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* [TUHS] ching in Unix
@ 2021-01-28 21:45 Warren Toomey
  2021-01-28 22:01 ` John Floren
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Warren Toomey @ 2021-01-28 21:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

https://ewe2.ninja/stuff/computers/ching/

Interesting story!

Cheers, Warren

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] ching in Unix
  2021-01-28 21:45 [TUHS] ching in Unix Warren Toomey
@ 2021-01-28 22:01 ` John Floren
  2021-01-28 22:10 ` George Michaelson
  2021-03-28  6:29 ` scj
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: John Floren @ 2021-01-28 22:01 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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@tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> https://ewe2.ninja/stuff/computers/ching/
>
> Interesting story!
>
> Cheers, Warren

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] ching in Unix
  2021-01-28 21:45 [TUHS] ching in Unix Warren Toomey
  2021-01-28 22:01 ` John Floren
@ 2021-01-28 22:10 ` George Michaelson
  2021-01-28 22:12   ` John Floren
  2021-03-28  6:29 ` scj
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: George Michaelson @ 2021-01-28 22:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Warren Toomey; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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@tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> https://ewe2.ninja/stuff/computers/ching/
>
> Interesting story!
>
> Cheers, Warren

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] ching in Unix
  2021-01-28 22:10 ` George Michaelson
@ 2021-01-28 22:12   ` John Floren
  2021-01-28 22:32     ` George Michaelson
  2021-01-30  7:31     ` Adam Thornton
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: John Floren @ 2021-01-28 22:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: George Michaelson; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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@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@tuhs.org> wrote:
> >
> > https://ewe2.ninja/stuff/computers/ching/
> >
> > Interesting story!
> >
> > Cheers, Warren

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] ching in Unix
  2021-01-28 22:12   ` John Floren
@ 2021-01-28 22:32     ` George Michaelson
  2021-01-28 23:05       ` Jon Steinhart
  2021-01-30  7:31     ` Adam Thornton
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: George Michaelson @ 2021-01-28 22:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: John Floren; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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@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@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@tuhs.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > https://ewe2.ninja/stuff/computers/ching/
> > >
> > > Interesting story!
> > >
> > > Cheers, Warren

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] ching in Unix
  2021-01-28 22:32     ` George Michaelson
@ 2021-01-28 23:05       ` Jon Steinhart
  2021-01-30  7:28         ` John Cowan
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: Jon Steinhart @ 2021-01-28 23:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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@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.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] ching in Unix
  2021-01-28 23:05       ` Jon Steinhart
@ 2021-01-30  7:28         ` John Cowan
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: John Cowan @ 2021-01-30  7:28 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Jon Steinhart; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 6:06 PM Jon Steinhart <jon@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@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.

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] ching in Unix
  2021-01-28 22:12   ` John Floren
  2021-01-28 22:32     ` George Michaelson
@ 2021-01-30  7:31     ` Adam Thornton
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Adam Thornton @ 2021-01-30  7:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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Those of us who listened to the Firesign Theatre may recognize this one.


DIAGNOSTICS
>        The great prince issues commands,
>        Founds states, vests families with fiefs.
>        Inferior people should not be employed.
>
>
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] ching in Unix
  2021-01-28 21:45 [TUHS] ching in Unix Warren Toomey
  2021-01-28 22:01 ` John Floren
  2021-01-28 22:10 ` George Michaelson
@ 2021-03-28  6:29 ` scj
  2021-03-28 21:56   ` Noel Hunt
  2021-04-10 20:32   ` Sean Dwyer via TUHS
  2 siblings, 2 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: scj @ 2021-03-28  6:29 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Warren Toomey; +Cc: tuhs

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

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] ching in Unix
  2021-03-28  6:29 ` scj
@ 2021-03-28 21:56   ` Noel Hunt
  2021-04-10 20:32   ` Sean Dwyer via TUHS
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Noel Hunt @ 2021-03-28 21:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Steve Johnson; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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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@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
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] ching in Unix
  2021-03-28  6:29 ` scj
  2021-03-28 21:56   ` Noel Hunt
@ 2021-04-10 20:32   ` Sean Dwyer via TUHS
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Sean Dwyer via TUHS @ 2021-04-10 20:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: scj; +Cc: tuhs

On Sat, Mar 27, 2021 at 11:29:49PM -0700, scj@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.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] ching in Unix
  2021-03-28 22:31 Norman Wilson
@ 2021-03-29  2:06 ` Noel Hunt
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Noel Hunt @ 2021-03-29  2:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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An unconscionable oversight on my part; yes Doug McIlroy is
also a fine writer of prose.

On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 9:33 AM Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org> wrote:

> Noel Hunt:
>
>   Who in the Unix world today
>   writes,  would even be able to write, a manual entry like that.
>
> ====
>
> Doug McIlroy is still around, though (alas) he doesn't write
> many manual entries these days.
>
> Norman Wilson
> Toronto ON
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] ching in Unix
@ 2021-03-28 22:31 Norman Wilson
  2021-03-29  2:06 ` Noel Hunt
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: Norman Wilson @ 2021-03-28 22:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Noel Hunt:

  Who in the Unix world today
  writes,  would even be able to write, a manual entry like that.

====

Doug McIlroy is still around, though (alas) he doesn't write
many manual entries these days.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2021-04-10 20:41 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 13+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2021-01-28 21:45 [TUHS] ching in Unix Warren Toomey
2021-01-28 22:01 ` John Floren
2021-01-28 22:10 ` George Michaelson
2021-01-28 22:12   ` John Floren
2021-01-28 22:32     ` George Michaelson
2021-01-28 23:05       ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-30  7:28         ` John Cowan
2021-01-30  7:31     ` Adam Thornton
2021-03-28  6:29 ` scj
2021-03-28 21:56   ` Noel Hunt
2021-04-10 20:32   ` Sean Dwyer via TUHS
2021-03-28 22:31 Norman Wilson
2021-03-29  2:06 ` Noel Hunt

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