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Quickies

Return of the Quickies 114

Posted by CmdrTaco from the whos-quickie-fu-is-the-best dept.
Finally home long enough to compile some quickies. option8 sent us the MacCrate which probably isn't up to code. Course neither is this one (thanks pkr) Speaking of cases, Deega sent us a site where you can get air brushed cases. rafa noted that Propaganda Volume 12 is out. UM_Maverick has started YALS called Linuxtopia.com pq wrote in with a picture that proves that a spell checker is probably a good idea. RoLlEr_CoAsTeR found something on Brunching Shuttlecocks which lets you combine Advertising and Perl: its actually extremely clever. Speaking of perl, ThePixel noted Perl Toys, which I think we mentioned a year or so ago, but with Christmas coming up, it probably is worth checking out again. Especially if you want magnetic poetry. Speaking of stuff to buy, JbirdUAH noted that Copyleft has Slashdot frisbees! Just in time for Winter! jhopson sent us a retelling of beowulf starring people you know. Lexie (who should really ask CowboyNeal out) sent us Eunuch which I'm not gonna explain, but its definitely wierd. motardo noted that Dalnet is for sale on eBay. Ant noted that Google seems to have an interesting result if you search for 'More evil than satan himself'. Speaking of evil, jsfetzik sent us Sinux the Linux for sinners. And how about Captain Zion's link to FsckU-FsckMe(tm) which is not for children, but is pretty amusing. Maybe you'll find auto.pron.org a little more wholesome. Finally, jetpack pointed us to Forum2000, which I'd never seen before, but am glad I did. It was mentioned in a comment awhile ago, and then we were assimilated. Super wierd.
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Return of the Quickies More

Return of the Quickies

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  • *perk* all 0 shares of it?
  • There is no link. I assume it's like the Crate guitar amplifier that literally is (was?) a wooden crate.

    Pretty cool, I guess.
  • whats regulatory issues of selling shares on ebay if i can just sell a company regardles???
  • "good" works equally well as "evil", but bad does not, and you can't leave out the word .

    ...day after day, love turns gray, like the skin on a dying man...
  • It's got to be one of the better hoaxes I've seen, if they'd had a spot for a credit card number wouldn't have been sure.

  • Wha? (Score:3)

    by spinkham ( 56603 ) on Friday October 22, 1999 @03:50PM (#1593640)
    That "fuck you, fuck-me" device has an eject button? Don't even wanna know ;-)
  • Yeah, the real shocker is that somebody would actually buy it. . . *rimshot*

    --
  • I think it's because of the way that Google finds winning sites. I'm sure someone can explain it better but, it's based on the theory that if enought sites link to another site it becomes an authority. If enough people a link to MS's page with the More Evil than Satan Himself near by MS becomes the authority on being more evil than Satan himself.
  • Wonderful! the quickies are back! To satisfy my quickie needs, i would go back to the previous quickies, and look at those. (Yes, i have no life). Thankyou Cmdr Taco, this is just what I needed. (Now keep 'em comming)



    -Tim
  • That's actually a good idea. I was thinking more along the lines of a BigMac carton...lol
    ---------------
  • Is Forum2000 real?

    I don't think it is - I saw one question where the guy had made a spelling mistake (he left off a letter on the last word of his question) and the system filled it in in the replies. Could be a spell checker, but a human replying would skip a mistake like that and maybe not see it at all. I'd expect a computer to misunderstand it..
  • Not only is Dalnet for sale on EBay, it's been sold, for the price of $10,000,000. Youch!

    http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIte m&item=171769565

    Could anyone tell us about the circumstances surrounding the sale? Will Dalnet remain the same under its new ownership?
    ---
  • Ok,here's my theory:
    A lot of people describe MS as evil or satan on their web pages, so it isn't that surprising that MS would show up, since this would make google think that MS is an authority on evil or satan.
    However, a search for just "evil satan" doesn't work.
    "evil more satan" works though. This is probably because the word "more" appears frequently on MS's home page, and these 3 terms together are enough to bring MS to the top of the list.

  • I think it's a hoax. Some of the threads are just too funny. If it's real, it has a better sense of humor than most real people. The site's down right now, so I can't supply a specific pointer, but the "Miss Rand, I underestimated you" thread was totally unbelievable (and hysterically funny :-). No way a computer did that. No fucking way!


    ---
  • Try: more evil than satan
    or: evil more satan

    Disney comes up 3rd and 2nd on those searches respectively... perhaps the web knows something everyone else doesn't....
  • I noticed that the Pizza box people are offering a simplified distro which works sort of like those click-on auto-setup file servers. They also offer it on a compact-flash ROM.

    This is pretty cool, but they offer the distro for download, WITH AN ACTIVATION CODE! The distro won't work without the code which can only be got by registration!

    Isn't this a violation of the GPL, since they impose a condition for availability of GPL code?
    Shouldn't someone (GENTLY) point this out to them before some asshole goes on a GPL-jihad and blows them out the water?
    No, I can't spell!
    -"Run to that wall until I tell you to stop"
    (tagadum,tagadum,tagadum .... *CRUNCH*)
    -"stop...."
  • My guess is it's a joke by the google people.

    After all even

    "More fish than satan"

    will bring up MS as the first link!

  • Re:Fsck u fsck me (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If they implemented it, it would also triple their sales -- two people, two units; three people, six units. 'Course, in the traditional wetware threesome implementations, to be of much use you would need an extra 5.25" bay some four feet from the other. First the protocol would need to be reverse-engineered, leading to a simpleminded commandline interface; shortly after that would come a KDE frontend with webcam overlay which wouldn't compile, and a couple months later a GNOME interface which would crash, inducing coitus-coredumpus, or something. No mention of a PCMCIA version -- or a drain hose on the back of the F model.
  • makes me seriously consider whether google is that good of a search engine or not. if shit like that is in there, then who's to say that it is doing crap like that all over.

  • Re:sellling dalnet vs selling shares (Score:3)

    by Rude Turnip ( 49495 ) <valuation.gmail@com> on Friday October 22, 1999 @04:54PM (#1593659)
    whats regulatory issues of selling shares on ebay if i can just sell a company regardles???

    You may be referring to the news item [slashdot.org]I had submitted yesterday.
    You can safely ignore the AC's comment about "approved forums" and the SEC wanting to control everything. The reason that guy got in trouble trying to sell stock on Ebay is because he was trying to sell unregistered shares in a company that didn't exist yet; there weren't even any disclosure [disclosure-investor.com] documents. Now, if you wanted to try to sell your 100 shares of publicly traded XYZ, Inc. on Ebay (when it was allowed on Ebay), that would be different, because there would be plenty of information available about XYZ, Inc., such as 10-Ks, news releases and analyst coverage. You don't need a tightly regulated stock market to do that since the shares of the company are "legitimate." You can even sell shares to your next door neighbor by simply recording the transfer of shares with XYZ, Inc. and your neighbor giving you $$ for your shares.

    It's hard to discuss the legalities of selling Dalnet since I don't know anything about its capital structure, ie is it an S corp, C corp, an LLC (limited liability company) or a limited partnership? Whatever it is, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that it's privately held, in which case you should hire a business valuation analyst [appraisers.org] to provide a disinterested opinion of value. Of course, we still have to look at the big picture and realize that we *are* just wasting our time talking about another crackpot auction on Ebay.
  • F2K wants "full" questions with lots of circumstantial detail, rather than simple one-liners. Not feeling very prosy tonight, I just quoted the most recent Ask Slashdot query over. In a day or two we can see how their panel of philosophers' answers measure up to our own panel of experts.

    --
    It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
  • Like an easter egg?
    My favorite was in MS Word 97... in the spell checker. If you typed in "zzzz," it would mark it as a wrong spelling, and suggest "sex" as a replacement.
  • They must make the source available to everyone who has the binaries, but they are not required to make the binaries publically available.
  • Google has a ranking system which is based on the way that the net is linked. It brings up matches, and sorts them according to its ranking.

    A lot of pages (good and bad) link to Microsoft's home page. Therefore that page has a high rating. So if it matches enough words in your query to be a match, it will be one of the first ones.

    Always.

    Now if they could just get past those duplicate pages. OK, so issue foo of The Linux Gazette matched the query. OK, everyone and his dog mirrored it. OK, I looked at it. Now can I please look at what comes next..?

    *sigh*
    Ben
  • Actually it works if you type 'more evil' or 'more satan'. Anything else you type is superfluous.
  • Indeed. If Google sees words together a lot it'll form internal connections between them. 'evil' gets seen with Microsoft a lot; a word like 'more' or 'than' which appears on MS's home site closes the deal. Also see many other well-known evil corporations, like Sun or Disney. Virtually identical results will occur for 'sucks,' 'blows,' you name it. The web has spoken...

    --neil

  • The gas in beer is carbonated and under pressure. As you can observe, it bubbles out once the can is opened due to reduction in pressure. It would go flat after a while, at which point beer would be like any other liquid, and only its thermal capacity and conductivity would matter.
  • You know... that thing could actually work. In fact, it wouldn't be *that* hard to build... [ching-ching]
  • Looking over the "Hall of Fame", it looks to me like the system works like this:

    You submit a question, and get an automatic response back from one of the "personalities" (this may or may not be always The Cube). This is probably just a random line from a text file. Then later, the person(s)/entity(ies) that run the site may add more coherent and funny responses later.

    Funny as hell, though...

    ------
  • The best part is that the code is "composed of about 11 million lines of C++ and Intercal code."

    Here's what a quick web search on "Intercal" reveals:

    "INTERCAL. The language designed to be Turing-complete but as fundamentally unlike any existing language as possible. Expressions that look like line noise. Control constracts that will make you gasp, make you laugh, and possibly make you hurl. Data structures? We don't need no steenking data structures! "

    :)

  • You can tell it's fake (Score:3)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Friday October 22, 1999 @06:42PM (#1593675)
    ...because none of the philosophers ever come back with "First Post!"

    > I get the feeling that the less intelligent (and less humorous) posts are generated by the machines, while humans handle the others (e.g. the Slashdot posts and many done by the "Crack Baby" or whatever).

    I'm inclined to agree. There was a response telling all the Slashdotters to get lost, in a context where a machine probably wouldn't have a clue that it was being slashdotted. (OTOH, /. had been mentioned in another query, so it's just possibly genuine if, for example, the machines stay "activated" for all the recent threads, rather than just the current one.)

    In general, what they're trying (pretending?) to do is not that far from what lots of other researchers are trying to do in NLP and text data digestion right now, so it may be for real after all. But my best guess is that it's a combination of "for real" and responses generated by slave^H^H^H^H^Hstudent labor.

    Possibly they are primarily interested in collecting the questions. I've participated in research meetings where we seriously aired the idea of setting up a "for entertainment" web app for the ulterior motive of capturing subtle types of NL data. Surely we weren't the only ones to think of it.


    --
    It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
  • That wasn't misspelled. Spelling checkers don't help much when you correctly spell the wrong word.

    Still funny, though.


    ...phil

  • PnP (Score:1)

    by craw ( 6958 )
    The rather interesting connections that is on display on one of the links is cute an interesting. However, this is just a more blatant and explicit display of the female and male port of a RS-232. Just imagine a small group of engineers many years ago sitting around, drinking some beers coming up with this terminology. Try explaining to your mom that this is a female plug.

    I still remember the 1st time when I realized the difference between the female and male plugs. The implications of the term, gender changer, has obviously not been realized by some ppl.:-)

    I'm not a prude, but I like subtle stuff. The male/female RS-232 plug is still the best.

    I won't elaborate about the meaning of plug and play.

  • Here's the link to the MacCrate:
    http://www.swapspace.net/crate [swapspace.net]

    I found it in the page source, it didn't go though because someone forgot to put the A in the A href= tag.

  • I just checked with Forum2000's nameserver (unnamed here, in order to give the poor guy a break). He confirms that the Forum2000 people are indeed legit students/faculty from CMU who do Weird Things. The reply was basically "Yeah I just do nameservice for them, but they're real people down at CMU who have been working on some kind of project."

    It could very well be a hoax. However, be sure to check out Andrej Bauer's site [cmu.edu] at CMU. And draw your own conclusions. It looks very thorough. If it is a hoax the hoaxers have gone to great lengths to add depth and detail. I'm still skeptical--waiting to see how the machine responds to more questions.

  • view the source, luke. it's in there. then cut and paste the url.

    cheers.
  • Now the question is, how long before someone comes out with a USB or serial "external" version?

  • Yay Andrej! [geocities.com] is an Andrej Bauer fanclub.

    So is this one [cmu.edu], simply entitled "Andrej Bauer Fan Club.

    All of the evidence seems to fit together and support non-hoaxness of Forum2000. Or but at least, somebody bothered to set up a LOT of extra crap to make it look real. Definiately more believable than FuckU/FuckMe.

    Is Andrej Bauer a mad genius? A nonperson? A pseudonym? Come on, Slashdotters, let's get to the bottom of this one!

  • Is it just me or does the Taco Bell sign look like it was digitally altered?
    Check out the "h" and the immediate surroundings. Looks fishy to me.

  • Re:You can tell it's fake (Score:3)

    by kosak ( 106052 ) on Friday October 22, 1999 @07:52PM (#1593685)
    The attention we are receiving from ./ is most welcome! We are experiencing some technical difficulties due to the vastly increased load; we appreciate your patience during this time of transition.

    We are pleased to report, however, that our recently acquired redundant parallel storage system [forum2000.org] has gone a long way to help buffer this crisis.

    We do have a special request for Slashdot readers: we would greatly appreciate it if you would restrict your postings to original questions, rather than material cut&pasted from our home page or from other sources. Repetitive, unoriginal input text tends to cause numerical instability in our NLP algorithms (performance of the FPUs in our Kryotech Athlon 900s [kryotech.com] seems to be particularly sensitive to divides by near-zero numbers)

    Thank you!

  • Not to crap on the guy who submitted that 'more evil than satan' Google search but that was part of an article I just read about Google finally coming online. I don't know whether the guy credited the original source in his post and CmdrTaco just left that out but the poster wasn't the smart-ass who thought of that.

    Just a little something in the name of poster integrity. Like the man said, 'credit your sources.'
  • Why not try this on google
    'the best os' or 'the best free sex'

    interesting results, click the link below

    The best free sex [google.com]


    The best os [google.com]

  • That is a great site, however once the ./ Tactical Linkage(TM) was engaged, the server errors started flying like gibs in a drunken deathmatch.

    A moment of silence.....
  • Oops. I mean /. not ./

    Fingers flying faster than the brain is. Situation normal.
  • Is Slashdot real?

    I don't think it is - I saw one question where the guy had made a spelling mistake (he left off a letter on the last word of his question) and the system filled it in in the replies. Could be a spell checker, but a human replying would skip a mistake like that and maybe not see it at all. I'd expect a computer to misunderstand it..

  • We need to change the quickie Icon.. (Score:4)

    by tonhe ( 35552 ) on Friday October 22, 1999 @08:33PM (#1593693)
    I vote that we change the quckie icon to something more appropriate...
    Like.. a small headshot of Jenny McCarthy or maybe Pamela Anderson...

    I dunno.. Just a though

    __
    ~/ony

  • omg,That's great.

    No ;) www.forum2000.org is NOT a C64. The telnet server just pretends to be one (very funny).

    www.forum2000.org responds to the following ports:

    • 13 daytime
    • 21 ftp
    • 23 telnet
    • 35 printing?
    • 53 dns
    • 79 finger
    • 113 auth ident tap
    • 118 nntp

    Doesn't look like a C64, eh? Whoever created this is extra cool in my book whether it's a hoax or not. Forum2000 et.al. have been enthralling me all evening.

    Has anyone looked at Andrej's Become and Objectivist in Ten Easy Steps [cmu.edu]? I'm leaning towards mad genius now; although it might be a mad genius who has set up a hoax. Very curious.

  • The F*ck You F*ck Me link doesn't belong on Slashdot. I mean, this isn't Freshmeat....
  • its all a hoax read the bid history [ebay.com] be sure to read the comments on bottom...

  • The taco bell incidentally is located right on the edge of the campus of Ohio State, here in Columbus, in fact, you can see one of the dorms in the background. While I have seen this pic quite a lot on the net, I have seen an attribute for the picture only once (and naturally, now I can't find it.)
  • Well, some of them at least. Selling Dalnet on eBay isn't anything big ... why, I bought AOL [dhs.org] on ebay last month. Ah well.

    The fufme was IMO very well put together ... it's hard to tell if it's a joke or not ... not like realhamster or luddite industries where *something* eventually gives it away

    I think they should combine forum2000 and Askjeeves, I think that would serve them well. AJ seems to have picked up more bad habits of other search engines lately, and who knows, with a moral and philosophical basis it could all be back to normal.

    I want to ask the powder puff girls complicated questions ... see how they answer. It should be an interesting nite. Thanks for the quickies!

  • I have a pizzabox computer.

    Mine says "Sun" on it, though...
  • It appears to be just some kind of UNIX/Linux/whatever system with some text strings changed. Instead of "Login:", we have "READY."; instead of "Password:", we have "10 PRINT""; instead of "Login Incorrect", we have "?Syntax error". Playing around with it for about 30 seconds, I did manage to make it say "Your kerberos account has expired.", which I don't think is quite the norm for a C64.
  • First I thought forum2000 was real. Then I decided that it was too good to be real. I decided that only "the cube" was AI controlled, and the others were some team making up witty responses. After reading some more, I decided that no individual or team could be that witty that consistantly. Humans burn out after so many questions. A machine, however, can keep chugging along indefinately (until it crashes)!
    -------------
  • Who the heck needs really, really big prime numbers when you can Forum 2000 running on your box? =)
  • http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/intercal-man/ [muppetlabs.com]

    Intercal disturbs me deeply.

  • From memory Google ranks by cataloging links to a site as votes for the site being a good source of information.

    Microsoft ranks highly for as people link to them for IE, and the "Internet" part of that ranks well. Ditto for satan, is evil, monopoly, etc...

    So black text on black background of "purple monkey dishwasher" in your webpages doesn't effect ranking much at all. How internal linking is effectively ranked though (does it have to be from a different server to be counted as a vote, or could another directory be safely counted without too much misuse of spaming the Google database?)... well, only you know.

    How about telling me, eh?
  • Yummy, new propaganda. Beautiful as always. The server seemed rather fast today, something wrong guys?

    Anyways, has anyone else found it impossible to choose between any of the tiles? I know I found the need to hack together a random background utility for wmaker...

    Jeff

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • A version that uses Apple's Airport wireless
    networking would be spiffy :)
  • Forum 2000 and Bill have destroyed Linux, apparently: http://www.forum2000.org/matrix/forum_reply?cookie =people&lm=940641941 [forum2000.org]
    Amusing.

  • Fake, or at least somewhat (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 22, 1999 @10:19PM (#1593714)
    Being a CMU student, I can say that most of what is on the main Forum 2000 page is complete bullshit. If there were a project with that kind of hardware devoted to it here at CMU, it certainly would be more than a side project. Also, while these grad students might really be trying very hard to avoid working on their thesises, writing a 11 million lines of C++ and intercal in their spare time is rather unlikely. Finally if that doesn't convince you, their master control room screenshot was lifted from an article about Linux being used for rendering in Titanic.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Regardless if it is real or not, I've gotten some pretty neat answers from the computer. (I'm sure it was the computer, a quick response (within 20 seconds) at a late hour in the night...)

    Anyway, I asked it an Analysis of Algorithms homework question, asking for big theta of a recursive algorithm. Specifically, I asked for big theta of:

    T(n) = a if n = 0 or n = 1
    T(n) = T(n-1) + T(n-2) + C*n for all other values of n

    and Evil Spock responded that it grew linearly since T(2) = 2a + 2c.

    If a computer did that, that is freakin' incredible.

  • I posted tough questions and they won't let me post anymore.
  • The 'More evil than satan himself' query was originally reported in this BeDope [bedope.com] story.

    -lx


  • There once was a fellow from Cheam
    Who invented a fucking machine
    Concave or convex
    It could fit either sex
    And was incredibly easy to clean

  • If you type in "mosaic web browser" you also get the notorious evil page.
  • My question was:

    I humbly request the wisdom of Charles Darwin

    I am vexed by the opportunity to take a job in Maui, Hawaii. Most of the population there are native islanders.
    I understand that it is a beautiful place, but I am consurned about any unusual rituals that they might have, like perhaps cannibalism. Any thoughts on if I should go or not?

    Echoes from the formless void responded with:

    The advice of Forum 2000 is ephemeral, like teardrops in rain.

    Honestly, I expected better than that... I'll check again later. ;)

  • FUFME (Score:1)

    by emmons ( 94632 )
    To all of you that wonder if fufme is a hoax or not, ask yourself this: How many people do you think there are in the world that would pay $500 to be able to fuck their computers?

    Oh, wait... maybe you shouldn't think of that.

    Perhaps a hand held USB version would be better?

    -----
  • Oh well. They do kick-ass (I now have a collection of 16 that pop up at random whenever I start X. It's great...)
  • But what the hell was it supposed to say?

    (Ok, I'm probably massively stupid. Being Swedish, I have never been near a Taco Bell sign, much less the actual place.)
    -

  • Well, it should be painfully obvious that Forum2000 is not an advanced supercomputing cluster.

    The sad/humorous/lame image I have in my mind is a loosely organized group of studends and faculty who sign up to receive incoming questions and come up with witty replies. Seems like there's an automated replier (the cube?) in addition to the humans.

    login CMU geeklab: ****
    passwd: *******

    ...blah...

    [GMT 23:13:21] There are 3 pending question(s) from Forum2000. Respond? (y/n)
    $:_

  • Shift, not Shit. :)
  • Man, that was a good one. I eventually puzzled out all the ad slogans.

    I guess that means I'm a media whore.

    --Corey
  • I would point out that running a spellchecker on the Taco Bell sign would have done /absolutely no good/.

    I absolutely can't stand people who make mistakes like that (like the university newsletter reminding everyone that fire alarms are announced over "the pubic address system") and then complaining that "waaaah, but the spellchecker didn't catch it, it's not my fault." Yo, dumbass, "pubic" is spelled perfectly correctly.

    Try using your $@!#?*@ brain instead of blindly clicking at a computer. The results can be amazing.
  • Well, that's ummm...interesting to say the least. At least it has good airflow, lol...and it looks better than the iMacs.
    ---------------

  • Me too (Score:1)

    by crayz ( 1056 )
    Mine says Mac LC III
  • I was wondering when folks would get around to this...folks, oddball responses you get from the Word spelling checker and thesaurus are NOT EASTER EGGS! For more information please see an explanatory page on www.eeggs.com [eeggs.com] for an explanation for this odd, but understandable, behavior.
  • Alcohol has a lower freezing point than water, though...so you can get it much cooler before it freezes up on you.
  • the "echoes from the formless void" page is actually their 404 page.

    for example check
    http://www.forum2000.org/matrix/forum_reply?cook ie=adfasda
    which obviously does not and never has existed.
  • I'm a regular Forum 2000 reader. There are many phrases that get repeated by the F2K 'somads' - xxx, I underestimated you is one of them. Granted, they are used to great comic effect.

    --
  • What I wouldn't give to have you guys fess up to whether F2K is real or not. I am a regular reader, and most of the posts are funny as hell (Barbie and Einstein have to be my two favorites), and I wish that computers were generating these responses, but my intuition tells me that humans are doing it all... Damn.
  • It locked me out when I asked a question about an MP3 the forum said it "created." In actuality, the MP3 was "stolen" from a real, live group of human composers. :(

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