On May 16, 9:24 am, Matthew Moss <matthew.m... / gmail.com> wrote:
> [Note:  parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]
>
> _If you want to ignore the introduction and just get to the task, skip down
> to the last paragraph._
>
> Ah, yes... I remember the good ol' days of Usenet, when the signal to noise
> ratio was high, very high... certainly much higher than the 1-to-100 ratio
> that is the curse of many newsgroups today.
>
> Back then we had rules! And etiquette! And people felt compelled to adhere
> to such rules, because... well, that was how things were done. For the most
> part, we didn't have to deal with the unrestrained spam that now pervades
> the Internet net like the lingering smell of boiled cabbage.
>
> Where was I? ..... Oh yes, signatures! We had signatures for our posts and
> email, restricted to a narrow space of no more than four lines and no wider
> than the terminal. We'd put our names, email, phone... even funny quotes (or
> angry, political quotes for those angry, political folks). But it always fit
> within four terminal lines: never more.
>
> But nowadays... What sane person would put his email address in his
> signature file, out in plain view for spammers to see? It is folly, I say.
> Insanity. Lunacy. I would sooner code in BASIC than publicly divulge my
> email address to the world.
>
> Now, I hear you say, "So, genius, how do you provide such information if not
> in the signature?" Well, you are right to ask and also right to call me a
> genius. Pay attention, and I shall reveal to you how such is accomplished
> (best viewed in monospaced font):
>
>  x = ("swDlw ms > mMm.hh@ttaiog" +  ##  Matthew D Moss, 888-555-1234
>  "<.cMmssoottaaee").split(//); z =  ##  Department of Fine Ruby Studies
>  [""] * x.size; puts x.map {z = x.  ##  University of Wherever I Like
>  zip(z).sort }.last[9].join + "\n"  ##  "He that runs Ruby, runs well."
>
> Do you see it? You don't, do you? Look again after I run this signature
> through the Ruby interpreter:
>
>    Matthew D Moss <matthew.m... / gmail.com>
>
> The silence suggests to me that you are stunned beyond words. I think you
> are needing such a challenge...
>
> For your task this week, I ask that you make your own signature such that
> displays your email address when run through the Ruby interpreter. The
> signature must fit within four lines of no more than 80 characters per line.
> (If you still want to avoid outputting an email address, your script may
> produce something else: a phone number, a funny quote, vCard, a poem to your
> love, whatever...)

Here's mine.  I avoided unpack and gsub and zip so that I could write
something I can't rely on working in the future.

srand 0; a=if defined?(RUBY_ENGINE);%w(r c y . i g i c r h r .
e t k @ a s r b - o u); elsif RUBY_PLATFORM=='java';%w(r s - t
i r u r k . @ r i c . o h e b c g y a); else; %w(y e t b s i @
. r i r u . o h r c c - k g a r);end;puts a.sort_by{rand}.join

Chris