Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny From: C.D.H.Williams@exeter.ac.uk (Charles Williams) Subject: Convention Conventions Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 19:30:00 PDT URL: http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/98/Jul/machack.html
An extract from a report by Jerry Kindall in TidBITS#437/06-Jul-98 describing the MacHack developers' conference:
No coverage of MacHack would be complete without a mention of the defining event of the conference: the Best Hack Contest, produced by the MacHax Group. The goal of the hack contest, if you're a developer, is to devise and program a demonstration of how clever a programmer you are. Anything goes, even programming techniques that don't play well with other applications. The wilder and more silly the concept, the better. You garner extra prestige if you develop the hack during the conference itself. However, if your program actually does something useful, you will likely be greeted with derisive shouts of "Useful!" when you present it - although, for comic effect, audience members seem to call it out just as often for completely useless hacks. Trying to plug your other products will result in equally derisive shouts of "Marketing!" The occasional technical difficulty is often met with cries of "Ship it!"
Source: <http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-437.html>
Administrative note:
The recent joke "Convention Conventions" did appear in TidBITS #437 as noted,
but TidBITS reprinted it from MWJ, the Weekly Journal for Serious Macintosh
Users, a subscription-only journal with information at
>http://www.gcsf.com/>.
MWJ has subsequently and of their own initiative given RHF reprint permission
for that piece, and we thank them for that courtesy.