=============================================================================== "Only the news Skies: Carolina Blue that fits our THE SITTERSON ENQUIRER Winds: North by Northwest views!" =============================================================================== Vol. 0 No. 0 Monday, April 1, 1991 Priceless =============================================================================== NEW GRADUATION REQUIREMENT Graduate students who expect to graduate this year may be surprised to learn of a new requirement they must pass before they can get their diplomas at Kenan stadium. "All undergraduates must pass a swim test to graduate from this university," explained a Rams club spokesman, "because that was stipulated as one of the conditions of building Kessing pool, which is near Woolen gym. Now, we don't think that it's fair that graduate students get to avoid this requirement, even if they never go to the beach like our undergrads do. We spoke with the Chancellor and he agreed, so starting in Spring 1991, all graduate students will be required to pass the swim test before graduating." When we asked the Chancellor about the new requirement, he replied, "It's a matter of fairness. Besides, I don't think it will be a hardship for our graduate students, because they're living in sink-or-swim environments already. And the test is mandatory pass/fail, so they don't have to worry about their grades on it." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COLAB UPGRADES LABORATORY EQUIPMENT The Colab announced the installation of a stereo system that includes a CD player. Expansion plans include an aquarium, several plants, and a basketball hoop. "We expect to match the Glab's amenities within this semester," one anonymous spokesperson said. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SPECTATOR CORRECTNESS (SC) POLICY INSTALLED Next Fall, when the group of new graduate students show up for orientation, you may notice a lack of attendance from the new students from other ACC schools. It's not that we've stopped accepting students from those schools; it's due to a new CSA program designed to increase camaraderie and department harmony during basketball season, through the enforcement of Spectator Correctness (SC). Starting next Fall, new students from other ACC schools will be moved to the Andy Skinner Tar Heel Indoctrination Camp for deprogramming before being allowed to officially enroll. Guidence counselors will teach the new students the fight song, the virtues of wearing Carolina Blue, and how to like upper level seats. Incorrect concepts that go against Spectator Correctness, like "Wolfpack power!" or "Go Blue Devils!" will be systematically removed and replaced with "Beat State!" and "Trounce Duke!" The new students will be allowed to leave camp once they purge their former false beliefs and recite the mantra, "Dean Smith is God, and Rams Club members indeed deserve the best seats." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BUDGET CUTS AFFECT SITTERSON HALL As a result of budget cuts, the university will be shutting off power to Sitterson Hall from 6pm to 7am each day. "After all, students don't need to be in the building except during normal working hours," said the Chancellor. "They can work at home or study in the library instead. Since we don't have the funds to buy more books, there's now plenty of space in the library for study desks." In a related story, Duke University officials are rumored to be preparing a hostile takeover of UNC Chapel Hill. "It's undervalued property," said one spokesman (Lawrence L. Bean, of 875 N. Greensboro Rd., Durham, NC) who spoke under conditions of anonymity. "Besides, they're weakened by the budget cuts and could use the funds. We'll rename the property Duke South Campus, which will let us expand our enrollment by about 10,000, 95% of which will come from New Jersey." When asked about their plans for Sitterson Hall, he replied, "We'll let the Omega Omega Omega fraternity move their new chapter there, if they think it's up to their standards. Otherwise we'll build a 10-story parking garage there instead. After all, our students need some place to park their BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GLAB MATCHES COLAB, RAISES ANTE Glabcomm announced the addition of a multi-disc CD player, 8 ceiling-mounted speakers, headphone ports by every workstation, a popcorn machine, and a modification to the Sony projector to allow laserdisc movies to be played with surround sound. "No way will we let the Colab top us," one unidentified professor said. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GLAB SPONSOR PLAQUE TO BE UNVEILED We all know that the Glab has plaques showing the various corporate sponsors that provided funds for the equipment in the Glab, such as DEC, IBM, etc. But early next semester, the CSA will be putting up a plaque honoring the other forgotten sponsors of the Glab: the companies, without which, no useful work would ever be accomplished. We're talking about: Dominoes Pizza Subway sandwiches Top of the Hill Time Out chicken Pizza Hut Golden Dragon Taco Hell Sadlack's Ben and Jerry's The Pepsi-Cola corporation Juan Valdez (who picks every single coffee bean that comes out of Colombia) Surplus donations to the plaque fund will go to the "Hector's fire rebuilding fund." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DEMO INCENTIVE PROGRAM ANNOUNCED The Department has been receiving reports that graduate students are failing to volunteer to give demos anymore. We've heard complaints about "wanting to pass DWEs" or "wanting to find a PhD topic" or "just wanting to get some work done." After hearing these complaints, the Department realized that this situation is intolerable and must change. So to keep demos flowing, the Department has announced the start of the Demo Incentive Program (DIP). Yes, now every time you give a demo, your name gets entered into a lottery pool. The more demos you give, the better your chances of winning! And just look at these wonderful prizes... 1st prize: a single office with a window on the 2nd floor 2nd prize: one DEC 3100 workstation 3rd prize: one Sun-2 workstation 4th prize: two Sun-2 workstations This offer won't last long, so grab the bargain now! Sign up to give demos today! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COLAB RESPONDS TO GLAB EXPANSION PLANS In a recent press conference, the Colab announced new plans to surpass the Glab with the installation of a hot tub in one corner of the lab, HDTV screens, DAT tape players, and TV video piped directly into a window on every user's workstation. "With live video on every monitor, users will be able to watch football, read news, and play Tetris all at the same time, thus tripling programmer productivity." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FELLOWSHIPS AVAILABLE Application forms are now available for three year FSN (Foundation of Science Nationals) fellowships, paying stipends of $15,000, $16,000 and $17,000 each respective year. The fellowship includes full tuition waivers for all three years. Applicants must have completed no more than 20 hours of graduate credit and must enroll in a full-time PhD program at an accredited institution. US citizens only, please. Base GPA must be higher than 3.95 on a 4.0 scale. Applicants are restricted to minority females. Applicants must have been born in Scandanavia and must pursue a degree in aerospace engineering. The institution attended must be in Senegal or Madagascar. Preference given to left-handed applicants who are daughters of a veteran of the Confederate Army. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW DRUG TESTING POLICY The University spent $7,500 to mail letters to every student explaining that drugs are illegal on campus. This information was a surprise to everyone. As one student put it, "I thought that while on University grounds you were immune to Federal and State laws." In response to the growing threat of drugs, the Department has decided to begin mandatory drug tests for all DWE takers, beginning Fall 1991. Students taking the DWE will be required to provide urine samples before picking up their packets and after returning them, for each of the three days of the test. When asked whether students would find it difficult to provide samples on demand, one professor replied, "Nah, just the opposite. Once they see the questions, they usually find it hard NOT to wet their pants!" We spoke with the director of the secret chemical analysis laboratory that will be performing the tests. While we cannot reveal the exact location of the 1st year chemistry class lab in Venable Hall, we can publish excerpts from the interview. When asked what kind of substances they would be looking for, he responded, "God, you don't realize what kind of junk students these days will take to get an edge on the competition. Mountain Dew, Jolt Cola, Oreo cookie centers... they'll try any chemical substance if they think it will help." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VDTs HARM HEALTH Scientists have come up with conclusive evidence that sitting in front of VDTs for extended periods of time is harmful to your long-term well-being. After placing twelve neophytes in front of a terminal and teaching them how to read news, the scientists running the experiment discovered that eight of them had managed to start massive flame wars in at least 28 different newsgroups and received 12 separate death threats, one of them after a test subject accidentally posted the same message (written in all capital letters) 100 times in a row. In addition to the visible stress the flames and threats caused, the experimenters noticed that the test subjects IQ dropped noticeably during the session and that their diet changed to a steady stream of soda pop, Dominoes pizza, and take-out boxes of spicy Kung-Pao chicken. All of this was conclusive evidence that extensive exposure to VDTs are harmful to your health. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NO HIDDEN CAMERA WARNING SIGNS Graduate school officials, being told that photographing people without informing them opened the potential for lawsuits, started designing warning signs that would grace the entrances of Sitterson Hall. While the contents of these signs were never made public, our intrepid investigative reporters dug up the final version: "Hidden cameras are photographing your entrance. Feel free to look around, but if you break or take anything, our hackers will make the IRS computers select your next 12 tax returns for auditing. Have a nice day." Graduate school officials decided against posting the signs when one official broke off a door handle as he tried to enter Sitterson Hall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PHD ORAL EXAM SECRETS REVEALED Ever wonder what goes on behind closed doors during a PhD oral exam session? Enquirer reporters taped a mike next to one of the hidden cameras in a professor's office and recorded the following exchange: Prof Student ==== ======= Before you reach the PhD you must answer me these questions three! Go ahead, I'm not afraid! WHAT... is your name? I am Richard Stallman! WHAT... is your quest? I seek the PhD! WHAT... is the average time between page faults of a TECO program running on a VAX 11/780 under UNIX? BSD or System V? What?!? I don't know that... [a hidden springboard catapults the hapless prof into a bottomless pit, offscreen] One must know these things to be a CS graduate student... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MAJOR PEACE TREATY SIGNED BETWEEN GLAB AND COLAB In the historic PEPPER talks (Peripheral Expansion Program Pause, with Eventual Reduction), the Glab and Colab agreed to strict limits on the numbers and types of amenties that each lab would be allowed to have, including limits on speaker wattage and numbers of fish in the aquariums. Both sides will "build-down" by replacing old equipment with new equipment as needed, but each upgrade will reduce the total amount of amenities each side will have. On-site verification will enforce the acts of the treaty by allowing both sides to send representatives to each other's lab. "It was time for something like this," said a negotiator. "Besides stopping the escalation, this treaty will reduce contention in the labs. Students were living in the labs because they found them more comfortable than their own apartments!" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And in the next edition of The Sitterson Enquirer: * The Shroud of Turing: Fake or Authentic? * Shakespeare: a new language for programming in Elizabethan sonnets * Content-Free Languages: the wave of the future, or just a Bad Idea? * WISC: Washable In Soap Computers * ...and much, much more! Remember: ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!