On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> I liked the earlier versions of AIX (among others) where the default
> error for make was 'don't know how to make [foo]' thus:
>
> $> make love
> don't know how to make love
> $>
>
> Which always seemed kind of sad to me.
Googling for "funny unix commands" turns up many, many hits.
Excerpts from the first one:
% make fire
Make: Don't know how to make fire. Stop.
% why not?
No match.
% gotta light?
No match.
% !1984
1984: Event not found. # (on some systems)
% How's my lovemaking?
Unmatched '.
% "How would you rate Bush's incompetence?
Unmatched ".
% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].
% [Where is my brain?
Missing ].
% ^How did the sex change^ operation go?
Modifier failed.
% ^How did the sex change operation go?
Bad substitute.
% If I had a ( for every $ Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.
% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.
% scan for <<"Arnold Schwarzenegger"^J^D
"Arnold Schwarzenegger": << terminator not found
% cat 'the can of tuna'
cat: cannot open the can of tuna
% rm Quayle-brains
rm: Quayle-brains nonexistent
% cat "door: paws too slippery"
cat: cannot open door: paws too slippery
% look into "my eyes"
look: cannot open my eyes
% talk Gorvachev@Kremlin
talk: Kremlin: Can't figure out network address.
% talk Comrade Khruchev
[Your party is not logged on]
% echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln256%Pln256/snlbx]sb3135071790101768542287578439snlbxq'|dc
GET A LIFE!
% ping elvis.rice.edu | awk '{print substr($1,1,5), $2, $3}'
elvis is alive
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/perl/unix.html
There were many, many others on that page. More still on other pages.
It's a little like The Onion -- very funny at first, but repetitive and
slightly boring after a few minutes. As opposed to, say, "The Big
Lebowski", which never gets old :)
--
Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
pun moratorium, n.
The doomed campaign to deoxymoronize computer humor.
In particular, the vain attempt to demonstrate that plays on words such
as RISC and UNIX are unfunny if the player is unaware of their
historically built-in playfulness. Other puns assinorum deserving a
well-earned retirement relate PARADIGM, Paradise, and ten sents in
boringly obvious ways: "Paradigms Lost and Regained," "Brother, can you
s'paradigm?" and so on. Likewise, the cash/CACHE thing is surely
bankrupt: "Cache-only memory, no checks." Be assured, too, that every
known C homophone has had its weary, C-sick day at the C-Users
Journal's annual C-pun contest: C-through UNIX, C'est C Bon, Holy C,
Proficient C, Vitamin C, O say can you C? e = mC^2, Variations in C,
C-C Rider, Rauchen C?, The Cruel C from Cmantec, Mer-C Beaucoup... ad
nau-C-am.
One of Western Democracy's major flaws is that we cannot, without
pettifogging legal interference, publically hang, draw, and quarter
C-punsters.
-- from _The Computer Contradictionary_, Stan Kelly-Bootle, 1995
