On Thu, 9 Mar 2006, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> 
> der Mouse wrote:
> > 
> > In Norwegian, it has a meaning which I cannot think of a precise
> > English translation for.  ("Elf" and "pixie" are close but not really
> > precise enough.  Or, it's possible - not unlikely, actually - that my
> > weak understanding of its meaning is the actual problem.)  Since
> > port-vax came from Sweden, and Swedish is very close to Norwegian, it
> > seems possible that this is the origin of its use in the bootloader.
> 
> Ah. Good point. I forgot about that one in my previous letter. A "nisse" can
> be a sort of friendly gnome as well (I think that is a better translation).
> Not sure if that was the intention, but it's good anyway. "nisse" sometimes
> have a tendency among swedish programmers to be used as a random junk name.
> Like "foo", "bar", "foobar", "gazonk", "quux", and all other of the kind...
> 
> I guess Ragge will have to tell what the thought was in this case.

It sounds like you somehow missed the message with id:
    <200603082041.VAA09267@father.ludd.luth.se>
from ragge, which I received before yours, and which mentions
some of the exact same words (foo and bar).  Perhaps it went into
a "spam" folder or something?

-aw