Tim, you are great!!! Some more from me: On Friday 01 April 2005 12:58, tim hall wrote: <snip> Two more to state that a mailing list for this format should be created but they don't have the resources. One more who has the resources and creates the mailing list. After some time he realizes that the list won't be used (as it is clearly unnecessary) and complains about that... Three others to complain that no new list is needed. (me being one of them ;-) ) Making it 48 ;-) Arnold -- There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. -- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

LOL. Well, this thread will become the largest bottom_phrase (I don't know how is it called in english) I ever had. Keep like that!! Damian- --8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<-- An OT discussion of LAU's mailing list, contributed by Tim Hall, Kjetil Svalastog Matheussen, Arnold Krill and Dave Phillips. T.H.: 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? Kjetil Svalastog Matheussen: 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... And here's an extract of what this OT became: Q: How many linux audio users does it take to change a light bulb? A: 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. Two more to state that a mailing list for this format should be created but they don't have the resources. One more who has the resources and creates the mailing list. After some time he realizes that the list won't be used (as it is clearly unnecessary) and complains about that... Three others to complain that no new list is needed. (me being one of them ;-) ) 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). Add one newbie to decide that manually changing a light bulb is too difficult, too much work, he doesn't need the light anyway, so he's going back to Windows. --8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<-- Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -- Groucho Marx

On Fri, 01 Apr, 2005 at 02:56PM +0200, Arnold Krille spake thus: Hey! LAM is still running. Would you be happier if we added bulb discussion to our remit, to keep it off the main list? -- "I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb. Thank you." (By Vance Petree, Virginia Power)

The age old one: How many software developers does it take to change a light bulb? None, that is a hardware problem.

FWIW there are well over 50 industrious people trying to work out how to deal with the lightbulb issue... ah, the wonders of open sauce... http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=AlsaHumour --markc