ELEANOR RIGBY E ALTRI TESTI CANTABILI

Anonimi ed autori vari

L’invito alla segnalazione di altri testi che accompagnava la pubblicazione di The Beatles e l’Information & Communication Technology è stato accolto.

Basta usare un motore di ricerca per vedere come, in realtà, di testi di un autore collettivo, scritture sovrapposte ad altre scritture, sempre con varianti ed aggiunte e lievi spostamenti di senso. Valga in particolare il caso di ‘Twas the Night before Crisis

Eleanor Rigby
Eleanor Rigby
Sits at the keyboard And waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal
Finding some code That will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?

Hacker MacKenzie
Writing the code for a program that no one will run
It's nearly done
Look at him working,
fixing the bugs in the night when there's nobody there.
What does he care?

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
Ah, look at all the lonely users.

The Abc's Of Unix
A is for awk, which runs like a snail, and
B is for biff, which reads all your mail.
C is for cc, as hackers recall, while
D is for dd, the command that does all.
E is for emacs, which rebinds your keys, and
F is for fsck, which rebuilds your trees.
G is for grep, a clever detective, while
H is for halt, which may seem defective.

I is for indent, which rarely amuses, and
J is for join, which nobody uses.
K is for kill, which makes you the boss, while
L is for lex, which is missing from DOS.
M is for more, from which less was begot, and
N is for nice, which it really is not.
O is for od, which prints out things nice, while
P is for passwd, which reads in strings twice.
Q is for quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and
R is for ranlib, for sorting ar table.
S is for spell, which attempts to belittle, while
T is for true, which does very little.
U is for uniq, which is used after sort, and
V is for vi, which is hard to abort.
W is for whoami, which tells you your name, while
X is, well, X, of dubious fame.
Y is for yes, which makes an impression, and
Z is for zcat, which handles compression.

 Chaucer [well, almost.  Ed.]

An Hacker there was, one of the finest sort
Who controlled the system; graphics was his sport.
A manly man, to be a wizard able;
Many a protected file he had sitting on his table.
His console, when he typed, a man might hear
Clicking and feeping wind as clear,
Aye, and as loud as does the machine room bell
Where my lord Hacker was Prior of the cell.
The Rule of good St Savage or St Doeppnor
As old and strict he tended to ignore;
He let go by the things of yesterday
And took the modern world's more spacious way.
He did not rate that text as a plucked hen
Which says that Hackers are not holy men.
And that a hacker underworked is a mere
Fish out of water, flapping on the pier.
That is to say, a hacker out of his cloister.
That was a text he held not worth an oyster.
And I agreed and said his views were sound;
Was he to study till his head wend round
Poring over books in the cloisters?  Must he toil
As Andy bade and till the very soil?
Was he to leave the world upon the shelf?
Let Andy have his labor to himself!

R. Kipling
Under the wide and heavy VAX
Dig my grave and let me relax
Long have I lived, and many my hacks
And I lay me down with a will.
These be the words that tell the way:
"Here he lies who piped 64K,
Brought down the machine for nearly a day,
And Rogue playing to an awful standstill."

‘Twas the Night before Crisis
'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
         Not a program was working not even a browse.
The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care,
         Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer.
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
         While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
         I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
         But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear.
More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
         And he whistled and shouted and called them by name;
On Update!  On Add!  On Inquiry!  On Delete!
         On Batch Jobs!  On Closing!  On Functions Complete!
His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
         From Weekends and nights in front of a screen.
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
         Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread...