VMs: O, 0, and Pavlov's Dog...

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

A cautionary tale for you all. :-o

Once upon a time, I prototyped a computer game whose main character was 
Pavlov's dog, trying to escape from his laboratory by using his copious 
drool to spit in the eyes of the chasing lab-techs. However, because it 
amused me but nobody else, I never released it. :-)

However, I did use it as an excuse to read up on Doctor Pavlov, who 
performed many other experiments (far more interesting than just 
bell-and-drool), one of which is perhaps more applicable to the VMs than 
you might think. There, he trained (IIRC) a dog to associate circles with 
food, and ellipses with electric shocks - but the twist in that tale was 
that Pavlov then made the ellipses progressively more and more like 
circles, to see how the dog reacted. In fact, to Pavlov's surprise, the 
poor dog had a nervous breakdown. :-(

So: when staring at a VMs page late at night, trying to distinguish <o>s 
from <a>s, or (in GC's case) <round o>s from <two-stroke o>s, remember - 
that way madness lies! :-0

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....


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