This probably should go to Debian Curiosa. But since this
involves an important Debian package, here goes:
I did an "apt-get source python2.3" this evening and merrily
typed "debuild -b -uc -us" within the build tree. Midway thru
what should be an uneventful compile (after I had hacked thru a
number of build dependencies), the speakers attached to my box
suddenly spouted something like "No one expects the Spanish
Inquistion!"
Boy, that scared me! Two things came to my mind: (1) I was being
haunted (2) I was hacked by a joker. But being somewhat of a
rationalist, I decided to investigate. My initial suspicion was
that it was tied to the python build. I grep'ped the source for
"Spanish Inquisition" and sure enough, there was a file that
contained the words:
$ grep -ir "Spanish Inquisition" python2.3-2.2.97/
python2.3-2.2.97/Demo/pdist/cmdfw.py: print "Nobody expects the Spanish
Inquisition!"
python2.3-2.2.97/Mac/Lib/test/tte.py:t = TETextBox("Nobody expects the SPANISH
inquisition", r, 1)
Without so much as scanning the source I thought that I might
have heard some sort of test of, say, python's built-in speech
synthesis. A reasonable supposition at the time. So I changed the
whimsical words to something saner like "This is a test of
python's [blah]." I still heard the malediction. I concluded
that perhaps the voice was a pre-recorded or pre-sythensized
audio sample. I did a search for "*wav", the most likely
suspect. Failing to find such a file, and thinking that Debian
won't allow its sources to be polluted by an mp3, I next searched
for "*au". There I put the mystery to rest.
The offending audio file?
"python2.3-2.2.97/Lib/test/audiotest.au"
Play it and be terrified.
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