HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: 528010@llnl.gov (Mark Levinson)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: Learn To spell Before You POST Your Ignoran
Date: 14 Dec 92 23:41:09 GMT
Reply-To: 528010@llnl.gov
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Lab

Help,

     I have been using Emacs for about 1.5 years now and I think it is the coolest software in
existence. Lately I have been logging into my Sun WS from home and using emacs in character
mode. I wanted to be able to read the USENET news from emacs. I know about rnews and I 
don't know how to get it to work. I use M-x rnews and it always shows my subscribed news 
groups flashing by and  then says No news is good news but I should have some news! I have
set an environment variabe NNTPSERVER to the proper host. What else shold I do to be 
able to use news from emacs.

Thanks in advance,

---


 Mark Levinson                               Internet:    markl@llnl.gov
 Lawrence Livermore National Lab             PacBell Net: (510) 422-1794
--------------------------------------------------------------
From: johnf@Auspex.COM (John Fereira)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: Alarm clocks & Guns 'n Roses
Date: 17 Dec 92 01:06:31 GMT
Organization: Auspex Systems, Inc.

>I am a night person.  I do not enjoy mornings, and can
>quite easily disable all three alarm clocks and never notice. 

Do what I do.  Set your radio alarm clock to the local country western
station.  Chances are, four out of five days a week the alarm will off
and "Achey Breaky Heart" will be playing.  You will instantly become
seriously nauseated and will find it difficult to fall asleep as a result.

-- 
+==========================================================================+
| John Fereira        | Auspex Systems | "Ask me about my vow of silence." |
| johnf@auspex.com    | Santa Clara CA |                                   |
+==========================================================================+
From: adam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Adam Hamilton)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Paper sizes
Keywords: paper
Date: 17 Dec 92 11:40:33 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

Peeve:	Fax sheets that don't fit the copier sheet feed being 2 cms too long.
Peeve:	Designers that don't think of these things (actually this is the same
	peeve but I don't care).
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
From: ataylor@nmsu.edu (Nosy)
Subject: Re: Can you please change the name?
Followup-To: alt.stupidity,alt.peeves
Organization: NMSU Computer Science
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 20:51:32 GMT


Found in alt.religion.santaism (yes, SANTAism) this gem of
boneheadedness:


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
In article <1992Dec13.222319.13265@news.columbia.edu> krim@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Karl Rim) writes:

  Hello all, seasons greetings and all that.
  I may have absolutely no right to say this considering I will probably
  never read or post her again but when the group got created
  I was asked if I wanted to subscribe to alt.religion.santaism.

  First of all, the name was way too close to saTaNism for me.
  My first reaction was to freak and wonder what the heck was going on.
  Of course when I read a couple of the articles I finally realized my mistake.

  However I personally feel that the name brings too much of a bad 
  connotation and may even turn away new readers who may have made the
  same mistake as I did.  How about just alt.religion.santa-claus or
  something to that effect.

  Thank you for just hearing me out.
  Please, no flames, not during this time of year and more importantly
  not because we have finals to take.
  I just wanted to point out my opinion and not start some silly
  new thread or flame war.
  Besides, I really don't find the subject of santa claus too interesting
  and will probably never read this group again.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


ObPeeeve: this log-headed dweeb probably won't get NEARLY the
	  flame-grief he deserves...

Newsgroups: alt.peeves
From: alex@vmars.tuwien.ac.at (Alexander Vrchoticky)
Subject: Re: Shit-for-brains grad students
Organization: Technical University Vienna, Dept. for Realtime Systems, AUSTRIA
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 17:54:38 GMT

dourish@EuroPARC.Xerox.COM (Paul Dourish) explains how he deals with 
clueless grad students pestering him for pointers to relevant literature:

>The latest strategy, of course, is to collect together some of the
>earliest, flakiest and most widely discredited work in the field, and
>send it to them with a cover note saying how it's really wonderful,
>seminal, state-of-the-art work and I'm sure that it's a fine starting
>point for their research.

fuck you, paul. i am currently refereeing some papers, and i suspect
that if it wasn't for this technique, some of those papers would
never have come into existence.

over the years i've read a number of papers that had the following in 
common: they were all well-written and well-presented, none of them 
contained any gross errors or inconsistencies, and none
of them had any relevance what-so-ever to the world most of us live in.

mind you, i'm not talking about papers where we have no use for 
the results yet; i wouldn't object to that. i'm talking about papers 
having results that are *guaranteed* to be useless for all eternity, 
simply because the authors start from `simplified' (read: false) assumptions. 

ah, the academic world, where art and science meet:
it's science to solve problems, but it is art to create problems
that can be solved. to hell with this kind of intellectual masturbation.

-alex

-- 
Alexander Vrchoticky             alex@vmars.tuwien.ac.at
TU Vienna, CS/Real-Time Systems  +43/1/58801-8168
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
From: mueller@iwf.mabp.ethz.ch (Mueller Beat)
Subject: movie peeve
Organization: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, CH
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 07:41:08 GMT

there are lots of specific movie peeves, but the very movie peeve itself
is forgotten mostly. 'film music' --- brrr. consider an average movie
which you would like to some extent.

an then comes this syrupy, seedy sauce which covers every positive aspect
of the flick. most musical scores are worst third hand recycled stuff
from the dump; leftovers of vapid composers who are, for their good luck,
already dead.

additionally the audience is exspected to be dumb. the scores are composed
that way that even the most brain-dead person would notice what kind of
scene is to come :

violins         : love scene
trumpets        : danger!!!!!!!
fagot           : funny event

and so on, ad nauseam.

i can remind two exceptions : 'eraserhead' by david lynch and 'the texas
chain-saw massacre' by tobe hooper. their score is merely carpet of white
and grey noise. sort of !peeve.

zosh
From: geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: More nomenclature (was Bleeding heart
Followup-To: alt.peeves
Date: 16 Dec 1992 01:11:49 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Menlo Park, Ca.
Distribution: world
Reply-To: geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: purplehaze.corp.sun.com



johnf@Auspex.COM (John Fereira) writes:


>I wonder how many people remember that the Stanford Cardinal haven't 
>always been called the Stanford Cardinal.  


Probably not very many, considering that the mascot was changed, what, 
all of five years ago, ten tops?


Geoff


-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Geoff Miller			+ + + + + + + +        Sun Microsystems
geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM	+ + + + + + + +     Menlo Park, California
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Newsgroups: alt.peeves
From: bberbeni@nyx.cs.du.edu (Bill Berbenich)
Subject: Re: The Eyes Are Everywhere
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 20:05:13 GMT

In <29518@castle.ed.ac.uk> jeremy@castle.ed.ac.uk (Jeremy Henderson) writes:

>TrulyUniversalPeeve: Going to the doctors - by the time you've gotten
>around to finding a time to go to the doctor,  whatever was wrong with
>you has cleared up.

I suspect that's the way it will be here in the U.S. of fuckin' A in the
coming years if the Clintonazis get their way.  That is with the exception
that by the time the doctor is able to see you, the ailment will have
either cleared up, gone dormant, or gone underground - or you will have
been to the already overcrowded Emergency Room.

Like the V.A., like military medical and dental care?  You'll LOVE the
new U.S. national health care plan!  Tour your local V.A. hospital to
see what can and will happen.  You're a taxpayer, you're entitled to
see how your money is being spent in that case.  Why should we expect
better when it goes coast-to-coast?

Just a minor rant, mind you, but an apropos one.  But enough politics for
now.  It saps one's karma.
Newsgroups: alt.peeves,alt.angst
From: machala@spdc.ti.com (King Mosher)
Subject: Re: Fuck Christmas
Organization: Texas Instruments
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 16:10:59 GMT

banta@abingdon.Eng.Sun.COM (242 lbs before cooking) writes:


>Peeve: Seemingly reasonable people that procreate and can no longer
>view anything from other than a parental point of view.  Christmas is
>a commercial cluster fuck.  That some fat, scruffy hobo with lousy
>fashion sense make your kids happy concerns me.

>drew
>banta@abingdon.sun.com

Peeve: Really stupid dickheads like you who think they know it all.

--
              Beer - It's not just for breakfast anymore.

Chuck Machala - Semiconductor Process and Design Center - Texas Instruments
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
From: rickg@netcom.com (Rick Gordon)
Subject: Re: The dog ate my homework
Followup-To: alt.peeves
Organization: Netcom - SF Bay, Cal Northifornia
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 15:42:04 GMT

In article <Bz8yMu.7KC@dcs.ed.ac.uk> Paul Crowley writes:

>Quoting rickg@netcom.com (Rick Gordon) in article <1992Dec11.182749.8132@netcom.com>:
>>One of the very few socially redeeming features of computers
>>is that they never, never "mess up".
>
>Of course, your entire networked file system can disappear piece by
>piece at around seven on Friday evening when you have more deadlines
>than you can think of all at once coming up the next week and you *know*
>that no-one will fix it until Monday morning.

And if you're willing to ascribe this satanic behavior to "the computer",
rather than to the maldesigned software which goes all cannibalistic when
the Moon is in the Seventh House (or whatever your local equivalent is),
you're more charitable toward slackjawed codemongers than I.

ObPeeve: Flying to BigDee for three days and having nothing to do there
but work.  Maybe I can bring home a coffee cup with a picture of The
Grassy Knoll on it.

>\/ o\ Paul Crowley pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk \\ //

-- 
Rick Gordon      | "Loud is good." 
rickg@netcom.com |   -- Frank Loesser 
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
From: drieux@wetware.com (drieux, just drieux)
Subject: I want to grow up and be a manager
Organization: Castle WetWare Philosopher and Sniper
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 21:11:12 GMT


WARNING: this post may contain both technical and Inflamatory Language.

Recently, as a part of the traditional annual Xmas Shutdown
a MangementDroid came to the conclusion that we had something
like 100 tapes available to do backups on <HOST> and hence that
we absolutely had to label some 500 more tapes.

What is most confusing to me is that this MangementDroid 
seems able to develop specific numbers without doing
any form of preliminary analysis, or making enquires
with those persons technically competent to actually
provide specific numbers.

It took me a whole Whopping 7.35 minutes to ask one of
my posse to get me those specific numbers to establish
that the MangementDroid was Several Letters Short of a Klue.

Would shooting this MangementDroid be considered
'discharge of a firearm into a public nusance'?

or

'a waste of good ammunition'?


ciao
drieux

ps: I do not mind the general Omniscience Requirement
needed to be a MangementDroid - but I would prefer that
they limited their Use of it to facts in this REALITY!!!!



-- 
Modern Day Problems:
Analysis Standards Supporting HeteroDyne Orthoganal Linear Enhancement Systems
ASSHOLES The Model of the Modern Major Manager's Mangement Tool! 
Posix Compliant, Xwindow InterOperable, A Unix Standard!
From: donb@igor.tamri.com (Don Baldwin)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: A Definite Not-Peeve, involves money
Date: 17 Dec 92 20:23:00 GMT
Organization: TOSHIBA America MRI, South San Francisco, CA

In article <1992Dec17.042804.15837@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> bberbeni@nyx.cs.du.edu
(Bill Berbenich) writes:
>There is a definite Not-Peeve/Anti-Peeve coming down the pike and it involves
>a substantial chunk of change (money, for the jargonally-impaired).  No hints
>yet, but it looks big.  BIG big.
>
>Details as they become known, but there are no acts of perversion involved
>in this thing as far as I know (or can recall).
>
>Life is definitely good!  I am so excited I can hardly stand it.
>xxxFx.fkl
>CARRIER LOST

You know, these cheery messages from Bill B are really starting to worry
me.  What if he's being held hostage by crazed Basque separatists, who
are forcing him to send out these phoney messages...

   don "oswald was framed"(tm) baldwin

   first-name "quoted-material" last-name format used courtesy of
   Laura Potler, copyright 1991
From: donb@igor.tamri.com (Don Baldwin)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: Fuck Christmas
Date: 16 Dec 92 21:08:57 GMT
Followup-To: alt.peeves
Organization: TOSHIBA America MRI, South San Francisco, CA

I wrote, inaccurately:
>Followups to alt.peeves only.

ObPeeve:  Typing the wrong thing.  Not just simple typos, like the peeve
          where I said I enjoyed the smell of Earl Gray teat...but those
          times when I say I'll do something and then don't.

Followups REALLY to alt.peeves only, this time.

ObBonusPeeve:  having to follow up my own message...

   don
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Random word .sig:
Bush heroin Quayle (potato-head) AK-47 marijuana cocaine hashish anarchy
NSA CIA FBI Nicaragua Sandanista Allende JFK conspiracy King Kennedy Iran
Iraq Hussein Jihad Contra Libya assassinate Executive Order treason BATF
civil unrest class war revolution Panama FEMA terrorist
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don Baldwin  -  Software Engineer  - e-mail to:  donb@tamri.com
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
From: alex@vmars.tuwien.ac.at (Alexander Vrchoticky)
Subject: Re: Shit-for-brains grad students
Organization: Technical University Vienna, Dept. for Realtime Systems, AUSTRIA
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 21:55:32 GMT

i wrote:
>>ah, the academic world, where art and science meet:
>>it's science to solve problems, but it is art to create problems
>>that can be solved. to hell with this kind of intellectual masturbation.

yarvin@cs.yale.edu (Norman Yarvin) makes me wonder about the colour
of the sky on *his* planet:

>Why would anybody want to create problems in the first place?  There are
>enough problems that already exist.  Even if you don't count the ones posed
>by academics.

correct. ten points. however, there's a wee problem with many of the 
existing problems, which is simply that they are damned hard to solve.
so, considering the way the academic world works (gotta publish, gotta
get research grants, gotta get results, gotta publish some more, and so
on, and so forth ad tedium), the idea of choosing the problems one 
works on based on their tractability rather than on their applicability
looks attractive. so attractive that a significant percentage of all the 
papers i ever received for review falls into the category i was 
griping about. 


i hope this answers your question.

-alex

-- 
Alexander Vrchoticky             alex@vmars.tuwien.ac.at
TU Vienna, CS/Real-Time Systems  +43/1/58801-8168
From: johnf@Auspex.COM (John Fereira)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: this is great!
Date: 17 Dec 92 00:32:04 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Auspex Systems, Inc.

In article <1992Dec15.024407.14589@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> bberbeni@nyx.cs.du.edu (Bill Berbenich) writes:
|Peeves:  The Encyclopaedia Britannica guy.  

The burger king guy.



-- 
+==========================================================================+
| John Fereira        | Auspex Systems | "Ask me about my vow of silence." |
| johnf@auspex.com    | Santa Clara CA |                                   |
+==========================================================================+
Newsgroups: alt.peeves,alt.angst
From: callahan@biffvm.cs.jhu.edu (Paul Callahan)
Subject: Re: Fuck Christmas
Organization: Johns Hopkins Computer Science Department, Baltimore, MD
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 21:04:55 GMT

symingto@iti.org (F. S. Symington) writes:
>I may be wrong in what I have done in trying to let my kids be 
>KIDS but, I'm still learning what the perfect parent is supposed
>to be. 

Well, I have nothing against letting kids be kids, especially those that are
two or three years old.  At this point, the universe is a fairly new thing to
them, and they are bound to have a great deal of misconceptions, belief in
Santa Claus being among the least of them.  The point is not to shatter their
dreams; the point is to let them discover things for themselves.  

Misconceptions are just unrefuted hypotheses, and children, being born
scientists, are always testing them.  If there is a clear refutation,
they will eventually find it.  I'm convinced that most children who believe in 
Santa Claus would rapidly discover the truth for themselves if they were 
not deliberately deceived.  

Like, some things are pretty obvious.  Children are going to see that there   
are lots of mall Santas, some of whom are clearly distinct people.  They'll
wonder about how Santa is supposed to make it down a chimney flue that is 
obviously too small (assuming the house has a fire place).  In short, they'll 
raise lots of objections to the initial hypothesis.  At this point, they'll go 
to their parents with some questions.  Now, a lot of parents will just start 
to embroider on new axioms in an attempt to patch up the proof: the Mall
Santa's are "Santa's helpers," but nevertheless there is a *real* Santa at the 
North Pole; Santa used to use chimneys in the old days when they were bigger, 
but now he materializes just like in Star Trek.  You get the idea.

To me, this is all very unfair to the child.  The child *wants* to understand.
When a child reasons that there is no Santa Claus, this is a modest intel-
lectual triumph.  Many (I would say most) children are going to enjoy having 
their new hypothesis validated by their parents; this will more than counteract
any disillusionment.  They deserve to have their reasoning rewarded, not 
brushed aside with further obfuscation.  By all means, let kids be kids.  This 
is precisely what I am arguing in favor of.  I don't think that a child 
who is truly allowed to be a child will make it to age five without figuring 
out that Santa Claus does not exist.

--
Paul Callahan
callahan@cs.jhu.edu
From: donb@igor.tamri.com (Don Baldwin)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Work peeves
Date: 17 Dec 92 23:37:23 GMT
Organization: TOSHIBA America MRI, South San Francisco, CA

What a fucking day!

This past week has been "challenging" to put it mildly, with two major
projects on my plate.  To make it even more interesting, one of them 
involves lotsa X/database work and is part of the current release, while
the other is writing up the design for enhancements to that program for
the next release.  Of course, both were due yesterday.  And unfortunately,
I don't do context switches between design and coding very quickly.

First off, I'm peeved that two people have sat through several versions
of the design document with minimal comments, then pounced on the last
version and requested all kinds of changes.

Then, our operational flow guy requested some changes that others here
disagree with...just before he left for a 1.5 week vacation.

Then, on top of all that,I'm supposed to be walking through a new
engineer's code (in my copious spare time).  I was supposed to look at
by last Monday, my supervisor informed me late yesterday that he wants
it today.

So, today I came into work reconciled and mentally prepared to spend
the day reviewing code...and people have been stopping by to ask me
questions every five minutes!!!  First a guy stopped by claiming that
my last version of the program wasn't working in his environment. After
about 25 minutes, we concluded that it did in fact work; however, the
dunderhead had set up an X resource that deactivated the routine that
"didn't work".  A half hour later he came back, claiming that I wasn't
writing a secondary output file correctly.  Fortunately, I managed to
shift the blame onto someone else's shoulders but it cost me time.

By this time, it's getting to be 2:30 and I need to get the walkthrough
done by about 4:30, as I'm selling my motorcycle today.  I just get
back into review mode, when a very nice woman who speaks so-so English
stopped by for help on some X code that she copied from a reference book
and "changed a little".  She insisted on running me through every step
of the way that the program reads a bitmap into a data structure, then
insisted that I tell her why the program wasn't drawing a picture on
her User Interface correctly.  Eventually, I just told her that I would
have to get back to her later.

Peeve:  Some people have radar that tells them when I am at my
        busiest, then make a point of stopping by to chat then.

!Peeve:  The double barrelled rubber band gun on my desk is going to
         make the next person who interrupts me wear smoked lenses for
         the rest of his natural life.

     don
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
From: bberbeni@nyx.cs.du.edu (Bill Berbenich)
Subject: Re: MalcolmX
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 92 22:24:08 GMT

In <1992Dec14.225947.26540@igor.tamri.com> donb@igor.tamri.com (Don Baldwin) writes:

>SEE the movie, Charles, and then decide what you think about the man.

The movie is a fictional account with chunks of truth thrown in to add some
measure of credibility.  Who doesn't agree with that?  A popular tool of the
propagandist, that one.  Not saying X's/Shabazz' life was without merit or
substance, mind you, just drawing some distinction between reality and the
Lee movie.  The ol' "kernel of truth" principle...

Had Lee hated Shabazz instead of adoring him, the picture would have gone
the other way.  But don't ever believe for a second that the movie isn't a
fictional account.

Just like Stone's "JFK."

And by the way, which one of you miscreants stole my .sig?
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
From: alex@vmars.tuwien.ac.at (Alexander Vrchoticky)
Subject: Re: Paper sizes
Keywords: paper
Organization: Technical University Vienna, Dept. for Realtime Systems, AUSTRIA
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 15:42:36 GMT

adam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Adam Hamilton) writes:

>Peeve:	Fax sheets that don't fit the copier sheet feed being 2 cms too long.
>Peeve:	Designers that don't think of these things (actually this is the same
>	peeve but I don't care).


huh? do you have a plain-paper fax?

the faxes i know all use this horrible chemical warfare paper from a roll. 
the roll is cut exactly when the command to cut it is issued over the 
line, which in turn normally happens when the sending fax
sees the end of the original sheet.

therefore, the length of a received fax isn't determined by any `designer',
but by the minimum of the length of the remaining paper in your fax and 
the original's length. if someone decides to send you a fax and tapes 
the two ends of the original together while the thing is being transmitted, 
you're in for a serious mess. you know what happened to laocoon, right? 

-alex

-- 
Alexander Vrchoticky             alex@vmars.tuwien.ac.at
TU Vienna, CS/Real-Time Systems  +43/1/58801-8168