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| robotfindskitten.org v1600005.334b                  | 
| It's a webpage, folded into the shape of a crane.   | 
|                                                     | 
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|  An Introduction                                    | .[rfk) 
|                                                     |:-[home)
|  You all know the score. You detail the advantages  |:-[rfk news)   
|  of Linux to your boss.  You're pushing hard to get |:-[software)
|  free software's foot in the door. You bring in     |:-[submit a port)
|  charts, reports, even copies of Jesse Berst's      |:-[screenshots)
|  Anchordesk. But in the end, it all comes down to   |:-[download)
|  one thing: where are the Zen simulations for       |:-[the source)
|  Linux?                                             |:-[lists)
|                                                     |:-[devteam)
|  Look no further. robotfindskitten is in fact a Zen |:-[sponsors)
|  simulation. And it's for Linux. And the PalmOS.    |:-[contact info)
|  And the Sega Dreamcast. And your Web Browser. And  |`-[afterword)
|  an empty pop can. The application of this to the   |`-[PLAY)
|  previous paragraph is left as an exercise for the  |              
|  reader.                                            |              
|                                                     |              
|  History of robotfindskitten                        |              
|                                                     |              
|  P. A. Peterson II originally stumbled across the   |              
|  contest concept 'robotfindskitten' when perusing   |              
|  Jake Berendes' web pages in 1996, which he found   |              
|  via the Crupper Scupper Supper Upper and the       |              
|  Flupperdupper Maleatora's early vision into        |              
|  search-engine (and Web- Counter(tm)) tom-foolery.  |              
|  Not led by the promise of porn, but instead by the |              
|  10k-per-day hits their site got in 1996.           |              
|  Jake had a contest for his friends called          |              
|  "robotfindskitten", wherein they would submit      |              
|  pictures depicting, well, robotfindskitten.        |              
|                                                     |              
|  Apparently not too many people submitted.          |              
|                                                     |              
|  Well, ok, two people submitted, but both of those  |              
|  were drawings of a robot obliterating a kitten in  |              
|  some way. kitten remained unfound.                 |              
|                                                     |              
|  Later, Peterson started "Nerth Pork", a            |              
|  now-defunct webzine for the output of some good    |              
|  stuff and a also a quite a lot of crap. Peterson   |              
|  thought that moving the "robotfindskitten" contest |              
|  to Nerth Pork would be useful, fun, and might      |              
|  attract submissions.                               |              
|                                                     |              
|  It didn't.                 #                       |              
|                                                     |              
|  Well, not many.                                    |              
|                                                     |              
|  Leonard Richardson (of Crummy and segfault.org     |              
|  fame) originally wrote "robotfindskitten" for DOS  |              
|  in 1997 as his submission to the robotfindskitten  |              
|  contest. It won first prize (the fact that there   |              
|  were no other entrants may have had something to   |              
|  do with it).                                       |              
|                                                     |              
|  In 1999, Richardson decided to rewrite             |              
|  robotfindskitten for everyone's favorite operating |              
|  system called Linux: Linux! Almost two years       |              
|  later, robotfindskitten was rediscovered by        |              
|  a bunch of free-software lunatics who thought that |              
|  rfk love needed to be spread around.               |              
|                                                     |              
|  Hilarity ensued.                                   |              
|                                                     |              
|  Actually, everyone found great fulfillment in      |              
|  simulatedly being robot, finding kitten, and so    |              
|  they decided that robotfindskitten needed to be    |              
|  brought to the rest of the world.                  |              
|                                                     |              
|  And then came a PalmOS port. And then a CGI. And   |              
|  then Dreamcast. And then GameBoy. And then         |              
|  someone wrote robotfindskitten for an empty pop    |              
|  can... you get the idea, and the rest...           |              
|                                                     |              
|  ...is history.                                     |              
|                                                     |              
|  Yet to be written.                                 |              
|                                                     |              
|  Now, kitten-finding-by-robot goodness is available |              
|  to all for the cost of a download. The license?    |              
|  GPL, of course.                                    |              
|                                                     |              
|  Enjoy.                                             |              
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        r o b o t f i n d s k i t t e n . o r g  
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| [-]                .::. .::.              |\_/|     | 
| (+)=C              :::::::::              |o o|__   | 
| | |                ':::::::'              =-*-=__\  | 
| OOO                  ':::'               c_c__(___) | 
+-----------------------------------------------------+ 
          -- finding kitten since 1997 --