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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!noscvax!kemp
From: kemp@noscvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Default is your fault
Message-ID: <721@noscvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Dec-84 15:50:13 EST
Article-I.D.: noscvax.721
Posted: Tue Dec 18 15:50:13 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Dec-84 00:20:23 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center
Lines: 56

>From dfaults@cod Thu Dec 18 11:18:43 1984
>To: nothing
>Subject: AN OPEN LETTER TO NOTHING
>-------------------------
>
>Dear Null,
>   We feel a little foolish, writing to no one about nothing. None
>the less:
>   First, you seem to be everywhere.Your name is (default)
>and if ever you have any values, they are usually either (Once)
>or (For all), and seldom for naught. Sometimes you are simply
>whatever you were last time, and you are almost never the same as
>you were at first.
>   We've thought about you. We've asked ourselves, from whence
>does nothing come? How can you always be everywhere when you live nowhere
>and consist of nothing? 
>   Our theory is that you simply came from what had gone before:
>you are just a bunch of artifacts which have emerged from 
>succesive damnations uttered by pressured developers of hardware and 
>software systems in which you address yourself.
>   Someone said that in the pyramid of the history of data processing,
>you are like a secret passage: you save time and effort for those who 
>recognize your absence. But for those who don't, you are inscrutable, a
>pitfall.
>   As far as we're concerned, you have sleighted us but we know you
>are just transparent and usually spaced out. You run up to salute even
>when there is no flag, and we wish you were a beep.
>
>   Signed,
>   The Damned Defaults:
>
>    The Space
>    The Group-id
>    .
>    The File Permissions
>    The Dot Files:
>      .login
>      .cshrc
>      .exrc
>      .ingres
>      .msgsrc
>      .netrc
>      .newsrc
>      .plan
>      .project
>      .logout
>    The Disc Quota
>    The Pathnames
>    The Environment Variables
>    The Flags
>    The "Prior"
>    /tmp
>    The Null String
>    The Collating Sequence
>    The Tab Sets
>    Zero, One and Infinity