Fortune Cookie File Number Two

Wow, what an effort! Nice followup to part one! Thx, Madhu!


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Are you trying to win a Moron Contest*, or did I miss a joke?
-- Kenneth Tilton
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[Quoting some "Bell Labs engineer" from the Newark Star Ledger]

"The hardest part for me was realizing I was being tolerated by all the people I had been tolerating."
-- Kenny
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That is a metaquestion. No metaquestions allowed under Obama. Note that this is a metametaanswer, it's like minus signs, ya got two ya ain't got any. With me so far?
-- Kenneth Tilton
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Let's decide on the shape of the table before deciding if the discussion to decide if free open software is ethical is going anywhere.
-- Ken Tilton
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Pioneers do not wait for the rest areas on the interstate highway to
have sushi bars.
-- Kenny
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The Mac I have now sounds like a 747 turbine after spinning up, can't
even hear The Voices let alone program a computer.
-- Kenny <490ba086$0$5643$607ed...@cv.net>
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What part of Anna Kournikova do you not understand?
-- Kenny
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That will be well-received, and when Anna Kournikova sends you an
email asking you to come spend a week with her you complain that she misspelled Tahiti and the airline tickets she sent were not first-class and write back asking if she knows anyone prettier you could stay with?
-- Ken Tilton
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I think Celtk just needs Cells. This is like saying that if you want
Anna Kournikova to have your baby then you have to sleep with her.
-- Ken Tilton
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Anna played tennis?
-- Ken Tilton
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Muhammed ibn Musa al-Khowarizmi! He wrote the book on Algebra!
Literally. Not sure where I can get a picture, tho. Maybe I can give
Anna a beard...
-- Ken Tilton
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I feel a naggum coming on. When you think you know what I am thinking try to stop thinking.
-- Kenny
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[...] you should -- I feel a naggum coming on -- stop trying to impose
your prior understanding on a new experience. You are like an
American tourist landing in Kinshasha and going in search of a Burger
King. Sadly they do not have to go far.
-- Kenny
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I feel a Naggum coming on. Before you contradict me or challenge me or quote me, please make sure you are not in fact talking about an inferior model of me rooting around somewhere in your cortex (and what a scary image that is).
-- Ken Tilton
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New Yorkers are not offensive. The joke is a good one (The proper way to ask for directions in NYC? "Excuse me, can you tell me the way to Lincoln Center, or should I go fuck myself?") but the reality is New Yorkers are so nice they will gladly give you directions whether or not they know the way.
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[...] the mentally ill are often the most compassionate because of what they have endured.
-- Kenny
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Instead you are like a new yorker asked for directions and before they
can even get out the words "...to Carnegie Hall" you have responded
"Use Google Maps. And rent the French Connection. The chase scene
covers most of Manhattan."
-- Ken Tilton

[Actually it was shot in Brooklyn -- rc]
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Your other mistake is thinking I was planning a 500-page treatise
complete with suggested legal forms. I am an American, we have Cliff
Notes for haiku.
-- Ken Tilton
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I will be honest here, I am just a humble application programmer, and as an American I barely know where Monte Carlo is because we only need to know where is Las Vegas.
-- Ken Tilton
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> "If Lisp is so great why don't libraries, etc. exist for it like
> they do for Ruby, Python, ...".

You are wondering why Shakespeare never conceived a hit game show like
Deal Or No Deal, and why Tiger Woods sucks at miniature golf. Why
Pavarotti never has and never will make it to the Billboard Pop 100,
and why Dale Earnhart got fired after one week driving a taxi in NYC
(he could only make left turns).
-- Ken Tilton
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The first time you run into something is only the first time you will run into it.
-- Ken Tilton
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Then again, I do not see why you even want to see it, you already have that sanctimonious glow from using free as in how we defined it software.
-- Ken Tilton
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What I saw was a defense of Java as being halfway to Lisp and the bit about him having a chart trying to close all the possible holes where behavior was unspecified. True Lispers laugh in the face of unspecified. Hell, we pay extra for it.
-- Ken Tilton
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Meanwhile Steele famously claims Java is halfway to Lisp. Perhaps he
meant starting from the stone axe?
-- Ken Tilton
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Apparently these geniuses think it matters one whit whether the spec
in its entirety can be carved on the head of a pin.
--Ken Tilton
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Now there's a language design principle. Another good one is that you
can sing it to the tune of Camptown Races.
-- Ken Tilton
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"...Those who can't do, teach. Badly. I am reminded of the New Math,
which made Principia Mathematica (?) a first-grade textbook."
-- Ken Tilton
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".... Never heard from again, though rumor has it Steele found work
as a tech writer for Sun."
-- Ken Tilton
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[on motivation to finish his product]

Not to worry, I have a friendly letter here from the IRS asking when
they might expect to see last year's taxes, those tend to focus the
mind wonderfully as well. :)
-- Ken Tilton
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wants to follow The One True Lisp Way and trust us to know what we are
doing, so compliance here would be compliance for it's own sake.

I must need a drink, that last word looks like a Japanese malt brew.
-- Ken Tilton
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Had you responded here instead of by email I could have eviscerated you in public (the only thing I really enjoy, the only thing that sets me apart from serial killers).
-- Ken Tilton
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> And thank you all, (every #'primep ...) worked great. I found it is
> a very nice and helpful place here!

Just wait until you put a parens on its own line, the honeymoon will
be over fast.
-- Ken Tilton
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> I try never to memorize what I can just look up.

Right. I never memorized C precedence, I dog-eared that one page in
K&R and/or threw in a pair of air-bag parens and skipped the lookup
altogether,
-- Ken Tilton
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But that code is quite solid and close to Deeply Correct. I know because it has not changed much in years and handles new requirements effortlessly, generally by /taking out/ code that was enforcing disciplines which turned out not to be necessary (and in Lisp we hold inalienable the right to shoot off our own toes).
-- Ken Tilton
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In the end I remembered that I have never let a concern for accuracy
get in the way of my rants, way too much work.
-- Ken Tilton
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hard-charging newbies such as yourself landing in Lispville dumbfounded by all the dust, cobwebs, rust, and neglect giving the boot to the war-weary, disheartened, parentheses-mocked old soldiers rolling up your sleeves and setting about dragging the damn language out of the seventies and into the 21st century just in time for the asteroid to hit. What was the question?
-- Ken Tilton
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You want there to be a problem, just like the strong static typers
want there to be a problem. Unfortunately for all you finger shaking,
rule making, strait jacket wearing school marms we have a nonexistence
proof of craploads of great code being written without a problem in
spite of your sky is falling obsessive compulsive gnashing of the
teeth.
-- Ken Tilton

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>> Wow, that is two non-required requirements in a week. Me, I am
>> looking for a transmission that can go from forward to reverse at
>> fifty miles an hour without self-destructing. I don't have a need
>> for this, I am just looking for it.
> Easily done. Not so easy is to allow any human passengers to
> survive the event.

Reminds me of the guy I met who said he and his buddy agreed at
sixty-five miles an hour to find out what would happen if they applied
the parking brake. Let's just say it is a good thing that they had
agreed on it, and that the rental car company did not ask how their
car ended up upside down.
-- Ken Tilton
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If you have to use so many big words, you must be wrong.
--Ken Tilton
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Please follow up, I want to see if my killfile is working.
--Ken Tilton
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Yeah, yeah, it was just a rant, you never want those held back by
concerns over accuracy. The sexp/mexp thing esp. suggests divine
inspiration might be a better model than alien arrival.
-- Ken Tilton
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Unlike the inability of a deliberate mention of Hitler to function as
would an emotionally honest invocation of same to signal the end of a
flamewar, one can apparently climb up on top of the nearest car hood
and announce one is starting a flamewar just to irritate people and a
crowd will immediately form to argue with one over doing so.

I once saw a nature special in which some insect or other dragged some other dead insect somewhere then turned around and dug a whole for it to bury it but the researchers moved the dead insect a bit while it was digging so it had to drag it back but while it did they filled in the hole and back and forth this insect went indefinitely until a PETA sniper took out the researchers. Where was I?
-- Ken Tilton
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>>I realize other people prefer other environments, they are just
>>mistaken. My ideal setup happens to be the best, hands down.

Wow, I am really out on a limb there. It would be pretty easy to take me down by naming a superior or even near equal environment. Or you could back down in the face of my confidence and resort to, I don't know, name-calling?

> You're clearly deluded.

Understood.
-- Ken Tilton
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I am not, really. I will do a year or two of Algebra and then have
enough money to open a bar, do what I really want, tend bar.
-- Ken Tilton
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Mind you I /have/ AG, but there is no point in doing cells-rdf if the
rest of you food-stamp licking, government cheese eating, thrift
shopping oooh-its-gotta-be-free pikers won't be able to benefit from
my unceasing thankless toil on your behalf.
-- Ken Tilton
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> Cells or Cello might be the solution. But getting mad at people won't
> help.

Thanks for your concern!

Not to worry, I abuse these yobbos for fun, not out of anger. And I
am not sure c.l.l would know what to do with KGK (Kindler Gentler
Kenny), but...
-- Ken Tilton
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Otherwise, sorry Karl, we are discussing the best way to learn Lisp
(free ACL trial on win32), not the best way to resurrect your six-feet
under commie pinko socioeconomic theory.
-- Ken Tilton
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> Can someone with a bigger brain than me please elucidate.

I think the problem is not brain-size so much as your admirable attempt to understand a tool by reading about it. That puts you at the mercy of technical writers, who combine an inability to program at all well with an inability to write.
-- Ken Tilton
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> check this out buddies

I have a buddy?!!! woo-hoo! I thought I had alienated everyone with
my sarcasm!!!!
-- Ken Tilton
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Tell us more about your home planet.
-- Ken Tilton
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I'm gonna hurl. Come on, everyone, newsgroup hug....
-- Ken Tilton
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(a) You seem to be unaware of the Laws of Conservation of Hyphen
Momentum: according to the CLHS, a term in hyphen motion tends to
remain in motion, a term at hyphen rest tends to remain at rest.

(b) Really, the worst thing you can do in CL is use a macro where a
function would do. The Pope does not sudo ex cathedra to say, "It's
not the heat, it's the humidity."
-- Ken Tilton
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Was the author writing under the cloak of infallibility, channeling
the word of G*d, and is our Talmudic interpretation of those awkward
words precise? The legislative history shows that CL got designed to
address concerns of The Big Customer over language fragmentation, so
it is hard to imagine an intent other than to define one language.
The next step was a pretty tight ANSI standard language specification.

Too easy? (I know, it is more fun being contrarian.)
-- Ken Tilton
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The language lawyers cannot save you. I am your only hope. I am a
simple application programmer.
-- Ken Tilton
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Fine, bring me a single malt, a pint of amber back, a wedge of cheddar and some saltines. And we'll need more napkins before we're done with this design.

ps. Oh, and another jar of dijon, and ask the redhead under the moose head if she would like to join us.
-- Ken Tilton
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> What is a `hacker', or `programmer', or `computer scientist'?

The last two were dragged to their death in the last thread. Hacker is a term used by us computer geeks in a desperate attempt to glamorize our bit-ridden asses, as if the best of us will ever get laid as often as the tone-deaf, rhythym-blind bassist of a third rate cover band on Long Island, let alone the rock stars we pose as when we call ourselves hackers. Paul Graham, who I generally greatly admire and hope will because I said that fund my start-up but more lavishly than he does those Y-Combinator conscripts, drove a stake through the heart of the term here: [snip]
-- Ken Tilton
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I actually had a business card that just said "Programmer". Got everyone quite upset, they wanted "Systems Analyst" or "Software Engineer" or "Database Administrator" or something. My point was that one cannot program a computer effectively without doing all those things, so "Programmer" was sufficient.
-- Ken Tilton
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Now can we get back to name-calling? Stop trying to civilize this
brawl.
-- Ken Tilton
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>> I always tell youngsters it is OK to take one year off before grad
>> school, but for the love of god don't take two.
> I think this depends on the person.

Never look a gift joke in the mouth.
-- Ken Tilton
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> My theory is that is we bought and open-sourced [...] we could get
> the community to rally around that one,....

The idea of this Lisp community "rallying" is about as conceivable as
a hootenany down at the cemetery.
-- Ken Tilton
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It is the mouse that feels bad, not the cat playing with it.
-- Ken Tilton
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The big mistake is thinking Lisp is going to grow by first being
adopted in Tall Buildings. They are the drones, the lemmings, the
sheep. They follow where We the Blessed Gurus lead them. But this
time it is to the slaughterhouse, because the world needs only fifty
Lisp programmers to write All the Code.
-- Ken Tilton
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... listening instead of yapping? Read my frickin lips: I am talking
about actual tall-office design reviews in which well-paid engineers
... pragmatically suggested design disasters because they objected to
anything a pet rock (sorry, Rockie) could not code.
-- Ken Tilton
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Anyway, if one has not programmed heads down for three years one likely does not know much about design. I am sure I write more code in a year than academics write in a lifetime, because we are doing different things. Hell, they have the sorry task of trying to pretend there /is/ such a thing as computer science. If there was, wouldn't everyone be using Lisp?
-- Ken Tilton
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Unfortunately I still do not understand the question, and I am a
frickin genius, I have a three-digit IQ, 50% more than 2.
-- Ken Tilton
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Well the trick of folks like H.. is to listen just enough so that one can respond to a direct hit with multiple non-pointing counterpoints, each more retarded than the last and each stated in an artfully needling fashion guaranteed to make the sanest NG denizen continue the thread, as if the /next/ direct hit will achieve any more than the last.

It's like playing paintball with a guy who keeps running around and
shooting, covered head to toe in paint.
-- Ken Tilton
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> deal more. But after seeing your behaviour in cll you can be
> assured that I will never, ever consider any functional programming
> language. I can just do without languages that attract that kind of
> behaviour.

-- tim (and yes, before you respond, that is one reason I
don't use CL so much any more as well.)

Abandoning something wonderful because of who else uses it makes
perfect sense. Why did I give up sex? One word: Joey Buttafucco.
-- Ken Tilton
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Never been to a code review, have you? You are blessed. The worst crap in the world gets protected by the manager because he is the only person in the room more clueless than the author of the crap and dies when the author dies because the author is in effect a buoyancy device for the in effect non-swimmer manager. But I digress.
-- Ken Tilton
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I cannot write correct code to save my life, I just throw out any bad code. Only trick there is to distract the author with a banana while deleting their code.
-- Ken Tilton
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You know, the oil companies have developed a car that runs on carbon dioxide and has like 800 horsepower. Where you can buy one is another question.
-- Ken Tilton
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Me, I saw the "Microsoft Research" oxymoron and did not get much
further. Unless by research they mean using Google to find out what
ideas other people have successfuly developed and commercialized so
they can copy it badly and crush them.
-- Ken Tilton
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> Yawn. You must be a riot at parties.

And you must be the life of a funeral.
-- Ken Tilton
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The way to get this going is to post here an especially good RQ
question and your Lisp solution, see if you can drum up interest. If
it takes off, you start a Web site or something. If not, the ball
game comes on at two.
-- Ken Tilton
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ps. I agree, the "fingers will be chopped off" sign should not have
been Comic Sans. :)
-- Ken Tilton
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Well whaddya know. I do GUIs, leave file work to the chimps. You win
a banana.
-- Ken Tilton
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Can we continue this over on comp.lang.turing.complete?
-- Ken Tilton
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...the only thing that matters is Becoming the Latest Thing. What is
the latest thing? The (a) new thing (b) being recommended (c) by
Famous People (d) in respectable places
-- Ken Tilton
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The operator helpfully suggests that I could avoid this problem by simply saying that my mother's maiden name is YOBBO, no one will make fun of me. He also takes care of confirming the purchase over the phone, while I try to figure out how to sell "Hi, I need to change my mother's maiden name..." to the next operator.
-- Ken Tilton
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So I am working in a lab? That would explain all the beakers.
-- Ken Tilton
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That rose girl is drying up and a few volcanos need sweeping.
-- Ken Tilton
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Grapette this: no, Jodie Foster is /not/ responsible for John Hinckley
shooting three people including the President. The correct question
was "Who is John Hinckley?".

Really, kiddies, it is OK to blame the perpetrator. Not that I do in
this case. The OP is clearly an unhappy puppy deserving nothing other
than compassion for the demons that drive them to randomly attack
Usenet blowhards like me.
-- Ken Tilton
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And Uhl says Kenny has made the South forget the Civil War, not sure
how I could top that. The hounds are exhausted, smiling in their
sleep. It's all good -- but someone has to talk Bubba and Jethro down
from their sniper nests.
-- Ken Tilton
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Do they have the distinction between a priori and a posteriori in your
banjo-pickin, moonshine-slurping, carcinogen-growing,
basketball-playing neck of the woods? How about de jure vs. de facto?
Simular.
-- Ken Tilton
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That /was/ a despicable and wholly unjustified ad stateum low-blow, a
cheap shot deliberately designed to make me look bad. It crosses a
shocking line, beneath contempt, really. Clearly I had cut in my
flamethrower after-booster and lost all reason or sense of decency.
It almost makes me wonder if I was even serious...
-- Ken Tilton
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See, this is what happens when you get all riled up and change the
subject to whether Kenny is consistent or not, you get so emotional
you cannot read straight. And my inconsistency varies quite a bit, so
I do not know if you can build an argument on that anyway.

ps. Random problem cloning is going well, but obviously slowly enough
to have me dashing here to hide pretty regularly. :) What kind of Lisp
did you write today?
-- Ken Tilton
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MWUAHAHAHAHAHHAHAA!!!!! Yes, palindromeloopstate set to 1 makes the
movie run endlessly forth and back. Picture looks fine running
backwards, but instead of the spoken words coming out in reverse,
well, it is just unrecognizable noise. Working on that now...
-- Ken Tilton
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Fine, but anyone who uses Usenet knows that that is not how one says
"Thanks". Which is why I felt safe moving directly to defcon 3, just
to see how big an *sshole we had on board. His defcon 1 "Rot in hell
jackass" response merely, well, QED.
-- Ken Tilton
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[...] the serious answer comes from the Tao Te Ching, lessee, on about
every other page:

"A man on tiptoe cannot walk easily."

Or:
"Never trying to impress, their being shines forth Never
saying 'this is it', people see what the truth is -- Never
boasting, they leave the space in which they can be valued ...
And since they never argue, no one argues with them either."

Lao Tzu clearly would be no fun in a flame war.
-- Ken Tilton
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"Gotcha" is like analogies, they lead to arguments about the
gotchaness of the gotcha, an exponential explosion guaranteed.
-- Ken Tilton
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Despite copious opinion to the contrary, I speak not as Grand Poobah
of Common Lisp and have not the power to marshall our forces to
maximize the benefit of their labor. I can only pause between rides
to town on my pushbox to wonder aloud in camp why a serous chunk of
our tribe is over there under the tree working on the wheel and
axle -- ones no better than the one on my pushcart.

Kenzo: "Dudes, it's been twenty-five years, prices down at Throg's
Wheel & Axle aren't all that bad. Why not work on a mast and sail?"
-- Ken Tilton
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A subtle execution of the tip of a tongue pressed against the upper
teeth with sprays of spittle coming out either side probably is not
what you had in mind.

Hmmm. Then we change the spelling to Lithp, and never have to hear
that stupid joke again. Our slogan can be "Thay it loud, thay it
proud."*, and we already have the frickin lambda.

Or "Out With Lithp!".
-- Ken Tilton
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Barker: "Stairway to Heaven! Open to all! Come on up! One-day
amnesty!"

Kenny: "No elevator?"
-- Ken Tilton
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No, I made a few changes and sent it to the Copyright Office.

For Mom I am holding out for the cover of Wired. (She already takes
America's Most Wanted.)
-- Ken Tilton
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"you also physically incapable of understanding that your opinions are
not the words of God". Nice comeback on originality! Physical
understanding? What part of the mind-body problem do you not
understand?
-- Ken Tilton
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No, I would mock you for being so locked into mob-rule and aggression that you think my insistence on walking to a different drummer entails also abusing anyone not conforming to my non-conformity.
-- Ken Tilton
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"wet feet" might not do justice to the 3D learning curve -- that
subsonic rumble shaking your kayak is Niagara Falls.
-- Ken Tilton
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"Feeling no pain, Kevin?"
"Sorry?"
"You just came out of the women's rest room."
"Look, I had to take a leak. Odd, no urinals, just sit-downs."> & no
'bouncers' made any approach..

It's crowded, they are still working their way through the crowd.
Don't worry, we'll explain about the Lisp "high".
-- Ken Tilton
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er, um... no. OO is about managing huge wadges of code in huge
systems that will be spending most of their lives waiting on disk I/O
so WTF cares about OO overhead, we need to manage these huge
codebases!!! ie, OO is for lazy-ass mo-fos who cannot be bothered to
toss of a few dozen lines of code and reinvent "objects" in a fashion
screamingly optimized for their application.
-- Ken Tilton
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So it samples the pitch and guesses at rhythm and provides tutoring
similar to what I would get from a good music teacher? Astonishing.
AI has been solved! Stop the presses on the emasculation of George
Bush, we have real news!!!
-- Ken Tilton
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> if Clisp is so good where are the commonly used apps?

If George and Barbara had such great sex, how did they produce Jeb and Dubbya?
-- Ken Tilton
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> I like the lizard.

No, you don't, you are just saying that. Think again.

> But then, I like the Geico gecko, too.

Everybody likes the GG. It has an australian accent.

> And I like Common Lisp, too. Guess I'm weird, hunh? ;-}

I was thinking "doomed".
-- Ken Tilton
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And a mascot like Joe Camel to suck in the kiddies, gotta have a
mascot.
- Ken Tilton
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You yobs might want to ... oh, what's the use? Lisp is dying. The next generation of Lispniks is over on #lisp worshipping themselves and learning nothing and achieving less. My god, another two years and Slime may be half the power of the ACL IDE. What is the word I am looking for... ah, here it is: PFFFFFFFT!
-- Ken Tilton
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You French really are pissed off about Lance Armstrong, aren't you?
-- Ken Tilton
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* reminds me of part of a route description to a rock climb called
Death's Door: "Don't use the jug handle just to the right of the
finger jam, that hold is part of Cakewalk."
-- Ken Tilton
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I have worked with body shop programmers who could not be bothered to write structured code. Are the concepts of structured programming too hard? Nah, those people just "refused to be bothered" (a direct quote), meaning they were too inured to the pain of spaghetti coding to realize how much "bother" structured programming could save them. They thought spaghetti code was /easier/ because, hey, how hard does one have to think to add another GOTO? It breaks somewhere else? Add another GOTO! C'mon, this is easy! Breaks somewhere else...read my lips: GOTO!
-- Ken Tilton
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