The R A G M A G

Record 4th Issue Celebrated!!!

Oh no! Not again...

They said it couldn't be done. They said it wouldn't be done, but unfortunately, it had to be done. Well, here we go again. Get the defibulator out, Bernat's going to have a heart attack. Can you believe it--2 in a row, 2 in one semester, 2 issues and a painted intersection? Maybe it's a sign. Maybe it's a sign that we'll start pumping these babies out so often that Dr. Bernat will give us an office and buy us a decent piece of publishing software. Maybe we can get official The Rag Mag T- sh irts... Or maybe we'll fall in the same rut as before and go two more years without another issue. If you recall, this issue's not due until February 1997. Like it or not, we're here, and we're here to stay, or at least until I can graduate, at which t ime I'll pass it off to some unsuspecting fool. With four issues, we feel it is time to lay a vision statement.

Computer Science, the final frontier. These are the rambling of the staff members of The Rag Mag. Our continuing mission: to explore strange, new comedy; to seek out new targets for cheap shots; indeed, to boldly go where no publication has gone before.

In the future, we hope to take The Rag Mag to new heights. We envision our own office, a decent publisher, a larger staff, tee shirts... Today the Department, tomorrow the University, the day after tomorrow, the World. Hail The Rag Mag!!!

This issue is dedicated to all you readers who asked for more! To show our undying gratitude, we have personalized each issue.

This issue is especially for

________________________________________________________
(your name here)

Remember, those who can, DO! those who can't, CRITICIZE!
P.S. Bonnie Traylor, this tm is for you.

Frank's Story

As you may or may not be aware, our department's NSF grant expires this semester. In an effort to maintain the level of quality our department provides students (and to find a way to keep our nice, cushy jobs), we TA's have come up with a few fund raisi ng ideas :

1. Selling autographed pictures of Dr. Gelfond. A true collector's item, sure to hold a special place in your home along with your baseball cards, Star Wars action figures, and Franklin Mint collector's plates.

2. Turning the lab into a video game arcade (which it already is, except that now we'll charge a quarter a game).

3. Instead of taking points off for late assignments, TA's will now charge a late fee of fifteen dollars for everyday they're overdue.

4. The "Guess Which Date Dr. Bernat Will Be in Town" lottery. Since he never is, we'll never have a winner and can keep all the money from the ticket sales for ourselves.

5. Pay toilets. Plus for an additional fee, Kenji will play live guitar music for you while you take care of business.

With any luck, these ideas will be implemented in the fall. We realize these changes will hit your wallets pretty hard, but we sincerely believe a UTEP CS education will still be the best value for your education buck. Besides, I've got car payments to make. Porsches aren't free, you know!

Rag Mag on the INFOBAUN

Yes, The Rag Mag is on the Information Superhighway... Actually, it has been on line since last Fall. All the back issues are there. This one will be too. "What's the address?", you ask. The answer:

http://cs.utep.edu/csdept/ragmag/ragmag.html

We were actually thinking about distributing The Rag Mag on-line only; a completely paperless version. Unfortunately, this would pose some problems. Many lower- division CS undergrads don't have Sun accounts so they couldn't access it. As for o ther majors, we REALLY don't want Business majors mucking around the net. Liberal Arts students would have problems; we all know they have trouble with the sciences. And the athletes, let's face it, can't spell computer.

Ok, Ok, it's wrong of me to insult the intelligence of non-CS majors. If you really want to get to the address above, I'll give you directions. Take I-10 to highway 54. Go north on 54 to Alamagordo. Take a right off 54 to highway 82. As your heading thru the mountains toward Cloudcroft you will see a large rock out-cropping on the right shoulder of the road. At the third left-hand curve past the rock, make a sharp right turn. This will put you on the invisible bridge that stretches across the DEEP valley to The Rag Mag offices on the other side... (Legal Note: Please do not actually follow these directions. Even an education major can tell it's a joke). If you really want to find out how to get to the address, RTFM.

Why?

Why do all the pansy clubs in the Engineering Department have bulletin boards except for ACM and UPE?

Why is it the Engineering Excellence Center? Who gave them this title? Did they grant it to themselves?

Letters to the Editor

TO: Rag Mag Staff
SUBJECT: Volume 2 No. 1
I was pleased to discover that the Rag Mag was still in business and that I was on the mailing list.

I had begun to believe that humor and satire had died at UTEP, but with your reappearance I see that this is no longer the case. I also noted that the style and idiosyncrasies of the Computer Science faculty have not changed much in the time you have bee n gone. We do seem to have added some equally as amusing people and am sure I will learn something by your poking fun at their frailties.

I look forward to seeing future issues.

Stephen Riter
Interim Vice President

Dr. Riter,
Sadly, you were correct in believing that humor has died at UTEP, but only in the Engineering Building. Thank God we're not in that building anymore. By the way, thanks for your support with the painting.

Ed.

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Irritation. Frustration. Angst. Not only were those the first words of the second ground-breaking edition of The Rag Mag, they were also the emotions felt by all of us who were witnessing the apparent demise of this satirical marvel.

Sure, there were the usual reasons for The RagMag's lapse: the lawsuits, the "incident" at the Board of Regents' meeting, and, who can forget, the riot at the faculty seminar (although we always maintained that certain ego-centric faculty members w ere to blame for that one).

But despite our optimism that The Rag Mag would overcome these problems and rise again to fulfill its mission of slandering every component of the University of Texas system (or at least, every professor in the UTEP Computer Science department), it was clear that The Rag Mag had fallen victim to the vast amount of pending litigation, and the fact that all of the funny people (or at least, all of the people that "thought" they were funny and were not afraid to make complete idiots of themselv es in public) had left the department.

So you can imagine my surprise and relief when a bit of net surfing yielded something I never thought I would live to see:

**The Rag Mag Third Issue**

This was no hallucination (like the ones I used to experience in my Algorithms class), this was real --The Rag Mag in all its splendor, filled with the same witty banter, bold illustration, and biting sarcasm that made The Rag Mag the period ical recommended by 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed.

And so, irritation, frustration, and angst are now replaced with joy (for knowing that I wouldn't be blamed for screwing up The Rag Mag), slight confusion (as I tried to figure out why UTEP let Watson back in), and pride--pride in seeing that UTEP Computer Science has once again succeeded in attracting a new group of social outcasts audacious enough (or dumb enough) to insult every faculty member in the department and bring order to the universe.

God bless you all,

Chris Quintana
Former Assistant/Medical Editor of The Rag Mag
Currently serving out the remainder of a six year sentence at the University of Michigan

Chris, The only reason UTEP let Watson back in was because he promised a third issue of The Rag Mag.

Ed.

To: Richard Walton, Staff Reporter
Carlos Gamboa, Staff Reporter

From:
Dr. Natalicio

Subject:
The RagMag

Enjoyed reading the latest issue of The Rag Mag, although I am still not sure whether it was worth the long wait. There appears to be a lack of continuity from one issue to the next, and those of us who follow such publications closely find this di scontinuity quite distracting.

Misspelling my name may not have represented RagMag's finest moment, but your suggestion that I wore colors to match the CS building is an outrageous misinterpretation of my fashion statement. I was, in fact, dressed in the colors of Ray Bell's car.

Attending Dr. Baral's Mosaic Demo was the highlight of my day. However, I failed to notice any swearing of undying allegiance to me on that occasion. Does that mean that I have to return?

Dr. Natalicio,
The reason you failed to see any swearing of undying allegiance is because by the time you actually got there, all the students had gone home. Ed.

Dear RagMag,
What happened to Popcorn Boy? He just up and disappeared without saying a word. Where did he go? When is he coming back? All I know is that he left me on stage all alone.

DiskMan

Dear DiskMan,
Maybe "she's" off getting married!
Ed.

Thanks for Nothing

The following is a list of students who promised to support the Rag Mag with articles but have failed to submit any information:

-Monica Cardenas
-Gilbert Castillo
-Maria Beltran
-Martha Hernandez

Hell, it's not that difficult, it took some coaxing but even Watson has written a few articles.(See Page 9, error corrected of course)

People we hope don't submit:

-Writers for Saturday Night Live
-David Letterman
-Jay Leno
-Aaron Segal
-Members of the Michigan Militia
-The unabomber-we won't accept anything from him/her.

Helpful Hints From An Upperclassmen

Automata
1) When drawing finite automata, be sure that arcs from one node cross as many other arcs as possible. A confusing automata is a good automata.

2) If on the test you see an expression of the form (expression)*, just start writing long strings of letters. They are bound to be right.

3) When taking the test, spend as much time as you like on the first question. You will have plenty of time to finish the other 8.

4) When designing a Turing Machine, don't use Scotch tape. He will see right through it.

Programming Languages
1) When doing your C programs, use as many macros as necessary to get the program to emulate Pascal.

2) Don't put comments in your code. They are messy and a shameful waste of valuable memory space.

3) When doing C++ programs, don't ever use the word "class". It's considered bad programming style and not in the spirit of C++.

4) In Pascal, utilize the GOTO statement as much as possible. Remember this rule of thumb: Anything that can be done with a WHILE loop can be done better with a GOTO.

5) Don't ever use the function libraries. Real men write their own string and sorting functions.

Artificial Intelligence
1) Remember Tweety is a canary, Sam is a penguin and Fred is an ostrich. (In actuality, Fred is a turkey)

2) Bertrand is the murderer.

3) Make your views well known from the start. State loudly that "I don't care what religion he was, there's no way Nixon was a pacifist."

4) Invite Dr. Gelfond out to the Surf Club for some mono-n-tonics, or if it's a school night maybe just a few non-mono-n-tonics.

Software Engineering I
1) If you are writing your specification and you can't find a way to link some data to existing modules, simply send a message to some non-existing module. Then INCLUDE the module in the header.

Example:
INCLUDE phone_book
x=3DSEND MESSAGE Gold Digger's phone numbers to phone_book

2) Dr. Cooke: I don't understand this part of your requirements.
You: That's a specification problem.

Dr. Cooke: I don't understand this part of your specification.
You: That's a design problem.

Software Engineering II
1) Design the robot to recognize and assassinate anyone with a beard.

2) Dr. Cooke: I don't understand this part of your design.
You: That's a hardware problem.

3) Don't fall for the "It is my understanding that the robot will be here tomorrow night" line.

Design and Implementation of Programming Languages
1) When designing a new programming language, keep in mind that your new language will not be able to be compiled in that language.

2) Keep in mind that asking Dr. Cooke to repeat everything twice will make the class take twice as long.

Quotable Quotes

Yulia also mentioned one of her old favorites, "Blessed are those who go around in circles, for they shall be called wheels." We thought about this and decided that it was totally wrong and should be replaced with The Rag Mag version: "Damned are those who go around in circles, for they shall be called infinite loops!"

Oh no, not me. I love getting professors infuriated.
-- Manuel Calderon

Can you do flash in LATEX?
-- German A

I'll get that to you in a few days.
-- Carlos Gameros

Awards, Awards, Awards

The Nit Pickers Award
Congratulations goes to Dr. Gates for the verbal thrashing she gave Carlos for the errors in the last issue. Sorry, but we were under the impression that this was an informal newsletter. I forget Technical Writing is a required course.

Procrastinators Award
Sorry Carlos hasn't gotten around to it, but he did promise to have it next week.

The Shafter Award
This month we are fortunate to give this award to not one, not two, but three people. Congratulations to Chad Cloud and Scott Ovelmen. We here at The Rag Mag hope you got enough sleep. The third recipient is Estela Ganem, who not only has shafte d her fellow 4201 TA's by not showing up to class, she also shafted her fellow students at the Engineering Expo as well. Thanks. It's good to know we can count on our co-workers.

Most Likely to be Beaten up by Dr. Cooke during one of his Lectures.
Our Congratulations go to Manuel Calderon, Need we say more?

Brightest Future Award
This award goes to Dr. Cooke, for one reason: Just think, you still have him for a year of Software I and Software II.

Where have you heard this before?

Dr Gates: I should have...

Dr. Berant: Do you realize it is illegal to use that for personal use...

Dr. Ewton: I'll email you the changes for the calc program and it should work...

Dr. Cooke: Remain ignorant and you will be in peace.

Dr. Cooke: You got a lot longer answer than you expected.

Dr. Longpre: I'll be in my office...

Once upon a Time

Once upon a time when Computer Science was a science and not a Liberal Art, a group of social outcasts set out to publish a small newsletter. Their mission--to slander every component of the University of Texas system as well as every professor in the UT EP Computer Science Department. This was accomplished though The Rag Mag, an informal, and definitely unperfect literary work, hell, it was just for fun. So imagine my dismay when I became editor and fell prey to the numerous criticisms of one Dr . Gates. Sorry Ann, I'm a Computer Science major, not an English Major. This issue is dedicated to the hard working men and women that decided that two semesters of English was enough. God Bless those people.

Dr. Gates this ones for you. I may not speak well or write well and I may miss an occasional comma and put a hyphen where I need a comma I may not know why I need a colon instead of a semicolon and I may make a run on where I need a new sentence but my p oint is give me a BNF for the English language, give me a Denotational Semantic, and I'll write just like you like.

Lost and Found

The Rag Mag FUTURE ASSURED!!!

The gauntlet has been thrown down. The ultimatum has been issued. They've pushed me, now it's time for them to get pushed back. Who am I talking about? Carlos Gameros and Frank Fernandez of course! You see, things could have been OK. We got out the third The Rag Mag issue earlier this semester. It was late, but good enough to make Dr. Bernat happy and keep him that way for a long time. But then, MADNESS... A second The Rag Mag issue this soon? They pressed and pressed and I had to give in. Either that or have them do an issue without me. Well, now the ball is rolling... With two issues this semester, at least one a semester will be EXPECTED from now on. I recruited them onto the staff so I wouldn't have to publish it myself. I mean, I like the writing, but hate the desktop publishing. So now I'm stuck with two young bucks who are running wild. They're gonna pump these puppies out at a rate of a couple a semester! Then what?!? I'll tell you. They'll graduate, I'll still be here, and I'll be stuck holding the bag. Well, I ain't gonna let that happen... The damage is already done... There is only one solution... GRADUATE SCHOOL FOR THE BOTH OF THEM... Hey, when it comes time to find a job, I'll be there. Who do you thin k employers are going to believe, them or me? And Dr. Bernat, if you sign their graduation papers without first making sure they're staying on for at least a Master's... well, let's just say we both know how often I got a The Rag Mag out before the y came along. It could be that way again. I think I've made my point clear. I highly recommend CS 3514 guys...

To Err is Human

We'd like to take this opportunity to make a correction for an error we made. In our last issue we incorrectly taunted you for your numerous trips to the Bahamas, when it should have been Puerto Rico. maybe next time we'll catch you between trips and we can avoid further embarrassment.

Ed.

Paid Advertisements

Done It!

Notes from the Editor

Be on the Rag...Mag, Take 3.

Easy Hours (4 issues in 4 years)
Sexual Harassment
Diplomatic Immunity
Maternity Leave (at full pay)
Pay (If you think your gonna get paid, you must have a sense of humor)
Extra Credit for CS4101
Free pizza
You get to be associated with us!

Requirements:
None. (Although it would be nice to have somebody somewhat responsible, who would actually push us to get these turkeys out.)

Interested parties should contact a member of The Rag Mag staff. Remember, even if you don't want to be a full member of the staff, you can still submit ideas for upcoming issues. Send all contributions to ragmag@cs.utep.edu. And yes, we'll even take contributions from alumni, assuming they haven't lost their sense of humor.

What we should have done...

Addendum to Fall 95 Schedule

CS3221 Information Hiding (3-0)
Introduction to basic concepts and techniques of the electronic mail system. Goal of the class is to answer a question that has puzzled mankind for centuries:
To Cc: or not to Cc:

Top Ten Possible Replacement Names for BagL

• 10) SackL
• 9) BogL
• 8) BagEL
• 7) Turbo BagL
• 6) BagL++
• 5) PouchL
• 4) WhatthehelL
• 3) AnngL
• 2) DangL
• 1) RagMagL

Top Ten Publications that are DEFINITELY worse than the RAG MAG

• 10) People
• 9) Nova (the UTEP Alumni magazine)
• 8) Pravda
• 7) The Star
• 6) The National Enquirer
• 5) The El Paso Times
• 4) The El Paso Herald Post
• 3) The Limbaugh Letter
• 2) E-Visions
• 1) The Prospector

Top Ten Ways to know it's Payday in the CS Department

• 10) Martha is in full riot gear.
• 9) TA's take half the day off.
• 8) John Murphy is in a good mood.
• 7) Dr. Gelfond shows up to work in a Well's Fargo Truck.
• 6) Bo's ex-wives buy a new dress.
• 5) It's the one day in the month you can bet money that Estela will be at school.
• 4) Notice we didn't say she'd be in class.
• 3) Martha is handing out penny wrappers to the TA's.
• 2) Beer Cans laying in front of rm 318.
• 1) You overhear someone in the hall exclaim "Dr. Bernat, is that you?"

Top Ten Ways to tell if you might be a little old to be a College Student

• 10)When you hear an old song you can remember where your 8 track jumped.
• 9)You know who "Chumly", "Peter Potamus" and "Josie and the Pussy Cats" are.
• 8) You think that cute girl in your programming class reminds you of your daughter.
• 7) Your professors call you sir.
• 6) A hangover is a week long experience.
• 5) You can remember wearing a polyester shirt to school and people thinking it was groovy.
• 4) You can remember the last time UCLA won the NCAA tournament.
• 3) Your first computer interfaced with cassette deck.
• 2) You had a crush on Marcia Brady.
• 1) You remember when UTEP had a good football team.

Top Ten Ways you know it's too cold in the Main Computer Lab

• 10)Falling icicles
• 9) Students' tongues stick to the color monitors
• 8) The Eskimos left for some place warmer
• 7) Milk doesn't spoil when left out
• 6) Tables are chopped up for kindling
• 5) TA's are renting out lab to LA Kings for hockey practice
• 4) Two words: solid nitrogen
• 3) Proposed site of El Paso zoo penguin exhibit
• 2) Thermometer labeled in Kelvin
• 1) The light goes off when you close the door

Who's Who among the Computer Science Faculty

This edition's nominee is a well respected, and well admired professor at the University of Texas at EL Paso. One of the Department's latest additions can often de quoted as saying "Maybe I should have gone to UTEP for my Ph.D." Although she has only be en with us a short time, her non-stop barrage of homework assignments and mind-boggling exams have already earned her the reputation as a lecturer to be avoided at all costs. She is currently co-authoring a paper with Steve Stair entitled "The Way the Wo rld Should have been." Although her tireless efforts to be listed among Mr. Blackwell's Best Dressed List have thus far been in vain, they have earned her the title of "Mrs. Color-Coordinated" for 2 years and running. Rumor has it that she is the middle of negotiating a deal with the University Bookstore for her own line of designer clothing. Recently at a fashion expo, Dr. Gates received as award for most effective use of a knot in a wardrobe to make a fashion statement. When not busy working on her 12 research projects, Dr. Gates enjoys several relaxing hobbies, including proof- reading for the English Department, Carlos Gameros Bashing, painting, and recruiting graduate students for NMSU. We recently uncovered a deal that will move two students an d a publication to NMSU in the Fall, but when questioned, she replied, "Oh my look at the time, I should be in class..."

Overheard

By this time next year, Richard Watson will have tenure at the University.

Rag Mag Jingle

I wish I was a Rag Mag Staff Member,
For that is what I truly want to be,
And if I was a Rag Mag Staff Member,
There would be lots of free pizza for me!

The Rag Mag