Just in time.
Last Friday 01 April 2005 02:01, Kjetil Svalastog Matheussen was like:
tim hall Wrote:
Have you never noticed the tendency on all
mailing lists for the original
question to always get about 2 or 3 relevant replies, then the next
half-a-dozen postings wander off into some personal discussion or flame
war. I mean, how many Linux Audio Users does it take to change a
soundcard?
Ah, I see you have laid the ground for a light bulb joke here... Let me
try to organize it from your data above:
Q: How many linux audio users does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 10. One to change it, 3 to instruct the person changing it, and
half-a-dozen to wander off into some personal discussion or flame war.
Hmmm, its not there yet, but its a start. I think this can be a good joke
with some work though...
I made it 42 ;-]
Here goes:
----
One to explain that there's probably a patch in Pd that would do all of that.
One to explain that lightbulbs are pre-digital technology and therefore not
likely to be even supported by OSS.
Two to argue that ALSA should be deprecated in favour of OSS, or vice-versa.
One to explain the function of all the different parts of the lightbulb, their
relationship to each other and the respective values that can be passed to
various of its functions.
One to lead a seminar to discuss the importance of the lightswitch.
Three posters complaining that Klightbulb is a KDE-only implementation.
Two posters to explain exactly which part of 'standards compliant' the
lightbulb doesn't understand.
One enthusiastic newbie who has just written in to say lightbulbs are great,
but I just can't seem to get this one to work when I plug it in to the
amplifier.
Three developers to write patches correcting the lightswitch behaviour.
Two newbies to ask whether their version of 'lightbulb' is currently supported
by UNIX sockets.
Two enraged missives pleading for glassblowing tips from members who are
attempting to 'blow their own'.
Three to post useful hyperlinks to favourite lightbulb changing sites.
Five experienced developers to discuss whether now is the right time to
implement their plans for a general domestic robot and state categorically
that the question of how many lines of function code it takes to change a
lightbulb should be carried over to the developers list.
One reply from a SusE user asking how to configure that with Yast.
One bemused Debian user to reply they don't know, they just
edit /etc/lightbulb using vi.
Two GNU hackers to demonstrate how the same thing can easily be achieved using
a LISP-based language from within emacs, given enough memory.
One to ask if there's a Gentoo e-build for this.
Three experienced coders to argue that we really need a new format for
lightbulbs, which would allow users to change them under the GPL.
One user to comment that they can see perfectly well by the light of their
computer screen anyway.
One hardware developer to announce that they have successfully embedded
lightbulbs in several commercial sockets with great success.
Two replies to ask the newbie which version of 'mains socket' they are using.
Two users to post screenshots of lightbulbs they recently installed.
One experienced developer to write in and say that they only ever use natural
light, so they've never really experienced these difficulties, but they
really sympathise (plus a link to their homepage).
----
You asked for that, ;-]
Happy Fools Day! (I know I am)
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk