Subject: Re: Design patterns for Lisp From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2001 01:46:15 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3216505572815147@naggum.net> * Kent M Pitman <pitman@world.std.com> | My only problem with this is that things are ALREADY sped up. What's the | point of running a zillion times faster than the machines of yesteryear, | yet still not be willing to sacrifice a dime of it to anything other than | doing the same kinds of boring computations that you did before? I want | speedups not just to make my same old boring life faster, but to buy me | the flexibility to do something I wasn't willing to do at slower speeds. Well, you could do what the other "innovative" guys out there do: Create another amazingly idiotic virus for some idiotic Microsoft product used by millions if not billions of people who would rather die than think about what they are doing, and, to misquote Bertrand Russel, in fact they do. That would certainly satisfy "to do something I wasn't willing to do at slower speeds", but the speed was probably not the reason. :) Seriously, software secure from Microsoftitis (the leprosy of software) would be something that computers could help us attain. However, it would take an act of Congress to finally turn around and notice that if a bank that was repeatedly robbed of all its money because it had the level of security for which Microsoft's products are famous, had tried to blame "crackers" and had taken _no_ precautions for twenty years to prevent these incidents from happening, the government would have shut them down and incarcerated the (ir)responsible owners and (mis)managers. The fact that the U.S. Government does not stop Microsoft from making and distributing software that aids and abets electronic terrorists means that they are harboring terrorists, according to the standards set by Presiding Dimwit George W. Bush (who has reverted to pre-9/11 blabbering with the highest pause-to-speak ratio of all present public figures). The only solution is to bomb the shit out of Microsoft's headquarters and their offices around the world, and to wage war on electronic terrorist trainer and leader William H. Gates III. If the world has finally had enough of terrorism, what will it take to make people tire of the crap that Microsoft produces and demand the end of their terrorist reign? /// -- The past is not more important than the future, despite what your culture has taught you. Your future observations, conclusions, and beliefs are more important to you than those in your past ever will be. The world is changing so fast the balance between the past and the future has shifted.