Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Path: news.cinenet.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!news.kei.com!news.texas.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!dciteleport.com!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!world!kibo From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry) Subject: Re: Let's Speculate! The Conspiracy Game. Sender: news@world.std.com (Mr Usenet Himself) Message-ID: Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 04:19:01 GMT X-Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3314 centons, 87 microns, .03 hectars Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 References: <57fkdd$mgk@nnrp1.news.primenet.com> Nntp-Posting-Host: ppp0a014.std.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Organization: welcome datacomp X-Kibo-Machine: Vannevar Bush's Memex & Gene Roddenberry's Memorator X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.3.4 Lines: 40 In article <57fkdd$mgk@nnrp1.news.primenet.com>, nickb@primenet.com (Nick S Bensema) wrote: >In article , >James "Kibo" Parry wrote: >>I just opened my word processor with my system's resource editor to go >>diving for Easter Eggs. For string resources, there were three (besides a >>big glob of error messages): one was the program's install location, one >>was the description of the program, and the other was the string >> >>" etnroaisdlhcfp" >> >>Theories, gentlemen, I want theories. I want an explanation of why my word >>processor would need a somewhat scrambled frequency table of the dozen most >>common English letters. Is there a hidden function for solving Esperanto >>cryptograms? Is it secretly making up random new dictionary words from >>markov chains? Is this the new Linotype keyboard layout? > >I'm surprised that you recognized it as such. Do you have this memorized >or did you websearch for that word? No, I have the *real* Linotype keyboard layout memorized. etaoinshrdlu running top-to-bottom starting at the left. The reason for this is that that's the most commonly accepted list of common English characters (although your choice of sample always yields different orders than that) and because Linotype matrices have to travel to the left into the caster, by putting the most common letters at the left of the keyboard reduces the amount of time the machine has to wait for them to trundle around inside the plumbing. Plus, it makes you keep your hand right in front of the thing that periodically spits a wad of boiling lead into your palm. Typing "etaoinshrdlu" was also the fastest way to fill up a line--you see Burgess Meredith doing this in a Twilight Zone episode--and was about the best solution to the problem of what to do when you make a typo: type "etaoinshrdlu", retype the whole line, and make a mental note to forget to take the bad line out of the cheap paperback novel you're keying in. Unless you're distracted by having molten metal squirted at you. -- K. Monotypes, on the other hand, were so safe that only women used them.