27 lines
1.7 KiB
Plaintext
27 lines
1.7 KiB
Plaintext
Dissociated Press
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n. [play on Associated Press ; perhaps inspired by a reference in the 1950
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Bugs Bunny cartoon What's Up, Doc? ] An algorithm for transforming any text
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into potentially humorous garbage even more efficiently than by passing it
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through a marketroid. The algorithm starts by printing any N consecutive
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words (or letters) in the text. Then at every step it searches for any
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random occurrence in the original text of the last N words (or letters)
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already printed and then prints the next word or letter. EMACS has a handy
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command for this. Here is a short example of word-based Dissociated Press
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applied to an earlier version of this Jargon File: wart: n. A small, crocky
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feature that sticks out of an array (C has no checks for this). This is
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relatively benign and easy to spot if the phrase is bent so as to be not
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worth paying attention to the medium in question. Here is a short example of
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letter-based Dissociated Press applied to the same source: window sysIWYG:
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n. A bit was named aften /beet@/ prefer to use the other guy's re,
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especially in every cast a chuckle on neithout getting into useful informash
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speech makes removing a featuring a move or usage actual abstractionsidered
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interj. Indeed spectace logic or problem! A hackish idle pastime is to apply
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letter-based Dissociated Press to a random body of text and vgrep the output
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in hopes of finding an interesting new word. (In the preceding example,
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window sysIWYG and informash show some promise.) Iterated applications of
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Dissociated Press usually yield better results. Similar techniques called
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travesty generators have been employed with considerable satirical effect to
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the utterances of Usenet flamers; see pseudo.
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