http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=1108142


in reply to The First Ten Perl Monks

Since I wrote the root node, I was surprised to discover that nine of the first ten Perl Monks also have accounts at everything2.com! (only vroom is missing).

I was astonished and elated to learn that the mysterious paco joined everything2 on Apr 29 1999 at 13:07, was last seen "never", and, incredibly, actually created a profile:

Things that are good: Whales, really cold cheap american beer, Macintosh, The Toyota LandCrusier ...
That should silence the doubters who claim that paco is not a real person! He's real all right and, for the first time, we are privileged to learn about his likes. As far as I'm aware, this is the only known personal information about the elusive paco. Though he supposedly wrote one node LandCrusier (thing), I get "Permission denied: You don't have access to that node" when I try to read it. Is this an ingenious paco prank? And what of the (surely profound) meaning behind paco spelling it both times as the innovative yet obscure "Land Crusier" in preference to the pedestrian "Land Cruiser"? The paco mystery deepens!

In other highlights:

Everything2 References

References Added Later

See Also

Updated Nov 25 2014: Minor rewording; removed some unnecessary jokes. 13-05-2021: yiango was not a Hope college student. Added See Also section.

  • Comment on Re: The First Ten Perl Monks (paco References)

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Re^2: The First Ten Perl Monks
by LanX (Saint) on Nov 23, 2014 at 14:23 UTC
    Where I come from, we say that public figures have a limited right of privacy.

    Are those first ten contributors really public figures?

    Don't get me wrong I'm not accusing you of breaching privacy yet but I'm feeling unease if a forum starts to discuss RL infos of others and am wondering in which direction this investigation will continue to after you started gathering infos from different sites... :)

    What about the ten highest ranking monks? Are they public figures?

    E.g for years now I know about some monks which were (non simultanously) re-incarnations of the same person.

    While occasionally having issues with these personas I never tried publicly to link them together, b/c it was their/his decission to not reveal informations.

    Cheers Rolf

    (addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)

[reply]

      Yeah, Privacy in general, and Internet Privacy in particular, are enormously complex topics.

      In writing this node, I felt torn between privacy concerns and reporting interesting historical facts. I suspect this is a common problem for historians and amateur family history researchers.

      The Dot-com bubble era in which Perl Monks formed is of interest to me, as are the individuals who made it happen. I'm amazed at how many influential players in this era came from Hope College Holland Michigan. As pvaldes pointed out, you could make a movie or write a book about this!

      I view the creation of Slashdot, the Everything Engine, and the Everything2 and PerlMonks web sites as significant accomplishments, significant enough to be of historical interest. Since I don't know any of the early players I can't be certain of course, but I hope they are proud of their historic role and accordingly would not mind being identified.

      See also:

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Re^2: The First Ten Perl Monks
by ww (Archbishop) on Nov 26, 2014 at 17:12 UTC
    FWIW ... where 'nothing' may be a valid value.

    A SOPW today (26 Nov 14, US EST) included a use info; which made me curious ...and which seems to lead to an ID on paco

    perldoc info
NAME
    perlinfo - a command-line frontend to HTML::Perlinfo


#        [irrelevant details -- for the purposes of this post -- edite
+d out]

EXAMPLES
       perlinfo -i

       'Saved file perlinfo.html'

       perlinfo -i /home/paco/www/perl-info.html

       'Saved file /home/paco/www/perl-info.html'

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright (c) 2009 by Mike Accardo

...

    [download]



    Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Juvenal, Satires

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      That's a very cool idea. Good work! I'm not sure this is much positive evidence, though: of ACCARDO's modules currently on CPAN, none date to earlier than 2003; it's possible (I'd say likely) that Accardo was influenced by perlmonks' paco, rather than the other way around. Also note that "paco" would be an unusual nickname for a Michael; it's usually a nickname for Pablo or Pasquale, I think, as well as Francisco -- or so they say. Not that that proves Accardo didn't adopt this username, of course...

      I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.
[reply]

        Also note that "paco" would be an unusual nickname for a Michael; it's usually a nickname for Pablo or Pasquale, I think, as well as Francisco
        Or perhaps "paco" is simply an abbreviation formed from the first two letters of a Christian name and a surname, for example, Paul Cohen ... which just happens to be the full name of SourceForge user paco!

        The SourceForge paco (Paul Cohen) appears to be an Eiffel programmer living in Sweden. So, perhaps paco is skiing to work as we discuss Him, listening to Abba on His headphones!

        A more likely alternative may be wikipedia user Paco, who seems to be a phenomenally versatile computer wizard, based on his profile. So, instead of skiing in Sweden, perhaps paco is sunning Himself on the banks of the Rio Grande, Mexico, just south of El Paso, Texas.

        Update: Given all the references to Hope College in this thread, and our fervent hope that paco will return, perhaps He is London-based software security expert paco hope, author of O'Reilly book Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security who once griped about Perl documentation and is referenced at PM in Perl Newbie and pacohope.

        Update: As a chess fan, today I noticed a new chess article A chat with Paco featuring Spain's top chess player Francisco ("Paco") Vallejo Pons. Maybe paco is this Spanish grandmaster, leaving an ingenious clue to his true identity by staying at Perl Monks for exactly 64 minutes - corresponding to the 64 squares on a chessboard.

        See also: Re: poll ideas quest 2016

        paco will return!

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      Finally we'll learn what happend to the Lindbergh baby!

      Cheers Rolf

      (addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)

[reply]
        Woot! Are you suggesting that the Lindberg baby grew up to be paco?
         

        ++$anecdote ne $data


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