29 Jan
2021
29 Jan
'21
3:45 a.m.
https://ewe2.ninja/stuff/computers/ching/
Interesting story!
Cheers, Warren
29 Jan
29 Jan
4:01 a.m.
A few years back I remembered that 'ching' was available on the Linux
distros I played with circa 2001/2002, but not in modern systems. I
found some source and did a little tweaking to make it build/install
better on Linux: https://github.com/floren/ching
On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 1:46 PM Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
https://ewe2.ninja/stuff/computers/ching/
Interesting story!
Cheers, Warren
4:10 a.m.
Ching had the best man page
Bugs: "It Furthers one to seek the great man"
On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 7:46 AM Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
https://ewe2.ninja/stuff/computers/ching/
Interesting story!
Cheers, Warren
4:12 a.m.
The version I have reads:
SEE ALSO
It furthers one to see the great man.
DIAGNOSTICS
The great prince issues commands,
Founds states, vests families with fiefs.
Inferior people should not be employed.
BUGS
Waiting in the mud
Brings about the arrival of the enemy.
If one is not extremely careful,
Somebody may come up from behind and strike him.
Misfortune.
On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 2:11 PM George Michaelson <ggm(a)algebras.org> wrote:
Ching had the best man page
Bugs: "It Furthers one to seek the great man"
On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 7:46 AM Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> https://ewe2.ninja/stuff/computers/ching/
>
> Interesting story!
>
> Cheers, Warren
4:32 a.m.
The great thing about (wetware) memory is how badly it degrades under
UV. Write words, wrong context! I'm pleased after 40 years I got the
sentence right, if I gave it the wrong tag in the Manpage
On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 8:12 AM John Floren <john(a)jfloren.net> wrote:
The version I have reads:
SEE ALSO
It furthers one to see the great man.
DIAGNOSTICS
The great prince issues commands,
Founds states, vests families with fiefs.
Inferior people should not be employed.
BUGS
Waiting in the mud
Brings about the arrival of the enemy.
If one is not extremely careful,
Somebody may come up from behind and strike him.
Misfortune.
On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 2:11 PM George Michaelson <ggm(a)algebras.org> wrote:
>
> Ching had the best man page
>
> Bugs: "It Furthers one to seek the great man"
>
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 7:46 AM Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
> >
> > https://ewe2.ninja/stuff/computers/ching/
> >
> > Interesting story!
> >
> > Cheers, Warren
5:05 a.m.
George Michaelson writes:
The great thing about (wetware) memory is how badly it
degrades under
UV. Write words, wrong context! I'm pleased after 40 years I got the
sentence right, if I gave it the wrong tag in the Manpage
On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 8:12 AM John Floren <john(a)jfloren.net> wrote:
>
> The version I have reads:
>
> SEE ALSO
> It furthers one to see the great man.
>
> DIAGNOSTICS
> The great prince issues commands,
> Founds states, vests families with fiefs.
> Inferior people should not be employed.
>
> BUGS
> Waiting in the mud
> Brings about the arrival of the enemy.
>
> If one is not extremely careful,
> Somebody may come up from behind and strike him.
> Misfortune.
I have always found the I Ching to be an invaluable tool for
making difficult management decisions.
30 Jan
30 Jan
1:28 p.m.
On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 6:06 PM Jon Steinhart <jon(a)fourwinds.com> wrote:
I have always found the I Ching to be an invaluable
tool for
making difficult management decisions.
Or any other kind of decisions.
Some of you may find amusing my (regrettably incomplete) "The Unix Power
Classic: A book about the Unix Way and its power" at <
http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/upc/>. Section 41 seems to be the most
popular:
Thoughtful hackers hear about Unix
and try to use it.
Ordinary hackers hear about Unix
and mess about with it a little.
Thoughtless hackers hear about Unix
and crack wise about it.
It wouldn't be Unix
if there weren't wisecracks about it.
So we establish the following rules:
The most brilliant Unix seems the most obscure.
Advanced Unix seems like retrocomputing.
The most powerful code seems like just loops and conditionals.
The clearest code seems to be opaque.
The sharpest tools seem inadequate.
Solid code seems flaky.
Stable code seems to change.
Great methodologies don't have boundaries.
Great talent doesn't code fast.
Great music makes no sound.
The ideal elephant has no shape.
The Unix Way has no name.
Yet for just this reason
it brings things to perfection.
John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org
The native charset of SMS messages supports English, French, mainland
Scandinavian languages, German, Italian, Spanish with no accents, and
GREEK SHOUTING. Everything else has to be Unicode, which means you get
only 70 16-bit characters in a text instead of 160 7-bit characters.
28 Mar
28 Mar
12:29 p.m.
I probably wrote the first version of Ching. You could type a question
as an argument and it would hash the question and use it to simulate
yarrow sticks. I used a small book for the "prophecies", and at some
point realized that it was probably some kind of copyright violation so
I dropped it. It's quite possible that others tinkered with it as well,
that being the way the world worked then.
---
On 2021-01-28 13:45, Warren Toomey wrote:
https://ewe2.ninja/stuff/computers/ching/
Interesting story!
Cheers, Warren
29 Mar
29 Mar
3:56 a.m.
From the manual entry:
Using an algorithm suggested by S. C. Johnson, the Unix
ora-
cle simply reads a question from the standard input (up to
an EOF) and hashes the individual characters in combination
with other indicia which happen to be lying around the sys-
tem. The resulting value is used as the seed of a random
number generator which drives a simulated coin-toss divina-
tion. The answer appears on the standard output.
I was always convinced that the presence of the word 'indicia' indicated
(pun
intended) that Dennis Ritchie had his hand in it. Who in the Unix world
today
writes, would even be able to write, a manual entry like that.
On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 5:37 PM <scj(a)yaccman.com> wrote:
I probably wrote the first version of Ching. You
could type a question
as an argument and it would hash the question and use it to simulate
yarrow sticks. I used a small book for the "prophecies", and at some
point realized that it was probably some kind of copyright violation so
I dropped it. It's quite possible that others tinkered with it as well,
that being the way the world worked then.
---
On 2021-01-28 13:45, Warren Toomey wrote:
https://ewe2.ninja/stuff/computers/ching/
Interesting story!
Cheers, Warren
11 Apr
11 Apr
2:32 a.m.
On Sat, Mar 27, 2021 at 11:29:49PM -0700, scj(a)yaccman.com wrote:
I probably wrote the first version of Ching. You
could type a question as
an argument and it would hash the question and use it to simulate yarrow
sticks. I used a small book for the "prophecies", and at some point
realized that it was probably some kind of copyright violation so I dropped
it. It's quite possible that others tinkered with it as well, that being
the way the world worked then.
---
That's interesting, so there was a trail of authorship, a history we have lost
touch with unless we find the long-lost v6 source or the 32v sources that can
shed light on this more. I am a little surprised that the Legge translation
was not used as a basis for prophecies, it's been public domain AFAIK.
--
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise as they fly by.
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10 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
Adam Thornton -
George Michaelson -
John Cowan -
John Floren -
Jon Steinhart -
Noel Hunt -
scj＠yaccman.com -
Sean Dwyer -
Warren Toomey