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AIList Digest Volume 3 Issue 187
AIList Digest Sunday, 15 Dec 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 187
Today's Topics:
Humor - Alice's LISP Machine
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Date: Thu 5 Dec 85 11:25:15-CST
From: AI.HASSAN@MCC.ARPA
Subject: Humor - Thanksgiving Story
[Forwarded from NIKHIL@MIT-XX]
[Forwarded from the UTexas bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
ALICE'S LISP MACHINE
Chris Stacy, Alan Wecsler, and Noel Chiappa
This song is called "MIT's AI Lab". It's about MIT and the
AI Lab, but "MIT's AI Lab" is not the name of the lab, that's just the
name of the song. That's why I call the song "MIT's AI Lab."
Now it all started two full dumps ago, on Thanksgiving, when
my friend and I went up to visit the hackers at AI lab on the ninth
floor. But the hackers don't always live on the ninth floor, they just
go there to use these complex order code stack machines they call Lisp
Machines.
And using a special purpose processor like that, they got a
lot of room upstairs where DDT used to be, and havin' all that ROOM
they decided that they didn't have to collect any garbage for a long
time.
We JFCLed up here and found all the garbage in there and we
decided that it'd be a friendly gesture for us to take all the garbage
down to the system dump.
So we took the half-a-meg of garbage, put it in the back of
a red ECL Multibus, took subrs and hacks and implementations of
defstruction, and headed on toward the system dump.
Well, we got there and there was a big pop up window and a
write protect across the dump sayin', "This Garbage Collecter Under
Development on Thanksgiving," and we'd never heard of a garbage
collector NOP'd out on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our
eyes, we CDR'd off into the sunset lookin' for another place to put
the garbage.
We didn't find one 'til we came to a side area, and off the
side of the side area was three hundred megabyte disk, and in the
middle of the disk was another heap of garbage. And we decided that
one big heap was better than two little heaps, and rather than page
that one in, we decided to write ours out. That's what we did.
Branched back to the Lisp Listener, had a Chinese
Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to SI:PROCESS-WAIT
SLEEP, and didn't get up until the next quantum, when we got a funcall
from Mr. Greenblatt. He said, "Kid, we found your name on a cons at
the bottom of a half-a-meg of garbage and I just wanted to know if you
had any information about it".
And I said, "Yes sir, Mr. Greenblatt, I cannot tell a lie. I
put that structure under that garbage." After speakin' to Greenblatt
for about forty-five million clock ticks on the telnet stream, we
finally arrived at the truth of the matter and he said that we had to
go down and link up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to
him at the Lisp Machine Factory. So we got in the red ECL Multibus
with the subrs and hacks and implementations of defstruction and
headed on toward the Lisp Machine Factory.
Now, friends, there was only one of two things that
Greenblatt could've done at the Lisp Machine Factory, and the first
was that he could've given us another 64K board for bein' so brave and
honest on BUG-LISPM (which wasn't very likely, and we didn't expect
it), and the other thing was that he could've flamed at us and told us
never to be seen BLTing garbage around in the vicinity again, which is
what we expected.
But when we got to the Lisp Machine Factory, there was a
third COND-clause that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both
immediately Process-Arrested, Deexposed, and I said, "Greenblatt, I
can't GC up the garbage with these here ARREST-REASONS on". He said:
"Output-Hold, kid, and get in the back of the Control CAR." ...And
that's what we did...sat in the back of the Control CAR, and drove to
the sharpsign quote open scene-of-the-crime close.
I wanna tell you 'bout the town of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
where this is happenin'. They got seven hunnert stop signs, no turn on
red, and two campus police CARs, but when we got to the
sharpsign-quote-open scene-of-the-crime close, there was five Lisp
Machine hackers and three scope carts, bein' the biggest hack of the
last ten years and everybody wanted to get in the HUMAN-NETS story
about it.
And they was usin' up all kinds of digital equipment that
they had hangin' around the Lisp Machine Factory. They was takin'
backtraces, stack traces, plastic wire wraps, blueprints, and
microcode loads...And they made seventeen 1K-by-32 pixel
multi-flavored windows with turds and arrows and a scroll bar on the
side of each one with documentation panes explainin' what each one
was, to be used as evidence against us.
...Took pictures of the labels, blinkers, the cursors, the pop
up notification windows, the upper right corner, the lower left corner
...and that's not to mention the XGP'd screen images!
After the ordeal, we went back to the Factory. Greenblatt
said he was gonna locate us in a cell. He said: "Kid, I'm gonna INTERN
you in a cell. I want your manual and your mouse."
I said, "Greenblatt, I can understand your wantin' my
manual, so I don't have any documentation about the cell, but what do
you want my mouse for?" and he said, "Kid, we don't want any window
system problems". I said, "Greenblatt, did you think I was gonna
deexpose myself for litterin'?"
Greenblatt said he was makin' sure, and, friends, Greenblatt
was, 'cause he took out the left Meta-key so I couldn't double bucky
the rubout and cold-boot, and he took out the Inspector so I couldn't
click-left on Modify, set the PROCESS-WARM-BOOT-ACTION on the window,
*THROW around the UNWIND-PROTECT and have an escape. Greenblatt was
makin' sure.
It was about four or five hours later that Moon--(remember
Moon? This here's not a song about Moon)-- Moon came by and, with a
few nasty sends to Greenblatt on the side, bailed us out of core, and
we went up to the Loft, had another Chinese dinner that couldn't be
beat, and didn't get up until the next evening, when we all had to
go to court.
We walked in, sat down, Greenblatt came in with the
seventeen 1K-by-32 pixel multi-flavored windows with turds and arrows
and documentation panes, sat down.
McMahon came in, said, "All rise!" We all stood up, and
Greenblatt stood up with the seventeen 1K-by-32 pixel multi-flavored
windows with turds and arrows and documentation panes, and the judge
walked in, with an LA36, and he sat down. We sat down.
Greenblatt looked at the LA36... then at the seventeen multi
flavored windows with the turds and arrows and documentation panes...
and looked at the LA36... and then at the seventeen 1K-by-32 pixel
multi-flavored windows with turds and arrows and documentation panes,
and began to cry.
Because Greenblatt came to the realization that it was a
typical case of LCS state-of-the-art technology, and there wasn't
nothin' he could do about it, and the judge wasn't gonna look at the
seventeen 1K-by-32 pixel multi-flavored windows with turds and arrows
and documentation panes, explainin' what each one was, to be used as
evidence against us.
And we was fined fifty zorkmids and had to rebuild the world
load...in the snow.
But that's not what I'm here to tell you about.
I'm here to talk about the Lab.
______________________________________________________________________
They got a buildin' down in Cambridge called Technology
Square, where you walk in, you get your windows Inspected, detected,
neglected and Selected!
I went down and got my interview one day, and I walked in,
sat down (slept on the beanbag in 926 the night before, so I looked
and felt my best when I went in that morning, 'cause I wanted to look
like the All-American High School Tourist from Sunnyvale. I wanted to
feel like ... I wanted to be the All-American Kid from Sunnyvale), and
I walked in, sat down, I was gunned down, brung down, locked out and
all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things.
And I walked in, I sat down, KAREN gave me a piece of paper
that said: "Kid, see the CLU hackers on XX."
I went up there, I said, "Eliot, I wanna lose. I wanna lose!
I wanna see hacks and kludges and unbound variables and cruft in my
code! Eat dead power supplies with cables between my teeth! I mean
lose! lose! lose!"
And I started jumpin' up and down, yellin' "LOSE! LOSE!
LOSE!" and Stallman walked in and started jumpin' up and down with
me, and we was both jumpin' up and down, yellin', "LOSE! LOSE! LOSE!
LOSE!!" and some professor came over, gave me a 6-3 degree, sent me
down the hall, said "You're our distinguished lecturer." Didn't feel
too good about it.
Proceeded down the infinite corridor, gettin' more
inspections, rejections (this IS MIT), detections, neglections, and
all kinds of stuff that they was doin' to me there, and I was there
for two years... three years... four years... I was there for a long
time goin' through all kinds of mean, nasty, kludgy things, and I was
havin' a tough time there, and they was inspectin', injectin', every
single part of me, and they was leavin' no part unbound!
______________________________________________________________________
Proceeded through, and I finally came to see the very last
man. I walked in, sat down, after a whole big thing there. I walked
up, and he said, "Kid, we only got one question: Have you ever been
arrested"?
And I proceeded to tell him the story of the half-a-meg of
garbage with full orchestration and five-part harmony and stuff like
that, and other phenomenon.
He stopped me right there and said, "Kid, have you ever been
to court"? And I proceeded to tell him the story of the seventeen
1K-by-32 pixel multi-flavored windows with turds and arrows and
documentation panes...
He stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to go
over and sit down on that bench that says 'LISP Machine Group'... NOW,
KID!"
And I walked over to the bench there, and there's... The
LISP Machine Group is where they put you if you may not be moral
enough to join Symbolics after creatin' your special form.
There was all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly-lookin' people on
the bench there ... there was Microcoders, DPL hackers, File System
hackers, and Window System Hackers!! Window System hacker sittin'
right there on the bench next to me! And the meanest, ugliest,
nastiest one... the kludgiest Window System hacker of them all... was
comin' over to me, and he was mean and ugly and nasty and horrible and
all kinds of things, and he sat down next to me. He said, "Kid, you
get a new copy of the sources?" I said, "I didn't get nothin'. I had
to rebuild the world load."
He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" and I said,
"Littering..." And they all moved away from me on the bench there,
with the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean, nasty things, 'til I
said, "And making gratuitous modifications to LMIO; sources..." And
they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the
bench talkin' about microcoding, DPL designing, file-system hacking,
... and all kinds of groovy things that we was talkin' about on the
bench, and everything was fine.
We was drinking Coke smoking all kinds of things, until the
RA came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said:
"KIDS-THIS-EXAM-S-GOT-FOURTY
SEVEN-WORDS-THIRTY-SEVEN-MULTIPLE-CHOICE-QUESTIONS
FIFTY-EIGHT-WORDS-WE-WANT-TO-KNOW-THE-DETAILS
OF-THE-HACK-THE-TIME-OF-THE-HACK-AND-ANY
OTHER-KIND-OF-THING-YOU-GOT-TO-SAY
PERTAINING-TO-AND-ABOUT-THE-HACK-ANY-OTHER
KIND-OF-THING-YOU-GOT-TO-SAY-WE-WANT-TO-KNOW
THE-ARRESTED-PROCESS'-NAME-AND-ANY
OTHER-KIND-OF-THING..."
And he talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that
he said. But we had fun rolling the mice around and clickin' on the
buttons.
I filled out the special form with the four-level macro
defining macros. Typed it in there just like it was and everything
was fine. And I put down my keyboard, and I switched buffers, and
there ... in the other buffer... centered in the other buffer...
away from everything else in the buffer... in parentheses, capital
letters, backquotated, in 43VXMS, read the following words: "Kid, have
you featurized yourself"?
I went over to the RA. Said, "Mister, you got a lot of
damned gall to ask me if I've featurized myself! I mean, I mean, I
mean that you send, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin'
here on the Lisp Machine Group bench, 'cause you want to know if I'm
losing enough to join the Lab, burn PROMs, power supplies, and
documentation, after bein' on SF-LOVERS?"
______________________________________________________________________
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind!
We're gonna send your user-id off to the DCA in Washington"! And,
friends, somewhere in Washington, enshrined on some little floppy
disk, is a study in ones and zeros of my brain-damaged programming
style...
______________________________________________________________________
And the only reason I'm singin' you the song now is 'cause
you may know somebody in a similar situation. Or you may be in a
similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that, there's
only one thing you can do:
[ CHORUS ]
You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may
think he's really dangerous and they won't take him.
And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're
both LISP hackers and they won't take either of them.
And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people
walkin' in, singin' a bar of "MIT's AI Lab" and walkin' out? They may
think it's an re-implementation of the window system!
And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people
a day, walkin' in, singin' a bar of "MIT's AI Lab" and walkin' out?
Friends, they may think it's a MOVEMENT, and that's what it is: THE
MIT AI LAB ANTI-LOSSAGE MOVEMENT! And all you gotta do to join is to
sing it the next time it comes around on the circular buffer.
With feelin'.
You can hack anything you want
on MIT Lisp Machines
You can hack anything you want
on MIT Lisp Machines
Walk right in and begin to hack
Just push your stuff right onto the stack
You can hack anything you want
on MIT Lisp Machines
(but don't forget to fix the bug...on MIT Lisp Machines!)
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End of AIList Digest
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