Quality Control at the Oracle Has anybody wondered about the declining level of quality at the USENET Oracle? Well, here's the answer, straight from the horse's mouth (so to speak).... The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was: Oh mighty one, why has the quality of the Oracle's responses shown such a down-turn? A. Supplicant, Rotherhide. And in response, thus spake the Oracle: While normally the Mighty Oracle would zot you into oblivion for daring to suggest quality control problems in the Oracle's responses, the fact of the matter is (and keep this under your hat, favoured supplicant, we don't want a panic) there have been some problems. You see, the Great Oracle got a little carried away with the NAFTA treaty, and decided to contract out some work to a Mexican firm who specialized in divinations and handbag manufacture, which would ease up the Oracle's workday a bit. The Net's been growing, you know. Unfortunately, the Oracle has now learned (Yes, I'm omniscient, but things still sometimes slip My mind) that the Mexican firm had hired not soothsayers, but those damn infinite monkeys with their infinite typewriters, who were answering supplicants essentially randomly. However, the company failed to realise that no matter how low the per monkey salary is, if you have infinite monkeys you also have an infinitly large payroll (not to mention a need for infinite bananas), and they have since gone bankrupt. Service should return to normal shortly. You owe the Oracle a book on contract law and a good lawyer. The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was: > And in response, thus spake the Oracle: Oracle Research Unlimited Progress Report #324562A Monkeys and Typewriters Project We have had an infinite number of monkeys sitting at an infinite number of typewriters for about a third of eternity so far. While they have yet to produce anything by Shakespeare (disregarding the near miss of 'Beavis and Butthead of Verona'), we have achieved a small advance. As is shown above, one of our subjects has managed to generate an answer to "What does a tree sound like if it falls in the forest and no one cares?" Also, in response to recent criticism, we have determined that the number of monkeys is countably infinite, and not uncountable. There is simply no way to diagonalize a monkey. We are running low on Monkey Chow and need extra funding to get the Project (and the monkeys) through the fiscal year. The Monkey Team Peter Leppik