[time-nuts] P word in my mails

Thu Apr 2 09:10:50 UTC 2009

Dear Ulrich,

After writhing around on the floor for some time, with my sides
splitting, I have managed to stop laughing, hopefully, long enough to
reply to your post. The P word in question is, as already pointed out,
PASCAL (hack, spit). To my understanding, almost universally loathed
throughout the coding community, and which, I thought, was put to rest
many moons ago, much to the relief of the programming community.

Now I have gone to the vault and dusted off the copy of The Historium
Evilis Computium which I keep wrapped in a black silk scarf and locked
in a lead lined container. It always gives me shivers whenever I open
this book and it takes some while to get back into a decent sleep
pattern after each reading. Searching through the book, I find many
sections referring to the M word, the I word, the BG words, and that's
not to forget the GOTO word. I went past the sections printed in
special ink where the text can only be read by those who are pure of
heart, as it is a protection against the evil IT masters who would
send their vile lawyers to suppress this work, until I came upon this
ancient writing which I reproduce below.

WARNING: if you are of a nervous disposition, or suffer from heart
problems,  I urge to to delete this message immediately and wipe the
free-space on your hard drive with a 35 pass Gutmann method.

--

And it came to pass that the Dark One was troubled.
Mankind had discovered this mighty power they called computing
And this made the Dark One angy.

He ruminated for many days and nights until he came to a solution.
He would create something so grave, so terrible, it would make mankind
think of IT as Instant Terror.
And the vile thing would dumbfound the masses with it's heavily typed variables,
It's unwillingness to perform functions with mixed types
And it's difficulty of getting anything useful through the compiler.
But mankind would see it as a wondrous system, so neat, so clean,
producing nothing but goodness.

With a wave of his hands, out of his ASR-33 there spat the most vile,
the most evil of all things.
And the thing was called PASCAL!
And the Dark One roared with a laughter that would be heard from all around.

And the P thing was sent down to the educational establishments
And darkness came over the computing land
And the comp science students were forced to use it.
It was pitiful to hear their cries as they flagellated themselves when
they coded
For it was only the pain that could keep them sane
But many failed and were dragged off to the asylums screaming.
Infrequently there would be a cry of "I finally got it past the compiler!"
And the students would rejoiced as they carried the victor at shoulder
height all around.

And there rose up others who challenged the P thing
And they created new programming languages
And their resistance drove out the P thing
Expunging it from mankind.
It still lurked in some places but it's hold on mankind was broken.
And programmers throughout the whole of mankind rejoiced
And the dark clouds that covered IT dispersed.

But there was no real rejoicing in the end as all that used the P
thing succumbed to its vile purpose.
And in later years, those that had survived were a pitiful sight
Oft-times found in dark corners, chanting, monotonously,
"I must not mix types, I must not mix types, I must..."
For hours on end, it was a sorrowful sight.

And it was said that the Dark One was displeased
His plan to destroy the will of mankind was thwarted
But only for the moment
For he was already working on his next evil plan
And it came to pass that he came down onto the World
And he took on a human guise
And he created an evil empire...

--

This is all I am prepared to transcribe from the book for fear that
even worse things will happen. I will have to get my whip from the
vault and flagellate myself for hours to get this P thing out of my
mind and try to keep myself sane, such is the power of this evil
thing.

That's all folks!!!
73, Steve

2009/4/2 Ulrich Bangert <df6jb at ulrich-bangert.de>:
> Steve,
>
> after I read your mail I have been completely perplexed because I could by
> no stretch of imagination detect where you had found the aforesaid P word in
> my mail. It needed the help of some English speaking friends and a search in
> my last mails to find out that I have (possibly over a range of more than 30
> years) used an American 5 letter word in another sense than most/all of you
> seem to interprete it.
>
> I HAVE seen the aforesaid word on some doors during my visits to he United
> States and I HAVE understood the meaning of the word in this context. But I
> swear that I have not been aware of the fact that the aforesaid word is used
> EXCLUSIVELY for the location behind these doors. If I had been aware of that
> I would have never used this word in a conversation because that is simply
> not my style.
>
> Instead, I have been believing (and I swear this is the truth) that the
> aforesaid word is used by a gentlemen to address a group of other gentlemen
> just as a "Hi folks" among noble people but avoiding the highly offical
> salutation "Gentlemen", in a sense a laid-back use of "Gentlemen".
>
> Clearly this is a mistake of mine that I cannot other than to apologize for!
> If anyone of you has felt offended or in any other way been affected by my
> wrong use of this word: Sorry for that, that was NOT my intention in using
> this term. I have started a lot of my posts to this group with this word
> because of the high s/n ratio to be found here and the extremely well
> educated people in the group that I hold in high regard.
>
> Someone should have told me before! If you find this word in one of my
> earlier posts substitute it with "Gentlemen" because that is what was ment.
>
> Thank you Steve for pointing at that. If you had not done it I would
> propably have used the word in a wrong sense for the rest of my life.
>
> Best regards
> Ulrich Bangert
>
>
>> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
>> Von: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com
>> [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com] Im Auftrag von Steve Rooke
>> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 1. April 2009 11:57
>> An: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
>> Betreff: Re: [time-nuts] Prologix
>>
>>
>> This man said the P word without any form of apology :-)
>>
>> 73
>>
>> 2009/4/1 Ulrich Bangert <df6jb at ulrich-bangert.de>:
>> > Mike,
>> >
>> > I would like to second Brent's information: That is exactly
>> how it is
>> > done. Talking to the Prologix interface and talking to the NI
>> > interface is COMPLETELY different in that talking to the Prologix
>> > always means straightforward serial communication while
>> talking to the
>> > NI involves DLL-calls from the application.
>> >
>> > The Prologix is cheap and easy to work with, thats why some
>> time nuts
>> > use it. The NI interface is on the other hand more
>> expensive and more
>> > complex to handle (and yes, it does some things that are not easily
>> > done with the Prologix). The biggest advantage of the DLL-calls is:
>> > The same application works with whatever NI interface you
>> use: Plug in
>> > card, USB devices, ethernet dvices, you name it. All work
>> by the SAME
>> > dll calls, so your application is not specific for a
>> interface device.
>> >
>> > I do not forget to advertise my own solution to GPIB
>> programming named
>> > EZGPIB which talks to Prologix (both LAN and USB based) as
>> well to NI
>> > interfaces and thanks supporting basic VISA even to GPIB
>> interfaces of
>> > other suppliers.
>> >
>> > It uses an easy to learn PASCAL like script language that
>> your friend
>> > might get used to in a snap. Basically, if your friend
>> writes a EZGPIB
>> > based script to talk to his counter over the Prologix, you will be
>> > able to use the SAME script to talk to your 5335A via a NI
>> interface.
>> > Nice feature? EZGPIB has got mentioned in April's 2008
>> issue of "Test
>> > & Measurement World". See the last link on my "About me" page
>> >
>> > http://www.ulrich-bangert.de/html/about_me.html
>> >
>> > EZGIPB can be downloaded for free from
>> >
>> > http://www.ulrich-bangert.de/html/downloads.html
>> >
>> > Best regards
>> > Ulrich, DF6JB
>> >
>> >> -----Ursprungliche Nachricht-----
>> >> Von: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com
>> [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com]
>> >> Im Auftrag von Brent Gordon
>> >> Gesendet: Dienstag, 31. Marz 2009 20:07
>> >> An: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
>> >> Betreff: Re: [time-nuts] Prologix
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Mike Feher wrote:
>> >> > A friend has a 5335A counter and bought a Prologix adaptor
>> >> for it to
>> >> > collect data. He wrote the software and has had extremely good
>> >> > results. He offered to do the same for me utilizing my NI
>> >> adaptor so I
>> >> > could use it for my various counters. Unfortunately he ran into
>> >> > problems and feels he needs a special version of basic
>> in order to
>> >> > make my $500 NI adaptor work. I admit to my total lack of
>> >> programming
>> >> > ability. I still use GWBASIC, and only to crunch heavy
>> >> numbers. I have
>> >> > no idea how to interface any software to communicate with an
>> >> > instrument, and, maybe am too old to want to learn as it
>> >> seems a lot
>> >> > of people do it on a regular basis already. If this becomes too
>> >> > difficult I may have to buy a Prologix unit from Abdul.
>> >> While I am all
>> >> > for doing that, and I bought my NI before Abdul had his
>> >> version going,
>> >> > I was also under the impression that if the Prologix can do
>> >> it the NI
>> >> > can do it, but, not necessarily the other way around. My friend
>> >> > mentioned API calls, whatever they are. Any suggestions?
>> >> Thanks - Mike
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > Mike B. Feher, N4FS
>> >> > 89 Arnold Blvd.
>> >> > Howell, NJ, 07731
>> >> > 732-886-5960
>> >> >
>> >> Mike,
>> >>
>> >> You should have gotten the NI-488.2 CD with your GPIB
>> card. On that
>> >> CD are the dlls (Dynamic Link Libraries) to talk to the card.
>> >> You can use
>> >> the dlls in any language that supports dlls or ActiveX.
>> >> Sorry to say,
>> >> GWBASIC is not one of those languages.  Visual Basic 6
>> works well and
>> >> I've even done GPIB data acquisition directly into Excel using VBA
>> >> (Visual Basic for Applications, Excel's macro language).  VBA
>> >> is part of
>> >> Excel.  Alternatively, you can get a free Visual Basic Express at
>> >> http://www.microsoft.com/express/vb/  I haven't tried VB
>> >> Express, but I
>> >> think it will work.  Normally, I do all my GPIB programming
>> >> in LabVIEW.
>> >>
>> >> Brent
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
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>> >> and follow the instructions there.
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV & G8KVD & JAKDTTNW
>> Omnium finis imminet
>>
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>
>
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-- 
Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV & G8KVD & JAKDTTNW
Omnium finis imminet