie combos
Lessons Learned From Comp 4
Sinus Infection
Swaggart at it again
The Swiss Army Chainsaw of UNIX
Top Ten quotes from LISA V
Uh-huh
YASS
The "Yucks" digest is a moderated list of the bizarre, the unusual, the
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 91 12:59:27 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Another reason to look forward to 1992
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU
European Ideal Embraces Harmonised Pornography,
by Andrew Marshall, West Europe Editor
The European Community has a new crusade: high technology pornography. EC
commissioner Filipo Maria Pandolfi told the European Parliament in a letter
yesterday that the Commission is working on a code of conduct for the sex
industry. Mr Pandolfi is the Telecommunications Commissioner, and does not
usually get involved with below-the-waist activities in a professional
capacity. But the modern pornographer is increasingly dependent on modems and
multiplexes [sic] rather than plain brown envelopes and hand-wound peepshow
machines. And when Brussels hears the word "hi-tech", it reaches for a
directive. "Such a Code of conduct would state ... rules for the information
industry ... and administer the provision of information services of a
pornographic nature," says Mr Pandolfi's letter.
The pornography industry, as well as simple telephone chat lines and recorded
messages, has now developed much more complicated ways of sending pornographic
images along the line. Regulating these is something of a problem for
old-fashioned vice cops. But when different individual member states develop
different approaches, this can interfere with more legitimate business
activities. So part of Mr Pandolfi's mission is to ensure that Nation shall
speak dirty unto Nation, because, as the Commission puts it, "discrepancies
between existing national regulations constitute a problem in establishing a
common market for information services". Let nobody keep apart heavy breathers
in Croydon and Cologne, lest they disrupt the single internal market.
Perhaps the commission is not aware of the risks in opening Pandolfi's box.
Will pornography have to be standardised, with French maid's uniforms
compulsory? Will there be heavily-subsidised industrial national champions in
pornography, allowing the Dirty Old Man to represent Euro-frotteurs? Must
Naughty Fifi Tell All in eight languages?
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 91 10:13:51 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Apple vs. Apple: The Beatles Apparently Win
To: yucks-request
Apple Logos Dispute Settled
LONDON (AP)
A multimillion dollar trademark battle between Apple Computer Inc.
and the Beatles' Apple Corps holding company over their similar
corporate logos has ended with an out-of-court settlement.
Apple Corps, formed by the Beatles in 1963 to manage their music
rights, accused Apple Computer of violating a 1981 agreement by using
its apple logo on music-synthesizing equipment.
Apple Computer's logo features a horizontally striped apple with a
bite out of it and a leaf on top, while the Apple Corp logo is an
apple with a stalk on top.
The two-year-old dispute centered on Apple Computer's musical
instrument digital interface or Midi. Apple Corps contended the
personal computer maker had agreed to use the apple logo only on
computer equipment in order to avoid interfering with the British
company's music business.
Gordon Pollock, a lawyer for Apple Corps, said in the High Court
on Friday that the companies had reached an amicable settlement.
Apple Corps sued Apple Computer in the court last Oct. 29.
"It has been a long, hard road," Pollock said. He said the terms
of the settlement were confidential.
The San Francisco Chronicle cited one report that it said called
for Apple Computer to pay $29 million. The newspaper did not reveal
the source of the report.
Apple Computer, based in Cupertino, Calif., disclosed in July that
it had put about $38 million in reserve to settle the litigation.
Apple Corps is owned by the three surviving members of the Beatles
Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr and by the estate
of John Lennon, who was shot to death in New York in December 1980.
London news reports said the case cost the two companies an
estimated 7 million pounds ($11.9 million) in lawyers' fees and other
costs.
Apple Corps was asking for a worldwide ban on the use of the Apple
Computer logo on music-synthesizing equipment designed by Apple
Computer.
Lawyers for Apple Computer argued that the agreement was
unenforceable and that Apple Corps' claim violated the 1957 Treaty of
Rome that set up the European Common Market.
[Still no word on the use of the number 9. --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 91 21:41:37 EST
From: Gene Spafford <spaf@uther.cs.purdue.edu>
Subject: Avis vs. Spaf
To: risks@csl.sri.com
Yesterday, I flew into Chicago O'Hare airport from Vienna, Austria. I
wasn't too awfully jet-lagged, and rather than wait 8 hours for the
next flight to West Lafayette, I decided to cash in my ticket and rent
a car one-way. (West Lafayette is a 2.5 hour drive from O'Hare.)
I got to the car no problem. The agent at the counter said it was in
stall J-32, and that is where the bus dropped me. So, the keys were
in the ignition and the driver's side door was unlocked. I threw my
coat in and tried to open the back door to toss in my portable PC. It
was locked. So, I hit the powerlock button on the driver's side door
to unlock all the doors, and then went to get my PC. A gust of wind
blew the driver's side door shut. I then discovered I had LOCKED all
the doors by pushing the button the wrong way! (This was a Chevy
Lumina.) On my old 1975 car, one must hold the handle out when
closing it, or lock it with the key after closing -- a form of
fail-safe behavior compared to this.
To make matters worse, the car was to be rented one-way, so they had
given me a car originally from Maryland...with no duplicate keys to be
had locally. It took 2 of their mechanics working together for about
30 minutes to break into the car without excessive damage. If my coat
hadn't been in the car, they would have just rented me a different
one. Sigh.
But wait, it gets better! On the way out of the lot, the guard
checked my rental agreement against the sticker on the car. The
numbers didn't match! I had to go back because I had the wrong car
for the agreement, and he couldn't let it out of the lot.
The woman at the counter sort of rolled her eyes when I came back in
for the third time, but she forced a smile and said that rather than
switch the car, she would just adjust the contract to show the car I
had. Some quick keypresses, a new contract agreement off the
printer, and I was on my way.
This morning, I drove the car out to the airport here to return it and
pick up my car in the parking lot. As I was transfering my briefcase
& books from rental car to personal car, the wind must have blown the
rental agreement off the car seat and into the surrounding fields. I
couldn't find it anywhere. Sigh.
Trudge into the airport. Give the person at the counter the keys and
mumble "I seem to have lost my agreement somewhere." No problem --
she'll just take the ID off the keys, enter the final mileage, and
print a duplicate agreement. The benefit of having one of those
marvelous computer networks, eh?
So, she puts in the mileage and vehicle number, confirms that my rate
was $89 with the corporate discount, and prints the receipt. As she
hands it to me, she smiles and says "Have a nice day Mr. Anderson" (I
don't remember the exact name). This takes me a bit aback, and I ask
"Anderson?" fearing the worst. I look at the rental agreement. The
name, home address, and so forth are not mine. The agreement shows
that the car was rented at Dulles Airport and was not to be returned
until tomorrow -- back to Dulles. It had someone else's credit card
number. It was the correct car, but the wrong renter.
After struggling with the computer for about 20 minutes, the clerk
then called Chicago and spoke to 9 different people (we counted) in 30
minutes before getting someone who could help find my rental record.
It seems Avis's system does not allow (for privacy reasons?) any field
agent to do a lookup based on name, based on credit card number, based
on rental location, or based on anything else I had with me or could
produce. It needed either the rental agreement number, which was
lost, or the vehicle ID, which was incorrect. The folks in Chicago
had to find the duplicate PAPER copy of the rental record in their
files to get the correct number.
Once my agreement was finally corrected, they had to fix the record
for "Mr. Anderson" because he hasn't returned his car. However, they
can't cancel a transaction in the system, I guess because it might
allow employee fraud ("Mr. Spafford, our records do NOT show a checkin
-- either produce the car or we swear out a warrant."). Instead, they
have to issue a special form of checkout that negates the effect of
the checkin. Unfortunately, the computer now showed that the vehicle
was checked in, because the local office had filed a record to indicate
they had the car. The system won't allow a car marked as present at a
local office to also be marked as "rented."
Between Chicago and locally, they decided to take the car "out of
service" somehow, thus removing it from the ken of the system. They
then did a correction checkout on Mr. Anderson. He's in for a
surprise, probably, when he tries to check HIS car in tomorrow. I
hope he doesn't have a flight to catch. Then again, maybe he'll do an
express checkin where he simply throws the keys and the agreement
envelope into a mailslot, and add even more entropy into the mix.
This whole mess took almost 45 minutes to get straightened out. I bet
their records are still messed up, with the car I had now marked out
of service and some other car lost in the system. I wonder if they
will ever get it evened out. As for me, no more rentals on windy days!
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 91 18:21:51 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Better living through chemistry
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU
Newsgroups: sci.med,sci.chem,alt.drugs,alt.sex
Subject: PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story
PiHKAL*
CHEMICAL LOVE STORY
by Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin
Book I: The Love Story --- tells the tale of a scientist who has
devoted over 30 years to the creation and investigation of
psychedelic drugs as tools for the study of the human mind.
There is a love triangle in which certain aspects of the
altered-state experience are explored in depth.
Book II: The Chemical Story --- describes in detail a wealth of
phenethylamine compounds:
* Synthesis and physical properties (in the format of the
Journal of Medical Chemistry).
* Structural correlates to human central nervous system
activity.
* The dosage used and duration of effects observed.
* Commentary and speculation on why (for instance):
-- Some which should have been active are not;
-- Some which should not have been active are;
-- Some are too toxic to determine activity;
-- And some have yet to be tasted.
"PiHKAL is a compelling novel... psychedelic biochemistry and sexual
chemistry... brisk and vivid writing."
Marilyn Ferguson, author of "The Aquarian Conspiracy."
"They have written a book... PiHKAL... that is part autobiography,
part metaphysical guidebook, and part cookbook."
Howard Rheingold, editor of Whole Earth Review.
"PiHKAL is science at its best."
Bradley Lenz, Ph.D., Research Fellow in the History of
Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
"This courageous and compelling book... provides a marvelous glimpse
of altered states of consciousness..."
Lester Grinspoon, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard
University.
"Some day in the future, when it may again be acceptable to use
chemical tools to study the mind, this book will be a treasure-house,
a sort of sorcerer's book of spells, to delight and enchant the
psychiatrist/shaman of tomorrow."
David Nichols, PhD., Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, Purdue
University.
PiHKAL
Phenethylamines I have Known and Loved
xxviii + 978 pp. $18.95 (+ $4.00 postage & handling)
California residents, add $1.38 tax
ISBN 0-9630096-0-5
Available From:
TRANSFORM PRESS
Box 13675
Berkeley, CA 94701
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 09:37:49 -0700
From: brian@UCSD.EDU (Brian Kantor)
Subject: from an old fortune file
To: spaf
One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple
language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for
students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of
its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on
VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With
VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the
difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
is that it's all there.
-- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984
------------------------------
Date: 14 Oct 91 10:30:05 GMT
From: tmorris@starman.convex.com (Terry Morris)
Subject: Gross, true story
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
[Definitely gross. You may wish to skip this one. --spaf]
One summer, fresh out of high school, several of us got summer
jobs at the Florida State Road department. My job was boring enough, I
drove a tractor and mowed the right-of-ways along the interstate. My
friend Kelly didn't want to drive a tractor.
Kelly is an adventurous kind of guy. What better way for an
adventurous youth to spend his time than to hack through the swamps
of Florida as a "Surveyors Assistant" for the Florida State Road
Department. As an employee of the SRD, he enjoyed the many benefits they
provide to their valued employees. Among these were a shovel, rake, and
pitchfork in each SRD vehicle. When he asked about the implements, he found
out about the sacred trust that had been placed in his care by the legislators
of that great state. It seems that _any_ SRD employee finding _any_ dead animal
upon the road or right-of-way is required to stop and bury said animal.
Kelly was with his survey crew, 6 people in an International Travelall
truck, heading west to survey what will become the roads to Epcot Center. As
they roar down the two-lane rural road, they can't help but notice a huge
sow which lay bloated by the side of the road. No one said a word as they
went past, for the sow must have weighed over three hundred pounds, and the
though of digging a hole that big in the summer heat was just too much. The
Area Supervisor, travelling in the car behind them, didn't miss much anyway,
and this sow was impossible to ignore. Soon the radio crackled to life:
"486 to 394"
"394"
"Y'all gonna bury that pig?"
"It'll take up half the day!"
"You know we gotta do it. 486 out."
"394 out."
It turned out to be the usual "we". "We" the supervisor drove on, and
"we" the grunts turned around to face the task.
"Damn, we'll never be able to dig a hole that big."
"We only got two shovels."
"We gonna hafta take shifts at it."
"Where does he think he gets off, out ridin, around while we bury
that thing."
"Well, I'd rather have him out ridin', than here standin over us."
They pulled up downwind of the animal, sniffed, and quickly decided on
a new parking strategy. They got out, and two of them started digging while
the others watched from the tailgate.
"That things blowed up like a football"
"Wonder what hit it - musta been a semi"
"That thing is huge! We're gonna be here all day!"
Kelly picked up a pine cone and pitched it at the sow. It rebounded
off the hide with a funny hollow sound.
"Tighter than a fat tick, boys."
"I bet that thing would pop like a balloon!"
"I wouldn't want to be around when it did!"
"I bet it wouldn't pop. It would just hiss out, like the
air from a tire."
"I wouldn't want to find out."
Never one for endless debate, Kelly grabbed the pitchfork, and strode
over to the belly of the bloated beast. He raised the fork, poised over
the belly, and looked over at the rest of the crew. He was not dissappointed.
"Look out!"
"Don't do that, Kelly. Its gonna blow up and stink like hell."
"It won't blow up."
They backed away...
Kelly raised the pitchfork and plunged it in...
Nothing happened. No explosion, no horrible smell, no hissing,
nothing at all.
"I told you it wouldn't blow up."
"Maybe you didn't poke it in the right spot, Kelly."
Kelly peered at the beast, and selected a new target. With his eyes on
the new spot, he yanked out the pitchfork for a fresh jab. Instantly four holes
in the side of the beast spewed about a gallon of the foulest substance known
to man. Direct hit.
"Yahhhh!"
"Its all over him!"
"Man, thats GROSS!"
"He's gonna throw up!"
And he did. For about half an hour. Then he lay in a ditch to wash off,
but the smell wouldn't leave him. He sat under a tree in the shade while the
others finished the job. It did take all day. When they were finished, they
loaded up the tools, put Kelly on the top of the truck, and drove off at a slow
pace. When I came into the equipment yard on my tractor, three guys were
hosing him off, all well upwind. The supervisor drove up, had a short
discussion with the foreman, and walked off shaking his head.
[If there was anything to evolution, do you think people like this
would still be around to breed true? --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: 21 Oct 91 10:30:04 GMT
From: strobel@ssgv02.enet.dec.com (Caveat Emptor 30-Aug-1991 0846)
Subject: jokes - more interesting? movie combos
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
The Grateful Dead Poet Society Movie
The Magnificent Seven Year Itch
The Sunshine Boys in the 'hood
New Jack City Slickers
Mo' Better Blues Brothers
What's Up Doc Hollywood
The Postman Always Rings Twice in a Lifetime
Couch Trip to Bountiful
Escape from New York Stories
Flashdances with Wolves
The Color (of) Purple Money
Purple Rain Man
Live & Let Die Hard
Kiss of the Spider Woman in Red
The Woman in Red Heat
Room with a View to a Kill
Ordinary Cat People
Radio Days of Thunder
About last night of the Living Dead
Raging Bull Durham
Naked Gun(s) of Navarone
The Man who would be king & I
Slow Boat to China Syndrome
Russia House of Cards
Hellcats of the Navy Seals
Troop Beverly Hills Cop
Earth Girls are Easy Money
Howard the Duck Soup
The Adventures of Roger Rabbit Test
The Fabulous Baker Boys from Brazil
Northwest Passage to India
To Live and Die in LA Story
Stakeout of Africa
Animal House Party
American Graffiti Bridge
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice's Restaurant
Fast Times at Ridgemont High Plains Drifter
Any Which Way but Loose Change
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 91 10:05:44 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Lessons Learned From Comp 4
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU
From: denelsbe@cs.unc.edu (Kevin Denelsbeck)
Subject: Lessons Learned From Comp 4
I recently finished up teaching Comp 4, the computer literacy course
here at UNC, during a compressed summer session. Comp 4 is an
introductory class that assumes NO knowledge of computers among its
students, and believe me when I say that this was often the case. The
class was great fun to teach, and one of the facets that made it
interesting (day-in and day-out) was the wealth of new knowledge that
the students imparted to me on tests and examinations. I thought that
I'd share some of these nuggets with you. My comments are in the
standard C delimiters (/* and */). *Your* comments are encouraged.
Here goes:
Bacchus invented FORTRAN. /* I knew FORTRAN was old, and that it may
have been designed under the influence of alcohol, but... */
There are three kinds of program statements: sequence, repetition, and
seduction.
There are two types of graphics: vector and rascal. /* Otay... */
Programming languages have specifictions. /* Obviously this student
has dealt with a few standards. */
Macs are compatible with each other. /* Imagine the alternative:
"What's your Mac's serial number? We'll go back to the ware-
house and get your software." */
Doctors use computers to create a three demential picture of a person's
brain. /* Is this classic, or what? */
One kind of a hostile computer program is a Trojan.
C is a logical programming language. /* <rim shot> */
Heuristics (from the French heure, "hour") limit the amount of time
spent executing something. [When using heuristics] it
shouldn't take longer than an hour to do something. /* An
absolutely terrific "false cognate". */
Having the computer automatically fill in images for animation is
called "spleening". /* Derivation: most likely "splines" +
"tweening". */
One method of computer security is a phone line. /* She qualified it
later by adding, "You have to know the number." */
Video games are examples of fault-tolerant systems.
On one test, I gave the students some abbreviations and asked them to tell me
what they stood for. You won't believe the creativity of a student in a test
situation. For example, one of the abbreviations was "fax", which *really*
stands for "facsimile". However, various Comp 4'ers said it stood for:
Fiber-optic Aided Xeroxing
Frequency Automatic X-rays
/* and my favorite... */
Fast A** Xeroxing
The students also had to hand in term papers, and these were rife with interes-
ting tidbits. I've clipped a few, quoted verbatim:
"The worst thing the Mac has to offer, is that cooperative multitasking
is not available to be used."
"... footnotes present an interesting problem, which may be solvable by
Hypercad." /* I assume the last term is the newest rage -- a
free-form database for designers. */
"...Linda, a blind girl, was able to attend public school due to the
aid of a speaking computer that taught her the basic
fundmamentals [sic] of grammar and spelling." /* Linda may
want to lend her computer out... */
"The program is manufactured by Quantel, a Silicon Valley company
located in Clearwater, Florida." /* A *long* valley, as my
roommate put it. */
"At the beginning of each season [Edwin] Moses teats himself on
computerized weight machines..." /* Ouch! */
Hope you enjoyed all these. If you've had similar experiences, I'd love to
hear about them!
------------------------------
Date: 6 Oct 91 21:27:18 GMT
From: cam@aifh.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Subject: Sinus Infection
Newsgroups: sci.med
[This is not for the squeamish. --spaf]
In article <803.28EF24B6@stjhmc.fidonet.org> Mark.Ochsankehl@p2.f175.n120.z1.fidonet.org (Mark Ochsankehl) writes:
>>from: swami1@troy.uucp (27445-swaminathan)
> 27> There is a Yogic procedure called NETI. In this you flush your
> 27> sinuses with warm salt water. With a special cup, it takes only a
> 27> minute and I do it the first thing I wake up every morning.
>Where do you get this special cup and how do you learn more about this
>procedure? Thanks!
You don't need a special cup. My sister and I used to horrify our
friends by drinking bowls of soup through our noses. You do it by
sucking through the nose with the base of the tongue, rather as in
swallowing snot. We claimed that it was the only way of really
appreciating the true taste of the soup, but we were just kidding. If
the soup had bits in it (barley, noodles, diced carrots, etc.) we then
horrified them further by blowing our noses.
[These are not people I think I would want to "do lunch" with.
The thought of what they might do with spaghetti boggles my mind. --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 91 10:15:11 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Swaggart at it again
To: yucks-request
Evangelist arrested with prostitute
INDIO, California, Oct 12 (AFP) - Former television evangelist
Jimmy Swaggart was arrested for a traffic offence on Friday by police
who found he was travelling with a prostitute, .
Swaggart, 56, was dismissed in 1988 from the pentecostal Assembly
of God church after being photographed in the company of a
prostitute. He went back to preaching when the scandal died down.
Swaggart was stopped by Indio police because he was driving on the
wrong side of the road. His Jaguar car had no number plates and he
was not wearing his safety belt, police said.
In the car, police found Rosemary Garcia, 31, who admitted being a
prostitute.
She said she had accompanied Swaggart "for sex," in an interview
with a local television station in Palm Springs.
"I mean that's why he stopped me. That's what I do, I'm a
prostitute.
"He's the same guy who cries on T.V. for all these people to feel
sorry for him.... to give him all their money. For what? So he can
come give it to us," she said.
Swaggart is on a preaching tour of California with his wife
Frances, according to his lawyer William Treeby.
Swaggart has been ordered to appear in court on November 15.
[Swaggart has since stepped down from his leadership position in
his ministry, and has claimed that it was "demons" who tempted him
to do these things. Yup, the debil made him do it. --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 13:15:30 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: The Swiss Army Chainsaw of UNIX
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU
[Keith's new subject line says it all. --spaf]
From: lwall@netlabs.com (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: SNMP-Capable perl ?
Keywords: SNMP, perl, ISODE
In article <1991Sep12.175632.1747@ulowell.ulowell.edu> pmaresch@cs.ulowell.edu
(Pierre Mareschal) writes:
: Marshall Rose describes a 'SNMP-Capable gawk' in "The Simple Book".
: This software is available with the ISODE package.
: Does anybody know a SNMP-Capable perl version?
With Perl it's possible to link in your own C subroutines and variables,
so it wouldn't be too hard. Look in the usub directory of the distribution.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 91 18:27:23 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Top Ten quotes from LISA V
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU
From: arensb@kong.gsfc.nasa.gov (Andrew Arensburger - RMS)
[Okay, so there aren't ten of them, but they are all quotes from the
recent Usenix/LISA conference in San Diego. All quotes, as well as
authors' names, are used with permission. -AA]
"Someone in the back row, raise your hand."
- Steve Shumway (shumway@central.sun.com),
making sure his mike was working
"We have the most [thorough] test guy in the world... [I showed him
this program and he asked,] 'but Rob, what if time runs backward?'"
- Rob Kolstad (kolstad@sun.com)
"Those Macintoshes aren't the cute little boxes you think they are."
- Elizabeth Zwicky (zwicky@erg.sri.com)
"I will not be presenting this talk in rap."
- Arch Mott (amott@mips.com)
"I like having a machine called 'elvis' on the network because
that way, I can say 'ping elvis' and have it come back with 'elvis is
alive'."
- Carl Shipley (carl@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov)
"Could I have optimized [this script] for legibility? Yes, but then
I would have had to use more slides."
- Tom Christiansen (tchrist@convex.com)
"I don't know why I didn't use an underbar here. Maybe it would have
made my line wrap or something."
- Tom Christiansen (tchrist@convex.com)
"You know, we really ought to do accounting on the Unix boxes. It
should be a ten-minute hack..."
- Former group head, 1987, quoted by John
Simonson (gort@cc.rochester.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 91 16:58:04 PDT
From: Jay Vosburgh <fubar@sequent.com>
Subject: Uh-huh
To: yucks
>I think this trademarking thing just went too far:
>
>Take a look at your next can of Diet Pepsi and note the "Uh Huh" on the
>label. It's got a little TM above it...
Those people at Pepsi are amateurs in the stupid trademark
field. The real masters are the people at Intel. A quick examination
of page ii of the 80386 Programmer's Reference Manual reveals an
enormous list of stupid trademarks, preceded by the sentence "The
following are trademarks of Intel Corporation and may only be used to
identify Intel Products." Some of the better ones include the words
"Above," "Genius," "ONCE," (all in caps, mind you) the lowercase
letter "i," and at least 10 things that look like line noise. I can
understand them wanting the word "Genius" only used to identify Intel
products, but I also find it very interesting that Intel has the
trademark on "intelligent Programming."
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 91 14:24:17 PDT
From: Lisa.Chabot@Eng.Sun.COM
Subject: YASS
To: mnemonic@eff.org, spaf
>From Don.Carloni@Corp Thu Oct 17 17:27:23 1991
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 91 17:24:53 PDT
SUN ANNOUNCES NEW SUBSIDIARY; IBM TO PARTNER WITH DENNY'S
Sun Microsystems today announced the creation of yet another
subsidiary, bringing the total number of Sun wholly-owned
subsidiaries to 1,207. After successfully creating SunSoft, Sun
Microsystems Computer Corporation, SunPICS, SunConnect, and a number
of other smaller firms, Sun has created SunLHMPPP. SunLHMPPP is
tasked with addressing the specific niche market of users that require
both left handed mice and a parallel printer port on their
workstations.
Howard Detwieler, president of SunPR, the public relations
subsidiary of Sun, explained the move: "We feel that a growing
number of left handed users are moving into the workstation world, and
a lot of them have printers with parallel ports. By creating this new
company to meet their needs, left handed users with parallel printers
can be assured of specific, long term help from Sun."
The firm is composed of six employees in an office down the hall
from Scott McNealy. The president of SunLHMPPP, Fred Testaverno,
is bullish about his target market. "We think that this will be a
big, big profit opportunity for Sun. Our initial research indicates
that the left handed users with parallel printers market is so big, we
have begun the process of creating two sub-subsidiaries, SunLHMPPP-LHM
and SunLHMPPP-PPP. That way, we can meet the needs of left handed
users WITHOUT parallel printers. And vice versa. Or both."
In a related story, IBM has announced a long-term technology
sharing agreement with the Denny's restaurant chain. An IBM
spokesman indicated that the move is an indication of IBM's commitment
to stay in business through a series of increasingly pathetic
consortium attempts. "Frankly, our competitors are eating our lunch
in this very competitive marketplace. With Denny's, we can start
serving lunch, and maybe stay ahead of the game."
Analysts welcome the move, pointing out that both firms mesh
nicely. "IBM has never been in the restaurant business, and the
only computers at Denny's are the cash registers. The two firms
complement each other perfectly. Best of all, both companies can
retain the menu driven interfaces to their products without confusing
the end user!"
The first joint effort between the two companies will be an
offering from IBM involving expansion disk drives encased in an
edible, pita bread housing. Denny's will begin selling a Grand Slam
Workstation, and will offer a free memory upgrade to every customer on
their birthday.
IBM is a multi-jillion dollar firm that used to sell a large
number of computers. They continue to stay in business, even
though no one has met a person who has actually purchased an IBM
machine in the past five years.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 91 08:47 EDT
From: rutgers!pdn.paradyne.com!reggie (George Leach)
To: spaf
A sign on the wall around here reads:
If The Morale Around Here Doesn't Improve
The Beatings Will Continue
------------------------------
End of Yucks Digest
------------------------------