off topic

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 02 May 2006 12:59, Michael T. Richter wrote:
> > It's not about "making shit up", or even that the same thing
> > couldn't be done with Windows.  It's about a mental attitude.
>
> It is not the fault of Windows that its users don't think of Perl,
> et al when solving problems.  It may, in fact, be the fault of the
> Perl community which routinely dismisses Windows users when asked
> questions.
>
> The fact is that the anecdote related above tells us absolutely
> nothing. I could relate an anecdote about someone in a UNIX system
> trying to rename all .c files as .c.old.  On a Windows system
> that's a "ren *.c *.c.old".  Under UNIX its... more complicated.
>  That anecdote, too, relates nothing.

Seeing as the anecdote in question is mine, maybe I should I should 
elaborate what it all means:

Nothing.

It's an amusing joke between Linux geeks. I didn't make anything up, 
the story really is on /. As to why $ARB_LINGUIST didn't use Perl and 
get a /usr/share/dict/words from somewhere - I really don't know, I 
really don't care, I'm not an $ARB_LINGUIST and especially not *that* 
$LINGUIST.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 8th Ed.:

joke: -n 1a. a thing said or done to excite laughter.
          b. a witticism or jest

-- 
If only you and dead people understand hex, 
how many people understand hex?

Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five