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1993-11-12
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9KB
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229 lines
∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙
∙ ∙
∙ T H E S T E N I N T E R V I E W ∙
∙ ∙
∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙
The STEN Interviews are where we talk to the movers and shapers in the
ST world, and ask what they think of the ways in which the scene has
developed.
As this is the final issue of STEN, we thought we'd go back to where it
all started from. Programmers may come and go, machines may fade and
die, but Operating Systems live on. STEN disczine is proud to present an
exclusive interview with God, the first of the great O/S coders.
∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°
∙ DATA ∙
∙ ∙
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STEN: How old are you?
GOD: Hah! Let's just say I've been around as long as anything has
existed...
STEN: Where do you live?
GOD: Another stupid question.... Here, there and everywhere. But if I
had to choose just the one place it'd be the Kalahari. It's quiet, and
they don't bother me so much there.
STEN: What work do you do?
GOD: Self-employed systems analyst and hardware designer.
STEN: What computer/s did you use before the ST?
GOD: Very funny. Nothing that you'll have heard of - let's just say
that they were custom jobs with neural networking.
STEN: What's your current ST set-up?
GOD: See above.
STEN: What do you use it for?
GOD: Running the Universe, a few personal projects, and the occasional
game.
STEN: What's your favourite productivity software?
GOD: Population Count III, That's Faith! v5.2, and Logos, the first and
best wordprocessor.
STEN: What are your favourite games?
GOD: I try not to play too many, but my current favourites are: Jimmy
Swaggart Strip Poker, Peace in the Middle East, and the odd blast of
Llamatron. I used to be really into wargames at one time, but you don't
see so many of them these days.
STEN: What are your favourite PD or Shareware programmes?
GOD: Church Admin 3 (Catholic version), Jihad 4, Chosen People v2.1,
Mega Conversion Utility, Kozmik v8.2, Screen Saver v1.01, Fortune Cookie,
and JCview.
STEN: What do you like about the ST scene?
GOD: Atari's devotion to lost causes.
STEN: What do you dislike about it?
GOD: Atari's devotion to lost causes.
STEN: What other interests do you have outside of computing?
GOD: Golf, theology and sport; anything that doesn't involve too much
thought. Even an Omnipotent Being needs to unwind occasionally.
STEN: What music do you listen to?
GOD: The Music of the Spheres mainly, but I did go through a heavy
metal phase a couple of aeons back.
STEN: How would you describe yourself?
GOD: Omnipotent, misrepresented, and in need of some good PR.
STEN: What's your ultimate ambition?
GOD: To retire.
∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙
∙ THE INTERVIEW ∙
∙ ∙
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STEN: Let's start at the very beginning. How did the Creation Project
come about?
God: It was a very long time ago.... So long ago that the beginning is
mixed up with the end. I was at a loose end and thought, "Why don't I
creae a few universes?" And it all started from that - the whole
completist thing of "let's populate them and start them rolling and see
what happens". Something like kicking an ants' nest and watching them
run.
STEN: It must have been a lot of fun.... I've seen some of the DNA coding
and marvelled; complexity being built up from simplicity. What a design!
God: Thank you, but really I made it up as I went along. I'd put in
little jokes like the capacity for religious belief - just to see how
they'd work out. The anthill again.
STEN: Do you regret coding the religious routine? It's probably caused
more problems in the system than any other chunk.
God: You think you've had problems? Oy Veh! Think what I've have to
put up with - 5 main religions, 500 sects, fundamentalists crawling out
of every crack... and every damn believer wants a hotline to me.
"Please give me this! Please give me that! Gimme, Gimme, gimme!"
Sometimes I do just that, I give them what they want and watch them
squirm.
STEN: Can we keep to the programming side? I'm not sure how to put this,
but there seem to be a lot of bugs in the system.
God: You ever tried coding something that big? Of course it's bugged -
what do you expect when there's so many patches and overlays! I won't
even mention the different language versions. If I was going to code it
all over again, I'd make damn (whoops, sorry!) sure it was in straight
Hebrew throughout.
You know I coded in Hebrew, don't you? Now there's a language for you -
none of those wimpy vowels to slow it down, you just bolt the consonants
together in just about any way you want. It was a RISC language that
never really caught on.
STEN: I heard you had a lot of problems with the manuals - is that true?
God: Yep, the real problems began with the manuals. No programmer
worth his burnt offering wants to write documentation, so over the years
I've contracted it out to third-parties. But it's not the best way to do
it... I had this guy called Moses who handled that side - keen as
mustard, climbed mountains for the job, but did you see what whe wrote?
Ten lines of instructions.... we're talking squillions of lines of code,
artificial intelligence routines, neural networking, evolution yet, and
he writes ten lines of instructions. Schmuck! No wonder I get a bad press.
So I spread the work around the tribes of Israel - telecottaging before
its time - and some of it turned out good, some of it bad. And some of it
- you read Leviticus sometime - I give them printouts and they write
menus on the back of it....
STEN: How about the stranger side of religion - talking in tongues,
hearing voices, seeing visions - where did that come from?
God: Ahh... Yes, I don't really want to own up to this one, but it's a
chunk of code that shouldn't be in there. I'd got interested in parallel
processing and virtual reality, and I wrote these routines to see what I
could do with it - it was a joke really - and then I forgot to erase it.
And you know what happens then? Some damn fool is just bound to find
it... I put mind-altering software everywhere - we all need a break
sometime - but no, they want to do it in hardware. Jeez...
STEN: Talking of which, what's the story with you and your son? Tell me
if I'm getting too personal here, but there's rumours going around that
you were disappointed by him. What really happened?
God: That's family, really, but it's an old story and it won't hurt
anyone to tell it again. I'd hoped that Jesus would come into the family
firm, on the support side perhaps, either that or become a Doctor. But
it wasn't meant to be... He got in with a love and peace crowd and the
next thing I knew he'd got himself crucified. I put the usual PR into
effect, but the damage had been done and I've had to live with it ever
since. A good Jewish boy hanging out with the goyim....?
STEN: Let's change the subject. Is it true you're working on a cyberpunk
project?
God: Well... it's got a certain kind of appeal, hasn't it? I don't want
to reveal too much about it, but a lot of it's already in place and I'm
just waiting for users to find it. One thing though, Gibson got it
wrong...
STEN: Let's wind the interview down now. I know the age of miracles is
long past, but could you give our readers a few hints and tips....
infinite lives perhaps?
God: OK. But you've got to work for them. RYFM. Go back to the
source. Study the Tao. But don't look for easy answers; there aren't any.
Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters.
STEN: I know it's been said a million times before, but Thanks, God. It
was good of you to spare the time.
God: You're welcome - see you around!
~~~~~eof~~~~~