4. Older readers will know of R. Lawrence Clark’s response to Dijskstra’s letter: the infamous COME FROM con- struct (Datamation, December 1973). What started as a spoof became a serious joke involving programs running backwards; http://www.fortran.com/come_from. html.

5. Watson, D. E. 1992. Solomon Reversed on Appeal; http://www.enformy.com/$solomon.html.

6. For some genuine Schopenhauerian quotes and insights, see The Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton, Penguin, 2001. Schopenhauer’s own opinions were even stronger than Nabokov’s or Dijkstra’s. Thus: “If only I could get rid of the illusion of regarding the generation of vipers and toads as my equals, it would be a great help to me” (op. cit., 176).

7. The Bootle-Boole family connection has now been verified at Disney’s GenomeLand. The T-gene mutation can be dated to the Irish potato famine, compounded with spelling errors by a Lincoln Registrar.

8. You’ll share my relief that cosmological eschatologists have extended the cosmic lifespan to 300 trillion years. Make them all count! Start running that NP program NOW.

9. Readers are invited to coin a more precise word than

rebus for the simpler set of phonograms used in text-speak ( 1 = won; 4 = for; 6 = sex; 8 = ate; Gr86 = great sex; G! = gangbang; more). No doubt the new mobile phones, as pocket servers/workstations/satnavs/tv studios, can handle the full range of graphic rebuses.

 

LOVE IT, HATE IT? LET US KNOW feedback@acmqueue.com or www.acmqueue.com/forums

 

STAN KELLY-BOOTLE ( http://www.feniks.com/skb/; http:// www.sarcheck.com), born in Liverpool, England, read pure mathematics at Cambridge in the 1950s before tackling the impurities of computer science on the pioneering EDSAC I. His many books include The Devil” ’s DP Dictionary (McGraw- Hill, 1981), Understanding Unix (Sybex, 1994), and the recent e-book Computer Language—The Stan Kelly-Bootle Reader. Software Development Magazine has named him as the first recipient of the new annual Stan Kelly-Bootle Eclectech Award for his “lifetime achievements in technology and letters.” Neither Nobel nor Turing achieved such prized eponymous recognition. Under his nom-de-folk, Stan Kelly, he has enjoyed a parallel career as a singer and songwriter. He can be reached at curmudgeon@acmqueue.com. © 2008 ACM 1542-7730/08/0300 $5.00

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