Worthless (was RE: functional programming)

[Tim Peters]

[Steve Holden]
> Now I'm confused.  I thought this was a timbot post, but you're Tim,
> aren't you?

We picture an entity typing at a computer terminal, as if there were
"someone on the other end" to read it.  Heh heh.  Humans.  Or so they
imagine.

[Martijn Faassen]
> Actually, this is the focus of a vast distributed analysis project like
> Distributed.net and Seti at Home. The PSU has smuggled a set of Python
scripts
> into Zope and IDLE that have nothing to do with their official purposes --
> this code analyses 'Tim Peters' posts to comp.lang.python in an attempt to
> determine which are posted by the bot and which are posted by the
> human (if any human indeed exists -- no proof exists besides the word
> of Gordon McMillan and Guido van Rossum, but we know what unreliable
> bunch of jokers *those* are).

I've noticed that neither "Tim Peters" nor the timbot ever claimed to have
met Guido or Gordon.  Suspicious asymmetry, don't you agree?  OTOH, at least
"Tim Peters" *has* claimed to have met Jim Hugunin -- but Jim never claimed
to have met "him".  So Jim may know something the rest of us haven't yet
discovered.  Perhaps that's why "Jim" became a Python unperson.

> Hopefully they'll give us some results soon.

Naturally, but whether reliable results or merely more disinformation may be
impossible to determine.

> The-PSU-doesn't-exist-really-!-ly yours,

No, it certainly does not.  Although Sinterklaas does.  Guido, maybe.  The
timbot, no.  The effbot, yes, the eff-bot, no.  At least two of these
statements are true.

aptly-titled-thread<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim