Enjoy a randomly generated fortune:
$ fortune | cowsay _________________________________________ / ... an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown \ | Heights Research Center. When a | | programmer used his new computer | | terminal, all was fine when he was | | sitting down, but he couldn't log in to | | the system when he was standing up. | | That behavior was 100 percent | | repeatable: he could always log in when | | sitting and never when standing. | | | | Most of us just sit back and marvel at | | such a story; how could that terminal | | know whether the poor guy was sitting | | or standing? Good debuggers, though, | | know that there has to be a reason. | | Electrical theories are the easiest to | | hypothesize: was there a loose wire | | under the carpet, or problems with | | static electricity? But electrical | | problems are rarely consistently | | reproducible. An alert IBMer finally | | noticed that the problem was in the | | terminal's keyboard: the tops of two | | keys were switched. When the programmer | | was seated he was a touch typist and | | the problem went unnoticed, but when he | | stood he was led astray by hunting and | | pecking. | | | | -- "Programming Pearls" column, by Jon | \ Bentley in CACM February 1985 / ----------------------------------------- \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || ||
$output = shell_exec("/usr/games/fortune | /usr/games/cowsay"); echo $output;