X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Date:         Tue, 1 Sep 92 15:05:05 EDT
From:         David Sewell <dsew@TROI.CC.ROCHESTER.EDU>
Subject:      the Oracle on NB4
Comments: To: Nota Bene List <NOTABENE@taunivm.tau.ac.il>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.notabene

Since I believe in the therapeutic value of humor, I sent a question
about NB4 to the Usenet Oracle.  (The Oracle is in reality a mail server
at Indiana U. to which you send questions that are forwarded to
anonymous Incranations of the Oracle who answer them.  Together the
question and answer makes an Oracularity, the best of which are posted
to the Usenet group rec.humor.oracle.)

The response is not encouraging, but then the Oracle is fallible once
every Great Year or so...
=====

From oracle@moose.cs.indiana.edu  Tue Sep  1 12:17:23 1992
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 11:17:20 -0500
From: "The Usenet Oracle" <oracle@moose.cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: The Oracle replies!

The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

> Oh great Usenet Oracle, I am but a drudge among drudges, an untenured
> assistant professor of history who is ordinarily too shy to lift
> her head above shoe level when confronted by an eligible male, much
> less dare to address the Platonic Idea of male power and wisdom, but my
> need is desperate and my question urgent.
>
> My Department is voting on my tenure this fall, and I have to complete
> my book manuscript, a revision of my dissertation on barn-raising
> rituals in the Susquehanna Valley from 1860-1880.  I have been using
> Nota Bene as my word processor since graduate school, and I was planning
> to write my completed ms. using Nota Bene 4, which was promised for
> release several months ago, or maybe years ago, it's hard to remember.
> (All I know is I sent NB my $100 upgrade fee a year ago.)  But the
> release date keeps getting pushed back and back and back, until I feel
> like I'm in a Stephen King novel or something, and I'll NEVER get 4.0,
> and I'll be too depressed to finish my book, and I won't get tenure, and
> no one will ever want to marry me, and my mother will keep saying "I
> told you to go to med school"...  Sorry, O Oracle, I'll try to get a
> grip.  My question, of course, is: will NB 4 ever be released, and
> what's with those Nota Bene folk, anyway?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Ah, humble supplicant, this is indeed a question of great import and
} complexity, for even I, The Usenet Oracle, have a difficult time deciphering
} the ways of software companies.  First, let me allay your fears: NB 4 *will*
} be released, however, it will not be for another 40-50 years, in which case
} no one will care and you will be living a life of utter destitution amongst
} the very squalor of the city streets, unable to do anything except mutter
} rambling dialogues about barns to imaginary puffins, if in fact you live that
} long.  Sorry.  It is a cosmic law that the release date of any software is
} always delayed by a factor equal to the cube of its urgency and necessity.
} Useless programs are written all the time all around the world -- countless
} Computer Science students have written countless incarnations of the dreaded
} "Hello World" program for example -- and yet it is the _useful_ software that
} takes the longest.  My advice to you is to encourage all your friends to
} try and believe that NB 4 is dreadfully _useless_, that you Really Don't Need
} Tenure or Any Sort of Financial Stability, and that you were actually glad
} to get rid of that 100 bucks.  By countering the Cosmic Law of Inevitable
} Software Release Delays with a little down-home negative thinking, you may in
} fact reverse the effects and cause the program to be complete, oh say, right
} before the university fires you.  But don't count on it.
}
} As for your man troubles, try lifting your head above shoe-level.  It'll
} improve your posture, and every man appreciates really good posture.  Just
} ask your mother.
}
} You owe the Oracle a signed copy of "Carrie."
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU