Subject: Re: Filk, puns, and other time wasting.
From: rpw3@rigden.engr.sgi.com (Rob Warnock)
Date: 1998/10/25
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <70vgle$73c0n@fido.engr.sgi.com>
Barry Margolin  <barmar@bbnplanet.com> wrote:
+---------------
| Rob Warnock <rpw3@rigden.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
| >But the really sad thing is that the individual contest winners had their
| >names stripped off of the bootleg versions, thus denying them even their
| >brief moment of fame -- exactly what Kent was warning about.
| 
| I notice that you didn't add it back when you quoted the example haiku in
| your post.  Shouldn't you practice what you preach?
+---------------

[Petard, own, hoist by?]

Mea culpa. While I *did* in that same article include the URLs containing
the complete original haiku (including the original attributions) for anyone
who wished to go look, at the time I wrote that article I was not at a
terminal capable of running a Web browser [yes, simple ASCII does still
exist, sometimes], so that I was not able to go fetch the contents of the
URL and cut&paste from the original, with proper attribution. (At least,
not easily. I suppose I could have stopped, gone and fetched a copy of Lynx
from somewhere with FTP, gotten it to compile on the box I was reading news
on at the moment, and used *it* to fetch the "Salon" article, but then I
would have gotten *no* sleep that night, instead of only a little.)

Instead, I cribbed the example from a saved email message I'd received
(containing the "stripped" versions) from a mailing list, and the relevant
URLs of the Salon site from a saved copy of a reply I'd sent to the list
blasting the redistribution! Thus taking the easy way to Perdition...

+---------------
| My feeling is that short works like these may suffer from problems similar
| to popular trademarks.  If they become too well known, they may become part
| of "folk humor", much as trademarks may become generic (e.g. "aspirin").
+---------------

Exactly the problem!  ...and so you were quite right to call me on it.
Had I put in only a little more time (well, a *lot* more, last Wednesday)
I could have given the proper attribution. So (having a browser handy
this time) I will do so now (snip, snip):

	Serious error.
	All shortcuts have disappeared.
	Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
	-- Ian Hughes 
	<URL:http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/chal/1998/02/10chal3.html>

+---------------
| Like the Craig Sherbourne "dying child wants postcards" email
| (which, amazingly, seemed to stop circulating a few years ago)...
+---------------

Uh... Isn't it "Shergold"?  And no, it still keeps popping up.


-Rob

[p.s. Apologies in advance: Back from sabbatical 11/2/98, but
until then email will still get a "vacation" bounce message...]

-----
Rob Warnock, 8L-855		rpw3@sgi.com
Applied Networking		http://reality.sgi.com/rpw3/
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