Larry Wall & Cults

[John Thingstad]

I think I just hit the 'wall'.
rlol

Larry Wall and Cults
(Lazyness, Impatience and Hubris)
200012

Dear readers,

Did you know that throughout history there's this thing called cult?
It is a very interesting phenomenon. I don't have time to expound and
teach, but will try to brief you.

These cults, are often lead by a single person. They form a group as
small as a dozen to multinational octopuses (such as
Scientology). Their creed varies from the mild in appearance
(Dianetics) to appalling (flat earth, extraordinary life-after-death,
impinging apocalypse scenarios, militant anti-government conspiracy,
diabolism with human sacrifices ...). Don't think that i'm citing from
some arcane books buried in libraries. These are real, and not
difficult to find in real life. Some of these cult leaders, are so
able to totally wash their member's brain, as to have them
autonomously swear and volunteer to die for the cause of the cult.
Occasionally, you'll even see mass suicide.

You know, the world is not made completely of rubes. Somebody
somewhere, will observe this phenomenon and study or report it as
is. Big brother organizations, such as the FBI, is keen on these and
very interested in benefiting from social psychology themselves. They
are recorded in books too. Ever wonder why the library houses so many
cold volumes of paper? This is one contributing reason. You might be
interested to verify that sometimes.

These brain-washing phenomenon, are not limited to fanatical
life-and-death or otherwise dire beliefs. You see it work in all
manners of human thought in the general sense. From culture formation
to fashion to commercialism. Surely you have heard of Adolf Hitler
and his atrocities of genocide? I must alert you, that a single person
couldn't commit such a crime. You see, even if you are superman, you
can only kill few at a time. You see, it is the people, people like
you and me, who commit the killings willingly, by Hitler's
teaching. You may say: "no, i won't ever do such stupid thing", well
because you are very ignorant about social psychology. It is precisely
innocent people like you and (not) me, who were lead by the radical
leaders of supreme brain-washing abilities. The innocent mob were
fervent in their leader's vision and beliefs to commit anything. You
know the concept of war, right? We have two massive body of people
committed to cut off other people's head or otherwise stick a knife in
their bodies or bomb off an arm or leg. How did that happen? Well, it
starts with patriotism for people like you and (not) me.

Now, back to topic. In the computing world, there're also bad seeds
with colorful creed taking innocent mobs forming cults. The three
principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and
Hubris. Yes?

How can we prevent heinous cults then? Stop bending truths. Education
and rationalism. I'm starting my own cult to exterminate morons on
this earth. Two things are on the top of my agenda: Unixism and Perl.

--------
This post is archived at
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/larry_wall_n_cults.html

Copyright 2000-2004 Xah Lee. Verbatim Reproduction for non-commercial
purposes is hereby granted provided proper credit is given.

Xah
(e-mail address removed)
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html

 

[Paul F. Dietz]

Nah - that was Queen!

When I was seventeen
I drank some very good beer.
I drank some very good beer
I purchased with a fake ID.
My name was Brian McGee.
I stayed up listening to Queen.
When I was seventeen.

Paul (channeling Homer)

 

[Dr. Richard E. Hawkins]

Over here in c.l.python, it's more like

"Guido said it, that settles it, but we're going to discuss
it endlessly and and vote on it using six or seven
different voting algorithms anyway. Then we'll argue about
the voting algorithms."

Now I understand what happenend in the 2000 election: Al Gore, after
inventing the internet, became a python programmer

hawk

 

[Dr. Richard E. Hawkins]

In this context --- This is the STUPIDEST thing I've ever heard.

Nah. I practiced law for five years.

hawk

 

[David Schwartz]

No, that of no more using things that you condemn.

I don't follow you at all. I think you'll find the most useful,
meaningful complaints about, say, a Ford Explorer from the people who drive
one every day.

DS

 

[ctcgag]

I don't follow you at all. I think you'll find the most useful,
meaningful complaints about, say, a Ford Explorer from the people who
drive one every day.

And if they continue to drive one everyday, perhaps you would conclude
that their complaints are insincere.

Xho

 

[Stephen Kellett]

Great song, but their hard-hitting stuff is even better. For instance
"Lisp in the Hills" or "Career of Eval".

They even provided your very own theme tune to red/black trees -
"The Red and the Black"

 

[Brendon Caligari]

$ telnet xahlee.org 80;
Trying 208.186.130.4...
Connected to xahlee.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.1

HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 01:35:52 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.50 (Fedora)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It's a hosting provider. Funny though how they would use something like
Fedora.

 

[John Doherty]

Of course, but are they consistently indented using tabs or
spaces?

AND HOW MANY SPACES PER TAB STOP?

--

 

[Pascal Bourguignon]

I don't follow you at all. I think you'll find the most useful,
meaningful complaints about, say, a Ford Explorer from the people who drive
one every day.

I'd expect to get these complaints indeed from people who drove it,
but I'd be puzzled if they'd continued to drive it every day.

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we.

 

[Tim Hammerquist]

AND HOW MANY SPACES PER TAB STOP?

You just reminded me of the infamous variable naming debate:

- visualBasicStyle
- javaStyle
- perl_style
- jumbledstyle

/me ducks out as sparks fly....

Tim Hammerquist

 

[David Schwartz]

And if they continue to drive one everyday, perhaps you would conclude
that their complaints are insincere.

That's a load of crap.

DS

 

[Rob Warnock]

+---------------
| $ telnet xahlee.org 80;
| Trying 208.186.130.4...
| Connected to xahlee.org.
| Escape character is '^]'.
| GET / HTTP/1.1
|
| HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
| Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 01:35:52 GMT
| Server: Apache/2.0.50 (Fedora)
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+---------------

So are you complaining about the fact that his hosting provider
preloaded RedHat Fedora with Apache 2.0 for him? [A lot of them do,
these days, 'cuz it's much cheaper than preloading RedHat Enterprise.]

Or are you complaining about that perfectly correct error message
which pointed out that you omitted a required HTTP/1.1 header? ;-} ;-}

% telnet xahlee.org 80
Trying 208.186.130.4...
Connected to xahlee.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: xahlee.org

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 05:16:44 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.50 (Fedora)
Last-Modified: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 10:36:38 GMT
ETag: "c41bc-87b-a8715980"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 2171
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Xah's Homepage</title>
</head>
<body ... >
...[trimmed]...
</body>
</html>
%


-Rob

 

[Pascal Bourguignon]

+---------------
| $ telnet xahlee.org 80;
| Trying 208.186.130.4...
| Connected to xahlee.org.
| Escape character is '^]'.
| GET / HTTP/1.1
|
| HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
| Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 01:35:52 GMT
| Server: Apache/2.0.50 (Fedora)
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+---------------

So are you complaining about the fact that his hosting provider
preloaded RedHat Fedora with Apache 2.0 for him? [A lot of them do,
these days, 'cuz it's much cheaper than preloading RedHat Enterprise.]

Or are you complaining about that perfectly correct error message
which pointed out that you omitted a required HTTP/1.1 header? ;-} ;-}

Obviously, I'm complaining the contradiction between his opinion about
unix about what I've underlined.

And I take care to select my hosting providers not using MS-Windows
(since I'm critical about MS-Windows).

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we.

 

[jmfbahciv]

AND HOW MANY SPACES PER TAB STOP?

Eight. Now talk about indenting skip returns...that one
required blood transfusions. [emoticon looks at list of n.g.]
I guess not many will understand.

/BAH


Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

 

[jmfbahciv]

That's a load of crap.

Sigh! Another one who has no appreciation of irony.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

 

[Andre Majorel]

+---------------
| $ telnet xahlee.org 80;
| Trying 208.186.130.4...
| Connected to xahlee.org.
| Escape character is '^]'.
| GET / HTTP/1.1
|
| HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
| Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 01:35:52 GMT
| Server: Apache/2.0.50 (Fedora)
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+---------------

So are you complaining about the fact that his hosting provider
preloaded RedHat Fedora with Apache 2.0 for him?

There is no shortage of Windows-based hosting companies, so why
didn't he go there ? Whatever your opinions, it's best to put
your money where your mouth is if you expect to be taken
seriously.

 

[Ian Wilson]

That's a load of crap.

DS

You're both right but ...

Xah Lee: "I'm starting my own cult to exterminate morons on
this earth. Two things are on the top of my agenda: Unixism and Perl."

Pascal Bourguignon: <Xah Lee's website runs on Linux, a Unix-like OS>


Is more like

Joe Blow: I'm going to exterminate all morons who drive a Ford Explorer.

Fred Bloggs: But Joe, you drive a Ford Explorer!


Rather than

Joe Blow: Ford Explorers are a little bit expensive to service and the
doors squeak after a couple of years.

Fred Bloggs: Thanks for the tip Joe, I see you drive one, so you should
know.

 

[Pascal Bourguignon]

You're both right but ...

Xah Lee: "I'm starting my own cult to exterminate morons on
this earth. Two things are on the top of my agenda: Unixism and Perl."

Pascal Bourguignon: <Xah Lee's website runs on Linux, a Unix-like OS>


Is more like

Joe Blow: I'm going to exterminate all morons who drive a Ford Explorer.

Fred Bloggs: But Joe, you drive a Ford Explorer!


Rather than

Joe Blow: Ford Explorers are a little bit expensive to service and the
doors squeak after a couple of years.

Fred Bloggs: Thanks for the tip Joe, I see you drive one, so you
should know.

Case closed. (And probably Xah has suicidal impulses).

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we.

 

[Steve O'Hara-Smith]

On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 16:31:07 -0500

AND HOW MANY SPACES PER TAB STOP?

One half inch is my preference for tab stops usually. A tab is a
tab and not some number of spaces.