xplorer2 v3.2 final released

[nikos]

xplorer2 always goes for substance rather than appearances

[Tuxman]

Yes, weird. You'd think a programmer~user intervention for common sense might be employed by... like... you know... a programmer...

See, that's the major difference between a programmer and a developer.

[Kilmatead]

An architect, a hooker and a programmer were talking one evening, and somehow, the discussion turned to which profession was the oldest."Come on, you guys! Everyone knows mine is the oldest profession," said the hooker.

"Ah," said the architect, "but before your profession existed, there had to be people, and who was there before people?"

"What are you getting at, God?" The hooker asked.

"And was He not the divine architect of the universe?" The architect asked, looking smug.

The programmer had been silent, but now he spoke up. "And before God took on himself the role of an architect, what was there?"

"Darkness and chaos," the hooker said.

"And who do you think created chaos?" the programmer said.

[Tuxman]

A programmer can only program what a developer designed.

[Kilmatead]

No, a programmer (if he's being paid by the developer) only has to programme the minimum designed to fulfil the remit. What they actually do, of course, is about a million more things since they know the silly developer is just going to come back and say "Can you add this?", so smart ones do it all ahead of time and just take a suspiciously long time with the initial submission... and then long naps between further revisions with the idiots who pay them none the wiser.

I have no doubt that film-script writers find it infuriating when actors make up their own "contributions" to the script, but it worked so well for Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner that sometimes you just gotta go with the flow.

[Tuxman]

Being an actor is not much of a creative "work" anyway as other people have done all the creativity work for you. An actor is not really more than a living puppet; unlike a developer, that is.

[Kilmatead]

You seem to be quite drawn, partial, and sympathetic to the developer's milieu. Actors tend to wear a lot of hats, too - did wonders for Bogart. Are you a Fedora or a Fezz man?

[Tuxman]

A Fedora man, of course (which might be the weirdest super-hero name ever). Fezzes are for hipsters.

[Kilmatead]

But Fezz's are cool.... besides, it might raise your profile in the lisp community, such as it is... ("in the kingdom of the blind", and all that...)

[Tuxman]

Matt Smith's Doctor was one of the most boring ones; but he was, according to various female sources, handsome to an extent where not even a Fez could ruin it. I, however, am quite the opposite.

I don't aim for a raised profile in a programming language community. Lisp is a tool (a quite handy one). I'm not a part of a screwdriver community either.

[Kilmatead]

Actually, many of the doctors wore a fezz not just gangly Matt Smith... it was sort of an ongoing joke for about 50 years...

Everyone is part of the Screwdriver Community...

This drink appears in literature as early as 1938 "And answered it 'The famous Smirnoff Screwdriver', Just pour a jigger of smirnoff vodka over ice cubes, fill glass with orange juice and serve". Then later it is claimed that this drink was invented by American aviators "A Screwdriver —a half-orange-juice and half-vodka drink popularized by interned American aviators—costs a dollar including the customary barman's tip."

The actual origin is Persian Gulf Oil workers in the 1920s who stirred the cocktail with their screwdrivers.

Learn something silly every day.

[Tuxman]

Your observations about 50 years of Doctor Who (now what does that tell us about your real age?) do not contradict my assumption that fezzes make men more boring.

Also: Yay, American cocktails of which I've never heard. Does that already make me a part of the cocktail's community and how is that a community at all?

[Kilmatead]

My real age? Not much of a mystery there. If Abraham Lincoln's legs were (purportedly) as long as they needed to be to stretch from his hips to the ground, then my age is old enough to know that the contemporary world is mostly just recycled illusions of a more-realistic past. Syphilis, smallpox, and penicillin notwithstanding of course.

And speaking of history, obviously you didn't spend nearly enough time (being the hip German you are) in Montmartre and Montparnasse in the 20's, otherwise you would have developed a decent taste for cocktails, absinthe, and curiously sexual uses for discarded bottles of gin. Think how much more you could have contributed to contemporary culture if you had only thrown off the shackles of Lisp and dedicated your drunken life to re popularising the Fezz. The fatherland could have been so different, but for your concentrating all your strength into merely living "now". You could have been the heir presumptive of Herzog's rusty crown.

Anyone who has never wasted away a weekend making themselves sick by methodically going through the whole cocktail list in a first-class Egyptian hotel trying to forget a woman has missed out on a major part of getting a good education.

[Tuxman]

you would have developed a decent taste for cocktails, absinthe, and curiously sexual uses for discarded bottles of gin.

Cocktails and sexual uses of discarded bottles might be interesting if you're a Berlin-born blonde girl in your early 20s, I guess. I never liked to wake up with a horrbile headache. Absinthe is nice, I like the taste, but it's not a good adventure - there's too little difference in it.

It's been over a year now since I last woke up with grief. It's not something I'd miss in the future. Growing old is for sissies; I guess I'm a sissy then.

Think how much more you could have contributed to contemporary culture if you had only thrown off the shackles of Lisp and dedicated your drunken life to re popularising the Fezz.

I never was a good role model. Then again, I hardly know any people who would adapt a drunkard's clothing.