From: becka@rz.uni-duesseldorf.de
  To  : mailing list GGI <ggi-develop@eskimo.com>
  Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1998 02:36:37 +0200 (MEST)

Back and some humor about elephants ..

Hi !

I found a really useful message in my mailbox, so I thought I'd let you
share it: (as always retranslated from german, so please excuse clumsy
phrases ...)

How to hunt elephants:
----------------------

 CS-students hunt elephants by executing the following algorithm:

    begin
    {
     go to africa
     start at cape of good hope
     search africa south-to-north, going bidirectionally east/west.
     for every step do
     {
      catch any visible animal.
      compare it to an elephant.
      halt() on match.
    }}

  Experienced programmers improve the above algorithm by placing an animal
  known to be an elephant in Cairo to make sure the program terminates
  correctly.

  Assembler-programmers rather like executing the above algorithem while
  walking on all fours

  SQL-programmers use SELECT elephant FROM africa.
 
  NATURAL-programmers ask ADABAS to bring them an elephant.

  LOGO-programmers ride through africa on a turtle.

  COBOL-programmers do the same on a dinosaur.

  BASIC-programmers prefer a horse powered wagon which has always engaged
  brakes.

  C-programmers first determine the sizeof(elephant), try to allocate it,
  forget to check the return code and then shoot wild pointers at the
  elephant.

  C++-programmers insist on elephants being a class, thus it has to provide
  a public "huntme()" method. In case the elephant leaves africa (it's
  scope), there is no problem either, as this automatically calls the
  destructor.

  PASCAL-programmers first mark a spot on a map, place an END there, and
  hope, that Nikolaus Wirth gets flattened by a raging elephant at that
  very spot.

  MODULA-programnmers simply import an elephant from a zoo.

  LISP-programmers build a maze of brackets and hope the elephant gets lost
  in it, as it doesn't know how to use emacs bracket highlighting.

  Mathematicians hunt elephants, by removing all elements from the set
  africa which is not an elephant, and then cathing the remaining set.

  Experienced mathematicians first try to prove the existence of at least
  one unique elephant, before starting over as above, where the above
  will be labeled a "simple exercise to the reader".

  Mathematics teachers in university do prove the existence of at least
  one unique elephant before leaving the rest of the task to the students.

  Clever mathematicians just build a small cage, climb inside and say 
  "I define: This is outside."

  Engineers hunt elephants, by going to africa, hunting all grey animals and
  assuming it is an elephant, if the weight dos not deviate more than 15%
  from some known-to-be-an-elephant thing.

  Physics people have their own set of methods for hunting elephants:
  - they fly over africa at nearly lightspeed. Lorentz contraction will
    make the elephant a flat thing. Thus they just roll it up and secure it
    with a rubber ring.
  - As they are naturally lazy, they construct an automated elephant
    detection and catching machine. The construction will take longer than
    the method used by the asm guys.
  - They build a small cage. According to quantum mechanics, the elephant
    has a nonzero probability of being in the cage. it is thus effectively
    caught. Just a matter of time ...
  - A high power ringlaser is build at the three outer corners of africa and
    the path is them contracted until all animals that can't go below it
    are either inside the area or ashes. The remaining ones should contain
    an elephant.

  Economists do not hunt elephants. Though they are convinced, that
  elephants would surrender themselves, if you pay them enough.

  Statistics people hunt the first animal they see n times and then call it
  elephant.

  Business consultants do not hunt elephants. Many of them never hunted
  anything. Though you can hire them at excessive hourly rates to hear
  good advice about it.

  System analytics would be (in theory) capable of calculating the
  correlation between hatsize and hitrate for hunting elephants, if someone
  would tell them what the heck an elephant is.

  SAP-engineers declare the first animal they see an elephant, and the the
  adjust their idea of an elephant to that animal.

  MICROSOFT buys an elephant from a Seattle zoo, makes a big bunch of copies
  and then talks all world into the idea, that everyone needs one and that
  it is the ideal helper application for MS office and will then export
  14 million copies to africa.

-- 
= Andreas Beck                    |  Email :  <andreas.beck@ggi-project.org> =