Subject: RE: [hackers-il] What's on a hackers mind...

From: Arik Baratz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 18:40:42 +0200

I once had a memory leak in my sleep.

I was trying to solve some problem I had, but I was tired, and it was early
in the morning, so I went to sleep.

That night, I had a dream in which I was sitting in front of the computer
and was coding the rest of my program. It was good code, it solved my
problem, and the program ran just fine. I remember saving my work before
waking up.

Unfortunately, when I did wake up all of that work was lost and I had to
type it in all over again. Bad luck. I did notice some stuff I didn't notice
in my dream, hence avoiding the memory leaks that I had in my sleep.

-- Arik

-----Original Message-----
From: Gilad Ben-Yossef [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 7:45 PM
To: Hackers-Il@Yahoogroups. Com
Subject: [hackers-il] What's on a hackers mind...

I just had a very amusing moment - I flipped back to the window showing my
private email and saw a new message. It was a meaningless SPAM with the
subject is: "Make money in your sleep" but I for some reason read it as:
"Memory leak in your sleep" ;-)

-- 
Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>

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From: Nimster <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 20:06:52 +0200

I actually had a dream about Hash tables after reading the thread (and
related links) on hackers-il. It was quite boring, all I remember was seeing
numbers appear and disappear, but apparently I knew what I was doing.
It was not my first computers-related dream, however. I used to dream up
chats in ICQ, and more recently I dreamt of virtual variables (I actually
tried to figure out if it was useful, and found it wasn't), probably
inspired by The Frost Project (http://www.flewid.de/julian/), and I dreamt
of CVS after countless hours of frustration getting WinCVS with Cygwin's SSH
to work. (Sourceforge documents suck.)

-Nimster

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From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 00:06:19 +0200

> problem, and the program ran just fine. I remember saving my work before

After waking up, did you remember any of the code or what you did in the
dream? If yes, did it make any sense? Was it of any practical use?

Because my experience is that while dreaming I can have a lot of emotions,
but very little rational thinking.
One time before some test (that I actually wasn't anxious about, so I don't
know why this happened) I dreamt that I was doing that test. The dream was
one of the longest I ever had (tests in the Technion's math department
typically last 3 hours ;)), and the entire dream was me taking the test.
During the dream, I remember reading the questions, thinking about them,
answering them, and it was all hard work and made sense. But when I woke up
(quite exhausted...) I still remembered a few of the questions and the
answers (strangely, I forgot all of it about 10 minutes later. Is that a
known phenomenon?). It was all complete and utter rubbish! None of the
answers or questions made any Mathematical sense whatsoever. My brain had
just spent half the night going randomly through a pile of unrelated,
unconnected and irrelevant Mathematical concepts, getting results of no
practical use (and after 10 minutes I forgot even that).

Sometimes dreams are really weird... M.C. Escher had a good point when he
said (supposedly):
	"I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough."

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |        Monday, Mar 18 2002, 6 Nisan 5762
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Energizer Bunny arrested - charged with
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |battery.

---

From: Dan Kenigsberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 00:46:07 +0200 (IST)

> practical use (and after 10 minutes I forgot even that).

The phenomenon you're describing is well-known. In fact, a real urban legend
tells that some physicist met Einstein and while chatting, told him that his
best ideas come up at night and he keeps a notebook under his pillow in order to
write them before they fade. To that physicist's question, Einstein answered
that he does not keep such a notebook - "I only had three good ideas in my
lifetime, so why bother?", he replied.

This phenomenon is probably what waking up means - the dream-like "utter
rubbish" (should I have said `refuse'?) gives way to to rational self-oriented
thinking.

And one last comment - perceived time, especially during dreams, and actual time
(the one measured and probably defined by clocks) vary considerably, so it ain't
certain you really spent half the night on that specific dream.

Good night, pleasant dreams, and tolerable reality,

Dan.

---

From: "Amir Abiri" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 00:13:44 +0200

> in my dream, hence avoiding the memory leaks that I had in my sleep.

[snip]

I knew that i am spending way to much time coding PHP when while we were
orginizing for launch i was thinking:
"if ($person->name == 'eran' && $kafitiria)
    $person->coming = false;"
...

Sometime you just have to know when to go see a sope opera.

--
http://abiri-e.com/
"God is a programmer".