On CHOW: Does drinking ice water burn calories?
BNET Business Network:
BNET
TechRepublic
ZDNet
TalkBack 17 of 19:
Next »
« Previous
Sun, the computer James Fennimore Cooper
Reading about Sun's excessively delayed leap onto the Linux bandwagon reminded me of one of the great essays of literary criticism: Mark Twain's discussion of Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses.

Here's the quote:

The ark is one hundred and forty-feet long; the dwelling is ninety feet long.

The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the rate of a mile an hour,and butcher the family. It will take the ark a minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety-foot dwelling a minute to pass under.

Now, then, what did the six Indians do? It would take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it up, I believe.

Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did.

Their chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian, warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him and when he had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as he judge, he let go and dropped. And missed the boat! That is actually what he did. He missed the house, and landed in the stern of the scow. It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there unconscious. If the house had been ninety-seven feet long he would have made the trip. The error lay in the construction of the house. Cooper was no architect.

There still remained in the roost five Indians. The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain what the five did -- you would not be able to reason it out for yourself.

No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No. 2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still further astern of it. Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then even No. 5 made a jump for the boat -- for he was Cooper Indian. In that matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands in front of the cigar-shop is not spacious.
[Re-paragraphed]

http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/cooper/cooper.html



Jonathon Schwartz, Fennimore Cooper Indian #5.


Worth reading Twain's essay if you have time.
Posted by: Anton Philidor   Posted on: 02/08/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use
Reply to Story Reply to Message

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

Now Sun will release crap to sell their "solution" services around  Boot_Agnostic | 02/08/06
And then the next Goal...  John Zern | 02/08/06
If it could just remove its foot from its  Boot_Agnostic | 02/08/06
Is it just me?  IT Scion | 02/08/06
They now have a chip that runs 32 threads at 4x performance per watt  DonnieBoy | 02/08/06
Yep  IT Scion | 02/08/06
They are at the break even point, and they still have billions in the bank.  DonnieBoy | 02/08/06
But Linux runs so well on low end servers  John Zern | 02/08/06
the bigger the better  Monkey_MCSE | 02/08/06
Sparcs higher cost is a myth  fencer | 02/08/06
Yes it does  Suicida| | 02/08/06
Its just you  fencer | 02/08/06
We'll see  IT Scion | 02/08/06
'strewth  fencer | 02/09/06
Why the negativity? eBay will drive this to success....  techboy_z | 02/08/06
If they can cut power usage by a factor of 4, and it ain't very expensive,  DonnieBoy | 02/08/06
Sun, the computer James Fennimore Cooper  Anton Philidor | 02/08/06
Sun wasted time and opportunity...  fencer | 02/08/06
It may take time, but this should work out.  NotBornYesterday | 02/09/06

What do you think?

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

advertisement

Meet Doc