August 12, 2001
The Devil's Netiquette
The Devil's Netiquette
Verity Stob presents the FAQ-from-Hell that They tried to suppress.
The Devil's Netiquette
Now this is the Law of the Newsgroups; from alt through to comp
hear it throb.
And those who obey it may prosper; the rest shall be hurled to
the mob.
'It is cruel to mock the afflicted.' The comedian's old motto is
true.
But it's fun! So let fly with your napalm when dim@AOL posts:
'ME TOO!'
Don't stint when you quote. Use the whole thread. And, should you
encounter protesting,
Remember the wise words of Linus. 'Time for some serious
flamefesting!'
Never give way in a flame war. Keep fighting whatever
the cost.
When your foe calls you 'fascist' he's losing; when your foe calls you 'Hitler'
he's lost.
By all means post he's a 'bastard', and seek to imply he's
insane.
But be sure to sign off with a smiley ;-) to make things all lovely
again.
The greatest one-liner stales quickly. Even quicker the
unfunny dig.
If you find something rotten and cloying, there's the joke to include in
your sig.
You'll not make a pull in a newsgroup. That girl's just a tease,
you will see.
Never send to know for whom the belle trolls. My friend: she trolls
for thee.
The FAQ is both for and by wusses. When sent to it,
real netters scoff.
So what if the question's familiar? Tell the FAQuers just where
they FAQ off.
It's your birthright to wander off-topic. Who cares about
signal-to-noise?
Those lamers, those self-proclaimed net cops, must remember that boys
will be boys.
It's your birthright to use up that bandwidth. Pour scorn both on dull
and on clever.
As long as you're online with Outlook, it's September for ever
and ever.
Now this is the Law of the Newsgroups; from alt through to comp hear it
throb.
And those who obey it may prosper; the rest shall be hurled to
the mob.
How infant techies learn to back-count
Four brand new screwdrivers.
My own set. Not freebies.
'Fingers' Geoff got in my desk
And fourbies became threebies.
Three surviving screwdrivers.
Kept them hid. But then:
I lent one to a customer
Who cut me down to 102.
My non-breeding pair of screwdrivers
Can still give me a tingle.
I poked one through a PSU
And thereby scored a single.
When the last, lonely screwdriver
Snapped, I thought: 'We're done.'
Then Geoffrey brought my crosshead back
And proved there's always one.
Sonnet to a Coelacanth
Our Janine's Dad is old and stubborn too:
A PC's use is quite beyond his wit.
So for a birthday gift she buys -- brand new --
A typewriter. (It costs her fifty quid.)
She brings it back to work, removes the box,
And plugs it in to make quite sure it goes.
We put aside our semaphores and locks
And gather round to have a quiet nose.
A youngish colleague, craning forward, cries
'It's QWERTY!' Well, what else did he expect?
I show the carriage; where the paper slides.
He looks at me with something like respect.
He's seen a fossil come to life from cold.
And I am twenty million seasons old.
Assembler programmer's song
The devotees of Python are not fickle,
Nor are those who treasure Ruby and Perl.
There are Java-ites, and fanciers of Tcl*,
Pascal makes C-lings' lips curl.
But all this is much too high-level
For an old-fashioned craftsman like me.
I code in God's own Assembler
For its macro-ised maturity.
It may not be garbage-collected.
It's as portable as old London Bridge.
But don't you coldly reject it
It's the language they used in your fridge,
Where...
(Chorus)
Every bit is sacred,
Every bit is right.
If a bit is wasted
I can't sleep at night.
Every bit is gorgeous,
Every bit is free.
Admire the shape it forges
In hex and BCD!
Delphi, C#, Basic
Waste bytes through sheer neglect.
I must have a tool that
Treats each bit with respect.
Every bit is special,
Every bit gets sick.
Coddle each dear rascal
And maybe it won't stick.
Careful you don't squash them
When you load your debugger.
It's me you must account to
The radical bit-hugger.
Every bit is sacred,
Every bit is right.
If a bit is wasted
I can't sleep at night.
*"Tcl" is pronounced "tickle." Yes, I know YOU knew that. This is in case the poetry standards inspector drops by.
Verity Stob wishes to apologise to Rudyard Kipling ("The Law of the Jungle"), Anonymous ("Ten green bottles" and its non-PC variants) and to Pythons Michael Palin and Terry Jones ("Every Sperm is Sacred") whose fine work she has given a mugging it did not deserve.
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