I picked this up off a gopher server some years ago. I believe it was the original gopher homestead site (alas no longer with us). I have reformatted it to better fit the web medium but otherwise the content is unmodified.
The original had the original usenet headers and claimed to be "Article 17 of alt.folklore.computers" although I cannot verify this since it seems not to exist in the archives any more. That said, there are articles posted that mention this article. It was apparently posted by someone by the name of David B. Stewart. For historical purposes, here are the complete headers from the original:
Path: umn-cs!nic.MR.NET!srcsip!ctrsol!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!rutgers!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!fas.ri.cmu.edu!dstewart From: dstewart@fas.ri.cmu.edu (David B Stewart) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Unix Message-ID: <7223@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Date: 6 Dec 89 05:24:33 GMT Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Lines: 72
I personally like the humour provided by the csh shell. The following came my way several months ago. Unfortunately, I cannot take credit for any of these.
Paul Barth writes:
Since we are all now great Unix wizards, the follow might be humorous. It
came to me from Umass.
Note that the '%' prompt indicates that the command should be issued from
the C shell, and the '$' prompt indicates the Bourne shell.
------------------------------------------------------
% rm meese-ethics
rm: meese-ethics nonexistent
% ar m God
ar: God does not exist
% "How would you rate Reagan's incompetence?
Unmatched ".
% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].
% ^How did the sex change^ operation go?
Modifier failed.
% If I had a ( for every $ Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.
% make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.
% sleep with me
bad character
% got a light?
No match.
% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.
% ^What is saccharine?
Bad substitute.
% %blow
%blow: No such job.
% \(-
(-: Command not found.
% sh
$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!
$ drink matter
matter: cannot create
Since this was a newgroup posting, there was a signature attached. Here is the signature of the original poster of the article:
--
David B. Stewart, Dept. of Elec. & Comp. Engr., and The Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University, email: stewart@faraday.ece.cmu.edu
The following software is now available; ask me for details
CHIMERA II, A Real-time OS for Sensor-Based Control Applications
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