Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine
Volume III, Issue 5, AD MCMXCVIII
Monday, March 9th, 1998
ISSN 1482-0471
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Unexpected demand for COBOL programmers due to the Millennium Bug
results in severe understaffing of fast food restaurants.

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"You know... I was expecting a war to break out by now. Too bad."

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1. Titanic and letters 
2. Clinton
3. Poetry for Two Voices
4. The Millennium 'Experience' 
5. C++ is a waste of time

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This week's Golden Testicle award:

The A-Klasse Diana Tunnel Racer

http://www.fork.de/games/diana/play.htm

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1. Titanic and letters
   by Leandro

THERE IS NOT A DOG IN TOWN that hasn't been telling me that I should
watch Titanic.  They are in love with the movie.  They have watched it
already six times and want me to go with them and watch it again.
People that wanted to hate the movie, or promised they weren't going to
see it, came back completely brainwashed and repeating like drones
"go... see... Titanic... movie... good.  must... enjoy... love story."
What the hell is going on here?

  A former flame of mine has been shattering my bullocks about it.
Everytime she hears the Celine Dion song, she has to stop, sigh and
tell me some new detail about the movie.  "Oh Leo! They spent their
most beautiful three days of their life together!"  I'm sorry, did I
say I cared?  "Oh, she is so beautiful and he draws her naked because
he is a poor artist!"  Yeah, what is it with the "poor artist" thing
anyway?  Even in the opera Rigoletto, his daughter falls in love with
a guy who passes himself for a "poor artist".  Poor artist my ass!  
Why isn't he a grocery clerk?  Or the editor of a zine?  Or some-sort
of web-programmer?  I bet my buttocks, that if I go and chat with a
girl and I say "I am a poor artist--" she'll be all over me before I
can finish the sentence.

  Now, unfortunately I will have to see this movie, for two reasons:
first of all, I can't go around dissing it if I haven't seen it yet.
I've heard enough of it to make me puke for a while, but it's still no
excuse.  Second, my girlfriend read IMPROV's article on Titanic and
guess what?  She goes "if your friend IMPROV liked it, then we must go
see it!"  No, really, we don't!  What is it with women and these love
stories anyway?

  200 million dollars spent on a 45 cent script.  Had I picked up a
Harmony book at random, changed a few things so it would fit on a big
ship, dropped Leonardo Di Caprio in it and made sure the love story
ended in tragedy, people would love it.  It doesn't matter how cheesy
the story is, as long as it ends in tragedy, then it's a great love
story.  Had Titanic ended with the two main characters happily married,
nobody would've bothered me so much, nor would this have been such a
great story.  Perhaps I'm bitter.

  As I wait patiently for the deadline to arrive and for my chance to
endure... err... watch the movie with my girlfriend, I fear but one
thing: that I might enjoy the movie.  However, I still think that if
you want to watch a real love story, you should stick to The English
Patient.


Letters

In my article "The Meaning of Life" that appeared in CoN III.4 I
originally wrote:

>> ... war will not be fought in a civilized manner like in WW I or
>> WWII. This time it will be Chemical.

Chen Drori replies:

> Not to be the prodigal pain-in-the-ass, but just to point out this
> inaccuracy - if This time will be Chemical, as Leandro points out, it
> won't be different than the Last time or a few specific other times.
> Chemical and Biological warfare has already been carried out, even by
> Iraq itself, but not only by it. Iraq has used chemical agents such as
> nerve gas and other assorted flavors of toxins against the Kurdish
> minorities in the northern part of the country, as a part of Pres.
> Hussein's plan to eradicate the Kurdish people. Even Japan has had a
> part in this. In WW-II The japanese used biological warfare in their
> invasion into China. They even had a whole POW camp in use as a
> biological warfare test site (film footage exists of japanese
> scientists walking around the campsite with gas masks and lab coats
> on, taking samples and examining the prisoners).
> And you know what? That's not the first time, either. In medieval
> times, the besiegers of cities used to catapult rotting and diseased
> corpses over the city walls, so that they would spread infection and
> weaken the cities' defenses.

  If that's the case, in the Wild West, Indians were given blankets as
gifts during "peace" treaties.  However these blankets originally had
been used in hospitals as blankets for very sick patients.  The Native
Americans' immune system, not having experienced the European diseases,
quickly got sick and many of them died.  However, that wasn't the point
of the story.  The point was that we should live it up now.  The
inability we have to control what is in the air reflects on our
inability to control what life throws at us.  We could be dead tomorrow
with a typical bus running us over.  Chemical or not, enjoy life to its
fullest and make sure you got a good book waiting for you at the can.

  Beside that, you are a pain in the ass.  There is always some freak
that has to write back and add their two cents worth on something.
Next thing I know, I'll check my mailbox and someone will have written
how his or her testicles have more hair then our Golden nard.

>> "Well, yeah" I answered as casually as I could "sex is almost as
>> essential as food. In fact, I can't think life without either of
>> them".

> Just in relation to this - did you know that sex is just like
> breathing air? Yes, it's totally unessential - but only as long as
> you're getting enough of it!

  Breathing doesn't seem so unessential to me.  If I stop breathing,
I turn purple.  If I stop having sex, I turn red and hot and I need a
cold shower to cool down.  So yes, we better get enough of it.  However
I don't understand how it can be unessential.  You got to check your
priorities, I think.


Sirine Hijal kindly informs us why she reads CoN:

> I realized why I subscribed to this zine: a good book for a good
> shit....
> your zine is from now on going to be a permanent guest of my bathroom
> window sill.

And lastly, Julian Yap sends us his "CoN Comments"

> To Mr Editor,
> I find your fine publication very entertaining indeed.  If fact,
> it's the best thing I read on a regular basis.  I only stumbled onto
> your magazine by accident through the ALT.EZINES newsgroup but I'm
> glad I did.  Your 'zine truly shits over all other 'zines.  My only
> gripe is that your online web site does not do your 'zine justice.
> ie. it's shit.  I find that IMPROV is my favourite writer because he
> shits on about his sex life and stuff but sometimes he just shits on
> for the sake of shitting on and on those cases, he's pretty shit.
> Keep up the black, sardonic humour and throw in some more sexual
> references (just what the public wants).

Dear Julian, thank you for your comments.  I hope that you have the
shits while reading our next issue.  This will ensure you will
seriously enjoy your toilet time and that yet another issue of CoN
ends up sitting on someone's washroom window sill.

Have a good one folks.

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2. Clinton
   by IMPROV

Okay, so I'm watching NBC Nightly News (why I still haven't figured out,
except for the fact that there's only so much "innovation" one can take
in a day from Toronto based CITY-TV).  The lead in story is "Crisis in
the Whitehouse", another riveting story about the case of the intern
who blew.  Call it what you want, Lewinsky Gate, Zipper Gate, or Starr
Wars,  I could care less!  Followed by a piece explaining that the U.S.
has sent 75 more warplanes to the Persian Gulf (bringing the number of
U.S. jets in the gulf the 350).  The story proceeds to say that the
troops are poised and ready to attack at any moment...which in some
people's opinion puts the world on the brink of a third world war. 
 
  Why am I giving you a report on "What I saw..."?  Because I have
one simple question, "Since when did the leader of the free world's
sexual promiscuity become more important then the possibility of
NUCLEAR FREAKIN' WAR?!?"  Here we are on the other side of the world
wondering around under the illusion that Bill Clinton's much travelled
dick is more important than an Iraqi-Russian alliance. Am I the only
one who has a problem with this?  Who gives a rat's ass if old Tubby
is boffing everything that moves in the White House?  I'll tell ya
who. It's the same mid-western inbreeds who think Springer is quality
television.

  Don't blame the networks, because they're giving the American public
what they want.  People don't want to know about political strife on
theother side of the planet, they want the scoop on how crooked the
president's member is.  Personally, I could care less if Lewinski &
Bill did it on the Oval Office desk during the State of The Union
Address (now there'd be some ratings!).  That's the sad truth, we live
in an era where the Pamela & Tommy Lee video is in as great a demand
as Too Hot For TV!  I'm far from a moralist, and would never condemn
one for getting they're kicks (as long as they didn't involve children
or livestock) including the President of The United States of America.
But people don't care about real problems... what so you think about
more:  Iraq's chemical and nuclear armoury or Clinton's preferences
concerning swallowing and kissing afterwards?

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3. Poetry for Two Voices:
   The Unawakening
   by Lilith DemHareIs


Dominant:			Diminutive:

Gather your blossoms and 
kiss them goodbye.  They
fall away in splendour blown.
Say gone				
gone, we are dead		gone, we are dead
				wake me nevermore.
Please do not cry it's just
				you are born, you
grow and then
				you die, and I
Say gone,
gone, are you			gone, are you,
				too,
dead?				dead?
Just
wake me nevermore.		wake me nevermore.
				Let
				me
				sleep.  Because
I have wandered.
				I wonder,
A last Soulless soul.	A last Soulless soul.
				I am now alone.  And so I
				say gone,
gone,				gone,
they all are dead.
Will we wake			will we wake
				nevermore?

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4. The Millennium 'Experience' 
   by The alarmingly uneventful Adventures of 'sum-fink from my hed'
   (Milkshake)

now, i dont know if any of you readers from countries other than Britain
know about this as i dont happen to live in those countries. 
But at this very moment, in greenwhich there is a huge construction site
where something special is being built for the turn of the new millenium.
What it basically is, is a huge tent with 'edcuational' but 'fun' rides
(i dont see how these two words fit in the same sentance, but they are
nevertheless)
Its going to stay up for a year.
Its going to cost one adult around 17 pounds to get in
Its going to cost seven hundred and fifty million pounds to construct.
and its apparently going to show that britain is leading the way into
the new millenium, how that is supposed to happen is beyond me.
 
Now, some of you may think this is rather a good idea, I would have
to disagree, especially when looking at the current state of the
country. Half of the schools in this country are falling apart, the
NHS and other areas of the welfare state are having to take big cuts
and take shortcuts because they haven't got enough money to go around.

I would have thought i secure economy and a thriving welfare state
would be a much better way of moving into a new era rather than a tent
in the south east of the country that most people wont even see 
But what do i know 
i'm just a student.

Send your comments to: Rik <Rich.h@btinternet.com> or visit 
http://www.btinternet.com/~weird.stuff1/Rik1.htm.

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5. C++ is a waste of time
this article courtesy of Dynamis.  Those in the underground will know.

This is a really interesting thing for us C++ programmers (or those
who have an interest in it).
FYI, Bjarne Stroustrup is the inventor of C++ and Dennis Ritchie is the
inventor of C/Unix.

 ______________________________________________________________
 On the 1st of January, 1998, Bjarne Stroustrup gave an interview
 to the IEEE's 'Computer' magazine.
 Naturally, the editors thought he would be giving a retrospective
 view of seven years of object-oriented design, using the language
 he created.
 By the end of the interview, the interviewer got more than he had
 bargained for and, subsequently, the editor decided to suppress its
 contents, 'for the good of the industry' but, as with many of these
 things, there was a leak.
 Here is a complete transcript of what was said, unedited, and
 unrehearsed, so it isn't as neat as planned interviews.
 You will find it interesting...
 __________________________________________________________________
 Interviewer:  Well, it's been a few years since you changed the
         world of software design, how does it feel, looking back?
 Stroustrup:  Actually, I was thinking about those days, just before
         you arrived. Do you remember?  Everyone was writing 'C'
         and, the trouble was, they were pretty damn good at it.
         Universities got pretty good at teaching it, too. They were
         turning out competent - I stress the word 'competent' -
         graduates at a phenomenal rate. That's what caused the
         problem.
 Interviewer:  Problem?
 Stroustrup:  Yes, problem. Remember when everyone wrote Cobol?
 Interviewer:  Of course, I did too
 Stroustrup:  Well, in the beginning, these guys were like demi-gods.
         Their salaries were high, and they were treated like royalty.
 Interviewer:  Those were the days, eh?
 Stroustrup:  Right. So what happened?  IBM got sick of it, and
         invested millions in training programmers, till they were a
         dime a dozen.
 Interviewer:  That's why I got out. Salaries dropped within a year,
         to the point where being a journalist actually paid better.
 Stroustrup:  Exactly. Well, the same happened with 'C' programmers.
 Interviewer:  I see, but what's the point?
 Stroustrup:  Well, one day, when I was sitting in my office, I
         thought of this little scheme, which would redress the
         balance a little. I thought 'I wonder what would happen, if
         there were a language so complicated, so difficult to learn,
         that nobody would ever be able to swamp the market with
         programmers?  Actually, I got some of the ideas from X10,
         you know, X windows. That was such a bitch of a graphics
         system, that it only just ran on those Sun 3/60 things.
         They had all the ingredients for what I wanted. A really
         ridiculously complex syntax, obscure functions, and
         pseudo-OO structure. Even now, nobody writes raw X-windows
         code. Motif is the only way to go if you want to retain
         your sanity.
 Interviewer:  You're kidding...?
 Stroustrup:  Not a bit of it. In fact, there was another problem.
         Unix was written in 'C', which meant that any 'C' programmer
         could very easily become a systems programmer. Remember
         what a mainframe systems programmer used to earn?
 Interviewer:  You bet I do, that's what I used to do.
 Stroustrup:  OK, so this new language had to divorce itself from
         Unix, by hiding all the system calls that bound the two
         together so nicely. This would enable guys who only knew
         about DOS to earn a decent living too.
 Interviewer:  I don't believe you said that...
 Stroustrup:  Well, it's been long enough, now, and I believe most
         people have figured out for themselves that C++ is a waste
         of time but, I must say, it's taken them a lot longer than I
         thought it would.
 Interviewer:  So how exactly did you do it?
 Stroustrup:  It was only supposed to be a joke, I never thought
         people would take the book seriously. Anyone with half a
         brain can see that object-oriented programming is
         counter-intuitive, illogical and inefficient.
 Interviewer:  What?
 Stroustrup:  And as for 're-useable code' - when did you ever hear
         of a company re-using its code?
 Interviewer:  Well, never, actually, but...
 Stroustrup:  There you are then. Mind you, a few tried, in the
         early days. There was this Oregon company - Mentor
         Graphics, I think they were called - really caught a cold
         trying to rewrite everything in C++ in about '90 or '91. I
         felt sorry for them really, but I thought people would learn
         from their mistakes.
 Interviewer:  Obviously, they didn't?
 Stroustrup:  Not in the slightest. Trouble is, most companies
         hush-up all their major blunders, and explaining a $30
         million loss to the shareholders would have been difficult.
         Give them their due, though, they made it work in the end.
 Interviewer:  They did?  Well, there you are then, it proves O-O works.
 Stroustrup:  Well, almost. The executable was so huge, it took
         five minutes to load, on an HP workstation, with 128MB of
         RAM. Then it ran like treacle. Actually, I thought this
         would be a major stumbling-block, and I'd get found out
         within a week, but nobody cared. Sun and HP were only too
         glad to sell enormously powerful boxes, with huge resources
         just to run trivial programs. You know, when we had our
         first C++ compiler, at AT&T, I compiled 'Hello World', and
         couldn't believe the size of the executable. 2.1MB
 Interviewer:  What?  Well, compilers have come a long way, since then.
 Stroustrup:  They have?  Try it on the latest version of g++ - you
         won't get much change out of half a megabyte. Also, there
         are several quite recent examples for you, from all over the
         world. British Telecom had a major disaster on their hands
         but, luckily, managed to scrap the whole thing and start
         again. They were luckier than Australian Telecom. Now I
         hear that Siemens is building a dinosaur, and getting more
         and more worried as the size of the hardware gets bigger, to
         accommodate the executables. Isn't multiple inheritance a joy?
 Interviewer:  Yes, but C++ is basically a sound language.
 Stroustrup:  You really believe that, don't you?  Have you ever sat
         down and worked on a C++ project?  Here's what happens:
         First, I've put in enough pitfalls to make sure that only
         the most trivial projects will work first time. Take
         operator overloading. At the end of the project, almost
         every module has it, usually, because guys feel they really
         should do it, as it was in their training course. The same
         operator then means something totally different in every
         module. Try pulling that lot together, when you have a
         hundred or so modules. And as for data hiding. God, I
         sometimes can't help laughing when I hear about the problems
         companies have making their modules talk to each other. I
         think the word 'synergistic' was specially invented to twist
         the knife in a project manager's ribs.
 Interviewer:  I have to say, I'm beginning to be quite appalled at
         all this. You say you did it to raise programmers'
         salaries?  That's obscene.
 Stroustrup:  Not really. Everyone has a choice. I didn't expect
         the thing to get so much out of hand. Anyway, I basically
         succeeded. C++ is dying off now, but programmers still get
         high salaries - especially those poor devils who have to
         maintain all this crap. You do realize, it's impossible to
         maintain a large C++ software module if you didn't actually
         write it?
 Interviewer:  How come?
 Stroustrup:  You are out of touch, aren't you?  Remember the typedef?
 Interviewer:  Yes, of course.
 Stroustrup:  Remember how long it took to grope through the header
         files only to find that 'RoofRaised' was a double precision
         number?  Well, imagine how long it takes to find all the
         implicit typedefs in all the Classes in a major project.
 Interviewer:  So how do you reckon you've succeeded?
 Stroustrup:  Remember the length of the average-sized 'C' project?
         About 6 months. Not nearly long enough for a guy with a
         wife and kids to earn enough to have a decent standard of
         living. Take the same project, design it in C++ and what do
         you get?  I'll tell you. One to two years. Isn't that
         great?  All that job security, just through one mistake of
         judgement. And another thing. The universities haven't
         been teaching 'C' for such a long time, there's now a
         shortage of decent 'C' programmers. Especially those who
         know anything about Unix systems programming. How many guys
         would know what to do with 'malloc', when they've used 'new'
         all these years - and never bothered to check the return
         code. In fact, most C++ programmers throw away their return
         codes. Whatever happened to good ol' '-1'?  At least you
         knew you had an error, without bogging the thing down in all
         that 'throw' 'catch' 'try' stuff.
 Interviewer:  But, surely, inheritance does save a lot of time?
 Stroustrup:  Does it?  Have you ever noticed the difference between
         a 'C' project plan, and a C++ project plan?  The planning
         stage for a C++ project is three times as long. Precisely
         to make sure that everything which should be inherited is,
         and what shouldn't isn't. Then, they still get it wrong.
         Whoever heard of memory leaks in a 'C' program?  Now finding
         them is a major industry. Most companies give up, and send
         the product out, knowing it leaks like a sieve, simply to
         avoid the expense of tracking them all down.
 Interviewer:  There are tools...
 Stroustrup:  Most of which were written in C++.
 Interviewer:  If we publish this, you'll probably get lynched, you
         do realize that?
 Stroustrup:  I doubt it. As I said, C++ is way past its peak now,
         and no company in its right mind would start a C++ project
         without a pilot trial. That should convince them that it's
         the road to disaster. If not, they deserve all they get. You
         know, I tried to convince Dennis Ritchie to rewrite Unix in C++.
 Interviewer:  Oh my God. What did he say?
 Stroustrup:  Well, luckily, he has a good sense of humor. I think
         both he and Brian figured out what I was doing, in the early
         days, but never let on. He said he'd help me write a C++
         version of DOS, if I was interested.
 Interviewer:  Were you?
 Stroustrup:  Actually, I did write DOS in C++, I'll give you a demo
         when we're through. I have it running on a Sparc 20 in the
         computer room. Goes like a rocket on 4 CPU's, and only
         takes up 70 megs of disk.
 Interviewer:  What's it like on a PC?
 Stroustrup:  Now you're kidding. Haven't you ever seen Windows '95?
         I think of that as my biggest success. Nearly blew the game
         before I was ready, though.
 Interviewer:  You know, that idea of a Unix++ has really got me
         thinking. Somewhere out there, there's a guy going to try it.
 Stroustrup:  Not after they read this interview.
 Interviewer:  I'm sorry, but I don't see us being able to publish
         any of this.
 Stroustrup:  But it's the story of the century. I only want to be
         remembered by my fellow programmers, for what I've done for
         them. You know how much a C++ guy can get these days?
 Interviewer:  Last I heard, a really top guy is worth $70 - $80 an
         hour.
 Stroustrup:  See?  And I bet he earns it. Keeping track of all the
         gotchas I put into C++ is no easy job. And, as I said
         before, every C++ programmer feels bound by some mystic
         promise to use every damn element of the language on every
         project. Actually, that really annoys me sometimes, even
         though it serves my original purpose. I almost like the
         language after all this time.
 Interviewer:  You mean you didn't before?
 Stroustrup:  Hated it. It even looks clumsy, don't you agree?  But
         when the book royalties started to come in... well, you get
         the picture.
 Interviewer:  Just a minute. What about references?  You must
         admit, you improved on 'C' pointers.
 Stroustrup:  Hmm. I've always wondered about that. Originally, I
         thought I had. Then, one day I was discussing this with a
         guy who'd written C++ from the beginning. He said he could
         never remember whether his variables were referenced or
         dereferenced, so he always used pointers. He said the
         little asterisk always reminded him.
 Interviewer:  Well, at this point, I usually say 'thank you very
         much' but it hardly seems adequate.
 Stroustrup:  Promise me you'll publish this. My conscience is
         getting the better of me these days.
 Interviewer:  I'll let you know, but I think I know what my editor
         will say.
 Stroustrup:  Who'd believe it anyway?  Although, can you send me a
         copy of that tape?
 Interviewer:  I can do that.

-------------------------------------------

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