http://www.userfriendly.org/

The following comic is discussed below: http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/00oct/uf002339.gif 2000-10-14

See EvilGeniusesInaNutshell and TheRootOfAllEvil.
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Interview with cast on ORA http://www.oreilly.com/news/rootofevil_1001.html

'''oreilly.com:''' Pitr, can you tell us the recipe for the perfect cup of coffee?

'''Pitr:''' Time. Time and evaporation.

Might be fun to write a Pitr-bot....

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Obviously he didn't start with Perl:

 #!/usr/bin/perl -p
 $_=(/([aeiouy])\W*$/i?$^T&1&&$1eq'y'?No:Yes:No).".\n"

This has a few changes from version 1.0. First of all, this version removes the obsolete input limit of only 20 questions. Also, who needs a prompt?  Prompts are for the weaklings who can't remember what their commands do. Finally, since "y" is ''sometimes'' a vowel, it is considered a vowel if the script is started on an even second. (This has the advantage of making unit testing much more interesting.)

Sample session:  [text in '''bold''' is user input]

 '''perl ai.pl'''
 '''Is it blue?'''
 Yes.
 '''Is it bigger than a breadbox?'''
 No.
 '''Is it smaller than a breadbox?'''
 No.
 '''Does it go "wiki-wiki-wiki"?'''
 Yes.

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Couldn't resist writing it in python;

 #!/usr/bin/python
 while 1: print ('No', 'Yes')[bool(__import__('re').findall('[aeious]\W*$', raw_input()))]

Output as above.
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Here's a better version without all that icky non-functional statefulnes.

  list( (lambda sys_,re_: sys_.stdout.write(('No.\n','Yes.\n')
  [int(bool(re_.findall('[aeious]\W*$', raw_input())))]))
  (__import__('sys'), __import__('re')) for x in 
  (lambda types: types.InstanceType(types.ClassType('inf',(), 
  {'next':lambda x: 1, '__iter__':lambda x: x})))(__import__('types')) )

-- IvanTkatchev

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