On Wed, 18 Oct 1995, AlberCrombie wrote:

You rather we compare you to the Oracle?
(speaking of which - is the Oracle still around?)

What is this?

Ichinohei Hitomi
Hitomi@escape.ca

Ok - the net Oracle was a wonderful machine somewhere in Indiana a few years
ago (even had it's own newsgroup for awhile)

You posed a question and it sent you the answer.  simple.

The way it really worked : you send the message to the computer, which would
then send YOU a question to answer.  See, the Oracle was so busy (or he
said) that for payment for asking a question, you had to help him answer a
question.  Once you finished writing an answer, you shipped it back to the
oracle, who would then return it to the original poster.

This was real, I'm not making this up - there were 100's to 1000's of
questions a month!  The Oracle would send out the top 10 questions of the
week to the mailing list.  They were hillarious.

For example :

you send this to the Oracle :

'Oh, wise and wonderful Oracle - who I am not worth to lick the goo off of
the bottom of your useless old sneakers - grant me this boone.  Why is their
air?'

And about a week later you would get a response, something like this...

'There is air to fill volley balls.  Why are you wasting my time with this
drivel?

You owe the Oracle a new volley ball net and a new watch.'

The oracle always demanded something in return, and it always got weird. 
Also, if you've ever heard of net.goddess.Lisa - this was the Oracles main
squeeze, his true love, the one he picked sheep wool with (these are actuall
descriptions of Lisa by the Oracle...)  that's where she came from.

I'll try to dig up some old Oracle items I got around here, and let you see.


AlberCrombie
                                                                           
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