Talk:Internet Oracle

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What's that "Why is a cow? Mu." thing mean? Anything?

I swear that used to be linked ... it refers to Mu (negative), or the answer you give to a question that has been incorrectly asked - such as "Have you stopped beating your wife?" (although admittedly most people wouldn't get why you decided to answer that one with a greek letter). Confusing Manifestation 13:27, 13 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

"The particular word *ZOT* may be a reference to the comic strip B.C."

Or is it, perhaps, a reference to the text-based dungeon game ORBZOT, in which the player must collect several treasures, avoid dragons, kill goblins, and travel through warps trying to find the ORB OF ZOT? Dansiman 08:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

I have never heard of this cooler incident, and I've been watching the Orcularities for quite a while. I'm going to try it out now. matt kane's brain 17:53, 12 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

Found something. Not sure how to reference this in the article, though. matt kane's brain 17:59, 12 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

Here's the original reference to that incident. [1] It soon became part of the internal folklore and standing in-jokes of the Usenet newsgroup rec.humor.oracle.d. --Ossipewsk 03:00, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yeahbut It's specific to rhod not to TIO, I feel this should be removed from this entry. If anyone wants to start a rhod gravestone^H^H entry it could be used there. --Motti 21:13, 8 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

The article states that Steve Kinzler started the Usenet Oracle in mid-80s, using a software created in 1989. Should it be verified?. Mauricio Lange MLange 01:20, 1 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The Internet Oracle has not been answering his mail since around 24 July 2007. The Oracle receives e-mail, but the expected automatic reply for "tellme" and "askme" requests does not seem to be generated and is not sent. The usual sources (including the Oracle's website) give no information that anything is wrong. Would someone who knows what is happening please post a (properly encyclopaedic) notice here! --User:Snezzy (5 August 2007) [This comment was put in the article. I moved it to the Talk page. --Lkseitz 14:48, 6 August 2007 (UTC)]Reply

I don't know what happened, but it is now back on. 129.194.8.73 07:43, 29 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

There was an outage while Indiana University did something with the mail servers, apparently. Oracle Priest tgies (talk) 10:43, 23 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Almost exactly ten years later Orrie is again not answering his mail. Perhaps he has Orectile Dysfunction. Who knows??? Snezzy (talk) 12:31, 3 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

You should email him to ask. If he doesn't answer, then you know he's indeed not answering. If he does answer, then there's no problem. Except that you asked why he wasn't responding even though he was, and the Oracle would not deign to respond to such ill-informed questions. Therefore you will not get a response either way. You owe the Oracle a tristate boolean variable. DMacks (talk) 15:43, 3 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

It's almost a false alarm. Kinzler reports that Orrie's email server in unable to send to my email server. No solution yet, but communication through Yahoo Mail works just fine. Snezzy (talk) 10:34, 4 August 2017 (UTC)Reply