Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About FoRK

What should I do first?

Before you do anything, buy some books and buy some music.
The most frequently asked question on FoRK has got to be, is there a search engine? Well, is there?

No. Use Google with a "xent.com" added to the search terms.
Hey, is there a FoRK RSS feed?

Yes, use this. Discussion: danbri, Edd, Gerald, Mike, and Mark. Check out the thread on FoRK archives in XML/RSS and XSLT. We feed off eGroups. Here's a Site Summary feed example: Usefulinc.
Also, what's with the rumor that the FoRK archives will be closed to the public?

According to Rohit,

FIRST, there will be no closing of the FoRK archives. FoRK is as much performance art as therapy. I know a lot of social clubs on the Net; there are millions more in every bar and dorm room. This is not one of them.

SECOND, there is no rule but the first. I know this puts everything out in the sunshine, and thus wilts the dark cabbage of unrefined VOX-like splimmage in the day, but that's precisely what I want. I'd like to see what happens over the years.
So there you have it. As of May 1, 2000, there were over 20,000 messages pickled up for your reading pleasure, in the FoRK archives.
Next, how can I reach Rohit?

+1-626-806-7574 for the cellphone, anytime, especially since the first minute is free. Voicemail is there, too. Unfortunately, paging, email, etc. are all in the future for SoCal. Paging, in particular, Rohit is upset about. There's also a Web gateway at http://www.sprintpcs.com/Paging/index.shtml but Rohit doesn't have a PIN. It's a Pasadena area code so it's a local call for Adam; that may change if Rohit finds himself checking voicemail long-distance too often. If you must, though, Rohit's Nextel number is +1-206-255-9134.
I am too important to join FoRK - how do I determine which posts are worth my reading in the archive?

Look for keywords in brackets like [BITS] in the subject line. We only adopted this convention in February 1998, so for articles before then, you're on your own other than Rohit's personal favorite FoRKposts.
I'm too impatient to read this FAQ. Give me something fast and furious to chew on.

Fear not, my accelerated-culture-loving friend, I have prepared a quickie just for you: Top Ten Frequently Answered Questions for the Impatient.
1. Who's who on FoRK: the lurkers, the middle class, and the overposters
2. Rohit's personal favorite FoRKposts
3. The FoRK motto
4. The Macarena
5. Ernie's Rules of War
6. Rohit's Rules of Order
7. FoRK jargon: "Bit"
8. FoRK jargon: "Cluon" / "Anticluon"
9. FoRK jargon: "97%"
10. FoRK jargon: "Thirty Hypothesis"
Also see Ernie's FOuR Koans, or "What are the rules of FoRK?" And then go recite Godwin's Law.
Huh? What is "Godwin's Law"?

/prov./ [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. Here's the the relevance of Godwin's Law to FoRK and Godwin's update of Godwin's law.
How many people on the FoRK list can actually claim to have read the whole FAQ?!?

(from Tim) Most all of us. We have incredibly large ego's on this list and we enjoy reading about ourselves during coffee breaks or other moments lacking in sufficient inspiration. As a matter of fact Bill Gates was denied membership not because of the third rate software his company produces, but because his ego didn't quite "measure up" so to speak. We have very tough standards.
(also from Tim) I don't even know the URL for the FAQ.
(from Douglas Adams) If there's anything here more important than my ego, I want it dragged out and shot immediately.
(from Scott Adams) An angry Dogbert denied that his ego was so big he started a tabloid devoted entirely to himself.
Is FoRK entertaining?

Absolutely!
(from Tim) Personally I find FoRK has a lot in common lately with Professional Wrestling. We have identities and we fill those roles for the entertainment of the crowd. And entertaining it is. Of course there are off nights, but over all those on the sidelines are mostly entertained.
Does "FoRK" stand for "Friends of Rohit Khare"?

Oh sure, I tell you, then you tell somebody, and pretty soon we have Armageddon on our hands. Well, I can tell you FoRK has nothing to do with Plastic Forks '97. Nosireebob, "FoRK" stands for "Frigging obnoxious Riting & Kapitalization". Well, our spelling is atrocious, too, but that's not important right now... What's it to you? Go find plot holes or play forkball or do something constructive with all that free time you have on your hands...
What is forkball?

fork, n. Add: III. 16. forkball: Baseball, a pitch in which the ball is held tightly with the thumb, index, and middle fingers spread wide apart, in order to make it fall down sharply or behave in an otherwise unpredictable manner; cf. split-fingered fastball s.v. *SPLIT ppl. a. 5 a. 1923 Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide 191 Opponents scored 3.32 earned runs per game off `Bullet Joe's' `*fork ball' delivery. 1962 J. BROSNAN Pennant Race 86 You oughta hurry that fork ball up, though. Any pitch that looks as much like a spitball as that has got to have a future. 1974 Spartanburg (S. Carolina) Herald-Jrnl. 21 Apr. B1 He was out to prove that what appears to be an illegal spitball pitch actually is a forkball. 1985 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 10 Oct. C3/4 Henke has added the forkball this year, but still does not have complete command of it.
Alternatively, FoRKball could be the name for the games we play on FoRK. But that defies description.
Wait, what is FoRK then if it defies description?

(from Mark Baker) 30-something 20-somethings acting 10-something.
(from Ron Resnick) A tightly interconnected Web of dynamically bound smart-things... [with] the potential to be the first conscious Renaissance Man (or Renaissance web, I guess) since the last human one --- da Vinci probably.
(from Duck) Chronologically, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Captain Kirk.
(from Ron Resnick) FoRK defies description. Adam's FAQ hardly begins to scratch the surface. Everybody around here is either a narcissist or a lurker - there is no in between.
(from Dan Kohn) FoRK is the first virtual community I've ever participated in, and it's truly an amazing thing. I'd just make sure you have a mail filter installed.
(from joebar) If this list has a patron saint, it's probably Oscar Wilde.
(hint) It's not Friends of the River Kelvin.
(from Yahoo) We Believe in the Interconnectedness of All Things.
( from Ernie) FoRK is a virtual community. A community defined, in this case, as a group of people who jointly share some finite resource for a common end The resource in this case being attention span and mailbox windows, the end being increased bits. (see also, FOuR Koans, or "What are the rules of FoRK?")
Um.

Just don't speak. You're already out of line according to Rohit's Rules of Order. You're even out of line according to Ernie's Rules of War. You're lucky we let you live at all.
What in heaven's name are Ernie's Rules of War??
1. Know your Objective
  - What you want
  - What you fear
  - What price you are willing to pay
2. Know your Self
  - Strengths
  - Weaknesses
  - Limitations
3. Know your Enemies/Friends as you know yourself
  - Any fool loves his friends and fears his enemies;
  - The wise love their enemies and fear their friends.
4. Know the Rules and their Value
  - The cost of Keeping them
  - The cost of Breaking them
5. Know your Environment
  - Keep moving when in enemy territory
  - Have a safe place to rest
  - Protect your sights and support lines
6. Know your Mistakes and Own your Decisions
  - War is about Justice, which is worth Killing for.
  - Peace is about Mercy, which is worth Dying for.
O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth: deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you. Amen.
Ernie's Rules proved so popular with Rohit, he even used them to assess himself during his grad school application phase. This assessment, of course, continually referred to Rohit's Rule of Design.
And what is Rohit's Rule of Design?

"Bad design should make you physically ill." There's a cool Design Bibliography in case you're wondering what "good design" is. To quote Steve Jobs,

To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don't take the time to do that.
Also, always read the fine print.
And what is Tim Byars's #1 Rule?

Give 'Em Enough Rope. Also known as: If I have to explain you wouldn't understand. Also known as: If you have to ask you can't afford it. Also known as: Somewhere in the world it's after 5:00 pm. Ok, maybe the last one wasn't quite the same, but it's a damn good reason to start drinking before "society" says it's ok. Yeah Baby!
Why are some of the people on FoRK such obnoxious a-holes?

The answer is in the belief that The Truth Shall Set You Free. No matter what form that truth may take. Thus, the holder of the truth gets to select the medium through which to disperse it. Being correct on FoRK is more important than being politically correct, being political, being tactful, or even being nice. Being right is basically a license to be as brutally honest as one wants to be. Arrogant? You bet. Elitist? Sure. FoRK is what's left once you've resolved what's right.
Come again? Just tell me, what *is* a "FoRK"?

It's like a pitchFoRK, but without the pitch. Remember: it's not just a state of being; it has a motto, too.

Okay, I'll bite. What is the FoRK motto?

As eloquently elucidated by Msr. Robert Harley,

From Robert.Harley@inria.fr Thu Mar  6 09:14:06 1997
To: fork@xent.com
Subject: Re:  Cringely, Metcalfe, Taligent, and Misinformed Protocols...

Adam wrote:
> Show me the bits!

Now is this an appropriate motto for FoRK or what?!

S h o w  m e  t h e  b i t s.

SHOW ME THE BITS!

Rohit, you're still our bit-agent ;P
-- Rob.

What a lame motto. You got any better ones?

Okay, let's have a top ten list. From the home office in Ellicott City, Maryland, we bring you...

Top 10 Slogans That Could Have Been the FoRK Motto

10. "Stick a FoRK in it, it's done."
9. "Life's a bit, and then it's not."
8. "You keep bringing them over, we'll keep putting them down."
7. "Come here and get bit."
6. "Our bits cannot be bought."
5. "FoRK: We know bits better than you. So shut up."
4. "When we want your opinion, we'll give it to you."
3. "We've upped our standards, so up yours."
2. "You think you got problems? Try FoRK!"
1. "You bring the quibbles, we'll bring the bits."
Additionally, FoRK could adopt the motto from Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, We Believe in the Interconnectedness of All Things.
Right. What's a "bit"?

Dude, if you have to ask, you'll never know. Go back to the land of anticluons, you 97%er. Oh, all right! Because we're nice, here's an example of pure bits.
Okay, how do I get bits?

By regularly reading the FoRK "required reading" list:
1. FoRK Archive
2. I, Cringely
3. Motley Fool
4. Need to Know
5. NewsHub
6. New York Times
7. The Harrow Group (was Rapidly Changing Face of Computing)
8. Red Herring
9. Red Rock Eater Digest
10. Release 1
11. Salon
12. SalonHerringWiredFool
13. Slashdot
14. Slate
15. Stating the Obvious
16. Tasty Bits from the Technology Front (archived) / TBTF Sources
17. TechDirt
18. The Industry Standard
19. The Onion
20. Wired
21. Christian Science Monitor
Not enough for you? Then read more. Still not enough for you? Then read more everyday. Only by continual bit consumption can you ever have a clue.
So FoRK is an exercise in bit transfer?

According to Rohit, FoRK is an exhibitionistic, incorrect forum that serves as an exercise in several things.
- Exhibitionism.
  Rohit, at least, has a perverse need to share his life for the entertainment of others. Like the bipolar aggressive he always claims to be, Rohit suspects that entertainment might be his life's only redeeming value.
- Aggressive eclecticism.
  This list is intentionally no-one-topic. It doesn't even have minimum standards of taste. Pretty much the only inviolate rule is it must be *new* bits, preferably bits that aren't obviously available elsewhere. FoRK is not quite the union of our tastes, but it's close. This isn't a working list, it's a cocktail party with a newswire.
  This is why Rohit actively encourages Jim Whitehead's Top 30, and Green Day discussions, and well, he can't say he encourages Tim Byars, but he doesn't stop him, either. Even threads like the awful Canada thread can shed insight: phryday had the best post of the lot, joebar has wit, and so on.
- Raw bits.
  FoRK is also a collecting point for lots and lots of raw bits; it's a mutual-aid society of bits. I trust Dan Kohn to read Red Rock Eaters, Adam to read alt.society.generation-x, and Tim to read Voxers-at-Large, so the rest of us don't have to. Even duck has raw bits every once in a while, like the inside scoop on Hunter S. Thompson.
  On the other hand, duck loses major points for choosing to read a book instead of attending an Rolling Stone party with Jerry Seinfeld, Brad Pitt, etc. He violated the premise that FoRK is:
- Vicarious risk.
  It's a chance for all of us, not just RK, to share our thrills and spills and entertain each other. It's an obligation to bring a new joke, an odd sighting, or tell a tale of wanton destruction.
  Be kind to those of us who don't have a life: donate!
- Broad.
  Not just in the bulk of some its members, but in -mindedness, too. No one here is going to faint away from foul language or racism or porn -- though you're all free to like or dislike it. I wouldn't ask my mother to subscribe (there's a scary thought), but it's not alt.tasteless, either. In between, we'll work it out. It's a minor milestone that perhaps 4,000 messages have passed without a single personal attack or even a harsh word.
- Public.
  Finally, aside from the rare FoRK-noarchive admin announcement, everything about this exhibitionistic exercise is on the Web. Frankly, it's because that's the best possible bait for finding more "friends." :-)
  There's nothing wrong at all with anyone exercising their right to privacy, even having me remove a post from the archive. It's only a social experiment to see how open people will be on the record.
  This brings us back full circle to the genesis of FoRK: a monument to Rohit's ego. "Look what cool friends Rohit has!" Seriously, it's not just about Rohit. If we went by posting volume, hell, we're all friends of Tim Byars'.
In short, FoRK ain't no dist-obj (aka Friends of Ron Resnick). It has even come a long way from Gordon Irlam's original fogheads -- and it hasn't changed a bit. An online community of offline friends is a joy to watch. I, at least, will hunt each of you down and have you for lunch, even Ron in Tel Aviv.
You are my friends, we are friends, and friends don't tell friends what not to post. It's just an experiment, so trust your instincts. What you think is FoRKworthy, is. All there is to it.
Besides, pure signal isn't a pretty sight. It's been known to kill 97%ers on sight. So, please, keep the world safe for sheep and send something goofy...
97%ers? What the...? Is there something about FoRK (the medium for sharing bits) that you're not telling me?

That's right. FoRK is where the 3%, the bitful and clueful, go to exchange bits and clue, so that they may avoid being 97%ers for at least one more day. These transfers of bits and clue are known as "FoRKposts", since they are posted to the FoRK mailing list.
So FoRK's a mailing list. Remind me which phase we're in?

THE NATURAL LIFE CYCLE OF MAILING LISTS

Every list seems to go through the same cycle:
- 1. Initial enthusiasm (people introduce themselves, and gush a lot about how wonderful it is to find kindred souls).
- 2. Evangelism (people moan about how few folks are posting to the list, and brainstorm recruitment strategies).
- 3. Growth (more and more people join, more and more lengthy threads develop, occasional off-topic threads pop up).
- 4. Community (lots of threads, some more relevant than others; lots of information and advice is exchanged; experts help other experts as well as less experienced colleagues; friendships develop; people tease each other; newcomers are welcomed with generosity and patience; everyone -- newbie and expert alike -- feels comfortable asking questions, suggesting answers, and sharing opinions).
- 5. Discomfort with diversity (the number of messages increases dramatically; not every thread is fascinating to every reader; people start complaining about the signal-to-noise ratio; person 1 threatens to quit if *other* people don't limit discussion to person 1's pet topic; person 2 agrees with person 1; person 3 tells 1 & 2 to lighten up; more bandwidth is wasted complaining about off-topic threads than is used for the threads themselves; everyone gets annoyed).
- 6a. Smug complacency and stagnation (the purists flame everyone who asks an 'old' question or responds with humor to a serious post; newbies are rebuffed; traffic drops to a doze-producing level of a few minor issues; all interesting discussions happen by private email and are limited to a few participants; the purists spend lots of time self-righteously congratulating each other on keeping off-topic threads off the list).
  OR
- 6b. Maturity (a few people quit in a huff; the rest of the participants stay near stage 4, with stage 5 popping up briefly every few weeks; many people wear out their second or third 'delete' key, but the list lives contentedly ever after).
So then... what makes an ideal FoRKpost?

If you read something good, interesting, or worthwhile, send a note to FoRK, obeying the

Ten Commandments of FoRKposting:

Commandment 1: Thou shalt use a meaningful Subject line to tag your message, so that when we go back through the archives to find your contribution, we can actually find it.

Commandment 2: Thou shalt forward only new bits. Most humor is not new bits; if you forward old bits to FoRK, you must pay the penalty of finding new bits within 24 hours, or suffer the fate of being tagged a 97%er by your peers.

Commandment 3: Thou shalt reference where you found the bits. This may either be a citation or a Web link. Note that FoRK likes to hear rumors, too, as long as you vouch for your source being at least as reliable, say, as Robert X. Cringely.

Commandment 4: Thou shalt know who the real Robert X. Cringely is. And thou shalt know the difference between the various Robert X. Cringelies of the world. (As a bonus, thou shalt also know the difference between the Adam Rifkins of the world.)

Commandment 5: Thou shalt only forward the relevant bits and/or clue. Don't forward to FoRK 400 Meg of garbage, but likewise, don't just post a URL and expect everyone to click on it. I repeat: forward only the relevant bits and/or clue.

Commandment 6: Thou shalt FoRKpost in a format that is readable by intelligent human beings. Garbage spewed by Internet Explorer does not count. Creative spelling is allowed, but only if it adds humor. Remember that humor is rarely new bits.

Commandment 7: Thou shalt comment on any bits and/or clue you forward. Don't just send us raw bits, because we are all well read. Send a paragraph or two about the bits. To quote the brilliant Dan Connolly:

The paragraph or two of personal analysis is the essential part. Without that, a "hey, read this!" message is nothing more than a commercial. In this age of information overload, let's do each other the favor of information _reduction_.

So give us commentary, or stay quiet.

Exception to Commandment 7: You can send raw bits to the list if your commentary is implicit in your sending the bits -- that is, it goes without saying.

Commandment 8: Old bits plus commentary equals new bits, so you can break commandment 2 as long as you add *worthwhile* commentary.

Commandment 9: Flaming is only new bits when it includes new commentary. Flaming of companies, products, and people is allowed (and encouraged) on FoRK, as long as you give intelligent reasons for your flaming. Therefore, saying something like "Micro$oft is lame" is not allowed, but saying something like

Why, oh, why do I still use this shitcan OS Win95 when even the M$ lovers among us cry out NT4.0? The little bugger was slurping data to a telnet log as I was rushing aboard this flight, only to have its telephone cord yanked and put to sleep. Once airborne, I wake it, the display comes up, it 'burps' -- flashes the screen, makes violent noises, usually reinstalls PC Card devices on the pessimistic assumption everything always changes -- and nothing.
is okay.

Commandment 10: Thou shalt always say it with style. FoRK is a class act, so let's keep the FoRKposts classy, okay?

Notes about the 10 Commandments of FoRKposting:
- 97% of FoRKposts ignore one or more of the 10 Commandments of FoRKposting. That doesn't necessarily mean we like it.
- Of course, 97% of FoRKposts do follow one or more of the 10 Commandments of FoRKposting. Isn't that special?
- The unwritten (until now) Eleventh Commandment is that Tim Byars shalt break at least one commandment with every post, 100% of the time, thereby breaking not only some commandment, but also the 97% rule, thereby disrupting the very fabric of the FoRK known universe. (Actually, he comes close to breaking all ten commandments with some posts, a feat unrivaled on FoRK. :) Now, Tim has himself made some subcommandments of Commandment 11, just to clarify Da Rulez According to Cobraboy:
  1. All anti Ms jokes/comments are allowed.
  2. Newbies are given shit on their first posts just to see if they can hang. (This is the patented CobraBoy!/FoRK filter, available now by calling 888-get-lost)
  3. Any post no matter how bad praising NeXTStep is allowed.
  4. Any post (now this is the tricky part) saying how stupid Apple is, is allowed. Bashing Apple is not. It's sort of like talking about the dumb guy. We can talk about how stupid he is, but given that fact, making fun of him is just mean and can't be tolerated.
Ugh, I'm too braindead to digest that "Ten Commandments" list, yada yada yada. Can you give me the Cliffs Notes version?

Do your homework.

( from joebar)
Do you have a browser? Do you know how to use it? How about a search engine?
If so, then there's no excuse for posting questions like "um, what's Gate's first name again"?
I'm not sure what your background is, but most of us are academics who are used to doing a little bit of literature search before publishing something. You don't publish a paper about RPC with a related work section that says, "oh yeah, Bruce Nillson or something like that got a master's thesis on RPC but I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I've heard that it's good so you probably want to check it out."
A similar (but appropriately scaled-down) standard applies to FoRK posts.
It's not uncommon for me to do four or five web searches before posting something on FoRK. That way I contribute bits to the common pool. Even in my dumb Apple == USSR post, I did several searches to get the names and dates right. Similarly, in my dumb post about the huge capacitors in IMSAI computers, I searched around to find supporting text and pictures.
( from Robit) I'll intercede on this minor point. The list is "freewheeling", but it is not conversational. FoRK is for bits, silly wabbit.
I like to remind myself that each post is archived, and to ask why: what in this post merits recording, and second, will this post allow the thought to be unpickled in the future?
Rambling, diversionary, tangential volleys are great, but I like them with bits: in recent memory, the "timekeeping" standards was an excellent example from last month.
Remember, there can only be one Tim Byars.
PS. Don't forget the Pyrite Rule: if you could imagine VOXing something, don't ever FoRK it :-)
So, do you have a Top Ten FoRKposts list?

Sort of. This is a work in progress. As of June 1997 there had been about 3800 FoRKmails, adding up to a 22MB html archive!

Top Ten FoRKposts

10. Welcome to FoRK
9. FoRK Cast List, Summer 96
8. Global Namespaces Are Just Plain Wrong
7. FoRK: Cult Material?
6. BF: In the Days Before FoRK
5. Climbing Clueful Mountain
4. A Study in Psychic Transrelational Posting Modes
3. RK's Greatest FoRKs
2. Tim in Vegas with the Shooter Girls, Baby - the minimum standard against which all other potentially "filthy" posts must be compared...
1. The 48 Hours that Rohit's Social Life was not a Void - and we almost had to shut down FoRK as a result...
What are Rohit's personal favorite FoRKposts that he actually wrote?
Spring 1996
Summer 1996
1. Why LA Drivers Do It Solo
2. Kudos
3. August'96 FoRK Dramatis Personae
4. Why I Will Never Offer Don Box A Lift Again [Classic]
5. NYTaholics Anonymous
6. Teledesic Analyzed (Munchkins)
7. Cringely Exposed, 2
8. Rohit = Suck [Just this one, from Adam...]
Fall 1996
Winter 1996-7
Spring 1997
1. [Off To MCI/Leaving MIT/Resigning] 1, 2, 3
2. Around-The-World #3: Solo
3. Web Metadata [Wherein Rohit Is Asked Graciously for Column Fodder]
4. Blue Helmets of Cyberspace
5. RoRadio [Not Great, But Unique -- RealRohit]
6. Metcalfe Eats Pulp, Climax
7. Book Beast Rises By Marin
8. RoVideo [The Cutting Room Floor Never Looked So Good!]
9. FoRK Dramatis Personae II [by Adam]
May-June 1997
1. The Church of Objectology [Ungraciously Borrowed Column Fodder]
2. FoRK FiLoSoPHY
3. Rohit (heart) Boston
Is there any FoRK-specific Jargon?

Top 10 (or so) FoRK-specific Words

10. Shemp / Moe / Larry / Curly (tie)
9. Cobraboy / Corbaboy (tie)
8. Infosponge / Infosoak (tie)
7. Bit / Cluon / Vision (tie)
6. ROOFS
5. oZone / oSpace (tie)
4. Cells
3. ONE / ONUS / ONESIMUS (tie)
2. Kudos
1. *TP / Munchkins (tie)
Please please please, tell me what munchkins and kudos are?

Munchkins are a killerApp of active messages. We have a little writeup about munchkins.
Does XML play a role?

OF COURSE XML plays a role. XML is key. But you have to grok it. Do you grok it, punk? Well, do you?
Does YML play a role?

OF COURSE YML plays a role. YML is key. But you have to grok it, too. Do you grok it, punk? Well, do you?
Does a generic event API play a role?

OF COURSE a generic event API plays a role. A generic event API is key. But like XML and YML, you have to grok it, too. Do you grok it, punk? Well, do you?
And how about ONESIMUS?

ONESIMUS dovetails the work on One Namespace Everywhere (ONE). According to Ernie, ONESIMUS is One Namespace Everywhere, Simultaneous Instances, Multiple Uniform Searchspaces. See the FoRKpost for more details.
How it all fits together: Despite great strides, it's amazing how much remains to be done with the Web. We may just have to throw out the plumbing (and replace it with *TP), or we may have to chuck the operating systems (and replace the with oSpace), or we may have to replace the programming models (and replace them with Cells), or we may have to rip out the file systems (and replace them with ROOFS), or we may have to migrate to a new platform completely (Munchkins, anyone?), or some combination therein, to free ourselves from the limitations of personal computers networked over end-to-end Internet protocols...
(from Ron's response to this) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Is this really news Adam? Without even addressing the jargon of your suggested replacements, the fact that a major architectural overhaul is still required, on pretty much all fronts, shouldn't be a surprise. All the more reason to suggest, as JoeK has, that it's still too early to simply give in and be resigned to an http-based web. We can, and must, do it all properly, right up from about IP, I think.
Until and unless it's all predominantly async and multicast, it's just never going to scale up to SOGS, or whatever you want to call the endgame. And until and unless every last bloody object/document/ component/shadow/whatnot, from the protocol objects right up to the domain objects, doesn't have every aspect of itself all metadata'd up and queriable and introspectable, the whole mess of it will never stick together.
Okay, so who's on FoRK?

Sounds like an Abbott and Costello routine. In his psychological deconstruction of FoRK entitled "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in FoRK: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Posting Modes", Adam Rifkin used a special blend of psychology and extreme violence to decompose the personalities of FoRK. As such, I divided the FoRK member personalities into 3 categories: the lurkers, the middle class, and the over-posters. These divisions were arbitrary and determined solely by me and my vast expertise of transrelational posting modes. But since then, I decided my expositions were longwinded, not funny, and not useful, so I took them out in favor of the short list you see below.

The current list of FoRKmembers, in reverse order joined:
1. bill@whump.com - Bill
2. jm@jmason.org - Justin
3. jeff@vertexdev.com - Jeff
4. rahul@reno.cis.upenn.edu - Rahul
5. tberkman@rcn.com - Tony
6. eisen@pobox.com - eisen
7. aswartz@swartzfam.com - Aaron
8. rbfar@ebuilt.com - rbfar
9. idof@contact.com - idof
10. Yangkun.Zhang@FMR.COM - Yangkun
11. MarkH@i2.co.uk - Mark
12. robert.occhialini@lspeed.com - Robert
13. tiago.pascoal@altitudesoftware.com - Tiago
14. ryan@sadtomato.org - Ryan
15. lisa@xythos.com - Lisa
16. ray-fork@rocks.net - Ray
17. hship@primix.com - Hship
18. garyp@speakeasy.net - Gary
19. efk@trustypocket.com - EFK
20. Mike@KnowNow.com - Mike
21. dh@hopcount.com - DH
22. bill@marginalia.org - Bill
23. population2@population2.com - Population2
24. cameron@alphanumerica.com - Cameron
25. jbr@pencoyd.com - John
26. roddy@zotgroup.com - Roddy
27. shri@cs.umass.edu - Shrikumar
28. josh+fork@avogadro.com - Josh
29. lane@monstro.com - Lane
30. kward@ipal.com - Kerry
31. robblau@mit.edu - Rob
32. lucas@gonze.com - Lucas
33. kents@trajecta.com - Kent
34. wsanchez@mit.edu - Fred
35. tom@goodtech.co.uk - Tom
36. thompson@roguewave.com - Thompson
37. rafeco@rc3.org - Rafe
38. lrivers@realsoftware.com - Lorin
39. willem@imeme.net - Willem
40. dave@userland.com - Dave
41. david@balrog.org - David
42. fraber@fraber.de - Frank
43. stoddard@raleigh.ibm.com - Stoddard
44. joelinda1@home.com - Linda
45. yakwax@yahoo.com - Yakwax
46. rbb@ntrnet.net - rbb
47. tnikkel@granite.mb.ca - tnikkel
48. terence.sin@sympatico.ca - Terence
49. mikef@praxis.etla.net - Mike
50. jskelly@jskelly.com - JSKelley
51. gburd@primix.com - Greg
52. largo@bubblegum.net - Largo
53. lmm@acm.org - Larry
54. colin@shell.vividworks.com - Colin
55. katchomko@katchomko.com - Robert
56. savamutt@trailnet.com - Tom
57. jay@tui.co.uk - Jay
58. sramjee@hss.hns.com - Sramjee
59. floorpie@ricebrother.com - Floorpie
60. ryanu@earthlink.net - Ryan
61. philip@ereo.com - Philip
62. brian@posthuman.com - Brian
63. cdale@silly.techmonkeys.net - Cindy
64. chuck@topsail.org - Chuck
65. anabhan@law.harvard.edu - Natoun
66. strata@virtual.net - Strata
67. latone@latone.com - Joe and Kristin
68. eh@mad.scientist.com - Eirikur
69. ake@raleigh.ibm.com - Ake
70. xanderb@earthlink.net - Xander
71. Kenneth.Meltsner@ca.com - Kenneth
72. sdw@lig.net - Steve
73. ij@w3.org - Ian
74. twleung@sauria.com - Ted
75. havi@havi.com - Havi
76. luc@nuclide.com - Luc
77. mkuharich@punchnetworks.com - Mark
78. edd@usefulinc.com - Ed
79. krisgan@microsoft.com - Kris
80. psw@wherry.com - Phil
81. rimpinths@aol.com - Rimpy
82. Lori.Turi@individual.com - Lori
83. anselm@realnames.com - Anselm
84. nico@realnames.com - Nico
85. edward@jungco.com - Ed
86. beberg@mithral.com - Adam
87. modlang@worldnet.att.net - Modlang
88. carey@4k-associates.com - Carey
89. rmz@dunk.follo.net - RMZ
90. kra@monkey.org - Karl
91. dab@organicmachines.com - David
92. jts7@duke.edu - JTS
93. udhay@pobox.com - Udhay
94. ThosStew@aol.com - Tom
95. bkdelong@pobox.com - B.K.
96. ciamac@alum.mit.edu - Ciamac
97. jeremie@monkey.org - Jeremie
98. comet@naxs.net - Comet
99. jbaugher@vt.edu - Jeff
100. rshah@mail.dave-world.net - Rshah
101. yuzok@paris.ics.uci.edu - Yuzo
102. ibrahim.sallam@autodesk.com - Ibrahim
103. eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de - Eugene
104. sdossick@electricpal.com - Steve
105. Koen.Holtman@cern.ch - Koen
106. mday@alum.mit.edu - Mark
107. jdietl@w3.org - Joseph
108. ccover@ics.uci.edu - Clay
109. evans@hfx.andara.com - Evan
110. harishr@prodigy.net - Harish
111. morton@dennisinter.com - Morton
112. kieron@developments.co.nz - Kieron
113. dgd@cs.bu.edu - David
114. Ken.Coar@golux.com - Ken
115. forum-fork@4friends.net
116. manojk@io.com - Manoj
117. Grlygrl201@aol.com - Geege
118. marc@mit.edu - Marc
119. touch@isi.edu - Joe
120. kragen@pobox.com - Kragen
121. ping@lfw.org - ?!ng
122. rasheed@ucf.ics.uci.edu - Rasheed
123. stevemw@place.org - Stephen
124. evan.cordes@umich.edu - Evan
125. gormley@hcs.harvard.edu - Gormley
126. gtn@eps.inso.com - Gerald
127. jdr8d@cs.virginia.edu - John
128. jrvincent@wesleyan.edu - Jesse
129. jtauber@jtauber.com - James
130. danny@spesh.com - Danny
131. gus@monkey.org - Gus
132. wilkins@princeton.lib.nj.us - Janie (aka Janest, Sara Bellum, Information Diva)
133. dl@silcom.com - Dave
134. ian@cafe.net - Ian
135. resnick@interlog.com - Ron
136. timBL@w3.org - Tim
  Before you mail Tim:
  - If you need someone to find something for you about some arbitrary subject (travel agents, or parakeets or whatever), don't ask him, but try the Virtual Library for example.
  - If you want to know how to run a server, or how to edit HTML, check the W3C web or your local bookstore. He's sorry he can't answer individual requests for help.
  - If you can't access something on www.w3.org, you find bad links from www.w3.org pages, or errors in the hypertext, please see the webmaster's documentation.
137. signa@birch.net - Signa
138. sk@zotgroup.com - Sally
139. gojomo@usa.net - Gordon
140. jbone@jump.net - Jeff
141. FoRKList@tenback.demon.nl - Robert
142. north@synopsys.com - Simon
143. dorons@corky.net - Doron
144. orchard@pacificspirit.com - Dave
145. hpand@flycast.com - Hokkun
146. jfeise@ics.uci.edu - Joe
147. daniel.brickley@bristol.ac.uk - Dan
148. michele.michelotto@cern.ch - Michele
149. dave@shortbus.com - Dave
150. cskerr@geocities.com - Charles
151. colds@dydax.com - Chris
152. ahitomi@ics.uci.edu - Art
153. the_rack@mit.edu - George
154. peymano@yahoo.com - Peymon
155. reagle@rpcp.mit.edu - Joseph
156. fielding@ics.uci.edu - Roy
157. gbolcer@ics.uci.edu - Greg
158. mike@techdirt.com - Mike
159. dgibbons@sparky.oroad.com - Darren
160. jay@thomas.vg - Jay
161. tomwhore@inetarena.com - Tom
162. dawson@world.std.com - Keith
163. jeremy.stemo@telus.com - Jeremy
164. gerald@impressive.net - Gerald
165. aspruit@acm.org - Sandor
166. connolly@w3.org - Dan
167. howcome@w3.org - Håkon
168. tjk@teledesic.com - Todd
169. johnboy@hiwaay.net - John
170. klassa@cisco.com - John
171. tbyars@earthlink.net - Cobraboy, aka Tim
172. joe@barrera.org - joebar
173. bal@farcaster.com - Brian
174. mark.baker@sympatico.ca - Mark
175. dugsong@umich.edu - Douglas
176. ejw@ics.uci.edu - Jim
177. rfa@initco.net - Ron
178. dan@teledesic.com - Dan
179. wendy@posh.com - Wendy
180. jfdobb@clark.net - Dobbin
181. robert.harley@inria.fr - The Robster
182. gordoni@base.com - Gordon
183. henrikn@microsoft.com - Henrik
184. baisley@alumni.rice.edu - Wayne
185. rst@ai.mit.edu - Robert
186. ernest@alumni.caltech.edu - Ernie
187. adam@4k-associates.com - Adam, I Find Karma, WikiWebber
188. khare@alumni.caltech.edu - Rohit
Who are artists formerly known as FoRKers (in no particular order)?
1. bunny@panet.bits.net - Srdjan
2. asoolind@hotmail.com - Asoolind
3. bixhorna@reston.btna.com - Ari
4. black@layer8.net - Black
5. bob@cringely.com - Bob
6. clover@bns.com - Clover
7. daniel.veillard@w3.org - Daniel
8. dist-obj@cs.caltech.edu - dist-obj
9. dmz@cs.caltech.edu - Dan
10. duck@cci-29palms.com - Duck
11. duzhh@huadi.com.cn - Washing
12. efreeman@ra.cs.yale.edu - Eric
13. gaffurr@sonnyj.btna.com - Rumman
14. gdavis@ghs.com - Greg
15. gil@rimon.org - Gil
16. isallam@gis.shl.com
17. john.feiler@attws.com - John
18. joshco@microsoft.com - Josh
19. JRChang+@CMU.EDU - John
20. kbuxton@aracnet.com - Kristin
21. kiniry@cs.caltech.edu - JoeK
22. kj.curran@ulst.ac.uk - Kevin
23. lawrence@agranat.com - Lawrence
24. lori@mci.net - Lori
25. magnush@microsoft.com - Magnus
26. mark@is2inc.com - Mark
27. markk@appmethods.com - Mark
28. markl@teledesic.com - Mark
29. meganc@axysdev.nwest.attws.com - Megan
30. michael.orr@design-intelligence.com - Michael
31. michdg@hotmail.com - Michdg
32. nelson@media.mit.edu - Nelson
33. newton@creativehollywood.com - Newton
34. philipd@matchlogic.com - Philip
35. phryday@eden.com - Bobby
36. pierre-list@kerchner.de - Pierre
37. pjsholtz@omix.com
38. rajit@cs.caltech.edu - Rajit
39. rajee@ics.uci.edu - Rajee
40. rbaqai@uci.edu - Rbaqai
41. realize@teleport.com - Realize
42. salo@dataparc.com - Salo
43. SCharlesL@aol.com - Steve
44. schooler@cs.caltech.edu - Eve
45. seth@cs.wustl.edu - Seth
46. shcho@halla.sec.samsung.co.kr - Shcho
47. stephen.petschulat@sun.com - Stephen
48. stutz@dsl.org - Michael
49. sue.khudairi@analog.com - Sue
50. thomasreardon@hotmail.com - Reardon
51. tjg@w3.org - Tom
52. viola@morelerbe.com - Yukari
53. ygoland@cinenet.net - Yaron
54. yobie@metagenesis.com - Yobie
55. zippy@myna.com - Zippy
Who do you wish was on FoRK, but isn't?
1. Alex
2. Anne Marie
(from Ron) Now that FoRK has become such a lovefest of soul-baring, who is Rob Harley anyway?

How does an Irishman wind up in France?
Why did he go to Caltech only to return to France?
Why does he keep an Irish flag on his web page?
Is he going back to Ireland one day?
Why does his thumbnail jpeg look like he's trying to scare everyone away? Is he?
What is ML?

(Rob replies...)
1. Because his Dad always loved France, got a job here 15 years ago and dragged us all over... I think it was for the wine.
2. It was the grad-school with a good reputation in the US that least ressembled a factory. That and the SoCal climate. My advisor, a very cool dude called Jan van de Snepscheut, died in a fire. That put a bit of a crimp on my PhD plans...
3. Most of my pages are available in both English and French: on the French ones I have the French flag and on the English ones, I'm hardly going to put the Union Jack or the Stars and Stripes!
4. Dunno, probably not.
5. No! Hey that's the best picture I have. You should have seen the previous one :(
6. It's a "real" programming languages as opposed to a toy one, whose semantics have been completely defined by a book-full of mathematical equations. In theory it's flawless. In practice it's fairly decent.
Why the propensity for FoRKers to use the word "smegma"?

We at FoRK are against obscenity on the Internet. Mainly because it's too papping clean, you squickable choad! So, we use the word "smegma" more often than George and Kramer say the word "duty-free" in the Jerry-in-First-Class episode of Seinfeld...
Which FoRKers are in Silicon Valley?

You're kidding, right? Physical location is *so* last millennium.
How do you spell "millennium?"

(from the Wall Street Journal) David Kimball, an amateur spelling enthusiast in California, has trolled the Internet and found "millennium" spelled wrong at least a third of the time, up there with the greats: minuscule, supersede, occurrence, accommodate, embarrass, and perseverance.
A glance at the World Wide Web produces 41,814 "millenniums" and 31,829 "milleniums." Many involve debates about "Millennium" the television show and the space ship Millennium Falcon from "Star Wars." The TV show and the movie spell it right. The fans are split: Millennium Falcon turns up on the Web 19,981 times, Millenium Falcon 17,997.
What famous people have called Rohit a marketer to his face?
1. Ted Nelson, inventor of hypertext and resident of Xanadu, who actually wanted to hire Rohit as a marketer
2. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web
3. Vint Cerf, father of the Internet
4. Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet and eater of own words
5. Robert X. Cringely, pundit and international sex symbol
6. Bob Lucky, head of Bellcore
7. Kip Thorne, Caltech physicist and friend to Stephen Hawking, who also had Rohit do gopher work for him
8. Mani Chandy, inventor of the UNITY programming model
9. Alain Martin, the first person to fab an asynchronous microprocessor
10. Gerald Sussman, mentor to many of the MIT greats, said Rohit couldn't type
11. John Gutag, inventor of LARCH
12. Ron Rivest, cryptographer of RSA fame
13. Michael Dertouzos, MIT visionary
14. Robert S. Thau, inventor of Shambala, which became the guts of the Apache Web server
15. Rob Harley, world's fastest factorer
16. Simson Garfinkel, pretty good privacy expert
17. Ralph Johnson, gang of four member
18. Guy Kawasaki, Apple dude
19. John Perry Barlow, electronic freedom fighter
20. Richard Stallman, software freedom fighter
21. Warren Christopher, former secretary of state, who slept through a crazy Indian guy who accosted him in the first class section of United
22. Vincent Sculley, architectural deity from Yale
23. Robert Dallek, presidential historian from UCLA
24. Marty Tenenbaum, principal in CommerceNet
What famous people have said bad things about Adam to his face?
1. David Letterman, who gave Adam the finger when Adam almost ran him over while learning to drive in New Canaan, CT in 1986
2. Chuck Seitz, who said Adam was a fool for dropping his VLSI class
3. Alan Kay, who called Adam an idiot at the History of Programming Languages II conference when Adam admitted he had never heard of Xerox PARC
4. Steve "Boom Boom" Jobs, who called Adam an asshole at Object World West 1993 because Adam was in Steve's way while walking to the pulpit to make a speech
5. Guy Steele, who scoffed at the idea of signing Adam's copy of the Hacker's Dictionary at Supercomputing 93
6. Robert X. Cringely, who called Adam various sundries in 1996 because Rohit could not give a talk he had agreed to give
What is NULA?

NULA is the NeXT Users group for Los Angeles, created by FoRKmember Tim Byars. NULA emerged like a Phoenix from the ashes of SCaN (the Southern California area NeXT users group, created by FoRKmembers Ernie Prabhakar and Rohit Khare). NULA is so successful that it has already been parodied by FoRKmember Wayne Baisley.

Could the earth survive on solar power alone?

According to Gordon,

From gordoni@acid.base.com Wed Apr 30 15:06:48 1997
Subject: Re: Global warming, population, nuclear power
To: FoRK@xent.com

> Solar doesn't cut it -- we already use more energy in a year than
> falls as sunlight in a year.

What is your source for this claim.  It sounds bogus to me.

The Solar constant is 1366 Watts / square meter.
The Earth's radius is 6400 kilometers.
The population is around 5 billion I think.

    1366 x 3.14 x 6.4e6 x 6.4e6 / 5e9 = 35 megawatts per person

Relative to most people, I lead an extremley affluent life style,
but still only probably consume perhaps 10 kilowatts.

Even at 10% efficiency, 1 thousandth of the Earth's surface should
thus be able to provide sufficient energy for all current needs.

Really?

According to Rob,

From Robert.Harley@inria.fr Thu May  1 09:48:43 1997
To: fork@xent.com
Subject: Re: Global warming, population, nuclear power

Ron wrote:
>Gordon wrote:
>>Jim wrote:
>>>Solar doesn't
>>>cut it -- we already use more energy in a year than falls as sunlight in a
>>>year.
>>
>>Even at 10% efficiency, 1 thousandth of the Earth's surface should
>>thus be able to provide sufficient energy for all current needs.
>
>As suspicious as Jim's initial claim was (solar is not enough),
>this sounds equally unlikely (1/1000 is enough).

As a scientist, I don't give a damn for the far-out claims of the
new-age "enviromentalist" religion that seems to have become
mainstream in 1989.  I might give a damn if the believers could point
to statistically significant effects (unlike the "evidence" for global
warming), avoid extrapolation many decades in advance (sometime around
1850 it was confidently predicted that given the rate of increase of
the horse population, Britain would be 6 feet deep in horse-shit by
1950), avoid reliance on "computer models" (which give random numbers
for output, which contradict each other and which are only reported
when they fit the dogma) etc, etc.

It's worse than medieval fanaticism... no thought required!  In fact
avoid thinking or you'll realise how bogus it is!  Science is your
enemy!  Basic numeracy is most definitely not needed!

For example the claim above.  I burst out laughing at it.  Gordon's
reply is correct, in fact he was using conservative estimates.  The
solar power incident on the atmosphere is 35 megawatts per capita or
so as he said, of which about half reaches the ground (or ocean).
This is as much as a small nuclear plant delivers.  Gordon estimated
his power consumption at 10 kilowatts max.  Actually an American uses
3 kilowatts average but Americans are by far the most greedy per
capita.  An average human consumes about .6 kilowatts.  I'm including
industry, cars and so on of course.

Now you don't need to work out the factor of 60000 between 35
megawatts and 0.6 kilowatts to realise how bogus the claim is.
Trivial order-of-magnitude guesswork is plenty.

I should keep a note of the worst excesses because this is a new
record.  The previous best was the oft-repeated feminist claim that
100000 American women die of anorexia each year.  Give or take a few
orders of magnitude.

-- Rob "my dick is 6 miles long" Harley.
PS: These electrons were posted from a 75% nuclear-powered computer.

Is this why people look forward to FoRKposts?

According to John Klassa, there are two reasons to look forward to new FoRKposts:
1. Watching Joe Barrera and CobraBoy go at each other. Damn, that makes for some good stuff...
2. The occasional one-liner, like: "-- Rob "my dick is 6 miles long" Harley."
It's a good day in FoRKland.

Wow, that Rob Harley quote makes me want to dance the Macarena. But I don't know how. How do I Macarena?

Funny you should think to mention the words Rob and Macarena in the same sentence. The Macarena dance was designed by one Mia Frye who teaches at the dance school where Rob's girlfriend Myriam goes, the one in the hotel built in 1600 that also houses a Tex-Mex restaurant, the one where they went with Rohit with that New York chick, the one who wouldn't stop complaining and then accidentally borrowed Rohit's California Love CD and still has it...

Anyway, getting to the point, in 1997, Mia Frye invented another dance for a song called "Alane" which is sort of techno accompanied by singing in Bantu by a guy from Cameroon called Wes. Hopefully it won't catch on but in case it does: yu heard it here!

Meanwhile, Dancing the Macarena requires you to move with the 16 beats of the music. Here's what to do:

Beat 1: Put your right arm straight in front of you with your palm down.
Beat 2: Put your left arm straight in front of you with your palm down.
Beat 3: Put your right arm straight in front of you with your palm up.
Beat 4: Put your left arm straight in front of you with your palm up.
Beat 5: Grab the inside of your left elbow.
Beat 6: Grab the inside of your right elbow.
Beat 7: Grab the back of your neck with your right hand.
Beat 8: Grab the back of your neck with your left hand.
Beat 9: Put you right hand on your left front pocket.
Beat 10: Put your left hand on your right front pocket.
Beat 11: Put your right hand on your right rear pocket.
Beat 12: Put your left hand on your left rear pocket.
Beat 13: Move your bottom to the left.
Beat 14: Move your bottom to the right.
Beat 15: Move your bottom to the left again.
Beat 16: Clap and turn to the right.

Now, dance along as I sing the words...

 
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Que tu cuerpo es pa' darle alegria y cosa buena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Hey Macarena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Que tu cuerpo es pa' darle alegria y cosa buena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Hey Macarena
 Macarena tiene un novio que se llama
 Que se llama de apellido Vitorino
 Que en la jura de bandera el muchacho
 Se metio con dos amigos
 Macarena tiene un novio que se llama
 Que se llama de apellido Vitorino
 Y en la jura de bandera el muchacho
 Se metio con dos amigos
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Que tu cuerpo es pa' darle alegria y cosa buena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Hey Macarena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Que tu cuerpo es pa' darle alegria y cosa buena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Hey Macarena
 Macarena tiene un novio que se llama
 Que se llama de apellido Vitorino
 Que en la jura de bandera el muchacho
 Se metio con dos amigos
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Que tu cuerpo es pa' darle alegria y cosa buena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Hey Macarena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Que tu cuerpo es pa' darle alegria y cosa buena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Hey Macarena
 Macarena suena con El Corte Ingles
 Que se compra los modelos mas modernos
 Le gustaria vivir en Nueva York
 Y ligar un novio nuevo
 Macarena suena con El Corte Ingles
 Que se compra los modelos mas modernos
 Le gustaria vivir en Nueva York
 Y ligar un novio nuevo
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Que tu cuerpo es pa' darle alegria y cosa buena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Hey Macarena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Que tu cuerpo es pa' darle alegria y cosa buena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Hey Macarena
 Macarena tiene un novio que se llama
 Que se llama de apellido Vitorino
 Que en la jura de bandera el muchacho
 Se metio con dos amigos
 Macarena tiene un novio que se llama
 Que se llama de apellido Vitorino
 Y en la jura de bandera el muchacho
 Se metio con dos amigos
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Que tu cuerpo es pa' darle alegria y cosa buena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Hey Macarena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Que tu cuerpo es pa' darle alegria y cosa buena
 Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
 Hey Macarena

I don't know Spanish! What's it mean, man?

In a New York Times article that Rohit forgot to clip, we discovered that Macarena was this cute piece of jailbait on the dance floor that the two fortysomethings who wrote the song were lusting after. If you want the lyrics english, I'm sure they're all all over the Web. By this point, the Macarena has gotten so obnoxiously ubiquitous, Yahoo has a page just for it. Shoot, there's even a Yahoo Anti-Macarena page. In short, Macarena's an obnoxious yet bodacious little number that's taken on a life of its own. Sort of like the FoRK mailing list.
Macarena's nice, but now how do I do a Mock-a-Rohit?

It's like the Macarena, only much more painful.

How about a Mac-are-NeXT?

Follow Ernie's guide.

MacareNeXT The BayArea Boys Mix
The official dance song of the Apple - NeXT merger

Copyright 1997 Ernest N. Prabhakar (3-Jan-1997)
May be copied freely provided URL and this notice is included.

 I am not trying to seduce you

  When I hack I say, "run Mac on NeXTSTEP!"
  and the boys they say, "Is that a dance step?"
    they all want Be
    they can't have Be
  so they all have to learn Objective-C
    it's just like C
    but its not C
  and it's so good you'll never go back, see

Chorus:
  In Cupertino they are putting Mac on NeXTSTEP
  And Gil Amelio's hoping this is not his LaST step
  Now Steve is coming home to try and take a new step
  Hey, Mac on NeXTSTEP!

(repeat Chorus)

  But don't you worry about my silly old friend
  That's an OS who's name is Apple's Copland
    I don't want him
    couldn't stand him
  He was no good so Ellen trashed him

  Now come on, what was she supposed to do?
  He was oh so late and NeXT Software is sooo fine

(Chorus) 2x

  I am not trying to seduce you

(Chorus) 2x

  Come this December we'll all run Mac on NeXTSTEP
  Avie Tevanian will make them work in lockstep
    come join me,
    hack with me
  and watch Bill Gates turn green with envy

Last chorus:
  Now Gil Amelio's betting everything on NeXTSTEP
  Don't know if Steven Jobs can make it for a third set
  But the alternative is Windows on your doorstep
  So try, Mac on NeXTSTEP
  Hey!

Adapted from the Bayside Boys Mix of Macarena by Los Del Rio. This version was written in honor of Apple Computer's friendly acquisition of NeXT Software, Inc. on December 20, 1996. NeXTSTEP is NeXT's highly regarded object-oriented system software and development environment which uses the C-based language Objective-C, and will form the basis of the next Macintosh. Apple's CEO Gil Amelio is bringing back Steve Jobs (NeXT's CEO and Apple co-founder, who was ousted over 10 years ago) as a special consultant to help architect Apple's future. Ellen Hancock, Apple's executive VP of R&D, picked NeXTSTEP over Be's BeOS to replace Apple's failed Copland next-generation Operating System. NeXT VP of Engineering Avie Tevanian will be in charge of creating the new merged OS. Good luck, everybody!

I don't like the Macarena.Can't you recommend some GOOD dance music?

Well, in addition to Jim Whitehead's regular KUCI (Orange) Top 30 posts, and good old KSPC and Rebel Radio in SoCal, there is KFJC in the Bay Area, and Adam's Top 60. And now we've set up a FoRK Recommended Music page.
Now wait, is there an indie band named FoRK?

Of course. Check out their track, "Everything You Do Annoys Me". A small snippet from the band FoRK's web page:

We're known for pulling large forks and whatnot out of our asses.

Yes, performance art is alive and well, and if you don't like it, fork u. Well, we had to get your attention somehow. Utensils aside, Fork are a tasty lil' number from NY, kind of like the aural equivalent of having a fork stuck in your eye. Only better. Kim and Kreg are childhood friends from alpha centuri, who decided being in a band was better than kissing ass for a living. Boy, were they wrong. After forking around in a couple of other bands (Fork was originally supposed to be kim's side project with 3 other kims. Get it- four-k's? But Kim Deal and Kim Gordon wouldn't return her phone calls), they decided to rip off the Pixies, like everyone else, and voila! Fork was born. Fork are now kicking ass all over the NY metro area.

Fork... the new white meat!

Coming soon to a placemat near you.
" Utensils aside?"

One word: FoRKchops. Save bamboo for the pandas and trees for the birds.
What's with all the religious imagery on FoRK?

FoRKmembers span several continents and seven religions (Atheism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and for lack of a better word Miscellaneous). Occasionally they may rant and rave about their various experiences, but that's to be expected, right?
(from Ron) The Psalms, as Ernie notes, were written (so legend goes) by Kind David, and are considered part of the written tradition in the Old Testament in Hebrew, literally, the "Torah SheBichtav" - the written Torah.
There's another parallel liturgy - the "Torah SheBe'al Peh" - the oral record. This was (again according to legend) spoken verbally at Sinai by God to Moses, who in turn passed it verbally down through the generations from teacher to pupil. As Rob notes, at a certain point they started to fear losing it all (no persistent state), and random bit-flips started entering the generational transfers (no checksums). So they started writing it all down.
First, they wrote down the mishna, which is the core of the Talmud, then they wrote down the gemarah, which is a whole set of rabbinic interpretations of the mishna. The gemarah reflects all the messaging errors - every rabbi has his own spin on what a statement in the mishna really means, and they debate it for pages. There are actually 2 different gemarahs- the Babylonian one written in - you guessed it, and the Yerushalmic one, written in the Holy Land itself. All the mishnas and associated gemaras form the collective Talmud, and all those guys you see in New York or LA or Paris with the severe black clothing, long beards, payos (those long hanging sideburns), and black hats spend most of their life sitting in seminaries studying it.
Gemara actually can be fun. It can be like following a weird FoRK thread that starts somewhere intelligble (the mishna, or the innocuous kickoff post). But then it meanders through what the students of Rav Rohit ben Khare think they word "smegma" means versus what the disciples of HaGaon Yosef HaBarrera HaShlishi overheard him tell his wife one morning about its annagram "e.g. - Mass". (Soon enough everybody's lost :-). (btw, literal translation is "The Exalted Genius Joseph The Barrera the Third"). Unfortunately far too little of the Talmud seems to deal with smegma- most of it that I learned dealt with who owes whom how many years of indentured servitute as compensation for allowing their ox to gore the other guy's ox, or for leaving an open pit for their ox to fall into, etc. Not enough juicy parts - it would never catch on as a soap pilot. Except maybe for an audience of oxen.
What's the "badges" quote?

You mean the quote from Section 3.3 of the Trust Paper...

Badges? We don't need no steenkin' badges!
-- Blazing Saddles

Well, it's funny you should mention that quote, being as half the Internet has seen it fit to write to us and tell us we have misattributed the quote. Let us state on the record that Mel Brooks snuck this into the movie Blazing Saddles as an homage to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. When Hedley Lamarr is rounding up a group of scoundrels to destroy the town of Rock Ridge, he gives two banditos some badges, which is when they reply with the steenkin badges quote.
The original quote is from John Huston's classic The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with Humphrey Bogart playing Fred C. Dobbs, and Alfonso Bedoya playing the bandit leader Gold Hat:

Gold Hat: Oiga, senor. We are Federales. You know, the mounted police.
Dobbs: If you're the police, where are your badges?
Gold Hat: Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges.
I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!
-- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

This original spawned many homages and copies, our favorite line of which is in Weird Al Yankovic's movie "UHF" for a mock zoo television show they were doing...

Badgers??? We don't need no steenkin' badgers!

Anyway, we liked the "steenkin" better than we liked Gold Hat's wordier version of the same thing, so we went with the Blazing Saddles reference instead of the Treasure of the Sierra Madre reference.
By the way, did you know "badger" is an anagram for "beg rad"?
What is it with you and all the anagrams?

Anagrams are life. Duck likes them. Rob liked them enough to write an obfuscated C program to generate them. Wayne liked them enough to write a highly optimized well-oiled piece of machinery to generate them. As for me? I wish I could figure out a way to make it stop. As Rohit would say, FoRK em if they can't take an anagram. They're in flagrant (or was it fragrant?) violation of Rohit's Rules of Order anyway. But since you asked, here are some anagrams of "Friends of Rohit Khare" generated by Wayne. And, unlike Keith's anagrams, Wayne's anagrams did not require meticulous culling. You can get the gist of Wayne's approach, of course, from the FoRK archives (post or followup). By the way, we don't just like anagrams; we like oxymorons, too.
Is FoRK sustainable in the long run?

Sure. As long as progress itself is sustainable in the long run.
What's FoRK's position on Microsoft?

Well, Rob "Give Me DEC Alphas or Give Me Death" Harley and Tim "Where Do You Want To Go, Toadie?" Byars belong in the "extreme prejudice toward Microsoft" camp with JoeK, and Rohit "I continue to use Windows 95 despite my continual complaints about it" Khare, Magnus "lurker" Hedlund, John "closet M$ lover" Boyer, and Adam "I'm a masochist, so please let me try out yet another buggy Xserver for Windows NT so I can log into the NetBSD machines to try to get some actual work done" Rifkin would be in the "malice toward none" camp with joebar. In other words, we're split down the middle.
How does Rohit describe Adam to other people?

I have a friend whose grandparents were the only survivors of a Russian pogrom, and he's haunted by a different survivor's guilt, one which drives him to live in the moment, for the pleasure of others and not to make prideful, ambitious plans. He's a very caring, hence popular leader of hearts and minds, and I only ask to topple the global telephone industry. We're still pretty good friends, though :-)
What is our deepest fear? Change?? Fear itself???

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are we not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. (from Nelson Mandella's 1994 Inaugural speech)

What is the first source code to ever be posted to FoRK?

That would be John Boyer's (untested) code to perform the uptime command for a Windows NT 4.0 machine:

#include <windows.h>
#define MSPDAY 86400000
void main(void)
{
        DWORD dwCount,dwDays, dwHrs, dwMins;
        /* get number of milliseconds since last boot*/
        dwCount =3D GetTickCount();
        dwDays =3D dwCount / MSPDAY;
        dwHrs =3D (dwCount - dwDays * MSPDAY) / (1000*60*60);
        dwMins =3D ( (dwCount - dwDays * MSPDAY - dwHrs *(1000*60*60)  ) / (1000*60));
        printf("Up %3d days, %2d:%2d, One User, Load Average: who knows?",dwDays,dwHrs,dwMins);
        return;
}

What is the first *Win16* source code to ever be posted to FoRK?

That would be Joe Barrera's (tested) code that you can click through if you really want. And yes, that's really COBOL.
Who are the boyz in the FoRK 'hood?
- Johnboy - JohnB
- Beanboy - Ron
- Chocoboy - Rajit
- Cobraboy - Tim
- Corbaboy - absolutely no one
- Bitboy - Adam, Rohit's intrepid spaniel
- Travelman - Rohit, of course

Does FoRK have a theme song?

This was a big subject of debate, and still open to conversation. For now, we have "half a theme" based on REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It". Not coincidentally, this song was Bill Gates' first choice for the Windows 95 theme (how fitting!) --- instead, REM said he could keep his money, and so he went to those dollarsluts the Rolling Stones ("you make a grown man cry" is supposed to be a positive theme song??? Anyway, here's a first attempt at our lyrics, made by the FoRK lyricist Dr. Ernie.

We're the Masters of Bits, And We Know It (and So Do You)

That's great, it starts with an email, words and
graphs, HTML and Cobra is not afraid.
I am a KarmaKid, listen to yourself spew -
Web serve your I.D., replicate I.D.
Feed it over munchkins, Larry, no, Shemp, Curly
start to hurry with fear write down sites.
Fire is a wire, representing Cringely, a Web guru
for hire and a world-wide trip.
Nerd with girl and drinking in a hurry with the furies
pouring down your throat.
Pay for play superiors baffled, trumped, tethered trapped.
Stuck in that low playing job, then.
Uh oh, three percent, explanation, objects bad, but I'm not sad.
Save your args, save HREFs.
Web serve your I.D., listen at port 80, marshal with RMI and
I-Sphere and the right byte.
You distributed miscomputed, slam, shift, rift, gift, getting frequent lift.

We're the masters of bits, and we know it,
We're the real three percent, and we show it.
We're the masters of bits, and we know it, and so do you...

We will soon rule the world as we know it.
We will use XML to expose it
And our objectspace graphs will encode it, by v0.2...

(It's time I had some time alone)

Whew. Somebody else do the other verses.

What, no Beberg lyrics?

 Twas the night of a Friday, when all through the house 
 Not a keyboard was stirring, not even a mouse; 
 The folders were hung by the archive with care. 
 In hopes that St. Rohit soon would be there. 

 The readers were nestled all snug in their beds, 
 While visions of protocols danced in their heads; 
 And mamma on her pilot, an I on my WAP, 
 Had just settled down, work a long weekend nap. 

 When out on the net there arose such a chatter 
 I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. 
 Away to my Windows I flew like a flash, 
 Tore open the crypto and threw up the hash. 

 The moon on the breast of the new-fallen bits 
 Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects and snits, 
 When, what to my wondering grep should appear, 
 But a miniature list, and eight tiny re-deers, 

 With a little old master, so lively and fit, 
 I knew in a moment it must be Rohit. 
 More rapid than spammers his readers they came, 
 And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name; 

 "Now, Bolcer! now, Baker! now, Whitehead and Brickley! 
 On, Rifkin! on Sweetnam! on, DeLong and Baisley! 
 To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! 
 Now dash away! bash away! trash away all!" 

 As dry bits that before the wild hurricane fly, 
 When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky, 
 So up to the house-top the re-deers they flew, 
 With the sleigh full of bits, and St. Rohit too. 

 And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the list 
 The prancing and pawing of each little jist. 
 As I drew in my hand, and was turning around, 
 Down the mail queue St. Rohit came with a bound. 

 He was dressed in no hair, from: his head to: his neck, 
 And his clothes were all tarnished with factoids and tech; 
 A bundle of bits he had flung on his back, 
 And he looked like a lurker just opening his pack. 

 He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, 
 And filled all the folders; then turned with a smirk, 
 And laying his finger aside of his nose, 
 And giving a nod, to the archives he rose; 

 He sprang to his list, to his team gave a whistle, 
 And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. 
 But I heard him exclaim, ere he logged out of sight, 
 "Happy weekend to: all, and to: all a good night!"

Ask for Beberg of Cosm fame and ye shall receive...

What, no Spice Girls lyrics?

 Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
 So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
 I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
 So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
 I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really
 really really wanna bag-o-bits ha.

 If you want my cluons, forget I'm smashed,
 If you wanna get my bits, get another glass,
 Now don't go wasting my precious time,
 Get your URLs together, include them inline.

 I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
 So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
 I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really
 really really wanna world-wide-web ha.

 If you wanna be a FoRKer, you gotta post with Ro's friends:
 FoRKposts last forever, -archive never ends.
 If you wanna be a FoRKer, bits you've got to give,
 Taking is too easy, but that's the way clue is.

 What do you think about that, now you know how I feel,
 Say you can handle my bits, are you for real?
 I won't be hasty, I'll give XML a try.
 But if Java beans bug me then I'll say goodbye.

 Yo I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
 So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
 I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really
 really really wanna bag-o-clue ha.

 If you wanna be a FoRKer, your vision should be good.
 FoRKposts need a subject, bits, and attitude.
 If you wanna be a FoRKer, bits you've got to steal,
 Copying is easy, but artists do it real.

 So here's a story from A to Z, you wanna get our slack
 you gotta listen to the FAQ,
 We got Tim in the place who posts it in your face,
 We got Joe like Ernie who posts it on a...
 Slacker Ro doesn't come for free, he posts minimally,
 And as for me, ha you'll see,
 Slam your vision down and wind it all around
 Slam your karma down and wind it all around.

 If you wanna be a FoRKer, you gotta avoid quick sends.
 Make your posts all matter, -archive never ends.
 If you wanna be a FoRKer, clue must be gestalt.
 Clue don't go down easy, not like my single malt.

 If you wanna be a FoRKer, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta,
 you gotta, you gotta, slam, slam, slam, slam
 Slam your objects down and wind them all around.
 Slam your markup down and wind it all around.
 Slam your kudos and wind them all around.
 Slam your munchkins down, bag-o-bits ah
 If you wanna be a FoRKer...

Ask for Spice Girls and ye shall receive...

Speaking of which, how is suffering dealt with in FoRK?

(from Ernie) In the FoRK Universe, there are only two legitimate responses. (a) show sympathy, or (b) come up with some creative punishment that is worse than what the sufferer is already going through. Of course, (a) is only used as a last resort.
Who is this karmakid Adam you speak of?

(from Ron)
Adam Rifkin is apparently neither a dist-objer, nor a FoRKer. Rumour has it he's an Infospheroid, but I rather doubt that. Some even claim to have seen him playing backup vocals to Elvis in a Vegas dive last Tuesday, but frankly he can't carry a tune that long, though I'm pretty sure Elvis was there. Nope - sad to say Virginia, just like Santa Claus, integrity in the White House, and usable software from Microshit, Adam Rifkin is merely a mass hallucination brought to you by those weird Hollywood media moguls.
Who is this Jamie Zawinski you quote of?

According to joebar, one of the real delights of doing grad school at Carnegie Mellon was reading the Opinion bboard. The Opinion bboard was sort of like FoRK, but more graphic, more violent, and with a greater emphasis on (dark) humor than on bits. At any rate, I invite you to sample the wisdom of Jamie Zawinski.
After reading all this, I gotta ask - how do things just keep cropping up in this FAQ?

(from Ron) It's becoming a challenge-puzzle to see what little catchphrases one can write that mysteriously are grabbed by Adam and suddenly appear on the FAQ. _Gee,_ I _wonder_ if _these _very_ words_ here_won't_ ricochet_ around_? (Adam's response: They might, rabbit, they might...)
What are Ernie's FOuR Koans of FoRK?

The disciple asks the Master, "What are the rules of FoRK?" The Master replies...
1. The disciple asks the Master, "Why is FoRK?"
  The Master buys two round-the-world tickets, upgrades to first-class using frequent flyer miles, and they travel to Japan to deliver a lecture on the future of the Web as a medium for universal interoperability and distributed computing. En route, the Master drinks an entire bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label, then throws up at the airport. In Japan, the Master ignores beautiful blondes who are paid to fawn all over him, while the disciple sings Karaoke with the Master's girl.
  And the disciple was enlightened.
2. The disciple asks the Master, "How do I know if a post is appropriate?"
  The Master smacks the disciple on the head.
  The Master says, "How do you know that I hit you?"
  And the disciple was enlightened.
3. The disciple asks the Master, "Why did someone post my private email?"
  The Master and the disciple walk up to a sign marked "Nude beach." They both undress and go in. The Master hands the disciple a camera. The disciple photographs the Master. The Master takes the camera, smashes it over the head of the disciple, and asks, "Why did you photograph my private parts?"
  And the disciple was enlightened.
4. One disciple asks the Master, "Why is there all this personal discussion on a technical list?"
  Another disciple asks the Master, "Why is there all this technical information on a social list?"
  The Master summons Tim Byars. Tim Byars says, "Check this out!" and smacks both disciples on their heads.
  And they were enlightened.
...and the disciple was enlightened
In the spirit of Rohit, what's "monomania"?
1. Salvador Dali
  "Based on my reason and based on what the latest scientific discoveries of our time have shown me, I am convinced that God exists. However, I do not believe in God as a matter of faith, because unfortunately I have no faith. On the other hand, God is not aware of the existence of Coca Cola, or of Salvador Dali, much less something called morals..."
  
  "I do not take drugs. I am drugs."
2. Charles Manson
  "I may have implied on several occasions to several different people that I may have been Jesus Christ, but I haven't decided yet what I arn or who I am."
  
  "No, I am not responsible for you. Your karma is not mine."
3. Louis XIV
  "L'e'tat, c'est moi"
4. Marc Andreeeeesssssen
All this sounds so cool. Can I join FoRK?

You can join FoRK if you can answer one simple question: what is the difference between the following two statements?

"In other words: there's an Orb-like thingie in just about everything, supporting a queryable BO that can do meaningful things?" (saying from Sandor Spruit)

"In other words, there's a HTTP server in every device with a processor and a port which can use PEP and HTML to offer a meaningful, composable interface to any other HTTP client?" (saying from Rohit Khare)
I give up.

You're learning, grasshopper. The key to knowing anything is admitting that you know nothing. And as Dr. Ernie tells us,

FoRK's primary method of reproduction nowadays is from people hitting the archive and being sucked in by one tidbit or other. And that one of the reasons for the list's existence is to explore the evolution of a electronic community in the fishbowl of a public archive.
So, you may now join FoRK by sending a (preferably tongue in cheek) description of yourself. Chris Olds reminded me that you don't have to: a) tell the truth in your introduction, or b) make sense (at any time; q.v. Nordquist).

This FAQ maintained by Joseph S. Barrera III, after being hijacked from the control of Adam Rifkin (who was actually just passed out in the back of the FoRK plane, slumped over the spilled, sticky remains of his sixth gin-and-tonic).