Collage 309               H u m o u r N e t                4 NOV 96

::snip info on Internet spam; look here: <http://www.vix.com/spam/>::

I am also a member of a mailing list whose members seek to identify
and stop 'Net spammers in their tracks. The recent "child porn" spam
that was propagated through the 'Net was a hot topic of discussion
on the list; needless to say, the discussion was very serious, given
the subject matter. However, it turned a little lighter after someone
posted a message stating:

    CNN: "Arrest may be near in child porn e-mail ad"

... which someone followed up with:

    The catch, of course, is that CNN told us back in July that
    "an arrest may be near in Olympic bombing," and the crime is
    still unsolved.

Well, given that this thread was developing on a mailing list devoted
to stopping spam, I could not help but post the following reply:

(NOTE: Those of you whose Internet experience dates back less than
a few years -- at least -- will probably want to skip this, as it
probably won't make a whole lot of sense to you . SPECIAL NOTE FOR
THE COMEDICALLY CHALLENEGED: The following paragraph is a *joke*.)

    No it's not -- just that no one's admitting it. Truth is,
    the Navy accidentally bombed Olympic park during a SA missile
    test; they were trying to hit the LEXIS-NEXIS database, but
    the missile homed in on a copy of the Neiman-Marcus chocolate-
    chip cookie recipe that had been discarded in a garbage can in
    Olympic Park. Rumor has it that the guidance-system error was
    the result of a bug introduced by the "Good Times" virus,
    purportedly present on nearly every major Navy computer system,
    having been placed there by Craig Shergold who is dying of
    cancer and wants to collect the largest number of "Save Sesame
    Street" petitions ever amassed, so he can get his name into
    the Guinness Book of World Records before he dies.

    So, you see, it was all for a good cause.

I subsequently received several e-mails from people who found the
post to be very amusing. However, the best response, by far, came
from Russell in Charlotte, North Carolina:

    Glad someone ELSE out here knows what's going on. BTW, I've
    heard that Elvis  was the investigator who figured the whole
    mess out.

Russell's response, though amusing, is, of course, incorrect; the
conspiracy was actually uncovered by "The J Team": Jimi Hendrix,
Jim Morrison, Jim Croce, and Jimmy Hoffa.

;-)

And since we've discussed the spam topic pretty thoroughly in this
opener, it simply seemed appropriate that Collage 309 should deal
with computer-related humor.

WARNING: This Collage is intended for serious computer geeks *only*!
Pedestrian-class computer users risk serious injury or death by
reading the contents of this Collage (possibly even spontaneous
consumption of Twinkies(tm) and Jolt(tm) soda). Anyone who is not a
terminal computer geek should delete this message *now*, and wait
for Collage 310, which will be cleared for consumption by the general
public.

You have been warned.

Nancy in Bowmanville, Ontario (Canada), tells us how to "Fix Your
Own Hard Drive";

[Navy] Lieutenant Russell brings us some hysterically funny "Stupid
Shell Tricks";

Lenore in Virginia Beach, Virginia, sends us the "UNIX Skill" piece;

Randy Cassingham of "This is True" fame (see your Welcome message
for subscription information) contributes the piece entitled "C+-";

and David in San Antonio, Texas, delivers unto HumourNet the "UNIX
baby Command." Since this last piece was a little long, I trimmed off
an amusing "baby Bug Report"; the unabridged piece can be found on
the Colossal Humor Page (see trailer) and HumourNet's Humor Archives:

<ftp://ftp.humournet.com//pub/HumourNet/unix_baby_command.txt>

Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to Collage 309.

Enjoy! (And if you do, don't let it get around. ;-)

- Vince Sabio
  HumourNet Moderator
  HumourNet@telephonet.com
____________________________________________________________________
          Opener (above) Copyright 1996 by Vincent Sabio
  Permission is hereby granted to forward or post this "Collage";
  please observe the guidelines stated at the end of the message.
____________________________________________________________________

SUBJ: Fix Your Own Hard Drive
By Brian Near in Deseronto, Ontario, Canada
Author's Warning: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

It's really not too difficult to fix your own hard drive, if the
problem is a head crash, or the infamous Seagate "stiction" problem,
if you know what to do. You will require #4/0 steel wool, Varsol,
WD-40, a few hand tools, and about 45 minutes.

First, you need a clean room, so make sure the garage door is closed
before you begin. Move those old lawnmower parts off the bench.

Disassemble the sealed unit and carefully wash all parts with
Varsol. Bend the read/write heads out of the way and then
disassemble the platter stack.

VERY CAREFULLY buff the platter surfaces with the #4/0 steel wool.
This will remove any existing data, level out any surface defects,
and help to redistribute the magnetic media and fill in those pesky
"bad sectors" that most drives have.

Reassemble the platter stack, and using a .015" feeler gauge, bend
the read/write head back to the platter surface, using the feeler
gauge to set the gap. This is a slightly higher gap than the
factory uses, but it reduces the chance of head collisions with any
flotsam you neglected to remove.

Give the head and platters a good shot of WD-40 and reassemble the
unit. If your drive has a filter, replace it with a clean section
of gauze pad.

All that's left is to low level and DOS format the drive, and you're
back in business.

I haven't tried this yet myself, but my friend's wife's
sister-in-law's husband knows a technician who does it all the time.

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: Stupid Shell Tricks

[Editor's Note: First of all, if you're not familiar with UNIX, your
best bet is to skip this piece; if you are a UNIX geek, you will
probably spend the next 30 minutes trying each one. Second, I've
tried most of these myself, and each one worked as advertised. </vs>]

Note that the '%' prompt indicates that the command should be issued
from the C shell, and the '$' prompt indicates the Bourne shell.

% rm meese-ethics
rm: meese-ethics nonexistent

% ar m God
ar: God does not exist

% "How would you rate Clinton's incompetence? 
Unmatched ".

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

% ^How did the sex change^ operation go?
Modifier failed.

% If I had a ( for every $ Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.

% make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

% sleep with me
bad character

% got a light?
No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.

% ^What is saccharine?
Bad substitute.

% %blow
%blow: No such job.

% \(-
(-: Command not found.

% sh

$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!

$ drink < bottle; opener
bottle: cannot open
opener: not found

$ mkdir matter; cat > matter
matter: cannot create

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: UNIX Skill(?)

Purportedly from an MIT job ad:

"Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of UNIX, although
they should have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider
this an achievement."

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: C+- (Pronounced "C More or Less")

Unlike C++, C+- is a subject-oriented language. Each C+- class
instance, known as a subject, holds hidden members, known as
prejudices or undeclared preferences, which are impervious to
outside messages, as well as public members known as boasts or
claims. The following C operators are overridden as shown:

>     better than
<     worse than
>>    way better than
<<    forget it
!     not on your life
==    comparable, other things being equal

C+- is a strongly typed language based on stereotyping and
self-righteous logic. The Boolean variables TRUE and FALSE (known
as constants in less realistic languages) are supplemented with
CREDIBLE and DUBIOUS, which are fuzzier than Zadeh's traditional
fuzzy categories. All Booleans can be declared with the modifiers
strong and weak. Weak implication is said to "preserve deniability"
and was added at the request of the DoD to ensure compatibility with
future versions of ADA. Well-formed falsehoods (WFFs) are assignment-
compatible with all booleans. What-if and why-not interactions are
aided by the special conditional evenifnot X then Y.

C+- supports information hiding and, among friend classes only,
rumor sharing. Borrowing from the Eiffel lexicon, non-friend
classes can be killed by arranging contracts. Note that friendships
are intransitive, volatile, and non-Abelian.

Operator precedence rules can be suspended with the directive
#pragma dwim, known as the "Do what I mean" pragma.

ANSIfication will be firmly resisted. C+-'s slogan is "Be Your Own
Standard."

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: UNIX baby Command
By Joe Beck, (?) Dunbar; other author(s) unknown

BABY(1)        USER COMMANDS        BABY(1)

NAME

baby - create new process from two parents

SYNOPSIS

baby -sex m|f [ -name name ]

DESCRIPTION

Baby is initiated when one parent process polls another server
process through a socket connection in the BSD version or through
pipes in the System V implementation. Baby runs at a low priority
for approximately forty weeks and then terminates with a heavy
system load. Most systems require constant monitoring when baby
reaches its final stages of execution.

Older implementations of baby did not require both initiating
processes to be present at the time of completion. In those
versions, the initiating process which was not present was awakened
and notified of the results upon completion. It has since been
determined that the presence of both parent processes results in
generally lower system loads at the completion, and thus current
versions of baby expect both parent processes to be active during
the final stages.

Successful completion of baby(1) results in the creation and naming
of a new process. Parent processes then broadcast messages to all
other processes, local and remote, informing them of their new
status.

OPTIONS

-sex............define the gender of the created process
-name.........assign the name to the new process

EXAMPLES

% baby -sex f -name Jacqueline
% completed successfully on July 9, 1992 at 9:11PM
% vital statistics: 8 pounds 3oz, 20 inches, dark hair
% The parent process, Kim Dunbar, is reportedly doing fine

SEE ALSO

cigar(6),dump(5),cry(3)

BUGS

Despite its complexity, baby only knows one signal, SIGCHLD, (or
SIGCLD in the System V implementation), which it uses to contact the
parent processes. One or both parent processes must then inspect
the baby process to determine the signal's cause.

The sleep command may not work as expected on either parent process
for some time afterward, as each new instance of baby sends
intermittent signals to the parent processes which must be handled
by the parents immediately.

A baby process will frequently dump core, requiring either or both
parent processes to clean up after it.

Despite the reams of available documentation on invoking and
maintaining baby, most parent processes are overwhelmed.

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