2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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casting the runes
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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n. What a guru does when you ask him or her to run a particular program and
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type at it because it never works for anyone else; esp. used when nobody can
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ever see what the guru is doing different from what J. Random Luser does.
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Compare incantation , runes , examining the entrails ; also see the AI koan
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about Tom Knight in Some AI Koans (in Appendix A). A correspondent from
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England tells us that one of ICL's most talented systems designers used to
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be called out occasionally to service machines which the field circus had
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given up on. Since he knew the design inside out, he could often find faults
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simply by listening to a quick outline of the symptoms. He used to play on
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this by going to some site where the field circus had just spent the last
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two weeks solid trying to find a fault, and spreading a diagram of the
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system out on a table top. He'd then shake some chicken bones and cast them
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over the diagram, peer at the bones intently for a minute, and then tell
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them that a certain module needed replacing. The system would start working
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again immediately upon the replacement.
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