🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <57...@internal.Apple.COM> c...@Apple.COM (Christopher Pettus) writes:
>In article <RODNEY.89D...@dali.ipl.rpi.edu>
>rod...@dali.ipl.rpi.edu (Rodney Peck II) writes:
>>I'm afraid that parts of this group are starting to become blatant
>>urban myth material.  Is there _any_ way we can find out what is
>>really true before we propagate even more half true material?  So far,
>>we have buring printers, hopping line printers and disk drives,
>
>I must confess to not being that concerned about the exact accuracy of
>the stories that are being told on this group.  That's one of the things
>about folklore: it is subject to the "folk process," where it is told,
>retold, embellished, changed, etc., until the final result is certainly
>not "true" in a strict sense, but still well worth reading.
>
>Perhaps the best test is to look for a pattern in the stories that are
>being told.  If _everyone_ has a walking disk drive story, _everyone_
>an exploding monitor story, etc., after a while patterns of folk
>process become pretty obvious.  But that's OK ... after all, this is
>a folklore group, not a solemn forum for well-tested technical information,
>and if some people are making stuff up, well, that's fine so long as it's
>not boring!
>-- 
>-- Christopher Pettus  

The first exciting thing about a computer folklore group is
swapping great stories -- firsthand experiences, heard-from-a-
reliable-source stuff, and classic someone-told-me-about folk tales.
Trading horror stories and biggest-bug-I-ever-saw stories happens
every time two industry folk are gathered together, just the way
it's happening here.

But the second exciting thing about a computer folklore group
being available *here* and *now* is that we may get a few confirmations
and clarifications of the classic computer industry legends, while
all of the principals are still at keyboards around the world.

Yes, some of these stories have the characteristic format and style
of all urban myths.  That makes them fun, and us human.  But we
also have a chance, in this context, to find the real stories, in a way
that folks telling tales one-to-one don't have.  If you *lived* one
of these gems, say so.  Give us places, and years, and machine models,
and all the dirt.

Do not fail to read The Choking Doberman, and The Vanishing Hitchhiker,
two books (author & publisher, someone?) which not only tell some
widely-known modern urban myths, but track down the alleged principals
for confirmation or, usually, denial.  Furthermore, this author examines
the characteristic patterns of urban myths (such as citing a distant or
anonymous source:  "I knew a guy who told me").  The fact that something
amazing or entertaining is widely-repeated does not necessarily make it
untrue.  Having seen some washing machines "walk" in my time, I'd be
surprised if one couldn't make a disk drive do the same thing.  But there
are indications you can look for to spot the possibly-apocryphal stories.

alt.folklore.computers may be the best of both worlds.  We can share
*acknowledged* industry folklore, and we may be able to winnow out the
genuine articles while we're at it.

linda carson