HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jgd@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (John G Dobnick)
Subject: Bogosort
Originator: jgd@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
Reply-To: jgd@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
Organization: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 01:26:09 GMT

I've seen a number of references to "Bogosort", which I'm happy (:-)) to
say, I've never heard of before.   (And, it's _not_ in The Reference
(Knuth, vol 3), either.)

Can someone point me at a source of information about, or a statement of,
this algorithm?   FTPable information preferred, but I'll take what
I can get. 

Thanks,
-- 
John G Dobnick                          ATTnet: (414) 229-5727
Computing Services Division             INTERNET: jgd@uwm.edu
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee     UUCP: uunet!uwm!jgd

"Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation,
and is thus a source of civilized delight."  -- William Safire
From: bob@kc2wz.bubble.org (Bob Billson)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Your co-worker may be an alien
Summary: uh oh!
Date: 17 Aug 92 22:30:28 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Color Computer 3: Tandy's 'game' machine

maynard@esther.msc.cornell.edu (Maynard J. Handley) says:
>
>>Actually the great leader was very upset to learn about the article and have
>>our cov...er...forget you heard that earthma...er..what I mean to say is *IF*
>>the list was true, I'll bet *IF* there was a great leader he/she/(it) would
>>be very angry our...er..the aliens cover was blown.
>
>One wonders- if the aliens talk this way, maybe George Bush is one of
>them!

Damn!  We've been discovered!!
>Maynard Handley
-- 
  Bob Billson, KC2WZ                          | internet: bob@kc2wz.bubble.org
                                              |           kc2wz@amsat.org
  $nail:  21 Bates Way,  Westfield, NJ 07090  | uucp:     ...!uunet!kc2wz!bob
                  C code.  C code run.  Run code run...<please!>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.edu,comp.human-factors,comp.misc,comp.programming
From: Michael Chui <mchui@spinner.cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: Indentation
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 17:46:46 -0500

In article <1992Aug14.175408.3096@bnrmtl.bnr.ca> patrick@bnr.ca writes:
>In article <1992Aug14.170444.1576@tandem.com>, tvv@tandem.com (Tom Van Vleck) writes:
>|BTI computer systems had an implementation language called DRAGON, in
>|which the indentation WAS the loop/if scope indicator.  Pat Helland
>|worked on the language there and told me about it after he left.
>
>An interesting idea.
>Does anyone know how well this worked in practice?

	While teaching introductory programming in Pascal, I often found
that students would assume that "proper indentation" would provide the
"proper context," for statements in the body of a loop, etc., rather than
the more syntactically relevant BEGIN-END pairs.
	Lesson relearned (again): If you go to the trouble to present
good examples (well-indented code), then your students will find a
way to learn a different lesson than the one you intended.

Michael Chui
mchui@cs.indiana.edu

PS: The "programming environment" of the product Dr. Pascal leaves much to
be desired.  E.g. The Dr. Pascal editor, by default, makes all of the
procedure and function definitions *invisible*, and requires you to explicitly
edit each one separately.  Not recommended.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine)
Subject: Re: Copy of Ritchie's "Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite..."?
Organization: I.E.C.C.
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 04:50:58 GMT

In article <3304@creatures.cs.vt.edu> you write:
>Does somebody out there have a copy of this?

No, but I have a copy of Kernighan's "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite
Programming Language" dated July 1981.  It's CSTR 100, and is probably
still there for FTP at research.att.com.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|world}!iecc!johnl
From: phil@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Phil Gustafson)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Fantasy Graphics System
Keywords: been there done that
Date: 15 Aug 92 17:23:22 GMT
Organization: Famed Parquet Floor

In article <millernw.713536416@craft.camp.clarkson.edu> millernw@craft.camp.clarkson.edu (Neal Miller) writes:
>	Working with a friend on my 386-33 (w/387) with the new Persistence
>of Vision (POV) raytracer, we came up with an incredibly nice, although
>not very practical, system that would allow 3-D raytrace animations WHILE
>rendering the images on the fly (instead of having them pre-calculated).
>Simple...  Each pixel on the screen would be driven by its own high-speed
>CPU, and... well, ok this isn't the most economical way of building such a 
>system, but it *is* nice to think about.  Maybe it'll be out in two years,
>now that I've sent up this posting. :)

See _Fast Constructive Solid Geometry Display in the Pixel-Powers Graphics
System_, Goldfeather et. al., _Computer Graphics_ V20 N4, SIGGRAPH 1986.

The system (which they showed in a room in the basement) had one processor
per pixel and could render like a sumbitch.  The processors do not seem
particularly useful for raytracing, though.

Phil "Gee, that guy al. writes a whole lot of papers" Gustafson
-- 
|play: phil@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG; {ames|pyramid|vsi1}!zorch!phil                |
|work: (Under Construction)              | Phil Gustafson                   |
| "Never give up!  Never!  Never!  Never!"                                  |
|                                          H. Ross Perot, 1992              |
From: mzraly@ra.cs.umb.edu (Michael S. Zraly)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Copy of Ritchie's "Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite..."?
Date: 21 Aug 92 03:29:12 GMT
Organization: UMass/Boston Dept. of Math & CS

alanlb@bethesda.cs.vt.edu (Alan L. Batongbacal) writes:
>Does somebody out there have a copy of this?
>
>alan l. batongbacal
>alanlb@csgrad.cs.vt.edu

Actually it's Kernighan who wrote that, and you can FTP a compressed
Postscript version from research.att.com, in the directory
netlib/research/cstr.  The file name is 100.Z.

Perhaps someone should make a list of publicly available documents
about programming, and how to get them?

-- Mike



-- 
Mike Zraly		An effective way to deal with predators
mzraly@cs.umb.edu	is to taste terrible.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon)
Subject: Re: Phone `boxes' (was Re: Hacker Test)
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 07:45:44 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix & Internet, NYC

In article <081092220220kafka@desert.hacktic.nl> kafka@desert.hacktic.nl writes:
>       To place a call to Russia, other than going through IOCC, one
>     might try to contact some sort of Inward somewhere, like
>     Yugoslavia (Karl Marx's suggestion), or maybe East Germany.  to
>     begin with, call rate & route for the IOTC routing (say you are
>     on cordboard) for inward in Yugoslavia.  She'll say something
>     like "038 plus blah-blah-blah" so you would box kp+011+038+st,
>     wait for Int'l tone, then dial kp+0+38+blah blah blah+121+st.
>     That should get you Inward, Yugoslavia, who speaks little or no
>     English and is at best unpleasant to deal with.

Unfortunately, I believe that this is prohibited by treaty, and (to the best
of my knowledge) one that, even if you can find someone who speaks an
appropriate language, is fairly well enforced.  (Or was, last I heard of anyone
having occasion to try this, which was a long long time ago to the point where
time and physical distance make it seem like a whole different life.)  German
never got us anywhere, nor did some fairly competent speakers of Slavic tongues
to help out...


Whew!  What a blast from the past.  I don't think there are good odds of
_anything_ mentioned in any of those articles working anymore, most places.
The whole thing looks real old... "Bell System?  What's that?"
-- 
Thor Lancelot Simon	 tls@panix.COM
  "Oh, you have wounded me!  I have very few prejudices, actually.  The
biggest problem is that I am intolerant of fools.  That is why I have
such a low tolerance level for Libertarians."  -- Jim McMaster
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon)
Subject: Re: Non Unix-OS's
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 07:49:25 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix & Internet, NYC
Keywords: CP/M, MP/M, Onyx, OS-9, Z-80, 6809

In article <41062@skye.dcs.ed.ac.uk> s.telford@ed.ac.uk (Scott Telford) writes:
>In article <1992Aug7.234604.2810@regina.cs.uregina.ca>,
>bayko@hercules.cs.uregina.ca (J. Bayko) writes:
>
>
>>     Anyone know what became of CP/M and Onyx?
>> 
>
>CP/M (3.0) is alive and well and still being shipped with Amstrad
>PCW-series "wordprocessors" (Z80A + 256/512k RAM + 3.5" floppy +
>crappy DM/daisy printer + CP/M + crappy wp software).

If they still sell the Commodore 128 (and somehow I bet they do...) then CP/M
3.0 is still shipping on what I believe is its original platform.  Why CP/M,
I will always wonder.  Why didn't they use an 8088 and DOS instead, for God's
sake?

Saw an advertisement for an Apple II Z80 board a long time back that alleged to
run CP/M 4.0.  Anyone ever actually use it?

-- 
Thor Lancelot Simon	 tls@panix.COM
  "Oh, you have wounded me!  I have very few prejudices, actually.  The
biggest problem is that I am intolerant of fools.  That is why I have
such a low tolerance level for Libertarians."  -- Jim McMaster
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: john@mullet.gu.uwa.edu.au (John West)
Subject: Re: Computers killing people? (WAS Re: 9 track data storage???)
Organization: University Computer Club --- Perth, Western Australia
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 04:00:15 GMT

lbd@cbnews.cb.att.com (linda.b.dunlap) writes:

>I remember hearing a rumor that printers sent to Iraq were programmed to
>upload (something) into radar installations to give erroneous data.

>First, is it possible?  Second, anyone else heard such a thing?

I believe it is possible, given the right sort of printer and the right sort
of computer, but it is incredibly unlikely. Also, this story is not true. It
originated in an article in some newspaper or techincal journal or something
in early April. Like around the 1st of April. The original article was quite
obviously a joke (to people who knew anything about the subject), but then a
journalist or someone was writing a book about a year after the event, found
this article, and didn't see the joke. So the story got published (as a true
story). Newspapers saw this, thought it was a great story, and spread it.
It never happened. It was a joke.

John West
(don't you love it when the ends of your lines line up like that?)
-- 
For the humour impaired: Insert a :-) after every third word
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: jsr@dexter.mi.org (Jay S. Rouman)
Subject: What has AI done for me lately?
Organization: Private System, Mt. Pleasant, MI, USA
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 14:54:17 GMT

I know that pure research should not have a bottom line, but the
artificial intelligence projects at MIT and Stanford loom so large in
computer folklore that it's hard to avoid wondering what the practical
impact has been.  Certainly Symbolics is a spinoff of that effort, but
beyond building LISP-based machines, I'm not sure how closely even
their technology is tied to AI.  There are some expert systems in use,
particularly in the medical field, but do lots of doctors really use
them on a daily basis?  The PBS series "The Machine that Changed the
World" left one with the impression that AI was in deep trouble and if
the field didn't pull a rabbit out of the hat Real Soon Now it was
going to dry up and vanish.  This may not be the right forum for this
question, but asking in the ai groups would likely produce a religious
response instead of an honest appraisal of the situation.  I'm really
curious about this.
-- 
Jay S. Rouman  (jsr@dexter.mi.org)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: hollombe@polymath.tti.com (The Polymath)
Subject: Re: Computers killing people?  (WAS Re: 9 track data storage???)
Organization: The Cat Factory
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 01:11:10 GMT

In article <1400@newsserver.cs.uwindsor.ca> oliver@cs.uwindsor.ca (Timothy Oliver) writes:
}In article <1992Aug12.163016.11684@cbnews.cb.att.com> lbd@cbnews.cb.att.com (linda.b.dunlap) writes:
}>
}>I remember hearing a rumor that printers sent to Iraq were programmed to
}>upload (something) into radar installations to give erroneous data.
}>
}>First, is it possible?  Second, anyone else heard such a thing?
}
}
}No, it is NOT possible.  There are not data lines that go FROM the
}printer TO the computer. The only line that go to the computer 
}are status lines (in a PARELLEL port).
}
}With a SERIAL port, maybe. But very unlikely. Few printers have
}the transmit data line hooked up. But any signal that comes in though
}the serial port MUST be read by a programme and any programme that
}writes to a serial printer will reject anything other than the paper out
}signal, pinter not ready signal, etc.

Maybe on a plain, dumb printer but ...

If you've got an "intelligent" printer that's hooked up to a network and
has it's own network address, what's to keep it from injecting packets
into the data flow (assuming it was modified to do so)?

The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, M.A., CDP, aka: hollombe@polymath.tti.com)
Head Robot Wrangler at Citicorp                   Turn the rascals out!
3100 Ocean Park Blvd.   (310) 450-9111, x2483     No incumbents in '92!
Santa Monica, CA  90405
From: grog@adagio.UUCP (Greg Lehey)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Non Unix-os's
Date: 20 Aug 92 09:31:29 GMT
Organization: LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, W-6324 Feldatal, Germany

In article <714209428.F00001@tdkt.kksys.com> ddb@tdkt.kksys.com (David Dyer-Bennet) writes:
> TB> wasn't better.  Remember CP/M 3.0 can deal with 1.0 Megabytes of
> TB> memory, and DOS (all versions) can only deal with 640K.  
>
>This turns out not to be the case (the part about DOS).  The DEC
>Rainbow, for example, could run MS-DOS with 896K of memory.  (Yes,
>this is a nit).

My original copy of 86/DOS 1.0 would run a full 1024K less the 8K BIOS
chip on my Seattle Computer Products S-100 system. The restrictions in
MS-DOS, such as they were, were introduced later to support an
architecture designed by people who didn't understand history.
-- 
Greg Lehey                       | Tel: +49-6637-1488              
LEMIS                            | Fax: +49-6637-1489
Schellnhausen 2, W-6324 Feldatal, Germany
*** NOTE ***: Headers are mangled - reply to grog%lemis@Germany.EU.net
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:12458 comp.arch:8859 comp.benchmarks:1295
From: bobmon@sandshark.cs.indiana.edu (Bob Montante)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch,comp.benchmarks
Subject: Re: 4 colors (was dinosaur horsepower)
Date: 12 Aug 92 18:11:04 GMT
Organization: dyskaryotic

mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (J. D. McDonald) <mcdonald.199@aries.scs.uiuc.edu> :
| 
| Overloaded is one way to put it. Another way is "roadblocked". Running
| on those things was a horrible pain, for which I will never forgive
| either IBM or the people who controlled them. One submitted "jobs"
| to them that had to specify maximum amounts of memory to be used (no problem
| for my jobs) and **maximum possible** times. This was a **BIG** problem!!

In those days some academic programmers debugged code by almost-haphazard
alterations, and detected infinite loops ex post facto, too...  on systems
whose biggest paying customers just wanted to rerun lots of largish but
predictable programs like payrolls that had priority to the management...

I think IBM's process control was a bit more friendly by, say, the late 70's
(so, what's a decade or so amongst customer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfriends?  :-)
From: dbriggs@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Daniel Briggs)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: You know you've been hacking too long.
Date: 14 Aug 92 15:33:57 GMT
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro NM

In article <1992Aug13.154430.5880@nrao.edu>
  cflatter@nrao.edu writes:
>This seems to be a demonstration that red and blue light are focussed at
>different depths by a lens.  This applies to the lens in the human eye as
>well as Bill's glasses: hence the design principle against using bright
>primary colours in near proximity on a computer display (the eye has to
>continually shift focus between the two colours which can lead to eyestrain
>after prolonged use).

What does primary colors have to do with it?  I'd think that you would want
to minimize the wavelength difference between colors in near proximity.

-- 
| Daniel Briggs  (dbriggs@nrao.edu)                      |        USPA B-14993
| New Mexico Tech / National Radio Astronomy Observatory |            DoD #387
| P.O. Box O / Socorro, NM 87801   (505) 835-7391        |
Support the League for Programming Freedom  (info from league@prep.ai.mit.edu)
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:12862 comp.unix.misc:3325
From: bjj@ecl.psu.edu (Bryan J. Jensen)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: The need for an assembler (was: Favorite CPU)
Date: 21 Aug 92 02:40:39 EDT
Organization: Engineering Computer Lab, Pennsylvania State University

I'm ready to write a software package for VMS that involves
multiple multi-user servers.  I need to choose a language.
Available languages are assembly, C, FORTRAN, PASCAL, and BASIC.

I think the best choice is assembly language since the algorithm
can't be expressed directly in C.  Here's why.

I have three choices to get the multi-user capability.

 Performance is too bad for #1.

 Code is excessively complex for #2.

 The last option works pretty good, however, it can only
 be implemented in assembly language.

Options are:

1)  Create a new process for each thread.  Under VMS, this is
    very slow (several seconds on a slow day).  This would be
    a pain in the final product.  In addition, some servers have
    to be a single process (a limitation of DEC's TCP/IP).

2)  Drive all the code off AST's (software interrupts).  VMS does
    well at this, however, the code can be real hard to read.

3)  Implement a threaded process.  This can be relatively trivial.
    Mostly it involves a tiny schedular and multiple stacks.
    However, last time I tried creating a new stack under VMS,
    VMS (especially the debugger) got hopelessly confused.
    I could still do this in assembly language by using some other
    register as stack pointer.
From: bryan@wupost.wustl.edu (bryan o'connor)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: What I learned in DC.
Date: 17 Aug 1992 00:36:51 -0500
Organization: Washington University in Saint Louis, MO USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: wupost.wustl.edu

1. The Commodore 64 was based on the Intel 8080 chip.
2. The book "Hackers" by Steven Levy is classified as 'True Crime'

References:
1. The Smithsonion "Information Age" exhibit at the National Museum of
   American History.
2. A DC B.Dalton bookseller.

Pshaw.
--bryan
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.religion.computers
From: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Hunk)
Subject: Re: Good source code to read?
Organization: Computing Services Division, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 01:04:44 GMT

In article <NEERI.92Aug10011245@iis.ethz.ch> neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher) writes:
>- Proving that two programs produce identical output given identical inputs
>  seems to be equivalent to solving the halting problem (even if the programs
>  are written in assembler :-), so I don't really see what advantage assembler
>  provides.

No it's not.  And in fact, especially if they are written in assembler, there
is a purely mathematical function that will determine the equivalence or
inequivalence of any two programs written on the machine in question.

The Halting problem related to Turing Machines, and there is no such thing as
a Turing Machine.
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:12899 alt.folklore.science:3089
From: rice@enterprise.Berkeley.EDU (Daniel S. Rice)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.folklore.science
Subject: Re: LED's and special effects
Date: 22 Aug 1992 05:15:10 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: alt
NNTP-Posting-Host: enterprise.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Aug21.193516.15833@doug.cae.wisc.edu> kolstad@cae.wisc.edu
(Joel Kolstad) writes:
>In article <BETSYS.92Aug21180139@ra.cs.umb.edu> betsys@cs.umb.edu (Elizabeth
Schwartz) writes:
[She describes a stationary LED strip which paints messages which can be
seen by moving one's head rapidly.]
>Nifty trick.  Not too horribly useful, though. :-)  Sears used to sell a
>long sword like device that worked just like this -- except that the idea
>was to swing the sword through the air, instead of your head.

	The neat thing about the stationary display is that the viewers are
left with the impression of having just seen a regular LED sign out of the
corners of their eyes.  It can take quite a while to identify this phantom
sign as the single vertical strip of LEDs, which will usually be pulsing
to rapidly for any patterns to be detected.

						Dan
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: phz@cadence.com (Pete Zakel)
Subject: Re: Computer relics
Organization: Cadence Design Systems
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 20:15:35 GMT

In article <3356.168.uupcb@ssr.com> dick.zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com (Dick Zeitlin)  writes:
>JGD> .Anyone remember the 90 column card?  With the round holes?  In
>   > .two rows of 45 characters per card?  And who used this format?
>
>You're referring, of course, to Uniquack.  Who used 'em?  Not enough
>people to keep them viable.  The longest hold-out that I'm aware of was
>the New Jersey Turnpike.  They used 'em for toll tickets long after
>anyone else that I had contact with...
>
>But why did IBM use the 80 column format for their cards??

Actually, IBM used the 96-column cards, too, on some of the System/3 machines.
The one I operated (back before I became a programmer) used an MFCU to read/
sort/punch/stack the cards (MFCU stands for Multi-Function Card Unit - the
96-column analog to the MFCM or Multi-Function Card Machine -- a/k/a Card
Masher or Cookie Masher, make up your own meaning for MF... B^).

I just noticed I said 96 column instead of 90 column -- and I think it WAS
96 column, too.  Or is my brain addled?

As far as "why 80 columns" -- isn't that a direct result of 80 columns being
a standard width typewriter (or teletype?) line?

-Pete Zakel
 (phz@cadence.com or ..!uunet!cadence!phz)

If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to invent it.
From: kimcm@login.dkuug.dk (Kim Chr. Madsen)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Smoking near a computer
Date: 13 Aug 92 14:34:15 GMT

codrus@glia.biostr.washington.edu (Ian McCloghrie) writes:

>	It gives the expensive programmers and operators lung cancer, thus
>causing the university/company insurance program to have to pay
>medical bills... :)

Bahh !!!
If we should follow this logic, we should ration the amount of coffee per day
do max. nn centiliters, no junk-food -- hey there's a new salad bar down the
corner, boss can I use that? Nope, their dressing contains cholesterol in excess
of what our "fit-for-expensive-personel" positive list describes!

							Kim C(ough)hr. Madsen
From: dick.zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com (Dick Zeitlin) 
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: The need for an assem
Date: 20 Aug 92 19:06:00 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Advanced Computer Concepts BBS, New Rochelle, NY 914-654-1981
Reply-To: dick.zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com (Dick Zeitlin) 

   > .have a clue... I could come up with that many personal friends who have d
   > .enough real work with but a moment's reflection. So could you, if you qui
   > .hanging around in academia and checked out a few real-time shops.

Don't rule out academia so quickly.  I spent many an hour debugging
code by staring at a FORTRAN source listing while stepping through the
CDC-1604 code at the console.  I'm not unique, either.  That sort of
thing was the norm in our shop, and with most of our associates.

        D/

 * OLX 2.2 * Dick.Zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com
                                                                               
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers