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[Joe Buck]

> > What exactly is a gnu?

Bernd writes:

> The GNU is a sinister, lurking presence in the deep places of the earth.

Um, that's a grue.  "You are likely to be eaten by a grue." :-)

> [those of you who think I've gone mad should go play Infocom's Zork
> trilogy, a classic in text adventures ;)] 

The game predates Infocom ... it started as free software.  In fact, I
think that the text you quote was originally written at MIT by one of
RMS's old AI Lab cronies, giving your pun a meaning you may not have
suspected.  My first experience of the net was in 1978, when a fellow
student dialed a local telephone number, typed some magic incantations to
get onto the ARPAnet, and then logged into a guest account at MIT, where
we played a version of what ultimately became Zork.  (Yes, I'm old).