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from the HUMANS-NEED-FANTASY-TO-BE-HUMAN dept.
Pratchett’s 33rd Discworld novel, Going Postal, tells of the creation of an internet-like system of communication towers called “the clacks”. When John Dearheart, the son of its inventor, is murdered, a piece of code is written called “GNU John Dearheart” to echo his name up and down the lines. “G” means that the message must be passed on, “N” means “not logged”, and “U” means the message should be turned around at the end of a line. (This was also a realworld tech joke: GNU is an open-source operating system, and its name stands, with recursive geek humour, for “GNU’s not Unix”.) The code causes Dearheart’s name to be repeated indefinitely throughout the system, because “A man is not dead while his name is still spoken."
What better way to remember the beloved inventor of this fictional system, then, than “GNU Terry Pratchett”? Reddit users have designed a code that anyone with basic webcoding knowledge can embed into their own websites (anyone without basic webcoding knowledge can use the plugins for Wordpress and other platforms). The code is called the XClacksOverhead, and it sets a header reading “GNU Terry Pratchett”. “If you had to be dead,” thinks a character in Going Postal, “it seemed a lot better to spend your time flying between the towers than lying underground.” And so Pratchett is, in a way.
Source The Guardian
Reddit link with suggested code mod here.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Pr. L Muishkin on Wednesday March 18 2015, @11:45PM
Done and done. Added to my own sites and a few at an old employer who really should've taken on board my suggestions for improved site security, honestly, eighteen months later and my access credentials are still valid, and I'm supposed to be the idiot.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Thursday March 19 2015, @01:07PM
added to my own little personal site..
There are browser addons that display when you are on a site with it..
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday March 19 2015, @06:31PM
aye, and a gradely post from a chap that can talk reet proper.
I'm a Lanky lad, myself.