[1336] in Central_America
New quotes for Sun Mar 12
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Mar 12 01:35:21 1989
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 89 01:35:21 EST
From: Initializer.SysDaemon <root@CHARON.MIT.EDU>
To: ca-mtg@bloom-beacon.mit.edu
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ambar (Jean Marie Diaz):
Look and they can't be found
Playing their presence down
Listen -- they make no sound
Look -- and they go to ground
You may wake to find your coffee cup is empty
And the tray you left is not beside the door
You are sure you had another hidden carton
When you look for it, it's not there any more
Inky bloaters -- they're the consequence of never being sure.
And the pencil that you had has now gone missing
You could swear you had it just the other day
All the things that make your little life run smoothly:
When you search they've all just gone away
Inky bloaters -- they're the consequence of never being sure.
"Inky Bloaters"
_Dark Adapted Eye_
Danielle Dax
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amgreene (Andrew Marc Greene):
On behalf of the management of this operation,
I would like to thank each and every one of you
(except for those I don't know :-)
for making the last two decades successful, fun,
bearable, exciting, agonizing, and thoroughly worthwhile.
Here's to a half-dozen more!
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capsalad (Dave Schulman):
De nada.
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tytso (Theodore Y. Ts'o):
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
From: campbell@redsox.UUCP (Larry Campbell)
Subject: Re: friendly messages
Message-ID: <595@redsox.UUCP>
I once attended a lecture given by Ben Schneiderman (Univ. of Md.) about
human factors engineering. He pointed out that the best error message he
knew of was the one you get when you misdial a phone number (this was before
divestiture):
"We're sorry, but we are unable to complete your call as dialed.
Please check the number and try your call again, or call your
operator for assistance."
This is an excellent error message, for the following reasons:
1. "We're sorry," It starts out by apologizing! For your mistake!
2. "We are unable..." It blames itself, and not the user!
3. "Please check the number..." It suggests not one, but two
alternative courses of corrective action.
In contrast, if compter programmers had designed the message, it would
probably say something like:
%ATT-F-INVADDR, Invalid or incomplete address, call aborted
or
Not a typewriter
---
setenv TEDPATH x3-7788:x3-4261:x5-6367:x3-7787
--- End of Central America ---
